[Drawn in Blood] Even in the haze of a desolate winter wasteland, the landscape covered in snow that ought to be pristine and white yet has gone tainted and gray in the places where technology and progress have pushed it up off the sidewalk in heaps--which are few, admittedly; this is not downtown, this is not the Heart of Chicago but is one of the forgotten places--even when the world is blanketed in a sort of hush, nothing but the distant whisper of tires over the slushy asphalt, the crack and groan of massive church doors seems like its own entity.
He's coming up the sidewalk, winter jacket zipped up but no hat, no scarf, no gloves to protect him from the cold. He does not need it. Though his Rage burns not so hot that it threatens to char away at his humanity, it is enough of an internal fire that it keeps him from feeling the chill as anything other than an irritant. It will not kill him in the amount of time it takes to walk from where he's coming to wherever it is that he's going.
The Alpha of the Last Watch, the city's Jarl, appears as a figure cut against the bright backdrop of what could easily be the set of a post-apocalyptic battleground, and the Modi lifts his head. In this form his nostrils threaten to freeze with each haul of subzero air into his system; the cold burns his lungs when he breathes through his mouth. This is a miserable walk, but the expression on his face, with its heavy masculine features and its grizzled quality, his skin weathered and his facial hair unshaved since before he arrived in the city, is almost serene.
It's an acceptance that of all the things in this world that he has no control over, weather ought to be the last of his concerns.
Silent, he pulls his left hand out of his pocket to lift it in a motionless wave to Kora, and almost imperceptibly picks up the pace.
[Erek Skulason] You know if you put salt down on the path, might eat up the snow and make it more walkable.
*The gruffness of Erek's voice greets the Jarl, blue eyes peering out from between the brim of the knit cap pulled low over his forehead to cover his ears and force tufts of blond hair to spike out, and the layers of thin scarves wrapped around his throat and his chin like some kind of ninja mask. The dark colors of his clothes, a beaten up wool long coat and gray sweatshirt beneath layer over faded Dickies pants and work boots. The bits of skin revealed to the chill in the air become reddened and chapped.
Kora comes down the steps, she'll find the young Get of Fenris just off to her side some distance, crouched on top of a small mound of snow. It's likely he's been out here for a little bit, packing and padding it into a ball. His head lifts up, tilting to an angle as he spies Drawn in Blood, slowly standing with rim of that knit cap dancing up and down as his brows rose*
Company. *He snorts*
[Sorrow] "Breaks down stone, too," says Sorrow, her breath a warm cloud around her features, generous mouth lifting over the edge of the scarf she's wrapped around her neck and chin. There's a certain ease to the expression, lilted upward more at the right corner than the left. Her nose is already tipped with red from the chill, cheeks bright. Dark eyes - the color leached out by the shadows, the orange glow of the street lamp - gleam with ambient light as they touch on Erek. "So I've heard."
There's a rich, low lilt to the one of her voice; she doesn't need to raise it to carry over the scour of the winter wind - it just carries. "Washes off into the river, too. Leaches down into the water supply. Not that what we'd put down would do more damage than the city does itself." She twists her shoulders, the movement mostly lost underneath the weight of her coat. "Trent came and shoveled the steps the other night. He might come for the path tomorrow after work." A glance up, then. She lifts her chin by way of acknowledgment to Drawn in Blood, and gives Erek a half nod - south, toward the Lake, into the wind. Toward the Caern.
"I'm headed for the Caern if you want to walk with me." A glance includes Drawn in Blood in the offer. "You've made your sacrifice?" Another glance includes Erek in the question.
[Drawn in Blood] He is only just now closing in on the conversation, wind wicking words away from his ears as his footfalls crunch down snow and threaten to slip out from underneath him, his pace steady and slow. As tall as he is, as innately and almost primally graceful as he is, Drawn in Blood--John, to the humans--is a large man. If he fell it would be a hard fall.
He doesn't fall, although he does look mildly uneasy as he treads the last few steps to join the Rotagar and the Skald on the sidewalk. Breath steams away from him as though his life force is being hauled away from him, yet for obvious reasons he isn't complaining. A nod, stiff from the cold rather than from his demeanor, is given to the two of them, and he tries to flash a smile that indicates his willingness to head to the Caern with the two of them.
It's too cold to smile. For a Modi, though, especially for one whose Rage is as high as his own is, he does not seem like a live wire snapped from a line waiting for something to strike. Maybe they breed them differently where he comes from.
You've made your sacrifice?
A flick of eyes between the two of them, and Drawn in Blood nods, quicker than his nod of greeting.
[Erek Skulason] *Erek leaps off the little snow mound, likely the base for something he was going to make out of the snow, playing in it like a kid. It's something not lost on him, the ability to keep those boyish mannerism, like a pup that's grown into its fur and legs, but not quite into adulthood. The way he covers his face manages to elude any signs of facial expressions save for his eyes. Kora can feel the way they stay on her when she addressed him, asked him if he's made the sacrifice*
No, ma'am, haven't made any contributions to the maelstrom as of yet. Haven't found anything worthy yet to seal the bond, sacrifice is a big thing, has to mean something. Can't just be blood I wager.
*Erek's quick to follow Kora, eyes turning down to focus on her footwork, watch her steps and manipulate his own long strides to pace behind hers, dancing in her shadow (as her shadow). He regards DiB's silence with an upturned nod of his head in greeting to acknowledge him*
What did you throw to the maw of the blood-red whirlpool? *this to DiB*
[Sorrow] "Some people throw in blood," Kora returns to Erek. "Cut themselves and bleed into the already-blooded waters." There's a note of something there. "But you're right; sacrifice should mean something to the person making the sacrifice. Blood seems a hollow gesture, somehow. Given how quickly we regenerate it."
Kora's stride is more measured, tonight. Her balance is changing; her center of gravity. She's careful when she walks, her long strides shortened. Neither Erek nor Drawn in Blood have seen her as anything but: six months pregnant, her once-boyish frame changed, padded with a subtle new layer of fat at the hips and breasts, even some new fullness in her face. Still, with the heavy layers of winter things, her pregnancy is not obvious. She does not show the way a less-fit woman might by this stage. There's a subtle, pungent scent in the air underscoring her own. A certain blood-rot, metallic and old, and a soft bulge in the left pocket of her coat. She leaves her arms swinging free, glances from Drawn in Blood to Erek and back again.
After a moment's mild consideration, Kora taps her temple. "I can connect us three," evenly to Drawn in Blood. "Make it easier to communicate."
[Drawn in Blood] Erek wants to know what John gave Maelstrom. The Modi's expression does not turn hard, or defensive, but there is a sense of quarantine about his thoughts, his actions, that has more to do with his inability to speak than with any great desire to remain unknown or separate. While he is, for the moment, unknown, that is not by choice. He has been here a week, now, and already has fought so many battles that they're beginning to crowd the space reserved for counting on his hands. His hands stay in his pockets; the Rotagar is just given an indecipherable, nearly blank look, as if his silence is supposed to be enough proof of his deformity.
The notion of a Rage-heavy Full Moon refusing to speak or lacking the intelligence to do so with any semblance of confidence is hardly novel, yet Kora knows he does, on occasion, possess thoughts and exercises his right to share them with the rest of the world.
She can connect them. John considers this, but doesn't tap his temple in kind. Burrowing down deeper into his jacket, the Modi nods. Alright. Thank you.
[Erek Skulason] Fire Claws explained to me how the caern was found on the blood and backs of our tribe and the others that build it around some mystical thing, didn't give a full tale, but cut to a point. You say some people throw in a little blood, I imagine others will part with a material objects that has held some meaning to them, personal or otherwise.
*He presses on, a gloved hand lifted to dig into the top layers of the scarf to yank it down. Hot breath rolling out of his mouth as chapped lips move. Erek keeps his eyes on Kora's shoulders as he walks behind her, never beside or in front of her as it was not his place to do so. He returns his eyes to DiB eying him with a twitch of curiosity.
Kora says she can connect them to speak, Erek seems more than willing to fill up the conversation to make up for the ahroun's lack of speech as he has to shut himself up or he'd keep on rambling. His thoughts toiling around in his head a mile a minute with the swift capacity of a washing machine*
Yeah, that's fine. *he huffs out*
[Sorrow] They're on the sidewalk now, three nearly abrest. Erek has to ghost along, watching her footsteps, matching his stride to hers. And sometimes he has to range out - move around an obstacle like a lamppost or a shattered parking meter. Kora's left arm swings free, but she slips her right hand into her right front pocket, holding her elbow close against her ribs. The coat she wears is wool, a peacoat, the dark color shows a deep purple only when they pass under the direct light shed from one of the few working streetlamps on these half-abandoned streets.
The ghosts of warehouses - squat brick shadows against the orange night, some derelict, others merely rundown - haunt their path. She takes a turn, a sidestreet leading toward the riverwalk, and then down like an arrow toward the lakeshore and the Caern.
"I threw in a journal," the Skald tells them, maybe unexpectedly. " - from before my change. Kept it while I was traveling, like a scrapbook, yeah? Pictures, with friends, stories. Drunk musings. Letters from home. Letters I never sent home. Just everything."
Both Garou accede to her offer, and so she closes her eyes - a moment's concentration - and draws them together.
The gift is less natural than the spirit bonds of a totem. It requires this little - shard of concentration from each of them. Not enough to unbalance, but enough to distract.
A sharp glance back at Erek, and Kora nods in agreement with Fire Claws' explanation of the Caern and the sacrifice it requires. "He was right. Fenrir fought to raise the Caern, and have been the backbone of the Sept ever since. These lands - " a gesture around her. " - have been held by Fenrir since the Caern was raised, too. When Silence-rhya left, my pack claimed them. I can tell you the whole story sometime, if you'd like to hear it."
Even with the gift, Kora speaks aloud; Drawn in Blood, though, can project some ghost-voice into their minds.
[Drawn in Blood] There is no structural damage, no torn or bruised tissue to explain why he won't speak. As far as anyone else can tell, it is no vow of silence that has driven him to withhold his thoughts; were he to have undertaken some vow, it is entirely possible he would have come out and said that at the first opportunity, or turned down Kora's offer to make communication between the three of them easier. Though he seems perfectly content to simply walk through the blistering cold, silent yet attentive, and do little more than listen, that it is an option to him is not taken for granted or sloughed off as something that is beneath his efforts or his appreciation.
Yet as Kora explains the history of the lands, what the Caern has been through since its birth, he does not jump in to offer his thoughts. They can tell the Gift has taken hold because of the effort of maintaining it; he simply chooses to remain quiet until he has something of worth to contribute to the conversation.
[Erek Skulason] *Erek twitches under the new sensation that racks inside his head, he wonders to himself if this is what pack feels like. He shakes his head, rubbing the back of his worn leather glove across his brow. Smoke taking form in front of his face every time he breathes out and in again. He listens; forcing himself to remain quiet, less he start speaking in a tangent*
What did that sacrifice mean to you? Why the journal? What was it about that journal that made you want to give it up? How does it affect you still?
*Questions and more questions tumble out at Kora. He doesn't lose his stride, despite readjusting it. His quick agility allows him to move around or over objects as if they never existed, and he always went a straight path without curving*
[Sorrow] Kora breathes out a sharply exhaled breath; it sounds like a laugh propelled from her diaphragm, somewhere deep in her voice. Unvoiced, though - and quiet - it could double as a sigh were it not for the wry twist of her mouth around the sound. The mute glow from the streetlamps pulls out pale threads of brilliance in strands of her long blond hair - pulled sharply back from her face, sharp enough to reveal the cut of her jaw, the curvilinear line of her ear, the hollow beneath.
"That was a long time ago." There's a steadiness to her voice, a low, thrumming grace. Light gleams across her gaze as she shoots Erek another look, nearly reaching out, physically, to end the moving stream of questions he asks her. "The journal," less eloquent when speaking of herself, her past, her own life, than her dead, she pauses, glancing up and away, down the snow-hushed sidestreet toward the slice of the Chicago River visible between the warehouses lining the way. "It was - " another pause, liminal, " - private, yeah? What it meant then, it doesn't mean now. I pledged my life to Maelstrom, and gave it those pieces I thought precious in retrospect. That would be lost when I threw it in. But I took that sacrifice seriously, Erek. Buried my Alpha, watched another one leave, looking for glory, and stayed, because a miracle like this place is worth defending with every fiber of one's being.
"That a Caern can be raised in a city like this - " she offers a leashed, quiet gesture toward their surroundings, the concrete-and-brick, the asphalt, the trash moldering in the dark maw of the alley they just passed. " - in these late days." A sharp sound, another rush of air expelled from her nostrils.
The rest of unvoiced. The liminal passion in her voice speaks for itself.
Her eyes find the younger Garou's profile; Dawn in Blood's a moment after. "What about you? Why have you come?"
[Erek Skulason] *True to his auspice, Erek is a child full of questions and Kora is like the mother that he constantly nags for answers. He hits her again and again repeatedly until it makes her want to physically shut him up. The young Get of Fenris is wise to hang back, stay out of the Jarl's reach, watching the pregnant woman cautiously as he's been warned of her temperance. Though, the faintest quirk of a smile draws on the corners of his lips, the left one rising higher than the right to reflect the curved horns of a crescent moon and split his face in half*
I'll pledge myself to Maelstrom if I can toss Remy into it as my offering.
*He spits this out suddenly, irritation ringing in his tone along with a sharp explosion of laughter. His eyes dart off to silent ahroun, biting on his tongue to keep from speaking further, giving Dib a chance to answer*
[Drawn in Blood] Though he doesn't speak, John isn't off in his own world, thinking of battles long past or yet to come, or remembering the scent of an otherwise forgotten figure's hair and skin. He's in the present, where he belongs, listening to the Rotagar's questions, waiting for Kora's answers. All the sound he makes comes from his boots, his body, the trampling of snow beneath his soles and the huffing of breath drawn by lungs not at all equipped to handle this degree of soul-numbing cold.
Yet he doesn't complain. He would not complain if he were in a camp with a group of urrah.
There's a light in his eyes that seems to flicker when Kora speaks of the purpose of her sacrifice, the trials she has endured since coming here. There is steel in her spine, fire in her veins, and he does not shy away from it even though, being what he is, ranked as he is, he does not meet her gaze. It isn't fear--it's respect.
Then she's asking why he's come. There is a sense of stirring across the mental link, flimsier and more inclined to snap under the whims of its participants than a totemic bond, as if John is drawing a breath to collect his thoughts. It has been far too long since he shared his thoughts with others. What they receive isn't exactly words as they would appear in written form, yet as pictures form, projected memories, there is a hazy sort of narration to it, explaining what they see.
The voice they hear in their heads is deep, yet young. A baritone. It's as weathered as his skin.
The pack I've known since I earned the right to be called Garou has turned to ash. Their remains are North. My home was South.
South: untouched desert, watercolor skies at dusk, a Caern left leveled and burning. There is nothing for him to return to.
North: an endless white expanse in the winter, lush and green and under attack in the summer. There was nothing keeping him there.
My route took me through this city. It is the first city I have ever seen. I see what is happening here. I cannot bring myself to leave. So I gave Maelstrom what I had that I do not need to live.
What he does not need to live: the contents of his bag. He had had a knapsack when he got here, filled with maps covered in years' worth of notations and routes; journals filled with the thoughts and memories of a creature that has lived its entire life within the Nation; photographs, flimsy reminders of things that do not exist anymore. He has no intention of leaving, he'd said. One day, the ground will swallow up what Maelstrom didn't. He doesn't say that, but he doesn't have to.
[Erek Skulason] Jarl...
*The word cuts through the ice in the air, it sounds soft and secretive in the way Erek says it, but loud enough for it to catch Kora's attention. He picks up his pace, stepping up to catch her stride and walk at her side on the sidewalk. His eyes darting back over his shoulder to peer at Drawn in Blood when the ahroun's thoughts mesh with his own, if briefly*
Kora, I need word with you in private about some shit when you get a chance.
*A glance to her and he's dropping back out of pace, losing the ground he's gained on her to muttering to her ear, and to dance in her shadow once again*
[Sorrow] Sorrow makes a strangled sound in the back of her throat; a voice laugh, one she interrupted in the mouth, swallows back down into the cage of her chest. Eyeing Erek, she shakes her pale head evenly, looking away, mastering her expression, the sharp twist of her curving mouth that suggests some awareness of irony.
"Maelstrom wants something that you'll miss, Spinebreaker." A supple flare of her nostrils, a withdrawn, withheld breath. The iron's underneath, in the steady tone. "Something you'll miss, some ache you'll remember when you curl yourself up to sleep at night. Not someone you want to get rid of."
Then the hints filter away - the humor and the irony - leaving just this sober edge. "You know she's a widow, don't you? Recent. I expect you both to give her time to grieve." There's an undercurrent beneath her voice, barely expressed - just there. "We understand each other, yeah?"
They have reached the riverfront by now; there's ice formed over the running water like a skin, but not fully. It is cracked, a channel down the center bubbles over with water running - paradoxically - away from Lake Michigan, not toward it. The jogging path is barely trampled, though a few anonymous someone's have broken trail for them. The road here has been plowed, and huge drifts hug the narrow lanes carved out by the snowplows.
Erek requests a private word; Kora's dark eyes trace his features briefly. She nods, once.
As he drifts into the shadows, (since I think neme is going to sleep? otherwise she'll maintain it) she drops him from the loose connection of the gift she's initiated.
There's a stillness to her, listening to the images drifting over the link. Her eyes are on the horizon, the lake in the distance, where the flat plains of the city begin to slope toward the waterfront.
Then she looks up, Drawn In Blood's features in profile, outlined against the brilliance of the downtown business district. "Tell me about them." Quiet. "Your pack."
[Erek Skulason] ooc/thanks for the scene! I'm off to face planting in pillows
to Drawn in Blood, Sorrow
[Drawn in Blood] For someone who has just professed to have left the pack he's known since his Rite of Passage behind in a place more desolate yet, given his home, not nearly so unfamiliar as this cityscape he's wandering through with little clue of how to set down roots when there is concrete everywhere, there is not a heavy caul of sadness over the Modi. There are those in this city who have suffered such profound losses recently, themselves: mates and lovers have perished off-screen or while lying broken and beyond hope or help in their arms, Alpha after Alpha has fallen to battle until the last one standing could not keep himself on a straight, moral path. He is young, that much is obvious by his enthusiasm and his almost subdued demeanor in spite of his Rage, yet his body showcases the path he's walked.
Physically, he does not appear to be a teenager; on the contrary, he looks as though he's approaching if not already in his human thirties, yet given the way his breed ages, it's entirely possible he could still be a teenager. The gravity in him, though, betrays the fact that however many years this earth has seen him walk upon it, they have not been easy.
When she looks at him, Kora finds his eyes, color a mystery in this light, cast out over the occluded surface of the river. The stubble on his face is as much a protection as anything else, yet without anyone to tell him to shave, to tell him that he looks like a barbarian strolling into a store with a beard growing onto his jaws, it's as much an indication of solitary laziness. Eyes, watering with the wind and the cold, blink and flick to her, once.
The quietude of her voice makes him swallow.
Too much to tell, is what his voice says, yet the feeling she gets from him, the flitting strings of imagery that he has to hold onto with the sacrifice of concrete reminders, suggests he doesn't have enough.
There were four of them, all male. They were young, by human standards, yet so far as the Nation was concerned they were well beyond maturity: mid-twenties, mostly, the oldest among them appearing no older than Drawn in Blood. Missing amongst them was a Rotagar, a questioner, yet the rest of the auspices saw representation within the pack. It might explain his reticence. Perhaps they had to learn to question themselves.
Before them I knew little. Had less. I don't think I could have had more if we were blood brothers.
He swallows again, though he isn't talking, though his throat doesn't work. His hands are numb in his pockets. The Modi parts his lips to draw in the air, as if there's a memory there he can't do without, but he lets it go.
I'm sorry. I'm no Skald.
Despite their tribe's image as the staunch, stoic Vikings of myth and legend, they were not cold, or detached. There is affection in his thoughts, and love, and the bitter acceptance of the fact that they died fighting a war they all believed in. It was not for nothing. He doesn't have the words to express this.
They were all I had. They made me better. It would be a disservice to their spirits to say that now that their bodies are gone I have nothing. They were Fenrir. I don't know what else to say about them.
[Sorrow] There's no one on the street. They could walk in perfect silence, as silent as the city ever could be. The snow cusions sound, absorbs it. There is only the harsh immediacy of their breath, the quiet shuussh of their boots through the mounded snow from the blizzard earlier in the week. Here are there are cars abandoned during the worst of it, now buried, hemmed in by the huge drifts plowed up by the snowplows, covered in a skin of ice from the melt and freeze that happens every day and night.
They are half-visible through the drifts, and look like great behemouths from some bygone age, foundered on the flooded plains.
She listens, Kora. There's a certain attentiveness to her, a rare sort of quiet. When he looks over and finds her eyes, he's reflected there, in cheated three-quarter profile. She is looking up, just - her pale brows arches at the center, her features clear except for the tip of her nose, the reddened apples of her cheeks. Light shines in the moist conjunctiva of her eyes, but the angle of her glance makes the iris and pupils dark.
Then she looks down again; as their feet plow through the snow the way a ship's prow courses through breaking waves.
"I don't expect you to be a Skald," she returns, her voice touched with a rich awareness of the places where the present turns into the past. "Just a Modi who remembers his dead." There's a sorrowful twist to her mouth; her expression could be melancholy were it not for the strength underneath - the winnowing acceptance of loss - that makes it rather more still, rather more solemn, rather more solid. "Thank you for sharing them with me."
They can see the boundaries of the Caern in the middle distance, now. The river running to the abandoned dockyard, the chainlink fence surrounding the concrete tarmac of the old shipyard. As they walk, she reaches into her left coat pocket and begins to pull out a winding piece of muslin or cheese cloth. The metal scent, clotted, half-rotted blood - blooms sharply against the cold air. The bandage comes out, in big, messy loops, dried and stiff in her hands. Even as they walk, little flakes fall off into the snow, scattering like ash, like cinder, flecks of paint against the muted white of the drifts.
"Joe War-Handed took Alpha of my pack after Kemp Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya died in battle." A faint, subtle twist of her mouth. "He gave me this talen back then. A modi-trick, yeah? Then he left before the next moot. I released the spirits long ago.
"I was pissed the fuck off when he left." The vehemence there betrays an old wound. Dark. "He had been talking about going to Portland, trying to save a lost Caern, like defending this one wasn't glorious enough for his blood anymore. He didn't leave until lost a challenge for Jarl, though. A Rotagar beat him. beat the Rotagar. He was already gone. Wanted to find some deed worthy of his pure blood.
"He was Drew's mate, yeah? He died out there, packless and septless as far as I can tell. No gathering. No memorial. No grave among his fellows. I figured - after Kemp - that we'd die together, here. We didn't." A brief, narrow twist of her mobile mouth.
"He died packless and Septless. No gathering. No monument." A sharp exhalation, near the end, nearly like a sigh. "Never fulfilled the promise of his blood. No son to carry it on, to redeem him somehow. Just an end. Whatever my differences with him, he deserved better than that.
"But I have this bandage.
"And it has his blood."
By now, she has tugged off her left glove, twisted the bandager around her palm and fingers so that it will not trail along the ground.
"I'm going to burn it. Give the ashes to Maelstrom."
A sharp, glancing look. Here, her eyes are bright, sure, grave. "You're a modi. I'd like you to help me. Stand witness.
"Maybe it'll help him find his way home."
He's coming up the sidewalk, winter jacket zipped up but no hat, no scarf, no gloves to protect him from the cold. He does not need it. Though his Rage burns not so hot that it threatens to char away at his humanity, it is enough of an internal fire that it keeps him from feeling the chill as anything other than an irritant. It will not kill him in the amount of time it takes to walk from where he's coming to wherever it is that he's going.
The Alpha of the Last Watch, the city's Jarl, appears as a figure cut against the bright backdrop of what could easily be the set of a post-apocalyptic battleground, and the Modi lifts his head. In this form his nostrils threaten to freeze with each haul of subzero air into his system; the cold burns his lungs when he breathes through his mouth. This is a miserable walk, but the expression on his face, with its heavy masculine features and its grizzled quality, his skin weathered and his facial hair unshaved since before he arrived in the city, is almost serene.
It's an acceptance that of all the things in this world that he has no control over, weather ought to be the last of his concerns.
Silent, he pulls his left hand out of his pocket to lift it in a motionless wave to Kora, and almost imperceptibly picks up the pace.
[Erek Skulason] You know if you put salt down on the path, might eat up the snow and make it more walkable.
*The gruffness of Erek's voice greets the Jarl, blue eyes peering out from between the brim of the knit cap pulled low over his forehead to cover his ears and force tufts of blond hair to spike out, and the layers of thin scarves wrapped around his throat and his chin like some kind of ninja mask. The dark colors of his clothes, a beaten up wool long coat and gray sweatshirt beneath layer over faded Dickies pants and work boots. The bits of skin revealed to the chill in the air become reddened and chapped.
Kora comes down the steps, she'll find the young Get of Fenris just off to her side some distance, crouched on top of a small mound of snow. It's likely he's been out here for a little bit, packing and padding it into a ball. His head lifts up, tilting to an angle as he spies Drawn in Blood, slowly standing with rim of that knit cap dancing up and down as his brows rose*
Company. *He snorts*
[Sorrow] "Breaks down stone, too," says Sorrow, her breath a warm cloud around her features, generous mouth lifting over the edge of the scarf she's wrapped around her neck and chin. There's a certain ease to the expression, lilted upward more at the right corner than the left. Her nose is already tipped with red from the chill, cheeks bright. Dark eyes - the color leached out by the shadows, the orange glow of the street lamp - gleam with ambient light as they touch on Erek. "So I've heard."
There's a rich, low lilt to the one of her voice; she doesn't need to raise it to carry over the scour of the winter wind - it just carries. "Washes off into the river, too. Leaches down into the water supply. Not that what we'd put down would do more damage than the city does itself." She twists her shoulders, the movement mostly lost underneath the weight of her coat. "Trent came and shoveled the steps the other night. He might come for the path tomorrow after work." A glance up, then. She lifts her chin by way of acknowledgment to Drawn in Blood, and gives Erek a half nod - south, toward the Lake, into the wind. Toward the Caern.
"I'm headed for the Caern if you want to walk with me." A glance includes Drawn in Blood in the offer. "You've made your sacrifice?" Another glance includes Erek in the question.
[Drawn in Blood] He is only just now closing in on the conversation, wind wicking words away from his ears as his footfalls crunch down snow and threaten to slip out from underneath him, his pace steady and slow. As tall as he is, as innately and almost primally graceful as he is, Drawn in Blood--John, to the humans--is a large man. If he fell it would be a hard fall.
He doesn't fall, although he does look mildly uneasy as he treads the last few steps to join the Rotagar and the Skald on the sidewalk. Breath steams away from him as though his life force is being hauled away from him, yet for obvious reasons he isn't complaining. A nod, stiff from the cold rather than from his demeanor, is given to the two of them, and he tries to flash a smile that indicates his willingness to head to the Caern with the two of them.
It's too cold to smile. For a Modi, though, especially for one whose Rage is as high as his own is, he does not seem like a live wire snapped from a line waiting for something to strike. Maybe they breed them differently where he comes from.
You've made your sacrifice?
A flick of eyes between the two of them, and Drawn in Blood nods, quicker than his nod of greeting.
[Erek Skulason] *Erek leaps off the little snow mound, likely the base for something he was going to make out of the snow, playing in it like a kid. It's something not lost on him, the ability to keep those boyish mannerism, like a pup that's grown into its fur and legs, but not quite into adulthood. The way he covers his face manages to elude any signs of facial expressions save for his eyes. Kora can feel the way they stay on her when she addressed him, asked him if he's made the sacrifice*
No, ma'am, haven't made any contributions to the maelstrom as of yet. Haven't found anything worthy yet to seal the bond, sacrifice is a big thing, has to mean something. Can't just be blood I wager.
*Erek's quick to follow Kora, eyes turning down to focus on her footwork, watch her steps and manipulate his own long strides to pace behind hers, dancing in her shadow (as her shadow). He regards DiB's silence with an upturned nod of his head in greeting to acknowledge him*
What did you throw to the maw of the blood-red whirlpool? *this to DiB*
[Sorrow] "Some people throw in blood," Kora returns to Erek. "Cut themselves and bleed into the already-blooded waters." There's a note of something there. "But you're right; sacrifice should mean something to the person making the sacrifice. Blood seems a hollow gesture, somehow. Given how quickly we regenerate it."
Kora's stride is more measured, tonight. Her balance is changing; her center of gravity. She's careful when she walks, her long strides shortened. Neither Erek nor Drawn in Blood have seen her as anything but: six months pregnant, her once-boyish frame changed, padded with a subtle new layer of fat at the hips and breasts, even some new fullness in her face. Still, with the heavy layers of winter things, her pregnancy is not obvious. She does not show the way a less-fit woman might by this stage. There's a subtle, pungent scent in the air underscoring her own. A certain blood-rot, metallic and old, and a soft bulge in the left pocket of her coat. She leaves her arms swinging free, glances from Drawn in Blood to Erek and back again.
After a moment's mild consideration, Kora taps her temple. "I can connect us three," evenly to Drawn in Blood. "Make it easier to communicate."
[Drawn in Blood] Erek wants to know what John gave Maelstrom. The Modi's expression does not turn hard, or defensive, but there is a sense of quarantine about his thoughts, his actions, that has more to do with his inability to speak than with any great desire to remain unknown or separate. While he is, for the moment, unknown, that is not by choice. He has been here a week, now, and already has fought so many battles that they're beginning to crowd the space reserved for counting on his hands. His hands stay in his pockets; the Rotagar is just given an indecipherable, nearly blank look, as if his silence is supposed to be enough proof of his deformity.
The notion of a Rage-heavy Full Moon refusing to speak or lacking the intelligence to do so with any semblance of confidence is hardly novel, yet Kora knows he does, on occasion, possess thoughts and exercises his right to share them with the rest of the world.
She can connect them. John considers this, but doesn't tap his temple in kind. Burrowing down deeper into his jacket, the Modi nods. Alright. Thank you.
[Erek Skulason] Fire Claws explained to me how the caern was found on the blood and backs of our tribe and the others that build it around some mystical thing, didn't give a full tale, but cut to a point. You say some people throw in a little blood, I imagine others will part with a material objects that has held some meaning to them, personal or otherwise.
*He presses on, a gloved hand lifted to dig into the top layers of the scarf to yank it down. Hot breath rolling out of his mouth as chapped lips move. Erek keeps his eyes on Kora's shoulders as he walks behind her, never beside or in front of her as it was not his place to do so. He returns his eyes to DiB eying him with a twitch of curiosity.
Kora says she can connect them to speak, Erek seems more than willing to fill up the conversation to make up for the ahroun's lack of speech as he has to shut himself up or he'd keep on rambling. His thoughts toiling around in his head a mile a minute with the swift capacity of a washing machine*
Yeah, that's fine. *he huffs out*
[Sorrow] They're on the sidewalk now, three nearly abrest. Erek has to ghost along, watching her footsteps, matching his stride to hers. And sometimes he has to range out - move around an obstacle like a lamppost or a shattered parking meter. Kora's left arm swings free, but she slips her right hand into her right front pocket, holding her elbow close against her ribs. The coat she wears is wool, a peacoat, the dark color shows a deep purple only when they pass under the direct light shed from one of the few working streetlamps on these half-abandoned streets.
The ghosts of warehouses - squat brick shadows against the orange night, some derelict, others merely rundown - haunt their path. She takes a turn, a sidestreet leading toward the riverwalk, and then down like an arrow toward the lakeshore and the Caern.
"I threw in a journal," the Skald tells them, maybe unexpectedly. " - from before my change. Kept it while I was traveling, like a scrapbook, yeah? Pictures, with friends, stories. Drunk musings. Letters from home. Letters I never sent home. Just everything."
Both Garou accede to her offer, and so she closes her eyes - a moment's concentration - and draws them together.
The gift is less natural than the spirit bonds of a totem. It requires this little - shard of concentration from each of them. Not enough to unbalance, but enough to distract.
A sharp glance back at Erek, and Kora nods in agreement with Fire Claws' explanation of the Caern and the sacrifice it requires. "He was right. Fenrir fought to raise the Caern, and have been the backbone of the Sept ever since. These lands - " a gesture around her. " - have been held by Fenrir since the Caern was raised, too. When Silence-rhya left, my pack claimed them. I can tell you the whole story sometime, if you'd like to hear it."
Even with the gift, Kora speaks aloud; Drawn in Blood, though, can project some ghost-voice into their minds.
[Drawn in Blood] There is no structural damage, no torn or bruised tissue to explain why he won't speak. As far as anyone else can tell, it is no vow of silence that has driven him to withhold his thoughts; were he to have undertaken some vow, it is entirely possible he would have come out and said that at the first opportunity, or turned down Kora's offer to make communication between the three of them easier. Though he seems perfectly content to simply walk through the blistering cold, silent yet attentive, and do little more than listen, that it is an option to him is not taken for granted or sloughed off as something that is beneath his efforts or his appreciation.
Yet as Kora explains the history of the lands, what the Caern has been through since its birth, he does not jump in to offer his thoughts. They can tell the Gift has taken hold because of the effort of maintaining it; he simply chooses to remain quiet until he has something of worth to contribute to the conversation.
[Erek Skulason] *Erek twitches under the new sensation that racks inside his head, he wonders to himself if this is what pack feels like. He shakes his head, rubbing the back of his worn leather glove across his brow. Smoke taking form in front of his face every time he breathes out and in again. He listens; forcing himself to remain quiet, less he start speaking in a tangent*
What did that sacrifice mean to you? Why the journal? What was it about that journal that made you want to give it up? How does it affect you still?
*Questions and more questions tumble out at Kora. He doesn't lose his stride, despite readjusting it. His quick agility allows him to move around or over objects as if they never existed, and he always went a straight path without curving*
[Sorrow] Kora breathes out a sharply exhaled breath; it sounds like a laugh propelled from her diaphragm, somewhere deep in her voice. Unvoiced, though - and quiet - it could double as a sigh were it not for the wry twist of her mouth around the sound. The mute glow from the streetlamps pulls out pale threads of brilliance in strands of her long blond hair - pulled sharply back from her face, sharp enough to reveal the cut of her jaw, the curvilinear line of her ear, the hollow beneath.
"That was a long time ago." There's a steadiness to her voice, a low, thrumming grace. Light gleams across her gaze as she shoots Erek another look, nearly reaching out, physically, to end the moving stream of questions he asks her. "The journal," less eloquent when speaking of herself, her past, her own life, than her dead, she pauses, glancing up and away, down the snow-hushed sidestreet toward the slice of the Chicago River visible between the warehouses lining the way. "It was - " another pause, liminal, " - private, yeah? What it meant then, it doesn't mean now. I pledged my life to Maelstrom, and gave it those pieces I thought precious in retrospect. That would be lost when I threw it in. But I took that sacrifice seriously, Erek. Buried my Alpha, watched another one leave, looking for glory, and stayed, because a miracle like this place is worth defending with every fiber of one's being.
"That a Caern can be raised in a city like this - " she offers a leashed, quiet gesture toward their surroundings, the concrete-and-brick, the asphalt, the trash moldering in the dark maw of the alley they just passed. " - in these late days." A sharp sound, another rush of air expelled from her nostrils.
The rest of unvoiced. The liminal passion in her voice speaks for itself.
Her eyes find the younger Garou's profile; Dawn in Blood's a moment after. "What about you? Why have you come?"
[Erek Skulason] *True to his auspice, Erek is a child full of questions and Kora is like the mother that he constantly nags for answers. He hits her again and again repeatedly until it makes her want to physically shut him up. The young Get of Fenris is wise to hang back, stay out of the Jarl's reach, watching the pregnant woman cautiously as he's been warned of her temperance. Though, the faintest quirk of a smile draws on the corners of his lips, the left one rising higher than the right to reflect the curved horns of a crescent moon and split his face in half*
I'll pledge myself to Maelstrom if I can toss Remy into it as my offering.
*He spits this out suddenly, irritation ringing in his tone along with a sharp explosion of laughter. His eyes dart off to silent ahroun, biting on his tongue to keep from speaking further, giving Dib a chance to answer*
[Drawn in Blood] Though he doesn't speak, John isn't off in his own world, thinking of battles long past or yet to come, or remembering the scent of an otherwise forgotten figure's hair and skin. He's in the present, where he belongs, listening to the Rotagar's questions, waiting for Kora's answers. All the sound he makes comes from his boots, his body, the trampling of snow beneath his soles and the huffing of breath drawn by lungs not at all equipped to handle this degree of soul-numbing cold.
Yet he doesn't complain. He would not complain if he were in a camp with a group of urrah.
There's a light in his eyes that seems to flicker when Kora speaks of the purpose of her sacrifice, the trials she has endured since coming here. There is steel in her spine, fire in her veins, and he does not shy away from it even though, being what he is, ranked as he is, he does not meet her gaze. It isn't fear--it's respect.
Then she's asking why he's come. There is a sense of stirring across the mental link, flimsier and more inclined to snap under the whims of its participants than a totemic bond, as if John is drawing a breath to collect his thoughts. It has been far too long since he shared his thoughts with others. What they receive isn't exactly words as they would appear in written form, yet as pictures form, projected memories, there is a hazy sort of narration to it, explaining what they see.
The voice they hear in their heads is deep, yet young. A baritone. It's as weathered as his skin.
The pack I've known since I earned the right to be called Garou has turned to ash. Their remains are North. My home was South.
South: untouched desert, watercolor skies at dusk, a Caern left leveled and burning. There is nothing for him to return to.
North: an endless white expanse in the winter, lush and green and under attack in the summer. There was nothing keeping him there.
My route took me through this city. It is the first city I have ever seen. I see what is happening here. I cannot bring myself to leave. So I gave Maelstrom what I had that I do not need to live.
What he does not need to live: the contents of his bag. He had had a knapsack when he got here, filled with maps covered in years' worth of notations and routes; journals filled with the thoughts and memories of a creature that has lived its entire life within the Nation; photographs, flimsy reminders of things that do not exist anymore. He has no intention of leaving, he'd said. One day, the ground will swallow up what Maelstrom didn't. He doesn't say that, but he doesn't have to.
[Erek Skulason] Jarl...
*The word cuts through the ice in the air, it sounds soft and secretive in the way Erek says it, but loud enough for it to catch Kora's attention. He picks up his pace, stepping up to catch her stride and walk at her side on the sidewalk. His eyes darting back over his shoulder to peer at Drawn in Blood when the ahroun's thoughts mesh with his own, if briefly*
Kora, I need word with you in private about some shit when you get a chance.
*A glance to her and he's dropping back out of pace, losing the ground he's gained on her to muttering to her ear, and to dance in her shadow once again*
[Sorrow] Sorrow makes a strangled sound in the back of her throat; a voice laugh, one she interrupted in the mouth, swallows back down into the cage of her chest. Eyeing Erek, she shakes her pale head evenly, looking away, mastering her expression, the sharp twist of her curving mouth that suggests some awareness of irony.
"Maelstrom wants something that you'll miss, Spinebreaker." A supple flare of her nostrils, a withdrawn, withheld breath. The iron's underneath, in the steady tone. "Something you'll miss, some ache you'll remember when you curl yourself up to sleep at night. Not someone you want to get rid of."
Then the hints filter away - the humor and the irony - leaving just this sober edge. "You know she's a widow, don't you? Recent. I expect you both to give her time to grieve." There's an undercurrent beneath her voice, barely expressed - just there. "We understand each other, yeah?"
They have reached the riverfront by now; there's ice formed over the running water like a skin, but not fully. It is cracked, a channel down the center bubbles over with water running - paradoxically - away from Lake Michigan, not toward it. The jogging path is barely trampled, though a few anonymous someone's have broken trail for them. The road here has been plowed, and huge drifts hug the narrow lanes carved out by the snowplows.
Erek requests a private word; Kora's dark eyes trace his features briefly. She nods, once.
As he drifts into the shadows, (since I think neme is going to sleep? otherwise she'll maintain it) she drops him from the loose connection of the gift she's initiated.
There's a stillness to her, listening to the images drifting over the link. Her eyes are on the horizon, the lake in the distance, where the flat plains of the city begin to slope toward the waterfront.
Then she looks up, Drawn In Blood's features in profile, outlined against the brilliance of the downtown business district. "Tell me about them." Quiet. "Your pack."
[Erek Skulason] ooc/thanks for the scene! I'm off to face planting in pillows
to Drawn in Blood, Sorrow
[Drawn in Blood] For someone who has just professed to have left the pack he's known since his Rite of Passage behind in a place more desolate yet, given his home, not nearly so unfamiliar as this cityscape he's wandering through with little clue of how to set down roots when there is concrete everywhere, there is not a heavy caul of sadness over the Modi. There are those in this city who have suffered such profound losses recently, themselves: mates and lovers have perished off-screen or while lying broken and beyond hope or help in their arms, Alpha after Alpha has fallen to battle until the last one standing could not keep himself on a straight, moral path. He is young, that much is obvious by his enthusiasm and his almost subdued demeanor in spite of his Rage, yet his body showcases the path he's walked.
Physically, he does not appear to be a teenager; on the contrary, he looks as though he's approaching if not already in his human thirties, yet given the way his breed ages, it's entirely possible he could still be a teenager. The gravity in him, though, betrays the fact that however many years this earth has seen him walk upon it, they have not been easy.
When she looks at him, Kora finds his eyes, color a mystery in this light, cast out over the occluded surface of the river. The stubble on his face is as much a protection as anything else, yet without anyone to tell him to shave, to tell him that he looks like a barbarian strolling into a store with a beard growing onto his jaws, it's as much an indication of solitary laziness. Eyes, watering with the wind and the cold, blink and flick to her, once.
The quietude of her voice makes him swallow.
Too much to tell, is what his voice says, yet the feeling she gets from him, the flitting strings of imagery that he has to hold onto with the sacrifice of concrete reminders, suggests he doesn't have enough.
There were four of them, all male. They were young, by human standards, yet so far as the Nation was concerned they were well beyond maturity: mid-twenties, mostly, the oldest among them appearing no older than Drawn in Blood. Missing amongst them was a Rotagar, a questioner, yet the rest of the auspices saw representation within the pack. It might explain his reticence. Perhaps they had to learn to question themselves.
Before them I knew little. Had less. I don't think I could have had more if we were blood brothers.
He swallows again, though he isn't talking, though his throat doesn't work. His hands are numb in his pockets. The Modi parts his lips to draw in the air, as if there's a memory there he can't do without, but he lets it go.
I'm sorry. I'm no Skald.
Despite their tribe's image as the staunch, stoic Vikings of myth and legend, they were not cold, or detached. There is affection in his thoughts, and love, and the bitter acceptance of the fact that they died fighting a war they all believed in. It was not for nothing. He doesn't have the words to express this.
They were all I had. They made me better. It would be a disservice to their spirits to say that now that their bodies are gone I have nothing. They were Fenrir. I don't know what else to say about them.
[Sorrow] There's no one on the street. They could walk in perfect silence, as silent as the city ever could be. The snow cusions sound, absorbs it. There is only the harsh immediacy of their breath, the quiet shuussh of their boots through the mounded snow from the blizzard earlier in the week. Here are there are cars abandoned during the worst of it, now buried, hemmed in by the huge drifts plowed up by the snowplows, covered in a skin of ice from the melt and freeze that happens every day and night.
They are half-visible through the drifts, and look like great behemouths from some bygone age, foundered on the flooded plains.
She listens, Kora. There's a certain attentiveness to her, a rare sort of quiet. When he looks over and finds her eyes, he's reflected there, in cheated three-quarter profile. She is looking up, just - her pale brows arches at the center, her features clear except for the tip of her nose, the reddened apples of her cheeks. Light shines in the moist conjunctiva of her eyes, but the angle of her glance makes the iris and pupils dark.
Then she looks down again; as their feet plow through the snow the way a ship's prow courses through breaking waves.
"I don't expect you to be a Skald," she returns, her voice touched with a rich awareness of the places where the present turns into the past. "Just a Modi who remembers his dead." There's a sorrowful twist to her mouth; her expression could be melancholy were it not for the strength underneath - the winnowing acceptance of loss - that makes it rather more still, rather more solemn, rather more solid. "Thank you for sharing them with me."
They can see the boundaries of the Caern in the middle distance, now. The river running to the abandoned dockyard, the chainlink fence surrounding the concrete tarmac of the old shipyard. As they walk, she reaches into her left coat pocket and begins to pull out a winding piece of muslin or cheese cloth. The metal scent, clotted, half-rotted blood - blooms sharply against the cold air. The bandage comes out, in big, messy loops, dried and stiff in her hands. Even as they walk, little flakes fall off into the snow, scattering like ash, like cinder, flecks of paint against the muted white of the drifts.
"Joe War-Handed took Alpha of my pack after Kemp Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya died in battle." A faint, subtle twist of her mouth. "He gave me this talen back then. A modi-trick, yeah? Then he left before the next moot. I released the spirits long ago.
"I was pissed the fuck off when he left." The vehemence there betrays an old wound. Dark. "He had been talking about going to Portland, trying to save a lost Caern, like defending this one wasn't glorious enough for his blood anymore. He didn't leave until lost a challenge for Jarl, though. A Rotagar beat him. beat the Rotagar. He was already gone. Wanted to find some deed worthy of his pure blood.
"He was Drew's mate, yeah? He died out there, packless and septless as far as I can tell. No gathering. No memorial. No grave among his fellows. I figured - after Kemp - that we'd die together, here. We didn't." A brief, narrow twist of her mobile mouth.
"He died packless and Septless. No gathering. No monument." A sharp exhalation, near the end, nearly like a sigh. "Never fulfilled the promise of his blood. No son to carry it on, to redeem him somehow. Just an end. Whatever my differences with him, he deserved better than that.
"But I have this bandage.
"And it has his blood."
By now, she has tugged off her left glove, twisted the bandager around her palm and fingers so that it will not trail along the ground.
"I'm going to burn it. Give the ashes to Maelstrom."
A sharp, glancing look. Here, her eyes are bright, sure, grave. "You're a modi. I'd like you to help me. Stand witness.
"Maybe it'll help him find his way home."
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