What is dead may never die [Event]

[thekittenqueen]

WHO: Margaery
WHERE: Outside the Inn
WHEN: 12/13
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: None
STATUS: Open

---

The snow melting was a blessed relief. Given how little experience she had with snow, travel from her home to the police station had been nothing short of difficult. The animals could at least graze more easily and the cold was at least partially alleviated. It was enough to prompt Margaery to stroll through the village and enjoy the changing weather. It wouldn't last for long, much to her chagrin.

As she approached the inn, her eyes fell towards the ground, struck by a sense of dread. There was something strange about the snow drift, now dwindling into a small mound. There was something wrong, yet she struggled to remember why this particular spot was so important. There was nothing there, nothing remarkable about the snow drift. Why should snow suddenly summon dread and a rising horror?

There is nothing there.

It hit her all at once as she stepped back. The creature. It had been placed there after the town meeting, to spare the rest from the potential smell of the decaying corpse, and buried in the snow to preserve it. Yet in the dwindling ice and frost, there was nothing there but the dead grass and the hardened ground. No sign of where it had gone, no tracks, no trail of blood. It was as if it never existed.

Sounding the alarm, she called everyone to the village. "Come quickly! The creature, it's disappeared!" There was no other word for it. It had simply vanished.

brew me a cup for a winter’s night [Closed]

[treadswater]

WHO: Annie Cresta
WHERE: #57 The Windermere
WHEN: Creepy Gift Day, and the snowstorm days that follow (20th-22nd December)
OPEN TO: Finnick Odair
WARNINGS: TBA
STATUS: Closed | Ongoing

---

It had all taken time. Time to find all the boxes and envelopes marked with their names, time to carry them back to their house. The house they have been using as shelter. (Their house.) Time to talk to some of the others, back at the Inn, about why, how, who, when. To try and understand what this 'Christmas' is that some of the others kept talking about, and how the boxes are filled with things that they have thought about giving the others. Johanna and her axes, gleefully leaping into Finnick's arms with thanks, when there had been no way for anyone to get anything.

But after enough time, all the boxes are in the living room and the envelopes are in the kitchen. Thirty-one boxes for Annie, and five envelopes: thirty-three boxes for Finnick, and another five envelopes.

An additional box from Kate Kelly, containing a hand-powered clothes washer. The young woman had said she hadn't needed it, and Annie wasn't about to argue with her. Not with the state of her clothes.

Two of the boxes, one for Annie and one for Finnick, contained food. Food that had once been hot and drinks that had once been rather more cold. The drinks - milkshakes, Finnick calls them - get stuck outside, on the kitchen porch, to thicken up with cold, while the burgers and fries are warmed up in the stove's unreliable oven. Or maybe it's not unreliable, maybe they have just not gotten used to it yet.

The snow is coming down heavily down, the sky darkening. It seems like the kind of weather that is sticking around, or maybe a better way of putting it is weather that is reclaiming its ground after the gentleness of the past few days.

Not for the first time, Annie is glad that she and Finnick are in a sturdy shelter, with fire and supplies. It'd be miserable out there, and there is a kind of security from those heavy snows which she is growing to appreciate. It's the only time she finds herself truly relaxing, for no one can reach them in this weather.

It's even... nice, in a way. Surrounded by cold while warmed by fire and stove.

What is elegance? Soap and water! [Closed]

[treadswater]

WHO: Annie Cresta
WHERE: The butcher's
WHEN: Backdated to after the hunting trip gets back
OPEN TO: Helen Magnus
WARNINGS: TBA
STATUS: Closed | Ongoing

---

Some days, Annie really hates the snow. It's not for any good reason like the cold, or the squeaking sound it makes as her feet move in it, or the tracks it leaves in her wake. It's not because it covers the landscape and insists on falling like they are in the wet season, except for decent thunder and torrential rain, it is snow. No, some days she hates it just because all that clean, squeaky white just shows how dirty she is. Her original uniform is closer to grey now than white, grey-brown, and all her original things are stained with sweat and dirt. She - fishergirl, born and bred and raised at the docks, deckhand for years - yearns to be clean. To have clean things. Clean clothes. Clean skin. Clean hair, but, no, her hair makes her cry if she thinks about it too much.

So here she is, trying to track down the soapmaker. She, not Finnick, has been driven to this, and sourly she thinks that's a laugh. Fish-girl having more vanity than peacock-boy.

Annie's not dressed in white; at least, not how she can help it. The denim overalls over the new, woollen longjohns, her black coat. A leather-and-fur hat, quickly sown by the village-women who have such skills after the winter meeting. She has gloves (grey, woollen) from the Gamemakers, but no scarf. She could use her braid, but her hair is scratching her skin and reminding of her of how itchy-scratchy everything feels if she thinks about it. No, she'd rather be cold.

She's not dressed in white, which makes her stand out against the landscape as she makes her way down to the butcher's. That's where the fat and charcoal go, although the actual process she doesn't understand at all. Soap is something you buy, in her experience, in hard bars usually or in pampered liquid softness from the wealthier merchants. Annie hovers outside for a moment, and then ducks into the doorway.

"Hello?"

Maybe she needs to go around the back instead.

make things anew [Closed]

[lastofthekellys]

WHO: Kate Kelly
WHERE: One of the earthquake-damaged houses
WHEN: Backdated to after the winter meeting
OPEN TO: Raven Reyes
WARNINGS: TBA
STATUS: Closed | Ongoing

---

Kate's offer at the winter meeting of helping had been genuine. Genuine enough that she's even forgone her usual skirts in favour of the denim overalls, although the rest of her attire remains the same under her coat. She's grateful for the coat, and for the woollen hat their captors had seen fit to give her last box, and for the gloves. Even though the gloves lack the tips of their fingers, which while normally she could see some use of, they aren't much good in this weather.

She stamps her feet a little to warm up her legs as she looks at the house, and then back over at Miss Raven.

"It looks sturdy enough, from here," she says. She's talking about the house. Before any sled building, they need to find the parts, which requires going inside. "I think it was just cracked too much to live in, rather than fall in on us."

Kate'd rather be inside, out of the wind. Even tearing apart cabinets, taking doors off their hinges, seeing what could be used as runners, all of that potentially and probably frustrating work is better than nothing. But on the other hand, having a house collapse on her and Miss Raven would be terribly annoying.