[Kora] Some gray spring night, rainy and cold - there's a lull in the storms now, and so the rain simply falls instead of pelting the windows. If Drew has the radio on, she'll hear the drone of the National Weather Service warnings - flash floods, thunderstorm warnings for outlying communities, all robo-voiced, endless sometimes.
The moon is waxing. Oh, she cannot see it, somewhere up above the constantly moving gray clouds. Cannot feel it the way Garou feel it - in their blood and bones, some tidal rhythm, each movement a sea change. But she's known them long enough to keep track of its pattern. To note the full moon not with the surprise, the way humans do - glancing up at the sky while taking out the trash, or picking up the kids from ballet, or walking the dog and saying, oh my, look at the moon. - but with awareness, nearly but never quite subconscious.
So: a cold rainy night capstones a gray spring day. And lo, there is a knock at the door.
[Drew Roscoe] Drew has been a quiet thing lately. She'd gone out of town for a weekend from what Kora would have understood-- just to visit her father, nothing too far away that she couldn't return within a few hours when called. She'd been focused on work, busy there, but not too busy to swing by occasionally to drop off essentials-- flour, sugar, bread, eggs, some lighter clothes of all sizes and genders that would be better suited for the oppression of a humid midwestern summer that would be upon them sooner than they knew.
There isn't a radio on tonight, surprisingly instead Drew's watching the television. The quiet pitter-patter of raindrops on her window is overtaken by the quiet voices on the television. She's watching a movie, something bland and forgettable, not engrossed in it so much as just resting for the evening. She's got a dish with apple slices in her lap, crunching on them contentedly, dressed in a pair of faded out blue-gray pajama pants that are cut off at the calf and a white wifebeater. Her long hair is drawn up into a ponytail, her face clean of make-up. It's certainly an evening in after a long day at work.
Knock-knock.
It's answered within twenty seconds, after a preliminary glance out the front window to be sure of who was at her door. The pale blond hair, the swollen figure of fertility, she knew immediately who was there. After the curtains fluttered the door opened without hesitation, wide enough to immediately allow the Jarl to step inside.
"Kora, how ya doin'?"
[Kora] There's no mistaking her, not these nights. She's dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, the shoulders and yoke dark from the rain. Her hair's dry, the hood pushed off the crown of her head when she stepped onto Drew's stoop.
That rush of city sounds floods in when she opens the door. The rain, the quiet roar of a car plunging through the rivulets and puddles pooling on the blacktop of Drew's side street, the smear of headlights across the crystalline darkness.
And of course she's huge now; her pregnancy has finally advanced enough to make her awkward. No matter the wolf that Drew can still see in the way her gaze fixes on the kinswoman - drawn inexorably by the subtle potency of her blood - no matter the native grace of her tall frame: she's awkward now, shoulders back to counterbalance the weight of her pregnancy, her gait - well, pigeontoed. Waddling. Ungainly.
Kora pauses on the thresholds to stamp the rain from her books, then waddles inside, hands coming out of the pockets of her oversized hoodie, one reaching up to start unzipping the sweatshirt, at least partway, revealing a pale green cotton tunic underneath, and of course the black leather choker - narrow, a few strips of leather braided together - she always wears.
"Drew," she returns, low-voiced, aware. Somber, too, her attention keen on the kinswoman, taking in the details of her appearance before cutting away to the living room. The flicker of light from the television. The dish of apples on the couch. A supple twist of her mouth follows, the natural curve deepening, but the sobriety lingers even there. "I'm well enough. And you look well."
[Drew Roscoe] "I'm doing alright, yeah. It's feeling like the calm before the storm these days, but I'll appreciate the still while it lasts."
Drew closes the door behind Kora, then steps back to give the Skald room to stomp her boots on the welcome rug and undo the sweatshirt she was wearing in place of a winter jacket on these warmer spring days. She stands behind her couch, leans over it for the remote control that was sitting behind the apple dish, and mutes the television. As she straightens back up, she does so with the bowl of apples in her hand, and offers them out to Kora with a stretched arm and stationary feet. One hip tucks against the back of the couch and holds the majority of her weight.
Her smile is bright and cordial, as it is known to be, eyebrows lifted a little, chocolate brown eyes resolutely on Kora's face.
"So, what's the occasion? Not that I don't appreciate company-- and damn it's been a while since I've had any-- but you're a busy lady. Typically you arrive with business."
[Kora] "Not quite as busy as you'd think these days," Kora returns, reaching out to take a couple of the apple slices from the bowl when Drew offers them, the gesture automatic, nearly thoughtless. "I'm a bit of a liability on the martial front. So I have to leave that work to the rest of the pack, yeah?"
The Skald offers the observation lightly, but there's a restlessness underlying the fact of it. The enforced idleness does her little enough good. Some days, all she wants to do is move. Some nights, she dreams of nothing but driving instinct, blood and the hunt.
All that's unspoken; burrowed beneath the surface of her low voice. Living there with other, darker things. "But you're right," and this is low as the rest of it, her dark gaze level on the much smaller kinswoman, sobriety evident in her face, stark and still, in the measured directness of her look. In her voice. She breathes out, a full exhale that flares her nostrils. "Remy's dead." Soberly offered, "I thought you should know. I know you and he were getting close. Earned a deedname, though, at the last. Summons the Inferno, Mourned by Flame."
[Drew Roscoe] A couple of apple slices are surrendered to Kora's fingertips, the remaining are brought back closer to the Kinswoman. One slice is brought to her mouth and crunched on, gone in a few quick bites. She nods sympathetically when Kora talks about hanging back from the fight. Drew couldn't understand the sort of restlessness that Kora felt, she didn't know the need to be out with the pack, to have the power of the Wolf in your muscles and legs, the thrill of the chase or the satisfaction of a successful hunt. All she could do was hear the heavily pregnant Garou out.
Then came the news. Drew stopped chewing the slice of apple in her mouth when Remy's dead was let to hang in the air. Jaw stilled, mashed up fruit pressed into her cheek. It's difficult to swallow, and her eyes drop from Kora's face to the bowl with the two remaining apple slices in it. There's a moment where she wonders if she'd get away with spitting it out, but shakes that thought off quickly enough and forces herself to clear her mouth by swallowing her food instead.
She takes in a deep breath, through her nostrils, enough that her lungs fill to capacity, then exhales slowly with a shake of her head.
"Did he go well?"
As she asks, she turns sideways, eyes still down, and sets the bowl back on the couch cushion for now.
[Kora] "As well as any of us." Kora returns, her attention keen on Drew for another pair of heartbeats after Drew has turned away. Then she withdraws. Looks away, off through the living room past the flickering light of the muted television, toward the kitchen, some indeterminate point of reference in the middle distance.
It's a platitude, the good death; one to which she herself does not perhaps subscribe in the requisite Fenrir manner. But she respects the question, answers it with a quiet, rooted conviction that rises from the circuit of centuries. A half-hundred memories of a half-hundred blooded and bloodied deaths. "He died in battled. Summoned a fire spirit to his aid and won enough of its loyalty that it came to find his tribe. The spirit destroyed whatever remained of his enemies."
There's another way to tell his story. A lone wolf who died alone, or near enough to it by the tribe's estimation; in the company of a Bone Gnawer he didn't know, who left town before his body could be burned, before his rite could be spoken.
That story remains inside Kora. Her voice is calm, still, bracing.
"We'll have his rite at the Caern tonight, or tomorrow. If you want to attend, I'll stake my honor for you with the Grand Elder so that you can see him off to Valhalla."
[Drew Roscoe] The fact that he died in battle seems a quiet sort of reassurance. The fact that his enemies fell just as he had, that he'd earned a deedname in his final act, all of that had her nodding slowly while Kora gave her a short, abridged version of the story. The fact that she didn't call him a lone wolf and explain that the only person to see him go fled town was a kindness to the Kinfolk. People didn't go as they were supposed to these days. Even if you were able to accept the fact that the Fenrir died in youth, fighting as they were meant to, that they were wronged in these last battles in any way was difficult. That lives were wasted, that they could have kept on for greater goods, was difficult to swallow.
She's invited to the Rite, and Drew nods again, lifts her eyes to Kora's. There's no tears, but the congeniality is gone from them, the sparkle and mirth. She's stark for the moment, digesting hard news, but not broken or devastated. Part of being Kin, of being Garou, was learning to take this news with a stalwart face and let it hit you only when no one was around to see you bend so far.
"I'd... appreciate that, Kora. Just let me know the time, I'll make it." There's another pause, and a frown presses her lips thin. Hands come together in front of her abdomen, fingers interlinking, thumbs sliding together, the pad of the right stroking the nail of the left. "Thank you for lettin' me know instead of lettin' me just find out."
[Kora] "If I know who your friends are, Drew," Kora returns with a quiet, sure, immediate conviction. "I will never let you just find out. That is the least of my duty to the living and the dead. " There's a stark passion in Kora's voice, unadorned but vibrant, wrapped about with conviction that few see these nights.
She's looking back at the kinswoman again; that moment's privacy has passed, but the direct look is neither judging nor assessing; just away. Of the way Drew receives the news - somber, but dry-eyed. The sparkle gone from her mouth and eyes. Just once Kora glances down, dark eyes touching on Drew's hands. she who offers sorrow earned her name from a moment like this; in another room, on another shore, bathed in the light of a fire from an ancient hearth rather than the flickering glow of the muted television, the smell of the salt-sea every-present in the air, blood on her own hands, under her nails. In her hair. Stiffing the bottom six inches of her jeans. Soaking into the seams.
Now her hands are clean; empty at her side. Now the room smells of wood polish and Drew's evening meal, smells of rain, and apples. Death is the only constant.
"I'll come for you before the rite. It'll be soon." A flicker of a glance here, down toward Drew's interlaced fingers, then back up to her face. Here, the Skald pauses as if she were listening to something quiet in the distance. "You shouldn't be alone tonight, Drew. You should call Eli. Or Rain, if he's out of town."
[Drew Roscoe] A weak tug occurs at one corner of her mouth when Kora assures her, sternly and passionately both, that she will never simply 'find out' so long as Kora has any indication that Drew was friends with the soul that had passed in a flash of the night, as so many do. Her eyes return to resting downcast, she nods again. That attempt at a thankful smile flutters by like a dead leaf on the breeze, and there's a moment of following quiet.
The home smells empty save for one. The meal she'd cooked had been simple, without garnish, something that would save well as leftovers for the next day's lunch at work. She didn't have mouths to feed besides her own to justify cooking much. There's the smell of apples, for certain, the rain outside, the vague scent of lemon cleaner and a scented plug-in elsewhere as well. It was too quiet in here, Kora picked up on the silence and knew exactly what needed to be done about it. She advised the Kinfolk to call somebody for company.
Drew's lips tug again, this time at both corners, and her chin lifts enough for her to look back up at the taller Skald, the Jarl of the tribe, the bastion of her people.
"Yeah, you're right. I'll give Eli a call." There's a pause, and Drew claps the heels of her hands together sharply. It's to jar herself out of melancholy, at least for the time being. The sound stands as a punctuation between muted shock and returning to proper function. "Kora, you want anything before you're on your way? I could re-heat some stew for you, fetch you a drink, whatever you like?"
[Kora] "Stew sounds divine," Kora returns; her smile is ghostly, bittersweet, but present nonetheless. "Lately it seems like I'm always hungry. Sometimes for the most awful things you can imagine." She breathes out, a subtle, half-withheld laugh. There's little mirth in it, precisely. Just a kind of quiet humor, self-deprecating. Wry beneath the awareness of death in her keen dark eyes. "Not that your stew is awful. I was just thinking it would go great with a yoohoo and some bacon double cheeseburger pringles."
The moon is waxing. Oh, she cannot see it, somewhere up above the constantly moving gray clouds. Cannot feel it the way Garou feel it - in their blood and bones, some tidal rhythm, each movement a sea change. But she's known them long enough to keep track of its pattern. To note the full moon not with the surprise, the way humans do - glancing up at the sky while taking out the trash, or picking up the kids from ballet, or walking the dog and saying, oh my, look at the moon. - but with awareness, nearly but never quite subconscious.
So: a cold rainy night capstones a gray spring day. And lo, there is a knock at the door.
[Drew Roscoe] Drew has been a quiet thing lately. She'd gone out of town for a weekend from what Kora would have understood-- just to visit her father, nothing too far away that she couldn't return within a few hours when called. She'd been focused on work, busy there, but not too busy to swing by occasionally to drop off essentials-- flour, sugar, bread, eggs, some lighter clothes of all sizes and genders that would be better suited for the oppression of a humid midwestern summer that would be upon them sooner than they knew.
There isn't a radio on tonight, surprisingly instead Drew's watching the television. The quiet pitter-patter of raindrops on her window is overtaken by the quiet voices on the television. She's watching a movie, something bland and forgettable, not engrossed in it so much as just resting for the evening. She's got a dish with apple slices in her lap, crunching on them contentedly, dressed in a pair of faded out blue-gray pajama pants that are cut off at the calf and a white wifebeater. Her long hair is drawn up into a ponytail, her face clean of make-up. It's certainly an evening in after a long day at work.
Knock-knock.
It's answered within twenty seconds, after a preliminary glance out the front window to be sure of who was at her door. The pale blond hair, the swollen figure of fertility, she knew immediately who was there. After the curtains fluttered the door opened without hesitation, wide enough to immediately allow the Jarl to step inside.
"Kora, how ya doin'?"
[Kora] There's no mistaking her, not these nights. She's dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, the shoulders and yoke dark from the rain. Her hair's dry, the hood pushed off the crown of her head when she stepped onto Drew's stoop.
That rush of city sounds floods in when she opens the door. The rain, the quiet roar of a car plunging through the rivulets and puddles pooling on the blacktop of Drew's side street, the smear of headlights across the crystalline darkness.
And of course she's huge now; her pregnancy has finally advanced enough to make her awkward. No matter the wolf that Drew can still see in the way her gaze fixes on the kinswoman - drawn inexorably by the subtle potency of her blood - no matter the native grace of her tall frame: she's awkward now, shoulders back to counterbalance the weight of her pregnancy, her gait - well, pigeontoed. Waddling. Ungainly.
Kora pauses on the thresholds to stamp the rain from her books, then waddles inside, hands coming out of the pockets of her oversized hoodie, one reaching up to start unzipping the sweatshirt, at least partway, revealing a pale green cotton tunic underneath, and of course the black leather choker - narrow, a few strips of leather braided together - she always wears.
"Drew," she returns, low-voiced, aware. Somber, too, her attention keen on the kinswoman, taking in the details of her appearance before cutting away to the living room. The flicker of light from the television. The dish of apples on the couch. A supple twist of her mouth follows, the natural curve deepening, but the sobriety lingers even there. "I'm well enough. And you look well."
[Drew Roscoe] "I'm doing alright, yeah. It's feeling like the calm before the storm these days, but I'll appreciate the still while it lasts."
Drew closes the door behind Kora, then steps back to give the Skald room to stomp her boots on the welcome rug and undo the sweatshirt she was wearing in place of a winter jacket on these warmer spring days. She stands behind her couch, leans over it for the remote control that was sitting behind the apple dish, and mutes the television. As she straightens back up, she does so with the bowl of apples in her hand, and offers them out to Kora with a stretched arm and stationary feet. One hip tucks against the back of the couch and holds the majority of her weight.
Her smile is bright and cordial, as it is known to be, eyebrows lifted a little, chocolate brown eyes resolutely on Kora's face.
"So, what's the occasion? Not that I don't appreciate company-- and damn it's been a while since I've had any-- but you're a busy lady. Typically you arrive with business."
[Kora] "Not quite as busy as you'd think these days," Kora returns, reaching out to take a couple of the apple slices from the bowl when Drew offers them, the gesture automatic, nearly thoughtless. "I'm a bit of a liability on the martial front. So I have to leave that work to the rest of the pack, yeah?"
The Skald offers the observation lightly, but there's a restlessness underlying the fact of it. The enforced idleness does her little enough good. Some days, all she wants to do is move. Some nights, she dreams of nothing but driving instinct, blood and the hunt.
All that's unspoken; burrowed beneath the surface of her low voice. Living there with other, darker things. "But you're right," and this is low as the rest of it, her dark gaze level on the much smaller kinswoman, sobriety evident in her face, stark and still, in the measured directness of her look. In her voice. She breathes out, a full exhale that flares her nostrils. "Remy's dead." Soberly offered, "I thought you should know. I know you and he were getting close. Earned a deedname, though, at the last. Summons the Inferno, Mourned by Flame."
[Drew Roscoe] A couple of apple slices are surrendered to Kora's fingertips, the remaining are brought back closer to the Kinswoman. One slice is brought to her mouth and crunched on, gone in a few quick bites. She nods sympathetically when Kora talks about hanging back from the fight. Drew couldn't understand the sort of restlessness that Kora felt, she didn't know the need to be out with the pack, to have the power of the Wolf in your muscles and legs, the thrill of the chase or the satisfaction of a successful hunt. All she could do was hear the heavily pregnant Garou out.
Then came the news. Drew stopped chewing the slice of apple in her mouth when Remy's dead was let to hang in the air. Jaw stilled, mashed up fruit pressed into her cheek. It's difficult to swallow, and her eyes drop from Kora's face to the bowl with the two remaining apple slices in it. There's a moment where she wonders if she'd get away with spitting it out, but shakes that thought off quickly enough and forces herself to clear her mouth by swallowing her food instead.
She takes in a deep breath, through her nostrils, enough that her lungs fill to capacity, then exhales slowly with a shake of her head.
"Did he go well?"
As she asks, she turns sideways, eyes still down, and sets the bowl back on the couch cushion for now.
[Kora] "As well as any of us." Kora returns, her attention keen on Drew for another pair of heartbeats after Drew has turned away. Then she withdraws. Looks away, off through the living room past the flickering light of the muted television, toward the kitchen, some indeterminate point of reference in the middle distance.
It's a platitude, the good death; one to which she herself does not perhaps subscribe in the requisite Fenrir manner. But she respects the question, answers it with a quiet, rooted conviction that rises from the circuit of centuries. A half-hundred memories of a half-hundred blooded and bloodied deaths. "He died in battled. Summoned a fire spirit to his aid and won enough of its loyalty that it came to find his tribe. The spirit destroyed whatever remained of his enemies."
There's another way to tell his story. A lone wolf who died alone, or near enough to it by the tribe's estimation; in the company of a Bone Gnawer he didn't know, who left town before his body could be burned, before his rite could be spoken.
That story remains inside Kora. Her voice is calm, still, bracing.
"We'll have his rite at the Caern tonight, or tomorrow. If you want to attend, I'll stake my honor for you with the Grand Elder so that you can see him off to Valhalla."
[Drew Roscoe] The fact that he died in battle seems a quiet sort of reassurance. The fact that his enemies fell just as he had, that he'd earned a deedname in his final act, all of that had her nodding slowly while Kora gave her a short, abridged version of the story. The fact that she didn't call him a lone wolf and explain that the only person to see him go fled town was a kindness to the Kinfolk. People didn't go as they were supposed to these days. Even if you were able to accept the fact that the Fenrir died in youth, fighting as they were meant to, that they were wronged in these last battles in any way was difficult. That lives were wasted, that they could have kept on for greater goods, was difficult to swallow.
She's invited to the Rite, and Drew nods again, lifts her eyes to Kora's. There's no tears, but the congeniality is gone from them, the sparkle and mirth. She's stark for the moment, digesting hard news, but not broken or devastated. Part of being Kin, of being Garou, was learning to take this news with a stalwart face and let it hit you only when no one was around to see you bend so far.
"I'd... appreciate that, Kora. Just let me know the time, I'll make it." There's another pause, and a frown presses her lips thin. Hands come together in front of her abdomen, fingers interlinking, thumbs sliding together, the pad of the right stroking the nail of the left. "Thank you for lettin' me know instead of lettin' me just find out."
[Kora] "If I know who your friends are, Drew," Kora returns with a quiet, sure, immediate conviction. "I will never let you just find out. That is the least of my duty to the living and the dead. " There's a stark passion in Kora's voice, unadorned but vibrant, wrapped about with conviction that few see these nights.
She's looking back at the kinswoman again; that moment's privacy has passed, but the direct look is neither judging nor assessing; just away. Of the way Drew receives the news - somber, but dry-eyed. The sparkle gone from her mouth and eyes. Just once Kora glances down, dark eyes touching on Drew's hands. she who offers sorrow earned her name from a moment like this; in another room, on another shore, bathed in the light of a fire from an ancient hearth rather than the flickering glow of the muted television, the smell of the salt-sea every-present in the air, blood on her own hands, under her nails. In her hair. Stiffing the bottom six inches of her jeans. Soaking into the seams.
Now her hands are clean; empty at her side. Now the room smells of wood polish and Drew's evening meal, smells of rain, and apples. Death is the only constant.
"I'll come for you before the rite. It'll be soon." A flicker of a glance here, down toward Drew's interlaced fingers, then back up to her face. Here, the Skald pauses as if she were listening to something quiet in the distance. "You shouldn't be alone tonight, Drew. You should call Eli. Or Rain, if he's out of town."
[Drew Roscoe] A weak tug occurs at one corner of her mouth when Kora assures her, sternly and passionately both, that she will never simply 'find out' so long as Kora has any indication that Drew was friends with the soul that had passed in a flash of the night, as so many do. Her eyes return to resting downcast, she nods again. That attempt at a thankful smile flutters by like a dead leaf on the breeze, and there's a moment of following quiet.
The home smells empty save for one. The meal she'd cooked had been simple, without garnish, something that would save well as leftovers for the next day's lunch at work. She didn't have mouths to feed besides her own to justify cooking much. There's the smell of apples, for certain, the rain outside, the vague scent of lemon cleaner and a scented plug-in elsewhere as well. It was too quiet in here, Kora picked up on the silence and knew exactly what needed to be done about it. She advised the Kinfolk to call somebody for company.
Drew's lips tug again, this time at both corners, and her chin lifts enough for her to look back up at the taller Skald, the Jarl of the tribe, the bastion of her people.
"Yeah, you're right. I'll give Eli a call." There's a pause, and Drew claps the heels of her hands together sharply. It's to jar herself out of melancholy, at least for the time being. The sound stands as a punctuation between muted shock and returning to proper function. "Kora, you want anything before you're on your way? I could re-heat some stew for you, fetch you a drink, whatever you like?"
[Kora] "Stew sounds divine," Kora returns; her smile is ghostly, bittersweet, but present nonetheless. "Lately it seems like I'm always hungry. Sometimes for the most awful things you can imagine." She breathes out, a subtle, half-withheld laugh. There's little mirth in it, precisely. Just a kind of quiet humor, self-deprecating. Wry beneath the awareness of death in her keen dark eyes. "Not that your stew is awful. I was just thinking it would go great with a yoohoo and some bacon double cheeseburger pringles."
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