Tiny cloven hooves kept up a rapid double-beat on the hard floor, the contrast of the sound from the usual stomping boots pulling the blank-faced woman from her reverie. Almost on cue, the smooth ridge of his immature spike plating collided with her calf, and without looking at him she uncrossed her arms to fish a piece of vine out of her satchel for him. Her fingers met mostly metal or miscellaneous textures; nothing edible. The man standing authoritatively by the liquor bottles didn’t seem to have much in the way of chewable calories, but she did see several of the loungers eating.<br/><br/>“<span style="font-style: italic">Zrelaksować się</span>, Dziecko,” she murmured to the Razorback piglet, who seemed very unwilling to relax. She vacantly requested directions from the man by the bar, following them while ignoring the petulant creature that bit at the bottom of her pants. It didn’t take her long to find a general food storage, with a few people shuffling crates.<br/><br/>Before Liliana could approach them, a Stalker came from the opposite direction; he was tall, with a bronze-ish skin tone and eyelashes so thick she could see them from meters away. They weren’t his most striking feature, however. Though the rest of his dress was typical, he had a tall hat, made out of what she could only guess to be a faded white sheet that had been methodically folded and wrapped several times over. She stared openly at the strange headwear, unable to control the sparks of curiosity that flared in her emotional void. The other men in the storage area took several steps back as the newcomer approached, as though pushed back by an invisible force, leaving a very nervous one standing alone to hand him a small sachet. He left just as silently as he came, offering the Polish woman a cursory glance and nothing else. She inhaled as he passed her- he didn’t smell terrible, at least not to her. Liliana’s curiosity reached critical (for her) levels... the man had a strange hat, but everything else about him seemed entirely normal. Why did his fellow Stalkers act magnetically repelled?<br/><br/>Her oddly intense curiosity faded with its objects footsteps, and she remembered why she had sought the storage. Within ten minutes, she had traded some of the trinkets from her recently-deceased colleagues for a decent amount of provisions, including a small loaf of thick-crusted bread that she bit into as she left. The only thing she had left of the harvesters was a small bottle of redwood liquor, if she didn’t include the clothes on her back and the nuisance that kept trying to bite her ankles through her boots.<br/><br/>Liliana intended to seek out some running water, but somehow found herself outside the base proper. The chill hit her, freshly biting after so long in a more comfortable atmosphere.  There was still a fair amount of ambient sounds, people talking, occasionally a mechanical whirring or engine sputter, various carpentry noises. A large fire crackled not too far away, just past a few tents; it only had a couple of people around it, leaving plenty of room for her to sit and finish her bread. She started walking over at a smooth pace, Dziecko on her heels.<br/><br/>Without looking or even breaking stride, she dealt a solid kick to one of the supports for Darren’s tent.