dreamwalking.

Jenny

Tue 02:31AM EST
The blood of innocence leaves no stain;

The haunted, haunting street runaway (because she couldn't be anything else, could she?) is asleep on her feet. Her sore, fleet feet; her feet that run before the wind. The haunting, haunted girl with hair so matted and tangled that they form a kind of urban primitive bird's nest dread-lock (locked away beneath the filth, the city stench, the city sleeps...) mess. But as said before, she's asleep on her feet, is Jenny; her fair cheek pressed against the street lamp and her eyes shuttered closed, pale tipped lashes sweeping across her dirt smudged cheek bones. Her arms are limp, circled around the lamp light, and her body is boneless, graceful, poised.

And it's the grace that will attract the vultures.

Jenny's tired. And her stomach growls while she dreams dreams that are not dreams.

Memories.
(...the blood of innocence leaves no stain.)


Eyes Like Flint

Tue 02:44AM EST
In the name of the Fenris Wolf, the god Forseti, and the Spirit of Gaia, I find you guilty of...
BANG.

The sound of distant gunfire: a shot heard not around the world, and barely around the block. North Jersey has many faces. This particular one he haunts tonight is smudged, dirty, fallen, ragged. No one cares if another life gutters out. No one cares if another innocent falls.

(...or not.)

Five minutes later one lone man comes striding down the street, zipping up a light jacket. Neither slow nor fast, he sets a deliberate, easy pace; his hands are in his pockets, and he pauses to read a poster advertising some punk rock band or other up on the wall. It's raining tonight, but only slightly. The hood of his jacket is turned up.

Pause at an empty intersection until the light changes: WALK. Cross, move past the bum sleeping in the doorway, the prostitute hawking her wares on the opposite streetcorner. Forseti: god of justice, not mercy. And on past the girl, who might be frail under a coating of grime and madness -

- stop. Turn around. He peers at her for a moment, and then reaches out to prod her shoulder.


Jenny

Tue 02:59AM EST
The ghost of a shadow flickers across her body. His fingers come in contact with (smell that? ripe.) bone. The girl, naturally slender, is too thin now; each rib would play a mourning song on the eye were they visible. He touches bone, and no reaction from the weary body is drawn. Then again, look closely. Her eyes are open now. Quietly opaque. A shudder works its way under her skin, so complete, so complete in horror, that it's almost like she's just some innocent mortal girl, and she just saw a few choice scenes from the Forseti's life. But, her eyes are open now, and Jenny breathes quietly, watches through a glancing dark, liquid gaze, and then her wide gaze darts to the street. She realizes that it's dark, and lurches backward, tripping nimbly over cracks, arms hugging close to herself, and, again, a quiet horror in her glance. He felt first moonrise, for a moment. He touched a scrawny, brittle shoulder, and he almost saw...

"Don't."
[Howl.]


Eyes Like Flint

Tue 03:16AM EST
When he sees the eyes open, when he sees the shudder of horror, Santiago pulls back. Straight black eyebrows draw together into a frown. He's a tall man, but lean, utterly devoid of excess flesh. Taut skin over sinewy muscle over resilient bone. His hands smell faintly of economy soap, clean and unperfumed, but that's only because he's just washed them clean of the stink of gunpowder, and the lingering scent of blood that leaks into the air.

He observes the girl for a moment, black eyes intense and bright, but revealing little. Nothing. "You shouldn't sleep out here, kid." No accent to match the swarthy skin, the high broad cheekbones and open rounded brow, that almost certainly spoke of hispanic heritage. "It's not a good part of town."


Jenny

Tue 03:28AM EST
Achingly,
shy.

Jenny straightens her frail shoulders (...this body won’t stop dying...) and rubs her palms against her thighs. For long moments she regards the stranger (...they’re all so strange...) without blinking. Then her brimming glance shiver away, to the shadows, skittish, tense, expectant, the beating of butterfly wings beating expectantly within empty stomachs, growl. Narrow, intense. Flicker back.

Achingly,
shy.

It takes her an age to force herself to speak. And then it isn’t the half-helpless half-stating-the-obvious don’t. Just: quiet. Faint. Breath of air, cold in the rain-drenched night. Jenny shivers, again. “...No?” Beat. “Why not?This... this is ... I should ...” Pause, again. Her eyelashes drift downward, as if the energy to keep them lifted was too much.

Even quieter, half-a-whisper: “Should I leave?”
Your place.


Eyes Like Flint

Tue 03:37AM EST
It takes an age for her to speak, but Santiago has something rare to the Get, and infinitely precious(deadly): patience. Besides, the mark is downed, the hunt finished. His blood ran slower now, the thirst of vengeance and justice slaked, if only for a night. An hour.

"Because this place isn't safe for a girl on her own." He's staring at her, inquisitive, though that could easily be mistaken for rudeness. She doesn't look like a halfwit - but what a question to ask. A pause. He reaches up and flips the hood down. Light illuminates his face. His hair is short and black, roman-cut close to his head. "Do you have somewhere you can go?"


Jenny

Tue 03:55AM EST
Jenny doesn’t lie. (Nor does she understand lies. Not really.) And she either doesn’t know how to answer that question or doesn’t understand it. The teenager cants her head, a slow, watchful movement somehow intrinsically delicate, light. And she says nothing at all. Merely watches [...and all the light on the street catches in her dark, sweet as honey gaze...] the stranger with a hard-to-decipher expression. Eloquence denied.

Steady. as. a. heart. beat.
ticking. out. its. final.
hours.


Eyes Like Flint

Tue 04:06AM EST
A slow, low breath out: a hint of frustration perhaps, or only weariness. Santiago is old for a Cliath; he changed a full decade after his contemporaries did. Some nights (some people, some eyes looking him in the face) reminded him of that. Of his age, his path, the compassion for the sinners that he left behind so that his compassion, if that is what it is, for the sinned against could be satisfied.

A moment passes and then he unzips his coat in the drizzling rain. Strange; no shirt beneath, though the guns, at least, are gone. Replacing them, sinuous black tattoos crawling the ladder of his ribcage faintly visible beneath a sheet of muscle tough and lean as seal-sinew. The tattoos curve up his sides, over his shoulders, and do not quite meet behind his neck.

"Family? Friends?" He holds the coat out to her if she takes it. "A home?"


Jenny

Tue 04:19AM EST
Jenny lowers her head, without moving her eyes. (No, they watch Santiago... The man stripping his coat in the drizzling rain.) Water droplets fringe her eyelashes; become clear jewels, an illusion of tears. Her fingers tremble faintly as they travel up her throat (the hunted, quiet pulse) to her forehead. Under the heavy, matting shag of hair. Fine? Nothing about her is fine. She’s absolutely nothing--just another street waif, another fading omen, another ghost out of her own time. Nothing about her is fine.

...She watches him distrustfully. After all, he’s a son of Adam. One of Adam’s boys. Automatically she reaches one slim, scratched hand out, palm upward, but as soon as he lets go of his coat she pulls her hand away, startled. Looks away, sharply.

Confused. Fog, fog--everywhere. Her throat works.
“-lost.”


Eyes Like Flint

Tue 04:24AM EST
He lets go. She pulls away like she'd been burnt. He reacts out of instinct, and a freezeframe video capture couldn't quite catch that fluidity of movement - the way his wrist bends, the way his hand simply dips like a swallow and catches hold of the coat again.

"Go on, take it." Holding it out another moment in case she wanted to try again, Santiago tips his head to the side. A few degrees, no more. "Where do you come from?" - and perhaps he's learned not to expect answers at this point.


Jenny

Tue 04:28AM EST
“Woods,” Jenny says, lashes lowered completely now; her gaze dips down to the wet, dank concrete and stays there. He knows somehow [...hue brushed in silver and grey, more dismal then the sky, then the indifferent stars above the storm clouds...] that woods she speaks about are gone.


Eyes Like Flint

Tue 04:41AM EST
And slowly, he draws the coat back to himself, slips into it. Raindusted shoulders smear water on the lining. The zipper comes up, and the traces of his odd markings are gone again.

A sense of helplessness. A weariness in his bones. Bloodstains never linger long on the skin, but they never go away in the mind. That's why his gifts of truth and justice worked, after all - because blood is indelible.

Deep breath - inhale the scents of the rainwashed city. Inhale the scent of a dreamsoaked sort of wyld -

blink.

His turn to recoil, an involuntary smooth step back as his head tilts the other way by the same slight degree. For a few breaths the tableau is still. Then, low: "I thought the Alfar were all gone."


Jenny

Tue 04:53AM EST

When he steps back Jenny stills. Her head lifts; first the liquid, dreaming eyes. Then the pale, rain-soaked lashes. Then the proud, pointed chin. Then the line of throat, deer-fine, deer-sweet. Then the stillness. Most hated by the dark, for her name is light. And it’s at this moment when she should understand, at very least; when she should show pride, when she should be composed, be poised, be what she is, or what she thinks she is, her knees decide to buckle, and she sinks, instead of standing tall, to her knees, and the cold, hard concrete, her palms smacking against the ground, painful, wet, movie reeltime sound.

“...Don’t,” [Howl] she whispers.


Eyes Like Flint

Tue 05:05AM EST
And here, when he should chivalrously catch her, or at least help her to her feet, Santiago Eyes-Like-Flint simply watches, amazed or impassive or both, as she buckles to the ground.

Rain drizzles.
Silence drifts.

A distant car turns the corner; headlights wash across him and catch his attention. He turns and looks up, one hand rising to shield his eyes from the glare before the beams sweep past him. His head turns to watch the car pass. Then he looks down, puts a hand under the girl's elbow and, finally, helps her (pulls her) to her feet.

"I live in the woods. I know a man whose people trafficked with the Alfar in generations past. Do you want to come with me?"
...lead a horse to poison/water.


Uaghaihg

Sun 09:57PM EST
to ::E.L.F::: Jenny turns her face away; her dark and dreamless eyes roam the cold, sterile streets restlessly. Immortal creatures are not supposed to be aware of their mortality. They aren't supposed to feel a heart ticking in their chest. Her kind, her kind: they were supposed to be embodiments of heartlessness as often as they stirred the heart. Jenny doesn't pull away this time; marrow weary. (But it's strange, to touch her. There's something half wrong with that. Unjust.)

"To this man -" subliminal shiver under the fine skin " -or with you?"


::E.L.F::

Sun 10:03PM EST
to Uaghaihg: Once she's on her feet, his hand falls aside. There are two reasons for this, both equally valid. It feels half-wrong to touch her (because she is half-dream, and a dream should not be tangible). It's also against the code of the Fenrir to aid overmuch.

Pull your own weight or die. Keep up or die.

Quiet rain; quiet street. A gutter somewhere splashes softly, water cascading into sewer depths. The waterfall of the city, and this, the street, a canyon between skyscraper cliffs. "With me." Pause. "And to this man."


Uaghaihg

Sun 10:15PM EST
to ::E.L.F::: The ivory-pale (creature) girl (runaway teenager, nothing more, nothing less) hugs herself. Then there's another moment of utter stillness. Nothing normal is that still. The stillness is beyond animal.

"But not to this - man - tonight?"


::E.L.F::

Sun 10:22PM EST
to Uaghaihg: Just a flicker. Just a trace of irritation. Impatience. Santiago is quiet control; he's closer to man than wolf, and all a man has over a beast is his willpower.

"I'll take you where you want." Low and even. Black eyes like brands beneath the hood, and the rainslicked fabric. "You can stay with me a few days," keep up or die, "or I can take you to see Noah Sullivan of the Fianna tonight." Smooth shrug, and slight. "It's your choice."


Uaghaihg

Sun 10:25PM EST
to ::E.L.F::: Fianna. The word draws a flicker of curiosity. (And somewhere, somewhere, a star dies.) " ... okay." The shy teenager speaks, now; not the myth. "I'll follow you."


::E.L.F::

Sun 10:38PM EST
to Uaghaihg: And so it began (ended).

The lean swarthy Forseti nods: a mild incline of his head, his goateed chin coming into light with the gesture. Then his face is shadow again, the hood slicked with rain and streetlight, the eyes flashing bright as polished stones. One wonders if he ever dreams, and if he does, what dark and pitiless dreams they must be, full of fire and retribution and the endless, final winter.

In nomine patris.
In nomine Fenris.

He draws another long, even breath, as though to check (just one more time) that his senses had not deceived him the first time. The scent of fae, changeling-child; the scent of arcadia lost. What does a dream taste like? Then, "I parked this way. It's a bit of a walk." Feed. Clothe. Shelter. And pass her off, eventually. "But you'll manage."


Uaghaihg

Sun 10:53PM EST
to ::E.L.F::: The teenager shrugs.
And so it ends.

Begins.
Whatever.

Fair, pale; encrusted in grime and dirt and garbage with fingers bitten raw and scabbed lips and other repulsive cammoflauge the changeling-child follows Eyes Like Flint. Santiago. Without another word.

But, in the shadows, at least, dark, lambent-eyed hounds invisible to the eye howl, robbed of their prey, and of their chase. At least for now.

The girl keeps up, but stays behind.
Caught between worlds.
[...home is the woods...]

As always.