Ornature

Charlotte crouches at the concrete edge of the small lake, remote control in hand. She is down on her haunches, balanced easily on the balls of her feet, slight yes but strangely feral, hauntingly inhuman to those who catch a certain glimpse of her profile from the appropriate angle, at an hour like this, which is dusk. No one is out renting these remote control sailboats, not on a cold day when the lakes are as like to be skinned with ice as they are to be clear, as they are today. Maybe Erich liberated the small ship; perhaps Charlotte did.

They came so that Charlotte could pour a clear water talen into each of City Park's artificial lakes. They haven't done that yet, but they will soon. The vials are at her feet; they glitter with this promise of retained light, somehow. Sun-on-snow, even as darkness starts to gather at the edges of the world.

Now though, a remote control sailboat bobs in the water; and here on the shore two wolves. One of them with a plastic box with a metal antenna and that seems to make the faintest of buzzing noises in her hand. The wind whips up, bright and cold.

Charlotte is smiling; unselfconsciously happy as she watches the tinyboat cut its prow across the slight waves that chilly wind whips up on the water.

It's not that Charlotte is a child, of course. Erich knows that. Some days, he even knows, in a small corner of his mind, that she is not only not-a-child but a mother, and a mother of a cursed thing; a sinner, though he thinks of her as a saint, and though she will one day -- maybe soon -- be the martyr every one of them was born to be.

He knows that. But right now, standing on the concrete shore with her, watching her uncomplicated quiet joy at such a little thing, it is impossible not to think of her as -- childlike, perhaps that is the word. Not a child, but sometimes, yes: childlike.

Not that Erich can claim different. Sometimes he too is boyish; as though with his tinypack he can reclaim a little of that innocence and joy that was stolen from him too soon. Perhaps that is the common thread that binds their disparate souls. They have all lost something, had something taken from them. They can, none of them, ever go home again. There is no home for them to go to except the one they made themselves.

--

The tinyboat bobs and sometimes it lists, but it does not capsize. It cuts rather swiftly across the water. Charlotte is crouching, and Erich is standing: her sibling, so close to her in looks that anyone seeing them would assume their connection was biological rather than spiritual. Blond and blue, both of them, long-boned. The girl slight and narrow and lovely-feral. The boy with good tackling shoulders and a sharply defined jaw, standing with his feet apart and his hands in the pockets of his thick sherpa-lined hoodie.

"We should take a roadtrip," he says. "Go to Oregon or California or something. Surf. I bet we can find a big sailboat and go watch whales or something." A big sailboat, he calls it. Not a real one. Because Charlotte's tinyboat is real, too.

The sun is setting. Somewhere the sun is always setting; somewhere the moon is rising. Somewhere night is coming home, and somewhere it is being chased away by the dawn. Charlotte tips her head back; her hair is all fly away in the cold dry air, the ends dancing in these little eddies that seem to dart and swirl across the surface of the lake.

Her carefree smile settles into something else; less carefree but no less, on some level, inherently happy in that precise moment. The failing sun sheens golden across the surface of her irises, which makes her look - oh yes - all the more feral.

Here is her smile, spreading but close-lipped. She is a wolf and they are packmates. There is no challenge here. She does not show him her teeth.

"We could go the way we came. The same roads. Except with Melantha, this time."

A year ago Charlotte fashioned talens to bind them; now, they are shadowed by a pair of small spirits, imbued with the intensity of Erich's and Melantha's respective longing.

"Or we could try new roads; all together."

Except Yellowstone. They probably cannot go back there.

"We should do both," Erich agrees. "We should go back to Baja on the same roads. And then we can wander our way back here on new ones."

There is no question there. No suggestion that perhaps they will not come back here, perhaps they will go somewhere new. They have somehow -- as if by magic -- put down roots here. Tenuous, tender little roots, and roots that are all spread between Evergreen and Cold Crescent and Forgotten Questions: but roots.

There is a quiet, then. A slight, slow, subtle sea-change in Erich's thoughts and mood and manner. His shoulders fold on themselves a bit. He lowers himself to the concrete, folds himself crosslegged at the water's edge.

"Melantha told me she wanted to build her own tinyhouse," he says. "She said she'd told you too. She said we'd still be welcome there and we can all come and go as we please and sleep and eat where we please, but ... it'd be her tinyhouse, because she's never had her own place before. And we'd have ours, and she'd have hers, and we wouldn't live all-together anymore.

"I'm sad," he admits, which is an utter waste of breath because a clod of dirt could see that. "But I get why she wants it and she deserves to have what she wants. Maybe ... maybe we can do that roadtrip before, though. I just thought of it, I haven't asked her yet at all. But it'd be nice if we did that together, all-together, before she moved out."

Roots go blind into the soil, worming and unseen and absolutely anchoring and necessary. Still, Charlotte notices. Erich, after all, was the most rootless of them. Sleeping in his car, which he moved at a whim. Haunting the fringes of their society. Neither of them so much as attended a moot in DC. Now look at him,

fighting passionately for the existence of a Sept, telling stories, challenging; leading.

Confessing his feelings quietly to a rather fey and a rather mad young Silver Fang, who holds the remote control lightly in the palm of her hand, and does not always know how to steer her sailboat and yet still, somehow, mostly it sails, more or less upright, sometimes akilter.

"I wonder if that guy is still there. And his wife." Charlotte's smile in this moment is rather older than you might imagine. This lovely edge, all sickle-moon. Haunting. "Cervezas and ceviche. We can teach Melantha to surf."

Charlotte just nods quietly, without looking aslant at Erich as he tells her that Melantha wants her own tinyhouse. She nods: she knows. She remembers. Erich is hunkered down now, beside Charlotte on the concrete verge of the lake, and he admits that he is sad, and for the first time she pulls back and looks at him, all in profile against the sparse trees and the dramatic skyline, the mountains all toothsome against the sky.

And sways into him; bumping shoulders, familiar, animal. This solid, non-verbal agreement that they can go, all together, before Melantha builds her house.

"We'll always be all together." Charlotte assures him, rather quietly, a moment later. This quiet underlayment of confidence in her tone. A solid surety. Places don't matter. Things don't matter: they are pack. "In our heads. I bet, in the end, you'll be more happy for her than sad for you. You know?"

Erich is bumped, and bumped, Erich is comforted. This is how they comfort each other in their low moments: with contact, with connection, with friendly and supportive little nudges and bumps. The corner of his mouth turns up. He steals a sideglance at Charlotte.

"Yeah. I know. I will be. I am. 'Cause she's never had her own den, and now she will, and we'll help her build it. And that makes me happy, too. Even if I'll miss waking up and looking down and seeing her reading on the couch or something. Well, maybe she'll still do that sometimes."

He fiddles with his shoelaces for a while. He looks out across the water where that funny little tinyboat is now drifting aimlessly on the wind. The waterbirds are back from their winter migrations, responding to the whisper of spring that humans can no longer hear. A duck paddles out of the way of the boat, quacking as it goes. It sounds offended.

"If you ever want your own tinyhouse," Erich adds quietly, "I'd help you build it too. And I'm sure so will Melantha."

Oh, duck.

Duck duck duck. No geese yet. Just ducks. Here is a secret of the animal world: sparrows might remember when they were dinosaurs. Mallards, however, have fucking forgotten.

The duck quacks; Charlotte grins. Her hand tightens around the controls and she bits her lower lip in concentration and the listless boat comes back to lift. Starts chasing the duck - who is just settling back onto the water, unruffling his considerable dignity with a slow, prim preening of his pinfeathers.

"I don't." This is a measure of how very far they've come. Erich tells her he would help her build her own tinyhouse if she wanted to go. Charlotte thinks about it, very quietly see? Takes the idea into her body and turns it over in her mind and then glances back at him, only briefly because she is chasing a duck with a mini remote-controlled sailboat she hardly knows how to operate and that, my friends, requires concentration. But see: Erich offers and Charlotte considers and understands from that consideration that she doesn't want a tinyhouse. Understands, too, that Erich is not telling her that it is Time To Leave his Tinyhouse. Understands each possible iteration; trusts him that he means what he says.

A stangely clear-eyed glance, sidelong, but bright. "I like where I am right now, just fine. But if I want one, we can build another.

"Together."

He does. Mean what he says, that is. It is perhaps the first lesson anyone else learns about Erich: that there is barely any filter between his brain and his mouth, and barely any capacity for deceit in the whole of his body and soul.

Maybe not Charlotte's first lesson, though. Charlotte, with her own war-wounds and old-scars. Charlotte, who perhaps as much as Erich had to learn to trust. Who had ground to cover, miles to go. An entire mind-country's worth of meandering and wandering to come to this point, where she can hear what he says and understand it, trust it.

He smiles when she says she likes where she is right now. He is relieved; maybe a little ashamed to be relieved, but relieved all the same. He is a wolf, and a pack animal perhaps moreso than either of his packmates. He likes having everyone near, everyone all-together. In his head is good, but physicality, corporeality, actual contact and closeness: these things are vital to him.

"I like where you are right now too," he echoes. "But yeah. Together."