4:27 Money moves.

Pilar's home had too few windows for Billy's taste.  He gazed at the two that were near the door as though the afternoon light that was demurely peeking through them were a lover he'd hated to lose.

Aubrieta watched his slack, sunburned face, his vacant green eyes, and his salt-dried, bitten up lips without any shame or concern at being caught.  It had been her idea to uncover the windows at all, as neither her mother nor Lorry minded one way or the other.  Now she was reaping the benefits of a choice normally reserved for parades, riots, festivals, fires, public executions, and other types of situations that brought people out into the cobbled street.

Lorrigan, whose pale, lightly bearded face was busy embodying all the worry that Billy's couldn't hold, scrubbed one of his sore hands in his messy blond hair and uselessly tugged at the twine-bound ponytail that hung behind his neck.

"So we're where we started," he said, the words pushing out of his mouth like the lazy breeze from a collapsing sail.  "And with barely any time."

"You're not exactly where you started," Pilar soothed, her left hand knowingly searching for Lorrigan's right.  Not finding it on the table, she began reaching tentatively for the back of his neck.  Embarrassed that she may catch him fidgeting, Lorrigan stopped swirling his ponytail around his fingers and took the smaller, darker hand into his own.

"Yer man'll only buy it when the spell were broke," he admitted.  "I see 'is point, o'course, but it doesn't 'elp us any, does it?"

Billy finally realized that Aubrieta was staring at him.  Her eyes, dark and mysterious to him, seemed to gleam with delight at being caught at last.  Clearing his throat needlessly, he turned his attentions to his long-cold tea, picking both the cup and the saucer up from the table to sip at it.  His red cheeks grew even ruddier, and Aubrieta pulled some of her thick black hair over her shoulder to put it over her face for a moment.

"I did tell you to wait until I came along with you," Pilar smiled smoothly.  "He's very self-serving, and has to be cautiously backed into doing anything that remotely looks like a favor for anyone else.  It's a good thing you had wit enough not to pay him to find a willing mage."

"I still don't see what the problem with that would've been," Billy complained, breaking away from his chilly tea cup.  "We're castin' off tomorrow early; we won't find a body who can break the spell before then by ourselves."

"Why didn't you tell me you were leaving tomorrow?" Pilar demanded at once, squeezing Lorrigan's hand.  Billy could hear only urgency in her tone, but Lorrigan, whose heart's every corner reverberated with the memories of that same tone being used in times past, closed his eyes and sighed.

"I'd planned to tell ya," he admitted quietly, burying his annoyance at his compatriot as deeply as he could.  "But not just now.  Or like that."

Billy stared down into the cold brown water in his cup with renewed awkwardness, feeling the weight of the "Ya great idjit" that Lorrigan hadn't said.

Pilar stopped squeezing Lorrigan's hand, and he opened his eyes to gaze at her.  In the silence, she felt her chest heat up and throb, as though nearly half a lifetime hadn't gone by since the days when the two had freely acted as any randy young pirate and carefree half-copper soothsayer might act.  Words that she couldn't afford to say stuck painfully in her throat, and Lorrigan watched her swallow them as a dull ache grew in the bottom of his belly.

Aubrieta gazed at their stranded desire, huge and heavy, like an ocean bound vessel run aground.  She could almost hear the shared inward groaning- the choices that couldn't be undone, the debts that had been paid in the wrong ways- and all the time, the time, the merciless rush of time that never ran backward.  The young girl turned sharply away from the scene and charged decisively into the kitchen, busying herself with whatever containers she could get her hands onto- the biscuit bin, the tea bin, the fruit basket, the bread box.

"Principesa?" Pilar asked, instantly torn away from her own intimate feelings by the steely claws of motherly responsibility.  "What's the matter?  Bugs?  Mice?"

"We're run out of things, Mama," Aubrieta shot back.  She hadn't meant to sound so sharp, but couldn't gulp the words back once they were out of her mouth.  "I'm going to the market."

"Right now?  While we have company?" Pilar asked, a bit winded by the edge in her daughter's words.  She unwound herself from Lorrigan, who straightened himself guiltily in his chair.

"They don't show signs of moving," Aubrieta reasoned, looking over her shoulder at her mother.  "If I wait any later, all the vegetables the sellers have left will be half rotted."

"When did we run out of any vegetable, principesa mia?" Pilar replied with a touch of wonder lingering in her tone.  "Sirs, I'm sorry to have to turn you out, but-"

"No, don't do that, Mama, only... only send Ser William with me," Aubrieta interrupted as she turned all the way around and leaned on the counter behind her.  "You won't mind, will you, Ser William?"

Lorrigan raised an eyebrow and folded his arms over his chest, looking for all the world like his ill-fated father, who had desperately taken work on a ship that flew no flag and had never returned.

Billy looked around himself, startled.  The idea of going to market with a young woman that he was still sure was a real and true witch, even if she weren't an entirely evil one, made his tongue thick in his mouth.

Pilar smiled a small, careful smile, beginning to understand her daughter's machinations.  "I don't know that Ser William will want to-"

"O'course 'e don't mind it," Lorrigan piped up, slapping Billy firmly on the back.  "It's no real man takes occasion to keepin' a woman safe."

"I ain't keen to-" Billy began, turning to Lorrigan with a rapidly paling face.

"To lettin' our Aubri get snatched up out there, certainly, I know," Lorrigan cut in, putting both his hands on Billy's shoulders.  "Good man, good man.  G'wan and wait for 'er by the door, won't ya?  Just 'old 'er purse, don't let nobody steal it.  Or if you're not confident about 'at, 'old th' wee basket."

Aubrieta gave a pleased hum as she momentarily scrunched up her shoulders, then made her way into her room to get her coin purse.  Billy, who realized that there would be no getting out of this unwanted guard duty, gulped down his cold tea and stood up from the table.

"It shouldn't take you long," Pilar managed, trying her best to keep her laughter out of her voice.  "She didn't tell me that we had run out out of anything, so I doubt you'll have to visit more than two or three stalls to get whatever foodstuffs we seem to so suddenly be in dire need of."

Billy lumbered off toward the door, and shortly afterward, Aubrieta made her way out of her room with her leather coin purse and a small shopping basket that she'd woven herself just a few months before.  She scooted to her mother's side and gave her a small kiss.

"Divertiti, e ti porterò frutta extra," she said quietly, knowing that neither man in the room would understand her anyway.

"Solo non portarmi un nipote," Pilar huffed half-seriously, giving her daughter's butt a soft swat.

"Non posso promettertelo," Aubrieta answered airily as she wiggled her butt just a tiny bit in response.  With a bounce in her step, she made it to the door, slipped her arm into Billy's, and opened the door.  It seemed that the entire house inhaled in the warm, salty street air as the two moved through the door and exhaled pleasantly lavendered breath when it closed behind them.

"It never strikes you that she might be that bit overwise?" Lorrigan chuckled, listening to the sound of Aubrieta begin to strike up a conversation with Billy.

"Of course she is," Pilar sighed, laying her head on Lorrigan's shoulder again.  "Don't you believe for a moment that young childen simply forget what they hear and see.  And she knew the differences in my patrons, even before I could explain anything- before I knew that I should have, I suppose.  At first, I thought it was because she might have some talent in magic, but if she does, it has yet to manifest itself in more than extra impish charm."

"That charm's powerful enough on its own- up we get."  Lorrigan slipped his arm around Pilar's back and guided her first to stand, then to sit herself down on his lap.  "That's better.  And I mean... just... ya know, she made eyes at Billy from the minute 'e stepped in 'ere, and-"

"And you, despite hating it with every fibre of your pirate heart, have a father's spirit," Pilar teased.  "She does as she likes, and has for some time.  All I ask is that she doesn't bring me back children, although if she did, I'd be a hypocrite not to help her raise them."

"Well, never mind that," Lorrigan grumbled.  "It's Bull Billy... 'e 'asn't any genteelity, and-"

"Compared to whom?" Pilar asked, amused.  "He'll learn no delicacy from you, Lorry the Lewd."

Lorrigan uttered a single squat grunt in response, sitting just slightly wider in the wooden chair.  "Plus, 'e's older'n 'er, and-"

"He's not that much older, from the sound of him, and from the sound of the way you talk to him," Pilar chuckled.  "In fact, from the way you talk to him, ser, he's your son."

"Aw, now, c'mon," Lorrigan began to protest, despite knowing that doing so would be useless.

"Come on yourself," Pilar scoffed.  "You see yourself in him, is what the matter really is.  Another 'feckless idjit' with the shadow of debt stretched long over him, getting a girl into trouble without being able to get her out of it.  So you're talking to yourself, trying to tell yourself not to get involved- it won't work, Lorry.  Obviously, it's too late to keep him away from unfair working contracts or poor gambling choices; you wouldn't have even dragged him here if he didn't owe you money.  I wonder, do you keep him playing cards with you so that he doesn't find some crueler cheat to bleed the coin he hasn't earned yet out of him?"

"Oi, girl, 'at's enough now," Lorrigan complained as he shifted himself underneath Pilar for a moment.  He patted her hips gently, a more intimate echo of the mild reproof Aubrieta had just earned a few minutes before.  "I wish I'd been able to do right by you back then.  You know I do."

"Of course I know that," Pilar purred, leaning back into Lorrigan's chest and reaching a hand up to caress the side of his face.  "And now, in a way, you do, dragging every single shipmate who comes across a magical item or who needs their fortune told all the way down here to me.  There are plenty of alchemic fiend witches right on the docks who'll do more for less coin."

"I ain't 'elpin' to pay nobody's 'abits," Lorrigan objected, seizing upon the one topic in Pilar's accusations that he felt he could bite into safely.  "Took me too long to kick them poisons m'self."

"I daily bless the gods that Aubri isn't into that," Pilar admitted.  "She could hide easily enough, if she were, but thank all that's good, she has a righteous hatred for every poison peddler alive.  Hates when I take patrons who are fiends, too."

"Well, look what the one bugger did," Lorrigan exclaimed, incredulous.

"That wasn't the poisons," Pilar mused, unconsciously bringing her hand down low enough to toy with the knot of the delicate cloth that covered her eyeless sockets.  "Emile was vicious and wicked all on his own."

"Brainweed can't've helped," Lorrigan muttered.  His right hand pulled Pilar's right hand up and behind his head, then returned to Pilar's hip once she began playing with his ponytail.

"So Aubri says when we have the same argument," Pilar chuckled, enjoying the feel of Lorrigan's thin, soft hair.  "And before I could finally get her to talk about it, she used to play all sorts of awful pranks on him, nevermind that he was her father.  Pickpocketing him, putting bugs in his tea- I think once she may have put pepper oil into his wash water."

"He weren't no man, let alone father," Lorrigan grunted as he momentarily squeezed Pilar's hips a bit more tightly.  "Deserved what 'e got."

"She says as much.  She used to ask precisely when he was hung, but I never told her, because I knew she intended to celebrate it like a holiday," Pilar sighed.  "I'll never tell her, but she gets that evil sense of pleasure right from him."

"But she'll wind up a good woman in spite of 'erself," Lorrigan said firmly.  "Make some man a strong minded wife, innit?"

"Oh, that's without question," Pilar smiled gently, picking Lorrigan's left hand up from her hip and guiding it around her waist.  He adjusted himself by pulling her a bit closer in to himself and snuggling his chin onto her left shoulder.  "She'll be a demanding wife and a powerful mother.  She's already trying to take me in hand; you've just seen her do it."

Lorrigan gave a short and quiet harumph, sensitive to how close he was to her left ear.  "You'll send for me when it happens, won't you?  When she gets a man, a child, or both?"

"Of course, Papa," Pilar breathed, leaning back just slightly so that she could be easily kissed on the lips.  She knowingly teased the man beneath her further with a well placed left hand.  "You know she takes to you.  If for some wayward reason she won't do it herself, I'll have someone send you word."

"Oi, c'mon 'en, c'mon," Lorrigan objected, picking his head up from her shoulder and shifting around beneath her again.  "I just care for ya both, that's all."

"And that, to most of the rest of the world, is called having a father's instinct," Pilar smirked, feeling his grip both around her waist and on her hip tighten just slightly.  "Perhaps it's the slightest bit out of place for a child and a woman who aren't yours, but-"

"Oh, not mine, are ya?" Lorrigan growled, unable to brush off Pilar's teasing and obvious advances any longer.  "Aching somethin' mis'rable for a reminder, are ya?"

"A reminder of what, ser?" Pilar shot back with mock indignance.  "I'll have you know that I am a respectable lady; it says so on my door."

"Right; up we go 'en, milady," Lorrigan grunted, ungraciously leaning forward to get his right hand under Pilar's skirts.  Pilar screeched with pleasure and surprise at once, clamping both of her hands on the firm forearm around her waist as though it were a life-saving bannister.  "Teach ya what ain't mine.  Ain't mine?  This ain't mine?  Mmff, from the feel of it-"

"Lorry!" Pilar cried, excited and scandalized.  She felt the cool air of the house suddenly rush over her legs and began pawing around in the vain attempt to find the hems of her skirts.  Behind her, she could hear Lorrigan's hum of approval as he stuck his adventurous fingers into his mouth for a moment.  "I don't know that the children be gone quite that long!"

"Hmm," Lorrigan scoffed, the sound vibrating in his throat and chest.  He unabashedly took his fingers out of his mouth and put his right hand dangerously high on Pilar's bare brown thigh.  "An' 'at boy knows what's good for 'im, if 'e makes it to that door while I'm still at work 'ere, 'e'll turn 'imself right 'round and march 'imself to a tavern.  Take Aubri with 'im, show 'er a good time."

Pilar mashed her lips between her teeth and gave little squeaks of pleasure as Lorrigan shifted himself underneath her yet again.  Both partners knew the course was irrevocably set when she sat suddenly upright as though electricity had just run from the pirate's hips straight up the entire length of her spine.

"There we are then, eh?  Feel yerself reminded, milady?"  A comfortable leer settled itself on Lorrigan's face when he received nothing but barely audible pops of high-pitched sound as a response.  "Awright then, let's send me off proper."

4:27 Fire forged friends.

The freshly rained upon Eastern Quarter streets, thanks to late afternoon bursts of sunshine, smelled of mud.  Despite the fact that the showers of the day had been brief, all of them had been strong, and no one in the perpetually darkened neighborhood had wanted to try to bring their wares and work back outdoors only to be pelted with vicious rain yet again.  So, the pair of children- one raven haired Shadar-kai girl in a ratty white tunic and a skirt made of lots of fabric scraps, and one sandy blond Human boy who had a billowy beige peasant shirt and breeches with holes and picks all over them- were, for the most part, alone.

"Muddy!  Mud-DY!  MUUU-DDYYYY!" the boy cried at the top of his lungs.

"Ease yer pipes, ya whoreson," the girl groaned.  "Ye'll have us in irons, singing tart's tunes so."

"If a body'll take 'Muddy'for fit to be cried o'th'back at night!" the boy chuckled.

The Shadar-kai huffed and turned up her nose at the boy.  "It's been worse flag's run up, innit?  Yer'n?  'Ditch.'  'Bide ye; some Merry Mercy calls, I'm smoked off; past tense."

"Aww, collar it, ya rank mid'n'," the boy said, a dirty smile sprawling across his face.  "He's like as nae to kiss the knuck o' ya."

"Starve for it,"the girl growled, despite being utterly pleased with the prediction.

The boy shrugged slightly with his smile still gleaming, knowing the compliment had been appropriately received.  The Shadar-kai sped up her walking pace, only to hear her companion shout even more loudly behind her.

"MUUUUUU- DDYYYYYYY!"


Farther up the street from the two Eastern Quarter natives, Circe, who had been using a long stick to scribe her studies into the mud flat that was supposed to be a yard out behind the house, peeked around the corner and into the street to see who was making so much noise.  Spying the two, she walked all the way out into the narrow street.

"Hey!" she called, waving a flush pink hand over her mouse brown haired head.  "What're you looking for?"

"Aww, ye've strung us," the girl hissed as she turned on the boy, who was a ways behind her.  "It's Ser Sadist's figgie."

"I'm not going to get you in any trouble," Circe said frankly, crossing her arms over her chest.  "Obviously, you're only looking for something, or someone.  What or who is it, so I can help?"

"Muddy, my dog," the boy yelled before his companion could make any more complaints.  "He's about yea big, dark brown all over, and busted his strap well early this morn."

"His tail's not been clipped as yet either," the girl said, her voice tight with annoyance.  Seeing that there was no help for the situation as it was, she reached out to put a hand behind the boy's back and marched him directly up the street to Circe, who unfolded her slender, pale arms.

"I've not seen any such dog, but I will help you look," Circe proclaimed importantly.  "Now, to cure your calling me anything to do with 'Ser Sadist', my name is Circe.  What's yours?"

"You're Ser Sadist's daughter," the girl said frankly as she planted her paper white hands on her hips.  "There's no cure for that."

"This is Kazikmyra, and I'm Ditch," the boy interrupted, ignoring his friend's flat response.  "I don't care whose daughter you are, if you'll help me."

"Nobody calls me Kazikmyra," the Shadar-kai shot back, her storm grey eyes glaring daggers down at her companion.  She turned her attention back to Circe when she felt Ditch seemed appropriately repentant.  "The name's Myra.  Ditch is just Ditch; he's always been Ditch.  Saint Bert help the woman who's gonna call him that before some priest someday."

"You call me it plenty, when you've air enough to," Ditch leered back immediately.  Myra again pegged him with a vicious look, but rolled her eyes when the boy's filthy grin faded not one bit.

"Did your mother register you that way?" Circe asked, bewildered and slightly intimidated by the taller, bossier Shadar-kai girl.

"Who knows?" Ditch shrugged as he turned pure, harmless attention to Circe.  "If I ever meet her, I'll ask.  C'mon, let's go."

"Hey, hold it, you street scum," a slightly older voice called as its source came from around the back of the house.  "I'm Ser Sadist's other daughter, Jana.  And Circe's not going any bloody where without me.  Tell me about this dog."

Unlike Circe, whose mouse brown hair was tied firmly with a long ribbon into a bun on top of her head, the right side of Jana's head was freshly shaved clean.  The brown hair left hanging free on the left side was thicker than Circe's, and hung just underneath Jana's jawline in lazy waves. 

Myra sized Jana up with a chilly grey gaze, but Jana's deep brown eyes reflected no concern whatsoever.

"Yea big," Ditch began seriously, apparently oblivious to the contest of wills going on.  "Dark brown all over, with a tail as long as his dam gave it to him, and a busted strap."

"Awright," Jana drawled, still not taking their eyes off Myra.

"Ey, but it's a top skirt, innit?" Myra dared, lifting her head slightly.

Jana crossed their arms over their chest, knowingly flexing the muscles in their forearms in the process.  Farther up their arms, their biceps pushed around and against the leather bands that held the loose sleeves of their dress on.  "Try yer one fer a top skirt 'n' see the frills ya gets of it."

"Ey-lah, cuz," Ditch said very slowly, taking in the apparent incongruity that was a person in a dress with a half shaved head. 

"The figgie's a sweet-gob innit though?" Myra pushed, not willing to give ground so easily.

"Ey," Jana admitted with no glimmer of shame.  "But call 'er't and my knucks'll be answerin' ya, clean?"

"Bone clean," Ditch nodded.  "C'mon'en, Myra, stand awhile."

"Whatever," Myra huffed, shrugging one shoulder as though she didn't care.

Jana watched the way the Shadar-kai's tunic slipped over her pearl white shoulder, and then noticed Ditch watching them watching.  The two gave nearly each other a nearly imperceptible toss of the head.

Circe, who had been utterly lost during the previous conversation, looked around herself as though she were in the midst of a forest.  "Aren't we supposed to be looking for a dog?"

"Yeah," Myra said sharply, walking past both Circe and Jana with a toss of her head.  Her ponytail of thick dark hair, which had been bound with twine and then folded in on itself so that there was a glossy lower case v just above the twine, waggled at the nape of her neck.  "We already searched back that way.  We're going down to the docks to look there."

"Okay," Circe agreed, her hands fussing with the satin ribbon in her hair.  "If the strap is busted, you'll want a new one.  Here, will this do?"

Myra stopped and turned around just as Circe pulled the ribbon free of the tight brown bun on top of her head.  The resulting spiralling and unraveling that transformed the fist-sized knot of hair on top of Circe's head into a sheet of hair that fell bone straight to her midback caused visible surprise to leap into the Shadar-kai's face, and both Ditch and Jana struggled not to laugh.

"Human hair does that," Circe explained knowingly, "if it's thin enough.  I'm lucky it didn't ball up into a million snarls on the way down.  I hate it when my mum puts my hair into buns; it takes me forever to brush it all back out at the end of the day.  So really, I appreciate your saving me the trouble."

"Give that to Ditch," Myra commanded, having fully regained her sense of regality with a mere moment's difficulty.  "Or better yet, tie it under his arms.  Go on, Ditch; up with the shirt."

Circe stared at Myra with her head tilted to the side as though she were a curious kitten.

"That way, it'll smell like him and not you," Jana explained to their sister, putting their hands on her shoulders to turn her around toward Ditch.  "The dog might not let it near him, otherwise.  And it's so smooth and weakly made that if the dog doesn't take to it, he'll rip it to bits.  Then Dad'll probably find some scrap of it somehow, and we'll be in even more trouble."

Myra began to comment that this was probably a stretch of logic, but thought better of it as she watched Circe very slowly step away from Jana's grasp to comply.  Ditch, who'd picked up he hem of his baggy peasant shirt only after he realized that Circe was going to go along with the plan, stood mercifully still as she began to tie the ribbon behind his back.

"No, turn it the other way," Jana counseled.  "Just in case.  It'll look weird, but just trust me, and turn it so that he can get it off himself if he had to."

Circe silently finished the knot where she was, but then put her fingers under the ribbon and began to pull it around Ditch.  Myra watched the small, tight knot move around Ditch's barely-fleshed ribs until it settled between them.  When Circe released the ribbon and stepped away, he let his shirt go, and the knot made a recognizable lump over his breastbone.  It took a moment for Myra to look up from the knot to Ditch's face, but when she did, she realized that both he and Jana had been looking at her with two different shades of the same type of interest.  Embarassed, awkward, and pleased all at the same time, the Shadar-kai whirled around to begin marching forward, her pearlescent skin glowing just a bit brighter.

"The cemetary and the catacombs are close," she counseled in her best adult voice.  "Ditch and I aren't afraid of zombies; are either of you?"

"Our father's Ser Sadist," Jana reminded.  "A lot of people sound, move, or look like zombies when he's done with them."

"That's gross, Jana," Circe frowned.

Behind them, Ditch gave a small shudder.

"Spread out," Myra commanded as soon as she reached the far edge of the cemetary.  "The dog's name is Muddy because he's totally shit brown, if you didn't sort that out already.  At least here, he'll stand out against the clay or the sand."

"Don't you get in trouble for using impolite words like that?" Circe asked with her nose wrinkled.

"Like what?" Ditch asked, genuinely confused.

"Nevermind it," Jana warned as Myra began to reply.  "Circe, you can't ask folks things like that; that's rude itself.  Just go toward the docks and look around.  Don't run off by yourself; you see something, you call for all of us to come see."

With that, Jana began searching for the puppy, or any traces that he'd been around, at the far edge of the cemetary.  Myra turned toward the beach, which was farther down a semi-hard slope, mostly held in place by the few purposefully planted trees forced to live there.  Ditch, after briefly peeking and calling down the darkened entrance that led to the catacombs, turned his attentions up toward the rest of Urmlaspyr proper.  Circe moved toward the other side of the cemetary, almost leaving it completely, and thus was the first to hear both a familiar voice shouting, accompanied by two very different barks.

"Get away from me!  Stop it!  Get away!" the young, high voice cried.  A few sharp yips and a wounded yowl came afterward.

"Hey!" Circe hollered, hopping up and down with the force of the pent up impetus to simply run toward the source of the sounds.  "Everybody- come over here!"

"I think one of those was Muddy!" Ditch yelled as he raced down toward Circe.

"Hey!  Hey, that's Dale!" Circe shouted, turning around to see if Jana had heard.

"Did you see her?" Jana panted, having begun the run toward their sister after the first holler.

"What's going on?" Myra demanded, puffing her way up from the beach.

"Ditch might have heard Muddy, and I definitely heard Dale and Briar," Circe said, turning away from the group to start running toward the docks.  "C'mon; somebody's hurting her, and maybe Briar too!"

The three remaining kids began chasing after Circe, but only Ditch took care to keep pace with her once he'd caught up.  With the advantage of height, Jana and Myra easily ran far ahead.  Jana was the first to see a band of six boys, three of which were yanking at Dale's horns and pulling at her apron, which she had balled up around something in her arms.  Two of the others were taking turns yanking at the tail, ears, and fur of a large old dog that she recognized as Briar, and the last, obviously the ringleader, was presiding over the group with a self-satisfied smirk.

"Please tell them to stop, Vaharys!"

Dale's plea rang uselessly in the ringleader's amusedly deaf ears, and the teasing continued.

"Give it, demon cuckold!" one of the boys pulling at Dale's horns taunted.  "Give us your baby!"

"Devil baby, devil baby!" another teased, deciding to grab for her tail.  "Drown it, 'cause it's got no daddy!"

"Hey, shut that up, Brian," Vaharys commanded firmly.  "I don't like that, and neither does she."

"Give us your baby, and you can have your dog back," the third boy close to Dale reasoned.

"Give it, or the old bitch goes in the sea!" the first boy- who was apparently named Brian- hollered triumphantly.  "Look how close, oooh!  Look how close she is to going right in!  Ooooh!  Just one good push, and she's drowned!"

As if to prove the point, the two boys who were holding Briar began stepping back so that their feet were in the sloshing sea water.  Briar, anxious to get to Dale but unable to muster enough strength to get away from her two captors, whined and barked pitifully.

"No!  No!  Please no!" Dale screamed.

"You leave that girl alone, or it's you going in the sea!" Jana hollered back, undoing the leather straps on their arms and pulling up their sleeves in preparation to make good on their threat.

"Says who?" one of the two boys holding Briar challenged.

"Says us," Myra growled.  "You saltwater softsoles don't wanna mess with real street creatures; we'll mess you up good."

"Oooh, the demon cuckold's got friends in looooow places!" Brian laughed.  "Whatcha gonna do, huh?  Gonna try to test your nasty spells on us, huh?  Gonna make us your slaaaves, you dirty Shade witch?"

Myra grit her teeth and prepared to charge, but Jana, realizing that the intent was to divide and conquer, took temporary hold of the Shadar-kai's shoulder.

Ditch, seeing Jana's hesitancy but wanting to get into the fight anyway, bounced with just barely controlled fury as he screamed, "You take that back!"

"Two Shade slaves- and one of 'em's Ser Sadist's wild tomboy baggage," Vaharys smiled grimly.  "Wonder what he'd say, to see you with her rough little mitts on one of the witches he forgot to torture to death."

Myra's eyes went wide, rage filled grunts that were too vicious to bear any language's syllables pushing their way up from her belly to the outside air.  Around her, small sparks of electricity began to hiss and pop, raising the hair on Jana's arms and the back of their neck.

"Big man all the way over there, with five other rats between my fists and your face," Jana stated as evenly as they could, their hand still firmly clamped on Myra's rapidly heating shoulder.  "C'mon over, and let's see if I inherited my dad's knack for breaking bones without spilling too much blood."

"Ooooh," Vaharys cooed, echoed by the boys who surrounded him.  But as his sychophants continued the sound, he began moving toward Dale, smoothing his bound blond hair as though he were preparing for a first date.  "Alright, back off, back off, mates.  Let me handle this."

Jana, Myra, Ditch, and Circe all watched suspiciously as the older boy made his way past his cronies to Dale, who was clutching whatever was in her apron as closely to her body as she could.  Briar snapped at the boy as he went by, and one of the two boys that was holding her by the tail took painfully tight hold of her lead strap in response, choking her.  A chocolate brown nose and muzzle poked itself out of Dale's apron despite her best efforts.  Vaharys grabbed the Tiefling suddenly around the waist and began caressing one of her arms, making her hold on her apron just that much more difficult to sustain.

"Hey!" Circe shouted at once.

"Don't worry, little girl.  My father owns the fishing company and the fish stall at market, and everybody here's got family that works in it, so we're all mates.  Now, her father told my father that this is how he got her mum- just went to the old empire and snatched her up.  That's how Tieflings do things; it's how they like it.  You like it right, Dilly-Dale?  Tell 'em."

"Dilly-Dale, Dilly-Dale," Brian began to chant in sing-song.

"Cram it, Brian!" Vaharys shouted, the thunderclap of actual anger in his early teenage voice.  Briar whined mournfully, not wanting to give up protecting Dale, but being physically unable to do much more than wriggle uselessly herself.  Beside Vaharys, Dale held as still as she could, trying desperately to keep her writhing apron as close to her body as whatever was in it would allow. 

"You don't call her that," Vaharys growled.  "I call her that.  None of you."

"She don't look like she like none of your sayin' it," Ditch spat, looking from the suspiciously familiar nose poking out of the apron to the apron's owner herself.

"Listen to that- 'she don't look like she like none of your sayin' it.'  You can't muck around with this street scum, Dilly-Dale; you can afford to buy better familiars than that."  The boy snuggled close to Dale, who recoiled in response.  "C'mon, call 'em off.  Tell 'em you're okay."

Dale opened her mouth as if she did indeed intend to say something, but no words came out.  For just a moment, Circe watched her friend look at something or someone who, for everyone else, wasn't there.  Unlike most other times, when the subject of her focus seemed to be either at her own height or taller, Dale's gaze rested on something that only stood about three feet high.

About as high as Briar.

"Oh no," Circe barely whispered. 

Ditch, who was close enough to realize that Circe had said something, but too far away to know what it was, edged closer to her, just as concerned about his new Human friend as he was about the Tiefling who seemed to have lost her grip on reality.  For him, such stunned and vacant looks meant entirely different problems.

"You gonna talk?" Vaharys asked with mock playfulness, forcing an awkward kiss onto Dale's rusty red cheek.  "Or you just gonna stand there catching flies?"

Having strained for too long against a grip that nearly cut all breath from her body, Briar wheezed weakly, then went limp.

And Dale, just barely holding on to what was now obviously a very wriggly dark brown puppy, snapped back into everyone else's reality.  She abruptly leaned as far sideways as she could, then slammed one of her growing horns into the side of the Human boy's blond head.  His grip on her loosened just enough for her to get free of him, and she began running toward Circe.  Behind her, the three boys who had been closest to her and Vaharys began moving forward with single minded focus.  One of Briar's two captives kept his hands on her tail and wound tightly in her lead strap, but the other tried to check on Vaharys, only to be slapped away.

"Oi, c'mon, Muddy, c'mon, boy!" Ditch called. 

Dale, knowing that she was far enough away from the boys for the puppy to be out of danger, finally let go her apron, letting it bound out of her arms and toward his Human master.  Thinking only of her own dog, she hardly felt the welts and scrapes the puppy's untrimmed claws left in his wake.

Brian and the two other boys that began chasing Dale nearly caught up to her, but as Muddy charged toward his owner, she whirled around and flung her left arm toward her persuers, releasing a balefire spell that sprung up from her wrist and rolled off her fingertips as though it were orangy red water.  The gorgeous wave of flame struck awe into Myra and Ditch, but terror into all three of boys behind Dale.  It frightened two of them into stopping their advance and actually set Brian's shirt on fire.  Jana, who didn't want to wait to see if this would convince the three untouched boys to flee, tapped Myra, then rushed forward toward the still-recovering Vaharys.  As Jana zoomed toward him, they clotheslined the two boys who had been scared into stillness.

Brian ripped off his shirt and threw it to the ground to stomp on it.  Once Ditch had reunited with his overjoyed puppy, he hustled forward to get his fists into Brian's face.  Dale tripped in her skirts and fell on her behind so close to the top naked boy that it was a challenge to get around her, but Ditch did just that, jumping onto Brian to deliver a pummelling that allowed Dale to get back up.  After a few more running steps, she fell to her knees, exhausted, and Muddy galloped over to lick her face.

Circe prestidigitated her scariest idea of a zombie into existence, making it groan and shamble its way toward the two boys that were holding Briar.  Having already caught sight of Dale's balefire and then surprised by Ditch's leap to rain down punches on Brian, the mere sight of the zombie was too much for them.  They ran screaming, leaving a motionless Briar lying abandoned on her side like so much trash.

Myra took on both boys that Jana had put on their backs, punching and kicking them freely while they were down.  One of them managed to get up and flee when they saw Circe's zombie lurching down the beach toward the other boys, but the other couldn't get away from the Shadar-kai.  White hot arcs of electricity leaped up from Myra's porcelain hands as she punched him again and again, all the while cursing his family, his friends, his dead relatives, and anyone he held dear in hideous screams that zagged both down toward the quiet shipping docks that were built out where the water was deeper and up toward the run-down buildings farther up the shore.

No one noticed that a few of the shipping dock workers were peeking out of windows and coming out of doors to see precisely what was causing all the racket.  A few of them who were more familiar with the fishermen recognized some of the boys, and commented to each other about the differences between Dark Quarter children and Temple Quarter children.

No one among them seemed to remember that Dale was an Elven Quarter child, or to know that Jana and Circe had been born and partially raised in the Mage's Quarter.  But such are the mistakes made when painters use brushes too wide for the strokes their compositions need.

Jana made it to Vaharys, grabbed him by his blond ponytail, and yanked him back toward themself before he could catch up to the two desserters who had been holding Briar.

"You think you're so tough, forcing yourself on Dale just to make your friends laugh, just because your pops is her pops's boss.  But now that somebody your own size comes calling, off you run?" Jana demanded, serving a beautiful left hook that made the boy stagger.  "Face me like a man, you coward whoreson!"

Vaharys touched his fingers to his lower lip, discovered that it was bleeding, then peered at Jana with squinted eyes as he slowly prepared himself for a real fight.

"Is that what you're gonna face me like, you ugly half-Orc?  Like a man?  You've got a winkie under that dress, huh?"

"It's a proper dick, and bigger'n yours," Jana spat, going for another punch.  Vaharys blocked it, but the reply strike he sent to their shoulder didn't hurt as much as he had believed it would.  He backed up enough to make Jana's left fist miss, and began to truly size up his opponent.

"Alright, square up, Ser Baggage," he scoffed, buckling down into a stance his father had taught him.

The two traded a few blows before Myra got a chance to notice, and when she did, she was surprised that Circe, Dale, and Ditch were all nervously watching the continuing fight.  Circe had a worn-looking Dale leaned back in her lap while both Ditch and Muddy, about a foot away from the girls, seemed to keep one eye on the fight and the other on them.

Vaharys dealt Jana a solid face busting right handed punch that sent them to the ground, but just as Myra prepared to charge in to help Jana gain ground against him, Jana wheeled around and threw a fistful of sand into Vaharys's eyes.  The effort dumped them onto their back for a moment, but they recovered before their victim did, and took full advantage in the form of a savage right uppercut and a left cross that knocked the boy out. 

Farther up the shore, some coins traded hands amid softly spoken oaths and comments both on what had transpired and why.  The boys that had run from the fight in various states of fear and disrepair had been left to continue running toward their own homes, sneers and scorn the only gifts offered to them as they passed through.

Both Myra and Ditch hollered happily when they watched Vaharys hit the sand with blood all over his face.  When Jana turned around and ran toward Briar, who had at last begun whining and pawing weakly at the sand, Ditch caught perfect sight of their swelling left eye.

"Is your pops gonna be sore at her for getting a black eye?" he asked Circe quietly.

" 'Them'," Circe corrected absent-mindedly as she patted Dale's shoulder, "and not if we heal it- c'mon, Dale."

Dale nodded and got up with some effort.  She and Circe only moved forward a few steps before Jana picked Briar completely up and began walking toward the group.

"What?" they asked when they saw the concern on everyone's faces.  They looked up toward the buildings farther up the shore, but saw no one.  "Don't tell me Dad already came and saw us fighting."

"You don't feel your eye?" Circe sighed.  "Kneel down so Dale and I can reach."

"Say please like you're supposed to, and I'll think about it," Jana argued, leaning over to allow Briar to stand on her own four paws.  Unfortunately, the pained dog had to lay down at once, and Muddy bounded over to sniff at her, his uncut tail whipping around behind him hard enough to hurt anything it smacked against.

"Would you please sit down so we can keep you from getting a black eye?" Circe whined impatiently.  "Word'll get around fast enough, but if you go home with that, we'll get in trouble as soon as anyone looks at you."

"It's none of 'em gonna tell," Ditch reasoned, watching Muddy nuzzle his way underneath Briar's available forepaw.  Briar, unable to respond as demonstratively as she would have liked, simply accepted the worried whines, sniffs, and licks without protest.  "Sweet mouths like that don't never wanna admit when street scum like us come out and wreck 'em.  Oi, Jannie, but your paws're stone, cuz.  Save Myra, I never seen girl put so clean a mash to trash."

"Jana's not a girl," Dale corrected, lacing her right hand with Circe's left as Jana knelt down and closed their eyes.  "They're Something Else."

"They're aberrant, sort of," Circe explained as she placed her free hand over Jana's left eye.  "But don't tell anyone else."

"They're not going to stone me or hang me; no one's allowed to hurt aberrants anymore," Jana soothed.  "I'll go see Old Lady Ranclyffe when I'm set to be apprenticed.  And I'm going to be fine.  I promise."

Circe made an uncomfortable noise somewhere between a pout and a growl.  Myra and Ditch looked at each other.  Myra shrugged, and Ditch nodded, satisfied.

"Okay, ready?" Dale asked.  When Circe placed her chubby pink hand on top of hers, she began to count.  "On three.  One, two, three- go."

Myra and Ditch watched as a deep crimson red rivulet began to ooze from Dale's hand onto the darkening skin around Jana's eye.  As it did, an emerald green mist whispered around Circe's hand.  It seemed to make the dark red energy that was steadily leaking out of Dale a brighter, happier ruby red.    The joined energies faded into Jana's skin after a few seconds, and when the girls removed their hands from Jana's face, the swelling had gone down considerably.  The barest hints of blues and greens lisped weakly around the area, as though the black eye were already days old.  Dale nodded with a quiet huff, and promptly laid herself back into Circe's lap.

"Well, it ain't gonna be like nothing happened, but it ain't gonna be no proper black eye," Ditch judged, leaning forward slightly to get a good look.  "Your parentals is strict, yeah?"

"Gotta be," Jana replied as they poked fearlessly at the flesh around their eye to see where it might still hurt.  Two spots closer to their temple did indeed elicit a wince, but they recovered quickly.  "Even for Ser Sadist, it looks bad to have kids that act like bastards when you're a commander."

"Yer sire'll read every scar and star the color ya put on 'at poofy bloodmop, an he's proper cold," Myra smirked wickedly.  "He ain't, and you're better off bastard, innit?"

Ditch laughed as he began untying Circe's ribbon, which had gotten slightly damp with his effort.  "Writ n' dry, cuz."

"Awright," Jana said with a smile.  Thrusting a thumb behind themselves toward the boy that Myra had knocked out, they commented, "M'lady's clean paws herself, innit?"

"Ey-lah, and brush up, cuz," Myra sneered.  "My scraps're flat to cold sermons."

"Aw, starve," Jana scoffed.  "A scrap with me'll outlast a Pelor's prancer any day y'call 'round for't."

Ditch hooted at the challenge as the two exchanged looks of charged interest.  Dale looked to Circe with an amused confusion.

"They do this now," Circe explained to Dale.  "If it made any sense, I'd try it, but it doesn't, so I haven't."

"It's when another language meets Common," Dale replied.  "It goes sour, somehow.  Mama speaks Infernal to me when she thinks we'll get away with it, and that's pretty.  But listen to 'Buela Mara, Tio James, and my dad argue over your head in the horrible garble that Mama says is an Infernal-Common mixed tongue for just one hour, and you'll wish you could hear this for the rest of your life."

"Oi, look you, what're you?" Myra asked simply.

"Who," Circe corrected, horrified.

"No, I know what she meant," Dale sighed.  "I'm Dale.  This is Briar.  You?"

"Myra," the Shadar-kai answered before Ditch could get a word in.  "And that's Ditch.  Just Ditch.  Nevermind why."

"I won't," Dale replied.

"You already met Muddy," Ditch said matter of factly.  "Your bitch isn't moved since she were put here.  Was she always so short of breath, or did them boys do a lot of harm on her?"

"She's usually much more energetic, but she's old," Dale explained turning her head in Circe's lap so that she could see Ditch better.  "She hadn't been out to make water this morning, so I took her with me to find Papa, even though she doesn't normally go so far away from the house.  She found Muddy and wouldn't leave him, so I singed the busted strap off him and took him with us.  Papa wasn't here; I guess Vaharys's father paid the boys to wash the nets today instead.  They surrounded me, saying Muddy was my child, that I was bringing my child to the sea to drown it, since I'm not married yet.  According to some one or two of their fathers, some witch had done the same thing a month or two ago, although I'm pretty sure that's a lie.  Witches don't drown children- or familiars.  Good witches don't, anyway."

"I would never drown my familiar," Circe said, scandalized at the very thought.

"You'd have to have one first," Jana reminded her.

"You'd have to be a witch first," Myra commented, raising an eyebrow.

"If I had a familiar, I wouldn't drown it," Circe huffed self-righteously.

"Oi, don't toad yerself," Ditch warned Myra, who had set her face like a coming storm.  "An it's a witch, it's a witch; nany of we's got ink there."

"I know you wouldn't drown anyone; I'm sorry," Jana soothed, starting to reach for their sister's shoulder.  They paused and retracted their hand as soon as they realized that their knuckles were bruised and bleeding.  "Did I get any on our dresses?"

"Get up and we'll look- please," Myra said, only half-mocking for a change.  Circe remained seated, but Jana got up and turned all the way around for the Shadar-kai's inspection.  "Uhm... uhmm... uhhmmm... nope, I don't see any.  You two, do that weird glowy thing again."

"I can't yet," Dale admitted, now turning her head so that she could see Myra.  "I'm too tired."

"I can't do it at all without you," Circe reasoned.  "We'll have to wait for you to feel better."

"Well, come put your hands in the salt water so's you don't get worms in the meanwhile," Myra directed.  "Happened to me.  Proper gross."

Jana simply held their hands out far in front of them to avoid any chance of dripping on their dress, and Myra carefully led them down the slope toward the water.

"Soon's they're back, we better smoke off," Ditch suggested.  "It wasn't for your fire and your zombie, that'd been a longer fight.  It's two of them and seven of us, but folks fresh whipped're extra sore."

A quiet welled up between them, bathed gently by the whooshing of the low tide.  Briar, whose breathing had returned to something that faintly resembled normal, finally gathered the strength to roll over so that she could lay on her belly instead of sprawled on her side.  Muddy was only temporarily displaced.  He rolled around in the sand for a few moments, causing everybody to close their eyes, turn away, or both, then sat about an inch away from Briar's paws.  Briar, dissatisfied, reached out a paw and dragged him back toward her with a reproving sound that burbled in her throat.

"They're pup and dam, innit?" Ditch smiled.  "Muddy don't let no dog 'round abouts where we are do that."

"Do you want to come with me to the market?" Dale asked, turning her head in Circe's lap so that she could look at Ditch again.  "If me and Papa walk back to your homes from there, he can make sure none of those boys try getting revenge."

"We'd have to tell our mother before we went that far away from the house," Circe replied apologetically.  "We might get in trouble just for being here.  And won't your father be annoyed at you for bringing us around while he's trying to work?"

"He won't be as annoyed as glad to have some proof against 'Buela Mara," Dale sighed.  "She thinks I'm crazy.  She tells him and Mama so all the time."

"Why come?" Ditch asked, scratching Briar's belly with some relief at her slower, deeper breathing.

"Because I see spirits," Dale admitted in a tone so flat that she could just as easily have told Ditch that she cooked rice or watched rainstorms.

"Make fun and I'll give you mindfire; I mean it," Circe threatened immediately.

"He's not going to make fun," Dale soothed, reaching up a hand to rub Circe's upper arm.  "If he was going to, I wouldn't have told him.  I don't think I'll tell Myra though."

"We've known each other all our lives, so I know what she's on about," Ditch said calmly.  "She likes girls, and boys- and not just regular like.  I mean like-like.  But she like-likes Jana, who's the first not-girl we ever met.  New stuff makes her nervous; she just don't say so 'cause in her house, that's basically baring your arse for a kicking.  So soon as she catches up to the fact that she can like a not-girl as well as she likes me, we can try on your seeing ghoulies."

Circe looked over at the figures of Jana and Myra, both wondering if her sibling like-liked the Shadar-kai back, as well as how like-liking someone might feel in the first place.   It all sounded annoying and complicated to her.  In her lap, Dale had just fallen into a delicate sleep, and Ditch decided to take part of her example, stretching out on his back on the far side of Muddy and Briar.  He laced his arms under his head to keep it off the hard sand, and gazed at the fickle dark clouds, who had not quite yet decided that they wouldn't throw down any more surprise rain.

For a moment, everyone simply listened to the gentle waves teasing the shore.