I had three recurring nightmares. One had been with me since before all this. The second had started last year and I had a feeling it would never go away. I would always dream about being lost in the woods and I would always wake up when, in the nightmare, I was grabbed by a walker rather than Bas. The third was reliving shooting a man in the face. That one at least wasn't with me every night anymore.
But as bad as dreaming about being killed by a walking corpse or the memory of murdering a man was, they didn't compare to dreaming about my father and hearing him say 'Come to daddy.'
Mom was asleep. She was exhausted from being in the infirmary all day and giving Mr Greene a chance to rest. She had nightmares of her own though she would never admit it, let alone tell me what they were. I could make a few guesses though. I knew there was an overlap between our nightmares.
I didn't have a problem sleeping here. I had slept in so many strange beds that the top bunk of a jail cell didn't bother me, especially after decorating the room so it wasn't just a grey cuboid. I couldn't do anything about the smell though. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as it had been but it wasn't going away. Even if we cleaned the entire building.
I listened and the cell block was mostly quiet. I was used to sleeping despite the sound of people snoring. You got used to it; you had to when everyone was sleeping in the same room. If you didn't get used to it; you didn't sleep. And not sleeping hadn't been acceptable. That had been true before and doubly so now. You couldn't afford not to be well-rested.
It was hard to get back to sleep though. Everything was peaceful, just as it had been before people had started shooting at us and I had used a good man's corpse for protection. Perhaps if there had been some kind of constant noise, like someone walking up and down, it would have been easier to sleep but whoever was on watch outside was still.
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Breakfast didn't mean much to me. We had always had breakfast before so the meal I cared most about was lunch because we had skipped it so many times as we ate only at the beginning and end of the day. It was oatmeal again and it seemed that most people accepted the bland meal because the alternative was nothing. I listened to Sasha and Tyreese recalling the pancakes their mom had made them for breakfast when they were kids and she teased him over his disastrous attempts to cook their mom breakfast in turn on her birthday or Mother's Day. Sasha even mused that the many fires he had started in the kitchen were what had inspired her to become a firefighter.
They seemed like good people. It was nice to have them around and for our group to have grown. If only it hadn't been subtracted.
I couldn't go outside and so the only place to go was to the infirmary with Carl. Even though I knew all the doors inside were locked and so even if a walker got into the building somehow it wouldn't be able to move around; it didn't stop the dark interior of the cell block from being spooky as hell. I thought that even if we had the lights working, it would still have been horrid place. It was meant to be full of people and with just the two of us moving through it, it was too still. Silent.
Mr Greene and Beth were there with their two patients. I only knew him as Allen and despite everything I knew, I still pitied him. He had lost his son. His son and his wife and all in a matter of days. I knew my mom still had problems with when I had been gone and that was when I had only been missing. Allen had seen his wife bitten and his son shot and watched them both bleed to death. He had tried to stop it and couldn't. Now here he was in the prison's infirmary and Mr Greene had him sedated. He looked bad.
"How's mom?" Carl asked.
"Better." Mr Greene answered. "You can see the colour in her face again."
"And…" Carl didn't know how to address his new little sister.
"Strong and healthy." He said. "And sleeping."
She looked better today. The first time I had seen her, she had been this red, imp-like creature with raw looking skin. Now she was pink. She looked like a baby. Like any other baby. I thought that had to be a good thing though I didn't know how to voice that. I also thought it appropriate that her mom looked pink as well whereas before she had so pale she had been virtually grey. I knew everyone had been thinking the same thing; that her greyness had made her look like a walker.
"What do you think you'll call her?" I asked Carl.
"I dunno." He answered. He was very uncomfortable here because he didn't know what to do with a baby and his mom had only spoken a few words to him since his new little sister had been cut out of her. I didn't know what to tell him. And Mr Grimes had only looked in a few times; like he was scared to visit in case that would mean Mr Greene telling him one of them had died. That was why he was away now; putting it out of his mind. That left Carl all alone right now and I couldn't help him. Maybe before, but now he would just get angry if I said anything that let him know I cared, because he would just interpret it as me feeling sorry for him and he couldn't take being pitied. Mom said this was normal. She said Carl was 'at that age'. I had heard her say the same thing about me, but for different reasons.
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Mr Grimes returned around midday, in time for lunch. He looked just as grim as before, while Miss Harrison had an actual grin on her face as she brought in box after box of ammunition and weapons. Lots of weapons. She had always been obsessing with weapons, complaining we didn't have enough, and now it seemed we finally did.
"What kind of cop were you?" Glenn asked Mr Grimes, picking up one of the smaller weapons. "You could conquer a small country with all this!"
"This wasn't from the station. Long story." He said and then after patting Carl on the shoulder, he headed out of the common area and toward the infirmary.
"He had a rough day." Miss Harrison explained.
"Rough?"
"Remember he said when he got out of that hospital, he met a man and his son? And they took him in and got him up to speed with the whole end of the world thing?" Her happiness at bringing in their haul had vanished. "We met the man. The son was dead…"
They looked at where Mr Grimes had gone and then at Carl and then finally back at her. "So-"
"He wasn't going anywhere." Miss Harrison said. "And I think we have enough problems without adding a basket case to them. Rick left him with an invitation, but I think for now he'd rather be alone and king of his own little world. Rick didn't take it well. Didn't help we had to shoot him at one point. And then he still stabbed Rick."
This remark might have shocked me once. It would have shocked most of us. Not anymore. Now we just understood that was a reasonable explanation behind the remark.
I knew how to use a pistol. I didn't know anything about the arsenal they had brought back besides that many of the rifles were the kind used by the military. Mom had used the Russian gun, the Kalashnikov, while now she inspected some of these new rifles with interest. I didn't know what was harder to accept; that I knew how to use a pistol now or that mom was good with a rifle. Mr Grimes had praised her shooting many times and while she wasn't as good as Miss Harrison, I figured that if she had more practice it wouldn't take her long to catch up. I also thought that whenever she was aiming a rifle, she was thinking about dad. Everyone got a satisfied look when they dropped a walker with a gun but mom got this scary smirk. She wore it now as she looked through the scope of one of the rifles. I couldn't blame her. When I looked at mom now, when I looked at myself… We would never have endured what we had now.
So many guns. More guns than we had people. Being shot at had been awful and now we had all the weapons we needed to shoot back. To kill, or be killed.
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It never seemed right to think of him as 'Mr Dixon'. But at the same time, I could never call him Daryl. Mom called him Daryl, and sometimes she treated him like a boyfriend. Other times she treated him like a kid. It depended on her mood, and on his too. He never seemed to mind. I couldn't tell how he felt about mom or how she really felt about him. She did love him though, because of me.
I did make him awkward though and he looked at me for a second before looking down sharply and resuming cleaning his crossbow. He looked up again after a few seconds. "I told you; he's fine."
I said nothing.
"He knows what he's doing. He ain't gonna have a problem."
I still said nothing.
"Look, there ain't nothing I can do! He's in there now and I ain't gonna see him until he comes out again. I can't go back there 'til then."
I continued to say nothing.
"This weren't my idea!"
"You didn't stop him."
"I ain't his daddy!" Mr Dixon snapped. "And he ain't a kid! He's doing this for all of us!"
"He doesn't even know why he's doing this." I said and it startled him before he snapped at me again.
"Ain't you got somewhere to be?"
"No." I said and I really didn't. If I couldn't go outside, there was very little to do indoors and I didn't feel like reading or finding a blank cell to decorate.
I went along the walkway and into the cell on the end. There was very little to indicate that someone lived here besides the bed being made. Without my artwork, it would have been just another cell. He was always saying he wanted something to read but he had never gotten around to making a serious effort to gathering any books for himself. Maybe he had been prioritising our needs versus his own. Or maybe he had just forgotten.
Sometimes I wondered what would have happened if Mr Dixon hadn't found us. I knew now that Bas had been making it up as he went along, like lying to me about how old he really was, and that if we had been lost in the woods; we would have been doomed. Finding that little housing development had saved us for a short while, and then Bas had lost his two fingers. He had been out of his depth before and then he had been out of mind from blood loss and dehydration. Again, I hadn't realised it at the time. But then he had recovered at the farm and I had gotten to understand him better. He had done his very best.
Mom said he was damaged. Like us. But despite the damage he had gone after me into those trees. We had never talked about it. I wasn't sure why considering how long we had had during the winter to talk about anything and nothing. Maybe he didn't want to think about it. Now I could understand why he didn't want to remember when it had just been the two of us. For the longest time I had accepted that I had power over nothing and with the walkers and everything, other people had had to accept the same thing, but now I had the power to make Bas squirm. It wasn't much and I knew it was cruel to leave him scared I would kiss him again but it was the one thing I could control. I knew what people were thinking about me being in here; the cute little girl who missed her crush. …And they weren't wrong.
At first it had been scary and weird that he never lied to me. Everyone else had always tried to pretend that the danger wasn't so bad and everything would be okay. Bas never told me those lies. I didn't know why. Maybe he just didn't know he was meant to tell those lies. Or maybe, I hoped, he thought I could handle the truth. Carl and I had once had a whispered conversation about how our parents had kept trying to keep us distant from everything, as if pretending that everything could go back to normal and we wouldn't be affected in the end. That had changed when we had come to the prison as we had started to adapt to life behind the fences but before, we were always kept out of the way. Bas and Beth had endured it as well. Keeping the young out of harm's way…
Bas never complained about that. So many times it had been him, Beth, Carl and me sitting and waiting while the adults argued about what to do next. The closest he came to complaining was telling us about his past, implying he could handle himself, and maybe that was why he didn't lie to me; he knew how bad things really could be for someone my age and he had gotten through it.
What was he trying to prove though, playing spy games? By his own admission, he had stolen things people wouldn't miss when they weren't around to know they were being robbed. What did he know about talking to people? Even I knew it was weird how little he spoke to anyone.
I would have been okay if he had been creeping into the place at night. I had pointed out to mom many times how he didn't make a sound when he walked. Like Mr Dixon. He could have gone into that town unseen and unheard as many times as he liked and instead… And everyone had gone along with it. A few people had thought it was a bad idea but no one had made any real objection. Just me it seemed and no one listened to me.
I understood one thing though. Doing something was better than sitting around and waiting. Waiting to find out if people lived or died.
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I didn't like guns. Carl got a lot of satisfaction out of shooting walkers but I never had. The best thing about a gun was that you didn't have to let a walker get close enough to grab you as they did with axes or crowbars but you still had to see pieces of brain and skull go flying.
Mom wanted me to learn how to use something bigger than a pistol. With all the new weapons they had brought in, there were plenty that fit me. I knew the weapon from TV and even though I had seen many firearms in the past year, it was still very weird to see one from the movies in real life.
It was called an MP5. It kind of looked like a toy with its 'Made in Germany' and 'WARNING READ OPERATOR'S MANUAL' markings. I did like the very clear safety catch though; SAFE marked in white and FIRE marked in red. Maybe the Germans thought Americans needed very clear instructions. Maybe they thought anyone who wasn't German needed clear instructions.
It came with a strap so it could hang from my neck. Like a purse.
"Our new fashion accessories." Mom said in that tone of hers; trying to put a humorous spin on the harsh reality we lived. She had an M16; another one of those weapons I had seen in a lot of TV shows and movies and now we had a whole heap of them and they all had different gadgets and gizmos attached to them so none of them looked the same.
"Is this necessary?" My new weapon wasn't as big as hers and it was light, only a little more than five pounds, but there was something about how it looked once you got past the similarities to a toy. Very business-like. Sinister.
"Thirty rounds." She said, holding up the magazine. "Better than twelve." Meaning what the pistols I had used had typically held and it was the same kind of ammunition. "And a better range." While I could definitely see the advantages this weapon gave and how it suited my size compared to one of the big rifles; I still felt like I was being turned into a soldier. Mom looked the part, even though we were equally skinny. I knew that I had to look ridiculous.
In a way though, we all looked ridiculous. Mom and I with our oversized weapons, Sasha and Tyreese in their grotty clothes, Glenn and Maggie wearing the prison riot gear just in case even though they were sweltering, Carl in his dad's hat, Miss Harrison with her hat and Mr Grimes in general. He really needed a wash and a change of clothes and everyone seemed too polite to tell him. Or maybe they were afraid of him.
Glenn, Maggie, Mom, Carl and I were here to learn with these new weapons. Sasha and Tyreese were there so they could see how good they were with firearms in general. It could have been a day at the range, except for the choice of targets. They didn't want to waste ammunition.
We were inside the yard. The walkers at the courtyard fences refused to wander off and now we were all lined up, they were trying to chew through the wire to get at us. These were our targets. We could train and clear the yard and the only issue would be that the outer wall of Cell Block D would have bullet marks in it.
We didn't have ear defenders so we were made do with scarves. Even so, the first rifle shot fired echoed off the surrounding buildings and the concrete ground of the yard so that my heart seemed to burst. At least I wasn't the only one. Glenn blinked a few times and then fired again. He already knew how to use bigger weapons but it was his first time with one of these. He and Maggie were just familiarising themselves.
The adults started shooting in their own time and once the noise became constant, it wasn't so frightening. It was actually worse when there was a long pause between shots as you got used to the quiet again.
Mr Grimes told me and Carl how to stand and how to grip and what to be aware of. Carl had always liked shooting and he was eager to get started but his dad was really quite adamant that we wouldn't hurt ourselves. Easier said than one. The anticipation made me very nervous and the gun seemed to kick me when at last I was told to take a shot. It made me think all my previous issues with handguns had been childish because this thing was the real deal.
It was a relief though that shooting a walker in the face didn't do anything to me. Mom hadn't said anything but I knew she was worried. I had seen all the adults give each other looks when I had been handed this weapon. But there was no need to worry because one of those sunken, rotting brown-green faces wasn't the same as a live one and when a bullet smacked into it, only that horrid black walker gunge came out of it. Not the vivid red of a live person. And there was a lot of that gunge as the rounds drilled through the fence and put the walkers down. Each round through the head took a chunk of skull with it and while that did bother me, there was nothing but muck within. Black gunge and brown stuff. Not red, white and pink.
It wasn't really a challenge at this range. The weapon kicked hard and I guessed you had to get used to it or maybe not be a bag of bones like me. It didn't seem to bother Carl and he was smaller than me. Mom at least started to pull faces after a while and I guessed her rifle was hurting her too. Practice. That was what they always said. You just needed more practice.
Practice for what though? Were they honestly just teaching me to use a better weapon now that we had them available? Or preparing me to shoot people? Again… I didn't think Carl would hesitate as I had to shoot someone but I knew he would cope with it just as badly as I had. As all the walker bodies piling at the fences told me; it just wasn't the same.
I was a good shot. Mom was a good shot. Carl was a good shot. Tyreese was awful. I listened as his sister teased him about being unable to hit the broad side of a barn even if he was standing inside that barn. Miss Harrison and Mr Grimes agreed that it was implausible that he wasn't improving. Sasha meanwhile was an excellent shot and I thought she looked bored as she picked them off; eager for some proper practice on targets far away.
When the practice was over, I didn't like it because we had been outdoors. Now we were stuck inside again. I listened as Axel reported that walkers had been drawn to the noise and they weren't attacking the outer fences but lurking by them.
"Like a bunch of attack dogs." Axel remarked. "Anyone comes through the trees again, they ain't gonna be able to fire a shot without bringing the whole pack down on 'em."
"But we can't leave." Glenn replied.
"We can draw 'em away if we have to. Lead them away from the gates." Mr Grimes was nodding to himself, replying to Glenn but also just thinking aloud. "For the time being; having them out there is a good thing. Like Axel says, like a bunch of attack dogs."
"Well, that's just sick." Miss Harrison remarked.
"It is what it is." Mr Grimes told her. "If the walkers can do something useful for a change…"
"Hey, don't get me wrong. If these assholes come again, it'd be pretty karmic if they have to deal with the real enemy. But I wouldn't wish being eaten alive on anyone. Even the bastards who killed Dale."
"But we still can't go outside?" Maggie inquired.
"No. Not until we know what we're dealing with." Mr Grimes said and then looked at Axel again. "She still down there?" He asked, meaning the woman with the sword who was living in the bus.
"She ain't moved. Didn't even stick her head out to see why y'all were shooting."
"Maybe someone should talk to her." Miss Harrison suggested.
"And say what?" Mr Grimes asked. "She's done all the talking she's going to do."
"To you maybe. Maybe she'll talk to someone who…" He had fixed her with the glare of his. "Someone without a penis."
I thought this was a very odd thing to say but as she walked away, Mr Grimes nodded as if she had made a very telling point. I didn't know enough about the woman to know.
"Are we going to fight?" I asked Mom later.
"We're going to defend ourselves if we have to." She answered carefully.
"What does that mean?"
"If we're attacked again, we can defend ourselves now. We know what to expect."
"If we can defend ourselves, why do we have to stay inside?" I asked and I answered my own question. "We can't stop someone coming along, shooting at us and running away before we can shoot back, or the walkers can get them. So we can't defend ourselves."
"We're figuring it out." She said.
"How?"
Mom looked at the ceiling for a moment and then at me. She looked very tired. "If these people attack again, we're expecting them. We're behind fences and they aren't. If they attack, they're vulnerable to all the walkers out there. So we do have the advantage, even if it's too risky to go outside. I mean, for all we know they tried to come again and they couldn't get through the walkers in the trees. Or maybe after losing two people, they don't want to lose anymore and we'll stick to our prison and they'll stick to their town."
"You think so?"
"I don't know. That's why Bas went to investigate."
"He's an idiot." I said and she laughed. "He is!"
"He's doing a good thing. When he comes back and tells us what he's learned, we'll be able to figure out what to do next."
"If he comes back…"
"You really think he won't?" She asked with that smile. She had been concerned about me and Bas but she kept getting this same smile when I said certain things or just the way I said something seemed to amuse her. As if she disapproved of what I did but not how I felt. I didn't know what to do with that.
"He'll come back." I accepted. "And I won't let him leave again." Naturally, this statement brought on mom's smile again though at least with this one I could understand why.
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I got to hold the baby. I didn't know why anyone would trust me to hold a baby and even though she was fast asleep and didn't move at all, I was still convinced I would drop her. She did however look like she could survive being dropped while her mom looked as if having a baby dropped on her would kill her. She had looked better the other day, except today she had the strength to talk to Carl properly.
"Shouldn't we ask dad?" Carl was saying.
"Oh, you know your father." She said with a slight roll of her eyes. "He'll make all the big decisions except this one. So I guess this one is yours."
"You don't have any ideas?"
"I wasn't thinking about names." Mrs Grimes said and I didn't think Carl understood she meant she had been more concerned with staying alive while pregnant and then having the baby to think about afterwards. I got it though. Carl had however given the subject of names some thought however.
"Do you remember my 3rd Grade teacher?"
"Ms Mueller?" Mrs Grimes asked, frowning. "It might be mean to call your little sister 'Mueller'."
"Her first name was Judith."
"Judith…" She repeated. "If you think she can live with being called Judy…"
"Hey, Judy." I said and the little bundle coughed in her sleep.
"Judith." Carl said stoically.
"Judith it is then." Mrs Grimes agreed. "Carl and Judith. My kids…"
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"What's it like no longer being the youngest?"
"Good. Maybe they'll stop treating us like babies now there's an actual baby."
"Judy."
"Judith." Carl scowled.
Something I had noticed about Carl was that like his father he could be really overly serious, especially when being teased. I wondered if they knew about the way they both tilted their head when they were annoyed. "What do you think the world will be like when she's our age?" I asked because I had had the thought many times.
"I don't know… Do you think it could get quieter?"
"If there's less than twenty of us here, and less than a hundred people at that town… It can always get quieter."
"Maybe there's other towns. Other places like this." He thought about it. "If there were a dozen towns like Woodbury, there still wouldn't be a thousand people."
"It can always get quieter." I repeated.
"Listen." He said and I knew what he meant. The walkers at the fences down in the field weren't riled up but there were still enough of them that they were making noise as they disturbed each other. "Maybe she won't have to hear that. Maybe they'll have rotted away by then."
"Rotted?" I asked. "You mean, you won't have tried to shoot them all?"
"We don't have enough bullets for that." He said, entirely serious and then realised I was teasing him. He shoved me which hurt because my shoulder was still bruised from firing that submachinegun. He winced as well for the same reason. "Judith won't have a gun. She'll have a crossbow like Daryl. And maybe a sword like that woman."
"Where are we going to get her a sword?"
"We'll make her one."
"How?"
"We'll figure it out." He said.
"We'll figure out a lot of stuff." I mused and then sighed. "I was really looking forward to farming."
"I wasn't."
"Why?"
"Because my mom and dad would make me do it all day. Every day."
"What's wrong with that?"
"There's other stuff to do."
"You mean walkers? You can't shoot them all. And you ain't big enough to fight them at the fences." I said and he scowled again. "You have to wait. That's what Bas said to me. I have to wait to grow up so I'm big enough to do all that stuff without being in danger."
"Well, if your boyfriend said it…"
Now I shoved him, but harder. "That's not funny!"
"You're the one that likes him." He grinned.
"Like you like Beth." I countered.
He turned pink. "No, not like that. …I haven't kissed Beth."
"You wish." I said and he turned pinker.
"I still can't believe you did that."
"I did though."
"Don't you think that's weird?"
"Why?"
"Because he's… Old!"
"So's Beth."
"She doesn't look old." Carl retorted. "He looks ten years older than you."
He had me there. When Bas had lied to me and told me he was nineteen, I had thought he looked older. But he didn't look ten years older than me. "He doesn't."
"Okay." He agreed. "Nine years older than you."
I refrained from shoving him again. "You wouldn't understand."
"I really don't." He admitted. "It's still weird."
"Everything's weird now." I said. "It's weird for everyone because there's so few people! Who's Judith going to play with when she grows up?"
He hadn't thought about this and frowned. "There has to be more people out there."
"Maybe. But what kind of people? People like Randall? Andrew?"
Carl took my wrist and squeezed it and that was as close as we would get to talking about that. I knew he had a whole lot of questions to ask about it but he was smart enough not to ask them.
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Miss Harrison persisted down by the bus until we had a name to put to the face. Michonne. That was all she got. Besides her tangle with Woodbury, we knew nothing about what the woman had been through though all the adults thought it must have been incredible; she had a sword after all.
Mr Grimes wasn't so concerned about her anymore though. Allen had recovered enough to be on the warpath. We heard it all second-hand from Beth that Allen… He wasn't happy that all we had done was send Mr Dixon out on his bike, and then to send Bas to investigate. The way Beth described it, Allen seemed to fully expect everyone who could stand and use a gun to go to Woodbury and shoot it up. It wasn't just what he expected; it was what he demanded.
It hadn't been a good idea to make demands of Mr Grimes while his baby daughter had been crying because of the shouting. She wouldn't give us the details but Tyreese had gone up there and he hadn't come back. Allen and Mrs Grimes both needed weeks to recover from their ordeals but he thought he could will himself out of it. For his son… I remembered when Bas had been stabbed. He had insisted on leaving the infirmary and then he had become stuck in his cell instead. People didn't just get over these things. Michonne was still limping from her wound and every time I saw her walking around, I could see Mr Greene frown through his beard and clearly wishing she would stay put.
I didn't see why they couldn't all just stay put while we waited. They knew we had to wait so why didn't they stay put and heal and then get excited when Bas came back? People said kids had no patience but neither did these adults. They were all the same. Michonne obviously wanted to fight. Miss Harrison wanted revenge for Dale, and Allen for his son. Sasha meanwhile was antsy and I guessed she hated being cooped up indoors doing nothing. Glenn and Maggie were the same. Axel and Oscar were twitchy; expecting to be shot at again even when they were safe indoors. The only people who seemed content with being patient were Mr Grimes and Mr Dixon. Mr Dixon was a little odd, but after a while I realised it was because he knew exactly what he was doing. Everyone else was waiting to learn what Bas knew so they could make plans while his plan was to wait until it was time to bring Bas back. He was okay with waiting until that time.
I was bored and it didn't feel right to simply be bored when everyone else was on edge waiting to find out if we were all going to die. Maybe they had gotten used to being scared of the dead and now the living frightened them. I had been scared of everything. So had mom. Maybe that was why we were much calmer about everything. We were used to being scared.
I wanted to do something. Something meaningful. That was what we had been intending to do when people had started shooting at us. Now we were living like we had during the winter; just sitting and waiting for another day to go by.
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Author's Notes;
Wish this was longer but you can't force a word count. Not the shortest chapter though; that honour belongs to chapter 2.
Did what I wanted with this chapter though; to present Sophia as always watching and listening, to show Carol learning some of the gun skills she picks up between seasons 2 and 3 and 3 and 4 (And to have Sophia learn them too), an appearance for Lori who got very little in season 3 and a conversation between Carl and Sophia to show their friendship. Carl and Sophia's friendship is a big part of the comics, even when it's off-page, and I wouldn't change that.
I wanted to present her as unsure of herself. Secure in some things and afraid of others. Given her experiences, she can't be of a single temperament, but at the same time she should be more than a little resigned to suffering; it's all she's known. I hope that weariness comes across rather than just a blandness. Also, Bas' remarked on her being intelligent many times and I hope that comes across too, especially her insights regarding Bas and other people. If it seems too much like an Informed Ability, let me know.