The heated climate of the desert continent had always been more than enough to deter merely-curious travelers from entering Strahta; and if it wasn’t, the long trek through the desert in order to reach the capital city did the job well. Far be it from anyone to say that they did not have their fair share of tourists and the like — they did, naturally. However, the number that came for such purposes, when compared to numbers of the neighboring kingdom of Windor, was miniscule.
Trips were often made in the context of business. Traders, vendors, people looking to make money, strike up alliances, ask for assistance from the Strahtan military. Seldom did adventurers make the trip into the desert for pleasure, and that was assuming they did at all.
— An assumption that would have looked rather silly, had the blonde’s presence in Yu Liberte not been noticed.
He’d seen her before. As his vision fixated itself upon the girl, that was the first thought to cross his mind. Once before, in Barona — and once again, in Lhant. And each time, she did nothing more than what she was doing at this moment; walk around, seemingly captivated, taking in the sights and sounds of the city. Truthfully, Hubert had not thought much of it the first time, and just slightly more of it the second. But now she was here, a place not-ideal to travel to for mere sight seeing. More importantly, she was now in his home.
Was he suspicious, then? Yes, if only slightly; however, standing around for too long would only further plague his mind with such thoughts, rather than clear them up. One brief moment to make a decision — and as the blonde walks past him, he makes his way out of the shade he’d been standing beneath with hasty steps.
“— A moment, if you would.”
As he speaks, he is already making his way to her side; one part of him subconsciously expecting her to stop, due to his status as a lieutenant in the military. But what good would that do him, if she was foreign to Strahta to begin with?
“You —” A pause, a moment to re-evaluate just how he was going to begin addressing her. After all, coming right out and saying “I’ve seen you before“ would not end well, under any circumstances. "— Are you … lost, perchance? You don’t appear to have come from anywhere nearby, if I may say so.”
Presence was something that she had never had very much of, being small in build and height, along with quiet and the tendency to fade back behind people with greater presence than she. So in many of her travels she went by unnoticed unless someone was looking for her purposefully, and her prior exploits in the world she stood in had also gone unnoticed. Or at least, she had thought they had, since no one had walked up to her blatantly and asked her what she was doing there at any point.
Which was why when someone approached and called out to her she turned towards them with some surprise, eyebrows quirking upwards. For a moment she wondered if he were referring to someone else, calling upon another person, but this young man was looking directly at her, there was no mistaking that. It wasn’t like she could shrug it off and walk away, or deny him, so she simply said—
”Of course.”
Taking a moment to look at him quickly she noted his appearance, the blue hair and the glasses, and the clothes that he was wearing. A uniform, it appeared, as there were others with similar coloring, but he seemed to hold himself in a different manner. Shoulders squared and head held up high—a head that did not include a hat, she noted—and an air about him that spoke of probable authority. Alright, so she definitely paused for the right person, considering that if she ignored someone who appeared to have some authority she likely would have gotten in some amount of trouble for it.
Then again, it wasn’t like she was from around there—could she really get in trouble for such a thing? Most likely at the same, as she was on their land even if she was not a citizen, which probably meant that she was still underneath their laws. Not that all worlds or countries had the same laws or the same system of such, but over time she had simply come to assume it.
When the young man began to speak and then paused she tilted her head to the side, wondering what he wanted to say to her. There was something about him that held a familiar air for some reason, though she couldn’t figure out why in the world it would be that way. Surely if Naminé had seen this person elsewhere before she would remember him, because she almost always remembered a face when she saw one. Then again it seemed as if they had never spoken before…
Faces were what she remembered—people. Really the blonde was just in the habit of remembering nearly everyone she came across, for no real reason other than just in case the information came in handy at some point. Plus it never really felt right, to forget about someone, though she had no time to linger on those thoughts as she considered his question. Apparently she was more conspicuous than she originally thought, if he was picking up on such a thing, unless there was another explanation for his observation.
”I haven’t come from nearby, so I am a little lost…”
An innocent enough statement, and it wasn’t a lie in the least. Not yet did she really feel lost, considering that she had found what appeared to be a relatively large city, but it wasn’t like she knew the name of it, or anything about it. And she supposed, in hindsight, that it appeared to be odd, the fact that she had come from apparently far away through a desert to come to this place. It wasn’t like she was used to the climate in the least, though she hoped that wasn’t evident through her actions.
