Ornature

Once upon a time (the best and strangest stories start with these four words), not so very long ago (and continue with these), Charlotte spent as little time in the Cold Crescent Sept as was practicable, for a wyld thing in a city with few enough wyld space. Summer saw the little pack camped up in the high valleys of the Rockies, and winter has brought them lower, lower yes but still rather far away. Only the official dissolution of the Sept of the Cold Crescent and Erich's determination to keep the Sept in the aftermath of the judgment of the elders brings her here.

And regularly.

The shrines feel all strange to her, this humming space alive with electricity, wrapped in a web of information, all glass and chrome and steel, the city spread out below, glittering in the new-come and early darkness, like a radiant galaxy. Often as not Charlotte begins her exploration of the shrines - the shrines that remain, the shrines that are newly-built, the shrines, too, that Erich would never allow to be entirely striped to pieces - not in the center of the space but its borderlands, frowning out of the windows, her breath a warm mist against the frigid glass, all humid and opaque.

And that is where she is tonight.

Avery is looking for Charlotte.

--

On the 43rd floor, where such horrors came to pass, there are shrines. Well. There are shrines if people have built them anew, and few have. Most were gone in the fire and blood. Many were gone as soon as the Great Alpha made his pronouncement. Only the transient wolves who come through here to guard the place still may have built some.

Or the one that Charlotte's own packmate put up for Luna. There's that one. Maybe there is one that Charlotte has built.

--

The elevators here do not ding, not on this floor. The emergency lights are not on, have never been on. The building hums. You can hear the mechanicals.

Avery walks out of the sliding doors, and sees exactly the girl she was looking for standing at the glass. There is a hatbox in her hands, and to see Charlotte, she breaks into a smile.

"Charlotte! My dear!"

Charlotte has not yet built a shrine, but she brings in stuff and stuFF and Stuff and her stuff is scattered around the remnants of the stripped and empty space. Squirreled away, forgotten, half-remembered. Scattered until inspiration or something close to it hits her. Hard for her to imagine how to honor volcano up where they are flying so high, so Falcon, perhaps, surely Falcon.

Soon, soon, soon.

--

Now though, Charlotte at the window - meditating, not brooding - her thick hoodie unzipped, her distinctive pink-and-platinum hair curling lightly at the ends, mussed from the hood. Avery exclaims her name and Charlotte recognizes her without looking, the vibrancy of her voice but she turns to look anyway, spins on her heel and gives Avery a rather shy smile.

And a sort of greeting-shrug, hands in the front pockets of her jeans, her spare frame all adolescent slouch.

"Hey. Uhm, hi. I mean, Avery-rhya."

Not for long, Avery wants to say.

The hatbox is white and pink in vertical stripes of organza. There is a large silver crepe bow on top. It's lovely. She crosses the room with it, smiling, her long jersey skirt swaying and kicking and whispering a bit around her boots. Her jacket covers the rest, her scarf white. The temperature dropped rapidly tonight, down to frigid, bone-shaking cold. Avery came all the way up from the lobby, and her cheeks are still a bit pink.

Avery. Daughter of Falcon, twice over, and so very blessed by him.

"I," she says, pleased with herself, "have a gift for you."

"Oh!" Charlotte exclaims, startled. She is not dressed for the weather. Perhaps she forgot the change, perhaps she merely shivered her way through whatever trip she made here. Perhaps she slipped across the gauntlet and ran ran ran through the city's reflection, befurred and brilliant, a pale streak beneath the moonless sky.

She is not dressed like a Silver Fang, like Avery. Beneath the unzipped hoodie - which is fine, of course, the best quality but - a Mexican Sprite! t-shirt in fading green, and jeans that are maybe half-an-inch too short for her, and Converse all-stars. The rubber margin is covered in ballpoint pen doodles.

And Charlotte's eyes dart from Avery's face to the hatbox, which is lovely, and back to Avery's face and it's not suspicion on Charlotte's features then, but a kind of cautious, wary ...

desire. "You didn't - " have to Charlotte is starting to say, but Avery is so bright and so pink-cheeked and so pleased and so lovely that it is hard to be anything else, so Charlotte sidles a bit more forward and swallows and the look she shoots to that box is still peremptory somehow. Like she daren't quite ask (all breathless), " - is that, I mean, did you mean the box?"

Without quite thinking about it, Charlotte is standing a leetle bit taller.

Avery does look every inch the Silver Fang. From that long hair cast straight and golden over her shoulders to the pristine white scarf -- cashmere, naturally -- to the supple black leather cropped jacket that hugs her arms to that long dove-colored skirt and the high, caramel-colored boots. Truthfully, she's a little saddened that her outfit does not present the gift to Charlotte better, just as she is a bit embarrassed to be giving it to her in the hatbox that is better wrapping than most people's Christmas gifts, but these things do not dissuade her.

She comes nearer, and she holds the pink-and-white hatbox towards the Theurge, beaming with pleasure.

"It's what's in the box," she says teasingly, cajolingly, and nods at it. "Take it," she urges softly.

Being this close to Avery makes Charlotte feel all strange and prickly and hot and aware of lo-the-many ways in which she does not match the promise of her blood, and also, strangely, makes her forget it too. There are all these threads pulling tight beneath her skin and Charlotte feels all odd, and a little bit floaty, the way she imagines a planet might without a sun to circle, Avery is teasing, cajoling, and Charlotte is charmed in the way that Charlottes are charmed.

The shy smile deepens but never loses its fey edge; Charlotte seems as much like a mythical animal glimpsed in the margins of a half-remembered forest, but more solidly so.

So urged, the girl darts a glance up at Avery and then, yes, reaches out for the hatbox with a (slightly grubby) hand that Charlotte herself does not particularly notice.

"Thank you." Charlotte's cheeks are pink now. She has not been out in the cold in quite some time.

And, slowly, slowly, she opens the box.

Charlotte, whose blood is purer and whose spirit is stronger and who is so very blessed by her ancestors that they sometimes walk through her body as though it is their own... feeling strange and prickly and hot and aware of her own shortcomings when she is near Avery. Avery would be bewildered. Avery would be stunned. Avery would be confused and saddened, but she would not sock Charlotte in the jaw the way she did Erich when he basically told her no no, madam, let me throw myself into the jaws of the space-wyrm for you, after all, you will do so many great things and I am but a hapless pawn in our great war, m'lady and she thought she didn't hit him she was going to begin speaking very shrilly indeed. And loudly.

No: she does not feel the urge to raise her voice at Charlotte, and probably would not even if Charlotte were to say foolish things like her packmate sometimes does. Nor can she imagine feeling the desire to punch Charlotte in the face, though if it were strictly necessary she might have to get over that.

Mostly, right now, she is just thrilled that Charlotte is taking the hatbox from her. Because Charlotte, in her way, is like a unicorn, and she seems to be interested in her present, and Avery is beside herself with excitement. She clasps her hands to keep from clapping, but does not hug them by her chin. Instead, she lowers them, pressing her lips together as Charlotte removes the hatbox's lid to find clouds and clouds of gauzy silk, one enormous length of it wrapped loose as a hurricane's spiral around the skull of a full-grown man sitting in the middle.

It has been ruthlessly cleaned. Occasionally it has been given sunlight to bleach it. It is in good shape. No bits of flesh, no rotting smell -- and also no antiseptic smell, which is a plus. It has a vaguely botanical scent instead, some other natural cleanser or oil or something. It has most of its teeth.

Avery's eyes are aglow. She watches, breathlessly, waiting for a reaction. Maybe it would mean more if she told the story behind it. Wait, no: didn't Celduin tell that story at some moot? Will Charlotte remember? Will she recognize it and recall the story? Will she realize that she -- she! -- is the talented Theurge of Avery's own tribe to be waited for, sought out, and gifted like this?

Stay tuned.

Charlotte is pulling out the spiral cloud of gauzy silk and seems quite thoroughly charmed by the extravagence of the wrappings, the liquid spill of those lengths of silk through her fingers. And she is unwinding them and unwinding them and unwinding them to find, at the center, a scoured skull and -

"Oh," somewhere in the middle of this Charlotte has settled herself down on the floor, the hatbox between her legs. It is a charming picture, like Christmas morning, except on one of the abandoned floors of an abandoned Sept that has been stripped of most of its furnishings and left echoing-empty aside from what they have brought in with them but:

"Oh - " all delight, this quiet exclamation that goes from native diffidence to a half-transported enchantment as Charlotte pulls the skull from the last of its wrappings, which fall away like a winding cloth from a corpse.

Quite simple, really, and quite simply happy, Charlotte starts to, well, babble, "I used to have a spine that Lauren gaven me and I took it to Washington when I went there with Chaz and I kept it in my room and we looked out over the old oak tree and I have one of his acorns but our house moves so I don't know if I should plant it but because I can't put it in a pot because the tree was way bigger than our tinyhouse but Erich said that I should get one and that I shouldn't bring my spine with me but he said I can have it now.

"Except not through the mail, so if I get my spine it won't match but it matches anyway because one's a head and the other's a spine all slinky and spiny and it's perfect is what I mean.

"Where'd you get - "

And this time, the oh is soundless, just an open-mouthed intonation of the syllable. Charlotte's eyes are fixed on Avery and nearly grave there, but Avery can read the way the realization creeps across Charlotte's consicousness in the widening of her eyes, and the deepening stain of red in her cheeks.

Oh.

Charlotte wants to refuse the honor a thousand times over. Doesn't she know? Couldn't she see? Wouldn't she -

But who can refuse Avery Chase?

"Thank you."

The box and the gauze are the gift! SURPRISE.

Not really. Charlotte gets to the skull, has lowered herself to the ground, and Avery follows her, a smooth crouch, as comfortable as a lioness. She folds one arm loosely over her knees, watching in serene pleasure now as the Theurge brings yet another new, more vibrant memory to this spot that held such unspeakable horror and violation. Cleansing is a process. So is grieving. So is redemption.

The skull of the man Avery warned, then helped slaughter, is lifted up. It is lighter than you would think. Heavier, too, somehow. She babbles. A spine! Acorn. Their house moves. Perfect.

Patiently, and rather happily, Avery just listens. She tips her head, as though this is a conversation and not a babbling of words, as though this is an instruction and not just word salad. And then Charlotte asks, and half-asks, and then realizes, and Avery smiles.

Gently.

Charlotte whispers a thank you, and that is when Avery shakes her head, and says quietly: "I am in love with Calden White." It is the first time she has said this to anyone, though Charlotte can't know it. Calden knows. Anyone who sees her with the kinsman can tell there is something coy and happy and intimate between them. Avery says it without anything but what it is: no claim, no defense, no assertion, no details, no hedging, no embarrassment, no deep-breath-now-we-plunge, no ache, no invitation for questions. Just this. Just the truth.

She is in love with Calden White.

"You have my deep and abiding gratitude for what you did for him," Avery goes on, just as softly, holding the other Fang's eldritch, fey eyes with her own, which are not some unnameable color but something more approachable, something warm and summery and yet achingly glorious in its own right. "The skull is yours for your talent and your power, which all who meet you know, and which the spirits and your people speak of in greater measure with each turning of the moon. It was meant for you from the moment I told its original owner that I would be taking it from him.

"But my gratitude," she adds, her brow furrowing just a touch, "is not something I can give you in a box, and it cannot be wrapped in silk. You have my favor, Black Sheep. And if there comes a day or a time that I find a way to truly show you the depth of that gratitude, know that I will."

[EDIT:

Charlotte whispers a thank you, and that is when Avery shakes her head, and says quietly: "Do not thank me, Charlotte." That refusal, gentle as it is, hangs in the air for a moment before she goes on: "I am in love with Calden White."]

Charlotte

Charlotte cannot know it but what is there about the posture or the admission or not-admission, the statement that is arresting. Three and one half-thousand voices seem to be all rattling around Charlotte's head and she is pulled in a half-a-dozen directions, babbling, yes happily, all stream-of-consciousness as she handles the skull of a man who was broken long before he was dead. Who could not know any sort of redemption, except for whatever was granted him in a violent burst, by Avery, with her claws.

Look, see - Charlotte is blushing and not-really-looking back directly at Avery who is crouched before her. The flush spreads down from her hot pale cheeks, down the column of her too-long throat. Were she dressed differently, by which we mean well, that throat might be swan-like or elegant and there is something beneath all this about Charlotte that is not elegant but graceful; swift, and animal in its promise, yes.

But now: arrested. Pale eyes fixed on Avery so directly and that flush slowly draining from her cheeks and throat.

Charlotte's skin is fine and white. There is a distinctive gravity to the rhythm of her breath. The steady tidal bearing of it. A pulse beats, visible, at the base of her throat.

So.

So.

--

At the end of it, the girl-who-is-not-a-girl swallows. Her skull is on the floor between her legs, but one hand is smoothed across the crown, the curve of her palm fitted neatly over it. Charlotte seams her mouth and licks her lips. Begins to respond - just an intake of breath - then stops and offers a curling shrug.

"I love Melantha." Shining eyes, and tears behind them, but Charlotte does not shed them. "I bet she's alive 'cos of him. It's like a circle. Or thread made into a length of cloth.

"Stronger for the weave."

There are parts of that night that Avery does not remember with perfect clarity. She unleashed her rage and tapped her will. They shot at her from above. They shot at Celduin. They shot at Calden. She remembers the men on the bridge; she does not remember if it was she or Jack who killed the tattooed man on the path whom she threatened with this fate. She does not remember shifting back into her human skin. She remembers a blanket wrapped around her body, blood staining her jaw and throat and breasts, remembers Calden assuring her later that she had nothing to be so ashamed of, even though she was.

She doesn't quite remember if she ever gave a thought to the redemption of men like this or not. There are better garou than she who do ask such questions. Sometimes she wonders if she was always so callous, if this should have been her clue all those years ago that the life of a kinswoman to Falcon was not her path. Then she feels bad for equating callousness to the state of being garou; it seems unfair to her to paint all of them in such light, especially when wolves like Keisha roam the land.

Charlotte speaks, and Avery lets her thoughts drift from her again, not so self-centered, focusing her eyes on the other Fang again.

She thinks, briefly, one last thing: she is so glad that there is one of her tribe here who is like Charlotte. So wondrous. So wise. She decides that if anything should ever happen to Erich -- perish the thought -- Charlotte will not be left adrift. Nor will Erich, in the reverse situation.

--

Charlotte loves Melantha. Avery's lips part at the statement, the truth in it, the difference between I am in love with and I love. She gives a small smile, exhaling softly, gratified in some deep way that Charlotte understands in part what this meant to her: to have him survive. To have that not be the end.

The truth of the matter is, and perhaps they both know this on some level, it was the kinfolk who saved each other. Had either one of them been hunted alone, they might have died. Had Calden not handed Melantha a gun. Had Melantha stopped shooting because the sight of all that blood terrified her. It was their strength. It was their determination. It was their will that kept their lights from going out in Golden.

It still means something that Charlotte laid her hands on Calden, and did so before healing the one she loves.

Avery, glorious and shining and wonderful and perfectperfectperfect Avery, knows in the depth of her heart that in the same situation, she doesn't know if she would have done the same. So she reaches over, slowly, and lays her warm hand atop Charlotte's, holding the Theurge's eyes.

"I think you are right," she says quietly. "All the same: know that you have my favor. And should you need me, call on me."

Her hand squeezes once, then slips away as she rises to her full height again, looking down at Charlotte with something like contentment in her eyes: to see a favorite of hers so pleased, surrounded by the wrappings and holding the gift that Avery had the pleasure of bestowing on her. She looks so at peace, looking on her like that.

"Good evening, Black Sheep. May it be well for you."

With that she leaves, turning gradually and walking herself back to the elevator, thinking that though she saw him quite recently at her packhouse, she should like to brave the snowy roads and go north tonight.