Rachel Default

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dialogue:coe/rachel_default

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{
  "path": "dialogues/coe/rachel_default.dialogue",
  "text": "~ start\nif is_faction_task_completed\n\tRachel: *She looks up from a row of seedling trays, wiping her hands on her robe, and smiles like she means it.*\n\t\tYou're back, and the land's still standing. Tell me it went well.\n\t- I've completed the task [#complete_faction_task]\n\t\tRachel: *She takes your account in, nodding slowly, already turning it over for what's underneath it.*\n\t\t\tGood. Every small thing tended is the world coming back an inch. That's not nothing, out here.\n\t\t- Continue => repeat_questions\n\t- Just passing through\n\t\tRachel: Then go gently. The ground's trying to heal, and most boots don't care. [#end]\nelse\n\tRachel: *She's crouched in a patch of cleared dirt, pressing seeds into the soil one at a time. She doesn't stop, but she glances up.*\n\t\tI keep what grows here alive, such as it is. You need something?\n\n\t- I'm looking for work => faction_task\n\t- Why did you join? => joined_question\n\t- Why reject technology? => technology_question\n\t- What do you think of the Church? => church_question\n\t- Nothing\n\t\tRachel: Then walk easy. Take only what you need. [#end]\n=> END\n\n~ repeat_questions\nRachel: *Her hands are back in the soil.*\n\tSomething more? The work doesn't mind an audience.\n\n- I'm looking for work => faction_task\n- Why did you join? => joined_question\n- Why reject technology? => technology_question\n- What do you think of the Church? => church_question\n- That's all\n\tRachel: Then go well. Leave the place better than you found it. [#end]\n=> END\n\n~ faction_task\nRachel: *She sits back on her heels and looks out past the perimeter, where the green gives way to dead ground.*\n\tThere's always work. The desert took everything once, and it's in no hurry to give it back. We push the green a little further each season - clear what's choking the seedlings, carry water where the land's forgotten how to hold it, deal with the things that come to eat what we plant.\n- What needs doing?\n\t[#get_faction_task]\n\tif is_faction_task_accepted\n\t\tRachel: *She presses a few seeds into your palm and closes your fingers over them.*\n\t\t\tDo it like it matters, because it does. The land keeps count even when no one's watching. Bring word back to me when it's done.\n\t\t- I have other questions => repeat_questions\n\t\t- I'll see it done\n\t\t\tRachel: Go on, then. The morning's wasting. [#end]\n\telse\n\t\tRachel: When you're ready to put your hands in the dirt, come find me. [#end]\n- Not now => repeat_questions\n=> END\n\n~ technology_question\nRachel: *She huffs a short breath, almost a laugh, and gestures at the dead ground past the fence.*\n\tLook at it. The old world had machines that could do anything. Pull metal from rock, water from air, fire from a sealed box. And they built every one of them to take more than it gave back.\nRachel: *She works a clod of soil apart between her fingers.*\n\tYou can't eat a battery. You can't drink from a wire. All that cleverness, and it poisoned the wells and burned the sky and left us this. \n\t*She nods up, to where the Scar smears the horizon.* \n\tThat's not a tool. That's what happens when you reach past what the world can hold.\nRachel: We don't reject the using of things. We reject the wanting that never stops.\n\tA seed asks for sun and rain and gives back a hundredfold. \n\tStart there. Build down from there. Anything that only takes, let it rust.\n- I have more questions => repeat_questions\n- That's all\n\tRachel: Plant something today. Anything. It helps. [#end]\n=> END\n\n~ church_question\nRachel: *Her hands go still in the dirt. When she speaks it's quieter, and harder.*\n\tThey stand on the wells and call it grace. Charge the thirsty for what falls from the sky, and tell them it's a blessing they've been allowed to pay for.\nRachel: *She picks the work back up, but her movements have lost their ease.*\n\tAnd they teach that all of this - the dead ground, the bad water, the children who don't grow right - was deserved. God's judgment on a sinful world.\n\t*A muscle works in her jaw.*\n\tThe water didn't go bad because anyone sinned. It went bad because someone upstream decided their profit was worth more than what came out our taps.\nRachel: We disagree on the most basic thing there is. They think the world was meant to burn and the few were meant to be saved. \n\tWe think the world is only hurt, and can be healed, and that no one gets to decide who's worth saving.\n\t*She lets out a slow breath.*\n\tSo. Not much, is the short answer.\n- I have more questions => repeat_questions\n- That's all\n\tRachel: Drink from running water out here, not still. The Church can't bless what they can't reach. [#end]\n=> END\n\n~ joined_question\nRachel: *She's quiet for a moment, sorting seeds by feel without looking at them.*\n\tI was nine when the water turned. Whole settlement drew from the same source, and one season it started taking people. \n\tMy mother first. Slow. The kind of slow where you have time to memorize a face before it's gone.\nRachel: *She tips the sorted seeds into a pouch.*\n\tMy father couldn't carry it. He needed it to mean something, so he found people who said it did. \n\tThat the land was sick and could be tended. That what killed her had a cause, and the cause could be fought. I followed him. I was sixteen, and I believed every word.\n\t*The faintest pause.*\n\tI still do. The work is real. You put a seed in ruined ground and sometimes it lives, and that's not a lie anyone tells you. That's just true.\nRachel: *She brushes soil from her palms, brisk, like she's closing a drawer.*\n\tThe rest of it - who leads, what they ask - I don't spend my days on. Edwin sees further than I do. I keep my hands in the dirt, and let that be enough.\n- I have more questions => repeat_questions\n- That's all\n\tRachel: *She's already turned back to the seedlings.* Go on. [#end]\n=> END"
}