Breaking and Entering (Aidan)

[Ana Sol Starris]

Summer 37th, 513AV Aidan's Residence Already Ana was out getting into trouble, or about to be, if she were to get caught performing said troubles. Thats why earlier in the day she had chosen to buy a sack, big enough to hold a few items, but small enough to not draw unwanted attention. It had been a random door of the Traveller's Row, a random victem, at a time when people had begun to clear from the halls and night would soon be upon the fortress city. She would be quick about this, with the sack tucked away in her pants and the neck of it just barely peeking out past her belt. Turning the knob and pushing the door open, Ana acted normal, who would suspect that this wasn't her room? Like a shadow she dissapeared inside, shutting the door behind herself, it was a little strange that it had been unlocked but she paid it no heed. Ana would scour the dark room for goods, and be out in a jiff, with none being the smarter. "Light would be wonderful just about now.." Ana muttered quietly, eyes taking in the vague forms of furniture and a hearth in the corner, and in front of the hearth was a couch. To her left there seemed to be a cupboard, table, a chair, and to her far right on the adjacent wall was a dresser. The opposite wall had what seemed like a bed, with a box at its end, or she assumed it was a box. The cupboard was first, though to her she didn't see anything interesting, she nicked an apple and bit into it. Keeping it there and quickly moving over to the hearth, anything that might have looked small and valuable was placed into her sack. Need immediately valuable things.. Don't want to risk trying to sell stolen goods in this place, I'll try Zeltiva for that.. Ana slunk over to the box and the moment she touched it, felt around it, found a latch and realized it was a chest. Flicking it open and peering inside, she let her hands do the seeing instead of her eyes. Again, anything that felt remotely valuable, such as metal, or was small, in the shape of a miza. Or even a small purse, she would quickly put said items into her sack when.. There was a twist of a door opening, Ana's eyes looked to it, and then to the couch she darted to get behind it as fast as she could without making too much noise. Yet ultimately she had left the chest open. Petch.. Petch.. I took too long.. Don't notice me. Don't notice me. Pleeeeease don't. Holding her canesword, and the sack tightly in either hand, she readyed herself to do a hard thwack to the residents skull, and then escape the room while he/she was stunned. From what Ana could tell from the figure, it was a male. If he went over to the chest, she would naturally move around the couch to go behind it and halted waiting for his move. Watching him. Heart hammering against her chest, she couldn't believe herself. This. How could she have lost the time. Oh no, what was worse, she had the delicious apple in her mouth still.. Making her mouth water, and want to bite down again. It was almost to the core. oocI think the sack was 1sm...but the price list for it is...messed up? o_o

[Aidan Sutter]

The heat of the kitchen still clung to the tensed flesh of a night spent working under the trammels of the Rearing Stallion, exhaustion sipping at what strength Aidan’s eyes had left to stay open. The tawny apron he’d worn around his waist now draped in folds from the shoulder as if it too felt the fatigue of the workplace, soiled now by both a mixture of sweat and excess materiel its owner had thought to rid from his hands. The faint scent of lamb stew and sourdough bread still coddled its cotton stitchings and the rest of what he wore, though at that moment his creations were the very last thing he wanted to be reminded of. Finding an appropriate place to sleep became his only goal.

More dragging than marching, he found himself so pleased to find Traveler’s Row that it begged the question if he’d ever been this happy to see such a place. Either way, it seemed to inspire enough movement in his aching muscles to hasten his pace, tossing open the front entrance and carving a meandering path through the tenement housing to his apartment on the second floor. He would have much preferred a breeze to waft lazily through a window as he slept that night, but felt it would hardly be noticed once his head matched with the pillow of his bunk.

Ascending the stairs, shoulder dragging along the wall, Aidan could hear the ongoings of the lives of others through wood stained doors he passed, in tongues whose origin he hadn‘t the faintest idea how to match. Not that the man presently possessed the acumen to try his hand with such things. But something about the Traveler’s Row’s communal system had always intrigued him, and perhaps been the single reason he had not moved on to more permanent housing somewhere else within the city’s sentinel walls.

Finding his door, Aidan reached for one of the ensconced torches that lit the hallway and pulled it from its stone bedding. Sliding his other hand into one of his pockets, the cook produced a key he used to fumble into his door’s lock and produce a mechanical clicking sound… Only the signature click he’d grown so accustomed to did not register, and might have been considered for more if the man had any desire troubling his mind other than sleep.

Finding his apartment in no less a disarray than he usually left it, Aidan closed the door behind him and locked it with his key, the metallic ticking filling the silence of the flickering darkness. Stepping slothfully across his apartment with the weight of the world bearing down upon his shoulders, he dragged himself before his hearth and let the torch fall upon the dried kindling and logs he’d thought to fill it with earlier that day. His intentions had been to cook for himself a lovely little meal when he’d gotten home, but exhaustion had both made him forget to bring anything back from the Stallion as well as lifted any desire to actually prepare it.

So, blue eyes gazing upon his narrow bed, Aidan tossed his apron from his shoulders and unfastened the tunic from his chest. The apron, however, missed the mark of his couch and instead found its place atop a crouching visitor he did not know himself to possess. Pulling the fabric of his shirt up over his head, he let the discarded cloth crumple to the floor at his feet. All that remained was the unfastening of his boots, a project he already found himself reviling for the technicality of it all.

OOCUgh, so sorry for my absence. I figured I’d let you react to the apron in whatever manner you saw fit before I went much further.

x

[Ana Sol Starris]

Ana refused to move out of principle that panicking when still hiding would draw more unwanted attention than no attention at all. Of course there was now a light in the room that would incriminate her the moment she stepped from the shadow of the couch she was hiding behind. Even if the couches shadow only marginally marred her presence from view, and if the man turned around suddenly he would most definitely see her, and if he didn't turn around. Ana was petching sure he could see her out of his perephrials from where she was positioned, but she couldn't move, only watch as he undressed and then.. Throw an apron on top of her. Oh petch... She almost breathed out, if not for the apple in her mouth. First reaction was to throw the apron off, but she found it was a little more tricky than that. The slightest movement with the cloth made noise as she tried to take it off quietly, but even if she had, she would be found out regardless of what manner of action she took. There was no other way around this. So she went with the offensive course of action. Throwing the apron back at the man and prefferably at his head she straightened up and bounded towards him, raising the tip of her cane up and attempted to vertically thwap the man's head. Or at least aim near that area. Ana was not aiming to kill, gods, she wouldn't be able to stay in the city for very long if she did, not to mention taking life was very much against her morals. What else was she suppose to do? Sit there quietly and allow herself to be caught, without a fight? Ana could have struck a conversation up, but she was a thief, why give away her voice to someone she could just knock out and escape from the room. Yet she was so very small, and the man was twice her size and looked ten times as strong. Maybe doing something head on wasn't the best of ideas either.. Ana now just took in the stupidity of her actions, what the petch was she doing trying to take on someone twice her size?! This wasn't going to end well.

[Aidan Sutter]

The whisper of a fire crackled and spat from the hearth as kindling became ignited by licking flame, its soft marigold glow intensifying until shadows were cast in steep relief against gray stone walls. Aidan cared little for the dark, in the way all men are wary of things they cannot understand or see. It held a deep unknowing about it, and was always present in stories meant to leave a child’s mind wary of poor decisions with even more dire consequences. Something his mother had never seemed to be in short supply of when it came time for bed growing up in Sunberth.

But he also held a fondness for the peace it seemed to stir within him, closing off the world like a black curtain where all manner of thought was quietly left behind. What was left was no more than a body’s desire, and right now his begged for little else but sleep. Languishing for a moment as muscles stretched and nerves unwound, Aidan breathed the faintest scent of wood smoke until his lungs were full of it, sighing comfortably as he turned towards his bed…

Darkness swallowed him in an instant, startling him into a gasp that went no further than the item draped about him. A curious hand reached up to find that the fabric was strangely similar to his discarded apron…except he’d tossed his apron off to the--

”BLACK DAMN!”

Pain. Searing white pain swelled across his fingers and over his scalp, cracking over bony knuckles that had gone to fetch the apron. Upon his head it was like streaks of white lightning against a blackened sky, skittering across bone and flesh and tapering off near his spine. Hard enough to make his knees buckle, though lacking enough force to bring him down to them, Aidan tore the scrap of cloth from his face to find a mere sliver of a woman standing before him.

Confusion vied for dominion over a tortured expression in an instant, feet pedaling backwards until his spine was flush with the wall behind him. Wanting nothing more than to sink into its impenetrable depths at that moment, he was struck by how vulnerable he felt within his own home. Being assailed by some muggers on a street was one thing. He’d experienced it a fair share in Sunberth. But to have it happening within his own home, a place catering to an inherent sense of safety and security, felt entirely different.

”L-look… Ju-ju-just take what you want and begone. I’m of no threat to you.” His voice held a calm tone despite its stuttering, wavering eyes falling upon where hers would be if it weren't for a lack of light.

A single hand reached out defensively with fingers slightly bent in, though Aidan couldn’t see how much good it would do if the woman was as fast as her lithe build cast in thick shadow suggested. His injured hand had fled away to the crook of his defending arm, its swelling skin already a belligerent red.

Despite how tired he’d been before, Aidan felt alarmingly awake now.

x

[Ana Sol Starris]

The attack had struck true but did not yield the results she would have been so happy to have, next time she would have to strike harder and with more force. Maybe that would knock the next fool out that was so unlucky enough to be near her, it was self defence, a cautious offensive one that took the first step but defence- none the less. The thief was in a room with a larger man, if she hadn't of swung first, he certaintly would have, and what then? Ana didn't want to ponder too long on that thought, instead she scowled down at her victem. Raising the cane up once more to bludgeon him with the end of it, but his voice stopped her. Made her think. Gods, what am I doing.. I'm about to very well beat this man to death.. It was like magick, a power that only those who've had a taste of would want more of, and revel in it. Here she had this man who was twice her size begging, afraid, her eyes watched his reaction and her previous resolve buckled. Ana couldn't do it. Lowering her weapon down, she glanced to the door and then back to him, she would leave without a word. Her steps were slow and cautious as her body turned and began to make her way backwards to the door but with the cane held out in such a way that suggested she was ready to swing at him again if he made a move to get up. When her back met the wall, her hand fumbled for the doors handle. Her eyes would only leave him when a terrible realization dawned on her, a small hand which gripped and tried to turn the knob became frantic, making her look at the handle in fear. Of course he had locked it. Ana's gaze lingered on the handle for a moment, just long enough for her to figure that perhaps the key was in one of his pockets and if it were in a pocket then that would mean she would have to frisk the man. It was not a very plausible plan, getting close to someone who was undoubtedly stronger than she was in terms of strength. She wasn't all too certain of what to do, but she straightened up, and glared at him "you locked the door..." Her voice was that of a 'matter of fact' tone. If he tried to get up and move to the door, she would raise her cane at him threateningly to stop him. Ana didn't need the fool to go running out the door and screaming like a bloody lunatic about her. Actually, now that she thought about it... His voice had a familliar accent to it.