Spring came with a new mission in mind, they’d get someplace for Piti to do its necessities and keep the rest of the house as unaffected as possible. He worked on that while also making sure they ate better than during winter.

But an unexpected visit came, a traveler from afar searching for a challenge, such as a hard mountain to scale or a deep cavern to explore. She was quite the character, as they’d soon learn. But for now, she just looked like a hungry, weary traveler in need of help.

Gabriel didn’t want to share their limited resources to this unknown woman, but his sister did it for him before he could even peep. She gladly took some smoked meat and started munching down on it. Gabriel lamented to himself that this was some of the last they had from last season and that they still hadn’t managed to capture anything yet.

After eating absolutely everything she was given and before Arabelle could give her some of the plants they had managed to harvest Gabriel intervened. First, he requested for the person who had come to them to present herself, so she did.

- Good day, gentleman, I am an adventurer from afar looking for a challenge. The name given to me by my predecessors is Marie, though I prefer to be called Colly for reasons I won’t detail. – She stopped for a second and Gabriel was going to ask her more details of her, but she stopped him before he could peep. – I am very grateful for your current hospitality and, if you let me, I’d appreciate if you let me stay some more.

- I think th… - Gabriel tried to give a definitive answer, he didn’t want her to stay, but his sister was the one that intervened louder.

- Please, brother, please let her stay! Even if just a week, do it for me, please. – Arabelle expressed herself and joined her hands to exalt her message. It had been quite some time since she was so emotional and this caused Gabriel to let her do what she wanted, though he limited the time to one week.

This act wasn’t random from his sister, as she wanted not only to converse with other people in order discuss her escape plan, but she also wanted to make the plan more believable by getting people into their home and as such making the location of their home “public”.

But before Colly was let in, Gabriel perused through her bags to prevent anything bad from happening. He’d have patted her down as well if he wasn’t rushed to go up by his sister who really wanted to show her new friend something.

But Gabriel wasn’t going back up the mountain, as he still wanted to gather some more wood to create a small garage-like structure where they could store everything without living between their stock nor needing to leave it in the environment where it was likely to be damaged.

Before the sun had started to set, Gabriel decided that it was time for him to return home. He was going back a bit earlier in order to catch his sister by surprise and maybe observe what she was doing with their partially unwanted visit.

As Gabriel was wandering through the cave system, he could clearly hear both her sister and Colly talking, clearly breaking the image that his sister had worked hard to build… or that’s what a neutral observer would have thought, but Gabriel believed that it was his fault that he and his sister conversed so little.

But, at the same time, it may be that the novelty of Colly was what made his sister so overexcited and talkative and with time they’d talk less and when Colly was forced to leave it’d be a little sad for his sister, but Arabelle wouldn’t care that much because she had already met her enough.

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Taking the logs to the clearing near their home, Gabriel’s presence was made clear to the women and Arabelle went out to greet her brother. Colly had stayed inside the house where Colly was showing Arabelle some of the objects she had collected during her travels.

She wasn’t only showing them, of course, instead every object had a tale behind them and that was what made her stories so captivating. But while they were sure that Gabriel couldn’t listen to them, they had talked about more private matters, yet they had stopped quite some time before Gabriel came up, just in case.

While Gabriel cut the wood Piti had went to accompany him and laid on top of a few plants after making his presence known to its owner. This monotonous lifestyle was something he disliked in the past due to him getting bored and would dislike in the future because it was simple, but in the present, he didn’t really think about his actions, he just did.

The next day was quite similar, just with him waking up someone extra for breakfast. There were no extra sudden visits either so he could do his tasks with just two stops to eat. He had already prepared some simple foundations for the garage, making holes on the floor and inserting wooden poles in it to create more stability on the structure.

While he was working there, Colly surprisingly went out and talked to him. She commented that Arabelle really wanted to explore the world and that maybe he should give her the chance, but Gabriel answered that he wanted her to be safe and where they were was safe.

Colly suggested that they travel together so that she could be safe, to which Gabriel replied that she wouldn’t be able to convince him and before she blindly listened to her sister, she should think a bit before accepting everything, insinuating that Colly was missing something.

And she was, because Arabelle had never told her about the people that were after them, though he was also secretly glad about it because it meant that she took their safety seriously, because doing so meant that she didn’t want to put them at risk of getting caught because someone had disclosed their location.

With that said, Gabriel forcibly finished the conversation as he made more noise while working and Colly understood the message. She went back inside silently and thought of her more recent adventures. She wasn’t a fighter, but she went to taverns often, so she knew some of the “criminal news”.

She realized that these two were being searched with a high bounty though she questioned what these two teens could’ve done to merit such a high price. She talked with Arabelle about it, at first only insinuating something, but the young sibling quickly understood. She told Colly everything she knew, which wasn’t much and left her unsatisfied.

Colly knew where she shouldn’t inquire too deeply, so she let the matters superficially go, though at times she thought about their situation, keeping all of it to herself. The days passed and Gabriel progressed with the garage, it was already taking shape.

Meanwhile Arabelle had been talking with Colly about her plans more in detail and while Colly have her feedback about them so that they were more foolproof, she immediately denied directly helping her because she was still nervous about their identities.

All Arabelle managed to get from her was for her to visit them again the next year, if she could, though Colly asked for some sign to show that she hadn’t left already and that she’d meet his brother on his own. Arabelle would leave certain marks on some trees if she ever left, and those marks had to be deep enough to stay for a year. They would form some sort of “Y”-pattern.

After the whole week had passed the new building was more than half-way done, but it still wasn’t usable. This had been done so purposefully from Gabriel in order to prevent Colly from staying any longer which she might’ve done if the garage had been built, because they’d have extra space which could be used as an argument for her to stay.

This wasn’t in her plans at all, in fact she was already late for an event she had planned, but the situation of the siblings was too interesting to miss. Giving her farewell Colly left the mountain and it quickly went back to its usual silence.