[He isn't sure what "rifles" are but the rest sounds awfully familiar.]
[Branch idly fingers through the beads, not really looking now, thinking about... what?]
["We." He's thinking about the "we." About his foster parents, who wouldn't listen to him about the danger and would neither come with him nor advocate for the village to move farther from Bergentown. (Even though, in the end, he turned out to be right, the Bergens did come back.) And their acrimonous final fight, where he realized they'd never make him feel actually safe and he'd never do anything but upset them.]
[It's amicable since he rejoined village life again, but distant.]
[And he thinks about four of the best rooms that were held aside, empty. But the rare times he went into town, he never heard about his brothers passing through. So eventually those rooms became nothing special. Relegated to more storage.]
[They never came looking.]
[He filled those rooms with more supplies just like he filled his days with constant maintenance. So he could try to ignore the fact he was only surviving, not living.]
[He finally actually looks back at the beads and makes a few selections, walking them over to place them near Dan's hand and retreating again. He goes back to digging through the beads and little odds and ends, but makes it look as if he's just curious about the contents and if something might be useful.]
[It's very obviously an attempt to avoid Dan's eyes.]
Mine's a lot bigger than one room. Technically just the one level, but I burrowed out the storage rooms so I could fill them all from the elevator, so it goes down pretty deep. I live on the bottom level.
no subject
[Branch idly fingers through the beads, not really looking now, thinking about... what?]
["We." He's thinking about the "we." About his foster parents, who wouldn't listen to him about the danger and would neither come with him nor advocate for the village to move farther from Bergentown. (Even though, in the end, he turned out to be right, the Bergens did come back.) And their acrimonous final fight, where he realized they'd never make him feel actually safe and he'd never do anything but upset them.]
[It's amicable since he rejoined village life again, but distant.]
[And he thinks about four of the best rooms that were held aside, empty. But the rare times he went into town, he never heard about his brothers passing through. So eventually those rooms became nothing special. Relegated to more storage.]
[They never came looking.]
[He filled those rooms with more supplies just like he filled his days with constant maintenance. So he could try to ignore the fact he was only surviving, not living.]
[He finally actually looks back at the beads and makes a few selections, walking them over to place them near Dan's hand and retreating again. He goes back to digging through the beads and little odds and ends, but makes it look as if he's just curious about the contents and if something might be useful.]
[It's very obviously an attempt to avoid Dan's eyes.]
Mine's a lot bigger than one room. Technically just the one level, but I burrowed out the storage rooms so I could fill them all from the elevator, so it goes down pretty deep. I live on the bottom level.
["Live." Not "lived." Present tense.]