[CupcakeDolly]

Someone in the distance was making themselves very easy to track down. Pained, desperate screams filled the air, and the girl named Amary imagined she could see their sounds like tendrils of colored smoke. She crawled, scuttled, and leapt across the rooftops, the holes in the bottoms of her stockings allowing the bottoms of her feet to deftly grasp-

Whoops, slipped on a roof tile. The girl named Amary cringed at the clatter it made, but pressed on. The screaming had stopped, but she wasn't far from its source. She hesitated at the edge of a two-story dwelling, crouched like a small gargoyle.

Gaslights had appeared in the windows of the homes lining the streets below. Their inhabitants were plainly curious about the ruckus, but just as plainly unwilling to step outside and put themselves in harm's way. The girl named Amary shook her head. Were these common folk so numbed to the perils of life that they wouldn't even seek to satisfy their own morbid curiosity? It was almost indecent, this caution they were exhibiting. The girl would have none of it. She felt she owed it to the screaming and roaring creatures to witness their most likely grisly fates.

And there, just across the street, was evidence of such. A trail of blood - dark red in the faint light from the moon - painted a complex mosaic through the cracks in the cobblestone as it made its way toward a sewer grate in the street. The scene in the alley beyond was cast in darkness, and the girl named Amary decided that she would need to get closer to properly witness it.

Timing her movements, the girl half-slid and half-fell from the roof, tumbling to the ground below and skittering along the ground beneath a large shadow cast by a cloud which briefly obscured the moon. The curious window-watchers would see nothing in such a short instant, and if they had they might convince themselves that it was only a stray cat darting across the street and up the wall to the rooftops.

Perhaps the girl named Amary might even have shaken off the person who was so obviously following her a moment before.

From her new perch on the roof overlooking the bloodstained alley, the girl blinked slowly and carefully, daring her eyes to show her something different from what they insisted on seeing. No evidence of the person who had been screaming remained - unless you counted the chunks of gore strewn along the ground - and the only thing left in the area to account for the thunderous noise was a... gigantic, fluffy golden ball of fur.

Ophelia tilted her head to the side as she regarded the thing. Aside from the bloodstains in its fur, it was quite cute, actually.