The Worldly Wonders of Missteps [Closed]

[Mel]

Mel frowned, tugging idly on the tips of her ears as she sat beside the mountain of a man inside the small church that he had insisted they stop in. She had of course no interest in doing such a thing at all, but Joel had insisted, and she did not have very much of a choice with his version of insistence. It was odd how seriously he took all of it, giving her a long speech about how to conduct herself which were all once again, suggestions.

It was getting tiring how he was watching over her like a hawk, she was perfectly capable of fending for herself, how could such a thing even come into question. It would be better just to stab him in the back and simply be done with him, far better. It was all his fault that she had failed to get the best of that buffoon back in the capitol, though there was a battle or the like it had nothing to do with her! Obviously!

Icy eyes glared down at her lap as she continued to pinch and pull at the pointed tips under her hood, trying to find the silver crack of a lining in it all. The horrid church's air reeked with the chocking scent of incense, if she didn't get a breath of fresh air soon she was going to...Why wait? Slowly she raised her eyes, letting them dart about the room grabbing up the little tidbits of information that she could pull from it. The priests were engaged with something up at the head of the room, leaving a small door unattended, they all obviously had to live there, no other places possible about that they had passed. Religious artifacts were always worth a pretty penny, no matter how much they were actually valued the belief of its value always took the head.

Carefully she shifted in her seat, pressing her palms to the bench and glancing at Joel as she slipped silently towards the door. The girl would be back before he even noticed she had gone, not a single bump in the road to be seen, priests were basically men in dresses, harmless like a butterfly. The odds were not exactly fair but why would she bat an eye at their plight. It would teach them to be more cautious in the future.

Silently she slipped through the side door, taking a long look about before pressing herself up to the wall and creeping along, listening intently and catching the soft crackle of paper that made her freeze. Someone was about, why had she not considered it before? Joel was making her lose her touch. It was obviously Zero and the buffoon from before's fault as well.

With little tact she grabbed a simple vase sitting on a pedestal along the hall and placed it over her shoulder, the flowers and water pouring down her back and seeping through the floorboards. A soft sound of the shifting of fabric met her ears, and the gentle footfalls drew closer, a young priest with large brown eyes and unruly red hair turning the corner to investigate the sound.

She broke it over his head, at satisfying ping echoing through the hall as it shattered and he uttered a gasp and fell to the floor dramatically, palm resting on his forehead. He deserved a knife in the neck! Yet...with the man mountain about it was not something to risk just yet. Once he was offed the whole world would open back up to her, but on to bigger and better things for now.

Letting out of a soft sigh she turned the corner, peering into the doorway she passed and making sure it was vacant before slipping in and closing the door. It was a bedroom, a small table and chair in the corner with a few books and scrolls scattered across the top. Knowledge was useful, and profitable when whispered to the right ears, yet something told her that anything she would find in those scrolls would be worthless. Instead she busied herself with the trunk in the corner, pawing through the clothes and the books to find a small purse filled with a meager amount of money. It was rather disappointing a sum, so much work for so little payout, there had to be something else...somewhere.

[Joel]

Joel, of course, noticed Mel's absence almost immediately. He smiled, his eyes still closed, as she snuck off, and, when he was sure she was no longer in the same room, he stood. He stretched upwards, pleased with the fact that, yes, the ceiling was out of reach, and then moved forward. Something had caught his eye earlier, and as a former wandering carpenter, he was very interested in taking a closer look at the bizarre chair in the front of the main room.

The chair itself was built more like a throne that someone had decided to cross with a bench; it was easily large enough to hold four people as broad as Joel himself. Yet it was still in proportion to a normal chair, which brought Joel to one of the reasons it was so interesting... The very top of the back of the chair looked like it was melded into the ceiling. From his vantage point, there wasn't even the tiniest crack betraying that the chair wasn't part of the ceiling! Hmm... And then there was the fact that the armrests had been carved to look like eagles. As far as Joel was aware, eagles of any sort weren't all that important to religion, but here they were. Pretty prominently displayed on something that took up almost all of the front of this room.

Before Joel got to make any further inspection (the stairs leading up the actual seat itself looked odd), he heard a loud crack from further back in the church. He began rolling his shoulders to loosen the muscles, should they be needed, but then stopped mid-roll. If that had been Mel... What had his thieving friend done? The giant of a man suddenly began beating himself up mentally as he strode towards his best guess of where Mel had gone, only to barrel over two priests who also had the idea of checking the source of the noise. "My apologies..." Joel whispered, and then proceeded to correct his course, facing and moving in the direction the two robed men had been going before they had been knocked over.

[Mel]

There was a small bowl of an apple confection resting on the side table but otherwise there was nothing that was even worth the taking. Churches always had relics! Statues of solid gold inlaid with jewels as large as an egg. She was very well aware of just how unrealistic her expectations were, and just how unlikely it would be to find anything of the sort. Yet, there should have been something...somewhere...

Hearing heavy footsteps she stiffened and slipped to the door, soft pads of her fingers pressing it open as quietly as the old door could. The rusted hinges screamed as it slipped opened gradually, as if it had just drifted slightly from a gust of wind from the newly open window. Was it Joel? It wasn't too unlikely...the oaf was able to use it's oversized brain every once in a while. After a few tense moments she rolled up onto her toes and took a shallow breath, creeping farther down the hallway in the opposite direction of the footsteps.

A sudden gust shoved open the door to another room and a swarm of papers filled into the hallway, something she was content to just ignore until something caught her eye. The particular page somehow seemed to be from a ledger, neatly filled in with softly curled script. Hurriedly she started to rifle through the scattered papers in search of it, what was being sold? And far more importantly...where was the money?

[Mel]

It was all rather suspicious and tickled her curiosity in the worst way. Joel would hardly approve, yet it was not as if he was her father or anyone of consequence. He was a slow man mountain with more height than he had brains, and now she had a chance to make a break for it and wouldn't wait.

She rolled the papers up into a little tube and crammed them down the front of her tunic, the bulge below her waistband rather prominent. It chaffed her skin with each movement but there was nothing else that she could do to keep her hands free, there would surely be a rash later.

For a moment she spun about, making sure there was nothing that she had overlooked in her hurry to investigate the papers. Nothing seemed to stick out and her gut was already out the window waiting for her to follow, which she did without dawdling about for another moment to be caught.

With a small running start she slapped her palms down on the windowsill and hopped up and out, kicking over a lit candlestick as an afterthought. It caught to the stray papers that lay about rather quickly, the fire starting to grow and greedily consume all that was in it's reach. And she ran, kicking up dirt in her wake as she scrambled away as quickly as humanly possible.

The fire only grew in size, burning up all evidence that the pointy eared runt had snatched up anything. Ash could hardly be told apart, and by the heated and frantic screams that pierced the air there was no worry about pursuers. They would all be too busy trying to beat back the ever growing fire, and she would by then be long gone.