As Katarina stepped outside, she nearly ran into the Yamato woman.

"You." Katarina greeted, and the smaller woman smiled up at her, a small, serene smile.

"Yes, me." The woman replied, smiling up at the Witch Hunter's face. Katarina realized what had unnerved her about the woman earlier; the woman's eyes were a pale, watery, lifeless gray.

"The villagers are all chattering about you, you know." the smaller woman remarked in a mock-worried tone. "They said some pretty interesting things about you as they were leaving."

Katarina snorted. "I imagine they did." She glanced back at the church door. "The daily lesson is over, if you were looking to perform your devotions."

Sasaki shrugged. "I have already performed my devotions privately." She remarked casually. "We Yamato are not prone to public acts of worship." She smiled. "It's embarrassing. We believe in a quiet, personal relationship with the Goddess of the Dawn."

"You're being awfully friendly all of a sudden." Katarina remarked. Sasaki nodded, but her face dried up quickly, and her lips tightened, as if she'd eaten something sour. "I was in the wrong. Sorry." She said curtly. Katarina nodded warily. Sasaki had likely overheard she was a Witch Hunter, as well as the whispered, terrifying stories that usually accompanied a Witch Hunter's arrival into a town or city.

Sasaki's eyes were very big and very round. "You... You're a Witch Hunter?" She asked, her voice low with shock and a touch of fear.

Katarina nodded. "That's right."

"Shit." she breathed. "I can't believe I mouthed off to a Witch Hunter." She murmured to herself.

"You forgot to add 'and survived' to the end of that." She replied smartly, with a smile to take the mockery out of it.

"I hardly think being thrown through the fuckin' wall and dunked in the mud counts as surviving, Witch Hunter." Sasaki replied.

Katarina rolled her eyes. "You're alive. A little mud and a little loss of dignity is a small price to pay." She paused, and then added, "and I should have kept my fuckin' mouth shut." as an aside to herself, mentally kicking herself for being provoked so easily into revealing that she was a Witch Hunter to this village.

"Are you're leaving? Same as me, then. Shall we travel together, you and I?" The Yamato woman queried.

"No." Katarina replied flatly.

"No?" The woman asked musically.

"I'm not leaving yet. There are still things I need to do." She replied. The woman smiled in response, a flower opening to the sun. "Shall I wait, then?" She asked, and Katarina raised an eyebrow.

"You need not wait on me, Yamato." Katarina replied casually.

"True. And I have a name, boorish one." She replied. "My given name is Sasaki; you may address me as such."

"I thought you Yamato introduced yourselves with your family name?" Katarina queried.

The woman smiled radiantly again. "Aha! You are definitely cosmopolitan, I knew it!" She answered with a nod. "To put an answer to your question, we normally do. However," she began, leaning conspiratorially towards the taller woman, "I have quite thoroughly pissed my family off and so I have as much use for their name as they have for mine."

Stolen novel; please report.

"So... Sasaki." Katarina answered, nonplussed, hand on her hip. The woman nodded. "Just so."

"I am Katarina." She introduced herself, displaying her holy symbol. "A Witch Hunter in service to the Golden Lady."

"Then you are hunting, I take it?" Sasaki inquired. After a long considering moment, Katarina shook her head, and twitched her head at Mystia. "As soon as I can find a respectable map, we're heading to the nearest large city."

Sasaki turned to Mystia, and frowned after a moment as she considered the silent girl. She glanced at Katarina, brows lowering.

"I'm assuming you've got her in hand?" Sasaki asked guardedly.

Katarina nodded. "One of the abilities of a Witch Hunter is to cancel out any magic in a set radius around me." She readily replied, trusting that Sasaki had a broader perspective than the working peasants of this hamlet. "Also, she wouldn't get more than two running steps from me before she got a bullet in her skull for the trouble either, and she knows it." Katarina added, and Mystia grimaced.

"...Then not a hunter today, but instead a courier?" She observed, and Katarina nodded, noting her wariness.

"Are you going to drag that thing around with you while you get mud on your feet, Katarina?" Sasaki asked, frowning worriedly at the pale girl that eyed Katarina bitterly.

Katarina snorted. "I suppose I'll have to."

Sasaki's mouth twisted at that. "A trouble, to be certain." She remarked with a short nod. "Where to next?"

Sasaki watched the taller woman casually examine her nails. She watched as the woman hooked her thumbnail with her middle finger and then with a flourish, flicked her hand away from her so that the nails clicked. Sasaki's eyes widened, and then narrowed in anger. When Sasaki had to attend functions with which she was bored, she'd do the exact same thing; a silent declaration of boredom and indifference. Was this that woman's mockery of Sasaki?

"I hadn't thought too far ahead beyond getting supplies and striking out for ..." Katarina trailed off, and turned to Sasaki. "I still don't know what the name of this frontier town is."

Sasaki's smile refreshed itself. "You can tell the difference between royalty and nobility by how these places are called." She remarked, turning away from Katarina and gesturing to the boardwalk, a raised walkway that spared them the ignominy of trekking about in the mud and horse shit.

"The royalty and entitled call these places 'shanty towns' because they're often ramshackle and ..." She turned to Katarina and cast a knowing wink and smile over her shoulder "uncivilized." She twisted back and faced front. "Landed Nobles and the merchant class are generally more pragmatic and refer to these places as "frontier towns". She shrugged and added "Because they understand the value of these "ramshackle shanty towns."

"You've got a hole in your little theory." Katarina warned.

"Oh?"

"The smallfolk that live and work in these towns. What do they call them in this theory of yours?" Katarina asked amusedly. Sasaki laughed. "Isn't it obvious?" She asked, and then answered her own question: "Home. They call these places home."

Katarina snorted laughter. "You still haven't told me the name of the village, Sasaki."

Sasaki shrugged. "I am told this place is called Higgenfal". She replied casually. Katarina nodded, mentally kicking herself. The innkeeper and the pastor at the church had both named the town she found herself in.

"And where are we going?" Katarina asked as they mounted the steps.

"The general store. You asked me where it was, earlier." Sasaki replied evenly.

Katarina glanced around as they moved down the boardwalk. The mage from weeks before had mentioned Higgenfal. It had to be divine providence that she would arrive at the exact place the mage mentioned; someone here was to be a sacrifice. Was it Sasaki? The pastor? The innkeep? Mages liked to make much ado about nothing, or something so obscure like time and date of a person's birth, constellations in the sky, different hair or eye colors, any number of minutiae that added up to someone being "important".

"You sure ingratiated yourself to me quick." Katarina observed to the smaller woman, who glanced at her briefly.

"I am no Witch. I wanted you to know that." She replied stiffly, but continued in a more conversational tone, "I am Yamato, not Anglish. I wear clothes that are different. I speak with an accent different from yours. I know I stand out." She stopped and turned to the Witch Hunter. "I wanted to make sure you understood that me being different from them does not make me a Witch."

"You know, that's probably the most suspicious thing that's been said to me since I arrived here." Katarina replied with a laugh.

Sasaki rolled her eyes at Katarina in response.