"Can I borrow this, please?" she asked politely. Ada's hands and forearms were pressed up against the still-warm body of a fallen bandit. Blood trickled from his ears and his right arm was mangled, as if crushed beneath a boulder. The bandit leaned against the back of a tree. His mouth was slack and his eyes were only partially closed. Although most would see lifeless eyes of horror, Ada saw a beautiful shade of sapphire blue. 

The soul offered no response to her request. Perhaps it was still angry with his friends for leaving him there to die as they tried to escape the powerful hammer man that the mean fire angel told them to attack. From afar, she had seen him stop to rest and plead with his fellow bandits to help him. But they, as well as Ada, could tell when they were looking at a dead man walking.

She slowly started to remove the bandages from her head as the sound of fire echoed in the near distance. She pressed her forehead against his and hummed an unfamiliar tune as she pressed herself closer to the corpse.  A loud howl accompanied the ending of her little ritual and as she quickly pulled away, her head snapped in the direction of the sound, blue and brown eyes wide with alarm.

"Thank you, Wesley," she said, turning back to the man; "You should forgive your friends-- you know you would have done the same if you'd been in their shoes. Still..." 

She kissed him lightly on the cheek and gently closed his eyes. Regardless of how inevitable his death was- it was nice to have some smidgen of proof that your life wasn't meaningless when you died. Even if he was already dead and his soul grudgingly sat there in silence, she hoped this would help him feel a little better. 

She stood and patted the dirt from her dress. Ada had no desire to get involved with the dangerous fight nearby. She had a bad feeling about the terrifying figure that had engulfed the thoughts of Wesley and the other bandits. 

She had hoped to make it to Gael by noon. Ada has heard tell of an organization whose sole purpose seemed to help people. After wondering about for the past several months, Ada felt that such a place was meant for her. She was far to young to understand how unlikely a sickly looking young girl such as herself could possibly join any reputable group, but that was a mountain of bad news she had yet o encounter. 

Not wanting to risk alerting either of the two voices she heard in the distance, she started to clumsily climb up the tree that Wesley’s corpse rested under. She would wait it out. In the distance, she could barely make out several caravans. A bit of the nearby shrubbery harmlessly caught fire in the marshy swampland. The moisture in the air would never allow too much damage to come about from flames.  She found herself pondering on the life of plants as the fight continued.