Ornature

The 'dynamically evolving' Columbia Heights on a cool winter's evening, a bite of chill to the air unwelcome after the afternoon's warmth. More than a few of the Section 8 buildings and basement studios and walk-ups and squats and old rowhouses crammed with too many immigrants in too little space on the side streets had windows open, radios playing, children and parents sunning on stoops and the few little patches of brownish grass crammed building and street as the temperature crept up above 60 and the patchy sunlight scattered over the dirty streets, a spare wintry promise of the summer heat to come.

Now it is dark, a biting wind rises out of the northwest, cuts down the radial arteries of the city. Past the shuttered 'artistic venues' and the few local galleries still hanging on the wake of funding cutbacks and kickbacks. Still, the city's alive. Dealers on the corner, prostitutes walking the beat. Locals spilling out of the bars and restaurants to smoke on the corner and argue about the World Baseball Classic. Cuba's unexpected double-defeat by the Netherlands, or this prospect or that one.

There, in a threadbare park, more mud than grass, half the swings no more than chains now, a group of teenagers with weed and pills and maybe a bit of crack to sell hanging out on the spring-loaded horses on the playground right by the intersection have a new target to harass: she doesn't belong here. Slight and absolutely fair and blond beneath the fading pink of her cropped hair, Charlotte is cutting across the park. The hood of her jacket had been up over her head, half-shielding her features, but her quick pace and the sudden blast of the wind have blown it back, ruffled her haphazardly cropped hair into a spun-sugar sort of confection of pink and blond.

The kids are egging each other on, calling out to her in Spanish, English, Spanglish. Mami - says one of them, or more, the word like a chorus she does not really understand. And she's ignoring them, head tucked down, giving them side-eyed looks that are wary, but not feature. Keeping them in view. At least until one of them grabs his crotch. Which has her baring teeth in an animal fashion and speeding up, away from them. Shoulders set against catcalls as she gains the sidewalk and starts across the street.

So that's Erich's sign to swoop in and rescue the damsel, right? And he would. If she were kin. Well, if she were any kin but Celia de Luca, who would probably not only take care of herself but chew him out for trying to rescue her. But she's not kin -- she's not even kin of the Celia-de-Luca persuasion -- and so across the street, coming out of his favorite little cheapass Mexican-American greasy spoon diner with a doggie bag in his hand

(hold the jokes, please.)

and his car keys in the other hand, Erich just kind of quirks an eyebrow at Charlotte hurrying across the street. And then he moves to intercept her point of alighting on the sidewalk.

"Why don't you just make them piss their pants?" he queries. The bag in his hand smells heavily of food. Meaty, greasy food. Not much corn tortilla-smell, though. He's not much of a grain eater. "You could if you wanted to."

"Hey! - " that's from five or ten feet away, as Erich emerges from his favorite Mexican diner, the grease already staining the bag and staining the air with the scent of his steak fajitas, holding everything except the beef. There's a quirk to her mouth, a certain gleam of greeting in Charlotte's eyes that has her footsteps lighter somehow. The Silver Fang even gives Erich a little wave, pale fingertips dotted against the dark cotton of her hoodie.

That grin wavers a bit as Erich asks her why she doesn't just make the humans piss their pants; her nose wrinkles and then her expression disappears from all but his peripheral view as she cuts a look back across her shoulder at the park across the street, dark except where the headlights of some customer's rusted 1986 Buick flare across it, summoning the youngest of the small group for an exchange.

A steadiness to her study of the group of young men; framed and alert, before she turns back to Erich, pale eyes touching on his car keys, then his face. A skeptical lift to her brows, and a doubtful little shake of her head. "I'm not like you?" Wistful, perhaps a bit admiring, the tone. "I'm pretty sure no one except Dosia and Delia are scared of me."

That silly little wave of hers puts a smile on Erich's face. It, too, fades as hers does. They both look over her shoulder: the small, slight Silver Fang and the considerably larger Shadow Lord.

His eyes fall back on her. He shrugs one shoulder. "Don't sell yourself short. You're a werewolf. And most humans scare pretty easy."

He nods her back toward the group with a tip of his chin upward. "Go on," he says. "Go back there and tell 'em if they ever harass a girl on this block again, you'll find 'em where they sleep and carve their balls out. Or, I don't know, whatever you Fangs use as threats."

((room for another mebe?))

There's that doubtful look again; she casts it up at Erich, then draws her chin back and angles her body to draw a line of sight between the Ahroun and the young men in the park. Her brows are drawn together, but the frown is thoughtful rather than deliberate. Less an expression than something that takes its place as she considers things.

The flutter in her chest - no, lower, just below her solar plexus - has her drawing in a breath deep enough that it pushes back her shoulder blades and then her shoulders proper. Squaring them as she allows that little flutter to open up to the idea of being powerful like that. Of carrying herself like Dances-with-the-Hurricane, silently cleaning her blade as snow swirled down in the center of the alley. Of sailing through a crowd the way an Ahroun does, without an Ahroun at her side.

Charlotte's little grin returns, with a slightly more feral edge. Though she struggles to suppress it and shoot Erich only a frown as she turns back to him, pulling the strap of her cross-body messenger bag up over her head and thrusting it toward him to hold for her. With, "You don't get to tell me what to do," a silky, sulky edge to the words belied by the fact that she is, in fact, doing exactly what he told her to do. "you're not the boss of me. I'm a Silver Fang."

Then she turns smartly on her heel and begins marching back across the street. And, christ, she really is virtually marching, this determined, absurd little stride, crisp and clipped and fast as her legs can take her.

Well, this ought to be interesting at least. Keeping an eye on Charlotte -- just in case he really did have to rescue her, though if he does he's never going to let her hear the end of it -- Erich settles his shoulderblades against the chipped brick facade of that Mex-Am diner with its buzzing neon signs shouting

OPEN 24 HOURS!

and

MEXICAN AMERICAN DINER!

The streetlights only barely blanket this area. He's sort of a smudge in the uncertain light -- a large, undeniably intimidating smudge with big shoulders and big knuckles, which is odd because he's also white as a ghost and very blond and ... well, pretty affable, all things considered. While he waits, he unrolls the top of his doggie bag and opens up the styrofoam container inside to nom on the remnants of his fajitas. Everything except beef held. Well, and a bit of onion and bell pepper... but only for the flavor.

(Charisma + Intimidation! PLUS WILLPOWER.)

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

This is what Erich sees: that knot of young men turning the way a herd turns - a leading edge as someone notices the girl coming back, then the rest after in stages, a velvety movement seen from affair, the sort of crowd-elegance that seems choreographed but never can be.

One of them - the beta, Erich's wolf-mind can easily mark him, for the leader, the Alpha, is still hanging back, sitting in the spine of a park bench, his arms open wide, knees spread, hands braced against his thighs as his pack flares open around him. And the cat-calling starts, ricocheting like dice thrown wildly about a craps table. Like a pinball down a gutter. Laughter exchanged with encouragement as she gains the far sidewalk. Climbs up it with a little hop and walks determinedly forward, hands tucked into fists in the front pocket of her hoodie.

Only the two youngest - the runners, the look-outs - are anywhere close to Charlotte's size. She walks by them all, side-steps around the first couple of young men, then the group closes behind her in a way that shields her a bit from his view. The beta-dude is watching her. Saying something that is hard to hear across the street, a cascade of Spanish and English that merges with laughter from his audience as she steps around him and (she, too, is a wolf. She senses instinctively where leadership of this motley pack of humans lies.) marches (STOMP STOMP STOMP) right for the Alpha.

There's a bit of a decrescendo as the group resettles, one of the kids miming something crude, another claiming with a gesture that he wants popcorn, for the theater that comes next. Charlotte's leaning forward - speaking, rather quietly and very straightforwardly - to the Alpha with a sing-songy rhythm movement of her shoulders, and abruptly the mood of the group just changes. Goes from gleeful to uneasy and unsettled. The anticipatory quiet becomes something altogether, goes dead-still and a few of the hangers-on at the outer edges begin peeling away a bit.

This time, when Charlotte turns around, the beta steps out of her way, and the rest follow and Charlotte walks right back through the edge of the darkened playground and park, off the curb, across the street toward the diner. Marching for the first fifteen feet, because she does not want to run, her wide-eyed young face set in a slightly crazed but Very Very Serious expression.

Though once she crosses the double-yellow lines at the center of the street, she cannot help but skip (yes, fucking skip) every two or three steps the rest of the way back to Erich. Now barely suppressing the fact that she is grinning and giddy and squirming with victory as she hops back up on the curb in front of the Shadow Lord.

Pale eyes shining, reflective as a cracked mirror. "Did you see that!"

He saw that.

He saw how the pack -- or are they a herd? -- opens up to envelope her. A twinge of unease flickers through him when a few of them block his view, but he pushes it down. She's a wolf, and neither his pack nor his tribe. He has no right to protect and defend here. His shoulders relax, and that's when he realizes they'd tensed at all; he settles back to watch.

And watching, he sees how the mood abruptly changes. How the catcalling and the jeering and the excitement of prey within reach shifts entirely and silently to uneasiness. To dread. To outright fear.

He sees how they get out of her way. This little girl, this pale, odd-haired, frail little creature that skips across the street to gain the curb again. She looks so proud of herself. Erich's proud too; he has to refrain from sidehugging her and ruining the whole effect.

"I saw," he affirms, straightening up and falling in beside her. Some crowd-choreography there, too, easy and uncalculated. "That was a slam-dunk. What'd you say to them?"

Erich saw and Charlotte gives another little bounce, not quite a hop, as she falls into step beside him. Easily and thoughtlessly, matching Erich not stride-for-stride, but stride-and-a-half for stride, slipping her bag back over her shoulders and letting the familiar weight of her theurgey-stuff hit her comfortably in the thigh.

A side-grin, up at Erich, beaming all the more when she catches the responsive note of pride in his expression, and she launches into her explanation, "I told him that there were worms and larvae and caterpillars inside his brain and that I could smell them and that they were gross and that he'd ask them in and that if he kept doing that I would come back and make them start eating their way out and they would eat their way out of his frontal lobe and his brainpan and skull and gnaw out through his eyeballs in a great big mass and push out through his nose and burrow down into his tongue and gnaw on its root until everything fell off in a giant rotten mass with his eyeballs oozing down his cheeks like a candlewax and the worms falling off the tip of his nose like drip-drip-drop."

Here's a pause, if only because she has literally run down all the breath in her lungs and there's nothing left to power speech. Charlotte drags in a big deep breath all at a go, and appends,
"I mean, more or less. I don't remember exactly what I said, but that was mostly it."

A little nudge, physical. Her shoulder to his elbow. It would never have occurred to her that she could do something like that if he hadn't told (reminded?) her that she could.

"That is... so gross," Erich responds, swaying agreeably with the little nudge. "Not that cutting balls off isn't, but -- that's just really gross, Charlotte."

He sticks his hand out. Palm up, fingers together.

"Gimme five. Good job. Bet they'll think twice before harassing you or anyone else again. And bet you'll think twice before crossing the street to avoid the likes of 'em again."

"Mmmph." That little note of pleasure as Erich informs her that her threats were really gross. She agrees; she's pleased with them in hindsight, perhaps dwelling on a few of the choicer bits in a delightedly dreadful, dreadfully-delighted way, but only briefly. Because if she thinks about it took long then it will be really really and she might throw up on her shoes.

Erich puts out his hand, palm up. Gimme five - and Charlotte does not know what to do. A moment's hesitation, a stolen side-glance at Erich and she smacks her closed fist into his open palm, like a judge banging a gavel to bring a courtroom to order.

"I dunno," another little glance at Erich's face, before she looks away, a bit more shy now that the euphoria of her victory is ebbing. The faintest shrug, more sensed than seen, twists her narrow shoulders beneath the hooded jacket. "I was braver because you were watching me."

Not a compliment. Not a confession. Just a quiet little fact.

Erich looks mystified as she bangs her fist into his open palm. "Okay, when you give someone a five, you're supposed to have your hand open and slap them together. It's very satisfying when you do it right."

He quirks. The obvious conclusion to the leapt to is simple: because she had backup. He doesn't leap there, though. Instead he asks, "Why's that?"

So, Erich instructs Charlotte in the art of gimme five and Charlotte does it properly this time, enjoying the satisfying smack of their palms together, and goes, "Oh, because you have five fingers." Which is deeply and immediately obvious to virtually everyone not unmoored from popular culture and marooned instead in the traditions and expectations of a hidebound, rigid, hierarchical and regressive cult-of-a-tribe. Erich learned how to give five. Charlotte in theory knows which of the forks in a place setting is the crab fork.

And that she is not under any circumstances to attempt to use it to eat her clear soup.

--

Her head's down. She's in profile, her mouth curved faintly, thoughtfully, and she hitches a shoulder in another half-shrug. Not so much an I don't know gesture as an it's obvious gesture. Quiet but matter-of-fact, she returns, "I didn't wanna let you down."

That draws a curious glance from the Ahroun. "You thought I'd be disappointed in you or something? Or ... I don't know, think you were weak?"

He's about to say he'd never think that of her. But he stops. He gives it a moment's thought. And then he opts for a rather brutal honesty.

"I guess I might have," he says. "I mean, I probably would've told myself you were just having an off day, and plus you'd never practiced the fine art of scaring someone shitless and all, but ... yeah. Truth is if I'd seen you cross the street to avoid some troublemaking kids and then fall flat on your face when you went back to confront them, I might have ... well, I wouldn't have thought poorly of you or whatever. But I might have put you in the needs to be protected category.

"Which isn't really where a werewolf belongs," he adds with a sidelong glance.

Charlotte listens quietly; she is still in profile, not looking at him. Not directly. She takes a step and a half for every single step he takes and it makes her seem to bounce along, even when she's no longer hopping. Even when she's just keeping up. Her profile is delicate, the crisp sharp cut of her jawline, the hollow behind her earlobe, a few stray strands of fading pink hair tucked haphazardly behind. The sharp cut of her nose. The faintest little curve of her mouth. Half-visible to him in profile. Just kind of nodding as he works his way through the permutations, and does not offer her platitudes.

Which pleases her, in a very different, and deeper, way than her small victory against some street kids.

"Everybody needs to be protected, sometime," a sly look back, the edge of humor surfacing in the gleam of her gaze. " - unless you're the fabled Ragaguergeodoxiiardhroun?" The sly edge fades and flicks a glance up to meet his sidelong glance. "But no. That isn't where a werewolf belongs."

"Well, yeah," he concedes, prepared to explain his point further -- but what I meant was! -- but then she continues on herself. Reaches her point, which

(he's pleased to discover)

is his point as well. He smiles at her, sideways and downward. "Yeah," he says again, and then punches her gently on the shoulder. "So I'm glad that's not where you're putting yourself."

A winging glance - sideways and up - when he punches her shoulder.
A little shake of her head. No, that's not where she's putting herself. Charlotte's mouth widening into a smile that could be almost considered assured.

Whatever it is, it is shining right back at him for three or four spare heartbeats before she breaks it off.

"Hey - want to see what I made?" And she's pulling up the flap of her bag to dig into its contents, coming back with a handful of obsidian arrowheads, two of them shattered into pieces, three still whole.

Cue chatter, as Erich digs into his streak-strips and jingles the keys to his car-and-home. "You can have one if you want, but you might not want to take it across" in that significant way, which means Code, which means Umbra, "because sometimes things can sense them and they don't like them.

"That's why I was walking home? Except I'm not sure which way it is since I got here on the other side." (Given her sense of direction (or lack thereof) and lack of any apparent transportation other than her feet, this may be how she gets everywhere in the city.)

"Hey, do you know Celia? I saw her the night Philip took us to the Club and told Chas because I could smell her and then I saw her at this art gallery and I wondered what Lauren would do, you know, and - "

Et cetera, all the way home.