Upon the city’s rooftops stands Meredith. She can survive well enough on animal blood but it gets… boring, so she makes the occasional trip for a snack and some books (one of the less boring parts of humankind). It is during one of these trips that she senses an unusual presence. Humans and supernatural species both have distinctive ‘flairs’ (to vampire senses, she’d describe it as halfway between a smell and an aura, not that either of those terms is right), and the one she is perceiving now is new to her.

That’s unusual. The entertaining kind of unusual. Meredith thought she’d met all magical species but she can’t recognise this flair like she should. So, she moves closer to it, jumping lithely from rooftop to rooftop, hair like a banner trailing after her. Curiosity still gets the best of her after this many years. Maybe even more so now that it’s rarer for it to have a cause. 

Sanna does not have many any unusual senses, and she doesn't have her nose in her phone but she isn't looking up either, so she certainly isn't going to notice some weirdo jumping from rooftop to rooftop like a ninja turtle.

(Some passersby could, though. This isn't far from Savoy's largest mall, so the sidewalks are moderately well-travelled even at this time of the evening; and some of these buildings are tall, but some are very much not; and the wide streets make it easy to see the tops of the shorter buildings on the opposite side without trying very hard. And it's not anywhere near pitch dark out yet. Hopefully Meredith is being careful!)

Anyway, Sanna's just going to keep on sitting here until the bus comes. Who knows when that will be. Well, Sanna knows. But for all Meredith knows, it could be 30 minutes from now or it could be one minute from now, or anywhere in between. Unless Meredith's familiarized herself with the bus schedules around here.

Meredith has plenty of practice at going unnoticed and it is very unlikely for anyone to notice her presence unless she either wants it to happen or the person noticing is not just attentive but also somewhat resistant to magic. (She can blend well enough into the shadows with just a little magic that it feels absurd to go fully invisible when that might get her prey’s attention if she can sense it.)  

She doesn't know the bus schedules but she's more than patient enough and she wants to know where this being comes from. As long as the sun doesn't rise first, she'll have no trouble waiting. Nor following a bus. Well, most likely jumping and holding onto its roof and not running after it, but it'll do the job anyway. And in the meantime she'll watch this person carefully and try to decipher the feeling she gets from her. 

This is one of those times that Sanna is glad the bus is running a few minutes late. If it had been on time she would have missed it, and would've had to wait another… yeesh, 20 minutes! More time than the actual bus ride! As it is, the projected wait is less than five minutes.

…It ends up being a little bit later than that (what else is new, Kalette Transit sucks), but only by a couple more minutes. And since this isn't the busy part of the route and rush hour is winding down, she can not only find a seat, she can even find a seat that doesn't leave her squashed between two other people. That almost makes up for the depressing feeling of getting home after dark!

If Meredith can't already tell by the livery which city this bus belongs to, it'll soon be clear in any case that it's leaving Savoy and going to the next city over. Is Meredith by any chance familiar with Kalette?

Meredith is very unfamiliar with the local bus system and Kalette! However, being on top of one makes it pretty easy to see where it is heading, so she soon knows that they're going towards Kalette. She thinks she's been there before but doesn't remember much except it being small. That's why she usually sticks to Savoy, it's easier to blend in as necessary. Smaller towns mean that people notice strangers faster and it's not like she's going to pretend to be a human who's moved in. 

Apart from thinking about the bus' destination and clinging to it, Meredith also uses the ride to examine the flair she's following a bit more closely. She has seen by now whom it is attached to,  and she'll approach said person once the bus stops, but now she's focused on trying to identify any recognisable elements to her flair. (She's likely not very successful at it, flairs aren't good for figuring out specific details or really anything other than species and, at most, magic type if it's a separate thing.)

The flair feels like… something that lives in the water. Like a selkie or a mermaid or something. Mermaid feels closest, but Meredith's encountered enough mermaids to know this is definitely not the same. Maybe it's a different species of mermaid, but Meredith's travelled a lot, surely if there was more than one species she'd already know? And even if there is another species she just didn't know about, why would this be her first time seeing one after living here for years? And why here? Why posing as a human?

Plus there's something wrong about the flair, something beyond just 'this is new and unfamiliar'. She can't put her finger on it. It's like if you saw a dog with six fully functioning legs. Or if you bit into an apple and it tasted like bubblegum. The individual elements are fine, but they aren't supposed to go together in quite that way.

The vibes she's getting about magic type are somehow even muddier than usual. Something outward-facing and 'hard', something inward-facing and 'soft'?

She appreciates her flair-sense but it is often annoyingly vague! It's pretty useful to recognise species she's met before but it's not all that good for figuring out new ones. Meredith is still going to do her best with the information she's got though. It'll help her form some expectations. Now, what is she getting... a water based creature, not quite a mermaid but similar... that's an extra serving of weird and unexpected. So far, most aquatic species Meredith has encountered were very reluctant to leave the water (except for Kelpies but they don't count, they're malicious spirits and shapeshifters) and all of them would have more tells than just their flair. 

Of course, there's also the wrongness. She doesn't focus on it for long. It's unsettles her. She can't put what's wrong into words but something clearly is.

And then there's the magic. It's good that it's separate enough from the other information she's getting. Magic is already hard to figure out in general, it just gets more muddled if it's too close to other species traits. Regardless, it's not a power she's seen before, although she's got some guesses. It could be some sort of defensive magic, the 'hard' part could be some sort of shielding. And maybe the softer part is some sort of emotion-tied ability? She'll have to learn more about them!

As they get further into Kalette, the bus starts to fill up more. Sanna doesn't get to enjoy having a pair of seats to herself for very long. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Sometimes she doesn't get to sit at all.

After about 15 minutes of riding, she disembarks.

This is one of the few areas in Kalette that has a healthy mix of homes and businesses, and where the businesses are right off the sidewalk instead of set back from the road by massive parking lots. (None of this will seem unusual to Meredith, since it's no different from most of Savoy; but Sanna knows that in most of Kalette, pedestrians might as well be second-class citizens.) From her vantage point, Meredith can see a spa, a sushi bar, a pharmacy, an auto repair shop, a small school, and much more. (How many of these she can actually identify will depend on how good her night vision is.)

It may stand out that the buildings here are pretty short compared to the parts of Savoy she's used to. The sign they passed on the way in said 'City of Kalette' (population whatever, Meredith wasn't paying attention), but so far it feels more like a town than a city. It's also… cleaner. There's a distinct lack of pigeons.

Sanna starts walking. Her direction of travel rules out some of these homes and businesses as her destination. But not that many, because there's an intersection with a crosswalk just up ahead. Will she cross this way? Will she cross that way? Will she do neither, and instead go around the corner?

Does Meredith wait to find out, or does she approach immediately?

(She should bear in mind that although there's no other foot traffic nearby, there is quite a lot of vehicular traffic; and it's still light enough for a hypothetical ship to navigate; and the street lights have come on by now.)

 Meredith gets down from the bus' roof with ease, letting her magic's disguise fade a bit once on the ground, so it looks like she could have just stepped out of the bus too. She keeps it active enough to make her presence inconspicuous and hide that off-putting sensation that vampires can give off for looking so human but not acting quite like one. Luckily, magic (or evolution, or both, she isn't an expert on the way magic species become such) gives her the right tools to keep her prey -whether she's hunting for blood or for answers- unsuspecting. Although she wouldn't mind being able to turn into a bat. Bats are much smaller than humans. (She can turn into mist but it's a very... intrinsically foreign form. Mist isn't usually a living creature, much less a thinking one, and it doesn't move like one either.)

She's getting distracted again but fortunately she hasn't lost sight of the stranger amidst her internal monologue. She always has thoughts to overthink but it's not every day that she finds a new species!

Meredith steps slightly closer, although still maintaining enough distance that if Sanna glances back her first thought probably won't be that she's being followed. Unless she can feel that Meredith isn't human. Well, there's nothing that she can do about that so it doesn't make sense to worry yet. 

Kalette is a very safe city. (And not just by comparison with the notoriously crime-ridden Savoy.) But Sanna is paranoid and used to live in Toronto. (These two facts are not as related as you might think.) She was paying enough attention to be pretty sure that whoever is walking behind her now didn't get off the bus behind her. And yet, she wasn't anywhere in sight when Sanna got off the bus either. Where the hell did she come from?

…Well, Sanna got off at the front door, maybe this person got off at the back a couple seconds later?

…No. What's the point of being paranoid if you're going to dismiss your instincts anyway.

This is what she used to call Settling For Hunches. Telling yourself that the Weird Thing is Probably Fine, and moving on with your day. It's easier and more comfortable to do that, so she was always doing it, until she eventually noticed what she was doing and how often it worked out really poorly for her.

She's gotten used to being safe. She's mostly unlearned what Miles called her Survival Protocol, because it just hasn't been warranted anymore. She's mostly unlearned the notion that Weird Things should be presumed dangerous until proven otherwise. On the one hand, it feels silly to suddenly fall back on that for no legible reason. On the other hand, she hasn't referenced her Survival Protocol in ages, even just in her own head, so the fact that it's suddenly coming to mind seems like it probably means something.

Besides… Something else her Survival Protocol said is that sometimes you have to Settle For Hunches, because you don't actually have the resources to do anything else, so trying to investigate or take precautions will actually just leave you worse off. But that's not her life anymore. She doesn't have to Settle. She literally has no reason not to follow her instincts here. Except for not wanting to feel silly, which is a terrible reason.

Without picking up her pace (that might look suspicious), she crosses the street in the same direction she's already walking, and darts into the Tim Hortons sitting there on the street corner. Does Meredith interrupt her in doing this?

It probably says nothing good of Meredith’s remaining ‘humanity’ that she smiles, thrilled, at Sanna’s attempt to either get away or confirm that she’s being followed, but she’ll take entertainment however it comes. Again, it is a shame that shapeshifting isn’t part of her arsenal. She might be able to stretch her normal stealth magic into making her look a bit different but she’s not going to test that now. 
Instead, she continues walking and turns a corner into a side alley, then jumps (possibly bouncing against the opposite wall, depending on how high it is) to the top of a nearby building, planning on watching the coffee shop’s entrance from the rooftop. The way she so perches on buildings like that, one might think she’s part gargoyle! (Gargoyles don’t reproduce that way, it’d be a silly thought.)

Meredith doesn’t expect her prey to take long to come out. If she’s correct, Sanna doesn’t know for sure that she’s being followed and will likely think Meredith gone. But she’s patient regardless and in the meantime she can continue to analyse Sanna’s flair and behaviour, coming up with more questions to ask.

There isn't really anything nearby that can be described as an alleyway. Will she settle for jumping onto the last building Sanna passed before she crossed the street? It's basically the only one that affords a decent view of the doors leading into and out of the Tim Hortons. But she'll have to rely entirely on her stealth magic to make sure Sanna won't see her jumping onto it if she happens to turn around at the wrong moment. Unless she wants to double back to the far side of the building first, which might look suspicious in and of itself if Sanna happens to see her. (It might look marginally less suspicious if she goes around the back of the building, since it might look like she has business there, or is heading for one of the parked cars there.)

Alternatively, if she just keeps walking until she's past the Tim Hortons, that'll look much less suspicious, and then she can go around the back of the Tim Hortons and then jump on top of that. She won't have a direct view of the doors, but there's no way she'll fail to see someone leaving.

Oh well. Alleys are very useful for following people but Meredith will make do with what there is. So, once she notices that there are none nearby, she’ll continue until she’s out of Sanna’s possible sight range and then proceed to get around the (Tim Hortons) building and onto it. She would trust her magic to hide her from a human even when doing something as unusual as jumping to a rooftop but then again, she wouldn’t be following Sanna so intently if she were a human.

Regardless, once she’s on the roof she’ll simply wait for Sanna to leave the building. Meredith is going to continue following her, this time again from farther away, until there are no people around who will notice their confrontation. She can’t know how Sanna will react! And witnesses are often more trouble than avoiding them to begin with.

Once Sanna's inside, the first thing she does is turn and look back through the glass door to see if the stalker is also heading this way.

Okay, so it's a woman, and… Huh, she's just continuing down the sidewalk.

Sanna goes to the far window to keep watching. …Yep, she's still walking. And still on the sidewalk, not veering into the Tim Hortons parking lot or anything.

She keeps watching until the woman is out of sight.

…Was Sanna totally off-base? Sure, the woman could just be doing that to throw off suspicion, planning to follow her again after she comes out, but… That seems like a bit of a stretch, doesn't it? She doesn't even know which way Sanna will go when she comes out, she could miss her entirely.

Sanna still has a bad feeling, though.

She's aware that a lot of this bad feeling is something she's built up in her head over the past minute. She didn't feel this scared when she first noticed the Weird Thing, or even when she first decided that the Weird Thing was worth treating as a potential threat.

But thinking of it as a Weird Thing in the first place happened almost right away. And that fact, in itself, is also a Weird Thing.

If this happened all the time, if she regularly became convinced something was Wrong and she almost always turned out to be mistaken, she would probably now be thinking that she's mistaken this time too and should ignore that feeling. But that's not the world she lives in. She's been here for two years, and in that time she has never spontaneously labelled something a Weird Thing. Not just a 'weird thing' — those are a dime a dozen — but a Weird Thing, with capital letters, the closest English gets to conveying the special gravitas that Survival Protocol jargon possesses in her own mind. Maybe it'll turn out this was just her brain misfiring, but she's not going to make that assumption the literal first time it happens, just because the Weird Thing didn't immediately blow up in her face. (Guess what, Survival Protocol has something to say about that too.) Because she doesn't know that she can afford to wrongly ignore that feeling; she does know that she can afford to wrongly assume she's being stalked, and take precautions that later turn out to be unnecessary, at least this one time. That's the whole reason she went into this Tim Hortons at all, instead of just brushing off her misgivings and going home.

So, now that she's decided to continue assuming she's Under Threat, the question is: Now what?

Well, she's certainly not going back outside right this minute, so she might as well get something while she's here.

She buys a green tea.

She sits and thinks.

Some time later — ten minutes? fifteen? — she walks out, carrying her half-finished tea. She's on the phone now, and as she walks away from the building she's looking around pretty much constantly, as if she's expecting someone to sneak up on her at any moment.

"…Yeah, well, I still say it was beginner's luck, but I wouldn't mind playing again sometime. It was fun."

As she walks, she heads in the same direction as a couple that walked out maybe five seconds before she did. (This happens to be the same direction she was walking when she first got off the bus.) She's trailing behind them as close as she thinks she can get away with.

Despite the distance between herself and Sanna, she can still catch her comment and a quiet chuckle escapes her. Sanna might not be talking to her but it still fits the situation. It certainly hasn't been beginner's luck on her part though! She'll admit to having used plenty of magic, but that's not the same as luck. She isn't done playing either, as evidenced by the fact that she's currently still trailing Sanna, just with even more stealth involved this time.

She hopes Sanna will split away from the couple soon. (Unless said couple is her prey? Vampires aren't the only creatures that find humans a nice meal. It would give Meredith a chance to learn more about her species without having approached her yet! Not that it's likely.) She could approach despite them but will at least wait a bit before deciding to do so. How high are the chances that they're going to the same building? It's a small city but it's still got more than four houses. Even in any given direction. So, despite it being relatively obvious that Sanna is following them to feel 'safer', she'll eventually have to take a different street and then there'll be even less people around. And Meredith will stop playing rooftop ninja. 

The bad news is, the buildings around here are mostly spaced too far apart for roof-hopping to be a very feasible method of travel. (Maybe this is why Meredith didn't stay in Kalette long enough to remember almost anything about it!)

The good news is, after the Tim Hortons she only has to go past one small building (presumably going around the back) before coming upon a large construction site, with a conveniently person-high barricade separating it from the sidewalk. She can easily slip behind this and still follow Sanna for some distance. (How convenient that she's making herself so easy to follow by talking on the phone. Did she not think of that? Well, she's talking in a pretty low voice, maybe she thinks that's good enough. Maybe it would be, if Meredith could only hear as well as a human.)

After a few minutes, the couple ahead of Sanna crosses to the other side of the street. Sanna doesn't follow them, so now it's just her on this sidewalk again. However, she's still on the phone.

After another minute, the barricade ends. If Meredith wants to keep following without being potentially-visible, she'll have to go behind this strip mall. (She could jump on the roof, but the strip mall is far enough from the sidewalk that when Sanna glances over — she's still looking around constantly like a paranoid owl, so it's not 'if', but 'when' — she could very well see her.)

"I'm honestly not sure if I could handle college or not. I can be studious, but I'm used to being studious at my own pace. And I'm pretty bad at time management, at least on that kind of time scale. And like, I could say I can't afford to try it and fail, but I could apply for scholarships if I really wanted to; and I could say I don't want to put in the time and effort and have it amount to nothing, but that wouldn't really be the end of the world. Those aren't really reasons to not even try, if I really wanted to try. I'm just kind of… not interested."

After the strip mall, Sanna is coming up on what looks to be an apartment building. Maybe that's her destination? Maybe she's just going home?

From this vantage point — whether she's behind the strip mall, or on the strip mall's roof — Meredith can't tell where the residential entrance is. For all she knows, Sanna could head inside at any moment.

She's still on the phone.

This city has annoying architecture. Really, who designs such unpractical rooftops? (She knows that people don't usually use them this way but she's allowed some internal complaining.) And yes, it's no wonder she didn't stay here for long the last time. Few people and streets that don't get along with her favourite travelling method are both good reasons on their own already, even more so when combined. This time she has a goal though, so she'll make do with the available hiding options and continue following Sanna as discretely as possible. At least the barricade is useful. Sanna being on a phone call is annoying because she'd rather not approach her while she's on it, even when she's no longer following the couple, but it also gives Meredith and extra way to track her. She pays little attention to the actual contents of said call, since they seem completely unrelated to what makes Sanna interesting.