Room for Rent: Spacious, Good View [IC]

[Electra]

"Everybody's out," one of the adult women assured Tarrant. She was sooty enough that she probably had personal knowledge of the fact, and her hands and arms looked like they'd been singed in the fire. "We sent a team to go look for scraps inna dead city, and they brought back some big pot things. We made a cooker out of 'em, easier than cooking over open fire. But one was bad, and it all went up, and most of the food, too. Dolly got burned on her face and Nea choked on the smoke and passed out while we was dragging her out. Nobody died, though." She shrugged, seeming to find that a passable outcome. "Can you stop the fire?"

[Fox]

Frowning more than a little at what seemed like a pretty impassive reaction to people getting burns and passing out, Gaian Knight turned toward the building - or what was left of it - and planted his feet. "Yeah," he slowly replied, pebbles swirling in a slow circle around his feet. "That, at least, I can do something about."

He made a motion like pulling something out of the ground, and the ground pulled up - way up, the dirt and stone in a small radius around the building flowing up into the air around the burning building to make a deformed dome, seamless and airtight save for a few small holes in the middle of a shallow depression up top. Gaian Knight dusted off his hands as the dust settled, still frowning. "Didn't want to just crush the thing, and figured it'd take forever to starve. But that'll keep it contained, and when it rains it'll flood and put out anything still smoldering. I'll make sure to take it down and clear the area for rebuilding once it's well and truly safe."

Raising an eyebrow, he turned his head to look at the woman who'd spoken before. "What kind of pot things burn down a building?"

[Electra]

The woman frowned at the question, then made a vague cylindrical shape with her hands. "Put the fire in the bottom pot," she explained, "then stack the water pot on top. Run a chimney out the bottom for air, hots up water fast, y'see? Faster than on the open fire, and not so sooty. The bottom pot exploded, sent embers all over, got the table, the food, all that would burn." A couple other nearby people nodded with the assessment.

A soft popping noise and a floral scent announced the arrival of Fleur de Joie in the clearing. "What happened?" she asked, hurrying over to Tarrant and the others. "I was getting the applesauce, and then I had to use the restroom, then my phone rang... where's the fire?"

[Fox]

Gaian Knight looked over to Fleur as she appeared, and gestured toward the vaguely building-shaped rock construct, shaking his head. "In there, where it can't set anything else on fire. It sounds like a couple people got hurt, but no deaths, thank goodness." Sticking his hands in his pockets, he made a mental note to take a first aid class or something. I can do a lot of things, but healing isn't one of them - though I wish I could. Heck, maybe I'll be able to, one day. I can make portals between dimensions, so why not? Here's to wishful thinking.... "Apparently, a pot...ah, exploded. Which isn't something pots are known to do, but accidents certainly happen."

[Electra]

Stesha raised a semi-amused eyebrow at Tarrant's skepticism. "I don't think they're cooking meth in there, if that's what you're worried about," she told him. "I'm going to see to these injuries if you'll just make sure that the fire's entirely taken care of." She hurried off, using a curious sort of waddle-run to compensate for the fact that her center of gravity had gotten way ahead of the rest of her body lately. Most of the settlers followed her like a herd of goats following their belldam. Tarrant was left with the man who'd come to fetch him, and a couple of teenagers carrying buckets from the well. Already the smoke in the air was beginning to clear, Fleur's curiously efficient trees rustling in an unseen wind as they filtered away the contamination.

[Fox]

Tarrant raised an eyebrow as they all - Nearly all, it seems. Hmm. - left to follow Stesha, and he good-naturedly nodded his head toward the man who'd come and alerted them to the problem in the first place. "They're really very fond of her here, aren't they? Not that I can blame them, heh: she's done a lot for you folks."

The eyebrow went a little higher as he turned back to look at the rock 'building'. "I guess I could fill this thing with dirt, but I don't want to end up just burying embers that water can't get to later. ....you guys really weren't cooking meth, right? That'd be an awful thing to loose a building over."

[Electra]

"What's meth?" asked one of the teenagers, giving Gaian Knight a blank look. "Is it good?"

"Dolly said they was boiling the laundry today," the other one replied with a shrug. "They used the big-big pot for the first time, maybe it was too heavy. Least they hadn't put the clothes in yet." He pointed over to a pile of sooty laundry pushed off to one side in the clearing. "They'd all be burned up too."

"Shoulda just put them in the river," opined the first teen. "They get mostly clean that way." While the two teens bickered aimlessly, the older man nodded soberly over Tarrant's comment. "Fleur de Joie gave us just about everything we've got here," he said with a sober nod. "And you helped, and the Gabriel guy too, but that was cause she asked you to. Her finding us is the first real good thing that's happened in a real long time. Maybe today we lost one building, some food, but nobody's gonna die of burns, you see? And that was cause of you,too." He held out a hand to shake. "I'm Bart, I forgot to say before."

[Fox]

Chuckling at the teens, Tarrant shook the offered hand. "Gaian Knight, or so they call me. And no, it's not good," he called toward the teens, though he didn't really expect them to be listening to him anymore. "It's in fact very bad, but I didn't think you--ahh." He shook his head, turning back to Bart. "I didn't think you were actually making any. I am sort of curious about what you were using as pots, though. When something metal explodes like that it usually means it was full of something explosive, or had some bad structural flaw. I'd hate to see this happen again if there was a problem with any other salvage."

[Electra]

"Mostly we use whatever we find," Bart told Tarrant. "Lots of scrap is good for summat, if you put your brain to it. Back afore we met Fleur de Joie, we sent parties out scrapping, bring back whatever they found. These was a couple of big, um, big gallon drums, made of metal, you know? Scrubbed 'em down good, built the fire in one and put the other on top. You think you could maybe save anything out of there?" he asked, pointing to the burnt building. "Lots of our cooking tools were in there, some might still be good, you know?"

[Fox]

Tarrant nodded, frowning at the rock-covered building. "That's one of the reasons I didn't want to just crush the thing to put it out - once the fire's completely gone and I bring the walls down, we ought to be able to get back any supplies the fire didn't ruin."

"Y'know," he said, rubbing his chin, "I bet I could help you guys with your salvaging now and again. There's gotta be some useful stuff out there that's either buried underground or trapped in a room that's buried underground; with a little time I could probably sniff out both. I can't promise anything, 'cos I don't know what's down there until I actually try to dig it out, but there ought to be some stuff worth having somewhere."

[Electra]

That idea seemed to appeal greatly. "Hey, if you helped out, we could carry heavy stuff back!" the first teenager enthused, breaking off the argument with his friend. Or his brother, since the two of them did look quite a bit alike. "And not have to break our own backs doing it, either."

"And he can fly, we could go far, and faster if we was flying like Bart did!" the other added with an excited nod, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing along with. "We could get to the island where the pickers can't go, see what makes the lights!"

"We appreciate any help you want to give," Bart said, somewhat more formally. "Could always use an extra hand around here. You've done lots of good for us already."

[Fox]

Tarrant laughed. "There's always more good to do. Honestly, I like this place - I wanna see you guys do well here. If that means spending part of my days helping you dig around for useful stuff, so be it. The island, though - lights?" He raised an eyebrow. "I don't think I've heard about that one. I could certainly help you guys poke around - heck, I could probably make you a bridge with enough time - but I'm a little cautious about mysterious island lights. Paranoia, maybe, I dunno...I'd just feel pretty bad if I made you a nice bridge and you used it to go get eaten by will o' the wisps or whatever."

[Electra]

"What are willathawips?" asked the first teen, the same one who'd asked about the meth.

"They're animals," the other one replied self-importantly. "They've got a head on each end and horns on the heads, and you can eat 'em. Gran told us the story about them and the doctor what talked to all the animals, remember?"

"Oh yeah," the first one nodded. "If there was some of those on the island, we could eat 'em! There ain't much animals around here, even with the plants and all. Fleur says she's gonna try and get some, but she has to talk to people who can teach us how to take care of 'em." He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. "If they got a head on each end, how do they poop?" His companion shrugged.

[Fox]

Gaian Knight gave the teenagers a blank look, scratching the back of his head. Head on each....what? "No, no no no. A will o' the wisp - 'will' 'o' 'the' 'wisp' - is a creature of myth. It's a ghostly light that legends say you could meet in swamps or forests. Depending on the story, it'd either lead you back to safety or get you completely lost, and then maybe eat you. Or eat your fear, or eat your soul, or...legends are kind of weird like that." He pulled his hand out of his hood before he scratched himself a bald spot, and shrugged. "Not that I think you actually have any out here - they are just myths, after all." But then, so are magic swords. "I just meant that strange lights don't always mean good things."

[Electra]

Bart nodded soberly at that. "Usually means chemicals," he agreed, "but sometimes it could be somebody's living someplace, or some machine's still got some power on it. Not so much since I was a kid," he told Tarrant, "but in the old days there was some machines what still ran if you found fuel for 'em. Fleur de Joie told us that if we knew where anybody else was livin', we should say so she could invite them up to live here too." He didn't look entirely comfortable with the idea, having just gotten used to the plenty they'd been given and perhaps not quite ready to share, but few actually contradicted Fleur in her domain. "Might be worth a look, for scraps or people."

[Fox]

"That reminds me that I need to go take a better look at this place...the parts that're outside Fleur's paradise, I mean." Gaian Knight put his hands back in his pockets, hunching his shoulders a little as he recalled the little poking at the borders that he'd done already. "I just...the ground's sick out there," he admitted, "and it's a little uncomfortable to be near. A lot of it's okay, but parts...there's some bad stuff in the soil and rock in some places, and it makes my skin crawl to be around it. I dunno. Anyway - speaking of Fleur, why don't we go see how your injured folks are doing? I don't think there's a lot else to be done here until it rains."

[Electra]

The men obediently fell in, leading Tarrant over to the little building that served as clinic and store room for the small colony. It didn't have much, just a padded table and a cabinet of first-aid supplies, but it also had a healer, which made the difference. Stesha was working on one of the villagers when Tarrant stepped inside, an older teenage girl with burns across the side of her face and down one arm. The girl was weeping softly, but the wound was obviously healing quickly under Fleur de Joie's careful attention. The air was pungent with the smell of herbs and dried flowers from the homemade remedies spread out next to the table. A few of the villagers had crowded in as well, including what looked like the girl's parents, standing nearby and looking worried.

Stesha looked up briefly when the door opened. "Nothing too serious," she told Tarrant with a reassuring smile, "nothing that can't be fixed right up. It was a lucky thing you were here today."

[Fox]

Tarrant chuckled, keeping a respectful distance from both Stesha and her patient. "I'm sure you would have gotten to it before it got out of hand...or stopped it if it had gotten out of hand. I was just in the right place at the right time."

He leaned against the doorframe, watching the woman work and trying not to look too hard at the burns, healing though they might be. "Talking with some people afterward gave me some ideas for helping out, though. I bet I could find all kinds of buried or collapsed stockpiles or supplies around here or out in the less...ah, clean, areas. Hopefully we can get some big pots that won't explode, at the very least."

[Electra]

"That would be great," Stesha told him, only half-paying attention to the conversation as she worked. "Gabriel has been great about finding sponsors and supplies over on Prime, but the money only goes so far. Anything we can find that's reusable and safe is important. But you'd have to be careful. It's not healthy out there for any extended length of time, especially out near the bay and the Wading River. I haven't even tried cleaning in that direction yet."

She sat back from her patient and stretched, popping her back. "There you go. The skin will be tender for a little while, but you shouldn't have a scar. Anybody else need help?" For the moment, it appeared that the crisis had passed.