saltburnt | inbox

[aldhani]

WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

USERNAME: andor

text ❖ audio ❖ video

Comments

[aldhani]

The network's different than anything we know, so I don't know what broke it or how to reverse it.

[as helpful as this is happy!]

Where I was before, it stopped after a few days.

[snaggleteeth]

I'll take that reassurance.

How are you, by the way? I've learned about Christmas and magically-assisted proto capitalism. Weather was shit, though.

[aldhani]

[for whatever that reassurance is. it's all any of them can take, really.]

The weather has been shit. Not my favorite.

[which is as close to i've been having a nervous breakdown about it that this man will ever say.]

You've been earning coins at the market?

[snaggleteeth]

[:(]

I know tone gets lost over type, but you could try a little harder.

Koby gave me some. I earned a few, cooking. You could do it. Nothing like a hot stove to put the feeling back in your face. And community's good camoflage.

[aldhani]

[no ❤️]

Or community is community. It helps to know people, especially in a strange place.

[and who's to say he hasn't been earning his own coins, thank you very much]

But it sounds like you're on your way to that.

[snaggleteeth]

Fair enough. I've enjoyed getting to know people in this strange place.

Do yours make the weather easier to bear? I do remember what happened to you, in the place before this one.

[freezing is a bad way to go. not as painful as starving, but the stranger decidedly has no interest in experiencing either.]

[aldhani]

It wasn't easy, especially when the rooms were locked from the outside. That was in some ways like before. But it did help to know that I wasn't alone.

[even if he'd spent most of his time locked in there wanting to throttle alec — it'd been nice to know that he was safe.]

[snaggleteeth]

Want to say I would've rather been alone, but I'd probably be wrong.

[boxed in with a serial killer is a weird vibe. for ... a spree killer from space.]

Did you know them already? The ones you were locked in with?

[aldhani]

Some better than others, and some I only just met.

[and only one, really, had been the problem.]

Was yours that bad?

[snaggleteeth]

I don't remember eighteen-year-old humans being a blight on our galaxy, but the ones from Earth are something else.

[and profoundly strange the boy was younger than his granddaughter—the stranger's jump-off. but he's got better manners than to say.]

Did you trust them? The ones that weren't Max.

[aldhani]

[this actually gets a laugh out of him.]

I don't know about that. Eighteen year old humans in our galaxy did damage, too. It's a busy age.

[jezzi, maybe, would still be alive to attest to some of the things he'd gotten up to around that time; it's a thought that tempers the laugh, seals it right back up where it'd come from.

anyway:]

I trusted them. It could've been a worse group.

[it also could've been better, but]

[snaggleteeth]

You're very lucky for an unlucky man.

Not less busy, now you are however old you are, it seems.