The streets of Hell were always busy and loud no matter the hour. Claire had initially tried to find quieter shopping times to stock the hotel's pantry, but quickly realized it was always one form of chaos or another and the trick was to just tune it out. Avoid eye contact, avoid conversation, avoid the stray bullet or fist and it really wasn't a bad city to be stuck in for eternity. There were endless stores catering to every single need and vice one could think of and several she'd never even imagined.

Or ever wanted to imagine.

Thankfully, she had the best distraction a dead girl could ask for.

Books.

It turned out the hotel had a vast, if entirely scattered collection that she'd been working her way through and once one got past the erotic romance sections (which did seem to take up most of the bookstores here), there was a surprising number of novels and historical epics and how-to books. So as Claire walked down the street now, stepping over the odd drunk and dismembered body part, she kept her nose firmly in chapter fifteen of 'Ezekiel's Wheel: A 500-Page Analysis'. It wasn't a difficult book to get through, though it was rather dry—how many ways could a person describe an infinite number of eyes on wheels anyway?—so it wasn't hard for her to keep half of her attention on it and the rest of it on her surroundings as she walked.

Colorful and mostly explicit graffiti marked nearly every available surface and made navigating the alleyways and streets easy. To get to the best produce store she turned left at 'No Second Chances', went straight for four 'LLA' symbols, and then took two rights after the double blue penises. If you hit the rubber duck being sodomized by the deer, you'd gone too far. She'd already memorized seven different routes she could take to the more dependable shops, which meant she never had to take the same path twice in one day. Sure, it meant that she was out longer and thus exposed to some of the weirder, more violent, and creepier inhabitants of Pentagram City, but that was just something she was going to have to get used to.

Maybe something they'd have to get used to.

Adjusting the increasingly heavy shopping bags on her right arm, Claire made note of another 'LLA' symbol crudely carved into the corner of a building that touted several televisions in the window. Presumably for sale, they appeared to be keeping a crowd outside rather than drawing them in. Each person—and 'person' was a term Claire found herself using more and more broadly these days—stared with rapt attention at the wall of screens barely blinking as a news anchor rapidly read off the biggest stories topping the hour: Heaven's embassy had locked their doors though since no one ever went there in the first place what with it being run by fun-sucking assholes this was actually seen as a win, an overlord named Orkas was found dead and no one gave a fuck because fuck that guy, and the price of tomatoes was ever going up due to Satan having a bitch-fit about something, as usual, and stomping the fields as he was apparently wont to do.

Claire let the auditory information wash over her as she continued on her way, pausing in her perusal of what exactly 'wheel' meant in the context of a prophetic dream to unfold the slip of paper she'd been using as a bookmark. It was a grocery list that she hadn't had high hopes for, but it turned out the selection wasn't so bad around here. She just needed a few more things before—

She stopped and turned her head when she heard the piercing cry of a child. That was new. Screaming was par for the course around here but that pitch, almost a wail really, had to be someone young. Were there children in Hell? That seemed—wrong. And yet as she hurried towards the sound, once more adjusting the handles of the bags so they left marks on different parts of her arms, there it was.

It looked to be a young boy, dressed in turn of the century sepia-colored clothing, hair a short bowl cut. His eyes were a deep black and fixated on a nearby tree. He paced the sidewalk in front of it and Claire put aside her surprise at his youth and the sudden splash of actual living vegetation as she headed his way. Following his distraught gaze, she saw what he was after immediately: a bright red balloon stuck in some of the highest branches.

"Just give me a second," she told him, setting the bags and her book down at the base of the tree. A moment later she jumped to grab a hold of one of the lower branches and hauled herself up, the treads of her boots helping to brace against the bark as she climbed. She'd grown up scaling larger trees than this, so it didn't take long before she was able to reach the balloon, carefully freeing it from the scraping of the branches.

"Don't worry," she called down to the anxious boy, winding the string around her wrist so she wouldn't lose it on the way down. "It's still in one piece!" Behind where the boy waited down below, Claire noted a taller, older gentleman wearing a cap and a vest watching her closely, though trying to appear nonchalant about it. This block seemed different from the ones she'd previously been exploring—cleaner. Greener. She hadn't seen any trees at all so far, not ones that were in any way alive, at least. And yet there seemed to be a bustling, small-town square here in what otherwise had been a…very lived in downtown area. There was even what looked like an old bandstand or gazebo surrounded by rose bushes.

It was an interesting scenery shift.

As Claire swung back down to the ground with the balloon, the young boy gave her a huge, sharp toothed smile. "Here you go," she told him, crouching down and unwinding the string from her wrist so she could tie it around his, without flinching at those teeth, "how about we just put that here so you can't lose it again, yeah?"

The boy gave the balloon a bright, pleased look, then reached out to grab Claire's hand, pulling her along with him as he turned and headed down the sidewalk with the energetic, intent purpose of youth. "…did you lose more balloons?" she asked, dutifully if warily falling into step beside him, trying to ignore the tell-tale rustle of bags behind them. She was going to have to redo that shopping later.