oh, for fox's sake | Glowfic Constellation

"Ah. Civil wars. Such lovely things."

"At least they're over fast. Some noble's knights ride around burning stuff, a few people die, a few cows get stolen, maybe one of the nobles gets his head cut off, and we all go back home in time for the harvest. Long wars are worse."

"Civil wars aren't so bad when they're short lived, yeah. Round my neck of the woods, they've got a bit of a tendency to be not short. So."

"Things get a bit rough in our neck of the woods sometimes, but we haven't had really bad fighting for a while. Just Welsh nobles fighting English nobles and Scots making loud speeches in Parliament. The Isles are one of the most civilized places in the world in that respect, methinks."

"Yeah, from what I've seen you're chill enough folks."

(Yeah right.)

Well, nobody's attacked her at all this whole week!

"I'll drink to that!"

The bartender obligingly fetches that man a refill.

"I hear they haven't have any fighting at all in Albion. Nothin' worse than the occasional bandit problem."

"But I heard they don't have cities. Just tents and mud houses."

"Maybe the neighbors having less stuff means you have less reason to go steal it?" Shrug.

"I've never heard of people having less stuff leading to less stealing. It ends up being 'hey, that guy has better mud! I should make that my mud!'"

They don't have any evidence to the contrary but they argue about it for a while anyway.

The bar continues to be a bar. Rambling conversation, drunken singing (including a couple of more bawdy songs), booze. Not a bad time.

...and it looks like her two hours are nearly up. She says a cheery goodbye to the bar patrons, and heads back to the air field.

Assuming she does in fact pay for her drink at some point, they wish her well!

The airfield folks recognize her! She can come in and wait by the 'wings. Helas isn't quite back yet - it'll be another fifteenish minutes.

One of the postal workers asks, "...You're not actually in the UDF, right? You're an independent they're hiring on for a run or two?"

"I'm probably not going to an independent for too long, but that's the sitch at the moment, yeah."

"Yeah. So, uh..." He glances around. "If there happened to be an avenue for making a little extra cash that the big-wigs would not necessarily approve of, what would you think of that?"

"Oh, I'd think that the big-wigs really didn't need to know.

And that entrepreneurial spirit should be encouraged."

"Yeah, entrepreneurial... I've got a special delivery. Nothing dangerous or anything, just a packet of documents. But the brass is so strict about 'critical military use only', it's stupid. Barely adds any weight to the 'wing, doesn't slow you down, and you're going in the right direction already, right? Back to Bristol. So, these have got to get to my buddy as soon as possible. I'd find some other witch, hire her to run them, but if you're already here, already going there... You hear me?"

"Yeah, I hear you.

Who do you want this to get to?"

"It needs to get to Mr. Albert Henson of the Westward Boat Company's prototyping division. Straight to him, ideally. They've got a big sign near the river, near the harbors in Bristol. I'll give you a few shillings now, and he can give you a few more when it gets there."

"Don't worry about it. The only people who'll know are you, me, and Albert."

She considers stuffing the packet down her shirt, but no, that's going to be too obvious. Giant skirt pockets will have to do.