Her eyes locked on his, and for a moment the violet was eaten away by a soft, dark gray. "W-we were... She was sick. They're all sick, everyone's sick, and the man, the man with the mask, he said we had to stay in the house..."
She sniffled, tears welling up in her eyes, and wrapped her arms around her knees tightly. "I just want my mama," she wailed plaintively.
Idara, perhaps a little slow on the uptake, move cautiously forward to kneel beside Aspen, one hand out to the bounty hunter--girl--whatever. "Hey, easy," she murmured. "We...we wanna help you, okay?"
Mask.
Slowly, Idara got to her feet and lowered her voice so hopefully only Aspen would hear: "Before there was even a school here, this town was tiny. Some records say a plague hit almost four hundred years ago..."