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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A sheepdog puppy comes charging down the way, yapping at the sheep as he starts to wrangle and drive them back in the direction they came from, back towards the police station. Margaery raced after him, holding a cloak over her head in an effort to shield herself from the down pour of hail.

"They broke free from the herd." Margaery said to Amy, quickly tugging along the ram she had gotten a hold on. "We need to get them to the police station. That's where the animals are." She whistled are dog, giving him the command to send the sheep running. They were at least not protesting, apparently wanting to find shelter as desperately as Margaery wanted to usher them towards it.

"Thank you for catching them. I thought they were lost."

Amy is definitely not going to be a shepherdess anytime soon, given how much she's struggling to get them to move, but apparently, forcing an animal to do what it doesn't want to do is sort of like getting Amy to fall in line with things she hates. Impossible, roughly.

"Why are we arresting them?" Amy demands, taking her hand off the one of them long enough to wipe water from off her forehead, not sure what's happening here. As far as she knows, it's not like the animals have done anything other than exist. "Or is escaping that bad of a crime here and I'm just finding out about it?"

Edited 2017-05-15 21:00 (UTC)

"It's been converted into a barn." Margaery answered, running alongside one of the rams, keeping him on a straight path. It would be too easy for him to veer off and run in any direction he wanted otherwise, just as he had earlier. "The cells have been acting as a pen for now."

It wasn't ideal, but it was the best they had. "Until a barn can be built for them." She adds that quickly. There were plans for a greenhouse, but eventually she would push for a barn. If only so her animals could move more freely in the winter.

Right, that makes a little more sense, though she still has a mental image of locking away a few sheep in the lock-up for disorderly behaviour and it makes her smirk in amusement. "I mean, I've spent a few nights in the local jail cell, there's worse places," she jokes, wincing as the hail pelts against them and she has to double back when one of the sheeps gets loose of her hold, baa-ing wildly.

It's clearly hurt from the ice, too, but Amy hasn't got a clue what to do except keep walking. "Do we have a vet? What happens if one of the animals gets hurt?"

The amused look isn't lost on her and Margaery finds herself smiling in return. Her worry subsided as they steered the sheep inside the police station. Once over the threshold, she released hold of the ram, letting it charge ahead into its cell. Gilbert urged the rest to follow. "You can let go of him now." She nodded to the one Amy was holding. "He knows where to go now."

Once they were safely inside, she shut the cell door, letting out a sigh of relief. It was only Amy's question that returned a shred of that fear to her heart. "I don't know. We can only hope that they don't become sick. I have a book that helps me know how to care of them, but it only offers so much."

Amy loosens the hold she's barely even remembered having on the sheep, apologizing out loud. She's not sure if that apology is for the sheep or the woman, so she figures she might as well cover her bases. "I'm not exactly a country sort of girl," Amy confesses. "Even if Leadworth was on the small side, it stopped short of too many animals," she shares, shivering a little as she steps inside.

It really does look a little like a barn in here, which makes her wonder what else they're using for different purposes. "So, how'd we decide to go with the jail for the barn?" she asks, perching on a desk as she shivers a little, clothes damp from the storm. "Did we start by locking them up?"

"Would you believe me if I told you I wasn't either?" She grinned, pulling on the cell doors to make certain they were locked. It would be her luck if the animals broke free and made a mad dash for it while she was elsewhere. She remembered how Bushy had been released from his pen, the only who had been. She didn't want to lose anymore livestock.

"I think we decided on this because the cells could act as stalls." She tossed over a towel for Amy wordlessly. Meanwhile, she busied herself with replenishing the food and water for the animals. "These buildings were not being used and I wanted to expand my livestock since the village is growing. Soon I am going to need to have something more permanent built."

"I don't think anything would surprise me about this place," Amy confesses, watching her companion leading the sheep with a sort of expertise that seems like she's figured it out. "I'm Amy, by the way," she introduces herself, seeing as now's a better time to do it than running for your life away from icy pellets.

"I suppose they're decent enough, but what happens if you've got a pregnant one? Is it just trapped here to make sure nothing happens to it?" She wrinkles her nose, trying to figure out whether that counts as cruelty or protection.

She grinned in return, finally pulling over a chair so that she could sit for a moment and talk. "I'm Margaery." It was a surprise that they had never seen each other before or spoken until now. Though, it seemed that the village was expanding so much that it was easy to lose yourself in the crowds.

She pointed back towards the cell with a particularly large cow. "She will be giving birth any day now. I have been giving her exercise and having her graze as I do with the other livestock. I try to make certain that she is not indoors more than she needs be."

Amy glances over to the cow, trying to figure out if she's any bigger than usual. She tries, always, not to think about her own pregnancy and how she'd been kept trapped for it, like an animal, quickly shaking that out of her mind. "Once she gives birth, are we going to have more milk to go around? Or is it finally going to be steak season, eventually?"

It's not like she needs meat all the time, but going without the option has been harder than she'd expected.

"We will have milk and cheese and butter." All of the things that she had been missing. "I have three bulls and three cows including this one. The rest will be impregnated soon, which will allow us to have enough milk for everyone. The goats as well." She didn't want to think about bringing them to slaughter yet. There were still uses for the animals.

"With the village growing, I need more animals to provide wool and milk. There was a time when the village was smaller that I thought of keeping only one cow and one bull, but now I might need more, if we want to have any of these goods." But she would need a barn.

It's not that Amy's really desperately missing all those things, but cheese and butter and milk? Well, breakfast sounds like it's going to get a bit better, soon. "So I don't need to butter you up to get first milk priority?" Amy jokes, because if she does, she might just pointedly remind Margaery about how helpful she's been today.

"Honestly, I'm used to popping around to the shop and picking up something frozen to heat up," she admits. "I never really did much with cooking and unless Rory's been keeping secrets from me, he's not exactly whipping up any masterful dishes."

She grinned in response, "No, I think you earned the first bottle of milk." It would need to be rationed until her other animals got pregnant. Her goat Ellyn Ever Sweet was starting to show symptoms of carrying a baby. It would mean only five months compared to how long her cow, Maris the Maid, had been with child.

"I had a cook and attendants before coming here. I have had learned how to do it all alone." Though there was something rewarding in this. Enough that she didn't begrudge the hard work. "Rory? Is he your brother?"

Amy can't help the smirk, seeing as once upon a time, she'd been quick to insist on that very thing. She'd been very, very young and stupid then, unable to understand just how much Rory meant to her. "He's my husband of ten years," she shares with a fond smile, letting some of that smugness drain away from the amusement.

"I've always wanted an attendant," she admits, "I mean, a maid or something. I'm a bit of a mess when I'm busy, have a tendency to just leave things around the place. Though, once our best friend got us an Ood and that was just...weird," Amy confesses.

There was a glimmer of surprise that registered across her face, amazed at how young Amy seemed, though that was hardly a deterrent. She knew there were others in the village who were in relationships, but very few that had their actual spouses with them. "You're very lucky." Margaery remarked with a soft smile. "The observers brought you both here together."

A part of her envied that luck, even if she didn't want her husbands with her. "I don't know if I have met him. I hope he treats you well." Amy seemed kind, which so rarely was rewarded in the world.

"An...Ood?"

"Not at the same time," she admits, "but where we were, Rory and I were trying to get to the same place at different speeds, too," she says, which is why she still wonders if it's not observers, but rather Weeping Angels that did this. It'd explain the people from different times and spaces, but none of them remember seeing a statue before coming apart from her and Rory.

Still, it's not like they aren't sneaky, why not some memory loss? "Rory's the best man I've ever met," she praises. "Too good for me, most days. I still don't know how I've kept him. The Ood, though, it's sort of..." She gestures to her face, making wiggly fingers. "Squid? Squid on your mouth? Talks through a glowing orb?"

It was a curious thing to say. "It doesn't matter in the end. You are both here together. It may not be the most ideal place to live, but it will be less lonely for you." She envied them that. "Is he safe inside? I hope he is not outside in this storm?"

She looked down at her hands, "How do you reconcile having the person you love but feeling you don't deserve them? At what point do you decide to accept that happiness?" It was something she had been wondering about of late, knowing her own sins and keeping her heart aloof.

"That...sounds bizarre." And horrifying. "It speaks through a glowing orb?"

"It was bizarre," Amy agrees, not arguing on that point. She hadn't really known if the Doctor was having her on when he'd sent the Ood, but the divorce paperwork had consumed her life soon after and she didn't really have time to pay much mind to it. "We fought about it, Rory and I," she admits, her trail of thought leading her to answer Margaery's question (even as she hopes he's safe inside and better not be out playing hero in this storm; that's her job).

"I can't have kids," Amy says, "not anymore. I tried to get a divorce because Rory deserves better than me. He deserves a family and someone who isn't so, so broken." It feels strange to tell this to someone she barely knows, but at the same time, it's years ago now and they're fine. "He wouldn't, he wouldn't sign them, he wouldn't let me go, and I realized that I just had to love him. I couldn't let him go either, not really."

"So I followed him, everywhere. Even here," she says proudly.

She folded Amy's hands between her own, offering comfort through the gentle gesture. The story was a painful one. While she had never had children, there would always be a part of Margaery that wished she had. To be told there was no chance, it had to be heartbreaking. "He has a good heart and truly seems to love you." None of Margaery's husbands would have accepted such a thing, save perhaps for Tommen. Though she doubted Cersei would have allowed him to do so.

"Now you don't have to let him go. You have a second chance here and the opportunity for a better life." It sounded trite, but it was true. For some, that would be enough. Given how deeply Rory and Amy seemed to love each other, they might well think the same thing.

"I envy you that."

"He's the best man I've ever known and I've met some pretty good men," she quips, even though there's the beginnings of tears in her eyes that she's trying to prevent from getting worse. Sometimes, she wonders how on earth Rory put up with her for so long, while she tried to figure out who she was and what she wanted, but she's so glad that he has.

"We were going to start a new life together in New York," she admits, breathing in slowly, "What's weird, now, is now that we have the chance, I'm not sure where I want to start." Kids are off the table, obviously, but that doesn't mean that there's no future for them.

"Perhaps it is better not to plan? At least not here?" It had taken her near a year to discover that, but it was something she was trying to put into place for herself. "New York, the village? You have your new life." She's jealous, if she had to admit it. No matter where they were, Amy had someone she loved with her. She wasn't alone in this.

"Tell me more about Rory? How did you know that you loved him? When did it occur to you?" What was it like to have that moment? Suddenly recognizing that you wanted on specific person? "How did you meet?"

"I can't even remember where we met," Amy admits, seeing as for all of time and space that they've shared together, she doesn't actually remember the first time she'd met Rory. "We were kids growing up in the same small town," she says. "Us and our best friend, Mel," she says, not going into the details about how they accidentally raised their own daughter as they grew up.

"We started dating, but I knew I loved him when I lost him," she says. "That's when I knew that none of it mattered, not without Rory. Lucky for me, that was all one big dream," she says. "I got my second chance." She got plenty more than that, but then, travelling with the Doctor is full of those chances until suddenly you don't get any more. "He's a nurse and so full of caring for the people around him, Handsomest man I know, bravest man too," she says seriously. "Patient and sweet and funny and thoughtful."

"That's certainly beautiful. You were friends for so long and then you discovered you loved each other." It wasn't something that the women in her world could experience. Perhaps the lower classes, but the noble born women had to marry those their fathers told them to. Well, nearly all of them. She had a choice and a measure of control, but not all women shared the same ambitions she did.

"It's clear you love him very much." There was a light in her eyes as she talked about Rory, a warmth that not many had when speaking about their marriages. Whoever he might be, it was clear that he was the finest man in Amy's estimation. "A nurse? I think I have seen him before. He has tended to many of the injured in the village."

"Yeah, Rory just got there first," Amy admits, a touch embarrassed about all those years she thought Rory was gay simply because she'd never seen him interested in another woman, not figuring out that it was because of her. Then, the Doctor had come back and things got so complicated, but they'd worked it out in the end. "He works at the hospital. Too long," Amy complains, "He's going to work himself ragged and he's not plastic," she says, mumbling the 'not anymore' part under her breath.

Wringing a little bit more of the water from her hair, Amy stares around at the animals, still in disbelief that this is her life, now. "I'm just glad I've got him. It's meant to be him and me, together, no matter what."

Perhaps someday she would feel the same way about someone. She had always believed that love was a concept, not an actual feeling. Something that could be affected and put on for seductive means, but nothing more than a mask. There was sincerity in Amy's voice and a genuine gleam in her eyes. There was really no better argument that her assumptions were wrong.

"We should return to the inn before he worries where you are."

if the sky can crack [OTA mingle]

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