Geraint didn't sleep very much, and when he did his dreams were often a chaotic mess, nightmares, but he found he didn't need much sleep so it was tolerable.  He spent much of the night simply looking at Vara and thinking hard.  He thought about the spirit, and her, and Blackvayne.  He didn't believe in destiny but he did believe in serendipity.  Some people lived charmed lives - hell, the Old People lived charmed lives for centuries, before their hubris and greed brought them down.  And some people lived cursed lives, too.  But luck existed and it wasn't all bad.  Maybe Vara was good luck, or cleverly disguised bad....<br/><br/>Geraint wasn't very good at thinking positive thoughts.  It's why he tended towards practicality as much as he could.  Luck existed, but you had to respond to good or ill fortune<i>practically </i>if you valued your life.  Most of the time, he valued his life quite a lot, so he encouraged practicality in his thoughts and actions.<br/><br/>Still, no Blackvayne.  The presumed dream did not arrive.  Geraint had no idea why, he didn't know if that was good or bad, but in a practical sense it was an opportunity.<br/><br/>Then they were closer - the levels of radiation were going up, he could tell because the trees were stunted and twisted and the grass was thicker and shone strangely in the sunlight, like there were sick rainbows underneath - he lead them to stream that lead beneath a great concrete road that had collapsed, and a vast tunnel of concrete that was cracked but not collapsed.  There was a strand of rubble right before it, but nothing they couldn't easily mount, and darkness beyond.<br/><br/>The lingering connection between them let him see her fears.  He said, "What's out there are mutants and broken machines - not nonfunctional, but<i>broken, </i>you'll understand when you see them - and crazy shit.  There's no good way to prepare for it.  Keep an open mind and stay alert.  If shit goes down, run first, hide if you can, kill when necessary.  We're more dangerous than almost anything down there but there are exceptions.  And we are outnumbered."<br/><br/>He climbed up the rubble, grabbing a plastic stick out of his bag.  He bent it with a crack, shook it so it started to glow with an eerie orange light.  It would provide excellent light for about twenty-four hours, and decent light for two or three days.<br/><br/>He added, "There's a lot of stuff down here that we could use, but we'd need some power.  For some things, I've got this little generator that makes 5.5 volts and hooks up to USB ports.  Do you know what those are?"