[MINGLE] Great Shakes

[sixthiteration]

WHO: EVERYBODY
WHERE: EVERYWHERE
WHEN: 13 July (afternoon, main quake) - 14 July (morning, last aftershocks)
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Potential injuries, PTSD, and anxiety

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The sun is still high when the earth begins its initial, almost benign sway, but seasoned villagers know well enough that what follows will be far from gentle. Vibrations ramp up swiftly, exponentially, until within the space of a few seconds, the whole world is shaking — Dishes pinging down from shelves, young trees sifting free of the earth, shingles dislodging and tumbling like rain.

After 20 seconds, the worst is done, and after 30 the shaking has ebbed completely. Some will have escaped relatively unscathed, but others will not have been so lucky...

...and the aftershocks are still to come.

Comments

[thegreatexperiment]

Sam used to visit the bakery. A lot. Back when she'd been human, of course. She'd bonded with one of the previous bakers over a mutual love of challah. For obvious reasons, she'd hadn't returned in awhile. No one had mentioned that it was under new management. Cute management too, although, of course, everyone in this damn clown rodeo looked like an underwear model. The circus here was filled with beautiful people, herself excluded, of course. And they were all so deeply intermingled, enmeshed and entwined. Sometimes, she felt like she'd been sucked into a soap opera, but she was the only one there who could see the cameras.

Which, really, was no different from LA.

She gave the boy a smile. "Me? I'm a cockroach. Nothing can squish me." Not even pieces of space station falling from the sky.

Go figure.

Sam made a small gesture to the bakery. And the boy. "How about you?"

[notbadcakeboss]

"I've been through worse." Not just the arenas, but here as well. There were still scratches and bite marks on his arm and back from the wendigo fight. It made crawling around during the quake a bit more difficult, but if anything was torn or needed to be re bandaged, he'd worry about it later. There were more pressing things to worry about and he'd rather just get cleaning out of the way instead of needing two trips to patch himself up. "That was my first quake."

He'd heard about them in other districts but never gone through one before. While he wanted to brush it off jovially, it brought back too many memories of the arena. A reminder of how easily the game makers could change something with the push of a button. The similarities to this world and his own were still to eerie to contemplate.

"The bakery is a bit more shaken up than before. It will probably need another day of cleaning. Nothing is badly destroyed." There was that, at least.

[thegreatexperiment]

Sam gave the bakery a quick once-over. It would be all right. She turned to give the boy a lopsided smirk. "Well," she said, hooking her thumbs through the loops of her pants, "you never forget your first. I hope it was good for you."

It was refreshing to know that her people skills still sucked.

She was still Sam after all.

And on that subject....

"I'm Sam," she said, reaching out to offer him a hand. "I rely on gallows humor to keep me sane. Just ignore me."