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

[astrogator]

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.'

[lovethyneighb_or]

…

“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.”

[astrogator]

'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?'

[lovethyneighb_or]

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.”

[astrogator]

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.

[lovethyneighb_or]

"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."

[astrogator]

'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.'

[lovethyneighb_or]

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.

[astrogator]

'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.'

wrapping?

[lovethyneighb_or]

"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."

sure! wrap <3

[astrogator]

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.'