[log] Chopped: Link's Exploded Backpack Edition

[unsheathedfromreality]

Who: Anyone who wants to salvage the Unreasonably Large Food Pile left in the kitchen ... and elsewhere ... by Link's departure.
What: An Unreasonably Large Pile of delicious fresh food!
When: April 1st
Where: The kitchen and surrounding areas in the Lobby. The bugs and lizards might spread ...
Content warnings: Contains live insects!! Potential insect-eating. Should be pretty tame otherwise!

It starts with a hurried post on the bulletin board in Illarion's efficient script:

There is an enormous pile of food in the kitchen that needs to be saved.

Anyone who can prepare or preserve it welcome.

After an hour or two, a tidy little inventory appears beneath the initial message, along with an attempt to track -- by name or description -- who's taken what, and how it's been used. There are some inventive descriptions on there for the items Illarion doesn't recognize.

(It doesn't look exactly like this -- because Illarion doesn't know the names of everything in the pile, or everyone who stops by, and certainly wouldn't make a spreadsheet -- but the poor digital substitute will have to stand in for his glorious real list.)

---

Those who do respond to the urgent missive will find the kitchen exactly as described: Absolutely full to overflowing with fresh produce that could've grown in the Library's garden, alongside a veritable market wagon of fresh fish, meat, and more produce. (Along with ... rocks and wood?)

Oh, and there's also a minor infestation of live bugs and reptiles actively escaping into the stacks.

Illarion's right in the thick of it for hours, first tirelessly triaging the mass into what should be cooked or preserved first, what will store well in the icebox, and what can be kept around on the shelves. Then he turns his hand to preparing the meat and fish for drying (and saving the fat from the richest cuts).

Once he's certain the most perishable items are taken care of, he sets aside some of the fat, honey, and berries for himself. Then he goes out hunting, pursuing the bugs and lizards loose in the Lobby and stacks. He's got no shame whatsoever about chasing them under furniture or up bookshelves, and soon has his sabertache full of squirmy tidbits.

Then it's back to the kitchen, to render the fat and make crunchy insect pemmican from his prizes.

(He's enough of a magpie he can't resist making off with some of the gems. There's someone out there who will look stunning in rubies and amber...)

((OOC: Feel free to use this as a jumping-off point for whatever you wanna do with your top levels! No need to tag Illarion -- go wild.

The spreadsheet above is fully editable -- feel free to put in what your guys take on tab 2 & I'll eventually get some automation going to track the item inventory and tab 1 will do inventory for us. Have fun!!))

Comments

[icanhearscreams]

Food, Glorious Food

Jun is not a chef. He also looks at that pile of food and gets overwhelmed other than trying to identify the types of fish, snails, and crabs. None of them look quite right. He's standing there for a long time, thinking about it.

"... Right." He got distracted. "Different worlds." Even if they look similar...

Feel free to find him in the kitchen. He probably needs to eat, anyway.


Ten Thousand Lightning Bugs

It's a surprise to him when he sees a gentle glow pass his face as he's reading in the stacks. For a moment, he remembers an old story he'd heard.

Fireflies are lost souls. Especially those of soldiers.

He stares for a moment as it starts floating past, swallowing hard. "I -" It's not them. It's not any of them, he's stupid for even thinking that.

That doesn't stop him from heading into the kitchen and swiping a jar, poking a few very small holes in the lid. He's easily found later, still in the stacks and holding a jar to his chest. He's also stuck a blue flower through one the holes. Why?

... He's not sure. And if his eyes happen to be a little puffy? No they aren't.


Wildcard

[[ooc; idk grab me on Plurk or Discord.]]

Lightning Bugs

[deinoswitch]

Dionysus is tracking even those small signs of life, easy enough to find in this otherwise lifeless space. He pauses a bit away from the young man, seeing him try to... feed a flower to the bugs? (Said bugs are just as confused as he is.)

"They won't last long, in a container like that," he says softly. He can tell the young man is... distressed, about something or other. What, he's not sure.

[icanhearscreams]

It's less trying to feed the flower and more using it as a decoration, but the bugs are probably confused either way.

"Neither will people." He looks up at the other, shrugging. "But here we are."

He straightens up a bit and tries to pull himself together. "... It's common to do this where I'm from. I'll let them go at some point. ... I don't want them to die either."

[deinoswitch]

"Is it?" Dionysus moves to sit next to him- despite being a tall, grown man, he makes himself much closer to Jun's size when he sits. Even with the veil and black, he is more... approachable than he was. The butterflies sitting in his hair probably help.

He glances down at the jar, soothing the bugs within with the knowledge that they will be freed, before back up at the boy. "What is it for?"

[icanhearscreams]

... Huh. Did he - what the hell. Magic? Or just weird perception?

"Just... to look at. To be a light on dark nights." He looks down at them again. "... They're also said to be the spirits of warriors." He pauses for a moment.

No. That's stupid. "I know that's not real, though."

[deinoswitch]

"Ah." Yes. He is very familiar with grief, and it's clear that there's more to this than just the saying. The fireflies are calm in the jar now, still lighting up and adding a more... peaceful feeling to this.

"Does it need to be real?" he asks after a moment, "Or, I suppose, does it matter if it's not real? There can be a comfort in stories, even if we know the truth." Helpful lies; those are the kind witches specialize in.

[icanhearscreams]

"Reality's the only thing we can hang on to." He looks around at the books. "... Stories are... I don't know about the ones we go into, but stories in general aren't real. The real world doesn't end nicely like a lot of stories do."

He sets the jar down and pulls his knees in. "It ends in pain and fear, not 'happily ever after'."

[deinoswitch]

Dionysus does not know this child's full story, but he can feel the pain coming off of him. He can make some guess. The souls of fallen warriors...

"Not always, no," he says, in agreement, "But that's part of what makes stories so wonderful. We can imagine things to be better than they are and ease our souls in them, delight at the wonder. And perhaps we can lose our pain in them for a little while and come out feeling a bit lighter."

[icanhearscreams]

"I don't let go of the real world easily. It was hard enough learning there were parallel versions of my world." Ugh, he's being too soft.

He huffs and looks up at the presumably new person. "And now we've got to deal with all of this."

[deinoswitch]

Dionysus tips his head, taking the point. "True. But perhaps we can make something good of this all the same. To put aside our normal burdens for a time... it's not necessarily a bad thing. A break from our normal concerns. Some distance can aid our recovery."

[icanhearscreams]

Sounds fake but okay. "Recovery's a nice word. ... I don't know how much if it applies to me." He rocks the jar gently, trying not to scare the fireflies.

"It's for people who deserve it."

[deinoswitch]

Oh boy Dionysus has his work cut out for him, he can tell.

"Why would you not think you deserve it?" he asks, still and quiet and curious, a gentleness in his voice that's hard to fake. And there may well be something... relaxing about his presence, something that would make someone more likely to follow their emotions rather than their mind. (Whether it works in this place or not, he doesn't know.)

[icanhearscreams]

"Considering how many people I've killed? It doesn't matter if they were going to kill me if they could. We all did what we had to. But the blood's still on my hands."

He flinches for a moment, thinking of the battle. Of the screams - he can still hear them.

food

[thickasacastlewall]

"I don't know half of these fish and plants," Dunk willingly admits out loud. He looks down at Jun. "We could fry one of the fishes on the big cooking box?" he offers the young boy. "The circles on top work a little like cookfires."

He means the stove.

[icanhearscreams]

... Damn this guy is tall.

"You'd need a skillet or something. Don't put stuff right on the stovetop, you're going to get stuff all over it that's going to be hard to clean." Are they even safe to eat, though? They probably wouldn't be here if they weren't...

[thickasacastlewall]

He is! Jun would have seen him at werewolf lessons with Lady Amalia during the last few days of the story, but it would be forgivable to assume he was only that tall for story purposes. But nope! He's really just that big.

"Aye, I do know I need a skillet," Dunk says, looking for the frying pan. "There's nothing on this box to let you properly stake a fish for roasting anyway."

[icanhearscreams]

... Dramatic effect seriously likes this guy, wow.

"Stake a fish - oh, like over a campfire." He nods, then tilts his head a little. "Is that what you're more used to? Since you don't seem to know much about stoves..." That probably comes out harsh, but he didn't mean to actually be mean. ... This time.

[thickasacastlewall]

"It is," Dunk says. "I spent most of my life on the road and even those times I was at a castle or an inn, there weren't any cooking boxes or buckets like they have here, just hearths and large ovens."

He doesn't seem offended. He knows that plenty of people here come from places where marvels and magic are everyday.

[icanhearscreams]

"Huh. Yeah, I've... cooked over a campfire, but not regularly." He grabs a skillet and turns on the heat.

"We'll need some kind of oil..."

they're the same thing

[thickasacastlewall]

"There's a bottle of rapeseed in the cupboard," Dunk says, already familiar with the contents of the kitchen--though the bottle he fishes out for Jun reads 'canola' on the front of it instead.

[icanhearscreams]

"That'll do." He's heard of it called both things, after all. "Do you eat fish often? It's very common where I'm from."

He's trying to be friendlier at least?

[thickasacastlewall]

He is! Dunk appreciates it, having already recognized what a melancholy boy Jun is.

"When Egg or I manage to catch some," Dunk says. And then, because he's not sure if he's explained Egg to Jun just yet, he says, "That's my squire. I took him on two years ago. You're what, three and ten? So he'd be two years younger than you."

[icanhearscreams]

The hell is a squire, he doesn't remember... like an assistant? Hm. "Oh. And yes, I'm thirteen."

... Huh. "Do you get left to your own devices on food a lot? I thought knights got food from their bosses. ... Lords?"

[thickasacastlewall]

"You do when you're working for one," Dunk says, "but I've mostly been a hedge knight and we're not sworn to any lord in particular, but go wherever we're needed. So when we've been on the road we've had to make due for ourselves. It was hard on Egg at first, since he's highborn, but he got used to it."

[icanhearscreams]

Hedge knight... so like a freelance knight? Hm. "I guess that would be hard if you're not used to it. I don't think I could do it. ... I can cook for myself okay, but I can't... make a campfire."

It's a basic skill and one he knows he's lacking, but it's never been an issue before... hm.