UN: ScielCandide | Video

[cache_coeur]

[The camera is fixed on a table, upon which sits a neat stack of cards –– black with gold foil in the shape of a sun and moon bisecting each other. The user’s hands pass over the deck and spreads it wide into an arc. Her hands are tanned, with two rings on her ring finger and one on her index finger, and she has so many colourful braided bracelets that some wind around her palm.

Her voice is pleasant, playful, French, a little theatrical:]

Bonsoir, mes amies!

Tonight and tonight only, I will tell your fortune with a single card. Tell me your name, and if you would like to hear about love, money, health or the soul.

If it moves you, you must repay me with an amusing anecdote about yourself.

Ready to play?

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[cache_coeur]

[Sciel swans up in trim trousers, a delicate tank top and a silk scarf. Her hair is loose and effortless, her face is heavily freckled, and a picnic basket hangs off the crook of one elbow.

She takes one look at him, eyes making the elevator path from head to toe, and smiles wryly.]

I am! [There's a scar banding the bridge of her nose, and it tugs around the edges when she smiles.] If I knew this was a military outing, I would have dusted off my uniform.

[nottheboss]

[It's the scar that sets him at ease. He likes scars. He understands people who have them better than he'll ever understand the people lucky enough not to have them.]

Nah you look good. You were in the military? [That perks him right up] What branch?

[cache_coeur]

Thank you.

[She knows the answer likely won’t make sense to him, but she replies without reservations.]

Survival & Rescue. You?

[nottheboss]

France divides you up like that? [He shakes his head slightly] I was Army. First I was a doorkicker in Korengal, then I became a sniper.

[cache_coeur]

Mostly by expedition number, but we all have our specialities. How long did you train?

[The 33rd had a few snipers, and she’d trained with them for years. It hurts in some vague way to think about, but she won’t dwell.

She offers her arm, in case he’d like to be a gentleman.]

To the park?

[nottheboss]

[He hesitates only because he hasn't really touched anyone outside the Reapers in twelve years. It's a long time to be isolated. But she's military; she's scarred. She's been tested at some point in her life. So he takes her arm and if his ears are a little red maybe she won't laugh.]

Ah, well, I joined up when I was seventeen. And I got sick of doing the shit work so I specialized when I was nineteen. And then the world ended and every day after that was like training. So a decade or so?

[cache_coeur]

[That hesitation sticks out like a sore thumb, and it makes her smile a little cat-like, but she says nothing. No sense in teasing a man who's made the courtesy to humour her despite his own discomfort.

On they go.]

You started much younger than most, by my people's standards.

[But one little note catches her.]

How did your world end?

[nottheboss]

[he's never had to explain the apocalypse to anyone before.]

It started with a virus. It infected everyone on earth. Killed a lot of them in the first wave. But the shittiest part is it raises the dead and brings them back hungry. Nothing stops 'em except taking out the brain. And if you get bit by one you die and reanimate too. So. Yeah. Most of the world is dead now.

[He glances at her]

Shitty, right? What's your world like?

[cache_coeur]

[The feeling is familiar, even if the details are entirely foreign. She looks up at him, the cheer on her face tempered with sad eyes.]

I’m sorry. Mine, ah… most of us are dead, too. There was a cataclysm in my grandparents’ time. For a while there was some thought that we could rebuild, and for a time it was better… but most of my life has been about preparing for the last generation.

[Grim, and fantastically so, but there’s a simplicity with being straightforward with someone who shares the same throughline.]

[nottheboss]

Shit. That's bleak. But that's pretty much what me and my people do, too. Prepare the world for the end.

[But he doesn't want to think about the Reapers right now. They're walking to a beautiful park and they have real food. They even have beer.]

What was the cataclysm that happened?

[cache_coeur]

Very bleak, especially for a first meeting, but you’re in good company, hmm? [A loose shrug of her shoulders.] We still don’t really know, but whatever it was, it tore everything apart. If you look at old maps, there’s a single landmark that shows where we started. The land itself is entirely different, now.

[nottheboss]

Huh. So even the land changed?

My father thinks the earth is glad to be rid of all the people. All the pollution.

But then I got here. And fuck, I've missed humanity a little.

[he gives her a little grin] I've missed picnics.

[cache_coeur]

[She wonders, idly, if her grandparents felt that way. If the Earth had opinions, in their eyes, and if it was something they could have told themselves to cope. She nods, and gives his arm a little squeeze.]

I’m lucky that I was born after the worst of the resettling. I get all that humanity has rebuilt and none of the nostalgia, and if I didn’t end up here, maybe I could have been the one to turn off the lights.

[She’s remarkably calm about that. It doesn’t matter. She has the smile she asked for.]

I’m glad to have brought you one, then. It’s not what I would have paired with beer but it is very good just the same.

[nottheboss]

If I'd known you were a Frenchie I would've asked. I don't know what pairs with anything, I'm just fucking excited to have alcohol again. It's been a long time. Last time we got anything close, one of my brothers tried to distill his own. It was the worst. You could've stripped paint with what he came up with.

[cache_coeur]

A Frenchie! [That’s amused; she’s never heard that before.] I’m glad to hear you’re at least weathering forced sobriety with your family… and someone’s got to figure out how to make it again eventually, hmm?

[nottheboss]

Well I say 'brother' but really he's part of my unit from the war. But we've been through so much it's closer than blood, you know what I mean?

[He looks at her, wondering] Am I wrong? Your accent just- sounds French. Does France even exist in your world?

[cache_coeur]

I do. I have family that way, too.

[Some of them might resist seeing it that way, but it’s the closest thing she has left, so that’s what it is to her.]

France is… complicated. [He is, actually, the first person to have questioned it; she’s been blithely letting Americans assume whatever they like for so many weeks.] Maybe we called ourselves French once, but France has been gone for a long time.

[It must have existed. But who could say when?]

Have you ever been to Paris?

[nottheboss]

Yeah, once. After my first deployment. I didn't want to go back to the States so me and a couple of guys went to France and Germany instead. [A huff, amused now after so many years] There were people protesting us outside the airport. But the city was great once we weren't in uniform anymore.

France was the last place in the world to fall to the dead. They fought the best, the smartest, of anyone.

But I guess...Paris is gone for you, too?

[cache_coeur]

[Without a trace of hesitation, and a deep fondness:] Sounds just like my people. We don’t suffer anything, and we don’t give up.

[That’s why they’re still the very last city standing in the known world.

As for Paris:]

Forgotten, but not gone. When the land split and broke us off into the ocean, the tower came with us. It’s bent over in a huge curve, but she still stands. And we call the city Lumière, because she’s the only light left in the world.

[nottheboss]

That sounds about right.... [he sounds somewhere between fond and admiring]

Does anyone still make croissants?

[cache_coeur]

Of course. [She lifts the picnic basket a bit in gesture.] Not even the end of the world could stop Lumièrians from making croissants.

[nottheboss]

Holy shit did you bring me croissants?

[his smile this time isn't so shy. He tugs her along to a pretty little spot in the shade by a stream]

This a good spot?

[cache_coeur]

And cheese, and grapes, and ham.

[What else do you bring on a picnic? Maybe the French had it all wrong, but Lumièrians know better. She follows along, smiling, even if the sound of the water makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She hefts the basket up, ahead of her.]

It’s lovely. Here, help me with the blanket.

[nottheboss]

[He takes the basket and motions for her to sit]

Go on, get comfortable. I'll set up.

[He sets the beers down first then kneels and sets the basket down.]

[cache_coeur]

[Sciel’s hardly ever been the sort to sit around while others do the work, but she’s not about to argue with an offer, either. So she sits, choosing a place with her back to the stream.]

This whole place must be rather comfortable for you, compared to home.