We can push on through till morning; [OTA | MINGLE POST]

[markwatney]

WHO: Mark & Anyone
WHERE: The Town Hall
WHEN: Feb 16, afternoon through evening
OPEN TO: EVERYONE! This is a mingle post!
WARNINGS: N/A - Please warn in thread subject lines if needed
STATUS: Open

---

When we all get together and have our town meetings, the truth is that a lot of times we don't come up with the sort of solutions we're looking for. I'm not trying to say we're complacent -- Or at least not all of us, not the people speaking up in the meetings -- but just that the nature of living here, such as it is, means that answers aren't exactly forthcoming.

But the latest meeting, the one about organizing, creating some kind of formal entity to oversee the group of us, it threw something into sharp relief for me: I've been talking for a long time about how we all need to be sharing our knowledge as a safeguard, but I haven't been doing much to make this happen beyond sharing my own personal knowledge. And that's really just not acceptable -- Not here, not when we've apparently got an entire section of the population asking for active leadership and another section who might just be too shy or apathetic to admit it.

So, I've been trying to figure out a way to kickstart this project. A way for people to even put out there the sort of knowledge they have to share. You have to start somewhere.

I've never had a problem getting people together to help with the field, but somehow we've been neglecting the town hall building right next to it this entire time. It's one of the biggest buildings in town, but it's still coated in dust and cobwebs, piles of leaves drifted into corners. The inn is starting to get a little crowded during meetings; it might be nice to have a little more room, a place where people come to share.

Regardless of how you feel about community leadership, I think most of us can get behind that.

A couple days before, I put out the call: A cleaning party. We get together, clean out the town hall, and afterward we have a little potluck. People can bring premade dishes, or we can cook out back over a bonfire. We can just be around each other, in a relatively safe space, just having a moment to relax and say hello. Meet someone new, find out where to begin.

After everything that's happened recently, I really think we could use it. I'm just hoping I'm not the only one who shows up.

[CLEANING PARTY & MIXER! Threads can take place during the CLEANING portion, after during the MIXER or BOTH. They can be indoors, upstairs, in the attic, out back by the bonfire, chowing down, whatever -- It's 100% cool to improvise! Mark will have expressly told folks this is about getting to know each other and what they can each do, too. There are some additional OOC notes here.]

Comments

[3ofswords]

"Maybe that was my intention," he groaned, wondering if this place specifically had out for his shins lately. There was a childish moment of scuffle as the man kicked free, and Kira kicked back on principle, but he set his feet firm to the ground and sat up once they were separated.

Covering his mouth to cough, he also spared a glance for the dust, then the heavy drape across his lap. "Well, a little light was one way to improve this place. Or are we both banking on intentions today?"

[king_in_the_north]

"I was actually intending on getting rid of some of the dust, which you can see I've managed brilliantly," Robb replied with a motion toward the cloud of motes settling about them. "The light is really just a happy side effect."

Looking down at himself, he could see that he was absolutely covered, dust sprinkling off his hair and clothes as he pushed himself to his feet and moved to unlatch the window in question. The air was cold and sweet, but he breathed too deeply and set off coughing again.

[3ofswords]

Still recovering himself, Kira smiled into his palm. Nameless ginger Brit--and he revised gingersnap to ginger biscuit as an identifier--was kind of a mess, nevermind only a first impression or Kira's own hand in it.

He'd never deny being a mess in his own right. "I think we could burn these for warmth and be just as well off," he said, folding the thick fabric aside from his legs and shaking his hair like a dog. Even he wasn't sure if a sneeze or a cough followed, just a violent rush of air and noise trying to clear the dust from his airways.

"Scoot." Standing, scraping his tongue on his teeth, as he maneuvered next to the man in the rush of fresh air. "Kira," he added, crossing one hand over his body in offering as he looked out at the tips of the trees in the wind.

[king_in_the_north]

The outstretched hand was still a novel means of greeting for Robb, and he stared at this one a tick before grasping the other man's -- Kira's, hand.

"Robb Stark," he offered in turn, wondering what he ought to do next -- Squeeze the hand, let it go? Was he supposed to shake it? It was such an odd, delicate maneuver; clapping a man on the back seemed infinitely more simple.

"Have you been here very long?" he asked, opting to gently withdraw his hand and hope for the best.

[3ofswords]

"Couple of months? I've been scratching the days off on my bed frame, but it took a few to think that up." It would be one more inscrutable detail for the next person to drag up out of the fountain and inherit his room, and at a younger age he might have dug some marks into the wall like a beast trying to escape, just to fuck with them.

It wouldn't be much of a joke. "I'm guessing you've been here longer," he adds, hands returning to his pockets, one layered over the cards, though it's nothing to do with them. "Seen you a few times, but, you seem to keep to yourself. Dirty curtains are a very powerful draw, though, I'll have to ask Kate to let them go a bit at the inn."

[king_in_the_north]

"I've honestly lost track." Not that Robb had ever endeavored to mark the days in the first place, coming in disoriented and eventually simply too grateful to be alive to worry over more than the passing of the seasons.

"Ah, yes," he admitted with a slight duck of his head; politely chagrined but not particularly regretful. "I've been something of a recluse. Some of my family's here, my brother and sisters -- It's been a bit of work making sure everyone's fed."

The truth, of course, was infinitely more complex: The clash with Jon, his own deeply-seated misgivings about himself, the pressure of becoming more worthy than the man who arrived. He still had his days, more numerous than he'd care to admit, when he wished his father might rise from the fountain to neatly lift the responsibility from his shoulders.

[3ofswords]

"Where I'm from we like to draw a line between reasons and excuses. Family's always a reason."

Turning his gaze back to the window, he lets his focus drop inward, traces their silhouettes in the light from the door. Robb is taller, and not hunched in the way Credence usually is. Something about the way he stands begs attention, like any slope to his spine is a private thing, and there were reasons beyond family to forgive. "How many are you the oldest of," he guesses.

Much as he misses them, he can't imagine what he'd do with his family here. Getting them out of Manhattan had nearly killed him, but having to provide for them--there or here--would be worse.

[king_in_the_north]

"Is it that obvious?" Robb asked with a soft little laugh, briefly wondering about what that might mean, that his role as the eldest sat so clearly upon him even to strangers.

"Five," he answered. "And a half-brother the same age." It left a bit of a sour taste in his mouth to immediately paint his father with a philanderer's brush, but there was nothing for it. Not including Jon wasn't an option.

[3ofswords]

Kira breathes the softest whistle through his teeth, tongue pressed to an incisor as he turns from the window and leans against the sill, looking around the room as the dust settles over it behind them. "I have a younger sister, is all," he says in way of explanation. "I get trying to handle things so they don't have to."

Protective wasn't a thing he'd achieved very well--attentive either, by his late teens--but he'd tried to take on certain responsibilities so Chiyo wouldn't have to. Dropping out of school had all but ensured her their father's support in attending the university of her choice.

Tracing the walls with his gaze, he asks, "What was your plan for after you fought with the curtains?"

[king_in_the_north]

"Well, the idea was to pull them gently down so that I could carry them outside and shake out some of the dust," Robb replied with a glance to the fabric pooled on the floor, which was itself now covered with a scrim of dust. His mouth pinched into a dismayed frown. "You see how well that worked. In my defense, I was eager to help despite not really knowing quite what I was doing. I expect I ought to still carry it outside and shake it out."

[3ofswords]

"Come on then," he says, a roll of his shoulders to push him away from the sill and back into motion. Bending to take a thick hem in both hands, he layers it over one shoulder. "Bring the other one, maybe two clumsy assholes will make one competent person by the time we get outside."

At the door, he crosses back into the cold afternoon, with a pause to let Robb follow out and take some partial lead. "Not done a lot of cleaning before now?"

[king_in_the_north]

"No," Robb replied; no judgment to the word, just a simple matter of fact. Even here, the upkeep of their home hadn't fallen to him since his sisters had arrived. He kept them in meat and firewood and kept up the furnace; it didn't make him feel particularly bad that the cooking and cleaning fell elsewhere.

"It isn't something I normally notice much, to be honest." His father had made certain that they all understood the important work their servants did for them, and Robb had always treated the smallfolk kindly, but things had simply always been taken care of.

[3ofswords]

"There's certainly more to life than dusty curtains," he agrees, even as he finds the edges of his in thin fingers and separates the corners, turning away from Robb to shake them into the direction of the breeze.

It was a bit odd for him to have spent as much time cleaning the apartment as he had, growing up--cooking wasn't so strange for a young man, head chef was a perfectly acceptable profession in the right place. Cleaning was one more way to spend time with his mother, learning control, hearing stories about exorcisms and amusing readings.

"What wonderfully masculine things do you do then," he asks, turning the curtain over to shake it again, "or did do, assuming things are very different now."

[king_in_the_north]

"Well, as I said, I hunt for my family, which I like to imagine is sufficiently if not wonderfully masculine," Robb replied with a laugh. "I chop wood for the fire and walk about with sweat on my brow as I flex my muscles."

This was not precisely true, although he had occasionally worked in only a sleeveless shirt when the weather had been warmer. Propriety hadn't allowed him to go shirtless completely, but it was a start.

[3ofswords]

"I miss all the fun," he sighs, slinging the shaken curtain over his shoulder and looking past it, brows raised at Robb. Equal parts baseless teasing and the question: do you plan to get on with your half. "I'll have to follow the sound of axes around the village."