John went back to the copse, closed his eyes, and spun around a bit more than two full turns. He took several steps before he opened his eyes. He headed straight out through the trees, having coincidentally picked a path which took him in between the trunks and densest clusters of branches.
He walked in a straight line to the edge of the park and then cut across the street, passing through the midday traffic without halting. The cars were slowing down as they approached the lights, and while some of them adjusted their speed to avoid him he did not have to do the same.
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t,” he remarked aloud, startling a man trudging past as he stepped up onto the sidewalk. He kept moving forward. There was a one-way side street which split off at an angle before the intersection, putting a path right in front of him. He walked the length of the triangular block and arrived at a bus stop just as the bus pulled up, its door sliding open before him.
He climbed aboard.
“You need a shirt,” the driver said to him.
“Excuse me?”
“You can’t ride the bus without a shirt,” she said, looking at his scratches dubiously. “It’s the rules.”
There was a dirty flannel one hanging off the back of her chair. John took it.
“Will this one do?” he asked.
“Ain’t my shirt,” she said. “It’s two fifty.”
He had three dollars in his pocket, which he fed into the slot. It didn’t give change.
“Take your seat, then,” the driver said. “Lord, but they all do manage to find me.”
Slinging the dirty garment over his shoulder, John moved to the back of the bus and took a seat beside a young man listening to music on a stereo system with headphones that seemed to be purely ornamental.
The bus pulled away from the curb.
He was on the move.
He was on the trail.
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Again with the Shakespeare. Yet another reason to love Tribe.
Hope you get your internet working properly again soon, Lexy.
I love how he doesn’t actually put the shirt on, he just has it.
I just posted another plug for Tribe, this time in the “Book Club” area of the BPAL forums, my major online home apart from my LJ.
If ever there was a group of people who appreciate dark literary magical stuff, it would be BPAL fans, so hopefully that will attract some new readers!
*crosses her fingers*
Of course, the side effect of that is that now I’m starting to think what BPAL scents would suit the various characters… For Mama, at risk of being obvious, Mama-Ji from the Neil Gaiman collection seems appropriate. For Woe, either Schroedinger’s Cat or maybe one of the Chaos Theory scents they’ve done from time to time. For Wow, maybe something a little more conventionally witchy like Arcana.
And oh gods, now my brain is jumping ship to Tales of MU: Inferno for Mack, Darkness for Dee… I’d better just stop now while I still can…
should it be ‘beside(s) a young man”?
My encouragement too:
Someone linked me to MU. I read the whole thing. I read everything I could find that you’d written. Most of it I like better than MU, but I kept reading MU. Eventually I got tired of it, and stopped. Yet I still check your page every day, just in case something else has been updated. It’s good to still be able to read your writing after my MU-limit was reached.
John’s actions remind me of Dirk Gently — not that that’s a bad thing.
Hg
THE HUNT IS ON!
I love the little glimpses we get into John’s semihuman mind.
Thankyou ms. erin! keep the updates coming in!
Tribe’s definitely better than MU.. still don’t understand how/why more people aren’t in love with it!?
Hope there have been more people moving into tribe to atleast warrant another week (or two
) of continuous updates! 
I
@Miss Lynx:
Oh my goodness, now you’ve got ME started thinking of BPAL scents to go with the characters! I was thinking more Brimstone for Mack, maybe, and Calico Jack for Tarnach from 3 Seas…
Great. Now I’ll be doing this all night. xD After I plug Tribe to the sinandsalvation BPAL LJ community, that is!