old town, new residents. (open)

[ophelia]

"Old town." The words involuntarily whispered from Ophelia's mouth as she made her way past the crude sign alerting her to the fact that she was entering Old Town. The main section of Old Town was surprisingly bustling for so early in the afternoon. She could hear the shouts of vendors on the streets trying to trade their wares for other things and the sound of people haggling and shouting back. Ophelia hugged the sparkling necklace closer to her person as she surveyed the scene. A group of three dark colored demons passed by Ophelia. She could feel their eyes burning into her and one even flicked its long tail in her face. Ophelia kept herself composed and simply brushed the sour smell of the demon's tail away from her face and continued forward.

Ophelia had been here before. Many times actually, with her father when he would come to barter for things with the vast amount of enticing jewelry, paintings, sculptures, and other possessions the Oxford's had managed to salvage from the disaster. Today, her father had been extremely busy with his work, somethings never change, and had sent Ophelia to run an errand. He tasked her with trading the heavy necklace in her hand for matches and a collection of candles. He had also given Ophelia a small knife for protection. The task was easy enough for her father, a charismatic man who's presence was felt even before he spoke. Ophelia was quite the opposite, she was small and quiet, more like a mouse than a human. Old Town was intimidating and it felt scary without her father along with her but she was determined to not let her father down and go through with the transaction. Besides, Ophelia and her father had become friendly with a candle vendor on the far end of Old Town. The vendor was an old human man, she reminded Ophelia of her grandfather, who made beautiful candles in many different colors and he always was good to her and her father, never ripping them off. The candle vendor also had a love for jewelry so he was always happy to trade for it. Her father always joked that the old man bargained the jewelry to the women in District 13. The thought of the creep Ophelia out.

She stepped around a group of winged humans talking to each other in hushed tones before pushing herself into the crowd. Ophelia held on to the necklace fro dear life. Ophelia was being jostled around in the crowd. She nearly fell into the path of a fey performer. The fey was spraying fire into the air and people were standing around clapping. Ophelia had been forced out of the bustling crowd and almost flew right into the line of fire. The fey was nice about it and simply laughed and the crowd had laughed along and clapped. Ophelia liked feys, they were calming and always full of life and humor.

After her run in with the fey fire breather, Ophelia tried her best to watch her step. She passed by a large building full of noise and life. Ophelia stopped for a moment and peered into one of the dusty windows. Inside she could see some people standing around a man on a table. It looked like an auction. The people inside were raising their hands and calling out muffled numbers. Ophelia watched silently as two of the auction participants began to viciously raise the price against each other. Finally one stood, a large demon with towering horns and bulging muscles. He took a human man and tossed him aside in rage. The demon approached his opponent in the auction and took the tall human male by the collar. The human punched the demon in the face and the two began to brawl. The demon got fed up and raised the man up.

Ophelia screamed and turned to run as the demon flung the man into the air and through the window that Ophelia had just been watching through. Glass shattered onto the floor. The bustle of Old Town didn't stop though. The man lay in a pool of blood and glass as the demon peered out. The demon rose his arms in victory.

Ophelia stumbled back in surprised fear. As she was stumbling full force backwards, Ophelia slammed hard into someone.

[pyro]

“Hm, I’ll take that.”A young man about nineteen years old said pointing at a healthy looking loaf of bread. The woman who was running the stall was human, probably in her early forties. She had a small child next to her who was obviously helping out with the stall. He frowned for a moment thinking of foul memories of his own mother. The boy looked happy enough with helping his mother. The woman handed Jack the loaf of bread as he handed her a small pearl necklace that he had picked off a prostitute earlier. She hadn’t even notice Jack had stolen the jewelry while she was too busy trying to pick up a man. With a mischievous smile, Jack took the bread form the woman and took a healthy bite from it.

It had been a little while since he had some bread. Being a Leopard man, Jack liked to mainly eat meat, but today he felt like a small loaf of bread. The black haired boy walked the streets dodging a few mean looking demons casually. Ah, the old town. One of many places where the young man liked to hang out and pickpocket people. He especially liked taking things from tough looking demons just for the thrill. If he were to ever get caught, he’d just have to run like he always did. Then again demons could also run fast, but Jack was familiar with the back streets and could get into small areas that some of the demons couldn’t really fit into. It was easy to steal from people around here especially when there were large crowds.

Jack took another bite of the bread as he walked, the other black hand stuffed into his pocket. The boy bumped shoulders with a laid back fey, who apologized to him. The dark haired boy just nodded, mouth still full of bread. He began to walk again, noting the fey performer who spitting out fire from his mouth. The crowd clapped at the display, but Jack wasn’t too impressed. He had seen it before when a more short tempered fey had caught him stealing something from her. She blew fire at him scorching some of Jack’s finer clothes. He still managed to get away by slipping through a sewer pipeline. Not the best solution considering many parasites could be found down there. Luckily he didn’t run into any real ugly ones and he escaped with only small scratches.

He was about to take another bite when something glinted in the sun. A young human girl had been pushed down almost getting caught in the feys’ flames. That wasn’t the thing that had caught Jack’s eye. Just barely visible, clutched in the girl’s hand was a beautiful looking necklace. His eyes had spotted it right away, though he couldn’t see the whole design of it, he was sure it would fetch a good penny. He was about to go over and help her up, but the girl had already gotten up and went on her way. The black haired boy followed behind, not too close to be noticed. He was looking for the perfect opportunity to swipe the object from her. She suddenly stopped to look inside a large building where they usually help the auctions. Maybe while she was still looking inside he could some how take the trinket from her. It would have much easier if she had it in her pocket, but then that wouldn’t make stealing so fun if it didn’t have its challenges.

He slunk closer to her quietly, then a commotion inside the building snapped his attention else were for a few moments. His strong hearing could hear that the human and demon had been arguing about the auction idem. He ignored the rest and crept close when the human was suddenly tossed through the window the girl was staring through. She stumbled back and right into Jack. His chance was lost since she gripped the necklace tighter ramming right into him. He may have looked smaller in size and more nimble, but he was pretty sturdy. “Whoa there, wouldn’t want to get involved in such a mess.” Jack said seeing the demon stalking toward the victim he just threw. “Come this way for a sec.” He said grabbing the girl’s wrist and pulling her away from the brawl, grip like iron so his prize would pull away. After he was sure they were a good distance away he let go and turned to face the girl, a mischievous smile on his face.“You alright there Miss?” He asked Stormy gray cat eyes scanning her for a brief moment. He was making sure she was still clutching the trinket, but made she his eyes didn’t linger there for too long to rise suspicion. His face was set so it would be very difficult to read what his real intentions were.