“You know, you really ought to get some sleep.”

Klara lifts her head, spectacles glint in the light of the half-shuttered lantern. Standing in the doorway, arms folded, the sergeant is looking at her. Her square shoulder leans against the frame, one booted foot crossed over the other, though her stance is sturdy enough that she hardly budges when the train rattles against the rails.

The lieutenant sighs, looks down at the desk again. Lots of paperwork still to do. She grabs the black, golden-nibbed fountain pen and gets back to writing without another word.

“You were spacing out. I could see it,” the sergeant insists. She takes a step through the door, pushes aside a creaky chair and sets her hands flat on the desk. She leans ahead, eyes narrowing, the freckled bridge of her nose wrinkling between them. “You were just staring forward, blankly.”

Klara purses her lips, runs her tongue against them. Thirsty. “I just lost my train of thought,” she answers, eyes on her pen and the thick, rough lines of dark blue ink she was leaving on the paper. Her handwriting, coarse and hard to read on a normal day, grows sloppier by the letter.

“I can see you’re still not all there,” the sergeant sighs. “Stop being stubborn. Come on, y’know this isn’t doing you any good.”

With a sigh, finally the lieutenant sets the pen down, runs her slender fingers through her blond hair, tidies the whitening locks behind knife-shaped ears: “Just tired, Penny,” she says, softly.

The sergeant straightens back up, crosses her arms over her chest. The topmost buttons of her uniform are left undone, her blue cap crowns sideways on the thick waves of messy blond curls - far denser and livelier a mane than Klara’s fine waterfall of hair. Instinctively, she reaches to open the lantern shutters more, to flood the room with more light, but Klara’s hand rests on her wrist before she can.

“Don’t,” she says in a sharp breath.

“Sorry,” Penny pulls her arm away. “Doing bad tonight?”

The lieutenant leans forward, an elbow on the desk. She pinches the smooth, pale bridge of her nose, running her fingers roughly across her tired eyes. It feels like there’s a thunderstorm raging between her ears, and that only now with her eyelids shut are the clouds and thunderbolts dissipating, somewhat. They return, though, blindingly, when she opens them again, and sees that Penny has since pulled the chair closer, opting to sit down.

“Worse than usual, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary,” Klara says. “Had a streak of good days, now it’s all returning at once like a punch to the back of the head. You know how it is.” she sighs at that last part, then gives a brief chuckle. Of course Penny would know how it is - after… What is it, now? Six years working together? She would expect that much.

That’s too harsh a thing to think, she chides herself right after. Penny has done far more than simply meeting all of her expectations. Sergeant at the age of twenty… Klara couldn’t forgive herself.

“Yeah,” says Penny, dragging her chair with a loud grind against the floor. “You should go and get some shuteye, Klar. It’s late.”

“And you’re not tired?” Klara gives another short chuckle, then she motions broadly to her desk. There’s documents all over it, some stacked somewhat tidily, but most scattered like a messy blanket of coarse paper across the desktop. They all bear the black ink stamp of the raven wielding a Gallian scythe in its claws. “I’ve still got lots to do, Penny.”

“Don’t worry, I’m feeling plenty energetic.” The sergeant cracks a smirk, blinking slowly. A strand of that messy hair falls across her face, and she blows it out of the way. The dark, almost blackened circles that line her eyes would serve to prove her wrong, but Klara knows that no matter how much Penny sleeps, they never go away - and that even with the typically few handfuls of hours of shuteye that she does manage to get, somewhat the sergeant always seems to operate at peak efficiency. “And I’ll handle those papers for you.”

“They’re officer business, Penny,” says Klara.

“Come on,” the sergeant argues, raising a hand dismissively. “As if I haven’t done them for you before. Sol knows the major likes my handwriting better than yours.” She leans back a bit, lifts her chin to let out a laugh into the air. It’s not a long laugh, but it’s deep and warm and it alone makes Klara smirk as well, though it fades quickly and her face returns to blankness. “Come on, old bird. Stand your arse up, it’s time to get some sleep.”

There’s a lull of hesitation as their eyes lock together, and finally Klara lets out a long, drawn-out sigh: “Fine.” She puts her hands on the table and slowly stands up. The room spins for a split-second. It feels like her head is half-full of water, and that with every little tilt it floods and slams against the side of her skull, then rebounds like a tidal wave against the other half of her brain. Then, everything is alright again.

“It’s really bad tonight, isn’t it?” Penny asks in a softer tone, standing up.

“I’ve had worse,” Klara says. “Don’t mind me, Penny.”

Spine straightened, the lieutenant makes a tentative effort to arrange some of the papers better. It’s a thing she says that she’s organised in her disorganisation - but that’s a lie; she’s just disorganised. Penny softly shoos her hands away.

“Let me do it,” she insists with a chiding tone.

“Some documents have an artillery battalion stamp on them - ignore those, they’re probably sent mistakenly. And the ones signed by the lieutenant colonel, ignore those too. Faeowynn is in Ardglas right now talking to him, and she’ll handle those when she’s back. And those…” she trails off when Penny puts a hand on her shoulder. She’s shuffled around the side of the desk by now, to be standing next to Klara.

“I know,” the sergeant speaks, warmly. Her pink lips are twisted into a smile. “Get going, Klara. Bed’s waiting.”

The lieutenant pauses again, and she slowly curls her fingers into a fist, staring at the desk. Then, with a low sigh, she nods, eyes closed. The light of the shuttered lantern glimmers against the glass of her lenses, until fading as Penny moves it to be closer to herself.

“Thanks, Penny,” says Klara.

“Don’t mention it. Come on, quit thinking of excuses to stick around here longer, get going.” Penny pats her on the back a couple times, both reassuringly, but also ushering her over towards the door. “Sleep tight, Klar.”

“Don’t work too late yourself.” The lieutenant reaches out a hand and grabs the beret from her desk. It’s the same blue as Penny’s, but made of a finer wool, embroidered with silver lace and the emblem of the interlinked scythes. And, attached to the left side of it, there’s an iron pin of a raven wielding a sword.

Penny sits down in her chair, where the old leather cushioning crunches like a bed of leaves under her. The sergeant’s eyes broadly sweep the messy desk, and the blue pupils zero in on a vase.

“Want me to throw this away, too?” she asks, prompting Klara’s attention. There’s a rose, wilted and drooping, its white petals reduced to a dying beige hue, curled up at the edges like folded newspapers. Half-dead, but still here.

“This? Absolutely not,” Klara says, walking across to the other end of the desk, softly putting a finger under the bud of the rose to lift it slightly and look within. Then, slowly, she lets it rest once more, and the flower wilts downward as it was. “You don’t remember it?”

“It’s been months, Klara.” Penny bites her tongue lightly, looking at the lieutenant with a disbelieving smile. “It’s not.”

“It is.” The other woman nods.

“Klara, it’s been more than half a year since mother’s day.” Laughs Penny. “You can throw it away, I’ll get you another. I promise I won’t get upset.”

“Maybe you won’t, but I will,” Klara says, shaking her head. “Until it gets a companion, I’m keeping it.”

She touches the rose again, softly. Bumped off, one of the petals that was barely holding on slowly falls to the table, and the flower is left just a bit more bare.

“It’s a miracle it’s been alive this long,” Penny comments. “How do you do it?”

“Change the water frequently, and every once in a while crumble a sugarcube into it, and keep it near you at all times,” Klara says. Penny narrows her eyes, incredulously. “It’s that easy.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to do that while you’re away.” Nods Penny.

“Goodnight, Penny.”

“Sleep snug as a bug, Klara.”

She shuts the door behind her. The headache had faded during the conversation, and her eyes enjoy the new darkness in the hallway between train cabins, but nonetheless she can feel it returning. The front of her head begins to hurt, and she can feel a pressure as if someone is squeezing her eyeballs in a vice-grip. With grit teeth, she ploughs through, begins walking.

Nothing exists to disturb the quiet night, here, in the vast stretch of snowy plains on the way from Ravenheart to Torain. They passed by the bridge over the Lagan some time ago, and the rattling of the wheels against the rails then likely stirred some people awake, but afterwards, it became smooth sailing again.

Quiet as a cat, her footfalls light as she can make them, she walks down the spine of the train car. The windows to the outside are shuttered, some with blankets hung over them, though there is no light to disturb anyone at this hour. And the small apertures on the cabin doors are dark, too. Behind herself, the one that leads to her makeshift office is the only one emanating any sort of light into the hall. Her eyes are slow, sluggish to adjust to the dark. In the cabins, sleeping soldiers are getting some much-needed shuteye.

The sudden mobilisation and redeployment to Torain wasn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare to try and handle; all of the hurry to reach the border on time has been stressing everyone out. It’s why she tries hard not to make any noise, even if her rough footsteps aren’t the quietest.

Klara passes by her cabin, though. Her fingers are shaky, and she doesn’t like smoking in her room. Penny doesn’t mind it, somehow, and the lieutenant is prepared to have to open every window in her office wide tomorrow morning, to air out some of the thick clouds of smoke her awful cigarettes will fill the cabin with. She walks by, opens the door at the back of the train car and shivers at the frigid gust of whipping wind that blows the tail of her coat behind her and makes her shove her chin into the thick scarf that comes with her uniform. Her beret almost flies off. Her boots make the small metal balcony clang loudly underfoot, and after shutting the door, she leans against the metal railing and starts patting herself down for the carton.

All around, blackness blankets the sea of white fields. The only source of light, here, is the swaying yellow lantern that hangs from a bar on the opposing train car. Beyond the metal gangway there’s another woman who doesn’t regard her, leaning against her own railing, staring into the darkness beyond. Whipped in the wind, blond locks spill out from underneath a woollen blue hood, connected to what looks similar to the standard battledress, but with a far longer hem that reaches down to the ankles of her steel-toe boots almost like a dress or robe. She’s also smoking, blowing a long line of light-blue vapour past red lips, holding a long-stemmed wooden pipe. The technomancer.

“Evening,” Klara says, somewhat in passing. Phoebe, somehow, disliked social interaction even more than she did. Not that she minded that — it meant quieter smoking.

The technomancer nods and probably mumbles a greeting in return, but whatever it is, it’s lost in the wind. Klara is about to light her cigarette when the door opens behind her again.

“I thought I told you to get some sleep,” Penny says.

The lieutenant looks over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow. The headache is fading again - the air is clean and cold, it almost feels like someone throwing ice water on a smouldering campfire.

“I am, just after this,” she answers. “I needed an evening light. You want one too?”

“Aye. Keep your sticks, though.” Penny walks to the railing as well and leans against it, digging through her own coat. The cigarette she puts in her mouth is a thicker, yellowed thing than Klara’s slim tube of tobacco. Penny rolls her own cigarettes. “Gonna need your light, though. Evening, technomancer.”

Phoebe doesn’t answer. As Klara pulls out a lighter, across the opposing handrail calmly saunters a cat. Black as the night, it’s almost invisible in the darkness, marked only by the wandering yellow spots of its eyes. It walks, teetering like an acrobat on a tightrope, across the railing without a worry, until it arrives at the arm of the technomancer. Phoebe glances at it, looks away, then sighs and holds up a hand. The baggy sleeve of her robe drapes across the cold fur, and the black furball gladly accepts its new spot, nuzzled against the protruding curve of the woman’s chest.

“Did ya read the news?” Penny asks as she lights her log of a cigarette. She drags in a deep, deep lungful, before blowing out a billowing cloud of grey-blue smoke as if she’s a locomotive chimney.

Klara takes a drag too, blowing out a smaller puff.

“No. You know I don’t bother with that stuff.”

“You really should,” Phoebe finally says something, though she doesn’t look in their direction. “At least nowadays. It’s not like we’re going to have another war soon.” She drags a leather-gloved hand against the puffy soft fur of the cat’s back.

Penny continues:

“Mordia’s sending a diplomatic mission,” she explains. “They’ll be coming to Ravenheart, to talk about the… ‘futures’ of Lwenn and its ‘beloved’ imperial ally.”

“What a bunch of dogshit.” Klara sighs. “Ally. They’re still trying to play that card?”

“Seems like it. Torain’s full of pamphlets, I heard. It’s as if they think people can just forget what they did, a decade ago.”

“As if most people didn’t already,” Phoebe speaks again, prompting a side-eyed glare from Penny. The technomancer doesn’t say anything more, though, and doesn’t give the sergeant an opportunity to start ranting.

“And then what do you think is gonna happen?” Klara asks.

There’s a very short silence, Penny’s cheeks sinking as she sucks in another deep breath through her cigarette. When she speaks, her words come out through smoking teeth.

“Then, war. What else?” She sighs. “Mordia’s been rubbing up against Lwenn for too long to just take ‘no’ for an answer. They’ll offer unification, we’ll refuse, they’ll cross the border and we’ll clash swords in Torain.” She takes another deep breath of cigarette-smoke. “And we’ll flood the Wyrm with corpses and let Solenna’s Eye turn red before we let them take an inch of land.”

“Then,” Phoebe looks towards them, tucking a statuesque pale chin against the epaulette of her mage-uniform. “When they get bogged down in the Wyrm’s ice, they’ll call their new friends in Tawal for help. And they will finish what they tried a decade ago.”

Klara grips the railing tight, grinding the cigarette between her teeth. There’s this stinging feeling in her head, as if someone is slowly pushing a red-hot needle between her eyes.

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“And then we’ll beat them back, like we did then,” Penny answers in a breath, in a tone as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “And this time, we aren’t going to let imperial soldiers rush to defend their border.”

“I’ll be going to bed now,” Klara says, suddenly. She pulls out her half-smoked cigarette and puts it out against the freezing rail, then rubs her forehead. “You two, feel free to continue.”

The lieutenant turns, drawing glances from both Penny and Phoebe. With a loud squeal the metal door swings open, and her figure melts into the darkness of the train hall, until disappearing entirely. The sergeant sighs as well.

“Well, excuse us, I suppose,” Phoebe drawls out of the corner of her mouth, running her fingers under the chin of the cat.

“Don’t be that way.” Penny’s tone is sharp, scalding like a red-hot poker lowered in a bucket of water. “The lieutenant saw things, in the last war. Things you couldn’t imagine. We should’ve just had some sense, held our tongues.”

Phoebe raises an eyebrow the colour of pale gold, before simply turning her head away, looking into the dark fields again. The wind whips the telephone lines and sways the thick wooden trunks of their supports like chopsticks buried in the frost-laden ground. Against the light of the lantern, her white face is like the snow, with two eyes like dark auburn and a small mole on her cheek like a stain of soot.

Penny’s tone changes to something more mellow:

“Did you get around to repairing it?”

“Repairing what?” Phoebe drums her fingers against the railing. By now, the cat has begun pawing to climb up on her shoulder, but the technomancer keeps gently pushing it away. “There’s lots of things to maintain, you people go through equipment like crazy. Do you guys chew on your rifle barrels?”

“The record player, y’know?” Penny shrugs. “The one that broke when-”

“Ah, right. When that bald ape sat on it.” Phoebe sighs. “It’s low on the priority list right now. I’ve got that mop-haired scout’s scope to patch up, it’s got a crack running up the glass, and if I don’t run a melding ritual over it, it’s probably going to throw the whole optics off.”

“Well, that can wait a bit. Bump it up to the top, you’ve got permission from the C.O.,” says Penny. Phoebe raises an eyebrow again, the corner of her mouth twitching with curiosity.

“How come?”

“You know Fasha loves to listen to it, and we’re gonna reach Torain soon.”

Phoebe runs her tongue along her upper teeth, thoughtfully, before she gives a nod. Few people didn’t like Fasha. Beyond the fact that it was always a good idea to befriend the best cook in the platoon, as well as the person whose job it is to hold up the ballistic shield for you in the middle of battle, it was generally just quite difficult to dislike Fasha.

She opens her mouth to agree, but as her lips move, none of the words reach Penny’s ears over the sound of an awful, metallic squeal underfoot. Against the icy rails, sparks occasionally shoot out from the steel wheels as they lock up entirely and the train begins to grind to an unexpected halt.

The two women grip the railing tightly, the inertia threatening to sway them off their feet. The cat sinks its claws into Phoebe’s thick robes to not fall off, to which the technomancer replies by protectively wrapping an arm around the soft bulk of fur.

After the initial shock of the sudden break wears off, Penny speaks: “What the hell? We’re not even close to Torain.”

“We’re passing through a junction station now, I think,” Phoebe says, and she leans across the rail to cast a look beyond the compartments ahead, where in the sea of darkness are visible a handful of yellow lights like will o’ the wisps floating on a black canvas.

“Are we supposed to stop?”

“No, normally we’d just pass straight through here.” Phoebe groans. “There’s only two reasons we’d stop here. First, is if the train needs any emergency maintenance.”

“Well, does it?” The sergeant rests her elbows against the railing.

She pulls the butt of the cigarette out of her mouth, the contents of it long-burnt and smouldering. Exhaling a last deep lungful of smoke, she flicks it off the edge.

Phoebe casts her a nasty glare: “Of course not! I am the technomancer aboard this engine. Everything is running perfectly!”

“Well then, what’s the second?”

Phoebe looks at the station again, then sighs.

“Second, is if some other train needs emergency maintenance. Then it chokes up the entire rail artery.”

“And we can’t go around?”

“If we were somewhere like in Artlandia, it’d probably have been moved to an offshoot line for maintenance. Or if we had the sort of railways Mordia has, it’d have been tugged into a service station.” Phoebe looks over her shoulder to the sergeant again. “But here we are, in lovely Lwenn, where we don’t need modern railways.”

Penny sucks in her lips, grimly staring ahead, then she sighs.

The train grinds to a stop. Whether or not it’s in Ravenheart yet is beyond Red - frankly, she’s not even considering her trip as she stands up and, wobbling on her feet, she rushes to pull open the door to the car. The toe of her boot hooks around the footboard without her realising, and she tumbles down onto the icy platform of a station, before scrambling on all fours through the white carpet of snow.

Soon enough, her head hanging over the opposite edge, she opens her mouth and begins the gruelling process of hurling her guts out.

Too much… wine…

It’s still pitch-black, so either the night has yet to pass, or it’s passed already and she simply didn’t notice in her fiercely-drunk daze. Fortified Mordian wine tastes too good for how badly it can knock someone off their feet. Her fingers grip the edge of the platform until her knuckles turn white, and she doesn’t even consider looking around for anyone that might see her in her nauseated state.

“You need someone to hold your hair?”

It’s another woman’s voice, deep and with a thick and distinct accent - an Ardglasian. Red is about to say something, before retching again.

“I take it you need some space, alright.”

“Just a…” the noble lady coughs. “...m-moment…”

“Take your time, you sound like you’re going through some stuff.”

Soon enough, Red at last sits up on her knees, gasping for refreshing wintry air, spitting the remnants of bile out of her mouth.

“You good now? I can give you another few minutes,” says the woman.

“No, no, I’m fine, thanks…” Red wipes her mouth with her sleeve and looks to the side, at the woman in question.

Worklights along the platform do well at highlighting her features: another soldier wearing the light blues of the Lwennian battledress, with a thick warm scarf around her neck. There’s the pallid complexion and sharp features of someone that hails from the depths of Ardglas, somewhat obscured by messy hair which half-covers a pair of pale-blue eyes surrounded by dark sleepless circles much akin to Red’s. Human ears, too, behind which locks of sand-coloured hair sit haphazardly tucked.

“Good to know that,” says the woman, before she glances towards the open door of the train car, then back at Red.

“I can explain,” the witch blurts out.

“And I’d love to hear it. You don’t have the looks of a murderer, so what’re you stowing away for? Draft dodging?”

“Well, no, in fact… quite the opposite.” Red slowly stands up. “I’m not actually a criminal. Hard to believe, I know.”

“Not quite that hard, but go on.”

“I’m looking to get to Ravenheart. Didn’t have a ticket, and… I’m trying to catch up with a friend, stop him from being a fool,” Red explains. “I believe this, ehm… is not Ravenheart, though.”

She looks broadly around her. It looks like the train came to a stop at a small station servicing a railway junction. All around them, the great blackness of the icy dark plains stretches for miles.

“I also believe…” Red glances at the woman’s arm. Triple chevrons. Sergeant. Damn it. “...This is the part where you arrest me?”

The sergeant waits for a moment, seeming to mull it over. Red notices she’s dragging a lit cigarette between her teeth, wearing an expression of something between tired apathy and amusement.

“Well, technically, I could,” she says after a moment, having crossed her arms and shifted her weight to one foot. “But technically, too, I don’t give enough of a damn. S’not a military train. Don’t really care what you’re doing, and don’t really care to pry into your business.”

“Oh.” Red’s eyes widen in surprise, and she smiles in return. “Thank you! Thank you…”

“Penny Macsen. Though it should be Sergeant Macsen to you,” the sergeant answers cooly.

“My pleasure. Lady Red Hildegard.” Red takes a step back, does a bow - though she stops herself soon enough, feeling her head getting dizzy again.

Penny quirks a sand-coloured eyebrow. A gust of cold wind whips the coat behind her, makes Red wrap herself tighter in her fur. A noble, how strange. She’s only met a handful before — in person, at least. She’s written letters and paperwork for lots more. It feels like after a point in the hierarchy, you stop seeing anything but bluebloods. No wonder Klara never got promoted past lieutenant.

“Well, excuse me, your grace.” The sergeant drawls in her charming accent. “I wasn’t aware I was in the presence of nobility. Should I kneel? I’m not used to this sorta stuff.” Penny asks, and her smirk doesn’t get lost on Red. The lady simply chuckles, and the sergeant chuckles back. “I think you’ve got some time to kill, though. Your train’s broken the drive rod or something. That, and I heard a steam pipe burst, almost cooked a guy’s head like a boiled egg.”

“Oh dear.”

“Yeah. Technomancer’s still busy with the repairs, and ‘till then-” She puts her fingers on her cigarette, takes a long drag and blows a large, greyish cloud of smoke in the air. The cold makes it seem far bigger than it really is; either that, or the sergeant has some considerable lung-capacity for a smoker. “-Our train’s stuck here, too.”

“Oh, excuse me.”

Penny makes a snort, smirking to show the half-burnt cigarette hanging from her teeth. “Why’re you apologising? Not like it was your fault.”

Red lulls for a moment, shuffling somewhat awkwardly - or maybe drunkenly - on her feet, before a third voice calls from across the platform:

“Penny! What’s going on over there? We stopped for less than a few minutes and you already walked off.”

“Oh dear, I believe that’s trouble coming,” says Red. “We can hide in the car, I doubt they’ll…”

“Don’t worry.” Penny does a half-turn towards the voice, tilting her head towards the voice, watching her through eyelashes that’ve caught some snowflakes in them. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

The new person joining them is also a blonde woman, wearing a uniform like Penny’s, but with stockier epaulettes and a shirt and tie visible through the open neck of the coat. Taller than her, though - slightly taller than Red, too, probably breaching the six-foot mark, even without the blue beret she’s wearing.

“Nothing better to help a woman fall asleep than the sound of screeching train-brakes.” Klara lets out a sigh. Red, instinctively almost, ducks her head into her coat somewhat, much like a turtle rearing into its shell. She blinks and looks reflexively to the side when the lieutenant’s glasses shimmer and her eyes fall on her. “Who’s this?”

“Just a little raccoon I found.” Penny chuckles.

“Little.” Klara makes a short ‘heh’ sound, raising her shoulders. “She’s half a foot taller than you.”

Red can’t help but chuckle, especially noticing the scowl forming on the sergeant’s face. It’s not long until she goes silent again, though. Unlike Penny’s blasé, accent-slurred drawl, this woman that’s got the insignia of a lieutenant speaks with a straightforward, authoritarian tone - one that makes Red tense up in her big coat.

“Stowaway, huh?” the Lieutenant asks immediately. She exchanges a look with the sergeant, who offers a closed-eyed nod, before looking back at Red. Her expression seems to be one of constant intensity, and the wrinkles around her eyes, Red assumes to not be merely of age, but caused by her seemingly perpetually-furrowed eyebrows.

“Look at her.” Penny chuckles. “She looks just like Vivi, if Vivi had more meat on her bones.”

Valentine is their platoon’s thaumaturge, Red would soon find out — though Phoebe often refrains from calling her that, for reasons of magical pedantry that typically fly over the sergeant’s head. For now, though, at the comparison, Red gives her a confused glance, and for just a moment their eyes lock before the lady wrenches her vision away. In an instant Penny feels goosebumps all over, and a sensation as if a ghost had exhaled an ice-cold breath straight down her collar and over her back.

“Vivi’s not got eyeshine, though.” She gives a shudder. Klara quirks an eyebrow, then looks at Red as well, unfazed. The lieutenant has always been immune to glowing eyes, the sergeant knows, and very much envies in moments like these. Though Klara seems less focused on the witch’s eyes as she wrinkles her nose.

“Not just a stowaway,” she says. “But a drunk one, too.”

Penny breathes in deep too, and over the odourless crispness of the wintry plains, she does catch the whiff of alcohol that Klara did. Red is quick to clasp a black hand around her mouth with a chuckle.

“Excuse me,” the lady says with a brief, polite chuckle. “I may have… you know. Imbibed,” she admits, cautiously looking at the lieutenant that watches with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Smells kinda good, though,” drawls Penny, prompting a sideways glare from Klara. “What’s that stuff?”

“Oh! Mordian port. Would you like some? I could… hang on, wait a moment!” Red insists, and though Penny does open her mouth to say something, the lady’s already turned on her heels and slithered back into the train car.

Moments later, she appears back out with another fine bottle of fortified wine. In the light, the glass and the contents within glisten with a deep, burgundy hue that makes the sergeant’s eyes widen, then narrow. Red quietly offers the bottle, under the scrutinising, grey-eyed gaze of the lieutenant, watching over the rims of oval glasses.

“Well…” Penny keeps a hand in her pocket and a smirk on her face, before laughing and snagging the bottle. “You're not catching me saying no to that.”

“A splendid display of discipline, as always, Penny.” the lieutenant sighs, taking off her cap and running her hand through tidy, long blond hair. She sets the cap back on, and Red notices sharp, knife-shaped elf ears, wrapped up in white gauze to not freeze and snap off in the winter cold. “And you, rapscallion? What’s your name?” she asks. “And what, exactly, are you doing here?”

Her tone is far more demanding than Penny’s, and Red is compelled to reply. There’s a short exchange - what her name is, what she’s doing. The person she’s running after. The idiot deed they’re about to do. The somewhat-convoluted path she’s taken to catch him. It’s just her luck that both the sergeant and the lieutenant look more intrigued than anything, and allow her to finish. The lieutenant does take a moment to introduce herself, too, while Penny lights herself a second cigarette:

“Klara Holloway, First Lieutenant. Call me what you will,” she says, her arms folded.

“What are you doing anyway?” Penny blows another thick cloud of warm smoke into the air. “Trying to stop your friend? What’s the sense in that - let your man fight, if fighting’s what he wants to do.”

“He doesn’t get it, though,” argues Red. “He doesn’t understand, he… I know him. I bet he thinks he’ll walk out fine from this, that this is just some other chore, going to war. That he’s not going to regret it.”

“I haven’t,” answers Penny. Her look is serious, and Red shuts her mouth.

Klara narrows her eyes, looks to the side. “Penny,” she says, sternly. The sergeant goes quiet herself, and the lieutenant looks at Red. “You’re doing the right thing.”

“You think so?” Red asks. The sergeant raises an eyebrow, taking another long drag of her cigarette.

“War… It’s a thing you have to really understand before you get into it. It’s something someone as young as you isn’t going to understand, Red. Doubt your friend does, either,” says the lieutenant.

“I know it a lot better than he does, ma’am,” says Red, in a low and morose tone. She holds up a hand, and taps her black-gloved finger against the iron pin she uses as a broach. “I… know what it can lead to.”

“As do I.” The lieutenant nods, dipping her chin, letting Red look at the beret resting on her golden locks of hair. Sitting on the side of it, there’s a pin of her own, of the raven wielding the sword - of someone who’d fought when the Tawallians crossed the border, and somehow lived to tell the tale. “Take care, will you?”

“You should get going now,” Penny pipes up, too, flicking the cigarette butt into the snow. Red looks over her shoulder, towards the locomotive. “It sounds like you’ll be moving soon, they’ve got our ‘mancer working on it. You can hear her shouting from here.”

Indeed, Red hears the faraway sounds of a posh tone using some very flowery words to address some engineers. Most of it is lost in the frozen wind, though as she focuses, her drunken ears manage to catch grazing sentences: “Hey! Get your grubby mitts off my animite torch! No, you’ll break it, imbecile! I swear, if I see one of you reaching for my tools again, this entire pneumatic wrench is going head first straight up your—”

Penny’s voice catches her attention: “Take care, raccoon girl. Rooting for ya, kid.”

“Take care,” Klara says in a serious tone, a glint in her glasses.

“Wait-” Red stops herself halfway through slinking into her train car, leaning out of it to look at the two women. “I just remembered: what regiment are you from? Unit? I must know who I have spoken with, and if you’re the Klara I am thinking of!”

“What, looking to sign up all of a sudden?” Penny laughs, crossing her arms. The steam of her warm breath is like a dragon’s fire in the air.

“You must tell me!” Red insists.

“Lwennian Special Operations Command,” Klara begins. Penny rests a gloved hand on her hip, seemingly poised to do something. “His Majesty’s New Home Army, 67th Battalion—”

“104th Outcasts,” Penny suddenly cuts the lieutenant off, though Klara continues speaking as if nobody interrupted her.

“104th Special Combat Platoon,” she calmly finishes. “‘Outcasts’ is just our unofficial nickname.”

By now, all the sergeant and lieutenant see is a white-toothed smile under a pair of piercing yellow eyes, and they hear Red’s voice echo through the darkened car:

“I knew it was you. Fasha is waiting at the train station for you!” she warns. Klara can’t help but smirk a little bit.

“How very thoughtful of you.” The lieutenant, for the first time Red has seen, manages to crack a smile on her stone face. “Though we already know.”

“Hang on, you met Fasha?” Penny begins to wonder, but by now the doors have shut already. She coughs a short laugh. “Well-connected, this Lady Hildegard, turns out.”

“Strange girl,” comments Klara.

“No stranger than most of the others.” Penny shrugs, reaching for another cigarette. “You wanna head back?”

“Let’s. I’m freezing my arse off.”