Ornature

Since Erich's first tour of the Gray family home, some progress has been made in turning it back into the sort of place real people might live. The front parlor is still shrouded in dust covers, as is the front music room, but the den and library are entirely uncovered, as is the massive dining room and the cozy breakfast nook, both of which smell strongly of wood oil and lemon-polish.

There's no staff, not that he can see. Not the way he might expect in a home this size, inhabited by Silver Fangs proper enough to own a home like this one, which has changed hands a half-dozen times and no more since it was first built in the early decades of the nineteenth century, and then only through inheritence. Never sold. Still, someone keeps the place clean.

And that someone is not Charlotte.

Who still does not know how to wash clothes, but can tell him where the laundry area is (vaguely) if he wants to throw in a load of wash while crashing. Downstairs, in the basement, beside the wine cellar. Because of course there's a wine cellar.

There is a little bar cart in the den, too, with Scotch and soda and sherry and gin and a variety of liqueurs. Including Grand Marnier, which Charlotte urges him to try. It tastes like orange juice had a birthday party.

--

Most of the bedrooms (and there are an astonishing number of bedrooms full of antiques and plush feather beds and not a flatscreen to be seen) are still closed down, curtains closed, antique quilts covering bare mattresses, the faint twinned scents of mothballs and furniture polish hanging in the air. Charlotte gives Erich what seems to be a master bedroom. Or one of them, a huge room at the back of the house with an expansive view of the garden below, a huge, old-fashioned sleigh bed in the center of the room, oil paintings and watercolors on the walls, a fainting couch and dressing table littered artfully with a silver-handled mirror-and-brush set and a pair of antique perfume atomizers.

A bathroom ensuite, the massive clawfoot tub amply supplied by french-milled soaps and bathsalts arrayed in elegant profusion on a mirrored tray on the vanity top.

This is far from Erich's first time being a houseguest. One advantage of being a reasonably lovable nine foot monster of doom is that your friends tend to invite you to follow them home. Come to think of it, nearly everyone he's befriended in this city has extended him an invitation. Even Jake's having him over for dinner. The only glaring exception is, of course, Ingrid. Who's Ingrid. So one wouldn't really expect her to extend invitations of any sort.

However, the point is: this isn't Erich's first time being a houseguest, but it's certainly his first time being a guest in a house like this. The closest thing he can bring to mind is an old-fashioned haunted house, which of course isn't particularly flattering. But really, it's much nicer than a haunted house. It just has that same sense of mystery and age, stories stretching back across generations.

And he has a suite! He would have been quite happy with a broom closet downstairs, but Charlotte is a Silver Fang, a gracious hostess, and he gets what he thinks guiltily might actually be the master's bedroom. He'd asked while she showed him around last night:

wait, where do you sleep?

and was only satisfied to take the room he was offered after being assured -- with visual evidence -- that her room was as large and grand. Or, if it wasn't, then at least comfortable and cozy and to her liking. He didn't bring a lot of luggage: he has a backpack with a change of clothes and his toothbrush. Everything else is in the back of the Mustang parked incongruously in the driveway. Besides, the bathroom is stocked.

Erich orders pizza. He insists: she offers her home, he gets dinner. She makes him try the Grand Marnier, which he does, and it's quite good but he really thinks beer goes better with pizza. There's more sausage in the fridge, which they snack on later, and sometime rather late at night they retreat to their respective rooms to sleep.

He wonders, as he's falling asleep, if he's her first houseguest. This city seems full of lone, lonely wolves and their kin.

The next morning -- well; no. The next morning, he simply sleeps through. And then he gets up and soaks in the tub for a very long time. Afterward, to be polite, he strips the bed and wads the bedding up in a ball. His footsteps thump down the stairs at half past one in the afternoon. The front door slams a little later, and then again two minutes after that. He goes into the wine cellar and finds the laundry room and puts the sheets in the washer, along with a small load of laundry. Small because he doesn't have very many articles of clothing, to be truthful -- not because he's washed them very recently at all.

And he's brought his own detergent. It's the cheap powdered sort, a gigantic costco-sized box of it, which he measures out and dumps in. As the washer starts up, Erich heads upstairs to look for Charlotte.

Charlotte's room is not quite so grand, but so thoroughly littered with her things, which are arrayed in the sort of profusion with which a hurricane levels its bounty of flotsam and jetsam, that he cannot help but imagine her perfectly (entirely) comfortable in it. There is an empty hornet's nest on the rolltop desk and a snapshot taped up to the antique mirror and a mostly intact spine, all strange articulations, atop a shimmering, silvery dress that looks far too grown-up and adult for the young theurge, and a view of the garden, the fat trunk of the old oak that dominates the backyard front and center from her view.

So Erich can feel perfectly at ease that he has not displaced her. ("Oh that's Philip's room," she might have informed him, nose wrinkled with a faint distaste, if he inquired. And who was Philip? "Our mother." With a roll of her eyes. Her real name's Philippa, Charlotte explains if necessary, dislike palpable in her voice. "We just call her that.")

--

Erich finds last night's "We" in this morning's kitchen. This afternoon's kitchen, Charlotte in a t-shirt (red riding hood, wearing a wolfskin, uncovering a gun from her basket) and boxers that reveal the long lines of her legs. Her hair is mussed, more blond than pink now, she is seated atop the center island, legs swinging, fuzzy-pink slipper-socks hitting the cabinets beneath the island with every-other sweep of her legs. Either she, too, is just waking or she has been lounging around the house all day in her pajamas.

Charles, the much-talked about brother, is refilling a travel mug with Dartmouth insignia from the brewstation (Keurigs are wasteful, after all) on the countertop, chatting with Charlotte quietly enough that all Erich hears as he trudges up the basement steps in the murmur of voices.

Both turn as one as the basement door opens, and though she is fair and he is dark, the resemblance is striking and immediately, particularly to his lupine senses. The same blood. The same sharp profile, the same pale eyes. Such a startling sensation, so see the likeness overlaid from one to the other, when otherwise they are so different. Charles is dark-haired where Charlotte is blond, and rather tall, broad-shouldered, masculine in that Ivy-League-Lacrosse-Player way. In that Bobby Kennedy-flag-football way, and while she always seems to have a wreathing look of startlement lurking at the edges of her features, Charles has the direct bonhomie of a born politician, of a knight-king.

Already he's flashing an edge of teeth, white, shifting the travel mug to his off hand in order to extend the right to Erich with several strides across the kitchen.

"Erich, right?" Not quite looking him in the eyes, but familiar enough with the blast of rage, the weight of it that he does not show many physical signs of its assault. Charles' hand is calloused, but not heavily. His clothing easy, casual, expensive. "Charles, Charlotte was telling me we had a guest. Glad to meet you."

They both have something of the stature and air of college athletes, Erich and Charles. But where Charles is all Dartmouth Lacrosse, Yale Crew, Erich is ... Fightin' Irish football. He's Big Red. He's Michigan Blue. There's something big and solid and unrefined and hearty and cornfed about him. His coloring and chiseling is all upper-Midwest -- or, really, north Europe: very blond, very blue-eyed, very stark bones.

He's a little surprised to see Charles. He hadn't expected the man, and though it's ridiculous -- it's his house, after all, as much as it's Charlotte's -- some animal part of Erich tenses on instinct. Bristles a bit. It's a stranger! He's on a friend's territory! Detergent box still under one arm, he stands stiff in the doorway of the kitchen for just a beat, just a second or two.

Then he remembers his manners. And his humanity. Charles approaches, and he shifts the detergent box out of the way. The offered hand is taken readily, solidly, shaken but not exactly squeezed or clenched or anything silly like that. He'd never do that, of course not. "Hey," he says, feeling a little self-conscious now because everything here is so expensive, and then scolding himself for feeling like that. Visibly, he draws himself a little straighter.

"Yep," he adds. "I'm the stray pup Charlotte brought home. And I know who you are." He nods at Charlotte, smiling. "You guys look just like each other. Sort of. Plus she talks about you all the time.

"You're at Georgetown, right? Doing ... like ... post-graduate stuff?"

"We get that alot," another flash of his teeth, as Charles releases Erich's hand and stands back from the Shadow Lord. "From you folks, at least. The resemblance isn't quite as obvious to the rest of the world."

Which is also objectively true, though Erich can no more divorce himself from his wolf-senses than Charlotte can divide herself from whatever madness animates her mind in its darkest corners. Charles' pale blue eyes flick unconsciously back to Charlotte when Erich names himself a 'stray pup.' Something in the look, some crease of concern or even a vague sense of pity, suggests that Charlotte's brother sees her as the stray pup in any such interchange between the pair of Garou.

"You're welcome anytime. It's good to see her," and his eyes are still on Charlotte, who is comfortable enough with her brother that she either does not notice of has chosen to overlook entirely the still-vaguely patronizing air about him, when he speaks of her, to this big and solid stranger, with a detergent box under one arm, stiff in the basement doorway, the faint, musty odor of the cool below-ground air wafting up behind him. A glance back then, to Erich, this one far more direct than the first. " - making friends.

"I should warn you, we have a housekeeper of sorts, who lives in the carriage house at the moment. She's kin, but if you see the gardening crew, it's safe to assume they're not. And yeah, I'm working on a Master's in Public Policy at the moment. Interning on the Hill, too. Which reminds me,"
Charles turns back to Charlotte, and bends over, kissing her gently, even tenderly on the temple. "I have to run. Tell Mrs. H I won't be home for dinner, and I have a seminar tomorrow morning so brunch is off. But I'll free up some time soon."

Charlotte is mute throughout the exchange, but she leans into her brother's chaste kiss like a wolf pup, thoughtlessly physical, then sits back as Charles grabs his briefcase and laptop bag and refilled coffe and juggles it all while reaching out once more for Erich's hand. This time, not just a shake but a fairly heart slap.

"Sorry I've gotta run, but it's good to finally meet you, man." Says Charles, as if he and Erich were already old friends or maybe future golfing buddies, in the passing way of a practiced politician, already on his way down the hall and eventually out the door. "Seriously, come back any time."

Charlotte just keeps sitting there, legs swinging in a haphazard rhythm broken apart every time her heels hit the cabinets. When the front doors of the home have closed behind Charles, she looks back to Erich and tells him, solemnly,

"His real name's Dolphus."

with such a round-eyed look that it is difficult to read whether her intention is mocking or simply bemused and informative.

Then she stops her legs swinging and points to the detergent box Erich has been shifting around in his arms with one fuzzy-pink-sock-clad big toe.

"What's that!"

You folks, Charles says, and Erich's back goes right back up. He wants to be all you people? what do you mean YOU PEOPLE? -- but then he figures it out; Charles doesn't mean Shadow Lords or German-Americans or people not rich enough to be a part of my country club. He means Garou. Which he supposes is fair enough; they do sometimes call themselves the Nation, the People. Erich grins a slightly strained sort of grin.

He's welcomed to the house, then, and all but thanked for befriending Charles's poor, socially-inept, slightly dotty little sister. He's warned about the mundane servants, and then there's something about the schedule and the brunch and all that, and then Charles is zooming.

Erich sort of waves to Charles as Charles heads out the door to his very busy schedule and his very important day. Then he turns back to Charlotte. Ninety seconds with this big brother of hers that she talks about so much, that she sort of kind of follows around and worships, and he's starting to understand just why she thought she --

she, blood-heir (albeit very distant) to the Silver Crown, scion of wolf-kings, wolf-queen in her own right

-- thought she had to cross the street to avoid a group of teenage proto-thugs. His brow is a bit furrowed. He doesn't laugh at the name joke. He starts to say something, but then she points at his detergent and he's

just

gobsmacked.

"Are you serious?" He looks down at the box; maybe it's morphed into green cheese. "This is laundry detergent. I'm washing the sheets off your mom's bed, and I'm washing some t-shirts and a couple pairs of jeans too. And some socks and undies. And my

hoodie."

An ever-so-faint stiffening of her spine, the supple networking of a spreading and liminal defensiveness that curls like a taut hand around her spine when Erich does not laugh at her joke. Which is both a joke and implicitly true. Someone named them Eulalia and Dolphus and expected them to wander around through life with those names. To smile and shake hands and offer toasts and sign whatever documents their accountants prepared for them to sign with those names. No wonder they retreated to the inner provinces of their names, came up with Charles and Charlotte, close enough that she still thinks of him, sometimes, as her twin. Even if he is a half-dozen years older.

Even if something between them is broken enough that he handles her with distant care, an affectionate condescension clear enough that a stranger and an Ahroun and a Shadow Lord can see that Charlotte's brother thinks she is the sort of Garou who needs to be protected.

All of this is subtle and sublimated, a bracing sort of subdural awareness until Erich's shock over Charlotte's lack of - ah, knowledge of the ordinary domestic arts - stops him before he's begun.

"Oh!" Says Charlotte, sliding down from the island now, her feet nearly silent on the marble floor. "You didn't have to. Mrs. H would've done that. Your things, too. That's pretty much her job.

"She used to have the job of telling us what silverware to use when so hopefully they'll need her for that again soon and she'll go away. She has special stuff that gets blood out. You could ask her about it. I bet she'd tell you."

A furrowed brow, then, the girl's pale eyes dropping to the detergent box as she pads across the kitchen to the fridge.

"Why are you carrying it around, though?"

"Nah," Erich says with a small but emphatic shake of his head, "I'm a guest and I oughta clean up after myself. It's how I grew up. I'd feel weird leaving it there for your Mrs. H." A pause, a quirk, "Salt. You can make a thick paste out of salt and a little bit of water and use that to scrub a bloodstain out. But I don't have any to scrub out right now, so it's cool."

Another bewildering question falls out of her mouth. He blurts a laugh, which he's quick to swallow because he doesn't want to embarrass her.

"Because it's mine," he replies. "I brought it in from my car and I was gonna take it back out later, but I figured I'd come say hello first so you didn't think I was planning on sneaking out or something. Plus I heard voices."

This time the pause is a bit longer.

"So uh, your brother ... you should tell him about what happened last night." Almost offhand, that. He comes into the kitchen finally, setting the detergent box down on the ground beside the island. "Do you have any eggs? I'll make use omelettes."

That's how he was raised. That's how he grew up.

Charlotte cants her head at Erich as he explains that he would feel weird leaving dirt sheets behind for the help. The expectations of a guest. There is the suggestion of something shrewd behind her great round eyes, something about the gleam, the precision in the way she watches him as he shakes his head. Not his features, so much, the quirk of his brow, the quickening of the lines of his mouth as he swallows back a half-blurted laugh so as not to embarass Charlotte-of-the-bewildering-questions with his laughter.

She does not explain that that was not how she grew up. That where she grew up, guests were announced by a herald on formal dining occasions and children spent hours learning the complex place settings of all manner of formal dining traditions with neither value nor worth in anything like the real world, but enough seriousness that Mrs. H wielded a cane with a cracking aim and enough force to draw blood from the knuckles at those willful enough to ignore a runcible spoon in favor of a butter knife for the formal game of consuming grapefruit in the morning room on a Sunday during a hunting holiday, and only the servants, sometimes seen, rarely heard, cleaned up after anyone, ever.

What she says is, "Okay." A little half-smile on her mouth, that he'd feel weird leaving it to Mrs. H. The heart-breaker/heart-breaking sort that lingers in the curve of her cheeks long after the expression has drifted back into her native, strange solemnity. And, "I wouldn't think that, anyway. Even if you did sneak out, I'd think you were going out for a Meatzza.

"Eggs are in the fridge," she continues, lifting her chin in the direction of the appliance. "I'm glad you know how to make omelettes. I was gonna offer to make us bowls of cereal but you couldn't eat them. Not even the good ones like Reese's peanut butter puffs."

Charlotte rummages about the fridge for eggs and omelet fixings while Erich slams through the myriad kitchen cabinets for the omelet pan. Or the cast-iron frying pan, heavy and well-seasoned. The faintly companionable hum of employment as Erich sets about making omelets and Charlotte pours milk and juice and sets about watching the Ahroun make omelets. Long enough and quiet enough and comfortable enough that when Charlotte picks up his conversational thread and adds a few more stitches, the reference may be hard to place at first.

"About those guys?" The defensiveness has worked itself out. Her eyes are fixed on his big frame, his back and broad shoulders, as he cooks. She asks him, not because she thinks she should, but because she wants to know, "Why?"

Her voice is clear and low. Her eyes, were he to look back at her, the color of an unstuck sky.

Charlotte doesn't watch the Ahroun for long. Erich rummages about getting ingredients out -- eggs, half a dozen of them all white and oval on the countertop, unless of course Charlotte's fridge was stocked with organic brown eggs from cage-free chickens; Italian sausage, the real kind that you cut open and squeeze out in blebs; a chunk of ham; a few strips of bacon. And then, because he does remember what it was like to not eat just meat: colorful mini bell peppers, spinach, and a small block of cheddar cheese.

Also, an eggbeater. And a big bowl. And a cutting board, and the biggest knife in the kitchen, and a cheese grater.

"C'mere," he says, while she's asking him why. He grabs the block of cheese, swipes it twice down the grater to show her how it works, and then hands it over to her. "Grate about half the block. And," meanwhile, he starts dicing the ham and then the peppers, "because. He should know his baby sister's not just his baby sister anymore. You're a grown-ass Garou."

So she slides back down from the center island when summoned, Charlotte, head canted curiously as Erich instructs her in the art of cheese-grating. A narrow little line between her brows (which may merely mean that she is concentrating), narrow shoulders squared. When Erich hands over the grater and the block of cheese, she nods once, and so solidly it seems nearly comical in its good-little-soldier solemnity.

"I think he knows." Charlotte, quiet, the faint hint of a frown deepening as she concentrates on long sweeps of the cheese block over the grater. Only occasionally catching her knuckles on the sharp metal. There's an edge of tension in her, more felt than see. Peripheral to Erich, as he chops and she grates. "Sometimes he just forgets?

"But I guess I haven't done anything to, uh. Remind him lately."

Then she lifts up the grater, spilling the mound of grated cheese over the marble countertop. "Is that enough?"

"Okay," Erich says, agreeably enough, and leaves the matter there for Charlotte to ruminate over, act on or forget as she pleased. A glance at her small pile of grated cheese: "Yup. That's good. Help me finish chopping these peppers while I wash the spinach and whisk the eggs. Watch your fingers."

The ham's in a haphazard little pile at the edge of the big chopping board already. He's marked by his upbringing, and by the belief that a meal worked for tastes better, but there are little kindnesses here. Meat's harder to cut than peppers.

"So, this your first time making an omelette?"

[i]Okay[/i], says Erich, and leaves it there. Charlotte steals a sideglance at the Ahroun. A half-step back from the counter, so that his profile is cheated away from her and the cut of his cheekbone, and the line of his jaw dominate. It is a precise, flickering sort of look that ends at the knife in his hands as he hands it over to her and they trade places, the sink for the chopping board.

A small, faintly pleased smile on her face that is both thoughtful and far away. Which lingers as she takes up the knife, uh, in various two-handed variations, slowly cutting the pepper into pieces with a great deal of concentration and effort.

Is this her first time making an omelette?

"Uhm, yeah? The only time I ever went into the kitchens at Clingstone was when I was stealing cereal cookies or eggs to hollow out or something like that. Cook didn't like us underfoot," and Charlotte had more important things to learn, like the order in which one would seat titled guests, and which of the half-dozen goblets at a formal place setting was for white wine, and which for red. " - and uh, at the Sept and when I was in my pack I guess there was always someone else to do it."

She finishes with a sharp little shrug, a sweeping glance back at him as he cracks eggs into the stoneware bowl. "Where'd you learn to cook?"

"My mom taught me to make mac'n'cheese when I was about five." He can tell, just by the way the knife thunks against the board and by how uneven the rhythm is, that she's doing it all wrong over there. "I mean, it was just boxed Kraft mac'n'cheese, but I guess it counts. I think learning to make hardboiled and scrambled eggs came next.

"Omelettes I actually figured out myself after I hit the road. I ran out of money halfway through Iowa and stayed a couple days washing dishes at a diner. I watched the cook make omelettes and then tried it myself later on."

He scoops the loose spinach leaves into a strainer and lifts it out of the sink, sluicing water. The sink drains and he leaves the strainer-and-spinach atop a washcloth to catch the excess water. Coming back over, he takes the knife from her -- "Hold it like this," and cuts a few times in demonstration, "and cut like this, down and forward, down and forward. Don't pull when you cut, push. And if you can't get through whatever you're cutting in one clean slice, you need to stop and whet your knife. Don't ever saw at anything. That's the easiest way to slip and slice off a finger."

He hands the knife back. And then he starts breaking eggs, all six of them one after another.

"What happened with your pack?"

"That's cool," returns Charlotte, diffident, not envious, precisely. That would be wrong. Momentarily, acutely aware of the differences in their lives. She tries to imagine five-year-old Erich, Erich small, Erich miniaturized in a kitchen with his mother, and the eggs, but has no frame of reference for his midwestern mother and midwestern kitchen, and all that populates in her mind are the buzzing kitchens full of humming servants, Cook and her kitchen maids and polished copper pots.

The heat from the ovens, the sense that within each world she could see was a whole other world she never would. "I mean, with your mom and stuff? Philip never taught us anything. Did she teach you how to wash dishes too?" The last is lilting, quite nearly sly, as she steps back and surrenders her knife to him for instruction.

Charlotte watches the demonstration closely and seriously, and gives another one of those serious little nods she takes the chef's blade back and begins anew. More slowly, but following his instructions as closely as she can.

"Uhm, Lauren - " the chopping sounds abate as she glances up and over at Erich's profile again. Debating whether to tell him that he reminds her of Lauren, for no reason she can name. " - she was a full moon? Like you? Her name was Bright Evening Star, but we mostly just called her Bright Star. She was Alpha.

"But we went on this thing. I mean, they sent us as part of this mission?" Her voice is spare, just a bit remote. Charlotte is no Galliard, and she tells the story at an un-literary remove, as if she were laying out points of an outline that might help make sense of a chaotic smear of memories. As if she could order things with the sparest retelling, and make it make sense to a stranger. "It was just supposed to be easy or something. Not easy I mean, but - " a faint, helpless little shrug. " - there were more than we thought. And Lauren died. Came back and died again. Ryland too. And without her - "

Charlotte has stopped chopping now, the knife is still poised in her hand, tip on the cutting board, her free hand a sort of fulcrum above the blade.

"It wasn't really a pack. Merlin left. I guess some of the others made a new pack? But not me. I mean, I didn't blame them or anything. But it was a good pack for a couple years."

There's a pause, still. Then the chopping resumes again, just as deliberate as before.

"I really miss her."

This conversation would be painful if their hands weren't busy. That's the nice thing about work -- work with your hands, work with your body. It occupies you and redirects you, and you have an excuse not to look at your friend, not to stare at her and pry into her soul, as she stops working and tells you a very sad -- but increasingly commonplace, in these increasingly desperate days -- sort of story.

There's nothing mechanical or stiff about Erich, though. There's no sense that he's avoiding eye contact out of awkwardness. The rhythmic ting!ting!ting! of the metal whisk hitting the bowl continues at its leisurely, practiced rhythm; he's done this enough to know it's not necessary to actually whip the eggs in a frenzy. He's just watching his work because it's his work. And because this gives Charlotte a bit of privacy, a bit of space. When she's done his mouth moves a little, a wry sort of smile. He glances at her then and the smile becomes a real one.

"She's the one that said Ahrouns should clean up too, right? My mom would have liked her." He taps the whisk a few times against the side of the bowl, then sets it in the sink. "I'd miss her too."

And there it is again. Fenrir-born understatement, German-American pragmatism; whichever it is. Simple, plainspoken, honest compassion, stopping just shy of anything so florid as sympathy or -- god forbid -- pity. Erich doesn't hug Charlotte or anything, but he does nudge her with his elbow as he's heading for the stove.

"Come on. You can finish chopping the peppers while the first omelette cooks. I want you to see how to start it up." Because he's not just making her work, see. He's teaching her.

Erich glances at Charlotte; and she senses the movement and looks back up at him. Her own smile seems both tremulous and solid. Rooted somehow, and she affirms his question about Ahrouns cleaning up with a mute but vigorous nod. The sort that sends the cropped fragments of her pink sweeping around her face.

Her pale eyes are a clear gray in that moment. The color of a rainwashed sky, some sense of the sun, radiant behind the clouds.

Then her gaze flicks away, back down to the pepper strips. They are nearly finished, more peppers than she's likely to eat, but something about finishing this mundane and thoughtless task seems important to her in just that moment, so she bends over and rocks the blade through the remaining pieces, carefully and precisely and just as close to the way Erich showed her as she can. And it is close: Charlotte has nimble fingers. She's good with her hands. She was good with her hands the night they cleaned up the bodies; knew where they good separate a joint to make the grim work that much easier. Peeled back the grown-over flesh from the muted faces with a light little hand, frowning at the way the growth had otherwise invaded human anatomy, to make something grotesque and entirely Other.

Erich does not hug her. He nudges her as he passes by to the stove, and she is still in that moment, except for a little nudge back. She's glad that he does not hug her. She would hate it if he did; if he thought that she needed to be folded up like that, drawn in. If he thought that she could not bear her own pain.

But she is also perversely struck by the urge to hug him. To jump up and throat her arms around his neck from behind as he stands at the stove, the way his sister would if she ever had the chance to see him again. If he came walking up her driveway someday, changed by time but still tied to her by blood and home and memory.

It is an urge she swallows. One she physically swallows, sealing her mouth in a flattened line.

"Okay," nod-nod, just the two, and she puts down the knife and scoots over to the big gas stove, her chin lifted a she watches him make the first omelette.

She's quiet, then, watching with those wide, pale eyes, all silent at his elbow, attentive and, in her way, still. It's not until he goes to flip the omelet that she speaks up again, stealing another glance at Erich's profile. "Uhm, did you ever have a pack like that? I mean, that you liked or something?"

He's not silent as he cooks. He explains what he's doing: a little oil in the pan, first. Then the peppers and the sausage, because they take longest to cook. After that, the spinach, because it wilts fast, and the ham, because it's already done. Then the egg, and she has to jiggle the pan a little or else there might be parts where the toppings are stuck to the pan!

After that there's a bit of lag time. Now and then he shows her how to tilt the pan and raise the omelette to help everything gel faster. When the omelette's no longer stuck to the pan, goes to flip it, and she asks him --

what she asks him. Which makes him glance at her, a quick unguarded look.

"Nah. Not really. I've run in some temporary packs, but it was just for the sake of safety or convenience, or because war was at hand. I haven't really stayed in one place long enough to have a real pack. I guess I'm sort of a free agent too. I'm not much of a leader. But I'm not good at staying in line, either. I can fall in when necessary, but ... staying is the problem."

A flick of his wrist flips the omelette neatly. He grabs a handful of cheese, sprinkles it on, and then folds the omelette over before sliding it out onto a plate. And then he surrenders the pan to Charlotte, pulling up a stool to watch her cook (or try to).

"I mean, Ingrid and I -- you met her that night I think, the one with the sword? -- we kinda talked a bit about starting a pack a couple months ago, but it never really got off the ground. I think she's sort of the same. Drift-y. Plus I have no idea who between us would be Alpha. Neither of us are cut out for it."

"Hmm." Charlotte, she takes the omelette pan in hand and eyes the ingredients. The squat plastic bottle of oil, the blobs of Italian sausage, fennel and sage sharp enough notes in the porkfat that she can smell them from here, separate out the notes if she closes her eyes. The bits of pepper and spinach, all of it, with the sort of frowning skepticism that a chiropractor might apply to a tray full of surgical implements, told he must perform an appendectomy after watching one helpful video.

She takes up the sausage and squeezes it into the pan, in two big blobs. Which she stabs at rather vigorously with a wooden spoon, in some strange pantomime of Ahab trying to harpoon his white whale. The peppers following, sizzling in the heated pan.

A sweeping glance back at him, then, where he hunkers over his well-made omelette, tucked up to the marble counter on a leather stool.

"You fought like a pack," says Charlotte, guileless in her directness. Her features are not blank, not precisely. Instead they're still. A forest-pool stillness strange only as a counterpoint to her usual (aimless) chatter. The corner of her mouth lilts upward, curving her cheek as she turns back to her peppers and sausage, pouring the eggs in, forgetting the spinach until she is half-through the eggs, stuffing the spinch in anyway and beginning to shake the pan to keep it from sticking, so she thinks.

"You could drift together."

"You think you're being subtle with the pack-matchmaking," Erich replies with a smirk, "but you're not."

It bears noting he hasn't started eating his well-made omelette yet. He has a fork on the plate, but he's waiting, watching. Being polite.

"Maybe I'll talk to her about it again. Don't shake the pan so hard, you'll turn it into scrambled eggs. I should've probably started you on that, way easier. What about you?" He's on the previous subject again. "Any prospects for packs, or are you looking for someone to drift together with too?"

Oh, so Erich calls her out on her lack of subtlety. He will not be able to see the rather (self-)indulgent half-smile curving her little mouth as he does, as she can hear the smirk in her voice, but he will see that cut of her shoulder blades against her fitted cotton tee as she offers him a sort of Who, Me? shrug.

"I'd like to have a pack," she is facing away from him, over the stove, drawing her shoulders back as she forces herself to stop shaking the pan so hard. Charlotte finds it creepy the way the egg goes from liquid to solid, the transparent whites turning opaque with the heat. " - to drift together with?" The curve of her cheek against the white cabinets and gleaming silver range hood, her voice is quiet, though, and that stillness has returned a bit. "But it wouldn't be fair to them, I think.

"So no." Another glance back, this one a full glance. She meets his eyes briefly, directly. Nothing coy about her. "I don't think I have any prospects. Anyway, you guys are pretty much the only Garou I know here."

"Not fair to them?" There's a new one. "Why would you say that?"

This time Charlotte does not look back at him. There's a new tension in the articulation of her spine, sharply visible beneath her skin at her collar. She takes a deep breath, drops the wooden spoon, the spatula into the omelet pan, and balances her knuckles at the lip of the stove, away from the blue-white heat of the gas flame.

Another breath, this one more shallow. Bracing.

"I'm a charach." The word is appropriately envenomed. With a crawling, palpable disgust. Something catches her eye outside, in the window above the sink. The bare branches of that oak framed against a gray spring sky. "It's not an epithet that fades away. People remember that."

Now.

That.

Was unexpected.

And the word hangs in the air for a while. For once, Erich doesn't seem to know what to say. Can't seem to find the right words, simple and true, to make this okay, make it accepted, put it aside. It's not even that he's appalled and disgusted, the sinner! It's not like he's a perfect angel, he's never ever ever thought about a female Garou that way, he's totally never cracked a joke about having a puppy crush on Ingrid, nope.

But that's him. And this is her. And it's not a joke, at all. So he's shocked, genuinely surprised. There's a few ticks of silence. Then he clears his throat.

"Yikes. Well, that's about the last thing I would have guessed." A few more beats. A little lamely, he adds, "Thanks for telling me. I mean. Putting your trust in me like that?"

The eggs are starting do something in the pan. Steam or burn or curdle. Charlotte does not know the proper work for it, but she picks up the wooden spoon and pushes them around in the pan so that they will do Less of whatever-it-is. Picks up the spoon in order to have something to hold on to, some movement in which to be engaged while the word hangs in the air, and Erich sits, shocked.

She does not realize that she's been holding her breath until he speaks again, this deep, deep ache asserts itself in her chest.

Erich thanks her for putting her trust in him. Charlotte - frail, strange, child-like, charach Charlotte - just nods - assent, acceptance. Acknowledgement, perhaps, and no more than that.

Then she lifts the pan from the heat and begins scraping the half-scrambled 'omelet' eggs onto the plate when she remembers the cheese. So instead she grabs a handful and drops it onto the nearly cooked, never folded, mostly-scrambled omelet-thing.

Lifts the pan to show him without turning around, and asks, "Like this?"

"It's a pretty good first try," Erich says, which is the nicest way he can say nope. There's another moment of pause. Then --

"Hey."

There's a note in that. It's quiet, but it calls for attention. He waits for her attention: waits for her to turn and face him, even if she doesn't want to, even if there are, onoz, tears in her eyes or something. When she looks at him, he's still perched on the stool, his heels drawn up to the second rung, jeans stretched over his knees.

"So ... back to the question then. Why's that not fair to your pack? I mean. If they knew what they were getting, the good and the bad, that seems pretty fair to me."

Erich says that it is a pretty good first try which is the nicest way to say nope. Which under nearly any other circumstances Our Charlotte would probably take as a yes, or at least some sort of pleasing, implicit approval. Tonight she nods again and scrapes the mess onto a convenient plate, then reaches to turn off the gas. First, of course, accidentially turning it UP.

Before finally operating the dial properly, and turning it all the way to OFF.

Hey, he says, that note in his voice. And she does turn to face him. Charlotte is dry-eyed, though now her irises seem ever-so-slight mismatched. One more blue, and one more gray, than the other. A spare sort of clarity to her features, the hauntingly wide eyes, the neat little chin rising as she looks back at him.

At first, her only answer is a little twinge of her shoulders: a teenager's shallow sort of shrug. The sort parents despise.
"There's an Adren. An Adren Philodox, who hates me. They can fuck you are." Nostrils flare with a short, exhales breath. "I could only pack with someone I like. And I couldn't subject someone I like to - to all'a that.

"So. That's why."

Erich's eyebrows go right up. And he hasn't touched his omelette yet -- in fact, he's going to have to pick most of the veggies out of it because he really should have made a demonstration omelette with all-meat, but he wanted to show her how and when to put the veggies down -- so he hasn't touched his omelette yet, but he sets it aside altogether now. The plate doesn't quite bang down, but it makes a very vehement click.

"That," he pronounces, holding up his hand to count off his fingers, "somehow managed to be emo, paternalistic, and silly at the same time. Which I didn't think was possible up until now, but obviously it is.

"Listen, Charlotte. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has skeletons in their closet. You think one Adren Philodox is bad? The entire Fenrir tribe, with a very few openminded exceptions, thinks I'm a traitor. Most of them prooobably wouldn't mind too much if I had an unfortunate accident at some point. So there's my own warning label. I don't think it makes me unfit to be anyone's packmate. I'm not on my own because I think nobody wants me or I don't deserve to be with anyone because I screwed up once. Because that's silly. And emo.

"And also: condescending and paternalistic to any future-packmates-to-be. Because you're basically telling every other wolf in the world that they don't get a say in any of this. They're too weak to defend themselves against your brand of ignominy and bone-to-be-picked, so you're just going to decide for them and turn them away on principle.

"So there you have it. I think your reasons are dumb. I think there's no reason at all you can't be in a pack. There's no reason at all you, me and Ingrid can't all pack up together -- other than the fact that we're all kinda drift-y noncommittal-y."

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )

There's a flash of something in her eyes, then. A stubborn silver flame, maybe. Her wolf bristling to attention to incandescent life. Charlotte listens to litany of all the things wrong with her (self-indulgent, self-pitying) 'noble' sacrifice, a growingly mulish look on her features, her lower lip curving into the suggestion of a silky pout. Knuckles getting whiter as her grip on the plate grows tighter.

"I think your reasons are dumber!" The girl returns, hotly, slamming her china down to the counter top with enough force that she appears to intend to break the plate. The plate does not shatter, but eggs, half-overcooked, half-under, slop off the plate in every direction.

Then she turns decisively away and starts to slop her eggs into the sink, declaring, "I'm having peanut butter puffs. I hate eggs. Which is not true, but feels good to say. To say with force and vehemence.

"Maybe," Erich says. And then again, thoughtful: "Maybe. But," and he is, against all odds, smiling now, very nearly smirking at her indignant back, "that implies your reasons are dumb. And I'm not the one that just dumped my very first cooking success down the drain because someone called me on my dumbness."

Erich gets up too. He goes over right beside her and starts flicking peppers, tomatoes, and bits of spinach into the drain. My, they're a wasteful bunch today; his mother would have had a fit.

"Anyway," he goes on, "you should think about it a bit. Mull it over. I'm going to too. And then maybe... maaaybe... we can think about packing up. Or not. Because honestly, it's nice to just be friends, too."

The 'dynamically evolving' Columbia Heights on a cool winter's evening, a bite of chill to the air unwelcome after the afternoon's warmth. More than a few of the Section 8 buildings and basement studios and walk-ups and squats and old rowhouses crammed with too many immigrants in too little space on the side streets had windows open, radios playing, children and parents sunning on stoops and the few little patches of brownish grass crammed building and street as the temperature crept up above 60 and the patchy sunlight scattered over the dirty streets, a spare wintry promise of the summer heat to come.

Now it is dark, a biting wind rises out of the northwest, cuts down the radial arteries of the city. Past the shuttered 'artistic venues' and the few local galleries still hanging on the wake of funding cutbacks and kickbacks. Still, the city's alive. Dealers on the corner, prostitutes walking the beat. Locals spilling out of the bars and restaurants to smoke on the corner and argue about the World Baseball Classic. Cuba's unexpected double-defeat by the Netherlands, or this prospect or that one.

There, in a threadbare park, more mud than grass, half the swings no more than chains now, a group of teenagers with weed and pills and maybe a bit of crack to sell hanging out on the spring-loaded horses on the playground right by the intersection have a new target to harass: she doesn't belong here. Slight and absolutely fair and blond beneath the fading pink of her cropped hair, Charlotte is cutting across the park. The hood of her jacket had been up over her head, half-shielding her features, but her quick pace and the sudden blast of the wind have blown it back, ruffled her haphazardly cropped hair into a spun-sugar sort of confection of pink and blond.

The kids are egging each other on, calling out to her in Spanish, English, Spanglish. Mami - says one of them, or more, the word like a chorus she does not really understand. And she's ignoring them, head tucked down, giving them side-eyed looks that are wary, but not feature. Keeping them in view. At least until one of them grabs his crotch. Which has her baring teeth in an animal fashion and speeding up, away from them. Shoulders set against catcalls as she gains the sidewalk and starts across the street.

So that's Erich's sign to swoop in and rescue the damsel, right? And he would. If she were kin. Well, if she were any kin but Celia de Luca, who would probably not only take care of herself but chew him out for trying to rescue her. But she's not kin -- she's not even kin of the Celia-de-Luca persuasion -- and so across the street, coming out of his favorite little cheapass Mexican-American greasy spoon diner with a doggie bag in his hand

(hold the jokes, please.)

and his car keys in the other hand, Erich just kind of quirks an eyebrow at Charlotte hurrying across the street. And then he moves to intercept her point of alighting on the sidewalk.

"Why don't you just make them piss their pants?" he queries. The bag in his hand smells heavily of food. Meaty, greasy food. Not much corn tortilla-smell, though. He's not much of a grain eater. "You could if you wanted to."

"Hey! - " that's from five or ten feet away, as Erich emerges from his favorite Mexican diner, the grease already staining the bag and staining the air with the scent of his steak fajitas, holding everything except the beef. There's a quirk to her mouth, a certain gleam of greeting in Charlotte's eyes that has her footsteps lighter somehow. The Silver Fang even gives Erich a little wave, pale fingertips dotted against the dark cotton of her hoodie.

That grin wavers a bit as Erich asks her why she doesn't just make the humans piss their pants; her nose wrinkles and then her expression disappears from all but his peripheral view as she cuts a look back across her shoulder at the park across the street, dark except where the headlights of some customer's rusted 1986 Buick flare across it, summoning the youngest of the small group for an exchange.

A steadiness to her study of the group of young men; framed and alert, before she turns back to Erich, pale eyes touching on his car keys, then his face. A skeptical lift to her brows, and a doubtful little shake of her head. "I'm not like you?" Wistful, perhaps a bit admiring, the tone. "I'm pretty sure no one except Dosia and Delia are scared of me."

That silly little wave of hers puts a smile on Erich's face. It, too, fades as hers does. They both look over her shoulder: the small, slight Silver Fang and the considerably larger Shadow Lord.

His eyes fall back on her. He shrugs one shoulder. "Don't sell yourself short. You're a werewolf. And most humans scare pretty easy."

He nods her back toward the group with a tip of his chin upward. "Go on," he says. "Go back there and tell 'em if they ever harass a girl on this block again, you'll find 'em where they sleep and carve their balls out. Or, I don't know, whatever you Fangs use as threats."

((room for another mebe?))

There's that doubtful look again; she casts it up at Erich, then draws her chin back and angles her body to draw a line of sight between the Ahroun and the young men in the park. Her brows are drawn together, but the frown is thoughtful rather than deliberate. Less an expression than something that takes its place as she considers things.

The flutter in her chest - no, lower, just below her solar plexus - has her drawing in a breath deep enough that it pushes back her shoulder blades and then her shoulders proper. Squaring them as she allows that little flutter to open up to the idea of being powerful like that. Of carrying herself like Dances-with-the-Hurricane, silently cleaning her blade as snow swirled down in the center of the alley. Of sailing through a crowd the way an Ahroun does, without an Ahroun at her side.

Charlotte's little grin returns, with a slightly more feral edge. Though she struggles to suppress it and shoot Erich only a frown as she turns back to him, pulling the strap of her cross-body messenger bag up over her head and thrusting it toward him to hold for her. With, "You don't get to tell me what to do," a silky, sulky edge to the words belied by the fact that she is, in fact, doing exactly what he told her to do. "you're not the boss of me. I'm a Silver Fang."

Then she turns smartly on her heel and begins marching back across the street. And, christ, she really is virtually marching, this determined, absurd little stride, crisp and clipped and fast as her legs can take her.

Well, this ought to be interesting at least. Keeping an eye on Charlotte -- just in case he really did have to rescue her, though if he does he's never going to let her hear the end of it -- Erich settles his shoulderblades against the chipped brick facade of that Mex-Am diner with its buzzing neon signs shouting

OPEN 24 HOURS!

and

MEXICAN AMERICAN DINER!

The streetlights only barely blanket this area. He's sort of a smudge in the uncertain light -- a large, undeniably intimidating smudge with big shoulders and big knuckles, which is odd because he's also white as a ghost and very blond and ... well, pretty affable, all things considered. While he waits, he unrolls the top of his doggie bag and opens up the styrofoam container inside to nom on the remnants of his fajitas. Everything except beef held. Well, and a bit of onion and bell pepper... but only for the flavor.

(Charisma + Intimidation! PLUS WILLPOWER.)

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

This is what Erich sees: that knot of young men turning the way a herd turns - a leading edge as someone notices the girl coming back, then the rest after in stages, a velvety movement seen from affair, the sort of crowd-elegance that seems choreographed but never can be.

One of them - the beta, Erich's wolf-mind can easily mark him, for the leader, the Alpha, is still hanging back, sitting in the spine of a park bench, his arms open wide, knees spread, hands braced against his thighs as his pack flares open around him. And the cat-calling starts, ricocheting like dice thrown wildly about a craps table. Like a pinball down a gutter. Laughter exchanged with encouragement as she gains the far sidewalk. Climbs up it with a little hop and walks determinedly forward, hands tucked into fists in the front pocket of her hoodie.

Only the two youngest - the runners, the look-outs - are anywhere close to Charlotte's size. She walks by them all, side-steps around the first couple of young men, then the group closes behind her in a way that shields her a bit from his view. The beta-dude is watching her. Saying something that is hard to hear across the street, a cascade of Spanish and English that merges with laughter from his audience as she steps around him and (she, too, is a wolf. She senses instinctively where leadership of this motley pack of humans lies.) marches (STOMP STOMP STOMP) right for the Alpha.

There's a bit of a decrescendo as the group resettles, one of the kids miming something crude, another claiming with a gesture that he wants popcorn, for the theater that comes next. Charlotte's leaning forward - speaking, rather quietly and very straightforwardly - to the Alpha with a sing-songy rhythm movement of her shoulders, and abruptly the mood of the group just changes. Goes from gleeful to uneasy and unsettled. The anticipatory quiet becomes something altogether, goes dead-still and a few of the hangers-on at the outer edges begin peeling away a bit.

This time, when Charlotte turns around, the beta steps out of her way, and the rest follow and Charlotte walks right back through the edge of the darkened playground and park, off the curb, across the street toward the diner. Marching for the first fifteen feet, because she does not want to run, her wide-eyed young face set in a slightly crazed but Very Very Serious expression.

Though once she crosses the double-yellow lines at the center of the street, she cannot help but skip (yes, fucking skip) every two or three steps the rest of the way back to Erich. Now barely suppressing the fact that she is grinning and giddy and squirming with victory as she hops back up on the curb in front of the Shadow Lord.

Pale eyes shining, reflective as a cracked mirror. "Did you see that!"

He saw that.

He saw how the pack -- or are they a herd? -- opens up to envelope her. A twinge of unease flickers through him when a few of them block his view, but he pushes it down. She's a wolf, and neither his pack nor his tribe. He has no right to protect and defend here. His shoulders relax, and that's when he realizes they'd tensed at all; he settles back to watch.

And watching, he sees how the mood abruptly changes. How the catcalling and the jeering and the excitement of prey within reach shifts entirely and silently to uneasiness. To dread. To outright fear.

He sees how they get out of her way. This little girl, this pale, odd-haired, frail little creature that skips across the street to gain the curb again. She looks so proud of herself. Erich's proud too; he has to refrain from sidehugging her and ruining the whole effect.

"I saw," he affirms, straightening up and falling in beside her. Some crowd-choreography there, too, easy and uncalculated. "That was a slam-dunk. What'd you say to them?"

Erich saw and Charlotte gives another little bounce, not quite a hop, as she falls into step beside him. Easily and thoughtlessly, matching Erich not stride-for-stride, but stride-and-a-half for stride, slipping her bag back over her shoulders and letting the familiar weight of her theurgey-stuff hit her comfortably in the thigh.

A side-grin, up at Erich, beaming all the more when she catches the responsive note of pride in his expression, and she launches into her explanation, "I told him that there were worms and larvae and caterpillars inside his brain and that I could smell them and that they were gross and that he'd ask them in and that if he kept doing that I would come back and make them start eating their way out and they would eat their way out of his frontal lobe and his brainpan and skull and gnaw out through his eyeballs in a great big mass and push out through his nose and burrow down into his tongue and gnaw on its root until everything fell off in a giant rotten mass with his eyeballs oozing down his cheeks like a candlewax and the worms falling off the tip of his nose like drip-drip-drop."

Here's a pause, if only because she has literally run down all the breath in her lungs and there's nothing left to power speech. Charlotte drags in a big deep breath all at a go, and appends,
"I mean, more or less. I don't remember exactly what I said, but that was mostly it."

A little nudge, physical. Her shoulder to his elbow. It would never have occurred to her that she could do something like that if he hadn't told (reminded?) her that she could.

"That is... so gross," Erich responds, swaying agreeably with the little nudge. "Not that cutting balls off isn't, but -- that's just really gross, Charlotte."

He sticks his hand out. Palm up, fingers together.

"Gimme five. Good job. Bet they'll think twice before harassing you or anyone else again. And bet you'll think twice before crossing the street to avoid the likes of 'em again."

"Mmmph." That little note of pleasure as Erich informs her that her threats were really gross. She agrees; she's pleased with them in hindsight, perhaps dwelling on a few of the choicer bits in a delightedly dreadful, dreadfully-delighted way, but only briefly. Because if she thinks about it took long then it will be really really and she might throw up on her shoes.

Erich puts out his hand, palm up. Gimme five - and Charlotte does not know what to do. A moment's hesitation, a stolen side-glance at Erich and she smacks her closed fist into his open palm, like a judge banging a gavel to bring a courtroom to order.

"I dunno," another little glance at Erich's face, before she looks away, a bit more shy now that the euphoria of her victory is ebbing. The faintest shrug, more sensed than seen, twists her narrow shoulders beneath the hooded jacket. "I was braver because you were watching me."

Not a compliment. Not a confession. Just a quiet little fact.

Erich looks mystified as she bangs her fist into his open palm. "Okay, when you give someone a five, you're supposed to have your hand open and slap them together. It's very satisfying when you do it right."

He quirks. The obvious conclusion to the leapt to is simple: because she had backup. He doesn't leap there, though. Instead he asks, "Why's that?"

So, Erich instructs Charlotte in the art of gimme five and Charlotte does it properly this time, enjoying the satisfying smack of their palms together, and goes, "Oh, because you have five fingers." Which is deeply and immediately obvious to virtually everyone not unmoored from popular culture and marooned instead in the traditions and expectations of a hidebound, rigid, hierarchical and regressive cult-of-a-tribe. Erich learned how to give five. Charlotte in theory knows which of the forks in a place setting is the crab fork.

And that she is not under any circumstances to attempt to use it to eat her clear soup.

--

Her head's down. She's in profile, her mouth curved faintly, thoughtfully, and she hitches a shoulder in another half-shrug. Not so much an I don't know gesture as an it's obvious gesture. Quiet but matter-of-fact, she returns, "I didn't wanna let you down."

That draws a curious glance from the Ahroun. "You thought I'd be disappointed in you or something? Or ... I don't know, think you were weak?"

He's about to say he'd never think that of her. But he stops. He gives it a moment's thought. And then he opts for a rather brutal honesty.

"I guess I might have," he says. "I mean, I probably would've told myself you were just having an off day, and plus you'd never practiced the fine art of scaring someone shitless and all, but ... yeah. Truth is if I'd seen you cross the street to avoid some troublemaking kids and then fall flat on your face when you went back to confront them, I might have ... well, I wouldn't have thought poorly of you or whatever. But I might have put you in the needs to be protected category.

"Which isn't really where a werewolf belongs," he adds with a sidelong glance.

Charlotte listens quietly; she is still in profile, not looking at him. Not directly. She takes a step and a half for every single step he takes and it makes her seem to bounce along, even when she's no longer hopping. Even when she's just keeping up. Her profile is delicate, the crisp sharp cut of her jawline, the hollow behind her earlobe, a few stray strands of fading pink hair tucked haphazardly behind. The sharp cut of her nose. The faintest little curve of her mouth. Half-visible to him in profile. Just kind of nodding as he works his way through the permutations, and does not offer her platitudes.

Which pleases her, in a very different, and deeper, way than her small victory against some street kids.

"Everybody needs to be protected, sometime," a sly look back, the edge of humor surfacing in the gleam of her gaze. " - unless you're the fabled Ragaguergeodoxiiardhroun?" The sly edge fades and flicks a glance up to meet his sidelong glance. "But no. That isn't where a werewolf belongs."

"Well, yeah," he concedes, prepared to explain his point further -- but what I meant was! -- but then she continues on herself. Reaches her point, which

(he's pleased to discover)

is his point as well. He smiles at her, sideways and downward. "Yeah," he says again, and then punches her gently on the shoulder. "So I'm glad that's not where you're putting yourself."

A winging glance - sideways and up - when he punches her shoulder.
A little shake of her head. No, that's not where she's putting herself. Charlotte's mouth widening into a smile that could be almost considered assured.

Whatever it is, it is shining right back at him for three or four spare heartbeats before she breaks it off.

"Hey - want to see what I made?" And she's pulling up the flap of her bag to dig into its contents, coming back with a handful of obsidian arrowheads, two of them shattered into pieces, three still whole.

Cue chatter, as Erich digs into his streak-strips and jingles the keys to his car-and-home. "You can have one if you want, but you might not want to take it across" in that significant way, which means Code, which means Umbra, "because sometimes things can sense them and they don't like them.

"That's why I was walking home? Except I'm not sure which way it is since I got here on the other side." (Given her sense of direction (or lack thereof) and lack of any apparent transportation other than her feet, this may be how she gets everywhere in the city.)

"Hey, do you know Celia? I saw her the night Philip took us to the Club and told Chas because I could smell her and then I saw her at this art gallery and I wondered what Lauren would do, you know, and - "

Et cetera, all the way home.

Saturday was warm, nearly spring-like. Bright sun and clear skies and temperatures in the 60s brought all of DC outside to revel in the weather and sun. The mall was packed with frisbee players and dog walkers, picnickers and protests, bureaucrats and lobbyists and baristas and street vendors. Joggers glutted Rock Creek Park and the Metro was bursting with folks from the suburbs taking a holiday in the city to check on the status of the budding cherry trees, or wander through their favorite Smithsonian museum. The chatter was still grim, of course. Who was furloughed and who was endanger of being cut entirely. How to make ends meet with 20% less pay.

The best paid civil servants are thinking about cutting back on cable. Maybe dropping HBO from the roster (with Game of Thrones about to start! What a sacrifice!). Those lower on the totem pole - the garbage collectors, the janitors, the toll-takers and park-keepers, the guys who fill the potholes. Well, they might be going without food, or heat, or lights, or running water.

There's little sign of the looming budget crisis and its many lesser spawn on U-Street tonight. The warmth of the day is rapidly disappearing from the streets, replaced by a brisk wind and a falling cold that feels more bitter than it is, after the taste of spring this afternoon. But the streets are crowded, the bars and restaurants packed. The galleries and shops open late and later, windows gleaming bright against the dark, cool, damp streets.

It's hard to tell when Celia gained her attendant tonight. Her handmaiden. Who follows her not so much like a shadow, knitted and sewn to her heels, but like a kite, drifting in her wake, loosely knotted to her wrist. Or like a moon, in some strange, eccentric orbit around a drifting planet. But gained one she has.

Celia has one job, and it isn't in civil service, but it is for the good of mankind. Celia is fighting a war. Celia walked into Washington this winter and carved out a trench, stored her provisions, and placed her battle lines.

That she does all this from the Hay-Adams hotel probably makes her seem like she isn't much of a soldier, but the faintest whiff of her breeding marks her as a creature from a long, long lineage of defiance, of ruthlessness, of dedication. Many things can be said about the Black Furies, and many things are said of Black Furies, and almost none of them are appreciative, but those things are still best said behind their backs.

Celia is one of them. Though her hair and eyelashes are curled, though her lips are glossed, though she all but lives in high heels, she's still borne of that ancient, devoted bloodline. She pays little mind to what is going on in this city. And she looks so confused when Jack talks about it, head tilted and mouth confused, til he gives it a rest and talks about something else. Some of them are things she can use. His complaints about the sequester aren't.

Tonight she's off duty, in a manner of speaking. Her leggings are still tight, though, and the heels on her riding boots are still high and sharp. The buckles around her calves are decorated with slicing silver crescent moons, brushed just enough to keep from glinting as she walks. A white lace-edged camisole hugs her hips, and the pale pink ballet sweater she has wrapped around her upper body lets the lace draw eyes to her cleavage. There's a new piece of jewelry resting there, a pendant of gold wrapped around an amethyst on a gold chain. She told him it was her birthstone.

For the coming chill she has a wool peacoat, heather gray with black wooden toggles, but it is currently folded over her arm. She was at a bookstore earlier, and a little cafe across the street where she treated herself to a salted caramel cupcake after a wedge salad with goat cheese and a bowl of fruit. She went shopping in a quirky but upscale furniture store briefly, but only window shopping, only browsing for later. Jack hasn't yet solidified the kernel of a thought in his mind yet, but he is going to get her an apartment. A little love nest. There he'll keep her, like a bird in a cage, taken out to sing for him and then covered with a shade again when he is done with her. The thought of it makes him salivate, but it's just a spark right now. He'll fully realize it soon enough.

After the bookstore and the cafe and window-shopping, she visited a small gallery showing the works of local artists who are starting to get attention. Some of them stood nervously near their work, not quite sure how to handle the clientele. Celia chatted with one, a skinny young man in a sagging beanie he refused to take off for the event, and gave him sweaty palms and nervous laughter. He was trying very hard to be angry and above all these sellouts, but he was charmed. He asked her for her number. She blushed and said she was seeing someone and excused herself.

Somewhere in there, someone started following her. And when Celia first noticed it, she did not so much ignore it as let it slide. Later on she wondered if it was Erich, but he wouldn't stay away for long. He'd barrel up like a gorilla, grunting and glaring at everyone, and start talking to her like that dog from Up, delighted to see her and be seen by her. So it's not him.

A little while after the gallery, Celia starts glancing back. The wind picks up and she unfolds her coat, swinging it around her body and onto her arms.

Charlotte has pink hair. When Celia sees her, she tips her head, lifting her eyebrows, and gives the werewolf a Look, as though to say: Really?

There are coincidences in this world. Strangers who meet in dark alleys where dark things lie in wait. Old acquaintances who run into each other at the Metro stop, at the 9:30 Club, in the toddler department at Macy's, in a coffee shop and say: oh my god, it's been years. There is probably another such pair on the street tonight, exclaiming and assessing and suffusing each other with questions that cannot be answered and answers that will not be remembered.

It's been so long! What have you been up to!

This is not a coincidence.

You see, Charlotte had a dream last night, about spring. About spring and about Celia, about the resonant memory of her blood. She did not remember this dream in the morning, when she woke up in a feather bed, with light streaming in striations through the 19th century glass windows onto the plush Persian rug hugging the old hardwood floors of the family's DC property.

But she could taste it, on the back of her tongue, all morning long. She could feel the way it cracked and curled in her marrow and she walked barefoot through the damp garden, the frigid soil squelching between her toes, amidst the daffodils and tulips and crocuses pushing green shoots upward through the mounded leaf mast piled over the brick-lined beds. Circling the old oak tree in the center, until the unmoored remnants of the dream broke free.

Then, she went searching.

So you see, this is not a coincidence. But Charlotte has not thought beyond the searching to the finding. The watching to the being seen, and Charlotte has pink hair and an abstracted manner. She has no friends with her, and no shopping bags, and no smartphone to occupy her hands with texting and tweeting and instagramming to update the world about her latest discoveries.

So when Celia spots her, tops her head and gives her that Look, Charlotte, (who is heel-to-toeing on the sidewalk in front of the gallery, furtively watching her reflection, which is still in the stolen moments of consideration, superimposed on the reflections of all the others in the street, who smear together like watercolors in the rain, and occasionally - glancing up at Celia. To find her again, assuredly. Even if she can't say why.) -

- Charlotte goes so-suddenly-still, a bit wide eyed, presses her lips together, sealing her mouth like every guilty girl working up a suitable lie to lie to her mother, ever.

Then swallows, and squares her narrow shoulders beneath her hoodie (DARTMOUTH, tonight. Her brother's alma mater), and jogs to catch up with Celia, a cross-body messenger bag bouncing at her hip.

Sliding, perhaps even sidling into place beside Celia. "Hi." Says Charlotte, right down to the period, pale gaze on Celia's profile, luminous and wary, both.

It's not hard to look at Celia and imagine spring, wet and verdant. Her skin is not sickly pale from wintertime, even in the chill and even under the clouds. Her eyes shift between blue and green, water and storm, blossom and sprout. When she smiles, which she does, it is hard not to think of sunlight breaking through, bring back all the warmth that has been missing for so long.

Easy enough to believe that losing her would bring winter right back down on their necks like cold iron. Easy enough to believe that a lord of death, of darkness, of Hell itself, would want to steal her for himself. That isn't far from what's happening, after all.

Charlotte dreamt of her this morning, and now it is evening, and here Charlotte is, looking at her. In the flesh.

As she bounds up, Celia turns a bit, as though to go on walking. It's an invitation of sorts: she doesn't storm off or demand an explanation, she just starts strolling along, this time with company. "Hello," she says, far more fluidly, flexibly, maybe even pleasantly. "Were you following me?" she asks, as though this would be perfectly acceptable and understandble, if a bit silly.

Charlotte takes that unspoken invitation to stroll. She understands the physical language of Celia's pivot and turn with the unspoken surety of a pack animal, and swings into step beside the kinswoman. Her own pace slowing, the slap of her sneakers on the pavement a quiet counterpoint to whatever pace Celia sets.

The (wolf)girl's surveillance of Celia's profile is open - Charlotte is staring, and takes darting glances away only when the shadow of as stranger looms ahead and she must adjust her own pace. - but still feels covert. Stolen.

It is in Charlotte to lie. She lies regularly and sometimes with gusto, though generally badly. Celia asks if she was following her and Charlotte takes in a breath, hesitates as if testing the lie in her head, working out its depths and contours. Sounding it out before casting it aside.

"I was." The creature returns, a bit breathless, and it cannot be from that quarter-block jog, which barely winded her. " - for a little bit," she appends, weasels really, the corners of her mouth quirking upward. "Since the bookstore."

Looking like she does, acting like she does, it's difficult to imagine Celia grasping why Erich behaves the way he does, why Charlotte reacts to her the way she does. They're animals and they are not animals. They're monsters and they are not monsters. They are creatures of unimaginable rage and unspeakable tenderness. They follow her around. They stare at her. They want to break necks, open bellies, feast on entrails, shadow her to her grave to keep her safe. They want to be friends, yes, and walk and talk and share their snacks, yes, and they want to be close and warm and yay.

She turns, she walks, and knows as if by instinct that Charlotte will understand the invitation (which she does). She feels Charlotte staring at her like anyone would and doesn't give her odd looks or glare at her, because there really is no point. It's not about feeling unnerved or feeling flattered; it's simply about understanding what she is. And she could only do that if she'd been around wolves a good long while.

Her head does tip, though, as she looks at the other girl. "Why didn't you come say hello?" she asks, a tiny furrow appearing between her brows.

"I didn't - " when Celia looks at her, head tipped, long dark hair catching on the cusp of the lifting breeze (which feels like winter, but smells like spring), a few fine hairs caught in the nap of her woolen peacoat, Charlotte meets the look.

Meets it, but only briefly.

In that moment, her own eyes are raw and sharp, all the blues bled out to a fractured but reflective gray. "I didn't know if you'd want me to come say hello. And I didn't know what to say after saying hello. Or what to say after that."

She is a finely made thing, still young, rather thin, as if she were underfed. The runt of the litter, perhaps. If her features skew younger full-on (the wide eyes, the high cheekbones, clear brow and tapered jaw. The scrubbed-clean lack of make-up that makes her seem... unfinished compared to nearly every other girl on the street. Half-drawn), her profile is keen, dominated by the high bridge of an aristocratic nose.

"Or if I'd get you - " in trouble, she swallows, with a lilting glance toward Celia here, winsome. "I mean, if I'd say something wrong, you know? I do that alot."

Celia listens, and as she listens her frown goes away, her features becoming placid with consideration rather than more wrinkled by it. She does up the toggles of her coat, thoughtful, and then gives a little shrug as her hands slip into her pockets. Like the rest of her, those hands are kept carefully, obsessively perfect. Manicured, moisturized, lovely and soft and seductive. That's the whole point.

"Thank you for being careful," she says, at least to start, as though she can read in Charlotte's eyes the words she doesn't say, "but you shouldn't worry so much about causing offense. If you think you say the wrong thing so much that you end up not saying anything at all, that's pretty messed up, you know?" She looks at Charlotte as she says this, then shrugs and looks away, still talking. Still thinking aloud. "Maybe what you're saying isn't what's wrong in the first place. And even if you do say something wrong or harmful or stupid, then it doesn't mean you're wrong or harmful or stupid.

"Our mistakes are only another enemy to face," she says after that, as though reciting something now. "Stand your ground as fiercely against them as against the Wyrm. Never cower."

Celia walks a few more steps, then smiles brightly at Charlotte. "It's okay if you don't have anything to say, too. We can just walk."

When Celia favors Charlotte with that bright smile, the Silver Fang breathes out, all at once. It is not a sigh, so much as a deep sort of release. Her own eyes are shining-gray, like a mirror, and Celia is caught within, a tiny twin reflections, like a pair of moving miniatures. She gives this curt, swallowed little half-nod, not so much an expression as a check of one, as Celia recites what must be a lesson learned. Some old koan a crone, a mother, a sister, a teacher gave her to remember.

And breathes out again, as the aphorism ends with the admonishment to never cower. Which has Charlotte wondering if she does cower. If this is cowering, standing outside everything as if she could slip history and blood as easily as she slips her human skin.

We can just walk, says Celia.

And so they do. For a half-block, past another small gallery, a famous chili stands stacked with patrons three-and-four deep at this hour on a Saturday. A street-vendor selling Rastafarian paraphanalia, Bob Marley t-shirts and tri-color knitted berets, pipes and hookas.

"I had a dream about you last night," Charlotte says at last, breaking the companionable silence. The words come out in a rush, like a confession, but is it buoyed by a certain subliminal confidence - which must surely have been steadied by Celia's encourangement. Her voice is quick, " - I don't know what it was about? I walked around the oak in the backyard until I remembered what was familiar. So I wanted to find you and see if you were okay.

"Or just see you, I think. It wasn't a scary dream. So I knew you were okay."

(brb!)

They can just walk. So: they do. Charlotte doesn't even answer that. As though relieved, she simply walks with Celia for a while. Celia stops frequently, to see if the line for the chili is too long to be worth standing in, to feel the edge of a pashmina between her fingers, to lean over and let a dog lick at her fingers as she smiles haphazardly, a wistful ache in her eyes.

It's gotten colder, the farther they've gone. She's walking eastward, toward 13th, when Charlotte pipes up again. Celia turns, blinking at her, as startled as she is curious. Usually when people tell her they've dreamt of her, they're running a hand up her thigh. Charlotte isn't doing anything of the kind, which means it must have been a different sort of dream than people usually tell Celia about.

That Charlotte walked around an oak tree until she remembered something that mattered to her, even if it doesn't translate well, seems to make sense to Celia. Perfect sense. The Furies are, after all, not just ball-busting, man-eating bulldykes as the Get of Fenris -- and plenty others -- would have them. They're protectors of the Wyld. Even their kin are pagans, howling at the moon.

She smiles, warm as a mug of cocoa held between the palms and as deeply comforting, a look of glee entering her eyes. "Would you like to be my friend?" she asks, and -- this is important -- she isn't teasing her. Not even remotely.

Charlotte does not mind the pauses; the stops, the little eddies in the walk, though she does stand by a bit awkwardly as Celia fingers the pashmina, or admires a dress in a shop window. And her attention drifts away from the line at the chili place or the Belgian-style frites stand to trace other trajectories. The skim of headlights across the street, the dark, dusken line of the sky. The pulsing light of a jet overhead, as it begins its descent into Dulles or Reagan National. The corners, the edges of things. Her own hands stay mostly in the kangaroo pockets of her hooded sweat shirt, emerging here and there to adjust or re-adjust the bag that bounces against her hip.

Oh, but as they drift away from this shop, or that one, the girl's fingers dart out to catch the edge of that pashmina as it falls from Celia's fingers, the action is very nearly furtive, and not remotely conscious.

--

They're standing on a corner now, the tick-tick-tick of the streetlight counting itself down, warning blind pedestrians "DON'T WALK, DON'T WALK" in a quiet, mechanized female voice. There is more foot traffic than cars out tonight, though a chain of taxis hover at the corner, waiting for the first wave of drinkers to begin spilling out of the bars.

When Celia asks if Charlotte would like to be her friend, Charlotte nods decisively, wordlessly, the reaction just spilling out of her before she has even turned to search out the expression on Celia's features. Again that wary edge to the girl, haunting the darker edges of her pale gaze, the tension in her neck and shoulders beneath the oversized hoodie, all knotted and then unknotted, raveled open as that expression - the warm, comforting smile, the look of glee gleaming in her gaze - registers on the girl's animal mind.

"I would." Eager, this. This sudden widening of her own smile, a lupine edge to it that transforms her girlish features into something both Other and familiar, at least to Celia. "I don't have any friends. I guess Chas but he's my brother, my full brother, I mean, so he has to be? Like he's required. And maybe Erich? I guess he could be. He gave me gyrosbeast and I showed him the ballroom at my house. It's big. It's on the third-floor.

"So I mean yeah," Charlotte nods again, eagerly, like a puppy stumbling over its too-large paws, cropped hair cotton-candy pink and ruffling. "That'd be really cool. I kinda made you something too? In case you wanted it, I mean."

Celia has exactly one friend. She has no idea that just a few mights ago, he fought alongside Charlotte, killed with her, has met her a few times before that as well. It wouldn't make a difference, most likely. But these are how connections are made in a world so much smaller than it feels sometimes: the quick bonds that are formed, the common enemies, the common interests, the need for each other that sometimes transcends all difficulties of surface difference.

She doesn't glance back as Charlotte catches the pashmina to feel it, but she notices.

Would you like to be my friend? asks one lonely girl to another.

yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes nods the other, sudden and fervent.

Even before Charlotte finds words to go along with that eager nodding, Celia is beaming. Even Charlotte admitting that she doesn't have any friends doesn't dim that smile. She has a brother -- a shot goes off behind Celia's eyes, to be dealt with later -- and then there's (maybe) Erich. Celia blinks, the smile startled off her mouth, her lips parting right around the time Charlotte gets to 'ballroom'.

"I know Erich!" she bursts in, amidst all of this. Then, calmer: "I know Erich, too, if we're talking about the same one. We probably are." They do, after all, live in a rather small subset of the population, a secret community of growling factions that like to pretend, at large, that they do not make quiet friendships along individual lines. "Erich's my friend," Celia says, firmly, as though planting him on that tier of people rather than staking some kind of a claim. The emphasis is on the last word, not the second.

The streetlight flicks and beeps at them, greenish-white and permissive. Celia steps off the curb to cross. At this point it's more evident that she's heading for the metro station, but still chatting with Charlotte. "What did you make?" she asks, peering nearer to Charlotte's shoulder as though she's hiding it somewhere.

There's this moment where they're talking over each other. Celia knows Erich, if they are talking about the same one. Celia's ready to seal the case that they are talking about the same one (wolves and kin, after all. With whom else could someone like Erich, or even Charlotte for that matter, ever hope to be something approximating friends?) but Charlotte requires more details before she is willing to concede the that the Erichs in question are the same.

A series of questions, half-on-top of Celia's affirmations, follow:

"Is he big?" illustrated with a sweep of her arms, and a kicky little jump that makes Erich Storm's Teeth out to be approximately six inches taller than he is. Though perhaps it approximates the sweep of an Ahroun's rage, haloing him like the corona of the sun. "And he likes meat and he has a car with stripes - " where a normal person, nearly any normal person, and most Garou would at least know the cultural resonance of the iconic Mustang, " - and he lives in it and he showers in high school locker rooms Erich?"

Which is a concise enough way of describing the Shadow Lord Ahroun.

Celia defines him as a friend, and firmly. The subtext - whatever there may be, the necessity of that firmness, that definition - is lost on Charlotte. "That's neat. He's the first - "

a pause, searching for a suitable Euphemism as they cross the street, the Metro station in sight. " - Person Like Him I ever met?" And she cannot mean Garou, and she cannot mean Ahroun, so perhaps she means, giant man living in a car, though in truth she means, Shadow Lord.

"I couldn't live in my car, though," she continues, confessional, with the naivetée of the utterly privileged. "I don't know how to drive."

--

Charlotte does not go digging for the present until they've crossed the street. The sweep of other pedestrians moves by them, as she shifts the messenger bag to the front of her hip and unloops its straps, peering inside and eventually pulling out, carefully, a small glass jar. Heavy and handblown, sealed with a waxed cork. There's a resonant gleam of water inside, though the vial is small enough that it could hold no more than six or seven ounces, it has a weight in the hand. A humming sort of warmth.

Palm open, she holds it out to Celia, pale eyes fast on the other girl's face.

Their hands both define Erich's height in mid-air, and meet at about the same place because as far as Celia is concerned anyone over 5'10" is a giant --

"And ice cream," she points out, when discussing his dietary preferences,

"--the Mustang!" Celia bursts out, laughing, clapping her hands lightly.

Yes, they're discussing the same Erich.

And Charlotte may very well be the only person on earth who could miss the subtext of Celia having to keep Erich neatly, tidily on the 'friend' tier. She's kin. She's lovely. The scent of her is positively dizzying. Many Garou would hear her call him that and begin asking if he's overstepped his bounds, if he's sniffed at her like a beast, if he's remembering his place, and a few would realize it's not really their business, but to not even notice, to not even bat an eyelash --

well. Charlotte just solidified herself as Celia's friend, even without the repeated nods of agreement that this is a good idea.

The euphemism, in kind, is lost on Celia. She only understands that Erich is different than a lot of people, and she shrugs, nodding. "He's pretty weird," she says, thinking she's agreeing with Charlotte, when in fact Charlotte means something else entirely. "I know how to drive," she goes on, stepping up onto the next curb, "but I don't have a car right now."

Hence: the metro station.

They pause, stepping out of the main flow of foot traffic, as Charlotte digs around in her bag. She pulls out a jar. Celia looks at it curiously, then takes it, holding it in her bare hand. She feels the warmth, which it would not have after being in the bag for more than a few minutes, and then looks at Charlotte with her eyes up in question.

"Is it a talen?" she asks, because if it is one, she does not recognize the sort.

"Yeah," Charlotte affirms, though there's a lilting sort of surprise etched into her brow that Celia knows the term. No one ever taught it to her before she changed and the world reoriented itself, entirely. "It's, uhm. For cleansing? It's not as good as a proper rite. It won't take something from tainted to clean. But it's pure and it will, like. Scrub the city off you, if it starts - clinging."

Once more, the Silver Fang presses her little mouth together, says nothing about him, the worm-and-snot-smelling Senator from whom Charlotte wanted to rescue Celia, who must surely have inspired the gift.

"You could drink it? But I would pour it over my head."

Like a baptism. Like a christening.

When Charlotte says it's for cleansing, Celia's eyes -- already quite round and accentuated by her makeup to only make her look more innocent -- get wide. She puts her other hand around the jar, as though she thinks she might drop it if she isn't careful. Those eyes, fit for a Disney Princess, go to Charlotte's face.

not as good as

but it's pure

scrub the city off you

Those eyes are gleaming, sparkling suddenly from a few quick-to-the-surface tears. She takes one hand off the jar, drawing it to her chest with the other, and wraps her free arm around Charlotte's shoulders, hugging her fiercely.

Celia's shampoo smells like sandalwood and roses.

"Thank you," she says, her voice tightened by the sincerity of her gratitude. The hug isn't quick, nor is it awkward. At least not for Celia. Celia doesn't hide from the hug, or from the sniff of moisture out of her sinus cavities. She squeezes Charlotte before she draws back, reaching up to daub at the wetness along her lower lashes, delicate as any movie star trying not to smear her makeup. She blinks a few times and smiles, overcome.

"Thank you so much," she repeats, and just as before, just as shockingly: she utterly means it.

Strangely, the hug is not awkward for Charlotte either. Oh, there's that moment of confusion where Charlotte is not sure what Celia's doing as she steps in and wraps that free arm around Charlotte's shoulders, but then quite suddenly and surely, Charlotte is hugging her back, both arms wrapped around Celia's neck, tight, the messenger bag digging into Celia's thigh with its assortment of lumps and bumps, talens and treasures, promissory notes and bribes, books and (to be fair) a single bagel.

With her nose so close to Celia's hair, Charlotte inhales deeply. Sandalwood and roses laid over warming earth, and the first shoots of new growth, the sweetness of pomegranites, and the bitterness of their pith. Sun on stone, and all the many memories buried in Celia's blood and bones.

"You're welcome," Charlotte returns as she lets go, suddenly a bit shy, ackward only in the aftermath of the hug; or perhaps it's just that dampness Celia's lash line that undoes her a bit. The girl's cheeks are pink with pleasure. "If you need another just let me know? I - uhm. I don't have a phone. Erich could tell you how to get to my house, though? Or if you said something to a sparrow, if it was a smart one, then Sparrow might find me and let me know."

From down in the depths of the Metro station, the rattle and hum of an approaching train. A few more pedestrians headed to the station begin to hurry, darting toward the escalators hurrying down them, two steps at a time.

Whereever she's going, Charlotte is not taking the Metro. Down underground, all that concrete and cables would feel like crawling into a spider's mouth. But she'll stand up here and keep vigil until Celia has safely disappeared behind a turnstile, and into the underground crowd.

This is how Celia makes friends. She asks, and then she hugs, and if presents or favors are exchanged in the process, it only seems to help smooth things along. The gift seems to have overwhelmed her in its thoughtfulness, in its understanding. What Celia does -- however much Charlotte is removed from it, however little she knows about the goal, the process at this point -- is certainly a part of the war, but she isn't opening up fomori and getting covered in their ichor. It's slow, and in many ways it's more insidious.

it's pure, Charlotte said, of her little talen. The same could be said of Celia, thought it often isn't. There are few who could do what she does and withstand being dragged down by it, poisoned by it, warped to the core. Celia seems okay, though. She hugs and cries and makes new friends and very carefully tucks that talen into her purse, wrapped in a glove.

"I have a phone," she says, "in case you ever want to hang out. I'm also at the Hay-Adams hotel, if you want to find me. Erich is going to be so happy we're friends now."

That makes her smile again. Her two friends -- she has two, now -- are friends with each other. And that means they're all friends. And this makes her inordinately happy about life. Before she goes, she gives Charlotte another hug, this one quick, then bounces down the steps to catch a train going south. She pauses at the bottom of those steps to wave, then into the crowd, where she only vanishes in the eyes of mortals.

These Garou -- the ones she calls friends, the ones she hasn't met yet -- could find her across the city if they wanted to. She stands out like a beacon.