Helene may not have been the fastest in the pack, but her body certainly has its stamina. I traveled for hours with only the necessary breaks - until I simply could not bring myself to try so hard anymore.
After a longer but still too quick rest to recover my will, I woke and got back on the move again. Until finally, I crested a hill at around dawn and saw it spread out before me.
A grand enough metropolis by both world's standards. The 'concrete' and glass structures that stood tall fit images sitting in Helene's head. With smaller buildings clustered around them like courtiers around royalty.
From a personal standpoint, buildings jutting into the air like that seemed higher than necessary. Especially that white one. Looking at it just reminds me that I always hated the stairways in parts of the palace.
> Would you not spend just as much time going up as you might running across the ground? I don't know for sure, but I doubt every human city in this world has werewolves, right? And the Rimecoat... now I know why Vossden was familiar. Is this me being lucky or unlucky? You didn't warn me, but I didn't feel him looking my way either... <
In this strange city filled with potential enemies, a situation like this wasn't welcome. Was he just a human or a threat? A werewolf using those scent blockers, waiting near the edges for rogues like me to pass by?
I tried to catch any sign of beast pheromones from where I stood. Nothing distinctive came through the urban smog, though I still caught a small whiff of some of them further away.
As I hesitated to answer and stop looking like an uncertain child who had done something wrong... the blue lump from earlier swirled back into focus and formed text.
| MOTHER'S INTUITION |
A strange sensation rippled through me upon reading it. The small hairs on my human form rose up like the moment before a lightning strike. When the natural magic in the air tingles against your fur.
For a few heartbeats, the awareness of my surroundings sharpened.
Somehow I knew this man held no supernatural threat. Completely human. I also noticed details I'd missed in my initial wariness.
The dark covering over his eyes that looked a little too different from normal 'sunglasses'. The metal cane propped against the bench beside him. The way he tilted his head slightly to track sounds.
He was blind
- just like the ancient one that managed the palace gardens. Just like that old fox, he was completely untroubled by my long silence.
"I can always hear them coming. Those cyclists. They think they own the sidewalk and pedestrians are the ones in the way."
Even without 'sight', people like this sometimes seemed to know you were there. I'd always found that interesting.
Though the gardener did not appreciate my experiments to see if he was just speaking to himself and hoping to get lucky that I was around when he spoke.
"I see. I'll watch out for them better from now on."
"You sound like you're new around here. Not used to the traffic in a city?"
"Is it that obvious?"
Now that I felt he wasn't a threat, I approached cautiously. The only actual people I'd talked to here were Chad and Jace. I can't even count that Kyle, because he never spoke to me directly!
I shuffled closer and he chuckled. A warm sound that reminded me more of one of the royal cooks. A man that would look the other way when I snuck back in through the servant entrance.
"When you've lived in one place as long as I have, you get a sense for tourists. The way footsteps hesitate at intersections. The way they say 'the people here'."
While frowning at my own unintended slip, his palm struck twice on the bench beside him.
"You sound tired. Rest your feet a minute. I don't bite."