[RP] A Frozen World

Now what?

That was always the question, wasn't it? Life was a pattern, and sometimes it was just about going through the motions, doing familiar things. Sometimes the pattern changed, though, or you needed to change it, and then you had to stop for a little bit and think about what came next - what could come next, what should come next, what you wanted to come next. Not just that, but how to work it so that it joined together with everything that came before and it wasn't too jarring. It needed to be knit together smoothly, not just half-stitched together like two pieces of two different blankets that didn't match or make any sense. You didn't want to look at life and say but whose is this then?

It was one of those times when Tella needed to stop and look at things and the way they were shaping up. You didn't get to unravel life and start over again, but sometimes you could work little patches over some of the parts. They'd never look quite right, but they might look better. Or maybe this was all a mess, a tangled metaphor that had gotten away from her like a ball of yarn that had been thrown in the bag half-unrolled and now she was going to have to spend half an hour picking knots out of it.

Tella sighed and put both metaphor and yarn aside for now, stowing the latter carefully in its place in her knapsack and the former much more haphazardly in the back of her mind. She made her way up to the deck. The air was cold, and she could see her breath, but it was always like that. She wrapped a scarf around her face to keep the chill off. It was an awful scarf, haphazard and with stitches that were all wrong - the very first thing she'd ever made with her grandmother, and she loved it even if it was awful. She wondered what her grandmother would think about all of this, about Tella getting ready to wander out into the white world and try to find out where everything had gone missing. The right thing to do, but for all the wrong reasons.

Sometimes life was like that, too. She shrugged her pack into a more comfortable spot on her back, and stared off over the railing. There was a lighthouse out there, the light slowly growing darker.

"Huh."

That wasn't supposed to happen. There were a few other people up there as well, and Tella tried to see if she could catch someone's eye.

"Did you see that?"

Making a cup of tea always seemed to set the world right - to put things in perspective. Pipes might freeze, crops could blight, tea might come out bad - but you could always make it better, always boil more water, add a few more leaves next time and it'll be better as long as you put your heart into it. When he cleared his head and got to thinking clear it seemed that was always what he'd come back to.

It seemed the whole world had no more love to give.

It wasn't their fault though. The blame couldn't sit at the feet of one man nor a million. All that was left now was to show a bit of kindness and love to the people you could with the time you had. It took a long time for August to realize that. He'd been smiling since the water boiled, measuring out a spoonful of leaves with only his gut to tell him what was enough. As he let the tea steep, he checked over his things again. It was the first time in a long time out past the boats, he'd made a promise to take the mission for the wellbeing of the fleet, but deep down it was about a lot more than that.

Get a little stronger, test that leg and see what you can see.

A couple minutes passed - he hadn't been counting but it seemed the right time to pull the strainer. Pretty good this time around, he was getting better. He capped the thermos and shouldered his rucksack as he headed outside to await news from the captain and see who needed waking, sipping tea through the slide-top container the whole way out.

When he arrived, he noticed he wasn't the only one taking in. A few others were already up, so he saddled up on the railing and looked out at the dark sky. 

In the distance, the lighthouse cut through the fog and the evening with burning defiance, but slowly began to fade into the dark with each rotation.

"Did you see that?" 

Gus turned to catch the girl's eye. He recognized her but couldn't place a name, likely a vagabond or something along those lines. Smaller and young, but she looked capable. "I caught that... no good." He took another sip of tea and frowned slightly as the light came around even dimmer. "I wouldn't be surprised if they want to send us to take a look, play wickies for a day or two." He looked over at the girl, the breath between them nearly freezing midair. He nudged the thermos towards her side with a little wiggle. "Tea? Brewed fresh."