[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

[deinoswitch]

"Fair enough. Most people do." At least, for a normal mortal lifetime. Longer than that is... complicated. But he understands all too well not wanting to get into that.

That gets a little laugh. "Yes, that sounds like it would have been extremely inconvenient."

[steelfeathered]

She'd had to choose to try to adjust or keep focusing on being miserable indefinitely, and Hisako had chosen to adjust. It helps that once she'd become more comfortable and sure with heights she learned to really enjoy flight.

"And here I've been talking for how long and you're nodding along and no names have been exchanged," she sighs. "I was coming up with bird nicknames for everyone but I want to take a break from that. I'm Hisako Godsup."

'Godeater', though without any suggestion of boastfulness or accomplishment.

[deinoswitch]

"Oh, so I'm missing out on a fun nickname?" the witch teases. He's curious now! What bird would you make him!! (Spoilers he can be all of them.)

"Dionysus. A pleasure to meet you, Hisako." He will ignore the second half of her name right now. But he will definitely remember. Sounds like there's a story in there.

[steelfeathered]

"If you want one you're going to have to stick around! I'd want to come up with something interesting, not just go through a list of birds that are tall," she says with great, assumed earnestness.

"Oh, the pleasure's mine." Hisako looks over the little animals again. Do they seem less uneasy about her? Hard to say without getting closer. That one lizard still hasn't taken a beady eye off her. "What are you going to do with those? The lizards look kind of like ones that can eat plants, but there aren't insects around, otherwise."

[deinoswitch]

"Well, good news on that front then. I doubt I'm going anyway in particular anytime soon," he says cheerfully, "Except for whatever the Story winds up being, I suppose." He will wait in eager anticipation of a Bird Name.

He looks down at the creatures, running a finger along the lizard's spine in a gentle pet. "Oh, I was going to take them out to the garden. Surely there must be insects out there, otherwise how could anything grow?"

[steelfeathered]

"If it turns everyone into birds, I'm going to have a crisis in my teeth." Hisako tries to adapt hand metaphors when she remembers to. It feels less... bitter, makes it look like she doesn't think about the shape of her body all the time. She hopes so anyway. "Because if the Story turned everyone into birds I'd chosen then I look like I have a power here which I absolutely don't. If it turned everyone into different birds, what do I do? Defy it? Change course? What if someone's a red-footed booby?" She's made her eyes quite wide in an approximation of alarm.

She's seen earlier that the lizards don't usually take petting in the spirit it's given. This one does, at least when Dionysus is the one touching it. Hisako's not going to think further on that subject because it just goes back to things she can't do. "These are the first mortal insects I've seen since I got my wings, but I mean, I could've missed some. They're not as... clear as animals with bones."

[deinoswitch]

"Hm, I hadn't considered that," he says with the appropriate gravity- which is to say, he's definitely smiling while saying it, "I would say that if they were all the birds you'd said, then you just had a good grasp of what they were like! And if they weren't, then clearly the story was wrong and you still had the correct grasp."

See? It's perfect solution.

"Oh? I suppose that makes a certain sort of sense," he says thoughtfully, "They probably wouldn't linger, with a larger winged being about." Since, you knows. Birds like to eat them.