On the Mend (Caly/Steiner)

The tea kettle whistled as steam existed from the spout, letting him know that the water had finished reaching its boiling point, and Steiner let out a low sigh as he began to pack herbs and tea leaves into his tea cup. He had a lot of things to work on before confronting Ulv, but first and foremost he had to get himself right first. As he turned back around to fill his cup with the boiling water from the kettle on the fire, the sound of a bellow, and the quick movements of a brown furred beast caused Steiner to leap for a nearby weapon. However, as the beast thrashed his camp, knocking down sets of armor pieces and weapons that were freshly made, he let out a sigh dropping the weapon he had picked up with a defeated look on his face.

Weeks of work destroyed in a matter of seconds.

"When it rains, it pours, eh?"

Steiner said sarcastically to himself as he walked around, scavenging what little could be saved after casually placing the cup full of herbs down on the tree stump next to his workbench. That is when a new figure joined the fray, a young lady by the look of things who had been chasing the Elk for some strange reason or another. He looked her dead in the eyes, surprised that anyone would be in these particular woods at this time of year, and let alone would be interested in wild life in such a way to chase it. She began speaking to him, rather politely at first, and even noted how beaten up he was. She seemed to have a rather keen eye as she looked over him before she titled her nose up to the wind.

For a second, Steiner was going to reply to her, and then she brought up something much deeper than the physical wounds he was dealing with. She had jumped right into Steiner's emotional state and to be quite honest, he didn't quite like sharing that he was fucked up on two fronts right now. Not to some random stranger who had ushered an elk into his midst to destroy his encampment at the least. It wasn't that eh wasn't friendly, it was more along the lines that he didn't want to talk about that particular can of worms at the moment, and he needed more time to process the shit he had done.

All of the people he had killed.

His friend that he had done some serious damage to.

The city that he had been so adamant on purging due to the effects of the miasma.

All of it was just a bundle of nasty demons locked in a closet that he just wasn't ready to full face at the moment. So, instead Steiner decided to table that conversation until he felt more comfortable around this outsider, and even then he didn't know if he wanted to be sharing mode with this individual. So, after a short deliberation, Steiner dropped a shattered blade on to the floor, and then let out a deep sigh.

"Who are you and why are you around these parts?"

It would be better first to gauge just what sort of person this young woman was before diving into a deeper conversation. He just hoped she didn't think him rude for not wanting to talk about the problems he was facing. After all, laying that much baggage on a person you just met would be rather stupid.