[Sorrow] The night is warm and cloudy and dark. Grant Park is quiet, closer to the river, away from the Millennium fountain, with its nightly light and water shows that delight the tourists willing to brave the muggy air. The evening slips away earlier, now, but it is still so hot that the promise of fall seems a distant answer to a non-existant equation. At this hour, the fountain is off, and smart Chicagoans keep to the sidewalks along Lakeshore Drive, hurrying to their cars, remote starter in one hand, mace in the other.
Kora's in the darker part of the park, a winding path of deconstructed gravel popular with distance runners and strolling mothers during the dark, dark at night. Cutting back through the park toward Cabrini from Caern, though the whispering trees, the well-tended plantings. The lights of the city are visible, here and there, through the shadows.
[Simon Zahradnik] Simon is always passing back and forth through this park. It wasn't so much deliberate as it was the fact that it got him back towards home each evening. He liked to walk, to run, and to wander. So it shouldn't be surprising to find him wandering the park at any given moment... It was one of the places he frequented rather regularly.
Something about the shade, and the cover, and the not so well lit portions made it a nice place to get away from the world. He rather enjoyed it at most times... He wasn't really a part of the world in which he dwelled. He walked outside it, and in most ways despised it as much as it despised him.
He could be found with a bag slung over one shoulder, and his bat smacking against the floor as he walked with it, playfully holding it as one might a cane.
[Sorrow] "Bad ankle?" They are passing in the same direction, the long-legged Skald behind the broader Shadow Lord. It's dark outside, the waxing moon hidden behind the blanketed clouds up in the sky. There is the keen promise of a storm in the air. Her voice is rich and low and absolutely distinctive. He has heard her tell stories before, and they always begin like this - low and even, moduted, rich. The voice rises from somewhere beind him, this hint of bemusement in it for the way he holds his everpresent bat.
" - or are you about to break into a chorus line number?" she finishes as she draws alongside him, her hands in her pockets, just to the first knuckle, no obvious burdens like his bag and bat. She travels light.
[Simon Zahradnik] He hears her voice before he takes the time to look up and make certain the face matched the voice in question. His smile lifted just a hint before looking down at the bat, and soon enough it finds itself lifted and slung over his shoulder."Not much of a performer... I figure it would be best if I left all that up to the professionals."A still, relatively, fresh battle scar had recently been etched into his flesh, more torn than etched. It was new... Brand new, and supposed to be a mark of pride for any young warrior seeing as how it was his first.
"Sometimes it makes the time pass a little faster. You know... Counting the seconds between your last battle and the next gets boring after a while. Gotta spice things up a little and find new ways to pass the time."He says with a nod of his head.
[Sorrow] "That's new," she remarks quietly. She's a Skald, remember. There's a story somewhere underneath the skin of his fresh battlescar. "Did Mila do the Rite?" she inquires further, passingly. The Rite of Wounding, she means, which the Fenrir keep even if no other tribes remember it. There's part of her that feels the death behind a battlescar, the bitter promise of it, her pledge to those who have fallen, the part that makes her graver than most, more still and centered because she carries the past in her as much as the future.
Then, further to his point, a quirk of her pale brow at the bat. "So you've taken up baseball? Or go around busting heads with that rather than your natural weapons?"
[Simon Zahradnik] He shakes his head when she points at the Scar."I'm sure someone will get around to it. We were all pretty busy when it happened."He chuckles a little to himself though there was an apparent bitterness in his voice, he didn't sound terribly excited about his battle scar.
He then looks at the weapon and back to her then back to the weapon."We got this thing called the veil..."He says with a shrug of his shoulders."It's not just about being able to fight your enemies in your birth form though. It's also..."He holds out the weapon a little."We created the veil because humanity managed to forge weapons which were actually capable of bringing us down."He says with a smirk."Our teeth and claws are still damn useful up close but this is a modern battlefield and each and every warrior should be familiar with every kind of weapon available to him should he not? If a human has a weapon in his hands that can bring one of us down then it stands to reason in our hands it could bring ten times as many of our enemies down..."He laughs a little as he trails off.
"It's a weapon... And it's a friend... I can hold it and touch it. I know it, I trust it, I know it will never stab me in the back, and I know it will stand beside me... And I know that if it is ever used against me that it was because I neglected and did not properly watch over it as I should have."He says with a nod of his head."It's a weapon of war... A tool of destruction right? So it kinda makes us kin... We understand one another."He says with a little laugh.
[Sorrow] "I'm familiar with the litany, Bone-Crusher-[i]yuf[i]." Kora says, with this lovely sort of wry undertone that seems at odds with both her essential gravity and the reputation of her tribe. She doesn't have the pure breeding that many of her compatriots have, even in this urrah outpost at the edge of a vast lake, in a dark, electric city under an orange sky, but she has a link to the past that is undeniable, that gravels her voice, her awareness of the voices of the dead that rise and sink in the dark folds of her mind.
He starts in about modern warfare, and she can almost hear the echo of another's words back at her. "Then I'm surprised," she returns good naturedly as he laughs and trails off. "You aren't driving around a tank." There's laughter in her voice, self-mocking more than mocking, this goodnatured ease in her manner. There's rage underneath her skin, an animal confidence - but she's not chained to it, as so many of their kind are.
"Sounds like," this is even more quiet, accompanied by a sharp, perceptive look sidelong. " - you're using that as a substitute for your pack." Though after Joe's departure, that word is even more complicated for Kora. The necessary trust. The complete, visceral understanding.
[Simon Zahradnik] He smiles and looks back at her."If I could drive a tank around town without having to worry about having it taken out then I sure as fuck would."He says with a smirk and his eyes look forward."A weapon is a weapon... Our enemies will use larger and more dangerous weapons against us. They will not hesitate to use a tank against us if they can get away with it and we should be ready to do the same."He chuckles."I've made it a point to never limit myself to one weapon. My claws and teeth serve me well... But if Gaia had intended us never to make use of our brains and the tools of men then she would not have given us their brains and forms right?"
He then smirks a little and looks at the bat."Packs in this city seem to be loose affiliations and clubs more than what I would cone to understand as a pack."He shrugs."That said... I don't care who I am fighting beside, if there are Garou anywhere and they need me I will fight beside them. I was created to make war and that is what I will do... Whenever it is needed."He shrugs."My weapon gives me the reassurance that I am never alone... I am always armed, and I am always ready for war. It's like Linus and his blanket."He laughs."Only my Blanket breaks bone."He nods."We take our comfort where we can get it I guess."
"How is your new pack thing going? Sparrow is one tough bitch... I'm sure she will take care of you all."He nods his head and grins.
[Sorrow] "I'm Fenrir," Kora says, with the quiet conviction of the most subtle sort of fanatic - a true believer in the tribe and the blood, in the bones of her ancestors and their whispers in her ear. She told someone once that the hierarchy of badass was: Modi > Fenrir > Ahrouns, and there's part of her - the hard part that most overlook in her - that believes that with te same sort of certainty that Simon believes that a weapon is a weapon is weapon, no matter its provenance, tank to bat to tooth and claw.
Her tribe has an older, rather more direct interpretation of that, but she doesn't give voice to it, just watches him sidelong , dark eyes sure, perceptive, her narrow shoulders set, her pale hair pulled sharply back from her head. twisted up in a messy knot, her generous mouth curved in an engaging sort of half-smile. Then he asks after he nascent pack, and she return, quiet and easy and relentless: [i]I'm Fenrir.[i] "I can take care of myself. We fit, though. Leaving on the quest for the totem tomorrow. We're going to petition Hermodr again. I have hopes that he will accept the Sparrow and Roman. They are pretty tough for their tribe. Might have to start from scratch if that doesn't work, but we'll find a spirit to bind us, I'm sure."
[Simon Zahradnik] He nods his head."Sparrow is tough as nails... And Roman is a good kid. Make sure to keep an eye on him though, and make sure he gets the training he needs. I'm not saying I doubt his ability to survive just that I think one of these days that kid is going to leap on top of something he can't handle. He's got the balls of a fenrir... But he's lacking the raw power he needs to have balls like that."He laughs a little. You see his tribe wasn't known for their courage, and if you were to ask him about courage it is likely where his philosophy and those of the fenrir differ most dramatically.
"With any luck you will grow in size and strength and... Things will go better this time around."He nods his head. Pretty much the entire Get of Fenris tribe had fallen apart as of late.
"What is the fenrir opinion on battle trophies?"He asks her curiously."I mean... I do the Fenrir discern between a Wyrm Tainted and Non Wyrm tainted enemy? An enemy is an enemy right?"
[Sorrow] There are Garou - Alphas - who would bristle at Simon's advice, no matter how well-meant. Kora is not among them. Her eyes are on the Shadow Lord's face, and then the path before them, then the Shadow Lord again. "I call him kid sometimes," she says, with this quiet seriousness that lingers in her mouth and eyes. " - but he's a cliath Garou, who earned his name the same as we both did. And his first battle scar, in a fight we fought together at the river, not a quarter moon past. Fenris' brood won't stomach the weak and cowardly. He'll get better."
Then, a passably wry look as Simon comments on her tribe's numbers in the Sept. She says nothing, though. She's Jarl. A cliath Skald. That alone tells the story of her tribe in the Sept. We follow the Modi, she told someone once, which was always true. And now: they follow a skald, who has not gained the second rank. The whole of that hadful.
"An enemy who fights with honor and dies with honor - untainted, that enemy deserves to be treated as one of the honored dead, not as a wyrm or weaver-bound thing fit for display. I would burn the corpse, not display it." Her tribe is as hoary and hidebound, in the end, as any in hte Nation, and there's a sort of visceral response in her to the question. That it was even a question he would ask.
"If you'll excuse me," she says, as they come to a fork in the path "I'm going to see my mate one last time before we head out on our totem hunt. Good night, -yuf."
[Simon Zahradnik] He nods and waves her off. He had much to think about it would seem. He had other questions for the Skald but they could wait. He nodded his head and allowed her the chance to take off."I will see you soon."
Kora's in the darker part of the park, a winding path of deconstructed gravel popular with distance runners and strolling mothers during the dark, dark at night. Cutting back through the park toward Cabrini from Caern, though the whispering trees, the well-tended plantings. The lights of the city are visible, here and there, through the shadows.
[Simon Zahradnik] Simon is always passing back and forth through this park. It wasn't so much deliberate as it was the fact that it got him back towards home each evening. He liked to walk, to run, and to wander. So it shouldn't be surprising to find him wandering the park at any given moment... It was one of the places he frequented rather regularly.
Something about the shade, and the cover, and the not so well lit portions made it a nice place to get away from the world. He rather enjoyed it at most times... He wasn't really a part of the world in which he dwelled. He walked outside it, and in most ways despised it as much as it despised him.
He could be found with a bag slung over one shoulder, and his bat smacking against the floor as he walked with it, playfully holding it as one might a cane.
[Sorrow] "Bad ankle?" They are passing in the same direction, the long-legged Skald behind the broader Shadow Lord. It's dark outside, the waxing moon hidden behind the blanketed clouds up in the sky. There is the keen promise of a storm in the air. Her voice is rich and low and absolutely distinctive. He has heard her tell stories before, and they always begin like this - low and even, moduted, rich. The voice rises from somewhere beind him, this hint of bemusement in it for the way he holds his everpresent bat.
" - or are you about to break into a chorus line number?" she finishes as she draws alongside him, her hands in her pockets, just to the first knuckle, no obvious burdens like his bag and bat. She travels light.
[Simon Zahradnik] He hears her voice before he takes the time to look up and make certain the face matched the voice in question. His smile lifted just a hint before looking down at the bat, and soon enough it finds itself lifted and slung over his shoulder."Not much of a performer... I figure it would be best if I left all that up to the professionals."A still, relatively, fresh battle scar had recently been etched into his flesh, more torn than etched. It was new... Brand new, and supposed to be a mark of pride for any young warrior seeing as how it was his first.
"Sometimes it makes the time pass a little faster. You know... Counting the seconds between your last battle and the next gets boring after a while. Gotta spice things up a little and find new ways to pass the time."He says with a nod of his head.
[Sorrow] "That's new," she remarks quietly. She's a Skald, remember. There's a story somewhere underneath the skin of his fresh battlescar. "Did Mila do the Rite?" she inquires further, passingly. The Rite of Wounding, she means, which the Fenrir keep even if no other tribes remember it. There's part of her that feels the death behind a battlescar, the bitter promise of it, her pledge to those who have fallen, the part that makes her graver than most, more still and centered because she carries the past in her as much as the future.
Then, further to his point, a quirk of her pale brow at the bat. "So you've taken up baseball? Or go around busting heads with that rather than your natural weapons?"
[Simon Zahradnik] He shakes his head when she points at the Scar."I'm sure someone will get around to it. We were all pretty busy when it happened."He chuckles a little to himself though there was an apparent bitterness in his voice, he didn't sound terribly excited about his battle scar.
He then looks at the weapon and back to her then back to the weapon."We got this thing called the veil..."He says with a shrug of his shoulders."It's not just about being able to fight your enemies in your birth form though. It's also..."He holds out the weapon a little."We created the veil because humanity managed to forge weapons which were actually capable of bringing us down."He says with a smirk."Our teeth and claws are still damn useful up close but this is a modern battlefield and each and every warrior should be familiar with every kind of weapon available to him should he not? If a human has a weapon in his hands that can bring one of us down then it stands to reason in our hands it could bring ten times as many of our enemies down..."He laughs a little as he trails off.
"It's a weapon... And it's a friend... I can hold it and touch it. I know it, I trust it, I know it will never stab me in the back, and I know it will stand beside me... And I know that if it is ever used against me that it was because I neglected and did not properly watch over it as I should have."He says with a nod of his head."It's a weapon of war... A tool of destruction right? So it kinda makes us kin... We understand one another."He says with a little laugh.
[Sorrow] "I'm familiar with the litany, Bone-Crusher-[i]yuf[i]." Kora says, with this lovely sort of wry undertone that seems at odds with both her essential gravity and the reputation of her tribe. She doesn't have the pure breeding that many of her compatriots have, even in this urrah outpost at the edge of a vast lake, in a dark, electric city under an orange sky, but she has a link to the past that is undeniable, that gravels her voice, her awareness of the voices of the dead that rise and sink in the dark folds of her mind.
He starts in about modern warfare, and she can almost hear the echo of another's words back at her. "Then I'm surprised," she returns good naturedly as he laughs and trails off. "You aren't driving around a tank." There's laughter in her voice, self-mocking more than mocking, this goodnatured ease in her manner. There's rage underneath her skin, an animal confidence - but she's not chained to it, as so many of their kind are.
"Sounds like," this is even more quiet, accompanied by a sharp, perceptive look sidelong. " - you're using that as a substitute for your pack." Though after Joe's departure, that word is even more complicated for Kora. The necessary trust. The complete, visceral understanding.
[Simon Zahradnik] He smiles and looks back at her."If I could drive a tank around town without having to worry about having it taken out then I sure as fuck would."He says with a smirk and his eyes look forward."A weapon is a weapon... Our enemies will use larger and more dangerous weapons against us. They will not hesitate to use a tank against us if they can get away with it and we should be ready to do the same."He chuckles."I've made it a point to never limit myself to one weapon. My claws and teeth serve me well... But if Gaia had intended us never to make use of our brains and the tools of men then she would not have given us their brains and forms right?"
He then smirks a little and looks at the bat."Packs in this city seem to be loose affiliations and clubs more than what I would cone to understand as a pack."He shrugs."That said... I don't care who I am fighting beside, if there are Garou anywhere and they need me I will fight beside them. I was created to make war and that is what I will do... Whenever it is needed."He shrugs."My weapon gives me the reassurance that I am never alone... I am always armed, and I am always ready for war. It's like Linus and his blanket."He laughs."Only my Blanket breaks bone."He nods."We take our comfort where we can get it I guess."
"How is your new pack thing going? Sparrow is one tough bitch... I'm sure she will take care of you all."He nods his head and grins.
[Sorrow] "I'm Fenrir," Kora says, with the quiet conviction of the most subtle sort of fanatic - a true believer in the tribe and the blood, in the bones of her ancestors and their whispers in her ear. She told someone once that the hierarchy of badass was: Modi > Fenrir > Ahrouns, and there's part of her - the hard part that most overlook in her - that believes that with te same sort of certainty that Simon believes that a weapon is a weapon is weapon, no matter its provenance, tank to bat to tooth and claw.
Her tribe has an older, rather more direct interpretation of that, but she doesn't give voice to it, just watches him sidelong , dark eyes sure, perceptive, her narrow shoulders set, her pale hair pulled sharply back from her head. twisted up in a messy knot, her generous mouth curved in an engaging sort of half-smile. Then he asks after he nascent pack, and she return, quiet and easy and relentless: [i]I'm Fenrir.[i] "I can take care of myself. We fit, though. Leaving on the quest for the totem tomorrow. We're going to petition Hermodr again. I have hopes that he will accept the Sparrow and Roman. They are pretty tough for their tribe. Might have to start from scratch if that doesn't work, but we'll find a spirit to bind us, I'm sure."
[Simon Zahradnik] He nods his head."Sparrow is tough as nails... And Roman is a good kid. Make sure to keep an eye on him though, and make sure he gets the training he needs. I'm not saying I doubt his ability to survive just that I think one of these days that kid is going to leap on top of something he can't handle. He's got the balls of a fenrir... But he's lacking the raw power he needs to have balls like that."He laughs a little. You see his tribe wasn't known for their courage, and if you were to ask him about courage it is likely where his philosophy and those of the fenrir differ most dramatically.
"With any luck you will grow in size and strength and... Things will go better this time around."He nods his head. Pretty much the entire Get of Fenris tribe had fallen apart as of late.
"What is the fenrir opinion on battle trophies?"He asks her curiously."I mean... I do the Fenrir discern between a Wyrm Tainted and Non Wyrm tainted enemy? An enemy is an enemy right?"
[Sorrow] There are Garou - Alphas - who would bristle at Simon's advice, no matter how well-meant. Kora is not among them. Her eyes are on the Shadow Lord's face, and then the path before them, then the Shadow Lord again. "I call him kid sometimes," she says, with this quiet seriousness that lingers in her mouth and eyes. " - but he's a cliath Garou, who earned his name the same as we both did. And his first battle scar, in a fight we fought together at the river, not a quarter moon past. Fenris' brood won't stomach the weak and cowardly. He'll get better."
Then, a passably wry look as Simon comments on her tribe's numbers in the Sept. She says nothing, though. She's Jarl. A cliath Skald. That alone tells the story of her tribe in the Sept. We follow the Modi, she told someone once, which was always true. And now: they follow a skald, who has not gained the second rank. The whole of that hadful.
"An enemy who fights with honor and dies with honor - untainted, that enemy deserves to be treated as one of the honored dead, not as a wyrm or weaver-bound thing fit for display. I would burn the corpse, not display it." Her tribe is as hoary and hidebound, in the end, as any in hte Nation, and there's a sort of visceral response in her to the question. That it was even a question he would ask.
"If you'll excuse me," she says, as they come to a fork in the path "I'm going to see my mate one last time before we head out on our totem hunt. Good night, -yuf."
[Simon Zahradnik] He nods and waves her off. He had much to think about it would seem. He had other questions for the Skald but they could wait. He nodded his head and allowed her the chance to take off."I will see you soon."
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