The Hex'ras looked upon his little corner of the French Quarter as a sanctum, such as it was, and such as it had always been. The familiarity of the building and its location at the far end of Decateur Street, a comfortable distance away from the heart of the Quarter, did well to provide him with the sort of tranquility his kind preferred - while still allowing for enough business to keep the lights on. Much as he despised dealing with people, there were still bills that needed paying if he intended to continue operating in Louisiana.<br/><br/>New Orleans suited him far better than Manhattan, from whence he had come some decades prior. New York City was a burgeoning, hectic environment of light, sound, and over-stimulation, none of which suited the calm, silent nature of a spider. Not a moment had gone by without the deafening shriek of a siren, the screeching of tires against rain-slicked asphalt, or the blaring of horns at the hands of impatient drivers - which said nothing of the cold. Draenai had hated the cold even more than he had hated the noise.<br/><br/>It had taken him some time to afford putting a sign over the door of his own shop, but he had kept the doors open for some thirty years.<br/><br/><b><i>The Web - Relics and Curios</i></b><br/><br/>it read, the W hanging just crookedly enough to obscure the adjacent E. So it had been for nearly a year, and he hadn't yet mustered the enthusiasm to pull up a ladder and fix it. Nor had he bothered to put on a fresh coat of paint when time faded the original colors. It hadn't even dawned on him to repair the cracks in the front window; reminders of the Mardi Gras before last, when a drunken frat boy had chucked a bottle at the display behind the glass. In all, Drae had been surprised not at the vandalism, but at the window's refusal to completely shatter upon impact. Good quality glass. Seemed a shame to replace it.<br/><br/>The weathered little shop was as much an antique as some of the kitsch he sold, having survived decades of Mardi Gras, spring break, summer vacation, even Katrina. It was old, scarred, dusty, and a bit worse for wear - but then, so was its owner. New Orleans was one of the only places in the continental United States that valued its antiquities, that didn't tear down a building at the first notion of a new strip mall or a paid parking lot. Perhaps that was why he stayed. Either that, or the Creole cuisine.<br/><br/>Most likely the Creole cuisine.<br/><br/>Due to his nocturnal nature, Drae was quite accustomed to sleeping through the daylight hours, rarely waking before four in the afternoon when the sun began to dip below the taller buildings. Sunlight did nothing for his eyes, even weakened him to a certain degree, and although he didn't exactly have a slew of enemies waiting for an opportunity to pounce, he despised standing at a disadvantage.<br/><br/>That afternoon, however, he woke well before four, owing to the racket outside. A violin, he realized as he turned over in bed, burying his head in the abundance of pillows he kept at the headboard. Try as he might, there was no tuning out the noise. And so it was that the spider was forced out of bed and into the first set of clothes he could find: dark jeans, a slim tank, and an overcoat far too heavy for the season. A glance toward the wall clock reminded him of the need to slide a pair of thin-rimmed, circular sunglasses over his face, the lenses tinted with dark purple to block out the worst of the rays.<br/><br/>Heading downstairs from his apartment to the shop, the spider threw open the door and stepped outside, squinting behind the spectacles, offended by the daytime glare. "Off with you," he demanded, flapping a dismissive hand at the crowd that had gathered. "My shopfront isn't a stage. If you want to hear music, there are plenty of piano bars on Royal or Bourbon."<br/><br/>Whether because of his instruction - less likely - or his outwardly dark, skeletal, even macabre appearance - more likely - the tourists shuffled off in all directions. By night, humans tended to look at him as an aloof sort of goth, a sickly pale creature with blue lips, a crescent earring, and the black clothes of one in mourning. An eccentric shop owner who, in the evening hours, embodied the eeriness of the touristy voodoo shops and fortune tellers the spring breakers came to see. By day, however, he was a much more unsettling fellow; something unnatural to see in sunlight.<br/><br/>The offending musician, however, didn't seem bothered by him. Drae didn't especially care why, just as long as he didn't put rosined bow to string on his sidewalk again. "You woke me," he muttered dryly. But he said so without any harsh accusation, merely a statement of fact. "My shop doesn't open until evening. I keep very late hours. I would greatly prefer if you played elsewhere."<br/><span style="font-family: 'Georgia'"><span class="fixed-color" style="color:rgb(255, 255, 255)"></span></span>