RP:It Wasn't My Fault

Riley had been so deep within her own mind that the scent of another had not yet permeated her clouded thoughts until it was fully upon her. Immediately her eyes came back into focus a piercing steel grey in color to look around her in a frantic search for some sort of danger that was surely pressing upon her and would strike at any moment. After looking left then right, that hard gaze flew skyward towards the branches of the overhanging tree only to find another's gaze returning the intent stare. The change in stance was visible as her shoulders once more relax and the biting steel in her gaze softens to the cloudy hues of one simply guarded. A slender hand quickly shields her face from the blinding rays of the sun peeking through the canopy so that she may better see the man spying on her, “Hello…?”

Krice must have liked it up in trees. Otherwise, why was he lying down on the twisted branches of one? When Riley caught wind of his scent and ultimately located him up there above her, the warrior's gaze softened with a blink and then focused anew. Her questioning word was met with a more definitive one of his own: " Hi." It was the only thing he said, before his attention drifted through the leaves to the western walls of Cenril.

Sabrina walked down the path, because it was a main path and so she walked on it. Pointed ears twitch at a ‘Hello’ and a ‘Hi’ and eyes focus on the originations of greetings not meant for her, because she was just walking down a path and had no intention of meeting anyone. Thin arms pull the heavy sleeves of her oversized and oh-so-fluffy sweater tight against her slight form. She looked tired, but otherwise fine. She had a half-step, but did not stop. Both citizens seemed preoccupied with each other…or no one. Either way not the Efless’ business and so, she continued to walk in the same manner she had previously walked. Bankward.

Riley 's gaze quickly shifts as more footsteps enter the vicinity and studies each new comer before returning her attentions to the man sitting above her. She is momentarily at a loss for words though a dozen questions circle about in her mind yet none seem to wish to make them heard at the moment. Taking a moment to clear her throat and roll her shoulders back into what she hoped seemed a stronger stance, the Lycan raises her voice once more towards the branches, "What are you doing up there?"

Krice tilted his head once more as Riley posed her query, but the arrival of Sabrina drew his gaze to her black head instead. Shifting, the warrior answered the lycan first with, " Sitting," before he fell from his branches, deftly landing on a limb below them, and stepped off that to find the next one down until, three branches later, he was falling to the ground at a healthy pace and landing in a comfortable crouch at the end. As he rose, he gestured with a wave to Sabrina. " I want to talk to you, remember?" He threw into the air, for her benefit alone, " Lusty friend. Rohk. Restaurant. Straw hat. Krice." Glancing over at Riley once more, the man asked, " What are -you- doing?"

Sabrina looks up to where the Lycan looks up, the question drawing finer attentions to the one who was tree high and familiarly stoic. “A hat, Rohk, Lusty friend.” A beat “Krice.” She whispered the words quite faintly and a smile dons her pale features. She huggles the sweater closer, minty reflections peering upwards but head still straight like she was fooling everyone with wandering gaze. She too enjoyed a treetop view but enjoyment or nay she was headed somewhere and she did not care to forget that fact. Shuffled steps take her in the designated path. There is a Krice in her path. She stops neatly, head canting to the side and left arm alighting but only just so as the tiny twinkles peer through tiny holes of fluffy sweater. “We had an infestation.” She recalls a filthy pix and smiles wider at Krice. “Sorry about the water.” She turns toward the female there at Krice’s query awaiting her answer to the male.

Riley watched the exchange between the man and woman semi interested though not truly paying attention to what he said to her. The babbling of words and names made no sense to her and she had no interest in finding out what it was about. She had to appreciate the grace with which he moved and navigated the branches of the large tree that had once been his haven. His answering question to her own, however, had her hands rising to rest upon rounded hips in a somewhat defiant manner and brows creasing once more to scowl at the human, “Well, I was walking till a lunatic sitting up in a tree disturbed my train of thought.”

Krice shook his head at Sabrina's words and adopted a wry smirk. " Don't worry about it," he murmured, before Riley's answer ensnared his attention her way once more. He arched an eyebrow at her insult, but otherwise seemed indifferent. " You're the one who interrupted -me-, actually."

Sabrina frowns at the madam. She seemed to have fewer social graces than Sabrina did and that likely took effort… or practice. She turns back to Krice, looking way up at him, one brow arched in question if this was a normal reaction to a simple query. His response to the woman made Sabrina’s heart pound a little harder in her chest. This suddenly seemed hostile and so a tiny step is taken from the path between the two. She looked worried, maybe a small planted seed of panic if these two would continue their insults.

Riley opened her mouth to retort with yet another insult for the man, but quickly shut it as she realized that he was in truth, correct. She had been the one to speak first and interrupt his own thoughts if that had been what he had been doing. Living on her own for as long as she had, she sometimes forgot that most did not possess the strong senses that she herself did so the scent of another would not interrupt their tasks as it did her. With a small sigh of defeat, the Lycan bowed her head slightly in a small sign of an apology, “Forgive me…”

Krice looked at Sabrina briefly, but Riley's bow and apology ensured that the other woman would not have his attention for long. He noted her body language, her earnestness, and then shook his head dismissively. " Don't worry about it," said the warrior, and lifted a hand out to hopefully halt Sabrina with the gesture. " Hang on a sec. I want to talk to you."

Sabrina began to relax some when the woman spoke, a relaxation noted by a softening of her shoulders where one who wasn’t paying attention would not have noticed them rigid before. Krice’s hand demands she stay, a small chuckle escapes her lips. He was always so serious. Two thin fingers come apart from clenched fist and she covers her mouth cutely with a curt nod of head. She would stay, if for any other reason than she forgot where she was going.

Riley 's upper lip twitched slightly in a hidden snarl at the dismissal. Giving the girl a disinterested glare, the Lycan moves around the two without another word for the human and continues down the road towards some unmentioned destination.

Krice turned his attention from Sabrina once he was assured that she would wait a moment, thereby freeing up his gaze to follow Riley on her way past them both. He arched a brow, sensing something less than civil in her aura, and opted to give her a casual, " Take care," before she'd be gone from their company completely. Krice looked back at Sabrina with the lycan gone and gestured eastward. " You were heading this way? Let's walk."

Sabrina’s wide eyes would stare at the female as she circled and passed, oddly she did not look away or cower in fear as her simple demeanor and small frame would design someone to expect. She looked right into those unnatural eyes in every gracefully gliding step she took. Her hand comes down to her side as if guarded. Proximity was becoming an issue. She would wait until the Lycan was half around her form and almost out of comfortable eye’s view before adjusting herself to turn and watch her leave. Those eyes glowed something fierce as she passed, but it was no more threatening than the way a cornered dog stares back at anyone. She turns back to Krice and exhales heavily. Her heart would take its time to regulate but her arms hugged back to her form once more. He asked a question she felt she should know the answer to when her tummy grumbles. “Must be headed to the bakery.” She walks.

Krice walked with Sabrina to the bakery, and obviously decided that conversation was not necessary - because the whole way there, he said nothing. As they neared the woman's destination, the warrior broke his silence with a casual, " Once you've got your food, I'd like to ask more about that ability you have. Is that alright?" On the tail end of his question, the silver-haired man pulled open the bakery door for Sabrina and held it as such, his unassuming gaze fixated softly on her face.

Sabrina had walked in silence too, since conversation was clearly not one of her strategic gifts of silence breaking. She was quite honestly comfortable in silence. She smiled way up at him in that way she does that is just as cute as it is innocent. She ducks past him and finds a table that is not dressed and so worry free in terms of organization and blank canvas things. She keeps keen eye on that table, like someone could walk in at any minute while she places her order and then steal it. Looking at it was owning it, you see. If one would walk in she would mozie on over and sit down just in case. Nobody walked in, good thing too cause it would have been weird to break conversation and sit in a table half a room away. She finished her order quietly and made her way to that gloriously empty table and sat down with her back to the corner. Her food was obviously not going to appear out of mid air so she waited, hands neatly folded upon table’s top and looking at Krice for penetrating questions about her curse.

Krice watched Sabrina in silence as she went about her order, and also noted how she kept eyeballing a specific table. Peculiar woman. The warrior stepped into the restaurant halfway through Sabrina's order, and the door swing closed behind him as she moved toward that table. He stepped forward to join her, taking up a seat across from her position and slightly to the side, with that wall to his back. Sitting with his right side angled toward Sabrina, the warrior turned his head to look her way and asked, for confirmation, " If you want to keep things secret after this, I'll respect that. I just need to know what exactly you did to me up there in the mountains. What was it - some kind of transfer-magic?"

Sabrina puts her hands in her lap, her food was faster coming than she thought. She smiles up at the woman sweetly and waits for her to leave. She pokes at the quiche and pushes it centrally on the table, the strawberry thingies centered between herself and her company, and the coffee… she repositioned it twice before she was happy and looked over at Krice. “It is no secret…” she picks up a strawberry something and sniffs it before putting it down on a small plate in front of her. She turns the plate quarterly and clockwise. “I am an Ardent. It is what happens when a bonding goes wrong” She pulls her sweater down… probably indecently so, to reveal a thin jagged scar between bare breasts. “Bound to the hound you saw before, turns out Druids and hell beasts are not meant to meld.” She lifts the sweater back up and sips from her coffee, also turning it quarterly and clockwise so the handle is facing her right hand in the ideal gripping position should she want to reclaim that vessel. “Rohk, a restaurant…Krice.” She was getting good at this whole remembering thing and leans on one folded arm across the table, raven trusses cascading back and over her shoulder to gently brush the floor beneath them.

Krice sat with his katana between his hands, between his knees, the tip of the sheathed weapon resting on the floor between his boots, and the hilt align with his clavicle. As Sabrina arranged her dishes and her foodstuffs in that quirky way, the warrior watched, but as she spoke, his gaze was fixed on her face once more. " An Ardent," he echoed quietly, committing the term to memory before falling silent and listening to the rest of her explanation. When she revealed the scar between her breasts, it was with initial respect to her modesty that Krice almost looked away, but he caught the end of that scar and kept his gaze on her skin, appraising the jagged marring. In response to her concluding words, he confirmed her memory with, " Lusty friend. Raphaline." A beat later, he asked, " Why did you try to bond with Rohk?"

Sabrina shakes her head. “Not try, did.” She sits back up and drinks from her coffee. “Sometimes when halfbreed’s are made they require things in order to survive…” She tries to bring some relevant fact into the story “..Like… Like a Vampire! No, no not like a vampire. Maybe… something halvsie that isn’t supposed to be there?” Yes, it was a ramble but the context was hardly the point. “Anyways, I found Ro in a pile of his mother’s ashes. He was cold, weak…” She was actually tearing up. “It was the only way. Half of mine to make his whole.” She referred to her heart of course. “Anyways, the undisclosed side effect is that since it will never heal it leaves certain avenues open… in my case emotions. And I have only met one other that has it. But… he dies.” Dies? Maybe it was mis said.

Krice studied Sabrina not with a frightening sort of intensity, but with the intensity derived from deep interest. Her love for Rohk was clearly apparent, but rather than offer sympathy for something that happened long ago now, the man opted for, " Oh. So... I guess that is what happened, then." His gaze drifted off the woman and onto the table instead. He lifted his left arm, glancing down at his hand thoughtfully. " Does it happen whenever you touch someone?" Did she have any control over it?

Sabrina shrugs and pushes the strawberry thing aside, but not so far aside it made the whole décor abstract. “It depends on how hard I think about it...I suppose.” She holds her hand out to him to see if he dare try it out. At most he would feel mentally exhausted if he would partake. She had little left in her aside from some residual thoughts on the female they just passed, in which case it would be hinted with timidity. The keener one was on these magics, botched or otherwise, the keener the sense….assumed anyways.

Krice considered Sabrina's initial words and then applied them to the situation that had lead him to enquire about her ability in the first place. He felt as though he had fallen from a great height, lost his balance and toppled. Was that because she had slipped on the rocks up in the mountains? It made some distant sort of sense. When the woman extended her hand out to him, Krice glanced down at it and then looked over at her, offering an apologetic smirk. He didn't want to play with her ability. Instead, he asked, " What about positive emotions? Do you think you're able to transfer happiness to someone?"

Sabrina made a habit of it at one point, transferring happiness, glee, serenity. She pulls back from him, recoiling in her chair to a semi defensive position. “Why?” Her heart began to race and her mind wanders to a time when it was all in good fun, and abruptly when it was no longer fun. Or joyous. Or simple. She looked like she couldn’t breathe and began clamming up around the forehead. It was going to happen again.

Krice immediately noticed the change in Sabrina and sought to reassure her with a genuine, " I was just curious if it worked in all ways." Through -all- emotions. He shook his head and returned his hand to his katana, holding the sword there between both palms. After a moment's pause, the silver-haired man gestured to Sabrina's food with a nod. " Anyway, sorry if this was an unwelcome interruption." He stood, rising from his chair in preparation to leave.

Sabrina relaxes some, a shaking hand coming out to her coffee but finding itself to unsteady to pick it up. Her voice is low as he rises. “Euphoria.” She says lowly. Like any drug with any side effect she adds. “Most effects are tenfold… but I got scared.” It implied that the tenfold applied to fear as well. She looks up at him like she wanted forgiveness. “It wasn’t my fault.” Her eyes fall to her lap in silence, a cold and empty feeling bleeding from her pores. She would not say anything else as, in most cases, he made ready to leave.

Krice didn't rush off, so he had time - and interest, and attentiveness - to listen to Sabrina's closing words. When she looked up at him, she would find the stoic facade so typical of him, albeit with flares of compassion amid the crimson of his eyes. He frowned ever so slightly in lieu of her expression, along with her concluding words, and hoped to reassure her with a quiet, honest, " I know." He shook his head and added, " Don't worry about it, alright?" The warrior hoped that this would allow her to relax a little more, at least around him, before he said a final word and then turned from the woman. " Enjoy your meal. It looks good."

Sabrina smiled weakly as one would do in a situation like this. She looked upon the meal disinterested. “Thank you.” Two words meant so much more than two words, she watched him leave feeling better he did not try to take happiness like so many who thought they could.

Krice 's lips pressed in something akin to a small, understanding smile, and it was after a moment's hesitation that he turned from Sabrina to depart the bakery, leaving her to - hopefully - partake of her meal in peace.