TEXT; UN: J.SHEPPARD

[impavid]

Alright, new pop quiz. When you think of home, what do you think of?

[ Open question, which he's not going to expand on unless prompted -- though really he's curious about something specific. Do people consider Olympia or Wyver their home now? Maybe the Natha station? Or do they think of home worlds they've been told no longer exist? ]

Comments

[impavid]

[ ... Kind of? ]

I've never ridden a dragon, but I guess close enough. I'm more in the business of man-made flying machines.

[latkje]

Seems like it would be either a huge advantage. Unless everyone had them.

With dragons, it's a pretty limited resource, but with machines…

[ Well, presumably they could be produced on a larger scale. ]

[impavid]

I mean they're not uncommon, but you get different kinds.

They're a good advantage until they shot at and start falling out of the sky.

[latkje]

Like with guns?

[ He does know about guns, but the ones where he's from aren't effective enough at long range to down arial targets. Of course, there were much better guns here. ]

[impavid]

[ 'Like with guns'? John supposes anything that fires a projectile, or... that fires anything on a trigger is like a gun.

So, close enough? ]

Yeah, guns of all shapes and sizes. People love guns.

[latkje]

Not me, but that's besides the point, which might have gotten away from me a little.

[impavid]

A little, but I guess it's all related. Home is usually what you know, right?

[ These are things he knows. ]

[latkje]

Or what you're looking for, yeah.

[impavid]

[ Huh. What you're looking for. He supposes that's true. ]

Does that mean I'm looking for the sea?

[ A vague deflection, because John doesn't like things too serious or personal. ]

[latkje]

I don't know you that well. [ Or at all, really. ] Are you?

It's a thing they say about sailors, though. That they always long for the sea.

[impavid]

I guess I miss the sound of it, you get used to that kind of thing.

[latkje]

I guess it's hard to find noise that's easy to listen to. I grew up in the middle of a city. [ The literal center, or close to it. ] We had big windows. [ The explanation for his definition of home. ]

[impavid]

Anything like the cities here?

[ If you didn't have planes it can't have been super modern, right? ]

[latkje]

More like Olympia than Wyver. Less liberal than both.

[impavid]

[ 'Less liberal than both'? ]

In a good way or a bad way?

[ In the sense of 'the government watches my every step and will remove me if I do something wrong' or 'the government stops people just doing whatever they want and nobody could, for example, raise an undead dragon while the armed forces panic ineffectively'? ]

[latkje]

In most ways. Nothing is all one or the other, is it?

Though honestly, I was thinking that this is a hard place to stay married in.

[impavid]

[ Well this took a turn. ]

I'm guessing you mean for refugees, because of the rate of stasis turnover?