sixthiterationlogs | if the sky can crack [OTA mingle]

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if the sky can crack [OTA mingle]

Hail had been falling for two days now, peppering the ground and shredding the grass but rather than melt away like a late spring storm it had only intensified, growing in diameter and moving from a mild annoyance to damned near deadly. As the storm raged, ice flew up through updrafts and was forced back to earth in the downdraft, accumulating layer after layer of murky debris until it went hurtling toward the earth with wicked accuracy.

Shingles were ripped from roofs, the wind howled and lightning cracked. The hail had driven both humans and animals into the safety of the indoors, to the dark corners of buildings that might withstand the assault. With only candlelight and the hushed voices of villagers to stave off fear and boredom, the storm raged like a sentient being heedless of those who might be caught in the path.

After the storm, a calm came over the land and weak sunlight glinted off smoke-tinged ice. Steam rose from the melt and humidity was thick in the air; petrichor hung heavy, a soothing scent after a savage display of natural fury.

[OOC: Your hail mingle post. Feel free to have characters on the run, gathering animals or inside the Town Hall waiting out the storm.]

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He's not entirely sure that he's being clever or calm, but when the hail starts coming down, Ravi panics on Mark's behalf, though it's completely easy to panic on his own because that's their food and delicate little leaves and Ravi has no want to starve. He spends about ten minutes rifling through his things to find the paracord and then breaks into the nearest empty house to rob it of its bedding, curtains, and anything else he can add to his pile of blankets before he heads straight for the crops, wincing as he thinks about how long it's been since the storm started.

Every pellet of hail hurts worse than the last, but Ravi only cares about getting stakes in the ground and tying the blankets up, using his height to ensure that he can get the blankets as taut as possible. It's entirely too warm for it, but he's wearing his fur hat, so only the rest of him is getting pelted with obscenely disgusting looking hail, but someone can patch him up later.

The make-shift solution seems to be somewhat working and Ravi desperately starts on the next little patch, wincing every time a new onslaught of icy hail assaulted his face, tamping down his fear at the lightning.

"You idiot," Kira calls over the sounds of the storm, detoured from his attempt to cut across the fields. He'd been aimed for home, afraid Bodhi or the dog might not have made it inside, but caught sight of the man struggling to secure the crops.

Shifting the pine branch he'd been carrying at his back to protect his own idiot neck, he frees a hand to snatch at Ravi's shirt and starts dragging him toward the treeline, where at least the shifting canopy might redirect the hail.

"There are shingles coming off the roofs," he yells, the wind stealing his voice and the crack of hail on every surface burying what remains, "what the hell is a sheet going to do?"

Ravi knows he's an idiot, but he has to try. If he comes back out and sees everything destroyed without him even having made an attempt, he'll be eaten alive by the guilt. "Because even if I can save one, it'll be worth the welts!" he shouts above the storm right back, wishing he had proper goggles for this.

He's trying to keep the stakes low to the ground to prevent the wind from just tearing them up, using the paracord to tie them down. Or at least, he had been. He struggles, just a little, against Kira's hold, glaring at him. "We need to try," he insists, a wild look in his eyes.

"If one of those hits you in the head," Kira shouts right back, renewing his grip and shifting the branch higher against his back to shield them both, "we'll be down some shitty new plants and one of our fucking doctors!"

Honestly, in many places the fields are still patches of dirt, broken by new leaves without a fruit or vegetable to yet be harvested. The rain will wash out the field whether it's covered or not, depending on elevation, and the hail can only do so much damage to such small targets. "We can lose a few early squash," he continues to argue, trying to back them both against trunk of the nearest pine: "Ravi, please come inside."

If he just had that extra sense, even muted, maybe he could risk it on the possibility that he'd know the moment to pull Ravi out of the way--but all he has left to him is common sense.

Ravi knows that Kira's telling the truth and that he's right, of course he's right, but he's so hesitant to give up on some of the newly flowering plants. On the other hand, he's right that one unlucky hit from a piece of flying debris and he'll be dead and good to no one. He finally stops resisting and gives in, letting Kira tug at him.

"Fine, fine," he admits, the frustration building in his words. "Inside," he agrees, but not with much pleasure. "Where?"

Ravi's more than just the local doctor to Kira: despite the disparity of height and build and temperament, he was ready to start throwing his weight behind his hands. When Ravi stops resisting, he's glad he waited, kept either of them from sliding down into the mud.

"This way," he says, grip just as tight on Ravi's arm as he leads them into the trees. "I live just south of the field, we can cut through the trees to get some shelter." Above them, branches cracked and splintered under the hail, but the debris rattling out of the shaken trees was less deadly than a ball of ice. "I was on my way back to make sure Bodhi and the dog aren't out in this shit, I'm glad I took the fucking detour."

Ravi hates leaving the crops, but he knows in his heart that this is the pragmatic choice. Sometimes, he really hates being practical, is all. "I wasn't going to die," he protests, feeling like he ought to at least hold that stubbornness out a little longer. "Not immediately, anyhow, and I promise if things got too scary, I would've folded and run inside myself."

Kira just got to him sooner, and there's no telling whether a stray shingle would've beamed him in the head. "This isn't normal hail," is what he says, darkly. "Not that anything in this place is normal, but this feels ominous. Plague-like ominous."

"Not immediately," Kira harps, keeping his hold in case Ravi decides the squash are worth it after all. "No, of course not, you'd just die of exposure after taking a blow to the head." Something has clearly shifted the axis of the earth, day is night, hail is soft as falling snow--because he sounds more like Ravi than Ravi does, right now.

Shoving into thicker brush rather than taking the potentially-open paths, Kira does his best to keep the edge of the field in sight, to guide them back. The last thing he wants is to get lost out in this. "I'm glad you're realizing this after throwing yourself out into it in a fucking hat."

It's possible he's being a little too harsh, but at least the hand he's holding, the body he's dragging through the woods, is still alive.

The hand-holding is getting a little bit awkward, mainly because between the panic-sweat and the running and the weather, his hand's all slippery. Besides, Ravi's not exactly a hand-holder by trade, but he's being tugged into safety, so maybe he ought to just shut up. "Don't insult my hat, it's an attractive hat," he replies, reaching his free hand up to pat it, like it needs the consolation.

"You know, you almost sound as if you care," Ravi teases, seeing as he knows plenty well that Kira does. "Thanks," he adds, a split second later. "For, you know...the saving my life thing," he adds, even if it's a bit begrudging.

"White people die from magic shit in the woods," Kira grouses back, squeezing the hand in his grip and by no means letting him go while the trees rattle in the wind and hail alike. "We're supposed to be smarter than this, we're supposed to stick together."

It doesn't take long to march Ravi back to the house, though there's a bit of a mad dash through the thinning trees to the back steps, and the house is quiet save for Aurora's whines from his room. Better she be terrified and pissing on his floor than out in it, he reasons. "Your hat wasn't attractive on Davey Crockett and it isn't now," he says, shoving the door shut behind them, dripping mud and rain onto the kitchen floor. "And you're welcome."

"Usually in horror movies, the minority is the first one to die," Ravi feels compelled to point out, but with two of them, Kira does have a point. It would be harder to kill them from magic shit in the woods if they don't break apart. Also, if he dies because of hail, that's just an embarrassing way to go into the afterlife.

"My hat is gorgeous because it's on me and an extension of my already gorgeous self," he says, trudging inside and shivering a little as he takes off the hat, gesturing for the sink. "Do you mind if I set said gorgeous hat out to dry?"

"Well if we had coins, I'd flip you one for it," he spits, vitriol stirred up to the surface by the weather, the rush home through the trees, the fact of Ren's house done in by lightning only months before. But there's only so much of it, and his nerves do better with a roof between them and the storm.

"Sure, just leave your boots by the door." He peels himself out of his own, leaves them with the wet branch against the back wall, and pads into the house proper still dripping from all his clothes. "I don't think I have anything that will really fit you," even Casey's clothes aren't for a man of Ravi's height. "We could try letting out the overalls all the way, maybe."

Ravi pries off the boots and settles them by the door with his hat to settle on top of it, dripping and making a bit of a puddle, but truthfully, Ravi's just happy to be inside where he can listen to the ice pellets hit the roof, though the idea of the shingles coming off wildly does make him wary.

"Any pants?" he suggests. "I don't mind wearing capris around the house so long as you can excuse the fashion faux pas."

"I already suffered that hat, I don't know if I can handle another," he says, padding barefoot across the house to his room. The squall outside hasn't let up--if anything it sounds worse, hail striking the roof with the force of a hammer, rain hissing and wind howling. It's strange to think they were just outside in it, that they were really that stupid.

"I don't know how Bodhi's special tea set really works, and I don't think he'd appreciate us touching it either way, so you'll have to settle for what I can manage with the kettle." When he returns, he has Casey's grey scrubs, which might at least fit Ravi in the waist, if not much anywhere else.

The sweater won't be much better--he's pretty sure it was left in the collection pile by a woman who happened to be taller than himself, but nowhere near Ravi's height, but it's bulky and warm, and the knit can stretch. "You're going to look a mess, but you'll be dry."

"You're just jealous that I can make hats work," Ravi replies, seeing as he does feel like he can work a hat, especially since it gives him a little extra height and makes him that much more scarily imposing and giant-like, even if he is a beanpole. He takes the scrubs and heads for somewhere a little private to change, grateful that they don't look entirely like flood pants.

They only look a little like it, so as he tries to adjust them, offering an apologetic look as he takes the sweater. "I feel like the inevitable crop top you're about to see me wear warrants an apology," he admits. "It's not going to be pretty, I don't wax," he says, gesturing to his stomach in a circle.

Kira's never been body-shy, or any other version of it, and he wanders back toward the bathroom from Ravi's private corner leaving wet clothing in his wake. When he returns, he's in his thermals with a coat pulled over, holding a towel in one hand and a Snuggie in the other, hair mussed something closer to dry.

"I don't know what kind of man you take me for," he asks Ravi passing over the towel first, "if you don't realize I like a little fur on my company." The black length of plush fabric, pilled from use and improper wash, hangs bundled in his other hand. "I'm pretty sure if you turn these things around they're just robes, so you can cover your shame with this."

"Your dog has told me that," Ravi deadpans, though he thinks that he's grown as a person in that he's standing here worried about his clothes instead of on his knees petting the dog and ignoring Kira wholeheartedly. He reaches out for the fabric with relief, adjusting them so that he sort of looks vaguely senatorial, spinning like he's on the catwalk. "Well? Who wore it better?"

"Me, or the depressed girl who just got broken up with and is now watching Legally Blonde for the tenth time," he quips.

"I would chew off my own hand to be able to watch Legally Blonde any number of times," Kira says, with feeling. After a beat, he spares a glance to the ceiling, as if it occurs that someone might be listening, and that someone might have the power to make that exchange happen.

When Ravi returns the towel, Kira uses it to pick up the wet clothes and carry them back to the bathroom. On his way back, he opens the bedroom door, letting Aurora wander out with her tail and head dropped low, trying to creep below the storm's notice through the house. She gives Ravi's hand only the softest, mildest lick, before dropping down again. "Well, if we didn't know things were fucked out there, she could have told us."

"Me too," Ravi confesses, though he'd put a stop to it after two viewings because he might be depressed some days, but that would just be sad. "Honestly, I'd chew off more than that to play Diablo or Call of Duty," he mopes, shaking a hand through his hair to try and get some of the moisture out.

He figures that he's ignored the dog long enough, crouching down to give her a thorough scratch behind her ears. "Hello beautiful," he greets warmly, groaning wistfully. "I miss having a dog around," he says. "The lab rats just aren't the same."

"Well, promise not to experiment on her and you can see her as much as you like." Aurora hasn't seemed to have met a person here she wouldn't claw the boots of and offer clods of dirt. Kira hasn't had enough dogs to know if she's good or bad, and sometimes when he tells her go home he just finds her eating bees near a person or landmark she knows, but she comes when she's called and she hasn't mauled anyone, so he figures he's doing an alright job of raising her.

Ravi's mention of the games gets a tight smile and a nod, but as Kira moves across the kitchen to find and fill the kettle, he gives it a little more thought. "With the quarantine," he says, "it's been...something like a year since I've used the internet. This place seems to like entertaining us with lightning and earthquakes, or--" he gestures to the ceiling, still facing the sink.

"I used to party a lot," he admits. "Dancing at clubs, picking people up. It was a big city, there was a lot of trouble to find, temporary friends to find it with. Strange how the people here are more permanent when we can literally disappear." It isn't meant as another dig at Ravi's actions, but he does cast him a glance when he moves down the counter to put the kettle on the stove. "Grab me some wood, it's stacked by the back door."

"Dogs are for cuddling and talking to, not experimentation," Ravi vows, seeing as he would never have allowed Minor to be an experiment. Apparently, he had allowed him to be the dog of a frozen zombie victim, but that's neither here nor there. "I miss the internet," he complains. "I miss my cell phone. I definitely miss YouTube videos and the ability to google something. I swear, I wouldn't be half as useless if I could just google my way out of a bad situation."

"I partied once," Ravi says proudly. "It lasted about six hours, but I met a lovely girl who turned out to be a stalker and I table-danced." He was roaring high on Utopium and Liv had been on frat-boy brains, but it had all worked out. Heading to the back door, he grabs the wood as he speaks. "You don't feel like starting up the village's first rave bar?"

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"Angle it!"

When the hail hadn't died down after the first day, Clint had immediately become suspicious. Hail during the spring isn't unknown, not at all, but the conditions to create hail usually don't last for several hours on end. At first they were just little nuisances, icy bits down the back of his jacket, but as they got bigger... and bigger... and bigger...

Well, this was starting to look more like the hand of whoever or whatever was keeping them there than anything.

That supposition had proven (probably) true when the hail not only didn't stop, but got bigger, and Clint had broken into the scraps of wood he'd looted from house 14 to fashion some stakes. Collecting fabrics in much the same way Ravi had, he'd broken into the inn's stash of useful goods to grab a roll of duck tape and run out with his bundle of stuff. Fortunately the plants aren't too tall yet, so they don't have to rig tarps in the sky or whatever, but that also means if one of them gets hit by these hailstones it's gonna be shredded.

"If it's angled it'll roll off and not drag it down!" Clint's taken his stakes and lashed them into tripods so they don't get knocked over, then taped two of the corners of various sheets and whatnot to a bundle each and set them up much like very shallow tents. He's got his peacoat and overalls on as well as the thick hat he'd found to protect himself as well as he can from any hail strikes, but he can tell he's going to have some bruises after this. Better him than the crops. Ravi, however, looks like he'd sprinted out the door without much preparation, and getting this done sooner rather than later will get him back inside without, hopefully, too much injury.

There's a voice on the wind shouting at him. At first, Ravi thinks he's going insane, because who else would be out in this storm apart from idiots like him trying to protect their fledgling work with very limited construction skills. If only the storm had required him to open up a cadaver or do an autopsy, he'd be in excellent shape.

"How do you suggest we angle?" he shouts back, searching around for a small stick to figure out how to work this out on the fly. "I didn't pack my protractor!" is his sarcastic retort, even as he works to get the tarp moving on a slightly different angle, ice pellets whipping him in the face.

An idiot like him with a somewhat higher level of construction skills. He used to do it for a living, after all.

"Not the sticks, the tarp! Drape it down and hold down the edge!" Suiting actions to words, Clint stretches out the blanket construction he'd just put together, pulling out the blanket so that the end not taped to the sticks rests in one of the furrows where there aren't any plants. It's not even necessary to look for rocks to hold the edge of the blanket down; he's wearing gloves, and he simply grabs some of the larger hailstones and piles them along the edge, scooping more hailstones to make the hold secure. The entire thing looks a little silly, maybe, but the sticks are holding one whole side of the blanket nearly a foot off the ground while the rest of it slopes down to eventually touch the dirt. It's not perfect - there's still a chance a stone could get too big or heavy and crash through or break the sticks - but for now there's an angled shelter over all the plants the blanket's big enough to cover and any hail that hits it will just slide down to the edge. Clint moves back to the sticks to start taping another blanket to the sticks, making the tripods a little more balanced and adding a mirrored "wing" to the other side so it really did look like a very flat tent.

Ravi wrinkles his nose, absolutely confused, and squints to see what the other man is doing. This is why he needs instructional YouTube videos to do anything with his life, it clearly isn't working in a high-stress situation. He stares at the tarp and tries to make it do what the other man is, but it doesn't work as well. Sure, it works a little better and some of the hail starts bouncing, so he supposes that there's something to this madness.

"Do this often?" he shouts, jokingly, trying to keep the mood light as he's bruised with icy hell from the sky punishing him for trying to be a good villager and help the common goals.

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