[Melody] Night has fallen, and the curtain of our present tale rises upon a wooded area within striking distance of the Windy City. Currently devoid of actors, our stage nevertheless shows nature green in branch and stem, with any number of nocturnal animals about their nightly rounds. The air, if not "fresh", at least far fresher than the shrouded pall that usually hangs over the asphalt jungle to the east.
In short, it is an idyllic and tranquil scene, or at least as idyllic and tranquil as nature ever really gets so close to an urban area in this dark, benighted world.
Now enter, 2006 Nissan Sentra, stage left. Along with the two blonde girls currently inside it.
[Sorrow] The city is a corona in the east; an orange glow that engulfs the sky. After a handful of days with nearly perfect weather, the night is cold and gray. The moon, somewhere behind the moving blanket of stormclouds above, is waning from the full. A gibbous moon, the barest sliver stolen from its frame. Sorrow's moon.
She has not seen it tonight, and that is assuredly for the best. Still, she can feel it up there, the inevitable, invariable pull of her birthmoon, the little extra charge of it underneath her skin, no matter how impotent that charge must seem when she's gravid with child.
The parking lot is mostly deserted. There's a van down in the shadows by the picnic area, but no one obviously around. Kora pauses, still, watching the other vehicle quietly for a moment after Melody shuts off the engine. The study lingers: the van in the distance, Kora's face, and then Melody's superimposed over it, reflected in the glass by the dim glow of the dashboard lights, by the wash of a single streetlamp over the dark, deserted parking lot.
"I feel better already," says Kora, quiet, reaching to undo the latch on her seatbelt before opening the door. The air smells like the memory of rain and car exhaust, the deep green musk of rotting vegetation and waking soil.
[Melody] "Is that more because of where we are now, or where we aren't?" Melody smiles, almost more to herself than to Kora. And then she's killing the engine and slipping outside herself.
Melody is, for all her innate nature, far more comfortable with civilization and technology than Kora is. Or other Get in general, for that matter (bastard streak of Glass Walker blood in there somewhere?). So it is that you might almost expect her to be a bit less comfortable out in the actual wild (such as it is), like a wolf that's been raised in captivity, never quite feeling the connection to its natural home. Yet apparently, that isn't the case - for all her quirks and foibles, she seems to draw energy from the forest as much as Kora does.
And, perhaps thankfully for Kora's sanity, she's even dispensed with most of her usual fancy (and pink) wardrobe for more sensible hiking boots, jeans, and a tan jacket over a simple green t-shirt.
[Sorrow] "I don't know," returns the Skald, glancing skeptically up at the night sky for a moment, as if she could gauge - by the particular quality of orange, by the dampness of the air, by the sound of the wind in the canopy of trees just starting to leaf out - whether rain might be imminent. It's dark, though, and the patterns of the clouds are little more than a dull orange-gray above them, a shadowy mass, the details of which disappear into insubstantiality, receding the longer she frowns up at them. As if in answer, a single raindrop - just one - falls out of the dark, shivered off the limb of of a mostly-bare oak tree, maybe - hits her on the cheek, just below the eye. Rolls down her cheek as she looks back at Melody, across the front end of the old Nissan, taking in her attire with a single, liquid look.
"I've never felt so trapped in the city before. In my own goddamned territory. In - "
A hand held palm-up shows no further raindrops, so Kora settles for zipping up her oversized hoodie - make for a large, large man, not a pregnant woman. It accommodates her stomach, pulled taut, but drowns her shoulders and arms. - but leaves the hood down.
"C'mon," she says, lifting her chin in a moving gesture toward the dark copse of woods, eschewing the open picnic area for the dark trailhead. Beyond, they can hear water rushing in a creekbed. "You settling in?"
[Melody] "Anything you want to talk about?" She says it casually, almost off-handedly, but Kora likely senses the underlying interest there. It might even strike her as humorous that her younger sister of 7-8 years seems to be developing an interest in acting like a would-be therapist. Shouldn't this be the point where Melody should be asking her about boys or college or something?
"And... settling in? As well as can be expected, all things considered. Though someone apparently slipped me a Bieber poster. Not sure who. Or if they meant it as a sincere gesture or a joke." She shrugs.
And she follows as Kora heads towards the trail. "Umm, you sure you're..." She trails off, and sort of gives a sheepish little half-smile accompanied by near-indecipherable hand-gestures which Kora thinks might be Melody's way of asking whether or not a pregnant woman should be walking trails in the middle of the woods. Or maybe not. Hard to tell, really.
[Sorrow] "Bieber?" Kora returns, glancing over her shoulder, pale face a smear in the dark shadows of the trail. Her brows lift in twin arches over her keen dark eyes, which reflect whatever ambient light filters down through the canopy. She has been entirely lost to the world of men for five years or more. Justin Bieber is -
- not in her frame of reference. There's nothing since 2006 or 07 on her iPod, which seems to be the only modern convenience she carries around. Even then, her taste is older. The Pixies. The Replacements. Radiohead. "I have no idea what the hell that is," she continues, turning back to watch where she's going. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. The train well-worn, somewhat muddied from the recent rains. There's a quiet hush in the air that becomes clearly the longer there are out here. In the distance: the roar of some freeway.
Not here. Nothing. Nothing close.
Just the sound of their breathing, Kora's care with where she puts down her feet. See how well she deftly ignores Melody's attempt to play therapist. "I promise," - low and ironic, a pale hand on a scarred limb, balancing as she kicks into the underbrush, looking for a walking stick. " - that I am not going into labour out here."
[Melody] "Yeah, you know, Justin Bieber? Singer? Really popular? Totally famous? He was really huge on YouTube?" She trails off at the look of complete and utter lack of comprehension. "Ehh, never mind."
She smiles faintly at Kora's promise. "Can we at least avoid any really steep or hilly trails, just in case?" And then she's quiet for a few moments, before pointing out: "And you never did answer my question, you know. Anything you want to talk about?" See how well she doesn't let herself get distracted? Probably too much to hope for, really.
[Sorrow] "I don't need a therapist, Dee," returns Kora, low-voiced and direct. She's half-crouched now, gauging the relative heft and height of a pair of broken limbs she has wrested from an overgrown bramble. There's a certain sharpness to the tone near the end, like the defined line of a parabola approaching the limits of Kora's patience, for all that Melody has done nothing to engage that subprocess. " - there's nothing to talk about. I'm just - "
With a flattened mouth, Kora chooses the slimmer, longer of the two branches and hefts it up, standing abruptly, testing the tensile strength of her makeshift walking stick by jamming it several times into the muddied ground. She breathes out, lifts her chin down the trail, the sound of water in the interval distance echoing through the semi-bare trunks of the trees. Here are there, pear trees are a white smear against the interminable shadows. They are already losing their blossoms, but the dogwoods and redbuds have yet to bloom.
"C'mon," Kora returns, quiet as she takes off, her gait steadier with the added support of the stick. She glances back just once, says, quiet to Melody. "If you want to run, I don't mind."
They both know what she means; the caged wolf is visible in the gleam of the Skald's dark gaze.
[Melody] "No, but you have an understanding and lovable sister who is available as a sympathetic shoulder to lean on, who is fully capable of dispensing both advice and in equal quantities, so you should totally avail yourself of that." She spreads her arms in a gesture which almost seems to say 'Ehh? Ehh?'.
"I mean, let's be honest. It's not good to bottle stuff up, or try to carry the entire world on your back. So... maybe it's good to talk about stuff sometimes. Even if it's only to vent and talk about how badly you want to punch someone or how much of a poo-poo head you think someone is being."
She doesn't say anything about how much pressure Kora is under as Jarl, or what various Kinfolk are up to, or the whole deal with Linus and the family, or even the normal stress of pregnancy, but she's probably thinking of at least a few of those things.
"We all admire your self-sufficiency, but that doesn't mean you have to do everything yourself, you know."
[Sorrow] Kora makes a low sound in the back of her throat, then. It sounds nearly like dismissal, quiet and sure. Kora's steadiness remains, but some of her openness is gone. Walled away. Melody has a fine view of her sister's back, the bunching of fabric at the shoulder, the way it spreads to accommodate her hips. From behind she could almost imagine that Kora was not pregnant. Except for the way it changes her gait, the way her stomach takes 2.3 seconds longer, it seems, to turn around than the rest of her.
"How about this for a start: I'm tired of fucking Shadow Lords." A pause like a valley as she goes on. Ahead, through the scrim of the trees, Melody can see the gleaming surface of a creek moving through the dark march of trees. " - and Bone Gnawers. And fucking gloryhounds. And - " a quiet shake of her pale head as the path breaks through the treeline at the edge of the small pond. "I'm not sure that talking about it makes it better. I fucking hate gossip."
[Melody] "I can see why all of those things would annoy you." She nods, almost sagely, though Kora likely misses the gesture in her insistence at setting the pace (or maybe more from Melody's refusal to set much of a pace at all). "But even if talking about stuff doesn't make it better, maybe it can help keep it from getting worse?"
She shrugs as they walk, and maybe there's even a hint of a smile in her next words. "Or do you just think you'd be happier walking in total silence and having the cutest wolf ever just sort of brushing up against your leg the whole time being all cuddly and adorable?"
[Sorrow] "Wolves," Kora returns, glancing back now, standing aside so that Melody can join her at the water's edge. " - aren't cute, Dee."
The pond is narrow, not natural - made by a cement dam they can both see dimly in the uncertain light. They are not so deep in the woods that the forest service has given up putting out trash cans and picnic tables, though - and in the clearing by the dam, they see a pair of picnic tables both chained to the fixture of a charcoal grill. Ripples move across the surface of the dark waters, some occluded reflection of the sky.
"Sometimes I miss the ocean," she continues, after a quiet moment. "There was a time when I missed pizza, but now I miss the damn ocean." A brief, sidelong glance at Melody's profile. "What about you?"
[Melody] "I beg to differ. Wolves are totally cute. And some are definitely cuter than others." And she does indeed move up to stand next to Kora, smiling. "The ability to rend flesh and break bone in no way detracts from cuteness." She pauses for a second, head tilting, smile fading as her lips quirk into an almost bemused thoughtful expression. "Well, except maybe in the immediately moments before, during, and shortly after said rending and breaking. That would probably be a period of diminished cuteness."
And she looks over at Kora, somewhat thoughtfully, at her question. A poignant look, as if pondering all of the things she misses, or mourns the loss of. And then:
"Not really. I mean, I never liked the ocean all that much in the first place."
And then, a slowly growing smirk.
[Sorrow] (and fin?)
In short, it is an idyllic and tranquil scene, or at least as idyllic and tranquil as nature ever really gets so close to an urban area in this dark, benighted world.
Now enter, 2006 Nissan Sentra, stage left. Along with the two blonde girls currently inside it.
[Sorrow] The city is a corona in the east; an orange glow that engulfs the sky. After a handful of days with nearly perfect weather, the night is cold and gray. The moon, somewhere behind the moving blanket of stormclouds above, is waning from the full. A gibbous moon, the barest sliver stolen from its frame. Sorrow's moon.
She has not seen it tonight, and that is assuredly for the best. Still, she can feel it up there, the inevitable, invariable pull of her birthmoon, the little extra charge of it underneath her skin, no matter how impotent that charge must seem when she's gravid with child.
The parking lot is mostly deserted. There's a van down in the shadows by the picnic area, but no one obviously around. Kora pauses, still, watching the other vehicle quietly for a moment after Melody shuts off the engine. The study lingers: the van in the distance, Kora's face, and then Melody's superimposed over it, reflected in the glass by the dim glow of the dashboard lights, by the wash of a single streetlamp over the dark, deserted parking lot.
"I feel better already," says Kora, quiet, reaching to undo the latch on her seatbelt before opening the door. The air smells like the memory of rain and car exhaust, the deep green musk of rotting vegetation and waking soil.
[Melody] "Is that more because of where we are now, or where we aren't?" Melody smiles, almost more to herself than to Kora. And then she's killing the engine and slipping outside herself.
Melody is, for all her innate nature, far more comfortable with civilization and technology than Kora is. Or other Get in general, for that matter (bastard streak of Glass Walker blood in there somewhere?). So it is that you might almost expect her to be a bit less comfortable out in the actual wild (such as it is), like a wolf that's been raised in captivity, never quite feeling the connection to its natural home. Yet apparently, that isn't the case - for all her quirks and foibles, she seems to draw energy from the forest as much as Kora does.
And, perhaps thankfully for Kora's sanity, she's even dispensed with most of her usual fancy (and pink) wardrobe for more sensible hiking boots, jeans, and a tan jacket over a simple green t-shirt.
[Sorrow] "I don't know," returns the Skald, glancing skeptically up at the night sky for a moment, as if she could gauge - by the particular quality of orange, by the dampness of the air, by the sound of the wind in the canopy of trees just starting to leaf out - whether rain might be imminent. It's dark, though, and the patterns of the clouds are little more than a dull orange-gray above them, a shadowy mass, the details of which disappear into insubstantiality, receding the longer she frowns up at them. As if in answer, a single raindrop - just one - falls out of the dark, shivered off the limb of of a mostly-bare oak tree, maybe - hits her on the cheek, just below the eye. Rolls down her cheek as she looks back at Melody, across the front end of the old Nissan, taking in her attire with a single, liquid look.
"I've never felt so trapped in the city before. In my own goddamned territory. In - "
A hand held palm-up shows no further raindrops, so Kora settles for zipping up her oversized hoodie - make for a large, large man, not a pregnant woman. It accommodates her stomach, pulled taut, but drowns her shoulders and arms. - but leaves the hood down.
"C'mon," she says, lifting her chin in a moving gesture toward the dark copse of woods, eschewing the open picnic area for the dark trailhead. Beyond, they can hear water rushing in a creekbed. "You settling in?"
[Melody] "Anything you want to talk about?" She says it casually, almost off-handedly, but Kora likely senses the underlying interest there. It might even strike her as humorous that her younger sister of 7-8 years seems to be developing an interest in acting like a would-be therapist. Shouldn't this be the point where Melody should be asking her about boys or college or something?
"And... settling in? As well as can be expected, all things considered. Though someone apparently slipped me a Bieber poster. Not sure who. Or if they meant it as a sincere gesture or a joke." She shrugs.
And she follows as Kora heads towards the trail. "Umm, you sure you're..." She trails off, and sort of gives a sheepish little half-smile accompanied by near-indecipherable hand-gestures which Kora thinks might be Melody's way of asking whether or not a pregnant woman should be walking trails in the middle of the woods. Or maybe not. Hard to tell, really.
[Sorrow] "Bieber?" Kora returns, glancing over her shoulder, pale face a smear in the dark shadows of the trail. Her brows lift in twin arches over her keen dark eyes, which reflect whatever ambient light filters down through the canopy. She has been entirely lost to the world of men for five years or more. Justin Bieber is -
- not in her frame of reference. There's nothing since 2006 or 07 on her iPod, which seems to be the only modern convenience she carries around. Even then, her taste is older. The Pixies. The Replacements. Radiohead. "I have no idea what the hell that is," she continues, turning back to watch where she's going. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. The train well-worn, somewhat muddied from the recent rains. There's a quiet hush in the air that becomes clearly the longer there are out here. In the distance: the roar of some freeway.
Not here. Nothing. Nothing close.
Just the sound of their breathing, Kora's care with where she puts down her feet. See how well she deftly ignores Melody's attempt to play therapist. "I promise," - low and ironic, a pale hand on a scarred limb, balancing as she kicks into the underbrush, looking for a walking stick. " - that I am not going into labour out here."
[Melody] "Yeah, you know, Justin Bieber? Singer? Really popular? Totally famous? He was really huge on YouTube?" She trails off at the look of complete and utter lack of comprehension. "Ehh, never mind."
She smiles faintly at Kora's promise. "Can we at least avoid any really steep or hilly trails, just in case?" And then she's quiet for a few moments, before pointing out: "And you never did answer my question, you know. Anything you want to talk about?" See how well she doesn't let herself get distracted? Probably too much to hope for, really.
[Sorrow] "I don't need a therapist, Dee," returns Kora, low-voiced and direct. She's half-crouched now, gauging the relative heft and height of a pair of broken limbs she has wrested from an overgrown bramble. There's a certain sharpness to the tone near the end, like the defined line of a parabola approaching the limits of Kora's patience, for all that Melody has done nothing to engage that subprocess. " - there's nothing to talk about. I'm just - "
With a flattened mouth, Kora chooses the slimmer, longer of the two branches and hefts it up, standing abruptly, testing the tensile strength of her makeshift walking stick by jamming it several times into the muddied ground. She breathes out, lifts her chin down the trail, the sound of water in the interval distance echoing through the semi-bare trunks of the trees. Here are there, pear trees are a white smear against the interminable shadows. They are already losing their blossoms, but the dogwoods and redbuds have yet to bloom.
"C'mon," Kora returns, quiet as she takes off, her gait steadier with the added support of the stick. She glances back just once, says, quiet to Melody. "If you want to run, I don't mind."
They both know what she means; the caged wolf is visible in the gleam of the Skald's dark gaze.
[Melody] "No, but you have an understanding and lovable sister who is available as a sympathetic shoulder to lean on, who is fully capable of dispensing both advice and in equal quantities, so you should totally avail yourself of that." She spreads her arms in a gesture which almost seems to say 'Ehh? Ehh?'.
"I mean, let's be honest. It's not good to bottle stuff up, or try to carry the entire world on your back. So... maybe it's good to talk about stuff sometimes. Even if it's only to vent and talk about how badly you want to punch someone or how much of a poo-poo head you think someone is being."
She doesn't say anything about how much pressure Kora is under as Jarl, or what various Kinfolk are up to, or the whole deal with Linus and the family, or even the normal stress of pregnancy, but she's probably thinking of at least a few of those things.
"We all admire your self-sufficiency, but that doesn't mean you have to do everything yourself, you know."
[Sorrow] Kora makes a low sound in the back of her throat, then. It sounds nearly like dismissal, quiet and sure. Kora's steadiness remains, but some of her openness is gone. Walled away. Melody has a fine view of her sister's back, the bunching of fabric at the shoulder, the way it spreads to accommodate her hips. From behind she could almost imagine that Kora was not pregnant. Except for the way it changes her gait, the way her stomach takes 2.3 seconds longer, it seems, to turn around than the rest of her.
"How about this for a start: I'm tired of fucking Shadow Lords." A pause like a valley as she goes on. Ahead, through the scrim of the trees, Melody can see the gleaming surface of a creek moving through the dark march of trees. " - and Bone Gnawers. And fucking gloryhounds. And - " a quiet shake of her pale head as the path breaks through the treeline at the edge of the small pond. "I'm not sure that talking about it makes it better. I fucking hate gossip."
[Melody] "I can see why all of those things would annoy you." She nods, almost sagely, though Kora likely misses the gesture in her insistence at setting the pace (or maybe more from Melody's refusal to set much of a pace at all). "But even if talking about stuff doesn't make it better, maybe it can help keep it from getting worse?"
She shrugs as they walk, and maybe there's even a hint of a smile in her next words. "Or do you just think you'd be happier walking in total silence and having the cutest wolf ever just sort of brushing up against your leg the whole time being all cuddly and adorable?"
[Sorrow] "Wolves," Kora returns, glancing back now, standing aside so that Melody can join her at the water's edge. " - aren't cute, Dee."
The pond is narrow, not natural - made by a cement dam they can both see dimly in the uncertain light. They are not so deep in the woods that the forest service has given up putting out trash cans and picnic tables, though - and in the clearing by the dam, they see a pair of picnic tables both chained to the fixture of a charcoal grill. Ripples move across the surface of the dark waters, some occluded reflection of the sky.
"Sometimes I miss the ocean," she continues, after a quiet moment. "There was a time when I missed pizza, but now I miss the damn ocean." A brief, sidelong glance at Melody's profile. "What about you?"
[Melody] "I beg to differ. Wolves are totally cute. And some are definitely cuter than others." And she does indeed move up to stand next to Kora, smiling. "The ability to rend flesh and break bone in no way detracts from cuteness." She pauses for a second, head tilting, smile fading as her lips quirk into an almost bemused thoughtful expression. "Well, except maybe in the immediately moments before, during, and shortly after said rending and breaking. That would probably be a period of diminished cuteness."
And she looks over at Kora, somewhat thoughtfully, at her question. A poignant look, as if pondering all of the things she misses, or mourns the loss of. And then:
"Not really. I mean, I never liked the ocean all that much in the first place."
And then, a slowly growing smirk.
[Sorrow] (and fin?)
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