Reba greets Emery after bringing wood chips

[Viridis]

This is the private conversation that Reba had with Emery after she returned alone to the Picadillo, having secured supplies from the Quebecois city of Strongeye in Reba's homeworld, but before delivering them.

[Viridis]

Emery believes that this is very good news indeed. At last they're going to be able to find a way to hit back... he's been wanting to just get *moving*, to do *something* around here. Instead of just slowly wasting away. He hasn't shown it out in the open, but every day he was here, sitting around and just doing *nothing,* something he despised above everything else, was a day that he was losing faith in the cause as a whole. Every day gone was another day that their friends could be butchered or taken away forever. But now that she was back, he didn't hesitate to return the hug, tightly and eagerly. "I missed you," he whispers, before pulling away again.

Reba gives the smile of the easy-at-heart, her eyes gently closed, her grip just right. "You missed *me*?" she says just above a whisper. "Silly purple me? Why would you do something like that?"

Emery notes that they're still standing right in front of a rather gaping crew, but for now he doesn't mind. The world encompasses only him and Reba right now, as long as he whispers secretively. It's so fun to whisper, especially in the middle of a crowd. He hasn't done that in a while. "Because... you are silly and purple. And I've found more happiness in those two things than a lot of others in a long time. You have a good hugging grip."

Reba grips him anew at this revelation. And she does, when she's in the right mindstate. "If you like silly purple things, I won't disappoint you. I'll tell you how I feel. I felt bad that the captain didn't let you come with me." She relaxes her hold, still whispering, her ears flicking now and then. "Normally, when I do this kind of thing, I do it alone. I work best that way. But if I had to had someone come with me anyway, I wish you could have been there, along with us."

Emery tilts his head some as the crew is dismissed and disperses to their various chores. But he remains on deck, enjoying the feeling of clasping the one he had wanted to hold for a while, and only just now was getting used to it. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they said, and Reba's absence had indeed made his heart grow a little more wanting of the purple raccoons presence. "Oh, is that so?" he wonders in return. "What could I have done there that I wasn't doing here?" He feels it's a rhetorical question, but smiles anyway.
Reba lets her head tip to the side, curious. "I don't know. What could you? Who knows what one person can do?" She pauses a moment, pats him lovingly on the back, and lets him go. "We met a sort of secret society. Or protected, anyway. And we found a town that's at war now because of us. You're used to war. And you're from a place unlike me or Marras. So you could have done something, I bet. But mainly..I just think you would've made good company."

Emery stands back and sighs, looking her over. Her answers always seem evasive, yet complete and satisfying at the same time. "People have called me good company before," he admits. "But it seems better coming from you." He reaches up to touch her cheek, his movements firm and controlled as a soldier's should be. "I would have gone if he let me. I don't like being left behind. While you guys were off starting wars, we were here... doing nothing," he says, turning about and going to the railing. "I hate nothing. But tell me about your little adventure... what's this about sparking a war?"

Reba glances at the crew. Those who remain seem anxious to either see Reba set off or hear more from her. But the captain seems okay with letter her have her little conversation with the other outworlder, so she turns to the rail, looks out to sea, and answers. "I hate nothing, too. But there's always something. The city we got to was being controlled by different groups, and they were trying to fight over whether, I guess, you had to pay a five percent tax on everything you buy or sell. I mean, I don't know, it doesn't seem that bad. But it's complicated. And I met a human who was colortouched, like me, and he gave me a belly massage." She swoons in memory. Also I met a flying squirrel who helped us out before he or she got arrested."

Emery doesn't see how all this is connected to all out warfare. People fight over the strangest things, he wonders. In the face of total annihilation, a five percent tax hike just seems like something to complain about on the couch, not kill someone. But there must be a story behind it all that made it make a little bit more sense. He doesn't know what a human is, supposing it's some kind of alien. "So basically... it was about money, and who controlled it," he deduces. Okay, no story could make that make sense. But it is a reason. "How'd you and Marras get it started?

"Yes, it is," she agreed. "These people seem preoccupied with commerce more than anything. Um, it was the squirrel, I think. Since it was helping us and they took it away, the group it belonged to, the Bonzettis, got all up in umbrage, and they have friends, and the Ringgolds struck some places...I hope it gets worked out. I really hope they don't, like, loot the lumberyard before I get back." She shuts her mouth in thought. "By the way, I think I want you to visit my homeworld sometime. That's where all this happened--in the world I grew up in."

Emery's eyes blink and then widen up in surprise. He turns to the raccoon and stares at her for a moment, trying to understand. "That... that happened on your world?" he asks, his eyes searching. Then he shakes his head and tosses up a paw. "Man! One chance I get... well. Not like I would have been able to stay very long anyway." Sounds like her world is just as afflicted with problems as anyone else's. "What's it like where *you* live? Like... your house and such."

Reba gets a little wistful, a little glassy-eyed, and her fur a touch redder and bluer as well, depending on the angle of light. "Well, we're thousands of miles from my home. I've never been to this part of the world. But my house is my mother's house, and it's little. But she has a lot of places she can go--the bakery and the mill and the arcade. And when I go home I can always go anywhere I like. I'm kind of like nobility back home," she adds quietly. "I'm the only colortouched they've got, except when my cousin Alina's in town."
Emery seems impressed, with his raised eyebrows and perked ears. "Really? That sounds just swell," he says with a smile. But mention of a cousin makes him tilt his head curiously. "Your cousin is Colortouched too? What're they like? Are they purple?"

Reba smiles on the verge of giddiness, just remembering her home. She seems a bit hopped up on something, to ward off fatigue or stress. "Yes, she's purple too, like me. She was expecting when I last heard about her--maybe she's got purple kids by now! And there's some others in the family who're touched too, but they live farther away. Mmm...I wanna go back home. With you and Jin. Jin is alive, by the way. I talked to him. Migo's still alive, too."

Well Reba's just full of surprises today, isn't she! Emery receives the news with gladness, heaving a sigh of relief and leaning on the railing. "Well that's a load off my mind," he admits. "I wasn't expecting to find either of them alive after all this time. How did you talk to them? Is that the telepathy thing I heard about? If you can talk to him, why can't we get to them? And what about the rest of the crew?" It'd be a shame to just get back two out of the many who stayed behind.

Reba shakes her head. "Not telepathy. I think they have some magic up on the Gnaw to keep Jin from talking to me that way. This is good old-fashioned shared hallucination--the same way I talk to my mom when I'm away. It was hard getting through...I has to work all morning at it." She leans on the rail and looks away vaguely, thinking. "Anyway, I think the rest of the crew's mostly still okay or Jin would've said something. I don't know for sure. But you remember that lemur kid, the one who was swinging around the rigging? He's there and Jin's gotten fond of him. So it's mainly for his sake that Jin doesn't leave. He doesn't want them to kill the kid."

Emery sighs again, but it's a little more despondent. Even with Reba here, they still can't do anything. Without the repairs, or a location, there's no way they're going to be able to rescue the crew. He raps his hands on the railing. "I feel guilty about leaving them," he admits. "On the Gnaw, when we were fighting... me and Migo could tell the enemy was closing in. Bastards just kept coming, too stupid or too blind to know one of us was worth ten of them. Migo told me to run. So I did. I thought they were behind me, and... I was wrong." He scratches the back of his neck. "I know if I was with them now, I wouldn't only be doing nothing, but I'd be useless too. Probably dead and under the ocean. This way I can help them when we find them again. Still... good soldiers never leave men behind. I wasn't a very good soldier that day."

Reba closes in against Emery and puts her right hand on his shoulder, her left on his side. Almost like they're about to dance. "You maybe weren't, 'cause you almost got yourself drowned," she reprimands. "And you know why it was it took me so long to get to you?" She giggles. "Marras. He thought I was trying to kill myself when I went to save you and tried to hold me back. Sillyhead." She leans in to whisper in Emery's ear. "But he got what he deserved in the end."

Emery turns to face Reba as she slides her hands onto him again, staring her in the eyes. Yes, he did almost drown, but that has nothing to do with soldiering, just swimming. And space pilots don't learn how to swim except on their own time. When he hears about Marras, he wonders if he should roll his eyes or widen them in slight terror. Who knew what Reba meant when she talked like that? "Well, I know he's not dead," he consoles himself, and drops his hands onto her hips. "Do I really want to know? Or is it going to be a surprise?"

Reba smiles and her face jerks with laughter. "I'll tell you if you promise to keep it a secret," she says. "It's just something funny happened to him, is all. Ohh. It's been a tired day." The raccoon kisses Emery on the shoulder. "Are you really worth ten times as much as an enemy? I think that's a lot. That's very good."

Emery decides not to press the issue for now. If Reba can laugh about it, it probably really is funny, in an odd, absurd way that he'll laugh about no matter how strange it was. He returns the kiss on his shoulder with one on her ear. "They're just angry guys with pointy metal. They shouldn't have been fighting. They just knew how to kill, not survive. I didn't really kill them... just survived longer than they did. I know a lot more than just shooting guns, and it's sad that I was able to beat any one of them. I was expecting to be useless in a sword fight. I think I took down eight or nine for sure. It's hard to check in the middle of a fight. But either way, it was them rushing reinforcements to stop *us*, not the other way around."

Reba listens politely, but she seems too tired to handle the details of the battle very well. Her ear fur grows thick for a second where Emery kisses it. "I like survivors," she confides. "They're more fun." She touches his playfully with a gentle poke on the nose, and then turns back to the crew, expecting her little break is about over and it's time to get back to work.

Emery watches Reba bound off to go be her helpful self, wondering about what she said. A survivor, sure. He realizes that was kind of a dumb thing to say. Survivors only had guilt for surviving where others didn't. He remembers them. People who have been in impossible situations, coming out by the skin of their teeth. They weren't very fun afterwards. Driven, maybe, but not fun, not to his knowledge. He wonders if he'll ever stop being fun at this rate, just surviving until the Surtr find a way to punch through to this place and assassinate him. He can feel them out there, as he looks up to the sky. All over again his feelings collapse, and he remembers that the best thing for him to do is leave this place. The more people he meets the lonelier he gets. He turns his face to work nonetheless.