[Minor GMing of Alan approved]
Lili caught Alan's protein bars without any struggle, but the plastic light saber bounced off of her side and onto the floor. Luckily, Alan hadn't thrown it so hard for it to hurt, but Lili was less than happy about having to reach over to pick up the plastic toy.
A bar and a penny, huh? Lili thought as she picked up the light saber,
Shit, I'm not sure if I have one of those. After putting the light saber and extra bars into her bag, she dug around for any loose change, hoping to find the right coinage. As she did so, Kaitlyn continued to bargain with her, and the two settled on a third of a loaf. When Kaitlyn threw the bread to her, Lili's head was still pointed down into her bag. The loaf bounced off of the back of her hair and into the day pack in front of her, landing with a thud. Lili looked up, saw Kaitlyn talking to Scout, and looked back down again. It wasn't worth fighting over. Eventually, Lili found a stray coin lodged in between her first-aid kit and a water bottle, and she picked it up to inspect it.
It was a quarter. Lili sighed, taking a protein bar out of her bag to go with the trade, then looked back into her bag for something else she could give to make up for her lack of proper coinage. So far, Alan seemed to be an unpredictable guy, given that he offered to spice up the deal without any kind of prompt. Maybe he'd appreciate some kind of random offering? Lili opened her first aid kit and closed her eyes, picking something up out of the box at random. When she felt it in her hands, she opened her eyes and smiled. She hoped this would do. Lili zipped up her bag and stood up to face Alan.
"Alright, I have a protein bar, but I don't have a penny," Lili said, shrugging, "So I hope that if I give you a quarter it'll be fine. Oh, and I'll throw in some...tweezers, too." She walked over to Alan and gently placed the supplies into his open palm. He didn't resist as she closed his fingers around the items gently, so she patted his closed fist reassuringly. Alan made a mock angry face at her, but didn't do anything else to retaliate. Lili just smiled back: she figured that it would be a good way to show that she didn't mean any harm. Made sense to her, at least.
Lili went back to her bag and peeled off a third of the loaf of bread, tossing the rest back to Kaitlyn along with a protein bar. As far as she could tell, she threw accurately, but she didn't pay too much attention to whether or not she caught it. Kaitlyn hadn't paid much attention, so why should she, right?
Right. She zipped up her bag.
The toll gate had lifted, and Lili had stepped through.
"Alright, Kaitlyn, that should be it," She said, standing up with her bag slung over her shoulder, "I think I'm gonna go on my way now, if that's fine. We've made our trade, right? So it should be fine." She started to walk away, going in the direction that she had started in before she was interrupted, towards the side with the radio tower. She hoped that she could meet someone she knew on the other side, someone that she could deal with, someone she could partner up with. She was looking for a way out, a place where she needed to be, and she hadn't found it yet. She didn't know if she would find it, ever. She passed Scout silently, walking on into the distance, the metal bridge clacking beneath her feet.
She barely noticed the pair of white shoes just next to the edge of the bridge, twinkling in the corner of her vision. Curious, she stopped walking onward and investigated. The shoes themselves didn't look damaged in any way, and they were neatly arranged next to each other. Not too far over to the side was an abandoned bag similar to the one she was carrying over her shoulder. Lili found this ordeal odd. She wondered who would just leave a pair of shoes sitting on the side of a bridge, unattended...
...facing the sea.
Lili got down on her hands and knees next to the shoes and looked over the side of the bridge, her fingers grasping the edge of the precipice. The bridge's cold metal floor sent chills down her spine, and she shivered as a slight breeze blew around her, her own nervous impulses threatening to send her off careening toward the deep blue waters below. She knew that she was checking something with a forgone conclusion, a secret betrayed by the abandoned bag, but she had to make sure just in case.
But she saw nothing.
Lili breathed a sigh of relief. At least, she
thought it was a sigh of relief. Was it a sigh of panic? She couldn't figure it out. Lili shook her head back and forth involuntarily, trying to get any bad thoughts or feeling out of her brain. Confused, she picked up the shoes, just in case. She didn't know what they were just in case for, but she thought she might as well take them with her anyways. No harm in doing so, right? Right. She knew it to be true. She left the bag alone. She figured that there were people who needed the stuff inside more than she did, and she didn't feel right staying around any longer.
Lili took one last look back at the toll booth setup, and kept on walking, singing to herself once more as she went.
"Spot the rot, spot the rot, spot the rot we say..."
[Lili Williams continued in
Heel-and-Toe.]