hazmats | Glowfic Constellation

keep_busy

Annie finds a spoon.

When the stew is an undifferentiated mass of horrible glop she takes a bite.

first-and-final

It tastes strongly of liquorice and faintly of spider. The texture is unappealing but more or less palatable.

(Haul. Haul. Haul.)

keep_busy

Right then. She will save the honey for later, she has no idea how long they'll be down here. She eats most of the pot of liquorice stew. ...She will save most of the honey for later and have one spoonful now. With a separate spoon that has no spider on it.

first-and-final

Stalas pauses in his hauling to ask, "Spider stew: improvement on raw spider?"

keep_busy

"Yeah, lots better. Helped that I found some sort of anise spice. And I found honey! Honey keeps forever. I might check other houses for it now I know what its texture's like."

first-and-final

"Good luck!"

Haul, haul, haul.

keep_busy

Annie checks other houses for honey and spices.

first-and-final

She finds three more jars of honey and one of anise.

Stalas hauls water.

keep_busy

Okay, if there are a total of four jars of honey she's going to consolidate them and eat whatever she can't fit into two jars, two being the number of coat pockets she has. ...She will do this in the "morning" so she doesn't have to eat spider for breakfast, no matter how much she wants to do it right now.

Annie finds the least horrible bed available and tells Stalas where it is and lays out her coat on it and lies down.

And has a long, awful cry, which she tries to keep subdued but has some trouble with because she is stone deaf and crying is not a form of language.

first-and-final

Stalas tries not to pay too much attention to the crying, on the principle that Annie deserves her privacy. He finally finishes hauling water, washes his clothes, cleans all his armour and weapons, finds that his clothes are still horrifyingly filthy, washes them a second time, takes his long-awaited bath, washes his clothes again, puts them on very reluctantly, and then decides that Annie ought to be able to have a bath too if she likes and hauls enough water out of the river that she will have this option available when she wakes up.

...And then he cleans his armour and weapons again. And contemplates washing his clothes again but decides that at this point it wouldn't gain him anything and he should instead try to see if he can detect any signs nearby that indicate the availability of a more appetizing meal than filet of spider.

He finds an unpleasantly populous spider nest, where all of the spiders are so tainted he can't even filet them and just disintegrates them completely on contact; and in the remains of the spider nest he finds several nug skeletons and Branka's expedition journal. He brings the book back across the river, reads it in front of the house where Annie is sleeping, then crosses the river again and pokes around the vicinity of the spider nest until he finds a live nug and a mushroom patch. Nug and mushrooms are brought to the house for Annie to have for breakfast.

It's been a while since his last breath of lyrium, but he doesn't feel like he's starting to run down. Weird. Still, they should look for lyrium first thing when next they set out.

keep_busy

Annie wakes up, detects Stalas, and goes over to him and says, "Hi. Anything interesting happen while I was asleep?"

first-and-final

"I found a nug! And Branka's expedition journal. But you might be more excited about the nug."

keep_busy

"I'm kind of excited about the nug! Maybe it'll go well with anise too." She does her best to disassemble the nug, since she can't seem to autofilet it, and then she roasts it in the oven in an anise honey glaze sort of thing. "Is the journal helpful? Why would it be lying around?"

first-and-final

The nug is a small furless mammal that looks vaguely like a tapir-nosed rabbit. On the whole, far more promising than filet of spider.

"Extremely helpful," says Stalas. "She left the book because it's kind of enormous to haul around, she was running out of ink to write in it with, and she wanted to abandon nonessentials for the next leg of the trip."

keep_busy

"Makes sense. What helpful contents did it have?"

first-and-final

"Well, it described the projected route and intended destination of the next leg of the trip. Bownammar, former headquarters of the Legion of the Dead."

keep_busy

"The Legion of the Dead?"

first-and-final

"How to explain... so, battling darkspawn is not an occupation with a high life expectancy, but somebody has to do it. The Legion of the Dead hold their own funerals when they join up, and thereafter can fight without fear, at least in theory. In practice I'm sure it's more complicated than that."

keep_busy

"Ah. How long will it take to get there?"

first-and-final

"They expected a week and a half. We might be faster or slower, depending how many darkspawn are between us and it."

keep_busy

Nod.

"Um, do you want me to take back the excess warmth thing now you've had your bath."

first-and-final

"Yeah. I hauled some more water in case you also want a bath," he adds. "But, uh, even combined with the disintegration power, the bath did not turn out to be sufficient to make me stop feeling like a filthy wreck. I had to wash my clothes three times and they're still awful; my armour's not much better."

keep_busy

"Okay."

Tap.

"I suppose I might as well, I won't get a chance for a while. After I eat the nug."

first-and-final

"A reasonable plan. And then I want to find some lyrium, and then we head for Bownammar."

keep_busy