"Should I throw something at him? I'm pretty sure a turnip rolled under the bar here and I'm a pretty good shot..." she nudged the old vegetable with her toe and wrinkled her nose as it squished a little.

Hans stretched his arms outwards. "Yay! A friend," he exclaimed, and rolled about on the attic floor. He stopped when he hit one of the piles of junk and it toppled over with an unpleasant crashing sound. He flopped over listlessly and looked up at Gracey. "I dunno what to do after this point," he said, bewildered.


Leonard chuckled at the idea of an overripe turnip flying straight towards Garrett's head. The idea was tempting, but looking at the guest he kept, it was not a far stretch to believe that the woman was not interested in his attempts to flirt. "Give her a minute to refuse," he said. "She seems to be putting up with him amazingly well."


Garrett pondered a moment. What does the owner-type look like, he was tempted to ask. But she had already sent him on an errand. And the customer always got what the customer wanted. He slid out of his chair and grinned. "I'll be right back with that," he said, disappearing back into the kitchen.

Gracey clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from giggling as he rolled about and topple the pile. Then leaned to the side, and stretched out on the floor mirroring the way he was laying from a few feet away. Patially because she liked to keep herself on the same level as the people she spoke to, but partially because she really was still physically exhausted, and laying down, even on the hard wood boards, felt nice. "What do you mean by that, my friend? Can't we just continue on as we have been? Speaking, getting to know each other, telling stories of our pasts?"

Garrett was still in the kitchen, not only brewing another pot of coffee, but also glaring unsavorily at the ceiling. He'd heard something topple over and hoped it wasn't Hans playing with some of his things. He had some important keepsakes in that atticspace, some of them quite old and fragile.

"Well... I don't really do that a lot," he said, curling himself around one of the things that had toppled over. It seemed to be a box, but he didn't know what was in it. Garrett told him not to fiddle with his things, even if some of the things in the crawlspace weren't really his. "What's a stregga?"


Leonard eyed the newest patron warily. She seemed to be inspecting the place for... something. He'd been told to keep an eye out if any sort of inspector came, but he wasn't sure if the lady was one. She certainly didn't look like one... and he was of the understanding that they had to carry a badge with them. Suspicious, curious, he leaned in towards her: not fully approaching her but certainly not ignoring her. "Can I... help you?"

Gracey thought about the question for a few minutes, trying to think of how to answer. "Well, a stregga is, well kind of like, a witch I guess you could say, but not the silly fake witches with big warts that turn people into newts and such. Just, someone who believes in the power of the natural world around them, and uses it to help other people. Like whith herbs, my teacher could use herbs to cure just about anything, even things that modern medicine couldn't explain." She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the cieling. "I miss her allot. I miss the way things were when they were good. So quiet, such a peaceful little life." She realized as she was talking that he'd implied he hadn't really had many friends if he didn't have these sort of talks often. "Hans, why don't you have more friends? You seem like a perfectly sweet and likable boy to me."

Leonard tilted his head cynically, but not so much from distrust but from familiarity with the feeling. This place seemed to attract drifters, and from what Garrett had told him of the previous owner it had been the same before they'd bought the place. Wanderers seemed to be a constant, and he himself was no exception. "Why did you stop drinking," he asked. For him, that was a more pressing, unusual question for someone who had spent the grander amount of time with an alcoholic.


"Stregga sounds like a Village Mother," he said, recalling a not-too-distant memory of his childhood and early adulthood. His vision drifted off into a middle-space, remembering the good times before the draught; before everything went to hell. It was hard to think of those without thinking about the bad times as well, but he stopped himself before he could get too far. "I don't have a lot of friends because I'm not supposed to go outside," he said, as though it were obvious.


Giving one last disdainful look at the ceiling, Garrett returned to the coffee, which he may have managed to burn a bit in the process of inspecting the noise that he had no doubts of origin. He grumbled at his inattention, but it was still good enough to serve. Taking a fresh mug and filling it with coffee, he exited the kitchen and into the common area. "Hope you like it robust," he said, trying to make up for the fact that he'd burned the beans. He wasn't so much shocked to see that she'd left the table as much as he was worried that she'd left without paying. But when he saw that she had simply relocated to the bar and was eyeing the selection of whiskey, his mood eased. He approached her with the cup.

Grace smiled. "I like that term. It sounds fitting for what the Stregga I lived with did. Or tried to do rather." She frowned though when she thought about the idea of this boy being stuck up here all the time, no matter how comfortable he seemed to be with it. "So, are you never aloud out then? Never at all? That seems horribly depressing. Wait, would they be mad at me if they knew I was up here? I don't want to make anyone mad, but I just had a feeling I'd find better company up here than down there." She began to wonder what the repercussions of her actions could be, and was a little upset with herself for not thinking it through.

She laughed suddenly at the way her mind was working. "Listen to me, sitting here having a conversation with someone who was suggesting he'd rather kill and eat me a moment ago, and I'm more concerned about upsetting the building owners than anything else. Perhaps you're right, maybe I am a 'strange thing' after all. What makes you say that, if you don't mind me asking?"

Leonard supposed that was true, about men loving 'tough chicks' but it wasn't really his area of expertise to say so. "We've been lucky enough not to have a barfight yet," he said reflectively. He scratched at his hairline ponderously. "Maybe that means I'm doing a good job."


Garrett wondered, but only vaguely, what it would take for him to give up drinking. He'd been drinking heavily since before he was legal, and so far nothing had stopped him. And having been in a few barfights himself, he knew that that would certainly not keep him from inbibing large quantities of sweet, delicious, distilled-and-fermented liquid. Oh, heavens no. He was fairly certain that he would continue drinking. But the discussion had turned to women. He would like to keep it there. "I dunno," he said. "I mean, don't get me wrong: I like dangerous girls and all, but danger and tough aren't always the same thing, if you get what I'm saying." He waggled his eyebrow. He does that on occasion.


"Probably not mad," he said. "More like worried. Because people aren't supposed to know that I'm up here and they don't want someone calling the police and telling them that they've got someone up here and that he's a wanted criminal and then they'd have to shut down the bar and go to jail and then we'd have to break out of jail again and find a new city and no one wants to hear Mr. Garrett complain all that time." He stopped, realizing that he was rambling and that it didn't answer her question. "And you're a strange thing because you crawl around in attic spaces," he said, grinning.

"Hey now!" Gracey exclaimed with a mock tone of shock, though she giggled at it "Isn't saying I'm strange for crawling up here rather like the pot calling the kettle black?" She reached out and poked him in the ribs again. The boy seemed far to thin to her, but, judging by what she'd gathered of his eating habits, she had no intention of reminding him to eat when the only edible thing around was presumably her. "As for the rest, they'll have nothing to worry about from me. For one, I simply have no desire to see any trouble befall you or your family. Also, if I were to talk to a cop, I think they'd be just as likely to ship me back home, where I can honestly say prison would probably be the nicest thing they'd do to me. What are you wanted for?"

Leonard thought it was a little odd that she called him Mr. Bartender when he was the bouncer, but he also surmised that she was an odd girl. She was certainly not as young as her demeanor would imply and while it didn't so much bother him (he had seen this before in other people) he wondered what was behind that; if it was a façade.

Garrett was not thinking of such things because he was busy studying, shall we say, "body language?" Her movements suggested somewhat of a loss, and and her clothes suggested someone who didn't have much in the way of livingspace. He took a chance, as he usually did when it came to making a sale, and as he always did when it came to attractive women. "If you need a place to stay, we have plenty of cheap rooms for rent," he said.

Oh, there he goes again, Leonard thought sardonically. Flirting...


Hans tilted his head quizzically. "But the kettle is silver," he said, unfamiliar with the idiom. "Yay! We can be prison buddies! I was in jail because eating people is wrong. That's what Leonard says, anyways. And some people call that murder." He made a face to show that he was very disappointed. "Gracey doesn't seem like the prison type."

Katya's tail swished as she threw a sideways glance at Leonard. She had yet to see him mix a drink, so she guessed the girl simply assumed anyone behind the bar was a bartender. "Must not get out much..." she muttered in Leonard's general direction. Things were still pretty quiet, so she mixed herself a grasshopper and leaned on the bar to sip at it. It would take a lot more to get her buzzed, so she wasn't worried. It was just tasty and something to do. She looked over at Leonard, "Want me to mix you anything?"

"Well, I didn't so much... hurt... anyone, as I just, conjured up something that did." Grace fidgeted a few moments thinking about it, then quickly changed subjects. "So... eating people? How does one become a cannibal? I mean, have you always been or did you get converted to it? Is it just more enjoyable? Do you still eat other things?"

Leonard shrugged and rolled his eyes. "Maybe," he said. "Might just not be paying attention."

"Let me show you around," Garrett said, putting on his heaviest gentlemanly charm while quite obviously staring at her navel. He grinned. He reached behind the bar and quickly grabbed one of the keys from the hook before leading her back to the hall where the rooms were. The hall was lined with a dark wood, stained and waterproofed just in case there should be a leak or a flood or a particularly terrible night. "All of the rooms were recently refurbished," out of necessity. "They have a nice rustic feel to them," he said. He unlocked the door to the room with the corresponding key and allowed her to enter first.

Leonard shook his head as he disappeared into the hallway. But he would have a talk with him later. "I don't actually drink alcohol," he said to Katya. He was beginning to get used to the way she looked, only realizing that she looked a little odd when he caught the swishing of her tail out of the corner of his eye. "But a glass of water would be nice."

"Leonard makes me eat vegetables," Hans said, making a face of distaste. "There wasn't a lot of food where I grew up and a lot of people started dying." He pulled his legs in and curled into a ball, as if hugging himself. "And I was hungry and they were just sitting there in the ground, decaying and I didn't want it to go to waste. And it kinda tastes pretty good, y'know..." He stopped, realizing that his mind was wandering more than usual. "Howd'ya conjure something? It sounds hard."

Lucia Neveaux was feeling kind of down in the dumps. Scartch that, really down in the dumps. Her boyfriend had left her earlier this week, her caretaker kicked her out of her lodgings, and her job as a seamstress for the wealthy went out the door along with her lodgings. Or herself. Either way, Lucia was manless, jobless, and homeless. All in acouple of days. Now, this fair Lady was slumming it, trudging down the street in a short, frilly dress of her own design, shivering and wondering why she hadn't taken a cloak with her. She'd have to sew one out of one of the bolts of fabric she'd brought with, which lay in the rolling trunk she pulled behind her.

Suddenly, Lucia stopped in the middle of the road and looked around. A pub lay on her left and she was really, really craving a drink. And maybe a man. 'No, no,'she thought, 'just a drink!'. After un-messing her long black curly hair and brushing and dirt off of her short striped, frilly dress, she opened the door of the pub and walked in. Hmmm, this place has a pretty interesting vibe to it, she thought as she moved up to the long bar. Plopping herself on a stool, she crossed her legs and leaned her rolling trunk against the bar, and looked for a bartnder.

Anna tried not to laugh at the guy, his antics amused her, but she wasn't quite sure if they were purposely obvious or not. She walked with him up the steps and looked around the hall. "Rustic..." She agreed. Possibly because it looks all like old and new wood? She thought to herself.
She nearly died when he opened the door. She walked in and looked around. The room was small, but nicely decorated and though it was bare, it was still more then she'd had in a long time. "It's a lot nicer than I thought it would be." She mumbled to herself unsure if he'd heard her. "How much....is it for rent? ...I mean I can rent this out?" She nearly smacked herself for being at a loss for words.

((sorry i was gone all weekend. It was my birthday))

Katya raised her eyebrow and smiled at Leonard's "confession". She got a clean glass from the cabinet. She looked back over her shoulder at him, "So, you want that straight or on the rocks?" she winked and filled the glass, dropping in a couple of ice cubes for good measure. She delivered it to Leonard with a smile, "There you go, Tiger, one water on the rocks," her eyes sparkled good-naturedly.

She turned away from Leonard when she noticed the new woman enter. She crossed back behind the bar and smiled warmly, "Welcome to Fid's Tavern, what can I get for ya?"

Gracey's eyes glossed over and she looked quickly down at the floor, fidgeting uncomfortably. "I... well, I don't know entirely. It's all... blurry, I guess. I've been trying to remember how it happened myself honestly. It's like I completely locked it out of my memory. It was just, terrible. People died. My mentor and I got blamed for their deaths." She grew silent, and curled herself up in a ball.

Deciding to distract herself from the thought, she turned her attention to the few spots where light filtered up from the room below. "So, what do you do up here all day? Do you watch the people come and go at all or do you... I don't know... do you draw? Write? I think I'd go crazy stuck in an attic all the time, how do you occupy yourself?"

Lucia smiled at the bartender who greeted her. "Thank you, and I'll have a bottle of your dryest red wine," she said sofly, reaching into a pocket in one of the ruffles on her dress. She pulled out a few long flat gold pieces and placed them on the counter, sliding them towards the woman behind the bar. "By the way," she remarked, "I like your tail, miss." Lucia watched Katya's tail swishing. She loved people with tails and things like that, they made her jealous.

A delighted grin spread across her face as her tail shivered happily, "Thank you! You're so sweet!" the lovely woman had just made her night. Probably my whole week! she thought, giggling to herself. She collected a wine glass from the cabinet and ducked under the bar to rummage through the wine racks. She selected an old Zinfandel. As she straightened up she blew off the dust and reached for a corkscrew. With a smile that could light the room, she opened the bottle and expertly filled the lady's glass. "A lovely red wine for a lovely lady," she smoothly handed her the glass and moved the bottle within reach so the woman could refill her glass at her leisure.