[ Julie's been back in the city for a few hours now -- she and Nadine were running perilously low on all of their basic necessities, so she cut out slightly early to go shopping for the two of them. She's coming out of a shop when Ciri calls, carrying two bags full of produce, and she looks over her shoulder to smile in greeting. ]

Hey, sug. [ While she's been back for long enough to clean up and make herself look just as presentable as she usually does, there is a certain exhaustion evident on her face and in her voice. ] Christ, what happened to you? How'd you get that cut up?

[ Julie is... concerned. Sure, filth and sweat and scrapes are to be expected while digging through the rubble, but Ciri looks like she fell down a hill. ]

Sure.

[ The concern doesn't go away, although Julie doesn't say anything else for the moment. Instead, she hands Ciri one of the bags before setting back off down the street. The crowds are thinner than normal; many people have yet to return to Libertas, and far more are keeping indoors these days, even before the sun fully sets. It's off-putting, when one is accustomed to Cadens's usual constant bustle.

They're only about a block from the Sarstina, and Julie takes a quick glance around the tavern before she heads up the stairs and opens the door into her apartment. ]

You can just put that in the kitchen. [ She says it as the various oil lamps and candles dotted around the living room magically light themselves. Opening a cabinet, she takes out a bottle of vodka while her invisible hand retrieves glasses and carries them over. ] I'll unpack it all in a bit.

[ Julie pours Ciri a second glass before she even has a chance to sit, then fetches a small box of bonbons she's hidden in the back of a cupboard. Nadine makes hard sugar sweets, but the bonbons from the confectioner are more rich and indulgent. She brings them over and sets them on the table, then pours her own glass and takes a drink. ]

Obviously. So what happened here? You look like you went through a cheese grater.

[ Chuckling, Julie takes a sip from her glass and leans back in her seat, legs crossed at the knee. The aquarium in the corner burbles pleasantly, a magically fueled fountain in the center keeping the water from becoming stagnant. The moth kits are in their hutch, which is closer to an aviary so that they can flutter around inside.

Her brow knits to hear what happened, but she keeps a placid exterior. She's been out of sorts since the Lunar Pond gala, and this is just one more thing to weigh on her that she doesn't want to show. ]

Y'all okay? If you wanna stick around for a bit, Nadine can patch you up real quick when she gets back. Shouldn't be more than an hour or so, if that.

[ Ciri is clearly not fine, and Julie knows Nadine will agree, so she lets it slide. Nadine will mother hen her into patching up all those scrapes and that limp.

That hasty addendum does not make Julie feel less inclined to freak out. "The whole fucking house came down on him" is not a sentence that can be said casually. Still, it is a somewhat more subdued freak out. ]

Um, fuckin' excuse me? How is he okay if a house fell on 'im?

[ Julie is quiet for a minute, then throws back the remainder of her vodka in a single gulp. This is just more than she can really deal with at the moment -- Dean's not dead, and that has to be enough for now. She pours herself another glass and downs half of that, too. ]

I didn't know Dean could do any magic. [ It's a dumb, detached thought, not in the least because Julie herself has only been able to do magic for a year. But she hasn't even heard of Dean attempting to learn.

The next question comes not because she has doubts about his ability, but because she needs the reassurance. ] Geralt's okay?

[ Geralt would be fine after getting hit by a Mack truck, and she's well aware of that, but she still needs to hear it. ]

Hey there, sunshine.

[ She hails for another ale, which is quickly dropped off simply because there's fewer patrons than normal. Julie's been with the search dogs for twelve hours -- she knows because they rotate every four hours, and she went through three rotations -- and while it's not the hard labor of going out in the rubble, it's still a lot of work. Particularly because she's capable of working with three dogs at once, thanks to her extra hand, and is therefore often wrangling more than large dogs than she really has the strength for.

But it's work she doesn't mind doing, which is saying something, because Julie hates work as a general rule. Especially work that's in cooperation with the government.

She watches Matt take a load off with a smile of understanding, and hums softly. ]

Can't go straight to sleep, or you'll just dream 'bout it all. It's times like these that make you miss TV more'n anythin' else. We could all use some brainless shit to zone out in front of.

[ The truth is that Julie thinks very little about the random pet names she calls people. It's mostly just whatever comes out of her mouth first. But she chuckles, considers what other nicknames people might attach to him. ]

I'd say eighty-five percent of havin' a TV wasn't about watchin' anythin'. Sure, there were some must-see shows, but it's nice to just have noise and movement to stare at while you're kinda in your own head.

[ But she gets it. ]

Either way, this is the alternative. Cheers.

If you wanna put it mildly, yeah. But... this is fuckin' awful, but you're a lawyer so you've heard worse. I guess the attack is better than some of the other shit we been through recently. Not in terms of like, who it affects, but this is somethin' we can do somethin' about, y'know? We can help Libertas, the Cities can fight back. We can't do shit about our own brains betrayin' us.

[ This is not Julie's first drink of the night, and it's something she's been thinking over anyway. It sounds so selfish and gross to say out loud, but at least they don't have to sit around, feeling helpless as they suffer.

This is why she needs TV. ]

Anyway, I been workin' with the dogs in Libertas. Takin' care of 'em, cleanin' 'em up after their shifts. It's probably takin' the easy way out, but I don't think I'd be much use out on the ground.

Oh yeah? Who?

[ Julie has to pause for a moment. She's almost positive his world is extremely close to hers, at least up until 2018 or so, and she feels like someone would have mentioned a second American civil war. ]

Um, I don't know that I'd call like, a hundred and fifty years past like it's recent. Did y'all have another Civil War? There's no way it was over slavery again, that wouldn't make sense. There ain't that many private farms left. [ Wait, there's also a bigger point. ] And this ain't a civil war. Civil war's between two groups from the same country, right? So it would hafta to be like, Cadens versus Libertas or Aquila for civil war, I think. Against Thorne's just... regular war.

[ She is fairly certain of all of this information. There is a lot of historical knowledge that she has no clue about, but Julie unfortunately comes from the kind of stock who occasionally laments "the War of Northern Aggression", despite being from what was technically a free state at the time. She doesn't claim those relatives. ]

Name doesn't ring a bell.

[ Julie, as someone with no real job and nothing better to do than hang around in taverns and see who shows up, almost certainly knows Frank by sight, but not name.

Taking a sip from her glass, she nods thoughtfully, eyebrows raised. ]

I get it. We're more used to war bein'... far away. It is weird to have it on our doorstep. Can you imagine Canada or Mexico at war with the US in our time? [ Which makes her scoff. In your dreams, Canada and Mexico. ] Anyway, I guess I'd just rather have a disaster where it feels like I can do somethin', 'stead of where it's just happenin' all around me.

Good new for him, he can join the Grumpy Asshole Outcast club we got goin' on 'round here. Heard they're goin' in on matchin' jackets.

[ For as small of a group as the Summoned are, they seem to have more than their fair share of loners, much like they have a ridiculously high number of people with naturally white hair. Just a weird quirk.

She sighs and sets her glass down. Yeah, that sounds about right. ]

Probably. I don't know how they plan to force us, but they didn't bring us here for shits and giggles.