milliways_bar | (no subject)

Current Mood: horrified

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Rae had been thinking about making pie. Apparently, though it is still early June in Independencia, it is Liberty Day in the bar. And time differences are no reason not to celebrate! So she had gone down to the kitchen, thinking about having a few pies ready to sell around lunchtime.

The problem is, a foul stench billows forth when she opens the fridge door to get the butter, and the bulk of the room inside the fridge is being taken up by a hulking great mass inside a plastic tarp that Rae is sure wasn't there a few days ago. Oh gods, the smell is overwhelming.

Against her better instincts, Rae gingerly maneuvers the edge of the tarp so she can see what's within...

It's a moment later, when she recognizes that the cloudy bulb set into the side of the mass nearest her is an eye, that she lets out a shriek and flails back into the kitchen counter island, dropping the metal mixing bowl to the floor with a loud clang.

(ooc: Disappearing for picnic-making, picnic-having, and eventual fireworks-watching! Will be back late tonight to pick up any and all tags! <333)

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Hannibal enters the kitchen just in time to pick up the bowl from the floor as it rolls towards him and ends up in front of his feet.

"I see you've found our new friend."

Kate re-enters the kitchen at the sound of screaming, her sleeves rolled up and her hands turned cinnamon from the stain of spices. She winces, pressing the back of her hand to her nose — lordy, that smell — and approaches to see if Rae is all right.

"Tea or bourbon?"

For context, she gestures over to one of the stoves. Aside a large pot she'd been using to sterilize canning jars is an open bottle of bourbon and a freshly brewed pot of tea.

To calm the nerves, you see.

Ellen had been looking for a card to pin to the notice board, the better to find someone who could help her make an identification. The scream brings her running.

"What's wrong?"

Hank runs in at the screaming and slides to a halt, not quite losing his balance on the kitchen tile.

"Are you okay?" He asks looking around and taking in the situation. "What is that?"

Oh, hey! Autor knows that shrill squawker!

Which means of course that he jogs towards the kitchen--and has to stop long before he gets there when Eau de silure-mort hits him. After some gagging and the application of a handkerchief to his nose, he strolls into the kitchen.

"Oh, good," he says, checking her over and then following her gaze to the hunk of ugly. "Unlike that thing, you don't appear to be dead."

Sunshine has her face turned away, her mouth and nose covered with one hand, as the other arm is held tight against her stomach. The shock lasted mere moments, but the horrified disgust (and the smell that has likely permeated everything in the fridge) remains.

Sunshine leans against the island counter-top, hand covering her nose and mouth, with her eyes mostly closed. She can't even look in the direction of the fridge.

Despite the friendly presence, it's a while before she can answer.

"Bourbon, please." Her voice is croak. She hopes maybe the alcohol will burn the smell out of her nose and mouth.

The mixing bowl rolls over the floor, aimlessly, while Rae holds a hand over her nose and mouth in horrified disgust, clutching her other arm against her stomach. She can't look in the direction of the wide-open fridge.

A cloudy, fishy eye gleams balefully from amid the folds of the tarp within the fridge.

Sunshine is faaaar away from the wide-open fridge, one arm hugged against her abdomen, the other hand covering her nose and mouth. Her eyes are shut tight.

"I... I don't know! It was in the fridge!"

"Well-deduced, you," she croaks, pale behind the hand covering her nose and mouth. Rae can't even look in the direction of the wide-open fridge, where the cloudy-eyed head glares balefully out into the room.

And now Autor can't decide whether or not to poke at the thing with the scalpel he carries in his pocket, or help lead his friend away.

He sighs--you don't know the sacrifice I'm making for you, Rae--and gingerly steps around the considerable mess to offer her his handkerchief, and his other hand. "Let's go."

It's better for all involved. Poking dead things in fridges with scalpels will only lead with some squeamish baker being violently ill in the sink.

Still stricken in horrified disgust by the stench and the sudden shock of seeing the thing, Rae takes his hand.

Kate gets to it without any further prompting. In short order, she's holding out a tumbler of bourbon, and resting a gentle hand on Rae's shoulder.

"You all right, sweetheart?"

Sunshine accepts the tumbler blindly, taking a gulp despite how her eyes water at the burn.

"....What... What is that, in the fridge?" she asks, still not looking in its direction.

Autor draws the handkerchief back to his face and squeezes her fingers. He leads her around the island--as far away from the fridge as they can get--and through the door to the outside.

Edited 2013-07-05 05:52 (UTC)

"I'm not rightly sure myself. Found it earlier when I was huntin' for peaches, an' nearly had the vapors."

She keeps a gentle hand placed between Rae's shoulder blades, thumb moving slowly.

"Looks like some sorta fish. Or dinosaur."

Beat.

"Pro'ly a dinosaur fish."

The afternoon sun is shining, and there is a breeze, smelling of trees and things from the garden, and sun-warmed earth.

Nothing at all like a decapitated head of... whatever that was.

Sunshine makes a sudden, involuntary sound, somewhere between a cough and a forceful wheeze, expelling the tainted air from her lungs so it might be replaced with something more wholesome.

Autor's own cough follows as he lowers his handkerchief, but he still looks to her sharply. "Would water help?" he rasps, shielding his eyes from the light.

He'll not bring up that the odor may have sunk into their skin by now.

She's careful to keep her breathing steady - though the smell isn't helping. Rae still looks rather green around the gills.

"...It's... a decapitated head of... why the lurid, multicolored hells in the fridge of all places?!" This makes no sense! There is not enough tea or bourbon in the worlds, Kate.

"I was going to make pie."

Sunshine holds both her arms across her abdomen, breathing through her mouth, still looking pale - the phrase 'green about the gills' comes to mind - and nods.

"...Thanks."

Frowning at her as Autor takes his sylladex out of his pocket, he decides to get his water from his camping backpack, not his food bag--for obvious reasons.

"Lo, thus by day my limbs, by night my mind, for thee and for myself, no quiet find,*" he says quietly, and rustles around in the bag for two of his three plastic water bottles. And hey, why not soak a portion of his towel with the third.

"Here," he says, offering her the drink and the makeshift rag.

*Shakespeare, Sonnet 27

She accepts the water and the cool, damp towel with a shaky smile of thanks. Drinking comes first, to wash the lingering taste-smell away, followed by the towel being used to cool her clammy face and neck.

"...Handy thing, that," she murmurs, nodding to the sylladex. Not touching the head in the fridge with a ten-foot conversational pole.

"It... is," Autor says, hesitating as he glances at the book in his hand. "Strangely enough, not many people ask about it."

"They're not desperately trying to distance themselves from the idea of a roughly-decapitated giant fish head shoved in next to the milk and eggs and butter," she replies, resting the cool towel over her eyelids.

"What was that about your limbs and mind finding no quiet?"

"Fair enough," Autor says, and takes a long pull from his water bottle. He carefully withdraws it from his lips at her question, so he doesn't choke.

"Oh, um, that," Autor says, and raises the leather book in a salute to hide the barest hint of a flush. "That is the final couplet of Shakespeare's sonnet twenty-seven. One translation of the piece is that a person who works all day because of someone they admire cannot sleep because their 'jewel' invades their thoughts at night."

He is not about to mention the line about zealous pilgrimages.

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