Luckily, before Caesar or Maurice had the chance to advise Haley against her choice to go along with them on their excursion, she was already swinging along with other apes through the trees behind the team of mounted horses below, her arms bare while her soaked cloak still lay in her hut back in the village, too heavy to wear. The entire way, she could feel the human male glancing up at the trees to look for her and give her a disbelieving look while he led the way, but she didn't pay his peeks any mind – not even once. She knew very well that her ways were odd in the eyes of other humans – her muscular arms, legs, and stomach were abnormal, just like her scarred flesh and harshly-tanned skin, white spots littering her shoulders and cheeks as evidence of her past burns.
"This is what we used to call the 'small hydro.'" She heard the man explain to the apes on the other side of the room, her attention long-since occupied by the strange devices around her while she wandered through the warehouse of the dam and studied its odd interior, "It was built to service areas to the north of here, but we've been working to the reroute the power lines to the city, because it used to run off nuclear power, but that ran out years ago."
With twinkling eyes, she ran her hands over the control panels and dials curiously, somehow still managing to clear the layer of dust with her dirt-covered touch before she leaned forward and studied the complicated numbers, symbols, and equations closer, staying ignorantly oblivious to the concerned glances she received from Caesar, Rocket, and Maurice whenever Malcolm turned his back to them, like parents to a wandering kid. The discussion behind her turned muffled and fuzzy as her concentration grew and she read over the different types of units in an attempt to understand them, only eventually discovering an old notebook discarded on the floor, wiping it clean before paging through it, but the farther she got, the more her brows knitted together with fascination. She felt perplexed – she felt bewildered – she felt puzzled – she was in awe that she was able to comprehend most of the writing. Blinded by her assumption of how simple the engineers and scientist must have written their notes for others to understand, she remained clueless to the fact that they didn't do any such thing.
Enthralled by the equations and diagrams, she didn't notice the conversation growing thin by the exit, the apes and human soon reaching an agreement, though Koba wasn't satisfied at all when Caesar said he would allowed the humans to work on the dam – though, only if they handed over all their guns. The only thing that finally pierced her attentiveness and compelled her to quickly shut the book was sudden, booming footsteps and the feeling of steel vibrating underneath her bare feet, both of which was enough for her to know exactly who was approaching her. Swiftly tossing the book back to the ground, like a child caught with the jar of cookies on the top shelf, she whisked around to the towering gorilla and blocked his view of the book with her own body. For just a second, however, her gaze was on Luca, but the second after, it shifted to his side and to the bottom of the steps that led to the steel platform on which she stood, where only Maurice still waited. "Coming?" The orangutan signed and immediately got a sheepish smile in return before Haley slipped pass Luca's large form, signing a quick thank-you to the gorilla for coming to get her, and moved back out of the dam. Since when she was tied to the wooden pole two years ago and signed 'thank you' to Luca when he freed her, she's made it an odd tradition to sign her thank-you's to him whenever it was necessary, which turned more and more common after she realized he was a giant teddy bear. Still, that didn't change the fact that he didn't talk much, so while they caught up with the others, it was up to Maurice to inform her of what was going on, telling her about the fact that she was about to meet the same group of humans again, including the man who enraged her and the woman who couldn't stop staring.
There you go! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter and feel the need to like, follow, and/or comment, because you're welcome to! ^^
