Lucia spent her nights in so many odd places about Old Rose that she had never made any place a standard place of rest, much less ‘home’. She specifically made a point to stay out of Angler’s Alley. There were so many old people here; wrinkled old people, sick old people, sad old people.
They were mostly harmless, really. But there scared her none-the-less. Lucia didn’t want to be an old person. Not here.
Never here.

But it was raining again, and it was raining hard. Too hard to go out to sleep in the grass of the Drought or to try for the partially covered doorways of the Medicine Hut or Ue’s place. So, here she was in Angler’s Alley, trying desperately to keep her eyes to the ground and ignore the groans and grumbles around her.

Luce tried to keep her ears tuned to the sound of the heavy patter of rain and the thick scent of the sea that the rain brought up from the ground. It was far better than the smell of Angler’s Alley; which felt a bit like it was smothering her as the alley began to fill up for the night. It was far more than the smell of sweat and close bodies, which Luce subconsciously ignored by now, but of drink and illness. It smelled a bit like the taverns after a particularly ill fermented barrel of ale had been distributed.

She stood, unable to stand it any longer as the other homeless and world-weary souls made their places in the alley, and proceeded to walk towards the open end. It would nice to see the street, at least not to be so cramped in the alley, before her body forced her into sleep.

Luce’s eyes found their way up to the tall tenement building before her. Was it warm inside? Was their food inside? Would the rain come through the roof? Or would it sing lullabies to the children as they slept? Could they hear the sounds of the alleyway up in their homes that touched the sky? Could they smell it?

The child found herself hoping they couldn’t. She spent as little time here as possible because she didn’t like it. It was easy to think no one else did either.

Luce watched the rain as it splattered along the ground making great ripples in the puddles that had formed in the last hour or so. Occasionally people would still walk by the alleyway, doing their best to ignore it.
Maybe she could find someone to follow home tonight to get out of the alleyway. It happened occasionally; rarely enough to be seen as blessing, but just often enough that it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.
Maybe.

Adelle was walking blankly, just strolling when the rain began. It began pounding harder and herder against the streets around her, even she herself was being hit by rain that felt almost like needles now.

During her strolling, Adelle had somewhere wandered into a place she hadn't yet been. As she looked up, she saw a sign. The sign read: "Angelers Alley".

Adelle saw many faces in the alleyways, most of which old, wrinkled, and wet. But then something stopped her short. A face, like was all around her, but a younger one. This face wasn't old, actually, it was not much older than her own.

She looked at this face for a moment, examining it. You didn't see many young children in a place with this many old people. How come she's here instead of somewhere dry? She thought. And then the thought came into her mind. A thought that was very sad indeed. She has nowhere dry to sleep...

"H-Hello..." Adelle said, moving her hand slightly in a pathetic attempt to wave.

Someone stopped.
Someone stopped.

The girl standing before Luce wasn't old enough to own a house, but maybe she had a family that did. Were all wicks traveling folk? No, that couldn't be right. She'd seen some stay in Rose for quite some time, doing whatever it was wicks did.
Or maybe they just traveled quickly.

Whatever the case, Luce smiled tiredly at the girl just beyond the alley way.
"Junta."
She stood up from her place against the tenement wall and walked out into the rain towards the wick child. Her arms slowly pulled in towards her chest through her overlarge sleeves. She opened her mouth to say something, but looked at her pulled in arms and closed it.
An arm shot back out with the offer to shake.
"My name's Luce. Ya want ta come in?" She asked, motioning towards the alley, "Smells funny, but it's not got all the much rain."

Really, Luce had no inclination to go back in the alley. She had even less to bring one more body into it. So, despite her offer, she moved further out of the alleyway and through the thickening puddles on the broken ground. Mud and water splashed up around her ankles. It was cold, but it was much nicer to walk on mud than the jagged ground beneath it.

Adelle smiled and shook the girls hand. She was surprised that this young girl was here, with so many old people...



"Er..Nah, I'm okay. There are a few too many people there for me." She said, a bit of a chuckle in her tone. "I'm Adelaide, but you can just call me Adelle. So what are you doing all the way in here?" She asked. She was indeed very curious.

Luce grinned at Adelle's reluctance. Any reason not to go back into the alley was a good one.

"'S rainin'." She replied, nodding up towards the sky, "Can't stay in any o' the other places when it's all tockin' wet like this. 'S not so rainy in the alley."
There was something in Luce's voice that seemed to convey that being 'not so rainy' was hardly a reason to be there. If anything, it was grudging admittance of defeat that she was even here in the first place.
The entire alleyway seemed to emit some kind of air of hopelessness, which she was entirely grateful to be out of.

"'S too wet for the doorways 'n the Drought n' the dock n'..." Luce's list ran on a bit before her words devolved into absent sounds of thought, which were followed shortly by a careless shrug.
"But what're ya doin' out here? 'Aint ya got ta get with yer family? Wicks got big families, don't ya?"

This was a long shot and Luce knew it. The only times she'd been taken home was by other humans. Assuming wicks even actually lived in places like humans did, which Luce doubted as she couldn't even recall ever actually seeing a wick sleep, she'd never seen any taking care of human children.
But wicks did have big families and there were lots of kids. That meant they liked kids, didn't it?

Luce could only hope.

Adelle thought for a moment. She wished she could say yes to that question.

Adelle just smiled. That smile didn't last long, she couldn't smile anymore at the thought of being alone. "I uh...I don't exactly have a family..." She replied with a slight frown. "Why don't...Why don't we go into a tavern or something? It'd be dry.."

She hoped the human girl would say yes. The only thing that was worse than thinking about her "family" was that and in the rain. It was worse because it always reminded her of the classical orphan in the rain stories. Stories like that were the saddest in her opinion. "What about you? Do you have any family?" She asked.

Well that certainly put a right stick in the gears of Luce's plans. No family meant no place to stay. No place to stay meant no roof. No roof meant... well, no roof.
So much for the idea of finding place to stay out of the rain tonight.
Maybe tomorrow.

Retreating back into Angler's Alley was beginning to sound like the intelligent thing to do, but the look on Adelle's face stopped Luce from turning back.

Adelle looked like she was trying to smile. Luce wasn't certain whether she should be glad the girl was trying or guilty for making her.
For all that wick magic, all people died sometime. Even families. Even magical families.
Briefly, Luce wondered whether that applied to galdori too.

"Sure." Luce answered with a broad grin, "Ah got kicked outta the last one I went ta. Caught me takin' some yats. Do ya think they'll let ya sleep there? Under the tables?"
It would be nice to sleep in a place where she could simply listen to the rain, like the people in the tenements, rather than be drenched in it.

"Not me." Luce replied, shaking her head in the negative, "Da died when I was real little. And daoa..." She hesitated briefly, "She did too. Couple maw ago. Da wouldn't ta been in the alley, anyway. Worked too hard."

Luce moved into the middle of the street and looked about, "Which tavern?"

Adelle slowly worked her way to a smile when she heard about Luce's family. Not because she was a sick person or anything, but it made her feel a little better to know someone who understood. Even if she'd known her parents, she lost them all the same, right?

"Hey, we can go into the Black Dove, and i got some coins we can use to get some food. Maybe that way, if we aren't having to steal anything, they'll let us stay!" She said this as if she'd just made a discovery that would win the Nobel prize.

Just then, in her excitement, she was reminded of someone she wasn't sure could go in, even if they were buying the food they ate. Chace let loose a harsh bark.

"Aww man. Think they'll let him in?" She asked. She hadn't been into the taverns yet. Maye someone wouldn't care.

"Ya don't think they'll just... think we're stealin' an' kick us out?"
It had happened on more than one occasion. Granted, most of them hadn't been the busiest of places and Luce wasn't sure if she'd ever actually stolen from the Black Dove or not. Everything kind of blurred together after a while. It was either get food from one place or get it from another. The actual 'where' was something that only got thought about at brief moments of time right before the actual act.
And it wasn't something that she'd made a mental list of, regardless of how useful it may have been.

But there was enough hope in Adelle's voice that Luce was willing to believe it too. And if Adelle did have coins to spend and she was going to buy something for herself, they really had to let them both in didn't they?

The 'we' that had been involved in Adelle's offer hadn't stuck in Luce's mind. If anything, the 'we' had been referring to Adelle and her dog rather than Adelle and herself.
The idea of someone buying her food, someone who wasn't practically swimming in it already anyway, was an entirely foreign concept.

"People have all sorts a pets." Luce shrugged, "If they let birds in there, they'll prolly let yer dog. I mean, maybe they don't let 'em in an' they just fly in, but..."
Luce closed her mouth with a small pout as she thought.
"But they'll prolly let yer dog in."
She then turned down to him and began to pet his face, "You'll scare off those stupid ol' birds, won't ya." She said happily, "Yah you will! Yah you will!"

Adelle let out a small giggle. It wasn't often that people payed attention to her friend, but when they did, it was usually children like herself. Though Adelle wouldn't let anyone call her a child to her face without correcting them.

She smiled towards Luce, and turned to walk to the Black Dove. "Then let's go!" She said excitedly. "C'mon Chace! Oh it'll be great! I wonder how much their bread is....Hmm" She said, starting to walk forward, but still looking back to see hat Luce was following her.

Luce followed Adelle and Chase through the streets. The heavy rain didn't seem so bad now. This was not to say it had let up in any way, but with a goal, even one so meager as getting to the Dove, the trek through muddy puddles and blinding rain didn't feel so useless. There was also most certainly something to be said for companionship.

Luce had only ever been to the tavern in passing. A few times to lift some food, when she could, a few times to beg around for it. But she had never really paid much attention to it. The black winged... thing that was on the sign looked awfully deformed to her. She unconsciously made a foul face towards it. Here, finally, was a bird that couldn't fight back.
This was probably also true of what was left of the dead one that hung from the ceiling inside the tavern itself. But Luce was doing her best not to look at it if she didn't have to. A bird was a bird and, truth be told, dead or alive they were pretty frightening on the whole. Those beady little eyes. Those horrible sounds they made. That weird ruffling of feathers that made them look twice their size.
There was nothing good about them at all.

The denizens of the tavern didn't look much better than the people in the Alley. Granted, these ones obviously had a bit more tallies to spend and were generally less, well, horrifically old.
Mostly.
There was a man outside that looked like he belonged in the Alley, but Luce didn't pay him any heed. Her eyes were too busy taking in the colorful sights of the alcohol along the back wall. The bottles were glistening with the brown liquid inside them. She couldn't be sure how they tasted, but they looked beautiful.

Luce proceeded to shake out the rain from her hair like a dog, with little care as to who or what it landed on. She then pulled herself onto a chair underneath a painting of one man stabbing another with a long red line through it. No Stabbing.
Well.
That was reassuring!

The rain had been falling hard all day, but it suddenly started falling much harder. The sky had gone mad. It looked as if somebody was dumping a continuous bucket out on the scene. Water was running down the streets like it had some place to go. It might be dangerous for the girls to leave the tavern any time soon.

Adelle let out a giggle when the rain picked up. The owner of the tavern could have kicked them out before, but the likeliness of it happening in rain this hard, was probably very low.

As the girls walked in, Chace hot on their heels, Adelle quickly noticed the shimmering bottles in the back of the tavern. Will thy let children buy drinks? What if they think we shouldn't be here? Wonder what kind of food they have... She thought.

"Wonder how much the food is. If it's cheap enough, we might each be able to have some for ourselves!" She was getting herself wound up now, getting her hopes all the way in the sky.

"Excuse me, how much is your food?" Adelle asked someone behind the counter.