#crrisptrepidation

Ivanna was never a coward, never one to shy from confrontation or run from her problems. The only time you’d find her retreating was when there was imminent danger to her family, and there was back at home. New security systems could only do so much to protect the people she loved the most, but she’d already warned her children to stay far from Vegas for a while. After the heat wave, she came to realize that even the strongest of them hadn’t been immune to the wicked ways of their own people. So, all in all, being somewhere that wasn’t her own house was nice. Killer Cupcakes had been an escape for a while now, comfort found in both Nadia and Sadie’s presences whenever Ivanna hung around for bit after her own shifts. She allowed herself a moment of solace now in the closed bakery, one leg crossed over the other as her arms did the same over her chest.

Stopping at White Dahlia just wasn’t enough. Even after getting her hands on the heaviest sweatshirt she could find, one that now stuck to her skin because the heat should have been a little more irritating than it was in that moment, Laurel couldn’t get warm. She nearly ran out of the bakery and tea shop, muscles stiff as a board with limbs trembling from the cold the freezer had engulfed her in – a girl frosted over in a town where people were just now recovering from a heat wave. She was one of the few anomalies left in the city and, realistically, Laurel probably should have called a doctor or took a pit stop at the hospital to make sure hypothermia wasn’t in the cards for her, but she didn’t.

Eyes narrowed as they locked onto a stranger that didn’t exactly seem to be much of a stranger to her, specifically. Laurel had to take a moment to make sure she wouldn’t be making a fool of herself by approaching somebody who truly hadn’t seen her face before, and she had to make sure she didn’t embarrass anybody else by putting them on the spot. If this was the girl she thought she was, though, then she knew she could find at least some comfort in knowing a familiar face for the first time in a while around Vegas.