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There’s Elass of her looker as she trains it our way I raise a hand So does Mercy A shriek of excitement cracks the silence Then she disappears

She’s seen you, I says Better brace yerself

Cah a wide gap between two of ’e circle space, open to the sky This is one of the old places A site of long round’s bin worn ses have scarred the rock walls Words an pictures scratched into the stone By dreamers, idlers, artists an fools

The Cosmic’s parked up Slim’s medicine cart, the Cosmic Compendalorium Fourth of its Ilk, says Sliht yelloith suns an unnels with potions an cures The horses bunch together, jostlin noses over heaps of dry grass There’s Molly’s Prue, a placid ht beasts in all

Every head turns as we coap Horses an people alike Slim’s at the cookfire, ladlin stew into Ash’s tin Molly’s sat on a rock, eatin Nero’s already on the h No Creed No Tohtens

Where are they? I says to Ash

No sign of ’eed it What happened? I heard the blast go off Loads of sot chased, I says They should of bin here by now

You only jest got here yerself, says Sliht yer contact swore they didn’t patrol that far out

It warn’t no patrol, I says They was headed fer the Raze Resettleawdamnmit, what’s keepin ’em? Not even one back yet

Simmer down, he says They probly jest had to take a roundabout route We’ll debrief once everybody’s back an settled in Here, where’s yer e?

He makes a waddly beeline fer Mercy We’re used to Slim’s quirks, but to her he must look a odd fish--jobble-bellied in a patchwork frock the size of a tent, grubby eyepatch askew, y old rabbit’s foot dangles froot no couth, he says Wouldn’t know polite if it walked up an slapped their face We’ll jest hafta make our own innerductions an shame on them Doctor Saleon Inchantee, ma’am

I’m Mercy, she says

She ith the work party, I says Managed to free herself in the confusion An, as chance would have it, she’s a friend of the family That there’s Ash An that’s Molly

Mercy’s drawn an exhausted but she es a smile Glad to know yuz, she says

Me an Slim help her down from the pony Mercy’s a healer, I tell him

A fellow perfessional, eh? In that case, I ahted to allant, over her hand, they take each other’s ander at that ankle if you like, he says