>No sense hanging around here and brooding. Make our way back towards Neu and Ishi, at a pace easy enough not to angry up the hole in our leg too much.
>You shrug and lazily make your way back towards the others in the hope that a ginger pace would be easier on your injuries. It probably is, to be fair, but it still hurts to move. Though given that it also hurts to stay still and would probably hurt to lie down, you suppose this is the best you're going to manage for now.
>"Welcome back to the land of the living," Aya says cheerfully. Murasa's eyes seem more focused now, and she slowly directs her gaze upward to lock with the pirate's. Her face is writ with an oddly muted defiance. She says nothing.
>"Those were some neat tricks you pulled off back there," Aya continues lightly. "Though I'm sure that last one wasn't much fun for you." There's even something of a sympathetic look on her face as she says this. Murasa's glower only deepens. "What's it like, anyway?" the tengu asks. "I mean, I know what everybody says, of course, but I've never heard it from a real drowned ghost themselves." She flips her notebook open again and looks at Murasa expectantly. There is silence for a moment.
>"I've got nothing to say to the likes of you," Murasa eventually replies, her tone cold and strangely dull.
>Aya frowns. "Nothing at all? Not even a little something? It would help pass the time, you know."
>Murasa's grim expression is broken only by a slight widening of the mouth that seems to say "Are you
serious?" Though, if you were to guess from the resigned look on the other tengu's face, this is nothing out of the ordinary. Aya herself doesn't seem to pay Murasa's reaction any mind.
>"It seems like such a shame," she continues. "It isn't often I get to meet a skyfarer of your caliber, and I know you've racked up all kinds of interesting stories in your day. I'd really love to hear some of them from your own mouth. I've read what I could get my hands on, of course, but we both know the official record doesn't always tell the whole story. Like, say, what
really happened to the Nordfalke?" She asks this with a knowing smirk on her face. "Or something else, if you'd rather; I'm not picky!"
>"Perhaps," Neu interjects in weary voice, "It would be in all our best interests if you simply got down to your business so that we could get back to ours."
>"But information
is my business," Aya replies with a smile, twirling her pen deftly.
>At this point, Ishi lets out a mightly blow of air through pursed lips. You
think it may have been intended to knock the spinning pen out of Aya's fingers entirely, but at this distance succeeds mostly in making the little kappa red-faced. The other tengu snickers. Neu sighs.