The triumphant return of the Scavengers to Thereafter Port evolved into a party before Alicia’s eyes. She didn’t get the impression this was the standard procedure, but perhaps her being a new recruit and back from her first mission did call for some sort of recognition, or even a celebration. Alicia wasn’t very good with celebrations. A job well done was reward enough in itself and all that. It made it easier to keep the pace and not distract oneself with pointless little excesses. Then again, Alicia thought as she sipped on her unmarked bottle of some sort of Thereafterian alcohol, it had made her a bit of a bore in some aspects. Life couldn’t, shouldn’t, perhaps be lived without a bit of excess. Alicia recognized that thinking this seemed reasonable enough, but she also recognized that she had no idea where to start. She could get drunk tonight. It wouldn’t be particularly hard, and while she didn’t feel she knew the Scavengers well enough to know for sure, she had the feeling she could trust them a normal amount. No, she told herself, she didn’t want to get drunk. That was a whole load of empty calories and she had no idea what kind of a fool she’d make of herself under the influence. Also, technically, she was undercover, so perhaps a little bit of restraint was just fine actually.
Alicia became aware that Ade was talking to her. It wasn’t anything too important Alicia figured, it had the cadence of casual bar talk, but the realization that it was going on without her noticing was, ironically, quite sobering.

“It’s wild shit, y’know?” Ade concluded. If anything, Alicia thought she seemed slightly stressed, although she couldn’t quite figure out why.
“Yeah, wild.” Alicia concurred.
“Anyway what’d you think of today? Void didn’t get to you did it?”
“Oh, no, no I’m quite fine,” Alicia said. Something about how she said that made her feel weird, but she didn’t want to make a production out of finding out why exactly. “It’s weird out there but I think I get it.”
“Get it?”
“Yeah, why y’all go out there, other than the fact that someone has to of course…”
“Mh-hm?” Ade’s tone wasn’t quite “go on” signal, but it was close enough for Alicia. She had things to say.
“Like Thereafter is a decent place to live, at least in the context that it’s one of the few extant places there are right now. I do love that word - Extant. Picked it up from Lex in the middle of some long-winded explanation of some magic business or other, although I suppose they did speak in Polish so if you want to be technical it was the translation field that taught me the word itself,” Alicia finished off her drink as a paragraph break of sorts. It was, she was starting to realize, a touch too late, that she was drunk. There had perhaps been a decision made in that regard, but if there had been one, it had solidly sat with Past Alicia. It was also possible it was one of those things that just happened, inasmuch as anything “just happened” of course. Alicia wasn’t sure.
“So anyway where was I, oh yes. Decent place,” Alicia continued. “Decent place, this, Thereafter, the people in charge are kinda up their own asses about it but that’s politics isn’t it?” A smattering of words and nonverbal voicings of agreement spread in the room. Uh-hu-s, hear-hears, and other such sounds “So it’s nice, Thereafter is, but it’s also a pain in the ass you know? It’s loud and crowded and you can barely move right out there, and there’s not really a lot of places to… disconnect ya know? Like no parks, no forests, no…”
“No savanna,” Ade added. She didn’t sound sad exactly, but there was some part of her that felt like commiserating in this way, Alicia was pretty sure.
“Exactly. No places that… just are, you know? Everything’s where it is for a purpose, and if you’re not somewhere you got something to do you’re on your way there to do it. I don’t blame the people who made this place of course, they did a frankly freakishly good job of putting this place together considering they didn’t have much of an atmosphere to work with at the time but… it gets to you, you know?”
Alicia sighed. Someone handed her another bottle of bubbly nondescript alcohol, and she accepted it with nary a thought. “So that’s where the void comes in, or where we come into the void maybe,” that observation wasn’t funny, but Alicia couldn’t help but chuckle at it. “It’s just there and it’s huge, y’know? There and huge and it’s not for anything. And it’s quiet, wow how quiet it is. I don’t love how dark it is, personally, but I do love how quiet it is. Big and dark and quiet and so so lovely…”

Something shifted within Alicia. The fun part was over. Just like her state of inebriation hadn’t let her even briefly edit her rambling thoughts about the void, the somewhat heavier topic that remained to be broached would not be held back for much longer. Had she been sober, Alicia would’ve taken a different approach, a smarter approach, probably. Then again, spoke the insistent voice that had kept her going on her ramble abou the Void, there is something to be said for getting direct with it.
“And that’s why I think it sucks that y’all took me on the fucking petting zoo theme park tour like I’m made out of glass or something stupid like that?”
The agreeable chatter that had accompanied Alicia’s rambling in the soundscape of the storeroom they had commandeered as a party spot by introducing the shabbiest couches Alicia had seen in her life, abruptly died down. “Like I get not throwing me into the deep end, but…”
It was Ade who cleared her throat and spoke up first. “What makes you say that Alicia?” It was, Alicia couldn’t help but notice, not a denial
Alicia blew a raspberry, she hadn’t planned to get all emotional about this, but there was a lot about this night that she wasn’t exactly planning. A bad night for plans in general, it seemed to be.
“Come on, I may be a greenhorn to youse guys, but I’m not stupid,” Alicia took a swig of her bottle. Was she really for real-upset about this? To her surprise she found that she was. There was nothing for it now though, even if she could reel back the anger that was emerging in her like well water, she didn’t particularly want to. “All that place lacked was signs and guide ropes. An octogenarian could get around there with one hand behind their back, but honestly that’s fine.”
“Fine, huh?” Ade’s voice wasn’t quite disbelieving, there was a slight sarcastic edge to it, though, but Alicia couldn’t blame her, she certainly did look pretty upset right now.
“Yeah, yeah, sure, send me to Weenie Hut Junior’s, I don’t give a shit… or I wouldn’t, but man, that place was picked cleaner than the clearance aisle after Black Friday.”
“Sorry if I don’t get the reference, but you’re angry we didn’t find more?”
“I guess,” now that Alicia said it out loud, she was a bit self-conscious of how petty that sounded. “I just… listen.”
Alicia took a deep breath

“I guess I feel kind of bad,” Alicia said, the truth came as easily as the anger had. Maybe she wouldn’t have needed to get drunk to get this out, but the drinking certainly had accelerated things. “Living in the Castle isn’t… like luxurious or anything but they make sure we want for nothing, heh, ‘want for nothing’ that’s a Lex phrase for sure. Anyway…” Alicia suppressed a burp. “It’s difficult to have enough while people around you don’t, or don’t always at least. I didn’t really think about how it got to me but now that I am it’s kind of all I can think about and it got all tangled up in this whole thing…” Alicia shook her head, this was getting entirely too earnest by a half mile. “Ugh, anyway, I’m just drunk, don’t worry about me.”

“Girl, you’re a few notches north of drunk,” Ade observed, but there was no chastisement in it. “But I get what you’re talking about, I think everyone here does actually.”
“Huh?”
“First pick,” Beth chimed in. “It’s mostly a formality these days since there’s less luxuries to go around, but man, remember that day we found that barrel of apples?”
A murmur of agreement rose among the drinking scavengers. “Or that one time we found that fucked-up fish Tag’lor likes?” Logan added.
“That fish as you so inarticulately describe it is a rare delicacy to the seasoned tongue,” Tag’lor protested.
“I mean with a layer of seaweed powder and salt I reckon it wouldn’t taste too bad,” Ade said before a devilish grin gave away the punchline “provided you coat your tongue with the stuff,”
“And plug your nose!” Beth added, provoking further laughter in the room.
“Anyway, what I mean to say is that it is a great privilege to be able to dictate, at least a little bit, what kind of foodstuff you take home to your family,” Ade said, leaning back in the threadbare reading chair that she occupied with the approximate grace of an oil tanker. Grace or not, though, Alicia thought she was rocking it. “But it does do something to you to know not everybody gets that choice. It makes you want to change that, bring back so much stuff that nobody goes hungry, and in so many varieties nobody gets bored.” Ade’s expression was difficult for Alicia to read, she was clearly pensive, but there was also the gentle tiredness of wisdom to it. Ade had talked about this many times, Alicia felt she could tell, if not from Ade herself how quietly attentive the room got. Everybody, it felt like, knew what Ade told her, but none would dream of interrupting her. This speech, as much as any hazing, was an induction into the Scavengers. “Nothing wrong with that, it’s a good goal to work toward, but you can’t let it take over. No matter how hard you work or how many chances you take, you’re working with limited resources. You only have that much effort, concentration, that much ability if you prefer. You can only stay clear in the head and in physical shape to do the things you need to do so long, gravity or no, and once one goes, the other will follow, sure as the void stretches on forever… You know, we Scavengers have a saying.” Ade stretched and settled into the chair. “Anyone want to get me… oh, thank you.” She accepted the bottle that Logan offered up. There was something to the scene that made Alicia think of a knight accepting a weapon from a waiting page. “We have a saying,” Ade continued as she opened her drink. “That goes ‘Half of the job is being here tomorrow.’ Now I don’t know if the translation field makes as much of a hash of that as I fear it does, but I hope the meaning remains.”
“I think so?” Alicia said. “It’s saying that one of your tasks as a Scavenger is to make sure you don’t overexert yourself and get into an accident or anything like that?”
“In essence yes,” Ade said. “The Council keeps saying that agriculture is right around the corner, and while that is a nice thought. I’ll believe it as soon as I see the produce, but not a moment before.” A smattering of agreement arose in the room. “It’s the opinion of the Scavengers that our job is too important to the survival of Thereafter to be rushed, or to be pushed, or in any other way exploited in an unsustainable way. Not everyone has it in them to do what we do, and what we do is dangerous enough that even us regulars can’t do it for more than two or three days a week, or we could, but then we’d start losing regulars, which means the irregulars have to go out more often, which means we’d have even fewer irregulars. I’m sure the destructive spiral is self-evident”
Alicia found herself nodding. This made sense, but the voice in her brain that noticed things and made inferences couldn’t help notice that something didn’t quite click into place. If they were so mindful of burnout, and as dedicated as Ade claimed, why were there so many retirees?

The party petered out after that. It wasn’t an immediate and dramatic effect, but Alicia got the impression that the zenith of the night had come and gone with Ade’s speech. It wasn’t the main reason they were there, but now that it was over, it was as good of a time as any to start wrapping up. Alicia was of half a mind to excuse herself and shamble home when Ade invited Alicia to join her in walking Logan, who was getting unproductively giggly, and Tag’lor home. Said escort was over in a short burst of that drunken not-time that simultaneously passed at a glacial pace and in a flash. The Castle not being too far at that point, Ade insisted to walk Alicia all the way home, a decision that was justified when Alicia made it a few steps more before stumbling and falling into a stack of crates.
Alicia had no idea whose idea it had been, but either way the material reality of it was the same. Ade had hoisted Alicia over her shoulder, carrying her as one might a sash or an intimacy-seeking cat.
“This isn’t uncomfortable for you is it?” Alicia felt herself asking as she laid on Ade’s shoulder, feeling the rough and thick but pleasantly warm skin of the rhinofolk woman on hers.
“What, carrying your scrawny ass?” Ade snorted with laughter at the thought. “I could do this in my sleep.”
“I’m not scrawny, you big meanie,” Alicia pouted.
“Alright, alright, scrawny comment retracted, I’m sure your ass is perfectly lovely to humans.”
“You’re damn right it is.” Alicia felt Ade’s skin against her hands. The part of her that was responsible for scandalous suggestions wanted to feel the leathery skin more, for the sense of it if not in a more intimate context, though that certainly weren’t off the table either. “A perfectly serviceable posterior.”
“You sure do like your big words lady. You comfortable?”
“Yeah, better up the tempo or I’ll fall asleep up here.”
Ade laughed, it was a pleasant belly laugh, it made Alicia smile.
“I’m sorry if I brought down the mood back there,” Alicia said after a while. “I just… I really want this to work out.”
“Oh don’t worry about it,” Ade said. Alicia had no idea where they were going as she was looking backward over Ade’s shoulder. “If anything I think showing some vulnerability may have convinced anyone who might have been skeptical of you.”
“Skeptical?”
“I mean there were those that assumed you’re here to spy on us courtesy of The Council or something like that.”
“And what do you think?” Alicia hesitated. Even if she wasn’t drunk, this conversation could easily get tricky, and seeing as she was drunk, she didn’t love the idea of trying to puzzle out the implications and loyalties at play.
“I think you’re here because you want to help, you strike me as the type for that. Whether your help will be more help or hindrance, well, that’s a different question. Hell, I ask that question about my own contribution sometimes.” Without seeing Ade’s face, Alicia still felt like she could imagine that wise tiredness in her brown eyes. “Either way if you’re willing to put in the hours and take your shifts, it’s none of my business really.”

Ade trudged along in silence for a bit before stopping. “And here we are, milady, your holdings.”
Alicia felt herself being hoisted off Ade’s shoulder and placed down on her feet. The world wasn’t quite spinning so fast, so staying up seemed way more realistic a proposition. Alicia did recognize the area as one of the entrances of The Castle, and while it wasn’t the one she used every day, getting to her quarters from here should be easy, even in her current state.
“Thank you Ade,” Alicia said.
“Oh, think nothing of it…” Ade begun to say, but the part of Alicia that did action moreso than planning did not let her finish, and grabbed Ade’s large, stubby-fingered hand in her own.
“No, thank you,” Alicia insisted. “Thank you for teaching me… and trusting me. I’ll tell you everything once I know for sure what’s going on, I promise.”
“Oh, shucks,” Ade said, her eyes darting between Alicia’s eyes and the environment around them, like she was trying, and failing, not to be lost in the moment. “I… uh, don’t worry about it, kid. I’m just taking care of business. Someone’s got to.”
The part of Alica’s brain that handled impulse yet again sprang into action, making her stand up on her toes and plant a kiss right on Ade’s face, just below the base of her horn. Alicia hadn’t planned to kiss her there, specifically, but in her mind’s eye she’d at least hit he general lip area. Whether it was a spur of the moment, a last minute course correction, or regular inebriation that had changed things, Alicia did not know, and suspected she’d spend much time pondering just that question.
“Goodnight,” Alicia turned away before she could take in any information on Ade’s reaction. She couldn’t handle a rejection right now, and hell, mutual enthusiasm also seemed like a lot, but most of all she feared the awkwardness. What if Ade asked what she had gone and done that for? Alicia certainly didn’t know. Was it an invitation to start a romantic relationship? Maybe. Alicia wouldn’t hate that, but was she looking for more partners? Should she have talked about the polycule before doing anything? And what even counted as “doing anything,” anyway? These questions and many more churned through Alicia’s head as she made her way back to her room and collapsed into bed. The world didn’t stop spinning either on account of the emotional question or the actual feeling of dizziness and vertigo, but thankfully she wasn’t down for long before sleep freed her from it all.

Author’s Note: This chapter was originally going to be more tense and less earnest, but real life intervened. You see, I am currently recovering from some (relatively minor) surgery and the aftermath has me feeling a bit more emotional than usual. Thus, I didn’t super feel like writing motivations and manipulation and lies and technical truths and such matters. I could, if I were a more stubborn man, have taken a hiatus to recover, but honestly I didn’t want to. I am, on occasion, too stubborn to be stubborn, it seems.

Catch you next time, when Alicia’s first “real” mission at least starts out normal.

VSD