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There is a young lady in the square. It may not have been obvious when she appeared; she's just a normal woman - taller than average - in a brown trenchcoat. But she's there now, looking about her with a sense of curiosity that seems to want to take in everything and store it away forever. She's staring, possibly staring at you and reading you like a book. And apparently you're one of those really good books - the kind with more questions than answers, the kind that keeps you turning the pages long after you should have gone to bed - because her dark eyes glimmer with interest at each new aspect she notices and there's just the hint of a smile on her lips.

"Amazing," she murmurs to no one in particular, "no two of them are alike."

[ ooc: I now have a permissions post set up, with a thing to fill out if you do/don't want your characters to be deduced. ]

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Simon isn't used to being noticed. Though he often looks at others with a similar level of intensity, he's finding himself uncomfortable upon finding himself on the receiving end of this. He isn't sure what she seems to find so interesting about him. With his grey shirt and neat hair, he hardly stands out. And yet here's this young woman watching him with a glimmer in her eyes that looks horribly similar to the one he saw so many times in the bullies when he was still in school.

Already short, Simon seems to shrink even further into himself. He twitches when she speaks, wringing his hands together even more nervously than he had been before. He makes a strangled sound in his throat on his first attempt to speak, and after taking a moment to quietly clear his throat he tries again.

"Are you talking to me?"

Hey, what's with this guy? It's like he's trying to disappear the more she looks at him. Which just makes her look more, because she's contrary like that.

"I am now." She smiles. "Hi."

"Hi."

Unlike her, he doesn't smile, looking her up and down suspiciously. "Why are you looking at me?"

"I think that's normal for most things in life, isn't it?" Alec is behind her.

He wasn't there a second ago. But that's how he rolls.

Today Alec's got his blue greatcoat on with a black t-shirt that says "Can't Sleep, Flowers Will Get Me", jeans, combat boots and a sword hung at his waist. As usual his hair is a permanent mess which allows his ears to poke through. He's also a bit on the twitchy side considering the Clutching Grove is still around.

It's allowed, she wants to counter. But he does have a point. She had been staring, and that's not generally considered polite.

"I was looking at everyone," she answers honestly. "Does it bother you?"

Lin was simply making her way through the square on the way to a late and hurried lunch when the young woman caught her eye. She slowed her walk a little and watched the watcher for a moment. The policewoman was tall, with confident shoulders and intricately molded armor framing an athletic body; her hair was steel gray and her gaze was piercing. She walked the policeman's walk, the same for universes over. It was a walk that could move miles comfortably, and so it often did.

But today she chose to pause. She'd never seen the girl around here before, that was for sure. She might be new, but if so, her composure was remarkable -- unless, perhaps, she was more than she seemed.

With that thought in mind, she approached and nodded abruptly to the stranger.

"Are you traveling through?" she asked.

It's not the fact that he suddenly appeared behind her that throws her off. I mean, it is, but there are plenty of people who can do that and, on a good day, she's one of them. That's not why, when she turns around, she finds herself suppressing the urge to shout.

What do you think you're doing? are the words that immediately come to mind. It's not the way he looks, per se, but something about the context of that look. Not only does every oddity look perfectly genuine and like it belongs on the man who is wearing it, but as far as she can tell this is how this person dresses when he goes to do his grocery shopping. And if a man puts on ear extensions and a sword to go buy milk, it doesn't matter that he didn't actually walk out of an urban fantasy novel that morning because in either case the world is that much crazier for having him in it.

"You can usually get a general idea of where you are by studying the people around you," Holmes explains. She doesn't waste time being startled, but she can't help cocking her head a little at this guy. Seriously, what the fuck? "But no two people around here seem to be from the same place."

That was an understatement, of course, but she was hesitant to voice her suspicions that many of them weren't even from the same time or planet. She wasn't sure yet that she had enough extraordinary evidence to be making such extraordinary claims.

"I hope so, officer," Holmes responded with a tight-lipped smile. "That implies that I'll leave eventually."

She had called the lady "officer" but really Lin didn't resemble any policewoman Shirley had ever seen. She definitely was one, though. Shirley was tentatively deciding that she was maybe the chief of police in the Steampunk China version of New York City. Of course, having formulated a working theory that involved the words "Steampunk China" as the best explanation for someone standing right in front of her, Holmes was beginning to feel a little faint. Maybe she should sit down and stop observing things for a while.

"Which, um, is to say that I'm lost," she added. "Help?"

"Please, sit," Lin said. She could hear the pounding of Shirley's heart and it wasn't a good sign. Now, it was quite possible that this would make things worse, but she didn't have a chair handy, so she reached out and bent one up from the earth.

"Welcome to Burby," she said, not unkindly. "I don't think anyone ever comes here on purpose.

Shirley let out a scream, but then when it turned out to be a chair that was suddenly rising out of the flat earth she decided to sit in it. Because that was the course of action that made the most logical sense, given that her legs had conveniently stopped working. She was going to have to revise her hypothesis about Lin - apparently it was Magical Steampunk China.

"Okay." She nodded. "And they can come from anywhere, apparently."

Anywhere. Anywhere. Even places that make no sense. It didn't seem like this should be bothering her so much, but it was.

"Oh. That's easy to explain. We're in Fairy. One of those crossroad places that take people in and doesn't exactly spit them back out again." He smiles a bit, friendly like, and seems to be a bit amused at her reaction to him.

Alec would love to hear where she thinks what sort of place he's from. She'll be wrong likely, but she might get some bits right.

Burby is an exceptionally dull place when one is accustomed to ruling a kingdom of unruly goblins. Jareth's boredom--to his eternal dismay--encourages him to spend much of his time mingling with the common crowd, occasionally trying to recruit people to serve him (no one has taken him up on that particular offer) and, at times, amusing himself with harmless little spells: shoelaces magically tying themselves together, holes appearing in the bottom of full cups and buckets, hair being tugged by an invisible force. It's not enough to prevent him from sulking. No goblins to boss around, no pretty young things to--

Strike that. Jareth notices a young woman across the square eying everything with the most intense scrutiny. She's not quite as young as he might prefer (younger girls are more likely to provide amusing company), but he's in no position to be choosy.

He disappears and, almost instantaneously, reappears next to the woman. "And what, my dear, do you find so fascinating?"

It does bother him, though it occurs to him it's something he does himself. He's sure he can't make people that uncomfortable. Can he? Maybe it's just they don't usually notice him.

"It's... uncomfortable," he admits, still uncertain.

If Holmes were writing a textbook on how to do the crazy shit that she does, she'd have to include this guy as a case study. Everything about him was so well-ordered and perfectly tidy that it was almost impossible to tell anything else about him. (Though she suspected that if she were looking at his back there would be more to see.) It would be perfect for illustrating what inferences can be made from the complete absence of any kind of evidence.

"Oh," she said, with some embarrassment but not so much that she was exactly going to lose sleep over it. "Sorry. I just sort of found myself here with no explanation as to how that happened, so I thought that observing the people around me would help. I didn't mean to disturb."

Alec was a lot to take in, but Holmes had quickly resolved the mismatched signals of his ensemble into a few important points.

When in doubt, the most important thing to look for on a person is the relative age of each article of clothing. Older shoes worn with newer clothes usually pointed to a decline in personal wealth, whereas a new coat worn over older clothes almost always meant a hurried move the previous spring or summer. In this case, the t-shirt and jeans were newer than the coat or sword in terms of how long they had been in their owner's possession as well as fashion. The sword looked like it had seen some use, judging by the signs of wear on both the scabbard and hilt.

"Fairy. Right. And I don't suppose you're of the Fae?"

She wasn't sure whether or not she believed him - or, for that matter, her own eyes. If he was telling the truth it would certainly explain his clothing, but she was leaving herself open to the idea that this was somehow an elaborate hoax.

She's new. Of course. Most people don't expect to find themselves in Burby, so he can't really fault her for wanting an explanation. He still doesn't fully understand the town himself, small though it is. He offers her a hint of a smile, appearing a little less guarded now.

"You didn't disturb me," he assures her, with a slight shake of his head. "This is Burby. It seems as though a lot of people find themselves here with no explanation. I haven't found out why yet."

"Nah. An ancestor of mine was. About a thousand years before I was born." He looks around a bit nervously. "Hopefully he won't show up here. He's a bit nutty even for a fey. I met him once. Wished I hadn't. Anyway, I'm a bit of a throw back in the looks department."

All his body language says perfect honesty.

Lin barked an unamused laugh. "Anywhere is right. Keep that in mind as you live here. You'll see things you never thought possible. Watch your back."

She wasn't usually so doom-and-gloom with newbies, but the girl could hardly handle earthbending. She wasn't going to do very well in a Faerie forest, and then there was that scary Grove lurking around the edge of the town, too. She hoped that a warning to be prudent would go a long way.

And then suddenly Shirley Holmes was standing next to Sparkly David Bowie With Magic. She was beginning to think that drugs were somehow involved.

"The people," she said, doing her best to keep her eyes above his waist. If there was one thing she remembered about that movie from when she was a little girl, it was that David Bowie's crotch was practically a named character. "They're pretty diverse, don't you think?"

"Mm."

It's a non-committal sound that manages to say "I am not the least bit interested in what this place has to offer" and "Oh, but do tell me more, you're rather fascinating" without a word.

Ah, there's a smile. He seemed a little more human when he smiled. And, considering that she knew how flimsy her explanation probably sounded to anyone living outside of her own head, it had come surprisingly easily to him. That was probably a good thing.

"A town that just kidnaps people, hm?" That sounded like pretty much the definition of a mystery worth solving. Or at least an amusing way to spend a weekend.

"You've been investigating, I take it?"

Iroh was walking through town when he caught sight of Lin chatting with a young woman he had not seen before. Smiling, he approached them.

"Lin, don't tell me you're having a tea party without me."

She nodded somewhat noncommittally. A lot of people could fake honest body language, but very few of those people would have come up with a story about a fairy town and one about a fairy ancestor without the two being in some way related. The only logical thing for her to do at this point was to assume that he was telling the truth about both, and see where that took her.

"I see," she said, her body language relaxing a little. This guy's weirdness wasn't so bad once you got used to it.

"My name's Shirley Holmes. Sorry about the interrogation, but this is all kind of unbelievable."

He does a quick blink at her name, clearly recognizing it. Well, a variation of it.

"I don't mind the interrogation. It's a bit weird if you're not from a place that has things like it." He offers his hand. It's definitely calloused from sword use. "I'm Alec Troven."

Lin's warning had the opposite effect; Shirley's eyes glimmered with interest at the thought of seeing things she had never thought possible, and her expression almost seemed to say, Try me. You know, completely as though she had not just now been tried and wasn't still recovering somewhat from the shock.

"I'm sure you mean that as a warning and not a challenge," she said, looking down somewhat self-effacingly, as though apologetic that she has to be so difficult. It was completely a lie.

She raised her gaze on hearing the newcomer, though. If Lin's attire could be considered 'steampunk' then this guy's seemed a bit more medieval. If they were from the same place at all, they couldn't be from the same time period. The older man's demeanor was quite different from that of the officer, too. If they were friends, they must be an odd couple indeed.

"We don't have any tea," she said somewhat ruefully. It hadn't occurred to her until he had mentioned it, but she could probably use some about now.

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yay, threadjack!