Ornature

Saturday was warm, nearly spring-like. Bright sun and clear skies and temperatures in the 60s brought all of DC outside to revel in the weather and sun. The mall was packed with frisbee players and dog walkers, picnickers and protests, bureaucrats and lobbyists and baristas and street vendors. Joggers glutted Rock Creek Park and the Metro was bursting with folks from the suburbs taking a holiday in the city to check on the status of the budding cherry trees, or wander through their favorite Smithsonian museum. The chatter was still grim, of course. Who was furloughed and who was endanger of being cut entirely. How to make ends meet with 20% less pay.

The best paid civil servants are thinking about cutting back on cable. Maybe dropping HBO from the roster (with Game of Thrones about to start! What a sacrifice!). Those lower on the totem pole - the garbage collectors, the janitors, the toll-takers and park-keepers, the guys who fill the potholes. Well, they might be going without food, or heat, or lights, or running water.

There's little sign of the looming budget crisis and its many lesser spawn on U-Street tonight. The warmth of the day is rapidly disappearing from the streets, replaced by a brisk wind and a falling cold that feels more bitter than it is, after the taste of spring this afternoon. But the streets are crowded, the bars and restaurants packed. The galleries and shops open late and later, windows gleaming bright against the dark, cool, damp streets.

It's hard to tell when Celia gained her attendant tonight. Her handmaiden. Who follows her not so much like a shadow, knitted and sewn to her heels, but like a kite, drifting in her wake, loosely knotted to her wrist. Or like a moon, in some strange, eccentric orbit around a drifting planet. But gained one she has.

Celia has one job, and it isn't in civil service, but it is for the good of mankind. Celia is fighting a war. Celia walked into Washington this winter and carved out a trench, stored her provisions, and placed her battle lines.

That she does all this from the Hay-Adams hotel probably makes her seem like she isn't much of a soldier, but the faintest whiff of her breeding marks her as a creature from a long, long lineage of defiance, of ruthlessness, of dedication. Many things can be said about the Black Furies, and many things are said of Black Furies, and almost none of them are appreciative, but those things are still best said behind their backs.

Celia is one of them. Though her hair and eyelashes are curled, though her lips are glossed, though she all but lives in high heels, she's still borne of that ancient, devoted bloodline. She pays little mind to what is going on in this city. And she looks so confused when Jack talks about it, head tilted and mouth confused, til he gives it a rest and talks about something else. Some of them are things she can use. His complaints about the sequester aren't.

Tonight she's off duty, in a manner of speaking. Her leggings are still tight, though, and the heels on her riding boots are still high and sharp. The buckles around her calves are decorated with slicing silver crescent moons, brushed just enough to keep from glinting as she walks. A white lace-edged camisole hugs her hips, and the pale pink ballet sweater she has wrapped around her upper body lets the lace draw eyes to her cleavage. There's a new piece of jewelry resting there, a pendant of gold wrapped around an amethyst on a gold chain. She told him it was her birthstone.

For the coming chill she has a wool peacoat, heather gray with black wooden toggles, but it is currently folded over her arm. She was at a bookstore earlier, and a little cafe across the street where she treated herself to a salted caramel cupcake after a wedge salad with goat cheese and a bowl of fruit. She went shopping in a quirky but upscale furniture store briefly, but only window shopping, only browsing for later. Jack hasn't yet solidified the kernel of a thought in his mind yet, but he is going to get her an apartment. A little love nest. There he'll keep her, like a bird in a cage, taken out to sing for him and then covered with a shade again when he is done with her. The thought of it makes him salivate, but it's just a spark right now. He'll fully realize it soon enough.

After the bookstore and the cafe and window-shopping, she visited a small gallery showing the works of local artists who are starting to get attention. Some of them stood nervously near their work, not quite sure how to handle the clientele. Celia chatted with one, a skinny young man in a sagging beanie he refused to take off for the event, and gave him sweaty palms and nervous laughter. He was trying very hard to be angry and above all these sellouts, but he was charmed. He asked her for her number. She blushed and said she was seeing someone and excused herself.

Somewhere in there, someone started following her. And when Celia first noticed it, she did not so much ignore it as let it slide. Later on she wondered if it was Erich, but he wouldn't stay away for long. He'd barrel up like a gorilla, grunting and glaring at everyone, and start talking to her like that dog from Up, delighted to see her and be seen by her. So it's not him.

A little while after the gallery, Celia starts glancing back. The wind picks up and she unfolds her coat, swinging it around her body and onto her arms.

Charlotte has pink hair. When Celia sees her, she tips her head, lifting her eyebrows, and gives the werewolf a Look, as though to say: Really?

There are coincidences in this world. Strangers who meet in dark alleys where dark things lie in wait. Old acquaintances who run into each other at the Metro stop, at the 9:30 Club, in the toddler department at Macy's, in a coffee shop and say: oh my god, it's been years. There is probably another such pair on the street tonight, exclaiming and assessing and suffusing each other with questions that cannot be answered and answers that will not be remembered.

It's been so long! What have you been up to!

This is not a coincidence.

You see, Charlotte had a dream last night, about spring. About spring and about Celia, about the resonant memory of her blood. She did not remember this dream in the morning, when she woke up in a feather bed, with light streaming in striations through the 19th century glass windows onto the plush Persian rug hugging the old hardwood floors of the family's DC property.

But she could taste it, on the back of her tongue, all morning long. She could feel the way it cracked and curled in her marrow and she walked barefoot through the damp garden, the frigid soil squelching between her toes, amidst the daffodils and tulips and crocuses pushing green shoots upward through the mounded leaf mast piled over the brick-lined beds. Circling the old oak tree in the center, until the unmoored remnants of the dream broke free.

Then, she went searching.

So you see, this is not a coincidence. But Charlotte has not thought beyond the searching to the finding. The watching to the being seen, and Charlotte has pink hair and an abstracted manner. She has no friends with her, and no shopping bags, and no smartphone to occupy her hands with texting and tweeting and instagramming to update the world about her latest discoveries.

So when Celia spots her, tops her head and gives her that Look, Charlotte, (who is heel-to-toeing on the sidewalk in front of the gallery, furtively watching her reflection, which is still in the stolen moments of consideration, superimposed on the reflections of all the others in the street, who smear together like watercolors in the rain, and occasionally - glancing up at Celia. To find her again, assuredly. Even if she can't say why.) -

- Charlotte goes so-suddenly-still, a bit wide eyed, presses her lips together, sealing her mouth like every guilty girl working up a suitable lie to lie to her mother, ever.

Then swallows, and squares her narrow shoulders beneath her hoodie (DARTMOUTH, tonight. Her brother's alma mater), and jogs to catch up with Celia, a cross-body messenger bag bouncing at her hip.

Sliding, perhaps even sidling into place beside Celia. "Hi." Says Charlotte, right down to the period, pale gaze on Celia's profile, luminous and wary, both.

It's not hard to look at Celia and imagine spring, wet and verdant. Her skin is not sickly pale from wintertime, even in the chill and even under the clouds. Her eyes shift between blue and green, water and storm, blossom and sprout. When she smiles, which she does, it is hard not to think of sunlight breaking through, bring back all the warmth that has been missing for so long.

Easy enough to believe that losing her would bring winter right back down on their necks like cold iron. Easy enough to believe that a lord of death, of darkness, of Hell itself, would want to steal her for himself. That isn't far from what's happening, after all.

Charlotte dreamt of her this morning, and now it is evening, and here Charlotte is, looking at her. In the flesh.

As she bounds up, Celia turns a bit, as though to go on walking. It's an invitation of sorts: she doesn't storm off or demand an explanation, she just starts strolling along, this time with company. "Hello," she says, far more fluidly, flexibly, maybe even pleasantly. "Were you following me?" she asks, as though this would be perfectly acceptable and understandble, if a bit silly.

Charlotte takes that unspoken invitation to stroll. She understands the physical language of Celia's pivot and turn with the unspoken surety of a pack animal, and swings into step beside the kinswoman. Her own pace slowing, the slap of her sneakers on the pavement a quiet counterpoint to whatever pace Celia sets.

The (wolf)girl's surveillance of Celia's profile is open - Charlotte is staring, and takes darting glances away only when the shadow of as stranger looms ahead and she must adjust her own pace. - but still feels covert. Stolen.

It is in Charlotte to lie. She lies regularly and sometimes with gusto, though generally badly. Celia asks if she was following her and Charlotte takes in a breath, hesitates as if testing the lie in her head, working out its depths and contours. Sounding it out before casting it aside.

"I was." The creature returns, a bit breathless, and it cannot be from that quarter-block jog, which barely winded her. " - for a little bit," she appends, weasels really, the corners of her mouth quirking upward. "Since the bookstore."

Looking like she does, acting like she does, it's difficult to imagine Celia grasping why Erich behaves the way he does, why Charlotte reacts to her the way she does. They're animals and they are not animals. They're monsters and they are not monsters. They are creatures of unimaginable rage and unspeakable tenderness. They follow her around. They stare at her. They want to break necks, open bellies, feast on entrails, shadow her to her grave to keep her safe. They want to be friends, yes, and walk and talk and share their snacks, yes, and they want to be close and warm and yay.

She turns, she walks, and knows as if by instinct that Charlotte will understand the invitation (which she does). She feels Charlotte staring at her like anyone would and doesn't give her odd looks or glare at her, because there really is no point. It's not about feeling unnerved or feeling flattered; it's simply about understanding what she is. And she could only do that if she'd been around wolves a good long while.

Her head does tip, though, as she looks at the other girl. "Why didn't you come say hello?" she asks, a tiny furrow appearing between her brows.

"I didn't - " when Celia looks at her, head tipped, long dark hair catching on the cusp of the lifting breeze (which feels like winter, but smells like spring), a few fine hairs caught in the nap of her woolen peacoat, Charlotte meets the look.

Meets it, but only briefly.

In that moment, her own eyes are raw and sharp, all the blues bled out to a fractured but reflective gray. "I didn't know if you'd want me to come say hello. And I didn't know what to say after saying hello. Or what to say after that."

She is a finely made thing, still young, rather thin, as if she were underfed. The runt of the litter, perhaps. If her features skew younger full-on (the wide eyes, the high cheekbones, clear brow and tapered jaw. The scrubbed-clean lack of make-up that makes her seem... unfinished compared to nearly every other girl on the street. Half-drawn), her profile is keen, dominated by the high bridge of an aristocratic nose.

"Or if I'd get you - " in trouble, she swallows, with a lilting glance toward Celia here, winsome. "I mean, if I'd say something wrong, you know? I do that alot."

Celia listens, and as she listens her frown goes away, her features becoming placid with consideration rather than more wrinkled by it. She does up the toggles of her coat, thoughtful, and then gives a little shrug as her hands slip into her pockets. Like the rest of her, those hands are kept carefully, obsessively perfect. Manicured, moisturized, lovely and soft and seductive. That's the whole point.

"Thank you for being careful," she says, at least to start, as though she can read in Charlotte's eyes the words she doesn't say, "but you shouldn't worry so much about causing offense. If you think you say the wrong thing so much that you end up not saying anything at all, that's pretty messed up, you know?" She looks at Charlotte as she says this, then shrugs and looks away, still talking. Still thinking aloud. "Maybe what you're saying isn't what's wrong in the first place. And even if you do say something wrong or harmful or stupid, then it doesn't mean you're wrong or harmful or stupid.

"Our mistakes are only another enemy to face," she says after that, as though reciting something now. "Stand your ground as fiercely against them as against the Wyrm. Never cower."

Celia walks a few more steps, then smiles brightly at Charlotte. "It's okay if you don't have anything to say, too. We can just walk."

When Celia favors Charlotte with that bright smile, the Silver Fang breathes out, all at once. It is not a sigh, so much as a deep sort of release. Her own eyes are shining-gray, like a mirror, and Celia is caught within, a tiny twin reflections, like a pair of moving miniatures. She gives this curt, swallowed little half-nod, not so much an expression as a check of one, as Celia recites what must be a lesson learned. Some old koan a crone, a mother, a sister, a teacher gave her to remember.

And breathes out again, as the aphorism ends with the admonishment to never cower. Which has Charlotte wondering if she does cower. If this is cowering, standing outside everything as if she could slip history and blood as easily as she slips her human skin.

We can just walk, says Celia.

And so they do. For a half-block, past another small gallery, a famous chili stands stacked with patrons three-and-four deep at this hour on a Saturday. A street-vendor selling Rastafarian paraphanalia, Bob Marley t-shirts and tri-color knitted berets, pipes and hookas.

"I had a dream about you last night," Charlotte says at last, breaking the companionable silence. The words come out in a rush, like a confession, but is it buoyed by a certain subliminal confidence - which must surely have been steadied by Celia's encourangement. Her voice is quick, " - I don't know what it was about? I walked around the oak in the backyard until I remembered what was familiar. So I wanted to find you and see if you were okay.

"Or just see you, I think. It wasn't a scary dream. So I knew you were okay."

(brb!)

They can just walk. So: they do. Charlotte doesn't even answer that. As though relieved, she simply walks with Celia for a while. Celia stops frequently, to see if the line for the chili is too long to be worth standing in, to feel the edge of a pashmina between her fingers, to lean over and let a dog lick at her fingers as she smiles haphazardly, a wistful ache in her eyes.

It's gotten colder, the farther they've gone. She's walking eastward, toward 13th, when Charlotte pipes up again. Celia turns, blinking at her, as startled as she is curious. Usually when people tell her they've dreamt of her, they're running a hand up her thigh. Charlotte isn't doing anything of the kind, which means it must have been a different sort of dream than people usually tell Celia about.

That Charlotte walked around an oak tree until she remembered something that mattered to her, even if it doesn't translate well, seems to make sense to Celia. Perfect sense. The Furies are, after all, not just ball-busting, man-eating bulldykes as the Get of Fenris -- and plenty others -- would have them. They're protectors of the Wyld. Even their kin are pagans, howling at the moon.

She smiles, warm as a mug of cocoa held between the palms and as deeply comforting, a look of glee entering her eyes. "Would you like to be my friend?" she asks, and -- this is important -- she isn't teasing her. Not even remotely.

Charlotte does not mind the pauses; the stops, the little eddies in the walk, though she does stand by a bit awkwardly as Celia fingers the pashmina, or admires a dress in a shop window. And her attention drifts away from the line at the chili place or the Belgian-style frites stand to trace other trajectories. The skim of headlights across the street, the dark, dusken line of the sky. The pulsing light of a jet overhead, as it begins its descent into Dulles or Reagan National. The corners, the edges of things. Her own hands stay mostly in the kangaroo pockets of her hooded sweat shirt, emerging here and there to adjust or re-adjust the bag that bounces against her hip.

Oh, but as they drift away from this shop, or that one, the girl's fingers dart out to catch the edge of that pashmina as it falls from Celia's fingers, the action is very nearly furtive, and not remotely conscious.

--

They're standing on a corner now, the tick-tick-tick of the streetlight counting itself down, warning blind pedestrians "DON'T WALK, DON'T WALK" in a quiet, mechanized female voice. There is more foot traffic than cars out tonight, though a chain of taxis hover at the corner, waiting for the first wave of drinkers to begin spilling out of the bars.

When Celia asks if Charlotte would like to be her friend, Charlotte nods decisively, wordlessly, the reaction just spilling out of her before she has even turned to search out the expression on Celia's features. Again that wary edge to the girl, haunting the darker edges of her pale gaze, the tension in her neck and shoulders beneath the oversized hoodie, all knotted and then unknotted, raveled open as that expression - the warm, comforting smile, the look of glee gleaming in her gaze - registers on the girl's animal mind.

"I would." Eager, this. This sudden widening of her own smile, a lupine edge to it that transforms her girlish features into something both Other and familiar, at least to Celia. "I don't have any friends. I guess Chas but he's my brother, my full brother, I mean, so he has to be? Like he's required. And maybe Erich? I guess he could be. He gave me gyrosbeast and I showed him the ballroom at my house. It's big. It's on the third-floor.

"So I mean yeah," Charlotte nods again, eagerly, like a puppy stumbling over its too-large paws, cropped hair cotton-candy pink and ruffling. "That'd be really cool. I kinda made you something too? In case you wanted it, I mean."

Celia has exactly one friend. She has no idea that just a few mights ago, he fought alongside Charlotte, killed with her, has met her a few times before that as well. It wouldn't make a difference, most likely. But these are how connections are made in a world so much smaller than it feels sometimes: the quick bonds that are formed, the common enemies, the common interests, the need for each other that sometimes transcends all difficulties of surface difference.

She doesn't glance back as Charlotte catches the pashmina to feel it, but she notices.

Would you like to be my friend? asks one lonely girl to another.

yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes nods the other, sudden and fervent.

Even before Charlotte finds words to go along with that eager nodding, Celia is beaming. Even Charlotte admitting that she doesn't have any friends doesn't dim that smile. She has a brother -- a shot goes off behind Celia's eyes, to be dealt with later -- and then there's (maybe) Erich. Celia blinks, the smile startled off her mouth, her lips parting right around the time Charlotte gets to 'ballroom'.

"I know Erich!" she bursts in, amidst all of this. Then, calmer: "I know Erich, too, if we're talking about the same one. We probably are." They do, after all, live in a rather small subset of the population, a secret community of growling factions that like to pretend, at large, that they do not make quiet friendships along individual lines. "Erich's my friend," Celia says, firmly, as though planting him on that tier of people rather than staking some kind of a claim. The emphasis is on the last word, not the second.

The streetlight flicks and beeps at them, greenish-white and permissive. Celia steps off the curb to cross. At this point it's more evident that she's heading for the metro station, but still chatting with Charlotte. "What did you make?" she asks, peering nearer to Charlotte's shoulder as though she's hiding it somewhere.

There's this moment where they're talking over each other. Celia knows Erich, if they are talking about the same one. Celia's ready to seal the case that they are talking about the same one (wolves and kin, after all. With whom else could someone like Erich, or even Charlotte for that matter, ever hope to be something approximating friends?) but Charlotte requires more details before she is willing to concede the that the Erichs in question are the same.

A series of questions, half-on-top of Celia's affirmations, follow:

"Is he big?" illustrated with a sweep of her arms, and a kicky little jump that makes Erich Storm's Teeth out to be approximately six inches taller than he is. Though perhaps it approximates the sweep of an Ahroun's rage, haloing him like the corona of the sun. "And he likes meat and he has a car with stripes - " where a normal person, nearly any normal person, and most Garou would at least know the cultural resonance of the iconic Mustang, " - and he lives in it and he showers in high school locker rooms Erich?"

Which is a concise enough way of describing the Shadow Lord Ahroun.

Celia defines him as a friend, and firmly. The subtext - whatever there may be, the necessity of that firmness, that definition - is lost on Charlotte. "That's neat. He's the first - "

a pause, searching for a suitable Euphemism as they cross the street, the Metro station in sight. " - Person Like Him I ever met?" And she cannot mean Garou, and she cannot mean Ahroun, so perhaps she means, giant man living in a car, though in truth she means, Shadow Lord.

"I couldn't live in my car, though," she continues, confessional, with the naivetée of the utterly privileged. "I don't know how to drive."

--

Charlotte does not go digging for the present until they've crossed the street. The sweep of other pedestrians moves by them, as she shifts the messenger bag to the front of her hip and unloops its straps, peering inside and eventually pulling out, carefully, a small glass jar. Heavy and handblown, sealed with a waxed cork. There's a resonant gleam of water inside, though the vial is small enough that it could hold no more than six or seven ounces, it has a weight in the hand. A humming sort of warmth.

Palm open, she holds it out to Celia, pale eyes fast on the other girl's face.

Their hands both define Erich's height in mid-air, and meet at about the same place because as far as Celia is concerned anyone over 5'10" is a giant --

"And ice cream," she points out, when discussing his dietary preferences,

"--the Mustang!" Celia bursts out, laughing, clapping her hands lightly.

Yes, they're discussing the same Erich.

And Charlotte may very well be the only person on earth who could miss the subtext of Celia having to keep Erich neatly, tidily on the 'friend' tier. She's kin. She's lovely. The scent of her is positively dizzying. Many Garou would hear her call him that and begin asking if he's overstepped his bounds, if he's sniffed at her like a beast, if he's remembering his place, and a few would realize it's not really their business, but to not even notice, to not even bat an eyelash --

well. Charlotte just solidified herself as Celia's friend, even without the repeated nods of agreement that this is a good idea.

The euphemism, in kind, is lost on Celia. She only understands that Erich is different than a lot of people, and she shrugs, nodding. "He's pretty weird," she says, thinking she's agreeing with Charlotte, when in fact Charlotte means something else entirely. "I know how to drive," she goes on, stepping up onto the next curb, "but I don't have a car right now."

Hence: the metro station.

They pause, stepping out of the main flow of foot traffic, as Charlotte digs around in her bag. She pulls out a jar. Celia looks at it curiously, then takes it, holding it in her bare hand. She feels the warmth, which it would not have after being in the bag for more than a few minutes, and then looks at Charlotte with her eyes up in question.

"Is it a talen?" she asks, because if it is one, she does not recognize the sort.

"Yeah," Charlotte affirms, though there's a lilting sort of surprise etched into her brow that Celia knows the term. No one ever taught it to her before she changed and the world reoriented itself, entirely. "It's, uhm. For cleansing? It's not as good as a proper rite. It won't take something from tainted to clean. But it's pure and it will, like. Scrub the city off you, if it starts - clinging."

Once more, the Silver Fang presses her little mouth together, says nothing about him, the worm-and-snot-smelling Senator from whom Charlotte wanted to rescue Celia, who must surely have inspired the gift.

"You could drink it? But I would pour it over my head."

Like a baptism. Like a christening.

When Charlotte says it's for cleansing, Celia's eyes -- already quite round and accentuated by her makeup to only make her look more innocent -- get wide. She puts her other hand around the jar, as though she thinks she might drop it if she isn't careful. Those eyes, fit for a Disney Princess, go to Charlotte's face.

not as good as

but it's pure

scrub the city off you

Those eyes are gleaming, sparkling suddenly from a few quick-to-the-surface tears. She takes one hand off the jar, drawing it to her chest with the other, and wraps her free arm around Charlotte's shoulders, hugging her fiercely.

Celia's shampoo smells like sandalwood and roses.

"Thank you," she says, her voice tightened by the sincerity of her gratitude. The hug isn't quick, nor is it awkward. At least not for Celia. Celia doesn't hide from the hug, or from the sniff of moisture out of her sinus cavities. She squeezes Charlotte before she draws back, reaching up to daub at the wetness along her lower lashes, delicate as any movie star trying not to smear her makeup. She blinks a few times and smiles, overcome.

"Thank you so much," she repeats, and just as before, just as shockingly: she utterly means it.

Strangely, the hug is not awkward for Charlotte either. Oh, there's that moment of confusion where Charlotte is not sure what Celia's doing as she steps in and wraps that free arm around Charlotte's shoulders, but then quite suddenly and surely, Charlotte is hugging her back, both arms wrapped around Celia's neck, tight, the messenger bag digging into Celia's thigh with its assortment of lumps and bumps, talens and treasures, promissory notes and bribes, books and (to be fair) a single bagel.

With her nose so close to Celia's hair, Charlotte inhales deeply. Sandalwood and roses laid over warming earth, and the first shoots of new growth, the sweetness of pomegranites, and the bitterness of their pith. Sun on stone, and all the many memories buried in Celia's blood and bones.

"You're welcome," Charlotte returns as she lets go, suddenly a bit shy, ackward only in the aftermath of the hug; or perhaps it's just that dampness Celia's lash line that undoes her a bit. The girl's cheeks are pink with pleasure. "If you need another just let me know? I - uhm. I don't have a phone. Erich could tell you how to get to my house, though? Or if you said something to a sparrow, if it was a smart one, then Sparrow might find me and let me know."

From down in the depths of the Metro station, the rattle and hum of an approaching train. A few more pedestrians headed to the station begin to hurry, darting toward the escalators hurrying down them, two steps at a time.

Whereever she's going, Charlotte is not taking the Metro. Down underground, all that concrete and cables would feel like crawling into a spider's mouth. But she'll stand up here and keep vigil until Celia has safely disappeared behind a turnstile, and into the underground crowd.

This is how Celia makes friends. She asks, and then she hugs, and if presents or favors are exchanged in the process, it only seems to help smooth things along. The gift seems to have overwhelmed her in its thoughtfulness, in its understanding. What Celia does -- however much Charlotte is removed from it, however little she knows about the goal, the process at this point -- is certainly a part of the war, but she isn't opening up fomori and getting covered in their ichor. It's slow, and in many ways it's more insidious.

it's pure, Charlotte said, of her little talen. The same could be said of Celia, thought it often isn't. There are few who could do what she does and withstand being dragged down by it, poisoned by it, warped to the core. Celia seems okay, though. She hugs and cries and makes new friends and very carefully tucks that talen into her purse, wrapped in a glove.

"I have a phone," she says, "in case you ever want to hang out. I'm also at the Hay-Adams hotel, if you want to find me. Erich is going to be so happy we're friends now."

That makes her smile again. Her two friends -- she has two, now -- are friends with each other. And that means they're all friends. And this makes her inordinately happy about life. Before she goes, she gives Charlotte another hug, this one quick, then bounces down the steps to catch a train going south. She pauses at the bottom of those steps to wave, then into the crowd, where she only vanishes in the eyes of mortals.

These Garou -- the ones she calls friends, the ones she hasn't met yet -- could find her across the city if they wanted to. She stands out like a beacon.