Welcome to Gaia! ::

Rain in the inner city made the gutters run black with soot.

Dark water rushed along the edges of the cobbled streets like barely-diluted ink and it poured over the lip of shop roofs in dripping gray sheets. Janatheil Orehian, noble by blood and ever in a position to get most anything he wanted, should he simply ask for it, needless to say did not need to steal to eat. But then, few entertaining things were deemed necessary or proper by society, and as it stood, neither the sweet that he popped between his lips to tuck beneath his tongue or the handful of others that he slipped into his coat pocket were his by right of coin. Nor was he, technically, supposed to be in the lower districts of Ashen City to begin with.

Dangerous, for a boy in too nice of a coat, fitted boots and gold buttons. He snorted, the fingers of his spare hand dancing idly up the wet brick of the shop closest to him as his multi-hued eyes surveyed the streets he’d come from. Someone had been chasing him, he knew, but that had been several streets back and a plump fussy-faced ord at that. He figured it was unlikely that—

The clipping splash of distant footsteps up the street and shouts muddled under the sound of rain told Jana otherwise. Immediately popping in one more sweet, he hopped down from the small brick ledge he’d perched on and darted around the corner, uncaring of the wet or grit he got on his boots, pants, or otherwise as he skirted down the street. Down, down, down. Eyes catching on a dimly lit shop window, he skidded to a stop, gave a fleeting glance in the direction from which he was being pursued, and then tested the door.

It gave.

Jana grinned, and slipped in.

It smelled of cloth and woodwork. An older building, but cared for, and no wonder: textiles of all sorts lined the walls, reams and spools of thread as well as a scattering of a couple mannequins upon which partially-finished projects, some relatively complete, another with pins still holding parts in place. Janatheil whistled low and lightly to himself as he surveyed place, oblivious to the wet soot smudges that his boots left behind and carefree as he weaved his way deeper in and away from the windows. He reached out, walking his fingers up a stack of cloth and squinting at it. How anyone had the patience to take material and actually turn it into the complex garments he saw every day was an eternal mystery to him.

It seemed a waste of time, when so much more practical clothes could be made more simply and cheaply.

Propping a hip idly to a shelf, he reached back into his coat pocket for another sweet, flicking the dampness from his wings as he did without a thought to where the drops might fall — or be flung. He would be out soon enough, regardless.

Janatheil blinked, glancing over at the source of the noise and eyeing his unasked for company. Girl. Young. Perhaps his age, perhaps younger. Probably just a touch younger. Coiling, wavy blue hair and violet eyes. Pretty enough — for a merchant. He tossed her a grin, careless, toothy, and amused, his tongue rearranging the sweet in his mouth to somewhere he could talk around.

“Nice to meet you too,” he said. “Name’s Janatheil, and such and so forth. Nothin’s harmed that can’t be fixed, mm? It’s just a bit of wet and cloth. And if something is, I’ll buy whatever I ruin, yeah?”

He scuffed a boot against the floor, scraping the water and grit from them before tapping the tip and glancing out towards the door — and the rain, still coming down in dreary gray sheets. But no one in it yet. Magnificent. His attention flit back towards his company and he tilted his head, sizing her up before reaching into his pocket and drawing out a second sweet, the wrapper crackling as he pinched and held it up. Bright pink and glossy with decorative gold dots.

“Here. Catch,” he said, and with no further warning than that, he tossed.