etrayalogs | (no subject)

WHO: Sciel, Lune, Alicia
WHEN: Backdated to… around when Alicia arrived
WHERE: Apartment -> wilderness -> Camp Etraya
WHAT: awkward
NOTES\WARNINGS: none 2 speak of

The first hitch in the plan is the click of the front door when Gustave leaves early. It hadn’t registered for a moment, not when she’d been busy finding a matching pair of socks across the wreckage of her bedroom. But no matter the scramble right after, they’d missed him, catching the aluminum elevator doors closing that last inch. Gone. Sciel ducks back into the apartment with a big shrug.

“Maybe it’s better this way,” she remarks to Lune. Could anything bad happen between the apartment building and Verso’s camp? Sure, but probably not. No sense in scaring him or Maelle.

Sciel scrawls a message on a piece of stationary, big black letters over a printed image of clouds: Tried to catch you early but no dice! Alicia needs help finding Verso. Lune and I are escorting her. Home before dinner!! XOXO

“Think that’s good?” Sciel asks, but she offers the pen anyway.

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Once Sciel steps back inside, Lune's just coming out of her own room, tugging down a thin sweater over a tank top. She's already guessed what had happened; the same thing that's been happening with increasing frequency since the date. It's starting to get a little silly. A familiar welling of some ill-defined frustration begins to ebb within Lune, but she tamps down on it, lips pressing tightly together for a moment as she glances toward the front door, then at Sciel, already busying herself with some stationary.

"Yeah," she just says. Better. But she knows what Sciel means, of course– there's no point to make a big deal out of this. They're just going on a walk, really.

"It's fine. Gets the point across." Lune shakes her head at the offer of the pen, having nothing to add, though she pauses with a puzzled frown and looks from the note back to Sciel. "...XOXO?"

Sciel holds the pen out a second longer, not entirely convinced Lune doesn’t have something to say, but she relents and drops it to the table, where it skitters across the tabletop. She plucks the page from the top of the pad and brings it his desk, where she figures it’ll be an obvious blue page amongst all his bric-a-brac.

“Hugs and kisses,” she says, amused at that frown. Force of habit. “Keeps it lighthearted.”

He’s not going to be thrilled either way, but exclamation marks can only go so far.

“Let’s go?”

Oh, Lune is starting to have something to say, but nothing that would be suitable to write down on a quick note here and now. Her frown deepens a bit more at the explanation, trying to work out how that gibberish translates to "hugs and kisses", but eventually she chalks it up to those nonsensical things this place is full of with a shrug of a shoulder.

"Yes. Let's," she agrees, snatching up her jacket from the rack and slipping on her shoes. "The sooner we get to it, the better, probably."

Sciel just smiles. Look, isn’t it fun to learn new things?

“Alright,” she just says, stepping into her own spring gear, flinging a scarf around her neck, and out they go.

The late morning air is nice, and it doesn’t take long to get to where Sciel had agreed to meet Alicia in the morning. She’s not particularly inclined to be nervous, much less visibly so, but her smile feels a little bit braced. Who knows how this will go, and hopefully Lune’s presence isn’t an unwelcome surprise.

Just as she'd said, Alicia is waiting where they'd agreed to meet. She's adjusted enough to this place to be wearing slightly more normal clothing, even if everything she wears is still grayscale. It'd... feel weird to have color, anyway.

She looks up when Sciel arrives, her eye landing on Lune. She tilts her head, stiffening a little bit. That hadn't been part of their agreement. And that's two Expeditioners, which puts her at a disadvantage. She looks nervously between the two of them, as if debating bolting.

...But. Lune is one of Verso's friends, too. One of Maelle's friends. It's... probably fine? So she inclines her head in a greeting, and acknowledgement that they should get going.

Etraya is slowly inching toward spring, which is making Alicia stand out even more; like a smudge of white and grey in an otherwise colorful landscape. Ever her clothes lack color— briefly, Lune ponders whether that's a conscious choice on Alicia's part.

It would be impossible to miss that nervous look the girl flicks between the Expeditioners, the way those slim shoulders stiffen. Lune hangs back, glancing briefly at Sciel before turning to face Alicia again, lifting one hand in a small wave.

"Hello, Alicia." She gives a small smile, trying to convey they don't mean her any harm. "I'm Lune. I know you made plans with Sciel, but hopefully you won't mind if I tag along to Verso's, too."

Sciel watches Alicia approach with the sense that this might be the second hitch –– she’s hesitant to be seen as changing the terms, but she knows so fiercely that Lune can be trusted that she can only hope Alicia feels it on her, and is willing to trust her judgement. She glances back at Lune sidelong.

“She wanted to meet you,” she says. “I figured fair’s fair, everyone gets to meet everyone, right?”

She takes a few easy steps in the direction of camp, so they can get going.

More Expeditioners might draw more attention, and the last thing she wants is Renoir getting involved. But it’s Lune, one of the ones she watched in camp from a distance, not some total stranger.

Alicia exhales, mildly annoyed by the surprise, but having moved past her anxiety. She types a message quickly to send to them both.

I am more worried about you scaring off Verso with too many people.

…But she’s half teasing about that, so. She moves to follow Sciel, but she does shift to the side so she can keep them both on her good side.