Re: [IC] Along the Chalk Road
Mira asks Helen if she could pay to stable Gaytha at their dino-stables for a while, "At least I need to pay to feed her. We've been on the run all day, and she can't exactly ask the hunters what they've seen," she says, looking shy and sad. Helen smiles and gives the girl a pat, waving them to the stables.
"Nonsense! We can spare a bit of fodder while you look for your kin. Now, you go talk to those fellows in the Dragonfly before they get too far into their cups, and tell them Helen said for them to talk straight!" Helen says. Mira quickly sees Gaytha to the stables, then comes back to enter the tavern. As she passes, she whispers something to Oiktirmon. "There's no argoraptors in the stables."
Helen remains in the stables while Mira passes inside the dimness of the drinking establishment. Those close can see the place is like much of Grevakc, a mixture of the old future and the new past. Panels from shipping containers make up some walls, along with slabs of wood, stone, large bones garnered from the bends of rivers after floods, and even living trees. The lighting is a few solar lights in the living ceiling, combined with the occasional fish-oil lamp, along with whatever sunlight dares filter inside.
Tables and chairs of bone and wood are scattered around with four lounging drinkers, the bar a mosaic of dino-bones with polished stones in them lined with bentwood bar stools which hold two more. A dartboard with hand-made darts with feather flights has seen some heavy use on one wall, and a raised platform against another is likely where some kind of entertainment would sit. In the sultry afternoon, no one holds center stage. The bar holds one tap, and a wealth of bottles in a rainbow of shades.
The lounging drinkers are a mixture of men and women, most of them in their second or third decade, with weathered complexions and a few scars that testify to their profession. They're wearing coveralls, stained but clean, in various dark shades. One woman has her hair elaborately braided with small dinosaur feathers, one man is missing half an ear with a scar following along towards the back of his head. The one who seems the youngest, a young man, is telling some story to the other guy seated at the bar, something that seems to require a lot of gestures.
In the garage across the way, anyone close by can see the one man working on the wheel is a powerfully-built man in his forties, with a face which had met several fists at different angles throughout his life. A woman is further back in the garage, putting things away in a cabinet. Her head is shaved, and she wears a well-stocked toolbelt around her sturdy middle. She is not an attractive woman, with small eyes, upturned nose, and a mouth that seems to be set in a sneer, but she also looks very busy.