(no subject)

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Spring has come to Milliways, in full warmth. The grass is greening, and the trees are in bud, and so forth. There are even trees in the mountains that are covered in pink flowers.

Were they there last year? Were they, in fact, there last week? Enjolras is not entirely certain on either count.

On the other hand: Milliways. He'll ask Bahorel, or Combeferre or Joly, if he thinks to bother, but he may not.

At any rate, he's sitting at the base of one of the pink trees, on a convenient flat rock. He has a book with him, as usual, but he's currently ignoring it in favor of an abstraction of thought.

Comments

[andinfluencepeople]

"A friend of mine," Chuck says, then "-- Edgar, you know? He got stuck outside, without any gear, and no one knew where he was. He's dead, and so was the first guy who chased after him without gear, so," he shrugs. "It was kind of a bloody stupid idea for all the living people to freak the hell out about it, but, whatever --"

He shrugs, and resettles, slowing down a bit. "My group headed out into the forest, right? We had to get clear of the snow, so the trackers could start looking for them. But what we found were these ice spiders. Well, kind of like spiders -- they had grabby things at the end of their legs -- but they were tall enough to climb as grown ups, a good, I dunno, 10 meters up. They'd caused the blizzard as -- maybe some sort of terraforming -- but we killed them after they attacked us, even though I just had a radio. Alistair had a couple daggers, too."

And a walking stick, but please, Enjolras would have killed both of them with one walking stick, Chuck is certain. He'll leave that detail out.

"Nepeta's this terrifying teenager alien who cosplays as a cat," his tone is serious, but in a kind of admiring way. "She's great -- she took an adult out by herself!"

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Enjolras hasn't met Edgar, but Hansen's mentioned him more than once, so he nods -- yes, Edgar, go on. (He actually has met Edgar, but only briefly, and they didn't get around to exchanging names.)

He's not sure that a blizzard couldn't do serious harm to a dead man -- they can get injured, after all -- but it's not especially important now. The rescue is done, and Hansen's not telling this story as if anyone was badly hurt.

And -- wait, ice spiders?

Ice spiders ten meters tall that a man can climb?

And Hansen is clearly not telling this as a joke, or a tall tale; he's incredulous too. "Good God."

What do you even say to that?

(And what does alien who cosplays as a cat even mean??)

"That's--" He shakes his head, lost for words for a moment. "Milliways."

Good God.

"Were they intelligent?"

[andinfluencepeople]

"I think so," Chuck says, brow scrunching. "I first ran into a little one-- like, compact-car-sized. Uh-- a little shorter than a horse. Anyway, I backed up and out and it still attacked me, which is pretty weird for an animal not protecting kids."

He shrugs. "It's kind of hard to tell the line, though."