burnt_orangesky | {Twenty-three} &diams The Shades of darkness filled her life

"I'll have to remember that."

"It's not sanitary to sink bodies in standing water," he protested, but weakly. "When they start rotting - all right, nomads might, but does that clothing look nomadic to y-" Rogue shook his head harder, and very deliberately turned away from the water's edge.

"Sorry. That's not important right now." One way or another, a few more hours underwater wasn't going to hurt them.

Trying to gauge the dog's size, he made a smaller loop in the other end of the rope, the dry end, and held it out to Fred, then turned southeast, the way he'd come. "Let's get going."

"I'm pretty sure all the particulates near the volcano can't be good for anyone's lungs," he said a few minutes later, as the terrain got drier and more rocky. "I should've remembered to get another scarf." Rogue unlooped his from around his neck and handed it over, then shed his jacket. As a breath mask, it wasn't as good as the scarf, but it was something.

"If you do not, she will correct you." Fred smiled faintly. It was almost the only thing her otherwise-quiet housemate insisted upon.

"No, they don't look especially like nomads." More like noble men, or perhaps warriors. Was that funerary dress or armor? It was so ornamented, yet functional... it could be either, really. Or maybe both. "No one is using this water from the looks of it, anyway."

Taking the loop of rope, Fred looked at it dubiously. She squatted down for a moment, risking putting Aven down on the ground briefly while she undid the loop. Quickly tying the now-loose end to Aven's collar, she straightened up again with the dog back in her arms. Much better; she didn't want to choke her dog if he suddenly ran off, forcing her to pull on the rope. She had a firm grip on the loose (wet) end of the rope just in case he did just that.

When he offered her his scarf she shook her head. "Keep it; if the particles are as bad as you think, you will need it." She fished in the pocket of her light jacket for a moment before she pulled out a scarf that still had purchase tags attached to it. "Thought I put that there." She wrapped the scarf a little awkwardly around her mouth one-handed, then held a corner of it over Aven's nose and mouth prompting him to bark shrilly a few times before he settled down again. "Good boy. This will not last long... I hope."

"Oh. I didn't notice the collar," Rogue said sheepishly, with a bit of a grin.

Just in general the walk was uneventful; in such hostile-seeming territory he was too occupied with noting that he was headed past all the same things and keeping an eye out for trouble to want to talk, and it seemed like Fred either felt the same, was occupied with her pet, or was put off by the change in his attitude. [I'm not godmodding am I?]

There was a heartstopping moment when he thought he saw something large and fast flying way up ahead, but when he strained his eyes he saw nothing through the haze but the now-visible tower, glowering malevolently at nothing specific. All in all, they got back without incident.

[if there are nazguls here, it was one of those. If there aren't, it was Valenth's blue-flamed dragon. Since he's Rogue, he'll think it was a ship.]

[[Nope, you're not god-modding, it's fine! And chat says that Nazguls are totally a possibility, so there we are then XD]]

Fred shrugged, smiling. "That's all right, it was easily fixed."

She didn't mind that the walk was quiet; she was indeed occupied with Aven, keeping him calm and petting him. As they grew closer to that tower and the place she had originally found herself, he was growing more nervous. She wasn't put off by Rogue's attitude; people reacted to death in different, and often rather strange, ways.

She suddenly frowned thoughtfully. Her voice slightly muffled by the scarf, she said, "Rogue... I just realized. Back there you talked about those people possibly being a species that could breath water." She hesitated a moment before asking her question. "Are you a Human then? Please forgive me if I am being rude."

They were already back in the area where the lift supposedly was, with only one small tense moment when that... thing had flown over them. Fred was decently certain it was some sort of animal, but she couldn't be sure and she hoped it wouldn't come back to give her a closer look.

Fred looked around expectantly. The lift had to be somewhere around here. Not even her curiosity with his familiarity with species other than Humans could lessen her desire to leave this horrid place.

[[People seem to know what their homeworlds are.... so!]]

"I'm Corellian," he said with a distracted version of the typical flashy odds-matter-not smile, as if what that meant was self-evident. The smile wasn't visible - to his irritation, he got some ash in his teeth - but it could be heard in his voice.

Rogue was now straining his ears as well as his eyes, but there was no engine sound. If he couldn't hear the engines, then whoever was flying couldn't be close enough to see if he started waving his jacket around. That would be another reason to come back here later.

"And there it is," he said as the lift and the various medics came into view, relaxing his guard a little.

[[...Rogue, first you want to pull the evil strangly drowned ghosts out of the water, now you want to flag down a Nazgul. You're so not genre savvy.]]

[[Fred doesn't know because I'm evil, but that's cool <3]]

Fred blinked. That was certainly straightforward of him. "I see..." Corellian. That didn't ring any bells at all. Still, it was nice to be acquainted with yet another person who was not a Human, even if it made her a little jealous that this hatchling knew his species already. "I do not know what my species might be called, but Humans seem to be most common here. There are even several people who seem to believe that Humans are the only species there could be."

"Thank goodness." Fred didn't bother to hide the relief in her voice as she saw the lift and the medics. "Were you going to stay behind and find more people?" She shifted Aven a bit in her arms. The little dog had been quiet since that thing had passed overhead but she could feel him trembling.

[At some point he'll have to realize that no one here, with the possible exception of Handmaiden, will have any idea what Corellian means. ...Now I kind of want to have Rogue go drinking, knock down a huge amount of alcohol with hardly any effect, and explain it as "I'm Corellian".]

"What?" He actually stopped to look back at her. "That's absurd. Who said that? Let me guess - they're sheltered and from some backwater?"

Rogue frowned. "Actually, I think I'll see if I can get into temporary housing now and get this ash off. It looks like there are plenty of other people going looking. I might come back later, though." For the bodies. And to try and identify the ship, if it was a ship.

[[Lolz! We do have a bar XD]]

"I believe most of them claim to be from Earth," Fred agreed, nodding. In her mind, that was a backwater... though if Rogue asked her why she thought that, she would be hard-pressed to explain why.

Fred nodded again. "Probably wise. If it is a bad idea to breathe it in, who knows what it will do if it sets on your skin long enough?" At this point, even if she could not get into her home she would go to the communal showers in Sections 1 and 2. Even a cold shower would be better than none at all.

She walked closer to the lift, waving off the medics that approached her asking if she was injured in any way.

"Isolated colonies sometimes forget about the greater galaxy, but why these Earthians would actually think it's not possible to be nonhuman..." A little disgusted, he started walking again.

"I woke up covered in it, and it doesn't seem to brush off easily, so if it makes me sick, it makes me sick. But I think my skin can handle it - lungs are a bit more delicate," Rogue said, pausing to kick at a particular mound of ash and finding a shapeless canvas bag, right where he'd buried it. He hefted it up and turned to Fred.

"But I'm still going to turn in. There's no shortage of helping hands and, well, I'm hungry. See you around, I guess?"

Fred frowned slightly. That... wasn't quite right. Earth wasn't a colony... was it? No, of course it wasn't. Rogue seemed to be the opposite of most of her friends, in that he automatically assumed Earth was just one small part of the galaxy and not the height of civilization. But all she said in reply was, "Some of them are convinced of that 'fact'."

"Probably wise, no need to exhaust yourself. Hopefully the housing issue has resolved itself and we will be allowed to enter the houses, but if not I hope you have luck finding a place to sleep." She smiled slightly. "If nothing else, I am sure we will see each other's writing in the journals before too much longer."

"Most of the people I've seen so far are human-shaped, but there were a few, I've seen them in passing, who were clearly not." Aggravated, he said, "What do the Earthians think of that?" Coming from a galaxy like his, it struck Rogue as a xenophobia issue - as if these people Fred mentioned knew full well that nonhumans were out there, but wanted to deny that they were every bit as intelligent and cultured as humanity.

"It seems likely." As they got into the elevator and the doors closed, Rogue pulled the scarf down from around his mouth and nose. "Is there somewhere I can take these clothes to get washed?"

Fred looked at him in mild surprise. "Really? I haven't seen any that looked obviously not Human, at least at first glance. Until I spoke with another friend of mine about it, I was worried that I might be outnumbered." She smiled at the end of that, making her statement into a joke. "But at least one of the people I've spoken to said she wanted scientific proof that there was life out there other than Human before she would believe it; she seemed convinced that it could not be so. I found the entire conversation quite amusing." Of course, it would only take 2 minutes with a stethoscope or a microscope to prove that Fred wasn't the least bit Human, but what was the fun in that?

Fred pulled her own scarf down, and set Aven on the lift floor. The dog shook himself, sending a small cloud of ash into the air, and then looked up at Fred, panting happily. "Aven! Oh lovely, now you've made a mess." Shaking her head with a smile, she brought her attention back to Rogue. "Ah, leave them outside the door of whatever Housing you are assigned, Housekeeping will wash them for you."

Rogue shrugged. "I saw one or two furred humanoids. It's possible that they weren't actually people - I wasn't close enough to hear if they could talk - and maybe the woman with green skin wasn't born like that. And I suppose a provincials who've never seen someone really different might have trouble wrapping their minds around that." He had to smile a little at the thought. How bizarre and lonely it would be to think that one's own species was all there was.

He had to laugh when the dog shook himself off. "I wish I could do that. So much faster than scrubbing."

"Thank you, I'll do that. Hopefully they'll take care of what's getting tracked around, too." The doors opened. With a sketchy salute - tapping his hand to his brow and flashing his palm - and a more earnest, visible showing of the flashy Corellian smile, Rogue left.

[End, I guess. They can remember that he gave her some rope later on, it's a good excuse to meet again.]

[Eff, I forgot that Fred's met Shoanji... /punts self.]

Fred paused as if remembering something. "Ah, furred... I'd forgotten. Some time ago, I ran into a cat-like person. He was interesting... I have no idea if he is still in Edensphere. I haven't seen his writing in the journals in a while. But that could be; I believe that at least one of my friends would either laugh or faint if I told him how many non-Humans I am aware of." Humans certainly were an interesting bunch... Fred wondered just what it was about them that made them so confident in themselves. She had discovered she was strangely curious about that species in the months since she had become used to Edensphere.

Fred waved goodbye as Rogue exited in the direction of Temporary Housing. "He's certainly an interesting one, isn't he, Aven?" Her pet cocked his head at her and made a little whining sound. Fred smiled and hit the button for Section 3. "Let's go home."

[End! And that sounds good XD]

{Twenty-three} &diams The Shades of darkness filled her life

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