Who: Julian and Evangeline. What: Julian is new in town! When: Say today. Where: Some street corner not far from central Seattle.
This place looked an awful lot like the one he'd just been in, Julian observed, pulling at the ends of his blue scarf and chewing on a bit of peppermint candy he'd found in his pocket. The first building he'd seen had been better suited to a postcard, but it had been dark and closed down, so he kept on past it and, walking on comfortable shoes with a non-stick sole, ended up comfortably in Seattle, where hopefully nothing stuck. He was teasing another candy out of its wrapper while he stood on the corner and looked down a long street of destruction: boarded up shop windows, streetlights bent in half or missing, tumbling bits of trash that nobody had thought to pick up. The candy was being difficult, so Julian reached out a long arm and snagged a man just mounting a bicycle on the curb. The bicycle fell over and the man, an older fellow even skinnier than Julian, yelped.
Julian handed him the candy to open, but he just stared at it and tried to get away. Julian kept his grip. "Have people been shopping through your windows?" he asked politely, feigning disinterest in his candy while looking again at the shops.
"Wh-wha?"
"Your windows are broken in your shops," Julian informed him, testily. "Are they always very broken, and you're just very messy, or was there perhaps a day to break windows... are you going to open that or not?" he interrupted himself sharply, looking down at the candy. The old man hastily began to twist the wrapper apart. Resuming, Julian said, "Because it doesn't make a very good impression on visitors."
"Reavers," the old man said.
"Obviously," Julian snapped back, "things have been reft. I am not an idiot."
Julian took two steps down the road, not releasing the front of the man's jacket. He had to stop because the man didn't want to be dragged. "Hey! Let me go!" Julian took his candy, but he didn't let the man go, pushing it into his mouth and pondering the situation. The man wriggled this way and that for a moment, and then, jumpy and desperate, he aimed a good kick into Julian's shin.
The candy popped out of Julian's mouth and he let out a very resentful, "OW." The man grabbed up his bicycle and pedaled away as fast as he could go. Julian was left on the corner, where he sat down abruptly on the curb and held his shin close to his chest. "Ow..."