Laura Kinney (butwhy) wrote in knowhereic, @ 2017-06-30 01:00:00 |
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Sniff. The air smelled thick with sweat and chemicals, sweet with strange foods, fruits most likely, though there was something...hot. The wrong kind of hot. Not heat but...different. It was mixed with fat, cooked with fire like Logan had. Sniff-Sniff. Someone had walked this way recently who stank of an uncleansed wound. Somewhere in the distance there was shouting, excitement. Someone was afraid. It was that direction to avoid.. These were the thoughts that keenly hit her mind as her slender face was turned up toward the air and nostrils flared to take in the scent. It was late, though how she knew that without a sun to track could have been anyone's guess. It was quieter than it had been when she'd first arrived, which had been the point of choosing now to be the time she'd slipped from the apartment despite Logan's request that she not. Normally, she never would have even thought to go against his wishes. Normally she would have sat right there on the couch and waited for him. Normally she wouldn't have even so much as moved if that's what he'd asked her to do, but normally Logan didn't ask her to sit still for so long. From the first day they'd met, they'd been on the move, with new sights and scents to take in by the hour. Even if she'd protested the trip North, even if she'd growled at him and tried to pull him in another direction, even if she was aggressively against anything that took her even in the vague direction in which she'd just spent years being taken away from, she still thought back on that time often. She liked sitting in the passenger seat, nose pressed up against the glass or with the window down so she could sniff at the air. She liked sticking her head out the window and feeling the wind in her hair. She liked watching it push her fingers around. She liked seeing the animals on the side of the road. Part of her wished she was back at that time in her life at least once a day... ...As long as it wasn't the parts where Logan was being stern with her. She didn't care for that part at all. If she hadn't sat still for most of an entire day, it might have been enough to keep her in that apartment he'd gotten for them. As it was, she had gotten curious and he'd been just absent enough that she could slip out the door and make her way here to the markets. It was the first place she’d been after arriving with the woman who smelled like the Kitty Pryde woman who she’d met at the school. Laura had been certain she was her, even if she looked different. That was nothing new, all faces tended to look the same to her at first. They were simple adjectives; long, short, fat, slim, beard, piercing, scar, color, and that where it stopped until she took time to study them. Kitty’s face, when Laura had taken the time to study it, wasn’t right. She didn’t seem to know who Laura was either and that had been…upsetting. Enough for her to defensively back away from the dog and keep her claws out as a sign Laura meant to defend herself. She hadn’t gotten much time to look around after that either, what with (much to her relief) Logan coming to collect her. At least he smelled right. At least he looked right – because she’d burned his particular face into her memory – and at least he’d seemed interest in shielding her from the overwhelming nature of the place she’d found herself in. Which was the very same place Laura Kinney was now dead set she was going to explore. Sniff She pulled at the air again as she slowly plodded her way past the stalls, doing her best to look inconspicuous. Mostly she was just there to watch, to listen. There were so many new things to see however that Laura couldn’t help the wide-eyed way she looked around. People wore very different clothes here. Their skin was new colors. There were foods and objects, the smell of metal and grease, a strange, acrid – it was coffee – Laura recognized it as it cut through, somewhere in the distance. She liked coffee, even if Logan had constantly advised her that she didn’t need it. It’s strong flavor was such a harsh departure from the bland food and water she knew to expect. It made her feel active, alert, too – two things Laura’s life often demanded she be. Should she move that way? Should she see about getting coffee? An internal debate raged for a fraction of a second. Ultimately, she knew coffee. She knew how it tasted. She knew how it smelled. She knew what it did. What she didn’t know were what some of these foods (she knew, because she saw people paying for them and eating them) were. What she didn’t know was what the group of people were doing milling about near the place that smelled like hot metal – a smell Laura didn’t think she’d ever forget. What she didn’t know was why there was sounds of metal banging off metal somewhere nearby in what, to Laura, clearly sounded like a fight of some kind. Very quickly she was becoming aware that this venture was going to be a lot more complicated and in-depth than she had originally thought. She should leave. She should go find Logan. She should go find Ororo. She should go find the strange looking Kitty. She should bring them with her. Laura did very much think these things, but it also very much occurred to her that they would have just tried to take her back to the apartment, that they would have told her to stay out of trouble – and Laura very much didn’t think…she…was…going…to….cause…trouble… …No matter how sweet smelling this strange, red, fruit was, or how wet it looked when she saw a tall man dig his yellow teeth into it. Her eyes zeroed back in on another one. It was right near the edge of the table. She could reach out and…she just had to wait until…. There. Another customer had distracted the owner of the stall (because he was the one taking what she assumed was money) and Laura very much saw her moment. She took it without hesitation, snatching up the fruit and immediately turning to walk in the opposite direction as if absolutely nothing had just happened. She’d keep right on walking to, back in the direction of the apartments – thinking perhaps she might go explore those next – until she’d found somewhere secluded she could set about figuring just how one was supposed to go about eating this thing that looked an awful lot like the ball Gabriela had given her. Once she was confident she was at least out of sight, Laura found a spot to crouch down and inspect the thing more closely. She stuck it right under her nose so she could sniff at it again, even poking her tongue out a little bit to – it was bitter. Her face scrunched up all at once, almost as though she’d taken offense to the thing, and she spat a few times to try and get the taste off her tongue. She wiped it on the sleeve of her jacket, shook her head, and snorted out her nose to try and blow the taste away. Confused, she looked at it again. It had smelled so good not minutes ago. Was there something wrong with this one?. She squeezed it in her hand, feeling the hard rind on the outside flex slightly. Was it like an orange? She’d had those once before and she remembered the skin being very bitter on those too, at least when she’d bitten through it…maybe she should… Very carefully, Laura flexed her free hand and drew the claws out from over the top of her knuckles. Very precisely she dragged the fruit along their length to split the skin so she could slide her fingers underneath and peel it back. From there it only took one bite, one tiny piece of the meat of the fruit being pulled up and popped into her mouth, before Laura tore into the thing with aggressive delight. She didn’t care that the juice seemed to stain her clothes and fingers, that it would be a giveaway if anyone asked her what had happened. She cared about eating the sweet tasting fruit because it just might have been the best thing she’d ever eaten – well, after steak of course. |