Old Photo

Dust swirled up around Blake’s feet and she sneezed violently, ears going down. It had been a few years since she’d last been to Menagerie, but she was following up on a lead that someone had told her about. Menagerie was starting to join the modern world thanks to the SDC using its resources to help build up and build bridges where there previously had been none at all. Winter’s post-Salem war policies had really been unpopular with a lot of people, but she had been determined to do right by the Faunus communities that Gelé had hurt so much with his exploitation. But Winter really did back her words up with actions and worked with the various Menagerine delegations and politicians in order to help bring it into the modern world. Blake was now the world’s leading expert on a once-hidden genocide that Mantle had attempted to commit on its slaves in the final years of the Great War once it was clear the country was on its back foot. She had grown up on stories of the Pogrom as it was called in the Faunus community. She knew it was real, but nobody had really known about it until Blake had started collecting stories and using the SDC’s backing and pressure on the Atlassian government to allow her to dig at sites where the camps had been. She was now in Menagerie on a lead where someone said some old photos exist. She doubted it… The only photos that she had known existed were the ones that Persia had, bless the woman’s soul. They had been proof enough for the public at large. The horrific, graphic images had come as a shock to the world on the whole, though the Atlassian and Menagerine Faunus communities… They had known. Oh, had they ever. The little girl that had led her up into the attic tugged at Blake’s sleeve and motioned. Blake followed her into a corner and the little girl produced a metal box. Inside were color photos of the devastation, the exact same type she had seen in Persia’s photos. “My great-grandpappy was a Valian soldier in the Great War… He took these when he was liberatin’ the camps.” “Thank you,” Blake said. “Seriously. Thank you. These mean more to me than you willeverknow.”