Chapter 2

"Scribe Yearling." Tanya thought to herself. Still seemed strange after all the training and indoctrination, that she still felt like Tanya the individual, not Yearling, the soldier. That hadn't gone unnoticed by her Commanders. She was proud to be part of the Brotherhood to be sure, and she believed in her job; she just didn't feel the same priorities the Command staff held for her duties.

They were always hot and heavy on pressing the arms race between the Brotherhood and the Enclave. Everything took a backseat to technological gain in the effort to crush their biggest threat. So they reprimanded her at first for using unit resources to recover literary works, when they expected - demanded, solid intel and asset recovery of lost technology. She had argued the point, but the point was, they didn't want an argument. When the reprimands didn't have the intended corrective effect, they transferred her out of the archives.

So here she was, a scout at an outpost, relegated to routing Raiders and digging through the refuse of an archeological site in hopes of finding diagrams, maps, electrical project guides to send to the boys back at R&D. A smile spread across her face. "Some punishment," This was exactly what she wanted, now she had her own Army to finally remove the Raiders that had kept her out when she was a kid. Better yet, with the Lone Wanderer bringing her exactly what Command wanted, she didn't even have to waste time looking for it. She could spend every minute reclaiming true treasure, the intellectual pursuits of the ages. Philosophy, Art, Psychology, Political method, Socioeconomic planning, and Theology. These were the things that created a society, held it together, stronger than steel, stronger than cement. They create something that can't be shot at, bombed, or swept away. It creates ideas and hope. It turns people into an indestructible force that can't be stopped.

One day she would find the right person to share this with. Someone with vision, compassion, and her shared intolerance for greed and abuse of power. Those people were hard to find in the Wastes, most just wanted enough to eat and drink today, and didn't care how they got it. Others couldn't see beyond tomorrow. Until there was hope, there would never be anything beyond tomorrow.

Good people were out there though, she knew they were, because her mother had been one. As a little girl she would sit in her mothers arms and listen to her read books and tell her stories of how things could be. She would tell tales handed down to her through oral tradition or those she had read in books. Tanya would look at the pages, her hair still tangled, her face still smeared with dirt from dragging books out of the crumbled ruins of the wastes. She would look up at her mom and see the hope in her eyes, as she told the stories of princesses and magic castles of shining granite and ivory.

It wasn't until years later that Tanya realized the pages of the books were empty. They contained only browned, burnt, and curled pages, devoid of words. But the dreams and hopes were there. They were there in her mothers eyes as she wished for a happier life for her little girl and told wonderful stories as she flipped the empty pages of the destroyed books. Tanya didn't forget those lessons and the love and care her mother had given her. Tanya was determined to bring that world to life, to bring it back; if for no one else, then for her mother.