exsiliumlogs | ( open ) happy moonsgiving, everyone! (forward dated to 11/15)

( open ) happy moonsgiving, everyone! (forward dated to 11/15)

Date & Time: All Day, November 15th, 3313
Location: Focused centrally on the Moon Base Cafeteria.
Characters: Any and all!
Summary: It's a feast on the moon under the guise of being a new sort of Thanksgiving! Food, drink, merriment, food comas... lend a helping hand, fill a few plates of goodies, and meet friends new and old!
Warnings: None right now. Please PM this account should anything go beyond a "my grandmother is also reading this and that is okay" level of appropriate.
Notes: Tag in action or prose, and please specify a time of day, location, or activity your character is participating in! (Set-up, the feast, clean up, etc.) Feel free to offer multiple prompts, as your heart desires! Also, Collette is asking for people to write something they're thankful for on butchers paper on the wall before getting their first plate of food. This is 100% optional!

In the morning, the setting up begins. It's hard to say what's a morning versus what isn't on the moon, but using the lighting system as a sort of guide, those who offered to help set up the feast or continue on with the cooking will all be there bright and early.

After things are cleaned, the cooking continues on while further set up of plateware and silverware and hard to break glasses are left to those helping hands with a mind for arrangement details. The whole of one section has been converted into a sort of buffet-style lineup, waiting for the dishes to be complete and set at ready. All varieties of the usual dietary fare have been offered, some in greater quantities than others.

Then comes the time where people stopping by or trickling in aren't just turned around or co-opted into assisting; it's feast time, though not before an announcement that each person getting a plate of food must write at least one thing they're thankful for on a large sheet of butcher paper taped up to the wall. There's a variety of colored markers and pens provided, from someone's personal (and eclectic) collection. It's a soft price to pay for free food and plenty of it!

When the feasting has wound down, so begins the clean up. Tired, drunk, well fed, over fed, or simply content, people will be shuffled out or dragged into helping turn the cafeteria back into working, normal form. What decorations were added will need collecting (or stealing), plates and dishes and cooking implements and pots and pans will need washing, and floors a good sweeping and waterless mopping before things are all back in order. Leftovers, if there are any, will need to be placed in sealable containers and put into refrigeration.

And then, blissfully unaware of anything impending on the horizon, to bed, or different haunts, for the night.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Which is funny, when you think about how so many never heard about Thanksgiving before!

( Her laughter is light and tired, shaking her head. It's a poor joke, but it does make her smile.

Kate's words come as something confusing. She looks at her abruptly, that confusion plain on her face. )

What? Why?

( Has she done something again? Her jokes aren't that bad!

... probably! )

[ Ten seconds ago she would have joked maybe people just came for the food (it's the best smelling meal the cafeteria's had to offer since they boarded over a month ago).

Instead, her lips press down and she shakes head, looking sheepish all of a sudden. ]

... Maybe it wasn't a good time.

[ It's Thanksgiving and everyone's in better spirits than they have been in a while. Dampening anyone's spirits, especially Collette's, is not what she intends to do tonight. ]

( She's too tired to be guessing at what Kate means, or to make the coherent connections she might usually. So it's little more than the continued look of confusion on her face. )

Kate, did I do something wrong?

( Betraying that she just doesn't understand what's been happening. )

No.

[ While she knows she can't make Collette believe her words, she goes on: ]

I don't want to ruin your night.

( She's not getting it any more than earlier. )

I don't get it. How would you ruin my anything? Oh man, unless you're going to tell me to do all the dishes.

( She pulls a not so mock horrified face. )

I'll be up straight through half of tomorrow!

[ She doesn't think Collette's forgotten, but now she's not certain she wants to bring it up this instant and make the atmosphere any more tense or confusing as it is.

Her joke does earn a tiny smile, though. ]

Not if everyone pitches in.

[ She'll boot people into cleaning up. ]

I...

( No, but she's tired enough to miss the connection right there to make. She shakes her head, breathes out in a huff of amusement. )

We've got a few folks who said they would. They're probably back in the kitchens now... it's so weird, not being able to use much water for any of this!

I wonder what the point of the sinks are, then.

[ She made the mistake of turning on one of the faucets once. It sounds like a ghost got itself jammed in there.

And then, out of nowhere, she's reminded on something Gil told her. ]

You feeling okay these days? Gil said you'd been sick a while back.

One of the unsolved mysteries... though the ones in the bedrooms at least get water. Then again, I think they're the ones who're supposed to, and it does shut off after a little if you forget to turn it off again...

( Design mysteries of moon base stations! Kate's question draws Collette's attention back to her, and she smiles. It's weird to hear Gil had said anything, but he's a worry, and it hadn't been a secret. It'd been bad timing, but that was about all. )

Yeah, I'm fine! It was just food poisoning, I ate something bad. After a day and uh... some upchucking, things were okay! It wasn't contagious or anything, and it's not why I moved out, so it's nothing to worry about!

[ Her eyes widen a touch. Gil never mentioned anything to her about Collette moving out of their sleeping quarters. ]

Moved out?

I needed a little more space than we had.

( She has the simple answer down to pat now. Admitting to nightmares that started with the zombies, how she'd wake up screaming and how it started feeling like it's own stifling guilt party knowing that how she was, without being able to control it, would make it worse on those she lived with.

So she's on her own, and it's not perfect, but it's slowly been getting better. )

[ Perhaps she no longer has the right to inquire into Collette's personal life, having been out of it for so long.

But it's difficult to walk away from someone she's come to care about and rather than build more tension, she opts to stay. ]

Everything alright, then?

( Collette hesitates. She has a decision to make, and it has the easy way -- gloss over everything -- or the harder, riskier way.

Does she trust Kate enough to try the chancy way, where there's more room for rejection? )

I... I'd started having a lot of nightmares. The kind you wake up from screaming, stuff like that.

[ She dons a more sympathetic expression, her voice hushed as she speaks.

She doesn't appear to be surprised by what Collette's told her. In broken sleep she finds herself drenched cold sweat once in a while. ]

It's been rough since we got here.

[ Before they boarded. ]

Anything in particular in your nightmares?

Martin's sister. Guys from home. Um... things that could happen to me, if I weren't careful.

( The memory of burning, too, but that's not anything she lingers on. It's never worth it. )

Have I told you about what a nothlit is, before?

Martin's sister?

[ With their last conversation already at the front of her mind, it only takes her a second to piece together what Collette's saying. ]

No.

Back in June, I think, wasn't it? The person who attacked all those people, with the monster hat on her head?

( She keeps her voice low, not wanting to carry in the cafeteria. )

Being nothlit means being stuck. When you're in a morph for over two hours, you're that way forever. You can't come back. And you might get stuck coming out, between your morph and yourself, if you wait too long.

( One might not even survive.

Either way, the morphing -- to a degree -- alludes to the horror of the zombies and bodies found during the opening of the ag wing. )

[ It all begins to fall in place, Nightcap's connection to a boy Kate had never once considered monitoring until he disappeared.

But she puts it aside for later, a story she'll need to hear from both sides in this case. ]

You worry about it? Being stuck.

All it takes is judging my time wrong once.

( She fiddles with her shirt, turning the edge inside out. )

I mean, I don't worry about it much, I have a great sense of time! I just... I don't know, with those things at the start of the month, it was like...

( All the worst sorts of possibilities, right there. )

[ She nods. ]

It's not uncommon.

[ Wartime plays tricks on the mind when there are constant stresses present. If it's not whether they'll have a roof over their head or food to eat, it's the ever present threat of bombs, or people they can't save. The things that eat one up from the inside in the dead hours of the night, make their way into thoughts during the day, and penetrates what are supposed to be pleasant and undisturbed dreams. ]

Living like this will take its toll.

At least it's in the open for us. I mean, the last time, the jerks we were fighting against wanted us dead, even before we were actually fighting against them. Talk about messed up!

( There's a lot of ways to find hell in a warzone. Like finding it in your life when you hadn't known it was there. )

That's war.

[ Although "messed up" only scratches the surface of it. ]

How's sleeping these days?

That was more judgemental jerks, but yeah, war's pretty full of those, too!

( A species that will kill you for being disabled isn't precisely the definition of war, as far as she knew. She smiles at the question, looking a little -- happy and glowy and almost out of place. )

It's better!

( And it is. Admitting to all the whys is complicated. Admitting to one alone will sound ridiculous -- it helps when she doesn't sleep feeling isolated and alone. How's that supposed to make sense? )

Good to hear.

[ She pauses, looking off toward the sinks where the dishes are being piled for cleaning before her gaze drifts back to Collette. ]

... I'm sorry for not checking in on you sooner.

It's not like you had to... I mean, I didn't check in on you either, right?

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in which i attempted to tag with gil

double the gilbert in this game, everything implodes

twice the teasing! the tears! the useless!

one for oz, one for alice, cover all their ducks at once!

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