Four hours later, Jeff was cursing himself again. This was the thirty eight time he had cursed himself since they started gathering supplies. As it turned out being a semi professional Seamstress, from what Jeff gathered during four torturous hours, meant she had something she referred to as “standards”, after an hour Jeff had called it being picky, now he was wondering if she just liked wasting time. They weren’t on a clock per se and thanks to the remains of yesterdays food, he had managed to get a nice meal going for the two of them, something he wouldn’t manage for the rest of the trip, especially if she had the same “standards” for food as for clothing.
The worst part, for some reason she had decided to ask HIS opinion. He had found a mirror and still she needed his opinion. Candy had been the same. It was awful. Jeff knew from experience with Candy there wasn’t really a good choice, well there were as Craig and Butch had shown, but Jeff didn’t know the words. Practicality, sturdiness and other real considerations were apparently not important. Well for Candy, thankfully Vaeri took these into account, which surprisingly made it worse.
Now the clothes didn’t just need to look good, by whatever measure she was deciding that, but also had to be practical and sturdy. This meant it took longer to find anything. She had already gathered a supply of underwear, which Jeff had only noticed because she had packed them away and he had asked. This had earned him a stinging stare as well as a snippy comment, though it seemed she was just as much teasing him as irritated. So, an improvement overall.
As for the rest of her equipment, Jeff had to scale down his ambitions for her quite a bit and instead settled on making her carry valuable stuff. He had everything he needed and with that they both had it, his pan would work for both of them and since she was smaller than himself, he could give her his older sleeping bag, he would need to repack a few things but until they managed to get out of here it would work.
Instead, he had her carry a few batteries, a solar panel of all things, that was honestly a jackpot in off itself. Alone Jeff wouldn’t want to carry the thing, but now that they were two and he had time to find it, well leaving it here would be just stupid. It didn’t work well in this damn sun, but if it all worked out, they could either sell it at Brindgap or take it with them to the Greylands in the Crawler. Speaking of that, that was the hard part of his plan, well that and getting Candy and the others to believe him. Well one thing after another. First was getting to Brindgap, without getting captured. Before that he had to get the woman going.
Thankfully Vaeri had apparently gathered most things she wanted to find. Still, she searched through a pile of clothes Jeff had collected to make finding things easier. Which also in hindsight was not a good idea. It meant she was comfortable spending more time looking.
“We need to get going, you have enough, don’t you?”, Jeff finally brought himself to say. He had packed all things for the third time and looked over what he would leave behind. It really was time to go,
“Sure, I was waiting for you to say something”, was Vaeris curt answer. Her mood was not great even Jeff could tell that.
“Seriously? I thought you were still looking through clothes, I wanted to move out two hours or so ago!”, Jeff failed to keep the exasperation from his voice, which of course was again, not a good move. He really needed to develop people skills, especially if he wanted to get his friends, no acquaintances to safety. That would take weeks.
“Why didn’t you say something then? I won’t say no to a few more clothes, but I was done a few hours back!”
“Sure, doesn’t matter now we need to get moving, grab the bags here and let’s head out”, thankfully Jeff was smart enough to see a lost battle before starting it, well this time. It had been uncharacteristic of him in any case, to say nothing for this long. It doesn’t matter anyway, two hours more or less if they die because of this, it was as much his fault as hers. Well unless she got them caught.
The bags Jeff indicated were sturdy things from the camps’ supplies, they were all made from sturdy leather, probably some import from Esher or a Greylands caravan. In any case, there was one backpack, and two smaller sacks filled with her clothes. Jeff didn’t know how much she could carry so he mostly stuck her with the batteries and solar panel, but the sacks held most of her clothes as well as the backpack. Overall, it was not too many. Jeff hefted his two travelling bags. That one was backed relatively light he wouldn’t be switching shoulders too often with his other travelling back on his back. He made a good upgrade to his travelling kit here so that was also nice. Most of their camp supplies and other nick knacks were with him as well as his valuable stuff. Vaeri also had a smaller travelling bag for the stuff she had arrived with; it had been filled with mostly Jeff’s own clothes now and some of her own stuff. Oh and their hygiene kit, which she had insisted upon and added things to after Jeff in his own manner only packed the essentials. Thankfully there was no mention of makeup or other vanity items, even though the camp had some local products, Jeff did believe a girl like Candy would have tried to insist, but then again Jeff learned with every interaction, he shouldn’t believe his expectations when it came to people.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
They did not talk much in the beginning, silently travelling, just like Jeff preferred. But after what must have been two hours or so, of just the essential communication, Vaeri started to talk. Whether her mood had improved, she was bored or simply felt like she should say something, Jeff, in his typical incompetence, couldn’t say. Which meant he also didn’t know what to do. In the beginning it was easy, it was a slow conversation, too many breaks because both got slowly exhausted but then she started to ask questions. First they were the reasonable sort, “are you from here?”, “Is your name Jiff or Jeff?”. She also talked about herself some, things Jeff honestly forgot as fast as she told him, mostly about her travels up until now, nothing personal, stuff people would call Smalltalk, Jeff thought. Then she went into dangerous territory, she started to ask real questions, telling real stories about her life. Things like “where are you from”, started to pop off and there was only so long that Jeff could ignore these questions. Avoid answering them for her and himself. He buckled when they had to take a break, first he took care of his bodily needs than she did and they both just started to rest a bit, the silence that had built up over the last half hour hanging above them, no excuses left.
“Why do you avoid my questions?”, her voice was surprisingly calm, like she was talking to a frightend animal. It was only then Jeff realized he had curled up on the rock he was sitting, making himself small. He still avoided answering, tried to avoid thinking about her other questions, especially the last one before the silence came up, “what about your family?”. No not thinking about that.
“You know you can say you don’t want to talk about it, I am sorry if I said something bad”, her voice was hesitant, she clearly wasn’t sure what she should say. Not sure if she should stop talking, let it rest or try to calm him. Jeff also didn’t know what he wanted. It was a long time since someone had managed to pin him in a conversation with so many bad questions. Normally he would just leave, he wanted to leave. But leaving her now was a bad idea. That and he knew being alone wouldn’t help, it didn’t help last time either.
He just managed to shake his head slowly, breathing in deeply, calming his own damn head. The thoughts wouldn’t leave him any time soon, that much Jeff knew from experience last time it took hours. Hopefully it would be better this time.
“I don’t like to think about the past is all”, His voice sounded weak and near cracking, it made a part of Jeff angry to be so worked up over some questions. The urge to leave flared up again, leave her and the questions behind, but that wouldn’t stop him from thinking about the questions. Remembering.
“Oh ok, then don’t mind my questions, I won’t bother you again”, her voice made clear that she was relived that he finally talked again and that he seemed to be calm. Or at least not totally crazy. But she was lying, they all always did. She would ask again, not today sure, probably not tomorrow, but the longer they stayed together, the more she would wonder, the more she felt the need to know. They all did. Even Candy, Butch, Ken and Kate all had promised, and all had asked again. It was probably for that reason he sold the crawler. If he was honest with himself. Jeff hadn’t wanted to leave so he made them make him leave. So, the question wouldn’t come up again. Stupid. It wasn’t even so bad, Jeff knew rationally that was the case, but still there was so much of it, buried there.
They stayed like this for a time, half an hour or so until Jeff felt ready to move again, uncurling he stood up picked up his stuff and mumbled for Vaeri to follow. She was clearly uncomfortable with the silence but kept it this time. The questions stayed with Jeff for some time until he started to talk again, he asked Vaeri about things she knew, how long she was in this zone, things away from the bad memories. Slowly the uncomfortable silence vanished replaced with a slow burning conversation about this and that, Jeff got Vaeri to talk about fashion, she explained a bit about her clothing choices, why some fabrics were better than others and more. It turned out to be quite informative, the rational part in Jeffs head, the one always analyzing and looking, learning, the part that stayed silent so often, saved all that information like it always did. It was also the part of him that remmebred all the things he wanted to forget and as it started to learn new things again, the bad memories receded from the front of his consciousness. And he surprisingly even started to enjoy the slow conversation.
They made camp after roughly 6 hours of marching, ate and then slept. It would be four more days probably until they reached Brindgap.
