"'The weather makes changes in any travel plans.'" Miss Estiel replied, her voice high in mimicry as she quotes, brushing her significantly shorter hair away from her own eyes. The hair itself was not dramatic - simple brown, well-cared for, and flatteringly cut - but the skin it lay against was. Few living have skin the grey of half-lit fog. Smiling faintly, she added in her own rougher low tones, "Perhaps if you took off the furs, it would be more comfortable for you . . ?"

On a whim, a dragon's plume of warm air billows to the ceiling, vanishing into the cold almost immediately. Regarding her companion, Estiel once again grows contemplative, weighing options on the trip ahead. The fragile, and undeniably unusual conditions required for her companion's health were a serious issue to keep in mind.

The windows within the carriage were just beginning to frost over, small streaky fingers of ice creeping across the strong weathered glass. Inside, the air was even chillier than the winds being whipped in by the storm front.

And one of its occupants, at least, seemed fairly content with this state of affairs.

Sitting languid against grey silk cushions, wrapped in white furs and expensive lace, was a young woman of breathtaking beauty--so grave and serene she might have been mistaken for a life-sized doll, if not for the faint puffs of breath that moved past her parted lips. Her silvery hair, immaculately swept up into a simple chignon, glinted under the faint interior lights. Every now and then her pale fingers grazed over the pages of a book held in her lap, tracing the edges of illustrations or illuminated words.

"It's a little warm in here," she murmured eventually, in a low, sweet voice. "But I suppose I'll survive until our next stop. Which, by the way, I had thought we would reach before dark."

Despite the bleak and dreary conditions, it seems travel is the order of the day. Lagging behind the carriage is a stolid, feminine figure. Not privy to the convenience of a coach or other means of travel, she makes her way through the inclement weather the best she can on foot.

The tattered hem of her hooded cloak and worn leather boots, as mired as they were with mud, were both indicative of a quiet resignation to the indignities of life on the road. Even with the rain tumbling down in an almost endless rhythm she continues on steadfastly, each seemingly delicate foot placed one in front of the other in the track left behind the vehicle--an easy way to not only keep track of the road in the thick fog, but also to keep her boots from becoming further encumbered.

They were not together, the carriage and her, but the traveler is perfectly happy to follow the path laid out before her until a better one presented itself. Even the sound of the cyborg horses, distant and muffled by the downpour as they were, were some comfort in a land where just breathing could be dangerous. And with nightfall's uncertain approach, there was always more safety in numbers.

Pleasant temperatures vary from person to person, but it was perhaps unusual that one of the carriage's occupants was wrapped in a coat made from some of the best of the Nobility's research into temperature-preserving garments. Meant to maintan a pleasant 'room temperature', the fabric gleamed faintly in the carriage lights, thin, glittering darts of reflected brilliance. The elegant cut and shaping was simply something to be expected. Just as having a pleasing - but not too dramatically gorgeous - a figure was simply to be expected.

It had always been a pleasing thing to her to have needed so very little modification to suit her Mistress's needs.

Watching the plume of her breath rise in the nippy air of the carriage interior, Miss Estiel leaned back against her seat, inwardly going yet again over the supplies and surprises packed and built into the carriage.

Shifting slightly at a change in the drum of rain on the carriage roof, Miss Estiel turned to her traveling companion, raising an eyebrow. "Enjoying yourself?"

Rain had been pouring down all day, but the long, straight road the carriage followed was comfortably elevated above the floodplain. Frontier weather was eccentric, at best, and this season featured steady fall rains paired with smothering tulle fog.

The driver of the carriage was unconcerned with fog dense enough to blot out the road before the lead cyborg horses, because he was an android. His elegantly tooled titanium chassis was quite waterproof, and his sonar worked quite well enough to tell him not only the lay of the land, but also of the few travelers behind him on the road. Rain on the Frontier was a comforting thing, the bane of the Nobility and the vast majority of their monstrous servants... at least, during the daytime.

However, through the dense fog layered over with rain clouds, it was impossible to tell the moment of sunset.