Ornature

The news breaks the way a dam does: first a tiny, frantic, high-pressure trickle -- a single channel interrupting whatever programming they had on to bring you this breaking news. And then, seemingly seconds later: the explosive decompression, the torrent, the flood. It's on almost every channel in DC, because it's local, because everyone knows this guy, because it's a scandal and it's sensational and titillating and everyone wants to weigh in on it. Shake their heads over the sad story of the Senator and his barely-legal (or is she even legal?) bit of fluff on the side, who lived in an apartment he rented for her, who used a credit card he got for her, who left him giggly little sexts with a phone he bought her. What was he thinking.

It might have been Charles who noticed first. It's certainly not Erich, though -- sometime in the early afternoon -- he certainly does notice. And then there's a trip to Charlotte's, but she's not there or perhaps indisposed. There are, after all, lurid pictures of her friend with that awful gross man all over the news channels, the NC-17 bits blurred out. All over the internet, too, the NC-17 bits definitely not blurred out. But anyway: Erich goes to her house, and he leaves a note with her housekeeper, and the note says something about how it's their cue to go and to be ready by morning.

But then a couple hours later he's back. It's about six pm now, and the evening news is all over this juicy, juicy tidbit, and

Erich is at Charlotte's door again, knocking with his knuckles instead of ringing the doorchime like a civilized person. He hammers until the door opens, and then he simply shouts up the stairs: "CHARLOTTE!"

She's out when Erich comes by the first time. God knows where, says Mrs. H, with a flash of a wormy little smile like she and Erich conspiratorial partners, somehow, in managing the comings and goings and moody little habits of her charge. Mrs. H has decided that she likes Erich. After she reads the note he leaves behind, she decides that she is going to pack him a lovely hamper of charcuterie. Every shelf-stable dried, smoked, preserved meat she can find at her favorite stores. Tinned sardines and mackerels and pates and escargot, too. In the morning, (she is already imagining this), she will have a lovely brunch with every breakfast meat imaginable to see him off. He may not know which is the proper proper spoon for consomme and which for broth and which for cleansing the palate with a silver dish of lemon sorbet sprinkled with seasalt from the salver (and these are things that Mrs. H likes - the regulation of them, the order of them, the rules that attach to them and give order to the universe, even the smallest parts of it), but he wouldn't be expected to know such things. And though she can feel her skin tightening, the small hairs on her forearm standing on end when she answers the door and finds him there, he says polite things. He looks her in the eye. Says please and thank you and that is all that can be expected of lesser tribes. And more than she ever expects of Charlotte.

Who is Out, not indisposed. Somewhere in the umbra, maybe, or scrabbling down in the shallows in Rock Creek Park, startling the joggers as she stomps through the cold water, sometimes hoping from rock to rock, boulder to boulder, looking for well-proportioned stones in the shallows.

If anyone in Washington, DC could avoid news like this, it is Charlotte. There are no televisions to be seen in the Gray home, and the only computer is Charles' laptop. She has a smartphone now, oh yes, and Charles has input contact information, emergency numbers, but other than sometimes turning it on to look at the pictures of herself with her friends on the night of the birthday party, Charlotte has not touched it much. She has yet to discover the internet.

But even Charlotte cannot avoid the news. There may not be any televisions in her home, but they are everywhere else, and the world needs some sex and scandal to go along with its murders. She glimpses the pictures first as she is walking back home from the park, through the window of a bar and grill, which runs giant screens of the cable news feeds the way sports bars play every incarnation of ESPN, all at once. Each network, from FOX to Al-Jazeera to Telemundo to CNN to the BBC has chosen a different picture, or series of them, to splash in between coverage of the manhunt in Boston and Charlotte sees them all, standing outside, staring in through the tinted windows, the bottom third of her jeans damp and fringed with mud, her little brown cross-body bag heavier with her haul of stones, her pink-tipped hair wrecked by the wind, which is wild and cold and cuts through her on the city street. She gets close enough to the window, watching, that her breath fogs the glass and lobbyists and interns and lawyers cut around her as they hurry down the sidewalk, doing Important Things for Important People, something strange enough about her stillness, her rigidity that despite the fundamental apparent harmlessness of her physique, they give her a second look. Wonder if, maybe, perhaps, they ought to call someone.

Charlotte feels so strange. Sick and hot and cold all at wants. She wants to tear into something and the world feels big, cushioned, distant all at once. She could find him. She could find him and -

She arrests that thought before it advances any farther.
And she runs, all the way home.

--

Charles pulls the door open when Erich returns, mid-hammer. He has a phone tucked between his left shoulder and ear, and another in his right hand, texting. But he's pocketing the second and begging off the first call as Erich barges in and hollers for Charlotte, up the stairs. There is, in the corner of the foyer, an open, hard-sided round hatbox suitcase, full of the talen-making supplies Melantha gave Charlotte, and others she has gathered since. Her Charlotte's messenger bag is on the floor beside it, the long cross-body strap pooled on the floor.

Charlotte emerges from the long hallway that bisects the house and leads to the back garden, her hands full of Stuff. She's white, and shaking a bit and says nothing because her heart is pounding and she can't quite speak. Not yet. She is so small, so wide-eyed, so girlish that a stranger who saw her from a distance might read it as fear. But Erich is an Ahroun. He knows the excess adrenaline of swallowed rage when he sees it. The something savage underneath her skin.

Mrs. H wouldn't like Erich as much right now if she saw him. Barging into the home, hollering up the stairwell, wheeling on Charlotte and grabbing her stuff out of her hands, putting it aside, grabbing her, hugging her tight.

The rage he sees in her is reflected in him too. It can't have been easy seeing those pictures everywhere. Worse, hearing the things that were said -- about Jack, but also about his unknown too-young mistress. Even in 2013, there are people always willing to point the finger at the woman. All that's missing is the scarlet A.

But it's not just rage in him. There's a thrumming sort of savage joy too. And ache, and sadness. All of it mixed together, jumbled and swirled. "Don't be angry," he says to Charlotte, fiercely. "This is a good thing. She's a hunter and hunters get their teeth bloody. This is no different."

He lets her go, bends to pick up the first thing he sees. It's her suitcase. "Come on. Grab your stuff. I made room in the back. We can wedge your things in. We might have to just sleep in wolf most nights until I figure something out. Maybe I'll get an old Airstream or something, I don't know. We'll figure it out."

And he laughs. The girl they both love, and the girl he's sort of in love with, has her picture plastered everywhere and everyone pities her for being young and dumb or hates her for being a slut. The girl they both love has left town without seeing either of them, because she couldn't. But still: somehow, he laughs, and it's not forced or false but real, true, exhilarated. He calls to her, carrying her suitcase out the door --

"Come on!"

Charlotte is so small and stiff and bright when Erich pulls her into that hug. Tight-shouldered and straight-spined and absolutely un-fucking-bending, at least until she feels that thrum of energy in him, bright and jagged and strange as it is. Then she wraps her arms around his neck, tight, her small hands formed into fists that he can feel firm against his shoulders. Erich tells her not to be angry, Melantha is a hunger, and this is just the blood on her teeth and Charlotte, Charlotte bangs her little fists into the twin bulges of Erich's muscled shoulders.

"I'm not mad at her," the girl all but seethes. "I'm just - "

Mad at everyone else.

Erich lets her go then, grabs her suitcase. He's exultant, laughing, savage. The case itself is light, a jumble of things inside. Charlotte does not have words for what she is, but Erich's moving so fast, like an onrushing tide, that whatever she was going to saw gets caught up in the undertow. He made room for her and then stuff. He says other stuff and he's heading out the door, and her garden things aren't yet tucked into the suitcase and she grabs them and her messenger bag and starts to run out the door after him, her hands full of branches and acorns and wavering vines of forsythia and wysteria and Erich is taller, long-legged, moving brightly, laughter still resonant in the back of his throat.

But Charles stops Charlotte at the door, and a moment later Charlotte shouts after Erich.

"WAIT. THAT'S JUST STUFF. THAT'S NOT MY CLOTHES."

"What?"

He's halfway to the car already. Turns back, the suitcase swinging an effortless arc in his hand. Must be nice to be so strong. Charlotte wouldn't know what it feels like; she's scrawn and bones. But then: she has a link to the otherworld that Erich can't even begin to fathom. They're all blessed in their own ways. They all have their own shortcomings.

He looks at the suitcase; back to her. "Where are your clothes?"

Charlotte is framed on the front step; Charles is inside. It is still light outside, though yesterday's heat has faded from the streets and there is a sharp spring chill in the air. Up in the mountains, there will be frost, perhaps even snow, tonight.

"IN MY ROOM!" Charlotte shouts back to Erich, louder than is perhaps wholly necessary. She stamps her foot by way of emphasis, then disappears back into the foyer. Calling out, "WAIT OKAY!" over her shoulder as she turns and runs back inside, stomping wildly up the grand staircase. The door yaws open, Charles glances outside, then turns to follow his sister upstairs.

"DON'T LEAVE WITHOUT ME!" - comes drifting down the stairwell, in her wake.

Something about that pangs in Erich. Melantha had said something to that effect too. They had about a minute and a half to speak, and she could have said anything, asked just about anything of him, but the first, only, and most important request she made was --

Don't go anywhere without her, okay? She doesn't have a pigeon.

"I'm not leaving without you," he calls after Charlotte. "I'll put your 'stuff' in the trunk. What about all that other stuff you're carrying? Will it fit in here?"

The garden Stuff Charlotte was carrying is now scattered over the brick and marble on the front portico. There's not much of it - just as much as one small girl can stuff into her greedy hands - but the house is so well kept that Charlotte's gleanings are easy to tell from the ordinary debris that might accumulate on a porch over a long winter, because no debris has accumulated.

"I GUESS?" Charlotte's voice is fading, muffled, she's somewhere upstairs and Erich can hear her stomping around, the old floorboards now and again creeking under her weight. The occasional raised voice, the words indistinct, urgency sketched into them.

Erich has five minutes, maybe six to gather up the bits Charlotte discarded when she ran upstairs. There is absolutely room in her hard-sided hatbox for the last bits and gleanings. Erich unlatched it carefully and finds inside a jumble of talen-making supplies, the glass jars carefully cushioned, the heavy pieces wrapped in velvet bags. Mrs. H is unfortunately out shopping, so she cannot hurry out and offer Erich the half-packed hamper of delicacies she has gathered for him (and well, okay - for Charlotte. Perhaps.) as he works to find a place for the hatbox in the back of the Mustang.

Then - five minutes later, perhaps six, perhaps even seven, Charlotte comes flying down the front stairwell, clutching a pillow in one hand and a duffle bag in the other. Stops long enough in the foyer to grab her favorite hoodie and throw the strap of her messenger bag over her narrow torso, and plunges out of the house, this time with clothes in Erich's wake.

Charlotte drops her duffle on the ground, beside Erich, behind the open trunk, and puts the pillow atop it, then runs back to the front porch to throw her arms around her brother, who has by now emerged in her wake. He cups the back of her head, hugs her close, then pulls back and speaks quietly to her. She's antsy, though, and breaks away with an irritated shrug of her shoulders, dashing back to Erich's car, ready now. Eager to be on their way.

When Charlotte bursts out, Erich is leaning so far into the back of the Mustang that his shirt has ridden up in the back. He's wrapped her Stuff in some paper towels, laid them carefully atop the rest of her Stuff in her Suitcase Of Stuff, and re-latched it. Now he's pushing it forward as far as he can, jigsawing things around in the back of the Mustang. There's just the two of them, so the backseats are still folded down flat for more storage. His sleep bag is still unrolled across the left side: more than enough room for two wolves to curl up and sleep in.

He holds his hand out as Charlotte comes up with her duffle bag. That too gets easily swung into the trunk, wedged between the back, the side, and one of Erich's Boxes Of Stuff.

"Anything else?" he asks her. "Don't rush. Take your time and think. If you forget, we'll probably have to send for it later. Maybe weeks later, however long it takes for all of us," he means Melantha, too, "to get someplace safe and settled."

"Uhm." When they moved here, someone else packed up Charlotte's things. Made list after list of what she might need, and checked and rechecked that list. Charlotte just 'packed' her 'clothes' in five minutes. Mismatched socks and a fistful of underwear. One stack of jeans and another stack of cotton shirts and one silver-armor dress - check and check and check. The bag of toiletries that her brother pointed out and an extra pair of shoes. The two books on her bedside table.

She stands there clutching her pillow frowning at Erich, squinting against the lowering gleam of the sun, which is lowering itself slowly in the western sky, trying to figure out what else might be necessary, what she might need. She's breathing fast, gulping in air, her mouth half-open as she tries to count through the things that might be needful and necessary. Trying to slow her beating heart to think.

Charles has disappeared into the house; emerged again. He has a re-useable shopping bag in one hand, a phone in the other.

Charlotte cannot think of anything else she needs until she spins and sees her brother and says "MY PHONE - " but he has it, holds it out for her too, and that bag. Which has the basics: Reese's peanut butter puffs cereal, slim jims, beef jerky, two jars of caviar.

Then Charlotte is ready to go, handing Erich her pillow to push in after her duffle. She tucks the snack-bag into the front seat and pronounces herself READY TO GO with one last survey of the house, followed by a brief, firm nod. And then, Charlotte slips into the passenger's seat, her messenger bag in her lap, the evening light swimming across the surface of the windows as she pulls the door closed behind her. After the frantic energy, she's rather still as Erich ducks into the driver's seat and starts up the Mustang, resting her forehead against the cold window glass, watching her brother watch her go as Erich puts the car into reverse and starts backing out of the drive.

They swing out onto the street, headlights swimming over the 19th century homes lining it. Charlotte is quiet, listening to her heart pounding in her ears.

They're three blocks away when she speaks again. Quiet now, not close to shouting. "She's okay, Erich," Plaintive, really. " - isn't she?"

"Hug your brother," Erich says, almost automatically, as Charlotte starts to get into the car.

So she does. Hopefully. And then he shakes Charles's hand, if Charles is up for a handshake. There are no promises to look after Charlotte or anything of the sort. She can look after herself. Well, sort of; but still: he doesn't promise things that will make her seem incapable and childish. The snacks go into the front and the pillow goes into the back and --

they go into the car. Charlotte watches her brother watch her go. Erich waves to Charles, starts the engine, and Mrs. H will have to be disappointed after all; will probably have to send them a care-package full of smoked meats at some other point in time, because

they are driving away from that lovely old house with its lovely old oak, which in Erich's mindseye is still draped in all those festive lanterns of spring.

He looks at her as Charlotte asks him what she does. And the truth is he doesn't know for sure, either. He only talked to her for a handful of minutes, if that, and he was so wrought and wrung-up himself that it was hard for him to really read her voice across that unstable connection. He thinks a moment.

"I think so," he says. "And even if she wasn't, she will be. She's stronger than the both of us put together, I think."

And then he reaches over and gives her should a squeeze, smiling.

"So it's good that we have each other. Which way do you want to go? We can go any way but east, I think."

Charlotte does hug her brother, again. And Charles does shake Erich's hand.

And later, Washington DC is speeding by, turning into dusk, the lights coming on around the monuments. Erich asks Charlotte which way she wants to go.

And Charlotte, looks up, squints her eyes at the flash of dying sunlight glittering over the flat DC skyline, and says, "Let's follow the sun."

Wednesday night in DC is warm but cooling quickly. The afternoon high was in the mid-80s, hot enough to make the tulips in the city's gardens and window boxes and greenspaces (most of which have only just bloomed) go blowsy with the heat. High winds peel through the city streets, strewing petals from cherry blossoms and bradford pears and the odd forsythia - gangly and wild and woodland and out of place here, except where it has been tamed to near inconsequence by a gardener's shears - so that the streets are dusted with white and pink and yellow as if a wedding procession had just passed through. As if snow had fallen, out of season, in the midst of a bright, sunny day.

The Gray home is large and stately, old as DC. Older, perhaps - as old as Georgetown proper, which was named originally for the King, and not the general. The original Federal building was brick and mortar and modest, set back from the street and sidewalk. It has been swallowed by a half-dozen nineteenth century renovations, so that what can be seen from the street now is a fantasty Victorian. Freestanding, on a corner lot, which is enclosed by high brick walls topped by black ironwork. Walls tall enough that they might be a zoning violation were they not as historic as the home they enclose.

The topmost canopy of the huge oak tree in the backyard can be seen from almost any angle, and tonight a handful of faery lights - paper lanterns, with a soft incandescent glow - that drift and sway in the nightwind that smells of cherry blossoms and car exhaust, and the musky promise of rain, sometime before morning - have been strung from its still-bare branches.

Erich, after all, is sharing a birthday with a nineteen year old girl. Who has never had a birthday party before.

If he drives his car up to park it on the street, or pulls it into the driveway that curls around back toward the carriage house, with its big wrought iron gates, there is a fucking valet in a formal black and a bow-tie and white gloves ready to take his keys. Maybe a little smirk on his face since it is quite a production for, ah, one guest. Thus far.

Erich does not, in fact, smirk to see what a production has been made of this birthday party. Actually, it just makes him feel a little bad because the party is so small, and it's Charlotte's very first, and she doesn't even really know what her real birthday is so she's just sharing one with Erich. He thinks, belatedly, that maybe he should have celebrated one just for her and then had another for himself. Or just let her celebrate this one alone, period, because he's already celebrated twenty-two of these.

He also wishes he had more friends that he could have invited. But of his friends in D.C., one of them has left for New York, while the other two -- well. Were going to be here. So that's something.

The Mustang rumbles to a stop. There's a valet that wants his keys. Erich looks at the fellow distrustfully, then grudgingly hands those keys over. Then he grabs a boxed cake and a little package from the passenger's seat, climbs out, and nudges the door shut with his elbow.

At Charlotte's front door, Mrs. H lets him in. And he stands in the entryway for a moment, present in one hand and boxed cake in the other, looking about for his friend.

Melantha has never been here. Not as Melantha. Not as Celia, either. In fact, she hasn't seen Erich since Jack moved her into a little apartment, and she hasn't seen Charlotte since a few days before that when Charlotte gave her the wee pigeon bead. Talen. Thing.

No one has seen much of her since Jack moved her into that apartment. Some texts, some calls between her and Erich. None with Charlotte, because Charlotte plus cellphone equals ??? so Melantha can't text her to begin with. She's seen Erich once or twice: midafternoon ice cream. A carefully arranged visit to a park, where she wiped the floor with him at chess. Brief visits, nothing more. And it's been a very long time since she and Charlotte watched Mulan.

When she comes up to the house, she's on foot. She took public transportation. She is beaming when she shows up, carrying a very large bag with two wrapped packages inside. There's a spring in her step. She has no keys for the valet but she says high to him. She is very excited when she gets to the front door and is let in, a minute or two after Erich. He's still there. She lets out a squeal and hugs him, then starts calling out. None of this 'looking around' business.

"Charlotte? Charlotte! We're here! Hi! Charlotte!"

Mrs. H wants to announce Erich properly. She's dressed up this evening, all her brown-and-gray hairs in place, wearing a quiet, formal, black dress with a bit of a ruffle down the front, and a formal black apron and a pair of diamond studs in her ears and she greets Erich with a hint of familiarity (because she knows and remembers him) spread neatly over her stiff, native dignity. Erich enters carrying packages and Mrs. H is ready to take them from him, the way she would take a lady's coat were she to sweep in next (as the footman or butler should take the gentleman's coat), but 1) it is too warm for coats; and 2) there is no butler, just a footman/valet shipped down from Clingstone, with Erich's keys in hand, who has not yet returned from driving Erich's Mustang slightly farther up the driveway toward the carriage house than Erich managed to park it.

And Erich holds: his package and boxed cake in hand, while Mrs. H steps back and eyes them without staring at them, wondering if she could maybe slip them out of his grasp, then deciding not to try.

Mrs. H thinks maybe she could manage the girl better. She looks very lovely, not so... well, large is what she thinks and angry is what she means, though the two thoughts never converge, so compartmentalized and euphemised are her thoughts.

But the Melantha is Celia too and she is so excited and the valet says Hi! right back to her and then starts to trail behind her because Charles said there wouldn't be many people. Just two or three and -

"I'll just announce you, then, Mr. - " is all Mrs. H gets out.

"Erich!" - Charlotte, from above. The EM has almost formed on her mouth before she recalls herself. That name is secret and a theurge knows how to keep secret things. Her moon is secret, nearly three-quarters enshadowed. "Celia!"

Leaning over the railing of the grand staircase, standing on the landing half-way to the second floor. Waving, a quicksilver smile appearing and then shyly disappearing on her face. Which is mostly enshadowed from this angle, low-to-high. She starts down the stairs, light footed, then elects to slide the rest of the way, down the mahoghany bannister to the foot of the stairs.

Her hair is pulled back, the platinum blonde roots more prominent around her face, the pink-dyed ends smoothed and tucked away, to curl up from where they've been tucked behind her ears. She is also: bare faced and barefoot, and wearing a short, silver dress.

Couture, one-of-a-kind, not fitted to her narrow frame so much as skimming it. It suits her, and her blood and breeding. Makes her look less like an odd, skittering, tentative, wounded little bird and more like the daughter of Falcon she is. Or could be, if the promise of her blood were ever fulfilled.

Then, of course, she slams into the base of the bannister with her right hip, hops off like a jackrabbit, bare feet slapping on the polished wood floors or gliding silken over antique Persian rugs.

"Hi!" A lifting, half-lashed look at Erich as she slips by him to hug Celia firmly. Thoroughly, breathlessly. "Come on. Chas is outside. We have, uhm. Champagne and beer and chocolate milk too. Because 'Delia and 'Dosia came. My sisters," to Erich, " - you saw them?" to Celia. "The little ones. Mother said they could. They're going back to Clingstone tomorrow though. And they have to say hi and go to bed. I made that rule."

It has been a week since he last saw Charlotte, and longer than that since he last saw Melantha. He did text her a few days ago, though, saying Charlotte and I are having a joint bday party at her place on 4/10, want to come? -- to which she replied in the affirmative, and to which he replied with a stack of smileys:

:))))))))))))!

So, yes. He's glad to see them -- glad to be squeezed by Melantha, glad to squeeze her back, see Charlotte come sliding down the banister. He bets her mom would never let her do that if she knew.

"I didn't know you had sisters," he says, and then reaches forward packages-and-all to hug Charlotte because he likes hugs too, thankyou. "I got you a cake. Well, us. But it's kinda ugly. And this is for you."

She is handed the package. It is messily wrapped, as if someone had tried to do a good job and then sort of just gave up halfway and scotch-taped and rumpled the rest into place. It's not very heavy, but whatever it is thumps around a bit inside its box.

Melantha is too polite to yoink her bag away from Mrs. H. with narrowed eyes of suspicion or a stuck-out lower lip of defiance. But Mrs. H. doesn't try, and Melantha bounces a little on the balls of her feet -- which are in cork wedges laced up in gold straps around her ankles -- when she hears and sees her best friend somewhere up high. On a staircase. Like a princess in a movie that Melantha would have Many Opinions on. She waves.

The girls are dressed better than the boy. The boy lives in his car. One girl is a Silver Fang. The other girl has a gold card given to her by the statesman she's fucking into ruination. One girl is in her short silver dress. Melantha's dress has almost a forties-esque flair to it, the bodice buttoned up and neatly collared, the short sleeves just barely gathered where they close about her arms. The dress is chocolate-colored, and the sash around her waist is creamy white. Her hair is up in a curling ponytail tied with a white, gold-trimmed ribbon. She smells like some kind of candy, warm and vanilla and possibly drizzled over strawberries.

"Oh, we can be barefoot!" she's saying, delightedly, as Charlotte slides down the banister and runs over to them and gives her a hug. She throws her arms, laden with packages or not, around her friend and wiggles her from side to side. "We can meet your sisters!"

Everything is an exclamation with her tonight. Everything is wonderful.

She looks to both of them. "I got you guys presents. Should we wait? Do you want them now?"

"Half-sisters," Charlotte corrects Erich with a wide-eyed and backswept look. One of those oddly solemn glances she bestows on him with semi-regularly. Particularly odd because at the precise moment of that look she is still hugging Melantha and being shaken back and forth in a way that sends the paillettes sewn into her silver dress into a chaotic dance. "I have a lot of half-sisters." And half-brothers.

Melantha smells good. She always does, but tonight that scent is both physical and spiritual, and Charlotte takes a breath deep enough that it stirs the kinfolk's hair as she pulls away from the hug and accepts Erich's messily wrapped package with diffident sort of hand flashing little half-smile.

"Thank you." The thanks are for both of them and Charlotte's eyes are shining suspiciously (or perhaps merely gleaming in the reflected light of her silver dress) by the time she has turned that look back to Celia. She is itching to tear into the package in her hand, to dive into Celia's bag and it is such a physical urge, between her shoulder blades, behind her spine but digging close to it, that it feels bright and electric beneath her skin. " - both, uhm. We can do it now? Let me get mine first! Come on, you can put the cake on the counter and we'll cut it and I had cook make you a special cake Erich - "

The latter part of that sentence is spoken over her shoulder, is left behind her like a trail of pale stones in moonlight, as Charlotte is already on the move, barefoot and familiar in her own territory, excited enough that she's speaking and moving quickly and there's a little skip in every third of fourth step she takes.

--

She leads them back through the long hallway: past the front parlor and the den and the huge, formal dining room, thought the white-and-marble kitchen where a dour-looking man in a white chef's hat holds a sort of court, with a variety of canapes and appetizers and drinks and supplies laid out on the center island, through the breakfast / sun room, out into the back garden.

Which is beautifully illuminated, still half-slumbering, daffodils and tulips and anemones in bloom now, buds on the low hedge of azaleas on the far wall, green both bright and deep in the grass, which is plush underfoot, still-bare limbs on the huge oak tree rising overhead.

Charles is standing on the brick-work patio, chatting with a young woman in dark clothing and a bow-tie to match the valet's uniform. The young woman holds a tray with a half-dozen glasses of champagne. Close to the two of them, a pair of girls, four and seven, sit at a tea-table with gold-rimmed plates and tea-mugs, wearing the sort of dresses with sashes and organza that little girls wear at Easter. They look up almost as one, startled, and Stare at Erich, not quite old enough yet to swallow the wary edge in their manner. Then the older one nudges or pinches the younger one on the thigh underneath the table and redirects her to watch Celia. These looks have rather more admiration than fear to them, and the youngest one is brave enough to give Celia a little wave.

--

Charlotte dashes up to Charles, and this is the young woman's cue to "circulate" with her champagne glasses. There are more glasses than there are guests allowed to drink the stuff, but there it is. In any case, she offers the tray to Erich and Celia while Charlotte rocks to her tiptoes to whisper into Charles' ear. And comes away from him a moment later with two packages of her own in hand.

Both of which she hands over to Erich when she dashes back across the garden, in time to take her own glass from the tray as the young 'server' heads back to chat with Charles some more. "One's from Charles, one's from me," she explains to Erich.

Compared to the girls, Erich feels -- and is -- a little underdressed. It's gotten warm enough that the ubiquitous hoodie has been relegated to the bottom of his dufflebag. The equally ubiquitous t-shirt and jeans have remained, though: neither of them particularly designer or chic or anything, really, other than sturdy. Utilitarian.

Also, sneakers. Kind of retro. Sort of muddy. They squeak a little on the polished wood floors, and when Melantha mentions being barefoot he

sort of

gratefully stomps out of them. And his socks, too. "Let's do presents after cake," he says. "'Cause it's an ice cream cake," of course, "and plus if we wait Delia and Dosia can't have any."

They are led through the long hallways of the house. They emerge into a backyard made magical by spring and lit lanterns. It all feels very classy and dignified, which means Erich feels a little unsure of himself. Charles is there too, because of course he is, and Erich has to admit to himself that his poor opinion of Celia's statesman is probably a good part of why he doesn't particularly like Charles. He reminds himself that Charles isn't a bad guy, not really, and he holds up a broad-palmed hand in hello.

There are little girls at the table. They are staring at him warily. They wave at Melantha, and whether or not she waves back Erich waves at them. He gets presents from Charlotte -- two -- in addition to the present Melantha has. He feels a little bad now. Maybe he should have gotten little things for everyone else, too.

"Thanks," he says, and sets the boxes down on the table. A tray sparkling with flutes of champagne circulates, nevermind that there are precisely four people who might drink it. Feeling obligated to do his share, Erich takes one. It looks a little ridiculous in his hand, against his t-shirt, his jeans, his now-bare feet. "I mean, for all of this. This is all so ... so Victorian tea party and cool and stuff."

And, fates forgive him: he sounds more puzzled and uncertain than thrilled.

The birthday girl in her pink-tipped hair and her Bee Eff Eff in her soda-shop-esque dress look like they belong here. Sort of. On the one hand, the gleaming, glittering gown isn't very tea-party, and the chocolate-brown dress isn't very fairytale, but it's just a different caliber of appearance. No one seems to mind, though.

Melantha keeps the bag with their presents close, and smiles as they start to head back out to the actual party. She keeps her shoes on for now, and as she and Erich follow Charlotte, she reaches over and holds his hand. Just for a little while. But her hand slides into his, gives his a squeeze. They separate, as they will need to, but he might notice -- as Charlotte may have already -- the slim leather cord wrapped multiple times around Melantha's left wrist like a hipster-trendy bracelet. The bright-eyed pigeon bead on it rests against the inside of her wrist, hidden away rather than displayed. But it's there.

Outside she gives a gasp of delight. "It's so pretty!" she says, and means it. The flowerbeds, the lanterns, everything. She's been at so many parties with chefs and waitstaff that it doesn't seem to strike her as odd, and she takes a glass of champagne without missing a beat. There are two little girls, and Melantha beams at them. They recognize her, at least dimly, from the very first night Charlotte caught sight of her.

She waves. One of them didn't get dessert because they waved at her that night. It sort of makes Melantha want to find their mother and punch her in the jaw. Or lecture her. Melantha's quite good at lectures.

Her eyes flick over to Charles-Chas, who she hasn't really met and didn't entirely notice at the supper club. She looks at the gifts and the little girls and then looks around, finding a spot to set down the large bag with the two presents inside of it. Then she hands her champagne to Erich -- she asks first, sort of -- and crouches down to unstrap and untie her shoes, stepping out of them onto the cool grass. There's no ahhh of relief, just a wiggling of her bare feet into the dirt and greenery before she takes her champagne back.

"Hi!" she says to the girls, and to Charles, finally. "I'm Celia."

When Erich lifts a palm toward Charles, Charles returns the gesture. He's not drinking champaign from the flutes, though. Not tonight, not quite yet. He has a dark bottle of amber beer in hand, and lifts it up as Erich and Celia emerge from the house behind Charlotte like a salute.

Then, Erich waves.

So do the little girls, though warily. There's a heartbeat, then a second. First the older of the two; then, after a moment's prompting that may have involved the sharp toe of a patent-leather maryjane kicked firmly into her younger sister's Achilles' tendon - all somewhere beneath the frothy lace tablecloth with which the girls' tea-table has been laid - the younger of the pair. Though by now she's is half-hiding behind her hair.

Erich wants to wait until after ice cream cake before opening presents and Charlotte is - as she always is - so very, very agreeable. She tucks her own messily wrapped package at the back of the cake-table, and is turning back to her two friends (with a brief, narrowing look at her little sisters' antics that does not quite express itself with a hiss. But could, if Charlotte were a different sort of girl. Or even a different sort of wolf) when Erich thanks her and she is at the tenative edge of a beam when she catches (somewhere beneath her skin, it snags) the inflection of his vague bewilderment. His uncertainty.

It is more than a bit like stepping through the looking glass, isn't it? The Queen of Hearts and Mad Hatter would be most at home if they appeared, suddenly, in this setting.

"Uhm," all wide-eyed, to Erich. Low-voiced, too, so it doesn't carry too far from their immediate orbit. "Would Mexican have been better? I could've gotten a pinata."

Some of that uncertainty is leeched out of her by Celia's reaction. That it is so pretty, the garden, the lanterns, the little girls in their dresses. The strange magic of an ever-so-slightly bent spring.

"Or uhm," bare food scuffing in the thick grass, a little shrug. " - something."

--

"Charles," - the older brother, dark haired and pale-eyed, twenty-five or so, pushes away from his perch, transfers his beer from his right to left hands, and reaches out with the right as he walks up to offer to shake Celia's. "Charles Gray. This," a familiar hand on the older girl's blonde head. "Is Cordelia. And this," the younger girl. "Is Theodosia." The introduction of the little girls is offered to both Celia and Erich.

The girls pop up then, right to their feet and bob forward in little curtseys. One and two and three. "Cordelia, Theodosia. . You just met Celia. The gentleman is Erich."

"No!" Erich says, a little too immediately and a little too loudly. "No," more modulated, "this is great. It really is. It just wasn't what I expected, but that's not a bad thing." There's a glance shot at Melantha here, looking for backup, for help, because god knows Melantha also took him to a party of sorts that he really, really wasn't expecting. But that wasn't bad, either. At all.

"I've just ... never been to a tea party before. Or anything like this, y'know? With catering and champagne and stuff. And to be totally honest -- "

Here he's interrupted. He's interrupted because he sees Charles heading over, so he stops talking, and then he's introduced to Delia and Dosia who are actually Theodosia and Cordelia, and Erich is wondering if every Silver Fang ever has such a long and cumbersome name. He is curtseyed to, which makes him get up out of his chair and bow, very awkwardly. And badly.

"Hello, Theodosia," he says. "Hello, Cordelia. It's nice to meet you both."

He pulls his seat forward as he sits again. And -- not exactly in the realm of etiquette, this -- he turns back to Charlotte and continues. "To be totally honest," he says, picking up right where he left off, "I was sort of thinking about, like... dragging you out and taking you clubbing, showing you a" he makes airquotes, "real party. But you know what?"

Here there is a thump of the table, very decisive.

"We can do that any other night of the year. You should not have to change your birthday party to suit anyone else's expectations. And I'm a shithead" -- the little girls gasp! -- "to even think of it. So we're going to have a tea party in your awesome backyard with beautiful lanterns everywhere, and I'm going to enjoy the fff--" he catches himself this time, "out of it, because you guys are my friends and we make anything awesome."

In another lifetime, Melantha might have blushed to be introduced to Charles, who is tall and well-mannered and handsome and intelligent and rich and athletic. In that lifetime, though, Melantha would not know that the Fangs would absorb her into their tribe for the purity of her blood, to pass it along to their own children by spirit. In that lifetime she might not have lost two brothers to the bitter interplay of reactive misogyny and tribe-specific misandry and two other brothers to Spirals, might not have lost her mother and her father, might not have been raised to be what is referred to even in her tribe as a Whore For Gaia, which isn't always a term of honor but sometimes is. In any of these lifetimes, she wouldn't know Erich, she wouldn't be wearing a talen that Charlotte made just so she won't get separated from him completely, and she might not even be as wickedly intelligent as she is.

This is a good lifetime. It may not be the best of all possible worlds, but right now it seems like a very good one. She smiles at the little girls and says hello to them by name. She lightly shakes Charles's hand, firming her grip halfway because she decides that she doesn't have to pretend to be delicate and wilting in this backyard, because Charlotte is her best friend. She sips her champagne and wraps her arm around Charlotte's shoulders. "He's just a dork," she says, fondly more than dismissively. "A pinata is always awesome but your backyard is super."

She plants a kiss on Charlotte's cheek. Erich rambles. Melantha smiles at him and squeezes Charlotte. "Also, if we drink champagne out of little china teacups at any point in the evening, I think that is also fabulous. The cake is melting."

Charlotte looks up at Erich's loud voice. No! that exclamation point at the end; she is still and sharply outlined and bright, the faery lights gleam off the armor-like bodice of her dress in soft, diffuse patterns. All alert, the look steady on Erich's face, watchful as he continues on, explaining himself through the awkwardness and expectations tunneling through his idea of taking her out clubbing for a real party and back into this, strange, glassine, inside out Victorian tea party with champagne and ice cream cake and children and brothers and blood.

Oh, Erich curses and both little girls GASP and then giggle; Cordelia bends over to whisper rather fiercely into Theodosia's ear, like so. The pair of them area peas in a pod. So alike, in mannerism and looks - in shining, silver blood - that despite the age difference, it would be easy to mistake them as twins. Particularly for a wolf, alive to the glimmer and frailty of their blood.

Whatever Charlotte was going to say in response to Erich is lost in the pink O of her mouth; because Melantha shakes hands, and firms her grip in Charles', and feels, in turn, the firming of his own grip. A shrewd, direct look from his pale blue eyes, which are so like Charlotte's, into her own before he lets go. Steps back. Probably takes the ice cream cake in hand and starts cutting it, while Mary, the champagne-tray-girl, puts down the tray and gives him a familiar hand, laughing at him as he tries to wrangle the first slice onto one of the Limoges plates.

So: whatever awkward response Charlotte might've uttered to Erich is saved from utterance, because Melantha wraps an arm around Charlotte and kisses Charlotte's cheek, and Charlotte gives Melantha a lifting, slanting glance. Nods her agreement to Melantha's fond declaration with a sly glance back to Erich.

"The oak tree's the best," Charlotte tells Melantha, quietly. "If you put your ear near the bark, sometimes you can hear him breathing." Though she doesn't know if kin can hear such things, she just expects that Melantha - who knows so much else - can and should. "I'll probably miss him more than my bed when we go."

--

Meanwhile, there is cake to be had. Charles is cutting, ice cream cake and something else, which isn't clear, in the uncertain light, the dimly lit spring, the swinging globes of pastel light from over heard.

Which isn't clear, at least until he asks Theodosia whether she wants ice cream cake or meat cake.

"ICE CREAM!" shrieks Dosia, momentarily forgetting to be scared at the horror of eating MEAT CAKE when ice cream was available. Then she informs Charles that he has forgotten the candles, and he tells her that they will eat the ice cream cake, and put the candles on the meat cake after.

And so it goes.

DING DONG, says Charlotte's doorbell. And it's Erich, standing on her porch with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking eager or expectant or bored, depending on how long it takes her to answer.

Charlotte @ 9:53PM

Charlotte's door bell definitely does not go ding dong. Perhaps it plays Fur Elise, but more likely it chimes, deep and resonant like the carillon tucked away in the belltower of the chapel at Georgetown University.

An efficient thirty-some seconds later the front door swings open, a prim, fifty-something woman rescued from the dumpiness of a spinster governess only by the (rather faint, but still present) blaze of her blood is standing there, peering up at Erich over the crown of her feather duster.

This is Mrs. H, and she looks rather harried, a few strands of gray-streaked brown hair have come loose from the tight bun that crowns her head, and a streak of some sort of dirt stains her frilly white half-apron. Which looks like it was stolen from one of those sexy French maid costumes sold by the thousand at Halloween.

They exchange particulars and Mrs. H eventually directs Erich to the back garden, where Erich will find Charlotte clambering ("like a little monkey!" said Mrs. H, actually out loud and is the hearing of a Garou before she realized it, looked horrified, and clamped a rather rough and reddened hand over her mouth, apologizing profusely) down from the upper branches of the big old oak that dominates the yard.

She's just ten feet or so up by the time he is in reasonable conversation range, lowering herself carefully from the lowest of the substantial branches.

"Erich!" From a bit above him; she carefully extracts her right arm to give him a little wave, then reasserts her grip, readying herself to jump the last dozen or so feet to the ground. A little bit shy, the flicker of her pale eyes over his face. The pleased curl to her mouth. "Hi!"

Erich @ 10:10PM

Mrs. H probably has no idea that she's now ruined sexy French maid costumes for Erich forever. Then again, Celia would have probably disabused Erich of that particular fondness sooner or later, anyway. Drowned it in a tirade of feminist rhetoric: how degrading to women it is, how it draws the parallel between an alluring woman and a servant; between desirable and subservient. See, he's already thinking along those lines. She's in his head!

Regardless: he follows Mrs. H out back after the prerequisite pleasantries: hello, how are you, I'm Charlotte's friend, can she come out and play? Or something like that, anyway. She's climbing the tree like a little monkey, Mrs. H says, and then is promptly mortified. Erich laughs, though: white teeth aflash, genuinely mirthful.

"She does like climbing stuff." And, aw. Rather like a lonely girl with few friends, Charlotte looks so pleased to have a visitor. "Hi," Erich says back, craning his neck to look up at her. "If you don't wanna come down, I can climb up."

And so he does: jumping to grab the branch, drawing his knees up and wrapping his legs around in a quick smooth snap. He twists his way upright, then onto his feet -- and runs along the branch, light on his feet, balanced as a cat. Sits straddling the thick branch not too far away.

"I might have to leave town soon," he says. No hello-how-are-you, nothing like that at all. Just: this. "You should come with me. Get away from all this ... " he waves a hand at her house, the big tree, all of it. "All this privilege. It's awesome, and I wouldn't blame you at all for wanting to come back to it eventually, but you should get away from it for a while."

Charlotte @ 10:39PM

So Erich climbs up, with all that swinging, physical ease that is his birthright. Fucking runs along one branch until he finds another, huge and rough and older than the house or the streets around it or this swampy city at the heart of the nation, or the nation itself, or any other benchmark the Europeans might use to measure their presence on the continent. Older still.

While Erich climbs, Charlotte belays her descent and scoot-scoots back until she is situated with her spine against the massive central trunk, her head tipped fondly against the back, as if she and the oak were old, old friends. Fine strands of her pink hair are caught in the rough bark, pulled up to frame her pale face like a shock of static electricity.

She listens to him quietly, turning with a pursed mouth to peer over at the house, glimpsed easily through the still-bare branches of the old. A half-dozen chimneys visible from their location, the dull gleam of the myriad 19th century windows reflecting the cold gray light of a cold spring day.

Maybe he's ready with explanations and argument, or braced for the sort of wounded-bird look that always seems to haunt the edges of her countenance. But she doesn't object, or demand explanation, or ask him why.

The girl - Falcon's girl - just flattens her pursed lips. He has to leave town.

"I know," the girl returns, some hint of her native shyness tattooed into what is otherwise a direct look. "Melantha told me." Her pale gaze steady on him, reflective, the color of the swimming gray sky in the diffuse afternoon light. The girl continues, so solemnly, "I was probably going to make you take me even if you hadn't asked."

Which is a lie that even he can read without a second thought, though there's truth embedded in it. She knew that he would have to leave, soon. And she wants to go with him. And she's pleased that he wants her to go, too.

"Hey - I made you something," she continues, apropos of seemingly nothing, it seems at the moment, digging into her front pocket to pull the something out, bracing herself with her left hand against her own limb as she leans to hand/toss it to him with her right.

It weighs nothing: just a small clay bead in the shape of a bird, smaller than a quarter. Not finely carved, but shaped by hand into the symbol of the thing rather than its likely, strung through on a small bit of braided leather cord tied with sliding knots so it can be worn a the throat or the wrist.

Charlotte @ 10:41PM

Bead 1

Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) VALID

Charlotte @ 10:42PM

Bead 2

Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) VALID

Charlotte @ 10:42PM

Bead 3

Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 9) ( success x 1 ) VALID

Erich @ 10:56PM

Erich was, in fact, geared up for a bit of a struggle. Not really a fight. Charlotte never seems to quite have the gumption for a flat-out fight, which is of course part of why he wants her to get away from this privileged, sheltered house. And away from her brother, who loves her and worries about her and is a good brother and is not at all the sort of squicky monster other tribes sometimes think of when they think of Silver Fangs -- but is nonetheless, in Erich's opinion, perhaps not the best thing for her at the moment. And he was prepared to say that, just that, flat-out, if he had to.

But he doesn't. Charlotte gives him one of those oddly grave looks, and she says she knows. As though maybe she divined it from the winds -- but no. Celia told her.

Melantha told her.

Erich immediately flushes. The reason is not so immediately clear: but he's only heard the name a few times, spoken it a few times, and each time was intimate, close, private, a thing that is inextricably linked to his memories of that strange, poignant, passionate trip into the wilderness. To hear it coming out of Charlotte's mouth startles him, even shocks him a little.

"Oh," he says, his eyes dropping for a moment. He picks bark off the oak and flicks it aside. Recovering, "Oh, well, good. I'm glad I don't have to drag you kicking and screaming. She told you her real name too, huh?"

She gives him a gift. It is a small clay bead that looks like a bird. It's attached to a thin leather thong. It looks like the sort of thing you see sold on the sidewalks outside large liberal universities: costume jewelry and henna kits and the like laid out in glittering long rows on a backdrop of some colorful woven cloth. Erich looks at it for a moment, puzzled, and then ducks his head to slip it around his neck.

"Thanks," he says, pulling the sliding knots until the bead rests comfortably over his manubrium. He grins. "Are you claiming me in the name of Falcon?"

Charlotte @ 11:21PM

Erich flushes.

And oh god, Charlotte flushes scarlet (they are both pale-skinned creatures. He has his northern blood, and she was born to the castle, and blood flushes easily to the skin) in some strange, sympathetic, autonomic response. If she knew why he was flushing the awkward moment would be all the more awkward, strange and dissolvingly unpleasant.

So, he flushes; and she flushes, and drops her eyes from him, and even from his branch, down to the ground fifteen feet or more below them. Spring has pushed onward. There are daffodils in bloom. Yellow mini daffodils in a profuse array around the knotted roots of the old oak, cheerfully swaying in the wind kicking up from the northwest, and stately white ones in the shadow of the garden wall.

The leaves of the tulips are green and stuff, all sensual curves, but the buds are still furled tight against the cold. The crocus have come and gone, but the grass is greening, and the moss is the color of emeralds again rather than dry and dead and gray, and tiny white anemones dot the yard.

Erich asks Charlotte if Celia - Melantha told Charlotte her real name too. And receives by way of answer one of Charlotte's patented little nod-nods. She doesn't quite dare to look up at him as the color drains from her cheeks, at least not until he asks her if she's claming him for falcon.

The flash of a pleased smile as she darts a glance back up at him, girlish humor as she shakes her head. Very: no, silly. Then her eyes linger there, on Erich's, blue against blue.

"I - I made her one too. They homing pigeon spirits bound to them. So uhm. When it's okay for you to go looking for her, she'll break hers and the spirit will come find you. And when it finds you, you'll break yours and your spirit will lead you back to her.

"Which is why I have to go with you. 'Cause you don't speak pigeon."

Charlotte offers him a faint shrug, her pale gaze falling back to her hands braced on the back.

"I don't speak pigeon either, but I speak spirit. So."

Then her expression stills, just comes to a halt half-way into the curve of a bashful little grin.

"You do want me to come, right?" Which fades, slowly, dissolving into that half-haunted, uncertain, startled-animal look that fixes itself in her eyes and on her countenace both too often and too easily. "It's not just that you think I should, right?"

Erich @ 11:50PM

Erich gets this look on his face. This sort of dawning understanding, which rapidly flushes into this -- gratitude, this poignancy, this smile that spreads slow and aching across his face. He clasps the little bead in his big palm, holds it gently but tightly as he would a living thing. A living, fragile bird, all hollow bones and ruffle-able feathers.

"Charlotte," he says, quiet because he doesn't trust his voice to hold up if he speaks any louder than this, "this is probably the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me. Thank you."

He wants to hug her. He's straddling a tree branch, though, and she's sitting with her back to the trunk. It'd be all awkward, and not even his flawless balance would keep it from being weird and all elbows and knees and, and --

he doesn't hug her. He smiles at her. He wills Mrs. H to stop cutting onions in the kitchen, dammit, because that's the only explanation for his suddenly stinging eyes. But he's saved! Charlotte skips subjects like a stone on a pond. Pigeons, spirits ... he does want her to come, right?

And Erich looks startled again. Just for a second. Then he laughs.

"I think you should get away from all this privilege for a while," he says. "I want you to come with me. We'll just drive around for a while, until Melantha lets us know where she is. We'll bring a tent or something for you. 'Cause I don't think we'll fit into the back of my car, especially with your stuff on board. Unless you think you might get cold? You can sleep in the car then. I'll sleep in the tent."

Charlotte is sure (sure) that someone has done something nicer for him before, but she beams nevertheless, either deigning not to notice (or truly: not noticing) the suspicious gleam in Erich's eyes. She clicks her heels together, pleased, never quite coming unbalanced from the motion and hums her pleasure in the back of her throat.

"You're welcome."

--

She shoots him a shrewd look, her head just canted, her eyes gleam, when he tells her that she should get away from all this privilege. She likes the privilege. The house and sky and the big warm bed, and the light in the kitchen and the food that appears sometimes totally replenished in the fridge and the fact that she does not have to wash anything, ever. But feels it suffocating her, sometimes. Just a weight pulled onto her chest, and wants to know if that's what he means or if it's something else, or something other than that, but doesn't quite have the words or the self-awareness to ask.

There is still the spark of his laughter when he assures her that he wants her to come, and she nods, the back of her head scritching against the oakbark. Reassured, her little nods punctuate.

They'll drive around. They'll bring a tent (or something) unless she thinks she might get cold?

"I have fur," she murmurs back to him, solemn and reassuring, in response. "I won't get cold." Though he's right: she's likely to, sometimes. Maybe more often than sometimes.

"I'll bring my spine." Maybe he thinks she means it metaphorically. Though a beat later, he may remember the sight of her spine, the strange articulations of some monstrous beast stripped of flesh to the bone, sitting on the floor of her bedroom atop a glittering party dress when he demanded to see her room, and assure himself that he was not putting her out. "But not the hornet's nest."

Later, he will talk her out of that, too. Remind her about police and potentialities, the letter of the litany.

"We could stay at hotels sometimes, too. I like sleeping in a bed."

"Not the hornet's nest," Erich agrees. "Maybe not the spine either. At least not on the roadtrip. You can leave it boxed up and have someone mail it to you when we get where we're going. Or maybe drive it out to you themselves. It'd be safer like that. Don't they x-ray packages these days? That won't go over well."

He wants her to get away from privilege for a while. That doesn't mean he's going to make her pretend she isn't privileged, though, or take advantage of it when necessary. And so:

"Well, maybe once in a while. But roughing it is fun. You'll see." He smiles at her. "It builds character."

A small hesitation. Then: "You should tell your brother before we go. I mean, not that you need his permission? But you should tell him, and say anything important to him that you have to say. Because ... well, I know you'll plan to visit him for Memorial Day or July 4th or whatever, and maybe you guys will go home for Labor Day, but -- I don't have to tell you it's dangerous out there. Especially when you're just wandering. Just in case, just on the off chance that something happens before you see him again, you should make it a goodbye that leaves no regrets."

Just as Erich thought, Charlotte never seems to have much fight in her. The spine is sometimes her favorite thing in her room. Sometimes she likes the medallion on the ceiling, other times something else - a handful of gravel from the roadside, the husk of some seedpod plucked from the edge of the C&O Canal, the shell of a snail, coiling in on itself, pried out of the asphalt of the service driveway of a mid-level office building in Alexandria. The sort of things that only an eleven year old boy, or perhaps a theurge, could love with all the thoroughness and distractibility that comes from being one or the other.

She likes its pliability, the way it moves like a snake when she holds it from the topmost of the cervical vertebrae. The sacral end swinging laterally like a swishing tail.

Maybe not the spine, counsels Erich, and Charlotte inserts, "It's really neat though, it moves like this," undulating her arm to show him the sidewinder movement. Then she's quiet, though, listening, her profile sharp against the gray light of the spring afternoon.

"Oh. Okay. I guess it shouldn't be in your car in case police come." And she slides a glance back to him, all pale eyes and half-smile, remembering, suddenly, the first thing Erich ever said to her.

"I already have lots of character," Charlotte assures him next, with a needling and doubtful wrinkle as he promises that roughing it will build her more. "I don't know how to drive, though." Or cook. Or wash her own clothes. Or earn money of any sort. Or scrub the blood off her skin in a frigid highland stream so that she's presentable enough to buy one of those hot showers at a truck stop. Or buy a hot shower in a truck stop for five dollars, because it has been a lean few days and she's beginning to smell.

She's still looking at him as he continues on. Counsels her about saying the things she needs to say because he doesn't have to tell her that the world is dangerous. And Erich, she thinks, knows about the importance of saying goodbyes that leave no regrets if you can. Her eyes are suddenly shining. Charlotte sniffs abruptly and looks down at the ground again. There are not so high that the view is dizzying so much as it is reassuring, life returning to the cold dark ground.

She is thinking of so much in that spare moment that she couldn't ever say which part of it closed her throat, but she sniffs again to clear it and rubs the back of her knuckles against the rough bark, her pale brows beetled together.

"When you - when you left home - were you scared?"

Her voice is thin, not fully voiced. The tightness is not just from the emotion thickening her vocal cords, but from the - sudden surge of rage that flares through her veins when she thinks of him, nameless and Nameless and cast out and alone. Whatever she is, whereever she came from, they never cast her out. Even her exile (of sorts) is chosen, is self-imposed.

"Or were you just mad?"

Startlement flicks Erich's eyes to Charlotte. It's so obvious to the girl where the connection is, what subconscious history drove him to tell her to make sure she left no regrets with her brother -- but Erich, himself, hadn't been thinking of that at all. The question seems out of the blue. His brow furrows a moment later, and he frowns at the branch beneath him.

"I was scared," he admits quietly. "I was only sixteen, and after Fenrir boot camp you're pretty damn aware of your limits and shortcomings. I knew damn well there were things bigger and badder than me out there, and if they found me I wouldn't stand a chance. So the first few months, hell the first few years, I was just trying to lie low, don't stir up trouble I couldn't put back down.

"Plus," he hesitates a beat, "ever since I First Changed my rage was real close to me. The Fenrir would've called me a berserker. But sometimes, especially when I was young, I didn't really have much control over when I'd go into a fury. And then I'd black out and ... well, every time so far I've woken up in a pile of dead wyrmlings, totally exhausted. Just drained, to the point where I'd have to crawl into a hole somewhere and sleep it off. But it's scary to leave yourself behind like that not knowing if you'd ever wake up again. Especially when you're alone with no one to watch your back, you know?"

He scuffs his knuckles over the bark. Then he looks at Charlotte.

"But I was mad too. Don't get me wrong. I'm still mad, if I think about it too much. And I'm sad. Those people were the only family I ever knew. And growing up, I thought I was always being taught that family was everything. Turns out they were teaching me tribe was everything. I guess they must've been pretty disappointed in me, too."

There are a few spare, dry leaves in the upper branches of the huge old oak that rattle like dry husks when the wind rises again. The afternoon is still cold and gray, but the forecast promises something like spring tomorrow, or the day after that. Sunwarmed streets and cold, damp ground. The baking heat of solar radiation.

Charlotte's eyes are huge and round, her attention flashing up to Erich as he begins speaking. He was only sixteen. Charlotte draws in a breath and holds it in her mouth, in her throat, behind her teeth because the story he tells her makes her mad and scared all at once, it takes like hot metal in her mouth, the combination, which curdles into something sour at the back of her throat. Mad and scared for him, even though he's survived it all. The rage and the blackouts, the crawling feeling of coming back into your body. If he had died then, who would have known?

She wonders if there's another Erich out there, right now. Crawling into a hole, ragged and drained. She wonders if something's following him, not-quite-dead-yet, and then her eyes sting and she makes herself stop wondering all at once, arrests the impulse before it unravels itself altogether in her small heart.

Her mouth twists into one of her spare smiles. On someone older it might seem wry, but this afternoon it seems - sweet. Bitter and sweet, precisely at the border of the two. Compassion deep and old lanced through anger and sorrow.

"I'm scared for you and you already survived all that." Charlotte returns, in her quiet voice, low and confessional. "I never would have made it if they'd kicked me out."

Which is nothing more than the truth. The helplessness of privilige, rather common to the upper classes of the 19th century, which is rather how she's lived the whole of her life, feted and instructed in pointless and archaic arts, everything, but everything done for her.

"I get mad or - " a beat, her mouth pulling tight across her teeth, " - sick about some things if I think about them too much, too." A moment later, a faint little frown line appears between her brows. "You were sixteen then, how old are you now?"

"Sick?" Erich sounds incredulous, laughter surprised back into his tone. He's on the verge of making some joke, asking if she was some sort of neurotic ballerina or something, but --

-- he doesn't. He reins it in, just in time, and manages to see that she's never shown him anything but generosity and kindness, and therefore deserves the same from him. Not that he would have meant a joke in a bad way. Yet there's something quite fragile about Charlotte, sheltered, and Erich has the intuition to realize that that's a state she'll only come out of slowly, if at all.

So he doesn't laugh. The laughter simmers in his tone and his eyes, and then he just smiles, warm. He answers promptly: "I'm turning twenty-three in a few days. April tenth. What about you?"

There is a hint of stiffness to her - shoulders, to her spine, curved sharply against the trunk of the tree - when Erich says, sick, like that, the laughter simmering in his tone without finding voice. She wants to say: in her head, sometimes everything gets so crowded that it feels like she's being extruded through her eyes and nose and mouth. She wants to say, Melantha says it's not crazy to feel the way you feel because something made you feel it, but she is not entirely sure she believes it, and anywhere - there is Erich's smile, warm, the laughter, swallowed into his body and shining behind his eyes.

The stiffness eases with a long, exhaled breath that is attended by one of Charlotte's one-armed shrugs. "I'm 19, I guess. If not now, then next month? Philip was - she wasn't at home when she had me and she didn't write down when it was. Or know properly? But I'm pretty sure I'm 19 now."

Charlotte's gaze drops, and her mouth twists into a thoughtful little frown. "That's a really long time to be by yourself," Quietly, continuing, "I'm glad you made it, though. Because if you hadn't I wouldn't've met you and that would make me sad."

Her gaze goes far-off, unfocused through the bare branches, cutting away from him and rising toward the mid-point of the gray afternoon sky.

"Is Melantha the first girl you ever - " she pauses here again, another frown of contemplation as she searches for the proper words to say exactly what she thinks. She eventually finishes the thought with, " - wanted to follow across the country?"

The first girl you ever puts this look on Erich, like someone's put a small frog into his iced tea and it just got stuck in his throat. But no, she's not asking him what he thinks she might be asking him; she finishes the thought quite innocently, really, but by then Erich's lean cheeks -- too fair by half to hide such a thing -- are flushed again.

"Yeah." His answer comes readily; he hardly needs to think about it. "I haven't really known a lot of girls. I mean really gotten to know them. I move around a lot. Don't really stay in one place more than a few weeks, maybe a few months. This has been one of my longer stays, here in DC. 'Cause I met some good people, I guess.

"There was a girl out in Browntown," he adds after a moment, quieter. "I liked her a lot. We were good friends. And then we were friends with benefits. But I think maybe that was just because she was just lonely, 'cause she used to have a mate and then he died in a bad way. She's Fenrir kin, though, so ... when the local Fenrir found out about it that ended about as well as you'd imagine.

"Even that was different though. When that ended, neither of us fought too hard to keep it from ending." Erich's serious again, his eyes downcast. Even his lashes are golden. "I think I'd fight a lot harder if someone tried to tell me I couldn't see Melantha anymore. But it's different with her, too. She -- she's not my girlfriend. She doesn't want to be. I mean, she doesn't want to be anyone's anything. She wants to be free.

"But I guess if she breaks the bead, that means she doesn't mind if I follow her. And then, yeah. I'd follow her across the country." He looks up, quirks a smile. "With you in tow."

He thinks of something, suddenly: "Hey! -- that talen you made her? She really, really liked it. I mean, not just liked. I think she needed it."

Charlotte does not - cannot - miss the flush or the expression on Erich's face and there's a moment in there when he's flushing clearing his throat and she's looking at him, eyes wide, mouth opened in an 'O' of alarum (not merely alarm, but alarum), but ah - it passes. Erich's flush fades as he tells Charlotte about a girl in Browntown and Charlotte wonders what Erich means by friends with benefits and then, five or seven or a dozen words later it occurs to her and she looks - well, a little bit green, all told. Bilious.

By then the subject has changed back to Melantha, and by the end, when Erich is remembering and remarking on the talen she made, the little vial of rainwater, Charlotte's eyes are beaming again, though her smile is no more than small and still and pleased.

"I'm making her another one," returns Charlotte, still beaming. And pointing downward into the garden with the right toe of her left sneaker. "I have it down there to collect the fainwater. I should have enough if it rains again, soon.

"She likes you too," Charlotte assures Erich, then. "She told me that - " another pause, the girl's attention pulling inward, another narrow little frown tucking down the corners of her mouth. " - that it was important and she didn't want to say goodbye. And that's how she knew. Anyway, I don't see how you can't belong to someone and still be free. I can be Charlotte and Black Sheep and Miss Gray all at the same time.

"Are you going to ask Ingrid to come?"

Erich's face is like a mostly-clear sky today. The majority of the time he's smiling, but occasionally patchy clouds come through. Here comes another one now, drifting across those clear blue eyes. He frowns.

"I did," he says. "After what you said about maybe-packing, and after I realized I wasn't going to be in town much longer, I talked to Ingrid. I asked her if maybe we could all hang out, like the three of us, you me and her. Like... travel together, and maybe if things worked out, be a pack. Or not. I'd be fine with that too. It's nice just to have friends who'd watch your back, it doesn't have to be all official.

"She has to go back to New York though, she said. Apparently she's been a busy bee and she's almost a Fostern. So she's going home to challenge, and then she seems to expect they'll saddle her with duties and responsibilities. Said something about how her wandering days were over.

"It's not a hundred percent yet, though. Maybe she'll change her mind or be able to get away. I don't know. But for now it's just us. Unless there's someone you want to bring?"

[caveat: that scene w/ Ingrid is actually still in slow progress! so this info might change!]

The girl shakes her head no, chopped pink hair a wild halo around her, bright against the dark brown bark of the tree. "I don't know anyone else to ask." Which is true in its way. She has met and seen other Garou and other kinfolk. None of them consistently. None of them who felt right, to her. Like she belonged.

And - "Oh." quietly, for the news about Ingrid. Charlotte's eyes drift down from Erich's face, then, the cut of his frown against his rather open face. The spare syllable is quiet. Charlotte found Ingrid - scary, intimidating. Every inch a Shadow Lord, even, during their single meeting, but Erich's talked about her since she met him and they fought like a pack. The story feels wrong to her, like someone else's ending has been appended to a friend's life. "I'm sorry," she continues. "I hope she changes her mind."

Another of Charlotte's narrow little shrugs follows. Both thin shoulders this time, twisted forward and close, like surrender. She is no longer looking right up at Erich's features, but rather at his shadow in the pale afternoon light across the branch he has claimed for himself.

There's a certain vulnerability to her in that moment; not the fragility that always seems to haunt the edges of her gaze, but a vulnerability, quite as the movement of the stars through the great vast sky. "I don't - " a pause, here. She exhales something like a sigh. "I don't think it has to be official. With a spirit bond. "You are my pack, Erich. With or without Merlin or Eagle to make it official. I know that inside me."

And like that the cloud's gone again. Erich gets this goofy little smile on his face. Just: happy, in a way that's hard to contain in a composed and non-goofy package. He should have some nice words to say back to that, he thinks, something elegant and wellspoken or at least not dumb. But he doesn't. So he just balls up his righthand and holds it up for a fistbump.

"Cool," he says. "Let's just drive around and be a pack and not worry about spirits and making it official and all that. Unless it feels right, I mean. Like... unless one day we just meet a spirit and it's just right."

And just like that, the vulnerability vanishes. Charlotte flashes a look straight into Erich's eyes, then cuts a glance back down to his fish. Thus far, Erich has only taught Charlotte about the high five. And so, instead of balling up her own, rather smaller, fist, Charlotte opens her hand and fives Eric a five on the top of his fist.

"It sounds good to me."

Erich looks on, bemused, as Charlotte's much frailer hand fives his fist. Not quite what he intended, no, but he supposes it works. "Deal," he says, and he grins at her as their hands separate again, and then he does that thing again, that thing where he just suddenly starts moving, and moves like gravity doesn't really have the same hold over him that it does on everyone else.

Somehow he's swung himself around on the branch. And is dangling by his hands, feet and feet above to ground. And then is letting go, dropping, landing lightly on the ground below.

"Hey, Charlotte!" he calls back up to her, laughing: sunny again, carefree now. "Why don't we have ourselves a birthday party on the 10th? You and me, maybe Melantha and Chaz if they want to come. Since you're not sure when you were born, but you're pretty sure you're nineteen or turning nineteen."

sCharlotte admires Erich's display of physical prowess with a mute and shining look, that hint of wonder in her eyes. She likely weighs half of what he weighs, but never has felt that light in the whole of her life.

The sun is not so much emerging from behind the gray clouds, as it is shining through them, as if in answer to the sudden brightness in Erich's tone and gleaming in his eyes, and Charlotte hugs her limb, peering down at him from above, shy and pleased and diffident and excited, all at once.

"That sounds awesome," she tells him, scrabbling then, carefully, to find purchase enough to lower herself and eventually jump down onto the soft, moss-covered earth close to him. Scraping her fingers on the bark as she does so.

"I've never had a birthday party. We can have it here!"

Charlotte will get cater waiters and everything.

"Hey, come on and I'll make you an omelet! I haven't been practicing," she informs him, "but I remember things really well sometimes."

How reassuring.

Privately, Erich isn't sure how much partying can actually be done in a house like this. Or worse: how a house like this would withstand the effects of true partying. But then, they're a small party. Just the two of them, or four at most ... plus a handful of servants, if that's what Charlotte is thinking of. Privilege: he doesn't blame her for liking it, partaking of it, all that. Especially when it's her first birthday party ever.

Which makes Erich look at her with a sort of ache in his eyes that never quite crosses the line into pity. He's not even very surprised anymore. Not with her past, not with her unfortunate deedname, not with that rather shocking history of charachdom that he just can't... quite... fit with the rest of what he sees from her.

"I'll ask Melantha to come if I see her. Or you can, if you see her first."

And walking into the house, Erich bringing up the rear, Charlotte gets an idea. She wants to make him an omelette! Erich is understandably a little hesitant, but he obliges: "All right. But no veggies this time."