It was true that Brennan and Eloise hadn't had as many opportunities to meet or speak personally in the last couple of weeks, but she had been more than diligent about making observations and leaving not only notes, but small and detailed reports in Brennan's corner of the basement. It was funny; they had made some effort to outline their intents when it came to all of this research, but as of yet Ellie hadn't felt it was fully connecting. All of her writing was about various zombies she had noticed lurking near the Public Library; she would spend hours watching, giving them names, tracking their movements around the building. She made marks about their posture and movement, changes in markings and the presence of blood on clothing, etc. Some patterns had emerged, it was true. But beyond this...? It was anyone's guess what they might end up concluding from their efforts. Not that Ellie wasn't positive.
That being said, the New Year had actually given Eloise a feeling of newness. Last October, she'd come stumbling into the safehouses from who knew how long out in the wild alone. She'd made progress throughout the next couple of months. She had friends now -- relationships, people she liked as company and found personally important. But there was something about the holiday that had confirmed all of this in her mind, and even if Ellie was still a work in progress, there was now an easy brightness to her calm facade: as if a certain light had turned on behind her eyes.
She had been looking forward to this trip: not only to gather more equipment that was generally too dangerous for her to gather on her own, but to work as a team. She'd missed Brennan in a way. People had been saying interesting things about him and a certain woman. ...Also a naked man. Eloise wasn't sure why it mattered if he was naked or not, but she supposed assumptions were easy to make about that sort of thing.
When she spotted Brennan at the door -- just where he'd said he would be -- she smiled, if only a little. Mostly Ellie simply walked up to him and took her place at his side, as if no time had passed at all between this and the last time they'd really seen eachother.
"You look prepared," she said simply, nodding to the knife.