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Kauff felt good, truly happy for the first time in... well... years. He scuffed his boot through the dirt, sending up an arc of orange dust and willing his mind to clear. He wasn't about to allow himself to ruin this mood by thinking too hard. For most of his life he'd had a knack for looking on the bright side of bad situations. The fact that he had lost that for a time was not something he wanted to dwell on now that the ability seemed poised to return to him. He finally had a goal, a direction in which to go that was certain to yield results. It had to. If he didn't find his family soon, he was rather worried he would give up looking.

The Wind was heading west, out of the range that his parents had confined them to in his youth, before he had gotten it into his head that he needed to be alone. There was a group of travelers ahead. The woman who had supplied the information about his kin had also warned him of the nomads. But he had goods and news to trade, and he was charming, if he did say so himself. Whoever these people were, they weren't likely to try ganging up on him or chasing him away unless he started something first.

Now, if only he could find them...

He had been expecting activity ahead, so the voice that came up behind him nearly made him jump. It was female, however, and its owner was attractive (he could just tell, okay?), so there was a smile on his face as he turned, a smile that fell when he saw who it was. It had been a couple of years now since he had last crossed paths with the Oban, but he would never forget her face or the wound she had dealt to his pride.

"You."

Kauff huffed a growl through his nose and spun on his heel, stomping farther down the road at a pace he hoped both expressed his displeasure at her presence and didn't wake the sleeping poscuta in his pack.

He continued his stubborn forward rush for a couple of steps, content to mow her down if it got her out of his way. But she kept talking. And she was being quicker than he was. Again. Kauff stopped, eyes narrowed. His fist clenched around the strap of his bag, but it all felt forced. He was no good at being mad on purpose. Over the years he had unearthed plenty of evidence that he was decent at all the forms of sullen pouting though.

"Keep those knives to yourself and I'll be fine... no... indifferent. I'll be indifferent." He could hardly dictate where she chose to walk, and despite the flare of temper he'd felt upon seeing her, he really wasn't in the mood for a fight.

"I'm looking for someone. And you and me? We're not friends."

"Ow. Ow." He held a hand to his chest as he slowed, looking down at her in earnest for the first time. It wasn't a glance or an angry glare, and Kauff found himself lingering on the rich shade of her eyes, the tilt of them. He'd never seen such eyes. His lips quirked in a tight frown. Those were the sorts of thoughts that got him into trouble. Luckily, he had only to revisit what she had just said to him for all of half a second—and catch the glint of her daggers out of the corner of his eye—before those thoughts disappeared.

"The marrying sort? Really? That hurts. It's so... no. Just no." He couldn't fathom settling down, and not solely because sleeping around was the surest path to free room and board that he'd come up with since he'd left his family. It was also... fun. The only times it wasn't was when people got attached. Then there was shouting and smacking and sneaking through town at the crack of dawn with no pants. Though if he was honest, all of that was fun too.

"Not that you actually care, but I'm looking for several someones. My parents and sisters. But, you know. We move. Wind." He didn't mention that he'd been looking for them for years, and that sometimes, in the middle of the night, he worried they were long dead. Sex helped distract him from all of that as well.

"So. Now that I've shared my lifelong goals and dreams, what are you doing out here? And why did you want to travel with my back before you even saw who I was? You need a partner in crime? Or an alibi? Someone to get you out of trouble? Because I'm not going to help with any of that."

"You certainly can," Kauff muttered. He knew now that he'd had no chance of beating her when they had first met and he wouldn't fare much better now if he got it into his head to try. Forget getting out of trouble. She wasn't even in it in the first place when she was around him.

"And I'm not a grump," he said grumpily, turning to keep her in sight as she crept around him. "I'm nice and cheerful and fun when I'm with people who aren't sizing me up like a... what do you call it? A mark." He felt through his pockets in her wake, prodded his bag, even ran his fingers over the hilt of the hammer slung across his back, as if she could have somehow stolen it.

Certain that he still had all of his possessions, Kauff tried silence as a method of dissuading her from following him, but he was far too talkative for that to work as he'd planned. "You just travel Tendaji looking for people to bother? I thought you were all nobles and dancers. Who'd leave that life to wander around?" He was wearing a wry smirk and faintly shaking his head, but Kauff was legitimately curious too. He'd first picked a fight with her due to resentment over the war, but maybe she wasn't very different than he was. There was too much of the world to see to stay in one place.

What she said about her so-called code shouldn't have encouraged him to relax his guard, but he found that it kind of had anyway. At least he now knew for certain that she stole for a living—not that he'd had any reason to doubt that—but it was nice to be sure. If he walked away from this encounter with anything mysteriously missing, he would know who to blame.

"You might have been a dancer once," he replied with what he hoped was nonchalance. It would have passed more easily had a grin not broken across his features right after he spoke. "Maybe Obans like stabby, mouthy performers." He shrugged.

"But never mind all that. Let's talk about how much you like me. Too much? What's that mean?" He conveniently neglected to comment on how her talk of exploration and travel had tickled the wanderer inside of him awake, how it made him long to ask her what she had seen and what she would like to see. He still didn't trust her, even if the reasons why were getting a little muddy.

"All right." He kept moving at little more than a stroll, keenly aware of her proximity as she inched toward him. A part of him didn't want her to like him to any degree or for any reason. She had taunted him and stabbed him and forced him to flee like a skittish moracker. It was unacceptable. Unfortunately, while humiliating and humbling, memories of getting his a** kicked by a slip of a girl with an amazing body were proving muddling in a way that hadn't been a problem when she'd been more than two feet away. That she was talking to him now meant she either didn't think less of him for losing or she somehow found it all endearing. He could work with endearing. Or he could be smart for once.

"I don't want to... discuss it further. Has anyone ever told you you're distracting?" He didn't look at her, directing the scowl he had unconsciously adopted while chasing his latest train of thought at the road ahead. "You can just keep wandering along with me, I guess, seeing as how you like me so much. Keep being secretive and... doing whatever you're doing. I'm not sure you'll get any less bored."

"A little frowning isn't gonna make me less pretty," he quipped, forgetting once again that he was supposed to be mad. It was kind of a shame that he had been so hostile toward her the first time they'd met or he might not have found himself so conflicted now. "But I can smile if you want me to." At least until the next time she mentioned something he regretted. Like... right now.

Kauff immediately leaned toward changing the subject, even though he had been the one to tell her who he was looking for so candidly earlier. To his credit, his expression remained neutral this time, rather than devolving back into irritation.

"That last one," he said with a sigh. "I was a stupid kid who thought he needed space and I wanted to see more than I was seeing traveling around with the same people I'd been with since I was born. And I somehow thought Sauti was a lot smaller. Why my parents didn't make, like, a place to meet once a year or something is beyond me. Maybe we're all a bunch of dumbasses." He looked down at her finally, shaking his head with a sarcastic smirk. "I don't want to stick with them forever now either, I'd just like to see them. Catch up. Pick a spot to meet this time." Kauff swallowed, reining himself in. It wasn't like she'd asked for his life story.