004 { A life you don't live is still lost

[tobeclosetohim]

WHO: Jo & THE COMMUNITY AT LARGE
WHERE: The Pub & Inn
WHEN: July 27th, Midday through Night
OPEN TO:Everyone was invited personally
WARNINGS: Jo's Better At This Than She Means To Be
STATUS: Open To All; Threads w/ Jo, w/ Others & Threadjacking Welcome

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Jo told everyone she saw yesterday to come by the Inn & Pub today.

Anytime after midday, and to pass on the message to anyone and everyone else they saw. That it wasn't a meeting per say so much as something everyone was going to need everyone's help with and something everyone should probably get in on. But without clarifying much else.

She spent the rest of yesterday stealing nearly a half dozen curtains from houses that hadn't been claimed by anyone, and then acquiring enough charcoal to fill two small baskets. It's not paper and pens or pencils but it's going to have to do until someone has a better idea or finds better supplies.

The morning of the 27th, Thorfinn helps her get them tacked to two different walls of the main room of Inn & Pub using her knives to cut holes and then sharpened bones, from earlier meals in the month that she hadn't been aware had been saved even, banged into the wall to make them hold high and sturdy enough.



On one side of the room, three curtains line the wall and it says at the high top MAP & LANDMARKS. In the center most piece there are sketched bits for the buildings they can all recognize, the center most being the fountain, and in the distance the river, certain bits of forest, canyon wall, but there's a lot of white space in every other direction, too.

On the other side of the room, one curtain goes up, marked only at the top with FOR TRADE. For the moment that one is entirely blank, but sooner or later she going to end up writing Fresh Meat, with her name and Thorfinn's next to it. There's a second curtain for that wall folded behind the bar, for when and if it's needed.


For now Jo's sitting on a table, again, feet on a chair, elbows on her knees, hair loose on her shoulders, looking at the maps' ocean of white, waiting to see what else might get filled in by those who show up today. Or at least having a better idea of where they should still be looking that hasn't been covered half a dozen times already by everyone else.

Comments

[seekingcrocodile]

Come to the pub, well, it didn't take much convincing to get him to agree to do that, even if he didn't know what it was for. Even if he hasn't figured out that not even alcohol exists here right now and it's a pub in name only.

He wonders for a moment why they've been invited here, until he adjusts to the darkness inside and notices what's hung on the walls. Just about the first useful thing he's seen in his short time here.

He goes over to the map to study it, and sees the obvious landmarks, buildings and such, surrounded by even more blank space. He remembers a stream he had discovered yesterday but doesn't see it on the map. (Of course he would find water.) He picks up one of the chunks of charcoal, one with a fairly good point on it, and sketches it in.

He'll make sure Emma knows to stop by here and add anything she might have noticed as well.

[seekingvinland]

Thorfinn didn't really believe in wasting things that could be used. Bones had many good uses. Such as being used as a makeshift nails. He had stood repeating the words written after asking what they said. He was learning little by little he was learning. He didn't think himself to be the sharpest tool, but he would learn it all eventually.

He was sitting quietly not far from Jo, a knife in one hand whittling away at a pace of wood. He didn't care that he was covering his gray scrubs with wood shavings he was more focused on his work. He figured if he stayed quiet no one would notice his lack of conversational language aside from anyone who already knew. Part of him wanted to go back to the woods like he usually does in the day. He didn't though, he just sat there carving at the bit of wood, every now and then reaching up to push his hair back behind his ears.

[lastofthekellys]

Coming to the inn hadn't been hard for someone who is currently still there. Except, that's not quite right. There are stairs involved. Stairs. Stairs when Kate's back aches and sometimes stabs, because she's pulled something there and she doesn't have her corset with its supportive boning.

(There's a chorus in her head about that. About women who don't wear corsets being no matter than they should be, and the excuse of 'it's not my fault' never flies, does it.)

Still, she's stubborn when she remembers how to be. She limps down the stairs, and tries not to show the limping. She's combed her hair with a fork yesterday, so at least her plait isn't as bad as it could be, but she doesn't need a mirror to know that sleepless nights upon sleepless nights have bruised her eyes. She's still wearing her overalls under her flimsy red blouse, she still smells of smoke from where she'd been jerking meat in the kitchen two days ago, but she keeps her chin up as she walks into the public room carrying a cushion for her back.

Then she sits, waits, watches. Remembers to scoot herself backwards against the chair to use its support. Watches some more.

As she watches people draw in places on the map, her mouth cants - she might read better than she can write, but drawing?

Drawing?

Maybe no one will ask her and she won't have to confess that she really doesn't much know how.

{ For Trade }

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo takes a while deciding just exactly what she wants to write down on this list. In some part, because it still feels like she's listing things that aren't exactly hers. Things she benefits from receiving, without actually having a hand in. Not that she doesn't. She's had to learn along the way, too. Had to return to things she hasn't done in at least three or four years maybe, and even to learn more from those skills from Thorfinn, the same way he's learning English with her.

How to skin animals. How to dry the meat. How to boil bones and leave them drying in the sun.
She learns, and maybe it's slow. So. Slow. Like she's learning this language herself, but she learns.

Eventually, Jo gets up and adds her own household to the list.
Not all of it made yet, but much of it something they're planning.
Things she's never needed to make, or know, but the Viking has.

Charcoal darkening her fingers with:


Fresh Meat
Dried Meat
Rawhide String
Small Furs/Pelts

Bone Combs (Next month)
Bone Knives (Next month)
Bone Needles (Next month)
Soap (Next month)

[notabirdcostume]

Sam had been keeping more to himself than he'd like to admit. For all his talk in the beginning of team work and working together, he'd sure done a bad job of it. Not that he wasn't trying to help. No, he'd gone back into the forests a few times for food and for exploration purposes. They needed to know this place, but it never seemed to give them any answers.

So when he had caught wind of a meeting, even if it wasn't a formal one, Sam had decided he should make an appearance. He was dirtier than he would have liked, returning from another venture into the woods and making a bee-line for the pub. However, he also wasn't disappointed by the contents of the inn either. His eyes immediately landed on the curtains transformed and the few people milling around.

The one thing this place hadn't claimed yet was his sense of humor so he spoke up as he entered, "I like what you've done with the place."

[thecatinahat]

Cougar's been keeping himself quietly busy in the settlement, testing out the canyon walls, assessing sunrise, sunset, and setting up traps for smaller game while he works on carving a bow and arrows for the larger. He's got a weapon that will do him fine, but it's not built for much repeat use. He always checks in on that same inn, once in a while, and heads in today to find things a little bit different.

He skirts his fingers over the curtains, then glances back to Jo, raising an eyebrow as he nods towards them, not actually asking so much as waiting for an explanation.

Jo + Open

[andrend]

Open
Ren didn't greet the others when he entered immediately. The curtain map caught his attention first and he made his way to it instead, studying what had been marked down so far. He had not thought to make charcoal, or anything else beyond the very simplistic weapons/tools he had fashioned out of carved wooden chair legs. Theydid as well for weapons and hammers as could be expected, but he had been too preoccupied to focus on arts and crafts.

With all the time he had spent on the cliffs and land south east of the river and main town, he could fill in a fair amount of the map in that corner, and he did fill in the buildings and refine the canyon edges with one of the charcoal pieces in the basket. If only because a completed map would benefit him as much as anyone else. He adjusted the banks for some of the other changes he had noticed after the flooding and then dropped the charcoal into the basket, taking a moment to glance down at the black residue coating his fingers. He glanced at the trade curtains and then turned to leave, stopping whenever his path took him near another person. Make allies was a mantra stuck in his head thanks to Sam, and to his credit, he was trying.

"Have you found anything unusual or interesting? Aside from the dead ends and empty buildings." Obviously no one had found a way out or they would not be wasting their time hanging around. But it was possible someone might have come across something they didn't understand that would be more familiar to someone from a less primitive planet. He could hope, at least.

For Jo
Ren had not meant to encounter Jo in the town the day prior. He had only meant to check the fountain and the move on back to the Mill after a quick circle around the buildings. He had brushed the idea of going off entirely when she mentioned it, but still found himself walking to the inn the next day. For once he left the coat behind, dressed in the overalls and the undershirt he had been provided with, both much worse for wear after a month of overuse. His hair was pulled back through the loop at the back of the baseball cap on his head.

He didn't bring anything to trade, though he had collected some junk from a couple houses. He had thinned some over the month. Nothing too noticeable yet, but while Ren was good at surviving and had learned how to live in harsh conditions, he had not applied himself as much as he should have over the month. When he approached Jo at the table, it was with a slight frown on his face, but his words didn't mimic the sentiment at all, coming out honest, if a bit dragged out.

"The curtains are clever. Admirable work, under the circumstances."