Day 273-277 | OPEN | Your Pokemans, let you show me them!

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

Who: Rob, anyone
Open: Open
When: Day 273-277
Where: Anywhere
What: Various things Rob's doing over these five days.
Format: Will match
Warnings: Nerdy. Gross. Smelly.

[A - Day 275 and on]

Okay it's not a Pokédex per se, but when Rob got the Monument to make him one of Colin's datapads he made a few modifications, one of which was adding the data and functions of the various Pokédexes in the Bastion. Of course the seen/caught counts are at zero, a detail which needs to be remedied.

So do you have a Pokémon with you? Or six? Or a house full? Rob's going to approach you, still wearing his rabbit-skull necklace, holding a green and black datapad in his hand.

"Hey, um, can I see your Pokémon for a sec?"

[B - The whole time]

The Disciple had set aside the hide, brain, and tendons from the mammoth she had killed, and Paar had some mammoth hides sitting around as well, so it was about time that someone did something with them. Rob, having already tanned the hide of the rabbit he'd killed (and used it to make the cord of the necklace he's still wearing), has decided to see if he can't tan mammoth hide as well. Paar's stack has gone rock-hard and/or started rotting since nothing's been done to preserve them, and while there are still uses for them Rob's not prioritizing them. That leaves the hide of the Disciple's kill.

Brain-tanning is a labor-intensive process that takes several days, made even longer by the sheer size and weight of a mammoth hide. The steps are roughly as follows:

1) Soak the hide to clean and soften it. For this stage Rob's just putting it in the river and weighing it down with rocks for a bit.

2) Scrape the inner side of the hide to remove every last scrap of flesh and fat. Rob has immediately given up on keeping the hide in one piece for this and has cut it into more manageable pieces, which he's stretching on wooden frames to make scraping easier and get a good end result.

3) Let the hide dry taut on the stretcher.

4) Soak the hide in a mild acid to loosen the hair. ...Urine. It's a tub of urine. Rob's not any happier about this than anyone else will be when they learn this. Ignorance is bliss.

5) Rinse the hide, soak it again, and then wring it out until it's just damp dry. Wet mammoth hide is heavy. Rob has cobbled together a wooden stand to hold one end while he twists the hide, but any offered help here would be appreciated.

6) Boil the brain in water and mash it into a fine slurry, then rub thoroughly into both sides of the hide. Yes this is gross.

7) Roll the hide into a bundle, cover, and let sit for at least 24 hours. This would be break time normally, but there's so much hide to deal with that he still has stuff to do while he's waiting.

8) More scraping to remove the hair and any leftover bits of flesh and fat on both sides, while periodically removing the hide from the frame to stretch in all directions. He's rigged up a way to do this on his own, but assistance would be useful here too.

9) Loosely sew the hide into a cone using the tendons as thread and suspend over a fire made of rotten or green wood until the smoke color comes through to the outside, then turn inside-out and repeat.

10) Collapse in exhaustion. Congratulations, the hide is now leather!

As might be inferred from the above, this process is smelly, sweaty, and time-consuming. Rob will set himself up near the edge of the Bastion by the river to try and keep from tormenting everyone with this process, frequently referring to his datapad once he has it and letting it play nature documentaries or something to listen to while he's working. He's not going to ask anyone for help with this, but any offers of assistance will be appreciated.

[C - Somewhen]

Remember those hides that Paar had? Well before anything can be done with them they need to be softened by being soaked in water. The easiest way to do this is by leaving them in the river. The problem is that a bunch of them have kind of hardened together into a mammoth-hide boulder of sorts. So here Rob is, unable to lift it onto a cart and thus trying to roll it towards the river. Progress is slow. Help is appreciated.

[D - Day 275 and on]

For the times when Rob makes his appearances at the Distillery for meals, he has his pad next to him while he's eating and scrolling through documents, occasionally switching over to a notepad program and scrawling something down. A glance at what he's reading will reveal different things at different times, but pictures include such things as various Pokémon, trees, and gears.

And of course, throughout all this he's still going on a couple Skyway runs with Colin and morning swordfighting classes with Zuko. "Keeping busy" is perhaps a bit of an understatement right now.

Comments

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

Rob's brow furrows slightly as he watches the motion and tries to imitate it. It doesn't match what he instinctively wants to do, but it isn't stressing his hand the same way, so maybe it's better? He has to focus a bit more on the motions as he goes back to scraping to make sure he doesn't instinctively go back to how he was doing it before.

"You a leatherworker, I guess?"

[treasureling]

"No, but I've done it before."

He settles down, taking this to be an invitation for a conversation. And even if it isn't, Malak wants the distraction.

"I'm a blacksmith."

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

"I know how to make a few things but I'm... not really anything." A self-depreciating laugh. "Stewart, he's the blacksmith here, taught me now to make nails and wheel rims and a couple other things. I've taught myself a little woodworking and built the two carts we have, and now I'm trying to do something with these mammoth hides." He shrugs slightly. "At least I'm not completely useless here. You should talk to Stewart if you haven't already though. He seemed to like being able to talk about blacksmithing with me, so he'll probably like it even more if he can talk to someone who understands everything he's saying."

[treasureling]

"I'll talk to him."

It will be another distraction.

But distractions aren't enough. He slides his head into his hands. He'd longed to leave the Spinward Islands before; he'd never imagined how the lack of his daughters would feel like an open, raw, unhealable wound. The girls are gone. They'll never get married or have daughters of their own; Brinna will never become a warrior and Viere will never learn to be her own woman.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

Rob's focused on scraping but when Malak doesn't say anything more for a moment something tells him to look over. His first thought is that he said something wrong and he immediately starts going over the conversation to try and figure out where he screwed up.

"Hey, uh, are you okay?"

[treasureling]

"My daughters are dead."

The words choke his throat closed. He rubs at his eyes, his dry eyes.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

"Hey. Hey."

He reaches over and puts a hand on Malak's shoulder, setting his scraper down and turning to face him.

"Someone told you that your world is gone, didn't they?" He doesn't wait for an answer, because even he can tell what it is. "Everyone seems to be going around assuming that what happened to this world is what happened to all of our worlds. So far as I know though, no one actually saw their world be destroyed. I've seen the number someone in my world calculated for how much energy it would take to destroy the world. It's a ridiculous amount. Add to that the amount of energy that'd be needed to reach between universes, and then add the amount of energy that'd be needed to destroy multiple other worlds, and the amount of energy you'd need is hard to even imagine. That much energy should've killed us all, but instead we survived and ended up here. The odds that something as fragile as a human could survive the destruction of an entire world completely unharmed is so tiny that it's hardly worth talking about. What I think happened is that us and the land we were standing on got pulled into this world somehow, and back home everyone's wondering where we are and why there's a big hole in the ground. Assuming that our worlds are all gone is just being overly pessimistic. That's what I'm thinking, at least."

And why he's still able to function. He's wrong, but it's keeping him from having a breakdown at least. Now maybe someone else will join him later in having their hopes shattered before their eyes when they find out that their worlds are indeed gone.

[treasureling]

Malak looks up at him, clings to his words. He doesn't understand the part about energy, but the odds of a human surviving - that makes sense to him, intuitive sense, and he breathes in fresh, shuddering breaths and maybe it makes the looming grief a little less overwhelming.

"Maybe." His voice cracks a little. The kindness of this stranger also means so much to him - someone who would stop what he was doing and take this time to reassure.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

Rob may be generally terrible at reading people, but even he can tell when someone's dealing with crushing despair. He hesitates for a moment, unsure how comfortable the other man would be with more physical contact, then decides to take the risk of possibly being punched in the face for this. He flips his rabbit skull necklace around so it's hanging down his back and not in the way, then leans in and gives Malak a hug, not saying anything.

[treasureling]

It's exactly what he needs. Something to ground him, pull him back to his body and let him remember that what's happening is real, and that it isn't all awful.

He eases a little at the touch. Breathes out, unsteadily.

"Thank you," he whispers, before he pulls back. Wipes at his eyes again, even though there aren't any tears there. Why aren't there any? "I'll hope that they do still live, somewhere. I hope they both have a chance to grow up." With or without him.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

"Welcome."

And someone else is now being held together with false hope. Nothing bad could possibly come of this.

"I hope so too." And he does genuinely mean that, for Malak's sake. "I don't have any kids myself, so I can only imagine what it must be like, but I want my mom and sister to be okay too, and for my sister to be able to grow up." With or without him.

[treasureling]

"Sister." The word is actually a little unfamiliar to him, used in a literal way like that. Not adopted. "Tell me about them?"

So he can focus on something besides himself.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

Rob blinks. He wasn't expecting this question, and in fact has been trying not to think about his family because it brings to mind uncomfortable questions, such as "How long will they hold out hope for me to reappear before deciding I must be dead?"

"Um... My sister's name is Laura. She's ten years younger than me, so 15. She's in her rebellious teenager phase so she's kind of frustrating to deal with lately. She's interested in a lot of art stuff, and I think she's thinking of designing clothes for a living."

He lives with these people but he's not sure how to describe them to someone who's never met them.

"My mom's interested in art too, though more in the drawing side of things. She answers phones for an ISP, for when customers have questions about billing or whether they can get a particular service where they live.

"...Not sure what else to say about them."

[treasureling]

"Rebellious teenager? What does that mean?"

He also senses the discomfiture, and wants to subtly pull the conversation away. He hadn't meant to upset Rob - one of them upset was more than enough.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

"That age when they're not really children anymore but aren't adults either and start trying to test boundaries and disagree with everything that parents and authority figures say? I'm told it's common, but I was never like that at her age. I was the most boring teenager there was. My mom says sometimes how much easier I was to raise."

[treasureling]

"Oh," he says. Thinks, for a moment. "So, twelve or so, for girls?" Perhaps a little older, for boys, he thinks, if what happens in his own world is anything to judge by.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

"Around there? It started happening gradually, so I never noticed exactly when it started."

[treasureling]

"So she still hasn't made her first kill?" he asks. "Something larger than squirrels and moles, I mean."

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

If Rob had been drinking anything just then he would've done a spittake. As it is it's definitely not a question he was ever expecting to hear.

"What!? No. No! She hasn't killed anything!"

[treasureling]

"That's what I said," says Malak, with a frown. "Otherwise she would be an adult." At thirteen or fourteen.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

"Not that young!"

His little sister having boyfriends is bad enough, but being an adult would mean marriage and... and... She's still his little sister, even if their relationship has become increasingly distant over time, and he's still her big brother.

"She'll be an adult when she's 18 and she won't be killing anything!"

[treasureling]

"Eighteen? That's after even men become adults," says Malak, in confusion. "That doesn't make any sense."

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

"Everyone becomes an adult at 18, regardless of gender."

If he were being logical here he'd have realized what the problem was right away and set about clarifying the situation. But he's not being logical so he only starts cluing in now.

"Wait, wait." He pinches the bridge of his nose. "The age of adulthood is a cultural thing, isn't it? In Japan it's 20 and in Jewish tradition it's 13, I think."

He looks back up at Malak, trying not to think of his sister being an adult at her age.

"Okay. So where I come from you're an adult once you turn 18, though a few things like drinking alcohol aren't allowed until you're 19 for some reason. But becoming an adult is something that just happens on its own; all you need to do is not die before then. It's... sounding like it works completely differently where you're from?"

[treasureling]

A slow nod. Twenty? That sounds absurd.

"Women are trained as warriors, from when they are very young," he says. "They experience their first combat at nine years, though they aren't expected to win." His daughter managed to draw blood. He's so proud of her.