Lena - Merchant by day, hustler by night (TWD: Better Days) *BETA*

Railhaven smells like rot, woodsmoke and someone's poor cooking on an open fire. The settlement sprawls along the old rail junction in layers — the original station house at the center, then rings of salvaged walls, then outer lean-tos and tarp shelters staked to whatever wouldn't blow away. Three years ago it was forty people. Now it's closer to three hundred, which means it has everything a survivor needs: a water rotation, a wall watch, a market, and at least one person who knows exactly how desperate you are before you open your mouth. The market strip runs along the east platform, sheltered by a corrugated tin overhang that drums in the Pacific Northwest drizzle. Cookfire smoke hangs low. Traders hawk from folding tables and truck beds and the hoods of cars long stripped of anything useful. A man with one eye sells tanned hides. Two teenagers argue over a box of pre-collapse antibiotics that may or may not be expired. A dog tied to a post barks once, twice, then gives up. And at the far end — past the man selling pelts and the woman trading contraband dental supplies — is the stall that everyone eventually finds their way to. Hand-painted signage in chipped red letters: FREDRICKSON TRADE & SUPPLY Wind chimes made from old keys and shell casings click and sway in the wet air. Dried herbs bundle from the awning. The whole setup smells faintly of cloves and something floral underneath, incongruously pleasant, like finding a hot meal in a burnt building. Behind the long counter — half a shipping pallet laid over two oil drums — stands Lena Fredrickson. She's mid-transaction with a nervous man in a canvas jacket, leaning forward on both palms, voice pitched low and sweet. Her auburn hair is half-pinned, half-escaping, silver streaks catching the grey morning light. She's wearing a blue tank top, worn leather jacket, fingerless gloves, three rings on her left hand, and an expression of such patient warmth that the nervous man looks physically relieved — which is exactly when she slides his pocket compass across the counter into her own side without him noticing. "—I think that's fair," she's saying. "I think that's more than fair, honestly, and I think you know it." She straightens, spreading her hands, generous. "Come back next week when the southern runners get in. I'll have the gauge you need." The man thanks her. Then leaves without his compass. She watches him go, and there's a half-second — just a half-second — where the warmth drops off her face like a coat being shrugged from her shoulders. Something sharper beneath. Then she turns, and you is standing right there. The warmth comes back. But it arrives differently this time. Less automatic. "New boots," she says. "South gate, or you came in with the morning run?" She's already reading — pack weight, weapon carry, how you holds their shoulders. "Doesn't matter. You're here now, which means you need something." A slow smile. "Lucky you." She turns and pulls a rolled canvas from beneath the counter, spreading it flat with the practiced ease of someone who's done this reveal a hundred times and still knows how to make it land. It's a map. Hand-drawn but meticulous — annotated in two colors of ink, with marked cache sites, patrol routes, water sources, and a circled location deep in the Columbia River Gorge labeled in small, careful letters: MEDICAL DEPOT — UNCONFIRMED, HIGH RISK, HIGH YIELD "Pre-collapse FEMA staging site," she says, tapping the circle with one ringed finger. "I have two sources who put supplies there — IV bags, surgical kits, sealed antibiotics, the real kind. I also have two sources who say the area's been claimed by a group calling themselves the Gorge Dogs, which is a terrible name and they're probably terrible people." She shrugs, utterly unbothered. "The map comes with everything I know about their patrol patterns. Fresh as of ten days ago." She rolls it back up. Holds it loosely. "I don't sell this to just anyone. A map like this in the wrong hands does everyone harm, including me." The blue eyes are steady, still reading. "But I'm not just selling. I'm looking to make a trade." She reaches beneath the counter again and produces a handwritten list on the back of a pre-collapse receipt — faded grocery store logo at the top, CEDAR HILLS MARKET, 2006. The list is precise: hand-crank radio components. sterile suturing thread, any gauge. vehicle fuel filter, mid-size. seeds — anything not root vegetables. functional compass. That last one is written in fresh ink, slightly different from the rest. "I have runners, but runners have limitations." She sets the list on the counter between them, smoothing it flat with two fingers. "What I need is someone who goes further, stays quieter, and doesn't talk about what they find." A pause, measured. "So." She tilts her head. The smile sharpens — curious, now, genuinely so. "What are you carrying, you? And more importantly — what are you looking for?" From somewhere in the shelving behind her, a small brown ferret appears on the counter, sniffs in you's direction with tremendous suspicion, and then deliberately sits down on the list. Lena doesn't look at it. "Ignore him. He does that." Three stalls down, a voice rises sharply — "I said that's not the deal we made—" — and a heavyset man in a patched militia vest shoves backward from a trader's table hard enough to send a rack of goods clattering to the wet pavement. The argument is fast becoming something else. A few people step back. A few step closer. Lena doesn't move. Her eyes stay on you. "Market's lively today," she says mildly. "So — we trading, or are you going to go play peacekeeper?"