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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Coffee is next on her list, it would go down well with some of those desserts she had spied anyway. Right, wasn't she trying to avoid all of the food? So much for that, but the thought of coffee...well that was just hard to pass up.

"Would a calendar really make that much of a difference? Besides, just because we found calendars here doesn't mean they would be correct." Riza takes a sip of her cider, setting the mug down before continuing, "Some of the first people that arrived here said the place was covered in dust and completely empty. Meaning that any calendars would probably have been set to the wrong date anyway." She knows some people had taken to marking the days, which was helpful, but that didn't exactly tell you what day of the week it was or what time of year.

"I'd know when my birthday was, so then I could guilt everyone into making me presents," he jokes, but it's sort of the sad truth. He'd really only want a calendar for personal reasons so that he could keep track of all the things that he held dear to him, like his birthday and Liv's and Major's and the major events that he liked, like football playoffs and Game of Thrones premieres.

"Go back, though," he says, frowning as he pours himself a new cup of coffee, anticipating a dive into this topic. "Things were here when others arrived? Everything?"

"I don't know what you mean by everything and keep in mind I can only go off of what they've told me," Riza says by way of prefacing her lack of first hand experience. "From what I understand, the group that got here first found the village buildings completely empty of people, but they had some basic supplies: furniture and tools. It was all covered in dust, and there wasn't any food, weapons, or a number of other supplies you would think would be in a village of this size."

"Homes and supplies and food?" he clarifies. "I know that there aren't cameras or anything, but if you could describe as best as you could what you found when you got here, it might help me to understand what's going on." He maligns his luck in not being able to evaluate the level of dust that had been here, at least to do a proper analysis. "Honestly, it's terrifying to think what might have happened to the last people here. There's no evidence of what happened, no accounts, no journals..."

"Like it was all taken, hidden." Like they might be the second iteration in this, though he doesn't want to think too long about that.

Riza does her best to explain to Ravi what they had found upon arriving. She hadn't been here with the first group, but she does her best.

She raises an eyebrow though, "I thought it odd that there was no evidence of people being here. One of the first things they did was start writing on curtains with what they had and carving tally marks into places to mark how long they'd been here. If there were people here before us then shouldn't there have been traces like that?"

"They'd have to be exceptionally thorough to take away every piece of evidence like that. Do you really think it's possible there were people here before us?"

"Unless they took all evidence that might have led us somewhere and got rid of it," he says. "That's what I would do if I were trying to set up a new experiment. Any indication of previously learned information would have to be shed, or else you risk sullying the results," he says, hating that he's talking about them like lab rats, again. "I think maybe this is too serious a topic given the gifts here," he says.

"How about instead, we talk about our favourite flavour of pie," he suggests.

Well that was certainly a possibility. Riza hadn't considered it prior to this conversation, but it was a likely possibility. After all, hadn't her father taken precautions with his own research. Still, while she's used to heavy topics, she does concede it might be more pleasant if they discuss other topics.

"I enjoy a good apple pie," she says, taking a sip from her drink. She isn't sure how long a conversation on pie flavors is going to last. "I had a friend who had a habit of baking all kinds of pies to cheer people up. That one was always my favorite though."

"Don't think I'm crazy, but strawberry rhubarb," he says, like he's willing to make his case. "I know, a bit unconventional, but this isn't to rule out other pies from the running. I think other pies are just as delicious, but there's something about an unexpected combination that you have to love. Plus, vanilla ice cream on top." Apple pie is the sort of thing that he thinks only Americans truly like, because he's never once come across it in England. At least, not like that. Now, an apple cobbler is an entirely different story.

"Did your friend teach you how to bake, perchance?"

"I think ice cream goes without saying," Riza replies. "And I'll be honest, I'm not sure I've had a strawberry rhubarb pie. How is it unexpected?" She knew the strawberries had to be sweet, but she wasn't even sure she'd even heard of rhubarb. Was that...bitter? Sour? She couldn't be sure.

Riza shakes her head, "No. Cooking has never really been an interest of mine. I know enough to not starve, but I've never gone out of my way to learn recipes like that." She was very frugal like that.

Edited 2016-12-14 03:59 (UTC)

"Well, it's not like you would ever look at a rhubarb and the first thought in your mind would instantly go to pie," he says, thinking of all that greenery that pops up when it comes to those things. "I was an awful cook," he admits. "I literally lived off takeout to the point that local Chinese restaurants would send me birthday cards," he jokes, which isn't actually the case, but the delivery men had started to know him by name and order. There's still a point where he'd needed to stop ordering takeout for the embarrassment.

"Lucky for us, we apparently have invisible benefactor chefs!" he says cheerfully. "Not that it's weird or anything, except for the part that it really is."

Riza actually chuckles at that admission. She wasn't sure her skills were much better, but she could at least make easy meals. But it was mostly just enough to survive and prevent herself from eating out all the time. "I suppose there's a reason neither of us have been helping Miss Kate in the kitchen then," she remarks.

"I'm going to try not to think too much about our invisible chefs," she adds. Because if she does she'll start getting far too paranoid and she already toed that line on a regular basis. "And it seems most everyone else is in that boat as well," she says as she glances around and notices all the people laughing, eating, and drinking. There was something to be said for that philosophy in life.

"If they need anyone to take a carving knife to an animal, I'm your man," Ravi announces knowingly, seeing as he's managed to get quite high grades in that, but he doesn't think that people are searching so desperately for that around these parts lately. He looks longingly at the table of food. "You know, if only I had a way of preserving this, I'd much rather stretch this out over a few weeks. My poor stomach can barely take the thought of this much food, right now."

Riza wonders if there is a way to preserve some of it. They can probably keep some of it for a few days and maybe turn some of the meat into jerky to preserve it. The bulk of it though...she's not so sure. "At least it's cold outside, we could probably utilize that somehow to preserve some of the food longer. It is a shame that most of it will likely go to waste," Riza admitted.

"Put it outside my house in the snow, it won't go to waste, I assure you," he says, dead serious. If he could somehow avoid the walk to the inn for food and be assured that it wouldn't poison him with bad cooking, he'd work to take the whole feast home. "I mean, honestly, I think this could feed me for weeks and it's cold enough to keep it temperate. I won't let anything rot away, swear," he vows.

Riza chuckles, "Are you planning to hibernate the rest of the winter away after eating all this food?" She has this amusing image of Ravi hoarding the food in a squirrel like fashion behind his house, bottles of beer poking out of the snow like strange flowers. "You should be careful though...leaving this much food outside in the snow is likely to attract visitors you might not be comfortable with sharing with." She says it as a joke, but it makes her think of the animal corpses they'd been finding around the village. Something was out there and hunting -- though apparently not for food. What would such a thing do if it smelled something delicious coming from behind someone's house?

"If I could live the life of a bear, I would," Ravi informs her, only somewhat jesting. Really, the idea of eating an enormous amount of food and then getting to sleep for an entire season is something that makes him think that certain animals definitely have a leg up on humans when it comes to dealing with the winter. "I think I could even manage with a bit of a paunch. I could make it look good," he says, patting his belly.

He could at least hide it behind a sweater, at least. Thank god that Major isn't here to yell at him for eating all this. "Maybe we'll have to put the food up a tree in the cold," he amends, thinking of real bears. "Just in case."

"Just don't go sleeping in any caves. It could be dangerous and you don't have the fur for keeping warm in the winter like they do," Riza replies, taking a slow drink from her cup. It's a more amusing conversation than trying to focus on the implications of this feast and she doesn't mind prolonging it.

She wonders if that would work -- hiding the food in bags in trees. She shakes her head, "Makes you almost miss having food delivered. Now we have to go climbing trees in the cold."

"Also, I'd hold off on developing a paunch. I'm not sure you'd look as good as you think."

"But just think, honey!" Ravi insists, showing quickly that he has very little idea what actual hibernating bears do, given what he's thinking is the picture of a bear hibernating. He's a medical examiner, not a biologist, and honestly, it's one of those things Liv can teach him when she's on a certain kind of brain.

"I do wear the tall, handsome, lanky doctor look very well," he assesses, patting his stomach. "I suppose I can keep myself svelte a while more."

"Shouldn't be difficult. We're not likely to get feasts like this often," Riza observes. She'd already noticed some weight loss based on the food shortage and had been doing her best to combat against becoming too weak by keeping up an exercise regimen and staying out in the field when possible. Still, a good nutritious meal went a long way, it was why in wartime soldiers were always given priority for food over civilians.

"Plus, all the running around to try and survive does work better than most of my roommate's personal training routines, which, frankly, just looked exhausting," he tells her, thinking of the work Major used to do. And what for? So he could look dapper and dashing and perfect with his shirt off? Well, job accomplished, Major, job accomplished.

"Maybe these won't be so infrequent? I like to believe we might get the chance for a feast every now and again."

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

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