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."
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."
Post a Comment