Ornature

Charlotte Gray

The Club is a poem to midcentury decadence, without any of the attendant and troubling ironies of the modern day. Deep burgundies and golds, tooled leather banquettes and mahogany tables regularly polished to a near-reflective finished. Heavy, masculine tables surrounded by deep-set leather club chairs that still seem redolent with the odor of pipe and cigar smoke long after such activities have been banished by city decree to what are once more smoke-filled rooms.

The waitstaff are dressed uniformly in crisp black and white suits. And remember your name and your wine and your table preference and your Scotch. Or forget them all, without question, as you prefer. The walls are so well-swathed in deep brocades, so well-baffled, that the ambient sounds of conversation throughout both the public and semi-private dining rooms never rise above a pleasant, background hum.

The menu does not appear to have changed in fifty years. Chicken Kiev and iceberg wedge salads covered in bleu cheese dressing and crumbled bacon, shrimp cocktail and oysters Rockefeller. Boeufs bourguignon and Wellington. Organ meats and something suspended, somewhere, in aspic. Baked Alaska and bananas foster prepared tableside, the lights in the dining room turned down for the drama of the flambé.

Everything is well-prepared and heavy and delicious.
Everything is quiet and unctuous and well-oiled.

And if, accidentally, you are your spouse both make separate reservations for doubtful assignations on the same evening, the maitre d ensures that you are tucked away in private little hideaways, and never the twain shall meet.

Tonight, a small family gathering at the round table beneath the weight of a well-appointed chandelier in the main dining room. Two older adults - a man, quiet and polished with gray at the temples and a few linear lines defining his features, and a woman, upright as an ionic column, a well-preserved forty-something with the brisk, expectant, faintly imperious manner of someone born to privilege.

The party is rounded out by two well-behaved girls, barely elementary school aged, blonde as their mother and kitted up in sumptuous velvets and well-polished patent leather Mary Jane shoes, who pick daintily at their meals as carefully as they have been doubtlessly instructed by an army of etiquette experts, and two older siblings - a dark haired young man, late teens, early twenties, dressed in a closely fitted, contemporary suit that seems more - casual on him than it might on another. And a young woman, late teens, early twenties, in a short, vintage cocktail dress covered in glittering silver pailettes.

The girl leans forward, elbows braced on the table, spine forward slung in the familiar posture of an adolescent slouch. And eats with her fingers, not her silverware, forearms defining a perfect isosceles triangle with the table beneath, pale skin gleamingly reflected in the mahogany. Her manners (to be specific - their clear and evident lack) seem as deliberate as the careful precision of the little girls, as they chose their proper forks, take their clear consomme without a single slurp or spill, and dab at their glossed little lips with a corner of their napkins after every third or forth bite.

Some faint buzz of conversation zips around the familial group, centered on the lovely 40-something blonde. In this, the teenager participates not at all.
There is nothing particularly remarkable about the sextet. Not in this setting - in these walls. They seem to belong here nearly as naturally as the Caesar salads and pheasant under glass.


Celia de Luca
The young woman the Senator is dining with tonight is not his niece but -- let's get creative here -- the daughter of an old school chum of his, and he's making sure she doesn't get up to any funny business in the big city while she visits. The staff has been appraised of this and have already arranged for one of the darker tables a bit in back and around the corner to be prepared for the two of them. It helps that she looks like she could be the daughter of some Harvard or Yale alum, friend by association to some of the more powerful people in the country. It makes the truth go down easier.

They arrive in a glistening silver Bently, the wheelhouses a reflective white. The driver does not need to get out at The Club; the valets open the doors on each side and allow the occupants to emerge with as much grace as you could hope for. The Senator, well, he doesn't matter much, and you can easily imagine what he looks like. Something about him feels off, feels wrong, feels... influenced. The girl, though.

Oh, she matters. And makes the skin crawl up the back of Charlotte's neck even before she is fully inside the doors. That touch is as deft as a harper's, plucking some deep-buried string, but it's there. For some wolves it's the scent: wet, dark, freshly tilled earth, like those found in croplands or graveyards. Equal parts the sickly-sweetness of rot or decay and the fresh, inspiring aroma of first flowers, wild onions, bags of seed ready to be sown. For some wolves it is almost pure spirit. They turn to her expecting to see a stolen maiden or the queen of hell, one and the same. They turn expecting to see a rival or a pack-sister from another life, reborn in the modern age but perhaps still wielding bow and arrow, double-bladed axe.

Except it's just a girl. Every time they scent her, sense her, it's just... a girl. Golden-skinned, with shockingly pale eyes. Not too tall, and rather slender without seeming breakable. She's lovely. She looks around herself with a faint expression of awe, her well-glossed lips parted just a teensy tiny adorable bit, her mascara lengthening and separating her lashes until she looks not entirely unlike a Disney Princess. Her cocktail dress is pretty and sparkly and does not go nearly close enough to her knees for the comfort of this establishment. Her heels are too high, which makes it worse. She's... so gauche.

The young woman -- and she is quite young, perhaps even not entilrely outside of her teens yet -- looks delightedly to her companion, lifting her hands and giving a tiny, silent clap of glee. Kisses his cheek,

demurely of course,

and clutches her miniscule purse as they walk back towards the table waiting for them. She glances at the family, or more specifically the little girls, and waggles her fingers at them. Mouths 'hello' like they're toddlers. Walks on by. She seems a damn fool, this daughter of Amazons.

Charlotte Gray

And Charlotte - Charlotte is a wolf.

A slouching, adolescent wolf dressed up in finery that suits her frame and coloring and place in the world, but does not seem quite to fit her body, as if she could slip the dress as easy and assuredly as she slips her skin.

Methodically stripping flesh from bone with her long fingers rather than silverware provided for just that purpose, a hint of grease rather than gloss gleaming on the fullness of her lower lip. Fat on her fingers, too, shining faintly in the light, though the focus on the meal ends abruptly as Celia enters the room. The thighbone, which she might well have cracked soon for the marrow, falls from between nerveless thumb and forefinger to the gold-rimmed china.

The flare of her nostrils, sudden and sure. The utter directness of her stare as Celia enters the heavy, masculine room, wrapped in all the signifiers of conventional, masculine power, with her aura of awe and delight. All these human mannerisms are lost, tidal, in the overwhelming immediacy of Celia's scent: which is older than any sort of human memory or time. Which resonantes deeply in the soft folds of the wolf's memory and darker folds of history that lodge somewhere deeper in the animal spirit that animates her flesh.

There is no great weight of rage shimmering in the air around Charlotte to pull Celia's attention back to her. Just the staring intensity of the girl's gaze, a pale and reflective blue tonight. The edge of the winter's dying sky, which follows Celia as she crosses the room, as she exclaims and gleams at the surroundings, glossed mouth parted just-so. As she wiggles her fingers at the two younger half-sisters, whose names Charlotte only occasionally remembers.

The eldest is too adult to respond, but the younger gleams back at Celia, offering a furtive wave and a certain wiggle of delight by way of response. The mother affects not to notice this breach of etiquette. The young man - politically interested, if not yet wholly connected - frowns faintly, dark brows drawing together on a well-proportioned face as he reluctantly tugs his appreciative gaze from Celia's legs to her companion's features and works to place a name to the Senator's face.

His faint frown deepens as his sister - oh and they are siblings, so alike aside from their coloring that the resemblance is eerie, and the twinned flare of their pale eyes reminds one of the sort of horror movies where children wander through churches and fields in a holy fervor, slaying all who oppose them - puts a staying (still-greasy) hand on his cuff and leans to murmur something into his ear. Without once taking her eyes from Celia, at least until the shadows of the room swallow her again. Like Lazarus disappearing into the shadow of the tomb. Like Euridyce swallowed back into the shadow of the underworld.

Charlotte
It is cold and rainy in DC tonight. Damp enough to seep into one's bones.  Cold enough to keep most residents of the city inside.  The homeless have sought shelter in the leesides of buildings, beneath bus shelters, and at this hour, in this weather, no one is playing chess on the concrete gameboards in the park at the radial center of DuPont Circle.

There is still foot traffic, of course.  The bars and restaurants are all open, though the dinner crowds are drifting away, and the politicos are still recovering from the festivities following the state of the union (or the morning's bloviating on talk shows and blogs the city over) so that only the hard core drinkers linger, and a few of the restaurants are beginning to well and truly empty out.  Live music spills out of the open door of an Ethiopian restaurant at the corner of Q Street and New Hampshire Avenue.  The strange physics of sound - some dampening of the rain, an odd echo through the wide street, something - carries threads of the lively music all the way down the block to the park and the fountain at the center of the circle.

The fountain has been turned off for the winter, though rain plashes into the water left in the basin surrounding the fountain proper in a quiet, arhythmic counterpoint to the beat of the African drums and drone of the Masenqo a block away.

There's a figure in the center of the park.  Rather slight from a distance, and likely a girl. Entirely unremarkable to human eyes, from any distance.  Though Garou who catch a glimpse of her profile cannot help but read the pure breed singing in her blood-and-bones.

Falcon's wayward daughter, that, and no mistake.

There she is - wearing a dark hoodie, the hood pulled up as protection against the rain, and jeans.  The shadows are deep enough that she is cast all in grays except for the pale shock of platinum hair, which catches the orange light and gleams when she lifts up her chin, tilts her head so that she is looking straight up at the orange clouds and falling rain.

Her attention falls from the sky to the bowl of the fountain on its elevated plinth, which is supported - as all such things must be - by naked women carved into the marble.  With a rather nimble little hop - kangaroo like, her hands remain in the pouch of her hoodie - she jumps from the sidewalk to the low wall framing in the basin and begins to circle the fountain.  One foot carefully in front of the other.
Considering, you see, whether she might be able to scramble up the central pillar.  And what the view might be from the top.

Erich Reinhardt

"I wouldn't."

Hoodies appear to be standard-issue for their kind, their breed, their age bracket.  The fellow who speaks to her is wearing on too.  His is quite thick, lined with faux shearling, and zipped about halfway up his chest.  Other than that -- well, that and the paleness of their skin and hair -- they have rather little in common.  There is nothing nimble or lithe about the fellow who speaks to her.  He's big across the shoulders, relaxed, eyeing the distance to the top of the fountain.

"We're like five minutes from the White House.  If you got up there they'd probably send the FBI to tackle you down in case you were going to try to snipe Obama or something."

His eyes follow her.  Whether she goes up or down or simply lingers where she is, he just watches her.  Dire warning or not, there's no attempt to stop her.

"I haven't seen your sort around these parts," he remarks.  Oh, sarcasm: "I was starting to think Falcon's kids were too good to dirty their feathers in politics."


Charlotte

The stranger's voice arrests the girl.  Stops her in her tracks - just so, one foot poised in front of her, the other carefully center in the middle of the low wall.  Which is thick enough to work as a perfectly adequate bench for the spreading asses of local officer workers on fine spring days, and certainly does not require the sort of careful sweep-stepping that defined her movement until his voice sliced in with a sardonic warning.

There's a chasing startlement in her sideglance.  The pull of the damp hood against the pale hair plastered to the line of her cheek and jaw by the drizzling rain.  An impression of startlingly pale eyes, gleaming with reflections of the streetlights whose sweep incises through the falling rain.

The startlement narrows into something else: animal wariness that crawls across the line of her shoulders and stiffens her spine as her pale eyes drop from his face to his body.  Taking in both the bulk of it, shadowed dark within the gleaming frame of Massachusetts Avenue, and the relaxed posture in which he harnesses it.

Then and only then does the girl lower the her leading foot to the fountain's edge.  Her own balance is easy, hands still slung low - actually, lower now, flat palms become narrow fists with an edgy tension that is easy to read in the frame of her body though less so  in the pale cut of her profile as she turns her head away and looks off in the vague direction of the White House.  Or what she imagines is the vague direction of the White House, mouth slipping into a doubtful little frown as she tries to tease out whether his warning is anything close to genuine, or - more likely to her, than anything - fun to be had at her expense.

"I haven't seen your sort around these parts either."  The girl returns at last, cutting a pale stare back towards him.  The idiom (around these parts) feels foreign on her tongue.  As if she were trying his language on for size.  Wriggling her way into it.

"'Course I don't know what sort that is."

Charlotte

Then, frowning faintly - doubt and wistfulness all wrapped together in the brief glance she sneaks back toward the top of the fountain - reluctance seeped into her tone.  " - do you really think the FBI would come?"

Erich Reinhardt

"Yeah, I bet you don't."  There's sort of a muttered laugh under that, which likely strengthens Charlotte's suspicion that there's fun to be had here, but not for her.  The fellow tips his chin up, though, and shrugs his shoulders.  Or maybe squares them.

 "I'm the sort that your sort usually checks behind curtains and under beds and in closets for.  Though I left my cloak and dagger and prerequisite evil goatee at home today.  Sorry."

It would have been a lot easier, Erich reflects, if he'd just been a Child of Gaia soul born into a Fenrir body.  Not that that would have made his family any happier, or made his exile any less permanent, but at least the rest of the world wouldn't look at him askance and try to sidle away from him when they thought he wasn't looking.

 He too takes a glance in the direction of the White House -- quite in another direction from where Charlotte was looking -- and then shrugs.  This time it's a shrug.

"Probably not.  But the cops do drive by like every three minutes, and they'll definitely order you down.  It's very bad for national publicity if a civilian cracks her head open falling off a fountain, five minutes from Obama's house."

Charlotte

That response - the mention of cloaks and daggers and evil goatees - has the girl turning back to him, rising tautly to the balls of her feet and pivoting back toward him like some first grade ballerina practicing a pirouette until she can watch him full on.  Though on her the gesture is more graceful and natural than any first grader, a supple coil of movement threading through her frame.

The girl seems long-limbed, but is all of 5'5", maybe 5'6" and would not be able to stare down your average corporate secretary or insurance salesman.  Or so it seems.  The wariness has returned, liminal about her narrow figure.  Has redoubled, as a slash of unbidden suspicion darkens her brown and she inhales.  Shoulders and thighs tauts, hands still tucked in the front pockets of the hoodie.  The edge of the hood caught on the crown of her skull, fine hair plastered to her forehead, cold rain dripping down her face.

When he looks away (toward the White House proper) she does not follow the glance, but watches the edge of his profile with a hard, reflective stare.
The cops will order you down, he tells her then.  With a shrug.

"I'd like to see them try," she returns, with a edge of haughtiness to the words, a certain smug pleasure at the mere thought of coloring the tone.

Charlotte

Sense Wyrm  (Who would I look for to wear evil goatees?  BLACK SPIRALS.)
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Erich Reinhardt

"Oh there's a good attitude for you," Erich deadpans.  " 'I like to see them try.'  Meaning, what, you'd tear their heads off if they did?  That'll go over well."  He takes his hands out of his pockets and frames an imaginary headline in the air.

 "Rabid Zoo Animal Slaughters Pedestrians And Policemen, Gunned Down By SWAT Team After Three-Hour Chase.

"Or at minimum," he amends, "you'd end up getting taken into jail.  And I'm not bailing you out.  So then I guess you'd sidestep, and then -- Police Begin Five-State Manhunt For Fugitive."

Charlotte

"That's not what I meant." The girl returns - and hotly at that.  Jumping down from the fountain's edge with a slap of her rubbersoled tennis shoes against the pavement and as such apparently definitively foregoing the pleasures of forbidden fountain climbing for in the middle of a constant drizzle on a frigid night.  At least for the nonce.

The snap of her eyes up to his features glitters with a banked stubbornness and all that wary tension dovetails in one casual slouch of her spine into an adolescent irritation at all the ways in which the world (and all its many strangers) consider to deny her the transgressive pleasure of - what?

"I just meant - don't you ever want to -  " and here, she swallows the rest of the thought.  Hardly something one says to a strange Ahroun on a dark night in unfamiliar territory, hitches her shoulders forward in the damp jacket, curling her shoulder to catch a raindrop falling from the edge of her cheek and just - breathes out as the prospects of just such headlines slip across the surface of her mind. 

" - anyway, you wouldn't have to worry about it.  Chas would bail me out."

Erich Reinhardt

Erich watches the girl -- who is not just a girl but Falcon's girl, to be precise -- with mingled amusement and curiosity, both.  He tilts his head: don't you ever want to -- ?  He's quite feral in that moment.  Something about the angle of his neck, the glint of animal intelligence in his eyes.

Chas would bail me out, she says, but while she's saying that he's walking, no running, and they have a certain nimbleness in common after all.  He's quicker and lighter on his feet than you would dare imagine.  One step, two -- the third beside Charlotte, bypassing her in a rush of movement.  The fourth: the ball of his foot only, an upward surge, a silent detonation of coiled strength that launches him an astonishing vertical distance.

He grabs the topmost edge of the fountain.  His grip is solid, palms smacking onto stone.  His feet dangle, and then his knees bend to reduce the lever arm of his body as his arms flex, and his back.  Instinctual physics: there's a class you'll never find on Georgetown's catalog.  He hauls himself up with little difficulty and rises to his feet, his eye-level now some twenty or so feet aboveground.

"Of course I want to," he says.  "But do as I say, not as I do.  Hey, you can see the White House from here."

Charlotte

Charlotte has a story she tells about Chas.  It's always on the tip of her tongue, and she likes to bring it and needle strangers with it.  Especially when those strangers are kin-girls of the gossiping sort.  And it she is turning it over in her mind anticipating the pleasure of bringing it out again, even if she doubts that this stranger will be scandalized or grossed out by the mere though of -

So there's that preoccupation veiled around the girl, Falcon's girl, enough of it that she does not quite catch way Erich watches her.  Does not register the animal cant of his head, the sweeping gleam of her eyes.  Does not even register the bunching of muscle and sinews in his thoughts, in his big, solid body as she's talking and he's walking, then running - then leaping.

Her shout of laughter is sudden, and bright, and clear.  Brighter than one would ever expect from a daughter of Falcon born under a waning moon. Just one exclamation of it, breathless, caught up in the sweeping drama of, the elegant effortless physicality as he throws himself outward and hauls himself upward with such perfect animal ease that it defies the definitions of the city.

--

She has neither the strength nor the height nor the power to mirror his motion.  Just the enthusiasm.  Instead of leaping up to catch the lip of the fountain, she jumps... onto the retaining wall framing the basin, then, halfway across the water, landing in the frigid little pool (with a noise in the back of her throat that is half-a-shriek of protest at the damned cold, half-something-else entirely) and scrambling out of the water onto the plinth.  Climbing what he managed with a single massive leap, finding foot-and-hand holds on the carved marble figures, the bare breasts and flowing robes.

Maybe he gives her a hand over the last few feet.  If not, her scramble over the difficult overhang of the basin over the central pillar will be far from elegant.  Either way, Charlotte will get there.  And when she does -

"That was awesome," she enthuses, jeans soaked to the knees, Converses sodden, jaw set firmly to keep her teeth from chattering. Marveling at Erich ever-so-slightly.  Climbing up to her feet to - well -  see what she can see.

"I'm Charlotte."

Drew Roscoe

Drew had gotten a phone call somewhere in the mid-morning from an unfamiliar number, with an unfamiliar voice at the end.  He said his name was Yiorgie, and that he'd gotten her information from.. well, it wasn't important.  What mattered was that he'd been referred to her.  He was a Garou, and in need of some assistance in the way of 'human affairs'.  You know, money.  He had some funds that need to be invested and/or kept safe, he was told she worked for a bank, and that she could help.

He didn't quite know what she looked like, but from the sound of her voice she was a younger woman, probably all brightness and sunshine from the chipper tone in which she spoke.  She'd advised, 'of course!' and asked where would be best to meet.  They decided on the heart of the city, it was easiest to melt away into a crowd when those crowds were as large as they were there.  She knew of a hot-dog cart, she told him which corner to meet her at, and advised that she would be there in the evening, at about eight-thirty or so.  She'd meet him from work.

It was a date.

---------------

Sure enough, when Yiorgie found the intersection that Drew had advised him of, he'd find her there.  The woman was petite, dressed nicely in a hip-length brown winter jacket and a pair of dark wash jeans tucked into shin-high boots.  She wore nothing on her head, it was warm enough that the jacket would do just fine, and was just turning away from the hotdog vendor with a hot dog in each hand.

She wasn't recognizable because she'd told him what she looked like.  She'd merely stated that she would find him, and he her.  It was easier to understand in person-- she could sense his Rage, that prickling of intuition and familiarity across the skin of her chest and neck.  He, in turn, could find her as a flickering candle in the wind amongst the thinning crowd of the weekday night.  She had breeding.  Not much, but enough to set her apart from the rest of humanity.  It spoke of blood caked to iron and frozen into steel-gray fur.  It howled of Fenris.

She paused to hover several feet away from the cart, out of the vendor's small line, and looked up the sidewalk in Yiorgie's direction, hunting for a face and body to match the encroaching sense of death/wild/family that came from that way.

Yiorgie Alexander

The ability to adapt is any living creature's greatest tool.  Humans evolved to the point to where they needed shelter, so they hid in caves, and even made makeshift homes.  They needed to hunt their food, so they created spears, and bows and arrows.  They needed to defend themselves, so they created weapons.  With their kills, they created clothing, tools, even jewelry.  They needed better tools, so they harnessed bronze.  Other humans needed to defend themselves better, so they made armor.  Bronze wasn't cutting it anymore, so they harnessed iron... then steel.  Then the humans needed to kill vast amounts of other humans... so they created bombs...
Adapting to the city would be easy for Yiorgie.  He has lived in, and fought in cities most of his life.  His heart still cries out for the wilds, though.  The wild places made of steel and concrete just don't do it for him like those made of wood, moss and grass.  But living in a city required money.  With his plans for the Vanguard on the horizon, he would need more money.  Either that, or he needed to ensure that his current resources were steady.  That required knowledge of math and money: skills Yiorgie simply didn't have.  Besides, going into a bank and writing a check is potentially dangerous.  What bank teller would actually serve him, anyway?
The Sept was kind enough to direct him to someone who could help him in this regard.  After calling the girl (and getting a questionable rendezvous point), Yiorgie set out into the thick of the city to find her.  When he came upon the hot-dog cart, he saw the girl in question.

The Ahroun attracted and repelled attention in all the worst ways.  In the human world, Rage is the worst enemy of the Garou.  People gave him a wide berth, and made startled noises when they saw him.  Others put their heads down and walked right past him, hoping that he did not notice them.  He seemed like a nondescript kind of person in his jeans and hoodie.  He had no real identifying markers, save for the terrible scars on his body.  While his face was slightly obscured from a hood, it didn't hide everything.  He had many superficial scars all over his face and neck.  While many seemed characteristic of slashes and gouges, the most obvious were the long streak marks that started near the center of his face, and went outward, as if something had blown up near his face, and the shrapnel cut his skin up.  Whatever good looks this man may have had, they were all but ruined now.  He did not seem to be bothered by that, either.

"You're Drew?" Yiorgie asked.  His eyes were alight.  Rage and fury were his friends.  He was a menacing figure, a true predator.

"I'm Yiorgie... " he said.  His lips moved slightly, as if to smile.  He didn't quite make it.  It was much more pleasant than the scowl he had been wearing, after walking amongst so many humans.

Drew Roscoe

Big brown eyes hunted, the eyebrows above them furrowed just a touch with focus.  She was hunting.  She knew he was there, or nearby, could feel it.  It didn't take long to pick up on the pocket in the crowd, no matter how meager it was.  The man in jeans and a hoodie had a wide circle of berth about him.  He wore his hood up, he walked with the same confident stride of a predator that Drew had learned to pick up on.  She could see it in how a Garou's shoulders hips and feet all worked together, no matter how they may hunch their heads and cover their faces to avoid gaining attention.

When Yiorgie came near enough to inquire her name, she was already watching him approach, smiling brightly (and an infectious smile it is, all pearly teeth and nude lips and lively eyes).  He gave his name, and she answered by holding out a hot dog with ketchup, mustard, relish and onions on it.  The other had the same toppings, she figured them universally acceptable.

"I am.  Good to meet you."  She took a moment and a half to look up the foot-plus distance between their faces and study his.  Dominantly, the scars that marred his flesh and the structure that lay under such cosmetic blemishes.  "Warrior, then."  She guessed, but it sounded like an assumption more than a question.  "Good to know.  I've been hearing that that's what we need.  Should we walk?"  Her smile wasn't as domineering as it initially seemed, had subdued into something closed-lipped that was formed into the very shape of her rounded face rather than worn as a conscious expression.  She gestured with the hot dog she planned to keep for herself to indicate the direction they should go.

Better to walk and talk, if you asked her.  Not as easy for eavesdroppers to happen by that way.

Yiorgie Alexander
Yiorgie's breeding was powerful, to say the least.  Anyone who knew to look for the features could see.  His was the blood of Kings, of the Tribe That Leads.  Despite the purity of his blood, the man was not dressed well.  He didn't smell very fresh, either.  in truth, the Silver Fang looked more like a Bone Gnawer than one of his own Tribe.  When he reached out and took the offered hot dog, he tore into it with great hunger, and little refinement.  He seemed pleased, and grateful for the meal.  It was not that he was malnourished, or even hungry.  He was simply happy to accept someone's hospitality.  To refuse such was considered an insult.  Even he knew that much.

"Did my striking good looks give it away?" he asked, smirking as he chomped away at his hot dog.

"This city needs a lot of things.  I can tell you this much: it requires a different kind of warrior," he said.  He was not very precise in his description.  To truly describe it to her, they would need privacy.  There were too many prying eyes and ears in this town.  It was one of the most technologically secure places in all the world.  It is the seat of both law and corruption.  This city is no place for a primal creature like a Garou.

"I was told you could help me out with a few things.  The first thing I need is a roof for a night or two until I can get myself set up.  The second is some financial help.  I've got some money to my name, and I've got it in too many places," he said, walking along with her.

"It's good to meet you too," he said, turning his head to give her a once-over.  He had to remember his manners.

Drew Roscoe

Drew looked pleased that he was so quick to accept the food she offered.  The young woman was built to become a forty-something house mother.  It was easy to see her twenty years in the future, a few kids out of the house, several still there with her, plumper and more weathered, but with no less spirit.  She was the sort that thrived on the well-being of others, and that was evidenced for just a moment in the satisfied contentment that showed on her face before they were walking.

"Well, that's part of it," was her answer to his quip about his striking good looks.
He was straight to the point, and she appreciated that.  He explained up front what he needed-- a place to stay, someone to help him with resources that he had spread out too thinly, that needed to be consolodated, set someplace that he could access it.  She was pretty sure she could help it to grow, too, if he wanted.

His explanation of what he'd come to her for was summed up with a pause, a glance her way, an up-and-down, and a 'it's good to meet you'.  She had been quietly listening as they walked, the low square heels on her boots thumping dully on the pavement in time-and-a-half with his steps (his legs were longer, she had to walk faster to maintain pace).

"It's good to meet you too, Yiorgie.  Whoever sent you my way sent you to the right place."  She took a bite of her hot dog (the third bite now), chewed, and then continued.  "I've got a house about two and a half or so hours out from the city.  There's a few spare rooms, no kids or housemates or pets or anyone for you to worry about stirring up when you crash there.

"I do technical support for the Bank of America, but I'm in good with a lot of the people here at the main office.  I can help, if you can get me all of the information about where your money is currently stashed away."  Up close, it's easier to note certain things.  She didn't have scars anyplace visible.  She walked beside him comfortably, not put off in the least by the Rage that eminiated from him and set even other Kinfolk on edge.  She smelled of other people-- an office environment, someone else's cologne or perfume from a hug.  She used a vaguely floral hairspray to hold the loose but neat curls in her hair.  Her make-up was subtle, but well done.
She didn't smell of other wolves, if he was paying that much mind he could tell.  She wasn't joking when she said that he didn't need to worry about stirring anyone or anything up in her house if he needed to bunk there.

"Well," she added after a moment, paused at an intersection waiting for the light to change so they could cross, "were you wanting that bed tonight?  Did you need to gather things up?"  Drew, the ever-willing to help.

Yiorgie Alexander

"Yeah, a bed would be nice.  It has been... a long time since i've indulged in a little comfort.  A shower would be nice, too," he said.

It didn't take him long to finish his hot dog.  He ate like many of his ravenous wolf-born kin.  It was messy, and wholly without refinement.  The food itself is little more than hammered guts put through a tube, but it sufficed.  At least it wasn't that tainted hammered shit from O'Tolley's.   A hot dog with all the trimmings was like a gourmet meal, especially in the city.  Yeah, he could go to any number of fancy restaurants... but who would serve him?  Also, that was a waste of resources.  The war effort didn't need luxury.

"Two and a half hours?  That's a hell of a long way from the front," he said.  He didn't seem put off by the number, though.  Having some seclusion is good for the Garou.  Having a place to retreat to is even better.  He would keep it in mind.

"You must make a decent living working for the Bank of America.  Or... y'know... not, depending on how you look at it," he said, smirking just slightly.  He had heard enough about the financial trouble the United States had gotten itself into.  He personally did not care.  Society would break down sooner or later.  It wouldn't matter after the Final Battle begun.  The Apocalypse was already here, in his mind.
"I am grateful for all of this, Drew.  What do I owe you?" he asked.  He did not seem to be put off by the idea of owing Kinfolk.

Drew Roscoe

A nod of understanding was given in a short bob of the Kinfolk's chin, and she continued to chew away at her hot dog while Yiorgie asked his share of questions-- that far away from the city, huh?  You must make a decent living.  What do I owe you?

Drew still had food in her mouth when he'd asked that last question, and was shaking her head and waving her hand before she had a chance to swallow and speak.  Once the food had gone from mouth to throat to belly she licked a bit of relish from the corner of her mouth and answered:

"Nothing just yet.  I might call on you for a favor somewhere down the line, but I can't immediately think of anything.  I know you're not Family--" yes, stated with a capitol F-- "but you're a cousin and that's close enough.  I don't think of this as me selling room and board.  I just look at it as me doing my part.  Can't exactly contribue in the way you guys do, after all."  She concluded that with a smile and a wink.

The light switched, and her boots clunk-clunked from cement to asphalt as she crossed the street.  She had some kind of destination in mind, it seemed.  She walked with direction rather than meandering.  With her feet on autopilot in the way they were, she was probably headed to wherever she was used to parking her car.
"It is a ways away.  I don't need to come into the city too much, a lot of my work I can do from home.  I just swing by once a week, sometimes more sometimes less, for meetings and appearances and all that."  The now empty hot dog carton was deposited in a public trashcan that they walked past, and her hands were dusted on the sides of her coat before going into her pockets.  "I make enough to be comfortable.  When you're just supporting yourself that doesn't take as much as you'd think."

Yiorgie Alexander

"Oh, I've seen cousins like you take a beating and keep on.  There was even a group back on the last front I fought on called the War Dogs.  Damned tough company, they were," he said.  He dropped his trash in the bin just behind her.

"I pay my debts, Drew.  If it is as simple, or complicated as a favor, I'll see it done," he said, very serious for such a relaxed situation.  The Ahroun seemed to carry with him a certain sense of seriousness, and especially of duty.  He knew what was required of him.  He was especially glad to know that Drew knew what was required of her.

"You're our most valuable resource, you know.  Without people like you, we would be dead in the water," he said, nodding his head.  He looked around the city as if it was some kind of bogeyman.  In truth, it was exactly that.  There is something about the city, any city, that is hostile towards the Garou, and of other wild creatures.  The Bone Gnawers and the Glass Walkers may make their way through the city, but they probably know best that the city does not work in their favor.

"I understand.  But... enough about this.  Tell me about yourself.  I haven't met many of your people since I got here.  Few and far between... and likely far less willing to help as you..." he said.

Drew Roscoe

So, tell us a little about yourself.

Drew chuckled some and nodded once more.  She was either in a particularly pleasant mood tonight, or this had to be some kind of a front that she put up that she was especially well practiced at.  Well practiced to the point that it didn't seem like a front.  Rather, everything about her, all of the smiles, the questions, the statements... all of them came across as simple and genuine both.  If this was no act, then the world had yet to break her.  That was either a testament to her heritage, or simply a matter of time.

"Well," she started, with a brief and cautious glance from side to side to ensure that people were letting them be and paying them little mind (and that seemed to be the case).  "I'm from Chicago.  Moved out here because nobody seemed to be left that needed my help anymore.  I'm useless sitting on my hands, so I came out here-- heard talk from my kin that there were deep rumblings in this city and the hills to the south to boot.

"Browntown is the town I live just outside of.  Apparently it's, like, at least forty percent populated by folks like us.  There's an established council out there, just like there is here in the city.  Different lands, different folks, though."  She'd gotten off topic from telling him about herself and had instead explained to him the world that he'd introduced himself to in coming to the country's capital.

She led him straight up the sidewalk, then took a turn to cut down a narrow driveway that led to what was once a vacant lot and is now instead a three-story parking garage.  She kept close to the wall of the brick building that framed it, avoiding the potential of unexpected traffic.

"I had a mate.  He passed about two years ago.  Now this is pretty much what I do-- offer what help I can give where I can give it.  Not much else for me to do beyond that.  I got so used to having to fight the monsters off my doorstep back home that I'm almost stir crazy with the lack of action out here.  Weird how that works, huh?  We strive for peace, then when we find it we don't know what to do with ourselves."

Yiorgie Alexander

Yiorgie wasn't fooled.  Drew might put on a friendly face, but he knew his people better than most.  To be Kinfolk who works in the name of the Garou means you live a lonely life.  You are constantly looking after people who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.  You are constantly caring for people who you know could die a few minutes after they walk out your door.  Those poor Kinfolk who take Garou mates have it the worst, especially if they mated for love.  They are constantly alone, waiting for a partner who may not come back.  Even if they do come back, the interaction can be dangerous.  Even in the throws of passion, the Garou can be a danger to their mates.  Plenty of Kinfolk have died while havin sex.  Rage is stoked by powerful emotions... including love.

"Isn't that always the case?  If there isn't rumbling under your feet, then it is certainly rumbling somewhere," he said, both humorously, and dead serious.

"Browntown?  I know the place.  I've met some of our people there, though I have yet to introduce myself to the community there," he said.  He needed to visit the rural caern.  His service to the Awakening was coming to an end soon.  He would need to make himself known to the Garou of the surrounding countryside.  He would need to find Garou for The Vanguard, as well.

"It's not weird at all.  I can only hope that we do our job well enough that we become obsolete," he said with a melancholy-laden tone in his voice.

"It's... noble... what you're doing, you know.  I'm glad I found someone to help me out."

Charlotte Gray

Washington is a strange sort of American city.  The strangest: every street and cross-street downtown was planned, laid out in radial harmony - with its wide, sweeping avenues and classical buildings, all opening up from the Capitol building at the center.

The streets are quiet just now.  Not deserted, not precisely - so much as suspended.  The Capitol Building is brilliantly lit and packed with legislators and dignitaries.  The lobbyists and minor officials, Hill staffers and journalists, bloggers and gossip mongers, socialites and think-tank interns, and on and on and on are all tucked away in apartments and walk-ups and diners and bars watching the state of the union.  And so: traffic is suspended for an hour or two, as the president speaks and cable news anchors listen and fact-checkers haunt wikipedia and spin doctors work feverishly to find something new, or at least shocking, or remotely interesting, to say about the theater of it.

--
Just a few tourists are still out, now.  The ever-present homeless population, the protesters keeping vigil outside this agency or that embassy.  The doormen huddling beneath the awnings of the hotels and luxury condo developments, the valets at their podiums by the city's finest restaurants.

Lights from a passing car sweep over them.  Yiorgie's shadow dwarfs Drew.  Engulfs her, looming over her slight form in parti-colored patterns as the car sweeps by.  Slows to avoid collision as Drew and Yiorgie turn the corner to a narrower driveway.  The driver flicks off the brights that cast them in such stark white light.
There's no real engine noise other than a low hum, the trademark of a hybrid.  An impression of a pale forehead and cheek pressed against the cool glass, and no more than that.  The car hesitates,

[He glances at her profile; her stare at the strangers both startled and intent.  She feels the look and cuts him a mulish one back.  Aren't we late already?]

then begins to accelerate again.  Strangers passing in the night.  Hardly to be noticed at all.

Drew Roscoe

"I don't think anyone's called this noble before."  Drew was fishing about in her jacket pockets again.  What she pulled free was a set of keys on a chain-- car keys and remote, house key, some other key (shed, perhaps?), and a little dark gray coin with the Get of Fenris glyph etched into it, and 'Long Shot' on the other side.  Not that he'd see this, but she glanced down for a second with the charm between her forefinger and thumb before shifting her attention back forward to the parking garage they were entering.

She didn't look about cautiously, didn't seem all too concerned about being ambushed from the shadows.  And why should she?  She had one of the more monstrous things that the world could throw at her right at her side, with something to gain from her and therefore no reason to do anything but defend her.  It was with that kind of assurance and confidence that she walked with no break in pace into the dark of the garage, lit only seldomly by flickering burnt-orange lights, tired from neglect and cold.

"I've been called any number of things before.  Hell, had my house called a brothel once.  But..."  She shrugged, and flashed a grin.  "Different management out here, you could say.  So long as I'm not stirring the pot nobody pays much mind."
There's a brief pause, then her tone shifts.  It's lower, softer spoken so that her voice didn't echo off the concrete walls and ceiling surrounding them.  The words aren't intimate, but they are only for their ears.

"I'm sure you know, but I feel it's only proper for a real introduction.  I'm Drew Roscoe.  I've got my own Name-- Long Shot.  Proud of it.  I'm Kin to the Get of Fenris, and I was mated to the late War-Handed, who was a Full-Moon of the Get of Fenris as well.  I can guess your moon, but not much else about you, Yiorgie."