A field of goldenry — "LUUUUUUUKAAAAAAAAA—! STOOOOOOP!"

A young man dressed in a cloak over a leather vest, equipped with a satchel and a belt of vials was running across the field of tall, dry, golden grass. In front of him ran a young woman, carefree in appearance and demeanour, barely hearing her brother screaming and panting behind her, a vest similar to the man's in hand. She swung it around while cheerfully jumping through the swats of nature's gold blades.

Meanwhile, a third figure, holding a steady position in the middle of the both of them moved effortlessly and without a stutter: a mask placed upon his face, a black hood and long cloak covered his entire body and a full sack behind his back, the cloak's unobstructed elements swaying from the movement and wind. The gold waves shimmering and shouting in their own way.

"What wonderful weather! We don't get that on Ranesairan!" The woman giggled, her long, bluish-white hair turbulently thrashing around, the similarly shaded eyes only now opening, "Right, Rurik?" She stopped and swung around on her heel, but seeing the masked man in front without the young man anywhere in sight made her appear fairly distraught, "Neoklipt, where's Rurik?!" It was said among the wild sways of her head, and the black mask — which had tasteful shiny golden accents around the eyes and the corners of the nip — had rotated around a whole one hundred and eighty degrees without hurry, looking over a narrow path of felled grass behind them. Just a few steps away.

"Oh..." She said, lifting up the young lad by his armpits from the place he has fallen, his face pale even for his white skin. "Luka..." Rurik expressed with a deathly gaze, trying to take deep breaths and look up at his sister, "I said..." A deep inhale, "Ha..." His eyes tiredly blinked, a scowl with a foul look rising up his physiognomy, "Don't... Run!" The sound of that volume made the woman pull her face away, Luka then awkwardly chuckled and put him down on his feet, eyes half closed and averted. Rurik only corrected his overturned attire, but he did not refrain from a quiet remark, “Dumbass...”

“Your hair came undone,” Neoklipt added, standing near the disgruntled man while pointing to the back of Rurik’s head, “No wonder...!” The young man’s hair was always put up in a neat bun, yet — because of his unfortunate fall — it came undone, so now he had to fix the mess that was his hairdo. 

Angrily reaching into the satchel, Rurik pulled out a lace, gathering the ruffled hair in his hands and making it into a bun on the back of his head, while hurdling curses at his sister under his breath, “Simply outstanding...” He sighed as Luka looked over curiously, “You carry those around?” Her eyes stuck to the lace he had at the base of his bun, which was on full display as Rurik was leaning forward with his hands on his knees, trying to get the most of this brief moment of rest. 

“Is that really what you care so much about?”

An unpleasant expression came over his face as he groaned and stared down at the ground, removing it from his mug shortly after, “...I have to.” The young man snarked, straightening out and glancing at both Luka and Neoklipt, who now stood before him. The first stood and stared with a stupid smile on her face, while the other blankly stared out into the distance. Rurik was not content with that kind of ordeal, so after he flicked Luka’s nose from below and watched her prepare to retaliate, he interrupted her action and spoke first. “We walk.” With this, he pushed his sister aside, moving at a pace fit more for a stroll rather than a marathon that his sister had tried to instigate previously.

But strolling didn't seem to make it much better of a journey, as Rurik grew agitated again — "Goodness, just how vast is this field?” He threw up his arms, Luka cared not for that expressive outburst, minding her own business as she walked behind Rurik, and Neoklipt, keeping the same pace as Luka, looked at the ground, “That's one thing; the other thing is why the east transport stage leads somewhere so desolate..." Rurik grumbled under his nose, kicking the grass out of the way, "We were supposed to get to Eirpejn, and this is definitely no city!" He kept reasoning, well, slapping the damn grass with the weight of his palm and foiled plans, walking forward, trodding through the field without a clear goal. 

The frustrations burned out, but the tone of his voice only grew more snotty and whiny. "I wanted to buy some constrations so we could venture into some dungeons near Stryky, but it looks like I'll either have to make them, or we cancel our plans, again." Those words made Luka rush past everyone with wide eyes, "You mean it?!" Rurik only gestured to cut off his head in a sarcastic message, that face of his grimacing at the desperation of his sister, while also swerving to walk around her. 

"Neoklipt! Aren't you disappointed?!" Now the masked man was distraught, although he wasn't and just replied in a steady, raspy voice, "Trying to bring down wild undead without constrations is not worth the energy lost." He also just walked around the now-still Luka. "Come o-o-o-on—!" Luka’s entire frame sagged and dropped, the moans of mixed annoyance and despair growing in distance with the rest of the group, leaving her with nothing but more space that she'd have to catch up over.

Finally, a groove in the gold skyline appeared: a possible road, and so Rurik's pace quickened as the groove grew wider and wider, until they finally stood at the roadside. "Tracks." Neoklipt pointed to the road, and indeed, a couple dozen pairs of tracks were seen, perhaps a caravan? Still, the discovery of a road was almost halfway to anywhere civilised.

Rurik immediately dropped to the ground, gesturing Neoklipt to drop the sack he had behind his back next to him. "Let's have a bite before going further." Luka stared at him, an eyebrow raised at the grumpy face, "You're hungry already?" She kept looking in his eyes while Neoklipt gently lowered the sack on the dry dirt of the side of the road. "What do you mean already?! We've been walking for hours!" Rurik expressed his perplexion with a disgruntled glance at his sister, “Sit down and stop stalling the meal.” Though he quickly tended to the sack, taking out a few paper-wrapped blocks and a small pot along with a pouch. Without looking, Rurik handed the pot to Neoklipt, "Pour me some water." He asked; Neoklipt obliged, conjuring some water out of his gloved hand and right into the pot while Rurik opened the pouch and pulled out a piece of something that looked like coal.

The slow one also landed near the two men, lifting an eyebrow as her legs crossed. "You saved some of that stuff?" Luka kept talking into thin air as Rurik and Neoklipt prepared a small stand for the pot with the three wire frames they had in the sack. Also: a packet of tea. "If you go out of Stryky without a cinder, you might as well be an utter dunce." He remarked, putting said cinder under the pot, flicking a spark out of his fingers and lighting the cinder instantly.

“Which you are.”

Some tea was dropped into the pot. The wrapped blocks, now unwrapped, turned out to be a dry meal of jerky, hard cheese and croutons. "So, what's the agenda now?" Luka asked, grinding her teeth on the jerky. Rurik watched the tea swirl in the heating water, the first hints of the smell rising up. Coming out of the tea trance, Rurik was rather upfront with his assessments, "The map's useless. Frankly, we don't know where we are." He looked up at the face of his sister, who was not a slight bit phased by the words uttered, "We don't know where we are." And she still showed no care.

“Guuuuuuuuh...”

Rurik decided not to think about that too much, so he focused on the food instead, stuffing cheese into his mouth giddily and resisting the urge to spell insulting adjectives at Luka. "Judging by the looks of your mug, I suppose that you aren't very concerned about it, so now would be the best time to decide what we do next, wouldn't it?" He glanced at Neoklipt, who had his hand under the long dark mask, audibly chewing on the jerky. The masked man reacted, but stoically, like usual, "I'm not interested in either continuing or going back." That reply made the young man drop his head relatively low, but surely he took the chance and looked at his sister. With a prejudiced tone, Rurik drew out a quiet admission, "I guess I should've expected a similar response..." He bemoaned sarcastically, while sighing profusely, chuckling and smiling at the idea of his sister deciding what they will do. "I guess you decide!... Like always."

"We go!" 

“Colour me surprised~”

Such, Rurik blankly stared at her, glancing away and clicking his tongue. "I guess we will go further on." He sighed again, sulking, perhaps losing a couple years of his lifespan in the process, but what was actually lost was the food — they had finished eating rather quickly, but it is expected. Can't savour what you ate for months by this point. The cinder was put out promptly and put back into the pouch after being cleaned up from the little bits of dirt. Each of them took turns to drink up the black tea as the sun slid from noon to evening.

After the tea was depleted and a few minutes more, words were the only dish they could afford now. "Quite the dead road we have here, not a single carriage, let alone a caravan in hours." Rurik was the first one to complain again, standing up from his spot, shaking off his robe and slapping his vest, as the wind plastered him with a thin layer of dust in this time they spent sitting. He rolled his neck and cracked his back, "But, it looks like we were spared just this once." Rurik said, looking further into the distance as a small shroud of dust appeared bigger and closer with each passing moment, his right hand covering his face from the orange glow. "Took 'em long enough!" Luka herself jumped up from the ground, nudging Neoklipt and pulling on his hood, "Time's up! I guess I'll hold onto my stuff again, thanks for carrying it around for so long~" Neoklipt obliged after rising to his feet, and somehow managed a sheathed longsword from under his cloak. Luka hummed while attaching the scabbard to the harness at her hip.

"How'd you fit that in there, even...?"