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Part of being one of Cassion's followers, Arlo would guess, was that by default a traveler, explorer...adventurer, storyteller, was that inevitably you'd become a student of human or mortal nature. Not the intellectual kind of course. More of an accidental one. People were funny and Arlo was fascinated by how things were playing out currently in their little camp by the road. Or maybe bewildered was a better way to describe the tension and strange behaviors. Vega's mostly. He couldn't say that their guest was behaving strangely. He hardly knew her and might be more her norm than not. But Vega? She seemed more prickly than usual. Not that he'd say so aloud. Arlo might be young but he wasn't stupid.
Besides that, though she was keeping him in the loop by translating foreign seeming words into hand signals, he somehow suspected that the ratio of Xanthean dialogue was out of sync with the amount of sign. And then? He'd picked up two plates from beside the fire. One for each of the women but Vega stalked right past him to grab the third. The one he'd have returned for when he was done. Arlo turned his head to track her with a curious expression and when she passed by him again, he lifted one brow as if he thought she'd enlighten him. She didn't of course.
Women.
"Ah," he said, smiling at Qit'tria when she explained what she'd meant. Tree choker. "Layabout, that's what my mother back in Rharne would call it. No payment required at any rate," Arlo reassured her. "Sharing a meal is part of devotion. For me anyway. Cassion. I'd be a poor follower if I was to ask for compensation." Potatoes, he explained, after returning for his plate and bringing a raw specimen with him to show her. "It's a root vegetable. Grows under the ground." She appreciated the food it appeared and made quite a show of it. It made him wonder just how long it had been since she'd eaten.
But he'd liked Desnind, he added while digging into his own meal. They'd been there a season and had gotten to know the people and their surroundings. "There were some strange creatures in the forest, much like here but different. We hunted. Explored a little." Of course, he didn't mention Vega's connection there. It was hers to tell and not his. "The people were nice." And even when she mentioned looking for her forest friend, he suspected he knew what she meant. Like Vega, she must be looking for that mysterious other part of her. That too was Vega's to tell. Or not tell.
Of course whatever it was she said in a tongue not common or sign went right by him. But he shrugged and smiled all the same. "We left to travel. See other places. We've seen a few, we'll see a few more and who knows, maybe we'll get back to Desnind one of these trials," he said with a smile in Vega's direction. Where she went, he went after all, and the same in reverse. Sometimes however, they hardly knew until they got there.
