[Sorrow] Someone walked her to the Brotherhood, that cold dark morning. Oh, it crept above freezing the day before, enough to bring everyone in the city out of their warm nooks and crannies onto the streets, out to the lakeshore, into the parks made a morass of mud and ice by the constant trickle of snowmelt. Worm pale faces greeted a wan sky, the sun like a translucent slice of lemon floating in a bottle of distilled windex before night brought winter back to the streets, freezing and refreezing the filthy slush, the north wind bright and damp against her skin, the constant, insistent whistle of between the city's industrial corridors, its canyons of office buildings and condos, the one piece of the paved prairie they cannot kill.
The Brotherhood had closed for the night; was not yet open for the morning, but some of the kitchen staff were there, and the scent of baking bread comingles with the lemon-scented cleaner from the late-night scrubdown in the downstairs bar.
There's always coffee.
There's always food.
There's whiskey behind the bar if she needs it, and someone to serve it to her if she's too shy to let herself behind the bar, to grab the bottle, to pour. The word has already spread among the kin here. They're quiet with it, sober. They don't bother her for the details unless she looks like she needs to vent.
Someone pours whiskey, though. And not long after, someone brings her fresh bread, so hot from the oven steam curls visibly from the slices, with which to soak it up.
Roman precedes Kora by a good half-hour or more. Finds Quinn whereever she has chosen to sit - in the dark, warm wood of the downstairs bar, closed and quiet, the wood gleaming with polish, the brass burnished to a spit-shine - or upstairs, on the sectional in the common area. In her room, or his.
The Skald arrives later, when the first wan light of preday has grayed the seam of the horizon, the scent of the icy lake sharp on her skin. Her eyes are bright with the cold, her cheeks and the tip of her nose pink.
They are strangers, these two - but there is fundamentally no denying what Kora is when she comes in from the cold in search of the kinswoman and her own packmate. Tall and leggy - 5'10" or 5'11" - with long, lean limbs and a long, sure gait, hair the color of the winter sun and dark blue eyes set in pale northern features, sharp and regular in a way that would denote prettiness were it not for the wolf underneath, the way it animates in her - behind the eyes, in the twist of a generous mouth, in the animal directness of her level gaze.
[Roman Turner] He was close to 5 inches shorter than his Alpha, Kora. And he was almost a polar opposite when it came to open friendliness. He'd come back to the brotherhood to watch over the Kin and see to any wounds she bore. Mostly he came to be company and see that the girl was warm and as comforted as he could make her till Kora appeared.
[Quinn] She should have slept. It's been a long long night for Quinn, one that started out so fine. She worked the overnight, served the party-goers traveling from bar to bar in Cabrini. In the earlier hours, her patrons had been happier, more free, more buoyant. As the night wore on, those trickled out, and the regulars remained, just a few. The lost and lonely, those with no hope for what a new year would bring. The owner of The Winchester did what she could to lift their spirits, or at the very least keep them from bringing down her own and those of her staff. It was a battle of will, but not a tough one.
Not like the one that took place out on the sidewalk just after closing. That was a different kind of fight altogether. And then there was work to be done, blood to be scrubbed from the sidewalk, claw marks to be erased or covered or disguised in the concrete. A friend to be brought home. The kinswoman should have known the Godi was sin-born, all the signs were there. For a moment she'd had hope, seeing his Crinos-formed body collapsed and shredded outside her bar. He was alive but unconscious. He could be saved. But he couldn't, not by the time she got back to him, and what could a kinfolk have done to save him, anyway.
So the night has been long, and the day has been longer. The dark-haired Fiann is sitting at the bar, one of the tall stools, a bottle of whiskey at hand. Her pale face is almost grey with weariness, and her jeans still carry the blood of a fallen hero. She sits there with whomever, with Rueben for quiet company maybe, or Roman nearby. That's the beauty of The Brotherhood: there's no space for true solitude, and Quinn wouldn't want it, anyway.
There are dark smudges beneath her brilliant blue eyes, but no signs of tears. She turns her head when Kora enters, and knows her immediately for what she is. One doesn't live their entire life surrounded by Rage and not learn to recognize it in others, or to see the predatory grace, the powerful fluidity of motion. Quinn sits up as Kora nears, straightens her shoulders. Her muscle creak with the movement, vertebrae wishes to pop. she should have slept.
But she didn't. She knew someone would come. She knew someone would want more details, more information. Someone would want the story.
Lifting her head, she doesn't smile or offer warm greetings as she might have under better circumstances. Angling her body toward the wolf in woman's skin, Quinn says, "Hi." Then, as direct yet respectfully as she can muster given the circumstances and the number of hours since she woke yesterday, "What do you want to know?"
[Roman Turner] This was his business in only the fact that he was Kora's Pack Mate and one of the Nation. It wasn't his Tribe however and unlike Kora, he did not bear the weight of so much responsibility for so many. Still he murmured to Quinn.
"That's Kora and she won't eat ya, she's too busy bearing the weight of a Tribe on her shoulders."
[Sorrow] Kora is dressed for the weather - a down coat over a hoodie over a t-shirt over a thermal - and the warmth of the bar's interior mades a good three quarters of those layers unnecessary to someone born to the north wind, fostered on the spare, flat islands in the North Sea.
There's no legacy of that fosterage in her voice; when she speaks, her voice is low and rich, the accent rather blandly American, suburban, ordinary to most American ears.
"That you're well, first - " the Skald says, stripping off her coat as she walks from the front door to the bar, the nylon layers whistling against each other from the friction. She seems to mean it; there is a subtle shifting glance from the kinswoman to Roman before her attention returns to Quinn, and remains there - whole, intent as few people are. Not animal this, but something else - some cultivated watchfulness, some inborn attentiveness to both the surface of things and the shadows beneath.
Her dark eyes flicker over the kinswoman's posture, the gray undertone to her skin, the blood soaked into her jeans, the whiskey glass on the wooden bar, the marred reflection of her movement in the polished wooden bar.
The winter coat is left carelessly over a barstool a few feet away. Kora's wearing a worn hoodie, half unzipped, three letters of her PIXIES t-shirt underneath visible. When Roman introduces him the serious mask of her features is undercut by the brief twist of a half-smile. The expression - seems hollow, undercut by the sobriety evident in her posture, in the steadiness of her gaze, by the blood on her hands. Still, she lifts her chin toward the Gaian in subtle acknowledgment of the introduction as she pulls out the nearest barstool to Quinn and slides onto it.
"Quinn," her brows rise to frame the subtle question, " - right? As he said, I'm Kora, a Skald - Galliard - and Alpha of the Fenrir. I've heard the story secondhand, but I'd like to know what happened, beginning to end, in your own words."
[Quinn] Quinn looks at Roman, and she attempts her best tired smile. It's weary all around the edges, but she tries - for his sake, he seems so young, a boy with old eyes - makes the effort to put him at ease. The smile, the look of her eyes, they say what she can't quite form the words into: that she's weary, not wary. That she doesn't expect the Garou present to snap her head clear off her shoulders. "Thanks," is all she says, and if he's close enough she actually reaches out to him, rests a slender hand over his forearm or his hand, some part of his arm that she can reach. The touch is light and brief, and probably reassures the kinswoman more than the Ragabash.
Then her attention is on the newcomer. The alpha of her tribe in Chicago. Quinn angles her body more, turns in the stool so that she faces the talesinger. Her hands swipe along the thighs of her jeans, down to knees and back up again once. And she nods her head to her name, doesn't offer more to it than that yes, she is Quinn.
What she asks for is a difficult request, if only because now Quinn has to do what she doesn't like to do these days. Cast her memory back to things unpleasant, events that led to the loss of someone she cared about. The unsteadiness of her spirit is not nearly so terribly great as it was months ago, but it's there' all the same. She takes a breath to steady herself, to find the words.
And she tells the story of Night's Reprieve's death, or as much of it as she can tell.
"I own a bar in Cabrini. The Winchester. Been in the family ages. Reprieve stopped in sometimes after working around the Caern, I guess that's what he did last night. He stayed and helped me close up for the night, and when I was locking up, these three people came up to us. One of them, the guy," here her brow furrows, and she looks confused, "he did something to me. I've heard about Garou who can use their Rage to draw someone in, but I've never seen it before. He used it on me, but Reprieve tried to protect me. He tried to get me away from them, but the two girls attacked. Both shifted to Crinos in the middle of the sidewalk. One of them had a sword, both of them had black fur." She shakes her head and sighs, frustrated with herself. For having nearly given in to a strange and unnatural lust she ahd no control over. There's no point thinking about what might have been or what could have happened. What's done is done. "I don't know what happened to him after that, the grabbed me and tried to drag me into the alley. He's the one I brought back." She stops, looks down at the hands resting in her lap, and she sighs. "I tried to get away from the guy. When I came back around in my truck, the other two disappeared, and Night's Reprieve was dead."
Her voice catches on the name, her brow furrows, and her eyes glisten, but that's as far as Quinn comes to tears. Wiping at her eyes with the back of one hand, she says, her voice wavering oh so slightly yet noticeably, "After that I knew there wasn't much time before people would be out. I called in my staff and we cleaned up."
[Roman Turner] Under normal circumstances he would of lit up like a torch if I woman touched him. This wasn't one of those times. In fact when Quinn told her story he gently rubbed her back in an attempt to comfort her.
"He died doing what was right, he'd have it no other way. It was an honorable death."
[Roman Turner] He eventually slipped out to give the pair some privacy, though Kora could reach him with but a thought.
((Ok guys, I need sleep for work and to fight this cold. Thanks for the play. Sorry I must go.))
[Sorrow] Quinn has been awake for a night and day. Outside, the sun has finally broken through the clouds at the edge of the horizon, sending long fingers of light over the dark, reflective waters of Lake Michigan. Cold fog is beginning to rise, and the city's awakening. It is a new year by the reckoning of most humans, but Garou are so divorced from human rhythms that the holiday is nearly meaningless. They live by the moon and the sun, the turning of seasons, these half-remembered ancient poles around which the world turns.
Roman offers Quinn what comfort he can; that it was an honorable death; that he died as he should have; he offers her the simple grace of human touch. His packmate is a different creature. She sits upright on the bar stool, her hands in the front pockets of her hoodie, the hood still half-covering her pale hair. The bright points of color - the flush of capillaries beneath her pale skin - gradually fade as the warmth of the bar chases away the last of the chill.
One of the kin, kitchen staff, approach quietly, some lull in the story - and offers Kora something to drink, to eat. She asks, of all things, for a glass of milk.
They bring it, of course, and there it sits incongruous on the bartop, the opaque and white, its wavering reflection obvious in the dark surface of the wooden bar.
There's no give in Kora on a night like this; her attention has a certain pitilessness. She watches Quinn, the movement of her mouth, the subtle furrow of confusion, the gleam of moisture across the surface of her brilliant eyes. No tears, not yet. The way her voice burrs over the name.
Silence, after. Kora is quiet, shooting a brief glance at her packmate in consideration of something, her mouth twisting in thought. "Thank you, Quinn." Her voice moves over the name like the curvature of the earth; she pronounces it with precision - just so, a certain illiquid music embedded in the tone.
Another glance at Roman follows, this one moving, brighter, thoughtful. "We could go to Battleground - watch the fight. That could give us enough to track them, but I'm not sure - " that they could find the battle, a small one, in the vast fields of them. That it would be wise for her to travel there, just now.
Something sharpens, then - and she focuses on Quinn again, asking two quiet questions in succession, "Your staff are kin, I take it? And you - do you have a place to stay?"
[Quinn] There are some kinfolk who, when driven to the brink of exhaustion, become more wary of their shifting, monstrous cousins. They haven't he will to withstand their Rage, and they become fearful. Quinn doesn't have the look of a rabbit, she's made of stronger stuff than that. Roman rubs her back and it's comforting, or at least is a start. The road towards comfort will end later today, in the stiff, awkward embrace of an unbearably depressed Galliard of all people.
Kora doesn't offer the same, and Quinn doesn't expect her to. She hadn't expected the touch on her back, much as Roman hadn't expected the one on his arm. The kinswoman doesn't ask for much from Garou. That Night's Reprieve died trying to save her. Quinn is very much aware of that honor. She'll never know the reason for it beyond the assumption that they were friends, drinking buddies, comrades, nothing more and nothing less. Roman tells her the Godi died an honorable death, and Quinn just turns her head, offering a smile over her shoulder.
She's fine, of course, if tired and shaken and worn. The blood staining her clothes belongs to a Black Spiral Dancer, and to Night's Reprieve, her own flesh is as whole and healthy as it ever is. All she needs is a good sleep and she'll be right as rain.
Kora speaks to her packmate, and Quinn drops her gaze, lowers her chin, disappointed. She's offered all she can about the Spirals that killed Night's Reprieve, but she can't help but wish there was more she could give to help.
Your staff are kin, I take it?
Quinn's head snaps up, her eyes wide as she drawn out of a momentary reverie. "Yes, yeah. Fianna, all of them. And I live upstairs in four. Um." She swallows, lifts a hand to rub her knuckles over her lower lip, considering for the length of a breath. "I haven't been in Chicago long," she explains, and it may seem there's no point to the sharing of this information. "Night's Reprieve was the first real friend I made here. I know Kinfolk aren't allowed on the bawn," there's a note there, confusion or annoyance, surprise, maybe a mix of all three, "but, would it be possible for me to go to his Gathering?"
[Sorrow] Upstairs in four - Quinn says, and Kora glances up, at the ceiling, as if she had X-ray vision. The movement is small, but enough that the hood half-covering her pale hair falls back, catches on the tumble of it twisted at the nape of her neck. Kora is older than most Garou in Chicago - by every human measure - an adult before she ever change. In such moments, the memory of she-who-was touches her face, like a shadow against a screen - makes her seem ordinary, a face in a half-remembered photograph, tacked on a stranger's wall.
"Good," she tells Quinn, dark gaze dropping back to the kinswoman. This space then, where she's deciding again if she agrees with the conventional wisdom, and at last surrenders to it. "You should be safe enough here. Your bar, though - "
Now the lingering, neutral curve of her mobile mouth flattens, and she shakes her pale head briefly, wordlessly. "These cursed Garou attacked you just outside it. They know where you work; they may have identified you and tracked you before. Had Night's Reprieve not been present to defend you - "
She does not speculate further; instead, she allows the possibility to hang in the air - the worst sort of unfinished sentence. "If any of your staff are pure blooded, give them an indefinite leave of absence. Whoever remains should conceal any trace of their tribal affiliation. No glyphs on necklaces, cover any runed tattoos with clothing or make-up.
"I'll want the address, too. If we can't track the survivors, we may be able to ambush them if they return to the scene.
Quinn's last request brings the full weight of the Skald's attention back to her features. Kora regards her quietly for a moment, the background noises of bread baking a distant counterpoint to the tick-tick-tick of the heaters running in the background.
There's a quiet moment when the Fenrir turns over the thought like a stone against her tongue, until at last she gives a definitive sort of nod, her pale hair gleaming in the soft light of the closed bar. It's like a lock, tumbling home. "I would not bar you from the ceremony, but you should have permission from your tribe, first. If your warder or elder - Rory? - allows it, I will speak to the Grand Elder. The final decision will be his." Another pause. " - and if your tribe will not allow it, I will find you before the gathering if you wish to contribute something to the grave goods we will burn with his body."
[Quinn] Quinn's brow furrows with concern. Cut the staff? Of course she understands the necessity of it, the need to protect her employees, her family. But she's worked so hard to try to resurrect the tavern from the ashes of its own gradual demise. It hasn't even begun to get back onto its feet again. It's taken every ounce of elbow grease from everyone in her employ -- and even a few who aren't -- to get The Winchester to where it is now. Cutting the purebred staff means the rest of them will have to work harder to take up the slack.
The look lasts only a moment, however. So they'll have to work harder, at least they'll still be alive, or relatively safe. It would hurt financially to watch her investment sink back into the mire, but it's not worth it if lives are at risk.
"I understand," she says. And she knows. If Night's Reprieve hadn't been there, Quinn would have been at the mercy of a trio of Dancers. They would have hurt her in ways unimaginable, or tried to at any rate. Probably would've succeeded, too, if Quinn couldn't get her gun to her temple in time.
She casts about for one of the kin staff. Someone finds her pen and paper on which to write the address of the old tavern, which she hands to the Skald.
"I'll talk to Howard or Patrick, then. They might know where to find her, I just...he's not my tribe, I didn't want to intrude." A nod to the rest. If she could get something to be carried off with him to the Homelands, that would be enough. "Thank you."
[Sorrow] "I think it would be honorable for you to attend, so that the spirits of the Caern may see whom he died defending," says the Skald, quietly. " - but I must know that your own tribe has no objections. My pack claims territory to the north, in Cabrini. The abandoned Cathedral a few blocks from the river is our packhouse. Your alpha can find me there or leave word at the Caern, but I'll come back to speak with you before the gathering."
Kora slides easily from her bar stool, her hands slipping from the pockets of her hoodie. It adds just enough bulk to her frame - or perhaps she wears it loosely enough - to conceal the curve of her pregnancy - at least around strangers, though not for much longer. "No, Quinn of Stag," says Sorrow then, quiet and formal, her booted feet soft on the worn wooden floorboards, her twisting as she reaches to pick up her winter coat, crumbling the shoulder in one capable hand without a sidelong glance, " - thank you, for bringing him back to us."
[Quinn] The weary smile returns, and it carries more than a little relief. There are so many more steps to this for Quinn than there were in Baltimore, but it will be good. Her thoughts are mostly on herself, on her need to say goodbye to a quiet steady presence in her life, but that her presence would be in some way honorable obviously pleases her. It lifts away some of the weariness not caused by sheer exhaustion.
Kora slides from her stool, and Quinn rises to her feet, as well. She's tall, as well, but more slender, her figure not as strong as that of the Fenrir. Her spine is straight, but her shoulders round.
"That's not far from The Winchester," she says. "If you ever need anything..." the offer is left hanging in the air, to be done with as the Jarl will. They're not tribe, Quinn is not under Kora's or Roman's protection, but she certainly isn't one to turn away anyone because they're not from her particular branch of the Family.
This is the part where they part ways. Quinn nods her farewell, her strength sapped and her body craving the blissful numbness of sleep. When the Garou has left, the Kinfolk looks at the whiskey bottle, barely touched by her own hands. Finding her wallet, she lays down a few bills, and she trudges up to her room. The first day of the new year is a long one, but the sun will set tonight.
Tomorrow it will rise again. The earth keeps turning. Life continues.
The Brotherhood had closed for the night; was not yet open for the morning, but some of the kitchen staff were there, and the scent of baking bread comingles with the lemon-scented cleaner from the late-night scrubdown in the downstairs bar.
There's always coffee.
There's always food.
There's whiskey behind the bar if she needs it, and someone to serve it to her if she's too shy to let herself behind the bar, to grab the bottle, to pour. The word has already spread among the kin here. They're quiet with it, sober. They don't bother her for the details unless she looks like she needs to vent.
Someone pours whiskey, though. And not long after, someone brings her fresh bread, so hot from the oven steam curls visibly from the slices, with which to soak it up.
Roman precedes Kora by a good half-hour or more. Finds Quinn whereever she has chosen to sit - in the dark, warm wood of the downstairs bar, closed and quiet, the wood gleaming with polish, the brass burnished to a spit-shine - or upstairs, on the sectional in the common area. In her room, or his.
The Skald arrives later, when the first wan light of preday has grayed the seam of the horizon, the scent of the icy lake sharp on her skin. Her eyes are bright with the cold, her cheeks and the tip of her nose pink.
They are strangers, these two - but there is fundamentally no denying what Kora is when she comes in from the cold in search of the kinswoman and her own packmate. Tall and leggy - 5'10" or 5'11" - with long, lean limbs and a long, sure gait, hair the color of the winter sun and dark blue eyes set in pale northern features, sharp and regular in a way that would denote prettiness were it not for the wolf underneath, the way it animates in her - behind the eyes, in the twist of a generous mouth, in the animal directness of her level gaze.
[Roman Turner] He was close to 5 inches shorter than his Alpha, Kora. And he was almost a polar opposite when it came to open friendliness. He'd come back to the brotherhood to watch over the Kin and see to any wounds she bore. Mostly he came to be company and see that the girl was warm and as comforted as he could make her till Kora appeared.
[Quinn] She should have slept. It's been a long long night for Quinn, one that started out so fine. She worked the overnight, served the party-goers traveling from bar to bar in Cabrini. In the earlier hours, her patrons had been happier, more free, more buoyant. As the night wore on, those trickled out, and the regulars remained, just a few. The lost and lonely, those with no hope for what a new year would bring. The owner of The Winchester did what she could to lift their spirits, or at the very least keep them from bringing down her own and those of her staff. It was a battle of will, but not a tough one.
Not like the one that took place out on the sidewalk just after closing. That was a different kind of fight altogether. And then there was work to be done, blood to be scrubbed from the sidewalk, claw marks to be erased or covered or disguised in the concrete. A friend to be brought home. The kinswoman should have known the Godi was sin-born, all the signs were there. For a moment she'd had hope, seeing his Crinos-formed body collapsed and shredded outside her bar. He was alive but unconscious. He could be saved. But he couldn't, not by the time she got back to him, and what could a kinfolk have done to save him, anyway.
So the night has been long, and the day has been longer. The dark-haired Fiann is sitting at the bar, one of the tall stools, a bottle of whiskey at hand. Her pale face is almost grey with weariness, and her jeans still carry the blood of a fallen hero. She sits there with whomever, with Rueben for quiet company maybe, or Roman nearby. That's the beauty of The Brotherhood: there's no space for true solitude, and Quinn wouldn't want it, anyway.
There are dark smudges beneath her brilliant blue eyes, but no signs of tears. She turns her head when Kora enters, and knows her immediately for what she is. One doesn't live their entire life surrounded by Rage and not learn to recognize it in others, or to see the predatory grace, the powerful fluidity of motion. Quinn sits up as Kora nears, straightens her shoulders. Her muscle creak with the movement, vertebrae wishes to pop. she should have slept.
But she didn't. She knew someone would come. She knew someone would want more details, more information. Someone would want the story.
Lifting her head, she doesn't smile or offer warm greetings as she might have under better circumstances. Angling her body toward the wolf in woman's skin, Quinn says, "Hi." Then, as direct yet respectfully as she can muster given the circumstances and the number of hours since she woke yesterday, "What do you want to know?"
[Roman Turner] This was his business in only the fact that he was Kora's Pack Mate and one of the Nation. It wasn't his Tribe however and unlike Kora, he did not bear the weight of so much responsibility for so many. Still he murmured to Quinn.
"That's Kora and she won't eat ya, she's too busy bearing the weight of a Tribe on her shoulders."
[Sorrow] Kora is dressed for the weather - a down coat over a hoodie over a t-shirt over a thermal - and the warmth of the bar's interior mades a good three quarters of those layers unnecessary to someone born to the north wind, fostered on the spare, flat islands in the North Sea.
There's no legacy of that fosterage in her voice; when she speaks, her voice is low and rich, the accent rather blandly American, suburban, ordinary to most American ears.
"That you're well, first - " the Skald says, stripping off her coat as she walks from the front door to the bar, the nylon layers whistling against each other from the friction. She seems to mean it; there is a subtle shifting glance from the kinswoman to Roman before her attention returns to Quinn, and remains there - whole, intent as few people are. Not animal this, but something else - some cultivated watchfulness, some inborn attentiveness to both the surface of things and the shadows beneath.
Her dark eyes flicker over the kinswoman's posture, the gray undertone to her skin, the blood soaked into her jeans, the whiskey glass on the wooden bar, the marred reflection of her movement in the polished wooden bar.
The winter coat is left carelessly over a barstool a few feet away. Kora's wearing a worn hoodie, half unzipped, three letters of her PIXIES t-shirt underneath visible. When Roman introduces him the serious mask of her features is undercut by the brief twist of a half-smile. The expression - seems hollow, undercut by the sobriety evident in her posture, in the steadiness of her gaze, by the blood on her hands. Still, she lifts her chin toward the Gaian in subtle acknowledgment of the introduction as she pulls out the nearest barstool to Quinn and slides onto it.
"Quinn," her brows rise to frame the subtle question, " - right? As he said, I'm Kora, a Skald - Galliard - and Alpha of the Fenrir. I've heard the story secondhand, but I'd like to know what happened, beginning to end, in your own words."
[Quinn] Quinn looks at Roman, and she attempts her best tired smile. It's weary all around the edges, but she tries - for his sake, he seems so young, a boy with old eyes - makes the effort to put him at ease. The smile, the look of her eyes, they say what she can't quite form the words into: that she's weary, not wary. That she doesn't expect the Garou present to snap her head clear off her shoulders. "Thanks," is all she says, and if he's close enough she actually reaches out to him, rests a slender hand over his forearm or his hand, some part of his arm that she can reach. The touch is light and brief, and probably reassures the kinswoman more than the Ragabash.
Then her attention is on the newcomer. The alpha of her tribe in Chicago. Quinn angles her body more, turns in the stool so that she faces the talesinger. Her hands swipe along the thighs of her jeans, down to knees and back up again once. And she nods her head to her name, doesn't offer more to it than that yes, she is Quinn.
What she asks for is a difficult request, if only because now Quinn has to do what she doesn't like to do these days. Cast her memory back to things unpleasant, events that led to the loss of someone she cared about. The unsteadiness of her spirit is not nearly so terribly great as it was months ago, but it's there' all the same. She takes a breath to steady herself, to find the words.
And she tells the story of Night's Reprieve's death, or as much of it as she can tell.
"I own a bar in Cabrini. The Winchester. Been in the family ages. Reprieve stopped in sometimes after working around the Caern, I guess that's what he did last night. He stayed and helped me close up for the night, and when I was locking up, these three people came up to us. One of them, the guy," here her brow furrows, and she looks confused, "he did something to me. I've heard about Garou who can use their Rage to draw someone in, but I've never seen it before. He used it on me, but Reprieve tried to protect me. He tried to get me away from them, but the two girls attacked. Both shifted to Crinos in the middle of the sidewalk. One of them had a sword, both of them had black fur." She shakes her head and sighs, frustrated with herself. For having nearly given in to a strange and unnatural lust she ahd no control over. There's no point thinking about what might have been or what could have happened. What's done is done. "I don't know what happened to him after that, the grabbed me and tried to drag me into the alley. He's the one I brought back." She stops, looks down at the hands resting in her lap, and she sighs. "I tried to get away from the guy. When I came back around in my truck, the other two disappeared, and Night's Reprieve was dead."
Her voice catches on the name, her brow furrows, and her eyes glisten, but that's as far as Quinn comes to tears. Wiping at her eyes with the back of one hand, she says, her voice wavering oh so slightly yet noticeably, "After that I knew there wasn't much time before people would be out. I called in my staff and we cleaned up."
[Roman Turner] Under normal circumstances he would of lit up like a torch if I woman touched him. This wasn't one of those times. In fact when Quinn told her story he gently rubbed her back in an attempt to comfort her.
"He died doing what was right, he'd have it no other way. It was an honorable death."
[Roman Turner] He eventually slipped out to give the pair some privacy, though Kora could reach him with but a thought.
((Ok guys, I need sleep for work and to fight this cold. Thanks for the play. Sorry I must go.))
[Sorrow] Quinn has been awake for a night and day. Outside, the sun has finally broken through the clouds at the edge of the horizon, sending long fingers of light over the dark, reflective waters of Lake Michigan. Cold fog is beginning to rise, and the city's awakening. It is a new year by the reckoning of most humans, but Garou are so divorced from human rhythms that the holiday is nearly meaningless. They live by the moon and the sun, the turning of seasons, these half-remembered ancient poles around which the world turns.
Roman offers Quinn what comfort he can; that it was an honorable death; that he died as he should have; he offers her the simple grace of human touch. His packmate is a different creature. She sits upright on the bar stool, her hands in the front pockets of her hoodie, the hood still half-covering her pale hair. The bright points of color - the flush of capillaries beneath her pale skin - gradually fade as the warmth of the bar chases away the last of the chill.
One of the kin, kitchen staff, approach quietly, some lull in the story - and offers Kora something to drink, to eat. She asks, of all things, for a glass of milk.
They bring it, of course, and there it sits incongruous on the bartop, the opaque and white, its wavering reflection obvious in the dark surface of the wooden bar.
There's no give in Kora on a night like this; her attention has a certain pitilessness. She watches Quinn, the movement of her mouth, the subtle furrow of confusion, the gleam of moisture across the surface of her brilliant eyes. No tears, not yet. The way her voice burrs over the name.
Silence, after. Kora is quiet, shooting a brief glance at her packmate in consideration of something, her mouth twisting in thought. "Thank you, Quinn." Her voice moves over the name like the curvature of the earth; she pronounces it with precision - just so, a certain illiquid music embedded in the tone.
Another glance at Roman follows, this one moving, brighter, thoughtful. "We could go to Battleground - watch the fight. That could give us enough to track them, but I'm not sure - " that they could find the battle, a small one, in the vast fields of them. That it would be wise for her to travel there, just now.
Something sharpens, then - and she focuses on Quinn again, asking two quiet questions in succession, "Your staff are kin, I take it? And you - do you have a place to stay?"
[Quinn] There are some kinfolk who, when driven to the brink of exhaustion, become more wary of their shifting, monstrous cousins. They haven't he will to withstand their Rage, and they become fearful. Quinn doesn't have the look of a rabbit, she's made of stronger stuff than that. Roman rubs her back and it's comforting, or at least is a start. The road towards comfort will end later today, in the stiff, awkward embrace of an unbearably depressed Galliard of all people.
Kora doesn't offer the same, and Quinn doesn't expect her to. She hadn't expected the touch on her back, much as Roman hadn't expected the one on his arm. The kinswoman doesn't ask for much from Garou. That Night's Reprieve died trying to save her. Quinn is very much aware of that honor. She'll never know the reason for it beyond the assumption that they were friends, drinking buddies, comrades, nothing more and nothing less. Roman tells her the Godi died an honorable death, and Quinn just turns her head, offering a smile over her shoulder.
She's fine, of course, if tired and shaken and worn. The blood staining her clothes belongs to a Black Spiral Dancer, and to Night's Reprieve, her own flesh is as whole and healthy as it ever is. All she needs is a good sleep and she'll be right as rain.
Kora speaks to her packmate, and Quinn drops her gaze, lowers her chin, disappointed. She's offered all she can about the Spirals that killed Night's Reprieve, but she can't help but wish there was more she could give to help.
Your staff are kin, I take it?
Quinn's head snaps up, her eyes wide as she drawn out of a momentary reverie. "Yes, yeah. Fianna, all of them. And I live upstairs in four. Um." She swallows, lifts a hand to rub her knuckles over her lower lip, considering for the length of a breath. "I haven't been in Chicago long," she explains, and it may seem there's no point to the sharing of this information. "Night's Reprieve was the first real friend I made here. I know Kinfolk aren't allowed on the bawn," there's a note there, confusion or annoyance, surprise, maybe a mix of all three, "but, would it be possible for me to go to his Gathering?"
[Sorrow] Upstairs in four - Quinn says, and Kora glances up, at the ceiling, as if she had X-ray vision. The movement is small, but enough that the hood half-covering her pale hair falls back, catches on the tumble of it twisted at the nape of her neck. Kora is older than most Garou in Chicago - by every human measure - an adult before she ever change. In such moments, the memory of she-who-was touches her face, like a shadow against a screen - makes her seem ordinary, a face in a half-remembered photograph, tacked on a stranger's wall.
"Good," she tells Quinn, dark gaze dropping back to the kinswoman. This space then, where she's deciding again if she agrees with the conventional wisdom, and at last surrenders to it. "You should be safe enough here. Your bar, though - "
Now the lingering, neutral curve of her mobile mouth flattens, and she shakes her pale head briefly, wordlessly. "These cursed Garou attacked you just outside it. They know where you work; they may have identified you and tracked you before. Had Night's Reprieve not been present to defend you - "
She does not speculate further; instead, she allows the possibility to hang in the air - the worst sort of unfinished sentence. "If any of your staff are pure blooded, give them an indefinite leave of absence. Whoever remains should conceal any trace of their tribal affiliation. No glyphs on necklaces, cover any runed tattoos with clothing or make-up.
"I'll want the address, too. If we can't track the survivors, we may be able to ambush them if they return to the scene.
Quinn's last request brings the full weight of the Skald's attention back to her features. Kora regards her quietly for a moment, the background noises of bread baking a distant counterpoint to the tick-tick-tick of the heaters running in the background.
There's a quiet moment when the Fenrir turns over the thought like a stone against her tongue, until at last she gives a definitive sort of nod, her pale hair gleaming in the soft light of the closed bar. It's like a lock, tumbling home. "I would not bar you from the ceremony, but you should have permission from your tribe, first. If your warder or elder - Rory? - allows it, I will speak to the Grand Elder. The final decision will be his." Another pause. " - and if your tribe will not allow it, I will find you before the gathering if you wish to contribute something to the grave goods we will burn with his body."
[Quinn] Quinn's brow furrows with concern. Cut the staff? Of course she understands the necessity of it, the need to protect her employees, her family. But she's worked so hard to try to resurrect the tavern from the ashes of its own gradual demise. It hasn't even begun to get back onto its feet again. It's taken every ounce of elbow grease from everyone in her employ -- and even a few who aren't -- to get The Winchester to where it is now. Cutting the purebred staff means the rest of them will have to work harder to take up the slack.
The look lasts only a moment, however. So they'll have to work harder, at least they'll still be alive, or relatively safe. It would hurt financially to watch her investment sink back into the mire, but it's not worth it if lives are at risk.
"I understand," she says. And she knows. If Night's Reprieve hadn't been there, Quinn would have been at the mercy of a trio of Dancers. They would have hurt her in ways unimaginable, or tried to at any rate. Probably would've succeeded, too, if Quinn couldn't get her gun to her temple in time.
She casts about for one of the kin staff. Someone finds her pen and paper on which to write the address of the old tavern, which she hands to the Skald.
"I'll talk to Howard or Patrick, then. They might know where to find her, I just...he's not my tribe, I didn't want to intrude." A nod to the rest. If she could get something to be carried off with him to the Homelands, that would be enough. "Thank you."
[Sorrow] "I think it would be honorable for you to attend, so that the spirits of the Caern may see whom he died defending," says the Skald, quietly. " - but I must know that your own tribe has no objections. My pack claims territory to the north, in Cabrini. The abandoned Cathedral a few blocks from the river is our packhouse. Your alpha can find me there or leave word at the Caern, but I'll come back to speak with you before the gathering."
Kora slides easily from her bar stool, her hands slipping from the pockets of her hoodie. It adds just enough bulk to her frame - or perhaps she wears it loosely enough - to conceal the curve of her pregnancy - at least around strangers, though not for much longer. "No, Quinn of Stag," says Sorrow then, quiet and formal, her booted feet soft on the worn wooden floorboards, her twisting as she reaches to pick up her winter coat, crumbling the shoulder in one capable hand without a sidelong glance, " - thank you, for bringing him back to us."
[Quinn] The weary smile returns, and it carries more than a little relief. There are so many more steps to this for Quinn than there were in Baltimore, but it will be good. Her thoughts are mostly on herself, on her need to say goodbye to a quiet steady presence in her life, but that her presence would be in some way honorable obviously pleases her. It lifts away some of the weariness not caused by sheer exhaustion.
Kora slides from her stool, and Quinn rises to her feet, as well. She's tall, as well, but more slender, her figure not as strong as that of the Fenrir. Her spine is straight, but her shoulders round.
"That's not far from The Winchester," she says. "If you ever need anything..." the offer is left hanging in the air, to be done with as the Jarl will. They're not tribe, Quinn is not under Kora's or Roman's protection, but she certainly isn't one to turn away anyone because they're not from her particular branch of the Family.
This is the part where they part ways. Quinn nods her farewell, her strength sapped and her body craving the blissful numbness of sleep. When the Garou has left, the Kinfolk looks at the whiskey bottle, barely touched by her own hands. Finding her wallet, she lays down a few bills, and she trudges up to her room. The first day of the new year is a long one, but the sun will set tonight.
Tomorrow it will rise again. The earth keeps turning. Life continues.
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