Ornature

It was sometime after dusk when Erich arrived at Cold Crescent with Charlotte and Melantha in tow. Not long after, and after a lot of hugs, he parted ways with them -- leaving them down on the dormitory level while he climbed on up to 43.

It's been hours since then. All night, in fact. It's seven am now, and the sun is up, and Melantha is asleep in one of the bunk beds and Charlotte is maybe-just-waking, maybe crunching a bowl of cereal or something in the common area when

Erich

bursts into the room, all pale and scratched up and knocked about and mud-faced, wide-eyed, yelling not about the results of his challenge or even what his challenge was but, instead:

"I MET GAIA TONIGHT."

There is something in Charlotte that does not love the cityscape. The wrapping certainty of the Weaver's webs, the heaviness of the concrete, the flat certainty of glass, which shines all smug, both reflective and transparent, all at once.

Well, maybe she likes glass. How it is two-things-at-once, but not how impermeable it is. How fused.

Charlotte's hours though are not human hours and the Sept has a life that is hard to see or know. When Erich finds Charlotte first thing that morning she is indeed crunching a bowl of cereal (a combination of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Pebbles, and Reese's Peanut Butter Buffs) soaked in chocolate milk and also strawberry milk (which is a thing: FYI) but she is not just waking. She spent the better part of the past hour in the umbra, studying the Veteran on his plinth in the plaza.

Just studying.

So Erich bursts in yelling about meeting Gaia Charlotte is first EXCITED to see him: scratched up yeah and mud-faced yeah but whole, whole and alive, and is second eager for news he's not telling her yet, studying him with her usual strange combination of startlement and alertness as if she might see the sigils of his rank sunk into his skin, and maybe she can, and is third: well,

a little bit doubtful, and a little bit reluctant to be so doubtful but here is a small secret, Erich. Sometimes spirits are secretive. Some of them are even liars. Some of them are spirits of liars and made to liar and wrap you up in -

Her mouth skews sidelong as she considers him, Charlotte, over her bowl of cereal. She was aware enough of his presence in the building that she has not upset her meal.

So she just sets it aside and leaves the matter of meeting Gaia tonight for later and asks him pale eyes sharp, thin body stark with a sublimated tension,

"Did you pass?"

She will ask him details about actually meeting Gaia later.

"Yeah! I did! BUT CHARLOTTE. I MET GAIA."

Because obviously: this is way more important. And it is. It actually, really is.

"Or like. Well. A piece of her. An... aspect? An avatar of an aspect. I met the ... angry pregnant part of Gaia. Oh man that makes it sound like some sort of sitcom, but no, it was amazing. And awesome. And like. Awe-some, literally, you know? It was just, wow."

So it is well and good that Charlotte has set aside her messy concoction of sugar-laden cereals and sugar-laden milks because Erich says Yeah! I did! and Charlotte jumps down from the counter (she was sitting on the counter) and takes the remaining 2.4 feet across the kitchenette and jumps up and throws her arms around Erich and hugs him tight.

Gaia, once more, will have to wait her turn.

STOPPIT.

Well he's still talking about Gaia when Charlotte fairly flies across the room and throws her arms around him. Impact into Erich is sort of like impact into a side of beef, or maybe a brick wall: a lot of oof and not much budge. Still, he doesn't hesitate, not even for a beat, to throw his arms around her in return and squeeeeze.

Strange; he can't actually remember the last time Charlotte hugged him. Like, without Melantha hugging both of them. Or him hugging her first. She's not as physical as her two packmates, Charlotte isn't.

And: she's growing taller too. Or is that his imagination? He's pretty sure she's taller: bird-delicate and thin-limbed, sort of heron-graceful in this way that's almost almost almost gawky. But not quite because, well: she is Of Falcon.

"I know!" he says, like she'd said something to express her joy. "I'm surprised and happy and stuff too! But: GAIA, CHARLOTTE."

Charlotte said nothing to express her joy, so Erich's I know! would surprise her if she were thinking with anything but her animal heart. Her feral, primal, animal heart. There is a bright, fierce joy, a sharply settled pride for Erich's accomplishment that is still shining in her eyes when she pulls back, lifting her delicate jaw, watching him with her pale, wideset eyes that make her seem so very young to ordinary humans.

A little bit awkward in the aftermath of that hug; perhaps even a little bit shy. See the way she looks more at his profile than his eyes, and looks at him more from her own profile, not precisely sidelong but close to it.

"An actual aspect of Gaia?" Charlotte is asking him then; because he has gone back to it and because she has a moment to breathe and she asks him rather gently but with some native suspicion, yes, but that seems to incredible and honestly Erich is an Ahroun.

Uh, so he might be easily fooled?

- but beneath her reluctance is a native instinct to indulge Erich's rather uncomplicated joy; to bask in the reflection of his enthusiasm, as in the framing heat of a fire, so - " - what did she say?"

"Um," and now, suddenly and for the first time, Erich is uncertain too, "I... I think so? I didn't call her, Silhouette -- she's the Fostern that I challenged -- asked a Silent Strider Theurge to call her. Or well, I asked to call her. And the Theurge, I think his name was Hungry Road or something?, he was like WELL THERE ARE A LOT OF ASPECTS OF GAIA and I was like, well, call the one who made me what I am, who needs me most?

"And so he called her, and she showed up looking like... well, actually she just looked like a pregnant girl, except then she looked at me and her eyes were like ... the universe. Anyway -- my challenge, that part of it, was to ask for one spirit and ask it one question.

"So I asked for Gaia and I asked her ... how I could help her. Like, what I could do to help her best, you know? And she told me..."

Erich's wild glee has banked some. It has become a quieter thing, thoughtful, poignant. His eyes sting at the very memory of it:

"She told me to be good. Like the way any mom would, I guess? But I think she also meant good like... righteous, pure, true. And she told me to fight. And to die. I guess she just told me to keep doing what I'm doing. Which is kinda nice. 'Cause that means I'm doing something right."

Charlotte tells every story she tells with the disjointed circularity one expects from someone born beneath her moon; Erich, when he takes a deep breath and steps back and starts from something like the beginning is rather her superior when it comes to this. He gets out the how and when and why and Charlotte's sidling attention - the piece that is spare and not surreptitious but careful somehow - is steadied as Erich's brief story unfolds.

She turns her head, the fine strands of her pink hair sliding against her cheek, until she's facing him fully. Somehow Charlotte finds Erich's quieter pleasure all the more compelling.

And she watches him, quiet now, listens to him, quiet now, no longer questioning the identity of the spirit whom he met; and certaintly not its instructions to him, even if a certain piece of them draws a faint shadow across her eyes.

"That was a good question to ask her," Charlotte tells him, with a supple, narrowing little shrug. "I don't think I would've thought to ask her that."

"Really?" That actually surprises Erich a bit; he can't imagine asking anything but that. But then, he was born under the full. "What would you have asked?

"I dunno," Charlotte returns, with a one-shouldered shrug that looks like the incipient phase of some adolescent rebellion, bony and stark beneath her t-shirt. Left hand finding its way to her hip pocket, left elbow out all akimbo. "What went wrong?"

A brief pause, a sharp, filtering exhale. "I mean, you know. To start with."

"Oh." Erich looks briefly crestfallen. "I didn't even think of that. That's a really good question too. I sort of wanted to ask Her stuff like... why am I a Shadow Lord and why was I born to Fenrir and stuff? But that just kinda seemed like selfish snitty baby questions to ask and I was only allowed to ask one.

"Plus, seriously, that's like almost insulting I think. It's like asking your mom why she raised you the way she did."

He bounces back to the previous subject: "What do you think went wrong?"

Of the three of them, Melantha has the most structured schedule, even though she's not the most structured of persons. She has to get up early sometimes to work, and since she traded shifts with someone so she could have tonight off, she got up early. She opened the restaurant and worked a full shift and then they all drove down to Denver and got some food and then Erich went off and it's been hours and she ended up falling asleep on one of the dorm beds, the hood of her hoodie up and curled up under one of the not-exactly-cozy blankets they pulled from storage.

And now Erich is back and they're talking and no one has thought to wake her up, which is why when their voices start to interfere with her dreams and she realizes Erich is back, her first groggy words are not to say his name in a cute and sleepy way but to go:

"--ythefu didn't you wameup?"

Charlotte is watching Erich and the light is strange and soft and shadowed and it makes her pale blue eyes look eerily silver and those eerily silver eyes remain fixed and close and intimate on his face; unblinking. She absorbs his fallen crest and wants to say something about freedom and will but she does not have the words or precisely the concept except that she knows, somewhere down in the strange hollows of her body, that they are all strangely, terribly free.

Maybe that's what went wrong.

--

Her nostrils flare; she abjures, "I dunno," quietly, with another sharp and reluctant little shrug. "That's why I'd ask."

This is true.

--

Then Charlotte peels away from Erich but catches his hand and sort of walks/leads her fostern packmate back to her other packmate, curled up and half-sleeping, just-waking from half-broken dreams.

"We were coming to do that next."

This is also true.

"And we kinda DID wake you up," Erich points out. He's still holding Charlotte's hand, and this is inexpressibly but entirely different from how he sometimes holds Melantha's hands. This: you think of Hansel and Gretel, children in a forest, orphaned, abandoned, growing up and learning to kill.

He flops down on Melantha's bunk, then. He sort of just... invites himself in, crowding her over and stretching out and letting out this big long sigh. "Ohhhh it's nice to get off my feet. I was just telling Charlotte I passed. And I got to talk to Gaia. And I asked her how to help her and she was kinda like, keep doing what you're doing.

"And then we were talking about what Charlotte would ask. And she'd ask how things went wrong. And I was asking what she thought went wrong, but she was like I dunno, that's why I'd ask. And now I'm like oh durr.

"What would you ask Gaia? If you could ask anything."

She has so much hair. It's thick and tumbling out of her hoodie's hood, and her eyes are sleepy and her eyelids heavy and she thumps around on the narrow dorm bed until she gets over beside Erich, glomping onto his side, her chest on his shoulder, her arms around his neck, her face against his not-very-long hair. She leans into him heavily, because she's tired, and she doesn't get in the way of any hand-holding or anything. He doesn't get the chance to lay out next to her because of this, which is a shame, but he does get to sit, at least.

She sniffs.

"You passed?" she says, happily, lifting her head up and smiling at him. Her eyes close and open; her smile fades naturally. "You talked to Gaia?"

He tells her more. He asks her what she'd ask, and Melantha is still and quiet a moment, then shakes her head. "I don't know. I guess I'll find out if I ever get to talk to her."

Learning to kill.

--

Erich stretches out over Melantha and they glomp together and in the interim Charlotte - whose fingertips were lightly interlaced with Erich's - has let go of his hand and found herself a few spare inches of space at the foot of the bed. She sits all cross-legged and knock-kneed and smiling and and sort of nods confirmation doubtlessly along with Erich when Melantha says you passed and Charlotte says,

"I told him he would."

She also told him it would be okay if he didn't.

Didn't she?

"You didn't tell me about the rest of it, Erich. What else did you hafta do? Who'd you challenge, anyway?"

Well -- Erich didn't really stretch out. He's sort of sitting on the side of the bed, and Melantha is sort of sleepy-glomped onto him, and Charlotte is tucked small-neat on his other side and it would not be an exaggeration, not at all, to say that right now Erich is an 11 on the 1-10 scale of happy.

"I did," he says, and, "I did." And, "You did!" And, "I didn't."

Tell her about the rest of it, anyway. So he does: tells her that he challenged a really cool Ahroun Shadow Lord called Silhouette-of-Clouds, and how first they went to go kick some ass and he totally thought he failed 'cause there were seven of them and he couldn't take them all and then Silhouette had to help him. But all she said was hey maybe next time PLAN AHEAD A LITTLE and then they were off to the next thing,

which was telling a story of their people. So he Told A Story Of His People, and it was a sad story but one that always stuck with him, because it was about doing what was right because it was right, and not because it was glorious or fun or cool or anything like that.

Then there was a discussion about what was fair vs. what was right, and how sometimes what was right was not fair at all. And then -- he's so proud when he says this -- he learned how to make Bloody Bandages. Mid-challenge!

"And then I talked to Gaia," he finishes. "Or well. I was told to pick a spirit, any spirit, to ask one question of. And... I picked Gaia? And the Theurge that was helping me was like, okay, you gotta be more specific. So I was like I wanna talk to the Gaia that needs my help. And then I got like, angry-preggo-desperate-Gaia-Mom. And that's when I asked her how I can help. And. Yeah.

"Then I passed," he finishes. "I don't have a new name yet. I was gonna maybe ask Reverence-rhya to name me. Or maybe you two can think of something?"

Melantha stays glomped. Melantha is tired. Melantha likes hugging Erich, and she knows he's strong enough for her to just lean on for a good long while, so she does so unapologetically, yawning a couple of times... just as unapologetically.

He tells them about the fight, and the story, and by then Melantha has already figured this one out. She guesses at the number of tests silently, and what they all were about. She does speak up to ask him what a bloody bandage is.

She smiles that the Theurge had to tell Erich to be more specific about which Gaia. That he wanted the one who needs him. That it turned out to be 'angry-preggo-desperate-Gaia-Mom'.

"You should be Storm's Teeth, Duckface the Magnificent," she tells him, still slurring a bit, snuggling under his arm and turning her back to his side and drowsing against his pectoral, his arm crossing over her chest. "That should be your name."

She's teasing him. Of course she is. Her hand is up, though, covering his where it wraps around her. "I'm real happy for you, Erich. I knew you'd pass," she says, and

yawns again.

"That's not a very good name," Charlotte is a bit reluctant to correct or contradict Melantha and that reluctance is written into the frame of her body and the twist of her brow and the fine and narrow little frown stitched between her brows and there's an underlying suspicion written into her awkward-but-graceful or something close-to-it teenager's frame that Melantha is teasing but she doesn't actually know that -

"Erich doesn't look like a duck. Ducks have beaks."

"Well, bills. I mean. They are basically beaks."

Erich bursts into laughter, which redoubles as Charlotte points out his lack of a beak. Or a bill.

"Yeah, I am like, NOT a duck. And I don't duckface either. I don't have a bill or a beak and I don't do that thing with my lips." He duckfaces. But just to demonstrate.

"C'mere," he adds -- holding an arm out to Charlotte. Hugging her, too, glomping all three of them together. "I should be Storm's Teeth, Who Has A Lot Of Awesome Friends," he says. It's a little quieter. Heartfelt and poignant under a thin little layer of humor. "Storm's Teeth, Who's Totally Lucky To Have A Lot Of Awesome Friends And Also A Tinyhouse Where They All Live Together."

Melantha laughs when Charlotte points out that Duckface the Magnificent isn't a good name. She twists around, grinning at her Best Friend Forever. "No," she agrees. "It's an awful name. But 'duckface' is like... all those selfies and stuff on the internet, where people hold their phones out like this,"

she sticks her arm way up,

"and they make this pouty-sexy face but their lips are all pursed waaay out, like this,"

and she does so, giving her quite the duck-bill,

"and a while ago Erich and I were making fun of each other and making duckfaces like that. See, now he's doing it." Which he is. So for a second there, both he and Melantha are looking at Charlotte, duckfacing, which is ridiculous.

Melantha smiles gently as she's hugged all the closer. "Storm's Teeth, Earth's... something. It should be about Earth, whatever your name is."

Charlotte takes rather alot of selfies or at least strange pictures of passing fancies but may not have ever heard the term selfie until now and looks a bit like an old lady whose granddaughter is teaching her to text - that faint note of alarum between her pale brows - as Melantha starts to explain and then they are both making faces at her and that faint note of alarum increases to something like panick and maybe Charlotte is afraid that their faces are going to freeze like that and then Erich is laughing and no longer duckfacing and hugging her and there is a moment's sharp and honest resistance to the hug all stiff and lancing through her and then the moment is past though perhaps not Past and there is glomping and whatnot and Melantha and Charlotte curls up around her kinswoman and tells Erich that he should be named,

"Storm's Teeth, Mother's Heart."

Or something, what the heck does she know. She's not a Galliard.

It had not occurred to him until Melantha said it -- though now in retrospect it seems obvious -- that his new name should reflect that last, and most remarkable part of his challenge. Earth's, she says,

though what she really means is Gaia's.

Which Charlotte understands, too, though she doesn't use the word either. Mother's, she says. Mother's Heart, which Erich suspects is something Melantha was looking for too. That symmetry; that mirroring. Storm's Teeth. Earth's ... something. Gaia's .... something. Mother's Heart.

"I really like that," he says, looking sort of amazed, the way he does when Melantha or Charlotte say something amazing. Which is pretty often. Then, looking vaguely worried: "It's not girly though, is it?"

Earth. Mother. Gaia. When faced with one spirit to call on, one spirit to question, he chose her. When given leave to ask one thing, he only wanted to know what he could do for her. It says more about him than the name given to him in passing, a name mentioning the tribe of his spirit and the nature of his rage, but not who he is. What really matters to him. What he fights for.

Melantha stirs at the mention of Mother's Heart, but she doesn't say anything. She remains a bit twisted around, looking between them, thoughtful.

He asks if it's girly and she sits up straight, out of his arm, her brow furrowing like a sudden summer storm flashing from the horizon across the entire sky. "I don't know," she says, her voice too hard to be called 'terse' or even 'sharp', "when you saw Gaia in front of you, literally pregnant with rage itself, were you thinking about how girly she is?"

She seethes a moment, her nostrils flaring on the exhale. "I'd call you Mother's Rage. Or Earth's Heart. If those aren't too girly."

There are a solid half-dozen strange things happening all at once. That moment of taut resistance to such close contact from Charlotte, which seems to dissolve like salt into the ocean a few heartbeats later, not even strong enough or strange enough for Charlotte to be wholly concious of it because then there is Melantha and Erich looking amazed, by which we mean shining and Charlotte remembers when he was a stranger and a strange wolf and she was climbing a fountain and daring the police to come.

Charlotte can see the movement in Melantha's mind, thinking and then Erich asks if the name is girly and Melantha is seething and that reflected fire of her rage itself makes Charlotte feel strangely hot and her cheeks and suddenly bright and she doesn't know what to do and she sits up a little bit on the bed and cants her head, all animal, and the names -

"Storm's Teeth, Mother's Rage." Charlotte murmurs. Reiterates, glancing at Melantha's profile and then past her, at Erich. Iterates, really, like a mantra, like a prayer, like a goddamned name. "Storm's Teeth, Earth's Heart."

A deep breath, drawn in and exhaled out.

"I like them both, but they taste different. They'll feel different when you put them on. I guess you need to decide - who do you wanna be?"

Erich's shoulders hunch up a little as Melantha flashes lightning and fire at him. In lieu of a verbal reply, he sort of leans over and bumps the top of his head against her arm; an appeasing sort of gesture. No mad, it says. No be mad, friend.

Then he rocks back to center, crossing his legs atop the bed. And he's quiet a while, thinking, mulling over one name and then the other and back again until --

-- until, cautiously, he says, "I like the names. But... y'know, I don't really... feel like either. I don't really want to just be Rage. Even the Gaia's Rage. And I don't think I deserve to be called Gaia's Heart.

"I guess if someone who didn't know me heard my name, I'd want them to know ... I'd want them to know that I won my challenge because I wanted to always do what was right. Even if it wasn't easy or fair. And I wanted to always try very hard and do the best I can, bravely and for the sake of what was good and right and pure.

"Is there a name that could get that across? Or some of it? Even if it wasn't like... in the Spirit's Noun format."

When Charlotte tenses up and doesn't want to be hugged, Melantha glances at her, wondering, but the flinch doesn't last long enough for her to see any deeper. A few seconds later Charlotte is talking about Erich's names, and Melantha is frowning, and Erich is bumping his brow against her arm. Melantha's frown deepens, her arm pulling back away from that headbutt.

Again her eyes go to Charlotte, brows tight, but they don't linger. She sits back from where she was previously glomped half on top of Erich, drawing her knees up, putting her arms on top of them. He talks, and truth be told she hears about half of it, and she just shrugs at the end.

"I don't know. Those were my only ideas."

[let's see what he gets this time]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 4) ( fail )

[why did i only roll two?]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 5) ( fail )

[WELL IT WAS 2 SUCC ON EMPATHY.]

"I don't - " Charlotte's eyes dart like minnows from Melantha to Erich and back again. She is aware of the currents between them, but does not dive beneath the surface of those moving waters. There is something careful and almost deliberate about this choice, which is a choice even though Our Charlotte is not wholly conscious that she is making a choice. Not to look. Not to delve. Not even to dwell.

See, light. Melantha's frown deepens and her dark brows go tight over her liquid eyes and Charlotte inhales and remembers and glances at Erich and thinks and is quiet and is holding herself lightly and carefully above the moving waters.

"I don't think a name will ever tell someone all about who you are. It's also just a name; who you are is right here. Maybe you should tell the story to Tamsin, though. She's a Galliard and she knows how to put words together. I bet she'd be able to find a name that would fit so neatly over your skin you wouldn't know you'd ever been called anything else."

Charlotte straightens, then. Sort of straightens, shifts to a knee and leans over toward Melantha who has pulled back and is frowning and has settled her arms on her knees and Charlotte braces her weight on a hand planted on the cot and sort of nuzzles Melantha, nose against the kinswoman's temple. Inhales.

Melantha smells like sleep and also like fresh turned earth. Melantha smells like seeds and furrows and pith and arils and ripening fruit.

Charlotte likes the way Melantha smells.It settles her.

It makes her wise, she thinks.

"I think you guys should talk. I'm gonna go get us dinner."

And Charlotte straightens and pulls herself upright and slides from the bed and she smiles like a wolf going hunting for her pack even if she is doing no more than stalking either the dorm fridges or at best the nightscape of the city of Denver in search of delicious and 24-hour meat-based takeout. It is still a kind of hunt.

"Charlotte," Erich straightens too, reaching after Charlotte and snagging her by a belt-loop, "waiiiit. What the hell. Melantha and I probably do have to talk, but ... okay, why are you leaving? It's not like it's a talk you can't listen to or something."

If there are currents between Melantha and Erich, it is in part because Melantha is herself (at times) a maelstrom. They do not ever question Volcano's acceptance of Melantha when she is bound to it through them; anyone who has ever met her would not. She calls things out. She is constantly, constantly thinking, thinking complex and difficult thoughts, thinking about herself thinking those things, an inner storm of cognition and emotion that see no reason to separate. At times, she erupts. Sometimes it is rain and lightning, sometimes molten, fiery earth.

"Charlotte's right," Melantha starts to say, of Charlotte pointing out that a mere name -- two or three or four words -- can never really tell anyone everything, even if it's a perfect fit of a name. She doesn't know who the hell Tamsin is though, not really, and just as potently as she feels anything else there is a stab of resentment because this is a pack thing and this Tamsin person isn't pack what right does she have to give Erich a name,

even if Erich doesn't quite like the names that Charlotte and Melantha have mentioned, never mind that.

Charlotte nuzzles her, and Melantha frowns a little, but doesn't flinch away. She never flinches away from Charlotte. But of course she doesn't. Charlotte is like crystal, fine and singing and clear and pure. Melantha is earth. And Erich is like stone, like thunder, and these things cannot be hurt, cannot be cracked the way that crystal can.

She is getting ready to go, and Melantha can tell, so Melantha frowns, and when Charlotte up and says they should talk and she'll go get dinner:

Erich snags her belt loop. Melantha holds her hand. Her frown is a deep thing, like it's carved into her face. It's thoughtful and intense and if Melantha had a deed name, maybe that's all it would be: Thoughtful and Intense, blah blah rank blah blah auspice blah blah of the Black Furies blah blah.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," she says, blunt as anything. "I don't think this is an Erich-and-Melantha thing. The three of us are talking. And every time I pick a fight with Erich or something you don't need to run off."

Charlotte goes still when Erich reaches for her belt loop and she's not really gettinganywhere because Melantha is holding on to her hand so she hasn't really gotten far. Just off the bed, snagged in two locations, right? Pinned to the hear and now.

She is quite remarkably still at first, Charlotte, and a stranger who does not see the animal in her might read this stillness as a prey-thing; a rabbit shivering against the snow; a mouse remembering the shadow of a hawk soaring over the meadow. Except there are no strangers here, just Erich and Melantha and they are her pack, and as breakable and crystalline as Charlotte is, she is also a wolf, a wolf-girl, a girl-and-wolf, who collects fingerbones and brainpans and unconventional, nobby, gnarled teeth of fallen foes with which to make a necklace, a circlet, a halo.

There is violence vivid beneath her skin and her stillness is as much the alert alarum of a pack-creature brought to the Alpha's attention prematurely; wary and sharp and still.

Charlotte glances at Erich's face and pulls herself up quiet and short, but settled enough that he can feel confident she's not about to bolt. Not immediately about to bolt, at any rate.

"I don't - " Charlotte frowns; she lets go of Melantha's hand and brings her arms in close and stuffs her hands into the pockets of her jeans and pulls her shoulders in tight, this slouching incurve defining her shoulders-and-neck that makes her look entirely adolescent. "I don't like it when you fight. Sometimes it makes my head hurt and I don't know what to say. And you - "

Her brows knit, "I don't want you to fight. I don't like it when you feel bad, either." Her breathing's a bit sharper, faster. "Maybe you can talk better when I'm not here."

Erich slips his finger out of Charlotte's belt-loop when it becomes apparent she won't be bolting. He sort of settles back on the bed, propping his shoulders against the wall. What Charlotte says makes him frown, makes him feel quite bad, actually. He wants to get up and headbutt her now, all gently and no-be-mad-ly.

He doesn't, though. At least -- not right now. He sort of frowns for a little longer and then glances sideways at Melantha. Back at Charlotte.

"It's not a bad thing when Melantha and I fight," he says. "We just do it 'cause she's got opinions and I've got a big mouth. It doesn't mean we don't love each other anymore or anything. Sometimes we just have to fight and maybe even feel bad before we figure anything out."

Another glance at Melantha. "Right?"

Grabbed by the hip and by the hand, Charlotte really has no choice but to remain.

No, that's a lie: she's a beast, a monster, and with fang and claw she could cast at least one of them off completely in an instant. She could make the Ahroun think twice; she is not as frail as she seems. But with Erich and Melantha she is not just a Silver Fang, nor even just a werewolf. She is their Charlotte, dear and precious and beloved in very different ways by two very different (and somehow intrinsically the same) people.

Melantha is the first to let go. She senses that: she knows the difference between a shivering animal of prey caught in terror and a predator about to open maw and tear with claw. She withdraws her hand from Charlotte's, apologetic because --

especially because Charlotte is a woman, and girl-seeming, and fragile-seeming,

-- to try and keep her when she wanted to move was grotesquely not-okay. She feels a pang of it, aching and stabbing at her, and it's guilt as much as it is sadness.

"It's not a bad thing," she says, echoing Erich, her brows drawn together in that ache, that pain. "It's like... weirdly important to both of us that we stand up to each other the way we do, Charlotte." She glances at Erich; she's not wrong, is she? She doesn't think she's wrong. He asks her Right? and she gives a soft nod. Her eyes go back to Charlotte; of all the differences in their appearances, they all share these pale, bright blue eyes.

"I don't want you to be sad or your head hurt when we fight, but... I think both of us would be lying to you and each other if we didn't argue sometimes. And I think one of the reasons we argue even if you're there isn't because we don't think about you there, but because... we care what you might say, too."

She holds out her hand, the one that grabbed, but now it's an offering. "Charlotte, I want you to stay. Even if we fight and feel bad and it makes your head hurt. And I really don't think Erich or I, of all people, are going to hesitate to tell you that we need to talk by ourselves if that's really the case. But please don't go. We're only butting heads because we both care."

They both let go and Charlotte has her hands back and they are in her pockets now. Arms cut forward against the acute incurve of her spine that makes her look rather spare and strange and young as they all are young; awkward except beneath that angular absurdity of a body there is a wolf's rather primal grace just written into her skin. Charlotte has Things in her pockets; more than lint, less than bones, and her hands cup the bits and pieces left behind from her last gathering expedition. The remnants and tailings that got stuck with the lint and seams in the frame of the pockets of her jeans.

She listens to both of them. A framing glance at Erich; and then steady on Melantha as the kinswoman walks her throughl echoes Erich; frames and references the things he said; confirms them with a quiet and steady exchange does not feel fractured or broken, but whole.

There's that hand, in offering.

Charlotte cannot help it when her head hurts. She cannot make it stop and sometimes when she tries it just gets noisier and noisier until everything - absolutely everything - else is drowned by a thundering surf of white noise.

And Charlotte does not really want to stay; that is between her teeth, her molars, the reluctance over which she is chewing, but there's a sharp line drawn from Melantha to Erich and Erich to Melantha with her pale gaze and there is Melantha's hand, open, and Charlotte cannot resist Melantha's open hand so she reaches out and takes it.

She does not say anything right now, Charlotte, because words are the strangest, hardest things sometimes, but the trust implicit in her decision - despite the tension in her frame - is evident on the surface and written into every pore.

Erich, whose instinctive understandings of such things is not so sharp as Melantha's -- and perhaps, in truth, not so sharp as a kinfolk's would be, nor a woman's must be in this day and age and society -- does not quite register that it is not-okay to hold on to Charlotte when she wants to go. It is only in retrospect, later, as he reads the tension in Charlotte's spare, awkward-elegant frame, that he feels regret for that as well.

He waits, though. Waits until Charlotte relents. Waits until she -- working against her own instinct, and her own desire to go go go flee be away -- takes Melantha's hand.

Then he scoots forward. And over. And does, in fact, head-bump Charlotte as well before sitting next to her, thighs and hips and elbows and arms all-aligned. There is something in that thoughtless comfortable nearness that recalls that long trip they took across the country,

just the two of them, sleeping curled-up in wolfskin in the back of his Mustang until the Mustang became a bumblebee-yellow truck and a tinyhouse, chasing a phantom of the girl they both love very deeply and -- this is important -- as pack, as dear, dear friend, first and foremost.

"I'm sorry I made you feel bad," he says quietly, rocking to the side so his shoulder bumps Charlotte's. "I'm not sorry for arguing with Melantha all the time 'cause sometimes we gotta argue just to like. Keep the pipelines open between us. Or something. But I am sorry when that arguing makes you feel bad."

He reaches an arm behind Charlotte, then, and -- mature, upstanding, thoughtful young man that he is -- pokes Melantha. "Hey," he says. "I'm sorry for saying the names you guys were thinking up might be girly. I didn't really mean that. Or think it's bad to be girly."

Her hand smooths under Charlotte's, and she draws her back down, closer, scooting back and wrapping her arms and yes even her legs around her best friend, sister, many things that Charlotte is. She envelopes her, and briefly closes her eyes, but opens them as she hugs her. Erich head-bumps, nonverbal and animalistic.

"Me too," she echoes, when Erich says he's not sorry for arguing, but he's sorry when she feels bad. Neither of them want her to feel bad. Or headachey.

Melantha kisses Charlotte's bicep. Looks up at her. She frowns at Erich when he pokes. "Then don't say it," she says, when a nicer or gentler person might just forgive with open-arms, when someone else might tell him not to worry about it. She just... pushes. She challenges. "You're not dumb, Erich. You know better."

But she sighs, then, and presses her forehead to her sister's arm, eyes closing. "I'm just... I'm upset that you got to see Gaia. And you saw her in the sort of pain that you are never, ever going to understand. And that you would be so dismissive, so immature about a name that might reference Her, and Her pain, and the meaning of that. It made me so angry, Erich, like you didn't even realize how blessed you were. How... fucking indoctrinated you are by this-fucked up world that worrying about seeming 'girly' could even fit inside of you amidst the awe. I don't understand it, and it bothers me, and it offends me on this like... core level."

She swallows. "And it bothered me that when I got pissed off you both kind of just... smoothed over it and kept talking like I wasn't angry, like I hadn't talked." This isn't just to Erich now. This is for Charlotte. This is picking a fight with Charlotte, too, almost; no wonder she didn't want her to leave. "It made me feel really dismissed and... kinda patronized, weirdly? Like you are both so used to me being angry about stuff that you just chose not to address it or respond to it at all. I mean... Charlotte, you didn't say anything at all. Erich, you just headbumped me, like that was going to make it all better. It really made me feel kinda crappy, like what I had to say just wasn't worth a verbal acknowledgement or answer."

And here, instead of swallowing, she just sniffs, opening her eyes again, rubbing her head on Charlotte's arm, then pulling back, looking at them both. "And I'm sorry, too, because I know I kneejerked. I know Erich's not a douchebag," she says, to Charlotte, even though Erich is sitting right there. She looks at him, more sad than angry now. "I was so frustrated to hear you disdaining the feminine when I know you're not some smarmy dick-waving douchebag, Erich, especially after an experience that I would die to have. I was..."

she hesitates here.

"I was disappointed in you," Melantha says quietly. "And then I felt bad, on top of it, for making this awesome thing for you about me and my anger, and it circled into frustration because I can't think of many men who ever gave a damn if they rained on my parade when they were upset about something, and it just... "

She doesn't have words for it. To understand recursion you have to understand recursion to understand recursion you have to understand recursion to understand recursion...

so she sighs. "I'm sorry, Erich. And I'm sorry to you, too, Charlotte, for giving you a headache."

"You didn't give me a headache." Charlotte doesn't talk-about-things so. So. All of this talking is rather difficult for her. Still, the first thing she says is near the end: Melantha didn't give her a headache. Charlotte is wrapped up and present and surrounded by Melantha's scent and neither Melantha nor Erich gave her a headache. "My head gives me headaches."

Her head; the madness. The noise that always seems to be rising, on the verge of the audible, in times of emotional stress and strain. Charlotte knows that others function differently than she does, but she doesn't know how. Doesn't know how they bear the whelming crush of the waves, and the shock of with the sand, the undertows and riptides that are always there, too, winnowing beneath the waves. She does not know what it means to be sane, because she's never been anything but what she is - brilliant and half-broken and fragile and glorious and fine and fragile as moonlight on water,

which is really not very fragile at all.

Charlotte takes in another deep breath, the way someone does before diving down deep below the surface if the sea.

"I'm sorry," she says to Melantha. "I didn't know what to say."

"I'm not indoctrinated," Erich butts in at one point, his own quicksnap kneejerk flaring up in response to Melantha's,

which does seem to be how things work between the two of them. Sometimes, anyway. He doesn't prevent her from finishing, though, and as she goes on her anger seems to beat lower and lower, abates, shifts.

There is an apology at the end. Erich is still frowning a bit. He folds one leg up on the bed, picking at the hem of his jeans. "Yeah, I'm sorry too for saying the name was girly. But I don't think it's bad to be girly. I just meant... Mother's Heart kinda sounds like maybe I have a mother's heart? And that's like. Not possible. 'Cause I can't be a mother.

"That's kinda why I didn't think the name fit me. Not 'cause I think I'm too manly or whatever. I'm not like that. I'm not indoctrinated. That's why I said I didn't mean to say 'girly'."

Pause. He stops picking at his pants, puts his foot back on the floor.

"I wasn't being whatever-who-cares about meeting Gaia either. I really, really wasn't. I mean I met Gaia, I know how special that is. Even if it was just a little piece of her so I could understand and not like. Explode from overload or something. I mean even if I'd failed my challenge, even if I never ever made it to Fostern, meeting Gaia would've made it all worthwhile. I asked to meet her," he sounds a little defensive now, "and I asked her what I asked her. I mean, doesn't that tell you I know how amazing that was?"

Quiet again. Sort of a restless shifting, his shoulder brushing against Charlotte's again.

"I didn't really feel like you were raining on my parade," he says, "until just now. When you said you were disappointed in me. I mean come on. I know I said something dumb, but I don't think I did something so bad that I deserve to be called indoctrinated, and that you deserve to be disappointed in me. Give me a little benefit of the doubt, y'know?"

Erich

"Well," Erich says after a long quiet, "if it means anything... I wasn't really like. Rejecting the Mother's Heart name 'cause it was, I dunno, feminine or girly or something? It was more 'cause ... we know what it references, but it just kinda ends up sounding like I have a mother's heart or something. Which obviously, I can't.

"It makes me sad that you were disappointed in me. Especially 'cause I wanted you both to be proud of me. I know it's not about the same thing? But. Yeah.

"It's okay though. Or well. It will be okay? I mean. You know I'm not actually douchey indoctrinated smarmy. And ... you know that's not how I meant it now, right? And I'm sorry if I came off like that's how I meant it, and if I made you feel like I was just ignoring you. 'Cause I wasn't. I just headbumped you 'cause, like.

"Well. I didn't really know what to say either, I guess.

"And also," this is possibly one of the more jumbled-convoluted things Erich has said in recent memory, and that's saying something, "you know I know that was a really, really, really special thing. Seeing Gaia. And it'd be special for any one of us. Not just... the girls, or the Garou, or whatever. You know I wasn't blowing that off as unimportant, don't you? And I really hope maybe someday Charlotte can take you to see Her too. 'Cause that'd be kinda awesome."

Melantha

It's not Melantha and Erich who hurt Charlotte's head. It's Charlotte's head. And that stabs right through Melantha, makes her ache, even though she is already pretty achey. "It's okay," she tells Charlotte, regarding not knowing what to say. She takes a breath. "To tell you the truth, I think I -- and maybe Erich, too --" she cheats a glance at him there, not wanting to speak for him but she's pretty sure she's right about this, "don't know what to say a lot of the time, either." She shrugs. "We talk anyway, and that's part of why we end up fighting."

That just hangs there for a moment, and then she turns to Erich. She does something then, turning to him physically, reaching over and offering him her hand. Well: first she almost just reaches over and takes his, but she's not really sure right now if he wants to be touched. So she offers, palm up, and if he gives her his hand, she wraps their fingers together. Laces them, if he lets her.

"I am proud of you," she tells him. "I was frustrated with and disappointed by what you said. I didn't mean to make you think I'm not proud of you. And I said it weird and I'm sorry, but I am really, really proud of you, Erich." She sniffs, because her nose and her eyes feel wet, even though she's not crying. Yet. It's always 'yet' with Melantha.

"Like I said, I felt... bad. For even being angry and frustrated to begin with. I really am sorry." There's a pause. "It's just me being cluttered."

Not a mess. Erich was pretty adamant, that one time, that she's not a mess. She can be clutter.

Her hand squeezes his, if he is indeed letting her hold it. "And I want to figure out a name with you and me and Charlotte that is as awesome as you getting to meet Gaia and doesn't make anyone think something of you that isn't true and shows you how proud we are of you and how much we love you." She furrows her brows. "Okay? Since we both tripped over our own words and feel bad about it, can we just... be okay again, now? And forgive me for getting caught in a funk?"

Charlotte

Charlotte does not know how they get to this place where everything is hard and strange and noisy and how they get to the place that comes after it that is not noisy at all. Erich talks through his thoughts and then Melantha talks through hers and they say things imperfectly and butt heads and sometimes more-than-heads, sometimes they are like mountain sheep, locking their curling horns and then they are un-locked and finding the places in between where the everything is laid out and zipped open again, but not in the Wrong way that makes Charlotte go rather still and frowning and makes her head fill up with she-does-not-even-know what, which makes her heart race and her breath come all sharp and sometimes makes her hands and feet tingle and sometimes makes the world recede and sometimes makes it come into a focus that is sharp as a rapier's edge.

She has to cross her arms to get through it. Pulls a bit away in there from both of them and crosses her arms low over her abdomen as if she had eaten too much ice cream and developed a tummy ache or - no. That forward, hunch-shouldered posture is not tummy-ache posture, but see.

Charlotte stays and Charlotte endures it. Closes her eyes at one point - during a string of words-she-does-not-like - and holds herself in one place and in one piece both by will and their anchoring presence.

They talk.

Charlotte listens.

Charlotte breathes.

Charlotte stays,

but she has nothing really to say.

Erich

Of course Erich lets Melantha hold his hand. Of course; he's an Erich, what else would he do? He even squeezes her hand back, looking sad because she looks so sad, looking achy because she seems so achy.

Between them Charlotte is not saying anything at all. Between them Charlotte looks sort of miserable herself, looks like she's folding herself quiet and still and just hoping to find her way, all their way, back to things that are not noisy-hard-strange-bad. And so, when Melantha offers that sad little apology, that poignant little wish, Erich nods. He's so quick to nod, his strong bigboned hand tightening on Melantha's.

"Yeah," he says. "We're okay now. You don't need to be forgiven for being in a funk. We're all in a funk sometimes. I'm sorry I kinda put you in a funk. It's okay, Melantha. It really is. I'm okay too, and ... we're okay."

He nudges Charlotte again. Hopeful. "Right? We're okay."

Melantha

[perception + empathy: what string of words?]
Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) VALID

Charlotte

Empathy Read: Charlotte is taut and tense because Charlotte is mad and the tension between them is hard for her to bear. She closes her eyes tightly as Erich says douchey/smarmy/indoctrinated and she does not like any of them. Does not like them particularly in conjunction with the conversation between her packmates, does not want to think about them on Erich's tongue, in Erich's mouth, from Erich's self.

Melantha is so keyed in to Charlotte's emotional state that she can almost hear the sort of white noise that Charlotte does. Fuzzy in the background in a way that drones and hums and blots out the background noise and makes everything around her seem close and hot and panicky and strange and broken and sharding and - and - and -

that is why Charlotte's head hurts when Charlotte's head hurts and Charlotte sits there with her broken mind as if she expects something deeply terrible to happen at any moment and she does expect something deeply terrible to happen at any moment, but she also trusts them, entirely, so she holds herself still and grits her teeth even through the worst of the words, only half-hearing the back and forth as some of it is a smear, and just. gets. through.

Melantha

They get through it, and there's a meadow on the other side where they can be sleepy and calm. Melantha squeezes his hand, leaning over, softly kissing his cheek, but then

she is letting go of him, wrapping her arms around Charlotte, and pulling the Fang to tuck her head close to Melantha's. "We're okay," she says, to Erich but also for Charlotte. She presses her nose to Charlotte's temple, breathing her in, making such full-body contact that it is hard not to feel enveloped by the Fury. Her hand comes up, pushes messily into Charlotte's pink hair. "We're totally okay. And next time Charlotte needs to go away when we fight we'll let her, okay?"

Her eyes find Erich's past that floud of downy white-pink blonde hair as she smooths it down. "Because it's not because she thinks we need privacy or because she doesn't know she's a full total complete amazing part of this pack." Those eyes are intent, as though to say DUDE BACK ME UP. "And she knows when she comes back we'll be okay because we love each other very, very, very much and nothing bad is really going to happen."

She almost rocks her friend, holding her tight. "Nothing bad is going to happen. We'll always be okay," she is talking quieter now, softer, right against Charlotte's hair, "because we love each other."

Charlotte

There's no reassurance for Erich from Charlotte, not at first. She hasn't the energy to nod at him and favor him with a sharp, spare smile that says yes, okay, okay, things are unpleasant now but okay. We get through them. We're getting through them. But she is there. He can feel her presence, strong in the totem. He may perhaps remember her madness; the way she rode through the City of Los Angeles with her hands over her ears, virtually catatonic. Denver does not hurt her the way LA did, and perhaps she is more comfortable in the city now. Better able to understand the places where wild things undercut the concrete. Better able to understand the dreams that concrete dreams, which are like the dreams the earth dreams, except both fractured and framed and aggregate.

So here, for a moment Charlotte is overcome or overwhelmed. Overstimulated, over-something and she is not entirely capable of reassure her pack that she's there, she's there, she'll get through it, and then Melantha is wrapping her arm, filling Charlotte's nostrils with the heady promise of her scent, holding her and holding her tightly and holding her close and holding her through the worst of the noise.

Melantha can feel Charlotte start to relent. Or no: it is not relent. She merely begins to ease into Melantha's arms, though it is hard to gauge how long it takes for her to do it.

One beat of her heart or two or twenty or a hundred or a thousand.

The noise fades. It always does. It always has, so far. But every time it seems as if it might never end.

--

After what seems like a very long time, though in truth is not so long, Charlotte starts to unbend, minutely, into Melantha's embrace.

"I know that. I do."

Erich

Of course Erich backs Melantha up. Just as he'll back Charlotte up. He is, after all, an Erich. "Yeah," he chimes in. "We just fight 'cause that's how we work stuff out. And it's okay if you have to go away. But when you come back, it's not like one of us will have Left Forever or something. I mean -- like Melantha said. We love each other. And you. And the tinyhouse. And stuff."

He stops talking. Melantha has hugged Charlotte, is almost rocking her a little. There's something sisterly and motherly about that and just for a little while Erich thinks aww, I should've asked to talk to the Gaia that made me. But that's silly because he already has a mom,

even if she doesn't talk to him anymore,

and anyway he has a tinypack and they glomp each other all the time and everything feels safe and good and nice when he's with them. Like now.

Charlotte eases, little by little. Erich reaches over as she does, wrapping his arm around the both of them for a tight squeeze.

"You guys wanna go home?" he asks. "We can stop for ice cream on the way back."

Melantha

Among the Furies, Melantha is a Maiden, all wildness and curiosity and sensation. But she also has in her the blood and wisdom of Crones, the warmth and ferocity of Mothers. She will become each in her time, whether she ever creates life in her womb or not; Melantha has known the arc and destiny of her life since was a little girl. One of the reasons she is so close to Charlotte is that all three faces of the goddess are welcomed by the Silver Fang, all three seem understood on some bone-deep and wordless level. Charlotte is sometimes sister to her Maiden, daughter to her Mother, ghost to her Crone, and Melantha loves her for it.

And Charlotte loves Melantha. Relents even her madness, easing into Melantha's arms because she can trust Melantha's arms, and Melantha's arms are not demanding she be human or even be sane. Just believe, even if she can't reflect that belief or prophecy its effect, that it's going to be okay. The truth is, even if Charlotte went truly catatonic in Melantha's arms, Melantha would... well. She would not be 'okay' with it. She would deal with it, and wait, and stay, so that Charlotte would remember she had a reason to come back.

She would do the same, if it were Erich. They are her pack. And just as Charlotte can be a sister, a daughter, and a ghost, Erich can be a brother, a lover, and sometimes the young warrior sent to her for wisdom. Their lines of love and family. Their mythologies, permitting their shapechanging.

Daughter of Spring,

Queen of Hell.

--

Melantha is quiet and dark as a grave for a while, holding Charlotte. Erich, like Melantha, falls quiet, but it's important that they both spoke: it's okay if she has to Go Away. They will not Leave Forever. He waits with them, and Melantha strokes Charlotte's hair very slowly, and when Charlotte's eyes begin to refocus, when she seems more in her body, Erich senses it like an animal sensing a storm; he wraps his not-inconsiderable arms around them both like he's been waiting to do that since forever.

Gently, Melantha turns her head and kisses his temple over Charlotte's crown, then lays her cheek on that white-blonde softness, holding and held and feeling all put back into her own box, too, even if that box is a bit disorganized and cluttered at times.

She does. She lifts her head to look at Charlotte to see if she wants to go home, too. Kisses her temple, too, when they all stir, when they rise. Melantha keeps her arm around Charlotte's shoulders as they walk out, her other hand holding Erich's. Erich Storm's Teeth Someone's Something, even if they haven't figured that part out yet. They haven't figured a lot of parts out.

But it's okay.