Coffee anyone...

[nyoka]

Li made his way down the street from his apartment to the coffee shop down a couple of blocks. The sidewalks this afternoon were fairly deserted, but that was only because people were inside of stores spending time to linger in the cool air vs. the heat from outside. The heat didn't bother Li too much though, he had shed his overshirt earlier and was now walking down the street in wife beater. As soon as he got his iced coffee all would be well with the world.

It wasn't a bad day for a Saturday, as for the past few weeks it was, damn rain. Today was hot, muggy hot and he was looking forward to his iced drink.

Listening to his IPod while walking, he was singing quietly as not to embarress himself too bad. Flipping through his MP3 player, he smirked to himself, tweaking it was great because he now got over 60 more songs than the average player.

Turning into the coffee joint, he sighed as the cool air hit his skin. Then he noticed that getting his drink was to be delayed because apparently he wasn't the only one who thought getting an iced coffee was a good idea. Sighing he stepped into line, determined. The place was packed, if it wasn't for the overworking AC it was probably 20 degrees hotter in here. He turned off his IPod and stepped into the back of the line.

[Demeter]

Mercy glared at the crowd of people standing around her. Half of them were talking on their cell phones and each was trying to out-volume the other. She could feel the headache blooming behind her eyes. "All I want is a tea and then I'll be out of here. I can remain put until I get my tea...and not maim people." she hissed as another person jostled her from behind.

After ordering her drink, Mercy followed the crowd and stood at the beverage delivery area of the coffee house. She pressed a finger to her eyebrow as it twitched in time with yet another annoying trill of a cell phone. With her finger still pressed to her eyebrow, Mercy scanned the crowd and smirked when she saw a man standing towards back of the line. The man had done the smart thing and had earphones plugged into a MP3 player. "Smart" she muttered as one of the bouncy teens bumped into her.

Once she snagged her drink, Mercy commendeered a corner table and scowled at all the perky people who came near her.

[nyoka]

Although the line was moving fairly fast, it still wasn't fast enough. Li tapped his foot in a mear advertisement of aggrivation. Looking around the room and seeing all the people he spotted a woman hissing at teens, Li blinked several times with a small smirk internally saying "Ok...."

Finally he noticed he was next, off came the headphones and he got his Medium Mocha Frapachino. He paid, off he went to wait, but that was hardly long because of the great number of people in here they had it ready in no time flat.

Li turned and looked at the door, he sighed, he wasn't ready to go back into the heat again. Going to get his straw at the end of the counter he saw the woman who was hissing at people hiding in a corner looking evil, or trying to look evil to scare people off.

Plunking his straw into his cup, he meandered over towards her, he had to figure out why she was hissing....

"Is or was there a reason why your choosing to hiss at people?"

[Demeter]

Mercy looked away from blowing on her tea in an attempt to cool it down before she scalded her tounge to the young man standing in front of her table. It was the headphones guy. "Deadlines," she said before taking a test sip of her tea. "Still to hot. I've got deadlines coming out of my ears and people actually expect me to play nice when I'm being jostled by brats."

Mercy leaned across the table, snagged up a shaker filled with ground cinnamon and sprinkled a good amount on the top of her tea. "Why do you care about my reaction to the other people." Mercy eyed the strange man from the corner of her eye. "I don't see why you should care about what I do, it's not like I'm hurting anyone."

Mercy hunched her back over and slouched in the chair. She wasn't big on interaction with strange people, men especially, because of her past. Crowds tended to make her feel a little...feral, for lack of a better word.

[nyoka]

A small grin came to Li's face when she mentioned deadlines, he knew all to well about them and the stress they caused. "Deadlines, yea those are not fun to deal with."

Li stirred his drink a bit thinking of just a right way to answer her question, without any provocation on his part. "Well as far as your reaction goes, you don't normally see people hissing at others in a public setting like this. I just thought something was odd that's all and needed to figure it out."

Still wary if it was OK to sit and start a conversation with her, he continued to stand but leaned against the wall next to her table. "I'm Li, by the way" grinning a bit looking in her direction.

[Demeter]

Mercy eyed Li and wondered why he was still near her table. Her first eighteen years of life had taught her to trust men in any way, shape or form. Mercy cuddled her thick paper cup against her chest and looked up at the man. "Mercy, and if you are going to be near me, at least sit down. I don't like it when men stand over me."

Once Li had settled himself into a chair, Mercy sipped from her tea and kept her eyes fixed on him. "Why? Why do you decided to pester me out of a full coffee-house of people? It's not like there isn't anyone else here. Can't a person be annoyed in peace these days?"

[nyoka]

Li was slowly sipping his coffee for a moment to think of a good response. "Well, to be honest, yes you do have the right to be annoyed. From the sound of your tone, it seems these deadlines of yours are weighing pretty heavily."

Turning in his chair a bit to fully face Mercy now. "Well Mercy, I don't see it as pestering as more of chatting. I was curious about you and wanted to find out more, that's all nothing more. Besides, looking around this place, You seem to be a type of person I can get along with verses the teeny boppers floating about in here."

Fiddling with his straw a bit, he noticed that her drink was hot, "Can I ask you, why on a warm day did you choose to drink a hot tea?"

[Demeter]

Mercy leaned back in her chair, taking her tea with her. "Don't like coffee, warm or cold, and ice tea gives me a headache. What about you, why coffee, even cold, on a day like today? Why get yourself all hyped up on the caffine this late in the day."

Mercy growled when the cell phone clipped to her bed started to vibrate. "I'm ignoring that. It's probably another one of my reporters whining because I chopped their peice by half an inch." When the phone chimed that she had a new message, Mercy flipped the top open and turned the phone off. "So, why are you in a coffeeshop in the middle of the day?"

[nyoka]

Li grinned a bit, "I suppose that makes sense about coffee, I've never gotten a caffine headache myself, but I heard they can more or less burn. I really just wanted a cold chocolate drink and suppose I could have just gotten a milkshake, but there is just something that sounded good about having an iced coffee right now."

Running his hand through his hair Li remembered her mention of chopping someone's piece in half, "Someone's piece? Are you an editor of some kind?"

[Demeter]

Mercy nodded her head. "I'm the editor for the society pages of the local paper. Plenty of my reporters like to wax eloquently about the color of someone's dress. By hacking their peices into shorter bits, this causes them to get the pertantient information out faster."

She took another sip of her tea and watched the man sitting across from her. She knew that she didn't look relaxed. She was sitting up straight, fingernails tapping rapidly against the top of the table, much to the irration of the people around her. "I should probably be getting back to work before one of those reporters fall into a state of panic because of something or another."

[nyoka]

Li listened to her explaination of editting, "It makes sense, only getting the real information." He smiled a bit and turned it attention to the front door for a moment, there was a mother bringing in her screaming kids.

Looking back at Mercy, she said she needed to leave. "Okay, well can I call you later and go hang out again in some.." he scanned the room "... less hazardous environment."

[Demeter]

Mercy considered the man sitting across from her. He seemed nice enough and her brother had been harrassing her about her hermit like qualities. "Okay, I'll give you my number."

Mercy reached into her purse and pulled out the first peice of her paper her hand found. She grinned when she pulled out the receit for the coffee shop. "So you'll remember where we met," Mercy dug through her purse until she found a pen and, grinning, scribbled down her number. "This is actually my brother's number because I currently live with him. If a cranky man answers the phone, just ask for me."

[nyoka]

Li had been sitting at his desk all day hovering over a memory disk tinkering with it. It was rather hard to focus on his project because Wing was pestering him and was rather relentless about freedom from the house. Getting up he decided that it was time for them to go for a walk or something, it had been a while anyways. Looking out the window he saw the weather again, go figure it was the northwest, had turned gray. Not cold enough for jackets in his opinon but to at least wear a layer or two.

Standing by the front window of his apartment, he saw Mt. Erie. He had always wanted to go explore it but never really had the urge to. Wing liked the idea of getting to roam a mountainous area and Li agreed. Looking down on his little end table he saw a little reciept, curious he picked it up and looked it over. It was from the little coffee house down the street, with Mercy's number on it. Li grinned as he read the number, it had been almost 2 weeks since that little encounter and figured it was about time to give her a call.

Grabbing his cordless from the charger he punched in Mercy's number, she might not want to go but he remembered how she said that her brother was pestering her about a social life.... he might need to remind her of that fact.

[Demeter]

Mercy stared at the pile of boxes still covering the floor of the room she was "borrowing" from her brother and sighed. How he expected her to get a whole apartment's worth of stuff into one room and a bathroom, she didn't know. Her furnature was already in storage or it had been stolen by her brother to furnish his house.

Mercy pried open the lid to oen of the boxes, grumbling at the contents. This box contained some of her books. She looked up at the stingy amount of shelving in the bedroom and hissed. Mercy lifted the first book out of the box and sighed again. She['d taken the day off to try and get through some of these boxes but now that she was here she had no energy to unpack the boxes.

She nearly jumped for joy when the downstairs phone rang. There was something wrong with the upstairs extenstion so she took joy in running down the stairs and skidding into the entryway to grab up the phone. Wrath was gone for the day, working at some clients home, and would skin her if she missed any calls. Mercy punched the talk button on the phone. "Hello?"

[nyoka]

Li was quite surprised that the phone barely made it past the second ring before someone answered it. If he remembered correctly, Mercy said that she was staying with her brother and that is who he was expecting to be on the line. Taken back a little when a female picked up, his automatic response was to ask for Mercy.

After establishing it was her and reminding her of who he was, their conversation began. "I was wondering if you would like to join me on a hike at some point today. Considering it still is pretty early and there is still lots of daylight left, there is ample time to go do something. If you have the urge to, you can invite someone to come too. Before you answer, might I remind you of your little statement about a social life?"

[Demeter]

Mercy grinned and leaned against the wall next to the phone stand. She remembered Li. She liked Li, well, more then she liked most people. "I wouldn't mind a hike. It would get me out of unpacking a whole apartment-worth of stuff into two rooms plus a bathroom. And from answering my brother's phone. So, where would we be hiking?"

***

Mercy closed the door of her car, a beat up junker when compared to her brother's fancy sports-mobile, and glanced around the state park's parking lot. She'd arranged to meet Li here. She was a few minutes early but that didn't mean anything. She leaned back against the door and waited for the man to show up.

She'd turned on the answering machine before she left and stuck at note to the handset of Wrath's phone. He'd eventually find it if he returned home before she did.

[nyoka]

Li pulled up to find Mercy had already arrived leaving him a little suprised. Parking next to Mercy's car he got out, "Wow you beat me here, I thought I was pretty close... either that or your just fast." Mt. Erie was fairly deserted on a grey day like this one. Coming out when it was sunny was the optimal choice for "normal" people, but the less people the better because Wing was very antsy. Not to mention what he knew about Mercy, she wasn't a people person either.

Walking around to greet her and walk further towards the trail, he spun around "Have you ever been up here before? I have been meaning to for a while but this is my first time up." Li was beginning to bound up the little hillside that bordered the trail with little effort, he offered his hand to Mercy to get off the well beaten path. "So aside from work, what have you been doing for the past week and a half?"

[Demeter]

Mercy glanced around the area. "I'm just a bit of a lead foot. I think I broke a few speed limits on my way up." Mercy followed Li down the path. When he held out a hand, Mercy took it and hopped a few boulders ahead of Li.

"This used to be my playground when I was younger. It is where I, and my brother, would go when things got a little rough at him. As a result I know my way around here. My brother once called me a mountian goat."

Mercy scrambled up the top of the hill and waited for Li. "As for what I have been up to, not much. Work, yell at the reporters for going over their limits, and, as I said over the phone, trying to unpack an apartment's worth of stuff into two rooms plus a bathroom. Not the easiest things I've ever done. What about you, what have you been up to?"

[nyoka]

Li paused as Mercy bounded up more or less leaving him in the dust, Wing took offense and flashed his eyes taking her title of mountain goat to gloating. Forcing him back down and shaking his head a little, Li took off after her.

"Well, I'm actually quite a hermit I suppose there are only few occasions when I feel the urge to join the human population. I suppose I have been hiding in my Apt. fiddling with things and on the internet. But work has kept me busy as well. As a matter of fact there was a woman who came in with a fried hard drive, literally smoldering and begged me to repair it. That has kept me busy for a while."

A few yards ahead of them, Li spotted a large boulder at the very top of the hill and took off for it making Wing absolutly delighted he was in the lead again. Facing Mercy again, "So, since you and your brother tended to play here quite often I suppose you can show me some interesting places right?"

[Demeter]

Mercy smirked at the man when he retook the lead. Never one to turn down a challenge, Mercy scrambled up a few more boulders after Li. "Yeah I know a few interesting places." At the top of the hill, Mercy glanced around and slid down the hill, heading for a little cave-like area sheltered by the trees.

"Life wasn't easy when we were kids so everytime things got bad me and my brother would come out here till the park closed, mostly during the summer. It didn't matter how many buses or how long we had to walk, this was a place where we could get away from life." Mercy peered around the little tree cave and then looked around for Li. "Come on...get down here."