"Where now?" Paps asked me as I shuffled about on the moss-covered stone. Unfortunately, it made the stone wet without making it particularly comfortable either. So I was left staring at the wet patch it left on my leotard before I looked up at him.
"In the ruins. I dan't knaw the naaame af them, hawever." I answer before I look further down the valley with my scope. There was another group of travellers passing through here. If they came to a stop, that might help us get our pay.
"Don't provoke. Leave them." Paps warns as his paw lowers my rifle. I roll my eyes as a result as my trigger discipline wasn't that bad. If there was a need to, however, I would have...
"Da we caaall it in?" I ask before I look back at the equipment Hrurim gave us when we accepted the job. He was happy with the fact he did, but this wasn't exactly our speciality. We were slavers, we transported living cargo. It's what we did.
Sure, it meant tracking and hunting, but just watching wasn't what we did. I supposed, though, we could not afford to turn the job down. The Academy was a strict customer and our problems did not net us even a sympathetic backrub. We received no pay and were given strict demands to reimburse them...
Their escort failed and it somehow fell on us... To say nothing of how they took no responsibility for their own students capturing us. Travesty after travesty and here we were. Following some aelenvari outcasts.
I mean, what else could they be? If you weren't in a flower, you were an outcast! I guess it didn't matter, though. What mattered was what they had with them.
A protected class with a contradictory life... Men. Or, in this case, a baby boy. A rarity that would bring even foreign flowers down upon us if word got out.
"Heiya!" Paps barked as he suddenly grabbed me by the scruff of my outfit.
"AAAlright!" I bark back as I free myself before I retreated closer to the path's natural wall. He still did not trust me fully... Still coddled me as if I was the brat down there! So I just crossed my arms and glared slightly.
Eventually, I went to grab the equipment we had been lent. And I fiddled around with it while Paps made an internal judgement call. Admittedly, it annoyed me, to be excluded from that process. But Paps did it how he did it, I guess.
"Call in." he tells me as he steps away from the ledge to go to another. He even walked a brief distance to observe the other direction.
"Shauld I mentian the ather graup?" I ask him when it became apparent that these other travellers were likely going to be stopping here.
"Yes." he answers before he pulls out a spyglass or something.
"Dane." I tell him once I set it up and put in all the details. It was a simple thing that might've not actually worked. As we had to uncoil an exceptionally long set of cables to bring it out this far. Thankfully, someone else was coming to pick it up.
"We go back." Paps then says as he walks by me and gently slaps my hand free of whatever it was holding.
"Shauldn't we staaay ta abserve?" I ask him as this was quite a risky thing to do. Follow the target all this way only to then just let it wander off.
"No. We paid for this." he reminds me to which I just shrugged. He was right at the end of it, we were just being paid to follow them until they stopped. Now it was entirely up to them. But, I suppose we would now have to prepare ourselves.
Such a risky way of departing the task could only mean a shaky paymaster. Even if Hrurim had been good to us before. It was just something I could see even him try to pull. Especially when he was acting on behalf of that hideous employer of his.
Then, my stomach started to ache and it groaned loudly. Paps looked back at me with worry and I just stared at it. I smiled slightly at him before he started to nod. Clearly he was worry once again.
"We gannaaa hunt aaa meaaal ar buy ane?" I decide to ask, having had that reaction just now.
"Bullet expensive." he rightfully points out.
"Faad aaadds up taa." I say with a shrug as I pulled out a single bullet. One shot is all I needed. For the price of one bullet I could alleviate one problem bearing down on us. We were scraping by right now, so the less we dug into our payday...
He stops and looks back at me, "See nest?"
"Nat fram here, na. Up there, maaaybe?" I say to him as we moved close to one of the split-offs in the path. Something we ignored the first time around but it was probably worth a look this time.
"Topped up. We make sure." he decides after he grabs the various pockets and small bags I had on. I would've complained about the roughness of his motions had he not stroked my spines at the end.
"Warks far me!" I chirp, happy to have had my pretty spines appreciated. Even gained a little spring in my step as we carried on our journey back to the town. Knowing Hrurim as well, he was going to stay behind to let others do the work.