Third Floor Common Room; Monday Morning [06/22].

[howareyanow]

No kitchen utensils and pots and pans all up on the ceiling. No everything turning into pizza. No weird colored food or blue milk (save for the little bit kept around for those who were into that sport of thing). Just a nice, normal breakfast, the way God (and Wayne) intended.

And, fuck, it was nice to have a good, normal breakfast around here.

At least nice and normal for the time being, but, realleh, that was all anyone could hope for 'round here. So Wayne got to work, got to cooking, and got to getting the week going right.

[[ and open breakfast is open! ]]

Comments

[white_oleander]

Having stayed up too late last night with her sketches and then not having slept well thanks to dreams about a man in a photograph who she had never met, Astrid was rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and stifling a yawn after trudging upstairs for breakfast before class.

And considering just heading straight for the coffee.

"'Morning," she murmured, and, unable to hold it back, went ahead and yawned before looking around. "What's for breakfast this week?"

[howareyanow]

"Something normal!" barked Wayne, with the exact kind of persistence and determination that could get a person in trouble around here.

And then he gave Astrid a nod. "Astrid. How are ya now?"

[white_oleander]

"I'm okay," said Astrid, who then smiled faintly for the fact that it was true. She'd been feeling okay for a good few weeks now, ever since she finally sent that letter of reassembled words to her mother and felt an odd sort of freedom that hadn't even frightened her. Well, maybe a little. But that was well beyond her now and she took in a deep breath to help wake her up a little as she pour herself some coffee. "You?"

[dauntlessdragoon]

Even if she was generally neglected not terribly social when she came down the hall for these weekly breakfasts, it hadb ecome a bit of a habit for Freya, and not really a bad one, as it was a good start to her day before heading to her class and spending the rest of her time endlessly leaping and wandering around the island with that slim glimmer of hope that, one of these days, the figure she found on the beach or in the park or around the corner would actually be Sir Fratley.

A useless hope, she suspected, but it gave her something to do with her days, anyway. As did this breakfast.

"Good morning," she greeted the room as a whole as she came in, nodding, and moved toward retrieving the food she'd come for, after glancing around to make sure nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

[howareyanow]

Wayne really couldn't blame her for the extra caution in lookin' around, realleh.

"Freya," he offered her a nod that timed well with a flip of a pancake, "how are ya now?"

At least he was getting just a bit more used to talking to a rat that was bigger'n he was by now.

Mostly.

[dauntlessdragoon]

"As well as can be expected, I suppose," Freya answered, honestly enough, with a small smile for what she was noticing tended to be Wayne's standard greeting. He always seemed a bit closed off, perhaps even nervous, when she spoke to him, so she wondered if such rote phrases helped him to be more social despite his awkwardness. "It should be a fine day. I hope to get a lot of searching done throughout the island, perhaps to the mainland, but there's always an odd....feeling in the air when I go that way, as if no one knows quite what to make of my presence. It's not nearly as welcoming as people on the island tend to be, but perhaps it's just something to get used to. And how are you this morning?"

[snowdroplace]

"Good morning!" Elli said, poking her head, and then the rest of herself, into the common room. "It looks like it will be a lovely day out!"

[howareyanow]

"All the more reason," Wayne stated staunchly, lifting his chin, as if declaring it an adage to fit the day, "to start it out with a lovely breakfast!"

And, affirmation made for the morning, he turned his head toward Elli and gave her a nod.

"Elli," he said, surprising no one, "how are ya now?"

[snowdroplace]

His affirmation made her grin--exactly her feelings!

"I'm quite well, thank you," she said brightly. "And yourself?"

[howareyanow]

A bit wordy of a response for his tastes/habits, but it'll do!

"Ohhhhh," Wayne drawled, easily, expectedly, "not so bad."

And today, it was even true! It was nice when manners and reality could be one in the same.

"Fix you up a plate?"

[snowdroplace]

"Yes, please," she said. "I do really appreciate that you do this every week."

[howareyanow]

Wayne had already started to fill the plate as he asked, so it didn't take long at all for him to fill it up and hand it on over to Elli with another nod, one that sort of worked to tell her it was no problem. Because Wayne might be a bit fussy about his Monday morning breakfasts, but he definitely didn't like to be fussy about the fact that he did them.

It was just tradition at this point.

And you didn't fuck with tradition.

"Any plans ahead fer yer day, Elli?" he then asked, to get the conversation going as he handed over that plate to return to making more for filling more plates.

[snowdroplace]

"No plans set in stone," she admitted. "Though perhaps a trip to the library?"

Or a walk along the beach. Or a trip through town. Or spending some time at the park...

"I did have a question, though, if you don't mind that it's probably a hopelessly strange one?"

[howareyanow]

Well, that was something to earn Elli a curious albeit slightly worried sort of quirk of Wayne's brow.

"On a scale of one to ten," he ventured, "just how strange is it compared to anything else around here?"

Because that was a high bar to reach, Elli.

[snowdroplace]

Elli paused and thought about it all.

...

"Maybe a two?" she said hesitantly. "Possibly even a one?"

[howareyanow]

Which felt good and low and comfortable, so Wayne approved.

"Well, then, go ahead, Pat Benetar," he said, "hit me with your best shot."

[snowdroplace]

It might not actually be a two but, well... they'd see.

"I was just wondering," she said diffidently, "why all of the seasons here were so long?"

[howareyanow]

"Well," said Wayne, who might've thought it a bit odd if it weren't for the fact that people here came from different planets and/or didn't pay attention in things like science class, "the length of the seasons are the way they are on account of the position of a place relative to the Earth's axis and the position of the sun. While it's a bit more temperate than all that, Maryland sits in what's considered a subtropical climate, giving it hot, humid summers and a relatively short winter, whereas winters are a lot longer up north where I'm from, due to it being further from the equator and situated on the axis in a way that favors more time away fro the sun that down here. So the length of the seasons are going to vary based on where a place is located, although their demarcated on the calendar in relation to the phases of the moon."

[snowdroplace]

Elli frowned, slightly, as she listened to that explanation.

"Is that how it works here?" she ventured. "Back home, every season is four weeks long and there's a clear difference between the last day of Spring and the first day of Summer..."

[howareyanow]

"Just four weeks?" asked Wayne, with a thoughtful frown of his own.. "Just like that? So's a year where you're from's basically just a season here..."

How could they even get a proper amount of planting and growing done in a season that was about the same as a month?

[snowdroplace]

Well. Turnips only took four days to grow!

"It's very confusing," she confessed. "I was calling home every day, but they'd ask me why I was calling so many times in one day? So now I'm spacing them out but they think I'm only calling once a day..."

Elli took a seat on one of the couches.

"I'm not even sure when to put my birthday in this world's calendar," she confessed. "We don't really have months at all..."

[howareyanow]

Wayne would make so much bank on the produce stand in Elli's world...

"Well," he ventured, "mebbe we can figgur it ouwt. Like with the calls. When's ter birthday where you're from?"

[snowdroplace]

He really, really would. Farmers made so much money.

"It's Spring 16th," she offered.

[howareyanow]

"Oh, now that should be easy," Wayne reasoned. "Spring 16, just a bit past the middle, assuming your weeks are still seven days. Spring here runs March 19th to June 20th. That's 94 days. Half of that, 47 days'll get you to May 4th. Add mayve a few since the 16th of Spring is a little more'n half, really, and that'll put you anywhere between May 6th to May 10th, I'd say."

[snowdroplace]

Elli could follow that but she couldn't do the math to see if his numbers lined up accurately in her head.

They sounded right to her?

"What about May 8th, then?" she suggested. "The middle of your suggested range?"

And according to MY paper math the actual day her birthday would be, following this logic...

[howareyanow]

"May 8th's a fine day," said Wayne, nodding. "Sorry we missed yer birthday, Elli."

[snowdroplace]

She laughed.

"I missed my own birthday!" she said. "I can't be sorry other people did the same!"

[howareyanow]

"Fair enough, " agreed Wayne, "but happy belated birthday, all the same."