[Kora] It is early afternoon on a warm spring day. There are high white clouds and a bright sun blazing somewhere in the middle of the vault of the sky. The U-STORE-IT on Bradley Avenue is built into space reclaimed from one of Chicago's old warehouses, vinyl siding and solid metal rolling doors set into solid old brick, red as Georgia clay. There are units locked away behind a high metal fence covered in razor wire, accessible only by summoning the caretaker. Others, though, face the wide alley between the streets. These are open day and night.
Her directions were clear and direct, but they were not the directions of someone who drives through the city. They start at the closest El stop, with no thought given to the one-way streets or unexpected U-turns, dead-ends or hard left turns across traffic. Still: the neighborhood is depressed, and commerce is scarce. The old warehouses on Bradley are largely abandoned, or inhabited by marginal businesses drawn by the cheap rents, small factories that operate on skeleton crews, the tired operations of cheap freight companies.
There's not much traffic other than foot traffic, except on the drug corners closest to the interstates, where the inner city dealers cater to the suburban addicts, one feeding the other like the perfect symbiotes - the quintessential parasites - they are.
You should probably - she said at some point, mid-way through describing the landmarks into his voice mail. - just drive down the alley. It's not a neighborhood where one would want to leave a car unattended. The alley in question is wide enough for two cars to pass abreast, though. Or for a large delivery truck to maneuver around the dumpsters backed up against the business the next street over. Despite the lure of easy pickings from the Chinese place the next block over, none of the neighborhood's homeless squat back here. Not with the beasts that came and went from the unit half-way down.
The sunlight is strong, and warm in the center of the alley. Most of the units are locked up tight, but the doors to one are wide open, with boxes set out on the asphalt outside, stacked haphazardly, inspected, labeled. There's music, too - from inside, the speakers are tinny, and the songs change often enough that it has to come either from a radio, or an iPod set to shuffle.
[Trent Brumby] Trent works. He doesn't run up against the Wyrm creatures festering in dark corners of the city, or spend time speaking with spirits, traveling through another land that mirrors his own. He doesn't have pack to worry about, to bond with. There's no need for him to train in pack tactics, discuss the latest battle strategy or scour through the city and suburban areas for potential threats. Instead he works security some nights, at a door at a bar, or walking through a club with ear buds to mute some of the loud pound of music, and sometimes, during the day, he works his second job on casual hours.
Today he got a call, picked it up on voice mail after he had bid a client good day, and found that Kora was asking for help. Immediately he had canceled his other appointments, giving them to someone else instead. He'd loose money but that was fine with him. He could make it up, but more importantly the Nation was his first priority. Several times he had listened to that voice-mail, scribbling down the instructions on a pad of paper held in the glove box of his car, then he'd set out to follow them.
His sedan crawled up the alleyway, turning into it carefully. Eyes peeled, he glances down it, driving slowly towards the boxes that blocked part of the way. He steered around them, dropping his head down to look through his window into the opened roller door, not quite sure whether this is where Kora wanted to meet him or not. He expects so. The car slowed to a crawl.
[Kora] The sound of the engine expands in the alley way, reverberates off the metal doors of the storage lockers. It is more than loud enough to be heard over the cheap speakers of the tinny, off-brand iPod dock she picked up at one of the innumerable thrift stores dotting the barren stretches of the impoverished city. As Trent's sedan slows to a crawl, Kora walks out of the opened doors of the unit, into the wash of sunlight that cuts through the center of the alley. The light picks out the brighter tones in her pale hair, giving her an illusory golden hue.
She is wiping her hands off on the thighs of her jeans, which are new - darker than her others - wearing a pale green tee that is soft because the material is fine, rather than soft from innumerable washes. The black boots are the same, though - and the black choker, and the dark bracelets at her wrist. As she emerges, she lifts her right hand to shield her eyes, squinting against the glare of the sun bright after the darkness of the interior, brighter for where it gleams off the windshield he slows his car. Her mouth curves, faint, in the distorted shadow cast by her hand over her face, and she gives him a wave, catching his eye as she does so, calling out if the window is cracked and she thinks he will hear -
"Thanks for coming. Just park anywhere, yeah?"
In the alley. Amidst the dumpsters. In the spill of the bright spring sun.
[Trent Brumby] Lifting a hand from the steering wheel he had waved back in that way men tend to - more like a stop sign or signal than any to and fro motion. He had heard her, because his radio is switched off and there's nothing else but the sound of the music coming out of the storage shed that she's standing before. He pulls his car over so that it's parked to one side of the alley, reversing it in so it's parked at the neighbouring rolling door. The engine shuts off shortly after and the keys slide from the ignition.
He opens the door and gets out, shutting it after him. Today their roles are almost reversed. Kora is in newer clothes, all aside from her well worn boots, and Trent is not as neat and tidy as he usually comes across. While he has groomed the gruff on his face, which he does as some morning ritual after a hot shower, he's wearing a pair of navy blue workmen pants and a similarly dark polo shirt. His boots are steel capped, the leather loafers or the priced sports shoes are no where to be seen. He looks like a regular, blue collar citizen of the world, and even has hints of grease on his hands and forearms to complete it.
"Hey Kora," he greets her with a quiet smile, walking towards her. His keys are stowed into his pants hip pocket, making it hang heavier. "How are you?" No questions about why he is here yet, though pale grays are curious. He's interested in her well being first, glancing over her for any hints. Although he'd like to reach in, hug her, kiss her cheek, he hesitates and lingers two steps away, sliding a hand into the pocket, after his keys.
[Kora] She looks up at the sky as he parks the car, still shielding her eyes from the glare of the spring sun, gauging the time of day by the slant of light between the buildings, by the particular shade of blue the sky has achieved at its apex. It is warm in the sun, but still cool in the shadows. She is perhaps underdressed for the temperature inside the unit, with its concrete floors and metal walls, with its metal roof - it would have been broiling in the summer, but she arrived in the winter and doesn't live here any longer. She will never know.
The car parked, she drops her attention from the sky to driver's door as it opens, watches him as he climbs out, her dark eyes flashing down, taking in his attire - the workboots, the tracery of grease on his hands - before returning to his face. There's a faint crease in her brow, a thoughtful comma in the center of her forehead. The shadows are not as evident in her dark blue eyes - not here, on a spring day, in clothing that makes her seem like a person who fits in the world rather than a girl who haunts the edges of it - but they are there. Her pallor is accentuated in the sunlight as well; and though she no longer has the stark whiteness of someone in shock, she still seems attenuated somehow. It draws out the wolf in her, even amidst the trappings of the girl; even without blood stiffening her clothes.
"I'm alright," she replies. It doesn't sound like a lie. It doesn't sound like the sort of lie women sometimes tell, inviting cajoling. She's alright. There are two feet between them, and she doesn't close the distance. She does hold his eyes, though - absolutely direct, except when her own eyes drop briefly to his mouth, then back again. "Thanks for coming, though I - " here the faint line between her pale brows deepens, passingly, " - should've realized it's like, a workday, right? A weekday."
She measures time differently.
[Trent Brumby] He takes her at her word and doesn't question it. If she says she is fine, and from the look of it she looks better than last time, well - better than the beginning of the last time that they had met, by the end of it she looked. Phew. Boy. He's trying not to think about that, standing there in front of her, with her eyes on his mouth, however briefly, and staring at him squarely.
"Nah, it's alright," he assures her with an easy smile. Nodding then, he holds her gaze, his own clear in the sunshine, and quite evidently gray in the way a winter sky is, very pale and yet very solid. "I work casual hours, night and day. I'm not locked into a routine, so don't worry about it."
Looking away from her then, he glances to the boxes she has stacked outside and then into the darkness of the unit, where the music is blaring from in that slightly off key way. It echos badly against all that metal and tin. "What are we doing?" When he looks back at her, he's getting down to business. He doesn't like the frown line on her face and wants to move past it, to stop her lingering on something she had mistakenly overlooked.
[Kora] "Alright," she says easily, the faint line smoothing away as she hooks her head back toward the interior of the storage locker, the heavy mass of her hair swinging with the gesture. She is it pulled up and away from her neck and back today, secured with a pair of chopsticks again. These are evident as she turns back toward the interior, dark wood, lacquered - more expensive than the usual take-out ones. In another woman, the artlessness would seem purposeful.
Kora is not a woman. She just wants her hair off her neck.
Stepping over the thresholds, she ducks - just - from sunlight to shadow, where cut of light into the interior gives the illusion of a bulkhead, some weight that shouldn't be there. The scent inside is familiar to her, fading - and feral, too. They slept here in lupus to heal their wounds; in their human skin when they were uninjured and the scents linger in the close interior. Not much longer, though.
She stands there a moment, waits for Trent to draw abreast of her, then gives him a playful hipcheck before leading him deeper, picking a careful path.
The interior is defined by a kind of controlled chaos. Kora's things are gone; she hadn't much, anyway - but the domestic trappings remain. The electric heater and the round kerosene heater in the middle. The milkcrates stacked like shelves, supporting the hot plate, the coffee pot, the mini-fridge, with a 13" color television - CRT - perched atop it. She skirts the boxes, some opened, others shut, Kemp's accumulated belongings, leading Trent back toward the bikes, parked where her Alpha left them last year, when autumn was sinking into winter and the weather was too cold to ride.
She touches her hand to the handle, turns back, giving him a look up over her lowered shoulder. "I need to sell these. I thought maybe you could help. Post them on craiglist or something, yeah?" There is a pause, then, when she looks back over the rest of it. " - the tools too, and the parts. Whatever goes with them."
[Trent Brumby] Pulling his hand out of his pocket he walked in after her, ducking his head past the rolling door if its too low. Her hip-check is unexpected and has him laughing quietly. It instantly lifts his mood from somewhat cautious and uncertain of where he stands into an immediate familiarity. Though even that isn't quite true or right. They aren't that familiar with one another, not really. Not enough to be completely reassured of what was going on between them. But he's comfortable, now, in her presence, shaking his head with a smile as he begins to walk through after, taking the same sort of care of where he's stepping.
Glancing over boxes, stacked crates and signs of household living - though he's not yet sure if it is what he thinks it is, a home, a place to stay. He thinks it's more possible that it's a hideout, which could be one and the same. Black Furies in the rural areas don't have large manors, after all, and still lived. This could be much of the same, but maybe part of him hoped not.
Over at the bike's Kora explains what she wants to be done with them and he nods his head, once, looking from her over the vehicles there and the tools that may be laying around or placed nearby. "Sure. I can ask around, and make sure there's a good price for them." Depending on the condition of them he may put more money into them, build it up, get a better price. She didn't need to know that part though; the parts where he will give her more money than it made, depending on the outcome.
[Kora] "That'd be brilliant," Kora returns, her voice low, quiet as it always is.
There's more motion in her voice, though; a certain intensity that suggests that this means something more to her than a pair of bikes, a few dollars in her pocket, evident in the voiced consonants, the way they catch and vibrate in her throat. The resonance that backs them.
She is then backstepping away from the bike so that Trent has a better view of the oiled parts, the motorcycle tools, the extra tires and other attendant pieces; so that he can touch the handle, check the model year if he'd like. Even in disarray, she is familiar with the place, moves easily through it, her booted feet heavy enough on the echoing concrete, although the sounds in the place are somewhat dampened by the boxes and mattresses, the accumulated lifetime of things.
Kora pauses at the crates long enough to turn the cheap little speaker set from on to off with a neat flick of her thumb. Leaning, half-perched, against the half-sized fridge, her hands braced on the frame, watching as he looks over the bikes, she clears her throat, clarifies. " - they were Kemp's, you know? He wanted us to sell them and send the money to his kid. So - " her voice fills the room, echoes off the walls. The sound is warmer than the tin speakers, quietly emphatic. " - I appreciate the favor."
[Trent Brumby] When she moves out of the way he steps into her place and looks over the bikes. He drops into an easy crouch, his backside resting against the heel of one boot as he shifts almost to a knee, lowering his head to have a good look over the make and models and whether the bikes actually needed some work, were missing pieces and so forth. By the looks of everything around it they had been tampered with or had someone trying to get them work better. They could have been in the middle of dismantling them for all Trent knew.
While he's doing this, Kora has moved and explains to him the significance of the bikes. He nods thoughtfully, and looks up and over towards her. "Don't mention it," he says of the favour. Rising up from the ground, he pushes off his thigh to stand upright. "We'll get a good price. I may have some work done on them first, if that's alright? But I'll make a quick job of it." Not a rushing job of the work, but make it a top priority so that money could be passed on to the child.
[Kora] "Whatever you need to do," Kora assures him, still quiet, watchful always, her dark eyes fast on him as he sinks to a crouch and makes a quick assessment of both the bikes and their respective states of repair or disrepair. " - is alright by me." The sunlight outside, brilliant, hazed with the promise of summer, makes the shadows of the interior even gloomier. It is only after his eyes have become adjusted to the light he can see that there are a handful of lights inside, as well. The cheap sort college students pick up for $20 at Target, to brighten up their dorm rooms. The cheaper sort, cast off by college students at the local Goodwill.
Their faint incandescent light does little to soften the shadows of the room; to illuminate her features. There is a small, supple curve to her mouth, but otherwise her face is still, quiet as her voice.
When he stands, she steps away from the minifridge, pushes her right hand into her right front pocket. "No one's here anymore, but I can give you a key. So you can get in to them when you need to. If you need the title or something - " she pauses again; here, twists her narrow shoulders in an expressive little shrug. The details of human life not a mystery to her, but still twist together into a knotted tangle. He need not practice rites; listen to spirits; harvest eyeballs to keep the Hrafn happy. She doesn't need to figure out her taxes, or keep track of her charitable giving for the year. Or count her calories. Or write the sort of will that might survive probate court, intact.
Someday, someone will do this for her. She hopes. " - it's bound to be in here, somewhere. Let me know, and I'll be on the lookout."
She pulls her right hand back out of her pocket, and turns it out. There's a set of keys in her palm. The bikes. The storage unit. She flashes him a half-grin, her breath a short huff of unvoiced laughter. "I guess you'll need the bike keys, too."
[Trent Brumby] Leaving the side of the bikes, wiping his hands off on his pants, he cast one more look at them before making his way back towards the entrance. He's not leaving, though, just standing where there's more room without threat of knocking something over or look as though he's peeking into things. This isn't his place. Besides, its warmer nearer the rolling doors than it is deeper into the shadows.
"Alright." He agrees to taking a key to be able to come here when time allows, which he will. He'll make time for it, spend his spare hours here rather then sitting at a pub watching some sports on tv and drinking down beers. He'll forgo an hour at the gym, cutting down the time, to spend it working on the bikes and doing something necessary, other than dealing with his vanity. "If you can't find the titles, don't worry about it, we can deal with it some other way."
A hand brushes over his hair as he watches her, curious from beneath his raised brows as she's digging out some keys from her pocket, huffing with amusement. "They'd be helpful," he agreed, his own mouth curling up, higher on the left hand side.
"Is there anything else you need help with?" His hand had dropped down to his side and he raises his head again, looking over the home that had been made here, and all the belongings that had been collected. The boxes outside gets a glance over his shoulder before he's looking back at her, ready to leap to aid. That's why he's here. She asked.
[Kora] "You want a beer?" she non-sequitors, briefly, toeing open the mini-fridge, sinking into a brief, easy-balanced crouch to examine the contents of the fridge. " - or a soda? There's coke, or mountain dew." She grabs a dark-glassed bottle for herself, picks up whatever he requests - if indeed, he requests anything - then picks her own way back to the entrance, where the spring sun washes warm into the shadows of the interior.
The keys clink against the bottle as she comes up alongside him, holds out the keys to him, the metal keyring dangling from her left forefinger, her pale head canted sidelong, dark eyes catching the sunlight that washes over them, warm, gleaming.
She stands close, a comfortable distance, not quite intimate, though still just within the circle of personal space humans usually observe. She isn't human, though. Even in an abandoned concrete and metal den, in a derelict section of a vast city, that is clear to him, if only in flashes like this one - the sunlight across her eyes, the sweep of her head - like the gleam of a silverfish seen through deep water, clear and then gone.
Then: ordinary. "I need to clear this place out." She looks out then, too. Not out, really - up, closes her eyes to feel the rays of the sun beat down on her eyelids, to feel the unexpected warmth in her bones. "Figure out what should be given away, thrown away. What can be salvaged. If you've time - " here she opens her eyes again, looks back at him, unerringly. "I'd appreciate it."
[Trent Brumby] "Coke will do. Thanks." He wasn't going to have a beer during the day. Those he'd save for later in the night if he wasn't working. Trent wasn't much of a drinker, anyhow. He liked a beer after dinner if its been a long day, or dinner if he's eating with friends. He's partial to wine too and whiskey, depending on the environment. But here, in the afternoon sun, helping a Garou sort of a deceased possessions, he's having soda.
Taking the keys from her, gently sliding it from her finger, he holds it in one hand and takes his drink in the other. While she looks at him, studies him the way she tends to, he watches only her eyes. "You don't need these?" He's asking about the keys, opening his palm, with them in it, for emphasis. Then closing it again. If she does, they slide into his pocket, settling in deeper, adding weight to those already in there.
He opens his soda while she basks in the sun, catching the way light falls on her lashes before she's looking at him again. There's a hint of a smile on his face, in his eyes more than anywhere else. "I've got all day." Now. Maybe not before, but he had cleared it out, and any plans that had, or might come up, are no longer considered. He takes a drink then, tipping his head back to swallow coke in a few large gulps.
[Kora] "Those were his." She says, watching him just up and aslant, the subtle engagement of a smile just evident in the tension of the fine muscles and fine skin around her eyes. "I have my own. Anyway, I don't need keys," her, the faint smile is realized, curves sure and bittersweet across her elegant mouth. " - if I really want to get in."
He has all day. "Alright then," reaching out across her body to clink her bottle of coke to his own. " - in that case, I'm putting you to work."
Her directions were clear and direct, but they were not the directions of someone who drives through the city. They start at the closest El stop, with no thought given to the one-way streets or unexpected U-turns, dead-ends or hard left turns across traffic. Still: the neighborhood is depressed, and commerce is scarce. The old warehouses on Bradley are largely abandoned, or inhabited by marginal businesses drawn by the cheap rents, small factories that operate on skeleton crews, the tired operations of cheap freight companies.
There's not much traffic other than foot traffic, except on the drug corners closest to the interstates, where the inner city dealers cater to the suburban addicts, one feeding the other like the perfect symbiotes - the quintessential parasites - they are.
You should probably - she said at some point, mid-way through describing the landmarks into his voice mail. - just drive down the alley. It's not a neighborhood where one would want to leave a car unattended. The alley in question is wide enough for two cars to pass abreast, though. Or for a large delivery truck to maneuver around the dumpsters backed up against the business the next street over. Despite the lure of easy pickings from the Chinese place the next block over, none of the neighborhood's homeless squat back here. Not with the beasts that came and went from the unit half-way down.
The sunlight is strong, and warm in the center of the alley. Most of the units are locked up tight, but the doors to one are wide open, with boxes set out on the asphalt outside, stacked haphazardly, inspected, labeled. There's music, too - from inside, the speakers are tinny, and the songs change often enough that it has to come either from a radio, or an iPod set to shuffle.
[Trent Brumby] Trent works. He doesn't run up against the Wyrm creatures festering in dark corners of the city, or spend time speaking with spirits, traveling through another land that mirrors his own. He doesn't have pack to worry about, to bond with. There's no need for him to train in pack tactics, discuss the latest battle strategy or scour through the city and suburban areas for potential threats. Instead he works security some nights, at a door at a bar, or walking through a club with ear buds to mute some of the loud pound of music, and sometimes, during the day, he works his second job on casual hours.
Today he got a call, picked it up on voice mail after he had bid a client good day, and found that Kora was asking for help. Immediately he had canceled his other appointments, giving them to someone else instead. He'd loose money but that was fine with him. He could make it up, but more importantly the Nation was his first priority. Several times he had listened to that voice-mail, scribbling down the instructions on a pad of paper held in the glove box of his car, then he'd set out to follow them.
His sedan crawled up the alleyway, turning into it carefully. Eyes peeled, he glances down it, driving slowly towards the boxes that blocked part of the way. He steered around them, dropping his head down to look through his window into the opened roller door, not quite sure whether this is where Kora wanted to meet him or not. He expects so. The car slowed to a crawl.
[Kora] The sound of the engine expands in the alley way, reverberates off the metal doors of the storage lockers. It is more than loud enough to be heard over the cheap speakers of the tinny, off-brand iPod dock she picked up at one of the innumerable thrift stores dotting the barren stretches of the impoverished city. As Trent's sedan slows to a crawl, Kora walks out of the opened doors of the unit, into the wash of sunlight that cuts through the center of the alley. The light picks out the brighter tones in her pale hair, giving her an illusory golden hue.
She is wiping her hands off on the thighs of her jeans, which are new - darker than her others - wearing a pale green tee that is soft because the material is fine, rather than soft from innumerable washes. The black boots are the same, though - and the black choker, and the dark bracelets at her wrist. As she emerges, she lifts her right hand to shield her eyes, squinting against the glare of the sun bright after the darkness of the interior, brighter for where it gleams off the windshield he slows his car. Her mouth curves, faint, in the distorted shadow cast by her hand over her face, and she gives him a wave, catching his eye as she does so, calling out if the window is cracked and she thinks he will hear -
"Thanks for coming. Just park anywhere, yeah?"
In the alley. Amidst the dumpsters. In the spill of the bright spring sun.
[Trent Brumby] Lifting a hand from the steering wheel he had waved back in that way men tend to - more like a stop sign or signal than any to and fro motion. He had heard her, because his radio is switched off and there's nothing else but the sound of the music coming out of the storage shed that she's standing before. He pulls his car over so that it's parked to one side of the alley, reversing it in so it's parked at the neighbouring rolling door. The engine shuts off shortly after and the keys slide from the ignition.
He opens the door and gets out, shutting it after him. Today their roles are almost reversed. Kora is in newer clothes, all aside from her well worn boots, and Trent is not as neat and tidy as he usually comes across. While he has groomed the gruff on his face, which he does as some morning ritual after a hot shower, he's wearing a pair of navy blue workmen pants and a similarly dark polo shirt. His boots are steel capped, the leather loafers or the priced sports shoes are no where to be seen. He looks like a regular, blue collar citizen of the world, and even has hints of grease on his hands and forearms to complete it.
"Hey Kora," he greets her with a quiet smile, walking towards her. His keys are stowed into his pants hip pocket, making it hang heavier. "How are you?" No questions about why he is here yet, though pale grays are curious. He's interested in her well being first, glancing over her for any hints. Although he'd like to reach in, hug her, kiss her cheek, he hesitates and lingers two steps away, sliding a hand into the pocket, after his keys.
[Kora] She looks up at the sky as he parks the car, still shielding her eyes from the glare of the spring sun, gauging the time of day by the slant of light between the buildings, by the particular shade of blue the sky has achieved at its apex. It is warm in the sun, but still cool in the shadows. She is perhaps underdressed for the temperature inside the unit, with its concrete floors and metal walls, with its metal roof - it would have been broiling in the summer, but she arrived in the winter and doesn't live here any longer. She will never know.
The car parked, she drops her attention from the sky to driver's door as it opens, watches him as he climbs out, her dark eyes flashing down, taking in his attire - the workboots, the tracery of grease on his hands - before returning to his face. There's a faint crease in her brow, a thoughtful comma in the center of her forehead. The shadows are not as evident in her dark blue eyes - not here, on a spring day, in clothing that makes her seem like a person who fits in the world rather than a girl who haunts the edges of it - but they are there. Her pallor is accentuated in the sunlight as well; and though she no longer has the stark whiteness of someone in shock, she still seems attenuated somehow. It draws out the wolf in her, even amidst the trappings of the girl; even without blood stiffening her clothes.
"I'm alright," she replies. It doesn't sound like a lie. It doesn't sound like the sort of lie women sometimes tell, inviting cajoling. She's alright. There are two feet between them, and she doesn't close the distance. She does hold his eyes, though - absolutely direct, except when her own eyes drop briefly to his mouth, then back again. "Thanks for coming, though I - " here the faint line between her pale brows deepens, passingly, " - should've realized it's like, a workday, right? A weekday."
She measures time differently.
[Trent Brumby] He takes her at her word and doesn't question it. If she says she is fine, and from the look of it she looks better than last time, well - better than the beginning of the last time that they had met, by the end of it she looked. Phew. Boy. He's trying not to think about that, standing there in front of her, with her eyes on his mouth, however briefly, and staring at him squarely.
"Nah, it's alright," he assures her with an easy smile. Nodding then, he holds her gaze, his own clear in the sunshine, and quite evidently gray in the way a winter sky is, very pale and yet very solid. "I work casual hours, night and day. I'm not locked into a routine, so don't worry about it."
Looking away from her then, he glances to the boxes she has stacked outside and then into the darkness of the unit, where the music is blaring from in that slightly off key way. It echos badly against all that metal and tin. "What are we doing?" When he looks back at her, he's getting down to business. He doesn't like the frown line on her face and wants to move past it, to stop her lingering on something she had mistakenly overlooked.
[Kora] "Alright," she says easily, the faint line smoothing away as she hooks her head back toward the interior of the storage locker, the heavy mass of her hair swinging with the gesture. She is it pulled up and away from her neck and back today, secured with a pair of chopsticks again. These are evident as she turns back toward the interior, dark wood, lacquered - more expensive than the usual take-out ones. In another woman, the artlessness would seem purposeful.
Kora is not a woman. She just wants her hair off her neck.
Stepping over the thresholds, she ducks - just - from sunlight to shadow, where cut of light into the interior gives the illusion of a bulkhead, some weight that shouldn't be there. The scent inside is familiar to her, fading - and feral, too. They slept here in lupus to heal their wounds; in their human skin when they were uninjured and the scents linger in the close interior. Not much longer, though.
She stands there a moment, waits for Trent to draw abreast of her, then gives him a playful hipcheck before leading him deeper, picking a careful path.
The interior is defined by a kind of controlled chaos. Kora's things are gone; she hadn't much, anyway - but the domestic trappings remain. The electric heater and the round kerosene heater in the middle. The milkcrates stacked like shelves, supporting the hot plate, the coffee pot, the mini-fridge, with a 13" color television - CRT - perched atop it. She skirts the boxes, some opened, others shut, Kemp's accumulated belongings, leading Trent back toward the bikes, parked where her Alpha left them last year, when autumn was sinking into winter and the weather was too cold to ride.
She touches her hand to the handle, turns back, giving him a look up over her lowered shoulder. "I need to sell these. I thought maybe you could help. Post them on craiglist or something, yeah?" There is a pause, then, when she looks back over the rest of it. " - the tools too, and the parts. Whatever goes with them."
[Trent Brumby] Pulling his hand out of his pocket he walked in after her, ducking his head past the rolling door if its too low. Her hip-check is unexpected and has him laughing quietly. It instantly lifts his mood from somewhat cautious and uncertain of where he stands into an immediate familiarity. Though even that isn't quite true or right. They aren't that familiar with one another, not really. Not enough to be completely reassured of what was going on between them. But he's comfortable, now, in her presence, shaking his head with a smile as he begins to walk through after, taking the same sort of care of where he's stepping.
Glancing over boxes, stacked crates and signs of household living - though he's not yet sure if it is what he thinks it is, a home, a place to stay. He thinks it's more possible that it's a hideout, which could be one and the same. Black Furies in the rural areas don't have large manors, after all, and still lived. This could be much of the same, but maybe part of him hoped not.
Over at the bike's Kora explains what she wants to be done with them and he nods his head, once, looking from her over the vehicles there and the tools that may be laying around or placed nearby. "Sure. I can ask around, and make sure there's a good price for them." Depending on the condition of them he may put more money into them, build it up, get a better price. She didn't need to know that part though; the parts where he will give her more money than it made, depending on the outcome.
[Kora] "That'd be brilliant," Kora returns, her voice low, quiet as it always is.
There's more motion in her voice, though; a certain intensity that suggests that this means something more to her than a pair of bikes, a few dollars in her pocket, evident in the voiced consonants, the way they catch and vibrate in her throat. The resonance that backs them.
She is then backstepping away from the bike so that Trent has a better view of the oiled parts, the motorcycle tools, the extra tires and other attendant pieces; so that he can touch the handle, check the model year if he'd like. Even in disarray, she is familiar with the place, moves easily through it, her booted feet heavy enough on the echoing concrete, although the sounds in the place are somewhat dampened by the boxes and mattresses, the accumulated lifetime of things.
Kora pauses at the crates long enough to turn the cheap little speaker set from on to off with a neat flick of her thumb. Leaning, half-perched, against the half-sized fridge, her hands braced on the frame, watching as he looks over the bikes, she clears her throat, clarifies. " - they were Kemp's, you know? He wanted us to sell them and send the money to his kid. So - " her voice fills the room, echoes off the walls. The sound is warmer than the tin speakers, quietly emphatic. " - I appreciate the favor."
[Trent Brumby] When she moves out of the way he steps into her place and looks over the bikes. He drops into an easy crouch, his backside resting against the heel of one boot as he shifts almost to a knee, lowering his head to have a good look over the make and models and whether the bikes actually needed some work, were missing pieces and so forth. By the looks of everything around it they had been tampered with or had someone trying to get them work better. They could have been in the middle of dismantling them for all Trent knew.
While he's doing this, Kora has moved and explains to him the significance of the bikes. He nods thoughtfully, and looks up and over towards her. "Don't mention it," he says of the favour. Rising up from the ground, he pushes off his thigh to stand upright. "We'll get a good price. I may have some work done on them first, if that's alright? But I'll make a quick job of it." Not a rushing job of the work, but make it a top priority so that money could be passed on to the child.
[Kora] "Whatever you need to do," Kora assures him, still quiet, watchful always, her dark eyes fast on him as he sinks to a crouch and makes a quick assessment of both the bikes and their respective states of repair or disrepair. " - is alright by me." The sunlight outside, brilliant, hazed with the promise of summer, makes the shadows of the interior even gloomier. It is only after his eyes have become adjusted to the light he can see that there are a handful of lights inside, as well. The cheap sort college students pick up for $20 at Target, to brighten up their dorm rooms. The cheaper sort, cast off by college students at the local Goodwill.
Their faint incandescent light does little to soften the shadows of the room; to illuminate her features. There is a small, supple curve to her mouth, but otherwise her face is still, quiet as her voice.
When he stands, she steps away from the minifridge, pushes her right hand into her right front pocket. "No one's here anymore, but I can give you a key. So you can get in to them when you need to. If you need the title or something - " she pauses again; here, twists her narrow shoulders in an expressive little shrug. The details of human life not a mystery to her, but still twist together into a knotted tangle. He need not practice rites; listen to spirits; harvest eyeballs to keep the Hrafn happy. She doesn't need to figure out her taxes, or keep track of her charitable giving for the year. Or count her calories. Or write the sort of will that might survive probate court, intact.
Someday, someone will do this for her. She hopes. " - it's bound to be in here, somewhere. Let me know, and I'll be on the lookout."
She pulls her right hand back out of her pocket, and turns it out. There's a set of keys in her palm. The bikes. The storage unit. She flashes him a half-grin, her breath a short huff of unvoiced laughter. "I guess you'll need the bike keys, too."
[Trent Brumby] Leaving the side of the bikes, wiping his hands off on his pants, he cast one more look at them before making his way back towards the entrance. He's not leaving, though, just standing where there's more room without threat of knocking something over or look as though he's peeking into things. This isn't his place. Besides, its warmer nearer the rolling doors than it is deeper into the shadows.
"Alright." He agrees to taking a key to be able to come here when time allows, which he will. He'll make time for it, spend his spare hours here rather then sitting at a pub watching some sports on tv and drinking down beers. He'll forgo an hour at the gym, cutting down the time, to spend it working on the bikes and doing something necessary, other than dealing with his vanity. "If you can't find the titles, don't worry about it, we can deal with it some other way."
A hand brushes over his hair as he watches her, curious from beneath his raised brows as she's digging out some keys from her pocket, huffing with amusement. "They'd be helpful," he agreed, his own mouth curling up, higher on the left hand side.
"Is there anything else you need help with?" His hand had dropped down to his side and he raises his head again, looking over the home that had been made here, and all the belongings that had been collected. The boxes outside gets a glance over his shoulder before he's looking back at her, ready to leap to aid. That's why he's here. She asked.
[Kora] "You want a beer?" she non-sequitors, briefly, toeing open the mini-fridge, sinking into a brief, easy-balanced crouch to examine the contents of the fridge. " - or a soda? There's coke, or mountain dew." She grabs a dark-glassed bottle for herself, picks up whatever he requests - if indeed, he requests anything - then picks her own way back to the entrance, where the spring sun washes warm into the shadows of the interior.
The keys clink against the bottle as she comes up alongside him, holds out the keys to him, the metal keyring dangling from her left forefinger, her pale head canted sidelong, dark eyes catching the sunlight that washes over them, warm, gleaming.
She stands close, a comfortable distance, not quite intimate, though still just within the circle of personal space humans usually observe. She isn't human, though. Even in an abandoned concrete and metal den, in a derelict section of a vast city, that is clear to him, if only in flashes like this one - the sunlight across her eyes, the sweep of her head - like the gleam of a silverfish seen through deep water, clear and then gone.
Then: ordinary. "I need to clear this place out." She looks out then, too. Not out, really - up, closes her eyes to feel the rays of the sun beat down on her eyelids, to feel the unexpected warmth in her bones. "Figure out what should be given away, thrown away. What can be salvaged. If you've time - " here she opens her eyes again, looks back at him, unerringly. "I'd appreciate it."
[Trent Brumby] "Coke will do. Thanks." He wasn't going to have a beer during the day. Those he'd save for later in the night if he wasn't working. Trent wasn't much of a drinker, anyhow. He liked a beer after dinner if its been a long day, or dinner if he's eating with friends. He's partial to wine too and whiskey, depending on the environment. But here, in the afternoon sun, helping a Garou sort of a deceased possessions, he's having soda.
Taking the keys from her, gently sliding it from her finger, he holds it in one hand and takes his drink in the other. While she looks at him, studies him the way she tends to, he watches only her eyes. "You don't need these?" He's asking about the keys, opening his palm, with them in it, for emphasis. Then closing it again. If she does, they slide into his pocket, settling in deeper, adding weight to those already in there.
He opens his soda while she basks in the sun, catching the way light falls on her lashes before she's looking at him again. There's a hint of a smile on his face, in his eyes more than anywhere else. "I've got all day." Now. Maybe not before, but he had cleared it out, and any plans that had, or might come up, are no longer considered. He takes a drink then, tipping his head back to swallow coke in a few large gulps.
[Kora] "Those were his." She says, watching him just up and aslant, the subtle engagement of a smile just evident in the tension of the fine muscles and fine skin around her eyes. "I have my own. Anyway, I don't need keys," her, the faint smile is realized, curves sure and bittersweet across her elegant mouth. " - if I really want to get in."
He has all day. "Alright then," reaching out across her body to clink her bottle of coke to his own. " - in that case, I'm putting you to work."
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