singillatim | 🎵whistle while you work🎶(closed)

It is an odd term, one with interesting implications. 'Interloper' - unwanted, intrusive, something to be defended against. Raju's right. Renny's yet to meet anyone who'd intended to come to this frozen little village. And if there's anything his experience as a bard has told him, it's that titles - desired or otherwise - speak to the giver as much as the receiver.

He slips a hand into a pocket, mirroring the man for a moment, as he twirls the leaf he plucked in the other. Renny raises his brows at the last piece. "Really? I didn't hear anything about the corpses."

It's a horrifying fact but the adventurer in him stirs at it. Wherever there's danger, there's answers and power to be found. Curiosity lights up his eyes, apparent even to a stranger.

"What's so special about the east? Someone must've tried to find out, right?"

"How?" Raju shrugs, but he looks frustrated when he does it. Having to resign himself to not being able to even try to look for answers doesn't mean he actually is resigned to it. "Both ends of the town are blocked, and supplies are thin enough; we don't know how long what we have will have to last, or for how many. I won't take any away from that for an expedition that may not even help. But maybe..." He sighs, breath blowing out in a cloud around him. "Maybe things will change. I don't know. But it isn't the right time yet."

He doesn't want to think about answers he still doesn't have, day after day, minute after minute still doesn't have and can't find, and he doesn't want to think about how long he might have to wait here. He nods toward the leaf twirling in the man's hand instead, hoping for a distraction. "What's that you have there? I... think I recognize it. Or maybe not. They're all just leaves, aren't they?"

He still sounds frustrated. It might not be the plant he's frustrated at.

That's Renny's favorite word to hear - how - because there's an inherent challenge in it, no matter the way it's said. Nights spent around the campfire, laying out maps and supplies, preparing spells for the coming day, discussing with his companions: How do we get into the tomb? How far are we from the Gate? Never mind the fact that Renny's got a tendency to throw a plan's details out once he's in the thick of it. Sometimes, a bit of improvisation goes a long way, for music and for adventures, right?

This man seems like he's itching to see things done. Renny will keep that in mind. He holds up the leaf, going along with the change in topic for now. "I aim to find out." He points to the seeds clustered in the middle of the leaves, then prods at them. "I was thinking of taking a nibble, actually."

Raju raises his eyebrows, distracted enough from his frustration to push it into the back of his mind. Being in this place has always felt that way, at least after the first week or two, and the man in front of him may be making his bad decision now.

"You're sure?" Raju does sound concerned, but only a little, balancing between the practical concern of someone who's seen what comes of eating the wrong plant and the instinct to let a man take his own risks. "There's a surgeon here somewhere," or at least, someone claiming to be on the notice board, "but I don't know how much he'll be able to do for poison. I've only been collecting things I'm certain that I know."

Which is little enough. But maybe this man doesn't need to know about Raju's failure to figure out the things he needs to know. Especially if he's about to poison himself anyway.

"My mother was a dwarf. If it's poison, I'll just throw it up." Renny says this with a dismissive wave of his hand. He isn't too concerned about the consequences because he believes in the best outcomes - more importantly, he's managed to distract the other man for a little bit.

"But if you know which plants are tastiest, I'll be happy to listen." He touches the brim of his knit cap, grins. "Name's Renny Oldoak, by the way."

Raju’s still looking confused as he gives a tight little smile, nodding back. He’s got no idea what dwarfism has to do with poison. But the man seems confident he’ll be able to vomit up anything he needs to, so who is Raju to argue?

“Raju. Should I call you Renny?” And then, well— Raju huffs out a breath, smile turning rueful. Maybe he does have to say it after all. “I don’t know about tasty. I barely recognize anything that lives here, not enough to be sure. Acorns you can roast, or boil. Pine needles, if you care how your water tastes.” He might drink coffee more often, but that doesn’t mean he’s willing to call boiled needle water anything like tea.

His smile, now, has a hint of a grimace in it as he nods toward the leaf. “If you eat that and it doesn’t kill you, you might know more about that sort of thing than I do.” He sniffs — the gloves keep his hands warm enough, but his uncovered face still complains in the cold — and ducks his head against the shifting direction of a frozen breeze as he goes on, curiously. “What makes you so sure that it’s safe?”

"Renny'll do just fine, Raju."

He nods along at the short list. Renny's relieved, to be honest, that the plants of this plane don't appear vastly different from his home. If acorns and pine needles exist here, then it meant some of his foraging knowledge remained useful. He'd been concerned, at first, that he'd have to learn everything from scratch.

He holds up his find, its leaves rustling in a suddenly robust breeze, and gestures at it theatrically. Renny never could resist a bit of dramatics, especially when he's given a chance to share knowledge.

"Mother was a druid. She taught me to smell it, touch it, then boil it. If it doesn't smell rotten and it doesn't give you a rash, throw it in some water."

He winks.

"I'm not certain if it is safe to eat, actually. That's what I'm trying to find out."

Raju doesn't know what a druid is, so it's hard to say what that has to do with poison or herbs, either. Renny's mother's turning out to be quite a mysterious woman. But one with good sounding advice; Raju's own training had focused on memorisation, how to identify this thing or that one, and not as much on how to figure anything out himself. Raju notes the process, tries to remember in case he's ever desperate enough to need it.

Raju grimaces a little as the breeze goes on, shifting around to put his back to it. He shifts his shoulders, but can't get the blanket higher on the back of his neck without reaching up for it. Moving his arms too high in something that wasn't meant to be a coat, no matter how well Raju's wrapped it, always lets a little of the cold air in, and in the moment that doesn't seem worth it. He hunches his shoulders and focuses past it.

"You'll be looking for more, then. Or do you boil the thing by itself until you know it's safe?"

"It'll be more efficient to gather as many plants as one can. Of course, we wouldn't eat all of them at once - it'd be hard to tell what's poisoned you if you go about it like that."

Renny tilts his head, a question in his look.

"What are you doing in the woods, by the by?"

Raju snorts, the cloud of breath puffing out in front of his face. "What are any of us doing outside in this hateful cold? Trying to keep busy."

But—

Raju's expression is a grimace for an instant and then it's considering, his gaze flickering down over Renny. He's already said it, hasn't he? How little he really knows about the thing he's trying to do. 'Trying to keep busy' is true, always, but it won't be anything Renny doesn't already know to share the details. "Looking for acorns," he admits. The one thing he knows he can eat here that actually helps fill his stomach, and not the dozens of other things that might or might not be edible that Raju has failed to learn enough about to try.

"And you?" Raju asks, sounding friendly despite the sour mood that failure and cold and the combination of the two puts him into. Speaking with someone about anything is helpful. The illusion of civilization, the distraction of a conversation, it's helpful. "Have you been out here doing this for long, or are you looking for something else?"

"I'm the same as you," Renny answers. He tucks the plant away into a pocket, along with the others he's plucked. Acorns. Not a bad choice. They're the safest bet, though they'd have to gather many to make a decent meal. "Truth be told, I hope to hurry to the good parts of this adventure."

Raju had considered Renny earlier; it's his turn to do the same, his gaze inquisitive.

What makes Milton tolerable is its people. Had Renny arrived alone - bereft of his dream guardian's guidance, his magic wrenched from him, the knowledge of the army that marched upon the Gate - he would have sunk into a deeper, darker place even he'd struggle to push through.

But there are others here, who are just as frustrated and puzzled and - most importantly - attempting to survive. That is enough to gird Renny against whatever comes next.

"It's as my friend said, 'Good things don't always come to those who wait.' So here I am, learning the lay of the land."

Raju tries to smile a little. "So far as there's anything out here to learn," he says and looks around at the snow covering everything, the cold which must be killing off most of whatever might have been living here when the temperature was more tolerable. If it ever was. "There's a man here who says he was in a place even more barren than this one, some time before he came. No plants, no trees. Hard to imagine. I suppose that makes us lucky."

The breath Raju huffs out afterward says plenty, wordlessly, on just what he thinks about that. Then he shakes his head. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to keep you. Looking for anything under this snow is no adventure, but it's better than staying still. I'm sure you'd prefer to keep moving."

"Keep me?" Renny laughs openly. "A bard lives for conversation! Distraction leads us to new stories and songs. But you must be freezing. Here-"

He double-checks his pockets, ensuring all's tucked away, before he thumps a fist against his chest.

"If you'll bear with me a little longer, I'd be happy to join you on a walk. If not - well, I'm certain we'll cross paths regardless. There's only so many Interlopers this village can fit."

"I'd like a walk," Raju says, realising his tone has gone soft and wistful only once he hears it coming out of his mouth, tries to distract from it with a friendly, embarrassed smile. For all the people sleeping in Milton's Community Hall, real company can be hard to come by. Raju had been used to that, once. That had been how he'd liked it. More or less. It had made things easier, anyway. The other officers had been too wary to approach, even the ones who slept near. It's those last few months before coming here, they broke him of the habit. Akhtar broke him of the habit, got him used to having more. He hadn't realised until his friend was gone. Or, until Raju was.

No sense in thinking about it now.

"I was heading that way," he nods ahead of him, still smiling a little tightly, "but it doesn't matter where we go. The snow will be the same everywhere. You used to be a bard, at home?"

Invigorated by the possibility of having made a new friend, Renny returns Raju's smile with a bright grin of his own. Forging new connections was always one of his favorite things about adventuring. Even if this foray into this strange, cold plane was an unwanted detour, there's no doubt in Renny's mind this will make for a great story one day.

He begins walking the direction Raju indicates, his gait shorter but quicker. He can easily keep up with whatever pace the other man sets, even with the snow's resistance.

"Not used to be," Renny says with no small amount of pride. "I still am, even here. It's a part of who I am, no matter where I go."

As he speaks, he alternates between scanning the ground and trees for any sign of foliage.

"There's bards back in your homeland, I'm assuming." Curiosity colors the statement.

"Mhm," Raju says, still thinking about the bright grin and easy enthusiasm that makes walking with the man a welcome prospect, and sounding for a second a little distracted. For all he just said it doesn't matter where they go Raju walks like a man who intends to get there, too busy ignoring the cold and thinking to remind his body it doesn't have any place to be.

It's almost strange, that good cheer. But some people are that way, aren't they? Even here. Or maybe Renny only hasn't been trapped here for very long. Not that Raju has either, but it feels long. Maybe it is. It's hard here to keep any real track of the days.

"It isn't what it was, of course. But you still see them sometimes. I suppose they must be making do. And yours?" Raju abandons his idle study of the base of a larger tree he doesn't really want to go searching around anyway — talking feels more worthwhile than unwrapping his arms from around himself to search for acorns under the snow — to look at Renny with just as much curiosity as Renny had given him a moment ago. It isn't always a sure thing, trying to place someone's home by the sound of his English. "Are there plenty of them where you came from? Or are you one of the few?"

Milton's woods are frozen and eerily quiet. Renny's accustomed to nature being full of noise, be it through insects or birds or whatever populates the land. This silent land locked in winter - it only cements his desire to never traverse too far north, where the snow consumes all sound.

So he studies the other man, noting how neat he is despite the present circumstances, the way he walks with purpose. Renny can't help himself - people are what make adventures interesting, just as much as the trials.

And Raju, in turn, will pick up that Renny speaks something close to English. But there's a certain drawl to his words, an odd lilt at times, that indicates he's speaking a different language. Yet it's comprehensible.

"There's more than enough of us to go around. Some say there's too many of us," he says in good humor, "that we're as noisy and numerous as locusts. It's my hope I'm one of the bigger and better locusts. After all, not many bards are dragged into other planes."

When Renny says planes Raju’s eyebrows twitch. His expression flickers into a confused frown in one moment, faint dismay in the next and he looks away again, ahead of him at the trees. He doesn’t know exactly what that word means in this context but it’s dangerous, feels dangerous. Raju’s got a sense, by now, that not everyone in this place is as… explicable as the ones that he’s already talked to. And that probably holds as many clues to figuring the mysteries of this place as anything else does. But it’s…

One thing at a time. One clue at a time. Not yet.

“Maybe one of these days you’ll actually see something here worth writing about,” he says, the interest that had been in his voice replaced with politeness, and he hurries away toward a patch of something almost green that he’d decided not to look at a minute ago, not quite hidden under a thin coating of snow. “Here, there’s something. Do you recognize this one?”

Renny, distracted by their surroundings, does not notice Raju's reaction. Habit has him mark their path as they walk - it would not do for them to run into trouble, only to be turned around. But he does pick up the shift in tone, wonders for a moment if he's said something to warrant it, only to be redirected towards the greenery.

"Likely not." Renny approaches it all the same and brushes off the snow gently. White sheds to reveal bowed green and yellow. It's - a flower? His eyes light up and he immediately lifts his hand, as if afraid to further disturb it.

"Will you look at that! I didn't think flowers could grow in a place like this."

"They don't," Raju says, sounding confident about it regardless of whether he's got a single clue about anything to do with flowers, purely by force of habit. He crouches down to take a closer look, frowning. "I thought."

He looks up. Of course he can't see the sun. He hasn't seen it since he came here. But the canopy is thin here, thin enough to let just enough of its weak and dim light filter through, and so the thing grew. His thumb taps against his knee, then the rest of his fingers join in. "Will you collect this one too? To eat?"

Raju doesn't exactly sound eager when he asks it, but he doesn't sound anything else. It feels... But it's practical, isn't it, and flowers can be as edible as anything else.

🎵whistle while you work🎶(closed)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject