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

[lastofthekellys]

The notice is welcome, as Kate had been well lost in her own thoughts, fabric and needle still in her hands. She blinks, in time to see Mr Cougar crouch and Miss Hoppity fling herself into his hands. Faithless animal.

At Mr Cougar's look, she shrugs and smiles, a little.

"I'm mostly all right," she says. "Ankle's the worst, this," and she touches the scratch across her nose, "the most visible."

She's worried about her ankle. She'd never intended to walk so far on it, and certainly not hiking in that weather. But there's nothing to be done but rest it.

"I heard you went lookin'?"

[thecatinahat]

He shrugs when she speaks of his search. He had looked, yes, but there hadn't been much success so he's not sure how much he wants to take credit for any search party that he'd participated in. "With no luck," he says darkly, not appreciating how his own senses had betrayed him. "Each time, something strange happened, like they did not want us to find you."

Who the 'they' were, Cougar doesn't know, but more and more, he's beginning to believe that there is a 'they'. There's too much evidence to point towards there being an enemy out there that's screwing with them. He gestures to the ankle. "Did someone look at this?"

[lastofthekellys]

"Miss Magnus did, last night," she confirms. "I'll be off it for a few days, then usin' some crutches to get around until it heals." Finally, maybe, she's been tossed around enough by this place to actually attempt to rest.

So far as she ever does.

"It was like that for us," Kate says then. "Somethin' kept happenin', to keep us lost."

[thecatinahat]

"Has someone carved the crutches yet?" He's good with a knife and wouldn't mind the task. Plus, it would help him to feel like he's able to contribute something, seeing as Cougar is still feeling frustrated beyond belief that he hadn't been able to find her, even if it seems everyone had endured the same problem.

"Then how?" he wonders. "How did you escape, finally?"

[lastofthekellys]

"Miss Reyes has a pair she lent me," Kate asks, then she falls silent. 'Falls' seems to the operating word, as her shoulders slump too. "Though I've been thinkin' of tradin' somethin' to get me own pair. Ankle keeps... I, keep. Gettin' meself into trouble with it."

Then she shakes her head. "Miss Tauriel and Mr Crowder found us. I'd left somethin' of a trail, with our initials in the trees. But I don't know if they got lucky, or we were let go."

It's a question that bothers her, deeply. And she's not sure which answer she'd prefer.

[thecatinahat]

He raises a brow when she blames it on the ankle, but nods sensibly when she takes the accountability and admits that maybe, just maybe, she has a hand in it. Initials in trees is a clever thing, but it still rankles Cougar to know how long he'd searched and only found himself going in circles.

Leaning forward, he gives her a dark look and understands all too well that she's probably right. "What happens if next time, they do not want to let someone go?" he wonders. "How do we fight that?"