They're not even a full half dozen paces away from Marjorie's back door. If Maureen's attention flickers absently in it's direction, a reflexive check to ensure that no one is peering out a window in their direction or something similar— well, then it's just instinct more than it is really cautionary.

"We're a little off the grid," she agrees, something conciliatory in her tenor. Yeah, she gets it. There's a sense of being in the dark out here, lonely and remote and dangerous with the rest of the world outside Sweetwater as thoroughly inaccessible as the distant stars overhead are.

"I wonder how long the rest of them have been stuck here. The locals."