Freehold of Minuit

Tiffani had been walking for quite some time. Everyone at Chantelle's was either gone or asleep when she awoke, so she had quietly slipped out, hoping no one had noticed her departure.

She strode briskly past shops, offices, abandoned lots, bars, and construction sites without paying any of it much heed. She didn't have much money to spend in those places anyway and she had no idea how many dollars she would get by exchanging her British pounds. Or where to exchange them, for that matter. Her hands were jammed into the pockets of her jeans, the fringed leather jacket she wore providing little protection against the chilly morning air. The sky was overcast and threatened rain. She could smell it in the air, sense the gloomy emotions many people had at the thought of an impending frigid drizzle. Those emotions were almost crushing - as if she carried an anvil on each of her shoulders.

Up ahead, she saw an abandoned storefront, its entrance recessed into the front wall. Tiffani stepped into the entrance alcove and sat down, her back against the wall, her knees drawn up to her chest. There she sat, watching the people walk past, the cars commuting to work. She just needed air. Besides, she felt weird hanging around Chantelle's apartment all day; this little walk at least gave her the illusion that she had somewhere to be, a place to go. It gave her at least a slight semblance of normality to be out in the world even if she were no longer a part of it.

There was an old saying, she remembered: The only thing worse than being alone is being alone in a crowd. It would take time, she knew, and she tried her hardest to reconcile with that reality. But she was never the most patient person. And it was just dumb luck that she stumbled across Chantelle on her second day of ... freedom? Was that what this was? At any rate, she couldn't become a burden on her. That was something she just wouldn't do even if that meant sleeping in the streets if needs be.

Tiffani kept her eyes open for others of her kind. Some strange mixture of human, animal, doll, wolf, inanimate object - others that were twisted and transformed by the Fae. Were our kind rare? she wondered to herself. It seemed so for she saw no one like herself pass by. Thus, she leaned her head back against the wall, closed her eyes, and simply listened to the world beyond her cubby hole, the hustle-bustle of a world stolen from her by a cruel twist of fate.

It felt like hours had gone by, but judging by the sun - or - the small little bright spot within the clouds where the sun would be - she reasoned it was still morning. The low, oblique angle of the sun in October made it difficult to tell.

Tiffani pushed off the wall and stood leaning against it for a time, waiting for the buzzing, tingling feeling to leave her legs - she forgot just how long she had been sitting in the same position - zipped up her leather jacket, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. There, she entered the stream of others going about their business, just another anonymous face in a crowd of anonymous faces.

She resumed her walk, having no idea where she was going - she wasn't familiar with Minuit at all, but she had no intention of going back to Chantelle's until it was time to see the Autumn king later this afternoon. It didn't even matter to her that her stomach protested in the loudest fashion that she hadn't had anything to eat in 2 days - save for a few cappaccinos. In fact, she was growing desperate enough to start entering stores to see if anyone would accept pounds instead of dollars. Surely somewhere "touristy" might. So she made that her mission ... except ... where was the tourist area in this city? Surely not here, it was too ... commercial. She would have to find someone to ask.

Tiffani walked for another hour, hands in pockets, slightly hunched against the cold. The chilly pre-rain wind blew her hair back, causing her face to sting. She gave another look to the sky and realized that the rain was getting closer - and she did not want to be caught in a miserable autumn drizzle with no umbrella. She knew if she returned to Chantelle's apartment soaked and wet, it would take all day to get rid of the chill - and it wasn't as if she had much in the way of a change of clothes.

She abruptly stopped, causing a man behind her to almost bowl her over. She grinned in a guilty sort of way and apologized profusely, then reversed direction and began walking back to Chantelle's place. It was a bit of a walk, and no place she passed looked overly inviting to get directions from. They were either closed or had too long of a queue to stand in it and not buy anything. She would try again later. After all, other than her visit with the Autumn King, her schedule was, well, embarrassingly open.

Tiffani needed to both beat the rain and get back before Chantelle took her to the king; the king was her only real hope of getting the long-term help she needed. She didn't have the cash to approach some seedy person in a bad part of town to acquire fake paperwork - and in the absence of cash, she knew they would want something else from her, something she wasn't willing to give.

Thus, she quickened her pace, taking in the detail of a futuristic era that fascinated her. Cell phones, internet, personal computers, DVD players, iPods, and the like. When she was last in the mortal realm, Walkmen and VCRs were the height of cutting edge technology and the few computers around were less powerful than today's browser games. It just sucked that she didn't have the cash to enjoy any of it. But ... one of these days. She wouldn't be penniless forever.

Tiffani only saw a handful of fellow Changelings - and by handful, she meant she could count the number on one hand with fingers left over. She's not sure why, but she thought there would be far more out there, that they've always been there but as a human, she couldn't see through their masks. Perhaps she even knew a couple of Changelings during her old life and never knew it. She laughed inwardly - if they could only see her now.

She had a million things to do. Find work. Find an apartment. Accumulate some money, apply to college, start reconstituting her wardrobe, learn how to use all the new gadgets - especially the internet. Plus, she had to ...

And then she was standing in front of Chantelle's door. That was quick, she thought. Time doesn't just fly when you're having fun. It flies when you're lost in your own head, too. After all, there wasn't anyone else to talk to, and she was still ... apprehensive about talking to mortals. She always felt as if they could see through her, somehow. Yet Chantelle, Jack, and Marcus were the only Changelings that would give her the time of day.

Well, I'm ... here, she said to herself. Tiffani refrained from using the word "home," even in her thoughts. This wasn't her home, just a place where she was currently crashing so as not to have to sleep in the park or, worse, find a woman's shelter somewhere and spend the night with psychos, schizos off their meds, people with PTSD, drug addicts, alcoholics, petty criminals, and lay on cheap fold-out cots complete with a plethora of mystery stains that she would rather not know from whence they came.

Anyhow, she knocked on the door and then entered, concluding her first unproductive yet ... informative jaunt around Minuit.

/scene