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Post by Keith Evans on Jan 4, 2014 22:00:32 GMT -5
Keith glanced toward Lyric before heading into the kitchen. "Um, I'm not going to hurt you or anything, if that's what you're worried about," he said, though when he thought about it he wondered if a kid so young could even understand that much. "Are you just hungry? I mean, I think most kids would go for the cat, it's all fluffy and warm..." He stepped toward the cabinets, though he had no idea what he would do if and when he actually found the kid. This was really the opposite of what he was prepared for.
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Post by Trent Frey on Jan 4, 2014 22:22:21 GMT -5
There was a slight shuffling sound, and then the crinkling noise of a crisp bag. Apparently the child felt safe enough to resume eating, because the crinkling was soon followed by crunching sounds. Shadow looked up from his impromptu meal of lutefisk bits, shook his head fiercely as though in distaste, then went back for more.
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Post by Keith Evans on Jan 4, 2014 22:32:40 GMT -5
"Uh, my name's Keith," Keith said. "I'm here a lot, so if you end up staying you'll see a lot of me." He made his way toward the sounds he was hearing and opened cabinets close by with no luck. "I don't know your mum, but you're here now, so I guess that doesn't matter." He reached for the handle of another cabinet and pulled to look inside.
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Post by Trent Frey on Jan 4, 2014 23:10:09 GMT -5
Inside the cabinet, the child had already made a nest of sorts. Its cloak was still tied on, but the hood was pushed back, revealing thin, lank, orange hair and striking brown eyes. Its hands, clear to the wrist and on the edges of uneven sleeves, were coated with a mixture of the various foods the child had been into. There was tuna salad of course, with cereal pieces stuck in and a dusting of other things harder to identify. The child simply looked up at the man with wide eyes and stilled, a rabbit under wandlight in a farmer's garden.
"Keith?" Lyric stepped into the kitchen and swore at the mess. Three steps in and he grabbed Shadow under the stomach and tossed him out of the room.
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Post by Keith Evans on Jan 4, 2014 23:14:46 GMT -5
"I think it's scared," Keith said. Care of magical creatures had been part of his required classes for herbology, due to how connected the two could be, and he'd seen similar expressions before. "You hungry? You don't have to hide to eat, you know. Besides, it's much more comfortable out here." Whatever food the child held didn't look quite safe to eat from all of the extra ingredients from the hiding and scurrying.
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Post by Trent Frey on Jan 4, 2014 23:22:06 GMT -5
Lyric was held still and quiet from the sound of Keith's voice. He'd been soothed by it before from time to time and as strange as it was hearing that cautious coaxing when his own nerves weren't stretched to breaking, it helped him understand a lot faster than he would have alone. He'd been thinking of the kid as a mute little rebel, probably too much for its mother to handle.
My step-father is a bad man, he just is, she'd said.
In the cabinet, the redheaded child held out the bag of crisps toward Keith. It could have been a bribe, or a peace-offering, or just returning what she'd taken. She didn't say a word, though.
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Post by Keith Evans on Jan 4, 2014 23:28:01 GMT -5
"Oh, I don't need any, you keep on," Keith said. He had the definite feeling that the kid needed the bag more than he did. "You going to come out? We're not going to hurt you or anything, if that's what you're worried about." It was a repeat of something he'd already said, but it couldn't hurt, right? He looked over his shoulder at Lyric, almost afraid himself of what this meant.
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Post by Trent Frey on Jan 4, 2014 23:38:31 GMT -5
Lyric looked back, his wide-eyed gaze almost a mirror image of the child's, though he couldn't see her from where he was. He'd seen the motion of that bag, understood that the child had found a safe place and whatever else she'd been looking for. She'd looked through most of his kitchen, it seemed.
Finally he pulled himself out of his thoughts and made his mouth form words. "Yeah, no one gets hurt here." Unless they want to be. He looked at Keith helplessly. Well, it wasn't like he'd never lied before.
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Post by Keith Evans on Jan 4, 2014 23:44:33 GMT -5
Keith shifted, then settled on the floor with his legs crossed. He had no idea what he was doing, but it didn't seem right to leave a kid hiding afraid in a cabinet. "So, ah, what's your name? I mean, I could give you one, but it'd be a sort of plant and you probably wouldn't like it." Of course, as far as he knew, children this age didn't even talk at all, so getting no response wouldn't be all that surprising.
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Post by Trent Frey on Jan 5, 2014 0:10:16 GMT -5
The child didn't respond, but dug back into the bag of crisps. Her stomach was starting to feel full, but she had food and wanted to keep eating. When she remained quiet, Lyric spoke up. "Quinn said she doesn't have a name," he said, and it felt even stranger now than when she'd told him. "She was called Kiley or Quinn or Mae or whatever. Quinn said it didn't matter."
Lyric had spent half his life fighting his own name, trying to go by Trent so people would take him seriously. And now that they did, he wanted the people he trusted maybe as far as he could throw them, maybe more, to call him Lyric. "What do you want to be called?" he asked.
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Post by Keith Evans on Jan 5, 2014 0:26:56 GMT -5
"I think Kiley's a nice name," Keith said, though he felt like he was just making it up as he went. It was such a weird situation. It was difficult to imagine not having a name. He knew of people who changed names as they got older or circumstances changed, but not having a name was an entirely different thing. He folded his hands together in his lap as he looked at the kid.
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Post by Trent Frey on Jan 5, 2014 0:31:26 GMT -5
The child shook her head angrily and threw the near-empty bag of crisps. They landed just past Keith on the floor as she made a little fist and hit the inside wall of the cabinet. Lyric winced. He didn't think she'd make a hole, but it was an unfamiliar noise in a kitchen she'd already trashed.
"Kiley was Quinn's dead sister," Lyric said, and the child stopped her tantrum before it really got started to stare at him. She pulled the bottom part of her cloak up to hide her head, exposing skinny legs and scuffed shoes that peeked out of the bottom of an old-fashioned dress.
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Post by Keith Evans on Jan 5, 2014 0:40:20 GMT -5
"Okay, then," Keith said, though he wasn't very sure of where he should go from there. "You could be named after your mum...or you could call yourself something you like." Tuna salad wasn't much of a name, but if it got the girl out of hiding then it was a good choice. Well, at least for now, anyway.
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Post by Trent Frey on Jan 5, 2014 13:56:28 GMT -5
The child hesitantly lowered the ragged cloak from her face and dug beneath it. What she produced was a marble attached to a thin gold chain around her neck. The marble was striped red and yellow, and though she didn't offer it to Keith the way she'd offered the crisps, she had responded.
"What is it?" Lyric asked, then looked over his shoulder at the sound of a knock downstairs. He hadn't expected to see Dare so soon, but he'd take all the help he could get. "I've got to get that, I'll be right back," he said.
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Post by Keith Evans on Jan 5, 2014 14:10:57 GMT -5
"Looks like a marble on a necklace," Keith said. He shrugged. "Better than tuna salad, I suppose." Weren't there stories all the time about kids left with just a trinket of some kind? Maybe it was part of the leave your kid on a doorstep class. He still didn't think any of this was fair to anyone involved, but his somewhat selfish near-panic had lessened quite a bit.
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