[MINGLE] Crab Boil

[markwatney]

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.

Comments

[digging]

"I'll get there," Karen promises, working her way down the table. "When I was a kid, sometimes we'd go out to Hampton Beach during the summer. This reminds me of that." The weather just beginning to warm, but still cooled by the ocean breezes. Stuffing themselves with seafood. These crabs are small and probably a lot of work; she hopes that means they're sweet.

"You ever do anything like that when you were a kid? Go to the beach, eat seafood, make bad sandcastles?"

[womanofvalue]

"My childhood was rather different," she admits, "Though I always imagined that we would go to the beach and have adventures. I was always the knight in shining armour," she brags, thinking nostalgically about the way their backyard could turn into anywhere, anytime. "My mother wasn't so keen on things that weren't ladylike," she explains.

"The beach, seafood, bad sandcastles, while not precisely listed, were disapproved of," she insists. "I've seen some beaches in Los Angeles since I've been there, but I don't go to relax." Usually, she's there to fetch Howard because he's out there being ridiculous and wasting time when she needs him to work.

[digging]

"That's too bad," Karen says as she leads the way back to the table and her waiting glass. For Peggy's sake, she should probably focus mostly on the food for now. God knows she's got plenty of time to get wasted anytime she wants.

"You should go now," Karen insists, already cracking into a crab with her bare fingers, glad to find the shell is thin. "Not like right now-now," she adds with a little laugh. "But you should go to the beach. We've got that whole river right there. You deserve a day off to make bad sandcastles."

[womanofvalue]

Peggy lets out a laugh, suddenly, at the prospect of her relaxing on a beach. She can't imagine herself languishing around anywhere without wanting to jump up five minutes later to do something, but the thought is a lovely one.

"I feel like all I have are days off here," she says, because that's also the truth. "We fill our time, but what are we really accomplishing? What are we doing apart from trying to survive?" Some days are harder than others, to be fair, but when you get down to it, that's all they're really doing.

[digging]

"That's what I mean," Karen says, motioning Peggy's way with a crab claw. "Being normal. Just doing something nice for once that has nothing to do with if we have enough to eat six months from now or who is coming out of the fountain to ruin our lives next." She shrugs, and licks some errant seasoning from the corner of her mouth. "Almost everyday I go out, and I don't even know what I'm looking for anymore. I'm pretty sure we're all clones and never getting off this rock, so I don't know why I even bother anymore."

[womanofvalue]

Peggy doesn't exactly flinch at the crab claw being pointed at her, though she does give Karen a wary look, not sure if she's going to have to disarm a woman wielding a crab claw today. She hopes not, seeing as that would be a terribly strange use of her skills.

"I had a party once," she offers, a touch lamely, because even that was a very long time ago and can hardly be used as an example of letting loose, seeing as she'd been doing it to say goodbye to a house. "And, that's not true," she adds. "People do get out of here. Some of us, at least."

Never Peggy, though, she's never had that sort of luck.

[digging]

"You sure about that?" Karen pointedly asks, and then turns her attention back to her meal, her fingers surprisingly dextrous as she pulls away the crab's shell to get to the meat inside.

"Because I'm not. I'm not sure about anything, Peggy, including whether we were ever actually back home to begin with."

[womanofvalue]

This is a level of maudlin that she hadn't been expecting, but lucky for Peggy, she's well-equipped to handle this with a hearty level of blunt reality. "Karen," she says flatly, giving her a pointed look. "I can assure you that I've been here longer than any person deserves to be stuck in one place. I am a real person, I came from a place, and one day, I'm going to go back."

"I'm certain of that much," she says, "because I have watched people come in and out with no recollection of being here. One day, it will be me," she says. "And I will likely never remember this little sojourn. That still makes that real, as well as this."

[digging]

"That must be nice," Karen allows, but just lets the subject drops, opting to lick her fingers clean instead. She's not precisely sober, but she's aware enough to know she doesn't want to get into an argument with one of her only friends about the value of nativete.

"We should do this more often," she adds instead with a vague motion to the party around them. "It's nice."

[womanofvalue]

Peggy glances around and thinks that it looks nice, but it just frustrates her. She wants to be doing something, constantly, and having so much free time is counter-intuitive to how she lives her life. "I hosted a party like this once, back wen I still had a large house all to myself," she says ruefully.

"I think it was the one and only time that my mother was pleased with me, even though I suspect she had no idea why," she deadpans, imagining her mother suddenly feeling a burst of warmth and satisfaction across the universe.

[digging]

Hosting parties is not something that springs to mind when Karen considers Peggy — At least not the sort that Karen is most familiar with, with all their mess and noise and utter lack of propriety. But then Peggy clarifies, and of course it makes sense, even if Karen still can't figure how an informal crab boil can be bridged with whatever canapes and cocktail dress affair Peggy's mom was happy about.

"It's good to get together," is all Karen allows around bites of food. "Sometimes people need a reason to be around other people."

[womanofvalue]

It seems that the food is helping to stem some of the more aggressive drinking that Karen had been doing, which makes Peggy pleased, seeing as while she's not averse to people enjoying themselves, Karen hadn't seemed like it when Peggy had first come across her.

"I'm sure if you were to drop a note in someone's ear, they'd be happy to do this again," she admits. "Because you're right. We all need a little interacting, sometimes."