Edwin Default

~ start
Edwin: *An old man rests in a garden that should not be able to grow in country this hard, and yet it does - heavy with fruit, humming with bees. He looks frail enough that a strong wind might take him. He is watching you the way a patient thing watches.*
	Come in out of that sun. Sit. You've walked a long way to reach an old man's garden, and a long walk earns a little shade and a kind word, at the least.
Edwin: *He pats the bench beside him with a soft, spotted hand.*
	They call me Edwin. I tend this place, and the souls who find their way to it. And you - you have the look of someone still deciding what they're looking for. That's no shame. Most never decide at all. 
	Ask me whatever sits heavy on you.

- What is this place? => rancho_question
- How did the Children of Eve begin? => origin_question
- What happens to those who leave? => leaving_question
- What do you make of the Institute? => institute_question
- Nothing for now
	Edwin: Then simply rest a while. Not everything has to be a transaction. The old world thought it did. Look where that got it. [#end]
=> END

~ repeat_questions
Edwin: *He turns his face to you, unhurried, the smile never far.*
	Sit a while longer. An old man has nothing but time, and time is the only honest wealth there is. What else?

- What is this place? => rancho_question
- How did the Children of Eve begin? => origin_question
- What happens to those who leave? => leaving_question
- What do you make of the Institute? => institute_question
- That's all
	Edwin: Go gently, then. And remember - the gate is open. It is always open, for those who belong. [#end]
=> END

~ rancho_question
Edwin: *He runs his thumb over the flowers carved into his stick, fond, as if remembering each one.*
	Dead Horse. Do you know how it earned the name? Long before the bombs, before any of us. Riders would drive wild mustangs out onto the point, where the cliffs make a natural pen, and they would cull the ones worth keeping and leave the rest corralled behind a fence of brush. 
	The river ran a thousand feet below, close enough to smell. And there the unwanted horses stood, in sight of all that water, and died of thirst.
Edwin: *He lets that settle, watching your face take it in.*
	Men named the whole country after that small cruelty. And that was the old world entire, child - to stand in sight of plenty and perish anyway, because someone had decided you were not worth the keeping. 
	So when we found this ground, we took the name on purpose. As a reminder. And then we did the one thing those riders never thought to do.
Edwin: *He spreads a thin hand at the green.*
	We dug. We carried water up from below, jar by jar, year by year, until the dead place forgot it was dead. 
	Now it feeds everyone who reaches it. That is what this place is. Proof. Proof that nothing is so ruined it cannot be brought back - not land, not a people, not a single soul.
	*The gentle smile.* 
	Provided, of course, it is willing to be brought.
- I have more questions => repeat_questions
- That's all
	Edwin: Walk the rows before you go. The tomatoes especially. They forgive the soil everything. [#end]
=> END

~ origin_question
Edwin: *He settles back, and his voice takes on the cadence of a thing told many times and loved each time.*
	In the first years after, people were mad with grief. Whole settlements of them, wandering, certain the world had ended. And it had. But here is the secret the grief hid from them, the secret a few of us were quiet enough to hear. 
	The world that ended deserved to. It was a machine for turning living things into numbers, and it had finally fed itself to death.
Edwin: *He taps the earth with the foot of his stick.*
	A handful of us looked at the ash and did not see an ending. We saw a field after a burn. You know what comes after a burn, child? The richest growth there is. The fire takes the old, choking tangle and gives the small green things their chance at last. 
Edwin: The bombs were not God's judgment, as the Church will tell you, nor a senseless accident, as the Institute would have it. They were a mercy. A terrible, necessary mercy. The earth exhaling at last, after holding its breath for a hundred years.
	So we gathered the grieving, and we gave them the one thing the old world never did. Not bread - bread runs out. We gave them a reason. A way to belong to something larger than their own small fear. 
	*He smiles, almost shy.* 
	People will walk a very long way, and carry a very great deal, for the privilege of belonging. That was the whole of our genius. We simply remembered that.
- I have more questions => repeat_questions
- That's all
	Edwin: It is a good story, is it not? The best ones are always partly true. [#end]
=> END

~ leaving_question
Edwin: *Something in him goes very still. Not alarm - attention, sudden and total, the way a heron goes still over water. The frail old man is, for just a moment, somewhere far underneath that.*
	Leave. 
	*He turns the word over as though it were an unfamiliar seed.* 
	You would be surprised how seldom anyone wants to, once they've truly arrived. Out there it is all thirst and teeth and men with ledgers deciding what you're worth. 
	In here a person is simply held. Why would they walk back into the cold?
Edwin: *The stillness eases. The smile returns, gentle as ever, and somehow that is worse.*
	But the world is wide, and some souls are made to wander. I would never cage a wandering soul. Now and then one feels the road again, and we send them off with seeds in their pockets and our blessing on their backs. Where they go after, I confess I lose track. An old man's memory is a sieve.
Edwin: The ones who stay, though - they go on tending, long after the body tires. We say they have gone to garden somewhere quieter. It's a comfort, that. 
	To know there is always more garden than there are hands. 
	*A pause. The patient eyes settle on you, mild and bottomless.* 
	Why do you ask, child? It's an odd thing to carry into a place like this. Did someone send you wondering?
- I have more questions => repeat_questions
- That's all
	Edwin: Put it from your mind. You're safe here. Safest you've been in a long while, I'd wager. [#end]
=> END

~ institute_question
Edwin: *He chuckles, soft and genuine, with what seems like real affection.*
	Oh, I have a great fondness for the Institute. Truly. They are the only ones out here still trying to think, and thinking is a rare and precious habit. 
	I'd never speak ill of them. But I do grieve for them a little.
Edwin: *He lifts his stick and points it, not quite steadily, up toward the smear of the Scar.*
	They spend their whole lives staring up at that wound in the sky. Measuring it. Naming its parts. Certain that if they only gather data enough, the universe will hand over its secret and everything will make sense again. 
	And all the while - *he lowers the stick and touches its tip to the dirt* - the answer is down here. 
	In six inches of living soil that can turn a dead seed into bread. They are looking in precisely the wrong direction, and so very sure of themselves while they do it.
Edwin:*The kind smile, with that distant cold a long way behind it.*
	And certainty, child, is a curious thing. A man certain he is looking the right way never thinks to check who is standing beside him, or what they might be quietly planting at his feet. 
	The Institute guards its doors against raiders and rivals. It does not think to guard against a friendly old man bearing seeds and good wishes. 
	*He spreads his hands, all innocence.* 
	Not that it would ever need to. We are gardeners. What harm is there in a gardener?
- I have more questions => repeat_questions
- That's all
	Edwin: If you pass their way, give them my warm regards. They'll know the name. [#end]
=> END