victormakesart | (no subject)

"Yeah? What would've happened if she'd stayed?"

"The guy was dangerous, but maybe he would've left her alone if I was obnoxious enough."

"Look, did you know her world had gone to crap?"

"I had no idea. I thought she was just gonna go to the Nexus."

"Then it's not your fault." Again, Victor.

Sniffle-sniffle, she wipes her eyes on her wrist, leans against him just a little more. "I feel like it is."

"It's not. So stop it." He tries to say that as gently as he can, and his tail brushes up against her leg. "You didn't know, and blaming yourself is only going to make you feel bad."

"I just wanted to make sure everyone was safe," she says, eyes shut tightly, focusing on how she's feeling, focusing hard on how to make how she's feeling better.

"Sometimes all you can do is save as many as you can."

"This planet is one of my favorites, right here. Do you wanna look around?"

He wants to keep talking, but maybe this will help her get her mind off things. "Sure."

"The bird-people moved here a long time ago. I don't know when or why. But they're some of the nicest folks you'll ever meet." She grabs his hand, leads the way through moist earth, to the gardens, plants grown in concentric circles not in grids.

Fortunately he doesn't have to hunch over to hold her hand, even though she'll have to reach up. And he has to take short steps so she can keep up... not that he'd know where they are going.

"So this isn't their original home either, huh?"

"Nah. That's why they started havin' all those health problems. They didn't have the right native plants, and they didn't know how to get the nutrients they needed."

"Kinda like the Sky People trying to live on Pandora. It really sucks when you can't eat the local food."

"Yeah, exactly. Except they did, for generations on generations. And each generation got weaker and sicker, because none of the native foods had a decent amount of calcium."

"But they've got it figured out now?"

"Yeah, Cole and I were invited to an egg-hatching ceremony, and we saw that a lot of bird-people had broken bones and the eggshells were so thin that most of them wouldn't even hatch and the birthrate was wayyy down. I, um. I figured out the problem, and got them calcium supplements as we searched for plant matter that would grow here."

"Hey, that's good. Meshing ecosystems and all that science stuff, right?"

"Yeah. It ends up, not much evolved here naturally, as far as animal life goes."

"I don't know a hell of a lot about the ethics and science of it all, but it's definitely good to be all harmonious with your environment. I'm kind of a transplant myself, and I think I'm doing okay. But only because Ewya accepted me."

"They're cool people... I was happy to give 'em a hand. And we've already started seeing changes in the young folks."

"Birthrates going up and all that?"

"Totally! And fewer broken bones, more resiliency."

"Hey, that's great." Jake can't even remember the last time he had a broken bone, and with his carbon-fiber coated bones, chances are he never will again. But he remembers them being a hell of a lot of No Fun At All.