[The head jerks up to reveal a dirt-smudged face - he looks like one of those poor people out of a film, the kind that hang in the background that the viewer either doesn't know about or hardly ever learns about - and so unlike the protagonist. His lips are dry, half-cracked with windburn, and the threadbare coat is pulled a bit tighter around the too-thin frame. He swallows before speaking, half-shuffling away.]

Was j-just looking for a place out of the wind.

[He's different than the normal that hang around here. His accent is cultured, syllables carefully pronounced. There is something about her that does not quite sit well with him, and usually his instincts are right. This young man - well, perhaps he is not as young as he used to be - has been to Hell - or at least, as close as his fellows could make it on earth.]

[Most people would have replied to the statement, bothered with it, trying to dissect it, to analyze it - but he doesn't. All of it is really a terrible, terrible haze of what she could be - though maybe it's just his brain - like someone had unplugged all the wires and left it in an impossibly tangled pile. He is beginning to shift away, hoping the adrenaline kicks in if he needs to run - or that maybe he'll experience the sudden recall of handfighting that had come naturally. He couldn't remember where he'd learned it. Still, he knows he has that unnerving look - of the fact he could just stare at something pointedly - as though tearing all the little bits out of the inside. Then he's shifting away, keeping close to the wall for leverage, should he need it.

Whatever this creature is, it can probably smell the pure, unaltered terror of what he thinks is coming harm.]