singillatim | Я вернулся в деревню

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Я вернулся в деревню

Who: Svetlana and Open + a prompt for Fraser
What: Venturing forth and also dealing with April shenanigans!
When: April catch-all!
Where: Milton, then the path up to and including Lakeside. See prompts in post!

Content Warnings: Nothing as of yet; will update!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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."

"No, I definitely want to hear about the yetis in Tibet," she exclaims. "Are you finished with the bowl? I can get more. There is plenty."

"I'd love another bowl, if that's all right. That cold fog really saps my strength." Chloe's endurance had been pretty high even before getting her aurora power, so she's really not used to this.

"The yetis were just guys in suits, but they were functionally immortal so I think it balances out."

"What makes them immortal?" She takes the bowl and fills it up again, setting it down, warm and inviting, in front of her.

It occurs to her that she probably should react more to the concept of immortals, but it's already done.

Chloe figures that at this point Sveta's just playing along. Besides, the wonderful smell of the soup is distracting.

"There was a tree up there in the city that had this weird sap. Bright blue. Absurdly flammable." The city had collapsed when the sap at the base of the tree had caught. "They'd eat it, these yeti guys. Gave them black teeth and ultra high aggression, but they were super strong and they didn't die of illness or old age. You could kill them with guns, but you'd have to unload entire clips into them."

"Wow," she breathes, settling across from her again. "Does that tree grow anywhere else?"

“I don't think so.” She certainly hopes not! “There was a guy there, in the village, who had been forced to help the Germans try to find it during the war. I don't think they'd have gone all the way out there if there'd been an easier way to get it.”

Sveta rests her chin in her hands, practically awestruck at the whole story. "That's - fascinating," she mutters. "This goes very deep. Very - long. Complicated."

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