Young Writers Society

Angry cries of “thief” and “pickpocket” soon began to erupt from behind her, though she was several blocks away. She was honestly a bit surprised it’d taken them that long to realize they were missing their coin — by now the guards would have a hell of a time catching her unless someone was able to recognize her face. The scene she’d caused with the fisherman certainly didn’t help her in this regard. However, if worst came to worst she’d just have to start running again.

Until then she had a different issue: in the commotion, she'd lost any visibility she'd had of her bird, and she found this rather concerning. Though Mags had often taken the liberty of flying off she'd never gone this far this fast and it made Jay very nervous to have her only companion out of sight and earshot with little idea of where she went. Luckily, the town was small, but since she was a bird, Mags could easily leave the bounds of civilization. Hopefully she wouldn't due to the copious amounts of food, from fish guts to bread rolls, that was available in the market and on the docks.

She tucked her hands into her pockets and stepped out onto the street in the direction where she'd last seen her bird. She was fairly certain that it was in the direction of the ocean but she wasn't sure whether there were docks or it was just the beach. After some consideration she decided the docks were her best bet -- maybe she found some fisherman's gut pile to raid or was stealing weevil-ridden biscuits.

Jay sauntered down the side of the road, adjusting her hat to cut some of the glare from the sun. It was a rather out of place hat if one took into account the rest of her attire -- the irridescent green clashed with the bright red hue of her doublet that was contrasted by a royal blue cloak (with some holes in it, but she thought of it as 'well loved'). The odd motley of assorted, bright colors suggested that her footwear and hose might be similar in their panache. As it was, her left boot had a large hole in the sole and her trousers were the same dull brown as worn, dusty leather.

It was, admittedly, an uncommon style, but in Thuki's words it did well to reflect her 'unorthodox' outlook on life and 'overly, even comedic, gallant persona,' whatever that meant. She'd meant to get a more detailed and simpler explanation but had gotten sidetracked with one of her jobs and had never really gone back to revisit the subject.

"Hey, you!" a stern voice jerked her out of her reverie and she stopped and turned around, coming face-to-face with a man in the dark gray uniform of a guardsman. Her eyes widened with surprise and she stumbled back.

"That's her!" an accusatory finger was pointed in her direction by a middle-aged woman with a very prettily woven basket in her fingers.

"Please empty your pockets," the guard told her, arms crossed. Jay took a few more steps back, nervous.

"Uh, y-y'all must be mistaken me fer some 'un else, I ain't done nothin'..." she said, chuckling nervously.

"Then just turn out your pockets for us."

She had three options: cooperate, fight, or run. The first was, as she saw it, the second-best of all of them - it would buy her some time and she was unlikely to get hurt by the guard but ultimately get her arrested and she'd probably end up in a cell for far longer than was either safe or preferable. Fighting was out of the question. Resisting arrest was one thing, and attacking an enforcer of the law was another. That was a line she wouldn't cross without very good reason. This left running as her preferred option -- the one where she was most likely to succeed and not end up getting arrested.

"Sorry, sir, I've got somewhere to be," she said to the guard, flashing him a beautiful, white-toothed smile (or so she thought, anyways) and sprinting full-tilt in the opposite direction.

A whistle rung in her ears as the man raced after her and called for backup from anyone within earshot of the whistle. The old lady was yelling and shaking her basket fiercely, though whatever she was saying wasn't audible over the sound of the whistle, her boots striking the cobblestones, and her own heartbeat pounding in her ears as adrenaline began to pump through her veins once more.

The following sequence of events happened in such quick succession she wasn't entirely sure of what came first in hindsight. She was fairly certain it began with her clambering up a roof and coming face-to-face with a gray-uniformed young woman who gave her a fierce glare and snatched her by the collar of her shirt. This preceeded a sudden sensation of falling (probably caused by Jay's punching of said woman, and then getting dropped) that promptly ended in pain and smack as her skull came in contact with the ground. Luckily, the drop wasn't far, and though it throbbed with every pulse of her heart and would probably leave a large egg, she was fairly certain it didn't leave a concussion as she scrambled back to her feet and continued her sprint away from the guards, of which there were now two, and that was right about when she found the beast who'd started this whole thing in the first place.

A flurry of blue and white obscured her vision as Mags flew over her shoulder with a fearsome screech, the feathered fury divebombing the first guard, scolding with her harsh voice all the while. The man ducked and covered his head in surprise and terror (she was quite sure this wasn't an exaggeration in the faintest), leaving Jay only with the woman on the rooftops.

Luckily, no one was better at rooftopping than a thief who was born and bred on the streets of a city like herself.