[Rain] Rain watches the Skald transit the Sanctuary, full bodied and argent. The poetic mind could draw parallels, but Rain is wise enough not to. She waits until Kora has just about neared her pew, almost come to stop at the end and wait, linger. Almost.
The kinswoman does not make her wait in her waddling state, but rather scoots down the bench to make room for the Jarl of the Fenrir, Alpha of Last Watch, and one of the few True she might actually call a friend. Or perhaps someday even Sister -- in that poetic way, like sisters-in-arms, like fellows of a cause.
Rain pulls her hair over one shoulder, baring the curve of her neck and line of her jaw that is closer to Sorrow as she gently shrugs, as her body readjusts, recurls itself into the balanced-yet-somehow-poised shape it held before. Feet on the back of a pew. Somewhere in her native South, somebody's Mama was reaching for a switch.
"When I lost my bag, I lost my notebook. I'm trying to remember the things I had written down, capture what I can before it's all lost," she says. Her voice is easy; there's no sadness. Mild burr of frustration, and perhaps that's what Roman hears when he enters. Something about how she says I lost my bag implies that there was more at play than mindlessness.
On this, like in many other things, Rain shoulders the blame for the mishap herself. She does not point fingers. Will not accept concessions.
"It's good, though," she says, her smile widening, blossoming at some faintly grasped silver lining. "Forces me to revise, rewrite, reconsider. First drafts are never as amazing as I think they are, you know?" Dark eyes shift upward. She is brave enough, now, to make eye contact for a moment. To let Kora, wolf that she is, look in. To share something like communion before she glances away and slightly down again, lets that glance linger on a strong cheekbone. Further downward to the curl of her mouth.
How far she's come.
[Roman Turner] "I reckon I should of looked inside before I went off all half cocked."
Were the first words that floated through the room, echoing towards the ceiling. If at all possible, Roman Turner looked a little taller, as if he might of grown in his absence. His shoulders were straighter, his bearing prouder despite the bed hair he still sported and the faint shadow shading his chin and upper lip.
"I was just coming ta find ya Miss Rain. Called your number just in case someone answered."
A gaze the same faded gray blue of old jeans came to rest on Kora, flicking from her face down her body to the swell of her belly and back up as if taking inventory. Pregnant with the promise of the future, Kora earned a broad smile.
"Miss Kora, ya look mighty healthy."
[Kora] "I kept journals," Kora returns, low-voiced. Seated now; and the way she sits, easing her weight onto the hard bench of the pew, the look of - yes, relief - when she does, a kind of easing of tension about her mouth and eyes before she stretches, pulling her shoulders back, extending her spine to relieve some of the framed tension of her body. " - for years, yeah? Before I changed. When I was bumming around Europe. Not songs, not stories, I wasn't - " a shake of her pale head stands in with a quiet note in the back of her throat. "a songwriter."
Kora meets Rain's eyes easily; though the look is intent, direct. It's dark enough in the old church that the color is lost in the darkness, covered in fine shadows enlivened by a reflective gleam across the surface. "I wrote everything down, though. Had pictures, clippings, ferry tickets, whatever all pasted inside. Kept them all the time I was at Vindur und Ringing, looking back like I might wake back up in the real world.
"When I came here, I sacrificed them to Maelstrom." She lifts her chin toward the largely-black page of Rain's newest notebook, the twist of her generous mouth supple and sure. "Clean slate. It's not the worst thing in the world, yeah?"
Roman comes in, and Kora's dark eyes flicker up, a neat little smile of pleasure relieving some of the tension in her face. Then he calls her Miss Kora again, and frission of irritation tenses her shoulders. "Just - Kora, Roman. Or Kora-yuf. Or - "
[Rain] They meet eyes as Kora shares, divulges, but it does not leave her vulnerable. Open. There's that reflective gleam to her eyes, like looking into mercury glass, like looking in without hoping to get back out again. An Intensity that Rain will never match.
One she knows that she doesn't need to. It's not her place, or her duty.
"No," she says, without remorse or sadness. "It's not a bad thing at all."
Her attention follows Kora's flicking up, and over -- the kinswoman has to turn her head to follow that look -- to Roman as he enters. And witness this: A smile, full-bodied, welcoming, warm. A welcoming. A homecoming. A small thing; she's his kin, and happy to see him.
"Hey, Roman." Even if the formalities of titles and what not have been lost in the months she's stayed at the church. There's a frission of tension to Kora, but a wealth of sunny disposition from Rain. "You're back!"
Even as he mentions her phone, and that smile faulters a little, curls in at one edge of her mouth to note her annoyance. "Yeah." Flat, but recovering. "Did anyone answer?" Wry, but faintly hopeful.
[Roman Turner] Kora got a solid look as he came closer.
"I can call ya Kora. I can call ya Yuf. I can call ya Alpha. Jarl of the Fenrir. The sister I never had. But I find it mighty hard to ignore nearly seventeen years of manners. In time this place might wear it off of me. For right now? Give me a hug! Both of ya!"
He ate up the distance between them, arms outstretched, a huge smile on his face.
[Kora] Kora returns that solid look with one of her own. Even from a distance it is direct and level, without give. She's not breaking the glance, until he comes closer and demands a hug. Then, the Skald simply turns her legs so that Rain can squeeze out around her and shakes her pale head, the loose, fine strands of her still-damp hair dancing like a pale halo around her shoulders.
It makes her look softer, seeing her with her hair loose rather than pulled back, twisted practically out of the way. That softness - hair, body - is an illusion. There's an animal under her skin.
"Fenrir don't hug, dude," she says, even as she makes a path for Rain to go and hug him. "It's in the enlistment papers they make you sign first thing."
[Rain] If Roman chooses to smoosh them all together into something more huddle that hug, Rain won't complain. Neither will she resist if they take their turns in more orderly ways. She assumes, though, that Kora is about to be hugged whether she likes it or not.
Her hug is firm, squishes him a little, emphatic in its warmth. This sort of thing communicates much: that she understands that something is different, that she doesn't quite know what it is, that she understands it to be good; also that she'd missed him, that he's welcome, that he's loved (in one sense or another). Her mouth quirks at Kora's quip, eyes dance a little bit in brightness at it.
"Oh, man, now you've done it. He'll hug ya in yer sleep if he has to," she teases as Roman's released. "It's our sacred duty to spread hugs and rainbows, y'know," she tells Kora. And this lightness is something they've fostered in her. This wideness to her mouth, generous and teasing; the way she stays close enough to Roman to bump him with her shoulder, egging him wordlessly into confirming this Gaia-Given Task of theirs.
[Roman Turner] "Then I guess it's gonna be a big ole wet kiss."
He spoke over Rain's shoulder, holding her wrapped in his arms in a hug with a kiss to her cheek as he nearly lifted her off her feet in the hug. As soon as he released her, he was swooping around the pew to bend over and hug Kora from behind.
"Can't help it, like Rain said, we're the Skittles of the Nation. We don't leave our affections hiding till it's too late to show em."
In the next moment he was back to bumping shoulders with Rain.
"Smile Kora-yuf, Gaia and we love ya."
Snickering with a wiggle of his brows as he bumped his hip in to Rain, whispering.
"Hope she don't implode."
[Rain] "Nah," she says, interjecting before Kora really responds. "She made it through that meeting what you skipped out on," elbows to his ribs, very lightly, just a nudge. "After that, an unwanted hug's nothin'!"
[Roman Turner] "I missed a meetin? Darn the luck."
[Rain] "Big meeting," she says, serious-faced. Eyes wide. Head tilted just so like she might be scolding him, somehow, somewhat. "But don't you worry. I kept a copy of the Memo all us kin got, so I can catch you up."
Joy.
[Kora] "I've heard that," the creature returns, remaining resolutely seated. Booted feet on the stone floor, hands braced on the wooden bench as she turns to watch Roman's approach. He promises her a big ole wet kiss and she makes a twisting face - something about the turn of phrase that strikes her wrong, that hits some strange, half-hidden chord in her hormonal body has her swallow hard. "That it's like my little rainbow pony everyday, yeah?"
Then she's leaning forward to evade Roman's threading arms as he tries to give her a hug from behind. Tense; genuinely tense, her shoulders firm as rocks, the shoulderblades standing out against the solid musculature of her back, clearly outlined beneath the finely-carded cotton of her tunic. Which is empire-waisted. Which someone bought in the maternity section.
She twists back, gives her packmate a dark-eyed look when he snickers, admonishes her to smile. She doesn't; the twist of her mouth just deepens, a sort of half-swallowed grimace that she struggles to pull back into herself. They discuss the meeting. Kora makes a soft noise in the back of her throat, like negation.
"You got a memo?"
[Rain] "Yes'm," Rain says, but the title is more about expressing, wryly, and with a sardonic twist of her mouth, exactly how amiss she finds this. "From Miss Danicka herself. About how we can bring things to her if it's about many Tribes, or if we don't feel comfortable talkin' to our own elders."
There's no play about the subject matter. Rain does her best to summarize it fairly, to not mock it.
"Like I told Dr. Slaughter: I don't really understand. I'd rather one of you two spoke for me, if anyone's gonna speak for me, if I'm not allowed to speak for myself. I know I don't have breeding, and I don't have Rage, and I don't have renown, or titles or a mate or any of the things that bring us stature...
"But you're my Tribe," she says, pointing a hand, open formed and unaccusatory to Roman. "And you're this pack's Alpha," the hand transits on to Kora. "If you two can't resolve whatever's gone wrong, then it goes upward from you, right? I mean, that's how it normally works, right?"
[Roman Turner] The look that flickered in the depths of his eyes with Kora's reaction to his attempt to hug her was a hurt that was damped down as quick as he could manage it. They were Pack, touch was very important to him. Still he stepped back out of reach, forcing a blankness to his face.
"I ain't got a clue what this memo stuff is about, but I can say this. Ya got a problem ya come to me. If I am the problem, ya go to Kora. If I am not here, ya call me. Don't do a Starla on me."
Once more pain flashed in his eyes.
"Ya call me, ya hear? If I can't handle it, I'll seek help from my Pack and if that ain't enough, I'll go to the Sept. Ok?"
[Kora] Kora makes another flat noise. She's getting up now, though. Hands braced on either side of her thighs for a bit of extra leverage as she rises. It's raining, and warm enough that the night air has the faint metallic tinge, promising more. In places, the water drips through the holes in the roof, runs in rivulets through the channels in the mortar. Plashes down from the high-beamed, half-broken ceiling. In other places, it simply falls, a pattern of darker shadows against the tarps covering the roof.
Roman's hurt that Kora pulls away from his hug; Kora's an animal trapped in a human's body. Literally trapped - no outlet for her rage, no avenue for her instincts. Every step she takes reminds her just how leashed she is. At night, she dreams of running, tastes blood from a kill in her mouth and wakes up - yearning for it, to run like that again.
She gains her feet, slides her hands into the front pockets of her long-slung jeans, elbows framing her stomach. Closes her eyes, takes a breath, and swallows it back, glancing between Roman and Rain. "Come to us with any problems you have, Rain. I think - " here she expels a single, forceful breath. " - that liaison business is meant if, like. Roman or I were beating you. A last resort thing. Or if we were too long absent. The rest," she shakes her head. "Just Shadow Lords overreaching."
[Rain] Don't do a Starla on me.
Rain exhales a little, like there's a weight there to be considered and pressed aside. Like it's heavy to her, too, this thing he brings up about his blood-cousin. She reaches up to rub the heel of her head against her forehead for a moment, then lets it fall down and away.
"Sounds like a plan. I'll bring things to ya'll, and I'll be polite to Miss Liaison when I need to be, like anyone else the Grand Elder appoints to any position he sees fit."
It sounds decisive, clear and unmuddied. Rain steps out of Kora's way and is not foolish enough to offer assistance -- even waddling the Skald is fully capable on her own.
"I'm sorry 'bout the phone," she tells Roman, belatedly, and without context beyond the note on the fridge. "I'll get a new one sorted, and then maybe you can help me put the number back in?" She goes to gather up her notebook, tucks it into the crook of her arm.
"Til then, let's go make up somethin' for dinner, yeah? I'm sure there's enough in the cabinets for a welcome-home something. Maybe not quite a feast, but more than tuna fish and crackers."
(Faaaade?)
[Kora] (is perfect fade for me!)
[Roman Turner] "I'll take ya out to go get a new one and while we make dinner, ya can tell me how ya lost your purse."
He nodded to Kora and headed for the kitchen, holding the door for Rain and then followed her in.
[Roman Turner] ((Thanks!))
The kinswoman does not make her wait in her waddling state, but rather scoots down the bench to make room for the Jarl of the Fenrir, Alpha of Last Watch, and one of the few True she might actually call a friend. Or perhaps someday even Sister -- in that poetic way, like sisters-in-arms, like fellows of a cause.
Rain pulls her hair over one shoulder, baring the curve of her neck and line of her jaw that is closer to Sorrow as she gently shrugs, as her body readjusts, recurls itself into the balanced-yet-somehow-poised shape it held before. Feet on the back of a pew. Somewhere in her native South, somebody's Mama was reaching for a switch.
"When I lost my bag, I lost my notebook. I'm trying to remember the things I had written down, capture what I can before it's all lost," she says. Her voice is easy; there's no sadness. Mild burr of frustration, and perhaps that's what Roman hears when he enters. Something about how she says I lost my bag implies that there was more at play than mindlessness.
On this, like in many other things, Rain shoulders the blame for the mishap herself. She does not point fingers. Will not accept concessions.
"It's good, though," she says, her smile widening, blossoming at some faintly grasped silver lining. "Forces me to revise, rewrite, reconsider. First drafts are never as amazing as I think they are, you know?" Dark eyes shift upward. She is brave enough, now, to make eye contact for a moment. To let Kora, wolf that she is, look in. To share something like communion before she glances away and slightly down again, lets that glance linger on a strong cheekbone. Further downward to the curl of her mouth.
How far she's come.
[Roman Turner] "I reckon I should of looked inside before I went off all half cocked."
Were the first words that floated through the room, echoing towards the ceiling. If at all possible, Roman Turner looked a little taller, as if he might of grown in his absence. His shoulders were straighter, his bearing prouder despite the bed hair he still sported and the faint shadow shading his chin and upper lip.
"I was just coming ta find ya Miss Rain. Called your number just in case someone answered."
A gaze the same faded gray blue of old jeans came to rest on Kora, flicking from her face down her body to the swell of her belly and back up as if taking inventory. Pregnant with the promise of the future, Kora earned a broad smile.
"Miss Kora, ya look mighty healthy."
[Kora] "I kept journals," Kora returns, low-voiced. Seated now; and the way she sits, easing her weight onto the hard bench of the pew, the look of - yes, relief - when she does, a kind of easing of tension about her mouth and eyes before she stretches, pulling her shoulders back, extending her spine to relieve some of the framed tension of her body. " - for years, yeah? Before I changed. When I was bumming around Europe. Not songs, not stories, I wasn't - " a shake of her pale head stands in with a quiet note in the back of her throat. "a songwriter."
Kora meets Rain's eyes easily; though the look is intent, direct. It's dark enough in the old church that the color is lost in the darkness, covered in fine shadows enlivened by a reflective gleam across the surface. "I wrote everything down, though. Had pictures, clippings, ferry tickets, whatever all pasted inside. Kept them all the time I was at Vindur und Ringing, looking back like I might wake back up in the real world.
"When I came here, I sacrificed them to Maelstrom." She lifts her chin toward the largely-black page of Rain's newest notebook, the twist of her generous mouth supple and sure. "Clean slate. It's not the worst thing in the world, yeah?"
Roman comes in, and Kora's dark eyes flicker up, a neat little smile of pleasure relieving some of the tension in her face. Then he calls her Miss Kora again, and frission of irritation tenses her shoulders. "Just - Kora, Roman. Or Kora-yuf. Or - "
[Rain] They meet eyes as Kora shares, divulges, but it does not leave her vulnerable. Open. There's that reflective gleam to her eyes, like looking into mercury glass, like looking in without hoping to get back out again. An Intensity that Rain will never match.
One she knows that she doesn't need to. It's not her place, or her duty.
"No," she says, without remorse or sadness. "It's not a bad thing at all."
Her attention follows Kora's flicking up, and over -- the kinswoman has to turn her head to follow that look -- to Roman as he enters. And witness this: A smile, full-bodied, welcoming, warm. A welcoming. A homecoming. A small thing; she's his kin, and happy to see him.
"Hey, Roman." Even if the formalities of titles and what not have been lost in the months she's stayed at the church. There's a frission of tension to Kora, but a wealth of sunny disposition from Rain. "You're back!"
Even as he mentions her phone, and that smile faulters a little, curls in at one edge of her mouth to note her annoyance. "Yeah." Flat, but recovering. "Did anyone answer?" Wry, but faintly hopeful.
[Roman Turner] Kora got a solid look as he came closer.
"I can call ya Kora. I can call ya Yuf. I can call ya Alpha. Jarl of the Fenrir. The sister I never had. But I find it mighty hard to ignore nearly seventeen years of manners. In time this place might wear it off of me. For right now? Give me a hug! Both of ya!"
He ate up the distance between them, arms outstretched, a huge smile on his face.
[Kora] Kora returns that solid look with one of her own. Even from a distance it is direct and level, without give. She's not breaking the glance, until he comes closer and demands a hug. Then, the Skald simply turns her legs so that Rain can squeeze out around her and shakes her pale head, the loose, fine strands of her still-damp hair dancing like a pale halo around her shoulders.
It makes her look softer, seeing her with her hair loose rather than pulled back, twisted practically out of the way. That softness - hair, body - is an illusion. There's an animal under her skin.
"Fenrir don't hug, dude," she says, even as she makes a path for Rain to go and hug him. "It's in the enlistment papers they make you sign first thing."
[Rain] If Roman chooses to smoosh them all together into something more huddle that hug, Rain won't complain. Neither will she resist if they take their turns in more orderly ways. She assumes, though, that Kora is about to be hugged whether she likes it or not.
Her hug is firm, squishes him a little, emphatic in its warmth. This sort of thing communicates much: that she understands that something is different, that she doesn't quite know what it is, that she understands it to be good; also that she'd missed him, that he's welcome, that he's loved (in one sense or another). Her mouth quirks at Kora's quip, eyes dance a little bit in brightness at it.
"Oh, man, now you've done it. He'll hug ya in yer sleep if he has to," she teases as Roman's released. "It's our sacred duty to spread hugs and rainbows, y'know," she tells Kora. And this lightness is something they've fostered in her. This wideness to her mouth, generous and teasing; the way she stays close enough to Roman to bump him with her shoulder, egging him wordlessly into confirming this Gaia-Given Task of theirs.
[Roman Turner] "Then I guess it's gonna be a big ole wet kiss."
He spoke over Rain's shoulder, holding her wrapped in his arms in a hug with a kiss to her cheek as he nearly lifted her off her feet in the hug. As soon as he released her, he was swooping around the pew to bend over and hug Kora from behind.
"Can't help it, like Rain said, we're the Skittles of the Nation. We don't leave our affections hiding till it's too late to show em."
In the next moment he was back to bumping shoulders with Rain.
"Smile Kora-yuf, Gaia and we love ya."
Snickering with a wiggle of his brows as he bumped his hip in to Rain, whispering.
"Hope she don't implode."
[Rain] "Nah," she says, interjecting before Kora really responds. "She made it through that meeting what you skipped out on," elbows to his ribs, very lightly, just a nudge. "After that, an unwanted hug's nothin'!"
[Roman Turner] "I missed a meetin? Darn the luck."
[Rain] "Big meeting," she says, serious-faced. Eyes wide. Head tilted just so like she might be scolding him, somehow, somewhat. "But don't you worry. I kept a copy of the Memo all us kin got, so I can catch you up."
Joy.
[Kora] "I've heard that," the creature returns, remaining resolutely seated. Booted feet on the stone floor, hands braced on the wooden bench as she turns to watch Roman's approach. He promises her a big ole wet kiss and she makes a twisting face - something about the turn of phrase that strikes her wrong, that hits some strange, half-hidden chord in her hormonal body has her swallow hard. "That it's like my little rainbow pony everyday, yeah?"
Then she's leaning forward to evade Roman's threading arms as he tries to give her a hug from behind. Tense; genuinely tense, her shoulders firm as rocks, the shoulderblades standing out against the solid musculature of her back, clearly outlined beneath the finely-carded cotton of her tunic. Which is empire-waisted. Which someone bought in the maternity section.
She twists back, gives her packmate a dark-eyed look when he snickers, admonishes her to smile. She doesn't; the twist of her mouth just deepens, a sort of half-swallowed grimace that she struggles to pull back into herself. They discuss the meeting. Kora makes a soft noise in the back of her throat, like negation.
"You got a memo?"
[Rain] "Yes'm," Rain says, but the title is more about expressing, wryly, and with a sardonic twist of her mouth, exactly how amiss she finds this. "From Miss Danicka herself. About how we can bring things to her if it's about many Tribes, or if we don't feel comfortable talkin' to our own elders."
There's no play about the subject matter. Rain does her best to summarize it fairly, to not mock it.
"Like I told Dr. Slaughter: I don't really understand. I'd rather one of you two spoke for me, if anyone's gonna speak for me, if I'm not allowed to speak for myself. I know I don't have breeding, and I don't have Rage, and I don't have renown, or titles or a mate or any of the things that bring us stature...
"But you're my Tribe," she says, pointing a hand, open formed and unaccusatory to Roman. "And you're this pack's Alpha," the hand transits on to Kora. "If you two can't resolve whatever's gone wrong, then it goes upward from you, right? I mean, that's how it normally works, right?"
[Roman Turner] The look that flickered in the depths of his eyes with Kora's reaction to his attempt to hug her was a hurt that was damped down as quick as he could manage it. They were Pack, touch was very important to him. Still he stepped back out of reach, forcing a blankness to his face.
"I ain't got a clue what this memo stuff is about, but I can say this. Ya got a problem ya come to me. If I am the problem, ya go to Kora. If I am not here, ya call me. Don't do a Starla on me."
Once more pain flashed in his eyes.
"Ya call me, ya hear? If I can't handle it, I'll seek help from my Pack and if that ain't enough, I'll go to the Sept. Ok?"
[Kora] Kora makes another flat noise. She's getting up now, though. Hands braced on either side of her thighs for a bit of extra leverage as she rises. It's raining, and warm enough that the night air has the faint metallic tinge, promising more. In places, the water drips through the holes in the roof, runs in rivulets through the channels in the mortar. Plashes down from the high-beamed, half-broken ceiling. In other places, it simply falls, a pattern of darker shadows against the tarps covering the roof.
Roman's hurt that Kora pulls away from his hug; Kora's an animal trapped in a human's body. Literally trapped - no outlet for her rage, no avenue for her instincts. Every step she takes reminds her just how leashed she is. At night, she dreams of running, tastes blood from a kill in her mouth and wakes up - yearning for it, to run like that again.
She gains her feet, slides her hands into the front pockets of her long-slung jeans, elbows framing her stomach. Closes her eyes, takes a breath, and swallows it back, glancing between Roman and Rain. "Come to us with any problems you have, Rain. I think - " here she expels a single, forceful breath. " - that liaison business is meant if, like. Roman or I were beating you. A last resort thing. Or if we were too long absent. The rest," she shakes her head. "Just Shadow Lords overreaching."
[Rain] Don't do a Starla on me.
Rain exhales a little, like there's a weight there to be considered and pressed aside. Like it's heavy to her, too, this thing he brings up about his blood-cousin. She reaches up to rub the heel of her head against her forehead for a moment, then lets it fall down and away.
"Sounds like a plan. I'll bring things to ya'll, and I'll be polite to Miss Liaison when I need to be, like anyone else the Grand Elder appoints to any position he sees fit."
It sounds decisive, clear and unmuddied. Rain steps out of Kora's way and is not foolish enough to offer assistance -- even waddling the Skald is fully capable on her own.
"I'm sorry 'bout the phone," she tells Roman, belatedly, and without context beyond the note on the fridge. "I'll get a new one sorted, and then maybe you can help me put the number back in?" She goes to gather up her notebook, tucks it into the crook of her arm.
"Til then, let's go make up somethin' for dinner, yeah? I'm sure there's enough in the cabinets for a welcome-home something. Maybe not quite a feast, but more than tuna fish and crackers."
(Faaaade?)
[Kora] (is perfect fade for me!)
[Roman Turner] "I'll take ya out to go get a new one and while we make dinner, ya can tell me how ya lost your purse."
He nodded to Kora and headed for the kitchen, holding the door for Rain and then followed her in.
[Roman Turner] ((Thanks!))
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