singillatim | (closed)

He isn't sure why Raju seems to be looking at him so intently, but whatever he saw must have passed inspection. He shakes his head with a smirk and starts back down the path to the edge of the frozen lake.

"Fishing equipment. Some bait, a basket, my knives. You know, you could have waited for me in one of the fishing huts if you were that cold. I hate to think you were freezing out here on my account."

He's clearly very concerned and not at all teasing his friend for being overly dramatic.

Talking with his men must have gone well. Raju recalls that it'd been Francis who'd started joking back in the Community Hall, and that it had helped; if he'd come down this path on edge or worried or anything else Raju wouldn't have minded, but helping keep his mind off things this way certainly won't be a chore.

"So then I could be freezing right on top of the ice." Raju makes it over to Francis, puts his hands in his pockets, and starts walking back beside him, close enough that the shoulders of Francis' coat and Raju's blanket brush against each other. If it wasn't for the extra layers, he'd be able to feel their shoulders touching; another thing to resent the cold for. "You're right. That's a much better way to spend my time."

“Mhm,” he hums noncommittally. “Better than anything else you were doing.” He pretends to overbalance to one side, pushing against him gently with his arm in-step.

He’s less aggrieved about the whole plan than he was at the beginning of the day. They’ll keep each other safe, and Jopson’s agreed to join him on the trek out to the mouth of the mines. They’ve got each other; there’s no reason to worry.

Raju snorts an amused noise, smiling over at Francis for a moment at the contact. “You aren’t wrong.”

Even aside from the joke, he isn’t wrong. Raju fills his days as best he can, but it always feels like busywork. Less often during the past week, at least.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing here worth complaining about. And Francis seems to be enjoying the complaining, anyway.

“But that says more about this town than the ice,” he goes on. “Weren’t you saying it was actually warm in that, ah, the…”

The last time Francis corrected him about the right word was a while ago. In the moment before he moves on with the teasing, Raju looks annoyed; forgetting eats at him a little.

“…The place you used to live in. These fishing huts don’t have proper floors, do they? Now you get to prove how warm the ice is.”

Crozier doesn't look at all bothered by Raju forgetting. "The ice hut?" he supplies, smiling good-naturedly. "They don't have proper floors, but they're not nearly as insulated as the ice huts."

He does consider apologizing, but he doubts Raju's truly annoyed at the cold. Maybe only actually a little annoyed.

"But the fishing itself will distract you from the cold, I swear it."

"Will it? Fishing always seemed to involve a lot of sitting in one place waiting for something to happen." He eyes the lake and the huts, idly gauging the distance and letting himself sway enough with his step to bump his shoulder and bent elbow back into Francis' side, belatedly. He realises he's smiling a little. "But I don't mind the company, so I suppose I can make do. Do you do this often down here?"

His eyes crinkle in a silent laugh as Raju playfully knocks back into him. It almost feels like a lighthearted outing and not an attempt to gather life-sustaining rations.

"Not as often as I did when I first arrived. Now that I've gotten the lay of the land I stick to my traps and foraging." Fishing one-handed can be...tricky at the best of times. "But when I don't feel like trudging out and about I'll come down here for a spell, so long as there aren't many people about."

"Oh?" Raju looks down to watch his feet as they skid a little over the rocks along the steep path, then looks back up at Francis, still ready to grab at him if he seems less steady, but focusing just as much on teasing him. "I thought you weren't avoiding everyone any more? Afraid too much companionship will scare off the fish?"

Not that Raju has any room to talk there, in his own way. But it's too useful a way to tease Francis to bother reflecting about it.

“I should clarify, I’m avoiding certain people. They’d most certainly scare off the fish. But…” He gives a bit of a surprisingly spry jump over a patch of rough rocks. “Although preferred companionship can create too much merriment. Not good for such a solemn occasion.”

“Solemn,” Raju repeats as he watches, pleased to see Francis navigating the trickier land here so easily. It was hard to know before he’d seen it whether a path like this was something worth being concerned about. “Is that what you are? You could have told me. I would have brought my mood down to match.”

“Solemn,” he says again, nodding Very Perfectly Seriously. “You’ll have to stop with all that damned smiling before we get out onto the ice. I’m too grave for merriment.”

The joke’s a little on the nose - he is fairly serious most of the time, and grave, and too melancholic for his own good at times - but it’s still funny.

Raju ducks his head, his halfhearted try at stopping that damned smiling only compressing it into a smaller area.

“Why don’t you try to be worse company then? Go on and help me. Snap at me for something I haven’t done, or… I don’t know, whatever else your men used to complain about behind your back when you were at sea.”

Whatever else the men would complain about - probably being a cold, miserable drunk, but that’s a little bleak for their lighthearted exchange.

“Ah, I can’t. Sadly I was only ever vexed by incompetence, and you’re lacking that particular trait.”

"You're terrible at this," Raju complains, visibly pleased. He doesn't look away from the fishing hut ahead, as if not looking will make his smile less obvious. "How am I going to get rid of this damned good mood now? You might have to settle for it until you decide you do want to try insulting me."

“We’ll see how annoying I’ll find your endless good mood, mn?”

He nudges him again playfully and pauses as the approach the water’s edge, scouting the small collective of huts out on the ice. His eyes eventually land on the suitable fishing hut - not too far away from the shore, but still somewhat isolated - and he nods vaguely towards it before starting out.

At the nudge Raju looks over at Francis, still looking pleased, then falls behind as Francis starts forward. He lifts his foot over the ice, pauses, looking down at it, and then starts forward after him, still looking down at the frozen lake like he's trying to see to the bottom.

"How—" He pauses as his feet skid, catching himself only by virtue of having switched his old shoes out for something scavenged and more suitable, then looks back up at Francis again, deciding not to try so hard to catch up. "How thick is it? This ice?"

Crozier doesn’t reach out when Raju becomes a little unbalanced, wanting to spare his dignity some, but he does walk closer to him. “A few meters. The ice doesn’t crackle or buckle under foot — you can feel that, can’t you? We’re quite safe.”

“Mm.” Raju keeps studying the ice, half to watch his footing and half curiously, not noticing any lost dignity at all. He’s in too good a mood with company that, at this point, knows him too well, and at least he’d caught himself.

If it were anyone else walking beside him maybe he would mind, a little; even after staying upright his walking isn’t easy or graceful. He moves gingerly over the ice like a strong gust of wind would take him down. Maybe it would.

“It must never melt. You cut through all of it first before you fish?”

"It should melt, unless Milton's weather is as strange as everything else in this damned place. There'll be constant sunlight in the summer, no darkness at all." That famed Midnight Sun, which was about as maddening as the constant darkness.

"There are hand-cranks that'll drill through the ice, but the holes should still be mostly open." He hopes anyway, he's been lucky enough so far to find slush in the ice holes each time he'd come out to fish.

Edited 2024-04-04 02:13 (UTC)

Raju makes an acknowledging noise, and for a moment his steps slow even more as he grimaces up in the direction the sun might be. It's something he tries not to do more often than he has to; it usually puts him in a worse mood, always seeing clouds instead of sky. He doesn't expect that to change even if the sun starts shining all the time, theoretically, somewhere behind all the murk.

He looks back down quickly. It would be a shame to think too much about it now. "And the fish should jump onto the line. That's what you said, wasn't it? That fishing here is easy work?"

“Mhm. They’re lethargic during the winter, and hungry. Resources are limited at the bottom of the lake.” Or at least that’s how it was before his string of bad luck, but that’s seemed to have subsided for the time being.

He brings them out to his preferred ice fishing hut, finding it empty as he swings open the door with a quick shove of his shoulder to knock out the frost and snow in the crevices. It’s dark inside, the wood stove in the corner not yet lit.

Raju's moving toward the stove almost before he's finished glancing around, kneeling in front of it as he slips the mittens off and looks inside it, then starts stacking some of the wood left nearby. He'll have to remember to leave more firewood here some time after they finish.

"Speaking with your men," he says, glancing over his shoulder as he asks. "It went well? Everything sorted out?"

Whilst Raju busies himself tending to the stove, Crozier starts poking at the hole in the ice with the iron awls and drills in the corner of the ice hut. It’s mostly frozen over, but he can work with mostly.

“Mhm. Doctor Goodsir will be well-cared for, and Jopson’s agreed to join me in accompanying the party to the mine.”

“Good, someone to help you see them off.” Francis won’t be worrying on his own, that way. He remembers Seetha growing further away on the shore, the crowd of everyone who’d ever really known him standing behind—

Probably because he’s trying to make a spark into the tinder now. He’d watched Seetha do this more times than he’d ever done it himself at home, at least without matches, and doing it here always seems to bring her to mind.

At least Goodsir and the rest aren’t planning on being gone as long as Raju was.

“Methuselah didn’t say how long to go through the mines, did he?” Raju looks behind him at the noise of Francis at the hole in the ice and then keeps looking, paying almost as much attention to it as to the flint and steel in his hand. The only reason he keeps kneeling here starting the fire instead of satisfying his curiosity is because it’s so damned cold.

“I’m sure no more than a day, when it was in use,” he remembers to add, after a moment of splitting his attention. “And then a couple more days in case the mine is blocked, or to scout out whatever’s on the other side.”

“He didn’t,” he mutters, “he was purposely vague. If they need to break trail it’ll be a slog.”

But Goodsir will be with them, and that brings him a tremendous amount of comfort. Goodsir will take care of them.

He listens to the clicking of Raju attempting to start the fire in between strikes at the thinner ice in the hole. He start chipping at the edges, pausing to shake his hand out for a few beats before getting back to it. It’s familiar enough work that he falls into a bit of a trance as he picks and prods and drills at the ice until he eventually finds water.

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