PIGEON - a Grishaverse OC story

Chapter 1 - The street witch

♤ 4 years later ♤

Milena Petrov slowly slipped her kefta off her her broad shoulders. It fell to the ground in a heap. The thick orange, yellow and red embroidery bent and disformed in it's crumpled state. Raw seams and hanging threads tickled at the Inferni's heels.

She removed her black under dress, the dirtiest of all her clothing, but essential for the silhouette of her Kefta. Though the padding in various places to fake a well fed stomach and confident pulled back shoulders had worn down to scraps over years of every day use.

The Grisha coat at her feet was the only one she owned. The one she had stumbled into this saintforsaken city in. She'd ripped the fur lining of her uniform out long ago, for the winters of Ketterdam did not freeze. The mass of people, fires, humidity and tightly spaced buildings prevented the frost.

Milena had desperately scrubbed the blood from the Kefta's sleeves and collar. She used any soap she could find, and boiled the water she washed it in. But the dark stains, persisted. The blue was darker than other grishas would have it and the strings used to pull the garment together were a permanent red-brown.

But the strings after that time used for repairs were all sorts of colors, at least not around the cuffs were her hands still went red every once and a while.

Some said her hands were stained permanently like her coat. And that in the sunlight a red hue could be seen in her hair. They said her blood boiled within her body. That the fire she conjured was hotter than most and red to show it.

Milena had strolled into Ketterdam, wearing a blue and orange Kefta soaked with fresh blood. She had rendered a foolish bouncers hands useless, or as they called it, had given him "the boil".

After that she heard herself being called the street witch. A real barrel nickname.

Milena looked around at the small bathroom she was in. Its wooden walls were leaning with weather and she could hear the terribly loud laughing and shouting of the gambling downstairs. There were no windows, and only a makeshift nail to hang up any clothes wished to stay dry from the puddle on the tile floor.

The yellow toilet had the privilege of hogging the only sewage pipe in the whole building. Probably the whole block.

She cautiously slipped of her white shift, stained even worse by the blood, despite a year of vigorous scrubbing. She held her small towel in hand, which was barely long enough to cover her breasts as well as what was between her legs. Then she slipped into the small bathtub in the corner. The water was cold, and Milena didn't waste time heating it up.

Milena only every cleaned herself once a week, and that was what cleanliness was called in Ketterdam. She didn't have product to wash her hair, and rarely got her hands on soap to wash away sticky beer and grime.

A very hurried pat down with water and a cloth was all she had the courage to do. The door was locked and braced with a chair, but she felt as if someone could burst in any moment. There wasnt any man in the city who hadnt seen a womans stripped body before but it would be the first time any eye saw Milena's self so undressed.

Milena held her towel in one hand at all times, her heart racing as she splashed herself with cold water.

She was one of the few who lived upstairs of the small club she owned, Sterling Cove. She was the only girl there with the slightest sense of properity too. And quite frankly the only Grisha on the streets not on government business.

She was lucky the men working here had some decency to give her the slightest sense of privacy of not bursting in every time shed done this before. But Milena new that was the rumours doing their work, not any kind of a heart.