The Old Fashioned Is Commonly Held To Have Been Invented In 1880

[crushed_pearls]

Who: Erin Peters and YOU
What: Settling in, dealing with things, making friends
When: Late March
Where: Oak & Iron, the woods, around
Warnings: Discussion of death & the ethics of suicide, trauma, whatever you bring with you




Gallery Style | Oak & Iron

Oak & Iron undergoes a few renovations, just a couple days' worth, to expand the bar area and add labels in Braille (thanks Gerry). When they're done, Pumpkin Hollow has a new bartender, a winged lass in a blindfold wreathed in the scents of sex and gunpowder. She quickly picks up a reputation for almost prescient service; good suggestions for drinks, never leaving a glass empty long, and a firm hand for when you're cut off. Though every now and again there's an odd dance where someone isn't cut off and instead drinks enough to, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking die - except they don't die, and instead just get normal drunk.

A rather extensive cocktail menu manifests too (thanks Magne, with your working eyes). It's cut up into various flavors, with the ingredients clearly laid out (thanks Max Maximum, with your knowledge of food allergies), but at the tail end of the menu is a change in theme; two sections labeled by nation instead of flavor. The countries in question are Gallery, and Japan.

Gangster Style | The Woods

Here's the needle Erin has to thread: she can't overload herself socially, but she also can't listen to the urge to isolate. So one day she goes out into the woods just at the edge of town and digs a pair of graves in the soft soil, leaving the dirt in a huge pile off to the side. You might find her out here, just laying in one, trying to listen to the sounds of the forest, but if she knows you, well, you might have been invited. "Six feet deep, best rest you'll get."

Tourist Style | Wildcard

Come get your bird lady.

Comments

[abhorrently]

If it's bad enough to get a warning from them both, it is absolutely what she's after. She doesn't have companions to be eighty five percent of her impulse control at present and she lives alone. Firmly in the camp of fuck it, we ball.

"Max, I wake up every morning with a headache, it's a nice change of pace when it's one I put in my own skull. No mercy."

It's not like the work she has lined up tomorrow is mentally taxing. But it's also a chance for them to show off some, which is as interesting to her as the drink itself is. Demonstrate their skills, hold her up as a cautionary tale, let her avoid moping by seeking out new experiences. It all works out.

[crushed_pearls]

"You heard the recklessly hot woman Max, we gotta kill her." Erin taps her chin, thoughtfully. "...I'm thinking strawberries, oranges, apples, blueberries, chunk everything but the berries?"

[maximumcake]

"Your funeral," he tells Fever with a laugh.

"Going to take me a minute to get it all together. And, uh... I'm not sure we have oranges in stock. Might have to make do with lemons. I got everything else."

[abhorrently]

"If tomorrow my head is full of hammers, the next time I have two days off, I'll bring you back some from Paradesium. They're little, but easy to peel - just a bit of a trek to get."

She likes them both, so they should enjoy the fruit as well. Whether they're going to grow above ground is a mystery, but as long as the trees aren't stripped, it's a special snack source.

[crushed_pearls]

"And in the meantime lemon will do fine, I'll switch to whiskey for that layer," Erin decides. "A fruit salad and some bread to help tank it, if you can?"

skip me for a few

[maximumcake]

"I'll go with you if you want? There's cocoa beans down there, too." And he wants to harvest those for his own reasons.

To Erin he says, "Coming right up." Salutes, and then ducks back into the kitchen to start preparing Fever's doom.

o7

[abhorrently]

"It'd be a pleasure, Max!"

It's called after him - she wouldn't want to go exploring down alone anyway. Even if she can defend herself, it's just more sensible to be trekking with an ally. In the meanwhile, she can pick up where her and Erin left off, and sip the whiskey sour. She's in no rush, and hardly the only patron in the place.

"So. You said you're feeling your Spring?"

An invitation to dwell in that mental space, to expand on her potential happiness.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin watches Max go instead of answering immediately; this also causes her to need to get drinks for a few other people, which she Then Does. Most of the locals are sticking to wine and beer, which Erin provides with great patience. The cocktails will catch on, she just needs to be patient, and once they do they're gonna hit this place like a meteor.

"It's a hard thing to name," Erin answers at last, coming back to Fever. "There's...a real community here. Hurt, yeah. Divided, sure. Mistrustful and wounded and aching, but it's here, and I'm...becoming part of it."

[abhorrently]

"Hurt and mistrustful, yet their reaction to us turning up on their shores was to offer what they had. Clothes, shelter, food - they had a hard winter, and still."

That's been something she's been turning over in her head like a stone gone smooth from tossing around in the river. It doesn't settle easily.

"I wouldn't expect it to be an easy adjustment for any of us. Just as long as the adjustment's happening."

[crushed_pearls]

"I'm planning on getting through it, as is tradition, by sleeping my way through half the town and any of my friends that seem interested." Erin flashes a wan grin; she knows what she's like. "There might be some drinking of my own too."

[abhorrently]

A tiny lift of the glass in Erin's direction again - she respects and endorses this course of action. She's already been making moves of her own, there's not an ounce of judgement in her body.

"There's some joke about sowing wild oats and putting down roots and spring in that, but I'm no bard with a wit to make it."

[crushed_pearls]

"You do realize you're very much on the list of people I'm interested in, yeah?"

[abhorrently]

"Have I ever given you the impression I'm not interested in return?"

Siiiip.

"That said, I've got enough sense to wait until you're not working."

[maximumcake]

Max pops his head back in for just one second, he's still working on the ingredients but he's been listening in, apparently.

"You know I'll cover for you if some kind of 'emergency' comes up." Best wingman award goes to...this dork.

[crushed_pearls]

"Max I'm working! And not about to bang a drunk lass!"

The lady who doth protest too much award goes to...

[maximumcake]

"I'm just sayin'..." and he's gone again.

[abhorrently]

Max, you are a pearl among men.

"So, if I forewent my promised death by cocktail..."

Just asking. Like she said, Erin's working, and Fever knows when to lay off.

[crushed_pearls]

"Oh we're locked in now," Erin teases, leaning in with a coy smile. "But if you're not spoken for tomorrow night, drop by my place. Dinner, chat, separate bedrooms...if you want to keep them separate anyway."

Can't just exclude Daisy off the jump.

[abhorrently]

Max is spared from having to cover, then.

"Give me the address and a good time, and then you can consider me spoken for."

The separate bedrooms will be a question she'll save for dinner tomorrow, if it doesn't become apparent.

[crushed_pearls]

"Living with Daisy not too far from the bar." Erin gives directions the author won't narrate because he's not opening the map on this damn phone. "Call it around six, six thirty? Figure worst case is I crash with Daisy, save you a bad walk home."

[abhorrently]

"Are you going to tell your wife I'm coming over, or am I a surprise?"

She has no idea what the worst case would be, and has no inclination to find out.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin wheezes and needs A Minute Here, but when she recovers she takes her sending stone from her pocket and waggles it. Shall she call now?

[abhorrently]

Oh, no, Erin. That call needs to be your own entirely, in both senses of the word. Fever just takes a drink and leans back, recusing herself from the decision.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin leans back against the shelves behind the bar and decides that she hasn't subjected Daisy to enough no-context bullshit lately.

So what Daisy gets is this:

"Dinner with a sexy homewrecker tomorrow, love?"

[hadnoright]

A solid few seconds go by without an actual response, though the mumbled 'what the fuck, Erin—?' might be audible despite her best efforts, before there's a sigh and:

"—Fever. Right?"