>>6071531>>6071534>>6071568>>6071682>>6071780>>6071828You kept your guard up as a small swarm of people approached you.
Most of them were older women, you noticed, with one of them even being the questionable character you'd heard accusing you of promoting a circus earlier. Whether she was repeating such an accusation to your face escaped you as everyone began to talk at once.
It took you surrendering your posture and clearing your throat to get everyone to quiet down. "Ladies and gentleman, please, I can't hear any of you through this mess. I haven't an inkling of how y'all're going to hear what I have to say this way."
You slowly began to return your hands to your knees. Once the cacophony had quieted somewhat, a teenage girl led the charge by unleashing a horde of gossipy questions upon you at her first opportunity.
Was it true that you'd been branded a criminal but hours before? Did you know that the birds were going to attack in advance? Were you some kind of animal wizard? How come you'd never been to church yet took to the company of these demons so easily?
You answered all of these with obvious sarcasm or nothing at all. Despite your young age, you had the distinct feeling that you were far too old for this shit. It took an intervention from your bovine bodyguard to ward off the girl, with her attempt at testing whether your gauze was real or tissue paper earning the ire of the sheep and granting the girl a new bruise to nurse off.
Unfortunately for you, many of the other questions were of a similar tone. In fact, one of the older ladies had actually gotten offended that the teenager had "stolen" some of her ideas and stormed off earlier on. It took an audible protest for you to ward off a bunch of the stupider stuff... leaving you with nobody but an aspiring journalist to talk to.
His face was visibly nervous, littered with uncertainty and scant drops of sweat. The poor kid kept looking at you, then your companion, then at your trunk, then at you again. It took a few minutes of stuttering for the guy to start saying anything of substance.
"S-sir, a-ah'm here r-representin' t-the W-Weekly Shasta C-Courier..." ...he shuffled his notes, seemingly having started reading from the wrong page... "...w-was sent here b-bah mah boss, a-ah jus' arrived t-this evenin'. A-ah was... a-ah was wonderin' if y-you could answer a f-few queschuns?" He finally made eye contact.
