in from the rain

[lastofthekellys]

WHO: Kate Kelly
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: 10th - 13th
OPEN TO: Helen Magnus | E V E R Y O N E
WARNINGS: TBA
STATUS: Closed | Open

---

Closed to Helen

Once Kate's back in the Inn - once she and Margaery have been found, once the forest lets them be found - her first port of call is her bedroom. She wants clean clothes, dry clothes. She wants to warm up and she's too cold to bother much about propriety.

Someone said something about getting Helen Magnus, but, really, Kate is fine. Scratches, including one across her nose. Bruises. Her ankle is painful, but she's fine. She just needs to warm up and maybe sleep, which is why she's in the bathroom, half-undressed, sitting in the bath and scrubbing at her skin with a warm washer.

She wants clean clothes, dry clothes, but she can't pull those on until she's warm and clean. She just...

She can't.

Open

Mostly, after Miss Magnus has sorted her out, Kate spends a lot of her time sleeping. In her few lucid moments, she thinks it is not unlike as if her body has suddenly realised how little she's been sleeping, and is trying to catch it all up at once. She gets out of bed to eat, to perform necessary bodily needs, and then she goes back to bed.

Once, she goes for a brief walk, because just being inside was making her feel awful, but only a brief one, where she wound up seeing Miss Carter. Then, it was to the Inn and her warm, warm bed.

By the second day after her and Miss Margaery's rescue, she's progressed to sitting up. It's all terribly indulgent of her, but people fuss when she tries to do anything more serious than checking up on her chicks, and she's so very tired. She can relax this once, can't she?

So Kate sits in bed and she sews. She plays with Miss Hoppity, who alternates between clinging to her as if worried that her human mama will vanish again and ignoring her, as cats do. She combs out her long hair with her fork, which takes rather more time than she'd admit. She naps. When she feels adventurous, or rather, when she's tired of her bed being so seductively warm, she sits at the chair at her dresser in the little alcove her room has, and sews there by the light of the now appearing sun.

She leaves her door open when she's awake, to let anyone come in when they want to. She might feel awkward admitting that sitting by herself is lonely, when she's been ordered to rest, but she does get that way.

Comments

[thenewways]

News travels fast here, and when it's news that two of her friends have been lost, Nerys goes to search almost immediately, even though it's ultimately useless. She has to do something, be moving, and everything but the most necessary tasks go by the wayside.

Once they've been found, she gives it a day or two before going to see either of them, to let them recover--being lost in the wilderness in the wet is no damn joke. But then...maybe she needs to convince herself Kate and Margaery are all right.

Kate's in the inn, so it's easy, really, to go up before lunch, and she knocks on the jamb of the door, lingering just outside. "It okay if I come in?"

[lastofthekellys]

Kate's sitting at her dresser, in her room's little alcove (courtesy of the bathroom's location next door). Ordinarily, she'd be hidden, which honestly is a large part of the appeal of the room, but not today. Today, she has her injured foot up on her second chair, and it's a small, socked foot on that chair which betrays her presence to anyone looking in.

"You can come in!" she calls out, and moves. Briefly. It's too awkward too untangle herself from the furniture unless she has to get up.

"You might have to sit on the bed, though," she warns Nerys with a sigh, and waits for the woman to come into view.

Kate's managed to get dressed today, complete with her corset under her blouse and her long hair in a simple plait. By now, the cut across her nose is healing, but it's been enough time for the surrounding bruise to show up. Still, she's sewing as per normal, so that's... something, she supposes.

[thenewways]

"I've sat on far worse than a bed," Nerys notes with a wry cock of her head, stepping quietly into the room, as it's a little awkward to talk to a foot. She's pleased to see that Kate is up and dressed, though her face looks painful in ways that make her wince in sympathy. "But I suppose I'll manage with the barbarity of it all."

She perches gently on top of the covers, looking Kate over from head to toe. "You usually get into these kinds of trouble, back where you come from?" she asks, but the question is gentle, kind teasing.

[lastofthekellys]

"We all must make sacrifices," Kate says with all the solemnity of a joke. "But I feel it is only proper to give fair warning."

Then she sighs as Nerys continues, and her ruefulness is only partially a play. "My brothers," she says, with great dignity, "would be rollin' in their graves at my gettin' lost so easy.

I used to be able to spend a couple days in the bush, and know exactly where I am. But here, I just... Got turned around. Or the fairies were messin' with me."

[thenewways]

"I'll endeavor to conduct myself with dignity then," Nerys says, equally solemn--until she clears her throat and smirks. She's not good at faking that kind of emotion; it takes a lot for her to be proper and decorous in general.

Settling back a little onto the quilt, she leans on the bedpost and considers Kate's story. Particularly that last comment. "The woods is finite," she says, then makes a face, correcting herself, "Well, okay, all woods are, technically, but this one is limited, we know you can only go so far. So either you hit a wall and got redirected somehow in a direction you didn't expect, or...maybe the fairies did mess with you." She gestures upwards, as if towards the unknown entity that has put them there.

[lastofthekellys]

"I have a good sense of direction," she says, thoughtfully. Her hazel eyes are distant, glancing out to the window opposite her bed. "But, I suppose for that little escapade to be useful... There needs to be a difference between certainty and pride.

So I don't know. How much of it is me and Margaery gettin' lost. It felt we were messed with. We didn't go that far."

[thenewways]

Huffing out a long sigh, Nerys turns, looking over her shoulder out the window, following Kate's gaze to nowhere-in-particular as if it will reveal something, uncover the answer to the mystery. But mysteries have always been Odo's thing, not hers.

"It's not farfetched an idea," she points out. "Around here, it's pretty much every day. But--"

She turns back to Kate and smiles softly. "I'm glad you both are back okay." It's true, she's not sure if this place would be quite right without either of them.