Ornature

Charlotte
It is cold outside, and rain drums against the huge old windows on the northern and eastern façades of the historic Hay-Adams. The constant drizzle intensifies in slow-moving cloud-bursts that spend themselves with the occasional rumble of distant thunder, then subside to a bone-chilling and constant drizzle, not the sweet warm rain of spring. Not now, not yet. It keeps people inside, sends them hurrying from their chauffeured cars to the warmth of the swank lobby, shaking the off the rain from crisp black umbrellas with a sigh of relief as the ambient warmth sinks into their bones.
Still, at this hour, on a night light this, traffic in the lobby is slow. No one wants to be caught out in the rain, diners hurry through their meals in the restaurant, few stay for a nightcap. Lobbyists and executive vice presidents head back early for a warm bath and some quality time with their powerpoint presentations before tomorrow morning's hearing at the House Undercommittee on Pork Production or the Senate Finance Committee's Working Group on Secondary Bond Markets.
And lo, the concierge rings Celia's room rather late one otherwise ordinary Tuesday evening.
Celia's visitor would be unusual at any hour, but on a slow Tuesday evening she is modestly remarkable. Slight and fine, damp from the rain without appearing to object to it or notice overmuch, pink hair flattened over her skull: the concierge just... stares, and some of the woman's skepticism bleeds into her voice when Celia answers the call.
"Miss. This is Michelle at the front desk. You have - ah," a pause, "a visitor. A Charlotte Gray. Should I send her away?"
Celia de Luca
They still call her Miss, even after months of living here, even though they all know her and they all know who she's dating. This is the Hay-Adams. One does not become overly familiar. You do not make friends with the guests. Even the friendliest, bubbliest guests. Even the ones who really should know better than to play around with a man like the one who picks her up every so often, especially with the way that very large, very blonde, very obviously crushing-on-her 'stepbrother' lurks around.
Miss de Luca is well-liked and very worried about. They don't know that she's a hunter. Or that she is here, for months, to destroy this man from the inside out. Rip his life apart. Get his children to curse him and his peers to disown him. She looks so sweet, so doe-eyed, so
not the sort of girl who is friends with pink-haired skinny girls who are probably high.
Celia, on the phone, all but squeals. "Nooo!" she says, pleadingly, as though it's not even her choice and she must beg. "Send her up, send her up! She's my friend!"
So she is.

Up the elevator and onto Celia's floor, then. The girl herself, in pajama pants and tank top and her hair braided in a crown over her head, is poking her head out of her room when the elevator doors ding open. "Charlotte!" she calls out, excited as though she's been waiting a week just for this, and bounces in place because she doesn't have her key and if she runs out of the room she'll be locked out. "Come here! Comecomecome! I wanna talk to you!"
Charlotte
Downstairs, the wood and paneling, the varnish and inlaid ceilings, the plush leather club and sumptuously upholstered wing chairs, the crystalline chandeliers, the damask curtains and silk wallpaper and persian carpets and masses of mahogany and cherry wood remind Charlotte of Clingstone, so as incongruous as she appears (dripping rain like a rather noble wet pink rat), she feels perfectly at home.
She distrusts the elevator, though, and is prepared to dislike the mute, hushed, luxuriant sameness of the upstairs hallway, all those closed doors, the minute she steps out of it, but there is Celia down the hall, poking her head out of the door of her room, waving and calling her name.
Charlotte's face both settles and lights up at Celia's greeting. She gives a faint little wave - nearly diffident - biting her lower lip at the end at then end of it, then catches some-bouncing-piece of Celia's enthusiasm and runs up the the hallway as summoned, shaking her head (like a canid) as she goes to rid herself of excess rain.
Because Celia wants to talk to her.
There's a bit of an awkward stand-off at the door. Charlotte wants to hug Celia, but is suddenly acutely aware that her clothes are reasonably soaked, so she just stops a big short of a hug and tips up onto her toes, then rocks back on her heels, smiling back at Celia.
"That's cool," Charlotte says, "I just wanted to see you."
Because it's spring, or supposed to be. Or maybe a sparrow told her. Things happen like that, with girls like these.
"What'd you want to talk to me about?"
Celia de Luca
There's no similar hesitance on Celia's part. Charlotte comes over and Celia, simply put, glomps her. She throws her slender arms around the other girl and gives her a surprisingly mighty squeeze. It may very well be the first time they've embraced. It probably is. And Celia's strength is as surprising as her cunning and her viciousness; she is not slim because she's merely fragile. She is not fragile at all.
Also: she has decided that she and Charlotte are hugging-friends. Not idly-chatting friends with one person in common. They are hugging friends, and come-over-after-dark friends, and my-god-I-need-to-talk-to-you friends, and, as Charlotte learns a moment later:
"Do you want cheesecake? I can order cheesecake,"
friends.
The door shuts as Charlotte is ushered into Celia's room. It is expansive, and made up of cream and gold and polished walnut. The television is nearly bed-sized itself. The view is spectacular, and with the trees still barren, you can see the white cap of the President's house. Her spacious suite is also a complete and utter wreck. It is hard to tell the clean-clothes-pile from the dirty-clothes-pile from the worn-once-but-not-really-dirty pile. Spied through a cracked door is a long marble vanity around the bathroom sink covered with a hair dryer, a flat iron, a curling iron, a larger curling iron, a tiny travel curling iron, a lot of makeup, some lingerie hanging from the shower's curtain rod to dry. There are empty cans of something called Go Girl, which has either 5 or 35 calories per can depending on the flavor, and some crumpled protein bar wrappers, and an apple core sitting on a table that hasn't had time to brown yet which explains why her breath smelled of apples,
and the California-king-sized bed with its rumpled sheets and squashed pillows and a bag of Veggie Straws sitting on top of the comforters. The movie Mulan is paused on-screen. It's raining in the scene, too.
"I wanted to thank you for the water, first of all," Celia is saying, picking her way across the room to the bed to pick up the remote, because you can order room service via remote, which is just insane. She looks over at Charlotte, smiling. "I went out in the woods camping and I drank wine and worshipped Luna and I got to use it, and baptize myself with it, and it made me feel better. So I wanted to thank you for that, mostly."
There's a beat. She looks a little unsure, because this could ruin everything, because her experience with men and with women who aren't Furies is that this sort of thing does ruin everything, and people hate her, and she's always used that hate to an advantage, but those women were not Furies and were not Garou at all. They were certainly not her friends. She doesn't want Charlotte to hate her.
"And Erich and I had sex. And... I don't want it to be weird because you two are friends and you and me are friends and he and I are friends too, but we did and I just don't want it to mean that you and I aren't friends or that if the three of us hang out it will be sad or uncomfortable or... anything like that." She pauses, her brow furrowed, that wrinkle between her eyes as heartbreaking to look at as ever. "I also just didn't want to keep something from you. Something important. Because... usually sex isn't important or anything, but this kind of was, so... I shouldn't lie to you about it."
Alexei Ojala
(Again this is someone's house? They have a make private room feature. I thought it was downtown)
Charlotte
Well then, Celia glomps and whatever awkwardness there was in Charlotte's tip-toe hesitation disappears. Charlotte wraps her arms around Celia's torso, bends her nose to Celia's neck. Breathes her in, and all at once at that.
Then one last tight squeeze, before she lets go and follows Celia into the whirlwind disaster of her upscale hotel room.
Charlotte is already unzipping her hoodie, peeling the damp cotton layers away from her narrow torso. Beneath she's wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a girl wearing a wolfskin, pulling a gun from her basket of treats, and dark jeans, damp at the cuffs and knees and thighs from the rain, and soaked Chuck Taylor All-Stars, which she also slips out of, toe-to-heel, heel-to-toe, leaving them on the floor near the entrance along with the hoodie to add to the whirlwind chaos that is Celia's hotel room.
And the whirlwind chaos that is Celia's room is familiar, too. Charlotte's is always like that until Mrs. H makes her pass through, picking up all the clothes, fishing out the old cereal bowls and bent-in-half spoons from the mix of ... well, thing stranger than make-up and the largest collection of hair-styling equipment Charlotte has ever seen.
"I like cheesecake. With big sour cherries on it. It's not time for cherries, though. It's time for watercress and watercress cheesecake sounds gross."
The hint of a smile now as Charlotte follows in Celia's wake, taking in the chaos, pale eyes drawn to the view without, or rather Celia's reflection superimposed on the view without, a pale ghost against the dark, rainwashed windows and the watercolor city beyond.
"That's awesome," says Charlotte of drinking wine and worshipping Luna and baptism and feeling better, because a girl like Celia should always be doing those things. Charlotte is a little bit shy to be thanked, cheek curving with that sort of half-suppressed smile, and a lot pleased to have been of use. "I'll put out a flask for rainwater and make you another when I've enough."
This is neatly inserted into that beat of hesitation: Celia's turn to navigate uncertain ground.
Erich and I had sex - Celia begins, and there's this moment where Charlotte puts her hand up to cover her mouth, without thought or intent. On another young woman it might seem just an exaggerated note of surprise, or perhaps - on the most-straight-laced - shock and disapproval. Charlotte looks a bit green, her pallor heightened, her big, pale eyes a little bit wide and a little bit wild. As her hand falls from her mouth, her arms cross in front of her torso, this narrow, protective sort of barrier, and she looks down and away, at the reflection of the room lighting patterned along the surface of that massive television.
Charlotte swallows, her mouth seamed together in a thin line, her own pale brows furrowed together as Celia forges onward. Explaining that she doesn't want it to be sad or weird or awkward. That she didn't want to keep something from Charlotte, not something important. That she doesn't want to lie, either.
When Celia's finished, and there's a sort of silence that extends requires response. Everything about her is awkward now, just uncomfortable and fidgety and strange and Charlotte gives this odd, forceful little shake of her pink head. Like she's trying to clear an echo from the back of her mind.
"I don't know why it means that we wouldn't be friends?" The girl manages at last. "Lauren and Chas were mated and I loved them both? They just didn't - " and there's something about Charlotte, persistent in her inward focus here. " - talk about it."
Here Charlotte pauses. Looks up, suddenly, almost imploringly at Celia. "You know?"
Celia de Luca
A good hostess would be offering Charlotte new clothes, something warm to drink, food, a seat -- and Celia is not a great hostess, but she does want to be a good friend, and if she has a few more minutes she'll get there. Cheesecake, Charlotte says, and Celia just perks at that. Fluffy, creamy, sweet cheesecake. It will be a good snack to share with her friend while they watch Mulan and talk about boys. It's almost cliche. No, scratch that: it's utterly cliche, and that does not mean it gives Celia any less pleasure, even when she's aware of it.
Telling her that she'll give her more rainwater makes Celia's eyes ache, pale and sweet and tender for the other girl suddenly. Charlotte certainly can't know just what it meant to Celia, exactly, to take that gift into the wilderness and make herself feel... different. Better. To give herself back to herself. She's not a Black Fury. She did not grow up with the rituals that Celia did. She probably thinks that being a virgin means that you haven't ever had sex, too.
But then Celia keeps talking, and Charlotte turns green, and Celia notices. She looks at the girl warily, suddenly, as Charlotte's hand covers her mouth. Is it Puritanical shock? Is it because Celia is so goddamn pure and Erich is... not? Is it because she's a Fury, he's a Fenris-born-Shadow Lord? Celia's eyes darken a bit, wariness easily mistaken for anger, insecurity easily mistaken for defensiveness. But it's not that. Charlotte looks sickened, and then self-protective, and then she won't even meet Celia's eyes.
Celia, on one level, wants to launch across the room and shove Charlotte so hard she falls down. On another level she wants to burst into tears.
"It doesn't," she says, a bit too forcefully. She's on unsteady ground herself, now that Charlotte just looks like she doesn't know what to say or where to look or how to act. Now that Charlotte has that imploring look in her eyes, which confuses Celia as much as it frustrates her. "I don't know who Lauren and Chas a-- were. And I'm not... going to start talking to you about like, the sex itself, that would definitely be weird. You and Erich are friends, too, I think he'd feel weird about that and you'd feel weird about that and I'm not a jerk, Charlotte."
She's not looking at Charlotte now. She's looking down at the remote, frowning at it but not pressing any buttons. When she does look up, it's quite sudden, and her light eyes pin Charlotte's even paler ones.
"Why did you look like you were going to throw up when I told you that? Why shouldn't I have sex with someone I want to for once in my life?"
She couldn't sound more vicious, more angry, if she were growing fur and sprouting fangs and claws of her own. It's a sudden rush of anger, of hurt, of something that's been boiling up inside of her for... god knows how long. She takes a breath and lets it out.
"I'm sorry." Her eyes cast downward again. "I'm just... that isn't... what I expected."
Charlotte
??
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 9) ( fail )
Charlotte
And so, Charlotte stands there in her damp socks (they are cotton and stripped in shadows of purple and red and pink and chartreuse, with a hole in the left big toe just large enough to show the peeling orange nail enamel painted thereon), just looking rather miserable, marooned in the sea of discarded clothes and protein bar wrappers and energy drink cans and hair products and make-up, all the tools of her trade, Celia's arrows and bow. The Silver Fang is both at odds and oddly congruent with the luxurious touches of the high-end hotel. Simply dressed as she is, her jeans are well-made and fitted, one of those brands that cost more than a month's rent on a studio apartment, at least in a 'transitional' neighborhood.

Charlotte's toeing the floor, the wrapper of one of those old protein bars crumpling beneath her curling toes, her knee jutting out like a flamingo, her physical balance in the odd posture as fine and finely tuned as a dancer's, not looking at Celia anymore, but close to her. At the specific point on the floor where Celia's shadow meets her body. Where they join and where they diverge.

It doesn't - mean that they won't be friends, and Charlotte gives Celia this emphatic, tight little nod of agreement, so definite, so forceful in its own way that it draws her shoulders tighter and gives the rather fragile-looking girl the surety, the compressed energy of a coiled spring. Then, another, smaller nod - rather more taut, and rather less sure - and though she once again seems a bit bilious - something about the seam of her mouth now, the way her crossed arms dig into the concave curve of her abdomen, highlighting the sharp angles of her still-adolescent frame - there is something controlled about the mute response.

She is trying so hard to keep all of herself inside herself, but that sudden glance upward - something about the energy of it draws Charlotte's pale eyes - a bit mismatched now, somehow, though so subtly it seems a trick of the light - back to Celia's, to be pinned by that sudden, furious look.

And then abruptly, a little jerk, a small convulsion of her shoulders, before Charlotte turns on her heels and flat-out runs for the bathroom. She flails a bit blindly to shut the door behind her, then sinks to her knees in front of the toilet.

No longer just looking like she was going to throw up.
Celia de Luca
"What the hell, Charlotte!"
No one will ever, ever accuse Celia of being softhearted. She will never be known for her gentle spirit or soothing words. She's not maternal. She's not as doe-like as she pretends for certain folks. She's a huntress. And, at least for some time, she grew up in a commune of Black Fury she-wolves and kinswomen and sinborn males. Even the male kin didn't live with them. It wasn't that they weren't strictly allowed to, or that some of them didn't want to. It was just... the way it was.
All that is to say, in a roundabout fashion, that girls throwing up because they're freaked out by something does not instantly garner Celia's sympathy. It's just a bodily function, doing what it is supposed to do. That's just science.
She huffs, and then storms in after Charlotte to the palatial bathroom, which has the faint scent of makeup and hair products and wet towels and soap. She looks at her for a moment, and her brow stitches, and when Charlotte is done, or when she's retched enough to realize that nothing is coming up, Celia is sitting on the edge of the tub handing her some tissues.
"I have mouthwash," she tells her, and her voice is softer than before, kinder. Or maybe simply practical. "I'm sorry I don't have a spare toothbrush, but if we call the concierge they'll bring us some. You can even pick the color. And like, if you have a certain brand you like, like Oral-B or Crest or whatever."
She's quiet a moment. Unsure. Frowning, thoughtfully more than angrily now, as she watches the Silver Fang.
"What's wrong?" she asks, that frown only deepening, as though if she looks hard enough at the other girl it will all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. She'll figure it out even if Charlotte doesn't tell her.
Charlotte
Charlotte's spine jerks and crawls with every heave, the articulations as sharp and sinuous and visible through the weave of the cotton t-shirt as some great, skeletal lizard's in the Smithsonian. And when it is over, Charlotte seems to have purged more than the contents of her stomach - she seems to have shed a half-dozen layers of her reactive strangeness, she seems to have pulled all these scattered pieces of herself back into her own power, and her own orbit. To have fitted them all, once more, beneath her skin.
Celia hands her tissues, and Charlotte takes them. Her nose is running, clear snot, and there are tears in her eyes from the strain. She wipes her eyes and then blows her nose. Cleans off her mouth, spits into the toilet again, and throws them into the bowl, shuts the lid, and reaches up to depress the lever and flush. Then another tissue and another, peeled out of the other girl's hand as quickly as she pulls them from the dispenser. Another blown nose, another wipe of her mouth and tongue, and Charlotte rocks back a bit on her feet, butt sinking down to settle on her heels, damp denims pulled taut over the fleshy part of her thighs.
Celia asks what's wrong.
"I'm sorry," says Charlotte now, looking up at the other girl, her pale eyes clear again, and wide and a bit bloodshot from the strain. The apples of her cheeks a feverish, though now-fading, red. There's a force to the apology, a vehemence that suggests it is a real one, full of intent, not the uncertain placeholder it might otherwise seem.
"I don't like to talk about it. But I didn't mean to insult you or make you mad. I didn't - "
Here Charlotte swallows hard. All that bile. No matter: she's a garou. She's tasted worse. She feels strange after puking like that, all scrubbed and clarified, with a fine gritty sense of sandpaper beneath her eyelids and under skin that is not unpleasant.
"I think you should be able to do - " a beat, a sour little curl of her mouth around the euphemism, not quite a grimace, "stuff with someone you like. I just. I just don't like to talk about it."
Then Charlotte plants her palms on her thighs and pushes herself to a standing position. Looking down at Celia now, the vanity lights behind her putting her own features mostly in shadow, her skin starkly pale except for the mottled redness in her cheeks and neck. Breathing shallow and sharp, her pulse quick at her throat, heart pounding beneath her breastbone.
"And if someone is making you have sex someone you don't want to, tell me and I will kill them."
Celia de Luca
It's been mentioned that Celia grew up in a commune.
Of all women.
Some of them did occasionally become pregnant. It's not the first time she's had to suppress a sympathetic gag reflex. Charlotte cleans herself up a bit, and then apologizes, and Celia's brows tug together in a sharpened frown that takes some of the concern away and replaces it with disapproval. It isn't that she thinks it's insincere. It's that she knows it is.
"I'm not mad anymore," she tells the other girl, firmly. "I just want to know what's wrong." There's a long pause, a longer frown. She's sitting on the edge of the tub still. Charlotte sits on the floor, on a towel-like mat that is not entirely dry. Then again, neither is Charlotte.
"No one is making me do anything against my will," she assures her. "It's just..." Celia shakes her head. "Nevermind." Charlotte doesn't like to talk about it. Trying to explain to her that it's a matter of the who and not the what, that it's not even the same kind of sex, that she wants to destroy Jack and she thinks this is the best way to do it and that's not the same at all as wanting the person and being herself and, and, and
she realizes, looking at Charlotte, that she's a little disappointed that she can't talk to her about it. It's not like she can go back to the commune in a weekend and talk to any of the sisters about it. Especially given what Erich is.
Celia exhales a sigh.
"My name is Melantha," she tells her, which seems off-topic at first. She whispers it. It's a secret, after all. "But you can't tell anyone that, at least not now." Which makes Charlotte the second person she's said this to in more years than she can count, more years than she can remember. "The name Celia is just a lie."
Which explains why she's telling Charlotte the name Melantha. A beat goes by. She has her arms folded over her lap, one hand cupping each elbow.
"If you're phobic of sex, or traumatized," she says, just as quietly, looking directly at Charlotte with her frown faded to almost nothing, "that's not something you're wrong to feel. And I won't ever judge you for it or ask you to talk about things that make you so upset, but you can say anything you want to say to me, even if a minute later you want to pretend you never said it. That is okay, and it doesn't have any more impact on whether or not you and I are friends than the fact that I like Erich."
She reaches over, putting her hand over Charlotte's knee. Her hand is warm where Charlotte's jeans and skin are cool. Melantha's eyes are pale and clear and intense. And sincere.
"I'm sorry that I upset you, and that I yelled at you. If you want to talk we can. In the meantime I'm going to order us some cheesecake like you said, unless you want something else now. And we can start Mulan from the beginning."
Charlotte
Per + enigmas
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 1 )
Charlotte
"My name's Black Sheep. I mean, to the Nation," hushed, perhaps a bit diffident there, is Charlotte. It is not precisely the sort of name one saddles a Silver Fang with bright prospects Though there's a sweet, almost wry half-smile curving her fine little mouth as Celia shares her real name. Melantha Charlotte repeats, not even out loud because it is a secret, but she savors the sound of it on the back of her tongue,
" - and my first name's really Eulalia, but it's so awful I use Charlotte. It's not awesome like secret name, though. It's uhm just a middle name." Charlotte's pale eyes are still fixed on Melantha's face, her senses contracted and cooler now. Their reflections skim her peripheral vision, in the gleaming beneath the bright lights of the huge vanity.
Then Charlotte's gaze shears away from Melantha as the other girl continues, quiet and serious and sure, telling Charlotte that she's not wrong. That she won't be judged. That she can safely pretend a minute later that she never said it. Just then, she's staring at the toilet, at the gleam of light on the curve of the top of the porcelain reservoir, her shoulders turned inward ever-so-slightly.
Charlotte never quite looks back at Melantha through the whole of the speech, though her eyes are drawn from the abstract gleam in the porcelain to Melantha's hand on her thigh. She does nod, though at the end, this neat little tip of her head, bobbing in profile, two times, then three. This series of faint acknowledgments for every point made.
"And a purple toothbrush?" Charlotte casting a edge of a glance back at the young kinswoman, cheek curved with a smile that barely registers on her mouth. In other circumstances in might be sly; tonight, perhaps, it is merely a sort of not-quite-wistful gratitude.
Then Charlotte turns away from Melantha, back to the vanity, searches out the bottle of mouthwash from amongst the cosmetics and hair products, the perfumes and myriad lotions. She'll wash out her mouth with water from the tap and several mouthfuls of mouthwash in steady succession, then wash her face, her eyes and mouth and neck, and her hands at least twice, with the white cotton washcloth and the hotel-supplied bar of soap, pulling the washcloth down her face and staring back at her stark-eyed reflection before following her friend back into the hotel room.
"I've never seen Mulan"
Celia de Luca
Upon hearing Charlotte's deed name, Melantha is quiet for a moment. She makes no comment, for Charlotte continues onward. Her first name is Eulalia. She says it's not awesome like a secret name, but she doesn't know just how secret Melantha's true name is. Almost forgotten, like some myths, like some gods. She knows what the name Eulalia means, though, despite the name Black Sheep.
Her hand is still warm on the other girl's knee. She wiggles her fingers at Charlotte when she nods. Okay, okay, and okay.
"Sure," she says, drawing her hand back, as far as the purple toothbrush is concerned. Melantha rises to her feet, and if she were taller she would be statuesque, but even at her natural height there is something regal about how she carries herself. Even in pajama pants. Even, as Erich saw, in the woods. And if not regal, then ritual. Then holy.
There is a bottle of sweet-mint mouthwash. Melantha leaves her to it, if only to give the pink-haired Garou a few moments alone. "You can borrow some dry clothes, too," she tells her, as she's ringing up the concierge. Ordering a toothbrush -- purple -- and some cheesecakes. She doesn't order fruit on them. She could, but both cherries and strawberries are out of season, and she knows what grows when. It's strange to eat a strawberry in December, to her mind.
Charlotte emerges. She's never seen Mulan. "Well," Melantha says, "then I'll just rewind it. It's pretty great." There's a pause, and she walks over to Charlotte, putting her hand on her shoulder and then simply stepping forward and embracing her again. "Are you going to be okay?" she asks, her arms folded around the Theurge's back.
Charlotte Gray
Melantha offers Charlotte some dry clothes, and the Silver Fang takes advantage of the offer, shucking off her jeans, dark with and heavy with rainwater, in an easy motion that reveals her pale legs. Beneath her clothes, Charlotte has the build of a long-distance runner. One of those slight girls who ran cross-county in high school, never track. She borrows a pair of boxers or pajama-shorts from somewhere in the 'clean' pile of the Fury's laundry pile, without regard for color or pattern and is straightening up, running a long-fingered hand through her damp pink hair, a shadow of movement to her pale eyes as Melantha walks toward her.
The hand on her shoulder is warm, and the two of them are virtually of a height, so that Charlotte catches and holds Melantha's gaze - and Melantha's reflection in her own pale eyes - for a fraction of a second before the other girl steps forward and embraces her. Folds her arms around Charlotte's narrow torso.
Charlotte's cheek grazes Melantha's, close enough that the sweep of her pale eyelashes is flush against the curve of the kinwoman's cheek. A brief, awkward moment before Charlotte's stiff-arms unbend and return the hug.
Charlotte is so still, except for the recursive expansion of her ribs and chest with each slow breath as she draws in Melantha's rich, resonant scent - just-turned earth, the bright herb notes of early shoots, the grassy surety of spring rains, the first promise of warmth in the sun's light at dawn on a mist-shrouded morning, as the world heaves itself against the bonds of winter, turns itself back to the sun.
Almost belated, Charlotte's wordless nod to Melantha's question, sharp enough that it feels definite. Definitive. She is going to be okay. The gesture is felt rather than seen, perhaps sensed in the Fury's peripheral vision.
"I - I'm not always silly and emo like that." Ventures Charlotte, then. The words are an echo; she'd never heard the second of them until a handful of days again, and there's a certain bracing strength to them that tells Melantha that Charlotte is not going to fall apart. Not tonight at least. Not on her watch.
"Sometimes things get in my head and it's like - " A moment's hesitation; some things are easy to say like this; to the ears rather than the eyes, when you needn't bear the weight of another's eyes on you. " - like my head's full of mirrors and it won't let anything out. Just gets bigger and bigger. It's like everywhere and I'm breathing it all and making it worse until I let it out. Usually I go run. I'm better now, though."
Charlotte smells of the cold spring rain and sweet mint mouthwash and the faintest acrid hint of bile. Her clothes smell most strongly of the rain and car exhaust and some ozone electric scent.
"I don't want you to think you can't talk to me. That I'll go crazy everytime you do." Here she pulls back again, searching for the other girl's pale gaze with her own. Which is darker, somehow, in just that moment, smoke pooling against the sky. "I'm a theurge. We're supposed to be priests, you know?"
Celia de Luca
Melantha's clothes are actually big on Charlotte, which must be familiar to Charlotte and is utterly strange for Melantha. She gives her pajama pants, though, which are meant to be big. They are soft and baggy and green, with little white turtles on them. The shirt she gets is long-sleeved and warm, a pale yellow, and Melantha produces a pair of fuzzy purple socks to go with it all. Charlotte, in the end, with her pink hair and all, looks like unicorn vomit.
During this embrace, she feels Charlotte hold onto her a bit, if not with her arms than with...everything else. She can feel herself being scented and drawn in. It's not an unfamiliar feeling. It's not a good or a bad one, either. It simply is. It's part of what Charlotte is, just as much as the scent and spirit is a part of who Melantha is.
She is frowning when she straightens up again. "None of that was silly or 'emo'," she says firmly, almost vengefully. That's the simple answer. Her brow unfurrows, smoothing to silken softness again, and she just nods. "I know that feeling," Melantha says, of mirrors and breath. She does not explain. Maybe she means she's felt it herself. Maybe she's just seen a lot of it. Shakes her head: "I won't think that," she assures Charlotte.
Drawing back, she smiles, gives a small laugh and a little nod. "Yeah, I know. I don't think it's the same thing as being 'crazy'. That's just... a word people throw at something they don't understand. Most of the time if they did understand what was really going on, what they called 'crazy' would seem like the most logical reaction in the world. Like... it's not 'crazy' to be upset and start crying and yelling when someone is a dick to you. It's not 'crazy' to throw a vase at a guy's head when you find out he's cheated on you. Or 'crazy' to really, really, really need to clean something when you feel stressed out because your brain's chemistry is just not set up to deal with that stress. It's just... how people are."
Charlotte Gray
Charlotte - unicorn-vomit, pink and green and yellow and purple now, in too-big pajamas, which are warm and soft and smell of phosphate-free laundry soap and Black Fury kin, lets go of the hug a bit reluctantly. Her eyes are fast on Melantha again, still clear and gray rather than blue. Hair slicked back, the damp but drying ends kicking out with a bit of curl that licks around her face.
The firmness with which Melantha dismisses Charlotte's confession to to being silly and emo draws Charlotte taut, the spasm of some sympathetic nerve. She is all comically erect, the elegant architecture of her shoulder drawn taut against the warm yellow cotton of the tee, left hand twisting around the waistband of the frog-covered pajama bottoms to keep them from slipping down over her narrow hips when she moves.
Without, the drumming rain has settled down into a low, pelting rattle. The windows are thick enough to insulate them from the rush of cars down sixteenth street. Charlotte half-turns, catches the edge of Melantha's reflection pale in the dark, swimming sea of the Washington night as the other girl tells her that there's no such thing as crazy. That there are just ways people were made to be. Charlotte considers this, head canted ever so slightly aslant, calmed by the arrhythmic beat of the rain against Melantha's hotel room windows, by the cadence of her friend's voice.
Each word settles her more thoroughly into her body.
"I like that," Charlotte returns at last, looking back to Melantha, "but I can't promise I'll remember it next time it feels like I'm going cra- " a pause, the quickening of a nimble little mouth, the rising curve of her cheek, correction. " - out of control. But I'll try."
Reaching out a hand then to tug Melantha over to the bed and the promised Mulan. Charlotte is quiet while the other girl rewinds, resets the playback to begin from the beginning, but her eyes are lingering, quick on the young kin's face, the distinct line of her profile.
"Do you really like him?" A little quirk to Charlotte's mouth; given the context of the evening, there really is only one subject of that question.
Celia de Luca
Something about the way Charlotte is acting is reminding Melantha of something that Erich told her. Something about Charlotte's brother. About his effect on Charlotte. She watches her, but she keeps her thoughts -- some of them -- to herself. It's in the way she stands, mostly. How she reacts to being told something firmly like that, which is just how Melantha talks.
Melantha climbs onto the bed, sitting with her knees out, the soles of her feet touching. She shrugs. "Nobody can remember things like that all the time," she says easily, and then: Charlotte and she are together on the bed, sitting together while Melantha clicks a few buttons to take them back to the start menu. She feels herself watched and looks at the other girl. Blinks at the question and
flushes, slightly, ducking her head and huffing a soft laugh. "Yeah," she says, smiling to herself. She looks over at Charlotte again, meeting her eyes. That smile remains, but she shares it this time. "He's my friend. And we went camping and just... ended saying we loved each other. Not like this romantic, ridiculous infatuation thing. Just that really easy, simple sort of love. But nothing even happened then. It was later, and it was more because..."
She trails off, then frowns a little, and shakes her head. "See, what I do? What I'm doing here in D.C.? It's... something I've been doing for a long time. But because this guy is so high-profile, it's probably going to be my last one. And I don't really know what's going to happen after that. I'll probably have to leave the city pretty quickly when everything comes together. Erich and I were talking about that, and he was saying how it was going to be okay, and we'd figure out a way to get back in touch and find each other, and it wasn't goodbye, and just... that word hit me and..."
Melantha's ears are darkened with moisture. She sniffs and smiles, smiles the way a woman who knows how easy it is to not cry when she doesn't want to, even if Melantha rarely employs that skill among friends, and shakes her head. "I don't really know how to explain it. I don't think it needs to be explained to be real. I just felt something else there, and I didn't want to keep fooling myself that I didn't want to be with him. And I don't even mean... all that stuff,"
euphemisms. Charlotte's euphemisms, in fact.
"-- I just mean with him."
She exhales, and then she lies down on her side, head on her arm, looking at Charlotte. "It's why I told him my real name, even though not even the sisters call me that. It's why I told you, too, I think. You guys are my friends. You're my real friends."
Charlotte Gray
Charlotte sits with her legs tucked together, Indian-style. Quite narrowly together, taking up a rather small footprint, hands on her thighs on her knees, fingertips tracing idly and almost without looking the pattern on the thighs of the pajama bottoms.
Her regard on Celia is almost unutterably steady now. There is something lupine in that, the willingness to watch another continuously, when most humans would look away, blink, find the ceiling or their reflection in the big-screen television. Right through the flush that pinks Melantha's cheeks, the duck of her head. Charlotte does look down with the soft huff of Melantha's laugh, to the complex interplay of their multipartitite shadows on the sheets and bedspread, diffuse and shifting from the glow of lights around the hotel room.
Then the girl looks up again, in time to share that smile and answer it with one of her own, which is hooked and a bit diffident, tenative, but still: an echo of the Fury's own, made strange and sweet by that vaguely haunting, haunted edge to Charlotte's wide eyes.
"I don't think everything needs to be explained to be real, either. I think some things so real that they just are, and they're better off without us or anyone else putting words all over them. Unless the words just are, too.
"But that's like, poetry. And stuff, I mean."
When Melantha's eyes darken with moisture, Charlotte gives her space to be again, glancing down at her fingers on the bedspread, index and middle hooked and curling into the rumpled sheets, chipping rainbow casilica nailpolish a dull gleam against the finer sateen of the Egyptian cotton sheets.
The euphemism - Charlotte's euphemism - seems to work like magic. Charlotte neither fliches nor tenses, and is self-away enough to glance up again, and give Melantha this very brief, and very strangely adult, and very wry look of gratitude for it.
Then she nod-nods, this firm, definitely little gesture of understanding as Melantha exhales and stretches out, cradling her head in one hand.
"Then I'm glad. And I'm glad you told me?"
"But - " a pause, a glance back and down, rocking so that her weight shifts forward toward her knees. " - uh," a guilty little look, a narrow, dismissive shrug. " - maybe don't tell him I puked when I heard?"
Celia de Luca
Charlotte gets it. Melantha sighs with relief and happiness and, frankly, closeness, to hear Charlotte's agreement. Some things just are, and they don't need to get plastered with words to be understood. She smiles and and leans right then against Charlotte, bumping shoulder to shoulder, needing physical contact at exactly that moment to try and express how dear the other girl is to her all of a sudden.
Charlotte gets it. Charlotte is a sister.
And the euphemism works. Melantha thought it would; she chose the word that Charlotte chose, and notices -- because she is watching carefully as she skirts this dangerous territory -- that it doesn't cause the other girl pain. They meet there again, in glances, and perhaps Charlotte is thinking that Melantha just
gets it.
She blinks at Charlotte's request. "Dude, of course not." There's a pause. "I mean, I might have, if you had run out and not talked to me after that. Just because he knows you, too, and maybe he knew something I didn't and would be able to explain what I said that might have freaked you out, I don't know. But no. I'm not gonna tell him about that."
Melantha is quiet again, for a moment. Her brows stitch. "But maybe you should. If not the vomiting thing, just... tell him that you don't want to hear about stuff and that it bothers you. And if he gets all pushy and asks you a million questions, just shut him down. He doesn't need to know everything or understand everything to respect it when you tell him to back the fuck off." She's quite firm. One could imagine she has told the Ahroun to Back The Fuck Off and one could just as easily surmise that she doesn't think doing so would come naturally to Charlotte,
called Black Sheep.
Melantha reaches over and gently pokes Charlotte's knee. "I think when there's people in your life you don't have to keep secrets from, it's good not to."