Irritations

Who: Robyn and Nate
Where: Little Haven
When: early afternoon

Robyn was loitering somewhere other than her usual stoop though not far from her normal set up. She’d just wished some woman well even though it was obvious that the worst was bound to happen. Robyn didn’t need to be psychic to see the pain in the woman’s eyes, smell the musky, dank scent that came with being cooped up dealing with the sick all day. In fact, Robyn had spent most of the reading trying not to breath it in for fear of catching whatever the woman had been trying to fend off her children. Death was waiting for them though and having felt its icy chill too close to her, she’d moved to a bench a block away, knees pulled up towards her chest while she watched those around, wondering if Roy’s path would cross her way as well.

Nate, for his part, wasn’t best pleased that he was still banned from attending the gala tonight. It wasn’t so much that he was all that bothered about going, more than he disliked intensely being told that he could not do something. It went against the grain, but he knew this was something that, for now, he needed to fall in line with. So, instead of getting ready to go out - as his mother and step-father currently were - he’d taken himself out of the house and onto the streets, covering a different part of town to his usual haunts. When he saw the girl sitting alone on the step, he changed his course enough to sit down beside her before he started taking off his shoe. “Stone,” he explained looking around at her.

Robyn watched the boy approach, turning her head with him as he sat next to her to the point where her cheek rested on her knees. He had that look, then one that people seemed drawn to. She wasn’t sure if she was or not because it didn’t come to her as strongly as it had with Roy or with Adelaide. “How tragic,” she murmured, still looking at him sideways.

“Well, it’s hardly the end of the world - just makes walking not exactly comfortable,” he said, making a show of shaking a pebble out of his shoe. He smiled at her, “I’m Nate,” he said, always one to introduce himself to strangers.

“You are,” Robyn agreed with a nod as if she knew that. She didn’t but it was fine to play her part even if Roy was right and it was off putting. For an instant she wished things were different, that it was easier to be more normal, but it wasn’t that easy. “Nate with the impeded walk.”

“See, this is generally the part where you tell me your name - in the normal scheme of things,” Nate supplied as he put on his shoe once more, since she’d missed out that part. he found that sometimes, all people really needed was a little push in the right direction.

“In the normal scheme perhaps,” Robyn said, smirking a little. She was still feeling self aware so when he pointed out that she realized that not doing things normally was her first reaction. “Robyn,” she told him as if he should have known.

“This isn't the normal scheme of things?” he asked her, thinking back and wondering if he’d met her before. The way she said her name made him think that possibly he had, but normally his memory for names and faces was impeccable.

The little smirk was back and she shrugged her small shoulders lightly. “Would you be afraid if it wasn’t?” she asked sounding a little far away with the question. She fixed her gaze on him, watching him closely for any reaction.

“No,” Nate told her, honestly. He didn’t do fear. He’d never felt it, as far as he knew. “So, if this isn’t normal, what is it?” he asked her. This girl was odd, and he wondered what her game was, whether there was something wrong with her in the head, or whether she had just set out to be contrary for the sheer hell of it.

Fearless. Robyn wondered if that meant reckless as well. Typically the two came hand in hand. “Different,” she told him plainly. Letting her knees fall she sat closer to properly with her feet tucked under her and her knees out. “What brings you here?” she asked as she folded her hands in her lap and waited, eyes still on him.

“A stone in my shoe. What kind of different?” he asked, not letting up on that at all, shooting the question back at her with speed.

Robyn was interested in why he seemed so literal. He seemed to take everything as how it effect that instance, not why he was wandered where he’d wind up with a stone in his shoe. “Different. The kind where your scheme of things doesn’t apply.”

“See, you have me intrigued - what do you mean?” Nate asked, giving her a sparkling, disarming type smile, one that he’d worked at perfecting. He wanted to know what she meant, because she seemed to be being evasive. He didn’t like evasive.

Nate’s smile left Robyn frowning a little. It was nice, in that way that things like that could be nice, but it was very...bright. “It doesn’t apply because it doesn’t apply here. Things don’t fit into your neat little boxes. You have to look outside them.” She made a little box shape with her hands then opened them up as if the box was opening. “What’s outside your box?” she asked looking at him closely.

“What’s different about this place, here - or you?” Nate asked her. “Why should this be any different to everything else when you get down to it? In my experience, things may look different on the surface, but at their core, everything’s the same .”

Robyn tilted her head a little then shook it. “Why do you shove everything into your box?” she countered. “It’s different because things aren’t what they seem. I’m not what I seem, you aren’t what you seem and everything else isn’t what it seems.” She paired it with a knowing nod as if she very much did know what she was talking about.

“Okay, I’m not what I seem. What am I then?” Nate asked, keeping a pleasant front and not showing the fact that he found her way of speaking to be, quite frankly, annoying as hell. Couldn’t a guy get a straight answer to a straight question? So far, the only thing he’d found out was her name and that he couldn’t use her.

“You seem charming and dull,” Robyn pointed out. “You aren’t. You’re more than you appear to be. Something more complicated.” She’d spent years studying people and making up their futures, it was easy to see that much about Nate. Beneath his friendly exterior was something else and she couldn’t help but wonder if it was something dark or just something broken. “What am I?” she asked, wondering if he would play along.

“Kind of annoying,” Nate admitted. “Evasive. Slightly weird,” he added, though he kept the ‘charming’ part, telling her it as though it were a joke, rather than the absolute truth. Maybe he should just have kept on walking, but when you set out to meet people, you couldn’t expect every single one to be a hit.

Robyn noticed that he didn’t drop the charming and she started to let go of the ‘broken’ part on his inside. She forced herself to not shift away from him. “Not evasive. Just different. Nothing to evade.” Besides her own sham, but she hadn’t offered to tell his fortune yet so she wasn’t lying yet. “You’re very literal,” she told him. “Straightforward. You walk one path and try not to deviate but instead drag everything around you onto it.” Most of it was assumptions based on a few clues and Robyn sat back to see how she’d done.

Nate considered that. “Maybe you think I’m literal for the same reason I think you’re evasive. I ask a question and you step round it, rather than answering it. As a result, you think I’m literal when I chase an answer that you’ve failed to give. And you think I’m literal because I’m not willing to let go of the fact that you’re skipping things.”

“No, I think you’re literal because when I asked what brought you here you told me about your shoe, not what brought you down my street,” Robyn pointed out, ignoring his talk about her being evasive. What was there to evade? She’d already told him that. He was trying to put her into his box and she was determined not to fit.

“And I think you’re evasive because, when I ask you a question, you either give me some vague, one word answer that’s no answer at all, or you respond with a question. you don’t actually impart any information at all, merely say something that ticks the box of you not ignoring me entirely,” he told her. “As for me being literal, I was here because I was wandering, with no real purpose and I stopped because I got a stone in my shoe. It was a more interesting answer than ‘no reason at all’ - and far more information than you’ve given me in return.”

Robyn gave him a bit of a look then turned on the bench to face him properly. “Which question would like me to answer and I will,” she told him, even though she hadn’t lost that distant tone to her voice. “Wandering...” she turned that over in her head, looking at him. “What drove you to wandering? I would imagine you are usually full of purpose.”

Sure, you’ll answer my questions, but you go straight on and ask questions of your own, how very distracting Nate thought to himself. “What makes you think I’m full of purpose?” he asked her, rather than going back over his previous questions.

“The way you walk,” she told him. “Even when you’re wandering you have some direction.” It was still a somewhat vague answer, but that was how she operated, on assumptions and observations.

“You were watching me walk?” he asked, wondering if she had been. And what she’d seen if she had - truly today he’d been wandering. He hadn’t had a mission, not more than the fact that he never truly stopped his role, he hadn’t had a purpose. All he’d wanted was to get out of the house for a while.

Robyn nodded and pointed in the direction he came from. “Watched you come. You didn’t notice?” People alternating in ignoring her completely and becoming unhinged by her very presence. It was interesting to see where people fell when they were less obvious about it.

“I was walking,” Nate told her. He laughed a little, though it was a pleasant enough tone, not directed at her as such. “Are you used to being noticed by people you watch?” he asked her, in a gently teasing sort of tone.

Robyn shrugged. “Yes and no; depends on the person. Apparently I can be spooky,” she said the last part with an eerie voice, leaning towards him with a little smile before sitting back again. His laugh was nice, the kinda that sounded nice.

That would go with the damn weird, Nate thought to himself, though it didn’t show outwardly at all. “Really?” he asked her, chuckling a little more.

It really was a nice laugh. Nice enough that she tilted her head as if to hear it better. “Comes with the territory,” Robyn said. And it kept her safe. It kept people at their distance out of fear of being hexed or something equally stupid.

“Does it - how so?” Nate asked. He realised he was asking a whole lot of questions, probably more than he normally would, but something about her made that happen. Possibly because he was dissatisfied with the quality of answers being given. Yes, that was definitely it.

Robyn pulled the little bag from where it was tied around her waist. “Do you want your fortune told?” she asked him expectantly.

Nate looked at her, and the penny dropped. That was her game. He chuckled a little and stood, shaking his head. “Right - no, thanks. Not really my thing,” he told her, pleasantly, but it was a denial all the same. That explained the really annoying evasiveness of her attitude - it was all part of the ‘mystic’ routine. Well, he wasn’t playing. He could spare the money, but it would be a waste all the same and better it in his pocket than hers.

Robyn shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal. She rarely approached anyone these days anyway. People came to her because she had a reputation. “No of course it isn’t,” she said knowingly, turning so she faced forward again and looked up at him. “You know where you’re going.” He wasn’t one to believe in fate and fortune. He made his own. In a way Robyn appreciated that about him, that he wasn’t the type of leave things up to chance, but she’d grown into her role as a seer and did believe that some things were better left to chance. Some things were out of one’s control.

“Yeah, I do,” he said, deciding that it was away from her. But, she’d accused him of being literal, so he figured he’d go with that. May as well leave the girl thinking she was right. He looked down the street, then pointed. “that way,” he said, decisively. And then he started walking.

“Of course you do,” Robyn said with that same airy voice again turning on the bench to face him. She looked down the way he pointed then back up at him. That way of course. “I’ll be seeing you,” she said as he walked away, voice knowing.