The Messengers of Sanctuary

10 - Chicory

"What in the name of all that is good in the world do you want from me?" David Iberon, leader of Alliance, was unnaturally tall, so tall that he could probably see over the shoe racks in old-world malls perfectly fine. It was such an alien concept to Chicory, who was currently being towered over.

She grinned up at him regardless, Chicory had been taught that if you wanted people to believe you were fine you just had to grin. Inside, whenever she smiled she was panicking. The panic had worn grooves through her mind at this point. It felt like she was walking in one of those grooves all the time as if she was half the height she displayed outwardly and had exactly zero hope of ever peeking above the top of the shoe rack.

She still smiled though, and somehow she still spoke through this internal panic that she was so used to. "Well you see, I'm a messenger, from this safe zone called Sanctuary. Um. I'm actually the head of those messengers. I came here to spread us out more since there's kind of a lot of us..." she paused, cringing inside as the man raised an unimpressed eyebrow. What? Was he judging her? "And um, I was wondering if you'd like us to send messengers around here regularly, to like, help out communications, you know, sort of like the pony express?"

The man met her gaze with an unimpressed stare. "I'm the leader of the Alliance, we already have radio towers and regular check-ins. I'm not letting some shady organization creep in and take hold of our information brokers."

Chicory blinked. Wow, he's really doing this? What kind of Sparking idiot- no no, he was probably legitimately concerned...Chicory frowned slightly, tilting her head, "We don't control all the information, it would be more like personal letters from one citizen to another. In fact, we're more like an independent corporation if you will. Sanctuary isn't in charge of the messengers, it's just our home base."

The man began to glare, oh joy. "And how exactly is that supposed to reassure me? Some strange group wants to set up base in my territory, and I wouldn't be the one in charge of them."

Chicory sighed, massaging her temples, "I feel like there's some type of miscommunication happening, can you please tell me what you gathered from what I said?"

The man folded his arms and leaned backward in his chair, it slightly diminished his height, but still...no person should be that tall. "You want to set up a base on my land, send out messengers regularly to do who knows what kind of scouting on my territory, and then before I know it you'll be taking over everything."

"I suppose that's a logical worry? But we aren't going to set up a base here, no. we just wanted to know if you were alright with us delivering messages in your area."

"Without fuel, trucks, or even addresses, how in the world can you possibly do any kind of postage without a base here?"

Chicory blinked, she was used to working with stronghold leaders who didn't care about anything besides the survival of their people. But this man had clearly worked hard to connect hundreds of forts and settlements and put them under his laws.

He saw the bigger picture of everything, he saw how things would go if he agreed. After all, as far as he knew there was no way for someone on foot or even horse to travel across his territory in a timely manner.

She began to laugh. It was a stress-filled laugh, it was the type of laugh that most people didn't use. But for Chicory at that moment, it was the laugh as the tension finally bled away. "You're the first to notice any type of inconsistency there. Perhaps we'll need a second base of operations as time passes, but your territory isn't far enough out of our rage for that. It only took me a month to get here from Sanctuary, and that trip will shorten as we make the route more ideal and precise."