Ornature

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.