<div class="floatleft">(http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs11/i/2006/223/f/6/Redhead_by_Chibiche.png)</div><br/>Missy was the last to climb, and a clean cut behind her lasso knot left plenty of rope still to spare. There could yet be chickens or lushes ahead of them to wrangle.<br/><br/>What a relief Gaz was willing to do the smashing. With all the tension ratched back in her crossbow, a simple stock whip might send an errant bolt sailing all the way back to New Hearth. She waited for the latch to bash open and the dust to billow out, and at once resumed her scouting duties with a long reaching dive right over Gaz's ears, a tumble through the lovely character of the dust of ages, she crouched in the dark room, eyes reflective like a cat's. Alert, but not too alert, because she took the time to grin at Gaz.<br/><br/>Sensitive nose dipped down over the snuffed fire. "Burning old paper for fuel." The swish of three tails accentuated her spring up right, and their color muted with streaks of grey. There would never be another perfume like the dust of a moon-tower's most ancient texts. Brushing it off her palms, her tails, her somersaulted hips would be a sin like felling the oldest living tree.<br/><br/>"How silly when there are trees all around. Oh! Do you suppose our men became trapped, and had to camp out in some strange sidereal world?"<br/><br/>Something bright orange oughtn't be able to scamper through the farm fence in the dead of night and infiltrate a coop of paranoid hens and snatch away a plump meal without raising alarm. Perhaps the nature of foxy stealth was easier to understand once she became a little dusty, and began to slink along the natural contours of the library with a fluid spine, and sank into every cobwebbed shadow like a cozy blanket. Missy could be a very stealthy creature. Perhaps she'd been a thief all her life.<br/><br/>But no, she wouldn't call herself that. She would call herself an adventurer.