People are out and about in the ... well, they're paths between buildings wide enough for multiple people to walk side by side if they have to; might as well call them streets. A lot of them are people from White Forest, in clumps of one local and two or three evacuees. It's difficult to place just how many people are in this part of the cave system at the moment, as there are inevitably echoes all over the place (including tantalizing snatches of echoing music). There's light, at least, and warmth despite the depths. It's evident now that people here not only look after their buildings and keep them in good repair, but go to some lengths to decorate them with such paint and paneling as can be made to look both tidy and appealing.
The latter is something that the Resistance rarely bothers with. In fact, it's not uncommon to deliberately leave Resistance-occupied buildings in disrepair--on the outside, at least. Signs of regular maintenance might as well be a sign that says 'Hey, Overwatch, Somebody Lives Here.'
This place... well, it's cramped to the point of claustrophobia, especially with all the new arrivals, but... it feels homey. It's a little weird, from Alyx's perspective.
She finds her footsteps drawn toward the source of the music, or what she thinks is the source of the music.
It takes some work to track it down. The echoes can be awfully deceptive here. Eventually, though, Alyx finds her way to the source- a dark-haired young woman who can't have been more than two or three years old when the Combine came, putting an acoustic guitar through its paces just outside a building whose front door is marked EMERGENCY.
Alyx settles down on a convenient horizontal surface (hey, she's four months pregnant with twins and she's been walking on bare stone for the past half-hour. She has a right to sore feet.) to listen to the other woman play.
She's pretty good at it, although right now it's not so much tune as technic. Finger exercises seem to exist for every musical instrument known to man, and this is no exception. It's still a good display of sound and fingering skill, though. And even better, eventually it starts to give way to a tune.
The player happens to look up about then and smiles in Alyx's direction. "You're new here," she says without stopping, although the playing gets a little slower. "Hi."
"If we had had the means to call ahead, we wouldn't have needed to evacuate in the first place," says Alyx bluntly. "The Combine was fucking with our radios somehow."
"Well- yeah, but-" The woman winces as her fingering goes briefly awry. She backs up to an earlier bit of the tune and resumes playing. "Just sayin'. I thought it was pretty neat, myself. Kinda scary, but still."
Sarah nods. "It's okay," she says as the tune returns to a normal tempo. "We've been kind of isolated a while now. Used to be we got a couple of survivors every so often, but it's been ages since anyone new showed up alive. And now all y'all land on the doorstep. Kind of a big thing for everybody, really."
"Kinda was, wasn't it?" says Sarah. Then she winces, although this time it doesn't reach her fingers. "Oh, wait, you mean the Seven Hours' War. Sorry 'bout that."
Sarah nods, picking her way through the next few bars with extra care. "Heard you make your speech on the radio, 'n Doctor Freeman, too," she says. "Didn't hear all of it, our rig's not that great, but I heard the important parts."
"About half of the people in White Forest were civilians we pulled out of the dead zone," explains Alyx. "And about two-thirds of the rest were from City 08 before that. We've kinda been accumulating refugees for a few months now."
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This place... well, it's cramped to the point of claustrophobia, especially with all the new arrivals, but... it feels homey. It's a little weird, from Alyx's perspective.
She finds her footsteps drawn toward the source of the music, or what she thinks is the source of the music.
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The player happens to look up about then and smiles in Alyx's direction. "You're new here," she says without stopping, although the playing gets a little slower. "Hi."
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