but you're cold

Swoosh, swoosh. The rustling of the straw distracts herself from her walls crumbling and from the painful bass blasting in her ears and shaking the ground. He sounds, to her, almost too know-it-all with the train of words that follow — that he hasn’t been struck with amnesia or something of the sort. The woman simply rolls her eyes (though subtly, so that the actor doesn’t catch her). That’s not the point, Jans Joakim. She would’ve thought that stardom would mess with that steel brain of his, though obviously he proves otherwise.

There is a pause, intentionally staged it seems, in their conversation as she simply gulps the flood of words down her throat. They want to carelessly bubble and froth past her lips, uncannily resembling magma and ash. She swears she remembers having a cold tongue (especially to the man in questioning) but now the back of her mouth flushes and turns her head hot.

“What time’s your shift end? I’ll take you somewhere. I’m fairly certain the food served here is superb, because the music certainly isn’t and it’s driving me nuts.”

Straightforward, aren’t we, Jans Joakim? And rather insistent. And as the two have so gloriously shown, two can play at this game. She licks her lips that’ve been pecked dry by the weather and chews off a speck of skin.

Suppressing her words, “It ends in...” she checks the watch on her right wrist “around six minutes,”. She simply raises her brow at him, waltzing her way to the back of the bar where all she does is click! Suddenly the music abruptly comes to a halt. 

She can’t recall if it’s been happening for a while just yet, not in her state of mind, but she now sees flakes of white flying around her — and at her. Astryd wants to give herself a hit in the head because it took her so long to realise that she’s in the midst of a snowstorm where the wind violently thrashes at her. Just great. And to think she’d just washed her hair this morning, too. She can’t see much off into the distance, with the two factors of difficulty being her awful state and the other being the fact that there is a sheet of white flying about in her goddamn face.

Ahead she thinks she sees a figure yank something off a storefront door and tosses it into the snow. Befitting for Christmas Eve, an Ebenezer Scrooge snatching wreaths and throwing it to places they’d never be found again. But this Ebenezer Scrooge bears an uncanny resemblance — this particular Scrooge seems weak, but perhaps far too weak for an old, fictional man who’s used to teach kids not to be sour pissbabies.

The Flare (if she could even call herself that without wanting to scratch her heart out) reaches for her Holo Caster, shining a bright blue light to even guide her way in the slightest. It helps, though only in the slightest, as the darkness isn’t what’s unsettling. But that lets her see the figure down the road and that they’re down to the ground in seconds. Astryd nearly ignores it, thinking perhaps that they’ve been swept by the wind, but the body doesn’t move. She’s never considered herself to be one of much justice but if bad (or more bad than Astryd, at the very least) people find vulnerable people — the unthinkable happens and she can’t let someone go with that so simply.

The redhead begins her small journey to the fallen being a few steps ahead. These steps are hard, nonetheless, with the snow brimming close to her knees. But she makes it, almost, and sees the body face-down in the snow with long hair of raven slowly fading to grey with the white corrupting the hair. Astryd reaches for the body’s apparent shoulders and gives a light shake.

“Uh... are you okay?”

“Don’t we know each other from somewhere?” he asks. 

Idiot; typical Jans move. He probably hasn’t reconsidered his poor choice of words. Part of her wants to laugh, the other part wants to give him a wham across his face for not remembering her. But she knows it isn’t his fault, not anymore — not when his life is full of flashing lights and fame. He hasn’t got time for her or anyone else.

“The youngest of the Hourigs… Astryd. Right?”

Click!

So he does remember her, to her surprise. She wants to semi-lunge into a hug and semi-break down into tears. A fragment of her childhood, a short-lived one at that. A privilege she was never given when she decided to leave the life she loved. Instead of succumbing to her impulses, she walks towards the bar, trampling with her boots over the glass — looking for a broom, or something that would make her seem the least bit collected.

Astryd replies with a chuckle, a rather smug one at that, just to seem cool because that’s the way she’s always been. She’d always been cool and aloof, apathetic at that too. 

“I didn’t think I’d see you again.” she admits, grabbing the wooden broomstick with her right hand; a dustpan with the left. At this point she sees the posse of teenage girls staring at the man with interest, and probably recognition — but they don’t interrupt. Which is good of them. But at this point Astryd doesn’t really think she should be talking to him. It’s much too overwhelming for her.

“Ever.”

Whoosh, whoosh — the sweeps that bring the clacking remnants of the empty glasses and debris of the ice onto the flat surface of the dustpan. Now she can’t really tell which is ice and which is glass, but she sweeps them as if they’re the same. It doesn’t matter anymore, they’re useless either way now.

“And even then, I didn’t think you’d remember me.” she adds.

Unova is an urban setting that seems too picturesque, less postcard-type and more PokéStar Studios-. A concrete clusterfuck that abides by laws of movie-script ideals, battled by the motorcycling gangs — almost similar to the bike-riders of Lumiose, but so different in indistinct yet undoubtable ways. Her supposed mission for ‘gathering intel on Team Plasma’ turns into a session of observing the alleyways and dark bars that Castelia offers — with nighttime predators, blood running down their stubbled chins and reeking of booze.

The moon falls and the Sun rises at its best yet again, painting a façade of innocence over the rascals of midnight. Nothing eventful has happened for her. The night prior was spent much too pathetically — a date with a cigarette, perched on a hostel iron-barred balcony that overlooks the city. It’s odd, yet quite funny she finds, that the attitude of the city is easily displayed to her from a single windowsill. Every nook and cranny; every little whisper echoed into her little personal space.

Rebellion — to her — is loitering lazily outside gyms, apparently.

Thirst parches her throat, so like any sensible person, she waddles her way to the vending machine that hoards drinks that would do the job she seeks. It isn’t even far away, nor is it particularly any more than five strides away from the bench she resides on. Though it’s enough to stir up trouble, like the kind she can never get herself out of. Her body jerks back to the sudden collision, and down onto the cement.

A man — one who looks like someone Astryd thinks she should know. An immaculate suit on a rather disheveled man. Profanity, followed by more profanity and what seems like rudeness is thrown out of his mouth. Her tongue is sharp, but his is sharper.