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WHO: Killian Jones
WHERE: The woods, the inn, the village, his and Emma's house
WHEN: October 16 and after
OPEN TO: All; one thread closed to Emma
WARNINGS: None
STATUS: Open; ongoing

[Out and about – open]

He'd been a bit confused when he woke up a few mornings ago and found a couple of boxes sitting on the table. He'd heard them mentioned but hadn't received any himself yet, and he doesn't know how to explain that. His curiosity had gotten the best of him and he'd opened them; one held everything he needed to bake a cake, and the other had shaving supplies. He knows that based on the weather and the best anyone can tell about what time of year it is, that Emma has a birthday sometime around now, but how did whoever left this box know that?

Despite the fact that they're all pretty sure someone is watching them, and the fact that he knows they're being toyed with, he decides to set his pride aside and use the contents of the boxes anyway. When he goes about his tasks now, it's with a freshly-shaved face. He feels so much more like himself now, and as he heads out into the woods with the harpoon to do some fishing, he can heard whistling and humming what some might recognize as sea shanties. Even after he returns to the inn and goes through the rest of his tasks for the day, he doesn't stop humming. With the surprise he's got planned for Emma later, he's in a comparatively good mood. Feel free to interrupt him at any point.

[For Emma]

The first thing she'll notice when she comes inside is the smell of something baking. There's the smell of food, too, but definitely something baking. He even set the table, and lit a few candles (though that's as much to be able to see as it is for anything else).

“I hope you haven't eaten yet. I have a surprise for you.” Two surprises, actually, because when she gets a look at him, she'll see that he has shaved off the beard that he'd been forced to grow since arriving here. “There's a cake waiting for you.”

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Ravi is beginning to suspect that everyone here is unfairly attractive in that way that makes him feel grateful he's not a peacock who needs to outshine the rest. Still, ridiculous levels of attraction or not, Ravi needs to get to know his neighbours for the express purpose of having information. "That makes me think I should be seasick," he notes, of the man's tune.

"That, or eating deep fried fish at a cheesy chain restaurant."

Hey, look at that. Someone who recognizes the tune. At least well enough to have the general idea of it. Which might provide a general idea as to how he ended up with a hook for a hand, too. His wasn't exactly the safest profession.

He drops his load of fish onto the table and begins to sort them by size. "A what kind of restaurant?"

He may be unfairly attractive, but there are a few things he's lacking in. Like how to make sense of modern things.

"It's sort of a place with a lot of pirate themed uniforms and outfits, with terrible deep fried food, and all they play is sea shanties and other nautical styled music." He thinks of the times he'd gone there on truly unfortunate dates, immensely grateful that they had been few and far between. "Honestly, imagine the most deep fried substances, put them on a plate, and that's roughly what you can expect."

Don't get him wrong, it's a great place to go when you're drunk or immediately post-drunk, but generally? Not his favourite.

That description really doesn't help him visualize it, but it sounds horrifying to him. "They make money off of pretending to be pirates?" This is somehow worse than finding out that there are stories with him in them, and that these stories aren't exactly true.

"You can make money off of pretending to be anything so long as you have decent fries and mozzarella sticks on your menu," Ravi says knowingly, because he, too, has been taken in by the allure of awful foods far too many times in his life. "Not that we've got those options here, sadly. It doesn't seem like anyone's rushing to open a restaurant in the middle of survival."

He extends a hand to shake after making sure it's clean. "I'm Ravi," he says. "You are? Besides someone well-acquainted with several catchy tunes?"

"I don't know what those are." There's a lot he doesn't know, which he probably isn't going to be learning about here. The things available here are closer to what he's used to, even if they're still more modern.

"Captain Killian Jones." Which is probably a bit hint as to why he knows those catchy tunes.

"Well, it may be a blessing that you don't have to endure the deep fried fish, but not knowing what mozzarella sticks are is just a crime," Ravi insists, his stomach growling and grumbling at him seeing as it's not like he's got the chance to feast on them here. He shakes the man's hands, a touch impressed with his accreditation. "Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti," he says, which doesn't really give him any insight as to why he might know some of those songs, but hasn't got much experience in singing them.

"So what's a Captain like you doing so far from a sea?" he jokes, as if he doesn't already know that they're all trapped and doomed and trapped a little more.

"Then perhaps when I leave here, I shall have to find some." He's sure that at some point, Emma will make sure he tries some. He's slowly learning new things about the strange world she lives in.

"If I figure that out, I'll be sure and let you know." They'd all like a way out of here, after all, and figuring out how they got here and who's responsible would be a big step in the direction of being able to get home.

He talks like he's getting out of here. Ravi already very much likes this man, though he has no idea why he thinks that he's getting out when the rest of the population seems a little less inclined to believe the same thing. "Have you got any ideas, then, for getting us out? Obviously, ship by sea probably isn't an option unless that river opens up into a great bay that just happens to be invisible."

Still, he'll take an invisible escape over anything else, because it means getting home and stopping a whole other crisis back there.

“There's no sea here.” He's not one hundred percent sure of that, of course, having not followed the river to its end in either direction, but he's been a good distance in both directions and hasn't found any indication of the sea. Even if he knows that there must be sea somewhere; the river has to come to an end. “Though if there were, and a vessel worthy of travel on it, I could get us away from here.” Maybe not home, depending on where home is, but at least away from here.

“No one has found a hint of a way home yet, but if I never looked for a way out when I was in a new place, I never would have gotten anywhere.”

"Well, if ever a sea opens up and if ever a vessel finds you, remember your dear old new friend Ravi," he encourages, seeing as he'd really like to be out of here sooner rather than later, given the potentially imminent apocalypse back home that he's been trying not to think about. "How can we be stuck? It's not like there are bears guarding the exits."

"There aren't bears guarding the exits, are there?" Ravi clarifies, hoping that he hasn't just made a stupid assumption.

"With the woods that are around here? There might be." He hasn't seen any, but the thought does occasionally cross his mind when he's walking through the thick underbrush with an armload of fresh-caught fish. "I haven't heard of anyone coming across a bear, but I also haven't heard of anyone coming across a boundary of any sort either."

They're in a seemingly-endless wilderness that likes to remind them that there were apparently residents here before them, but without giving any clue as to the fate of those residents. "Even if there was a boundary and we could make it across, there's no guarantee that we would be in a world that any of us came from or could get back to."

"Where do you think we are, then?" Ravi wonders, because part of experimentation and science is understanding the variables of the situation. In this case, finding out what people think of the world they're in (or rather, what world that is) at least helps him in building a case. "If the boundaries suddenly gave way, what do you think lies beyond all this?"

"I don't think I'm qualified to answer that." He's been a lot of places, sure, but he's always known where he was going and that he was going to them. He'd also, with one notable exception, had a map of the place, or been able to acquire one. Everyone came into this place knowing absolutely nothing about it. "There must be an ocean out there somewhere, based on the presence of the river, but how close it is, or even if it's within the boundaries we haven't discovered yet, I couldn't say."

"So no tracing the river back to the source? I thought that was a mountain or a lake," he admits, feeling briefly stupid for not knowing how rivers work, exactly, but he'd been too busy at medical school figuring out how to save lives until he'd been forcibly boxed into a role where it didn't matter what you did, seeing as they were already dead.

It does tend to take the pressure off, though luckily he had his experiments to keep himself occupied.

"The source and the mouth are two different things. The source could be a mountain or a lake, and it ends in an ocean." He knows a lot about water. He's been making his living on it for centuries.

"The ocean could very well be outside of the boundaries we're not allowed to cross." Since no one has found those yet either.

"This is clearly where I failed map skills," Ravi says with a helpless shrug, seeing as he definitely spent most of his time working with dead bodies and not river sources. "I don't understand how we're being kept here, truthfully. We're filled with intelligent people and we still can't escape."

"We're lab rats," he realizes.

"What kind of rats?" He's seen a lot of rats, living on ships as he has, but he's never paid attention to the differences between them.

Nor is he aware of half the references people from a modern culture make. He's still a little behind the times there.

"Some of us have map skills. Some of us have other skills. They're all what will eventually get us out of here."

"The kind that people use to test variables on," he says, his eyes widening a little as he looks at this place in a new light. "Like when you give them an obstacle just to see what they do," he finishes, trying to quiet the dread in his heart though he knows it's going to haunt him for days if he's lucky, but realistically it will be weeks.

"If you do find a way out of here, I'm hopeful that I've earned enough friendship to be one of the first you tell," he suggests hopefully.

"If I find a way out of here, I'll be sure and let everyone know. If we don't all survive, then we can't say that any of us did." That's how it was with his crew, and even though he's not the captain and this isn't his crew, every survival instinct he has right now is telling him to look out for everyone. They're all in this together, and together is the only way they'll get through it.

"You seem to be in a good mood," Margaery said as she ambled out of the woods, heading in the direction of the inn. By sheer chance, their paths had managed to cross and she got to hear the tail end of his whistling. While she had never been around sailors before, she had heard sea shanties from a distance, the men on the dock singing happily.

At her side was her small sheepdog puppy, mud and dirt around his nose from where he had sniffed out mushrooms for Margaery to dig up.

"I suppose it is a better day, now that the rains have finally stopped."

"Aye." He's got the harpoon slung over one shoulder and a net bag made of vines, full of fish, hanging from his hook. It's been a good morning to go fishing, and now they can have fresh fish instead of some that's a few days old.

"We can get out and do things instead of sitting around like useless lumps." Not that he's calling anyone specific a useless lump. They've all been doing what they could, even while trapped inside because being outside was impossible.

The rains had at least not devastated the rivers and streams. The fish were still biting and they would have something fresh to eat again, instead of relying on broths and pickings from scavenging.

He's accurately described how she felt the past week. "Did you manage to make that net yourself?" She's impressed to say the least. "Where did you manage to find the vines?"

He nods his head in the direction of the woods. "The vines are out there, if you know where to look. Mostly near the water." He tends to find water, whenever he can, just because it means so much to him. He still wishes he could find something bigger than a river though. He's seen no hint of anything though. "It would be better with rope. That would take the knots better and not need replacing every few days, but until I have some, vines will do."

"I could always weave you a basket as well. There is some spruce root which Kate and I have used for making them. You could likely make a type of net with them as well. They are stronger than vines, I imagine." She knew where to find them as well, having spent the day digging them up with Kate.

"Are there enough fish for lunch today?" The communal lunches had become a daily event for Margaery. Everyone came together, bringing food and harvests from the woods. "Or do you have something special in mind for them?"

"A basket would be more useful." He wouldn't have to spend so much time repairing it, for one thing. "I've never made a net out of a root before, but it's worth a try." Creativity and innovation is what's going to get them all through this.

"There are. Typically I catch one or two for my own use and then keep going until there's enough for everyone who wants them." Catching extra fish is how he trades for other supplies that he needs. There are some tasks he just can't do for himself, so he makes sure to do plenty of what he can.

"I have a bit more experience now in making a basket. I could make you one, if you are willing to give me a few of the fish?" She was getting a bit tired of just rabbit.

"We may need to learn how to fish in the cold. Have you had any experience with that?" She asked him, worrying about what would happen when the streams and rivers froze.

"There are plenty here. Trading a few fish for a basket is no problem." He has traded before. He prefers that to just leaving the fish to potentially be taken by someone who's not pulling their weight (though he will admit that that is unlikely to happen).

"Not particularly. We tended to stick to the open sea, and that doesn't freeze in the cold." Not that they'd always had a choice about that, but the nice thing about having a ship was being able to go where he wanted, when he wanted.

He glances down at his hook. "I wouldn't be very good at breaking a hole in the ice, anyway."

He wasn't alone in that opinion. Trades needed to be equal. They couldn't afford to have someone that just rested on the efforts of others.

"You are a sailor?" She asked in surprise, having never had the chance to converse with one until now. "You must have traveled across a number of lands." She envied him that. Part of her had always wanted to see the other realms across the Narrow Sea.

She hadn't noticed his hook until now. She glanced at it once before looking back at him, not wishing to be rude. "We would need something heavier to break the ice, I imagine."

"I have been for most of my life." Which is understating it, in fact, seeing as he's been around for a lot longer than most would assume he had. Either way, it's a set of skills he worked hard to obtain, and he has found a way to apply some of them here. "Not that it does much good without a seaworthy vessel." What he wouldn't give for one of those. He'd even be content with a rowboat, or some way of making it across the river to explore the other side.

"Aye, and two good hands to do it." One of the tools back at the inn would probably work, if it had to.

"Is this the longest you have been ashore?" It couldn't be an easy transition for him. In this place, they were essentially grounded. There was nowhere for them to go. They were almost isolated in one location and something made her feel that it was intentional, though she couldn't say why.

"I'm sure there is someone who could help. We would at least have the option when winter comes."

"It's close." He'd been stuck in Neverland for many years, but there he'd still had his ship, and had run errands for Pan. "I was without a ship for a number of months, but I managed to get it back from the man who had stolen her from me." And his time in Storybrooke without a ship hadn't equaled this many months yet.

"If someone can make a hole in the ice, I can catch the fish."

Emma rubbed her hands together, warming them up. She had been out walking, just thinking, trying to forget that it was her birthday or that she was away from her family.... Henry, again.... not to mention that she is still having nightmares about her house almost collapsing around her.

No, she would rather just forget about the whole day, thank you very much. That is until the door closes and she smells something wonderful. Her stomach growls of its own volition.

"You.... baked?.... For me?" She asked softly, looking slightly stunned.

"Of course I did." She's still so surprised when he does anything for her, and he'll keep doing it until one day she stops wondering why. And then he'll keep doing it because she'll know why.

That's not all he did, once she gets a look at him. It's obvious that he shaved too. "You do have a birthday, don't you?"

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(omg I lost this notif so if it's too late, feel free to ignore)

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