(After)life: Nel L & Lear L
Nel was still in the process of unpacking. She was something of collector. Junk, some might say, but she preferred to think of her acquisitions as treasures, which could be considered a romantic view of human baubles. But she liked clutter, something which she blamed on the indomitable minimalism of her verdant youth. There wasn't much room for clutter in green pastures, and even godly orgies tended to involve a vast amount of skin and fecundity, while being desperately lacking in the accessories department. All this was to say that Nel had quite a bit to unpack. She could've lured someone to help her, but she liked the tactility that came with positioning her own items where she liked them. Nel was laidback, but she liked what she liked, and she couldn't give a shit less about how things should be done.
All of this was a rather long way to explain why she wasn't present when the woman entered the studio. Nel was thinking of hiring someone to answer the phones and smile becomingly at the door, but Nel only liked certain people, and she didn't know this bizarre little town well enough to determine if she fancied any of its little inhabitants yet.
She climbed the stairs from her apartment just in time to hear that last clack of sandals. Nel slowed her ascent, and she watched the perch and cigarette retrieval, and then she smiled a slow and deliberate smile at the curl tucking. Well, well, well, and she could tell there was something amiss, but she didn't try to determine what. This unexpected woman would be a surprise. Nel wasn't particularly fond of surprises, but some of them turned out to be pleasant. Once upon a time, someone had left a very pretty brujera on her doorstep, and Nel had enjoyed that particular sacrifice immensely.
Dressed, because it would doubtlessly frighten the denizens of Repose if she wandered around naked while unpacking, she stepped out into the center of the warehouse-turned-studio. "You can smoke that. It won't bother me," she informed the woman who waited. Nel's accent was more British than anything else, though it wasn't truly British at all, and it certainly couldn't be tracked to any specific municipality.
She didn't ask any questions. She walked over to the couch opposite the one the woman occupied, and she sat. She hiked her pant leg up, and she crossed her leg at the thigh, and with no concern about discomfiting the woman, she stared. That there was power in the not-a-day-past-50 blond was deliberately glaring to anyone who knew anything about that sort of thing, but none of that massive strength was being used in the moment. There wasn't even a pinkie's worth of magic being aimed at the woman with the tellingly new sandals.