special_rabbit | A Strategic Spot near the Shore; Saturday Afternoon [10/29].

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A Strategic Spot near the Shore; Saturday Afternoon [10/29].

Amaya's day had started exactly as it usually did and exactly as she preferred it: bright and early and incredibly busy. Thankfully, the work of figuring out which spot along the shore was likely to give the most pumpkin chuckin' for their buck as well as one that seemed likely as a good defensive spot against, say, a potential kraken attack some day, was easy. And the work of hauling a good deal of wood, tools, other supplies, pumpkins (both organic and concrete), and a variety of different weights and counterweights to that spot was much more demanding, but those were the kinds of demands Amaya rather enjoyed. Honestly, hauling materials across an island with far too many steps probably ranked right up there with her top five ways to spend a Saturday morning.

But, eventually, all the materials were there, and then it was just a matter of her partner-in-trebucheting to arrive so that they could get to work and get to the good stuff. She took a moment to lick a finger and lift it in the air (after removing her glove, of course) to test the wind, nodded approvingly, and maybe was just going to get started on at least the base of the thing, because she really was terrible at waiting when there were things to be doing and potential lingering nerves to ignore.

Even if she was, occasionally, distracted by what she thought was someone talking to her, in little more than a creepy whisper on the breeze, but, whenever she turned her head, she found there was no one there.

Which was probably best for them, really. She was loaded for bear on things to be thrown at anyone trying any sort of funny business, after all.

[[ mostly for the trebuchet date (trebu-date?), but feel free to poke at the blacksmith before she arrives! ]]

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It had taken Irene forever to get ready today. Part of it, naturally, was that every time she'd gone to put an earring in or decide whether her hair was better suited up or down, she'd had to pause to stifle the rustling of her own clothes so she could hear whether someone was -- talking to her? Just a whisper, here and there. And she knew no one was in her flat besides Clementine, who had not yet proven to have the gift of speech as of yet (and besides, she was very busy with a chew toy), but it was enough to make Irene paranoid to double-check the cameras and such before she left.

But, of course, the other reasons she'd dallied with her appearance were a little more complicated. How did one dress for a trebuchet date? What did she want to risk having be-pumpkined? And -- while Irene was confident now in the fact that Amaya seemed to find her just as attractive in denim as she did in stockings (possibly more so), she still wanted to look nice.

So, anyway -- right on time, but definitely not early, Irene sauntered up with her hands in her pockets. She'd settled not only on the jacket, but on a pair of skinny dark-wash jeans that tucked neatly into the boots she was fairly sure could withstand any pumpkin (or sand, or water, or ketchup, if that came back) casualties.

"You've been busy," she commented in greeting, having to smile at the clear effort Amaya had put into their setup. All just for a love of trebuchets, certainly.

To be fair, Amaya's love of trebuchets...especially ones that were going to be hurling things into the ocean...was substantial.

Amaya paused what she was currently hammering together for a moment to listen, as if expecting it to have just been another whisper on the wind, but she looked up to see that this was not the case this time. "Ah, good," she said, giving the board one last good hit to drive the nail home before pulling herself up from the base-in-progress, brushing off her skirts a little, and then settling with a grin on her face and the hammer over her shoulder. Not quite as impressive of a pose with a regular hammer over her blacksmithing one, but she fell into it almost subconsciously. "There you are. I was half worried I'd have this thing built up entirely by the time you got here."

And, obviously, building the damn thing was half the fun! Irene had offered an extra set of hands, after all, and Amaya fully planned to put them to good use.

See, and now Irene was quite pleased she'd thought to move her manicure touchup from yesterday to Monday. Foresight!

That pose with that hammer -- smaller though it might have been comparatively to other hammers -- was taking a bit of her focus, though, and Irene couldn't help but return the grin. "Might've demanded we dismantle it if you'd got that far without me," she replied, shaking her head with a little scoff. "Just so I could see how it goes together. I could've helped you get this all here, you know."

Or at least she would have happily hired a rickshaw or four. Irene was much more of a 'Gifts' than an 'Acts of Service' sort of person (even if she was, you know, adapting.)

Amaya shrugged off the offer. "The way I see it," she said, "this just means I can skip leg day next week. Your timing's perfect, though. I just finished up on the base, which means it's the uprights next, and those can get a bit tricky with just one person, especially with the size I've cut everything for. So that just leaves one question: hold? Or hammer?"

Was that technically two questions? Amaya shook her head just slightly, shifting the hammer off her shoulder and holding it out if that was indeed the path Irene decided to choose.

"Hold," Irene decided quickly, eyeing the hammer with interest before shaking her head. "'Least at first."

This was different from blacksmithing class, and while Irene knew her way around small, simple tools and was quite good at striking things (ahem), this felt like an instance where watching the expert in action first might do her well. (Also, she liked watching the expert, but that truly was a secondary concern this time.)

"Where do you need my hands, love?" she added, drawing them out of her pockets with a smile and giving a playful, jazzy wiggle of her fingers.

And that was the beauty of constructing something that needed two symmetrical supports; whichever option Irene didn't pick now was definitely going to be turned back on her one the other side, so Amaya couldn't have been more pleased by that response. And her smirk almost showed as much, too, as she shifted the hammer in her hand to get ready to use it, and then nodded at the prepped wood waiting in the grass.

"On one of those long boards," she instructed, nodding that way. "I'll need to you hold it up tight and upright against that notch there in the base about a quarter of the way from the end there, while I get it fastened into place."

Ugh, Amaya, your smirk was distracting and cute.

But not so distracting and cute that Irene couldn't follow directions. She took a quick look at the notch so she wouldn't be fumbling around with the wood (or at least, so she'd be less fumbly, maybe), then grabbed one of the indicated boards and gave a little huff of effort as she snugged it into place. "Like so?" she asked, holding the board as careful and still as she could.

Amaya, snagging a good fistful of nails from the box already on the ground from working on the frame, knelt down at that intersection of the boards and gave a small nod of approval when she went to jostle the upright a little to test her hold on it. "Just so," she confirmed. "Now, keep it firm, these swings ain't gonna be soft."

With that serving as Irene's warning, then, she went to work, doing her own part in holding the boards tight at the base as she started driving the nails home.

"Yes ma'am," Irene replied with exactly as much innuendo was deserved when threatened with swings that wouldn't be soft. Please. It was right there. And she was Irene. Be glad it hadn't been mistress.

She did obediently hold the board in place, leaning her hip and knee into the action a bit for a little stability in light of those hammer swings since innuendo or not, it did not seem Amaya had been kidding there.

Amaya was firmly in that particular work-oriented focus where any and (mostly) all innuendo were liable to fly right over her head, especially since the last thing she'd want is for them to go through all this construction, only to have something go wrong and have the whole thing just be a failure. She might, at that point, just wind up chucking the trebuchet itself into the ocean with her own two hands.

But everything seemed to be going well enough so far, and Irene wouldn't have to hold the upright for too long before Amaya stopped, took a second to test the hold, and then nodded in satisfaction.

"And there's the first," she concluded, settling back on her heels a little as she looked up at Irene, offering up the hammer again. "Onto the next."

Honestly, flinging innuendos at someone who didn't (or refused to) notice them was at least half as fun as doing it to someone who played along, anyway. (And, moreover, Irene always liked seeing Amaya so focused on -- well, anything, but particularly something like this.)

"All right, I think I can handle that," Irene decided, though not without the tiniest bit of dubiousness as she took the hammer and gave the board she'd held a similar little push, experimentally.

She would help throw the trebuchet in the ocean if she somehow ruined it this far along, so that was a slight concern. Even if it seemed a bit unlikely.

With that, then, Amaya snagged the nails Irene would need from the box before pushing herself up back to her feet, handing them over, and going to fetch the next board, so Irene could take her turn with the hammer. After that, it was onto the braces, and a similar exchange, although, really, holding the braces in place wasn't as fussy a thing as the uprights, and, before long, they had themselves a base, and Amaya stepped back a moment to look over their handiwork, before glancing over at Irene to get a gauge on where she was after all that.

"Well," she then stated, and the grin that went along with it seemed pleased, "now that the easy part's over..."

"Pfff." Irene made a little show of cracking her knuckles as she tilted her head to survey the base they'd constructed. "Bring it on. This is actually quite fun."

The building something with Amaya part, that is. If left to her own devices, Irene would probably not have enjoyed building a trebuchet alone. (Though there was something to be said for how satisfying it was to have constructed something. That part still always took her by surprise.)

"And to think," Amaya remarked, her grin giving her away for more than she would have normally let it if she wasn't so invested and pleased with how well the project was going, "we haven't even gotten to the axle and swing arm and the counterbalances yet, either!"

Which they would be getting to now, all of them in short order, and Amaya had already drilled all the holes where they needed to be, so it was just a matter of showing or talking Irene through all the eyeholes and axles, pivots and divots and ropes, and getting that swing arm's slightly more detailed mechanics all set and in order before finally getting it set and balanced on the uprights, and, the before you knew it, bam. Trebuchet.

Maybe not the most impressive one, but not too shabby, for the short amount of time in which it was cobbled together, and it would more than serve their purposes. It was hardly anything new for her, really, but she couldn't help feeling oddly proud of it, once that final bit was in place.

It was certainly the most impressive trebuchet Irene had ever taken part in building, that was for certain, and she was also more than a little proud.

"Look at her," Irene commented, dusting her hands off on her jeans before moving to nudge her shoulder into Amaya's with a smile. "Not that I know anything from anything, but I think that's a rather nice piece of business, there. Good show, us."

She wasn't even just flattering, either!

"Well, I wouldn't go around patting each other and ourselves on the back quite yet," said Amaya, although it was maybe a bit more amused than than anything else. "We still have to see how it actually works."

"I will pat what I want, thank you," Irene replied with a cheeky smile, though she was eager to get to the trebuchet-ing of it all. "It's certainly the best trebuchet I've ever worked on, personally, even if it doesn't work."

It wasn't the pumpkins you chucked, of course. It was the (hot) friends (with benefits, and maybe inconvenient feelings) you made along the way!

But also. "But I'm sure it'll work," she added, a little hasty on that front.

"If it doesn't work," Amaya noted with a snort, "then I might as well hang up my hammer now. But..." She drew in a breath and, for all that talk a moment ago about not patting each other on the back and all, lifted a hand and essentially did just that, bringing it down again on Irene's shoulder in an almost congratulatory fashion.

And fleeting. Very fleeting. Weighty enough to know it was there, quick enough to prevent mistaking it for anything else, and then it was gone, as Amaya went over toward the collected pumpkins.

"You load the counterweight," she instructed, "I'll pick out a good gourd. Pumpkins are light, so we won't need too much weight, unless you wanted to start in with some of the concrete ones."

"As fascinated I am by the concrete ones," Irene admitted, her cheeks warm from that oh-so-fleeting hand on her shoulder (and that snort, which had done a thing to her heart, reluctant though she would be to ever admit as much), "probably best to start with the organic material before making the poor thing heave rocks."

Besides. This part sounded really fun. Especially since it did seem like anything messy would happen far away from Irene.

She set to work with the counterweight, making sure to not overdo it too much given that Amaya was correct -- unless she'd found some sort of adorable rural fair's prize-winning pumpkin, it wasn't likely to be all that heavy.

"We'll definitely work our way up," Amaya assured her, as she took a moment judge the different weights of two pumpkins of relatively similar size and shape, one in each of her hands, shifting them like she herself was a scale until finally deciding to go with the one in her left hand. She set the other one down, and went to go nestle the winner in in the sling.

"Now," she offered, although, really, she suspected after working on it from pretty much the ground up, Irene could see exactly what the mechanics behind the process were, "as soon as we're set, we'll pull the stopper keeping the counterweight up, gravity will do its thing, pumpkin goes flying, and we'll hope any sea creatures out there at the moment have enough sense to keep out of the way."

Though if they did hit something out there, was it bad that she'd hope it was just a coincidental Sidon rather than this fabled kraken?

Although that would make for an exciting conclusion to this particular little project, that was for sure.

That would be very exciting indeed. And something appreciated by the whole island, surely, if there was any sort of seamonsterish retaliation.

"Got it," Irene replied cheerfully, pursing her lips thoughtfully and giving the counterweight an experimental, almost calculating consideration before deciding that yes, that was probably sufficient. "And if they don't, hopefully they like pumpkins. Why pumpkins, anyway? Just feeling autumnal?"

Irene kind of wondered if this might not also work with other produce, as well. Melons seemed like a nice candidate.

Eh, there'd been enough people commenting on how quiet things had been, invasion wise, that surely, they could hardly be to blame for anything that might emerge from the sea due to an excessive barrage of pumpkins.

"Exactly that," Amaya admitted. "It's tradition. We do trebuchets and pumpkin chunkin' every October in my shop class. Not really the same effect when we're tossing them into the ocean, but out of all the various produce you can go with, they do seem to smash particularly well."

Though melons would be great for a summer course, really...

Edited 2022-10-29 21:12 (UTC)

For all they knew, there was some sort of endangered sea creature out there that just needed gourds to survive! Maybe this was helpful, even.

"I think it's a Halloween thing to do, they smash so well," Irene offered, not totally certain since she'd mostly done Halloween in Fandom, where hooligans were unlikely to smash your jack o'lantern. "There's at least a band called that."

Though, yes -- a watermelon for example would probably smash splendidly, next summer.

"Did your students have fun with it?" she wondered, turning to Amaya curiously.

"Well, the current crop seem to have fun with just about anything I throw at them," Amaya noted, and, pumpkin secure in the sling, moved around to the side of the trebuchet, sparing a small, frequent shake of her head that one of those excitable nerds was possibly in line as a future King of Daventry. "But it definitely seems like a...."

Look, it was there, she had to say it, even if she didn't always feel good about it.

"...smashing success.

"Anyway!" Best just move right along from that one, and she nodded at the rope connected to the bar keeping the counterbalance up. "Ready when you are, Irene. Let 'er rip."

"Oh, you." That was almost under Irene's breath, her response to that absurd wordplay. Points for quickness. Points lost for it being sort of cheesy. Points gained ad infinitum for how adorable and...Amayaish Irene found it, however quietly.

But there was a trebuchet to let loose, and Irene was prepared to treat pulling the stopper with all the reverence that such a maiden voyage deserved. "Right." She squared her shoulders, gave the trebuchet one last look just in case it all fell apart, and gave a swift pull.

...mechanical poetry. She got that, now, seeing it in motion.

Amaya, for her part, took a second to just enjoy the whump of the counterweight, the creak of the wood in argument against the sudden call to motion, the snap of the sling as it launched the pumpkin into the air and toward the vast blue horizon.

Lifting a hand to shade her eyes, she squinted out until she saw the splash to break the surface of the water, then shifted her attention back over to Irene with a grin.

"Not too shabby for your first trebuchet, there, Irene."

"Back-patting allowed now?" Irene teased, looking more than a little pleased (and, frankly, a little in awe) with the trajectory of that flying pumpkin as she moved over towards Amaya to watch that splash with a grin. "I scarcely did anything. That's all you, babes. You're such a good teacher."

Really, it had been sort of a genuine team effort, which made Irene happy in and of itself,

"Back-patting allowed now," Amaya confirmed, with a grin she would insist was entirely do to a job well done and completely unrelated to how absolutely delighted her partner-in-fruit-flinging had seemed over the whole thing.

(Though she would admit that she could see how the mistake could be made).

"And that's a two-way street, right there," she said. "Even the best teacher's not much good without an equally good student. But the real test is going to be seeing how it handles the concrete."

"And if it can't," Irene suggested, one hand shading her eyes so she could still watch that spot where the pumpkin had splashed, just in case tentacles emerged from the surface (and, again, because she was pretty delighted with all of this, anyway), "we'll just adjust, right?"

Nothing wrong with fine-tuning one's approach every now and then. Just saying. It was scientific, whether it was trebuchets and concrete pumpkins, or...you know, blacksmiths and gardening books.

"Those concrete ones really aren't fucking around, though," she noted, eyeing said concrete gourds with interest. "Almost like cannonballs or something, I'd bet."

Edited 2022-10-30 00:27 (UTC)

"Well," said Amaya, because she was, unrelentingly, a nerd, "practically, yes. Before cast iron came around, all cannonballs really were were just smoothed out, rounded stones, so you're not wrong there."

But when she looked toward Irene to shoot her a wry grin to go along with the comment, she felt like she'd unexpectedly just ran into something, like something a little bit...indescribable had just struck her, caused her breath to hitch a little bit. Her grin went into something much softer, and once she realized that the heat was starting to creep in on her cheeks, she resolved to push right on past whatever that was and get back to the task at hand.

Clearly just the lingering thrill of success. That had to be it.

"You want to pick out the next one, then?' she said, gladly taking the excuse to nod toward the gathered projectiles again. "I'll work on the counterweight?"

Just the endorphins from flinging a pumpkin, that was all! Irene's own softening of her smile into something gently curious and openly pleased (especially once there was blushing) clearly just had to do with learning more about cannon. Obviously.

"Do we want to go all the way to concrete?" Irene wondered, actually giving her head a little half-shake to break the spell and biting her lower lip as she considered those projectiles. "Or amp up with a bigger regular pumpkin, first?"

Irene was, perhaps, a little intimidated (and fascinated) by the much heavier projectiles.

"You know what?" said Amaya, with a thoughtful tilt of her own head, after already having hauled up another weight to put into the counterbalance. "Lady's choice. I'll let you decide what looks like it wants to go flying next. After all, this isn't even my first pumpkin chuckin' this week, you've got fresher eyes for it."

Irene considered that (and idly indulged herself in considering how nice it was that this felt like genuine< teamwork, and a fairly even partnership at the moment) as she continued also considering the projectiles.

And you know what? She was not exactly a woman well-known for playing it safe, so she was crossing over to grab a concrete pumpkin. (Or. Well. Less 'grab, ' more 'inelegantly heft.')

"Let's see what she can do," she decided, actually fairly excited by the prospect of really opening up this trebuchet's capabilities.

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A Strategic Spot near the Shore; Saturday Afternoon [10/29].

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