Kaze nodded along slightly. She was still trying to get a map of this village in her head. It was so unfortunate that she could not. It'd take multiple reviews for her to start taking it all to heart. Really, once things became second nature, she was fine with them. Things like walking, or finding her way around the place she currently called home, but anything that required memory was a bit of a problem.

However, there were many workarounds regarding that.

"Okay, sure!" she replied, "I'd love to meet your parents."

Not that Eld had actually invited her to meet his parents or anything, but she had inferred it through some weird sort of logic. And just like she had declared, she would have loved to go in with Eld and meet his parents while he dropped off the items he'd picked up--these . . . bandages and stuff? Kaze briefly poked at them, leaving over quite a bit after letting go of Eld to do so, enough that she should have fallen off for all intents and purposes, but she still seemed perfectly balanced.

Almost imperceptively, Eld tensed up. Meet his parents...? His mind flashed to the image of introducing this silver-haired, out there girl to his parents, and trying to explain why he was with another exotic looking girl. No, that was not going to happen, not if he could help it. Not to mention there was no way it wouldn't get back to the girls if his mother met her.

He laughed nervously. "Ah...there's no need to do that. We want to start looking for your brother, right? Just let me run these in, return the horse, and I'll be back in a flash."

"Oh . . ." Kaze trailed off.

So, he didn't want her to meet his parents, then? Maybe she was kind of annoying, then. Not so annoying that he was put off by her, but annoying enough that his parents might be. Kaze accepted this as a fact, however disappointing and kind of depressing it may be, and didn't question it.

"O-oh, and--could you get a pen?" Kaze asked. She planned on drawing a map. Yes, a map would work wonders.

She'd be rather quiet once they were outside of Eld's house, spacing out again. Even after he returned to get the horse and return it, she had still been a little bit spaced out, not quite paying attention to much. It was nice sometimes. Sometimes, it helped keep everything a little more level and calm. It made socializing a little weird a lot of the times, but if she were horribly depressed and then spaced out for awhile, she felt momentously less depressed after coming to again. She'd be fairly silent until after the horse was returned, and they were on foot again.

"So, where's the first and most important place in Gullslist?" she'd ask outright as soon as they were both on foot and relaxed again.

"Uh, sure." And indeed Eld didn't waste much time with finishing the errand; his parents thanked him, and his mother gave him a bit of an odd look (How does she always seem to know? he couldn't help but think) but he was out of there. Perhaps if she stayed in the village a bit longer she'd see his parents (and hopefully not because she needed their services), but one didn't go introducing every random person they met to their parents. Especially not with Eld's history with random, attractive females who looked Cizokian.

"Hillcrest," he corrected automatically, handing her the pen she'd asked for. "And...umm...I'm not really sure there's any one place that's terribly important. There's a general store, a blacksmith, a few ranches, a church, and my parents who run the clinic...a small tavern," he added. Not being old enough to drink, he didn't frequent the place--not that anyone in the small town would have really cared.

"It's a fairly small town." Well, the town part of it was fairly small. There were miles upon miles of farms, but the center of town was comparatively tiny.

"Hillcrest, Hillcrest," Kaze repeated as if trying to memorize it.

And it just wasn't working!

"Hrrmmm . . ." she hummed in thought. It was pretty important that she get the name of this village down. Her brother was here for some reason; if she was ever told why, she'd long since forgotten. So, it was probably pretty important that she come up with some memory device to keep her from forgetting the village's name again.

This was plenty important enough that she might have even seemed as if she'd completely disregarded Eld's explanation of the town. She'd heard it. It was just something she'd address here in a moment!

"Hmmmmmmmmmm here!" Kaze finally declared as she came to a conclusion.

A conclusion that might not have benefited Eld all that much, but it wasn't too much of an inconvenience.

"Hold still~," Kaze declared as she put her left hand on Eld's forehead. She leaned forward a bit and eyed his forehead now that she had cleared his bangs away. He might be confused at first, and understandably so, until Kaze put the pen partially in her mouth, held her lips on the cap, and pulled the pen out with her right hand. And then, at that very moment, she'd take the pen to Eld's forehead, gently scrawling a single word upon it:

Hillcrest

Briefly stunned in sheer confusion at her antics, it took him a minute to realize what she was doing. Unfortunately, it was too late by then, and she'd finished the word, leaving the name of his home printed on his forehead. Not that he knew what she wrote, though his eyes rolled upwards in a futile attempt to try to read it.

"H-Hey! What are you doing? What are you writing?" he asked hurriedly; while most people would react adversely to being written on anyway, it was likely not the first time he'd been written on, and previous experiences had likely taught him people don't usually write anything good on another person.

"W-What'd you do that for?" he pouted, like a child being picked on by a tougher kid. "That's not very nice..."

Kaze smiled at Eld as she withdrew from his person. She hadn't written anything horrible on his head or anything! It was just the name of his hometown.

"Well . . . . ." she hummed.

Maybe it would have been funny if she had written something else on his head? Or made him think she had? But it also would've been mean, too--definitely, without a doubt it would've been mean! Terribly cruel, even. Kaze wouldn't have liked it if someone did that to her.

"I wrote Hillcrest," she replied, smiling sweetly, "That way, if I ever forget it again, I can just look at your face and remember!"

Harmless enough! And Eld would certainly have no reason to doubt her. She sounded sweet and innocent enough, after all. Someone like Sarah or Emma, on the other hand, couldn't sound sweet and innocent without giving themselves away.

Eld stared at her, trying to decide if she was really serious or not. It was a thought that occurred to him every so often ever since meeting this girl, that it might be all one big joke on him and she was really the best actor in the world. Scary as it was, though, so far he had to conclude that she really was just like that.

"You know, you could have just asked for some paper," he complained. "I'm definitely going to have to take a bath tonight, wash this out."

"If you have that much trouble remembering things...why not keep a little notepad and a pen on you or something? That way you could write it down and just look it up if you needed to," he suggested. It was certainly a better idea than writing other people.

"Well . . . . ." Kaze hummed aloud.

Maybe it would have been better if she wrote it on paper or something. Kaze thought for a moment. She really hoped Eld wasn't horribly upset by that or anything. That would've been terrible, upsetting her guide like that. Especially since her guide was a really nice person. And he had really nice lips, too. Kaze's mind wavered a bit as she let her eyes wander just inches below his eyes, only for her to shake her head quickly and look back to his eyes again.

"I don't know," she concluded, "I think I'd forget eventually! I mean, if I carried a notepad around, I'd just forget it in my pack."

Incidentally, Kaze lacked any sort of pack. She was ill-equipped for any sort of lengthy journey. Eld probably wouldn't have to think too hard to figure out what happened.

"I figured it'd be easier, if it was somewhere like that," she pointed at Eld's forehead indicatively.

It was really hard to believe that writing on his forehead was a better option. "Well, I'm going to get strange looks if I go around with something written on my forehead." At the very least, he needed to get rid of it before the girls got back; Etsu would probably not care, but the others were going to laugh at him, at least until he explained why he had the village's name written on his forehead. Then, laughter would be a lucky response.

"Besides, how are you going to remember if I'm not around?" he asked. A valid point, as she was going to have to find a place to stay, not to mention it would have been faster to look for her brother if they split up.

"Oh," Kaze furrowed her brow, "You're leaving?"

She figured that Eld was going to be around until she found her brother, and then after meeting her brother, and her introducing them all and telling him about Eld and how he helped her out and everything--then he'd leave. She didn't figure that Eld was going to leave her so soon.

Why Kaze had come to that conclusion, she didn't know. Eld hadn't said anything in particular to suggest that he was going to stick around for any length of time. In fact, it was kind of rude for her to make such an assumption. He had a life, right? He had his friends that he was going to go back to, and probably spend a lot of time with tonight. He didn't want to be around Kaze, helping her around town, helping her find her brother and such. His friends sounded a lot cooler than she was, anyways.

"I . . . suppose I'll just get a notepad from somewhere, then . . ." Kaze thought aloud, sounding a little disappointed.

"N-Not right now, we still have to find your brother, right?" he corrected hurriedly. She seemed to have been a bit mistaken about what he meant, so he clarified: "If you decide to stay here for a bit after we find him--or if we don't find him today--you aren't going to be around me constantly."

It was difficult to say whether this was a naive assumption or just wishful thinking; Eld wasn't the most successful person when it came to disentangling himself from exotic women.

"Oh. Uhhhhh, right!" Kaze's mood adjusted rather quickly, and she laughed nervously.

Yes, maybe it was a little silly of her to do that--get all . . . almost emotional like that. She certainly felt silly. She must have looked really ridiculous! Truth be told, Kaze hadn't really gotten downright emotional, but the way she had looked down, and the way her tone changed and all the like, it had been pretty obvious that she was disappointed.

"So . . ." Kaze glanced behind her, back towards the main town.

She didn't really know a thing about this place--like where people congregated, or anywhere like that. Eld would definitely know where to find her brother more than she would.

"Where to first?" she chimed cheerfully as she clasped her hands behind her back.

"Our best bet is probably to ask around in the town center here," he responded, gesturing around with one arm. "If he's planning on staying here, he has to get food and shelter from someone, so I'll bet someone's at least seen him."

It was highly probable, especially if he'd mentioned Hillcrest by name as his destination; he must have had some knowledge of the town then. There was the chance he was simply staying at someone's farm or even roughing it in the woods, though--it would take a lot longer to find him in either of those cases.

"I'll take you to the places, and you can ask and give them your brother's description, how's that sound?" he suggested, as he tried to rearrange his bangs to (hopefully) cover the writing on his forehead. He'd leave the talking Kaze for the moment; he didn't want to be seen like this if he could help it.

With that, he started off towards the tavern. A lot of people gathered there, and they rented out a few rooms, so it was the best place to start.

"Okay!" Kaze replied cheerily.

She could steadily become a ball of enthusiasm just as much as she could steadily become an emotional wreck. It always seemed to be steady, and take just as much time to lower as it took to pick right back up.

And right about now, she was a ball of enthusiasm.

However, as they started to head towards the tavern, Kaze started to progressively become nervous. She couldn't remember the time she was in the crowd in Galaens anymore, but the feeling was there. What if there were a lot of people in the tavern? Eld said that the general populous gathered in the town square, so what if it was like Galaens, and people might just walk all over her if she were to fall over? Of course . . . of course, Eld was there! He'd just help her up again if she fell over, and take her off to a safe alleyway . . . somewhere.

Alleyway? What alleyway?

Nonetheless, when they arrived in the tavern, she was a little overwhelmed. There were a lot of people there! Way more than there should have been around this time. She glanced first to Eld, looking for courage, saw the name of the town on his head, and remembered where she was--and why she was here, again.

"Ummm . . . excuse me sir?" Kaze asked as she tapped upon the shoulders of a larger, bearded man passing them by.

"Erm?" he grunted as he turned to her. He was noticeably inebriated, but Kaze didn't seem to notice.

"Have you seen my brother?" she asked nervously.

"What?"

"Ummm . . . my brother?"

"Who the hell's your brother?"

"Ummmm . . ." she glanced to Eld again, "H-he's . . . not from around here?"

"Look, I got no idea who you're talkin' about."

"U-umm . . ." Kaze started to think about it.

Her brother, her brother . . . what did he look like, again? She couldn't remember for the life of her. It made her sad to think about that, that she couldn't even begin to remember what her family looked like. It was depressing! And rightly so. It wasn't like they had been apart for very long. And it wasn't like they had pictures of each other, either, so if anything happened to one of them, she might very well forget what they looked like entirely.

"H-he's taller than me . . ." she thought aloud; she was really straining to get this memory, "A-and . . . and he was weird colored hair-- like-- like-- like . . . e-errr . . . I think it's . . . . it's blue?"

"Blue? There's a girlie here with weird lookin' hair, but no guy."

"O-oh," Kaze trailed off nervously, "Ummm . . . th-thanks anyways."