The road to Gervasiel

[Graybeard]

Brad moved to intercept Lillith. "Wait, sweetheart! Let me..."

Before he (or Lillith) could do anything, however, a blur of motion in front of the wagon caused Sister Rose to rein the horses to a stop.

[OOC: Nice forensics work. And yeah, six or seven years is a long time for a kid to be out on her own as a wild child, even in country as benign as this ... unless she had ... help ...]

[Drannin]

Argus' head whipped to the front as the horses stopped. His eyebrow raised. "Now what?"

"Is it someone selling beer?" Quipped a certain familiar. "'Cause I could use one."

"Not now, Harker."


(OOC: Blarg. Too sleepy to give a decent update. Blarg, I say)

[Drusia]

Before he (or Lillith) could do anything, however, a blur of motion in front of the wagon caused Sister Rose to rein the horses to a stop.

OOC: "There's some... THING... on the Wing!"
^^;; Sorry, had to make the joke.
I'll give Drusia a reaction after we all learn what "it" is.
/OOC

[Graybeard]

[OOC: I can sympathize. Not totally clear where to go from here. To move things along:]

It was the girl again.

This time, however, Sister Rose didn't need her senses sharpened to observe what was going on. The girl had changed into the jeans, and gathered up the tattered shreds she'd been wearing earlier into something that more or less covered her torso. Now she was actually smiling, almost ...

"Thank ... you," she said in a slow, almost mechanical voice, and she melted back into the trees with that same impossible speed.

Leaving, however, a very subdued and thoughtful Rose in her wake. I was wrong about what I saw before. Her hair wasn't really brown; that was just all the junk caked in it. She could really do with a Hygiene spell -- how is it that someone who can command time magic can't do something that's as basic a part of a normal magical toolkit as that? No, she's blond and blue-eyed ...

... And almost a dead ringer for Wife Number Three.

[Porcelain Fish]

"Well, wild child or not, she could certainly have used a good scrub," Maduin opined, folding his hands across his knees.

[Drannin]

"Alright, this is starting to bother me," said Argus.

"Just now?" exclaimed Harker, looking incredulous.

"Alright, I'm getting even more disturbed," Argus admitted. "And not just because there is a young girl using the only school of magic to ever scare the hell out of me. This is just not adding up."

Argus scanned the tree-line, seeing nothing, wary nonetheless. "I knew I should have taken those scrying electives," he muttered dismally.

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose wasn't so sure.

"I just find it very difficult to be scared of someone who thanks you for giving them a pair of pants," she said, not knowing how wrong she would be proven by completely unrelated events two years later in the Ensigerum village. "She was scared, that was obvious. If she's been living on her own for all this time, I really can't blame her. How did she survive? I don't know, but she bore a distinct resemblance to the, uh, breeders we saw at Provatiel." May as well call them what they are, or at least what they're perceived to be ... I don't think the men of that place really consider their women as human beings, curse them.

A thought struck Rose as she turned the wagon onto a lane that looked like it led back to the main road. "If she tags along, should we take her in? We have room in the wagon, although it'd be a little tight."

Surprisingly, Brad chose this moment to chuckle a response to the others in the wagon. "One thing you need to know about my cousin is that she has this tendency to pick up strays ... me, for example."

[Porcelain Fish]

"As long as there's a bath, soap, and shampoo involved at least initially, then I have no objection to her presence," Maduin said just as flatly as before.

[Sareth]

Lillith reached out to give Maduin's knee a less than friendly swat. "Be nice." She turned to Sister Rose. "Of course we take her in. How could anyone even think to do anything else for the poor thing! We've all been strays at one point or another. If anyone would understand, it's us, right?"

[Drannin]

Argus was forced to nod at this. He'd been living in the gutter- literally- for years, and had only recently gotten his act back together. And, he was forced to admit, that was mainly due to the friendship and support he had gained. Especially from Miguel and Rose. Rose in particular, really. Though Argus didn't exactly have a great deal of respect for the Veracian's object of worship, (it was like having faith in a golem, for crying out loud), he had to admit the congregation had some fine individuals in it.

Heh. Saved by Luminosita through his followers? Yeah, Argus didn't intend on converting anytime soon. He was perfectly happy being secular.

"I agree, de- Lillith," he said simply.