The bad weather couldn't have come at a better time. You get to know people in disasters, especially groups of complete strangers--where do they go, who do they look to? What simple task can you perform to make them value your presence, when they've no theater and no money? Herding livestock is for the dogs, but he can't deny that herding dogs is a man's job.

Rescuing a child would make a better story, but they've none of those either. Truly they've come to some purgatory, complete with mountain trails, torrential rains, fewer wandering souls than one would expect.

People are usually complicated, and difficult; that's what makes them interesting. More so when they have something Cael wants, but given a village of people who don't, he makes do. The decent at heart tend not to last very long, but if you can fake it--well, at every other disadvantage, faking it is all he has. Faking it is probably why they wound up here, instead of being chased by the Mohrrigai's wolves for eternity.

A good deed is a good deed, whyever it's done.

If it gets done. Pushing wet hair from his face, he squints up at the woman, making out the shape of her burden. Of course it went up the mountain--back to it's real master. Some stupid test they're probably failing, not following it to the highest point. "Buildings," he calls back, wringing his hands uselessly in the spitting rain. "Preferrably dry ones." A rock could only be so different from pipes and eaves, but: "Would it really help for all three of us to be up there?"

Perhaps she sees something he can't, from this angle.