16 - Laura 04 - The List
Laura awoke on the couch at her friends place, still in the dress from last night, all rumpled to no end. She cursed to herself when she saw the time - almost noon - and busied herself with cleaning up and getting dressed in something far more casual. Her friend had already left for the day. Somehow doing so without waking the sleeping Laura.
If anything, she felt guilty. She’d been crashing here ever since she got out, with nowhere else to go, and now suddenly, she was partying all night in expensive dresses?
She stashed everything away, piled her belongings into her duffel, carelessly tossing the dress on top now she was clad in jeans and a hoodie- wrote a quick note of thanks, left a small pile of cash, and walked out with everything she owned.
She’d find a hotel by the end of the night, but for now, she had research to do, And that meant a trip to the library.
The central library downtown was an old stoic building, as one expected. It was always occupied, but there was never a feeling of being cramped. She took up at one of the local public computers and started working her way through the curious list she had been given.
A lot of it seemed… mundane? Mundane if it for the amounts they were listed on. Occasionally she found herself not looking at supermarket sales pages, but recommendations and hints pointing to little out of the way esoteric and occult stores. *Raw Dragons Blood* apparently *was* a real thing…. Of course, it was a sap from a specific tree used primarily in… incense making? What the Lady wanted with this stuff, she could only guess… but at the same time, she wondered just how much she had to guess.
She wrote down all of the addresses and prices she could, noting her listed hours time on the computer was almost up, she closed her eyes and tried *really* hard to remember the words from last night.
The other woman, lily, had said… Kedves bara-something. The search engine came up with a song as its first hit, Kedves barátom, “My Dear.”, in Hungarian. The words itself were disappointing, but it was confirmation at least! She plunged in with Szarka, and found a naming site.
The bartender was right, it did indeed mean Magpie. But that was only the literal translation. According to what she read, Magpies were regarded as synonymous with *Thieves*.
Somehow, she was not surprised. Was her madame some kind of crazy cat burglar, Or maybe even a Black Widow? She only ran the homeless shelter, but somehow had money coming from everywhere - enough to indulge Laura’s silence, anyway. Who knows, in a world where you can have freaking zombies play in a band while you sing jazz songs, what was the point of money?
She tried wrapping her mind around the words that her mistress had used to greet Lilly…. Ianya, came up as daughter…. But the first word couldn’t ring a bell. Seppass something? There wasn’t even any ready suggestions….
With her time up, that would have to wait.
She booked in at a cheap hotel. A room just nice enough to have its own TV and little other amenities. She did her best to de rumple and hang the dress, left what she could, and headed out across town to collect.
She stashed everything away, piled her belongings into her duffel, carelessly tossing the dress on top now she was clad in jeans and a hoodie- wrote a quick note of thanks, left a small pile of cash, and walked out with everything she owned.
She’d find a hotel by the end of the night, but for now, she had research to do, And that meant a trip to the library.
The central library downtown was an old stoic building, as one expected. It was always occupied, but there was never a feeling of being cramped. She took up at one of the local public computers and started working her way through the curious list she had been given.
A lot of it seemed… mundane? Mundane if it for the amounts they were listed on. Occasionally she found herself not looking at supermarket sales pages, but recommendations and hints pointing to little out of the way esoteric and occult stores. *Raw Dragons Blood* apparently *was* a real thing…. Of course, it was a sap from a specific tree used primarily in… incense making? What the Lady wanted with this stuff, she could only guess… but at the same time, she wondered just how much she had to guess.
She wrote down all of the addresses and prices she could, noting her listed hours time on the computer was almost up, she closed her eyes and tried *really* hard to remember the words from last night.
The other woman, lily, had said… Kedves bara-something. The search engine came up with a song as its first hit, Kedves barátom, “My Dear.”, in Hungarian. The words itself were disappointing, but it was confirmation at least! She plunged in with Szarka, and found a naming site.
The bartender was right, it did indeed mean Magpie. But that was only the literal translation. According to what she read, Magpies were regarded as synonymous with *Thieves*.
Somehow, she was not surprised. Was her madame some kind of crazy cat burglar, Or maybe even a Black Widow? She only ran the homeless shelter, but somehow had money coming from everywhere - enough to indulge Laura’s silence, anyway. Who knows, in a world where you can have freaking zombies play in a band while you sing jazz songs, what was the point of money?
She tried wrapping her mind around the words that her mistress had used to greet Lilly…. Ianya, came up as daughter…. But the first word couldn’t ring a bell. Seppass something? There wasn’t even any ready suggestions….
With her time up, that would have to wait.
She booked in at a cheap hotel. A room just nice enough to have its own TV and little other amenities. She did her best to de rumple and hang the dress, left what she could, and headed out across town to collect.
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