[Moira] Sunday night. Easter.
A day of rest to the Christian faithful. The celebration of Jesus Christ and his resurrection. Moira didn't much care for it. It was just another holiday that had strayed far away from its original meanings and became commercialized by chocolate bunnies and colorful plastic eggs. The kinswoman of the Fenrir sat at the round kitchen table in the loft apartment she currently shared with a roommate and ex-coworker from Hill House.
The blond Coggie kin wasn't at home, out of town for the weekend visiting relations. Which left Moira to her own devices. She had remembered the warning on the answering machine that told her not to go out and do anything stupid. So, she didn't. Instead, her laptop sat open and she poured over a file or two, researching land developments for her newest employer.
There was a half-filled bottle of Green Spot whiskey sitting on the table several inches away from her with an empty, unused shot glass. Her gaze straying from the monitor to it every now and then.
[Sorrow] Sunday night. Easter. The mystery of the open tomb.
Moira is sitting at her kitchen table, in the warm coccoon of the temporary home, her features bathed in the unnatural illumination of the laptop on the kitchen table. There are pictures of lots and vacant buildings, neighborhood plat maps and local blogs. There are home-for-sale listings and legal notices in the paper. Property transfers, in dry flat script.
Then, the space between seconds bends, and the air in the otherwise still apartment blows past her fast enough to lift her hair, as if she were standing with her face to the wind, when the still air is displaced by the sudden presence of a familiar frame in this unfamiliar space. Here is Sorrow, tall, straight-shouldered, narrow-framed. Her blonde hair is loose down her back, blonde and blonde, except for the last half-dozen inches, some long-grown-out dye job.
Her pale skin is stark white, the blood drained from her, and her eyes are terrible, clear and dark. There is water on her cheeks, water in her hair, the scent of rain on her skin, and under that, blood. She has washed it from her hands and her arms, scrubbed her pale face clean, but blood remains on the thighs of her jeans, stiffens the hem of her black t-shirt.
"Moira," she begins, her voice stark and raw, the echo of the words lingering in the shell of her ear. "I have news."
[Moira] The sensation startles the young kin. It sends a shiver racing down her spine, skidding across the spare skin of her shoulders and arms, barely covered by the thin cotton of a black camisole. Silver and gold twinkles at her throat, catching the light in a bright glimmer of two round objects that dangle from a chain, nestling into the hollow of her throat.
The simple gold band of a woman's ring clicking against the half dollar sized coin of the wolf-head medallion Kemp had given back to her.
Her body jolts upright, the chair falling back as her calves shove against it, tipping it over. She turns, bracing against the edge of the table as her hand reached for the thick green bottle of expensive whiskey to use as a weapon. It is lifted up by the neck, turned over quickly and brought up with a start. Blue eyes narrow and then widened as recognition strikes a sense of clarity into Moira's brain.
"Kora!" Her voice is loud, carrying the name with an echo throughout the small kitchen to bounce against wood cabinets and marble counter tops. Her grip lessens on the bottle for a second, but fingers immediately tighten - knuckles turning white.
"What do you mean you have news?" Black hair spills in waves around her face, pooling across her shoulders to fall down and gather over the soft swells of her chest. She can feel her heart start to hammer loudly in her ears, breath catch in her throat. She was shaking before Kora could even get the words out to tell her.
"Kora?"
[Sorrow] Moira says her name twice; there's no look of acknowledgment from the Garou, at the kinswoman's naming of her. She has one name tonight, the name she was given by her tribe, and it is wholly different than the name she was given by her mother - who only wanted to escape them. It is raining outside again; a warm spring rain, gentler tonight than it was the night before. Still, sometimes the wind rises, whips up from the lake, rattles the panes of glass in the windows, lashes rain against the glass.
Sorrow's shoulders are damp, and the thighs of her jeans. Her hair, too, is darker for the rain, at the crown, sliding in a mass down her back. Humans look each other in the eyes, direct, when they tend such terrible news. Sorrow looks at Moira now, meets her eyes with look that is spare and unrelentingly direct.
"Kemp died."
She offers the truth, plain and unadorned. She offers sorrow, without measure.
"He didn't come back to us."
[Moira] Kemp died.
Two words. Two very simple words is all it takes to shatter the world. The weight of the bottle is heavy in her hand, arm dropping down to her side as fingers begin to lose slack on the neck, it dangles precariously from between the first knuckle, threatening to escape from Moira's hand and fly to freedom and the floor.
He didn't come back to us....
The bottle of Green Spot finds freedom and destruction, released from Moira's grip to strike against the tiles, exploding in a wet sticky mass at her feet, green glass splashing like tiny shining stones in the kitchen's light. She brings both of her hands up to cover her mouth. Her breath drawn in until she couldn't breath, lungs contracted as every inch of her becomes so tight and coiled up the kin might shatter if touched.
"NO!" It is a strong sound that one word, it tears from Moira's throat - her voice twisted and snarling as it snags on heavy sob. Blue eyes become watery and red she tries to hold back the shedding of tears, but even that Moira cannot control. "You let him die?"
[Sorrow] You let him die?
The whiskey bottle shatters; glass shards are everywhere. They smell like the bottom of a barrel, just tapped. In the darkness, on the hardwood floor the alcohol has the color of enshadoweded blood, but not its viscosity, and not its warmth. The blood on Sorrow is dry now, old. It was old when she took her portion of his body, and carried him with her pack.
You let him die? Moira demands - and there is a moment between breaths where the young woman inside flinches before the beast flares all around her, a tinderspark of anger to the hazey cloud of stark rage and shock that has yet to yield. Sorrow bares her human teeth, her fine, mobile mouth pulls back from them into an expression that can only be read as rictus - before she finds the threads of her control, her constant, abiding will, the ancestral memory that bathes her conciousness in the lessons of a hundred lifetimes.
"I felt him die."
Her lips come together, her mouth is held stiff, but closed, beneath the worn, blood-stained clothing she wears, Sorrow is lashed tight as a yardarm made ready for an oncoming storm.
[Moira] There is rain beating down on the city outside, tapping a rhythm on the windowpanes as it grows stronger for the briefest of seconds. The sky lights up in a brilliant shade of violet and white-hot light as it flickers and flashes, streaking in crackling lines to bath both Garou and kin. The kitchen sparks with that light for another second, and then dies down to the dull tones of fluorescent lighting.
Kora felt him die. They were pack mates, they shared that spiritual bond only permitted between werewolves, and wolves alike. Moira had glimpsed it once, such a bond that was nothing more than a fleeting memory in the back of her mind. She looks away, downcast her head as her eyes shut tightly.
Her hands uncoil from her mouth, lifting up to drag through black hair and shove it all back out of her face, like it was an annoyance to her. She hated the feel of it, hated the Fenrir that stood in this kitchen with her, hated the overwhelming sensation of grief that erupts inside of her. She knew this day would come, but not so soon... not today.
The convulsions that rupture through the kin are visible, Moira shakes as she feels her legs start to give out from under her and sinks down to her knees. Not caring as she can feel shards of glass bite into her calves. Her voice quivering is rather soft, "What killed him..."
[Sorrow] "We're going to Battleground," Sorrow replies, quiet. The words are likely meaningless to the kinswoman. We're going to Battleground. We're going to the battleground. The phrases are so close as to be indistinguishable. Her voice is raw, underneath. She has said this before; she has given this much of the story, worst than most others.
We don't know.
" - to find out." Moira sinks to her knees, her dark hair a cloud around her face and shoulders, the broken glass grinding into her unprotected flesh, even the shallowest of wounds made more painful by the pool of spilled whiskey on the floor, laving the cuts, washing the sharp and bitter and clean. Let the blood run clear.
The room stinks of alcohol. It seems, too, far too small. There are too many walls, too many lights, and the sweep of the storm is made distant by the well-built windows, by the well-sealed doors, by the warm of this human-built place, with all its humming gagdets, all its artificial connections. Moira sinks to her knees, and Sorrow steps forward, the spilled whiskey rippling out from her every step in concentric circles, expanding the stain of the spill on the floor. Even with Moira, she sinks to her haunches and reaches out, pulling the girl up from the floor with a grip from beneath her shoulders, then shifting her grasp on Moira to carry her, one arm threaded beneath her arm, around her back, the other beneath her thighs - literally carry the other woman out of the puddle of spilled whiskey and shattered glass, out of the kitchen toward the living room, the couch, stopping twice to still the girl's struggles, balancing her weight with a knee as fulcrum beneath reaching the couch and setting her down, carefully.
"I'm going to call someone." Sorrow announces, boxing Moira in with her tall body. "Okay?"
[Moira] Moira can't hear the words that follow. The answer to her question isn't the one she wants to hear, isn't one she understands. A shadow passes over her, Kora swims into her peripheral. Nostrils flare out, breathing in the smell of alcohol, the faint stench of blood that may start to well up in tiny cuts from the biting teeth of glass. She ignores the sharp stings of alcohol-soaked cuts, her body trembling of its own violation has gone limb.
The female Skald encircles her, arms reaching out to find a hold on the Kin and lift her up. Moira tries to struggle, her hands and arms pulling close to her body for a second as her head snaps up to stare directly at Kora. She is has the strength of a fussing child in her struggles, going weak in the Skald's arms.
Once they exit the kitchen and find a new place in the living room, Kora sets her down on the couch. Moira retracts from her instantly, pulling her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around herself and looks away. Hair falling across her face, sticking to wet cheeks and temples as the flood of tears roll down to her chin quietly. Her chest rises and falls in quick pants, air rushing in and out of her nose.
Kora mentions something about calling someone... she blinks once, lips part to speak as her tongue felt thick in her mouth. "Who?"
[Moira] (limb-limp)
[Sorrow] Sorrow seats herself on the coffee table, across from the couch, leans forward, her forearms braced on her thighs, her elbows pointed sharply outward. She is lives Moira's storm of grief at a terrible, dry-eyed remove, her gaze stark and bright, her every muscle in her lean frame snapped taut. There is something of a ripcord to her - behind all that, waiting to be unleashed - but not now. Not here. Not ever here.
"I'm going to call Adrian. Okay? I'll ask him to come over and stay with you until you're stronger - "
The lights in the kitchen cut through the living room, long strands of boxed light shine on Moira's tear-stained face. Sorrow leans over, curves her long-fingered hands over the girl's cheek, pulling strands of black hair out of the tracks of her tears, smoothing them aside.
[Moira] Every night for the past couple of weeks guilt has gnawed at her from the inside at the sudden loss of a mate - of Connor, who was snuffed out even before Moira could get a chance to really know him; it had made her numb. Now, the news of Kemp's death, stirs a turmoil of emotions that she has tried not to feel, it opens up old wounds and tears clean new ones. Kemp had been something to Moira that Connor might have one day become if he'd lived long enough.
She sits still, seconds ticking by as an ache starts in the center of her chest that begins to spread down into her stomach and makes her feel sick. A narrowing of eyes to form slits on the Garou sitting in front of her. She jerks her head back in a sudden motion as Kora reached out to smooth back the hair from her cheek.
"Stop." Her voice is harsh and low, a snarl hissed out, "Don't touch me." Kora was going to call Adrian, to stay with her until she was stronger, which insinuates that Moira was weak. She felt it, even as shakes uncontrollably on the couch. Moira swallows the lump forming in the back of her throat.
[Sorrow] "He loved you." The touch was passing; not it is finished. Sorrow's skin is hotter than even Moira's grief-flushed cheek, and in the wake of her touch, the ambient air is cool. Beyond that, she does not react to Moira's sudden, lashing snarl - Sorrow with her dry eyes, with her wet cheeks. Sorrow, with her fine voice gone raw underneath, as if it had been scrubbed by diamond dust. "Whatever passed between you, he wanted you to know."
Then she rises, in one smooth, controlled motion - stands straight, circles the edge of the coffee table, allows Moira whatever space she wants to have.
"You will be permitted into the Caern to attend the rite, or to visit his grave. I staked my honor for you, Moira. And, in some ways, his. I know that you won't disgrace him. We will do the rite on the night of the New Moon. You have time to decide whether you want to come then, or later."
Then, circling away from the young kinswoman, Kora finds a her cheap cell phone in her pocket, makes a quiet call that last - perhaps - a minute and a half before returning. "Adrian is away until mid-week. I'll call Drew."
A day of rest to the Christian faithful. The celebration of Jesus Christ and his resurrection. Moira didn't much care for it. It was just another holiday that had strayed far away from its original meanings and became commercialized by chocolate bunnies and colorful plastic eggs. The kinswoman of the Fenrir sat at the round kitchen table in the loft apartment she currently shared with a roommate and ex-coworker from Hill House.
The blond Coggie kin wasn't at home, out of town for the weekend visiting relations. Which left Moira to her own devices. She had remembered the warning on the answering machine that told her not to go out and do anything stupid. So, she didn't. Instead, her laptop sat open and she poured over a file or two, researching land developments for her newest employer.
There was a half-filled bottle of Green Spot whiskey sitting on the table several inches away from her with an empty, unused shot glass. Her gaze straying from the monitor to it every now and then.
[Sorrow] Sunday night. Easter. The mystery of the open tomb.
Moira is sitting at her kitchen table, in the warm coccoon of the temporary home, her features bathed in the unnatural illumination of the laptop on the kitchen table. There are pictures of lots and vacant buildings, neighborhood plat maps and local blogs. There are home-for-sale listings and legal notices in the paper. Property transfers, in dry flat script.
Then, the space between seconds bends, and the air in the otherwise still apartment blows past her fast enough to lift her hair, as if she were standing with her face to the wind, when the still air is displaced by the sudden presence of a familiar frame in this unfamiliar space. Here is Sorrow, tall, straight-shouldered, narrow-framed. Her blonde hair is loose down her back, blonde and blonde, except for the last half-dozen inches, some long-grown-out dye job.
Her pale skin is stark white, the blood drained from her, and her eyes are terrible, clear and dark. There is water on her cheeks, water in her hair, the scent of rain on her skin, and under that, blood. She has washed it from her hands and her arms, scrubbed her pale face clean, but blood remains on the thighs of her jeans, stiffens the hem of her black t-shirt.
"Moira," she begins, her voice stark and raw, the echo of the words lingering in the shell of her ear. "I have news."
[Moira] The sensation startles the young kin. It sends a shiver racing down her spine, skidding across the spare skin of her shoulders and arms, barely covered by the thin cotton of a black camisole. Silver and gold twinkles at her throat, catching the light in a bright glimmer of two round objects that dangle from a chain, nestling into the hollow of her throat.
The simple gold band of a woman's ring clicking against the half dollar sized coin of the wolf-head medallion Kemp had given back to her.
Her body jolts upright, the chair falling back as her calves shove against it, tipping it over. She turns, bracing against the edge of the table as her hand reached for the thick green bottle of expensive whiskey to use as a weapon. It is lifted up by the neck, turned over quickly and brought up with a start. Blue eyes narrow and then widened as recognition strikes a sense of clarity into Moira's brain.
"Kora!" Her voice is loud, carrying the name with an echo throughout the small kitchen to bounce against wood cabinets and marble counter tops. Her grip lessens on the bottle for a second, but fingers immediately tighten - knuckles turning white.
"What do you mean you have news?" Black hair spills in waves around her face, pooling across her shoulders to fall down and gather over the soft swells of her chest. She can feel her heart start to hammer loudly in her ears, breath catch in her throat. She was shaking before Kora could even get the words out to tell her.
"Kora?"
[Sorrow] Moira says her name twice; there's no look of acknowledgment from the Garou, at the kinswoman's naming of her. She has one name tonight, the name she was given by her tribe, and it is wholly different than the name she was given by her mother - who only wanted to escape them. It is raining outside again; a warm spring rain, gentler tonight than it was the night before. Still, sometimes the wind rises, whips up from the lake, rattles the panes of glass in the windows, lashes rain against the glass.
Sorrow's shoulders are damp, and the thighs of her jeans. Her hair, too, is darker for the rain, at the crown, sliding in a mass down her back. Humans look each other in the eyes, direct, when they tend such terrible news. Sorrow looks at Moira now, meets her eyes with look that is spare and unrelentingly direct.
"Kemp died."
She offers the truth, plain and unadorned. She offers sorrow, without measure.
"He didn't come back to us."
[Moira] Kemp died.
Two words. Two very simple words is all it takes to shatter the world. The weight of the bottle is heavy in her hand, arm dropping down to her side as fingers begin to lose slack on the neck, it dangles precariously from between the first knuckle, threatening to escape from Moira's hand and fly to freedom and the floor.
He didn't come back to us....
The bottle of Green Spot finds freedom and destruction, released from Moira's grip to strike against the tiles, exploding in a wet sticky mass at her feet, green glass splashing like tiny shining stones in the kitchen's light. She brings both of her hands up to cover her mouth. Her breath drawn in until she couldn't breath, lungs contracted as every inch of her becomes so tight and coiled up the kin might shatter if touched.
"NO!" It is a strong sound that one word, it tears from Moira's throat - her voice twisted and snarling as it snags on heavy sob. Blue eyes become watery and red she tries to hold back the shedding of tears, but even that Moira cannot control. "You let him die?"
[Sorrow] You let him die?
The whiskey bottle shatters; glass shards are everywhere. They smell like the bottom of a barrel, just tapped. In the darkness, on the hardwood floor the alcohol has the color of enshadoweded blood, but not its viscosity, and not its warmth. The blood on Sorrow is dry now, old. It was old when she took her portion of his body, and carried him with her pack.
You let him die? Moira demands - and there is a moment between breaths where the young woman inside flinches before the beast flares all around her, a tinderspark of anger to the hazey cloud of stark rage and shock that has yet to yield. Sorrow bares her human teeth, her fine, mobile mouth pulls back from them into an expression that can only be read as rictus - before she finds the threads of her control, her constant, abiding will, the ancestral memory that bathes her conciousness in the lessons of a hundred lifetimes.
"I felt him die."
Her lips come together, her mouth is held stiff, but closed, beneath the worn, blood-stained clothing she wears, Sorrow is lashed tight as a yardarm made ready for an oncoming storm.
[Moira] There is rain beating down on the city outside, tapping a rhythm on the windowpanes as it grows stronger for the briefest of seconds. The sky lights up in a brilliant shade of violet and white-hot light as it flickers and flashes, streaking in crackling lines to bath both Garou and kin. The kitchen sparks with that light for another second, and then dies down to the dull tones of fluorescent lighting.
Kora felt him die. They were pack mates, they shared that spiritual bond only permitted between werewolves, and wolves alike. Moira had glimpsed it once, such a bond that was nothing more than a fleeting memory in the back of her mind. She looks away, downcast her head as her eyes shut tightly.
Her hands uncoil from her mouth, lifting up to drag through black hair and shove it all back out of her face, like it was an annoyance to her. She hated the feel of it, hated the Fenrir that stood in this kitchen with her, hated the overwhelming sensation of grief that erupts inside of her. She knew this day would come, but not so soon... not today.
The convulsions that rupture through the kin are visible, Moira shakes as she feels her legs start to give out from under her and sinks down to her knees. Not caring as she can feel shards of glass bite into her calves. Her voice quivering is rather soft, "What killed him..."
[Sorrow] "We're going to Battleground," Sorrow replies, quiet. The words are likely meaningless to the kinswoman. We're going to Battleground. We're going to the battleground. The phrases are so close as to be indistinguishable. Her voice is raw, underneath. She has said this before; she has given this much of the story, worst than most others.
We don't know.
" - to find out." Moira sinks to her knees, her dark hair a cloud around her face and shoulders, the broken glass grinding into her unprotected flesh, even the shallowest of wounds made more painful by the pool of spilled whiskey on the floor, laving the cuts, washing the sharp and bitter and clean. Let the blood run clear.
The room stinks of alcohol. It seems, too, far too small. There are too many walls, too many lights, and the sweep of the storm is made distant by the well-built windows, by the well-sealed doors, by the warm of this human-built place, with all its humming gagdets, all its artificial connections. Moira sinks to her knees, and Sorrow steps forward, the spilled whiskey rippling out from her every step in concentric circles, expanding the stain of the spill on the floor. Even with Moira, she sinks to her haunches and reaches out, pulling the girl up from the floor with a grip from beneath her shoulders, then shifting her grasp on Moira to carry her, one arm threaded beneath her arm, around her back, the other beneath her thighs - literally carry the other woman out of the puddle of spilled whiskey and shattered glass, out of the kitchen toward the living room, the couch, stopping twice to still the girl's struggles, balancing her weight with a knee as fulcrum beneath reaching the couch and setting her down, carefully.
"I'm going to call someone." Sorrow announces, boxing Moira in with her tall body. "Okay?"
[Moira] Moira can't hear the words that follow. The answer to her question isn't the one she wants to hear, isn't one she understands. A shadow passes over her, Kora swims into her peripheral. Nostrils flare out, breathing in the smell of alcohol, the faint stench of blood that may start to well up in tiny cuts from the biting teeth of glass. She ignores the sharp stings of alcohol-soaked cuts, her body trembling of its own violation has gone limb.
The female Skald encircles her, arms reaching out to find a hold on the Kin and lift her up. Moira tries to struggle, her hands and arms pulling close to her body for a second as her head snaps up to stare directly at Kora. She is has the strength of a fussing child in her struggles, going weak in the Skald's arms.
Once they exit the kitchen and find a new place in the living room, Kora sets her down on the couch. Moira retracts from her instantly, pulling her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around herself and looks away. Hair falling across her face, sticking to wet cheeks and temples as the flood of tears roll down to her chin quietly. Her chest rises and falls in quick pants, air rushing in and out of her nose.
Kora mentions something about calling someone... she blinks once, lips part to speak as her tongue felt thick in her mouth. "Who?"
[Moira] (limb-limp)
[Sorrow] Sorrow seats herself on the coffee table, across from the couch, leans forward, her forearms braced on her thighs, her elbows pointed sharply outward. She is lives Moira's storm of grief at a terrible, dry-eyed remove, her gaze stark and bright, her every muscle in her lean frame snapped taut. There is something of a ripcord to her - behind all that, waiting to be unleashed - but not now. Not here. Not ever here.
"I'm going to call Adrian. Okay? I'll ask him to come over and stay with you until you're stronger - "
The lights in the kitchen cut through the living room, long strands of boxed light shine on Moira's tear-stained face. Sorrow leans over, curves her long-fingered hands over the girl's cheek, pulling strands of black hair out of the tracks of her tears, smoothing them aside.
[Moira] Every night for the past couple of weeks guilt has gnawed at her from the inside at the sudden loss of a mate - of Connor, who was snuffed out even before Moira could get a chance to really know him; it had made her numb. Now, the news of Kemp's death, stirs a turmoil of emotions that she has tried not to feel, it opens up old wounds and tears clean new ones. Kemp had been something to Moira that Connor might have one day become if he'd lived long enough.
She sits still, seconds ticking by as an ache starts in the center of her chest that begins to spread down into her stomach and makes her feel sick. A narrowing of eyes to form slits on the Garou sitting in front of her. She jerks her head back in a sudden motion as Kora reached out to smooth back the hair from her cheek.
"Stop." Her voice is harsh and low, a snarl hissed out, "Don't touch me." Kora was going to call Adrian, to stay with her until she was stronger, which insinuates that Moira was weak. She felt it, even as shakes uncontrollably on the couch. Moira swallows the lump forming in the back of her throat.
[Sorrow] "He loved you." The touch was passing; not it is finished. Sorrow's skin is hotter than even Moira's grief-flushed cheek, and in the wake of her touch, the ambient air is cool. Beyond that, she does not react to Moira's sudden, lashing snarl - Sorrow with her dry eyes, with her wet cheeks. Sorrow, with her fine voice gone raw underneath, as if it had been scrubbed by diamond dust. "Whatever passed between you, he wanted you to know."
Then she rises, in one smooth, controlled motion - stands straight, circles the edge of the coffee table, allows Moira whatever space she wants to have.
"You will be permitted into the Caern to attend the rite, or to visit his grave. I staked my honor for you, Moira. And, in some ways, his. I know that you won't disgrace him. We will do the rite on the night of the New Moon. You have time to decide whether you want to come then, or later."
Then, circling away from the young kinswoman, Kora finds a her cheap cell phone in her pocket, makes a quiet call that last - perhaps - a minute and a half before returning. "Adrian is away until mid-week. I'll call Drew."
Post a Comment