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Ruka sat on the ground, watching Jessie run around the open space at the edge of town. She felt bad for keeping the poor dog locked up all day...The cool night breeze felt good on her pale skin, but she missed the daylight. The soft glow of the moon held none of its warmth...But that was to be expected...Even if the moon gave vampires a slightly buzzed feeling from Twilight on, it was still a piece of rock floating around the world; Not a star the world needed for life to flourish.

After sitting for a good long while, keeping an eye on Jessie, the dog ran back over to her as if ready to go home. The vampire got to her feet, patting Jessie as she did so, and said "Come on then," with a little smile. It was a strange feeling she had right now; she was starting to feel a little better, but she didn't want to. She didn't want to feel better...No, she didn't deserve to have that sensation of redemption...After all, it was her fault he had ended up like that in the first place. Why should she be allowed to be happy when she allowed the man she fell in love with to die and a monster to replace him?

A quick sigh escaped her lips as they started back into town...There was another vampire around. Ruka's ears perked up a little, listening carefully to see if she couldn't locate them before she simply ran into him...After the events with Ai, she didn't want to take any chances...That was when Ruka realized she had left her silver rapier back in her room. She cursed herself slightly for having been so careless; after all, they had found her once already, so she had every right to be at least a little wary of any vampire she came near.

She turned quickly to face the taller vampire, but didn't seem all that phased by him. "Hello...And, I'm not really alone, am I? Jessie is here,"She said in the same tone she had always been told to use when greeting another vampire, but none of the usual formalities accompanying it. Her voice instinctively carried all the markers of a lady of vampiric breeding, but none of her actions complimented that tone.

Ruka decided that Drakul was not working with her family just from the simple fact that she had been able to sense him from the moment she walked into the town...Given, until only moments before he had approached her it hadn't been much of a sense, but...Regardless, if he hadn't left with Ai, that was a sign against that theory. "Besides...I doubt after all that trouble last night..."She had thought it would be alright to try and talk about it in that voice; it was one of quiet demeanor and subtle confidence...But she stopped short, unwilling to continue.

The water was dull and chemicalized into near impossibility to recognize as water (besides the fact that Malaki obviously had never drunk water before), but there was a faint echo of the tingling spark water had dancing within it, above it and that could be seen in spirit. The pear has a biting tang of not just chemicals but poison. If Malaki didn't know how humans "treated" more or less all of their produce this way, and was sure that Horatio didn't know what he was, he'd have thought the man was trying to poison him.

"Thanks." When Malaki raised the bottle to his lips again, the water seemed... clearer, somehow. Despite that the water coming from Cascade's pipes certainly was as good as that from the city, there was just something that made the water the bottle had contained before seem to be as clear as mud and as healthy as if it had gotten a dose of radioactive energy, to compare what it held now. The pear didn't look much different. Still that side of soft but it also, somehow, seemed different. Malaki wondered if he'd give himself away to those who knew how to look just by apparently, but invisibly, since he himself didn't notice the changes, leaking light everywhere.
"You carve as a hobby?" Malaki asked with curiosity in his voice and smiling slightly. "What'd do you make it into, most often?"


Drakul raised an eyebrow at the tone of voice but lack of "correct" terms. Not that he cared much; that was the way of the younger ones trying to be fancy and sounding more important than they were (of course, as things go, what Drakul considered "young" was different than what others might see it as).

"Doe-eyes, that dog couldn't keep you safe from anything bigger than a rabid rabbit or a fox," Drakul snorted and then titled his head.
"Yesterday night, eh. I was wondering if I would have to put myself into the middle of all that noise and break the fight up. But apparently whoever were involved reasoned it out between themselves," Drakul said blandly, giving Ruka a sharp, toothy smile.

Horatio glanced up from his work, his eyes briefly meeting Malaki's. "Animals." He seemed to have spoken without thinking, for now he backtracked a bit. "I make all sorts of things. Boxes, whistles..." He let his gaze trail over the food, not looking at anything in particular, just trying to regather his thoughts.

The light from the long fluorescent bulbs above them was a bright artificial white, full of glare. Horatio preferred the dimmer orange glow of the lamps in the storeroom and upstairs, but it was not economical to use those in the main room, not when it needed to be kept so well-lit for customers and commercial use.

"I would like to know," Horatio said finally with a sort of cultivated casualness in his voice, "what you are doing in Cascade. How did you get hurt?"

Horatio smiled very slightly, turning the piece of wood over in his hands. "Yes, it's long enough," he agreed. He had not actually decided what he was going to make it into yet, but Malaki's suggestion was certainly a good one. And his excuse, well, it worked as well. Horatio found that he had no real inclination to ask any more questions about it. It was certainly a shorter interview than either Ruka or Ai had been expected to participate in and he felt that the one question he asked was more out of honest curiosity than anything else. He was being far too lax about it all, of course, but...

Horatio shifted in his chair, feeling awkward with himself. It was a sensation that he was not used to and he straightened, almost shrugging his shoulders to physically throw it off.

Malaki was rather surprised no deeper probing was forthcoming, since his answers, while the absolute truth in a very wide sort of scope, had been more than vague. It was, perhaps, the nature of his self that, unnoticed, affected Horatio's drive to probe deeper, the truth of his words somehow noticed and becoming "enough". Malaki wasn't sure he liked this possible influence. There were, after all, many reasons why "demons" and "angels" (or whatever equivalents there were in any given culture) shouldn't involve themselves directly on the mortal Earth plane.

"I'd tell you more, since you've offered shelter, but at this point there's a need of a certain... sensitivity in the issue," Malaki offered up, unable to let his conscience lie in this matter. Humans were inquisitive creatures (of course, within a wide range of inquisitiveness), and one of them taking his words, however actually and sincerely true, without questioning, made him uncomfortable.

Perhaps more because it was impossible to know if, but quite possible, that his very being was affecting the nature of humans, rather than that the truth wasn't questioned.

And how to explain non-physical injuries whose effects had been transposed onto physical flesh?

"Emphasis on 'were', Horatio." Malaki said with a shrug, leaning back against the back of the chair and taking a few thoughtful sips of sparkling water. "I was injured quite a while ago, and all that's left is some bruising. The injuries weren't completely... physical in nature, so it's also a sort of phantom pain, though more... real, as it were." Malaki smiled and then, as he remembered human magical abilities, Malaki knew he had a perfect solution to this.
"I was locked in a magical battle; that leaves some injuries on the body and mind that normal science can't heal."

This could be revealed without problem, really; Malaki knew witches had been fighting hard and bitterly during the Apocalypse-that-almost-was, and since any magic humans could do was tied to you being a witch, that should be the natural assumption made when he mentioned magic.

"And as long as there is a bed, I don't mind. This investigation is hardly... official, and money's not something I have. So otherwise I would just have been sleeping outside," Malaki said with a smile and a negligent wave of his hand, curiously unconcerned with the prospect of sleeping on the streets.
"It's not winter, at least."

The door knob turned quietly, and the door opened just a crack. Of course, as soon as it had, Jessie scurried into the shop. Ruka watched the little dog run inside before she slowly let her eyes raise up, then realizing that she was certainly not alone in the shop despite the hour. The vampire probably should have figured, considering the lights were on and the door was unlocked. "Oh, I..."She stumbled on her words a little bit, "...I'm sorry...I didn't mean to interrupt..." The girl flushed the little bit she could, embarrassed to have walked in on a conversation to which she didn't belong.

Unbeknown to her, but for just an instant, her eyes flickered soft crimson and then returned to normal. She hadn't eaten anything at all since before Ai came, none the less had any blood. Of course, Ruka wouldn't notice for a while yet; she had gotten used to being much hungrier than this. However, it was a little different than what had become her norm, as she hadn't even eaten normal food. At this rate they would be that same bright red they had been when she stumbled into town again in no time.