Waiting for the Lady

I feel quite lucky having decided to become a stalker at the moment I did. It takes about ten minutes to climb up on the roof. From there I have an hour to find the best lookout to eavesdrop on our little oddity. I pick out the overhangs, gutters, and walls connecting any given roof to another that can keep me out of sight from the street. No one walks around in the early morning, but I know what a lunch rush can look like. I do not want to deal with even a dozen people going ‘ah! Oh no! A horrible slime creature!’

So I perch on the roof of Sufri’s building for some time. It occurs to me, these are not houses. The buildings are quite large and open to the street, with the building I’m on being two stories itself. I’d say this part of town had more businesses than living spaces. In fact, there’s hardly any signs of life in this building.

The street gets much busier just as noon rolls around. Many people shuffle into buildings to do business. Some come and leave with an early lunch, trying to eat and complete errands simultaneously. Others rush to catch people before their meal break. The building across the street, where the layabouts had stopped me for a debate, seems to be a restaurant. People walk in there without food, and sometimes return with a meal. Eventually, I even catch Sufri wandering over there with her particular half-elven scent.

How particular is it, you ask? Like a donkey and a mule I say. To the first-time observer, there is no difference. However, after several hours of comparing humans and elves, you start to notice distinctions to set them apart. The half-elf has the oddest and most striking conflation of the two, even in metabolism. It results in something… nose-catching, if I had a nose. It’s exciting, honestly. This new scent makes me realize I have traveled to a new world! I couldn’t find an elf or half-elf on earth.

Also, I realize the attraction is partly sexual as I try to be patient. Drat, I am a pervert.

So, I wait for Sufri to eat. It doesn’t take long. She returns to work in less than an hour. She isn’t carrying leftovers, so either she eats quickly, or lightly. The poor girl is probably stressed. She returns to her place of work after her little luncheon. I take the time as the day goes by to see where she works. After people clear the street I shuffle over to the window that she opens once again for air.

I don’t have the balls to peek in, but I do listen and smell. It smells dry and dusty while smelling scratchy. My guess: desk job. Yuck. The actual epitome of this evidently wasteful society. With magic and wonder all around, even just outside the window, you spend your days cooped up in an office. What do you actually accomplish at a desk job, You just sit around all day and wait for more work to come your way.

The worst part is, the whole situation reminds me of myself. Here I am, stuck in a wonderful world and all I can do is sit in some old guy’s house and wait for him to help me out. I’m still just sitting in the woods most of the time, waiting for more excitement to come my way. I did something exciting in this world once. I only did it after I stopped laying on my own gooey ass.

So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to get up off said goo and do something about it. I’m not waiting for Geiger to help me out. I’m making my way in this world my way. I’ll rock this girl’s world in the process. I won’t do it here though. Not in the middle of the afternoon where anyone could barge in. I wait, taking a power nap while she slaves away at shuffling papers.

Evening falls. The air gets a little cooler, and somebody comes by and lights some street lamps. I am kept surprisingly sane with a small bit of anticipation. It’s refreshing really, being able to patiently wait for hours to do something special. Sufri stays to work a little after sunset, then leaves after deliberately organizing some paper. She moves into the building and to the front door.

Now, if I were familiar with this area, I would wait to see which direction she went and follow from a distance. I do not have that luxury, so instead I channel the power of the assassin. When I hear her open an entrance from the alley I can drip down the side of the wall without being detected. The flickering light of the street lanterns, while useful for seeing approaching assailants, only aids a moving shadow as it follows someone. I feel so lucky.

Our journey goes to a part of town I have not yet wandered through. The buildings become less bulky, and the street lamps farther apart. The ever-present street scents are undercut with the odor of muck and garbage lurking in the shadowy depths of alleys. Even late at night, some of the buildings we pass are empty and decrepit. This is a sketchier neighborhood for sure. At some point, the street lamps disappear altogether, though our final destination doesn’t reek unceasingly. Sufri enters a cobbled mishmash of a building, where seemingly three independent wooden homes crashed into each other in their haste to be built.

She shuts the door behind her. I try to press under it, but there seems to be a rag or something jammed under the door. Luckily the door is thin, and I can hear footsteps ascending a set of stairs. Climbing up to the roof, I do see a second story room. Peeking in, however, I hear only the deep gentle snoring of someone long asleep. This cannot be Sufri’s room. It takes me a few minutes of poking around before I find on the other side a small window on the other side of this lone second story room. Long and thin, it pokes up just a foot above the roof. I ease open the window, putting the creaking hinges inside my shadow to mask their sound. Sure enough, there sits Sufri in a cell-like bedroom. The room is long and thin like the window, and it barely fits the misshapen bed at the end. Sufri sits on a small stool, rocking herself back and forth with her feet on the footlocker at the bottom of her bed. She seems deep in thought, and after a moment I hear words.

“The brutal bog of banal banishment

Allows any acrimony at all

To seep and simmer to spurious spilling

Upon the ears of all unwilling

For but the pittance of a shilling.”

Is she… writing poetry?