[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/qFC355N.png?2[/img][/center][hr][hr][right][sub][color=1a7b30][b]Location:[/b] The Crows' Nest[/color]     [color=A9A9A9]//[/color]     [color=007236][b]Date:[/b] February 24, 2057[/color]     [color=A9A9A9]//[/color]     [color=00746b][b]Time:[/b] 18:30[/color]     [color=A9A9A9]//[/color]     [color=0076a3][b]Interactions:[/b] Erik [@FunnyGuy], Dallas [@pantothenic], Vincent [@Daxam][/color][/sub][/right][hr][hr]
What Lysandra did following her adventure in the ruined city brought new meaning to the common term 'falling asleep'. Her back was lost to agony and all that she could feel of her arms and shoulders was a throbbing ache. It was a struggle just to transfer out of her wheelchair and into bed. She roughly half-managed and fell onto her mattress, too sore and exhausted to even shift positions. Only barbarians go to bed with their shoes on. Lys supposed that she was a barbarian, then. 

To say that she woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed would be... something of an exaggeration, but she was considerably better. The myriad aches were duller and, if her arms still felt like spaghetti, at least they were a bit al dente this morning. Besides, she was now powered by science. After hiding from the provgov people by taking a well-timed morning bath, she took her time getting dressed in a cute off the shoulder top and some jean shorts. She was accosted by Erik just outside of the garden but, finally, she got to spend her day with the mistle... and the roughly dozen other projects that she had on the go. This was the first time that she'd gotten to work with a live sample, and most of what she did consisted of first trying to save the plant from its excessive recent trauma. Still, she had a few working if wholly-unsubstantiated theories:

[list][*] The blood beads were its fruits and means of spreading its seeds, which were somehow mixed in with the pseudo-blood. The mistle was using the revenants, who were particularly wide-ranging and effective organisms, just like most flowering plants with ingestible fruits used animals.
[*] It logically followed that the liquid contained in the blood beads was actually a species of sap, evolved or engineered to have qualities remarkably similar to human blood to ensure that the fruits were attractive to revenants.
[*] This led to a troubling working hypothesis: either the revenants and BOR parasites were much older than previously believed and simply poorly-documented or else classified knowledge or, alternatively, the mistle, revenants, and everything else connected to the collapse that seemed to run afoul of the basic laws of biology had been engineered by someone or some process.
[*] Finally, she had her suspicions that the mistle must be parasitic in nature. Its structural similarities, at least outwardly, to [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotropa_uniflora]Monotropa Uniflora[/url] - the ghost plant - were striking, and its white colour denoted a lack of the chloroplasts necessary for traditional photosynthetic processes to occur. Just what the plant was parasitic towards remained a mystery, and Lysandra cursed her absence during its discovery. While uprooting the mistle had been an absolute necessity for its survival, not being able to study its environment had meant the loss of vital clues as to how it worked.[/list]

Thus, the Commune's lone scientist contented herself with stabilizing it as best she knew: deep, loamy soil poached from Poppy's garden, limited direct sunlight, and some water. That would have to do for now. She spent the rest of the day intermittently picking dirt out from beneath her nails and removing as much of the corrosion from the new radio's wires as she could, replacing them as necessary. She commandeered Dallas to help move things, but he seemed oddly...dumb today, possibly distracted, and she was too busy to be his emotional support animal. 

It was five in the afternoon when she rolled out of her little workshop in the storage room, determined to reclaim for her equipment the room that had temporarily been Ionna's. Instead, she found Vincent and strong-armed him into helping her set up the projector screen in the Great Room for movies and karaoke. She trailed him around like an absolute nag as he pushed the speakers into place, making conversation and offering somewhat ineffectual help when needed. She ferried bottles of vodka, whisky, and wine on her lap, shifted chairs around, flopped on the couch for a few minutes, and then plugged ALL THE THINGS in. 

At some point, however, she felt the need to eat but no compunction to cook. How bothersome. Poppy had been in the kitchen area earlier, but Lysandra was loath to put herself through another ordeal almost as bad as the Tsar Bomba had been. With a sort of anticipatory schadenfreude, she stole glances at Erik as he walked up and contemplated taking a bite. [color=7FFFD4][i]Do it,[/i][/color] she thought evilly. [color=7FFFD4][i]You know you have to now that people are watching.[/i][/color] She couldn't suppress her grin. [color=7FFFD4][i]Do it![/i][/color]

The cake was - apparently - good, and Lys was not entirely sure if that was true or if Erik had noticed her shit-eating grin and decided to play an uno reverse card on her. With some degree of trepidation, once he'd gone off to plug in some cables that were out of her reach, she quickly made her way to the cake and cut a slice. [color=7FFFD4][i]No witnesses,[/i][/color] she told herself, after looking quickly about the room. With a cup of strong wine ready to wash away the anticipated taste, she took a bite, every muscle in her body tensing up.

Lysandra blinked and... savoured the flavour. She glanced around guiltily. When even [i]Poppy's[/i] cooking was good, it could only be an sign that this was going to be a night to remember.
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