The birds have flown their summer skies to the south;

[markwatney]

WHO: Mark Watney
WHERE: 6I Inn
WHEN: 19 Oct 2017
OPEN TO: ALL Closed to new threads

---

I think most people have an unspoken list of things they intend to do when they have the time and inclination. Mine I usually actually write down, even in a place like this where paper and writing implements are scarce — Days with much downtime don't happen often, and my list is embarrassingly long. It helps to have a note so I can look everything over and figure out what's most pressing. I managed to get off of Mars this way, so I figure it's not a bad system.

Today, though, my choice was made for me. I woke up to two things: A box with my name on it, and a sky full of snow. Fortunately, all of the harvesting had been done on the less cold-hardy plants already, and unless this cold snap dragged on into something long-term, it would be good for what we picked later in the season. Sweetens the berries.

I've got plenty of ways I could fill a free day, but the snow and that mystery box left little question what needed to be top of the list: Taking a census before winter fully moved in. As far as I could tell, while various people in various places took notes about events and connections, we'd never had one central, definitive list of everyone in the community, where they were living and how long they'd been around. With a second village in the mix now, this information was more important than ever. A proper census would give us the tools to start to prepare for winter in earnest — Not just in predicting how much food and firewood would be needed, but what roads needed to be cleared, medical preparations and more.

The box I mentioned before, it helped with this. It was full of items that were a huge help in getting organized: Pencils, binders, blessed paper. And chalk. There was only one place to use that.

After carefully copying the information that had been collected on the blackboard at the Inn, I wash down both sides and jump right in: At the top of the outfacing side, I make three headings:

Name - Residence - Apx. Arrival

Beneath this, I start with my own info:

M. Watney - W. outskirts, blue - 1yr, 4 mo

"Why haven't we named the damn streets yet?" I mutter, and then began writing in what information I know on the rest of the villagers, leaving blank spaces for others to fill in next time they're at the Inn. But seriously, though, one more thing added to my to-do list: Street names and house numbers.

Comments

[warriorborn]

Having spent a year in this habble, Benedict likes to consider himself an old hand at this whole weather thing. He's already got one winter on the Surface under his belt, after all, he feels like he can consider himself fairly well prepared for another.

That doesn't mean he doesn't glower at the snow-filled clouds every chance he can, though.

The evenings have grown cold enough that he's taken to starting a fire in the common room every night, keeping an idle eye on it to make sure it doesn't burn itself out as he goes around doing his various chores to help keep the Inn running. Mr Watney's preparations with the blackboard do not go unnoticed, but the scientist's puttering has long ago become a sort of comforting background noise to Benedict, who has grown used to working alongside him in the fields and with the bees. He leaves him to whatever it is he's doing for the most part, only drifting over to investigate when it looks like Mr Watney is more or less finished.

"That is...not a bad idea," he comments, having heard the man's mutterings. "I'm surprised we haven't, actually."

The board gets a curious glance, and then Benedict's eyebrows draw close for a moment as he thinks. "How many months are in a year?" he asks, finally having given up on feeling somehow guilty and ashamed for his ignorance of what to most is common knowledge. He's asked Mr Watney stupider questions before. "I might have to ask my Kate how long I have been here, I am still not comfortable with the way you all tell time."

[markwatney]

"Twelve," I answer without really thinking about it. There are so many people here from places far beyond the universe I know, the one this place is at least partially based on; there aren't many questions that surprise me anymore.

"They average about 30 days each month," I add, and hesitate, chalk pausing in its route across the blackboard as I consider whether to elaborate and then decide against it. Here, it doesn't really matter that some months have 31 days and one has 29 or 28.

"Mostly I'm just trying to get a general sense of how long people have been here. For statistical purposes, but also to have a better idea of how many folks know what to expect for the winter."

Not that any of us ever really know what to expect.

[warriorborn]

"Twelve," he repeats under his breath, sounding bemused. "And there are seven days in a week." This, he's learned from Kate, who likes to keep track of the cycle of the week because she prays every seven days. Apparently it holds significance in her religion. Benedict prays every day, it seems neater. "So four and...a quarter weeks per month, twelve months per year, that's...three hundred and sixty days. It seems very...arbitrary." It seems very strange actually, but he's trying not to insult anyone, so arbitrary will do.

It also explains why he feels like he hasn't been here a whole year when he apparently has, by most's reckoning. "There are five hundred days a year where I come from."

He nods at Mr Watney's explanation, watching him scribble in the names of habble residents and where they are living. "A very sensible plan," he agrees, not sounding surprised in the least. If anyone in the habble is going to be sensible, it surely will be his Kate and Mr Watney. "If I may?"

He holds his hand out for the chalk and, when he's been given it, reaches in to fill in his own information below where Mr Watney has written Kate's, approximate dates and all. He hesitates for a moment when he's finished, then wets the pad of his thumb with his tongue and smudges out Kate's surname before re-writing it, the tips of his ears turning red as he does.

Sorellin-Kelly.

[markwatney]

"It's actually not arbitrary at all," I explain as I pull another piece of chalk from my pocket so I can continue filling in what info I know. "365 days is how long it takes Earth to make one full rotation around our sun. Is that how you define a year where you're from?"

I watch as Benny adjusts Kate's name, my brow creasing. Is he saying they got married? I feel like I would have heard about that, but who knows. It's not like we've got any laws about that sort of thing here.

"Congratulations," I simply say instead with an arch of my eyebrows, and motion to the name. "On Earth, the maiden name would come first, if that matters to you."

[warriorborn]

"Ours is not a heliocentric world," Benedict replies, trying not to think about the fact that not only is he on the Surface, and not up in the safety of a Spire, but that apparently he's not even on his own planet, if all the little details he's learned are true. "There are five hundred days in a year because that is what the Builders decreed."

Also, he thinks it's far more sensible than the arbitrary (sorry, Mark, he won't be swayed from this) system this habble uses.

Neither he nor Kate have made a grand announcement as to whether or not they are married. They have been married in all but name for months now, as everyone around them can attest to, and so they simply decided to make it official. It will be official-official when they can rustle up someone to read them the rites of Kate's Catholic god, but that is somewhat less urgent than preparing for the oncoming winter. Benedict cannot remember the marriage rites of the Way well enough to feel comfortable teaching them to someone else to perform for them, so that will have to wait as well.

If they ever manage to leave this place, and if he manages to return to Spire Albion, he'll find someone to handfast them properly.

"Thank you," he replies, looking rather pleased with himself. "And yes, so I've been told."

He hands the chalk back, no longer needing it now that he's made his corrections. "In Spire Albion it is the opposite. I am a Lancaster on my mother's side, and our children will be Kellys on their mother's side." This is one small thing he can hold on to from home. Kate hadn't seemed to be fussed one way or the other when he had suggested it to her.

[3ofswords]

"Helps us dodge the junk mail," he says, without bothering to figure out the context. With his powers receded again, and not yet driving him out of the village even worse than before, he's trying to get what he can out of each day. Today: some new socks for the I fucking told you so snow he'd pointed out to Bodhi, and sidling up to Mark for some of his sanity-shoring company.

That one conversation notwithstanding.

Glancing over the board, it isn't hard to gather the purpose, or find his and Bodhi's information somewhat filled in. "Here, let me see that." Taking up the chalk, he ignores the blank for his last name but fills in Rook after Bodhi, needing only a moment's thought to add 8 mo. Below even that, he starts a new line for the Orientation House, with its description and placement a row or two behind the inn, and he adds his and Bodhi's names as caretakers. "We'll be spending the winter here if I have any say in it, and I honestly have all the say in it."

Opinions that lead to freezing on the outskirts of the village don't actually count.

[markwatney]

"Yet somehow, the mystery packages always find their way to the right place," I quip back, and reach for another piece of chalk after Kira plucks the one from my fingers.

"Nobody needs to be over on the east side once the weather starts to really turn," I add, and glance behind me at the slow-drifting snowflakes tumbling beyond the window panes. "Stuck over there with almost no resources... No. I don't relish the idea of going out there and finding bodies once the snow melts."

[3ofswords]

"I can't believe you'd call my shitty dice, old bullet casings, or dozen rodeo belts junk," Kira says, voice dipping and rising with exaggerated offense. In a tighter space, he might think about getting rid of the things that simply haunt him out of sentimentality, but he has a house with a house's storage: why throw anything away? Where would he even throw it?

The lake. Definitely the big lake.

"I don't relish the idea of finding bodies anywhere," he adds, eyes driving sideways over the board to find Mark's. "Especially the fountain. I know it drained last summer; you wouldn't know how to rig some kind of pump for that, would you? Or we could do our best with buckets."

[markwatney]

"It wouldn't work," I reply with a shake of my head. Not that we've ever tried that particular tack that I can recall, but amid the unpredictability of this place, a few truths have emerged. One of them is that we're not doing anything to that fountain that the people in charge don't want us to do.

"To be honest, I don't know what would actually be worse, coming out of the fountain wet in the middle of freezing temperatures but having the possibility of finding shelter, or being dry and stuck in the bottom of it for hours."

Kira does bring up an important point, though. "A lot of people go by there or take informal shifts — We had some volunteers last winter, but there were gaps, obviously." I motion his way but don't elaborate. The least said about Kira's arrival the better. "It's probably finally time that we see about making fountain watching an official thing 24-7."

[theluckygirl]

She's still the new girl, despite being there for over a month and a half, though Claire is keeping busy while trying her best to contribute as often as she can. It's all in the name of not going nuts. Unfortunately, she's sure if she doesn't take on some extra hobbies that was a very real probability.

So when she arrives, the nurse slowly stares at the board on her way to grab a hot drink of something. Even wearing her issued black peacoat there's a very obvious tension in her shoulders that spells out she's cold. New York got its freak 10" snow storms, sure, that part wasn't shocking. It was the chill that came with it.

"Taking a census of who's all here?" Claire asked, making sure before she was bothered filling it the columns with her information. It was good to ask, especially if it was meant for another purpose altogether.

[markwatney]

"Yeah," I answer, finishing up the list of Starks (I think) before glancing back at her over my shoulder. "Several of us have kept informal lists, but we've never really had anything set down officially. But with winter obviously eager to get here, I figured it was past time," I added with a smile and a quick look at the windows and the snow drifting beyond.

"You're Claire, right?"

[theluckygirl]

It makes sense and the little bob of her head says as much before she's looking down the list of names, recognizing some but also realising she hasn't met a lot of people since she showed up in the village. All she needs are the faces to match them up.

Speaking of.

Eyes drift his way and brows lift in mild surprise. A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.

"Right. Small village. News travels fast." she laughs, pushing herself off the ledge she'd been leaning on and walks closer to the board and him. "So now that you have me at an unfair advantage.. which one of these names is yours?"

She is going to guess either the first, or last and since he's still writing names, Claire doesn't want to guess wrong.

[markwatney]

"I'm Mark Watney," I reply, tapping the first line on the list. "I answer to Mark or to Watney; people call me both around here. Technically, I also answer to 'hey you.' I'm not that picky," I add with a soft laugh.

"I'm a botanist, so most days you can find me out in the fields, but we'll be done for the year pretty soon. I'm hoping this lists helps us get a better idea of how far we need to stretch our stores. Are you from Earth?"

[pretendtoneedme]

"Why haven't we named the damn village?" is Clint's question when he sees what Mark's up to. Seeing Mark walk into the Inn with that "I've got something important to do" look on his face had drawn Clint away from his fletching station at a table in the corner, where he's busy turning the bunch of sticks he and Baze had gathered into full-fledged arrows. This kind of organization is something he's thought they should have before, but what with one thing or another he'd never really come across the time to get it going. Mark jumping on it - and, it seems, with fresh supplies - means that it'll be kept up with.

"Do you want to add people who've been and gone, or just people here now? And what kind of dating system are we going to use?" He's been able to keep more or less track of the passage of time in this place, going by the natural markers like the solstices and the equinoxes, but Clint hasn't kept numerical track of the days that have passed since his arrival. Presumably, someone has, or was. But he doesn't know who that would be.

[markwatney]

"We've actually talked about naming the village before," I say as I pause in my notations and take a step back from the board. "There's a strange and irrational amount of politics involved in naming things," I continue with a glance Clint's way. "We just never really settled on anything, but there wasn't actually a need until the last big earthquake. You don't need to name a village when there's only one. I just call them East Side and West Side now." That seems easiest and least likely to get hackles raised.

"We just need people who are here now," I add with a nod to the board. "And the dating convention isn't really important. I'm just trying to approximate so we have a better idea of who's already been through the wintertime gauntlet. Once we get this info down, we'll be able to better figure out how many supplies we need, who needs the crash course in not freezing to death, that sort of thing."

[pretendtoneedme]

"So you want us to skip back and forth doing ballet now?" A connoisseur of theatre he is not, but even Clint knows that reference, and he snorts a little as he asks the question. The idea is just ridiculous to him, as it's presumably ridiculous to most people in this place. "I don't think we have any Puerto Ricans here, and we definitely don't have time for gang warfare."

Grabbing one of the pieces of chalk, Clint finds the place where Mark has already penciled in his name and starts filling out the rest of the blanks. West, road north of inn, blue/off-white - 9 months is added to the line, the shortest description that still gives the full picture he can think of. "I showed up mid-winter, so I don't know how you guys handled preparations for all of this last year. But if you need anything, ask me and I'll try and help."

[markwatney]

"I don't think we have any women named Maria, so we're probably fine," I reply as I watch Clint fill in his information.

"I've actually been thinking about welfare checks. Not all the time, but we had some pretty good snowfall a couple of times last winter. Days like that, when it's not so simple to walk down to the Inn for a hot meal or over to the store house for supplies, it might be good to have a few people on hand to knock on doors, make sure everybody has enough firewood, things like that." And what I know of Clint, he seems to me someone who would jump at the chance to volunteer for a task like that.

[theoldlie]

There's something like relief that floods Steve when he hears someone speaking sensibly. Street names, town names, landmarks, these are the kinds of things that every place should have and this one hasn't seemed to get with the program at any point in time, much to his consternation. For a spy, gaining information has been his life's mission these last few years.

Being shoved into a place with no information makes him wonder if maybe that plane didn't blow up and bring him to a place of suffering. He's been shivering as he comes in from the cold, feeling like he's back in Belgium without the decent coat for it, but as the warmth hits him, so do those words.

"Yes, thank you," he says, maybe a little too emphatically, given that he doesn't really know the man on a personal level (though he's gleaned that he's Mark and has a lot of business at the fields). "Why haven't we? I mean, I've been here maybe two months, so I know why I haven't, but why did no one else?"

[markwatney]

"Mostly, it's because people have been too busy just trying to survive," I reply with a glance over my shoulder, watching as the new arrival shakes off the snow. "And when your village only has around fifty people in it, it doesn't often seem like a priority, even if I'm bitching about it now," I add with a small smile.

"We've gotten to the point though where we probably should slap on some street names, what with winter on the way. Last year was terrible, but there were fewer of us. I'd really prefer to avoid finding out after the fact that someone was stranded in a house because we didn't know they were there."

[theoldlie]

"I heard that there were some touch and go moments," he admits, though he's been thinking of life from a survival standpoint for the last few years, which means that he would have probably been more useful then, if he's honest. "When you say terrible, what are we talking about? Winters? Or something else?"

He's also been around long enough to understand that it's not just weather that you need to worry about. "I'm mostly complaining," Steve confesses, "I'm the kind of guy who likes to get his feet under him in a situation and that means information. Showing up in a nameless town without a way to orienteer apart from 'blue house'? It's been harder than I like admitting."

[markwatney]

"The cold, yeah, and we got a lot of snow," I reply with a nod. "At the time, we didn't have much in the way of extra clothes or blankets. The weird pseudo-Christmas helped a lot — This room just piled full of boxes for everybody. A lot of people got gloves and coats and things like that. Some food. But who ever knows what to expect from this place. It could be nothing but coal in our stockings in this year."

I step back from the board with a tilt of my head. "I mean, we can name things for our personal reference, but the kind of information you're talking about is harder to come by. But naming streets is at least a start."

[babyhunter]

Clary was heading out with her backpack slung over her shoulder when she saw the board. She watched the man write on it carefully before her lips tugged into a frown. "A year and 4 months? How do you even manage to keep track of that?" She was a little helpless without a phone or some sort of device to help her figure out the time and date. She hadn't tracked the days and eventually they began to bleed together.

She knew about the snow, having looked out her window, but Clary wasn't dressed for it. She was wearing yoga pants that stopped at her calves with a pair of black boots and a white fleece coat that she had liberated from the storage closet. She didn't think it'd be cold enough to wear pants yet and the coat was decently heavy.

"I gave them unofficial names." She turned towards Mark with a bit of a grin. She was heading out but it could wait. Clearly this was more important. "Want to see? I drew a map." She had a few, it's been her pet project since she first arrived since as an art student and a Shadowhunter... maps were all she could do to help.

[markwatney]

"Well," I began, turning with an arch of my eyebrows, "I keep a tally." I would have thought that was the obvious way to track how long you'd been anywhere, memorialized in countless books and movies, but with this place, you never know what someone's experience has been. Maybe she'd never heard of that.

"And sure," I add with a motion to the girl. "What've you got?"

[babyhunter]

Clary's experiance with the weird usually involved having a place to charge her cellphone. Even the Shadowhunters used cellphones and other technological systems, like clocks. She hadn't expected for this place to seriously be anti-everything-technology. It was stupid.

She rolled her shoulders in a shrug. "From what I've heard, that might not work with a sun that doesn't set." Not that she'd been around for that but all the basic ways you'd tell time didn't feel reliable.

"Oh, yeah. One second." Clary turned and dug through her backpack. She had been drawing better maps of the village and the canyon as a whole. Where there were the moving forest was just scribbled over with the words 'Lord of the Rings Forest' scribbled inside of it. The picture that she had for he town was nicer and involved road names and house numbers that she'd randomly assigned to keep things straight in her head. After Erik informed her that there were no house numbers. Again, that was stupid. He'd probably notice some mistake in her numbering and as such there were also numbers with letters next to them. Clary didn't have an eraser.

"Here." She passed over the two pieces of paper, careful not to bend them or mess them up. She spent nearly a month to get it straight and she had to battle foxes to make the map of the other canyon.

[ooc: my weird references for the maps: here and here.]

[markwatney]

"The sun didn't set, but it still moved from one horizon to the other," I mildly reply, and then reach to accept the proffered maps.

"Most of these names are along the lines I was thinking of," I say with a glance back up to the girl. "I think innocuous choices like Main Street are probably going to be best. Less likely to have people arguing about what we call things."

I gesture with the papers. "You did a good job with these."