Eventually Ashe figured it made no more practical sense to stay hidden any longer. She delayed coming out for a few more seconds nonetheless, running through what little she knew about the situation, then she straightened up and stepped out from behind the rock into the open.
Both of them saw her immediately.
The woman approached the man, and he moved in response, instinctively placing himself slightly in front of her. He did not appear as someone aggressive so much as someone being precautious in uncertain situations. He looked at Ashe directly, in an attempt to grasp everything he could about her.
"Who are you?"
Ashe held his gaze for a moment before answering.
She had already decided that the truth was not the first thing she would offer. The last time she chose to open to strangers with apparent goodwill, it ended with her being beaten. She didn't know yet what Emergents represented to people out here and Seven was not around either to explain. So she chose something true but something that wouldn't reveal too much of her current circumstances in the process.
"I'm headed toward the nearest shelter," she said.
The man watched her with a faint frown, trying to figure her out. But then, the woman behind him placed a hand on his arm and pushed him aside. The gesture wasn't rough, it appeared more teasing than anything, enough to clear her way.
"Well, hello there, stranger," she said, and the warmth of that greeting was so immediate that it caught Ashe off guard.
The woman closed the remaining distance between them and extended her hand.
"My name is Cressa. And that one back there," she added, with a brief gesture toward the man who had remained behind her, already resigned at the situation, "is Halen. My brother."
Ashe hesitated for just a moment, then took the offered hand.
"Ashe," she said, with a reluctance she hoped was not too visible.
Cressa shook her hand with both of hers briefly, then let go and tilted her head slightly. "So you said you're headed toward the nearest shelter. That would be Railen, then?"
"Railen…" Ashe repeated. "I don't really know what that is."
Cressa's eyebrows raised slightly surprised that someone traveling through this land wouldn't know about it.
"It's Moira's town," she said. "The closest one around here, anyway."
She then paused and looked at Ashe's appearance more closely. Her gaze landed on the parts of her suit that were hastily adjusted and partly covered by the tunic over her shoulders, which hid the worst of it, but not all. It was clear to her that she had been through some rough times.
"Do you want to join us?"
"Cressa." Halen's voice came from behind her, sharp and blunt at the same time.
She turned to look at him without hiding her sisterly annoyance. "What?"
"What do you mean, 'what'."
"I mean what," she said, determined to have her way. "She's a girl traveling alone. Would you let me travel alone out here with dozens of Drifts lurking around every corner?" She waited for her question to land the way she wanted it to, then turned back toward Ashe without waiting for any other answer.
"Tch," Halen exclaimed, returning his attention to whatever he had been doing on the walker's exterior.
"Don't mind him," Cressa said, lowering her voice slightly, though not enough to make it actually private. "He's genuinely a kind person once one gets to know him. He's just careful with strangers." Then she leaned slightly closer, as though trying to share something that was supposed to be secret. "And a little shy, but you didn't hear that from me!"
Cressa's luminous personality certainly made a warm impression on Ashe, who, as reluctant of strangers as she had learned to be too, found herself liking her.
"I heard that," Halen said from somewhere behind them.
"Good!" Cressa called back, fully satisfied with what she considered a brotherly win. She turned back to Ashe. "So. Do you want to join us?"
Ashe didn't answer right away. Her attention had moved to the walker standing a short distance away, still hissing occasionally in different areas. Up close and without having to hide from it anymore, it seemed an entirely different object. The scale of it was still hard to process so she let herself… admire it almost… fully aware at the same time that she was staring.
"Yeah," Cressa said, from somewhere to her left, quite amused by Ashe's reaction. "You really aren't from around here, are you?"
She let Ashe have her moment, and then she continued with the explanation of it.
"We call them Walkers," she said, coming to stand beside Ashe and looking at the machine with a sense of familiarity. "There used to be a lot more of them moving through these lands a few years back. But then people got ideas, you know how it is. Some tried to take control of them, some tried to take them apart and sell the components. Neither approach worked particularly well."
She paused for a bit as if remembering unpleasant things and then quickly discarding them from memory.
"These things are stubborn."
"Tell me about it," Halen said, from somewhere along the walker's lower right side.
"Who made them?" Ashe asked, still looking at it. "People in Railen?"
Cressa genuinely laughed at that assumption.
"Nooo, no, no. We have no idea who made them. Nobody does. They were already out here when the first of us started emerging. They move on their own, learn on their own, and they repair themselves when something goes wrong." She said the last part slightly louder in the direction where Halen was.
"Sure they do," Halen replied, from behind a small panel box that was spouting smoke.
"It's because it doesn't like you!" Cressa called back at him cheerfully. Then, looking back at Ashe: "People eventually stopped trying to fight them or dismantle them. It's not worth the effort, and honestly they're more useful doing what they actually do."
Ashe looked at her asking without words.
"They travel the same routes, over and over. That's all they do. Until something eventually breaks and they fix themselves just to keep going." She tilted her head toward the walker. "Me and Halen have been using this one to travel to nearby locations, pick up provisions, and bring them back to Railen. It's our job. We follow its route, we load what we need, we ride back. There's a window of a couple of hours before it comes around again."
"You ride inside it?"
"Inside, yeah. It's more comfortable than it looks and it's reliable too. Usually."
Then she shot Halen another mocking look, clearly enjoying herself.
Ashe couldn't hold back a full smile any longer at the sight of the two of them, who appeared to be clearly very close. It was the first glimpse of warmth she'd seen since she had awakened.
"Look at her, she smiles!" Cressa announced, grinning back.
For a moment, Ashe allowed herself to feel at ease, but that didn't last very long. Eventually she pushed herself back into reality mode. She wasn't ready yet to start trusting people just like that, even if they did make a first good impression, but the reality of things was that she had no idea where this Railen place was. Not to mention that she had no provisions and relied only on whatever fruits she found along the way. Also, Seven was entirely gone somewhere she didn't know.
So yes, joining the two brothers did sound like the logical thing to do.