[Blood Summons] There are at least a dozen pubs in the Lakeview area, all of them with similar menu fare and similar ambiance: eclectic collections of trophies, posters and pictures signed and aged, battered floors and chairs and tables made of dark, heavy wood. The bartenders all look distinctly American, though a few of the pubs employ hospitality students from the UK who are there on internships or study abroads. Those are the ones who make the most money with the tourists, are the ones who sport authentic, charming accents.
The staff of The Duke of Perth are making bank tonight, selling a lot of fish and chips and shepherd's pies, selling pint upon pint even this early in the afternoon. There is fiddle music being piped through the speakers, dim lighting what with the sun still being somewhat visible and meandering through the big front windows, and one of the patrons is making the rest of them marginally nervous.
He's not the most attractive person sitting in the restaurant at the moment; no, far from it. He's tall and rangy, physically unimpressive in every way except for how ugly he is. There is nothing average about the way he looks. His features are heavy and masculine, his hair is a wild overgrown mess and his hands are big and mean; he hunches over his beer as though there's a chance someone is going to take it from him, and it doesn't look as though he's been here long enough to have any food in front of him, or else he's just here for the booze.
His appearance isn't what draws people's attention. It's the fact that he feels like a tightly wound spring, that he bristles and has a voice like bones in a meat grinder, that he is clearly scaring his waitress but she's got a job to think about and probably has a child at home, so she keeps coming back to his table even though he makes her afraid to turn her back on him.
Everyone else is trying not to look at him. He has the look of a guy who would pound the tar out of anyone who looked at him, but there's something about him that draws the attention nonetheless. There's music in the way he moves, something captivating about the way he talks to the waitress, the way he refers to her by her name when she wants something.
But still. He's not normal, and that terrifies people.
[Imogen Slaughter] It is a busy restaurant tonight, a busy pub. This one is just on the edge of her tolerance. It is a little too faux-authentic. It tries a little too hard to be 'Celtic', with its music choices and the small framed pictures in the booths and on the walls.
Barely a step up from the pub called O'Malley's where all the waitresses where kilt skirts, in her opinion.
A plate of fish and chips sits in front of her, the fillet only half eaten, the fries barely touched, pushed away as if she were done. A pint glass of beer sits nearby, half-drunk. She has a book in hand, and at one point, she looks up.
Her eyes find the beast and rest there, lingering a frown gracing her brow. His rage stands out, creating a berth about him, a circle where humans dare not tread. She can sense it, feel it, even from her distance.
Her breeding is a small as sharp as new cut grass, a feeling across the skin, like silk. A change in visual acuity.
The pub is busy, but in the end, it would have been hard for the Kin and Garou to share the same space, and never be aware of the other.
[Blood Summons] There are places back home--and he has to stop thinking of it as 'back home,' because 'home' would lend the impression that there were the chance and opportunity to return and be welcomed and even if he does have it within his ability to return it's the latter, the being welcomed, that is in question--where when you walk into a restaurant like this he just knows that he's going to be assaulted by Stag's Kin, that most if not all of the waitresses are going to be half-bloods and by god if he talked to any of them without permission then there would be a furious brogue-tongued hammer falling down on his head before daybreak.
Thus far there has only been one place presented to him as run and staffed by Kinfolk, by mostly Fianna Kinfolk nonetheless, and he stays away from it unless he absolutely can't avoid getting up the backstairs and into the bathroom or the laundry room for a while.
Yet it isn't until he sets down to drink his beer that he becomes aware of the sharp almost-green awareness of the nearness of Kin. Not his Kin, not the battle-ready and stoic force of one of Fenris's, but the battle-ready and barbaric memories of one of Stag's. It seems to take him a while to figure out that he's not alone in this space, or else he isn't in any huge hurry to get his throat torn out for doing so much as looking at her.
She's of a certain age.
She's blisteringly attractive.
She's pure enough of blood that likely every child she bears will be at the very least Kinfolk.
Three very good reasons not to do so much as look at her, but after what seems like several minutes of him simply communing with his beer, he looks up. He looks over. He sees her.
Now, it's hard to guess what tribe this one might belong to. He's got clearly European features, but they are the features of an island, not the broad continent to the east; with auburn in his hair and white on the hair on his chin he is not easily mistaken for a Shadow Lord or a Silent Strider, likely isn't Uktena or Wendigo either, and he looks too pugilistic and tightly-wound to be a Child of Gaia or Glass Walker. He looks as though he hasn't got more than the clothes on his back or in the gym bag at his feet, which speaks of Rat; but there's battle in his blood, which has it narrowed down to one of two, neither of which is likely seeming overly promising for Imogen: Fenris, or Stag.
He takes a draining draw off of his stout, pushes back from the table, and picks up his gym bag. When he stands, he reveals himself to be tall and dressed all in black: combat boots, slacks, tucked-in t-shirt. The only part of his uniform that isn't black are the suspenders keeping his slacks up. Those are red and green stripes. They're fairly hideous.
It takes fifteen seconds for his strides to carry him from his table to hers, and when he gets there, he does not invite himself to sit.
"Fish no good?" are the first words out of his mouth, and anyone else might be instantly terrified of him: he sounds as though he's been gargling with roadside gravel.
[Imogen Slaughter] Truth be told, Imogen does not study and wonder at the tribes of other Garou. She does not have the ability to feel breeding, and while each tribe has its stereotypes, the possibilities along the spectrum are too varied to ever be entirely sure.
She does not wonder at Blood Summons' tribe as he approaches. She has identified him as Garou - and that is enough.
Even kinfolk do not quite have the directness of gaze that she does. The steady regard of dark eyes, the unflinching, unafraid posture, as if her spine were still and unaccustomed to bending.
The question is blunt, but somewhat deviated. After all, in the grand scheme of things, who cared if her fish had been good or not. She lifts her eyebrow, leaning back a little in her chair to better see the Garou, one hand lifting to push back her hair from her eyes.
Unlike Blood Summons, Imogen's blood is clearly identifiable. And among Garou, tribe is more important than amongst Kinfolk.
She is dressed for business, chocolate brown slacks, a pale opalescent blouse, the silk shimmering over her torso. Her hair is vibrant and bright, her skin pale, her eyes dark. Those eyes cut to her half eaten plate, then back again.
"It isn't very good," she says, simply, though the number of times others in the restaurant order the dish, plus a few blackboard signs declaring 'best fish and chips in Chicago!' seems to contest that.
She studies him, briefly, a flick of her eyes, a touch of them on his horrid suspenders, before they lift again to his face.
"I suppose introductions are in order, then, are they?"
[Blood Summons] "Looks like it."
His speaking voice is a strange thing: it isn't overly deep, isn't overly powerful, isn't overly loud. It doesn't sound like it can become any of these things. It's looking at him that gives the impression that if he decided to stop speaking in a conspiratorially low tone that he could get loud. Underneath the rasping he's got a young man's voice, a baritone that makes him seem more laid back and personable than his physical appearance does.
The kinswoman looks at him as though she is unafraid, and he does not posture or pose to try and crack her façade. She is unafraid of him. This seems to please him, the way sunlight pleases the tactile, the way water soothes after a period of thirst. One has to imagine that a good deal of the people in this building, in this neighborhood, in this city are afraid of him. His Rage is not as high as a Full Moon's. Not that Imogen can tell just how much Rage he happens to be carrying within him, cannot gauge it down to the drop, but there are Galliards who feel like he does.
Most of them are dead now.
That's as much as an invitation as he's going to get, it would seem, or all the invitation that he feels he needs, for he's pulling back the chair across the table from the kinswoman and parking himself there a moment later.
"What's your name?"
[Imogen Slaughter] She watches him take his seat, and picks up her beer.
"Imogen Slaughter," she says, offering her name without adornment. "And yours?"
[Blood Summons] He doesn't tell her that he doesn't have one, that people just usually call him whatever the hell they want. He doesn't tell her that his mother had a name for him, but it's gone now, gone and unclaimed, left in the annals of his history.
There are things you tell people you've just met, and then there are things you keep.
All he needs to know about her, he gets from his name. A flicker of recognition comes across his features, as though he's suddenly placing a face to a name, but he doesn't comment on it.
"Bob," he says. The way he says it, it doesn't sound real, doesn't sound owned. There's no history attached to that name. "Sounds like your mate and I share a family, but I ain't met him yet."
[Imogen Slaughter] Bob, he says, and her eyebrow stirs, but settles. Her expressions are subtle and slight. They reveal little.
Though he does not mention that he recognizes her name, when he mentions her mate, that says enough. The edge of her mouth tightens, her jaw grows a little stiffer, and she lifts it, slightly, as if in defiance, though the defiance is abstract, and undirected.
"If you are Fenrir," she says coolly, "then you probably do."
A pause, a sip of her beer.
"Want to meet him, do you?"
[Blood Summons] Blue eyes are clear if somewhat glazed. It'd be easy to blame on the alcohol that he'd pounded back, were not for the fact that he does not smell like drink, were not for the fact that he has beneath his skin a humming of energy that seems to be making it hard for him to sit still. He lounges in his chair as though he's not planning on going anywhere for a while, and under the table his left foot is thd-thd-thding against the hardwood. It isn't nervousness. He doesn't seem like the nervous type.
"I'm not in a real huge hurry to," he admits, as his waitress comes back to find his table abandoned. She picks up his empty beer and traces him to this table, where a brief exchange occurs: does he want another. Why, Beatrice, that's an excellent idea. She'll let Tara know. Spectacular.
After Beatrice and her working-class accent steps away, he clears his throat and asks another question.
"You get a lotta people asking if you can introduce 'em?"
[Imogen Slaughter] She tilts her head slightly, a shoulder-less shrug, almost dismissive.
"No," she says, "but it seemed only polite t'offer t'point yeh in the right direction" A wave of her nearly empty pint glass, before she lifts it to take a swallow.
"Family bonds and what-not."
When Tara returns with Bob's drink, Imogen tilts her empty one in the waitress's direction. When asked if she wants another, she responds, simply. "Please."
[Blood Summons] The noise he makes is one of agreement, but it can hardly be called human. It's a rumbling sort of a grunt, and it comes when she makes mention of family bonds. He waits until his beer has been conjured up and set down in front of him, until Tara leaves with Imogen's request for another drink, before he responds to the dangling thread of conversation.
He drums on the table in front of his beer, a halting staccato rhythm that seems as much a result of his searing energy as much as anything else.
"Well," he says, "if you're offering..."
[Rituals+Wits: WAKE UP.]
[Kora] Late afternoon, early evening on a warm spring day - half-a-holiday, this. Offices are closing early, and others have been deserted since yesterday afternoon. The windows are flung open, and the warm sun beats down on the streets like summer-to-come. There are people on the beaches, in the streets, in the parks, wearing shorts and tank tops that smell like mothballs, baring skin as white and blind and sunless as an earthworm's.
The pub is not crowded, not precisely - but it is happy hour, and the folks who have been hidden away in their cubicle farms want to loosen their ties, slip off their shoes, and have a drink. Those who've been out, pretending it is summer, forgotting that the sun is not kind to winter skin need one too. Inside, it is still cool and dark. They cultivate that sense here, to give the space the sort of intimacy Americans expect from a British-style pub. They've distressed the wood and burnished the metal so that it has that warm patina of age. It is all wrong, though. The place is larger than it should be, more crowded - too much furniture, too many signs. Too many pennants from too many places.
The front door opens, the bright light of the late afternoon sun cuts a strong line through the crowd. This happens again and again, and the new customers always stand just inside, squinting as their eyes adjust to the sudden shift from impossible sunlight to cultivated shadow. Backlit, Kora is unremarkable - a tall, narrow figure in jeans and a plain fitted tee-shirt, fine cotton, black, with cap sleeves and an elongated neckline - pale hair blazing with the streaming light of the sun. Another woman, no breeding to speak up.
Still, the crowd shifts around her as she heads to the bar, and opens up as she leans in, waiting for her draft, turning to wait while the bartender draws her stout. These things take time, the first pour is allowed to settle before he finished it off, drawing a four-leaf-clover in the creamy foam at the top. It gives her time to survey the scene. The beer arrives - Kora gives the bartender a direct look, says, "Really?" mild and ironic before sliding over her her cash.
She doesn't wait for change.
Moments later, she joins the oddest duo in the pub. Makes it the strangest trio, "Doc." a direct greeting, that, the faint curve of her smile, lifting her beer in the slightest of salutes before she claims a seat. Then, to Bob, the same as she sits. Not Bob, but " - rhya."
[Imogen Slaughter] "He tends to live in a dockhouse on th'lake," she says, leaning back in her chair. Her plate has been taken away. The Garou has a beer on his side of the table, and the kinfolk nothing, not until the waitress returns.
"Just follow Lakeshore drive until it heads into Cabrini Green," she says. "Yeh want to look fer the dockhouse with fencin' all around it and a sign tha' says 'Don't Touch'. Sometimes there's an old American car out front. A barracuda."
She had not, after all, been offering to introduce him personally. Simply point him in the right direction.
Kora walks up to the strange pair, making them a strange group as she takes a seat. "Kora," Imogen greets her, shifting her chair over a little to give the beast more space at the table - ostensibly designed for four, but a little cramped for all that.
[Blood Summons] She'd offered to point him in the right direction, and that's what she does, telling him where to find the former Jarl with directions and names that may or may not be sinking in. They're simple directions, clear-cut and purposeful, and he seems as though he's listening to her as the drumming dies away and the stout in his glass seems... brighter, almost. Like it would sing on the way down.
A tall blond figure moves away from the bar and towards their table, and Bob's sky-colored eyes pull away from Imogen to move to Kora as she greets them. He doesn't smile, but he does reach out to playfully cuff the Skald in the upper arm with his left hand. The middle finger's nail is shorter than the rest of them, down past the quick, as though it's having to claw its way back from having been lost.
"Yo," he greets her, then spies the four-leaf clover on top of her beer's head. "Oo, someone got fancy."
[Kora] Kora elbows the godi back as he cuffs her on the upper arm. Her skin is still warm from the sun and she smells of it today, the city in summer - exhaust in the air, the faint reek of garbage on the corner, in the alley - cigarettes and hot dogs, gasoline and asphalt - rather than spring. The dark metallic tinge of winter has been banished from the air, and the cold sharp scent of the lake in the air has gone vegetal, wet.
"Cheers - " Kora finishes the faint suggestion of a toast with a circular motion of her arm. Her fingertips are neatly set around the rim of the nearly over-full glass as she brings it to her mouth, drinks, dark eyes dropping to the shape in the foam deforming with movement - the bottom loop elongating, the others still. Then, putting the beer back down on the table, her expressive mouth twisted into a supple thread of a smile, lifted more at the right corner than the left. " - dude, I think they charged me extra for that, too."
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen's breath exhales, mildly amused as she turns her head, catching sight of the waitress headed over with her beer.
"Well, obviously," she says, answering Kora's comment. "Gettin' a shamrock in foam requires skill 'nd all. They send American bartenders to Ireland just fer that purpose."
The waitress sets her beer down and Imogen turns back, arching an eyebrow in Kora's direction. "It must be authentic, after all."
[Kora] "I've been to Ireland, Doc," Kora sits back, her shoulders straight against the high-backed chair, her spine curved just enough to make the posture seem negligent, seem indolent. The possibility of movement exists somewhere, always beneath it. Her stillness is an animal sort of stillness, the lean muscles of her torso still engaged, tensed, underneath. Her voice is a low, supple thread, a warm counterpoint to the Godi's graveled tones.
Her chin rises toward Imogen, then, dark eyes drifting over the other woman's shoulder to fix on the waitress behind her, cutting through the evening crowd with Imogen's next round." - and never, not once, did anyone draw me a stout with a four-leaf clover when I was there.
"I think," she waits for the waitress to set the next round on the table, waits for her to step back, efficient, alert, her eyes spiked with awareness, eager to leave them to it, before continuing. " - that they were too busy serving the beer."
[Imogen Slaughter] "Here," Imogen says, ironically, "They are too busy trying to be Irish."
She takes a swallow of her beer, a thick, dark brew that is nearly a meal in and of itself.
[Blood Summons] They're too busy trying to be Irish.
"What's 'Irish'?" he asks, twirling his own barely-touched, unadorned glass of stout around in a circle. There is no accent to his voice, nothing to indicate which region of the world he's from. There's a slight drawl to some of his words, an almost Southern coloration of an otherwise clear tone, but he speaks too quickly for it to have much of a presence. "Drawing flowers on beer and hiring waitresses with accents?"
[Kora] "It's like a play." The Fenrir woman's posture has shifted, subtle, sidelong. Still leaning back, she now has her right hand on the base of her stout, the black nails flat against the dark brew. The other, she tucks into the left front pocket of her fitted jeans, tall frame an incisive incurve against the strict right angle of the chair and its back.
"People can put on the masks that they want to, try on the fit, take them off," there is dimension in the dark liquid where the light hits it; striae of burnished reflection. Her voice has that quality, too. " - when they're done."
[Imogen Slaughter] "Apparently," her answer to Kora
[Imogen Slaughter] (,... pls ignore)
[Imogen Slaughter] "Apparently," her answer to Kora, wry and smirking, before adding, "at least I'm spared paying admission."
A glance to Bob as he speaks, "Are yeh askin' fer the meanin' of the word Irish, or are ye askin' what makes this place Irish?"
[Blood Summons] The swallow he takes is open-throated and powerful, and the head on the beer drains sharply in the amount of time it takes Imogen to ask her question. He sets the beer down with a muted thump, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and clears his throat again, a stones-in-a-garbage-disposal sound that would speak of smoking far too much if Kora didn't know that this guy can heal whatever harm comes to him just as quickly as Gaia can allow for.
There's no defensiveness in the metis's tone when he answers Imogen, and he doesn't bark at her the way another of his Rage might have. It's close to the surface tonight, they can all feel it; he's tired, perhaps, or else he's drained himself in battle and all it takes is one sensed challenge or one misinterpreted word and he's running the risk of snapping, even with the moon waning away from full.
"The second one," he says.
[Kora] "The football pennants." Kora supplies, her attention flashing from Imogen to the Godi she knows only as Blood Summons, not Bob. Blood Summons-rhya. There is that in her dark-eyed attention, too. Her gaze is fixed on his face assuredly - when she looks at him, she looks at him, studies the shape of his bones beneath his skin, the way his muscles and tendons move when he leans back to take a long draught of his beer, her attention fine, observant, clear.
Her name is Sorrow, but she smiles more easily, more freely than either of her companions. It is there now, on her mouth - not ironic, not precisely, not so spare are Imogen's wry smirk - but self-aware and expressive for all that.
She indicates the pennants with a tip of her head, a brief lilt of her pale brows upward. "The menu. The beer they have on tap. The wood. The metal. I bet - " she continues, her attention swinging away from the Godi now, making an interested circuit of the room as if she were seeing it for the first time. Her mouth quirks with the next thought. " - that they host hurling parties, Sundays. Munster versus Connaught, anyone?"
[Imogen Slaughter] "The music," Imogen supplements, "and yes, the shamrock on the beers. Plus they've hired a bloke with an Irish accent to tend the bar."
A glance toward Kora, as she takes another sip, "They host football parties," she says, not meaning American football, "That much I know. I'm not sure about hurling."
Another, appreciative swallow of her beer.
"Beer's not half-bad, though," she adds.
[Kora] "Shame." Kora returns, direct, bemused, to the good doctor. Her chin rises, and she unearths her left hand from her left hip pocket, reaching out for the beer on the table. Lifting it to her mouth.
" - if they had hurling parties, I might've come. That's a pretty bad-ass game. I bet - " she is a betting woman, tonight, so it seems. Her mouth twists, and she keeps the brew level with it, inhaling the warm aroma of hops and yeast with an appreciation not unlike Imogen's own. " - the Vikings brought it to the fair isles, you know? I'd stand a beer on that."
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen exhales sharply, smirking. "Don't let the Gaelic Athletic Association hear yeh say that," she answers.
"Or any Irishman, come to think of it."
[Blood Summons] There's a word he doesn't know, a concept that he isn't familiar with, and for a time, he sits in silence consulting with his memories, with his brain, attempting to see if there's any match or meaning in the word beyond what it immediately sounds like. So the two women converse as the spirit-talker thinks, and when Imogen offers her warning, a chuff of amusement leaves the Godi's throat.
[Kora] "I'd take 'em on," Kora replies. The edge of her half-smile does nothing to dampen the humor in her tone. Her chin rises in vague acknowledgment of Imogen's reply, and she lifts and levels her beer in the kinswoman's direction, another silent toast followed by another deep swallow. Her mouth is evident, wide, expressive over the lip of the glass, and her dark eyes gleam with the burnished light cultivated by the management. The sort that gives everyone that two-drink glow before they've managed to sit down to the first. "Long as someone's buying someone a beer, after."
The noise in the place expands as the afternoon lengthens. They have a small pocket around them, a built-in buffer defined and refined by their rage. The other customers cluster away from them. Oh no, Sarah. - a voice drifts out, passing, from the intermingled noise around them. What about the table by the kitchen?
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen is the oddity. She does not frighten passers-by. She does not make them uncomfortable. There are a few situations where one or two men cast her glances, considering. They wonder if they should offer her help, or walk up and start to talk with her to take the interest of these two unsavoury monsters from her.
In the end, they always decide to do something else. Walk away, and leave the slight redhead to her fate, telling themselves she shows no signs of distress and it is Not Their Business, anyway.
She takes another swallow of beer.
"I imagine there would be beer after any mobbing," she says. "They'll even be so kind as t'hold yer straw fer you."
The dichotomy, of course, is stark. No humans would dare to attack Kora, no matter what she said, and even they did, the likelihood of them doing damage, never mind damage that would require the Skald to drink her beer through a straw, is slim to none.
[Blood Summons] "Don't worry," Blood Summons says, without explaining the comment, "I'd fix your jaw up afterward."
It's hard to tell whether the implication is that he would beat her for accusing the Vikings of bringing a sport to the fair isles or whether he would be there for her in the unlikely event that she pissed off an Irishman and he decided to retaliate against her. In either case, he makes his statement, and then he drags his beer down to the halfway mark.
[Kora] "That's what I appreciate," Kora returns, the thread of her voice low, easily woven into the background noise here. She's comfortable in this space, with its four walls and its roof, with its deliberately aged wood and polished brass accents. With the dartboards on the back wall, by the hallway leading to the restrooms where the old fashioned payphone is fixed to the dark-paneled wall. The sound washes over her, laughter - rising somewhere - low voice comingled, the sound of glass against glass against wood. " - the attention to detail, you know. The hospitality."
A faint, passing twist of her mouth. "What with the straw."
The creature turns then, shifting her lean frame in the hard seat, her body language as open as her regular features, dark eyes, fair skin, pale hair. "Cheers," she offers him back, tipping the glass in his direction. " - 'preciate it, -rhya." In context, in a faux-Irish pub on a warm spring afternoon, the title sounds almost like a name.
[Blood Summons] [Curtain!]
The staff of The Duke of Perth are making bank tonight, selling a lot of fish and chips and shepherd's pies, selling pint upon pint even this early in the afternoon. There is fiddle music being piped through the speakers, dim lighting what with the sun still being somewhat visible and meandering through the big front windows, and one of the patrons is making the rest of them marginally nervous.
He's not the most attractive person sitting in the restaurant at the moment; no, far from it. He's tall and rangy, physically unimpressive in every way except for how ugly he is. There is nothing average about the way he looks. His features are heavy and masculine, his hair is a wild overgrown mess and his hands are big and mean; he hunches over his beer as though there's a chance someone is going to take it from him, and it doesn't look as though he's been here long enough to have any food in front of him, or else he's just here for the booze.
His appearance isn't what draws people's attention. It's the fact that he feels like a tightly wound spring, that he bristles and has a voice like bones in a meat grinder, that he is clearly scaring his waitress but she's got a job to think about and probably has a child at home, so she keeps coming back to his table even though he makes her afraid to turn her back on him.
Everyone else is trying not to look at him. He has the look of a guy who would pound the tar out of anyone who looked at him, but there's something about him that draws the attention nonetheless. There's music in the way he moves, something captivating about the way he talks to the waitress, the way he refers to her by her name when she wants something.
But still. He's not normal, and that terrifies people.
[Imogen Slaughter] It is a busy restaurant tonight, a busy pub. This one is just on the edge of her tolerance. It is a little too faux-authentic. It tries a little too hard to be 'Celtic', with its music choices and the small framed pictures in the booths and on the walls.
Barely a step up from the pub called O'Malley's where all the waitresses where kilt skirts, in her opinion.
A plate of fish and chips sits in front of her, the fillet only half eaten, the fries barely touched, pushed away as if she were done. A pint glass of beer sits nearby, half-drunk. She has a book in hand, and at one point, she looks up.
Her eyes find the beast and rest there, lingering a frown gracing her brow. His rage stands out, creating a berth about him, a circle where humans dare not tread. She can sense it, feel it, even from her distance.
Her breeding is a small as sharp as new cut grass, a feeling across the skin, like silk. A change in visual acuity.
The pub is busy, but in the end, it would have been hard for the Kin and Garou to share the same space, and never be aware of the other.
[Blood Summons] There are places back home--and he has to stop thinking of it as 'back home,' because 'home' would lend the impression that there were the chance and opportunity to return and be welcomed and even if he does have it within his ability to return it's the latter, the being welcomed, that is in question--where when you walk into a restaurant like this he just knows that he's going to be assaulted by Stag's Kin, that most if not all of the waitresses are going to be half-bloods and by god if he talked to any of them without permission then there would be a furious brogue-tongued hammer falling down on his head before daybreak.
Thus far there has only been one place presented to him as run and staffed by Kinfolk, by mostly Fianna Kinfolk nonetheless, and he stays away from it unless he absolutely can't avoid getting up the backstairs and into the bathroom or the laundry room for a while.
Yet it isn't until he sets down to drink his beer that he becomes aware of the sharp almost-green awareness of the nearness of Kin. Not his Kin, not the battle-ready and stoic force of one of Fenris's, but the battle-ready and barbaric memories of one of Stag's. It seems to take him a while to figure out that he's not alone in this space, or else he isn't in any huge hurry to get his throat torn out for doing so much as looking at her.
She's of a certain age.
She's blisteringly attractive.
She's pure enough of blood that likely every child she bears will be at the very least Kinfolk.
Three very good reasons not to do so much as look at her, but after what seems like several minutes of him simply communing with his beer, he looks up. He looks over. He sees her.
Now, it's hard to guess what tribe this one might belong to. He's got clearly European features, but they are the features of an island, not the broad continent to the east; with auburn in his hair and white on the hair on his chin he is not easily mistaken for a Shadow Lord or a Silent Strider, likely isn't Uktena or Wendigo either, and he looks too pugilistic and tightly-wound to be a Child of Gaia or Glass Walker. He looks as though he hasn't got more than the clothes on his back or in the gym bag at his feet, which speaks of Rat; but there's battle in his blood, which has it narrowed down to one of two, neither of which is likely seeming overly promising for Imogen: Fenris, or Stag.
He takes a draining draw off of his stout, pushes back from the table, and picks up his gym bag. When he stands, he reveals himself to be tall and dressed all in black: combat boots, slacks, tucked-in t-shirt. The only part of his uniform that isn't black are the suspenders keeping his slacks up. Those are red and green stripes. They're fairly hideous.
It takes fifteen seconds for his strides to carry him from his table to hers, and when he gets there, he does not invite himself to sit.
"Fish no good?" are the first words out of his mouth, and anyone else might be instantly terrified of him: he sounds as though he's been gargling with roadside gravel.
[Imogen Slaughter] Truth be told, Imogen does not study and wonder at the tribes of other Garou. She does not have the ability to feel breeding, and while each tribe has its stereotypes, the possibilities along the spectrum are too varied to ever be entirely sure.
She does not wonder at Blood Summons' tribe as he approaches. She has identified him as Garou - and that is enough.
Even kinfolk do not quite have the directness of gaze that she does. The steady regard of dark eyes, the unflinching, unafraid posture, as if her spine were still and unaccustomed to bending.
The question is blunt, but somewhat deviated. After all, in the grand scheme of things, who cared if her fish had been good or not. She lifts her eyebrow, leaning back a little in her chair to better see the Garou, one hand lifting to push back her hair from her eyes.
Unlike Blood Summons, Imogen's blood is clearly identifiable. And among Garou, tribe is more important than amongst Kinfolk.
She is dressed for business, chocolate brown slacks, a pale opalescent blouse, the silk shimmering over her torso. Her hair is vibrant and bright, her skin pale, her eyes dark. Those eyes cut to her half eaten plate, then back again.
"It isn't very good," she says, simply, though the number of times others in the restaurant order the dish, plus a few blackboard signs declaring 'best fish and chips in Chicago!' seems to contest that.
She studies him, briefly, a flick of her eyes, a touch of them on his horrid suspenders, before they lift again to his face.
"I suppose introductions are in order, then, are they?"
[Blood Summons] "Looks like it."
His speaking voice is a strange thing: it isn't overly deep, isn't overly powerful, isn't overly loud. It doesn't sound like it can become any of these things. It's looking at him that gives the impression that if he decided to stop speaking in a conspiratorially low tone that he could get loud. Underneath the rasping he's got a young man's voice, a baritone that makes him seem more laid back and personable than his physical appearance does.
The kinswoman looks at him as though she is unafraid, and he does not posture or pose to try and crack her façade. She is unafraid of him. This seems to please him, the way sunlight pleases the tactile, the way water soothes after a period of thirst. One has to imagine that a good deal of the people in this building, in this neighborhood, in this city are afraid of him. His Rage is not as high as a Full Moon's. Not that Imogen can tell just how much Rage he happens to be carrying within him, cannot gauge it down to the drop, but there are Galliards who feel like he does.
Most of them are dead now.
That's as much as an invitation as he's going to get, it would seem, or all the invitation that he feels he needs, for he's pulling back the chair across the table from the kinswoman and parking himself there a moment later.
"What's your name?"
[Imogen Slaughter] She watches him take his seat, and picks up her beer.
"Imogen Slaughter," she says, offering her name without adornment. "And yours?"
[Blood Summons] He doesn't tell her that he doesn't have one, that people just usually call him whatever the hell they want. He doesn't tell her that his mother had a name for him, but it's gone now, gone and unclaimed, left in the annals of his history.
There are things you tell people you've just met, and then there are things you keep.
All he needs to know about her, he gets from his name. A flicker of recognition comes across his features, as though he's suddenly placing a face to a name, but he doesn't comment on it.
"Bob," he says. The way he says it, it doesn't sound real, doesn't sound owned. There's no history attached to that name. "Sounds like your mate and I share a family, but I ain't met him yet."
[Imogen Slaughter] Bob, he says, and her eyebrow stirs, but settles. Her expressions are subtle and slight. They reveal little.
Though he does not mention that he recognizes her name, when he mentions her mate, that says enough. The edge of her mouth tightens, her jaw grows a little stiffer, and she lifts it, slightly, as if in defiance, though the defiance is abstract, and undirected.
"If you are Fenrir," she says coolly, "then you probably do."
A pause, a sip of her beer.
"Want to meet him, do you?"
[Blood Summons] Blue eyes are clear if somewhat glazed. It'd be easy to blame on the alcohol that he'd pounded back, were not for the fact that he does not smell like drink, were not for the fact that he has beneath his skin a humming of energy that seems to be making it hard for him to sit still. He lounges in his chair as though he's not planning on going anywhere for a while, and under the table his left foot is thd-thd-thding against the hardwood. It isn't nervousness. He doesn't seem like the nervous type.
"I'm not in a real huge hurry to," he admits, as his waitress comes back to find his table abandoned. She picks up his empty beer and traces him to this table, where a brief exchange occurs: does he want another. Why, Beatrice, that's an excellent idea. She'll let Tara know. Spectacular.
After Beatrice and her working-class accent steps away, he clears his throat and asks another question.
"You get a lotta people asking if you can introduce 'em?"
[Imogen Slaughter] She tilts her head slightly, a shoulder-less shrug, almost dismissive.
"No," she says, "but it seemed only polite t'offer t'point yeh in the right direction" A wave of her nearly empty pint glass, before she lifts it to take a swallow.
"Family bonds and what-not."
When Tara returns with Bob's drink, Imogen tilts her empty one in the waitress's direction. When asked if she wants another, she responds, simply. "Please."
[Blood Summons] The noise he makes is one of agreement, but it can hardly be called human. It's a rumbling sort of a grunt, and it comes when she makes mention of family bonds. He waits until his beer has been conjured up and set down in front of him, until Tara leaves with Imogen's request for another drink, before he responds to the dangling thread of conversation.
He drums on the table in front of his beer, a halting staccato rhythm that seems as much a result of his searing energy as much as anything else.
"Well," he says, "if you're offering..."
[Rituals+Wits: WAKE UP.]
[Kora] Late afternoon, early evening on a warm spring day - half-a-holiday, this. Offices are closing early, and others have been deserted since yesterday afternoon. The windows are flung open, and the warm sun beats down on the streets like summer-to-come. There are people on the beaches, in the streets, in the parks, wearing shorts and tank tops that smell like mothballs, baring skin as white and blind and sunless as an earthworm's.
The pub is not crowded, not precisely - but it is happy hour, and the folks who have been hidden away in their cubicle farms want to loosen their ties, slip off their shoes, and have a drink. Those who've been out, pretending it is summer, forgotting that the sun is not kind to winter skin need one too. Inside, it is still cool and dark. They cultivate that sense here, to give the space the sort of intimacy Americans expect from a British-style pub. They've distressed the wood and burnished the metal so that it has that warm patina of age. It is all wrong, though. The place is larger than it should be, more crowded - too much furniture, too many signs. Too many pennants from too many places.
The front door opens, the bright light of the late afternoon sun cuts a strong line through the crowd. This happens again and again, and the new customers always stand just inside, squinting as their eyes adjust to the sudden shift from impossible sunlight to cultivated shadow. Backlit, Kora is unremarkable - a tall, narrow figure in jeans and a plain fitted tee-shirt, fine cotton, black, with cap sleeves and an elongated neckline - pale hair blazing with the streaming light of the sun. Another woman, no breeding to speak up.
Still, the crowd shifts around her as she heads to the bar, and opens up as she leans in, waiting for her draft, turning to wait while the bartender draws her stout. These things take time, the first pour is allowed to settle before he finished it off, drawing a four-leaf-clover in the creamy foam at the top. It gives her time to survey the scene. The beer arrives - Kora gives the bartender a direct look, says, "Really?" mild and ironic before sliding over her her cash.
She doesn't wait for change.
Moments later, she joins the oddest duo in the pub. Makes it the strangest trio, "Doc." a direct greeting, that, the faint curve of her smile, lifting her beer in the slightest of salutes before she claims a seat. Then, to Bob, the same as she sits. Not Bob, but " - rhya."
[Imogen Slaughter] "He tends to live in a dockhouse on th'lake," she says, leaning back in her chair. Her plate has been taken away. The Garou has a beer on his side of the table, and the kinfolk nothing, not until the waitress returns.
"Just follow Lakeshore drive until it heads into Cabrini Green," she says. "Yeh want to look fer the dockhouse with fencin' all around it and a sign tha' says 'Don't Touch'. Sometimes there's an old American car out front. A barracuda."
She had not, after all, been offering to introduce him personally. Simply point him in the right direction.
Kora walks up to the strange pair, making them a strange group as she takes a seat. "Kora," Imogen greets her, shifting her chair over a little to give the beast more space at the table - ostensibly designed for four, but a little cramped for all that.
[Blood Summons] She'd offered to point him in the right direction, and that's what she does, telling him where to find the former Jarl with directions and names that may or may not be sinking in. They're simple directions, clear-cut and purposeful, and he seems as though he's listening to her as the drumming dies away and the stout in his glass seems... brighter, almost. Like it would sing on the way down.
A tall blond figure moves away from the bar and towards their table, and Bob's sky-colored eyes pull away from Imogen to move to Kora as she greets them. He doesn't smile, but he does reach out to playfully cuff the Skald in the upper arm with his left hand. The middle finger's nail is shorter than the rest of them, down past the quick, as though it's having to claw its way back from having been lost.
"Yo," he greets her, then spies the four-leaf clover on top of her beer's head. "Oo, someone got fancy."
[Kora] Kora elbows the godi back as he cuffs her on the upper arm. Her skin is still warm from the sun and she smells of it today, the city in summer - exhaust in the air, the faint reek of garbage on the corner, in the alley - cigarettes and hot dogs, gasoline and asphalt - rather than spring. The dark metallic tinge of winter has been banished from the air, and the cold sharp scent of the lake in the air has gone vegetal, wet.
"Cheers - " Kora finishes the faint suggestion of a toast with a circular motion of her arm. Her fingertips are neatly set around the rim of the nearly over-full glass as she brings it to her mouth, drinks, dark eyes dropping to the shape in the foam deforming with movement - the bottom loop elongating, the others still. Then, putting the beer back down on the table, her expressive mouth twisted into a supple thread of a smile, lifted more at the right corner than the left. " - dude, I think they charged me extra for that, too."
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen's breath exhales, mildly amused as she turns her head, catching sight of the waitress headed over with her beer.
"Well, obviously," she says, answering Kora's comment. "Gettin' a shamrock in foam requires skill 'nd all. They send American bartenders to Ireland just fer that purpose."
The waitress sets her beer down and Imogen turns back, arching an eyebrow in Kora's direction. "It must be authentic, after all."
[Kora] "I've been to Ireland, Doc," Kora sits back, her shoulders straight against the high-backed chair, her spine curved just enough to make the posture seem negligent, seem indolent. The possibility of movement exists somewhere, always beneath it. Her stillness is an animal sort of stillness, the lean muscles of her torso still engaged, tensed, underneath. Her voice is a low, supple thread, a warm counterpoint to the Godi's graveled tones.
Her chin rises toward Imogen, then, dark eyes drifting over the other woman's shoulder to fix on the waitress behind her, cutting through the evening crowd with Imogen's next round." - and never, not once, did anyone draw me a stout with a four-leaf clover when I was there.
"I think," she waits for the waitress to set the next round on the table, waits for her to step back, efficient, alert, her eyes spiked with awareness, eager to leave them to it, before continuing. " - that they were too busy serving the beer."
[Imogen Slaughter] "Here," Imogen says, ironically, "They are too busy trying to be Irish."
She takes a swallow of her beer, a thick, dark brew that is nearly a meal in and of itself.
[Blood Summons] They're too busy trying to be Irish.
"What's 'Irish'?" he asks, twirling his own barely-touched, unadorned glass of stout around in a circle. There is no accent to his voice, nothing to indicate which region of the world he's from. There's a slight drawl to some of his words, an almost Southern coloration of an otherwise clear tone, but he speaks too quickly for it to have much of a presence. "Drawing flowers on beer and hiring waitresses with accents?"
[Kora] "It's like a play." The Fenrir woman's posture has shifted, subtle, sidelong. Still leaning back, she now has her right hand on the base of her stout, the black nails flat against the dark brew. The other, she tucks into the left front pocket of her fitted jeans, tall frame an incisive incurve against the strict right angle of the chair and its back.
"People can put on the masks that they want to, try on the fit, take them off," there is dimension in the dark liquid where the light hits it; striae of burnished reflection. Her voice has that quality, too. " - when they're done."
[Imogen Slaughter] "Apparently," her answer to Kora
[Imogen Slaughter] (,... pls ignore)
[Imogen Slaughter] "Apparently," her answer to Kora, wry and smirking, before adding, "at least I'm spared paying admission."
A glance to Bob as he speaks, "Are yeh askin' fer the meanin' of the word Irish, or are ye askin' what makes this place Irish?"
[Blood Summons] The swallow he takes is open-throated and powerful, and the head on the beer drains sharply in the amount of time it takes Imogen to ask her question. He sets the beer down with a muted thump, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and clears his throat again, a stones-in-a-garbage-disposal sound that would speak of smoking far too much if Kora didn't know that this guy can heal whatever harm comes to him just as quickly as Gaia can allow for.
There's no defensiveness in the metis's tone when he answers Imogen, and he doesn't bark at her the way another of his Rage might have. It's close to the surface tonight, they can all feel it; he's tired, perhaps, or else he's drained himself in battle and all it takes is one sensed challenge or one misinterpreted word and he's running the risk of snapping, even with the moon waning away from full.
"The second one," he says.
[Kora] "The football pennants." Kora supplies, her attention flashing from Imogen to the Godi she knows only as Blood Summons, not Bob. Blood Summons-rhya. There is that in her dark-eyed attention, too. Her gaze is fixed on his face assuredly - when she looks at him, she looks at him, studies the shape of his bones beneath his skin, the way his muscles and tendons move when he leans back to take a long draught of his beer, her attention fine, observant, clear.
Her name is Sorrow, but she smiles more easily, more freely than either of her companions. It is there now, on her mouth - not ironic, not precisely, not so spare are Imogen's wry smirk - but self-aware and expressive for all that.
She indicates the pennants with a tip of her head, a brief lilt of her pale brows upward. "The menu. The beer they have on tap. The wood. The metal. I bet - " she continues, her attention swinging away from the Godi now, making an interested circuit of the room as if she were seeing it for the first time. Her mouth quirks with the next thought. " - that they host hurling parties, Sundays. Munster versus Connaught, anyone?"
[Imogen Slaughter] "The music," Imogen supplements, "and yes, the shamrock on the beers. Plus they've hired a bloke with an Irish accent to tend the bar."
A glance toward Kora, as she takes another sip, "They host football parties," she says, not meaning American football, "That much I know. I'm not sure about hurling."
Another, appreciative swallow of her beer.
"Beer's not half-bad, though," she adds.
[Kora] "Shame." Kora returns, direct, bemused, to the good doctor. Her chin rises, and she unearths her left hand from her left hip pocket, reaching out for the beer on the table. Lifting it to her mouth.
" - if they had hurling parties, I might've come. That's a pretty bad-ass game. I bet - " she is a betting woman, tonight, so it seems. Her mouth twists, and she keeps the brew level with it, inhaling the warm aroma of hops and yeast with an appreciation not unlike Imogen's own. " - the Vikings brought it to the fair isles, you know? I'd stand a beer on that."
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen exhales sharply, smirking. "Don't let the Gaelic Athletic Association hear yeh say that," she answers.
"Or any Irishman, come to think of it."
[Blood Summons] There's a word he doesn't know, a concept that he isn't familiar with, and for a time, he sits in silence consulting with his memories, with his brain, attempting to see if there's any match or meaning in the word beyond what it immediately sounds like. So the two women converse as the spirit-talker thinks, and when Imogen offers her warning, a chuff of amusement leaves the Godi's throat.
[Kora] "I'd take 'em on," Kora replies. The edge of her half-smile does nothing to dampen the humor in her tone. Her chin rises in vague acknowledgment of Imogen's reply, and she lifts and levels her beer in the kinswoman's direction, another silent toast followed by another deep swallow. Her mouth is evident, wide, expressive over the lip of the glass, and her dark eyes gleam with the burnished light cultivated by the management. The sort that gives everyone that two-drink glow before they've managed to sit down to the first. "Long as someone's buying someone a beer, after."
The noise in the place expands as the afternoon lengthens. They have a small pocket around them, a built-in buffer defined and refined by their rage. The other customers cluster away from them. Oh no, Sarah. - a voice drifts out, passing, from the intermingled noise around them. What about the table by the kitchen?
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen is the oddity. She does not frighten passers-by. She does not make them uncomfortable. There are a few situations where one or two men cast her glances, considering. They wonder if they should offer her help, or walk up and start to talk with her to take the interest of these two unsavoury monsters from her.
In the end, they always decide to do something else. Walk away, and leave the slight redhead to her fate, telling themselves she shows no signs of distress and it is Not Their Business, anyway.
She takes another swallow of beer.
"I imagine there would be beer after any mobbing," she says. "They'll even be so kind as t'hold yer straw fer you."
The dichotomy, of course, is stark. No humans would dare to attack Kora, no matter what she said, and even they did, the likelihood of them doing damage, never mind damage that would require the Skald to drink her beer through a straw, is slim to none.
[Blood Summons] "Don't worry," Blood Summons says, without explaining the comment, "I'd fix your jaw up afterward."
It's hard to tell whether the implication is that he would beat her for accusing the Vikings of bringing a sport to the fair isles or whether he would be there for her in the unlikely event that she pissed off an Irishman and he decided to retaliate against her. In either case, he makes his statement, and then he drags his beer down to the halfway mark.
[Kora] "That's what I appreciate," Kora returns, the thread of her voice low, easily woven into the background noise here. She's comfortable in this space, with its four walls and its roof, with its deliberately aged wood and polished brass accents. With the dartboards on the back wall, by the hallway leading to the restrooms where the old fashioned payphone is fixed to the dark-paneled wall. The sound washes over her, laughter - rising somewhere - low voice comingled, the sound of glass against glass against wood. " - the attention to detail, you know. The hospitality."
A faint, passing twist of her mouth. "What with the straw."
The creature turns then, shifting her lean frame in the hard seat, her body language as open as her regular features, dark eyes, fair skin, pale hair. "Cheers," she offers him back, tipping the glass in his direction. " - 'preciate it, -rhya." In context, in a faux-Irish pub on a warm spring afternoon, the title sounds almost like a name.
[Blood Summons] [Curtain!]
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