2017-05-29: Mr. Hawthorne I Presume
- Log: Mr. Hawthorne I Presume
- Cast:Josephine Lovelace Noah Hawthorne
- Where: Adlehyde Boarding House
- Date: May 29 2017
- Summary: Josephine Lovelace finally tracks down the man she's looking for. Two people die in the process.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Adlehyde has seen better days. And all the rest of the calendar wrapped up along with it. Josephine sucks in a breath, frowning as she trudges down a backalley that, only weeks ago, had been just another street leading to a familiar haunt.
By now, the flames are out. The still-standing buildings and even sections of the city are eerily quiet -- not even the birds have returned. Debris litters the street along with ash, and the whole of Adlehyde feels almost like it's holding its breath -- as if waiting for the other shoe to drop, or to be certain that it really is all over.
She doesn't bother knocking. The door's unlocked, like many in this place. The boarding-house door opens easily, passage only briefly impeded by something -- a chair, as it turns out -- just inside. Josie ducks inside. Snapping her fingers, she summons forth a small globe of light. It's dark in here.
The bird, hunched uneasily on her shoulder, draws in closer to her neck.
She'd used the evacuation site outside to her advantage -- had asked around with a few of the civilians. It was there that she'd gotten a potentially useful nugget of information -- the boarding house where a certain Noah Hawthorne had been staying. Of course, odds were high he wasn't there now, especially if he was dead, but what else did she have to go on?
She'd follow any clue to its bitter end.
It's mostly unscathed in here -- predictable, perhaps, since the outside was only somewhat charred, and not even blackened. Only a bit of mess inside suggests that the inhabitants left in a hurry. Slowly, she ascends the stairs to the next level, taking the steps carefully in case any of them are damaged.
There's always the chance he might have left something behind. Since she doesn't know which room was his, though, she'll have to do it the hard way.
But right now Josie has the time to waste.
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
It's a miracle, really, that this building remains as intact as it is. Outside the buildings to either side are thoroughly decimated, debris from either having toppled in such a way as to create an accidental firebreak. The heat from nearby flames left its sooty fingerprints behind, but for the most part the damage done here was done by frantic residents and other civilians seeking shelter from the horrors of invasion night, and what few looters have been brave enough to attempt to scavenge through the city when the ashes are still warm.
Josephine has no difficulty pushing the chair out of the way after the door bangs into it. The stairs seem intact; they creak as she ascends, but with age rather than the strain of structural failure. Motes of dust dance in the weak sunlight that penetrates smoke-tinted windows. Her boots leave prints behind in the carpet of ashes that swept in on backdrafts.
All of which, anyway, makes noise.
Looters may be few in number, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Buildings like this one are rare enough to make for tempting targets, which probably explains the sudden emergence of two dirty faces around the wall to one side of the stairs, difficult to see in the gloom save that Josie's summoned sphere of light casts pinpricks of brilliance in their eyes. They take all of two seconds to watch and see if she's alone before deciding she's no threat, and another second and a half to contemplate whether or not she's prey.
They decide 'yes.'
"Don't think there's any vacancies, darlin'," one of them says, rounding the corner and setting a foot on the bottom stair. He's not tall. Stocky, well-muscled. Tanned enough to be a laborer of some variety or other. He finds his remark the very height of wit, and smiles a jackal's smile.
The figure that steps out to join him is tall and gaunt, pale as can be. He was probably well dressed once, but his suit is now a patchwork of singes and stains. "Is that because every room in the house belongs to us now, Lovett?" The question seems deferential, but it's cold and cool, the sound of a voice of command.
"Think so," says Lovett. He has a hand on a sheath at his belt. It isn't clear what it contains. "Though they could probably do with a woman's touch."
"They, or you?"
"Hah, well.."
Two floors up, Noah Hawthorne stands in the middle of his half-packed room, his head tilted to one side, listening. A single hand slowly moves to thumb-release the catches on the holsters at his hips, unsecuring the ARMs they contain.
[FLIP] Josephine Lovelace flipped a coin: Heads!
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Oh, right.
Looters always follow in the wake of a catastrophe. Why should she have thought any different this time around, just because the streets were so quiet?
This was a little careless of her, wasn't it?
Josie hesitates, one foot just resting on the top step. She glances over her shoulder, dark eyes scanning the area below. She counts two of them. There's always a chance there could be more, but there's no point worrying about 'chances' right now.
"Oh, really? That's a shame. I always thought this boarding house looked like a fun place to stay~"
She pivots on the step, casting the sphere of light ceilingwards with her right hand while drawing her rifle with the left. Squinting one eye closed, she readjusts her stance against the step, rolling her weight back onto her right foot.
Counterbalance. For the kick.
"I certainly wasn't expecting a crowd. Well, now that you're here, I had a few questions." She tilts her head to the left, just a bit. It's almost, almost coquettish. If it weren't for the rifle. "Alright?" she says to the men, barrel trained on the most problematic looking of the pair -- the one going for the sheath at his belt. "So! Let's start. Hypothetically speaking, gentlemen," Josie raises an eyebrow here, as if to suggest she's using the term very loosely, "About how fast do you think you can run?" Her lips break into a grin that under any other circumstance could be called 'irrepressively cheerful'.
Her finger slips over the trigger. "My longest shot was 50 meters. Think quickly!"
Penelope fluffs out, hunching low on Josie's shoulder. As if this is familiar for the poor pigeon.
A shot rings out soon after.
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
Maybe they don't think a woman with a pigeon on her shoulder is the kind of woman who would shoot them when they haven't even set a finger onto her yet. Maybe they're brave enough not to flinch -- probably that's true, since they're plundering a town still haunted by the ghosts of demons out of myth -- or maybe in addition to being brave enough to plunder the town, they're also stupid. That seems likely, too.
Whatever the reason, they exchange a glance with one another as she issues her threat and break into simultaneous laughter, as though she'd just told the world's funniest joke. The funniest joke that Lovett, at least, has ever heard.
And the funniest joke he will ever hear, becomes moments later he's incapable of hearing anything at all. She dispatches him with shocking ease. It's astonishing how quickly a life can end: one minute there, jackal's smile sharp beneath glittering eyes, and the next minute the jackal's smile is still there but the eyes no longer are, only open space where the top of his head used to be. He topples over backward. Before he even hits the ground there's a wicked gleam of pewter light as the gaunt figure beside him draws a revolver, aims, and fires it at Josie.
What happens with that shot Noah won't immediately know, though he descends the stairs on the opposite end of the landing hall just in time to see a woman he doesn't recognize kill a man he does. No great tragedy there; they'd been trying to steal from the refugee encampment for days before he and Morgan Newkirk ran them off.
He won't know because the moment the pistol in the thin man's hand bucks, so does the ARM in Noah's, and the man with the hollow face and spindly limbs joins his partner in crime on the ash-blanketed floor of the boarding house, blood starkly red against the grey and white.
And then that ARM noses over just enough to suggest he's not above shooting women, either, if it looks as though things are going to turn against him.
His expression is skeptical, though, the cock of his brow not particularly aggressive, and his tone of voice actually dances along a line of wry humor, even if his hazel eyes are sharp.
"Thinking quickly was never his strong suit, I'm 'fraid." The voice is accented, but not with any one particular accent, and it wanders easily between tenor and baritone registers, emotive and easy on the ears.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Admittedly, with her rounded face and features that tilt towards sweet the archaeologist is -- height aside -- not particularly imposing-looking. Just about the only tell for the men that they're in trouble would be the ease with which she handles the rifle. She's long since reached the level of skill with this type of gun where she can control it with the same unconscious carelessness with which someone might move their arm. Particularly this one -- Gawain has been a part of her personal arsenal for a long, long time.
Only an expert in ARMs -- someone well-versed in how a rifle of this make is properly handled -- would notice the little hitches in the way she moves. She aims and fires left-handed, after all, and it's more like she's mirroring something she learned the other way around.
They don't think she's a threat. They laugh. And Josie fires, taking one brief, sharp moment of self-satisfied exulatation in the fact that the smile remains on his lips even as he begins to collapse over backwards, quite a bit shorter than he used to be. Laugh at her, will he?
She's distracted. Awareness -- a glint, motion, discharge of gunfire -- arrives rapidly. There's no time to scold herself for being sloppy again -- she moves, tilting to the side. Time, to her perspective, slows to a crawl. In reality, it's going much, much faster.
A few stray strands of pale hair dance for a spare second under the cool light of her spell. Penelope bursts into flight in a flurry of wings.
Josie wasn't fast enough. A thin line of blood trails down her cheek, her reward for her carelessness. Lifting a hand, she touches the tiny cut, then tugs at a section of her bangs which are now a bit shorter. Her dark-eyed gaze first lands on the bodies at the foot of the stairs, then pivots over towards the man with the ARM pointed roughly -- if not entirely -- in her direction.
Penelope settles somewhere near the bottom of the stairs, peering inquisitively at the still-bleeding bodies.
"Damn," Josephine sighs, lowering the muzzle of her rifle down towards the step just below her. By the time she'd manage to draw on him, she'd probably already have a hole in her head. "Well, you've got me at a disadvantage. Not friends of yours, right?" Here, she jerks her head down towards the cooling corpses.
Slightly, she squints. "You look a little familiar, now that I think of it..." She just can't place where. Lopsidedly, the archaeologist smiles. "...Well, nevermind that, right? What's it going to be? Are you going to shoot or not?"
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
There are reasons that someone as big as Noah is capable of moving as quietly as he does. It helps, of course, when the people in the next room over are laughing raucously, and someone is firing a rifle...but even without those things to cover for him, he's well-practiced in staying silent. Contrary, of course, to all evidence -- if one puts any stock in his public reputation.
"Not friends of mine," Noah repeats, confirming in that same easy-going tone of voice. Save for the presence of the peculiar ARM he's holding -- its mirror opposite still sits in the holster on his other hip, undrawn -- this might be, to listen to him, just an affable chat with a stranger. He never does take his eyes off of her, though. They only detour, very slightly, as a thread of scarlet begins to rill down the contour of the side of her face.
The question she asks him inspires a ghostly hint of humor to take up haunting one side of his mouth. "I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you, but I guess that depends on you. What're you doing in here? You come here to pick the rooms clean like chuckles and knuckles down there, or what? 'Cause there ain't much left in here worth dying for, doll."
He says nothing of her suggestion that he looks familiar. She does not look familiar to him, but then...the incident in question, he'd lost rather a lot of blood, and then subsequently been hauled off to a Baskar shaman's tent and pumped full of hallucinogenic drugs. His memory of that evening is suspect, to say the least.
He figures she's trying to distract him, in the end, and lets that statement go completely ignored.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
To be fair, she was fairly distracted at the time, but he's got her at a disadvantage all the same, so the reason behind it remains moot. Still, even Penelope hadn't noticed a thing...
Granted, this is the bird which has now hopped down to the bottom of the stairs to investigate the pool of spreading blood more closely, so perhaps Penelope's helpfullness is questionable in this regard besides.
Anyone who was listening in might even begin to think it was pleasant -- if they weren't in the room, that is. Or listening to closely to what was being said. Briefly, Josie's gaze dips downwards, to his hip. Another holster. "...To be honest, neither am I," she says, that half-smile turning a little more rueful. "But, I suppose I'd still have to say the same."
She shrugs, shoulders lifting and falling in a slight movement. "You know, pointing that at someone is really impolite!" Her left hand eases off the rifle. She turns it towards him, palm outwards. "Could you consider being a little more friendly? I know, I know, under the circumstances..." Josie sighs, then inclines her head as if to take herself in. Her gaze lifts, meeting his eyes. "So, I'll tell you what. I'll tell you why I'm here. It's pretty simple, anyway. I'm looking for someone."
Josie's lips part, exposing white teeth. "...Besides, picking over a place like this would be a little pathetic, right? So, what about you? What's your story?"
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
She tells him that she, too, would rather he didn't, and for that exchange earns herself a wider smile. It's closed-lipped and the eyes lose none of their hawkish acuity, but the smile still manages to get up into his eyes, as though he's the sort of person for whom smiles come easy.
She lifts her hand off of her rifle, and while Noah probably appreciates that -- does, in fact, appreciate it -- that ARM isn't getting tucked away on faith alone. A presumed lifetime of wandering Filgaia doing whatever it is that drifters do came along with some lessons, a few of which he's even managed to learn.
He is not Lovett. The distance between them in experience and canniness is the distance between Lovett's crumpled body at the bottom of the stairs, and the fact that Noah's head is still intact.
"That might go some way toward helping things along, yeah," he says, when she offers to tell him what she's doing there. Amicably. Encouragingly, even, with an undercurrent of something like cheer. But she doesn't do that: what she does is ask him why he's there, and he visibly mulls over the importance of that before consenting to tell her anyway.
"A lot of people are pathetic." That observation first, then, as his eyes tighten in the corners, "I was packing to leave. As much fun as Adlehyde's been, at this point it has that depressing 'when the lights come on after the bar closes' feeling and I never like to stick around for that. It kills the magic. Nobody wants to get a better look at the face that six ales and candlelight told them was pretty enough to chat up."
His eyes narrow. "So?"
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
All told, it's probably the smartest move he could have made.
The small orb still glowing steadily overhead is more than enough signal that even if the lady has her hand off the rifle she's probably not exactly harmless.
Smart, Josie considers, before lowering that hand. Unfortunate for her, but smart. He's experienced, all right -- unlike those fools at the bottom of the steps. In spite of her predicament, her smile only widens. He hasn't shot her yet anyway!
"Some people are," she says, without so much as batting an eye -- or glancing at the bodies below.
Josie lifts a snowy eyebrow. "Well, that's an interesting way to put it..."
Packing to leave, he says. More of a scholar than you might expect to look at him, the professor had said, describing a young man who'd spent many years in the Badlands. A few things come together. Just a touch, Josie's eyes widen, lighting up as she assembles an approximation of the picture on the puzzlebox.
And she rolls the metaphorical dice.
"Oh, I was just curious if you were like them," she jerks her head vaguely in the direction of the stairs, "or not. Besides, it's unfair if you're the only one asking questions here, isn't it?" She gives him her Very Best smile. "Say, you wouldn't happen to know a Professor Montagu, would you?"
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
Noah hadn't been aiming at her precisely until that point, because while he's on his guard and ready to pull the trigger he'd rather not force her to feel that her death is absolutely imminent. People who think that's the case tend to do rash, inadvisable things. You leave people with enough wiggle room to breathe, and there's a better chance they're not going to do something you can't predict because it's fundamentally insane.
That changes when she mentions the Professor. After that it's awfully easy for her to get a look down into the blackened depths of those fat barrels at the end of that oversized firearm. Beyond it, eyes containing all of the green-and-golden-brown hues of a forest narrow, much of the affable superficiality bleeding out of them. They become not unlike crowbars, seeking to pry back whatever masks she's wearing, as though he could get at whatever contents lie beneath.
"Yeah. I do. And I think you'd better explain that connection in a hurry."
Ambrose is a friend, but Noah has secrets of his own. Being hunted down specifically is enough to worry most people; Noah has more reason to concern himself with it than most. There's tension in him that wasn't there moments ago: he may have her at a physical disadvantage, but now she knows more about him than he knows about her, and that, clearly, sets him on edge.
...He still hasn't shot her, though.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
There'd been that space, sure enough -- but Josie knows well enough that it would take at best a second for him to fully correct the angle of his aim, whereas for her, it would take longer than that. Long guns have advantages in many situations, but rather distinct ones when taken by surprise on the stairs. It's enough to make a girl decide to start carrying an emergency sidearm.
...On the positive side, she's pretty sure she's found who she's looking for!
On the negative side, well...
The gun in her face and the look in his eyes speak for themselves.
Externally, that smile on her face doesn't immediately falter -- though she does blink, her dark eyes flickering down to the barrels briefly. Internally, she figures she has seconds to explain.
"You know, if you shoot me, I think Ambrose would be a little put out," she says, finally pressing her lips into a much more sober thin line. "Noah Hawthorne, right? I'm a colleague of his -- Josephine Lovelace. I have a letter from him to you, in fact. So, if you'll please put the gun down..."
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
His restraint, at least, is good. His hand doesn't tremble, though he's been holding that heavy thing up for whole minutes now. Some thanks must be paid, probably, to his physique -- which, on scrutiny, certainly does look built for the task of hauling heavy things into and out of holes in the ground, and (much to Noah's everlasting exasperation and dismay) climbing difficult terrain.
No trembling, and no indication that he's likely to misfire on account of being nervous. He looks steady as a bear trap: quiet, still, but prepared to invoke a world of hurt at the first sign he's about to be stepped on.
"Read it," is what he says, gesturing with the barrels. "The letter."
The ARM isn't going anywhere yet.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
"Alright. I'm going to take it out."
Her eyes remain fixed on his, her breathing steady, as she slowly reaches into the depths of her duster, fumbling with her left hand for a bit of paper she knows is in there.
Slowly, very slowly, she pulls the letter out. Her gaze doesn't leave his for a second, up until the moment she unfolds the bit of paper, glances down at it, and begins to read it aloud.
"Hawthorne my boy,
The young lady bearing this letter is an old colleague of mine from before the Age of the Cane (and the ever-widening bum). She has a curious object in her possession and a clue to follow, and were I twenty years younger I would have run off on this adventure in a heartbeat. Instead, I intend to pass her into your able care and I fully expect that you will treat her not with the same dignity and respect you would treat me, but a great deal more than that.
"If the task piques your interest, I will collect a favor at a later date, and if it does not you may consider this due recompense for nearly getting me drowned.
'"Do try to stay out of trouble,
"Signed, B.," she finishes, and in spite of her situation, she even dares to smile, like a cat. With a flourish, she hands the letter towards him, the sheet of paper dangling from her fingertips by a corner.
"So, then, Mr. Hawthorne... Care to help a girl out?"
As if he weren't still pointing a loaded gun in her face.
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
It sounds like Ambrose, but that doesn't mean it IS Ambrose.
Not, at least, until the letter mentions almost getting him drowned. At that point, in spite of instincts he's clearly nurtured in the direction of healthy paranoia, there's no way Noah can deny any longer that the letter probably did come from Ambrose. Sure, there's a very, very slim margin of possibility that it could've been someone on board the Mamma Mia, but...
He draws a deep breath and holsters the ARM, the tension hardening the muscle that straps neck and shoulders going out of him all at once.
"Yeah, alright. As long as you don't call me 'Mr. Hawthorne.'" His hands still busy themselves in the vicinity of the holsters, but only to secure them once again. After that he turns his back on her and lazily descends the stairs to where the dead men are still venting blood onto the floor. One boot planted to either side of Long-and-Thin's body, he drops into a half-kneel and begins to rifle through his pockets. "This was a long way to come to get my help, Miss--?"
Whatever he's doing with the dead men while they make these bizarre introductions, he isn't robbing them, anyway. The gella he turns out of their pockets he lets fall onto the floor, disinterested.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
"Well, that settles that, then!"
He's not the only one relaxing. Her shoulders dip a touch, and she exhales a breath.
Moving aside on the stairs as he passes, she tucks the letter back away in the depths of her coat, holstering and securing the rifle. The stairs creak as she steps down after him, hand trailing on the railing.
Penelope coos at Noah, tilting her head curiously, from the place where she stands just out of reach of the coagulating pool.
"No, it doesn't suit you, does it?" Josie comments, resting her hand against her chin. She watches, in silence, as he goes through the dead man's pockets. "Josie is fine! I'm not old enough yet to be a Miss Lovelace. Anyway..."
She continues down the stairs, end of her coat dragging through some of the still-lingering dust. "It is, but I suppose you could say I'm a little desperate. I was asking after you at the guild, but it seems you'd vanished. And then, the invasion happened. I was a little worried you might have been killed! That would have been a problem." She clasps her hands in front of herself, here, her lips curving in a half-smile.
Her gaze tracks the gella cast onto the floor.
"Anyway, we can chat about the specifics later, I think. I've already told Ambrose everything."
Not hardly.
"The point is, I need you to help me break through the barricade. There's a ruin I need to get to out west, and you might just be the only man for the job. So... what's your price?"
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
"I was in jail," Noah says, finding what he was looking for: documents. He gives them a cursory glance, flipping through them, and then tucks them into one of his back pockets, then shuffles over to pat at Lovett's pockets in turn. The pigeon gets a glance or two, but it doesn't seem he's too concerned, nor does he find it especially strange. He's taken up traveling with a ferret against all sense and practicality, sheerly because he hasn't had the heart to get rid of it. Who is he to judge any woman's pigeon, even if it does seem disarmingly interested in blood?
"Which is a long story, and doesn't matter, because there's no jail anymore to speak of." More documents. Less, but still a few, and these join the others in his back pocket. With that done he places his hands on his thighs above his knees, gives them a last looking-over, and then pushes himself back up to his full height, stepping out from that straddle of Lovett's body to turn and face her, his head rolling over to one side. Hazel eyes lid while they consider her question: what is his price?
"That depends on what kind of risks are involved, and it sounds to me like you don't know." He braces his hands on either hip above the grips of his ARMs, and quirks a small, sharp little smile. "Usually I'd take this opportunity to charge you an arm and leg for something as risky as breaking the barricade, even though I was going to have to do that to get back to Dazil anyway...but since you're here on a favor I owe Brose...I'll throw that in gratis. You're welcome. The rest, we can talk about when we get to wherever this ruin is, which is--?" His brow arches.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Papers. Josie lifts an eyebrow. Now, that's interesting.
"In jail? Well, that must have been a wild night," Josie comments, gesturing one hand outwards, palm up. She can't help but snort, vaguely amused. "Lucky break for you, I guess? ...Penelope, what are you doing?" The last, naturally, is said to the bird. Which lifts her head from inspecting the stranger messing with the very limp very bloodied bodies back to Josephine. "C'mere. Leave them alone, okay?" With that, Josie descends the final few steps and stoops -- yes, stepping briefly into the pool of blood -- to pick up the pigeon. Penelope doesn't squirm or fidget.
"Don't mind her. She's had a rough time lately. The fires didn't agree with her." Her gaze softens as she looks down at the bird in her hands. Penelope, meanwhile, stares straight at Noah, black eyes glittering.
Most people, on some level, have a price.
"You're right, I don't. But it won't stop me." Her dark eyes meet his, for a moment hard, intense. But the look soon shifts, sliding back to Josie's apparent usual ease. "...An arm and a leg, huh? I suppose I lucked out -- I'm just an archaeologist, you know. We don't make that much money!" Still holding Penelope, who is being remarkably still, she shakes her head. "As for the location... well, that's where it gets a little tricky. Ambrose said the site was a known ruin in the Badlands, but... I lost all my notes from the expedition involved where I found it when someone burned down my house."
She pauses, still looking at him, almost thoughtfully. Then, far too cheerfully, declares, "Let's consider it a challenge, shall we?"
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
Must have been a wild night.
Noah thinks back. Touches in memory on an enormous black horse statue covered in rhinestones called 'Mr. Goiter;' on dumping a stripped-down page into a scraps-chute in a busy kitchen. On the metal demon beast they fought, the weaponized cucco.
"Yeah," he says, a word that doesn't really stretch widely enough to encapsulate all of that.
He huffs a short, all-breath sound of amusement when she says archaeologists don't have much money. "Mmhm. Well, if it's a known ruin, I'll probably know where to find it. I spent years in the Badlands." He turns his head enough to slant his eyes through the wedged-open door, into the charred streets beyond. "I wasn't planning to head back that way so soon, but..." After a lingering pause, he lets himself sigh, doesn't bother to conceal it. "Like I said, Adlehyde's lost its charm." With a blink, he recenters his gaze on her, flicks it over the particulars of her countenance and build -- not a lecherous appraisal, though he's certainly not above that sort of thing. Given the way his attention briefly diverts to the missing top of Lovett's head, it's probable he's trying to gauge her competence. Trying to decide, ultimately, if he wants to tie himself up with whoever this woman is.
"I've been known to like a puzzle or two," he says finally, which sounds like consent. "I've got some things to wrap up here before I'll be ready. Find yourself a horse if you don't have one already, and then get down to the refugee camp. Ask for Morgan Newkirk if you need a place to stay, and tell him I sent you. I'll meet you there. We'll head out after that, so..." He lifts a hand from its brace at his hip, gesturing loosely in the direction of the streets outside. "Make sure you've got whatever loose ends here tied up before that. No telling when we'll be able to come back this way."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Stepping over the bodies, pigeon still held in both hands before her as she makes her way after him, towards the door, she at least has the decency to scuff the bottom of her bloodied boot against the floorboard. It's mostly coagulated at this point, anyway. "Good, Ambrose said you might. I suppose we'll just have to gather some information once we're out that way again, won't we?"
In her hands, Penelope fidgets as Noah directs his gaze onto Josephine. Sighing softly, Josie rolls her forearm, allowing the bird to hop on over to sit as she pleases.
'We' apparently means her, him, and the bird.
"It'll be fine. I've done this before," she says, looking up from her bird at last, apparently addressing the way he was looking at her, as if she'd been aware of the weight of his gaze the entire time.
"The same with me. There are a few folks I should say goodbye to, you know?" Like Lily and Leon, among others. She'll probably not see them again once she heads back west -- crossing Aveh would be dangerous for them. "Plus, I'll need to get that horse. I walked most of the way east from Aveh, you know... it'd be nice not to do that again. I really don't recommend it." This is paired with a sheepish grin and she shrugs, as if to say 'what can you do?'.
Morgan Newkirk. That name's filed away for later, along with the location.
"Alright then. We'll consider it a done deal." Josie starts to extend her hand towards him, as if to shake on it. There's still a pigeon on that arm, though.
"I'll explain the rest later. I'm sure you'll want to see the thing Ambrose mentioned in his letter up close." And here, Josephine pauses. "Oh, and... do me one little favor?"
Here, though she's still smiling, it's now not really a happy smile. "Don't point a gun in my face again, alright~?"
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
He takes her hand readily enough and shakes it, a brisk, firm shake. Big hands and calluses: Noah's lifestyle lives in his hands as much as anywhere else. "Yep. Done deal. You have trouble finding a horse you can afford -- again, just...talk to Newkirk."
He seems willing to take her promise to hear about the rest of it later on good faith, so he's already turning around to leave her at the door, return upstairs and finish packing the rest of what few things he's brought...
When she makes her parting shot, sing-song and with a smile that says butter would not melt in her mouth.
It stops him in his tracks, has him turn just enough to look over his shoulder, the half-smile there genuinely wry. Hazel eyes tick over her features with an entirely different sort of wandering thoughtfulness. "Don't do anything likely to make me point a gun in your face, Josie, and I expect you'll never have to worry about it again."
Because like hell he's making that kind of promise to anybody.
And, with the terms of their agreement roughly laid out -- including when and whether either of them are permitted to aim guns at one another -- Noah turns back to the stairs and ascends unhurriedly, whistling something as he goes.