[closed] winter breakers

[3ofswords]

WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: House 42 (Mark and Helen)
WHEN: January 13/14 - during the snowstorm
OPEN TO: Mark, Helen, Ravi
WARNINGS: Will put in tag headers if any arise beyond smoking weed and going stir crazy.

---

Stay the night, Mark had said; it looks awful out there, he'd said.

It looks a lot worse in the half-light of day, the sun obscured by clouds, the trees visible in how they whip and bow to the wind, until they disappear behind the falling snow. Kira's hardly at his best after a night on the couch, listening to the wind howl and his fucking goat clopping around the room. Goats are kind of inherently creepy, and they're ten times worse in the middle of the night.

But she's his, and there's no telling if it's the weather or something worse that has them down a bit of livestock.

Point is: there's a cramp in his shoulder, a goatlick of hair slicked out over his scar, and the plans to let her out in the morning are not going well. "Hey guys," he calls to the waking household, "The porch is basically gone." The wind has apparently been bad enough to pack snow against the front of the house; Kira is surprised enough by the sight, and bleary enough after sleep, that he stands there a moment staring at the wall of it.

The goat takes seconds to push past him, headbutting the barrier and making it fall in on top of her. The layer carries on in a slope, and the wind starts to blow the still-falling snow back toward him. Anyone coming into the room will find a goat bleating helplessly as she shakes herself out of the pile, and Kira trying to nudge her out of the way with his foot, unable now to close the door against the wind and snow.

[Four adults, one goat, two days.  Free for all post for individual and multi-person threads.]

"the snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches." -- e. e. cummings

[warriorborn]

WHO: Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster
WHERE: The Inn/immediate surrounding area
WHEN: Jan 13, after supper
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: foul language probs

---

LEAVING THE INN

OTA

He'll never get used to Winter.

This is Benedict's second cold season down on the Surface, and he would have thought he'd be prepared for snow; after all, he had plenty of experience with it last year — never mind that it hardly feels like a year has passed, he's had it explained that the seasons only happen once each per year and a year is shorter here than it is back home, by nearly a third! — but he was wrong. He's starting to think that one can never be ready for snow, that it catches you unawares every time, that you're left scrambling to deal with it no matter how well prepared you think you might be. 

It started snowing overnight. In his humble opinion, that's the absolute worst time for snow to begin to fall. When snow begins during the day, you can keep an eye on it, keep abreast of it, decide how you're going to deal with it and make the effort regularly to go out and maintain your pathways. When it snows after you're already in bed... It's pretty to look at, he'll admit that, but only from the warm safety of his bed, with Kate beside him like a warming stone tucked against his side. When he inevitably hast to get up and get started for the day, the crushing weight of the impending snow-removing work he has to do feels like a physical weight on his shoulders. 

By the time the evening meal is concluded, Benedict is afraid that, by the time morning rolls around again, he won't be able to even guess where the path is to shovel it even if he wanted to. 

Bundling up as best he can, making use of some of the abandoned cold-weather gear left behind by those who've disappeared in the past, he heads towards the front door, a coil of climbing rope over his shoulder. As he nears the door, he grabs the sleeve of the person closest to him. 

"Do you have a minute?" he asks, voice muffled by the way he's turned up the collar of his coat and has already burrowed down into it in anticipation of the miserable task ahead. "I would be eternally grateful for an extra pair of hands for a brief moment." 

BACK AT THE INN

OTA

Surely it's not healthy to be this cold. Benedict is fairly learned, more so than many of his peers, but while he studied human anatomy in both an academic and a military-triage sense, he does not have much knowledge about extreme temperatures and their effects on the human body. In the climate-controlled Spires, it wasn't exactly an issue, outside of perhaps accidents involving fire or blaster burns. The only time he had ever possibly gotten close to being as cold as he's grown used to becoming during treacherous Winter was on the airship Predator, and even that felt wildly different than this. 

He's hung up his sopping wet clothing, changed into something dry from the wardrobe, and even went so far as to drag the blanket off his and Kate's bed so he can wrap it around himself as he huddles near the fire in an attempt to thaw out his frozen extremities. 

"How do you people live like this?" he grumbles to nobody in particular, tucking his fingers into his armpits and pulling his knees up to his chest.