networkinthenight | [audio] @silver; Backdated to the fifth [open]

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[audio] @silver; Backdated to the fifth [open]

[Someone had been around the docks when...all of that happened, broken an arm, and spent the following days snugly shut up tight in her house. Not a weakness she wants on display, of course, but she's angry, and having been in no useful condition for supply-regathering isn't much of a boon to her pride. But a handful of days shut up are little better.]

Couple things, just, quick.

Couldn't stick around the ferry and people's chief concern seems to have been food, which is fine, but I'm wondering if anyone got gardening supplies, and if those made it? I've mentioned it in passing to a handful, but especially given the exact worry I had was just proven right, no excuse to not be proactive anymore. We have good gardening types here, and it's better for the town as a whole if we can set a couple plots up...immediately? Fast as possible. A couple of small greenhouses are kind of a must at this point too. I'm not really up to building and clearing condition right now, so anybody brave enough to turn soil and move rocks and handle basic construction, drop me a line. People I talked to before, uh, the same I guess? We can divvy up who goes where, five people per square foot's a bad spread of resources.

Second thing - I'm getting the impression nobody's liking those flowers very much. [She's...largely unperturbed. Distressingly accustomed, at this point. Were the month not getting off on such a broken foot she'd be amused.] If it's crippling and you're desperate for something, stop by and I can give you a little cone to breathe through. Plague doctor-style, but tiny. Cute. [Deadpan:] You'll look like little birds, and it'll smell like pine.

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[That gets her a very skeptical, dubious look, which is probably better than the broody one.]

Misty. I'm an assassin. And I crashed the ferry. I am not good luck. If anything, I'm the opposite.

[But it does follow back to the garden with the seeds, settles on its knees at the edge of the turned earth closest to Misty's house, and waits for instruction on how to plant things.]

[And this is now when her smile reveals itself to be relentless. She crouches next to him, still a pillar of cheer.]

Only a couple per packet, and they need to be spaced out differently. This one...[A moment to eyeball the space, provide a rough estimate.] Maybe six here, one even row across. Press in with a thumb and cover them back up, like, a handful of dirt.

[Instruction is good. Much better than talking about its worth in subjective measures such as "luck". It carefully does as she says, measuring the dirt to cover the little holes with by her look of approval. And discovers immediately that using its left hand for handling dirt is a bad idea, as far too much fine grit manages to slip between the plates of palm and fingers, and by the time the first seed packet has been planted, they won't close all the way.

It flexes its metal fingers and grumbles,]

That's going to take forever to clean out.

[Time to keep seeds in that hand, and use the right hand for burying them. Yep.]

[The sympathy wince is not subtle. It couldn't hurt, she's certain, but that sounds like the kind of annoyance that can snowball. There's a pang of worry about the inevitability of repairs, but it's momentarily brushed aside.]

Could ask Rastus about canned air, maybe? The little dust ones, for computers.

You're doing good so far, though.

I have tools for arm maintenance. And I'm not sure Rastus can get us anything without the ferry.

[Scooting over a little for the next kind of seed to plant.]

That could be useful, though.

[Because it does recall technicians using compressed air on the arm before. It had been... cold? The sensation is very distant but still there in its memory.]

Worth asking anyway, even if it's a long shot. Stocking up, you know? Winter's coming.

[Limited supplies to start with and hardly any control on its reliability bodes ill for stockpiling; they ought to be taking with both hands, as quick and often as possible.]

You do Thanksgiving?

What?

[The look it gives her says that no, it does not do Thanksgiving. It doesn't know what that is. Something about being grateful? Not not phrased in such a way that it can comfortably just say "sure I'm thankful" and be sure that's the right response.]

It's a holiday. You sit down with however much family visits, make a turkey, lots of sides, pumpkin pie? Thankgiving.

[It is, this must be said, her favorite holiday, and the first that hit her when she considered the holiday season doth approach.]

I don't remember any holidays.

[Seems like a shame. Though if it remembered holidays, it might remember family, and that's. Not somewhere it's brain is going to go, right now.]

Will we have those here?

Well we're gonna have 'em, so that's fine - I'll explain as we go.

I mean, I can't speak for the town at large, everyone being from such different places, but I'm not skipping any. You have to pick what you want for Christmas, too.

What I want?

[It doesn't know what Christmas is, Misty, how is it supposed to know about presents?]

Christmas is putting a tree and decorations up, baking a lot, and on the day-of you give people close to you little gifts. Nothing in particular, just something they want, or something they'd like. Kids make lists.

[Nobody is out of the know enough to not want things!]

[Well. That's. Going to be weird. The Soldier tries to imagine telling someone what it might want for a gift, and gets nothing but static. This might require some work.]

Okay.

[Less difficult, though:]

So I'll need one for you. And other people. When is Christmas?

[Does it need to get these gifts in the next few days?]

December twenty-fifth, but keep in mind it's not -- the gifts aren't really the point of it, you can do the holiday fine without them, it's just common and obvious. It's just about appreciating the people you care about and helping people out a little, and giving a couple things someone'd like or need is a good way of doing it.

[She can smell the difficulties a mile away, and is hastening to try and plant the seed that even helping everyone as he currently does would be gift enough, if it came to that. No need to make it a stressful affair.]

And it's a good excuse for big dinners - more I can teach you to cook.

[It can see what she's doing there... but it's okay. It's nice of her. And might even be right. (Don't mean we're not going to try and find her something. Well, true.)

For now, it's going to be content with the idea of more cooking lessons. Getting back to normal, or their probably very weird baseline of normal.]

Okay.

[This time the "okay" is less bordering-on-stressed and a little easier, more thoughtful.]

You can have Crowley and Aziraphale over.

[If she isn't still mad at them, too.]

[She nods...slowly, at that. Contemplatively. It's still an active situation and her emotions are complicated and volatile enough opinion could sway wildly in the time between this conversation and holidays proper. Aziraphale seems likely to fall back into good graces, but Crowley....Complicated.]

Aziraphale's always welcome. Have to see how much sense Crowley's got by then before I rush to save him a seat, though. Rash and endangering, and you can't mix signals with those things.

[Wrongdoing has to be punished, in wildly disparate ways, but she can respect the capacity of sentient growth and her other friends' closeness to him enough to not dismiss the notion outright.]

Coal come Christmas, though.

[So she had been angry with the Soldier, and still with Crowley, but not with Aziraphale. Well, that's fair. It's not like Aziraphale had really even been involved, or wanted to do it. He'd just been along for the ride.

So it asks, instead,]

Coal?

[Close! Livid with Crowley, angry with Aziraphale, and with Soldat himself bringing up the rear somewhere between angry, disappointed, and frustrated. Intent is often the overriding factor. Aziraphale claims the goal was to return, and she believes this firmly - she can feel the sincerity, in a literal way most can't. Soldat does as he's told, which is regrettable, but perhaps nothing he can be blamed for. Crowley instigated the entire thing and has expressed nothing like remorse, and that being the case, deserves no sympathy.

But she smiles.]

It's what bad kids get. Santa saves good stuff for people who are good to one another.

[The Soldier gives her a dubious look. You're dropping all this weird information on it without context, Misty, be ready to do some explainin'.]

What is a Santa?

It's...he's...hm.

It's weird, but roll with it, it's mostly a story for kids: Old man who lives in the North Pole, with his wife and reindeer and elves, and they spend all year making toys and watching kids to see who's been good. Then on Christmas Eve, he checks it, loads all the gifts onto a sleigh, and the reindeer fly it all over the world so he can give nice kids gifts. You leave him cookies and milk out of politeness.

[A beat.]

It's fun.

[That has to be the most ridiculous thing the Soldier has ever heard. Someone really needs to introduce it to more mythology. Or just plain fiction, for that matter. Still, the utter absurdity of the story still makes a slow and real, if incredulous, smile.]

Are you serious. You're yankin' my fucking chain, right? Do the kids really believe that?

[A smile from him always perks attention. This has her all but glowing in return.]

Not at all! Kids love it, they write him letters, it's cute. We're gonna leave cookies out then, this year, make sure you get the full experience.

Who will get to eat them?

[There's obviously no Santa person here. The Soldier has the stupid hope that maybe it will get to eat them. (Or sneak into Misty's house and eat just half of one, and make her wonder. Ha. I like it.)]

[A shrug. She seems mostly unconcerned, but only because a handful of cookies are left out; the rest are rife for the thieving, while warm.]

Whoever stops in, if Santa doesn't polish them all himself.

[...And she might just insist on Santa all season long. They're Santa's, Soldat.]

[You need to introduce the Soldier to warm cookies, Misty. This is not a treat it knows. It just knows "cookies are dessert" and thus probably good.]

Okay. I will arrange to stop in often. Just in case.

[Its also out of seeds, now, and patting the last of the earth down on top of the last little hold of them. It sits back on its heels to survey their work.]

How often do these need to be watered?

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