[Kora] Kora has levered herself up onto the hood of an old Buick, the leathery brown exterior crushed through the center, blockish everywhere else, the finest example of early 1980s Detroit design ethos. The day was chilly and the night is nearly cold - except for those with northern blood, perhaps, and then it is simply familiar, the chill - maybe their blood remembers it. Maybe their bones.
The ruin around them is all metal and rubber, strange pieces extruded and others crushes, engine blocks levered out of split front hoods like organs being extracted from a living being, the few permanent-seeming structures - the trailer, for example, on concrete block pilings - as provisional as the rest of it. Still, for all the metal, there is green everywhere; grass greening beneath the old monstrous cars, vines crawling up the great piles of metal - which gives the place a hint of the wyld.
"Trudy, yeah?" Kora says, her long legs swinging beneath her. Joe and Colt are somewhere out there, doing Modi things. Maybe they're fighting. Maybe they're giving each other love taps. Maybard they're making eyes at the Disciples on the corner, warning them off the two trucks - Colt's, shiny, new - Trudy's - older - parked in the lot across the street. "I'm Kora. The kin the Sept where I fostered called me Kora Eyjólfsdóttir, but here I'm just Kora. she who offers sorrow to the Nation, fostered at the Sept of Wind and Rain, in Hjaltland, but I've been Maelstrom's the last five moons.
"Joe War-Handed - " she tips her pale head toward the entrance of the junkyard, Joe there somewhere, " - is my Alpha. He's a Modi, also cliath, though," here she offers a faint, curling grin, the sort that enlivens the corners of her generous mouth, only, "I'll leave the rest of his naming to him."
[Trudy Adler] Trudy had left the boys to their business and moved into the Junkyard with Kora. She hadn't found somewhere to sit, but had looked around, taking notice of where the green sprung up through metal and rust, while she stood with her hand in pocket and over-sized sweater swallowing up half her other hand.
Her attention swung back to Kora, listening as the other speaks, giving an introduction and explanation of where she's from before giving a run-down on Joe, the Alpha, talking to the other outside. She's sure she's going to need to hear that last name again, and doesn't blame the people here for shortening it to just Kora. There's a quirk of her mouth at that, and a faint humour in the eyes.
"Yeah, it's Trudy. Trudy Adler," she begins her own introduction, casual rather then howling it, "Fistful of Reason to the Nation, Cliath Forseti."
"I've just came in from Minnesota. Needed a change of scenery for the kids, and I heard that there's a few of us here, and that the Sept is taking a lot of hits lately." The death of Garou, especially higher ranking ones like Kemp, travels far. There's been plenty of dying in Chicago, and that's not including those that had bit the dust this passing week, she heard about those after she had made her plans, and it justified her reasoning for packing up and moving across states.
[Kora] "Three Garou this week." Kora replies, her rich voice low, quietly affirming Trudy's statement of the Sept's losses. There is a certain texture to her voice, Kora's, when she remarks upon the deaths - even of those she did not know except in passing - a clear-eyed acknowledgment of death, sorrow without sentimentality. " - our Alpha, Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya was killed in battle just before the new moon. So that's four since the last moot."
The creature's wide mouth is still, her dark eyes distant, head held just aslant. " - no, wait," the huff of breath she offers could be read as humor, but tonight it has a rather more bitter cast, salted, not sweetened, the breath that livens it. She smiles, though, faintly ironic. "Five since the last moot. Silence-rhya's last packmate, too. The Sandman. I think Silence-rhya and the Guardians are the only ones left who were here when the raised the Caern.
"It's been a while since we had a Forseti, too. And our last Forseti," her mouth curves again, supple and expressive, " - as the sort who needed another Forseti, I think.
"So," she continues, her dark, gleaming gaze swinging back to Trudy, watchful and direct. " - I'm sure we'll be glad of your counsel and your strength. You've been to the Caern?"
[Trudy Adler] "Mmm, that's what I thought. Word travels far, especially when one of our own fall." Not that Minnesota was very far from Chicago anyway, and being that its the Fenris stronghold of America it's really no surprise that Trudy had heard about the status of War in the Sept either.
She's quiet, hand sliding out of her pocket as she folds her arms loosely beneath her breasts. Casting a glance back towards the direction of the street, listening out for the other two and more, she lets a moment of respect pass for those that have lost their lives rather then just barreling on with the conversation.
"Yeah," she confirms, looking back to Kora, "I've been to the Caern. Went there before I came 'ere." Her mouth quirks faintly. "It's how I got the directions."
But she brings it back to the small note that caught her attention earlier. "So you've got no other Forseti in town? How many of the Tribe is there? Can I get a run down on what I'm getting myself into here?" Trudy, right down to business, wanted to know what she was going to be dealing with and what sort of state the Tribe and the Sept is in.
[Kora] "Not Dial-a-Fenrir?" Kora inserts in there, after Trudy's comment about directions, adding a quick, wide gesture with her long arms, encompassing the whole of the old ruin that Thomas and Joe had claimed as their territory for some time.
Then, a supple curl of her narrow shoulders. Somewhere during their conversation, Kora stopped swinging her feet, planted her heels back against the rusted wheel-well of the old Buick, braced both of her long-fingered hands on her thighs, just above the knee. "Well, War-Handed-yuf and I have a packmate, another Skald, known as Gut-Song. He's Talesinger of the Sept. We're packed under Hermóðr," - her accent on the Old Norse name is nearly perfect, but there is no foreign lilt in her voice to match the foreign patronymic or her facility with the old language. " - one of Odin's sons, according to the legends. One of Fenris' brood."
"Hmm," she pauses, her attention cutting distant again, listening perhaps for the other pair of Garou. " - that cowboy is new, too. His name's Colt. If I don't miss my guess, he's a Modi, though I never got his deedname. He has a packmate, too - but I don't think she's Fenrir.
"There's a Rotagar named Laughs in the Face of Death - also a cliath - packed under Bear with the Sentinels. The last Forseti in the Sept was packed with the Sentinels, Daniel Brokenhammer. He left, though. Anyway, Sentinels all seem to stay in the Brotherhood if you want to find them - I'm sure they told you about the Brotherhood at the Caern?" looking up there, just long enough for affirmation, "There's another Rotagar named Low Key," her mouth quirks, as her attention cuts back toward Trudy, " - who is so low key I've not met him, just seen him at moots.
"Blood Summons is the only Godi we have. He's a Fostern, not yet packed, but he's not been here long - a moon, maybe. There was another modi, named Wrath, but he's one of the fresh graves.
"And then, of course, there's Silence-rhya."
[Trudy Adler] She listens to all that's told to her, filing it away for future reference. Her thoughts are her own, barely written on her face, the interest there is the most prominent in the way her gaze is sharp, focused and she barely moves from where she's standing, far from a restless spirit. She's grounded, this Fenris woman, two feet planted on the ground, comfortably width apart with her center at the core of her navel.
"And yourself, Kora, what side of Luna's face calls to you most?" That detail had been skipped out earlier.
[Kora] This draws the Skald's dark eyes back to Trudy, unerringly back. The moon is growing large in the sky. Somewhere behind the veil of orange clouds, somewhere above the dreaming, sleeping, wretched city - the moon grows fat and the stars wheel, dimmer, somehow, in Luna's wake. Here, the light orange, and the shadows pooled deep beneath the twisted corpses of the old cars cast about the ruin.
Sorrow smiles. The expression is both more fierce and more full than one might guess, given her deed name. "Waxing." A beat, then. "What about you?"
[Trudy Adler] "Waxing."
"But you never mentioned what auspice you are." Since the poetic expression hadn't gotten her anywhere, she went through the even more direct route. Trudy could have her guesses, but they don't know each other well enough for her to form an opinion on it yet. Besides, she'd rather just ask.
Her gaze is direct.
[Kora] "Oh - !" this time Kora laughs, outright. The sound is brief and clear; the suggestion of laughter remains a living thing in her shoulders and her torso, after laughter itself has died away. In the end, the remainder of that passing, fierce sort of grin is rather more human: wry and clear and self-aware, without being self-conscious. "Clever of me, yeah?
"I'm a Skald. Though," another expressive curl of her shoulders, still taut with the promise of subverbal laughter, " - you probably guessed that, in your heart of hearts." Kora grins, continues, " - What with all the talking."
[Trudy Adler] Kora's laughter makes a smirk first, followed by a grin. She had almost chuckled herself, finding others laughter rather contagious, her own being suppressed in the back of the throat. Uncrossing her arms she takes another look around before moving to find herself a seat opposite the other woman. "Na, plenty of us talk. It's good to be around some other Fenrir, right?"
Easing to sit on the lower block of metal, making it creak softly under her weight, she steadies herself before stretching out a leg, leaving the other folded, resting a hand on the lean thigh. "Fresh faces in times of war are always boosts the spirit."
"They're gonna need you Skalds, though. Plenty of work for you here." This was more serious again, nostrils flaring with her inward sigh, as she settles her gaze on Kora once more.
[Kora] "Nothing better - " Kora allows, her mouth settling into natural curve, a subtle twist of expression at the right corner, faintly wry, though perhaps too fine a thing to be considered a smirk. " - of course, in Hjaltland, all we had were Fenrir, excepting the odd visitor.
"Chicago's - " and here the Skald's craft fails her. There is no single word, nor even a phrase, that could encompass precisely what she means to say: and so she says, instead, " - young, and raw, still.
"We've got every tribe, or nearly. Shadow Lords packed with Silver Fangs, if you can believe that. Silver Fangs followed Shadow Lords. It makes me appreciate," here, she looks around the ruin her packmates have claimed, which is now her own, too, since the new moon, "the tribe as I hadn't, then. And," she looks back here, direct as ever, " - there's plenty of work for all of us."
Another pause, long enough for the night sounds of the place to filter through the corridors of metal. Then, " - you said you had kids? Kin you brought down with you?" Kora's voice is sure, low, serious. Something in the tone suggests that this is more than a social inquiry.
[Trudy Adler] "You an' me both," she says about coming from a place where there were just Fenrir, at least for the most part. "I bet this place is gonna be an eye opener." It isn't that she hasn't been anywhere but in Minnesota, but that had been home, and Chicago was setting up to be home as well.
The mention of Fangs with Lords and visa versa has her brows arching up and a short huff of a laugh escape from her. "I have to see that for myself." She wonders how they worked together. It defied the odds.
Her tone captures attention and makes the lines on Trudy's face seem more severe. She sweeps a hand up through her hair, pushing the loose strands away from her face before dropping it back down to her thigh. "Yeah, I do. I got four kids, they're currently at home with my two sisters." Careful becomes her tone, her chin tilting up, head more to the side. "Why?" Its dangerous ground asking about children, especially if its not just for something social.
[Kora] "We've had attacks on kinfolk, too." Kora's fine mouth is still, now. "Laughs in the Face of Death's cousin - some sort of FBI agent - was kidnapped by the cursed ones. They got him back once, but - " and this is a grim twist of an expression, low, unleavened by anything but consciousness of the war. "I heard he was taken again.
"There was a Gaian killed by some fomor in a restaurant, and other attacks in recent nights. Cursed ones in Grant Park, poisonous fomor. They set a sort of ambush with some fake glyphs in Cabrini, too. I trust your sisters are armed, but they should know - " a faint curve of her shoulders. " - we are in a state of war.
"There's a Hive about fifty miles north, maybe less, near a town called Elk Grove. They should avoid it at all costs. It's worth a two-hundred mile detour not to drive through there."
[Trudy Adler] She takes it in, the details she didn't know. But by the end of it, Trudy doesn't seem anymore worried then she had in the first place. "Thanks for the warning, I'll be sure to find out where Elk Grove is and make sure they keep clear of it."
"As for the rest, well," she straightens her back and drags her heel back from where it had been stretched out, knee bending to place her foot squarely on the ground again, "they're Fenrir. They expect war and hardship, and we had a good idea of the state of things before we got here."
"That's why we came, and my kids go where-ever I go."
[Trudy Adler] (ooc: Ahem. Wherever, even.)
[Kora] "There's a map of the area in the Caern, just ask the Guardians next time you're there," she notes, "Though I expect you can find enough to get by on the web or in a car atlas, for whatever that's worth."
Reaching back then, extending her body through the lumbar spine, Kora plants her hands on the cool metal of the old Buick's hood, lifting her face to the vast expanse of the night sky - cloudcast now, shifting patches of dark and brilliant orange a passing pastiche overhead.
"How many kids do you have, anyway?"
[Trudy Adler] Nodding, just the once, she notes that she will ask the Guardians about the map, and she will compare them to what ever else she gets her hands on; a road map, information on the internet, and in the navigation tool on her phone.
"Four," she repeats quietly. Cloth shifts as her arms fold again, loose, fingers scratching briefly at her left shoulder.
"Three boys and a girl. Derek, Emerson, Kurt and Robyn."
[Kora] Somewhere between the answer four and the names that follow Derek Emerson Kurt Robyn, Kora drops her gaze from the sky above to the Garou seated with her. The junk yard had its own light ecology, its own peculiarities of sound and depth. There is enough light, just, to sheen her eyes when her head is held at a certain angle, so precise that the gleam appears and is gone before it can be registered.
Kora's eyes are fast on Trudy's face as she names her children, the ones she will not leave behind, the Fenrir children, bred for war an hardship, watching the shape of her mouth, the supple movement of the minute muscles of her face in this direct, abstract, interested way.
"Kemp had a kid," Kora says, quiet, after a time. " - none of the rest of us do, though. It'll be good to have a family around, I think. And," her hook-curl smile, passing as smoke, transparent, too, in the shadows of the junkyard. " - if either of your sisters favor a shotgun as their weapon of choice, we've got a helluva supply of ammunition."
[Trudy Adler] "Yeah, it would be good," she agreed, "Helps keep in mind why it's all for. You teach them what you know, pass it on down, and make sure that the culture survives. You want to leave something behind when you go."
"You'd be surprised, how much more you can handle when you've got something to come back home to. Mates, family, kids, they keep you working that much harder, making sure you're not making foolish mistakes. You learn, quickly, not to be selfish and glory hounds. It makes you think before you act."
Her mouth quirks again, "But I'm lucky in a way. I'm already thirty and didn't change until the cusp of twenty-nine. The folks new I was true-born, and it was comin' one day, though none of us knew why it took so long, but now? I got a family to show for it. Now, I'm that much more focused. And as I look around, seeing all these young Garou, I don't question why the Gods chose to keep me waitin'. Life experience goes a long way when you're born to be a Judge."
But she rounds it back to her sisters, grinning lopsidedly. "Heidi's all about the shotgun, she likes to make an impression. Johanna's more of a rifle-gal. She's a good shot at long range."
[Kora] "Shit," says Kora, quiet, a half-smile evident on at the corners of her lips, in the minute changes in the fine extraocular muscles. There is a low whistle, then, decrescendoing a minor fifth to express her surprise. " - I thought I changed late. Now I get to feel like an enfant terrible again."
"That's kinda - " Her voice is rich and low, as subtly expressive as the shape of her mouth. " - inspiring. I never thought of it like that. Family. I mean," she pauses, matches Trudy's lopsided grin briefly before looking back up at the night sky, as if she might be able to find the moon behind the veiling clouds. " - in the abstract sure. I could tell you a half-dozen stories on the subject, I bet. More, if I called on my ancestors. Hell, I'd have a hundred stories, then.
"They like to talk.
"Family, though. You know," Kora continues, cutting a look back down, direct at Trudy, clearly changing tacks. This time with her eyes, just her eyes, half-lidded, the look evident only by the low gleam of light across the irises. Otherwise, her posture is hardly changed - her arms behind her, narrow shoulders back, her chest out, neck stretched such that the black choker she wears stands out, dark against her pale skin, her face largely tipped upward, toward the sky, " - my mom was kin," pause, " - but she left the tribe behind, she just kept moving the whole family around, though we never knew what she was looking for, behind her. Maybe she wasn't strong enough for the war.
"Maybe she just wanted to believe in peace. So we weren't raised in the tribe, and me, I didn't find out until I changed. Which was - " pause again, she lifts her head upward, here, not quite a full-on look, this, more more than the half-hooded glance with which she had favored Trudy before. " - interesting." This is all quietly spoken, this story. There's no bitterness - and her consciousness of loss is supple as well-tanned leather, clear as rain, and just as passing.
"I'd like to meet your family, sometime." Kora muses, straightening at last, dusting off her hands on her thighs, straightening her body through the spine, sliding forward from the hood of the Buick until her feet hit the ground.
" - now, though, I need to go do a circuit of the neighborhood. You're welcome to join me, if you've a mind."
[Trudy Adler] "War isn't for everyone, an' we all have our own demons to settle. Until we deal with that the rest of the world doesn't make sense," she says, on the topic of Kora's mother and her need of having to move around.
The rest of the conversation, though, leaves her with a warmer smile. Nodding, she pushes up from where she's sitting, dusting down the back of her jeans after the process. "You can come by. We'll have a grill, the lot of us. You can meet my sisters and the kids. It'll be good for them, all of us, I reckon."
"Better, too, if something were to happen, you'd know where to go to get the Kin out of the way." Happen to her, to the house, anything. If there was a need, she would rely on - and expect, her Tribe-mates to make sure that the Adler family wasn't left alone.
"I'll come by for a tour next time," she says on going for a circuit around the neighbourhood, "I'll be getting back to the wild ones, give my sisters a breather." Grinning again, and with a large chunk of pride for her family, she had began to walk with Kora on the way out.
She'd bid her goodbyes before climbing in the truck, leaving a number and address behind and a promise to catch up again soon.
The ruin around them is all metal and rubber, strange pieces extruded and others crushes, engine blocks levered out of split front hoods like organs being extracted from a living being, the few permanent-seeming structures - the trailer, for example, on concrete block pilings - as provisional as the rest of it. Still, for all the metal, there is green everywhere; grass greening beneath the old monstrous cars, vines crawling up the great piles of metal - which gives the place a hint of the wyld.
"Trudy, yeah?" Kora says, her long legs swinging beneath her. Joe and Colt are somewhere out there, doing Modi things. Maybe they're fighting. Maybe they're giving each other love taps. Maybard they're making eyes at the Disciples on the corner, warning them off the two trucks - Colt's, shiny, new - Trudy's - older - parked in the lot across the street. "I'm Kora. The kin the Sept where I fostered called me Kora Eyjólfsdóttir, but here I'm just Kora. she who offers sorrow to the Nation, fostered at the Sept of Wind and Rain, in Hjaltland, but I've been Maelstrom's the last five moons.
"Joe War-Handed - " she tips her pale head toward the entrance of the junkyard, Joe there somewhere, " - is my Alpha. He's a Modi, also cliath, though," here she offers a faint, curling grin, the sort that enlivens the corners of her generous mouth, only, "I'll leave the rest of his naming to him."
[Trudy Adler] Trudy had left the boys to their business and moved into the Junkyard with Kora. She hadn't found somewhere to sit, but had looked around, taking notice of where the green sprung up through metal and rust, while she stood with her hand in pocket and over-sized sweater swallowing up half her other hand.
Her attention swung back to Kora, listening as the other speaks, giving an introduction and explanation of where she's from before giving a run-down on Joe, the Alpha, talking to the other outside. She's sure she's going to need to hear that last name again, and doesn't blame the people here for shortening it to just Kora. There's a quirk of her mouth at that, and a faint humour in the eyes.
"Yeah, it's Trudy. Trudy Adler," she begins her own introduction, casual rather then howling it, "Fistful of Reason to the Nation, Cliath Forseti."
"I've just came in from Minnesota. Needed a change of scenery for the kids, and I heard that there's a few of us here, and that the Sept is taking a lot of hits lately." The death of Garou, especially higher ranking ones like Kemp, travels far. There's been plenty of dying in Chicago, and that's not including those that had bit the dust this passing week, she heard about those after she had made her plans, and it justified her reasoning for packing up and moving across states.
[Kora] "Three Garou this week." Kora replies, her rich voice low, quietly affirming Trudy's statement of the Sept's losses. There is a certain texture to her voice, Kora's, when she remarks upon the deaths - even of those she did not know except in passing - a clear-eyed acknowledgment of death, sorrow without sentimentality. " - our Alpha, Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya was killed in battle just before the new moon. So that's four since the last moot."
The creature's wide mouth is still, her dark eyes distant, head held just aslant. " - no, wait," the huff of breath she offers could be read as humor, but tonight it has a rather more bitter cast, salted, not sweetened, the breath that livens it. She smiles, though, faintly ironic. "Five since the last moot. Silence-rhya's last packmate, too. The Sandman. I think Silence-rhya and the Guardians are the only ones left who were here when the raised the Caern.
"It's been a while since we had a Forseti, too. And our last Forseti," her mouth curves again, supple and expressive, " - as the sort who needed another Forseti, I think.
"So," she continues, her dark, gleaming gaze swinging back to Trudy, watchful and direct. " - I'm sure we'll be glad of your counsel and your strength. You've been to the Caern?"
[Trudy Adler] "Mmm, that's what I thought. Word travels far, especially when one of our own fall." Not that Minnesota was very far from Chicago anyway, and being that its the Fenris stronghold of America it's really no surprise that Trudy had heard about the status of War in the Sept either.
She's quiet, hand sliding out of her pocket as she folds her arms loosely beneath her breasts. Casting a glance back towards the direction of the street, listening out for the other two and more, she lets a moment of respect pass for those that have lost their lives rather then just barreling on with the conversation.
"Yeah," she confirms, looking back to Kora, "I've been to the Caern. Went there before I came 'ere." Her mouth quirks faintly. "It's how I got the directions."
But she brings it back to the small note that caught her attention earlier. "So you've got no other Forseti in town? How many of the Tribe is there? Can I get a run down on what I'm getting myself into here?" Trudy, right down to business, wanted to know what she was going to be dealing with and what sort of state the Tribe and the Sept is in.
[Kora] "Not Dial-a-Fenrir?" Kora inserts in there, after Trudy's comment about directions, adding a quick, wide gesture with her long arms, encompassing the whole of the old ruin that Thomas and Joe had claimed as their territory for some time.
Then, a supple curl of her narrow shoulders. Somewhere during their conversation, Kora stopped swinging her feet, planted her heels back against the rusted wheel-well of the old Buick, braced both of her long-fingered hands on her thighs, just above the knee. "Well, War-Handed-yuf and I have a packmate, another Skald, known as Gut-Song. He's Talesinger of the Sept. We're packed under Hermóðr," - her accent on the Old Norse name is nearly perfect, but there is no foreign lilt in her voice to match the foreign patronymic or her facility with the old language. " - one of Odin's sons, according to the legends. One of Fenris' brood."
"Hmm," she pauses, her attention cutting distant again, listening perhaps for the other pair of Garou. " - that cowboy is new, too. His name's Colt. If I don't miss my guess, he's a Modi, though I never got his deedname. He has a packmate, too - but I don't think she's Fenrir.
"There's a Rotagar named Laughs in the Face of Death - also a cliath - packed under Bear with the Sentinels. The last Forseti in the Sept was packed with the Sentinels, Daniel Brokenhammer. He left, though. Anyway, Sentinels all seem to stay in the Brotherhood if you want to find them - I'm sure they told you about the Brotherhood at the Caern?" looking up there, just long enough for affirmation, "There's another Rotagar named Low Key," her mouth quirks, as her attention cuts back toward Trudy, " - who is so low key I've not met him, just seen him at moots.
"Blood Summons is the only Godi we have. He's a Fostern, not yet packed, but he's not been here long - a moon, maybe. There was another modi, named Wrath, but he's one of the fresh graves.
"And then, of course, there's Silence-rhya."
[Trudy Adler] She listens to all that's told to her, filing it away for future reference. Her thoughts are her own, barely written on her face, the interest there is the most prominent in the way her gaze is sharp, focused and she barely moves from where she's standing, far from a restless spirit. She's grounded, this Fenris woman, two feet planted on the ground, comfortably width apart with her center at the core of her navel.
"And yourself, Kora, what side of Luna's face calls to you most?" That detail had been skipped out earlier.
[Kora] This draws the Skald's dark eyes back to Trudy, unerringly back. The moon is growing large in the sky. Somewhere behind the veil of orange clouds, somewhere above the dreaming, sleeping, wretched city - the moon grows fat and the stars wheel, dimmer, somehow, in Luna's wake. Here, the light orange, and the shadows pooled deep beneath the twisted corpses of the old cars cast about the ruin.
Sorrow smiles. The expression is both more fierce and more full than one might guess, given her deed name. "Waxing." A beat, then. "What about you?"
[Trudy Adler] "Waxing."
"But you never mentioned what auspice you are." Since the poetic expression hadn't gotten her anywhere, she went through the even more direct route. Trudy could have her guesses, but they don't know each other well enough for her to form an opinion on it yet. Besides, she'd rather just ask.
Her gaze is direct.
[Kora] "Oh - !" this time Kora laughs, outright. The sound is brief and clear; the suggestion of laughter remains a living thing in her shoulders and her torso, after laughter itself has died away. In the end, the remainder of that passing, fierce sort of grin is rather more human: wry and clear and self-aware, without being self-conscious. "Clever of me, yeah?
"I'm a Skald. Though," another expressive curl of her shoulders, still taut with the promise of subverbal laughter, " - you probably guessed that, in your heart of hearts." Kora grins, continues, " - What with all the talking."
[Trudy Adler] Kora's laughter makes a smirk first, followed by a grin. She had almost chuckled herself, finding others laughter rather contagious, her own being suppressed in the back of the throat. Uncrossing her arms she takes another look around before moving to find herself a seat opposite the other woman. "Na, plenty of us talk. It's good to be around some other Fenrir, right?"
Easing to sit on the lower block of metal, making it creak softly under her weight, she steadies herself before stretching out a leg, leaving the other folded, resting a hand on the lean thigh. "Fresh faces in times of war are always boosts the spirit."
"They're gonna need you Skalds, though. Plenty of work for you here." This was more serious again, nostrils flaring with her inward sigh, as she settles her gaze on Kora once more.
[Kora] "Nothing better - " Kora allows, her mouth settling into natural curve, a subtle twist of expression at the right corner, faintly wry, though perhaps too fine a thing to be considered a smirk. " - of course, in Hjaltland, all we had were Fenrir, excepting the odd visitor.
"Chicago's - " and here the Skald's craft fails her. There is no single word, nor even a phrase, that could encompass precisely what she means to say: and so she says, instead, " - young, and raw, still.
"We've got every tribe, or nearly. Shadow Lords packed with Silver Fangs, if you can believe that. Silver Fangs followed Shadow Lords. It makes me appreciate," here, she looks around the ruin her packmates have claimed, which is now her own, too, since the new moon, "the tribe as I hadn't, then. And," she looks back here, direct as ever, " - there's plenty of work for all of us."
Another pause, long enough for the night sounds of the place to filter through the corridors of metal. Then, " - you said you had kids? Kin you brought down with you?" Kora's voice is sure, low, serious. Something in the tone suggests that this is more than a social inquiry.
[Trudy Adler] "You an' me both," she says about coming from a place where there were just Fenrir, at least for the most part. "I bet this place is gonna be an eye opener." It isn't that she hasn't been anywhere but in Minnesota, but that had been home, and Chicago was setting up to be home as well.
The mention of Fangs with Lords and visa versa has her brows arching up and a short huff of a laugh escape from her. "I have to see that for myself." She wonders how they worked together. It defied the odds.
Her tone captures attention and makes the lines on Trudy's face seem more severe. She sweeps a hand up through her hair, pushing the loose strands away from her face before dropping it back down to her thigh. "Yeah, I do. I got four kids, they're currently at home with my two sisters." Careful becomes her tone, her chin tilting up, head more to the side. "Why?" Its dangerous ground asking about children, especially if its not just for something social.
[Kora] "We've had attacks on kinfolk, too." Kora's fine mouth is still, now. "Laughs in the Face of Death's cousin - some sort of FBI agent - was kidnapped by the cursed ones. They got him back once, but - " and this is a grim twist of an expression, low, unleavened by anything but consciousness of the war. "I heard he was taken again.
"There was a Gaian killed by some fomor in a restaurant, and other attacks in recent nights. Cursed ones in Grant Park, poisonous fomor. They set a sort of ambush with some fake glyphs in Cabrini, too. I trust your sisters are armed, but they should know - " a faint curve of her shoulders. " - we are in a state of war.
"There's a Hive about fifty miles north, maybe less, near a town called Elk Grove. They should avoid it at all costs. It's worth a two-hundred mile detour not to drive through there."
[Trudy Adler] She takes it in, the details she didn't know. But by the end of it, Trudy doesn't seem anymore worried then she had in the first place. "Thanks for the warning, I'll be sure to find out where Elk Grove is and make sure they keep clear of it."
"As for the rest, well," she straightens her back and drags her heel back from where it had been stretched out, knee bending to place her foot squarely on the ground again, "they're Fenrir. They expect war and hardship, and we had a good idea of the state of things before we got here."
"That's why we came, and my kids go where-ever I go."
[Trudy Adler] (ooc: Ahem. Wherever, even.)
[Kora] "There's a map of the area in the Caern, just ask the Guardians next time you're there," she notes, "Though I expect you can find enough to get by on the web or in a car atlas, for whatever that's worth."
Reaching back then, extending her body through the lumbar spine, Kora plants her hands on the cool metal of the old Buick's hood, lifting her face to the vast expanse of the night sky - cloudcast now, shifting patches of dark and brilliant orange a passing pastiche overhead.
"How many kids do you have, anyway?"
[Trudy Adler] Nodding, just the once, she notes that she will ask the Guardians about the map, and she will compare them to what ever else she gets her hands on; a road map, information on the internet, and in the navigation tool on her phone.
"Four," she repeats quietly. Cloth shifts as her arms fold again, loose, fingers scratching briefly at her left shoulder.
"Three boys and a girl. Derek, Emerson, Kurt and Robyn."
[Kora] Somewhere between the answer four and the names that follow Derek Emerson Kurt Robyn, Kora drops her gaze from the sky above to the Garou seated with her. The junk yard had its own light ecology, its own peculiarities of sound and depth. There is enough light, just, to sheen her eyes when her head is held at a certain angle, so precise that the gleam appears and is gone before it can be registered.
Kora's eyes are fast on Trudy's face as she names her children, the ones she will not leave behind, the Fenrir children, bred for war an hardship, watching the shape of her mouth, the supple movement of the minute muscles of her face in this direct, abstract, interested way.
"Kemp had a kid," Kora says, quiet, after a time. " - none of the rest of us do, though. It'll be good to have a family around, I think. And," her hook-curl smile, passing as smoke, transparent, too, in the shadows of the junkyard. " - if either of your sisters favor a shotgun as their weapon of choice, we've got a helluva supply of ammunition."
[Trudy Adler] "Yeah, it would be good," she agreed, "Helps keep in mind why it's all for. You teach them what you know, pass it on down, and make sure that the culture survives. You want to leave something behind when you go."
"You'd be surprised, how much more you can handle when you've got something to come back home to. Mates, family, kids, they keep you working that much harder, making sure you're not making foolish mistakes. You learn, quickly, not to be selfish and glory hounds. It makes you think before you act."
Her mouth quirks again, "But I'm lucky in a way. I'm already thirty and didn't change until the cusp of twenty-nine. The folks new I was true-born, and it was comin' one day, though none of us knew why it took so long, but now? I got a family to show for it. Now, I'm that much more focused. And as I look around, seeing all these young Garou, I don't question why the Gods chose to keep me waitin'. Life experience goes a long way when you're born to be a Judge."
But she rounds it back to her sisters, grinning lopsidedly. "Heidi's all about the shotgun, she likes to make an impression. Johanna's more of a rifle-gal. She's a good shot at long range."
[Kora] "Shit," says Kora, quiet, a half-smile evident on at the corners of her lips, in the minute changes in the fine extraocular muscles. There is a low whistle, then, decrescendoing a minor fifth to express her surprise. " - I thought I changed late. Now I get to feel like an enfant terrible again."
"That's kinda - " Her voice is rich and low, as subtly expressive as the shape of her mouth. " - inspiring. I never thought of it like that. Family. I mean," she pauses, matches Trudy's lopsided grin briefly before looking back up at the night sky, as if she might be able to find the moon behind the veiling clouds. " - in the abstract sure. I could tell you a half-dozen stories on the subject, I bet. More, if I called on my ancestors. Hell, I'd have a hundred stories, then.
"They like to talk.
"Family, though. You know," Kora continues, cutting a look back down, direct at Trudy, clearly changing tacks. This time with her eyes, just her eyes, half-lidded, the look evident only by the low gleam of light across the irises. Otherwise, her posture is hardly changed - her arms behind her, narrow shoulders back, her chest out, neck stretched such that the black choker she wears stands out, dark against her pale skin, her face largely tipped upward, toward the sky, " - my mom was kin," pause, " - but she left the tribe behind, she just kept moving the whole family around, though we never knew what she was looking for, behind her. Maybe she wasn't strong enough for the war.
"Maybe she just wanted to believe in peace. So we weren't raised in the tribe, and me, I didn't find out until I changed. Which was - " pause again, she lifts her head upward, here, not quite a full-on look, this, more more than the half-hooded glance with which she had favored Trudy before. " - interesting." This is all quietly spoken, this story. There's no bitterness - and her consciousness of loss is supple as well-tanned leather, clear as rain, and just as passing.
"I'd like to meet your family, sometime." Kora muses, straightening at last, dusting off her hands on her thighs, straightening her body through the spine, sliding forward from the hood of the Buick until her feet hit the ground.
" - now, though, I need to go do a circuit of the neighborhood. You're welcome to join me, if you've a mind."
[Trudy Adler] "War isn't for everyone, an' we all have our own demons to settle. Until we deal with that the rest of the world doesn't make sense," she says, on the topic of Kora's mother and her need of having to move around.
The rest of the conversation, though, leaves her with a warmer smile. Nodding, she pushes up from where she's sitting, dusting down the back of her jeans after the process. "You can come by. We'll have a grill, the lot of us. You can meet my sisters and the kids. It'll be good for them, all of us, I reckon."
"Better, too, if something were to happen, you'd know where to go to get the Kin out of the way." Happen to her, to the house, anything. If there was a need, she would rely on - and expect, her Tribe-mates to make sure that the Adler family wasn't left alone.
"I'll come by for a tour next time," she says on going for a circuit around the neighbourhood, "I'll be getting back to the wild ones, give my sisters a breather." Grinning again, and with a large chunk of pride for her family, she had began to walk with Kora on the way out.
She'd bid her goodbyes before climbing in the truck, leaving a number and address behind and a promise to catch up again soon.
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