.

Safe Haven

Another day on the Rim. Chef wiped the sand from his eyes as he stared at the boiling tin of water. He'd slept pretty well, all things considered. The experience yesterday had been something else. Squires had watched over the girl in the first half of the night, then Larisa, of all people, had taken over. And it was Larisa that was now emerging from the rickety shack where they kept their patient. Procene, her name was. He hoped she was alright, and since no news tended to be good news, he assumed that was indeed the case. The girl had earned the right to live, and then some.

"How is she?" he asked Larisa, who trudged past him, her eyes bleary.

She made a so-so wobbly gesture with her hands and disappeared in the sleeping barrack. The surgery hadn't done wonders for the girl's social aptitude. He'd wanted to ask her to milk the muffalo, but it was clear what the answer would be if he did, so he let it go.

Cassie came out not long after, coming to sit by him. "Whoo," she grunted. "Water for breakfast."

"Actually," Chef said, "it's going to be tea. Larisa found some leaves that have a pretty nice flavour. Not sure it's actual tea, but I mean… the principle's the same." He dumped the yellow-green leaves in the boiling water. "I s'pose it's got to steep about five minutes, like most tea?"

"Mm." Cassie sat on the ground, hugging her knees. Even though she was dead tired, Chef again was struck by how lovely she was. There was no romantic feelings or anything on his part, just… it felt nice being on this far-away planet with this pretty girl. Larisa wasn't all that special to look at, bless her. Not ugly, just… plain. Cassie was pleasing on the eyes, no doubt. It was superficial of him to think in those terms, but really, he felt that it was perfectly alright as long as it didn't involve any lechery or other base desires. It just made him cheerful to see her slightly upturned nose and her chocolate brown eyes. Maybe it was stupid, but for the first time, Chef felt happy to be here. He'd spent his time so far feeling worried, but that was a waste of energy. He was here, with nice people, trying to survive and build a home to live in, and he actually felt like they might even make it.

"So how's our patient?"

"Huh, what?" Cassie's question pulled him back to the present.

"The poor thief we butchered?"

"Ah. Uh, Larisa said, um, well, gestured that she was still alive, doing uh, reasonably well?"

"Let's go check."

That wasn't a bad idea. This tea would probably still taste somewhat decently if oversteeped, and the water was far too hot now anyway. He removed the tin from the fire and let it cool in the grass, then followed Cassie.

"Hey, Cassie?" he felt an urgent need to say it. "Um, I just wanted to say, that what you did yesterday, well, that took some huge brass balls… in a manner of speaking."

She laughed. "I'm still shaking, so don't be too impressed."

"Still. I don't think any of us would be able to, well, you know. Just lop a hand off like that."

"Yeah, you would've," she turned her head and smiled at him. "I'm not special, we're all capable of remarkable things when we need to be."

Chef didn't feel special at all, just a stupid cook from a backward land.

They went in and kneeled by the neo-amputee. She was unconscious, or asleep, Chef didn't know the difference, but she was breathing. That, already, was a miracle in itself, considering how ridiculously amateur the impromptu surgery had been conducted. It was dark, but by the light of their welder-cutters, they could see that the blood on the bandages covering the stump of the girl's arm was mostly dried. Good sign, Chef supposed. Her face, too, looked less gaunt, the black rings around her eyes less dark… if that wasn't a trick of the limited light.

"She's asleep, I think," Cassie whispered. "Usually, they say that if a patient makes it through the night, they have a good chance of surviving. But that might just be bullshit."

"I have no idea."

"I'll watch by her today. Maybe you and Squires can see about building something new? We'll need roofs over our heads if we want to make it through fall and winter. Who knows, we might even be able to build a separate room for everyone."

"That'd be the day." He stood up. "Alright, let me know if you need a break."

"M-hm."

Squires sat by the fire, his hair dishevelled and his face scrunched up. "Heya Chef." He yawned and stretched. "I could probably sleep for days." Bob the cat and Noah the dog were actually playing together, rolling over each other and bopping each other on the face with their paws. Chef had always thought cats and dogs hated each other and fought to the death if they met, but seemed that wasn't always true.

"Me too. But hey, we can't sit around being lazy, right." He poured them both the lukewarm, oversteeped tea.

"Nope. I've got an idea, too. After we get the barrack done, shouldn't take long, we could build ourselves a sort of mess room? Like, a kitchen and a small refectory. We can't eat outside forever, sooner or later we'll get rainy days." Not today though, the air was a cold morning blue.

"Sure, yeah." Chef felt his stomach growl, however. And with Cassie watching Procene, there'd be no food coming in today, at least not right away. He didn't know how many packets of survival paste they still had, but they'd need a sustainable food source soon. The plants Risa had sown wouldn't mature for a few days yet, although when he looked carefully, he already saw bright green little stalks peep out of the ground where she'd sown. Those super-seeds were pretty damn amazing. And the tea wasn't too terrible either. Bitter, but refreshing.

"We'll still need to use wood, though. I don't think we're ready to start building things out of stone just yet. I don't know much about mining or quarrying, not enough to do it safely, and I'm wagering you guys don't either?"

"Don't think so, no."

Squires stood up, went to fetch an MRE packet and tossed one to Chef while he squeezed his empty in his mouth. "Best get started or I'll fall asleep at the campfire."

They did, finishing work on the barrack rather quickly, putting the last of the ceiling boards into place. Squires coated them with sap he'd drained from trees to make them somewhat water-resistant, and just like that, they had a place to sleep. "Hey, you know what?" Squires said as they worked.

"What?"

"That big heifer over there," he pointed at the domesticated muffalo, "looks like it's got some serious wool on its back. We could try shaving it. Use it for beds?"

"That's… actually a pretty great idea. Maybe Cassie knows how. Or Larisa. They seem to have some idea about animal care."

"Mm, let's hope so."

They went on building, getting the ground ready for a new project, a kitchen-slash-refectory. But as Squires looked at the terrain and planned the lay-out, he changed his idea. A separate kitchen and refectory, with a wall in between. He explained it was cleaner and safer, especially since there would also be butchering going on in the kitchen. Chef didn't mind, an extra wall was no big deal with how fast the welder-cutters made the whole business.

"We also want tables," Chef explained as they sawed some floorboards. "Entire colonies have burned to the ground because people didn't have tables to eat at. Then when we're done, you can move your stove and your butcher's table inside, so you've got a clean cabin you can cook in, how's that?"

"Sounds great." It did.

With Squires' excellent advice and building knowledge, constructing a second log cabin proceeded very quickly. The guy had clearly learned from the previous experiences, and this time the work went exponentially faster. By the time lunch came around, they'd already laid the groundwork for the kitchen and had begun raising the walls, one doorway leading outside, and the other to the future refectory. When they saw the sun rise high in the sky, Larisa appeared with a tin of milk for each of them. They drank in silent enjoyment, then kept working, pausing only to squeeze another MRE packet into their mouths.

It was around noon when they heard three clangs. It was Larisa hitting a mess tin signalling lunch. She hadn't cooked, of course, but the berries and last of the exploding critter meat were a filling repast, for Cassie too when she took a break to sit by them, telling them their ward had woken up once or twice and seemed coherent, even quite positive despite the loss of her hand. They'd had a few short conversations between fevered sleeping bouts, and it seemed she was going to be alright. Squires asked her if she thought the girl might stay with them, and Cassie said she had no doubt. Things really were going great. Sure, the girl had tried to steal, but she'd been hungry and desperate, so everyone seemed willing to overlook that. Chef wondered what kind of skills she had. Probably very little expertise in survival, judging from recent events. And what skills she did have might be quite hampered by the loss of a hand. He shuddered at the memory.

After lunch, work proceeded for Chef and Squires. The guy was pleasant to work with, offering all kinds of knowledge tidbits about construction. Turned out he was also a bit of a tinkerer, enjoying himself by taking apart machines and putting them back together, describing it as a sort of guilty pleasure. That might actually be useful.

By the time afternoon rolled around, the kitchen was pretty much done, and Larisa had passed by with another tin of milk. As they took a drink, Squires suggested, "Come on, let's play some horseshoes. Take a break."

Nothing wrong with that. All work and no play and all that. Larisa clapped her hands excitedly, her face eagerly questioning.

Squires laughed, "Of course you can join!"

The three of them divided the six bent bits of metal amongst themselves, Squires taking the first turn, his toss missing the pin by ten centimetres. Chef tossed next, his piece hitting the pin but glancing off, ending up farther than Squires'. Chef didn't fail to notice how Larisa leaned against Squires while she watched. Those two were certainly getting along.

Larisa detached herself from Squires and let her metal sail through the air. It skidded to a halt right at the foot of the pole.

"Whey," Squires whooped. "You're in the lead." But then he bopped his elbow against hers. "But not for long. Now watch me make the perfect throw." He bent forward, the piece of metal swaying in his hand, his eyes focused on the horseshoe pin.

Instead of throwing, he froze, looking beyond the metal post. "… what is that?"

Chef and Risa followed his gaze, and now noticed Noah barking near the campfire, her eyes also on the horizon. Bob the cat also looked to be on high alert, his back arched.

Someone was coming. Running, looked like. It was too far to make out, but whatever or whoever it was, it was heading straight for the camp.

"Cass!" Chef hollered, his eyes still on the running figure. "Cassie!" He drew his knife, knowing he couldn't use it properly anyway, at least not for this purpose.

"I don't think…" Squires muttered, squinting in the distance. "Look, he's waving his hands."

He was right, the person running towards them, hell for leather, was flapping his hands – it looked like 'his' hands, at least – in a panic, flailing them about wildly. Looking more terrified than hostile.

Cass emerged from the hut, her rifle in her hand. "Noah," she rapped, clicking her tongue. Amazingly, the dog ran up to them, standing at the legs of her mistress and growling at the approaching person. Cassie shouldered her rifle and took aim. "Any idea who that could be?"

Chef and Squires replied in unison, "No."

Larisa slapped Cassie's shoulder with the back of her hand and pointed at the man running. Chef saw it too. This guy wasn't running towards them as much as he was running away from something. Now, they could hear a panicked voice shrieking something that sounded like 'help'.

Cassie licked her lips and aimed. The running man was getting closer now, close enough for the colonists to see that he was a skinny teenager, dressed in shredded pants and a torn shirt. The cries were definitely for help. Behind him, about thirty metres, ran someone else, a man in jeans with a fur jacket, brandishing… something.

As they watched in indecision, the pursuer kept the thing in his hands steady, and the next moment, a shot rang out, making them all flinch as the bullet whizzed past its target and struck a tree only ten metres from where Chef and his friends were standing.

"I don't trust either of them, but only one of them is putting us in danger right now," Cassie muttered, looking down the barrel of her rifle. She fired, making Chef's left ear ring, but the bullet went wide, rustling the bushes behind the guy with the revolver. Another shot came, this one impacting the ground next to Larisa's feet. The girl gasped in surprise and Squires immediately grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back, behind the wall of the shelter.

"Best take cover too," Cassie said to Chef in a clipped voice, taking aim again. Chef wasted no time and joined his friends behind the shelter wall while Cassie kneeled to make herself a smaller target. She fired again, and from his relatively safe spot, Chef saw a cloud of blood erupt from the pursuing man's abdomen. He stumbled, but kept up the pursuit, blood spraying from his gut as he went. Somehow keeping to his feet even though his upper body lurched from side to side, the man brought his weapon up again, the revolver swaying on the end of his trembling arm, but Cassie beat him to it. The top of the man's head blew apart in a red mist of blood and brains, and his body crashed to the ground, sending up clouds of dirt as it did.

The running man had reached them by now, and scampered into the dirt at Cassie's feet. Chef ran forward, brandishing his knife, but it wasn't necessary. The teenager did nothing but crawl backward, his eyes in the direction his pursuer had come from, ignoring the growling dog between him and his saviour.

Cassie stood motionless, her rifle falling to the ground, tears in her eyes. Behind him, Chef heard Larisa's sobs as she wept into Squires' shirt.

Ignoring the fleeing man, Chef took hold of Cassie's shoulders, trying to look eyes with her. "Cass. Cass, are you alright?"

She was quiet for a moment, then rasped, "I... I killed someone."

"I know." It felt unreal to Chef at the moment, like he didn't realize he'd just seen a human being's head get torn apart. Perhaps there was a reason he was the only one still functioning. For him, it wasn't the first time he'd seen someone die. The guards had sometimes used lethal force on his fellow slaves. He'd seen at least three of them get shot, one of them in the head. "Cass, hey. You also saved someone."

Abruptly, her legs gave out and she fell down on her ass, sitting up, still with her face vacant.

On the ground, the refugee lay panting, his eyes closed and arms spread, Noah still growling low. With Cassie completely fallen apart, Chef would have to take action himself. He snatched the rifle up from the ground and pointed it at the prone teenager, ignoring how horrible it felt for him to hold such an instrument of death. "You. Who are you and what are you doing here?"

The guy opened his eyes and raised his hands to show they were empty, breathing hard. He must've run the legs out of his body. "I'm…. My name… is Odile. Odile Adams. I was… just lost… and these… two guys… captured me… said they… wanted to…" his breath came too rapidly to continue and he had to stop talking, getting the wind back into his lungs. He tried again, "Make me… sex slave. I managed to… stab the… first guy but… other guy saw me… when I tried to escape."

Chef knew, sadly, that young pubescent boys tended to be prized as carnal trophies for degenerates whose depravity knew no bounds. Especially adolescents who looked thin and somewhat androgynous, like this one.

"I'm… no threat, I swear. Oh god… thank you for… saving me, I thought I was dead. Or worse."

Chef heard the sounds of Larisa and Squires' footsteps as they came to stand next to him.

"I saw… the smoke coming from your fire and ran… for a night and half a day. The guy came after me… thought I'd lost him but… suddenly there again. When I rested. Had almost caught up to me."

Cassie's shaking hand came to rest on his shoulder, the other gently taking the rifle from him. She slowly lowered it, but made sure she could still use it if necessary. Tears streaked the dust on her face. "You m… made me kill someone."

"I know. I'm so sorry," he pleaded, still lying on the ground, with Noah watching his every move, ready to tear him apart. "But… I mean, they were slavers. Rapists."

Cassie closed her eyes and took a slow breath. "So you say."

"I'm telling the truth here!" His voice broke, his face looked on the edge of panic. Chef was inclined to believe him. "I ran all the way here, please, you've got to believe me."

"Well," Chef said to Cassie, "I mean, there's very little reason for him to stage all this just so he can steal our stuff, right?"

Cassie lowered the rifle. "I s'pose."

His hands still up, the boy said, "That's… that's right. Look, all I ask is that you don't shoot me. I'll… I'll leave if you want me to but… just don't kill me."

From the corner of his eye, Chef noticed Procene's tattered red robe as she came to stand in the doorway, leaning on the jamb and holding her severed wrist.

"He doesn't look all that dangerous," Squires said. Larisa shrugged to show she agreed.

Cassie finally made a decision and slung the rifle over her shoulder. "If we run you out, you'll just starve, and that'll just be a reason for you to come back and steal things. Better we keep you here so we can keep an eye on you. You can stay here if you like, but you'll need to pull your weight."

Undiluted gratitude came over the boy's face. "Of… of course! I'll do whatever you need. I'm was a farm boy in my old life. Well, I farmed in the refugee camp. If, if you've got seeds, I can…"

Cassie looked at flower child. "Larisa?"

She nodded to show there were still seeds left.

"Gr- great! I'll… you won't regret this, I promise."

"You uh," Squires asked, "wouldn't happen to know anything about mining or quarrying, would you?"

"N-no, sorry. Is… is that a problem?"

He shrugged. "Nah, might've been helpful, is all."

"I'm Cass. But you can call me Cassie once we know each other better."

"I'm Terry, but everyone calls me Squires. This quiet lady here is Larisa. Or just Risa for short."

Flower child briefly raised a hand, then walked off.

"You can call me Chef. My actual name's Carl Johnson, but everyone just says Chef. As you can probably tell from my name, I'm the one who makes the food 'round here. When we uh, have some."

"I'll… I'll help with that. I swear, I'm good at plant work. I mean," he smiled broadly, "farming'll always be the most reliable food source, right?"

"We already have someone who's good at that," Cassie said curtly. "But I s'pose two is better than one."

"Hi. I'm Procene. Procene Sartherian." The girl's complexion had improved and the dark rings around her eyes were slowly giving way. She still stood on unstable legs. "I'd shake your hand, but…"

"Oh. Uh. Yeah. What happened?"

"I'll explain some time." Despite the sweat beading on her forehead, she gave him a disarming smile, which lit up her pretty face. "I'm new here too." She turned to the others. "How can I help?" her voice was soft and gentle.

"Help?" Chef blurted out. "You can barely stand. You should rest, get better. I mean, you lost your hand just yesterday."

She said, "It's not that bad. I mean, it is, but I don't want to be dead weight."

"What are you good at?" Squires asked her. "We don't know much about you, so..."

"Right, sorry." Another gentle smile. "I'm from a tunnelworld, and I don't know if you're familiar with those, but if you spend ninety-nine percent of your life underground, you need to think of all sorts of creative ways to make do with limited resources. My job was to think of even more ways to be creative with limited resources. Recycle machines, improve efficiency, and invent new things."

"So what, you're a tinkerer?" Cassie asked.

"No. Well, my title was Illuminator, but I s'pose surfacers would call it an inventor?"

They could use one of those. Definitely. Chef immediately said, "Hey, that's great! I mean, we've got all sorts of tech we can use from our cryosleepers, but no idea how to use it. I mean, there's a few basic things we can do, but the high-tech stuff, I don't think anyone has an inkling."

Cassie showed her enthusiasm less, but Chef presumed to know her well enough by now to be sure that she, too, welcomed someone with science-y knowledge. "Alright, well, what would you need to um, invent things?"

"Just basic stuff," she said. "uh, a worktable, some space. A light. And materials to work with, of course."

"Hey but Chef," Squires asked, "Didn't you have that survival booklet? It contained diagrams and things, didn't it?" he was right, it did. "They were too tricky for us to decipher, but maybe…?"

The girl smiled again, narrowing her almond-shaped brown eyes. "I'd love to take a look at them, if I may?"

"Wait, before you go," Cassie stopped them. "The guy we shot. He was holding a revolver. Any of you good at shooting?"

The young boy only muttered, "Uh… a bit?"

"I spent some time hunting insects underground," Procene said. "I only have one hand left, but it's my good one, thankfully. I could… always carry a firearm for the colony's defence? I mean, if you trust me? It'd be perfectly understandable if you didn't."

Nobody had any doubts left at this point, so Cassie just told her, "Alright, it's yours. I'll go fetch it. In fact, it's best that you come with?"

"Oh?"

"I uh… don't want to hurt your feelings," Cassie said, "… but you smell terrible. Maybe that slaver guy's clothes are still usable. We really need to get you out of that torn and soiled frock."

The girl looked at her robe, holding the folds between thumbs and forefingers. After a few whiffs, she immediately agreed. "Oh my, that's… something else."

"It's uh… quite spectacular, yes," Squires agreed with a faint smirk. "You could probably knock a buzzard off a manure truck."

"Say no more. Miss Cassie, can you show me the way?"

Cassie chuckled, actually looking somewhat charmed by this gentle, soft-spoken girl. "It's just Cassie. Come on, let's go find that body."

"Chef," Squires said, "You've been on break long enough. Let's get back to building." He checked and realized something. "After I dethrone both of you with my horseshoe throw. Larisa! Come see this!"

They also invited Odile to join, because why not give the kid some time to pull himself back together. He was a bit reluctant at first, but he finally picked up his bent metal pieces and showed them all how spectacularly bad a person could be at throwing horseshoes.

"Hey um, Cassie?"

"Yeah?"

"I just want to say, again, thanks for saving me. And for trusting me after what I did. It must've been a hard decision to make."

She shrugged as they walked, the tall grass caressing their legs. "It's alright. Just because we're cut off from civilization doesn't mean we should cut our civilization out of us as well."

"That's true. Thanks for letting me stay, too. It's a relief to see that you're decent people."

"Again, that's fine. We were getting lonely, just the three of us, anyway."

Procene looked up at the sky as she walked, holding the stump of her forearm. "I know what you mean. Tunnelworlds are lonely places to live too. Sometimes, you spend days in a narrow shaft with just the same three or four people, trying to discover a stratum of ore or compacted machinery. Just a few light bulbs to see where you're going." She closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose. "Just being in this pure air, under the open sky, is heaven for me."

"M-hm. I get that when I'm on the open sea too. There's actually a beach not too far from here. I sometimes take a few minutes to just stand there and look at the waves during my hunts and patrols."

"You have a special bond with the sea?" the girl's brown eyes came to rest on her.

"You can say that, yes. I was a sailor for most of my adult life… well, not that I've been an adult for that long, but you know what I mean."

She nodded. "Mm."

Cassie saw a motionless body lying in the tall grass. "Oh, here we are." As they came closer, though, it seemed the clothes on this slaver's back might not be all that reusable. The fur jacket he wore was bloodied, with a ragged hole in the back from where the bullet had exited.

"I… suppose I can walk around in a bloody jacket for a while," Procene said, her nose wrinkled. "Trousers seem pretty much whole though."

"Yeah, we can probably use them until – " but then she saw that this wouldn't be the case. "Nevermind. He shat 'em when he died. Dammit."

"Ah," the other girl merely said. "That's… unfortunate."

Cassie bent over and began swiping the grass aside. "Although, with any luck, we can still find the – aha!" she stuck her hand between the glass blades and retrieved the revolver, a heavy, old-world type. They reloaded painfully slowly, but some of them, like this one, were less revolvers than they were hand cannons. A shot from one of those would probably fell… whatever it was on this planet that was large and thick-skinned.

She held it out to the other girl, grip-first. Her slender fingers took it, delicately but with confidence. "I should probably design a one-handed reloading mechanism for this thing first," she chuckled.

Cassie had started removing the fur jacket from the slain gunman, pulling it off his muscled shoulders. She tried not to look at the head, its top blown off with globs of tissue hanging from the red, open brain pan. The jacket gave way and she heard the dead body collapse back to the ground.

"Here you go," she tossed the jacket at Procene. Without a hand to catch it, the girl let it flop against her chest and to the ground, stooping to pick it up, and then shrugging it on, over her robe. The left side was red with blood, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

"Maybe you can wash in the lake where we rinsed ourselves off, it's hundred metres from here. I'll make sure no creeps spy on you."

The jacket was long enough to cover her chest and half her thighs, so she'd be fine without her robe for a bit. It really needed to be washed and left to dry. They walked to the lake and Cassie sat down, her back to the pond, watching the colony, in the distance, as Procene stripped to her underwear and washed the stink off her.

When she heard water splash and the rustling of fabric, Cassie turned around again. "Done?"

"M-hm." It was a strange sight, a narrow-built young lady with two long pigtails down her back, with an oversized rough, bloody and shaggy fur jacket on, contrasting with her slender bronze thighs. "I think all the essentials are covered." She contorted her body to look at her own backside to make sure nothing was visible.

"Just about. Hey, I was wondering?"

She stood wringing out her pigtails. "M-hm?"

"How is your skin like mine, even slightly darker if you've lived in a tunnelworld all your life? I mean, mine's tan, because, well, I've spent time in the sun, but yours is almost caramel. That's weird for someone who lived underground."

With a smile – she did that a lot, it would seem – she said, "Our living spaces had ultraviolet fungi to provide light. So when we were in our home tunnels, we got what amounts to underground sunlight. Everything looked different shades of purple without artificial lights, but we were used to it. Up here it's… so much colours." She looked around, as if every minute she came to the same wondrous realization over and over again.

"I see. Let's head on back, you must be starving."

"Somewhat."

This Odile lad didn't seem like an idiot, at least, Larisa concluded as she made him talk about his former life on the farm. Seemed he was pretty well-versed in sowing, maintaining, and harvesting food crops mostly, which was welcome, since Larisa's expertise was mostly centred around more… delicate flora. Having someone there who knew exactly what to do with the vegetable and grain seeds she had was a relief. Thankfully, she'd done very well up 'til now, as could be testified by the bright green stalks sprouting from the ground where she'd sown only a few days before. If the seed packets were to be believed, the crops would be fully grown in 'turbo time' of a few weeks. It literally said that on the packet. 'Turbo time'.

He seemed physically rather frail, but then so was she, and they had Cassie to protect them, after all. Especially Cassie's rifle. She hated firearms, but had to admit to herself it had been a damn good thing that they'd had one. Chef and Squires could probably put up a decent fight too, and now that this Procene chick was capable of walking (or rather wobbling) they had one more gun for defence. If she didn't shoot them in the back the second the crops were ready, that was. Larisa didn't quite trust her. The blows she'd had to take probably didn't help with that.

She looked over at Chef and Squires, finishing up the outer structure of the refectory, and realized she was incredibly glad that the blond builder had come across them. Without him, they'd probably still be sleeping under the open sky, or in some rickety shack cobbled together by Chef's two left hands. Was that the only reason she was so glad he was here, though? She sighed and dismissed the thought.

Odile was asking something, and she hadn't been paying attention. She turned her head and tapped her ear with her finger.

"I said, are there any more seeds."

Oh. Yes, there were. She took him along to her crashed longsleeper and showed him the packets.

"Wow, you've got just about everything here." He rifled through the packets. "Rice, corn, cotton, damn, even healroot, nice."

He knew how to sow that? She didn't have a clue and the pack provided no instructions either. She felt her eyes grow wider as she pointed at the packet with a questioning face.

"Oh, yeah, I know how it's done. Come on, we'll do it together." They walked out to the field and he explained, "Gotta be careful when you sow healroot. The seeds only sprout in extremely humid environments. In the wild, healroot only takes root when the seed lies in water, like in a puddle or something. The seeds in these packets have special biodegradable film around it. You're supposed to fill that with water, so the seeds are in a sort of water bubble. Look." The packet also came with a tiny syringe, and Odile drew some water into it from a nearby puddle. Then he carefully set the needle against the seed and injected a tiny bit of fluid so the film around it inflated with water, creating a sort of teeny tiny water balloon, about a grape seed in size. "Then all you need to do is bury the seeds. The film degrades at just the right pace so the seed can sprout roots in the water, then cling to the surrounding soil when the film begins to leak. If it didn't have that, we'd have to soak the seeds in water for two days and then bury them. This is much quicker, especially since the roots are so fragile that they need to be left undisturbed once they sprout. They're really hard to handle without breaking them at that point."

The guy clearly knew his stuff. Better than she did. It was hopeful, but also a bit threatening.

He passed her the first water bubble and began to fill another. "Now all we do is bury the seeds two centimetres deep and twenty centimetres apart."

Larisa secretly hoped he wasn't good with animals or her presence would be much less indispensable in this colony.

"Hey um," the kid asked, "I just want you to know… I'm really looking forward to being part of this colony. Be nice to actually stay in one place and sow seeds for myself instead of the whole refugee camp. And we can teach each other all sorts of stuff. I'm also okay with you not saying much… I'll make enough ruckus for the both of us."

It sounded like something some hotshot with spikey blond hair would say, but it somehow felt very disarming coming from this rather awkward but clearly knowledgeable boy. She quickly wrote,

no need for ruckus

I enjoy the silence

and calm, quiet conversation

He read it and smiled, "Ah, right. Gotcha."

She held up a packet of corn seeds at him and pointed to a nearby fertile patch of land, then to herself.

"Oh, sure," he said. "Go ahead, I'll do this. Want to take a break together in, uh, say an hour?"

She gave him a short and contained smile and went to sow the corn. As she did, she saw Squires and Chef working on the new structure. Things were proceeding at an impressive pace. Squires really knew how to put his back into things. Chef was doing his damnedest to keep up, but he clearly wasn't cut out for this kind of thing. Hopefully he could do more than just grill some meat, because so far he'd been mostly tagging along without really being all that useful.

After an hour, Odile came to get her for a drink of water and a sit-down, which she enjoyed to some extent, but much more when Squires and Chef came to join them. Cassie had gone off with her rifle, and the new girl, Prowhatsherface, sat mashing some of the leftover healroot, probably to make some kind of soothing balm for her stump. She better start making herself useful soon. Her supposed skills didn't impress Larisa much so far.

The rest of the day was spent sowing the corn. Odile came to help when his packet of seeds was empty, and together, they prepared an impressive swathe of field. When these matured, they'd have corn for a long while – which wouldn't be an excuse for Chef to serve porridge day in, day out, she promised to herself.

As dusk fell, Cassie came back with Noah, hauling the body of what looked like some kind of llama or alpaca, it wasn't entirely clear. There'd be meat on the menu again, whether she liked it or not. It was food, at least.

She watched as Chef and Squires hauled the stove and butcher's table into the newly completed kitchen, and after half an hour, smoke began to rise from the steel chimney Squires had fitted into the wall. Larisa wasn't sure about the safety of cooking in a wooden shelter, but it'd have to do for now. As they finished putting the last corn seeds in the ground, the mouth-watering smell of grilled meat came lazily rolling downwind.

Dinner was quite delicious, and she found the companionship somewhat enjoyable, even though six people was a bit much for her delicate senses. She made sure to sit next to Squires, so she could enjoy his stories about the building projects he'd been involved in back home, and all the crazy capers he'd had to pull to get things finished in time.

Without much means to join the conversation herself, she settled on making a long and careful analysis of her fellow colonists.

Squires was, without question, a godsend. He was a master builder, and she couldn't help but notice his athletic build. Not a muscleman by any means, but he looked toned and in prime physical shape.

Cassie was Cassie. Even though Larisa had told herself not to like the girl, she did in spite of herself. When it had been just the three of us, Cassie had been the one bringing and keeping the high spirits in the group, and now, too, she was outgoing, friendly and social. Pretty, too, which made Risa secretly a bit envious, but not too much, because looking average also meant getting less attention, and nothing tired her out so quickly as constant attention.

She wasn't sure about Chef. Even though he was full of good will, he hadn't impressed her so far. Not yet. Though she had to admit, she probably couldn't make such a well-grilled piece of llama-like meat in berry sauce even if she had a year to try.

Then there were the two newbies. Odile actually seemed alright, despite his rather inglorious introduction earlier today. He'd been kind and calm during the day once he'd gotten over his initial panic. There was something androgynous, about him, even feminine at times, but she didn't mind, quite the contrary. They didn't need a colony full of men that acted like silverbacks beating their chests.

This Procene girl, though… she might be as good-looking as Cassie, maybe even more so, but she somehow felt that her gentle and quiet demeanour hid something more sinister. She was a bit too well-spoken, she knew a bit too well what to say at all times. The guys obviously took a liking to her, but especially Cassie seemed to get along with her very well. She had this appearance around her, a kind of angelic gentility that more often than not served as a front for a vicious snake in the grass.

Squires' arm lightly coming to rest over her shoulder as the evening turned colder, however, made her realize she didn't have to give the pigtailed stump-arm too much thought.