S a l e t é I I

XVI - Griffes - Quatre

Cassia hadn't wished to be of any sort of negative disposition, but she would have been lying if she'd said that she'd been wholly confident about the old street yielding results that day. After a scan of the area from the top of the slope, and following the subsequent walk up the length of the road, the three girls hadn't found anyone offering anything in the way of stamps or delivery services of any kind.

Chief had mentioned that there were people in the area who were sometimes willing to run things back and forth, like letters and such. What would they actually look like? They must have had big bags to carry everything in. Cassia hadn't seen anybody like that yet... Maybe they only appeared at certain times, or on certain days?

...

What day was it?

"It doesn't look like there's anything of use." Monet stated as they reached the end of the road, the jumble of buildings that supposedly qualified as housing waiting ahead of them.

"That's okay... Thanks for actually taking me along to have a look." The newcomer replied, Monet acknowledging her gratitude with one of those brief smiles of hers.

"Don't worry about it, we've just gotta be patient. Honestly, you'd be surprised by what can turn up on some of these stalls. I've seen stuff a lot weirder than stamps." Uliana said in an effort to cheer her up. Cassia wasn't as deflated as she could have been, given that she'd no expected much in the way of results, but it was still nice to hear.

"Because patience is your forte, isn't it?" Monet replied, Uliana sticking her tongue out in response.

"Like what though? What weird stuff?" Cassia asked, both because she wanted to hear Uliana's stories and because she simply wished to hear her voice.

Her accent had remained pronounced, each word carrying traces of that flavour as a consequence, and it was a sound that Cassia had decided that she quite liked.

"There was this one guy selling a go-kart, ages ago."

"A go-kart?"

"Yeah. I would have got it, but Monet said we weren't wasting stuff trying to trade for it. We could have been zooming around all over the place."

"Judging by its appearance, I would have said that the children in the factory could have done a better job building one. The thing was an accident waiting to occur." Monet said, actually speaking up on the matter, something that both surprised and amused Cassia.

Her anticipation quickly swelled, however, as they took their first steps down one of the paths leading into the housing grounds. That feeling had been with her since they'd left the warehouse, or from even before then, hanging over the trip so that it could take centre stage now. There was little she could do to quell it, other than by making an effort to stick close to the other girls.

"We'll stick to the perimeter. There's no sense in going in further, not today." Monet announced as she led them onwards.

The buildings they were now in the midst of all retained that irregular style, the different constructs all arranged in an entirely uncoordinated way. It appeared as if people had simply arranged their buildings wherever there had been space, with the thinking involved not really continuing much beyond that.

Sheets of corrugated metal were common as rooftops or reinforcement for walls, whilst wooden beams of varying quality were also prominent across the numerous projects, all features she'd seen before now from a distance. Whilst initial work had been rough, repair work was often even more offhand, like people had simply done what they could wherever it was needed.