Taking the Initiative [Dark]

[Bee]

Mnem almost wanted to protest being slung over Minh's shoulder like another pack, but she was really too tired and in too much pain to care. So she merely mumbled something incoherent and relaxed as she let Minh do the heavy lifting.

They trudged along like that through the woods, with Monty scouting around them for any signs of danger (like enraged villagers looking for a little kindling), and they weren't moving much faster, really, but it made Mnem's head feel a little clearer not to be walking. She almost wanted to start talking, but she had a feeling that once she started in on that, it was going to be nothing but a nonsensical stream of nothingness. So she settled for humming quietly, and eventually the sound of her own voice put her to sleep. Minh might not be happy, but she was too unconscious to care.

[Dark]

Minh kept walking, though it was harder to carry Mnem once she fell asleep and gave up all pretenses of holding on, stumbling through increasingly darker woods. As a feline, Minh had relatively good night vision, but in the end it got dark enough under the cover of trees that Monty had to led the last hour or so.

The found a lovely little overhang by a small, clean trickle of water and decided to call it a night. They were far enough away from the village now that there shouldn't be any problems, as long as they kept the fire small.

Minh was too wired to sleep, though, and went about setting up a small camp site. Monty prowled the perimeter while Minh gathered enough wood to create a tiny fire, enough to keep the cold at bat at least, and settled Mnem down as comfortably as she could manage.

She had a feeling they wouldn't be moving much in the next couple days.

[Bee]

Mnem woke sometime in the night to see a small campfire crackling merrily in front of her, and Minh sitting nearby. The raging, skull-splitting pain of earlier had subsided into a hard, constant throb, but she didn't want to smash a rock into her own head to end the pain anymore, so that was nice.

She was also quite hungry, but the thought of food made her want to vomit. Unfortunate. She wanted to put something in her stomach.

She maneuvered herself into something of a sitting position, and scooted a bit closer to the fire. Too small for, say, a pack of pyromaniac villagers to see. Good.

"Thank you for carrying me," she told Minh, and the sound of her own voice wasn't painful anymore, which was nice. Hopefully sometime in the near future the headache would be gone all together. "How far have we gotten? Where is Monty?"

[Dark]

Minh was just about to nod off into sweet, glorious sleep when Mnem spoke, shattering any illusions she'd had of getting any sort of rest that night. She'd been tossing and turning for the last several hours, mind too...awake...to do anything so simple as relax.

Whenever she got to still, her mind would wander back to the feeling of the flames roaring around her, licking her heels. The smell of her fur melting and her flesh burning. They'd gotten out before anything but minor burns could leave mark on her body, but she couldn't stop her imagination from filling in the blanks. Burning the witch had given her plenty of information to do so.

"Monty is off patrolling the perimeter and eviscerating small woodland creatures. And--you're welcome."

Minh regained her feet, and shuffled over to the canteens.

"Think you can handle some water? It'll help."

[Bee]

Grateful for the canteen being offered her way, Mnem sat up and took it from Minh. She took a sip of the water, and then took a moment to see if her gag reflex was going to kick up. It didn't. It seemed to settle on her stomach fine, so Mnem drank a bit more, slowly. Water was nice, but what she really wanted was some deep, undisturbed sleep.

She still had a bit of her tea with her, a sedative type that helped aid headaches and stomach pain (though it had the odd side effects of occasionally producing stomach ulcers and producing hallucinations, and it cut a person's sex drive down to essentially nothing, which had once come in very handy when trying to dissuade a particularly amorous suitor), and she moved gently over to her back to retrive it. She heated up some water, and carefully spooned in the brew.

It didn't taste anything wonderful, especially since she didn't have anything handy to sweeten the flavor, but she wasn't exactly drinking it for the taste.

She sipped at it quietly for about twenty minutes, and it finally began to have some sort of effect. Drowsiness began to settle, and her body felt heavy.

"Minh," she said, sleepily, mostly unaware that she was speaking at all. "Tell me a story."

[Dark]

A story, eh? Minh stretched out onto her stomach, and regarded Mnem's relaxed posture--the canine was barely conscious. Maybe she should try some of that tea, herself. Sleep was always good.

Considering the day they'd had, though, she didn't think a story was asking all that much, and she started talking about the first thing that popped into her head before she realized she'd even consciously made a decision.

Once upon a time...

There was a band of swash-buckling, gun-toting space pirates who flew a battered old space-cruiser, through the vast, uncharted regions of space, named HMS Adhara. Their names were Minh, Mnem, and Monty, though they were collectively known throughout the civilized solar systems as The Ship of M.

They mostly ran smuggling jobs and cargo-lifts, and they liked what they did, and they were good at it. Until one day, the law finally caught up to them in the form of smoking hot Special Agent Shinrai.

Mnem stole the agent's heart, and his gun, and they made a snappy escape into the black nothingness of space; running to steal another day.

[Bee]

She liked space pirates, she decided. And they were going to need to call their apartment the House of M from here on out, because it really was uncanny that...

She got no further into the thought before sleep overtook her completely, and when she woke again, it was late in the morning. The fire had died. Minh had apparently gotten into her tea and was still sleeping. Monty was still patrolling the area, having apparently slept sometime during the course of the night, and the little bander snapped hir eyes to Mnem when she saw that she had woken up.

"Good morning, Monty," Mnem muttered. Her head felt significantly better; the migraine appeared to have broken with enough sleep and some handy-dandy tea. It was now little more than a faint hum in her temples, something she could ignore. Good.

Her next thought was of herself and Minh in pirate regalia, robbing a vault at a space station with Monty by their side. She must have had an extremely strange dream. "Minh," she said, poking her friend. "We need to get up. We're close to the path; I can feel it."

[Dark]

Minh didn't like being poked, especially at such heinous times in the morning. She had a rule when camping out that roughly stated that no one of civility should be forced to get up before the sun touched the tent--or patch of ground in their special case.

And--the path? Yeah, right.

She cracked open a single eye to stare moodily at her canine companion with a healthy dose of disdain, "Whatever you're feeling, I highly doubt that it's the path."

Which might have been a bit harsh, but Minh hadn't even seen coffee since their first disaster over a week ago, and she was in the middle of a very painful withdrawal. Coupled with misfortune stacked on misfortune, she didn't feel overly inclined to do anything more assuming then curling up under a rock and not surface for the next month or so.

[Bee]

At this point Mnem was trying to stave off pessimism with every little bit of concentration she had, so she chose to ignore Minh's remarks and chalk them up to not having near enough caffeine in her system.

"Minh, up," she said, impatiently. Now that she felt like she could move again, she really wanted to get going. The sooner they found the path, the sooner they got to the Marsh. At the rate they were going--and all of the extremely bizzare misfortunes they had encountered up to this point--they would reach the Marsh in perhaps a few months, or they would be dead. In any event, Shinrai and Elias would already be there, and Mnem didn't think she could handle that particular bitch-slap to her ego.

"Monty," said Mnem, cheerily. "Please encourage Minh to get moving."

Monty cheerily flung hirself at Minh's face.

[Dark]

Minh was up rather promptly, swatting and flaying in a rather useless attempt to rid herself of rabid-bander. The little rodent wasn't holding anything back, either, and Minh would swear later she almost lost an eye in the initial attack.

She finally managed to gain her feet, a little worse for wear, and glared at the two culprits, "You guys are horrible, horrible people. Is this anyway to thank the woman who cared you half-way across the continent? I don't think so!"

As huffily as she could manage, she dug through her pack for a bit of breakfast and then slung in over her shoulder.

"Well, if you're so eager to get a move on, we can eat on the road."

Munching on a bit of tack, she gloomily studied the horizon and, despite all her gloom and doom this morning, hoped Mnem was right.