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The lights along this section of street in Kensington are mostly broken out, but every so often, one light casts a chilly glow down to the trash-strewn street below. Across this blot of cool light on a cold night dashes a warm splash of orange, there in the light and then gone again. A trash can clatters a moment later.
?
The unusual cadence of the movement, the surprisingly bright color- well. It would be surprising if foxes weren't so good at finding places to live around Philly. Still, it wasn't often that Johnnie caught sight of one, and she had to admit, the resemblance- even passing- to June made it all the more appealing to take a look. She'd been keeping to the rooftops, having discovered as of late that being in public proved... exhausting. Troublesome enough restraining her own natural, impossible elegance to avoid drawing attention- paired with the way Autumn and the hunt for the Helldivers had honed her intuition meant pretending not to notice... so much. Don't notice, don't react, definitely don't flinch from things she shouldn't see coming but did.
Too much.
So when she caught sight of that lovely bolt of color wandering down an alley? She melted down the bannisters of a fire escape and stepped down into the alleyway as if she had descended a spiral staircase and not the edges of a metal scapeway.
Vasha teases her about the fact that when he met her, she was living in a dumpster, but the fact is? Foxes like rooting around in things. Urban foxes dig in garbage the same way that foxes in the forest dig under roots.
Coming up with half a burger, Fox tips her vulpine head back and nomf nomf nomf it down. The impossible grace of the thing descending behind her? Her ears swivel and then her head turns. Her spine arches like a startled cat.
She smiles, reaching for a bit of bun cast aside by the nomfing with that unnatural smoothness, not bothering to hide from- well, a fox. A minute expenditure of a renewable resource, and the burger reconstitutes, the missing pieces of the delectable meal replaced rather than retrieved, for that is how this Magick works! To a Changeling, Hours are as mutable as anything else, and she turns them back 'til the sandwich is whole and steaming again, crouching and setting it down in the least filthy patch she can find as an offering for the hungry beastie.
Fun fact: Fox has the ability to tell what kind of Magic she's seeing even when only her peripheral Mage sight is on.
The first clue that this isn't actually a fox but is in fact a Fox is the moment that this Fox doesn't startle or run away when Jackie picks up a bit of bun. Then when the food is reconstituted, those green gold eyes go really really wide. On closer inspection, there's weird dappling in the Fox's fur, something a little odd in the orange of her coat. But that's only there for a moment before something like a reverse full body yawn flexes that tiny vulpine body into a small, dirty woman in a tank top and cutoff jeans, wearing a backpack and no shoes. She snatches the burger off the ground (she was just eating out of the trash, after all, and Life Mastery means having total control over your personal biome), takes a giant bite out of it, and asks, with wide-eyed excitement:
"Are you friends with Lux?"
That should be surprising. It should be startling. It should shock and awe and anything close to a human would have been unsettled at least a LITTLE by someone transmuting themselves out of an adorable rooting fox in the space of a heartbeat and it is perhaps the most telling thing yet that the one thing it does not get from Johnnie is a reaction. She is surprised, mind, she was definitely not expecting there to be such a surprising thing instead of a fox with an borgr, but every scrap of that surprise is trapped behind the wall that is her own stolid refusal to expose herself to the world accidentally and so what comes out is just a chuckle and that is simply poor fare when it comes to pretending at a nearer grasp of normalcy than one has.
"Friends would, I think, be presumptuous. They're quite the lovely person and we're certainly acquainted, but when it comes to me and mine, they're closer to the latter than the former, I'm afraid." She offered one hand in an unguardedly velvet movement that completely fails to require her to visibly rebalance at all. "Vorpal. If you know Lux, then you should have a name they'll know me by. Could I ask yours-" She paused briefly, perhaps catching some hint of amusement starting to brew in the Mage's expression, and leaned into a hunch. "-or should I just keep calling you Fox?"
Chomp. Chomp Chomp Chomp. Fox gets through most of the burger and then waves the last bite toward Vorpal in offering, as if it makes perfect sense to offer someone the last bite of your reconstituted trash burger. Her eyebrows arc up, too, with this gesture.
But then she shifts her burger to her off hand so she can take that offered hand. There's a shimmer of street light on the silvery ring on their left ring finger. "That's a bummer because Lux is, honestly, like, the best. They're my best friend, actually, outside of my immediate family. You should know them better, really. Make a point of it."
She laughs, then. "Everyone calls me Fox. So that's fine."
It's slight, but it's there, perhaps all the more notable for the fact that it exists at all. That offer of food? The faint tightness around the edge of Johnnie's expression would have to be a scowl on a more expressive face to match the magnitude of the shift from perfect congeniality to I don't think so.
"No, I'm fine. I made that for you. And I'm not entirely sure they'd be up for getting to know me better. I'm not the easiest person to spend time around, you see." A casual explanation for a deep-rooted problem. Fox could likely see the edges of it rising up around them- less so for him, as they were used to magically exceeding human limits and watching others do the same, but she could probably guess at how unsettling the Changeling would be to those less accustomed.
"But I can try. If you think they'd not mind." A small smirk. "No promises, though." See? A joke! Ha! "Fox it is. Well met. Are you out for a purpose tonight? Or just enjoying a night on the town on another's dime?"
She plops down on the ground in the alley, looking up as if to check whether lights are coming on in the rooms on either side of said alley. People live here, of course. When Vorpal's expression changes, she shrugs as if to say your loss, and shoves the last bite of burger into her toothy maw. Chomp!
"Aren't you?" Fox asks thoughtfully, and then shrugs. "Well, your name goes snicker snack, that's clever, I approve." She licks her fingers and then burps. "I can't speak for Lux, but I like when my friends are friends!"
Blink blink.
"Honestly? I like that, too. I haven't got many. I keep busy. I have- other things, but not- friends, exactly. I tend to polarize." Vorpal offered idly. While Fox watched for lights, it was second nature for Johnnie to track footsteps, snores, hinges, fridge doors, comforters. It was easier to notice than not, after all. A background program running to collate and process all that information while she spoke to Fox. A conversation ruled neither by relationships, politics, nor a need to be normal.
It was refreshing, really.
The approval earned Fox a grin. "I like my name too," she said, her shadows nodding in agreement. "Yours is fitting, too. Do you have any other friends that might already be my acquaintances, do you think? Likely ones a little less- colorful?"
Wasn't everyone less colorful than Lux?
She thinks about that for a moment, while continuing to lick her fingers. "I want more food," she declares. "We can walk to the late night schwarma truck. Let's go!" Pushing herself up to her bare feet (Life Mastery also means you don't really feel cold), she pap pap pap to the mouth of the alleyway.
"Oh... I know, ummmm. Lux, and... Jack... and... Mearcstapa... and Anneliese..." She recounts casually. "Probably lots more actually but that's who I hang out with most or run into most."
There was a- reluctance to the idea of striding into public, but Johnnie braced herself and rolled to her feet, taking a moment to remember how to move something closer to natural before she followed. It... wasn't easy. She had to rely on a sort of tangled combination of her own hyperawareness with her ability to move just so to manufacture the sort of minute flaws a normal person might experience while walking. The one thing she couldn't much manufacture was surprise- with so much attention focused on seeming less graceful, less hypertuned into the world, there wasn't much focus left to forge reactions. "Schwarma is lovely! And I know those folx. All of them are lovely. Among other things," Johnnie thought to herself, mildly amused. "Or- well. With one exception, I suppose. It's just a three of a kind. Ah, well. I'm glad you've got good taste in company. Though," she remarked, "You'd be hard pressed to find otherwise round these parts when it comes to my sorts."
Fox waits for Vorpal to sort herself out and come accompany them, hands hanging on to the straps of their backpack. "Oh, they're all very good. I'm not very close to Anneliese but she's nice. I only know Jack okay but you know, he's Lux's so I'd kill for him," so casually said, "and Mearcstapa is like me in a lot of ways and he helps me with my pigeon lofts." Her feet pap pap pap on the sidewalk.
"I would ask if you know others like me but... there's no one else in this city that's just like me. There's one person close but I'm pretty sure you don't know them." Pap pap pap. "I haven't met anybody of your sort that I haven't liked. Well, except one but I never met her, I only heard about her, and she tried to hurt my Lux and the ONLY reason I didn't EAT HER FACE is because Lux told me to let them handle it."
She briefly bares her sharp little teeth, snaps them. "Anyway, you are like water, it's really wild."
"She -is- nice. I'm not always sure what to make of her, but that's a pretty common refrain, I'm afraid. It's better than it used to be, but." But People Are Hard. It's unsaid, but hangs in the air. "Jack's quality people, and that's even before you count his skill set. I suppose- if you extend the chain far enough, that actually makes us-" Teagan to Jack. Jack to Lux. Lux to- well. Fox never said they were more than friends. "Ah, then again. That assumption requires information I haven't got and aren't entitled to. Perhaps not, for now." She strode along.
"Like you? No, nobody like you, that's for sure. Perhaps similarly skilled?" She chances, "but I don't- ah, no, there's one, perhaps. Diamond? I believe? Ran across her on a little field trip. She seemed most surprised to run across somebody else from home." As one does when encountering the living on the borders of the lands of the dead. "And yes. An unfortunate matter, that." And thankfully ended, her tone implies.
"Oh, quite. That's what Bruce Lee suggests, isn't it? Flow, Crash and all that. It is a bit wild, isn't it?" She smiles, a grin too broad, too sharp. "You should see me fight."
"Sometimes it's easier to be a fox, or a tree, or an eel, and not have to deal with human feelings for a while," Fox opines thoughtfully, still hanging on tight to the straps of her backpack. "But I do like people. They have so many thoughts and feelings, so many experiences, and the way that people fit together with other people is a little like playing brain Tetris."
Pap pap pap. She turns left at an intersection. There's a confused look up at the idea of a chain, so either she didn't understand what she was saying, or, well, Vorpal is off-base with certain assumptions.
"Oh, yep!" Another turn at another intersection. "Diamond is great."
Pap pap pap. Foxes love food. She's on a Mission. "I bet that's a sight to see! I would like that, for sure."
"Ah, but you're likely right. I've never much thought about trying that out. Perhaps I should. I usually Go Someplace when I feel like there's a bit too much Feelings or Thoughts to work through. Head someplace where it doesn't so much matter until they quiet down. And- hm. Do you find it more challenging to play brain tetris or heart tetris, Fox?" A simple question with deeply complicated connotations.
"She seemed to be. I did enjoy surprising her. She didn't seem much used to being surprised, Diamond."
The food is a non-entity as far as Vorpal is concerned, but the company is nice. "Oh, I'm told it's downright exquisite. Perhaps I could arrange an exhibition? That'd have to do, I'm afraid, it's awfully difficult to find something actually in need of more than a simple demonstration of basic skill," she laments quietly.
And yet, she answers immediately, without even thinking. "Oh, brain Tetris is harder. Feelings are just feelings, they don't have to justify themselves or anything. They just exist. It's what you do with your feelings that matters. But brains, and how people justify to themselves what they do with those feelings, that's harder!" She gives Jackie a sympathetic glance aside and smiles a little. "Yeah, if feelings get too much you just... go away for a bit. Not too long, because then people worry. But sometimes you have to go be a fox and dig through the trash."
"I imagine they aren't," Fox agrees. "They're very... capable. I respect their skills quite a lot!"
The line of food trucks appears up ahead, not far from where the bars empty onto the streets, and Fox speeds up a little. The bars haven't closed yet so there aren't tons of people out yet.
"That makes you sound cocky," she laughs over her shoulder, turning back to face Jackie. "But sure, that would be neat!"
"Hm. I suppose there's truth to that. It's- mm. I'd always assumed it was the feelings themselves making everything complicated. I suppose you're very much right about that." There's some food for thought. "And yes. Precisely. Just- take a bit of time for oneself."
"Oh! Should I have called them they? I may owe them an apology. I didn't intend to assume. It's been a while."
It's no trouble keeping up with the hurrying Fox, and it eases the need to control herself a little. Or- more precisely, shifts the focus from controlling speed to managing fluidity. "Oh, I'm not cocky. I'm an arrogant fucking cunt. I'd like to think I've rather earned that distinction, but it doesn't make it less accurate!"
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