[ Action, Video, and Voice! ] Good Golly, Miss Molly .001

[talentsgirl]

[Molly woke up on her side, in pain, and cold.

That's strange. I wasn't asleep a moment ago. Was I?

Also, her brain felt fuzzy. That wouldn't do. Deep breaths, Molly, and she remained still and safe for a moment - movement was a tell, and until she had her focus back she wasn't going to do anything until she was sure she could hide. Then slowly, Molly sat up.]

Woah.

[She was on top of a tree house. In what looked like a tree village, no less. And where the heck were her clothes?]

Let me guess. I'm not in Kansas anymore.

[Molly twisted around to try to see the source of pain on her back, only for bright pink to meet her eye - a single pink wing! With a blue one to match. Oh. Hahahahahaha, this must be a dream. She gave a light tug on one of her wings and the dull pain turned into a shooting one which made her grit her teeth against the sudden flare behind her eyes. OK, girl. The wings stay on. And if this was an illusion, it was a hell of one to sustain that much pain. She glanced around, found, and opened the journal.

Huh.]

...a magic book with my name on it. That's not at all suspicious. Well, I guess I'm already through the looking glass...

Hello, in the book! I'm looking for a white rabbit, he was supposed to give me the time. Or maybe the place? Either way, I'm late for an important date.

[No time to say hello, goodbye... either way, she couldn't sit around waiting for the magic book to talk back. Magic didn't work that way. And it was still here, she could feel it humming but... faint. And very much like it was through a looking glass. Strange.

Either way, she wasn't one to just sit around in a tower - or a treehouse - and wait to be rescued. She held the book carefully opened by inserting one finger in it and closing the book around it in case of a response, not knowing that flashes of video could escape through it as well, and began to make her way down as best as she could in a dress entirely too short for her long legs and thin enough to hint at just how low the thorn tattoo starting high at her neckline curved down. Time to wander the forest in hope of... something. Some kind of clue or direction.]

[Part the Second: Or if you'd rather not rescue/inform a New Feather]

[Clothed in jeans a light jacket, and boots, one tall young lady is poking about all the shops in the square. Maybe you'll run into her there?]

Comments

[greenjacketed]

It wasn't until after another, oh, maybe fifteen minutes of walking that he inquired: "How goes it?"

Until that point, Sharpe had made a show of walking a decent few paces before her. Not wanting to stifle her apparently very independent nature.

[talentsgirl]

Oh, of course, it was all about not stifling her and not about proving a point. Frankly, this completely sucked. But Molly lets out a little laugh at his question, anyway. "Silently."

Her smile remained slightly wry and mildly pained, "But it could be a lot worse."

And as soon as she said that, she winced. Hero's rule Number 7, Molly. Never comment on the fact that it isn't raining. Or that you're not being chased by vampires, zombies, or other things out to get your blood - it's the surest way that they'll come.

[greenjacketed]

"Back home, I'm not known for my conversation. Molly."

He too seemed to tense when she said that. Honestly. Who knew what was out here? Perhaps there were enemies just waiting to ambush.

[talentsgirl]

Well, she'd just have to hope that it doesn't start raining. But she did note the deliberate inclusion of her name. She'd take that obvious lead-in. "What are you known for, back home?"

[greenjacketed]

"For my silence. Ain't it obvious?"

And for a slew of other newsworthy things. But it'll be amazing if anyone in Luceti managed to get him to fess up to those heroics. "That and for being a thorn in old Napoleon's side."

[talentsgirl]

The unexpected joke startled a laugh out of her, not long, but genuine and joyful.

...and Napoleon, was it? That put him - what - in the late 1700s? Molly nearly missteps, and does, in fact, stumble - though she catches herself very quickly.

I am talking with someone who is no more alive to me than I am to him.

[greenjacketed]

"Molly...?"

He looked over his shoulder. Concerned.

[talentsgirl]

"I'm fine," she waved a hand, and she was, except. Wow. Napoleon. But she's a bit too honest to leave it at that, with her knowing and him not. "I'm just... I never expected to meet anyone who fought against Napoleon."

[greenjacketed]

"Not Napoleon his-self, mind. Not yet. But his armies in India and Portugal and Spain. Was about to return to the push into France when I woke up in this bloody cage."

Oh. Out came the language once again.

[talentsgirl]

She'd put too fine a point on it, and he'd missed it.

"I don't know much about that," she frowned a little, and then decided to be a bit more straightforward, and, pausing in her walk, she said his name. "Richard - the war you want to go back to fight is a war I read about in history books."

[greenjacketed]

"So I've heard, lass. So I've heard."

Harry, actually, had been the one to break the news. And he stopped and looked back at her -- ignoring the strangely endearing sight of her in his coat. "Napoleon loses. So I've heard."

[talentsgirl]

Okay, so the fact that he was talking to someone who didn't exist yet to his time didn't seem to bother him as much as the fact that she was talking to someone long dead was disturbing her. So while she worked on sorting out just why that was so, Molly stuck her hands in his jacket pockets and began walking and talking again.

"He does. It's horribly embarrassing for him and people are still making jokes about him hundreds of years later."

[greenjacketed]

Might have had something to do with a certain wizard advising him to treat it like a dream. To be zen.

"That's a comfort."

[talentsgirl]

"I guess it's good to go on knowing that you win," although her voice was uncertain, muted. This whole thing is so strange. Did she just break the space-time continuum by telling him that? She'd read something about memory loss, hadn't she? She really needed to sit down and study that guide.

[greenjacketed]

"Oh. Molly. There ain't a question of winning."

He kicked a dead log out of the way. There was only a question of whether he would be there to partake in the victory.

[talentsgirl]

...that was an interesting perspective. "You're that sure?"

[greenjacketed]

"We've fought them out of two countries. They're on the run."

[talentsgirl]

People fight harder when they're cornered. When it's their homes and families on the line.

And all of her thoughts were sober ones, of what it was she had to face when she returned home. So she shifted the topic slightly. "Have you been in the army long?"

[greenjacketed]

"Twenty years. Or thereabouts. Took the King's shilling when I was seventeen, Molly." A beat. "I think."

[talentsgirl]

Well, seventeen plus twenty equals considerably older than late twenties. He wears it well.

She caught that 'I think,' as well. An uncertainty about when he was born? Too personal for a 'first date.' "So for most of your life."

And that, too, explained the flavor of death and pain she was sensing off of him. Hearing he was a soldier had settled the 'whys,' but this explained the depth. "That's a long time to be fighting."

Her tone was soft with some kind of understanding.

[greenjacketed]

"I know it sounds daft, Molly. But it's a way to live. The army feeds you. It sometimes puts a roof over your head. Now and then it pays you."

Or lets you avoid prison. Most privates joined the army to avoid the law. It was a viable, legal, encouraged option. It made the ranks a dangerous mix of thieves and murderers and vagabonds.

[talentsgirl]

She won't comment on whether or not it's daft. She didn't feel fit to. For a brief time, a year or so, Molly had been little better than homeless, but that had been by choice. All the same, she knew the value of a meal when you were hungry, and she had paid enough attention, when she finally went back to school, to understand that the past held situations a good deal more desperate than her own.

"Actually, I was thinking that it was amazing you were still alive and seem mostly sane," still soft, and with wry honesty. "Fighting that long can do things to people, and my history is spotty but I don't think you caught much of a break between wars."

[greenjacketed]

"Maybe I am a bit lucky after all."

[talentsgirl]

"Here's hoping," because she suddenly very much wanted him to make it through his wars okay, and grow fat and happy on a bit of land with a family who loved him.

...okay, maybe not grow fat.

...she needed to stop thinking about her dad. "It looks like we're almost there."

[greenjacketed]

Don't worry, Molly. He will find himself a wonderful French widow and a farm in Normandy. After the war. Eventually? He'll even meet Napoleon during his exile. He'll have lots of children; he'll be a happily retired soldier.

But for now? For now, Sharpe still thirsted for entry into France.

"These shops are in the very centre. This way, lass." He struck their way down a particular path.

"Tell me, instead, about your America."