Ornature

[Imogen] She sings into the microphone, her voice stark and floating over the barest of picking of her guitar strings. She has no band, no back up. Alone on the stage, she sits on a stool, one foot perched on the lowest rung, the other, the toes touching the wood floor beneath her, presumably for balance.

Her back is straight, her shoulders back. Her hair is up, but strands have begun to fall into her face, strands she pushes from her eyes with a tilt of her head, aware of the apparatus in front of her.

"They figured it out
They were gonna do it anyway
Even if doesn't pay.

"I can get a tip jar,
Gas up the car,
And try to make a little change
Down at the bar."

Several people cheer loudly in response to the lyrics and the doctor allows a small smile to cross her face. It is hard to call it genuine, but is too practised to appear fake.

"Everything is free now
That's what they say
Everything I ever done
Gotta give it away...

--

Later, she tears down what she has, which is not much. The amplifiers are the bar's, as is the microphone. Her guitar, then, the patch cord coiled and laid atop the silent and turned off microphone. She steps off the stage, the applause well and done by now, and heads for the bar. The conversation with the 'tender is brief, the transaction orderly. She is handed her cash, whatever it is she earned, and counts out several bills to lay it on the table, before pocketing the remainder.

She's given a glass of scotch, neat which she picks up for her first sip before turning away to scan the dining area. Some people, familiar, address her, some unfamiliar do the same. No one speaks to her for long.

[Sorrow] Nearly lost in the shadows of one of the booths: one of the far ones, unfavored by the crowds. There's a poor view of the stage, maybe, when people linger in the aisle beside the bench seat as they wait for the restrooms, or an opening at the bar. It's one of those places in the room that becomes a cross-roads, a meeting place. Except: tonight - no one's lingering there. There's a pretty clear view of the stage, obscured only by the tables and seats clustered close to it. The line of sight would be tricky for someone of slight stature. Kora is not a slight woman.

She is not, in point of fact, a woman. And so, when Imogen pulls away from some acquaintance, some familiar face, someone who does not know her at all - who cannot feel the pull of her blood, who could never imagine her hands encased in latex, covered in blood and gore - someone who knows her voice better than anyone in the Nation is ever likely to know it - she'll catch the blond hair first, pulled back, the tension that marks the animal under her skin, marks her out as Garou.

The booth is empty but for the Fenrir woman. There are two beers, both dark, on the table, one half-finished. The second, untouched, is set in front of the opposite bench seat. When Imogen is free, when her gaze falls upon the unpopular table, Kora tips her head toward the second beer by way of invitation.

[Imogen] These moments are dichotomy. Her every moment is dichotomy. The Garou who see her with latex-gloved hands, fitting a disarticulated bone into a black body bag. The humans who hear her music, who see her every day. Who ask her the question 'how are you?' and hear a lie.

Everything's a mask.

She meets Kora's eyes from across the room, her expression measured and controlled, her elbow back against the edge of the bar, her scotch tumbler held in hand. A moment passes, then she straightens, bending over to pick up her guitar by its handle, drawing it out from between two stools.

She weaves through the room, patrons and tables and chairs to reach the small pocket of isolation in which Kora sits. She crosses the invisible barrier easily and does not flinch the closer she gets. She manages the Fenrir's rage better than most.

"Kora," she greets her as she leans the guitar against the booth's side, setting down her glass before slipping into the bench opposite the not-woman.

She picks up the beer and lifts it in a half-toast.

"Thank-you fer the drink," she says.

[Sorrow] "Doc," Kora returns Imogen's greeting in her low voice, lifting up her own glass in response to the half-toast. She doesn't offer words. She's done that before: offered words. Something passing, maudlin on another's tongue - the past or the future - one of those toasts, to the dead. In other bars, with other kin. Here, she just lifts the glass. Maybe Kora figures the dead can see it well enough on their own. Maybe she's decided that they have to suffer through toast after toast in Valhalla, offered by those with tongues rather more eloquent than her own, and spares tem.

Or something. Listen: she greets Imogen with that brief invocation of her mortal title. It's a gesture of respect, like -rhya or -yuf, though it might read differently to the kinswoman. There's an empty glass of beer already on the table, and an empty shot glass. Just one.

"Thanks for the song." The was she uses her voice, the faint inflection suggests she means it. Or maybe not: the song. There's something there. It's not meant to be polite. It's not tit for tat. It's not turn about is fair play.

"The crowd was into it." Offhand; or something else. Kora's looking at the crowd, now, the humans all around them.

[Imogen] They are both low speakers. Artists, perhaps in their own right. Imogen sings songs and plays her guitar, she uses words not her own. Sorrow tells tales of stories that happen to others, that happen to herself and those around her.

Neither speaks louder than they must, and in a private booth, with a few feet of separate between them and the humans, they do not have to speak much louder than they would normally. Her eyes move to the Fenrir as the Skald mentions the crowd, then move back, passing over the humans. Her mouth twists in a vague smirk.

"I never really notice," she says. "Sometimes at the end, but mostly." She shrugs slightly, her mouth disappearing as she lifts her glass again.

[Sorrow] Imogen says: sometimes at the end and Kora's dark eyes trace away from the kinswoman, back over the humans who linger among the tables, moving back and forth. Who are gathered in a crowd which has a sort of collective voice, this changing meter of drifting conversations, that rise and fall in counterpoint to the draw of whoever is on stage next. The creature's attention lingers there, passingly but not quite passively, seeing the shifting fractures in the small groups as an organic thing, in motion.

"You're not here for them." It could be a cliche. It isn't: not quite. Kora offers the response with the sort of quiet attention she pays to most such things, though in the doctor's case, she leaves room for error. It's like noise in the system, then: the standard deviation. The creature's gaze, all direct, lingers on Imogen a moment before dropping to her half-drunk beer. The head's gone down. It is disappearing back into itself. Her mouth curls, at the edge: think paper caught to flame. Like that, like a thin metal wire, softening in the heat of a torch.

This is not a smile.

"Joe's gone," she says, without looking up. Her knuckles are white on the handle of her beer glass. Her knuckles and nailbeds are white. " - that fucking coward."

[Imogen] You're not here for them, Kora says and the corner of Imogen's mouth moves. Someone less perceptive might mistake it for a trick of the light or not see it at all. But it is there, a genuine rare untwisted lift of the edge of her mouth. The muscles move as if surprised at the motion, then resettle to her baseline, an even and unrevealing set to her lips.

"No," she says picking up her beer again. "I'm not."

She lifts her beer and takes a deeper swallow. Her tumbler of whiskey remains where it is, untouched for now beyond the first few sips she'd taken prior to reaching the table. There is no ice in it, the liquid amber still and thick.

Someone else has taken the stage, a thin, lanky man with unkempt curls that are going grey with age. Like Imogen, he sings alone. Some Beatles' song. Imogen's attention has drifted there, and remains so, until Kora speaks again.

She turns evenly, but her gaze is intent on the Skald, eyes dropping briefly over her expression, her posture. Silence echoes briefly, before the kinwoman says: "What happened?"

[Sorrow] No says Imogen, and the Skald's dark, direct gaze skims away from the crowd, back over the table, flickers over the kinswoman, from the crown of her head to her pale, delicate finges wrapped around her dark beer. It is sweltering outside, but the air conditioning hums inside, keeping the woodwork crisp and cool, the polish bright and cleaming rather than cloudy with humidity.

In the silence between them - filled by the murmur of distant conversation, by the chorus of Norwegian Wood from the reedy voice of the gentleman on stage - the Fenrir moment takes the time to deliberately uncurl her fingers from the glass. Her breathing is controlled and thoughtful. This is an effort: a choice she makes not to break something.

"He lost a fight," Kora allows at last; when Imogen asks the question, when she herself finds some measure of equilibrium. " - yeah? He beat Kemp once, so he figured no one could beat him. At least no one unworthy. And - " the faintest gesture, a twist of her shoulders, " - so he lost, and then he left. He'd been dreaming of this other challenge out west. Figured it was more glorious, like some old story rather than the story here - one of the big ones out of the Eddas. Mostly, though, he - "

There is a short, sharp breath.

" - fucking coward." She looks back up then, the look is naked, stark and direct. Her voice has dropped, in both tone and texture, but it isn't maudlin. "I'm sorry, doc. I just figured we'd die together. When we came back from the Battleground together, I knew we would."

[Imogen] Imogen's regard is intent, an edge of wariness to her gaze. The barely contained rage of the Skald is something with which the kinfolk is familiar. The need to lash out and hit something, kill something, tear it apart, with a spray of blood and flesh and bones.

The look of that desire, tenuously leashed: that is also something with which she is familiar.

Still: it is not with fear that she watches the Skald, merely a steady readiness.

"That," the kinwoman says, her voice somewhat tight, restrained, though she has no rage. No: it is resistance. As if she disliked the words, but spoke them anyway. "Appears to be going around."

She drains her beer glass and sets it done.

"I think we need another drink, don't you?" she enquires, forcibly mild, already beginning to slide from the booth.

[Sorrow] There is a sharp sound, the faint flare of Kora's nostrils as she huffs out a response. Enraged, she is still controlled: she would probably be this controlled until the last, when the red fury took her, when blood washed over her vision. The lights in the room spark glittering points across the surface of her eyes, like the spray of errant flames from a sparkler. Her generous mouth is fixed in a tight expression, and her body has that readiness to it.

She's different from the males of her tribe: slighter, with narrow shoulders and a lean frame, her strength centered in her core, in her thighs and legs rather than her shoulders and arms. Still: they all have that animal look to them when rage flares under the surface of their human skins, when the wolf gleams in their human eyes - other, this other thing entirely.

Kora's gaze is fixed on Imogen; her dark eyes drop from the kinswoman's gaze to the kinswoman's mouth as she speaks. "Yeah - " the Skald agrees, the word is loose at the end, a different sort of language. Lifting her own beer in an errant toast as Imogen rises, she continues, "I think we do."

[Roman Turner] At some point during the coming and going at the entry, a figure entered removing a well worn summer weight stetson. This hat was straw, faded white with a thin black corded band where the body of the hat joined the brim. Said hat was removed on entry, leaving a bad case of sweaty hat hair that was hastily smoothed down with the edge of one hand. He'd been here before and knew while the ice tea wasn't sweet and it had been over brewed, it was cold and wet and he could add sugar to try and doctor it up. He wasn't in the door but a few seconds that he blurted out to anyone listening as he waited for someone to tell him to either seat himself or show him to a seat.

"Boy howdy, it's karaoke night!"

[Imogen] Imogen does not answer or smile, she has only her empty glass, which she does not raise. She merely exits the booth and starts across the dining area to the bar. This is not normally necessary here; however, humans shy from Kora. They might be a long time waiting for a waitress. Imogen is not in the mood to wait.

These moments where she moves away are moments that allow her to breath deeper, though her jaw tightens, her mouth draws to a tight seam. There had been another motive to this: the solitude she gets in a room full of humans, away from the female Garou.

Roman is at the door, waiting to be told to seat himself or directed to somewhere to sit. Imogen's gaze flicks his way, rests, there then moves away, back toward her goal. She leans a forearm against the bar, waiting briefly for the 'tender's attention.

When he leans forward, she leans as well, speaking close to his ear to make his order. The music here is loud. The singer is relatively good, though his voice is non-standard enough he would never make it big. He'll only make it this far. Bars where people come for food and drink as much as they might come to hear him play.

--

"It's seat yourself!" this is not from a waitress, but a passing girl, hair dyed black and face touched with piercings. She smiles in a half-hearted manner. "Nice hat." Before returning to the table with her friends.

--

Imogen turns away from the bar, drinks in hand and starts toward the booth.

[Roman Turner] What had started as embarrassment at being told he was standing there like a damned fool, turned to a flush when told his hat was nice. He was never sure if people around these parts were joshing him or not when they said stuff like that.

"Thanks..."

Even as his face flushed and he smiled awkwardly and started forward, that he noticed his Goddess. How could he not notice the rays of the sun dancing beneath the lights over the bar? He could no sooner miss that red hair than he could his own face in a mirror. Like a bee to a flower, he wove his way towards Imogen, smiling like a damned fool.

"Howdy Miss Doctor Slaughter, Ma'am. Ya look mighty purdy tonight."

[Roman Turner] ((oops, better make that he trails her to the table like a puppy LOL!))

[Sorrow] There's a booth set back from the others, in a direct path between the bar, the restrooms and the door. Crowded though the room might be elsewhere, there's few enough patrons standing around there as they usually might. Imogen leaves with an empty glass in hand. Kora's is less than a quarter full now, and she nurses the remnants knowing that another is coming.

When the Imogen returns like a planet with an errant moon trailing in her wake, Kora is sitting back against the wall, her spine straight, her pale hair cushioning her head, her feet coiled on the bench seat. She unfolds her legs, shifting her stance to put her feet straiht on the floor, giving Roman room to sit. "Have a seat, kid," the tension lingers in her mouth, but the dimunitive is offered to Roman with a twist of her mouth and a sort of respect. It's clear the Skald means: have a seat beside her.

Hey, he can look at Imogen then, over the table.

[Imogen] Roman trots up to and after her, chattering in her wake. Imogen glances over her shoulder at him, her gaze restrained, mild.

Give her this: she tolerates the crush rather than smashing it. It is more than most Garou have received.

"Hello, Roman," she says, his compliment entirely unacknowledged and unanswered.

There's another glass on the table on Imogen's side, a tumbler of whiskey, the liquid amber and rich, it's level more or less untouched. "Look who I've found," she notes somewhat wryly to Kora as she takes her seat. Have a seat, kid, Kora says, clearly meaning the seat beside her, rather than Imogen. Imogen's gaze flicks there, but if there is gratitude, it is hard to find.

[Roman Turner] He was smiling like a moon calf half brain when he approached the table behind Imogen. Not much taller than she was at this stage in his life. When he saw Kora his smile widened and he spoke.

"Howdy Miss Kora. Ain't ya looking purdy as a peach tonight."

A statement, not a question as he replied to her offer of a seat and slid in next to her till he darn near crowded her out. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. He was half wolf, half man and the wolf half was a pack animal that craved touch.

"Near as purdy as Miss Doctor Slaughter."

[Sorrow] "He turns up in the strangest places," Kora returns to Imogen. It would be wry - with that twist of her mouth, the way her gaze touches first on Roman, then on Imogen - but for the twist and flare of her rage under her skin. Even that is an effort - the touch toward normalcy. Then Roman slides in beside her, and she gives the young Ragabash a subtle hip check, a faint bump of her shoulders - acknowlegment of his presence, if not his compliment.

"Like hell I do," she returns, back to Roman. This much is true: the bones are there, the fine color of her hair, the expressive twist of her mouth - are all objectively attractive by human standards. The pale hair, however, is pulled back from her face in a messy twist, and her face is bare of all make-up. Her lashes are blond, as are her brows, leaving her features without the definition of mascara or make-up, but bare. Against the normal standards of human beauty, she looks washed out except for the rage under her skin. "I'll give you half my beer if you promise never to say that again."

Somewhere underneath, Koraknows that that is an open invitation to a Ragabash.

Her dark eyes tick back toward Imogen, then. She's direct, she's level - "Roman and his cousin, Sparrow, are running that territory with me, now. I couldn't do it alone."

[Roman Turner] He shrugged as natural as breathing and simply said.

"We fit."

And to him it was as simple as that. In the next moment he was smiling ear to ear to Kora.

"Make it a whole beer and I won't say that again tonight."

[Imogen] Imogen's gaze moves from Kora to Roman then back again. In the end, she merely nods. There is not much to say to that. There is nothing at all.

"Here," she picks up the whiskey and slides it across the table toward Roman.

"Try that."

[Roman Turner] "Why thank ya kindly Miss Doctor Slaughter, Ma'am."

He wasted absolutely no time in snagging the offered whiskey when it was slid across the table. No time in snagging, lifting the glass and drinking till he managed to swallow it all for fear someone would take it.

[Imogen] Imogen's eyebrow arches as he gulps the eighty proof liquor.

"You're meant to sip it," she says, mildly.

[Roman Turner] His eyes watered, throat burned and he could feel the fire racing down to his belly. Barely able to get the words out as more than a gasped breath, he hoarsely said.

"Yessum."

And smiled as wide as he could with tearing eyes.

[Imogen] Imogen's mouth twists - a smirk, though the humour does not quite reach her eyes.

"You'll need t'be carried back, I think, and yeh keep this up. Alright, are you?" The question is negligent, practically rhetorical. She is not concerned, not truly.

[Roman Turner] "Fine. Thanks for askin."

His eyes might be watering and maybe it was a little hard to breathe at the moment, but the promise of being carried back was just too much to resist. He quickly downed the rest of the drink despite the burn and watering eyes.

[Sorrow] "That," Kora counsels Roman, " - is not how you drink Scotch." It's nearly under her breath, sidelong at the young Ragabash. "Remind me, someday. We'll buy a decent bottle and teach you how to really drink it."

[Roman Turner] That earned Kora a blurry eyed smile and a reply that took clearing his throat thrice.

"You're on."

[Imogen] Roman will be disappointed to find out that Imogen had no intentions of carrying him back, and that if the Rotagar needed any carrying, either Kora would have to do the honours, or doubtlessly, he would be forced to deal with his inebriation through forced splashes of cold water and perhaps, if he's lucky, lukewarm coffee.

"Hm." This a dry reply to Roman's assertion that he's fine. "How good to hear. I'll ask yeh t'stand in a few minutes time."

She picks up her beer now, drinking deeply. Scotch, you sip. Beer - you take deep droughts.

[Roman Turner] He just smiled like a fool and reached for Kora's beer, reminding her as he lifted it with every intention of cooling the fire going down his throat.

"Ya said if I don't say it again, I get half."

[Imogen] Imogen's eyebrow arches just slightly as she looks at Roman.

"Been pissed yet? Drunk, I mean."

[Roman Turner] It wasn't too long before he pushed his way up from the booth with a stupid smile to both women. Even went to tip his hat to them before he figured out he was holding the hat.

"Well, thanks for the drinks and company. I've got to be heading out."

Quick as that he was weaving his way to the door while he still could find it.

[Roman Turner] ((sleep time, thanks!))

[Imogen] (thanks for the play!)

[Roman Turner] ((crap and now it refreshes so I see your post LOL! ))