| Who | Samwise and Signless What | PO. TA. TOES. Where | District 12 kitchens When | A few days after Sam's arrival; a few days before the Arena. Warnings | None expected; will update if needed!
It's been a strange few days, and no mistake. The whole place, this whole country of Panem, is easier to bear since Sam found Frodo and Bilbo, and the rest; but he can't be with them every minute of the day with the curfew going, and there's plenty of hours he's left alone in the District 12 suites, feeling little less lost than he did his first hour here.
But there's something here as he hasn't seen since he left the Shire, and that's a kitchen. A proper kitchen, with a stove and an oven and a sink and a pantry and all; more than a proper kitchen, even, as Sam's got no idea what half the devices in it are meant to do, or what they could do that the things he recognizes can't. It's a means of keeping occupied, after hours - not just using it, but figuring out how to use it, one oddity at a time (and with the help of a sturdy box on which to stand).
Still: Enough things remain the same. There are bowls and pots and pans aplenty, and it takes only a politely-worded request to one of the silent servants ever hanging about the place to get the stove on, if not functioning quite as Sam would like it. He's still not sure to whom he's meant to go if it's specific things he wants, but inside the-- the icebox, he supposes it is, more or less, there's a drawer full of vegetables, firm and fresh; and among them, all the roots a body could wish for.
"I wish I knew where it came from, I do," he tells one of the lower cabinets as he puts his head into it, seeking for a pot he won't need two hands just to get up off the stovetop. "I've not seen any market in this place yet - and it's hardly the season for tomatoes, yet here they are, and sweet, too! They'll fry nice enough, I'll wager-- but it hardly seems natural, does it, to have a year's harvest all in one place, and not a farm in twenty leagues."
If he finds it odd to be talking to nobody but himself, he doesn't seem to notice; he's focused on his work as he talks, hefting a pan up onto the stovetop and beginning with deft movements to separate out the vegetables on the counter next to him. |