Finding a bike was turning out harder than Ruth had expected. Weeks in Whitby and she still hadn’t found a suitable two wheels to buy. She was so desperate she was starting to hope to encounter a “stray.”

This looked like it could be just that, a stray. Ruth turned her head to one side, then the other, then got closer to the bike, without touching it. She looked around, wondering if there was anyone in sight who might own the two wheels.

She looked straight down the skirts of some woman behind the bike. She looked to have fallen there, made a cursory attempt at getting up some time before Ruth’s journey here, and then decided that where she’d spilled off said bike was as comfortable a place to nap as any.

There was a woman napping nearby. And maybe that meant the bike was hers. Or maybe it was a coincidence and she was just somehow near the bike. Ruth ought to make an attempt communicating with her. “Ma’am?” she attempted, half whispering for about the second time her life.

Her face turned further toward dirt, rubbing into the hard, gritty warmth her body had left upon it.

“Ask your father,” she mumbled back, eyes remaining plastered shut.

“Auf keinen Fall,” Ruth mumbled to herself, almost insulted by the woman lying on the ground. She walked even closer and took another breath. This wasn’t exactly her preference, but she felt generous today.

“Are you in need of help?” she asked again. Maybe a little more clarity would help?

Anita’s upper lip twitched in a way not entirely voluntary. Had her surprisingly tall priest-son taught one of her … her daughters (God above, each and every one of them looked too much like her) to speak, uh. Russian?

Eyes blearily blinked open and squinted at shapes that did not want to make coherent patterns. Ah. That was a face. And … red hair? Oh, oh no. This was a Ward.

Anita closed her eyes and sunk into an even more deeply uncomfortable position.

The redhead was, like most of her relations, in lack of any sense of self preservation and she generally needed to shove down her throat the idea of backing off once she had started something.

Ruth sighed. Well, the lady couldn’t be help. Not her fault, she had even been told to talk to Fater! She felt officially dispensed from every obligation, so turned to what was important to her.

“Is the bike yours?”

Anita blinked one bleary eye, and then the next, in that order.

“What?” she grunted. “No.”

It wasn’t, and she saw no point in pretending otherwise. Especially with this splitting headache.

“But I’m keeping it,” she said, plainly as a slice of bread.

One blink. Two blinks. One eye always blinks when Anita says the truth. The other one when she is too drunk to remember the truth. Ruth wondered if she could make a song out of this. She probably could.

“Good,” was Ruth’s response. She had had the idea in mind for a while but didn’t want to go too much out of her way. She had just arrived in town, after all. But stealing from a thief sounded reasonable.

Ruth straightened her back. “Tja,” was her response and she took the bike in her hands, concluding that *is this bike yours* was going to be her new pickup line.

Anita let out a long-suffering groan, an eye now peeling back to remain open.

“Really, Ward? Right in front of me?”

She sloppily crossed herself, realized she could get her limb to cooperate enough cross herself, and then rolled onto her stomach to try and scramble to her knees.

She collapsed.