Ornature

[Eli Booker] It's late in the afternoon, Wednesday, when Booker's bike rumbles to a halt near the Church. He is careful, always, to never part directly in front of Last Watch's den. When the kin rounds the cover of trees that mask the front of the dilapidated building, his face is stoic and lacks the flicker of sarcastic, yet good nature humor that tends to consistently plague his expression.

Mother nature can't decide whether to push Chicago into spring or yank it, hold it, in the grasp of winter. Where it had been almost 50 degrees last week, today it has shrunk back into the mid-30s and has forced Elijah to once again sport the dark colored hooded sweatshirts he owns so many of. His Dickie's hang low on a now slim waist and when he walks his center of gravity seems to be pitched perfect, offering a slight confident swagger to his stride.

The stairs to the front door are taken two by two and the bottom of a balled up fist against said door announce that those within have a visitor.

[Kora] Sorrow isn't inside; she's behind Eli, passes his bike, the surface gleaming under the gray light of a late winter's afternoon. It's above freezing, just, and there's the promise of the rain in the air. The frozen ground's starting to wake up. Deep underground. Bulbs are opening. Some places, there are crocuses pushing up through the filthy morass of melting snow and oozing mud.

Not here. Just bare tree limbs wrapped with last year's vines, brown bark against gray stone surrounding by a sagging, rusting fence. An urban forest: fast growing, competitive species of weeds able to take root in the worst soils. The sort of things that grow in sidewalk cracks, wind their way through the sightless eyes of burned out rowhouses. Still: wild somehow. The earth come to take back her own.

Kora is not silent; Eli will catch movement in his peripheral vision, the flash of pale skin framed by a dark, heavy sweatshirt. Pale hair coiled around her neck, secured loosely by a rubber band close to the nape, but otherwise loose. Her hands are in the kangeroo pockets that flank the jacket's gleaming zipper. The garment is huge on her, made for a husky man, too large in the shoulders, through the upper torso, but large enough to accommodate her pregnancy. Maybe even for the rest of it.

She's seven months or more; there's a certain care when she walks up the steps behind him. A precision. "Eli Booker." says the Skald by way of hello. A dark flicker of a glance takes in his expression when he looks back at her, and the brief flicker of her half-smile goes still, then. Drains away. "C'mon in."

He steps away, she opens the doors. The sanctuary is vast, full of gloom. There's little enough direct light through the clerestory on a gray day like this one, so the shadows patterned across the stone and marble floors are gloomy and indistinct. "You look like business," she says, pauses at one of the coolers, sinking to a crouch that requirest exquisite balance, still. An inquiring glance, " - want a beer?"

If he does, she supplies one. Grabs an IBC for herself, which she lifts in toast. "Thanks for the supplies, by the way. Fucking considerate of you. Have a seat." She finishes, a gesture toward the couches in the make-shift living room, warmed by space heaters.

[Eli Booker] Eli is focused in his anger. It rides his dusky hued skin like goose flesh - palpable and present. It is because he is glaring holes into the door of the Garou's den that he misses her. Has been ignorant to her progress behind him. When she speaks, he turns.

His name leaves her lips in a breath and it elicits the faintest of smiles to breach his currently stoic expression. The Skald takes note of his demeanor, the posture with which he carries himself right then, and he nods.

That she is swollen with child is not lost on the kinsmen. His eyes travel to the swell of her abdomen for a beat and then return to somewhere around her eyes. There is a moment, then, that he re-thinks his visit. Contemplates whether or not to bother Kora with something that to a Garou is likely to seem trivial.

"That'd be fuckin' fantastic." He says, moving with her toward the coolers he once helped stock. She tells him it was considerate and all he offers is a wink that conveys it was nothing at all.

"Can I talk freely?" He asks, a brow cocked high over one eye as he opens the beer and has a drink. Agitated, it takes him a moment to sit when she offers him that option. He paces, like an animal caged. waiting...for something.

"I mean, I got all respect for you guys ...and I don't mean any disrespect..." It starts off that way. With masked apologies and trepidation.

[Kora] She does sit, twisting open the cap of her root beer. It offers a satisfying hiss, but the carbonation is all sweetness, hits strange places against her palette. Still, the neck of the bottle is familiar between the twist of her long fingers. It swings like a pendulum - a defined arc - against the cushions of an old floral monstrosity of an insanely comfortable seventeenth-hand couch into which the Skald lowers herself.

To watch him pace.

She's a pale thing, with the sort of northern skin that would never tan, only burn, and a weight of fine blonde hair that looks silver underneath the moonlight, never golden - not really. Dark eyes framed by pale lashes are still and clear, and she watches him as paces, a certain clear-eyed intensity about her, a certain attentiveness. Reading more than his agitation, but the way it flares in him; the physical fact of it. The animal echo in the way he paces.

A twist of her mouth, subtle, wry. "You can stand if you need to."

There's a pause, a shift in her glance. He has the edge of her three-quarter's profile in view then. The strong line of her nose framed against the gray shadows, the curve of a pale cheek. Her gaze is hooded with consideration as she takes in a narrow breath, breathes it out, then replies.

"Yeah." The wryness is gone, replaced by a supple attention. The stillness of a forest pool still rippling with the memory of movement. "You can speak freely. What's on your mind?"

[Eli Booker] His eyes cut to the side and watch her open the root beer. She is still, and he can't stop moving. When she tells him he can stand, if he needed too, Eli nods. A hand hitches on one hip and the beer is tipped up so that the bitter liquid coats his throat in a rush. He doesn't choke. He's an experienced drinker.

"Who's in charge here? Who do I listen too? Because if doin' what the fuck I been told - what I know is right because I been in this shit knee deep since I was goddamned sixteen - means I gotta take Garou coming into my home and verbally bitch slappin' me over it? That's going to piss me off."

It's a tirade, something that comes out in a fast rush of words due to anger. Frustration even, maybe.

"They shoulda just punched me in my fuckin' mouth. I think I'd of been less pissed off."

Realizing, probably, that he's making no sense...that Kora has no idea what happened in his squat little home somewhere in Bronzeville, Eli sits. He slumps, then straightens back up with the bottom of his beer resting on his thigh.

"About an hour or two ago, Defiance strolled into my place - Joey and Hunter. I got that one broad stayin' there for now, Janis? She mentions how she came to be in Chicago and Joey lost her fuckin' mind. They insinuated that I endangered their territory by bringing her back there. I didn't even know I lived in their fucking territory!" He claims, exasperated. "No fuckin' clue."

"And? Apparently, I shoulda freed this half dead Garou and left her sitting on some corner, because according to them either that or bringing her - and any Wyrm shit that might of been following her - to your den here were my best options. Not to mention that you have no say in any of this - so I've been told. You only handle tribal shit. So if that's true, Kora, can you let me know what the fuck I shoulda done and who I should report to or listen too? Cause right now ...I'm pretty fuckin' confused."

[Kora] The Skald listens, quietly. She's impassive through his tirade. The moon's waning now. It makes things more comfortable for her; the worst edge of her temper has faded. That's deliberate, too. Her pack ensures that she still hunts, taking the edge of the restlessness setting in, the enforced caution necessitated by her condition. Not delicate. Still: she's carrying a child, and the babe has quickened. Whatever her early misgivings, her body has shaded her response - changed it. There's a certain feral drive underneath her skin now, sharpening her senses, shaping her response to the world.

He is too lost in his anger, most likely, to read the stiffness in her shoulders, the tension framing her spine as he begins to rant about who or what's in charge; about the insult done him. About the life he's lived. When he sits, though, her attention is still rapt on him, dark eyed and direct, watchful.

"Let me make sure I have this straight, yeah?" she interjects when he's finished. "Correct me if I don't. You found Rides like Cowboy, wounded. Imprisoned somehow, yeah? Pulled her ass out of the fire. She was wounded, maybe tainted, and who knows if she was who she said she was. Instead of bringing her here, you took her home. Gave us a call so we could come check her out. Make sure she was who she said she was before you exposed her to more Garou and more kin. Make sure you weren't being tailed or watched."

[Eli Booker] There is something both beautiful and awe inspiring about a woman with child. Kora carries both of these things accompanied with the keen eye of a wolf, her muscles tempered by the life within her womb. There would be a small part of the kin that felt shitty for bringing this petty bullshit to Kora given her condition, yet he knew to do otherwise would likely insult the Fenrir Jarl. To treat her as anything but what she was (predator, huntress, alpha) would be a grave mistake.

"That's exactly what happened. I was aware that my house was in the same vicinity that Joey's pack was in - you told me as much - but they acted like I brought shit to their door and introduced them to it."

"I did what I thought was best. Fuck I look like bringing her back here and she's all fucked up? Or leaving her on the street almost dead so someone else could snatch her up?"

[Roman Turner] It was his wont to learn things by listening in, by not making himself known; most times. This was not one of those times. He'd just come in from patrols, so he missed all but one thing.

"Who wants to ride a Cowboy?"

God help him if it was this guy sitting there with Kora, he himself was heading back out the door.

[Roman Turner] Cold wind had added color to cheeks that hadn't know many years. That wind had reddened the skin around eyes the color of faded denim enough to make whitish crow's feet at the corner of eyes that shouldn't have crow's feet for years to come. He was still brushing snow from the hems of jeans so dark in color and stiff with starch that they looked like they should be able to stand in the corner all on their own. Snow still coated the toes of a pair of cowboy boots kept supple with layer after layer of Mink Oil. A wide smile appeared for Kora, crinkling the corners of his eyes again. Eli got a curious look over. There were so many new faces lately he couldn't keep up with them all, but he could sense the breeding from the guy and it wasn't from Roman's Tribe.

"Howdy."

Followed his initial question. And he began working open the thick wool lined coat he wore as he warmed up from outside. Snow was threatening again tonight, snow that might push the city over a hundred and fifteen year old record.

"Big ole snow might hit again tonight. I swear, I ain't never thought when I came here that I was coming to the land of blizzards."

There was a part of him that wondered if his cousin had really left because she knew what was heading this way this winter.

[Kora] Kora lifts her chin as Roman comes in, dark eyes moving between her young packmate and her kin. There's a serious cast to her clear features, but she offers a brief, supple twist of her mouth by way of greeting. "My packmate," she tells Eli, quietly. "Roman. He's a ragabash."

She doesn't reply to Roman's question; not aloud. Not precisely. "Deed name of a new Rotagar in town, Roman." The touch of her mind against his is quiet, serious. "There's a pale ale left in the right cooler if you want it," she says instead. "Hands off the chocolate milk, though."

Then she turns her dark eyes back to Eli, gives him a brief, narrow shake of her pale head. "You're right. I don't see that you did anything wrong. If she was fucked up, you were already compromised the moment you set her free. You wouldn't be doing your duty as a kin if you left a badly wounded Garou on strange streets to fend for herself. You took her someplace where you were the only one endangered. Gave us a chance to check her out without compromise. If she were lying - yeah? - an enemy hiding under a mask of injury, part of some elaborate pantomime to take you in, we'd've found it when my Godi came by.

"Then we'd've put her down.

"Hell of a lot easier to move a single kin from a single fucking house in those circumstances. You already knew the danger when you freed her. It's not like she bewitched you, right?"

A brief, lifting glance back at Roman. "Makes me think, though, that we might want to have a safe house or two outside the territory. Someplace to go if we need to shake a tail. Nothing fancy. Could be useful, though."

Kora glances back to Eli, then. Her attention is direct and level, dark eyes lingering on the kinsmans face. "Joey, Hunter. They been by your place before?"

[Roman Turner] Ut oh, Tribal stuff, he decided it wasn't a good idea to say anything.....well at least for a few minutes...his mouth sometimes got the better of his resolve, so who knew how long he could be quiet. Beer was mentioned, so he headed that way, adding over his shoulder which killed his vow of silence right away.

"How far outside ya want these safe houses?"

[Eli Booker] Eli's dark eyes shift toward Roman when he enters and asks about who it is precisely that might want to ride a cowboy. It draws a grunt / chuckle from the mohawk sporting biker's throat. Kora takes the question he poses and answers it and Eli, for his part, nods at the young Garou and raises his beer.

"Hey..."

Then, his attention is Kora's once more. She confirms what he already thought and the kin nods. "They pretty much made me look an idiot. Berated me, disrespected me and tried everything but smacking me around in my home. I guess they were trying to get the point across that I was some stupid fresh off the block kinfolk who shoulda known better." Eli huffs at the thought and tips his beer back, swallowing a gulp of malt and hops.

"Hunter and Joey haven't stepped foot in my house before yesterday." There's a pause, consideration before he speaks again. "Not that this has anything to do with it?" Or maybe it did? He had no real fucking idea. " Joey and I used to ..." He pauses and cocks an eyebrow above his eye, gaze leveled somewhere on Kora's face. "She insulted Janis too. I mean ...she kept her cool pretty fuckin' a-ok in my book. But they called her a stray and said I ...brought this princess back to my place to sleep with and put their territory at risk to do it."

"Look. I get it in with a lotta fuckin' people. Put I ain't touched Janis. She sleeps in wolf form for chrissake..."

[Kora] "I'm not sure," Kora says to Roman as he makes and immediately breaks a vow of silence. Tribal stuff. The Days of the Lives of Chicago's Fenrir. "We don't need much; maybe out in the Green. We can talk about it later. Scope a few places out. Booker's story just made me realize how helpful something like that could be if we needed it."

There's that stillness then, a certain wryness when Booker indicates that he and Joey raised eyebrows at each other. Hung around. Enjoyed the fruits of each other's company. She doesn't pry, but there's a faint, moving nod of her head by way of acknowledgment. "I don't know Joey well. I've not been in a pack with her, and she's never been especially interested in tribal things. Fostern Fenrir who follows a cliath Bone Gnawer." A brief, narrow twist of her shoulders. "Maybe she's feeling territorial about you. I think you know that's always a risk with our kind, yeah? When things go like that. Sounds like that was a while back, though.

"I'm sorry. They were wrong to berate you; wrong to insult you in your home. Wrong to abuse your hospitality. Wrong to insult your intentions. Wrong," that moving curve of her mouth - now it is Kora's turn to stand. She puts her booted feet on the stone floor and stands, straight. There's a hitch in it; an extra moment or two when all that forward-centered weight on her frame is a bit much for her tall frame to overcome. But still, she stands, bottle of rootbeer still in hand. " - in the end, to alienate someone," a tip of that bottle back toward Eli, "who might've proved an ally if they'd treated him with respect.

"I'll speak with them. Bring a Forseti if necessary. But there's a limit to what I can do, Booker, if your house is really inside their territory. If they've got rules for you living there, you've gotta follow them. And if you can't abide them," a brief, supple twist of her mouth. "We'll rent you a U-Haul. Find you someplace they don't claim, get you moved before they turn around and realize what they've lost themselves."

[Roman Turner] "Personally, I'd move just to thumb my nose at em."

He chimed up with a salute of the bottle he now held.

"Move just beyond their territory because I'm kind of a pain like that. If there were a fence that divided their land from another, I'd be right on the otherside of the fence laughing my hind end off."

Warily smiling as he added.

"Course I ain't the best one to listen to on such things. I tend to like thumbing my nose. Ma said one day I was gonna lose the end of it."

[Eli Booker] He listens to Kora exchange ideas about kin safe houses with Roman as he finishes off his beer. It's dropped in the nearest trash can and it isn't until Kora stirs, stretches muscles that had been still for too long, that he follows suit.

Everything that the Skald says is taken to heart. Given a place in his considerations. Eli reaches for another beer and lifts the lid on the other coolers to check how full - or empty - they may be. It's noted, and chances are he'll be bringing more food and drink by within the next few days.

To Roman he looks then, and grins. "Man after my own heart. I'm pretty good with the whole thumbing of the nose thing." He pauses, opens his beer and takes a swig. "The thing is, neither of them said where their territory began or ended. It was like they claimed the whole fuckin' area of Bronzeville...and that ain't a small area." Another drink and his shoulders raise in a shrug.

"Look, if they'd of whooped my ass, punched me in my mouth ...blacked both my fuckin' eyes - I wouldn't of said shit. But they insulted me in a way that left me little fuckin' by way of recourse. I ain't askin' you to fight my battles. You got your own wars ragin'. All I need to know is who's in charge? Because to hear Defiance tell it ...they're pretty high on the fuckin' list of top mutherfuckers...and I ain't one to cower in my house for fear of pissin' off a pack of Garou that're full of themselves."

Eli talked like a sailor. He drank like one too. "I'm movin' tomorrow. I'll find somewhere to go. Mind if I bring some of my tools and shit here and leave 'em?"

[Kora] Eli draws her attention back to him when he lays down the line. Look, if they'd of whooped my ass - She's still dressed in that oversized hoodie. It's dark gray, with a University of Chicago crest on the left breast, heavy enough to keep someone warm through a long ultimate frisbee game, some cold fall night. She has one hand in a pocket, the other loose around the neck of her rootbeer. It swings with her gait, moving. Prowling, then still.

A brief glance at her Ragabash, a supple twist of her mouth, a half-swallowed laugh in response to his suggestions. It should be noted that she does not endorse the young Gaian's plan for nose thumbing. Doesn't scold him, either.

"I get that, Eli," she tells him, low-voiced, when he says that he would prefer a goddamned beating to being yelled at, insulted like a child. There's something level there, like a pledge. Like a fucking vow. "I do." A brief, lifting look toward Roman, after. "I know they claim territory there. Had no idea they imagined to claim all of the Bronze. Can't see how they could begin to hold it, anyway. Maybe they see it as their hunting grounds, but for fuck's sake."

Kora lifts her shoulders, exhales a long, quiet breath. Shakes her pale head, the gesture quiet, singular.

"They aren't in charge of you. And you're welcome to leave your tools here long as you want." She lifts her brows, looks up at the dark wood of the choir loft, the soaring space in the sanctuary itself. There's more space beyond, offices, classrooms, a cobbwebbed chapel to the adoration of Hrafn, now that Linus has stripped away all symbols of the White Christ's virgin mother. "Swing by when you have the moving van. We'll be happy to give you a hand with the move. You need some cash for a quick deposit, hell. We can scrounge that up, too."

[Roman Turner] "Far as I'm concerned he could move in till he finds a place. Or whatever."

He piped up.

"And I thought all Fenrir kin were under the protection of the Jarl unless otherwise noted? So unless this thing between you and Joey was more than a thing and she claimed ya, I don't see where she has any claim over ya. I sure don't see how the Gnawer would. Kinda seems like someone watched too much Titantic and invision Bronzeville as the nose of a ship's bridge."

[Eli Booker] His eyes move between Kora and Roman, never staying too long on one Garou or the other. With a fresh beer in his hand he takes a healthy swig and pays close attention when Kora's voice drops low and she says that she understands. Maybe that was all he wanted hear, because there's one deep nod given at that.

"I don't know what they claim or don't. Someone needs to give out a color coded map or something because I'm clueless." He takes another drink, and shakes his head. "Nah...I can come up with the cash at some point." He did have a job, and Eli earned his fair share of cash in other illicit ways.

Roman says he wouldn't care if Eli moved in and with that statement the kin's eyes move toward Kora. He's considering it. He laughs, though, at Roman's final statement.

"I know man, I tried to tell them....they weren't hearing it."

[Roman Turner] "Truth be told, ya can claim a lot of things, a lot of territory. Claiming, covering and holding are two different things. It also opens ya up to a whole world of pain if ya claim something ya can't back up. King of the world or not."

One shoulder moved in a faint shrug.

[Kora] "No shit," says Kora, low-voiced, quiet in response to Eli's remark about requiring a color-coded map. "Maybe a brochure, yeah? We can hand out to new folks when they come in. Like you get at a tourist kiosk. Highlights of Chicago, places to avoid. Here be dragons, all that shit."
Lifting up the bottle, she drains finishes out the remains of the root beer. The sweet liquid fills up her senses, she swallows it all, breathing out at the end, setting her own empty aside on one of the fold-out tables the pack has collected.

Then she cuts a glance between the Child of Gaia and Eli. There's a certain clarity to her gaze, somethine reflective in the swimming gray light of the sanctuary's soft, cool, soaring gloom.

"He's right," she says, quietly. "I figured you for a man who - " her dark eyes swing back to Eli, touch his features, remain there. With a brief, wry twist of a curving mouth. "Preferred his privacy, yeah?

"But you're welcome to crash here, whenever you need and as long as you like. We've a few other kin who stay here, some come and go. There's room in the next building. All sorts of old offices and classrooms, if you want to crash you can take your pick. We'll get it cleaned up. Water's on, electric is limited but we can get you a heater. There's the Eagle's old kinhouse, too - " this more to Roman than Eli. " - where the Sparrow-shrine is, yeah? We should fix that up. Satellite location what with all the expansion, in case."

[Roman Turner] "Good idea." He agreed when Kora mentioned the old Kinhouse. "Some might prefer the Kinhouse to living in here. Me? I like the feeling of them I trust around me. Helps me sleep soundly."

[Eli Booker] Eli likes Roman already. His eyes look the kid over and then shift back to Kora. She makes a crack about handing out brochures and he grins, nods and tips his beer up to the both of them as they make valid points.

"Well. I know now and they can take that shit hole and shove it far as I'm concerned. Karma's a bitch and she'll bring that shit back to them when they least expect it." His beer is tilted up and drained, the bottle dropped into the trash can along side the other he previously drank.

"I am a man of man depravities, and yes I do enjoy my privacy." He grins, obviously in a far better mood than when he stalked toward the church and stomped up the steps. "I might stay here ...work on the church a little to help out - at least until I can find a place. Maybe somewhere big enough to house a few wayward's should they need an emergency bed."

"I do appreciate it, Kora." He says firmly - sincerely. "You won't find me runnin' to pull atcher shirt hem often ..."

[Roman Turner] "Don't get me wrong. If they could protect the entire whole of Bronzeville, I would dance my best while singing praises from the highest mountain. I don't wish them ill luck. But they ain't shown much wisdom with this little act of bullying. Beating your chest while hollering still don't turn a cow patty to gold, ya know? Yell all ya want, it's still a pile."

He swished the bottle around indicating the church in general.

"And there's a part of me that is just crowing cause they done what they done and now our little family is gonna swell again with ya coming in to the fold so to speak. Where if they had used honey instead of vinegar they might have the help we're gonna have from ya."

[Kora] "I like the stained glass windows," Kora tells Roman, with a glance up past the dark wood of the choir loft, toward the soaring interior of the stone structure proper. Half the stained glass windows - maybe more - are still intact, and they shine softly, the muted light of the failing winter's day in the background. The temperature's already falling. When one of the paces too far from the heaters, their breath fogs in the chilly air. Then she gives another quiet snort, a faint, subtle nod to Roman, a quiet sort of agreement.

"It's my pleasure, Eli. Tribe's tribe, and hospitality is fucking important to me." She lifts her chin at Roman. "Let's see if we can find a room, yeah? I think we've got a couple of spare mattresses in that office behind the bathroom if we need it." Another brief, wry twist of her mouth, back to the kinsman. "My pack's here. Roman. Linus you met. Patrick, a Fianna Galliard. My sister's about, Melody. Rain and Starla are Roman's kin, and they're staying here too. The place is open to the tribe, so Janis is welcome to crash. Welcome home."

[Kora] (I think that's a wrap for me for now. Gonna go cook dinner, you guys are welcome to continue, though.

Thanks for the RP. :) )
to Eli Booker, Roman Turner

[Eli Booker] (Thank you!)
to Kora, Roman Turner