[MINGLE] Daily lunch

[markwatney]

WHO: Mark Watney
WHERE: Inn
WHEN: 18 August, lunchtime
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: n/a
NOTES: This is a standard mingle post centered on the daily lunch! Come grab a bowl and meet someone new! It's meant to emphasize making new CR, but is open to whatever you like. I am turning off notifs so if you want to tag Mark, pls wait for his top-level.

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I have to admit, even in a situation as strange and unpredictable as this one, it's still easy to become complacent. That's just human nature, I think. But complacency isn't always bad — About some things, yes, but the human body wasn't designed to be perpetually hyper-vigilant. There need to be things that you feel comfortable relaxing about, and yeah, sometimes to the point that you forget how significant they are.

Like the daily lunch served at the inn. Kate came up with the idea not long after I first got here, with that first batch of fountain arrivals, and I honestly don't think there's been a single decision we've collectively made that's proven to be more important. Everyone, no matter who they are, knows they can come to the inn in the afternoon and take a moment to eat a hot meal and relax. A lot of hands go into making that meal, a lot of love and effort, and I think we often forget about the significance of that simple act. But that's good. That is, I think, part of the whole point.

Today, it's stew, which is pretty common — Easier to feed dozens of people that way. There's flat bread and herbal tea and tap water that's probably infinitely cleaner than even some of the bottled stuff back home. And it's good after a morning of hard work to wash my hands, grab a bowl and simply enjoy the company around me.

Comments

[scathefires]

Life goes on with or without you; Jason's seen both sides of that coin. And what can you do but soldier on, one foot in front of the other? Give up - sure, that's an option, but that's not the way Jason's wired, not even a little bit. He may be twice removed from everything familiar in this place, but that's no reason to just quit. He's confident he'll find a way out eventually, and until then, he's taking each day as it comes, using the time to gather data.

You can learn plenty about people in public settings. Observing the other villagers is not only a way to kill time, it's an assessment of potential threats and allies. So far, no one seems particularly noteworthy, but that can always change. Jason picks an isolated seat around the far edge of the room, kicks his feet up on the adjacent chair, and starts in on his lunch, blue eyes scanning the room around him.

[reprobate]

It isn't James — This Sirius knows as instantly and intrinsicly as his own name. He spent seven years in the bed next to James Potter, and sometimes in closer quarters than that besides. He made a focused study of his best mate and could have picked him out by the scuff of his footfalls alone. So no, this isn't James, and the differences leap out at him like neon lights — The eye color is wrong, the gruffness of bearing — but there's enough familiar that the spoon slips from Sirius' grip all the same and clanks down against the side of his bowl.

A bowl he then immediately picks up and carries over to the far table, where he settles himself adjacent without a word, bracing splayed elbows across the tabletop.

"What's your name?"

[scathefires]

People don’t typically approach Jason in such an ... enthusiastic manner, and he’s slightly startled by Sirius’ appearance at the table, reaching on instinct for weapons he doesn’t have, pistols kept tucked into the back of his waistband, knives hidden away in the lining of the jacket he lost months ago on a rooftop in Gotham. To Jason’s credit, his expression remains mostly impassive, an arched eyebrow the only real visible sign of surprise on his face.

It’s fine, he tells himself, false alarm, not an attack, but Jason’s been fighting the world in one way or another for most of his life, so is it any real surprise his muscle-memory reaction is one of defense? Resettled for the moment, he sits up straight in the chair, shoulders squared, and makes a quick visual appraisal of the other man.

“Who wants to know?” The voice is certainly all wrong too, silk-and-gravel, a flat tone, the accent distinctly American.

[reprobate]

"Sirius Black," is the immediate reply, assuming it means nothing at all to this bloke. Sirius' nose wrinkles at the jarring American accent, too strange coming out of a mouth that shape.

"I've a mate who looks a lot like you," he adds, putting it in the present tense without thinking.