2019-10-15 - What Not To Do At A Job Interview

It's been a while. It's been a long while. But Lilith Winslow still looks a little bit the same, dark hair and big uncannily blue eyes, just all grown up into woman form instead of the little girl that sometimes was kicking around the shop during times when Nasir would come in with his father. It looked different then too. The building clearly has been reconstructed with a loft above within the past year or so and things are so much better organized and repaired than they ever were when Hank Winslow was in and out of the place pretending to run it for profit (instead of into the ground). But the sheer span of useful, pricy, cheap, and useless items is still there and it's clear that someone has a discerning eye for value and refurbishing.

Currently, the woman is seated behind the glass jewelry case in one of the chairs, turned to work on the computer spreadsheet she has pulled up when the door chime goes off. Given the fall weather, she has a navy blue wrap sweater tugged close around a white blouse and gray fit and flare skirt combo with a pair of low red kitten heels on underneath the counter. Mild cosmetics highlight her fine features, mostly mascara/eyeliner and flush of gloss and her hair has been twisted back and stuck through with a pen as a makeshift hair-stick to get it out of her face, though with pieces falling free, it's one of those effortless, haphazard do-jobs despite the fact she looks more than presentable without being overbearing or too professional. Mostly it's just pretty as a collective.

When Nasir is on his way, she sends Byron a text as well, so she's not quite certain who to expect when she looks up at the door.

Too long, perhaps, with how longingly he eyed the framework and foundations of the changed shop. It was nostalgia, that; nostalgia the feeling that crept it like a claw from the stomach and upturned across his windpipe, seizing it with a force. He drove in in his dingy Silverado, a massive truck the kind men purchase to make up for a lack in other departments. The radiator support was entirely dented, its grilles fed and overbearingly clogged with bugs' corpses and other fetid remains of goop remanded to toast there under the radiator's heat. Side panels, tailgate and bumpers all dented, with fading colors and scuff marks forgotten to fester in the entirely decadent state of the vehicle; vehicle he parked lazily in front of the store.

With one swing of his arm, he popped the door open. Out stepped a groggy man wearing the closest thing to formal attire he had perhaps worn in years- a tight-fitting, grey checked cutaway collar shirt; an equally tight pair of black, dressing pantaloons and black moccasins. He wore a black, loose tie without pattern and one of his hems by his waist looked popped out of his beltline, hanging out while the other was tucked in. Disheveled, much like a youngling out of a frat party, Nasir made way to the door while struggling a cigarette out of a Malboro packet and seeing it lit with an engraved, militaristic zippo whom's flint wheel had him struggle for flame all the way into the store, where the chimes announce his presence.

His gaze didn't take long to wander, and he took in the changed details on the inside with no small amount of shock. This was his sanctuary once; this was a home, once, for him. It now felt anything but, and a necessary inhale of much smoke was taken in a hard drag before stepping further in, approaching the counter with a hard - no, grave - expression. "Where's Hank?" he asked, his voice so hoarse it could've easily been taken as a demand.

Byron Thorne is a busy man. He's had calls to both take and make in the morning hours and at least one potential tenant who stopped by for a visit. When he does get the message from Lilith he was just giving out a confirmation to one of the local establishments, giving the go-ahead for their festival decor idea.

Before reaching the Harbor Mist, he stopped by Downtown to pick up two cappuccinos on his way. So it takes a moment before that black Rolls Royce Wraith pulls up into the parking lot. There was no rain, but the air was cold. This is something that he preferred. With all the running around and meeting various people on a professional level, it's no surprise when Thorne shows up in his usual type of attire-- a dark business suit, tailored to fit his tall and lean form. Now that they've fully moved out of the summer heat and humidity, he dons a stylish overcoat for warmth.

He shows up shortly after Nasir does with the cups of warm coffee in hand. He doesn't intrude, for the moment, taking a more casual walk to where Winslow is seated if only to set the cup he'd brought her down. That's when he gives a somewhat curious look at her visitor, one that the obviously heard about from her, which is why he's here right now.

Well. If Lilith was going to bitch or eyeball the cigarette that Nasir carries in with him after she gives him a once over, she's forgotten all about it probably being like bad for the items and customers and looks like she wants to ask for one instead, suddenly. Because he asks a question that makes her pause after she rises up into a stand from her chair, deciding the first guy in dressed with his button up and moccasins is her guy she's waiting on. Her shoulders are a touch tense, but when Byron comes in with cups and door chime not long behind to hear the question, something about his presence seems to help. For a moment, she leans with her hands on the glass jewelry case and stares at Nasir before hitching her shoulders up just a touch with affected control and general sober casualness, "He's dead. This summer."

The bluntness of her own answer and the words in the air aloud, it flinches her more than it normally would given what she's recently done with some of Hank's remains and the context of his death, besides, but if Lilith wants to go on and explain more about Hank for Nasir's curiosity, he's going to have to dig it out of her.

She changes subjects, hands making a little squeak of flat-palmed drag on the case on her way off out of the lean to look at Byron now close with flick of eyes, reaching to take the coffee he puts down with a little charmed partial smile despite herself. She makes a gesture the suited man's way, "This is Byron Thorne. And I am supposing rather solidly that you must be Nasir. You..." Once she's paused, her eyes squint a touch, as if she's trying to place something about the Arabic-blooded man as familiar, though she can't visibly pinpoint what it is without prompt, seems, "You look familiar. But then again, if you're asking for Hank by name..."

The woman bumps a hip at the glass counter and pops the lid on the cup to blow down into it for a sip, continuing to eye Nasir unabashed. Clearly, he's going to have to explain, because whatever's familiar about him is nagging her now and she's making no bones about it, "Help me out. The name isn't doing it quite, but that's not surprising, I've always been a little 'meh' at them." There's a silent kind of inquiry when her eyes cut in brief to Byron again, as if he might be able to place the guy where she can't.

Nasir had only been halfway to lower that cigarette off his lips when the news was delivered. It was subtle, perhaps, the way his index finger sunk into the half of the rolled-up nicotine stick and split it in a nice half. The way his breathing picked up some; the hard, coiled veins that squeezed at his throat and threatened to pop out his windpipe. Bad news, bad news, past every doorway; past every frame. The two halves of his drugstick fell by his feet, and a lazy right foot rose to stomp away any cinders into ashen mulch. He flared his nostrils then, taking in a deep breath that strained the already struggling shirt layered to his skin.

Nasir was a decadent man. A dissolute, drunken and disreputable rogue in reputation as he was in physicalities. Rings of black surrounded his eyes, just as black; bags clung beneath them, and his gaze lingered with silent, looming foreboding. That same gaze turned to Byron, trying to make sense of him; to remember something about his modulated voice, or equally arranged get-up, thousand times more groomed and arranged than himself. Nasir's beard was a scraggly mess, hair on his hard jawline both ginger and brown, unfittingly grown. "Hey," was his first response, a mere reaction to the efforts of preserving his stoicism while processing what it even meant that Hank was dead. Even the shop felt emptier right after, and he took to eye the ceiling yet again, one he at least felt preserved some of the magic he thought he'd revive, when revisiting. "Ibn Khairan," for Lilith, monosyllabic and somewhat even lazy of an answer.

For someone seeking an interview, he looked more disconnected and far from eager than the usual lout. His gaze was bitten by a bug of wanderlust, and he stared at the many items in silent, ponderous judging. Here and there, his left hand rose to point quietly at something; at an oddity or curio, almost as if about to speak, before going quiet again. Keeping it to himself. "It's all so different now. It even smells different." And it was, everything was. No room for nostalgia anymore, even the weather was different- even the signs looked dead. But so was Nasir, not even the crows would try his bone marrow.

If Lilith wasn't going to make a big deal about the other man smoking within the shop, Byron is right about to-- that is until Nasir lets the cigarette drop onto the shop floor to stomp it out. Obviously, this does not sit well with him. "If you're here looking for a job," His voice raises in volume and while his features look relaxed as he leans against the counter, taking a sip from his cup, those piercing dark hardened eyes watch the other man carefully from over cup's plastic cover. "You might want to start with that." The cup lowers and his chin lifts, gaze staring down at where the remains of the cigarette now lay.

Thorne keeps a wary gaze on the other man, someone who now holds his full attention. While he's not the type to stare openly, he does prefer a more subtle touch, allowing his gaze to drift and lower, even if his attention remains focused on Nasir. There's no response on whether he recognizes the other man or not. With how Byron migrated between various groups and cliques in school, he probably knows of Nasir, even if he may not have immediately recognized on first sight.

Something about Nasir's response to the news and his following commentary, the way he starts eyeing the items with certain lingerings and catches on the inventory at wander, it makes her tilt her head a smidge with eyes narrowed, this time with recollection. She continues to nurse the coffee for sip while watching him, and hell, this is Elm, people piss in her alley on the regular, it's not like a cigarette is going to offend her, particularly, but given a certain lack of shop help of very late, she's the one that has to sweep bits and pieces up and make the place look presentable.

Suddenly, after wetting her lips and looking aside at Byron's words and shift of demeanor once she's had the thoughtful, focused lull of a few fleeting moments on study of the Arabic man, she makes an 'ohhhhhh' noise in her throat. Then she makes another 'ohh' noise, this one a bit shorter, and suddenly, whatever was visibly nagging her about what she couldn't place with familiarity or memory, it's visibly there. She doesn't comment on it right away, even though it's written on her and audible with the catch-on noise, though. Instead, she puts her coffee cup on the glass counter, leans to get a little trash can and tiny sweeper dustpan set she keeps under there with other things, then walks around the counter.

Firm and casual is a good way to explain what she does next, though, she does take a bit of a brief detour on her way around to kiss Byron on the cheek and corner of mouth with delayed thanks for the coffee. Once she reaches Nasir, she leans to put the trash can down, hands him the little combo sweeper, then takes off to start grabbing things from the shelves. She grabs a variety in her arms of carrying things on the way to the office's open door at the back of the shop once the cleaning supplies are passed to Nasir, "Here. Do the thing, jeez, you coming off a nasty bender or just raised in a barn? Then come with me." She doesn't give a lot of options, and it's not that she's being a dick about it, she's just suddenly hyperfocused on an idea involving him coming back to the office and the junk in her arms so they can have a proper talk.

A talk NOT about fucking Hank. She absolutely is not ready for how to explain that one.

On her unorthodox, unexplained way back there, she asks Byron, "Will you get my coffee when you come in, please? Hands are full." Then unabashed, she prompts, apparently giving him some form of control with the interview while she's distracted with this relocation and 'thing' she's setting up to do in the office while ushering them all along that way, "Byron's going to ask some pertinent things too, you're not the only hot mess at interviews around here. I can see the door from the office surveillance, let's sit."

There was a certain hunch to Nasir's shoulders, a dejected stance and a slouch the more he stood there, looking off at the shelves. He looked skinny, too skinny - and too wiry - the perfect result of a once vascular man who had forsaken food for other things; things that gave the feeling of fullness, both emotionally and physically, while being hollow in truth. His palms were loosely open, so it was no issue for Lilith to force things between them and instinct see his fingers clasp and wrap around them, so they wouldn't fall. His were long, gangly fingers, the kind you'd expect from an extraterrestrial, covered in callouses and white, fading scars to speak for the work they once submerged themselves into. These were the lego clamps that squeezed that pan and he took to lean down almost immediately at the given set of tools, seeing to answer Byron at the time after having gone into silent recollection for far too long after his question. "I, uh; uhm," he stammered some, failing to anchor down his train of thought while doing the mundane task of sweeping his split cigarette and the dusting below it, dumping it into the trash can after.

"I don't know man; I-- yeah, you're right. I should have, and.." a beat, one that wouldn't see its conclusion. Whatever purpose he had in his head to see for an answer to Byron was utterly squashed by Lilith's paired presumptions. Both, he wanted to say, to service himself as the self-deprecating thing he truly was, but there; there on his eyes, hesitation. So much hesitation even his mouth, ajar and prepared to answer, only but shuddered in mutely gagged reconsideration. If he looked exhausted on his way in, he now looked entirely disarmed. The news had taken to him so badly Lilith had positively aged him ten years more, made entirely crestfallen as the idea formed and manifested more and more in his head, that Hank was actually dead.

He made no attempts to pontify himself at Lilith's orders, the automaton that he was walked after with shuffled steps that lacked the strength to even rise in a more formal pattern. "You can ask whatever you want man," he almost re-assured, but it didn't sound reassuring at all- it sounded more careless and defeated than anything else. "I just drank a couple of beers last night or something," his was an idle response, so much a lie that not even his skeptical face believed it. A couple of beers, a couple of Old Parrs? What's the difference? it didn't matter. In he went, and down he sat, on the first thing even remotely 'sitable'.

In truth, if Byron were doing the hiring, he already knew how this whole thing was going to end. They wouldn't even need to venture into the confine of Lilith's small office. The decision would've already been made. He had other people to speak to. However, he wasn't the one doing the hiring, even if he were here in an advisory position. The man, at least, cleans up when told to do so. This is something that Thorne is keen to observe and while his eyes may have lowered to observe just how well Nasir swept up the remnants of the broken form of the cigarette, what he does most is to take in and study the man's body language, how he handles himself, his posture and more than anything, the expression that he wears.

There's no smugness on his part, seeing that the guy actually cleans up the mess that he made, and for a time, despite keeping watch on the other from out of the corner of his eyes, Byron allows his gaze to wander. He even flashes Lilith a smile after she'd placed the kiss to his cheek, leaning into it gently. He makes sure to divert his attention, perhaps in hopes to not make Nasir feel more uncomfortable than he already may be, from what Byron can tell.

With Lilith leading the way into her office, Thorne finally pushes off and away from where he'd been leaning against the counter and moves to scoop up Winslow's still hot cup of coffee. "I gotta be honest, I see some red flags being raised all over the damn place. But I'm curious to hear your side of the story."

Lilith kind of side-eyes Nasir and all his dejected contemplation and sag, as well as the automatic do-the-thing response about cleaning up his mess and her brows knit just a touch while she's carrying the things to put down on the desk once in the office. Because okay, people liked Hank even though he was a drunk, negligent, awful father with fucked up issues. She got her occasional personal charisma from somewhere, afterall, and she supposes maybe a little of it was hereditary, because people like her enough through whole heaps of problems and mess too. Even when she's perfectly self-beating and deprecating, which may be something else familiar about Nasir by proxy while she's making that sideways-formed look during set-up.

Then after spinning from the desk on arranging the items in a line of three in variety for display, she steps to take her coffee that Byron is carrying to drink from it while agreeing, "I'm curious too, obvious red flags aside. I mean, I know I should be asking things, like... what's your availability, what was your last job, why'd you leave, where you been, so on, but here's the thing-- there's something about your drive to be here and I think I remember enough to maybe piece together that look on your face isn't just about Hank." Her head tilts a little bit before she admits, "And moody sometimes works for pawn brokers, honestly, since you have to be a hardass about defaults and loans and the word 'no' when it comes to collateral. So listen-- don't kiss my ass. Just give it to us straight why you want to be paid to be here as a whole, yeah?"

When she encourages an answer from Nasir to Byron with spill of her own interest and commentary, that's not really rude so much as off the cuff bluntness, she pauses to sip coffee, looks at the items on the desk, then tacks on, "Then... if you can loosely identify the decade or value belonging to any of these three items, tell me."

Red flags, that's what he was. His long legs a pole and the entirety of his torso and face; the whole of his state, a red, waving flag of get away from this one. He could've been taller than Byron any other time, but now; now his head hung so much he may as well be a whole head shorter, even there, sitting where he was. At the questions, Nasir sniffled. He wasn't here, perhaps they'd tell; he wasn't exactly in that room, seeing those items or burdening himself with the expectations of their questions. His palms clutched at the armrests set on his flanks, feeling and touching the wood with some alarm, like a bout of anxiety took hold of him.

After the better part of a minute of what one could only assume was thinking, Nasir finally looked up. First at Byron- first he lingered on the man's face, his own expression lacking in drive. "I liked your father," a pause, as to let the notion sink in. It didn't matter that it was obvious, it needed to be the start; "But that's not why I'm here. I'm not studied, Lilith- I certainly don't know the price of this shit here," he didn't even need to glance at the truck to make assumptions, or the vintage glass vase; or the pendant. "I fix things. I don't just fix things, I improve things; I don't just improve things, I create things. That is why I came here so much, if you don't remember, I took away worthless things off your father's hands and made others out of them," there was some slurring to his words; some gagging. He didn't feel fitting; he didn't feel like his message was getting across, or was good enough of an answer. So instead he reached out, and let a right hand move around that decently valued vase of crystal glass that was older than twice his age, unceremoniously throwing it into the ground under the push of a single index finger.

It'd shatter horribly.

This was Lilith's show to run. Byron was just here to sip at his cappuccino and silently decide whether Winslow was making a big mistake by giving this guy a chance. So he'll continue to nurse that cup o' Joe and continue with this mental case study on the man before them today-- One Nasir Ibn Khairan.

Of course, as a local himself, Thorne has heard many things about most people within the town. Everyone seemed to know everyone else; there were long time families who lived here, going back generations. With the man not being too far off from his own age and with the other's reputation of being bullied, it's not unlikely that Byron Thorne knew nothing of that. It's a hard thing to ignore when there was the remote possibility, with everyone who Byron mingled with, that they were the bullies.

When Nasir's weary and possibly glassy eyes meet with his now, then the man mentioning the word 'Father' of all things, of course with Byron's own upbringing, his mind immediately goes back to something, well someone, from his past. That doesn't stir him in any way, however, taking yet another sip from his cup. Especially, when it he comes to realize that it's not his father who is being spoken of.

People in town talk and perhaps from the way that Nasir handles himself at the moment, Thorne's willing to believe that the man's seen things. Most likely combat. He'll keep that in mind, allowing his own gaze to finally drift and view the items set out as part of the man's test. There is a point where he's silently taking this test himself, trying to sort out the items by date, from his own knowledge and perhaps something that he'd learned from Lilith over the years.

That is until Nasir goes ahead and shatters a vase in the most dramatic of ways. If this were some other place and he had no knowledge of healers, Byron may have been up in arms. That doesn't mean he doesn't shoot this look over at Lilith now, his own posture straightening as he sets his cup at the edge of Winslow's desk.

Lilith is quiet while listening to Nasir, though she does look a little disappointed when he can't source or value anything on the desk. Though, when he explains further, she looks at him more closely to attune to what's inside him quite visibly, her eyes hazing a touch before she's pulled from what to say or do or think by the push and shatter of that vase. She opens her mouth as if about to explain something about what she sees with context of what the man's just said, but in response to that shatter, which Byron is watching... she stops short. She looks at Byron for a beat. Then if watched close enough, she shines with a whipsnap flare of power that immediately runs the man's metabolism with a force purging of all the alcohol and drug toxins in his body. Of course, Byron might actually think she's about to rip into him, given precedent, but that's not what happens.

Instead his coloring and sobriety starts to come back, and maybe it was rude to steal his interacting highs and take all the intoxicating poison from his blood without warning or asking, and he'll feel it later as fatigue, but for now, it's just clarity, "You know, I like to smoke a joint as much as anyone else, but I lived almost thirty years paying for my father's high and fuckery, so if you want a job, I'm going to require some level of operational. Now fix the vase, please, before you go get some actual food and coffee inside that gut. Then we'll say goodbye and I'm going to think before I decide anything at all."

She also might want to see how he takes a good force to sober, aside from seeing him fix the vase.

Being forcibly cleansed out of every ounce of mistake in his body wasn't something he expected. And it wasn't just clarity, not at first- expunging him meant metabolization, and something so preternaturally hastened meant he processed it all in the split of a 'purifying' second. And it fucking sucked. She may as well have ripped him open just as expected, for his eyes widened and his torso pushed forward, releasing an unjustifiably sordid, hard retch where he threatened to puke out on the table, and he would have; he would've dumped the contents of his stomach out on that counter, if he wasn't such a seasoned tweaker, and fasted himself into two days of nothing but the good shit to keep such needs for protein out the back of his head.

Lilith's words were, for now, an echo in the background. A blur of voice that not even her tone manifested through, but he already had a purpose- a purpose made even harder by his cleansing. Nasir was very clearly unaware of what Glimmer even was; he was entirely outside of his element, and as he demonstrated before the two, the very act they witnessed was perhaps a willing first-time of seeing it all through, kind of winging it as it was. Every day of the last two weeks, however, were all perhaps taken in preparation for this very moment.

Like the vase was steel and his palm a magnet, a centrifugal force manifested on the core of his hand. Every broken shard, every piece; every splinter of destroyed glass began to orbit an unseen orb of force that lingered on the floor, spinning; turning and shapelessly making a mock-up of Saturn in his hand. His breathing became hard and equally shallow; his shoulders tensed and for the first time, he straightened. Focus, but more than just focus, passion; passion in his eyes, as the shape of the vase took form in his brain and now, here, between his fingers, reformed.

With unbridled strength, the pieces of glass began to plastify together into a see-through, tumorous growth that beat and pulped like a deformed heart. A loud, sizzling sound of unseen 'energy' rattled out his wrist, and the process took such a strong toll on him that it was no surprise, that there lied an equally tormented look on his face, once the vase returned to its original form, there, on the floor. Levitating wasn't one of his gifts. Tenderly, he reached down and laid two fingers inside the bowled-out vessel, setting it back on the table.

He wasn't proud, no- he wasn't even showing off. He was tired, worn, and dejected, for the drugs were gone; for the drugs that brought numbness had been whisked away by a hand as strong as fate, and now he had real reasons to be brooding. One had to hope he was paying attention to their faces, but he looked more off than anything else, trying to figure out in feeling the depth of what Lilith did to him.

In actuality, Byron didn't expect Lilith to go off the rails over a shattered vase. Gohl was gone, anyone affected by the murderous spirit returned back to normal, or so he'd believed. And despite his own thoughts not turning to murder... he felt that heavy weight lift from his shoulders as well once the casket slammed shut. That said, once he feels this... heat around her, seeing her own form flicker and shine ever so brightly in that brief single moment, the thought that she'd go after the man did cross his mind. If only at that point.

If she did slice into him or snapped his bones, the entrepreneur wouldn't have really done much else to help the guy out. Not immediately anyway, but no form of violence seems to happen. No screams of agony from the man's skin being flayed or his bones crushed. No... the place doesn't burn the way it would if she'd set Nasir on fire. Whatever she was doing was different.

Being the overly attentive sort, his eyes ever wary, watching, Thorne had almost expected this man to hold some abilities. He can see the faint glow coming off of Nasir, but his did not match Byron's. That only left a few other options. If he dared to break the vase, one can only assume that he was prepared to fix it, so as the pieces start to come together, he expects that to be the case right then. But rather than turn it back into a face, he transforms it into something more. Thorne's dark eyes move from the newly combined pieces of the vase to look upon the man once more.

Right now, he's concentrating, focusing on Nasir. He's not completely sure what Lilith had done, but this was Byron's attempt at getting just that little glimpse into the man's mind, wanting to know what he's going through right now.

Nothing.

The contents of Nasir's mind beyond the tangible spectrum of one's own eyesight remain a mystery to Byron, but that isn't to say there is nothing to see, there, on the Arab's face. His eyes close shut, hard; his head shakes, equally hard. He seems to be working a hard pill down his throat, in the form of an image, out of his head. His right hand was like a skeleton's defleshed fingers, rattling, cracking his knuckles incomprehensibly hard as he tensed up, forcing it into a pocket. It shuddered so hard the cigarette packet flew right out of his hand as he worked it out of the pocket, and just as quickly snatched it right out of the air.

He wasn't aching for a smoke, he wasn't wanting of a smoke, he needed it. Three or four fell on the floor in a bundle, and he showed little concern for them as he fixed one between his lips. It was a deft sleight-of-hand, when that zippo showed from his back pocket and rose to his face, its flint wheel snapped so hard it came horribly loose out of its base, flying out of his thumb in the clicking fury. This didn't phase Nasir, whose nail tucked into the layering of metal of the little device and plopped the lid off, giving sight of its mechanisms where he moved some of the little gas tubes, re-aligned the match and with a sudden snap-grind against the coarse surface of the wall - which in turn left out a sodden mark on it - a flame lit up in reactionary friction. A flame higher than it should be, as his hard Macgyvering had popped the filter that usually kept it to a little fire, resembling now more the end of a welder.

With it, he lit his cigarette, and down he popped the cap to kill the flame over the marginally kept top. After that, he walked out. He wasn't dismissed, but out he walked nonetheless.

What Thorne expects to find within Nasir's mind is darkness and utter chaos. That's something that he'd witnessed from other addicts and alcoholics whenever he'd dared try and get into their head. When he finds this quiet nothingness, Byron's been using his abilities for far too long to know that the man's mind was filled with nothing. In fact, he used to try and clear his own head as a child as a way to protect himself and he's learned that that never works. So this nothingness just tells him that he'll need to try to crack into his mind a little harder next time. If there is a next time. He doesn't like to read the minds of the sick.

With the sound of the store bell ringing, a customer having wandered inside, Byron watches as Lilith excuses herself to deal with their new visitor, all while taking a few steps forward, then dropping into a crouch to scoop up the fallen and forgotten cigarettes that Nasir leaves behind. He keeps to this lowered position for a time, eyes watching the other man as he finds his own way out. When he rises, his gaze slowly returns to what was once fragments of a normal vase. His eyes on Ibn Khairan again, knowing that Lilith was crazy to take the man on.

Slipping the rogue cigarettes into his coat pocket, he returns to take up his own temporarily abandoned cooling cup of coffee, bringing it to his lips. If the man hadn't heard it said before, Byron will remind him, "You'll be hearing from us." Us, as if he actually works here. This is followed by his own quiet steps, wandering so that his frame stands within the threshold of the office door, making sure that Nasir has safely found his way out.