UN: itsybitsy

[tothefly]

[Hi, villagers. Here on your screens is one Natasha Romanoff, hair tied back from her face, still looking a little worn out but finally rested again after sleeping for nearly 24 hours.]

So. It's been about two weeks since our unexpected little hiking trip, the weather sucks, and since I don't think group therapy would go over well here, I'm offering another option for those of you looking for a little distraction.

[The video pans from Natasha's face over to a small bookshelf, where the brightly-colored spines of twelve hefty mass-market paperbacks can be seen. The titles are all fairly innocuous, and they all seem to be part of the same series, being labeled by month at the top of the spine.]

Whoever's running this place has seen fit to send me a small part of my library from back home. They aren't much, but in my experience there's very little a trashy romance novel can't cure. I'm willing to loan them out if anyone's looking for something to read that isn't an informational guidebook or how-to.

Of course, that's with an oath to bring them back in the same condition they were loaned out in.

If anyone wants descriptions or summaries, feel free to stop on by number 40 or send me a message. First come, first serve.

Comments

[tothefly]

Just doing my civic duty.

[pampa]

If only everyone were as magnanimous.

[tothefly]

Then things would be pretty boring, wouldn't they?

[pampa]

Now you're talking my language. How long have you been around here, Nicky Sparks?

[tothefly]

I'm fluent in a few. Natural talent. About three and a half months, even if it feels like twice that. What about you?

[pampa]

To sasa Lang Belta ke?

[ just checking, you never know with these interdimensional shenanigans... ]

I'm fresh meat. Joe Miller. [ gosh her name looks familiar. ] I wish I could say it was a step up from a killer space station.

[tothefly]

[Something about the syntax might feel vaguely familiar, but unfortunately that's a negative. Still she can guess easily enough what he's asking from syntax.]

Not one of my repertoire, sorry. Though I'm always looking to add more, if you're willing to teach.

Nice to meet you, Joe. Killer space station sounds like a story you've got to tell.

[pampa]

It's my native language. Belta. I'm from Ceres if you've ever heard of it. If this place is anything like the last one I'll assume you're from Earth and Ceres is just a rock with no people living on it yet. Am I warm?

Reverie Terminal. Couldn't tell you where it was or anything, it was near a planet none of us recognized with nothing else around. Shit would happen there that wasn't normal. From what I hear this place is like that too.

[tothefly]

As far as I know it is, but then we found out a few years back that space is a lot more occupied than anyone formerly expected. But you're not wrong about the rest. I'm from an Earth, not sure if it's the same one from your past or not, but that's really just semantics at this point, isn't it?

You're not wrong, so far. Although I'll admit, my sense of normal is pretty skewed these days.

[pampa]

Meaningless yeah. I stopped trying to untangle all that alternate universe shit a long while back. It's 2350s though where I came from and probably 50-100 years past that on Reverie. This place looks primitive but also manmade, like it was deliberately made that way.

What's normal? Is that an Earther thing too? [ ha-ha ]

[tothefly]

It's a fun puzzle to pick over late at night, but I'm not too invested past that. Better to just accept it and focus on the rest. I'm sure the village's time period was a deliberate choice. Anything that made that bunker and managed to get us all here is definitely way more advanced than Frontierland here.

[And then she is laughing at that last part, because of course.]

Funny. I'm pretty sure it's imaginary, honestly.