"Shitshitshitshit!" A caramel skinned man teethed as he sprinted down the road with a parcel in his hand; "Boy!" an elder man shouted running a few yards behind and slowly losing distance. The caramel man ignored the man behind him and continued, jumping onto a wagon and jumping out in front of it before he turned sharply into an alley. He leaned onto the brick wall before looking around, there was a ladder leading up one of the buildings, too convenient he thought, past that there was a fence. The fence however seemed to obvious to him, so he just waited till the man passed the alley for him to blend into the crowd.
The man soon did so, not even paying a glance into the alley, and the boy let out a breath, walking out onto the street warily, he turned the way he came and began to walk down it, making it down a few streets before someone tapped his shoulder and he turned around, trying to not look startled.
"You went down the wrong street Dav," a slightly shorter woman noted, the man looked around, and realised she was right, "Sorry, Irisa, I wasn't paying attention". The woman shook her head, "Just hand me the package and we can go," she said calmly holding out one hand, the man nodded and set the parcel in her hand and started to walk behind her. They walked back up the street he'd just walked down and into the other one connected to the fork, before going down multiple different alleyways to a street you can't stumble onto unless you were drunk or had known where it was before. They continued to a building of much the same calibre; they walked up to a building with a cast-iron sign of a raven in a puzzle piece frame.
They walked into the door with a wave to the guard out front. The sound of dice rolling, clicking from a spinning roulette board, slipping of cards and the clink of glass drinks as people cheered in one corner. They passed by a few games and the man felt antsy to play a round, or seven, and the woman pinched his arm when he fell behind on their way to the back hall.
They continued down the hall to the back office and the woman knocked once, the man looked at her after she did that. "Who knocks once?" He questioned, the woman looked at him, "That's why I do it, he knows it's me," she explained, the man threw his arms into an exaggerated shrug.
Another man opened the door, almost comically pale, but with enough contrasting colour to still look human. "Took you both long enough," he greeted, then moved out of the way leaning onto a silver tipped cane. The two walked in, the woman sat down while the man prefered to stand. The pale man limped as he walked back to sit at his desk, "Daven?" he asked the caramel boy perked up, "I handed it to Irisa on our way back here," the woman nodded to confirm she had it. She rose to hand it to the man, "Here, Koren," Irisa noted as she passed it over the desk, Koren waited until her hand had fully retracted to grab the parcel.
Without looking up Koren ordered, "Don't touch that," before Daven poked a stuffed raven, Daven flinched his arm to his side, "But Kory! I gave Terru to you!" he whined. That was when Koren looked at him, "Use that nickname again and I swear on the lords' name's you'll have a bruise covering half your face," He spoke quietly in a sharp contrast to Daven. Daven pouted as if he hadn't been threatened but walked away from the stuffed bird dubbed 'Terru' and sat next to Irisa, then slouched deep into the chair. Koren opened the paper to reveal a brown leather bound notebook, he untied the leather strap and opened to a secret compartment cut into the pages, "Shoddy work if you ask me," Daven noted, pulling off his hat and stretching out his arms, "I didn't," Koren replied, gently taking out the contents with his leather gloved hands.
A pearl necklace, a scrap of lace, a pen and a small folded piece of paper, Koren set the rest down before placing the paper in his blazer and standing up with the help of his cane. "You two do what you like with the rest, I don't need it," The pale man noted, before moving around the desk and towards the door. Daven immediately lurched over for the pen and got up too, and Irisa grabbed the book itself, uninterested in the lace and pearls. Koren held the door for the two to leave before him and closed the door behind him, locked from the inside then walked behind them.
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