Snippet #2552305

"It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace." - George Bernard Shaw

Bakersfield, Sacramento
Las Vegas, Paradise Republic
The Change, Year 10

Clarissa's bright, alarmed eyes scanned the horizon from where she stood at the edge of the camp. She adjusted her poncho and shifted her weight from one foot to the other impatiently. "This is killing me, Gary," she called out fretfully over her shoulder at the man sitting at a makeshift desk, focused on his task at hand. "We need to go after her. Right now."

"She made her own choice, Clarissa," he called back, patterning her speech as he did so, as he jotted down a few notes in a ledger. Clarissa paced inside their tent, the door flaps pulled up to still see over the valley. At the sound of his voice her head angled more over her shoulder as she shot him a disdainful look. "I know you're worried. But she made her choice."

"Klaus is going to come unglued on you," she hissed quickly, narrowing her eyes. "You don't deserve that but you know that's what's going to happen?"

"Yeah, I know," the man said, reaching his hands up to drag down the sides of his face. He leaned back into his chair and cast his eyes irritably out at the sky. "Aves doesn't realize what she's done."

Clarissa paused. Her eyes went clear for a moment as she contemplated what he had said, then she nodded. She should not have let Aves go. "Gary, I need to go back to Las Vegas." She whirled around fully and dropped to the ground to tug a small trunk from underneath their cot, her sudden movement surprising Gary.

"What for?" he demanded, springing to his feet and spreading his hands inquisitively. Clarissa was spontaneous by nature but wasn't in the habit of taking roles in situations like these. "What do I not know?"

She looked at up him. "I promised Klaus something," she said gently. "I'll tell you about it when you get back. Okay?"

Gary blinked and stared for a moment. "I don't like this," he repeated familiarly. "We're better off all traveling back together."

"No, someone needs to go, and go fast," she insisted, tossing some of her belongings into a trunk and packing a few changes of clothes and provisions into a backpack. "I'll take the speedy horse. She can get me there in two or three days."

"You can't send a bird?"

"Can't trust a bird with this."

Gary folded his arms across his chest and paused, rolling his tongue around in his mouth as he tried to think of some way to reason with herr. "I'll need to send someone with you to keep you safe," he gruffed. "That's one less person who can help get us on the road."

Clarissa plucked a small leather case from the trunk, her two favorite blades rolled up safely inside. "I'm not worried." Gary knew full well she wasn't afraid to use them. "I don't need much rest. The horse is terrific. We'll stop through Barstow and I'll switch out if I have to and you can pick her up on the way back."

Gary opened his mouth to say something, but a voice called out sharply from outside the tent. The two dashed out, and ran to the scout offering a pair of binoculars. Gary lifted them to his eyes, and frowned deeply. Clarissa impatiently reached toward him, snatching them away anxiously and sticking them up to her eyes: Aves, on the sand-colored horse, heading up the highway. She tore the binoculars away quickly, shoving them back into Gary's hands and started out toward the horses. "I'm leaving now," she said emphatically, skittering away on her long legs.

"Safe travels, Dear," Gary responded distractedly as he watched the scene.

# # #

Three days later…

# # #

"I wasn't expecting you to come back so early," said the tall, slender, sandy-haired man as he gestured for Clarissa to enter the house. He offered her a friendly embrace, grinning and chewing gum at the same time. "Jane's gone out, otherwise she'd be here to say hi." He shut the door behind her and offered her a spot in the large parlor outside of the kitchen area. He pulled a kettle off of the wood stove fixed next to one of the windows and retrieved a nearby mug. "Tell me how the route's going! You've all been gone for three months and I'm sure you've-"

"Klaus," Clarissa interrupted, waving her hands and looking at him seriously as he poured boiled water into the mug. "You told me to tell you if something went wrong."

The friendly face drew into a blank stare as he quickly realized what was going on. "What did she do?" he asked curtly and calmly.

She folded her arms across her chest and leaned into the doorframe of the large parlor. "Bakersfield is captured-"

His eyes widened. "It's true?" He suddenly startled back; in his moment of paying rapt attention, he'd accidentally burned his hand with overflowing water.

"-and Aves went to go initiate trade with them. So she said. But we spotted her riding north instead."

"Who took Bakersfield?" Klaus asked sternly, his eyebrows furrowing darkly as he absently waved his raw hand. He'd sustained some strange injuries over the last ten years, but being burned by hot water still felt uncomfortable, more or less.

"Sacramento. And the Lord-Commander is there."

Klaus opened his mouth to say something, but stopped for a moment before he reached his unscathed hand behind his head and cringed. "This… we need to do something. Is she heading north to…" he trailed off, the thousands of possibilities flipping through his fast mind. He shook his head quickly and looked at her. "You need to go to town to tell Giuseppe."

"I just rode three days in the Mojave with little sleep or food," Clarissa snapped back tiredly, tilting her head forward to glower at him from under her dark eyebrows. "If I have to ride in the next week I'm going to be pretty poorly off. No thank you."

"Then write a note and I'll have it sent down," Klaus instructed nonchalantly, rushing to a cabinet in the parlor and pulling out an old, blank notecard and a pen to set on a large table. "I'll get ready to go soon."

"You're sure about that?" Clarissa asked, immediately setting about transcribing a quick version of her account. "They took the city in less than eight hours," she recounted as she fixed her eyes on the paper, "and they brought a lot of people. A lot. Resettling a lot of locals, too, from the looks of it. They're not messing around."

Klaus started to rush toward the back door of the house, shouting an order from the porch to a young assistant wheeling a large box toward the smithery, then rushed back in. "That's fine. I'm not going to instigate a conflict. I just want-" he stopped for a beat, then continued quickly. "We just need to locate the whereabouts of our leader. That's our explanation. No reason for bloodshed."

"What about Jane?" Clarissa queried curiously, lifting her pen and waving the card to dry the wet ink. "She might not like that very much."

Klaus plucked the card from Clarissa's worn hands and started toward the porch to hand it off to his scout. "I suppose that's my problem."