[MINGLE] Harvest Feast 🍂

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: 6I Inn
WHEN: 10 November, all day
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE POST
NOTE: Details can be found here.

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In the wee hours of November 10th, before even the earliest risers have roused themselves for another day, items begin to appear in the front room of the Inn. Decorations first — Boughs of autumn leaves in their reds and golds, wreaths of dried flowers and silken ribbon, flickering candles among the goards and berries and acorns. The food arrives next, the decadent aroma slipping up the Inn stairs to tempt those lingering in bed — Every imaginable harvest time delicacy, from roast turkey and ham to smoked salmon and oysters; fresh, soft bread warm from the oven to plum pudding and ice cream. And did we mention pie?

Once again, it's time for a feast. The bar is stocked, the coffee is brewed and the tables are groaning with food. Indulge, there's more than enough for everyone — That is, if you don't lose your appetite worrying about what it will all cost.

Comments

claire temple | open

[theluckygirl]

Of course the question of 'at what cost?' was lingering on her mind, too. Claire had come to the realisation quite abruptly after arriving that nothing came without a price there. In fact, everything that hit her senses when she walked through the door to the inn had a Thanksgiving vibe to it.

Were they supposed to be thankful?

Grabbing a plate and piling it high wasn't the first thought that went through her mind, nor any kind of drink that wasn't her usual tea. Instead she watched it all suspiciously and waited to see if people started developing scales, or third eyes.

And her skepticism showed pretty well, too.

[babyhunter]

Clary was enjoying her fifth cup of coffee when she spotted Claire looking very skeptical. She didn't blame her, more so after the invisible ghost thing they had to deal with a few weeks before.

She stepped up to the other woman, her head tilted curiously to the side. She was dressed in the clothes she had slept in, complete with socks, but didn't looked too concerned about it. The runes burned into her shoulders, neck and stomach were visible though they looked more like tattoos than burn marks.

"Hey." She flashed a brief smile. "Worried that it's poisoned or something?"

[theluckygirl]

Looking up, she gave Clary a guilty look. "Is that bad to think given what's happened since I got here only a few months ago?" Claire asked with another question. It was kind of hard not to and she was sure she wasn't the only one wondering it either.

But the smells were also getting to her, too, making her stomach growl noisily.

"It looks really good though. Have you had anything? Any weird feelings afterwards?"

[babyhunter]

"I have and I feel perfectly normal." She watched the other woman closely before offering her 2 cents. "You know if they wanted to kill us they've proven that they can do that at any time. I'm fairly sure our invisible act was because of them. So I don't see why they'd bother to poison our food."

It wasn't logical to poison their food when they didn't need the food to kill them.

"I tried some of the pie, the coffee of course and the fruit over at the end of the table." She has yet to try the meat or some of the other things on her to-eat list.

[theluckygirl]

"Well," Claire began, brows shooting up a little defensively. "It's not being killed I'm worried about. There's a reason not many have. It's the possibility of other things happening."

Given she was alerted to plagues, thunder strikes and other uncomfortable things happening eating the spread before them might bring on symptoms of some crazy sort. They had to be prepared for that and if they weren't, they were fools.

[babyhunter]

"I don't think that any other happenings happened because of a feast like this." Try saying that five times fast. "Mark says this is usual for this time of year." She rolled her shoulders in a shrug. "Sort of like the Thanksgiving of the Salem Witch Trials." That was an unpleasant image and Clary quickly pushed it away to focus on the rich cup of coffee in her hand. She was drinking it straight, if only to experience more of the delicious caffeine as it seeped into her system.

"You have a point though." Clary hadn't been cautious. It has been months and she missed the simple pleasures that she had taken for granted in New York. "The coffee is safe."

She didn't feel weird or sick. If anything she was feeling more comfortable than she had in the last few weeks. "I don't think this world makes a whole lot of sense." She looked sideways at Claire. "Or our hosts. It's like one minute they like us and then another they don't. It's weird." Clary didn't know what to think. They were needed her for some reason. At first, she thought her father was behind this but now she wasn't so sure. He didn't have this kind of power.

[theluckygirl]

"Believing that would be easier if others weren't just as suspicious." Claire said, but in a way that she surrendered to the possibility that something may not happen at all. But being cautious wasn't a bad thing to be when happenings happened without food suddenly appearing.

But that coffee Clary was drinking definitely smelled amazing so Claire stepped the few steps over to collect a cup. Glancing over her shoulder she lifted a shoulder into a conceding shrug.

After putting a bit of sugar in, she turned and while stirring, thought about what Clary was saying. Something she thought, too, beyond other weird things.

Like, "Or the intense feeling like we're being watched. That's the one that weirds me out the most. I mean there had to be someone. You don't make three people vanish completely and then put out clues and not check in to see if their following them."

This didn't feel anything like the Hand, but the same kind of feeling that someone was watching definitely was.

[3ofswords]

"I too condemn this holiday's erasure of American's genocide of its native population," Kira says, dryly misinterpreting her expression. Any skepticism of his own had been beaten out by his very real--physical, emotional, and mental--need for a well-cooked meal. Not cans, not rations, but food. As if to punctuate the comment, he lifts a still-steaming roll he's cut up into a pocket for turkey and gravy, and takes a decisive, soggy bite.

Breathing deep as he chews, he sighs through his nose, looking at the sandwich like it's the best idea he's ever had. "Is it really not worth risking our lives for something other than salted fish," he asks, wondering what he can pick up and store for later. "I've had two coffees and I haven't died yet."

[theluckygirl]

Truth be told, the longer she was sitting there watching people happily consume their weight in the food spread left for them, the less time it was taking to convince her that it would be fine. Then again, there didn't seem to be any trigger to her becoming invisible not to long ago...

Claire turned her gaze towards Kira, whom she recognized and who she hadn't realised she hadn't seen in a few long days. His comment and the way he looked eating his sandwich was more than amusing, though it didn't show.

"From what I hear, dying doesn't happen very often around here. I'm more worried about other potential weird stuff happening." Claire replied, glimpsing at the sandwich again before shifting to look at the spread of food nearby.

[3ofswords]

He wonders if he should offer to make her one, watching her give his plate a second look. It was an old trick from visiting friends after the holiday: stuff leftovers into bread for the rest of the weekend, until the turkey was gone or you were sick of it. The latter usually didn't happen.

"Worse ways to go," he says, his own gaze shifting over to the bar--usually empty. "They finally put the bar to good use," he adds. "It's one of the worst things, showing up here. They sit you down next to a bar with nothing in it."

[theluckygirl]

A nod to acknowledge that, Claire also couldn't ignore the fact that her stomach was growling louder for the food that was literally surrounding her. Finally she breathed in deeply and decided whatever happened (if it happened) would be worth it to fill her belly.

"I can see that as being a pretty big tease. I'm not much of a drinker so it doesn't bother me, but if they have beer I am definitely having one. Want me to get you one, too?"

Shifting to turn, she pardoned herself long enough to get a small helping at first. She'd go back for more later.

[3ofswords]

"I don't know if you need to be a big drinker, to want something that first night." He had been, shortly before things went to shit, and he'd taken what he could find in the safehouses. He'll do the same here, day one, day seven, day four hundred. "Sure," he answers, knowing the bottles he snuck across the way would be waiting if the hard stuff disappeared while he kept it cute.

As she wanders away, he can't help but wonder--is this going this easy because he's familiar to her, or is she just one to roll with the punches. Are they all, on some level, making it up as nicely as they can as they go along?

Mark's got all his notes, maybe he can get him to fill in the gaps of names Kira doesn't ask for fear of another Bodhi. "Thanks," he says, taking the bottle and scooting over to give her room when she returns. "I haven't had one of these in months."

[theluckygirl]

"I know I did." Claire confirmed. Kira was right though, the whole situation was level ten weird and in a way that rivalled what she just went through with the Hand back in her world. Actually, the two were tied because the stuff with the Hand was out and out disturbing.

But over. Hopefully.

When she returns she gives Kira a soft smile and nods. "Me, too. Honestly, between the things I went through where I'm from and here I may have more than one since it's available."

[thegreatexperiment]

Claire wasn't alone in her skepticism. But Sam had stopped giving a fuck about consequences awhile back. If she was in a Skinner Box, it was clearly operational conditioning. Which meant that she wasn't going to waste the possibility of food.

She was just going to...play it smart.

So it wasn't a plate that Sam started piling up with food.

It was a fucking burlap sack.

She was going to take as much as she could, but wasn't going to touch a bite of it until she'd had enough time to observe and collect data from everyone else who was chowing down.

[theluckygirl]

That was mostly what Claire was doing but in a shorter time period. An hour, maybe a little longer and that would be enough to decide if it was safe, or not. But in seeing the girl with the blue hair and her bagging the food, there may have been a bit of relief seeing she wasn't the only one.

Taking baby steps, Claire decided to grab a coffee and maybe a bun and appeared at the young woman's left.

"I thought about doing the same thing, but I can't see myself eating it all before it goes bad." she said, reaching over to grab a still warm bun.

[thegreatexperiment]

When virtually no one talked to you or gave a fuck about you, a person got pretty good at observation. And Sam had definitely never seen this chick before. Newbie. Had to be. Still had that actually-where-you-belong smell. Sam couldn't help but give her a sympathetic grimace.

"The trick is to pick as much stuff that can be preserved as possible. If they had fucking Twinkies, it would be a jackpot, but..." She shrugged. You couldn't control the Observers any more than you could control Chicago weather or the beehive that was George Lucas's brain.

She dropped a handful of dried apricots (she hoped?)into her bag, then wiped off her palm on the leg of her pants, before offering the woman a handshake. "Sam Moon. Professional pain in the ass and ruinator."

[theluckygirl]

Huffing out an easy sound of concession Claire nodded. Why did this girl have to mention Twinkies?

"Well, I like to call myself a survivor but I can't say I was paying attention when my mother was trying to teach me how to can." she laughed, offering her hand in return. "Claire Temple, usual handler of pain in the asses but it seems I've been granted a holiday. Nice to meet you."

[thegreatexperiment]

Sam decided that she liked Claire almost immediately. It was always nice when an old person--to Sam's mind, anyone over the age of twenty five was old--had a decent sense of humor.

Hell, it was nice to find anyone with a sense of humor in this place. Sam's gallows humor wasn't exactly...well received.

Story of her fucking life.

She shook Claire's hand, pumping it firmly like every women's career seminar had taught her to. "Don't meet a lot of people who consider this place a 'holiday.' Your life must really suck."

[theluckygirl]

Really, it all came from seeing and dealing with the thing she had on top of everything that happened on a regular shift at Metro General before she even found Matt in the dumpster. Since then Claire wasn't so sure the ride had officially stopped.

After releasing Sam's hand, hands slid into the pockets of her peacoat before giving a shrug.

"To be honest, I can't say I even know what a 'holiday' is, so it may be something else entirely." she laughed.

Whether it did, or not, Claire didn't have much time to think about it.

Re: claire temple | open

[tooktheblack]

The skepticism in her eyes didn't go unnoticed and Jon felt it necessary to say something, if only to reassure the woman that the food was safe. Nothing had ever happened to him at one of these feasts (aside from, of course, the illness that befell some of them back in the spring) and he generally trusted the food.

"It likely won't make you ill," Jon said, nodding at a roast pheasant on the table. "That only happened once, in the spring. Last autumn's feast made no one ill at all."

[theluckygirl]

"I suppose that means it's a 50/50, right?" Claire answered, looking at the man who she had yet to meet, but had seen around the village. By then she was already leaning more towards grabbing a plate and filling it because what was being offered up to that point - though she was still thankful - wasn't this.

Turning her focus back to him, she smiled. "Have you tried any of it this stuff yet?"

[tooktheblack]

"Aye, no, I just got here," Jon said. Still, he'd filled his own plate and intended to eat his fill. If he grew sick from it, he grew sick, and he'd have to trust in the few maesters here to set him rights again. It had worked before, after all, and he would have to trust in their skill again.

"I suppose we could try it together. If one of us falls ill, the other can go for help?"

[theluckygirl]

"What the hell, you only live once." she said, giving a nod as she shifted around to go to the table where the food was. It was either sit there and go insane with the smells, or take the risk and hope it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed.

When they got there, she grabbed two plates and handed him one. "I'm Claire, by the way."

[tooktheblack]

"Jon," he offered in kind. "Claire...it's a name I never heard before here and now you're the second woman I've met who has that name. There's another woman called Claire, though she's much shorter and her hair is pale blonde. You couldn't look more different."

He smiled a bit, though, just a touch at the corner of his mouth. "Is it a common name where you're from?"

[theluckygirl]

Still listening, Claire began putting things on her plate and nodded with an amused grin. She remembers meeting the blonde and the guy who came into the clinic looking for her.

With his question she lifted a shoulder up. "Actually, not as much as Jon is." Claire told him. "I may know a few of those and treated wayyy more than that when I was working at the hospital where I was a nurse."

Claire stopped and looked at Jon. "None of them looked like you either. Well, maybe one."

She laughed.