[MINGLE] Scout's Honor

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: Hot Springs
WHEN: 21 Sept, after sunset
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn in your subject line as needed
NOTES: Details found here

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It's been a strange, rough couple of months for our intrepid villagers — Bunkers, superpowers and clones, oh my! Perhaps the Observers are sympathetic to their plight, or maybe they just have a peculiar sense of humor. At any rate, they've set up a gathering space chalk full of summer camp goodness, no strings attached. Not that anyone knows that part.

Just before sunset, a cheery message pops up on wrist devices all across the settlement and beyond. The instructions seem simple enough, although one does have to wonder at what dubious gift awaits them all after everything is said and done.

Marshmallows are on the house, so grab yourself a stick, strap on a sash and get to roasting, villagers. Skinny dipping, sing-alongs and friendship bracelets optional.

Comments

[tosavecocoon]

Vanille hasn't experienced a bonfire like this, exactly, though on Gran Pulse things were different than what Cocoon or village people might think of. Usually things had a purpose to them, a reason for existing, which is what she was really asking after. Luckily, the person she's asked this time has a useful answer for her and it clears up at least some of her confusion.

"That's what I was thinking," she says with a nod, remembering the times she'd been camping in the Cocoon outlands or the wilds of Gran Pulse. They made camp and then made a fire. A campfire. "I didn't know if they called it something different here. So what kind of social gathering uses a bonfire? Is it just something you do with a bunch of friends?"

If so? She is so adding this to the list of things she'll do as soon as they're done with Barthandelus back home.

[collaronhisneck]

"Mostly, yes." He has to wonder briefly where she comes from if this sort of thing is completely unknown to her - in all the history he's studied, and stories from people even not of his world, or at least a world similar to his, fire seems to have been something of a social stimulant. "Friends, or family, or a whole community. Of course bonfires can be practical - if you need to burn quite a lot of something all at once, bedding infested with fleas for instance, you would simply find a place where the fire won't spread and build one fire to burn everything at once. But people like to gather around a fire, for the comfort of the heat and the light, and it draws people together. Just as it's doing now."

Mulcahy nods out to the edges of the fire's light as he speaks, and it's fairly obvious that he has a point. If people had seen a large fire, they would have come to investigate, even without the prompting of their captors; if it hadn't been dangerous to anything, and as long as it looked deliberately built, it quite likely would have turned into a gathering point on its own, as people cross in and out of the light, laughing with friends and performing silly tasks that they nonetheless seemed to find joy in. "A fire, especially a large one such as this, seems to represent the heart of many communities in a way. Some religions where I'm from keep eternal flames going to represent their gods, or some facet of what they worship. It seems... fairly universal in that regard."