Welcome to Gaia! ::

'Tomorrow at dusk,' which she had promised the man she'd meet him by, feels line an eternity away as she rides back towards the manor, meeting up with her chaperone (who had, as an old drunkard, eventually given up and fallen asleep under a tree). It feels entirely too short a time when she gets back to Westlake Manor, avoiding her lord father and her mother to sneak into the kitchens and fill a sack with apples, cheese, half a duck wrapped in paper, several loaves of bread, and a stoppered container of soup. It is probably entirely too much for the short ride to Oldcastle, but Jessica has rarely left the bounds of Palisade. She has no idea what she might encounter.

Besides, Warwick looked like he'd need food. He was so skinny. Not to mention Iskierka, who now lopes beside her with long strong legs and an arched neck, seemingly having grown overnight. She is almost as tall as Jessica's favorite pony. Somehow, this makes Jessica choose a different horse, a roan with a dark mane and tail: less apt to be recognized.

It is this horse, with its small cloaked figure, that waits nervously for Warwick at the crossroads at dusk. Jessica feigned an early bedtime -- lady's troubles, not feeling her best -- to avoid notice, and sneak out of the house. Iskierka trips beside the horse, snorting: deciding whether to headbutt the horse into action, and not quite certain what that would unleash.

She looks at him -- looks around, her hooded head moving left and right -- and then pulls her hood down. Perhaps thankfully, she does not look quite so enthusiastic; she looks less exuberant, more cautious and careful. They are, after all, under cover of darkness. But if she's found out -- she will be punished for much, much more than climbing down the rose terrace at night.

"Of course I'd come," she says, and her voice is a bit quiet, perhaps to hide its strain. "I brought supplies." And, he'll notice, she's changed clothes. She is not sitting side-saddle in her proper skirt and boots: no, she's astride the horse, in pants and high riding boots, and her hair is, well, somewhere. No long golden braid peeks out of her hood.

Jessica smiles at him. Iskierka, on the other hand, snorts in carefully expressed distaste. "No, of course not. This is my decision." And she is prepared -- at least for right now -- to take full responsibility for it. Whether that remains that way ... well.

She'll run a hand over the proud neck of her horse, "I'm riding on my own horse. And Iskierka is almost big enough to ride," she teases; the deer has grown. Perhaps not enough for Jessica to ride on, but -- she's of a size with Wren now. Even if she studiously ignores the other doe.

A headbutt to her horse's flank sends Jessica several steps forward. "I guess we should be going."

Jessica is a light sleeper, normally -- or she has been these past few days, when she waited to see just when people rose and slept in Westlake Manor. But now, surrounded by the guardians, knowing she is (relatively) safe, she sleeps like a baby. She is curled up around Iskierka, who somehow suffers her presence -- almost affectionately, given that Jessica is doing what the yearling wants -- and Wren, good-natured and calm.

She will awake when the wagon is already moving, poking her head out. The morning sunlight is golden, and on the roads, surrounded as they are by fields and farmland, everything is bright. Iskierka bulls her way past, leaping out of the wagon and sneezing at the bright sunlight.

It's easy enough to share breakfast; she packed enough for two. If Warwick's nervousness is apparent, Jessica ignores it -- still too excited to really think about the repercussions of what this could do to her.

Oh, they have been followed -- and for the reason that Warwick most fears. Someone is looking for a missing teenager, but they have also had the good grace to follow in secret without raising a hullabaloo or an alarm. They have followed far enough away that Guardians inside of the wagon do not sense him, nor is he usually within sight.

Riding on Guardian-back probably does help, as Cesambre is in no way as clumsy, loud, or obvious as a horse.

It means that when Warwick dunks his head in the well in all innocence, someone slips up behind him and holds him down by the collar -- just for a second, just enough to alarm -- and then pulls him back up. The hand on his collar is strong. And, if Warwick looks over his shoulder, belongs to someone with a vague familial resemblance to Jessica, though much sterner, older, and male.

Talbot merely raises an eyebrow at Warwick. "Where is Jessica?"

Of course Talbot notices the tattoos. A navy man himself, it is not uncommon for a sailor to sport a myriad of designs -- Talbot himself has a reputation for being a little too straight-laced, and he is: there is not a single tattoo on his body, nothing out of the ordinary, not even the length of his hair. He looks down at them for a moment, and -- perhaps to Warwick's great relief -- seems unimpressed. He has seen them before.

But it makes no difference. He must act the proper older brother, and keeps his face stern; his heavy eyebrows and dark eyes help his expression along. "My sister," he says, and holds a hand about five and a half feet off the ground. "Blonde, with hazel eyes, and fidgety," he adds, his voice terse. "Her name is Jessica. She was seen in your company."

It is when Wren's head lifts, and peers around the corner of the cart, that things abruptly shift: Talbot has opened his mouth to speak, and as he does so another Guardian appears, melting out of the fields to either side of the road. She steps forward with all of the self-possessed confidence of a noble lady, and looks from Talbot, to Warwick, and then over to Wren.

The man is Chosen, as well.

Cesambre whuffs at him -- nothing so indecent as a headbutt -- and then when Talbot peers down at her, steps towards the other deer. It makes Talbot's face twist: he goes from the intense desire to shake Warwick to something like resignation. "I think I see why."

Talbot is worldly, in his own way -- a man grown, perhaps in his mid-forties, certainly old enough that some of his dark hair has gone to grey (in the way most fashionable in Palisade right now, perhaps to his chagrin). The hand that grips Warwick's collar is disfigured: his last two fingers gone at the first knuckle, an accident with rope and hawsers. He will stand clasping Warwick's collar, as easily as holding a child back from the cookie jar, and seems to consider what to do next.

Cesambre is no help -- she keeps pacing sedately towards the wagon, though she will walk right past Wren. She was not, perhaps, going to make friends with the other guardian. She nuzzles up under the curtains and cloths that cover the mouth of the wagon, twitching them aside with a flick of one ear, a dip of her head.

From the inside of the wagon comes a rustling, a bang (as if someone kicks something in their haste), and out tumbles a yearling guardian, all dark of coat except her long pale legs. A moment later someone interjects -- "Hey!" The voice is young and feminine and a bit worried. Iskierka, staggering to her feet and blinking in the bright morning sunlight, looks at Cesambre with a distinctly unfriendly air, and then to Talbot, ears fanned and eyes alight.

Talbot raises an eyebrow. "And what is her name?" Meaning the Chosen. A moment later he tips his head to the side, "If you come clean now, this will go easily for you."

Talbot has seen men hanged before, and has killed a few. It is no different for the Chosen. It is n't hard to imagine a sword buckled at Talbot's hip, and given the look of the man, he knows how to use it, and when.

For a split second after being punched, Talbot wishes dearly he had the sword: if not to run the man through with it, just to slap him with the flat of the blade and knock him to the ground. The punch makes his head wrench to one side, which pulls at the still-healing muscles in his shoulder and chest. This provokes a growl out of him that might give Warwick reason to consider just bolting for it, but Talbot has enough presence of mind not to strike back. At least not yet.

As Warwick makes his mistake, turns his head to shout, Talbot seizes him by the upper arm and spins him around, twisting it up tight and high behind his back. A moment later sees Warwick's other arm held in an iron grip down by his hip. Talbot is strong. Even his mangled hand is strong.

"Girly?" His voice is mild; he speaks from just behind and above Warwick's head. A moment later, as Cesambre pokes her head into the caravan proper, he raises his voice: "Come out, Jessica."

And -- to Talbot's credit -- Jessica clambers out of the caravan a moment later, round-eyed and staring at Cesambre and then at her brother. She is not wringing her hands, a bad sign: she just stares, with wide hazel eyes and two hot spots of color on her cheeks, at her brother.

"Is this your deer?" Her voice is full of wonder. She winces at Warwick. "--you can set him down, Will, he hasn't hurt me."