Greener Pastures

[Aoife O'Kelly]

Despite her extravagance that came and went with her undebatable enthusiasm for a job well done, Aoife could be quiet when she wished, sliding one way and then another she snaked away from the brute — dipping between bodies that hugged the pavement, all of them eager for food before they started their own jobs around that end of the city. She ignored the moans and grievances of those who started the day already wishing for the night, and instead sought the path by the door she wished to enter, and waited like an awaiting spirit as she chewed on her lip and scratched at her scalp.

She watched as Eoin played his part, and admired him as she did when taking stock of a well sharpened tool, her eyes hooked on him to the point of forgetting herself till she felt the gnaw of her belly reminding her of what was at stake. Breakfast.

As soon as the woman was taken in by playing the great help to that strange man who looked on with his sad eyes, Aoife disappeared. She plunged into the bounty on show, her ice-blue eyes near jumping out of their sockets as she soaked up the smells and images — bread rolls aplenty, stuffed or left plain! What else!? Sweet things, things that Aoife hadn’t even seen before, but she was not so greedy to take the risk over food, she knew hunger as a starving creature did, and as such refused to fall foul of its tricks again. So, as anyone may have done in her position, the girl stuffed her pockets with the plain bread rolls before jumping aside, before disappearing back into the great unknown.

Aoife could have, she would later note, go elsewhere with her bread and eat them merrily to herself, pulling the roll to pieces so she could share them willingly along the canal to all her friends (her friends being such unnamed creatures that she liked to feed now and then, whenever she had the time to spare). But, McDaniels had proved himself, if for a single morning, so she returned and tugged on the back of his top before gesturing for him to follow with the tilt of her head — opening her mouth to reveal a partly chewed piece of bread, as a bird displayed its feathers in the bid of finding a mate — as she went to head the way they had just come.

[Eoin McDaniels]

"Me sister," Eoin said and gestured towards Aoife when the girl appeared at his side, like a translucent little bird of prey — a shrike, about to return to its thorny vines. "She a sick 'un. Got t' go. Bless ya, missus."

After his last line was said, he turned and dropped the forlorn look from his face in an instant. He threaded through the crowd, keeping O'Kelly's ragged blonde head in sight, until they were back in the alley.

Now he got faster until he was tight behind her, damn near breathing down her neck. Eoin didn't want the bird to get the idea to split on him now that it was time to share their spoils.

"Where we goin'?" he asked. "Let's eat." His stomach growled fiercely now and at the same time he felt sick. Time was ticking away from him. He looked towards the sun, barely visible behind the fog and smoke of the East End, and he counted his hours.

[Aoife O'Kelly]

Aoife came to a slow halt as Eoin joined her in the crowd of constantly moving subjects, pressing her back into him as their steps took to a similar timing and matched rhythm. Pulling her body back to look at him, Aoife pulled a piece away from the roll she held in one hand, and reached up to stuff it mercilessly into Eoin’s own mouth — touching upon his lips in doing so, as her eyes glittered with their small, less ceremonious victory.

“Won’t yer practice a pinch o' patience, McDaniels, or we’ll be outta the stuff before we got time t’enjoy t’em,” Aoife warned him, tilting her head to one side as she looked at his flinching, narrowed eyes set toward the sky. Aoife was quite uneducated in the ways of addiction and drugs, mostly because they were but common notes in her life — treated and witnessed in the same way breathing was. What difference did Opium make, when most of her jolly lot were strung up on some other drug? Aoife, herself, had dabbled, but had never been afforded access to truly wear herself down to the quick of addiction, if only because she had had very little choice in the matter. So, she was oblivious to Eoin’s pains, and instead poked fun at it as she led him down past the hurrah of the crowds towards a quieter, less visited alleyway.

Jumping atop a ledge, Aoife swung her legs beneath and picked a second bread roll from her pocket, handing it over in the same way she offered food to a stray. Poor guy, she thought, what a fool! She couldn’t imagine him getting food by himself, with his large hands and broad exterior she doubted that he could disappear into a shadow. Pulling her own roll apart, Aoife popped a piece into her mouth, chewing slowly as she knocked her heels against the wall and kept her knees together.

“I liked t’at name you gave me before, w’at was at’at? Mad Knife?” Aoife asked, grinning with a trace of dough between her teeth.

[Eoin McDaniels]

He chewed while walking and swallowed hard. His stomach protested against the sensation. Eoin kept going and soon they were in a quiet alley and Aoife climbed up on the ledge of a wall and sat at the height of his shoulders. Clambering did not appeal to him, and he stayed on his feet and put his arms on the ledge, cramping belly against the cool stone of the wall.

Aoife's sly blue eyes were blinking above him in the shade of the crooked houses. She extended a piece of bread roll like a priest giving communion, all superior generosity. He laughed at her and took the bread. "Amen," he said. "Mad knife O'Kelly. T'was it. Tickles ya," he assessed.

Eoin took a bite and with the other hand he went searching for her knee over her threadbare dress. It was sharp and bony. "Yer a twig, mad knife O'Kelly," he said and dug his thumb tentatively into the hollow at the inner side. It felt risky. She had something strapped to her thigh, he could see the shape. Knife? He savored the little thrill to increase pressure on the knee until she flinched, eyes on her hands, in case she got ideas.

"Yer wish t' have meat on a fella's hy-po-cri-tic," he told her, drawing out every syllable and switching into a vaguely posh accent. He grinned and tried to remember where he had bitten off this morsel of a word. Probably around Wynn; wherever had the proddy disappeared to? Wasn't around anymore.

The roll was gone and it did not sit well in his belly. He laid his head on the ledge for a second and fought down the nausea. His skin was prickling, and he was gripped by great unrest, now that his objective was gone. Eoin picked his head back up and tried to come to some decision, eyes cast back up towards the sky.

[Aoife O'Kelly]

Aoife liked the name if only because it made her seem sharper, or more akin to a character told to children when a parent yearned to keep them from harm — though she was not the kind of person who knew anything of the world outside of the norm she kept to, Aoife liked the idea of becoming a figment of a nightmare, dressing herself up as ghoul, leaving her to be untouched, unwanted and the very image of terror.

Quickly, however, Aoife was struck from her imagination by Eoin’s touch, coaxing her to lift her knee into him — parting legs for his hand to slip down into the abyss that welcomed him, her eyes delighting in the attention as she shifted herself so the blade stuck out against the fall of the skirt in remembrance; let him tease her, let them play that sordid game, but he should know what danger he toyed with.

When he spoke, Aoife flinched and screwed her face up in dismay. “W’at t’e feck are yer jabberin’ on about!? High! Pow! Cra! Tick!? Yer speakin’ in evil tongues! Hangin’ around eejits too well read ‘n’ all!” She laughed, kicking her knee up high to shove his hand from her, before she wilted and lay to watch Eoin’s reaction to that piece of bread. But why? How? Wasn’t it the good shite from a well placed merchant stall? More annoyed than concerned, Aoife slapped her lips together before making a noise of disgust, or perhaps frustration.

“Now w’at t’e feck is wrong wit’ yer? Weren’t bad, were it?” She asked, taking her hand to the top of Eoin’s head, pulling his hair as to look at him face-on, curling her fingers into him as she looked from his mouth to each of his eyes. “Not good enough fer yer or w’at?”

[Eoin McDaniels]

Aoife's hand came into his field of view from the right and briefly obscured the sky, until he felt it in his hair. She grabbed it, pulling on it so he would look at her. Eoin did, his eyes swimming in pain, not because of her harsh touch. He smiled weakly. "Aye, t' bread's fine," he said. His hand grabbed her wrist and he unthreaded her fingers from his hair. "Listen, ya scroungy alley cat. I got t' go."

He pushed off the wall and moved a few steps away and looked back around to Aoife on the ledge. His back he held slightly hunched, as if it would protect his troublesome stomach to hide it under the arches of his ribs. But at the sight of the perched ghastly girl, he brightened up a moment. Eoin stood upright and turned to her and grabbed the bulge of the crotch of his trousers in an obscene and provocative gesture.

"Don't ya forget it, O'Kelly. Ya said t' give a think to this cock!" he shouted. "Think long 'nd hard! Get yer noggin' runnin'!" He laughed and then he turned away from her and picked up his pace. In a few steps, he went around the corner and was gone.

Eoin would be back, just no one knew when. He was gone off to score to get right, keep the bread down; grow a bit stronger, if things worked out for him. The new day had taken hold in the East End and coated it in drab grey light. Half of winter was still ahead.

[Aoife O'Kelly]

She couldn’t have deciphered why Eoin had reacted so damn strangely to the bread, but as soon as she had asked she had found her attention waning, her fleeting nature cast along the alley as her fingers fell from his hair — snapping her wrist away as to loosen his own grasp made around her. Aoife did not like to be held, not in any sense of the word, even if it was by one flimsy bone. Drawing her gaze over him, Aoife waited and watched as Eoin began to retract himself from her — wherever he was going, she didn’t think to contemplate it, for instead she was quite glad to have some left over bread to share with the animals who needed a charitable hand.

Better the strays than him, she thought, as she popped her last piece into her mouth, chewing without decorum as Eoin grabbed at his groin and hollered. That, at the very least, earned a chuckle.

“Oh sure, I’ll be t’inking about it all right,” Aoife yelled back, mimicking him with a hand against her skirt where her legs met, her grin exposing her teeth and a wet protruding tongue till she watched him turn the corner and disappear into the city. Well, at least he played his part, and she was sure she’d be forced to see him again at their headquarters.

Without much purpose, Aoife remained in that alleyway for the best part of a dry morning before trailing her way back to lay her head for a semi-nap stolen beneath the tables, it wasn’t always all blood and steel after all.