Ornature

Sunday after sundown; the lozenge of a moon in the sky. It is crescent and tastes like the memory of a soap bubble popped in the mouth: sweet, with an aftertaste of lye. The building curves around the Holy Ghost Church, which is illuminated by spotlights throwing up stark cones of light against its frame. In the plaza between 1999 Broadway and the church itself, the dark marble plinth of the Veteran is quiet and stark and still.

There is a girl seated on a bench beneath the Veteran, facing toward him rather than away. She is eating rather carefully and precisely from a plastic container of sushi.

Her hair is pink.

Her breeding verges on the intoxicating, she is so pure.

There was another girl, perhaps not so well bred-

No, not perhaps. There was no perhaps with her. There was just a fact. The difference between them were as clear as the glass Hazel had spent the last few days thinking of how to please. Because, you see, this was a city. Glass was everywhere, and someone had to think of how to keep it happy. There were city spirits, and the smell of this place was on her like a second skin. Like a birthright.

But, there were similarities. They didn't know what they were just yet, but there were similarities, like the choice in food… just of very, very different qualities. Hazel looked at monolith, the statue of the Veteran all quiet and stark and still. There was the scent of chicken flavored ramen in a microwavable container.

"Can I sit here?" she asks, not like it's high school- Hazel didn't remember things like that. Hazel did, however, know that feeling of nervousness, the familiar feeling of being told that the seat was, in fact, taken and that she wasn't welcome.

She was overcome with awe- somewhere between the statue and the purest of blood.

Hazel wasn't much in comparison, but there was something glorious and humbling in feeling so small.

Charlotte is spare, is pale-skin and fine-boned and rather small for a wolf-girl but is also: growing. There is something birdlike about the upward lilt of her chin, the way her hair - which is natively platinum, just the tips dyed pink - frames the wide-open eyes as she gives a rather startled turn of her head to find Hazel watching her. Ramen in hand.

A moment where the pink-haired Silver Fang glances around to confirm for herself that the strange is indeed speaking to her, before she turns around at last, and says, "Uhm, sure?"

Eloquent.

Shy.

Her pale eyes just graze Hazel's face, drop to the noodle cup in hand, and skitter away. Back to the solid Veteran, whom she is contemplating rather solemnly. Hazel has time to chose and take her seat and Charlotte does not make smalltalk but she does steal another sideglance at Hazel, mostly the noodles, and then nudge her plastic tray of sushi a bit towards Hazel.

"You can have one if you want."

Hazel is unimpressive. She would probably be prettier, more impressive or more inherently awe-inspiring save for the fact that she could probably stand to put on about fifteen pounds. Her skin is olive, though it is hard to tell if it is because she needs a bath or if it is because she is naturally tan. Her hair is a dark mess of tangled curls. Her teeth are white and the canines are just a tad too sharp.

She smiled, and it was genuine. The girl took a seat next to the Silver Fang, feeling almost daring to sit beside her instead of behind her. Her expression was one of delight.

Hazel took a bite of ramen and her eyes went back to the Veteran. Though, she could smell food- Bone Gnawers had a sense for food. Her eyes went down, then back to the pink-haired one. She can have some if she wants. Just one, though.

"Okay," she replies, and very carefully she takes a piece of sushi from the end- one of the smaller pieces- and pops it into her mouth. She looked at her noodles, and then carefully held them out to her current companion.

"Hmmn?"

It wasn't much, but clearly she was more-than-willing to share.

Charlotte says you can have one if you want and Hazel hears one as just one and Charlotte does not mean for the words to take that shape but they do. She has never been hungry; never wondered where her next meal was going to come from or what it was going to bed, not even when she was on the road with her packmate.

And Charlotte does not particularly want any of the noodles but see there is a ritual here that she must somehow sense, because she flashes Hazel another rather wary little glance, then a rather wary little smile, then dips her chopsticks into the Bone Gnawer's ramen. Twirling a few noodles rather inexpertly up and slurping them into her mouth.

"You should try one of those," Charlotte replies, when she has chewed-and-swallowed, pointing out another piece with her chopsticks, rather closer to the middle, a slab of raw tuna over an oblong half-cylinder of rice. "I'm Charlotte."

It tastes…

Actually, it tastes like instant ramen is supposed to taste. Cheap, available, and not offensive to one's senses. Overall, it's not a bad gig. It's just… eh. That is the nature of instant ramen in the United States. Hazel smiled, though the mild bit of wary discomfort from Charlotte is met with absolute delight from the Gnawer, a joy that she got to share.

"Ooh, that does look good," she said as she took the little piece of tuna-and-rice. She took her time to observe it. To take it in as a full sensory experience. The look of it, the smell of it, finally the taste and the texture. One would think that Hazel would demolish food instead of sit in quiet contemplation of it.

There was chewing.

There was swallowing. There was an introduction, "I'm Hazel. It's nice to meet you."

She then smiled, embarrassed, the girl ducked her head, "sorry, I just.. i've never met someone like you. Well, like, I've seen people similar to you, we just never talked."

A beat.

"I'm new in Denver."

The Silver Fang's pale brows rise in a sort of query as Hazel informs her that she's seen people like Charlotte but never met someone like Charlotte. Charlotte's eyes are all inquiry and she does not quite understand why Hazel is embarrassed or abashed or even precisely what Hazel means by someone like her because Charlotte interprets that phrase rather differently than Hazel does.

There is a kind of cloudy film over Charlotte's eyes as she processes this and thinks and considers and then figures it out her mouth an "O" of surprise that she swallows neatly into her body a moment later.

Another tentative smile. "You don't mean someone with pink hair, do you." The creature lifts her pale eyes then, past the statue she herself was observing, to the office building that looms over the both of them.

"New, huh. Have you been up there?" She indicates with a short little gesture of her chopsticks. "Or to the place in the country?"