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[ Upriver from him, up the bank just a bit - maybe as far as he can throw one of those flat stones - Dancy wends her way out from the trees and scratching underbrush. She tugs a wide-brimmed straw hat down over her head and gives the strap of her ratty duffel another hitch over her shoulder. One of her pale knees is skinned through the hole in her dirty jeans, a trifle wound already scabbed over since that morning.

She pauses maybe forty paces out from the man, a moment of flickering hesitation, but continues tramping on his way a second later. Dancy pauses again once she's near enough to get a good look at him, but this time it's to clean the mud off the soles of her weather-worn, ancient boots, a quick drag of rubber soles against one of the low, shelf-like rocks littering the bank. ]

Hey.

*He looks over and nods to her. His clothes look like they were designed in the 1850s, handmade but comfortable, and he has a face to match.* Hello.

What are you doing out here, lass? It isn't safe to be alone in the woods. You could get lost, if nothing else, and it would be a shame for you to starve.

[ Dancy shrugs once, giving the duffel strap another hitch. This close, the places where she's mended it with duct tape are visible, silver stripes against faded black. ]

I got stuff to eat. [ Five words, all infused with heavy, Southern, swamp hick inflection. ] I ain't lost, neither- [ Then, remembering what her grandma taught her, ] -sir.

[ His clothes are worth some study, and she cocks her head, not hiding her curiosity. ] You a reenactor?

Not quite a reenactor, no. *His accent is vaguely Scottish, although not as strong as it once was.* Just a bit older than I look, shall we say.

Care to talk a bit with an old man, or do you have places to be?

Edited 2016-06-14 20:40 (UTC)

[ Again, that hesitation. Dancy looks on down the river briefly, as if it will provide some sort of answer. The Angel tells her to move on, a death-dry rasp only she can hear, and so she shakes her head. ]

Nowhere to be just yet.

[ Lowering the bag, she comes close enough to be polite - but not necessarily close enough to grab - and parks herself on another rock. Dancy twitches her straw hat into place, shading her skinny arms. ] Don't meet too many folks in these parts.

No, you don't. Certainly not pretty, pale girls with miles to go. *He chuckles.* But then frontiersmen straight out of the wild west aren't too common either, are we?

Tell me your story and perhaps I'll tell you mine, hmm?

Pandora can be lured out by the strangest things. She really does seem to come out of no where. Turn your back and when you turn around, there she is.

The irregular splashes pull her near shore, and it takes her a moment to orient on the thrower and not the stones. "Hello."

*He looks up and smiles.* Hello.

What are you doing out here all alone?

Her gaze ticks over him, ink-dark eyes a stark contrast to the pink and flax coloring. Did she slip through to another time or is he the one displaced? Either is equally likely, she supposes. "I'm not alone."

Wait. Not what he was trying to ask, probably. She gives a small shrug. "Wandering."

*It's a funny old thing, time.*

Well, you're not alone now, are you? *He smiles gently.* Come sit by me and skip rocks? It does get a bit lonely out here.

Funny thing about English, too. Pandora weighs him a moment, before picking her way to a sunbathed stone nearby. Close enough to be in arm's reach and therefore by him. Her little floral dress ends about mid-calf, but she's got boots on under that. Her bag is slung across her chest and see shoves it being her as her fingers pick over the stones.

"No touching," she warns him, light as you please. Because people like touching, even just casually. Hand shakes and shoulder touches and little things like that. "Why are you all the way out here?"

I'll do my best to avoid it. *And he will, too. Unless his . . . condition gets the better of him.*

I live out here. Well, technically I live at Fort Spencer, but that's only a short hike from here, so I come here often. *It's a short hike for him, that is. For a normal human it would be quite the march.*

More the pity for both of them if that happens.

She tilts her head as if thinking. "I'm not familiar with Fort Spencer. Is it an army base or a museum?"

*Woe to everybody, yes.*

An army base, if only barely. We're in the middle of nowhere, I'm about the only soldier around. *If only because everyone else wound up as emergency rations.*

That sounds suspicious. The only thing she can put her finger on is the small number of people. Don't they close those bases?

"How's that?" She asks, trying to sound baffled. It's easy; baffled is the dominant emotion.

It's getting on towards winter and we're on the frontier, lass; when I arrived the place had eight soldiers and the number has only dwindled since. *There's a good reason for that, mind you--and you're looking at him.*

The frontier.

Oh, she's the one displaced this time, isn't she? "Desertion?"

*He laughs and shakes his head.* Afraid not, lass. There are hungry things out in these woods, and not all myths are wrong.

Have you ever heard of the wendigo?

Where the hell had she gotten off to? Her friends are usually pretty keen to keep her out of the territory of anything that ate human types. Had the Hound missed a change or had the shift in time and place played havoc on such efforts?

"Probably," she says, then with a seemingly childish demand, "Tell me."

It's said that if one ever resorts to cannibalism, they will become a wendigo. Strong, fast, unkillable--but addicted to the taste of their own kind, always hungry, always alone.

Of course, it doesn't sound so bad when you've eaten your belt and are digging up roots to gnaw on. Not much nutrition in those . . .

"Are you saying a wendigo decimated your peers?" She's very proud of that one, 'decimate'. And her approach. Ask the inoffensive question and then peel apart the truth from there.

Edited 2016-06-15 21:23 (UTC)

I wouldn't say decimate. *He smirks.* That would be one in ten, not eight in nine.

She gives a snort that's not precisely ladylike. "To kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of," she recites crisply.

Or 'to select by lot and kill every tenth person of.' That was the original meaning, thus decimate. *A shrug.* But yes, you're right. The word has changed its meaning over time.

The wendigo killed everyone, for it was hungry. It was hungry and none of the soldiers wished to join it, so what other use did they have but meat?

Edited 2016-06-15 22:38 (UTC)

"You said eight of nine," she points out helpfully.