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"It's a foot. Stop crying like a ********' baby. Spank your inner moppet, woman." Alexis stalked over to Autumn, stepping precisely over the ground, shoulders tense. "You have one - one foot -in each of yer shoes right now, shocker. You want to figure out how to go home? Calm the ******** down."

Alexis, at least, seemed otherwise unruffled. Their annoyance was more at everyone else than the fact there was a missing girl's foot being half-flung around like a hot potato.

(There was still rainwater gathered in their hair. They looked young enough to be one of the missing ones, for a second. Then it was gone.)

Cataleen had quietly followed the group under the canopy of the evergreens. All of her attention had been for the native plant life, quietly wondering if there was any difference between these plants and the ones in the normal Ashdown.

Her musings had been interrupted by the grisly discovery. She caught a glimpse of it as it arced through the air, the sight hitting her in the guts. But she didn't scream. More death. She was so tired of death.

Cataleen averted her eyes as others examined the foot, and instead joined the woman trying to comfort the poor girl who'd picked that body part up. She rummaged in her pockets for a second, pulling out a small bottle of Vanilla scented hand sanitizer, and offered it to her, placing her other hand gently on Asiya's shoulder. If it had been Cataleen who'd found it, she knew she'd want to clean her hands!

Leila gingerly accepted the foot with a rare air of professionalism, and squatted down on the ground some so she could concentrate on giving it a look... not that there was a whole lot to see. The rain and the forest cover were making it too damn dark, and since she had gone out not expecting to do any sort of fieldwork she hadn't brought a proper flashlight. All the squinting she could do wasn't going to reveal much.

On an off thought she reached into a pocket for her keychain, which had among a few other bits and bobs a tiny novelty flashlight she almost never used because its dim LED was only good for finding the key slot in her car door. Even so, she gave the button a firm squeeze, and--

"Whoa, what the ******** was surprisingly bright, enough to illuminate the foot's ragged stump in complete horrible detail. That shouldn't have been possible. Whatever. She gathered up her bearings enough to see if there was anything going on with it that she would recognize. The suddenly-photobooth-quality light of her little trinket could be a puzzle to mull over later.

Asiya's head was spinning, and it was all she could do to fight off visibly wobbling thanks to the vertigo. The scene that was playing out seemed to be on mute for the young woman, at least for a few seconds. The screams of Autumn didn't fully register in her head. Instead, she just kept playing back to pulling the foot out of the ground.

It was a foot.

Not a prop from a movie. Not a toy.

An actual human foot.

The artist could taste the bile in the back of her throat, but she did her best to keep it at bay. As she did this, the words of other people came to her ears, and she perked up when others spoke to her. The first one was Jeremiah, kindly reminding her to calm down and take a deep breath. Asiya would do just that, pausing to take a few inhalations and exhalations of air.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

There. That seemed to help a bit. With a look of thanks in her eyes, she gazed over to the detective and nodded her head to him in response. She would have said more, but frankly, at the moment, she was at a loss for words. Perhaps they would come back to her later, but for the moment, she wasn't going to do much speaking.

Kalisha spoke to her next, asking her if she was okay. All she could do was nod to the other girl, her expression grim. The offer of a hug was not only a comforting one, but also one that she almost took the other girl up on. The fact that she wasn't familiar with Kalisha, however, is the only thing that held her back. If she knew the girl better, then she absolutely would have said yes. But for now, she just shook her head at the offer of being held. Another time?

It was then that Cataleen offered Asiya some hand sanitizer, which was also very generous of her. While it wasn't the cleansing process of wudu, the vanilla scented goop would have to do. The artist silently held out her hands for some of the product, and then murmured a quiet, "...Thank you." in response.

Huh -- so she was able to speak again, after all?

If Kalisha was bothered by the refusal, nothing showed of it. At least Asiya seemed to be calming down, which was the important part right now. So when the other girl shook her head, she started rummaging though her bag.

Phone... Keys.... Needle nose pliers... (What the hell were those doing here, anyway... ?) ...ah ! Some luck on her side, after all. Another girl had come forward with what lookd like hand sanitizer (good idea, holy s**t) and when Asiya was done, she would find an unopened water bottle waiting for her.

Her only one, but hey. Asiya needed it quite a bit more than she did at the moment. "I don't like this place..." you don't say ? Well, Kalisha had no idea what she was even supposed to say right now.

So.

Yeah.

In the sharp light of Leila's keychain flashlight, three things are immediately noticeable:

Firstly, that it's a clean cut, with no hesitations. Like a limb severed by a butcher.

Secondly, that there's too much blood (pooling inside the Converse sneaker, staining the fabric, coloring the mud a dull brick color) for the foot to have been severed post-mortem.

Thirdly, it doesn't seem to have decayed at all. There are no bugs to be seen, not even larva.

Leila looked back up at Jeremiah, offering a soft asymmetrical grin. "Recent! Couldn't have been here more than a few hours, especially given the rain. If she's good with her first aid she could still be alive."