The sun burned his vision white even with his eyes closed. Into his brain it lit every dark corner so that when he opened those eyes he was forced to give his mind a moment before it remembered what colors were. When Locke moved up from the heated tiles his head felt light in a warm heat, akin to being drunk, but the drowning feeling of forgetfulness was replaced with a swarthy mellow carelessness. It was addicting. Hence he seemed to find himself on the open balcony on a madam’s house every afternoon of late. Not for the company, but the blissful, heat blistering, rest on this favored spot that seemed the only place capable of warming the seemingly permanent winter’s cold in his bones.

The sun was well passed mid-day when Locke reached out, with eyes still closed, feeling, searching around him. Around the raised pallet he half rested on, and the tiles his other hooves draped upon. Where was that water jug. He swore, causing something beyond the curtains to the balcony to stir. “Darling-?” Came a whine from within, sickly sweet in this heat. The young thief groaned as the moment of burning bliss slipped away and in concession of defeat, he opened his eyes, letting the white simplicity focus back on reality. Locke first spotted the jar, rolled just a few feet from where he left it. Then a dark head comes through the curtains lazily drifting in the winter’s cool breeze. “Did you call?” More like did he finally want her...company. Restrained irratance leaves him in a sigh as his swooning head rolls to her. It takes in her fine head, gentle light figure, but regardless of her attempts to curve her neck and cock her hip, ‘no’ was written on every line of his own face.

----
Locke had found the balcony when he first visited the court several weeks back. In a life where a single level roofed home had been a palace, a third story balcony still seemed a god-view, even if it was attached to the medium sized… establishment of the lower quarter. That was why he had chosen it though. These houses could always be trusted to be private, quiet...ish, and contain the latest gossip a stallion could spill. (Honestly, more news was dropped in these walls than coins.) A nice place for an unsettled thief to lay up for the afternoon. Yet it still hadn’t gotten him what he was really after.

A head rested on his shoulder, laying across the feather’s of Locke’s back. Breath hitches in the young boy’s chest as he turns halfway to his shadow for the afternoon. “I’d rather you wouldn’t…” It came strained, the nerves along his spine holding his ease in a vice grip as they squirmed at another’s touch. The dark bay girl, not much older than he, lifts off of him, pout evident. “I promis-” God she was still trying. Payment had already been made, but clearly she saw a few coins tip bulging his pockets. There was nothing else bulging, so her efforts were half sighted. “No. Cut the shit.” To her credit she did. The sweet grace drops like a hot pan, and that sweet honey voice burned away to bitterness. “Why the fuck do you come then.” If he didn’t know her trade, he’d think her insulted, but he knew greed when he saw it. So the lanky youth standing at the edge of the balcony, already laughing at his wit, tossed her a coin in the waning light. “To admire the view.” Locked then turns away from her hard eyes to do just that.

No one. For two weeks before Locke had journeyed south he’d seen nothing but beggars, drunks, and sand in those back alleys. Now it seemed he was doomed to find only the same. The dying sun let the cold winter slip into the drifting breezes, running its clawed finger down his spine, and reminding all what season it truly was. Reminding him of a clock. Then. There. Red and white walk without fear or shame through the burning cold streets. The feathers at his back raised just at the sight of her, answer enough at what she might be, and he was tired of waiting. Not to mention the not-so-subtle sighs of his companion told him his time in the small flat were near up.

-------
Cold was stealing its way in, seeping into the stones of the court city as the young thief stepped out of his den, aptly named ‘The Burning Oasis’. The light-head inducing afternoon had injected his blood with a toxic mixture of impatience and brashness. It whispered in possible suicidal lurings that there was always one last resort to finding the underbelly of a city. Yet the young thief did not need suspicious eyes following him as he moved towards it. So the Locke paints a sideways grin as he thanks his generous host for a revealing time, loudly calling to her raised brow several compliments, before stumbling forward into the darkened alleys, moving in the lackadaisical manner of a drunk fish.

The act drops when he finally finds the trail several streets over. A yellow brick road of swept streets. Chained ear hovers back, tugging at his mind with words like trap, obvious, suspicious and even idiotic. Yet the young thief was tired of dancing about the streets of this city, flirting within the walls of tourist and guest. He would never be mistaken for such when he began to turn a trade here, so best go ahead and rip that illusion right off. Maybe it would be painful, bit awkward, but the youth was filled with the endless impatience of his age, and every cell was struck careless from the lazy afternoon rendering him fully capable of making the terrible decision to follow the owner of the tracks.

Idiotic could not really describe the level of shortsightedness which led Locke through the streets behind the rose dressed high headed queen of shadows. The streets he barely knew. Following the female he did not know, other than she obviously seemed to know every turn. (A fact more and more enticing the youth that he had at last found someone who could answer his questions, afterall there were only a few who walked shadowed halls as queens.) With a creature that was familiar enough with death to wear its mask. All without aid of any magic to make his stealth remotely masterful. He was decent at sneak thieving, but he doubted there was a miracle working luck available for him to pull this one off. So when she finally spoke, her sleek crimson looks matching the drawling dripping sounds, Locke could only sigh with the inevitability of it, before stepping closer, and into her sight fully.

“Locke.” Came the short answer. “And I was finding the possible outcome to either more than acceptable.” Came his returning low hum, not as expectant as hers, but just as playful. A youth he may be, but the thief was not naive enough to be ignorant of the game she laid out for them to play. Not to mention, it wasn’t a lie. Perhaps he had turned down a-paid-for companion earlier, but the regal thorn tipped rose of the streets was a queen he found worthy of giving a longer glance. (Mind you not in a lustful maddening mesmerization, but in an assessment of qualities pulling from him admiration, envy, and desire for the cards she so clearly displayed in her possession.)  She had something he most certainly desired to possess, authority.


So the youth reaches out to it. “Perhaps you could indulge me…” He moves to lean against the near wall of their narrow alley, (the other option of moving closer or circling her cut short by the unease her follower placed with any distance associated with the term closer) the rough stone still warm from the little sun it had managed to steal away in the day. “I’m in search of a guide to these alleys.” Every half lie was made bare in the dark grin upon his face. Perhaps it was the heat he’d drunk on all afternoon, or the days without coming so close to a possible answer to his questions, but Locke in the carelessness of his age tossed aside conspicuousness. In his weeks of slipping through this sun burned city he was tired of knowing it from a distance. If that meant learning the number of grains on this dark alley, or the way to the nearest healer, or the bricks on the ceiling of the local jail cell, well, it would one less thing he didn’t know now. Maybe he had burned away one to many brain cells that afternoon.



"Speaking."
OOC:: @Vendetta Again, apologies for the length as I merged a starter with a reply. They will be much shorter after this!

There must be some initiation that young Locke did not yet know about. This began to occur to him, not for the first time, as this shadow queen screwtinized and analyzed every missing mark on his youthful complexion. He had dabbled in this trade for several years now, albeit under many different circumstances (survival, ignorance, dares, fun) but in all areas he seemed to meet the same creatures. Black hearts so twisted and corrupt their eyes (at least at first meeting) only held an endless chasm of ever growing avarice and hunger, weighing him. Shrewd, calculating bank tellers who knew the worth of street grim, but rarely saw in any equines. The young thief often wondered if he’d turn into them whenever he passed some milestone of his trade. If when settling himself to make this life his ‘business’ he would find himself harboring the same disgust for non-sellable items.

He prayed to every god he came across that he’d be spared such a fate. It looked damn boring and uncomfortable.

So Locke continues to grin back at the mare and her initial threat of a swift end when she obviously found his life worth little and his pockets empty, as he was not yet ready to let go of the illusion that this work and banter were merely a fun game. (Though he was having quite a bit of fun with it.) The brave (or was he still being idiotic? Too much sun indeed) youth even gives a ghost of a laugh as he exhales. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her words. No, the pain part certainly could be felt in the knife she carried in her voice. It was that the young thief had seen several like her in his short time, and as he still walked the world (mostly) unharmed by them, she was not a threat, nothing new. A monster maybe, but an impossible beomiath? No.

“And you have me mistaken for street trash.” That small voice in him told him she had every right. After all up to this point what had he managed? A half hearted, foolish (to put it nicely) attempt at stealth and a grin in the face of a threat. Not exactly a stunning resume.

“Well we can either take a tour...or I go and learn them on my own.” Voice empties of care and floats higher on the whispers of a sigh. “Either way, I find a new home for this poor beauty.” From over his back where it barely rested against the wall, came a gleam of treasure. A leg cuff, gold (possibly just plated), but bearing three set garnets and several loops of gold chains around its bottom rim. Not the most stunning piece, but the youth was not a complete fool. A job application this might be, but it was also being made to a shadow queen on a shadow street. The two more valuable pieces of jewelry he harbored stayed safely untouched in his leg satchel (where he had pulled this item from and slipped it up to his back along the wall). Would she steal it from him? Likely, but then surely she could see the dead end that action would lead her.

He begins to pull the item back, eyes dropping away as if the conversation were coming to a close (but his ears stay trained on her). “I suppose I must ask forgiveness for mistaking you for a head merchant, capable of doing simple sums.” Those emerald eyes roll back up to seek out hers, as he cast the last few words like dice. Only afterwards did the thought come to him, that given his sunbaking, drinking, and desperation, gambling his life might not be the wisest of ideas. (Especially as the glance back up caused him to catch sight of her companion so clearly who was so clearly on close terms with death.)  Possibly more foolish than talking to her in the first place.



"Speaking."
OOC:: @Vendetta We should title this "Locke tries to be sassy too and ends up with a hoof in his mouth' XD