foxing around

[bit_fairytale]

WHO: Amy Pond
WHERE: Border of 7I
WHEN: September 24th / 25th
OPEN TO: OTA / Locked Log to Jax
WARNINGS: n/a

---

OTA

The little mirror village has been Amy's solace and quiet place ever since Rory vanished. She's not saying the earth opened up and gave her the Scottish female equivalent of a mancave, but she's also not-not-saying that. It's quiet, there's thankfully barely any people, and there's been peaches to keep her from starving, not to mention that snagging a peach is a thousand times easier than trying to hunt rabbit and then deal with all the blood and the bones and the gross parts of rabbits that Amy doesn't want to think about.

It's perfect, right up until the stupid foxes come along.

At first, it's just that Amy notices a lot of them are around. It's not too strange and since she's not exactly kicking off a fox hunt, she doesn't care. Then, they start to get involved around her. The peaches she picks and sets on the ground go missing. Flattened, gone, or ruined, but they're missing. Seeing as no one else seems to be around, she figures that it has to be the stupid animals, but she can live with it.

What she can't live with is that they seem determined to kick up their levels of mischief when Amy keeps going back. She's taken off her shoes to get comfortable and read one of the books she'd brought over with her (squinting more than she likes, which just makes her wish she had her reading glasses with her), when sh hears a faint rustling sound nearby.

Then, when Amy clocks it for what it is, her eyes widen with alarm. "Don't," she warns the furry little thing, who currently has one of Amy's boots in its mouth. "No, you...! Idiot fox!" she snaps when the thing takes that as a sign to run away. It's got a heavy boot in its mouth, she ought to be able to keep up, but the stupid thing is fast and Amy doesn't have any shoes on. Glancing back to the other, she lets out a sharp, "Oi!" of anger when she sees another fox is making good on getting both that boot and the book.

That's it, Amy decides. Fox hunts are back in style. "If you don't drop that boot," she shouts at the fox, one of them, who cares which one, "I'm gonna wear you for a hat and gloves!"

For Jax

"Hey!" she shouts at the furry thing that's currently making off with the bottom leg of her trousers. It's not cold yet, but she's fairly sure that one long leg and one shorts leg isn't the height of fashion anywhere in the world, not to mention that Amy has stubbornly decided that instead of being mature and calm about it, she's going to go chase after a stupid fox like a maniac, marching right into a fight with one of mother nature's creatures.

This can't go wrong, right?

She's closer than ever to getting her pant-leg back because she's managed to corner the fox into one of the little nooks and crannies, crouching over to try and approach quietly like this is some easily spooked alien creature and not the devil's own little dog-cat pets. She's going to time her moment right, she's going to make it happen, except when she does lunge forward for the fox, it darts out, her scrubs-pant-leg flapping in its mouth, leaving Amy flat on the ground, dusty and dirty and hating her life.

Instead of getting up right away, she flops into her hands, chin pressed stubbornly there.

"Guess I'm spending winter in half-shorts," she mutters sarcastically, unless she can actually catch up to one of the stupid things and skin it for leggings, that is.

they lost their former dye - autumn equinox [Mark, OTA]

[thenewways]

WHO: Kira Nerys
WHERE: The garden
WHEN: 22 September
OPEN TO: OTA, with locked log for Watney
STATUS: open (OTA)

---

It's clear to nearly everybody (and that's despite everything that's come up to divert the attention of the group, particularly of late) that the change of seasons is upon them. Even though Nerys doesn't have any solid sense of Earth astronomy at all, and has no clue that autumn is nigh, she's not completely oblivious to the shift herself, even if the weather's been veering frantically over the course of the last month. Apparently staying firmly put in the 'cooling down' column isn't really how this works.

Either that or the observers roll the damn dice every day to see what the weather's going to be. Today it is absolutely frigid, to the point where Nerys had to pull out a couple of layers of sweater this morning just to steel herself up to the notion of working outside. She's wrapped her hands firmly as well, as much for the warmth as to protect them from her tools.

If there's anything that Nerys is good at, it's getting on with the business of surviving--while the village and the other finds intrigue her somewhat, they unsettle her even more. These days, the chill in the night air (and now the day too) means it's nearly harvest time, and if they don't start canning up what they've got right now, it's going to be a lean winter again. Not to mention that there are more people around to feed, and she has no intention of anyone starving on their watch.

It's not like the garden hasn't been through enough this year, the plants hanging on to their lives with a sheer tenacity that rivals the sentient beings of the village. Hell, rivals the damned foxes. The latter have, over the last few weeks, been making a mess out of what's still left to be harvested. Sure, using blood- and bone-meal for fertilizer probably attracts them, but that doesn't really account for the sheer maliciousness of what's been done--vegetables left in neat piles with a single large bite taken out of them, mounds of chewed up berries, holes dug in very precise locations. It's enough to piss a hungry Bajoran the hell off.

[kind sir, be civil, my company forsake - OTA
So that's why Nerys is out hoeing up potatoes on a freezing cold afternoon. If they can get these down into the cellar space at the inn, they'll last a few months, though not as long as if they could leave them in the ground a while yet. She's already cut an armload of late zucchini and squash without much incident, but word gets around both among the humanoid and vulpine populations, it would seem.

A pack of three foxes have spent the last ten minutes slinking up to and around the potato patch, circling Nerys in slowly narrowing concentric arcs. She could swear that they keep looking at her, with the kind of expression that indicates they want her to know they're looking. Despite herself (come on, the Cardassians have played this game with much higher stakes), the frustration's built up to the point of snapping in two. One fox tries to move a little too close, pushes the envelope, and Nerys finds herself snarling, brandishing the hoe like a pike at him.

"Get!" she shouts, voice cracking. "Damn it...all of you, get!"

The fox doesn't, though all of them freeze; instead, they seem to give her a look that asks her who exactly the animal is meant to be in this situation. It's not lost on Nerys, who bites her lip hard enough to draw blood.

"Fuck, come on," she says, almost pleading. "We just want to eat."

The foxes are, unsurprisingly, unmoved.


[sly, bold Reynardine - for Mark]
The potatoes are in, or at least as many as Nerys dares to harvest right now today. Midday's long gone and it's not gotten much warmer, and all she can think of is frost on the vines. So, despite herself, she's kept on working, switching over to the remaining beans. The goal with these is to can them in the containers from one of the earlier feasts, cap them with beeswax, and call it a day, hoping it won't kill them all.

It seems like a worthwhile thing to try, at least.

Nerys' got a half a bag full already when she realizes there's a fox watching her from over by the wastewater tub. Five minutes later, it hasn't ventured much closer, so she's pretty sure it's just a scout. She makes a silent snarling face at it, before shifting up to her feet to ease the strain on her hamstrings for a second--and in the process, ends up snarling at Mark across the plot of beans. The color of her face after she figures that out probably rivals the turning leaves across the field.


[refs are to the British/Irish were-fox folk song 'Reynardine'; Rhiannon Giddens does it well.]