logsinthenight | And it feels like I've been away for an era

Entry tags:

And it feels like I've been away for an era

characters: Rosinante, OTA
location: Harbor, Bonfire Square, Scrapyard
date/time: May 27-31
content: End of the month catch-all. Having taken stock of their few remaining supplies, Rosi is boiling water, and ruminating on what to do next.
warnings: n/a

Harbor

This is technically a little risky, what he's doing here, but only because the lake is not his friend and never will be. It, like the sea, hates him. But while others are worrying about food, Rosinante is worrying about water. Sleep is something they can all do, but they'll each need one of the other two if they're going to survive until they can get supplies, and at least water is a more or less inexhaustible resource. It just has to be gathered and treated.

To this end, he has acquired stock pots and a few barrels that once held other food and drink, now all gone. Out at the edge of the water, he fills each barrel by submerging it in the shallows a few inches, tipping it up, then scooping with the stock pots to top it off. It's slow, but the shovel on the ground beside him, a piece of tubing from the pawn shop, and the submerged, half filled-in pit of gravel show his original plan of digging a good hole and siphoning into the barrel didn't work out very well.

He notices light, or maybe the crunch of pebbles underfoot, and beckons you toward him. "Want to give me a hand with this?"

Bonfire Square

The stock pots are better than the barrels for one task in particular - boiling the water over the pile of burning torches. With a few hefty branches carved from a nearby tree, Rosinante has constructed a basic rack to hang them on and let them boil.

In the meantime, he's seated cross-legged on the ground near the fire. His completely soaked clothing shows that in part, he apparently needs to dry off. Feel free to ask about that. Otherwise, he looks at you, hair hanging into his eyes. Probably needs a cut. "You, uh. Don't know if there's anyone around who has a cigarette left, do you?"

Even one would sure be nice right now. Just one. Anything for one.

Scrapyard

That metal hull is something he's had an eye on for months now, but this isn't a place Rosinante comes often and he's standing well back from the pile itself as he looks the remnants of that boat over. For chained within, but watching him closely, is the enormous spirit dog, and while the creature isn't as large compared to him as it is to everyone else here, it's still plenty menacing. He takes a step forward, and it tenses and sniffs at the air.

"Easy," he calls out to it, and bends down to pick up a chunk of wood. Maybe it will accept it as a chew toy? He doesn't exactly have meat to hand out, and that's probably what works best.

"Easy, buddy, I just want to see the boat..."

Maybe he could use some backup.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Food. Water. Supplies. Everything is dwindling dangerously low. He's noticed those in the Invincible pouring themselves drinks that are barely perceptible and trying to draw it out for an hour with minimal success. And it's not as if sleep is coming easily either - not with so many things to worry about.

He's a little surprised to find Rosinante by the lake, after fishing up a foam clone of himself and then being killed by whatever horrible monster lives in there, he wouldn't have thought the man would come back and try his luck again. Still, he has a good plan if what Kuai surmises is true.

"Planning to take all that back to town?" He raises an eyebrow as it's instantly evident that this is going to take forever to get enough water for everyone in town. "Is it drinkable?"

"Going to boil it first," he replies as he hauls up another heavy bucket, then pours it into the barrel before looking at Kuai with a solemn nod. "That part's going to take even more time. But I figured I better get started before we completely run out."

In truth, he's not sure if it needs to be boiled. Maybe, since they're dead, they can drink the water as-is. Maybe it's fine. Maybe the water is naturally fresh and clean, like how the food stays good for a long time here on the general store shelves. But yes, given the things that seem to exist in the lake, he figures he'd better boil it to be safe.

Even if it didn't need to be, there's something comforting in the familiar gesture. A little bit of safety even if it was meaningless.

"Solid plan." He turns to stare out at the lake for a bit before running his hands through his hair and turning back to Rosinante. "It will be easier to carry back if you have a sled or cart of some sort. Maybe a piece of plywood with a rope to drag over the ground, rather than carrying a barrel of water."

Granted Rosinante was a lot bigger than him, but barrels of water are extremely heavy.

"I'll see if I can find something, there must be something usable left from the wreckage of the flood."

"Yeah? That'd be helpful. Was going to try and seal and roll them otherwise. Sled's fine if you can't find anything with good wheels. You could make an ice path for it."

Actually, that almost sounds kind of fun. As long as it's not far too slick and prone to sliding all over the place - but in his experience, ice is never quite that perfect, not like it is in stories. With a heavy weight on a sled, it will still take a lot of effort to drag. He'd just rather do that across a flat surface than the uneven ground.

That actually gets an almost smile out of him. Making ice paths for transporting barrels of water is not something he'd ever imagined he'd use his powers for. Being a fighter, a kombatant, for so long he sometimes forgets about all the mundane normal things that make up life.

Or in this case death.

"Certainly. We can try and keep it from slipping back into the lake. I shall return shortly."

And off he heads to try and find something like a wagon or a sled or a cart. Of course there's nothing quite so useful sitting around waiting to be used (though he's pretty sure he's seen a wheelbarrow by the greenhouse at some point, it's not there now). Instead he lashes together some wooden planks with rope and bungie cords, creating a knotted leash to pull it with, something long enough that Rosinante could hold comfortably while Kuai makes an ice path.

Testing it out he stands on it and makes himself an ice path back to the coastline, using it as a makeshift snowboard to head over to Rosinante.

"It may work." He hops off, tugging it into place to put the barrels on. If only town was downhill from here, that would make this so much easier.

The grind of wood on ice causes him to look up from scooping water, and he laughs a little in surprise at Kuai's new vehicle. "Looks good! And maybe you've just invented a new summer sport."

He could call it... ice boarding. Or something. Maybe. Rosinante turns back to lift the stock pot full of water, misjudges the balance, and crashes down into the shallow edge of the lake, spilling everything in the pot. It rolls away a few feet, and he fumbles lazily for it but can't quite get himself to move quickly enough to grab it before it's out of reach. It takes a moment before he can make himself stand back up, and with a roll of his shoulders he forces the lethargy aside.

He needs the levity, everything is far too gloom and doom, even for someone as stoic as him, "May we live to see the summer and I'll be glad to freeze paths for people to sled on. Maybe off the roof."

Some amount of falling is pretty much a given whenever he interacts with Rosinante, so much so that for the most part he's stopped noticing it. But this is rather dramatic and he actually startles before going to scoop up the pot. "It's been a long few weeks."

He offers a hand to help him up, even though they're about the same height right now, "Have you been out here working for long?"

"Hm?" Oof, man, the water makes his head a little fuzzy sometimes, too. He doesn't take the offered hand, he's fine getting up on his own, but hey, nice of the guy to get the pot so it doesn't get swept away by the lake or one of the things in it.

It takes him an extra second to process what the question was, but then he replies, "No, maybe twenty minutes? Long enough to get the barrel almost full. Otherwise I'd have more for you to stick on your sled."

A whole year here, nearly, and almost nobody knows about his problems with water. He should probably let someone know some day so he doesn't manage to drown in just a few feet of it in some freak accident.

"Hm." Completely oblivious to Rosinante's issues with water, he assumes that he's just exhausted himself working too hard after the flood and the subsequent ... everything. He can relate. Throwing himself into work is a good way to make him feel like he's making a bit of a difference and keep him from dwelling on their situation, but coupled with the fact he's not sleeping well at all he's stretching himself thin.

The moment his hand connects with the shallow water to retrieve the pot, tiny shards of ice start floating away from his fingers. Had the lake not been in motion and the water stagnant he would have inadvertently created a thin crust of ice on top. Fortunately he's only in a few inches of water and he backs away as soon as he's gotten the pot.

Unbeknownst to him they are the two worst people to be on water retrieval duty.

"Let's see if it works before we commit to more barrels. This may be a disaster." He pushes the sled up against the barrel to make it easier to rock it back and forth and onto the platform.

"Might be," he agrees with a smile as he shoves the stopper into the mouth of the barrel, hammers the butt of his palm against it with a good heavy strike to make sure it won't leak, then heaves it with Kuai's help onto the makeshift sled. Damn thing's heavy for sure.

"I can pull it if you want to push. That might help it stay on track," he suggests, and moves to take the rope.

There's something about this that's comically ridiculous and even Kuai realizes it. There's a small pang of homesickness that no one from his world is around to goad him about it, Kung Jin maybe to tell him this plan is dumb, or Takeda to snicker under his breath.

But it's just Kuai and Rosinante and a chore they need to get done. Stepping to the side he lays a pathway of ice leading back to town, he'll have to reupp that every twenty feet or so but it's a start. Standing behind it he gives it a steady push, starting this whole thing sliding along the path.

"How are you planning to boil all this? At the kitchen in the Invincible?"

Well it's sliding!

Meanwhile, Rosinante takes hold of the rope at the front and tugs it over his shoulder, then gives it a good heave as he starts forward. And surprisingly, it moves pretty well - especially thanks to Kuai pushing it along. So far, so good, though if he was superstitious (and if his hands weren't occupied) he'd probably want to cross his fingers.

"Depends on if they're busy in there. If not, I thought I'd split it, get some going in there and then the rest on the bonfire. Once it's cooled, we can move a bunch of it to the general store. Should be plenty of empty jars still."

Look, okay, sure - most of the buildings probably still have functional plumbing, but his limited experience with plumbing is that it can't be trusted after a flood. It cracks, wastewater spills into the pipes, and having something he can rely on is reassuring until they know the pipes are clear.

Even if the water from the faucets was perfectly drinkable Kuai would still be assisting with this. Because it was a tangible thing he could do with a quantifiable result. He could tidy up the town, organize supplies, note where bridges needed to be repaired but it was all so much that it seemed almost insurmountable. This was small. Well small-ish anyway. And when they were done there'd be an actual end product, something they could look at and know they had helped.

Kuai really really needed that right now. Feeling a little overwhelmed lately as he tries to do everything all the time forever.

"I doubt they are at this time of .. well night." Time of day certainly didn't seem appropriate to say in the ever present darkeness. Old habits and all that. "Have you taken stock of supplies lately? The outlook is rather grim right now. I'm not sure we really need to eat any longer, but even so, it won't be pleasant when it runs out."

Because unless the ferry makes a miraculous reappearance it's a matter of when, not if.

"I've only glanced," he says, then pauses as the sled sticks on some slight groove in the ice and digs his heels in. With a heave, he tugs it forward and it slips a little, catching up to him quickly - though thankfully with Kuai in back it doesn't go spinning off wildly or anything. They'll get there eventually.

"I just know I took everything edible I had in my room, and anything I found around town, and put it in the stockroom. Better off sharing what we've got than having everyone hoarding the last few crumbs."

Okay, so he didn't actually take everything down. There's a stash of candy he kept for Mary. And coffee and tea but those aren't food so holding onto them didn't feel so bad.

"Could always try fishing again," he says, totally deadpan, but they both know that's not actually going to help.

"It's bad. We have fewer people than ever, yet without replenishing the supplies we'll go hungry soon. Something will have to be done. Hunting or.."

Well, or that. "I think I speak for everyone that no one is going to eat anything fished up from the lake. Especially if it's a duplicate of a resident. I'm not sure I want to eat anything from the woods either."

He hadn't been forced to eat spirit meat, but he'd heard what few stories were posted on the network, what the Wild Hunt had divulged. There's no way anyone would willingly subject themselves to that.

"Has anyone tried to contact the Night Market? Maybe we can trade for additional rations."

Yeah, the idea of "hunting" here causes him to shake his head, which makes him pause in his pulling as it becomes almost a full-body shudder. No, whatever there is to eat out there in the forest, he doesn't want it. He's normally not opposed when the things to hunt are actual animals, but every animal-like creature they've encountered in the year they've been here has been some sort of spirit, and after what the green-eyes did to him and the others, he's not interested.

But soon enough, he resumes trying to haul the water. The slope from bonfire to harbor is subtle, but he's really starting to feel it with all this weight. Good thing the ice is slick and Kuai is still pushing or this would actually be really damn hard.

"No, but I've talked to several others about that. None of us know how to get a message to her, but we should try. She should have noticed the lack of communication with Robin when the lighthouse went down, though, so I'm hoping she'll arrive in the middle of next month as scheduled. She's not cruel, if she finds out we need food she'll have some brought up if they have any to spare."

If this was any lighter he would have shoved the whole thing right into the back of Rosinante's legs since he didn't notice that pause and shudder, all his concentration on making sure this doesn't topple.

"Right that's my hope too. If nothing else they may be running low as well and come to us to see if we have more. They may have even lived through something like this before and have some thoughts on what to do. A secret stash of food perhaps. Or knowledge of a better way to weather the storm, so to speak."

Or a literally in their case considering the flood.

"Kimiko must have some source of supplies for her people as well. They're getting them from somewhere other than the ferry."

"Yeah, that's a good point. She must, and we haven't heard anything from them either. But they live in the mines, wherever those are - and I'm worried the flood might have affected them badly. Soldat and I were thinking we might start looking for them soon."

Because look, while he doesn't agree with their philosophy whatsoever, mines implies underground, and underground with that much water sounds to him like they might have been even worse off, and if they've been trapped by their tunnels collapsing then they'll need help to get out. They shouldn't suffer, he just doesn't know where to even start to try and help them.

Besides, if the people of Beacon can prove they care, and if members of the Wild Hunt might have come into abrupt reckoning with their mortality, some might opt to switch sides out of gratitude. It's the reverse of the play the Hunt tried and failed to pull on them.

He grimaces, he hadn't even thought about the fact they lived in mines. "I'm sure someone was swayed by her message and might have followed them back to wherever the mines are located. Wanted to join up, after being here for long enough I'm sure there's many that have fallen into despair and see that as a way out."

While Kuai isn't one of them, he's plummeted to the depths before, he knows how alluring a way out can be. But that was only for himself, those that chose such paths for others he had no empathy for. It was no mans right to make such decisions for anyone else.

"We need to reestablish communications with all the various parties. The Night Market, Wild Hunt, Lighthouse, everyone not currently in town." Another thing to add to the ever increasing list of things he was going to attempt to tackle all on his own because even after a year he thinks he can handle it all.

Rosinante is not so sure anyone was swayed. He kept a careful eye on the network, did quite a lot of eavesdropping, and tried to feel out allegiances around that time and found nothing at all. But he's not all-knowing, and it's certainly possible that someone took advantage of the flood to go run off and join them unnoticed. It would make them much harder to track, and everyone would assume they had died rather than defected to that particularly unpopular side.

He'll still try to help, though, especially if there's goodwill to be gained by it.

"Yeah. Just got to-"

His feet slip right out from under him on the ice, as was bound to happen, and the rope slips from his grasp. As he crashes to the ground, the sled slips backward toward Kuai.

He's been better about paying attention to the network, but he's never been good at deciphering what people actually mean. Putting out a call to ask if anyone knew where they went wouldn't be fruitful, no one is going to admit to something that might lead to a bunch of infighting. They'd have to actually go out and look for it. Probably not worth it, at least not now when they need to focus on their own survival without the ferry deliveries.

Before he can say something along those lines, and regret the presumed loss of life, what they both knew would happen at some point comes to pass. Kuai takes a barrel to the gut and backpedals while the cart slams into his shins. Sadly this might be one of only a handful of times that wearing his full armor is actually useful because otherwise he'd be hopping around with busted up legs. It catches him off guard enough that he actually goes down on his knees, barely managing to keep the barrel from toppling.

But not enough to prevent it from going off the ice path and partially sinking into the sand of the beach.

"You still with me?" as he peers around from the side of the barrel he's trying to hold up and seeing only a tangle of limbs.

"Yeah," he grunts from where his face rests on the ice, then picks himself up one long limb at a time and sits up to shake sand out of his hair.

"You okay?" he asks a second later, as he turns and then stands to make sure he didn't somehow accidentally fling the whole sled into Kuai when he went down. Nothing looks broken, right?

It's like watching a rather fashionable spider unfurl itself as Rosinante gets himself back to something resembling upright.

"Fine. And the barrel seems to have survived." Which is the important part. Kuai will accept any amount of bruising (of which his stomach is going to have a nice one), so long as they accomplish their goal. Sacrifice for the greater good and all that.

He groans a little as he tries to shove the cart back onto the ice, trying to get it back on there via brute strength and he almost face plants into the sand from the effort.

"I've had worse." Which they all have, seeing as they're dead. But Kuai doesn't see the irony here, getting up and dusting himself off now that the barrel isn't about to topple and roll away in an escape attempt to rejoin the lake. "Once we're over this little ridge it'll be flat to the Invincible."

"Oh-" Well, he'd help move the goods, but Kuai manages a lot of it surprisingly well. He knew the guy was strong, but that's still pretty impressive for someone so much smaller. Once the barrel and sled are back into position, he starts hauling with the rope again, trying to be more careful with his feet (as if that will ever actually help).

"Yeah, just a bit more. ... Sorry," he adds with a sigh. "I've always been just... like that."

A rare attempt to explain his condition, if one could call it an explanation (or even a condition). Far from satisfactory, probably. But he likes Kuai, and feels bad making him suffer with his stupid problem.

"Nothing to apologize for." Usually Rosinante's clumsiness was pretty endearing. Though it obviously had it's downsides considering how he first died.

Kuai doesn't assume that he's naturally a klutz, it's more that he thinks Rosinante comes from a world full of nine foot tall people, and is trying to adapt to this place designed for much shorter humans. Anyone would have a hard time when door knobs, sinks, and even ceilings weren't meant to house someone of their height.

"And no harm done." He says as he ignores the soon to be bruises forming across his stomach. "In your world, have you ever had to supply people for extended times like this? You seem like you know what you're doing."

And it feels like I've been away for an era

Harbor

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