attracted to power

Toulouse allowed his eyes to follow her hand, understanding her point fairly quickly. "Then by all means," he gestured right back to the seat before fishing around in his bag for a pencil sharpener. Honestly, he didn't mind sharing space with others. Though there was something... ominous in the air. Ah. He was probably just being paranoid.

Mirage kept her eyes deliberately averted. Stares were often par for the course (though optimally Mirage would like to go unnoticed wherever possible). She pulled her coffee to her lips just as Toulouse asked her a rather amusing question. There was a pause, with the cup lingering under her half-curled lips.

"You're welcome." He nodded and handed them to her, glad he had gotten at least some of the papers, but he wished he had caught them all. Colt glanced around, then gestured off to the right. "Uh, I think they went over that way. Don' know how long they'll stay there in this wind, though. Sorry 'bout that."

Mirage glanced in the direction Colt nodded toward. A few things went through her mind at once. The papers were important. Not terribly so, but enough that she would have some explaining to do. Enough that if a savvy person caught them later on, they might look into what was written. Reason enough to stop keeping paper trails.

All of a sudden, this dark energy had swooped in and distracted him. His pencil tip snapped, startling him and causing him to look up. He wasn't expecting anyone to be there, and so when he saw the mysterious woman across from him, he slowly took out an earphone. "Somehow I don't think it would matter if I did. Can I help you?"

Mirage smiled, wry and unreadable. Toulouse was correct in that regard. She adjusted the coffee cup on the table, and straightened out her skirt.

With everything that had been happening lately, Toulouse decided that he just needed to find somewhere relatively quiet to think things over. So, he decided to head down to the Enchanted Rose cafe and get a special holiday drink; if there was one weakness he had during the winter, it was Eggnog. Sat alone at a booth with his drink and a sketchbook, Toulouse popped his earphones in, and got to work.

Mirage was seemingly all-knowing and unknowable in one fell swoop. It was her job to know everything and appear to know nothing. But, of course, she did know just about everything, and Toulouse's little conspiracy had not gone off her radar. Mirage slid into the seat in front of him, black coffee in hand. She did not wait to be invited, instead, using the business of the cafe to her advantage. "Do you mind?" she asked, for politeness' sake.

As expected, Mirage's signature smirk came between them. Gabe had seen that smirk one too many times and every time, it was standing in his way. Most times he couldn't prove it, but he kenw in his gut she was to blame.

"Yes. Uneventful," she replied, averting her gaze out toward the sleepy little town. In the grand scheme of things, the things that happened here were merely drops in an ocean. For now, at least.

Smee couldn't have cared less what was on the papers. A more curious man may have tried to read them, but that wasn't his goal. He was simply attempting to be kind and help someone in need. "Oh, n-not a- a problem," he reassured, chasing down one particular page that seemed hellbent on running away. "J-just a second, I've almost- yes, got it," he nodded, snatching the last page and carefully sifting them all back together. "Here you are," Smee handed them over, with a meek smile.

Mirage inwardly grimaced. She wasn't a fan of 'scenes' and this felt very much like one. She watched Smee chase after the paper, almost wishing it would blow out of reach to get this ordeal over with quicker. Thankfully, she supposed, he managed to catch, and handed over the rogue papers, seemingly without having a look at them.

Mirage tried not to panic, but the thought of chasing papers fluttering around in the wind while wearing stilettos and a pencil skirt was enough to make the bridge of her nose sweat. Even worse, someone had already started gathering the papers.

walking home from work, eilonwy witnessed the dramatics of the wind trying to blow everything that wasn't pinned down away, mirage's paperwork included. dashing over to help her, eilonwy gathered up some of the blown papers to hand back over to her "here you go, that wind has been a pest all day"

Mirage did her best not to seem alarmed, aware that if she drew too much attention to the importance of the paperwork, the likelihood of someone reading it would increase exponentially. She kept her cool despite the fluttered worry in her chest.

It being fall, Colt had expected to get hit with some falling leaves from time to time. He had not, however, expected to get hit with flying papers. So when a sudden burst of papers came blowing his way, he blinked for a bit, then reached out to grab whichever ones he could. He got his hands on some of them, though the rest had already blown out of his reach.

Mirage was well practised in keeping her cool, but there was only so much she could do when something was completely outwith her control. Those papers were important, and if they ended up in the wrong hands, who knows what would happen?