Homework 1

~ start cb9b4c5a-a0cc-474d-9936-90f044d6afc3
if is_quest_accepted
	Meredith: *She doesn't look up from the filtration gauge.* [#end]
		The school. Up the hill past the ore rows, (location 30,10). Ask at the working wing while there's light in the windows.
		The book stays with me until you bring me something better than guesses.
else
	Meredith: *The donations box stands open on her bench, its contents sorted into neat piles - dented cans, candle stubs, a brass button somebody passed off as a cap.*
		*Set apart from all of it, squared to the bench edge, lies a child's school workbook.*
	Meredith: Someone left this among the offerings. Pencil work, neat as scripture. Every page dated, every error corrected in red.
		*She opens it to the last written page and turns it toward you.*
		The final date is a month from now. The hand that graded it writes like the world never ended.
	- Teachers date pages ahead sometimes
		Meredith: Teachers are seventy-seven years gone. And no living hand is this patient.
			*Her thumb stops above the red ink without touching it.*
			The ink smells fresh. I have smelled every kind of rot the old world left us. This is not that.
	- Why does it matter to you?
		Meredith: The Lord dates no letters ahead. What arrives before its time comes from somewhere outside His order.
			*She closes the workbook, careful of the pages, the way you handle a thing that might still be owned.*
			Or a person is playing at haunting my chapel box. Either way, I will know which.
	Meredith: Find the school this came from. Only one still teaches - the [Old Schoolhouse], up the hill here in Prosperity (location 30,10).
		Ask after the child. Ask after the teacher. Bring me a name I can pray for.
	Meredith: [#quest_info=3df019ba-71aa-4f5d-8e11-aaa720885fb6]
	if is_quest_accepted:
		Meredith: [quest: accepted] [#end]
			Mornings are recitation. Go while the children are in the yard - children answer before they think to lie.
			May the pure waters cleanse your path, wanderer.
	else:
		Meredith: [quest: declined] [#end]
			*She sets the workbook on the shelf above her bench, spine out, like quarantine.*
			Then it waits. It seems patient.
=> END

~ start 3dbec2ab-824b-4443-b62e-1b54f34388f3
if is_quest_accepted and are_quest_requirements_met
	Narrator: *The schoolhouse is pre-war brick, the color of old scabs, holding the hill above the ore rows. One wing has light and chalk-sound in it. The other is boarded blind.*
		*In the yard, eight children on a break that ends when a bell says so. They are playing a game with rules you don't know.*
	Narrator: *You describe the workbook. Dated ahead. Graded in red. The game stops.*
		*The smallest one answers before the others can stop her.*
	Girl: That's Red Rosie's. She does your pages if you leave them on the sill.
		But you can't ever ask her to. And you can't say thank you. Elsie said thank you.
	Boy: *An older boy pulls her back by the sleeve.* Elsie moved away, is all. Don't talk to him.
	Narrator: *The teacher of the working wing - a widow the mine pays in scrip - shoos them inside. There's no one in the boarded wing, she tells you. Rats and roof-rot. She recites it flat, like the times tables.* [#complete_quest]
		*She won't look at the boarded door while she says it.*
		*You look. Through the dead grass to the padlocked wing runs a footpath - narrow, patient, worn to bare dirt. Somebody walks it every day.*
	- There's more school here than they teach
		Narrator: [#load_quest=00c4d4a6-cd8d-4c06-96f2-a46f71fa2f46]
else
	Narrator: *Brick, chalk-sound, a bell. A working school going about a small day, and no reason for you in it.* [#end]
=> END