Taffer Notes: I did a wee bit of scene-fast-forward practising in this one. It's one of the things I still struggle with in my writing, so this was a good little exercise! Is it perfect? Ahaha, hell no. But it'll do.
More so though, we have now finished setting the scene.
And now it's time to begin derailing Dying Light 2's story.
In which Zofia laments how she lost her taste for chicken and misses her less-than-sensible Crane.
Chapter 6
Pilgrim's Path: Scene. Set.
2026
On the gentle slope of a forested valley, sat what'd once been an old-world kind of village. Most of its houses leaked a timeless charm, with colourful walls accented by dark, wooden beams. Each house had a certain attention to detail to it; one likely driven by the simple need to look prettier than the one next door.
Which meant lots of flowers on windowsills, gorgeous rustic latticework wherever you looked, and, at occasion, decorations up front that'd come hewn out of rock.
Then the Fall had come and done the whole toppling of society thing, and now none of that mattered. No more tourists to snap pictures. No more neighbours to measure yourself again.
The apocalypse had swept through the village like it had swept through most everywhere else, leaving its streets clogged by mudslides, its lindwurm fountain dry and covered in layers of pigeon shit, and its two overly enthusiastic hotels abandoned for good.
Zofia cared little for any of that.
What she cared for was a particular garden at the back of one of those lovely old houses. A house which stood at the village's outskirts and which, all things considered, was still in relatively good shape. The walls were a solid blue, its windows intact, and the narrow rear porch only slightly gunky.
Three more— almost identical —houses flanked it tight, squeezed together into a colourful block. The leftmost one was white. Then came yellow and blue and, lastly, pink-ish. Each had a garden of its own, but only the blue house had a veggie patch.
And peach trees.
Zofia hopped the weathered wooden fence. Her feet landed lightly, carefully placed to not step on anything potentially edible. Because even if the garden had missed about five or so years' worth of harvest now, its veggies had kept growing. And spreading. And growing some more, turning themselves into compost along the way so they could grow even better the next year.
Or something like that, anyway. Zofia didn't know much about gardening, truth be told.
She did know about being a backyard veggie-thief though. The cautious sort. Zofia kept her eyes turned to the porch, where a door led inside the blue house. It'd been a glass door once. Now it was a gaping maw tipped with glass shards. Those same shards had been tipped in old blood at some point, until all the rain had washed them clean. The body which had been laid out on the threshold the first time Zofia had come here was gone. (Buried.)
So. Peach trees.
There were two of them in the garden, near the porch, and Zofia liked to think they knew her rather well by now, what with how frequently she visited them and all that.
"Morning," she said as she stepped under one of them, a finger lifted so she could gently prod at a fuzzy baby peach within reach.
Predictable, the tree said nothing in turn.
She walked around it once, then did the same with the other, looking for anything that'd tell her if this year was going to be another terrible year for peaches — like last year had been, when all the fruit had either fallen early or gotten stuffed full of worms. But there weren't any curled leaves. No spots, either, or gnarly warts.
Whatever Collin had done to the trees it'd paid off.
Zofia propped her spear against one of the trees. Was she getting her hopes up? Why, of course not. A bolt of lightning might (somehow) strike both trees at once and then that'd be it for them.
She turned around and slunk to the veggie patch. Once upon a rosier time, it'd likely been neatly divided, with the salads there, the tomatoes over yonder, and so on and so forth. Now, it was a free for all of a sort, with every plant battling for the right to grow (and get eaten). Like the garlic she had her sights set on, and so Zofia went down on her haunches in the veggie jungle, where she rubbed elbows with a flowering artichoke and dug into the moist earth with her bare hands.
The garden unravelled itself into a wealth of scents; some sharp, some thick and sweet, and others everything in-between. None of it was particularly bad. Yet, the moment it all hit her nose— especially the whiff of earthworms as she finally reached the garlic bulbs —nausea hit her. Hard.
Feeling queazy as hell, Zofia stuck her tongue out and tried to focus on pulling the garlic free, when a soft crunch of glass being ground underfoot had her freeze on the spot. She threw a look over her shoulder.
Biters.
Two.
They were having a disagreement on who ought to go out the backdoor first.
Zofia got up. Her head spun. A bit, anyway, and she ground her teeth together, entirely unhappy with her overall condition. Her head ought not to spin that easily and she'd smelled rot for years now. Wee earthworms and some old compost weren't supposed to make her want to vomit.
Teeth still tight, she swiped up her spear.
The Biter that won the shoving competition for who made it out the door first also won the first stab to the eye socket. An eye socket which— inconsiderably —refused to give her spear back.
"Bollocks." Zofia let her weapon go as the Biter fell. The spear wobbled in its skull, erect and generally useless.
The second Biter gained momentum. It was sturdy, she noticed. Still had meat on it. And it was wet meat. Meaning it reeked, and Zofia almost retched right then and there. She covered her mouth, gagging, when a short, sharp whistle split the air behind her.
The Biter kept coming.
A dark blur leapt over the fence she'd hopped earlier, landed with a solid thud by her side, and then shot forward again; all black and fawn fur and bared, white teeth.
Chief— his entire sixty-six pounds of Belgian Malinois —latched on to the Biter's arm and tore it off its feet. The thing got spun to the side so violently, Zofia swore she could hear its shoulder pop from its socket. Something further demonstrated by how the arm twisted at an unnatural angle as Chief kept tearing at it. Growling— in a cheerful and murderous kind of way —he dragged the Biter away from her.
It trashed and it moaned, its neck twisting and its teeth gnashing. But it never got anywhere near the dog.
Zofia skirted the fighting pair and got back to her spear, this time taking her time to put a foot down on the dead Biter's head as she wiggled her weapon free. Her stomach turned again, pointlessly letting her know that she was, quite literally, scrambling the thing's brain.
"I had it," she said. The spear had finally come loose.
"Totally."
Zofia shot a look back at Crane. He was just outside the fence, on horseback, with one hand ruffling his Appaloosa's mane and the other draped over the handle of his always-loaded crossbow as it hung near his thigh. Even in the saddle— or, rather, especially in the saddle —Crane was his deceptively lopsided self. Deceptively, because Zofia knew he'd snap to attention in a blink and trade the lazy roll of his shoulders for a ramrod-straight back. But until then he carried a slouch and a sufficiently disarming grin. Both of which, unfortunately, charmed her.
. . .
She'd forgive him for sending Chief over the fence.
For now.
Zofia turned her attention back to the Biter and managed an awkwardly assertive "Aus," prompting Chief to let go. Why the German, one might wonder; much like she had when Crane had begun barking Sitz and Aus at his otherwise perfectly English-speaking litter of puppies. Something-something tradition, that was why.
Obviously.
"You know that means we gotta come back," Crane said while Zofia drove her spear into the Biter's skull, ending it before it realised it no longer had a dog attached to its arm. "Give the village a sweep before we get squatters."
"We're already here." This time, the spear came free okay. When she turned, Crane had just swung his leg over Al Capony's rump and landed on his feet.
Mhm.
Al Capony.
Between that, Liam Neighson, Miss and Chief, Breakfast (a chicken), and Q-Tip (a sheep), Crane had lost his right to name another animal. Ever. Which meant Zofia had gotten to name her horse something reasonably thoughtful before he'd gotten to it.
Azia— bless her —watched Crane dismount from behind Al Capony, her ears perked with that unending supply of equine curiosity she'd been possessed with.
And, gosh, was she pretty. Zofia couldn't help thinking that every time she looked at her. Built for running forever-and-ever, Azia (supposedly a Shagya Arab), was a shapely horse from the tip of her nose all the way to the flick of her tail. Her coat was mostly a near-sunset-orange kind of colour, though she had a lovely white mask, a white mane and tail, and matching white stockings, all of which speckled her in an endlessly charming kind of way. And it made her stand out next to Al Capony's dark brown fur and his white, dotted rump. Which was not to say Al Capony wasn't a good looking horse in his own right; he was the whole tall dark and handsome routine, while Azia hoarded all the glitter.
When Crane didn't immediately move after dismounting, Azia stretched her neck, puckered her horsie lips, and gave his shoulder a nibble. There was, after all, a chance for treats to fall out.
Crane swiped a hand down her nose, flicked Al Capony's reins over his saddle, and then left the two horses to their own devices. Kind of. Ever the workaholic, Chief jumped the fence and parked himself in the grass, from where he'd watch the horses graze, his long pink tongue lolling out from between sharp white teeth and his large black ears on a constant swivel.
Good luck to any Biter trying to sneak up on them.
Crane, in the meantime, joined her in the garden. Her statement of We're already here, he'd gone ahead and ignored.
"And since we are—" Zofia returned her attention to the garlic, digging up the rest. "—it stands to reason we don't got to bother anyone else."
"Nah." Crane put on a set of sturdy leather gloves, then grabbed a hold of the first body and— grunting aplenty —hauled it over the fence, where it dropped to the other side sounding like a wet sack of grain. No way they'd leave them to rot near the veggies. "Damien and Matty have been itching to blow off some steam. They'll thank us."
"Oh for crying out loud, Crane. There's plenty of steam to be blown all 'round. You're just—" Zofia yanked out the last bulb, snatched everything she'd gathered up in her fist, and rose up quick. Too quick. Her head spun again. And she felt sick. Again.
At the worst possible timing, too, since Crane had just finished dropping the second body over the fence, which meant he had all the time in the world to watch her.
Zofia stood very still and inhaled through her mouth. Maybe that'd stop her churning stomach from pushing bile up her throat.
"I'm just— what? Hm? What am I, Fi?" Crane had put himself into her trajectory, right up to the fence, and when she got ready to climb it, he offered her his hand. So she shot him a glare, ignored the hand, and hopped the fence by her lonesome.
Reasonable was the answer.
Kyle Crane, the man who tended to be about as mad as a sack of ferrets on his best of days, was, for once, being perfectly levelheaded.
It drove her mad.
Zofia ignored him some more, all the way until she'd reached Azia and had started stuffing the garlic into her saddlebags. Then he made it hard for her to pretend he wasn't there, on account of how he'd stuffed the zombie-gunk covered gloves into his belt and dropped a hand on her shoulder.
"I hate this," she blurted. "I hate how you're being sensible. How you're sidelining me and how I'll get to be sitting at home soon while you go out by yourself. That isn't how this is supposed to work. Where you go, I go."
Her shoulder got a squeeze.
"And you know what? I hate how I can't eat chicken anymore. Chicken, Crane. I love chicken. It's supposed to be my favourite, but, instead, it makes me want to throw up."
. . .
Oh no, she really hadn't intended for that last bit to come out so weepy.
Frustrated, and with uncomfortable heat biting at her cheeks, Zofia fumbled with the latches on the saddle bags, her thoughts all astray and her leftover fingers uncoordinated. Like they'd grown minds of their own and were about to start picketing over the poor treatment they'd been receiving.
While she struggled, Crane's hand wandered. It slipped off her shoulder. Swept down her side, trailing a tempting warmth all the way, and, eventually, settled on her stomach.
Which, undeniably, had become his favourite place to park his palm as of late.
Zofia shook out a quiet sigh and craned her neck to look at him. He'd tilted his head sideways. And the way he stared at her, with a sheepish sort of guilt in his light brown eyes, made it near impossible for her to stay mad. Even if mad was what she wanted to be. The alternative was to leap into a bottomless pit of despair.
She'd rather not. Leap, that is.
"You're already so much better at this than I am," she mumbled.
"Yeah, well—" Crane's lips twitched into a crooked smile. "—I got it easy."
Zofia scoffed. "I mean it. Two months in and I'm already a dreadful mom. Aren't I supposed to be all— I dunno— glowing? Because I am not glowing, Crane. I feel like a toad. Toads don't glow."
"Hm," he intoned. "You're more like one of those cute tree frogs? The little blue ones? With the big button eyes and— ow. Sharp elbows, yep. Exactly. Those."
"I hate you."
"Yeah, I don't blame you. But I solemnly swear I will make it up to you. I will dote on you. I will massage your feet and pickle you all the pickles if that is what it takes." And snap your bags closed, apparently, with his free hand taking care of that while Zofia hung her head in shame.
"I'm supposed to be happy. Not miserable."
"You're not supposed to be anything, babe. You get to be whatever it is you need to be. Scared? Sad? Mad at me? Furious? Go ahead. You wanna keep stabbing me with your evil pointy sticks for arms? Do it. I can take it." He'd finished with the saddle bags and wrapped his arms around her instead. Entirely. His chin dropped on the top of her head. If there was one thing in life she was grateful for right now, it was that she still found solace in how he made the air smell of peaty ash around her. "And me? I get to be here for you and help you with all that shit. And— and yeah— if that means I have to be the sensible asshole, then so be it. Because— and I need you to listen very carefully now, okay?"
Zofia nodded.
"Because I am going to prove to you how I am, without doubt, going to be the best dad this shitty, rotten Earth has ever seen."
2036
Zofia straddled a low stone railing and stared down the steep slope on her left, where fir trees crowded the mountain's flank.
It didn't look so bad. Not for a perpetually rotten world, anyway.
Milky morning mists had pooled into the valley below, where they shrouded Villedor's neighbours from sight and pushed up against the mountains caging in the region. Like the mists had grown weary of being stuck on the ground and wanted to climb up. Turn into clouds.
But long before that'd happen, the sun— currently peeking through the murk —would smite them. What a spoilsport.
Zofia took a deep breath. The air up here was nice.
She tasted fir. Autumn flowers. Damp earth.
And a dash of hope.
Turned out this Dylan did, indeed, exist. And he did, indeed again, know Waltz. Now all they had to do was get there. With there being so damn close, it felt almost surreal.
Dangerous, too. It was dangerous, that hope, and so Zofia scowled at it and kicked it aside. Careful. Don't want that to take root, she thought and swung her leg over the railing to hop down onto the ground.
Right on time.
Crane and Aiden stepped from the waystation, a conversation bouncing between them that sounded only one ill-placed word away from escalating into shouting. Aiden pointed wildly and so did Crane; with a coiled rope dangling from his arm, she noted. He'd found it back in the nest, and because Kyle Crane had yet to learn how to say no to a free length of good rope, he'd had to bring it.
"You heard him back there," Crane said. He looked a bit ragged after an entire night spent tossing and turning under UV light. "She's alive. What more do you want?"
"Yeah. Alive and—" Aiden threw his arms skyward. "—in Villedor. What good does that do me if he won't tell me more until he's in New Paris? That's another two or three weeks before I'm back here."
Crane locked eyes with her and nodded in the general direction of forward. Pathfinding duty, then. She could do that. Zofia scurried off, the conversation drifting on the breeze behind her.
"She's alive," Crane repeated.
"And I—"
"Alive. Jesus Christ, kid. Take a deep breath. You just had a dude tell you the sister you've been checking under every rock for is still around. Give that a moment to process."
Silence.
Zofia led them past the comm's tower, her footsteps retracing a Pilgrim's tail that'd angle towards Villedor's walls.
More silence.
A yellow-winged butterfly tumbled through the air in front of her, its flight charmingly erratic. It accompanied her all the way to the ledge of the mountain's peak, where prior drifters had erected a scaffolding that held up a zip-line leading down. The butterfly, relatively unburdened by gravity, flew ever onwards, leaving Zofia standing at the edge.
"Yeah, see, that's what I thought," Crane eventually said, the silence broken.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Crane, his thumbs hooked into his belt, walked by a gobsmacked Aiden's side. Yeah. Gobsmacked. The kid's brows were pinched, his jaw a little slack, and his eyes stubbornly locked to the ground in front of his feet.
"Yesterday, all you had was a maybe. And today— well—" Crane gestured vaguely towards the zip-line coming up.
If that'd been meant to further encourage Aiden, Aiden didn't play ball. Instead, his shoulders drooped. "Unless he's lying."
There's always that, she thought.
Crane clicked his tongue — though whatever he said after, Zofia had no clue, since she'd yanked her zip-line loop from her pack, swung it over the line, and pushed herself off the rocky ledge.
She let go before the end came up and landed in a light crouch.
That'd been fun.
A stirring kind of fun which left her feeling a bit like she'd swallowed that butterfly from earlier, and Zofia allowed herself the ghost of a smile, which she carried with her as she stepped into the shadow of a small church.
The church was the only building atop the plateau. It had a bulbous roof, tall windows on each side, and its large front doors stood wide open. A graveyard surrounded it, decorated with overgrown fountains and angelic kind of statues with their heads turned down in ever-lasting shame over what humanity had gotten up to.
Zofia ignored the lot. For the most part, anyway. She did glance inside once she passed the doors, where she caught a look at the large letters painted behind the altar.
GOD IS DEAD, they read.
Rolling her eyes, she carried on. If she'd had a penny for every church or altar they'd come across that'd been defaced with those same words (in all kinds of languages, too), then she'd have a whole lot of useless pennies. Well. No. Pennies weren't useless. They did okay in a sock for bludgeoning and you could melt some of them down.
But. Anyway. Graveyard. Plateau. And beyond that, their destination: Villedor.
Zofia didn't know much about the city, safe for how it'd been popular long before the Fall, its appeal right up there with New York, L.A., London, and Tokyo. Something about the scene. And the scenery. Probably. But she'd never come to visit. Which, in hindsight, had been a shame, considering all it'd taken to get here would have been a single overnight train ride.
Out of London.
Through the channel.
And right down to Villedor.
She shuffled up to the plateau's edge and peered down. A road— ruined, of course —ran along the mountain's side below her. Beyond the road, way down, was yet another lake, its shores occupied by a boat house that'd had Welcome to Villedor written in cheerful font up front. Further back, pushed up right against Villedor's tall walls, sat a train station. One with tracks on the ground and up, held up by stilts.
Shuffle-shuffle went a pair of footsteps next to her, with Crane pulling up on her left and Aiden on her right.
And while the kid lifted a pair of binoculars mostly made of duct tape to have himself a gander at the train yard too, Crane almost got himself pushed off the ledge. Gently, of course.
"Fi. What do your elf eyes see?" he asked, his lips quirked up in a crooked smile. A smile that only got worse once she shot him a blank look. Oh, if only he knew how close he was to landing in that lorry under them, its bed filled with all sorts of old rubbish.
. . .
Who was she kidding?
He knew damn well.
Aiden— likely about as familiar with Aragorn and Legolas as Crane was familiar with the concept of growing up —lowered his binoculars, his forehead crinkled in a What? kinda way.
Zofia raised her left arm and pointed. "Dylan wasn't fibbing. There's a GRE checkpoint by the station. The tracks head into Villedor on either side—" Her arm swung right, then left again. "—but this one's got a GRE barricade in front of it, so that'll be where we want to go in. Except first we got to get down there and across the lake." She leaned forward far as she could, feeling one of Crane's fingers immediately hook into her belt, and peered to the side. "Someone blew that road, too, so we aren't walking. But we can probably climb down the side. What with your rope and all."
"And how do we get across the lake? Swim?" The binoculars lifted once more, Aiden was back to studying the walls. Because he certainly wasn't pointing them at the water.
"Hell no," she said. "I'm not getting wet." Then she carefully tapped the binoculars and pushed them down, directing his eyes to the water. "See that line running across? The one attached to those pillars by the dock? That's the lead of a rope ferry. And since the line hasn't been cut, I'm hoping the ferry is still there, too."
"Huh," was Aiden's comprehensive reply to that.
Crane's rope got them down from the road and down to the lake, where the ferry (or, rather, the raft wanting so hard be a ferry) was laid out on the muddy shore.
It was a miserable thing; no more than a plank of wood strapped to airtight drums, with an upright plank on either end. Metal hoops were bolted to the planks. The line that led across the river ran right through those hoops.
While Zofia stood with her arms hugged to her chest and her eyes narrowed, Crane got to pushing the raft into the water.
"I don't like it," she said, the words out before she'd had a chance to turn them over in her head.
"Huh?" Aiden went again, a repeat performance from up on the ledge.
"Fi is allergic to things going smooth. She'd be happier if the thing had a leak or the—" Crane grunted as he gave the raft one last shove. It splashed the rest of the way into the water, only kept in place by Crane snatching one of the hoops and leaning out over the shoreline. "—line snapped. Look, Fi. It held."
She huffed. "We're drowning."
"No one's drowning." Crane stepped onto the raft and shuffled himself to the front. The raft leaned treacherously, unhappy with his weight. "Now hop on, Paper Tiger."
. . .
Aiden, who'd stood a bit off to the side the entire time, looked first to Crane and then to her. His brows scooted up into his forehead. If there'd been another Huh? waiting to happen, he kept it to himself.
The trip across the lake was a quiet one, with Crane and Aiden taking turns pulling them along. Water lapped against the raft, a constant, soothing murmur under her feet. It was cool here, with the lake's surface hanging on to the autumn night's chill, and everything smelled a bit of mud and algae. Least until they got closer to the other shore.
Densely populated areas had a very distinct smell about them; almost like urban areas rotted different than rural ones. Zofia had gotten used to it, a long while ago, too, but that didn't mean she had to like it.
In fact, she rather disliked it.
At one point, she got down on her haunches and ran her hand through the water, her eyes catching on the glint of fish scales darting by below. Then she rose again and looked up, at Villedor's walls undeniably present above them. It made her a bit dizzy.
"They're— ah—," Zofia started and gestured upwards.
"Taller than Harran's?" Crane finished for her. "Yep."
And since they'd brought up the H-word, their tag-along got curious.
"I still can't believe Spike never mentioned you," Aiden said.
"Yeah, what's up with that?" Crane— knowing full well what was up with that, namely that it'd been on purpose —flashed her a wink.
"Especially since he said you helped him get out of there." Aiden gave the rope a hefty heave, though his eyes were squarely set on Crane. Who, the moment he got stared at, cocked his head to the side like he knew what was coming. "Which is pretty wild. You were like, what... ten back then?"
Crane snorted. "Mmm. Stealing my material. I see how it is," he said, gracelessly dodging the question under Aiden's jab.
Aiden's follow up— whatever that would have been —was cut short when Crane's radio gave a sudden and urgent POP.
A pay attention to me kind of pop, which got Crane to unclip it with a practised grab. Keeping one hand on the rope so he could help Aiden pull the raft the last stretch to shore, he pressed the radio to his ear with the other.
"Dylan?"
Another pop, chased by a sharp intake of air that sounded almost like static hopping off the wavelengths. A whisper followed. And whispers, by definition, were a terrible, terrible sign. "Crane?"
"Yeah. We're almost across the lake, what's up?"
"You need to hurry. I've unlocked the GRE hatch, but I can't stay here much longer. Please. You have to hurry." The hurry at the end had dropped to a hiss; as if the man on the other end had pushed his lips to the radio and was trying his hardest to be quiet.
Crane's eyes snapped to Zofia. She shrugged meekly.
Not near quiet enough, it turned out. Since the next thing the radio picked up was a "Shit!", then a loud crash and a distant— whoop? A laugh? Something gleeful, at any rate, which was the last thing they heard before the line cut out.
Crane's thumb hovered by the transmit button, his lips pressed together tight, but he didn't push it. Probably since he didn't want to risk being the noise on the other end that sealed Dylan's fate.
Whatever that fate may be.
"Okay," he said. "I guess we're hauling ass."
Zofia leapt off the raft first. She didn't wait for the others before she darted forward, leaving the shore behind to trade it for a reedy kind of park arrangement. Thin trees. Thin shrubs. And real mangy Biters, too, all of which she ignored as she found them a way up to where they had to be.
She only stopped jogging once she'd reached it: a grim fence blocking off access to a tunnel leading under Villedor's wall.
Under.
Always under.
Her bladder pinched uncomfortably.
The fence, its top tipped with barbed wire, belonged to a military blockade, which had come with mean, armoured people carriers and weather-beaten signs declaring that they ought to stay out.
Crane didn't even blink at the warnings or the barricade, marched right past her as she stood in front of it, and found the bent lip in the fence where some other drifter had already gnawed it open with a wire cutter.
He peeled it back.
Aiden squeezed through first.
And Zofia — hesitated. Her legs wouldn't move.
"Fi?"
"I've got a massively bad feeling about this," she admitted.
"Mhm. Same. But we got this." Crane's head snapped around, drawn by the same thump of feet hitting metal that she'd just picked up. A rather distant thump. "Hey. Hey. Aiden!" He hollered. "Wha— what are you— wait! Shit. The punk fucking ditched us, can you believe that?"
Zofia finally stepped up to him and peered through the meshed fence. The abandoned checkpoint on the other side had been overgrown. The tunnel waiting at the back still had a train cart parked in it. Everything beyond that was pitch black.
She couldn't see Aiden anywhere.
"So, what now?" she asked.
"We go after him," he said, already digging for one of their last UV flares in his pack.
Zofia sighed. Her eyes fluttered shut. For a second, anyway, before she ducked through the gap and got ready for the dark.
Anything else would have been too sensible.
Taffer Notes: I would like everyone to know that it was very difficult for me not to launch into a 500-word description of Azia and Al Capony. My inner horse-girl WANTED.
I would ALSO like everyone to know that this is probably one of my boldest/b daydreams. I used to have horses, you see, and one of my favourite things to do was go cross-country riding either super early or super late, when there was no one around but me and the horse. And I'd pretend that I'm out on patrol in a post-apocalyptic world, keeping an eye out for the monster of the week. Sometimes that was zombies, sometimes aliens, and sometimes even dinosaurs.
Now I get to live that through Fi and Crane. I'm sobbing happy, ya'all.