tushanshu_logs | EVENT | LANDFALL

EVENT | LANDFALL | VALISHAERA

Characters: ALL!
Date: JULY 13-26
Location: Valishaera
Situation: Tu Vishan has made landfall on Siaxhi, to explore the Dreaming Watch City of Valishaera.
Warnings/Rating: Please indicate content warnings in subject headers as applicable.

As Tu Vishan draws near, the heavy jungle visible even from miles out quickly identifies the landmass as Siaxhi, one of the westernmost continents in Konryu and one that has been largely untouched insofar as the kedan themselves have gone. There is a natural inlet along the southeast shore on the continent and Tu Vishan makes for that, though he fills nearly all of it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Maybe a little too alike, as they had merely gone from one war to another, with only a few centuries between them.]

Alright. I'm listening.

[ ~~Picture it, Paris, 1830...~~ Enjolras takes a moment to consider what of the political background is needed here, and what would be too much of an information dump. All things considered, Enjolras decides to go with a slightly amended version of past events. ]

About six years before our July Revolution, a new King came to the throne. He, and his brother before him were set up as rulers because they were members of a ruling family, not because the people had wished them to be there. It is a very common thing, or was at home, that Kings inherit their nations by birth and power of blood. About sixteen years before we revolted, when France was given a king again, a charter was established and it severely limited a good deal of freedoms for the people. Censorship of the press, persecution of religions other than the Catholic...they were aggressions that started to wear upon the people.

Slowly, things began to grow worse. There was a law proscribing death as the penalty for profaning the church. [For the Eucharist, in specific, but it's a matter of religion Enjolras is not certain is the same between worlds and he hardly wants to get into that explanation too.] And then, there was another law passed arguing that the people must pay those who had been deemed enemies of the Republic back in our first Revolution.

The people had been promised a good deal of more freedom than they proved to be getting, you see, and the air was already ripe for change and a return to their lives under the republic. While all of this was going on, a good many of my friends and I arrived in Paris to begin studying and found each other, which helped a good deal, actually. It did not do enough, but it did help, and we formed our little society as a sort of smaller subgroup branching off from the rights of man society. We'd come together, started our great work of liberating the republic once again, and started finding our feet as it were.

We'd authored some pamphlets, printed articles in papers sympathetic to our cause and that was how I came to know Carrel. When he assisted in the founding of Le National, he offered me a place writing articles for our cause, perhaps every...week or so, I think it was. In Spring, the King dissolved our parliament, who some were allowed to vote for, though most of us were below our majorities still, and suspended new elections, which was more than enough to upset even the calmer of our group, but then things became harder still. He dissolved the National Guard as well. Back then, our guardsmen were much more on our side in things. They served as much more of a link between the king and people, and with them gone, and a extremely hot summer, well...

[It's actually approaching the anniversary of those days themselves, roughly, at least, Enjolras thinks,given the timing of Christmas and it feels somehow right to have found the papers now. That does not make the story of the July Revolution any easier, but even so, he'll tell it to the death. Feuilly had the injustice of the Partition of Poland to rage at, but the acts of Charles, and their result, are his particular grievance, even now.]

In July, our king signed yet more ordinances that wrested away more of our power. The middle class were also barred from voting, more positions were dissolved, business owners now banned for running from office, and,on top of this for many of us, he suspended all liberties of the press instead of 'just' [Those are some air-quotes Enjolras has learned here that he is attaching to the word, yes.] the censorship we had been under.

That day was a Sunday, but by the next morning everything had changed. Our business owners wished to protest, so they shut their businesses, and the workers had nowhere to go, but joining others who'd been slowly fired all summer. They ordered our republican papers shut down, and many did, but fifty of us met at Le National and signed that we would keep on printing. Well, they made the choices, but I did sign in my support as well. Because we had stayed open, they came to shut us down that night and take our contraband.

[Here, Enjolras is tapping at Carrel's printed words again, nearly seeing the man himself as he put down those very words.]

We stayed around, of course, on principle, and well, we were a group of journalists. I do not think that I've ever known journalists to flee before any major events, and republican journalists at that, meaning we had a great deal of things to defend.

We'd gathered quite the mob in our support, at our press when they arrived, and that was when we started fighting.

[Enjolras, himself, had draped himself over the press containing the arranged print for the edition now in his hands, and, though he did not raise his voice, made everything quite clear to the officers sent in that they would have to take the press from him by force, or by his death. There is something of that spark he had shown then in his eyes now, almost as though he expects for someone around him to provide a challenge.]

It was exactly as I read. Obedience was long past a duty we would even pretend at, and we prepared to offer up what resistance we could. There were no chances, or leaving the press to fall into police hands, and I...well, things all became rather confused...

[They'd tried to pull him off, or push or shove, but it had finally been a knock to the face with a nightstick, and a boot firmly, sharply, pressed into his spine and quite a lot of darkness rushing up to meet him then, though he had kept this secret from near everyone, or he had tried to, then.]

The next I knew, it was much later and I sent Gavroche and some of his small army to gather everyone else that we could meet and plan our next moves together.

[Here, Enjolras is pausing, taking a moment to breathe, and giving Midii a halfway sheepish expression since this is probably the first time she's heard him going on like this at all.]

This is all much longer than I'd thought that it would be. Perhaps we ought to find somewhere to sit before I tell you more.

Edited 2014-07-21 11:07 (UTC)

[~~Oh, she was picturing it alright~~ Some of the story was vaguely familiar to her. Not enough to be sure it was decidedly the same world, but enough to know it was at least a parallel one. War was circular, after all. Their would have not been the first in France's history, and hers would certainly not be the last in its future.]

[The main difference was that they had a King, and in her time, there was the Alliance. Not just a single monarchy usurping power and punishing the current generation for the pasts' actions. The Alliance was world-wide, and the Earth itself had been at war with the Space Colonies that only desired autonomy. Religion was a momentary escape for some, but no longer a direct means of persecution. It simply did not carry the degree of sanctuary it might have once had--Midii heard stories about a Church which had been burned to the ground for its alleged allegiances. Father and Sister (meaning the priest and nun who lived in the area) brutally murdered.]

[Then, of course, there were the rebels. Small pockets of resistance that sought to regain control for the People. Midii knew of them all too well...and it pained her to realize that, had their situations overlapped, she and Enjolras would have been fighting on opposite sides. Not even out of principal, but of survival for herself and her family. Mostly her family. The money the Alliance had promised her...]

[Would things have been different in another time? Another France? She couldn't help wonder.]

That might be a good idea.

[She had been so caught up in the tale, after all, she'd hardly noticed him "going on" or the fact that they were both still on their feet.]

[Given all of the differences Enjolras had found, even among rough contemporaries, or those whose dates matched on some accounts that they might have overlapped, Enjolras would almost be shocked now to meet many people from the Paris he had come from here unless he's personally known them, or at least of them. Hell, he could run into someone like Victor Bloody Hugo and not be convinced that they exist within the same universe, even though he's actually met the man. Not that he's got a penchant for the Romantics, anyway, but the point remains, he supposes. Something of it anyway.

An alliance may, at first, have seemed better than a king had the subject come up, but then again, what had most of the parliament been in action but a united group of bourgeoisie who strove to protect their own self assured importance and interests above all else. There were, well, so many horrible things that seemed to function most of all as universals and could be taken to so many terrible extremes no matter what the differences making up a world were. He did not doubt that there could be a better one, but perhaps the work of the Utopia he had seen from the barricade was still the work of centuries, maybe more than those, in the making.]

After all, I've not gotten to the first day of the revolution itself yet.

[He's confiding this with a little nod, then glancing about for somewhere they might sit, mostly for the reason that he tends to ramble and there are three more actual days to get through. ]

Here we are [He's saying, after a moment, finding a perfectly comfortable looking table and pulling out a chair for Midii before taking one across from her, his hands splayed across the table as he thought where to continue.]

As it transpired during our meeting, and the messages we'd gotten, it was expected that the workers, and the others who were being harmed directly by all of this, would try to form a revolt in the next day. There was the hope that things would go to barricades, and it seemed as if, perhaps, our time had come.

I think we spent that night, almost all of us, trying to plan for what may come. It had occurred to all of us to some degree we might not all meet again, or we may meet again in a world that was changed. We spoke to some of our larger society, learned where some barricades were the most likely to be placed, and where we could expect to stir up fighting reasonably. It was one of the best nights, and the best three days that followed them, you know.

[It's a time that Enjolras can think of even the friends he lost here, in addition to those who did not come, with smiles as bright and vibrant as he is just now.]

I had rarely felt, even Paris herself, had never felt so alive, so filled with hope at that point of the night and into the next day. And when the people gathered, we were there to meet them, to attempt directing things, really. I left a lot of that up to the others, especially when they sent out members of the military to patrol. My friend Bahorel was, well, always rather fond of riots and tearing things up and throwing them at people who deserved it. He was in charge of a good deal of our group's area of influence and getting things started that day.

[You know, to put it mildly. There are less politic ways to refer to Bahorel, probably, but Enjolras does want his friend to remain in a good light in this re-telling so phrases like 'one stop destruction' and 'reincarnated god of mayhem and chaos' are best left in his mind.]

So things got on to twilight, and the mobs attacked. I think we had no more streetlamps in Paris after that night, really. But what started as just a riot quickly became something more. When the fighting really started, and the next day, as all of the insurgents across the city tried to capture some of our most important landmarks, some of our group separated. Feuilly, the best of us, and some of the others with more noble purposes in mind, went to La Louvre, not to capture, but to guard it so that everything within, our greatest works of art, could not be harmed as a result of the mob or violence.

Everyone fought across the city. I was on a barricade with most of my friends then, and we took on a little damage, saw some of those who'd joined us killed, friends of ours, even, but none of our set of nine. We were lucky to be spared that fate, then. And we kept on for three days of it.

[Three days which, actually now, are something of a blur to Enjolras. They had not stopped to eat or sleep, after all, so that the whole revolution comes to him in bits of memory, rather than a full construction of events. That was until the end and how it had been ruined, then.]

It finally felt, it truly did, as though we finally had won. The more buildings those on our side gathered, the closer a republic seemed, the truer that it was.

[His next words are a sigh,deeply sad and disgruntled at the same time, and the next words are darkly bitter. ]

The closer it had seemed...

[If he was looking for precise dates to compare...that was a little above even Midii's mental capacity. She had always been smart for her age, sure, but never a genius. Not like some of the actual prodigies she'd known. It was more...the essence of the history. The emotion and human nature of action and reaction to the events surrounding them.]

[Events such as war.]

[She accepted the chair he pulled out for her with a grateful smile, sitting with proper posture and her legs crossed at the ankles.]

That seems almost ironic, doesn't it? That your sense of hope would have come at the very beginning of the war.

[Then again, it made sense. Not yet weary from all the fighting, if chances looked good at the time, why wouldn't they have reason to believe that such a battle would be over soon?]

[Dates were not what mattered in all of this, no. Scopes of events, rough periods in time and thought were more than enough to establish things on a formal scale. Other than that, what truly mattered in those cases were the simpler things. The songs being sung in the streets, forms of address among citizens, the leading topics in the air. Those made a time and place much more than a date written on a paper and established it forever as Enjolras was concerned.]

Maybe a bit ironic that we did not wait until much longer to allow ourselves to consider the outcome and whether too much enthusiasm and hope might lead to a disaster. But then again, it was also something else though. Very much like...

When I was a child, it transpired that my favorite aunt was to have a child and I was to have a cousin. The months of waiting seemed so long, even though they were busy ones with a great deal of preparation. But when she realized that it was time to send for the midwife and the hardest part of birth began, it was also the moment that our family was filled with the most hope and the most joy. Even though the moment could and was filled with a lot of pain, my aunt was at her most excited. At the promise of a child and all the hope one has for an infant who is being born.

[Is that improper? It would have been a bit at home, to even speak of such, but here it hardly seems as socially strict, not that Enjolras was one to worry too much about lines of propriety before.]

Our July Revolution started quite like that. The second French republic was being born, and we were all set to labor, and to, as my friend Feuilly pointed out, deliver and see it fulfilled. However, [And his tone is a little wry] the births did vary in terms of success.

My cousin was born healthy and brought us a great deal of joy. Our republic was killed before it left the womb we had prepared for it.

[Perhaps to another, but Midii actually found yet another parallel to his story, if what she suspected was true.]

So your cousin was okay. What about your aunt?

Well, Aunt Apolline was weakened by the experience, more than was thought usual and she became ill rather easily after that, but she did live until Gahariet was old enough to be sent to school. I do suspect she waited until then, to know for certain that he would be all right without her there.

[Thinking of that moment now, visiting with his aunt in the last few years of her life, always at her home in Paris, where her husband had insisted on bringing her for better access to doctors, Enjolras remembers just how afraid she seemed of leaving the earth. It had seemed the sort of thing that one understood would happen, but naturally brought her so much worry for the beloved child she had longed for and nurtured, despite the promises and assurances that things would be as all right as they could.

It was a fear he could acknowledge all too well back then, at seventeen, himself, but he had not understood it very well, and had not considered even then, that he would ever have a child. Only, right here, with Midii, another metaphor in the scenario he started to explain becomes perfectly clear. The only regret at his death, the only sorrow was that he did not know who remained behind to care for the idea of the republic, and...

Well, it seems his metaphor and story went deeper than he knew, and he's reasonably sure that his Aunt Apolline is laughing at him, somewhere in spirit. Trolled, almost. From behind the grave and a universe.

Oh QUITE well played indeed! A little snort escapes him then before he realizes that one does not often punctuate stories of beloved relatives who have passed on with laughter.]

I...forgive me for that but I've just realized something even deeper in the metaphor than I imagined, and I believe my aunt is laughing at me.

[So she didn't die in childbirth after all. Huh. But she was lost all the same.]

[That was not quite true for Midii's mother, who gave up the fight by the time her fourth child was born. Midii never blamed her for leaving, but she was also never truly close enough to her mother to be so greatly affected by her passing. Except for the part where it left her the primary caretaker for her three little brothers...and then, later, for her father as well, when he got sick.]

No, that's alright.

I wasn't offended.

[Not offended, no, but there is something else there, something more to the question that has Enjolras searching Midii's gaze, and trying to find something to say.]

It was not so uncommon, then, for women to lose their lives that way in my Paris. A few of my friends experienced it for themselves when they were young. I cannot specifically relate to the experience of so much loss, my mother and I do not speak, but if you would feel better to speak of yours, or not to speak of her, or anything at all, I would gladly listen.

[She hesitated at first. Not because she didn't want to talk about her mother. There was never a time when she would make a point of bringing her up, but she never shied away from the topic before.]

This is your story. I wouldn't want to interrupt.

Please, if you would like...

I've told you so much about those who were important to me. It would only be fair for you to do the same thing. And, well, my story does not exactly end there, but the July Revolution does.

The old king fled, and we had hopes that we had won but they installed another. That is what came of our attempt just then. There...is not so much more to tell you of that, so please. Speak away.

[Besides, it may be good to listen to someone else for a change. Someone with another perspective of things. Enjolras had not gotten along with his mother since he was a young teenager, and he last saw her at age 18, on a visit where he overheard her saying she was "terrified" of what he had become, so it would be nice to learn of someone else's really.]

[There were few people who knew of her past, and even less who knew the whole story.]

[Maybe...it was time. Time she finally told somebody who could understand. Different eras, but same world. One filled with war and death and heartache. The only difference between them was that Enjorlas knew what it was like to experience hope first. Midii had never been given that luxury.]

I was born in southern France, around le Midi. [At least, that's what the region was referred to as by her time; the coastal area regions that bordered the Atlantic.] Our village was too far north to gain much from the oceans, though, and the war had already been going on for years. Before I was even born. Tensions between the Earth and the Space Colonies had existed for a long time, but it was the Assassination of a peaceful ambassador...a man named Heero Yuy...the year After Colony 175 that started it all.

Not everybody was affected by the War. Not the rich. But the rest of us were. It's all we've known our whole lives. Soldies coming into town for supplies. Fights breaking out. People get hurt or killed when they didn't even want to be involved. That was the world we lived in.

[Hope had been a major part of what kept Enjolras steady on the barricades and spurred him through a lot of situations, yes. He may not have realized the extent of that hope back then, but since he's been here, he has learned a LOT about who he is, and was, and the things that sustained him. A life without hope, even if he did not quite realize how deeply he hoped then, is a hard thing to face, especially in those circumstances
.
Give a man a life without hope and they turn into, well... Grantaire came to mind, actually. Midii herself did not seem that way, of course, but well, he was interested to learn more of her, really, given the talks they'd had so far. Enjolras leaned forward in his seat a bit to study her.]

That sounds... [He's frowning a little, trying not to make this seem dismissive or as if he does not care and the words show it as the come out.] much like the world that Epoinine knew. The nature of war is terrible, more to its effects afterwards in most cases, I think. I am sorry to hear of that.

[It would have been a lie to say she didn't flinch ever so slightly beneath his gaze. It was as if he were trying to look right through her. Not that she thought he was accusing her of lying. Again, she had no reason to. Not anymore.]

I wouldn't know about that.

The year I came from, just before I was brought to Haven, was After Colony 1-9-0. The War had still been going on at the time. I had been right in the middle of it all.

[An interesting pronoun choice. I, not we, when until a moment ago she had been specifically referring to the home and people she'd been born into.]

[Not quite to look through her, maybe, but to understand her more than anything else. Enjolras had never been quite sure what to make of women, especially younger ones, so it resulted in situations like this one. And of course he would never think she lied at all. Midii's truth was her truth, no matter how different it was from anyone else's. It was only fair that she be allowed to speak her story, however she felt it best. Enjolras himself was interested in what she had to say, not in accusations.]

You had been.

[He is nodding and looking up a bit to meet her gaze.] You were a soldier of some kind then?

[She shook her head]

No. Not me.

[Which wasn't to say child soldiers did not exist. They did. Not as a common occurrence, to be sure, but there had been instances of nameless orphans as young as four or five being taken in. Taught to fight. Taught to kill. Sometimes, worse.]

I was about seven or eight, I think, when they first came to our village. They were looking for kids willing to help them, and they were willing to pay. Very well. Enough to feed a very sick older man and three little boys for some time. [It hadn't been the money that motivated her. It had been the thought of taking care of her family, who might have otherwise starved.] I had no other choice but to sign up. It was our only chance.

So I went with them. And they trained me. For more than a year. How to fool soldiers. How to listen. Pay attention. How to gain intel, decode basic encryptions, and most importantly, only get noticed when it was necessary. I had to seem completely innocent, or they'd suspect me.

None of them ever did.

[That news was a relief. Well, at least Midii's part of it. Enjolras was developing something of a soft spot for the girl, and after all, it did feel right. They had to stick together, did they not? He would have hated to hear it had been her, but even something in her tone suggested that it happened, which he hated too. Still, this was not about a world he'd never seen, and the horrible things they did to children not here, but about Middi instead. So, he listened, instead of interjecting, even when she mentioned the group who had come.]

So, you were something of a spy?

[He's choosing the word carefully, or trying to, because if there is one thing everyone that Enjolras knows dislikes, and he himself disdains, it is a spy. But then, other worlds, and the offer that she mentions, that idea that someone could be helped by it. He can almost see Feuilly's face popping up here now, as young as when they'd first met him, and he had point out that what he did was to help others. He would understand far better, though Enjolras IS trying. there is another important question to be asked in all of this, though. ]

Did they care for you while you were trained, at all?

[She nodded absently at the first question. The title alone wasn't offensive to her, It was essentially true. She infiltrated enemy ranks and made them think she was one of them. If that was all that had happened, she wouldn't have been bothered at all. It was the fact that so many people died because of her...right in front of her...that weighed heavily on her conscience.]

Well enough.

They were strict, sure, and there were a lot of things we weren't allowed to do. We got yelled at when we screwed up. Punished, if we broke the rules. But we were fed and had a bed to sleep in every night.

[Well. This was one of those moments when Enjolras was forced, once again, to re-evaluate the priorities and standards he had known at home. Spies, even when one used them, were never quite trusted there, and he had understood why, with it being so EASY to sell one side out to gain a profit, and vice versa. He, himself, had reviled Javert at the barricades when he had learned that the man among them was the inspector and there to ensure that their barricade fell.

It was different though, now that he felt he knew Midii a bit better than at first. Perhaps spying, as it seemed to have been for her, and as it had been done to aid the side she stood on, was not always so reprehensible as it had felt to him then. At any rate, it was not the sort of thing applying to this moment, or to their future, so he simply committed that fact to memory, in the case that her skills may someday come in handy. And well, what she described sounded rather a lot like school had been for him. Well, aside the fact of what she'd studied, really. ]

Not so awful as I had first thought, then. [He spoke those words outloud, musing over them.] But still a rather difficult position to be in at times, I would imagine. After all, for most of us, having someone to report to and such, ends when we finally are allowed to leave the lycées.

Edited 2014-07-28 07:49 (UTC)

[She wouldn't have blamed him for looking differently at her now, reevaluated priorities or no. She was a spy. Part of her still instinctively clung to that training--she had been snooping around some of the kedan local areas lately. Seeing what was going on, and attempting to uncover certain shady deals. Oh, not that she would dare intrude herself. She was sneaky, not stupid; everything she uncovered, once she had enough visual proof for certainty, went straight to local authorities.]

[But there was still that snitch stigma hanging over her head. A lingering uncertainty of whether or not to trust someone like her.]

I never made it that far in school.

But you're wrong. There will always be somebody to report to. If not a teacher, than a boss. Or a commander. Being left on your own can be dangerous where I come from, and not just for me.

[The training explained quite a bit more at least about how she had come to be found here just now. Enjolras was not filled with the immediate distaste he had had for Javert after learning the truth at least, and well, in any place but here, the admission would have been the end of things as far as being friendly went.

At home, Enjolras might have used her, actually, as a young woman could get into many places that men could not, and could also be ignored in a great deal of conversations, even important ones that may have been of use in one way or other. It would not have been a friendly, or even relatively respectful business relationship, but still. He could count on both fingers, and then some, the times that a female spy would have worked out quite well. Why had he not thought of it, why had this not been a tactic? He could almost kick himself for that right now.]

Damn it all. [Those words were actually muttered out loud.] We could have used the women.

As much as he had wished the Revolution and the Republic to have remained pure, perhaps more underhanded tactics would have been of use. And the ends that they had found themselves at, even the ends that they had tried for, would have more than justified the means. In fact, he could think of nothing that he had done in the name of Revolution that had not been perfectly justified by the ends that they had gotten, or desired.]

Wives and mistresses, even servants must have heard so much.

[And then, in the midst of that musing, he slightly remembered that he was talking to an actual girl, and actual spy, and blinked a little.]

Ah, that was probably rude. I was just realizing a mistake we made in trying to keep our victories completely pure. That was something of a mistake, I think.

Then I was luckier than I knew, that my life was not so full of those. At least not those who were worthy of being reported to in any greater sense. Those who I chose to share it with were more than worthy, they were equals. I am glad, too, that they were such who would never have left me on my own.

[The outburst was, indeed, unexpected. Far more positive than she would ever have anticipated. For one who seemed averse to the thought of a spy not moments before, here he was, embracing the thoughts of what someone like her could have brought to his own war at hand.]

Your time is different than mine. A woman would have been no less noticed than a man. But a child... [She said nothing about servants, not knowing whether or not that would be true. Servants were not slaves, but rather highly trained paid officials that were employed by the wealthiest of the wealthy. Often with their own level of respect. Not dismissed as little more than moving furniture.] ...and even then, if we did not remain quiet, we would be called nuisances and thrown out the first chance they got.

[It took a bit of opening his mind to get used to the concept of spying at first, but once Enjolras had realized what could be done, well. Perhaps underhanded tactics would not have been so bad in and of themselves. It was awful to think that way, but sometimes that sort of thought process did come in handy.]

A child would have been even less so then, yes. A part of the endemic problems that Paris was having at the time. Gamines running about everywhere, really no more noticed than the rats, simply something to trip over and complain about. It takes a special sort of coldness to deny the existence of starving children in the street, but many in Paris managed it.

[There's a hint of anger in his words, and Enjolras feels a sort of fire rising in his chest with them, but he clamps down on it for now, a library not being the proper place to rail against things that had been.]

It seems that your world, your universe, perhaps, had a more sensible idea of how to treat relations between men and women at least. It was never our pressing issue, but a good deal many of my friends supported, and struggled with bringing attention to the idea of equal suffrage among the genders.

[Enjolras will not lie and say that it was something he'd deemed worthy of importance at the time. It had been an issue, and he would never have denied that he thought women should be treated equally as possible, without disrespecting them, but gaining control of the new republic had been the first step and many other causes, worthy though they were, had needed to be put aside, and beyond simply agreeing with the terms at hand, he'd not devoted himself to the brainwork needed for it.]

I think too many people tell children that they should be seen and not heard. I have never known many young people when I was not so young myself. Gavroche excepted, and now, you, of course, but shutting someone down, or throwing them out so often cheats us of some valuable ideas or skills. You seem to be a living proof of that.

[She IS living, isn't she? Should he have been more careful with that phrasing?]

[She took note of the questioning look in his eye at that last statement, and knew at once what he was thinking.]

Yes, I am still alive. For now.

[...if only because she couldn't be sure what awaited her if and when she ever returned home. As she had previously explained to Frank. She was no longer in immediate danger. The bombs had ceased. But even for a child of her resourcefulness, there was only so far one could travel on foot, with no food or water, in a corpse-ridden field, and no sense of direction or sign of civilization for miles around.]

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