GAH!
Who: Jasper, and the NPC kids (Ashwin and Corbin) Where: Field Camp When: Late Afternoon/Early Evening What: The exact opposite of a finding. Would that be a 'losting'? Rating: PG (with a lot of muttered curses)
"Oh, you are fu.... um, goddamn well kidding me." Jasper muttered to herself, and moved the sleeping baby to her other arm. Everyone was gone. Everyone. Even that bloody tanning pit Bazzer'd made was emptied. The baby made a sleepy protest and stuck his thumb in his mouth, settling back down as soon as she stopped moving him around. There were dead laughers laying around, but they were obviously rotting and had a fair portion of
"Where's the people? You said there'd be people!" The six year old girl, Ashwin, demanded, stomping her foot in what Jasper recognized as an impending temper tantrum, thanks to a neice and two nephews. Jasper didn't blame her, since she felt like having a minor meltdown herself.
"They moved on. They'll be at the island. We'll start following their trail tomorrow. I'm too tired today, and I need a night to recharge." Jasper rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. Like she'd get any sleep with two kids and a laugher pack. God, that was a hilarious idea right there. "Come on. I haven't had a bath in like a bloody week or more and I really want one." That settled the girl down - she'd told Jasper her entire life story (it was a pretty short story), and it mostly involved the stuff she loved to do. It was a short list, but playing in the water was apparently one of them. So Jasper started wandering to Helena's Bath and the soap pods. On the way she made note of a small pile of rough spears, like the one's she'd taught Clay to make, that were apparently forgotten in the move. Or maybe he didn't consider them good enough or something. Whatever, they might be helpful.
The girl apparently knew soap pods - whatever group she'd been with took baths, thank whatever deity was out there. And she even grabbed three. One for each of them. And when she saw the pool, she started stripping down without even having to be told. That made Jasper raise an eyebrow, of course, but whatever. It was a kid. Like there was a lot of choice under the circumstances. The boy, Corbin, Jasper woke up gently and started pulling clothes from. His sister came over and started tugging him towards the water, and Jasper took the opportunity to peel - in the most literal interpetation of the word, her clothes of. She thought about hanging them in a tree branch or something, but what the hell, they needed to be washed worse than she did. So she just dumped them in the water too. A hop in, and Jasper watched the big sister washing up her little brother before herself, and Jasper started washing out her clothes and then herself. She would've done the kids' clothing, too, but you couldn't get leather wet without it getting hard, unless it'd been cured or something, and she didn't know if they had. If that was even the right word.
The kids were having a grand time playing in the water, though it was pretty obvious that the girl was more trying to look happy then actually being happy. The boy was just... too young or something to understand what happened. Jasper waded out into the river bit a little way, keeping an eye on them in case someone went under and didn't come up again, and started looking around for one of those ugly-ass unfish. She was just absolutely starving for protein. And laughers that were rotting in the sun didn't appeal.
Of course, there was no bloody unfish because she wanted one. That was the way it worked. She sighed, and came back to the pool, dragging her now mostly-clean clothes out, wringing them mostly dry, and hanging them on branches to dry for a while. Jasper hung up the kids' clothes, too, figuring at least they could air out that way. Letting them play for another ten minutes, and then Jas whistled. "Come on, grab your things. Let's climb a tree for the night and we'll get an early start tomorrow. We might be able to catch up."