Ring Around the Rosie [Balam]

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Isis Ikati;;

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The necromancer had become more withdrawn from society at two points in her life, both of which marked the lows for her. One of them was when her family was massacred by a rogue vampire. To tell the truth, Isis never even found the creature that caused so many things to happen after that. Besides, because of that incident, she now had her necromancer powers, and had met that god who resided truly over all. And then, there was the man known as Dark Fang. That would have had to been the worst of her life so far, a place so down in the lows with Isis that it was cloaked in shadows, something that this necromancer would never revisit again. Only twice had she related her story to another person. After that, it was no more. She carried that knowledge with her everyday, but no more did it come to this little necromancer in story form - it was more like facts. That type of recalling information seemed easier to her, and made the ordeal less traumatizing. It took on a professional air, oddly enough.
However, the after-effects were still there. The scars that lacerated her body would never go away, not even if she had been infected by a vampire, changed into a Lycan, or any other means of creating a new type of species for herself besides human. They were the work of a Lycan, and nothing would ever change that. Those scars had become a part of Isis though, just like that thorn tattoo that decorated her neck, marking her as a slave.
The breeze chilled the girl, and awoke Isis from her thoughts. At the pier, nobody disturbed Isis, and for that she was grateful. Today, though slightly on the chilly side, was a beautiful day. The sun was obviously in the afternoon part of its travel through the sky, and the necromancer. Her robes were not red anymore, but a navy blue. It was an unconscious decision of the woman, but she had enjoyed and embraced the change.

She rose from position on the dock, bare feet dangling over the edge of the old dock. Weaving through the boxes of stacked goods, the wooden crates didn’t move as Isis slipped though the spaces between them, almost like a maze. Once deserted, this place now thrived, becoming like a mini-marketplace, the shipping docks almost constantly busy. The small woman was making her way back to the streets, just at a normal pace, until a familiar, lanky figure caught her attention. Isis smiled, something that she had not done in ages, even with her recovery, and the new way of life she was trying. Worming her way through the crowd, Isis had finally caught up with Balam, her arms going around his waist from behind.
“Balam! I’ve missed you,”[/color] the girl said through his shirt in the street, the joy in her words unmistakable. This was a new step for the blond, her own way of moving on.

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The jackal-raven-jaguar was out and about once more.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. It wasn't like he was ever not out and about. Staying still wasn't really the shifter's game. Children of Gaia such as he rarely kept in one place-- it was hard to believe he was even still in town. But this was a very interesting town, Noctum. He had a hell of a time just wandering around, observing, chattering with the birds and the Streets' children. At this point, Balam Xbalanque was a well-informed pirate in regards to the goings-on of the city. He could've passed for a native, except that he still certainly looked like his usual pirate self. Stained, dirty jeans rolled up past his ankles were a sight with flip-flops and an open button-up shirt, equally as wrinkled, with the sleeves again rolled up past his elbows. At the least, a clean white undershirt hid smooth, rolling abs and a long, graceful human figure. He wore some kind of sunglasses plucked out of a bygone age, though he was fairly sure they had come back into style recently...maybe. Or maybe that was 10 years ago. Balam didn't actually care. His hair, as usual, was a mop of brown-black, sticking up at quizzical angles that leant him even more of a bird-like air that came naturally from his large, crooked nose.

He'd come to the pier for some fresh food. Fish, perhaps, or some sort of fruit or, well, really, whatever he could manage to take. Not that it was hard. The art of thieving was one he'd perfected. Balam was something of a Robin Hood at heart, though-- he'd target the richest man at market if he could find him. At the moment, though, he'd been admiring some sort of fish or other.

He was a big fish eater, after all. Jackal and Raven had no issue eating carrion, but his Human and Jaguar sides were not keen on it. Fish was something he completely enjoyed, however, and was probably a contributing factor to his remarkable skinniness. Or, perhaps, that he was just a skinny sort of person, twig-like, as though an invisible hand had taken him and stretched him out, leaving the shifter tall and willowy.

Balam had just snuck a handful of pecans away from some booth when he felt a pair of arms twine around him. His reaction at first was to tense, mind flying for a clever excuse to talk his way out of this predicament, when his captor spoke.

"Isis! Nefertiti's beard, I was about to fly away." The ancient shifter laughed heartily as he turned to spy the girl he'd met in the desert once and made fast friends with. Brown eyes inspected her briefly, noting her change in clothing, her youthful joy. The tattoo around her neck remained, as did her scars, but she seemed lighter, as though a certain weight had passed from her. The work of time, he supposed, to close wounds if it couldn't always heal them. He, of course, looked absolutely the same as last he'd seen her, his own tattoos just as arcane as ever.

"How've you been, miss Iset? Good I hope, since your employer up'n vanished." He teased her with his pronunciation of his name, as he had when they'd first met. Of course, he knew that old vampire that had been the head of ZaneCorp had vanished-- Lucian? Lucius? Something like that. Sort of sinister and Roman-sounding, he was quite sure. Many of the old tyrants of Noctum had been replaced in the bare months since he'd seen Isis, whether due to infighting or whathaveyou. It was a city that truly never slept.

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It was true, for time would eventually heal all wounds, whether the person wished for it to or not. It was the funny thing with this world. No, not even this world, but those of all human descent, maybe just those that thought like some sort of a subspecies of homo sapiens. For they all had some sort of humanity within them, sometimes deep and buried. Either way, it had worked its magic on Isis, and she was that cheerful child yet again, perhaps acting in such a manner more so than before. It was simply something that people had a habit of reverting back to after some incident had changed them in some shape or form.
However, that didn’t hold her back from the reaction of seeing someone that she had recognized and greeting them properly. It was okay to be touched, in Isis’ book, when she initiated it and the receiver was fine with it. Hence the hug, and that smile that rested on her lips. There was also a small bit of silent laughter at his comment. Oh, in her prime, this little necromancer was good at scaring the bejeebus out of people. Well, at one point in Isis’ life she was, not so much now. Growing up had that sort of effect on her, just as it did for all peoples.

“Pretty nice, actually, O High Pirate of the Seas,” the girl replied, brushing a bit of the blond hair out of those dark brown eyes, that teasing gleam there as well. Oh, sure, she may have been depressed before - and with good reason - but now Isis was willing to banter back and forth with Balam. It was something that she had not done in ages. She looked away for a moment, then back at the shifter. No, he hadn‘t changed a bit. The same lanky form, easy grin, and tousled dark hair. A good thing in her book, for Balam seemed unchanging to her, throughout the ages. “Yeah, he hasn’t been seen for a while. Eventually, I stopped coming back, though I can’t get that one chip out.” [/color]Here, her hand instinctively went to that lump in her wrist where the tracking device resided. Her fingers brushed it, before falling. Turning her attention back to Balam, Isis smiled. Such a nice change it was, to see someone she knew, to actually enjoy herself in the outside world. Isis was becoming too solitary, though the necromancer couldn’t really help it. To her, it was a reflex, to draw back from the world o protect herself from whoever may inhabit it.
“In fact, I just got a small little flat, downtown somewhere.. Though I seem to be running on reserve money at the moment. But what about yourself?”[/color] Isis said, fixing the ruffles that were annoying her on the pants that she wore, a different ensemble than the last time she had met with the male shifter. Again, it was something that time had imposed upon the necromancer, and she had felt compelled to accept what was thrown at her with that easy-going attitude and grace. Most of the time, Isis managed to do such, though mortality came into play as well. She was only a human; sure she was a necromancer, but a human nonetheless. As all of them were flawed in major ways, it wouldn’t do the woman much good to ignore such truths of the world, but to accept and shape them, not the other way around.