It Meant More Work.

It meant more work.

She couldn't just twist her hair up behind her head and pin it back with a stray pencil. She would have to be cautious to keep it out of grime and gunk. Run a brush through it at intervals of more than once a day. Get used to the feel of something brushing her shoulders.

But it made her look less like a tangled mess. Less engineer, more businesswoman. And she needed to cultivate that persona, or at least the appearance of it. Especially if she was to make the kind of money needed to pay the Gamesman's bounty.

She tried on her most stylish outfits: the one her sister had given her, the two made by Lady Marat. All looked good with her hair worn long. Sighing, Milli nodded to herself in the mirror. It would stay down. Hopefully she didn't look too silly.

call me for Tia

Fog had rolled in thick, engulfing the dark streets of Lion's Arch and making them even more inhospitable. Cold, desolate, insulated. It felt like she walked alone in all the world. But she had a purpose, sweeping through the swirls and whorls of fog. She searched.

There were inns and taverns and bars all over the place. Milli had looked there first. Then she'd resorted to the lower places. Shadowy clubs that were barely more than four walls and most of a roof in which the patrons could drink away their troubles and gamble away their money. She longed for a shadow in these places, but that time was passed.

Still, she couldn't find Tia.

Finally, she went do the beach. Low tide, the sand seemed to stretch forever in the fog. The sound of the ocean and the tang of salt the only signs it was close.

"Tia!" she called. "Tia, where are you!"

Her words didn't carry far. Sucked up by the fog. Pulling her jacket around her tighter, Milli sucked up her fear and worry and kept looking for her friend.

Milli examines the design carefully. It's good work. And she might have a use for this soon...

Steampunk Claw Hand by Diarment

A design left behind in the workshop, the notes on it in Tia’s handwriting.

YES YES YES YES

Aperture Turrets singing Killer Queen

It always seemed like she missed a spot. A dark blotch on her neck, the end of her nose. Underneath her eyepiece. The grease snuck in everywhere, as much a part of her as the work she did to earn it.

Not all dreams are nightmares. She forgets that sometimes. Then she wakes up giggling, images of fish made of gears and metal dancing through her head. Such silliness her mind can conjure. As she dresses, it's fading. A vague memory of something funny with some fish. During the day, she forgets it entirely. But that night, as she's drifting off with her head laid on her arm, at the worktable again, she remembers. And she wills that she'll have the fish dreams again. And again. And again.