Taking the Initiative [Dark]

[Dark]

Monty looked insulted, but Minh felt the statement completely valid, "Don't look at us like that: it's your own damn fault."

They'd trusted that Monty had picked up on something relating to their quest, when the truth of the matter was s/he'd just found some tasty Slithey Tove eggs to maul. The following rock slide couldn't directly be blamed on the bander, but s/he had been the reason they were there.

Still, Monty was they're best chance of finding the runaways.

Before they started moving again she quickly checked on her newest charge, worried that maybe the tumble had disturbed him--or possibly crushed him--but he was still sound asleep, curled up in a ball of twitching misery. Hopefully he wasn't bleeding internally.

The trees were bigger up here, older, and Minh felt tiny in comparison as they walked. Soon enough, though, the tree line broke on a ridge. The mountains stretched out around them for what seemed like eternity. Pretty. And depressing.

"We're never going to find them, are we?"

[Bee]

Mnem too was feeling the pull of despair, especially as they gazed out on the vast stretch of mountain they had yet to cover, but really, they had made it this far--braving every bizarre road block that the unkind world chose to throw at them and coming out mosty intact--and they were going to make it to the damn marsh it if killed them. Which it might, if past experiences were anything to go by. And if they had to search for those brats to accomplish their goal, then they were going to do it.

"Monty has a scent," Mnem said, somewhat dubiously, looking down at their bander, who was marching in front of them. What the scent was was anyone's guess, but Mnem chose to believe that it was the odor of irritating teenagers. "With luck we're not too far off from wherever the twerps have chosen to hole themselves away."

[Dark]

They weren't, in fact, very far off at all. The small clearing they had chosen to set up camp in was actually a rather choice spot, and it was doubtful Minh and Mnem would have stumbled across it if they didn't have a genetically enhanced bander leading the way. Half way up a steep valley wall, with an isolated well, and hidden from view mostly by the large volcanic rock that was scatter across the hillside. The camp itself was situated underneath a rock overhang, hiding the site from airborne observation as well.

Monty charged right into the middle of the young couple dolling out their midmorning meal, buriying hir head in the pot and leaving Minh and Mnem to deal with a suddenly very awkward situation.

The male--a rather spry looking ferret, for being a Lowlander--immediately situated himself between the intruders and his love--a nervous, rather cute-looking vole.

[Kiki]

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[Bee]

The boy jumped to his feet, brandishing what looked to be a large stick sharped to a point with something--perhaps a rock. He had the fearless determination of someone who had absolutely no idea what he was dealing with.

"Back, vile creatures!" he proclaimed, waving the stick at them. "I know what you have come for, and you shall not lay a hand on either me or my true love! For it has been written in the stars that our pure and perfect love is destined to end the long fued between our warring houses and--"

Mnem was trying very hard not to laugh. The two of them hardly looked like any threat--Mnem herself, especially, looked like she had been rather violently beaten and then dumped in a ditch. And Monty was too busy eating to show off the entirety of hir terror.

"Oh, shut up," Mnem said. "We're not here to hurt you."

[Dark]

All thoughts of valiantly risking life and limb to save two star-crossed lovers had dimmed over the course of the last week-and-a-half, the glamor stripped away by a gradual build-up of travel dust and rationed coffee. Now, after days of fruitless searching, they were face-to-face with just one more facet of their journey towards Josiggy Marsh, and Minh didn't feel anything besides the strong desire to strangle something. Someone. A particular ferret, actually.

"You wouldn't admit if your aim was to harm us, now would you? So back, vile heathens, lest I part your head from your shoulders. Our love will not be silenced!"

It was out of a bad novel, and Minh wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Or bite someone's head off. Yes. That sounded delightful, though Mnem would probably be cross with her afterwards.

She turned her attention to the young vole, "Do you want to restrain the great lug, before someone--the someone being him, of course--gets hurt? We're here to help you two nitwits, you know. We want out of this mess just as much as you do."

[Bee]

The girl opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, her lover scoffed and said, "Hah! What do you know of sorrow, of pain, of suffering? We have been forced to leave our homes for the sake of our sweet love, for which both of us would gladly give our lives. We have braved many perils, and situations that were most...perilous."

"We have a vertiable laundry list," said Mnem, trying very hard now not to smack the little dipshit in the face, "of terrible predicaments we've been in over the course of the last few weeks, and I've very little desire at the moment to hear of your barely-pubescent angst. Now kindly shut your gaping maw before I am forced to sic Monty on you, and I can assure you that you will not like the results of that." To the vole, she said, "How long have you two been out here?"

"For years, it seems," said the girl, wistfully. "We've been living on little but our love for one another, and our determination to--"

Monty bit her hand. Mnem had never been so proud of that little bander.

[Dark]

It was very hard not to laugh when faced with such stunned, incredulous expressions. Just for that, Minh was more than willing to take back each and every negative comment she'd ever directed at Monty. Their "prince," however, didn't appear to find the situation amusing, and at the girl's shriek--shrill and wavering and effeminate--he leaped forward, determination glinting in his eyes.

Minh grabbed him by the scruff as he rushed by, cringing a bit at the sensation of diseased skin under her paw, "Oh, no. I don't think so, hot stuff. This is one monster you won't be saving your fair damsel from." She eyed Monty, and as an afterthought, "Heel."

Monty subsided, grumbling the entire time, and Minh almost revoked her command when the boy started to struggle and bellow.

"Fiends! Loathsome creatures! You shall not stand before the force of our devotion. Our love shall conquer."

She looked to Mnem for help.

[Bee]

Mnem quite honestly did not see a solution to this problem that did not involve blugeoning the both of them to death with a rock. Earlier, the desire had been to buck that irritating Range council and slip the brats off to somewhere they could be free of prejudice, but now Mnem mostly wanted to drag them both to the nearest town and see them stoned by villagers. An idea blossomed. They could still tell the wretched twits that. Where they were actually headed, the two need not know. She would need to find some way to convey this idea to Minh later.

"Children," she told the pair. "I've had quite enough of this nonsense. Your love is not going to conquer anything without proper support. We intend to smuggle the two of you to a place where you can live together in harmony. Alone. Isolated from the rest of humanity. Which really works out lovely for everyone involved."

Suspiciously, the boy said, "None shall harm a beautiful, delicate hair on the perfect flesh of my beloved Peninnah?"

Mnem looked at the girl. "Peninnah?"

Demurely, the girl said, "I do prefer Penny. But Barnabas thinks that my full name is more romantic." She gazed adoringly at said 'Barnabas.'

"Right," said Mnem, disgustedly. "Let's get on with it, then."

[Dark]

The hike uphill was ridiculously slow--Barnabas suffered from rather severe asthma, and had to stop every third step or so to catch his breath. They started believing him after he passed out the second time in as many hours. It really made Minh wonder how they'd managed to escape from their furious families to begin with, but she dreaded the sure-to-be thirty minute dirge about their 'grandly heroic' escape that she didn't dare ask.

Peninnah was actually rather sweet, if you could ignore the fact that she was a complete and utter nitwit. The vole was all whimsical sentiment and not much else; the couple barely had a spare thought between them.

"And there he was, in all his dashing glory, sneaking his way through the courtyard towards my window under darkness of night. I just couldn't bear to call the guards on him, so instead I made him promise to visit me again in exchange for my silence."

Minh nodded, just like she'd nodded throughout the entire reminiscent, feverishly wishing she had a pair of ear plugs.