singillatim | Я вернулся в деревню

Coin flip. An interesting thought, but Sveta isn't so certain.

"Do you think there is - a choice in it? Or is it random?"

“If it's that woman picking us out, you'd think she wouldn't pick people who hate each other.” The boatman infighting isn't exactly conducive to defeating the Darkwalker.

"The woman?" she asks, sitting back. "The - oh, yes. That woman." But she isn't even sure that's the case. It's frustrating to not know.

"I suppose we can't exactly ask."

“Yeah. Seems like it's all one-way communication with that one.” And the weird stuff, the guilt and the pain, though it doesn't seem like that was on purpose.

“You think it's deliberate?”

It's a question that she had talked with Hickey about, too, and she doesn't feel any better about the answer she's settled on.

"I think that the - idea is terrifying either way. Either she is a mindless being who doesn't know what she's doing and can't be reasoned with or - or she's a thinking creature who - who won't be reasoned with."

“If she thinks she's saving the world, she might just be grabbing anyone she can get.”

As awful as this all is, Chloe can't really blame her for that. What wouldn't she do to save her own world?

"But what makes us - able to get? Be get? Getting? Eh, I don't know the word." She struggles for a moment, looking to Chloe for help.

Chloe smiles a little. There's a symptom of Sveta’s English class crush, maybe. “It sounds stupid but it's gettable.”

The other part is less straightforward.

“I don't know if it's something special about us, like we’re… susceptible? To being changed by the aurora. Or maybe it really is random. I was sitting with three other people and I'm the only one it took.”

It certainly is. And Sveta smiles, repeating the word and committing it to memory.

"What were you doing? Have we - asked any of the others? Is there a pattern to it?"

“That EMT asked me at the general store opening.” It had felt a little too much like an interrogation to Chloe, but maybe the man had just been jealous at the revelation that she’d been hanging out with his 'roommate' without him.

“I was at a party though, and some of these guys I'm pretty sure don't know how to have fun. So I don't think it's that.”

"A party!" she laughs. "I was certainly not doing that. But - yes. I think that many of the people here would fall apart if anyone threw a true party."

Chloe snickers. God. Some of those Victorians would probably crumble into dust.

“It was really great. There’d been… unrest, recently, around where I was. It had just ended and the soldiers were coming home. The mood in the street was electric.”

They would. Sveta's not the sort to party, but it doesn't mean she doesn't know how.

She rests her chin in her hand. "Did you know someone who - any of the soldiers?"

Chloe shakes her head. Sure, she’d known 'someone who' considering that she’d dropped the head asshole in charge into a canyon herself, but that's probably not what Sveta is picturing.

“Knew this little girl there, her dad had volunteered.” If it was my choice, I wouldn't leave you here alone. “I took her out for pizza to celebrate him coming back.”

"Pizza," she repeats, staring longingly at the bowl on the table. Maybe that could be a pizza, if she tried hard enough.

"I'm glad he came back," she says honestly. "It - it sounds like not everyone did."

“Yeah.” Chloe’s father had been killed by the same group years earlier, left to rot until the authorities had only been able to identify him through dental records. “Yeah, it was rough. But we… this time, everyone survived. In the city. It was good.”

"It was good," she repeats. "I am glad for that. I - was with friends," she says. "It wasn't a particular special night. It wasn't - anything to be excited about."

“It is now, if you miss them.” Who knows when - or if - they’ll see their friends again? “Do you want to talk about them? Or do you want a distraction.”

How to talk about Olga, who can turn into an owl, or Anton, who she might love but who will not talk to her because she is the most powerful sorceress in an age?

"No, no," she laughs. "You go ahead. Tell me something."

Chloe smiles again, nostalgic even though technically her India trip wasn't that long ago. “I was at the party with my friend Sam - he's my ex’s brother but he's cool - and Nadine, my new work partner. She loves animals, knows everything about them, I reckon. We had to take a side trip to see monkeys while we were in India.”

Sveta folds her arms on the table. "Monkeys!" she exclaims. "What - did you do for work?"

It's difficult to be a survivalist here and know everything about your friends.

“Grey langur,” Chloe says, amused again at the memory. That woman really is so cute. “Apparently. We were looking for something out in the jungle.”

"Something?" she presses gently. "What something?"

“Well.” Chloe rolls her eyes. “My friend Sam got his stupid ass kidnapped by the head rebel in this civil war situation, so that was my main goal, but we were looking for something else, too. A treasure in an ancient city.”

"An adventure," she laughs, breathless with the novelty of it. "Did you find it?"

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