[Kora] Late in the day, at the end of a long gray afternoon, Trent received a text message from Kora's phone.
Lunch - dinner at the park?
Hey. Who knew she knew how to do that? His phone vibrated or beeped or sang at him, and he replied - yeah - or k or called her back, found his way into her voice mail, left a message in the ether. Or he didn't.
Now the gray day has become a strangely clear twilight. Sometime between the dinner hour and now, the storm front moved off into the east and the sun came out. The sidewalks are damp, strewn with puddles, the trees gleam and the grass is a sinking, sodden morass. Here and there are flooded streets - from overwhelmed storm sewers, near low-lying creeks - and the Chicago River is both high and churned up, muddied, solid looking rather than merely murky.
The night is warm, the air steamy from the rain. The lights at Buckingham Fountain are on, but there are few enough tourists out tonight. Everyone has found something else to do, under cover somewhere - the movies or the museums, some show, a beer with friends.
Kora sits on the pediment edging the fountain, cross-legged. When the wind rises, the spray from the jets catches her in the edge of its arc. The water is cold, pointillist, refreshing. She doesn't move. There's a book open in her lap, but she pays it little more than half-a-mind, contemplating the sunset visible behind the skyscrapers, the night sky clotted with clouds. Or the crows, the people who circle, buy a soda or a hot dog from the vendors, wait for the next big display at the fountain.
[Gina McClaren] *Green crunches underfoot. Gina out far later than she would like tonight, in far less clothing than she ought to feel comfortable in. She's dressed to draw attention away from nimble wallet seeking fingers, and towards the curve of ample caramel cleavage. That is to say, she's in the sort of dress that should have bongo drums playing as an accessory. Instead, her bangles clink and clatter as the pikey picks her way barefoot through the crisply mowed grass, mangled shoes in her hand, little brown kin alert for any dog muck in the dewy grass.*
[Trent Brumby] The text had been replied with a call and a voice message left. He will be there, roughly what time he can make it and will meet her fountain.
True to his word, his shift had changed over and he had enough time to head home and change his clothes. Faded jeans and a buttoned down shirt, with a pair of leather loafers seems his casual clothes. Kora knows he has slacks, more shirts, has some sweatpants and t.shirts or work gear. But he tends to adopt jeans and short sleeved shirts for most days. Tonight isn't any different, but he has a jacket in the car if he needs it later.
He's approaching the Garou at the fountain with a quiet smile in his pale coloured eyes. It's not until he's a few feet away that he raises his voice to talk to her. "Hey Kora." He doesn't call her honey, sweetcakes or anything of the sort. Always by name, so far. His gaze flicks down to the book in her lap, curious to what it is, but he doesn't ask, raising his gaze to meet her gaze.
"You're all wet."
[Kora] There are few enough pockets to pick tonight - some couples, some college kids. An artist at the edge of the square, painting not the sunset that blazes behind the city to the west, but the changing shadows colors of descending darkness over the lake to the east. Kora catches sight of Gina, crunching barefoot through the grass, saturated from the drenching rains of the afternoon and offers the kinswoman a faint lift of her chin by way of recognition. The creature's dark eyes linger there several moments longer - looking for signs of distress behind the mangled shoes dangling from her hands.
Then - Trent arrives, and Kora's attention cuts to the kinsman. Her eyes are on him as he rounds the corner on the path from the parking lot, gleaming in the fingers of dying sunlight that cut through the city's long shadows. It's too dark to read, really, except for the glow from the fountain all lit up for the evening. The text in the book, whatever it is, has the look of poetry. There's as much blank space as there are black letters.
She lifts her chin when he's close enough to call out her name, giving him a sideswept look, quick and subtle, accompanied by a curving half-smile.
"Hey," her voice is low, her left cheek dappled with water droplets, errant spray from the fountain. These, too, catch the light. You're all wet, he says, and she shakes her pale head no. "Not all," she corrects, closing the book in her lap and unfolding her long legs to stand up. " - just a little bit, like running through the sprinkler when you're a kid, yeah?
"How was your day?"
[Gina McClaren] *Fountain lights cast a halogen pallor over the soft planes of Gina's face, strider kin walking through the misty corona to settle on the water feature's stone edge, a smile flashed to Kora and her man, warm and fleeting as the fading sunshine purpling the sky. Then its on to business, inspecting the shoes in her hand, a broken heel turned over in her fingers, mud crumbling from its spike. Satisfied its salavagable, its set down, a thin tube of Krazy Glue plucked from the kinfolks satchel. It wasn't classy, but it was Diva on a dime.*
[Trent Brumby] He's smiling as she gets off the fountains edge to stand with him. Reaching out he wipes his thumb down her cheek, smearing away droplets to wet the rest of her skin, to try and wipe it away. Its just an excuse to touch her, really. "Busy," he answers simply.
Tucking his hand into his pockets, he watches her. "What would you like for dinner?" His wallet is tucked into his opposite pocket along with his phone and his keys, making the pocket hang a little heavier under his hip. This close he smells like faint cologne, freshly showered with earth-friendly soaps that Kora knows so well now.
He offers to take her book for her, palm up with a glance towards it then towards her face. A hand would do, if she'd rather. He's relaxed and in good spirits tonight, with a little more energy bubbling up towards the usually quiet demeanor.
[Kora] Kora's clothes are old and worn. Anyone who knows her knows them by now: a black PIXIES t-shirt, old jeans, pale from too many washings, and black boots. She has a handful of bracelets on either wrist, and a thin black leather cord around her neck. Up close, it is clear that the leather piece is braided together. From a distance, it is just a dark line against her pale skin.
Her hair is up, pulled back from her face, the fine strands twisted into a knot and left to hang on their own weight, the mass secured by a number 2 pencil, all stark and yellow. There are graphite smudges on her hand, too, as she turns her head, just, into his touch and hands over the book.
It's Beowulf. Or rather, it's Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf from Old English into modern English, written back into free verse.
"One of the street carts around here had Italian sausage, with peppers and onions. That sounds ridiculously good to me." Impromptu, al fresco. She stands close enough that she can nudge him with her hip, lift her chin over his shoulder toward Gina. "Have you guys met?" That's low voiced, private, she asks as she breathes in his familiar colonge, then lifts her voice to the Gina, seated at the fountain's edge, repairing her heel.
"Gina," Kora's voice is still low, but it carries, underneath the sound of the fountain, really - some different texture. There is a moment of stillness, focusing on the shoe, the broken heel. The superglue the kinswoman has in hand. " - you okay?"
[Gina McClaren] *Careful. Oh so Careful. A glob of glue scraped onto the ugly grey scar where her heel was formerly affixed to her shoe. A long strand of hair threatens to muddle up the mix, swept back over her shoulder as she purses her lips and blows on the glue. Kora's low voice thrums like a single sound wave below the burble of the fountain, and Gina's distracting soprano rises in greeting. A shock of lovely tone and gutter-snipe accent, damn near musical.*
Allo loves, ah'm fine. Jes blew a wheel es aul! Be recht as rain an' back on me feet, soon enough! Nae worries!
*As if to illustrate her point, she wiggles the heel, and finding no give, slips her shoes back on and rises to her full 5 feet. A dust of her dress for decency's sake, and she's on her way with a wave.*
There we are loves. Be fine!
[Trent Brumby] The book is held in his hand, glanced over before he holds it against his side, fingers wrapped around the binding and thumb splayed across the back cover. He likes the way her voice sounds in his ear, but he tilts his head to look over in the direction Kora's indicating. His gaze slips over Gina, remembering her from the Kinfolk meeting. Her features are familiar enough that he recognizes her as Kinfolk, not her name - until Kora says it, or even to what Tribe she belongs.
"No, we haven't," he'd answered her. They hadn't, not formally, not that he can remember anyway. He knows that she speaks with some accent he has trouble trying to figure out. That much he remembers.
Looking to her shoes he watches what she's doing, lifting his gaze back to her face as he waits for her to answer the question.
[Kora] Kora and Trent, both of them, tower over Gina. Maybe those heels she just repaired do something to close the distance between them. Still, intent on her heels - and their rapid repair - there's no interval between times for more formal introductions. Gina's on her feet, trilling her goodbyes the moment she's sure the repair has taken, and Kora waves back. It's not a beauty-queen's wave, all forearm, the wrist stiff, the finger's long. It's just a little acknowledgment, accompanied by the supple curve of her expressive mouth.
"'Night," Kora calls out, in the kinswoman's wake. " - be safe, yeah?" Lifting her voice only with the last before she turns back to Trent. In just these few moments, the sun has slipped beneath the horizon. The quality of light has changed. The park is all lost in shadow except for the artificial lights of the fountain, but the sky is illuminated, brilliant - patches of blazing orange and salmon pink, a richer, deeper blue to the east, falling to darkness, gray shadows like smoke against the lake.
"Her name's Gina," Kora supplies, turning back to Trent, standing close and facing him. Her dark eyes dart over his shoulder, though, tracking Gina's path to ensure her safety, at least until the kinswoman is out of sight. " - she's kin, too. To Owl." A supple twist of her brow, and a shake of her pale head. " - I mean, the Striders, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] "I've seen her before, at a meeting and the bonfire," Trent informs her, watching Gina head off into the park. He's about to say she shouldn't be walking alone, he has concerns about that, but holds it back the last moment. Plenty of kinfolk walk around and they're in better knowledge of what could happen then humans are. Nor could they spend their life in fear, stopping their lives because of possibilities.
His attention returns to Kora, brows raising. "How about that dinner? Are you sure you want sausage? I could find us a restaurant nearby." She's always so easy to please. He had a feeling she lived off things like sausages at vendors, whereas he was raised with a more mindful approach towards the foods he was putting inside his body. There are reasons why he is healthy and fit. His Tribe were very conscious about organic foods and everything natural, except, of course, where there's that dislike of an entire gender.
[Kora] "I like those sausages," Kora proclaims, her features in distinct profile to him until Gina has reached some point in the distance where she merges with the shadows, or disappears over the horizon. The distant, extended expression - that quiet look, watchful, concerned perhaps, though not in the way he might have been - that Gina, with her too-small dress and her too-high heels and her too-well displayed cleavage shouldn't walk alone, int he park - that quiet look shifts, becomes more subtly engaged as she looks back to him, reaches out to touch him, just the curve of her hand warm at the edge of his waist before the touch falls away.
" - he even has the good buns, all crusty, like a baguette." She finishes the thought, doubtlessly confirming his feeling about the way she lives - gas station burritos and hot dogs from the street vendors. Chinese take-out to break it up, and start the cycle again.
"I'm not exactly dressed for a restaurant," she says, glancing down the line of her body with a distinct air of unconcern. These are her work clothes, dedicated to her body and her spirit. He has seen them too many times to count. Has seen her scrubbing them blood out of them. Has scrubbed the blood out, sometimes, himself. The black t-shirt is warm for the summer, but it hides the blood well. " - but if you were to find us a pub, I wouldn't say no."
[Trent Brumby] "Sausage it is. I'm sure you're hungry enough to have one of those tide you over until we find a pub, with good beer." He knows which ones are good enough to go to, not because of their beer, but because of their reputation. Trent, working in security, knows which has the violent drunkenness and those that have no need, as well as where crowds tend to go on what night. Already he has a few in mind and by the time he gets to the car he'd figure out where they were going.
For now he's glancing around the area. "Where's this vendor?" His free hand reached around to touch her back, not so much to guide her, as simply feel her under his hand. Its rare that the two of them can be around one another without a need, and it's only part to do with attraction, really. He responds to her on a different level.
[Kora] "Hah." He can feel her laughter more than he hears it. It is a subtle change in the lean torsion of his spine underneath his hand, the sense of energy withheld, subsumed beneath her skin. She gives him a bright look, sidelong. "He's around the way, nearer the lake. The umbrella he has looks like the Italian flag." Then, with a subtle bump of her hip, Kora starts walking, her gait quick, long-legged and efficient, though not quite ground-devouring.
"I'm starving," she says, the half-smile twisted across her mouth deepening briefly when he falls into step alongside her. " - I know it's not organic soy yogurt with flax seed omega 7 oils," maybe she has rummaged through his fridge. "So I'll come by, after." Her tone is deceptively light, mild and easy, but her voice is always low. The air is warm and sweet, the wind from the lake refreshing against the humidity left behind by the day's rains. "Help you work it off."
[Trent Brumby] Taking off after her, he finds that he has to put in extra work to keep up. Trent is usually the sort that strolls when he's walking, unless he has somewhere to be in a hurry and then it's almost a jog. Now he's using the full length of his stride to keep up with her, and he appreciates that she's not one of those five foot women that he nearly trips over.
Before he can say anything else though, he's laughing rich. It's rare for him to laugh, he sometimes grins, or smirks, or has that under the breath sort of chuckle, but now he laughs, greatly humoured. He's a little embarrassed too, knowing that she takes in all the details about his life and hasn't got a problem calling him out on them. Honestly, though, he doesn't mind. The laughter sobers, but his smile remains and his gray eyes shine. "Promise? It's tempting enough to go to a burger place or a pizza cafe."
[Kora] "Pinky-swear," she assures him, with this level sort of voice, her expressive mouth curled around the world, her eyes gleaming just enough to suggest a subtle edge of irony to the words. Her chin is high, her pale head swept aside, their path around the fountain kept in her peripheral vision, not her direct line of sight. There are a handful of other couples out tonight, small knots of family groups, a cluster of Japanese tourists, cameras out, filming the illuminated waters of the fountain, waiting for the next show.
Kora walks through the line of the tourists' shots without noticing them. Years from now, the pair of them will be preserved on some stranger's vacation video, pale head and dark, nearly of a height, backgrounded by the constant display of the turn of the century fountain. She has her hand held up to him the pinky out, wiggling, her smile crooked at the corners of the expression, her eyes bright with reflected light on his face.
[Trent Brumby] Laughing again, he shook his head with crinkles at the edges of his eyes and slides his hand from her back to hook his pinky finger with hers. Its not something he's done, not even as a child, but he's seen plenty of girls do it. Boys spit in palms and shake, girls did this dainty thing that he finds himself doing, without qualm, in the middle of Grant Park.
He doesn't leave it there though, after letting go of her finger, his fingers curl around his wrist. He doesn't pull her closer, but steps in to block her path instead, letting her meet his body if she doesn't halt before. Trent's going to kiss her. She knows the signs, the fleeting glance to her mouth before his eyes flick up and meet hers again and the way his head tilts slightly towards the right as he leans in. "It's good to see you," he tells her in a murmur, seeking her lips in a rather chaste kiss, but the lingering sort that promises more.
Every time he sees her, he's grateful, knowing that one day, they weren't going to catch up for dinner or she was not going to knock on his door, or leave a text message on his phone. Every day is a blessing.
[Kora] Trent turns to block her path, and Kora walks in to his body as if it were the most natural thing to do. As if she fit into the space between them, just so.
This close, her eyes lose the definition of color, become little more than pools of reflective shadow, shadowed by the scrim of her pale lashes. She knows the signs - can see them as if time were dilating by now, can measure them out against her heart beat, which grows faster just from his closeness. He glances at her mouth, and she's smiling for him; the smile is a private thing, as intimate as the direct look in her dark eyes when his eyes find her own again. She shares it with him. She shares it with no one else.
In the loose circles of his grasp, her wrist seems delicate. It's the stark edge of bone beneath her skin, the way her tendons stand around against the inner hollow when she flexes her fingers to follow his touch, to twine her fingers with his, and reaches up - belatedly, to curl her free arm around his neck, her forearm on his right shoulder. While the kiss lingers, she twines her fingers into his hair, cradling his head. Her book is at his side, or caught between them. A hard edge.
Her mouth rises to follow his when the lingering kiss ends. No - not to follow his, she brushes past his lips, and her mouth finds his ear.
"I'm glad you came," her voice, low, has a meditative quality to it, the rhythm a low tattoo against his ear. "I knew you would."
[Trent Brumby] He likes the way she curls herself around him, even if its just an arm in public, and the way she twines their fingers together. Her book is safely in his opposite hand, still resting against his side. He is mindful of it, like he is mindful of her, aware of how close she is, how her mood shifts and the way she pays attention not only to him, but to all around her.
Smiling as she drifts, teasing, past his mouth to his ear, it only increased with her words. "As if I would do any less," he tells her, dropping his mouth down to kiss her neck at the junction where her jaw and ear meet above. A second kiss follows, lingering breath across her skin as his lips trail up to kiss her jaw.
"Let's get you some food, before you waste away." He knows its dangerous for them to continue to be this close to one another. It always ends in one way, and he's not sure he could or would say no to her, even being in public, and neither of them needed to get arrested for public indecency.
[Kora] This is the view he has of her: in profile, her eyes half-closed. There's light nearby. It is artificial and it catches out the prominences of her face - her cheek bones, the line of her jaw - washing out the hollows with amber tinted shadows. Her eyes are hooded, her mouth near his ear, her profile a series of stark shadows, mouth half-open, eyes half-closed. When he kisses her at the junction of her jaw and ear, her hand contracts in his hair, pulling tight against the fine, closesly cropped black strands.
He kisses her again and her teeth close over the flesh of his earlobe. Whatever space exists between their bodies disappears as she steps into him again, closing enough that he can feel the rise and fall of her breasts against his chest with every deliberate breath she takes.
...before you waste away.
She smiles around his earlobe; her lips are soft, her teeth are sharp, which gives the expression something of a razor edge, felt rather than seen. "I'm in danger of it." she allows, her voice low and rich as she pulls back just, blowing a warm breath across his ear to soothe the bite. "And you," she continues, pulling back, brushing her cheek against his to feel the scratch of his stubble against her skin. "You need some incentive for a good evening's work out, yeah?"
She's laughing again as she peels herself deliberately away from him, one of those wholly quiet laughs that sparks in her eyes and curves her mouth. Her body, though - tall and lean - has that liminal sense of tension that makes her stand just so - aware of him, alive to him, ready to -
- bump her hip into his when she has detangled herself from him as she brushes past him, toward the vendor ahead of them, who is starting to shut down for the night, who has the last few sausages on the grill, and is pulling the cold sodas out of the sloshing icewater in the orange cooler he has sitting out in front of his stand.
[Trent Brumby] Pulling on his hair makes his breath come out sharper, and anyone would think that it wasn't hair that she had gripped and tugged, at least not with the sort of sound that was faint, lodged somewhere deep in his throat. She was encouraging him and she knew it as much as he did. He steals her lobe into his mouth with his tongue and drags his teeth softly across it, releasing it before she's bitten his - which draws another of those sounds, more appreciative then surprised.
He's laughing low as she tells him he needs more incentive. "Anymore and we might be skipping dinner altogether." His words follow her past him, his hand having dropped from hers to let her walk beyond where he stood. Turning, he follows after her, enjoying the way she walked and the way she lit up the area (to his eyes, anyway).
But he spies, beyond her, the vendor shutting up and quickens his pace. His voice raises, calls out to the man as he lifts his wallet from his pocket and into the air. "Wait up, man. We're after some food." There was no way Kora was missing out.
[Kora] She makes some noise in the back of her throat, already three steps ahead of him, and casts him a glance back over the line of her shoulder. Her t-shirt is black, it recedes into the shadows, so her face is a pale wash above it. They have barely scratched the surface of summer, but her hair seems blonder, somehow, bleached at the crown from exposure to the sun.
She is laughing, still sub-vocal, but this time the laughter does not dissipate the smoldering heat in her dark eyes, which spark against the darkness with reflected lie from the fountain. The look she gives him is long, raking, appreciative, lingering on certain lines of his body, the cut of his obliques shadowed against his shirt, the hard, trim line of his waist.
Between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., the line for Italian sausages is a ten minute wait at least, with only the spray of the fountain for relief from the heat of of the blazing sun. The plaza is paved over, concrete and stone, stone and concrete, the planting contained in concrete berms or great wooden barrels, the trees protected behind iron cages - and these are spindly things, flowering ornamentals bred for prettiness rather than the great oaks and chestnuts, the maples and birch trees native to the eastern US.
Now, though - there's nothing like a line. There's no one else, just the vendor - a middle-aged man of unclear ethnicity beyond the drooping black mustache he seems to believe marks him as Italian - dumping out the slurry of largely melted ice over the sidewalk. He looks up as Trent calls out to him, pauses, hands wet from fishing out the unsold cans of soda.
"I'll give you," he pursues his mouth, the droopy mustache slumped comically over his upper lip as he looks at the remaining sausages turning slowly on the grill. "You can have everything cooked for five bucks. For $7.50, I'll throw in sodas of your choice."
Upending the cooler to let the rest of the water drain away, he heads back behind the gleaming stainless cart, waiting for the momentary okay from Trent before he dishes up and out what remains of the sausages on crusty rolls, topping them with pepper and onions. He's already put the ketchup and cheese away, but Kora is a purist, wouldn't take them anyhow.
[Trent Brumby] "Done." He's glowing under the surface, and it shows, not in the way skin glows in a woman, but the way he holds himself taller, more broadly, like a cock strutting for attention. Except he's not looking for attention, he's just more sure of himself and his body after the way Kora eyed it appreciatively. Its worth those hours in the gym and the careful eating regime that he keeps.
Her book is tucked under his arm as he fishes out some money from his wallet. He's not worried about the change as hands over a ten, leaving it on the clean surface of the cart somewhere so he can put back his wallet into his pocket and have free hands for the sausages, which are handed towards Kora. "Pick your sodas," he tells her quietly, not about to let her go without. It's warm and stuffy out anyway.
Once was all said and done, they have food and drinks and the Italian vendor gets a, "Thanks," before he's moving on with his mate to go and find somewhere to sit or to walk and eat, either which way works for him.
[Kora] Eek. Apologies Simon! Pip has to play chauffeur, and I need to sleep in short order. We are going to fade our scene out there.
Next time, man!
to Simon, Trent Brumby
Hey. Who knew she knew how to do that? His phone vibrated or beeped or sang at him, and he replied - yeah - or k or called her back, found his way into her voice mail, left a message in the ether. Or he didn't.
Now the gray day has become a strangely clear twilight. Sometime between the dinner hour and now, the storm front moved off into the east and the sun came out. The sidewalks are damp, strewn with puddles, the trees gleam and the grass is a sinking, sodden morass. Here and there are flooded streets - from overwhelmed storm sewers, near low-lying creeks - and the Chicago River is both high and churned up, muddied, solid looking rather than merely murky.
The night is warm, the air steamy from the rain. The lights at Buckingham Fountain are on, but there are few enough tourists out tonight. Everyone has found something else to do, under cover somewhere - the movies or the museums, some show, a beer with friends.
Kora sits on the pediment edging the fountain, cross-legged. When the wind rises, the spray from the jets catches her in the edge of its arc. The water is cold, pointillist, refreshing. She doesn't move. There's a book open in her lap, but she pays it little more than half-a-mind, contemplating the sunset visible behind the skyscrapers, the night sky clotted with clouds. Or the crows, the people who circle, buy a soda or a hot dog from the vendors, wait for the next big display at the fountain.
[Gina McClaren] *Green crunches underfoot. Gina out far later than she would like tonight, in far less clothing than she ought to feel comfortable in. She's dressed to draw attention away from nimble wallet seeking fingers, and towards the curve of ample caramel cleavage. That is to say, she's in the sort of dress that should have bongo drums playing as an accessory. Instead, her bangles clink and clatter as the pikey picks her way barefoot through the crisply mowed grass, mangled shoes in her hand, little brown kin alert for any dog muck in the dewy grass.*
[Trent Brumby] The text had been replied with a call and a voice message left. He will be there, roughly what time he can make it and will meet her fountain.
True to his word, his shift had changed over and he had enough time to head home and change his clothes. Faded jeans and a buttoned down shirt, with a pair of leather loafers seems his casual clothes. Kora knows he has slacks, more shirts, has some sweatpants and t.shirts or work gear. But he tends to adopt jeans and short sleeved shirts for most days. Tonight isn't any different, but he has a jacket in the car if he needs it later.
He's approaching the Garou at the fountain with a quiet smile in his pale coloured eyes. It's not until he's a few feet away that he raises his voice to talk to her. "Hey Kora." He doesn't call her honey, sweetcakes or anything of the sort. Always by name, so far. His gaze flicks down to the book in her lap, curious to what it is, but he doesn't ask, raising his gaze to meet her gaze.
"You're all wet."
[Kora] There are few enough pockets to pick tonight - some couples, some college kids. An artist at the edge of the square, painting not the sunset that blazes behind the city to the west, but the changing shadows colors of descending darkness over the lake to the east. Kora catches sight of Gina, crunching barefoot through the grass, saturated from the drenching rains of the afternoon and offers the kinswoman a faint lift of her chin by way of recognition. The creature's dark eyes linger there several moments longer - looking for signs of distress behind the mangled shoes dangling from her hands.
Then - Trent arrives, and Kora's attention cuts to the kinsman. Her eyes are on him as he rounds the corner on the path from the parking lot, gleaming in the fingers of dying sunlight that cut through the city's long shadows. It's too dark to read, really, except for the glow from the fountain all lit up for the evening. The text in the book, whatever it is, has the look of poetry. There's as much blank space as there are black letters.
She lifts her chin when he's close enough to call out her name, giving him a sideswept look, quick and subtle, accompanied by a curving half-smile.
"Hey," her voice is low, her left cheek dappled with water droplets, errant spray from the fountain. These, too, catch the light. You're all wet, he says, and she shakes her pale head no. "Not all," she corrects, closing the book in her lap and unfolding her long legs to stand up. " - just a little bit, like running through the sprinkler when you're a kid, yeah?
"How was your day?"
[Gina McClaren] *Fountain lights cast a halogen pallor over the soft planes of Gina's face, strider kin walking through the misty corona to settle on the water feature's stone edge, a smile flashed to Kora and her man, warm and fleeting as the fading sunshine purpling the sky. Then its on to business, inspecting the shoes in her hand, a broken heel turned over in her fingers, mud crumbling from its spike. Satisfied its salavagable, its set down, a thin tube of Krazy Glue plucked from the kinfolks satchel. It wasn't classy, but it was Diva on a dime.*
[Trent Brumby] He's smiling as she gets off the fountains edge to stand with him. Reaching out he wipes his thumb down her cheek, smearing away droplets to wet the rest of her skin, to try and wipe it away. Its just an excuse to touch her, really. "Busy," he answers simply.
Tucking his hand into his pockets, he watches her. "What would you like for dinner?" His wallet is tucked into his opposite pocket along with his phone and his keys, making the pocket hang a little heavier under his hip. This close he smells like faint cologne, freshly showered with earth-friendly soaps that Kora knows so well now.
He offers to take her book for her, palm up with a glance towards it then towards her face. A hand would do, if she'd rather. He's relaxed and in good spirits tonight, with a little more energy bubbling up towards the usually quiet demeanor.
[Kora] Kora's clothes are old and worn. Anyone who knows her knows them by now: a black PIXIES t-shirt, old jeans, pale from too many washings, and black boots. She has a handful of bracelets on either wrist, and a thin black leather cord around her neck. Up close, it is clear that the leather piece is braided together. From a distance, it is just a dark line against her pale skin.
Her hair is up, pulled back from her face, the fine strands twisted into a knot and left to hang on their own weight, the mass secured by a number 2 pencil, all stark and yellow. There are graphite smudges on her hand, too, as she turns her head, just, into his touch and hands over the book.
It's Beowulf. Or rather, it's Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf from Old English into modern English, written back into free verse.
"One of the street carts around here had Italian sausage, with peppers and onions. That sounds ridiculously good to me." Impromptu, al fresco. She stands close enough that she can nudge him with her hip, lift her chin over his shoulder toward Gina. "Have you guys met?" That's low voiced, private, she asks as she breathes in his familiar colonge, then lifts her voice to the Gina, seated at the fountain's edge, repairing her heel.
"Gina," Kora's voice is still low, but it carries, underneath the sound of the fountain, really - some different texture. There is a moment of stillness, focusing on the shoe, the broken heel. The superglue the kinswoman has in hand. " - you okay?"
[Gina McClaren] *Careful. Oh so Careful. A glob of glue scraped onto the ugly grey scar where her heel was formerly affixed to her shoe. A long strand of hair threatens to muddle up the mix, swept back over her shoulder as she purses her lips and blows on the glue. Kora's low voice thrums like a single sound wave below the burble of the fountain, and Gina's distracting soprano rises in greeting. A shock of lovely tone and gutter-snipe accent, damn near musical.*
Allo loves, ah'm fine. Jes blew a wheel es aul! Be recht as rain an' back on me feet, soon enough! Nae worries!
*As if to illustrate her point, she wiggles the heel, and finding no give, slips her shoes back on and rises to her full 5 feet. A dust of her dress for decency's sake, and she's on her way with a wave.*
There we are loves. Be fine!
[Trent Brumby] The book is held in his hand, glanced over before he holds it against his side, fingers wrapped around the binding and thumb splayed across the back cover. He likes the way her voice sounds in his ear, but he tilts his head to look over in the direction Kora's indicating. His gaze slips over Gina, remembering her from the Kinfolk meeting. Her features are familiar enough that he recognizes her as Kinfolk, not her name - until Kora says it, or even to what Tribe she belongs.
"No, we haven't," he'd answered her. They hadn't, not formally, not that he can remember anyway. He knows that she speaks with some accent he has trouble trying to figure out. That much he remembers.
Looking to her shoes he watches what she's doing, lifting his gaze back to her face as he waits for her to answer the question.
[Kora] Kora and Trent, both of them, tower over Gina. Maybe those heels she just repaired do something to close the distance between them. Still, intent on her heels - and their rapid repair - there's no interval between times for more formal introductions. Gina's on her feet, trilling her goodbyes the moment she's sure the repair has taken, and Kora waves back. It's not a beauty-queen's wave, all forearm, the wrist stiff, the finger's long. It's just a little acknowledgment, accompanied by the supple curve of her expressive mouth.
"'Night," Kora calls out, in the kinswoman's wake. " - be safe, yeah?" Lifting her voice only with the last before she turns back to Trent. In just these few moments, the sun has slipped beneath the horizon. The quality of light has changed. The park is all lost in shadow except for the artificial lights of the fountain, but the sky is illuminated, brilliant - patches of blazing orange and salmon pink, a richer, deeper blue to the east, falling to darkness, gray shadows like smoke against the lake.
"Her name's Gina," Kora supplies, turning back to Trent, standing close and facing him. Her dark eyes dart over his shoulder, though, tracking Gina's path to ensure her safety, at least until the kinswoman is out of sight. " - she's kin, too. To Owl." A supple twist of her brow, and a shake of her pale head. " - I mean, the Striders, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] "I've seen her before, at a meeting and the bonfire," Trent informs her, watching Gina head off into the park. He's about to say she shouldn't be walking alone, he has concerns about that, but holds it back the last moment. Plenty of kinfolk walk around and they're in better knowledge of what could happen then humans are. Nor could they spend their life in fear, stopping their lives because of possibilities.
His attention returns to Kora, brows raising. "How about that dinner? Are you sure you want sausage? I could find us a restaurant nearby." She's always so easy to please. He had a feeling she lived off things like sausages at vendors, whereas he was raised with a more mindful approach towards the foods he was putting inside his body. There are reasons why he is healthy and fit. His Tribe were very conscious about organic foods and everything natural, except, of course, where there's that dislike of an entire gender.
[Kora] "I like those sausages," Kora proclaims, her features in distinct profile to him until Gina has reached some point in the distance where she merges with the shadows, or disappears over the horizon. The distant, extended expression - that quiet look, watchful, concerned perhaps, though not in the way he might have been - that Gina, with her too-small dress and her too-high heels and her too-well displayed cleavage shouldn't walk alone, int he park - that quiet look shifts, becomes more subtly engaged as she looks back to him, reaches out to touch him, just the curve of her hand warm at the edge of his waist before the touch falls away.
" - he even has the good buns, all crusty, like a baguette." She finishes the thought, doubtlessly confirming his feeling about the way she lives - gas station burritos and hot dogs from the street vendors. Chinese take-out to break it up, and start the cycle again.
"I'm not exactly dressed for a restaurant," she says, glancing down the line of her body with a distinct air of unconcern. These are her work clothes, dedicated to her body and her spirit. He has seen them too many times to count. Has seen her scrubbing them blood out of them. Has scrubbed the blood out, sometimes, himself. The black t-shirt is warm for the summer, but it hides the blood well. " - but if you were to find us a pub, I wouldn't say no."
[Trent Brumby] "Sausage it is. I'm sure you're hungry enough to have one of those tide you over until we find a pub, with good beer." He knows which ones are good enough to go to, not because of their beer, but because of their reputation. Trent, working in security, knows which has the violent drunkenness and those that have no need, as well as where crowds tend to go on what night. Already he has a few in mind and by the time he gets to the car he'd figure out where they were going.
For now he's glancing around the area. "Where's this vendor?" His free hand reached around to touch her back, not so much to guide her, as simply feel her under his hand. Its rare that the two of them can be around one another without a need, and it's only part to do with attraction, really. He responds to her on a different level.
[Kora] "Hah." He can feel her laughter more than he hears it. It is a subtle change in the lean torsion of his spine underneath his hand, the sense of energy withheld, subsumed beneath her skin. She gives him a bright look, sidelong. "He's around the way, nearer the lake. The umbrella he has looks like the Italian flag." Then, with a subtle bump of her hip, Kora starts walking, her gait quick, long-legged and efficient, though not quite ground-devouring.
"I'm starving," she says, the half-smile twisted across her mouth deepening briefly when he falls into step alongside her. " - I know it's not organic soy yogurt with flax seed omega 7 oils," maybe she has rummaged through his fridge. "So I'll come by, after." Her tone is deceptively light, mild and easy, but her voice is always low. The air is warm and sweet, the wind from the lake refreshing against the humidity left behind by the day's rains. "Help you work it off."
[Trent Brumby] Taking off after her, he finds that he has to put in extra work to keep up. Trent is usually the sort that strolls when he's walking, unless he has somewhere to be in a hurry and then it's almost a jog. Now he's using the full length of his stride to keep up with her, and he appreciates that she's not one of those five foot women that he nearly trips over.
Before he can say anything else though, he's laughing rich. It's rare for him to laugh, he sometimes grins, or smirks, or has that under the breath sort of chuckle, but now he laughs, greatly humoured. He's a little embarrassed too, knowing that she takes in all the details about his life and hasn't got a problem calling him out on them. Honestly, though, he doesn't mind. The laughter sobers, but his smile remains and his gray eyes shine. "Promise? It's tempting enough to go to a burger place or a pizza cafe."
[Kora] "Pinky-swear," she assures him, with this level sort of voice, her expressive mouth curled around the world, her eyes gleaming just enough to suggest a subtle edge of irony to the words. Her chin is high, her pale head swept aside, their path around the fountain kept in her peripheral vision, not her direct line of sight. There are a handful of other couples out tonight, small knots of family groups, a cluster of Japanese tourists, cameras out, filming the illuminated waters of the fountain, waiting for the next show.
Kora walks through the line of the tourists' shots without noticing them. Years from now, the pair of them will be preserved on some stranger's vacation video, pale head and dark, nearly of a height, backgrounded by the constant display of the turn of the century fountain. She has her hand held up to him the pinky out, wiggling, her smile crooked at the corners of the expression, her eyes bright with reflected light on his face.
[Trent Brumby] Laughing again, he shook his head with crinkles at the edges of his eyes and slides his hand from her back to hook his pinky finger with hers. Its not something he's done, not even as a child, but he's seen plenty of girls do it. Boys spit in palms and shake, girls did this dainty thing that he finds himself doing, without qualm, in the middle of Grant Park.
He doesn't leave it there though, after letting go of her finger, his fingers curl around his wrist. He doesn't pull her closer, but steps in to block her path instead, letting her meet his body if she doesn't halt before. Trent's going to kiss her. She knows the signs, the fleeting glance to her mouth before his eyes flick up and meet hers again and the way his head tilts slightly towards the right as he leans in. "It's good to see you," he tells her in a murmur, seeking her lips in a rather chaste kiss, but the lingering sort that promises more.
Every time he sees her, he's grateful, knowing that one day, they weren't going to catch up for dinner or she was not going to knock on his door, or leave a text message on his phone. Every day is a blessing.
[Kora] Trent turns to block her path, and Kora walks in to his body as if it were the most natural thing to do. As if she fit into the space between them, just so.
This close, her eyes lose the definition of color, become little more than pools of reflective shadow, shadowed by the scrim of her pale lashes. She knows the signs - can see them as if time were dilating by now, can measure them out against her heart beat, which grows faster just from his closeness. He glances at her mouth, and she's smiling for him; the smile is a private thing, as intimate as the direct look in her dark eyes when his eyes find her own again. She shares it with him. She shares it with no one else.
In the loose circles of his grasp, her wrist seems delicate. It's the stark edge of bone beneath her skin, the way her tendons stand around against the inner hollow when she flexes her fingers to follow his touch, to twine her fingers with his, and reaches up - belatedly, to curl her free arm around his neck, her forearm on his right shoulder. While the kiss lingers, she twines her fingers into his hair, cradling his head. Her book is at his side, or caught between them. A hard edge.
Her mouth rises to follow his when the lingering kiss ends. No - not to follow his, she brushes past his lips, and her mouth finds his ear.
"I'm glad you came," her voice, low, has a meditative quality to it, the rhythm a low tattoo against his ear. "I knew you would."
[Trent Brumby] He likes the way she curls herself around him, even if its just an arm in public, and the way she twines their fingers together. Her book is safely in his opposite hand, still resting against his side. He is mindful of it, like he is mindful of her, aware of how close she is, how her mood shifts and the way she pays attention not only to him, but to all around her.
Smiling as she drifts, teasing, past his mouth to his ear, it only increased with her words. "As if I would do any less," he tells her, dropping his mouth down to kiss her neck at the junction where her jaw and ear meet above. A second kiss follows, lingering breath across her skin as his lips trail up to kiss her jaw.
"Let's get you some food, before you waste away." He knows its dangerous for them to continue to be this close to one another. It always ends in one way, and he's not sure he could or would say no to her, even being in public, and neither of them needed to get arrested for public indecency.
[Kora] This is the view he has of her: in profile, her eyes half-closed. There's light nearby. It is artificial and it catches out the prominences of her face - her cheek bones, the line of her jaw - washing out the hollows with amber tinted shadows. Her eyes are hooded, her mouth near his ear, her profile a series of stark shadows, mouth half-open, eyes half-closed. When he kisses her at the junction of her jaw and ear, her hand contracts in his hair, pulling tight against the fine, closesly cropped black strands.
He kisses her again and her teeth close over the flesh of his earlobe. Whatever space exists between their bodies disappears as she steps into him again, closing enough that he can feel the rise and fall of her breasts against his chest with every deliberate breath she takes.
...before you waste away.
She smiles around his earlobe; her lips are soft, her teeth are sharp, which gives the expression something of a razor edge, felt rather than seen. "I'm in danger of it." she allows, her voice low and rich as she pulls back just, blowing a warm breath across his ear to soothe the bite. "And you," she continues, pulling back, brushing her cheek against his to feel the scratch of his stubble against her skin. "You need some incentive for a good evening's work out, yeah?"
She's laughing again as she peels herself deliberately away from him, one of those wholly quiet laughs that sparks in her eyes and curves her mouth. Her body, though - tall and lean - has that liminal sense of tension that makes her stand just so - aware of him, alive to him, ready to -
- bump her hip into his when she has detangled herself from him as she brushes past him, toward the vendor ahead of them, who is starting to shut down for the night, who has the last few sausages on the grill, and is pulling the cold sodas out of the sloshing icewater in the orange cooler he has sitting out in front of his stand.
[Trent Brumby] Pulling on his hair makes his breath come out sharper, and anyone would think that it wasn't hair that she had gripped and tugged, at least not with the sort of sound that was faint, lodged somewhere deep in his throat. She was encouraging him and she knew it as much as he did. He steals her lobe into his mouth with his tongue and drags his teeth softly across it, releasing it before she's bitten his - which draws another of those sounds, more appreciative then surprised.
He's laughing low as she tells him he needs more incentive. "Anymore and we might be skipping dinner altogether." His words follow her past him, his hand having dropped from hers to let her walk beyond where he stood. Turning, he follows after her, enjoying the way she walked and the way she lit up the area (to his eyes, anyway).
But he spies, beyond her, the vendor shutting up and quickens his pace. His voice raises, calls out to the man as he lifts his wallet from his pocket and into the air. "Wait up, man. We're after some food." There was no way Kora was missing out.
[Kora] She makes some noise in the back of her throat, already three steps ahead of him, and casts him a glance back over the line of her shoulder. Her t-shirt is black, it recedes into the shadows, so her face is a pale wash above it. They have barely scratched the surface of summer, but her hair seems blonder, somehow, bleached at the crown from exposure to the sun.
She is laughing, still sub-vocal, but this time the laughter does not dissipate the smoldering heat in her dark eyes, which spark against the darkness with reflected lie from the fountain. The look she gives him is long, raking, appreciative, lingering on certain lines of his body, the cut of his obliques shadowed against his shirt, the hard, trim line of his waist.
Between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., the line for Italian sausages is a ten minute wait at least, with only the spray of the fountain for relief from the heat of of the blazing sun. The plaza is paved over, concrete and stone, stone and concrete, the planting contained in concrete berms or great wooden barrels, the trees protected behind iron cages - and these are spindly things, flowering ornamentals bred for prettiness rather than the great oaks and chestnuts, the maples and birch trees native to the eastern US.
Now, though - there's nothing like a line. There's no one else, just the vendor - a middle-aged man of unclear ethnicity beyond the drooping black mustache he seems to believe marks him as Italian - dumping out the slurry of largely melted ice over the sidewalk. He looks up as Trent calls out to him, pauses, hands wet from fishing out the unsold cans of soda.
"I'll give you," he pursues his mouth, the droopy mustache slumped comically over his upper lip as he looks at the remaining sausages turning slowly on the grill. "You can have everything cooked for five bucks. For $7.50, I'll throw in sodas of your choice."
Upending the cooler to let the rest of the water drain away, he heads back behind the gleaming stainless cart, waiting for the momentary okay from Trent before he dishes up and out what remains of the sausages on crusty rolls, topping them with pepper and onions. He's already put the ketchup and cheese away, but Kora is a purist, wouldn't take them anyhow.
[Trent Brumby] "Done." He's glowing under the surface, and it shows, not in the way skin glows in a woman, but the way he holds himself taller, more broadly, like a cock strutting for attention. Except he's not looking for attention, he's just more sure of himself and his body after the way Kora eyed it appreciatively. Its worth those hours in the gym and the careful eating regime that he keeps.
Her book is tucked under his arm as he fishes out some money from his wallet. He's not worried about the change as hands over a ten, leaving it on the clean surface of the cart somewhere so he can put back his wallet into his pocket and have free hands for the sausages, which are handed towards Kora. "Pick your sodas," he tells her quietly, not about to let her go without. It's warm and stuffy out anyway.
Once was all said and done, they have food and drinks and the Italian vendor gets a, "Thanks," before he's moving on with his mate to go and find somewhere to sit or to walk and eat, either which way works for him.
[Kora] Eek. Apologies Simon! Pip has to play chauffeur, and I need to sleep in short order. We are going to fade our scene out there.
Next time, man!
to Simon, Trent Brumby
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