They do!

And it's not a bad dinner at that!

Despite the ramshackle condition of its wagons and tents, this caravan clearly has a bit of coin to throw around--they left town with a wide assortment of fine food and drink.

(She spots a couple of people among the dining throng who she recognizes as prior townsfolk; she must not have been the only person who thought to use this caravan as a way out of whatever-it-was-that-had-everyone-on-edge)

Really. It's practically a feast. It shouldn't be hard at all for someone with her skills to slip off with an armload of delectable comestibles.

She does precisely that. The trick is to act like you belong just exactly where you are. Well, and not to look too homeless, but that's less of a concern with this crowd.

Indeed!

Most of the people here overlook her, and those who look at her at all do so in that instantly sympathetic Oh Look A Child kind of way.

She doesn't even have to snag the food herself. This friendly woman with big curly hair puts a platter together for her (it is a Be Sure To Eat Your Vegetables sort of platter, but still).

She makes sure to reward her with a smile - being friendly with the people in charge of the food is always a wise move - and then takes her platter to a secluded spot between some wagons to eat; no sense risking questions that she can't in any sense answer.

She isn't bothered!

From her vantage point among the wagons, she sees the towering outline of the caravan's orcish protector strolling out into the darkness beyond the camfires' glow. He has a smaller person on his arm: a dwarf, if she doesn't miss her mark...

...the dwarf has a happy spring to her step.

This seems like such a nice caravan.

The scary thing's still out there, obviously, but the people are nice and the food is good and the orc fills his followers with confidence.

It is nice. She was only planning to stay with the caravan until the next town, but if this keeps up, maybe she'll keep going.

Days pass like this.

The details change--they pass through wilder terrain, the feasts give way to more slapshod dining, and the orc goes on nighttime patrol with different cohorts--but the general pattern holds.

Everyone continues to assume that she belongs there, and she isn't asked any tricky questions.

Being asked questions at all might be a little tricky; sometimes people react badly, when they realize she doesn't talk. But she has a pretty good strategy - smile, act shy, withdraw - and hopefully it'll serve her well enough here.

Not many people stay up too long past sundown, most nights. Which gives her plenty of time to roam around among the tents without attracting attention, provided she keeps quiet.

She keeps seeing the curly haired woman out and about, though. The woman seems to have a similar sleep schedule to hers: maybe because she (Emi? The other nomads have called the curly haired woman that a couple times) is one of the orc's most common partners for midnight patrols.

On some of her free nights, the woman just sits by the fire looking solemn.

But on other nights, Emi goes out to the edge of the campground with handfuls of food scraps and teaches tricks to the woodland creatures!

She hangs around to watch, just as often as she notices her doing it. She likes animals; they make a lot of sense, somehow.

One night, she sees Emi do something new.

The woman spreads her hands, as her well-kept cadre of animal companions dance around her, and a quartet of golden lights spring forth from her fingertips and loop about artfully amidst the prancing throng.

Huh. She didn't think Emi was a wizard, but maybe she's wrong about that.

It'd be good to know why she's keeping it a secret, if she is. But startling her seems like a really bad way to do that.

"Is someone there?"

Emi catches a glimpse of her, outlined when one of the glowing orbs shifts position.

At first the woman looks frightened but, as soon as Emi notes her quiet admirerer's diminutive stature, that fright evaporates.

"Oh. Hi."

Pretending you're supposed to be where you are works for lots of things. She steps into the light, ducking her head a little in acknowledgement.

"I hope you like it."

Emi returns the nod, and the golden motes of light drift past her to spin idly in the air between them.

"...it's the only spell I can manage, and just once a day at that so I have to make it count."

...aw, Emi's sad. She offers a hug, and... sometimes she can talk, a little, if she tries just the right way. It takes a little while, though.

Emi is a little surprised by this approach. The woman hadn't meant to let on that she was in need of comfort.

But her shocked smile when initially hugged quickly gives way to a genuinely appreciative one.

The animals have begun to shy away a bit. Things have gone off script, and there's someone new, and they're nervous and they're retreating towards the treeline.

Emi glances back and makes comforting noises at them.

Then the woman glances back at the girl and says: "...can I tell you a secret?"

(Hugs are nice. She likes hugs.)

Secrets are much more interesting than trying to talk. She abandons the attempt, and nods.

"...I'm actually a princess."

She whispers in the conspiratorial fashion that adults reserve for telling Secrets To Children.

"These celestial lights are the sigil of my house, passed down my mother's line for a hundred generations. I grew up in a kingdom far north of here, where it snows half-year round and the mountains are too big to even teleport through."

She's embellishing a bit, but the gist of what she's saying is accurate.

"...these days, though, these critters are my only subjects."

She winks. At her feet, mice and squirrels chase her golden orbs round in dizzying circles.

That's pretty neat. She grins and nods.

"Do your parents know you're up this late?"

She has some practice with this sort of question; she nods, not too quickly, but not with a long enough pause to seem like she's hesitating, either.

"I hope they're okay. The first week or so is always the hardest."

The woman has probably surmised that her 'parents' joined the caravan at its last stop, due to the lack-of-having-seen-her previously.

"But no matter what happens, you'll be safe here. You know that, right?"

That's a little odd. The confusion shows on her face, but she nods anyway, agreeably enough.

"Oh. Um. Nevermind then."

Emi gets that look that adults get sometimes when they think they might be tripping over another adult's Parenting Choices.

"Well I hope you, and whoever you're traveling with, have a pleasant journey to wherever you're headed to."

She glances back at the animals.

"If they're okay with it, you can come back and watch me any night I'm out here alone with these critters. But not on the nights I'm busy with Kosh. Understand?"

Kosh (or, more often, Kosh-nak) is what people call the big strong orc who leads the caravan. Emi sounds like she takes her bi-weekly guard duty with Kosh very seriously.

She lights up at the offer, but puts on her serious face and nods at the clarification.

"Well, it's about time I got to bed. Do you think you can find your way back to your family's tent on your own..?"

"Mmhmm," she nods.

Over the next week, Emi spends pretty much every one of her free nights out at the forest's edge handling animals.

It makes a difference, having an audience. A safe audience. The girl can tell, perhaps, that she's making Emi happy with her continued presence.

On the rare occasions when they run into each other during daylight hours, Emi winks conspiratorially at her. Like they're in on a big secret.

(Neither Emi's heritage nor her limited magic nor her animal friends are secrets per se, but she isn't particularly chatty with most of the short-term nomads so these things aren't exactly talk of the caravan either)

She can tell, and it makes her happy, too. It's nice to have a friend, even temporarily; that's not a luxury she's had often. She picks up some of Emi's animal training tricks, too - mostly just how to avoid scaring them, but by the end of the week she can tempt a squirrel or fox to take a bit of food from her hand.

That's splendid!

Emi starts thinking about other things she could teach her little tag-along.

"Do you play any musical instruments? My hometown has a famous bard college. I never got the hang of bardic casting, but I sing and play the flute pretty well."

She shakes her head, but looks interested.

Emi will teach, then!

She has her doubts about whether her companion-of-few-words will take well to singing, but since she doesn't have a flute on her she'll start there.

The songs aren't familiar. Old melodies from distant lands that most people have either forgotten or never knew about in the first place.

They're pretty, though.

She takes to it surprisingly well; for all that she never comes up with more than one word at a time on her own, she can repeat a phrase she's just heard with no trouble at all.

"That's very good!"

Emi takes her through three different songs about four times each before the night's done, with a couple breaks throughout to pass around a waterskin and look at the stars.

"You have a very promising voice. You might want to think about applying to a bard college yourself, when you're older?"

Might be interesting.

Might be something Emi'd want to ask her parents about, though.

She shrugs.

"No rush. Lots of time to explore your interests. You're, what, eight years old? Big life ahead of you."

The caravan leaves the forests and enters a jagged arid landscape.

Previously, the nomads had been able to forage for nuts and berries to supplement their food stores. Now, the only thing they've got besides dry rations is meat from the occasional monstrous animals that attack the caravan's flanks (Kosh stops these beasts cold every time; even after three such attacks, nobody in the wagon line seems to have gotten a scratch from them).

Emi continues the instruction of her musical protegee most nights. She gets hold of a flute not long after they enter the drylands and--after demonstrating its use--passes it along to the girl as well.

She takes to the flute just as quickly, and Emi will occasionally hear her practicing in the afternoon while the caravan travels. She's got quite a cozy little nest, now: she managed to make off with a bit of canvas, one evening, and a night's exploration found her a wagon she could tie it up under; she likes how it sways her to sleep in the morning when the caravan starts moving, and it gives her a safe place to leave the flute and the small collection of interesting stones she's been accumulating when the caravan stops for the evening and she goes to help haul water and gather firewood.

"So, you're Emi's new friend."

During one such evening, the orc approaches her while she's out gathering firewood.

"I've been smelling a new scent on her recently. Was curious who."

He's... big. But seeming intimidated when people don't want you to be tends to go worse than not, so she just grins and nods.

"Well. I hope you decide to stick around. She gets real lonely."

Interestingly, the orc makes no reference to the girl's hypothetical parents in this statement.

Well, sometimes people don't.

She makes a noncommittal sound, in response - she could stay; she hasn't decided one way or the other yet. It is pretty nice here.

"Your call. Stay or go, the door here's always open."

Koshnak uproots a nearby tree and slings it over his shoulder.

"Wherever your path takes you, be strong and seize your dreams."

And with that, he strolls off.

Y'know, he's pretty cool.

It's much later, over dinner, that she puts together the comment about smelling her on Emi and the lack of comment about her parents. It puts her heart in her throat, for a moment - someone tried to return her to them, once, back when she was first out on her own, and she has no desire to repeat the experience - but... he didn't. He said she could stay. So. That's good. (Maybe she should stay, if she's really properly welcome here. It's certainly a point in favor, at least.)

Unfortunately, not everyone in the campground feels the same way as Koshnak about her unaccompanied status.

She gets no music lessons that night, since Emi is off with Koshnak, but the next morning as the wagons are loading up she overhears an exchange between Emi and another woman:

"--he says that she's traveling alone. Does that mean... did he--?"

"No. No. I've known Kosh for a long time and he would never--"

The two of them get interrupted by another couple of passing nomads, but their correspondence picks back up again a few seconds later.

"--she's probably an orphan or a runaway looking for food or a way to travel?"

"But this *still* isn't any sort of place for an unaccompanied minor! The roads aren't safe and... even if you're sure Koshnak wouldn't hurt a child, can you say the same for all the other ruffians in this band? He lets anyone in, Mhina."

"You're right." The other woman pauses at the edge of the wagon. "We should make sure she's okay."

"--how? I don't even know where she gets off to during the day? I assumed she was with her parents but now I'm worried--" Emi steps into the vehicle overhead, passing within inches of the girl's hiding place in the process. Emi and the other woman exchange a few more muffled words, then the doors close and the wagons set off along the parched wilderness trail.

...that's going to be unpleasant to deal with.

She stays in her hammock that evening, until most everyone has gone to bed, and then creeps out to get a meal from dinner's leftovers.

Emi's waiting out there, patiently, right beside the food.

Darn.

She makes sure she has an escape route, but approaches anyway.

"Hey. So I think you and I need to talk about something."

Emi holds out some food for her, making no moves to bar her escape route while doing so.

"Mmm?"

She takes the food.

"Koshnak says you don't actually have parents traveling with you. Is that true?"

Sigh.

Nod.

"Do you understand why I would find that concerning?"

Shrug.

(That people find it concerning, yeah, she's noticed. It doesn't really make sense, though. She's fine. It's not like sending her back would make anything any better.)

"I want you to be okay." Emi wishes the girl would be more talkative, but she tries her best not to let her frustration slip through. She thinks back to what Mhinasukambre said about their stowaway's likely background. "And I understand if you don't have somewhere else to be okay. I... I kind of don't either, in a way?"

Then what's the problem?

Be an adult, Emi chastises herself, and articulate this clearly.

"I don't like that you were pretending you had someone looking after you when you don't, though. It's dangerous out here, and nobody should be alone, least of all a child?"

That last bit gets a skeptical squint, like she thinks Emi is confused about something.

"Yeah. I feel like I'm not getting something here." She sighs. "Sorry... is there any way you can explain?"

"Mmm."

She considers, and then hums the first few bars of one of the songs Emi's been teaching her, about an adventurer who made it safely through a troll band's territory by pretending to be one.

"Oh. That makes sense."

...

"I'm not upset with you for hiding that at first." It's a good song. Her grandma used to sing it to her, back when she was little. "But I'd like it if you could be honest with me from now on? I... I'd like to look out for you, while you're here, and I can't do that if I don't know what's going on."

She rocks back a step and looks down, thinking about it.

Emi conjures up some dancing lights.

It takes the girl a second to notice them; when she does, she scowls.

She puts the lights away.

And waits.

She comes to a conclusion after a few more seconds; looks up, nods, turns, and takes a few steps towards the wagons, then looks back over her shoulder to see if Emi is following.

She follows slowly, making sure her proximity is welcome before drawing too close.

She doesn't object, at least.

She leads Emi to her wagon, gently pats the side of it, and then ducks underneath.

She peers under the wagon.

It's dark, and she wishes she hadn't blown her single-use-per-day of magical illumination just a minute ago, but she can make out the gist of what's going on down there.

"That's pretty clever." She crawls under the wagon on hands and knees. "Can't imagine it's as comfortable as a proper bedroll laid out on stable ground though?"

There's a noncommittal chirp from the deeper shadow of the hammock.

"There'd be room in my wagon for you, if you'd like that. Nice solid door between me and the outside." She pauses awkwardly, then giggles and adds in an unconvincing attempt at mirth: "being royalty has its privileges, I guess?"

This time, the response is a frustrated huff.

"Okay. It was just an offer. You can stay here if you prefer. I can't--I'm not..." Not your parent. Emi feels so out of her depth right now. "It's your decision to make. Thank you for trusting me."

Yeah, okay.

She crawls back out of the hammock and gives Emi a careful hug.

Emi tries not to get freaked out by this diminuative act of physical contact, but fails to.

She jerks back, hitting her head on the underside of the wagon as she does so.

"Oh." Shit. What is wrong with her? "Sorry!"

Oops. "Sorry," she repeats back.

"You didn't do anything wrong. I just, uh... I don't like being touched?"

"Mmm," she acknowledges.

"Okay, so, please come to me if you need anything." She backs the rest of the way out from under the wagon and sits up. "And please let me know if anything changes? Or if anyone does something, or says something, that worries you? Do you think you could do that?"

She emerges from under the wagon too, looking more than a little worried about the woman. She nods, though, when she finishes speaking.

"Thank you."

Emi tries to think if there's anything else she can do, here.

"Would you like to meet someone else I trust, here? So that you don't have to rely on just me? I won't always be around, and..."

She glances out into the darkness beyond the campground, where Kosh is currently out patrolling the perimeter with his dwarf friend, and shivers.

Yeah, okay. She nods.

Early the next afternoon, the caravan stops early at the edge of the arid expanse. A stream runs alongside the area where they strike camp: its waters are a little dire, full of jagged rocks and frothing rapids, but they're a welcome change of pace after all the endless dry that came before.

Emi stops by the wagon where the girl's set up her daytime hiding place, and waits a polite distance away.

She doesn't immediately conclude that they've stopped for the day, and when she does, she exits from the side of the wagon that doesn't have an unidentified person watching it. But she turns up pretty quickly after that, looking around curiously.

She's staring out over the roaring stream when the girl comes upon her.

Perhaps sizing up the woodlands on the far side of it? Considering what new animal subjects she might find surrounding her, there?

Maybe.

She chirps a greeting before getting too close.

"Oh. G'morning?" She isn't sure whether to say that, or good afternoon, given the girl likely just woke up. Also, she isn't sure if her tiny and resourceful companion stashes rations away to eat during the daytime so it's possible she hasn't eaten since the wagons set off twelve hours ago. "Would you like something to eat, before we go meet my friend?"

She nods.

(She doesn't; she has trouble eating neatly enough to not end up with a crumb- and subsequently pest-filled bed even when she's not trying to do it in a swaying hammock.)

Well Emi can supply food, then!

(It's the same variety of dry scraps the nomads have been eating for most of the past week, but while not especially tasty it's adequately nourishing)

It's food that she doesn't have to steal; she's not picky.

Soon enough, she's ready to go.

Emi leads the way back to the front of the caravan where she last saw her other friend.

"--and so, we're going to need at least three extra days to prep the wagons for a safe crossing here, whereas if we continued a day downstream we could probably handle it with just a bit of sealant on the undercarriages--"

As Emi approaches, she and the girl can overhear a conversation in progress between the caravan's human quartermaster and its orcish protector.

"Couldn't I just carry them all over? Water doesn't look that deep."

"I don't doubt you're strong enough, but some of the wagons are in pretty bad strain and might crack if all their weight were placed on two palm-sized supports. Maybe if we rigged them up properly, but that would take extra time too, and--"

She stays close to Emi, and doesn't interrupt.

Eventually, the two adults reach an agreement about how the caravan should proceed from here and Koshnak wanders off.

He flashes a wink in her and Emi's direction as he goes--probably aware of their presence there the whole time through his Scent ability--but doesn't shout any greetings their way or anything.

"Mhina."

Emi approaches and speaks up once the orc's out of earshot.

"Hey, are you busy right now? There's someone I was hoping to introduce you to."

She's not quite sure what to make of the wink, and watches the orc as he goes, but turns her attention back to Emi's friend when Emi starts talking.

"Oh! Hello there!"

Like most adults, Mhinasukambre makes an extra effort to be enthusiastic and upbeat towards children.

Unlike most adults, she's good enough at putting on such airs that the artifice isn't transparently obvious.

"My name's Mhinasukambre. But you can just call me Mhina if you like. What should I call you?"

She looks up at Emi. (She'll try it if she has to, but only if she has to.)

"She doesn't talk, much."

"Oh, okay." Mhinasukambre quickly re-calibrates her diction to focus on yes-or-no questions. She turns her attention back to the as-yet-unnamed stowaway. "So, has Emi explained who I am?"

Nope.

"I mentioned that you were my friend, and that you could be trusted. Not much else."

Mhinasukambre looks momentarily taken aback by Emi's use of the word 'friend' to describe her.

The confusion crosses her features only momentarily, though, before she resumes her smooth upbeat patter.

"Well, I've been with this caravan since its beginning--better part of half a century. I'm in charge of supplies and navigation, though Kosh sets the course and the calendar. I can help you with most anything around here. I take a shift on patrol about one night every month, and you mustn't bother me then, but any other time of day is fine. Everyone in this wagon line is my responsibility... that all make sense?"

She nods.

"Emi mentioned she was teaching you to play the flute. You enjoy picking up new skills?"

"Mmhmm."

"Well, I happen to favor classes that grant bucketloads of skill ranks, so I've dabbled in a lot of things over the years."

"I could teach you whittling, knot tying, tracking, lockpicking, firespinning..."

"Not firespinning."

"Ah. Well. Anyway. Did I mention anything you think you might like to practice?"

She giggles, a little, at Emi's reprimand, and nods.

She lists them out again one at a time, giving the girl-of-few-words a chance to stop her on whichever sounded most interesting.

Whittling gets little attention; knot tying, a little more; tracking she's definitely interested in, and lockpicking she's quite enthusiastic about.

Figures.

"Alright, so. While I've got the tools of the trade on me presently, they won't do you much good without a lock to practice on. I'll see if I can't scare up a spare after I'm done plotting out our route for tomorrow."

"Come back after dinner, maybe?"

She glances up at Emi to check that this is all right. (She doesn't track her down right after dinner, usually, but Emi probably has a better idea of how long this will take, whether it'll interfere with their time very much.)

Emi is generally alright with this, though she maybe wishes that Mhinasukambre knew some crafts Better Suited For Young Ladies.

Eh.

She gives Mhina a grin and a nod.

Mhinasukambre picks up on this nonverbal exchange.

"It's okay," Emi says to the older woman. "I understand that your upbringing was... different than mine.

Mhinasukambre flinches momentarily at that. But only momentarily.

"Yeah. We can't all be princesses." She turns away, again considering the rapids standing between them and their destination. "Gonna have to ask for some space now. Important work to do."

"Sure."

Emi heads back towards camp.

The girl follows her in, but breaks off when they get there to go disassemble her hiding space - better not to let it get sodden, if they're going to be fording a river. She takes the resulting bundle with her to watch Mhina work.

Mhinasukambre cheerfully attends to the needs of the caravan: giving out directions to drivers, starting the work of sealing the wagons up for tomorrow's crossing, redistributing supplies between vehicles to equalize weight between them.

No matter what holdups or frustrations she faces, she always remains level headed in temperament and pleasant in demeanor when addressing the motley group of nomads comprising the caravan.

As she watches Mhinasukambre work, a shadow falls over her from behind.

"She's pretty extraordinary, isn't she?"

Koshnak sits down beside her bundled nest.

Even seated, he's not quite down to her eye level.

"We met way back in the day; she was a soldier of the Northern Guard, and I was just some ruffian looking to make a name for himself. An unlikely pair, but after a rocky start we became quite an effective team."

The old human woman can't uproot trees or wrestle down dire wolves the way Koshnak can, but as she hops from task to task she displays almost superhuman grace, perseverance, and attentiveness to detail. Everyone she interacts with, from rugged mountain men to delicate doe-eyed dames, seems to treat her with natural deference.

"We're damn lucky to have each other." He rests his back against one of the wagons, jostling it noticeably in the process. "None of this would be possible otherwise."

She hums appreciatively.

"Say. Emi mentioned you don't have a name, least not one you're giving out to folks round here. And so she just kept calling you 'the girl' over 'n over again, which was kind of funny to be honest."

...ah, yeah. That. "Mmhmm."

"So I've decided to call you Jen. I'm guessing you'll be fine with that."

There ought to be a question mark at the end of that second sentence.

There totally isn't though.

She makes a rude noise.

Koshnak laughs, leaps back to his feet, and then heads over to where Mhinasukambre's working to help her with a bit of heavy lifting.

...well, all right then.

Things get sorted out. The sun sinks lower in the sky. The nomads back at the camp throw a 'feast'--nowhere near as grand as what they had during those first days of the journey, but they're excited to have fresh fish again and they'll party if they want to.

Mhinasukambre is one of the last ones to head back for a bite to eat.

She doesn't wait that long - she's enthusiastic about the fish too - but she keeps an eye out for Mhina, and goes over when she turns up.

"Hey there. Rickhardt says there are some old locks he doesn't need anymore back in the second-to-last wagon. We can go take a look in a minute."

She walks past, grabs a fish, and then begins scarfing it down in a decidedly indelicate fashion.

She'll just tag along, then.

A minute or so later, they are rattling around inside of a wagon looking for surplus locks.

(She tries to keep her rubbernecking subtle.)

"Okay, one of these should work."

Mhinasukambre withdraws with a trio a low-quality but not-rusted-through locks strung through her fingers.

"Let's find somewhere well lit, it'll help if you can see the tumblers your first couple of times. You got a preference for nearer or farther from other folk?"

"Farther."

Mhinasukambre sends her to fetch some kindling, then they start a fire together at the outskirts of camp.

"Alright, so, have you ever seen the mechanism inside one of these before?" She holds up the three locks.

Nope.

She pulls out an expensive looking dagger, which seems heavier in her hand than an item of its size ought to be, and starts whittling away at one of the metal boxes.

The iron casing around the locking mechanism peels apart like wood shavings. She whistles a merry tune as she turns it over carefully in her hand, making sure not to damage the tumbler in the process of exposing it to the night air.

"Here." When she's done, she holds it out so the light from the fire glints off its innards. "Take a close look."

She does, turning it this way and that to get a feel for how the pieces go together and how, if at all, gravity plays into it.

Mhinasukambre gives a quite adequate introductory lesson on lockpicking.

She's enthusiastic, but very clumsy.

Mhinasukambre's patient.

"Sometimes, if you want to do something that you don't have ideal attributes for, you've got to come at it from a different direction than most people do?"

"When I was younger, I wanted to be a soldier, but I was too weak to even hold a sword properly. I spent a while puzzling it over, considered my strengths instead of my deficits, and approached things by another angle..."

She moves her arm quickly, and the air beside her (the side further away from the person she's talking to, naturally) erupts into a brief storm of glittering blade strokes.

"It took a lot of years to get the hang of it, doing it my way. But once I did, I could take people off guard." She lowers her arm. There's no sign of the blade she held a moment before. "Whether you pick the lock, or bust the lock, or squeeze through a window? There's always a way through if you look for it."

"Mmhm." She's got some experience with that, yep. (It'd still be easier if she could actually manage this, but, well. Not today, at least.)

"I'm pretty sure Emi's free tonight. She'll be out waiting for you by now, if'n that's the case?"

She starts packing her lockpick kit back up.

"Mmhmm." She'll keep the lock, if that's all right.

It's quite alright!

Be careful of the sharp edges, though?

"Mmhmm."

She tucks it into her bundle and off she goes. She has a pretty good guess of where Emi will be.

She doesn't find Emi where she expects to.

But she does find a scrawny desert fox that Emi'd been training this past week.

The fox eyes her expectantly. It looks very much on edge, but not due to her presence: it's eaten food from her hand enough times to recognize her scent.

Huh.

She stashes her bundle and tries to get the fox to approach her.

The fox hops towards her once, then turns and dashes off.

It stops after a few bounds, though, and peers over its shoulder as though to check if she's following.

Yep, here she comes.

The fox winds its way out into the dark, its path purposeful and its pace expedient.

It gets harder to keep track of the energetic critter as they get further from the campfires--it seems to vanish whenever it stops moving, but when it bounds forward again her eyes can still track it through the gloom.

And then, abruptly, the fox is not the only landmark she has to navigate by.

Cries of pain.

Emi's.

From somewhere up ahead in the dark.

Oh no.

She can't go back for help - she can't tell them anything - but maybe there's something she can do anyway.

She continues onward, slower now as she puts some effort into stealth.

The cries die down, but the girl can still hear Em sobbing on the ground somewhere ahead. She can also hear the sound of scraping gravel. Like someone pinned under something, trying to claw their way free?

These lands are dangerous. Emi herself had said that, hadn't she? What's she doing all the way out here, alone..?

She'll worry about that later. The question for now is, what's going on, and can she make it stop?

As she creeps closer, she can see that Emi isn't alone.

Koshnak's out here too. She didn't hear him before, because his quiet grunts of effort can hardly be heard over Emi's intermittent cries, but at this distance his hulking outline is obvious.

He's on his knees in the gravel, bent over halfway with his fingers splayed out on the ground in front of him. He's rocking back and forth, a steady rhythm like riding a horse.

Emi's facedown on the ground beneath him. Her skin's bare and dirty. Every time he thrusts into her, she screams.

...what.

People are weird. That's pretty much just a fact of life; she's more or less used to it, at this point. And usually she assumes it's pretty harmless - it's not like she's not kind of weird herself, after all.

This is something else again, though. Emi's definitely getting hurt - she can't make out the details, but she can hear her clearly enough. But what can she do against Kosh? She's just a kid, and he makes a casual habit of uprooting trees; there's precisely one way it can go if she tries to fight him.

She's frozen, for a few seconds, trying to come up with something better to do than just run away.

As she crouches there frozen, she might notice--belatedly--that she is currently upwind of Koshnak's position?

"Oh. Jen." Koshnak glances over in her direction, his-dark adapted eyes quickly pinpointing her hiding place. "You followed us all the way out from the wagon line?"

He makes no move to accost her, but does ease up a bit on whatever he's doing to hurt Emi.

Emi sucks in breath unevenly, turning in the same direction Kosh's facing but seeing nothing aside from arid brush and shadows.

"W-whaa?"

The confused noise she makes is not even slightly intentional.

"No." Emi freezes up where she lays, her body trembling and her teeth clenched tight together. "No."

"S'fine, love." Koshnak rubs a hand across her back in what is perhaps intended as a reassuring gesture. "Nothin' here to be ashamed of."

She hisses - not at him, under her breath, but still audible.

"You can't--... You shouldn't have--..."

Emi shouts hoarsely in her general direction.

"Go! B-back to camp! Now!" 

"Shhhh. Quiet, love."

Koshnak starts doing the thing, again, that hurts Emi.

"Jen. You're free to do whatever you will, here." He meets eyes with the girl again once Emi's words have devolved back into tears. "But since we'll be at this for a few hours more..."

He shrugs. Pretty a pair as he and Emi make, he expects the girl will get bored watching their joint exertions sooner or later.

She shuffles around in the underbrush for a moment - still tempted to challenge him, and never mind that it'd be utter suicide - but goes. Retrieves her bundle. Finds someplace out of the way to sit and practice throwing pebbles at the shrubbery.

The sun rises on the caravan's right flank, casting long shadows across the out of the way spot she picked out. Nomads start emerging from their tents: exchanging morning greetings, rekindling fires, breaking fast, and otherwise bringing the campground back to life.

Only a while later, past the time when she usually would've gone to sleep, does she catch sight of Koshnak and Emi on the horizon.

Koshnak, his greatcoat back in place upon his shoulders, towers like a monolith beside the human-sized woman he escorts.

She's clothed, cleaned up, not bleeding.

She does have a fleeting stagger to her step, almost like she's intermittently dozing off on her feet, but she refuses to lean on the orc beside her for support.

rrrrrrr.

They reach the campground outskirts.

The dazed Emi won't notice her, unless she makes an attention-catch sound while they're passing.

Koshnak totally will notice her, either way, but won't necessarily do more than give her a conspiratorial wink.

She stays quiet, but does glare at him.

The nomads welcome their protector and his escort back into their midst.

As always, the people of the caravan seem slightly nervous, but at the same time confident that Koshnak will shield them from harm.

Emi goes to sleep, in the back of the wagon set aside for her. Everyone else gets to work.

Nothing's changed.

It's just... normal.

Maybe they don't know? She didn't know. But... no. He wasn't trying to hide it. And the nervousness makes sense, now.

Well, that's the question of whether she's staying answered, at least. She can't. She can't.

And for now?

It's hard being alone when you're hurt. Kind of awful, actually. (She feels a little sick, thinking back to all the times when Emi really seemed to need a hug.) So. That's something she can do.

She's quiet, opening the door to Emi's wagon; she doesn't want to startle her, though she only sort of has a plan for not. Peeks in, before announcing herself.

Emi doesn't startle. Doesn't actually seem to register the door opening.

She's already sprawled out in her cot, near the front of the carriage.

She goes over and sits by the head of the cot. "Mrr?"

Emi startles awake. She'd thought she'd locked the door to her wagon, she usually does, but locks can be picked and maybe she was sloppy and...

...and there's the girl. Sitting there. Watching her. The way she must've watched earlier, when Emi was face down in the gravel...

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Emi's lips move, but no words come out.

Oh dear.

She's probably not going to make things any better by just going?

She reaches out to pat her hand, stopping short of touching her to check whether this is a mistake.

It is a mistake.

Before the girl's hand even gets close to the woman's, Emi backs up onto the corner of the cot and wraps her arms around her legs.

"I'm sorry." She speaks into her own folded wrists, rocking slightly in place.

Yeah, okay, this is above her challenge rating. Back out she goes.

It's a while later - in fact she's moved on to looking for a solution to her other problem, 'where am I going to sleep today' - before it occurs to her that she could try letting Mhina know. She's not sure that that will work, and wouldn't be even if today wasn't being one of those where nothing she tries works, but - well, at least she can go see what kind of mood the woman's in. (And maybe she'll have a suggestion for a safe enough place to sleep, too. It's getting to be well past a comfortable hour for her to be awake.)

Mhinasukambre is cheerfully working on prepping the wagons to move. She wants to get them about forty miles upstream before nightfall, so that they can plan a fording over calmer waters on the morrow.

And no sign of the orc, right?

No sign of the orc.

If hanging around looking distressed doesn't get Mhina's attention in a reasonable amount of time, she'll interrupt her.

Hanging around looking distressed does in fact get Mhinasukambre's attention.

Said attention doesn't cause the old adventurer to drop what she's doing immediately--she has a responsibility to everyone in the caravan, not just its youngest members--but she extricates herself expediently when an opportunity presents itself.

"You alright?"

"Enh," she answers, and then turns and heads for Emi's wagon.

Uh.

What.

Mhinasukambre wavers for a moment between following up on this bewildering exchange and returning to her duties at the caravan head.

In the end, she opts to trail the laconic stowaway.

Wagon: Emi's. She stops outside and makes a face.

“Oh, was Emi... not there, last night?”

Mhinasukambre looks from the girl to the wagon. Notices that the latter is unlocked.

”We really shouldn’t ought to barge in on her. This is the time of day she likes to sleep, and she needs her rest before we cross the rapids tomorrow.”

Headshake.

"Kosh."

It only takes that single word for Mhinasukambre to instantly understand what’s transpired.

“And you already woke her up, and she was upset, and you don’t know what to do?” She considered feigning ignorance but decided against that very quickly. “Okay. Yeah. We should talk to her.”

Mhinasukambre pauses for a moment to examine the girl’s countenance more closely. Her fists clench.

”He didn’t touch you did he?”

Headshake.

She opens the door and steps into the back of the wagon.

Emi remains more or less in the position she was before.

The girl stays in the doorway, fretting.

"Emi?"

"She saw, Mhina."

"I'm sorry."

"Are you okay?"

"How could you let that happen!?"

"...Kosh said it was Aki's turn last night.

"He is a Chaotic. Evil. Barbarian." Emi stares daggers through her 'friend' Mhina. "Those are known to change up their schedules, from time to time."

(This... seems to be helping? Ish? She's not paying very much attention to the actual words right now.)

Mhinasukambre glances over at the girl beside her, and says to Emi: "I'm sorry it happened this way, but... you know she was going to find out eventually?"

"No! She wasn't. She was going to get off at the next town we passed through, safe, carefree, with nothing but happy memories about us!"

Mhinasukambre raises an incredulous eyebrow, looking to their stowaway expectantly.

"Were you?"

She shrugs.

"Yes. She would've. And she still will, less the carefree and happy memories bit."

Mhinasukambre remains a little unsure about this assertion of Emi's, but doesn't challenge it further.

Instead, she hunches down against the wall of the wagon and motions for the girl to step up into the space as well so that they can be approximately eye-to-eye.

"What you saw last night was really scary, wasn't it?"

"If you want, we can pretend it never happened. That's fine. That works for some people. Alternately, if you ask me to, I can explain better what's going on. For some other people, that makes things less scary?"

"No."

She seems skeptical of the idea of pretending it never happened even before Mhina offers to explain. But when Emi objects, she pauses, waiting to see if she'll explain.

Further words from Emi do not seem to be forthcoming.

And Emi's advice hasn't been all that good.

She nods.

"Koshnak thinks that folks should be able to do pretty much whatever they want, if they're strong enough to? And some of the things that he likes doing... they hurt people." Mhinasukambre does an admirable job of keeping her tone level and her words clear of revulsion. "Almost all the adults in this camp have been hurt by him before. Me included."

Welp.

"You're only going to frighten her more with talk like that."

"There are two important things for you to understand here--"

Mhina pauses long enough for Emi to finish being contrary, and then resumes speaking to the young stowaway.

"The first is that you're not going to get hurt like that. Not by Koshnak. And not by anyone else, either, if I'm around to have a say in the matter."

Emi makes a protective sound, and nods along to what Mhinasukambre just said.

"The second thing is that... this isn't your fault. What's happening to us won't be your fault if you leave at the next town, and it won't be your fault if you stay either. Do you understand that?"