Once everyone has rested, you make your proposal. Having been on the last watch before dawn, you had plenty of time to think it over, refine your argument, and lay the groundwork for your logic, which you did endlessly because it means you don't have to think about Sorrow & Sons because you're still not sure how to deal with other people and you don't want to be misunderstood if it's at all avoidable. So while everyone is doing some combination of getting soup, eating soup, putting water back in the soup, or adding ingredients to the soup, you open your mouth.
"I think we need to take some time and salvage what we can from the parking lot," you begin. You take a sip of your broth to steady yourself and -
"Good idea," Jack agrees, mildly.
"Was gonna propose it myself," is Sasha's contribution.
"Already started on the ones in easy reach, at the employee parking," Jill muses.
"Crimes," Marie adds with mysterious eagerness.
Oh.
Well okay then. You discard your entire speech and sulk, at least until Jill reaches over and ruffles your hair, which produces a startled sound from your raspy throat that catches it by surprise. When you manage a, "I didn't say stop," Jill just kinda. Keeps at that. While you eat. Jill is a Good Friend.
The initial work is pretty easy, if mind-numbingly boring; y'all team up with brooms and heavy gloves and double-layered garbage bags and you get all of the glass out of the parking lot to be stashed and sorted later. At first Sasha is going to throw it away, but Jill has a quiet word with it, gesturing at the roof garden, and then Sasha is giving you a strange, wide-eyed look, and then the glass gets stored. In some ways you're the least helpful of anyone here; you keep having to stop to take deep breaths, and getting dizzy. Jill keeps making you stop to eat fruits and candy, and after the third time you remember, oh right, the blood loss.
...
Wait. "Hey, I know how to treat blood loss, but why do you know?" you ask, curiously.
"Used to donate a lotta blood," Jill says with a shrug. "Universal donor. My go-go juice is good for saving lives, and when things were better...well, if I could help, why shouldn't I?"
That...puts a warm feeling in your chest. You double check the glass shard to make sure it isn't that, and it's not. Good warm feeling. Well, unambiguously good, anyway, and it's nice to have because the problems start immediately. You almost scream at Jack when he goes to touch a driver that has been frozen in glass behind the seat of its car; when Jack pulls its hand away from the statue, the poor thing sobs in relief. "Don't touch the people," you say quietly. "...They're alive in there."
"They're what," Jack asks.
"They're alive," you reassert, firmly. "So don't touch them. Until. I figure out how to fix them..."
The haul isn't quite an infinite bounty, but in the end you come away with:
Five pounds of snacks & candies
Nine roadside emergency kits (each containing a glass-breaking tool, road flares, a portable jack, pop-out road cones, and heavy-duty scissors)
Just So Fucking Many Spare Tires I'm Not Even Gonna Track These You Have Tires There Are Tires
1 Kessel Portable Entertainment System (stolen by Marie immediately) w/5 games (also stolen by Marie immediately)
7 bottles of over-the-counter pain medication
30 rounds of 10 millimeter ammunition (claimed by Sasha) w/1 spare 10 millimeter pistol
A variety of partly-used word games
Spare roadmaps
Several(tm) unexpired boxes of condoms (Jack keeps giving these a dubious look, like he doesn't trust them)
2 pairs of used work boots (they fit no one here)
1 katana ("Mall katana," Marie scoffs)
250 pounds of soil, likely originally purchased from your new home
Many, many tools, likely originally purchased from your new home
Roughly a thousand total feet of straps and clamps, formerly used to secure things to these cars
A selection of membership cards to various stores, including 4 Bayview Membership Cards
$267.44 in various forms of money
And...
"...Okay so no one shows Marie the porn," Sasha says firmly. "Also why is there porn?"
"Because someone bought it before coming to this store?" Jill points out, reasonably. "Just be glad we don't have anything that can play it - there's a television in the break room."
"Computers in the management offices and HR," Jack adds.
"What the fuck is porn?" you ask, not entirely honestly; going back over those messages with Jessie, which are finally loading images, gave you a consistent theme of 'naked people seemingly having sex' and 'very stupid facial expressions', but aside from causing odd but not unpleasant feelings in you you're not sure what the utility of it is or why the phone's owner and Jessie traded so much of it.
They all give you an odd look, then give each other a 'you first' kind of look, and then Sasha puts a hand on your shoulder and says, "I'll talk to you about it after you figure out those romance novels."
There are eight speaking statues that survived in the parking lot. Two have been identified to you as children.
* * * *
During those times that Jill browbeats you into taking breaks, or you have spare time on watch when other people are sleeping, you start investigating these romance novels. You have come armed to this battle of knowledge, with spare printer paper from the management offices, pencils, and a knife to sharpen the pencils with (there's a powered pencil sharpener in the offices but you're not about to disturb people by making all that noise). You first sort them out by the way they advertise their pairings and are pleased (...huh...) that there is a variety; while several identify themselves as involving a man and a woman, or in one notable case three men, four women, and a dragon (you wrack your brain and get told that dragons are fictional, which, honestly, good), there's at least one that says it's about 'a passionate story of rivalry turned to love' between two men, a couple involving women, and a 'journey of self-discovery and passion' revolving around two people 'destined to Switch'.
"Hey, Jill," you ask, because Jill is not yet asleep. You point to that word on the back of the book. "What's this mean in this context?"
"Oh hey, that's me," Jill notes with interest. "That uh, the capital S there and the romantic context...wow, I actually gotta. Hrm." It frowns, and chews its lip. "Sometimes folks have powerful dreams that temporarily alter their bodies. That's normal, that's just a manifestation, it doesn't always mean anything. Plenty of men have a strong dream that they're a woman and spend a week learning how the other half lives and vice-versa, right. But sometimes the experience tells 'em somethin' about themselves they didn't consciously know, and they Switch, they realize they've got a different gender or want a different body or both. Back in the day you had to hire like fifteen oneiromancers and rent a fuckin' bomb shelter to invoke a permanent manifestation, so only rich folks could really do it, but these days medicine makes it cheaper."
You blink, processing that. Several parts still don't make sense, so you latch onto the one that does: "You said that's you?"
"Yeah. Dad's insurance paid for the fast way." Jill smiles, fondly. "...I hope he's okay. I gotta go keep working, flower. Have fun!"
Armed with this information, you discover that you're a fairly fast reader, even while taking notes. These books place a lot of focus on emotions and social drama; none of them involve protagonists with a straightforward life, and often their families have some manner of objection to their pairing (one instead also tells a heartwrenching story in which the male(?) lead is dealing with the slow death of his brother to cancer). There is a lot of sex in these three, and eventually you dedicate several sheets of paper to your best guesses as to which euphemisms compare to what parts of the human(?) anatomy. You'd intended for only one sheet of paper, and that plan got wrecked fucking immediately; however, frustratingly that emotional focus is even stronger during those explicit scenes, and you come away with so little information as to how one actually has sex that it might have been better to keep knowing nothing. Outlines of themes, plot beats, and consistent tropes in all three books take up several more sheets of paper, and you spend a lot of time chewing your pencils and staring at them, trying to unlock the secret of why they have all those things in common.
Sasha's only contribution to this is when it spots your sheets of euphemisms and devolves into howling laughter. Trying to get it to explain only gets more laughter.
You have gained a curiosity about your own sexuality.
* * * *
"Marie gets the crossbow," Sasha says firmly. "If she's gotta defend herself, this is the safest thing for her to learn, she can practice it right here, and it doesn't explode."
There are no objections from anyone else. Soon enough a primitive firing range is constructed, and Marie quickly learns that her enthusiasm for the idea of the crossbow does not match the tedium of trying to learn it, especially not with you as her instructor, a role that is instantly and bizarrely familiar to you.
"Why is this so boring?" Marie complains.
"Dedication beats motivation every time," you not-answer, lost in thought. Someone else said that to you...who...
* * * *
When you start trying to paint, Marie elects to sit near you while playing her(?) games. It becomes easy to forget that she's there, all the more so when you start getting frustrated. There's something just out of reach for you. You're trying to paint an orchid, just out back of the building at the loading docks, and you can see it in your mind. Brush strokes that would add texture to the stem and leaves, lines to help define the flower, you can see it but every time you go to move your body won't enact the image in your mind. You end up with blobs of color and the vague outline of something that might be a fucking daisy, and after three hours of trying you scream in frustration and throw a paint bucket against the wall of the building.
"...Are you okay?" Marie asks in a small voice. You plod over to her(?) and sit heavily against the wall, drawing your knees up to your chest and resting your forehead against them. "It's okay to be mad sometimes," she adds, softly.
"I should be able to do that," you mutter. "...I know I should. What're you doing?"
The teenager leans in a little closer and shows you the screen of her device, which displays a variety of pixelated sprites that depict fantastical creatures. "This's Dream Lab 4," she tells you. "It's sorta like a 4X, but instead of trying to conquer territory you're trying to research monsters from another dimension without disrupting their ecosystem. I'm kinda bad at it."
What the fuck is a 4X. "...If you're bad at it, why are you playing it?"
Marie shrugs. "I want to be good at it. It's...got a lot of numbers, a lot of math, and I have a hard time fitting it in my head, but I like the idea. And when I do something good or find a combo of technologies I hadn't noticed before, it feels great. So I keep playing. That's the thing, if you keep playing and you're paying attention, you get better at it."
You think about that.
And you think about that.
And about an hour later you get up, and go get more paper, and start taking notes about the numbers. Everyone needs help sometimes.
* * * *
You tell yourself that you're not going to break down on Jill again when you ask for a quiet word about what you saw and did. You're firm about this. You are also wrong. By the time you reach the end of your story, there on the roof beneath the trees you grew with your own power, you're sobbing with your head in Jill's lap, and it is quietly carding its fingers through your hair, and holding you. You fucked up. You hurt people. You...
"I'm sorry, flower," Jill murmurs. "...I'm sorry you're joining the world in a time like this. You're a gentle soul."
"No I'm not," you sob. "...No I'm not..."
"Hey. Listen. I'm not goin' anywhere for a while yet, so...just cry it out. Stay right here, in my lap, and...just stay here. I'll keep you safe. 'tween me and the Everlasting Lady, you've got friends aplenty. You can relax. Jus'. Let it all go for a bit, alright? Can you do that for me Orchid?"
You shake your head against Jill's leg, trembling, but you make no move to leave. You're not certain when you fall asleep...
* * * *
...But you know, immediately, that you are dreaming. The place you're in is breathtaking, a gorgeous lake fed by a cascading waterfall which drains into a rushing river. All around you are trees and plants and flowers, birds that are calling, insects in a thousand colors that flit to and fro, warm sunlight on your face. And you are not alone here. There is a person, hovering impossibly with black wings; its eyes are closed, and do not open, and its body is wrapped in a loose robe that moves in the breeze.
Its voice is like yours, or Jill's, or Sasha's, and it says, "It's always a pleasure to meet a friend."
You blink, staring up at this person. "...Do I know you?"
"Not yet," it says, serenely...no, playfully. "But you've said my name, and believed in me, and so you are my friend." It laughs when you frown. "I'll have mercy, Orchid - your life is difficult enough as it is. I've had many names, across many cultures and many ages, but the one you spoke was the Everlasting Lady, friend to the living and the dead. By my hand does no one die alone."
You blink again.
And again.
"I'm talking to a god?"
The Lady laughs, and swirls around you to look(?) at you from other angles, and alights on the soil in front of you before ever-so-lightly touching the tip of your nose with a single, gentle finger. "That depends," it says, "on who you ask. But since you're asking me...no. I've never claimed to be a god."
In the distance you can hear laughter, and music, and celebration...
"I. Don't know what to say," you admit.
The Lady smiles. "Don't let it get in your head, Orchid. I talk to everyone, at least once, and more often if they're willing to not make it weird. I never asked to be a god, and I don't like it. I'm just...a friend. As long as you don't forget me, I won't ever forget you. Now..." The Lady takes your hands. "How are you feeling?"
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