Just a Little Bent

[andhiswife]

As far as Darrow antics go, this one might top the list for bloody eeriness. At the cottage, they can almost pretend nothing's happened. Between the garden, the chickens, and the staples she always keeps well-stocked, there's no immediate threat of starvation. The power hasn't failed yet, but even if it does, she thinks they'll be able to work around it — neither she nor Anne are exactly accustomed to being without it anymore, but that doesn't mean they've forgotten how to get by.

And surely things will go back to normal sooner or later. They always do, and she refuses to believe that—that whatever this is might be special in that regard.

But it's still unsettling. Even though it only seems to be the locals who have vanished, there were always far more of them than anyone else, and never has she felt the difference so keenly. Whole blocks are abandoned, shops either permanently shuttered or, more often, left unmanned mid-shift: the lights still on, but no one at home. But what she hates most are the littler signs of lives abruptly interrupted. A lone briefcase sitting at a bus stop; half-drunk beverages glued to their coasters by dried condensation; shopping carts left idle halfway down an aisle.

Regan is taking it especially hard, and no wonder.

It would be easier to avoid town entirely, and she'd be lying if she said she wasn't tempted. But she can't abide the thought of hiding out in the countryside when there are still plenty of people who need help. Not when her hands still remember how to feed a Village.

So she's stolen a bakery. Or, well... borrowed. She's borrowing a bakery.

It hadn't been hard to find. Even cleaning it up hadn't been too much of a challenge: people had already made off with the displays' contents, so there was little rotten food to be dealt with. Obviously there were no fresh ingredients worth salvaging, but things like flour, baking soda, and spices don't go bad overnight. There's plenty to start with, at least.

Getting the word out had been the bigger challenge. She's texted everyone she can, and Saoirse has made some very colorful signage to post in the bakery windows and in other places around the city, letting people know that there are fresh-baked goods available. She can't imagine charging for any of it, but after the first few hours (and some discussion with Anne), she'd added some signage suggesting that she wouldn't question where any raw ingredients might have come from, if people wanted to bring some.

It's mid-afternoon when she slides two more trays of muffins into the oven, sets a timer on her phone, and then steps out of the kitchen for some slightly cooler air. Her hair is falling out of its bun and she's probably a mess, but it's satisfying to see people eating something she made: something fresh and good that hasn't come from a bloody can.

[ooc: a mini-gathering for the vanishing NPC plot! If your pup knows Greta, you can assume they've received a text; otherwise, there's plenty of signage letting people know there's still one functioning bakery in town.]

Comments

[selkiesaoirse]

"My mum's the best baker in the whole city!" Saoirse declares to a tall ginger lady — John and Martin's friend, she thinks. She remembers her from when they were small, lingering at the edges the way Anne does — who's picking up a fresh loaf of bread in exchange for a plastic jug of milk that hasn't gone off yet.

"Oh," she says, followed by, "Oh? Good. For her." She says it awkwardly, but sincerely, and Saoirse thinks that maybe she's not really used to talking to kids.

"Mhm!" She accepts jug and thanks her with a curtsy of her colorful skirt, then brings it inside to Greta. "Mum! A lady brought milk! She must've read your sign!" The jug is slightly sweaty from the walk from wherever it'd come from to here, but she holds it tightly with both hands on the handle so she doesn't drop it.

[andhiswife]

"Real milk?" Greta replies, staring at the jug in surprise. There hasn't been much of that to go around, and she's been getting by with condensed milk and water, for the most part. She supposes it's not impossible, though, and she nudges over a stool that Saoirse might set the jug on for a moment. "Have you checked it?" No one's offered them anything outright spoiled, but it doesn't look as if the jug has been opened at all, yet. It could go either way.

[selkiesaoirse]

Saoirse twists her precious bundle in her hands so she can read the printed date. Her eyes light up. "It's for today! But it hasn't been opened yet, so I bet it's still good, right?" She's fairly familiar with expiry dates on things, but she wants to verify with Greta, who is, frankly, the smarter of the two when it comes to cooking and all things ingredients.

[andhiswife]

Greta hums, tentatively optimistic but not quite willing to bank on anything. "Open it up and give it a sniff," she advises. She's elbow-deep in half-scrubbed pans, otherwise she'd check it herself, but it's not as if it takes a connoisseur to recognize when milk smells off.

[selkiesaoirse]

Saoirse sets the jug on the floor and kneels beside it. It takes a moment to twist the cap; the seal hasn't even been broken, after all. But she gets it open, and then lowers her face to the opening so she can take a sniff. She waits a moment, then sniffs again.

"It smells like milk!" she assures excitedly. "That's good, right? Bad milk smells bad, but this doesn't smell bad at all."

[andhiswife]

"That is very good," Greta replies. "You should probably have yourself a glass before we use it for anything else." She doesn't think this will drag on until malnourishment becomes an issue, but she'd sooner see Saoirse take advantage of some unspoiled milk than pour it into recipes that can do without.

She stops to think for a moment, trying to remember if this place even has cups that aren't of the measuring kind, before remembering that there's a coffee machine out front. It's nothing fancy — she imagines being able to offer guests something was their only real goal there, as opposed to competing with Ahab's in earnest — but it means there ought to be some disposable paper cups out there. "Check out front, by the coffee machine; there ought to be some cups, I think."

[selkiesaoirse]

Saoirse nods, and she re-caps the milk before dashing out for one of the cups. There are a couple that had been set upright, like someone had grabbed it to fill with coffee and just sort of walked away. That's sort of what happened, she supposes. She leaves those there, though, and grabs one from the stack. She returns a moment later, then carefully pours some milk into it — slowly, so she doesn't spill or send the cup flying.

"Maybe, when this is all better, we could get a cow," she says, in a sort of thoughtful way. "Then we can have milk all the time."

[andhiswife]

"A cow?" Greta echoes, eyebrows ticking upwards. Her most recent memories of dealing with a cow are notable, if not entirely fond, and she shakes her head a little as she scrubs out a mixing bowl. "And where would we keep it?" she asks. "Might get a bit cramped in the chicken coop."

She almost adds that a goat might be easier, except she isn't sure that's true, when all is said and done (goats might be smaller, but they're less biddable and more prone to escapes, from what she's seen), and she doesn't necessarily want Saoirse to think she's considering it that seriously. The real issue is less to do with housing, anyway, and more to do with the fact that you have to breed them to get milk, which means an adorable calf that Saoirse would probably be loathe to part with, which means, in the long run, bloody infinite cows.

[selkiesaoirse]

"We could make a house for it!" she declares. She sips the milk, still knelt there on the floor, then hums and takes a bigger gulp. "Just in cow-size instead of in chicken-size." She seems proud of her deductive reasoning, and she brings the jug over to Greta and places it on the counter beside her. Then she grabs her cup and sips from it again. "You're so clever, I'll bet we could figure it out."

[andhiswife]

"Flattery will get you nowhere," Greta says drily, giving Saoirse a mild but pointed look. They'd both assisted in building the little workshop before repurposing it as a chicken coop, but Thomas had been running that particular show. All they'd had to do was follow his directions, not figure things out on their own. A barn might be less complicated, in some respects — no need to run wiring for electricity — but that still doesn't mean it'd be easy.

"Besides, I'm not sure I fancy building a barn from the ground up," she adds. "Even with help."

[selkiesaoirse]

Saoirse gives Greta a charming grin when she makes the remark about her flattery. She supposes she had sort of been trying to flatter her, hadn't she? Whoops.

"I suppose it would take a lot of work." She considers it a little more, then says, "D'you think they make them to buy? Like dog houses! But, bigger, of course." She giggles a little, and looks a bit contrite over continuing the conversation. She doesn't want to make Greta cross by talking about it so much... but she is curious, now.

[andhiswife]

"God, probably," Greta replies, her tone suggesting she's never really given it much though, but wouldn't find it surprising. Darrow has always amazed her with its various prefabricated offerings; if you can buy clothing off a rack, perhaps it follows that you could buy a shed, or the easily-assembled pieces of one. "Maybe not a-a cow house, but something more like a garden shed."

[selkiesaoirse]

Saoirse nods like that makes perfect sense. She's seen garden sheds with big barn doors on one side that open up to showcase how large they are on the inside. Until right now, she never would have considered putting a cow in one. But as they talk about it, she realizes she doesn't really know how cows work, entirely.

"Are cows like chickens?" she asks curiously. "Chickens lay eggs all the time, even if there isn't a baby inside. Do cows do that, too, just with milk?" She looks at her curiously, sipping milk and giggling to herself a little as she considers that, once, this came from a cow.

[andhiswife]

"They don't," Greta replies. She minds this line of questioning a bit less, if only because she imagines Saoirse might find the answer a little discouraging. "You need a calf if you want a cow to produce milk. That means you have to get a bull from somewhere — I suppose you could just borrow one, if you knew another farmer — and then figure out what to do with the calves once they've grown up. Back in the Village, that usually meant sending it off to the butcher before winter set in."

She doesn't intend to be harsh, just honest, and she thinks Saoirse's mature enough to handle it. Really, she just wants to make sure that Saoirse doesn't get it into her head that keeping a cow would be as straightforward as keeping chickens, especially if you want milk out of the bargain.

[selkiesaoirse]

"Oh," she says. She's obviously a bit disappointed, but she doesn't so much pout as she does frown a bit. "That sounds like an awful lot of work just for milk," she reasons. "I'm not afraid of work, though," she adds. "But I don't know any farmers for a bull, and I don't think we have enough room for two cows."

She doesn't add that she wouldn't want to see any calves go to the butcher. She knows that's where meat comes from, but it probably would be hard to watch a baby cow born and grow up, just to send it off like that. And if they don't have enough room for two cows, then they definitely don't have enough room for two cows and however many babies cows have.