15. Lambkin
Jan. 19th, 2014 04:58 am[At the market]
[He's small and quick and barefoot, essentially interchangeable with any other member of Below's sizable urchin population. He weaves through the crowd like a minnow, all bright eyes and quick hands. He does not steal, not here, where most people are on their guard for. Or - he doesn't steal things. The smallest touch of fingertips, and he siphons off a moment of emotion - excitement, anticipation, delight or disappointment. The apathy he leaves in exchange is too shallow, too brief for most people to notice, and so he gluts himself, nibble by nibble, beams innocently at anyone who grabs his wrist in suspicion, gives them a low pulse of comfort and reassurance back. Everyone is safe under Market Truce, after all.
When he taps someone who isn't happy - well, that's interesting. Sometimes it's scuttle-away-quick interesting, but sometimes it draws him closer.]
What's the trouble?
[A darling smile, between exuberant and shy, a child's well-intentioned and optimistic stumbling over normal social boundaries. It's not even all a lie: he feels good, right now, he feels. It makes him magnanimous.]
Maybe I can help.
[At the Market, actually trading.]
[His sister is elsewhere, with others of her kind. They do not appear together in public, though he has been seen on occasion exchanging a few words with her fellow velvets with no apparent fear, even outside the protection of the truce. For now, though, he searches for white things: plastic bottle caps, pale stones, fragments of broken ceramics. He presses forward through the throng, hands in his pockets, bouncing slightly, leaning forward in interest.]
What have you got there?
[Elsewhere, elsewhen]
[He has acquired a red pen, still half-full of ink. He nurses a burst of stolen smugness, stretched out over the afternoon into a thin, golden satisfaction as he draws little red feathers, falling from an archway of teacups someone else drew already. People generally don't bother painter-kids. He watches people come and go, feels the horde of emotions he isn't feeling yet buzz at the base of his skull like trapped wasps. It makes him want to do wild things.
He might pickpocket the passersby now, or give them disastrous directions, or slip his hand in theirs and play at being someone's child for an hour or two. He decides in a moment, half keen old instincts and half childish capriciousness, whether he feels avaricious or spiteful or charmed. And then he makes his move. ]
[Velvet lair]
[He comes and goes by his own ways, small paths only small people can wriggle through, perhaps a slender bridge over terrible abyss, which becomes easier to cross for someone incapable of his own fear. However the journey, he arrives, sweet-faced and terribly polite. He bows to the ladies, smiles winningly, offers them whatever baubles he has come across that he knows already are not to Anastasia's taste.]
[OOC: Responses will come from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
heisfallen.]
[He's small and quick and barefoot, essentially interchangeable with any other member of Below's sizable urchin population. He weaves through the crowd like a minnow, all bright eyes and quick hands. He does not steal, not here, where most people are on their guard for. Or - he doesn't steal things. The smallest touch of fingertips, and he siphons off a moment of emotion - excitement, anticipation, delight or disappointment. The apathy he leaves in exchange is too shallow, too brief for most people to notice, and so he gluts himself, nibble by nibble, beams innocently at anyone who grabs his wrist in suspicion, gives them a low pulse of comfort and reassurance back. Everyone is safe under Market Truce, after all.
When he taps someone who isn't happy - well, that's interesting. Sometimes it's scuttle-away-quick interesting, but sometimes it draws him closer.]
What's the trouble?
[A darling smile, between exuberant and shy, a child's well-intentioned and optimistic stumbling over normal social boundaries. It's not even all a lie: he feels good, right now, he feels. It makes him magnanimous.]
Maybe I can help.
[At the Market, actually trading.]
[His sister is elsewhere, with others of her kind. They do not appear together in public, though he has been seen on occasion exchanging a few words with her fellow velvets with no apparent fear, even outside the protection of the truce. For now, though, he searches for white things: plastic bottle caps, pale stones, fragments of broken ceramics. He presses forward through the throng, hands in his pockets, bouncing slightly, leaning forward in interest.]
What have you got there?
[Elsewhere, elsewhen]
[He has acquired a red pen, still half-full of ink. He nurses a burst of stolen smugness, stretched out over the afternoon into a thin, golden satisfaction as he draws little red feathers, falling from an archway of teacups someone else drew already. People generally don't bother painter-kids. He watches people come and go, feels the horde of emotions he isn't feeling yet buzz at the base of his skull like trapped wasps. It makes him want to do wild things.
He might pickpocket the passersby now, or give them disastrous directions, or slip his hand in theirs and play at being someone's child for an hour or two. He decides in a moment, half keen old instincts and half childish capriciousness, whether he feels avaricious or spiteful or charmed. And then he makes his move. ]
[Velvet lair]
[He comes and goes by his own ways, small paths only small people can wriggle through, perhaps a slender bridge over terrible abyss, which becomes easier to cross for someone incapable of his own fear. However the journey, he arrives, sweet-faced and terribly polite. He bows to the ladies, smiles winningly, offers them whatever baubles he has come across that he knows already are not to Anastasia's taste.]
[OOC: Responses will come from
heisfallen.]
