She laughed, softly, mostly at herself, and shook her head. She snorted and looked at him with a wry smile. "My life has been spent making sense out of debris and ruble. And sometimes less concrete sources." Like hacked governmental networks, for instance. She missed her information network.

"Something here is not right, but I have no idea what it is. No one knows where the thorns came from. Who is directing them. What drives them." She shook her head again. "Everyone agrees the thorns have overgrown villages, and most people agree the villagers got out. But no one knows quite which village was actually overgrown."

Lifting her fork, she prodded at her food for a minute. "They are capable...farming, fishing, the maintenance of roads. But they are also wildly incompetent. Not some, every single one of them. Not just here, but every person I met between here and the sea, and all the people in the little Port, too. Something is very wrong in this place, and I don't like not knowing what is causing it."