"The world started ending a half decade ago," she shrugs, brittle where the light catches her at the edges. She blows a small smoke ring, weighing him briefly - is he trustworthy, that's what she wants to know, partly now simply because she's got into her head to be curious and she's always been like a cat that way. "There were storms, and they changed things, and lots of people are just right bastards, so that didn't help."

On this subject, she's matter of fact but almost more jagged just underlying it, like whatever it is she shields away beneath that veneer of bland passivity comes closer to the surface with a topic like this one.