Re: Mental: Cal/Gwen
[It is not a nice area. It's off the tourist track, near a restaurant that is bad enough they toss edible stuff out at the end of the night for lack of customers. Naturally, the rat population is thick in this neck of the woods - sorry Gwen. A light is lazily blinking in a window across the way, one letter has burned out. It flashes 'liqu-r' over and over, like a lighthouse for the washed up. The man backed up in the back of the dumpster is less king of this particular eroded-rotten cardboard castle, more, this is the last place anybody wants to be, even the homeless. The suit is once-expensive, now the mottled gray-black of dirt, of living in trash. The sleeves are torn at the seams, his wallet has been taken from him long ago. So have his shoes.
He is backed in the very far corner, under a heap of cardboard and plastic that has been dragged together to provide relief from the wind and low evening temperatures - and Cal has a hazy recollection of half a dozen people mentally passing remark on his smell.
The mental 'signal' as such is smaller. He's not looking to be heard, he is not a beacon. More like a wavering filament, ready to burn out. The mind is exhausted, an overpowering sense of fear.]