Steadily emerging with grace

@kristina Outfit

Tess had showed her where to go and how to get to London to do her shopping. She didn’t like to take trains and things if she didn’t have to, she ran where she could, traveling by foot mostly, but the longer she had been around Tess the more she was trying to accept things. She just didn’t like people. Their looks unnerved her. They made her self-conscious about herself, even if she didn’t care what she looked like half the time. Tess had given her strict rules and she followed them. Dressing like a person was one of them. Tess helped. She had a style of her own, but she liked Tess’ too.



After leaving the train she walked through london and went into the Leaky. Following those that headed out into Diagon it only took her a short time to find her destination. She walked into the shop and looked around. She could read well enough when it was a book, or handwriting that was familiar. Like her own or that of Tess and Vic, but she was getting to the labels and it was hard. She didn’t like this. She should have just asked Vic to get her what she needed.



Looking at things she hoped that things didn’t get to the point that she had to talk to people. Ew. People. She felt someone come up and she took a long breath to avoid panic. And tried to remember rule twelve. “Not everyone wants to hurt you. Deep breaths and access the situation.” Tess’ voice in her head and Vic’s too kept her calm. Pulling out her list she smiled to the woman. ”Would you mind helping me find these?”

i sold my soul, i hit a lick
if i die and go to hell

i swear to god i'm gonna be pissed
outfit

Work had once been a dance, one that she knew by heart. She could waltz through her days without even looking down at her feet and could do so flawlessly. It had taken practice, three years of it to be exact, but she had finally perfected it. That is until she began her new side business. Her waltz had turned into break dancing very quickly and she struggled to learn the new moves. She had asked Elijah for help at first, trying to figure out the steps to this new dance. As time went on she became better and better. Her meeting with Wyatt had helped further, bringing her into his crew, and she had began to feel like she was finally getting it. The business came easy, it was the regular work that still needed tending to.

She had let her other responsibilities slip more than once over the course of things. Forgot an order here, ran out a product there. She had been trying to find the balance. She was still trying. One of the things she had let slip first was her organization, which she had been so proud of once. She had ever item labeled clearly, faced, and ready for sale. In the rush of everything she had gotten sloppy. Now she was picking up that slack and had spent the better half of her morning re-labeling things. Some of the damn things she could hardly read herself, and it was her own writing!

Kristina sat behind the front desk putting nice new labels on a few of the really bad ones when the patron had entered. She had greeted her with a smile and proceeded to let her shop around a bit before offering her services. The red haired woman was unfamiliar to Kris, and she was certain that she had never seen her before. It could have been her first time in the shop...Perhaps she should offer some help. Kristina left her spot at the desk and approached the woman, hearing her take a deep breath. She hoped she wasn't too flustered and unable to find anything. She felt bad for not stepping in sooner. "Of course, let's have a look," Kris smiled as the woman showed her list. She scanned the list, making mental notes of where the things were. "Should be easy to get you all that you need. Is this your first time in the shop, hen?"

She wasn't stupid, and it was a fact that Vic had tried very hard to drum into Bex’s mind. She was an individual who has lived through some extraordinary circumstances and come out the other side markedly changed. She merely wasn't as modernity intelligent as other people. She had grown up alone, raised by wolves, lacking connection to most human emotions, but she has been found, she has been saved by Meré and Peré. She had been gifted a family who had been patient with her, and taught her. Not only how to human, and adult, but how to think. She was a quick study and great with her hands, she made her own bows, arrows and traps by hand. She was no fool, but the written word was her weakness. And unfortunately, it was thus that divided her from the rest.

One of her largest struggles was the written word, well the handwritten word. She could handle the printed page, thanks to the fact that Tess was such an excellent tutor and she had developed a deep affection for the woman and the written word. Not that she would spend her days indoors or anything to read instead, but on cool nights in front of her wood stove while pelts were drying and a stew of some kind was bubbling away, reading a simple book did offer it's joys. Of course it wasn't like she was reading Sickens or anything, but the bodice rippers her mother sent her were goodreads. It was the variances the differences that one person alone could have, based on mood and personality. It drove her mad, but she had gotten used to Ted’s and Vic’s. Notes from them lay scattered over the counter top just by the door.

Handwriting and speech were her downfalls. Despite how much she tried. The doctors that she had been taken to said that it was related to the lack of communication that she has been exposed to. She had been so young when she had been lost and even now she had little memory of what had happened to her parents or who she was. Her DNA or something had told who she was when they found her. It has been nigh on twenty years since she has been rescued and some things got easier with the passage of time. Others not so much. She tried though, she worked with Vic twice a week on speech and handwriting and Tess worked with her about etiquette and keeping her home clean.

She wanted a family of her own, and she knew that she wasn't too old yet, but Vic told her all the time, that if she too wanted a baby like Jericho, she would have to be better. And she tried. That's why she was shopping. She was trying to get this person thing down so that she could move on with her life and have a family, so that she could find her happy ending. She knew that some people wouldn't think that they deserved it being wolves, but it was what it was. She had her pack for the time being, and it would have to be good enough.

Her face heated and she shook her head, her ratty red hair moving about her like waves as she moved. ”No. I come wi-" She stopped herself. She couldn't say with her Alpha, and she couldn't say with pack. She thought for a moment and figured she'd go with a half truth. ”I come with family, but they work today, Me do things on own. “ Her speech was a little broken but it was better than it had once been. It was no longer a series a of grunts and pointing. She could verbalize her thoughts now, but putting those thoughts into actual words was harder than she could have ever anticipated. It was so hard to find the words that fit her thoughts and it often left her frustrated and angry.

”Me shop for things we need. Since season change. “

I SOLD MY SOUL, I HIT A LICK
IF I DIE AND GO TO HELL

I SWEAR TO GOD I'M GONNA BE PISSED

It was never easy to tell based on someones appearance if they were coming into the shop for Watson supplies or her own supplies. At first she had detested the very idea of having any sort of customer base entering the shop but out of convenience she had begun allowing it. The hours she spent outside of work were much fewer than those she spent inside. Well, that wasn't exactly true. It was more so that she had found the amount of personal hours she was willing to sacrifice for her new business was much less than she had anticipated. It hadn't been so bad at the very beginning. She hadn't had many customers at first and the time she spent delivering and collecting wasn't too bad. As her business grew the hours she had to herself shrank. It wouldn't have been an issue given she had been her old self. Her old self would have relished a new hobby to attend to so frequently but now she had a bigger burden that needed tending to. Her anxiety, though quelled, still remained.

It was almost likened to a house fire. Her anxiety came in as the tiniest spark, hardly noticeable at all until the entire building was ablaze. Suddenly she had been overwhelmed in the flames and worked tirelessly to put an end to them. Kristina had found that distraction helped to snuff the flames. Distraction, and thrill seeking. It was exactly what had been missing from her life before, it was exactly what had started the spark in the first place. Now she felt that the flames were extinguished. She had gotten her life back under control with her new endeavors, she knew how to put out the flames with an effectiveness that she knew would keep them from starting up again. But now there was the issue of the house. The flames were gone, but the house remained and it remained in shambles.

Kristina had begun working on picking up the pieces to her charred house bit by bit, righting them until hopefully she would have a livable home there once again. Joining Wyatt's crew had been a bit of a help in that. It gave her structure, something to build the home up from. It gave her the chance to be apart of something solid and not just a fluid member of her own world. Cleaning up and reorganizing the shop had been a part of that too. It was lucky that none of the Watson's had been made aware of her screw ups. She had managed the merging of their two businesses somewhat seemingly, and totally secretly. It was the small things, if anything at all, that would ruin that for her. She needed to be diligent in making sure that her duties did not change here. They had learned what to expect from her, it was pertinent that she live up to those expectations lest she raise a few brows.

The woman's English was broken and her accent lead Kristina to believe that she was foreign. French, perhaps? Belgian, possibly. The red haired woman spoke of having been in the shop before with family and Kristina offered her a cheerful smile. "Well, good! It's always nice to get out on yer own for a bit. I do apologize for the, erm-" she glanced around the shop, which she had been tearing apart in hopes of reorganizing, "-well, it's in a bit of disarray, isn't it? Tis' a good thing ye've asked for the help, hen, I'm no' sure even the most frequent of customers would find a thing today!"

Kris glanced at the first order of business: pot marigold. It was a common need, one she never let go out of stock. People used it for many things: healing potions, acne cures, sunburns. The woman spoke of the changing of seasons and Kris assumed the last one may have been a concern. Not that she was judging the lass. The woman looked a bit of a ginger, easy to burn possibly. Ok, maybe it had been a little bit of a judgement call, but not a bad one! "Marigold, yes, right over here lass. We keep it with most other healing herbs. You brew many healing potions? If no' we keep plenty o' elixirs in stock."