Shoplifters of the World Unite [Macaria]

[Sparrow]

Restless.

Sparrow was restless. Almost endlessly so, nowadays.

What had changed recently?

Not a lot.

To most, anyway.

To someone who constantly suffered through the fear of being hunted down and killed by anyone or anything, and stayed constantly locked in her room, the choice to allow Doc into her life had been something on the verge of Earth shattering. She had been in Tytonidae for two years already, and had made no true friends, really. She had spoken to Zoey more than she had anyone else, but even that was sparse at the best of times. Regular, consistent conversation with someone more than her sire was a breakthrough.

Dismantling every inch of traps in her house was a breakthrough.

Going out in to public for events more than once a year? That was all the proof some would need that God did, in fact, exist. Even if one of the outings had resulted in an anxiety attack and passing out in the middle of a bar, only to wake up with Doc next to her bed, presumably passed out from sitting there for so long.

She had a soft spot for him.

And it scared her.

And he certainly had not been doing anything to make her feel better about it lately. He was making it worse if she was honest with herself, and she couldn't tell if any of it was intentional or not. She would have to have a talk with Tori about it later, though the best way to bring up the possibility of potentially having feelings for your sire's ex-not-husband that she still had a thing for was a subject that was going to be hellish to breach on a good day, and more of a living nightmare than vampirism if the woman's mood wasn't right, she assumed.

Sparrow's feet had long since carried her from the safety of the Eyrie and toward the Honeymead station. She was headed toward Cherrydale district in the hopes that perhaps, just perhaps, shooting at the undead pests inside the catacombs below the mausoleum would quell the itching in her fingers and give her mind something to focus on.

The raven-haired woman stepped off the train and made her way outside, doing her best to blend in with the thinning crowd around her as the dark worked its tendrils through the surrounding air. She unconsciously set her hand over the pistol holstered over her right hip as she slipped by several shady looking men with teeth that matched the plating of her gun, neither of them seeming to mind the fact they were exchanging their wares out in public. A single, well-aimed shot at one of them left the second confused, before he, too, slumped over enough to fall against the first man's frame. It looked like they were trying to hug each other for a moment before they both crumpled to the ground.

Awwh. How sweet.

From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of something she wasn't entirely sure she was seeing correctly.

A zombie, outside the mausoleum.

Carrying what looked to be an armful of... groceries.

Zombies didn't need groceries. If that was not a breach of the masquerade, Sparrow would have to tell Velveteen that she didn't know what she was doing anymore and quit.

Despite the instinct to empty the fourth bullet from the clip into the creature (with the first being the bullet she had shot into Doc's foot the night she had found out about Mortll), she instead chose to follow it at a distance.

Who on Earth would be controlling this thing? And why did they need actual -food-? A million other thoughts raced through the Russians mind as she meandered along for quite some time, leaving the more developed parts of Harper Rock to go out toward... who knew what. It looked like fields of some sort, off in the distance. She didn't know the city even had farms close by.

Maybe she needed to get out more.

The unpleasant taste of dirt and a stinging sensation in her jaw brought Sparrow out of her thoughts.

"Ow."

Palms flattened against the ground as she made to push herself up, and she tipped her chin down to her collar to look and see what she had tripped over.

A body.

Oh, goody. A pit started settling into her stomach as she tried to imagine what type of person she might run in to out here. And she hadn't been paying attention to where she was going; she only knew that the zombie was making its way up to a farmhouse at the same grueling pace it had set out at by the time Sparrow had first seen it. It was obvious that it was someone who could absolutely not be bothered to care about the masquerade in any capacity, which meant that it was entirely possible she was putting her life at risk just being around here.

She had to know why the heck that zombie needed bananas, though, and nothing short of a trip to the shadow realm would stop her from finding out what it was.

She didn't know if Doc would be proud of her tenacity, or upset about her stupidity.

Probably both.

So she stood. It would only take a minute to have a peek around, right?

[Macaria]

Then.

Macaria was at a loss. It hadn’t been that long ago that she’d been human and had needed things like lettuce, bread and cheese. And bananas. Also ice cream. Christ but she missed ice cream. Still, she wasn’t too sure what her new house guest/house prisoner ate, what her dietary requirements were or whether or not she could actually be bothered to leave the house to get whatever the hell the blood thief wanted.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and read back over her notes. So far the experimentation process had been going fairly well, with more intensive tests still to come. Which, she realised with a groan, only intensified the need to get the human some actual food that wasn’t tapped from the vein. She was pretty sure that wasn’t healthy. Or even particularly sanitary.

She rose from her desk with a rustle of silk and cotton, gliding from her room into the main body of the farmhouse. Kaleen was nowhere to be seen; a mildly worrying idea. Clouseau had Kato, Ria had Kaleen. She had a quick look around, making sure there wasn’t a blood thief lurking behind the curtains waiting to pounce. Satisfied that her carotid was safe for the time being, she ambled over to her small altar.

It was a simple spell, one she’d mastered fairly early on following her nocturnal rebirth, and the words tripped from her tongue without thought. She didn’t especially enjoy venturing from her farmhouse into the outside world. There were people out there. It was much nicer to stay at home where she could get on with her experiments and general necromancy without being bothered. Or attacked by pitchfork waving locals. She’d read Frankenstein, she had a good idea of how it would go.

Movement came from the piled corpses she kept for an occasion such as this. She pointed at the first zombie to rise.

“Thing One,” she pointed to the second, “And Thing Two.”

The arduous process of naming the risen dead out of the way, she moved on to the second item of business for the night.

“Thing One, you are to pick up… groceries. Fruit, vegetables, bread. Perhaps some meat of some sort. And by that I mean animals that aren’t human. And have never been human,” she paused, “I’d ask if I was making myself clear, but…”

She gave a wry smile, exerting her will in lieu of more detailed communication with the recently risen dead. She turned to Thing Two.

“As for you, bottled water, some wine and…” she paused. What on earth would make a good addition? She felt curiously as though she were planning a macabre picnic. She sighed.

“Just the water and the wine.”

She completed preparing the two of them and sent them on their way, helping them avoid the walls and coffee table as they made their way out of the farmhouse and into the city at large.

As she watched them shuffle down the path she wondered if she should have sent more of them out just to be sure that the errand would get done. In the past, sending one zombie to complete a task had been met with limited success. Or abject failure. Mostly abject failure. They were not exactly the most reliable of servants, but they were needed for the look of the thing. Appearances are important.

She returned to her desk and continued writing up her notes.

Now.

About forty-five minutes later, she heard the front door… well, not open, exactly. Just the percussive impacts of something walking into it repeatedly, underlayed with the rustling of a brown paper bag. She shook her head ruefully. One day she really would have to teach her little helpers how handles worked. Or doorbells. Either or.

She rose once more, putting her pen aside and closing the file in front of her. After locking it away safely in a filing cabinet, she made her way, back through the main room, and into the entryway she insisted on referring to as the vestibule. Really it was just a stepped, raised platform that lent the door some implied gravitas.

Opening the door, she stepped smartly to the side to allow the forward momentum of the zombie to see it safely over the threshold. Judging by what came tumbling out of the bag as he spectacularly failed to navigate the three steps correctly, it was Thing One. Of Thing Two there was, as yet, no sign.

She was about to close the door when she noticed something picking itself up a little way down the path. Assuming it was the prodigal zombie returning, she slipped through the door and made her way down the trail towards the figure, admiring the foliage as she went. And trying to ignore the squirming scarecrow that seemed to do entirely the opposite job. On the plus side, the birds were so preoccupied with that that they left her plants alone. Sometimes things are just destined to work out.

As she got closer to the figure she’d seen, it became steadily more and more apparent that this was not Thing Two. It wasn’t even a zombie. What it was was a small, scrawny, fairly ragged looking (though this was likely due to the corpse she’d tripped over) young girl with dark hair. Macaria raised an eyebrow. Most perturbatory. Something was awry. An interloper, a trespasser, on the grounds of her farm. She almost reached for the gun she kept at her ankle on principle.

“Wait, I know you,” she said, surprised, “Well. Not know you, but I’ve seen you around. You have a stup-... interesting name. A bird, or something like that, correct? I’m leaning towards Finch. You were at a… lineage event I went to last year.”

She paused, remembering she was supposed to be indignant.

“And just what in the name of the pit below do you think you’re doing on my farm? While you’re about it, feel free to tell me why I shouldn’t feed you to the zombies.”

[Sparrow]

Sparrow was dusting herself off when she heard approaching footsteps, and reached for her pistol more out of reflex at this point than anything else. She didn't draw it from its holster, though; only fingered over the lines of it while it still sat holstered at her hip when she noticed that the zombie had not suddenly turned around and decided to give a demonstration in self-defense against fruit.

Her eyebrows furrowed together as she pondered over her options, each one escalating in severity before she forced herself to take a moment to try and comprehend the words that were being spoken to her by the not-zombie who had come down the drive.

"You know, you're not the first person lately to say that my name is stupid. No points for originality for you," she quipped. "Though I will say that no one has yet thought of 'Finch' when trying to recall who I am." She paused a moment to readjust her shirt a touch, nudging the now dusty ribbed tank top around until its seams were aligned correctly down her sides, and matched up with ones that traveled neatly down the sides of her skinny jeans until the material bunched up around her ankles.

"Sparrow," she finally said, looking up to peer at the woman more closely in an effort to recall who she was. The woman's memory was terrible when it came to most social situations. She was always too busy being stuck in her head, replaying numerous possible outcomes, both fantastic and horrifying, for whatever particular situation she might find herself in, no matter if it was a celebration or a hunt. "And despite you remembering me from... whatever exactly it was that I went to, I afraid I can't recall who you are even a little bit."

It kind of made her feel bad, really. Not many people seemed to take much notice of her at all, and to run in to someone who had and not know who they were in return was a tad disturbing to her, if only because it meant she hadn't been paying more attention to her surroundings at the time.

And that could have been dangerous. To her, anyway. Possibly. Maybe.

The possibility of horrific outcomes had also lead the woman to completely estranging all her neighbors by tearing down her house in Sparrow Lane and having it rebuilt on stilts taller than she was, complete with a filthy moat on the 'ground' floor swimming with awkward looking creatures galore, and all fenced in with barbed wire and carefully hidden electric wire. You had to know where the concrete was hidden below the muddy water to even get to the stairwell safely.

"As for what I'm doing here, I was following a zombie that was carrying a bag of groceries from what it looked like, as odd as that might sound. I wanted to know where it was going and why. Masquerade violations are something that I try to keep my eye on because being chased by angry mobs is more unpleasant than most would think it would be, and the undead wandering around in plain sight is not exactly the best way to keep creepy things undercover."

It did sound odd. And she probably would have been stared at for a time before any normal person would respond to her concerns about such a thing. Tori might have believed her more readily than Doc might, just because the woman knew her better than anyone else did, but Doc? He already thought that she had issues just because she was a female. Her recent emotional outbreak hadn't helped any in that department. She frowned a little as she thought about it, and dropped both hands down to her sides. She shoved her thumbs into her pockets and let her wrists hang, thin bangles chinking away at each other as gravity resettled them into their new positions on her arm.

"Feed me to the zombies, though? Why on Earth would you do that? Don't tell me that that thing was yours."

Macaria didn't really have to, though. Just from looking around, there were several of them around the property, and one even attached to boards of some sort in the middle of the field. She heard an angered grunt from the distance, and watched as birds seemed to flock to the animated corpse with a certain malevolent glee.

How... creepy.

"How do you even get them to listen to you like that? All the ones I've ever come across have been brutish and stupid on a good day. I didn't think any of them were even capable of understanding commands, much less acting out on them successfully."

Maybe she did have someone dangerous on her hands. What was the word she was looking for...

"Are you a necromancer?"

Too many questions. She was asking too many questions. She drew her lips into a thin line after the last one, silently berating herself for talking so much. Embarrassment slowly crept into the woman's mind as well, now. She was trespassing, and.. whoever this was did have every right to be upset about it.

"Maybe you should just.. no, never mind. Be more careful about your... things." She removed one hand from her jeans to wave toward the 'scarecrow', and the corpse she had tripped over.

"If someone else decides to follow one of them back here one day, there's no telling what might happen, especially with all those military personnel so close to here, what with the mausoleum being down the road a ways."

She was talking too much. Too fast.

"ANYWAY."

Sparrow cleared her throat, and rocked on her heels.

"I think I'll be going now. I have, uh.. things, to do. Somewhere. Back in town. And I don't want to interrupt whatever it is you were doing. Sorry, again. .. did I apologise a first time?" She couldn't remember. Didn't matter. "Do you, uh.. want me to leave this here, or move it on my way out?" She nodded her head toward the body.

[Macaria]

Macaria raised an eyebrow as this ‘Sparrow’ fiddled with her wardrobe, wondering why exactly she would want points for originality for pointing out that the name leaned towards the ridiculous. Of all the birds one could choose to name oneself after, a sparrow? It was all she good do not to laugh. All that being said, she did approve of the mild display of a potential OCD when it came to the seams of her clothing. She gave a small nod as she noticed the alignment, wondering if it was intentional.

“Macaria,” she smiled, holding out her hand, “My name is Macaria.”

She paused.

“Well, it isn’t. But it’s good enough for now. Friends call me Ria. As to the event, I am afraid I can’t recall what it was, but I think there was a boat involved. Or perhaps a nightclub of some sort? It was some time ago and I find myself often quite… distracted by social events. So much to take in, you understand.”

She watched the other woman carefully as she spoke, declining to comment on her sense of curiosity. Why would anyone in the right mind want to keep track of masquerade violations? And which masquerade, exactly, was she talking about? She assumed it was another family event she had not been informed of, not that she likely would have gone even if she had been.

It was ironic, however, that the very thing that Macaria used to keep the local townsfolk from her door had brought another vampire to her home. At least she wasn’t carrying a pitchfork, and due to the fact she was alone and fairly diminutive, it would be a stretch to refer to her as an angry mob.

She shook her head with a smile.

“No, no. You have quite the wrong idea. I read an article on the internet recently dealing with a social phenomenon where groups banded together to dress and act like zombies. If anyone asks, that’s all my little helpers are doing. Walking dead enthusiasts. Which I also believe is a televised drama. They’re fans of that, too. Whatever keeps the torches and scythes from my door.”

She smiled thinly, her arms folded.

“You could have found that out in an email, however, instead of barging onto my land and disturbing my servants,” she said with a shake of her head, “And that would be why I might have been inclined to feed you to the zombies. Of course that ‘thing’ is mine. I don’t let just any zombie into my farmhouse, you understand. That would be crazy.”

Macaria had spent a considerable amount of time wondering how it was that she was able to control the things as well as she was able, too. Part of it, sure, was due to extensive practice and testing of her limits, but she had always seemed to have an innate ability to control the minds of the undead from the moment she had been reborn to darkness. True, there were still some miscommunications and misunderstandings, but that was only to be expected when one considered the fact that the zombies in question were, well, zombies.

She considered the question, wondering how much she should tell this woman. Were she more imposing, she might be considered a threat, but as it was even someone of Macaria’s combat ability and training seemed to be able to break her in half with a well placed flick. She did, however, know that in this city such appearances could be misleading. She decided to tell her just enough truth to keep things interesting.

“Yes,” she replied, “I am a necromancer. Which also explains my love of solitude if you think about it momentarily. History tends to take a dim view on those that interfere with the corpses of loved ones in any way, especially to reanimate them.”

She followed the waved hand to view her scarecrow, currently being swarmed by carrion birds and, if such a thing were possible, looking none too pleased about it. Next came the corpse Sparrow had tripped over. Her eyes drifted to the scuff marks at the knees of her jeans.

“Yes,” she chuckled, “I’m the one that needs to be more careful about my zombies.”

She was talking too much. Too fast.

It could not be argued that this Sparrow did not have a point though. The army continued to maintain a presence not too far away, despite the poor logic of using human forces to manage a supernatural threat in a city so concerned with keeping the supernatural world away from the ken of mortals. Surely, she thought, if such things were a, hah, grave concern to the vampire community, they would deal with it themselves rather than risk further exposure. She shrugged.

“You make a good point, for a given definition of good. You are also, however, the first person to have followed one of my friends back to my home. As for the scarecrow, as you can probably tell by the way he’s strapped, nailed and chained to the cross in question, he’s not going anywhere. Besides, I need something to keep the birds from my herbs. Esepecially as birds generally come out during the day and creatures like you and I, well… don’t.”

Macaria frowned slightly once more. Despite the nature of Sparrow’s felonious visit to her farm, she was fairly sure that one did not just show up and then leave immediately. Sure, social interaction was hardly her strong suit, but she had read things that seemed to support her view.

“Don’t feel that you need to rush off. If you have errands to run, I can send Things Three and Four off to get them done for you. They’re surprisingly helpful if you make sure they understand what it is you want from them. Oh, and. You did apologise, but have no real need to as long as the gate is closed and still intact.”

She paused.

“... it is still intact, isn’t it? Because if it isn’t, that would be a problem.”

[Sparrow]

Sparrow felt her hand lifting to take the one offered to her before she could really even think about reacting. Her social skills, while lacking, did not inhibit her penchant for manners. Thankfully. The few social interactions she did have (that mostly consisted of sitting around awkwardly and listening to other people talk) would have been significantly more awkward if she wouldn't have been able to manage a polite greeting when one was offered to her first.

She nodded. She did understand that there was too much to take in with a load of people around. The woman had never done well in crowds, or with noise levels above a distant murmur surrounding her. They had a tendency to leave her mentally crippled. Her mind often shut down, and she found herself unaware of her surroundings and unable to talk for periods of time. Or her mind decided that it was going to pretend it was an old computer, with too many new programs running for the RAM to support everything going on at once. For instance, she had fainted one night not too long ago while she was in The Handle Bar. Anxiety regularly made the perpetual teenager its *****, and always at the worst possible times.

Like now.

She had felt the tendrils of dread working their way through her veins and in to her stomach since she had first seen Macaria making her way down the drive, and while the woman seemed pleasant enough so far, she still couldn't help the weight she felt being added to her limbs with every passing second.

A furrow began to work itself into her brow as she listened to Macaria's sentiments and findings online. Sparrow didn't even understand the need of so many people to watch television regularly, and she sure as **** didn't understand a good ninety percent of what she heard people talking about being on lately. Astonishingly, the Russian had heard of The Walking Dead, but had never been bothered to find out what exactly it was about, past hearing that someone tried keeping zombies in a barn once, and it hadn't worked out so well in the long run. Sparrow decided to quote something that she herself had read on a forum, once, that she had (astonishingly) picked up to actually be sarcasm.

"If you read it on the internet, then it MUST be true, right?"

God, how rude. She was already mentally berating herself for saying it.

"Why would people want to dress up and act like zombies? That's so... strange." Her confusion was now entirely evident, etched clearly into her facial features. "And... I don't really use computers all that often. Nor did I know whose place I was coming out to at all, since I was just following your... thing, since it was bumbling around in public. I wouldn't have known who to try and get in contact with if I hadn't followed it. Plus... Technology confuses me. I try to stay away from it unless it's entirely necessary that I make use of it. It makes it harder to keep up with things, but I always end up finding out about them last minute when someone asks me if I'll be going to whatever has been planned."

Sparrow, while not a necromancer, had found herself able to control people since her own turning. Her own abilities required said people to possess more than the bare minimum of cognitive ability, though, and had mostly been used to benefit the cause of protecting the masquerade to keep the pitchfork wielding crazies from coming after her and the rest of her kind. Again.

"You do need to be more careful about them. I might be the first person to follow one out here so far, but if anyone else has seen them, I don't think they would just write it off as having an eclectic neighbor with strange friends. People gossip. You don't want to be found out, do you?"

The question, while... condescending, in nature, was genuine. And not only because one vampire being found out would be enough to spark an inquisition, but because for some reason, Sparrow legitimately cared about the well-being of people as a whole, stranger or otherwise. It was a curse, in many ways. Like now. When she SHOULD have been leaving, but was instead standing around with the hopes of making sure the woman took more precautions than fabricating fantastic tales of crazy people to defend herself.

"I.."

Errands?

She didn't have errands. And would have declined the offer to have a reanimated corpse attempt to complete any for her even if she had.

"No, thank you. I don't have anything particularly pressing to do. I was going to go to the mausoleum to let off some steam when I saw your creature wandering around."

Sparrow paused when Macaria did, contemplating.

What gate?

"I don't recall having to come through or going over a gate...? I was also, uh... a little focused on trying to figure out what, exactly, was going on, though. ...maybe I should go check on that for you."

Hopefully, checking on it would allow her an out.

'Oh, it's broken. That sucks. I'll leave you alone so that you can get that taken care of.'

But that would be rude.

And offering to help fix it would have the potential of several outcomes, only one of which she liked the idea of.

Maybe finding that it was broken and saying she could go get the supplies to fix it?

That seemed an even enough trade.

'I'll get the boards, you can fix it by yourself.'

Also kind of rude, once she spent more than a millisecond considering that option as well.

Which left for offering to help, and offering to get supplies, which in any normal social situation, would leave THIS gate open for the possibility of Macaria feeling the need to thank her for her help, which could lead to more socialising that Sparrow, quite simply, was not even a little bit prepared for at the moment.

Crap.

[Macaria]

Macaria blinked. Of all people, she knew the importance of the process of peer review and that very little posted to the internet could be trusted. That being said, there was a vast amount of postings, both video and otherwise, showing people taking part in ‘zombie walks’, which, as the name might suggest, generally took the form of a large group shuffling around pretending to be zombies. Humans, it would seem, could be both imaginative and entirely lacking in imagination at one and the same time. She could hardly believe that she counted herself as one of their number until recently.

“Well, no. But I’ve seen the videos and they did not look faked. People seem to be quite taken with the idea, and it provides me with ample cover for my activities. As they say in a certain type of movie, I’ll take the win.”

She shrugged as Sparrow continued speaking, having no real idea herself as to the reasons why people would do such a thing. She assumed that in a world so suffused with things to do people would quickly grow tired of one thing, moving to the next with inexorable inevitability. After a while the next thing would become more and more unlikely and bizarre. She almost dreaded to think what would come next once the allure of zombies wore off. If such a thing ever happened.

“I have no idea,” she began, “But as I say, they seem to enjoy it and I am more than happy to use that to my own advantage.”

She paused, considering Sparrow’s next words and reasoning that she had a point when it came to not knowing who to contact. How could she have done? It was hardly as though the place was signposted or that she made her presence known in any obvious way. She wasn’t even sure that her extended family knew she had taken up residence on one of the farms.

She was about to say something to that effect when one of Sparrow’s other comments registered with exacting clarity.

“You don’t use computers? How on earth do you get anything done? I find the machines invaluable for a number of things. Writing up notes, keeping track of things that need to be kept track of. Noting down ritual ideas and ingredients, refining the same… I’d be lost without my terminal. Not to mention that, for one such as myself who prefers their own company as a general rule, it allows one to stay in contact with people from a distance. Which is always nice. I do, however, seem to have issues when it comes to finding out about things, even at the last minute, so you seem to have the advantage over me in that regard.”

Sparrow’s words had merit, she decided, and resolved to be more careful in future.

“You have a point, I think. Whilst it is true that most of my immediate neighbours are of a more vampiric persuasion, the same cannot be said for the city at large,” she said, her brow furrowed, “And you are also right in saying that people gossip. Ad nauseam extremum in my experience.”

She broke off, momentarily, as the vague formings of an idea began to make themselves known to her.

“I don’t suppose that you would have any tips for me in that regard, would you? Though it pains me to say so, I find myself fairly new to this new form of existence and have yet to have most things explained to me. You seem to know what to do to survive in this city and I would welcome your thoughts.”

Macaria smiled encouragingly. Anything that anyone could do to help her fortify her little slice of solitude from the predations of the outside, wider world would be greatly appreciated. She, more than most of her kind, had reason to want to be left alone. She doubted they would approve of her experiments, both on the undead and on the less vampiric members of society, and believed strongly that they wouldn’t so much have something to say as much as they would have bullets to shoot.

And bullet holes would ruin her clothing, not to mention what the blood stains would do to her carpet. Such a thing could not be permitted.

“Well, the offer is there if you need anything while we talk. With the right amount of pressure and willpower, I find that the freshly risen can actually be fairly reliable when it comes to simple tasks. I have yet to have had any success with more complicated requests, though, sadly. We can’t have everything, I suppose.”

Macaria smiled to herself, remembering when she had walked the halls of the mausoleum and preying on the residents therein, honing her skills and growing used to what it was that she now existed as. She was about to point out the direction of the mausoleum when Sparrow mentioned the lack of an obvious gate into the farm. She scowled, cursing as much to herself as to the woman opposite her.

“Dammit all. Thing One must have gotten flustered and neglected to close the thing behind him. Either that or he noticed you following him and assumed that you were stopping by for a visit and obligingly left it open for you. I have yet to work out exactly what it is that makes them tick.”

She pulled a notebook from her pocket and jotted this down in a line of tight text that matched the others already contained within.

“Don’t feel that you need to check on the gate, though. I have a few helpers that wander the perimeter and take care of things like that for me,” she said with a smile, “Having power over the dead comes with perks after all.”

She suddenly realised that they had been stood on the path for far too long for her to still consider herself a good host. She motioned back to the farmhouse.

“Would you like some tea? I have plenty, not being able to partake myself. Someone really needs to complain about that. It’s one thing being the eternal undead, it is quite another never being able to enjoy the simple things in life.”

[Sparrow]

It would seem that Sparrow needed to suck up her distaste for electronics at some point, just so she could go on another “This Week on YouTube, I Learned…” spree to see just how convincing these people in costume might be, despite the rather… disastrous end result of her last surf through the videos of the internet.

No one should have some of the fetishes they did.

No one.

And why would people take video of cysts being squeezed out.

Llamas with Hats, though, had been entertaining, if a bit deranged.

“I don’t typically use computers, no. Whenever I need to keep track of something, I just write it down by hand on paper. I find that it’s easier to remember things that way, since I’ve got to focus on an idea long enough to write it all out the way I want to. Makes for a lot of files in my filing cabinet, but I don’t have a problem with that at all. There’s plenty of room with just me and my roommate in the house.”

She was not really sure she considered herself an expert on the subject of survival so much as she knew that making herself as inconspicuous as possible would be the best way to make sure that no one took notice of her. It was why she regularly made use of her own abilities while out on hunts, rather than shooting people herself. It did not help she almost entirely lacked any combat ability, either. Taking hold of someone else’s mind was more simple for her than practicing out on a shooting range every day or getting into a regular exercise routine. Short bouts in the mausoleum were enough for her to be able to work on things at her own pace without feeling too pressured to be better.

“I can try to help where I can, sure. Self-protection was an obsession of mine for awhile there. If I can’t find an answer to something myself, I can jot it down and get an answer to you at a later date.”

She’d only recently taken all the traps out of her house and started cleaning out some of the debris. It had taken awhile, but she was slowly slipping out of the constant paranoia she’d been living through the last few years, and the ever-present need to hide had been nagging at her less and less the last few months. No longer would she have to worry about forgetting which tripwire was where, and which pile of rubble her gas traps had been hidden under.

The rigged cameras were staying, though.

No one would be going in or out without her knowing about it.

Macaria’s language startled Sparrow into paying attention to what was being said again. Cursing always threw her for a loop, despite the fact everyone seemed to use corrosive language as though it were nothing.

She wasn’t sure she would trust a zombie to close a gate for her. Especially after watching it trundle around town.

She would not be voicing her thoughts about it, though, despite the fact it went against almost everything she felt was necessary to get across to the other woman right now.

“I really do appreciate the offer, but I’m all set. I really don’t have anything too pressing that needs to be taken care of at all. I will be sure to let you know if anything crosses my mind while I'm still here, though.”

Why was she being so polite. She wanted to leave, not stay and chit chat. Not risk breaking the masquerade and have to shoot the woman where she stood or risk being hunted herself for being involved with violations and potentially not being able to do anything about it herself.

The offer of tea, though, brought pause to her thoughts and a small smile to the Russian’s face. It was something she knew plenty about, and she had always turned to it for its ability to ease her discomforts, both physical and mental. Perhaps socalising just a little bit would not be a terrible idea after all. Not if a warm cup was involved.

“I don’t have any complaints about this sort of life insofar. I’m lucky enough that I can still process those little joys without paying as dearly as many seem to have to for attempting to enjoy something so vital to everyday routine.”

Why was she suddenly so unconcerned about staying and talking further when it had been near paralyising her before?

Oh right.

Tea.

“So tea sounds wonderful. Thank you.”

She took a step around the corpse she had tripped over previously, wondering a moment if she should just… scoot it out of the way now, or wait until she left so that she would be less likely to be fussed at for it. A second step was taken almost tentatively toward the farmhouse at the far end of the drive, leaving Sparrow standing right next to Macaria. She shoved her hands back into her pockets for lack of anything better to do with them.

An attempt at actual conversation came next. Perhaps a bad one, but it was an attempt nonetheless.

“How long have you been a part of Andras? You’d think that I would have at least heard of you before now, but I honestly don’t recall anything of the sort. Who is your sire?”

She figured it wouldn't be Micah or Velveteen. Their childer had a tendency to... speak out fairly regularly, she assumed to assert their places as being higher up in the lineage than the rest of everyone else. Or so she found, anyway. There were a couple who came to mind who seemed to think that doing as much would always serve to their advantage, but were sorely mistaken.

"I was... kind of adopted in. Not directly. I think that's why I've never really bothered to get involved with much Andras does, though. I haven't ever really felt a part of the larger group, even when there wasn't endless amounts of fighting amongst everyone all the time."