[House of the Unbelievable]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[House of the Unbelievable]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[House of the Unbelievable]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[Sorrow] Cloud Gate is almost like a door. This human-made thing, just metal and glass, undulating like a kidney, like an organ - which is to say, organic, without right angles, a thousand thousand people walking through it, beneath it, around it, reflected across its gleaming surface day and day and day and night and night and night, as if the gate were a monster in an egg, dreaming itself back into the world.
- it is easier to step sideways, here. Somehow, this one act of public art, or rather - the hundred daily acts of public art reflected in its undulant surface - bring their bifurcated worlds closer together. The new-made thing has a distinctive umbral presence that few such wholly human things can manage without an age and an age again within which to make themselves felt across the worlds, or, at the least, without a rite to awaken them. It's reflection is whole and entire, still shiny, though perhaps less mirror-perfect. Instead, the images that drift across its ghostly surface play out like a stuttering run of half-melted film, dragged out of some underground vault to be projected across the drifting clouds of the sky.
Which is to say: fascinating, meaningful, meaningless.
They are standing at its edge.
"I promise you," Sorrow says, gliding her hand intently over the surface. " - they were here. I saw it yesterday, five times in a row, this whole little story-thing. It was like a love song. A real one, I mean, yeah? Except written in images. Like one of those Folger's commercials, you remember? Where the guy and the woman meet in the lobby and it is all soulful, except a Folger's commercial written by Euripedes. I'd never seen it repeat something like that before."
[House of the Unbelievable] "I don't remember the commercial, but - "
The child (daughter) of Gaia (reverent [faithful]) galliard pauses for a second and tips her head, slow, to the side. As if she can hear music. As if there's a line of quarter notes and half notes, eighth notes and sixteenth notes, inky and black, stuck in her ear, like water -- musician's ear, rather than swimmer's ear. And, as if to confirm this, she hums the bars of the Folger's commercial, mmhmm
" - in your touch." Beat. "I remember the song. I think I remember the song. I never watched much television when I was younger, and more human." The smile she offers Kora is easy, dreamy without wistfulness. She untilts her head, and turns her attention to the ghost-glass, the spirit-glass, the umbral Cloud Gate. Lila doesn't reach out to touch it, but she leans close, closer, closest, meeting her own wide, wide green eyes and the ghost-radiance of half-seen visions which flicker [stutter] uncertainly across the surface.
Then she breathes on it. A couple of quick huffs. Obfuscating. Reaches out to draw a glyph -
insight (vision)
- to trace its curves in the heat her breath has left behind. "If they don't show tonight," she says, equitable, "I want a story instead."
[Sorrow] "I used to watch it - " Sorrow says, standing just back from the spirit glass, from the umbral sculpture that curves so distinctly through the evening, silver-lit by the glow of the weaver's workings that surround them, humming and singing and knitting and marching their perfectly tuned three-note-chords and three-cord-songs. " - when I was especially little, when I was still human. We moved around so much, yeah?" Her eyes are on the moving imagines, constantly changing, as if whatever singular spirit lived inside the cloud gate were made of picasso and pollack and kahlo and marx (both karl and groucho, made whole together). " - and television was this one constant thing, which felt right. When I learned to read, though - "
The Loop is different, just. The Art Museum and the parks, the older buildings, stone and brick and ironwork, the history makes it settled, makes it a place rather than a hollowed out matrix-horror of pattern web and pattern spiders. They're here, of course. They are everywhere, even deep in the Tekakwithwa woods, mirroring the underground utility lines, tracking the power grid as a lone line carries electricity to the ranger's cabin, following the signal of cell phones and smart phones and air cards and sateillites through the dark night sky.
" - I didn't need it anymore. And," - a direct look, a hook-curve of a smile. "I always have a story for you."
There's a subtle pause, neat and acquired. "Here's the beginning of one. Or an end. " This is a story, too. Sorrow offers it as if it were a fortune from a bubblegum wrapper, offers it while she's looking away, watching the glyph disappear back into the spirit-glass. "Silence left sometime before the full moon. The Eagles are gone."
[House of the Unbelievable] I always have a story, Kora says, for you. And Lila's response is this: That her gaze sharpens, just a little; that it becomes a touch more present, clearer, waking. The neat pause wakes a smile, a radiant curve of mouth, which might just be what chased away some of the dreaminess for a second. Then: the story, such as it is.
The cloud gate is mutability, and so, too, are Lila's expressions. Now, something solemn, something strong, slips into her direct gaze, something that has more kinship with stone than any other element (fire and water, dew and air). "He doesn't intend to return, then."
It's a question that isn't quite a question, but Lila watches Silence's tribemate for a sign of that elder's intentions nonetheless. She is sad that he is gone, or something close to it -- and perhaps that's why the solemnity. Lila isn't a moody creature, but she is thoughtful. She is a creature of consideration, howsoever brightly her Rage burns in her breast, howsoever darkly it licks at her bones and seeks to puppet her by the spine.
[Sorrow] "I don't think I can speak to his intent," Kora begins, her own dark eyes returning to Lila, drifting away from the constantly play of (remembered) reflections in the surface of the spirit gate. There's an answering solemnity in the Fenrir woman too; this is the space where things change. The Eagles who raised the Caern have all flown away, except for their dead, their too-numerous dead, mixed with the earth beneath the tarmac of the spirit they found. Of the spirit, the massive, immutable, roiling spirit, that found them. Still, her mouth - that curve, the right corner higher than the left, it is wry underneath the sorrow over things that pass. " - you know? but he's been called to be a Warclaw, so I'd say he won't be returning, except in passing."
Because things pass. One thing dies, a new thing comes. The world moves beneath their feet, is moving now, this great fragile disc of blue and white, framed in a black, airless expanse, breathing and dreaming and swimming with life and with death, with a war, underneath the surface of the thing, for life and for death, the right of both to be natural, full of grace, which is not to say: easy.
This isn't easy. Sorrow says it easily, though. "Joe and I are taking what we can of the old territory. And Thomas, too, when he's back of course. It's important, the north flank of the Caern, and held so long. We couldn't let it just - drift away, you know? Fall back into the world."
[House of the Unbelievable] This is the thing about Lila: she wears authority well; as if she has worn it far longer than she has, as if she had more years than she does, as if she was older, as if she were wise, as if she'd seen things, as if she knew where she stood, knew how to stand. Difficult, then, to pinpoint her age precisely; difficult, too, to parse the trick she has of enjoying herself -- of being enjoyment, as simply, as utterly as if she were the spirit of, when she can also be this creature called by the moon to remember, to be mad with remembering, to exhale the dust of the new-dead and old, to see footsteps and pawprints, to be able to howl them. Anyone can do it, but not all are called - no.
"This year," she says. "This year has been heavy," she says. "Not too heavy," she says, a lilt to the corner of her mouth; it isn't wry. "But heavy; I hope summer crowns us all in gold, and by the end, we've crowned our foes in red, shown them how to fall down with the season, while we - " a beat. "We stand."
This, then - interest: "I'll pass the word along." That all of the Eagles territory isn't unprotected now. "And," she adds, "Thank you." Thank you, for doing the honorable thing: thank you, for taking the territory on. She means it, too. "Speaking of Thomas, have you heard from him? When I gave him those quests, I didn't expect them to take him out of the city for so long - " there. Lila is fey. She isn't blinking; she doesn't, not too often. " - but I know," here, then, is wryness, "that the spiritworld isn't always predictable."
[Sorrow] "I need a beer for that one," says Kora, quiet, back. The year has been heavy. She wears it around her shoulders, she wears it in her spine. She breathes it when she sleeps, all this promised lost, dreams the dead into being, dreams the past into the present. " - to toast and make it real. Or a glass of good Scotch. Or a mug of mead, like they've got in Valhalla, the sort that tastes of sunlight and those golden fields the Voluspa promises us.
"Which means," says Kora, continuing, quiet, her voice low, her mouth quirked, alive to the bittersweet awareness of Lila's hope - of Lila's prophecy - for the summer to come. " - that I'm buying you a drink, next time we're walking on the other side."
Then Thomas: "Oh," she continues, shaking her head. " - we've not heard from him, but we can still feel him. Far enough away to be back of the mind, but close enough to know he's still on this side, not the other. He'll be back, soon enough. We'll take a few more streets back, then."
A supple curve of her shoulders, the faintest of shrugs. "Until then, if you need to find us - we're not taking the old Eagles' dockhouse. Too private, yeah? There's this church, those - huge place, one of those neogothic marvels that remind of the old world, without invoking it, precisely - abandoned for years. It is easy to find when you start looking for it, just a few blocks away from the docks, near enough to the river that you can see the river when you look out from the belltower."
[House of the Unbelievable] "There is a meadery in the state of New York," Lila says, smiling fully now, both corners of her mouth; her smile is a luminous thing, and unfettered. Easy, enjoyed. Like it feels good to smile. Like it's a sensual thing to do. "They have black raspberry mead in summer, and blueberry; I hear tell they have peach, as well -- and in autumn, they've pumpkin mead. I'd like that to swig. And, okay," she says, to Kora buying her a drink. This seems to be a tradition, now: one or the other of them always owes the other something to drink.
The fostern is watching the spirit glass again, watching, fixed, the passage of half-visions. Her hands have found the pockets of her very worn [older than they look] jeans. She is listening, because the umbra isn't safe; the city is never safe, tainted, tarnished, or fixed in place, webbed into an unmoveable pattern -- it pays to be mindful. She looks dreamier, though, when she says " - I have a story for you. Resistance," she says, "Full Moon of my tribe. When considering Totem spirits, she thought of honoring Eagle's presence in this Sept, but was afraid to do so without asking Silence-rhya's permission first. Such is the respect he commanded."
She grins, outright - a dimple, just there. It amuses her, that Resistance (a young cliath) wanted to ask, wanted to be so careful to show respect. To the church, she says, frowning - " - I think Blood Summons knows where it is, yeah? If you need to find me - " this, an exchange. " - there's a house behind a house. The house is little, and belongs to the larger one, but is as private as anything can be in the city. In Bronzeville. There is a painted canoe on the roof."
[Sorrow] "I know her," the reply is looseboned, somehow, loose jointed. Resistance, Sorrow means. " - and another of your tribe, named Fate. I fought with them once, in the Cabrini - outside any claimed territory. That night, I fought with Resistance and with Fate and with the doc. There was a cursed one, and four fomori. You tribesmates took down the cursed one on their own. And the doc," Sorrow continues, the edge of her mouth twisting upward. " - she's a quick hand with a firearm. Quick hand and a steady mind, you know? Your Tribesmates fought well," continues the Fenrir, quiet in her story-in-miniature, " - and bravely."
And: "I'll remember the honor she wanted to show too; the respect, though - " hook-curve, this isn't a story, this is a private thing, between-them, a friend-thing not a Galliard-thing. Lila can tell because something changes in the way Kora speaks, all quiet and keen. " - I suspect that Silence-rhya might've barked at her presumption and sent her scurring away, blistering from his rage, if she'd approached him, if she'd asked. I've had," quiet, continuing. " - three conversations with him since I've been here.
"The first time, he told me to quit coddling the modi of my tribe. Which," a neat, narrow shrug. "I might have done.
"The second time, I tried to tell him the story of a battle that Gut-Song and Wrath fought. He misunderstood me, and barked at me for apologizing too much.
"The third time," oh, and this is quiet, this is even-more-quiet, " - I told him the story of Kemp's death. He just looked at me. Then he walked away, slammed the door, said nothing. I've never - not in my life, rarely in the lives of my ancestors - felt rage on my skin from another Garou like that.
"You know that idiom about killing-looks?" if looks could kill, she means. This is serious, listen: "I think he made an epiphling of that idea in the umbra that day."
[House of the Unbelievable] And the doc, Sorrow says, and Lila can guess who she means. There are few kinswomen -- anywhere -- who have accrued such a name; and this is Chicago, where the once-Fianna kin is a legend in her own right (stand here [where are your children]). She'd been at Kemp's gathering, Lila remembers. She'd been quiet. "I haven't met her," she says, of Imogen.
And Lila listens to this, the friend-thing, with the same amount of attention (of care, of consideration) that she listens to the other kind of story, that she listens to galliard-things with, and she turns away from the cloud-glass, the spirit-mirror, the shady, diluted visions of things that go by, in order to look at Kora as she speaks. Makes a sound in the back of her throat, says, clear-eyed, "Honestly, I said as much to Sparrow -- well. I told her that Eagle wasn't Silence-rhya, although Silence-rhya might be Eagle; that it might be courteous to give Silence-rhya a nod, but that the spirit had been around years and years before Silence's great great grandmother's parents lay together, and it was his favor she should be worrying about." A beat, and then: "I never spoke to Silence. I wanted to find him, because I was worried: everything I heard -- "
Beat. "I didn't like to leave it so. I hope he fits -- that he stays -- now that he's Warclaw." Lila exhales, quiet. Because there is real worry there, still: that Decker would leave the Nation, grow too-angry; that he'd Fall, uncaring.
[Sorrow] "I know her," says Kora, of Imogen. " - but that doesn't mean I know her, yeah? Still, I'll introduce you two," the briefest of pauses. It is minute. " - if you'd like and if she'd like. Sometime. I'd like to introduce you two," another hook-curve, " - since Kemp, I think I'm the only one who brings her news. And if I follow him - "
A faint shrug. It is so much easier for kinfolk to leave.
They just pack up their boxes, call the moving company. Let the lease expire. Escape.
" - well, I don't plan to do that. Not for a while."
The Lila shares her fears, clear-eyed, without sparing. Sorrow looks back: watches, and the look is the same, level and direct and oh-so-clear. "I was too. Did too. Thought that, that - what if under my skin, after seeing him then and feeling him then. Still, however he did it, he found his way back from the brink of the firestorm. I'd like to know how he did it, you know?" her mouth moves again, this is familiar. She wants to know because she is charged with knowing. " - but he's not the talkative type. The last time, though - at the tribal moot, and before he left - he was better. Balanced, back, I think.
"As far back to us, or himself, as anyone like that can be." Like that she means. "I mean, as anyone so storied can be, yeah?"
[House of the Unbelievable] "That's good," Lila says, carefully; almost cautiously. Lila is an optimist. Lila believes in people. Lila believes in Silence. Yet, still: care and caution; they are not strangers. And, her mouth quirks - " - when I'm an old grayhaired Athro," she says, and the quirk of her mouth becomes that lopsided smile, kiss of one dimple, "you'll," and this is an underline, to Kora's statement: that she doesn't plan to die, not for a while, "have to smack some sense into me, if I seem like I've lost my mind, or lost my way into story -- you know? I don't want to be Rage-eaten."
Of course, Rage-eaten Lila: difficult to imagine.
Lila leans over, bumps her shoulder against the taller woman's arm, then slings her arm around the taller woman's waist, companionable, casual: "Let's go get that drink, hm? I don't think the cloud gate has any visions for us tonight."
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[House of the Unbelievable]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[House of the Unbelievable]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[Sorrow] Cloud Gate is almost like a door. This human-made thing, just metal and glass, undulating like a kidney, like an organ - which is to say, organic, without right angles, a thousand thousand people walking through it, beneath it, around it, reflected across its gleaming surface day and day and day and night and night and night, as if the gate were a monster in an egg, dreaming itself back into the world.
- it is easier to step sideways, here. Somehow, this one act of public art, or rather - the hundred daily acts of public art reflected in its undulant surface - bring their bifurcated worlds closer together. The new-made thing has a distinctive umbral presence that few such wholly human things can manage without an age and an age again within which to make themselves felt across the worlds, or, at the least, without a rite to awaken them. It's reflection is whole and entire, still shiny, though perhaps less mirror-perfect. Instead, the images that drift across its ghostly surface play out like a stuttering run of half-melted film, dragged out of some underground vault to be projected across the drifting clouds of the sky.
Which is to say: fascinating, meaningful, meaningless.
They are standing at its edge.
"I promise you," Sorrow says, gliding her hand intently over the surface. " - they were here. I saw it yesterday, five times in a row, this whole little story-thing. It was like a love song. A real one, I mean, yeah? Except written in images. Like one of those Folger's commercials, you remember? Where the guy and the woman meet in the lobby and it is all soulful, except a Folger's commercial written by Euripedes. I'd never seen it repeat something like that before."
[House of the Unbelievable] "I don't remember the commercial, but - "
The child (daughter) of Gaia (reverent [faithful]) galliard pauses for a second and tips her head, slow, to the side. As if she can hear music. As if there's a line of quarter notes and half notes, eighth notes and sixteenth notes, inky and black, stuck in her ear, like water -- musician's ear, rather than swimmer's ear. And, as if to confirm this, she hums the bars of the Folger's commercial, mmhmm
" - in your touch." Beat. "I remember the song. I think I remember the song. I never watched much television when I was younger, and more human." The smile she offers Kora is easy, dreamy without wistfulness. She untilts her head, and turns her attention to the ghost-glass, the spirit-glass, the umbral Cloud Gate. Lila doesn't reach out to touch it, but she leans close, closer, closest, meeting her own wide, wide green eyes and the ghost-radiance of half-seen visions which flicker [stutter] uncertainly across the surface.
Then she breathes on it. A couple of quick huffs. Obfuscating. Reaches out to draw a glyph -
insight (vision)
- to trace its curves in the heat her breath has left behind. "If they don't show tonight," she says, equitable, "I want a story instead."
[Sorrow] "I used to watch it - " Sorrow says, standing just back from the spirit glass, from the umbral sculpture that curves so distinctly through the evening, silver-lit by the glow of the weaver's workings that surround them, humming and singing and knitting and marching their perfectly tuned three-note-chords and three-cord-songs. " - when I was especially little, when I was still human. We moved around so much, yeah?" Her eyes are on the moving imagines, constantly changing, as if whatever singular spirit lived inside the cloud gate were made of picasso and pollack and kahlo and marx (both karl and groucho, made whole together). " - and television was this one constant thing, which felt right. When I learned to read, though - "
The Loop is different, just. The Art Museum and the parks, the older buildings, stone and brick and ironwork, the history makes it settled, makes it a place rather than a hollowed out matrix-horror of pattern web and pattern spiders. They're here, of course. They are everywhere, even deep in the Tekakwithwa woods, mirroring the underground utility lines, tracking the power grid as a lone line carries electricity to the ranger's cabin, following the signal of cell phones and smart phones and air cards and sateillites through the dark night sky.
" - I didn't need it anymore. And," - a direct look, a hook-curve of a smile. "I always have a story for you."
There's a subtle pause, neat and acquired. "Here's the beginning of one. Or an end. " This is a story, too. Sorrow offers it as if it were a fortune from a bubblegum wrapper, offers it while she's looking away, watching the glyph disappear back into the spirit-glass. "Silence left sometime before the full moon. The Eagles are gone."
[House of the Unbelievable] I always have a story, Kora says, for you. And Lila's response is this: That her gaze sharpens, just a little; that it becomes a touch more present, clearer, waking. The neat pause wakes a smile, a radiant curve of mouth, which might just be what chased away some of the dreaminess for a second. Then: the story, such as it is.
The cloud gate is mutability, and so, too, are Lila's expressions. Now, something solemn, something strong, slips into her direct gaze, something that has more kinship with stone than any other element (fire and water, dew and air). "He doesn't intend to return, then."
It's a question that isn't quite a question, but Lila watches Silence's tribemate for a sign of that elder's intentions nonetheless. She is sad that he is gone, or something close to it -- and perhaps that's why the solemnity. Lila isn't a moody creature, but she is thoughtful. She is a creature of consideration, howsoever brightly her Rage burns in her breast, howsoever darkly it licks at her bones and seeks to puppet her by the spine.
[Sorrow] "I don't think I can speak to his intent," Kora begins, her own dark eyes returning to Lila, drifting away from the constantly play of (remembered) reflections in the surface of the spirit gate. There's an answering solemnity in the Fenrir woman too; this is the space where things change. The Eagles who raised the Caern have all flown away, except for their dead, their too-numerous dead, mixed with the earth beneath the tarmac of the spirit they found. Of the spirit, the massive, immutable, roiling spirit, that found them. Still, her mouth - that curve, the right corner higher than the left, it is wry underneath the sorrow over things that pass. " - you know? but he's been called to be a Warclaw, so I'd say he won't be returning, except in passing."
Because things pass. One thing dies, a new thing comes. The world moves beneath their feet, is moving now, this great fragile disc of blue and white, framed in a black, airless expanse, breathing and dreaming and swimming with life and with death, with a war, underneath the surface of the thing, for life and for death, the right of both to be natural, full of grace, which is not to say: easy.
This isn't easy. Sorrow says it easily, though. "Joe and I are taking what we can of the old territory. And Thomas, too, when he's back of course. It's important, the north flank of the Caern, and held so long. We couldn't let it just - drift away, you know? Fall back into the world."
[House of the Unbelievable] This is the thing about Lila: she wears authority well; as if she has worn it far longer than she has, as if she had more years than she does, as if she was older, as if she were wise, as if she'd seen things, as if she knew where she stood, knew how to stand. Difficult, then, to pinpoint her age precisely; difficult, too, to parse the trick she has of enjoying herself -- of being enjoyment, as simply, as utterly as if she were the spirit of, when she can also be this creature called by the moon to remember, to be mad with remembering, to exhale the dust of the new-dead and old, to see footsteps and pawprints, to be able to howl them. Anyone can do it, but not all are called - no.
"This year," she says. "This year has been heavy," she says. "Not too heavy," she says, a lilt to the corner of her mouth; it isn't wry. "But heavy; I hope summer crowns us all in gold, and by the end, we've crowned our foes in red, shown them how to fall down with the season, while we - " a beat. "We stand."
This, then - interest: "I'll pass the word along." That all of the Eagles territory isn't unprotected now. "And," she adds, "Thank you." Thank you, for doing the honorable thing: thank you, for taking the territory on. She means it, too. "Speaking of Thomas, have you heard from him? When I gave him those quests, I didn't expect them to take him out of the city for so long - " there. Lila is fey. She isn't blinking; she doesn't, not too often. " - but I know," here, then, is wryness, "that the spiritworld isn't always predictable."
[Sorrow] "I need a beer for that one," says Kora, quiet, back. The year has been heavy. She wears it around her shoulders, she wears it in her spine. She breathes it when she sleeps, all this promised lost, dreams the dead into being, dreams the past into the present. " - to toast and make it real. Or a glass of good Scotch. Or a mug of mead, like they've got in Valhalla, the sort that tastes of sunlight and those golden fields the Voluspa promises us.
"Which means," says Kora, continuing, quiet, her voice low, her mouth quirked, alive to the bittersweet awareness of Lila's hope - of Lila's prophecy - for the summer to come. " - that I'm buying you a drink, next time we're walking on the other side."
Then Thomas: "Oh," she continues, shaking her head. " - we've not heard from him, but we can still feel him. Far enough away to be back of the mind, but close enough to know he's still on this side, not the other. He'll be back, soon enough. We'll take a few more streets back, then."
A supple curve of her shoulders, the faintest of shrugs. "Until then, if you need to find us - we're not taking the old Eagles' dockhouse. Too private, yeah? There's this church, those - huge place, one of those neogothic marvels that remind of the old world, without invoking it, precisely - abandoned for years. It is easy to find when you start looking for it, just a few blocks away from the docks, near enough to the river that you can see the river when you look out from the belltower."
[House of the Unbelievable] "There is a meadery in the state of New York," Lila says, smiling fully now, both corners of her mouth; her smile is a luminous thing, and unfettered. Easy, enjoyed. Like it feels good to smile. Like it's a sensual thing to do. "They have black raspberry mead in summer, and blueberry; I hear tell they have peach, as well -- and in autumn, they've pumpkin mead. I'd like that to swig. And, okay," she says, to Kora buying her a drink. This seems to be a tradition, now: one or the other of them always owes the other something to drink.
The fostern is watching the spirit glass again, watching, fixed, the passage of half-visions. Her hands have found the pockets of her very worn [older than they look] jeans. She is listening, because the umbra isn't safe; the city is never safe, tainted, tarnished, or fixed in place, webbed into an unmoveable pattern -- it pays to be mindful. She looks dreamier, though, when she says " - I have a story for you. Resistance," she says, "Full Moon of my tribe. When considering Totem spirits, she thought of honoring Eagle's presence in this Sept, but was afraid to do so without asking Silence-rhya's permission first. Such is the respect he commanded."
She grins, outright - a dimple, just there. It amuses her, that Resistance (a young cliath) wanted to ask, wanted to be so careful to show respect. To the church, she says, frowning - " - I think Blood Summons knows where it is, yeah? If you need to find me - " this, an exchange. " - there's a house behind a house. The house is little, and belongs to the larger one, but is as private as anything can be in the city. In Bronzeville. There is a painted canoe on the roof."
[Sorrow] "I know her," the reply is looseboned, somehow, loose jointed. Resistance, Sorrow means. " - and another of your tribe, named Fate. I fought with them once, in the Cabrini - outside any claimed territory. That night, I fought with Resistance and with Fate and with the doc. There was a cursed one, and four fomori. You tribesmates took down the cursed one on their own. And the doc," Sorrow continues, the edge of her mouth twisting upward. " - she's a quick hand with a firearm. Quick hand and a steady mind, you know? Your Tribesmates fought well," continues the Fenrir, quiet in her story-in-miniature, " - and bravely."
And: "I'll remember the honor she wanted to show too; the respect, though - " hook-curve, this isn't a story, this is a private thing, between-them, a friend-thing not a Galliard-thing. Lila can tell because something changes in the way Kora speaks, all quiet and keen. " - I suspect that Silence-rhya might've barked at her presumption and sent her scurring away, blistering from his rage, if she'd approached him, if she'd asked. I've had," quiet, continuing. " - three conversations with him since I've been here.
"The first time, he told me to quit coddling the modi of my tribe. Which," a neat, narrow shrug. "I might have done.
"The second time, I tried to tell him the story of a battle that Gut-Song and Wrath fought. He misunderstood me, and barked at me for apologizing too much.
"The third time," oh, and this is quiet, this is even-more-quiet, " - I told him the story of Kemp's death. He just looked at me. Then he walked away, slammed the door, said nothing. I've never - not in my life, rarely in the lives of my ancestors - felt rage on my skin from another Garou like that.
"You know that idiom about killing-looks?" if looks could kill, she means. This is serious, listen: "I think he made an epiphling of that idea in the umbra that day."
[House of the Unbelievable] And the doc, Sorrow says, and Lila can guess who she means. There are few kinswomen -- anywhere -- who have accrued such a name; and this is Chicago, where the once-Fianna kin is a legend in her own right (stand here [where are your children]). She'd been at Kemp's gathering, Lila remembers. She'd been quiet. "I haven't met her," she says, of Imogen.
And Lila listens to this, the friend-thing, with the same amount of attention (of care, of consideration) that she listens to the other kind of story, that she listens to galliard-things with, and she turns away from the cloud-glass, the spirit-mirror, the shady, diluted visions of things that go by, in order to look at Kora as she speaks. Makes a sound in the back of her throat, says, clear-eyed, "Honestly, I said as much to Sparrow -- well. I told her that Eagle wasn't Silence-rhya, although Silence-rhya might be Eagle; that it might be courteous to give Silence-rhya a nod, but that the spirit had been around years and years before Silence's great great grandmother's parents lay together, and it was his favor she should be worrying about." A beat, and then: "I never spoke to Silence. I wanted to find him, because I was worried: everything I heard -- "
Beat. "I didn't like to leave it so. I hope he fits -- that he stays -- now that he's Warclaw." Lila exhales, quiet. Because there is real worry there, still: that Decker would leave the Nation, grow too-angry; that he'd Fall, uncaring.
[Sorrow] "I know her," says Kora, of Imogen. " - but that doesn't mean I know her, yeah? Still, I'll introduce you two," the briefest of pauses. It is minute. " - if you'd like and if she'd like. Sometime. I'd like to introduce you two," another hook-curve, " - since Kemp, I think I'm the only one who brings her news. And if I follow him - "
A faint shrug. It is so much easier for kinfolk to leave.
They just pack up their boxes, call the moving company. Let the lease expire. Escape.
" - well, I don't plan to do that. Not for a while."
The Lila shares her fears, clear-eyed, without sparing. Sorrow looks back: watches, and the look is the same, level and direct and oh-so-clear. "I was too. Did too. Thought that, that - what if under my skin, after seeing him then and feeling him then. Still, however he did it, he found his way back from the brink of the firestorm. I'd like to know how he did it, you know?" her mouth moves again, this is familiar. She wants to know because she is charged with knowing. " - but he's not the talkative type. The last time, though - at the tribal moot, and before he left - he was better. Balanced, back, I think.
"As far back to us, or himself, as anyone like that can be." Like that she means. "I mean, as anyone so storied can be, yeah?"
[House of the Unbelievable] "That's good," Lila says, carefully; almost cautiously. Lila is an optimist. Lila believes in people. Lila believes in Silence. Yet, still: care and caution; they are not strangers. And, her mouth quirks - " - when I'm an old grayhaired Athro," she says, and the quirk of her mouth becomes that lopsided smile, kiss of one dimple, "you'll," and this is an underline, to Kora's statement: that she doesn't plan to die, not for a while, "have to smack some sense into me, if I seem like I've lost my mind, or lost my way into story -- you know? I don't want to be Rage-eaten."
Of course, Rage-eaten Lila: difficult to imagine.
Lila leans over, bumps her shoulder against the taller woman's arm, then slings her arm around the taller woman's waist, companionable, casual: "Let's go get that drink, hm? I don't think the cloud gate has any visions for us tonight."
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