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It so happened that another pair of travelers was also headed home, in the same direction and on the same road. Well, Roger thought, it was a pair when you considered the amount of sentient (or semi-sentient?) beings, anyway. Lippa was somewhat sentient, right? He knew she could communicate, and that she could form relatively complex plots in that sweet pale head of hers, or she wouldn't...well, she wouldn't be here, trotting at his carriage's side, projecting rather determinedly the landscape of a peaceful meadow into his mind. Anyway, there were four of them if you counted the horses. Four was a crowd.

Yes, Roger Malmstadt was headed home, strange guardian of the Wardwood in tow. She'd hatched some plot to leave his daughters with his wife and tail his coach to its next destination; it had been standard travel affair for some wayward women of wealth - but not, of course, so much wealth that they possessed their own coach. And now he was stuck ferrying his deer back instead of trying to see if he could scrounge up another paying customer who so happened to be heading in a similar direction. His mares, at least, did not seem disturbed in the slightest. They were truly Roger's pride and joy; he'd sunk so much of his income into training them to endure his distances and his directions. And they were helping, of course!

He mustn't forget that.

He wouldn't have spotted the other pair, though, except that his guardian skipped just a little off the road when she'd heard the conversation and the river bubbling, and his mares had craned their necks to follow, as one. "Lippa!" he called, frustrated. In his mind's eye he saw a man and a child, both dark-haired, and he heard the cool splashes of a river along its bank, far closer than they should have been from the road. Consarn it; he'd thought Lippa would...well, he wasn't sure what he'd thought Lippa wanted, actually. She'd always worked in strange ways - guardians always did, he'd learned. Spirit-sent. Perhaps he hadn't left enough offerings by the Wardwood the last time he'd stopped by. The last thing Roger wanted was for Lippa to endanger him and his mares on their way back to warm soup and safe sup.

Her hooves and the horses' clattered audibly to a stop, and Dussander and Preben saw, probably, an alert grey doe with flowers tucked in her ear peering curiously at them, and behind them a stately but ultimately plain coach. Roger put his reins to one hand and used the other to rub his temples. "Apologies!" he called, after a moment. They'd seen his guardian, and there was a child. He had horses, and a guardian. They could take on a man and a child, if this got violent. (Fish, he thought with some semblance of unending delight, and then he remembered that it likely wasn't his thought at all.)

It was far from the truth to say that Roger was listening to the small family's conversation - he wasn't quite close enough to hear the man's side of it, for one, although the boy's childish shouts carried rather well. Lippa could make out a bit of it, though, and though she could not really form words in his head, he saw a pair of people walking on a road anyway. Someone really had to let the public know that being 'chosen' was not all it was cracked up to be; constantly dealing with an apparently telepathic deer made Roger feel insane and hallucinogenic more than anything. Also rude; he really wasn't much of an eavesdropper in general. Briefly he entertained the thought of some royal spy using a guardian to seek out dissent, and then he remembered quickly enough that a guardian's telepathic ability was well-known enough, and that no one had ever seen a guardian wandering about unconnected to a chosen human.

To Roger's knowledge, anyway.

(Lippa, head tilted, watched the father-son pair rather interestedly. She did like that Preben child, although the elder one seemed too easily distractible. She didn't think Roger would drop his things! And he wasn't even stopping to pick them up again. She could help them, perhaps! Humans were strange. But what was he doing with his hand? Wait - wait, no, he was not distracted, but frightened. She tried to project a feeling of calm and peace over the man, for she knew she would not hurt him - gentle puffs of cloud hiding bountiful golden sun, a cat just falling into a long nap.)

Of course, though, Dussander was not Lippa's chosen, and Roger now held his head with a hand. Why cats? What was Lippa doing? He dismounted quickly, running a hand through the nearer mare's - the grey dapple's - hair and walking closer only to see his guardian stretch her face into a strange satisfied grin, leering closer to a little child. She looked blissful, with her eyes closed like that. Of course, she also looked a bit threatening so close to the child - a wild, spirit-sent deer the size of a horse with hooves and coat rather caked with dust. Roger didn't think that'd ever change, no matter how long he spent with her; for him her appearance would always come at odds to her rather doglike personality. The man certainly seemed to share Roger's caution.

"Ah, yes," he said finally, in response to the man's question. "My...guardian, I think. Lippa, the boy's not Eliza." He tried to meet the man's eyes, shrugging. "I think really it goes the other way around; she's more like a child than a horse or a deer. She followed me; generally she stays home to, ah, play with my daughter." He hadn't spoken so many words in quite a while, but Roger thought it best to err on the side of caution. He did want to reassure the man, although he'd prefer that Lippa not come so close to the boy. He might not be as accustomed to her ways as Roger's own children were, and besides he did not want to take responsibility for any injury, however accidental.

(Was that how the laws worked?)

He turned to the child. Lippa was lowering her head almost eagerly at him, having heard and comprehended his question quite clearly. "You may if your father permits it, and if she calms down." Resentment spiked through Roger, an odd feeling - Lippa, right. In its wake he forgot about the other question, although the group was certainly headed in that direction. (The man was the child's father, right? Roger didn't want to presume.)