cityofhex | WEEK 03

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WEEK 03

Preparation for the holidays continues at a steady - if slow - pace. Almost all traces of Halloween are gone by now, except for a few rotting pumpkins shoved into compost heaps, but with over a month until Christmas and the Day of Lights, nobody is yet in a hurry. Still, a few early holiday shoppers are out and about, usually in pairs if they aren't families with children, happily chattering about gift plans.

Weather forecast: The rain has passed, and days grow clear again for this week. Hex’s weather has been getting colder, and people are bundling up a bit more - even those who don’t need to, just in an effort to fit in. Hats and gloves are being prominently displayed in stores, even if they’re not strictly needed yet.

Moon phase: The moon is full on Monday the fourteenth, reaching peak fullness over the city at about 2AM. Afterwards, it begins to wane.

More employment: More decorations for the Day of Lights are going up, with some stronger-backed labor being recruited for the stockrooms in preparation for the incoming holiday rush. No one seems concerned about work history, a boon for people without a human paper trail. The park lights aren't finished yet, either, though things are on schedule to open next week.

Hitting the books: To prepare for the holidays, and raise funds for their community party, the library near the university is selling some of its used books. Most of them are fine, if an odd selection - you might find a cookbook, or you might find a book of poetry. There’s something weird about the books, though - a few of them smell faintly of mint. Watching over all of this is a sharp-eyed librarian. Don’t take a book without paying, or she’ll get up from her desk and try to block the door. She keeps having to chase away teenagers with dirty hands, too.

Bake sale: Some of the local schools are starting to take up donations for their holiday parties. One in particular in the residential district is holding a bake sale in front of the elementary school for an hour each day after classes let out. If you can fight through the sea of small children hoping someone will buy them something, you’ll find a variety of brownies, cookies, and tiny cakes. Many of them are lopsided, but a few look put together by expert hands. They cost more, of course, but it’s all for a good cause. A grouchy mother can be found near the cash box at all times, making sure no one steals the money.

Whoo are you?: Malin will notice that owls seem to be happening at her; they're hard to see, just shapes against the lesser-dark of the night sky, but they definitely seem to be watching her. They particularly seem to gather when she feeds. If she doesn't confront them, this will increase slowly but measurably throughout the week.

Time waits for no one: An old clock tower in the part of downtown leading into the Sixth has been restored to functionality... Mostly. The belltower stands empty, though there's a visible place where a bell should be hung, several stories above the floor. Ryoji might find the scene familiar. On Wednesday evening, there is some kind of reopening gathering at the church below it; the brief service and meet-and-greet is not particularly unusual, save that the young Acolyte handing out papers in the entry won't step into the congregation hall itself.

Like a dog with a bad...: In the Sixth, the construction is ongoing, still with the same handful of men, who rotate through almost like randomly generated NPCs. Lurking around outside is a thickly built man, who watches the whole goings-on with suspicion; strangely, he seems to be watching it mostly through the camera on his phone. On Friday morning, though it shouldn't be cold enough for frost, three of the strangely similar men slip on patches of ice and fall behind a half-finished wall... Where they vanish completely. They reappear after lunch, if it's even the same men, with no signs of injury. That afternoon, the man with his phone looks smug.

A touch of the season: And speaking of ice, passage into many of the city's Avernian Gates is blocked this week by a thick frost that seals the entries shut. An Unsettling Youth and his girlfriend can occasionally be seen investigating them; though they're constantly together, they don't seem much inclined to talk to each other. Occasionally, she'll drape her arm over his shoulders and giggle, while he looks confused; other times, she seems almost to shy away from him.

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She drops by - not every day, but every other day, not always in the evening, but at some point during the night. It all depends on how hungry she is and how well the night goes. She's been especially paranoid ever since he showed her the picture, and now with the owls...

Each time, she will come in quickly, fidgeting a bit, only slowly getting used to being inside a regular house again, not just like a thief in the night but invited, like someone coming over for fika. There's no coffee or cookies, obviously, but going by the feeling.

She turns down the books, explaining that she would have nowhere to put them. And for the first few night, she won't react to his offer of staying at all, unsure how she would properly react and unsure of his intentions, unsure if it would be safer or more dangerous than what she is doing now, and perhaps a bit lulled by the feeling of ...being human, that being in this house, strange as some of it is, has brought on.

Finally, she decides to confront him about it, and when he asks again, she replies:

"Why are you offering?"

It's often enough, considering he expected far fewer visits for all he waits for her for a little every night, that he starts to feel a little more positive about the idea that she might actually be a friend. Who else would put up with the way he makes them feel so much? Some nights, if it's later than others, he takes longer to get to the door, but then, surely he must be sleeping, right? (Only not at all. There is only one open room with a bed in it, and it is completely untouched. There's one bedroom in the far back with the door firmly shut, though, and who knows what's actually in there?)

The inside of the house is weirdly put together, anyway. The rooms look like they were put together out of used furniture and makeshift shelving (cinder blocks and boards, anyone?) but in such a way that they mimic something out of a magazine. Corwin, after all, isn't fully a person. Right now, he's just trying to look like he is. The odd effect is almost ruined, though, because most of it is either covered with books and magazines and open notebooks with Corwin's messy handwriting all over it... or bits and pieces of what are obviously experiments or lab equipment or both. It might convey the idea of a mad scientist, but always Corwin hurries to clear off places for Malin to sit, should she want to, and if she can't take the books, she's welcome to sit and read if she would rather do that than talk or listen to him ramble about those experiments. That, by the way, is where the alchemical compounds smell came from... he has a lot of that bubbling around in the kitchen and back den.

Lucky for her, too, the windows all have heavy curtains, so it's unlikely anyone will glimpse her through them.

When she finally addresses his offer, he blinks at her. "If people are taking pictures of you, they might want to hurt you," he says, earnestly. "I don't want you to be hurt." The phrase "you're my friend" wants to come out, but he's not quite bold enough to claim it to her face yet.

"I know ways to stay safe during the day."

That burn blood, and she's using so much discipline anyway these days... if she had a better place to sleep than a random patch of ground, she would probably have to feed less. Which in turn may attract less owls to her. Which in turn ...thinking about it, she's gotten a idea of what kind of lack of willpower the owls could possibly be looking for while she's feeding, and it's made her do her best to never get too hungry. What if they're just waiting for her to frenzy? It doesn't quite make sense, but it's the best guess that she has at the moment.

"And..." She's not sure how to say this. Uneasy feeling or not, she has come to quite like him, but she's not sure if that includes her trusting him enough to sleep around him.

He understands, he honestly does. It's common, after all, for people not to trust him. So he offers, "I work until afternoon, and then I'm out most of the rest of the day, watching people and running errands and things. I won't be here for most of the time you'd want to sleep. You can come in at dawn, I can put in a little cat door for your fox form since I'll be gone off to work before then, and I'll be home maybe two in the afternoon. That's a lot of sleep. Or I can just not come home until later, whenever you want me to."

He truly wants to help, can you tell, Malin?

"No, it's..."

He's her friend, and not human besides in a way that very likely rules out blood bonds - she is fairly sure that he doesn't even eat. And even if he was. She wouldn't want to lose a friend to that.

But as much as she finds herself trusting that he means well, at least right now, at least up until now, that doesn't have to mean much in the long run. She is fairly sure that Lars meant well, too, in a very roundabout way. And the Caitiff girl whom she stayed with for a few nights before he found her, who almost got them both killed by getting back in touch with her family that considered vampires something that needed to be put down.

And she doesn't know if she can and wants to explain just how vulnerable she is during the day. But then, she once read in a book that they had to read for class, sometimes it is more dangerous to leave your loved ones in the dark because they might cause harm by accident.

Does that apply to Corwin?

She curls up on her chair, her tail twitching nervously, and finally offers: "It's not about you." She doesn't want to think that he as a person is the problem here, especially with how... well, off-putting his aura is. He probably gets that enough. "It's just a huge risk to take."

"A risk for which one of us?" Corwin asks. He needs that clarification before he can know how to properly argue against it-- or if he even should. If staying with him is a risk to her, he certainly doesn't want her to take it if she doesn't have to. But he can't see how it possibly could be a risk for her, that's the whole point of the offer, because he can only see how it would be safer for her than staying out all day, alone.

"I would need a room that I can lock from the inside."

That's easier to state than to explain why, or why it is such a risk, but ...it's dangerous. It's foolish. But she feels like she owes him an answer. Wants to answer. And if she keeps it a bit vague, maybe it will not be that bad.

"I'm a lot more vulnerable during the day than during the night, so for anyone to know where I am during that time..." Anyone whose loyalty she hasn't made certain. Or anyone whose knowledge of her whereabouts she can't help, but that's still dangerous. Just something that she couldn't help for the longest time. "I haven't known you for very long, and I can't enforce your loyalty." At least she's fairly sure that he can't be blood bonded, and she very much wouldn't want to, either.

For more reasons than that she likes having him as this... friend? Maybe. But also because she still feels really uneasy about blood bonding in general.

That seems like a perfectly reasonable request when she doesn't know him that well and he has that aura of creepiness, and for all he knows vampires are really paranoid anyway, and all he wants is for her to be safe and comfortable anyway, so he nods. "The guest room does have a lock on it. Both bedrooms do, really, but I don't use that one much." He does in fact keep his personal bedroom locked, since... it's not really a "bedroom" per se. "I can give you the key, so you won't think I might use it or anyone else could get it."

Well, vampires are really paranoid anyway, especially when it comes to their havens, so Corwin's estimate is pretty well rounded, really.

"I can look at it."

She's still not sure, and honestly ...she trusts Corwin more than anyone else, though that really doesn't mean much. But she trusts him enough to at least consider this. Still, he's probably capable of breaking down the door, so at least for the first couple of nights, she might want to push something in front of it to secure it further.

"There is only one key?"

"That I know of." He pauses to think. "I'll have to find it. It's buried in a drawer in the kitchen, I think." He is, in fact, capable of breaking down the door-- but then he'd have to pay the landlord for it, and who would want to go through that kind of hassle? "Does that mean you'll stay?"

"I'll look at the room first."

That is a 'most likely, yes', though. There are reasons for and reasons against it, and only some of them area rational. There is also the odd unrest that settles on her when she's around Corwin, the feeling of being on edge, and warring with it the feeling that he's ...a friend. Or something closer to it than she's known in a very long time, at least. What does being friends even entail?

You're asking the wrong person, if you're asking. Corwin hasn't had many experiences with actual friends. But he's willing to give it a try. He picks himself up from his armchair, beckoning for her to follow him down the hall. "This way, this way, I'll show it to you."

It isn't far. Past the den, around the corner, and there's the single open bedroom right there, door ajar. This one looks a little nicer than the rest of the house, with an only slightly threadbare quilt on the bed and a dresser painted carefully white. It's as if he's kept it in constant readiness in the hopes of someday, maybe, having a guest for the night-and-or-day. There is a window, but like the rest its curtains are heavy and drawn tight against outsiders. The window, if peeked through, opens onto the tiny snow-dotted backyard, neatly fenced in and mostly bare except for a few more pieces of lab equipment and a picnic table.

They can try to figure it out together. So far, they're doing fairly well, at least.

Once in the room, she'll eye the curtains critically, and wander over to poke at them with a hand - her sleeves are still covering all of them, but the motion makes it very clear that the fingers underneath aren't quite human. Normal human fingers aren't that long and pointy.

"Are they black-out curtains?" Even then, sun might filter in through cracks... she should probably just pull a blanket over herself and perhaps sleep behind or under the bed. Just to be safe.

She's not really used to sleeping in rooms any more, but she has slept under much worse conditions when she was still in Copenhagen. Before meeting Lars she'd alternated between squatting or just finding a tucked away corner. And even after meeting Lars she'd returned to that sometimes, unable to give up on her relative freedom ...the one upside of living in Lise's house had been that she'd been so deep down in the basement that sunlight wasn't a concern.

"Oh-- no, they aren't, I didn't even know that was a thing. I'll see if I can find some after work today, if that's what you need," Corwin says immediately, thoughtful. He notes the fingers, but honestly, given how much of her is so very not human looking, he's not surprised and takes it in stride. The curtains themselves, while not blackout specifically, are very thick and heavy, so they block light fairly well-- just not in the cracks. "I can pin them shut maybe, if that would help. Or hang a blanket?"

"I can sleep under the bed."

Or something like that. Somewhere where she can be absolutely sure that no sunlight can hit her.

Really, she's slept in a lot worse places than on a rug under a bed. ...Though, she realizes, she might not fit.

She'll very likely not fit, not with her wings (and to be fair she got the idea from something that she did back when she still lived in her parents' place, and she was a good deal smaller than just because she wasn't fully grown yet). She looks around the room, trying to see if there is an alternative.

"...We could shove the wardrobe in front of the window." It should be big enough to block it completely.

"Of course, whatever it takes to make you feel more comfortable and be safer." Corwin is just pleased and relieved she seems to be taking this seriously. "Do you need me to move it?" He doesn't know if vampires have more strength than normal people, or not, but he knows he does-- albeit in short bursts, but still. More than enough to move a dresser. "We can hang a blanket, then move the dresser, it's not quite tall enough to block the whole window, but it will keep a blanket and the curtains both closed and keep any light out."

She nods slowly at all of his suggestions.

"We can move the furniture together." She has no supernatural strength, but she can still pull some weight, and doing this together will be easier either way. Being able to lift more corners and such.

"All right! Let me get a blanket for you." He gives her a bright smile, relieved and happy and quite possibly taking more joy out of this than would be remotely normal if he were human, and bustles off to the linen cabinet to find something suitably heavy, for her.

She waits in the room, a bit awkwardly, and just-

She's really doing this, isn't she? Is it a good idea? She's putting a lot of trust in Corwin here. More than she thinks she has in her. But anything else isn't a solution in the long run, either.

No. She has to try this. She'll just have to get out during the nights - as much as she likes being around Corwin for the factor of having someone to talk to and having someone to look like herself around to and someone to cautiously lower her shields around and... well, someone like a friend. As much as she likes it (as much as she likes that he seems to be so excited about all of this) she is well aware that he's putting her on edge, and she just can't risk frenzying because she keeps exposing herself to him too much.

He comes bustling back in a moment later, and goes right to the window with a thick, heavy blanket, talking as he tucks it up over the curtain rod with clothespins. Yes, he has clothespins. "I have a bunch of blankets like this, mostly they come from the trash, but you know people throw things out that are still perfectly good, you know? They just need a good washing, and maybe to have part of them cut away. I wouldn't put this on a bed, but it's fine for getting cold on the couch-- or covering up a window!"

She's probably slept in worse, really, at one point while she lived on the street.

So she just nods and helps him put them up. "Do you pick everything you can out of the trash?"

"Not everything, but a lot of things," he admits. "If you aren't too picky about the way things look, it's a lot cheaper, and it lets me save money for cat food and materials for my experiments." Yes, cat food. Surely she's seen the bowl he leaves out, by now. That isn't even the only one. "And, well, rent."

She has, and it made her mildly curious. "Why the cat food? I've never seen a cat around here."

Really, if anything they seem to shun the place.

"There's one who's come by when I'm not home," Corwin says with a shrug, putting the last clothespin in place. "And I leave some at work. They won't come near me, but I still feel better making sure they get something healthy to eat after I've gone again."

She nods. It's a bit strange to her, but fair enough. Everyone needs hobbies.

...Speaking of which, she should really pick up something to do that is not survival now that she has a place to stay for the day and settled into a routine for feeding.

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WEEK 03

Re: OTA

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...days not nights lmao

I didn't even notice, haha XD

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yikes, missed this one in my last round, sorry about that!

np!

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