keeping idle hands busy

[lastofthekellys]

WHO: Kate Kelly
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: 10th April
OPEN TO: EVERYONE
WARNINGS: TBA as needed
STATUS: Open

---

Spring has arrived, warming the air and seemingly to banish all that dreadful, dangerous fog. Some part of Kate thinks that it should be autumn, but she's not in any of the Australian colonies and everything is backwards here. Backwards and strange and draining. The winter was hard for many, many reasons, and spring hasn't been off to a brilliant start with disappearances and biting insects. Not just disappearances, others have moved out of the Inn. Which she'd been expecting as the weather turned more habitable, but the combination with disappearances means Kate is feeling a little lost and uncertain.

At least she's patched things up with Benedict, thank God.

But as self-destructive as she can be (and has been, over winter, with the access to drink), Kate knows there are still things to be done. Today after the daily village lunch is cleared and the volunteers are cleaning the kitchen, she takes herself to the verandah at the front of the Inn with some sewing. For all the weather is warming and based off last year (oh God, oh God, has it been so close to a year?) it'll get hot even by her standards, clothes are wearing out. There's more farming to be done, more repairs and more building, and what they have will be wearing out.

Today, she has some of the rabbit leather and is stitching together simple fingerless gloves to help protect palms from rough work. She can make clothes themselves, as is evidenced by the fact that she sits there in a long brown skirt with a petticoat underneath and an undyed long-sleeved blouse with some simple embroidery, but those she has to be asked to make. The working gloves are a project she's assigned herself.

And, as is usual, as Kate works, she sings. Nothing more recent than 1883, and usually folk songs, traditional songs. Some sad, some sweet or sly, but all sung clearly and with the air of someone who is keeping herself occupied.

healing hands and meditation

[ethnobotany]

WHO: Beverly Crusher
WHERE: around House #15, the hospital, wandering around town
WHEN: April 10th
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: TBD, will update as needed
STATUS: Open

---

Beverly has been a resident of this tiny little village for less than a month and she wouldn't be able to say that she has settled in by any stretch of the imagination. By now she has claimed an empty house and is starting to figure out a routine, the latter of which is by far the only real settling she's actually done since she got here. The last thing she wants to do is get complacent here. Not that she really thinks she can, given how much she misses the Enterprise's crew already.

So today starts out as normal. She hunts for herbs that might be around to stockpile or use. Naturally, she can't help muttering about wanting several others that don't grow here. The supply on Caldos had been much better than this one, even on Arvada III during that disaster. Still, it's better than nothing and she knows better than to complain too loudly. If Q really is involved, he might take that as a challenge.

About mid-morning sees her cleaning her new house as best she can. She might be from a very, very distant future than most of the people and equipment here, but that doesn't mean she can't get down and dirty. Every so often she takes a break outside, looking around the property for a good place to think about starting a garden.

After she's had enough cleaning, she takes to wandering the village. She pays a special visit to the hospital, to check up on which of her colleagues is around and catch up with them, as well as the fountain, too see if there's anyone who might need to get pulled out of the water.

Late in the day, closer towards evening, she can be found out by her house again practicing Mok'bara, which looks like some kind of intricate and very slow full-body dance. It's not much of a dance and if anyone tries to interrupt her physically, she may or may not slide into using the techniques she's practicing as they were intended: as martial arts.

003 ✝ i won't be made useless, i won't be idle with despair

[ottimismo]

WHO: Sonny Carisi
WHERE: The Inn, the Hospital, the Church
WHEN: April 10th
OPEN TO: OTA, with two closed starters!
WARNINGS: N/A
STATUS: Open!

---

Church

This morning, like all mornings, Sonny begins his day at the church.

He needs his faith like he needs air and water and shelter. Some days, he's sure it's the only thing that keeps him going. He's stuck in an impossible situation, one that has little rhyme or reason, one that makes very little sense. Sometimes he thinks that it's possible God can't even hear him here, but that's a thought he always dispels quickly. God has to hear him. God can always hear him. So every day, often more than once a day, he prays. In his head, out loud, with his hands clenched tight in front of him. He prays likes it's the last thing he's ever going to do.

This morning, like all mornings, Sonny is praying.

He's on his knees in the home he's turned into a church. It's nothing special — just a bunch of chairs and couches pushed into the living area, lined up and facing the far wall where a crudely made cross stands. It's not much, but it serves its purpose. It brings a sense of peace as Sonny folds his hands together, bows his head, and moves his lips soundlessly in a conversation with God.

Inn

That morning, after returning to his house, he finds a cardboard box on his front step. He's gotten one before, and it wasn't filled with anything bad. Though he knows some people aren't so lucky, and have received some not-so-good things in theirs. Even so, he's excited to tear the top off of this one and see what he's gotten this time, all hopeful gaze and bated breath.

He had not asked God for breakfast foods, but he's certainly not disappointed.

Instead of working in the silence of his home, as he did the last time he got a gift like this, he decides to take it all to the Inn and work in their kitchen. He's never much liked being alone anyway, and things are far more lively here. He gets to work immediately, cheerful despite lacking the usual music he enjoys cooking to. There's a mixed fruit bowl, and he picks out the strawberries and blueberries to make two different batches of fruit pancakes. He wishes he had a few more spices at his disposal to toss in, so he could make it closer to what he does back home. But beggars can't be choosers, and he's happy to have what he does.

Once it's finished, he gathers the pancakes and syrup and the rest of the fruit bowl onto a platter that he unearths from a cabinet in the kitchen, arranging it all nice and neat before carrying it into the main room.

"Who wants pancakes?"

( i will gather myself around my faith )

( for light does the darkness most fear )

(no subject)

[bit_fairytale]

WHO: Amy Pond
WHERE: Blacksmith
WHEN: April 10th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: n/a
STATUS: Open

---

There's been a box of little jewels under Amy's bed for a few weeks now, collecting dust. Most people would probably hoard them and use them up right away, but Amy hadn't known what to do with a box of diamonds and other gems that she'd just received. Of course, five minutes later, she'd figured out what she wants with them, but there's a problem. She's still annoyed with this place for stealing her wedding bands, but she's got jewels and absolutely nothing to put them on, not to mention that of all the skills she'd accumulated with the Doctor, blacksmith didn't exactly make it on the list.

Good news for her, then, that they've got this place in town that looks plenty like a blacksmith's, though she hasn't exactly seen anybody in there, when she's been scoping the place out. After she sends Rory off to the hospital with a kiss, she decides that today's the day she goes and finds out. Box clasped tightly to her chest, Amy heads out and starts to knock on the wood the minute she's there, even though she doesn't really hear any of that clanking or see any sweaty, shirtless hunks around slaving over a fire, the way you'd expect.

Or, well, the way that Amy would expect, but it's not her fault that she's developed certain fantasies over the years, not with the actual eras of history she's been to.

"Hello," she drawls, peering inside and at all the nooks and crannies to see if anyone is there, nudging over some old tools as she meanders through the place, despite the sinking realization that she is absolutely all alone here. "Married woman, looking for some help, here!" she shouts out to absolutely no one at all, settling herself down on the table with a box of precious gems in her lap. She's got no gold, no rings, and no one to help her out.

She wishes she knew why this is bothering her so much. Shouldn't it be the confines of this place? The boredom? Except, she'd been about to settle down in New York and do just that, but she was going to do with Rory, together, and part of that marriage was the rings they'd exchanged. That ring means more to her than most, seeing as that little ring had helped pulled Rory out of nothing and nowhere in her memory, a man that didn't exist, except to Amelia Pond. Now, she hasn't even got that, but she wants it back. She wants something of her old life back, even if it's just a little piece of jewellery.

Not today, apparently.

Pushing to her feet, Amy heads outside with a briskness in her step, which is why she's not really thinking too much about pushing the front door open as hard as she does, which is instantly regretted when it comes into contact with something that's definitely not thin air. Closing her eyes tightly to avoid looking, she takes her hand off the handle. "Please be a shoe or a rock or some sort of animal," she mutters to herself, peering around the door belatedly. "I really hope I didn't hit anything delicate," she says to whatever (or whoever) is on the other side of the door.

(no subject)

[igotacrossbow]

WHO: Jake Jensen
WHERE: The Alvarez-Jensen-Sawyer residence's back yard
WHEN: April 10
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: excessive singing by a very, very white man
STATUS: ongoing

---

Perhaps he should be suspicious of the nearly idyllic weather that's settled over this godforsaken hellhole, but Jake has always tried his best to live in the moment as much as possible, especially in situations where he can't control the future in any real way, shape, or form. And since it doesn't look like they'll be getting out of here any time soon, he's settled into the idea that he might as well focus on the present and enjoy what good moments they can scratch out of this shitty little life. 

Okay, he can't honestly be too mad about this. It sucks that they're trapped, but he's spent two solid weeks trapped in the jungle with Cougar before, and that was with a broken ankle and a concussion and no glasses, with enemy soldiers hunting them down to try and kill them, so this already has a huge leg up on that nightmare. At least here he has a house, and clean sheets, and a roommate, and a dog, and a general support network of neighbors and friends to rely on and socialize with. He's unreasonably fond of Cougar, it's true, but the guy isn't a great conversationalist, especially not when you're both fighting a raging fever and trying not to get perforated by a hail of bullets. 

He's decided to seize the moment, weather-wise, and get the washing finished. The soap they've managed to conjure up is a fucking far cry from some Tide back home, but it's good enough at getting general grime out of their sheets, and he's spent most of the afternoon churning a tub full of cotton fabric with a wooden dolly that he'd crudely whittled over the winter with a little instruction from some of the town residents who had actually used one before and not just seen them on Wikipedia. 

Once the sheets are as clean as he was going to get them and as wrung out as he can manage, it's time for hanging, which is how Jake ends up in the back yard by the chicken coop and rabbit hutch, Baby tagging along at his heels curiously as he starts to heft sopping wet bundles of white cotton up onto the clothes line, belting out a song at the top of his lungs like he's not in a more or less public space and people can actually hear him. 

"I want a Sunday kind of love" he croons at the dog, who cocks his head curiously to one side as Jake pretends the equally crudely-whittled clothespins in his hands are a microphone. "A love to last past Saturday night~"

🔪 I » I'll see what tomorrow brings

[ex_halberd259]

WHO: Lagertha
WHERE: Fountain/Inn/Forest/House #16/Fields
WHEN: 4/10 + onwards
OPEN TO: OPEN
WARNINGS: TBA
STATUS: Ongoing


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

( Fountain ━ April 10 )

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

( Inn ━ April 10 )

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

( Forest ━ April 11 )

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

( House #16 ━ April 12 )

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

( Fields ━ April 12 & closed to Henry Tudor )