Still Wandering

[Gilsworthy]

Dust kicked up around the boots of a tall man exiting a shadowy alleyway. At first he might have appeared menacing, but when he straightened up and patted some of the grime from his dark longcoat and ran a hand through his messy black hair, he appeared no more than a shady looking miscreant. People hustled and bustled past him and his cozy little viewing spot, their faces looking haggard and careworn, for the most part. Here, a woman was walking from market with a basket of goods, there a few children were playing noisily on the ground. 'Unless I'm seeing things,' he thought, 'I'd say there's been some kind of war around here.'

Any man who travels is bound to run into war, heck, war runs into people even if they don't travel. The struggle was evidently over, and the thief congratulated himself on not having been a part of it. 'Couldn't have come at a better time! The people will be relaxing after any sort of conflict... judging by some of the holes in the walls it must have been some fight.' the man chuckled to himself. He glanced behind him; down the alley a ways was a conveniently placed puncture in the city's defenses, be it from said struggle or just the detritus of decay. 'Well, Gil, you've got to have a knack for finding these sorts of things in your job, eh?' he said to himself, chuckling once more and giving closer inspection to the crowds around him.

He needed to find out what exactly had happened... there would no doubt be someone around willing to give him the general idea. Another thief, perhaps? The less savory individuals of a city always seemed to have their fingers to the pulse of current events, or, in some cases, a dagger. There was bound to be another around in a crowd of this size. Gil's sharp blue eyes continued to look, but nobody stood out to him. He released a sigh, and stuck his hands into his pockets and assumed that sort of lean that every good traveler learns, slightly hunched over, eyes forward but head bent down, the feet able to move constantly and without any excess motion. After enough time in the city he would adopt a more relaxed stance, but just coming in from the road he was still in a traveling mood.

He passed a stall of apples, where a young boy was trying to reach a particularly juicy specimen on the top row. His little arms stretched out, but came just a hair short. Gil glanced about; the shopkeeper was chatting on the other end of the stall with a local. Grinning, the thief reached out and plucked the apple from it's high position. A gasp escaped the young one, and he looked up at Gilsworthy with big brown eyes that were widened with astonishment. Gil brought a finger to his mouth to silence the boy, then bent down so he could be eye to eye with him. "Listen closely," said Gil, giving a conspiratorial glance around before continuing, "See how the apple man isn't paying attention to his apples? That means you don't get in trouble if you take this one. See?"

The boy looked in confusion at the apple, then back up at Gil, "But... but in't that stealing?" he whispered back to Gil.

The thief shook his head and said, "No, no it's not! The apple man is paying you that apple for his being a lunk head. You should thank him if you see him later. He wants you to have that apple, and I'm sure he understands. He would say the same exact thing if you asked him." Gil followed this up with a big grin and a pat on the boy's shoulder. "Now go enjoy your apple." Without another word, the boy smiled widely and nodded, then ran away as fast as his legs could carry him. Children never ceased to put a smile on Gil's face.

"Hey, did that little rat just steal one of my apples?!" came an angered voice from the other end of the stall. The merchant stormed up to Gil in a fury, but instead of facing him, the thief slipped around back of him and put an arm over his shoulder.

"Hey now, he's probably just a little hungry, eh? And he's just a child. Here, why don't I just pay for that apple and we'll clear everything up, hmm?" Gil dropped a fat coin into the merchant's hand, and the man stared for a long moment at the coin before shooting a suspicious stare at Gil. In response, the vagabond just smiled and slipped away into the crowd. The merchant turned back to his stall, decided one apple wasn't all that much of a loss, especially when some fool had just paid him a gold for a single one, and resumed his place behind his stall. Gil swung the man's purse from between two fingers and savored the satisfying chink the money inside made. 'He never even noticed I took it in all his surprise at that one little coin... haha, that might have been a fake, now that I think about it...' The humor of the situation made Gil release a contented chuckle before secreting the pouch away in his spacious longcoat.

His hands resumed their place in his pockets, and he just kept walking. In a city this size, he was bound to run into someone eventually. His blue eyes still pierced the crowd to attempt to weed out those he might pose a few questions to. The dust continued to kick up at his feet, mixing with the cloud already present from the people surrounding him.

[Eisilena Telise]

A day or two of not eating might have been a good thing for Eisilena’s looks to blend in. And it wasn’t just food that she did get for a while. Dirt smeared her pale face and dark mangled hair. Her clothes, blue and black robes, where tattered, stained and practically ruined. Licking her cracked lips, she held on shakily to her staff as she slowly made her way through the equally battered crowd.

Dust that flittered above for a moment sunk back and dusted her dark shoes tan for a moment. She had paused to watch in envy as a young boy ran off, holding a wondrous piece of food in his small hands. He was gone so quick and all Eisilena did was sign in envy. Even little children where getting food, but she doubted it was by coin. For some reason, war most likely, this town had turned for a worse case. There was probably nothing for the ice mage here. She scowled and continued, holding back tears of anguished frustration.

Her stomach flopped with a grumble and she bit her lower lip and closed her azure eyes. She never stopped though and kept going without complaint. Was resorting to thievery the only option she had? She only just entered a probable war zone, but it seemed it was more of the after math rather than a pure danger zone of fighting. Still…

Her azure eyes snapped opened and she took another look around. Eisilena could see that no one looked like a magic user. Just commoners, thieves and warriors. Where were all the mages? A horrible feeling began to sink in her dried stomach. Was all this horrid aftermath from a fight of getting rid of those who used magic? What if mages weren’t supposed to be here? Her heart began to beat faster in fear and she looked around, before doubling her pace towards an alley. She needed to stop and think. She needed to know what happened.

Spots began to fuzz up vision as she cut through the crowd. With no energy and her heart beating into hysterics, she was getting dizzy and disoriented. Her lips cracked apart to take in large gasps of air, but it didn’t seem to help. She just made it to the edge of a stall when she collapsed to her knees. Even her staff couldn’t hold her up any longer. She was shaking badly and the spots were growing larger.

The horrid feeling of nausea began to grow in her stomach and the back of her neck heated up in a sickly feeling. Her skin suddenly went from pale to clammy and ill ridden. Her eyes glazed over and a high ringing came to her ears. Numbness began to spread. Finally, she fell over to her side, darkness taking her to a faint. A few people paused but not many stayed. One woman bent down to touch her fore head and see if Eisilena was okay, but she yelped and jumped back, panicked and complaining about how cold her skin was. Not just cold… freezing to the touch.

[Gilsworthy]

Gil stopped at length, his tall frame just eking out over the heads of most of the crowd. Naturally, the people simply parted around him to get where they were going, the first few adding a nasty look or mutter to the mix. He'd been in crowds denser than this one and managed the same thing. His usual amount of luck, however, was running dry in regards to finding any people aside from the commoners. A dark scowl took Gil's playful features, and he turned slowly to scan the crowd and the fringes straying along the stalls as well. 'I must be in the wrong part of town.' he mused, scratching his chin with a rough sound from the bit of stubble adorning it. 'I might drop in on the local Tavern later on, that would be a surefire way to get acquainted with the locals. Doesn't seem like many of them come by the Square.'

His sharp eyes locked onto an anomaly in the flow of traffic, a darkly clothed figure stumbling toward an alleyway. It only took a light push to get people out of his way as he started moving to the edge of the crowd. At that moment, A rather plump man with a massive bag hanging at his side moved in front of Gil and nearly stepped on his toes. "Watch your step!" he growled, but the man ignored him and kept on his trundling way. Gil rubbed his arm where the fat peasant had bumped him and scowled with all his might, as if to wither the man where he walked. Realizing he was getting sidetracked, the thief turned his attention back to the nearby alley and jerked to a halt. The mysterious person had disappeared.

Gil sighed and ran a hand through his hair, ducking quickly to the edge of the crowd and taking cover from the sun under an abandoned stall. He had lost him, whoever he had been. Probably some unsavory wretch getting away with the goods; he wouldn't be the only thief around in times like these. Briefly, Gil considered moving on from the square and wandering elsewhere, when a passerby stooped down at the edge of the stall Gil was stationed at and murmured a few words. There was a yelp in response, and some pathetic sounding answer. Curious, Gil leaned ever so slightly in that direction and peeked over the side of the stall. There, sprawled haphazardly at the side of the stall, was the dark clothed mystery man. Except she was a woman. The thief's eyes widened as he observed her piteous condition.

"Ye gods, are you alright?" he said, quickly moving beside her. The poor thing was shaking uncontrollably, and he could barely make out a face past the tangle of black hair. He put his hand on her arm to try and revive her more fully, and wrenched it back at the feel of it. Ice cold, even through his cut-fingered gloves. He moved his head down to try and look up into her eyes. "My, but aren't you a mess?" Briefly his gaze lingered on the staff clutched in her hands, but he moved the thought to the back of his mind. Her clothing was so torn as to be nearly unrecognizable, and she was as pale as marble. The cogs in Gilsworthy's head spun rapidly, then he slipped an arm around under her shoulders, trying not to gasp at the sharp coldness of her skin.

"Come on, into this alley." he said quietly, helping her to stand and moving the two of them into the shaded spot inbetween two buildings. 'She's skin and bones.' he thought in wonder, goodness knows when she had gotten her last meal. "Aaaand, there you go." he said, moving her gently to rest up against the side of the building. Here, the sound of the crowd was muffled, and a musty sort of peace reigned. It was in this environment that Gil thrived, those places inbetween that few desire to tread.

Moving quickly, the woman was looking worse by the minute, Gil patted around the inside of his longcoat and procured a small flask. This he un-stoppered before pouring a small amount of amber liquid into the cap and holding it out to her. "It's brandy." he explained, "Get this down and maybe we'll get a few words out of you, hmm?"

[Eisilena Telise]

The darkness was not for long. Only minutes passed while it seemed hours to Eisilena, who was still on the ground and only coming into awareness of what happened. Her mind was sluggish and her body weak and still shaking. Her numb ears picked up sounds that seemed so close yet so far away. Her eyelids were too heavy to lift and her lips and jaw to clenched to move.

She tried to find her voice, but found nothing. Something briefly touched her arm, but went back a second later. The ice mage knitted her dark brows together and parted her lips to speak, but her voice was still lost in a tangle of confusion and numbness. A moment later, she was suddenly coming up right. Her eyes finally cracked open and she gave a small whimper. It was then when her mind concluded that an arm or something was around her shoulders and helping her stand.

The talking became louder and clearer, but so did the light and she moaned and faced her head down, hair acting as a dark curtain to keep the light out. Suddenly, she was moving. Eisilena didn’t even remember if she commanded her feet to move, but none the less, she was moving. The person helping her said something around the lines of ‘there you go’ and the dark shade of an alley blocked the light.

Now leaning against the wall, Eisilena managed to blink a few times before opening her eyes wider. The sounds of the crowd seemed more muffled, but it wasn’t all from her numbed hearing, which was slowly clearing back up. She raised her head to see a young man standing nearby, holding out a flash. Any precautious thoughts that normal ran through Eisilena’s mind never entered and she grabbed the flask. She heard the words ‘Brandy’ but her mind was too slow to recognize what exactly ‘brandy’ was.

It took her a moment to bring the flask to her mouth. Her hands were still heavy and right now, she could only think about clenching the object. Soon, that turned to thoughts of liquid, sweet liquid that was in the object and her stomach squirmed with delight at the thought of finally having something in it. Slowly, shakily, she brought it up to her dry lips.

A hot burning liquid, not hot from heat, flowed into her mouth and her eyes shot open. She quickly brought the flask away from her mouth and spat out whatever entered her mouth and sputtered. With the back of her hand, she wiped her mouth clean, but continued to sputter here and there. Brandy; that vile liquid her father use to drink on days off. Not every day… just when he needed a sip. Her mind finally got back to a decent working gear and she looked up at the young man and handed the flask back.

“Thank you.” She said shortly, her voice was light but touched with winter.
“Take it, I won’t drink the rest. Vile stuff, that is.”
She nodded to the flash, favoring it a slight glare.

[Gilsworthy]

Amazingly, in her delirium, the woman reached past the proffered capful of brandy and seized on the entire flask. Gil let her take it, and watched as she mechanically brought it to her lips, then immediately spurted it all out. Blinking back his surprise, he wiped the droplets of spray off his face and observed the sip of brandy still waiting in the cap in his hand. With a shrug he downed it, and reveled in the fiery taste that swept down his throat. The hand that offered the flask back to him was much more under control than before.

Gil took the flask and re-capped it before stowing it away in his coat. "I thought that would do it." he said knowingly, displaying a roguish grin as he did. "Indeed, but somehow it's the vile stuff that lets you know you're alive... anyway, how do you feel? I imagine something must be amiss for you to just collapse like that." Her voice was just as cold as she had felt, and unwittingly Gil's eyes drifted to the staff that the woman held, before looking back to her eyes.