Humming merrily to herself with no particular tune, Susannah paused, looking up from pouring water into the bucket for the boy that didn't want it to begin with. She blinked against the gentle breeze, looking in the vague direction that Solange would be coming moments before the red-headed woman actually came into view.
Susannah didn't know why she looked in that direction, nor had the thought that there was anything odd about it. She looked back to her pouring, resuming her merry. She heard the odd name distantly, paused, continued, and three beats later, she was up off her feet and being twirled - flying, she was flying! - by familiar hands and Solange's bright, warm face before her.
But it was serious business when she was set back down. She spoke in that tone where it was quite clear what she was doing was the most important - no, the only thing that mattered - in the world. "I'm filling this bucket for the little people's flying ponies in the tower over there," she said, awkwardly handling the bucket while trying to gesture dismissively in the direction of the boy, who was expanding the archway and the bridge even further to add more things. "And then I need to get cages for the trolls." She was speaking very quickly now, as if she had not heard the concerned question of whether or not she was alone.
Hati took a drag of his cigarette, a blur of red moving across his periphery, a petite woman with a glowing face. He narrowed his eyes as she were too bright to look upon. She was cute. He did not recognize her for what she was, and he looked over his shoulder toward Skoll's direction, whose conversation was escalating - Hati's heightened sense of hearing allowed for him to almost hear the latent growl in Skoll's voice, something that Skol probably would never notice about himself.
Skoll turned as his brother did, they did meet eyes, but Skoll's glance was for something else. Some energy in the air, a subtle, nuanced shift. Skoll inclined his chin up, nodding toward the imaginative playground.
Hati turned back, exhaling smoke through a lopsided, wolfish half smile, half leer. Where'd she go? There she was, the blur of bright hair still as she approached his niece. He moved off his lean on the car, but did not advance.
Like a predator, he waited, and he watched. To Solange, he was just a lingering taxi driver waiting for his customer to come back from lunch. For Hati, she was just a friendly face in a crowd, talking to a little girl straying too close to the edges of the playground.