A Town Less Traversed

Ever since that day in Third District, the incident with the toy water pistol and the Heartless, she'd been living alone. Beneath the cobblestone streets lay a waterway, vast and deep, flowing with the rainwater that came pouring down on certain days. For twenty years she'd stayed out of sight from the people she'd used to know. Andeline doubted anybody was going to recognize her. She was dressed in the earth-stained, hand-stitched excuse for clothing she'd been making herself from discarded sheets and curtains she'd pulled from various open windows. It was the cleanest one she owned, but it was still plain that she was a vagrant. Although she'd done all of her washing up, the woman was still very much aware that she wasn't up to standards. People she passed by were already giving her strange looks. Hell, Andeline didn't even have shoes on. She'd never needed them before.
The waterways when she was younger were, yes, nearly unlivable. Jagged, rocky patches scattered through the underbelly of the city. Wild rapids sloshed and frothed with no real direction or meaning, gathering into a lake further outside the town's boarders. But years of using the water to carve away at the stone took away its wild edges. It made pathways for the water to flow freely and openly, out of the city limits and into the unknown wilderness beyond.

"If I'm to finally gain some purpose, obtain meaning, I'll have to let go of these dreams first," Andeline thought to herself as she sheepishly skirted around Second District. She was more focused on not being seen than anything else. Despite a hunger for companionship and a desire to belong, she'd kept her distance...she knew full well that there was no place for her among the normal people here. To be honest, she wasn't sure if she could rid her head of the strange visions that had been creeping since her youth. As she'd become more adept to her aquakenesis, they'd only become more potent. There was a reason for all of this, surely...but as to what it was, Andeline couldn't say.

There was no certain place she was heading to. There was only the knowledge that strangers always ended up in First District, and if nothing else Andeline was a stranger to these people. They didn't know her, naturally, but she knew them all quite well. From below, in the grates of the waterways, she'd come to learn their names. She heard their conversations as they walked down the street. She'd watched her friends grow up into adults, and have children of their own. As the time passed, Andeline had watched the town she loved grow and blossom, with a window between her and her past. She could see, and she could hear...but there was no speaking to them now. She was not part of their kind, she'd decided.

A delightful scent was wafting from the café, causing her stomach to bowl over with hunger. Andeline had yet to eat anything today; this was normally the time of night where she'd go off and scavenge for scraps in the back alley. But she wasn't here for food...she was here for information, possibly even work if someone would have her. Most of the shops in the other districts were closed by now. Few souls walked the streets at night, and for a good reason. There were still the Heartless, though rare as they were, to worry about. The elder urchin had her own fair share of dealing with their kind, although in the waterways there was nowhere safer she could be; it was practically like walking into an enemy line, brimming with weapons. There wasn't a single instance where she'd ever been without a way to defend herself down there. In some ways she had to thank the Heartless for being so relentless in trying to snack her--it'd made her significantly stronger, and helped her better her combat prowess.

Quietly keeping her eyes to the ground, Andeline stood beneath the light of the lamppost, trying to figure out why she'd come out in the open like this. What could she have possibly expected to find, answers? Traverse Town was a small place, with simple folk. Every stranger who came in usually settled down here, or vanished for good. Nobody was sure how one could leave without being taken by one of the Shadowkin...If there were a way out of Traverse town, if there were somewhere else to go, the vagabond woman certainly would have taken it.
"Where did I think I could go?" She asked herself aloud, smiling at her own foolishness. "There's nothing out here."

Slowly, she sank to the grassy patch beneath the lantern, sighing as she closed her eyes. The earth was nice, but the grass kept poking her skin through the meager fabric of the curtain-dress she'd fabricated, and she was undoubtedly starving. For some reason, she didn't feel like going to search for food, or even to return home. Some bizarre intuition told her to keep her position.

Little could've prepared her for this. Twenty years of solitude beneath the streets, and nobody to speak to but herself. Many a soul may have been driven mad by such a daunting task, and yet Andeline had taken it in stride, as part of her strict regimen and the boundary she had to make between her and those considered ordinary. And yet now someone had gathered up...something, perhaps pity, courage, or curiosity, to speak directly to her.
It was a very smooth, surprisingly comforting voice that now came to greet her ears. Kind. Warm. Friendly even. Without a question, a man of age not quite at his peak.

At first, she wasn't sure how to respond to the young man's presence, greeting, or compliment. Words were running through her head but they were far from forming a proper sentence, let alone meaningful communication. If that didn't keep the sounds in her throat, the gentleman's appearance certainly did. Andeline had taken less than a moment to glance up at the person speaking to her and had to do a double take.
With the strangeness she had on her own, the local was not one to judge on looks alone, and strangers were not uncommon, but this one by far caught the eye. He had horns, curving around his head. His hair was blonde, through it was practically goldish in nature from the light above him. He was reasonably attractive, which pulled more attention away from the bizarre nature of his pointed ears, with pleasing features and a charming little smile. Even his clothes were strange and foreign by the standards of Traverse Town's local population.

But Andeline noticed his eye color and strained to keep her jaw from falling open. Gold. Just like the others. There was something distinctly different, however, about this one. He didn't look related as the other two had. Perhaps it was only a coincidence.

It took a while to realize she'd been staring at him for a good five minutes or so, and felt all the color flush into her face. She had to have looked absolutely foolish now. Quicker than she would have liked, Andeline shot up to her feet and brushed away the grass and hair from both her body and face.
"I...erm, yes. I'm okay. It's not too cold out really...the winter's been mild at best," she muttered, doing her best to keep her face away from his. She'd have rather not offended him with the lack of oral hygiene.
In all honesty Andeline was quite used to the mild weather that Traverse Town had in the peaks of its seasons. The summers were met by staying down below the streets, where the shade and water kept her cool. The winters had less of a nip with a cocoon of blankets and a fire to keep her company. In this season, at the edges of winter and spring, there were ample things one could use to concoct a source of heat. Dwelling on it now, she recalled that the cold had never really bothered her, even as a child. By now, after quite so long of living this way, she'd become more adapt to harshness than most people would have credited her for given her appearance.

"You appear to be a stranger around here," Andeline continued, preferring to keep the attention off of herself. "We've plenty of those as of late...Stars suddenly going out as well, it'd seem," she pointed out, jerking her head upwards to the blanket of lights above them. Traverse Town, to her, had the most lovely of night skies. Long did the hours pass when she gazed up at them through the grates of the waterways. More often than not, she counted and charted their whereabouts noticing that, from time to time, some glittering gems vanished from the canvas, never to be seen again. The sky had become so much darker, it felt.

"If it's a place to stay you're looking for, there's a place over in Second District willing to take in folks that have the munny for it," the woman added, with a small shrug. "The café's always rife with a hot meal as well, if you're seeking that sort of thing out. Anything else out in the other districts I wouldn't recommend going to at this hour." Cautiously, she twisted a section of hair around her finger. This was the longest conversation she'd ever had with anybody since she was a young woman.
"There's likely to be Shadowkin--the Heartless, is what us locals call them--out lurking around during the night. It's all well that you stay away from them, since they enjoy taking the hearts of folks too dense to take advice and make off with them to who knows where. They look cute, to be sure, until you meet some of their uglier cousins. All in all, they all will snatch you up just the same as the next."
Too many folks had vanished under the darkness of night to count in the lifetime Andeline had known. As often as the Heartless struck, she'd done what she could to aid their victims in their time of need. The bulk of the time it required her to get physical, defending against the creatures of shade with all of her strange powers. Those who were intended to be prey usually took off in fright, though there were many who questioned who she was and such. Andeline never stuck around when the danger had passed; when there was one attack, there were usually others to follow in its wake ranging from First to Seventh District. Though it wasn't her job, she felt the need to do it. She was, after all, the strongest of her people...and if she couldn't fend against them, who would?

"I'm...quite alright, thank you for the...the compliment, though," Andeline muttered, sheepishly kicking at the grass below her feet. "I confess that I don't know how you see lovely as a proper adjective but I'll take it none the less. If it doesn't discomfort you for me to pry, what could bring so peculiar a young man to so quiet and ordinary a place as this?"
It wasn't intended to be rude, of course. Near to all of her life she'd noticed the strange people coming and going from Traverse Town, though many of the community shrugged them off or simply never spoke to them. Even her parents had discouraged her from speaking to them when she was young, and it had been so long since she'd had the courage to ask. There was so much more Andeline wanted to ask him, as friendly and outgoing and...strangely, physically warm that he was...but she felt it would be a waterfall of questions too quickly for him to get out all at once. Quietly, she put a damper on the desire to consume information and shuffled uncomfortably on her feet. Despite how kindly he was being, there was still the nagging discomfort of being around people after such lengthy a time alone.