[Rory] She has not kept track of how long she's been waiting. It really doesn't matter to the young Ahroun. She'd been invited in, given a beer and a place to sit out of the wind, the rain. Sometimes, that is all that is needed. For one such as Rory, it is more than is ever expected. Erik has gone on to do something else, and Rory still waits patiently. Soon, she is slipping to sit on the floor next to a makeshift coffee table and opened her pack. Inside, her tools - from the small and delicate, like her fingers, to the larger and stronger, like her will - and her current project. Some little mechanical doodad, a music box, most likely, as that is what she favors.
There is something to be said for bringing about beauty in the broken...
So she is found, mostly empty beer at her elbow, her head bowed over her task, her curls hiding her expression, which is one of concentration and calm, as she plucks piece after piece of the broken box apart, only to put it back together again - in working order.
[Kora] The church is quiet, cool. There's rain running from the eaves, down the broken gutters, over the half-patched flashing on the roof, leaking through the seams in the tarps spread over the largest holes, the ones that left great gaping wounds through which the ever orange sky was visible. The darkness inside is not absolute; it is patchily broken. There are braziers fixed in iron to the great stone columns and a rather more prosaic camping lantern blazing incandescent light.
Sorrow's footsteps are quiet for all her weight now. Quiet but not silent. It was never her way to sneak up on another. So here: a door in the south-western wall swings open, and she's walking through the ruined old sanctuary a moment later, hands pushed into her front pockets to the first knuckle, gray cotton sweatshirt unzipped, hanging loose and empty about her torso. She is late in pregnancy now, and the new weight and all its attendant discomforts and compromises defines every move the Skald makes.
So it is that she waddles rather than walks across the stone and marble floor, through the damp, chilly air, taking a direct path for the Fianna. There she pauses, rocking back on her heels, pulling her shoulders directly back as well. "Rory," she says, by way of greeting when she's close enough to speak and be heard. "You're here to see me, yeah?" Then, " - what are you making?"
[Rory] So many sounds have faded into the background as she works, her fingers - for all their fragility, pale and slender and looking to be easily broken, shattered - dexterous and sure, confident in each little minute turn of a screw here, bend of a bit of metal there, tighten of a spring just under there... this is what she knows, where she draws comfort, where she feels most at home. It brings her to a place of peace in a past that is dark - so very dark - with horrors done to her, around her. Stories no one knows, stories she doesn't tell, stories most would think to steal her innocence, her shyness.
Instead, it enhanced it.
Still, through all this, though she hears her approach, she still starts a little as Kora speaks, her head snapping up, and there is something across her face that speaks to those nightmares, dancing across flesh in a quick succession of fear to recognition. It settles on the last, and Rory offers a shy smile, lowering her eyes in respect as she nods. "Yes."
Single words are easier. As Kora asks about her project, she straightens her shoulders, confident in this, if not in much else while in her monkey skin. "A busic mox." It's still in pieces, not ready to play it's tune, but she turns to her backpack, instead, and pulls out another. This one - this one is in the shape of a guitar, metal polished and gleaming, every bit of tarnish carefully buffed away. There are minor imperfections that speak to it's age, but when Rory turns the key, it plays it's tune - tinny, but true.
"I thix fings." she peeks up through curls, her shy smile accompanied by a little shrug. "This one is for be thaby. If you'll have it." She sets it on the table, nearest to where Kora stands, and waits, quietly.
[Kora] Sorrow watches Rory steadily, her dark eyes intent, cutting from fragile jaw to fine, thin hands, to the flush of lashes across the metis' (deceptively) soft cheek as the creature lowers her gaze - out of respect, out of shyness, out of deference to territory or rank or the sheer, ferocious reputation of the Skald's tribe.
Though tonight Sorrow does not look the part. The cycle of sleeplessness and restlessness is beginning to talk its toll, and a certain unspent tension from the evening's earlier discussions lingers as a frame around her mouth and eyes, present but difficult to place.
Still, there's something easy about the way Kora offers Rory a shadow of her usual half-smile; generous mouth quickened at the corners, the answering light of the expression finding its way into the shape of her eyes, shadowing the tension clearly evident there. Framing it with something brighter.
Her hands are still in the front pockets of her jeans, arms framing the weight of her stomach. A human woman might touch the curve of her stomach in near-Pavlovian response to the word baby, but Kora is not human, and does not do so. Instead, she dips her chin with a certain attentive gravity. Says, "Thank you," with a precision that verges on the formal, and feels both old and new. "It's lovely, and generous of you to offer. I'm sure my mate will enjoy it, too."
A minute pause, dark eyes still on Rory's face. "You didn't come here just to give me a music box, did you?"
[Rory] She flushes, a blush as natural as her shy smile, as her twisted words. Odd, a full moon that succumbs to such frailties, so often. Perhaps it is due to her coloring, or her upbringing, but either way - this is one born of pleasure, of pride in the simple thanks of an elder, for something offered from her own hands. It's not hard to imagine such moments of praise are few and far between. Enough so that she cherishes each and every one, holds them close to her heart, to pull out and examine in the darkest of times. This joins those cherished memories, all on the wings of a simple blush.
"No." She admits, and shakes her head, but wrinkles her nose slightly. "Though I hould wave." clarification she feels necessary in the wake of her next comment, and her question. "Roman said I bould she bold. It's... difficult." Understatement to the extreme. She is bold in one instance, alone - war. In that, she never wavers. She has fought beside the Last Watch. She trusts that Kora knows the difference between that - and this.
But she steels herself, and squares her shoulders, lifts her eyes to somewhere along Kora's cheekbone - as high as she dares, and there is no doubt in the way she twists her hands about her tool, that this daring is nothing less than a pure test of her will - one she doesn't want to fail. "I bave heen without a pack a tong lime. You have need of a Mull Foon. I am shy, here, thike lis. I know. Not in battle. Never in battle. I'd like a chance to run yith wou, and see if maybe I can find a hack pere."
She ends in a rush, and all but holds her breath.
[Kora] Kora stands a half-head taller than Rory, maybe more. Her pale head gleams with reflected firelight, but her eyes are more enshadowed, fixed steadily on the Fianna Ahroun as she summons the will to be bold, as Roman told her.
With that view of the pale-skinned Fenrir's right cheekbone, Rory can see the supple movement of skin over muscle as the Skald offers the Fianna a faint, wry half-smile when she mentions Kora's packmate.
"Roman was right," Kora returns, that wryness finding its way into her voice as well, her attention steady on the Ahroun, watchful and appraising in a manner than conspires not to be invasive. It's the way her dark eyes move; taking in the subtle changes in musculature, the sweep of light across the metis' features, the pulse of pure blood underneath her skin.
"We need a full moon, and Garou were not meant to run along. You and I have fought together, I know what you can do in battle." A small pause as she breathes in through her nose, never looking away. " - do you know anything of our totem? What he expects from us?"
[Rory] Roman was right, and in that - Rory blushes again. That she tries here, now, shows how much she has grown in her time in Chicago. Some questioned her decision to pack with a sneaky shadow lord, but he - and their totem - taught her the power of acceptance, and set her on the path to accepting her frailty, and becoming the stronger for it. She is a work in progress, and unafraid of the work it involves.
And she grins a little grin when Kora asks her question. She knows all of the totems followed in chicago, and is aware of the contradiction that could be seen in her seeking this. "Hermóðr." She slaughters the pronunciation, and wrinkles her nose at the rest... "be Thrave."
She straightens her shoulders, though, and nods slightly, again. "Steadfast. Strong. I am bis in thattle, and struggle lo tearn elsewhere. I try."
And in that, is the sum of Rory O'Bryne. She tries, and she throws all she is into that. Sometimes she succeeds, and accepts that with blushes and surprise. Sometimes she fails - but she does not give up. She tries again.
[Kora] "The story is," returns the Skald, that minute shift in her expression as her mouth widens briefly, curves upward at the rightmost corner, then settles back into a neutral expression. " - that Hermóðr road to the gates of Hel to save Baldr from death, and then flung himself over them, pleading so eloquently with Hel - nevermind the seven day and seven night ride over the roads of the dead to get there - that even cold-she promised to return Baldr to the lands of the living should everything in the world weep for the dead god.
"Of course," that twist again, a faint not of undervoiced humor. " - Loki intervened and war ravaged the land, but that's another story for another time. He's of Fenris' brood, but he does expect steadiness and strength; and control above all else."
A brief crease in her brow, then - a brief, sharply exhaled breath. "And yes," that hint of humor flashing beneath the surface. " - bold, yeah? And if nothing else, you've been steadfast in your devotion to Maelstrom."
The crease returns, Kora studies Rory quietly, then, asks, with a certain solemnity. "Did you know Drawn in Blood?"
[Rory] She listens to it all, absorbing the story as Kora tells it, even hopes in the promise story for another time. She is a sponge, soaking in every little bit, every offered learning. It makes one wonder what she could have been, if she were raised differently.
But then, she wouldn't be Rory. Rory, who wrinkles her nose, and blushes with a little nod. "Bold." Yeah.
Then she mentions John, and she bites her lip, absently. She shakes her head then, curls bouncing about her chin. "Met him - nut bot much more."
[Kora] "He was a metis, like you. The Get of Fenris don't have the same prejudices against the Sin-Born that your tribe exhibits. Among Fenrir, a name is a name, and a rank is a rank. If you are strong enough to be recognized as a Fenrir, strong enough to rise in rank, strong enough to follow the tribe or - " a brief pause, narrow, alert, " - lead it, then you are strong enough to be respected as any other Fenrir.
"Mind, we're not polite about it. Ever Fenrir has to prove his strength, usually over and over again. But there it is."
Kora pauses, glances away, out toward the edges of the church where the darkest shadows gather.
"I liked Drawn in Blood. I performed his Gathering. When he came to Chicago, I asked him to run with my pack. I feel naked without a modi at my side. Have ever since War-Handed left.
"But he chose to pack with Hunter and Joey instead." The moon is null; there's a certain equanimity there that she can maintain thanks to the dark moon somewhere overhead, above the clouds: just a shadow. A void.
"I don't know the truth of what happened. But I know something happened. Some kinswoman - Strider by blood, though she was there by grace of a Shadow Lord - came to his funeral. Made a scene, making eyes at his packmates who could hardly stand to look at her. Rumor is she thought that they were mates.
"How long that went on, I cannot begin to say.
"But Hunter and Joey - his Alpha and his tribe and packmate - they allowed that to go on. Blessed it, somehow, whether through not so benign neglect or active deception. Maybe they wanted to let him have this pretense of normality. Maybe they were just too weak to tell him know.
"But I know this: what they did opened the door inside him to the Wyrm. Because Drawn in Blood did not just die. After death, his corpse was possessed by the Unmaker, turned into a mockery of itself, a ravenous, death-hungry thing without mind or soul. Defiled in death," a sour note, a spark of disgust in the back of her throat.
"I would have told him no. Maybe he would've rebelled; left the pack, run away. Maybe he'd still be alive, fighting beside me, a strong right hand.
"That's what I offer you, Rory. That troth. You earn every name you bear, and I will respect that. I will remember that you are sin-born only when it is necessary. And if it is necessary, I will remind you, too, of what it means. But only then.
"If you still want to run with us, Tongue-Twister, you are welcome in my house."
[Rory] She listens, closely. She learns the tale of one such as she, a Fenrir, that gained strength and names and in the end fell. There's a shiver that slides under her skin, her arms wrapping around her waist, as she listens to what happened, to what is counted as the downfall of Drawn-in-Blood. She bites her lower lip, chewing absently, and does not answer right away.
She is sin-born. She has had it pounded within her to know what it is, what it means. She has strayed, a time, or two - but never, ever has she assumed she could be normal. She lifts a hand, and rubs at the side of her nose, and then nods. Her decision was made before she came, before she dared speak to Roman, before she managed to screw up her courage to speak with Kora.
A nod. She will challenge soon, and she wishes to do so with a pack waiting for her, to celebrate, or to bolster her though disappointment, and help give her the strength to try again. Three words, that mean a wealth of things.
"I tant woo."
There is something to be said for bringing about beauty in the broken...
So she is found, mostly empty beer at her elbow, her head bowed over her task, her curls hiding her expression, which is one of concentration and calm, as she plucks piece after piece of the broken box apart, only to put it back together again - in working order.
[Kora] The church is quiet, cool. There's rain running from the eaves, down the broken gutters, over the half-patched flashing on the roof, leaking through the seams in the tarps spread over the largest holes, the ones that left great gaping wounds through which the ever orange sky was visible. The darkness inside is not absolute; it is patchily broken. There are braziers fixed in iron to the great stone columns and a rather more prosaic camping lantern blazing incandescent light.
Sorrow's footsteps are quiet for all her weight now. Quiet but not silent. It was never her way to sneak up on another. So here: a door in the south-western wall swings open, and she's walking through the ruined old sanctuary a moment later, hands pushed into her front pockets to the first knuckle, gray cotton sweatshirt unzipped, hanging loose and empty about her torso. She is late in pregnancy now, and the new weight and all its attendant discomforts and compromises defines every move the Skald makes.
So it is that she waddles rather than walks across the stone and marble floor, through the damp, chilly air, taking a direct path for the Fianna. There she pauses, rocking back on her heels, pulling her shoulders directly back as well. "Rory," she says, by way of greeting when she's close enough to speak and be heard. "You're here to see me, yeah?" Then, " - what are you making?"
[Rory] So many sounds have faded into the background as she works, her fingers - for all their fragility, pale and slender and looking to be easily broken, shattered - dexterous and sure, confident in each little minute turn of a screw here, bend of a bit of metal there, tighten of a spring just under there... this is what she knows, where she draws comfort, where she feels most at home. It brings her to a place of peace in a past that is dark - so very dark - with horrors done to her, around her. Stories no one knows, stories she doesn't tell, stories most would think to steal her innocence, her shyness.
Instead, it enhanced it.
Still, through all this, though she hears her approach, she still starts a little as Kora speaks, her head snapping up, and there is something across her face that speaks to those nightmares, dancing across flesh in a quick succession of fear to recognition. It settles on the last, and Rory offers a shy smile, lowering her eyes in respect as she nods. "Yes."
Single words are easier. As Kora asks about her project, she straightens her shoulders, confident in this, if not in much else while in her monkey skin. "A busic mox." It's still in pieces, not ready to play it's tune, but she turns to her backpack, instead, and pulls out another. This one - this one is in the shape of a guitar, metal polished and gleaming, every bit of tarnish carefully buffed away. There are minor imperfections that speak to it's age, but when Rory turns the key, it plays it's tune - tinny, but true.
"I thix fings." she peeks up through curls, her shy smile accompanied by a little shrug. "This one is for be thaby. If you'll have it." She sets it on the table, nearest to where Kora stands, and waits, quietly.
[Kora] Sorrow watches Rory steadily, her dark eyes intent, cutting from fragile jaw to fine, thin hands, to the flush of lashes across the metis' (deceptively) soft cheek as the creature lowers her gaze - out of respect, out of shyness, out of deference to territory or rank or the sheer, ferocious reputation of the Skald's tribe.
Though tonight Sorrow does not look the part. The cycle of sleeplessness and restlessness is beginning to talk its toll, and a certain unspent tension from the evening's earlier discussions lingers as a frame around her mouth and eyes, present but difficult to place.
Still, there's something easy about the way Kora offers Rory a shadow of her usual half-smile; generous mouth quickened at the corners, the answering light of the expression finding its way into the shape of her eyes, shadowing the tension clearly evident there. Framing it with something brighter.
Her hands are still in the front pockets of her jeans, arms framing the weight of her stomach. A human woman might touch the curve of her stomach in near-Pavlovian response to the word baby, but Kora is not human, and does not do so. Instead, she dips her chin with a certain attentive gravity. Says, "Thank you," with a precision that verges on the formal, and feels both old and new. "It's lovely, and generous of you to offer. I'm sure my mate will enjoy it, too."
A minute pause, dark eyes still on Rory's face. "You didn't come here just to give me a music box, did you?"
[Rory] She flushes, a blush as natural as her shy smile, as her twisted words. Odd, a full moon that succumbs to such frailties, so often. Perhaps it is due to her coloring, or her upbringing, but either way - this is one born of pleasure, of pride in the simple thanks of an elder, for something offered from her own hands. It's not hard to imagine such moments of praise are few and far between. Enough so that she cherishes each and every one, holds them close to her heart, to pull out and examine in the darkest of times. This joins those cherished memories, all on the wings of a simple blush.
"No." She admits, and shakes her head, but wrinkles her nose slightly. "Though I hould wave." clarification she feels necessary in the wake of her next comment, and her question. "Roman said I bould she bold. It's... difficult." Understatement to the extreme. She is bold in one instance, alone - war. In that, she never wavers. She has fought beside the Last Watch. She trusts that Kora knows the difference between that - and this.
But she steels herself, and squares her shoulders, lifts her eyes to somewhere along Kora's cheekbone - as high as she dares, and there is no doubt in the way she twists her hands about her tool, that this daring is nothing less than a pure test of her will - one she doesn't want to fail. "I bave heen without a pack a tong lime. You have need of a Mull Foon. I am shy, here, thike lis. I know. Not in battle. Never in battle. I'd like a chance to run yith wou, and see if maybe I can find a hack pere."
She ends in a rush, and all but holds her breath.
[Kora] Kora stands a half-head taller than Rory, maybe more. Her pale head gleams with reflected firelight, but her eyes are more enshadowed, fixed steadily on the Fianna Ahroun as she summons the will to be bold, as Roman told her.
With that view of the pale-skinned Fenrir's right cheekbone, Rory can see the supple movement of skin over muscle as the Skald offers the Fianna a faint, wry half-smile when she mentions Kora's packmate.
"Roman was right," Kora returns, that wryness finding its way into her voice as well, her attention steady on the Ahroun, watchful and appraising in a manner than conspires not to be invasive. It's the way her dark eyes move; taking in the subtle changes in musculature, the sweep of light across the metis' features, the pulse of pure blood underneath her skin.
"We need a full moon, and Garou were not meant to run along. You and I have fought together, I know what you can do in battle." A small pause as she breathes in through her nose, never looking away. " - do you know anything of our totem? What he expects from us?"
[Rory] Roman was right, and in that - Rory blushes again. That she tries here, now, shows how much she has grown in her time in Chicago. Some questioned her decision to pack with a sneaky shadow lord, but he - and their totem - taught her the power of acceptance, and set her on the path to accepting her frailty, and becoming the stronger for it. She is a work in progress, and unafraid of the work it involves.
And she grins a little grin when Kora asks her question. She knows all of the totems followed in chicago, and is aware of the contradiction that could be seen in her seeking this. "Hermóðr." She slaughters the pronunciation, and wrinkles her nose at the rest... "be Thrave."
She straightens her shoulders, though, and nods slightly, again. "Steadfast. Strong. I am bis in thattle, and struggle lo tearn elsewhere. I try."
And in that, is the sum of Rory O'Bryne. She tries, and she throws all she is into that. Sometimes she succeeds, and accepts that with blushes and surprise. Sometimes she fails - but she does not give up. She tries again.
[Kora] "The story is," returns the Skald, that minute shift in her expression as her mouth widens briefly, curves upward at the rightmost corner, then settles back into a neutral expression. " - that Hermóðr road to the gates of Hel to save Baldr from death, and then flung himself over them, pleading so eloquently with Hel - nevermind the seven day and seven night ride over the roads of the dead to get there - that even cold-she promised to return Baldr to the lands of the living should everything in the world weep for the dead god.
"Of course," that twist again, a faint not of undervoiced humor. " - Loki intervened and war ravaged the land, but that's another story for another time. He's of Fenris' brood, but he does expect steadiness and strength; and control above all else."
A brief crease in her brow, then - a brief, sharply exhaled breath. "And yes," that hint of humor flashing beneath the surface. " - bold, yeah? And if nothing else, you've been steadfast in your devotion to Maelstrom."
The crease returns, Kora studies Rory quietly, then, asks, with a certain solemnity. "Did you know Drawn in Blood?"
[Rory] She listens to it all, absorbing the story as Kora tells it, even hopes in the promise story for another time. She is a sponge, soaking in every little bit, every offered learning. It makes one wonder what she could have been, if she were raised differently.
But then, she wouldn't be Rory. Rory, who wrinkles her nose, and blushes with a little nod. "Bold." Yeah.
Then she mentions John, and she bites her lip, absently. She shakes her head then, curls bouncing about her chin. "Met him - nut bot much more."
[Kora] "He was a metis, like you. The Get of Fenris don't have the same prejudices against the Sin-Born that your tribe exhibits. Among Fenrir, a name is a name, and a rank is a rank. If you are strong enough to be recognized as a Fenrir, strong enough to rise in rank, strong enough to follow the tribe or - " a brief pause, narrow, alert, " - lead it, then you are strong enough to be respected as any other Fenrir.
"Mind, we're not polite about it. Ever Fenrir has to prove his strength, usually over and over again. But there it is."
Kora pauses, glances away, out toward the edges of the church where the darkest shadows gather.
"I liked Drawn in Blood. I performed his Gathering. When he came to Chicago, I asked him to run with my pack. I feel naked without a modi at my side. Have ever since War-Handed left.
"But he chose to pack with Hunter and Joey instead." The moon is null; there's a certain equanimity there that she can maintain thanks to the dark moon somewhere overhead, above the clouds: just a shadow. A void.
"I don't know the truth of what happened. But I know something happened. Some kinswoman - Strider by blood, though she was there by grace of a Shadow Lord - came to his funeral. Made a scene, making eyes at his packmates who could hardly stand to look at her. Rumor is she thought that they were mates.
"How long that went on, I cannot begin to say.
"But Hunter and Joey - his Alpha and his tribe and packmate - they allowed that to go on. Blessed it, somehow, whether through not so benign neglect or active deception. Maybe they wanted to let him have this pretense of normality. Maybe they were just too weak to tell him know.
"But I know this: what they did opened the door inside him to the Wyrm. Because Drawn in Blood did not just die. After death, his corpse was possessed by the Unmaker, turned into a mockery of itself, a ravenous, death-hungry thing without mind or soul. Defiled in death," a sour note, a spark of disgust in the back of her throat.
"I would have told him no. Maybe he would've rebelled; left the pack, run away. Maybe he'd still be alive, fighting beside me, a strong right hand.
"That's what I offer you, Rory. That troth. You earn every name you bear, and I will respect that. I will remember that you are sin-born only when it is necessary. And if it is necessary, I will remind you, too, of what it means. But only then.
"If you still want to run with us, Tongue-Twister, you are welcome in my house."
[Rory] She listens, closely. She learns the tale of one such as she, a Fenrir, that gained strength and names and in the end fell. There's a shiver that slides under her skin, her arms wrapping around her waist, as she listens to what happened, to what is counted as the downfall of Drawn-in-Blood. She bites her lower lip, chewing absently, and does not answer right away.
She is sin-born. She has had it pounded within her to know what it is, what it means. She has strayed, a time, or two - but never, ever has she assumed she could be normal. She lifts a hand, and rubs at the side of her nose, and then nods. Her decision was made before she came, before she dared speak to Roman, before she managed to screw up her courage to speak with Kora.
A nod. She will challenge soon, and she wishes to do so with a pack waiting for her, to celebrate, or to bolster her though disappointment, and help give her the strength to try again. Three words, that mean a wealth of things.
"I tant woo."
