Crows of a Feather

Landmines and shouting and Volcra- Oh MY!

Erine

If there was one word to describe the scene before her, it was chaos. Arken was stumbling about the contraption, fiddling with switches and gismos, doing things Erine would never understand. Jesper stood in front of Kaz who was in front of her, "Please tell me you have the 20 pounds of Alabaster coal" Arken said while he moved about his machine. Jesper looked at Kaz while he handed the coal over to Arken. "Slight snag in the plan, turns out the kid who was helping me buy the coal, didn't know how to buy coal," Jesper answered looking down. Erine knew it and Kaz knew it, he never actually bought the coal. Kaz took another step towards Jesper "We know you gambled it away" Jesper looked at him " I lost a little bit of the money... I lost all of the money" he looked semi-ashamed. "But I managed to steal 20 pounds of Alabaster coal," he said rather proudly. "No non no no there's 16 pounds." "16 pounds of alabaster coal. Kaz looked at Arken "Can we do it in 16?" "Never been done before".

Erine never liked gambling, she didn't understand why people would bet on luck. Maybe it was because she didn't have the best luck, or maybe because she never really understood what the odds were. But now, sitting on a metal bench in a very loud machine shaking like a leaf, Erine learned what very low odds were. And they had it. Before anything else happened a loud explosion went off from outside, the big boom caused poor little Erine to jump and shriek. She hated loud noises the explosion caused the whole machine to shake, Kaz lost his balance holding onto the wall with one arm looking down at Erine. The young girl looked up at one of the only comforts she had in this world, Kaz's eyes. The pair communicated through their eyes, in the honey brown it read fear, it the icy blue determination and assurance.

Arken grabbed Jesper and forced him to sit on the pull "Sit here and don't shift your weight". Jesper looked outside, "landmines," he said in disbelief. Oh- so those are landmines. Erine concluded she didn't like landmines at all. Erin focused on just staying quiet and calm, trying to ignore the panic movements and conversations on numbers and nightmares. She then felt a warm heavy material be placed over her, the dark black fabric swallowed her whole making her look smaller than she was. The scent of parchment, alcohol, and leather swarmed her nose. Kaz. before she could process she felt two soft yet comforting pats on the head, she locked eyes with the Bastard of the Berral once more. His eyes screamed with assurance. She nodded.

Kaz took the seat next to her pressing his elbow on his good knee " I thought you said those weren't real" he said referencing the not fake landmines. "I said nothing of the sort. I just said I put up the sign myself" the conductor answered tending to the fire. Well, it was official, Erine didn't trust this man. The crows shared a look, some of fear, others of determination. It was now or never.

The machine or guess train was chugging along the tracks surprisingly well, it was loud yes, but fast. It was probably only five minutes since the group had started to move, and while the constant noise was annoying to the young girl, Erine found it quite comforting. That was until a loud ding sound rang through, once again causing Erine to squeak and cower further into Kaz's coat. "What was that?" Jesper asked "I've erected a system along the line, bits of metal hung on poles to tell the time apprised of our pace" Arken explained looking at his pocket watch. None of it made sense to Erine, the system the noise, the need to cross this way. She hated it. After this job was done she would insist on walking back to Ketterdam herself, even if she had to swim. Whatever it took to not be back in this death trap.

Erine elected to ignore all the scary and boring adult talk happening about the inner workings, it's not like she would understand. So instead she recited things she did, stars. Erine closed her eyes and started to picture each constellation, its shape, its name, she even tried to think about where they were in the sky and the name of the stars the created them. Any little detail she could remember about the bright lights that gave her more comfort in a world where she had so little she tried to remember. When she and Kaz would play their game, Erine always tried to find words tied to astrology, though it was always a shot in the dark if she was right. And every time she did find one cause would smirk slightly and little out a soft breath, like a very short chuckle.