Out on the pasture, Ellie and Dee were deep in the business of counting their little flock of sheep, and for a little while, Ellie half-hoped that Dee wouldn't broach the subject of their unexpected visitor. Her hope was short-lived though.

"Now look here, Ellie. You've been acting shifty ever since that guy showed up last night, and I can tell something is eating you up inside. So out with it! What is it about this Luke that makes you so nervous?"

Ellie sighed. "Oh Dee, can't you guess?"

"Since I've never heard of him before last night, and haven't even seen his face yet, I can't. Won't you give me a hint?"

"Does 'he's Murron's dad' seem like enough of a hint?"

Dee was so surprised that she almost fell over the ewe she had just been examining. "Holy sheep, woman, you couldn't have given me a bit of warning before you throw a whopper like that at me?!"

Ellie helped her back up, and started busying herself with a young ram before she answered. "Sorry to dump it on you like that, but it's the truth. He doesn't know, of course. He left before I even knew I was pregnant."

"Jesus Christ. That must have been right before we met, mustn't it? Just before the Technos turned up. I remember you were awfully messed up over a guy back then, but we all had our own problems at the time so I never really thought about it any more, the Technos carted you off so soon."

"Yeah. So you can see why I'm not so keen on having him here. I don't know how on earth I should tell him. To be honest, I don't even want to tell him at all. I wish he'd just leave so that we can go back to our normal life."

Dee was silent for a little, while she looked over another ewe's lambs. "I think I kind of get that. What on earth possessed him to come look for you in the first place?"

"Beats me. I didn't think I'd ever see him again, much less after such a long time."

"Well, he's here now, so you'd better think quick. With that little girl prancing around, looking the spitting image of you, he's bound to realize something's up sooner rather than later."

Ellie looked up from the ram miserably. "I know! But how in Zoot's name am I supposed to tell him? I can't very well go 'oh hey, by the way, this is my daughter, and in case you were wondering, she's yours, too', can I?"

"Can't you leave the 'she's yours' part out? If he has no idea..."

The younger woman looked up, horror-struck. "Mercy, no, he'd think she was Jack's, and that would be even worse! Those two never saw eye to eye!"

"They know each other? I'm seriously confused now. I kind of always assumed she was Jack's anyways, but you never seemed to want to talk about it, so I never asked!"

"Well... Jack and I were dating when the Chosen arrived, but he got taken away pretty soon, and then this thing with Luke... just happened. He used to be the Guardian's lieutenant, and when Alice noticed that he fancied me, she encouraged me to use him for our own goals. But then I actually started liking him, and we had a thing together..."

"A thing that can walk and talk on its own, I might add!"

"No, that happened later. It was a huge mess, we started seeing each other secretly, then the Guardian tossed Luke out of the Chosen, and then Bray and Amber tossed the Chosen out, and Jack came back, and I tried to pretend like nothing was happening, but of course it was... And then Jack found out and left, and I was so upset about having hurt him that I became a little reckless with Luke. It didn't really seem to matter, everything was going wrong anyways, and I was young and dumb enough not to think about trivial things like protection. Sometime later it all became too much for Luke, all those people out for his blood because of what he had done with the Chosen, and he left, too, and then this whole Techno business started, and before I knew it, the hormones I didn't know about were bubbling up in my body and drove me so nuts that I started that stupid plot to kill Ebony, and had myself shipped off to Techno island. I only understood there what was happening – I must have been three, four months pregnant by then, and of course I knew it was Luke's, but a fat lot of good that did me in that prison camp."

Dee had listened open-mouthed, the sheep around her forgotten. "So Murron was born in there? In Techno prison?"

"Yeah, Alice was there, thankfully, she'd been shipped there with the first load of people the Technos had abducted. Cloe arrived, too, shortly before I was due, so the two of them got me through the birth as well as they could."

"Holy sheep. What a mess. And now daddy's home and doesn't know a blessed thing. I have no idea how you're going to get out of this without somebody getting hurt – you, Luke, Murron, or all three of you."

"I know. Come on, let's head back. The sheep are all accounted for anyways, I'd better face up to the music."

Meanwhile, Lottie and the children were having a grand time on their day out. Ellie had woken them all up bright and early, packed them a picnic lunch and sent them off for the day. All four were on horseback – Murron and Niko on the ponies, and Lottie on the farm's only horse with little Maya sitting in front of her. It was a rare treat, to be allowed off all chores and to just ride off over the pastures, and while the children were overjoyed, Lottie was silent, quietly wondering about Ellie's motives. She was no slave-driver by any means, but the farm was large and there always were lots of odd jobs to do, so Lottie couldn't help but wonder at Ellie's sudden willingness to allow them all a holiday. She had just come to the conclusion that it must have something to do with their unexpected visitor when she was roused from her reverie by Murron, who was excitedly pointing towards a thicket full of blackberries.

"Lottie, can't we pick some? We can bring them back home and Dee can make some pie!"

"Sure. Let me just help Maya off the horse, and we can have at it. What can we put them into, though?"

Niko piped up "Ellie packed us some milk, if we drink it quick, we can put the berries in the jug."

Lottie smiled at the bright boy. "So you kids want to have your picnic now, huh? How about you, Maya?"

Maya nodded vigorously, looking back and forth between the bushes bursting with berries and the very tempting bag Lottie was just unpacking, revealing a jug of milk, sandwiches, fruit and some of Dee's special cookies. For a little while, there was no sound except the birdsong and the children's munching.

"Lottie?"

"Yes Murron?"

"Who's that Luke? He's nice."

"Yeah, I liked him too. I don't know, I think he's just a stranger passing through."

"If he is, why did mama give us a day off and send us away today?"

"What do you mean, Murron?"

"Mama hardly ever gives us holidays. And she's never sent us off on a ride when a traveller comes because she knows I like to read to them."

"I don't know. I don't think it has anything to do with you or Luke. I think she just figured you fancied a day off."

Privately, Lottie was rather sure that it DID have something to do with Luke, but she was at a loss to what it could be. She had never seen his face before last night, and even though she had had a little more time to study his features that morning, when she had left the breakfast tray on his bedside table while he had still been fast asleep, she had learned nothing from it. He had looked much more at peace than the night before, when he had looked careworn and rather sad, but his face told her nothing more. She had liked his aquiline nose and soft mouth, and had been pleased to see that even though his face was lined with sorrow, a dimple had shown in the corner of his cheek when he had half-smiled in his sleep. He must have been rather handsome when he was younger.

She had no more time to think about the visitor though. When the children were done eating, they all started picking blackberries for Dee's pie, and after they had filled the milk-jug and the breadbox with berries, they rode on through the farmlands, chattering animatedly about pies and what stories Luke would be telling them that night about the rest of the world.

Sammy had grown up to be a short, but stocky young man in the years since he had left the Mall. Farmwork had become something of a passion for him, because he enjoyed watching things grow and reaping the benefits of his work. He had given up his signature red and blue hair in favor of a simple ponytail in his natural brown, and the sun had burned his skin almost as dark as his hair, while the hard work had given him a build like a small bull. He and Gel made a funny contrast – his weather-beaten skin against her almost lilly-like pallor, the one vanity she still allowed herself. It was easy to keep up since her chores were nearly all indoors: she did the housekeeping, although the kitchen was mostly the kingdom of Dee and Patch. Ellie took care of the animals with occasional help from Dee, Darryl and Sammy shared the farmwork, Lottie amused the children, and Patch acted as jack of all trades, except for farm duties, at which he was a notorious klutz. They had no real leader among themselves, although Ellie mostly took care of the upkeep of the farm, being the only born and bred farm girl, and Dee and Patch enjoyed a bit of seniority, being the oldest ones and having found the house. Mostly, though, they lived in relative harmony without needing an official head of the house.

All this Luke found out while harvesting potatoes with Sammy, to whom Gel had delivered him shortly after breakfast. When Sammy had finished explaining the workings of their living arrangements, there was a brief silence before he decided that it was his turn to ask some questions of this very interesting stranger.

"So... Gel told me you and Ellie used to be close years ago. What made you look for her after all these years? I mean... that was an awful long time ago."

"I heard about that virus, and that the city had been evacuated for a while – and that many hadn't come back from that evacuation. I just... needed to know if she was all right."

"But that was nearly six years ago!"

"Would you believe me if I told you that it took me over five years to get here?"

"No way man! We're only three days from the city! One and a half, if you go on horseback!"

"Yeah well... I didn't know you guys were here."

"Why didn't you ask at the Mall?"

"I haven't been at the Mall ever since the day I left it eight years ago. I... didn't dare."

"Big feller like you, afraid of going to the Mall? But if you weren't there, how did you know that Ellie wasn't there either?"

"Well, a guy I knew had been at the Mall a little while after you all had come back from that trip away from the virus, and he told me that there had been no Ellie there. So I started asking around at every place I came to – but you know how hard it is to find someone these days, with no internet and that kind of thing."

"But why not start at the Mall?"

"I figured they might still not feel very friendly towards me. Maybe Gel told you that I used to run with a pretty bad crowd – we even enslaved the Mall Rats for a while. We called ourselves the Chosen."

"Jesus, that was ages ago! Besides, the Technos were just as bad as your lot, or even worse, and look at Jay and Ram now, all cozy and happy with Amber and Trudy."

"Well, I didn't know that, did I?"

"Oh, come on. We were all kids back then – heck, I'm not sure if I'm not still one – we all did dumb stuff. People get over it."

"I didn't. I still see the faces of the people I hurt in my dreams. And I still feel guilty about leaving Ellie all that time ago. So I've been looking for her for the past five years or so, so that I could at least apologize for that, if I can't apologize to all the people the Chosen hurt."

"Sounds like an awful lot of trouble for an old girlfriend. No offense to Ellie, but I don't get why you went through all that trouble just to apologize to her."

"Didn't you have a first love that you still feel sentimental about?"

"Well, Gel IS my first love. So I don't have anything to feel sentimental about – especially since occasionally we hate each other."

"So did Ellie and I. Maybe it's an age thing – one day you wake up and realize that you're going on thirty, which in this world means that you're an old man, and that there are things that you need to fix before it's too late."

"Yeah, I wouldn't know. Thirty is a long way off for me – and who knows if I'll ever get there, you never know."

"Exactly. In this world, we're all lucky if we make it to thirty. So I wanted to see if I could at least talk to Ellie once more."