the cost of living Who: Valya, Kahlan & Holly Where: Starbucks When: Noon
It was always a bad idea for Valya to take a nap -- and not because someone always died. She truly could not give a fig if a whole township burned because she had had an extra few hours sleep at the wrong time; Eloisa was bound to love that. She could not stand being out of sync with the other Rider, though. It left her restless and uncomfortable, like she was wearing someone else’s shoes or had put her own on the wrong feet. On Famine, ‘restless and uncomfortable’ was a dangerous combination. Especially when one threw in bored. Boredom set her a hair’s breadth away from tearing the house apart, the only thing staying her hand from throwing the first thing she could was her reluctance to wake Ela. Leaving the Rider of War sleeping, Valya had slipped downstairs in her pyjamas and automatically resorted to flicking through the channels. It was mind-numbing in an infuriating kind of way, at least until she reached one of the few that she deemed even vaguely acceptable to watch.
Nothing but the news that she did not care about. The school could rot, as could those parked around it.
As the television screen blinked off, Valya cracked her neck -- she was going out. That snap decision was more or less irrevocable, and hardly took more than a few minutes for her to grab clean clothes from the laundry pile (not upstairs, so Eloisa was left in peace) and drum up a rough idea of what to do with the rest of her waking hours. Or rather, what to do until she got bored of that as well. In her bag, alongside her usual gun and a more recently acquired hunting knife, she added the only ballpoint pen she could find that worked.
The only thing that truly differed from her usual outings was the use of contacts. Unflinching, she pressed the bright green discs to her irises and watched as the black darkened them, almost eerily turning her eyes back to the colour they used to be. Well, very nearly. She knew without even consulting the other Rider that Eloisa would hate them. While she would not have usually bothered with the pretense, the strange goings-on the news reported would, to her mind, made people more alert. Humans were not as stupid as they used to be; they would not see a woman with fangs and black eyes and simply scream ‘Devil!’ until others came to help or she shut them up herself. They would see a vampire they did not know or understand, word would spread and the hunters -- both human and otherwise -- would crawl out of the woodwork. Eloisa might not have cared if they were seen, found or reported, but Valya did. They did not make mobs like they used to, but they did still make them.
And they were annoying.
Her first stop was what everyone else might have called breakfast. A rather obliging blood doll who gave her both his blood and his empty reusable Starbucks cup, though she didn’t leave him with much choice. The second stop was the corner store, for crosswords, sudoku or whichever kind of puzzle book she could get her hands on. Lastly, she stopped off in Starbucks -- somehow managing to stop them refilling her reusable cup with latte but still convincing them she had bought a drink. Technically, she had. She just had yet to pick one up that was not A-negative Fae.
Having eaten before she napped and then again on the way over, Valya could afford to let her blood sit while she spent her time at a table in the very centre of the cafe, answering crosswords. Bold as brass, the Rider of Famine easily spent hours in the same seat, not particularly caring if they eventually noticed -- or simply commented upon -- the fact she had been there a while. Nevermind whether or not she was human. She had little to no interest in whether they had noticed; only in how many patrons of this noble establishment had gone home with poisoned blood. Well… and maybe if they would all jump out of their skin if she finally moved a limb. Because that, admittedly, would be funny. Sometimes details like feigning life were lost on her.
From behind the counter, she could hear complaints about the state of the milk. The corners of her mouth tugged into a smirk as she filled in her next crossword answer: Curdle.