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[indent][color=c8d1c6]	She leaves with promises and whispered farewells, her eyes flitting and lashes swooped low whilst they embrace in a swift good bye, his arms around her small shoulders and her fingers scooped against his back. It's brief, but telling, and within Ana feels only the slightest burdens of guilt. Their meeting may of been performed on a means to an end, but their friendship is genuine in warmth and understanding, though currently under forgery. Ana is the first to break away and she glances up -- she then realizes just how much taller he is than her -- and smiles. If such is perhaps pinched around those delicate edges, he doesn't say, but then she doesn't question why he seems perhaps a bit too hesitant to let her go.

	But, he does. Eventually.

	Patrick watches as she leaves the park enclosure in front of the museum -- his museum -- to cross the main road where citizens of The Badlands gather in troupes and part around her briefly before closing entirely around her. To him she stands out like a brightly coloured bird, adorned in paradise and dressed in splendor, appealing to the curious notions of rarity that crowns her as something beloved. She would loathe that comparison he knew and would tell him she was otherwise and simply just a normal person, however she was anything [i]but[/i]. A shadow descended across his eyes as the sun fell yonder clouds swollen all grey and dark, heralding to the Fall weather slowly embarking across the later noon with the promise of the evening chill. He knew she was after something, though his knowledge ended there as to what she was searching for. But, there was no mistaking the glimmer in those ethereal blues alight in success, pride, and intelligence so keen and well wielded, that he was powerless -- no, [i]hopeless[/i] -- to do anything else but acquiesce to her very whims and wishes. However Patrick was not without his own merit and with this distinction in hand he quickly retrieved his mobile -- ignored the message there with her name attached -- and dialed a number from memory.

	[color=7c7c60]"It's me."[/color]

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	Nights within The Badlands came upon a near winter breath, frigid winds following down the mountain at the farewell of the sun beyond the peaks looming within the clouds. Punctuated to the skies, the evenings fell swiftly and the cold more so in the later years, thus the days shorter and the nights longer that did little to wane the actively of the locale. People flocked to dimmer settings with amber essences and ambiances dulled to golden dusk and husky browns like whiskey in honeyed glass. Cafes were traded for bars alive in smoke and whispers and here Ana paused, glancing to one such establishment that only opened doors at this hour of dusk. Those initial patrons spilled out onto the patio adorned in bare bulbs and maroon drapes; heavy velvet embellishments pulled taut away from tinted glass that cast her reflection back upon herself. 

	Once, maybe some odd years ago, Ana would indulge in such luxuries with former associates much like Patrick. Lost to whimsical music in the shadows of twilight with perspiring tumblers held cold within slight gestures, such dalliances now seemed like an age ago, almost another life time lost to fate of life and all the destines lain therein. An adopted birth rite had been her sanction and on the eve of coming to terms with her bequeathed purpose, Anastasia came to accept that initial of role of maintaining facades built upon facades and fortifying those with simpers laced with false mirth. She remembers accepting the key that would dedicate her justification to thievery of legendary artifacts and priceless objects from the highly coveted vaults and coffers of many would-be millions of those wealthy patrons that sired The Badland's herald. Anastasia had taken the mantle of the harbinger of forgotten rouges and in exchange, she had come to thrive in the shadows cast by these very buildings she had known so well. In small ways, her identity too had been stolen, buried somewhere among the roots of her family's legacy, liken to a rose among thousands of thorn bushes.

	Quietly, she smiled to herself and tucked a strand of hair behind the shell of her ear before abandoning her reflection within the amber tinted glass, and continued her way home to the Herlion building where a rich Greenhouse awaited her and where a forsaken tome of dead poems and lost serpentine dragons suddenly became a glow.

	[i]Now the real games would soon begin.[/i]

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[center][sup][color=c4e4e6]. 𝒆 𝒕  𝒅 𝒓 𝒂 𝒄 𝒐  𝒈 𝒍 𝒂 𝒄 𝒊 𝒆 𝒊 .[/color][/sup]
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