Ornature

[Kora] There is a 24-hour laundromat on the corner of Seventh Street and Carver Boulevard, where the city’s low-rent student housing bleeds into the great tangle of the inner city ghetto. The Cabrini highrises are stark in the distance – a good mile, perhaps more – away from this stretch of commercial real estate. The distant buildings are flat concrete, dark and looming. Unlike the office buildings downtown, they are not illuminated, and stand as a monument to bureaucracy, the false promises of urban renewal.

Here the brick storefronts are lowrise, two or three stories, the centers, once, of Chicago’s old ethnic enclaves. There are still signs of that history on the foundation stones, in the faded carvings on the stone lintels. The Polish-American Benevolent Society, the crumbling stone façade announces above the more recent, more garish metal sign:

COIN – OP LAUNDROMAT

- red letters on white metal.

This late, there’s little foot traffic. Smokers spill out of the two bars on the corner, into the cool damp Sunday night, bringing with them animated discussions of the NCAA basketball tournament, debating the merits of WVU and Baylor and the Duke Blue Devils with a passion that would be better reserved for politics, or religion. The laudromat, though, is empty except for one person, evident through the picture window, illuminated by the harsh glare of the industrial fluorescent fixtures hanging from metal framework of the ceiling, spilling across the institutional pale green walls.

There were a handful of other patrons when she arrived. They all found reasons to leave early. Two frat brothers ran out of quarters, cursing low, and couldn’t work the change machine for the subtle shake of the hands. A tired, wrung-out looking middle aged woman decided, in the end, to hang her sodden load from the washer up to dry around her dingy apartment, a block away.

An hour later, Kora sits, cross-legged, on the metal folding table in front of the bank of dryers. Only one of them is going, turning round and around. She leans forward, her elbows braced on her thighs, something open on her lap. Her dark clothes absorb the fluorescent light, but her pale hair is bright in the harsh wash of glaring light.

[Trent Brumby] Sunday's was washing day. It happened to be the same day that his washer decided to throw a fit and stopped working mid way, making him spend twenty minutes scooping water out of the bowl and into the small water trough next to it. He'd wrung out sopping wet towels, one after the other, until his muscles ached and his hands felt raw. They still smelled strongly of the earth-friendly washing detergent that remained in the fabric, permeating its way through his car when he threw them in a laundry basket in the backseat and spent a good half an hour driving around to find a laundromat that he might chance walking into.

He lived in the Green, you see, but further towards the Mile than the ghetto.

The sedan had pulled up at a nearby parking space and he leaned against the car while he lit a cigarette, pocketing his lighter. After several puffs he opened the back door and hauled out the basket, holding it against his hip like some transvestite washing-woman, he shoved the door shut and locked up the car before walking for the laundromat itself. Smoke drifted in his wake, exhaled in great plumes from his clouded lungs, and by the time he got to the door the cigarette was finished, extinguished against the brickwork and the remaining filter shoved into his jean pocket.

A shoulder pushes open the door. The basket bounces against the door frame, jarring into his side as he fights his way in with a mutter under his breath. He's wearing well worn jeans with a pair of converse sneakers, and one of those black muscle shirts that guys like to wear to the gym, with a hooded jacket open and undone. It's not his usual shirt, loafers and pea-coat routine. He's not expecting to find Kora sitting there, and doesn't discover it until he's already made his way over to dump his basket by one of the dryers, hands on his hips like he's defeated some troublesome beast.

[Adrian] Adrian's building has a laundromat. It also has several fully functioning bars full of students (read: said students' apartments) and more than enough people enthusing and obsessing over this strange phenomenon known as college sports. Not that this is a completely foreign concept to Adrian, mind; he knows from competitive team sports well enough, he simply doesn't care about them. He never really has, quite frankly. So the night has him out not in search of a place to do laundry or a place to drink, but a place to buy cheap cigarettes, and that place just happens to be a liquor store half a block down from the laundromat where Trent and Kora are . . . well, doing their laundry.

He steps out of the store shortly after Trent steps into the laundromat, sets aside the ridiculously large (Bloody Americans.) plastic cup of slushy coke-and-cherry mixed so that he can beat the pack of cigarettes against the fleshy part of his palm, a ritualized count before the crinkle that heralds the removal of cellophane - opening the box - ripping and crumpling the foil - withdrawing a fag - lighting it with relief and a long, blissful inhale. Other people flood in and out of the place, and Adrian studies them all in a similar manner - briefly, intently - as they pass him. The first couple drags taken ["Fucking fag," some particularly thick-necked jock says as he passes, to which Adrian's answer is an accented, "Charming, really."], he gathers his cup and starts walking.

It's slow, this amble, but it takes him inexorably towards the aforementioned laundromat.
He doesn't know, of course, that two people he knows (to varying degrees and definitions of intimacy) are inside.

It's pure happenstance that, after the couple minutes it takes to cover half a block, he's looking in the window of this one-time Polish-American Benevolent Society cum laundromat, only to see Trent, hands on his hips celebrating the submission of his laundry beast, and Kora, sitting with something open in her lap, awaiting true victory over hers. It's a formidable foe, is laundry, and a soul-sucking one, at that. Standing outside the large window long enough to finish smoking his cigarette is a given, as is a long pull from his slurpee to clear out the taste and smell before he enters. Some sort of chime heralds his arrival, no doubt, as it had Trent's before him.

And then there were three. (Only Adrian has no laundry to wash or dry, for which he is truly thankful.)

[Kora] There are bells on the door that shake as Trent opens it. They have a clotted, tinny ring, rusted through as they are, muted from the damp air in the dull, ugly room. When the door swings open, Kora looks up, sharp and suddenly alert, her features sharpened in the stark light shed by the industrial fixtures overhead, made an opaque, pasty white where the light hits her directly – across the brow and cheekbones, highlighting the structure of her collarbones beneath the stretched old t-shirt she wears.

Her winter coat – absurdly plum, particularly in the bright white light of this place – is tossed carelessly over one of the washing machines, the lid closed, the display demanding TWO DOLLARS to start a wash.

The alertness – a startled moment, animal in its intensity – filters slowly from her features. By the time Trent has noticed her – still watching him, her dark eyes intent – there is only a ghostly echo of her startlement remaining, in the dilated pupils, in the stark line of her spine and shoulders beneath the worn out cotton tee.

“Hey,” she says, when he notices her – careful, in this, not to startle him – her mouth curved, faint and sure, her eyes clear, dark and direct. “You need a hand with that?”

The question is not rhetorical. She is already unwinding her legs to stand up and give him a hand. Then, her chin rising as the front door swings open again, as the bells sign their rust-choked little song, Kora looks over Trent's lowered shoulder, dark eyes touching on Adrian. "Evening Adrian. Laundry day for everyone, eh?"

[Trent Brumby] "Hey." He smiled at her; a smile that chased away those stress lines that has started to really etch their way into his brow and make him seem all the more gruff and ruffled. Both hands smooth over his black hair, pushing back the short strands, making himself appear neater and more appealing - at least that was the subconscious notion behind it. "I think I got it," he tells her, dropping his hands down to pick up one of his towels.

Adrian walks in and the two of them look over towards him. Another smile comes easily as he nods his chin at the younger man, letting Kora do the talking. He was busy bringing a towel up to his nose, anyway, sniffing at the strong smell of cleaning powders, debating whether he needs to wash them out or if he could get away with simply drying them while there was still soap in the fabric.

"You think I need to rinse these out?" He asked them both in general, holding up a wet towel that hung limply in his hand. Like most laundry detergent, it was an overly pungent fake floral scent. Even those earth-friendly products stank far from the real thing.

[Kora] "Beats me." The pale-headed creature returns to Trent, her features made stark under the ugly overhead lights, a low wave of humor threading through her voice. The humor is subverbal and subphysical, just touched on by the tone. "Mostly all I care about is getting the blood out."

This is, perhaps, too much information, and all the wrong sort. She says it as a joke, though; that much is clear from the flare of her nostrils, the quiet snort that follows the retort. Call it gallows humor. Her laundry continues to turn. There is a rhythm to it, insistent and rhythmic with just a hint of syncopation, every third beat off, as something metal - the button or zipper of her jeans, perhaps - strikes metal inside the rotating drum.

She has put aside the composition book that was open in her lap, uncoiled from her cross-legged position, but not yet dropped to the floor. Her long legs dangle over the edge of the metal folding table, swinging. Every third swing, the heel of the right or left boot hits the cross-bar support underneath, a faint metallic ping. "So," she concludes, this time with a low laugh self-aware and threaded with irony. " - my laundry advice is: bleach, bleach, and more bloody bleach. I could be the new Clorox spokesmodel."

[Adrian] Adrian is dressed on the preppy end of his couture spectrum tonight - a gray plaid blazer over a deep purple button down shirt and neat jeans, possibly new, but probably not. The butt of his cigarette, once he's sure it's fully out and sufficiently cooled, is disposed of in a handy garbage bin meant for spent dryer sheets and lint balls and candy wrappers and such.

Garou and kin [Fenrir and Fury] both look his way, and Adrian's eyebrow raises, amused (perhaps) at how quickly he garnered their attention.

"If you have to ask, then yes. Unless you want your towels and things to smell overly of your detergent," is his assessment, and his eyes drift between the two briefly, as if deciding to whom he should give more attention. (The moon is full. Kora is a Skald. Whatever appearances may be, it's ever she - here and now - who gets more of his focus.) "If I'd known I'd happen on such a gathering, I'd have brought a deck of cards or something. And bleach will wear your clothes faster. You're better off investing in industrial sized quantities of Spray n Wash or something similar - the fibers hold up longer."

This is wry, all of it - who expects to be speaking with a Skald about laundry on a Sunday night? But then, this is where they are. It's what there is, for the moment, to talk about. Except Adrian shifts it, a little, eyes landing on Kora.

"I spoke with Kemp." He doesn't know what Kemp's said of their meeting, if anything. "He gave me his number, said to call if I needed something . . . not petty, was the gist. I assume others have called him with things of a less than serious nature."

[Trent Brumby] Comments about getting the blood out makes him chuckle. He's not offended or grossed out about such an idea. It's practical advice, really, and expected when it came to Garou. He's had his fair share of blood spills and his time with bleach, as Kora witnessed the other night. But he doesn't come home with bucket loads spilled down his shirts like a warrior with claws might.

"Bleach stinks," is his very apt description of the topic. But he takes in the advice that Adrian has to spare, about bleach and wearing clothes and what was better for the fabric. That's something that he might find useful later down the track. Not for himself but for some lady friends that he may wash for. Trent's the sort to like washing frilly knickers and hanging them up on a line, out of direct sunlight!, to dry. It's not something he readily admits, though.

His towel is dropped back down into the basket, which is then shoved along the floor as though he's playing soccer with the side of his foot, all the way from the dryer to the nearest available washing machine. And as they talk about Kemp, whoever that is, Trent is lifting wet towels from the basket and arranging them into the washing machine, occasionally running his tongue across the split across his lower lip he got several days ago.

[Kora] Kora offers a low snort in response to Adrian's advice about laundry detergent; the appropriate tool for getting the blood out. She doesn't say much more about it, but something in the set of her narrow shoulders, in the way her attention shears back to him before she lets the topic fade away suggests that the longevity of her wardrobe is not one of her top ten concerns. If either of them look at the washer, they can see that: the whole of her closet, turning in the dryer, consitutes barely half a normal human being's single load of laundry. Aside from the jeans she is wearing, and the oldest of her t-shirts (which says, after a few faded, peeling letters, something-something HIGH), she owns a handful of things, two more pairs of jeans, five other t-shirts, a pilling white thermal, a handful of sports bras, socks, underwear - all cheap cotton, all now jumbled in the turning drum, whites and darks together. Ebony and ivory of the laundromat.

Then: Adrian spoke to Kemp. Kora's chin rises, her head turns sidelong - the crown dipping away from him, the line of her jaw turned toward him, that familiar and wholly animal cant of her head. She hasn't moved, and her legs still swing, though the arc of movement has lessened. She no longer hits the crossbar.

"Yeah?" she replies to the well-dressed young man, his blood beneath his skin richer than hers, clear to her senses. The question is rhetorical, the faintest of placeholders. And: " - good." Her shoulders rises and fall, then, in response to his comment about others and their calls. "I don't know. I don't have any specific examples - " here a faint flash of a grin, the young woman twined with the wolf, " - of folks calling for frivolous reasons, but he probably doesn't want to be asked for advice about what sort of haircut you need. If you're not sure whether or not something's important enough, you can call me," she continues, her voice serious. "We're pack, you know? I don't mind. But for the big stuff, you've got to go to the Jarl directly. Alright?"

[Adrian] ".....I remember. And I don't call unless it's important." Unless they're friends, which is another thing entirely, and . . . well. Adrian doesn't make friends with [other, a notion he'll have to get used to again] Get - the closest he'd come in eons was Max. And that, like so many other, similar friendships is gone. "Though," he adds with a hint of an amused grin, "if you'd be interested in advising me on a haircut, I was contemplating one." Tonight, his hair is the carefully teased (but oh, so casual looking!) mess, a not-blond-not-brunet mane around his head with a bit just narrowly avoiding falling into his left eye. It's his deviance from the preppy-ness of his clothing, or something like, but hardly an important issue.

A sidelong glance at Trent notes the split, and that it's a couple days old; Adrian doesn't question it, just takes it as a matter of course. These things happen, and as far as he can tell, the Fury kin isn't otherwise hurt. So there's simply a step or two, a light brush of shoulders (as animal [or unconsciously imitating it] as the cousins, in his own way), support, friendship.

"But yes," he says, "if I'm not sure, I'll call you. Everything's been . . . reasonably well? With both of you, I mean."

[Trent Brumby] There's other injuries, none of them threatening, underneath the clothes he's wearing. Of what can be seen is the bruising of his knuckles and the raw, healing skin there. He'd been in a fist fight. He'd won though, and that's what counted that night. He doesn't like to loose. Even his submission, it's a given thing, not a taken one.

He's finished putting all his wet towels into the washer, leaving the wicker basket empty but soaked, and is fishing in his pocket for some coins. Having stopped by a store on the way here, he had grabbed a new packet of cigarettes and had made sure he had got coins for this exact purpose. They clink softly in his hand as he sorts out the machine, throwing a small look to Adrian when he steps on by with his faint brush of shoulders. For a moment he wondered if he had missed something and threw a glance over his shoulder to Kora, eyebrows raised, then back to Adrian - who, by that time, had gone on.

"Yeah, everything's fine," he assures the other Kinfolk, still thinking he's missed some vital part of the conversation but not caring too much about it. Coins are loaded into the machine and the lid is put down, waiting for it to start. Once it does, he picks up his basket and sets it on top, out of the way. "How's studies?"

Turning around he leans against the washing machines, tucking a hand partially into his hip pocket and taking an easy stance.

[Kora] Kora's hair, as usual, is tied around itself, secured messily at the nape of her neck by a handful of found instruments. Tonight: a number two pencil, the yellow barrel splintered, and half-chewed through, a red rubber band of the sort used to hold crowns of broccoli together in the produce department, and a twist of dark leather, the origins of which are better left to the imagination. The ends are usually tucked up, under the mass, but there are hints of them here and there - old, mottled black, the last three or four inches, a long-grown out dye job she has never cut off.

"I don't think," she says, humor rising in her voice as her dark eyes rise to follow the track of Adrian's hand through his carefully careless hair. " - that you really want my advice. I'd recommend warrior braids, probably. Or something else wholly unsuitable."

With the second question, how have you been?, Kora cuts a glance back at Trent. Her dark eyes linger there a moment, then cut back to Adrian. The stark light casts her features in raw strips of bright and shadow, exagerrating the hollow of her cheeks, catching out the faint glint of the ring she wears through her left ear, with the old iron-worked charm dangling from it. "Yeah," she replies, the dryer still going, thump-thump-thump, thump-thump-thump, with the rhythm of her half-a-load. " - everything's cool."

[Adrian] "Glad to hear it."

He finds a place to lean, roughly equidistant between Trent and Kora, and crosses arms (after offering his giant slurpee first to Kora, then to Trent, and setting it aside) and long legs both in front of him - three points of a triangle, they make, and the conversation goes slow - lulled by the rhythm of the machines around them, by the buzzing of fluorescent lights that make even the most attractive person in the world look sallow and sickly in their glow.

"And I don't know. I don't think I could carry the warrior braid look that well." There's a shrug, all amused, and for all that he says he doesn't think he could, as unlikely as it might seem in his current garb, there's something in his bearing and look that says he could, indeed, if he wanted to. Then, there's a smile. "They're going alright. I'm TAing for my advisor next semester, which will be interesting. And the building will apparently be all but empty over spring break while people go enjoy themselves elsewhere for a week or so, so I may actually be able to hear myself think for a bit."

He's exaggerating, of course, and it (if nothing else) is clear in tone and expression.

[Trent Brumby] The slurpee was passed on, waved off, he really wasn't the sort to be drinking one but it was appreciated all the same. He could use another smoke, already, but that could wait. He'd much rather the current company instead, listening to them as conversation went back and forth.

"You're not going to do anything for spring break?" he asked of Adrian.

Pale grays had drifted over to Kora, taking in what she was wearing and how she was sitting, before he looked back over to Adrian, interested in the answer. Some quiet might be good for him, if he could stop from running into Wyrm things, that was. It's only about now that he realized that Kora really hadn't answered his question from the other day, and he throws another look over towards her, seeking out her expression. She looked sharper, more alert, and he wondered if it had something to do with the moons phase. It probably did - but he didn't have a whole lot of first hand experience.

[Kora] Kora shakes her head, quiet negation at Adrian's offer of a sip of his Slurpee. Her things are strewn about the laudromat - her winter coat tossed over a pair of closed washers, her deflated laundry bag occupies another of the four folding tables, and a closed notebook and paperback, the cover flat down, are barely evident in the shadow behind her left hip, away from them, back toward the back of the room, where a hand-lettered sign promises FIRE EXIT and RESTROOMS and These premises are under video surveillance. All three signs have been defaced, which suggests that the promise of video surveillance is an old threat rather than a present concern.

Her attention swims from Trent to Adrian, back again, as the former asks of spring break and the latter discusses his plan for the upcoming semester. She offers Adrian the edge of her curling half-smile when he mentions his desire to hear himself think, but does not append anything to his description of his upcoming semester. I dropped out of college she told Imogen, once, after the first week.

They never made it beyond Hegel, in her European Intellectual History class.
She never looked back.

Her hands are braced on either side of her knees, now, fingers curled over the lip of the table. The blunt nails were recently painted, matt black. Her arms are long and pale, but the line is foreshortened by the dark circles of bracelets she wears on either arm. The swinging of her legs has stilled, and something in the arc of her spine forward suggests that she's about to jump down from her perch, as the minutes tick down on her dryer drum.

[Adrian] "I'm going to write three papers and prepare a presentation for spring break," he answers Trent. "Probably here, but possibly in London. It's terribly close, really - even if I do decide to try, there's no guarantee I'll get a flight. It would be nice to see Emma, Grace, the kids and everyone else, but . . . I suppose it depends on how much I think I'll get done if I go, and if I'm needed here."

He has university to hold him, but on its breaks? That's a different story.

Adrian is, of course, very different from Kora. He never Changed, never will. He is good at what he is - he finds things, retrieves them, and makes sure they go where they belong. (Most of them, anyway, though there is that collection in his flat.) There's been nothing to prompt him to leave academia, and in fact, there's been more to keep him there. Levels of renown garnered there, and through his fieldwork during his summers, gains him access to places not many other people get, and goodness only knows what he'll find there, and how [or how] it might benefit.

"Getting ready to leave already?" This is for Kora - he can see the timer on her dryer, can see her posture shift as it nears its end.

[Adrian] ((Who [or how]. My bad.))

[Trent Brumby] "Better to do it in London than Chicago. Some small time with friends and family is better than none at all," he offered to Adrian with some warmth in his voice. He always thought the young man spoke very proper, a clear sign of his upbringing and/or education. Trent admires that, but doesn't envy it - he's comfortable in his own skin.

Slipping his hand from his pocket he sets about pulling his jacket off. Standing by the washers and dryers has the humidity warming. The jacket is left on the washer behind him, along with the basket, and his naked forearms cross over his chest as he leans back against the machine again.

When Adrian asks Kora if she's leaving, he looks back over to her, wondering the same thing.

[Kora] "You should see your family." Kora replies, quietly. There is a firm clarity to her voice, when she looks over at Adrian as he considers his options, weighing them each-to-each. Trent offers much the same advice, and the young woman's clear dark eyes shear over to him them, her expressive mouth set into its neutral shape, which rather resembles the dark sliver of shadow at the edge of the light when her moon is in the sky.

Then, with Adrian's question, she flashes him a sudden grin, direct and unexpected. Her attention strafes back to the young kinsman. The smile takes a different shape; these expressions never last long. The look with which Kora fixes Adrian is direct, watchful and dark - but never probing. Still, the hint of humor lives in the tension of skin around her eyes, in the neat twist of her narrow shoulders beneath the worn-out cotton of her fitted, faded tee. "My unmentionables," the sentence is punctuated by the buzzer of the dryer. The noise renews her humored grin, and is punctuated as she levers herself to the floor, dark boots thudding on the tiled surface. " - are nearly done. So yeah."

[Trent Brumby] It would be a lie to say he wasn't curious what sort of unmentionables that Kora wears. One of his brows quirks at the prospect of finding out, and he finds one of his hands raising from where it's crossed over his torso to brush his fingers across the stubble of his chin and half conceal the mild smirk at his mouth. He's watching between Kora and her drier, a quip on the tip of his tongue that never goes further than that.

Because, at the end of the day, Kora is a Garou and a woman, and he'd be beaten for less.

[Adrian] "Kora, you'll make me blush," Adrian says, droll - he dares, even now, to tease lightly where Trent does not. "Your unmentionables, egads. What's a gentleman to do?"

This isn't to say the advice on seeing his family (adopted, not born - he's made no mention of South Africa, of his parents and brother) goes ignored, just that it's heard and tucked away to consider when he's home with his laptop and mobile both, when it's easier to arrange for these things if he decides to do so. He only says, after a long moment, "Maybe I will, at that."

And Kora's preparing to leave - Adrian would offer to help if there were more, but as it is she's more than capable of taking everything she owns in one trip, with no help at all - and so he offers her a smile, truer than most. "Enjoy your evening, and I'll see you soon?" For drinks, perhaps, or a meal. It makes no difference to him - he likes Kora, and spending time with her.

[Kora] The flat light, the peeling paint - the nondescript laundromat on a largely deserted stretch of street, in a decaying part of town. This is where she comes to wash what few things she owns when the Brotherhood is too far to walk, when she only needs to scrub the blood from her clothes, not her body, when the full moon in the sky - which is now somewhere in the apex of the sky just now, which she can feel, burning, bright in the back of her mind - makes public transportation difficult, all other options sketchy.

"Look away, if you're that sensitive, yeah?" Kora replies to Adrian, pale brows lifted into fine arcs as he teases her. She doesn't blush. The line of her mouth - hooked up at the right corner - is faintly ironic. " - but it's hardly something out of the Victoria's Secret catalogue."

The drier opens with a sigh, and the tick-tick-tick of metal against metal comes to a low, stuttering end as the revolutions slow and then stop. The have the impression of cotton, cotton, cotton and more cotton - jeans and t-shirts, pale and dark - more than anything else. Her unmentionables seem terribly mundane. The impression of a racer-backed sports bra, the flash of something white and cotton before it disappears into the depths of the laundry bag.

The bag is half-full when she adds the notebook and hidden paperback after her still-warm clothes. She pulls the closure through, tight, and lengthens the straps to hold the it over her shoulder. "We're going on a hunt," she says, something sharp in her features, as she looks back to Adrian. The swings across her back, but comes to rest against her left hip. " - I'm sure it'll be a good night. Be safe."

The direction is to Adrian. Then she casts a look to Trent, her dark gaze flashing to the corner of his mouth. She cannot have missed the faint twist of his near-smirk, observant as she is. Then, up to his eyes. "You too. I'll see you."

Back to Adrian, as she cuts a line directly between the pair of them, stopping just long enough to grab but not don her coat. " - soon."

[Trent Brumby] He dropped his hand from his mouth, clearing his throat a little as he nods, far more seriously, to the Fenrir woman. "You've got my number," he reminds her. "Good hunting." It was about the best he could give her under the circumstances. He really didn't like the idea of all this blood, gore, and chaos, but it was their duty and his own to deal with it; support it how he could. Tonight that's by offering her safe, successful hunting.

He'd watch her leave thinking about whether she'd appreciate something from a Victorian's Secret catalogue, and whether he'd keep his teeth if he gave her some. It's an idea he runs around in his mind and will do so for the next few days. He'll probably settle on some decent clothes instead, since he can't recall seeing her in much more then what she wears and piled away in her bag.

[Kora] get the transcript!
to Kora

[Adrian] "In one piece, I hope," is his version of be safe - they're going on a hunt. She won't be and he knows it - but being in one piece at the end is the important part, and so that's what he hopes for. "And good luck to you all."

From there, it's leaning again - for a moment, anyway, and then he says, "Cigarette time?" Likely, they could get away with smoking in here. But it rather destroys the purpose of the place, if laundry smells like smoke as soon as it's pulled from the dryer.

[Adrian] (And, pause on Trent and Adrian, cos bed time for me!)

[Kora] "Always," Kora remarks to Adrian, opening the front door with her back, her shoulderblades against the cool glass, her body turning away from then as the door opens. Then she's out the door, into the great dark night.

[Kora] (thank you both! (grins) night!)

[Trent Brumby] Still breathing harder, heavier from his jog into the Park, Trent found himself sitting on the edge of a bench seat. His jacket was left open; the dark shirt beneath concealing the few splattered drops of deep, red liquid, but his faded blue jeans had two clear drops on the thigh. He rubbed at them with his thumb, his hand still shaking with the adrenalin that was still working its way out of his system. Across the sharp points of his knuckles the skin is grazed, raw and smeared in blood. He's not sure if it's his, unlike the blood he spat from his mouth to the ground before him.

He was still collecting himself, unsure of what actually happened. One thing had rapidly lead to another and before he knew it the opponent was down on the ground. He tailed it out of there, aware of the various onlookers, and was certain that authorities were being called and, likely, a medic. He can't remember the last time he became violent - lost his cool, but he felt conflicted, both disappointed an elated at the same time.

He may not know what happened. But he knew the prick deserved it.

[Kora] It's a cold night, not long after dusk. The sky is clear - as clear as it ever is in a city so mired in light pollution as Chicago - and dominated by a waxing moon, gibbous, just a hairsbreadth shy of full, which spreads concentric rings of shifting shadows out from every structure here in the park in gradually darkening gradients of silver-gray. The ornate iron-worked light posts meant to invoke the romance of gaslights from another age, the caged little trees, the well-disguised trash cans, the helpful kiosks placed at strategic points amidst the green, to direct hapless tourists to the museum, the sculpture garden.

There are a few other late night joggers, the glow of the museum plaza in the distance, the dark chill of the lake behind him somewhere, the vast concrete and metal jungle half-hidden by the screening trees – the still full evergreens with their great susurrant arms and deep pools of shadow, the stark, still-bare branches of the deciduous trees, just starting to bed. Out here, in the park at the edge of the vast dark of the lake, the constant orange glow lessens and the sounds of the city, a constant, are dampened by the distance and the well-planted parklands, made tricksome by the echoing expanse of the light.

“I hope,” the voice comes from behind him, behind him and to his right, low and rich, “that most of that is the other guy’s, eh?”

Her approach was hardly silent – but what is another set of unhurried footsteps in the middle distance? She’s there now, standing behind the park bench, leaning forward, bent nearly double at the waist, resting her forearms on the back slats of the wooden bench, dark eyes on his face when he turns to look at her, the smear of blood at the corner of his mouth. There is an impression of a fitted coat, wool and dark, the color blotted out in the shadows beneath her pale face, the cuffs flares around her wrists, pulled just back by her posture to show the bracelets – black leather, twisted suede, et cetera – she always wears.

[Trent Brumby] The sudden voice behind his ear, and the presence to go with it, jolts him, literally. He doesn't quite leap out of his seat but he certainly jerked as though she'd hit him from behind and forced him to half turn around. His elbows had come up slightly, a natural guard of defense, just like the way he had ducked his head away from her. "Holy... fuck!"

"You're scared the shit out of me," Trent curses, trying to eat his heart back down.

He'd recognized who it was, and finds himself quickly becoming embarrassed. Perhaps, even, a little guilty. Rising from his seat, he stands to turn and face her, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth and swallowing, rather than spitting, the blood that continues to leak from his tooth-cut lip. His hands slide behind him, the thumbs resting into the back pockets of his jeans, concealing his hands from further scrutiny.

Looking at her, with his unkempt hair and his swelled mouth, he doesn't know what to say. So he offers her what he would under any other condition. "How are you, Kora?" As though all of this, his demeanor, his attire and the bruises to form on the morrow, was nothing.

[Kora] Her response is both visceral and physical. Kora is standing straight - straight-spined, straight-backed, straight-shouldered - abruptly, her narrow shoulders stiff, her lean body held taught as a whip beneath the tailored lines of her third-hand winter coat. The moonlight cuts across her, haloing the crown of her pale head, highlighting her clear brow, the sharp lines of her cheekbones, nose and jaw, leaving her eyes and mouth enshadowed.

She is breathing deeply, narrow shoulders rising and falling clearly beneath the cut line of the coat. It isn't adrenalin that spikes her blood, spurs open her veins, floods the dark folds of her mind, but something silvered and dangerous - and she breathes, clearly, deeply, deliberately - to find restore her sense of herself, to find some cool center that the hot mooon above cannot touch.

"I shouldn't have," her dark eyes are on his face. There's a pause; she's considering a word, her mouth twists around it, but does not surrender into the supple, subtle smile that is its natural shape. " - startled you." Then she turns, cants her head - looks away, up the path, down, and finds it empty in both directions except for a slow-moving couple, holding hands, their shadow like a double-winged bird in the distance.

This isn't an apology, not precisely. I'm sorry is something people say to fill up space. She is more deliberate than this. And she's two steps back, now, a half-dozen feet between them, standing in the middle of the half-frozen mud, on the turf still sere and weedy from winter, the dark lake behind her, glittering inconstantly with the reflected city lights.

Trent asks how she is. It draws her attention back to him. Her pale brows furrow, a narrow line drawn between them. "I'm fine." - she says, passingly. They're words to fill up space. What she wants to know is - " - what happened to you?" Something sharpens in her features with the question, becomes more alert, more alive to both the shadows around them and his appearance in between.

[Trent Brumby] She shouldn't have startled him and he agrees. But there's a difference in the way she says it and the way he perceives it himself. "I shouldn't be so easy to startle," he says to her with an edge of a smile that stretches and stings his already abused mouth.

He hadn't meant to scare her off, to make her upset or angry and otherwise uncomfortable. It may not be what it is, but there's no other way for the Kinfolk to understand the Rage and the pull of the moon. He still didn't like the way she's moved back from him, as though, when he raised his arms, he may have hit her. There's a deep seated part of him that associates her retreat with his former run in of violent behaviour. Whether it was right or wrong had no business in the equation.

"It's alright," he says, bringing a hand around to look at it and flex his fingers, watching the way raw skin moves across aching knuckles, "just a disagreement." Shaking his hand once, he drops it down to his side and walks those few steps back towards the bench. Pale grays are watching her, testing the ground that he can close between them and looking for signs of further upset, before he's easing to sit on the bench, turned so that his arm rests along the back rail and so he can still watch her.

His tongue probes his lip, licking the way the blood habitually, while he looks her over and up again. "Everything okay?" The voice he uses is quieter, concerned rather than curious.

[Kora] "Nothing more?" There's the hint of a smile on her mouth with those words, and a thread of humor twined beneath the tension that still somehow knits the words together - some vibrant undercurrent to her low voice. It's just one corner of her mouth, the right, twisted up like the curl of a question mark, faint, perhaps faintly ironic, as her dark eyes drop from his eyes to his mouth, and then from his mouth to his hand. Back again to his face, then. "Just making sure."

Hands buried in the pockets of her coat - hip level - elbows bent sharply to accommodate the posture, Kora opens her hands, flaring out the skirted hem of the pea coat, an open gesture that takes in their surroundings, the dark copse of trees, the deserted the jogging path, the open expanse of the small green against which the benches are set. She circles back around, the other side of the bench, then sits, her hands still in her pockets, elbows mirroring the curve of her lean torso inscribed against the sharp angle of the bench.

"We've had," her chin rises, toward the dark trees. Some of them are tall and twisted, others straight-spined and young. Most of last year's leaves have been scoured from the branches by the cold north winds that peel in off the lake. " - a few run-ins with the cursed ones, here." Her tone is quiet, her attention filtered into the middle distance. Then, clarifying: " - in the park I mean. Not so far from here.

"So," a sidelong sweep of her pale head brings attention back to him. " - just, be careful, yeah?"

[Trent Brumby] "Nothing more," he assures her.

When she comes to sit down with him at the bench, he shifts his posture to rest his back into the bench. He has some niggling pains elsewhere under the clothes; when face shots were lacking the body shots weren't, and he'd rather have taken a beating there over a broken nose, cheekbone or eye socket any day. It's still going to ache more tomorrow.

"Here? Really?" He's never came across one of the cursed ones. To him they're just an idea, a very real idea, but something that he can't put a face to. Adrian has come across them, several times now, and he wonders what it is about the other kinfolk that attracts the troubled attention. Looking from her to their surrounds he tries to imagine what would be out and around these areas. Some lovers, illegal trades too, and maybe some small criminal activity, but he can't think of what would draw the enemy, Their Enemy, to the Park.

"Why do you think that is?" he asks her honestly, forgetting about his run in earlier. His heart rate was back to normal, much like his steady, easy breathing. The bloodied lip and the stinging hands were just scraps, easily overlooked.

[Kora] "I don't know." There's something rueful about the shape of her mouth. The light catches out her cheekbones more than her expressive mouth, though - and he can sense more than see the expression by the curve of her pale cheek. She has turned to look at him fully, her chin hovering over the curve of her narrow shoulder, her hair pulled back from her face, secured haphazardly at the base of her neck by a handful of found objects - a mechanical pencil, out of lead, the plastic case splintered but not shattered, and a pair of thin blue rubber bands. There is a hint of smoke scent in her hair, wreathed into the fabric of her coat and jeans. It's not tobacco - just something else, vaguely ashen, intermingled with the raw metallic tang of the cold wind across the open lake.

"It the dark of the moon." Kora is unmoored from the rhythms of humanity. She knows it is spring because the earth is moving beneath her; she remembers the months - vaguely - and knows only the difference between weekday and weekend by the change in the rhythm of the city around her. It was the dark of the moon, she says, as if that were as precise a rendering of time as March the 14th. " - on the other side, not far from here." Her attention cuts back to the dark screen of trees, the crabbed branches swaying in the chilly breeze.

It's very matter of fact, low and quiet, her voice - contemplative. "They set a trap for us, to lure us out, I think. Captured a - " and here she looks back to him, appends, easily " - well, you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you." Her humor is a sudden, bright thing, clear in her voice.

"They captured a spirit, to lure us out, and then attacked. They were looking - " and the good humor passes, as easily as it arose. Her death - not the good one, the one from which she fought back - but the second one, that should-have-been, a sudden sour thing, bile in the back of her throat. " - for something. I'm not sure what. Two got away. Who knows if they got what they came for."

[Trent Brumby] He listens and without interruption, following her glance over beyond and back again to meet her gaze. Trent doesn't smile with her though, even with her humour and the pretty curve of her mouth. He can't find it in himself to have any mirth about the situations she talks to easily on. Lures, captures, and deadly violence is part of his world only on the edges - at times like these.

"Miss Kora," he says suddenly, but quietly, "forgive me if this is out of line, but... - and I know it's not an easy thing to answer, - but.. how do you feel about being who you are? It can't ever be easy, and I know some struggle while others accept. But how do you feel about your role in it all?" It's a serious, deep question, one that probably would be better asked somewhere other then on a bench in a park that has such a sordid history, but there was no better opportunity in conversation than for him to ask her here and now.

[Kora] "It's just Kora, Trent." The correction is quiet, immediate, somewhere between her name and his beg pardon. She holds his pale gaze with her own, dark - just dark, now, the deep blue tones lost to the shadows - and does not look down, and does not look away. He can see the wolf in her, the beast underneath her skin, reflected in her eyes. He can see the girl in her, too. Not girl - the young woman - the human - in the minute movements of muscle beneath the fine, pale skin that frames her eyes, in the sweep of her blond lashes as she looks down, and then away.

Silence falls for a time. She remains seated, hands still in her pockets, her elbows flat against her body, just at the level of her hips. The coat is plum. Maybe it is the first time he has decided upon that detail; absurdly plum-colored, missing most of its black buttons, with others hanging by a thread. "That's a pretty big question," she says at last. Rue here, too. Rue, but not woe. She continues, thoughtful - turning over the idea of how she feels about this in her head like a smooth stone. "BUt I don't mind it."

She gives a faint snort of laughter; it is enough to enliven her mouth, but not her eyes. Then, unearthing her left hand from the pocket of her coat, she holds it out to him, palm up, blunt nails gleaming dull, painted black in the filtered light cast by her moon, above. "Here, though - " cutting a glance back at him, " - gimme your hand, yeah?"

[Trent Brumby] Trent is a patient man, most of the time, and he'd already slipped up earlier that not. There wasn't a chance he was about to do it again, and certainly not with a Garou and one that was a woman. He watched her face, the way his question played along her features while she decided how to answer him. There's something in her that makes his own demeanor shift into something more gentle. It's not an obvious thing, really, but it relaxes his muscles and his posture and softens his eyes, just a tad, in that gruff, though attractive, face of his.

His hand is held out, palm down, when she asks for it. There's no hesitation in him at her simple order. He complied without thought or worry to what she might do with it, or to him. Looking down at his hand, where the hair along the outside on the top of his hand is dark, fine at first and becoming more coarse as it travels beyond his wrist and up his arm, he took in the size comparison before glancing back up to her dark eyes.

Still, he says nothing, but only waits.

[Kora] Kora is a tall woman, with long legs and long arms; she wears her height easily and without apology. Her fingers, too, are long and fine. He places his right hand over her left, palm down. She glances down, bends – gently – his four fingers at the first and second joint, turns her hand sidelong beneath his to run the pad of her thumb across his raw knuckles – bruised here, split there, swollen. The gesture sharpens the impression of the bony joint of her wrist, too, against her pale skin, pulls against the most fitted of the bracelets, thin strips of braided black leather snug against her skin.

“When you were in this - ” a sweeping glance upward, a curl of her mouth. Dispute, he said. Dispute, she says, though the word has a different feel from her tongue, the euphemism shaken out of the structure by her tone, “ – dispute, what were you thinking? How’d you feel about it? I’m not - ” she cautions, abrupt, quiet, forestalling any objection to the tack she has taken. “ – mocking you, by the way. It’s not a new age question, you know? I mean: what was in your head, that’s all.”

It’s a cold night, but the skin of her hand is distinctly warm against his. Perhaps their hearts beat faster. Perhaps they blood burns brighter in their veins.

[Trent Brumby] Her touch is awfully distracting. It's an expected arousal, the way her fine boned fingers touch his hand gently, and the sweep of her thumb across his raw flesh stings, heightening it even more. Trent is glad he is sitting and that he's had enough experience to be able to keep his features straight and serious. The warmth of her hand is more then his own, which is cool across most of the part, other then where the skin is swollen and heated because of it.

She's asking him a question and making sure that he didn't take offense to it somewhere in the middle. He concentrates on what she's saying and not that sudden, unexpected turn of very male hormones. He knows what she is, had seen the wolf in the glint of her eyes, but had also seen the young woman surround it all. It's appealing, and the way she's talking to him doesn't make it any easier.

Trent's careful with his words, not expecting a trick question from Kora, but his own experience makes him tread with caution when answering these things. Black Furies had a very different view to the males of the world and their capabilities and behaviour, than a Get of Fenris might. "I don't know," he tells her at first. "There wasn't much thinking. It was simply to avoid being hit and hit back harder. Only one of us could walk away standing." It's simple and primal, and he knows that, but doesn't quite know what she's getting at - yet.

[Kora] "That's how it is, for me." She says, quiet, her thumb stilling on the knuckles of his index and middle fingers. Her gaze sharpens on his face, the pupils dilating to swallow down the dim light, the raw shadows in which they are stilled. Such a strange tableau, the pair of them. "I don't think about it, right? Like you didn't think; you were. You did. That's me. That's what it means to be one of us. We fight until we fall, and then we fight our way back into the world, because it's what She made us for. It's what He expects of us."

Her fine fingers tighten around hand, then. The strength would be unexpected, did he not know what she is. "See. I didn't fit anywhere before I changed. And now, I just am. I just know my place. I know the world."

Always low, her voice, and so usually quiet, it is charged now with the fervor of her moon, perhaps, the faith beneath it, the knowledge of the web of the world they live in that sustains her. He has never seen the cursed ones; he can only imagine the other side, some dim, technicolor reflection of the world in which they find themselves. She's descended to the underworld to bury winter, to bring back the spring.

The park around is dark and silent; the sounds of the city filter in at a distance. The constant hum of electrical circuitry, the low washing roar of traffic on Lake View Drive, on the loop. The moon - her - moon moves above them. She can feel it as distinctly and as surely as he can feel the rush of hormones in his veins.

She lets go of his hand, then, slides her palm out from beneath his, but does not drop it. Her breathing is deliberately slow, deliberately controlled. There's a moment of stillness where she withdraws, looks off into the trees again, the sleeping soil, the wakening grass, the motion of green things beneath the ground. Her hand disappears back into her left coat pocket and she glances back at him.

There is something about the way she looks at him. His face. His bruised mouth. His swollen hand.
This is the moment when he can say, no.

[Trent Brumby] His gaze hasn't left her, steady and watchful. He's listening to every word that she speaks and every breath that slips past her lips. It's not quite the answer he was looking for but he accepts that from her. It's a perspective of her that he didn't have before, and a knowledge that he has now. A small nod had indicated that he understood it as much as he could given that they were different breeds under a microscope.

But all that rushes back when she squeezes his hand, sharpening his hormones and making the quietest of sounds in the back of his throat, which was closer to pleasure then any sort of anguish. He cut it off as soon as he could, but the sound had been there, strangled in the back of his throat in seconds of that moment. An inhale through his nostrils was sharp and sudden, and the swallow of his adam's apple thick.

Still - he hadn't looked away. Pale eyes are awash with a (usually) hidden fire, that he won't ever act on himself, since he wasn't wired that way. Maybe once he was, but that had long been trained out of this male Kinfolk. Submissive and subordinate to the female population, it's always, only, by invitation.

It was over far too soon for him, going as quickly as it had come and leaving him aching for entirely different reasons. He flexed his hand once and drew it back to himself, her warmth fading from him quickly. He slipped his hand in his jacket pocket, too, and looked away from her finally. There wasn't a no from him, just a moment where he was floundering for something substantial to grab on to. Wondering what the hell had happened and what the hell he is doing.

A look back at her, says he's still connected in a way. Again, his gaze is still steady, brighter then it was before, like the way the blood has infused his skin, flushing it lightly with anything but embarrassment. Like she, before, there's no apology for how he reacts to her. "I know how that feels, I think," he's telling her quietly, "like when I found out about my own ancestors, it made more sense. I felt better in and of myself. It meant something. It gave life more value and purpose, and made me accept more of who I am, and how I am."

"Is it like that, for you, Kora?"

[Kora] “Mmmph.” Her agreement is a low sound in the back of her throat; but it isn’t whole. She negates it with a subtle shake of her pale head half-way through. “There’s more to it. It’s not knowing the way a person knows. An animal just – is, right then, right?” Her chin rises, she looks up, a sweeping sidelong look. “ – living in some constant present. It’s not quite the same thing, but it’s more primal than human acceptance. It’s this physical knowledge I have, in my bones, in my blood.”

Her body language shifts. She says physical and brings her pockets hands closer to her torso. Gut, she means. Gut knowledge, somewhere in the serpentine core of her body. Disconnected as they are, he looks at her, skin flushed, the capillaries dilated beneath the skin, his pale eyes intent and bright – and finds her looking back at him, the animal gleam in her eyes, her head tipped upward toward the sky, dark beyond the orange haze, the heavy moon.

“See that?” she cuts a look up at the sky, her brows expressive, her voice rich, “ – that’s my moon. I know that in the same way, in the same place, that you - ” and suddenly raw. “ – that you - ”

Kora does not finish the sentence. It dies out on her mouth, swallowed back. She sits up, deliberately placing both feet on the muddied ground. Her footsteps sound loud to her ears – thump, thump – beneath the roar of blood. She has a lean, narrow frame – made feminine only by the distinct curve of her hips, hidden in the shadows of her winter coat – but there is some feral grace in the way she moves, half-scooting across the distance between then, then standing deliberately, setting one knee down on the bench on either side of his thighs, straddling him.

Hungry, insistent – she bends down, cups his chin in her hand, and kisses him, his bruised mouth, tastes the blood on his tongue. It’s not tender. She kisses him as if she needed the breath from his lungs for her own.

[Trent Brumby] Physical knowledge. Well, he doesn't understand that, though he tries to follow along her line of thinking in his abstract sort of way. What she's speaking about is similar to how he things of the Wyrm; he takes it on faith and trust in the knowledge of others and their understanding rather then his own. He believes what she's saying even if he doesn't understand it.

That glint in her eyes is bordering that line of attractive and disturbing. If he didn't have that trust in her, although she's somewhat of a stranger still, he might have moved from that bench by the edge of the lake and in the darkness of the park, but he did trust her, perhaps foolishly. He likes that glint, and follows her gaze as she directs his to look up and search the sky for the moon that she's talking about. He can't quite find it quick enough, though, since he immediately looks back at her when she gets up.

He doesn't have long to wonder what she's doing. As her knees come in contact with the bench, and her warmth spreads across his thighs, he slides his hands out of his pockets. The raw skin of them has dried off, making threads of raised, broken skin hard and almost brittle. His hands rest on the natural curve of her hips, as his head tilts back and his mouth stings. It's a wonderful sensation, her mouth against his and the way it floods his senses. The sharp intake of breath through his nose is surprise at that, but his mouth is not idle. Soft and tender, or hungry and rough, Trent enjoys the way she tries to devour his throat through his mouth, and is careful not to push her back too much, letting her lead.

[Kora] There is a kind of neutral tension in her spine; in the great long sweep of her broad paraspinals, her laterals and obliques. She holds her body carefully. For all that she is kissing with a kind of moon-driven hunger, she holds her body just away from his. They touch just where her knees and calves flank his thighs, where his hands rest on her hips, underneath the dark wool coat, which has fallen open without her hands to hold it closed, where her hands cup his face, the back of his, her long, warm fingers splayed across the scruff covering his cheeks, cradling the back of his skull. Otherwise, she holds herself carefully apart, distinct and controlled, not giving in to the beast inside of her, keenly away of his blood, beneath all this, which marks him – clearly and surely to every last one of her feral senses – as someone else’s.

The long kiss has a rhythm of its own, dovetails together. They have to breathe, and when she pulls apart to do so, he can feel her smiling against her mouth, the vibration of her laughter a supple cord beneath it. When she kisses him again, laughing into his mouth, she is pulling him upward, expanding her body through the spine, decompressing the vertebrae, lengthening the long muscles of her torso, hunger opening inside her again like a hothouse flower, somewhere between the cage of her ribs and her pelvis.

She’s flushed with it. Her death is still inside her, the faint seeds of it like the bitter seeds of a pomegranate, and she kisses him to kiss away the taste, which is remembered ash on her tongue. There are a half-hundred other deaths inside of her, from a half-hundred other half-remembered lives.

When it is over, she kisses the corner of his mouth, which is seeping blood again, some wound reopened by the work of her full mouth over his, and slides her nose down alongside his, breathing against his rough cheek, her eyes half-opened, the movement of lashes distinctive against his cheeks, her arms now loop loosely around his muscled shoulders, both intimate and apart,

“Thank you,” – she says, quiet, swollen tongue deliberately placed between her teeth for the voiceless fricative th. She doesn’t say for what, but she is already disentangling herself from him, pushing herself back to stand up, free him from the trap of her body, to let the cool night air sing passing sense into her hungry veins.

[Trent Brumby] He'd like to pull her down over him, but this was just as satisfying - her sitting apart from him, touching him only where she wanted and how she wanted, and with her mouth making him almost beg for more. He's compliant to the way she touches him, across the stubble of his strong lined jaw and into the thickness of his black hair across a warm scalp, but he kisses her as if he can't get enough of the taste from her mouth.

When she breaks from him to breathe and laugh, his own air comes out hot and a little unsteady. He takes a lung fulls of air until she's kissing him again, making his back stand straighter, pulled at by her grip of him that he's willingly wanting. His mouth is burning by the time she's done with him, and it spreads throughout his body like a wild fire, covered and concealed by the fabric over his strong frame. She could feel that, the strength of him beneath his clothes, and the way she's set his blood to boil with want, rather than need - a subtly that makes all the difference.

"No, thank you Mi--Kora." The change of title is at the last minute, where his mind scrambles to correct himself. He doesn't want her to move, but his hands slide off her hips and down onto the cold, hard bench that her knees have vacated. His heart beats hard in his chest and his breathing is deep but steady, as he watches her with an open, sharp eyed longing.

He had thoroughly enjoyed that.

[Kora] The correction he makes - the last-minute, the swallowed hiss of the -ess - earns him a sharp, sidelong look. Her mouth is bruised and swollen, the knot of her pale hair loosened down her back. The long, fine strands catch in the rough matt nap of the boiled woolen coat where they have loosened from their haphazard knot, and spill down her back. She is a feral thing, tonight, with her moon livid in the sky; beneath the boxy shape of her coat, her lean torso defines a subtle S-curve. The fitted t-shirt beneath her coat has rucked up over the low-slung waistband of her jeans, revealing an inch or two of skin beneath it. There is a battlescar there, raw and red, but the shadow of her coat conceals it.

The city opens up behind her, the skyscrapers rising somewhere behind the dark copse of trees, rearing overhead, their dusty faces gleaming with dull reflections of the city's suffused orange glow. Here, present, closer - She's breathing slowly, carefully, as if each breath were a mantra, more wolf than girl when she looks up at the moon she claimed as her own. He can read the want in her dark, fixed gaze as easily as he can taste her mouth in his, still, mingled with the seeping blood from his cut lip. It is written into the taut line of her narrow frame, the possbility of movement liminal around her, like the halo of light around the full moon on a hot summer's night.

But this is what she says, with a slow-curl of her bruised mouth, "I think I need to go." some thread of self-aware humor, the faintest suggestion of apology, too, in the feral cant of her blond head. " - goodnight, Trent."

Kora turns, then, and walks away. Her gait is distinct - long legged and efficient, meant to cover long distances - but tonight, there is a certain hip-slung sense to it, as if she were more keenly aware of her body than she has been in quite some time.

[Trent Brumby] Nodding, only mutely at first, Trent leans himself forward, into the brace his hands hold onto the edge of his knees. He's watching her - hasn't taken his eyes from her, for the entire time. He can read the want there, the way she's responding to him, and while he may not move to act on it, he's pores are daring her to cross that line. The Black Furies hadn't been around. None had claimed him. He was his own man, in his own right, for now.

And right then, he'd like for her to. But, instead he offers her a quiet, slightly more husked: "Safe journey, Kora," and watched her walk away from him, while the back of his hand dabbed at the blood on his lip.