Summary:May's persistence pays off: she finds the pale Jackal once more at the butcher shop where he once brought her for food, back when she was cursed to be a cat. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
  |
Since having figuratively recovered from being a cat, Agent Melinda May has been trying to show her gratitude to those who had offered her shelter, assistance, even just a bit of understanding. There's one individual that she's not at all sure she'll ever be able to pin down long enough to thank, but she's willing to try. It doesn't hurt that this butcher's shop is a really good one.
She's been back by this place about once a week, trying to vary which day and time of day she drops in to hopefully catch a particular small and pale-furred quadruped. Today, her plan is to place an order for both chicken and pork along with some sausages, but there's a line so she steps back outside to wait for a few minutes.
Ambrose absolutely refuses to let Fate dictate his daily doings. If some dratted revenant from his past wants to shamble up and pick a fight, so be it. It's not going to stop him from taking the subway into the neighborhood and then slipping the diamond-studded collar over his head. Down he shrinks to become that sly and pale little jackal, quick to smile and reveal teeth as he is to slunk about the alleyways.
He arrives around the right-hand corner of the conjoining alley next to the butcher in a manner nearly identical to how he'd escorted one particularly mysterious feline. Last Ambrose had seen Tortie-May was in the interior of Cover Story and in a flash as he'd darted out of the door after a small cursed kit-fox. This time, as if he owned the entire alley, he saunters to the door and sniffs along its base. What is on the menu for today…
May will probably catch the reflected gleam from his ID tag if not the wee canid himself.
Idly pacing about a bit potentially gives her a lead in the form of a glint of light off of something shiny metallic and close to the ground. Still feigning idle meandering, she steps into the alley and toward the back door of the butcher's that's being snuffled at.
She again uses the premise of checking her phone to make it seem like she's not paying too much attention to her surroundings, and moves closer to where the pale little jackal happens to be at the moment.
Oh, it seems like pork sausages with rosemary and thyme were made….that, and Swedish meatballs. This makes the fluffy if thin tail swish back and forth in a mimicry of domestic appreciation. His large ears flick back and then forwards. One paw lifts to scratch at the door's base.
But Ambrose realizes there's someone's shadow stretched long down the alley. Quickly, he turns to look, ears lifted now at May. Frozen with his front paw still crooked up, he gripes to himself about the annoyance of modern cell phones. Before May can get too close, he's sidling away with smart, light steps. Having regained about fifteen feet of distance, only now does Ambrose turn about to completely face May.
Dratted technology. Who is this? he muses to himself before he stretches out his wiggling nose a bit farther. There's something…something that's familiar to him about May's own skin, but he can't put a finger — or a paw — on it.
Taking a chance, May utters an annoyed comment in Mandarin as if whatever she's reading on her phone has earned that response, then stops and pockets her phone again. It's likely something that she uttered at least once while Tortie-fied.
She's pointedly pretending to have not noticed the jackal's presence.
Those ludicrously-large ears perk further yet and quiver the slightest.
Was that…something angry in Mandarin? Those off-blue eyes narrow at May and he hazards a soundless step towards her. Wait a second…
A breath of air off the street that swishes from behind May brings more of her personal signature to his nose and then it clicks: this is the cat — the tortoise-shell cat!!! The one with the pretty bell on her collar that he last saw in Cover Story!
With a murring chirrup of a sound, the pale creature pads up until he's close enough to sniff at May's ankles. His body sinuously curves around her once with his whiskers fletching and twitching at his work of forever memorizing her lotion-detergent-last meal-shampoo-wood desk-shoe scent.
I daresay you look your proper self, Shanzha, the Jackal notes to himself again as he looks up May now. In this guise, he'll apparently be more fearless despite knowledge of her hours spent at the Triskelion.
Looking down at the little jackal that has finally approached and done the feline twining around her ankles, May seems oddly unsurprised. Almost like she'd been expecting this exact reaction.
"Well. Here you are. You are not easy to track down, and you've not been back by the bookstore lately that I've seen." She doesn't reach down to try and pet the small canid, as most people would likely do.
I did visit the bookstore recently for tea and shortbread cookies with the damned scariest God on this side of the Atlantic, but it was not a long visit, I will grant you this. It would be luck that our paths crossed here as it stands, Ambrose notes with a wryly-amused note in his mental speech, all to himself. At this point, he's come about to the front and sat down to continue looking up at May, head cocked at an angle. Light falls through his ears and showcases their pink undertones.
Someone walking by on the sidewalk has him leaning to peer around May's legs. It's no one important, deeply involved in their headphones, and then they're alone again. Ambrose then makes a quick decision to leap up a pile of cardboard boxes to the top of the alley's dumpster and sit again. It puts him almost at eye level with May and, again, he lifts his ears forwards as if asking her to continue speaking.
Staying still as Ambrose first parks in front of her then relocates to the top of a pile of boxes after another pedestrian passes, she seems content to wait for him to settle.
"How is your rude little white-haired friend, by the way? Has she returned to apologize to the bookstore owner?" Even though she's not expecting a comprehensible answer, she asks anyway, to see Rosie's reaction. And yes, she still very much plans on sharing a bit of sausage with him after she makes her purchases for the week.
May will likely correctly interpret the initial fall of the jackal's ears. It's distress if muted. His eyes roll in a motion entirely human and he even lifts one paw to rotate it half-up, as if to accent a shrug he doesn't entirely feel.
Would that I knew. I have not seen hide nor hair of her in weeks. His thoughts to himself take on a melancholy blue shade and droop his ears do even more. I fear her dead at worst…at best, mayhaps someone took pity upon her and brought her in from the cold. She would take to being a pet with time. Down his paw goes to settle back into line with the others. He adds another chirruping sound, this time in a pitch and tone to indicate worry as best he can.
May ohs softly at the droop of the jackal's ears, interpreting it as a negative reply along with the very non-canid eyeroll and the lifted paw. "If there's anything I can do to help track her down, you'll send word to me through a mutual acquaintance, yes?" While Loki would likely scoff at the thought of passing messages, she suspects that Sigyn would do so kindly enough if asked nicely.
"But right now, I'm guessing you're here for a snack. I was about to pick up a few things for myself." She waits to see what reaction that garners.
His pointed nose nods pointedly in agreement: yes, Ambrose will send word if his own efforts at searching out the lost white fox-kit ultimately fail. Currently, it remains one of his own affairs when he isn't fixated on avoiding being tempted or cornered via another missive from someone who is SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD.
The mention of snacks, however, is enough to bring up the jackal's ears once more. His thin plush of tail thumps quietly once atop the dumpster lid. Oh yes, snacks are wonderful things. His small stomach agrees completely.
Despite himself, the pink blep of his tongue appears up to tip at his nose and disappears behind black-lined lips again.
May nods as well, and lets that topic drop. There is food to be purchased, after all.
"Do you trust me to choose something, or do you want to pick for yourself?" How that will be managed should promise to be interesting at the very least.