A
Anguissette
Guest
Original poster
Blink. Blink. Bzzzt.
The electric light flickered in the stained white limestone ceiling, illuminating a small oval of corridor midway up stairwell 13 East. Also caught in the unreliable brilliance is the doorway to the floor's washroom and the suggestion of another portal beyond it, but in order to get there a local would need to navigate almost 800 metres of dark hallway with ambient lighting at best.
Blink. Blink. Bzzzt.
The Aisling Grey who limped into view was a far cry from the perfumed maiden of the May Queen Ball. The lustrous chestnut hair she had dressed in a thousand tiny rivulets cascading down her back had instead been hacked off by some kind of knife just above the scalp at the back. The rest retained most of its former length, but in the three months since her exile from The Sky it looked as though she'd scarcely washed it. What she had spent time on instead by all appearances was her attire. Gone was the travelling gown of Quality, the ballroom slippers and the cloak. Instead she wore a plain grey day-dress that certainly hadn't come from a Skylady's closet, a brown duster coat and a pair of chunky miner's boots surely two or three sizes too large. She also sported an actual burlap sack over one shoulder, the opposite side to her limp.
Blink. Blink. Crack-tssh!
The cough of a firing piece and shattering glass herald the lumen-globe's destruction and pitch the hallway into gloom. Without looking back, Aisling scrambled in her pocket for her keys and then jammed one on her lock. Heavy footsteps on the stair hurried closer, and she managed to swing the door just wide enough to admit her thin body and then shut it with haste. The handle turned a moment later, but too late as it locked automatically. The Skyborn sagged with relief against the inside of the door, then tensed at the male laughter through the thin wood.
"Caught like a Rat inna trap," he mocked. "Open up and give me the bag, and maybe I won't take the time to look around yer pad for anythin' else you mighta forgot to mention. Cause me trouble an' I might have ta find somethin' else to make up fer my time."
His tone was dark and intimidating, but Aisling wasn't one to back down to empty threats. Hah! Hadn't she stepped around her family for close on a year as she advanced her work? She knew she'd been close; They had tried to stop her, had hurt her family but They had missed her and as soon as she could reconstruct her experiments she knew she would be able to make the breakthrough They were so desperately afraid of!
"Stay away!" she said defiantly. "I've got nothing for you here Palmers and I don't have time for your games!"
There was a moment of stunned silence, as though the air itself couldn't believe she'd been so stupid and then a string of curses sounded from the other side of the door and the thin wood began to shudder and crack under a series of kicks and shoulder-slams. The brunette backed away from the door, dumping her sack on the end table as she began to dig within it with a series of metallic clanks. At this rate the door would fail in less than a minute, she guessed.
The electric light flickered in the stained white limestone ceiling, illuminating a small oval of corridor midway up stairwell 13 East. Also caught in the unreliable brilliance is the doorway to the floor's washroom and the suggestion of another portal beyond it, but in order to get there a local would need to navigate almost 800 metres of dark hallway with ambient lighting at best.
Blink. Blink. Bzzzt.
The Aisling Grey who limped into view was a far cry from the perfumed maiden of the May Queen Ball. The lustrous chestnut hair she had dressed in a thousand tiny rivulets cascading down her back had instead been hacked off by some kind of knife just above the scalp at the back. The rest retained most of its former length, but in the three months since her exile from The Sky it looked as though she'd scarcely washed it. What she had spent time on instead by all appearances was her attire. Gone was the travelling gown of Quality, the ballroom slippers and the cloak. Instead she wore a plain grey day-dress that certainly hadn't come from a Skylady's closet, a brown duster coat and a pair of chunky miner's boots surely two or three sizes too large. She also sported an actual burlap sack over one shoulder, the opposite side to her limp.
Blink. Blink. Crack-tssh!
The cough of a firing piece and shattering glass herald the lumen-globe's destruction and pitch the hallway into gloom. Without looking back, Aisling scrambled in her pocket for her keys and then jammed one on her lock. Heavy footsteps on the stair hurried closer, and she managed to swing the door just wide enough to admit her thin body and then shut it with haste. The handle turned a moment later, but too late as it locked automatically. The Skyborn sagged with relief against the inside of the door, then tensed at the male laughter through the thin wood.
"Caught like a Rat inna trap," he mocked. "Open up and give me the bag, and maybe I won't take the time to look around yer pad for anythin' else you mighta forgot to mention. Cause me trouble an' I might have ta find somethin' else to make up fer my time."
His tone was dark and intimidating, but Aisling wasn't one to back down to empty threats. Hah! Hadn't she stepped around her family for close on a year as she advanced her work? She knew she'd been close; They had tried to stop her, had hurt her family but They had missed her and as soon as she could reconstruct her experiments she knew she would be able to make the breakthrough They were so desperately afraid of!
"Stay away!" she said defiantly. "I've got nothing for you here Palmers and I don't have time for your games!"
There was a moment of stunned silence, as though the air itself couldn't believe she'd been so stupid and then a string of curses sounded from the other side of the door and the thin wood began to shudder and crack under a series of kicks and shoulder-slams. The brunette backed away from the door, dumping her sack on the end table as she began to dig within it with a series of metallic clanks. At this rate the door would fail in less than a minute, she guessed.
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