Helen Haras-Uquara (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
uquars_gadget) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
milliways_bar2008-09-20 10:33 pm
uquars_gadget) wrote in milliways_bar2008-09-20 10:33 pm
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There are several large books stacked around Helen. Three in a language known in some worlds as Russian, one in a language known on some worlds as Greek, one that died out on most Earths long enough ago to not be known by anthropologists (but one significant slice of Earths became very prominent and important), and five in English. They all have titles about cross-dimensional travel.
She decided to stop researching in her room. So the young girl is researching at a table down here--that's totally the same thing as socializing, right?
Right.
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The resulting explanation is in the cadences not of something learned by rote, but of someone used to giving long and detailed explanations.
Brevity is not a factor for Helen, sometimes.
"It is the size of Earth, with a diameter of roughly 8000 miles at the equator. It's mostly covered with deserts or swamps, due to our weather systems which were broken by Them a long time ago. So most plants do not like to grow except very hardy ones. In the part of the world I live in most of it is desert, though the sand is not very deep everywhere so you can work the soil beneath if you have the right equipment. Mostly we make compost and have shelters against sand coming in, so more grains grow. There's still not many, so we don't have the big grass-eating animals that used to live in our world--and might, still, in some places. We only raise pigs, because they do not fuss over what they eat and they are easy to keep within the walls."
Helen shrugs. "Most Houses fight each other, because they think they have more food or because they think they have equipment they can steal, or usually because a hundred years ago those people attacked them. And they take their enemies bones and store them against the future, because they think burning them releases them back into the world, to attack them again.
"The House of Uquar burns bodies," Helen she adds, pushing her hair back, "but not because we think it releases them back into the world. It's sanitary."
"The warlords lead groups that are small compared to many places, but some band together in small cities. They usually don't last beyond two or three generations, though--a feud always tears them apart. But because everything's so small they can't really have people who are deformed being a burden, or criminals, so they send them outside the gates for the dinosaurs. They blood the criminals, first--stone them--and exile them. So the dinosaurs can smell them, and aren't scared off by their size."
Helen shrugs. "That is my world. Is that anything like yours?"
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"In some ways. We still have wars over colonies and resources. And there's a greater variety of plant life, but what can be grown in different areas still is limited by climate and soil. The dinosaurs went extinct several millenniums ago, and most societies hang or imprison their criminals."
The ones they catch, at any rate.
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Stupid unreasonable people, says her tone.
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