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"Thanks..." Zin said to the pink-haired trainee as she accepted the handkerchief, but he was already gone. She looked back to Lenore with concern. "Come on, the person on the horse will handle it."

She put her arm around where she guessed Lenore's waist would be, somewhere within the folds of the costume. She gently dabbed the younger girl's lip using Elliot's handkerchief and exhaled in a long hiss. "That looks painful. Let's head back to the tent; I'm sure they have a first aid kit there."

Lenore continued to glare, but she nodded, her reasoning finally coming back. The girl winced in pain as the older girl dabbed at her lip. Seemed like her reasoning had taken the place of the adrenaline.

Zin hurried Lenore away from the site of the dissipating tenstion and back toward the tent where Lloren was giving out assignments to some straggling volunteers. She moved as quickly as she dared while still supporting Lenore to the front of the tent.

"Um, excuse me!" she said to Lloren. "Do you have a first-aid kit? My friend needs it..." She glanced at Lenore, who looked like she was in pain.

"Sir!" A civilian hailed the parade marshal, a serious look on their face. Saga stopped his horse to look there way. "Salutations, my friendly citiz-"

-"Sir I'm sorry but there's a fight that broke out by the canal, where the barges are." The man interrupted somewhat apologetically, but it got the message across. Saga's eyes widened and he gave his horse a kick, making Drakon gallop off towards the source of the commotion. The giant book flopping around on the floor, the screams and general sounds of a scuffle- people trying to break it up and failing- could not be missed. He recognized these people as the volunteers from yesterday. Suddenly, he was filled with dread... One of those fighting was Preacher. But he had chosen to support her. He didn't want that to be a mistake. He knew it wasn't.

He reared his horse and had his hooves come down hard in a deafening clap, barely three meters from Axel and Preacher- the latter of which had yet to stop trying to grab the other. "Cease and desist! What is going on here?" He asked, his tone booming as ever. He was actually serious for once.

Another girl looked to be helping the book away, but that was all right- there were plenty of eyewitnesses around.

Alec busied himself with the straps, and fastening the belts into their properly place when he looked up at her explanation. "My dad showed me when I was little too..I just kept practicing even after he passed." He smiled thoughtfully, eyeing The Horse as Alec was forced to think of him as in the mean time, was already trying to be on his way when he felt the weight of the saddle.

The click sound of the final belt locking signaled he was done at last, and ready to go.

Pursing his lips into a thin line, the red head opened the stall letting the horse walk forward with him, keeping a loose but firm grip on the reigns casting a wary glance at the words one last time giving in. "Hey..um." He waited until he had the raven-haired girls attention. "what does that--" he tapped the word in question. "--say..?" Alec asked in a quiet mumble, glancing at her shyly before staring down at his feet cheeks red suddenly.

It was now or never.




The older red head was busy fussing with a few flowers giving the Ox a thoughtful look as she pet its head. "There we go, don't you look cute?" Marissa coo'd at the creature laughing at herself. Wiping her brow a bit tiredly having taken on the task of not only cleaning the beasts, but attaching decorations to them. Stepping back she let out a small sigh. "Goodness, I'm certainly not getting any younger.." she sighed, glancing around to see if she could spy her youngest child, or perhaps another able body. She'd been brave when she sent the two children off earlier, and wouldn't mind the help.

"Just have to give this a test drive, and I think we'll be all set for tomorrow." Marissa was tying her hair up as she caught her breath.

Lloren looked up from her reading to find two very worried looking volunteers. Correction: one worried, the other one looked beat. Part of her brain was empathy, and the other part was saying I'm not a book restorer. Thankfully, it was the former part that spoke. She got up immediately. "Right away, come with me inside the building."

She went to fetch the first aid and took out the small bottle of alcohol within, turning it over onto a cotton swab. She also wet a towel to start cleaning up the girl with. "Get that costume off, does she have any scratches, open wounds? Wouldn't want those to get infected."

Alec did notice while he spoke with Tala, asking his question to relieve his discomfort that Cyril had showed up and was trotting over to the ox-cart his mother had been working hard on. Feeling a pang of guilt, but knew she wouldn't have said they could go if she hadn't meant it. He hoped anyway.

The older woman smiled as the boy walked up, his timing couldn't have been better! "Hello there." Marissa touched the boys shoulder smiling in a motherly fashion at him. "You seem like an able bodied lad, would you want to drive the cart and make sure it'll be ready for tomorrow?" Her green gaze flickered from the project to him a bit hopeful really. "Everything else is mostly about wrapped up on this end. Then we'll just need to gently toss the bundles and sit in the cart, which we don't have to practice." Rattling off her mental check list in relation to what had been asked of them.

Lenore was relieved to have an excuse to remove the costume, even if for just a moment. As she took it off, she shook her head. "I only got hit once. I don't think there's any cuts except on my lip." The costume was good for something, at least.