Mingle - Emergency Potluck

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WELCOME POTLUCK

Greetings, residents! Those more observant sorts among you may have noticed a large influx of very crowded ferries. In order to welcome our new residents en masse, Town Hall is holding a potluck in Town Square. Please bring a dish if you are able and make a new friend!

All of our newest arrivals need only bring themselves. We look forward to welcoming you all into our community, and may your lanterns always be lit.

This event is open to all! In light of our new influx of prospective players following the Great Sail Migration, we've decided to offer a small public event to tide everyone over until the TDM this weekend.

Comments

[tisnotthehouse]

Tarantulas doesn't miss a beat.

"Must knowledge be relevant to be considered valuable?" he asks, and smiles, and stretches up a hand for Dr. Kuiper to shake. As he is himself only five feet tall, it's a bit of a stretch indeed -- but he doesn't seem to mind.

"I did guess that, and I'm still afire with curiosity. Was it a natural black hole, or artificial? How long had you been studying it? How do you control the height of your hovering?" It must be under Sigma's conscious control, if he's also able to touch the ground; Tarantulas's first theory had been that he was locked at a certain distance from the planet's molten core, to explain why he didn't continue to rise right out of its gravity well.

[comedyequalstragedy]

That's all he wanted to know.

"Not at all. Ready to keep going? Not too much further, I'd hate for it to cool down before anyone can try some. I think it's chilli."

He hasn't checked.

[crushed_pearls]

Well, there goes her best idea for a relatively private conversation given that she doesn't speak the cant, so...

"Yep, let's do this." The straining sounds Erin makes are not faked at all, she's still feeling so god damn weak. At least there's a conversational question that's not gonna be weird in the context, at least not to maybe anyone other than the locals. "I hope I'm not taking too wild a guess when I assume you're from an Earth, what year was it for you?"

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"I'm not going to forget any of this. But... I'm willing to forgive you, Vika."

Chris looks away, and their voice is very soft. "I just... feel so helpless sometimes. I keep getting reminded that I can't protect anyone."

[spaghettification]

“It was an artificial micro black hole created on the space station I was working on. It lasted for 5.8 seconds, and I was exposed very directly to it.”

Yes, even with the handwaves of video game physics, that was an intense trauma he has not actually recovered from.

[astrogator]

She shakes her head, quick to reassure. 'It never took that from me. To me, it seemed you were all speaking Sector Standard like me, except when people made a very concerted effort not to. Which is how I learned some Japanese from Nobunaga.' Tayrey smiles at the memory. 'He called me Ari-kun sometimes. In private.' She'd had to ask Yato what it meant, but even before she knew, she'd sensed the significance, Ari Tayrey who understands levels of formality and gradations of meaning better than most.

She doesn't mention that the people closest to her, the people she trusted, sometimes seemed to be speaking another language. The language of her childhood. But she'll explain what she can.

'And thank you! I would be... exceptionally pleased to teach you one of our languages. There are many, in my sector. The story goes that our very first colony, Kishar, was settled by speakers of many languages. They met together and they all decided that it would be best for children to be taught only one language, to unify the colony. But then it came to agreeing on which language it would be. They couldn't! All the languages had value and they didn't want any to disappear. Hub stations have signage in many languages, and Tradeliners - we come from all over. You'll hear so many languages on a ship. But Sector Standard is our common trade language, the one we usually speak shipside. It's my second language. I could teach you that. Or I could teach you my first, Company Standard. My generation speaks that natively, but my grandparents didn't. It's another trading language, but Company executives didn't go the Kisharin route, they adopted it happily.'

[astrogator]

That's a loaded question if there ever was one, but Twenty-Seven Tayrey knows better, after Erin's reaction, than to expect any real sympathy for her terrible death. She needs to put the past in the past where it belongs, and be stronger than she used to be. Find strength in her freedom.

'I am better than I have been in a very long time,' she tells him, with a hopeful little smile. 'Liberty agrees with me. And you?' She finds that she can't bring his name to mind either, if indeed she ever heard it, but the other woman from the Village had found names very difficult, so she doesn't want to ask for it. People need time to heal.

[tisnotthehouse]

Tarantulas's eyes widen; he appears to be doing very rapid mental calculations. When his golden eyes lift to meet Sigma's gaze again, they are alight with nothing short of awe.

"That is amazing," he says, sounding nearly breathless with it. "Horrible too, of course! I'm sure the experience was nothing less than torturous! But to survive such a thing, much less retain the ability to describe it...you must have seen wondrous things."

CW: dissociation

[spaghettification]

“Describe it? Hardly. No, I…”

A pause. His gaze goes distant, and he falls silent. Blank, really. As if trying to think back to that moment, to those few seconds had overwhelmed him.

[astrogator]

'It's where we came out from,' she says carefully. 'It became a tyrannical place and my ancestors had to fight a war for their freedom. We won, and we stayed well clear, and Tirva is off-limits now. Nobody has been back there in a century.' To her knowledge. Of course space is so vast it would be possible for a determined ship to slip past the border patrol's notice, but Tayrey can't think of a reason why anyone would. Certainly not heading in the Tirvan direction.

'But tell me, what's your little backwater home called?' She's genuinely interested, because where home is for someone really matters. 'When I get home I'll tell my comrades, and you can know that spacers very far away know the name of this place, and not more famous others.'

[tisnotthehouse]

Tarantulas patiently waits for a moment, studying Sigma with a thoughtful gaze, to see if he'll snap out of it himself. When this fails to happen he says in a low, gentle voice, "Doctor de Kuiper? Are you present?"

[notinflictthem]

He genuinely wants to ask more about Tirva but the idea of people in space knowing about his hometown makes him laugh- genuinely, not bad joke laugh, at the absurdity of it.

"It's called Crabapple Cove. I mean it's beautiful- lots of birds, lots of trees. There was a little creek in my backyard I used to play in as a kid. Not a whole lot of people- mostly some lobster fishermen, some farmers- one of them did uh cranberries, actually. My dad's the town doctor, my mom ran the local poetry society, and my sister got out of there as soon as she could."

Another small laugh, "Christ, listen to me, I sound like the tourism board. It's nice, that's all, I miss it. I'm pretty far from home where I left off in my world."

[astrogator]

She smiles at his laughter, but the explanation makes her speak softly. 'No, I hear you. I do. I'm fortunate enough to have two homes. My ship's one, and I miss that so bad I could probably write poetry even about the questionable food and my cupboard of a cabin, but the other - I was like your sister. Got out fast. Now it's-' Four standard years. Five? Tayrey doesn't even know any longer. 'So long since I've been there, all the reasons I had for leaving seem like nothing, you know? I just want to see the people there again.'

This is getting decidedly sentimental and that is not a good thing. Not when it's about Cardalek and her father and all the things she needs to put in a precious little mental box and stop dwelling on if she's going to appreciate what she has here.

'Crabapple Cove does sound nice. You're doing the tourism board proud. I'd visit if I could. I think I'd like the cranberries. Maybe even the poetry.'

[notinflictthem]

"It's my mom's poetry, if you said you didn't like it I'd have to fight you for her honour."

But still, he looks out over the assembled crowd, at all the new faces.

"Tell me more about it? I mean, I blabbed enough about my home for the both of us, but I want to know about it. Why'd you leave?"

[astrogator]

Tayrey chuckles. 'In that case, I'm certain your mother writes the most excellent poetry in Crabapple Cove and probably ought to win awards,' she says merrily, as much because it's something to say while she tries to figure out what to tell him about Cardalek as anything else.

'Where I'm from... It's a place called Cardalek. That's the name of the colony world, of the Company - the megacorporation that owns it - and of the central Tower I grew up in. Cardalek Tower, floor 284. I grew up in the sky! I was adopted as a baby. That's a complicated story, but my father was so good to me. I never went without anything, and he valued me so much. I didn't even appreciate it until later, when I met people who had rough childhoods, who never had what I had.'

She sighs. 'Why I left... it was impulsive. I had this friend who convinced me that an... internal politics situation was going to go against my family, and that I'd lose my citizenship rights. So I decided to leave. I ran off and joined the military, thinking it'd be a great adventure, and...' Tayrey shakes her head. 'I love my career. I love flying. I don't regret that. But I regret the way I went about it. The hurt that I must have caused. It was thoughtless. Stupid.' She'd been all of thirteen, hadn't known any better.

[notinflictthem]

A lot of the specifics are lost on him, but God if this isn't a familiar tune. He's met plenty of kids who signed up to the army thinking they'd be heroes and wind up on his table as corpses. More than one who was running from home.

"My dad's pretty great too. I had to leave him to go study to become a doctor- when I was younger I was too excited by all of it to write, but... I ended up missing him a lot, y'know. You're right, we're luckier than most."

He's still got the message from the bottle in the breast pocket of his vest.

"I'm sure your dad is still proud of you. I mean, that's what you do when you're young. You make mistakes, break some hearts, and you learn better for next time."

[lovethyneighb_or]

…

(It’s just as well that this Hawkeye still can’t imagine worse than their lot in Korea. His only hope is that if Mulcahy gets hurt, he won’t mind that he can’t stand being sedated anymore.

He will always be proud that the only one to outlast him was Vickie, but oh, Lord, what cost does a deathless martyrdom come with. This is a debt with fearsome interest that he will never lift from his shoulders.)

He’s quiet for too long.

Eventually: “… Well, I, uh, I’m not doing much these days, so perhaps I could help.”

[notinflictthem]

"...Really?"

He gestures, "I would've thought you'd want to go back to proper preaching. Not that I'm complaining, it would be nice to have you around, but don't... feel obligated either, y'know?"

[lovethyneighb_or]

He’s…

… he’s doubted his efficacy as a preacher for a long time. In Korea, but especially after. It’s hard to imagine what good it’s done in that damned ship or that Village, especially for things to end up the way they did, and he’s—the last many years of mass and sermons were held in Vickie’s mockery of a home and strangled by Two’s imagined morality enforced by injury and death. He’d done his best to toe the line as close as he could, but what… what good was it? Did anyone actually care? It wasn’t bad that hardly anyone ever showed up, if another passenger wasn’t of or fallen from a different faith they were a delightful miscreant, but—

…

He thinks of Darcy in the dark, asking for a hug.

“I’m not sure I have much of a flock here to preach to,” he laughs lightly. “I’m certainly not giving up on being a priest, but delivering sermons to a pew isn’t much of a job.”

[notinflictthem]

"Just so long as you aren't giving up on it entirely. Another couple of years and I'm sure they'll have you pegged to play Pius XII in his biopic," he jokes, flashing Mulcahy a grin.

"In the meantime, I'm happy to pay you to do my secretary work. I won't even set a miniskirt dress code, because I'm that nice."

[immortaldemonsoul]

"I don't think so?" It doesn't taste rancid, just wrong. She looks around for her wine. Anything to wash this taste out of her mouth.

"Do you know who brought it in?" she innocently asks the kind bystander who definitely just rushed over to check on her with no personal stake in the offing at all. "I can't even tell what they were trying to make."

[configuration_birdwatcher]

The crashing noise draws Bastion's attention, and the flash of a very familiar pink hue darting under the table keeps it. Logically they know there are other creatures in the multiverse that have vivid pink-red fur, feathers, or skin, but they've recognised several attendees of this gathering from the Serena Eterna. It's possible that the pink snout snatching up slices of meat to drag under the tablecloth could belong to their friend. It's the type of thing she would do. They hope so badly that they're right.

// Nimona?

[immortaldemonsoul]

"Oh, that's wonderful!" Overcome with enthusiasm, Ellarinne is bouncing a little in her excitement. The tips of her ears bob in mid-air. "Only a few cultures on my homeworld like peppers, so when I have to go traveling somewhere I usually have to go without. And I've mostly been eating savory fish soups for the past year, so as you might imagine I'm ready for a change!" She laughs, glancing down at the table -- despite the blindfold, her body language is that of a sighted person, and she immediately seems to spot the Spicy sign. "Oh, are those dumplings of some kind? May I try them?"

[lovinglefthand]

"Maybe if you washed yours out with soap first," First Aid says primly. "But then again, maybe not. Chris and I are adopted siblings, you know. Isn't that kind of thing frowned on in human societies?"

[hyliasblessing]

"As far as I am aware, the former. Those trying to fly have evidently experienced similar issues. If there is a way around it, I'm afraid no one here has figured it out." Zelda casts her eyes around thoughtfully. "There is a strange energy here. Something pressing inwards. Like a stuffy room. It feels like even the air can't get out. Does that make any sense?"