Descending from the snowy peaks, drawing ever-closer to the caravan, Kairavi noticed the folk were not quite as she expected--the lithe and dark-furred Rodents of the low valleys were there, in the bright silks and cottons that marked those who lived along the banks of the Holy River, and among them also the hulking forms of her kind’s distant kin.  But intermingled with these were others that were less familiar, their strangeling tongue harsh on her ears and their garb unknown...and then came the moment at which she came around an outcrop and found the first sentinel waiting to meet her.  It was cold comfort that the guard’s weapon, while readied, was not pointed directly at her.<br/><br/>One pale eye, gray as ice, examined the matriarch and her companion with no sign of amusement, and the flicker of curiosity she thought she might have seen was gone almost before it registered.  What she could see of the guard beneath the rough brown cloak draped over their form was pale-furred, oddly delicate...and when the sentinel drew back the hood, the better to let Kairavi see, she found herself looking at a woman.  Most unexpected!  Pale furred, a rough and rugged Canine of some sort, with an eyepatch over her left eye and her headfur drawn back into a tail tied at the nape of the neck.<br/><br/>“Strange night for a walk,” the Wolf spoke to her in the trade-speech of the valley folk, her accent strange as the garb of the others, who were no valley-kin..  “And stranger still to see you with such a burden.”  That pale eye lingered on Tushar, who shifted uneasily and tittered amusement.  “But you are no bandit,” the woman continued, her voice low and confident.  “So I think you may be welcome.  Look to the Caravan Master, Paz the Eloquent.”<br/><br/>She gestured at one of the larger campfires.<br/><br/>“He will not begrudge your company, an’ you are going where we are, and if you can use that sword of yours it shall be all to the better.”<br/><br/>With that, the woman pulled her head up once more, shifted the strange, long fork she bore in lieu of a spear, and settled back under the shadow of the stone to keep her watch, leaving Kairavi to make her way closer to warmth and fellowship.<br/><br/>Lower still, and Tushar complained of the cold, of the foreign chatter reaching his round ears, and most of all, how unsettling he found the Wolf now behind them.<br/><br/>“She will be trouble,” he chittered.  “Mark my words, slave!  I do not care for that Wolf.  She is North-blooded.  Probably one of the Get of Ymir.”  Shivering, he huddled lower in the nest he had made upon her backpack, and so passed almost unmarked into the camp proper, looking nothing like a passenger at all so much as a bundled blanket.<br/><br/>Here, close upon the fires, Kairavi saw the mix of River-kind and Outlanders.  The foreign-born were taller, for the most part, but not as large as she, and their clothing not so colorful being in the main rugged and hard-wearing.  Their speech, what was not Trade, grated on her ears, and their accent was pecuiliar, but they greeted her well enough as a fellow traveler and directed her to the named Paz with wry grins and great goodwill.<br/><br/>Thus she came before Paz, a Bear of great girth and merry nature, who sat beside the greatest of the fires in good fellowship and, upon hearing that she had come down the mountain invited her to travel with them without too many questions...or, indeed, any, for he seemed unaware that mischief or worse might be lurking about.<br/><br/>“As our guest,” he proclaimed, “it is only fitting that you help entertain our company!  My companions and I are from Returia, far across your mountains, and these others joined with us for fear of bandits.  They have repaid us not with coin but with tales, the better to inform us as to the lay of your lands.  I ask the same of you, O Great One, that we may know more than we do, and give less offense when we are here.”  He grinned and waggled his eyebrows suggestively.  “Blasphemy makes for light purses, and no merchant yet breathed that will suffer undue loss of profit!”<br/><br/>