[aeiou] There is a bar outside've Chicago down a highway and another road and the bar's got some man's last name. Just like a hundred others. Thing about this bar is this: it's old, and it's splintered, and it shelters down the way from a reststop where the weary American vagabond in his or her truck or her or his camper can rest their weary bones. Thing about this bar is also this: it lurks below a big ol' sign with an old advertisement for Whole Heart Farms peeling away, and beneath the peels, meticulous grafitti, done only in black, the many variations of black that weather'll make out've whatever man-colored thing is cast up. There's a neon sign in the window, and it does not say open. Whatever it says is obscure, illegible and unreadable; it might be the man's name, or the name of a beer, or just the last neon sign that the neon sign makers had in the factory the day the bar's owners got there, desperate, just desperate, to have a neon sign. The neon is radiant pink, and it gives people's eyeballs a strange sheen. Behind the bar, there is a line of pine trees that becomes something approaching pine woods. This is, to the citygoer, practically wilderness. This is, to the suburbanite, practically wild -- and truly, it is an American sort've place, an American sort've wilderness.
Lila told Kora -- perhaps they'd been at the caern, at the graves; perhaps they'd been at the wyrmpole, at the glory-tree; perhaps they'd been on the street, loitering; maybe even Lila'd been hitching, her thumb out -- about this place. About their ale, about their beers: their selection all about Trappist monks and beer snobbery, all about experimentation and cool dark cellars and surprise to find it out here in the middle of nowhere.
Thing about this bar is this: there's something wrong. It's in the air. It's in how afraid everybody is, or was, even before the garou got there. It's in the way their eyeballs catch, reflect, neon radiance.
[wolfsong] Maybe it was the woods she'd wanted; near enough to woods, away from the sheen of the city, away from the building and the corridors between them, away from the scent of the lake, which becomes pungent some warm spring days, not with the promise of growth but with the kind of rot that happens to wild places near people.
The lake is still wild. The lake is still, sometimes, too. Tonight, though - tonight, the lake and the buildings and the city - are gone, left behind, that sort of radiant glow against the horizon. Sometimes, when she was a child, living in this suburb or that suburb, sometimes, when she was a child, Kora woke up and saw that glow and thought: nuclear. war. - on winter nights, when the snowpacked against the ground reflected the orange glow packed against the sky back at itself. That is what the sheen of the pink neon sign says to her.
Nuclear. War.
Her spine prickles. They are here; who knows how they got here. Kora does not know how to drive; does not own more than can fit into a backpack. Does not own a car, assuredly. Still, here they are, Kora is telling a meandering story that is a sort of thing about grief or death. It starts this one time and isn't a fine story or a good story or a neat story - it's just one she is sharing, quiet, thinking about the Trappiest beers and how she really does, on the whole, like the idea of blueberries and hops together, but prefers the wheat beers, the Hefeweizens, she tells Lila, which always taste like bananas, underneath.
" - and then, in Bamberg, there is this smoked beer, yeah? And they still serve it, but basically the tradition started because some brewery burned down and they drank the beer anyway."
Inside the bar, she is saying this, low. People are wrong here.
What will she see?
[wolfsong] Per + Alertness!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2
[wolfsong] Int + Occult
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5 (Success x 1 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Ancestors!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [And Lila: Per + Alert, yo.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] They got there, somehow. Luck and charm and determination, maybe. They each possess these things, and Lila -- Lila is listening to Kora's ramble-story, her friend-story, and her mouth is curving, her expression gleams when she glances toward the Fenrir, says, "Ha. I like that. I like that a lot. Drink down things that've burnt because burnt things are still good, and then you've got the smoke inside you, and -- and I like that a lot. I half-wish," she says, mouth still quirked, "that you'd travelled with me." And they're inside, and speaking low, and Lila's giving the place a wide-eyed glance, her thumbs easily finding the beltloops of her jeans.
What won't Kora see?
Kora sees the bartender, a woman with hair that gleams brassy in the bar's low-light, owl-light, hair that gleams like brass knuckles, ready to bloody some sucker's mouth. Kora sees the bartender's tattoo, a parrot which flowers out've her open-blouse, and Kora sees the age footing around the bartender's eyes, and Kora sees the menu, which is indeed replete, interesting, select, and she sees the way the bartender keeps glancing toward a window, the shutters pulled closed, the blinds drawn, as if she expects something. No: as if she dreads something, as if there is some named dread thing that is going to come through the window. That's the way humans look at garou when garou can't control their Rage, when a garou has nothing tying them howsoever tenuously to the [promise (we're kin)] warmth of humanity. Kora sees the woman touch her hands beneath the bar over, over, and Kora sees the shotgun the woman's keeping there.
Kora sees the group of regulars sitting in a corner, all together, and she sees that two of them are armed, but armed with human weapons. Kora sees that they aren't looking at the window. Kora sees, in fact, that they never look at the window, even though they've placed themselves so that the window is directly in their line of sight, and Kora sees that they don't look at the bartender either. Don't meet anybody's gaze except each other's, and then briefly but intensely, as if they're just checking to make certain that something's there, some resolve, some shared thing, before the sight of it shames them enough that they can't take it anymore.
Kora sees the teenage boy, sitting in the corner, hair as brassy as his momma's, a book open and a glass of not-beer and not-ale by his elbow. He's texting. Kora sees that the lights begin to flicker, evenly, as sure as any message, in the backroom: she marks the staccato beat of light against shadow against the barroom gloom, and she notices, although it's such a slight difference, such a small little thing that it's likely she is the only one who does, the pulse that goes through the music playing from an old jukebox, a minuit change in volume: it pulses each time the light flickers in the backroom -- the door to the backroom is behind the bartender; is off to the side of the bar, in an unused corner.
Kora sees the two men -- in their thirties, toward their forties -- who are seeing the two garou women as if they'd like to see a lot more of them. There's nothing there but human constancy, human attraction; they look like they're campers, on their way to some fishing hole, some secluded place. They look like they've got wives, or commitments.
And Kora, Kora sees the impression of a face in the sawdust floor, which doesn't so much disappear when one of the committed campers gets up and walks across the tiny space to the jukebox, as re-arrange its expression.
[wolfsong] "I traveled," Kora says, quiet, as she is walking into the bar and looking at the bartender and looking at the regulars who are not looking at the window. She is seeing them the way she sees things: which is as a thing apart, as a person who looks rather than a person who is seen. This is how she was all those years before she changed; this is how she has been, always, after. Except sometimes, some odd times, some times when she is seen, and then she looks up, not startled but alive, in a different way, " - before." They both know what she means. "Now for me it's about standing in one place, you know - vanguard and all that."
Lila knows Fenrir stories. She knows what that means. Defend this thing, fight for this place, keep fighting until you die. They are pitiless, the Fenrir. They cannot afford pity. Kora doesn't invite it. She does allow, though, " - but," faintly, that is something she misses. There is a picture in her hip pocket folded in half and half again. "yeah. Me too, sometimes."
It would be different; to see the world like this. To see this world.
Instead the bar, though: things are different. People are armed, and touching guns. The kid and the face in the floorboards. "Hey," Kora says, quiet, looking up at the campers who are looking at them with a flick-blank look she perfected during years of traveling, alone. She touches Lila's shoulder, lightly - points, cool and sure. The bar. The window that is closed. That people are not looking at. She looks, pulls Lila's attention to it with a touch and a lift of her chin, then flashes a look from the bartender to the son, to the backroom door. "C'mon." Inside the door, wary, alert, she begins across the bar, not-looking at the campers, headed toward the end of the bar closest to the closed door.
[aeiou] This bar with a man's name isn't the kind've bar where they greet you by name unless they actually know what the fuck it is. This bar with a man's name isn't the kind've place where the bartender gives a rousing cheer just because a couple've customers, a pair of blondes, come in to buy. This is the kind've place where fear and expectation are so thick in the air, that -- to the sensitive -- it's a lot like drowning in it. A lot like being surrounded by the sound of deadgone voices, ghosts in the blood. Kora sees things. Kora sees bugs crawling in the sawdust: little, tiny mites. Sees that they're crawling in circles, the same little, tiny, hard-to-discern patterns the whole floor over, with a precision that wyld (wild) things just don't have.
Kora knows things, too. Knows them the way she used to dream ancestor-dreams before she Changed for the first time. Knows them without having learned or studied or taken the time: knows them because of some long-dead ghost in her blood, somebody watching her progress, expecting her to be glory, a clamor of knowledge. Knows this, then:
That she (not-Kora [maybe not even a she]) has seen this before, seen something so similar that -- she knows in the back of her throat that soon there'll be a gleaming, a light; knows that the light won't be foul, but it'll be attracted and attract itself to foulness; she'll know that it'll circle a hole between spaces, between days -- knows, with Kora-self, stories about Rip Van Winkle, about waking up with a year gone by, about disappearing somewhere for a day, finding a hundred years'd gone by. Kora knows, knows that these people -- especially the weaker ones, the ones with less willpower, less stubborn go-to -- will be affected when they see it, that the light, what it's going to follow, will wash against them like poison. That it'll work, real slow, until it's too late -- until they die, or change. She's seen this (not Kora, someone else; but Kora knows) before.
By the door, that far end of the bar, there's a table for two. The chairs are mismatched; one of them is rickety. The chair closest to the door looks -- and Kora sees this, too -- rotten. The wood that's nearest that door: it's got lichen, mold, beginning to bloom through the grain -- and maybe noone's noticed because of how dim it is in the bar.
Hey, Kora says, and points out the bar, the windows, the backroom door. And C'mon. And Lila will catch Kora's eyes, nod slightly; lift her hand, tender a lock of shining hair behind an ear, stay beside Kora, close enough that, for a moment, their hips brush. These women aren't women at all -- they're wolves. And they aren't wolves at all -- they're women. And they can't be one thing or another, so they're this: eldritch, creatures that belong nowhere, except, perhaps, in moments like these -- following the smoke of some dark thing.
"What do you think," Lila says, when they're near the table. Her eyes have flicked to the bartender, and then to the bartender's son, who is staring at Lila and Kora with eyes that are wide and green as mint icecream.
[wolfsong] "I think," it would be easier if they were packmates; able to speak silently, able to know where the other is, in time and in space. Her pack is distant now, but she can feel them, can feel the directional pull that the spirit-ties they share gives her. They are out there. " - that I've seen something like this before. That I know what's coming. Look." The pattern of bugs in the floor, she points that out, pulls Lila's attention from the boy to the bugs, to the movement of things in too-predictable ways, like a rite, like a ritual.
They are standing by the bar, by the table, which is riddled with rot. She does not sit down; she looks at the place where the wood is failing, remembers what the wyrm was before it was corrupted, the eater-of-the-dead before it became eater-of-souls. "Whatever's coming will kill them; or worse. How many do you think we can harry from this place before the worst comes?"
She's standing close to Lila, neither woman nor wolf; both, more. She's standing close to Lila, looking no longer at the boy, but at the men, who are ordinary. Campers. Looking directly at one of them, a stare that is decidedly not come hither.
[wolfsong] Charisma + Intimidation + 1 (totem!)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 4)
[aeiou] [...i'm not... uh, uh. scared of ... you.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] [And! Lila Perc+Emp: Mom & Boy.]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[aeiou] [Regulars: They get a collective: Perc + Alertness]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Bad Shit: starting strong?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10
[aeiou] [...yes. yes it is.]
[aeiou] The camper Kora looks at looks back at Kora. Maybe he thinks, This is it. Maybe he looks at her, and meets her flat, blankeyed stare and thinks: Now's the time. Maybe he has a chance to think something like that before whatever's in her stare, whatever is encased in her skin, whatever secret her bones hide, becomes too much for him, crawls up his spine and sets his teeth on edge, makes him blanche, grabs him by the throat: the kind've fear you get when you suddenly think, I'm not alone. There's something behind me, and it means to do me harm. Maybe if he were righteous, he wouldn't be so frightened, but Kora: somehow she becomes sleek, deadly, dangerous -- shows a little bit of what she can do, while showing nothing. And the camper moves away from the jukebox quickly, not looking again at Kora, and he holds a quick conference with his friend. He can feel Kora's eyes on him still, whether they are or not, and he leaves. It's a sudden departure, and one of the regulars who isn't looking at the back door notices this, and frowns over toward Kora and Lila.
Lila is studying the bartender, is studying the boy, although when Kora asks her how many of them she thinks they can together harry out of this place to safer grounds, she says, "That boy, there. He feels guilty, but he isn't afraid like the rest. He's just -- he feels like he did something wrong; like he can't be harmed for it, but maybe he should be."
The two campers depart, and Lila half-smirks [somehow, this, too -- is radiant; is dreamily amused]. Low. Vibrant. " - and I think that you could harry the Devil back to Heaven with that Look, Kora." Then, suddenly grave: " - I think we can harry them all. Except the boy, the bartender. That man, at that table, right there. The one who's looking at us. I'm going to talk to the boy."
And the lights wink out. Inside the bar, it is not dark as pitch. An emergency light comes on alongside the bar, and the regulars look at each other. The one who'd been staring at Kora and Lila, noticing how Kora'd run the two campers off, he gets up, frowning, says, "Ladies, that's closing time."
[aeiou] ooc: ahem. "Ladies, that's closing time. That right there. Lights out. Why don't you head on back out." His is the too-cool tone of someone who thinks he's dealing with monsters. No, more: the too-cool tone of someone who knows, and is maybe going to lose it.
[aeiou] [How close is Bad Shit?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[wolfsong] "Thanks," says Kora, low-voiced, clear, back to the man watching them. The one who means to send them scurrying. " - but I just put in my order. We came all this way for the Hefewiezen, and I aim to have at least a sip. Though," her arms are at her sides; then room is bathed in shadows, now - except for the bright glare of emergency lighting. Lila walks over to talk to the boy; and Kora, Kora instead turns to the remaining regulars, the ones who come here, who come here armed and sit here anyway, not looking at the door they do not want to think about, but aware of it as they are aware of darker things than themselves, aware of the broken pieces of themselves, the lake of shadow in the center of the heart.
Lila walks over to the boy, and Kora instead turns to the regulars, finding the beast inside her, letting it flare, silverfish in the darkness; letting it gleam in her eyes, which are a predator's eyes, glazed with light when she cants her head just so. "Time to go," she says. Or " - storm's coming. Hear that? Best get going."
The words matter less than the tone. The tone matters less than her presence.
[wolfsong] Char + Intimidation
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 7, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Char + Intimidation
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[aeiou] [you don't scare meeee.... +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [... you... DON'T! scare me?]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] This time, Kora's ability to harry the Devil into heaven isn't quite up to snuff. The regulars regard Kora flatly, suspiciously; and oh yes, there's still fear. The neon light is still on. Takes a moment to notice it, but Kora will, and so will Lila: that, although all the lights except the emergency lights have gone off, the neon sign still gleams, tosses its woozy luminescence across the sawdust-covered floorboards, sends the queasy pink skimming across one man's hairy knuckles, gleams on his glass. The fear they've got is reflected, but manageable, under control: they don't let her run them off.
Except for the man who'd stood, who'd questioned. Maybe he was the smart one. He looks at Kora, and she looks at him, and he's the one who would remember the most, if he were to see the kind've monsters which the blonde creatures could transform into -- and he swallows, hard. Kora says, storm's coming, best get going, and he swallows again, speaks around a clicking noise in his throat, " - maam, I don't know who you think you are - " it's respectful. "Sure ain't the little girl you look to be. But it's best to just stay put -- to just stay here and wait it out, see?"
He'd like to go. He wants to. He just can't.
Lila glanced over her shoulder when the man addressed her and Kora, but Kora: she was moving for the regulars. And she, Lila: she was going for the boy who wasn't afraid, who seemed to have a reason for not being afraid, who thought himself stained, besmirched by -- but, ultimately, safe. The lights go out, and it doesn't deter her. There is this, about Lila: she isn't human. There are moments when this isn't obvious. There are moments when it is: when she is a creature of grace, of stillness, a creature of spirit wedded to flesh, of blood and foam, who can melt from one world to the next, who can dissolve, who could tear out a throat just as easily as she could kiss a mouth -- this is one've those moments. She doesn't exude the sort of danger that Kora is exuding, but she's difficult to look away from, and she is studying the boy even as she puts a hand on the bartop, glances at the bartender, who is reaching under the bar, staring at Kora. Lila keeps watching the bartender, and says,
"Why aren't you afraid like the rest of them?" - confidental. Confide in me. Trust.
"What do you mean?" the boy says, staring at Lila's collarbone. He looks sick.
"Just what I asked," she says, gentle, and he,
"Your friend - " begins to say something else.
The door opens. Not all the way, just a little. The door peels out of its frame: the backdoor, the stockroom door -- the door near the wood table and wood chairs that are blooming with rot; there is nothing behind it but a wall of black, dense darkness. And, although the window is shuttered, although the blinds are pulled, it isn't enough to keep out the glow, which washes in patches, in stripes, through each chink [ - some kind've godamned alien abduction, an episode of X-files, the hell - ] and burns white.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Lila: WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Kora: WP
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] [Weaker Regulars: WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 6, 6 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] [Strong Regular]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Bartender!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Boy]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 4)
[wolfsong] The windows are shuttered; there's light. There's light within back behind them; the window is covered and locked tight, the blinds pulled sharply closed. No one looks there; none of them, except when the light comes and they cannot help but look there, direct-like, sudden, their faces flared in a sharp wash of coruscating light where it pushes through the chinks in the wood, through the faults in the wall, through the pieces of things that should be but are not there.
Kora - Kora is staring. Kora is staring, feels herself rooted in place, as if her feet were fixed to the floor and the floor were fixed to her feet; as if her joints were fused to the long bones between them, her whole body straight and rigid, her whole body wanting, immediacy, immediately - oh gods.
With a deep, abiding sense of place - with the sense memory written into her skull by ancestors long-passed-on, Kora finds her will and strength of purpose, pushes through the paralysis, the longing, the want. There's a moment, then, when she finds herself seeking out the stranger again, the strongest of them. Leave now. He had said. Go on. "Tell us what's coming. We can keep you safe if your keep your heads."
[aeiou] [commercial break.]
[wolfsong] [BUY SOME TACO BELL.]
Lila told Kora -- perhaps they'd been at the caern, at the graves; perhaps they'd been at the wyrmpole, at the glory-tree; perhaps they'd been on the street, loitering; maybe even Lila'd been hitching, her thumb out -- about this place. About their ale, about their beers: their selection all about Trappist monks and beer snobbery, all about experimentation and cool dark cellars and surprise to find it out here in the middle of nowhere.
Thing about this bar is this: there's something wrong. It's in the air. It's in how afraid everybody is, or was, even before the garou got there. It's in the way their eyeballs catch, reflect, neon radiance.
[wolfsong] Maybe it was the woods she'd wanted; near enough to woods, away from the sheen of the city, away from the building and the corridors between them, away from the scent of the lake, which becomes pungent some warm spring days, not with the promise of growth but with the kind of rot that happens to wild places near people.
The lake is still wild. The lake is still, sometimes, too. Tonight, though - tonight, the lake and the buildings and the city - are gone, left behind, that sort of radiant glow against the horizon. Sometimes, when she was a child, living in this suburb or that suburb, sometimes, when she was a child, Kora woke up and saw that glow and thought: nuclear. war. - on winter nights, when the snowpacked against the ground reflected the orange glow packed against the sky back at itself. That is what the sheen of the pink neon sign says to her.
Nuclear. War.
Her spine prickles. They are here; who knows how they got here. Kora does not know how to drive; does not own more than can fit into a backpack. Does not own a car, assuredly. Still, here they are, Kora is telling a meandering story that is a sort of thing about grief or death. It starts this one time and isn't a fine story or a good story or a neat story - it's just one she is sharing, quiet, thinking about the Trappiest beers and how she really does, on the whole, like the idea of blueberries and hops together, but prefers the wheat beers, the Hefeweizens, she tells Lila, which always taste like bananas, underneath.
" - and then, in Bamberg, there is this smoked beer, yeah? And they still serve it, but basically the tradition started because some brewery burned down and they drank the beer anyway."
Inside the bar, she is saying this, low. People are wrong here.
What will she see?
[wolfsong] Per + Alertness!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2
[wolfsong] Int + Occult
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5 (Success x 1 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Ancestors!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [And Lila: Per + Alert, yo.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] They got there, somehow. Luck and charm and determination, maybe. They each possess these things, and Lila -- Lila is listening to Kora's ramble-story, her friend-story, and her mouth is curving, her expression gleams when she glances toward the Fenrir, says, "Ha. I like that. I like that a lot. Drink down things that've burnt because burnt things are still good, and then you've got the smoke inside you, and -- and I like that a lot. I half-wish," she says, mouth still quirked, "that you'd travelled with me." And they're inside, and speaking low, and Lila's giving the place a wide-eyed glance, her thumbs easily finding the beltloops of her jeans.
What won't Kora see?
Kora sees the bartender, a woman with hair that gleams brassy in the bar's low-light, owl-light, hair that gleams like brass knuckles, ready to bloody some sucker's mouth. Kora sees the bartender's tattoo, a parrot which flowers out've her open-blouse, and Kora sees the age footing around the bartender's eyes, and Kora sees the menu, which is indeed replete, interesting, select, and she sees the way the bartender keeps glancing toward a window, the shutters pulled closed, the blinds drawn, as if she expects something. No: as if she dreads something, as if there is some named dread thing that is going to come through the window. That's the way humans look at garou when garou can't control their Rage, when a garou has nothing tying them howsoever tenuously to the [promise (we're kin)] warmth of humanity. Kora sees the woman touch her hands beneath the bar over, over, and Kora sees the shotgun the woman's keeping there.
Kora sees the group of regulars sitting in a corner, all together, and she sees that two of them are armed, but armed with human weapons. Kora sees that they aren't looking at the window. Kora sees, in fact, that they never look at the window, even though they've placed themselves so that the window is directly in their line of sight, and Kora sees that they don't look at the bartender either. Don't meet anybody's gaze except each other's, and then briefly but intensely, as if they're just checking to make certain that something's there, some resolve, some shared thing, before the sight of it shames them enough that they can't take it anymore.
Kora sees the teenage boy, sitting in the corner, hair as brassy as his momma's, a book open and a glass of not-beer and not-ale by his elbow. He's texting. Kora sees that the lights begin to flicker, evenly, as sure as any message, in the backroom: she marks the staccato beat of light against shadow against the barroom gloom, and she notices, although it's such a slight difference, such a small little thing that it's likely she is the only one who does, the pulse that goes through the music playing from an old jukebox, a minuit change in volume: it pulses each time the light flickers in the backroom -- the door to the backroom is behind the bartender; is off to the side of the bar, in an unused corner.
Kora sees the two men -- in their thirties, toward their forties -- who are seeing the two garou women as if they'd like to see a lot more of them. There's nothing there but human constancy, human attraction; they look like they're campers, on their way to some fishing hole, some secluded place. They look like they've got wives, or commitments.
And Kora, Kora sees the impression of a face in the sawdust floor, which doesn't so much disappear when one of the committed campers gets up and walks across the tiny space to the jukebox, as re-arrange its expression.
[wolfsong] "I traveled," Kora says, quiet, as she is walking into the bar and looking at the bartender and looking at the regulars who are not looking at the window. She is seeing them the way she sees things: which is as a thing apart, as a person who looks rather than a person who is seen. This is how she was all those years before she changed; this is how she has been, always, after. Except sometimes, some odd times, some times when she is seen, and then she looks up, not startled but alive, in a different way, " - before." They both know what she means. "Now for me it's about standing in one place, you know - vanguard and all that."
Lila knows Fenrir stories. She knows what that means. Defend this thing, fight for this place, keep fighting until you die. They are pitiless, the Fenrir. They cannot afford pity. Kora doesn't invite it. She does allow, though, " - but," faintly, that is something she misses. There is a picture in her hip pocket folded in half and half again. "yeah. Me too, sometimes."
It would be different; to see the world like this. To see this world.
Instead the bar, though: things are different. People are armed, and touching guns. The kid and the face in the floorboards. "Hey," Kora says, quiet, looking up at the campers who are looking at them with a flick-blank look she perfected during years of traveling, alone. She touches Lila's shoulder, lightly - points, cool and sure. The bar. The window that is closed. That people are not looking at. She looks, pulls Lila's attention to it with a touch and a lift of her chin, then flashes a look from the bartender to the son, to the backroom door. "C'mon." Inside the door, wary, alert, she begins across the bar, not-looking at the campers, headed toward the end of the bar closest to the closed door.
[aeiou] This bar with a man's name isn't the kind've bar where they greet you by name unless they actually know what the fuck it is. This bar with a man's name isn't the kind've place where the bartender gives a rousing cheer just because a couple've customers, a pair of blondes, come in to buy. This is the kind've place where fear and expectation are so thick in the air, that -- to the sensitive -- it's a lot like drowning in it. A lot like being surrounded by the sound of deadgone voices, ghosts in the blood. Kora sees things. Kora sees bugs crawling in the sawdust: little, tiny mites. Sees that they're crawling in circles, the same little, tiny, hard-to-discern patterns the whole floor over, with a precision that wyld (wild) things just don't have.
Kora knows things, too. Knows them the way she used to dream ancestor-dreams before she Changed for the first time. Knows them without having learned or studied or taken the time: knows them because of some long-dead ghost in her blood, somebody watching her progress, expecting her to be glory, a clamor of knowledge. Knows this, then:
That she (not-Kora [maybe not even a she]) has seen this before, seen something so similar that -- she knows in the back of her throat that soon there'll be a gleaming, a light; knows that the light won't be foul, but it'll be attracted and attract itself to foulness; she'll know that it'll circle a hole between spaces, between days -- knows, with Kora-self, stories about Rip Van Winkle, about waking up with a year gone by, about disappearing somewhere for a day, finding a hundred years'd gone by. Kora knows, knows that these people -- especially the weaker ones, the ones with less willpower, less stubborn go-to -- will be affected when they see it, that the light, what it's going to follow, will wash against them like poison. That it'll work, real slow, until it's too late -- until they die, or change. She's seen this (not Kora, someone else; but Kora knows) before.
By the door, that far end of the bar, there's a table for two. The chairs are mismatched; one of them is rickety. The chair closest to the door looks -- and Kora sees this, too -- rotten. The wood that's nearest that door: it's got lichen, mold, beginning to bloom through the grain -- and maybe noone's noticed because of how dim it is in the bar.
Hey, Kora says, and points out the bar, the windows, the backroom door. And C'mon. And Lila will catch Kora's eyes, nod slightly; lift her hand, tender a lock of shining hair behind an ear, stay beside Kora, close enough that, for a moment, their hips brush. These women aren't women at all -- they're wolves. And they aren't wolves at all -- they're women. And they can't be one thing or another, so they're this: eldritch, creatures that belong nowhere, except, perhaps, in moments like these -- following the smoke of some dark thing.
"What do you think," Lila says, when they're near the table. Her eyes have flicked to the bartender, and then to the bartender's son, who is staring at Lila and Kora with eyes that are wide and green as mint icecream.
[wolfsong] "I think," it would be easier if they were packmates; able to speak silently, able to know where the other is, in time and in space. Her pack is distant now, but she can feel them, can feel the directional pull that the spirit-ties they share gives her. They are out there. " - that I've seen something like this before. That I know what's coming. Look." The pattern of bugs in the floor, she points that out, pulls Lila's attention from the boy to the bugs, to the movement of things in too-predictable ways, like a rite, like a ritual.
They are standing by the bar, by the table, which is riddled with rot. She does not sit down; she looks at the place where the wood is failing, remembers what the wyrm was before it was corrupted, the eater-of-the-dead before it became eater-of-souls. "Whatever's coming will kill them; or worse. How many do you think we can harry from this place before the worst comes?"
She's standing close to Lila, neither woman nor wolf; both, more. She's standing close to Lila, looking no longer at the boy, but at the men, who are ordinary. Campers. Looking directly at one of them, a stare that is decidedly not come hither.
[wolfsong] Charisma + Intimidation + 1 (totem!)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 4)
[aeiou] [...i'm not... uh, uh. scared of ... you.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] [And! Lila Perc+Emp: Mom & Boy.]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[aeiou] [Regulars: They get a collective: Perc + Alertness]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Bad Shit: starting strong?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10
[aeiou] [...yes. yes it is.]
[aeiou] The camper Kora looks at looks back at Kora. Maybe he thinks, This is it. Maybe he looks at her, and meets her flat, blankeyed stare and thinks: Now's the time. Maybe he has a chance to think something like that before whatever's in her stare, whatever is encased in her skin, whatever secret her bones hide, becomes too much for him, crawls up his spine and sets his teeth on edge, makes him blanche, grabs him by the throat: the kind've fear you get when you suddenly think, I'm not alone. There's something behind me, and it means to do me harm. Maybe if he were righteous, he wouldn't be so frightened, but Kora: somehow she becomes sleek, deadly, dangerous -- shows a little bit of what she can do, while showing nothing. And the camper moves away from the jukebox quickly, not looking again at Kora, and he holds a quick conference with his friend. He can feel Kora's eyes on him still, whether they are or not, and he leaves. It's a sudden departure, and one of the regulars who isn't looking at the back door notices this, and frowns over toward Kora and Lila.
Lila is studying the bartender, is studying the boy, although when Kora asks her how many of them she thinks they can together harry out of this place to safer grounds, she says, "That boy, there. He feels guilty, but he isn't afraid like the rest. He's just -- he feels like he did something wrong; like he can't be harmed for it, but maybe he should be."
The two campers depart, and Lila half-smirks [somehow, this, too -- is radiant; is dreamily amused]. Low. Vibrant. " - and I think that you could harry the Devil back to Heaven with that Look, Kora." Then, suddenly grave: " - I think we can harry them all. Except the boy, the bartender. That man, at that table, right there. The one who's looking at us. I'm going to talk to the boy."
And the lights wink out. Inside the bar, it is not dark as pitch. An emergency light comes on alongside the bar, and the regulars look at each other. The one who'd been staring at Kora and Lila, noticing how Kora'd run the two campers off, he gets up, frowning, says, "Ladies, that's closing time."
[aeiou] ooc: ahem. "Ladies, that's closing time. That right there. Lights out. Why don't you head on back out." His is the too-cool tone of someone who thinks he's dealing with monsters. No, more: the too-cool tone of someone who knows, and is maybe going to lose it.
[aeiou] [How close is Bad Shit?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[wolfsong] "Thanks," says Kora, low-voiced, clear, back to the man watching them. The one who means to send them scurrying. " - but I just put in my order. We came all this way for the Hefewiezen, and I aim to have at least a sip. Though," her arms are at her sides; then room is bathed in shadows, now - except for the bright glare of emergency lighting. Lila walks over to talk to the boy; and Kora, Kora instead turns to the remaining regulars, the ones who come here, who come here armed and sit here anyway, not looking at the door they do not want to think about, but aware of it as they are aware of darker things than themselves, aware of the broken pieces of themselves, the lake of shadow in the center of the heart.
Lila walks over to the boy, and Kora instead turns to the regulars, finding the beast inside her, letting it flare, silverfish in the darkness; letting it gleam in her eyes, which are a predator's eyes, glazed with light when she cants her head just so. "Time to go," she says. Or " - storm's coming. Hear that? Best get going."
The words matter less than the tone. The tone matters less than her presence.
[wolfsong] Char + Intimidation
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 7, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Char + Intimidation
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[aeiou] [you don't scare meeee.... +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [... you... DON'T! scare me?]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] This time, Kora's ability to harry the Devil into heaven isn't quite up to snuff. The regulars regard Kora flatly, suspiciously; and oh yes, there's still fear. The neon light is still on. Takes a moment to notice it, but Kora will, and so will Lila: that, although all the lights except the emergency lights have gone off, the neon sign still gleams, tosses its woozy luminescence across the sawdust-covered floorboards, sends the queasy pink skimming across one man's hairy knuckles, gleams on his glass. The fear they've got is reflected, but manageable, under control: they don't let her run them off.
Except for the man who'd stood, who'd questioned. Maybe he was the smart one. He looks at Kora, and she looks at him, and he's the one who would remember the most, if he were to see the kind've monsters which the blonde creatures could transform into -- and he swallows, hard. Kora says, storm's coming, best get going, and he swallows again, speaks around a clicking noise in his throat, " - maam, I don't know who you think you are - " it's respectful. "Sure ain't the little girl you look to be. But it's best to just stay put -- to just stay here and wait it out, see?"
He'd like to go. He wants to. He just can't.
Lila glanced over her shoulder when the man addressed her and Kora, but Kora: she was moving for the regulars. And she, Lila: she was going for the boy who wasn't afraid, who seemed to have a reason for not being afraid, who thought himself stained, besmirched by -- but, ultimately, safe. The lights go out, and it doesn't deter her. There is this, about Lila: she isn't human. There are moments when this isn't obvious. There are moments when it is: when she is a creature of grace, of stillness, a creature of spirit wedded to flesh, of blood and foam, who can melt from one world to the next, who can dissolve, who could tear out a throat just as easily as she could kiss a mouth -- this is one've those moments. She doesn't exude the sort of danger that Kora is exuding, but she's difficult to look away from, and she is studying the boy even as she puts a hand on the bartop, glances at the bartender, who is reaching under the bar, staring at Kora. Lila keeps watching the bartender, and says,
"Why aren't you afraid like the rest of them?" - confidental. Confide in me. Trust.
"What do you mean?" the boy says, staring at Lila's collarbone. He looks sick.
"Just what I asked," she says, gentle, and he,
"Your friend - " begins to say something else.
The door opens. Not all the way, just a little. The door peels out of its frame: the backdoor, the stockroom door -- the door near the wood table and wood chairs that are blooming with rot; there is nothing behind it but a wall of black, dense darkness. And, although the window is shuttered, although the blinds are pulled, it isn't enough to keep out the glow, which washes in patches, in stripes, through each chink [ - some kind've godamned alien abduction, an episode of X-files, the hell - ] and burns white.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Lila: WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Kora: WP
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] [Weaker Regulars: WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 6, 6 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] [Strong Regular]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Bartender!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Boy]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 4)
[wolfsong] The windows are shuttered; there's light. There's light within back behind them; the window is covered and locked tight, the blinds pulled sharply closed. No one looks there; none of them, except when the light comes and they cannot help but look there, direct-like, sudden, their faces flared in a sharp wash of coruscating light where it pushes through the chinks in the wood, through the faults in the wall, through the pieces of things that should be but are not there.
Kora - Kora is staring. Kora is staring, feels herself rooted in place, as if her feet were fixed to the floor and the floor were fixed to her feet; as if her joints were fused to the long bones between them, her whole body straight and rigid, her whole body wanting, immediacy, immediately - oh gods.
With a deep, abiding sense of place - with the sense memory written into her skull by ancestors long-passed-on, Kora finds her will and strength of purpose, pushes through the paralysis, the longing, the want. There's a moment, then, when she finds herself seeking out the stranger again, the strongest of them. Leave now. He had said. Go on. "Tell us what's coming. We can keep you safe if your keep your heads."
[aeiou] [commercial break.]
[wolfsong] [BUY SOME TACO BELL.]
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