Is she... who?

[Declan] [Doo be doo be doo]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8

[Declan] The rain had stopped.

It was a gentle night. Cloudy. Neither warm nor cold. One would never know there was a spiritual chaos going on in the city. The streets bordering Grant Park were dotted with the occasional vehicle, but nothing like the mad rush of cars that might occur during rush hour or on the weekend. Lamps lit the rows of rose bushes that lay in the center of the park, highlighting the figure of a thin, blond-haired young man as he walked slowly past, letting one hand drag delicately over the tips of leaves and flower petals.

So beautiful, these things. Even in the midst of ugliness and decay.

[Emily Littleton] Outside. The best part about early summer was that Emily could be outside whenever she wanted. The days were rarely so hot as to push her indoors, into the cool embrace of air conditioned spaces. The nights were rarely so chill as to send her back into similarly sheltered places. Even though the prick of paranoia followed her, she could be out in wide open spaces without other people just across the cubicle wall, just down the hallway, just across the room.

Outside. It was the best thing about summer, even in a humid, tepid place like Chicago.

The supernatural tumult had not touched her personally, so the girl walks -- idles, really -- down the broad paved path with her chin tipped upward and her gaze lofted toward the heavens. There's a flash of silver about her throat, a thin chain there. Her hair is a cascade of dark curls that end just past her shoulder blades. Tonight she wears a sundress, red and orange and pale yellow. A pretty batik pattern that sets off the moon-pale of her skin.

Emily is peaceful, all things considered. All things considered, this is a good night. Trouble is coming, but it has not quite found her ... yet.

[Ellie James] Chicago was already looking like a decent place to spend the summer. Plenty of places to crash on a clear night, and even a few on a bad one. Might be too cold come winter, but that hadn't stopped her yet. The park here, on the north side, was looking like a good spot to spend the night. Plenty of benches, plenty of guys out looking for 'love' that were easy to take advantage of if she decided she wanted some extra attention.

For the moment, she was sitting on the back of a bench, staring out at the lights of the city and considering her options. Tomorrow she could look for other street kids, scout out the homeless shelters and soup kitchens. Tonight was for staring at a sky too bright to see stars in, and for contemplating the possibilities of finding some... familiar spirits.

[Declan] [Oh yes, we should do this awareness thing - Per+Aware]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Emily Littleton] ((Perception + Awareness: Wondrous things are afoot; keep your eyes open.))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 7, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Ellie James] ((Per+Awareness
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Declan] Emily would recognize the denim jacket that he wore. Declan wore that jacket nearly everywhere, even in the summer. In fact, the only time she'd seen him without it had been the evening she'd run into him (oddly) at the nightclub. The jacket was old and worn. Frayed in places. Even doodled on. (A red heart, drawn in pen, on one cuff.) Underneath the jacket, the drifter had on a plain white t-shirt. Lower, a pair of jeans. Those were newer. He'd acquired them from the Salvation Army shortly after arriving here.

As was also usually the case, he looked as if he hadn't shaved in about five days, and a shadow of sandy facial hair outlined his jawbone. He looked a bit gaunt tonight, as if he hadn't been eating well lately. Or sleeping. Someone who didn't know him well might not think much of it. He was homeless. A vagrant. Of course he looked worse for wear. But for all Declan's lack of a home or any kind of stable income, on good days he took fairly decent care of himself. Better than some, anyway.

There was blood on his jacket. Not much. But enough to be noticed in the light. Small dots of darkened, coppery red along one sleeve.

He felt the others, but didn't turn around at first. One was unfamiliar, and difficult to grasp. The other....

"Emily."

He greeted with a soft, sad smile.

[Emily Littleton] Soft and sad: she knew that smile. Emily's footsteps slow as she draws nearer the drifter. Her dress's hemline swirls about her knees. The quiet flip-slap-flop of her sandals stills. She is calm, today. Lives up to the threads of Reverence that pervade her. She is so composed, today, that the passing resonances do not stir her worries.

Perhaps the word is not composed, perhaps it's unobservant: numb. Maybe it's all been too much for the girl for too long, now. Save that it wouldn't rest so lightly on her shoulders were that true.

"Declan," she says, her mouth turning to a warmer smile. Unburdened, this, despite the gravity of the night surrounding them. This smile reaches up to touch her eyes, to lighten them. He knows them for the blue-dark they are, but here, in this nightfall darkness, this half-light of city diffusion and unmitigated sprawl, here they are only dark. Colorless, like her hair.

"How have you been?" she asks, as if she is utterly unaware of the Other who is close enough to taste. She is not tasting, not sensing, not feeling. She is blissfully numb, unaware of the cold seeping into her bones. Drowning, and too far gone to care -- no, she is only calm, quiet, Reverent and still. Tonight is not a night for relentlessness; tonight is pensive, comported, unmoving, still.

[Ellie James] Voices nearer than most draw Ellie's attention. She'd originally pegged the two, when they were further away, as nothing to be concerned about. Not marks, not cops, not worth worrying about. Closer, now, there's something off; something that pings on her instincts and makes her pay a little more attention.

Not enough to be noticed, hopefully. Just enough to let her study the quiet drifter-dressed, and the peaceful not-mark who spoke to him. They made her edgy, those two. She pulls her tattered leather jacket a little closer, and rests her knees on her elbows, looking but not staring.

Even though she kind of wanted to.

[Declan] How had he been?

The drifter's eyes expressed sadness and regret, and he gave a slight shake of his head. "Oh my dear, sometimes I think the trials of this world are just too much to bear. But we must, mustn't we?" (Oddly, the Boston accent wasn't there tonight. This was more neutral. As if he'd been training himself out of old speaking habits.) He looked down at his hands, holding them out as he spread the fingers. Declan turned them over once... twice... slowly. Marveling? No. Afraid. The twin scars on his palms were more noticeable that way, but he wasn't focusing on that false stigmata. Rather... on the hands themselves.

"Something terrible is happening. The devil's awake and he's hungry. He frightened the beast that guards the gates. I tried to stop it, but I... couldn't."

He glanced over her shoulder, at the girl sitting on the bench.

"Is she with them, or with us?"

[Emily Littleton] ((Perception+Awareness: Is she? Who? Oh... I see you now.))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 7, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Emily Littleton] Declan was subdued, but he had been that way that afternoon at St. James. When they spoke of opened eyes and traditional groupings. When he seemed to grasp that he wasn't alone, except that he was in all the ways that mattered most. It had been a calm and reverent night, then, too. Like tonight.

"Is she... who?" Emily asks, her voice is riddled through with sounds of not here, and not now. It is predominantly British, but there are other threads to it as well. She is not from around here, to say the very least. And around here could be practically anywhere, and the statement would still hold true.

Fluid, flowing, dynamic, shifting, changing, unstable, flighty -- the Orphan girl's breath dragged in sharply, pulled across her teeth. Her extended senses picked up on something that echoed Declan's own resonance, mirrored it in imperfect ways. Together they seemed to make the world shimmer, made it less tangible, less solid. She breathed out carefully, shook her head a bit to clear it.

"She is like us, meaning she has her own flavour and tinge, but I cannot tell you if she is with us." A little pause, careful, quiet. She regards the girl with a rather pointed detachment. Wary. Curious. It all muddled together this late in the evening (this late in the game).

"Shall we say hello? Make friendly?" she asks the drifter man. She is not suggesting it with the undertones of her mellifluous alto. She is querying him, directly. Taking his counsel. Measuring it, weighing it against her own, and seeing if they might agree.

[Ellie James] Ellie sat up a little when they both looked her direction. She had their attention, and attention was rarely good unless she was digging for it. She shifted, turned her eyes in another direction just for a moment, before looking back. The not-mark was still looking, studying.

[Declan] "I don't know what to think of anyone anymore. Everything seems so uncertain." He sighed, but nodded nonetheless. If Emily's unusual lack of response to his portents of doom bothered him any (or if, indeed, he even noticed - maybe he'd been talking more to himself than to her), he didn't give any indication.

"Maybe she needs help."

Perhaps vagabonds could sense each other the same way that all of them sensed each other's potential for will-work. Or maybe Declan just worried about people. He'd always seemed a bit sensitive that way. Reaching out a hand, he touched Emily's shoulder gently before moving forward, approaching the stranger.

"Hello," he said.

[Emily Littleton] It wasn't that Emily had no reaction at all to his portents of doom and destruction, it was just that they were so quiet, so quietly voiced, so simple compared to the searing presence of an Angel, or the piercing fear the Demons put into her. Declan was aware of the coming storm, and that he was in the know was somehow comforting.

(Have we come so far, Little? [Why yes, I think we have...] You can never go home again.)

His fingers find her shoulder, alight on the smooth skin there. They slide past, leaving the whispers of fingerprints behind. He steps in front of her, she follows.

Emily stands five-foot-nine on her bare feet. She is tall, tall enough to look over Declan's shoulder. She is just behind him, just to the side. She is smiling, but the smile offered to the unknown girl is a little reserved, a little less warm. It is enough without becoming ample. Adequate. Polite.

[Ellie James] Too late to run now, when they were both in front of her and had gone so far as to smile and say hello. Not so much self-consciously as cautiously she pulls her beat up jacket a little closer, pushing shaggy hair out of her face as she looks at the strangers with the familiar feel.

"Ah... hi. Am I on your bench?"

It's out before she can think to filter the words, watching Declan and Emily, and maybe drifters really can pick each other out from the street punks and emo kids and the ones who didn't want to go home rather than having no home to return to.

[Declan] In spite of himself, for the fraction of an instant, the blond drifter smiled.

"No. We felt your presence, and I thought... perhaps she's just an uncertain, flighty kind of angel. Someone who doesn't know the full beauty of the gift she's been given. I think you'll find it, some day. I hope you will, at least."

The man looked down (he couldn't have been all that old, for all that he spoke like someone three times his age) at his hands again briefly, and pale eyebrows knitted together for a moment.

[Emily Littleton] There are two types of drifters here: one with no home, and one with no hometown. There is a girl who drifts because she can, because it's who she is, because setting down roots is so damned hard; there are those who drift because it's deeper yet, it's burned into their bones, it's not a wanderlust but the simplest truth of what they are, do, seek.

Emily wanders, because she knows no other way. These two live closer to the edge of nothingness; she cannot join them there. Perhaps she knows it. Perhaps it's that knowledge that drags her away, more than the feeling of being watched by something or as much as the promises she's made to take better care of herself, to stay safe -- and this wandering about past midnight thing, it is not safe.

It is her turn to lay a hand on Declan's shoulder, to let it linger there just long enough to communicate its warmth, its gentleness. He does not like to be touched, so it is withdrawn quickly.

"I'm sorry," she says, and it tastes of Good Bye. "It's later than I thought..." this trails off, curls into his ear and then falls away. She looks past him, to Ellie, and smiles. It is not a nervous smile, she is not leaving because they are drifters and she is not. But Emily is leaving.

"Be well," she says, and it encompasses them both. And then, to Declan, "If you need someone to talk to you, you know how to find me."

After that? There is a moment; she lingers long enough to be polite, and then Emily rocks back a bit, separates herself, makes her way back from whence she came. She takes the Reverence with her, the Grace and the surety. It follows her, even when she has forgotten how to follow it.

[Ellie James] Ellie studies both of them, Declan because he called her - however indirectly - an angel, and Emily because for just a moment she is a even less of a mark and more of something... familiar.

"it's... all right." Though she's speaking to Emily, she's watching Declan. And when Emily leaves, she looks at Declan and hunches down a little lower.

"I don't know where you're seeing any angel, mister." She studied the night, and shook her head. "Sorry I ran your friend off. I didn' mean to, I was jus' curious."

It's in her accent, that she's far from home. Not New York far, and definitely not San Fransisco far, but far enough. How she ended up here is anybody's guess. Maybe what he's noticed is what she's here for.

[Declan] He knew how to find her. Of course he did. Declan could track her resonance to hell and back, if he needed to. (The question was... would anyone ever find him? Perhaps some day. Maybe he'd even find himself. But that day wasn't today.)

He looked up when Emily turned to go, and this time he did not flinch when she touched him. A faint smile appeared instead, and he nodded as if her departure had been expected all along. (Yes, of course you must go.)

"God be with you, beautiful girl."

He watched Emily go in silence before turning back to the other (feminine) drifter on the bench. "No need to apologize. I'm sure it had nothing to do with you. The late hour calls for rest, especially for those who are so weary as she."

Truth be told, if any among their number could be called weary, it was Declan himself. His eyes were tinged with a diffusion of red tonight, and dark shadows resided beneath them. He likely hadn't slept in at least 24 hours. Possibly more. Ellie was probably used to that kind of thing. This was the world these two lived in, where beds did not always materialize, and where one couldn't always afford to shut one's eyes.

"Can I help you with anything? It's... the least I can do. I've failed in so many things, lately."