Out.

The sun is harsh, the streets are harsh, the language, the money, the time, the place, the air, the smells, the sights, the sounds, the food.... an infinite list of items that were just simply harsh. Unforgiving, unrelenting, impossible to grasp, follow, survive with.

Ilario is hurting.

His stomach and his head are empty. He can't recall when he last ate, nor can he remember when last a single, concrete idea made sense.

His only solace lies within the aged fabric of his clothing.

A single kindly soul, a woman of venerable age had helped Ilario around the area of a week ago. A warm meal, a soft couch, and something called.. deter.. detegan.. detergant.. on his garments. It smelled like a rose waterfall. That's what the packaging said. A jug made of... paskit.. plas.. plastic. Yes.

So his hose, his jerkin, his shirt, even his slippers were clean and colour-guarded. Whatever that meant.

But he was tired now.

He had taken to sleeping wherever someone else was not which meant abandoned buildings, decks, under trees, carelessly unlocked cars. And because eyes only stared when he tried to offer them the gold coins from Firenze (now called Florence), he was going hungry.

His auburn hair fluttered around his cheeks and neck messily, a light, graphite-made shading of grey eyes lined with cornflower blue from lack of and need for sleep. He, of course, wore his traditional attire and sometimes would rub the patch over his heart (or more precisely, his left pectoral muscle, but he still fancied the idea that was the direct position of the heart). He was doing it for reassurance, but it looked like he was feeling the bad after-effects of a deluxe burrito from a Mexican restaurant.

The warm day had no effect on him, he let people on the pale walkways brush around him at their own will. He just walked although his knees were numb. People stared, he walked. He thought.

He was not sleeping out of fear. Not only from the alien country and time period, but from the images he saw when he closed his eyes and thought about sleep.

Flashing, fleeting, blurred, naked in front of a full auditorium, then a red carpet path with flashbulbs on either side, being lost as sea, being surrounded by muffins, sex, marriage, death, worlds were things were far too big, nights were no one would turn off a light, a hot bath where the water turned to blood.

He was a satellite receiver for every skewed dream in a quarter-mile radius.

They gave him headaches, eyeaches, brainaches, muscle cramps. He shivered, cried, writhed, tried to hide, tried to draw in the dirt or on the wall with a lump of dirt.

In a nutshell, he was fairly miserable.

He attracted her immediately.

Natty had been staring through a store's window at a lacy, long sleeved cream shirt with little gray roses decorating the surface. The collar was notched, and the material amazing, but the price was astronomical. She made a face at it, fogged the window with her breath, and drew a frowning face with a slender finger. Her nails were blue today. Chipped, as usual, she had picked at them an hour after they were painted.

She was distracted from her new obsession when she saw the reflection of someone walking behind her. A blink, and then she turned around, eyes trailing after him as if he were some sort of exhibit that had gotten loose.

Scuffed black flip-flops followed after him. She had superglued blue sequins to the sides a long time ago, and they were all but gone now, save a couple that clung desperately to the shoes. She wore old jeans that she folded at the ankles, that ripped at the knee and the thigh and the shin, and that were splattered with multi colored paint. She wore a black shirt that showed her shoulders, and a pale blue tank top underneath. She wore jewelry—huge hooped earrings and chunky rings and thick bracelets. She wore her hair in two braids, pigtails, and she wore Jackie Onasis sunglasses that took up a good portion of her face.

She followed him. Put her hands in her back pockets and sort of walked in a skip after him.

He looked like she was walking in his sleep. Not sleepwalking, no, that was different.

"Hey. Hey! Are you all right, sir?"

Her lips glittered when they curved in a smile like so.

It's not every day you see man in an effectual cousin of a pair of pantyhose. Jaybird blue ones at that.

Ilario shivers when she speaks. Not because he is cold, but because it is his initial reaction to the language. Grunts and slurs. He focuses his mind (difficult because he is longing for a warm rabbit pie from his mother's servant's crowded kitchen) on what she said.

Hay. Hay? Hey. He heard that intoned often. Not intoned, really, he recants, but shouted. Sir. That's almost familiar. We don't except... gold pieces... Sir. Do you understand me, Sir? Sir? Can you even hear me? What are you wearing, Sir, is it yours?

Are and you were easily placed. All right. Everything being right. The state of correctness. There was no order or method to it.

Ilario fixed her with a hazy, bedraggled stare and then slowly shook his head. He felt he might as well be honest about these matters.

In the back of his mind, he made a mental note to later on summon the emotion to be apalled at her dress. Women in leggings. This one with her shoulders bare.

No wonder this place made such little sense.

Well, that wasn't good.

Usually, when she asked someone if they were okay, she automatically expected them to answer with a lie. Otherwise, it was just boring. When was anyone really okay? Every person had something to complain about, be it the weather, their Aunt Jane, or the hemorrhoids on their cat. People always had something to whine about, no matter who they were.

But the simple shake of the head she received in response to her inquiry worried her more than elaborate bitchfest about a splinter ever could. She touched his arm, gently, frightened that she might startle him.

"Well, that's not good that you're not good. You look like you need some sleep." Have you been doing drugs? Drugs aren't good for you, you know. They keep you from sleeping.

Grip tightened, if just to hold him up.

"You look like you need some sleep. Or some food. Or some good, homestyle rest! Do you want to come over? My mom won't mind, she's worse than me when it comes to helping people. I mean, this one time we found a homeless man—" she said this as if they had found a dog, "—and my mom invited him in for spaghetti. He ended up living with us for a month! Can you believe it? A month!"

Of course, she had no idea that he, quite possibly, had no idea what she was saying. Ah, youth.

Ilario blinks. He tries to follow the conversation, but she's talking awfully fast. He opens his mouth once or twice to ask for some clarification, but shuts it quickly.

Most of what she said went above or to the sides of his understandings. A few choice words he had heard before and her tone were his only guides toward what she was saying.

He does not flinch as she grabs him, but did glance at her hand briefly. He seemed somewhat fascinated by the nail polish, but tore his eyes away and put them back on her face.

"I..."

He whimpered. He might cry. This was all too fast.

"I no.. capisca... I no.. under.. undertsand."

He rubs his eyes with his free hand and looked at her wearily.

(OOC: Sorry it took so long, I lost the thread! X_X)

Immediately she looked guilty. "You don't speak English?" That could be a problem. The only other language she was fluent in was Spanish (modern day Spanish, mind you), and he did sound like he spoke in something similar to it (the accents were similar, at the least).

"You can rest at my house," she offered again, this time in Spanish. "And there is food for you to eat, and a place to bathe." She kept her words slow, not wanting to scare him away with her rapidfire Spanish, just in case her instincts were wrong and he wasn't speaking in something derived from Latin.

Gnawed on the nail that wasn't attached to the hand that was gently leading him. Looked at him with worry—he looked as if he were going to break down.

He shakes his head. That sentence, one of few, he understood perfectly.

Something new. Slow. He watched her face intently while his own screwed into a concentrated expression. Some of these words made more sense, they were strung together in a much more natural order too. He rubbed his chin with his loose hand and thought for a few minutes.

"I would like that very highly, but I have no payment in return."

He says. Not in Spanish but Latin. Not church Latin, of course, but conversational Latin which was more informal and less recognizable. However, he too speaks slowly and annunciates his sentence carefully. He adds a gesticulation when appropriate, touching his crest for 'I' and shaking his head for 'no'.

He continues to let her guide him.

She puzzled over his speech pattern. It didn't sound like anything she had ever heard before, but then again she really hadn't heard everything. It took her a moment to dissect it, and when she realized what he was implying she shook her head quickly.

"No, no, there is no need for payment. Think of it as a gift."

She was leading him into a nice little neighborhood, nothing too spectacular. It was the kind of neighborhood where some houses had nice lawns and others had brown ones, where some were really neat and properly trimmed while others were overgrown and wild with both nature and nurture.

Her house was fairly nice. They kept their lawn trimmed and even had a little garden in the front, overflowing with roses and various different vegetables, some foreign, some not. The house was blue, and very pointy (their family didn't believe in box houses) with a patio in the front and a porch in the back.

"We have pets. I hope you don't mind. I have a cat named Stan and a dog named Ralph." She didn't elaborate on the types of cats and dogs because she doubted he would know what she was talking about, but the cat was black and long and sleek and the dog was a well-muscled Alaskan Husky.

She led him towards the door, insistantly.

He seemed to, eventually, understanding the 'gift' and favoured her with his first large smile. Although his eyes remained tired, the smile brought some vitality back to his young, pleasing features.

"Grazie.. thank you.. thank you."

First Italian, he frowned, then Latin, he looked unconvinced he made sense. The last expression of gratitude was done in slow English, but 'thank you' were two words he had heard before and cultivated an idea of when they should be used.

He looked up at the house, the smile returning. It was a glorious sight to him, no matter what, as he had spent the previous night on the cold wood a deck. He mumbled something about the house being lovely in Latin, but more rapidly than before and to himself. When she began speaking, he looked at her but did not reply.

Upon reaching the door, he extending his hand and touched the frame, murmuring a small prayer of appreciation and protection for the house. He was trying to be respectful, although while Ilario had been expanding his mind in the 1500s, emphasis had left much of the spiritual in favour of the man and his life at the present time.

"Hey! That's neat!" She faltered when she realized that he could take her exclamation wrong, then shifted from foot to foot. "I mean, I like that." She wished she was cool enough to bless houses before she entered them.

Nevermind the fact that she was pretty agnostic. Or something along those lines.

She shuffled around in her bag for a moment, trying to locate her keys by just feeling, then gave up and opened it to dig around more thoroughly. It took her a moment to get a hold of the keys, and then another moment to unlock the door.

Managed not to get any dust on her hand that time. That was a plus.

The door swung open easily and Ralph looked up from the blanket he was lying on. He didn't bark or anything, just thumped his tail once in greeting.

It should be noted that this particular Husky looked remarkably like a wolf. Probably not something someone who wasn't keen on this century would be too excited on seeing in front of an unlit fireplace.

On the other hand, a black streak went charging up to her, meowing happily and affectionately. The cat nuzzled her and flopped on his back, rolling this way and that way energetically.

The animals certainly had the strangest role-reversal.

"Come on," she urged, still in Spanish, heading towards the kitchen. "I'll make you some food."

He blinked a few times as if trying to figure out what made her so excited. When he finally came to the conclusion that it was his gesture, he touched the doorframe again and smiled, but sheepishly.

"I'm not a priest, but I owe you many thanks for this welcome."

In Latin, of course.

He watched her sift through the purse's contents silently, plucking the hem of his tunic with his free hand. He moved away as she opened the door and entered more behind her than beside. He saw the dog and smiled, but mistook it not for a wolf, but the large hunting hounds he had sometimes seen brought over on ships from the north were they were more often bred.

"Does your family hunt?"

It was a very common question, and hunting stories could often spark friendly relations between families. His own father, Alessandro, had hunted often although Ilario chose to study and perfect his artistic talents. Many a time as a small child he had been regaled by his father's stories of the hart hunts Alessandro preferred to engage in.

He looked from the canine to Natty and nodded slowly, walking after her while being careful not to trod on the cat. He did not pay much attention to animal itself, but wondered inwardly how much of a mouser such a friendly animal could possibly be.

"Hunt?" It took her a moment to realize that, yes, he was actually being serious. A smile, at that, what an amusing question—did they look like they hunted? The walls certainly didn't have any deer heads on them, and the only place her dad would get a bear rug at would be a garage sale.

She shook her head. "No. They're not hunters. I think my mom's a vegetarian." Never really paid attention to what her mom ate, but she had a vague recollection of the older lady picking out meat from every meal.

"In any case, I've lived here all my life."

That was a lie.

In fact, they had only lived there for a year.

She didn't know why she said it. Maybe because she liked the thought of actually settling down. They didn't move as much as some families, but she certainly had never been able to settle down in one place long enough to make a lot of friends. She didn't like moving to new places. They thought she was weird.

Nervously, she pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. Her eyes looked amber in this kind of light, but, she can assure you, they're nothing but boring brown.

"Do you want anything in particular? I'm a notoriously horrible cook, but I can make a killer sandwich."

Bad choice of words, perhaps.

He looked vaguely disappointed by this, nodding.

He continued nodding politely while she talked, having no idea what 'vegetarian' meant in Spanish or English. He vaugely grasped the communication of how long she had lived there, keeping to his nods although he grew steadily more confused.

Upon reaching the topic of the sandwhich, he blinked.

"A... sandwich.. which.. kills? Poison?"

He begins to back away. Perhaps he had stumbled into the den of a political rival. A wronged merchant. Nevermind that all traces of his family name and their relations with ouside sources had disappeared from knowledge almost five hundred years ago.

"You only brought me here to poison me.."

His tone is accusing as he stumbles into the frontmost room.

Poison?

Did they even have any poison?

Natty followed him, puzzled by his strange conclusion. How did he come up with that? She stuttered to a halt and retraced her steps, physically. For some reason, going back to where she stood when she knew the thing she forgot always made her remember.

It worked.

"No, no, I mean a good tasting sandwich!" She looked appalled at the very idea of being accused of wanting to kill someone. "Haven't you ever heard that saying before? It's not even that new! It's like, lingo from the seventies."

She followed after him again, eyebrows knit with worry. "I'm not going to harm you. Honest. Why would I do something like that?"

Annoyed. Threatening? Her? She stepped to the side in order to avoid killing a lady bug on any given day.

She was going to have to be more careful with what she said.

He stopped just before stepping on the cat. He continues to peer at her, grey eyes riddled with worry and mistrust.

".. Lingo..? Seventies? You are not seventy."

He crosses his arms over his narrow chest and affixed her with a disapproving stare. Something he had seen done often in public places. The arm crossing at least. He had only known a select few that lived to such a venerable age and they certainly did not look like her.

"I do not know. Because you are bitter over trade terms.. or a loss of land.."

He waves his hand with a dismissing air, as if brushing away the importance of her reasons. He re-crossed his arms and tilted his weight onto his back foot, almost mimicking the position he saw more than one person assume during his daily meanderings.

Considering his speech and clothing, it only looked somewhat comical.

"Bitter over..?

"I'm not seventy..?

"..what?"

Natty stared at him with a dazed sort of confusion, gawking, with her lips slightly parted. He was standing oddly—what was going on?

She shook her head, completely baffled.

"Look, I promise you that I won't kill you." What an odd thing to promise. "On my honor." Wonder if that meant anything.

He looked slowly sinking into the same confusion.

"You're..."

He changes thought-tracks.

"On your family's honour?"

He presses, locking his shoulders and indicating he would not back down. His expression became an almost triumphant smirk. He knew the magnitude of a such a swear might flush her out. If only things were still so simple.

"If you don't... I shall find out your means and have you removed from all your business dealings... I shall ruin you."

Make no mistake. He sounds quite threatening and it would be a very effective threat. If Natty were the type of tradesmen he was accustomed to seeing his father deal with when a ruined business meant beggar's rags.

Natty put her hands on her hips and frowned at him.

"On my family's honor," she repeated. Of course, she was unaware of the weight of her words, but it wouldn't matter much to her even if she did know. After all, she wasn't keen on killing this man, no matter what he thought.

Kept her eyes locked on his, not backing down either. Why should she? No reason, no reason at all.

"I'll even taste-test the food for you if it makes you feel any better."

How on earth did one get in an argument such as this with a complete stranger? She wondered how she managed it.

Her agreeance to his stipulation seemed to take the wind from his sails. Ilario slumped vaguely and nodded in a compromising manner.

"I take you for your word."

He said with a little less fervor.

"Are you a food tester?"

He counters.

"There is no need to be ashamed. Everyone has their place in life and in Christendom."

He almost crossed himself, but stopped as he recalled the urgence of his former peers to concentrate on the physical journey of man. Of course, he would never be caught dead samplinmg potentially laced food, but it was becoming beside the issue.