singillatim | Я вернулся в деревню

“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?"

"We did! Guy who took Sam was also looking for it, so it was a two-birds, one stone kind of thing." Except for that whole wrinkle with Nadine not knowing about the Sam part and Chloe lying about the 50/50 split, but it had all worked out in the end, hadn't it? "It almost blew up like, three different times, but we did get it and we all made it back to the city in one piece."

Mostly. Chloe's ribs had been pretty crunchy when she'd arrived in Milton.

Her eyes are wide. "That's - I have never heard anything like that," she laughs. "Blew up? An explosion or - it didn't work?"

Chloe snickers. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a bunch of explosives must be in want of something to blow up, yeah? Though I guess, to be fair, the helicopter crash was my fault."

These things just sort of happen.

Sveta takes a very, very long moment to think about that. "The helicopter crash? What - happened?"

"It was stupid." Chloe makes a face. "But this guy, right, he gets the artifact away from me and he doesn't even want it, trades it to this military contractor guy for a bomb, what a waste -" She takes a breath. "Well. We got to their base right after the handoff. The leader's helicopter was already in the air, but he and his stupid mullet decided to stick around so he could make sure my partner died. Big mistake."

"Chloe, what a life you lead! It's from a film or - " she trails off, shaking her head. "This - cannot be true."

Her own life is strange and weird and wild, but it's nothing like this.

"It really was ridiculous," Chloe agrees easily. "That guy used to be a doctor and he couldn't even buy his own bomb. There have to be easier ways to fundraise as a warlord than sending your whole bloody army into the jungle looking for an artifact you're not even sure is real."

She frowns, but it's hiding most of a smile. "How much of this is fantasy?" she giggles.

"I'm telling the truth!" But Chloe's laughing. It probably is a lot for people who haven't spent half their lives living like this. "If this is too much for you, you definitely don't want to hear about the yetis in Tibet."

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