Marcel spotted the cloaked figure and saw him wave him over. He had a keen eye for noticing faces--or at least the general characteristics of them (pretty, female, etc.; the things he deemed important)--even when under cloaks, and well...he found himself sighing at the sight of this one. When Arietta spoke of this contact, he had been picturing some slick, mysterious, dark-haired beauty, dangerous and leading a life full of intrigue and excitement, to meet him there...not some twerp who stood out like a very red thumb in the crowd. He felt like a kid who had been expecting to get a shiny new bicycle on Christmas day...but only received some ratty old socks.

Cursing his luck, he brushed past the host and showed himself to the table where the cloaked young man awaited.

When the figure looked up at him, the words just flowed out of his mouth without thought, "My name is...uh, my name is..."

His mind woke up at the sound of his stuttering and realized it was probably going to have to do some work here. And now, thanks to this, it suddenly occurred to Marcel that it might not be the most well-advised idea to give out his name to someone he knew absolutely nothing about. Especially someone he knew absolutely nothing about and who had the potential to be someone who could use magic. He consulted his memory, full of old crushes and jumbled-up phone numbers, and tried to produce something along the lines of an alias he remembered Cadenza using before. The problem was, all those names were feminine. And Marcel had very little imagination for anything but courting girls.

"My name is...Mari...o."

The cloak figured stared. The stare seemed to ask: "Is that the lie you wanna settle on?"

The boy coughed, and squared his shoulders in an unconvincing attempt at confidence. "Yeah. Erm. Mario," he repeated. "I'm here because of your...uh...note. Right. So let's conduct business?"

--------------------------------------------------------------

Monroe looked...bad. Well... Tracey corrected, ...he never looks bad. But he looks hurt. And quite shaken up mentally.

The detective helped him up into a sitting position against a wooden beam that held up the roof of the Gulch's dusty porch, and then plunked herself down in front of him so that he wouldn't have to crane his neck the slightest bit to look at her. By force of habit, she fell into her usual "concerned and listening policewoman look"--eyes focused and mouth set into a sympathetic frown--but found it more genuine than any she had ever given to old housewives who were missing their good silverware, or a kid who'd had his shoes nicked. In this situation, she really cared. She had a personal connection, and that was...new.

"You had...something you needed to tell me?" she asked. As she waited for him to summon up the breath to speak, she found herself digging around worriedly in her bag for a canteen of water to cure that raspy throat.

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[A timid shapeshifter with an unexpected, inner wolf "side".]
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