[color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell]
[h3][color=4682b4][i][b]Ash Holloway[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=4682b4]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Quarantine (W)
[i][b][color=4682b4]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A
[/cell][cell]
[right][img]https://i.ibb.co/Wnnd0Wm/Ash-FC-5.jpg[/img][/right]
[/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color]

	[color=4682b4]"Thanks, Guy,"[/color] responded Ash a little more quietly that he had been speaking earlier. Thoughts always seemed to bubble up to the surface at inconvenient times. More often than not, they weren't warm and happy ones. Ash was no stranger to these. Like everyone else who was still alive, hardship was a part of life. Talk of Alicia and Caesar got him thinking, if only in a fleeting manner, of things which once were in a place that didn't exist anymore. Pulling himself back to the present, Ash blinked twice and looked across the table as his friend and fellow Hillfolk Virginian looking back at him with a goofy smile still across his face. Live in the now. It was pretty much all that they had. 

	As Guy brought up the colorful man known here as "Shakespeare", Ash had to give him a nod. [color=4682b4]"Yeah. Surprised me, too. Then I saw him on sentry duty for the memorial. He's one of them alright. Picks and chooses when people see it. Makes me wonder how many more of them are out there, though."[/color] Alicia hand mentioned that her mother might still be out there somewhere and that her last known location was in Texas. It was an interesting thought. Ash turned his attention back down to the cards in his hands. Again he gave a look of pessimism and fished out a couple of cards from his hand. He looked like he might go back for a third one, as a man who might be weighing the probability of a full house against the greater odds of getting back a sackful of [i]nada[/i], but in the end just shook his head and slapped the original pull on the table. [color=4682b4]"Two, please."[/color]

	He was really just buying time to continue their developing conversation until boredom on one of their parts or other business pulled them away. Reconnecting was important. To that point of interest, Guy had done him a favor in revealing a more recent development about himself that just begged for a followup. [color=4682b4]"That pretty girl you're talking about - anyone I know?"[/color] He raised a quizzical eyebrow. A betting man might be setting Guy up for distraction amid cardplay. Ash's motives were significantly more benign.   



[color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell]
[h3][color=dc143c][i][b]Thalia Carmichael[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=dc143c]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Gymnasium (K7)
[i][b][color=dc143c]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A
[/cell][cell]
[right][img]https://i.ibb.co/3szwFSj/Thalia-HF-Pugilist.png[/img][/right]
[/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color] 

	Of course it was another clue. Why the hell not? It wasn't like this whole, dumbassed mystery was going to suddenly reveal its innermost secrets somewhere from between a couple of bench plates, in front of these people. It was a really auspicious moment as she caught the corner of the message sticking out from between two heavy, iron plates, begging so hard to be snatched up that it deserved to be smacked with a rolled up newspaper. Thalia's lips moved as she read the paper, her voice rising to enunciate the words inscribed upon it. [color=dc143c]"I shave every day, but my beard stays the same. What am I?"[/color]

        Thalia thought about her brother, Joaquin. He was always so impeccably coiffed and scaped, he must shave everyday. And owing to his only recently outed sexual proclivities, if such a thing can be referred to as a proclivity in the truest use of the word, he must have utilized a friendly female at one time or another to keep his secret safe. A "beard", as the term went. Ergo, this leads back to Shakespeare. But other factors made that less likely an explanation. 

        Perhaps a good knife or razor was the answer. A tool that does the actual shaving, rather than the one being shaved? But then, how the hell does a razor have a beard? Maybe it was a word describing part of the item, of which she had no knowledge because her training lay elsewhere. There was a guy in town who would know, or at least who she hoped would know. Shears. That was his trade. 

        Then it occurred to her. The Barber. This was the answer. Of course it was, and Thalia was a moron for having taken those other flights of deductive fancy. Internally annoyed at herself, she vowed to go find the guy and see what role he played in this ever-growing joke at her expense which she couldn't escape due to her own sense of curiosity. But first...

        [color=dc143c]"Ahl right, let's get this ass beating over with. I suddenly gaht someplace to be."[/color] Whether it was her ass getting beaten or another's was up for debate. Thalia had lost a lot of herself that she aimed to get back. This was part of that aim. And a little humility might do her some good.