[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

---

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

[underpinnings]

"You'd think if the whole family of moose can handle themselves, we wouldn't need to worry." As she sags, Owen moves up, one hand hovering as the pots slide into place. If they leave them, they might just wind up back on the ground--

And if they put them all up in cabinets, they might just fall further onto it. No point being particular about pots and pans, even if they're easier to manage than weird fauna.

"She's gotten out before," even with the pen mostly intact. It isn't exactly intelligence that lights those brown eyes--from what he's heard, she usually just leans on the gate until it gives. Owen's voice drops to weary baritone, like a man reporting the reason for retreat on a front line: "I hear she's fond of pumpkins."

[digging]

"I'm sure the people who do the farming just love that," Karen replies, and immediately feels a pang of guilt as she leads Owen out the back door. She isn't one of the people who do the farming, and maybe she should be; when they're having to grow and hunt and fish for everything themselves, everyday, it's hard to justfy exploring as a useful vocation.

Hopefully, she thinks, the groffle won't have done too much damage yet — Hopefully it will have just gotten scared and wedged itself under a tree or outcropping somewhere. Karen feels like even thinking that, she should be knocking on wood.

The back of the inn looks a lot like the front, just with more downed limbs to step gingerly around. The ground begins to sway again and she halts, nowhere particularly safe to go with all these trees, wishing they'd gone out the front way so they were on the broad, empty expanse of the lawn.

[underpinnings]

If Owen doesn't reach out to steady her, it's all the more altruistic: "I don't have the best track record with the trees around here," he says, breathing through his teeth a moment until the ground settles. Earthquakes are fine, earthquakes are normal. They're just normally capable of being pretty horrible, and he eyes the inn over his shoulder.

"Watch for anything rattling around, shit tends to go sideways after the big one softens it up."

Kind of literally. "At least the fields are pretty open." A trellis falling on him would be new. In the aftermath of the shake, an alarmed human voice competes with a horribly feline wail in the kitchen. He looks at the creaking door, then to Karen, hopefully for long enough to divorce the sound from what he says. "Run for it?"

[digging]

Owen's been in earthquakes before, then; Karen guesses it's a relief that at least one person here has.

"Sure," she agrees with a nod, and takes off at a sprint, seeing no reason to wait for confirmation if they're honestly trying to outrun more aftershocks. The field is mostly intact when they arrive, the expected tree branches and general flotsam around the edges but the crops seeming okay. The orchard is further back and harder to tell, but from here Karen thinks it's come through alright.

But more to the point, the groffle is right where Owen expected her to be, calmly chewing on what looks to be some sort of squash vine as if this were all in a normal day for her.

[underpinnings]

Two birds, one stone; Owen leans into his knees and heaves a fortifying breath, the urgency easing away with their weird cow in sight and nothing waiting to fall on them.

"Are you as weirdly disappointed as I am," he huffs, kicking a clod of dirt in the animal's direction. When the next shock rolls through, he's already crouched enough to ride it, and this time he puts a hand to Karen's elbow, steadying. Out here, they're mostly in trouble of falling on their asses.

"Should've been more worried for the pumpkins." The groffle gives a low, irritated rumble as her prize rolls slightly away, and takes a step to catch up. "I guess when you've done enough speed, the shaking seems normal."

[digging]

As the swaying eases off, Karen pushes out a laugh, glad for the levity and an excuse to let the instinctive tension slide out of her shoulders. "The question is," she begins, squinting out at the groffle who, from what Karen could see, merely snorted at the disturbance and continued on her pumpkin-ravaging business, "are we going to need to feed her more speed to get her out of there?"

[underpinnings]

Owen closes his eyes briefly, smile subsumed into a brief shake of his head. "Do you carry some around for special occasions? Thrill-seeking tendencies?"

Getting dragged half back to the village by this thing is probably up there with the badger and Liv for years shed off his life. With that in mind, and the general safety of the field itself, he has to wonder aloud: "Doesn't seem that urgent; maybe we just put a gourd on a stick and see if those antlers fit through the jailhouse door."

[digging]

As plans go, it's straight out of a cartoon, but even as she's pressing her lips together against a laugh, Karen has to admit that there's a certain brilliant similicity about it. She doubts it will get executed nearly so cleanly as it was conceived, but they've only got som many options when trying to move an animal the size of a small house.

"What the hell," she says with a lift of both hands. "I'll find the stick if you'll find an uneaten gourd." And if it doesn't work, they're no worse off than when they started.