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When breath ghosted over her scales, Haila stilled once more. The Arist was here. Here! With her! Who would've thought she'd be privy to such an encounter in her lifetime, much less than a day into her Wander?
Then the nature of his question registered.
'Nothing! Nothing. Sir. Just observing. Sir.' Slowly, she lowered her head, her mane flattening against her neck in deference.
Perhaps she shouldn't have been surprised. The Arist had reached out to her, despite the distance between them; but even then, she hadn't expected him to approach her directly. Why would she? She'd been doing nothing but watching the scene in the human village play out.
'Why did you help them?' she sent, in a fleeting moment of boldness. 'You killed a traitor to protect the human hatchling.'
🄴🅁🄸🅂🄴🄳
'English, Wurld, whatever, it's the same to me,' said Erised, ''S'long as I understand it.'
The only human who she could understand and it was a kid. Typical. At least the kid hadn't broken down crying because of her swearing. Or freaked out about her wings. That would've been annoying.
Actually, the kid seemed to be calmer than she'd expected, considering everything that had happened. Not to say that Erised wasn't glad the kid wasn't in hysterics, but that was a quick recovery. The perks of being a protagonist, she supposed. Or maybe the human kids around here were just plain weird. Who the hell knew with this place?
'Nature,' she said, in response to the kid's question. The desires of the people around them rumbled - and not in a pleasant manner. Ungrateful bunch. Erised was not in the mood for running, or flying in a hurry, out of this village. Maybe if the horse hadn't decided that swallowing her whole was a great pastime, she wouldn't have minded. As it was, the kid and the oaf would be the ones enjoying a nice ride on good ol' Bessie while Erised worked her wings. Irritation flickered through her. She didn't even need to run.
'Hey, you speak their language, right?' said Erised to the kid, gesturing to the townspeople lingering around. 'And you're real good at being demanding, screaming left and right. Do me a favour and translate for me to the good people here, will ya?' Turning to their audience, she lifted a fist to her mouth and cleared her throat, dramatically loud.
'Right, she's a kid. Gotta keep it PG. Wait, shit, I always get long-winded with these things, does she have the attention span to keep up? Better keep it short. Two sentences then. Maybe three? ...This is gonna get real awkward if I don't say something soon.'
'Piss off,' she announced. With a flick of her fingers, desire popped into the physical plane - long, thin spikes that hovered in the air between them and the townspeople, wavering threateningly. 'Or die. Ungrateful shits.'
A little too short for her taste, but it'd be a waste of breath to launch into a spiel of intimidation when they couldn't understand half the things she said. Or all of it, in this case.
Movement caught her attention and she glanced over at the big oaf, who was scribbling away in what apparently passed as a notepad here.
'Is now seriously the time? Unbelievable.'
CHERYL LUSBY
& PIPERWhile Cheryl wasn't known for her expressiveness, she reasoned that much of her reaction could be blamed on extreme exhaustion. That, and the fact that she genuinely hadn't expected Jack to be this much of an arrogant dumbass. She stared, wide-eyed, as he practically blew his top, spewing enough illogic that she considered sensitively, for just one second, that perhaps he was brain-dead. Then he drew his sword and Cheryl - again, she was blaming her tiredness - furrowed her brows in disbelief. What in the fire...? Was that an Arist-based sword? Jack was off before she could take a proper second look, presumably to do something stupid.
With a sigh, Cheryl took hold of Guinea's reigns.
'Come on, girl,' she cooed, petting her along the chin. 'You'd bite a dumbass like him, wouldn't you? Yes, you would.' Guinea choked and snapped her incisors at Cheryl's hand in a show of affection. 'I know, I know, you're a good girl.'
Screams rang out from the shack, male and female alike. Two sole voices - both had that cracking, warbling tone that came with age. They rang clear through the thin, deteriorating walls of the shack.
'Oh, mercy, have mercy!'
'Don't hurt us! Take what you want!'
Ignoring the noise, Cheryl lead Guinea to the side of the shack, instructed her to stay, then fetched her bedroll from the back of the saddle. She placed a hand on the saddlebag, then hesitated.
See, she wasn't a fan of carrying this much money on her. Folks who knew what to look for would easily paint her a target to rob or whatever, and she was not in the mood to deal with more idiots. After a few moments of thinking it over, she made her decision and opened the saddlebag. Once she was done, she closed it and then whistled, a short, familiar ditty.
'Dun wanna,' grumbled Piper. His mental voice was faint, garbling slightly with the weak connection.
'You got to sleep. You take watch.' He shifted once, twice, and then got up, claws digging slightly into her shoulders as his back bunched up into a stretch. His jaws opened wide and his ears folded back, the top of his head flattening into a huge yawn.
'Whatever.' Even as he sent it, he was already hopping onto Guinea's back. He circled, sat, then started gnawing at something between his toes. Satisfied, Cheryl walked to the shack's front opening, her bedroll tucked under her arm. Coming to a stop behind Jack, she peered around his arm. A thoroughly unsurprising scene greeted her, illuminated by Beckon Season's moonlight filtering softly through the gaps in the roof.
The inside of the shack was in no better condition than the outside. Mould spread across the floor in wide swatches and crawled up the walls. Some of the floorboards had fallen through, rotting on damp soil. On the left, there was a stool with a broken leg in the corner nearest to them and a small bookshelf with collapsed shelves along the wall. A half-assed guard post that had been abandoned halfway, Cheryl guessed. The lack of windows was a glaring sign. There were only gaps in the walls where parts of the boards had rotted through.
At first glance it seemed like the one square room took up the entirety of the shack, but there was another opening at the back, barely hidden in the shadows. Seemed like a storage room, big enough for a child to sit in, legs drawn up, but not enough to sleep in, unfortunately.
Resigned, Cheryl returned her gaze to the spectacle in the first room. A crude, unlit campfire was in the middle of the space, sticks neatly arranged on a ring of stones. That was about the only thing neat here. A pile of clothes and knick-knacks seemed to have been tossed against the bookshelf and two thick burlap bedrolls were haphazardly strewn in the back left corner. One old woman sat on one of the bedrolls, sobbing in a faded nightie.
'Please spare us,' she blubbered through tears. 'Oh Lord, we was just trying to provide for ourselves, young man, please.'
'Take what you want!' the old man said for what was probably the fifth time. He was on his knees in front of Jack, hands clutched together in a death grip as he shook them at Jack's feet. 'We have, we have food, we have lots of it, we have money, oh for fire's sake, take the donkey-'
'How will we travel, Rennard?' wailed the woman.
'It's better we live than die over a donkey!'
Other than the random shit scattered about the room, it was pretty clear there was nothing around that could mean ill intent. Having had enough, Cheryl elbowed past Jack.
'Shut. Up.' She did not shout, but she said it with enough meaning that the old couple fell silent. 'We're not here to rob you.' She turned on her heel, squinting up at Jack with utter condescension.
'Turns out that there isn't anyone here moronic enough to camp out in this filthy place-' she pointed to the floor '-across a flaming dragon grove-' she pointed at said grove across the path '-in the slightest chance that they'd get to jump two idiots like us who'd stop right here during Beckon Season. What a flaming surprise.' She dropped her arm. 'Maybe listen to the local next time.' She turned away, not giving one slice of meat what Jack had to say, and looked down at the old man.
'Get up, Rennard,' she said, not unkindly. He scrambled to his feet, but hunched, half-bowing in an act of submission. Cheryl sighed again. 'It's a misunderstanding. Sleep with your wife, we're just here to camp.'
'Oh, thank you, thank you, young 'un, thank ye kindly-'
She tuned out the response. Between the couple's bedrolls taking up a good half of the shack; the bookshelf and the pile of clothes on the left; the campfire in the middle; the broken stool in the left corner nearest the entrance; and all the damned rotting floorboards, the only place stable enough to lie on was right where they stood and the corner on their right. They could throw out the broken stool and have them each take a corner but even then, it wasn't the most spacious situation.
Regardless, she was the one with her bedroll at hand. Quickly - and perhaps irrationally - she tossed it into the corner before Jack could call dibs.
'Piper's keeping watch outside, if you care,' she said over her shoulder. She bent down to untie the bedroll, then hesitated.
She didn't care about his situation. At all. It was an inconvenience and an annoyance, and frankly if it wasn't for all the threats looming over her and Piper, she'd be very happy to leave him. But if she'd connected the dots right...
She was no parent, but the notion of one missing out on their child growing up entirely only reminded her of who she'd lost tonight.
'Think of it this way,' she said, gruffly, without looking at him. Mildly aware of the two other people in the room, she chose her words carefully. 'At least she became someone powerful. She's safe.' Then, because she couldn't resist, ''Course, doesn't mean I'm safe. She could kill me any time I'm no longer useful. Great stuff.'
Awkwardly, the bedroll was rolled out; a sad, lumpy thing. Something else from Jack's earlier rant floated into her thoughts. She frowned.
'Who's Sherlock?'
