Eli was currently doing push ups, and doing them really damn well -- far better than Selene could ever hope to do.  She didn't look up as the builder approached, and Selene waited silently and counted out 52 push ups (and who knew how many she'd already done before Selene had even come outside) before Eli finally came to a stop and shifted her legs around to sit cross-legged in the cleared area of frozen grass.

"Did you still want to go to the Solstice gathering?" Selene asked. For a long moment Eli was silent, then she simply nodded; Selene returned the nod and smiled at her.  "Yay, all right -- did you want to be the bringer of cheese or the meats?" She took a step back as Eli got up; once the woman was up and out of the shadow of the edge of the nearby stables Selene could see sweat droplets sparkling in the woman's eyelashes and a thin sheen of it over her face -- she'd need to get inside and get dried off before she froze.

"Cheese, I guess."

It wasn't enthusiastic but she'd take it.  "Ok then - I'll go get the foodstuffs while you get cleaned up.  We've got a couple hours before everything starts but usually people gather early to watch Django get the hot pot started.  It'd be a really good time for you to meet and mingle, talk to people."

"I don't know that I feel up to mingling."

"Oh.  Well, uh..."

Eli gave her a strained smile.  "Sorry.  Don't mean to make things awkward, I just..."

Selene didn't press her to continue; instead she nodded and led the way back into the house where Eli disappeared upstairs to her room and Selene turned into the kitchen.  She'd bought some nice cuts of beef and chicken and a very soft and delicious white cheese from Sophie and Emily a day ago.  After her first Solstice in Portia Selene had decided to vary what she brought each year; the first time she'd brought diced up layered carrots and last year she'd brought cornballs from her own garden which had turned a small spot of the pot into a spicy chowder. This year would be the first time she'd brought any meats.  Hopefully they were sliced thin enough that they'd cook up quickly once they were in the pot...maybe she should have checked with Django first.  Oh well.

Eli should at least be well-received for bringing the cheese; the soft white was a Portia favorite and it tended to sell out quick when Sophie had a new batch ready to go.

A quick glance in the fridge showed that the wax paper wrapped around the meats hadn't leaked, and there weren't any grease marks on the paper bag that the cheese was in - it was nice to see that she wouldn't need to put them into other containers or worry about the bags ripping on the way in to town. Selene grabbed a potato fruit fritter out of the bag next to the cheese (she liked Sophie's pies and fritters, what could she say?) and retreated to a chair, slowly munching on the fritter as she waited for Eli.

She was washing grease off her fingers when she heard Eli coming down the stairs; the Dubei woman was combing her hair off to the side as she walked, and was wearing a sweater Selene hadn't seen before - it was a burnt orange color with goldenrod colored trim along the sleeves and collar.

"That looks nice.  When did you get that one?"

Eli glanced down and smoothed down the sweater's hem.  "Couple days ago.  Carol was nice enough to tailor it a bit so it fit better across my shoulders."

"Going to need a lot of tailoring soon, huh?"  That got a faint smile from Eli; Selene grabbed the meats and cheese and led the way out of the house toward Portia's gates.  "What were celebrations like, in the Old World?  Were there a lot of holidays?"

"Saying there were 'a lot' would be a massive understatement. You could find a festival or holiday going on almost every other week," Eli answered.

"Wow... That sounds hectic, but also fun."

Eli shrugged.  "Isn't that true of any holiday?"

"True.  Oh, here-" Selene briefly spun around and walked backwards, holding out the bag with the cheese in it.  "Best cheese anywhere around."

Eli took the bag and tucked it into the crook of her elbow.  "So...how does this festival work?"

"Well, we have a giant hot pot that Django gets started with a broth base.  We wait 'til it gets boiling, then everyone starts tossing ingredients in.  Everyone is welcome to eat as much as they want and because of how big the pot is you'll find little pockets of dozens of different flavors -- and, when we're done, all the leftovers are divvied out to everyone to take home, or available to eat for free at the Round Table for the next couple of days.  After we've all eaten we have a snowball fight -- or, WOULD have a snowball fight.  What snow that's out in the fields right now isn't all that packable since it's not fresh so I'm not sure if Gale has something else planned instead. And THEN, after that, we all take pictures together."

"...'all,'" Eli repeated.  "Who does that include?"

"Everyone in Portia, if they want to," Selene giggled.  "I help build the riser platforms each year.  When we're done with the hot pot and everyone heads off to the snowball fight I, Paulie, and a couple others move the pot out and get the risers in place for when it's picture time."

"Are the pictures just...for free? For anyone?"

Selene nodded.  "Yep.  And a lot of the pictures get printed in the newspaper too so even if you don't manage to grab a copy today you can clip it from the paper later."

They were approaching the central plaza now and Selene could already smell the vegetable broth; Dawa and Paulie were standing near the massive hot pot helping Django feed logs to the fire burning beneath it.  Gale, Gust, Ginger, and Russo were already there too, and so was Carol and Martha and standing with them were the triplets, Toby, and Jack as well.  Their arrival immediately caught the attention of the children; Selene subtly moved Eli around the plaza's edge in the opposite direction.

They stopped at the benches over near the Research Center and Eli sat down, and sat the bag of cheese on the bench beside her.

"That is definitely a large hot pot."

"Yep.  No idea who first forged it but it's been in use for awhile - not sure what they used before.  Maybe just a giant cauldron or something."

They sat and waited, and watched as more of Portia's residents began to show up.  There were a lot of curious and uneasy looks tossed their way; few people seemed willing to do more than nod or wave, and Selene was pretty certain most of the friendlier gestures were aimed at her and not Eli.  Really made her wonder what Lee might have been telling others since Eli definitely hadn't done anything to warrant the weird looks she was getting.

Eventually, as more people showed up and more greetings were exchanged, Martha's attention wandered enough that Toby broke away from the group they were all standing in and as Selene suspected the boy made a beeline toward them.

He stopped just short of the bench, eying Eli for a moment or two; despite having a heavy coat on along with his backpack he had managed to also strap a wooden practice sword to his back and the handle jutted awkwardly over his left shoulder.

"Hi!  Are you really three hundred years old?"

Eli blinked at the boy for a moment, then sat up a bit straighter.  "I think I'm closer to 370, but yes."

"What did you do in the Old World?  Were there adventurers?"

Selene watched as Eli's gaze moved from the boy over to where his mother was standing and chatting with Carol and Alice; after a pause Eli looked back to Toby.  "I was a ranger.  It was a type of soldier."

"Ha!" was Toby's response.  "Django said there was more to you than it looked!  Did you fight in the war?  Did you shoot robots with guns?   Was there really robots everywhere you looked? Did you use only guns or did you still use swords and stuff?  Do you know how to use a sword?"

"Toby, one at a time," Selene interrupted dryly.  Eli got bombarded enough as it was thanks to those nosy scholars.

A small smile crossed Eli's face.  "I didn't fight in the war - I was already injured and inside that tube by the time the Calamity hit.  I'm not even sure what event started it.  As for AIs - yes, we had a lot of them.  They did a lot of the work for us, but not ALL of our work.  We didn't use swords but we had some long-handled machetes as part of our camping kits and if we fought in close combat we had bangsticks.  They were these metal rods of varying length that, if you swung and hit something with it, would release a little electric shock with a loud bang, hence their names.  And, I know how to dance with a sword but not how to fight with one."

Selene had been listening quietly as Eli rattled off the answers to Toby's rapid fire questions but the last answer caught her attention.   "Dance?"

Eli nodded.  "Dubeian saber dancing.  Was a hobby I picked up when I was a teenager and carried it along while serving - I wasn't especially limber or graceful but it was still fun."

Toby pulled a face.  "Dancing?  That sounds boring."

"Maybe, to someone who hasn't ever seen it.  You started out with plastic practice props, worked your way up to wooden ones, then blunt metal, then sharpened metal, and the last 'rank' was sharpened metal with a middle, inner strip that you lit on fire."

THAT got Toby's attention.  "You danced with fire?"

"Me?  No.  I only made it up to the sharpened metal rank - live steel, as it was called.  Once I was out of school I only got the chance to study and practice when I was on leave from active duty."

"That sounds pretty neat, actually," Selene mused.  "Sounds kind of dangerous too though - a sharp edge AND fire?"

"It WAS dangerous, and that's why it was fairly challenging to work your way up the ranks.  You learned the basic moves with the plastic, then added weight and balance with the wooden ones.  From there you began picking up the advanced stuff with the heavier but blunt metal props, and you needed a perfect score from a certified instructor to move on to the sharpened ones.  When you got to the sharpened rank you had to have so many hours of supervised practice as well as a certain number of dances performed and scored by eight different instructors, all perfect scores and with no injuries or else you had to start over and put in the time and effort again.  Being as it became something I did on the side to keep myself busy when I was on leave I never had the time to put together the dances or log the hours needed."

"Are you bothering Eli?"

Selene jumped at Arlo's voice and spun around to find him standing behind her with his arms crossed and his attention squarely on Toby.  

Toby jutted his lower lip out at Arlo.  "No!  I'm learning about the Old World."

"Fine, but your mother is looking for you either way."

"Aw man..." Toby slouched off through the crowd back toward Martha who greeted him with a glare and what Selene imagined was a very short and to the point lecture on running off when she clearly wanted him to stay put.  He...did that a lot, and could probably recite any lecture by heart now.

When he was gone Eli leaned back against the bench and stretched her legs out.  "He wasn't bothering me.  Just asking questions."

"Fair enough. Martha WAS actually looking for him however."

Selene shifted around to perch on the arm of the bench, looking up at him.  "Are the scholars going to work today too?"

"Not that I know of.  Gregory and Adam are going to stay out at the sinkhole just in case they do, and also to keep guard.  Mali and the others planned to come take part in the festivities but I've no idea if the scholars will too."  Arlo glanced over a shoulder and skimmed the crowd, then returned his attention to Eli.  "I did want to mention that Lee gives a sermon every year before we eat - whatever he might say today know he's more or less said something similar every year.  This might be the one time I can honestly say it shouldn't be personal."

Eli nodded but didn't say anything in response.  After a few moments Arlo moved to sit on the bench with the bag of cheese between himself and Eli, and not too long afterward both Sam and Remington found them and stood about chatting as they waited for Django to signal that the broth was ready; it already appeared to be boiling and Selene spied what she thought were vegetable bits floating around in it.  Shouldn't be too long now.

"-Eli, I had a question about Stewart," Sam suddenly asked, abruptly changing the subject away from the weather.

"What about him?"

They'd all had a chance to talk to Stewart at least once now; the All Source AI was polite and helpful but Selene found his constantly shifting facial projection to be massively distracting.

"What are we going to do with him?"

That was a question Selene had thought about too.  Wendy, the other All Source AI they'd found, was currently in the Research Center and wouldn't be able to ever leave it now that her original power supply had been damaged beyond repair -- she'd always be tethered to the power supply they'd rigged up for her.  Stewart, on the other hand, had been specifically built to be mobile; his inner battery needed repair due to the ravages of time but he was confident they could fix it even with limited technology, and that would leave him with about three months worth of power if he was forced to go without his docking station. Could they move his docking station out of the facility and figure out how to power it up here?  It seemed like a huge waste to leave him down in the facility or for him to walk back and forth between there and town.

"I'm not sure yet," Eli answered after a lengthy pause.  "He seems convinced the reactor is still fully functional for now, so we've got a bit of time to figure something out.  But he'll have to be moved somehow -- the fuel inside a reactor has an expected lifetime and to be honest I'm surprised it's still working after all this time.  It won't last forever though, and there's no way we can make more of what fuels it."

"We were able to make a new power source for Wendy," Selene said.   She glanced toward the Research Center -- Wendy had seemed satisfied with the power output of the high voltage dual engine set up they'd put together.  "Could we move the docking station and make do like we did with her?"

Eli was silent for another long moment - Selene could only imagine the calculations going on in her head.  "--it's...possible, I guess.   But it'll need a lot of room, first and foremost - we'd need his docking station for sure, along with his memory cores and server banks, and then space enough for whatever power source we come up with to run it all.  He might need his own dedicated room entirely."

Remington's eyebrows shot into his hairline.  "He really needs that much power?  That much room?"

"Yeah, that seems-" Sam paused, then shook her head.  "Wendy didn't need that much of either.  What's the difference?"

"They're different models," Eli answered.  "They might both be All Source AIs but their duties are drastically different and they have different specs.  And I bet if we could find Wendy's original memory cores and servers her power and space requirements would shoot through the roof too."

Selene huffed out a sigh at that.  "Man...we've lost so much, haven't we?  I hope we haven't damaged Wendy on accident."

"I wouldn't worry about it," Eli replied, looking over to her.  "If she says she can manage with her current power level then she knows what she can and can't safely process."

"What would happen if we got her hooked up to more power?"

"Probably nothing.  Her memory cores aren't attached and she's not connected to anything else to warrant more power right now."

"She DID say that she couldn't teach us anything because all she did was give orders, but she's given us a few blueprints since she said that," Selene said slowly, tapping a finger against her chin as she thought - what did a memory core or server bank even look like?  "If she had her memory cores, would that make a difference in what she could teach?"

"A huge difference.  You can't teach something if you don't remember knowing it in the first place.  With her it's likely she DID know the inner functions of certain technologies but that information was stored in a separate memory core than what she's carrying onboard now.  If we separate Stewart from his servers and cores he'll lose a lot of what he knows too."

"Which seems like a poor idea," Arlo broke in.  "Having those medical texts is helpful but having something on hand that actually knows it and could teach it to others is way more valuable."

Sam shrugged. "The clinic DOES have that storage room upstairs, and also the space around it to add on another room or two - it'd make more sense to install Stewart in the clinic than it would here at the Center, since he's a medical AI.  I think it was just last year that Dr. Xu was talking to Albert about a possible expansion too."

Remington shook his head at her.  "He only did that because Phyllis wants to open her own office.  I think the plan was adding on and giving that space to her to start out with but she found a place out in South Block that she's trying to buy instead. He probably wouldn't say no to an expansion to house Stewart but I don't know that any plans or budget from before would be useful now since he wasn't factoring in an All Source AI's needs."

Selene stood up and stretched as she noticed Gale taking his place at the center of the crowd.  "Eh, leave it for another day - looks like it's about time to start."

Portia's townsfolk had all clustered around the hot pot and Selene and the others were basically at the back of the group; Gale was a little hard to hear but, as he did every year, he greeted everyone and then invited Lee to start his sermon.

-----------------------------------------

Eli listened quietly as Lee detailed how, after the Calamity, the sky had darkened and sunlight had disappeared.  AIs had gone rogue, crops were failing, people were starving - humanity already pushed to the brink was getting even closer to extinction.  To hear that finally, in a moment of need, people came together to ensure survival was nice...even if the story as a whole was very bleak.  

'To think I outlived all that because of a stupid tube and science I can't understand...'

One of the first things she'd asked Stewart was why she was down there - why she was in that tube - and the AI couldn't tell her.

Not because he didn't know but because he'd been ordered not to tell anyone outside of the project involving the tubes.  And what that project was was also something he couldn't share, and no amount of administrative access he could grant her would give her access to those files.  He couldn't go against his orders or his programming and had been very apologetic but ultimately she'd gotten nowhere with that subject.

The rest of her questions had been directly answered, at least, and it painted chaotic, terrifying, and destructive final days for the facility and the people of Dubei.

First had come a bombardment from orbital railguns.  Eli hadn't even known there WERE railguns up in orbit, and if they had fired freely on Dubei she imagined no one in charge had known they were there either (or if they HAD known, why weren't there defenses in place?).  Who could have gotten railguns into orbit without anyone detecting them?  Maybe they were inside something else...hidden, so that no one would suspect. And if that were the case then it could have been any nation behind it, and while Eli knew diplomacy had been breaking down she didn't think the Generals would have kept something this potentially devastating a secret...

Then Stewart had detailed how, in the immediate aftermath of that first attack, a small group of unknown assailants had forced their way in and appeared to be there to steal top secret information from various government-funded research projects.  Stewart didn't know what files in particular they had come for but they were systematically searching floors and attempting to breach his encryptions and firewalls before they'd been subdued either by security or by circumstance; the orbital bombardment had leveled over half the city and obliterated that part of the facility that had been above ground, and the damage had caused the air filtration and circulation system to go haywire during the infiltration. Several of the underground sections were subsequently flooded with such severely polluted air, smoke, and particulates that it had caused many to suffocate (even some who had tried to get protective equipment on had been killed before it made a difference) before Stewart had been able to get the systems under control again and broadcast an order to begin evacuation once the intruders had been dealt with.  

A small silver lining to this was the suffocation had taken out some of the attackers too, though their losses paled in comparison to the number of employees that had died. There was a mad scramble by those left to try and pack and prioritize, and to the credit of the survivors a lot was able to be salvaged and taken with them as the remaining living AIs were able to carry a lot more than a human could. But it was during the rush to leave that they'd been hit with a second bombardment and Stewart lost all contact with the surface world.  In the chaos of the second attack Stewart had issued a total evacuation order: if it couldn't be immediately carried out on one's person then it had to be left behind...supplies, personal effects, the fallen, everything. Those few that were left alive to hear the order made it out through old maintenance tunnels.

And that was it.  Ever since then Stewart had been the lone guiding force within the facility and had struggled to keep it functional (especially after an earthquake struck about 73 years after the second bombardment and had destroyed even more of the facility), and make certain that the remaining stationary AI assistants like Pauline as well as Eli in her tube survived until help arrived (something Stewart admitted he had lost hope for several times over the centuries).

That was a touchy subject... Eli had been in a tube, and so had all but two of her squadron.  It had definitely hurt to know that most everyone she'd worked with AND her husband were all dead in the same room she'd spent over three hundred years "sleeping" in and that it had only been sheer dumb luck that the earthquake's damage hadn't reached far enough into the room to take her out too.  Thinking about it, even briefly, was enough to make her eyes sting and well up and she quickly squashed it down and tried to focus on the end of Lee's sermon.

Better times...  Yeah, compared to what she'd been told had happened, and what had been been endured, these times were certainly better.   Humanity had a future even if it felt like she didn't.

 Don't think about it.

At least, don't think about it until the next session with Dr. Xu.   Or, bare minimum, she should aim to make it through today without falling apart.

"-all right, time to start adding things."

Eli flinched a bit as Selene - she hadn't even noticed the woman had moved from the other end of the bench - grabbed her by the elbow and tugged her toward the enormous hot pot, giving her only a moment to pick up her sack with the cheese in it; Arlo stayed with them and had produced a small bag of eggs from somewhere - she was about to ask where he'd been hiding it when she noticed Sam pull a cluster of some leafy green herb out of the bag she seemed to carry everywhere.  She handed whatever the herbs were to Remington and then pulled out a parcel wrapped in wax paper; Sam wasted no time in approaching the pot and dumping the contents of her parcel in and Eli watched as a small shower of tiny meatballs plopped into the boiling broth.

"What'd you end up bringing?" Remington asked then.  He had a small pocket knife in hand and was carefully cutting off the string that held the bundle of herbs together; she caught a whiff of it as well as a closer look and thought it was coriander.

Eli opened her bag and pulled out the chunk of cheese inside it, and managed to smile a bit as Remington's eyes lit up at the sight of it.

"Ha, you actually managed to get your hands on some of Sophie's cheese?  That'll win you a lot of friends today I bet." He wiped the blade of the knife clean on the hem of his shirt then offered it to her, handle first.  "Here, this'll help."

The cheese was the size of her two fists put together and it cut smoothly.  She did notice a couple of approving looks as she dropped the first few pieces into the pot and watched as it melted and floated on the top almost like a cream.

"Should I try to spread it out?" she asked, glancing over to Remington; Arlo and Selene seemed to have moved on to other spots around the pot, chatting with the other townsfolk as they walked and dropped in cuts of meat and freshly cracked eggs at random intervals.

"You can, or you can claim a little spot and let others come to you," Remington answered.  He started gently twisting the coriander into small handfuls that he sprinkled over a wide area of the hot pot's surface; the boiling broth quickly sent the little green bits floating away or sinking inward.

Along with the sudden surge of various types of foodstuffs appearing in the pot there were a lot of people and a lot of separate conversations going on around her; for now she decided to slice up about a third of what she had and spread it in the same area.  As she was carefully cutting off a few more slices one of the short, hairy men appeared at her elbow with what looked like fresh fish fillets.

"Hey, look at that," was the man's greeting as he spied the cheese in her hand.  "I always end up eating all that myself when I manage to get my hands on it."

She recognized him in that he was identical to the three others like him that she'd met, but his glasses were more opaque and a different size and shape than the ones his brothers wore.  Quadruplets?  "Would you like a piece to eat?"  She cut off a decently thick bit and offered it to him; he accepted it with a grunt and smile and popped the whole thing into his mouth before beginning to carefully slip the fillets into the broth.

"-so, you're Eli.  I'm Qiwa.  You meet the rest of my brothers yet?"

"I've met Dawa, Sanwa, and I saw a third brother on the night I was introduced but I'm guessing that wasn't you.  How...uh, how many of you ARE there?"

Qiwa began to chuckle, and didn't respond until he had all the filets in the pot; after wiping his hands on his shorts (Eli couldn't fathom how he wasn't freezing) he began to point to various spots in the crowd.  There was Dawa, and Sanwa, and there was...three, four, five...

"-there's SEVEN of you?" she asked, looking down at Qiwa in amazement.  "What's in Portia's water and should I be concerned?"

That got a deep belly laugh out of Qiwa.  "Don't worry, you'll get used to it!  We at least color code ourselves."

He kept on laughing and Eli shook her head - seven identical brothers, good grief.  She cut a couple more slices of cheese and let them drop in; Qiwa headed off, still chuckling, and for a brief moment Eli was left standing more or less by herself as people milled around.   Seeing that the pot was pretty cheesy where she was standing she decided she would move around after all and carefully edged off to the left toward a  dark-haired woman who was carefully adding in what looked like dumplings but before she got too far another woman stepped in her path and cleared her throat.

"Oh, uh - hello." Her brain stalled on the woman's name; she knew she owned the bakery and she recognized her from earlier when Arlo had sent Toby scampering back to her.

"Hello.  Sorry to bother you on a holiday but could I have a word in private?"

"Sure."  Eli returned the cheese to the crumpled up bag and tossed the knife in with it as well, then tucked it under an arm and followed Martha - THAT was her name, right - as the woman headed over toward the far wall and gate that led out of Portia.

Once they were away from the crowd Martha inhaled deeply and seemed to be trying to force a smile but it didn't quite cover up how tense the woman seemed.

"You might have guessed this already or been told but I'm Toby's mother," Martha started.  "I know he ran off earlier to pester you with questions and now all he can talk about is you being a soldier and fighting robots."

Eli winced a bit.  "Sorry about that.  I didn't mean to-"

Martha waved her hands and shook her head.  "No, it's not that - I'm used to him being a nuisance and overly excitable when he gets fixated on something.  It's more that I know exactly what he's going to do next and I wanted to ask you NOT to indulge him."

"...huh?"

Martha sighed and ran a hand over her headband and then through the hair it was just barely holding back from her face.  "His father was an adventurer, and it got him killed.  Toby is dead set on being an adventurer too, and while Django has been humoring him and teaching him some very basic swordplay I know without a doubt that he'll come asking after you to teach him how to fight as well.  And I don't want you teaching him anything, because I don't want him encouraged to go off into the wilds like his father did."

...well, that's not what she'd been expecting.  Eli mulled that over for a few breaths - it was a reasonable enough request, on the surface. "I can abide by that, sure.  Can I ask you something, though?"

"Oh good!  And, of course."

Eli shifted the cheese from one arm to the other, turning her head to skim the crowd and pick out where Toby was standing with the other children again; he had that practice sword in hand and was waving it wildly as he spoke, and the others were laughing along with him.  "I don't mean for this to sound insulting or belittling, but how confident are you that you can keep him from running off, if he's determined to follow after his da?"

Martha's expression faltered a moment and then she sighed heavily.  "Well...so far I've not had much luck..."

She trailed off and Eli nodded, more to herself than to the woman -- that was what she thought the answer was going to be.  It would seem little boys are just as headstrong now as they were three hundred years ago; it was a bit endearing but knowing how concerned Martha was just based on how she was acting now...

"I won't teach him anything if you don't want me to, but it sounds like - at least for the time being - he's not going to let go of that particular dream.  And if that's the case, maybe he SHOULD be learning how to take care of himself in a fight."  She turned her attention from the kids back to Martha.  "Since you worry he's going to run off anyway learning how to handle himself in a dangerous situation and how to deal with injuries and survival techniques would be valuable information for him.  THOSE are topics I'm well versed in, and I wouldn't mind teaching him.  But, I've got an idea for a compromise: I could bore him to tears with it in the process and see how much he likes the adventuring life then when he gets to see what all is needed for it."

Now it was Martha's turn to mull things over, glancing between Eli and Toby but seeming to be looking through them rather than at them.   "I...didn't think of it like that. I try not to think about it in general because I just don't want to lose him like I lost his father.   And, what do you mean when you say you could bore him?"

"I am definitely well-practiced in not thinking about things," Eli said quietly.  She took a breath and then flashed Martha a half-smile.   "And yeah, bore him with it.  If we make learning the skills and the act of adventuring seem like more trouble than its worth that might work better than forbidding him from doing it.  He's a kid after all: I've not met a kid who didn't push boundaries or rebel against their parents. This might be a phase you can turn him away from but if not at least he's not walking out into the wild unknown not knowing a thing about how to take care of himself.  -- and actually, I had another deterring idea.  How's his grades?"

----------------------------------------------------

After the hot pot gathering they'd all gone out into the fields for the largest game of "flag tag" Eli had ever participated in.  Everyone was exhausted and muddy by the end of it but they all remained in good spirits as they trudged back in to town to goof around in front of cameras (old-fashioned film cameras...another thing that had been old even in her time).

While she'd admittedly not felt like mingling or even really felt human this morning Eli found she was glad she'd let Selene drag her out.  The weird looks had mostly stopped by late afternoon and while only a handful of people had been brave enough to walk up to her she felt less...like an outsider, more or less.  And she hadn't run into that minister either so the whole day had been pretty peaceful; she had a small photo of herself with Selene, Xu, Arlo, and Dawa posing beneath the large tree that took up the center of the plaza, and her jacket smelled faintly of wood smoke as she walked back toward Selene's place.

In the morning she'd be heading back into town to meet Martha at her bakery, before Toby had to be at school.  He didn't know it yet but he was about to be offered survival and combat lessons, taught by Eli, on the condition that he had to get high scores on all his schoolwork for the next two quarters.

Martha had been tickled pink by the idea as it seemed Toby was a little terror in school too, and while the prospect of having to focus in school may not deter him initially Eli still vividly remembered her boot camp days...they'd find out how determined Toby was when she started putting him through his paces (both physical and mental - took more than just being strong to be a good ranger).

But, on the flip side of that particular coin, if he kept with it he'd be one heck of a well-trained adventurer.  At the very least that ought to relieve a bit of Martha's worry about the kid if their combined efforts couldn't turn his attention away from a future career of adventuring.

She would also need to drop by the Civil Corps building and give Remington back his pocket knife - she hadn't been able to find him after the tag game so it was currently in her own pocket (and she'd made sure to clean the cheese off before closing it).