#i just bounce around little details like this in my head like a windows screensaver

[mirage-of-the-virtuoso]

"Again."

The blue sapling lunged at the violet mesmer, who deflected the sword attack with their scepter, clones appearing out of thin air. In response, the trainee formed a phantasm of his own, then disappears into a cloud of smoke. As the mentor's clones looked wildly for their target, the trainee leapt out of the shadows and struck the other sylvari, only to once again be deflected.

Being spotted, the blue sylvari teleported backwards and swapped weapons, from a sword and torch to a staff. The skill difference was noticeable the moment he swapped sets.

More and more of the trainee's clones appeared, shattering just as fast. The sapling got close, appearing as one of the clones before casting a chaotic storm and leaping backwards, a similar purple aura swirling around him. Before long, more clones appeared once the phantasms expired. It didn't help that there was an occasional sharp pain from a mantra sent their way. A quick pinch to throw them off-rhythm.

Too bad it doesn't quite work on them.

The trainee was distracted by a clone coming for him, practically demanding his attention. A quick close-range shatter or two, and the trainee was gasping for breath on the ground.

"Again."

The blue sapling cast a healing signet, blinking away to the edge of the ring and casting more clones before swapping back to his sword and torch, leaping forward for a flurry sword strike. Once again disappearing into the air, the violet mentor cast one of their phantasms to again distract the sapling. The sword mesmer leapt out from the side and shattered his clones, a crystalline shield preventing him from harm for just a second or two. A second is a lot of time in battle.

Two more clones appeared from the blue sylvari, and all three sprinted towards the mesmer mentor.

Having had enough of this, the mentor used a shatter skill, dazing the trainee so much that he dropped to the ground.

It's now that the mentor notices the flowers in the blue sylvari's white leaves.

"That's-"

"Again."

The mentor caught him by the wrist when he swings, twisting it behind his back and pinning him to the floor.

"That's enough, Chrysallus. You need a break," the mentor firmly stated.

The sapling, Chrysallus, struggled to get free. "I can- I can get this, Auri!" he grunted, fighting to stand. "One. More. Time."

Auri, the mentor, sighs. "You're obsessing again, Chrys. This perfectionism of yours is getting out of hand. No one learns everything in a few days."

"I can learn this!"

"You will wear yourself out first, then where would you be? This would get you killed in a fight."

Chrys finally stops struggling. He loathes giving in, but he didn't have any more energy to keep fighting.

Auri lets him go. "We'll call it a draw-"

"Don't pity me, I lost."

"I'm not pitying you, I'm acknowledging your progress," the violet sylvari huffs. "Stop shooting down praise that's rightly earned, you will not get anywhere being difficult like that."

Chrys sheathes his weapons, still looking irritable. Auri approaches and embraces him from behind. "Why don't we go into the Garden of Dawn? Unwind for a little while? Treat the bruises?"

After a moment of silence, Chrys pulls away and tugs them by the sleeve of their shirt. He never was particularly verbal when frustrated.

They link arms with him and lead the difficult sylvari away from the training ground, over by a small pool. Both of them dive in and swim to the other side, being met with a brightly lit space paved with smooth rocks and a small waterfall at the end. They sat down in front of it, and Auri wasted no time meticulously untangling some flowers from Chrys's hair.

"Aurienal." Hearing their name, they made a hum in response. "Do you know of any other sylvari like me?"

"Like you?"

"These damn flowers. Pesky little things always being an inconvenience."

"Well, you refuse to take breaks when you need to, these 'pesky flowers' make it easier to give you that time," they reply. "A strange little quirk, but it's benign, for the moment."

"Hmph."

Once the flowers are picked out, his mentor pulls him back to relax against them. "So, your body has a visual cue. If you had continued as you had, you likely would have forced yourself to collapse."

"I would have been fine!"

"I'd have to drag you to a mender on principle." That response earned a growl. "Don't growl at me, kitty cat. You're the one being difficult."

"I am not a damn cat."

"No, but you share a lot of similarities with them!" Hearing Auri laugh, Chrys just huffs in annoyance.

"You're lucky I tolerate your pet names. But I don't want you using them in front of others."

They rest their forehead on Chrys's head, feeling him relax a little. "Not one word. But I reserve the right to call you 'kitty cat' when you're being difficult."

"Oh shut it, I'm not doing it on purpose."

Auri helps him settle, noting his yawn from exhaustion. "I know. Now get some rest. We'll get some food once you've recovered more of your strength, my treat."

[hiccanna-tidbits]

HICCANNA MONTH WEEK 3, DAY 5 - SCI-FI AU BLADE RUNNER

Next up for Hiccanna Month: Another fic idea that’s been bouncing around in my head like a Windows screensaver since 2015! GOD, I remember watching Blade Runner for the first time alone in my dorm room my freshman year, and just getting OBSESSED--and, of course, the first thing my brain does is start building an overly-detailed Hiccanna/RotBTFD AU longfic that I’ll never have time to write XD Idk, maybe someday???

WELL ANYWAYS. Figured y’all deserved to see the base concept that I get super obsessed with every now and again, even if I never do anything with it XD I’ve read the book the movie’s based off of, too, so some concepts from the book found their way in here as well. I also rewatched the movie for this, and lemme tell you, that shit holds up--like every other cyberpunk dystopia deadass wishes they could be Blade Runner (1982). How they did all those flying cars and futuristic buildings and shit with practical effects and mini-sets is beyond me.

Fic summary under the cut! As always, moodboard pic credits available upon request!

***

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III was one of the best Blade Runners in Los Angeles back in the day. Not like he had much choice in his career; he comes from a long line of proud android hunters--strong, ruthless men who will do anything necessary to protect humanity from its own rogue AI creations. Hiccup trained to “retire” replicants since childhood--and with excellent tracking skills, sharp intellect, and ruthless pragmatism, he was very good at his job.

Natural talent or not, blade running wasn’t a job that Hiccup could stomach forever. Eventually the brutality took a toll--it became more and more of a weight to bear, killing beings who looked just a little too human. Hiccup decides to retire early (much to the chagrin of his late father, he’s sure), turning in his pistols and retreating to his high-rise apartment. The perks of a such a dangerous and taxing job were that it didn’t pay half bad, and Hiccup has plenty to support himself for a while. And that’s all that’s really needed--no wife, no girlfriend, no roommates, only one real friend.

Despite his success in his career, Hiccup is a lonely man. He’s never particularly connected with his coworkers, not finding much joy or satisfaction in retiring replicants. The women he tries his luck often as not find him too awkward or sulky or sarcastic--hardly the charming man with a vibrant life that many seek.

Hiccup’s best and only friend is an electric black cat, found in an alleyway after work one day and lured into his building with canned tuna and freeze-dried salmon. He doesn’t know the precise story behind the abandoned cat, but what he’s able to semi-confidently piece together (he is a detective, after all) is that the artificial cat was an attempted scam--pawned off as real, as so many high-quality, convincing electric animals are. Real animals are a rarity, most having died off as the world became choked with trash and pollution that apparently only the human animal could consistently stomach.

The cat could certainly pass as real--at first glance, anyways. In fact, Hiccup is initially shocked, wondering how he stumbled on a real flesh-and-blood feline in a city where practically everything else is artificial. When he gives the loud-meowing cat some dinner, though, he notices the teeth seem to slide in and out of the creature’s jaw as he eats in a way no organic cat’s would. Hiccup suspects this is what gave him away as a fake to whoever adopted him--and whoever must have thrown him out in the street.

Nevertheless, Hiccup knows what it is to be rejected. To be ostracized and excluded because you’re not what people want you to be. And someone needs to fix “Toothless”’s broken tail--which, upon closer inspection, is sparking every so often, too. Certainly a fire hazard if left to wander about the city.

Hiccup’s retirement is going rather well when things get upended. Toothless is good company, Hiccup can afford the nicest games and streaming services money can buy, and he even has time to indulge in a hobby he was always too busy for--tinkering with and fixing broken machinery.

Then one day, over his regular lunch of shrimp-and-beef ramen, his old boss shows up and says he’s needed for one last job.

Hiccup won’t hear of it. He’s done with killing and hurting and destroying things, no matter how much society would have him think it’s not “real” life. It turns out, however, that Hiccup’s boss isn’t letting go of his best Blade Runner so easily.

“Your cat,” he says. “Organic or electric?”

“Electric.”

Hiccup sees no reason to lie. If he claimed Toothless was organic and word got out, everyone and their mother would be trying to steal him.

“So his software is hooked into the Cloud, just like every other electric animal in the city. Their brains were built to share a network.”

Hiccup freezes.

“What I’m saying, Haddock, is that certain...city officials have access to the animal neurological networks in the Cloud. Sure would be a shame if Toothless’ got damaged...or shut down completely.”

And so Hiccup is on the case. There are four replicants total who must be retired, all rogues who got loose on a ship bound for Earth, killed all the human passengers, and hijacked the controls.

“Jack Frost,” the supposed leader, is tough-as-nails combat model built to withstand subzero temperatures and be far more flexible and agile than any human could hope to be. He’s wily and charismatic, as likely to try manipulating or sweet-talking you as shooting you.

“Merida,” another combat model, is the brawn of the group. Aggressive and ruthless, she’s not the sort to back out of a fight until her opponent is beyond dead.

“Rapunzel” has appropriately long blonde hair to match the fairy tale moniker, though she usually keeps it braided back and out of the way. She’s a standard pleasure bot, not an uncommon sight at exoplanet military outposts, but rumor has it she is not to be underestimated, and she’s not as soft as she looks.

“Anna” is another combat bot, although she’s not noted as being brutal like Merida or cunning like Jack. She is, according to her profile under her spinning head on the hologram screen, fairly average in every way.

Nonetheless, Hiccup can’t take his eyes off her. There’s an intriguing--almost playful--glint in her holographic eyes that draws him in.

He manages to track Anna down to a seedy part of town, finding out that she’s been forced to work as an “exotic dancer” of sorts to lay low while still paying the bills. He meets her backstage, claiming he needs to run a “safety inspection” on the premises, but it only takes a short conversation for Anna to see right through his cover. She attacks with superhuman strength, throwing him hard against a wall and making a run for it while the wind is knocked out of him.

Hiccup gives chase through grungy, neon-lit streets, nearly losing her among the raincoats and umbrellas of thick crowds a number of times. He finally corners her near a backalley, out-of-the-way clothing store, in a place where there are no cars or people or power boxes to hide behind. She dives through a display window, the effort of breaking glass slowing her down, and at last Hiccup has his chance.

Something stops him from pulling the trigger.

She turns and looks at him the second before he shoots, and her eyes are filled with blazing, palpable fear. The fear of a clearly sentient creature. Not so different from the fear Hiccup saw in Toothless’ eyes when he first met him, back when Hiccup was just another in a vast world of humans that only wanted to hurt him.

He lowers his gun, and watches as Anna scrambles into the darkness of the closed shop and out of sight. He starts home, feeling sick.

He knows he’ll have to kill her eventually...but not tonight. Not tonight.

He’s almost to his car when a cold, steely grip closes around his arm, yanking him into an alleyway. In the bright neon glow from the adjacent street, he recognizes the round face and tied-back head full of red curls immediately--Merida, the most vicious of the rogue replicants. She saw him shooting at Anna, her comrade and friend, and now he is deeply fucked.

It’s not much of a fight. Within seconds, Merida gains the upper hand--and is, to put it delicately, beating the ever-loving shit out of him. Hiccup makes his peace with the gods, recognizing that tragically, this is indeed an occupational hazard of being a Blade Runner.

She’s just about to land the killing blow when someone intervenes.

Shaken and battered, Hiccup gets to his feet. He leans against a wall, watching a blur of red and orange hair as he gets his breath back.

His rescuer, he realizes, is Anna.

Merida is hard to subdue, blinded by rage and lashing out wildly in her efforts to get back to Hiccup. Anna pleads for her to stop, trying to explain that Hiccup let her go--that he’s not worth killing if he could help them.

Hiccup realizes with a start that she must really believe that. Why else would she save his life?

Finally, the realization that Anna is alive and well--and not bleeding out from a gunshot wound outside some dingy shop--seems to sink in for Merida. She calms down and takes a step back, eyeing Hiccup with distaste.

“He’d better be useful,” she hisses. “Imagine of he really had killed yeh, huh? That’s jest what his lot do.”

She spits on Hiccup before stalking off.

After Merida leaves, Anna admits she followed Hiccup, wanting to know why a Blade Runner spared her. After a rather tense conversation--including but not limited to Anna painfully shoving Hiccup against a wall and conducting an impromptu interrogation--Hiccup admits the truth: He had to take the job to retire her and her friends because someone he loved would be in danger if he didn’t. Someone mechanical.

With a little more prodding, Hiccup admits that the people he used to work for threatened to deactivate Toothless if he didn’t dispose of the four rogue replicants “terrorizing the city.” Anna muses--half to herself--that she may be able to help. No one better to understand an artificial life form than another artificial life form, after all. And Anna has been to dozens of planets in all different types of spacecrafts and interfaced with hundreds of other AIs--if anyone understands AI coding and tampering, it’s her.

Besides, she saved his life. Him, a bounty hunter who got paid for killing beings like her. That has to count for something.

Before they know it, the two are forming a tentative alliance. Anna offers to take a look at Toothless’ software and try to figure out how to disconnect him from the cloud, thus cutting off any outside access to his neural circuits. In return, Hiccup will give her and her friends protection, ceasing his hunt for them for the time being and keeping their locations a secret from other Blade Runners.

With nowhere else for her to really go, Hiccup reluctantly tells Anna she can stay in the spare room of his apartment--only because she might be the only one who can potentially save Toothless, of course. That’s the only reason it’s worth the dangers. Hiccup supposes it’s just as well--easiest to keep her safe (so she can still be around to decode and free his cat) by keeping her close. Emotions can’t factor into this when replicants have none--not like humans do, anyway. Right?

It turns out Hiccup can’t stay nearly as detached as he hoped. The more Anna tries to figure Toothless out--muttering about his wires and his circuit board and his signals as she tinkers with the squirming feline--the more Hiccup tries to figure Anna out. She’s fascinated by the humans on earth--their food, their culture, their art. Their reverence for the biological and their utter disdain for the artificial. He often finds her asking for bites of his food (despite not needing to eat), or watching cars and ships pass out of his high-rise windows. She begs to tag along when he goes undercover in dingy parts of town, fascinated by the bustle of the crowds and the crammed markets with their shouting vendors and ever-flashing neon signs.

Protecting replicants, however, isn’t without its dangers—as Hiccup well suspected. His employers are becoming suspicious of his skills having grown so “rusty” that he misses every shot and he often just “can’t track the bastards down.” But as he grows closer to Anna and meets the rest of her friends, he realizes everything he’s been taught about replicants couldn’t be more wrong. 

They’re intelligent, and they can be kind, emotional, loving, good. Their brains and souls are just as “real” as any human’s. All they want is what anyone wants—to not be treated as lesser for things they can’t help.

As Hiccup’s bond with Anna grows, she opens up to him about the horrors she’s faced. Bloody battles on distant planets. The death of her “sister” Elsa, a replicant made in the same factory as her who was the first living being she ever met. From the same line of Nexus models as Jack, Elsa was built to withstand frigid subzero temperatures...but it wasn’t enough to protect her from being slaughtered by a hoard of newer, even more cold-tolerant models.

Together with the four replicants he’s supposed to be hunting, Hiccup eventually uncovers a horrifying truth--all replicants are programmed to shut down permanently after 4 years. A self-destruct “failsafe” put in because humans were scared of their creations growing and developing in ways they couldn’t predict. Becoming a little too self-aware, and realizing how sick they are of living as second-class citizens. Before he knows it, Hiccup finds himself on a mission more perilous than ever: Find out how to override the programming sending his new friends toward an early doom, all while dodging the wrath of employers who will no doubt think poorly of him for fraternizing with the enemy, to say the least.

And the fact that he’s falling in love with his bounty isn’t going to make things any easier.

[paging-possum]

hi ive been seeing you post about cape kids a lot, and i was wondering what that was? ocs? fandom? you're art is awesome by the way!

you have no idea how excited this ask makes me because as you have deduced i have been thinking about them NONSTOP. CAPE is a ttrpg campaign im in with some friends! The premise is that there’s this organization called CAPE (the original acronym has been lost to time), which is like the police for metahumans (people with superpowers), and they have a trainee program which our PC’s are all a part of (for varying reasons). Said PC’s are:

- Leo Luo: MY LITTLE GUY! She’s part of CAPE because she committed arson, almost died, and had the option to go to court or be on CAPE probation. She has a heightened body temperature, which gives her heat resistance, and she’s also the most repressed lesbian ever and a major STEM kid

- Markus Kane: this man is 6’9, anxious as hell and studies magic! He has a magic snake familiar (named Linguine), and is the only person on our team to like, fully voluntarily join CAPE (though he regrets it). Notably from Kentucky, and the only American PC, since the campaign is set in Ireland. Leo’s bestie because he said so.

- Kyra Kim: She’s a healer! Kyra is an aspiring journalist, and was put on CAPE probation after she got caught using her powers to save Leo from the aforementioned burning building where Leo almost died (they hate each other intensely in an enemies to lovers kinda way). they also do taekwondo!

- Noemi Santolin: twitch streamer and girl gamer 💖 she’s able to manipulate light, which she uses for social media reasons, however, she got caught by her parents using said powers and had the option to join CAPE willingly or be turned in and put on probation, so even though they aren’t probationary, they still aren’t there entirely by choice

- Roya Stallard: previously did vigilante work with Karma, her old mentor, but got put on CAPE probation when she was caught. They can breathe underwater, but prefer hand to hand combat, and is one of the two members of our team who could actually survive a fight

There’s also a whole bunch of NPC’s who range from mentors to friends to more enemies than the average teen should have. We usually do little CAPE missions, try to puzzle out lore, and generally are menaces both in and out of character (they’re all between the ages of 16-18 so there IS teen drama. leo and kyra did pvp one time) and it’s basically very fun and these teens have been bouncing around my head like a windows screensaver for weeks now. I’m planning to post more art of them at some point, since it’s basically all i’m drawing aside from finishing egwene animatic 2, but there is markus fic out there if you’re interested. Thank you sm for asking and letting me ramble about these guys though! this is obviously a very simplified version of like…everything (going into full detail would take too much time, and i would feel weird just deep diving into the entire comprehensive lore on my public tumblr without like…permission), but hopefully it’s still been an informative post about the teens who i have been posting about incessantly :]

[hellizens-a]

What kind of relationship do Boo and Husk have? Has it changed much from when they were alive to now that they're in hell? Does it change when they find out?

My thoughts are questions and "oooooh" and maybe an owo face bouncing around like a windows screensaver :V and a little half formed idea about Boo and Husk going to a cafe after they find out, trying to have a "normal" father/daughter day out (and maybe failing, though I'm imagining it in a "that's okay, our relationship can be whatever it is" way), but idk what that'd look like yet or if either of them would have any interest in attempting to have a "normal" father/daughter relationship. Maybe they can have a healthier relationship than what much of society considers normal, with Husk recognizing she's a fully grown adult and that he only rarely needs to be her dad because she's got this. Or maybe she wants him to be her dad more, maybe they want to make up for lost time, or maybe there was no time lost at all. :VVVV This is just a longer way of asking the questions I wrote at the top though, plus "maybe... cafe daddy/daughter date?? Purrhaps........"

OKAY NOW IVE THOUGHT OF AL DOING CAT PUNS CONSTANTLY TOO

Feel free to cut out any of that in your answer, this is longggg

I'm gonna legit answer this ask as an ask because I'm tired and don't wanna mess up your formatting.

BUT HOLY SHIT WHAT AN ASK.

So, when they were alive, Husk never even knew he HAD a daughter. Perhaps it was a one night stand that ended in an oopsie on her mother's part. Perhaps it was a girlfriend or even a wife that he left, or maybe she left him first for whatever reason. Either way, he never found out, and she never met him in life.

That said...my friend @hazbinbargainbin and I did delve into how they find out - but it was for our Silent Hill AU that kinda flopped? No one in my group's said anything about it for a while. I can tell you what was said though! The plan was for them to find out when one of the monsters they ended up fighting was revealed to be Husk's ex and Boo's mother at the same time. They both recognized the monster as such, and then they realized that they were indeed related.

Until that discovery was made, though, they actually got along pretty well! Boo was actually one of the people to head back to the hotel in that AU and rescue Husk. After that they were the ones to sort of make plans for scavenging and actually going out to scavenge. They were always on the same page and they'd often compliment each other and make playful jabs in each other's direction. It's a great dynamic.

Moving on from discovery though. Boo never had a true father figure in her life. Hell she barely had a mother figure, given how hers was always sick and in bed for one reason or another. She had a step-father, of course, but that Did Not Go Well. I haven't gone into detail about it yet, but as I use her more - and by God I plan to now - it'll eventually come out into the open.

So, for her to find out that Husk is her father...yes, she's an adult, but she would still want him to be a father for her. They would definitely need to make up for lost time, because they never had time to begin with!

This is a longer way of saying...yes. Café daddy/daughter date. I would 100% write that.

And Alastor would think it was the cat's pajamas.

[rhetoricalrogue]

WiP Whenever

@genginger tagged me in a WiP Wednesday post, thank you!

More stuff from the Stardew Valley thing (Part one here) that's bouncing around my head like an old school Windows screensaver:

Morning sun filtering through pretty lace curtains instead of a harsh alarm woke Sophie up for the first time in forever. Her first night in the farmhouse was a quiet one: most of her belongings had been delivered during the week and while they were still mostly in boxes, Robin had taken it upon herself to assemble the bed and arrange the bedroom furniture. The curtains were a gift from someone named Emily, and the pretty sculpted vase holding a batch of wildflowers were from a Leah, who, the note that accompanied the gift stated, was one of her closer neighbors south near the forest.

Stretching, Sophie made her way out of bed and towards the kitchen. Her new neighbors had been considerate: the fridge was stocked with a handful of staples to get her through the first week and the pantry shelves had been filled with more. Upon opening the freezer, she saw that Gus, the proprietor of the Stardrop Saloon, had loaded her up with foil pans of lasagna and casseroles to the point where she wouldn’t have to cook for some time.

Still, the kitchen had been the first room that she had unpacked, empty boxes cluttering the living room as dishes were put in cupboards, pots and pans neatly organized alongside the handful of gadgets she hadn’t had the heart to try to sell before moving. She’d spoken with Robin in the design and added a built-in bookshelf for her beloved vintage cookbooks. Grandpa had left her multiple notebooks full of recipes for canning and preserving, and she’d created a space of honor for them to sit at easy reach. Humming to herself, Sophie continued with the leisurely pace of the morning. It wasn’t long before the scent of freshly brewed coffee filled the air and the sound of bacon sizzling on the stovetop mingled with the music on the radio perched out of the way on the countertop.

“Okay, breakfast cooked. Now what next?” Tapping her pen to her lip, Sophie regarded the blank notepad in front of her as she ate at the little round dining table she’d rescued from a flea market in the city. Lists and goals had served her well in her former life and it was a habit she wasn’t going to let go of any time soon. Linus had been at her doorstep to greet her, a packet of seeds as his welcome gift.

Here’s to the start of your farming career! He’d joked. And high hopes that we’ll see the same quality produce come out of here that your granddad used to sell!

“Write thank you letters, visit the neighbors, learn how to plant parsnips,” she muttered, sipping her coffee as she wrote her objectives down. Grandpa had written entire chapters on various crops, giving Spring, Summer, and Fall crops their own individual notebooks with detailed anecdotes and troubleshooting advice.

Well, here we are, Sophie Girl. Your first spring planting season. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve stopped caring for the property, but I’m betting you’re going to have your hands busy before long. Don’t worry, kiddo, it looks a lot worse than it really is. You keep your tools in good condition and your tools will reward you by making any job easier than it would have been without ‘em. First things first though: you gotta plan out your garden. You’re going to want to plant everything you possibly can, but pace yourself! You’re only one person armed with a watering can (hint: flip to the back of this book and see my usual layout. Don’t know the condition of the irrigation system, but hopefully you don’t have to do too many repairs) so you don’t want to bite off more than you can chew. Focus on just a few plant varieties, see what works for you, and slowly expand from there.

The soil’s good, I swear. Unfortunately, this land is as stubborn as I am, but guess what? Stubbornness runs in the family – you can be obstinate right back at the ground, show it who’s boss. And just like us, once you crack that hard exterior, you’re going to find some softness that’s perfect for growing whatever you want. Just got to take a shovel, maybe do some cussing, to it first.

“Glad I don’t have a swear jar handy, Grandpa,” she laughed, rising from the table to wash her dishes and set them to dry in the rack by the sink. A quick change of clothes into a well-worn pair of jeans and a tank top later, Sophie pulled her long hair into a ponytail and marched down the front porch stairs towards the little toolshed Robin had rebuilt against the side of the house.

Hand gripping the handle of the pickaxe, she surveyed the overgrown and rock-filled yard in front of her, mentally deciding where to put her very first garden plot. “Well,” she said, swinging the tool and grunting as it cracked a large rock into smaller, easily cartable pieces. “Here goes nothing.”