video;

[deal]

[Cassandra glances over before focusing on her wind up music box, and begins slowly turning the handle. Music starts to play, a tune that may be familiar to people from Earth. She's not doing this to play music for everyone though, so she stops after a handful of seconds, looking thoughtful.]

It's funny. You hate home until you've been gone from it long enough, and then you get homesick and home is all you can think about. No matter how shitty it is, you forget about all of the bad things and only care about the people you left behind.

[The music box is picked up and clinched in her hand.]

Do you think it's possible to get a message back to someone? Has anyone tried communicating outside the ship yet? If things like this - [She drops the music box in her hand on the table she's sitting at.] can come through the Ingress to us, we have to be able to send things back through it.

Comments

[deal]

I haven't heard of her, sorry.

[But given that people come from all different worlds here, that's not really a surprise. She wants to actually answer the kid's first question though, it's just a matter of finding a way to do it that's not revealing too much. Unable to think of one, she just keeps on the witch subject. It's safe to do that.]

When you say dusted...do you mean the people who died? She takes them?

[kidjoy]

[She huffs. It's not anger at Cassandra, just disappointment that others wouldn't know about one of the most basic parts of living. If people didn't know about the Witch, how would they find peace whenever they died?]

Yeah, she takes everyone who died on to wherever dead people go. If ya give her a letter she'll take it to someone who isn't 'round anymore. If we had a box she could take your message to your friends, I bet.

[deal]

[Cassandra isn't sure something like that is real. It can't be. But she's not about to say that, because the kid believes in it so strongly. Besides, it's a nice thought, so she just explains what things are like where she comes from.]

There isn't any witch like that back home. When you die, you just...die. Unless you become a zombie.

[kidjoy]

Has anyone ever come back from the dead to tell you that she's not there?

[There were plenty in the Zones that didn't believe in her either, but Cherri had and her boys had never tried to shake the faith she had in that man's stories.]

Zombies like the eat your face kind of zombies?

[deal]

They'll eat any part of you, actually.

[It's said like a joke, but one of those jokes that you know is based in truth. She doesn't want to scare the kid, but figures that she's seen some shit too and what she's got to say won't hurt her.]

People where I'm from come back from the dead, but they're not human anymore when they do. They're monsters.

[kidjoy]

[It's a little scary, but it's more fascinating. The boys had always told her about old horror stories, used them as an escape from the horror they already lived in. Half the desert had homages to old movie monsters in their imagery, painted on buildings and used in masks. To hear about something real only tugged at her curiosity.]

So you really got zombies to deal with. How? I've heard of 'em but just as stories. Are the real slow and got some kind of a virus? Do ya really have to shoot the brain to keep 'em down?