Evasion and Chores - OTA

[najaran]

Who: Naja, her Cards, and whoever she can't avoid.
What: Doing her chores while trying to avoid everyone. Which... is just not going to work.
Where: Mostly the Garden Car and kitchen, but all over the place as she gathers laundry and scrubs.
When: After the train AMA till end of month
Warnings: Angst. Angst. Angst. Possible violence/war/PTSD mentions. Death mentions. Possible suicide mentions.




Najaran had a routine, and she could only hide from everyone for so long. Her excuses for not practicing more were the cramped quarters of the train, and her chores. So she had to get back to chores or Goligan and Glorfindel might find creative ways for her to practice somehow without endangering the train. But she really didn't want to see anyone, so she started working super early some days and super late at night other days, trying to avoid anyone who might be looking for her during the day.

She gathered dirty clothes with the help of Eidolon and Gremlin. She had sitting all crunched up in the corner of the Garden Car sorting clothes with Eidolon as Gremlin fetched kindling and scraps for the fire and she grabbed the biggest pot from the kitchen, filling it with water before she left. As she always did. Then she set up her stand over the fire and set the pot on the stand and lit the small fire. Because she kept it small it took forever to heat the water enough, but that was fine. She did the things that should be washed in cold first, using poor Goligan to stir. As usual. Then she hung the first load on the strings she tied up between the far wall and Knight before starting on the next load while that load dried.

Once all the wash was hanging to dry, she left her creatures to watch the fire as she went to the kitchen, scrubbed and refilled the pot then brought it back. She knew more or less how to use the range now, but still preferred to cook in the garden car because Knight didn't have enough room in the Kitchen and besides, this let her be productive while the washing dried. so she tended to the fire and the pot, sending Gremlin and Ediolon to fetch the ingredients and knives and cutting boards and such. She settled into work again when they returned, Knight peeling potatoes, Gremlin cutting the small vegetables that didn't need peeling, Ediolon doing small tasks as he could, and her doing the larger cutting and prep work. She tried to make soup at least twice a week, and enough of it at that for leftovers to last till the next pot, making due with whatever meat she could find in the kitchen, and whatever vegetables. Where she could she tried to make each soup different than the last unless the leftovers went fast.

Once the soup was all packaged up and the cooking scraps fed to whoever wanted them, she and her cards ate, then she took down the wash and folded it. She called Knight back into his card and started returning the clothes to the rooms they belonged to, then set about scrubbing.

Maybe she was working a little harder than usual, but the more she scrubbed... the less time she had to think about the fact that everyone here hated her now...

Comments

[sos_pilot]

After being on the moon for ten years, Della's sleep schedule is kinda wacky. So when others might be in their beds, Della's strolling around, trying to wear herself out. When she catches glimpses of movement in the garden car, she can't help but stick her head in.

"Hey! What's happening in this party?"

[najaran]

"Just doing chores" Najaran said, lifting a shirt she was folding to show her. She studied her friend a moment. "Are you going to yell at me?"

[sos_pilot]

Della blinked rapidly, wondering where that accusation came from. "What? Of course not! C'mon, you know me - usually I'm the one who deserves the yelling."

[najaran]

Yeah, Della just got an impromptu hug. Najaran needed a friend who wasn't going to lecture or scold. She... might have started crying a little.

[sos_pilot]

Della's not going to say no to a hug, but she is going to be very confused. She's quick to put her arms around Najaran and pat her back gently. "Sounds like I might have missed something...?"

[najaran]

"Everyone has been so mad at me lately. All the time. Eva even tried to tell me I'm not allowed to go on missions. Someone else threatened to magic me, and I was even challenged to a fight." She was shaking. "I want to go home," she whispered into Della's shoulder.

[sos_pilot]

Hmmm. Perhaps it was a case of "we don't want you in danger, so stay back" sort of deal? But Narajran seemed way too upset to hear that kind of logic now, so Della put that on the back-burner for now to comfort the girl. "There, there... I know, I want to go home too. But I promise, I'm not mad at you. I know you always try your hardest, and you always do what you think is right."

[najaran]

She sniffled. "Thank you," she mumbled.

[sos_pilot]

"Do you wanna talk about any of it?" Della offered, not judging either way.

Super late at night

[so_dark_a_road]

Curufin walked into the Garden Carriage, carrying his flute and looking for a peaceful place to practice his music. He often wandered the train during the night, having chronic insomnia. Also, being of the Elvish race, he didn't have as much need for sleep as most mortals did. He sometimes did chores at this time of night, but not tonight! And last reason, he had an intuition that Najaran was awake and out of her cabin.

He found her sorting laundry with Eidolon while her other creatures assisted with various tasks. He blinked in surprise to see the laundry being washed in a pot and hung on clotheslines. Najaran was obviously going out of her way to avoid others, if she wasn't willing to use the train's laundry facilities.

"Are you helping Red Team with their chores this month?" he asked. Red was assigned to laundry and Orange to cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms.

Re: Super late at night

[najaran]

She glanced over at him then went back to her washing, shoulders tighter than they had been before he spoke. "I try to do all the chores every month," she said trying to shrug, but there was so much tension in her now that the motion wasn't strong.

"Are you going to yell at me too?" she asked quietly.

[so_dark_a_road]

"That's very generous of you," he answered. "No one's crazy about chores, and your efforts must make it easier for all the teams. Can I help with the laundry?"

He could see the tension in her shoulders. He gave her an empathetic look.

"No, I'm not going to yell at you. Far from it. You seemed both passionate and very upset during the meeting, and I was worried about you. Still am. But also, I admire you for your strong convictions."

[najaran]

Her shoulders relaxed when he said he wasn't going to yell at her, so she nodded at his earlier question.

"It's not generous. I can't really practice on the train" and didn't want to "so I need to be doing something useful. Besides, Knight and the others get bored being cooped up in their Cards all the time."

She grabbed a clip and moved to hanging to leave him room to work.

[so_dark_a_road]

He really wasn't going to yell at her, and he was concerned for her. It wasn't easy to hold a view in opposition to another person, or more than one other person, and try to express it and make it clear that you had important reasons for holding your own views.

"Okay, chores do give a person a chance to be active in ways that might matter. And your creatures obviously need to get out of their Cards and get some activity in."

He started washing clothes, scrubbing them in the pot and handing them to her to hang up to dry.

"What's your impression of what happened at the meeting?" he asked her, softly.

[najaran]

She took the shirt he handed her, frowning. "You promised not to scold," she reminded him before considering his answer as she hung the shirt, and reached for the next.

"I think very few of us are used to working with each other," she said finally, still frowning thoughtfully.

"When I wound up with Alta's team..." she considered, hung that shirt then considered the next one. "We had no clue how to work together at first. We figured it out pretty quick compared to how long we've been here but..." she hug the shirt, taking a deep breath as she thought through how to say what she wanted to say. "Not counting Goligan and my cards since they stuck with me.... There were just a few of us. Me, Alta, Joaquin, and Ganz. I won't lie, it was a disaster at first. Alta swapped out my cards for fakes because she didn't trust me not to turn on her and lied about her gun.Ganz couldn't do much unless he was drunk, Joaquin used us as test subjects for his experiments and we made a lot of stupid mistakes."

"We?" Goligan asked dryly from where she had left him leaned.

"Fine, I made a lot of stupid mistakes. One of them was relly bad actually," she admitted, rubbing the back of her head before going back to hanging cloths.

"But we learned." She shrugged a bit. "At first we didn't trust each other at all. Which made sense. I was only with them because Alta broke me out of jail and I was afraid of what would happen when the guards woke up if I stayed. Ganz didn't say why he was there, though I figured out some of it, I think. Alta pout the team together, but knew we weren't there because we liked her. I don't think the others knew her more than a week or two before we met her."

She hung the next shirt and fussed with getting it to hang perfectly.

"But at the end..." she tipped her head back. "At the end we had each other's backs. When Dumdum and his mercenaries showed up and the battle got all sorts of messy and we saw what we were really up against and the darkness took Kigi..." she swallowed and closed her eyes. "The mercenaries backed down, most of them fled. Alta, Joaquin, and Ganz..."

She took a deep breath then let go of the shirt, keeping her back to him as she spoke, eyes still closed, standing like she was back there, ready to fight.

"They knew I didn't have a chance. Believe me, Joaquin made it very clear I had no hope with my Book as it was. And no time to change it. And they all knew how I was with spells. But..." She took a deep breath, hands closing at her sides. "But they didn't tell me to back down because I was going to get myself killed, they didn't try to stop me. Instead they charged in. Any normal person against a Cepter back home... that's just suicide. And Kigi wasn't just any Cepter. She was the last Elf, we were in her Domain, and she was lethal with her bow. She was crazy powerful and at that point the darkness had taken her so far she was more than half just plain crazy. I knew if Alta and the others fought Kigi, they'd die. They knew if I fought her, I'd die. But the thing is..."

She sniffed. Rubbed her nose on her sleeve.

"The thing is we didn't waste time trying to stop each other. We found ways to use our strengths to cover each other instead."

She rubbed her arms lightly. "We won," she whispered, "If any one of us hadn't helped, we'd have all been dead. I wouldn't be here now. No one from my world that you'd want on this train would be. Because we found out why Kigi was fighting. What she was fighting."

She swallowed hard, her voice broke.

"They died," she whispered. "Every last Elf. They died giving their lives to Grandmother Willow to strengthen her. Because she was holding back the Dark Lord. And he was waking. That was what poisoned Kigi. He was breaking free. At the end... she..."

Najaran swallowed hard, shaking harder now, crying. "She gave the last of her life to Grandmother Willow to buy us the time we needed to destroy The Dark Lord. If even one Elf hadn't given their lives, we wouldn't have been there in time, if even one person had been protected and kept safe for their own good the world would have fallen to the Black Cepters, and they'd go to other worlds after that."

"It wasn't any one person that was a hero or whatever stories talk about. one of us were trying to be heroes. Alta and Joaqyun first joined the search to learn, and for Alta also treasure. Ganz to fight. Me, because I had no choice. But once we knew the stakes? It still wasn't about being heroes. It was about helping. That was it. Alta didn't even get any treasure, and she didn't care."

She turned to look at him finally. "I wouldn't try to tell anyone else that they can't give it their all, that they can't try if they think they need to. Because we don't save the world by saving ourselves or each other. We help by helping."

She was almost pleading with him to understand by the end, her skin abnormally pale, for her.

[so_dark_a_road]

"I promised not to scold, and I'll keep my promise," he said, softly. "You're not just my teammate, you're my friend. And if I could not listen to you without judging, I couldn't call myself your friend. Also, I think you're right, most of us have very little experience working collaboratively. And none of us has much experience with problem-solving when there are differing opinions and conflict arises within the group."

He continued to wash clothes while he listened to her story. But when her voice broke and she began to shake and then to cry, he rose from his squatting position beside the makeshift laundry tub and came to her side. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"It seems that your convictions come straight from experience in your world. You and your team learned to get beyond any disagreements in order to support each other in the fight. And you, your team, and your allies won that battle in the end, because you had all learned to give that support. And because some were willing to sacrifice their lives to that end. I understand what you are saying, that this is not about being about being a hero, but about backing each other up, about helping."

When she looked at him with those pleading eyes, he looked back with kindness in his own eyes. "I really do understand, Najaran."

[najaran]

She nodded a bit and closed her eyes, leaning a bit to rest her head on his shoulder.

"I don't know what to do with how everyone treats me here," she said. She had never seen its like before. No one had ever been this flavor of protective over her. Not really. Her father would leave he alone for lengths of time while he tried to find them a place to stay - usually an abandoned building - and most of their time together they'd been on the run. He'd never left her with someone else while it was dangerous, when it was scary he was right there running with her.

Then her Master... he constantly sent her into danger so she'd learn to survive. He trusted that she would; and when she almost didn't, he bandaged her up and the reviewed what had gone wrong and he made her practice more. Just a little before she arrived on the train, even... Her powers had failed her for some reason. She couldn't summon her cards. But when she was challenged to a ranked Battle Royale by a whole mess of other Cepters, all gunning for her.... Gooligan had tried to convince her to stand down but when she refused, he went with her. Her Master? Wished her luck and sent her into the bloodbath, knowing that she would rise to the challenge. That she would survive. And she did.

"That's it, isn't it?" she said quietly. "They don't trust me." she didn't realize how it could be taken, that they didn't trust her to have their backs or that they thought she might turn on them. Her thought was that they didn't trust her to survive. They thought she couldn't do it. So instead of having her back... they were always going to try to hold her back.

[hotheadwarmheart]

Lea wasn't normally up this late, but he'd been trying to work on a surprise gift for Xion which was difficult to do, as when she was awake, she was usually with him. Or else expected him to tell her what he'd been up to when he got back to the room. Thus, he had to find odd times to mess around with the ice cream machines so Xion wouldn't see or question.

He was on his way to do just that when he came across a young woman doing laundry. In the garden car. With a bunch of funky looking monsters hanging around. He just... stared at the scene for a moment before filing it away in the mental drawer with all the other bizarre things he'd seen in his life. All things considered, on a weirdness scale of one to ten, random monsters in the garden car probably only rated about a four at this point, if that, and since they weren't bothering anybody, he intended to return the favor.

One thing he did feel the need to point out though, as he approached the young woman. "We do have washing machines, you know," he said.

[najaran]

She glanced over. Since he wasn't yelling at her, she tried not to tense up. "My friend said he was going to show me, but we keep getting distracted," she said with a shrug. "Besides, I'm not so good with machine things."

[hotheadwarmheart]

"You and a good number of other people on board, apparently," Lea said. "But washing machines are pretty basic. I can show you if you want."

"Though what're you doing laundry this late for anyway? Most people are either in bed already or winding down for the night."

[najaran]

She shrugged. "Got tired of being yelled at, so I figured I'd do it after most people were asleep."

[hotheadwarmheart]

"You mean about the thing at the meeting?", Lea said. He'd witnessed the discussion turned argument- it had been pretty hard to miss-, but as he hadn't been involved with the mission that was the cause of the contention, he'd stayed out of it. "That was a couple days ago. People are still yelling at you about that?"

[najaran]

"Look at where we are? Not like there is a ton else for people to do."

"Plus Lady Najaran has been avoiding people since the train welcomed questions," Goligan put in.

"Doesn't stop him from lecturing me," she muttered, nodding at her cane.

[hotheadwarmheart]

...And now her stick was talking. OK.

"So basically, you don't know and are just assuming people are mad at you," Lea said. "Look, you may not have noticed, but avoiding people is kinda impossible on this train. You'd probably be a lot better off sitting down and talking with the people you think are mad at you one on one. Clear the air, you know?"

[najaran]

"Considering one of them wanted me to fight? No thanks."