Flashback Cold and bitter

[Tsilah]

Summer 73, 503 AV afternoon Tsilah did not like Alvadas. Most of the time, it was just a nuisance. Some days, she downright hated it. Today was shaping up to be one of those days. Syna had dawned bright and clear that morning, the air heavy with summer warmth and the touch of the sea. Tsilah had risen with the sun and gone out for a run, loping down the maddening -- and just plain mad -- streets until her lungs complained and her legs were on the edge of aching. Then she followed her key back 'home' at a more sedate pace, ate leftovers from last night's dinner, cleaned the paltry few dishes that were all one person ever needed -- -- and emerged again to find the sky blanketed in dense gray clouds, clouds which shed white flakes as profusely as a spring herd of okomo shed their wool across the mountainsides. A very large herd. The streets were already blanketed with fluffy frozen water, the air become cold enough to mist her breath. What miserable petching kind of place went from summer to winter in the bare span of... had it even been a bell? It was absurd. The entire city was absurd, she had decided all the way back on day one, now seasons past -- yet Tsilah remained in Alvadas, when she could have gone anywhere else, for reasons she wasn't nearly brave enough to examine closely or even really acknowledge. Which meant she just had to deal with this ridiculous absurd weather. More clothes -- a second layer of stockings beneath low boots, a jacket in dark gray felt, a scarf of soft gray-on-gray silk wrapped about nose and throat and with one loop over her ears, clear glass beads clicking and glinting at its exposed end. These would let her endure the now-frigid outdoors, and so Tsilah set out again into the mercurial streets... with no actual idea where she was going. Somewhere, there would be a shop with what she needed. It might be -- would almost certainly be -- a shop she had never seen before, but she would find it, and buy her groceries, and follow the key back to the one place she could return to dependably. All the while thinking silent, sullen imprecations towards the bizarre, infuriating chaos that was Alvadan geography and Alvadan climate and practically everything else having to do with the city, too.

[Kit Rowan]

Alvadas had Ionu's own sense of humor. It would guide your steps to places you needed and didn't know about, it could save you, it could show you beauty of a sort that did not exist in a world where houses stayed in one place and the roads did not change seemings when you were not looking. In exchange for that, you just had to accept that sometimes the city would bring its eccentricity to bear in ways that were not immediately pleasant. Like snow in summertime.

Kit had ransacked her cousins' drawers and stole some warm things before her aunt and uncle could catch her. Their wardrobe was more feminine than anything Kit would have picked for herself but it was warmer and finer, too. She stole a furred blouse to wear over her shirt, turned her nose up at the skirts and made do with her normal trousers and a warm cloak.

She sprung out the door, pulling the cloak around herself and looking up at the falling snow as it danced down up, sideways until at last it came to rest on the ground. Kit wondered whether Shy and Rechail had found someplace warm to stay today. She hoped they had.

Kit made her way through the streets, the color pallet of Alvadas shifting around her. Reds and greens and purples faded away, replaced by blues and whites that hurt the eyes to look at. When Kit turned the corner she saw icicles protruding from the ground, hanging from the lips of roofs. It was not that cold around, but when she ran up to touch one the chill belonged to that of real ice, and though the temperature should have melted it it stood stubbornly as it was.

Kit marveled at the illusion, and even though the cold bit at her fingers and face she murmur a prayer to Ionu in hope that she would see many more things like this before she died. She turned, marched her way down the street, intent on finding something interesting. Maybe the city would take her to the Playhouse, or a small marvel of its own illusion. Kit let Alvadas guide her steps without a care in the world, turning this way, that way . . .

The crowds had thinned considerably, as more people decided it would be best to stay inside. But there was still a few, here and there. A shivering older girl wearing clothing that bared more skin than cotton, wide eyed and bewildered at the city's sudden change in mood, a fellow with a squirrelly face who darted down an alley as soon as Kit saw him, a woman, full grown, bundled up tight, her face and expression hidden behind a beautiful gray scarf.

Kit was jealous of the way it wrapped over her head. How warm her ears must have felt, Kit thought, as she reached up and massaged where hers had gone red and stiff. How cozy her neck must have been. Kit wanted it.

How to get it, though? It wasn't quite as ridiculous as the thought of pickpocketing someone's pants . . . But it was almost. Still trying to call on her thoughts, Kit stalked behind the woman with the gray scarf, accepting this as Alvadas give her the opportunity to entertain herself, waiting for the right moment to present itself. She wasn't as good as Nim, or even Shy, but with Ionu as her witness Kit would win over this mark today!

[Tsilah]

City of illusion. The snow felt real -- chilled the air, blanketed sounds, crunched underfoot in just the way she expected of fresh-fallen powder. The icicles which weren't there to start with, but dotted building eaves just as soon as Tsilah looked back at them, didn't match her expectations: it wasn't that cold. But were they illusion? Would they feel less cold than snow, less cold than true ice? Or would they have equal verisimilitude under close inspection? Tsilah wasn't really minded to find out, truth be told. Ducking her head down into her scarf and trying to tune out the strangenesses of the tableau around her, Tsilah glanced briefly towards a girl badly caught out by the weather and continued on her way. She gave a wide berth to a trio about her age -- probably about her age, two men and one woman, but who knew? -- amusing themselves in trying to catch the drifting flakes. Attention on the silliness of their frivolities, she huffed a soundless breath into the scarf pooled about her neck and failed to notice the girl following behind her as anything but part of the street scenery... if even that. Beyond them and in the open, mostly-empty street once more, Tsilah refocused on what she needed to find. A shop, or a stall, or even the large bazaar which hid somewhere amongst the city's shifting streets... funny how something so large could fit into a fairly plain building. But that building didn't show up as she turned a corner and crossed another street -- not as she knew it to appear, anyway. No, what the Lhavitian found herself amongst were a block of small, individual shops, each with a pictorial sign denoting its wares. She paused to scan them, finding one that looked like some kind of fruits or vegetables or other such produce and making a beeline for that entry. It didn't occur to Tsilah to think that illusion might have veneered the signs with something else, just as the streets were dusted in unseasonal snow. Fortunately, today the exterior's promise matched what the interior had to offer: a bounty of summer foods in keeping with what the city weather had been that morning and hopefully would be again tomorrow. It was also much, much warmer in the shop than outside. As she stepped into the heat, Tsilah automatically reached up to undo the scarf, now almost a burden rather than a boon.

[Kit Rowan]

The Trickster stood behind her today, in their own way. Kit's mark seemed blind to her intent. She lacked the wanderlust that Kit had come to associate with a native Alvad; they understood that their time was at the mercies of the city, came to appreciate the journeys that the city sent them along while dismissing punctuality as the luxury it was. The woman with the gray scarf stared straight ahead, marched with purpose, sure she knew where she wanted to go, rather than allow the city to decide on her behalf.

Foreigners were always the easiest to con; their little missteps made the chase easy and redemption impossible. Kit's shoes made unforgivably sounds in the snow as she crept up closer behind the woman in the gray scarf, and though Kit tried to hide her footfalls they were there all the same, as loud as though she was stomping across the cobble. Kit's only prayer was that the woman did not think to turn around, or if she did, dismissed Kit's stalking as harmless.

The longer she followed, the greater the chance this lady would figure out what was going on. Kit bit down on her lip, hugged her arms close to her body; she needed a way to finish this quick. The turn of Ovek's die may have come up lucky now, but every second was a new roll, and it was only a matter of time before it ended with the wrong number face-up.

The woman found her destination, marched up, pulled her scarf loose . . . Kit's stomach lurched, and the little thief swallowed hard. Yshul make my figures quick, Trickster keep my cunning sharp . . . She made a prayer and took off at a hard dash through the snow, nearly slipping as she started up.

Kit changed the angle of her run just so, set an angle so that she passed behind her mark without running into them. Kit stepped just in the door, reached out her hand, bare fingers still burning from the cold she had just leapt from as they groped at the woman's neck, and Kit hoped against hope that they would find the scarf . . .

This time they did, though it was not clean. Akajia would have turned her nose up, and doubtless Ionu thought her a brute. Kit's fingers seized the scarf, felt some resistance and then was free, nipped out the door and just outside. When Kit looked down at her hand she saw the woman's . . . No, Kit's scarf now. She grinned a wicked grin and took off down the street with all the speed her little body could muster, intent to lose the foreigner in Alvadas' impossible streets.

OOCI hope you don't mind me roleplaying the theft out like that. I know we had planned on Kit nabbing the scarf so I thought it would be okay, but let me know if I guessed wrong and I'll change it.

[Tsilah]

A blur of shadow at the edge of her vision, a sense of presence behind her... but before Tsilah could even turn and fully process what had shattered her concept of personal space, the gray silk went sliding through her fingers. Soft, smooth, slippery fabric, it was almost gone by the time her mind caught up with its motion, her fingers closing around a single clear glass bead. The fringe pulled taut, snapped, and the length of the scarf went whipping away into the snow. With a child. A child in a furred blouse and trousers, either quite young or short for her age -- what age? six? -- with vivid red hair that stood out against the snow almost like a beacon. "Hey!" the woman shouted reflexively, leaping into motion almost without thought, shoving the door unthinkingly out of her way and charging headlong through the thin snow after the girl. She had no further breath then for shouting, and no inclination for it besides; exhorting the thief to return her property so wouldn't help, it'd just slow Tsilah herself down. Her feet dug into the snow, compacting the thin layer of powder until stone could be distinctly felt underneath, not that Tsilah truly noticed it. The cool air began to burn at her lungs just as soon as she drew it in in pronounced earnest; she sucked it down anyway to fuel the run, willing force, willing speed into her motion. Her ears and neck and nose, all previously shielded from the atmosphere, quite distinctly protested the sudden shock of exposure. The nipping chill spurred Tsilah on. Her scarf. She had to have that scarf. Tsilah's legs were longer by far, and in normal circumstances, the contest in these near-empty streets would have been unequal. There was no crowd here for the child to lose herself in, little in the way of cover for her to duck behind in hopes of losing the woman chasing after. She was faster; if all else were equal, she would overcome. But this was Alvadas. All it took for the scenery to change was a turn of a corner. She needed to catch that thief before too many corners went past.

[Kit Rowan]

Kit heard her mark call out, turned to see the woman begin to dash in turn. Grinning at the electric, panicked thrill that surged through her body, Kit forget to watch her step. The snow had not fallen long, but it had made her feet slippery. Her step skidded over wet snow and Kit fell to her knees in the snow. Kit gritted to her teeth and started the run again.

While her shoes skidded, they retained enough traction in the thin snow and get going again. Bad setup, Kit thought; the snow would make running a pain. Kit spared a much shorter peek over her shoulder and prayed that her pursuer was less sure on her feet.

The first time Kit tried to make a turn, she felt herself slipping. Her heart stuttered a beat, and she kept on going straight as she could manage. She couldn't do quick turns in this weather? She couldn't do quick turns in this weather. Except, the woman had longer legs, and if she was as sure of feet as Kit then it was only a matter of time until she caught up. Corners were Kit's friends, and . . .

Swallowing hard, Kit turned to telegraphing her movements. Rather than Hairpin twists her running took her twists and turns in slower curves, never letting momentum change direction long enough for her footing to come too loose. One, two, three . . . Kit felt her breath running ragged, and when she turned around her pursuer was still there! Gods, how could Kit shake her?

[Tsilah]

oocI took way too long to get to this -- sorry! The thief glanced back, then lost her footing in the snow, which only served her right for getting distracted. She slid, dropped to her knees, scrambled back up and forward again. Her lapse let Tsilah close the gap between them by one, two, three strides. The woman's feet dug into the powder, finding the flagstones beneath, propelling her in a wide arc around the corner after her quarry. The thief slipped again, but didn't go down -- more's the pity. One stride. Another. Breathe with the steps, ignoring the way the cold nipped her nose and clawed her lips, damp as the latter were with the humidity of her own breath. Chill sank down to the depths of her lungs with every heaving breath, but Tsilah was stubborn; she had grown up on the mountaintops of Lhavit, she could outlast this illusory seaside 'winter' long enough to catch that thief. The distance between was surely shorter, surely shrinking with each pace; she just needed to keep going. To keep the thief from getting away. The girl adjusted unfortunately quickly to the snow, easing her way through corners rather than pivoting on her heel. She didn't seem to notice that every glance back over her shoulder slowed her down, too -- if the thief kept that up, she might even run into something. But Tsilah still needed to catch her. She pushed harder, faster -- or it felt like she did, though in fact it was hard to tell if the buildings went past any more quickly at all. Only partly because she wasn't looking. Faster, faster, faster... ...until, as she angled towards the same corner the girl was making, her foot slipped on the edge of the street's central channel. It wasn't much of a rise between channel and edge, but Tsilah missed it, her foot angling to align with the curb and her forward momentum not lessening in the least. Her turn to go down, then, twisting so that her shoulder struck the paving instead of her face. The need to catch up beat at the inside of her skull; her hands shoved at the pavement, the woman lunging back up and towards the intersection, snow all but flying from the urgent motion of her feet. How much ground had she lost? Her heart hammered louder with apprehension even than with the exertion of running -- when Tsilah rounded that corner, would she see that familiar shock of red hair in the frost-rimed environment?