Quoted By:
You make better time in the alleys and side streets, though the closer quarters make the noise from your cart and your boots seem all the louder. While you inadvertently slow down as you wonder if a few drops of the whale oil you bought would work as a lubricant, you manage to hear something that is neither your boots nor your cart. Three stories up, in the eaves of a kind of shoddy looking addition to an already kind of shoddy looking house is what appears to be a Hook Gull, screaming and mewling in turns. It is not easy to see from your current position, but the bird does not look healthy, and you cannot see any reason for it to be making all of this noise.
This gull could be one of the ones that was affected by the device that the Inquisition found in the attic apartment across the street from the South Burying Ground. And with the device either destroyed or in the possession of the Inquisition, getting a look at one of the birds is probably the only way you are ever going to learn anything about what was going on, unless the Inquisition missed something when they were razing and cleansing the site, which is not likely … but, then again, they did manage to overlook you.
For now though, you should focus on what is in front of you – or rather, what is above you. Strange-Staining is only active when you look at your bundled spare dress. When you look away, up at the bird, the glyph deactivates … which does not mean much, because the gull is well outside of the detection range of the glyph, and if the gull had been exposed to enough Strangeness to cause it’s current disheveled appearance, then you would suspect that it would be Strange enough to spread Strangeness all the way down to the street, if it had been sitting on its current perch for any real length of time … unless the bird had been exposed a while ago, or it had been exposed to repeated small doses of Strangeness over a long period of time, as it might be if it came into regular contact with magical device.
It could go either way, really. This could just be a sick gull, or this could be a Strange gull, and your best chance for learning about whatever the Hell was going on in that apartment … which for all you know could be connected to father. And even if it was not connected to him, there is a chance that you could learn something. On the other hand, there is chance that you recontaminate yourself with the Strangeness again and end up with nothing to show for it … besides doing right by a sick animal and putting it out of its misery. Or, if it isn’t Strange at all, then there is a real risk that you make a mess of your new dress and apron. What the Hell do you do here?
