sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] Crab Boil

WHO: Mark Watney
WHERE: 6I Inn front lawn
WHEN: 21 June 2018, afternoon/evening and onward
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
NOTES: A few thinsgs: You may assume your character helped set up; There are tubers in pot with the red salt, negating the warmth effect; The list of of potluck dishes is here; The list of local provisions is here

The weather is great, the sun is starting to dip toward the horizon, and it's pleasantly mild. Time for an (extremely) old-fashioned low country boil.

We've got two small fire pits built out in front of the inn, each with a massive pot filled with loads of vegetables — corn, carrots, potatoes, onions — and of course the rainbow crabs Finnick and Annie discovered not long after we arrived here. We've even got salt, if you can believe it, although the red salt in this place is pretty spicy and usually makes me sweat, so I've only put it in the one pot, and then set a bowl of it out for garnishing.

Tables and chairs have been brought out from inside, a couple of them set aside specifically for piles of plates, bowls, cups and whatever potluck provisions the rest of the village brings.

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Helen arched a brow at him. Poor joke, perhaps, but funny nonetheless and she allowed a small laugh. "I presume they are born that way, though not in the sense you indicate. I'm certain it has something to do with their particular evolutionary tree - and that is something I would love to research. Later, though. Now, I want to eat."

She nudged him a bit. "Did anyone say where they found these? What part of the settlement?"

"I didn't really pay attention past someone putting out free food in front of me," Ravi confesses, seeing as in a society of hunters and gatherers, he tends to fall at the end of the spectrum where he does neither and mostly observes and waits for someone to fetch him something instead.

Ravi makes some room beside him, though, patting at the space to encourage her to stay. "I know I should be wary of what I eat, but it's seafood and I'm starved."

"I thought I might want to know for future reference," Helen said, shrugging a shoulder. She liked to gather even if she tried not to hunt on a regular basis and this was something she could stand to eat more of if it was in a place easily accessible.

She slides in beside him, though, hip pressed to his. "It is incredibly good. You're not wrong to dig in."

"I feel like I take advantage of not being a hunter or a gatherer, but I like to believe that dissecting the human bodies that die here has earned me a spot of being cared for, at least for a little while," Ravi insists, seeing as he doubts anyone else wants to do it. Even then, only he and Liv could probably do it professionally.

It's terrible, but Ravi actually sort wants to have that experience again, bonding with Liv over a dead body, her cooking the brains into something delicious, Ravi jealous because he kind of wishes that she would cook a normal portion for him.

"Ah, well, as doctors we do serve a higher calling," Helen agreed. "And we're lucky to even have doctors here. Perhaps we don't have state of the art equipment and supplies but the three of us are brilliant and Claire besides."

Helen wouldn't knock the contributions of a well-trained nurse like Claire Temple. "The people who live here could be much worse off for medical care, that's for certain. Still, I do like to have a walkabout from time to time. I like seeing what's out there."

"Honestly, any big surgery, I'm not really capable of that," Ravi confesses, even though he doesn't like to admit it. Hands in the air, he shrugs as he wiggles his fingers. "Dead bodies? I'm great. Diseases and lab tests? I'd go so far as to say I'm an expert. Live ones?" He shakes his head, because that means that he's stepping into an arena he's not entirely comfortable with.

"Then again, I'm still not convinced that there isn't a plan to keep us all healthy until we're useless, and maybe that's when people die. When they don't serve a purpose to the overlords."

"I've no idea what purpose we serve. Still, I did battlefield surgeries at Verdun so if I had to be called upon again, I could do it with the equipment we have. It wouldn't be pleasant, unless we got more ether, but I could manage to complete the job."

Maintaining a sterile field would be the worst part. It'd been infection that had killed most of those men, not the initial wound. "Luckily we've not had anything terribly serious. Some of the lightning injuries in the past were but it's been a while since that happened and we have more equipment now."

"You take the living, I've got the dead," he negotiates, since that's roughly where his skills tend to lie. It's always much better when they simply lie there and don't complain about Ravi's stitching skills. It's not his fault he only practices Y incisions, he's a medical examiner, after all.

"I mean," he says, "Major is gone, but Liv's here now," he says, helpfully. "So it's sort of trading zombies, so we've still got that mystery to continue with." He pokes at his rainbow crab. "Do you think these things have any brains to spare?"

"I imagine the brains of crustaceans are too small to be of any use to zombies. Then again, I've only learned this much about zombies since meeting you so, truly, you'd be the expert here."

Helen grinned broadly at him. "I defer to your expertise, Dr. Chakrabarti."

"You're probably right, and I'm not sure I want Liv wandering around pinching me," he adds, seeing as that might be a little more awkward than he can bear, and he's grown very used to awkward scenarios, dealing with zombies every day of his life.

"Squirrels, it remains," he says. "Do you know I'm actually beginning to worry there'll be a nut infestation in our house while she prepares for the winter?"

"Well, at least you won't go hungry. I suppose you could try deer but I think she might startle too easily if she was eating deer brains on a regular basis."

There was a reason, after all, for the deer in the headlights metaphor.

"Badger? Those were interesting."

It might be funny for him for about two seconds before he got tired of watching Liv skitter away. "If it's that hyped up badger, she might aggressively attack someone," he says, furrowing his brow with concern as he imagines how awful that could be.

Again, funny for about five seconds, then really and truly awful. "Maybe I should stop worrying about Liv and just enjoy what's in front of me," he says. "Otherwise, I think I might just go mad."

"Perhaps but we're scientists. We don't often have the luxury of ignoring the future in favor of enjoying the present."

Helen gave him a bit of a smile. "But we could table it for a little while, if you wanted? We have nothing but time to attack this problem and nothing says we have to do it right now at a party."

"Let's enjoy the festive rainbow crabs for now," Ravi says, making the decision basically as soon as they start talking about parties and enjoying them, seeing as honestly, Ravi is all about ignoring the more dismal parts of their existence here when given food.

"Who knows when we'll get our next chance, right?" Because that, too, has been clear. Feasts are few and far between, so all the best to enjoy them.

"We should carpe diem while we can," Helen agreed. "And I imagine it's rather easier to seize the day when one has pincers, so our crustacean friends might be better off than we are."

Or perhaps not, considering they were the prey and not the predator. Hmm.

[MINGLE] Crab Boil

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