[color=ed145b]CORRINE DOOLAK[/color] -- the wall - nighttime

There was a bit of a murmur in response to her address of the other harborfolk.  Corrine didn't take it too personally; it was late, after all, and fatigue certainly plagued all of them.  The woman Zelda, standing nearest to her, on watch at the wall, gave her a firm nod and a slight squeeze on the arm.

Both James and Castner seemed to appear in the throng and of course had their own questions.  Corrine's immediate, internal response, was to feel annoyed that mainlanders couldn't help but shove themselves in the middle of island business.  She swallowed a lump in her dry throat and merely let them speak.  Besides, Castner's volunteering of Brotherhood equipment and tech was more than generous.  Brotherhood was only mostly spoken about in whispers and rumours, but one constant thread was their general distaste for sharing any of their weapons or knowledge with regular folks.  Even he recognized the desperation of the situation and put aside his deeply ingrained ways.

[i]Gettin' soft, Corrine...[/i]

"People of Far Harbor!" The cultist suddenly yelled out, "Have you not wondered from where the Fog comes? Have you not wondered why it ebbs and flows like the tide? Have you never wondered why the creatures within dare not stray from its embrace, as a newborn might fear to stray from its mother? Have you never considered that it seemed to have a will of its own?"

The cultist left the questions hanging in the air.  No one spoke a response.  He continued.

"I have promised you a kindness for a kindness. Return Alice to us...return our sister, and we will do the same for you." 

The cultist turned around and nodded his head. Immediately a band of white-clad individuals stepped forth, the lower half of their robes and boots were caked with dirt. In their hands, they bore a simple wooden coffin. Gently, they laid it down before them. 

"Avery," The cultist uttered the name solemnly, "She belongs with her family."

It were as though the next few moments unfolded in slow motion.  The cultists stepped back from the coffin, laying in the exact spot to be illuminated from a half a dozen lanterns in the nearby vicinity.  Corrine leaned forward to grip the rail with both hands and felt as though it took several moments for her body to lean close enough to grab hold.  She could hear every molecule of air that entered her lungs as she gasped.  Her pulse pounded like a slow, but deafening, hammer in her ears.

"Corrine", Steve said gently as he placed a hand on her back in an attempt to comfort her, "What do you want to do?" 

Corrine blinked, and everything seemed to have gone back to real-time.  "I...huh?  I..."  She swallowed, again.  "Wait, what're you doin' on your feet?"

She inhaled slowly, minutely aware that it seemed both the cultists and the harborfolk were waiting for a response from her.  Corrine turned Zelda who was still standing next to her, who had reached out to her before.  "Come with me."

"Sure thing," Zelda replied gruffly.  Harborfolk parted to let them cross the hull, down the stairs, and exit the gate.  The cultists' faces were hidden, by cowls and by darkness.  It made Corrine feel unsettled.

"That there coffin better not be a trap, y'hear?  The second Corrine's hands get blown off, we start shooting!" cried one of the harborfolk from the wall.

Corrine frowned, and felt her stomach sink.  "C'mon," she motioned to Zelda, taking one side of the coffin top.

"On three..."

Slow-motion seemed to return as the coffin top was pushed off and slid onto the cobblestones with a dry clattering.  The smell hit her first.  Not so much the offensive odour of decomposition, but dirt, decay, and mud.  She covered her nose and mouth with her sleeve and finally dared to look inside.

There, before her, was a collection of human bones.  Corrine peered over the edge and looked the bones up and down.  Zelda gasped, then shrieked, and jabbed her hand into the coffin.  "It's hers," Zelda babbled, holding up an instantly-recognizable relic: Avery's locket.  "This is she, this must be.  Oh...oh my god!" Zelda cried, falling to her knees, much like Corrine had.

Corrine's heart was beating a mile a minute.  She looked between Zelda and the dusty bones in the coffin and swallowed, hard.  [i]No.  I saw her die.[/i]

"It's a pile of bones!" Corrine yelled out, hoping most on the hull and the cultists could all hear her.  "This...this could be anyone you dug up!  It doesn't prove a single thing you just said."  She turned to address the harborfolk on the hull and around the gate.  "That woman we carried in, who looks like Avery, who [i]sounded[/i] just like Avery, I saw her...perish.  She got hit by a bullet, and blood flew out and..."  She had to pause, becoming choked up all over again.  

Corrine turned back to the cultists.  "Y'all have been operating in shadow -- in [i]Fog[/i] -- and done nothin' but antagonize, threaten, and...well, and kill, or try to kill!  Maybe this is Avery, and maybe you murdered her, yerselves, or..."  She wiped her brows with the back of her hand, cursing the stiffness settling in to her joints in the late evening air.

She glanced up towards where Steve stood on the hull.  Corrine gave him a small nod.  She wouldn't admit she had reached a point of having less care for her life than before, after the day's events, but the feeling inside of her was quite similar.  She turned back towards the cultists.

"I need more than just her trinket.  These bones don't prove a thing you said.  'sfar as I care, the woman inside Far Harbor is Avery."