[Twilight] The afternoon has long since passed. It's late, twilight going down to dusk. The tree-lined streets of Berea itself are charming and quaint, sidewalks and 80 year old homes, front porches and mature trees. Paint Lick Road cuts beyond the city center, moves past several more recent subdivisions and housing developments, under I-75. Past a Kroger's and a Home Depot, through a weedy series of shopping centers, old and new, fast food restaurants and a pair of hotels, all right off the interstate. Trucks whiz by on the highway overhead, and the taxi's lights gleam against the darkness. The driver allows Roman out half-a-block from the address proper, in an overgrown lot between an Arby's and an empty fast-food restaurant, the neon sign for a Dollar General glowing in the middle distance.
No sidewalks out here, just a country road curving away from the interstate and its developments back into the Kentucky mountains - dun brown and gray at this time of year, except where the greening grace is clear through the wracks of bare limbs. There's a trailer park across the road.
The addresses are hard to read. Arby's and Wendy's, the Econolodge and AmeriSuites seem to have them as formalities rather than things of substance. Still, as he walks through knee deep brown sedge, the trash-strewn ditch at the side of the road, with the song of the interstate in the background - the constant hum of traffic, even here, in the middle-of-damn-nowhere - he sees ahead another freestanding store. This one's older than some of the others. Brickfronted, the asphalt parking lot old enough that it's crumbling. It was a tack store at one time, or so the cowboy-hat shaped neon sign (turned off and covered with a FOR RENT sign that has in turn been papered over) suggests.
JoEllen's truck is parked by itself in the front parking lot. The windows are covered in brown paper, then gleam in the dying light, reflecting the westering sun. Closer, there's a sign in the window that says, "Ring Bell for Deliveries."
[Fate] First thing he did was look for the back of the store to see if he could get a peek through a window somewhere along the sides or back. He also checked for a vantage point for the front door where he could see the door when it opened, but remain hidden himself. Then he rang the bell and ran like hell for cover to see if it was JoEllen that came to the door or not.
[Fate] dex+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Twilight] None of the windows are uncovered. The only windows are in the front of the building, and these are all covered with brown paper. There's a service door in the back, metal, closed tight. An outdoor kiln is set on the asphalt.
The terrain is flat, open - like all roadside shopping developments. There's no place close enough that he could run to quickly enough, hide and have a full view of the front door, but he's pretty sure he could make it around the corner of the building before someone made it to the door.
Unless they were close to the door.
So he rings the doorbell; skedaddles around the corner. Watches the door swing open. He can hear the locks inside tumble as someone opens them, and then - barely - see JoEllen leaning out, looking right and left - at first just curious, her brows raised, and then - something slips over her face like alarm.
The door closes behind her.
[Fate] Now that was a curious reaction. Alarm. He hadn't expected alarm. Irritation, yes, alarm, no. From the looks of the Kiln out back, he guessed she just had a workshop here. Maybe she hoped to open the place to sell her pottery? Didn't seem like much of a secret worth hiding to him either. Nothing else to go on at the moment, unless he was to go to a pay phone and call that cell number for the granddaughter (something he was not ready to do yet. What would he say to her? "Hello, what is your granny hiding?") So, he decided to settle in a little further from the place, maybe even across the street in the ditch if he had to, to wait and watch. Watching to see if anyone came or for JoEllen to leave. Hadn't she said she was going to Studio? This must be it.
"Well Horse shit."
That rarely heard (around women) curse of his came as he settled in.
[Twilight] The location isn't ideal for surveillance. There are few trees and shrubs here, just the flat, open plain of asphalt and weedy lots. There's a deeper ditch between the once-western-wear store and Paint Lick Road proper, and a line of hedges further on, separating the old store from the pasture on the other side.
So he retreats, hunkers down. He doesn't have a perfect view of the storefront from here, and as twilight falls to full dark, the glare of lights from the fast food joints and other little shopping plazas, the hotels and Dollar stores scattered around the interstate sort of blast out the shadows around the older store. There's just one street light in its crumbling parking lot, which gives off faint white light. After a good two hours of waiting and watching, JoEllen comes out the front door again, her phone against her ear, takes a moment to lock the store behind her, and climbs into the truck. She sits in the cab for a moment, phone in her ear, then turns it off with a flick of her thumb and slides it into her handbag.
A moment later the truck's engine turns over. The brakelights flash, and JoEllen pulls out, heading back toward town.
[Fate] Well heck, he was going to have to figure out a better way of doing this. And he had a long time to think on it on his way back towards town and JoEllen's home. Though in the middle of the night, when he was sure she was sound asleep, he went hunting for JoEllen's cell phone to see if he could get his paws on it and check the calls made and received.
[Twilight] It is a long walk back to town. Not a comfortable one, either. No sidewalks out here, on the winding road, and friendly as Roman is, there's still something about rage that steers the locals away. Not many people give hitchhikers rides these days, not even in Berea, Kentucky.
It's ten-thirty p.m. when he makes it back. JoEllen's in the living room, crocheting a half-finished blanket in soft, pastel colors, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, the evening news on the television. She looks as he comes back in, gives him an appraising glance. Reads the teenaged boy hunger under his skin. "Want me to order you a pizza?" she asks him, fingers moving over the crochet work on autopilot. "Or there's left-over risotto in the fridge."
By 11:15 p.m., she packs up her handwork into a basket beside her favorite chair in the bright living room and goes upstairs to bed.
So Roman's left to snoop around the house looking for her cell phone. He finds the charger plugged into the wall on the kitchen counter, but no phone there. And instead is left to pause through her purse like a pickpocket in the dark shadows of the quiet living room. She didn't think to take it upstairs with her, to lock it away.
He finds her wallet, wrapped with a rubber band - the mechanism is broken - receipts sticking out. Kroger's, Complete PetMart, Delgrazzio's of Berea, Grandview Home Improvement Outlet - for an installed steel security door. A scribbled list comparing prices of mini-fridges with LOWE'S circled and underlined. A receipt from Seven States for an extra large dog crate, another from Jo-Anne's Fabric stores of cotton yarn and several yards of fabric, thread, and patterns.
Her cell phone shows several calls from and to Emma - each day for the past week. There are other calls to work, to Myrna. To the Gathering House. To Kid Country Toys and Baby's 'R Us. To a doctor's office, and Complete PetMart.
[Fate] He accepted the offer of leftovers and made small talk till she went to bed. Then came the snooping. The doctor's number was taken down because he was going to find out the name of the doctor and if it was a general practitioner or what he was starting to think, one that dealt in pregnant women. Steel door was likely for the new shop. Big ole extra large dog crate? Oh holy crap, it was sounding more and more like maybe the granddaughter might have a bun in the oven, or maybe she done had a kid and it was either lupus or metis born? Could that be it? How the heck was she going to hide that one around here? But how else to explain Kid Country Toys and Baby's R Us unless someone in this community was having a baby and she needed gifts? That settled it. He riffled the place till he found JoEllen's keys. Then though it was late and he would love some sleep. He took a nice long jog back to the little out of the way, papered up shop with the Kiln to take a look inside.
[Fate] No sign of keys meant, well he wasn't likely to get in through the door. After a little searching he did the next best thing. He went outside and used the sideview mirror on the old truck to cross over. Once there it was a four legged run as a wolf back to the little lonely shop on Paint Lick road. Or what he could find of it. It was time to take a little look through the waver y walls between worlds to see what he could spy in the shop.
[Fate] gnosis
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 4, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6) [WP]
[Twilight] Roman doesn't find JoEllen's keys that easily. Maybe she trusted him enough not to steal from her, but she doesn't trust a teenaged boy not to 'borrow' and wreck her truck. Maybe she just wasn't thinking, dropped them somewhere in her bedroom without thinking. He sits, waiting, considering sneaking into the older kinswoman's bedroom to find them, when he climbs the stairs back upstairs, each riser creaks under his weight, and he knows the door would do that, even more than the stairs.
---
So it's back to the papered over shop. He finds his way back there, sees the shape of it like a ghostly projection, so translucent he can just walk through. The lights from the nearby shopping centers, the gleaming perfection of the weaver's highway hugs the interstate, then spills out in calcifying spirals to encompass all those fast food restaurants and other buildings.
Having no idea of the interior layout, he peeks across. It is remarkably dark inside, but he stays absolutely still, watching across the gauntlet for signs of movement in the physical world. He finds none.
[Fate] Mentally he shook himself and then pushed through the gauntlet, or tried to push through to get inside the shop where if he made it, he listened for sounds of something finding him before moving around to start his spying. Spying which might include finding a light switch if he had to in order to see.
gnosis
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Twilight] The front room is rather as he expected it to be. A potter's studio. There's work tables and wheels, smaller kilns, clay, paints, curing racks - all the necessary items for not one but several people to sit and work. Racks - old but clean - in the storefront area have a handful of pieces on display, and there are other artists' things about. Painted canvases, the disjointed pieces of a large papier-mache dragon puppet and on and on and on.
But behind the studio area, a little corridor leads toward the restrooms and the stockroom. The stockroom has another new door, steel as well. With a security keypad. This one's open, though. Inside: fridge. A bassinet covered with a steel frame on top. A reclaimed dresser and a rocking chair, a fuzzy rug on the floor. A small fridge plugged into the wall. An extra-large dog crate.
[Fate] He slowly made his way through the shop and down the hall to that little stockroom door. In there he paused, head cocked as he listened for anything other than the sound of his own breathing and the fridge running. Then he approached the dog crate and bassinet for a careful look inside. Afraid he was going to see a Metis child, though surely JoEllen was still in preparatory stages and wouldn't leave a baby alone here? Then again, Metis were something he had little experience with as babies. Had Emma dropped her child off with JoEllen and moved on with her pack with daily check ins? The secret he think he might of figured out was making him a little ill feeling.
[Twilight] The room is entirely empty. There's nothing in the dog crate; no sound of breathing in the room. Nothing in the bassinet but a baby blanket.
[Fate] He let out a relieved sigh, that meant the child wasn't hear yet. It might not be born just yet. In the morning he was going to check out that doctor and pretty much make himself a pest sticking to JoEllen. But he had a very good idea that Emma as going to turn up some time in the near future and she was going to turn up with a not normal child. Infact, he had an idea where she was, he had a name and picture and phone number. He might have to take another Penumbra run to see if he could get a look at Miss Emma himself. Only if he couldn't put the pieces together without doing so. For tonight, he decided it was time to go back and sleep while he could.
[Twilight] transcript!
to Twilight
No sidewalks out here, just a country road curving away from the interstate and its developments back into the Kentucky mountains - dun brown and gray at this time of year, except where the greening grace is clear through the wracks of bare limbs. There's a trailer park across the road.
The addresses are hard to read. Arby's and Wendy's, the Econolodge and AmeriSuites seem to have them as formalities rather than things of substance. Still, as he walks through knee deep brown sedge, the trash-strewn ditch at the side of the road, with the song of the interstate in the background - the constant hum of traffic, even here, in the middle-of-damn-nowhere - he sees ahead another freestanding store. This one's older than some of the others. Brickfronted, the asphalt parking lot old enough that it's crumbling. It was a tack store at one time, or so the cowboy-hat shaped neon sign (turned off and covered with a FOR RENT sign that has in turn been papered over) suggests.
JoEllen's truck is parked by itself in the front parking lot. The windows are covered in brown paper, then gleam in the dying light, reflecting the westering sun. Closer, there's a sign in the window that says, "Ring Bell for Deliveries."
[Fate] First thing he did was look for the back of the store to see if he could get a peek through a window somewhere along the sides or back. He also checked for a vantage point for the front door where he could see the door when it opened, but remain hidden himself. Then he rang the bell and ran like hell for cover to see if it was JoEllen that came to the door or not.
[Fate] dex+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Twilight] None of the windows are uncovered. The only windows are in the front of the building, and these are all covered with brown paper. There's a service door in the back, metal, closed tight. An outdoor kiln is set on the asphalt.
The terrain is flat, open - like all roadside shopping developments. There's no place close enough that he could run to quickly enough, hide and have a full view of the front door, but he's pretty sure he could make it around the corner of the building before someone made it to the door.
Unless they were close to the door.
So he rings the doorbell; skedaddles around the corner. Watches the door swing open. He can hear the locks inside tumble as someone opens them, and then - barely - see JoEllen leaning out, looking right and left - at first just curious, her brows raised, and then - something slips over her face like alarm.
The door closes behind her.
[Fate] Now that was a curious reaction. Alarm. He hadn't expected alarm. Irritation, yes, alarm, no. From the looks of the Kiln out back, he guessed she just had a workshop here. Maybe she hoped to open the place to sell her pottery? Didn't seem like much of a secret worth hiding to him either. Nothing else to go on at the moment, unless he was to go to a pay phone and call that cell number for the granddaughter (something he was not ready to do yet. What would he say to her? "Hello, what is your granny hiding?") So, he decided to settle in a little further from the place, maybe even across the street in the ditch if he had to, to wait and watch. Watching to see if anyone came or for JoEllen to leave. Hadn't she said she was going to Studio? This must be it.
"Well Horse shit."
That rarely heard (around women) curse of his came as he settled in.
[Twilight] The location isn't ideal for surveillance. There are few trees and shrubs here, just the flat, open plain of asphalt and weedy lots. There's a deeper ditch between the once-western-wear store and Paint Lick Road proper, and a line of hedges further on, separating the old store from the pasture on the other side.
So he retreats, hunkers down. He doesn't have a perfect view of the storefront from here, and as twilight falls to full dark, the glare of lights from the fast food joints and other little shopping plazas, the hotels and Dollar stores scattered around the interstate sort of blast out the shadows around the older store. There's just one street light in its crumbling parking lot, which gives off faint white light. After a good two hours of waiting and watching, JoEllen comes out the front door again, her phone against her ear, takes a moment to lock the store behind her, and climbs into the truck. She sits in the cab for a moment, phone in her ear, then turns it off with a flick of her thumb and slides it into her handbag.
A moment later the truck's engine turns over. The brakelights flash, and JoEllen pulls out, heading back toward town.
[Fate] Well heck, he was going to have to figure out a better way of doing this. And he had a long time to think on it on his way back towards town and JoEllen's home. Though in the middle of the night, when he was sure she was sound asleep, he went hunting for JoEllen's cell phone to see if he could get his paws on it and check the calls made and received.
[Twilight] It is a long walk back to town. Not a comfortable one, either. No sidewalks out here, on the winding road, and friendly as Roman is, there's still something about rage that steers the locals away. Not many people give hitchhikers rides these days, not even in Berea, Kentucky.
It's ten-thirty p.m. when he makes it back. JoEllen's in the living room, crocheting a half-finished blanket in soft, pastel colors, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, the evening news on the television. She looks as he comes back in, gives him an appraising glance. Reads the teenaged boy hunger under his skin. "Want me to order you a pizza?" she asks him, fingers moving over the crochet work on autopilot. "Or there's left-over risotto in the fridge."
By 11:15 p.m., she packs up her handwork into a basket beside her favorite chair in the bright living room and goes upstairs to bed.
So Roman's left to snoop around the house looking for her cell phone. He finds the charger plugged into the wall on the kitchen counter, but no phone there. And instead is left to pause through her purse like a pickpocket in the dark shadows of the quiet living room. She didn't think to take it upstairs with her, to lock it away.
He finds her wallet, wrapped with a rubber band - the mechanism is broken - receipts sticking out. Kroger's, Complete PetMart, Delgrazzio's of Berea, Grandview Home Improvement Outlet - for an installed steel security door. A scribbled list comparing prices of mini-fridges with LOWE'S circled and underlined. A receipt from Seven States for an extra large dog crate, another from Jo-Anne's Fabric stores of cotton yarn and several yards of fabric, thread, and patterns.
Her cell phone shows several calls from and to Emma - each day for the past week. There are other calls to work, to Myrna. To the Gathering House. To Kid Country Toys and Baby's 'R Us. To a doctor's office, and Complete PetMart.
[Fate] He accepted the offer of leftovers and made small talk till she went to bed. Then came the snooping. The doctor's number was taken down because he was going to find out the name of the doctor and if it was a general practitioner or what he was starting to think, one that dealt in pregnant women. Steel door was likely for the new shop. Big ole extra large dog crate? Oh holy crap, it was sounding more and more like maybe the granddaughter might have a bun in the oven, or maybe she done had a kid and it was either lupus or metis born? Could that be it? How the heck was she going to hide that one around here? But how else to explain Kid Country Toys and Baby's R Us unless someone in this community was having a baby and she needed gifts? That settled it. He riffled the place till he found JoEllen's keys. Then though it was late and he would love some sleep. He took a nice long jog back to the little out of the way, papered up shop with the Kiln to take a look inside.
[Fate] No sign of keys meant, well he wasn't likely to get in through the door. After a little searching he did the next best thing. He went outside and used the sideview mirror on the old truck to cross over. Once there it was a four legged run as a wolf back to the little lonely shop on Paint Lick road. Or what he could find of it. It was time to take a little look through the waver y walls between worlds to see what he could spy in the shop.
[Fate] gnosis
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 4, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6) [WP]
[Twilight] Roman doesn't find JoEllen's keys that easily. Maybe she trusted him enough not to steal from her, but she doesn't trust a teenaged boy not to 'borrow' and wreck her truck. Maybe she just wasn't thinking, dropped them somewhere in her bedroom without thinking. He sits, waiting, considering sneaking into the older kinswoman's bedroom to find them, when he climbs the stairs back upstairs, each riser creaks under his weight, and he knows the door would do that, even more than the stairs.
---
So it's back to the papered over shop. He finds his way back there, sees the shape of it like a ghostly projection, so translucent he can just walk through. The lights from the nearby shopping centers, the gleaming perfection of the weaver's highway hugs the interstate, then spills out in calcifying spirals to encompass all those fast food restaurants and other buildings.
Having no idea of the interior layout, he peeks across. It is remarkably dark inside, but he stays absolutely still, watching across the gauntlet for signs of movement in the physical world. He finds none.
[Fate] Mentally he shook himself and then pushed through the gauntlet, or tried to push through to get inside the shop where if he made it, he listened for sounds of something finding him before moving around to start his spying. Spying which might include finding a light switch if he had to in order to see.
gnosis
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Twilight] The front room is rather as he expected it to be. A potter's studio. There's work tables and wheels, smaller kilns, clay, paints, curing racks - all the necessary items for not one but several people to sit and work. Racks - old but clean - in the storefront area have a handful of pieces on display, and there are other artists' things about. Painted canvases, the disjointed pieces of a large papier-mache dragon puppet and on and on and on.
But behind the studio area, a little corridor leads toward the restrooms and the stockroom. The stockroom has another new door, steel as well. With a security keypad. This one's open, though. Inside: fridge. A bassinet covered with a steel frame on top. A reclaimed dresser and a rocking chair, a fuzzy rug on the floor. A small fridge plugged into the wall. An extra-large dog crate.
[Fate] He slowly made his way through the shop and down the hall to that little stockroom door. In there he paused, head cocked as he listened for anything other than the sound of his own breathing and the fridge running. Then he approached the dog crate and bassinet for a careful look inside. Afraid he was going to see a Metis child, though surely JoEllen was still in preparatory stages and wouldn't leave a baby alone here? Then again, Metis were something he had little experience with as babies. Had Emma dropped her child off with JoEllen and moved on with her pack with daily check ins? The secret he think he might of figured out was making him a little ill feeling.
[Twilight] The room is entirely empty. There's nothing in the dog crate; no sound of breathing in the room. Nothing in the bassinet but a baby blanket.
[Fate] He let out a relieved sigh, that meant the child wasn't hear yet. It might not be born just yet. In the morning he was going to check out that doctor and pretty much make himself a pest sticking to JoEllen. But he had a very good idea that Emma as going to turn up some time in the near future and she was going to turn up with a not normal child. Infact, he had an idea where she was, he had a name and picture and phone number. He might have to take another Penumbra run to see if he could get a look at Miss Emma himself. Only if he couldn't put the pieces together without doing so. For tonight, he decided it was time to go back and sleep while he could.
[Twilight] transcript!
to Twilight
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