sixthiterationlogs | mingle | we have bread and fishes and a jug of.... well, herbal tea.

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mingle | we have bread and fishes and a jug of.... well, herbal tea.

WHO: Kate Kelly
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: 15th August | Noon
OPEN TO: E V E R Y O N E
WARNINGS: N/A
NOTES: All sections are completely free for all! You can handwave your character helping out or thread it out, or just jump in to them eating. All characters are ICly invited, as they are every day. In light of the illness plot, feel free to use this post as an excuse for your characters to catch ill or spread the plague around.
STATUS: Open and ongoing!

Rain, hail, shine; blizzard, earthquake or lightning storm, the meals at the Inn have continued. People can, and do, wander in at breakfast and supper - as long as the stores are enough for three meals, anyway - but the main meal remains the one at midday. It's this meal which is the main event that Kate structures her day around, making sure volunteers arrive to help prepare, serve, and then clean; double-checking that there is enough food for all, that stores aren't too low and that fresh greens have been gathered. With the village chickens now producing eggs regularly there's a welcome addition of protein to the foodstuffs, and by now there are a number of experienced cooks in the village. At least, experienced in the ways of cooking communally and with what's on hand.

The main room of the Inn is swept, dusted; cutlery and bowls, plates are laid out on the sideboards in piles to be collected as people need. Everything is as it should be, even if some people - Kate included - are feeling a bit under the weather. But that's to be expected, isn't it? Everyone gets run down, has a day or two of feeling off colour. Certainly, it's nothing to worry about.

So come on in, help at the kitchen or pull up a chair at a table and enjoy some warm food and company while the outside confusion stays firmly outside.

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She frowns as she looks around them, thinking that his estimation that it's a flu is likely an accurate one, though she's still confused as to how that might have come about. "I've been feeling fine as well," she admits. That is to say that she's been physically well, but emotionally, she's been slightly out of sorts given that she's been unable to pin down her emotional state since Steve arrived again.

Lucky for her, that's not contagious in the least. "Well, at least we know that it isn't extremely contagious," she says, "which would be quite terrible if it impacted everyone. Have you any medical training in your past? I suspect that if more and more people get sick, we'll need it."

Finally, he lifts his spoon to his mouth and takes another biting sip of his soup.

"Triage, mostly," he confesses. "Field medicine. I'm alright with spurting wounds and broken bones, but not anything like this." The warriorborn were blessed with hardy constitutions. He's never had to worry about something as pedestrian as the flu before. Thankfully, that seems to hold true even down on the Surface, even when so many other things he's taken for granted, like his eyes or his incredible strength, have been altered. "My sisters were sick a handful of times during our childhood, but I never paid much attention to the remedy for any of their ailments."

"Yes, I'm afraid that I'm mostly the same," Peggy confesses, having been able to put a patch or two on people when they're in rough shape, but no more than that. She breathes out slowly and tries to stem frustrations, hoping that maybe it's simply a terrible cold and she's not going to have to worry about anything more than that.

"Sisters? I didn't know you had more than one," she says, trying to recall if Benedict had said as much at any point prior, though she doesn't believe that's the case. "What are their names?"

"They're twins," Benedict replies, smiling a little as he thinks back on the squirming bundles of squalling red flesh he held for the first time when he was nine years old. He remembers being distinctly unimpressed by them, even going so far as to ask his father if they can return them.

His parents have never let him live that down.

"Lucille and Emilia. Lucy and Emma for short. They're...oh, thirteen now?" He frowns, and lifts his shoulder in a shrug. "I don't rightly know how long I've been gone but it's been about a year, I think, so thirteen should be correct." He very nearly continues by saying they're fully human, but thankfully stops himself. He's only explained to Kate the why that would be something he'd need to clarify, and he'd rather not go into the details of the warriorborn right now over lunch.

Peggy wonders what it might be like to have more than one sibling (or any at all, these days, truth be told), but smiles as she allows Benedict to speak of his family and for her to live vicariously through that. "That's a very tender age for young girls," she says with a knowing smile, given that Peggy at thirteen had been more than a bit of a handful. "You must miss them dearly."

If there's one thing that Peggy is grateful for, it's that her separation and distance from her family is years-old now and she no longer feels that ache. Perhaps five years ago, it would have been different, but she's no longer the woman she was then.

"I do," he admits with a sigh, thinking of the girls and wondering what they're up to, Lucy with her dark curls and serious eyes, heavily favoring their mother, and Emma looking more like her brother, with honey-blond hair but entirely human eyes. "We were never very close, growing up, since there's ten years between us and they always had each other, but I do miss them."

They love him, he knows that, but there was always that slight distance between them that his heritage brought. He's just glad they escaped the indignity of being shunned because of the shape of their eyes or the length of their teeth. It's hard enough for a male child to navigate the world with warriorborn blood, but doubly hard for the girls.

"They're going to make their entrée into society soon," he adds wistfully, once again giving away his high-born status without thinking about it. "Last I saw them they were bickering about the color of their dresses."

Peggy's strangled sound is only because she, herself, had been expected to enter society at one point. She had grumpily stomped her way through it, barely making it through before she had found a way to tear the hem of her dress as she explored the hall that they'd had the soiree in. "I don't see how any big brother could have little sisters and not want to defend them. Mine always did," she says fondly, smiling warmly as she always does as she thinks about Michael.

"Though, if my brother heard me gossiping on about dress colours, he'd roll his eyes and insist we talk about something far more important," she can't help but admit. "He never quite saw the joy of picking out a lovely new dress."

He raises his eyebrows at her when she makes a strange noise in the back of her throat, but dismisses it quickly when she moves on.

"I admit, the joy is rather lost on me too," he replies with a laugh. "Though I have suffered through similar conversations often enough in my life to realize that my opinion is not truly sought, and I am only included for politeness or for moral support. Or, sometimes, to hold whatever is thrust at me and wait until I am otherwise needed."

Benedict has been forced to accompany his cousin to the dressmaker's frequently enough that he knows the whole routine and his place in it.

"I used to refuse to wear dresses on principle, but found as I got older that there's a steady and enjoyable routine to be had in setting one's hair and face, pressing a dress, and looking your best," she admits, thinking that her childhood self would glower at her for such a thing, but it's the truth. "I like to think that it's possible to live in both worlds. Dirty yourself up when required, clean and put on a show when you can."

"It's hardly as if we have that here. I have one dress and I've had the one opportunity to wear it." She had given a party to even have that opportunity and now her dress sits untouched in the back of a closet.

"I know," he agrees, his focus shifting for a moment as he looks out across the assembled crowd to find where Kate is standing, busy as always, looking somewhat worse for wear. "My Kate has left the gifts she received hanging in our wardrobe most of the year, reluctant to dirty them up with daily wear. Perhaps we should...engineer a reason for celebration again?"

He shrugs, running a hand through his hair again. It's getting too long, he'll have to get someone to cut it for him soon.

"There are so many holidays celebrated between us, surely someone can come up with a suitable excuse for a night of revelry."

"It would be a nice thing to do," Peggy agrees, though she feels awful for even deigning to speak about it when people are falling ill with the flu and there are more important things to focus on. Still, it would be nice to be able to wear such things and pretend, for just a moment, that she's not trapped in a village being pushed around in ways she despises. "Does it ever seem like the right time, though?" she can't help but wonder.

"I don't want to be insensitive and have a party while people are ill," she says. "It feels a touch mocking."

"Well, maybe we can schedule it in a few weeks," he suggests, his lips twisting wryly. She's right, it does seem a little gauche to plan a party when people are under the weather, but if they keep putting it off it'll never get done. One crisis begets another, in his experience.

"If we wait until the perfect moment, however, we'll never have another party in our lives," he points out. "It's too bad there are so few musical instruments," he continues absently. "I don't know how many of us are musicians, but I'm quite sure you're getting sick of that one record you have." He's been taught words like record in the time he's been here, and he likes to think that, if you didn't know any better, he'd more or less sound like anyone else these days.

"I wasn't in the habit of attending many parties," Peggy confesses, given that her life had been rather mired with the job and not nearly enough free time to allow her to enjoy herself. The most she ever was able to enjoy was to attend soirees and dress up and make herself feel normal on a case, when she wore makeup to stun someone rather than to impress.

"It is a terrible record, honestly," she has to admit. "Though, I do have a music box now, as well. We'll have two options," she teases.

"My aunt liked to throw parties. It was expected of her, as a Lancaster, and I think she delighted in the politics of it all, more than the actual frippery of the party itself. Even so, I was forced to attend each and every one, usually as a chaperone for my cousin. At least, until I joined the monastery, and then I was set free," he adds with a smile.

His tenure at the Temple may not have lasted more than a few years, but it was a welcome reprieve from the stuffy life he'd been living at home.

"I thought it was nice," he protests, feeling the urge to champion her record's quality, even if he was also getting rather tired of the songs by the fourth or fifth time he heard it straight through. "The music box might be difficult to dance to, but I'm sure we'll manage."

"My mother threw awful parties that I tolerated," Peggy admits, given that they were sad and stilted and no one ever truly had fun so much as sat there and acted polite in the ways that everyone was expected to act, even though it was hardly any entertainment at all.

"I take it that means that no one else has received any records, then?" She's still curious why she had been so lucky as to get one herself, but even she finds herself too maudlin to use it much of the time, given that it just reminds her of a dance that never happened.

"You know," he says slowly, scratching at his chin and drawing his eyebrows together like the very admission pains him, "I almost miss them, after all those years of complaining bitterly about attending and doing my best to avoid having to do so at all costs. I mean, they were horrible, and boring, and dreadfully long, but I suppose they just became familiar. And they were always filled with members of my extended family, so perhaps I miss their company more than the actual parties themselves."

Living in Habble Morning, Benny was surrounded by his entire extended family. And while most families tended to be rather small in Spire Albion, likely due to the lack of space available to spread out in, he was still always surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins of varying degrees.

Being the only Albion down here on the Surface can feel very isolating, sometimes.

He shakes his head. "Not to my knowledge. I haven't asked anyone, though, so it's possible that someone has and they have no way to play them, which is why they didn't say anything." Surely there are people in this habble who don't know about Miss Carter's phogograph machine.

"I'd like to imagine that people are receiving far more useful items than what I did," she says, given that she'd been grateful for her collection at the time, but with some distance, it all seems rather frivolous, the sorts of things that do no good in the long run. She would much rather food or books or weapons, that is, if she can't get a drawn map of the way out of here.

Glancing aside when she sees someone else feverish and flushed, she has to wonder how many people have been impacted so far. "You could always convince Kate to turn one of the lunches into a bit of a fete, I suppose," Peggy points out. "Now that I live with Stella, I would never want to force such an event on her."

It had been a lovely last hurrah, in that last home of hers, after Bucky had vanished. Now, though, she'd rather attend than host.

"Well, one would hope." Kate's dresses are very pretty and flatter her admirably, but they aren't quite as useful as, say, a weapon would be. Benedict has grown used to no longer wearing his gauntlet and sword at his side at all times, but he can't lie and say he wouldn't jump at the chance to have them back.

He hums. "The Inn would be an ideal place, I suppose," he concedes, eyeing the room they're in consideringly. "Considering the number of people we've managed to accumulate, even with the steady disappearances of certain members of the habble."

It hasn't escaped his notice, the sudden absence of members of the community he'd taken for granted before. It's made him doubly nervous, that one day he might vanish. Or worse, Kate might, and then he'd be left alone and the entire habble would no longer have her around to look after them.

Peggy does her best not to flinch at the mention of disappearances, mainly in that the last time she'd had the dance, there had been Steve before and now he's there again. It's not quite the same as someone who's vanished and never returned, but there's a special kind of grief that Peggy feels as a result of this. She tries not to think about lost chances and how she's doing herself no favours by not pursuing things this time around, but she still can't bring herself to change.

"You seem quite determined for such a thing to happen," she can't help but tease. "Let's see if we can't get people healthy first, but then I'd be happy to pitch in whatever help you might need."

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mingle | we have bread and fishes and a jug of.... well, herbal tea.

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