Should've taken a left at Albuquerque

[ParanoidAndroid]

Faith stood on a street corner, looking up at a digital board showing the local time with a look of confusion on her face. 7 PM, the clock showed. Which made no sense.

I mean, really : How can you go into the Hedge, then leave it one hour earlier all the way across the country? No way in hell did I spend a whole day in there, and my watch says it's 10 PM... So really, what the f@çk?

She sighed, hefting the duffel bag on her shoulder. Instead of being filled with goblin fruit like she'd hoped, it contained what few possessions she'd brought along with her.

She pondered diving back in, finding her way back home. But she already knew that if the Hedge wanted to screw with you, it was going to keep screwing with you, whether you were pig-headed or not.

Well, let's see about finding a place to stay the night, at least, she thought to herself.

[Forn Clakes]

The digital clock flashes for an instant before returning to show the time.

Welcome to Sacramento

It then flashes once more.

Have Faith

Once again it tells the time.

19:01

[Lesingnon]

Rick was relaxing, in the midst of a leisurely walk. It was nice to have an opportunity to unwind, free from the troubles of Gentry and Hedge. The tumultuous status of the freehold temporarily banished from his mind. Just a night where he could avoid worrying about the supernatural, or not.

For the shifting, subtle glow beneath that woman's skin surely wasn't any sort of natural effect. An indication of a Fireheart or Flamesiren perhaps? And it did seem like she had a bit of a Summer mantle about her, faint though it may be. Well, he might as well check it out. So he walked up to the girl, "You look like you're confused about something, lost perhaps."

[ParanoidAndroid]

Faith frowned at the sign, not bothering to wonder if the universe was messing with her with that statement. She'd heard people use her name like that so often it only bothered her until she punched something. It's roughly then that something clicked. Sacramento. That's where the time difference is. She muttered something unintelligible, one third of it being 'time zones', and the other two thirds profanities.

Just as she is done adjusting her watch to local time, she spots the blue-skinned man approaching her. She takes a moment to look him over, even though his body is more obviously alien than hers.

"Yeah, guess you could say that," she answers, her strangely melodious voice rising and falling to some hypnotic rhythm. "Goddamn rosebush screwed me over. You know how that is, right? Wanted to get there, ended up here." She doesn't offer a name, at least not right away.

OOC

Siren's voice : Faith's voice distracts from anything else, to the point of a -2 penalty to actions.

[Lesingnon]

Rick leans back away from Faith as she stops talking, shaking his head slightly. Well let was certainly odd. And though he did not show, he was certainly wary now. "Yeah, that's certainly a tricky place, you never know what to expect from it. So I take it you just arrived in town then?"

[ParanoidAndroid]

If Faith notices the effect she has on Rick, she doesn't say so. "Yeah, fresh off the gate." She sounds irritated about it, even though her voice just keeps that strange rhythm through the tone.

"What about you? Been stuck here long?", she asks as though there would be no other reason to stay in Sacramento. She punctuates the statement by blowing an errant strand of hair away from her forehead.

[Lesingnon]

And there it was again. That odd, entrancing quality to her voice. It was odd, and more than a little unnerving. When she stopped speaking at least. While she was such thoughts seemed to be invariably chased from one's mind. There simply had to be something supernatural going on with it. "Yeah, I've been in Sacramento for a while now. It's a nice enough place, even if we seem to be entering a bit of a tumultuous period at the moment. And I hope you don't mind me asking, but what's with your voice? It seems to have a way of...capturing one's attention." Best to put it in polite terms, at least.

[ParanoidAndroid]

Ah, the question everyone asked sooner or later. And noone ever liked the answer, not even Faith. "Sorry," she answers, without sounding sorry in the least, "a 'gift' from you-know-who. I can't turn the fu**ing thing off." She massages her throat, almost subconscioiusly, and adds "And believe me, I've tried." The last Sovereign who got tired of it suggested she just shut up indefinitely. Which didn't end well for either of them.

She takes a brief look down the street. "You mind if we walk and talk?", she says, the subject of her voice apparently dismissed for the moment. "I'm gonna find a place to stay for the night. And you can tell me about that tumultuous period." She makes air quotes at those last two words.

"I'm Faith, by the by," she adds offhand.

[Lesingnon]

"Ahh," Rick ran his fingers through is clouded hair, "we all have people who've left their marks on us I suppose, some of them greater burdens than others." He turns and begins to walk with her down the street, plucking a leaf out of the air. A leaf from his mantle, a symbol of what he had done and what he had become since his return to the mortal world. "But though they've taken our past they can't control our future," he lets the leaf flutter off into the winds of his mantle, watching it disappear in a flash of lightning, "and we become what we make ourselves." He pauses briefly, making sure they had enough empty space around them for him to talk softly without being overheard. "And I've made a place for myself. I am Rick Pereg, Legate of Mists."

[ParanoidAndroid]

Faith just scoffs, once. "Burden, that's a nice way to put it." The whole leaf-grabbing-disappearing, though, that gets an amused smile from her. "Heh, nice trick. Look, don't mention the voice, and I won't mention the whole bird-in-a-storm getup. You could probably pass for a Poe story with a look like that." Which is probably a compliment in Autumn, come to think of it. Though whether she intends it that way is anyone's guess.

"So what's up with this town? I don't want to stick my foot in a hornet's nest before I vamoose, y'know." After all, just because the Hedge sends you completely off-track one day doesn't mean it'll keep sending you all over the place the next day, right?