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With the world change had come a whole slew of issues. Why in hell the management figured it was a profitable or worthwhile endeavor to go running about visiting torn up by piss poor government officials and undead what-evers, Jo had no idea. All he knew was that he seemed to spend half the night with a big stick in his hand to ward off any potential thieves from the caravan and the other half was spent trying to snatch a few fitful moments of sleep while he had nightmares about the trailer being set on fire or someone stealing the pony because whoever was on watch was a Grade A ignoramus. He couldn't go ten yards from the animal tent without an itch starting between his shoulder blades and the hair at the back of his neck prickling up from sheer paranoia.

Which made the necessary errands he had to run in the city's market that much more difficult. He turned the slip of paper over in his fingers, the folds well worn and the handwriting slithering at a slant across the note page. At the moment he was leaning heavily against the front of the battered trailer he shared with a number of other no-name carnies: mottle-faced youngsters running away from home or who knew what else (Christ knew there certainly seemed to be a slew of reasons that Jo never would have had the imagination to think of). Jo had his bad leg jammed out in front of him, the prosthetic neatly under his pant leg and in his boot.

He stuffed the list into his back pocket and leaned over to drag the brace from the open door of the trailer. He hitched his bad leg up on the step and wriggled the bottom strap into place with necessary tedium. Blunt fingers did up straps and buckles, tightened the occasional screw that had squeaked loose since he'd taken the brace off. Jo tested his weight, grunted in satisfaction, and snatched his hat out of the doorway. He slapped it firmly on top of his head, closing the trailer door with a mild 'snikt.'

The thought of wandering off to the market place of some strange city, possibly the murder capitol of the world for all he knew, made him waffle a little: squint around uneasily. Maybe he could find someone else heading out into the wild unknown - two was better than one, after all. At least then someone would be watching his back.

He walked with an uneven gait, stride rolling oddly as he moved. It caused him to hitch slightly, turn his shoulder just barely with every other step which was probably how Jo managed to catch sight of Lily from the corner of his eye despite the fact that he was walking rather nearly away from her. He did a double take when he realized she was headed for him, slackened his undeniably slow pace a bit (the dawdling was a sure sign of Not Wanting To Go somewhere).

With all his weight canted off to one side, he turned to meet Lily face to face. Almost immediately he caught sight of her arms, the thin yellowed bones dull in the afternoon sun. Jo straightened a little bit, knocking his hat back slightly from his forehead with his wrist. Thank Christ, someone to give him a delay.

You've got to get feed for that damned pony, he snapped it himself. That is, unless Specks intended to keep eating goat feed and stealing treats from any soft-hearted passerby anyway. Jesus H., the Shetland pony was going to be spoiled to death.

"Need something?" Jo asked, cocking an eyebrow up toward his hairline.

The tangle of her boney fingertips in her hair caught his eye. It earned a brief throwaway glance, mostly involuntary. Who could blame him? Sure, he'd seen all sorts of high falutin', straight up weird since joining the carnivale - fish people, machines that talked like they had emotions -, but there was something morbidly fascinating about something so natural as flesh and bone turned just slightly askew.

He peeled his hat off the top of his head and nodded, a somewhat awkward alternative to a handshake. "Ah, 'scuse me. It's a real hotsy-- uh, pleasure to meet you." He jammed his hat back on then, mostly to cover the awkwardness of hastily brushing his vocabulary back up to scratch. "I'm Jo Hinton. I've got the snotty pony running about," he explained lamely, grinning swift and crooked before the expression settled into something slightly stilted, awkward not because he wasn't pleased to meet her - and Jesus H. was he glad for the distraction.

Jo cleared his throat. "I saw you perform at the last show," he offered lamely. "Nice, showy; burning your hands off was a real trick."

The smile on his face, awkward and stilted, eased slightly into something more natural as the blush suffused her cheeks. Really if it wasn't for the whole bit about her being nothing but bone from the elbow down, in that moment she could have been any old young slip of a girl from home. Hell, even with the bones she looked a sight more familiar than a lot of the people he'd stumbled across as of late.

"Jesus H., I hope the act doesn't have to change every time - I sure as hell can't be running around making changes every time we hop from one place to another." He stamped his bad leg absently, the wooden prosthetic hidden under the brace, the pant leg and the shoe thumping oddly hollow against the dusty ground. He gave her a swift wink. "I don't think they expect you to be one hundred percent original every time you step out."

Jo slipped the hat back onto his head, the brim casting a long shadow over his broadly weathered nose and cheekbones. "Just the one pony right now," he admitted. "I'm keeping an eye out for a matching pair of big sixes - er, proper horses, strong enough to do something impressive and look pretty doing it." He hesitated, wheeling himself in lest he begin to ramble at the poor unsuspecting kiddo. "Yeah, they're trained. Horses are for working, not for looking pretty and petting between the eyes. Though there's that too, I just never knew a pet horse that wasn't a real s**t."

"Aaah," he hummed, understanding. Jo idly hooked his thumbs over the rough edge of his leather belt, nodding thoughtfully. "That I understand."

As she trailed off into silence, Jo let his gaze wander back out toward the edge of the ground the carnivale had staked out for itself: a lonely bright mark at the edge of the rest of the world, close enough to the town to keep from getting over run by whatever the populous was so damn scared of (Jo hadn't asked, didn't want to know - it was none of his business so long as it didn't come gunning for him) but far enough to keep well out of the way of normal business.

He cleared his throat, glancing back to Lily. "Look, as much as I enjoy standing around in the Midway I've gotta swing up to town and put in a feed order for the animals." He paused and gave her a swift once over, thoughtfully. Sure didn't looked like she had much else to do. Jo told himself it was charity, that he was providing a lonely bored kid with something to do. "Want to come along?"

"Sure, why not. I can tell you now it's about as fun as watching paint dry though." It wasn't a particularly long walk between where they were set up and the market he intended to hit up, nonetheless Jo seriously considered swinging by the menagerie to pick up the rickety old truck parked behind it. No sense in getting in trouble with the locals though, he told himself sternly - no need to get in deeper than he had to, and from the looks of it the place might have been fueled to the brim with magic but it didn't exactly seem technologically forward. The truck would stay behind.

Tipping his head in the right direction, Jo set off in his low rolling stride that covered ground fairly quickly all things considered. An old injury. "So little miss," he said, sliding back into conversation as they made their way out of Cirque's fringes and hit up a wide dusty road that led, inevitably, into the outskirts of the town. "Where'd you hop ship from? Anywhere I've heard of?"

Sanctuary was all old buildings and looming stone walls fortified against who knew what. The people were long faced and more often than not sallow and sunken eyed. Jo could recognize wartime when he saw it, chose to squint somewhere toward the horizon line as they neared their destination of a wide market pockmarked with stalls and carts, the lowing of cattle and bleating goats coming from under the wide shades built against the side of buildings.

He'd never heard of it, though he was getting pretty used to it. Ansbach sounded faintly German, something he maybe read about Prussian kings or something, but he sort of doubted it was one and the same. Hell though, even back home someone could tell him where they were from and he'd have shrugged and filed it away in the back of his head, not really knowing. There at least he had a reference point, planet Earth as a stand in. "Born in the Catskills up North, New York. Been all over the place since then - mostly West though." He shot her a fleeting smile saying, "I like the warm weather. And yeah, Specks came with me."

He was getting slower the farther they walked and by the time he'd spotted the granary at the edge of the market place his hip ached and he was welcoming the chance to give it a rest. He snagged a boy loitering outside with a dirt smudged face who stared at the both of them, round-eyed before Jo gave him a strict order to find the boss and he scampered away, shooting Lily a look over his shoulder as he flit inside. As they waited Jo jammed a hand against the nearest wall and eased his weight off his bad leg. It didn't take long for a man to come out, his sleeves rolled to the elbow and his forearms heavily muscled. He was barely taller than Jo himself, but more muscular by far and wore fine linen slacks. He had his hands on his hips in a distinctly friendless manner.

"How can I help you?"

"We're with the carnival," Jo explained, a certain sandpaper rough quality to his voice that hadn't been there before. He leaned away from the wall. "Just need to resupply for the animals. I'd like to take a look at what you've got."

Not unlike the boy before him, the owner's gaze wandered over Jo toward Lily. If a stare could burn, he'd be boring holes right through the yellowed bones of her exposed hands. "What's this?" he demanded.

Jo glanced between the two of them, following the man's line of sight to its inevitable conclusion. "None of your business - you going to help with what is or aren't you?"

The main running the place gave them both a last evaluating glance before he led the way inside. Jo nodded curtly and went after him, motioning for Lily to follow.

Inside the word had either already spread or was clearly on its way to. As they were led through the granary they received more than a few quick sidelong glances and even over the noise of the establishment, Jo was pretty sure he could hear muttering. He limped after the owner who eventually led them to the storage room at the back. the owner hauled down a bag of grain from the waiting pile and Jo bent down awkwardly - that one leg didn't seem to bend much at all - to peel open one corner and inspect the grain. When he straightened he was nodding.

"Alright, we'll take two hundred of that and at least as much hay. If you can get us three hundred bales that would be better."

The deal was sealed without much more than a handshake and instructions for delivery and then Jo glanced back at Lily. Christ, this whole place put him on edge, made the hair at the back of his neck stand on end. "Let's get the hell out of here."