Brushing at her hakama, Shiori ducked down one narrow spindly street as she casually glanced over the open-air vendors hawking their trinkets and doo-dads. The street was smooth cobblestone beneath her bare feet but the towering buildings stood like crooked spines, leaning this way and that as they spilled to overhang the alley like fat-bellied old men. Shadows were cast pell-mell, the scent of grime and soot only growing stronger as she worked her way deeper into the external network of backstreets.
As she wound her way past civilians counting out coins and bartering for bits of scrap metal or chunks of quartz she couldn’t quite shake the feeling of being watched. More than likely paranoia; none of her instructors had much patience when it came to her almost daily foibles and would never have waited long enough for her to reach this back-water swell of a district before pouncing. That knowledge hadn’t helped earlier, when she was walking through the bright and airy fair near the Dawnbringer’s Plaza, twitching every time someone glanced her way. It didn’t help now, either.
It wasn’t as if she was skipping school, which would have been more suspicious than her tentative wanderings. No, siree, Kita Shiori did not have the death wish necessary to run off when someone might be actively looking for her. Classes had been cancelled and a free afternoon handed out like candy to starving children, the shock of it hitting her straight to the core even as she could taste the sweet sweet flavor of freedom. She had hidden away in the mass exodus of hyperactive and insane children, ducking her head and some-blessed-how not getting called back for whatever specious reason Fumiko-sensei might have come up with on the spot. Those first few seconds of fresh air and unguarded liberty had gone straight to her head and she’d almost danced her way to the Plaza with the rest of the rabid hoard.
It was only later, as Shiori began to realize what an opportunity this mystery release could turn into, that the paranoia truly bloomed. She had skittered along in a small gossiping knot of younger girls’ wake, coasting on the lapels of their normalcy, the whole time plotting the possibility of getting to the iron district unnoticed. She didn’t know for certain that anyone would actively try to stop her from visiting Junichiro, but she didn’t know that they wouldn’t, either. And the cost of a mistake might very well be the end of any such brief gasps of independence.
Which was why she had wasted over an hour walking in circles, stopping to stare glassy eyed at various stalls and even once shelling out her hard-bitten coin for a packet of sweet bread. Figuring she’d either slipped the leash, if there was one, or had enough plausible deniability built up from the wandering, she had headed deeper into the knot of crossroads where the less respectable and almost affordable smithies plied their wares.
Keeping up her steady stroll, she couldn’t help the smile as she saw the rows upon rows of freshly forged pots, nails, wheel-spokes, and even an impressive display of doors. Pausing to run her hands through a box of nails, she savored their upended weight against her fingertips and moved on only after a lingering glare from the lady behind the table. It wasn’t home, per se, but it was a sight closer than her everyday life, and the presence of so much iron made her heart swell.
WC: 585
As she wound her way past civilians counting out coins and bartering for bits of scrap metal or chunks of quartz she couldn’t quite shake the feeling of being watched. More than likely paranoia; none of her instructors had much patience when it came to her almost daily foibles and would never have waited long enough for her to reach this back-water swell of a district before pouncing. That knowledge hadn’t helped earlier, when she was walking through the bright and airy fair near the Dawnbringer’s Plaza, twitching every time someone glanced her way. It didn’t help now, either.
It wasn’t as if she was skipping school, which would have been more suspicious than her tentative wanderings. No, siree, Kita Shiori did not have the death wish necessary to run off when someone might be actively looking for her. Classes had been cancelled and a free afternoon handed out like candy to starving children, the shock of it hitting her straight to the core even as she could taste the sweet sweet flavor of freedom. She had hidden away in the mass exodus of hyperactive and insane children, ducking her head and some-blessed-how not getting called back for whatever specious reason Fumiko-sensei might have come up with on the spot. Those first few seconds of fresh air and unguarded liberty had gone straight to her head and she’d almost danced her way to the Plaza with the rest of the rabid hoard.
It was only later, as Shiori began to realize what an opportunity this mystery release could turn into, that the paranoia truly bloomed. She had skittered along in a small gossiping knot of younger girls’ wake, coasting on the lapels of their normalcy, the whole time plotting the possibility of getting to the iron district unnoticed. She didn’t know for certain that anyone would actively try to stop her from visiting Junichiro, but she didn’t know that they wouldn’t, either. And the cost of a mistake might very well be the end of any such brief gasps of independence.
Which was why she had wasted over an hour walking in circles, stopping to stare glassy eyed at various stalls and even once shelling out her hard-bitten coin for a packet of sweet bread. Figuring she’d either slipped the leash, if there was one, or had enough plausible deniability built up from the wandering, she had headed deeper into the knot of crossroads where the less respectable and almost affordable smithies plied their wares.
Keeping up her steady stroll, she couldn’t help the smile as she saw the rows upon rows of freshly forged pots, nails, wheel-spokes, and even an impressive display of doors. Pausing to run her hands through a box of nails, she savored their upended weight against her fingertips and moved on only after a lingering glare from the lady behind the table. It wasn’t home, per se, but it was a sight closer than her everyday life, and the presence of so much iron made her heart swell.
WC: 585