[Kora] Early some winter's morning, the sun low on the horizon, half-hidden by a bank of clouds. The air is cold enough to freeze one's sinuses, and every exhaled breath produces a visible cloud of steam. The city is quiet, wrapped up in human holidays. Skeleton crews man the city's office parks. The rich retreat to their faux-traditional mansions and their faux-traditional holidays while the poor are left to scrape together what they can. On the coldest days, that's sometimes no more than the heat radiating from a burning trashcan, the steam from a building's boiler, billowing out onto an otherwise ice-wrapped sidewalk.
The waning moon is just visible in the sky, sinking into the west as the sun rises in the east. Grant Park is empty, the fountains shuttered, the fields lost in drifts of slowly compacting snow. The city keeps the main paths shoveled, and where they are not shoveled, the city's residents have trampled the snow into a compact layer of glazed ice.
There is just a blond woman sitting on a brick piling flanking the entrance to a long, narrow pier that juts out sharply into the dark waters of the lake, giving a fine view of the city's tourist attractions, the perfect vantage point for a panoramic shot of the city's skyline.
She's by herself, hands tucked into the pockets of her down jacket, her shoulders forward, huddling to conserve body heat. The pale blue hood of a secondary layer - a cotton jacket, maybe - skins the back of her head, moves when she turns to follow the course of a line of dark-winged birds across the horizon. Now and then she looks back toward the city, dark eyes alert, searching out the familiar landmarks for the dark shadow of a broad-shouldered man.
"I know it's early." - she told him a half-hour ago, her fine, low voice vibrant, intimate over the cell phone. Mouth to ear, ear to mouth. "I want to see you. In the sunlight. Meet me - " here, by this brick piling, by the brown pier over the dark, still lake, in the first light of morning.
[Trent Brumby] No stranger to early mornings, he hadn't complained. Having taken a few days off, unless it's an absolute emergency and for only his most valued and beloved customers, he's let himself unwind before the start of the new year. The new year that, hopefully, will see him become a father. He's looking forward to that; having his own family. The day he can hold his child in his arms and protect it from danger. He'd never say this to Kora, but the day he can keep their child at home and not see it in harms way, just because his or her mother has to fight, will be a very happy, relieved day for him. It's not that he doesn't worry for Kora, or feel sympathy for the plight she's been given by the Gods in this lifetime - she had no choice in it, like the child, but somehow it's different. With children it's always different.
Car parked over yonder, he had walked the street in a pair of jeans, hiking boots, and several layers of clothing, from his under shirt, to his sweater, and his scarf tucked into his wool jacket. A dark cap fit over his black hair, covering the tops of his ears and drawn down low across his brow. His hands are in his pockets, where a set of gloves await to be put on. He hadn't got to that yet, preferring to drive with naked fingers even if it meant the tips got red in the cold and became partially numb until the heater of the car kicked in.
Spotting her, he smiled quietly. Approaching, he was careful on the wet side walk, not hurrying across it, but taking his steady, sweet time. "Good morning, Kora." He greets her with a warmth that carries in the depth of his voice, easily and honest.
[Kora] "Baby," she says in her low, rich voice, pitched just enough to carry. She's hoarse from the frigid air, the forced march here from the spare loveliness of the early morning Caern, but it hardly matters. Her voice thickens like syrup around the pet name just as her mouth curves in a small, private smile as she slides down from the brick piling, easily gaining her feet.
There is that native grave always in her, though a new something - subtle, shifted - as she adjusts unconsciously to her changing center of gravity as their child grows and her body grows to accommodate it. Her eyes are bright in the cold morning hair, her cheeks and the tip of her nose a bright pink from exertion in the cold. The path here is damp, nothing more - regularly shoveled by the ground staff - but there are patches of black ice against the pavement that justify his steady caution.
He makes it there, dignity intact, still standing, and she slips from the piling to both feet reaching out to grab his hands and pull him close, reaching up to kiss him like she'd been away for days, weeks, when it has only been a few nights. The kiss is lingering and settled - at once intimate and chaste. She lets go his fingers and cups his cheeks, thumb tracing his jaw as she enjoys his mouth, his closeness, his heat, the scent of his blood underneath his skin, the rough stubble lining his jaw. From a distance, it looks like one of those movie kisses - lovers on a train platform, some lingering farewell - but up close it is written in this intimate sort of haiku, the chill pads of her long fingers stippled across the line of his cheekbone, the warm sweep of her breath, a little stale from a long night, against his mouth. His eyes close to hers, definition lost from nearness - just a pale, shining gray, all solid.
The kiss changes, becomes more fierce, more hungry - more full of want, which is the root of wanton toward the end, before she breaks off and just leans her forehead against his, her eyes half-closed, the slushy remnants of mostly-shoveled snow crunching beneath their feet. He has to lean down for his, drop his height to match hers, and so she is looking up at him, every so slightly, the rosy light of early morning pooling across her cheeks as she eventually pulls away, tugs him with her down toward the end of the pier.
"Let's watch the sun rise, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] His mouth curves to almost match hers, still amused by the pet name that she has dubbed him with. He's never corrected it, and honestly doesn't mind. It's very human of her, and that part he enjoys. Like when she paints her nails and the colour gradually chips off. Or how she grabs anything to use in her hair, pushing it through the pale strands to keep it knotted in a design he still hasn't figured out how to master. There's some trick to it that most women know, and for the life of him he can't figure out, even though he can usually diagnose a problem with a car and patch it together again. It should be easy, simple, but its one of those marvels that he hasn't asked about. It's a girl thing, and he loves to keep it that way. Mysteries of womanhood, like the glow of her skin in pregnancy, and the gut intuition that all women have and only few men are blessed with.
She kisses him. It ranges from chaste to intimate, and becomes something more hungry and consuming. He likes all shades of it. The variety is what keeps him on his toes. He never knows what to expect from her and that's the thrill of it. He's heard that the libido can be dampened if not out right squashed when a woman is pregnant. Maybe that doesn't apply to Garou. Kora still wants to crawl through his mouth until she can taste his bones, and he's perfectly accommodating. No man would dare complain.
His hands had come out of their pockets, and once she's done with the warmth of them, he touches her waist while his mouth is locked to hers. He still tastes faintly like mint from his toothpaste. It lingers on the back taste buds and the inside cheeks to his mouth. She can smell the shampoos trapped under his watch cap, and the cologne splashed across his collar; nothing too strong, just not yet faint from a days wear. Reluctantly pulling back, his mouth still parted, he slowly opens eyes made heavier with a moment of heat.
Before he can protest, or tell her what better ideas he has on his mind - all of which she can read in his raw expression -, she's pulling him towards the pier and diverting his attention from her to their surrounds. Taking them in, he walks with her, curling his fingers around hers until they are laced, a little firmer with the potentially slippery slope of the ground. Not for his benefit, but hers, as if somehow his footing his more secure then a woman that can run on four paws if she so chose.
"You're looking bright." He casts a quick side glance at her. "Happy." Although it's a statement, it's one of those with a slight lilting edge, an invitation for elaboration on her part. He's wondering what's up, and why the early morning call.
[Kora] "Later, baby - " she promises him, too, when she reads that heavy spark in his eyes, the catch of flame behind the gray disks. This is quiet, sure and bemused. Her chin lifts to brush the words against the shell of his ear, this subtle little promise. "We'll have breakfast in bed." So quiet no one listening could overhear, were there anyone else in the park at this hour of morning, when the sky is a gray color streaked with pink and purple shadows, and the morning star still lingers, bright against the horizon, in the first flush of coming dawn.
Their hands are linked now, like the long sweeping shadows cast back, behind them over the icey boards of the pier. The structure creaks and groans underfoot, and the lake water laps quietly against the pilings buried deep in the muck. The boards are worn, will need to be scraped and painted again come spring. If he looks down at their tandem steps, Trent will see the worn fans where the park workers' snow shovels have scraped and re-scraped the cold, damp pier.
Her mouth is brighter, the morning hoarseness chased away by the bright mint of his toothpaste. She can still taste him with every breath, and tightens her hand around his, squeezes as they walk, but does not drop the contact. His hands are broad and callused, hers are fineboned and long. They fit together like lock and key, and that knowledge sparks again in her dark eyes as she meets is sidelong glance.
"I am - " she confirms, her mouth curving quietly around the word. " - happy." She tips her head, forward toward the horizon, a gray swath of clouds over a gray stretch of lake, flat as the great plains, the pink promise of the rising sun beyond. "Look, the sun's coming back. There was a time when you really had to do the rites - the hunt - the sacrifices - to charm the sun back into the sky, so they say." A neat, narrow shrug of her still-narrow shoulders follows, and in that moment he might think this celebration - early morning, along in the cold bright world - is just that. Winter is here. Winter is already passing.
"And, well - Lila came back from the Hanging Oak Sept." She continues, but only when they've reached the edge of the pier, where she can lean against the reinforced railings and draw him close, beside her and behind her, where she can feel some shadow of his body heat through their heavy winter gear. "I'm Fostern, now."
[Trent Brumby] He likes to hear that she's happy. It's a rare thing to be spoken aloud. She's Garou and her life isn't meant for that. Blood, pain and misery seems far more common amongst the Garou. But she's always smiled. She's mourned too, but happiness seems like a great deal of achievement. It leaves him satisfied, even if he may only be a small part of it. He doesn't ask. He doesn't want to know all the answers.
With his larger hand around his, he seeks to keep hers warm. That fine boned hand seemed so fragile. But he never forgets, not for a moment, what she's capable of. One might think that knowing a lover can turn into a mythical creature, with teeth and fangs, and claws to rend through flesh and bone, might make one wary or even repulsed. But he has long come to acceptance and knows nothing different, even if this is the first time he's ever lived with a Garou so intimately woven into his daily life. "Good," he had said, and lifted her hand to his mouth to kiss the back of her bare knuckles.
Releasing it shortly after, he slides in behind her and lays his arms around her waist, drawing her back into the solid expanse of his chest and into the bulk of arms and fabric. He's taller and his view is unobstructed. Only her bright hair is in the line of his sight, reflective more then the dark water below the pier, and spreading out around them. He has yet to meet Lila, though she's been mentioned a few times. He's quiet as his mate tells him about her return, and then drops a little bombshell.
"You're what?" Sliding hands from her belly, he grips her at the waist and turns her part way as he comes to meet her, looking around her shoulder to find her face, not just the side profile of it. "When did this happen?" He doesn't sound outraged. He's moving from shocked into surprise, and she can see the slow glow building as he shares this delight with her. Her triumph of moving up in the world.
[Kora] There is something charmingly awkward about embracing through all these clothes. Kora's warm down coat squeaks softly with most every movement, turns her into some junior approximation of the Michelin Man from a distance, but up close the downy layers depress easily beneath his arms, and the sound of friction against the nylon shell becomes part of the background noise, like the distant roar of traffic on the interstate, the low lapping of water about the wooden beans holding up the pier. The hood of her next layer - her cotton jacket - has fallen down from the crown of her head, revealing the oddly intricate twist of her hair, secured with a long, slender twist of knobby driftwood still damp from its journey over the lake to the shore.
Her eyes half-close as his mouth touches the back of her knuckles and her breath catches again, sharply this time in the back of her throat - emotion shining in the dark discs of her eyes. Where he touches her skin - his mouth on her hand, his fingers cupped around hers, striving to keep her warm - she's a degree or two warmer than he is, as if she had the slightest fever. It's just the rage - banked, subtle, everpresent - warming her blood.
When she turns like this, her body sideways against his, her neck craned so that they are eye to eye, he can feel the shape of her pregnant stomach like a shadow against his flanks, through the whispering layers of cotton and down that keep her warm.
"The last couple days - " her eyes are quick on his; she follows the gradations of surprise, the slow, building glow, deep in his gray irises. Her reflection is there two, shining back at her, framed by the rising sun.
The creature's voice is low, quiet, but she does not break eyecontact. " - but really, officially," she breathes out, nostrils flaring as if she had just sked herself a question. " - about an hour ago. She gave me another name, too." A minute pause, before she supplies the name. " - Renders Bone."
[Trent Brumby] An hour ago. He's happy with that answer. He'd have hated to be the last to find out, that this had happened days ago and she was just telling him now. His smile is instant and broad, giving him laugh lines around his eyes and deepening the shined colour more. Tightening his arms back around her, he gives her a little squeeze, not around the belly but more about the shoulders. The kiss he gives her is sound, left on the high part of her cheek, and he murmurs there: "Congratulations." He's proud, but doesn't say it, for fear of sounding like some condescending prick.
"Renders Bones." Repeating the name, he soaks it in. It's very Fenrir. Violent sounding. It chases some of that good glow to him, but not all of it. Just brings him quickly back to ground and to reality. He looks at her again. It's more serious this time, darker for different reasons, and his voice is low, matching it. "I'm very glad that I'm on your good side," he tells her, and means it.
[Kora] "I left the Caern," she tells him, voice soft, quietly leaning back against him, feeling the solidity of his musculature, his big chest, the broad shoulders, the architecture of which she knows so well, under so many different strains. " - and called you." Confirming his place in the hierachy of People She Told. With a worming motion, she frees her right arm from where it is trapped behind their bodies and reaches up to grave the groove of her thumb over the laugh lines framing his left eye. The edge of her thumb trails down his cheek thing his jaw, like she was memorizing the angles of his face, the hard lines and softer hollows as she returns the shining look in his eyes.
His gaze darkens then. They are standing at the end of a pier jutting out into a dark, quiet, freshwater lake in the pale gray of predawn, and they breath fogs around and the air feels so cold that she can almost swear she can see the condensation freezing as she breathes out, that she imagines she can trace the miniscule filaments of quick-formed ice out of the air between them, watch them fall, shattering toward the ground.
The sky is beginning to turn extraordinary colors, but there's still the mystery of the setting moon low in the west, the bright, singular point of the morning star in the east, the promise of a new day as drifts of icy fog creep through the silent city.
Most nights, he hears her stories before anyone else, feels them in her shoulders, in her body, the rumble of her words inside the circle of his arms before the sound reaches his ears. She's quiet now, though. "I'm glad you are, too - " she tells him, her voice thrumming with that same vibrancy of repressed, half-voiced emotion, though it means something else in her, in this gray light of early dawn.
An hour from now, as they are walking back to his car, as they are shivering in the seats, testing the heat again and again to see if it is warm enough to blast while the city wakes up around them - an hour from now she'll tell him the story - of Burns Within, a Fianna - she will say, quiet - a red wolf who scoured a great and hungry darkness from these lands years ago, before he disappeared. Who died inside a strange living maze of a house in the umbra, whose bones she found to return to his people, and with them, the story of his death. The details are so strange and fanciful that they are hard to credit, bring to mind Alice in Wonderland so strongly that he can almost - in the oddest, most quiet moments - taste the mad hatter's tea - and yet she tells him this strange tragic with such abject forthrightness, with such solidity in the blast of the dry heat in the front seat of his car.
They will eat breakfast before she takes him to bed, seated on the couch in his living room, warm coffee, hot chocolate to steam away the bright, bitter chill of the early morning. Burns Within stays with them, here, too - this unseen presence, just out of sight, the Galliard's promise to remember, above all. Until she says, quietly, so directly, so level - " - let's go to bed." - because she wants to feel his skin against hers, and his body beneath hers. Because she wants to feel him, alone in the breathing darkness of his bedroom some ordinary morning, as the vast city wakes up around them.
[Kora] transcript!
to Kora
The waning moon is just visible in the sky, sinking into the west as the sun rises in the east. Grant Park is empty, the fountains shuttered, the fields lost in drifts of slowly compacting snow. The city keeps the main paths shoveled, and where they are not shoveled, the city's residents have trampled the snow into a compact layer of glazed ice.
There is just a blond woman sitting on a brick piling flanking the entrance to a long, narrow pier that juts out sharply into the dark waters of the lake, giving a fine view of the city's tourist attractions, the perfect vantage point for a panoramic shot of the city's skyline.
She's by herself, hands tucked into the pockets of her down jacket, her shoulders forward, huddling to conserve body heat. The pale blue hood of a secondary layer - a cotton jacket, maybe - skins the back of her head, moves when she turns to follow the course of a line of dark-winged birds across the horizon. Now and then she looks back toward the city, dark eyes alert, searching out the familiar landmarks for the dark shadow of a broad-shouldered man.
"I know it's early." - she told him a half-hour ago, her fine, low voice vibrant, intimate over the cell phone. Mouth to ear, ear to mouth. "I want to see you. In the sunlight. Meet me - " here, by this brick piling, by the brown pier over the dark, still lake, in the first light of morning.
[Trent Brumby] No stranger to early mornings, he hadn't complained. Having taken a few days off, unless it's an absolute emergency and for only his most valued and beloved customers, he's let himself unwind before the start of the new year. The new year that, hopefully, will see him become a father. He's looking forward to that; having his own family. The day he can hold his child in his arms and protect it from danger. He'd never say this to Kora, but the day he can keep their child at home and not see it in harms way, just because his or her mother has to fight, will be a very happy, relieved day for him. It's not that he doesn't worry for Kora, or feel sympathy for the plight she's been given by the Gods in this lifetime - she had no choice in it, like the child, but somehow it's different. With children it's always different.
Car parked over yonder, he had walked the street in a pair of jeans, hiking boots, and several layers of clothing, from his under shirt, to his sweater, and his scarf tucked into his wool jacket. A dark cap fit over his black hair, covering the tops of his ears and drawn down low across his brow. His hands are in his pockets, where a set of gloves await to be put on. He hadn't got to that yet, preferring to drive with naked fingers even if it meant the tips got red in the cold and became partially numb until the heater of the car kicked in.
Spotting her, he smiled quietly. Approaching, he was careful on the wet side walk, not hurrying across it, but taking his steady, sweet time. "Good morning, Kora." He greets her with a warmth that carries in the depth of his voice, easily and honest.
[Kora] "Baby," she says in her low, rich voice, pitched just enough to carry. She's hoarse from the frigid air, the forced march here from the spare loveliness of the early morning Caern, but it hardly matters. Her voice thickens like syrup around the pet name just as her mouth curves in a small, private smile as she slides down from the brick piling, easily gaining her feet.
There is that native grave always in her, though a new something - subtle, shifted - as she adjusts unconsciously to her changing center of gravity as their child grows and her body grows to accommodate it. Her eyes are bright in the cold morning hair, her cheeks and the tip of her nose a bright pink from exertion in the cold. The path here is damp, nothing more - regularly shoveled by the ground staff - but there are patches of black ice against the pavement that justify his steady caution.
He makes it there, dignity intact, still standing, and she slips from the piling to both feet reaching out to grab his hands and pull him close, reaching up to kiss him like she'd been away for days, weeks, when it has only been a few nights. The kiss is lingering and settled - at once intimate and chaste. She lets go his fingers and cups his cheeks, thumb tracing his jaw as she enjoys his mouth, his closeness, his heat, the scent of his blood underneath his skin, the rough stubble lining his jaw. From a distance, it looks like one of those movie kisses - lovers on a train platform, some lingering farewell - but up close it is written in this intimate sort of haiku, the chill pads of her long fingers stippled across the line of his cheekbone, the warm sweep of her breath, a little stale from a long night, against his mouth. His eyes close to hers, definition lost from nearness - just a pale, shining gray, all solid.
The kiss changes, becomes more fierce, more hungry - more full of want, which is the root of wanton toward the end, before she breaks off and just leans her forehead against his, her eyes half-closed, the slushy remnants of mostly-shoveled snow crunching beneath their feet. He has to lean down for his, drop his height to match hers, and so she is looking up at him, every so slightly, the rosy light of early morning pooling across her cheeks as she eventually pulls away, tugs him with her down toward the end of the pier.
"Let's watch the sun rise, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] His mouth curves to almost match hers, still amused by the pet name that she has dubbed him with. He's never corrected it, and honestly doesn't mind. It's very human of her, and that part he enjoys. Like when she paints her nails and the colour gradually chips off. Or how she grabs anything to use in her hair, pushing it through the pale strands to keep it knotted in a design he still hasn't figured out how to master. There's some trick to it that most women know, and for the life of him he can't figure out, even though he can usually diagnose a problem with a car and patch it together again. It should be easy, simple, but its one of those marvels that he hasn't asked about. It's a girl thing, and he loves to keep it that way. Mysteries of womanhood, like the glow of her skin in pregnancy, and the gut intuition that all women have and only few men are blessed with.
She kisses him. It ranges from chaste to intimate, and becomes something more hungry and consuming. He likes all shades of it. The variety is what keeps him on his toes. He never knows what to expect from her and that's the thrill of it. He's heard that the libido can be dampened if not out right squashed when a woman is pregnant. Maybe that doesn't apply to Garou. Kora still wants to crawl through his mouth until she can taste his bones, and he's perfectly accommodating. No man would dare complain.
His hands had come out of their pockets, and once she's done with the warmth of them, he touches her waist while his mouth is locked to hers. He still tastes faintly like mint from his toothpaste. It lingers on the back taste buds and the inside cheeks to his mouth. She can smell the shampoos trapped under his watch cap, and the cologne splashed across his collar; nothing too strong, just not yet faint from a days wear. Reluctantly pulling back, his mouth still parted, he slowly opens eyes made heavier with a moment of heat.
Before he can protest, or tell her what better ideas he has on his mind - all of which she can read in his raw expression -, she's pulling him towards the pier and diverting his attention from her to their surrounds. Taking them in, he walks with her, curling his fingers around hers until they are laced, a little firmer with the potentially slippery slope of the ground. Not for his benefit, but hers, as if somehow his footing his more secure then a woman that can run on four paws if she so chose.
"You're looking bright." He casts a quick side glance at her. "Happy." Although it's a statement, it's one of those with a slight lilting edge, an invitation for elaboration on her part. He's wondering what's up, and why the early morning call.
[Kora] "Later, baby - " she promises him, too, when she reads that heavy spark in his eyes, the catch of flame behind the gray disks. This is quiet, sure and bemused. Her chin lifts to brush the words against the shell of his ear, this subtle little promise. "We'll have breakfast in bed." So quiet no one listening could overhear, were there anyone else in the park at this hour of morning, when the sky is a gray color streaked with pink and purple shadows, and the morning star still lingers, bright against the horizon, in the first flush of coming dawn.
Their hands are linked now, like the long sweeping shadows cast back, behind them over the icey boards of the pier. The structure creaks and groans underfoot, and the lake water laps quietly against the pilings buried deep in the muck. The boards are worn, will need to be scraped and painted again come spring. If he looks down at their tandem steps, Trent will see the worn fans where the park workers' snow shovels have scraped and re-scraped the cold, damp pier.
Her mouth is brighter, the morning hoarseness chased away by the bright mint of his toothpaste. She can still taste him with every breath, and tightens her hand around his, squeezes as they walk, but does not drop the contact. His hands are broad and callused, hers are fineboned and long. They fit together like lock and key, and that knowledge sparks again in her dark eyes as she meets is sidelong glance.
"I am - " she confirms, her mouth curving quietly around the word. " - happy." She tips her head, forward toward the horizon, a gray swath of clouds over a gray stretch of lake, flat as the great plains, the pink promise of the rising sun beyond. "Look, the sun's coming back. There was a time when you really had to do the rites - the hunt - the sacrifices - to charm the sun back into the sky, so they say." A neat, narrow shrug of her still-narrow shoulders follows, and in that moment he might think this celebration - early morning, along in the cold bright world - is just that. Winter is here. Winter is already passing.
"And, well - Lila came back from the Hanging Oak Sept." She continues, but only when they've reached the edge of the pier, where she can lean against the reinforced railings and draw him close, beside her and behind her, where she can feel some shadow of his body heat through their heavy winter gear. "I'm Fostern, now."
[Trent Brumby] He likes to hear that she's happy. It's a rare thing to be spoken aloud. She's Garou and her life isn't meant for that. Blood, pain and misery seems far more common amongst the Garou. But she's always smiled. She's mourned too, but happiness seems like a great deal of achievement. It leaves him satisfied, even if he may only be a small part of it. He doesn't ask. He doesn't want to know all the answers.
With his larger hand around his, he seeks to keep hers warm. That fine boned hand seemed so fragile. But he never forgets, not for a moment, what she's capable of. One might think that knowing a lover can turn into a mythical creature, with teeth and fangs, and claws to rend through flesh and bone, might make one wary or even repulsed. But he has long come to acceptance and knows nothing different, even if this is the first time he's ever lived with a Garou so intimately woven into his daily life. "Good," he had said, and lifted her hand to his mouth to kiss the back of her bare knuckles.
Releasing it shortly after, he slides in behind her and lays his arms around her waist, drawing her back into the solid expanse of his chest and into the bulk of arms and fabric. He's taller and his view is unobstructed. Only her bright hair is in the line of his sight, reflective more then the dark water below the pier, and spreading out around them. He has yet to meet Lila, though she's been mentioned a few times. He's quiet as his mate tells him about her return, and then drops a little bombshell.
"You're what?" Sliding hands from her belly, he grips her at the waist and turns her part way as he comes to meet her, looking around her shoulder to find her face, not just the side profile of it. "When did this happen?" He doesn't sound outraged. He's moving from shocked into surprise, and she can see the slow glow building as he shares this delight with her. Her triumph of moving up in the world.
[Kora] There is something charmingly awkward about embracing through all these clothes. Kora's warm down coat squeaks softly with most every movement, turns her into some junior approximation of the Michelin Man from a distance, but up close the downy layers depress easily beneath his arms, and the sound of friction against the nylon shell becomes part of the background noise, like the distant roar of traffic on the interstate, the low lapping of water about the wooden beans holding up the pier. The hood of her next layer - her cotton jacket - has fallen down from the crown of her head, revealing the oddly intricate twist of her hair, secured with a long, slender twist of knobby driftwood still damp from its journey over the lake to the shore.
Her eyes half-close as his mouth touches the back of her knuckles and her breath catches again, sharply this time in the back of her throat - emotion shining in the dark discs of her eyes. Where he touches her skin - his mouth on her hand, his fingers cupped around hers, striving to keep her warm - she's a degree or two warmer than he is, as if she had the slightest fever. It's just the rage - banked, subtle, everpresent - warming her blood.
When she turns like this, her body sideways against his, her neck craned so that they are eye to eye, he can feel the shape of her pregnant stomach like a shadow against his flanks, through the whispering layers of cotton and down that keep her warm.
"The last couple days - " her eyes are quick on his; she follows the gradations of surprise, the slow, building glow, deep in his gray irises. Her reflection is there two, shining back at her, framed by the rising sun.
The creature's voice is low, quiet, but she does not break eyecontact. " - but really, officially," she breathes out, nostrils flaring as if she had just sked herself a question. " - about an hour ago. She gave me another name, too." A minute pause, before she supplies the name. " - Renders Bone."
[Trent Brumby] An hour ago. He's happy with that answer. He'd have hated to be the last to find out, that this had happened days ago and she was just telling him now. His smile is instant and broad, giving him laugh lines around his eyes and deepening the shined colour more. Tightening his arms back around her, he gives her a little squeeze, not around the belly but more about the shoulders. The kiss he gives her is sound, left on the high part of her cheek, and he murmurs there: "Congratulations." He's proud, but doesn't say it, for fear of sounding like some condescending prick.
"Renders Bones." Repeating the name, he soaks it in. It's very Fenrir. Violent sounding. It chases some of that good glow to him, but not all of it. Just brings him quickly back to ground and to reality. He looks at her again. It's more serious this time, darker for different reasons, and his voice is low, matching it. "I'm very glad that I'm on your good side," he tells her, and means it.
[Kora] "I left the Caern," she tells him, voice soft, quietly leaning back against him, feeling the solidity of his musculature, his big chest, the broad shoulders, the architecture of which she knows so well, under so many different strains. " - and called you." Confirming his place in the hierachy of People She Told. With a worming motion, she frees her right arm from where it is trapped behind their bodies and reaches up to grave the groove of her thumb over the laugh lines framing his left eye. The edge of her thumb trails down his cheek thing his jaw, like she was memorizing the angles of his face, the hard lines and softer hollows as she returns the shining look in his eyes.
His gaze darkens then. They are standing at the end of a pier jutting out into a dark, quiet, freshwater lake in the pale gray of predawn, and they breath fogs around and the air feels so cold that she can almost swear she can see the condensation freezing as she breathes out, that she imagines she can trace the miniscule filaments of quick-formed ice out of the air between them, watch them fall, shattering toward the ground.
The sky is beginning to turn extraordinary colors, but there's still the mystery of the setting moon low in the west, the bright, singular point of the morning star in the east, the promise of a new day as drifts of icy fog creep through the silent city.
Most nights, he hears her stories before anyone else, feels them in her shoulders, in her body, the rumble of her words inside the circle of his arms before the sound reaches his ears. She's quiet now, though. "I'm glad you are, too - " she tells him, her voice thrumming with that same vibrancy of repressed, half-voiced emotion, though it means something else in her, in this gray light of early dawn.
An hour from now, as they are walking back to his car, as they are shivering in the seats, testing the heat again and again to see if it is warm enough to blast while the city wakes up around them - an hour from now she'll tell him the story - of Burns Within, a Fianna - she will say, quiet - a red wolf who scoured a great and hungry darkness from these lands years ago, before he disappeared. Who died inside a strange living maze of a house in the umbra, whose bones she found to return to his people, and with them, the story of his death. The details are so strange and fanciful that they are hard to credit, bring to mind Alice in Wonderland so strongly that he can almost - in the oddest, most quiet moments - taste the mad hatter's tea - and yet she tells him this strange tragic with such abject forthrightness, with such solidity in the blast of the dry heat in the front seat of his car.
They will eat breakfast before she takes him to bed, seated on the couch in his living room, warm coffee, hot chocolate to steam away the bright, bitter chill of the early morning. Burns Within stays with them, here, too - this unseen presence, just out of sight, the Galliard's promise to remember, above all. Until she says, quietly, so directly, so level - " - let's go to bed." - because she wants to feel his skin against hers, and his body beneath hers. Because she wants to feel him, alone in the breathing darkness of his bedroom some ordinary morning, as the vast city wakes up around them.
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