livelikeanimals (livelikeanimals) wrote in supernextdoor, @ 2012-02-26 22:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | 09.27.11, rowena, zeke |
Walking in like a fairytale
who: Rowena and Zeke
what: First Meeting
when: Tuesday Afternoon
where: Farmer's Market
warning: n/a
Rowena had a bit of a craving for some fresh strawberries. She had decided to ride one of the horses to the farmer's market as it wasn't too far from the palace and Cloud could use a long ride. She had a tendency to get temperamental when she was kept on palace grounds for too long. Armed with a covered basket, Rowena made the beautiful ride to the farmer's market to do a bit of shopping. She didn't see her friend Landon, figuring he was likely working elsewhere that day.
She walked around the market, having already picked out her strawberries, grabbing a few other things as well. Currently she was looking at some flowers. She drew the hood of her cloak back so she could lean in and inhale the scent of some peonies. Even though she was out in the modern world, Rowena was still wearing one of her work dresses that she normally did at the palace. It was certainly out of it's time in design, but she loved the colors. The seamstress Genevieve had made her several sturdy dresses to wear while she worked and was even making her a beautiful dress from the Halloween ball. Rowena didn't have a date or anything, but she was really looking forward to it.
Zeke had headed to the farmer's market after work. He'd be having dinner the next night with Fable and he figured that he'd invite her over and that meant making dinner and making dinner meant that he needed some fresh fruits and vegetables to go along with it. The best place in town to get both of those and perhaps a few other things was the farmer's market. What he hadn't expected, however, as he made his way through the crowd, was to walk back in time at least visually. He saw the girl with the hooded cloak looking like something out of a fairytale and he didn't pay enough attention to his feet and where he was going with his eyes busy taking her in. So when he bumped into a display of flowers and knocked them over, he felt like a complete moron and certainly the girl would hear the commotion considering she was only a few steps away from him.
He flushed desperately and bent to start picking up the flowers he'd upset. Thankfully none of them had been smashed or mussed up too badly. Nope, that would just be his pride that he'd smudged. "Idiot." he muttered to himself. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
Rowena turned when she heard a crashing noise. She saw a man knocking over some flowers as he bumped into them. She quickly went over to him, crouching down and beginning to help him pick them up. "Are you alright?" she asked with a soft smile and concern for his well being in her eyes. He seemed rather flustered and was muttering to himself.
The color on his cheeks only seemed to deepen when she indeed heard the noise and then rushed over to help all concerned with his well being. He sighed. "Yes." he told her. "I'm alright. Just clumsy as ever." he explained, even managing a little smile despite his complete and utter embarrassment.
They managed to get all the flowers up and she stood, holding now a bouquet of flowers. "Everyone can be a bit clumsy at times." she said with a sweet smile. "Don't tell anyone, but once I lost my balance while riding and fell from my horse into a puddle of mud." she said in a secretive, teasing whisper.
She didn't think he was a loser? Well that was definitely an improvement to his day. As was the fact that she continued to speak to him. He pulled out his wallet and paid the man whose flowers he'd toppled, deciding that the bouquet should belong to the girl if only for helping him after he disgraced himself. "Keep them." he explained to her. "For not laughing." he smiled. "I'm Zeke." he went on as he tucked his wallet away again and offered her a hand. "Zeke Owens."
She smiled, smelling the flowers. "They're lovely, thank you." she said, looking up at him with sparkling eyes. "I'm Rowena." she said, taking the hand he offered and shaking it. While she looked soft and fragile, her hand was strong and slightly worn from all the hard work she did. "It's nice to meet you, Zeke." Rowena didn't have a last name as she had never known her parents. She was instead raised almost collectively by the palace servants. though Mama Beth would always be her mother.
She didn't give him a last name, but he didn't want to question her. A first was good enough. "Nice to meet you too, Rowena. That's a beautiful name. Fitting for a pretty girl like yourself. So what brings you to the farmer's market?" he asked.
Rowena's cheeks went bright red at his compliment and she looked down with a shy smile. She wasn't too good at interacting with humans, as it were. She spent too much of her time with animals and they thought in a completely different way than humans. "Thank you." she said softly. "I was just picking up some fresh fruit and some other odds and ends." she said, looking up at him through her lashes.
That got a brighter grin from Zeke. "Me too!" he told her. "Well fruits and vegetables." he explained. "Having a friend over for dinner tomorrow and figured I needed to grab a few things. She's not the greatest cook." he told her, though he didn't go into detail at just how catastrophic Fable's culinary skills were. Of course the fact that he said 'she' made him pretty sure that she'd get the wrong idea. "I mean friend. Like... best friend. Not like... girlfriend. Not that there's anything wrong with her, but yeah, no. Ew. Not that she's 'ew'. I'm sorry. Can we start over?"
Rowena giggled, then pt her hand over her mouth to stifle it, but to no avail. "Sorry...It's ok." she said, smiling up at him. Zeke was a silly man, she thought to herself, but she found her most certainly entertained. "I'm sure your friend will enjoy everything from here." she said encouragingly.
"I have the tendency to run off on a tangent. Babble about nothing. It's really a pain in the rear end most of the time. I just go on and on about noth-…" he sighed and shook his head. "Just like that." he chuckled. "But yes, she should. I'm sure she'd be satisfied with me ordering pizza, but I figured I'd put a little more effort into it than that."
The more Zeke talked the more fascinating she found him. "She's lucky to have such a thoughtful friend." she said just as she spied one of her favorite stands that sold gourmet hot pretzels. "Would you like to join me for a snack?" she asked shyly, nodding her head toward the stand. She wanted to hear him talk more.
He blinked a little, obviously surprised by her invitation. "Really?" he asked, that same disbelief obvious in his tone. "I mean, yeah. Yeah, sure." he nodded. Like he was going to say no to her. He didn't exactly have the best track record when it came to women so when one asked to hang out with him more he wasn't going to question it. "So um..." he began as he took one more look at her on their way to the stand of pretzels. "Is there a reason you're dressed like you came out of a fairytale?"
It was rare for a human to catch Rowena's attention. Shy as she was, she rarely talked to her own kind, but there was something about Zeke that piqued her interest. She walked with him over to the pretzel stand, looking over the choices when he asked about her clothing.She looked down at her dress and saw his point. As used to seeing the ornate gowns of her majesty and the court, hers was simple in comparison. But out here, she stood out. "I work at the palace." she said, as if that explained it.
"Oh." he said. The palace. He'd lived in Toronto his entire life so he knew of the palace and the queen and the fact that a lot of vampires lived there or were in and out of there, but that just made him wonder if she was a vampire, but could vampires go out in the sun? He wasn't in control of his thoughts enough to keep them from slipping out. "Are you a vampire?" he asked her, brows furrowed in the middle and a quizzical look upon his face.
"What me? Oh no, no, I'm not a vampire." she said with a giggle. "I'm well...her majesty would call me a servant, I guess." she said, thinking employee didn't quite cover it. She was exceedingly loyal to the queen, unfailingly so. Employee sounded like some teenager at one of those horrid fast food places.
"A servant?" he said. Well that might not have sounded amazing to anyone else, but to Zeke it was sort of like Cinderella. Not that he thought he was any sort of prince to whisk her away or anything, but hey, he could dream. "Sounds interesting. What sort of servant stuff do you do?" he asked her, quite intrigued.
He did sound very interested. Rowena had never had someone ask her so many questions about herself. Likely because she never met anyone new. "I work with the palace animals, especially the horses and hunting dogs." she said as she picked a cinnamon sugar pretzel and some fresh squeezed lemonade. "I also help out in the kitchen. I like to cook."
"Sounds like fun." he said as he picked his own pretzel and a drink. He decided to pay for those as well before she could get the chance to argue it. "I like to cook too. And I love animals. Too much honestly. I mean I've got four dogs at home and the fact that I can turn into a bird gives me a soft spot for those too and it's really hard for me to just walk away from an animal in need. I swear I'm going to end up with a billion animals overrunning my home before long."
Zeke offered a lot of information about himself and it made her smile. Rowena thanked him for paying for her snack and led him over away from the market a little to sit under a tree. "You can shift?" She found the very interesting. "I'm different too...I can talk to animals telepathically." she said with a blush.
He hadn't exactly meant to tell her all of that all at once, but he'd found it was pretty easy to just let himself talk to the woman. Especially now that she said that she could talk to animals. "Really?" he asked her, obviously completely and utterly enthralled with what she was saying. "Yes. I can shift. Into a macaw. It's a rainbow colored bird." Which sometimes was lame, but whatever. "I'm also an elemental. A hybrid. Guess I'm rare or something. Do you think you can talk to animals, even humans that can shift into animals?" he questioned. What? It was a valid question.
Rowena munched on her pretzel as they talked, finding she was very happy to have run into Zeke. "Her majesty has a beautiful aviary and I believe a few macaws. And yes, I can talk to people telepathically when they shift into animals. No one has ever heard of an animal telepath, not even the vampires so I just sort of find things out about my gifts."
"So you're like... super rare then?" he asked. That was pretty interesting in and of itself. "Guess we're both rare. So us running into each other is like one in a bazillion." he chuckled as he took a bite of his own pretzel. "Which is pretty awesome." he added once he'd swallowed. "I'm glad I made a fool of myself today. At least I got to meet someone as different as me."
Rowena smiled around her straw as she took a drink of her lemonade. "You didn't make a fool of yourself, really." she assured him. "I'm glad we did meet though..." Rowena dared to think the two of them would become good friends. She didn't have many human ones.
"Well hopefully we'll be able to meet again." he told her. He hoped they'd run into each other sometime soon again. He didn't want to keep her from her shopping though so he bit his bottom lip and thought for a moment. "Um... could I give you my number?" he offered. "Then maybe we can hang out sometime."
She smiled up at him. "Sure. I don't have a cell phone or anything, but I can call you." she said as she looked around in her basket to find a little notebook and a pencil, offering it to him so he could give her his number. "If you ever wanted to, you could come ride horses at the palace." she suggested.
Zeke smiled. He hoped she'd call him so he wrote his name and number down on the paper she offered. "I teach during the day, but you can get a hold of me on that number pretty much anytime." he told her. If you don't catch me, just leave me a voicemail and a number where I can reach you and I'll call you back the first chance I get." he said as he handed her the notebook back.
Rowena took the notebook and tucked it away. "Ok. Maybe I'll see if I can get a cellphone myself, to make it easier." she said smiling up at him. It was then Cloud decided to trot over and inform her she was bored and wanted to go back to the palace. Rowena shook her head and chuckled. "Cloud's grown impatient with me." she said as the horse moved over to Zeke to examine him.
"Probably would make it easier." he agreed with a little nod. "Not that you have to get a cellphone on my account." When she commented that her horse was impatient, he glanced at his watch. "I should probably be going myself honestly." he admitted, though he wasn't ready just yet. "I hope that I'll hear from you, but if I don't it was nice meeting you."
Rowena smiled at him as she drew Cloud away from him and mounted up easily. "You'll hear from me." she said. "And it was nice meeting you, Zeke." She clucked to the horse and she turned, Cloud going into a trot to head back to the palace. Rowena herself looked back at Zeke until she entered the trees and could no longer see him. "What a nice man." she told the horse. If you like humans. the beast replied which made Rowena laugh, the happy sound ringing through the trees.