Anuradha was sure that she was just going to lose it.


All five senses were being asaulted. She was finding it difficult to breathe as people bumped and jostled her around. The noise was defening compared to the peace of the forest, and she was tempted to clamp her hands over her ears to try to block out the noise. The air was thick and smelled of all the vendors items rolled into one, creating a fume that hurt her nose. Even the taste on her tongue tasted bad.

She pushed past a group of young, gabbing woman, ignoring the cries as she knocked one over. She wove around several ambling shoppers, a pair of men clearly on their way to a the bar, and a cranky old man arguing with a merchent. She finally found some empty space and dove into the room between two buildings. The shadow of the high walls gave her a break from the sun, and except for a cat who was napping on some boxes she was alone.

She breathed a sigh of relief and slumped onto the floor. Her hand strayed to the longsword at her side for comfort as she looked back toward the mob of people. How could these people stand living like this? Packed in like trees in a forest, always running into someone, no room to even think. She could barely stand it for a half an hour, she shuddered to think about dealing with it her whole life.

Why was she here, anyways? Why was she putting herself through this? It took her a moment to come up with a reason. A bought of desperation had set in some nights ago when she had been caught in a fierce storm with no where to go. This had brought on the thoughts of winter with no shelter, how she would end up frozen under some tree. So she had decided it was time to start a search for her winter home.

So far she had found absolutly nothing. The inns had all the workers they needed, and she had no real skills that she could use to make a profit. She had quickly given up trying to talk to people. Her skills in conversing were minimal, and she did not know how to strike up a conversation. Most people had looked at her as if she was nuts. A few had laughed. Others had yelled. After she had threatened the last man who had laughed in her face she had decided to just give up on tackling the problem like that.

Anuradha sighed in exaustion and wiped the sweat off her brow. This day was just getting worse and worse.

Iomhar found naps as an integral part of his workday, especially in the lulls when people were not as apt to give him any sort of donations. He could get people in the morning and people at noon, but in between when everyone busied themselves with work, he had nothing to do. Oftentime he spent these periods of innactivity by fixing up his 'chair or dozing off whilst he had a few moments. Really, the only real profitable times were later in the night, especially come Friday and Saturday when people had a bit too much to drink in the bar and a couple coins to spare as they traveled down the road to their next destination. It never proved profitable enough to stay up too late, for many of the drunks had no money to spare.

Today he curled up next to a barrel and fell asleep, his chair folded up underneath him. Not particularly comfortable, but it assured him that no one would steal it when he napped. His brain tottered between conciousness and unconciousness for a few moments when he heard some rustling near him.

Iomhar shot up straight and looked around, pushing his hair out of his eyes. He scanned through the darkened ally for a moment before noting a figure not too far away from him. Another beggar, no doubt, he thought as he started to drift off back to sleep. But suddenly his eyes flashed open and he focused on the form of the person, dressed in nice robes and, well, female. No, she definitely was not like him.

With a tired groan, he scratched his head and ran his hand through his hair. He did not appear to be a normal beggar, no. His hair, though slightly dirty from lack of convenient water sources, was not completely greasy. He was cleanshaven thanks to the fact that he had been brought up in a high class society and no one in his family ever grew a beard. Yes, he was a beggar with good hygiene skills.

But he narrowed his eyes at this girl and studied her for a few seconds. She oughtn't be here, he knew. Too pretty. Not like him or any of the others who crawled through the streets.

"Lost are you?" he asked, his voice quiet but firm in the narrow alley.

A young woman was sitting in a small alley, and in a place like this, it was quite strange. Especially because this was his alley! He rose from behind a box, and stood there, waiting for the elfen woman to notice his prescence. Unfortunately, he was an assassin. This meant that people usually didn't notice him even if he did want them to.

If the girl didn't realize his prescence soon, Karasu was going to have to say something, and that meant saying something to [/I]her[I] and he didn't want to do that. Why? Because Karasu was, one, a half-vampire, two, antisocial, causing his home to be an alley, and three, people were annoying, leading to him becoming a paid killer of people.

A few minutes passed, and the elf didn't notice him. "Fine. If I have to talk to you then I will. This is my alley. You can stay if you want, but only if it's to get away from the idiots outside."

Gods you could not be alone here could you?

Anuradha whipped around, on her feet in an instant. Her muscles were already tense from stress, but now they were focused and ready on action in case she needed it. Her mind was both prepared for anything and griping about the annoyane that was the city.Even in this tiny little area-one that was only there because they did not want to stack their buildings side by side- there were people, strangers, humans or some other race that found her odd. Not that she cared what any of them thought of her. She probably returned the returned the emotion. Citydwellers, city rats-was that what her father had called them? were so weird

She blinked as they each spoke, each more baffling then the next. How could she not know where she was? How could someone own an alley? "I am not lost." She replied firmly, squaring her shoulders and looking at the one who had asked. "I know exactly where I am."

She then turned to the other one, liking this one less then the other stranger if she ahd to rank them. She wiped her hand over her sweaty face, pushing the strands of dirty gold hair that had escaped her braid. Her traveling clothing was clinging to her due to the heat. While they were traveling clothing-meant for wear and tear-the one thing Anuradha did not shrimp on was clothing she would use every day.

"I did not know people owned alleys." She was being one hundred percent truthful, no sarcasim intended. "I thought they owned the buildings that made them." She looked up at the walls as she spoke. But, even if she hadn't know, this was the city. Unfamiliar territory. She would just have to follow their rules if she wanted to sit for a moment. "I wanted out of the crowd. To many bodies, voices, smells." She spoke to the wall. As a wander she had learned to use all her senses to figure out the world around her, but that made life difficult apparently in this overwhelming place.

This was good, it seemed that he was not the only one. "It is my alley, because only those that I allow may stay here. If you've noticed, only the beggar over there is here, besides me. There are no homeless, not even any dogs. Only me, beggar, the cat, and now you." he said to the elf. "Yes, the buildings make the alley, but the buildings do not own it. They cannot control who comes and goes, only the space one can come and go in. They are only restrictions, much like the fools outside."

He truly hated the outside, and indeed, anyone who was here to stay would soon go if he did not approve. The cat was the first to come here, and only leaves for food. The beggar had just appeared one day, and had just stayed, only leaving on the full moon. Karasu was not dumb, and knew that he was a werewolf, but as long as he was here to cheat the idiots out of money, he could stay as long as he wanted.

Roncho actually didn't mind the crowds during this time of the day, people gave him a bit of distance due to his large bulk, so he almost never ran into someone. Plus he had become somewhat of a legend at the local taverns, he had made a small fortune playing poker with some of the wealthy traders. Roncho left that night with plenty of drinking money for the months too come. But every time Roncho made a bit of money here and there from the odd jobs that they would want him to perform he would save some of away for his dream inn. Roncho came down, or more rather fell into the human lands for the beer. He wandered into a tavern and found that they served large amounts of the stuff for little money. After his first visit too a tavern Roncho knew what he was to set out to do... build and own a inn of his own. Of course he didn't make a lot of money all the time, and Roncho still couldn't find that "special spot" that he knew was somewhere in his gut.

Roncho was knocked out of his revile from the sound of a pot smashing against the ground. He looked over to see a woman cradling the pieces of the pot. It was empty but by the looks of it she was a very poor woman. Roncho was a little befuddled, speaking in a very broken sentence, "I'm so sorry.. Miss I didn't... sorry about you're pot." The woman turned towards Roncho, her face was very dirty and her pupils were blank, she was a blind beggar probably getting water for her and maybe even a family. He thought of the bag that was almost full of coins from his gambling exploits. He reached his massive hand into the bag and pulled out about a half handful (which was a handful for a human) of coins, he held them out to the woman and spoke in a more confident tone, trying to sound nonthreatening, "here miss... this should be more than enough." The woman knew what Roncho had handed to the woman and took the coins, nodding a thank you before standing up and walking the way that she had come. Roncho watched her walk off before starting off again, he didn't even know where he was going... just that there was no one in the bars during this time of a day and no one plays poker until the end of the day, so he usually wandered around the town. The glint of metal in a nearby alley caught Roncho's eye. He could tell that she was stressed she was talking to someone. Further down the alley he saw a man sitting on the ground near a chair, his head turned to another figure. The other figure looked a lot more threatening than the other one. It almost looked like he was threatening the woman from a distance. Roncho wasn't going to stand for someone mugging a woman like that, he moved through the crown, he made sure that his brass knuckles were on, ready for a fight, with his strength they could break someone's jaw. He got to the edge of the alley, cracked his knuckles and yelled out to the man nearest to the woman, "Oi, by the god of nature's almighty bullocks if yer going to threaten a lady like that you better be ready to face the consequences..."

Before the woman could respond, a troll shouted at him from the end of the alley. His alley. This was becoming quite an annoying day. "I'm not threatening this elf. If you threaten me again though, you may find yourself lying in an alley. A different alley." he said to the troll.

"Now kindly leave, unless you have something to offer us. Either that, or you're trying to get away from the outsiders. The ones in the street. You know, where you were? This is my alley, and I control who comes and who goes. You, are most likely to be going. I have fought bigger, and badder things than you, troll. On that note, why are you here?"

((:frantic: Okay, okay, lemme post!

((Secondly, Karasu, um, how does this fit in with our other topic. Gosh, this is why multiple topics are so hard for me!))

Suddenly there were mass amounts of people in the alley, and this giant troll filled up the exit. People threatening each other, this and that, and frankly Iomhar wanted to just go back to sleep. His heart beat a little more quickly while he watched the exchange, unaware as to what he ought to do next.

Escape, maybe? Hmm, how shall I do that? Maybe get up and walk past the troll? he thought bitterly.

((Ooookay, horrible post! But I'm confused. And stuff. :no: ))

One of the things on Anuradha's list of things she hated about the city was the confusion. With so many people around and so many things happening it was easy to lose track of everything. Like she was now. One moment she thought she was alone. The next second she was with one person, then two. She was apparently tresspassing and wasn't sure if she was aloud to stay or expected to to go. Just when she was starting to get a grip on the matter a large mass was suddenly behind her and she found herself with a defender. Almost made her jump out of her skin at his booming voice that left her ears ringing.

Now, Anuradha was no wimp. You couldn't be a wimp to live by yourself. But she also wasn't stupid. If this...very large creature wished to protect her then she found absolutly nothing wrong with that. At least not enough to make a fuss about being dubbed the damsal in distrace Hell, she was kind of out of her element in this place. She glanced back at the annoying talking one at the end of the alley. He had yet to give her a valid reason to want to see his face dented, and he didn't want her so called rescuer understemating his opponent and thus get himself uneededly injured. So the only thing she came up with was to step in.

"Apparently I am intruding upon his alleyway. He wasn't threating me, just telling me that." She explained to the large man-was he a man?-behind her. "I wanted to get away from all the people out there, but I don't want trouble." She turned and looked at the two other strangers. Was one scrap of free space worth this? Maybe she would have more luck trying to find a alleyway that was not already owned. This was giving her a migrane. The whole day was making her ready to explode. She had been tense for so long her muscles were starting to ache. She clossed her eyes against all the confusion.

"Does anyone know a way out of this place?" The question left her mouth before she could stop it. She blammed the stress. "I'm not meant to be in the city." She admited. "I shouldn't have come, now I just want out." Just one look at those trees and open space and she would never leave again. Not for all the gold in the world.

((wow, where did everyone come from?))

{I don't know}

This was getting too confusing. Screw the alley, he wanted out! If one elf girl coming in was going to bring some random troll, then this alley was most certainly cursed. "If you wish to leave, then I suggest going to the southern gate. I'm going to the eastern gate, and I don't want anything more to do with this many people. There was a reason I had my alley, and it was supposed to be quiet, and empty! Then two people come, and everything gets confusing. I wanted to leave for a while anyway." Karasu said, jumping onto the wall, and kicking off, landing behind the massive green beast.

'Haven't done a job for a while, maybe killing someone will help ease my nerves.' Karasu thought as he walked in a general east-ward direction.