sixthiterationlogs | Half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees [OTA]

WHO: Mark Watney
WHERE: Fields and nearby
WHEN: 23 May, evening
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Poop
STATUS: Open
NOTE: Please don't feel you have to talk to him about plants. I know how boring it can get.

The weather is starting to become a concern.

Now, I really am not a person prone to panic. Things have to be going pretty badly pretty abruptly for me to freak out. But I'm also aware of how nefarious a gradual change can be, and how dangerous to people not paying attention. Personally, I'm not interested in being a lobster in a slow-warming pot.

Then again, maybe I don't have much choice in that.

Point is, it's easier to pay attention to the fact that the sun is taking the opposite path in the sky than that we're getting way too warm too soon for this time of year. (And I could get into why it's implausible that the Earth has actually reversed rotation, including disruptions that would likely end all life, but it's way more boring than it sounds, so I'll just say I'm not buying it.) People are finding ways to cool off, and that's good -- Apart from physical health reasons, we don't get nearly enough opportunities to simply relax and have unfettered fun. The plants we've all been so tending so judiciously, though, don't have the option to take a dip.

The hail was bad enough. The damage was... Well, it wasn't great, obviously, but nothing we couldn't recover from. Assuming, of course, that everything stays relatively predictable. This heat and lack of rain? It isn't predictable.

I've been out in the fields all day today, even longer than normal, taking notes and measurements, doing what I can to ensure the plants are well fed and watered. We really cannot afford to lose a significant part of this harvest, not with the number of people in the village now. It's tedious, back-breaking work, but it has to be done.

And it's honestly probably a testament to how tedious and back-breaking it is that I am tired and distracted enough that I end up covered in shit. Not metaphorical shit; actual shit, courtesy of a poorly-timed misstep while I was shoveling fertilizer. Manure's coated all along the front of my thighs and torso, splashed up to my neck and chin.

"God damn it," I moan, picking myself up with a wince.

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Ravi leans as far away as he can, grateful for all the lankiness in his limbs so that it means he doesn't have to get too close (he's already wishing he had thought to invent nose plugs, too). "I mean, you could stand to do more leg days," Ravi deadpans sarcastically, as if Mark isn't in perfectly good shape and could run laps around him on any given day.

"Go on, start scrubbing and I'll see if I can't rustle up a towel or something. The least I can do. Do you know what the sad thing is?" he calls over his shoulder, raising his voice so he can still speak as he heads to the nearest house. "You're not the worst thing I've smelled in my career!"

"Yeah, well, I'm not dead," I murmur to myself with a tilt of my head as I watch Ravi go again. I'm glad to see him heading toward a nearby house and not all the way back home or even to the inn. Eager though he perpetually is, I would have felt bad about it.

I tug my shirt off as I walk, pulling a face at the state of it when I hold it up to see. Not that it isn't already stained beyond recognition, its dark green now too faded to hide the grass and dirt I can never seem to get out, but this is a whole new level of unfortunate.

When he comes back, he's managed to find one of the erstwhile snuggies that have lived sad little lives in the pile of clothes without getting to do much at all, but it's as good as a towel and can show off Mark's arse if he decides he wants to be a little loose with the village. He keeps the closest eye closed as he wanders closer to him, wiggling the cloth.

"I'm just going to leave this on the rock so you can put it on," he says. "That stuff isn't going to sink into your skin and permeate it, is it? Only, if it is, there may be a sudden new house rule about manure and the people it came into contact with," he jokes.

I've just begun to wade into the water, and I turn to toss back a suitably sarcastic answer when I notice the Snuggie draped over a boulder. Pausing with the water at mid-calf, I shift a glance from the Snuggie to Ravi and arch an eyebrow.

"Oh good, hot pink zebra print. I knew I could count on you to choose something practical."

"You should just be glad I don't have a camera," Ravi retorts, even though it's currently what he's maligning because a photograph of Mark getting cozy in a hot pink zebra snuggie is the sort of blackmailing picture that friendships are grown out of. "Whatever, as if you won't pull it off," he insists. "Would you rather streak through the village?"

Though, maybe that would earn Mark a few new friends, especially since the man does keep himself in shape. He might also earn himself a bit of a reputation and Ravi senses that he doesn't want that. "Is this an occupational hazard, then?" he wonders. "Is this your first time getting manured? Or is there a count?"

"If I streaked through the village, I'm pretty sure you're the only one who would notice," I reply with a soft snort. Sure, I keep in shape -- It's kind of required that you do when the government shoots you into space -- but I'm the 45-year-old plant guy in a village filled with kids in their 20s who used to be able to fly and read minds. Nobody's checking me out except Ravi.

"Occupational hazard maybe, but yes, this was my first time landing in a huge pile of shit."

"I mean, you might get some people reporting a strange man off his gourd running around naked," Ravi points out, seeing as he might be more impressive than Ravi, but it's also a strange thing to have happening around the town just like that. "I will say, I've had to deal with my fair share of strange liquids and solids, but I have never fallen in shit," he announces proudly.

"I know that might sound extremely trivial, but I really am proud of that, given my field of work," he admits. "I would notice, incidentally, the streaking. I'd worry that we'd have to find you a head shrink."

"You know, there's a line of thought that suggests that sort of reaction would be actually be a sane one, given being stuck here," I counter. "That acting as if nothing were wrong is the true insanity."

Of course, given that I have a pretty mild reaction to most things, Ravi may be on the right track by that logic.

"Do we even have a shrink?"

"I could pretend, but I don't think you want me psycho-analyzing you," he admits, seeing as he's not trained in the least in that. He barely manages to keep himself afloat psychologically, at times, but he is also coping with a potential zombie apocalypse at home and there really isn't anyone you can turn to, to share that problem.

"Everything is always wrong, though," he complains. "I'm starting to think that it'd be an anomaly to find normality. Was Mars like that?" he wonders. "Did you do any streaking inside your little space-cabin?" he teases. "First man to moon Mars?"

"Given that I was the only one there, yeah, there was a little nudity out there by myself," I answer with a laugh. "But to answer the bigger question, no, Mars was nothing like this. Mars was a pain in the ass, but it was predictable. I never know what the hell's going to happen around here next."

There's only so much I can do for my scrubs at this point, and I toss the soap toward the shore as I squeeze out the excess water from my clothes.

"Hand me that pink monstrosity," I ask as I start wading back toward shore.

Ravi holds out the pink thing (though he secretly believes that it might actually be ridiculously comfortable) as he thinks about his own situation at home. "I had the opposite," he confesses, "life was just as unpredictable and terrifying as here, but I had technology and support and research equipment," he says with the forlorn face of a man who desperately misses such things.

"As far as worried about death and my friends getting hurt, this place is neck and neck for home, unfortunately," he admits, sniffing the air tentatively when Mark gets out, debating whether he ought to move upwind. Luckily, that doesn't seem to be required.

Half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees [OTA]

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