[Kora] The moon is half-full, and already half-way through the evening sky by the time dusk arrives. Now, a few hours after dusk, full dark, she's sinking steadily toward the western horizon, visible through some tunnel of warehouses and rearing, derelict ships that erupt from the flats of the bawn like misplaced monsters from the dawn of time, strange offsping of the dragons whose spines form the mountain ranges, maybe, coiled in wait for the end of days.
There are fewer ships on the lake now. The nights are cooler, and the tourist trade has changed. Instead of farmers down for a week of summer in the city, there are bank executives and nurse practitioners and forensic accountants and tractor salesmen and software developments and court administrators in for a half-week of conferencing capstoned by a weekend of shopping, or alumni come home for a brisk fall football game.
Fewer pleasure vessels out on the lake, and the lake is the darker for it. The days are still warm, but the nights carry that hint of fall in the air, the promise of winter lingering at the edge of the senses.
Kora sits on a dock, her legs hanging over dark waters, swinging. Her feet are bare and damp, her boots tucked away to the side. There's blood underneath her fingernails, though it has been otherwise scrubbed off her hands. Blood on the hem of her jeans. Blood she notes absently, on her toes, and a new crop of eyeballs for the Hrafn.
Now: though - she's watching the stars, their simmering reflections in the waters, matching them to their track in the sky. It is clearer here. And darker, the city's glow at her back, the dark lake gleaming against the horizon, broken only by the odd ship plowing dark waters.
[Lila] " - the air here," Lila says, a familiar voice, behind Kora: "I feel like I could lean my shoulder into it and pass like water through cheesecloth out've this world and into the other. Like I could pass between: as easy, as simple, as water; and I wouldn't need to look at the glim and the gleam of possibility in the lake to make it happen. Huhllo, she who offers sorrow," and maybe by then, Kora's turned around, looked at the rageful galliard who (and a galliard's rage simmers, see -- it smoulders, stars under heel, sharp, stinging, scattered and beautiful, but quick to flare) is walking down the dock toward the Fenrir.
Lila. Her hair is tangled, matted, a hopeless snarl of gold, tarnished-up into elf-locks, tied up, twisted, unknotting, bird's'd love to nest there, and her jeans are riding low on hips thinned with days spent fasting (hungry). Her eyes are green, and open, and wide, and her smile is slanted; it leans on a dimple, hello, hello. Her feet are bare, and her steps are quiet, but not as quiet as a wolf's steps, not as quite as a fey thing's steps, for all she looks like a human's vision of something fey, a lovely girl, a lovely thing, only lovely when you're leaving: Lila, that's her.
"Dialogue rhya said you were still here. Look, I found you."
[Kora] "Lila - " Kora returns with some feeling, turning around, her sharp, pale features silhouetted against the dark horizon. There’s no mistaking the living surprise in her voice, followed by a sort of sheering pleasure that is nearly human, entirely unreserved. A rare thing, that – for she is reserve, careful and precise, watchful and aware, not smoldering, sharping, dreaming like Lila – but colder underneath, the pitiless edge of her ancestors rising only when that reserve is breached, when she turns over, like a shark in dark waters, when she shows her spine.
Now, though – “ – rhya.” is nearly an afterthought, and maybe it is the humanizing influence of being mated, but Kora’s first impulse is to hug the other Galliard. Fortunately for the dignity of Great Fenris, that impulse passes before she scrambles to her feet. Still then – lupine, feral, she wants to touch, and so she does, this familiar bump of bodies, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, bare feet on the cracked concrete pavement covering the old jutting dock, listing now near the end, the pilings underneath rotted by the movement of the current, the passage of time.
There’s a certain solidity to Kora tonight. She’s gained back all the weight she lost in the northern snows as they hunted down the outrider. It is all the more clear against the fey vision of Lila, her cheeks gaunt, her hips thinned, her body tenuous here, the scent of spirit-things on her skin, in her hair. Distance, memories.
“I have no idea what cheesecloth is,” the Skald confesses then, her voice rich, though never quite musical. “And I’m glad to see you back. I thought - ”
- well, Kora arrests that thought, resists the shape of it. And flashes Lila the edge of a generous half-smile.
[Lila] Lila is not against hugging. Lila is not against holding, or cradling, or snuggling, or burrowing, or personal space taking, or touching. Lila is not against touching, for all she was an ethereal thing, some-times, a thing twisted out've air and moonlight and bone, blood and heat and oh, it was obvious, so obvious, that she was one of unicorn's. Because the simmer, star-scatter smoulder of rage is kept checked; kept cautiously cradled, at the heart; kept cupped, ready for breath to fan it, but only controlled breath, only righteous.
The wide-eyed galliard, she: not against hugging, but also: she, often inhuman, often alien, often so settled in her many-skinned one-self, in her multiplicity of who she is, and she doesn't always behave humanly. Witness, now: bump of shoulder to shoulder, bump of hip against hip. Lila leans into Kora, and rests her forehead against the taller femalething's shoulder, breath warm through whatever cloth Kora's got to cover, and the slanting smile becomes whole.
"Am I to understand, then, that I missed my own Gathering?" Let's not lie. There's something sad, underneath Lila's question; something muted. Doesn't conquer, doesn't control: still, sad. "Or many others?" A beat. Then: cheerful: "Cheesecloth is full of holes. Like swisscheese."
[Kora] Lila breathes against a worn black cotton t-shirt, washed in places to insubstantiality, with the word PIXIES across the breast, in white letters. Those are not faded, but rather - adultered, by time, by dye bleeding from their neighboring fibers, by the odd spatter of mustard, the other splash of blood. Clean but - not bright. Kora smells of earth and the breathing exhaust of the city, of blood and other viscuous, (in)human fluids necessary for certain bodies to continue functioning. Of humors, vitreous and otherwise.
" - no, just two since I saw you. Moving Mountain, and Thirty Second Silence. Who came and went before he celebrated his first moot with Maelstrom." There is, always, in Kora's voice a certain respect, a certain lingering gravity when speaking of the dead. It approaches sorrow, but is something else, entirely.
"Mostly, we've had other - " that half-smile sharpens, bitterness shapened inside it, like the kiss of myrrhh against the senses, " - kinds of attrition. The Sentinels left, the lot of them. I've heard from the guardians that Joey's back, but it could be just a rumor. Passing through, yeah? And Joe - hied himself to Portland. Whole packs, -rhya, come and then gone, since I saw you last. I get the story soon, right?"
- of her absence. Of her path. All the places she's been.
[Kora] transcript!
to Kora
[Lila] They're standing, talking about this. They're standing on the old dock. There are splinters in the wood, and the city's got a glow to it. The city glows like a dirty thing; filthy, unnatural. Not a scab; a scab is a sign of wounds, healing (and this kind've creation heals nothing). Blight, for the stars; blight, for the sky. They're standing, talking about this, and Lila is easy on her feet. There is a pack, thrown over one shoulder; a duffel that bumps against her knee, dangles-long, is cross-thatched in dirt and things that've stained, a traveler's duffel, a duffel of many colors. They're standing, and Lila is watching Kora, unblinking, head canted just so to the side, lips parted. Still as a thing that doesn't need motion.
Lila is an expressive creature; not quite glass, but still -- unconcerned with concealing what she feels, what she is thinking. There's something steady, steadying in the texture of her gaze, the way she looks at Kora, when Moving Mountain's name is mentioned. His death, she remembers hearing of; Thirty Second Silence, that name causes her eyebrows to quiver together, a furrow to appear betwen them. The furrow stays throughout all this: The Sentinels left. Joey might be back, a rumor. And Joe -
"Why did he leave, Joe? Are you alone now?" A beat. And then, this - the corner of her mouth, beginning to curve again, something toe-curlingly delicious, touched - no teeth - "You'll get the stories. I've a whole bag of them, Kora." She sounds grave, and also wondering. "And when I fall - " a beat " - here - " another beat " - you'll be better able to sing my spirit gone, providing there's no better galliard to do it."
"My favourite story, I think, is the one of how she who offers sorrow walked Waking Dream, Breaking Heart to that cheap all-night Lebanese restaurant near the caern."
[Kora] "C'mon. Let me tell you that one. In cinemascope and smell-o-vision," replies Kora, with that edge of a grin by way of response, the bitterness lingering, back-of-the-tongue now, because she cannot swallow it all no matter how much she tries. Because it stays. Because the there is another shard to follow it, a splinter-thing. " - and three-D, to boot. I could go for some baklava, anyway - "
There is a lift of her chin, an animal cant of her head by way of invitation, and then Kora swings into easy step with the slight Gaian, the loping stride of someone who has walked miles and miles and miles in her time, and will walk miles more before her time has ended.
" - do the Lebanese make baklava? Gods, I hope so."
--
And Joe. Listen: Kora does not tell that story sandwiched between the gleam of the lake and the promise of honeyed pastries. She's quiet for a time, and they walk in that sort of companionable silence, because that story is old enough that she's not tense with it now, for all that it still coils her rage around her spine like the serpent around the world-tree, like some constrictor-thing crawling up her vertebrae, twisted among the muscle and the bone and the branching bundles of long nerves that run throughout her body.
The lake: behind them. The Caern, around them. It is nighttime, and rather quiet. There is a chorus of crickets somewhere close, and the more distant sounds of the city, the hum of traffic. The call of a distant siren.
And Joe.
The Story of Joe.
"Silence-rhya left, yeah? That old territory his pack defended for years was left unguarded, left to - drift, right, until god knows what took it back. It's just north of the Caern, the northern flank, so we moved from the junkyard to this old ruined church in Cabrini, started exploring it, re-establishing old ties, chasing out the nests where the Wyrmlings had crawled in at the corners.
"Except Joe was dreaming of glory greater than holding a Caern, yeah? He kept talking about Portland, and some ancestor of his who single-handedly rescued a near-fallen Caern. That's just in idle moments, really. Why go hieing off after some other Caern when there's one right here, raised from nothing, with our dead mixed with the earth and our sacrifices tossed into the Maelstrom?
"I never really figured he would leave, just that he had that modi restlessness.
"When Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya died, and Joe and Thomas and me went with Blood Summons to the Battleground. When we fought that battle, over and over and over, dying with him, dying for him, I figured - no, I knew we'd die together.
"Except Joe. Right: he was Jarl. And this Rotagar, Karl Holds-the-Line, challenged him. He followed this - totem, some bird-thing, yeah? Not a proper Fenrir totem. Made him fight like a fostern Ahroun, though it wasn't his own strength. Joe figured he could take him anyway, figured that since he'd beaten Kemp once, in a martial challenge, no one could best him.
"They fought, and Karl won. And Joe - he couldn't - face it, really. That he'd lost. So he left."
That's as they walk, weaving between the derelict ships, the ruined warehouses, the old dry docks, all quiet, a certain passion underneath - sometimes, a certain contempt. Joe, in her mind, is still Joe - that fucking coward. sometimes.
"I'm not alone though," after. "When Joe left, I asked Roman and Sparrow to come join me, help me hold the territory. They did. We made it official before the last moot."
[Kora] [pause!!!]
[Lila] There are stories Lila knows, of Joe. There are stories she had ready, for when he died himself. There are stories Lila knew, of that Jarl, bright mind all sunk-deep in tribal prejudice, all deep-sank in human prejudice, never going to another tribe's Gathering, not remembering, and yet - his honor, that's what they said, often; his honor, and also, his glory, and Lila saw it. Knew it; heard it. There are stories she had ready, because a Moonsinger, Taledancer, must be prepared to let the moon swell bright in the throat and undo the ties of [fervent (passion)] memory. They've gotta be prepared to do it right. They've gotta care to know.
This one is different than the others. The golden-haired galliard, one hand in her own hair, briefly, to scratch at an itch, the other hand comfortably at her hip, thumb laced through jean-loop, still barefoot, no human'll serve her (yes they will [looks like that]). "I'm sorry," Lila says, in answer to the story. "That story's like a stone; and I'm sorry." There's no deep, abiding sympathy in her tone. The words are simple, bare; her compassion isn't human, either - a creature's thing.
Also, this. They're approaching the gate, and Lila bumps easy into Kora, before ducking under chainlink. Out've this half-place, where the air's so thin lean your shoulder against it just right and slip across to the other side, ghost-girl, not-girl.
There are fewer ships on the lake now. The nights are cooler, and the tourist trade has changed. Instead of farmers down for a week of summer in the city, there are bank executives and nurse practitioners and forensic accountants and tractor salesmen and software developments and court administrators in for a half-week of conferencing capstoned by a weekend of shopping, or alumni come home for a brisk fall football game.
Fewer pleasure vessels out on the lake, and the lake is the darker for it. The days are still warm, but the nights carry that hint of fall in the air, the promise of winter lingering at the edge of the senses.
Kora sits on a dock, her legs hanging over dark waters, swinging. Her feet are bare and damp, her boots tucked away to the side. There's blood underneath her fingernails, though it has been otherwise scrubbed off her hands. Blood on the hem of her jeans. Blood she notes absently, on her toes, and a new crop of eyeballs for the Hrafn.
Now: though - she's watching the stars, their simmering reflections in the waters, matching them to their track in the sky. It is clearer here. And darker, the city's glow at her back, the dark lake gleaming against the horizon, broken only by the odd ship plowing dark waters.
[Lila] " - the air here," Lila says, a familiar voice, behind Kora: "I feel like I could lean my shoulder into it and pass like water through cheesecloth out've this world and into the other. Like I could pass between: as easy, as simple, as water; and I wouldn't need to look at the glim and the gleam of possibility in the lake to make it happen. Huhllo, she who offers sorrow," and maybe by then, Kora's turned around, looked at the rageful galliard who (and a galliard's rage simmers, see -- it smoulders, stars under heel, sharp, stinging, scattered and beautiful, but quick to flare) is walking down the dock toward the Fenrir.
Lila. Her hair is tangled, matted, a hopeless snarl of gold, tarnished-up into elf-locks, tied up, twisted, unknotting, bird's'd love to nest there, and her jeans are riding low on hips thinned with days spent fasting (hungry). Her eyes are green, and open, and wide, and her smile is slanted; it leans on a dimple, hello, hello. Her feet are bare, and her steps are quiet, but not as quiet as a wolf's steps, not as quite as a fey thing's steps, for all she looks like a human's vision of something fey, a lovely girl, a lovely thing, only lovely when you're leaving: Lila, that's her.
"Dialogue rhya said you were still here. Look, I found you."
[Kora] "Lila - " Kora returns with some feeling, turning around, her sharp, pale features silhouetted against the dark horizon. There’s no mistaking the living surprise in her voice, followed by a sort of sheering pleasure that is nearly human, entirely unreserved. A rare thing, that – for she is reserve, careful and precise, watchful and aware, not smoldering, sharping, dreaming like Lila – but colder underneath, the pitiless edge of her ancestors rising only when that reserve is breached, when she turns over, like a shark in dark waters, when she shows her spine.
Now, though – “ – rhya.” is nearly an afterthought, and maybe it is the humanizing influence of being mated, but Kora’s first impulse is to hug the other Galliard. Fortunately for the dignity of Great Fenris, that impulse passes before she scrambles to her feet. Still then – lupine, feral, she wants to touch, and so she does, this familiar bump of bodies, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, bare feet on the cracked concrete pavement covering the old jutting dock, listing now near the end, the pilings underneath rotted by the movement of the current, the passage of time.
There’s a certain solidity to Kora tonight. She’s gained back all the weight she lost in the northern snows as they hunted down the outrider. It is all the more clear against the fey vision of Lila, her cheeks gaunt, her hips thinned, her body tenuous here, the scent of spirit-things on her skin, in her hair. Distance, memories.
“I have no idea what cheesecloth is,” the Skald confesses then, her voice rich, though never quite musical. “And I’m glad to see you back. I thought - ”
- well, Kora arrests that thought, resists the shape of it. And flashes Lila the edge of a generous half-smile.
[Lila] Lila is not against hugging. Lila is not against holding, or cradling, or snuggling, or burrowing, or personal space taking, or touching. Lila is not against touching, for all she was an ethereal thing, some-times, a thing twisted out've air and moonlight and bone, blood and heat and oh, it was obvious, so obvious, that she was one of unicorn's. Because the simmer, star-scatter smoulder of rage is kept checked; kept cautiously cradled, at the heart; kept cupped, ready for breath to fan it, but only controlled breath, only righteous.
The wide-eyed galliard, she: not against hugging, but also: she, often inhuman, often alien, often so settled in her many-skinned one-self, in her multiplicity of who she is, and she doesn't always behave humanly. Witness, now: bump of shoulder to shoulder, bump of hip against hip. Lila leans into Kora, and rests her forehead against the taller femalething's shoulder, breath warm through whatever cloth Kora's got to cover, and the slanting smile becomes whole.
"Am I to understand, then, that I missed my own Gathering?" Let's not lie. There's something sad, underneath Lila's question; something muted. Doesn't conquer, doesn't control: still, sad. "Or many others?" A beat. Then: cheerful: "Cheesecloth is full of holes. Like swisscheese."
[Kora] Lila breathes against a worn black cotton t-shirt, washed in places to insubstantiality, with the word PIXIES across the breast, in white letters. Those are not faded, but rather - adultered, by time, by dye bleeding from their neighboring fibers, by the odd spatter of mustard, the other splash of blood. Clean but - not bright. Kora smells of earth and the breathing exhaust of the city, of blood and other viscuous, (in)human fluids necessary for certain bodies to continue functioning. Of humors, vitreous and otherwise.
" - no, just two since I saw you. Moving Mountain, and Thirty Second Silence. Who came and went before he celebrated his first moot with Maelstrom." There is, always, in Kora's voice a certain respect, a certain lingering gravity when speaking of the dead. It approaches sorrow, but is something else, entirely.
"Mostly, we've had other - " that half-smile sharpens, bitterness shapened inside it, like the kiss of myrrhh against the senses, " - kinds of attrition. The Sentinels left, the lot of them. I've heard from the guardians that Joey's back, but it could be just a rumor. Passing through, yeah? And Joe - hied himself to Portland. Whole packs, -rhya, come and then gone, since I saw you last. I get the story soon, right?"
- of her absence. Of her path. All the places she's been.
[Kora] transcript!
to Kora
[Lila] They're standing, talking about this. They're standing on the old dock. There are splinters in the wood, and the city's got a glow to it. The city glows like a dirty thing; filthy, unnatural. Not a scab; a scab is a sign of wounds, healing (and this kind've creation heals nothing). Blight, for the stars; blight, for the sky. They're standing, talking about this, and Lila is easy on her feet. There is a pack, thrown over one shoulder; a duffel that bumps against her knee, dangles-long, is cross-thatched in dirt and things that've stained, a traveler's duffel, a duffel of many colors. They're standing, and Lila is watching Kora, unblinking, head canted just so to the side, lips parted. Still as a thing that doesn't need motion.
Lila is an expressive creature; not quite glass, but still -- unconcerned with concealing what she feels, what she is thinking. There's something steady, steadying in the texture of her gaze, the way she looks at Kora, when Moving Mountain's name is mentioned. His death, she remembers hearing of; Thirty Second Silence, that name causes her eyebrows to quiver together, a furrow to appear betwen them. The furrow stays throughout all this: The Sentinels left. Joey might be back, a rumor. And Joe -
"Why did he leave, Joe? Are you alone now?" A beat. And then, this - the corner of her mouth, beginning to curve again, something toe-curlingly delicious, touched - no teeth - "You'll get the stories. I've a whole bag of them, Kora." She sounds grave, and also wondering. "And when I fall - " a beat " - here - " another beat " - you'll be better able to sing my spirit gone, providing there's no better galliard to do it."
"My favourite story, I think, is the one of how she who offers sorrow walked Waking Dream, Breaking Heart to that cheap all-night Lebanese restaurant near the caern."
[Kora] "C'mon. Let me tell you that one. In cinemascope and smell-o-vision," replies Kora, with that edge of a grin by way of response, the bitterness lingering, back-of-the-tongue now, because she cannot swallow it all no matter how much she tries. Because it stays. Because the there is another shard to follow it, a splinter-thing. " - and three-D, to boot. I could go for some baklava, anyway - "
There is a lift of her chin, an animal cant of her head by way of invitation, and then Kora swings into easy step with the slight Gaian, the loping stride of someone who has walked miles and miles and miles in her time, and will walk miles more before her time has ended.
" - do the Lebanese make baklava? Gods, I hope so."
--
And Joe. Listen: Kora does not tell that story sandwiched between the gleam of the lake and the promise of honeyed pastries. She's quiet for a time, and they walk in that sort of companionable silence, because that story is old enough that she's not tense with it now, for all that it still coils her rage around her spine like the serpent around the world-tree, like some constrictor-thing crawling up her vertebrae, twisted among the muscle and the bone and the branching bundles of long nerves that run throughout her body.
The lake: behind them. The Caern, around them. It is nighttime, and rather quiet. There is a chorus of crickets somewhere close, and the more distant sounds of the city, the hum of traffic. The call of a distant siren.
And Joe.
The Story of Joe.
"Silence-rhya left, yeah? That old territory his pack defended for years was left unguarded, left to - drift, right, until god knows what took it back. It's just north of the Caern, the northern flank, so we moved from the junkyard to this old ruined church in Cabrini, started exploring it, re-establishing old ties, chasing out the nests where the Wyrmlings had crawled in at the corners.
"Except Joe was dreaming of glory greater than holding a Caern, yeah? He kept talking about Portland, and some ancestor of his who single-handedly rescued a near-fallen Caern. That's just in idle moments, really. Why go hieing off after some other Caern when there's one right here, raised from nothing, with our dead mixed with the earth and our sacrifices tossed into the Maelstrom?
"I never really figured he would leave, just that he had that modi restlessness.
"When Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya died, and Joe and Thomas and me went with Blood Summons to the Battleground. When we fought that battle, over and over and over, dying with him, dying for him, I figured - no, I knew we'd die together.
"Except Joe. Right: he was Jarl. And this Rotagar, Karl Holds-the-Line, challenged him. He followed this - totem, some bird-thing, yeah? Not a proper Fenrir totem. Made him fight like a fostern Ahroun, though it wasn't his own strength. Joe figured he could take him anyway, figured that since he'd beaten Kemp once, in a martial challenge, no one could best him.
"They fought, and Karl won. And Joe - he couldn't - face it, really. That he'd lost. So he left."
That's as they walk, weaving between the derelict ships, the ruined warehouses, the old dry docks, all quiet, a certain passion underneath - sometimes, a certain contempt. Joe, in her mind, is still Joe - that fucking coward. sometimes.
"I'm not alone though," after. "When Joe left, I asked Roman and Sparrow to come join me, help me hold the territory. They did. We made it official before the last moot."
[Kora] [pause!!!]
[Lila] There are stories Lila knows, of Joe. There are stories she had ready, for when he died himself. There are stories Lila knew, of that Jarl, bright mind all sunk-deep in tribal prejudice, all deep-sank in human prejudice, never going to another tribe's Gathering, not remembering, and yet - his honor, that's what they said, often; his honor, and also, his glory, and Lila saw it. Knew it; heard it. There are stories she had ready, because a Moonsinger, Taledancer, must be prepared to let the moon swell bright in the throat and undo the ties of [fervent (passion)] memory. They've gotta be prepared to do it right. They've gotta care to know.
This one is different than the others. The golden-haired galliard, one hand in her own hair, briefly, to scratch at an itch, the other hand comfortably at her hip, thumb laced through jean-loop, still barefoot, no human'll serve her (yes they will [looks like that]). "I'm sorry," Lila says, in answer to the story. "That story's like a stone; and I'm sorry." There's no deep, abiding sympathy in her tone. The words are simple, bare; her compassion isn't human, either - a creature's thing.
Also, this. They're approaching the gate, and Lila bumps easy into Kora, before ducking under chainlink. Out've this half-place, where the air's so thin lean your shoulder against it just right and slip across to the other side, ghost-girl, not-girl.
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