Oh and all the ways that you won't bend

Are the only ways I live my life
Open | outfit

It was amazing how quickly Kristina had been able to get the hang of the smuggling business. In just seven short months she had made her connections, gathered a customer base, even made a few business partners along the way. She knew that she had a long way to go before ever being a 'hot shot' in the business but she was happy with her progress and connections. She was also happy to not be alone in it anymore. She had Affy, Wyatt, and now she had Ezra too. He was the newest of her connections, a connecction she had made in the weirdest of ways. She never thought it possible to smuggle an entire human being before him, though she figured it wouldn't be so difficult. She had managed a teenage Norwegian Ridgeback a few months before that and it had been a much larger and unaccommodating beast to hide. Ezra was easy peasy and that meant she had yet another market she could enter into.

Kristina had always liked the idea of being able to smuggle people, though not for any horrible reason. She liked to imagine being able to smuggle muggleborn witches and wizards to a place, any place, different than here. She didn't like the conditions they had been facing and it hit her very close to home. Her mother, the only parent she had ever known, was a muggle and if it hadn't been for members of her deceased father's family stepping forward when registration came a'knocking she would have been in their exact same shoes. It was because of her upbringing that she had never really imagined herself stepping foot in Knockturn Alley. She had heard things, dark things, about the alleyway and did her best to avoid it. Until today.

A friend of hers, a connection rather, had told her of a shop in Knockturn Alley. One that was difficult to enter but if she would be granted access held a great deal of impressive things. They had been quite vague about what exactly was so impressive, but still her interest was piqued. So Kristina had decided that today would be the day that she would try her luck with the shop. It was a rainy drizzly day and she assumed that any....unsavory figures would likely be in out of the rain instead of crowding the alley streets. She had been somewhat right, the foot traffic was low, but there were a few curious eyes on her as she approached the shop door. Kristina looked around anxiously, not exactly sure what to expect. With a deep breath she knocked on the shop door.

Tribulation

Outfit | @kristina

    This arrangement had a lot of very good things and a lot of very bad things. Lord Lestrange was frightening more often than not, there was something unbalanced about him, and she knew that she was always at risk of something when he was in the room. He probably wouldn't hurt her, she believed, since she was of use to him and she followed his orders to the letter, but there was still that itch under her skin that she always got when she was too close to something that would burn her. For now, however, she would rather be here than anywhere else. She didn't feel anything, most days, but when he came around he brought that delicious bit of sunshine with him. It wasn't like what was available everywhere else, the elixir in the shelves of every single apothecary she'd found hadn't been comparable. Lord Lestrange's was far more potent and now that she was so dependent of it, she couldn't go back and stop using. She couldn't, she refused to go back to that emptiness. Here, now, she was kept in an apartment and given money and belongings and those glimpses of euphoria, and all she had to do in return was anything he asked.
    Her days were mostly free, really. She still had work at the serpent but she was considering quitting that. There was no point in working there, she didn't do anything since almost nobody went in there and she didn't need the money anymore either. She almost never left her apartment anymore, actually, unless she really did need to stretch her legs and walk around. Snoop into shops, get a drink, anything like that. Not that she stayed out after dark, she wasn't allowed to do that since she had to be available to Lord Lestrange if he showed up at night. Any night. That was fine, though, she didn't miss her night job and there was nobody she wanted to meet that she couldn't meet in broad daylight. Going out for walks in Knockturn Alley was fine sometimes, she could keep herself entertained like that. It was cool in the dark alley and the summer was still hot enough for it not to be cold. That was a good day in her book, so she decided she would go out.
    It wasn't a long walk before she spotted someone quite... stuck, though. The woman was somewhat older than her, not dressed much like she fit into Knockturn Alley, though there were all sorts of people around all the time. Especially in the summer. Bemusedly, she watched the woman try to get into Moribund's for a while. Futile, of course. It didn't open for most people, though Anya had managed to catch someone as they were going in and -having entered with them- had somehow been granted permanent access. Not that she found it all that useful, now. The shop wasn't anything special, she didn't know why it'd been locked in the first place. 
    "You okay there?" Approaching with a smirk, she leaned against the wall beside the woman.

► kaigra ◄