They were almost to the carriage before the thought fully formed.

’I need them to take me with them.’

Before he spoke, Ash heard Rinna’s voice.

"Lissa."

He closed his mouth.

"We can’t just leave him here." No argument in the statement, no hint of urgency - just the quiet certainty of someone who already knows what the outcome is going to be. "He said he’s lost. We should take him with us."

Lissa stopped walking.

She didn’t turn right away. She paused with her back to both of them, her tail swishing behind her while the calculations happened inside her head.

And then she turned around and looked at Ash.

The look lasted four or five full seconds - Ash counted without meaning to.

Her light blue eyes searched over him as they had when she had the sword aimed at him. He held the gaze without moving.

"Mister." This time there was respect in Lissa’s voice that wasn’t evident anywhere else. "Is it okay with you if we bring him along?"

The old man leaned back in the driver’s seat and looked back at the trio with an air of someone familiar with all possibilities. "Of course." His face broke into a warm smile. "That’s perfectly fine."

"Let’s go," she said the same thing as before, two words and she headed to the carriage, climbing up inside.

Rinna turned to face Ash again.

Her smile came without warning.

"You can come with us," she said and motioned with her hand towards the carriage.

"Thank you," Ash said.

His voice was softer than intended.

He followed her to the carriage and climbed up. There was a creaking noise as the wood took his weight. He found his place in the carriage and settled in.

He was surrounded by wood panels with only the open part facing the dirt road trailing behind the carriage as it began moving slowly forward.

The old man clicked his tongue and flicked the rope. The horse pulled the carriage into motion, the wheels catching the ruts and making some faint noise at every bump encountered on the road.

He sat opposite Lissa.

She was looking at him now - not the intense way she had before when she threatened him, but a different kind of watchfulness, more deliberate, less pronounced.

It said: I still don’t know if I want you here or not, but I am going to observe your every movement anyway until I make my decision.

He didn’t avert his eyes, nor did he keep them there for long enough to make it look threatening.

There was another kind of scrutiny on Rinna’s side - quick glances from Rinna that he caught from the corner of his eye, glances that disappeared before he could be sure he’d seen them.

Each time she did that, her fox ears twitched lightly as she averted her eyes.

He didn’t know what to make of that.

Questions were waiting inside him, about the world, about the state of things - whether there was something wrong, something people were afraid of, something that the old man who had sent him here might have called a threat.

He had come in with no information and a mission he couldn’t begin until he understood what he was working with.

But there was a quality to the silence - something heavy - that made him pause. Not hostility, no. Just density.

He waited.

The road was moving beneath him.

And Rinna made slight movements, stretching herself and reaching for something beside her seat.

A small travel bag, from the looks of it - and she took a waterskin from it, the outside rough-stitched from what looked like sewn animal hide.

"Here." She held it out to him.

He looked.

"Water," she said. "You requested it earlier."

"Thanks." He took it and opened it.

The water tasted cool and somewhat metallic; he kept drinking until it ran dry. Once it did, he let out a long sigh.

"You must have been very thirsty," Rinna observed.

"Yeah." He returned the waterskin.

"No problem."

Silence filled the carriage again as they traveled along the road.

"By the way," Rinna folded her hands in her lap and leaned her head slightly to the side. "How did you end up in a grassland like that? Do you really not remember anything?"