Let us eat quickly-- let us fill ourselves up. {Harvest Feast}

[lastofthekellys]

WHO: Kate Kelly
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: 24th November
OPEN TO: E V E R Y O N E
WARNINGS: TBA
STATUS: OPEN

---

Aside from the days when she'd been too drunk or too hungover to get up, Kate's kept a farmer's hours all her life. Even in winter, when the bitterly cold winds that'd come up from the south and make its way through the cracks and holes in her ma's hut, she'd get up, get dressed, do her chores. But lately, it's been harder to extract herself from her bed. Benedict's been sharing her bed more often than not lately, and the chasteness of their interactions does nothing to change how warm and safe she feels. How little she wants to get up, get dressed, go out into the colder spaces of the Inn and do her work.

So, today, she's late getting out of bed - at least, by her standards. She's late getting down the stairs. She's late, so she's hurrying; she lazed in bed, and now she needs to start the fire in the main room. Start the fire, open the shutters, show that the Inn is standing and warm. And welcome, so she moves the -

No, Kate doesn't move the chairs stacked precariously at the front door as a rudimentary alarm of someone, something, coming through, because the chairs are gone. She neither dismisses it as one of the residents not getting the message, nor panics. Instead, she just opens the shutters to let in the dawn light and see if there are footprints, except, no, the snow has mostly cleared. The day is sunny. As welcome as it is, that doesn't help at all. Miss Hoppity jumps down from the foyer's desk to rub her face against Kate's skirt, apparently entirely unconcerned.

Kate eyes the cat for a moment, then approaches the closed doors leading to the main room. Closed, but with light coming through the cracks between door and floor, door and door frame. Cautiously, Kate opens one of the doors and peers in.

Then, she gapes.

The fire is blazing - hot, cheery - but so are the candles. The candles: candles on the unused candlesticks, candles clustered on tables, light up sideboards. Candles bobbing in bowls of water and apples. Candles white, yellow and red, when the village had none. Boughs of wheat, corn, decorate tables and the mantle over the fire, apples and pumpkins and collections of yellow, orange, red flowers seem to be everywhere.

And the food.

Each table is piled high with food. Roasted, baked, cooked on stoves and Kate knows how to cook, she knows how long this would all take, how many people, and it's impossible. What she's seeing is impossible to have done with the resources on hand: even an attempt would have woken up the whole building.

Disbelieving, Kate walks in. For a moment, she's entirely dumbfounded. Miss Hoppity, however, is nothing of the sort. The cat has leapt up onto the sideboard next to Kate and - well, Kate isn't sure what happens next. Just that suddenly there's movement and something large seems to lunge at her. Miss Hoppity yowls and speeds off: Kate screams as she battles something, falling backwards and hitting the floor along with a broken bowl of water, spilled apples and some tiny candles, and her attacker.

Pushing the food-turkey off her, Kate sits up and is, for once, entirely lost for words.

Comments

[womanofvalue]

Peggy is still marvelling with worry and awe, but distracts herself from those feelings to help Kate with the turkey, giving her an arched brow as she surveys the line of tables stretching out. "I think if we don't partake in it, it's going to go bad," she says, sizing up the food and trying to recall the population, given that it's not like there's a line of refrigerators sitting outside. And wouldn't that just be ideal, would it?

"No one snuck in at night? Not even, perhaps, a small army?" She thinks that given the right amount of time and talent, a battalion could accomplish this, but she's still missing the 'why'.

[lastofthekellys]

There's a laugh, short and cynical. A little shaky, still, but Kate swallows it. "Sure, maybe it was pixies, because anyone else doing all this would make noise. We'd wake up. Or Miss Hoppity would have woken me up."

Kate lifts a hand up, pinches the bridge of her nose and breathes out for a moment or two as she thinks.

"Unless, it's... maybe the same as the boxes? Those can appear here outside the room door."

Miss Carter is right about the food, but she's trying to sort through her thoughts, process one thing at a time.

[womanofvalue]

The boxes, though, are closed things. They're small and compact and wouldn't require so much effort. There are questions here that she doesn't quite understand and it's beginning to make her head hurt. "How did they cook it all? The turkey, the food, where did it come from?" she asks, delivering the last question with the pointed emphasis on the fact that it must have come from somewhere.

And if it was nearby, then maybe they're still just looking in the wrong places when it comes to an exit.

[lastofthekellys]

"I don't know." It's said with mingled helplessness, frustration, and resignation. She doesn't know. She doesn't have the first bloody clue where all this has come from, how it got here.

"They'd need a score o'people, and we didn't hear anythin' during the night but it's all that darn hot, you'd swear it'd just come from the kitchens. Unless there's some secret, sound and smell proof kitchen below us?

It seems to have appeared like a magician's trick, except without all the fancy backwork and distractin' assistants."

[womanofvalue]

Peggy opens her mouth to ask more questions, but the truth is that now that she looks around, her hunger and thirst for the food that's been missing for so long overwhelms her and makes her realize that she'd rather be eating this than questioning it. "I think you deserve to sit down and have some of it," Peggy insists, placing a gentle hand on Kate's elbow in order to guide her towards it.

"At least a drink, I know you deserve that much."

[lastofthekellys]

"You know, all the tales from the Old Country say that eatin' food provided by the Fair Folk is pretty foolish," Kate says. "Unless they were friendly brownies, I suppose, but we've nought been leavin' anythin' out. I'd hate to be trapped here dancin' to the Fairy Queen's whims."

Despite her (somewhat flippant, a bit genuinely cautious) protests, the girl lets herself be guided towards the food.

And the drink.

"But if we're all goin' to be partakin', Miss Carter, then there's no bloody way I'm lettin' you lot drink it. Just wouldn't be right."

This is her community here, for better and for worse. And there are too many English around for the lone Irish(-Australian) to remain sober while they have fun.

[womanofvalue]

"Aren't we already at the Fairy Queen's whims, so to speak?" is her reply, giving Kate an amused look though it's tinged with dark humour. "I don't know whether we should call it a Fairy Queen or something else, but someone is already making us dance to their particular tune. If they think I'm going to ignore the food in front of me out of fear, they're wrong," she insists.

She smiles warmly and gives Kate an encouraging nod. "I'll drink after you take the first sip."