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

[thenewways]

Usually Nerys notices that she's being watched, would have something to say or a cut of the eyes in response to a smirk, but this time she's too enthralled by the novelty of the coffee. It's not a raktajino, but it doesn't have to be. It's something familiar, that's what matters, even if it's human familiar, station familiar, rather than a taste of Bajor.

The voice almost comes out of nowhere. She doesn't visibly startle, but she didn't notice him approach, and the mocking voice in her head that drawls sloppy, Major sounds a little like Garak.

It's one of the young couple who'd gone into the woods after they'd arrived. While Nerys isn't entirely certain about his attitude, she knows this much--people don't just run off and hide, hide well, survive handily, without having had experience and reason. So she's gotta respect that.

"It's a vice," she says, friendly enough herself. "But I couldn't really pass up the chance, no matter if it's a double-edged sword. You like it?"

[fishermansweater]

Mostly, Finnick still doesn't trust anyone here but Annie. And he considers the ridges on her nose to be just one more reason to be wary of her. She doesn't speak like the Capitol, though: none of that silly high-pitched hissing or the strange inflection that makes every sentence sound like a question.

In fact, there's nothing about her except her face that suggests the Capitol, certainly not the suggestion that a cup of coffee could be considered a vice. Finnick knows the vices of the Capitol as intimately as anyone could, and coffee isn't one of them. So he lets himself smile at the description and collects a cup of coffee for himself, adding a dash of cream and loading up a saucer with sugar so he can add it to his taste.

"It's one of my milder vices," he admits. "But it's a luxury where I'm from, so I'll take some while it's here."

The life of a victor tends to lead one towards opportunism. Too much time spent in the Capitol, around temptations of food and drink commonplace there and incredibly difficult to find in the districts, has taught him to take what he can get.

It is, he's always felt, the smallest possible compensation for all the Capitol's taken from him, but compensation it is, and that's a theory that can carry over just as well to this place.

[thenewways]

The young man's smile strikes Nerys as a little bit wary, or maybe she's just projecting her assumptions onto him from what she knows. Either way, she's not going to pretend to be disarmingly friendly, it's never been her style, but she doesn't have any reason not to welcome him to sit down cordially. As he returns with his coffee, she nods at the chair across from her.

"I've only started drinking it in the last couple of years," she says, sipping as a punctuation mark. "It wasn't available back home until recently, at least not for people, well...like me...but it's amazing how quickly you pick up the habit. Could be worse, I guess." She subtly nods to acknowledge that she'd picked up his comment about milder vices. "I'm a little skeptical about this whole meal, but it seemed like an acceptable risk, a cup of coffee."

[fishermansweater]

It's easy to slip into the chair, and Finnick does it with a grace that belies a little of the wariness hidden behind his smile.

"People like you?" he asks, his head tipping to one side a little in curiosity. The words strike him as something familiar. People like me, people from the districts, victors in the Capitol. There's a lot of people like me in Panem, and coffee isn't something that's available to most of them.

Finnick lifts his cup to his lips and sips, then lets his vivid green eyes blink, slowly and sensually. He gives a little shrug. "It could be a trap, but we need the food. How many good meals do most of us get?"

[thenewways]

He's clearly not entirely trusting in her, which Nerys can live with. It's not as if she hasn't been living with it in basically everyone she meets for most of her life. Unearned trust is for people who can afford it. Unfortunately, in her experience, those are usually the people who least need to depend on others.

She decides to give him the brief version of the narrative she keeps sharing here at the village; for lack of a catchy title, it's called The Bajor Story for People Who May Not Know Non-Humans. "My people were under occupation by a different people until a couple of years ago," she explains. "I was born in a camp, we didn't get much to eat, and coffee's a luxury to begin with."

The blink makes her raise an eyebrow, uncertain if it's a vague defensive gesture of flirtation or simply enjoying the drink. For his sake, it better bet the latter. "Meals here aren't bad, but they're certainly not...well," she gestures around the room. "I guess bountiful would be the word. Unless it's poisoned, it's probably wisest to fill up on proteins and fats right away, then store and preserve what's left for as long as possible. The benefits outweigh the risks, I think. You?"