[hr] [center][i][color=000000][b][h1]Jack[/h1][/b][/color][/i][/center] Was this girl even aware of the implications she was making? Jack was dumbfounded. He slipped down off Guinea, top lip curled in contempt of the words proceeding from Cheryl's mouth: “Before I was around.” “She came back as the most feared witch around.” “The old Hag’s connected to that witch.” [i]You mean my daughter?[/i] He was thinking, [i]She was here before you were even born? She is now a witch that everyone is scared of? She’s tied in with that Hag I just met at the blacksmiths? My own now very old daughter is a witch? So I’m several decades too fucking late – is that what you are standing there telling me, you stupid apathetic fff….[/i] Jack had to turn away, if only for a moment to maintain his composure. While Cheryl continued ranting, apparently about the shack now, he glared across the road at the massive trees of the adjacent forest. Just glaring in anguish over the possibilities surrounding his daughter. But his glare turned into a suspicious squint when he thought he caught sight of movement between two tree trunks near the edge of the road. In that moment - a very short moment - he thought he also saw two small beady white eyes flash back at him. His body shuttered. Goosebumps dabbed his arms. He turned his head to look down the road in the direction they had come, in a fleeting instant considering that maybe the feral girl he had seen back there was actually in need of help. He discarded the though with a small shake of his head before turning back to Cheryl, who was now conversing with some old guy who had apparently appeared from inside the shack. Jack listened to their conversation carefully. Considered the situation. At last, when Cheryl turned and made some ridiculous comment about sharing (presumably with her) or sleeping outside, he wondered which one it actually was: That this girl was out of her mind - cuckoo - or just the dumbest bitch he’d ever met. ‘You can’t be fucking serious?’ He finally spoke. ‘Are you out of your fucking mind? Moons twisted your brain or something, lady?’ He looked at the shack, looked back at Cheryl. Shook his head with disbelief. ‘I’ve seen some naïve twats in my time, but are you seriously believing a word this old fart has to say?’ He threw his arms out to the side in an exasperated why-would-I-even-bother fashion, and then had to point out the obvious just in case she missed it. “Take a look around, [i]Sherlock[/i]. Is there anything, ANYTHING at all in this place - in this very moment and time - that you even feel at all comfortable with? We pass some crazy possibly-escaped-lunatic on the road a few minutes back, we are now pulled up in front of a creepy-ass forest where two creepy-ass white eyes just looked back at me, we have three – and I repeat THREE,” He held up three fingers for effect; ‘moons hovering in the sky. And you have the bright-spark capacity to trust this old geezer at his word? Do you really, honestly believe that he is in fact just some old guy willing to invite two young strangers into this abandoned shelter to share the night with his aging wife? Your crazy mind sees nothing at all amiss with this situation? Really? Do you even live in this world at all? Move out of my fuck’n way!’ Jack had his sword out, and it would have been then that Cheryl saw its brilliant steel shimmering in the light of the falling moons, and she would have recognised it - the wavy reflections of its unique colouring - to be that of arist steel, as Jack then moved right past her with a purposeful stride towards the shack. He soon arrived. Pushed aside the boar skin and stepped past the threshold inside. Sword at the ready. Him at the ready. Ready for anything. [hr] [center][h1][color=708090]𝕭𝖔𝖗𝖎𝖘 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕳𝖆𝖓𝖓𝖆𝖍[/color][/h1][/center] Bauble had gone without dignifying Erised’s remarks with a response. Boris was dumb, and his goofy smile was continuing proof of that. His big, ironically brutish baby face had the look of an infant watching a stage show as Erised did her thing. Hannah, now interested in Erised to the point of forsaking her own despair, watched on intently as well. By time Erised returned with a reforming hand – an aspect that couldn’t really be hidden by a glove – she had her head tilted and cocked, eyes narrowed with the concentration required to absorb Erised’s every move. When Erised offered her the horse, Hannah didn’t know what to say, since she had never been on a horse before. But when Erised finally showed - at least to Hannah - some vulnerability by stammering over her final question, she smiled. She smiled in the way that a girl who possessed the prospect of making a friend her own age in an otherwise scary place would smile. ‘I don’t know what that is,’ She said with a nervous yet hopeful kind of discarding laugh, ‘but I do speak English, if that’s what you mean?’ She took a step forward, glancing again to Erised gloved hand for reference. ‘How did you do that?’ Meanwhile, the townsfolk were becoming uneasy in the visual absence of Bauble, murmuring among themselves, some of them returning their attention to the smouldering ruins of their town. Others sharpening their stare on Erised, Boris and Hannah in an all too familiar where-are-our-pitchforks kind of way. Boris, on the other hand, now becoming distracted by a thought, retrieved his drawing pad from his backpack. He flipped past a few parchments until arriving at a clean page, and then started scribbling something down with his charcoal pencil, tongue sticking out and writhing with childlike concentration. [hr] [center][h1][color=MediumTurquoise][b]𝔅𝔞𝔲𝔟𝔩𝔢[/b][/color][/h1][/center] Haila’s effort to make contact with Bauble’s mind would have - at least for the immediate few second to follow - failed, as though some dark wall had been raised to prevent her access. As she continued to watch on at the three humans of interest, nothing nearby that could have distracted her from events taking place in the town, not even the slightest crack of a twig or shift of a shadow – she would have suddenly felt a warm breath on the side of her face, accompanied shortly thereafter by a deep, whispered voice travelling through her head: ‘What are you planning?’