03. (Not) Shooting Things

[chirrutsluck]

WHO: Baze Malbus and OTA
WHERE: Outskirts of town, 6I
WHEN: September
OPEN TO: Any and all
WARNINGS: Look out for flying projectiles

After a couple weeks of being too sick to do much, Baze is getting back into life in 6I, despite the lingering cough and occasional shortness of breath. He's checking his traps in the morning, offering to fix anything people need that's broken and that he can figure out... and attempting to shoot things.

Two weeks of being confined to one building means he had a lot of time to try and carve bow staves and whittle arrow shafts, and to try and twist strings out of cloth, leather strips, and guts from fish and rabbits, anything he could get his bored fingers on. So he has three bows put together, and he spends at least some of his time every afternoon attempting to shoot things. "Attempting" is the operative word, there, because only one of the bows is remotely serviceable and that one was an experiment with bending the staff the other way when he hadn't really intended it to work, and his arrows-- merely sharpened and straightened sticks, at this point, since he wasn't going to waste stone or metal on tips when he's just learning-- don't fly very well.

There is a lot of cursing going on, when one catches him at it.

Of course, he's also available at the normal places: the inn, helping in the kitchen or attempting to whittle some better arrows; around the village, carrying things or pausing to cough or catch his breath; up on a roof battering down leaks; or peering across the divide into 7I, though he doesn't spend much time there. He may be attempting to shoot foxes sneaking across the border, but again, he's not that great at it.

(no subject)

[enterprisingheart]

WHO: Jean-Luc Picard
WHERE: around town; house 20
WHEN: August 21-25; early Sept.
OPEN TO: plague stuff ota; house 20 stuff is locked to housemates
WARNINGS: potential mentions of kidnapping and torture in the plague part of the post (thanks to delirious flashbacks). Warnings will be updated as necessary, and individual threads will be marked as things come up.

---

{It seems like everyone's catching the plague}

For all that he’s spent a not insignificant amount of time caring for someone who’s been ill, it doesn’t entirely occur to Jean-Luc that he himself might fall sick. Not that he’s unaware of the fact that the illness spreading through the village is communicable, mind. But thus far there hasn’t seemed to be any conclusive evidence as to either how it spreads, nor any real indication of whether or not some people might happen to be immune.

Plus even if he had been aware of the finer details of this particular illness he still would have spent the majority of his time at Beverly's side. And so he thinks nothing of it and simply gets on with life.

It isn't until August 21st that he first notices something wrong. A little extra tiredness, but that's not anything that he'd call concerning. Most like he simply hadn't slept as well as he'd thought, the night previous. Only it doesn't go away like he might have suspected; by the time the eclipse has been and gone he's feeling tired enough that he starts making for the house he shares with Beverly.

It's a slower process that it might normally be, especially given that he starts stumbling a little by the time he gets halfway there, but he does make it eventually. Even if he does slowly collapse against the wall just inside the door.

He doesn't stay put long though, for all that Beverly does her best: the 22nd and 23rd see any of a number of escape attempts as he turns up everywhere from the Inn to the fountain - and a few places in-between. He doesn't look well either, regardless of whether he's lucid or not. The only real difference is in the conversations - when he's lucid, they're almost normal. When he's not, they tend to turn mentions of "Q" or "Cardassians" or "Borg"; things that clearly mean something to him, but perhaps not so much to anyone else.

(The very unlucky might also find him in the middle of what looks for all the world like an emotional breakdown.)

By the 24th, Beverly seems to have wised up to his tricks - there are no further escape attempts, although he's around to at least be visited, should people have any interest in doing so.

The 25th sees him finally recovered, in large part due to the peaches Beverly had managed to convince him to eat the night before, and while he's being a little more careful to not overdo things than he usually might, he still makes an effort to seek out people who might have run into him while he was less than himself. If only so that he can offer more thorough explanations than he might have previously.


{Meeting the neighbors}

Moving isn't an unfamiliar thing, to Jean-Luc. After all, in some ways he's always moving (and in others, he's always taking his home with him). Moving in with people he barely knows is something else entirely. Not something he hasn't done even so, but he can't deny that it's something he'd expected to be facing again quite so soon. Still, he trusts Beverly's judgment, and it's not like he has very much to pack up anyway. They'll like need to transplant Beverly's garden, yes. But that can wait at least a little bit longer.

And if the house looks a little strange, at least means that'll be easier to remember which it is, and for now, he lets Beverly take the lead, although he certainly doesn't mean to be precisely shy either. Simply not the current main focus - she's the one who knows their new housemates better, after all!