sixthiterationlogs | lord willing and the creek don't rise [open]

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lord willing and the creek don't rise [open]

WHO: Raleigh Becket
WHERE: Along the banks of the river
WHEN: 10 July
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: None
STATUS: Open

Raleigh has spent the last week just trying to figure out what, if anything, is the rhyme and reason to this place. He's found himself a house that's decent enough shelter and while there's no tech and no maps, it's a comfortable enough existence. Food is something that has to be gathered daily and so he's taken it upon himself to figure out how to use the woven fish baskets to set traps along the river.

Amazingly enough, they work, but only just. Without bait, it's hit or miss if any fish swim into the traps and they're in such states of disrepair that half the time if he does get a catch, the fish is able to get itself right out. The traps themselves remind him of primitive versions of the ubiquitous crab traps all along the Pacific coast and Raleigh is familiar enough with those. He's gone crabbing before when the oceans are deemed safe and there's not pollution levels off the charts from Kaiju Blue. It usually kills all the fish, makes the place a dead zone for a couple years, but up in Alaska it's been a while since one has actually been killed in the direct area. Usually they kite the Kaiju further down the coast, away from the viable fishing industries.

This morning, when he goes to check the traps, he notices that the water has risen. The landmarks he's gotten used to along the river are now submerged and there's water splashing around his knees when normally it'd come to his ankles. Finding his traps in the swollen river are a problem too, as the surge seems to have pushed them away from where he normally sets them. If that's the case, they're not going to be eating well tonight, and there's the more immediate problem as to where all this water's going to go in an enclosed canyon.

"Damn," Raleigh hisses, wading into the water to try and get what traps he can. They're a precious commodity and he doesn't exactly know how to make them himself; he had intended to sit down one evening and try and recreate one but he hasn't had the chance yet. Losing them now means losing his one guaranteed way of feeding himself and it's not something he's willing to risk. Not without a fight.

When he hears the footsteps of someone else approaching, he calls back to them without turning around, too focused on the task at hand. "Help me! The river's rising and I'm losing all my traps. I don't know what's going on."

Understatement of the year.

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The days of exploring the various houses and buildings hadn't yielded much. Sam had taken to foraging for useful tools when he could, and of course gathering food and water. So far nothing had killed him from eating it...yet. He hoped his luck held out.

It was only by chance that he was by the river that day. His team hadn't been the one to explore it, and he didn't much like water, but he still came here because if nothing else was changing in the town -- at least the river had to be. He wasn't expecting much, so head snapped up at the call for help.

Sam cursed under his breath and dashed for the river. The water was definitely moving faster than he remembered. "We haven't gotten any rain...the hell is going on?"

Sam's eyes flicked over the river, trying to find any of the traps floating or bobbing on the surface.

"I don't know but the water keeps rising," Raleigh says, showing the line where it was evident that some time earlier, water hadn't been covering the area. It was lapping at the trees along the riverbank and the river was swollen the way they usually looked after a thaw.

"It's eerie. I can't tell where the water is even coming from, unless it's underground." If that's the case, there's no telling how deep the water goes and if they're sitting on a sinkhole or God knows what else.

"I've been coming down here to check these traps," he explains. "And it's risen since this morning."

Sam glances in both directions past the village. They had started exploring the surrounding area, and he knows a team had been following the water. However, it had only been a small group of people and they couldn't have explored every inch of the place. Still, the flooding seemed too sudden. There had to be SOME kind of cause.

Yeah, just like something caused you to appear in a mysterious well wearing red scrubs. He thought bitterly. This place just continued to provide more questions than answers.

"We haven't explored enough of this place yet, so there's really no telling. Let's get those traps then first, then we can see if we can get a handle on how fast the water is rising," Sam suggested. He wasn't too sure what else their options would be after that. Hopefully it wouldn't be something so bad as to elicit evacuation.

It's a good direction and Raleigh starts working on getting the traps out of the water. It's hard work, beating the rise of the water, but he doesn't want to lose what he's salvaged over the last several days. He doesn't want to lose the one way he's contributing.

"Have you ever seen a place like this?" It's not something that Raleigh's ever experienced before but he thinks the more information he can glean from the others, the better off he'll be.

Sam's helping, so at least that should half the work of saving the traps. He doesn't completely understand how they're built though, so he carries them carefully.

He shakes his head at the question, setting one of the traps clear of the water. They'll need to keep an eye on it rising further, so Sam is making sure it's well away from the river's edge. "Can't say I have. The place seems like it would have been a nice town at one point--just not sure what would have driven so many people out of it without leaving some kind of sign. It might even be nice...if it weren't an abduction and there was actual technology and tools to utilize." There's a pause and then he adds, "And food. But that probably goes without saying."

He turns to head back into the river to see if there's any more traps, "Of course, if it was more desert-like I might compare it to some of the places I've been stationed at."

"I've always been stationed along the coast," Raleigh says. There seem to be a handful of ex military around and it comforts him. Raleigh's always loved the order and the regiment of being in the corps and he thinks that it will serve him well here too. He likes the rules and the clear leadership - but this place doesn't have a leader yet.

"Never seen anything like this before though. Usually when you see surge like this, there's a storm. The wind drives it up on the shore, you know? I know we had the wind the first day we were here but it doesn't make sense for that to cause the surge now."

"The coast? You're not Navy are you?" Sam says it half serious, but mostly joking in his tone. Even retired it's hard to shake old rivalries and preferences for a branch of the military. He was an Airman through and through, possibly more so now that he was using the EXO-7 suit on a regular basis. But, they're currently in a situation where Sam wouldn't necessarily mind a Navy-guy. They had some tough training too after all and Sam could appreciate that. Although, it is only an assumption, but clearly Raleigh is indicating that he's part of some kind of military branch.

Even if the Air Force was the best one.

Sam shakes his head, "I don't know much about that kind of thing. But, I see your point about a storm usually causing flooding like this more than anything. We haven't explored our surroundings enough to know much about the source of the river though." He glances upstream like that will magically reveal something, "Could it be a blockage of some kind? Like an avalanche or, hell, beavers? We don't even know if there are any beavers in the area do we?"

"Could be beavers," Raleigh agrees. It's something he has a little experience with, having lived in Alaska, but it would require going upstream and seeing if they could find the dam. It was something to be done after they saved the traps.

"Annoying little bastards. And to answer your question, I was in the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps. Joint coalition, several countries. Part of the Navy, though, technically."

As close as he could get, anyway. Wars didn't really matter any longer when there were kaiju around.

Sam sighs. If it's beavers he's going to be irritated but at least it will be something reasonable that they can deal with relatively easy. At least he hopes, he's never had to worry about beavers before. What has his life come to that he has to worry about beavers? "Guess we'll need to head upstream and see if there's a dam then."

The answer to his Navy question however only raises more questions because Sam has never heard of anything called the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps. Great. This is probably another one of those multiverse things that Sam had mentioned before. Sam shakes his head, "Not something where I'm from. What'd you guys bring that many countries together for?"

"You probably won't believe me if I tell you but I might as well be honest," Raleigh admits. "Just...I'm not crazy. Keep that in mind, okay? In my world, there's monsters that come up through a breach in the Pacific Ocean. We call them kaiju."

Raleigh gestures toward himself. "I fight kaiju in jaegers - giant robots. Are you still with me?"

Normally Sam wouldn't take it as a very reassuring sign that this guy was trying to convince him he wasn't crazy. However, his past week in this place had shown him that crazy was going to be very relative based on experience. After he'd met a woman who should be dead and had a talk at the Inn about the fact that they were all likely from various universes, he was willing to be a little more open minded.

So he listens without judgement and when Raleigh finishes Sam just nods, "I am. You're right it sounds crazy, but I've been hearing a lot of stories around this place and I have a few myself that some people might find it hard to believe. I mean I joined a team that's fought an alien invasion a few years back and then later took on an army of robots." He hadn't been on either of those missions, but he'd seen them in action and heard the stories.

He smiles slightly, "Still...fighting monsters with giant robots...that sounds pretty badass."

"Can be, yeah. Used to be a superstar. Now I'm just trying to stay alive." Both back home and here, it seemed, though Raleigh hasn't really experienced much in the way of danger here. There's been inconvenience, yes, but no true danger.

"Now I just do what needs to be done. It doesn't have to be fancy any longer. It just has to get it done."

"In this place I think we all are...but I get what you mean," Sam says. He knows a little about what that can be like. One minute you're living the high life and people are rooting for you and the next people are calling for you to stand down, to follow regulations and a government that doesn't understand half of what happens with enhanced humans and aliens on a regular basis.

Sam wades out of the river now and keeps an eye for anymore floating traps. "Speaking of getting things done...anything else you need help with?"

"For the moment? No. But I'm sure something will come up and I can ask for a hand," Raleigh says, flashing him a smile. He tries to keep a good attitude about this place, to keep his chin up and to work hard. Maybe that's the key to surviving.

"You'll let me know if you need something too?"

Sam nods, because he wants to be able to help where he can. Raleigh seems like a good guy. His positive outlook is certainly a nice change from some of the other stuff that's been happening.

"Yeah, if you'll do the same. Seems the least we can do is help each other out in this place."

A day. Half a week. A week. Almost a week and a half now.

Time keeps moving. The men behind the curtain, again, some themselves not at all. Perpetrators worse than some of the worst monsters she's dealt with, but as much as it galls, frustrates and angers her, in turns, it's not surprising either. Never in Medietas. Never in the Apocalypse. When she finally found the guy in that hell dimension she'd been ripped out in the very middle of their fight.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the sudden yell for help, which, on too deeply trained impulse, has her heading toward it at a run. Even if the next second she nearly wants to roll he eyes. For assuming it might be a big problem. Sure, okay, fine. Food and river problems were problems. But not like she thought it might be monsters or an attack of some kind suddenly.

There's a hesitation at the waters edge. Jo really didn't want her boots soaked again. But. Fuck.

It would take longer to take them off, and she walks into the river, feeling with her hands. "How many did you have? Where?"

"About five or six strung along this bank here," Raleigh explains. As she looks to be helping him, he goes further, trying to see if he can get the traps out before the river tears them to pieces. It's the weirdest thing he's ever seen and that's saying something - he does fight giant monsters for a living.

"The water's not coming from the sky," he says, looking down at the river swelling from its banks. "It's coming up from the ground, somehow, but I don't know what the land's like here. I'm no scientist. I don't know anything about how geology works or anything like that."

Is it geology, studying a river? Fuck if Raleigh knows. "All I know is that we need to try our best to keep the damage to a minimum."

Jo hasn't the smallest clue, so she doesn't contradict it, or really even think about it. It sounds smart enough, more knowledgeable than she might be on the ability to even name it. She knew what she knew, and it wasn't anything like this. Not when her pants are soaking her and the water is up to her thighs just standing, but it's getting a lot more places, because she has to bend down and feel along the river bed.

Which means it's all of her. She's determined and her first hesitation was her last, but she's small, and searching on the river bed puts her nearly to her shoulders in the water. Not that she cares at all when her hands finally catch on something solidly not wet dirt and rocks. "Got one!"

She lopes, rushing river water, awkward steps back toward the shallows to toss the basket, heavy with shuddering movement once it's wrested from the water and more water is pouring out of all its woven bits. Jo chunked it as hard as she could away from the shoreline, before turning back and splashing back toward the depth line at which she'd found it.

Edited 2016-07-13 17:53 (UTC)

"One is better than none," Raleigh says, giving her a grin and a little cheer. He's found the one way he can help feed people here and he doesn't want to lose it because he hadn't predicted that the river would rise. Then again, who could? It's just not natural, the way this river just rose without any rainfall, and he needs to figure out why it's doing it so he can predict it in the future.

He finds another trap and wrestles it free from the water, putting it high up on the bank so he can know it won't get caught by the tide again. Between the two of them, maybe they can rescue most of them and keep his hard work from going to waste.

"Have you ever seen anything like this place? It doesn't make any damn sense."

Jo was wading back in, hating the scrub pants again. Heavy and clinging on the parts of her out of the water, and then too fluid and away from her skin under it. What she wouldn't give for a pair of jeans already, but there was no clothing left behind. Not any house or building she'd rummaged through.

She pushed back into the water, hands feeling through silt and grass, ignoring the chill of the river as it hit her bare arms, shoulders and upper chest against and again. She could deal with hot and she could deal with cold. Goosebumps prickled on her skin and she moved in half arcs, trying to feel around her feet, and feeling like she stirred up more cloudy dirt, unhelpfully, with every step.

Worrying she might miss anything by inches, or even step on one by accident.

"Not exactly. Of the two anything like this one," She was not all that much better at not feeling odd saying these things, not even since she had announced it for common knowledge in the pub that first day. "--one of them was far worse--" The one where. Well. Everything was worse. But so was her ability to even recollect it clearly at all. "--and one of them was better, but only marginally."

"This hasn't ever happened to me before." Raleigh doesn't know what it means for him. This is his first time ever being in a place like this, in a place that rips him away from the real world and puts him in some sort of alternate reality that he can't escape. The fact that she has done it before is intriguing, though, and he pulls out another trap before figuring out how he wants to ask her about it.

"When's the last time you were in a place like this? Come straight from there to here or did you make it back home first?"

And if she'd made it back home first, how does he do it? How does he go back to the place where he's needed?

If she could be numb to it, it might be a different story. But she isn't, and it isn't.

Even when she's frowning, and she's still searching in the water, hands and arms in wide arcs, face scrunched up like she's focused on the task and not his words. She still isn't. She still wouldn't wish this on anyone else. She still feels bad that they are in this straight, and annoyed as fuck she has to go through it all over again. New rules, new lands, new alliances.

"Right before," Jo said, fingers finally brushing something in a too fast movement that sends her half turning that way, feeling around and pulling another basket up hard and fast from it's stop. "I haven't been home in--" She gave a hard lunge and chuck of the trap, aiming for the bank beyond the water, before she started to finish, again. "In the better part of half a decade, give or take a few years. But I think it's more give, than take."

Beat. "Time is strange in these places. Even when you're keeping track of it sometimes."

"Hard not to have a place to call home," Raleigh says. "I've never been in a place like this before but I haven't been in one place for a long time in years. I kind of miss having somewhere I can call home."

This place, he thinks, isn't going to be that. It feels a little too unsettled to be a place he can truly call home and he doesn't know if he can trust it.

"I guess you can understand that too?"

Jo isn't expecting that, and maybe even just how much she isn't, shows for a few seconds. Because she doesn't even hunker back down to searching right away. It's not the kind of thing people say when grilling her for being too many places and knowing too many things, all of which don't help anyone, no less herself out with where she happens to be standing now. Those like her, even extrapolating, that's never the kind of things they'd say either.

They don't think of home, when they give up home for the road. But Jo'd always had the life, no road, and the Roadhouse.
Until she had no home, and the road, and Milliways. And then none of them. And then the shadow of one ripped home; family.
And just again. Finally making that choice. Building something, that even if it wasn't a home, had been something more, hadn't it.

To hook under her rib cage and pull so hard at his words.

"Sure." Jo rubbed scratched her wet fingers in her hair. "Something like that."

"I think we've got a lot of these traps back out," Raleigh says, surveying their work. There's a hush between them now and he wonders if he'd said the wrong thing by mentioning what it's like to move from place to place. He's never been in a place like this before and this isn't her first rodeo; he's curious as to her experience but prying doesn't seem like a good idea.

"Thanks for your help," he says, flashing her a grin. "I'll have to do something nice for you in exchange. You got anything around your house that needs repairing? I used to do construction and I don't mind trading a favor for a favor."

If anything, he said something right, more right than he can even guess at, the kind of right that all but takes the wind out sails right, but sometimes that's a lot harder to tell with Jo. Wrong can go balls to the wall, caterwauling profanity and dangerousness sharpness in seconds. But this was quiet. This was something she hadn't expected. Not in this one or other ones. That was the kind of comment if took people a good while to realize. Because.

Because Jo made a mask of it. The ease with which managed all of this. The necessity. The aloofness. Putting it out there.
Talking about it like it was old hat. Because it was old hat. It was years on years of this. But it didn't mean she didn't miss it.

Home.

(Her mother.

Slam, went the shotgun,
and Ellen-Harvelle-Who-Wasn't-Anymore.)

She considered the offer and while she'd been about to shake her head, it turned one way as though starting and then stopped. Her head cocked to the second. Thinking better of the refusal. "I don't at the moment. Not that I can think of. But I'll could keep it in mind in case something comes up? I mean, those houses are crazy old. Something's bound to break on me when I least expect it, right?"

Plus, having favors in her back pocket for bigger emergencies? Well, that wasn't a terrible plan either.

"Usually does," Raleigh agrees. "I picked up construction several years ago. I've gotten pretty good at it." He'd worked on the wall as well repairing whatever shithole houses he'd lived in along the way and he'd learned how to do most things himself so he wouldn't have to pay someone to come in.

"Can do a little plumbing too," Raleigh says, laughing a little as he looks at the water rising. "I guess I should have taken some classes on weird weather phenomena, huh?"

"Really how could you ever have been so thoughtless and not planned just for us, every second, when you were picking what things to learn?" Jo's mouth has smoothed for serious toward a smile, and detoured right into a smirk that sets her copper eyes bright. She knows how to do this kind of easy banter at least.

It's a good kind of favor to have, especially when they have no clue what will actually come at the next. No one knows why it's abandoned, or why the creek is suddenly suddenly rising, she'd hazard already, given they haven't even had any rainstorms to proceed it. But that's all she has any clue about, and it could be something else.

Raleigh laughs at that. It is a little stupid to think he could possibly have planned for this as much as it's stupid to think that the world could have planned for the kaiju. But, still, it's hard to not feel a little guilty that he doesn't have the answers.

Raleigh has always been a doer. He's always been a helper, the kind of person who rolls up his sleeves and gets things done. It's hard to only be able to contribute so much here and be hamstrung by what he doesn't know.

"Yeah, I should have been a hell of a lot more thoughtful. I'm kind of an asshole for that, huh?"

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lord willing and the creek don't rise [open]

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