Saburov:
The preserves in the tea wasn’t something he expected when she’d offered. He’d expected a plain biscuit as a vessel for the sweet. But the tea is good, and the strawberry added a pleasant spot of sweet and tart to the drink, so he doesn’t complain, and instead notes the combination for later use.
Yulia quickly deduces the other offers he meant to give after her acceptance. Being able to choose her own staff and direct (or wrangle) the Stamatins, being able to improve upon the infrastructure and add where things were needed.
There’s a dry smile that creeps onto his face, “Honestly, I feel more like Atlas and less like Hercules, though I understand the sentiment and the Twelve Labors…”
Saburov lowers his tea, briefly, “It never seemed fair to me that Hercules was punished both by gods and man for something out of his control. He didn’t ask for divine lineage, nor was the will that turned him against his family his own- yet, he still labored to atone for those. I suppose if it isn’t fair, it’s still admirable.”
“Regardless,” he pauses to sip, “You’re right. It would be easier to leave. Death too, is simpler than the manner of dying.”
“Where would we go, Yulia?” he asks, “I think you could go anywhere and survive. What little remains of the Imperial legacy is fleeing. I could join them. I would be miserable in Paris, but I could join them.”
No, he couldn’t. That would be betraying Katerina’s wishes of him.
He shakes his head, “And the people left in town? They are used to being treated as slaves, but still enjoy freedoms no one else on the globe will. Perhaps never.”
He glances at Aysa as he says it.
“Crossing the steppe by any means is suicide. It will be the unpleasant death if we leave. At least trying to fix things may give us a chance to make life worthwhile before the inevitable.”
“Pardon the tangent.”
Aysa takes tea as well, welcoming the break from cleaning dirt and already dead plant matter from the floor. She has the eye of someone listening to the conversation at hand and processing it without further interjection. Analyst’s eyes. Yulia nods.
“You would be miserable in Paris. France is not the most ideal place to be, I do imagine. I do not particularly see you as Atlas. Atlas was condemned, and you took your burdens on easily. Hence, more a herculean effort, and less fruitless labors when the evidence was clear that the sky was held up long before Atlas.”
She sips her tea and meanders over to her gramophone, to readjust the needle and wind the device herself. It hummed to life and played a lively tune off of some foreign record. It was strange for the area, and stranger still in it’s speed.
“If we leave, we also leave the cultures here to be at the mercy of the mining industry without enough experience in how to contend with the machines and structures of the age. It’s evident that we’ve been planted here and must now be responsible curators of our own environments. It’s a pleasure to see what we shall come to, and how far behind the rest of the world shall be for quite some time.”
She lets the record play, and the children find the energy to scoop dirt with the beat.
“I have been waiting to participate in such a thing. I anticipated it at the turn of the decade.”
