We’re totally going

Okay, so I’ve never really travelled to “typical vacation spots” and been able to play LARP, but this time was *totally* different. I don’t even know how all the coolest folks in the universe got there, but the sun had set over the warm Pacific waters, and no oil was washing up on the beaches in front of our hotel in Puerto Vallarta. The LARP was some kind of Star Trek/Houses of the Blooded thing, and His Nibs was playing a kind of Vulcan/Noble who had to make a difficult decision. Would he marry me off to the man my planet’s elite had promised me to in a politically-motivated arranged marriage, or would he stand up for the rights of people to choose their own partners?

The decision was made more difficult by the fact that he and I had been lovers, kind of in secret (everyone on the station/planet we were stationed on knew we were lovers, but it was the best kept secret offworld) for the past several decades. Near the end of the game (which had at least a hundred participants), when all the characters were gathered on the beach for His Nibs’ character’s Final Act (would he lead me to the altar and hand me over to a life of servitude and isolation?), he and I and another character played by Ferlak had a long discussion and we used an awful lot of metaphors.

Also embroiled in the Plans was the fact that another character was to be executed, oddly enough, as part of the political “ceremony”. I don’t remember the relationship the dead person walking had to me or to the wedding party, but it was someone I Dearly Loved. I think Cha-cha may have been playing the DOOMED. Perhaps he was my brother. Most likely, he was my brother.

OH! That was it! My brother had been promised in marriage to the daughter of the ruling family on planet ?? But my brother had run off, determined never to marry her, or any woman. Particularly any woman chosen by our father. Of course, we had different mothers, but we were the only two children who were really emotionally close. So when he reneged on the arranged marriage, a price was declared by his betrothed’s father, to save face for the insult and to repay the investment and all that jazz.

Through the course of the night, I had (I thought) convinced my lover (His Nibs’ character) to just go through with my marriage, and that the most important thing was that my brother’s life be saved. I would do anything…*anything* to ensure Terryn survived. I would agree to be sold to the highest bidder, I would allow them to do whatever they wanted to my body, as long as they spared my brother’s life. I was confident that I would be able to, at the last minute, and as the Ambassador’s new wife, throw myself in front of the blade/gunshot/blow that was to kill my brother, thus solving two problems.

But it was not to be. At the very end of the evening, His Nibs murdered me! It was an act that surprised me, not because my lover would kill me, but because I had kind of missed the part where he did it. Later I would find out that while he was playing essentially Mr. Spock, he had a flaw on his character sheet that made him extremely possessive. And if he couldn’t have me in secret all to himself, no one would. Plus, he had  a Plan for reviving me. But the game was over for me for the evening, so I decided to stroll up the beach.

SWCoyote was there, looking incredibly dapper in a yellow Dick Tracy suit (no, I wouldn’t have pictured it on him either, but it did look good). I walked up the beach with my friend Melistress, who normally doesn’t play LARP, but who was there for this one. We walked along the beach, with the cool ocean breeze lifting our hair, and we found this really cool shop.

It wasn’t like all the other shops full of tourist crap and mass-produced malarky. It was the shop of a tailor/clothing designer, and he was this awesome older man…bald, wearing bermuda shorts and a golf shirt, and Birkenstocks, and he was fabulously gay. He took one look at the corset Melistress was eyeing, and he steered her completely away to a Merry Widow thingy that…well. Wow. He was right.

Then he nearly tore my corset from my body, disappeared with it for ten minutes, then returned with a repaired, steamed, shiny one that may have been mine in a former life, before…well…before life got at it. So we stayed and had tea with this guy, and the dream ended with me stripping naked and swimming out into the warm, salty surf.

I can’t even begin to tell you the forty-seven thousand ways in which this dream rocked. But it was one of the best ones I’ve had in a long time. Also, if you’re planning to run a LARP, do *not* cast Bne as the deaf-mute. Doesn’t work.