While the rest go out and squander (Open!)

CIAN

Look not here for bits of narration that will serve as puzzle pieces for a whole. See not the name, the face, the stoic movements and think ample dissection will prove worth your while. You'll not find here tidbits to mull over, just ample descriptions of eyes uncomfortably blue, and a jawline to make a skeleton jealous.

Look only here for a man, impeccably dressed. His coat is made from the wool of creatures those in the Hollowed Ground have never heard of much less seen, his shoes polished but well worn. He smokes a well-rolled cigarette that smells far sweeter than any grass grown in these parts, and yet still he looks around like a man lost in the alleyways of a dark memory.

Smoke whorls upwards, obscuring his eyes as he stands in the middle of the street, feet comfortably apart.

But the highway's low, & the low way's mine
You can burn me eternally, out to the snow and the wind and the rain

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Laser beams we're about to awesome all your dreams

Maybe it’s the smoke that draws her, the smell of something absolutely foreign in a world she knows like the back of her unaging hand. There’s nothing else to bring Wessex nosing around the Settlement right now, not when there are things to be done in many other parts of the known world. But things change in the blink of an eye, and the explorer, the Wraith is a slippery creature. How long she’s been there or why she watches is unimportant; only that she is there and he is there and he isn’t someone she knows.

Stalking (or perhaps gliding, one never knows how graceful she is these days), Wessex approaches with a curious tilt to her head and assertive, appraising eyes that rake the man up and down. Nothing screams threat and nothing screams friend, either, so she’ll settle for slightly on edge and having faith that she can outmaneuver him if need be.

“Who are you?” comes the question-demand. It is something she expects to be answered.

WESSEX

CIAN

She arrives like a predator. She doesn't need to assert her dominance because it's all right there in every artificially graceful step. Carve her open and you'll get sparks, not screams; what is there for her to fear? What indeed, from a man in a trench coat seemingly doing nothing but smoking.

What indeed.

Inhaling a long and unhurried drag, his eyes not really moving to Wessex though seeing her well enough out of his peripheral vision, the man takes the cigarette from his mouth and gestures with it towards the west. Towards Halo, as if that is where Deepfrost emanates from.

"Snow'll be comin' early this year." He said in a voice shockingly pleasing to the ear. The man is the sort who appears as though he ought to bark with malice rather than speak, or whose voice ought to sound as though its been shredded by a cheese grater. Instead, it's liltingly accented and entirely ordinary.

But the highway's low, & the low way's mine
You can burn me eternally, out to the snow and the wind and the rain

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Laser beams we're about to awesome all your dreams

In a way, she knew that already. Asked it of Eirachi, for that very reason. But maybe - maybe the increased snow will keep the Outlanders inside this year, since there will be no epic battle for LongNight freedom. Maybe this year they’ll learn. If snow comes early, it isn't a bad thing. And maybe there are others who know Eirachi’s moved - how the Wraith can’t fathom - but then two years ago she’d never dreamt of Torchline or Halo either.

The demigod stops her approach at six feet, if he doesn't move. Crosses her arms. His statement is all well and good, but who is she to listen and take anyone at face value? That’s not the Wessex we all know and loathe. “That’s not what I asked.”

The lilt is familiar. She’s heard it before, but can’t put her finger on just where. For now, the connection eludes her and perhaps its slipperiness is why Ianto is a fox.

WESSEX

CIAN

Shifting his gaze to her finally, cheeks hollowing as he pulls in another drag of his cigarette, the man regards her with a tense stare for just a fraction of a second. But how long do two predators truly need, to size each other up? The math is done in the bones and low in the loins, not the mind. Pulling the cigarette from his mouth, he bobs it her way as if to say that you didn't.

The man's smile is not full, nor does it reach the steel of his eyes. A token gesture at best, and one not particularly veiled. "I could tell you who I am, or I could lie. You'd wouldn't know the difference, so what of it?" His tone is caught between philosophical drivel and challenging. Had he laughed then, it might have seemed like a joke.

But he didn't laugh.

"If the snow comes early, that'll make the LongNight preparations all the harder. Snow moss hidden beneath layers of ice, memory snow weakening the boards and growing mould in the warm places it finds..." This was said almost as a threat, as if he, this unassuming man, had control over the winter threats. "Then again.." His lips pursed as he shrugged. "You might well have all that under control." So saying, he placed the cigarette back into his mouth.

But the highway's low, & the low way's mine
You can burn me eternally, out to the snow and the wind and the rain

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Laser beams we're about to awesome all your dreams

“Common courtesy.” At this her head tilts a fraction to the side, arms losing a bit of their tension. They can be civil or not, it doesn't really matter to her, she's got some immediate thoughts on the man. “I know enough already.” Every body tells a story. The smells that come with it - the sweat, the odors of the last meal they ate, the posturing, eye dilations (whether or not she can actually see that, she'll never tell). Whatever. There are things a machine can do that a human’s eye cannot. And she’d sacrifice taste for that over and over again.

Her thoughts drift again to Eirachi, eyes still on the stranger. “Why do you think this will happen and why come to tell the Hollowed Ground?” Why the first stranger he meets on the street, why not ask for the leader of the area?

WESSEX

CIAN

"Common courtesy, eh?" The man repeats as if amused by this turn of phrase. "And that's how your operate, is it? With common courtesy?" He very much doesn't think it's the case, not with who she is. What she is.

His shoulders shrug beneath his coat as she decides that she knows enough. She doesn't, by a long shot, but it isn't his place to educate her. Whatever conclusions she draws are to her own detriment.

Taking another long drag on his cigarette before letting the smoke waft up before his eyes again, obscuring the hardened blue of them, he takes his time before replying. He has an unhurried way about him. A patience to make even stones jealous. "Experience." The man replies at last, before he shakes his head, indicating that she's misunderstood.

"I 'aven't come to warn anyone." He says, tossing his cigarette to the ground and grinding out the ember with his heel. Linking his hands behind his back, he begins to stroll up the main street. "Just making conversation."

But the highway's low, & the low way's mine
You can burn me eternally, out to the snow and the wind and the rain

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Laser beams we're about to awesome all your dreams

Actually, yes, she wants to shoot back, but he’s a being a dick and Wessex is very much over this kind of conversation. Over people like him. So she stands breathless and as still as a statue and lets the man pass by her, the only movement in the tracking of her eyes. She might have let him go on his way to find conversation elsewhere until he dropped the cigarette butt on their street.

Littering. Lack of courtesy. Assumptions. No, she doesn’t like this stranger at all.

Right before he passes her she reaches out for her shadow, calling it up from the road to try and trip the man as he walks past - grab at the toes of a shoe, stick to a heel, or perhaps pull the back hem of his trousers. If he trips - if he stops - he’ll find her in the same position: facing away, arms still crossed, feet still as they were when she stood in front of him.

WESSEX

CIAN

Oh, it would be cinematically wonderful for the man to pause for a fraction of a second and step just a bit higher. To pull his coat around him so that the shadows couldn't cling to them. To evade.

But it isn't a film, and for all that this as of yet unknown man is, a future-seer he is not. So he does trip, his coat flailing out from his side like wings. His hands reach out to brace a fall, but his legs right him quickly enough, though it is far less elegant than he likely would have liked. Turn he does, to see Wessex with her arms crossed completely innocent of wrong-doing here. Or such is what it's meant to look like, but in this world, strangers though they are, they both know this isn't the case.

With a knowing smile that borders on the condescending, the man merely turns his eyes up towards the sky with a nod. "Snows' comin'." He says without concern, turning with more diligent steps into the heart of town.

~FIN

But the highway's low, & the low way's mine
You can burn me eternally, out to the snow and the wind and the rain

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!