I want to live where soul meets body

[repressings]

WHO: Credence Barebone and you (ft Annie Cresta)
WHERE: Fountain, inn, and around the village
WHEN: 12/8
OPEN TO: Legit everyone
WARNINGS: Most likely mentions of abuse in tags, will edit accordingly. Spoilers for Fantastic Beasts!
STATUS: Open.

---

i. Bᴀᴛʜᴇ ᴍʏ sᴋɪɴ ɪɴ ᴡᴀᴛᴇʀ ᴄᴏᴏʟ ᴀɴᴅ ᴄʟᴇᴀɴsɪɴɢ ⇾ closed to annie cresta
It's probably not a good thing to scream when you're underwater. That's Credence's first instinct, to scream, but something instinctual stops him. He feels pressure, an unusual sensation that he soon identifies as being surrounded by something other than air. Credence Barebone is drowning.

Blind panic sets in. Somehow, he's underwater. How isn't exactly the first thought on his mind--instead, it's I can't swim, and he kicks in the strange mixture of somehow warm-and-cold water, though it winds up more as a flail, and tries to reach the dim light that signals the surface.

He's going to die.

Credence is going to survive so much only to wake up somewhere unfamiliar and drown. Sheer stubbornness doesn't quite describe how much he's clawing at the water haphazardly--it's more instinct to stay alive. To endure. He's done it before, he can do it again. He has to, even if he feels consciousness starting to slip away. He's tired. He's so, so tired of fighting. It's all he's done these past few days.

Finally, he manages to struggle his way upwards--just enough to splash a large wave of water over the fountain, pale hand surfacing from the dark waters of the fountain to grasp feebly at the edge before slipping under once more. Credence may be tired, but he's not done yet.


ii. Aɴᴅ ғᴇᴇʟ⇾ inn
Credence has been counting. It's been exactly two days since the girl with the long hair helped him out of the fountain, sputtering and incomprehensible. Two days since he first stayed at the warm inn, and he's still there. He can't quite put an emotion on what he's feeling--it's certainly not homesickness, nor is it restlessness. He feels uneasy, and it's a different type than what's usually ingrained in his mind.

Two days of doing nearly nothing.

Idle hands are the devil's workshop. He tries to not take the phrase that flickers through his mind quite so literally, but after the events in New York City--after what he's done to everyone--it's hard not to. He'd been sitting in a corner, quiet and out of the way, when he decides to fix things.

Maybe it's a small way to fix things--to get rid of the feeling in his chest and the guilt of not actually doing anything when everyone is pitching in to survive. Somehow, he wants to make up for all of the damage he's done. This isn't the best way to go about it but it's a start. With an amount of courage that's abnormal from him, he clears his throat and speaks to the nearest person.

"I want to help." His voice is soft, barely above a whisper, as if raising it will somehow detract from something.

"I used to run--used to help--a church." It's the only equivalent to New Salem Philanthropic Society he can think of. "I want to help," He repeats, and finally chances a look at the other person's face.

"Please."


iii. Fᴇᴇʟ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ɪᴛ's ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ɴᴇᴡ ⇾ village

It's cold. It's cold and it's not snowing but there's a bunch on the ground, and Credence hasn't really it like this before. Not piled up. He's never been outside of New York City, never further than Broadway and 42nd street except for that one time he walked all the way to Harlem. He's left with the strangest urge to just jump in it, even though he swears he can still feel the chill the air had when it was biting down on wet skin upon his arrival.

He settles instead for smiling. Just a tad, of course, because he doesn't deserve to smile, but it's just him and the sky and someone passing by. Once he notices that someone's there his face immediately returns to it's neutral state, gaze to his shoes.

"It's beautiful," he says in that same soft voice he always does, as if misspeaking will bring forth something unpleasant. "It's not like New York."



iv. I ᴄᴀɴɴᴏᴛ ɢᴜᴇss ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴇ'ʟʟ ᴅɪsᴄᴏᴠᴇʀ ⇾ wildcard

Credence can be seen wherever there is warmth--he is the quiet, lurking presence in the inn, always listening to conversations. When he's walking around the village, he waits until the night time, and can be found staring at houses in a forlorn fashion. He might even bump into others if his mind is preoccupied, though his reaction to doing so will be abnormal.

Comments

iv

[booklegging]

Jess isn't a pious person. The only altar the Brightwells had worshipped at when he was young had been the trading tables in the underground, original books their bibles, materialism their guiding commandment. He supposes he wouldn't have stood a chance at rising past earthly concerns should the desire have arose--his father would have laughed him out of the house much sooner than he had.

But he can agree on one thing: idle hands are a curse for the spiritually-minded and the practically-minded alike.

Action is the only outlet that gives Jess a reprieve from burdensome feelings, and since the brutal murder of one of their own two weeks ago, he's been needing that reprieve more than ever. He sleeps less and less, and pushes himself more and more. Some days he heads into canyon lands before dawn and doesn't return until after dark.

Always, though, he keeps watch when he's in town. The animal mutilations and Karen's murder had been a stark reminder--they're not safe. They need lookouts. If that was ever in question, it's not now.

Those of them in town definitely aren't safe wandering about after dark, alone, and unarmed, and dressed in painfully eye-catching white as Credence is. Jess, concealed out of sight on a rooftop like a living, breathing gargoyle, sees the new guy coming a mile away. What are you out here doing? The hunched figure strolls aimlessly, passing dark alleys without checking them, blind spots wide open. Vulnerable from every direction.

An easy mark for a killer.

When it becomes apparent Credence isn't about to reverse course and head back to the relative safety of the inn, Jess sighs to himself. The prisoners who leave themselves exposed like this are the ones who worry him the most. Uncurling from his position, it takes a fence, a gap between roofs, and a matter of seconds to catch up to Credence, and when he does he swings down silently.

"Hey," he says just as his feet hit the snow-packed dirt with a soft whump. Surprise?

[repressings]

He has nowhere in mind, really. But if he walks, if he moves, it's just like if he helps out at the inn or hands our pamphlets back home. It makes him busy. It makes him feel something other than the strange hollow sensation in his stomach.

Something's missing from him. Not completely--the thing, the energy clawing at his skin and constantly whispering to be free has dimmed, no wrongs or slights to set straight. It's still there. It's still there and impatient, burning at his skin, but instead of a hot brand pressing into his spine he feels, instead, a warm hum, like a hot summer day.

He's still cold, of course. Credence has wrapped himself up in his peacoat but it's not enough, and it's the oddest sensation, being warm and cold at the same time, but here he is, walking and staring at his pale hand, palms turned to the snow, the back of his hand alarmingly white in the moonlight.

There's something soft hitting the ground--a thunk and a woosh mixed together--and a voice from behind.

Anything that comes up behind Credence automatically puts him on the defense--he jumps, every particle in his body lifting save for his actual feet, and whirls around, nearly stumbling over his own gait. One, two, three steps back and he's too startled to avert his gaze. Instead, wide eyed and panicked, he stares at the other villager, his mind racing.

Trespassing. That's what it must be--tresspassing, Credence has unknowingly walked into someone else's territory. As usual, Credence has walked himself into something his fault that could have easily been avoided.

"I--I didn't realize," he says immediately, trying to will his heartrate down to no avail.

[booklegging]

The older boy acts the way someone with a history of dodging and flinching back from physical attacks does. He spooks quickly, nimbly, like any runner worth his salt, ready to bolt at the sudden appearance of the Garda. But it's an unfocused sort of defensive posture--if Jess had been a real attacker, one slip of a knife into that open guard as the boy turns and the snow would be painted a vibrant red.

Like Karen. And once is enough.

"--I was there?" Jess finishes for the other unhesitatingly. He slips his hands into his coat pockets for warmth, casual. He wears the matching coat, but his scrub pants are grey. A player in this game, same as Credence.

If not for the pink spots on his cheeks suggesting he's been out here awhile, it might look as though he'd just appeared with the same inexplicable mystery of one of the Observer's gift boxes as he isn't even winded by his acrobatics. He hopes he's made his point.

"You should be careful. It's not safe out here away from safety in numbers."

Ignoring the fact he's out alone, too. He can handle himself. There's a difference.

[repressings]

'I was there,' the other man finishes his sentence, and Credence finds himself nodding numbly, looking at the other's shoulder instead of him. He has a darker shade of scrubs, but it might be white--there's no telling with this light. Maybe he'd just been there for a longer time and they were stained from dirt? There's no red on them. If that theory's true, then that means he hasn't killed.

He's been taught to see the worst from the start, after all. Why stop now? Especially here.

The other's warning proves a point, even though Credence would very much have liked it to have started with the warning and ended with it instead of 'scare the newcomer to prove the point.'

"I thought the village was okay," he says slowly, carefully, because the last thing he wants to do is upset the other. He doesn't want to rock the boat, doubly so with being so new, and when it comes to other people's temperaments, thanks to Ma, he always errs on the side of caution.

iii

[fishermansweater]

There's a look that kids from the industrial districts get. Pale, because they never see much of the sun, skinny, because they never get enough to eat. Scared, because who in Panem isn't scared, and the kids he sees from those districts have plenty of reason to be scared, because mostly, they're going to die within a few weeks.

The kid Annie pulled out of the fountain is like that, and oddly enough, it's something that makes sense to Finnick in a place that makes no sense. So many of the people here look like they never knew a day's hardship in their life until they arrived here, and, well.

There's nobody in Panem who's never known hardship outside the Capitol.

So Finnick's been keeping an eye on the kid. This morning, though, he's not actually watching out for him. He's on his way out to the woods, feeling decidedly too hot in his coat since the sudden mystery heat (and occasional fire) started.

But he sees the way the kid looks when he realizes he's spoken, and he's seen that look too many times.

"It's not like where I'm from, either," Finnick admits, glancing at the trident he's carrying to make sure he's not about to set the thing on fire again.

(There are scorch marks on the wood.)

[repressings]

He's grateful for the quiet girl and her suitor. He assumes that's what he is, because he looks at her like the sun probably looks at the moon. He's thought about that a lot--quiet little moments of sombre poetry. He's thought about all of the people in the village, none of them from where he is, like different characters in a book or a play. It's easier that way.

Even if they were from home, they wouldn't understand. It's not that he's some bleeding heart, unique in its fragile state--he's not special, despite what Graves had said, just destructive, a cracked shell of a human--it's that there's a simple rule in his world. No-maj and wizards don't mix. No one here seems to have magical powers similar to what he's seen--so it stands that his initial reaction is right.

None of that matters now, though. Credence has learned along time ago that dwelling on things that don't matter mean more pain in an already distress filled world. What matters is the quiet girl's suitor, all dazzling smiles and broad chest, and the curious tone in his voice. He can't place what it is, but he knows it's not sympathy, and that's good enough.

"Where are you from?" Credence asks things like he's fully expecting the question to be brushed off or tossed aside--but he does turn his face towards Finnick, just a little bit more, even if his gaze is still avoidant.

He should probably introduce himself at some point. Maybe that'll be his next goal: introduce himself to his savior's boyfriend.

[fishermansweater]

Finnick knows how little use sympathy is, though he's had little enough of it in his life. Understanding, though, that's something different, and he can understand the sort of fear that makes the simplest of comments seem like too much, because that's all he's ever known, he and anyone else from Panem who wasn't part of Snow's circle. Even before he was a victor, he'd known it, and known it without being told, because when you play the system in Panem you run the risk of losing, and playing the system was what the Careers existed to do.

Of course, in the end they all lost, no matter the outcome of their Games. The words New York, unfamiliar as they are, mean that Credence either truly isn't from the districts, or is going to pretend not to be, but that awareness of the threat that any stranger could pose is still familiar.

Finnick's still not used to being asked where he's from, as though people don't know. But someone who talks about their home in New York isn't even going to understand District Four as an answer. Or is going to pretend not to, and whichever is true, the instinctive answer still won't help.

"I think you'd say 'Texas'," is his reply after a few moments' careful thought. Not that there's much hint of it in his voice: far more in Annie's, but Finnick had learned a long time ago that a heavy district accent wasn't attractive.

iii.

[powerunleashed]

Jean didn't mind the snow nearly as much now that she had on clean, dry scrubs and overalls along with a coat and boots. She was much warmer, even if it was still impossibly cold, and the snow was nice and clean. It was never like this in the city and at school, it usually ended up getting cleared away before they could really get out in it like this.

When she heard New York, she paused and turned to look at the man who said it. "I'm from New York too," she said, her smile growing a little. "Upstate. Are you from downstate?"

[repressings]

"Oh," Credence says, and it's not a bad oh so much as it's surprised. He'd spoken, yes, but he hadn't expected her to actually talk back.

Thinking back on it, it's a silly thing to be startled by--humans are humans and this is a small place, of course someone's going to talk to Credence, especially if he talks first--but he's always been a little caught off guard by things that seem perfectly normal to others.

He blinks, looking down at her shoes and then up, but only to up to where her collarbone would be before replying.

"New York City," He answers. "Um--near 42nd street, if you've ever been." He's never been outside the city. He's never been in a place like this, either. But this girl--red hair, pretty, the type of person his Ma would say is probably full of sin--is starting a conversation with him. He's happy to oblige. He's happy to pretend he's normal.

"I like how the moon looks on it. It's like powdered sugar."

[powerunleashed]

"I've been to the city before. It's been a little while, I've been at school," Jean explained. "Westchester is just outside the city, I don't really get out a lot."

When he explained the moon making the snow look like powdered sugar, she couldn't help but nod in agreement. She smiled a little, thinking it was a good comparison.

"My name's Jean, by the way. I don't know if I said?"

village

[womanofvalue]

Peggy smiles softly at the comment, bundling her coat a little tighter around her neck to protect her from the chill, though she thinks that the voice she hears is enough to pause a moment for. "No, it's not," she agrees, turning so that she can look at the precise same view that he's looking at. "Though, in certain lights and at times, New York is quite beautiful too. Sunset on the Brooklyn Bridge," she suggests, her smile nostalgic and sad as she thinks of the last time she'd been up there.

"Have you ever seen snow like this before?" she asks.

[repressings]

He shakes his head, a small motion in comparison how one would normally say no. He hunkers down a little more, less because he's frightened of the other and more because it is cold, and drinks in what she's saying.

"Times Square at night," He supplies. His voice is barely above a whisper but it's hard to keep the tone of relief in it--someone who's been to New York. That's when he spares an actual glance at the other, trying to time it for when she's not looking. When he's done, or she looks, or both, he's back to staring at the snow like nothing's ever happened.

"I've never even left the city. Not until--" This. The fountain. He takes a few steps forward, tempted to squat down and grab a bunch of snow, letting his words hang in the air. He doesn't feel like finishing it, even if it's impolite. He can, instead, try something new. Ask a question to a stranger.

It's thrilling.

"Does seeing this get old?"

[womanofvalue]

Peggy gives him her attention, his manner and bearing making her soften up her gestures and her bearing, not wanting to come on too strongly when all they're doing is talking about the weather and how it compares to Times Square. "I've only been here for a little while and the snow is fairly recent, so no, it's not old at all," she guarantees. "Before this, I was living in Los Angeles, having moved there from New York. I wasn't going to see any snow for a while," she admits.

Even back home, snow didn't look quite like this. This is the sort of fairytale book snow that you enjoy from afar. Now, it feels like she's living in the snowglobe. "The last time I was in Times Square, it was a bit of a crowded mess. I tried to avoid it for a while," she says, because the celebrations had gone on for some time and it had become a sweethearts' spot, to a degree, after that man's kiss with the nurse had been captured in all the papers.

i

[treadswater]

The wave doesn't make Annie startle so much as pivot, focus on it. Waves on a boat would be normal, expected. You'd need to watch them, if they were bigger or smaller than normal, but expected. Except she's landlocked here, no proper boat to take her onto the river. She's in the fountain park, and after Ciri, she knows what a wave means.

She doesn't start moving until she sees the hand. Then, it's instinctual. Someone is drowning and she's able to help (and it's not her games where she had to wait and wait and wait and ignore all the kids): she runs over.

Her coat is on the ground before her knees hit the snow (she's the priority, needs to keep something warm for herself), and she braces herself against the edge of the fountain before reaching in.

Gotcha.

Annie wraps her hand around the person's wrist and pulls upwards, hoping it's enough to get them kicking up again to grab the edge of the fountain.

[repressings]

A hand.

A hand, or he hopes it's a hand, grips his wrist. He doesn't have time to think, doesn't have time to instinctually yank his hand away because his hands are sin incarnate, capable only of destruction. Instead, he's hauled up and there's strength, an amount Credence wishes he had, and it's just enough to get one arm hooked over a slippery surface.

That's when he feels the cold. It hits him the same time he breaks the surface like an absolute punch in the gut, and he nearly slips from the precarious hold he has on the side of the fountain. That pale hand keeps him in place, though, long enough for Credence to sputter.

An attempt at breathing only gets him to cough, and when he does it's violent and watery and nearly upheaves him only to send him back into the water he's half in. He doesn't realize it, wild and frightened, but he uses his second hand not to hold the other's wrist like they had before, but to grab the other's hand.

"Please--" It's a hoarse, unusual sound, and he looks up and his saviour. "Help me--" he can't physically get out of the water, not right now, and the winter bite buffets his already wet face. If he wasn't continuing to cough, he'd let out a whimper.

[treadswater]

"I got you." It's not a shout, but it's spoken loudly, clearly, intensely. "I got you."

She does. One good hold, one bad. His hand that's grabbed her other one is cold, thin, desperate: it's a weak hold. But it's a hold. She'll work with it. She has no other choice.

Annie looks at him, the young man. The boy, maybe. She looks at him, and her sea-green eyes are dark, intense, boring into his face until he looks up and pays attention.

"I got you," Annie repeats. "Okay? You're not gonna drown. Not gonna let ya. But I need you to help, right? I'm gonna move my left hand to the fountain edge. And when you can feel the stone, I want you to slide your arm over so you can hook your arm over the edge. And then I want you to let me go."

He looks like he's from District Three. District Six, maybe. Five. Eight. Pasty.

She tries not to remember the names of the children who looked like him.

"Once you do that, we can get you out more easily. Okay?"

ii.

[lastofthekellys]

She's been concerned about Mr Barebone, ever since Miss Annie brought him in a couple days ago. There's a fragility to him she isn't used to here, a sense of fine cracks running through him as if a wrong word would make him shatter. No, that's not it. He reminds her of a badly beaten horse, dark eyes hidden, head lowered, the strength in his limbs forgotten.

Badly beaten horses can be dangerous, as well as heartbreaking. They need to be treated with kindness.

But it can be hard to judge which particularly path that kindness needs to take, and she's not sure if she's made an error here or not, letting him try and get his bearings without asking for his help straight away.

Kate lowers her sewing and glances over, regarding him for a moment.

"Well, now, I'd be glad of your help, Mr Barebone," she says kindly. "I just wasn't sure if it'd be the right thing of me to ask before now. I've run a little farm 'fore now, not anythin' like this." And yet, here she is, orchestrating a daily meal for fifty-odd people, cut off from civilisation.

And the mention of church is a sure thing to mention to a woman who wears a twig-and-string cross around her neck.

"What did you do, in that church of yours?"

[repressings]

He likes Miss Kelly. He likes her a lot, because she reminds him of his sister Chastity. It's probably just the eyes, though, because Kate certainly doesn't have her personality. To Credence, that's a good thing.

He loves--loved, he has to remind himself--Chastity but she was demure, and virtuous, and perfect. Ma liked her the most because she never misbehaved. Kate seems to misbehave all the time, in the strangest of ways, while still maintaining an air that he can only describe as mother knows best. It's very complicated--Kate is very complicated--and it makes Credence dizzy if he thinks about it for too long.

So he sits, and he watches, and he feels more and more useless until he breaks and realizes that it's Kate Kelley, one in the same, that he'd talked to. his gaze slides downwards and his hands move to his lap, quiet and obedient as she talks.

"I should have asked sooner," he apologizes, and it's something he is genuinely sorry for, especially now that he knows Kate was thinking about it. He can picture Kate on a farm, with cabbages and maybe a cat. He wonders if Australia can even grow cabbages in all that heat.

"A lot. I'm the only boy, so--I fixed the church, when I could. I helped my sisters with cooking and cleaning, too. Chased pigeons away." It's a polite way of saying he did the majority of it because Modesty was too young and Chastity was dealing with spreading the word of the New Salem Philanthropic society. "It's nothing special, but I don't much like sitting here and doing nothing, if it's all the same to you, Miss Kelly."

[lastofthekellys]

"I think here, that all those rich and educated folk's special skills don't come much in use," Kate says, a little amused. The amusement of a poor girl seeing her ability to scrub stoves and cook be of survival value. "With the exception of Watney - Mr Mark Watney - who studied plants and farming."

He knows more about farming than her, she who toiled with thankless soil underneath heat and cold to try and get that blasted acre growing. Just one acre, so they wouldn't lose the land. Just one acre, when after they cleared the trees the soil turned to dust and blew away.

Here, dust isn't the problem at all.

"There's work to be done, although not so much in winter it seems here. You'd have noticed that people come here for food? You can help. Help prepare with the others, help serve, help clean after."

Then Kate pauses, eyeing him speculatively. "When you say, fixed the church... do you mean with carpentry? Even just every day tasks? Or... fixin' roofs, windows?"

ii

[notabirdcostume]

Sam had been counting the days as well. At first it had been since his arrival, but now he was worried for Jo, Mark, and the others who had gone on that hunting trip. They'd been gone for awhile and he hoped they were going to make it back okay.

The weather hadn't exactly been pleasant after all. Sam had tried passing the time recently by patrolling the village and keeping an eye out for danger. There had been no new attacks, but a few new people had joined their ranks. That just meant more people to worry about and Sam was so tired of worrying.

He had started thinking again of his talk with Nerys. They needed a distraction from all this snow and being so helpless and the idea of starting a game night of some kind was poking at the back of his mind again. Sam had decided it might be a good project to start trying to "make" his own games out of stuff he found in the woods. Game pieces didn't have to be fancy carved plastic or metal -- it could be rocks, twig, and debris from the broken homes. A game board didn't have to be freshly painted and printed with words -- it could be a big enough piece of wood from one of the broken houses from the earthquakes.

Sam probably looked strange coming in to the inn with this junk, but he did it all the same. It was while he was setting the materials down that he felt someone watching him. Sam looked over and realized that the inn's main room was currently occupied with one of their newest arrivals. He might have waved the request off if it was someone else. After all, he really didn't need help with this project and he was hoping to keep it as a bit of a surprise. But as soon as he'd looked at the kid and really heard the request he'd immediately reconsidered.

"Yeah? My dad's a minister at a church." He looked around, but they were pretty alone in the inn right now, "You just got here right? I'm working on a surprise for the others. Mind helping with that? It's nothing big, but I"m trying to make something that will break up the monotony that comes from endless snow days."

[repressings]

He knows the man from sight, but not anything else--he comes into the inn with his strange little parcel of strange little things. Credence is perfectly content to watch with curiousity, watching him cobble things together. He hasn't said boo to him, not wanting to throw him off and certainly not wanting him to think he's being judged. It's a project, and one the man clearly cares for if he's working at it this often, and Credence is in no position to turn his nose up at anything like that.

Not that the would, of course. He considers it admirable. People that have their own projects should be respected--they can gather up little tasks and make one big one that, when finished, has a sense of accomplishment Credence doesn't think he's ever experienced before.

Credence surprises even himself when he speaks up--the words had burst forth like a damn finally giving way--but he's caught off guard with how easily the man takes it in stride. Calm, official without being authoritative. Credence likes his voice; enjoys the cadence. It's soothing without acting like some sort of lullaby. It's nothing like his Ma's strict voice.

He nods at the other's words--a small one for the first question, a larger one for the second. The idea of something like that is certainly thoughtful. He wonders if anyone will thank him for that virtue after everything's said and done.

"It's a really good idea," he says softly, and looks not at the other but at the pieces. He's trying to figure out the exact game. He doesn't move to join him simply because he hasn't been invited fully.

"Do you have rules or anything yet?" Rules, he's learned are important.

[notabirdcostume]

"Well, I guess that depends on if I can recreate a game from home or if I try to create something original," Sam mused, looking at the pieces himself. He probably should have thought of what specific game he was trying to create, but some of the first that popped in his head would be too complicated with limited paper and no method for counting spaces. He could probably take the time to carve some crude dice or maybe a spinner would be easier -- though the real question would be how to differentiate the board pieces. "I never created a board game before, so I was pretty much leaning towards recreating a game."

"I ruled out chess because that would take too much carving and we don't exactly have paint," he paused, studying his pile of odds and ends, "I guess I could technically carve the letters into the pieces." He picks up one of the small, smooth pebbles he'd picked up on a recent walk, "I guess a mancala board wouldn't be hard to make." He looked back to the young man, "You ever play that? Or know any games that might be easy to make from random bits? I'm open to suggestions."

iv

[ofspaceandtime]

Ciri is tucked tight in every item of clothing she arrived with to make her way through the village. The cold weather (and the general bizarre nature of the situation) has kept her mostly confined to the inn. However, pacing about in a tiny bedroom or in front of the fire is getting her nowhere, and there is only so much help she can be to Kate, and there is only so much game to caught in the forest.

As she explores, Ciri notes those that come and go from the unfamiliar looking houses, and examines some of the larger, more purposeful looking buildings.

She's just finished her loop around the snow-covered bakery and is stumbling out from behind a bush when she nearly collides with pale figure wandering down the road. Ciri tries to catch her footing before any actual harm is done. "Oh! Sorry- sorry, I didn't see you there!"

[repressings]

It's Credence's fault--it's his first and only thought as someone careens with him. She's roughly the same height, though Credence has a feeling that's more because he's constantly hunched and slumped.

Regardless, neither of them actually fall, nor do they actually collide. Instead, it's an incredibly jarring near-smack, and Credence's entire body tenses. It's a natural movement for him, instinctual, as knee-jerk as someone grabbing for something they've fumbled with and dropped--his head dips, his shoulders push inwards, and he shakes his head.

Someone apologizing to him seems almost foreign.

"It's my fault," he says immediately, loud enough to be heard but not enough to be firm.

"I didn't look, I'm sorry."

[ofspaceandtime]

For a moment, Ciri is worried the fellow will collapse in on himself, as it is he seems to shrink in front of her and she feels immediately bad for having startled him.

"No, not at all! I wasn't looking either!" she tries to reassure him, hopping back a step so as to give him some space once she's sure they've both not lost their footing in the snow. "I suppose we're both at fault, if anyone is."

Ciri flashes him a relatively carefree smile and a light shrug. "I was just exploring the village, I'm relatively new here. I don't believe we've met, have we?" In the past few weeks she's met a lot of new people in this place, but his face strikes her as unfamiliar, and distinct enough to be memorable if they had been introduced.