AU Week: YT the Post-Apocalyptic Mail Carrier (The Postman)

[feminine_menace]

The back door opens, and in bolts a large dog that seems to be part pitbull, part Great Dane, and maybe part wolf. The dog barks and wags its tail happily. Behind the dog is a young woman in a weathered gray letter carrier's jacket and peaked cap, both bearing emblems of the United States Postal Service. The jacket is a little too big, and the name patch over the left breast pocket reads "Matheson." A utility belt, a pair of well-worn jeans, and trusty boots complete the young woman's non-regulation uniform.

"Yeah yeah, Fido, I'm coming. Gimme a minute. It's a lot of stuff, you know?" The 'lot of stuff' is a set of bulging saddlebags and a satchel. The young woman goes to the Bar and gives her the saddlebags to keep safe. "Please gimme one of those bowls of fancy dog food for Fido, before he barks his head off," she says. Fido's making quite a racket.

The Bar produces a big dog bowl of premium wet dog food, which the young woman puts on the floor for her canine companion. Fido digs in with gusto. The young woman gets herself a turkey club sandwich with avocado and a bottle of Coca-Cola.

(Come talk to her, she has interesting stamps.)

Comments

[daringyoungman]

One of the causes of Fido's excitement may be that over by the fireplace, where he's hanging upside down from his knees hooked over the back of an armchair, and juggling.

What he's juggling are werelights: multicoloured ballcs of light of varying intensity that trace intricate circles in the air and around each other, a little more complicated than your usual juggling tricks.

The werelight is a basic Newtonian forma. The juggling is all circus-kid. The magic vestigia it gives off is known to dogs of certain tempraments a little overexcited.

[feminine_menace]

When Fido’s done eating - because food takes priority - he takes an interest in the kid juggling werelights. But he doesn’t go over because he’s a Good Boy who won’t leave YT without her permission. Instead he whines at her insistently and tries to direct her attention to the juggling child.

“Fido. For fuck’s sake, can you...oh, okay.” YT can’t say no to Fido when he’s like this. She picks up her satchel, her sandwich, and her bottle of Coke and gets off the barstool. Fido reads this as implicit permission and dashes off to make the juggling child his new friend.

[daringyoungman]

Dick of course, loves dogs. Especially when they are large working mutts like this one, rather than the inbred hunting dogs his schoolmates have. His lights pop out in a succession of sparks one by one as he's approached, and he drops - first into a handstands and then rolls on to his feet to give a proper ear-rubbing hello.

"Hi, boy!"

[feminine_menace]

Fido answers with a happy “Woof!” and enthusiastic tail-wagging.

YT catches up a bit after, relieved that the kid is happy to see Fido and not scared of him. There are certain people who should be scared of Fido, like creeps and Holnists, but not kids.

“Hey,” YT says, putting her stuff down on and end table by one of the armchairs. “That’s Fido, I’m YT, nice to meetcha.”

[daringyoungman]

"I'm Dick," says Dick, smiling at her. His English is perfect, but his accent slightly Eastern-Europe. "Nice to meet you both, too. Hope I didn't interrupt anything?"

[feminine_menace]

“Nah, nothing much.” It was just a sandwich, not the swift completion of her appointed rounds or a hot date or anything. “Where’s those little blinky things you were juggling before?”

[daringyoungman]

"Werelights?"

He opens his hand an produces a single, textbook-perfect globe of soft white light about an inch above it.

"Magic."

[feminine_menace]

Fido gets really excited and starts barking again. “Fido, shh,” YT says. Fido pipes down, but licks his chops restlessly.

“I get it. There’s no magic where Fido and I come from, I think, except maybe what gets us here every now and then.”

[daringyoungman]

"Might be that you just don't know about it," Dick offers. "Lots of people don't, I guess. Which is stupid 'cause it's everywhere."

[feminine_menace]

YT is skeptical, and she looks it. “I’m pretty sure that if we had magic, we’d have evil Holnist wizards.”

Because she could definitely see people with powerful magic and no morals embracing the ‘night makes right’ philosophy of Nathan Holn (may he rot in Hell).

[daringyoungman]

"Probably," says Dick, without knowing what she's talking about. "What's Holnist?"

[feminine_menace]

“Okay, well, you know survivalists? Heavily armed cranks who think it’s every man for himself?”

YT is vaguely aware that survivalists are a very American phenomenon. Dick does not seem to be American, so she hopes he at least gets the gist of what she’s talking about.

”Holnists are the worst kind of survivalists. They want a return to feudalism where they’re the lords and the rest of us are serfs.”

[daringyoungman]

"Hmmph," says Dick, "yeah we've got people like that."

Well, Nazis aren't eaxctly like that but still.

"And they do have evil wizards. So you're probably right."

[feminine_menace]

“Mph,” YT says, because she has a mouthful of sandwich. She swallows it. “That’d be the last thing we need. It was hard enough to get those scumbags out of the Southwest without them being able to shoot lightning from their fingers or whatever.”

[daringyoungman]

Dick lifts his hands up and tosses a bit of ligtning from finger to finger. "Lightning's alright, but a good fireball's got more damage per effort."

[feminine_menace]

Fido whimpers and sidesteps away from Dick. YT puts a reassuring hand on his back. “Sorry but could you...he gets all weird about lighting storms.”

Even very small ones, apparently.

“But okay, lightning, fireballs, whatever. They already have most of the high-powered rifles.”

[daringyoungman]

Dick shuts his hands immediately.

"Sorry, sure. I guess, it's just good that the allies have magic too?"

[feminine_menace]

Fido calms down a bit. YT keeps petting him, to reassure him that it’s all okay.

“Your allies, against your Holnists?”

[daringyoungman]

"Yeah," Dick says. He watches Fido, holds out a magic-free hand because dog-petting is easier than talking abou this stuff.

"I mean, every one says there's gonna be another war. And that the Germans aren't gonna agree not to use magic like last time. So I guess the others are going to have to."

[feminine_menace]

YT’s familiarity with pre-Doomwar history is...not great. But it’s better than that of most of her peers, and something clicks. “Nazis, right? You’re talking about Nazis. Your allies should totally use magic to defeat the Nazis.”

[daringyoungman]

Dick glances up at her, and then he nods. "...yeah, I'm talking about Nazis. And they will. My teachers are already talking about signing up and we're not even at war yet."

[feminine_menace]

“You know it’s coming though, right?”

After all, he said they’re not at war yet.

“It’s scary, but it’s good that your teachers have the sense to get ready.”

[daringyoungman]

Dick nods, focusing on Fido for now instead. "Yeah, I just wish - I kinda wish they'd get on with it instead of waiting around to see what else thhe Nazis will do?"

He still has no idea where his parents are.

[feminine_menace]

YT frowns. “You’re right, they shouldn’t wait. If people want a better and safer world, they need to take responsibility for making it so.”

That’s one of the important things Postmaster-General Krantz said.

[daringyoungman]

"Yeah," Dick says. He looks down at Fido, rubs his ears a bit. There's a lot he thinks people should do, and it's not happening quickly enough. It's a bit like the British people don't even care about what's happening in Europe.

[feminine_menace]

YT is not sure how to respond to this, exactly, so she executes her tried-and-true approach for cheering up children or getting her attention. Well, other than letting them pet Fido.

“Want to see something cool?” she asks. She unzips her jacket, reaches into an inner pocket, and pulls out a small book, which she opens so that Dick can see it. Inside are stamps, neatly and carefully placed, with written notes next to them detailing their dates of release and a brief history.

[daringyoungman]

"You've got a stamp collection?"

He lifts his head, then himself, and hops on to the chair back to get a better look.

"Some of the kids at school collect stamps," he says conversationally.

[feminine_menace]

“I’ve got two. One is pre-Doomwar stamps, but these are stamps of the Restored United States.”

She points them out one by one.

“The first is the Republic of California stamp, and the second is the Willamette Valley commemorative stamp.”

(It looks like the little hood ornament of a Volkswagen. It is, but it means something different now.)

“There are stamps for Washington State and Seattle, for Nevada and Las Vegas, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Navajo Country - that’s a state now. There’s gonna be one for Colorado soon, they only just joined.”

She hands Dick the little book to browse through.

“Every one of these represents communities who were isolated after the Doomwar and the Three-Year winter, and now are talking to each other and working with each other again. We’re all building a new country together.”

And YT gets to be part of it, a very important part.

[daringyoungman]

"You're from a long way in the future, huh?"

Dick knows some of these states, but he never watches many movies and doesn't really keep up with them. Still, he's sure they're not countries.

[feminine_menace]

“Like, a hundred years or so. I think.”

YT is not totally clear on when Nazis were a thing.

“Things are really different, as you probably guessed.”

[daringyoungman]

He nods. "But they're really different everywhere. Different sorts of magic, other places don't even have the local gods."

[feminine_menace]

“And all the other folks here who come from twenty-first-century Earth said they never had the Doomwar there.”

Which is really really different.

“And there’s no magic, like I said. There might be local gods though, or at least the Navajo have them and take them pretty seriously.”

[daringyoungman]

"I used to know a few," Dick says. "Back home. The ones in England don't really trust the school, so I don't see them very often."

[feminine_menace]

“Navajo?”

No, wait, probably not.

“Gods? You know some gods?”

[takethatnature]

Wilson was enjoying a chicken sandwich; then he heard loud, deep canine barking from behind him and now he's in the aisle clutching a tentacle spike and trying to figure out which way to run. The Security office? Out the back door toward the forest?

[feminine_menace]

YT has seen people frozen with terror before, and immediately scans the environment for potential dangers (e.g., snakes, bandits). When nothing presents itself as an obvious danger, she says to the short (but still taller than her) dark-haired dude, “Hey, what’s up? Are you okay?”

Fido, quieter now, comes up to investigate. Which may not be helpful.

[takethatnature]

The barking stopped?? Someone's talking to him; a young woman in work clothes. Right, he's in Milliways, not out on the island. He lowers the spike.

"I guess so? Where did that barking come from?" He sounds baffled, tense, and disconcerted, like he's not sure where the danger went and doesn't trust it to stay gone.

Wilson's question is answered by the largest dog he's ever seen poking its head out from behind her. But it looks like an actual dog, not one of Maxwell's over-muscled, hunchbacked, short-bodied hunting hounds.

"Was it you?" he asks the dog, sheepishly, pointing at Fido.

[feminine_menace]

Fido wags his tail.

“Yeah, that was him,” YT says. “He gets really excited when we visit because whenever we’re here he gets special F-O-O-D.”

YT hopes the guy can spell. Most people here can, but where she comes from you can’t assume that someone is literate.

[takethatnature]

"What do you feed him?" Wilson asks, still a bit rattled and not entirely clear on why the word needed to be spelled out. He didn't grow up with dogs.

[feminine_menace]

YT sighs and drags her hand down her face as Fido gets really excited, wagging his tail and shuffling back and forth, alternating barks with whines.

“Okay. Lemme show you.” She goes to the Bar and orders a bowl of premium canned large dog food, which she puts on the floor for Fido. He attacks it with gusto.

“I have to spell words like that because he knows them all.”

[takethatnature]

Wilson cringes involuntarily as the barking starts up again and tightens his grip on the tentacle spike, though he at least doesn't look like he's going to start swinging it around.

"Your dog knows how to spell?" Well, he has heard that they're pretty smart animals. At least the giant dog's eating normal dog food instead of, say, giant hunks of raw meat.

[feminine_menace]

YT almost snaps something very rude, but stops herself. Letter carriers are representatives of the Restored United States government, after all. It would be inappropriate for such a person to be rude to someone just asking questions, even really dumb questions.

“No, he can’t spell. He knows a lot of food and eating words.”

She feels safe just saying then now, since Fido is already eating.

“I spell them out for other people because Fido doesn’t know how to spell.”

[takethatnature]

"That's what I meant," Wilson insists, maybe not as convincingly as he would like.

"He must still be pretty smart, huh," he says, watching the huge dog devour his somewhat less huge meal.