Video @Pratt

[theweakhavepurpose]

[The video opens with a idyllic shot of horses grazing in a pasture with a barn in the background. Well idyllic if you discount the fact that they're clearly on the agriculture level of Beacon, one of the horses is glowing and the other is Branwen and that some of the other animals in the paddock are mutated deer. It's about as close to scenic as this place gets.]

Kieran and I have been working on getting a ranch going up here. Cho's been doing tests on the deer and they're good to eat so I'm gonna try and get a little herd going. But then over here...

[The camera pans to some cleared areas nearby with the smoothness of someone who has used their phone to film hundreds of Vine videos back home.]

I thought we could start some sort of farm? I've grown tomatoes before but I don't know anything about farming, I'm more the livestock sort. So if anyone wants to work on this, you're more than welcome.

Actually if anyone wants to help with any of this feel free. But don't try to pet the deer. They're not friendly.

Comments

[theweakhavepurpose]

That's probably it. Something about being safe all the time and not having to do anything or experience new things makes them stagnant. Or like... stale. I dunno. It was starting to get kinda hard to live with.

Not that I wanted to move because I'd be out of place anywhere else, but I was kind of silently wishing people would change.

Guess they have now.

[This is some sort of monkey paw wish. They changed alright. Into monsters willing to kill each other for a religious fanatic, and ready to destroy their community for the Collapse that no one could prove was happening.]

They can be expensive. It wasn't that much but I was a kid and I didn't have a bunch of money sitting around. My parents paid it and then I had to pay them back. It sucked. And every time I did anything even kinda wrong they'd bring it up. If I ever scuff the squad car it'll come back up. It was over a decade ago.

Food. More clothes. Supplies for farming. Guns. I dunno, I feel kinda unprepared to start a whole society from scratch.

[braidmage]

[ Reynir knows that feeling, too - of not quite fitting at home, and not fitting anywhere else, too. The closest he had felt to having a place he belongs had been... on the expedition. With his friends. Gods, he misses them.

And then when Pratt mentions how people changed in Hope County, Reynir remembers about the murder-y cult all over again and says, voice sorrowful: ]

I'm sorry about the cult. As suffocating as my village felt sometimes... I would never want something like that to be the thing that stirs it up.

[ He winces in sympathy when Pratt explains that his parents had had to pay and he'd had to pay them back. If they're anything like his own parents, he can just imagine the lectures. So many lectures. ]

Well, for what it's worth, I promise to never to bring it up ever again.

[ He means that, too. ]

[theweakhavepurpose]

[Aw Reynir, he likes you.]

It's fine, chances are I'm not crashing any cars here. I'm actually a pilot, but I don't think there's a whole lot of helicopters in this place. Would be nice though, we could explore more of what's outside without actually having to walk through it.

There might be huge ravines and stuff out there.

[braidmage]

Aren't there any cars or tanks or anything?

[ Then, after a beat, completely credulously: ]

What's a helicopter?

[ In his defense, he at least knows what airplanes used to be! But Pratt can explain it to him; catching up is going to be a long process and it's good to have met someone new, who has a little in common with him, to help him with some of it. ]