She smiles warmly at her and nods.

"That's good!" She was glad.

She keeps smiling at her.

Cole just kept on working.

"If we actually got a rhythm going, I'm positive we could sing 'Heigh Ho' or something like that." Riley says, helping do his share of the work as a chipper.

Shade nodded, giving a soft laugh to try and help Riley lighten the mood as he worked close besides him.

Vicky didn't really have any more questions to ask, so she fell silent

Nobody in Furnace knew exactly how long work duty went on for. Jack claimed it was five or six hours--from breakfast to lunch-- but that second day of hard labor felt more like a full twenty four hour stretch. With no fuel to keep them going, many of them quickly began to falter. The oppressive air of Furnace beat down on them like a dragon's breath(not talking about Shade)--hot, stale, and at times stripped of oxygen so some felt like they were choking. It was the lack of water that really took its toll, drying them out like prunes and forcing them to lay their picks down every couple minutes to avoid blacking out.

Two passed out that morning, the second midway through a swing. He fell forward like a dead weight, landing face-first on a jagged strip of rock. His prone body was dragged from the room by a blacksuit, a slick crimson train betraying his route.

~~~

By the time the siren sounded--half a lifetime later--the rhythm of picks against rock had dwindled to a sorry tapping from the couple of inmates who still had the strength to lift their tools.

After a short while she sighs and leans her head against Vic's arm and promptly falls asleep.

Even Shade grew tired, having to lean on his pick soon. He honestly could have handled worse, but he'd not had to for a good span of time. He wasn't really ready to be launch into a habit of no food all of a sudden, even if it was horrid stuff to down. He swayed as he leaned on his pick handle, one hand to his head as if to keep it in place. His wings where slumped and tail limp behind him.

Victoria finds this kind of weird, as no one had ever been close or comfortable enough to fall asleep on her