2022-06-09 - The Common Denominator

A little bird told me that you happen to enjoy raisins in your cookies, and since I happen to have oatmeal raisin cookies to hand... pop over sometime? I'm home all day.

It's another perfect day on Oak Avenue, and as Una sets down her coffee pot next to the usual plate of cookies on the porch table, she fires off a text to Ravn as well: information gathered from from friends about their significant others must, of course, be put to good use. She's set up for a chill morning, with a fairly hefty paperback biography of the Roman Emperor Nero (what? that still counts as chill!) on the table next to her coffee cup, one foot curled up beneath her butt for appropriate pretzel-ish comfort.

The coffee gets poured. The book gets opened. She clearly expects to be interrupted, sooner or later, but until then? There are far worse ways to spend a morning.

"A curious choice of light reading, that." Trust Ravn to appear ninja-like, as so often before; the man does move about rather silently and often unnoticed.

He plonks himself into the chair next to Una's. "Trying to understand our violin abusing friend? I'm diagnosing 'tiger mum with curling baby' -- which is probably not all off the mark, given how Nero's mother did most of the heavy pulling. And somebody suggested there might be raisins in the cookies around here."

Ariadne was not lying. He really does like raisins in his cookies, the depraved bastard. "Don't suppose you can spare a cup of coffee and a cookie for a violin deprived violinist?"

Mention of the violin draws a wince from Una: not quite guilty, but certainly deeply sorry. It's not, however, at the forefront of her thoughts, because her comment focuses elsewhere.

"I realised how much I really don't know about that bit of history. And," she makes a face, "how much of what I think I know is via novels, so of course has very dubious provenance. The novels are great fun, but... well, we've had that conversation before, haven't we? Historical fiction is not truth, no matter how well researched. And, of course, some of it is barely researched at all." She sets the book down again, though, gesturing expansively towards the coffee pot, the spare mugs (multiple, of course), and, of course, the plate of cookies.

"Though mostly, I think you're probably right. I wonder how our experiences tally up to real history, of course, and there's a lot there we'll just never know, but... it's interesting, anyway. Have a cookie. I'm fully expecting someone else to wander past, decide those are chocolate chips, and then make an exceptionally delightful face. I think it's my new hobby."

"The raisin trap." Ravn laughs softly and secures himself one cookie -- after making sure that he is indeed stealing one with raisins and not chocolate chip. "That's taking trolling to a new and very subtle level, and I approve very much."

He glances at the book cover one more time. "It does make you wonder, doesn't it? How real it was, I mean. I doubt we were at the actual court of Nero. So it all must have been based at least in part off our expectations -- which means it was one hell of a historical fiction if you think about it. Between us, we did not paint a very flattering picture of Emperor Neckbeard, did we?"

The historian chuckles. "Contemporary sources say he opened his palaces and worked hard to rebuild Rome after the fire. So either it was a bit of a wake-up call to him when it grew as large as it did, or our depiction of him as a one-track mind, obsessed, somewhat greasy git is just not very fair."

There are no tricky chocolate chip surprises here today-- hurray! Una grins, a little crooked, but undeniably pleased. "I'm quite fond of the idea," she admits. "It's amazing how passionate people get about raisins. I do prefer chocolate chip, but... raisins are good too."

Her own gaze slides back towards the book and its cover, a photograph of that most famous statue printed there in full colour. "Right," she agrees. "I mean, if he was actually like that... if Sabina was actually like that... it's just interesting. I hope it was a wakeup call. I hope after we left Sabina yelled enough that he started paying attention. Or something happened. Because I didn't like him at all, and I wanted to... well, not like him, but at least find something good there. Not the caricature, I guess."

She pauses to reach for her own cookie, turning it over thoughtfully between her fingers. "It's fascinating, though, thinking about the details we experienced. All of that must have come from our imaginations, or the imaginations of Veil entities, or something, I guess. Because it felt real. Not exactly what I'd imagined, but somehow... more likely? If that makes sense? Just, I'd look at things and go, oh, of course, that's exactly how that would look."

Ravn nibbles on his cookie -- on a crumb of it, anyhow. "Judging by our modern standards I doubt we'd ever like Nero more than we like, say, Jeff Bezos. Probably less because Bezos will at least pretend to play by human rules in public. Nero won't -- because he's not human. When they put a crown on his head they elevated him to a god, and like any god out of classical times, he has the unquestionable right to have you horribly tortured and executed as a matter of course if you annoy him. But yeah -- leaving that as an aside, you kind of want a man in charge of the largest empire to exist in the history of mankind to be at least somewhat decent. Or at least harmless."

He looks at the cookie. "I felt sorry for Sabina. An ambitious, cunning woman, stuck with that lump -- and knowing how bad it's going to end for her."

"Harmless," repeats Una, not without a bitter little laugh of her own. "Yeah. It's-- I had to read about Sabina, first, and it's just awful. No one deserves what happened to her, of course no one does, but it's just... she didn't deserve that life, either. I always knew I liked the women of that era more than the men, and... well."

She dunks her cookie into her coffee, then nibbles on the softened remains. "I wish I knew who we were supposed to be. I know it was just a Dream, but I still feel connected, now. Made up role or not. It's somehow... different, when you're experiencing real events. I usually don't have Dreams like that. Fantastical, yes, but not... historical."

"I think my sympathies lie with the people who did not have agency." Ravn nods and reaches for a coffee cup to go with the cookie. "And that did include a lot of women, yes. I did some sniffing around -- hell, I mailed an acquaintance who specialises in this era, too -- and I'm no wiser. There aren't any strikingly obvious people that we must have been standing in for. Most historians agree that Nero wasn't even in Rome that night. There are no records I have heard of, of some cousin of Sabina's and her lover slash husband slash brother slash whatever turning up to present Nero with an exotic instrument or anything along those lines. It probably is safest to think of it as highly interactive historical fiction."

He glances at the flowering bushes that (fail to) separate the yards. "Rome was a better place to be than many at the time -- but it still sucked for a lot of people. One thing that the Romans did better than us at least? They weren't racist. Equal opportunity for dying horribly or rising to the top, regardless where you were born. The patricians based their power in land and wealth, not on some god-given right based on ethnicity."

Una nods, perhaps a little reluctant but without that much hesitation. "I mean, that's absolutely the safest explanation," she agrees. "And the most logical. Dreams are just Dreams. We didn't accidentally introduce violins to Rome a few centuries too early." This time her hesitation is a little more obvious, and her words just a little quiet. "I am sorry about your violin, though. Lost to history, lost to the Veil; either way, it was lost, and I'm sorry for it."

She idly turns her mug upon the table, twisting it between her fingers. Her added, "I like that too. Rome as an actual melting pot, where people could get ahead. Isn't it true that the think one of the later emperors might actually have been black? I'm sure I read that somewhere. It's a nice thought," may well be intended to offer an out from the violin talk: an opportunity not to linger.

"I don't recall reading that, but given it's Rome, I am not going to say it's not true." Ravn nods and cradles his mug in long, gloved fingers. "Several emperors were the sons of slave women, and I really doubt they'd let somebody's mother being Nubian be the deciding factor there. Rome was a strange mix of feudal society and meritocracy. Assuming you were able-bodied, male, and not too poor."

He smiles a bit, noticing Una's little offer of a straw in the figurative well. Then he shakes his head. "Losing my violin annoys me, of course. It's inconvenient. But that's all it is. I didn't go travelling the world with an expensive, irreplaceable antique. So I am choosing to look at it as an opportunity to find an instrument of more personal value now that I am in fact living in one place again. I don't want something I'd feel like I should keep in a vault, but something more personalised, perhaps."

"And not a slave," Una adds in, which is a less comfortable thought, but a true one. "Not that freedmen couldn't rise in prominence, but... only to a point."

Ravn's smile is acknowledged with her more rueful one, his shake of the head drawing a slower nod of her own. "I guess that make sense," she allows. "I imagine if you had something particularly expensive and one-of-a-kind you'd probably be more cautious about taking it places, or using it as a prop in a Dream. But it's still-- I don't know. Just because something wasn't expensive, doesn't mean it wasn't important, in its way. Things gain value through familiarity, a lot of the time, and it's pretty clear," she lifts her brows, just a little, "that you do more than play 'a little'."

"I'm kind of starting to bring everything. I mean, I have this amazing ability to fold space and put a metric buttload of things into a very small bag -- what excuse do I have, for not having a first aid kit or whatever else I might need at hand? If I can get my bag with me into a Dream, I'll have most things I ever imagined needing. In this case, my violin." Ravn glances at his hands; that's a slightly uncomfortable subject, perhaps.

Then he decides to not try to dodge it; that's not how friendship works, after all, cruising past uncomfortable truths with bland platitudes. "I usually tell people I don't play much. Everybody knows how a beginner sounds on a violin -- and no one wants to volunteer to listen to it. For most of my childhood and teenage years, playing was my safe space. The one thing I got to do for myself and me alone, and it feels kind of -- private? But it's also about privilege. I had access to private tutors and teachers, good instruments. Take someone like Rosencrantz who more or less taught himself to play while subjecting every neighbour in a tenement house on the Lower East Side to his practise sessions -- it feels very privileged and arrogant to make it seem like we've the same experience. He's truly accomplished something. I've just used my privilege."

Una considers Ravn over the rim of her mug, and slowly nods in response to that first comment: it makes sense to her. It's useful. "It's a pretty impressive little trick," she agrees, in a voice not much above a murmur.

The rest, though, that leaves her silently thoughtful, studying Ravn as he explains. "It's not the same experience," is what she says, finally. "But that doesn't mean yours is lesser. Just-- different. Yes, you had privilege. That doesn't mean you didn't work hard, and it doesn't mean you can't own your own skill. It is still skill. Itzhak's is just--" She breaks off, frowning as she tries to work through what her point is. She may not even properly have one. "I mean, okay, yes. I do get your point, I think. And you're allowed to not want to perform for people; to keep it as your safe space. I just don't think you should diminish yourself just because you had privilege. Plenty of privileged kids never do learn, because they can't be fucked doing so."

"I'm not ruling out playing for people I and trust in private, some day." Ravn nods slightly. "But in general -- Rosencrantz enjoys getting on stage, hogging the spotlight, putting on a show. And he does it very well, at that. Watching him give a show is watching somebody do what they truly love. Me? I'd rather hide in the bathroom until everyone forgets I was supposed to be there. I don't like eyes on me, I don't like being judged and evaluated. I hate being compared to somebody, or seeing somebody compared to me. It's one of the reasons I love this town as much as I do -- no one here cares, and the outside world largely forgets about anyone who stays here for some time."

This is one thing that Una can absolutely understand, and it shows: her mouth twists, ruefully, and her gaze narrows. "No," she agrees. "That makes absolute sense, no question. Some people are performers; some people just play for themselves. Both are absolutely reasonable approaches, just different."

She offers a quick smile. "I'm not sorry I got to hear you, but don't worry, I have no expectations of more, no desire to push. I won't be broadcasting to the world. I like all of that about this town, too. It's nice to just be... taken as what you are, not more than that, or less. It makes life so much easier, and I don't have-- I mean, I think it benefits all of us, except, I suppose, those who want to be famous and recognisable and quote-unquote important."

"Well, there's the whole rest of the world for them." Ravn chuckles. "Go to New York or Los Angeles, or if that's too far away, go to Seattle. Nice city to visit but, with all due respect to Seattle for having spawned you and Scullins both, I wouldn't want to live there."

He nibbles on his cookie -- at this rate, it's going to take a decade to empty the platter, but at least he seems to be enjoying the one he's very slowly taking apart, and pieces of it do end up in his mouth. "I'm reminded sometimes. I remember you talking about how you feel guilty about what your ancestor did -- Asshole Irving's involvement with the systemic abuse of the indigenous population. I feel the same way every now and then. That I know I haven't done anything personally to make life harder for others, but I still represent a group of people who has and does. Maybe that's part of why I still tip toe around Black, too." He means Jules -- and he'll probably never shed that habit of referring to absent people by their last name.

"I mean, there's a reason I live here and not there," says Una, with a laugh. "Seattle's a perfectly acceptable city. I don't really have any experience of any others. But--" she shrugs. It's just a city. And now she lives here.

Ravn can keep working at his single cookie; Una will take a second, judgement free. "Jules' temper can be explosive," she agrees. "It's deeply personal for her. I can't blame her for that. It's still-- hard, sometimes. I have privilege too. White privilege, and now, the privilege of finances too. It... it's tricky. Actually. Did I mention? How we ran into another of my ancestors in the library, the other week? I looked it up, and I found her: the asshole's granddaughter. It was like we had a door into the past, just for a few minutes. She made some horrifically racist remarks, but... she listened to what Jules and Della said, and she apologised. It really made me think, I guess."

"No, you didn't. Things have been happening pretty fast over the last weeks -- if it's not us ending up in Rome it's Veil fruit turning people half crazy, and whatever else." Ravn looks up, grey eyes ablaze with interest; a door into the past will never not excite the historian, and if something can be learned that helps with retrieving those missing Quinault artefacts, all the better. "Did you learn anything useful?"

Then he nods. "I don't begrudge Jules her temper. She's got every right to be pretty perpetually pissed off. It still means I tip toe around her, though, because I've got my own issues about angry women, and I have no desire to piss her off further. I mean, even without the PTSD, why would I? I have nothing to gain from making her mad. It's difficult for me to not come across like a pretty oblivious white boy at times, though. Probably because that's what I am."

"I'm impressed that more of us didn't manage to make her flaming mad, that week when she was under the influence of the Veil fruit," Una acknowledges, her expression slightly pained. "I know probably more than I need to about how her brain works, now, and it's not as if she isn't forthright about what she thinks and feels at the best of times."

She considers her coffee, pausing for a moment, but Ravn's interest in her library experience is hard to miss-- and she's more than happy to talk about it. "I mean, she was about six years old, so there was only so much to say, but I did a little digging, and she absolutely did exist. Millicent Irving, born 1918. She said they were just moving in to the house, which was brand new, and that there used to be an old house, but it burned down long before she was born. I hope that means that the artefacts weren't burnt down with it."

She hesitates. "She walked right out of the library, right into the hallway. Her library, but our hallway. It was the weirdest thing. And then she ran back to get a book to give as, uh, 'reparations', for her rudeness, and the door closed, and... it was all gone."

"It's probably a good thing I did not speak to her while she was. All I heard her say is that she wanted to torch Brennon's greenhouse and under the given circumstances, I'm not sure I'd consider that an irrational urge." Ravn nods. "I haven't seen hair or hide of Brennon after, either -- and I worry a bit that she's gone to ground to just live off Veil fruit and questionable science. But it's her life, and I don't get to tell her what to do with it."

He glances back at the house, trying to picture, perhaps, two libraries superimposing themselves on each other. "I don't think Old Asshole would be around still if they burned. It wouldn't fit the pattern of how hauntings tend to go -- when something is burned it's 'killed'. The fact that he's still around implies that so are the artefacts -- somewhere."

Una's gaze shifts. She can't see all the way to Ava's house from her position, and certainly not the greenhouse in question, but it's hard not to imagine that that's the general direction of her glance. "I'd want to burn it down too," she admits, reluctantly. Not prone to impulsive and destructive actions, generally, Una, but this is a little different. "Maybe she's embarrassed. I would be. But it's not an excuse."

Her lips are still pressed together tightly as she turns her attention back to Ravn. "That's true," she agrees. "Which means, either they weren't there, in the house, when it burned, or they were saved. But where? I don't entirely trust weird little experiences, like the girl in the library, but if she'd been older at least she might have been more helpful. It's odd, though. It feels like... I don't know, that space and time are more permeable at the moment. Or, at least, the Veil is trying to imply that they are."

"The Veil does seem to get an idea sometimes and hang on to it for a while." Ravn's gaze follows Una's, and he too decides to say no more; the thought of 'accidentally' smashing a few glass planes has occurred to the folklorist as well, and he too has had to remind himself that that's not how it works. Just because you think you're right doesn't mean you get to dictate other people their truth -- it only means you get to refuse to support or participate in their truth.

He looks back at his neighbour. "It's almost -- it makes me think of trends. Fashion, social media, whatever. Somebody gets an idea and we're all doing the ice bucket challenge all summer. Sometimes I feel like this happens with the Veil too. Somebody over there gets an idea, and then everyone else is aping it. Right now, it seems to be historical re-enactment. Over Christmas and in the winter, it was slapstick comedy -- Zorro, remember? Heaven only knows what the next big theme will be. But there does seem to be themes."

"Trends," Una repeats, with what could almost be described as a nervous giggle. "I-- hadn't thought of it like that, but you're absolutely right. It really does make it feel a bit like we're just here for someone's entertainment. Slapstick comedies over winter, and now historical re-enactment and world travel. Next..." She shakes her head. Who is she to try and hypothesise what might come next? She'd inevitably be wrong.

"Well, it's a far sight better than the absolute doom and gloom it could be. Rome was interesting. Meeting Millie was too. If this kind of thing is the worst we're going to get for a little while? I'll absolutely take it. I'd like to be able to enjoy my summer. New traumas are not in the list of that; a bit of this, though? Fine, I can work with that."

"I'd certainly rather be doing live history or silly rom-coms than a lot of other things we've seen." Ravn smiles a bit, lopsided. "That Zorro dream was pretty funny when you look back at it. Nice touch in places -- the horse that threw Scullins, the way it managed to apply that my priestly self had just banged the entire whorehouse, and so on."

He steeples his fingers -- it looks a little silly with the half-eaten cookie still balancing on one fingertip -- and mulls on it. "I wonder if the spirit dreams are related. The ones where you were a squirrel -- and the one I was in, where we were a band of hunters ending up as the hunted. Black suggested that the evil spirits may still be around -- and I think she's right. That the evil spirits of the Quinault are if not the same as the dolorphages, then of the same nature at least. If anything, that makes me more eager to explore indigenous stories -- because we know most of what went down between the Baxters and the Addingtons, what created this big, fat tear. But we don't know much about what created such a perfect environment for their feud to become literally reality altering."

"Zorro was actually a fair amount of fun," Una acknowledges. "I think I was a little... overwhelmed, afterwards, at the time, but in retrospect? It was kind of exhilarating."

She's slower to respond to the rest, needing to take a long moment (several long moments) to work through the implications of this particular statement. "There's an uncomfortable thought," she admits, finally, with an expression that looks more than a little troubled. "But not inaccurate, I suppose. You're right; something must have happened before to create the right kind of environment. Lots of people have feuds and don't, presumably, cause this kind of difficulty. I expect we'll find out, though, won't we? Or-- if not outright, at least get more clues. I expect whatever it is, it will make Jules mad, though."

"Even without looking at the supernatural aspect, what happened here was genocide and I see no reason she shouldn't be mad about it. Particularly not given that it's still on-going -- when did the last residential schools close? Indigenous rights are a joke." Ravn nods. "And don't think Denmark isn't doing the exact same thing to the inuit in Greenland, bigotry is hardly a US only phenomenon. Any combination of POC, female, or poor makes you a second rate citizen in most countries. She's got a right to be mad -- particularly because it's still happening and no one cares."

He cants his head. "But the Hatfields and McCoys didn't somehow rip a big hole in reality by doing much the same thing that happened here. Something was different here, before the Baxters and the Addingtons. And if there is something to learned about it, I suspect it is from the Quinault."

None of this is new information to Una; none of it is especially comfortable, though, even so. "Yeah," she agrees, accepting it for what it is, though she makes a face anyway. "Of course she's mad. I'd be mad. I am mad, on her behalf. And guilty, even though I'm trying not to be; I know we've talked about that before."

She chews at her lip, then seems to change her mind and reach for another cookie instead. Conversations like this may not be great for her waistline, but sometimes a person needs the sugar content for focus. "I wonder how far back it goes. I suppose that's the real question, isn't it? Is it something that happened pre-European explorers, or are we involved in this, too, in whatever guise. I wonder what the Quinault stories have to say, if there's anything important in them, however deeply buried."

"It's a path I'm interested in pursuing at least." Ravn nods his agreement again, and puts his cookie down long enough to sip his coffee. That, at least, goes down without a hitch. "But it's also a path I think I need to not just forge ahead on all gung ho, here I come, tell me everything, like a white scholar admiring the zoo exhibit that is the Quinault Reservation. If we're going to pursue this lead, we need Black to be the one taking charge of it, so to speak. It's disrespectful otherwise."

A small smile flits across the folklorist's lips. "There are plenty other sites we can sniff at though. Gray Harbor does seem to have it very bad -- but there are other thin spots. A number of them are in locations where research can be done -- without stepping on cultural toes. My home is one, on a far smaller scale. There are other places here in the US, and in Europe, where presumably, genocide is not the possible cause. I want to look at what those reported sites might have in common, what things seem to be true everywhere."

Una's wry little laugh is not really an indication that she's amused-- it's too dark for that. "Yeah, no, that would not go down well. With Jules, or probably with most of her people. Besides, she's more likely to have the connections. Just... I hope this can be explored without her needing to play with that thing she has. I'm pretty strongly opposed to that."

By the look on her face, though, she's at least halfway resigned to this being likely.

"Oh, but see, that is interesting. I hadn't thought about the other ones, though I knew, of course, that there were some. Will the Veil let us conduct that kind of research, do you think?" Beat. "Portland's the nearest one, isn't it? I know we talked about that at one point. That wouldn't be too difficult to research."

"With the internet at our fingertips, nowhere in the US or Western Europe is really that difficult to research." Ravn smiles slightly. "We don't need to go there. We need to look at what kind of sites they are, what the story is, and what supposedly happens. We know that Gray Harbor has a tumultuous history but the big thing happened before that. So are all of these sites located in places of mass extinction? That would give us something to work with."

Una breaks off a piece of her cookie and acknowledges this with a dip of her chin. "I suppose so," she agrees. "Mind you, it might help even more to be able to talk to people from those places, and see what they think; there's bound to the stuff they know, just by living there, that we won't find in our research. But-- if these are all places of mass extinction, for instance, well, that sucks a lot. It says a lot about human nature, because there's a lot of these places, I think?"

She sets the rest of her cookie on her napkin and goes for her coffee again. "But it would also fit, of course, if that's what They feed off of."

"The problem with going there and interviewing people might be the same problem we have here," Ravn points out. "The Veil doesn't let us put anything on record, and it doesn't let word get out. Because of that, I am inclined to not start travelling around the world to do research -- because I think we might well find we're wasting our time. But there are historical facts that don't change -- that aren't edited out, or maybe we are already getting the edited version. I am pretty certain Engelsholm is not on the site of a mass extinction event -- but I'm also pretty certain that it's seen its share of human suffering because feudal Europe was brutal."

Reluctantly, Una accepts this truth. Fine, yes, okay, travel is not on the agenda (she probably didn't really believe it was or would be anyway, but _still). "Okay," she says. "Research. That's fine-- we can do this. There must have been something that happened at Engelsholm, though, because sure, feudal Europe was brutal, but I don't think all castles have thin spots... do they? Because that would be a lot. And it would be more than a lot, because I guess a lot of castles aren't there anymore, and-- well. You could argue that it would be more than just castles, too. Everywhere. One giant thin spot that covers the entire world, between one thing or another."

Ravn's smile widens a bit. "Don't they? I mean, think about it. How many stores of haunted manor houses do we have? I'm not convinced Engelsholm is special."

Una opens her mouth to argue-- and then stops. "I... hadn't thought of that," she admits, then. "Well. Fuck. I mean, ok, that makes sense. But it just... god, there really must be thin spots everywhere."

Ravn nods lightly. "More likely, there's no such thing as a place that is entirely barred off. Realities overlap. But the more of whatever the common denominator is, the more they overlap and superimpose themselves on each other. The thinner the Veil. At a guess, the common trait is human suffering -- but that is a guess, and I want to dig deeper. Because it's not just human suffering, or most of Ireland would be a thin spot due to the Potato Famine, and let's not talk about the 14th century plague that wiped out a third of the European population. There's a filter, somewhere."

Una turns her gaze away, letting it sweep over the street and the houses spaced around it, as if she's trying to conceptualise this. "Right," she agrees, finally, without having glanced back. "It sounds more like... human suffering done deliberately, though that's also a guess, and I'm not sure how well that holds up, even with Engelsholm and anywhere like that."

She does glance back, then, frowning. "It just reinforces the point about looking after each other, doesn't it? All of us. Because if it has anything to do with our actions..."

"It really does. And we do meet the 'deliberate' marker, on just about every castle or manor house in existence. All you need is one baron or lord punishing his farmers for laziness or shoddy work, entirely within the legal frame work at the time, and there we go. But that also applies to almost every European city -- think witch burnings, hanging thieves, starvation, abuse. Edwardian London should have sent that entire region screaming into the Veil. We have stories of gallows' hills and burial mounds for plague victims, of haunted castle dungeons and what have you. But it's still not enough for even a place like the Tower of London to be affected the way Gray Harbor is. Or if it is, we don't hear about it."

Ravn reaches to refill his coffee cup. "My working theory is that you need the right kind of environment -- which could be created by the indigenous genocide. Angry spirits and ghosts. Suffering, despair. But then something needs to happen, there needs to be a trigger. And I'm curious as to what that trigger is, because knowing that might give us ideas about how to fight back."

He hitches a shoulder lightly. "Or it might be a wild goose chase to keep me busy."

Picking up another piece of her cookie, Una muses over this, and finally nods. "Maybe it is a wild goose chase, sure. But it's an interesting theory. It makes sense, because something has to be that thing that changes it from just a small thing to something much, much bigger. Like here. And the other places that are like here."

It's a perplexing thought; a concerning one. She purses her lips in consideration, then pours herself some more coffee as well. "Even if nothing big comes of it, more information is never a bad thing, right? It'd be useful to just... know. Even a little. There's so much we just don't know at all."