Ornature

The tenants at Cold Crescent are used to the strange, intense young people who come and go from the tech company that occupies the upper floors. Start-up, you know, or defense contractor or whatever - that's what strangers might think, when they think about the tops floors. If they think about them.

You get used to anything. You get used to everything.

During office hours the Garou try to stay away from the public spaces. Avoid rush hour in the elevator bays, keep to the industrial stairwells threaded through the structure that business people avoid when traveling between floors.

Upstairs, 5:30ish, sun still bright in the sky, one of the express elevators opens up and spills two of those too-bright youths onto one of the limited-access floors.

They are: bruised and a bit blooded, and also: fine. They're wolves. Their bodies can heal from anything short of death, and even then they can return. Gaia's fucking immune system.

"I'm starving," Charlotte to Erich, of the tinypack, as they emerge from the elevator. "I wanna order sushi pizza. We can get you a meatzza."

She doesn't know what that is.

She might have just made that up.

They haven't Talked About Things in a while, which is probably good. Sometimes that doesn't go so well.

"What's a sushi pizza?"

Erich is scraped and bruised and victorious. Erich is carrying some sort of groddy trophy over his shoulder in a watertight sack, aka a bodybag, only this one is all festive and blue or red or something so people don't necessarily think bodybag when they see it. He dumps it on the floor: SQUISH-clatter-bonk-bonk. Dusts his hands off, blows out a breath.

"They don't make meatzzas. I tried once to order a pizza without the dough but they were like, it'll just melt and fall through the grill if we try to put it in the oven. But we can buy pepperoni and sausage and ham and bacon and mush it all together with a bit of mozzarella and a bit of pizza sauce and a lot of italian seasoning and it basically tastes the same."

"-- and I guess I'm just kinda let down," Goldie was in the middle of explaining when the elevator doors next to the ones that spilled out a Shadow Lord and Silver Fang (well isn't that a funny duo) opened up as well. "I mean, how stereotypical that the rural place is full of fun-suckers. Do you think it's because they leave sticks laying around the challenge circle? So, like, when someone falls down it goes right up their assholes?"

The 'right' was complete with a rather violent gesture, where Goldie used her hands to creatively represent a visual of what a stick going up a rectum must look like. She'd stepped out of the elevator mid animated chatter, hands leading the way through the air ahead.

She and Matthew were together on this visit, and they brought evidence of the thunder and rain from the world outside with them. Goldie was wearing a yellow raincoat that still held drops on its water resistant fabric, unzipped and hood pushed down. Under that was a white-and-black striped T-shirt, which went well with a pair of very tight black jeans and her favorite black boots. An equally black scarf knit in a loop was wrapped about her neck, and moisture clung to it in places as well.

And speaking of moisture, a 'squelch-squish' sound pulled her attention to the duo up ahead.

It was a dramatic gesture when she pointed at the waterproof red-and-blue bag of festivity and nasty. "What is that?"

"What if you took like chicken skin and cooked it 'til it was crispy like dough and then put the toppings on it?" Charlotte asks. She is: somewhat tallish (5'7ish?) willowy thing who has the sort of physicality of a supermodel, at least from a distance. This spare and lean and nearly child-like frame. Call her: waifish. "I bet that would be pretty good. And I don't know what sushi pizza is. I just want to try it."

She is a fan of mixing: cereals, sodas, and virtually anything else that strikes her shifting fancy until it resembles nothing-like-food. She is also: pure bred as fuck.

Shining. Lovely. Mad.

Do not call her: squeamish. They are somewhere and Erich is dumping the brightly colored tye-dyed bodybag on the linoleum floor of an open space in the center of one of the floors that serves as you know, meeting room and monster-gutting facility and the creature is stilling down on her haunches, reaching up for the zipper.

"It was a person. Then his heart got eaten up by worms and he grew a second face on his back and an arm like a 'gator's head and a stupid donkey tail."

Like evolution, the Wyrm is not always practical in its investments.

Flick flick. Pale pale eyes, curious and (shockingly! Erich!) rather oddly forthright as she unzips the prize. "Who are you?"

"I don't know." Erich looks dubious. "I mean that could be amazing, but it could also be really fucking gross. Let's try it sometime. Is sushi pizza really a thing, or did you just make that up too?"

They are interrupted. Or rather, they are discovered. Ding! goes the other elevator bell, and Erich turns, face all animated and mid-conversation, expression all expectant. Out comes... two people he hasn't met before. One of them wants to know what's in the bag.

"Honor and glory for me, blondie," he says, right as Charlotte is being a tad bit more specific about the contents. Not that he isn't blond, himself, because he is. Not quite as white-blond as Charlotte though, or even so golden-blond as he was when he was like, eighteen, sixteen, six years old. Darker with the oncoming winter, now.

Also, echoing his tinypack-sister: "Who're you guys?"

"Do I think that?"

Look at his face. He's so perturbed by Goldie's vulgarity that he doesn't even want to dignify it with a response. He does it anyway though. Just in case anyone heard the silence after the question and thought the silence implied agreement. He does not agree with her. Not even a little.

He's saved from further exploration of the topic by the No Moon's dramatics. As he steps out of the elevator it's obvious he recognizes neither Charlotte who he has never met before nor Erich who he met in darkness under less than ideal circumstances. If he were to ever breed his children would be Kinfolk if they would not be fated to Change. His bearing and his blood tells of the strength of his lineage. He's wearing work boots and jeans and a rain-slicked jacket but there's no mistaking him for anything other than Fianna.

Hearing the question echoed has Matt slowly looking sidelong at Goldie like to ask her if she's going to answer them or not.

"It's real." Charlotte assures Erich, of the sushi-pizza. She does this: solemnly. She has a face that is suited for such solemnities, you must know. These huge pale blue eyes and this aristocratic skin and a certain frame and bearing even with her strange and still somehow adolescent gawkiness that is,

you know,

kingly. "They have it in Montreal. It's really, really good. You'd like it if you could get rice. Or I figure you could just buy a pizza and put sushi on it. Maybe you could just make a crust out of hamburger though. Then top it. We should try to make a meattzza when we go back home."

"Us?"

Well, Goldie did have a pentiant for the dramatic. Perhaps the due date that her mother was given landed under a Gibbous moon-- she was born a little early, after all. Either way, Goldie proudly jammed a thumb to her chest and jutted her chin out when she proclaimed:

"We're Fianna."

As though that should say it all. She glanced briefly to Matthew, then jammed that same thumb through the air in his direction. There had been a pause there where she'd considered putting one hand on his back and smacking the other hand into the bartender Kinsman's chest instead, but some modicum of either respect or restraint had her deciding to gesture his way instead. Either way, the beacon of Old Hearthfires and Headresses of Antlers was pointed to as an indicator. "Couldn't you tell?"

From there, she jammed her hands into her coat pockets and wandered further toward the tye-dye bag of Glory and Honor. With a bit of a sniff, she turned her head to Erich and asked in perfectly innocent curiosity: "What was so honorable about the Chimera kill?"

It's that solemnity that wins Erich over, time and again. It's that solemnity, and that pale-eyed, wide-eyed wisdom of hers that makes Erich suddenly grin and reach over and hug her against his beefy side. The indignity of a brief noogie is administered, and then Erich just relaxes into that random loose-armed side-hug.

"I don't like raw fish. Maybe we can put some grilled fish on top of hamburger. Like sushi surf 'n turf, I bet that'd be good."

The new people announce themselves. Fianna: he snorts, letting go of Charlotte and turning to face them.

"Damn right I could tell. I could tell from the beer fumes wafting over this way. I meant like, names. I'm Erich. This's Charlotte. And the Chimera kill," is that what it's called? Erich isn't sure. Maybe Charlotte knows, but Erich: Erich's just going to play along and pretend he knows what that is for now, "is honorable 'cause we were out killing it while you two were pickling yourselves. OH, BURNNN." And he holds up a hand for Charlotte to high-five.

Matt just shakes his head and turns around to find the stairs.

Charlotte has unzippered the Chimera-kill and within the bag is a twisted man with a scraggly gray beard whose face has gone strange and slack and sick, tongue too-white, thick and lolling. The suggestion of the twisted arm a slick and sickly green and she is looking down at him with what is both a mildly detached interest and a kind of mournful intensity. The prize was long-since cleansed, still.

There is a humid stink to it and Matt turns around and Charlotte assumes that that is: why.

"Sorry." THIS IS KIND OF MUMBLED and she reached to zip-it-back-up, real quick and then she's standing and Erich pulls her in for a side-hug and don't they look like brother and sister.

Sometimes she high-fives him absent-mindedly or intently or not the proper way at all. Tonight she glances at Erich's hand, then Matt's back. "That wasn't very nice Erich, I think you hurt his feelings."

Annnd he's left hanging! Deflated, Erich lets his hand flop back to his side. "Well, his friend started it," he protests -- just like the mature, grown-up, Fosternized Big Boy that he is. "She was all being psh! about our kill. Anyway, it's just friendly rivalry. Keeps things interesting. Don't worry, Blondie, I'm not gonna keep ragging on you now that your backup's upped and left you. Wouldn't be sportsmanlike."

The comradery between the tall skinny moon-eyed Silver Fang and the beefy-flanked Shadow Lord was evident. Packmates, Goldie had to guess, but that was something just to be scrawled on a post-it note and tacked on the corkboard of This New Community for analysis later. More than that she was curious to see this gator-armed donkey-tailed person.

The grizzled-gray beard and lolling tongue upper body rolled out of the bag, and Goldie straightened up and stepped back, even went so far as to wrinkle her nose and make a kind of 'Hoo-ee' sound at the sight.

But there was Erich, then, insisting that he could smell the beer on them and didn't need their tribe because of it. Called his kill honorable because he was killing it instead of killing shots like they were supposedly doing. There is, momentarily, a snap in the air. It isn't like when the earth cracks and magma heat boils up from underneath, not like when an Ahroun feels a push of Rage, but it is still there and sharp and hot and electric. The second time such a response was provoked from the little Fianna by the Fenrir-turned-Lord.

"Woooowwww," she drawled out. Matt had turned to leave, and Goldie reached out to nab onto his coat sleeve-- near the cuff, like maybe she wanted his hand but missed. "Matthew Murphy, are you just going to walk and let this guy talk about us like that?"

The answer was probably going to be a yes, and maybe that would be communicated in a glance, or maybe not, but she looked back to Erich and scoffed a dramatic little scoff and put her free hand on her hip.

"Did you hear a 'pish'? I didn't hear a 'pish'. I heard a lot of fish, but no 'pish'. I mean, I was asking what made it Honorable and not just Glorious, but some lines got crossed and suddenly we were reduced to this." The hand that was on her hip gestured before them, as though she was indicating some sort of scene that had unfurled and made a mess of the place.

Charlotte goes all-alert at that snap of electricity, the spark of rage that does-not-precisely ignite beneath Goldie's skin but still: brights, turns over, draws her taut through the spine.

There is, a new wariness about her in that moment that feels more animal than human. The tension in her spine and shoulders. The way she stands so as to keep both Goldie and Erich in view.

Quieter now. A slow-flush of color pinking her aristrocratic cheeks.

She's right at Erich's side, still.

A bit of blood on her hands, but never-you-mind.

He doesn't jerk his cuff out of her grip. That would be rude. When he does turn back around he's trying not to roll his eyes and he's got his tongue pushed into the back of an incisor like that's keeping him from saying something he's going to regret later.

Goldie doesn't need him to defend her. She can do a fine enough job on her own. So she steers him back to her side and Matt stands there looking back and forth between the two of them. Wary not the same way that Charlotte is wary but wary in the way that meatbags are wary.

There's a tension suddenly that Erich doesn't quite understand. He gives Charlotte a quizzical look. He gives Matthew a quizzical look. He looks down at the carcass, which stinks, and then he drops to a crouch to zip the bag back up.

"Okay, so... not sure why everyone's all edgy suddenly, but I'm gonna go dump the body somewhere where the Guardians have check it over and then get rid of it." And thus speaking, he heaves the load back onto his capable shoulders.

A tilt of his head Matthew-ward before he goes -- "Does he ever talk? And what's your name? I mean, you called him Matthew, but I'm gonna start assuming your name actually is Blondie unless I hear otherwise."

The bright-electric burn of Rage didn't manifest in a sharpening of teeth or flex of muscles. Goldie's body language didn't even look that violent, really, but there was an undeniable prickly quality to her voice now. She was a bright little falling star of a human, petite and lean with a mass of sandy-blond hair that was piled up into a knot on top of her hair, bound tight and kind of frizzy in the weather. She shouldn't be facing off against an Ahroun, but who called this a face off? The way that Matt stood reluctantly stationed at her side and how Charlotte took up a quiet space at Erich's made it seem that way.

And Erich? Well, he just seemed confused.

Goldie blinked at him a few times, and answered his questions in a casual off-hand sort of way that didn't quite match the situation that they were standing in. "Oh, Blondie isn't too far off, really. It's Goldie."

She blinked and looked at Charlotte for a second. Goldie opened her mouth like she was going to say something-- she had somewhat bucked front teeth, that was noticeable in that moment. They worked with her face, didn't detract from the wide-eyed fae-like sort of pretty that she carried about her. Goldie looked like she belonged in the woods with flowers in her hair. Instead she wore mass-produced clothes and had pink lipstick on her lips.

Whatever it was she was going to ask Charlotte, she instead decided to direct at Erich. Sounding like she was breaking script to clarify something, she tipped her head forward and blinked at him instead.

"Do you really not understand how greeting us with alcoholism jokes was a shitty thing to do?"

Okay.

Okay.

See, just like that Charlotte's wariness melts - not away, but sinks somehow back beneath her skin, wraps itself around the base of her spine, goes back to whereever it lives when she has forgotten to be self-conscious.

Which is: rarely.

The unguarded immediacy of that initial encounter is long-since gone and in its wake she is: you know. Strange and awkward, the fringe of her hair dyed pink, her blood shining and singing and whispering promises in a way that she never, ever does.

"We asked who you were," a little one-armed shrug, Charlotte's voice is quite nearly a whisper. "And you didn't say. It might not've been a nice joke but what you did wasn't nice, either.

"Do you want to start again?" Charlotte gives Erich a Look. It is: mildly sidelong. She seems again really rather solemn. "We could do formal introductions."

Once that initial not-wanting to turn back around has passed Matt brings himself to look at the two Garou standing down the hallway and neither of them can see fear or timidity in him. A lack of patience maybe but that's different than fear.

Kinfolk are supposed to be patient. They are supposed to stand in the face of Rage and not quail. He has his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and he's watching Erich as he speaks. Still watching Erich as Goldie asks a question that sounds odd for its sincerity. He glances over at her like he isn't sure he's hearing her right.

And then the waif-girl offers up something like a truce. Maybe this is when it starts to become apparent that he's silent because he doesn't want to answer for the Garou girl at his side.

Instantly bewildered-indignant: "What! Since when was it not okay to reference the well-known drinking habits of the Fianna? Since when did the Fianna get all hypersensitive instead of giving as good as -- "

and this is when Charlotte comes in: quiet, level, and dare we say it: wise. Erich, also wisely showing some restraint for once, closes his mouth. He is given a look. He heaves a sigh, but then he tosses that burden higher up on the slope of his shoulder and faces the duo again.

"Okay. I guess we can start again. I'm Erich, called Storm's Teeth, also called Son of Rage, and it's actually a longer name than that 'cause a Silver Fang Philodox gave it to me. I'm a Shadow Lord." His eyes are momentarily ferocious: just daring them to say something about that. About the Shadow Lord thing, about the Silver Fang naming thing, all that. "I'm an Ahroun, and a Fostern."

Charlotte was a soft-spoken thing. Goldie may very well one day come to the conclusion that she spoke so quietly because her ears were busy hearing the spirits half the time anyways. Looking at her, the slight frame and how all of the color was wrung from her through so many years of selective breeding, she may also wonder if all of those voices actually were spirits and not made up.

Just like how one day Goldie may wonder what Erich was doing with the Shadow Lords, of all tribes. She might chalk that up to a misplaced 'fuck you' to mom and dad. She might actually ask one day, who knew?

Both of them Goldie looked at as though they were the daily sudoku puzzle in her paper. Like she was trying to figure them out but still needed to do some foot work before she could have all the boxes filled in. Erich was defensive, as though it was standard practice to give Fianna guff about pickling their livers, and Charlotte was trying to make peace. Matt? He was letting her do the talking-- the poor fucker.

"Hmmph," she said at first, and crossed her arms over her chest thoughtfully. "Right. Well. I've just got the one name-- Little Uproar. Fianna Ragabash Cliath. I was just trying to show my friend here how nice this place is. You see, we had kind of a negative experience going to try and shake hands out at Roxborough, but...." She unfolded her arms in a 'what do you do?' kind of a gesture, then sighed and looked back up to Matt.

"Sushi did sound pretty good. There's an all-you-can-eat place that I saw like six blocks over?"

The Ahroun's eyes go vicious for a moment and Matt doesn't mean to pull a face but he does. Like oh sure that's fair.

He goes on to frown when Goldie says they had a negative experience out at Roxborough. Lips purse like he's going to ask her what she's talking about but he schools his expression a second later because she's talking about sushi.

"You don't wanna wait for the rest of the formal introductions?" he asks. Tilts his eyes towards Charlotte. He can recognize Garou but not their heritage. He has no idea what he's getting himself into. "She only gave us her first name."

Would you look at that. He does have a voice.

"I'm Matt," he says like to ante up. His voice is deep even if it sounds disused like he spends most of his days listening instead of talking. "Murphy. My old man was Nolan Murphy, he was an Athro Theurge died in North Carolina about twelve years back. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too, Matt.

"I'm Eulalia Charlotte Horatia Evadne Jefferson-Gray, daughter of Guillaume Cédric Félix Ementier Gray, called the Spine of the Moon, called Starfall, called Silvertongue, called the Undying, son of [.... there's more here. there's so much more, but eventually she gets back around to:] called Black Sheep. Cliath Theurge. We're packmates. Our other packmate's up in Evergreen right now. At our house.

"This isn't," a blink in Goldie's direction, then back toward Matt as she's considering what to say next. "This isn't really a nice place. The Sept's here to guard the pit in the basement. It's not like Forgotten Questions. There the earth - "

Charlotte trails off, reverent and a bit strange and embarrassed and lots of things.

"You shouldn't eat all you can eat sushi. They just get cheap fish and dye it pink. Try Sushi Sushi. It's not all you can eat but they don't make you spend too much for a roll and they're really good. We gotta go take care of this dead guy. Bye."

And, turning back to Erich, the ghostly flash of her ghostly smile. "I want all of his fingerbones. Just the first joints. And the teeth are really good for lots of things. Especially from the alligator-arm. I wonder how long the roots are - "

Trailing off as they, you know, wander away with their corpse.

"Well," softening -- a little -- Erich shrugs Le Corpse a little higher again and looks about. "This place is pretty nice," that, right as Charlotte is calling it not-nice. Erich grumps at Charlotte for a moment, then presses on doggedly: "You been up to the roof yet, Uproar? Great view. Go before it gets cold.

"Anyway. Yeah. We gotta go dump a bod." He swings away. Gets a couple steps; turns back.

"Heh. Is your name seriously Goldie? Man, what are the chances. Blondie, Goldie, Goldilocks." And on that note -- with a click of his tongue against his teeth which evidently constitutes some form of goodbye -- Erich turns away for the last time and goes tromping off to dispose of the body.

[bedtime for us east coasters! cuz i'm a temporary east coaster!]

[NO SLEEP TILL BROOKLYN]