4 Apocalypse, Thursday Morning

[not_of_the_nora]

Sorry, Fandom. After several weeks of relative quiet in 4 Apocalypse, Aloy was... trying things again, with the computer system they had running now. Trying things that involved setting up a power grid on the ground floor, and since she wanted to make sure there was as little space between her new grid and her power source while she was testing it...

...the Sunwing was standing in the middle of the road, not far from her door, its solar panel wings firmly outstretched. The door was open, thick cables keeping it from slamming shut.

And she was in the hallway, meticulously fitting metal panels and circuitry into a very large hole in the wall.

Oh well.

[[ open! ]]

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[no_missing_piece]

Well, if there had been any doubt that Beta remembered where Aloy lived (there wasn't), the Sunwing certainly made it easy to find.

She gave it a light pat on its metallic flank on her way past, sticking her head in the door.

"Aloy?"

[not_of_the_nora]

"Beta?" Aloy called back. She looked up from where she was seated on the floor, sawdust in her hair, a piece of wire tucked behind her ear and two more in her hands. "Hey."

[no_missing_piece]

Beta made her way into the hallway, a small paper bag in one hand, then leaned forward to peer into the hole at the circuitry.

"You've been busy. How's the power output so far?"

[not_of_the_nora]

"Doing better, but it's still not where we want it to be," Aloy said. She sat back on her haunches with a sigh. "I'm freeing up some space in what used to be the... toilet? We can put a generator there."

Who needed more than one bathroom?

[no_missing_piece]

And she wasn't even sharing that one bathroom with everybody else at the base! More than one, pfft.

Beta glanced in the general direction of said erstwhile bathroom.

"That should help, and I have some ideas on boosting the output," she said. Then, abruptly, looking down at the bag in her hand, she shoved it somewhat clumsily at Aloy. "Oh. I got you something. From the trip."

[not_of_the_nora]

Aloy blinked. She hadn't expected gifts. (When did she ever?) But she took the bag. "Thanks," she said. "... How was it?"

Right. She should probably look in the bag.

[no_missing_piece]

It wasn't that much, really, just a sampler box of cheeses from the farm in Rouen, and to tell the truth it wouldn't have occurred to Beta to get her anything at all if she hadn't overheard other people on the tour discussing what to bring home for their friends.

"I thought at least you could eat it," she said, halfway between explaining and apologizing. "More practical than a mug with a picture of Paris on it."

But wouldn't that collector in Meridian have loved to get his hands on a pristine ceremonial vessel?

"It was good. There were a lot of people, but it was a nice trip. There was a lot to do, and I didn't expect we'd have so much leeway to choose what we wanted to do, but I enjoyed it."

She was still a little surprised about that.

[not_of_the_nora]

"I'm glad," said the woman who could have been choosing to do anything, and yet had spent the past few weeks here. In this house.

Well. She'd gone for a hike every other day, just to keep in shape. But... she'd been here, mainly.

"And thank you," she added, taking the cheeses out. "They look good." What else could you say about cheese? "Was there anything in particular you really liked? There, I mean. Not cheeses."

[no_missing_piece]

Well, the bathroom fixtures weren't going to rip themselves out to install a generator, after all.

"I think I liked the more rural areas more than I liked Paris," Beta admitted. "There wasn't much information on agriculture that would be useful for the Quen, but the farm was still interesting."

Of course she'd tried to do research on vacation, while also trying very hard to succeed at vacationing.

"The food, the scenery from the boat, all of it was incredibly good, but I would have liked to do the tours at my own pace instead of having to wait for a group." She tilted her head. "Did you go on any of these trips when you were a student?"

[not_of_the_nora]

"I did," Aloy said, after a short moment, as she racked her mind for it. "To a place called... Austria? I think. And the year after that, to somewhere much further away. I think not that far from Quen lands, actually."

[no_missing_piece]

"I had seen holos and read things about Paris before," Beta mused. "So I had... a very general idea of what it might be like, and it was still so much more than I was prepared for. You didn't have any frame of reference for any of it at the time, did you?"

[not_of_the_nora]

"I didn't," Aloy agreed, softer. "I can't say I appreciated it at the time."

[no_missing_piece]

"Of course you didn't," said Beta, familiar as she was with the way both of them tended to think. "Looking back on it now must be an interesting new perspective, though."

[not_of_the_nora]

"I... really don't know," Aloy admitted. She sank back a little. "It's not our world. And it's not really Elisabet's, either. Not yet."

She shook her head.

"Or the way it used to be, before they started breaking it."