<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="background-color:#101010; border:1px solid black; margin:10px 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;">"Mmm?"<br/><br/>Jax grumbled, not at all happy with being shaken awake. She sat up and rubbed the base of her hands in her eyes. God, what time was it? The sun was barely up, and the sky had already begun its transformation from black and star-speckled to deep blue when she finally gave in to sleep. At least the girl looked remarkably healthier, skin and bones as she was. Sleep and laughter, always the best medicine. Closely followed by food and actual medicine. Her bones felt stiff, as if she were a thousand years old, and she flexed her fingers over her head with some ominous cracking sounds to follow. That was when she noticed that she and the girl were no longer alone.<br/><br/>He didn't look dangerous, just out of place. Flaming red hair with eyes to match, and a cloak that would look far less odd in a castle than here in the middle of nowhere. "If you got it from a snare, yeah, that's mine. Ours," Jax replied, eyeing the rodent. She shot a grin at the girl. "Look, finally we come across something more dead than you!" She said as she reached for the animal and the knife that Plaguerat had used to make snares the night before.<br/><br/>"I'm not on the run," Jax replied cheerfully while carefully removing the insides of the small animal, "but Plaguerat sure is. From, guess what, the plague. I'm guessing the stuff you're running from is a little more - active in its hunt," she stated. "If you're gonna get us into trouble, you can move right on. I'm not interested in fighting the battles of strangers, even if they do bring me food." He could sound as demanding as he wanted to - if those soldiers wanted to butt heads, she would give him up without thinking twice about it.<br/><br/>She set the animal aside on one of the rocks and began looking for an appropriate stick to skewer it with. "Those soldiers, how 'ahead' are they? Do we have time to cook breakfast, or is that just gonna mean they get a free meal when they reach us?" Jax asked. What on Earth could he have done that would warrant a group of soldiers chasing him all the way out here? Aside from their food, there was nothing for them to confiscate in the name of the king, queen, or whomever they answered to. She popped a berry in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. He had barely left any visible footprints in the dust, either. A thief? Assassin? Unfortunate victim of coincidence? She wasn't too interested in what had brought him here - except that whatever it was, trouble was following.</div></div>