#i don't like leaving the house that early usually but botany is worth it

[juliamccartney]

8AM botany class tomorrow yay!!!!!!!!!! 🌿

[liltaz-asatreat]

Day 2 of @taznovembercelebration : Daylight, domesticity

Davenport is surprised at how bright it is when he walks out onto the deck of the Starblaster. He usually wakes up early enough to catch the sunrise, but right now the sun is high in the sky, about ten o'clock he would estimate. Maybe he shouldn't have stayed up so long reading that novel he picked up last cycle. Not that he has anything in particular planned for today. They had found the Light a week ago, and they still have another two months before the Hunger is due to arrive which means he has a bit of free time on his hands before he has to help everyone prepare to leave.

Movement catches his eye somewhere off to the side of the ship. He looks around and walks to the railing, peering out at the field below. Merle is standing on a stool and hanging up clothes from a basket off to his side on a line he's tied between two trees. Davenport sighs and walks down the plank to greet him.

As he approaches, Merle glances over and smiles with a clothes pin held in his mouth as he pins one side of a shirt up on the line. "Hey, Cap'n. I was gettin' worried about ya. You never sleep in this late."

Davenport chuckles. "Yeah, I stayed up too late reading that murder mystery I was telling you about. Is the dryer not working again?"

Merle takes the clothes pin out of his mouth and nods as he pins the other side of the shirt up. "Yep. I asked Barry to take a look at it since you were asleep. Figured if it hasn't been fixed yet after tinkering with it mechanically, the enchantment might be what's causing the issue. Can you pass me another shirt and set of pins?"

"Yeah, just a sec." Davenport walks to his other side to get to the basket and pulls out a damp, floral pattern shirt and two more pins from the small container set next to the basket. He hands them up to Merle who nods in thanks and gets to work pinning up the garment.

"This reminds me of living back in the enclave at home," Merle says. "We didn't have a lot of the technology and appliances that the towns and cities had. We had a more natural way of doing things. We washed our clothes in buckets of river water and hung them up to dry like this in trees by our houses, and it was hell during autumn and winter. In autumn, we'd get leaves and stuff stuck in our clothes, and in the winter, it took forever to dry because it was so damn cold. We'd try to find room around the fire to hang them up during those months, but it's really hard when you have eight people's worth of laundry."

Davenport looks up at him with a start. "Eight people? You had eight people living in your house?"

"Yeah, me, my mom, my dad, and my five siblings. Can you pass me-"

"Yeah, here you go." Davenport hands him an IPRE jacket and another set of pins.

"Thanks."

Davenport thinks for a minute. "I guess that's not so different from how we're living now."

Merle laughs. "Yeah, there's seven of us living on a ship that's not meant to house us for more than two months. At least we all have our own separate rooms. The house I grew up in only had four bedrooms, so me and my siblings all had to share."

"That must have sucked."

"Oh you have no idea."

Davenport hands him another garment and pins. "What was your family like?"

Merle hums a little as he starts pinning up the garment. "They were... fine, I guess. I mean, don't get me wrong, I loved them. A lot. But it was hard growing up in the middle of all of them. I had two older brothers, an older sister, a younger sister, and a younger sibling, and they were all perfect to my parents. They were all really into medicine and priesthood and druid magic and everything my dad wanted. And they were really good at what they did too." He says a little bitterly. "I also got into medicine, botany, and clerical duties obviously, but to be honest, a lot of the reason why I did that was because I wanted my dad to be proud of me. But I wasn't good enough for him. Not compared to the rest of my siblings anyway."

Merle brings down his hand to let Davenport pass him another piece of clothing, but Davenport holds off for a minute. "I'm really sorry to hear that, Merle."

Merle shrugs but doesn't meet his eyes. "I mean, I'm the one still... still living."

They're silent for a moment before Davenport hands him a pair of shorts. "Do you have any good memories of them?"

Merle smiles slightly as he turns to pin them up. "Yeah. Me and my brother, Charlie and my sister, Leslie, we got along the best. We used to play pranks on people a lot as kids. One of them being taking other people's laundry that were hanging up on the clothes line and swapping them with another person's clothes. It was great. The neighbors would get so mad at each other because they thought someone else stole their clothes."

Davenport laughs and hands him the last piece of clothing. "That sounds like it was fun."

Merle smiles even wider now as he pins up the pants. "Yeah, it was. What about you, skipper? Did you have any siblings?"

Davenport frowns slightly. "No, I'm an only child. I was one of the kids who grew up at the Institute in their childcare program. My mom was a scientist and my other parent was an engineer, and they... well... they didn't really have a lot of time for me, let alone to take care of another one."

Merle's smile fades a bit as he looks down at him. "Did you have any friends you were particularly close to?"

Davenport chews his lip. "Not really. There weren't a lot of kids in the program, and the ones I grew up with weren't all that interested in hanging out with me. We weren't enemies or anything. They weren't mean to me. We just had different interests, so I spent most of my time by myself reading about the stars and planes, and I read the papers the people at the Institute published about the newest experimental findings and explorations reports."

"Oh..." Merle says. "That sounds... well..."

"Boring?" Davenport guessed.

Merle laughs. "Hey, you said it, bud. Not me."

Davenport laughs too. "Yeah, there were times that I wanted to have a friend to do stuff with, but that just never happened I guess. Studying everything I could to one day be a captain and go exploring was my life, and now... there's no choice but to have this be my life."

Merle climbs down from the stool and grabs it, the basket, and the container of clothes pins. "Well, that's the reality of our life now. You're not alone in this Cap'n. And we've got time to do other things every now and then that isn't saving the world. And hey, me and the others are your friends now, and I'm happy and honored to call you my friend. So why don't we pull the foldable table and a couple of chairs out onto the deck. I can teach you how to play yooker with tarot cards if that's something you're interested in."

Davenport smiles and takes the basket from him. "I would love to. Thank you, Merle."

"Any time, Dav."