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Mingle - Emergency Potluck

Pumpkin Hollow Community Bulletin

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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.

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—Oh! It’s the young lady he spoke to in the Village, and who… sent up the satellite.

He stares, a little more than stunned, considering he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her after a certain point. Not to mention he isn’t quite sure how to feel. But he’s not one to jump to hostilities, so he won’t; this isn’t the place for that. Is this where she's been all this time?

"Peace and prosperity, er... Lieutenant." He doesn't like the way her number jumps to his memory before her name. He remembers she introduced herself, and yet... "So far I seem to be the only one left who has, but I'm still holding out hope. Have you, uh, been well...?"

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.

“I find myself freer than I’ve been in a very long time.” His smile is faint, though. Freedom as the sole survivor of the Village, and indeed his entire original voyage, is a bitter, bitter thing. But he is free.

“I’m glad to see you here as well. Have… you been here long?” He wouldn’t guess so based on the plain clothing, but perhaps that’s just her taste. She’s a Lieutenant who takes pride in the title, after all. “I stopped seeing you about after a while.”

'Two days,' she answers softly. 'Two of the best days.'

Then there's a hesitation, but ultimately she decides to tell him the truth, because if she doesn't expect anything but scorn for it, then she can't be disappointed.

'I presume you know what I did.' Even here and now she won't breathe a word about the others involved. She owes Fever her silence, and there's no telling who else might be here. 'I was prepared for brutal retaliation from our captor. Instead I got brutal retaliation from my fellow prisoners. After that I was... in no condition to be up and about, really. It seems the injuries ultimately weren't survivable.'

Her words are flat, almost clinical, as if she's talking about someone else. Unlike most on the prison ship, Tayrey had never died and returned. In that bed in Arthur's cabin, though, she'd been in such pain that she was ready to go. Once she'd told Clarke all that she needed to - no duty left unfinished. She'd surprised herself with the strength of her assertion, afterwards, that she'd take the offer placed before her. That she wanted to come here, to this place. To live.

"... I see," he says very softly, and his hands itch to do--something for her, a belated last rite or anything at all. It's his duty as a priest to ease suffering, and as an army chaplain, the passing of the dead. Nevermind what she's done. They're here now, and Christ is nothing if not forgiving.

But her affectation is flat. It's technical in the way Army-speak so often is: P.O.Ws, L.I.Ps, personnel, officers and enlisted and drafts. Anything to distance them from the violence.

Still, that never stopped him.

"... I know you aren't..." Pauses. Sighs. "I don't know how you feel about your situation, precisely, but one of my duties as a priest is to offer the last rites of the dying. I know you aren't Catholic, and I don't have any of my vestments, but... if would ease your heart, I can perform the prayer we offer to guide one's passage. Or one of another faith."

Not that it's technically allowed to offer rites for someone already passed (although they're all sort-of-maybe-dead), but he worked in a mobile army hospital near the front; he's broken that law hundreds of times already. Sometimes there just isn't time.

Edited 2024-03-10 14:58 (UTC)

Not so long ago, Ari Tayrey would have rejected this in an instant. She's not religious, and she might be curious about Earther religions but following any of their customs for any reason would be a step too far. Today, though? Today the young lieutenant sees the kindness in his words. She has come to value that more than she used to.

Still, she doesn't agree with his idea. What she does do is reach out to touch his arm, and smile at him. Gently. Hopefully.

'If you want to say a prayer for me, make it a prayer of joy! I'm not dead. I was dying, and I should be dead. Instead I'm here. Instead I have a chance to live, to find my way home. If I knew the Light of Ishirin rites I might be saying them myself, because there was a way out of the unending black for me.'

A woman to guide her way, with an offer of a path to salvation. Fortunate that the woman wasn't carrying a light and dressed in coveralls; or she might have made an Ishirinite out of Arilanna Tayrey after all.

Mulcahy smiles brightly. "Oh, of course! Yes, of course--forgive me. I've been on that ship and that Village for far too long, and even before then, I was a chaplain to a combat hospital. I believe I've spoken more funerary rites than any other prayer. It would have been more efficient if I started anointing people with formaldehyde instead of oil, but it's not very good for the hands."

Father Mulcahy has a moment to think. Then raises a hand, palm out.

“O Lord, Your Name be praised, we thank you for the miracle of our new freedom in our pilgrimage home. Long was the night, and now we bear witness to a new dawn. Through the merits and intercession of St. Anthony of Padua, patron of the lost and of travelers, we ask that You might guide the rest of this young Lieutenant’s safe passage; and through the merits and intercession of St. Expedite, patron of urgency and of revolutionaries, that You might ensure a swift and bright return. Guide her feet and her hands; let her not be led astray. As You led the Hebrews out of the desert, Lord, we keep faith that one day, however long our odysseys, we will return to where we’re meant to be.”

He raises a hand to sign the cross. “Thus I speak this prayer in the Name of the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Belatedly she realises that she doesn't know what she's supposed to do while listening to a prayer. Presumably not holding hands like in the circles she's seen in her sector. To be on the safe side, she straightens up, standing respectfully still as he speaks.

Kind words, again, and she's still fragile enough to value them immensely, even the ones she doesn't rightly understand. There's something to be said of contingency plans; if there is some deity watching over her, maybe they'll be moved by it.

'Thank you,' she says quietly. 'That was... it stirred my heart. I value it.' A high compliment from the atheist Tayrey.

Then, after a moment's hesitation: 'If I wrote down for you my people's words for the dead, would you keep them? Just in case I can't finish that journey. I only told my friends Tayrey was never a passenger, before, because it was fitting. But maybe you'd be willing to read it all. If I die here, I die a free Tradeliner, and that's something.'

…

“You honor me with this. Of course.” He speaks with an airy lightness, like wind in the leaves, sun on the grass. Things he hasn’t seen in a long time, but are here now. “It is an incredible honor to be able to serve one more faith, and attend to more people, and care for them as they—and you—deserve.”

A beat. “And I do believe that this is the first time I’ve heard your name, Lieutenant Tayrey.”

'Is it? Well that's an oversight!' She smiles, and speaks up with mingled pride and amusement. 'Lieutenant Arilanna Lorenza Kittredge Carrington Tayrey.' As if every part of it has significance, all those illustrious Company names - but she's self-aware enough to add: 'Try calling all that across a chart room! Just Tayrey is fine.'

It's with a certain delicacy that she asks her next question, memories of the Village still fresh enough to trouble her. 'And what should I call you?'

He’s more aware of it now more than usual, with all the people he’s had to introduce himself to; still, it’s easy to ignore the way the number jumps to his throat first. It never makes it into his tongue.

“Father Francis John Patrick Mulcahy,” he hums, grinning. “I’ve got my own mouthful, but you can just call me Mulcahy. Ah—‘Father’ is the honorific for a priest in my faith. It’s meant to be descriptive of our caretaker role in our community.”

Similarly long name with a similar attitude to it; that earns him a nod of solidarity from her. 'Mulcahy,' she echoes, because she'll remember for sure if she says it aloud.

As he explains the honorific she leans in a little closer, curious. 'You aren't the first person I've heard use familial terms when there's no relation by blood or contract. It's not something that really happened in my sector, but I see what you're trying to evoke.' It's no betrayal of her Tradeline principles to admit that she could easily see the potential for a fatherly manner in him.

'What do you do in the community, beyond leading religious rites and prayers?' Tayrey uses the present tense for his work, just as she does for her own. The intervening captivity doesn't have to take that from either of them.

"With a proper parish, all sorts of things. We'd do charity work for the needy; we contribute to hospitals, soup kitchens, scholarships; or even more hands-on projects, like helping fix infrastructure in the community."

Ideally, in any case.

"On my own, I suppose... well, simply all that I can. I'd still be able to offer advice and guidance for the troubled or the struggling, for matters both spiritual or ethical, and practical. I can also simply go out and offer to be an extra set of hands. More than anything, I'm here to help."

'I admire charitable people,' she says, thinking back to Cardalek. Of course, one had to have sufficient funds to make the charity worthwhile, and that's going to be the sticking point for him here, she suspects. It looks like he's already finding a way around it.

'We're all under contract to help, one way or another, and I don't think your way is any less valuable than someone who goes out to fight the monsters here. I might not be a spiritual person myself, but you don't stand on a ship under fire and not see what it means to others. From what I've been told, this town badly needs people with your skills.'

There's a soft huff as he bows his head slightly.

"Ah... I certainly hope I've kept those skills. It's been a long time since I've... been somewhere with a proper community. You understand."

Really, there are very few things keeping him from going on an indefinite break from preaching, but... speaking with and aiding Darcy back on the ship soon after his escape from the Village, that certainly helped. It was the first time he felt of any use in a long time. It's not all gone from him after all.

'I understand,' says Tayrey softly. 'I could say the same myself, and I know it's been longer for you.' Others might have spoken about the community on the Serena Eterna, but she'd always remained outside it. Part circumstance, part free choice, and part that in her mind becoming a member of that community necessitated first accepting total defeat. Giving up on the Tradelines and believing every word her captor said. The covert version of what the Village had openly and at times brutally demanded. For all her other faults, Lieutenant Tayrey had always remained stronger than that.

'I don't think you lost them,' she goes on. 'If you're anything like me you'll find places where there's rust. Damage. Pain. In freedom, those places can heal. Besides, you helped me today, and I'm not even a believer. That has to count for something.'

"Rust," he repeats, and finds the notion oddly comforting. Yes. There's undeniable damage. Some things that have rotted and cannot be gotten back, but... nothing that can't be cleaned. Not easily, but it can. Eventually.

... Eventually.

His gaze softens. "Yes, I... I think it must." If there's any love in the world. "Thank you. You're a sharp and compassionate young woman, Lieutenant Tayrey."

Edited 2024-05-08 19:49 (UTC)

The unexpected compliment touches her. She's so used to criticism, to people not understanding what she truly means, what she stands for, why she does what she does.

She gives him a soft smile. 'Thank you,' she tells him. 'I value that, very much. And you? You're a man of principle, and you're kind, without being weak. That matters. This place might prove good for us both.'

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Mingle - Emergency Potluck

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wrapping?

sure! wrap <3