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

[abhorrently]

Fever listens, because that's what she can do. Listen respectfully, carefully, to what she's saying. Just because she personally doesn't agree with it in all respects doesn't mean it's less worthy of being heard. It makes her think of listening to Lae'zel, to a woman whose life and culture were unlike what her scant ghosts of memories offered up, who nevertheless would explain, so long as she knew it would be heard. Still, she tucks this knowledge in the back of her head - who knows when it might come in useful? When seeing the divide between the life the lieutenant has led and the life Fever herself has led will be critical to know?

"A little out of sorts, but I got a job offer back there. Two, actually, but I decided on being a clerk for Town Hall. Worst that can happen is I find out I have no patience for the work and figure out a graceful exit. The work comes with housing, so it wasn't a difficult choice at all."

[astrogator]

Tayrey practically beams at her, hearing this news. 'Two job offers! Fever, that's wonderful. Congratulations. Good for them, for recognising your talents.' She knows not everyone places as much value on work as she does, but this feels important all the same.

'Looks like you made a sound decision,' she goes on. 'See if they'll let you pick one of their vacant properties, don't let them assign one or you might get the worst available.' Which Fever probably knows already, but Tayrey has to be sure.

Then she looks at the other woman again, tilts her head. 'I've got to say I never pictured you as a clerk, but I expect the failure there is my imagination, not your abilities.'

[abhorrently]

Ari's joy for her sits warmly in her chest - even if she doesn't have the same discipline as the other woman, it's still nice to be congratulated. She'll feel the same, no doubt, when Tayrey comes and speaks of her own work and accomplishments. To the comment on properties, she nods - she doesn't know where they'll send her, but Fever thinks there should be options, based on what was said.

"No, it's a surprise to me as well, in a way. I thought I'd have to take on odd jobs or tasks, or perhaps something that required combat knowledge." Which, she could have looked to the enforcers, but the day she voluntarily puts herself there will never come. "But if this is where people are needed, and I'm not picky, then it'd be foolish to pass it up just because I'm not accustomed to the work."

A thought comes, and she laughs. "Who knows, perhaps somewhere in my missing past, I did some work like that, and it'll come back to me when I try."

[astrogator]

'I think that's an admirable attitude,' Tayrey agrees. 'Moral problems excepted, any work is better than none at all, and if you find you don't care for it, you can always try something else. It seems there's a shortage of workers here.' It's true that there are plenty of jobs she wouldn't want to do herself, but most of them would still be preferable to having nothing to do.

Her enthusiasm doesn't dim. 'I'm sure you'll pick it up quickly, regardless. The administrative side of my job shipside is... not my favorite part, I'll be honest, but it's all reasonably straightforward.'

Now, though, there's something else she has to ask. Her voice softens. 'Did you remember anything else about your past? I wondered if arriving here might have repaired whatever's preventing you from recalling it all.' If it could heal Tayrey's wounds, she reasons, maybe it could do that too.

[abhorrently]

At the question, Fever's face falls, and she looks away. There are the things she remembered before it all went haywire, the things she has to add to her tally of wrongs committed. Things that she knows very well if she was to utter would alter Tayrey's perceptions of her so fully that the young woman might never trust a soul again. They happened, Fever admits. They happened, and they live upon her as her weight to carry, her burden to bear. That, she will not lie about.

But they aren't things she needs to talk about to the unprepared. Much less someone who wants to think the best of her. So she swallows them, places them back in the numerous things she might never speak to a single person about. Perhaps one day, when she's ready to set the torch to her connections, or it's dragged from her.

"A little, after you disappeared, but...I think that whatever happened to me, the bulk of things are lost and always will be. Not a curse or something else blocking me from seeing them, but damage done and survived. Coming here hasn't changed a thing."

A breath, so Tayrey might get distracted from asking what she remembered.

"There's a scar, at the back of my head. I didn't dwell much on it for a long while, but with time to think about it? It's a very straightforward answer, isn't it. Some kind of accident, or an attack. But I'm a bit too stubborn to simply die."

[astrogator]

'I'm sorry,' says Tayrey softly, but of course it's projection, it's imagining how devastating it would be for her to lose her own past, all the things that matter to her, and imagining how she'd cling to any clue that she found. That she thinks Fever to be the same isn't wholly without logic; her need to escape the ship and go home had seemed to mirror Tayrey's own, with not dissimilar motivations.

She doesn't ask what Fever remembered, but it's a deliberate omission, because if Fever has the space to talk about home and doesn't, Tayrey shouldn't pry. Instead she lightly touches the other woman's arm. 'I'm very glad you survived it. It sounds like something we could have at least tried to fix back home, but it'd be ludicrous to attempt brain surgery here even if we did have someone qualified.'

With a shake of her head, she adds, 'We're all too stubborn to just die. It's brought us this far, yes? We'll find a way through. Do you... do you want to know what happened? Who attacked you, if that's what it was?'

[abhorrently]

The touch is a surprise, but a welcome one. Her expression softens minutely at it, knowing it for the comfort it's meant to be.

"I have suspicions, but...right now, knowing would do nothing but make me want answers from someone who isn't even here, and who would be unlikely to ever come here. If I'm to know for certain, I'll let it come back to me in time, so that I can deal with the knowledge when I'm not also trying to sort out what happened to earn us our freedom."

Reasonable, logical. And not mentioning how she'd want the most bloody revenge against the perpetrator.

"You think you really could fix it, back in the Tradelines? I'd take at least getting rid of the headaches...though everyone would have to put up with me asking about nearly everything in sight."

[astrogator]

'Not me personally, but a specialist doctor planetside? Very possibly.' She sighs. 'I know it doesn't do any good talking about it, when there's no way to bring you there, but if I could I'd just say you were from somewhere real isolated, and then everyone would be happy to answer all the questions.'

Fever is someone she trusts, someone she'd take shipside and vouch for to her captain. If such a thing were possible, and desirable. 'But I hear you,' she goes on to say. 'Knowing now and not being able to take action would frustrate me immensely, for sure. Only...our freedom wasn't earned. It was stolen from us by that bastard, and we took it back. Are you worried about the finer details? I don't remember them, but it's enough that it happened.' She'd been in a haze of pain; she doesn't remember much of anything after Clarke left her.

[abhorrently]

She just nods, taking a deep breath.

"I'll always be a bit unsettled about the parts I don't remember. It's things like...I remember my hands hurting like they had been burned, but not how they could have been burned at all. Until I know the shape of it, I won't stop longing to understand it. If that makes sense."

When your memories were already something to hold onto with every bit of strength, them getting jumbled further was distasteful.

"Anyway, I can't make them come back any faster. Better that I come up with a convincing way to sell myself as an isolated amnesiac colonist to your doctors. Perhaps I was caught up in a technological accident that also destroyed my identification."

[astrogator]

'It makes perfect sense,' Tayrey assures her. 'There are gaps, you can't fit them, you're going to wonder. Speculate. That's natural. I'd be unsettled as anything too. I hope it clears, soon as it can.'

Her suggestion for presenting herself as an amnesiac colonist makes Tayrey smile, though. 'Out in my sector, sure, we'd just say you were from the old frontier. A lot of unusual things happen out there these days.' Hardly surprising, now that it's no longer fashionable and the delight of would-be investors. 'For the real frontier effect, if anyone dares ask you for identification? Tell them that you know your Charter rights and you won't stand for pushy Tradeliners thinking they run the whole sector. You don't carry it and nobody can make you!'

Her words are half-teasing, but if Tayrey's mocking anyone, it's the hypothetical overbearing Tradeliner, not the Charter-reliant colonist.