ianncardero:
Iann was, for lack of a better word, spying. Although in all honesty it wasn’t half as glamourous as ‘spying’ sounded. He supposed this was more what it was like being a private detective: sitting around, looking at someone and waiting for something to maybe, perhaps, possibly happen. He’d brought a book with him, but stupidly found he couldn’t read and spy at the same time. He could phone a friend, but Iann wasn’t good a social calls. He resorted to conversing with himself and pacing, but people gave him wide berth but that only distracted Iann from his task. After a while, Iann floomped down on the rain-damp bench again.
So when a stranger showed up (he hadn’t noticed her gait as she walked over) and asked out of the blue if she could sit on the bench - his bench - Iann blinked up in surprise. The sun peeked out from behind the rain-clouds, creating a rather lovely halo backlit against the young woman’s hair, all her little wispy dark brown hairs looking like they were glowing gold. He didn’t recognize her, but he grinned absurdly up at her.
“You look like the Virgin Mother…” he said.
And then he remembered his primary task: spying. Well, this distracting Mary-esque kid didn’t seem suspicious or anything (but wasn’t that the point of suspicious people? Oh, she was good) so he motion to the bench and scooched more in to the corner.
"It’s a free country,“ he grunted, turning his attention back to the shop across the street from the park.
He was quiet, staring at the shopkeep he’d been tasked to spy on, before abruptly asking his bench-companion: "Why this bench? Why not…that bench over there?” Iann motioned casually to a bench a littler farther along the path.
Ren actually snorted at that, startled by the observation, and finding it more than a little ironic. Virgin was a far cry from who she was, both in terms of the obvious meaning, and her dive into sobriety. “Thank you, I think.”
She sat down, though she regretted it a little bit at his next response. It had kind of looked like he wasn’t doing anything, but now she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d interrupted him somehow. It would probably be more awkward to just stand up and leave immediately though, and certainly more rude, so she stayed put, fishing for her phone in her bag.
Ren assumed they would sit in silence; she only needed a few minutes to rest her leg, but he surprised her with a question, following his motion with her gaze to the bench further away. Shrugging, she knocked on the hard plastic of her brace with her knuckles. “The closer one was more appealing. Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes. Just needed a rest before I caught a ride back to my place.”
She didn’t drive, not anymore, out of fear more than anything. Guilt weighed on her every day yet somehow in the eyes of the law, she was completely innocent, a victim even. But everyone knew that wasn’t the case, or at least she knew that. So no, she didn’t drive.
Since he got to throw out random interjections, Ren decided she was afforded the same right. “How did I look like the Virgin Mother?”
