come_sailaway | (open.) while now i'm free

Entry tags:

(open.) while now i'm free

Who: Fever and open!
What: First month on the ship, and she's getting adjusted.
When: September.
Where: Everywhere - a few specific locations for some prompts.
Warnings: Marked in specific threads if they happen.
Notes: Will match tag-in format.

they let anyone in - infirmary.

There's a new face in the infirmary, but not slinking in with something that needs repair. Rather, Fever's taking stock of the inventory, looking at what's familiar and unfamiliar alike, reading boxes and labels to understand what they're for. She moves purposefully, before she's collecting items to put together in a group - not a lot, but a pattern emerges. One set of bandages, one of different ointments, something to splint a broken joint - all necessary components for a first aid kit, along with the violently red potion she has on the counter.

Though on a different day, she's cleared a little section for herself, and is cautiously using some equipment with a few empty bottles. Heating water, and crushing something unknown into it, the scent of brewing plant matter beginning to rise. Might as well refine what materials she can, while she's here.

you need hobbies - playback.

The arcade is loud, bright, but it offers amusements if she's patient enough to learn, and Fever sees the potential if she just keeps trying. Her despair over some of the games just not making sense is apparent - the Pacman should be able to face his foes always, not just at certain intervals, and it's beginning to frustrate her deeply before she stalks away to try and find something better.

But later, she's found her niche, almost serene as she carries on playing one of the light gun games. Her score keeps going up, but she barely seems to see it - only what comes to the next target, when to reload and where to fire next, at vital points that make the virtual foes fall. Peaceful as one can be while hearing fake zombies attacking and dying in explosions of pixelated gore. And all that said, there is a gun for player two there.

"let there be something green" - flowers.

Of course, the new plantlife is something to investigate. It shouldn't be growing from walls, from the floor, which is enough to tell her that she needs to be a bit careful. But looking for the effects and being around them, they're not destroying her with their aura - yet. Yet is always the key word, and that's good enough for Fever to make the unwise decision of taking blooms for herself. Plucked, placed in her satchel, she's hoping it'll ward off the worst effects.

Except of course, when it can't. And given that there's quite a few types around, it means that those who venture too close might be also at risk to falling victim to whatever plant she's clipped and currently dealing with. At the least, the magic should be a sufficient icebreaker. Or you can stop her from picking up one with truly hideous side effects.

[ooc: open to any and all flower effects except for baby's breath and titan arum. mix and match with me!]

insomnia club is always open - around.

Even on this ship, her sleep is no better than it has ever been. Never a truly sustained night, only some uneasy truce with her mind and her body to lie down and attempt rest. It never lasts for as long as it should, and when her nightmares inevitably wake her, sometimes staying in the cabin is suffocating. So Fever goes out, heedless of the hour, walking softly in the cabin halls and seeing where her feet take her.

Maybe she lays in a chair by the pool, trying to find new rest there and failing, or maybe she's sprawled out in the lounge by the atrium, having just taken a tumble from trying to fit all of herself on a chair. Or she's posted up in Bobby B's, but drinking isn't the name of the game. Instead, this is one of the few areas she can idle in with a mote of fire in her hands and not get sprayed down for it. Rolling the magic around between her palms like someone else would a stress ball, lost in consideration, her guard's relaxed for a moment.

wildcard.

[have a different idea for something to happen? come at me, my arms are open. basic info and permissions here, as well as Fever's opt out.]

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And he does startle, nearly fumbling the current bottle, catching it just in time. He turns, but not all the way, not to look at her.

It's proving. difficult. to start feeling particularly safe again.

"Oh--" Arthur says, embarrassed by his own tension, pushing onwards through both, "I- I'm sorry, no, thank you."

He turns back to the shelf, finds it with the knuckles of his bottle-holding hand, and then turns to her again.

"Yes. Actually. I- I don't know if you would help me look for something. I was advised to find... multi vitamins?"

The phrase sits awkwardly on his tongue, one he's heard but not been fully introduced to yet.

That confirms the idea she was having. Subtly, she puts more weight on her feet, so he'll hear the sound of her footsteps clearly as she approaches.

"Of course I can do that. What are the multi vitamins supposed to do?"

She says it as if they're as strange to her as they are to him - they are, but she's getting familiar with things around here, and she's moving to get the bottle that looks easiest to understand.

Arthur shifts out of her way, and tries not to be too obviously relieved. This'll go quicker with a pair of eyes. "Thank you, miss. Apparently they are a treatment of some sort for, ah... well, for my current..."

God, hedging is pointless, isn't it? It's not a subtle problem, as multiple people threatening to call Watson on him has demonstrated.

"A treatment for not eating well."

He says it with just the most detachment, tiptoeing right over that bottomless pit without even glancing down.

The shelf he's been searching is a mixed bag: some bottles thick brown glass and some white plastic, some painkillers and some allergy meds, all things that in certain times and places would be considered over-the-counter. It's as good a place to look for vitamins as any.

"Lester, I'm... I'm Arthur Lester." Smooth. Apparently the pounds he lost were where he stored his conversational aplomb.

"Fever. It's my pleasure, Arthur."

Turning the bottles, she studies the labels, putting aside what doesn't suit and moving on. Though...

"How long ago was all that? And how have you been eating since then?"

"No, I don't have..."

Beat. Oh, he's Boo-Boo the Fool.

"I- I- no, the pleasure's all mine."

nailed it

He listens to the bottles clink and rattle as Fever examines them; at her questions, he stares into the familiarity of absolute nothing, and puts his hand on another shelf, quietly. There's sterile metal under his hand, and he doesn't let it turn into damp earth wall. His pinkie finger is lifted so that the tip won't touch the metal; the tip looks like black bone, snaking rootlike veins -- or maybe veinlike roots -- back into the hand itself.

"A day or so," he says, briefly, letting nothing whatsoever through.

He doesn't have the stomach (haha) to describe what he's been eating. His introduction to the plants was a real sonofabitch.

Gods. It's almost enough to suggest amputation, but it doesn't look rotted enough to be causing him the pain required for that. Instead, she finds the bottle of daily multivitamins, and this must be it. Checking inside, she sees a number of larger pills - this should hold anyone over for quite some time. One a day, so says the label, but she pauses with it in her hand.

"...Listen, I know you didn't ask for any advice, so you're free to tell me to piss off at any point. But if you're looking to get better, you're going to need more than this bottle to do it. You can't go from bad to normal right away. There's other things you're going to need in order to get your strength back."

Edited 2023-09-15 21:44 (UTC)

It doesn't smell rotted either; surely there'd be a stench, if it was rot.

He almost does tell her to piss off, that he knows it's not going to be easy, because nothing fucking is. But that's just his kneejerk response, the thing that gets stuck in his throat. He's trying to be better than that.

"Go ahead," he says mildly, even distractedly. "Everybody so far has had something to say about it; it would be rude of me to deny you a chance."

"Okay. Simple, easy to eat foods for a couple of days. Broth's a good one, even though I know it'll get boring. After you've got a little energy back, you can move onto more substantial things - still simpler, less rich. Then, when you feel more like yourself, you can do as you like."

She decides to very lightly touch his hand with the bottle, to hand it over without making him guess where it is.

"Far as I can tell, nothing in these will hinder recovery. It's just...do too much too fast, and your body won't know what to do."

His hand flexes at the touch, and then closes around the smooth sides of the bottle. It's surprisingly light. Not that he hasn't used medicine from this place before, but somehow he still always expects the heavy glass of his own world's pharmaceuticals.

Broth. Simple foods. Recovery. He nods, and tries to keep it in his head for more than a moment. The words seem sideways, surreal, as if they're discussing a broken leg instead of... instead of what it is.

"Easy foods," he repeats, and thinks of difficult foods struggling, and wants to vomit.

"You sound as if you've done this before."

"Not precisely this. I'm no healer. But recovery - some things are always going to be the same. Rest, care, making sure you get your strength back so you don't go and make things worse before they're better. Right now, I'm just thinking about what you do when someone's come out of a long illness."

And her tone makes it clear, she has no deep desire to pry as to what happened to him. The problem can be solved first. The answers can come later.

Arthur turns the bottle in his fingers until he can brush his thumb over the raised Braille on the label. Yup, multivitamins. How about that.

Rest feels like a joke, one the corners of his mouth quirk up at, and it's as a private joke that he responds: "So you'd not recommend hiking in a blizzard, or- or climbing a mountain, I take it."

He says this blandly. Totally hypothetical!

"Not unless the situation absolutely called for it and you had no alternatives."

He can't see the way her brow just raised, but it's there.

"We're absent the mountains, and there's not a cloud in the sky to even think about a blizzard. Just...if you feel tired, sit down. If you want to sleep, sleep. It's as straightforward as that."

He's still free to wave her off and do his own thing. She's not his mother or anything like it.

"Hah," he says to himself, though the punchline is unclear.

"My roommate would love it if I did that."

His tone gives nothing away about whether he's going to follow the advice or not. He's not kidding, though, Crichton would probably deliver flowers to anyone who could convince Arthur to sleep off an injury.

"Your roommate, but also your body. But -"

And she cuts herself off with a little yelp, rushing over to the hot plate to take the beaker off before what she's reducing burns. Ouch, that's hot to take away, but just a second.

"Anyway. I've given advice, you're at utter liberty to decide what to do with it, and if I had just spoiled half my potions it would have been my own fault."

"Oh--"

It's a sound of subdued alarm, as Fever yelps and runs off. Luckily nothing unbelievably terrible has happened, which is nice. This whole encounter has, in fact, gone shockingly well.

"I appreciate it," he says, and there's actual life in his voice at last, in part because he's relieved he didn't inadvertently ruin what she's been working on. "I really do."

And of course he can't hear 'potions' without getting curious. Like. Magical ones?

"You've found some way to actually make these plants useful?"

"Mmm, that'll take some doing and some prodding at them to make the attempt. All of what I have here -" and here she remembers, and goes into greater detail. "On the counter on this side of the room, it's plants and things that came with me. They'll do better if I turn them from raw materials into something prepared. They last longer."

She doesn't know about the lack of rotting, yet.

"I may not have had a choice in getting elected to this place, but it didn't deprive me of what I had on me."

Arthur takes that as an invitation to move towards the counter, because he's cursed to put his hands on everything. He doesn't go straight for the bubbling sound, because he does have his moments of good sense and the heat is obvious; instead he rests his fingers on the counter's edge, staying oriented.

His cane rattles across the floor, serving its vital purpose of bouncing off things before his face can. It was retractable once, but that was before it got smacked against a glass tube; now the joints are fixed with duct tape lest they fall apart.

Whatever she's been heating smells... pungent, just sideways of sweet, pulling at memories of vaulted walls and hymns. He's a little surprised, and certainly interested, when he says: "It smells nearly like frankincense."

"Balsam. They do smell close, right? You need it for certain healing potions, and without my usual recourse of a friend with the right spells nearby, it feels smarter to keep what we can on hand."

Shadowheart put up with more than her fair share of work from everyone else. Fever can't bring herself to regret not picking up a spell herself, but still, it's an absence.

"Don't taste fantastic, but they work well enough to keep the blood in your body."

"You're from an openly magical world, then?"

'Openly' magical, because as it turns out his own world isn't without magic either, though it mostly serves the purpose of making things more complicated and frustrating.

"I suppose that must have made arrival here a little easier to understand." It feels like a safe guess. Fever is talking as if she hasn't been here long.

"I didn't grasp it too well until someone explained that it's more or less a demiplane. Even where I come from, that's not the first thought that'll come to your head."

There's a laugh in her voice, more at herself instead of him. There's the sound of clinking glassware, as she pours off the now appropriately warm mixture into the rest of the ingredients.

"From how you talk, then, your world is secretly magical?"

"Secret until you stumble into some god damn thing," he deadpans, "and either it tries to eat you, or someone tries to sacrifice you to it."

He's so tired of cults!!!

"Or both. I was in missing persons at home; I..."

...but there are some things it's so much harder to be glib about, especially now. Roland didn't make it. Neither, in the end, did his girl, and nor did others. Some clients came to Lester & Yang in addition to the police search, but still more came because the police simply didn't care, and often the best case scenario for those parents was that they'd get closure.

"I, I ran into a thing or two." The dry tone is now more wooden.

"...I'm sorry. That sounds like a difficult job to begin with."

She was going to try to make some joke about things trying to consume them, but the shift of his tone makes her leave it on the table, and move back to sincerity. It has the feeling of it's terrible that worse happened, even as she's mixing the potion and capping it off, leaving it to properly cool to room temperature.

Sure, she'd found some people in the varied things people had asked her to do. But it wasn't her job. And so often, it was terrible news. If she thinks too long, she'll hear Arabella crying out in grief, the weight of suddenly being an orphan upon her. To say nothing of others.

Throw in whatever else wants to haunt him, and Arthur's stance makes a little more sense.

"It wasn't my first choice of career," Arthur agrees, and his tone is once again dry, only as deep as it absolutely needs to be. Taken completely in a vacuum, he could be talking about a harrowing private investigation career, or equally about a desk job that's more boring than he hoped for. He's given away more than he wanted to a stranger, and it's made him retreat.

"But-- tell me about your world. Tell me about what you're making. They're medicinal potions, you said?"

There's more there, a world there, but if Fever learned anything from travelling, it was that people will only talk so much about themselves at one time unless they're greatly conceited. Patience, then. She coaxed enough out of him at present.

"Yes. General healing - stemming bloodloss, working on bruises and broken things, that sort of injury. More for worse situations, though, because no healer's going to fix absolutely everything with magic or potions. You still need rest and care and to not go getting yourself back in the same mess."

They could fix everything that way, but there's things like cost, and whether it was worth it, and whether an aided healing would enable someone to run back into stupidity again. And a potion wouldn't save things that wouldn't mend on their own, couldn't dispel illness without being crafted to counter it. It could only speed up what others were capable of.

"It gives me something to do, anyway."

And to not go getting yourself back in the same mess.

"I feel oddly targeted," Arthur says, lightly.

"Are there potions for disease as well?" He's interested! "Poisons? I can't help but wonder whether there's overlap between your world's potions and my world's medicines."

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abhorrently - 2023-10-16 22:29 (UTC) - Expand

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(open.) while now i'm free

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ftr i'm rolling irl checks for fun on this

lmao that's perfect

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bg3 act 2 spoilers.

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