🎵whistle while you work🎶(closed)

[load_aim_shoot]

Who: A. Rama Raju, Lanfear, William Gibson, Renny Oldoak
What: wilderness chore bonding time!
When: I'm thinking some time after the ghostly housefire, but it's loose
Where: the forest around Milton

Content Warnings: talk about food/eating/not eating, possible talk of fire stuff. will add as stuff comes up

Comments

[load_aim_shoot]

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."

[cantor]

"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."

[load_aim_shoot]

"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?"

[cantor]

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.

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"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?"

[cantor]

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."

[load_aim_shoot]

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?”

[cantor]

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."

[load_aim_shoot]

"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.