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

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

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.

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I think it's pretty fair to say that, of everyone here, I've not exactly seemed concerned by the deeper meaning of why we're stuck in this place. This doesn't mean I haven't done plenty of thinking about it, because trust me, I've had more than my share of sleepless nights. There's just a point where people like me, people like Kate, we go into survival mode. Making sure everyone is fed and healthy becomes the most important thing, and that's been pretty damned critical these past few months. Winter has arrived with a vengeance, and I'm glad we put the rest aside to focus on the harvest when we did.

But that practicality doesn't mean I can look at a spread like this and not be completely freaked out by it. Honestly, part of me -- A very loud, insistent part of me -- doesn't want to touch any of it, at least not yet. The smarter approach would have been to feed some of it to one of the animals, watch what happens. The food would have kept for a day. But there are so many people tucking in by the time I show up, there's no point in being the practical one anymore.

And who can blame them? We've been barely getting by and this is a meal straight out of 'Good Housekeeping.'

I give in, because of course I give in. Trust me, you'd give in, too. But even as I eat, I'm more somber than normal. I don't know what this means, but I'm worried it's nothing good.

Edited 2016-11-26 00:56 (UTC)

Ravi's absconded with a leg of turkey, pausing in order to judge the look on Watney's face as he masticates slowly and swallows down the meat. Gesturing to him using the drumstick to help, he also uses it to summarize his face with a general drawing of the air around him before he picks up two beers by the necks and drops them right in front of him. "Beer," he announces, "because if the look on your face is anything to go by, either the food is terrible or something is wrong and I can tell you for a fact that this turkey leg is delightful," he's happy to announce.

There's plenty to be serious about, of course, but until push comes to very violent shove, Ravi does try to keep positive even if his brain is currently running through various worries and plans in the back of his mind like a perpetual motion machine that refuses to stop.

"It's pretty fucking good," I admit of the turkey with a low laugh and conceding arch of my eyebrows. And beer -- God. Actual, legitimate, cold beer. Things like this you don't even realize you've really missed until you have them again.

"Here's to hoping that if drinking this gives us hallucinations, they're at least pleasant ones," I say as I pick up my bottle and tap it lightly against the neck of Ravi's with a clank.

Ravi salutes that, though he peers into the bottle and wonders how anyone would have been able to slip a hallucinogen into the alcohol without someone seeing it, especially seeing as the caps are still on firmly. "So, the face?" he prods, gesturing to it again with a finger and not a turkey, this time. "If it's not the beer and it's not the turkey, what mars that handsome face of yours?" he asks, taking a seat beside Mark and digging into the food without waiting.

Manners have to go out of the window in circumstances like this, in order to enjoy the strange.

"You know, if you keep talking about how attractive I am, I'm going to think you're hitting on me," I point out with a smile and pointed arch of my eyebrows. I suppose it's possible that Ravi is secretly jonesing to get in my scrubs, but I don't ever get that kind of vibe from him, which is why the remarks on my looks are even funnier. Never mind that compared to most of the people in this place, I'm nothing special.

"I just don't know that I trust all of this," I say with a motion to the food. "I mean, obviously I am eating it, but the scientist in me would have rather run some kind of test first. But hey, at least if we go down, we'll all go down together."

"I'm a scientist," Ravi insists in a 'don't blame me' tone of voice, "I'm incredibly objective, which means that I can empirically state when another man is more handsome than me. As far as I'm concerned, we're testing it the way old emperors used to. Those who waited a little longer will have the chance to live longer, though much hungrier." Biting into the turkey leg, Ravi tries to still the rapturous joy of the flavour he's tasting. "Honestly, if this is my last meal, then I'm happy to enjoy it. Have you had the coffee yet?" he asks. "Or the beer? Honestly, I'm going to be sick later, I've accepted this."

"We could still salvage some of it, run some tests, but without a microscope, I am woefully unprepared to analyze anything."

I can't help but laugh; I can't tell if he's drunk yet, but I wouldn't be surprised. "Attractiveness can't be empirically measured, Ravi," I point out with a smile. "It's subjective by its nature. Like art. Although I'm glad that you think I'm hot, thank you."

I lift the beer bottle he gave me and take a long, demonstrative swallow so he can see I am clearly enjoying myself, or at least making an attempt.

"Unless you've been keeping some serious secrets, I don't think any kind of tests we could run on this stuff would do more than waste something that could be eaten."

"I beg to differ, the golden ratio and symmetry are perfectly mathematical to me. Love and attraction, that said, are extremely subjective," he agrees, seeing as it's not like he's going around insisting that he can measure love - though, strictly speaking, he supposes he could measure the pheromones and spikes of happiness in the system. "Well, we could run it to see if there's anything artificial, but I don't have the equipment."

He gives Mark a rueful smile. "I don't suppose dessert comes with microscopes and slides, does it?"

"Not that I've noticed," I reply, and although it's intended as a joke, it does give me pause, worried all over again about whether something dangerous could be lurking in what we're eating. But then, that seems a little too obvious, doesn't it? Whoever is keeping us here is a little more creative than that.

"I think the best we can do is keep an eye out for any adverse reactions in the coming days," I continue, and take a quick glance around the room at the folks stuffing their faces. "Apart from general upset stomach, anyway." For a good portion of these people, this food is much more rich and sugary than they've been eating for months. I have a feeling the bathrooms are going to be getting a workout tomorrow.

"And the hangover I plan to have tomorrow morning," he adds to the list, because there's really no way around it. There's a lot of delicious looking alcohol here and Ravi hasn't imbibed in a very long time. Both his tolerance and his ability to process will be weakened (though his tolerance hadn't been standing the test of endurance before, what with Peyton routinely drinking him into a near coma only for her to swan off to spin class while Ravi nearly died).

"So, what's the Mark Watney favourite?" Ravi asks, gesturing to the vast array of tables before them. "Name your specialty."

"Not fucking potatoes, I can tell you that much," I say with a shake of my head. "I don't know. Maybe pie. A really good pumpkin pie with Cool Whip on top." In truth, it's hard to choose; these days, I'm back to being grateful just to be fed at all. But pumpkin pie is definitely up there on the list.

"A better question is who is going to clean all of this up?" I glance around the rooms at the happy faces full of food, and the tables cluttered with dishes, and my first thought is Kate.

Well, and me, because obviously now that I've thought about it, getting drunk instead of doing my part to clean up is definitely not in the cards tonight.

"Well," he says, eyeing the array in front of them, "ideally, the best way to clean up would be to distribute things to the village. It would both get rid of the food and the platters. Then, once everything is gone, people are happy and fed and ideally there should be nothing left to do but wipe the counters and wash the floor. Unless the people who were so good to give us this feast are the types of arseholes who also left the dishes." He doubts that's the case, feeling like someone would have complained by now, if they had.

"I'll happily take any of those potatoes you refuse to eat," Ravi says, always happy for a good mashed. "But I still may fight you for pie. Pie is always worth fighting for. That and a very good pizza."

"I used to love potatoes," I admit, and lean back in my chair with a bemused sigh. All this food, and my stomach has shrunk so much I can barely make a dent in what's on my plate.

"I ate a lot of potatoes when I was on Mars -- A lot of potatoes." Raw, even, at the end. You do what you've got to do, but it gets pretty bleak after awhile, particularly after the ketchup runs out.

"Did I ever tell you about Mars?"

Ravi perks up slightly, because no, he would have remembered that. "You have most definitely not told me near enough about Mars," Ravi insists with widened eyes as he sits his elbows onto the table, supporting his chin, and leaning forward to stare at Mark with the dreamy look of a little boy who loved to stare at space and think about going up there. "Tell me about Mars," he pleads.

"What was your primary objective while you were up there? Did you find anything fascinating from a scientific perspective? Signs of life?"

"Well, at first my primary objective was collecting data, but later is was not dying," I reply with a soft laugh. It's honestly not a laughing matter -- I really did nearly die several times over -- but it's one of those situations where the only sane way to cope is to find the humor in it.

"No signs of life," I add, since Ravi seems to be particularly interested in that. "But the soil has the components to support it, when you add fertilizer. While I was stuck there, I grew potatoes to stretch my rations. That's why I'm sick of them."

"How long were you stuck there?" Ravi's joking manner is fairly steady, but there are often times when it falls away and he can sense the severity of Mark's situation coming. Now, his questions are turning a little more serious, doing calculations in his head as to how long it might take someone to get to Mars. Beyond that, he hasn't even asked Mark if he got off the planet. For all he knows, this village might have interplanetary kidnapping potential and it doesn't matter where you are.

"About a year and a half," Mark answers, and takes a sip from his beer. He has points where it simply feels second nature to talk about his time on Mars; god knows he's had to do it enough, over and over for the press, NASA, his parents, his crew, strangers on the street... If it ever bothered him, it doesn't anymore.

"I was there with a crew about a month before that. I got hit by debris while we were evacuating during a storm. It fried my bio reader, they thought I was dead. It wasn't their fault I got left behind. But it took awhile for them to get back," he adds with a faint laugh. "But we weren't meant to be there a year and a half, so I had to get creative."

Ravi is already leaning forward on the edge of his seat, without realizing it. It's not that he dreamt of being an astronaut, but the sheer amount of new breakthroughs that people could make on Mars is practically a dream for him.

The unfortunate part is that you have to go through a ridiculous amount of training and physical work to get there and Ravi is really better at the behind the scenes work. "Potato-creative," he clarifies. "I feel like there were far more opportunities. How did you manage to stave off concerns like scurvy and infection?"

"Well, there were rations for six people, and medical supplies," I explain. "Just not enough for a year and a half. I wasn't only eating potatoes, they were intended to stretch the rations. But I was eating them every, single day at each meal. The worst, though, was when I finally ran out of ketchup."

God, I still crave ketchup, crazy as that sounds. And not homemade, certified organic, fancypants ketchup. I mean fucking Heinz, loaded with sugar, 100% American ketchup.

Well, that would help bridge the gap, given the math that Ravi's doing in his head. Still, there are so many potential issues that his mind is aching just to think about it. For one, the food issue might be solved, but Mars is barely a habitable planet. "I'm sorry," he says, knowing his face must be stuck on awe and shock, "where I'm from, Mars is still but a distant dream. The idea that you were stuck up there is both horrifying and amazing," he confesses.

"Not that I'm saying that you should've been grateful for the experience," he qualifies, "just that it's beyond what we can even imagine." Then again, he's in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, so his imagination has been learning to stretch, recently.

"No, it's alright," I'm quick to reply with a dismissive gesture of one hand. "I am grateful for the experience. I'm the only person who has gotten to have that experience. I'm just more grateful that I made it back home, and I definitely have no desire to go back."

I can't deny that there's still and likely always will be part of me that yearns to go back into outer space, but more present is the part of me that feels like I used up my one Get Out of Jail Free card and I shouldn't press my luck.

"It's funny, because I had to go through a lot of crazy shit to get off Mars, to get home, and the part I was most anxious about was making the descent back to Earth."

The only person to have been stranded on Mars and stayed there for a mad amount of time is sitting in front of Ravi right now. Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that he's trying to stuff his face, he'd probably be asking Mark a thousand questions about the science of it all and what it looked like and how it felt. "I mean, people can be bastards," he deadpans wryly, but he supposes he can understand.

"How was it? Adjusting, that is? I'm assuming you immediately crusaded to rid potatoes from your sight?" he guesses.

"I'll say this. If I'd been able to run right out and order a cheeseburger, I would have skipped the side of fries," I say with a laugh.

"And honestly, it was long and a little tedious. I did have the entire trip back to Earth to recoup before we landed, but after that it was a parade of doctors and press for a long time. I wouldn't recommend it."

"I don't know, I wouldn't mind a parade of press lauding me for my accomplishments," Ravi admits, because while he might labour out of love and devotion to science, he's also still selfish enough to want to see a few medals of recognition on his mantlepiece, seeing as 'curing the zombie plight' would be probably the most incredible thing this year, for him. "Isn't that what everyone wants a little, deep down? I mean, the Nobel Prize, it does beckon," he confesses.

"The Nobel Prize would be nice, given that I was the first person to cultivate crops on Mars," I reply with a smile. "Instead, I got a lot of people constantly in my business for a very long time. Couldn't walk out the front door without being swamped for awhile. The police had to help me get to my car more than once."

Sitting back, I take a slow sip from my beer, considering. "Honestly, it was the reaction from the people that was more satisfying than anything I got from my colleagues. People writing me letters, kids saying they wanted to be astronauts because of me. That part I wouldn't change. It almost made it worth it." I laugh. "Almost."

OTA

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