An even exchange. (for smartass_captain)

[eumenis]

It's a rare overcast day at the Green Towers, when Furiosa brings Jim from the Nexus with her to visit. Normally the sky is a ruthless, clear teal, except when storms rage through. Today it's a soft, leaden grey that makes the sand look a deeper gold than usual. The Wasteland is not without beauty, even now.

Chrome sky, shiny day! The war boys are shouting the adage to one another as she leads the way through the tunnel that takes her to and from the Nexus. It opens out into a garage, which has a wide bay door through which the dubious glory of the desert shows. Furiosa is quick to beckon him to look, although they end up passing a couple groups of blackthumbs working on engines to do so. The men and women look up as they pass, visibly curious but too polite to question. Furiosa doesn't bring many visitors, but she does tend to wander with inexplicable companions now and then. Her feral Fool, for one. Jim looks much more put-together, and alarmingly clean, and there will no doubt be rumors, but her people trust her judgment. Especially the ones she works alongside most closely.

"All right," she says, by way of introduction. "If you look around the crag there, you can see where the groundlings are working on shelters, and the rows of grasses we've put in. When Immortan Joe ran the place, they were called the Wretched...but we're trying to change that."

Comments

[smartass_captain]

He's trying to do his part. As much as people give him flak for it, he knows the Prime Directive front and back. He's wearing a brown cloak over his clothes and has ditched his command golds and belt for just his black pants and undershirt in an attempt to look as plain as possible. Still, he's clean and hasn't shaved himself bald. Nor does he have the decency to have some rocking facial hair despite this. He still sticks out.

"Why call them the Wretched?" They don't look to be particularly diseased. Jim wonders if they're not simply peasants. The thought twinges at something in him, but he's seen all sorts of societal views on his travels. They're trying to survive. He can respect that.

"My first officer would have a field day in this place." Jim takes a look around with an impressed whistle. "His home world was dry and hot too." Was being the focal word there.

[eumenis]

She wasn't going to ask him to wear anything unusual, partly because she tends to assume everyone has as limited access to clothing as she does. Not true in his case, but she's never seen him in anything but the command golds, so perhaps she can be forgiven for assuming.

In any case, it's good that he's made efforts to blend in. He may notice bright colors are absent in the clothing of the people around him. It's all weathered earth tones, except for the occasional flash of dark black or soft green.

The ex-Wretched may not look diseased from up here, and they're all in better health now than they were a year ago, but for a time they lived up to the name, at least aesthetically. "I'm not sure who started that," she says thoughtfully. "I don't think it was Joe. We had a very stratified society. The lucky ones lived inside the towers here, with varying duties, and the unlucky ones stayed outside on the ground. Hence the Wretched. There's very little out there in the way of resources. Now we provide water and rations, shelter and green and a little education, and they help watch for trouble that could threaten us all."

They lost a lot of war boys in the road war that won them the Citadel. Someone had to make up for the lack of defense. Not everyone was thrilled by the idea of recruiting the Wretched at first, but the Sisters and Furiosa held firm, and it's worked beautifully.

"To be fair, I guess we still have a stratified society. We can't be as even-handed as we would like. But we're kinder than most. Kinder than we used to be."

[smartass_captain]

"That kind of change and revolution doesn't happen overnight."

There's understanding in Jim's voice as he stares down the cliffside to the hovels and people down below. From everything he's learned talking to Furiosa, the old society was pretty cut and dry, with women having little to no freedom. That at least, seems to be changing.

"Besides, even as you change, the world at large is even slower to do so. Change too quickly, and you might become a target." He scans the lands as far as he can see in as many directions as the cliff allows, blown away by the sheer vast emptiness of it all. "So you get water from an aquifer underground I take it. When's the last time it actually rained around here?"

[eumenis]

"Overnight? No. But it can happen faster than I'd have ever thought." She smiles a little. "We drove in with the corpse of Immortan Joe, me hardly able to stand, and every second I was expected someone to start shooting...but they didn't. The treadrats made them lower the lift, and the people around us on the ground screamed for them to let us up."

"I will never forget that, as long as I live. That they backed us when they could have turned on us and we'd have been too worn out to resist. These are my people."

It's a strangely sentimental statement, almost maternal. She shakes her head and looks over at him, then. "Rain? Every six months or so we get a spattering, but it's not much. Heavy dew more often, maybe a couple times a week, but not nightly. The dew is never poison, but sometimes rain is acid or radioactive."

[smartass_captain]

"That moment when someone else vouches for you, even when they don't have to is a pretty magical one, ain't it?"

Jim can't help but to smile at her description. It reminds him of the first time his crew put their trust in him, gave him their support even as the world was going to hell around them.

"They sound like a strong folk." They'd have to be to make it out in a place like this. Jim pulls out a crisp new book from under his cloak and begins flipping through it. "The dew will definitely help then...Weirdly enough you'll probably have to cover up the collector arrays for your moisture farms when it rains, if the rain's no good for drinking. That's kind of a pain, shit."