stateofdecay | Thanksgiving @ Lundegaard (Forward-Dated to 11/28)

Thanksgiving at Lundegaard

Order of Events

ARRIVALS/VIBES @ 3:30 PM

MINGLING, DRINKS, & APPS @ 4:15 PM

DINNER @ 5:00 PM

LEADERSHIP BINGO @ 7:00 PM

LINE DANCING @ 8:00 PM

Vibes & Playlist

Mismatched furniture, tableware, and cutlery in the B&B, dining hall, and town hall. Wooden carvings of animals hung up with burlap ribbons and hand turkeys made by schoolchildren. Bouquets of dogtooth daisies and boughs of marescent leaves in red, orange, and gold. The smell of freshly baked bread, hay, and woodsmoke. Warm lights from firepits, candles, and dim, flickering fluorescent bulbs.

John played some of these chill tunes.

ON THE MENU

Drinks & Appetizers
🍹 Maggie's Pear Kombucha
🥛 Malted Milk
🍹 Whatever other drinks folks brought
🧀 Charcuterie board

Mains & Sides
🦃 Turkey
🍗 Pan-fried goose in (mostly) huckleberry sauce
🥗 Green and red leaf lettuce salad in lemon vinaigrette
🥬 Mustard greens with salt pork
🥔 Mashed potatoes au gratin
🍞 Sausage hand pies
🍞 Dinner rolls
🍽️ Any other food folks brought

Desserts
🥧 Apple pie
🍮 Baked egg custard
🫐 Wild berries in cream
🍽️ Any other dessert folks brought

VOLUNTEER SLOTS

VOLUNTEER 1 arrives too early and is enlisted to help whip cream by Lundegaard's resident tree whisperer, Alice Samayao. On the bright side, your forearm strength is going to be off the chain once you're done...

After they're released from hwhippin' it, Volunteer 1 sneaks away with some whipped cream to playfully smash it into VOLUNTEER 2's face.

DUTCH and DUKE RATTRAY spy a ladder leaning against the roof of the barn and climb on up. They get a nice view of Lundegaard in the crisp autumnal night. But—whoops—Bill Rhoades takes the ladder away when they're not looking. Dutch and Duke have to jump down (safely) from the roof into a bale of hay. Oof.

VOLUNTEER 5 stuffs themselves on food. Feeling wretched and incredibly sleepy, they knock out in an empty barrel. VOLUNTEER 6 finds them 30 minutes later. You good?

COURT SLAUGHTER makes a daring request during line dancing and gets all the dancers grooving to Rihanna's "S&M" (feat. Britney Spears). Vrow.

GAMES & DANCING

Leadership Bingo
Quaid and John have prepared 3x3 bingo cards using old notebook paper (so... bingo leaves), each randomly populated with the names of community leadership (sans John). The winner gets the honor of being THE BIG TURKEY of the evening and a dozen apple donuts.

Line Dancing
To these classic tunes! Before the outbreak, John spent some time at his local senior citizens center carefully observing line dances and at times participating. So while he claims he can't dance, he is able and willing to help anyone pick up the steps.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Edgar raided Whitney's store of non-perishables and came up with this rainbow dessert (sweetened condensed milk, gelatin, lots of Jell-O). Much like this treat, he's making an effort to seem bright and cheerful and attractive (new sweater!), but goes uncharacteristically quiet and withdrawn whenever he isn't engaged in conversation.

He sticks it out at least until the end of dinner, then finds a joint and heads out for some air.

Lola observes Mara and now Edgar acting a little off.

"Who's scaring the hoes?" she wonders out loud.

"Language," Edgar says, which is one of those things that just pops out and makes you realize how old you've become. But enough thinking about mortality. He forces a smile for Lola. "You enjoying yourself?"

“Uh huh,” she nods, but this is a really low bar for Lola to clear. She could enjoy her way out of a sealed metal box. “Are you?”

"Always am." Edgar is less than an hour away from quitting Thanksgiving. "Don't worry about me."

“Oh,” Lola replies, in a tone of voice that suggests she will be worrying about Edgar. “But like, it’s okay to be like sad and stuff. Like when Billie got majorly jacked down and you got bitten and Mara’s head got blasted up, that sucked a—”

Lola pauses, peering at Edgar carefully.

“—sucked eggs.”

This gets a smile out of Edgar. A small one, but more genuine than not. "That was a real mess, huh? You did well, though."

"I always do well," Lola shrugs. Scooter was the same way, perpetually fine until the day he was not. "Anyway, rock on, rock steady, hang in your buffalo stance and all that. I need to go find where they're serving the full glasses of milk. BI-ZARRE."

Mara also heads outside after dinner, thinking she may perhaps need to throw up after drinking a lot of milk and eating a moderate amount of cheese. She's immediately irritated to find Edgar already outside, since she can't throw up in front of him.

"Hey," she says instead. She gives him a critical once-over, which is bold of her to do when she looks ill herself. "You good?"

Edgar laughs without any humor. "I'll be fine." He's leaning against the side of the building with a burning joint between his fingers. Naturally, he's posed more like he's in a menswear ad than having a fit of holiday depression.

He exhales a mouthful of smoke (mindful of the breeze, away from both of them) and eyes Mara. "You good?"

"I'm fine," she says tersely, leaning up against the wall a few feet away from him. She takes her sidekick out, fiddles with it for a second, and then apparently becomes irritated with herself and pockets it again.

"I hate having a phone again," she says. "The best part of all this was not having a phone."

Probably the polite thing to do would be to not look at Mara while she's dealing with whatever she's dealing with, but Edgar can't help glancing over. He suspects Mara wouldn't appreciate him being concerned about her, and normally he wouldn't dare, but she's become... not exactly a friend. Not just yet. But someone whose well-being he cares about, sure.

"Because someone is bothering you?" He pauses. "Or is it because you bothered them?"

Mara tosses Edgar a sharp look at this addendum which either says he clocked her or that he overstepped his bounds. Or, even more likely: both. She schools her expression back to an irritated frown quickly enough.

"I was in Lake Kelenqua for two weeks before the outbreak happened. No service. I was thinking about work emails the entire time," she says. The thought had left her head immediately when they'd encountered their first zombie, and she'd found her mind had become a lot more peaceful without the constant distraction. That's over now. Her hand is in her pocket as they speak, sliding the sidekick open and shut idly. "It's like. Addictive."

"You're telling me. I used to read everything people wrote about me." He still does, technically, but at least the BB doesn't allow him to set a Google Alert for his name. No need to explain to Mara how corrosive this was for him. She's from L.A.; she knew actors.

Edgar listens to the steady click of Mara's Sidekick. He thinks about Nat, worrying about her. Worrying about them both. If Nat believes they're similar, then Edgar wouldn't know either how to help Mara. Couldn't be someone who can.

"As I recall, the phones came from you. Why'd you do it?"

Moreover, and worse for him, Mara also knew an obsessive fan of his movies. She isn't just familiar with what people wrote about actors in a general sense — she remembers plenty of things they wrote about Edgar de Leon.

There's a pang of secondhand embarrassment in her chest and she glances back towards the door of the dining hall. She stops fiddling with her phone.

"I like controlling the commodities," she says flatly.

Edgar laughs. It's only a bit insincere. There's nothing funny about such ruthless pragmatism, except that he envies it.

"You're your own worst enemy." He respects Mara just enough not to add I know what that's like, but the thought crosses his mind.

Edgar is declared...

Best Hair Despite the Apocalypse

Nat clocks his unusual behaviour and whenever she is able to catch his attention, it's clear she is concerned. About he and Mara both. Okay? she mouths to him from across the room, tries to soften the question by shaking her glass as if to ask if he was feeling sick.

This should be Edgar's cue to wink or blow a kiss, but there's a look in Nat's eyes that cuts right through his paper-thin defenses in this moment. He doesn't need to be told he's not doing a good job acting like his regular charming self.

Plan B, then. He mouths Okay back to her, and pulls out his Sidekick.

Thanksgiving @ Lundegaard (Forward-Dated to 11/28)

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

Re: ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar

ARRIVALS/VIBE CHECKS: Edgar