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The boxsplosion has been dealt with, and Shephard thanked Kanaya appropriately before taking his various Christmas gifts home. Except the mug- he's keeping that in one of the abstracted pockets of the jacket Kanaya gave him a while back, as he intends to make a point of using it where people can see. He's not drinking now, though. Alene, one of Mrs. Wilson's first litter, insisted on following him when he started putting things away, so she's trotting happily along behind him as he heads out to the target range. It's been a while since he's been able to get in any time with a bow, and he's got some recently fletched and tipped arrows to test out anyway. Best to have one of the houndeyes around in case someone- not naming any names, but they're probably French- wanders through. Again.

He'll be happy to talk in between flights, though.

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"Andraste's tits!"

If he thought Ysalwen looked horrified about the dogs --

"Even the Blight doesn't take lands in that short a timespan. Do they still occupy your world, these conquerors?"

"We managed to git 'em driven out 'bout two years back," says Shephard. "Far as we c'n tell we wrecked their ability to ever come back, but we still got a hell of a lot of shit to deal with even with 'em gone. I'mma guess you ain't referring to the kind of blight that kills off crops'n starves whole countries?"

... hey, he learned about Ireland in school, okay?

"It does that, too, but it poisons more than the crop, and it brings darkspawn with it. Entire armies of them."

Her mouth twists.

"I'm glad your plague of armies won't be coming back, ever again. We're still likely to have two more Blights of our own. Someday."

"Can't say as I've ever heard of darkspawn, but they don't sound like nothin' you'd want on your doorstep," Shephard says. "Whatever they are, you got my sympathies."

"Thanks. You have mine, as well. It -- the most recent Blight we just ended. It was bad enough. But the darkspawn always remain. And they'll swarm again. Someday, but not soon."

She rotates her shoulders as if releasing tension.

Liranan cocks an ear, but doesn't let up from his play.

"Sorry. It's -- are things getting better, for you and yours? Now that you've been invader-free for two years?"

Is there a great deal of hope for more changes to come?

Edited 2014-12-29 23:54 (UTC)

"They're pickin' up," Shephard allows. "It's slow goin', but they're pickin' up. We're gittin' our feet back under ourselves better'n I would've thought."

"I'm very glad. I'd like to think we'll do the same, but it's only been days yet."

She doesn't sigh.

"Did you come here through all of it?"

Shephard grimaces. "Tell you the truth, I wasn't there for all of it," he says. "I was there at the start, and then some sick grey fuck who talked like he was a team of weasels all dressed up like a human put me in some kinda... I don't even know what, but when I woke up next it was twenty years later and folks were only just startin' to git their shit together enough to give the invaders hell. Started comin' here a little after that, been comin' off and on ever since."

Yeah, it sounds like bullshit, he knows that, but it's the best he can manage in the way of an explanation for that dog bastard shit in the suit.

"Gods damn it all, I hate when that happens."

She'd set Fen'Harel on that kind of thing, if she could.

If he wasn't the kind to enjoy that kind of thing.

Ah well.

"It's not quite as bad, I suppose, when it only feels like twenty years have passed. Still."

"Ain't much I c'n do about it now," Shephard admits, "but at least I got the chance to throw my weight in when we took the fight to the Combine's home turf. That counts for somethin'. Other'n that I got a lot of makin' up for lost time to do."

"I always prefer doing something to doing nothing. I'm terrible at hand-wringing."

This is strictest truth.

"Sounds familiar," says Shephard with a grin. "Where you from, anyways?"

"Ferelden, which is a country in Thedas. No one here seems to have heard of it."

Her mouth quirks up at the left-hand corner.

"And you?"

"World's called Earth. Country's called the United States, or it was before the Combine rolled over us," Shephard says. "Town's called Rowlesburg, and I guarantee you ain't heard of it because damn near nobody back home's heard of it."

"How fractious are these United States you speak of? Are they a loose alliance of free -- city-states?"

See: The Free Marches.

"Used to be they were held together pretty tight," says Shephard. "We had us a civil war 'bout a hunnert-fifty or so years ago on account of some of 'em didn't want to take their orders from the capital, but after that they were all nailed down good'n tight. Ain't enough people left these days to hold it all the same way, though. We're workin' on one city at a time at this point."

Being from the state that seceded from the seceding states, Shephard is reasonably familiar with all of the contributing factors of the Civil War, but it'd take a long time to explain about the rest of it.

Given the mess that Thedosian politics has always been, Ysalwen doesn't ask any more.

"Is everyone coming together to support and reinforce each other, or do they remain scattered? I -- there aren't really all that many means of transportation where I come from except for walking. And the occasional wagon pulled by oxen or halla. And ships, of course, but those aren't very good for overland travel."

Horses will have to wait ten years or so. Even if everyone knows they exist.

"Pretty scattered," Shephard admits. "We got some vehicles, but we ain't got a lot of fuel for 'em. I got a ship of sorts, but once you git into port you still got to git out and walk. Least we got radio- we c'n talk to folks a damn long way away even if we ain't able to see 'em. That goes a long way."

"I'd give a lot for that, in the near future, I think."

So, so much.

Shephard thinks about this for a bit. Eventually he says, "I ain't too sure how to set somethin' like that up somewheres that didn't have the kind of manufacturing we do. I ever work out the best way to git started on it, I'll make sure folks know."

The Prime Directive is for other people. People who are sissies.

"I'll thank you in advance."

Ysalwen grins, sudden and bright.

"You'd think magic would be good for that, but long-distance communication not involving birds and teleportation are essentially impossible."

Pity.

Shephard grins wryly. "We ain't got magic where I come from- least the humans don't, anyway," he says. "Vortigaunts do shit that I reckon most people'd see as magic. Everything I know 'bout what magic can or can't do, it's somethin' I learned here or learned from someone I met because of here."

"Magic itself also seems to be different between worlds, from what I've heard."

She hasn't seen any of it yet, of course. Not really.

"Is it the same for technology? And the -- what was it -- Vortigaunts work?"

"Folks develop different kinds of technology in different worlds, from what I've seen," Shephard says. "Most of the time it looks as if it's runnin' on similar principles, but that ain't always the case. Far as the Vorts go, they talk about Vortessence'n weavin' lives together'n sometimes they c'n shoot lightning out their fingertips. I got no fuckin' clue how that works, I just know it does."

"Hmm. I can do that last one, too. And magic in my world comes from the Fade, where people go when they dream, and where some say we also go when we die."

Interesting.

Liranan, meanwhile, seems to have given up playing tug-of-war in favor of trying to nap.

Or maybe it's a trick.