[At least it had been a few days since the fiasco with the fire had gone down. AJ had been spending a lot of time taking it as easy as she could handle, if only because pretending she was at her ease meant that Algidus would not get up and start trying to put her there. It meant that, though she suspected the kind of walk he was talking about would be hard for the alien, it wouldn't be as much to worry about for her.

When had worry about other people gotten wedged in the forefront of her brain? Ideally, this would have been a good time with anyone else to leave them for dead...

But she'd been asking herself questions like this for months now, it seemed like. They'd reached a comfortable, wordless understanding.]

It'll give me a chance to scrounge up some things to eat along the way, [she offered--and true to her word, once they'd hit the tree-line she began to keep an eye out. The smoke that had billowed up had left everything with a fine layer of dark grit, however... and in the end she found herself walking in Algidus' cool shadow.]

Maybe if I imagine a nice, tall, cold glass of beer it'll come true and it'll last, [she joked.] And maybe a great big watermelon. You know, in another world I would have said no fucking way to fruit a lot of the time, but out here anything that tastes like home would be the first thing I'd jump on.