[Kora] Late Monday night, there's a firm sure knock on Drew's door. It's a cool night, with a shivering sort of drizzle falling from orange-gray skies onto the freezing asphalt, glazing every surface with a thin skin of ice.
The rain gives the atmosphere a hushed quality, pinging off the window panes, sliding down the gutters of Drew's small rental home. It glazes the half melted snow in the yard with a lacy skin of ice, compact and solid as frozen milk.
[Drew Roscoe] Drew had been asleep when the sound of someone pounding on her front door woke her up. She roused from a sprawled-out state on her mattress, covers half-hiked up her body half-kicked down, pushed herself up with her forearms and stared bleary-eyed toward the large bedroom window from the second story of the house that overlooked her front yard. Fingers went for the gun kept in the nightstand, and she held it careful, though still half-asleep, as she looked down out the window.
Kora.
Oh great.
The gun is put away again, back in the nightstand drawer, and Drew doesn't bother to wrap herself in a bathrobe to go downstairs and answer the door for her Jarl. Kora waits out in the cold for two or so minutes, this is the time it takes for Drew to check the window, descend the staircase, and undo the three separate locks that keep the door secure at night. When she opens the door, she steps back to allow Kora inside without question, letting the woman out of the cold and into the warmth of the small home with the hardwood floors and cozy furnishings.
Drew's dressed in a pair of pale green silk pajamas, pants and tank-top combination, and while her hair is mussed and her eyes still at half-mast from being roused, she appears to be unsurprised.
[Kora] The Skald is dressed in a new sweatshirt, dark gray, with the university of chicago logo on the breast and a pounch bisected by the zipper pulled all the way up to her neck. The hood is forward, touching the crown of her head, shielding most of her face and hair from the rain. The yoke of the sweatshirt - and hood - are patterned damp from the rain.
"Drew." - she murmurs, giving the young kinswoman a dark eyed once over, head to toe and back again. She steps inside, the warmth welcome, flexing her bare hands to return circulation to the digits as she reaches up to unzip the hoodie, take off the damp cotton jacket as she pauses just inside the door to stamp off the rain and muck from her heavy black boots. There's a braided leather necklace at her throat, thinly worked, and a handful of bracelets at her wrist. Her blonde hair is scraped back from her sharply defined features. There's a stillness underneath; a certain solid presence that does not belong confined in walls like these.
When her boots are stamped clean, she walks further in. The gait like an animal's is nearly enough to make one forget her pregnancy. Except there's no forgotting it now.
"You know why I'm here." Kora says, with a lifting look back to Drew.
[Drew Roscoe] "Yep."
The answer is half-sleepy, but certain enough. She closed the door behind Kora and didn't bother locking it-- she didn't expect Kora would stay longer than necessary, and knew that, despite their differences, if someone was bold and dumb enough to try and break into her home right now just because she left the front door unlocked, Kora would surely tear them apart.
She didn't have pockets for her hands to go into, so Drew instead wrapped her arms about her chest, one hand on either shoulder, and left them there for now. She stood with her back to the wall near the door, not inviting Kora to sit, not sitting herself. It was too late for pleasantries, she knew that it wouldn't be pleasant anyways.
This was business, and it was going to be conducted as such.
"What's the punishment?"
[Kora] There's a low huff of breath from the Skald. The sound is quiet, nearly subvocal. There's a certain bitter twist to it. Underneath, though, the creature is clearly calm. When Drew asks what the punishment is so very plainly, Kora flickers another glance around the small, shadow cloaked living room before returning her level gaze to Drew.
The room is half-lit by the glow from outside, one of the lamps Drew turned on as she made her way to the door. It casts them in sharp relief, shadow play. "You think I'm going to punish you without at least hearing your side?" That sound again, a quiet snort that flares her pale nostrils, her generous mouth drawing in at the corners.
The expression is distinct and considering, but withdrawn somehow. A clinical distance. "Let's hear it." That pause. "In your words."
[Drew Roscoe] Drew shook her head and sighed, moved a hand to scrub at the bridge of her nose with her forefinger and her thumb, then placed that hand back on the shoulder it was cradling. She leaned against the wall, took another deep breath, then started talking.
"Ran into a bunch of the Unicorn kin last night at a coffee shop. I like Rain, I like Jackson, and I figured whatever was between August and I was water under the bridge. 'Cept she's spending the better part of the time I'm in there talking to Rain and this.. Phoenix guy and all acting like I'm not there, just bein' real.. coy, I guess, I don't know. I could tell she had words in her, so I asked her outside to say them.
"She's apparently not too pleased about me 'getting in her business' and trying to encourage her to be stronger for herself and her kids. Feeds me this line about how her past and how I don't know her and I have no grounds on which to be advising her what she do with her life. I tell her flat out what I think about it. That she's a liability by putting herself in these situations where she needs people to help her 'cause she can't help herself, that she's betrayin' her tribe by not turning to them for help but others? And tell her, frankly, that if she can't take care of kids herself she shouldn't be having them.
"She gets pissed and grabs me up by my jacket, gets way too close and into my face and starts bleating about her abusive mate and all that. I don't want her there, so I punch her in the mouth."
Just like that. That simple, apparently.
"Of course tempers exploded, I tried to hit her a few more times, she tried to hit me. We didn't get too far, no one got hurt 'cept some feelings and pride 'cause that Phoenix fellow stepped in and got between us. After that, I came home, had a drink, and went to bed."
The end.
[Kora] Kora's standing with her hands still in the pockets of her unzipped sweatshirt. The sides hang loose - too much fabric for her frame - down her flanks, the zipper glinting with its glaze of freezing drizzle. Underneath, the Skald's clothing is wholly utilitarian - jeans, a thermal, and a pale gray tunic, both long enough to cover her torso and stomach, pulled down to her hips. There is a ghost of darker fabric along her shoulders and around the neck, where the rain soaked through the outter layers to the inner layer.
"How did you try to encourage her to be stronger for herself and her kids?" A flicker of a look. Steady on Drew's face, stillness quiet in Kora's.
[Drew Roscoe] "Went to her house 'bout a week ago... Or I should say that what's-his-face Shadow Lord's house. Heard that was where she was staying. Hand her a copy of those apartment papers I sent do you--" Drew doesn't pause to ask if Kora got them or not, that was neither here nor there. "--and explain to her how the math and money works out, how I'm willing to help her get her own place and all that. She doesn't even glance at them-- decides she's happy playing housemaid to a Lord.
"I explain to her that she should be with her Tribe. That she should be standing up strong for those kids by taking care of them herself and not relying on a nigh-stranger from another Tribe to support them and her instead. Tell her she needs to be a constant in their lives because nothing else will be. She, apparently, took offense to that when I told her the first time.
"The second time, tonight, I told her basically the same thing, except with a lot less patience. That she kept falling in the laps of other tribes or sellin' herself out to them. There's no honor in that, and it's just.... not right for them kids. If she didn't have the buds attached to her I wouldn't give a damn what she was doing with her life-- but those kids are what we're putting our stock in, you know?"
[Kora] There's a certain sheen of light across the Fenrir's dark eyes; animal. It's there too in the way she watches Drew while the young woman explains herself - that steadiness, held back a bit. Her rage banked, perhaps spent before she came here. Once she pulls her hands from her pockets and pushes up her sleeves over her forearms. The gray tunic is shortsleeved, leaving the cuffs of the white thermal with that faint white glow in the shadows.
There's a spot of blood there.
Something for someone else to clean up.
The sweatshirt hangs open now, and the Skald slides her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. Slung low, mostly under the swell of her stomach. The top button's left undone, the imprint of it evident against the fabric of the longer tunic top.
Once more, a low sound, a quiet noise in the back of her throat, like a withheld laugh that's been swallowed by a moving wave. "I want you to think about this," Kora continues, her generous mouth twisting in a terribly human expression. " - why did you seek her out. For yourself? For her? That's the first question. And the second is: did you think that that would work?"
[Drew Roscoe] "Originally?"
To make sure they were on the same grounds. When the nod, or what have you confirms it, she presses on with a bit of a shiver and while rubbing her hands down her arms to warm them.
"Both, I suppose. I wanted the best for those kids more than her. I felt a bit guilty about refusing my home to them and wanted to make that feel right by offering her the other options she had. I wanted to feel the honesty about discussing this face-to-face rather than using you as a correspondence about the whole thing."
As for whether it would work, she shrugged: "I'd never met her before. I didn't know how obstinate she was about being under a man's thumb, regardless of who that man might be. She could do it-- take up the option I've given her. She's refusing it, didn't even think about it for half a second. I didn't realize it then. I know it now."
[Kora] "August," the word sits alone for a moment, without inflection. It rises as if roused. Kora watches Drew with that same aura of animal speculation, a certain coruscating intensity, the movement of her hands over her arms, the shiver that moves through her from the cold. "She called me tonight. She told me that the first time you came to her house - a stranger - you berated her, judged her, and informed her that she was a bad parent, even though you had never met her before. She thought that you were trying to drive her from the city - to make her feel unwanted and inadequate."
There's a twist of Kora's shoulders then, mirrored by the movement of her curving mouth. A certain irony in the background to keep the sharper, animal side of her deeply in check.
"Maybe she is stubborn. Even feckless." There's a faint gesture, a twisting shrug near the end. "But if you wanted the best for her kids; if you wanted to help her stand on her own feet, if you genuinely wanted those things, I think you fucked up."
[Drew Roscoe] Drew makes a bit of a face when Kora relays what August gave her through the phone call, but doesn't say anything more or shake her head to make a point of denying it. She'd already given her side of the story, Kora already knew her take.
I think you fucked up.
Drew didn't argue it. She just shrugged again, and stopped rubbing her arms so she could lift her hands to brush her fingers through her hair, undoing some of the 'I just rolled out of bed' cowlicks. "I probably did. I was very up front with her, 'cause I don't see sense in... I dunno, courting her, I guess?" There's a shake of her head, and she's brushing her lengthy hair down over one shoulder and working out the knots. "She called you, huh? Didn't talk to any of her tribemates first?"
[Kora] "Totally immaterial, Drew. I'm your tribesmate, and I'm here to deal with you. Not gossip about others." There's a note - pressure in her voice - there, a certain forward shift, a subtle thread of disapproval that Drew was bold enough to ask the question.
Her stance does not change, nor does the steadiness of her quiet regard. Then she makes a low noise of negation in the back of her throat.
"I don't think the problem was that you didn't court her, the problem was that you completely and utterly alienated her." There's a quiet snort at the end of this. "That letter you sent me. About apartments and classifieds. You meant is as a peace offering, did you?"
Kora pauses, long enough for Drew to affirm what the Skald realizes, only now. "I read it half-way through before I crumpled it up. Even the text seemed - " Another supple snort, a twist of her mouth near the end. "Perhaps you should avoid 'upfront' for now."
[Drew Roscoe] Kora's asking if the letter was meant to be a peace offering, and Drew's eyebrows lifted some over groggy eyes, showing a moment of sleepy surprise. She'd thought that was obvious, that was the point of the compromise. It'd be that much easier to leave it as a 'no' and let it stay there-- she'd put time and research into finding alternatives for this Kin she'd never met, and was offering up a considerable sum of money on this stranger because Kora wanted to help her. Peace offering was a good word, and she nods a bit to confirm what the Skald was now figuring out.
The suggestion that she should avoid being upfront is met with a bit of a shrug, and her arms cross over her chest securely again, hands on the tops of her biceps to keep her arms warm. The house, compared to outdoors, was nice and warm. However, the first story on hardwood floor compared to the warm bed upstairs was pretty darn chilly.
"Probably right. Figure I'm done with August too. She's not my problem in the first place, didn't want my help when I offered it, and I've done burnt whatever bridge that could be salvaged." There's a pause, then she sighs and frowns a bit. "Need to apologize to Phoenix, I snapped at him pretty badly when he got in the way, I regret that... He seemed real nice. Gotta apologize to Rain too for killing her evening."
[Kora] "That's a good start, Drew. Reasonable. Necessary." Kora concurs, in her rich, low voice. There's still that twist to her mouth as her dark gaze turns harder. Flinty, somehow. "Unfortunately, you're not quite done with August. You crossed the line twice with August, Drew. I asked you if you would take on a roommate. You said no. That was the end of it as far as I was concerned. I asked nothing more from you.
"And this is where you crossed the line. You haven't the right to go about telling other Kinfolk how to be good Kinfolk. August isn't your tribe, and I did not ask you to speak to her. Certainly, I didn't ask you to lecture her."
There's a pause there, "I'll accept that on some level you meant well. You were also horrible at it. Things ended worse than they began. If that's all there was, this discussion would end here. I'd tell you to shut the fuck up about August and stop lecturing other kin.
"But that's not the end of it. You've no right to attack another kinfolk. Another pregnant kinfolk. Bar brawls? I'll look the other way. Cat fights - ?" This quiet shake of her pale head pulls the weight of her hair against the hood of her jacket. "Jesus christ, Drew. You're Fenrir. Not some fucking Silver Fang."
Here, she draws in another breath. Expels it all at a go. "Tell me you get that. Where you were wrong in this. Where you crossed the line."
[Drew Roscoe] Drew's temper doesn't flare up when Kora explains to here where she went wrong, or even when she scolds her for cat fights. Either she's too tired, that drink was still warm in her stomach and veins, or she was content after she had her chance to vent all her frustrations at the blonde Kin and throw some fists for the first time in forever.
That or she knew Kora was right.
For any of these reasons, she doesn't interrupt or argue with the Skald while she talks. Instead she listens, and nods faintly in some areas, but otherwise is still and quiet, save for the occasional shiver that trembles along her back and shoulders.
"Naw, you're right, I know where I went wrong. I should've just left it the hell alone. I shouldn't have tried to tell her how to be, not my place. The fighting was stupid and juvenile, the both of us acted like a couple of teenage girls." There's another shake of her head, a sniff, and she looks at Kora with no disagreement, no sarcasm on her face. The fighting, the disagreements, the mean words and bad blood, she's past it apparently. "I'll rectify where I can. What do you need me to do with August?"
[Kora] For the first time all night, the Skald gives Drew the weary edge of a genuine half-smile. Her mouth is wide, quick-moving, expressive - softening the sharp angles of her features - and it curves in this Mona Lisa way even when still.
"I'm impressed, Drew. Most people are incapable of admitting fault. It's a weakness they read as strength," here Kora moves her shoulders in another of her narrow expressions, half-way to a helpless shrug. " - or pass off as truth."
"This is gonna be two parts, I think. I'm not sure which one is harder. The first one's immediate. I don't wanna hear you - or hear of you - talking about August. You've given up your right to an opinion on her. Or at least, you've given up your right to spread your opinion about. It may be hard, given your pretty definite opinions on the subject. I think it's necessary though.
"Maybe you were gonna do that already." The last like a concession.
"The second part is a little more fluid. You're gonna come up with something that you can do for her. Something that will genuinely help her. Probably without contact between you, since I can't see that ending well. Maybe you'll pay for day care for some time. Maybe you'll help her with tuition. Maybe there's something else you can offer her, without rancor. You figure it out, and bring it to me for approval.
"Got all that?"
[Drew Roscoe] Drew sniffed a bit and returned the half-smile by offering a bit of a sleepy grin in response. It was crushingly cute, thankfully Kora was overall immune to such things because it looked the perfect match to something that belonged on a pillow with the first rays of sunlight cutting through a bedroom. She brushed her hair back from her brow and settled her arms over her stomach again.
"Sounds fair," to the part about not speaking of August. As for the second part, giving something back, she's frowning, but not with disagreement so much as thought. "She won't do daycare, made a point of mentioning so the first time we talked. ...Maybe find some jobs she'd be suited to? I could look around and see if there's any... child care jobs open so she could have the kids with her? Or some other job that won't mind if she's got children with her? I dunno..."
She's dismissing that thought process for now, she wasn't near awake enough to be tossing serious ideas around. She'd been musing immediate thoughts aloud, but it didn't go too far. She just nodded to Kora, confirmed: "Got it." And moved for the door, but paused and instead hitched a thumb over her shoulder toward the kitchen. "You want, like, a cup of something warm to get you back home?"
[Kora] "Yeah," says Kora, following the movement of Drew's thumb. "I'd like that."
[Drew Roscoe] The Jarl would like that, so Drew seems quite content to comply. She doesn't bust out the coffee, not because she thinks it will damage a pregnant woman beyond repair (she didn't believe all the hype about every little thing being able to ruin you if you're pregnant), but rather because she figured Kora would be on her way to rest for the night, because she figured the caffeine would still affect the baby, and she could only imagine trying to sleep with something doing cartwheels inside you.
Rather, she warms some milk and makes some hot chocolate-- simple and modest, a packet that boasted caramel flavoring as well, and mixed it all together in a thermos that she screwed the lid onto and passed off to Kora. The Jarl is wished a good evening with a smile and seen to the door, which is closed once Kora steps past the threshold and out onto the sidewalk, and locked up with the three different locks required for this part of town.
That past she's going straight back to bed, climbing the stairs, scrubbing her face, and tucking herself in under the sheets, snuggling down against her mattress and pillow and sighing happily.
It seemed she'd needed to throw all of her cards on the table, scream a little, and when that was out of her system she was able to see more clearly-- to look back and understand precisely all the points she'd gone wrong rather than one or two and denying the rest. The conversation with Kora had gone much better than she'd anticipated. She had plans for sushi for lunch the next day at work (her supervisor's way of thanking her for the long-assed stress-filled workday she'd pulled today). Things looked up, and for that she drifted back to sleep quickly and peacefully.
The rain gives the atmosphere a hushed quality, pinging off the window panes, sliding down the gutters of Drew's small rental home. It glazes the half melted snow in the yard with a lacy skin of ice, compact and solid as frozen milk.
[Drew Roscoe] Drew had been asleep when the sound of someone pounding on her front door woke her up. She roused from a sprawled-out state on her mattress, covers half-hiked up her body half-kicked down, pushed herself up with her forearms and stared bleary-eyed toward the large bedroom window from the second story of the house that overlooked her front yard. Fingers went for the gun kept in the nightstand, and she held it careful, though still half-asleep, as she looked down out the window.
Kora.
Oh great.
The gun is put away again, back in the nightstand drawer, and Drew doesn't bother to wrap herself in a bathrobe to go downstairs and answer the door for her Jarl. Kora waits out in the cold for two or so minutes, this is the time it takes for Drew to check the window, descend the staircase, and undo the three separate locks that keep the door secure at night. When she opens the door, she steps back to allow Kora inside without question, letting the woman out of the cold and into the warmth of the small home with the hardwood floors and cozy furnishings.
Drew's dressed in a pair of pale green silk pajamas, pants and tank-top combination, and while her hair is mussed and her eyes still at half-mast from being roused, she appears to be unsurprised.
[Kora] The Skald is dressed in a new sweatshirt, dark gray, with the university of chicago logo on the breast and a pounch bisected by the zipper pulled all the way up to her neck. The hood is forward, touching the crown of her head, shielding most of her face and hair from the rain. The yoke of the sweatshirt - and hood - are patterned damp from the rain.
"Drew." - she murmurs, giving the young kinswoman a dark eyed once over, head to toe and back again. She steps inside, the warmth welcome, flexing her bare hands to return circulation to the digits as she reaches up to unzip the hoodie, take off the damp cotton jacket as she pauses just inside the door to stamp off the rain and muck from her heavy black boots. There's a braided leather necklace at her throat, thinly worked, and a handful of bracelets at her wrist. Her blonde hair is scraped back from her sharply defined features. There's a stillness underneath; a certain solid presence that does not belong confined in walls like these.
When her boots are stamped clean, she walks further in. The gait like an animal's is nearly enough to make one forget her pregnancy. Except there's no forgotting it now.
"You know why I'm here." Kora says, with a lifting look back to Drew.
[Drew Roscoe] "Yep."
The answer is half-sleepy, but certain enough. She closed the door behind Kora and didn't bother locking it-- she didn't expect Kora would stay longer than necessary, and knew that, despite their differences, if someone was bold and dumb enough to try and break into her home right now just because she left the front door unlocked, Kora would surely tear them apart.
She didn't have pockets for her hands to go into, so Drew instead wrapped her arms about her chest, one hand on either shoulder, and left them there for now. She stood with her back to the wall near the door, not inviting Kora to sit, not sitting herself. It was too late for pleasantries, she knew that it wouldn't be pleasant anyways.
This was business, and it was going to be conducted as such.
"What's the punishment?"
[Kora] There's a low huff of breath from the Skald. The sound is quiet, nearly subvocal. There's a certain bitter twist to it. Underneath, though, the creature is clearly calm. When Drew asks what the punishment is so very plainly, Kora flickers another glance around the small, shadow cloaked living room before returning her level gaze to Drew.
The room is half-lit by the glow from outside, one of the lamps Drew turned on as she made her way to the door. It casts them in sharp relief, shadow play. "You think I'm going to punish you without at least hearing your side?" That sound again, a quiet snort that flares her pale nostrils, her generous mouth drawing in at the corners.
The expression is distinct and considering, but withdrawn somehow. A clinical distance. "Let's hear it." That pause. "In your words."
[Drew Roscoe] Drew shook her head and sighed, moved a hand to scrub at the bridge of her nose with her forefinger and her thumb, then placed that hand back on the shoulder it was cradling. She leaned against the wall, took another deep breath, then started talking.
"Ran into a bunch of the Unicorn kin last night at a coffee shop. I like Rain, I like Jackson, and I figured whatever was between August and I was water under the bridge. 'Cept she's spending the better part of the time I'm in there talking to Rain and this.. Phoenix guy and all acting like I'm not there, just bein' real.. coy, I guess, I don't know. I could tell she had words in her, so I asked her outside to say them.
"She's apparently not too pleased about me 'getting in her business' and trying to encourage her to be stronger for herself and her kids. Feeds me this line about how her past and how I don't know her and I have no grounds on which to be advising her what she do with her life. I tell her flat out what I think about it. That she's a liability by putting herself in these situations where she needs people to help her 'cause she can't help herself, that she's betrayin' her tribe by not turning to them for help but others? And tell her, frankly, that if she can't take care of kids herself she shouldn't be having them.
"She gets pissed and grabs me up by my jacket, gets way too close and into my face and starts bleating about her abusive mate and all that. I don't want her there, so I punch her in the mouth."
Just like that. That simple, apparently.
"Of course tempers exploded, I tried to hit her a few more times, she tried to hit me. We didn't get too far, no one got hurt 'cept some feelings and pride 'cause that Phoenix fellow stepped in and got between us. After that, I came home, had a drink, and went to bed."
The end.
[Kora] Kora's standing with her hands still in the pockets of her unzipped sweatshirt. The sides hang loose - too much fabric for her frame - down her flanks, the zipper glinting with its glaze of freezing drizzle. Underneath, the Skald's clothing is wholly utilitarian - jeans, a thermal, and a pale gray tunic, both long enough to cover her torso and stomach, pulled down to her hips. There is a ghost of darker fabric along her shoulders and around the neck, where the rain soaked through the outter layers to the inner layer.
"How did you try to encourage her to be stronger for herself and her kids?" A flicker of a look. Steady on Drew's face, stillness quiet in Kora's.
[Drew Roscoe] "Went to her house 'bout a week ago... Or I should say that what's-his-face Shadow Lord's house. Heard that was where she was staying. Hand her a copy of those apartment papers I sent do you--" Drew doesn't pause to ask if Kora got them or not, that was neither here nor there. "--and explain to her how the math and money works out, how I'm willing to help her get her own place and all that. She doesn't even glance at them-- decides she's happy playing housemaid to a Lord.
"I explain to her that she should be with her Tribe. That she should be standing up strong for those kids by taking care of them herself and not relying on a nigh-stranger from another Tribe to support them and her instead. Tell her she needs to be a constant in their lives because nothing else will be. She, apparently, took offense to that when I told her the first time.
"The second time, tonight, I told her basically the same thing, except with a lot less patience. That she kept falling in the laps of other tribes or sellin' herself out to them. There's no honor in that, and it's just.... not right for them kids. If she didn't have the buds attached to her I wouldn't give a damn what she was doing with her life-- but those kids are what we're putting our stock in, you know?"
[Kora] There's a certain sheen of light across the Fenrir's dark eyes; animal. It's there too in the way she watches Drew while the young woman explains herself - that steadiness, held back a bit. Her rage banked, perhaps spent before she came here. Once she pulls her hands from her pockets and pushes up her sleeves over her forearms. The gray tunic is shortsleeved, leaving the cuffs of the white thermal with that faint white glow in the shadows.
There's a spot of blood there.
Something for someone else to clean up.
The sweatshirt hangs open now, and the Skald slides her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. Slung low, mostly under the swell of her stomach. The top button's left undone, the imprint of it evident against the fabric of the longer tunic top.
Once more, a low sound, a quiet noise in the back of her throat, like a withheld laugh that's been swallowed by a moving wave. "I want you to think about this," Kora continues, her generous mouth twisting in a terribly human expression. " - why did you seek her out. For yourself? For her? That's the first question. And the second is: did you think that that would work?"
[Drew Roscoe] "Originally?"
To make sure they were on the same grounds. When the nod, or what have you confirms it, she presses on with a bit of a shiver and while rubbing her hands down her arms to warm them.
"Both, I suppose. I wanted the best for those kids more than her. I felt a bit guilty about refusing my home to them and wanted to make that feel right by offering her the other options she had. I wanted to feel the honesty about discussing this face-to-face rather than using you as a correspondence about the whole thing."
As for whether it would work, she shrugged: "I'd never met her before. I didn't know how obstinate she was about being under a man's thumb, regardless of who that man might be. She could do it-- take up the option I've given her. She's refusing it, didn't even think about it for half a second. I didn't realize it then. I know it now."
[Kora] "August," the word sits alone for a moment, without inflection. It rises as if roused. Kora watches Drew with that same aura of animal speculation, a certain coruscating intensity, the movement of her hands over her arms, the shiver that moves through her from the cold. "She called me tonight. She told me that the first time you came to her house - a stranger - you berated her, judged her, and informed her that she was a bad parent, even though you had never met her before. She thought that you were trying to drive her from the city - to make her feel unwanted and inadequate."
There's a twist of Kora's shoulders then, mirrored by the movement of her curving mouth. A certain irony in the background to keep the sharper, animal side of her deeply in check.
"Maybe she is stubborn. Even feckless." There's a faint gesture, a twisting shrug near the end. "But if you wanted the best for her kids; if you wanted to help her stand on her own feet, if you genuinely wanted those things, I think you fucked up."
[Drew Roscoe] Drew makes a bit of a face when Kora relays what August gave her through the phone call, but doesn't say anything more or shake her head to make a point of denying it. She'd already given her side of the story, Kora already knew her take.
I think you fucked up.
Drew didn't argue it. She just shrugged again, and stopped rubbing her arms so she could lift her hands to brush her fingers through her hair, undoing some of the 'I just rolled out of bed' cowlicks. "I probably did. I was very up front with her, 'cause I don't see sense in... I dunno, courting her, I guess?" There's a shake of her head, and she's brushing her lengthy hair down over one shoulder and working out the knots. "She called you, huh? Didn't talk to any of her tribemates first?"
[Kora] "Totally immaterial, Drew. I'm your tribesmate, and I'm here to deal with you. Not gossip about others." There's a note - pressure in her voice - there, a certain forward shift, a subtle thread of disapproval that Drew was bold enough to ask the question.
Her stance does not change, nor does the steadiness of her quiet regard. Then she makes a low noise of negation in the back of her throat.
"I don't think the problem was that you didn't court her, the problem was that you completely and utterly alienated her." There's a quiet snort at the end of this. "That letter you sent me. About apartments and classifieds. You meant is as a peace offering, did you?"
Kora pauses, long enough for Drew to affirm what the Skald realizes, only now. "I read it half-way through before I crumpled it up. Even the text seemed - " Another supple snort, a twist of her mouth near the end. "Perhaps you should avoid 'upfront' for now."
[Drew Roscoe] Kora's asking if the letter was meant to be a peace offering, and Drew's eyebrows lifted some over groggy eyes, showing a moment of sleepy surprise. She'd thought that was obvious, that was the point of the compromise. It'd be that much easier to leave it as a 'no' and let it stay there-- she'd put time and research into finding alternatives for this Kin she'd never met, and was offering up a considerable sum of money on this stranger because Kora wanted to help her. Peace offering was a good word, and she nods a bit to confirm what the Skald was now figuring out.
The suggestion that she should avoid being upfront is met with a bit of a shrug, and her arms cross over her chest securely again, hands on the tops of her biceps to keep her arms warm. The house, compared to outdoors, was nice and warm. However, the first story on hardwood floor compared to the warm bed upstairs was pretty darn chilly.
"Probably right. Figure I'm done with August too. She's not my problem in the first place, didn't want my help when I offered it, and I've done burnt whatever bridge that could be salvaged." There's a pause, then she sighs and frowns a bit. "Need to apologize to Phoenix, I snapped at him pretty badly when he got in the way, I regret that... He seemed real nice. Gotta apologize to Rain too for killing her evening."
[Kora] "That's a good start, Drew. Reasonable. Necessary." Kora concurs, in her rich, low voice. There's still that twist to her mouth as her dark gaze turns harder. Flinty, somehow. "Unfortunately, you're not quite done with August. You crossed the line twice with August, Drew. I asked you if you would take on a roommate. You said no. That was the end of it as far as I was concerned. I asked nothing more from you.
"And this is where you crossed the line. You haven't the right to go about telling other Kinfolk how to be good Kinfolk. August isn't your tribe, and I did not ask you to speak to her. Certainly, I didn't ask you to lecture her."
There's a pause there, "I'll accept that on some level you meant well. You were also horrible at it. Things ended worse than they began. If that's all there was, this discussion would end here. I'd tell you to shut the fuck up about August and stop lecturing other kin.
"But that's not the end of it. You've no right to attack another kinfolk. Another pregnant kinfolk. Bar brawls? I'll look the other way. Cat fights - ?" This quiet shake of her pale head pulls the weight of her hair against the hood of her jacket. "Jesus christ, Drew. You're Fenrir. Not some fucking Silver Fang."
Here, she draws in another breath. Expels it all at a go. "Tell me you get that. Where you were wrong in this. Where you crossed the line."
[Drew Roscoe] Drew's temper doesn't flare up when Kora explains to here where she went wrong, or even when she scolds her for cat fights. Either she's too tired, that drink was still warm in her stomach and veins, or she was content after she had her chance to vent all her frustrations at the blonde Kin and throw some fists for the first time in forever.
That or she knew Kora was right.
For any of these reasons, she doesn't interrupt or argue with the Skald while she talks. Instead she listens, and nods faintly in some areas, but otherwise is still and quiet, save for the occasional shiver that trembles along her back and shoulders.
"Naw, you're right, I know where I went wrong. I should've just left it the hell alone. I shouldn't have tried to tell her how to be, not my place. The fighting was stupid and juvenile, the both of us acted like a couple of teenage girls." There's another shake of her head, a sniff, and she looks at Kora with no disagreement, no sarcasm on her face. The fighting, the disagreements, the mean words and bad blood, she's past it apparently. "I'll rectify where I can. What do you need me to do with August?"
[Kora] For the first time all night, the Skald gives Drew the weary edge of a genuine half-smile. Her mouth is wide, quick-moving, expressive - softening the sharp angles of her features - and it curves in this Mona Lisa way even when still.
"I'm impressed, Drew. Most people are incapable of admitting fault. It's a weakness they read as strength," here Kora moves her shoulders in another of her narrow expressions, half-way to a helpless shrug. " - or pass off as truth."
"This is gonna be two parts, I think. I'm not sure which one is harder. The first one's immediate. I don't wanna hear you - or hear of you - talking about August. You've given up your right to an opinion on her. Or at least, you've given up your right to spread your opinion about. It may be hard, given your pretty definite opinions on the subject. I think it's necessary though.
"Maybe you were gonna do that already." The last like a concession.
"The second part is a little more fluid. You're gonna come up with something that you can do for her. Something that will genuinely help her. Probably without contact between you, since I can't see that ending well. Maybe you'll pay for day care for some time. Maybe you'll help her with tuition. Maybe there's something else you can offer her, without rancor. You figure it out, and bring it to me for approval.
"Got all that?"
[Drew Roscoe] Drew sniffed a bit and returned the half-smile by offering a bit of a sleepy grin in response. It was crushingly cute, thankfully Kora was overall immune to such things because it looked the perfect match to something that belonged on a pillow with the first rays of sunlight cutting through a bedroom. She brushed her hair back from her brow and settled her arms over her stomach again.
"Sounds fair," to the part about not speaking of August. As for the second part, giving something back, she's frowning, but not with disagreement so much as thought. "She won't do daycare, made a point of mentioning so the first time we talked. ...Maybe find some jobs she'd be suited to? I could look around and see if there's any... child care jobs open so she could have the kids with her? Or some other job that won't mind if she's got children with her? I dunno..."
She's dismissing that thought process for now, she wasn't near awake enough to be tossing serious ideas around. She'd been musing immediate thoughts aloud, but it didn't go too far. She just nodded to Kora, confirmed: "Got it." And moved for the door, but paused and instead hitched a thumb over her shoulder toward the kitchen. "You want, like, a cup of something warm to get you back home?"
[Kora] "Yeah," says Kora, following the movement of Drew's thumb. "I'd like that."
[Drew Roscoe] The Jarl would like that, so Drew seems quite content to comply. She doesn't bust out the coffee, not because she thinks it will damage a pregnant woman beyond repair (she didn't believe all the hype about every little thing being able to ruin you if you're pregnant), but rather because she figured Kora would be on her way to rest for the night, because she figured the caffeine would still affect the baby, and she could only imagine trying to sleep with something doing cartwheels inside you.
Rather, she warms some milk and makes some hot chocolate-- simple and modest, a packet that boasted caramel flavoring as well, and mixed it all together in a thermos that she screwed the lid onto and passed off to Kora. The Jarl is wished a good evening with a smile and seen to the door, which is closed once Kora steps past the threshold and out onto the sidewalk, and locked up with the three different locks required for this part of town.
That past she's going straight back to bed, climbing the stairs, scrubbing her face, and tucking herself in under the sheets, snuggling down against her mattress and pillow and sighing happily.
It seemed she'd needed to throw all of her cards on the table, scream a little, and when that was out of her system she was able to see more clearly-- to look back and understand precisely all the points she'd gone wrong rather than one or two and denying the rest. The conversation with Kora had gone much better than she'd anticipated. She had plans for sushi for lunch the next day at work (her supervisor's way of thanking her for the long-assed stress-filled workday she'd pulled today). Things looked up, and for that she drifted back to sleep quickly and peacefully.
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