when a thing is wick

[windblownrose]

Who: Andrei Vetrov and you!
When: Early February, after the Entertainment District attacks
What: Community organizing; cheap drinks; chivalry
Where: The Parish, the Underground and the NSO
Warnings: Alcohol, possible violence with prompt 3

1 - How Does Your Garden Grow

[The Underground has cheap rents and minimal security presence to recommend it, but one thing it doesn't have is sunlight of any sort. The Parish is in shadow most of the day, gray and bleak down below the taller and better-kept buildings of the Middle and Central wards, but even partial sunlight is better than flickering fluorescent and LED. In partial sunlight, it's possible to coax a few things to grow.

Andrei has been working on a vacant lot there; the soil had been sodden clay, but the deep trenches he dug along the sides are helping to drain it and the crushed brick and rotting wood he mixed in lightened it. He's always found gardening to be strangely soothing, and even here, where the best vegetables he's coaxed to life are straggling, yellow-spotted and undersized, being among growing things has its joys.

He's sowing lettuce seed at the moment, next to the beets and beside the scavenged-concrete terrace that's being slowly filled by spreading mint runners. He's left posters up around the Parish advertising the lot as a community garden and inviting anyone who's interested to come help in return for fresh herbs and vegetables. Did you see a poster? Or are you just passing by? Either way, he looks up with a welcoming smile at anyone who steps into the lot.]

Oh, hello! Do you happen to have a shovel?

2 - Quiet Nights at Enyart's

[From four p.m. until midnight six nights a week, Andrei can be found behind the bar at Enyart's, serving cheap beer and spirits with equally cheap gestures towards mixology. It's not a cocktail bar; it's a vodka-and-soda or rum-and-coke type of bar, but the fried spicy soy crisps are free and plentiful, and the atmosphere under the dozens of mismatched decorative holiday lights Andrei has strung through the rafters is cheerful.

Currently, he's singing an old pop ballad from the 2100s as he pulls beer glasses out of the sanitizer and lines them up on their shelf under the bar; his voice has an untrained breathiness to it, but it's a beautiful baritone, and he does at least have a good ear for intonation.]

--open the sky and let the stars down, mm do, do down...

[The song breaks off as the tinkle of the little silver-tone bell nailed to the door alerts him to a new arrival. He smiles, gestures to an empty seat at the bar, and picks up the song again where he'd left off as he sets the last few glasses in place.]

3 - Walking in the Dark

[With the frequency that people are being stopped in the Parish these days, Andrei's been offering people walks home from either the Underground or the NSO. He's no fan of being spoken to by police or security himself -- there's always the chance that someone's seen a certain video of a metahuman surrounded by deadly lightning last decade in Nova Moscow, and has a good enough eye for facial features to see past the new beard, longer hair and glasses -- but two people together are a touch less likely to run into trouble than one alone.

This time of year, despite the city dome, it gets chilly at the outskirts of the Parish. He tugs the collar of his coat a bit tighter around his neck and smiles over at his companion.]

A lovely night, isn't it! And it's only raining a little--

[With a distant snap, the lights on the street go out. Andrei groans. It's another of their temporary blackouts: since that one long blackout last month, most of them have been fixed in a few hours, but the electrical grid in the Last District is so old, cheap and overloaded that they're still frequent.]

-- oh, no.

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Comments

2

[rubricatus]

[ Magnus has to duck under the door frame to get inside, but that isn't anything new for him. Immediately, and without any particular guilt, he thinks that the light-strung rafters are a quaint way to distract from the dinge of hardscrabble Last Ward, and he greets Andrei with a smile. ]

You seem well. [ And he sounds genuinely pleased to see it. Magnus approaches the bar, but doesn't make the attempt to sit just yet. First, there's that book he had promised; it comes out of a pocket lining the inside of his coat, and Magnus deposits it gently against the bar top. ] And I apologize for my tardiness in seeing this to you.

[windblownrose]

Why, thank you, Magnus! [Andrei's smile is brighter than the holiday lights, and very nearly approaches the brilliance of the strand of fist-size hula-skirted LED pineapples.]

Yes, I have been doing quite well -- and keeping busy, of course. You look well yourself; please, have a seat...

[He doesn't gesture to the bar stools, which are all sized for someone considerably smaller than Magnus; instead, he waves at a battered double-wide armchair tucked between the bar and a standing cardboard cutout of a decade-old movie star.]

Thank you for dropping by. I hope it wasn't too out of your way?

[rubricatus]

[ In all honesty, it's more in the way of accommodations than he had expected — but, then, his experiences have taught him that the farther he moves from the wealthy, the more likely he is to find such consideration. After a brief, faintly amused glance at the cutout, he takes the offered seat, and the movement has the look of a man who has made grace and good manners into an act of aggression so often that it takes him conscious thought to adopt a casual posture. ]

Oh, it's terribly so. [ It's said with a laugh, good-natured. ] But I've found that good company is worth a little inconvenience.

[windblownrose]

[Andrei laughs in response. His own posture is nothing but casual, and he moves like a man utterly in his element as he tucks the book away under the bar with great care and returns to putting away the clean glasses. His cheerful conversation doesn't miss a beat, except when he has to crouch to grab the last tray from the sterilizer and huff for breath on the way back up.]

I was afraid of that! Regardless, you're very welcome, and I only hope the company is up to standard. [He flashes a teasing grin.] Did you notice the flowerbeds on the street? -- I do believe they might actually sprout this year! I've added a few extra lights around them, and I've been running a light electrical current through the roots a few times a day. Supposedly, it helps plant growth in low-light conditions, which I'm afraid are all we have down here.

[rubricatus]

Is that so? I'm afraid botany is a subject that my education has left neglected, however much it shames me to say so. [ It isn't something he typically needs to consider, either in work or leisure — but god forbid he not be the smartest person in the room at any given time. ] But it's just as you said, isn't it? There are so many fascinating subjects in the world, yet it would be a struggle for a single person to learn everything they might want to know about them.

What have you planted, or is it a surprise for when they sprout?

1

[jediparkour]

[Growing up in a temple made it easy to find peace and quiet, but Cal was a long way from the temple now and couldn't stand being alone with his thoughts besides. The garden was the closest thing to a meditative spot he'd been able to find, with the usual noise of the district helping to keep him in the moment instead of being a distraction. Cal wasn't much of a gardener by any stretch, but he liked to just sit nearby and take in the rare sight of green, living things existing in the Parish at all.

It wasn't a surprise to see that someone else was working in the garden, but Cal still didn't quite relax until he realized who it was. There were some people in the neighborhood that Cal preferred to avoid, but Andrei was generally pretty cool about everything.]

Sorry, Mr. Andrei. I didn't bring any tools with me, [he says with a quick little smile.] I'm just here to take in the atmosphere.