Third Floor Common Room; Monday Morning [06/29].

[howareyanow]

Depending on how they timed it, some of the breakfast goers might walk in to find Wayne not dutifully minding his pancakes at the stove, but, instead, a few steps over at the counter where he figured the best light was, his phone out, taking pictures of a stack of pancakes he had apparently mixed with food coloring so that they were rainbow-colored, and another stack of pancakes that were artfully sliced into to show that there were rainbow sprinkles inside, like he was setting them up for a fucking Instagram or Pinterest or Fartbook or whatever the fuck all else there was.

Not that he was actually posting to any of those things, because fuck social media, but he'd made the pancakes that way that morning fer Katy, and it didn't do much good, did it, if he made them fer Katy and then didn't even send her pictures.

They weren't good pictures, but they were good enough, and the pancakes themselves being good would more'n make up for it.

Even if Katy was only looking at them instead of actually eating them, but he knew she'd appreciate them all the same.

[[ open breakfast is open and colorful! ]]

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[snowdroplace]

Elli paused in the doorway, taking a moment to watch him standing and pointing a thing at the pancakes.

"Good morning, Wayne," she said, after that moment. "What are you doing?"

[howareyanow]

"Elli," said Wayne, straightening up from where he'd been bent over one of the pancake stacks, "how are ya now?

"An' I'm sending pictures of the pancakes to my sister back home. Figgured she'd appreciate 'em."

[snowdroplace]

"I'm great, thank you," she said. "And yourself?

"Oh! I see, now, that's a phone, isn't it? I'd heard they could take pictures..."

[howareyanow]

"Ohhh," Wayne said, "not.so bad. An' you can do jus' about anything with a phone these days, when you get right down to it."

Said the guy who still mostly just used it as, you know, a phone.

And hockey fight videos.

Well, and Wikipedia. Fuck, he could spend all day on the Wikipedia if he weren't careful.

[snowdroplace]

"I still find that strange," she admitted. "Phones only do one thing where I'm from."

[howareyanow]

"I'm gonna go out on a limb,' said Wayne, "and guess that that thing's not takin' pictures and basically bein' a mini-computer in yer pocket."

And now, to the important stuff: "Fix you up a plate?"

He'd sent Katy more'n enough pictures by now, tucking the phone into his front pocket and going to serve up some breakfast.

[snowdroplace]

"Yes, please," she said, laughing. "And no, the idea of it is--it's just so big for something so small? The phone's back home are big and bulky and there's only one in the whole village."

[howareyanow]

"Well," said Wayne, fixing that plate with the speed and ease of a man who'd need fixing up plates just like it for more'n a year now, "here's to hopin' you've got at least more'n one horse, at least."

He never thought he'd leave Letterkenny only to find places that were actually somehow smaller...

[snowdroplace]

"Of course we do," Elli protested. "A whole ranch of them! Cows and sheep and chickens too!"

[howareyanow]

"Then at least," said Wayne, with stout reassurance, "at least yet not a one-horse town in addition to bein' a one-on-one village. That is something. Fuck, even Mennonites'll let you have one'r two phones per household."

[snowdroplace]

"It's not that we're not allowed them," Elli said, not sure what a Mennonite was. "It's just that we don't see the need for them? Everyone's just a few minutes away so why call when you could talk face to face?"

[howareyanow]

"Well," Wayne reasoned, "sometimes it's just polite to give a person a ring before you drop in for a visit."

Or a donnybrook, so's to make sure everyone stayed at the end of the laneway, didn't come up the property.

[snowdroplace]

Elli shrugged a little.

"No one back home minds," she admitted. "Even Gotz, who tends to keep to himself, doesn't mind too much if people take shelter at his house when it rains."

[howareyanow]

"Well, no," Wayne allowed, "I don't s'pose anyone's expect a ring out there if you've only got the one phone."

Then, a pause.

"Who would you call, anyway?"

[snowdroplace]

Elli giggled.

"The phone's in the bar," she explained. "Well, during the day it's also a diner, but either Doug, the owner, or Ann, his daughter, will be there to catch the call."

[howareyanow]

"Bar's a good place fer a phone," Wayne said with a nod of approval, as if his thoughts on the matter.were even of any significance, "if you've only got the one..."

[snowdroplace]

"That's what we thought," Elli admitted. "It just seemed to make sense since it's the most centralized place and Doug doesn't mind."

[howareyanow]

"Any bar owner that'd look down on a reason to get more feet in the door might need to have his head checked," said Wayne, "that's what I always say."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"I never thought I'd walk in on this," Sabine admitted.

It was not a criticism!

[howareyanow]

"It's fer Pride," Wayne offered by way of explanation. "Fer my sister..."

He took one moment to consider the colorful array of pancakes before his attention shifted back to Sabine.

"Sabine. How are ya now?"

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"I'm good," she said, taking her own real look at the pancakes. "This is actually really cool."

[howareyanow]

Wayne nodded his appreciation. "You and she are in agreement there," he said, a little bit of pride seeming to sneak it's way into his usual monotonous drawl. "Fix you up a plate?"

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Sure, thanks," she nodded. "How're you doing, Wayne?"

[howareyanow]

"Ohhh," said Wayne, shocking everyone, as he piled up a plate and handed it over, "not so bad. Summer's going a bit better this year than last, I'd say."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"That's right! I haven't had to worry about radioactivity once so far," Sabine realized, taking the plate with a nod of thanks.

[howareyanow]

"It's the little things in life, realleh," said Wayne.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

Sabine tilted her head. "That's a little thing?"

[howareyanow]

There was...a pause.

"Or the big things," Wayne amended. "Like a family reuinion, it's all...relative."

[snowdroplace]

"Good morning," Elli said, with a smile towards the other girl. She didn't think they'd talked before but she had seen her around.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Morning," she said. "You're new, right? New-ish?"

Since it'd been a while now.

[snowdroplace]

"New-ish," she agreed lightly. It was pretty accurate.

... Elli frequently felt she was the newest of the new people since everyone else seemed to take things more in stride.

"I'm Elli. It's nice to meet you."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Sabine," she said. "I'm slow to meet people sometimes. How're you liking it here?"

[snowdroplace]

"I think I like it?" she said, a bit tentatively. "Though it's also terribly strange."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Oh, yeah, that grows on you," Sabine told her. "I mean, it still stays strange, but you just get used to it."

[snowdroplace]

"Do you really get used to it?" she asked doubtfully.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"I did. And most people seem to. One day it'll rain something weird and you'll think 'oh, must be Tuesday,' and that'll be weird too because they don't have Tuesday where you're from," Sabine said.

[snowdroplace]

"We have Tuesdays, at least," she said with a laugh. "But we don't have months!"

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"At all? Or just not these months?" Sabine asked.

[snowdroplace]

"At all," she clarified. "We only have seasons and days."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"So what day would you say today is over there?" she wondered.