Private Finished If you wanna soar with vultures, you'll have to swallow bone

Yoka took note of this.

Yoka enjoyed the paradoxes of life. If there was one thing that Yoka was certain about, it was that there were no absolutes. Nothing was granted. By all accounts, Yoka was an immortal creature. Should she not be killed, Yoka could live another four hundred years, and then she would become a god.

But that wasn't guaranteed. There were a lot of things that could kill her. A well-placed knife, a spell aimed at her throat. Hell, she could choke on the pit of the cherry she'd just popped into her mouth from the bottom of her drink.

Yoka narrowed her eyes at the woman across from her, assessing her features.

"What do you want from life, Andrea?" Yoka said. She pulled the cherry stem out from her mouth and plopped it into the glass. Yoka hadn't bothered tying it into a not. "What makes you wake up in he early morning and come here to help me?"

Yoka wasn't just talking about the money.

It was a good answer.

It was one that pleased Yoka, but her expression didn't change. Yoka valued her freedom, and there was more freedoms that she wanted yet. She had gained a lot in the last five hundred years.

Yoka was a fox first and a woman second, but she was not one without the other. For most of her life there was not much difference in how the two were treated. Yoka licked her lips. Things changed.

She wanted to be around to see those things.

"How would you like to do some favors for me, off the clock," Yoka said. "In exchange for some gifts, things that I would be happy to offer."

Namely, this: Yoka paid cash.

"I often have some personal projects that I could use a helping hand for, someone with your special touch," Yoka said. She tapped her fingernails against her lips for a moment; the bright red of her nails would have matched had Yoka been wearing lipstick.

"You can say no, for the record, and walk away, and we will just go on as normal. I'm not one for pretending this conversation never happened. If you chose not to and know someone with similar skills who might be interested, you could pass it on. You can tell whoever you want, really, because it's nothing illegal," Yoka shrugged.

While she could tell whoever she wanted, Yoka hoped she wouldn't.

It was so much easier that way.

"I assume you're comfortable with blood, though," Yoka said.

"I don't anticipate it will be too often, no," Yoka said.

And she wasn't lying when she said it wasn't illegal. After all, healing someone wasn't illegal. And it's not like Andy would be there when Yoka--or someone else--stuck the knife in. She smiled at the thought and made a pleasant hum for a moment. Yoka did not enjoy taking violent actions. It's not that the idea of there being harm made her happy.

It was the thought that she might be one step closer to being safer that brought the smile to her face.

"As for the details, it's not that I'm intentionally keeping them from you," Yoka explained. Yoka couldn't read Andy's mind; she had no idea what the other woman was thinking. But she had been doing this long enough that she could take a few guesses and she was usually pretty close.

Yoka continued, "I will always give you enough information so you can make the choice that is best for you. It is simply that, despite my gifts, I cannot yet see the future and I have no idea what the details of the situation will be until the unfold."

She reached her hand into her bodice and pulled out a folded envelope with two folded $100 bills on the inside.

"Consider this a thank you in advance," Yoka said, sliding the envelope across the counter to her. She rose, moving to clean up her cup and the ice bucket when Yoka realized she probably should have asked Andy what her comfort level was with....no, Yoka decided, it was probably for the best.

Yoka washed her glass behind the bar and her expression was cool when Andy asked her questions. She considered not telling Andy as much as she could, but that wasn't like Yoka. Yoka kept her secrets, but her secrets were safer the more people thought they weren't secrets.

"I have body guards," Yoka settled on. It wasn't something she publicly broadcast, but it wasn't something she kept hidden, either. "And they're useless to me as body guards if their bodies are out of commission for too long."

Yoka reached for the drying rag.

"They're not human, but given what their abilities require to heal them, sometimes it's easier to get help from the outside than to just sit and wait it out," Yoka shrugged. "I was kidnapped three months ago and they still haven't found the culprit. It could have been random. It's happened before. I change my appearance so frequently it's not uncommon for me to be mistaken for someone else."

Yoka shrugged.

She was painfully practical about this, though there was another undercurrent that she wasn't announcing: Yoka did not like when people suffered for an extended period of time because of her.

Actually, scratch that. Yoka didn't like when the people she liked suffered.

There were plenty she wanted to suffer for an extended period of time because of her.

"I have also misjudged my own capabilities as an owner some time ago," Yoka explained. She didn't bother to hide the tint of regret that clouded her face for just a moment, but it faded quickly as she took on responsibility. "I have an employee whose particular gift caused an incident that resulted in hospitalization and an extended recovery period. We were very lucky. I was well aware of the risks but I put my own interests first, assuming I was capable to handle the fall out. I was wrong."

Yoka set the glass down with the others, rung the towel out, and put it in a box to be taken down with the dirty wash.

"I am many things, Andrea, but I am not a healer," she said, resting her arms on the bar and looking over at the other woman.

"So if harm befalls the ones keeping me from harm, myself, or the ones I should be keeping from harm outside of work hours..." Yoka narrowed her eyes and smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "Then it's personal."

Her smile didn't flicker when she added one more irrelevant detail.

"Sometimes I also engage in knife play with a consensual partner and there can be injuries that don't need to be explained to hospital staff."

While Yoka had an interesting relationship with secrets, she had a more interesting relationship with privacy. While Yoka was quite comfortable having her body on public display for the context of work, she chose her home to be a place of privacy and solitude. Yoka also enjoyed the option of choice. She tended to give the people around her the opportunity to divulge their own information rather than having her do it.

But this was a bit different, Yoka knew. She drummed her fingers off the counter for a moment and said, "Two of them are demons."

She did not specify what two, trying to keep some semblance of privacy, though in truth it was both of her bodyguards.

The last one brought a moment of concern to Yoka.

"The other one is human," she said.

Her lover's status was a source of concern for her. She often considered his humanity the equivalent of a fatal disease, though she tried not to, especially given his questing plans.

When the other woman told her that the procedure could have been flawless had she known what it was, Yoka shrugged and smiled again. The fact that Andrea had not asked was actually a boon to Yoka, so she snapped her fingers and let the illusion she had on her shift until Yoka was a long-legged Japanese woman standing behind the counter. Her full five tails were visible, splayed out before her, and a pair of dark ears produded from the top of her head. It was a guise she tended only to use for hentai nights.

"Kitsune," Yoka said, and snapped her fingers again and the tails and ears were gone and she looked like a normal human once more.

"I'm glad you've decided to help me out with this, Andrea," Yoka said, grinning. "I will do my best to make sure that it is worth your while."