[Open] Farming Club Shenanigans

[nedofpies]

Who: The Farming Club! Also open to anyone who wants to come by and harass them.
What: Agricultural avengers assembling to till some soil, plant some crops, water the ones they've already got, and converse amongst themselves in a lively fashion.
Where: A large patch of open space between House 11 and the edge of the woods.
When: Day 79-81 (please indicate which day in the thread header!)

Ned's not really one for leadership, but it isn't quite so daunting when he knows he's just acting as a kind of deputy. Erik was the one who said he should get everyone together, and so get everyone together he shall. He put out a message on the network the previous evening, naming a time and place and politely (and a little awkwardly) requesting that everyone whose name is on that trusty list for farming duties show up to help get some more things planted.

They won't be able to accomplish it in one day. Some things will need to go in other places with different soil types (according to Lydia, anyway), and some things will need to wait for the greenhouse to be built. But in the meantime there are plenty of things to be done. Grass needs to be cleared, to give them a larger plot to plant in. Someone mentioned irrigation systems. He thinks there are other things - ways of regulating sun and shade, of keeping the crops safe from birds or other dangers. He hopes he'll have enough willing hands to help do them.

Ned's brought all the tools he can find - shovels, trowels, gloves, seeds, and assorted other items. He has also set up a wobbly table that he found in the church basement, with a few pitchers of cold lemonade and a dozen or so glasses on top. There is a social component to this too, he knows. It's part of all of them working together, against the people who brought them here, looking into a future in which they aren't starving and at one another's throats, but dependent on one another to keep all this going.

Comments

[nedofpies]

It makes sense to Ned that superior technology, without understanding, would seem like sorcery to the people Wallie is talking about. When the people who are keeping them here changed them into monsters, when they interfered with people like Elizabeth's powers so that she couldn't escape, it seemed like magic, to him and to others. But he believes it is only because they lack the knowledge and technology to understand how the scientists are accomplishing it. He thinks about that term, 'the scientists', that he uses sometime to mean whoever is keeping them captive. He could as easily substitute in 'sorcerers' or 'gods' and mean much the same.

Interesting the way Wallie says he couldn't have killed the sorcerers. Does he mean that he lacked the skills, or that he morally would never do such a thing? Ned isn't really sure. Still, he feels a bit easier for it. He knows killers, here. Is one, himself. But it's nonetheless reassuring to him that Wallie wanted peace, made peace instead. When he comes to the end of his story Ned looks up to give him a wry, lopsided smile.

"None of us do."

Whatever force had brought him here was stronger, then, than whatever protection he might have been given by the grateful gods and inhabitants of, as he called it, the World. It doesn't surprise Ned. They can pull in people from other universes, from across time. If they wanted someone they took them, no matter what.

"We've all had our lives disrupted," Ned continues, but he adds, "though I suppose some of us had less to leave behind." Ned thinks that he must miss his wife, and the world where he played such an instrumental role to political stability. It was a bit different for an unattached piemaker.

[reluctantsword]

"Yeah." Wallie sighs again, shaking his head. "I can't claim to be the only one upset about that. Not fair of me." He flashes a smile but his heart isn't in it, and it's more than a little bittersweet. "You probably have things you've left behind, yourself. We all do."

What's less? Anything at all is hard to have torn away from you. Sometimes he thinks of little Vixi, and wonders how much bigger he's grown since Wallie's left.

"What about you?"

[nedofpies]

"Not really," Ned says. He thinks of Digby with a pang of sadness, but other than him, what did Ned's life really have going for it? His shop? Was that all his life had been but silence and isolation, exhaustion and a kind of hopelessness that he had gotten so used to that he didn't see it any longer, even when it was wrapped around him like a shroud? His small smile is rueful and he shrugs. It's easier to see how empty his life before had been, now that it is starting to fill.

"My story's nowhere near as exciting as yours. No gods or swordsmen or wars with sorcerers. Just owned a little pie shop. Lived with my dog. All very simple. Wouldn't make a good summer movie."

Of course, if Wallie has been here as long as he said, chances are he knows it's a bit more complicated than all that. Then again, Ned hadn't spoken to him at the time: perhaps he hadn't heard? It seems a longshot, but not entirely impossible.

"If it weren't for the cameras and the food shortage and people disappearing and getting experimented on, I might even like it better here."

He knows it's perhaps a worrying thing to admit, but perhaps Wallie will understand, as someone who already went from one life in one world to a different one in another.

[reluctantsword]

"That," Wallie points out, "is how the summer movies start."

He pauses for a moment, because his hair is coming down and he has to pause to clip it back into his ponytail. By this point in his new body, it's almost second nature.

"I... understand, though. I was never unhappy in Edmonton, but I was... unattached. The World is far from perfect, but I found some roots I'd never had before." He shrugs. "There are easier places to be happy, but who am I to judge?"

[nedofpies]

"Unattached," Ned repeats, bending to toss aside a troublesome rock. "That's a good word for it."

In his case, that un-attachment had been deliberately crafted. But it's impossible to stay that way, here, and now that he's had a taste of attachment, he doesn't think he can go back to the old way. He's putting down roots here; literally, with all this planting, all his little plans for making this place more liveable, and figuratively, in his relationships with the people around him. Is it wise?

He catches himself in a reverie, not saying anything or looking at Wallie, realizes he's being rude.

"Even if it is how they start, I don't think I'd make a very good protagonist."

[reluctantsword]

Wallie glances at Ned, pausing.

"That's not how I understand it," he says; his tone is pointed but not unkind. "I do listen to the network, at least some of the time."

He hadn't answered Ned's 'coming-out' if only because he didn't know how to respond. He doesn't like these sorts of supernatural situations, remains sceptical that it can even be possible.

"Incidentally, I'm not sure what would happen if you touch me, but I'm not eager to find out, either."

[nedofpies]

Ah. Well, that clears that up. Ned laughs softly, a bit embarrassed, pushes his hair out of his eyes and goes back to digging, at least until Wallie says what he does about them touching. He has a very good point; his aliveness situation is complicated, and Ned doesn't like or trust complicated.

"I'm not sure, either." He meets Wallie's eyes, promising gravely, "I'll make sure neither of us find out." The onus of preventing contact should be on him, since he's the one with the freaky powers. It's possible that nothing would happen. But it's also possible that a single touch from him would kill Wallie, instantly and irrevocably. It's a forceful, extremely unpleasant reminder of just how dangerous he is.

"You don't have to worry. I'm good at making sure that kind of thing doesn't happen. Uh, normally." Laura had been an exception, an extraordinary circumstance. He doesn't intend to make another mistake like that again.

[reluctantsword]

"I won't offer you any hugs," Wallie suggests. As far as he's concerned, the responsibility is as much on him. Not touching is sort of a two-way street, after all. "If we're lucky we won't have to find out what would happen."

He buries his shovel in the ground again, returning to his labour while he talks. "It's a bit hard to swallow, you know, that sort of story. I think the only reason I can accept it at all is because, well, what happened to me was probably just as weird. I still don't know how to take the vampires and things we have around here."

[nedofpies]

"Every time I think I've hit the 'nothing can surprise me anymore' threshold, this place proves me wrong."

Ned doesn't mind Wallie's skepticism. In fact, it's rather reassuring. That kind of outlook, which finds his very existence to be improbably, has been instrumentally useful to him over the years. He's had more than his fair share of near-misses, all of which did not become complete catastrophes only because the truth was too unimaginable to the witnesses. The case with Laura had been the exception: it had been too public, the process of cause and effect too public, to dismiss as anything else the way he normally would.

"I wouldn't believe in vampires either, if it weren't for the evidence of my own eyes." And neck, he thinks, wryly. "Or psychics or any of the rest of it. But there are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, etcetera."

Perhaps if he had a chance to see Ned's power for himself, Wallie would believe it more easily. But Ned isn't really in the habit of wandering around giving demonstrations. He's still convinced that people only accept what he can do because they don't think about it hard enough, and have never seen it in action. He doesn't intend to jeopardize that.

Ned spots a few of the newcomers milling around, looking as if they need direction. He sets his shovel aside and looks at Wallie. He's glad to have met him, spoken to him. Now, despite his imposing frame and appearance, Ned doesn't feel that same uneasiness when he looks at him. Wonderful what a little chat can do.

"I'm gonna go... pretend I know something about leadership and help those people, but it was good to meet you, Wallie." In lieu of the traditional parting handshake Ned waves again, this time with a bit of a smile quirking the corner of his mouth.