Welcome to Gaia! ::

Just after sunset a man will walk down the street, and Chloe may find herself revisiting her doubts and regrets regarding her new employer, because the fellow he has sent is nothing less than frightening. He is much taller than Harmon, and broader of shoulder, a man of lean muscle and starkly black clothing, with hair that seems to glow white in the early evening light, though surely it has just gone grey early in his life. His face is rougher than Harmon's by far, with a craggy unfamiliarity that suggests he is not originally from Sunderland, no more than the exotic Harmon. But there is nothing about this man that is gentle, tender, or romantic: he looks like the worst sort of bully-boy, like a mercenary, the sort of sellsword that others often cross the street to avoid.

But he is followed by a clever brown grimalkin with a striped tail that she may indeed recognize, and though he seems to be ignoring the animal, it is clearly behaving like a clever little chaperone.

And as he comes up to the door, knocking heavily, he is also carrying something over one arm -- an innocuous looking basket covered with a pale cloth. He will check it as he waits for someone to come to the door, and children watching through the window may see him do so, and get a glimpse of the gloriously red round shapes in his basket: a dozen fresh apples. At the bottom of the stairs, Whsst stops to meticulously begin cleaning the base of his tail.

"Yes," says the gentleman, peering down at the lot of them -- down and down at her and the children, as if Chloe and the children both are some sort of exotic species that he does not particularly understand. He has no interest in the miniature humans crowded behind the young woman and would in fact prefer that they are kept away from him. Frankly, they look fragile. What if he breaks one on accident? What if it starts making loud noises?

On the stoop the grimalkin looks up with interest from unashamedly cleaning its bottom, tongue still sticking out just slightly as it examines the toddler approaching him. Whsst has not had much experience with children, living until now in a brothel, and so does not suspect the damage that small children who know no better can do. He sees simply another person, a little smaller than most, and is delighted at the promise of attention. Rolling up onto his feet, the grimalkin pushes his soft head into the little one's hand, ears forward and tail flagged with pleasure.

For his part, Ivon ignores the grimalkin, making absolutely no move to rescue it from what may be a sticky-handed dangerous midget. Instead, cautiously, he offers Chloe the basket. "I will take you to the Red Bird," he tells her in a deep and rumbling voice, uttering each clipped word with care -- there is nonetheless still a trace of a foreign accent there. "This is from Harmon, for the .. children."

Whsst is astonished. What is happening. First he is swatted, instead of the caress he is expecting (he does not seem to understand the toddler is trying to pet him, and flattens his ears in dismay), and then -- only then does he get a bit of a scratch! And if that is not confusing enough, then he is squashed! And then noise! Loud noise! And he decides he's had quite enough of it all, after that, hissing fitfully after the already retreating children and putting in a retreat himself: he darts behind Ivon, huddled behind the tall man's ankles.

Ivon merely waits for Chloe to eliver the apples: he shows neither impatience nor pleasure in his expression. He simply waits for Chloe to step outside of the door, at which point he will walk along beside her, as this is what he has been paid to do. In fact, he will not speak until they are at the bottom of the steps and on the street, at which point he finally offers: "I am Ivon." He peers down at her, as if aware that this is generally not understood to be a sufficient instruction, and then carefully continues. "I am to guard you."

Unfortunately for poor Chloe, small talk is not Ivon's forte. He glances down at her, as if startled to hear so much out of someone so much smaller than he, and then considers her question. It will take him some time to consider it, in fact, at which point she may wonder if at least one of the words she has used is not contained in his limited supply of words in the language native to Sunderland. At least when he is thinking so hard he does not appear to be considering committing some kind of crime against her: that would, perhaps, be too much to think about at once.

"I am willing so long as I am paid," he rumbles to her, though this is not a particularly informative answer.

Whsst trots along behind them, happier now that they are leaving the sticky, bewildering midgets far behind. Being that he is Harmon's token of recognition, it is unlikely that he, at least, will return as a secondary escort. He stops once, to clean his head, catches up again, and then darts ahead to sit on someone else's stoop and clean his side while they catch up.

There are few with the courage to try their luck against someone as mean as Ivon appears, and fewer still that would dare to do so for as small a prize as little Chloe. Their walk is uneventful, if silent. When they arrive he will take her around to the back entrance of the Red Bird -- the servant's door may be humble, but it also means that Chloe will not have to endure so much as a glance of the customers eagerly awaiting their turn. Instead she is lead into .. well .. a kitchen. It may seem rather anticlimactic to her: there is almost nothing that differentiates it from a kitchen in any of the nicer taverns. There is a drudge in the corner, turning a spit with a languid expression; a pair of wenches with their blouses pulled low, gathering trays and taking them off again, and an older woman who must once have been quite lovely many years ago standing guard over several dishes in varying stages of preparation.

"Oy, lass, don'tcha just stand there." She nods politely to Ivon but fixes her gaze upon Chloe, and nods over towards a much smaller, much more modest tray left on one corner of the preparation table. "Take the tray, little miss, and just you take it up the servant's stair, there, all the way up to the garret. Mister Harmon will come see to you in a bit, but you might as well make yourself useful in the meantime."

It is all so .. so incredibly ordinary. There is soup on the tray, and a mug of tea, and an apple already cut in thin quarters, sitting beside a perfectly ordinary hunk of bread. The tray will be normal, and if she takes it, the stair will be just as normal, a skinny little stair that the customers never see, which presumably leads towards a set of private living quarters.

"What? I'm not hungry! I'm never hungry! Go -- wait, are you the new girl? Come in!" The voice is certainly female, and young, and petulant; if she is listening for them, there are also hints of weariness and of weakness there. On the other side of the door is a smallish garret room, clearly a personal and private room compared to the public rooms available for hourly rental. There are knickknacks on little shelves on the walls, and embroidered pillows here; there is a little couch, and a large ornamental brazier to make up for the lack of a fireplace, and woven blankets on the little bed. It is parlor and bedroom and dressing room all in one; there is even a copper tub leaning against the wall in one corner.

On the bed is a young woman, hardly sixteen or seventeen years of age, with the protruding belly that proclaims her current condition. It is rather large and she herself is rather small, making the great lump at her middle seem even more dramatic, and she leans back into the bed into a great mounding of pillows to support her slight weight. She is not taking well to the pregnancy, it seems, for while she once must have been quite pretty her skin is drawn and pale, and there are lines of weariness around her eyes. But her hair has been braided back behind her, and she is wearing a lacy, frilly sleeping gown, and her gaze is perfectly clear.

"Well, look at you!" She says to Chloe with some surprise, looking her up and down critically. "He really does know how to find them, doesn't he now? Come in, make yourself at home, and you might as well eat that. I don't want it."

"Lily? Is that what he told you?" She sounds both surprised and wryly amused, and the shading of her words at least marks her as far more jaded than sweet little Chloe. "Nasty sense of humor he's got .. but it'll do. Yes. Lily will do well enough. It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Chloe." She will take Chloe's hand and give it a gentle squeeze, clasping it briefly in both of her own before letting it go. Her hands are soft and smooth as a lady's, for the work she does will not give her the callouses of any other working woman -- it is in her best interest to keep her touch smooth. "Just you have a care not to go rubbing one eye while you're here, although I can promise you that Harmon can't cast no illusions."

Pretty as she is, Lily's voice has a quality that few young people do; there is a weariness in it which comes only with age or experience. But she has not let it sorrow her, oh no, and if her tone is rather dry, there is a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. She knows well enough that Chloe is unlikely to know what she's talking about (why should it matter if she rubs her eye? what do illusions have to do with it?), and she's hoping the girl will ask what she means. If she does, maybe the story that Lily spins to explain will distract her from the food.