Ornature

[Resistance] She is decidedly more effeminate than she likes to think about. Her hair is down, though today she is decidedly jewelry free. It's not something people normally see- those wirethin burnmarks are more pronounced, easier to see against her skin. Boots are on, tank top on, and in a skirt.

She could run in a skirt. She didn't plan on running, though.

Kora asks if they're ready. Her attention flickers-

"I'm ready," she says.

[Roman Turner] He had never done this before and that fact made his belly tight with nerves and somewhere in the back of his head was a worried thought that maybe the belly cramps was the results of nerves combined with burrito and taco. This could be so embarrassing.

"Yessum."

He couldn't help but stare at the Ritemistress because he had yet to figure out exactly what happened to her to make her like she was now. So he stood there with a belly in knots and his eyes shadowed by the brim of his Stetson. As usual he was in stiff Wranglers that looked like they might stand in a corner all on their own.

[Sorrow] The rite is sacred, as all Garou rites are. The Ritesmistress performs it with the sort of reverence humans might reserve for pilgrimages to Rome, to Mecca, to the Ganges, to breathe in the dust of centuries, to dream their holiest dreams, to be purified in some enduring flame beyond the flesh.

The Garou - this mismatched trio, the pair of Gaian cousins and the lone Fenrir Skald, older than both but still cliath for all that - stand in their human skins in a place paved by humans, abandoned by humans, rediscovered by the Garou just a handful of years ago, where this endless, unknowable Maelstrom churns constantly, stained by the blood of the sacrifices made by them, by their brethern, and by their dead. They wear clothing stitched by human hands, decorate themselves in human ways - Fate in his stetson, Resistance in her skirts, Sorrow in her boots - as the world around them shifts.

It is ninety degrees in the shade this evening, even with the setting of the sun.

The Ritemistress finishes the rite and steps back. She tells them that their guide will come soon, and they will know to follow. And then she steps back further, her pale eyes on the glimmering north.

It is ninety degrees in the shade this evening -

- and the temperature is dropping around them. Fate is the first to feel the bite of the north wind. The first flakes of sifting snow.

---

In an eyeblink, Sorrow has dropped to the ground - her slender lupus form, eyes bright, her dark nose to the wind, the familiar hint of winter in the air.

[Roman Turner] "Well I'll be a three eyed pig, I see snow in August."

The words were spoken softly. His full attention was towards the North. No idea what was about to happen, though he greatly appreciated the air-conditioning blowing their way.

[Resistance] She's a subtle sledgehammer. Whatever she's thinking about, whatever comes across flickers through her eyes.

Their guide will come, and there is something that will come from the north. She might not be the most communicative of creatures, or the most deceptive, but it works well in her favor. She looks to the north, feels the cold, and seems almost out of place.

No, she does feel out of place. She's not the most in-tune with her wolf (she spent so much time hating it, accepting it now still seemed a little strange), but... we digress. She looks at Roman, catches Sorrow on all fours, in lupus, "c'mon..."

She takes her time, and she shifts down. They had to track something.

[Sorrow] They stand at the edge of the lake in the hottest season of the summer. The shallows are warm as bathwater, lapping quietly at the lakeshore, the soft slap of the minor waves - the wake of some passing ferry, some pleasure ship.

Then, the water is unmoving. Or rather, the sound of it recedes. The air conditioning becomes sharper and colder, and the lake begins to solidified, this narrow path of ice, snow collecting on it, wending north east and away from the lakeshore, out into the gathering darkness.

Roman says, Well, I'll be a three eyed pig and his Fenrir would-be Alpha nips at this heels as he stands and watches the shifting storm come in. It extends no more than three feet in either direction around them, but just here, in the midst of it, the temperature has dropped precipitously around them, from hot to warm to cool to frigid.

Resistance shifts into her lupus form - strange, she spent so much time hating it - and Sorrow brushes past her, both greeting and appreciation, feral and familiar. Her breath is steaming from her nostrils now, and the fur is a welcome addition to the flesh. The world changes, becomes pinpoint and immediate. They can all smell the horseflesh somewhere ahead, the outrider whose shadow they saw against the snow, blood and cinders in the air, cinders and blood.

Somewhere there, out on the lake, where the faintly solid path has coalesced, where snow swirls in faint, drifting squalls before being blown away into the lake on either side.

---


Sorrow takes the first steps onto the semi-solid lake. Her paws leave prints behind her in the snow, and her scent, which is both female and strong, is sharp in the air. The lake holds underneath her and she begins down the path, keeping to the middle road.

Somewhere, fifty or a hundred yards, three hundred, more - out in the midst of the lake, the path begins to rise away from the lake, peels away from the city, rising into the sky like every moonpath they've ever run.

Except colder.

[Roman Turner] He was the slow one, that one that clung to his birth form longest. When Sorrow nipped at his heels he did a modified two step to try and avoid those sharp teeth.

"I'm a coming, I'm a coming. Don't get your britches in a bunch."

Logic had it that his wolf form would weight less than his human and he really wasn't in to falling in to the water. So he began the shift and was assaulted with all his heightened senses brought to him at once. Keen hearing had his ears twitching like twin radar disks. So many scents had his nostrils flaring. He pulled himself together enough from the new wonders to follow the pair out on to the ice path. Thickly padded paw pads kept his feet from freezing to the ice and helped with his footing.

[Sorrow] [Stamina + athletics - Kora]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Sorrow] [Stamina + Athletics - Kora]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Sorrow] [Stamina + Athletics - Kora]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 8 (Failure at target 6)

[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) [WP]

[Resistance] [stamina+athletics: roll 1]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Resistance] [Roll 2?]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Resistance] [roll three!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Resistance] [COME ON, REALLY?]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6) [WP]

[Sorrow] The outrider ahead keeps a steady pace at first, as the path peels away from the human city like a strip of flesh, like a torn ribbon flung out against the dark night sky. They rise from the earth the way a jet climbs into the night for a long, transoceanic flight, from one end of the world to another.

Except they are going higher than the world, and all its tears. Ahead, the scent of horseflesh, the iron-cold promise of war. The stars wheel and change above them as they run, shifting points of light in the blanket of the sky.

Roman and Resistance are behind her, but she has run this path before. Or another, like it, in the wake of her alpha and his beta, the former dead, the latter fled. The path changes, and the city disappears. There are stars, and the stars are bright, pointillistic, just glimpsed between the snow squalls.

They run for what feels like a day and a night and a day again, as the path opens beneath them. They are cushioned in darkness, punished by the cold. If Roman welcomed the air conditioning as he stood at the edge of the lake, he will perhaps think differently of winter after this run.

Sorrow does not flag, dogged and sure, night and day and night again. Fate finds himself falling behind once, his legs sore, his body aching from the neverending effort, his lungs burning with the cold. He could stop here, lay down, rest and renew himself. Resistance runs and runs, sure and unfailing - slowly losing pace with her to-be Alpha. At the last, she throws herself into it with the same determination that Fate finds inside his feral mind, sinking every more deeply into the rich, immediate world of instinct and motion.

Instead, he digs inside himself and pushes onward, surging forward, struggling through the moment of flagging failure to find his stride again.

--

Hours later. Days maybe - time is such a strange and elastic thing in the spirit realm - they see ahead of them some shore of dazzling white. It reminds Roman of some family trip to the white beaches of the southern Gulf Coast, the glittering blue ocean, so fine does it seem. Closer, closer, closer still though, and his dreams of white sand beaches dissolve into something else as the icepath underneath them lowers gradually to this new earth.

Not sand, but snow - this expanse of white, trackless and nearly formless except for the constant swirl of some howling storm.

Sorrow is the first to pass from path to realm, her paws sinking into the deep, shifting snow. The winds send drifting snow in every direction, swallowing her tracks moments after she leaves them. She does not go far, but waits for the others instead, her dark nose to the air.

The outrider cannot be seen through the squall, and his tracks disappear almost as soon as he makes them. He's out there, though. Sorrow circles her packmates to be and nudges Fate forward. No-Moon she tells him, in brief, short yips and barks. - track our prey.

[Roman Turner] He was freezing his cajolies off. His sides heaved with each frozen breath that came out of him on a white cloud. His spittle had formed to ice in the fur around his mouth where his tongue had lolled out. And when they finally hit the beach that turned out to be more snow, that same snow collected like dander on his chestnut pelt. They got snow at home, but they seldom got much and it was seldom this damned cold.

Track our Prey.

The order came and it had him sticking his nose to the ground where each labored breath puffed the snow like blowing against powder.

Per+PU
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 6 at target 6) [WP]

[Resistance] There's something to be said about thinking too much.

It's thought about movement, and finally just throwing herself into it. In the end, she catches up. In the end, she commits.Funny, when she actually transitions, makes the slip, she is there. Her eyes hit the sky, and her tail swishes from one side to the other. Slowly. One side... to the other side...

Sorrow doesn't flag, days pass.

There is snow.

She's all tawny browns and greys, and she doesn't quite blend into this scenery. She doesn't seem to notice... or care. They need to hunt something. Track our prey, she says. Sparrow waits- Roman will find it. If there is prey to be found, he'll find it.

[Roman Turner] His dark nose was to the ground a matter of a heart beat before he lifted his muzzle and sounded the call to send them racing off again. It was the chase that kept him going when his muscles said rest.

[Sorrow] [Stamina + Athletics]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Resistance] [Run!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Sorrow] This is a quest. There is no rest. They run through the sky like an arrow unleashed from the earth, and land on other shores. There is an ocean behind them, dark and bound in ice. The wind scours in across the formless white expanse from behind them, bitter, and they will be lost if they stray too far, if they range away from the pack and steal off into the dark, cold night alone. Instead, Sorrow, spins in the trackless waste and nuzzles them, Fate and Resistance, feeding them her scent and stealing their own so that the they can rely on all their other senses to feel each other, running close like a pack, through the quickened howl of the gathering storm.

Then Roman has his nose in the cold drifting snow. He has never tracked prey in such circumstances, but he finds the trail immediately, and leaps off. He has the scent and will not lose it, though they will run for hours. So sharp are his feral senses that he brings them close enough to glimpse the outrider ahead - the flash of iron hooves running so fast they seem to cast sparks where they hit the odd rib of rock.

They run again. The landscape that seemed formless changes around them, rising from the lowlands at the edge of the icelocked sea by slow degrees to a tableland cracked by deep, running fissures they must leap over or - with the widest, deepest ones - forge their way through, picking their way down over steep pathway, scrambling back up over frozen cliffs.

The land rises ahead again. The scent of outrider - which is blood and iron, cinders and cold, nothing but war - sharpens with each strider. Roman finds him first, closing, this feral surge of triumph as he closes on that which he tracks at a promontory overlooking a vast plain.

This then, is their prey - a plain looking man with a mane of blonde hair riding a huge warhorse larger than any hispo Garou, whose coat is iron and whose mane seemes made of plumed white snow. He stands at the edges of the cliffs overlooking the vast pains opening below. The man - the Jotunn, for though his skin seems human, he is as large as a war-formed Garou, larger even - wears a thick mantle of furs, and sports a heavily braided beared. Beads reamed from carven bone cap each of his many warbraids, and he watches not the small pack but the distant horizon as their scramble up the last few feet to the headland.

You have come this far - he says. His eyes are on the tracking no-moon, but he addresses Sorrow. There seems to be an echo underlying his voice, this resonance that cannot come entirely from within. If Roman and Sparrow think that they hear an edge of surprise underneath the outrider's resonant voice, they would not be wrong. and your no-moon tracks like a Rotagar. The host is ahead, daughter of Fenris. Who will be your champion?

Wordlessly, Sorrow nudges Resistance forward. They should be spent, but there is a renewed energy buzzing underneath their skin. They can hear the distance wardrums, feel the stirring pulse of rage within the cages of their chests.

Resistance Sorrow yips, circling the outrider to stand at the edge of the cliff, overlooking the wide plateau below.

Daughter of Gaia the outrider says, turning to the Ahroun. will your stand the challenge to come? There is a subtle edge of doubt remaining in the Jotunn's voice. Can you hold your own against a warrior of Fenris?

[Roman Turner] His tongue was hanging out the side of his mouth in a constantly moving pink wave that pulsed up and down with each breath. And each of those breaths was announced in a white cloud as moist heated exhale met freezing air. His tail was held straight out, showing his intense focus. And there was no doubt that when his cousin was nudged forward his own tension rose. He wanted to go with her, it was clear in every line of his body. He wanted to fight as a Pack, as family. And this anxiousness came out on an anxious whine as he began to pace and circle.

[Resistance] She is, if nothing else, more perceptive of these things when she's not in homid. The subtle hints and edges in words. There is doubt there, doubt that she can't hold her own. Doubt is a powerful thing, and even though the moon wasn't full, there is a bristling of her fur, a tension in her muscles. Admittedly, looking at her? Resistance is not the most impressive of figures.

"I will stand this challenge," she replies to the outrider, "and I will hold my own."

Let it be said that what she lacks in being physically impressive, she makes up for in the fact that she is almost fearless. That she's stubborn as Hell. That she will do something she sets out to do. She stepped forward- she should be tired. And she is, but hiding that fact (playing through the pain, coach), is the only lie she can tell.

Sparrow steps forward.

[Sorrow] In the plains below, a teeming host made of all manner of monsters. There are giants and fire giants, dire wolves and great, craggy monsters that seem to have been made from the iron-gray bedrock somewhere underneath their feet. Frost-wraiths and Valkyries, on winged steeds to lead them. From a distance, the host seems like a carpet, moving just, woven tightly into the background, dark against white, smoke against the sky from the cookfires, bright points where the pennants flap and the trophies are raised on broken trees like banners against the darkness, promise and warning, together, to whoever would oppose them. From a distance, it seems like a carpet, some moving monolith, some singular thing.

The host is fractious, though - contentious and violent, boasting and prideful - gathered on the plains, fighting and casting lots, boasting and drinking and fighting and fighting and fighting as it awaits the call to war.

--


They stand in a small clearing, here. The remains of an old fire are evident now, in the sheltered lee of some nob of rock. Strange it is, that when Resistance steps forward, the natural circle just - forms amidst the snow and rock.

Roman paces, a high whine in the back of his throat. Sorrow pushes against his flank to still him and hold him back. She remains close to him, her tail thumping heavily against his flank, immediacy and reassurance as the pair stand just outside the forming circle in the snow.

We will see, daughter of Gaia, if you have the strength to follow one of Odin's sons. The outrider responds, shrugging off his mantle of furs onto the back of his massive steed. From somewhere underneath them, he produces a massive warhammer, the head worked in runes that seem to shift and move like worms underneath the skin.

You face me.

[Resistance] [Initiative: 9+1d10]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10

[Sorrow] 8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2

[Roman Turner] Oh great the guy had a big ole war hammer. No fair!

Sorrow pushed against him and he nipped at her cheek and wound around her like a slinky. How could he hold still when he wanted to rip at the guy's hamstrings because he just pulled out a big ass hammer with every intent of braining his cousin?

[Sorrow] Resistance: 19
Outrider: 10

Outrider: 1. Hammer Sparrow. 2. Hammer Sparrow. 3. Bodyslam Sparrow.

[Resistance] [Action!: -1 rage (yay hispo!), -1 WP (resist pain)
1a: Falling touch for Mr. Outrider man
1b: biiiite hiiiiiim
R1: Seriously.
R2: I mean it!]

[Sorrow] (Note: Resistance can take hispo without spending rage to do so.)

[Resistance] [Dex4+hispo2+medicine3=9 - 2 = 7, diff 7]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7 (Failure at target 7)

[Resistance] [dex4+hispo2+brawl3= 9 - 3 = 6, diff 5. Bitiiiiing (freakin' failures!)]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 5)

[Resistance] [This is embarrassing. str2+hispo3+hispobite2+1=8, diff 6]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 10 (Failure at target 6)

[Sorrow] Hammer!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)

[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Resistance] [Soak?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 7, 10 (Failure at target 6)

[Resistance] [Rar?]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 5) Re-rolls: 2

[Resistance] [Str2+hispo3+hispobite2+6=13]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Hammer!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)

[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Resistance] [Oww!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Resistance] [Rage 2: Go again!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 10 at target 5) Re-rolls: 3

[Resistance] [[Str2+hispo3+hispobite 2: 7]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Resistance] [Damage: part 2]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 4, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Sorrow] The battle is brief and ferocious. Resistance surges at the Jotunn, tearing into him again and again after her full-moon's trick fails her, her rage fed by the failure. He hits her once, then twice, each great swing of the war-hammer ringing through the clearing, her body shuddering with the impact. Then, at last, she frees herself from the last loops and whorls of her inhibitions, her human self inside the wolfskin, the girl who wore a skirt to a totemquest, who wears bangles and tries to live above, around, underneath her rage - launches herself at him, seizes, tears, opening him from neck to pelvis, a great torrent of hot blood, slithering organs, all unleashed as she tears into him. The outrider falls to his knees, and the ground cracks under his weight. Nerveless fingers release the haft of his hammer, it slips to the ground with a deep, ringing sound.

Through all the blood, he smiles, beard parting in this fierce expression that gives rise to a savage, abiding sort of laugh.

"The way," he says to Sorrow, struggling to hold in the loops and whorls of his intestines, all his glistening viscera, "is clear. Be sure they know what they seek."

[Roman Turner] His cousin ripped the rider open and suddenly his concern went from his cousin to the being gutted that still smiled. His head cocked, ears flicking forward and then he yipped out.

"Hammers are slow, they require a wide swing, leaving your gut wide open."

[Resistance] There is blood everywhere. Everywhere, mostly the outrider's. And, mostly? It's on her. It makes her eyes stand out, and strangely enough? Makes her fit more into this landscape. Through all the blood, the outrider smiles. He'll be fine. Sparrow? Doesn't feel a thing except a pang of accomplishment. There's no jingling of bangles. There is no swish of fabric, just the moment. Satisfaction. Be sure they know what they seek.

[Sorrow] Some stories cannot be told in wolfskin. While the outrider pulls closed his terrible wounds, Sorrow shifts to Crinos. There is no pure blood in her, but her markings are the same as most of her tribe, iron-gray with black guard hairs, and a paler gray undercoat.

She leads them to the edge of the cliff, gestures to the host spread out over the plains. Now they can smell the meat on the cookfires, hear the ring of metal on metal, the roar of laughter as someone makes good on some reckless boast. The louder roar as another fails to make good on an even more reckless boast.

And so on.

"Baldr," Sorrow tells them, "was the loveliest and most beloved of Odin's sons. In the time before time, though, he was troubled by dark dreams of the world gone mad, the Wyrm risen, circling around Yggdrasil, swallowing the world-tree branch by branch by branch, until the canopy died, and the roots were dislodged, and the end of all things came.

"They stories say that Odin was so troubled by his favored son's sleeplessness that he traveled to the ends of the earth to find a witch who spoke only in riddles, and who read the truth of the future in the mirrors of the dead, in the pattern of blood on the snow. He brought her sacrifices nine times nine, and she promised him four questions and four answers, but so terrible was the last that she refused him it, and swallowed all her prophecy like a bitter tongue, disappearing into a crack in the earth.

"What he learned was that his son would die, never to be seen again until the end of the world.

"Neither Odin nor Frigg could bear to lose their best son. Together, all the Aesir traveled the world, extracting promising from all the made-things and the thought-things, all the growing-things and the dying-things never to harm Baldr, best of all things, the god of light. The Aesir traveled day and night, seeking out everything in the world, from the lowliest worm to the mightiest Frost and Fire Giants, and all pledged that they would never harm Baldr. But one thing did they overlook: mistletoe, so small and dependent, wrapped around the oaks like a parasite that none dreamed it might ever cause harm to the lowliest of the worms, let alone the greatest of the gods.

"They did not recken with the work of the Undoer-of-things, however.

"When the work was finished, the Aesir gathered on the plains to celebrate. Baldr called for all the assembled to attack him. With sword and hammer and shield, with dagger and club and greataxe, the great host of the gods attacked Baldr, one by one by one, but nothing on earth would harm him, and still he stood, unbent, unbroken, unbowed."

[Sorrow] "Then the undoer, wearing the guise of Loki, whispered into the ear of blind Hodr, Bladr's brother, the gentle giant, weak and dumb. He took Hodr's arrows of ash and gave him arrows of mistletoe, bade him unleash them at Baldr, who was safe from all things of the world.

"And Baldr fell, for mistletoe had been overlooked - too young, too weak, too clinging to be remembered, overlooked by all but the undoer. The mistletoe arrow pierced his heart, and Baldr feel, and a great darkness overcame the host. The sons of men and the children of the Aesir wept, so great was the sorrow of the world that the stars did not move in the sky for three times three days and three times three nights. Instead they remained fixed, glittering the trackless sky, weeping stardust back to the deepest folds of the earth.

"Frigg stood forward and called out to the assembled host, demanding that one among them go to Hel to free her favorite son. No matter the tears that slipped down her ageless face, none of the assembled giants, wolves and heroes stepped forward to her call, except for Hermóðr.

"While the gods built Baldr's funeral pyre, Hermóðr mounted Sleipnir to follow the Hel-reid, the road to the lands of the dead.

"For nine nights, Hermóðr rode down the dark road to the land of the dead, through a valley so deep he never saw the son. Unflagging, he continued through the darkness until he came to the bridge Gjallarbrú over the river Gjöll.

"There he met Móðguðr, the maiden who guarded the bridge. She noticed that the bridge creaked more under Hermóðr's weight than it had when five battalions of dead men crossed the day before, and concluded that Hermóðr was not yet dead. She refused to let him pass, for she guarded the way, but Hermóðr'd account of the grief of the gods moved her as she had never before been moved, and she opened the way. And so he rode, until he came to the gates guarding Hel, and there he did not slow, but spurred Sleipnir to leap the gates.

"And so he came to the lands of the dead.

"Hermóðr pleaded with Hel until she agreed to release Baldr to the lands of the living; but she would do so only when all the things of the earth wept for his return. Hermóðr stood watch as Baldr arrived in the lands of the dead, and visited his palace there, drinking the mead of poetry, the óðr-rerir, which means, battle-mover, and returned to the lands of the living with a heavy heart.

"The Aesir again scattered to all the ends of the earth, pleading with all living things to weep for Baldr, that he might be freed, but both Odin and Hermóðr knew too well the words of the seeress - that Baldr will not be freed until all the world weeps, until the world is seized by violence and the hosts gather. The gates of Hel will open when Ragnarok comes, and Baldr's halls will shine again only after the final battle, the world-ending Ragnarok, when the world will drown in darkness, or be reborn in Baldr's - and Gaia's - shining light."

[Adrian] It's night in Grant Park, and along walks a returned Indiana Jones kin, cigarette in his fingers as he appreciates the for once clear skies. There's the barest sliver of moons in the sky and the way is lit by the lamps along the path far more than the stars. He is, as ever, perfectly dressed and messily (designedly so) coiffed.

[Kora] The days have been blistering, the nights steaming. Two hours after sundown and the temperature is still in the mid-80s, with suffocating humidity. Outdoors feels like the inside of a sauna, or the humid atmosphere inside the dome over an indoor swimming pool, midsummer. There's a breeze from the lake, but it is so warm and humid that it feels more like some hot oceanic current, wretched and tropical, than the tradewinds one imagines close to the waterfront. People with air conditioning disappear inside and stay there, venturing out only for ice cream or beer. People without - some of them suffocate and die. Others sit on their stoops until 3 in morning, open fire hydrants, soak in cool waters in the tubs.

Kora sits on the retaining wall overlooking the dark lake, yearning for a breeze. She's dressed casually, in worn jeans and white camisole that leaves her shoulders and arms bare. There's enough muscle definition that her narrow frame looks rather less narrow when she's dressed in such clothing, the deltoid, biceps and triceps muscles all visible beneath her skin, which is pale even in mid-summer. The camisole is dark with sweat down the line of her spine, and her fine pale hair is damp from the humidity in the air itself, twisted messily up and away from her neck and body, clipped on top of her head.

Her heels are propped on the bottom rung of the railing, and she's watching for Trent who is meant to bring dinner. Instead, Adrian comes into view first. "Hey," she calls out, stealing his attention from his cigarette. Her voice is low, but it carries easily, "Adrian. You're back, yeah?"

[Victor Oseragigte] The Lovin' Spoonful LIES. Maybe in a drier clime the night is a different world, but here where the humidity is so very thick they've merely traded a bright blazing heat for a dark crushing one. It envelops. It cloaks. It smothers.

Victor might weather it better than some of his tribe, having spent time in some pretty sizzling cities during past summers, but it's still distinctly inimical to him, and he'd far rather be climbing. A desire for companionship draws him down, though, and he moves through the oppressive atmosphere, headed into Grant Park where so often he's found Septmates in the past.

[Trent Brumby] It's too fricken hot. He'd like to stay indoors under the air conditioning, but heading out to the lake is the next best thing. He wouldn't risk swimming in waters in this city, it's not like being in the wilderness or heading out to parts of inhabited sea shores. Kora had wanted to grab some dinner and there was no way he was eating that processed trash that is served out on the vendors at the park, or grabbing some greased laced pizza from a nearby store.

When he comes into sight he's not carrying an actual picnic basket, but he's got a pack over his shoulder that's even got a rolled up blanket attached to the base of it, wound up in buckled straps. It's a well used bag, something he uses on single day hiking trips. There's sandwiches, some marinated meats in containers, some Lebanese style bread, along with dips, some cheeses, olives and fruits. It's finger food, along with a loaf of banana and walnut bread for something a little sweeter. In a small cooler ice rattles and stacked between the cubes are several bottles of water and an few beers. Kora didn't seem to favour the wines.

For once he's in some denim shorts and he's got some hairy legs, dark like that mop on his brow. A tank bares his arms, some shoes are the converse sort, something more casual and he can get away with wearing with small socks. It's a far sight from slacks, jeans and buttoned shirts or greased work clothes.

As he approaches, he eyes who's with Kora, curiously, and once spotting it's Adrian he lifts his spare hand in one of those half ass finger waves. It's more like some hand signal, really.

[Adrian] Hey, he hears in a voice he knows well, and it tugs his lips into something near a smile; as ever, there's that reserve, that bit of distance, but it doesn't stop him from drawing near, from leaning against the handles of the ladder that curve up and over the wall to dive down into the ground and provide security. You're back, yeah?

"Ja," he says, so slightly different from Kora's 'yeah'. "I'm back. Did you miss me?" He stands companionably, easier than he is with many Garou, or people in general. And look, there's Trent in approach - he, too, gets that near-smile, as warm as Adrian gets. And Adrian's hand, too, lifts in a little wave.

"Everything's been well, I trust."

[Trent Brumby] [please note: this are not small denim hot shorts.]

[Trent Brumby] [he has manly shorts, like surf ones, dude. just had to clarify. *ahem*]

[Kora] "Terribly," the Skald tosses back, with this casual half-smile that lifts the right-most corner of her mouth in an expression that would be a smirk on some other woman. Her mouth is generous, though, and there's an underlying curve that warms the expression to something easier, still direct - but wry rather than caustic. "Abominably."

She pronounces the words with a certain care. Each syllable, each vowel. "It's good to see you back, though. I suppose school starts up soon. Do you have a few weeks off first, at least?"

Then, Trent approaches, visible from another angle. Adrian waves and Kora lifts her chin - that sidelong, animal cant - turns her head to follow his line of sight. Spying Trent, she looks him up and down and lets out a brief, low whistle. Construction-worker style. "Nice legs," she says, lifting her chin again to gesture back to Adrian. " - look who I found."

More than anyone else, Trent will notice Kora's most basic concession to the heat. Not the camisole in place of her usual tees, but the flip-flops on her feet, in place of her dedicated boots.

[Victor Oseragigte] (( Suuuuure he does. ))

Shorts are a good idea, one Victor approves of. His own are a pair of faded red cargo shorts, the sort with pockets on the thighs. The black tanktop is more familiar to people, and the hard-toed black work boots that go up to his mid-calf.

Familiar voices draw him across an open field, coming up on them partially obscured by a low hedge of aromatic bushes. His hair is tied back into a pony tail, the better to keep it off the back of his neck.

[Trent Brumby] Trent smirks at the wolf whistle. "You're not treating me like an object, are you? I might have to protest," he tells Kora as he approaches the two of them. She knows he would do no such thing, and despite his Black Fury heritage (or maybe because of it), he'd rather be treated like a possession. It's his thing. He had thrown a look down at his legs, pausing when he got closer, taking them in before looking back up.

More seriously, he asks: "What's wrong with them?" The man works out, has an active lifestyle and career too. But he damn well knows it's the dark hair that they're talking about. It's not ape style, but the guy does have, well, guy legs. He only waxes other parts of his body. Don't ask.

Swinging his pack down, he sets it on the ground with the cooler and smiles, then, to Adrian. It reaches his pale eyes easily, offering warmth. "Adrian, it's good to see you." He means it. He's been having a hell of a time. Adrian is the only one he actually talks to about such issues.

[Adrian] Adrian does not deign to wear shorts. He wears summer cotton or linen trousers, airy and light, and looks - to use the parlance - fabulous. Not flamboyant, but like he could well be on a runway somewhere, fiercely and anonymously showcasing someone else's line of clothing. The distance and aloof bearing are his thing, much like the submissive nature is Trent's - it's odd, or amusing maybe, that he and the Fury have become such friends since Adrian came to Chicago.

"Good to see you too, Trent. We should have drinks soon, or something." His accent is there, mostly British tonight - the hints of Other exoticism are light, mostly hidden. "And there's absolutely nothing wrong with your legs, don't let her fool you."

Somewhere behind Adrian, Victor approaches. For the moment, though, Adrian at least is oblivious.

[Kora] "Make signs, yeah? Come up with a nice chant. And if you're really feeling aggrieved," the faintest gleam across her dark eyes, some shifting reflection of the ambient light, illuminating and then gone again. "chain yourself to my front door. That would get my attention. Maybe I'd even change my ways."

Kora slides neatly from the railing, her feet hitting the ground beside Adrian neatly, lightly, quietly. Taller than everyone else in her soon-to-be pack, she not quite eye level with either of them, but the trio is still of a height with each other, ranged like strange siblings, dark and light and in between. "You should," Kora echoes Adrian's suggestion that the two kinsman get together for drinks quietly, then appends, " - and you could join us for dinner, tonight." There's a brief lift of her brow in Trent's direction by way of question, but she knows he will have brought more than enough food.

Her dark eyes don't linger there, though. While they talk, she looks off over Adrian's shoulder, keen to the approach of the partially obscured figure behind the hedges.

[Victor Oseragigte] The hedges don't long obscure or slow him. He vaults his way in from the darkness, landing in a pool of light beneath a nearby lamp post. He chooses to do so not quite behind Adrian but off to the side, away a little, so that he doesn't put them too much on edge with his sudden arrival. There's a good long pause there in that circle of light, so that they can all get a look at him, and then he nods and moves to join them, every step certain and precise.

[Trent Brumby] "I'll make note." And he may do just that thing. Maybe he'll even enlist some help with the chaining against the said door. He'd have to know when she's about though, he'd hate to be stuck at the church like that. The people in the hood would likely think he was doing some poor reenactment of a crucifixion and would want to make it real. He's seen that neighbourhood. Maybe she'd have to settle for his apartment instead.

He watches her drop down to the ground, then nods, easily accepting such an idea. Looking to Adrian he adds: "Plenty of food."

"How was the dig?"

[Adrian] Adrian is largely in between because he's sunburnt, and freckled with it - dark and shadows do away with much of the pink, but if one looks close, his nose and forehead are near to peeling, as are his shoulders and chest under his shirt.

"Thank you, I will," he says to the invitation to dinner, as light and easy as his companions. Only when Kora looks behind him, over his shoulder, so, does he turn to look as well; it's been relaxing, his time away. He's rusty. But when he sees who's there in the lamplight, there's a smile similar to the ones that Kora and Trent got, and a nod towards the Wendigo. "Hallo, Victor," he offers - tone no different than what he uses with his Tribesmate and her mate. He's pleased to see Victor as well, but that's all.

"What have I missed here, in my absence? I'm pleased to see all three of you well."

[Kora] "Victor," Adrian turns when the Wendigo approaches. Kora's dark eyes are already on him as he lands in the pool of light and lingers there so as not to startle. She greets him when he is close, her voice low and easy and confident. "You know Adrian. I don't think you've met Trent." She cuts a direct glance back at the kinsman with the pure blood that marks him as Black Fury to all their feral senses. This is a lingering sort of look, her eyes on his face before she turns back to Victor to finish the introduction, "He's mine. My mate, yeah?"

Then, back to Trent. "Baby, this is Victor, he's Wendigo, and runs with Karl and the rest."

Adrian asks what he missed; Kora gives him this sort of still, wry look. He missed everything, and nothing. There have been no deaths for weeks, and the battles that consume her life - these terrible spasms of violence - seize and then are finished. Until the next one. The ghost of the last battle is on her mouth, the promise of the next one under her skin. Trent has set down both his pack and his cooler, and - hungry, thirsty - Kora goes foraging in the latter to find something to satisfy one or the other. Or both. She straightens, a dark bottle dripping wet from the melting ice inside in her right hand, look back to Adrian.

"It's been an eventful summer, but no one's died since - " she remembers them. She remembers them all. "Moving Mountain. The Sentinels are gone, though. Joey and the rest. Blood Summons disappeared. I've not seen Lila in weeks." The world shifts. Garou come and go in the small urban Caern. She says nothing about the break-up of her own pack. Adrian knows something of that. Joe's gone. That was all she said, when the anger had filtered away.

[Trent Brumby] "Nice to meet you Victor," this is accompanied by an offering of a hand to shake. His eyes are a pale gray, his skin a little darker to hint at mixed Caucasian, more obvious in the summer where it darkens even further. After shaking the Wendigo's hand, Trent steps back and moves over to the bag.

He waits until Kora's finished telling Adrian what's been happening before he speaks up, glancing to Kora with raised brows. "Are we going to spread out a blanket to sit? Easier to lounge with this sort of food. It's no hot dogs." There's a slight smirk there with that last little jab.

[Victor Oseragigte] He smiles to Adrian, to Kora, then to the new face. If he makes much of her evident possessiveness it doesn't show, just nodding at her claim, acknowledging it properly. A hand is offered to Trent, a simple, friendly gesture, almost at the same time apparently. The resulting shake is firm but not testing.

Adrian asked what's happened. Kora's report tells him things he does not know, so he adds to it. "Moonrunners have another. Plenty of trouble to watch for. Angels and octopi." He shook his head faintly. Trent, unfamiliar with him, might not be used to his terse style of speech, brief, starting and stopping, nothing more than necesary typically. His tone is not unfriendly, it's simply that he isn't given to speaking heavily, nor too good at it, either.

[Adrian] Absently, Adrian takes a final drag from his cigarette and flicks the butt away, then reaches out a hand to take something, to help. "Not a bad idea. And there's nothing wrong with those daft American hot dogs if they're had once a month or less." This is amused, and assuming Trent allows it the two kin are laying out the picnic . . . as Adrian's mobile rings. When his hands are free again, he checks it and grimaces. "Technically, I have a few weeks off. Caller ID says otherwise, though - dinner and drinks soon?"

[Kora] "Since you went to all this trouble," Kora replies to Trent quietly, her eyes sparking only at his last little jab about the hot dogs. "then yeah. I'll give you a hand."

The Skald is a few seconds late, though. The two kinsman are already doing the work, spreading the blanket on the clipped grass bordering the park, close to the drop-off where the railing circles the retaining wall, a view of the lake spreading out over the Eastern horizon, dark and glittering with the city's reflected light, and then simply dark. While they lay out the picnic, Kora looks back to Victor. "Angels and octopi?" she queries, with this professional sort of interest.

Then, the blanket is open, and Adrian's making his excuses after checking his mobile phone. "Trent's working on something, and I'd like you to get involved. Maybe some of your colleagues from school, too. Give him a ring soon, yeah?" Though there's only the faintest lilt upward with the appended yeah. "It's good to see you, Adrian. Be safe."

That, by way of farewell before she folds herself down to sit cross-legged on the blanket, easing her toes out of her flipflops. "There's plenty of food, Victor. You're welcome to join us," she tells the Wendigo with a gesture to - in fact - join them.

[Trent Brumby] Trent lets Adrian help him set out the picnic blanket for them all to sit on, and to unpack various containers of prepared food. Not all of it was made by him, but picked up at places across the city. Places he trusts that has good food and hygiene, and preferably the closest to organic he can get.

When Adrian declares he has to go, he looks up and nods with a small smile. "Give us a call when you're free." He's flexible with things like that, and wouldn't mind catching up with the other Kinfolk again. "I'll tell you about the working bee I'm trying to organize for the river." Something for them to discuss.

Kora already said as such, and he shoots her an apologetic look as he almost spoke over her. Then with another glance back to Adrian, he tells the other, "I'll catch you later."

Trent's still standing as the Fenrir makes herself comfortable on the picnic, and when she invites the other Garou to come and sit and eat with them Trent waits to see if he takes the invitation. If he does, he waits for Victor to sit down before lowering himself down, leaving his feet off the blanket and reclining sideways on his left elbow.

[Victor Oseragigte] He turns as Adrian prepares to leave, nodding again to him. "Welcome back," he offers with a quiet smile, before he turns to debate intruding on Trent and Kora's picnic. They did have food... and the Charm's presence was making his stomach rumble again. Victor finally walks over to settle lightly at the offered point.

"Thanks. Yeah. Big octopus attacked the caern. BIG octopus. Also killed some angels Monday. Spirit at the caern has the details. Nasty stuff. Go for the wings. Pile on the guardians first." Sounds like advice, which is what it was.

[Adrian] ((Thanks for inviting me in!))

[Kora] Kora's flipflops sit neatly on the grass beside the blanket, and she sits close to both her mate and the cooler with the drinks. She already has an open beer - dark glass slick with moisture from the cooler - resting not on the blanket, but nestled into the grass beside her flipflops, but she digs around in the cooler finding bottles of water and beer, offering them, pale brows raised by way of question, to Victor and Trent.

This is the sort of spread on which you can graze all evening, and Kora reaches for bread, cheese, and olives. "I've been hungry for olives," she tells Trent, shooting him a look back over her shoulder, her eyes shadowed, the edge of her cheek and curve of her mouth illuminated by the lamps flanking the path, the city's orange glow dampened as it is by the humidity. "These are brilliant." Then, she casts a look back to Victor, listening quietly, seriously as he offers his terse account of his recent battles, accepting both giant octopi and angels as part of their world.

"Roman and I fought a huge bane made of - oil, poison and trash at the river's edge a week or so ago. It was a close thing, but some of the water elementals healed Roman, after, and cleansed me, too. Trent's organizing a river clean up by way of," a glance back at the kinsman, the glint of her eyes, the fond, possessive curve of her mouth, " - chiminage, maybe. Thanks and - well cleansing. I've asked the other Fenrir kin to get involved, but you should pass on the word if you know anyone who'd be interested."

[Trent Brumby] "Glad to be of service," he says lowly to Kora, meeting her over the shoulder look with a smile in the corners of his mouth. He watches her reach for food to eat, glad that he's picked foods that she seems to enjoy. They often had spreads like this in his other Tribe, some sort of cultural thing that, no doubt, went back to their Greek heritage.

He takes a water with a quiet thanks and breaks off some flat bread for the dips, he prefers the spiced one, red with chilli and yoghurt as a base. It burns his mouth but after the sweetness of it has faded. While they talk, he looks between the two of them, nodding as his chewed food is moved from his cheek and swallowed.

Focused on Victor, he speaks quietly. "I really have no idea what I'm doing, but I can't sit around and do nothing. Your Tribe, they know a lot about honouring the spirits, especially those of nature?" It's clear where this could be going. Trent wants advice and he's not ashamed to ask outright.

[Victor Oseragigte] He looks to Trent at Kora's description of his environmental activities. Though he glances to the food, he doesn't yet reach for anything, instead nodding to Trent.

"Say we do. Sounds like you have a good start. Just need to drum up more people. Maybe some publicity. Walkers are good for that. Theurges to talk to the spirits of the river, little covert help. Work both sides."

[Sean Douglas-Pinkerton] (is this an open scene, and may I ask where everyone is?)

[Kora] (it is indeed an open scene! everyone is sitting on a blanket near the lake, eating. I will have to go to bed shortly, but you folks can continue without me when I go!)

[Trent Brumby] "I've been contacted by two others, not much more than that. I'm hoping for the end of the month, and even if there's not enough people, I'll go down with who's willing." Another piece of bread is swiped through the open container of dip, his eyes darting back up from it to the Wendigo. "I don't know any Theurge's."

"And what sort of chiminage or offerings do you give a River? Aside from offering to clean it up and saying prayers?" It's an honest question that is asked of both Garou present, glancing between them as he popped food into his mouth again. The Kinfolk is relaxed and comfortable, lounging with them.

[Kora] Kora's smile spreads in response to Trent's. It's a quiet exchange, mostly in passing, mostly cast in shadow. She looks at him, direct and sure in that moment, but her attention does not linger. When Victor speaks, she flashes a look back to him, "I'm relying on our kin for publicity. Which reminds me," she continues, flashing a look back to Trent. "I spoke to Izzy. Asked her to get the PD or the police union on something involved. She should give you a call soon, yeah?" Let me know if she doesn't goes unspoekn, underneath.

Then, to Victor, "I don't know of any Glass Walkers in the city other than the Guardians and Sinclair." When Trent asks the next question - chiminage for a River, she returns, this quiet spark in her eyes, "Skinny-dipping."

She is only half-kidding. "I could do some research on it, though. The history of the river, right? Find some way of encapsulating that into a story we tell at the moots." To Victor, then, " - any other ideas?"

[Trent Brumby] "Skinny dipping?" Trent is laughing quietly. "You want me arrested." Shaking his head he opened up his bottle of water and took a good drink from it, amusing himself with the thoughts of a mass crowd leaping into the Chicago River, naked. It's certainly something the Black Fury's would do. Sky clad. It's almost tempting.

[Victor Oseragigte] He listens intently to them both, and when Kora turns back to him he can smile and nod certainly.

"Two of my packmates are Theurges. Gnawer and Walker. They should be able to help. But chiminage is easy. It's a river. Rivers like to be clean. They like to flow freely. Clean it. Get rid of the clogs. And the river will happily help you. River's history is a good place to look. Probably its path's been changed. Might not be able to completely make it happy... give it its old course. But should be able to offer it things it wants."

Though not a Theurge, Victor's decently versed in the spirit ways. After all, ALL Garou must deal with spirits on some level, and the Philodox have their own gifts and rites that call upon them.

[Trent Brumby] "Could you pass on the word then?" Trent asks Victor a little more humbled. "I'd like to get in contact with them, if that's alright, talk and see what they suggest and what they can offer."

"It'd be nice to make this more then a one off thing. If not just for the river but for other places around the city. As much as I enjoy the bonfires at seasonal changes, there should be plenty of reasons for Kin to get together." And for Garou as well, but he doesn't add that, not in front of two garou. That would be out of line for him.

[Kora] "No," she throws back, easily, laughing underneath her breath, the hint of it lingering in her lean body even when it doesn't imprint itself upon her voice, shaping the pattern of her breathing even when she does not laugh out loud. And she says something to him, just mouthing the words, then glances back between Trent and Victor, listening quietly, eating olives and hummus and cheese and flatbread, exclaiming over the tabouleh with a pleasure that Trent might have assumed she reserved only for greasy pizzas. Returning to the olives, savouring the salty richness.

(I am enjoying the scene, but have already outstayed my bedtime! Please assume Kora hangs around and listens i that is convenient, or wanders off in search of: 1. the ladies' room; 2. something to kill! if she needs to wander off.)

[Kora] Mouthed at Trent, with a flashing-quick grin. I just want you naked. - immediately after the bit about being arrested.
to Trent Brumby

[Kora] That week he saw her at the church, brought dinner to the pair of wolves sleeping their way back to health. Every time he came by, she looked better, closer to being whole. Her eyes bright, her skin more luminous - as that healthy beast glow that Garou seem to have returned day by day. Midweek, she was injured again, a deep wound visible on her neck and shoulder, where something had seized her, tried to tear out her throat. The wound was already half-healed over by the time he saw it the following night, the skin raw, shiny and tight, remaking itself at a furious pace, every night she spent sleeping in her wolfskin, curled up with her packmate.

Her packmate to be.

--

The lights are off, when she lets herself in. Just the glow of a nightlight in the hall, between the bathroom and the bedroom. The television is silent, as is the apartment, dark and quiet. Light cuts in through the windows where the blinds are open, amber and orange, the city's reflections cast in deep, strong shadows on the floorboards of his home. The navy couch is empty, though perhaps the cushions are disordered. And so on: the DVD player tells her the hour - the middle of the night, after the clubs have closed, spilling their overheated clientele back into the streets.

She lets herself in, and leaves her key with her passport and her debit card and her cash, what cash she has, on his coffee table, and breathes in the scents lingering in the air. Smoke maybe, alcohol, herbs, his colonge. She breathes in deeply, her eyes half-closed, the bright chill of the air conditioning a welcome counterpoint to the heat that lingers in the streets, still, to the humidity that has been oppressive the last few days, wanting a storm to come and wash it all away.

Somewhere between the front door and the bathroom, she lets down her hair, pulling out the pencil securing it the way a soldier pulls out the pin of a grenade, letting it uncoil down her back.

He's sleeping in his bed. Maybe he wakes up when she climbs over him, the matress depression under her weight at the level of his waist, hips. Maybe he woke up when the front door opened, listened to the water rushing through the pipes in the walls as she brushed her teeth. Maybe he wakes when she - fully clothed, her hair curtaining loose around their heads - bends over him, grasps his jaw with her right hand, balancing her weight with her left, planted on the pillow beside his ear, kisses him awake. He can feel the weight of her boots against the sheets, on either side of his legs.

She tastes like toothpaste, sharp and bright and minty fresh.

[Trent Brumby] He'd been out again. Trent has discovered that being a mate to a Garou is much the same as it was before. Nothing much has changed, except for the fact that he worries for a singular Garou as much as he does for his own family, and that he has wonderful sex. It has not been as fulfilling as he had hoped, but this realization stems from some insecurity that had been slapped in his face one particular night. A misunderstanding, perhaps, but when it had been cleared up he still hasn't found himself any better.

Then he was stabbed. He lost work for weeks. Worried about his depleting bank account. It took him some serious time to get back on the horse, and just this week has found himself some work again. It's not as steady as the last two jobs he was holding, leaving him too much time with his own thoughts, aimless without Kora around. He took up smoking again. He took up drinking and delving back into human society.

It still isn't enough. He had cut certain ties to his life, ones that he now regrets. But all this has never been voiced, discussed or even hinted at. When they had met he had smoked, drank and went out, and now seems to be falling back into that routine.

So, after another night out, he's sleeping in bed. Alcohol is still in his system, but he smells a little cleaner, having showered when he got home and brushed his teeth. He collapsed into the empty bed after, falling into a deep sleep. He begins to rouse at the weight of her on the mattress, but only properly wakens when she's kissing him. A small sound in his throat is that of waking surprise, and an eager delight.

Sliding his arm out from under the pillow, and the other up from the sheet, he'd found her body before he even opened his eyes, which he's struggling with. He doesn't need his eyes open to kiss her back in that slow, sleepy sort of way.

[Kora] The soles of her boots are a heavy counterpoint against his bare legs. He can feel them, where the sheets are drawn tight against his body by the weight of her body as she straddles him, her knees depressing the mattress on either side of his hips. She can still smell the smoke in the room; less in his hand that in the clothes that he discarded, in the sheets in which he sleeps. Even his sleep itself - the slow way he rouses to her touch, her mouth on his mouth and then on his throat, her hands in his hair, and then on his body, until she can look up the hard line of his torso and find his eyes, open, his focus sharpened by arousal, looking down at her.

She's dressed, down to her boots. His hands settle on her hips, his fingers twist through her belt loops, skim underneath the hem of her camisole. He's not, except for the sheet pulled over him, pulled tight against him by her body weight. Her mouth returns to his, and she kisses him deeply, seekingly, until she chases away the last of his sleepiness, drags him into this sort of crisp, waking dream of sex some part of him might easily think nothing more than a vivid fantasy, written out by his half-drunk, sleeping mind. Except for the sharp sensation of her fingers twisting in his hair, the humid scent of her skin against his skin.

"Take my clothes off," she tells him when he's awake enough to open his eyes, to following the movement of her body over his with more than his hands, to wake to her demands. She pulls away from him, climbs off his body and stands at the side of the bed as she offers him first one boot to unlace, and then the other, watching him the whole time. When he reaches for the button of her jeans, well, she tells him, use your mouth.

And so on.

--

She's hungry afterwards, for more than sex. It is still dark outside, and the alcohol is still opening his blood vessels, blooming inside him. His heart is still beating faster, from the work of sex. Her skin, underneath, is pink from exertion. She wants scrambled eggs and bacon, and wears one of his button down shirts over her otherwise naked body as she shadows him in the kitchen, watching him cook. The city is asleep outside, the windows dark, the streets empty. She's drinking a beer, maybe to catch up with him, and her clear dark eyes linger on him as he cooks.

It's a quick meal to prepare, scrambled eggs and bacon. It's everything that she wants, all that fat and protein her body needs to replenish itself after the work of healing.

The beer goes mostly untouched, see. She's watching him, the way he stirs the eggs as they cook, the way he moves. And when he's asking her if she wants the bacon crisp, testing one of the strips as it sizzles in the skillet, she returns, suddenly, almost inartfully, "What's going on, baby?"

The concern wraps itself around her low voice, rich again, familiar and invasive. She touches his ankle with her bare toe as she asks the question, reaching out from where she lounges against the counter, making contact.

[Trent Brumby] Woken, she's demanding of him, and it sharpens his attention even more. For a moment he had hesitated, looking at her with a quiet something under his surface before he had done exactly as she had asked. He took his time unless he told her to hurry up, carefully sliding off boots from the heel after unlacing them, and only using his hands on her jeans after he'd used his teeth to unbutton her jeans, kneeling down on the ground before her. And she can see, quite clearly, just how much he likes this.

He craves it, and when she gives it to him, he feels much more satisfied. Even when she tells him she's hungry, she doesn't even need to tell him to make the food. After asking what she had wanted he had got up, obediently, and pulled on a pair of boxers before walking into the kitchen. There he had washed up his hands, splashed some water on his face and got to work.

Eggs where whisked, seasoned, thrown in with a few quickly chopped spring onions and tomato, unless she protested. The bacon was laid in a separate pan and both were watched with him hovering nearby, tongs and cooking spatula at hand. He had a glass of water off to the side with a few ice cubes in it, from which he occasionally sipped from. Her plate was already on the counter, waiting to be filled with food, and he had gone about this in an orderly, relaxed manner. His mind had been a little distant in this, probably thinking back on the moments before, maybe imagining others.

So when she asks him that question, pale eyes shoot over towards him with a raise of his brows. "I'm sorry?" A look over her, the way she's leaning, and how she's looking at him makes him still. It draws his spine a little straighter. "I uh, just having some issues finding some decent work. I don't want to go back into the security industry." Had told her he wouldn't and was keeping his word. "It drives me crazy without anything to do."

[Kora] "That's all?" Her dark eyes trace the familiar line of his body, the hard muscles flanking his spine as he stands both straighter and taller. Her voice is quiet, but not soft. There's an edge underneath that she cannot quiet extinguish. The way her rage intermingles with her concern for him, overlays it casting it into sharper brights and deeper shadows.

She's loose, mussed hair spilling around her shoulders, half-naked as he is, bare thigh sliding underneath the tail of his shirt, the shadow of her small breasts just evident where the V of the shirt opens against her skin. Her bare foot rises from his ankle to the swell of his calf, and her gaze drops from his shoulders and spine to watch the faint, affectionate caress. There's this sort of - waking frustration under her skin; that she startled him out of his humming sort of day dream as he cooked, as he hovered over the skillets, finishing her meal. That she doesn't know what to ask him, that she doesn't know how to reknit anything that's gone frayed, or strange between them.

Instead, she's quiet a moment, quiet as she watches him fill her plate with food, lifting her beer and taking another swallow she does not quite want, not precisely, not now. "I mean, I get that. Yeah? I've been - "

Here she pauses again, swallowing back whatever she meant to say briefly. The overhead light in the kitchen makes a halo of her pale hair, and scatters shifting shadows around the tiles. Her shadow dances with his, merges where her toe touches his calf, then resolves itself as her foot drops away. "I can tell a dozen stories about the deaths of heroes, but I don't know how to talk about this. I just - want to make sure that that's what this is."

There's this sort of gesture she makes, encompassing the kitchen, the quiet, dark living room beyond. His apartment, which is hers because he is hers. The city beyond. "That we're okay. That you - " she pauses, swallows hard, and doesn't give voice to the rest of it, underneath.

[Trent Brumby] The food is arranged on her plate, not just thrown into two separate piles. He takes the fork and knife in his hand, picking up the plate to carry it over towards her. His gaze is serious, like his expression, pulling him away from whatever thoughts he had been having earlier. Focused on her, he offers the plate, standing near where she leans against the counter, with her fondling foot now on the floor.

"Kora, we're fine." He doesn't know what she was struggling to say and doesn't push for it. It's easier that way. That she can't even question him or get to the bottom of what's happening, seems okay with him. Trent rarely questions her in return, it's just something quite unheard of. He lost his temper the once, had swallowed it down after, got back on track again. "Do you want some more bacon?"

The skillets were still on the stove top, but the flames were off. She knows his routine. Once the meals are on plates he rinses out the pots and pans and sets them off to the side, stacked to be washed later. For being a bachelor he's quite orderly. Not obsessive compulsively, but he had a routine to life.

[Kora] He tells her that they're fine, and her mouth tightens, briefly. Her curving mouth goes just flat and she lifts her chin in that unstudied way so that her dark eyes catch the light and gleam with the animal surety that limns her every step. He saw her as a wolf for the first time a handful of days ago, in the cool shadows of an abandoned church, slender and inhuman: alien. He saw her as a wolf for the first time, but he always sees th wolf in her in these moments, when the light shifts and she makes some gesture born in one of her other forms.

Then she accepts the plate he offers her, and she's a woman again, leaning in to catch her lover in a passing kiss as she stands close, relying on the physical contact, the sense of his body close to his, the way he gives way to her - the way his mouth opens and his body shifts, minutely, to accommodate her own as she holds the plate just side, as if he might read some thing more in his mouth and his body than she can glean from his words.

"It looks good," she tells him, breathing in through her nose. Breathing him in through her nose, her forehead pressed briefly against his own, her body close. "Brilliant, really. Come sit and eat with me, yeah? Watch me eat."

Then, with a tug on the waistband of his boxers, she grabs both her plate and her beer, and pads barefoot out through the kitchen, into the living room, to eat on the couch rather than at his dining table.

[Trent Brumby] She looks at him in thatway and he stands under it, looking at her in return in his quiet way. He doesn't give anything else to her, other then a look that isn't challenging her dominance over him. Watching her, he waits for her to say something more. But she doesn't, instead she backs off and takes the plate from him.

Before he can step away and deal with dishes, she leans in with a kiss to his mouth, staying in close. There's nothing to read in there either, other then an affection he has for her, especially in the way her mouth can make him catch on fire. In this case threatening to reignite it from earlier, still vivid and fresh in the memory of his body as well as his mind.

His eyes are closed when their brows are together. Small moments, like these, where she shows this tenderness, he wants to tell her: Don't go out again. But of course such notions are ridiculous, and she's telling him to come and watch her eat, demanding with her fingers in his boxers, the elastic snapping dully back against his trim waist after she lets it go.

Grabbing his water, he follows her out and towards the couch. He'd deal with the dishes later, but for then he settles down on the couch with her, resting his arm across the couch, both ways. The tv is off, there's no sound but the traffic, and any other movement from other apartments in the complex. "You want me to turn the television on?"

[Kora] "No," she replies, quietly when he offers her the television. "I want to hear you breathe."

The room is still dark, just the light from the kitchen and the light from the windows, and the sound of the building all around him, like a living thing they inhabit, however briefly. Some body in which they are subdividing cells locked in a self-sufficient little organelle. At this hour, on warm nights like these when the city is quiet and she's whole, healthy, and his close, the marks of her hands and her mouth lingering on his body, visible if just in the half-light, it is easy enough to imagine that the world has rolled itself up and moved away, leaving them marooned - if only briefly - in the cool dark, alone.

She's sitting on the edge of the couch when he joins her, her bare feet on the edge of the coffee table, the curve of her bare thighs visible where his shirt falls away as a cool, pale shape in the darkness. There are her dark eyes, lingering watchful on him as he follows in her wake and sits close to her, close enough that she can fold her herself so easily into the space he leaves her as he sits back, flanking him, balancing her plate carefully in her right hand as she tucks her feet up onto the couch.

There's smalltalk, the crunch of bacon as she tucks a slice into her mouth after a forkfull of eggs, and so on. She eats with the gusto usually found in teenage boys, applies herself to her food with single minded thorougness.

Halfway through the plate, the edge is off her hunger; and she slows, eating more carefully, lingering and savoring the simple meal he prepared with such care. "Roman, Sparrow and I," she tells him, " - are going to go questing soon. Looking for a totem, yeah?" In the darkness, he can see her eyes, all shadow, watchful and absolutely direct.

[Trent Brumby] Sitting, he had reached a hand out to rest it on her leg, caressing it slowly with his fingers. There had been a time when he wouldn't even do this without some sort of invitation from her, but has since learned that she likes these casual touches to be on his own accord. He loves the softness of her skin and the way it's taut over well used tone. Back and forth his hand trails, an inch this way, and back again.

Smalltalk he can do. They trade some small things; his work again, a good band he heard, how the bird feeders are going, and how he's going to go to the Brotherhood and start getting that Working Bee organized. This he seems quite focused on since they spoke about it.

He doesn't mind the way she eats, used to it by now, especially when she's in the middle of healing from something or had a rough night. Since meeting her his pantry, fridge and freezer has been packed with more foods, catering to her needs and her tastes.

"How long will you be gone?" he asks of her, meeting her gaze.

[Kora] The meal's finished, a last bite of egg and bacon, and she leans forward to put the plate down on the coffee table, taking up her mostly untouched beer from the coaster instead, drinking deep. The bottle glistens in her hand, slick with condensation. Her yes are half closed, her throat working as she swallows. She watches him as he discusses his work; the band. The Working Bee. One moment she's simply hungry, eating like the monster she is underneath her skin, sitting close to him and the movement of his hand ove her leg, quiet, simple.

The next, for reasons she cannot name, her heart is in her throat.

He cansee that, the way it turns over inside her, shift like unstable stone, gleaming-bright.

"It won't be long," she replies, quiet. "A night, maybe two. Time gets strange in the umbra, though. It coul be days, or weeks. It could be a half-minute. I'm coming back, though." She's turning to him, then, her hands on his thighs, the butt of the beer bottle in her right hand, cool through the fabric of his boxers. Cold where it rests against his skin below the hem. Her eyes are dark, direct on him the whole time.

[Trent Brumby] That sudden shift in her, has his brows draw in. He see's it, senses it, and was about to ask, but she already explains herself and what the possible problem is. Trent doesn't need to reach for her either, she's already coming towards him, presumably, for comfort.

Shifting his hand, he rubs it up along the outside of her arm, his other still resting down on the couch by his side, loose and comfortable. He meets her gaze, dark against pale. There's something he should be saying, but her words are only just catching up to him. She's going into the Umbra where sometimes Garou disappear for longer then they intend to. She promises she's coming back with the tone of her voice, instead of direct words. And he finds that there's nothing he can say to this. This, too, is the reality of living with a Garou.

Lifting his other hand, he brushes it over her hair, curls it around her ear, shifting his gaze to watch his fingers move along the outside of it. Then look back to her. "Be careful."

[Kora] Their eyes meet; pale and dark, dark and pale. Her own are clear, too, reflecting the light spilling into the living room from the kitchen, gleaming with light, painted with it, that shifting sheen that reminds him of the animal inside her, under her skin. Not the beast, the monster, but the wolf at the core of both. The heel of her beer bottle digs into his thigh as she pushes herself upright, shiftings her knees underneath her body, pushes herself upright, and then kneels over him, looking down on him.

His hand is in her hair, pushing it back behind her ear. The other half of the mass curtains around him as she leans forward, into him, her arms circling his neck as she presses a deep, lingering kiss onto his forehead.

Then the bridge of his nose, then the apex of his cheekbones, then his half-closed eye, pressing her tongue to his flesh so that she can taste the salt and ash on his skin.

He tells her to be careful.
She promises no such thing.

Instead, she repeats, quietly, I'll miss you over the paper-thin skin of his eyelid, over the corner, not the fullness of his mouth as if she were Odysseus taking leave of Penelope rather than a Garou who is like as not to be home the night following.

She kisses his throat, lingers on his pulse, pushes her fingers through his dark half-curls to drag his head back and further expose his throat. Twice, he feels her teeth against his exposed throat.

She kisses him everywhere, except for his mouth, and when she returns to his mouth, her own simply - lingers over his, without kissing him.

"Take me to bed," she tells him, quietly. The beer bottle is still loosely held in her hand, cool against his back now, his trapezius, His shirt rustles, shifts, gapes over her body as she reaches around him. "Now."

[Kora] Earlier that day, Izzy received a voice mail. A woman's voice, low and rich and distinct, a new authority that still fitted strangely over her lean frame, but a surety to it, nonetheless. "I'd like to talk. Tonight?"

A handful of messages after that, and the meeting was arranged for Fat Patty's Bar and Grill, where the run-down Cabrini neighborhood runs into gentrification along the river, bordering the park. It is a hot, humid night, and those patrons lingering in the bar at this hour have chosen the air conditioning inside rather than the patio outside, light by a string of laterns and served by a long barmaid. All except one, who lounges underneath one of the open umbrella, a burger and fries on a plate in front of her, and a beer in hand. There's another place setting and another beer there, both crisp and fresh, the glass sweating condensation, the head foaming, crisp. When Izzy turns the corner or parks her car on the quiet sidestreet fronting a spur of the parkland, Kora lifts a hand by way of greeting, applying herself to the fries.

When Izzy is close enough to address, she says, "Have a seat, detective. I would've ordered you a burger, but wasn't sure what you'd want. They have Bell's on tap here, though. I got you a two-hearted ale. The brewmaster's brilliant." Small talk, for the moment. As soon as Izzy walked into view, Kora's dark, sure eyes were fixed on her, in that animal way that Garou have.

[Izzy Montoya] She had answered the email with a simple text agreeing to the meeting, tapped out one handed in the midst of shift change, while Sarge went on and on about the list of cases that needed worked. She'd answered the rest in the same manner, agreeing to the time, the place.

When she parks her car, and steps out, it's clear that today has not been the best of days. She's worn down, and the exhaustion is showing in her eyes. When she closes the door of her non-descript unmarked car, that all but screams 'cop!' by its very unmarked-ness, She takes a moment, her eyes on the ground, her breath even and slow. Then, if Kora is watching, she sees shoulders roll up, spine straighten, jaw set as Izzy settles herself into the facade she shows the world. With that, she turns and heads to the Patio - dressed in typical 'uniform', business casual, dark slacks, and a lighter tailored blouse under a light blazer worn only to cover the presence of her gun.

The wave gets a nod in return, as long strides carry the Detective to the table, and the place settings there. To the greeting, she nods, and pulls out the chair, and settles into the seat, reaching behind her to adjust her holster at the small of her back so that it doesn't catch on the edge of the seat. She crosses her legs - long, and slender - and smooths the material over her thigh. She reaches for the beer, and with the barest, briefest hint of a grin, she nods. "Thanks. I'm not hungry, the beer is fine. To what do I owe the pleasure.."

Even if she's quite sure it's going to be anything but...

[Izzy Montoya] (email = voice mail. really. heh.)

[Kora] They look nothing alike. Kora has a feral certainty about her, the animal grace written into her body, blood and bones. The way she sits, leaning back, her body a neat curve inside the right angle of the patio chair, her chin rising, her hair half-kempt, half loose down her back. And, more than that, she is a sharply casual counterpoint to the detective's precise wardrobe, the blazer, the fitted blouse underneath, tucked in, the pressed trousers, all the signs of her success and her professional life. Kora is dressed in a t-shirt that has been soaked in her blood so many times the seams are stiff with it. The black cotton conceals the stains, old and new, admirably.

"Cheers," Kora returns, when Izzy reaches for and picks up the beer. She lifts her own in counterpoint, her head canted aslant, her dark eyes watchful on the kinswoman's face. She could not miss the reluctance written into the woman's body language, so close and careful is her observation, but there's a delicacy to it. She watches, she doesn't stare, and she does not indulge the other's misgivings by acknowledging them.

The minor toast offered, Kora takes a quick sip of her beer, then returns the glass to the iron and glass patio table. The light out here is shifting, indifferent, but not so meager that Izzy will miss the fine amber color of the two-hearted.

"I have a bit of a project," Kora begins, reaching for one of her fries, dunking it quickly in a small container of mayonnaise. "I was hoping you could get the Police Department involved somehow. Sponsorship or participation - that sort of thing. You want to hear about it?"

[Izzy Montoya] She takes a healthy swallow or two of her beer, before setting it it down again, a sound of appreciation of the taste made in the back of her throat, before she settles back into her chair. She knows she is being watched, expects that she is being judged in some fashion, doesn't seem to care either way. Instead, she awaits the reason for the meeting, and what is expected of her.

What she hears is not necessarily what she expected, and that's given away by the arch of a brow, slight yet visible. "A project." A beat, and then a carefully casual "Sure, tell me about it."

[Kora] "The Chicago River," the Skald says, quiet, this sort of simmering presence underneath. There's a subtle thread of humor in here, " - is filthy." Here, the humor sparks bright in her dark eyes, lingers in the shape of her generous mouth without finding any other expression in her voice. "I expect that's nothing you didn't already know. We fought a huge spirit, made of trash and spilled oil there, on the other side. It was working to poison the river further, destroy whatever might be left in there of balance. We won, but it was a close thing - and afterwards, all this trash sort of rained down on us. Some of the spirits in the river healed my packmate, and cleansed use both of the poison that would've killed us.

"So," another fry, which she - hungry - practically inhales. "I was thinking that we could start there, yeah? Picking up the trash, cleaning up the river banks. One of those river clean-up days that folks organize, just getting as much of the trash out of the river, the banks, and the shallows as possible. Trent's working to organize some kin resources, and I thought you might be able to get the PD, or at least the Fraternal Order or the police union or something involved, yeah? As sponsors, or volunteers. I told him I'd get in touch with you, and ask you to get in touch with him."

[Izzy Montoya] That brow quirks again, and she can't quite hold back the "No shit.." at hearing the river is filthy. She follows it with a chuckle, though, brief as it is. The abbreviated tale of a battle on the other side, of Spirits and such, is listened to curiously, though little of it shows through her features, barely glinting in her gaze.

She is a warrior of another - weaker - kind, but that doesn't mean she lacks appreciation for the efforts of the others. Then she blinks. "Trent... Trent Brumby?" and almost a smile, there. "Haven't seen him in ages. Wasn't sure if he was still around." Clearly, there's a past there, of some sort. And with it, a decision. "I can see what I can do - it's not my usual forte, but I know who I can get to help grease the right wheels and get involved."

Poor Finn. He's about to be recruited once again...

[Kora] "Yeah," Kora replies to the question, when Izzy puts together the kinsman's first and last names. The rightmost corner of her mouth rises, briefly familiar. " - one and the same. He's still around." The smile deepens briefly; Kora glances away, watching the drift of headlights along the building fronts, pale and ghostly as some SUV as the closest intersection makes a leisurely left turn against traffic. In profile, her features are sharp, dominated by cheekbone and jaw rather than her expressive mouth. Her dark eyes gleam in the dim light and her hair is haloed into white by the background illumination, though the rest of her expression is lost in the shadows.

Then, she lifts her chin neatly and cuts a look back to Izzy. "He's Fenrir now, yeah?" Half-rising from her chair, Kora pulls out a torn sheet of notebook paper on which she has scrawled a pair of numbers, pushing this across the table to Izzy. "Give him a call. I appreciate this, Detective."

[Kora] transcript!
to Kora

[Izzy Montoya] Izzy doesn't miss that reaction, and she's not one of the best Detectives in the city because she's dumb enough to miss the obvious signs. It doesn't take her long to put together the thrown out news of Kora's being mated at their last meeting, and the way she looks away now, the way her eyes gleam and then - the clincher - the fact that he's Fenrir now.

"Is he then." A bemused chuckle, brief, but certainly there, as she takes the piece of paper.

"I'll call him tomorrow, and see what I can do at work." There's no promise of results, but certainly one to try - and likely, not for the woman who asks, but for the man she asks for, instead.

[Kora] "Brilliant," the Skald replies, low-voiced and sure. She lifts her glass of beer again, making that vague gesture toward a toast that is never wholly resolved into one, and sits back in the chair, gesturing toward her fries with a help yourself sort of look. She's quiet after that, small talk about the heat, maybe. Some notorious crime in the neighborhood she calls home. A passing question about Thornton, how the move went, whether Izzy was all finished with it, whether she still had more to move.

The advantage, Kora will say then, of packing light. Because she can carry all her belongings in a back pack. The rest, gleaned and otherwise, are locked away in a storage locker in Cabrini.

Very little to show for a life. She doesn't say that, good-natured underneath it, easy when the moon is dark, in control of both her tongue and her temper always. When Izzy finishes her first beer, Kora offers her a second, never expecting her to accept, but ready and willing to purchase it if she's so inclined. And so on, until the detective leaves, or the Skald. Or both, off into the humid summer night, the steaming, filthy city.

[Kora] Two nights ago, Kora let herself into Trent's apartment. She brought her laundry, showered and changed clothes. She sat next to him, humanskinned, on his couch holding his hand and kissed his knuckles quietly. She didn't feel like eating. I'm not feeling well, she told him, and I need to heal and nothing more of the story, though she looked well, uninjured, her skin whole except for the flushed capillaries from the heat of a scalding shower. It was already late and he had been out, the alcohol opened his bloodstream and the folds of his mind, made everything weaving, brighter maybe, out of focus.


Monday - midday, his break, or his lunch. He's at a client's house - some normal day, he received a text message from her.

- bring dinner to church later? hungry! ty.

and, five minutes later:

+ice cream.

The nights have been warm and the days have been simmering. The city is lost in a hot haze of humidity and pollution throughout the day that settles at night as the temperature drops, or is blown away - briefly - by the great, gathering storms that sweep into Chicago off the plains. Except for the city's high-rises, it is a straight shot to the lake, and beyond.

So it's night. Near-night, the sun sinking in the west, casting striking shadows against the run down warehouses and abandoned brick storefronts where the Cabrini neighborhood abuts the river. There's an old church there, abandoned for twenty years or more since the congregation died to nothing and the neighborhood became more and more industrial. Untouched for years, the building is surrounded by the quick-growing locust trees covered in Virginia creeper and fireweed, by morning glories and other quick, opportunistic weeds that can find soil in any crack in the concrete, and grow, and grow.

The place is all stone and concrete admist the humid greenery - stone and concrete steps leading up to a porch - a portico, really - and wooden doors leading inside. Above, half the old stained glass windows have been shattered, but some remain intact, reflecting back the light of the dying sun, blood-red now. The front door is cracked open, as if fire or water damage has warped the boards until they will no longer fit snugly together, but otherwise the place is quiet and apparently abandoned.

[Trent Brumby] Trent had pulled up outside and climbed out of his perfectly ordinary sedan. Taking with him some bags of food, boxes and containers filled with various Chinese take outs, another with several bottles of drinks, from soda to water and beer. Having gone home before coming out, he's changed out of work clothes and was dressed in some jeans and a buttoned down shirt. While he has shorts, sweatpants and t.shirts, he often tends towards buttoned shirts whenever he's meeting her, making himself look presentable. It's some strange wiring in his behaviour code that makes him do this, and if she knows anything of the bag in his closet, she may begin to understand the way the Kinfolk works.

He makes his way up the church steps and to the door. Knocking on it, he pushes it open a little to poke his head inside and take a look around. Eyes squint to the dimness inside, trying to make out the details of the place. It's not as if he's been here much, if at all, and if he was to be honest with her, Trent dislikes the fact that she stays here at all. Pack or not.

"Kora?" His voice echos, even if its not a very loud query.

[Trent Brumby] Edit: He also brings a picnic cooler, fit with ice.

[Kora] Light cuts through the windows set high above the nave in long slanting lines, dappling the floor in shifting patterns of brilliant sunlight and deep shadow. It is cooler inside than it is outside, and there's a certain sort of quiet, defined by the leafy shade and the thick stone walls, by the way the broken windows above shunt and filter the city's noises back into the echoing space.

As churches go, the place is not large - but it has been standing for nearly a hundred years, with all the neogothic details that the original architect could fit into such a space. The rose window above the apse is intact, but the sun comes from the other direction, so the glass there is just a deep, abiding blue. The other windows ahead are broken out, vines curling intricate stone and iron work.
,
There are rough paintings of saints - folk-art style - around the chancel, where the alter once stood. These seem to have been added sometime after the building was abandoned, by the hand of a skilled amateur, vagrant or vagabond, just passing through.

Trent pushes open the door and calls out her name. His hands are full and his voice echoes. He will not see them until his eyes adjust to the shadows inside, the sunlight at his back streaming in past him - but they are there, curled close together just below the steps leading up to the area where the altar once stood.

Animals.

One lifts its head, its eyes catch the light and gleam, and its ears are pricked forward. The wolf watches him briefly, then climbs to its feet and pads across the old stone and floors. The beast is slender, alert - gray, brown and black markings on its coat, dominated by gray. When the sunlight catches its eyes, they gleam, molten, amber or gold. Otherwise, they are a deep soft brown.

With a precision that feels both delicate and predatory, the wolf picks it way across the debris scattered over the stone floor, past what remains of the ruined pews, toward him.

[Trent Brumby] That's not what he's expecting, but he goes with it. His heart beats a little quicker as the wolf approaches him but he slides inside the church and nudges the door closed behind him with a foot. Glancing back to the wolf, he holds up the food with a clink of bottles and a rattle of ice. "Food and ice-cream." Then with a small, fleeting smile, "and beer, of course." Because that's all she seems to drink at his place. He's had to keep it stocked. Trent, on the other hand, seems to favor waters or wine, and freshly squeezed juice over coffees in the morning.

She can smell that he's showered not long ago, right before picking up ice for the cooler, heading through a grocery store for ice-cream, and, finally, dropping past the Chinese place so that the food would still be hot by the time he got there. The soap doesn't get rid of all smells, though, like the fact he's probably taken up cigarettes again, and he's been working with car grease today.

"Where should I put it?" If he thinks its odd to be talking to a wolf, it doesn't show. He is trying to wrap his mind around the fact that this is Kora. He hopes it's Kora! It's one thing knowing your girlfriend turns into a wolf, but it still warps the human mind trying to grasp the reality of it.

[Roman Turner] The other wolf only stirred when it's partner moved away. It wasn't the lack of warmth, heat bothered him right now, it was the removal of another's heartbeat, another's steady breathing. Ever so slowly this wolf shifted position and seemed to go back to sleep. Fur was simply missing across it's body where angry, blistered, peeling, weeping flesh shown.

[Kora] When he speaks, the animal's ears prick, this faint movement side to side. Its eyes are on his face, and its tail remains high. There's nothing of the Kora he knows in the animal now. Her eyes are dark blue, the wolf's eyes are deep brown, mute and wordless, all animal fixed on Trent's face. As the beast closes the last of the distant, he can see its dark nose twitching as she steals the scents - of Chinese food and cigarettes, soap and sweat, pure Garou blood, car grease, exhaust, humidity - the whole of the world he brings back inside with him, on his skin, in his hair, lingering in the fibers of his clothes.

He steps inside and closes the door behind him. She comes close and circles him, brushing her flanks against his legs, his jeans, marking him with her scent. Her tail is still held high; any other wolf would read that as dominant - but for all that he shares their blood, these subtle signifiers of feral behavior may easily be lost on him.

He speaks; she does not answer him. She doesn't think in human language in this form, but there's a certain brightness to her eyes that confirms, at the least, that animal circling him understands the question. After another circle around him, her flanks against his calves, her tail thumping twice, heavily, against his thighs, she peels away from him, padding off sharply to the north. There, in the shadow of the choir loft, on an old wooden table dragged from somewhere - is another cooler. There are a pair of rubbermaid containers - the big, multi-gallon storage containers - tucked under the table, and a discarded pile of clothes to the side.

There are Kora's familiar boots, kicked off there, too, up against the wall.

The wolf grabs one of the piles of clothing in its mouth and pads deeper into the shadows under stairs leading up to the choir loft.

[Trent Brumby] Standing still as she circles around him, he doesn't watch her the entire time, but glances off to where the other wolf is. He can make out that there is something wrong with the wolf, missing fur, but not much detail from where he is. Kora had told him that she was staying here for awhile, that she wasn't feeling well either, and he understands more of that now. There's nothing he can do, other then to bring food or anything else when requested.

Kora pads off and he watches after her, before following over towards the table. There's no more words now, just the quietness of him setting down the cooler and the bags. Food containers are taken out and set, stacked to keep the warmth. Drinks are set inside the cooler along with the tubs of indulgent ice-creams, several of them. If it's one thing he's learned as a Black Fury, is that women and ice-cream or chocolate, or any sort of food, must never be messed with. Being generous is always favoured upon. So there's plenty of variety to eat.

After doing this quietly, very aware of sleeping wolves, he rubs his hands down the back of his jeans and slips his hands into the pockets there. He stands and waits for Kora to return.

[Roman Turner] The best way to heal was shifted and the best way not to feel like a third wheel between a male and a female was to pretend like he was sleeping through all the little sounds of movement. So despite the smell of food, he actually managed to let himself float in that space between true sleep and wakefulness.

[Kora] The shadows cannot conceal the sound of her joints popping in and out of place, of her bones cracking, changing shape - growing and then contracting as the animal changes to the girl. To the woman. She has nearly a decade on Roman, for all that they are the same rank, and Kora does not look like a girl.

Just a woman - maybe a bit sick now, her lips chapped, her skin sallow, her eyes bruised, the most subtle physical signs of the damage done not to her skin by to her body, the organ systems underneath, kidney and liver and spleen, heart and lungs, healing surely, with ever beat of her animal heart.

Still pulling her t-shirt down over her torso, threading her arms through the sleeves, pulling her hair out from underneath the collar, Kora emerges from the dark where the wolf disappeared. Her hair is loose, long down her back, and her feet are bare. The bracelets, the choker, and the single iron earring she always wears are with her always, changing with her body, melding with her spirit.

She embraces Trent from the side, her chin on his shoulder, her arms around his waist loose for a moment, then tightening as she plants a kiss on his shoulder just at the attachment of the deltoid muscle, through the fabric of his button-down shirt.

"Thanks," she says, quiet against his skin. Mouths, missed you without voicing it, then says, aloud - "I'm starving." He could almost believe it. The work of healing is rough on the body, and she looks - stretched, attenuated. Her voice is roughened from disuse or something else. Then, loosening her arms from around her body, she lifts her chin in the direction of the other wolf, wounded, curled against the stage where the altar once was. "That's Roman."

Then, untangling herself from him, she starts - attacking the food, grabbing a pair of containers without regard for the contents, searching through the ice and water for a bottle of water rather than beer. "We can eat outside, on the steps?"

"Hey - " to Roman, sleeping, lifting her hoarse voice. " - dinner's ready, kid! You remember Trent, yeah?"

[Trent Brumby] He smiles seeing her, though the worry is clear in the way his eyes are shaded. These little details of her he cannot miss, does not like, but is powerless to do anything but watch. The Garou's fight is to die for a better cause, there is no other way around it. Kinfolk know this and they have to simply accept. Their fate is not as bad as the so called trueborn, so they should not complain. It still doesn't make it easy, watching friends, family, loved ones, get hurt day and day again. They're on borrowed time.

Dropping his hands out of his pockets, he had curled an arm gently around her waist and turned his head to kiss her on the side of her brow. "You're most welcome," he tells her, smiling again at her mouthed word. He finds it a little amusing that she doesn't voice it aloud. Some Fenrir pride, no doubt.

Then she's moving over to get food and he hangs back. "I should have bought more." Casting a glance over towards where Roman was, he had nodded, acknowledging, remembering. "I can always go out again and grab something. Spare ribs and pizza?" Kora had a like for disgustingly greasy food, Trent had found out. He was more like the girl in this relationship. Good food, better wines, and some gym regime.

He waits for her to lead the way outside. Apparently he wasn't eating, though.

[Roman Turner] His ears flickered like a fly had landed on one as the other swiveled towards Kora's voice. Ever so slowly his head lifted and turned towards the pair. With a huff of effort he pushed himself up like an old dog in movements. When they started outside he began the slow version of shifting back to two legs. It wouldn't be for several more minutes before he appeared in an old pair of flannel pajama bottoms, bare footed and shirtless. The flesh from his chest up was blistered, weeping and in places that too bright pink of new flesh.

"Thanks for the food mister Trent."

[Kora] "You brought a feast," she replies to his plan of leaving for more food, after thirty seconds of silence broken only by the sound of ice rattling in the picnic cooler, of paper bags and paper contains and take-out pouches and chopstick sleeves rattling as Kora inspects the meal, the Chinese food hot enough that it is still steaming. She leaves the pints of ice cream sunk in crisp fresh ice for now, claiming the pepper steak and fried rice, a bag full of hot fresh egg rolls, translucent with grease, and both a fork and a set of chopsticks. "No need to run out for more. Though, I think I will ask you to see to my bird bath and feeders, later. Remind me, before you go."

Maybe she plans to fix her hair.

Kora leads Trent outside to sit at the top of the stone steps, the portico - the porch. Somewhere between the table and the steps, she pauses, holding the door open for him to come after, and looks up at him, her dark eyes clear, the faint discoloration underneath unfamiliar, as if she were recovering from one of those minor illnesses Garou never get - the flu, or something - "You're smoking again." - she tells him quietly, though the animal cant of her pale head makes it a question that requires no answer. Not directly. Not now.

The air is cooler now that the sun is setting, though the night is still hot and humid, and despite the shade of the overgrown trees, the steps retain the sun's heat. She leaves the door propped open so that Roman can slip out - as he does, a few minutes later - after them.

Then, she folds herself to sit, applies herself to her food, watching the light change across the fronts of the buildings on the other side of the street, making appreciate sounds underneath her breath. When Roman pads out after her, she looks, flashes a look between kin and Garou, and offers her soon-to-be-packmate the edge of her smile. There's a certain shadow in her eyes, though. Which she explains, quietly, to Trent. "Roman's first battle scar."

If Roman were Fenrir, it would be a point of pride. Kora offers the bit of information with a certain quiet gravity.

"I can tell you the story, if you want."

[Trent Brumby] "I know the way Garou eat," Trent tells her in his defense. "There's no such thing as too much food." Especially, it seems, when they are in the middle of healing. He should have got more meat, more carbs, less worried about feeding some vegetables and getting a balanced diet. They're Garou for Gaia's sake, they can just about eat anything. They don't have to worry about any sort of vitamin deficiencies. Oh well.

Then comes the question, statement, of him smoking. To this he has a slight apologetic look, and as he walks out into the night air again, tells her; "I'll get some more of those patches." The nicotine ones that helped him quit last time. Being at home when he was healing hadn't done him any favours, and then trying to get back into work, it left him bored. Smoking, drinking. Or maybe it was that and something else. A particular argument that has never been raised again. Accepted and moved on, at least on the surface.

"You're welcome, Roman." Casting the other a glance, he couldn't help but look at the others blistered and healing chest. It looked painful and when he looked up, there was that glimmer of sympathy and worry in his eyes. He hated feeling helpless. That poor kid. Poor Kora.

Scruffing a hand through his black hair, he moved to settle down on the steps with the two of them, resting with his forearms resting into his thighs. Pale grays glanced over the neighbourhood. His car was parked out on the curb, but he looked beyond it, over the rough area that they called their home.

A glance is given over to Roman, brows raised with a quiet interest, before he shifts his gaze to Kora. "If he and you'd like to share it." Trent always listens. He lays awake in bed while she tells him stories while laying in the crook of his arm, with a possessive arm and leg over him. She tells him so that they are remembered and he listens so that she's comforted by that.

[Trent Brumby] [half hour warning, then I got to bail. I'd much rather stay, personally. A seven year old's birthday is not how I'd like to spend a Saturday. LOL. ]
to Kora, Roman Turner

[Roman Turner] "Telling the tales is what she was born to do. It's what she has to do."

He nodded towards Kora and gingerly sat down to dangle his legs over the edge of the porch. Shifting to be social was a pain, but you did what you had to do for those you cared about. So he sat and began to eat. His was a very calm and even disposition and as long as they didn't start getting all mushy, he was fine.

[Kora] Between the door and the steps, when they're still alone, when Trent tells her that he will get the patches, she looks back up at him, her dark eyes lingering on his pale ones, brief and searching. She looks at him the way she always does: clear and direct. There's a promise there, too, subtle as it is, not as a demand. I remember or I know or something like it.

--

There's a half-devoured quart of pepper steak on her tap, the paper container resting on a napkin on her jean-clad knees. Kora has unsheahted the chopsticks and uses them with a certain sort of familiar dexterity, scooping up bits of steak, pepper and onion.

The story is brief and she tells it quietly. Her voice doesn't feel like velvet tonight, unless it is velvet chafed by sandpaper until it pills and piles up, the rough understructure of the weave turned over by the friction.

"We were in the old Eagle pack house. I was showing Roman the shrine to sparrow - not," a faint flash of humor, lingering, "his cousin, when the wind stirred. Not the wind, just a small one, so small it couldn't have come from the window. So we crossed over - "

And so on, she tells the story quietly. How they crossed over and found a spirit, an air spirit, desperate to find Garou. There was a battle, it told them, at the River, a battle for the River, fought by the elementals - fire and water and air - a battle that the elementals were losing.

So they ran, following the spirit, through the city's reflection until they came to the edge of the Chicago River, and found a monstrous thing made of oil, pollution and trash, amorphous and grotesque, a giant bane fighting the a fire spirit, spreading its filth over the river.

And they fought: Kora and Roman, just Kora and Roman, they charged into the battle, tore at the giant oil-slick. Then, she says, quiet, looking sidelong at her mate, her dark eyes clear. She wants to share this with him, here on the steps of the church, with her packmate by her side. She was swallowed by it, and everything was black. It devoured her, filled her eyes and her nose and her mouth, and she was stuck it in, struggling to pull herself free.

- she felt heat, a rush of it in the darkness, and then the whole thing collapsed around her, this rain of poison, ooze and filth - all the trash that people have discarded into the river, thoughtlessly, beer cans and barbie dolls, toilet seats and fast food containers, and oil, and chemicals, and poison.

And she found Roman, badly burned, humanskinned, floating in the river, only his nose and mouth above the water. Near enough to dead that she did not know, at first, whether he was dead or alive.

--

She's quiet then, Kora, glancing from her mate to her packmate, watching them in the dying light. Then, quietly pushing her chopsticks into the mass of her remaining meal, she turns over her right hand and opens it to Trent, seeking his while her eyes linger on Roman. "The spirits of the River, the water elementals - healed him. And cleansed the poison from me, before it could do any worse."

That's what happened. Kora's quiet after that, content to eat with them, please enough to be alive with them both.

[Trent Brumby] He listens, his gaze switching between the two of them, considering what had happened. Imagining it. It's not anything that he can really wrap his mind around either. He knows, this words are true, the story is real, but it's still hard to believe it. How they can go through that and then sit and eat take out on the church step, ready to do it all again.

Curling his fingers around her hand, he lifts it and kisses it without much thought of her possible embarrassment. "I'm glad that the two of you made it through," he says in genuine honesty. There is a look across to Roman, he's included in this. He doesn't just say it for the hell of it. Trent is open with his thoughts.

"I'd appreciate if you'd show me how to give proper thanks," this is as he's looking off, over the neighbourhood. "I don't know anything about spirits or Gods. But if you could give me a few tips, I'd like to show my gratitude." Not just for this time, but for others too.

[Roman Turner] "I ain't so sure I want to see this proper thanks thing. Ain't proper for someone to watch something like that between a man and a woman. Besides, that's like thinking about my ma and pa doing it. And that scars my mind to think about."

He actually shuddered.

[Kora] The sun is low in the west, now - the shadows are long, and the light somes through only in these small, brilliant patches between the long lines of the buildings. It's that hour of the evening - just before dusk - when everything in the countryside is golden. In the city, things are different, but the windows of the buildings, of Trent's sedan parked by the curb, are incandescent with light, brilliant with the dying glow of it, amidst the broken bottles, the drifting trash, the pavement and pollution and grinding poverty.

Trent lifts their twined hands, kisses the back of hers, and she's still, close enough that he can feel the heat of her body, not so close that they touch, except where their fingers intertwine. Then Roman makes his comment about proper thanks and Kora shoots a look across Trent at the injured Ragabash, her nostrils flaring in that striae between humor and irritation, the line that no-moons have to tread.

"He means," she says, swallowing back a cough from her blistered throat. All that poison she breathed in, as she struggled in the dark, " - he means to give thanks to the River, for healing us. Not - "

and then it is clear, that the shuddering young no-moon had indeed hit his mark, straight-on target. Trent has never seen Kora blush, but she flushes not, blood suffusing underneath her pale, still faintly sallow skin.

Her mouth sets in a line as she composes herself, then, another glance from garou to kin, before she offers earnest and quiet, "They're so alien, you know? The river spirits called me "Thing made mostly of water." And the air spirit called us sacks of meat that become great and hairy sacks of meat. But I've been thinking about that, too. WE gives sparrows water and food so that they'll take messages back and forth for us, when we need them, yeah?

"The river healed us, the water elementals in it - and that bane was full of trash and poison. Maybe we need to - " the faintest of shrugs, nearly diffident, because it sounds so easy, " - start cleaning it up. You know, the trash from the shallows and the banks would be a good place to start. Here, on this side."

[Roman Turner] "Trash spirit wants more junk."

He mumbled the information around a mouthful of rice.

"Though where to put it all is another question."

[Trent Brumby] For what its worth Trent lifts his spare hand to cough his laugh into it, struggling to keep a straight face at Roman's remark. He knows he needs not to laugh, especially when Kora blushes. Clearing his throat, he lowered his hand back down, giving Kora's a squeeze.

He listens to what she suggests and he sort of figured that answer himself, but doesn't question her on it yet. For now he merely nods and accepts it. "I'll see what I can do, organize something. Some sort of working bee. People will come and help if there's free food or something." It's an idea, anyway.

[Kora] "Adrian's in grad school, and Izzy's in the Police Department," Kora says, stubbornly, cutting another stark sort of look from Trent to Roman, and back again. Her blush is fading, if gradually, underneath her pale skin. She's sitting rather straighter, though, right through the spine, the humor living in her body, underneath her embarrassment, when Roman pokes, and Trent struggles to swallow his laugh. " - if they gave you a hand, got volunteers from the university and the PD, or some sort of sponsorship, I bet you'd get a lot of just," then, the faintest of shrugs, her narrow shoulders moving underneath her t-shirt. "normal people. Yeah. The river borders our territory, anyway. It goes right past, all the way. I hadn't even considered until this what was in it, but yeah. I like the idea. What isn't recyclable, we'll take to the trash heap spirit."

She squeezes his hand again, loosely linked with her own, then extricates her fingers to begin attacking her Chinese food again. Later, she'll retrieve the ice cream from the coolers, giving a pint to Roman, keeping a pint of her own, wheedling Trent to take a bite here and there. Or insisting, quiet and sure. Before he leaves, Kora will give him directions to the old Eagle packhouse, with the birdbaths and bird feeders they tend in the front yard, telling him where the seed is kept, and that the water works inside the building, though she does not know for how much longer. And ask him to care for it in her stead, until she and Roman are healed, cleaning out the bath, filling it up. Filling each feeder with thistle from the plastic tubs stored inside.

And so on.

[Trent Brumby] [okay guys, I've got to bail. Assume Trent is fine company and promises to organize something with kinfolk and humans, and does as Kora's asked! Ride is expected any moment. Thanks for the scene!]

[Roman Turner] He got that kind of blank look that sometimes came when folk he didn't know were mentioned. Figuring lover boy Trent knew who Kora was talking about. Only now and then did he come up for air from chowing down.

[Roman Turner] ((take care!))

[Kora] [That is perfect. (gins) I'm calling it a scene!]