[Imogen] It is late in the evening, and the business district is quiet with the night. Its primary occupants have all gone home for dinner with their wives or husbands, their children or their dogs. The stores and restaurants that are nestled between buildings and on the ground floor of skyscrapers have long shut, the minimum wage employees having no reason to stay if the offices are closed.
The glass door of the Cook County Medical Examiner's office opens near silently, and Imogen's hair is a bright flare beneath the exterior light. The door bangs gently into a metal frame, and her keys click and clink as she pulls them from her purse. She locks up, a lone security guard watching her. Later, he will chain the door, and spend much of his time in the lobby, watching as nothing passes him by, from time to time, getting up to go around back to deal with some of Chicago's deliveries. He hates going down to the morgue and rarely does, though his job requires it.
They never keep guards for long.
The doctor descends the steps outside the building, her shoes clicking softly on the concrete. Her attire is business, pressed slacks, conservative but attractive shoes. A leather jacket, the tails flapping as the wind catches it. The street is a wind tunnel. The gale seems much more constant, much more unpleasant here.
[Kora] The Skald is seated on a concrete pylon down the sidewalk from the office, with its glass door, descending concrete steps, the bare trees in aggregate planters, their slender limbs whipping in the moving wind. The weather is bitterly cold tonight, a descending blast of arctic air, dry and sharp in the lungs. Cold enough that even the Fenrir Garou conspires to remain out of the blast of the wind, tucks her shoulders forward, pulls her legs up to conserve body heat and expose as little of her frame to the cold as possible.
Her clothes are more respectable this winter than last. The wool coat she wears is second hand, all the buttons in tact. From a distance it looks like a dark bruise against the lingering brightness of the February sun on the horizon. Close up, it is a dark subtle purple. A hood covers her fair hair, but fine strands of it have come loose and whip about her face.
The days are starting to open up, the memory of the sun stains the sky later and later each evening, but winter is still a raw wound across the prairie. Gritty and exhausting now, the slow slog of waking days toward spring. She is backgrounded by light, walking, a half jogging step as she catches up to the kinswoman, so bright against the gray half-light of the dying winter's evening.
"Doc." Kora's voice is raw from the cold, her nose and cheeks raw with it. "We need to talk."
[Imogen] She turns at the sound of Kora's step behind her, the motion tight, ready, that eases as she recognizes the blonde woman. Imogen's steps slow as the other catches up to her.
Already, her skin is paling in the cold. She reaches up with a gloved hand, adjusting the scarf around her throat.
"Sounds serious," she observes.
[Kora] This pulls the creature up short. She's half-way through an indrawn breath, hands in her pockets, her elbows held close to her frame. The coat's large enough to partly - though not fully - conceal curve of her stomach beneath.
A flat, narrow mouthed grimace, reaction to the cold, and something else. "I didn't mean it like that," she corrects. Self-corrects, her voice pitched beneath the howl of the wind, face turned toward Imogen, the edge of the hood plastered against the frame of her face. "Not entirely. Let me buy you a beer. Or something, get out of the wind, yeah?"
[Imogen] Imogen's mouth curves slightly to Kora's reaction - some latent amusement surfacing and subsuming swiftly. She does not clarify it; the truth is, it was as much her experience as the way Kora put it. Habit, almost. A garou seeks her out - it must be serious.
She tilts her head slightly, taking the next turn. "I could go fer a tea," she says. "There's a cafe down the block."
[Kora] The next turn: and a brief, immediate surcease of the wind. Some cross-wise office block, looming high enough that it blocks the middle third of the sky or so it seems, glittering in the gloaming. They saw the sun today - brief and brilliant, fucking golden - for the last hour or two of the day - and now somewhere above the city's bitter, constant glow, the stars glittering in sharp relief as whatever heat lingers in the sidewalks and glass, the metal frames and tar-roofs escapes impossibly upward.
It's night, it's winter, the sky's clear - the temperature plummets. Between now and morning, some half-dozen unfortunates somewhere in the city will die from the cold in one way or another. None of them will make the papers. Few of them will be identified.
"I'm really raising expectations, eh?" says Kora, walking swiftly enough, head down, watching the sidewalk and path, hunkering her body against the cold. The lights are on in the café's windows, awash over the sidewalk. Kora follows Imogen inside and reaches behind her, pulling the door firmly closed behind her, that courtesy necessary in cold climates. Keep the heat in. Keep the cold out.
[Kora] is this thing on?
to Kora
[Imogen] Her breath exhales quietly, amused. "Don't worry," she assures the Fenrir gravely, "I'll do my best not t'get my hopes up, shall I?"
The cafe is made of dark woods and dim lighting. A woman in all-natural attire and dreadlocks stands at the counter. There is only a couple in the corner, intent on their conversation, and their hands gripping tight across the table, otherwise, the dining area is empty.
The cashier begins to smile, but it falters a little as her eyes reach Kora, shifting nervously, though she gamely tries to put her best 'service' face on. She has a flat nasal accent of Massachusetts, and a silver ring in her nose.
Imogen orders a pot of earl grey, then glances at Kora for her to make her order. She does not demure on the offer of the purchase. Kora has, over time, made it merely a matter of course.
[Kora] Kora orders a large Mexican hot chocolate. The sort that will come in a mug the size of one's head, laden with bitter chocolate shavings, oaxacan cinnamon, and enough whipped cream to float an army melting on the surface. And the chocolate poundcake. And one of those things - whatever it is? No, no, the other one. The awkward moment of picking out just the right pastry from the display case does nothing to ease the cashier's nerves, does nothing to calm her pulse, but it distracts her. Makes those fight or flight instincts seem all the more
- absurd. Like something out of Ionesco. She'll bring them their drinks, the cashier assures them after Kora pays, eager to have them gone even it it just means she will have to come close again. Kora slides her passport - the cash she carries is tucked inside - back into the hip pocket of her jeans, underneath her coat, and chooses a booth on the far side, away from the intent couple, near the window, where they can look out on the street.
She doesn't sit down in her winter coat; she pulls her things off. Gloves, with her teeth, white against the dark suede, and then scarf, and then at last the coat, unbuttoned with distinct care all up the line, the way a woman unzips her dress, with that sort of autonomic precision.
"Fucking cold out there," she says, flicking a glance up as the cashier brings a tray over. Imogen's pot of earl gray rattles as the woman sets it down, the chocolate sloshes out onto the saucer the size of a dinner plate. Still, the Skald gives the woman a (reassuring?) half-smile when she's done, when it is all laid out. "Thanks," and lifts her chin as the woman scurries away. Then breathes out once, glances out the window at the street, chafing her hands as she shifts her weight forward, more awkward now, with the new girth.
There's the clink of the teapot. Some music in the background, independent folk. Singer-songwriter. Their reflections are wavery in the glass, which transmits the chill of the night with a certain efficiency. Crisp and cool against the blast of dry interior warmth, forced air. "That place, the other night - " Kora's studying their reflections as she begins, but a half-heartbeat later her dark eyes fix on the kinswoman's face. " - you wanna tell me what the hell you were doing there. Alone."
Her tone's even, even hushed, the subtle tightness of her mouth betrays withheld tension; the (super)natural anger she always holds so firmly intact.
[Imogen] Imogen opens her coat but leaves it on - it hides her gun at the small of her back. She removes her gloves with her hands, pulling the leather away from her fingers, one at a time. These are folded together and laid on the table, her purse set against the wall on the booth before she sits down.
Fucking cold out there. Kora says, and Imogen only nods slightly, any absent response she might have given, swallowed by the arrival of the waitress. She does not yet touch the tea pot, which has the tails of its tea bag caught in the lid. The tea is fragrant even as it steeps.
Kora asks her question, and there is a subtle intimation there. In that moment, it is clear who is Jarl and who is kinfolk. The way that the Skald speaks.
It is the way of things.
But still.
Imogen's gaze meets her's unwavering, even. She does not speak immediately, several moments of silence taken. "Reconnaissance," she says, with a trace of European awareness of the French pronunciation. "Had you and yours not shown up, I never would ha' fired a shot."
[Kora] "Reconnaissance?" There's nothing European there; just that not of - not disbelief, but that sharp, sour scent of anger subsumed underneath the tongue. The impotent sort that leads to - this. A sharp glance upward, dark eyes in a pale face, the redness chaffed up by the wind already fading from her cheeks and nose. There's a fullness to her features now, subtle enough, that does nothing to swallow that singular flash of the wolf in her eyes, under her skin, the half-moment before she swallows it back.
Kora is the first to look away, shaking her pale head, enough that the knot of hair at the back of her neck begins to uncoil under its own weight. "Jesus, doc. You were inside - "
There's more. She doesn't say it. How long those things might have stayed. How acute their senses might have been.
She doesn't say it at first, and her hot chocolate sits there while Imogen's tea steeps, the spiral curl of whipped cream melting into the hot liquid.
"How long - how long do you think you could've stood there. Without - " A sharp gesture, as she pulls back her hand. The movement is subtle, though, somehow restrained.
[Imogen] Several moments of silence again. Imogen chooses her words carefully at the best of times. Here, in seconds like these, she chooses them as if they were precious pearls.
In the end, the way she answers Kora is circuitous. "Given the choice, I would not ha' been in the position I was in. While in that position, I did my best to keep myself hidden and took no unnecessary risks until I saw the opportunity to aid yer pack.
"None of them saw or smelled me. Neither, I believe, did Roman, when I saw him sneaking about the perimeter.
"I knew I was taking a risk entering an area wi' limited exits, but I considered that risk worth it, had I been able to confirm it as a nest." Her words are quiet. They do not extend beyond the two of them.
"I was hidden. I was not comfortable, but I could ha' remained still as long as I needed. And I had a vantage point that allowed me a long view o' their approach, should I ha' been found out."
She stops there, a muscle in her jaw moving, and though there was more to be said, she refrains.
[Kora] The moon's waxing, now. Growing in the sky, but it's still quiet, past a sliver, past a quarter, turning toward the half and not yet there. Somewhere above the raw glitter of the stars in the deep, arctic darkness of the unsparing night that rises above the sky scrapers and concrete interstate bridges, above the raised subways and steam vents, the small, groomed parks, green things slumbering beneath a weight of mounded snow.
Kora listens. She's looking away half the time, out through Imogen's reflection toward the street. The whipped cream continues to deliquesce into the hot chocolate, and the air is sharp with its perfume, which is dark, less sweet than most, more bitter and accordingly all the more complex. Twice she looks over, flicks a look at Imogen, up and down her familiar features, breathing in through her nose and allowing her focus to shift just enough that breeding overcomes distinctive, and some nameless, long-dead Fiann surfaces in the delicate planes of the slight woman's features.
It is such an easy shift; one look, then gone.
At last Kora breathes out, a flare of breath through her nostrils, a low sound of frustration without the brighter burst of rage beneath, tinged with enough wry immediacy that it is nearly a laugh. "You make it sound so goddamned reasonable, Doc."
[Kora] (breeding overcomes distinction - not distinctive!)
[Imogen] Through the time that Imogen speaks and Kora listens, Imogen's gaze is on the Garou, even as she looks away. It is steady, unwavering. It is not earnest, the way the kinfolk makes her case. It is not even intense.
Kora is right - reasonable. Quiet. Calm, and thought out.
She smirks - her mouth twisting. "Well," she says, not without self deprecation, "if one is going to stupidly get caught in a warehouse, by twisted cursed things, one might as well be reasonable about everything else."
A pause. Levity fades to gravity.
"If yeh want to tell me to be more careful, or take less risks, yeh should know tha' I won't."
[Kora] That brings Kora's dark eyes back to Imogen's. The reaction is immediate, sharp at the edges, the way a blade is sharp, which is to say - honed and tempered - but even in the middle, some solid core, ballast, even.
"Why not?" The question is quiet; is that that note of control as well, the even tone lifted by the faintest of lilts near the end of the question, a (barely) noticeable rising third between vowel and voiceless fricative, almost soft against her teeth. Some easing, some subtle shift of the muscles around her generous mouth, the fine skin framing her dark eyes, that rising third, suggests that she might actually want to know.
[Imogen] This time it is Imogen who looks away - not immediately, but after the question. She picks up the tea pot, and begins to pour it into the cup. The hot steeped water chimes as it strikes the porcelain. It is a large mug meant for cold winter nights and warmth and comfort.
There is a small creamer filled with milk. She picks it up.
"Because it is my life to do with as I will," she says, "and I believe I am as careful as I can be."
[Kora] The Skald breathes out again, feeling a subtle flush of shame under her skin. It is not enough to color her cheeks, to spread over the bridge of her nose, but she can feel it open nonetheless. Imogen looks down, picks up her tea pot. She pours the hot, fragrant tea into the large mug, and the Fenrir's gaze is steady on her face, the subtle shift from full portrait to a three-quarter profile as Imogen reaches for the creamer. The glaze on the porcelain is bright, liquid over a deeper craqueluere finish, without the painted swirls of spring or summer flowers one might see in a staid British tea shop.
At last, her attention falls from Imogen's face to the mug in her own hands. God knows how many calories it is, and Odin knows that doesn't matter to a Werewolf. Kora picks up the mug, her mouth twisting as she takes a sip, then another. It's only then that she speaks, still low, a thread of humor twisting through the words like an opened vine.
"Yeah, well. Don't forgot," a flicker of a look back at Imogen as Kora pulls over her slice of chocolate pound cake, presented on a crisp, square plate made by a local artisan. "I've got a Ragabash and a Rotagar rattling about. Wouldn't mind putting them to use, now and then. When the former isn't ironing his jeans," a twist of her mouth, " - and the latter isn't chasing kin." She pauses, gestures at her pound cake (as yet untouched) with her fork. "You want a piece of this?"
[Imogen] The kinswoman's gaze flicks briefly toward the Garou, her expression restrained, but for a tension lingering in her brow. "I haven't forgotten," she says, mildly. This too, is restrained and does not rise to meet Kora's humour.
She pours the milk into her darkened tea, watching it as it swirls, then picking up a spoon from her saucer, dipping it in, and stirring slowly.
A glance up at the pound cake, a brief twist of her mouth - and here is where the tension clears. "I can't abide American chocolate," she says. "But thank you."
The night moves on.
The glass door of the Cook County Medical Examiner's office opens near silently, and Imogen's hair is a bright flare beneath the exterior light. The door bangs gently into a metal frame, and her keys click and clink as she pulls them from her purse. She locks up, a lone security guard watching her. Later, he will chain the door, and spend much of his time in the lobby, watching as nothing passes him by, from time to time, getting up to go around back to deal with some of Chicago's deliveries. He hates going down to the morgue and rarely does, though his job requires it.
They never keep guards for long.
The doctor descends the steps outside the building, her shoes clicking softly on the concrete. Her attire is business, pressed slacks, conservative but attractive shoes. A leather jacket, the tails flapping as the wind catches it. The street is a wind tunnel. The gale seems much more constant, much more unpleasant here.
[Kora] The Skald is seated on a concrete pylon down the sidewalk from the office, with its glass door, descending concrete steps, the bare trees in aggregate planters, their slender limbs whipping in the moving wind. The weather is bitterly cold tonight, a descending blast of arctic air, dry and sharp in the lungs. Cold enough that even the Fenrir Garou conspires to remain out of the blast of the wind, tucks her shoulders forward, pulls her legs up to conserve body heat and expose as little of her frame to the cold as possible.
Her clothes are more respectable this winter than last. The wool coat she wears is second hand, all the buttons in tact. From a distance it looks like a dark bruise against the lingering brightness of the February sun on the horizon. Close up, it is a dark subtle purple. A hood covers her fair hair, but fine strands of it have come loose and whip about her face.
The days are starting to open up, the memory of the sun stains the sky later and later each evening, but winter is still a raw wound across the prairie. Gritty and exhausting now, the slow slog of waking days toward spring. She is backgrounded by light, walking, a half jogging step as she catches up to the kinswoman, so bright against the gray half-light of the dying winter's evening.
"Doc." Kora's voice is raw from the cold, her nose and cheeks raw with it. "We need to talk."
[Imogen] She turns at the sound of Kora's step behind her, the motion tight, ready, that eases as she recognizes the blonde woman. Imogen's steps slow as the other catches up to her.
Already, her skin is paling in the cold. She reaches up with a gloved hand, adjusting the scarf around her throat.
"Sounds serious," she observes.
[Kora] This pulls the creature up short. She's half-way through an indrawn breath, hands in her pockets, her elbows held close to her frame. The coat's large enough to partly - though not fully - conceal curve of her stomach beneath.
A flat, narrow mouthed grimace, reaction to the cold, and something else. "I didn't mean it like that," she corrects. Self-corrects, her voice pitched beneath the howl of the wind, face turned toward Imogen, the edge of the hood plastered against the frame of her face. "Not entirely. Let me buy you a beer. Or something, get out of the wind, yeah?"
[Imogen] Imogen's mouth curves slightly to Kora's reaction - some latent amusement surfacing and subsuming swiftly. She does not clarify it; the truth is, it was as much her experience as the way Kora put it. Habit, almost. A garou seeks her out - it must be serious.
She tilts her head slightly, taking the next turn. "I could go fer a tea," she says. "There's a cafe down the block."
[Kora] The next turn: and a brief, immediate surcease of the wind. Some cross-wise office block, looming high enough that it blocks the middle third of the sky or so it seems, glittering in the gloaming. They saw the sun today - brief and brilliant, fucking golden - for the last hour or two of the day - and now somewhere above the city's bitter, constant glow, the stars glittering in sharp relief as whatever heat lingers in the sidewalks and glass, the metal frames and tar-roofs escapes impossibly upward.
It's night, it's winter, the sky's clear - the temperature plummets. Between now and morning, some half-dozen unfortunates somewhere in the city will die from the cold in one way or another. None of them will make the papers. Few of them will be identified.
"I'm really raising expectations, eh?" says Kora, walking swiftly enough, head down, watching the sidewalk and path, hunkering her body against the cold. The lights are on in the café's windows, awash over the sidewalk. Kora follows Imogen inside and reaches behind her, pulling the door firmly closed behind her, that courtesy necessary in cold climates. Keep the heat in. Keep the cold out.
[Kora] is this thing on?
to Kora
[Imogen] Her breath exhales quietly, amused. "Don't worry," she assures the Fenrir gravely, "I'll do my best not t'get my hopes up, shall I?"
The cafe is made of dark woods and dim lighting. A woman in all-natural attire and dreadlocks stands at the counter. There is only a couple in the corner, intent on their conversation, and their hands gripping tight across the table, otherwise, the dining area is empty.
The cashier begins to smile, but it falters a little as her eyes reach Kora, shifting nervously, though she gamely tries to put her best 'service' face on. She has a flat nasal accent of Massachusetts, and a silver ring in her nose.
Imogen orders a pot of earl grey, then glances at Kora for her to make her order. She does not demure on the offer of the purchase. Kora has, over time, made it merely a matter of course.
[Kora] Kora orders a large Mexican hot chocolate. The sort that will come in a mug the size of one's head, laden with bitter chocolate shavings, oaxacan cinnamon, and enough whipped cream to float an army melting on the surface. And the chocolate poundcake. And one of those things - whatever it is? No, no, the other one. The awkward moment of picking out just the right pastry from the display case does nothing to ease the cashier's nerves, does nothing to calm her pulse, but it distracts her. Makes those fight or flight instincts seem all the more
- absurd. Like something out of Ionesco. She'll bring them their drinks, the cashier assures them after Kora pays, eager to have them gone even it it just means she will have to come close again. Kora slides her passport - the cash she carries is tucked inside - back into the hip pocket of her jeans, underneath her coat, and chooses a booth on the far side, away from the intent couple, near the window, where they can look out on the street.
She doesn't sit down in her winter coat; she pulls her things off. Gloves, with her teeth, white against the dark suede, and then scarf, and then at last the coat, unbuttoned with distinct care all up the line, the way a woman unzips her dress, with that sort of autonomic precision.
"Fucking cold out there," she says, flicking a glance up as the cashier brings a tray over. Imogen's pot of earl gray rattles as the woman sets it down, the chocolate sloshes out onto the saucer the size of a dinner plate. Still, the Skald gives the woman a (reassuring?) half-smile when she's done, when it is all laid out. "Thanks," and lifts her chin as the woman scurries away. Then breathes out once, glances out the window at the street, chafing her hands as she shifts her weight forward, more awkward now, with the new girth.
There's the clink of the teapot. Some music in the background, independent folk. Singer-songwriter. Their reflections are wavery in the glass, which transmits the chill of the night with a certain efficiency. Crisp and cool against the blast of dry interior warmth, forced air. "That place, the other night - " Kora's studying their reflections as she begins, but a half-heartbeat later her dark eyes fix on the kinswoman's face. " - you wanna tell me what the hell you were doing there. Alone."
Her tone's even, even hushed, the subtle tightness of her mouth betrays withheld tension; the (super)natural anger she always holds so firmly intact.
[Imogen] Imogen opens her coat but leaves it on - it hides her gun at the small of her back. She removes her gloves with her hands, pulling the leather away from her fingers, one at a time. These are folded together and laid on the table, her purse set against the wall on the booth before she sits down.
Fucking cold out there. Kora says, and Imogen only nods slightly, any absent response she might have given, swallowed by the arrival of the waitress. She does not yet touch the tea pot, which has the tails of its tea bag caught in the lid. The tea is fragrant even as it steeps.
Kora asks her question, and there is a subtle intimation there. In that moment, it is clear who is Jarl and who is kinfolk. The way that the Skald speaks.
It is the way of things.
But still.
Imogen's gaze meets her's unwavering, even. She does not speak immediately, several moments of silence taken. "Reconnaissance," she says, with a trace of European awareness of the French pronunciation. "Had you and yours not shown up, I never would ha' fired a shot."
[Kora] "Reconnaissance?" There's nothing European there; just that not of - not disbelief, but that sharp, sour scent of anger subsumed underneath the tongue. The impotent sort that leads to - this. A sharp glance upward, dark eyes in a pale face, the redness chaffed up by the wind already fading from her cheeks and nose. There's a fullness to her features now, subtle enough, that does nothing to swallow that singular flash of the wolf in her eyes, under her skin, the half-moment before she swallows it back.
Kora is the first to look away, shaking her pale head, enough that the knot of hair at the back of her neck begins to uncoil under its own weight. "Jesus, doc. You were inside - "
There's more. She doesn't say it. How long those things might have stayed. How acute their senses might have been.
She doesn't say it at first, and her hot chocolate sits there while Imogen's tea steeps, the spiral curl of whipped cream melting into the hot liquid.
"How long - how long do you think you could've stood there. Without - " A sharp gesture, as she pulls back her hand. The movement is subtle, though, somehow restrained.
[Imogen] Several moments of silence again. Imogen chooses her words carefully at the best of times. Here, in seconds like these, she chooses them as if they were precious pearls.
In the end, the way she answers Kora is circuitous. "Given the choice, I would not ha' been in the position I was in. While in that position, I did my best to keep myself hidden and took no unnecessary risks until I saw the opportunity to aid yer pack.
"None of them saw or smelled me. Neither, I believe, did Roman, when I saw him sneaking about the perimeter.
"I knew I was taking a risk entering an area wi' limited exits, but I considered that risk worth it, had I been able to confirm it as a nest." Her words are quiet. They do not extend beyond the two of them.
"I was hidden. I was not comfortable, but I could ha' remained still as long as I needed. And I had a vantage point that allowed me a long view o' their approach, should I ha' been found out."
She stops there, a muscle in her jaw moving, and though there was more to be said, she refrains.
[Kora] The moon's waxing, now. Growing in the sky, but it's still quiet, past a sliver, past a quarter, turning toward the half and not yet there. Somewhere above the raw glitter of the stars in the deep, arctic darkness of the unsparing night that rises above the sky scrapers and concrete interstate bridges, above the raised subways and steam vents, the small, groomed parks, green things slumbering beneath a weight of mounded snow.
Kora listens. She's looking away half the time, out through Imogen's reflection toward the street. The whipped cream continues to deliquesce into the hot chocolate, and the air is sharp with its perfume, which is dark, less sweet than most, more bitter and accordingly all the more complex. Twice she looks over, flicks a look at Imogen, up and down her familiar features, breathing in through her nose and allowing her focus to shift just enough that breeding overcomes distinctive, and some nameless, long-dead Fiann surfaces in the delicate planes of the slight woman's features.
It is such an easy shift; one look, then gone.
At last Kora breathes out, a flare of breath through her nostrils, a low sound of frustration without the brighter burst of rage beneath, tinged with enough wry immediacy that it is nearly a laugh. "You make it sound so goddamned reasonable, Doc."
[Kora] (breeding overcomes distinction - not distinctive!)
[Imogen] Through the time that Imogen speaks and Kora listens, Imogen's gaze is on the Garou, even as she looks away. It is steady, unwavering. It is not earnest, the way the kinfolk makes her case. It is not even intense.
Kora is right - reasonable. Quiet. Calm, and thought out.
She smirks - her mouth twisting. "Well," she says, not without self deprecation, "if one is going to stupidly get caught in a warehouse, by twisted cursed things, one might as well be reasonable about everything else."
A pause. Levity fades to gravity.
"If yeh want to tell me to be more careful, or take less risks, yeh should know tha' I won't."
[Kora] That brings Kora's dark eyes back to Imogen's. The reaction is immediate, sharp at the edges, the way a blade is sharp, which is to say - honed and tempered - but even in the middle, some solid core, ballast, even.
"Why not?" The question is quiet; is that that note of control as well, the even tone lifted by the faintest of lilts near the end of the question, a (barely) noticeable rising third between vowel and voiceless fricative, almost soft against her teeth. Some easing, some subtle shift of the muscles around her generous mouth, the fine skin framing her dark eyes, that rising third, suggests that she might actually want to know.
[Imogen] This time it is Imogen who looks away - not immediately, but after the question. She picks up the tea pot, and begins to pour it into the cup. The hot steeped water chimes as it strikes the porcelain. It is a large mug meant for cold winter nights and warmth and comfort.
There is a small creamer filled with milk. She picks it up.
"Because it is my life to do with as I will," she says, "and I believe I am as careful as I can be."
[Kora] The Skald breathes out again, feeling a subtle flush of shame under her skin. It is not enough to color her cheeks, to spread over the bridge of her nose, but she can feel it open nonetheless. Imogen looks down, picks up her tea pot. She pours the hot, fragrant tea into the large mug, and the Fenrir's gaze is steady on her face, the subtle shift from full portrait to a three-quarter profile as Imogen reaches for the creamer. The glaze on the porcelain is bright, liquid over a deeper craqueluere finish, without the painted swirls of spring or summer flowers one might see in a staid British tea shop.
At last, her attention falls from Imogen's face to the mug in her own hands. God knows how many calories it is, and Odin knows that doesn't matter to a Werewolf. Kora picks up the mug, her mouth twisting as she takes a sip, then another. It's only then that she speaks, still low, a thread of humor twisting through the words like an opened vine.
"Yeah, well. Don't forgot," a flicker of a look back at Imogen as Kora pulls over her slice of chocolate pound cake, presented on a crisp, square plate made by a local artisan. "I've got a Ragabash and a Rotagar rattling about. Wouldn't mind putting them to use, now and then. When the former isn't ironing his jeans," a twist of her mouth, " - and the latter isn't chasing kin." She pauses, gestures at her pound cake (as yet untouched) with her fork. "You want a piece of this?"
[Imogen] The kinswoman's gaze flicks briefly toward the Garou, her expression restrained, but for a tension lingering in her brow. "I haven't forgotten," she says, mildly. This too, is restrained and does not rise to meet Kora's humour.
She pours the milk into her darkened tea, watching it as it swirls, then picking up a spoon from her saucer, dipping it in, and stirring slowly.
A glance up at the pound cake, a brief twist of her mouth - and here is where the tension clears. "I can't abide American chocolate," she says. "But thank you."
The night moves on.
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