it’d become something like routine, trudging her pom-pom’d feet from her cluttered apartment to Walter’s trove, her biggest bag-- an all-black one, like a void in space-- slung over a narrow shoulder, a wad of singles and change stuffed haphazardly into the front pocket of her shorts. she took a shortcut through the back of Hundred Acre Woods, cut across two lanes of traffic, and then it was the piers of Crescentia Harbor looming in the distance, a haggling beacon of light.
before Walter, a lot of what Tink’d scavenged for her projects she’d had to collect herself-- on the beach, in back alleys, scanning the floors of boutiques and sidewalks-- or else had been brought to her by peter. and while she still did these things, and peter still brought her knick knacks nicked from god-knows-where, sometimes it was a hassle to find anything genuinely usable-- and peter, of all the things he was, was never reliable. Walter, on the other hand, was a consistent presence-- and an easy enough person to haggle with, if only because Tink had such a knack for persuasion.
she didn’t bother knocking on his door anymore. with a confidence she rarely exercised, Tinka flung open Walter’s front door so suddenly it banged against the back wall-- but when she stepped inside, she was quiet enough that not even the floor creaked under her shifting weight. she didn’t seek Walter out, like any respectful guest might have. instead, she immediately stepped towards a shelf teeming with inanimate life-- wheels and dials, screws and plugs, a cracked porcelain figurine. her long fingers began to pick through the carnage of someone else’s life, eager to take hold of something useable for herself.
