[Log] Sandwiches or snowflakes

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Crew Commons, Grace O'Malley
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Bishop has since deserted the commons, and Lu is still lingering in the galley cleaning up her medical supply mess after a short break in which she apparently got herself a cup of coffee. The snowflake project remains as it was when everyone filtered off, looking sad and dejected on the table.

Kael slowly starts his way back in, a towel about his neck. Apparently he had helped Josephine out and then proceeded to go back to his standard thing nowadays of working on his martial arts skills in one way or another. His eyes are looking down towards the ground until he steps in through the hatchway. His eyes drift up for a brief moment and he spots Lucinda, his feet screeching to a bit of a halt just inside as he looks to her, it seems his breath catches in his throat as well.


Lucinda snaps the lid back in place, tucking it away in its proper place before relatching the cabinet. A soft tune that sounds vaguely Christmas-like is being hummed by the doctor, so she doesn't realize anyone has returned to the commons until her gaze shifts up to the table. And then she seeks Kael on the other side. "Sure are abusing yourself lately." She comments quietly across the space between them.

Saienne pokes her head in from the door to the vessel's port side. She is dressed casually in a cream shirt and a pair of red fishermen's trousers, and she is carrying with her a cup made of bamboo and a small empty teapot. Her feet are bare and she makes little noise on the decking in the corridor approaching the Commons. This being the case, she clears her throat with a small cough before proceeding to enter. "Must be lunch time," she says, mildly, as she uses her spare hand to fish her PDA out of a pocket in order to check the time.

"I.. wouldn't call it that..." Kael responds, pulling the water bottle up in his hand to take a drink. His breath is let out right before he takes the drink of water, a breath which sort of shuffles out of him as his eyes watch Lucinda. He hears the slightly noises of the cough and then Saienne speaking as he swallows the water. He comments back idly to her, "yeah... just about I think." Though his head doesn't' turn to face her, instead he just stands there as if not quite sure where to go or what to do. Though that soon changes as his eyes flick away from where they were, seeing his water bottle and apparently noting that it's just about empty.

Lucinda snags her coffee mug off the counter, the moment of impasse broken by Saienne's entrance. "Its always lunch time somewhere in the 'verse. I think we're having sandwiches." She steps out to eye the blackboard and confirm her suspicions. She then returns to the table and her art project, the Christmas tune she was humming long forgotten.

Josephine seems oblivous to any kind of tension in the room, but, knowing her, she isn't. Even so, she enters in full force, singing, "I was blue, just as blue as I could be.. Every day was a-cloudy for me... Then good luck came a-knocking at my door. Skies were grey but they're not grey anymore.." She's using one of her wooden spoons as a 'microphone' again and dancing to accompany her jazzy tune.

Saienne looks between Kael and Lucinda with obvious concern as she slips into the galley, but she chooses not to take it upon herself to intrude - aware, perhaps, that her presence has done just that anyway. Indeed, she looks rather tired herself, with red-rimmed eyes and a less than enthusiastic approach to the washing up of her tea things. She clatters the little teapot into the sink and sluices the dregs of tea around before dumping them unceremoniously into the bin. "I ain't about to argue with that," Sai says, in response to Lucinda about the general mutability of lunch time. She looks as Josephine makes her musical entrance and her crooked grin breaks out and she watches the other woman dance into the Commons.

"Right..." Kael says to no one in particular and turns his head up towards Lucinda, his eyes slipping to her for a brief moment. Though it's soon broken and his head turns towards the fridge. He begins a slow shuffle off towards it, giving a look back to Josephine and the corner of his mouth pulls up the slightest amount for the time being. It's short lived though as he turns his head back away and his eyes mostly focus towards the ground at the moment, trying not to look up until he gets closer to the fridge.

Lucinda settles back into a chair, staring at the paper gown soon to be decoration infront of her without really seeing it. Josephine gets flashed a brief smile as she enters, and the spell is finally broken. Retaking her scissors, "These snowflakes will never be finished unless I get a hand."

Josephine twirls around dramatically. "Sandwiches or snowflakes, Oh Crew of Grace. The choice is yours," she offers with an elegant bow. "Well, that is, unless Sai or Kael want to help with the snowflakes...or someone else wants to make sandwiches. Then we'd all have the best of both worlds!"

Saienne peers over from the galley to the table where the snowflakes are busy being born. "You're makin' decorations?" she asks, looking a little more engaged. "Are we gettin' a tree an' all?" She shakes her head, glancing once at Kael as he approaches the fridge. "Surely don't feel like Christmas... time goes so quickly, don't it?"

Kael turns his head, looking towards Lucinda and his eyes settle upon her. His breath catches in his throat again until he clears it, a bit of a grating sound that makes him wince a little, "Well.. if I make sandwiches I'm liable to poison someone, so... I guess I'll help make the snowflakes." His mouth pulls up a little bit again and then his eyes dance away from Lucinda and towards the fridge he's next to. He opens it up then and works on fishing out a new bottle of water.

Lucinda flattens the fan folds out that seem to have crinkled some where in the interim. She refolds the paper with precise movements, creasing the paper between pinched fingernails. "I'm not quite hungry, so don't go through any trouble on my behalf."

Josephine already figured she'd be making sandwiches rather than helping snowflakes to be born, so she's headed for the galley to wash her hands and take up her apron and pretty red hairscarf which she ties deftly into place. "Blue skies..smiling at me.. Nothing but blue skies...do I see.." she sings, dancing about as she pulls the assorted club sandwich-making ingredients from their various homes. "This will be my first time celebrating Christmas," she tells everyone. "So I'm hoping it will be nice. Sai...you came from a nice big family. I could use some recommendations for cooking? And who here can teach me a Christmas song!?" Clearly, she has more enthusiasm than a crowd of small children just released onto a really fun playground. "Eating is important, Lu. You'll have a nice half of a sandwich," she decides on the other woman's behalf.

Saienne shakes the water off her hands after standing her tea things on the draining board next to the sink and steps aside as Josephine comes singing into her kitchen. "I ain't celebrated Christmas with my family since..." A pause, and she starts to count of the years on her fingers. "Since... longer than I realised, actually." She crosses her arms over her chest and looks sad for only the briefest of moments before fixing Josephine with a sunny lop-sided smile. "Christmas was always a bit of a scuffle," she says, fondly. "On account of my various aunts an' my two grandmothers vyin' for control over the kitchen." A pause. "But my mother used to roast a goose, habitually, with all the trimmings - roast potatoes an' greens an' bread sauce an' stuffin' an'..." She stops talking and smiles again. "I don't reckon we want to bother with a goose, mind. All that fat to be drained off an' fussin' around. More trouble than it's worth."

Kael slinks, in a way, towards the table and slowly finds a seat, somewhat near Lucinda. He's watching her for the moment though and he asks gently, "How... do you make them?" His brow furrows a little and he leans over at his waist, tilting to the side to set the bottle as safely as he can on the floor under his chair. After sitting back up though, his eyes look over between Jose and Sai, looking between them and listening, "Goose is quite good. Hard little suckers ta catch sometimes..."

Lucinda holds the one she's working on out towards Kael. "You fold the paper in a fan.." She starts the lesson over. "Like so. As wide as you'd like the snow flake to be. And keep folding back and forth until you run out of paper. Then you cut the gown into squares, so each will be a strip of snowflakes we can string together when we're done..." She focuses her attention on teaching the simple craft project.

Josephine cheerfully goes about making plates of sandwiches, dancing a bit as she does. Sometimes she even talks to the slices of tomatoes and the bits of bacon that she had fried earlier, which is a bit strange, but that's Josephine. "Two of you on this sandwich..no don't fall off. There you go..that's perfect. Thank you." Lifting her gaze, the cook smiles at the others. "I can't make any promises, but if you folks want goose at Christmas I'll see what I can do. I don't mind the trouble. I'm here to make you folks happy. Besides, then you won't have me to cook for you for a whole month, so I hope to leave you with a good memory..that way you'll be happy to see me come back!"

"Ain't they just!" Saienne exclaims, back to Kael. "An' most often it was me an' Daniel chasin' after the gorram bird all around the orchard, with Maire cacklin' away on the sidelines unwillin' to get her skirt dirty." She shakes her head, smiling broadly. "Sisters, eh?" She falls silent as Lucinda begins to explain how she is making the snowflakes, half listening to the cook serenading the sandwiches. "What are we goin' to do without you, Josephine? You're goin' to have to leave us lists an' all sorts, I reckon - an' as if we would ever be unhappy to see you!" She shrugs a little as Josephine seizes on the goose idea. "Well, if you fancy it mayhap I can help a little. See what I can remember of what Mother used to do." She looks a little bemused. "I should warn you, mind, that I wasn't ever the domestic kind - you'd be much better off with Maire." A pause, as she considers: "Mayhap you should cook what you want to cook, Josephine, an' all?"

Kael reaches out, taking the paper that Lucinda offers to him, his hands trying to gently run over her's as he takes it away. Though once he does, he listens to what she's saying and keeps his eyes more often then not on the folded paper. He nods his head carefully, a few times and then picks up the scissors starting to work on cutting it up, quite careful at first as he tries to get it right. His eyes do flick up towards Saienne as he says a bit on the quiet side, "Can't say I ever tried to chase them down /that/ hard. If they kept bein' a real pain... well.. we had a shotgun." He grins a bit sheepishly up towards Saienne at that notion.

Lucinda wrinkles her nose at that. "And then you're picking buck shot out of your teeth while you eat." She comments lightly to Kael, gently reaching out to reguide his hand as he nearly cuts on the fold that would unravel his whole project.

Josephine is just about finishing the sandwiches that she is arranging so fastidiously and with love upon the various plates. "I want to cook what you folks want to eat," she replies to Saienne. "And I don't mind doing a little research to figure out how that's possible, either. You just remember whatever you remember, and I'll work it out, never you mind." She occasionally tends to pick up some of Saienne's speech patterns while talking to the woman. "Although I don't imagine we'll have to go hunting in the wild for our goose...bless the modern shops and all. And bless the poor goose, too," the cook adds for good measure.

"Lucinda ain't wrong," Sai agrees, smiling a little at Kael. "Takin' a shotgun to a goose ain't conducive to a nice an' easy supper time... an' that's what we were set chasin' them for - not fun." A pause. "Although folk who reckon goose-chasin' is fun ain't entirely normal in my estimation." She leans back against the galley counter, her arms still folded across her chest. "Well an' good, then, Josephine." Saienne says, evenly. "But we weren't huntin' them, exactly. They were our geese - livin' in the yard an' in the orchard." She shrugs again. "They were there to be et, as hard an' heartless as that sounds."

"Thanks Lu.. and not nearly as bad as you think. Uhh," Dyre says, seeming to try and make this more pleasant then it'll probably come out, "...it was a full choke, means closer in, it's tightly spread and, well, we aimed high." His mouth continues to pull into the same sheepish smile as if he just uttered something which shouldn't have been. He looks back down towards the paper he was cutting and takes special care not to make any of the wrong cuts and thus, ruin all the work so far. His eyes look back up towards Saienne and he nods a few times, "Oh, I definitely agree with you there.. goose chasin' is akin to pullin' teeth in my book."

Lucinda arches an eyebrow at Kael, "You're a violent man. I had no idea." She quips lightly, and seeing that he has a handle on his manly version of a snowflake, she retakes her own and the surgical scissors making dainty cuts.

"I don't think it sounds heartless," Josephine assures Saienne. "Okay, clear some space on the table," she requests. "I'm bringing over the sandwiches," which is just what she is preparing to do, including the triangular half-sandwich for Lucinda. "Anyone need anything to drink? Extra napkins? A kick in the shin?"

"Oh, my mother always was most particular about such things as shot in the meat an' game." She pauses again, staring this time into the middle-distance. "Although mayhap she was just windin' me an' Daniel up makin' us chase all over." She grins crookedly - but not unpleasantly. "It surely would explain why Maire'd be cacklin' so." She leans up off the counter. "You need a hand with carryin' anything, Josephine?" And, waiting for further orders, she asks. "You goin' anyplace nice?"

Kael starts about clearing the table, commenting back towards Josephine, "Yeah.. I think Lu could use a kick in the shins." He says playfully, giving Lucinda a quick smirk and a playful glance before looking back towards the table. He starts to fold the uncut up ones into one pile and the ones still being worked on in another, shuffling them off to one of the unused seats. "But I got some water already." His eyes turn towards Saienne then for a moment and he asks, "What, tryin' to wear you out ya mean?"

Lucinda mmphs generally, both as she's delivered a sandwich she didn't ask for and an order for a kick in the shins she really doesn't require. But dutifully, she sets aside her scissors and looks to the plate she's being given.

"Here, you may carry your own sandwich," Josephine informs Saienne, with a warm smile. "I like hearing about your family life. Makes me wonder what that was like," she admits. "As for where I'm going, I figure it's high time I return to my temple for a little while, before they forget who I am. Being that I mostly grew up there and all... many of the folks were the closest I had to a family, and I haven't seen them for nearly five years now, I suppose. Time really passes quickly.." The woman seems a little distracted as distributes the other two plates. Apparently she plans on keeping the other half of Lu's sandwich for herself, although there are several more sandwiches on a plate waiting for other crewmembers who are currently absent.

Saienne shakes her head in Kael's direction, even as she accepts with a fond smile the plate offered to her by Josephine. "More like workin' to make us look foolish." Another crooked grin. "Not that she had to try too hard, of course. Reckon we did all the foolin' our own selves, an' suffered the bawlings out an' all." She shakes her head and adds: "My mother an I ain't never seen eye to eye on nothin', an' I don't reckon we ever will neither." Saienne regards Josephine carefully. "Truly?" she asks seriously in response to the question about family. "Truly, then, it was just like this." She gestures expressively with her free hand at the interior of the Grace; the people settled here. "All the same feelings an' fears an' closeness an' distances." Saienne looks to each of them in turn. "All the same." There is a glance, then, at the calico rug under her feet. "Um, possibly with fewer incidents of fisticuffs, mind." She trails after Josephine, then, heading for the dining table. "Five years," she asks, "Is that so? Time does fly so quick, don't it? They must be lookin' forward to seein' you." A pause. "I do hope you have a simply splendid time, Josephine."

Kael takes the sandwich on the plate and gives Josephine a wide grin, "Thanks Jose." He shifts around in the chair a bit and sets the last of the cut up ones on top of the non-cut ones. The plate it set down on the table with a gentle clink and then he's bending at the waist and reaching under his chair again. He snags the bottle of water he had stashed under there and pulls it back up, looking to be about to drink some of it. "Ahh, that sorta thing. Yeah, I did that to a few folk myself... Eye dee ten tee forms for one."

Josephine grins as she goes back to fuss over things in the galley a bit. "Well, it's no vacation resort," she is saying as she puts stuff away, "but it will be pleasant all the same," she admits. "It'll be strange too, being away from you folks and plunged into a familiar past where I don't quite belong anymore..if that makes any sense at all, and it might very well not..."

Saienne says, somewhat gravely: "It makes perfect sense." She sits down on one of the benches around the dining table and settles her plate in front of her. "Thank you for lunch an' all, Josephine," she says, before tucking in. After a mouthful or two - and she is not so uncouth as to speak with her mouth full - she asks Kael, pronouncing the sounds phonetically: "Eye dee ten tee?"

Kael looks right at Saienne and grins widely, "Sure.. you go up a green lieutenant and ask him for one. The guys in the office make ya run 'round a whole lot 'n' then someone finally tells ya to write it out." He gives her a quick wink and then he looks down to his sandwich. He picks it up and turns it around a bit, finally seeming to settle on a side and takes a bite out of it.

Saienne is sitting at the dining table along with Kael and Lucinda and plates of sandwiches. There is also a pile of surgical gowns in the centre of the table, and a couple of pairs of scissors. Josephine, meanwhile, is tidying up the galley after having made lunch for everyone. Saienne replies to Kael: "Huh." She smiles lop-sidedly. "Evidently I would have fallen for it, then." She munches on her sandwich some more, thoughtful.

"Jo?" asks Tyr, making his way in, holding a note in his hand. "You're going away?" His voice is tinged with a bit of worry and sadness. "Is everything okay, Jo?"

Kael doesn't turn his head from the conversation he's currently having. His shoulders giving a slight rise and fall as he chews on his first couple bites of the sandwich. After finishing his mouth pulls into a grin, "You'd be surprised how many people you get with it." His head gives a little shake and his eyes flick over towards Lucinda for a brief period before turning back to his sandwich. He sets it back down though and goes after his bottle of water.

Lucinda is quietly munching on the sandwich she was given, her free hand fingering the edge of the snowflake chain she was making for the Christmas decorations. She's smiling slightly, enjoying the sounds of conversation around her, and more importantly, the grin that Kael is wearing. Once or twice she looks to him, a fondness clear in her eyes.

"All them fresh-faced officers..." She starts to sweep the stray crumbs from the table onto her plate with long elegant fingers. She looks up as Tyr enters and smiles in his direction. "Tyr, welcome. I reckon Josephine's got some sandwiches left if you're in the market for food."

"Well, that sounds just shiny. At least she's gonna be with us through Christmas. Be a shame if Jo left before Christmas." This possibility seems to bother Tyr greatly. He makes his way over to the galley, putting himself together a sandwich.

Kael Bowen's eyes flick over towards Tyr then and his right hand reaches up, giving a bit of a wave. He had missed the looks that Lucinda had given him, though he had continued to glance back in her direction every so often. Finally though, he leans back into the chair and pulls the sandwich up again, about to take a bite when he says, "Ohh yeah.. all them and then the enlisted.. god... ya'd get some reeeaaal winners in tha enlisted ranks." His head gives a little shake of the head and he chuckles, finally taking a bite of the sandwich.

Lucinda actually finishes the bit of sandwich she claims she wasn't hungry for, forgetting her prim and proper manners and wiping her hands on her cargo pants. "I think she'll be here for the festivities, Tyr, never fear."

"Hey, Lu. Yeah. Oh, that's good," Tyr makes his way over towards the table. "So how is your preparation going for the holidays? Anything you hoping will be beneath the tree for you?" He grins.

"Different world, ain't it?" Sai says to Kael; then, turning to Tyr: "Don't you fret none, Tyr. Josephine's cookin' Christmas dinner so I reckon she'll be stayin'." She grins crookedly, and nods in agreement with Lucinda's statement. "Like the doctor said."