Liz carefully surveyed her reflection in the mirror, it wasn’t often that she got a chance to prepare for a first contact. Normally they stumbled into other groups without a lot of warning, and she’d gotten tired of playing ‘ambassador’ in her traveling leathers.

“Yellow really isn’t your color.”

She turned to find Will sprawled on what was left of the bed, playing with what looked like an old cat-toy. Where ‘play’ was a half-step down from ‘kill lovingly’. She’d assumed the dog had gone off with the rest of the group to scavenge houses, but apparently her luck was running thin.

“It’s not yellow, it’s goldenrod.” And still in decent shape, which was amazing considering how long it had been hanging abandoned in the closet. She tugged experimentally on one of the seams, but the stitching held firm.

“Fine then,” Will sniffed, “‘goldenrod’ really isn’t your color.”

“Oh fuck off.” She threw one of the deteriorating shoes at him, which exploded in a puff of dust as he batted it out of the air. “Seriously, go help Mika or Danny. Shoo!”

“Shoe!” Will agreed amiably, gnawing happily on well-aged leather. When she threw the other half of the pair at his head he laughed around the mouthful of cow, but scrambled down off the bed to go find Danny.

Liz counted to twenty to make sure he had left, then went looking for accessories for the dress. This time she was going to make sure they came out on top of the negotiations. Positive visualization, that was the key.

And yellow was too her color, dammit.