Flashback Idle Hands

[Kit Rowan]

"Listen, I've some friends I'd like you to meet. They're a little shy, so they wanna test you a bit. Just keep taking the third right turn until you find a red door with a three-pointed star when it's getting close to evening and come inside. We'll be waiting.” “Nim . . .You've talked a lot about your friends, but never actually said anything. What are they like?” “Well . . . One's real quiet, like you wouldn't believe. The other's fussier than a merchant before market day, believe you me, but she's got a heart carved out of a mountain. I think you'll like her, once you stop fighting.” “You really think we'll fight?” “Oh yeah. Everyone does, at first. How long's the only question.”

Season of Winter, Day 70, 502 AV

Leth blessed Kit with a full moon that night and Ionu blessed her with two strangely-colored extras for giggles. Kit followed Nim's instructions perfectly, third right, again and again. It took her down wide roads and alleys so small she needed to squeeze in sideways to make it through to the other side. Eventually she found what she was looking for.

A little red door, with a three-pointed star painted in azure across its front. The door was attached to a lovely little hovel; she'd have guessed it had four good-sized rooms, at least, with little vines that crawled up its sides and bloomed into flowers in colors that just didn't make any sense to her eyes. The windows, she could not help but notice, were utterly dark. If she'd not been told to meet here, Kit would have sworn that the house was sleeping.

She walked up to the door and rapped her knuckles against the wood, loud enough to alert anyone awake, she hoped, while praying it wasn't enough to wake anybody who was asleep. “Hello?” She asked, not sure whether to expect an answer back. “Anybody there?” Kit pressed her ear against the door and closed her eyes, hoping to catch something.

There was a sound of something shifting. “Hey there, Kit!” She heard Nim call, muffled through the door, cheerful as always. “Come on inside.” Kit tried the door. It wouldn't budge. She tried again, pushed a little harder and found the source of the problem.

“Nim,” she said, like she was talking to an idiot. “Door's locked.” Kit waited. There was a sound of scuffling that brought her eyes down to the bottom of the door. They caught of the sheen of something metalic slipped underneath. A key? No, she thought as she reached door, picked it up and tested the shape of it. It was as long as her hand, with some sort of tooth at the end. “What's this?”

“Lockpick.” Nim said.

“Lockpick,” Kit's voice was toneless”

“What do you expect me to do with this?”

“Magic.”
x

[Kit Rowan]

“So Kit, what do you wanna do?” “My mother's a performer. Travels around everywhere, showing people little tricks. She's a magician without magic. I wanna be like her.” “Well, can you do card tricks? Palm a miza? Pull a rabbit out of your sleeve?” “No . . . I can't.” “Then how you gonna do that?” “ . . . ” “Don't know, huh?”

“So this is your prize girl?” A different voice came from behind the door now, still distinctly female, and young. But it had hard edges; she bit off each sentences like a meal she was having trouble chewing. “Can't even open a locked door? Doesn't even know how to start?”

“If you saw how what she can do might help . . .” Nim was cut off.

“You've got thirty chimes.” The harsh voice said. “I dunno how much she told you, but if you can't in after thirty chimes, it's off. So best learn that lockpick fast.”

Kit clenched her hands into fists and kicked the door as hard she could could. “Asshole!”

“Save all of us the trouble,” the hard voiced called again, and Kit bristled at the mockery. “Walk away.”

“You stay right there!” Kit hissed through her teeth. She pocketed the lockpick and stalked around the house, never giving the one up front a second chance.

She didn't know how long these vines had grown or how long, but some of the ones out back. There was no second door, but there was a window, three floors up. It was barely two feet high, more of a line for light to shine through than a real window, but to Kit it was as good as an invitation. Up front the vines had seemed controlled, but in back it was clear no one had taken an axe to them in a long time; some of the vines were huge, about the width of her arm, and left Kit the perfect handholds to climb. She scaled it one step at a time, fumbling in the dark as she reached for what she thought might be handholds or footholds and caught only air, leaving her twisting in panic for a moment, or stepped on a vine too weak to bear her weight. A ladder was regular, a ladder made sense. This did not.

It took maybe ten of her thirty chimes, but Kit reached the window. She let one foot onto the little wooden outcropping next to it, then too, held precariously over the backyard by a handful of vine and luck. Kit shoved at the window; it wouldn't cave inward. Straight up refused to budge. Kit scowled at it and kicked at the latch. There was a sound of something twisting as it broke, and the window swung open inward, letting in a sudden draft of cold night air.

Kit waited with baited breath for someone to have heard, to call out, ask what was wrong, anything. No one did. Sparing a thank you to the Trickster, Kit put herself through the window feet first and shimmied on through the gap. Before she could get all the way through though, she held on a little too long and smashed her head into top of the window and fell without grace.

She hadn't bargained for how high the window was inside. Kit plummeted, nothing to save her except the knowledge of how to fall properly, for about seven feet. She hit the floor with a loud, dull thump. Kit groaned and held on to her side, rolling over in place and praying for the pain to go away as half a dozen feet scampered up from the front of the house.

Kit squinted up at three shapes looming over her.

“Well!” Nim said from somewhere very far away. “She got in didn't she?”

“She didn't use the lockpick.” The harsh voice said. “She was supposed to use the lockpick, prove she knew enough of the business not to get in the way. Girl hasn't proven that at all.”

“She got in, didn't she?”

“And look at her! She cracked her head. If she did that again the game would be over before it even started!”

“But she got in. Didn't she?”

A pause. “She did.” Sigh. “Shyke.”

“What do you have against pulling people in? Every time I find someone, you just wanna push 'em away again.”

“Not all of us have a family to run back to, Nim. We bring in someone wrong, I and Shy lose our everything.”

“Gotcha, gotcha, everything to lose, yada yada. You always say it, but nothing ever goes that wrong . . . Kit look okay? She isn't moving . . .I'll frisk her pockets.”

"Easy there, Nim. She's part of the sisters now. You made sure of that." Color bled out of her vision, and then everything went black.
x

[Kit Rowan]

“You think Ionu hates crime?” “Whatcha mean, Nim?” “You know . . . robbery and banditry and thieving. You think he guards his city like that? Chases out all the troublemakers?” “I . . . Guess.” “I don't think so. Ionu, they're trickery and mischief, aren't they? You manage to outwit someone, Ionu's not gonna swoop in to save them. I think Ionu's got the back of anyone clever enough to get away with it. Alvadas is a stage, and no matter what side of the law they fall on, Ionu'll stand with whoever's most clever.” “Then why do they punish criminals?” “Well, they weren't very clever if they got caught, were they?”

First thing Kit was aware of was a pressure against her right cheek, left cheek. right cheek. Next came the awareness of pain, and she groaned, blinking up as the world slowly came back into focus. "About time," the harsh voice said, directly overhead, and finally Kit got a good look close up at the girl. Her skin was . . . A light blue, actually except for her right arm, hued purple. Her hair was black and cropping just above her ears, almost like a boy's. "You with us?"

When Kit didn't respond, the girl hit her again. "Stop!" She hissed, pulling back, holding up a hand to her face.

"Little princess is up, everybody!" Blue girl stood and clapped her hands.

Kit crawled backwards and braced herself against the wall so she could sway to her feet. She rubbed at her forehead, and when she looked at her palm she saw a streak of blood. She felt something in her guts start to churn.

Kit saw fair-face Nim come around from behind a corner with hands clasped behind her back, and a little brown-haired girl Kit did not know with her arms crossed and eyes in a suspicious squint. Each and every one of them was older and taller than Kit; brown-hair and Nim stood beside and behind purple-arm, framing her between them. "I didn't let Nim say the whole story, so I'll tell it now. We're thieves." She said. "And now that you've joined us in breaking in here, you're one too." Nim pulled a silver plate out of a bag for Kit to see, smiling like it was some kind of trophy.

They let that sink in. "You're walking on Yshul's side of the street now. You can walk right out, and I won't stop you. But I'm gonna make you an offer I'm sure I'm gonna regret." Nim rolled her eyes. Blue kept talking. "You can join our sisters, and we'll get you so you can charm a lock, to get and enter without busting your head open. You just gotta help us with our scores when we need you."

"My advice?" Blue leaned forward, eyes narrow. "Get out of here while you still can."

Kit stared between the three girls a moment, trying to put everything in the proper frame. "Oh Trickster," she said, clasping her hands together, smiling she'd been promised sweets. "You're all so keen!"

Brown and Nim exchanged a look. Blue raised an eyebrow.

"I wanna be just like you!"

Brown rolled her eyes. Blue muttered under her breath and spat into her hand. "Before I change my mind . . . Kit, do you swear to hold our sisters' secrets close, protect us, and do whatever else I damn well tell you to, in the eyes of Yshul, Akajika and Ionu?"

Kit spat into her hand and shook Blue's. "I do." And just like that, it was done. Somehow, she'd expected something a bit more dramatic.

Instead, Blue just wiped her hand on her shirt. "You can call me Rechail, the quiet girl is Shy, and you already known what to call Nim. Right away. Maybe one day you'll get to start the good stuff. Today? You get to the carry the loot."
x

[Fallacy]

XP Award! Name:Kit XP Award: Acrobatics 1 Lore: Vine Climbing Sister Thieves Notes: Any questions or concerns about the rewards gained please send a PM