Well that's the difference between us, you see. I'm coming up on a year awake. ["Give it time" is the implication given, a bleak outlook if there ever were any. But why sugar coat the facts? Just look at these halls. Some people stayed in the waking world and others fell asleep. Sometimes they'd get right back up again and other times they wouldn't. C'est la vie, mes amis.

He takes the flask back and has a commiserative swig himself as she gives the details.]

So you were alone? [The worry reads clear in his knotted brow, though he still chuckles when she brings up their inauspicious meeting.] I do, I remember that part because it's crazy. Fits you right in with the medieval knights and the talking raccoons.

Five, though, hot damn. Bet you were a hellion. How many grown folks got an ulcer when you tottered past their kneecaps like that? [He shakes his head.] The kids don't wake up at all, I think this is the first any refugee had to babysit their own kind since the apocalypse.