Ornature

[Jack Hill] 2. He has another contact who is a member of city council. She's a democrate, and they worked on a congressional campaign in '06 together when she was a volunteer/housewife and he was a staffer. He's going to find a charity event she knows will be well-attended by the city council members and buy himself access to it even if he has to eat ramen for a month (Note: he has resources 3 so should be able to finagle a $250/a plate dinner or a $100/a head silent auction thing.) Then he's going to presume on his contact with Jen (the councilwoman) to get an introduction to a moderate Republican councilman with ties to business.

AND THEN: he's going to chat up the councilman about BlackSun. Not talking about environmental impacts, but instead worrying a bit about the negative effect on property values in lakeview and on the potential negative effect on tourism, business, lakefront development, that sort of thing. Basically: he's looking to create awareness of BlackSun as negative in the business community/among wealthier Chicagoans. [Tell me what to roll? He's doing this more from a political perspective, too. Like, convincing the REpublican that most of his constituents will agree/convincing the dude he wants to be out front on the issue.]

Roll politics + clout to be included, and expression + Clout to do the convincing.

First roll: politics + clout

[Jack Hill] Second roll: expression + clout + WP

[Mei] witnessed!

[Melody] Night has fallen, and the curtain of our present tale rises upon a wooded area within striking distance of the Windy City. Currently devoid of actors, our stage nevertheless shows nature green in branch and stem, with any number of nocturnal animals about their nightly rounds. The air, if not "fresh", at least far fresher than the shrouded pall that usually hangs over the asphalt jungle to the east.

In short, it is an idyllic and tranquil scene, or at least as idyllic and tranquil as nature ever really gets so close to an urban area in this dark, benighted world.

Now enter, 2006 Nissan Sentra, stage left. Along with the two blonde girls currently inside it.

[Sorrow] The city is a corona in the east; an orange glow that engulfs the sky. After a handful of days with nearly perfect weather, the night is cold and gray. The moon, somewhere behind the moving blanket of stormclouds above, is waning from the full. A gibbous moon, the barest sliver stolen from its frame. Sorrow's moon.

She has not seen it tonight, and that is assuredly for the best. Still, she can feel it up there, the inevitable, invariable pull of her birthmoon, the little extra charge of it underneath her skin, no matter how impotent that charge must seem when she's gravid with child.

The parking lot is mostly deserted. There's a van down in the shadows by the picnic area, but no one obviously around. Kora pauses, still, watching the other vehicle quietly for a moment after Melody shuts off the engine. The study lingers: the van in the distance, Kora's face, and then Melody's superimposed over it, reflected in the glass by the dim glow of the dashboard lights, by the wash of a single streetlamp over the dark, deserted parking lot.

"I feel better already," says Kora, quiet, reaching to undo the latch on her seatbelt before opening the door. The air smells like the memory of rain and car exhaust, the deep green musk of rotting vegetation and waking soil.

[Melody] "Is that more because of where we are now, or where we aren't?" Melody smiles, almost more to herself than to Kora. And then she's killing the engine and slipping outside herself.

Melody is, for all her innate nature, far more comfortable with civilization and technology than Kora is. Or other Get in general, for that matter (bastard streak of Glass Walker blood in there somewhere?). So it is that you might almost expect her to be a bit less comfortable out in the actual wild (such as it is), like a wolf that's been raised in captivity, never quite feeling the connection to its natural home. Yet apparently, that isn't the case - for all her quirks and foibles, she seems to draw energy from the forest as much as Kora does.

And, perhaps thankfully for Kora's sanity, she's even dispensed with most of her usual fancy (and pink) wardrobe for more sensible hiking boots, jeans, and a tan jacket over a simple green t-shirt.

[Sorrow] "I don't know," returns the Skald, glancing skeptically up at the night sky for a moment, as if she could gauge - by the particular quality of orange, by the dampness of the air, by the sound of the wind in the canopy of trees just starting to leaf out - whether rain might be imminent. It's dark, though, and the patterns of the clouds are little more than a dull orange-gray above them, a shadowy mass, the details of which disappear into insubstantiality, receding the longer she frowns up at them. As if in answer, a single raindrop - just one - falls out of the dark, shivered off the limb of of a mostly-bare oak tree, maybe - hits her on the cheek, just below the eye. Rolls down her cheek as she looks back at Melody, across the front end of the old Nissan, taking in her attire with a single, liquid look.

"I've never felt so trapped in the city before. In my own goddamned territory. In - "

A hand held palm-up shows no further raindrops, so Kora settles for zipping up her oversized hoodie - make for a large, large man, not a pregnant woman. It accommodates her stomach, pulled taut, but drowns her shoulders and arms. - but leaves the hood down.

"C'mon," she says, lifting her chin in a moving gesture toward the dark copse of woods, eschewing the open picnic area for the dark trailhead. Beyond, they can hear water rushing in a creekbed. "You settling in?"

[Melody] "Anything you want to talk about?" She says it casually, almost off-handedly, but Kora likely senses the underlying interest there. It might even strike her as humorous that her younger sister of 7-8 years seems to be developing an interest in acting like a would-be therapist. Shouldn't this be the point where Melody should be asking her about boys or college or something?

"And... settling in? As well as can be expected, all things considered. Though someone apparently slipped me a Bieber poster. Not sure who. Or if they meant it as a sincere gesture or a joke." She shrugs.

And she follows as Kora heads towards the trail. "Umm, you sure you're..." She trails off, and sort of gives a sheepish little half-smile accompanied by near-indecipherable hand-gestures which Kora thinks might be Melody's way of asking whether or not a pregnant woman should be walking trails in the middle of the woods. Or maybe not. Hard to tell, really.

[Sorrow] "Bieber?" Kora returns, glancing over her shoulder, pale face a smear in the dark shadows of the trail. Her brows lift in twin arches over her keen dark eyes, which reflect whatever ambient light filters down through the canopy. She has been entirely lost to the world of men for five years or more. Justin Bieber is -

- not in her frame of reference. There's nothing since 2006 or 07 on her iPod, which seems to be the only modern convenience she carries around. Even then, her taste is older. The Pixies. The Replacements. Radiohead. "I have no idea what the hell that is," she continues, turning back to watch where she's going. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. The train well-worn, somewhat muddied from the recent rains. There's a quiet hush in the air that becomes clearly the longer there are out here. In the distance: the roar of some freeway.

Not here. Nothing. Nothing close.

Just the sound of their breathing, Kora's care with where she puts down her feet. See how well she deftly ignores Melody's attempt to play therapist. "I promise," - low and ironic, a pale hand on a scarred limb, balancing as she kicks into the underbrush, looking for a walking stick. " - that I am not going into labour out here."

[Melody] "Yeah, you know, Justin Bieber? Singer? Really popular? Totally famous? He was really huge on YouTube?" She trails off at the look of complete and utter lack of comprehension. "Ehh, never mind."

She smiles faintly at Kora's promise. "Can we at least avoid any really steep or hilly trails, just in case?" And then she's quiet for a few moments, before pointing out: "And you never did answer my question, you know. Anything you want to talk about?" See how well she doesn't let herself get distracted? Probably too much to hope for, really.

[Sorrow] "I don't need a therapist, Dee," returns Kora, low-voiced and direct. She's half-crouched now, gauging the relative heft and height of a pair of broken limbs she has wrested from an overgrown bramble. There's a certain sharpness to the tone near the end, like the defined line of a parabola approaching the limits of Kora's patience, for all that Melody has done nothing to engage that subprocess. " - there's nothing to talk about. I'm just - "

With a flattened mouth, Kora chooses the slimmer, longer of the two branches and hefts it up, standing abruptly, testing the tensile strength of her makeshift walking stick by jamming it several times into the muddied ground. She breathes out, lifts her chin down the trail, the sound of water in the interval distance echoing through the semi-bare trunks of the trees. Here are there, pear trees are a white smear against the interminable shadows. They are already losing their blossoms, but the dogwoods and redbuds have yet to bloom.

"C'mon," Kora returns, quiet as she takes off, her gait steadier with the added support of the stick. She glances back just once, says, quiet to Melody. "If you want to run, I don't mind."

They both know what she means; the caged wolf is visible in the gleam of the Skald's dark gaze.

[Melody] "No, but you have an understanding and lovable sister who is available as a sympathetic shoulder to lean on, who is fully capable of dispensing both advice and in equal quantities, so you should totally avail yourself of that." She spreads her arms in a gesture which almost seems to say 'Ehh? Ehh?'.

"I mean, let's be honest. It's not good to bottle stuff up, or try to carry the entire world on your back. So... maybe it's good to talk about stuff sometimes. Even if it's only to vent and talk about how badly you want to punch someone or how much of a poo-poo head you think someone is being."

She doesn't say anything about how much pressure Kora is under as Jarl, or what various Kinfolk are up to, or the whole deal with Linus and the family, or even the normal stress of pregnancy, but she's probably thinking of at least a few of those things.

"We all admire your self-sufficiency, but that doesn't mean you have to do everything yourself, you know."

[Sorrow] Kora makes a low sound in the back of her throat, then. It sounds nearly like dismissal, quiet and sure. Kora's steadiness remains, but some of her openness is gone. Walled away. Melody has a fine view of her sister's back, the bunching of fabric at the shoulder, the way it spreads to accommodate her hips. From behind she could almost imagine that Kora was not pregnant. Except for the way it changes her gait, the way her stomach takes 2.3 seconds longer, it seems, to turn around than the rest of her.

"How about this for a start: I'm tired of fucking Shadow Lords." A pause like a valley as she goes on. Ahead, through the scrim of the trees, Melody can see the gleaming surface of a creek moving through the dark march of trees. " - and Bone Gnawers. And fucking gloryhounds. And - " a quiet shake of her pale head as the path breaks through the treeline at the edge of the small pond. "I'm not sure that talking about it makes it better. I fucking hate gossip."

[Melody] "I can see why all of those things would annoy you." She nods, almost sagely, though Kora likely misses the gesture in her insistence at setting the pace (or maybe more from Melody's refusal to set much of a pace at all). "But even if talking about stuff doesn't make it better, maybe it can help keep it from getting worse?"

She shrugs as they walk, and maybe there's even a hint of a smile in her next words. "Or do you just think you'd be happier walking in total silence and having the cutest wolf ever just sort of brushing up against your leg the whole time being all cuddly and adorable?"

[Sorrow] "Wolves," Kora returns, glancing back now, standing aside so that Melody can join her at the water's edge. " - aren't cute, Dee."

The pond is narrow, not natural - made by a cement dam they can both see dimly in the uncertain light. They are not so deep in the woods that the forest service has given up putting out trash cans and picnic tables, though - and in the clearing by the dam, they see a pair of picnic tables both chained to the fixture of a charcoal grill. Ripples move across the surface of the dark waters, some occluded reflection of the sky.

"Sometimes I miss the ocean," she continues, after a quiet moment. "There was a time when I missed pizza, but now I miss the damn ocean." A brief, sidelong glance at Melody's profile. "What about you?"

[Melody] "I beg to differ. Wolves are totally cute. And some are definitely cuter than others." And she does indeed move up to stand next to Kora, smiling. "The ability to rend flesh and break bone in no way detracts from cuteness." She pauses for a second, head tilting, smile fading as her lips quirk into an almost bemused thoughtful expression. "Well, except maybe in the immediately moments before, during, and shortly after said rending and breaking. That would probably be a period of diminished cuteness."

And she looks over at Kora, somewhat thoughtfully, at her question. A poignant look, as if pondering all of the things she misses, or mourns the loss of. And then:

"Not really. I mean, I never liked the ocean all that much in the first place."

And then, a slowly growing smirk.

[Sorrow] (and fin?)

[Hunter] [wits+brawl]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Hunter] [dmg+1+6 pulling at lethal incap]
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[C.J. Nash] [Jesus Christ, kid! Diff 8, soaking lethal.]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 9 (Success x 1 at target 8)

[Hunter] The fight is over in a matter of seconds, Nash pulls a gun and finds a fist planted so squarely into his jaw that it probably knocked the weapon from his clutches. It certainly knocked the senses from his mind and his eyes go dull, void, unconscious in the span of a stun.

And in that stun it's all over, before Nash can react.

The second punch hits him in the ribs, doubly him over, cracking bone and knocking him to the ground. The heavy boot of Hunter Matthews finds him near to death, bleeding out on the road and wounded probably beyond repair. Except he's a kinsman and Hunter is a Garou. Nothing is beyond repair.

Hunter is snarling when he flips the body of the kinsman over onto his back and crouches down beside his head, staring down into eyes that can see but from a body that can do little else. The hand gun gets picked up, put back inside the holster that the kinsman had drawn it from. Then there's a gourd, retried from Hunter's pocket and placed against the ribs of Nash.

"We're goin' to see Kora." Hunter says down into the face of Nash. "I've had my say, now's her turn to have hers. But let me be clear about one thing Nash and one thing only."

A beat.

"Rosie is mine and I don't give a fuck what she did to entice ya' into bed. She's mine n'ya fuckin' know that n'ya should fuckin' know better. Ya not gonna see her ever again, Nash. Ya' can thank ya' sleazy old-man cock for that."

The gourd gets crunched roughly beneath the meaty fist of the Ahroun then smeared over the man's ribs before he's gripped about the collar of the shirt and pulled to his feet. Pockets are shuffled through until the man's keys can be found and then he's dragging[carrying, pulling] Nash back to his own vehicle.

[C.J. Nash] Most of what Hunter growls into Nash's ear, into his face, is not going to be retained. There's really no point saying it in the first place, one could argue: Nash knew all this, and he acted anyway. He still fucked Rosie even though he knew she was with Hunter, even though he knew this was going to happen, so either Nash isn't all that intelligent, or he just isn't all that enthused about being alive. This is the sort of shit a man who doesn't want to keep going does.

He lies there, eyes barely open, broken chest barely rising, but the second his mind clears, the second Hunter puts his hands on him to haul him to his feet, he's thrashing like a wet cat.

"Get the fuck off'a me!" he says, and throws a punch.

It's worth mentioning that he sounds pissed off, not scared.

[Hunter] [+18 sigh nash]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2

[C.J. Nash] [+7!]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1

[C.J. Nash] [1: LOL not happening, punch!]

[Hunter] [1a punch
1b punch]

[Hunter] [1a -2 split]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Hunter] [dmg+2]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[C.J. Nash] [Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Hunter] [1b -3 punnchh]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2

[Hunter] [dmg+5 PULLING DMG at incaP]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[C.J. Nash] [Ah hah hah, ah hah hah... hah.]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 6, 6 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Hunter] There isn't a sigh when Nash strikes out at Hunter, this isn't an annoyance. There's a smile in his lips like he's just so glad that Nash gave him the chance to do this all over again.

Thwap

Thwunk

The Kinsman goes down for the second time and this time Hunter doesn't heal him or share words with him or show him kindness beyond the fact that he's still living. He grabs him in one hand and hauls his ass off the ground. Maybe his feet drag behind him or maybe he can stumble somewhat, either way he gets throw into the passenger seat of his truck.

Hunter takes the time to pick his bike up, park it on the side of the road before coming back to the vehicle and climbing in the drivers door. "This is a fuckin' piece of shit, Nash. Ya know that?" Hunter says as he turns the ignition.

[C.J. Nash] Once he's unconscious, Nash is significantly easier to move from one place to the other. He's taller than Hunter, but he's lighter, raw-boned, and can't put up a fight when he can't even support his own weight. The kinsman flops in the passenger seat, nose bleeding, ribs crackling unheard as he breathes. In a few minutes he'll be exhaling pink froth, but Hunter knows better than to heal him again.

He's Fenrir. He'll keep fighting until he's dead.

The truck's engine turns over with difficulty; there is no radio in the vehicle. All Hunter has during the drive to the church is the hum of tires over asphalt and Nash's labored breathing for background noise.

[Hunter] He drives quickly but without speeding; this vehicle feels like it might fall apart at any second, he wouldn't be surprised if he saw a hub cap roll off into oncoming traffic. But they reach the church without incident and Hunter parks up the truck, climbs out of it and moves around to the passenger side to haul out Nash.

After the vehicle is locked, the keys get dumped back in one of the kinsman's pockets while he's dragged up the steps of the Church. There he's dumped, right on the top one and Hunter Matthews beats a heavy fist against the wooden door.

[Kora] The front doors to the church are made of heavy, iron-banded wood set into gray stone, dark with age and exposure to the elements. Hunter waits several minutes before the door opens in response to his heavy knock. Surprisingly, the hinges do not protest the movement. They are well-oiled and silent.

The interior is dark, the shadows broken by the fitful illumination of braziers mounted on the stone columns marching back toward the altar. The sense of space in the interior is muted at the front door, thanks to the lower ceiling created by the choir loft.

Kora stands in the doorway, pale hair unusually loose about her shoulders. She's tall as ever, and gravid with late pregnancy, bare footed on the cold stone floor, wearing gray cotton pants and a lime green tee, long-sleeved, taut across her stomach. Her eyes are dark in the shadows of the church, the color lost except where they gleam with reflected light from the streetlamps.

"Hunter - " she begins; but whatever she was going to say is cut off as her gaze drops to the unconscious kinsman on her stoop. Her generous mouth tightens, and she cuts a lifting glance back to the Bone Gnawer, a question clear in her lifted brow.

[Hunter] "I believe this is yours yuf."

Hunter says the words then slides the kinsman through the doorway and dumps him at Kora's feet. "He needed persuadin'." There is blood on Hunter's knuckles but none on his face and the blood on his knuckles isn't even his. When he wipes them along the front of his shirt they come away clean, skin intact.

[C.J. Nash] At least he's still breathing.

Nash is dressed as he has been nearly every time Kora has seen him, his bloodied face obscured by hair that is long enough to identify him from a distance if his breeding wouldn't do it for him. Dropped on the step, he's not moving aside from the uneven rise and fall of his chest. Occasionally, he gurgles. It's not a healthy sound.

Hauled inside, he wheezes with the concussion of his body hitting the ground again, but doesn't stir. He's shivering despite the fact that he's wearing his jacket; it's cold outside, and he's gone into shock.

[Kora] (Rage)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3 (Botch x 3 at target 4)

[Kora] There is a moment where Kora's attention dilates to a single point somewhere in the middle of Hunter's face. Still, her pale features - softened by pregnancy - have the look of someone staring off into the distance. Kora's curving mouth flattens, and there's a flash behind her dark eyes. The moon's heavy; she's furious, and in that moment rage threatens to overwhelm her.

--

Maybe it's the blood in the air; maybe's it's some errant movement of the child in her stomach, a kick to the kidney, the pressure of a heel against her abdominal wall - but the flare of temper leaves her just a bit - emptier. With the moon this full, it's a physical relief that does nothing to soften the blunt edge of her anger.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she all but snarls at Hunter, the flash of white teeth in her curving mouth. "What the fuck is the meaning of this?"

[Hunter] Hunter raises an eyebrow at Kora when she begins to lose her shit, silently leaving her body for that brief moment of tension that rides before a possible frenzy.

"Calm down. Ya' gonna give ya'self a fuckin' stroke in a minute." Hunter tells her with both eyebrows raised now and a look that says quite sincerely: if I look worried it's only for you and your baby. "Let me in n'we can talk. He's not dead Kora; he's not gonna die. Cuts n'bruises. He'll be fine."

[C.J. Nash] Gurgle.

[Kora] "He's not Garou, he's kin." The feral, pregnant creature returns, emphasizing the words with a sharp snap of her teeth, as if she were biting off each word. "Fenrir kin." She adds in a moment later, as explanation for Nash's survival, perhaps, but with the sort of immediate possessiveness that feels utterly territorial.

"And you had no right to lay a goddamned hand on him."

The spasm of anger subsides into a slow burn gleaming in the fixed intensity of her dark blue eyes. She swallows once, tasting bile, feeling the fixed riger of muscles aching from the tension, the flood of stress hormones the flare of rage unleashes in her body. The child turns uneasily in her body and she breathes out all at once, shoulders shuddering with the exhalation, feeling - acutely - the limitations of pregnancy.

"You have five fucking minutes." Kora tells Hunter through clenched teeth.

Then she sinks awkwardly to her haunches to inspect Nash's wounds. Slides an arm beneath his shoulders and starts to rise to half-walk, half-carry the kinsman over to the couches in the living area, warning Hunter away with a flash of her teeth if he so much as makes a show of moving to assist her.

Fenrir take care of their own.

[Hunter] Hunter doesn't offer to help the kinsman -- he already healed him once and he won't be doing that again any time soon -- nor does he immediately follow after Kora, instead he steps inside and closes the door behind him, crosses his arms over his chest and watches the Jarl take care of her own.

Just like he had done; just like he would do.

"He had no right to lay a hand on mine neither, didn't bother him none." Hunter says. "Not that it's an excuse -- look I didn't wanna have to break him like that. Pulled a gun on me, kept fightin' when I healed em' back up."

A beat.

"Can't say I'm particularly sorry that the fucker's all balls and no brain though."

[C.J. Nash] Though he's beaten to within a few inches of his life, determining whether or not he's conscious is a task better suited for medical personnel: his eyes aren't open, don't do so much as flutter when Kora gets an arm under him and works him off the floor. He is deadweight, unable to get his legs under him to help the Jarl walk him; still shivering, his head drops forward, blood and saliva and fuck knows what else leaking from his mouth.

He's not awake to either confirm or deny the allegations, but Kora's starting to know Nash fairly well, can feel the holster underneath his jacket as she moves him. He seems the sort to pull a gun on an Ahroun.

[Gwen Sullivan] The Cub is an entity that comes and goes in the Church. When Fire Claws is present she's typically to be found nearby as well, sleeping close to his side in wolf skin, slinking across the Gauntlet or out toward the woods for hunts and lessons with her Mentor. When he's absent she tends to be as well. Even other times the Lupus Philodox will be within the echoing halls of the old church, and the Cub will be nowhere to be seen. She dedicates time to the Caern though she cannot pledge to it yet, she walks the streets to patrol the territory and contribute to the Pack that she was not a member of. She's also been known to run with Bone Grinder, the Shadow Lord Ahroun, and learn lessons of interrogation and cruelty from him.

Tonight, though, despite Fire Claws being nowhere in sight, Gwen is within the Church. She'd been resting in one of any number of back rooms, and shuffles out into the sanctuary with a sleepy-eyed look about her. Her dyed-dark hair is slept on, messy and unwashed, hanging about her face just past her shoulders. She's wearing a pair of overlarge gray sweatpants tied securely at the waist and a snug-fitting long sleeved black tee shirt with some swirling design up the left side on the front and back. She's scrubbing at her eye with the pad of a thumb and hanging in the doorway, shoulder against the doorframe, frowning and half-asleep.

"What's going on?"

Waiting, perhaps, for permission to come forward. Squinting at the body on the floor and trying to make out who it is through the shadows of the unlit room, she's trying to find recognition in the limp, shadowed figure's back and shoulders.

[Kora] "Give me a hand," Kora says to Gwen, not answering her but giving her quiet permission to step forward and help her support the dead weight of the kinsman's body. It takes strain. Effort. She lacks the grace she had, and all that strength in her abdominal muscles is dedicated just now to supporting the weight of a near-term child. Who has survived in there against all odds. Her voice is curt, the flash of temper still evident when her dark eyes reflect the light from the braziers on the wall.

"He was fighting with one of your kin?" A soft snort, backgrounded by rage. There's a baleful light across the surface of her gaze as she cuts a glance back at Hunter. "That's still no reason for you to lay hands on him unless there was some goddamned imminent danger to your kin."

[Hunter] She snorts, he snorts too and pushes away from the wall where he leans by the doorway. His face is bathed in shadow but she can see the fire in his emeralds as he stalks through the dim lights of the church.

"No, Kora. He wasn't fightin' with one'a my kin. He fucked my pregnant mate. Shit like that ain't make a Garou too rational. But here he is, alive and well, free to keep fuckin' messin' with families with the next generation of the nation."

A beat.

"Somethin' I thought ya' would understand, Kora."

[Gwen Sullivan] An elastic band is snapped off the Cub's wrist and her hands move to the back of her head. Hair fast on its way to greasy, far beyond unkempt, is wrangled into a fist and twisted about until it's a knot at the base of her skull. Secured there, she starts forward on stocking feet-- black so she doesn't have to worry about them going stained and dirty from all the dust and debris on the floor, large and baggy enough at the heels that they were probably intended for grown men rather than teenaged girls.

Kora gets Nash up, he's slumped against her shoulder arm and beachball belly, and as Gwen nears her always-hooded eyes widened some, then sharpened. Her pace quickened, and she was at Kora's side all the quicker for recognition. The long blond hair, the shape of the beaten and swelling face, the leather jacket and all struck her as intimately familiar. Gwen pressed herself into Nash's other side and grabbed his arm, dragged it over her shoulders and helped quicken the journey from front door to sofa against the wall in the living area.

Her jaw was set, Rage a flickering blue flame about her shoulders and at the top of her head. When they reach the couch she helps the man lay down, bends his knees so he can fit well enough to lay on his side rather than putting him flat on his back. Pale eyes cut back toward Hunter, and her nose wrinkles in distaste, lips pale for being pressed hard to hold back an open snarl. She wouldn't be so defensive, truly, were it not for the Moon above.

[Kora] "Starla?"

A flash of dark eyed look from Hunter to Nash and back again.

"He fucked Starla too?"

[Hunter] A frown.

"What? No, I mean he might have, how the fuck should I know? A gnawer, my mate. What's gotten into ya' Kora?"

[Gwen Sullivan] Kora and Hunter are left to hash out politics. Gwen is left crouched down in front of the couch, knees out rather than forward so that she can straddle herself nearer to the furniture, to the unconscious man laying on the length of it. She keeps her back to the Ahroun, leaves the talking to the Jarl. She was a Cub, if she opened her mouth it would only be to invite knuckles or claws into it.

Rather she scowls heavily and assesses the damage of the Kin, pushing his hair gingerly from his face. There's no tenderness in the gesture, it, as many things about the cub, is both utilitarian and a little bit awkward. She's clearing the blond out of the way so she can see his face. Touching lightly at his side to feel for breaks, for swelling, for anything out of place that might indicate internal hemorrhaging. She wasn't a medic, wasn't an EMT or a doctor or anything close to trained for this, but she could tell what was or wasn't supposed to be.

[C.J. Nash] That wakes him up.

As far as beatings go, this one was fairly tame: Hunter hit him four, maybe five times altogether, but as a son of Eagle, the punches and kicks he landed were inhumanly powerful. Nash's nose is bloody but not actively bleeding anymore; his jaw is discolored but not obviously broken. The bulk of the damage seems to be to his torso. He's making strange noises when he breathes, which isn't all that often, and when he exhales, it gurgles.

Then she presses on his ribs, and he coughs so violently that if Gwen's reflexes aren't honed she might end up with blood on her. His eyes don't open. The kinsman, whose tanned skin has gone pale, whose lips have a vaguely bluish tinge, seems to consider it, if only to see who's poking at him.

He weakly pushes at Gwen's hand, mumbles something that sounds like "God damn it," and goes back to wheezing.

[Kora] "If another Garou tried to steal my mate, I would tear her apart," Kora returns, without a moment of hesitation. " - but if he was willing to fuck around with a stranger, a kin of another tribe, anyone, well, he would not be mine, would he?"

While Gwen tends to the unconscious Nash, Kora straightens and stands bodily between them. There's blood on her flank, on the sleeve of her cotton t-shirt where she carted the unconscious kinsman back to the couches, on her face, in her hair, and she's swallowing hard against the fundamental substrate instinct to shift and go for the throat. The moon's high, her rage is still close to the surface and there's a certain harsh asceticism to her voice. A certain sourness beneath the storm of her gaze.

"You have a helluva nerve, Hunter," almost unconsciously, her arms cross over her stomach. It is a gesture she rarely makes, refusing to fucking acknowledge the advanced state of her pregnancy in public. Here, though, she's just shiedling the kid-to-bed from the ahroun-in-front of her. A twist of her mouth. "You said pregnant mate. The last I heard you were intruding on Roman's territory fucking his cousin. Now there's some other pregnant mate the rest of the world's supposed to be hands off? See to your own fucking house.

"I'll have the Forseti exam him. If he coerced, induced, or forced your fucking mate to have sex with him, I'll forgive you this and beat him myself for good measure.

"If not, you'll answer for every fucking blow."

[Gwen Sullivan] Nash jerks awake with a cough and splatters blood past his lips. Gwen is quick enough to duck to the side that it doesn't hit her in the face (as though she's worried about contracting anything from him), but doesn't stay leaned away in disgust or bother. Instead she catches his hand when he moves it feebly to brush her away from his ribs. Squeezes it and pinches the thin skin at the inside of his wrist with untrimmed fingernails.

"You breathing okay?" She asks, but doesn't fully expect an answer. She could hear the watery gurgling with every breath he took.

The frown seemed permanently etched into her features, she turns her head so that her chin is in front of her shoulder, giving her profile to the Ahroun and the Skald. Her eyes don't focus on either, though, she looks past both of them. Her always-raspy voice, with all the potential for husky sultry tones like the smoke filled chamber of a 1930s speakeasy, was nothing but a raw growl now.

"There's blood in his lungs."

[Hunter] A slight ponderous rumbling escapes from the depths of his throat as Kora begins speaking and when Kora finishes he waves a hand. "Forget the Forseti, wasn't no coercion. But that's between me'n'mine."

His voice is casual, like he's had far too long to think about all of this.

"Also, intrudin' on Roman's territory is a bit of a way to put it Kora. He ain't Fenrir, neither is Starla. Just cause Roman's packed with you don't mean that's how their whole tribes gonna work."

A beat and he waves a hand.

"Besides, that was awhile ago. It's irrelevant. Fact of the matter is Nash knew, I told em myself that she was mine. Did it anyway. I ain't sayin' I fuckin' followed your rules down to a letter Kora, but I did what needed to be done. If he weren't such an idiot as to pull a fuckin' gun on me he'd be sittin' there happy as day with a black eye. He got off fuckin' lucky if ya' ask me, we all did."

[C.J. Nash] He breathing okay?

Nash manages to open his eyes now, and Gwen finds them unfocused and bleary. Now that he's awake, he's also acutely aware of the amount of pain he's in, likely cursing his daughter for dragging him back into his body when he was blissfully unaware of how wrecked he was. He starts breathing faster, flinching with the pain it produces, and attempts to push himself up.

Nothing happens. Through his haze, he hears the Los Angelean Ahroun telling Kora that he got off fuckin' lucky, and Nash huffs, coughs, winces, as though he would burst out laughing if he could catch his breath. His lung filling with blood is likely the only thing keeping him from smarting off; he can't even find the air necessary to complain about not being able to catch his breath.

[Kora] There is a moment where Kora's attention is pulled back, drawn inward. She looks - meditative - then focuses again directly on Hunter. Says, in a soft, quiet voice, "I can fucking assure you that that is how their tribe works. Starla's been in town for two moons, so it cannot be all that long ago as to be ir-fucking-relevant to your own goddamned behavior. The rules in question aren't mine. They're the fucking Nation's. And if he transgressed against you, it is my duty to punish him, not yours. Since you seem incapable of understanding that, I'm happy to let Honor's Compasse explain the matter to you directly.

"Unless you want to offer me our contrition for this transgression, you can leave now."

[Gwen Sullivan] Gwen's fingers swipe through the flat cut of bangs over her forehead, pushing them out of the way only long enough for them to fall back into place once again. She's nipping at the inside of her mouth, cheeks and lips and tongue alike, with the sharp edges of her incisors. Nash isn't quite struggling for air, but it certainly isn't easy for him to breathe either. He huffs and wheezes and every half-panted breath he takes has a wet shlucking sound to it.

She lets go of his hand, her own now hovering awkwardly over his waist and shoulder. She doesn't know how to heal, she doesn't know much of how to help him. She could perform CPR, she could splint an injury, but internal damages like this she was downright useless with. On top of that, she wasn't much comfort either. The girl wasn't soft, nor was she warm. Kind emotions were a far drift from what she was accustomed to, especially these days with the hardening paces that one being indoctrinated into the Warrior's Tribe goes through.

Still, she pats lightly, gingerly at a shoulder and grinds out through teeth clenched over the inside of her lower lip. "Keep doing that. Breathing. Cough it out, don't let it well up. You go to sleep you won't cough it up."

[Hunter] "No no, I ain't hit em' to punish em'. I hit em' because he fucked my mate n'that's the laws of fuckin' wolves, Kora. That's the god damn laws of nature. He's in the state he is because he either couldn't use his brain or didn't give a fuck to -- when fuckin' my mate and when drawin' that gun -- you try dish out whatever fuckin' punishment you see fit Kora, I ain't arguin', I don't give a fuck about none of that."

He turns on his heel and heads for the door.

"He ain't worth the fuckin' hassle Kora." Called over his shoulder as he's leaving.

[C.J. Nash] It sounds like common sense advice, to keep breathing, but when breathing causes pain, one can see why Nash isn't in much of a hurry to do something that's going to hurt. All he can do is lie there, with or without his eyes open to see what's going on around him. He can tell, just from listening--Gwen's small frame blocks his view of the rest of the world--that the Bone Gnawer is starting to leave.

He huffs again, blue lips incapable of smiling, and he reaches out a pain-blinded hand to rest it atop her head. The kinsman finds the wind necessary to get out one word--"I'm"--before he coughs again, aborting whatever thought crawled into that thick skull of his. His hand leaves her hair so he can bury his coughing in his elbow. When he groans, it's nearly a growl; it would be a Fuck! if he could speak.

[Kora] "Then I will see you at the Caern as soon as Honor's Compasse-rhya is available."

And that is all Kora says to Hunter.

The door closes behind him and Nash is lying there, listening to the echo of footsteps on the stones of the church. Unable to move, with Gwen's frame blocking the light. Kora swallows back the echo of her ancestors in the back of her mind, the need for blood in return, and frowns down at Nash. "Gwen," to the cub. "There's a box by the far wall, wooden. I have healing talens inside. Gourds, yeah?" Her voice is clipped, still taut with half-swallowed fury. "Bring me one."

[Hunter] [thanks for scene!]

[Gwen Sullivan] Nash's hand lifts, hovers haphazardly, then settles on top of her head. Gwen didn't do affection well, or craft words carefully. She was straight to the point in everything. The night that paternity results were pulled from an envelope and left to hang in the air between cub and Kin there hadn't been much catching up, lamenting about what could have been, or promising to be there from here on out. Nothing like that. Just a matter-of-fact statement that he'd have to get an apartment with an extra room and silent resolve on the cub's part to make an effort with this Kin.

Simple, physical stuff like this, though, she understood. A hand on the head was met with her nudging her head into his palm, tucking her chin and taking a deep breath.

He's coughing again, pulling his hand back so he could cover his mouth with the crook of his elbow. Hunter's leaving, the door thumping closed behind him, and Kora's giving her instructions. There were healing gourds in a box against the wall, bring one on over. Gwen's pale green-gray eyes hopped up to the Jarl's face, then the girl nodded and pushed herself up onto her stocking feet. Legs that weren't short to support a petite frame, nor long enough for the word 'leggy' to be applied to her, carried her across the large room in hunt of what she was told to fetch.

Once found, a gourd is delivered into the hands of the Skald.

[C.J. Nash] He has to know he fucked up, that this was going to be the consequence of his going to bed with a woman who, if not in her own mind, belonged to a Fostern Ahroun from a tribe of creatures who have been mistreated and oppressed throughout history. Hunter didn't ask him questions before he came at him like a freight train, didn't stick around to ask questions in the event that he was healed before he could drown in his own blood. Even were he not Fenrir, in the presence of his Jarl, he wouldn't have a lot of room to complain.

So he doesn't. It's more like bitching than anything else, as though a collapsing lung is on the same scale of irritating as a paper cut or a stubbed toe; his body is doing the complaining for him. He's clammy, blue, short of breath. Kinfolk heal faster than normal human beings, yet they die just as easily. Were they to leave him without healing, he would be dead within days.

Kora sends the Cub for a healing gourd, and he takes his elbow away from his face. His eyes are closed as he breathes. The blood he coughed up went into the crook of his jacket. He's still shivering. Unlike plenty of other people near death, he isn't begging for forgiveness or absolution. Either he doesn't believe he's going to die, or he doesn't believe he's done anything worth apologizing for.

Given who it is we're talking about, it's likely the latter.

[Kora] "You've heard of these?" Kora to Gwen, here. "Gaia's breath. They're bound with water spirits. They take some time to make, though - and you cannot keep a spirit bound indefinitely, not with a simple talen-making rite, so we don't have many on hand. I make these down by the river. Roman and I fought a battle last summer at the riverside; I was nearly swallowed by a giant spirit of corruption. He died, but came back. Just barely, though, floating alone in the river.

"I was poisoned, slowly losing coherence. Nearly dead. But the river knew what we had done, and the spirits healed me, cleansed the poison from my body, and healed Roman. So we started a clean-up, yeah? Riverfront, as a sort of chiminage. I've made these there ever since.

"The spirits aren't meant to be used, though. They aren't - things, right? Resources for us. This is an exchange of sorts, and you have to respect what they offer you, use it wisely, and do not waste."

Kora cups the gourd, imbues it with some of her spirit, and breaks it over Nash, letting the clean water run over his battered features.

"This is not a waste." She says, quietly to Gwen. Understanding something of the extent of Nash's injuries.

[Kora] (1 Gnosis spent - 4 Health Levels)

[Gwen Sullivan] Gwen stands like some mix between a sentry and an apprentice at Kora's side after the gourd is handed off, watches intently as the elder female displays the gourd and tells the story of how it and its counterparts all came to be. Her eyes only stray from Kora to check the doorway when the wind makes it creak, as though she's braced for Hunter to come back, ready and willing to change into a figure that would shred her undedicated clothes and throw her bulk (considerable for coming from a teen girl but nothing compared to that Ahroun's) against his to stop him from doing more harm.

He doesn't return, though, so she's safe to pay careful mind to Kora and what she does with the gourd. It cracks, the water contained inside drizzles over his face and chest. It works magic, takes a moment for the spirit to wake and do so. In the quiet that would follow Kora's last words, the waiting moments for the effects to be realized, the Cub murmurs quietly.

"No, a waste is the energy that... man--" she wanted a crueler word, obviously, but chose something less venomous, "spent on this. ...Stupid, stupid decision."

[C.J. Nash] They can practically hear his ribs knitting back together, his lung reinflating as the dust, the water from the broken gourd splashes over him. He sucks in a breath, as though he's been bucked from a boat into frigid water, so quickly does he go from being in excruciating pain to its lessening to an ache: he gasps, shocked, and pushes himself bolt upright. He ends up doubled over, coughing so hard he nearly loses the contents of his stomach. Blood comes up instead of gastric fluids, and Nash scrubs his face with his hands when he's got his wind back.

"Holy shit," he says. He is not Garou; he has to have experienced this before, this spiritual lessening of his physical suffering, yet he can hardly claim to be used to it. He says it again, slower, almost reverently, but he doesn't thank Kora or start to explain himself. He sits with his forearms between his knees, digesting the fact that he isn't close to death anymore.

[Kora] "If I wasn't pregnant," Kora tells Gwen, quietly. "I would've throated him." With utter confidence. Nevermind that Hunter was a fostern Ahroun, now and it would not likely have been so easy.

"As it is, I'll lay it before the Adren Fang Philodox for judgment, or instruction, since he seemed unable to grasp where he failed to heed the litany." This is a quiet aside. Kora watches as Nash sits up and starts coughing, quietly standing back, giving him room to breath, to reorient himself, to find his way back into the world.

[Gwen Sullivan] If I wasn't pregnant, uttered the Jarl in a soft voice at about the level of Gwen's ear-- Kora had a few inches on her, but not enough to make her a full head taller. The young Philodox's brow furrowed more, and a hand lifted to scrub absently between her breasts, where the chest aches with emotion and Rage.

"If I weren't but a Cub I would have done so myself. I know where he was wrong, I just don't have the... the weight to back that up yet."

Nash is coughing, leaned over the couch and half-belching excess blood onto the floor. Neither woman goes to touch him, to comfort or help him as he worked the fluid from his lungs near to the point of vomiting. They let him work through this on his own, and only once he's recovered, sitting back and breathing more steadily, arms dangling between his legs, does Gwen speak up.

"Better. Good." Because she doesn't know what else to say. She doesn't ask for his side of the story because that was Kora's place. She doesn't tell him that Hunter was wrong in what he did because that was unnecessary. Beyond those two words she's quiet. Her hands go into the pockets of her oversized sweatpants and she frowns down at the mussed blond hair on Nash's head, not at him so much as the situation she'd awaken to find.

[Gwen Sullivan] Matter of fact, her presence here as a whole was unnecessary. She determines this with a nod of her head and by glancing to Kora. "I'm going to go back to sleep." Then, to Nash: "Find me or call me, let me know you're okay..?"

And with these disclaimers left, the teen stalked back through the doorway, to the hallway with many doors and many utilitarian sleeping arrangements.

[C.J. Nash] [WRIZZAP]

[Maddox] "What I wish, Lllizzy," and the L is noticeably drawn out, "is to not break a verbal habit that's twenty-some-odd years in the making. But," and he sighs, long-suffering and benevolent man making the effort to bestow a favor, "if it will make you happy, I can try. The best I can promise is a hybrid, lllIzzy."

Peering up at her, his mouth quirks, and he shrugs a shoulder. "And you can call me whatever you like, s'long as you don't refer to me as anything relating to Angelina fucking Jolie."

[Kora] "I trained in these islands in the north Atlantic, yeah?" she returns, walking fast enough to match his pace. It's hard to see the grace in her gait anymore. Mostly, she waddles, shoulders back, stomach forward. "The meal plan included every edible part of the sheep. Mutton; they sold the lambs off. And fish. I'd be happy with Little Caesar's pizza.

"This stuff - " outside now, a cool spring night; she glance up automatically, finding clouds across the waxing moon. The night's unsettled; she's not yet glimpsed the moon through the cloud cover and reminds herself not to look up again. "Is heaven."

Kora's eyes drop from the sky to the street; settle on Maddox and Izzy down on the corner, the bus stop bench. Then she cuts Lukas a side glance, generous mouth twisting in a subtle show of wry humor. "Did you actually just say little tyke?" The streetlights sheen across the surface of her eyes as she lifts her shoulders in a vague, answering shrug. "I don't know when exactly. Soon, though."

[Danicka Musil] Two college seniors and two people that look like they're old enough to be grad students stumble into the pizza parlor, laughing and barely able to carry themselves, then abruptly straighten up because they have to be serious here. One of them keeps flicking his eyes around, not blinking, and is visibly trying very, very hard not to laugh. He's holding the hand of a girl who, sober, would be way too pretty for him, but maybe that's what people think every time those two hold hands. The 'grad students' are a total hipster -- scarf and everything -- with a chin beard and tattoos, and beside him is a blonde woman in dark pink and white lululemon athletica, her hair up in a high ponytail.

The hipster is handling himself better than the undergrads, as though this is just his natural state. The brunette starts to giggle again. The blonde, who smells as strongly of weed as the rest of them, lets out a squeal that is decidedly not Shadow Lordly at all and bolts across the room to jump on Lukas, arms and legs tossed around his shoulders and waist, respectively.

"Hi!"

[Izzy Montoya] She studies him again. A long moment. Then? A subtle curve at the corner of her lips - barely seen, barely there before it's gone again. She turns, and settles to the bench then, crossing long legs, smoothing her slacks over her thigh, before she turns her attention to the pastry now held in her lap, cigarette between her fingers as she plucks bits of the treat off to eat them.

She doesn't seem to care that he didn't invite her to sit.

"To be fuckin' honest, I never made that connection. Now, though..." She looks up then, which is where finds Kora looking toward her and Maddox. She holds the gaze a moment, before returning her attention to the Theurge at her side.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "I absolutely did. I thought you'd prefer it to," he pauses to take another big bite, bringing up the pizza box to catch a runaway glop of meat-n-cheese, "the future warrior of Gaia, oorah!"

And a laugh, then, more or less heading toward Izzy and Maddox down the way now -- that sort of half-unconscious clustering of like to like. "I was fostered in upstate New York. Very rural area, very beautiful. A big lake and some waterfalls. Actually, a reservoir and a dam, but still quite lovely. We were close enough to the City not to have to salvage every part of the sheep, though."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [ack! *reads* go on, i'll add another post in a sec!]

[Maddox] He shifts on the bench, giving the woman room. His Rage is not terribly high, and he's not the most threatening of Garou. Tall and gangly, Maddox looks more the type to accidentally hurt himself before doing damage to an opponent in a fight. Even without a gun, Izzy could probably overpower him with little effort.

That's not why he makes room. There's no telling what that reason is, or when why when she does deign to sit near him he refrains from leaning up against her and being a general nuisance. He does indeed look surprised, though. And he huffs a laugh.

"Hey, I'll remind you that I'm making an effort. No luvs for you. No Jolies for me. Deal?" Leaning back slightly, he holds out the arm closest to her for a shake. Her attention drifts, though, and so does his. Maddox looks over to see the small party over by or in the pizza joint. One familiar figure, one less familiar, and one just in the process of latching onto the more familiar one like a jumper.

[Izzy Montoya] He offers a shake, and she pulls her attention back to him. She drops her gaze to his hand, and then slides her fingers into his easily enough. "Deal."

A beat. "Which is good, as I'd hate to have to get these coordinates right here tattoo'd on my ass to commemorate the place we met. I hate needles."

His rage isn't as much as some, perhaps more than others. Rather than overwhelming, it's more of a tingle of awareness along her spine, under her skin. Easily ignored. He follows her gaze, and she lifts a chin toward Kora and Lukas. "Know'em?"

[Kora] Whatever she might have replied - the twist lingerings in the curve of her mouth when he finished future warrior of gaia with oorah - is largely swallowed when Danicka appears, well dressed, smelling of pot and Shadow Lord, and flings herself onto Lukas. The pregnant Fenrir steps rather politely, rather decisively, out of the immediate circle of their space, lifts her pizza box in vague toast to Lukas and begins ambling (waddling) down the street toward the bus bench.

So: tall, young, heavily pregnant woman, pale-skinned, pale-haired, dark-eyed, wearing a University of Chicago hoodie that is large enough to accommodate her gravid figure at the stomach, and too large everywhere else. NO breeding to mark her as Garou; just the confidence to walk a street like this in the presence of a Shadow Lord, or along. Her hair is long, pale enough that it would go silver in the moonlight, the weight of it wrapped back upon itself, secured with a chop stick at the base of her neck. Mostly the twist is covered by the hood of her sweatshirt.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's an unShadowLordly squeal, and then there's a rapid approach that distantly reminds him of the way his imaginary dream-daughter flung herself at him in the Underworld, and then he's scooping a potsmoked Danicka up half out of reflex and half out of instinct. Hi, she says. Rrr, he says, pretend-gnawing at her shoulder for a second.

Then, as though abruptly re-aware that they're out on the streets, he leans back and lets her slide back down. "Hi," he replies, smiling. Then a pause. Sniffing. "Are you stoned?"

He hasn't quite let go of her entirely. His arm wraps warm and heavy over her shoulders as he starts following Kora's meandering, waddling path toward the others.

[Maddox] "Why...?" he trails, amused and confused all at once. Before he can complete the question, Izzy asks him if he knows them. He lifts his head again to see.

"Big bloke's got a room at The Brotherhood. I don't know the bird 'e's wearing. Her..." He squints at Kora.

She probably doesn't remember him. He certainly doesn't really remember her, though she looks familiar. But they saw each other once, on another night, when Maddox was sitting on a bench in a park, playing to the twilight. It was brief, and he'd been thoroughly distracted by an adorable little songbird and a flighty tribesmate.

Maddox watches the pregnant woman as she makes her way near, eyes narrowed and head tilted. Then he gives up in a shrug.

"Aside from a bit of déjà vu, I don't think I've met her before. Friend of yours?"

[Danicka Musil] "I'm hungry," Danicka answers, as though this was a very, very stupid question on Lukas's part, and she must be stoned because there was less grace than her usual as she slid down and set her running-shoed feet on the concrete again. She's got a messenger bag slung over her shoulder, the strap crossing her chest, but it isn't heavy. Her eyes are glassy, but she's smiling. "You found the real pizza!" she says, since he's at this parlor, and she sounds so proud.

Oh, they're walking. She's got a very heavy arm on her and she's essentially being steered in the direction he's going, but tonight she doesn't seem to mind that. She doesn't reposition his arm or anything. She seems, in fact, quite content to be ushered along for once.

"I can haz pizza?" she lolcats at him, holding out her hands. She's beaming.

[Izzy Montoya] She shrugs a shoulder, semi-embarrassed to know the following: "Jolie has the longitude and latitude of the birth place of each of her adopted children on her arm."

Then it's back to the garou. The big bloke he says. "Lukas. And Danicka. And this..." Added as Kora comes within comfortable earshot and conversation distance. "Is Kora. Kora, Maddox. Kora is the Jarl."

The. Not hers. Somehow, though, it's not intended as an insult, nor slight. Izzy tends to hold herself apart from the Nation she is mired within, and this is no different. Of course, she doesn't claim Kora is a friend either. It's not hard to imagine Izzy having a distinct lack of those, all told. Coworkers, acquaintances, sure. Friends? Few and far between.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Well, at least the big bloke is no longer wearing the bird. He's just gently guiding her along, and long before she lolcats at him, he's already offering her his pizza box. There are two meatlover's slices in there, big and flat and heavy, oozing, dripping with toppings. One's halfeaten. The other one's hers now.

"I totally found the real pizza. Why are you -- " he decides, midway through the question, to stop trying to ask why she's stoned and cruising for pizza in Cabrini with a bunch of classmates. "Did you drive?"

[Kora] The Jarl is ungainly with late pregnancy, carrying a small pizza box that smells of garlic and another single slice on a greasy paper plate atop that. She has not yet eaten, not even the first bite of the slice. Her thumb holds the paper plate in place atop the box as she walks, though. When she's close enough that Izzy offers introductions, she offers the kinswoman a faint half smile. "Detective." And a lift of the box by way of greeting. "Maddox."

Her eyes are dark, the color mostly lost in the night's shadows. Without precisely conscious thought, she stands out of the stream of smoke, but does not ask Izzy to put out her cigarette, and does not otherwise acknowledge her pregnancy. Not that it needs acknowledgment.

A brief glance back down the street touches on Danicka and Lukas as they take the same path. Then her gaze shifts, focuses beyond them, behind their backs, narrowing with momentary interest at something in the middle distance.

The note lingers, then shifts. Kora glances back at Izzy and Maddox. "Making friends?" A steady look for Izzy, though there is an understated irony to the curve of her expressive mouth.

[Maddox] "Jarl?" he asks, brows raised. He looks over Kora, surprised, but probably not for a reason she might think. "I thought this was a multi-tribal sept?" His voice is not pitched to keep from reaching the Jarl, but nor does he call it out to her.

"Kora," he greets, mouth quirking. When he takes a drag from his own cigarette, the smoke gets blown from the corner of his mouth. Where the wind takes it from there is beyond his control. "And I think it's safer to say we're not making enemies. I hope." He doesn't needle Izzy about her knowledge of a pop culture icon. Not right now, anyway, though he does wonder what other tidbits of useless information the kinswoman has tucked away in that fascinating brain of hers.

[Izzy Montoya] Making friends, Kora asks, with understated irony. "And Influencing People." Izzy replies, with a slight smirk and equally steady gaze. Some have told her that a smirk is rude, crude, and not at all polite - which is likely why it's her default expression. She means no insult though. At least, not at the moment.

There is respect in this, too. Kora stands out of the path of cigarette smoke, but does not ask that it be put out. As a direct result, Izzy takes a final drag, exhales away from the Jarl, and drops the butt to the cement at her feet, crushing it to final death under the toe of her boot. It's the little things.

As for the idea of a multi-tribal sept. "It is."

[Danicka Musil] "Pizzaaa..." Danicka chortles gleefully, accepting the greasy slice without bothering with a napkin, without asking for one. She grabs the second large slice and holds it with both hands, taking a very large bite while Lukas is thinking better of asking why this woman, who considers everything from gallery openings to drinking at Mr. C's to taking apart arcane weaponry under a microscope to be appropriate ways to spend her leisure time, would do something as shocking as get high with college students.

Her teeth dig into the cheese and she looks like she's about to burst out giggling from sheer happiness. She doesn't, though. She reins it in, and chews that enormous bite, wiping some grease off her lower lip with the back of her wrist. Looks up at him as they near Maddox and Izzy and Kora again, blinking.

Swallows.

"I'm pretty sure we walked here. There may have been a bus. III left my coat at Trevor's apartment, though. He said he'd bring it to class tomorrow but I have to get it dry cleaned cuz it smells like ganja now." She takes another bite and, cheeks bulging, raises one hand in a wave to the Fianna, the detective, and the preggorz chick. She at least has the manners not to speak with her mouth full, though.

[Kora] "Not making enemies, influencing people," a mild, dark-eyed look from Maddox to Izzy and back again. The faint irony evident in the curve of her generous mouth widens. The shift is subtle as the difference between two shades of some designer color, but all the more evident for that. "Careful, detective. You'll make me proud."

Her chin rises, and she lifts the box by way of explanation. "If you will both excuse me, I'm heading back to the church. Need some milk to wash this down with, and I'm starving." A brief, flickering glance encompasses Lukas and Danicka in her excuses, and then the Fenrir starts around the corner.

[Kora] (Thanks for the scene, folks. Bedtime!)

[Kora] Late afternoon on a bright clear day. Cold, too. The weekend's brief heat wave was followed by a series of storms, constant flood warnings on the radio for outlying areas, creeks and storm drains rising out of their banks - cold, flooding rains, all, that turned the lake and the sky into one cold gray mass. This is the reward: the impossibly blue sky, the huge sun now meandering westward, bright enough to give the illusion of warmth. In the street's quiet shadows, though, the air is sharply cool, damp still from yesterday's rains.

The great facade of the church is bathed in the sun's late afternoon brilliance, the light just enough to warm the stone. The trees and brambles surrounding the long abandoned structure are beginning to green up. The forsythia has long since bloomed, now its slender branches are the bright green of new growth, tangled amidst the great mass of weedy growth. There are buds on the other trees and vines; mostly still furled, but giving them a halo of green around the edges. Somewhere deep in the mass - in the midst of an old, long-overgrown garden - daffodils push up through the mud, and a Bartlett pear tree blooms bright white.

The gate in the chainlink fence is wide open. The sidewalk is still damp, and there are a few puddles in the shadows of the portico. The big doors are closed, of course, keeping out some of the chill. One of the residents - the pregnant one - is sitting out on the front porch, pale face lifted toward the afternoon sun. She's leaning back on her elbows, long legs stretched out down the front steps, boots dark against the gray stone, eyes closed, soaking in the spring sun.

[Nash] And here comes Bessie.

No one has actually referred to the early-90s model Ford Ranger by this name aloud yet, yet so far as anyone who has gazed upon her is concerned, that is the vehicle with the Alabama plate's name. Her owner has been dragging his feet insofar as getting new license plates and changing his address has gone, as though by some bizarre chance he was going to turn out to not be the father of the rumored Cub who has been wandering around Chicago for months, now.

Spirits have very limited sense of time. Many of them don't understand linear relationships or chronology. One would think he would have grasped this readily; yet his mother was a Forseti, not a Godi.

Regardless, he has to stay, now, and that truck still coughs and wheezes as he drives. It pulls onto the block, and Kora can likely hear it before she sees it, though she might not recognize it, yet. That truck is a piece of shit, though it isn't, by some standards, That Old.

It's like its owner.

It pulls up to the curb, Nash having healed sufficiently to be able to parallel park without a twinge of pain or a sudden spasm causing him to smack up onto the curb. The manual transmission truck is skillfully parallel parked, and he gets out, pocketing his keys and hauling out of the cab a drink tray from Dairy Queen. It contains two Blizzards. He holds it in his left hand, using his right--the wrist confined to a pharmacy-bought neoprene splint while it finishes healing--to lock and close the door.

A pause for traffic, and he moseys across the street, letting himself up onto the curb and through the gate.

"Howdy!" he calls, boots thumping against the concrete as he draws closer. It's not warm enough for him to consider lounging in what little sun there is; the long-haired kinsman still wears a leather jacket. "Workin' on your tan?"

[Kora] Neither the coughing, wheezing engine nor the back and forth of Nash's parallel parking are enough to bring her alive. When the car door slams shut, though, the pregnant Skald cracks open her right eye, peers through the sun's glare at the streetscape. In the space of another breath, she has both eyes open, and watches Nash cross the street from beneath the shadow of pale lashes, still squinting against the glare.

She is sitting up when he reaches the base of the steps, pulling her feet back up to plant her heels on the flat edge of a stone step three steps down, dusting off her hands as she leans forward, resting her elbows on her thighs. When he's close enough to speak, she offers him a narrow half-smile, somewhat wry but aware.

"Never managed to find that middle ground, yeah? Between stark-white and red-as-a-boiled-lobster." The half smile lingers at the corners of her generous mouth, but the rest of her face is lost in shadow as she leans forward, dark eyes gleaming with faint threads of reflected light. "It's been gray for so long, though, I'm glad to see the sun."

There's a pause there; a lacuna as she flickers a look at him, up and down. Looking for blood, maybe. Or assessing the state of his recovery in a single, watchful glance. "Good to see the world's longest meeting didn't drive you off, though."

[Nash] In that pause, Nash works himself down onto the step one below her; either it's a subconscious thing, keeping himself lower than the Trueborn female, or he's attempting to compensate for the scant few inches of height he has over her. He's long and fairly lean, giving off a greater impression of being tall than he actually possesses. That isn't to say he's not tall, but he is not as tall as he looks.

He sets the tray of milkshake concoctions between them, and rolls his shoulders as if to work out a kink. The right arm rests on his knee, and he gives her his gaze.

"The concussion I had and the Vicodin the Doc got for my arm certainly helped," he says, of the world's longest meeting. "I don't remember a damn thing from that meeting."

[Kora] "Not a damn thing?" she returns, pale brows lifting in fine arches about her shadowed eyes. Her expressive mouth is still; set into its neutral position, a faint curve that makes her seem as if she were always on the verge of smiling. Now, she just twists up one corner of her mouth, wry, her dark-eyed attention steady. "Not even flipping off the grand elder?"

Some hint of bemusement wraps itself into her words; braids itself into the quiet spaces between them.

Then she tips her chin toward the blizzards in the cupholder. "First in share to the greatest in station, yeah?" That's quiet, humor at the forefront, though it's a still sort of humor, reserved, dry. "What flavors?"

Sunlight hits her shoulders, pulls out the secondary colors in the weave of her oversized gray swearshirt. It was make for a man or woman who came by his girth by eating Chicago's delicacies - hot dogs, deep dish pizza. Endless beer - and so although it fits well over her swollen stomach, the shoulders are too wide, the arms voluminous.

She has pushed the cuffs up over her forearms, rolled them so that they do not slide far, and beneath those oversized rolled up cuffs the sleeves of a pale green cotton tee fit closely to her skin.

[Nash] There's a brief moment where it seems as though he believes her when she claims that he ended up flipping off the Grand Elder; brief, yet no so scarce that it escapes notice. He stares at her in suppressed horror for a few seconds, then cracks a grin and shakes his head, about the time she's indicating the huge cups of frozen dairy product.

"Didn't take you for a leg-puller," he says.

Her humor persists when the conversation drifts to the matter of the share. Nash, who's got some sort of gum in his mouth that does not require constant gnawing, is mid-reactivation of the nicotine-infused rubber when she asks, leaving him grinning while chewing. All he does is flick his eyebrows, as if to confirm her suspicions, and then the question of flavors.

"One of 'em's got some sort'a candy in it," he says. "Peanut butter cups or somethin'. Other one's chocolate-covered cherry."

Nash doesn't move to let more sunlight hit his flesh. He doesn't need to: if he hails from the land that bears its name on his truck's license plates, he undoubtedly soaked up a considerable amount of sunlight before making the trip north. It persists on his skin, which is deeply tanned even after the winter Chicago just endured. It's bleached out his hair. The stubble on his face is salt-and-peppered, the white existing prominently on his jaws where it does not have neighbors in the blond atop his head.

"It ever gonna get warm?" he asks.

[Kora] She makes a sound in the back of her throat, a barely voiced laugh returned through closed lips so that it sounds like no more than a quiet hmm. The steadiness lingers, but when he calls her out for pulling his leg her curving mouth twists briefly wide and she looks up and away, toward the bright, cloud-scattered sky.

There is a huff of breath, but she does not look back down until he explains the flavors. Candy. Chocolate covered cherry. She pushes up the falling cuffs of her sleeves again, then reaches to examine each blizzard through the cloudy plastic translucence of the lids, picking the peanut-butter one for herself, lifting it up and out in an ironic echo of a toast.

"Cheers," she tells him by way of thanks, already pulling up the lid with long, sure fingers, easing the spoon stuck deep into the ice cream back out with a certain precision. A specific fastidiousness that he may well read as animal.

The spoon's halfway out when he remains on the weather; she returns his question with a soft snort. "I fostered at Hjaltland in the north Atlantic, yeah? This is warm." She pauses, here, lifting her chin in his direction. "But yeah. No worries. Come summer it'll be fucking sweltering."

Her gaze drops to the surface of her ice cream as she stirs up the candy pieces. Then glances back at him through the scrim of pale lashes, dark eyes touching on his jaw before finding his gaze. "You find your kid yet?"

[Nash] By the time summer rolls around, it'll be sweltering. Nash considers this, or else considers the propriety of firing a wad of nicotine gum into the shrubbery around the steps of a former church. Rather than unleashing bacteria-laden rubber into holy earth, the kinsman reaches into his pocket for the plastic sheet he'd drawn it from in the first place and sticks it back in the reservoir. There are seven untouched blisters in the pack. He folds the popped bit of foil back over the hole, crams it in his pocket, and picks up the fruit-and-chocolate concoction left behind by the pregnant Skald.

He find his kid yet, she wants to know, and the kinsman looks over at her, his face betraying minimal emotion. Right hand is charged with keeping his cup still while his dominant hand moves the spoon through the cup's innards.

"Yeah," Nash says, in that lazy, letter-accentuating manner of his. "That little bird spirit wasn't lyin'."

[Kora] "Gwen?" Kora returns, dark eyes sharp on his face, now, the red plastic spoon marooned in the midst of the ice cream. "Or the kitty-hat girl? What's her name. Jocelyn."

[Nash] "Jocelyn?" he says, as though the very idea caused him to suffer heart palpitations. "Jesus Christ, I'd have myself castrated if she was my fault."

[Kora] That earns him another half-voiced laugh, accompanied by a supple twist of her expressive mouth. Her amusement is mostly subliminal, contained inside her body, held back somehow, but that instinct toward control is frayed and twisted by the hormones flooding her bloodstream; by the too-often unspent rage that spikes through the feral part of her changing soul.

"Gwen's a good kid," the Skald offers, musing. Mostly background. It's all she can say about the future-Forseti. She does not know the girl well. Still, a quiet glance here, sweeping back down the steps to the horrified kinsman. "She'll do right by you."

Then her dark eyes lift beyond Nash's rough gray(ing) beard, his blond hair made brighter by the cold spring sun, to the truck he's packed across the street. Visible between the rusting diamonds of the old chain-link fence.

A thoughtful line appears between her brows. The stirring slows, and she reaches to catch a stray drip of ice cream from the lip of the cup with the meat of her thumb - this without looking - and glances back toward him.

"You working this afternoon?"

[Kora] Some gray spring night, rainy and cold - there's a lull in the storms now, and so the rain simply falls instead of pelting the windows. If Drew has the radio on, she'll hear the drone of the National Weather Service warnings - flash floods, thunderstorm warnings for outlying communities, all robo-voiced, endless sometimes.

The moon is waxing. Oh, she cannot see it, somewhere up above the constantly moving gray clouds. Cannot feel it the way Garou feel it - in their blood and bones, some tidal rhythm, each movement a sea change. But she's known them long enough to keep track of its pattern. To note the full moon not with the surprise, the way humans do - glancing up at the sky while taking out the trash, or picking up the kids from ballet, or walking the dog and saying, oh my, look at the moon. - but with awareness, nearly but never quite subconscious.

So: a cold rainy night capstones a gray spring day. And lo, there is a knock at the door.

[Drew Roscoe] Drew has been a quiet thing lately. She'd gone out of town for a weekend from what Kora would have understood-- just to visit her father, nothing too far away that she couldn't return within a few hours when called. She'd been focused on work, busy there, but not too busy to swing by occasionally to drop off essentials-- flour, sugar, bread, eggs, some lighter clothes of all sizes and genders that would be better suited for the oppression of a humid midwestern summer that would be upon them sooner than they knew.

There isn't a radio on tonight, surprisingly instead Drew's watching the television. The quiet pitter-patter of raindrops on her window is overtaken by the quiet voices on the television. She's watching a movie, something bland and forgettable, not engrossed in it so much as just resting for the evening. She's got a dish with apple slices in her lap, crunching on them contentedly, dressed in a pair of faded out blue-gray pajama pants that are cut off at the calf and a white wifebeater. Her long hair is drawn up into a ponytail, her face clean of make-up. It's certainly an evening in after a long day at work.

Knock-knock.

It's answered within twenty seconds, after a preliminary glance out the front window to be sure of who was at her door. The pale blond hair, the swollen figure of fertility, she knew immediately who was there. After the curtains fluttered the door opened without hesitation, wide enough to immediately allow the Jarl to step inside.

"Kora, how ya doin'?"

[Kora] There's no mistaking her, not these nights. She's dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, the shoulders and yoke dark from the rain. Her hair's dry, the hood pushed off the crown of her head when she stepped onto Drew's stoop.

That rush of city sounds floods in when she opens the door. The rain, the quiet roar of a car plunging through the rivulets and puddles pooling on the blacktop of Drew's side street, the smear of headlights across the crystalline darkness.

And of course she's huge now; her pregnancy has finally advanced enough to make her awkward. No matter the wolf that Drew can still see in the way her gaze fixes on the kinswoman - drawn inexorably by the subtle potency of her blood - no matter the native grace of her tall frame: she's awkward now, shoulders back to counterbalance the weight of her pregnancy, her gait - well, pigeontoed. Waddling. Ungainly.

Kora pauses on the thresholds to stamp the rain from her books, then waddles inside, hands coming out of the pockets of her oversized hoodie, one reaching up to start unzipping the sweatshirt, at least partway, revealing a pale green cotton tunic underneath, and of course the black leather choker - narrow, a few strips of leather braided together - she always wears.

"Drew," she returns, low-voiced, aware. Somber, too, her attention keen on the kinswoman, taking in the details of her appearance before cutting away to the living room. The flicker of light from the television. The dish of apples on the couch. A supple twist of her mouth follows, the natural curve deepening, but the sobriety lingers even there. "I'm well enough. And you look well."

[Drew Roscoe] "I'm doing alright, yeah. It's feeling like the calm before the storm these days, but I'll appreciate the still while it lasts."

Drew closes the door behind Kora, then steps back to give the Skald room to stomp her boots on the welcome rug and undo the sweatshirt she was wearing in place of a winter jacket on these warmer spring days. She stands behind her couch, leans over it for the remote control that was sitting behind the apple dish, and mutes the television. As she straightens back up, she does so with the bowl of apples in her hand, and offers them out to Kora with a stretched arm and stationary feet. One hip tucks against the back of the couch and holds the majority of her weight.

Her smile is bright and cordial, as it is known to be, eyebrows lifted a little, chocolate brown eyes resolutely on Kora's face.

"So, what's the occasion? Not that I don't appreciate company-- and damn it's been a while since I've had any-- but you're a busy lady. Typically you arrive with business."

[Kora] "Not quite as busy as you'd think these days," Kora returns, reaching out to take a couple of the apple slices from the bowl when Drew offers them, the gesture automatic, nearly thoughtless. "I'm a bit of a liability on the martial front. So I have to leave that work to the rest of the pack, yeah?"

The Skald offers the observation lightly, but there's a restlessness underlying the fact of it. The enforced idleness does her little enough good. Some days, all she wants to do is move. Some nights, she dreams of nothing but driving instinct, blood and the hunt.

All that's unspoken; burrowed beneath the surface of her low voice. Living there with other, darker things. "But you're right," and this is low as the rest of it, her dark gaze level on the much smaller kinswoman, sobriety evident in her face, stark and still, in the measured directness of her look. In her voice. She breathes out, a full exhale that flares her nostrils. "Remy's dead." Soberly offered, "I thought you should know. I know you and he were getting close. Earned a deedname, though, at the last. Summons the Inferno, Mourned by Flame."

[Drew Roscoe] A couple of apple slices are surrendered to Kora's fingertips, the remaining are brought back closer to the Kinswoman. One slice is brought to her mouth and crunched on, gone in a few quick bites. She nods sympathetically when Kora talks about hanging back from the fight. Drew couldn't understand the sort of restlessness that Kora felt, she didn't know the need to be out with the pack, to have the power of the Wolf in your muscles and legs, the thrill of the chase or the satisfaction of a successful hunt. All she could do was hear the heavily pregnant Garou out.

Then came the news. Drew stopped chewing the slice of apple in her mouth when Remy's dead was let to hang in the air. Jaw stilled, mashed up fruit pressed into her cheek. It's difficult to swallow, and her eyes drop from Kora's face to the bowl with the two remaining apple slices in it. There's a moment where she wonders if she'd get away with spitting it out, but shakes that thought off quickly enough and forces herself to clear her mouth by swallowing her food instead.

She takes in a deep breath, through her nostrils, enough that her lungs fill to capacity, then exhales slowly with a shake of her head.

"Did he go well?"

As she asks, she turns sideways, eyes still down, and sets the bowl back on the couch cushion for now.

[Kora] "As well as any of us." Kora returns, her attention keen on Drew for another pair of heartbeats after Drew has turned away. Then she withdraws. Looks away, off through the living room past the flickering light of the muted television, toward the kitchen, some indeterminate point of reference in the middle distance.

It's a platitude, the good death; one to which she herself does not perhaps subscribe in the requisite Fenrir manner. But she respects the question, answers it with a quiet, rooted conviction that rises from the circuit of centuries. A half-hundred memories of a half-hundred blooded and bloodied deaths. "He died in battled. Summoned a fire spirit to his aid and won enough of its loyalty that it came to find his tribe. The spirit destroyed whatever remained of his enemies."

There's another way to tell his story. A lone wolf who died alone, or near enough to it by the tribe's estimation; in the company of a Bone Gnawer he didn't know, who left town before his body could be burned, before his rite could be spoken.

That story remains inside Kora. Her voice is calm, still, bracing.

"We'll have his rite at the Caern tonight, or tomorrow. If you want to attend, I'll stake my honor for you with the Grand Elder so that you can see him off to Valhalla."

[Drew Roscoe] The fact that he died in battle seems a quiet sort of reassurance. The fact that his enemies fell just as he had, that he'd earned a deedname in his final act, all of that had her nodding slowly while Kora gave her a short, abridged version of the story. The fact that she didn't call him a lone wolf and explain that the only person to see him go fled town was a kindness to the Kinfolk. People didn't go as they were supposed to these days. Even if you were able to accept the fact that the Fenrir died in youth, fighting as they were meant to, that they were wronged in these last battles in any way was difficult. That lives were wasted, that they could have kept on for greater goods, was difficult to swallow.

She's invited to the Rite, and Drew nods again, lifts her eyes to Kora's. There's no tears, but the congeniality is gone from them, the sparkle and mirth. She's stark for the moment, digesting hard news, but not broken or devastated. Part of being Kin, of being Garou, was learning to take this news with a stalwart face and let it hit you only when no one was around to see you bend so far.

"I'd... appreciate that, Kora. Just let me know the time, I'll make it." There's another pause, and a frown presses her lips thin. Hands come together in front of her abdomen, fingers interlinking, thumbs sliding together, the pad of the right stroking the nail of the left. "Thank you for lettin' me know instead of lettin' me just find out."

[Kora] "If I know who your friends are, Drew," Kora returns with a quiet, sure, immediate conviction. "I will never let you just find out. That is the least of my duty to the living and the dead. " There's a stark passion in Kora's voice, unadorned but vibrant, wrapped about with conviction that few see these nights.

She's looking back at the kinswoman again; that moment's privacy has passed, but the direct look is neither judging nor assessing; just away. Of the way Drew receives the news - somber, but dry-eyed. The sparkle gone from her mouth and eyes. Just once Kora glances down, dark eyes touching on Drew's hands. she who offers sorrow earned her name from a moment like this; in another room, on another shore, bathed in the light of a fire from an ancient hearth rather than the flickering glow of the muted television, the smell of the salt-sea every-present in the air, blood on her own hands, under her nails. In her hair. Stiffing the bottom six inches of her jeans. Soaking into the seams.

Now her hands are clean; empty at her side. Now the room smells of wood polish and Drew's evening meal, smells of rain, and apples. Death is the only constant.

"I'll come for you before the rite. It'll be soon." A flicker of a glance here, down toward Drew's interlaced fingers, then back up to her face. Here, the Skald pauses as if she were listening to something quiet in the distance. "You shouldn't be alone tonight, Drew. You should call Eli. Or Rain, if he's out of town."

[Drew Roscoe] A weak tug occurs at one corner of her mouth when Kora assures her, sternly and passionately both, that she will never simply 'find out' so long as Kora has any indication that Drew was friends with the soul that had passed in a flash of the night, as so many do. Her eyes return to resting downcast, she nods again. That attempt at a thankful smile flutters by like a dead leaf on the breeze, and there's a moment of following quiet.

The home smells empty save for one. The meal she'd cooked had been simple, without garnish, something that would save well as leftovers for the next day's lunch at work. She didn't have mouths to feed besides her own to justify cooking much. There's the smell of apples, for certain, the rain outside, the vague scent of lemon cleaner and a scented plug-in elsewhere as well. It was too quiet in here, Kora picked up on the silence and knew exactly what needed to be done about it. She advised the Kinfolk to call somebody for company.

Drew's lips tug again, this time at both corners, and her chin lifts enough for her to look back up at the taller Skald, the Jarl of the tribe, the bastion of her people.

"Yeah, you're right. I'll give Eli a call." There's a pause, and Drew claps the heels of her hands together sharply. It's to jar herself out of melancholy, at least for the time being. The sound stands as a punctuation between muted shock and returning to proper function. "Kora, you want anything before you're on your way? I could re-heat some stew for you, fetch you a drink, whatever you like?"

[Kora] "Stew sounds divine," Kora returns; her smile is ghostly, bittersweet, but present nonetheless. "Lately it seems like I'm always hungry. Sometimes for the most awful things you can imagine." She breathes out, a subtle, half-withheld laugh. There's little mirth in it, precisely. Just a kind of quiet humor, self-deprecating. Wry beneath the awareness of death in her keen dark eyes. "Not that your stew is awful. I was just thinking it would go great with a yoohoo and some bacon double cheeseburger pringles."

[Jackson Montgomery] "Jesus." He chews on his lower lip. "You okay?"

[Bronwyn Montgomery] "It could have been much worse for me. Father...." She glances up, then back down. He knows as well as she does what kind of influence the man has.

[Jackson Montgomery] "...was pretty pissed, I imagine." He reaches out and settles his hand over hers.

"I'm sorry."

[Roman Turner] Overcast with the feel of possible rain in the air, warm enough to go without a jacket today. Chestnut hair blew back from a youthful face, settling in a ruffled mess as he shouldered open the door of the little cafe to enter a world of smells. He didn't seem to notice anyone or thing as he headed for the counter, finger combing hair out of his eyes. Except for the stiff new jeans, he looked like any other kid in the city. Those jeans and blue tee that stretched across his shoulders. The only odd thing was the click of boot heels as he walked up to place an order while reaching to a back pocket for his wallet.

"I'd like one of them iced coffee things."

[Bronwyn Montgomery] She snorts quietly. "What are you sorry for? I'm the one that made the choice."

[Rain McKellar] It's a little cafe in the middle of Lake View, which is not the usual sort of place that the Family rounded up by chance, by accident, happenstance -- call it what you will -- but there's a young man with a pleasant accent at the counter, and a pair of siblings at a window table, and a songbird rocking down the street. They're converging, the Unicorns, and not for a war council or a dressing down.

Jackson catches Rain's attention as she passes the window. It's warm enough that her taupe raincoat hangs open, and the shirt beneath is a dark, alligator-green. Jeans. Shoes that keep out the puddle-wet. No scarf. No annoyingly cheerful hat. A messenger bag that's still becoming familiar rather than seeming old hat. The smile she's sporting, though, is pleasantly cheerful. She taps on the glass, waves to the siblings, and then heads down a bit to push in through the front door, bringing the smell of rain-wet pavement and the city sounds in with her.

Rain sidles up beside Roman, bumps him with her shoulder, glances over out of the corner of her eye and grins a "Hey, there." Like everything was right in the world and the last time they'd spoken hadn't been quarreling at all.

"Can I get a mocha, please?" she asks, when it's her turn to order.

[Jackson Montgomery] He looks chastised by Bronwyn and pulls his hand back, looking away. That allows him to see Roman and Rain, and his back straightens. "Family, six o' clock," he says quietly to his sister as he puts on a friendly smile for the two, waving.

[Roman Turner] It was a glance over to Rain and a pleasant enough smile that shown for the moment as he replied in a voice most here called an accent. To him, he didn't hear the twang, didn't here the drawn out syllables.

"Howdy Rain. Nice day, ain't it? I think Spring done decided to come 'round."

Somewhere in the back of his head he noticed he'd outgrown the woman in the past year.

"I've got her's too."

Given to the server as he counted out a few more bills before taking his drink and turning towards the room in general.

"Well lookie here. There's Jackson with......someone."

A gaze the shade of faded denim fixed on Brownyn like sighting down a barrel before firing.

[Bronwyn Montgomery] The change is nearly unnerving in it's speed and completeness. The Prom Queen makes her appearance as easily as a switch going off, and the woman's posture changes to something regal, and any trace of worry is snuffed from her eyes.

Her gaze follows where Jackson indicated, and she recognizes his small friend from the other day. It's Roman that gets her attention though, and he seems to be taken in and sized up in one quick glance.

So this is the child that she'll be answering to. Roman is given one of her camera ready smiles that means nothing but certainly seems friendly to anyone looking on. She's able to speak through it from years of practice, low enough so that her words can't reach beyond Jackson.

"Father's sense of cruelty runs deeper than I'd realized."

[Rain McKellar] "I think so," she agrees, still smiling broadly. Warmly. "And thank you," she adds, when he picks up her coffee. It's not quite warm enough yet for Rain to ask for hers iced, so when it comes she wraps her fingers around the mug to let the warmth seep in.

She casts her attention toward the table of Montgomeries, and then back to Roman. "Mmm, that's Bronwyn. His sister, very good at the whole watching and judging thing. I take you've not met yet, right? Y'wanna go say hi?" she asks, giving him the option to beg out of formal introductions in a sleepy cafe but still tipping her head in that direction, making it obvious that she was perfectly happy with heading on over.

[Jackson Montgomery] "That's Roman. Tribe Elder."

He keeps the words quiet too. Family trait. "What'd he do?"

[Bronwyn Montgomery] "Do you think for a second that he didn't know who our elder was before he agreed to let me come here?"

[Roman Turner] "How long she been here?"

No one had mentioned another Goggie in town, there'd been no word of introduction at the Caern. Maybe it was a casual visit without the formalities of letting the Sept know she was passing through? As soon as he asked Rain the question, he grunted.

"Yep, sure do."

He stepped towards the sibling's table like a large cat stalking through the grass. Roman moved with a natural grace despite those boots of his and those stiff Wranglers that belonged in a Rodeo.

"Well howdy Jackson. Rain her tells me this here is your sister."

[Bronwyn Montgomery] This is her hell.

The smile is turned up, hair tossed just so. She is, at least outwardly, completely composed. A hand is offered, palm down as if there is a clear expectation of social deference.

"Roman, is it? What a pleasure to meet you. Bronwyn Montgomery."

[Jackson Montgomery] He opens his mouth to say hi, and then Bronwyn speaks up and Jackson just gives a smile in greeting to the Ragabash.

[Rain McKellar] How long she been here?

"Couple days," Rain says; she's not exactly sure, but she makes it sound very nonchalant and easy. There's a roll of her shoulder, too, to emphasize that it wasn't really the crux of her conversation with the siblings earlier in the week.

Then they're walking toward the table. Or Rain is. She saunters. She's happy. Roman stalks. Rain notices this and curls her mouth into a patiently amused smirk. She approaches Jackson's side of the table. Rests a hand on the blade of his shoulder to say hello when she gets there. Offers him a warm and effusive smile and then glances at a free seat at their table, as if asking for permission.

[Roman Turner] At 17, his carriage was one of Rank. Posture said sit up and take notice at the moment despite the face he'd taken to dressing somewhat like the locals today. Something had changed with Roman since the last time Jackson had seen him. He looked the same, perhaps a little taller, a little fuller. There were the same mottled finger-like scars reaching up from the neck of his shirt along his neck towards his jaw. Same blue-gray eyes as before. The change was something more profound, an added depth to the look he gave.

He took the offered hand, turning it to a straight out arm pumping shake.

"Howdy Bronwyn. Ya doing a short visit or ya planning on joining the party and staying a spell? I ain't heard tell ya arrived."

[Roman Turner] ((Please excuse typos, typing with a splinted hand))

[Jackson Montgomery] "She just arrived a couple days ago," he says, looking to Roman. He gives a little smile. "Gotta give her a little bit of a grace period, right?"

[Bronwyn Montgomery] Something about how he says her name grates on her, almost as much as the manhandling of her hand into some kind of cowboy handshake. This is her Elder though, so she resists the urge to wipe her hand with a napkin when it's released.

"I hadn't decided yet. Though I'd certainly be open to discussing why it may be beneficial to stay." Beneficial for who isn't quite implied.

[Rain McKellar] Her glance toward the chair had not been followed by a nod from her kinsman, or anyone pushing it out with their foot, no outward indication that Rain was welcome to intrude on the family tete-a-tete, so she stays a bit to the side and just a hair behind Jackson's chair, sips at her mocha, and waits out the introductions with as easy a posture as she can maintain.

Maybe to passersby or other patrons, they're just one pair of friends happening upon another, bunching up for a moment to catch up and destined to separate soon and head out on their own paths.

[Roman Turner] "I ain't here to play recruited. Either ya know your manners or ya don't. Or ya know them and prefer to ignore your upbringing. Ain't my cause. If ya plan to stick around, best make yourself known. I reckon ya staying with your brother? If not and ya need a place to stay, I can offer a few."

His smile was as pleasant as they came, coating the firm undertones. He wasn't missing the Fang-like attitude.

[Jackson Montgomery] He blinks, frowning. Roman's tone is a complete 180 from what Jackson's seen from him before, and it clearly catches him off-guard. He straightens a little bit, going quiet.

[Rain McKellar] Jackson straightens a little bit, and Rain glances to him, then down. She adjusts her stance so she'd be in the other kin's line of sight, easily within distance to incidentally reach over and make contact, but doesn't assume he needs that either. Both kin are quiet; Rain's infectious grin is absent, tamped down to a respectfully hesitant smile that lifts only the corners of her mouth.

[Bronwyn Montgomery] "I am well aware of my obligations" There's the patient tone that she took with Jackson before, designed to make the recipient feel as if a line has been crossed.

"It seems as if perhaps you were not made privy to my arrival, for whatever reason." A shortcoming, perhaps. Certainly not hers.

She stands, as if what she's saying now is only a formality to a course of action already decided on. "Perhaps we should step outside for a moment, where we can speak privately"

[Roman Turner] He waved towards the door, indicating she should lead the way. Then turned a smile on Jackson and Rain that was a little more heart-felt.

"Y'all welcome to step outside if ya want with us."

To Bronwyn he said.

"Lead on. I imagine when ya checked in somewhere it weren't with them that would pass word. Happens all the times, I'm right sure."

[Roman Turner] (howdy)
to Kora

[Bronwyn Montgomery] And lead she does, striding to the door with another flip of her hair. It pushes open and she moves into the sunshine of early spring which contrasts with her darkening expression.

[Jackson Montgomery] He takes a breath and then looks at Rain. A little nod is given, as if in confirmation of something, and he rises to go follow them.

[Kora] (hey! :) )
to Roman Turner

[Rain McKellar] Rain cuts a quick look from Roman to Jackson at that invitation. If the other kin shows any indication of rising, she'll set her mocha down on the table and head out with them. She makes sure to catch a server's attention before they all wander out, though.

"We'll be right back," she says. "Please don't clear the table."

Then the songbird heads out, hands in pockets, to stand beside Jackson and witness the formalities.

[Kora] dude, when did Roman get so RUDE. o.o heh.
to Rain McKellar

[Rain McKellar] I know, right?
Rain wasn't fibbing! He's been insufferable lately.
to Kora

[Roman Turner] The sun came and went today. Extreme thunderstorms were in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow with scattered showers throughout the day today. For a moment the sun came out to touch Bronwyn, even as Roman went towards the shadows, stepping between buildings before turning to face her.

"Now, I reckon ya checked in with the Sept since ya say ya aware of your obligations. I reckon someone done told ya they'd let me know and told ya about me. In case that was missed. I'm Roman Turner. Fate to the Nation. Fostern of your Tribe and ironic as it seems. " Here there was a wry little twist of his lips. "Tribal Elder here in this city. I know for some of greater years it might be hard to believe, but sure enough, I done earned my rank the hard way like everyone else. In case ya didn't hear, I'm also a New Moon. Now..."

The grin returned, crinkling his eyes at the corners.

"...your turn."

[Bronwyn Montgomery] Her fiery, fiery hell.

The girls on the Miss America stage have nothing on how she stands just so, smiles just so, answers just so...

"Bronwyn Montgomery, known as Sees the Soul by deed, daughter of Fist of Stone, sister to Dove's Wrath. And Jackson, of course." Her eyes flicker to her brother, then back to Roman. "Half moon."

[Kora] There's a bookstore across the street. Small, the windows cramped full of old volumes. It's warmer today, and though there's no sun on this side of the street - not precisely, not at the moment, just a watery spring light - the windows gleam with that light, murky, reflected back toward the street.

The front door swings open, a tinny note from the bell hanging from the frame merges with the ambient street noise, and a quite pregnant young woman walks out. That's the most prominent thing about her from a distance. She pauses on the stoop, holding the door open for a stranger heading in who is no longer sure he wants that leather-bound volume of Byron he saw in the window.

These things just are.
He's not sure why.

A small bag dangles from her index finger, the contents slap against her thigh as she slides her hands into the front pockets of worn jeans. the waistband below the swell of her stomach. Pale hair gleams against the shadows of this side of the street as she steps down from the stoop, watching the Children of Gaia exit coffee shop in a line.

She thinks, absurdly, of ducklings.

[Roman Turner] "Ah, well then, and your rank I can guess at, even though ya done seemed ta forget it. As a Judge, ya should be able to tell what I say is truth. Right? Well, maybe."

He was after all a Ragabash with could muddy the lines of truth and misdirection. Kora he felt, on the edge of his mind he felt her nearness and knew she'd either join them or not. Lately she'd been crankier than two cats tied together ta the tail.

[Bronwyn Montgomery] "I have not forgotten it." It's just a sore point. A raw wound, ripped open twice this afternoon.

[Rain McKellar] The last little duckling in the row is the shortest. She is the only one without blood that sings. From a distance, she is the least likely to grown up into an elegant swan -- unless the book Kora has purchased is a child's tale, a parable about the Ugliest things and the Beauty they hold.

But Rain is also the one least invested in the goings on. She's the one freed to look up and around, to subtly take in their surroundings, to be watchful of how their presence pushes the tides of pedestrians astray. On one side of the street was this caucus of Rage. On the other, the Skald.

It's a subtle thing, slight enough to not interfere with the proceedings at hand. Rain's chin lifts in greeting, her attention is momentarily closer to the bookstore than here. It holds, longer than is just coincidental, and then she turns back to the duck pond, and the Ragabashery, and the tension.

[Roman Turner] "No? Hmm, just must of forgotten to mention it in your introduction there. No problem."

He touched the base he wanted to with those words and moved on as if it mattered not.

"I guess ya know Rain. And I gotta tell ya, Jackson your brother is a fine fella. I'd do near anything for him. If ya not staying with him, I'd welcome ya to stay a bit with myself and my Pack if ya need a place to sleep. Ain't much and we're a mixed bunch. Got us a Fenrir Jarl as our Alpha and we even got a Fianna in the mix. Offer stands."

[Jackson Montgomery] He stands nearby, frowning as he crosses his arms over his chest. He has a touch more of that same demeanor that Bronwyn's carrying about him now that he normally does...touches of Silver Fang-esque in the otherwise Gaian attitude.

He looks about to speak up at one point, when Roman lays out what should have happened, but the conversation moves quickly along and he stays quiet.

[Bronwyn Montgomery] The irritation over the reprimand is tempered by a flood of relief. Her secret, it would seem, is safe within the elders of the tribe.

"I am indeed staying with Jackson, yes. Thank you though. I appreciate the offer, and will certainly keep it in mind should circumstances change."

[Rain McKellar] Rain fidgets with her phone in her pocket, and makes sure not to elevate her line of sight to be dangerously close to making eye contact with either True. Her stance looks casual enough to the casual observer, but the lines of her shoulders, mouth and eyes are tight.

[Roman Turner] "Fine and dandy. Ya should know things are dangerous in the city here. The Sept is at war and lately things done gotten a bit more active. Find someone what can tolerate ya, someone ya fit with and consider packing up with them. There's none of us meant to be lone wolf."

Now he looked towards Jackson and Rain again.

"Bring her by the church some day and we'll grill out some thing."

Formalities were over it seemed and he was finished here.

"Y'all take care."

[Kora] Certainly out of earshot, there across the street. More to the point, there's nothing to mark her as Fenrir or Garou to Bronwyn from such a distance. No breeding, no fine blood. No obvious war axes. No battle braids. Nothing except for the steadiness of her regard from a distance. The way crowds shift to move around her.

When the last little duckling in the row lifts her chin by way of greeting, the pregnant blonde returns it just as subtly; a canting sweep of her head, wolf life, enough to shift the weight of pale blond hair coiled at the nape of her neck. Then she takes a long step between the cars, enough to clear the current of runoff running gleaming through the stormsewer, floating with all manner of detritus.

She glances both ways, and starts across the street. No matter how long her legs, there's still that pregnant woman waddle to her gait.

[Bronwyn Montgomery] Done and done. She doesn't volunteer this though, of course.

"It was so nice to meet you." She can't force her tongue to add the Rhya at the end. It will take some time for her to swallow the bitter pill, and accept the boy as who he is.

[Kora] mind you, he wasn't that bad in the end. hah.
to Rain McKellar

[Rain McKellar] Rain glances up when their Elder's attention is brought to bear on his kinfolk again, her chin tips up most of the way but she's still glancing at least partly through her eyelashes at him. It's one part submission, and another part being unused to his newfound height.

Rain's thinner smile flexes, warms a little, and she nods in assent to his request. They'll get together. They'll grill something. (Hopefully not something the Fenrir just killed and dragged in.) The way her mouth bends indicates she thinks this is a good, or at least passingly positive, idea.

But the tension doesn't recant, not yet. And it takes a moment for her to find her voice and chime out a mostly-pleasant, nowhere near as sunny, "Bye, Roman" before he leaves.

[Jackson Montgomery] He puts on a polite smile for Roman and nods. It's polite, but perhaps not quite as warm as it has been previously. It could be that there's something about those in charge acting like it that hits his past and creates distance, or the fact that their association has simply been more informal. Maybe it's just because of the tension that immediately sprung up between Roman and his sister. For whatever reason, he is absolutely polite and even a little friendly, but somethings just a bit faded.

"Have a good Saturday, Rhya. I'll talk to you later."

[Janis Ian] The Rotagar appears in the doorway, exiting the cafe that the Gaians circle around. Her hips nudges the door open, hand on the bar as she pushes it halfway, sidestepping with the preternatural grace of a predator. Her head angling slightly to sniff at the wind, she blinks, brown eyes cutting across the faces that born recognition. The door shuts quietly behind her, she raises a hand to touch her temple, tilting a two-fingered salute to Rain in greeting as she passes the Coggie kin.

A small bag rustles in her other hand, some bakery goodies inside wrapped in wax paper. She doesn't stay to linger and make conversation, leaving Roman's kin to themselves. Janis slipping off to chase Roman's shadow, and to move off towards the blond Skald she defers to as Alpha.

[Roman Turner] He chuckled with a glance back at Bronwyn just before stepping out of the alley to go meet Kora.

"Chaffs a bit, don't it?"

A full smile was given to both Rain and Jackson, adding to Jackson.

"I'm still Roman, Jackson, though your politeness was appreciated. Y'all take care."

He slowed when he became aware of Janis, waiting for her to fall in step with him as they went to intercept Kora.

"Howdy Janis."

[Bronwyn Montgomery] He has no idea.

She can and will challenge though, the very moment she gets her rank back. For now though, she turns her attention back to her brother, who no doubt understands the situation far better than he would have an hour ago.

"Shall we go back inside and eat? Rain, will you be joining us dear?"

[Janis Ian] "Afternoon, Roman." the rumble of her brogue carries a vague cheerfulness that is often lost on Janis, the corners of her lips twitching into a half-grin that reflects a grinning moon. She slides her head to the side, looks back once again at the Gaians that they are leaving behind, and says nothing about them.

She easily keeps a pace or two behind and to the side of Roman, following the Gaian as his shadow would. She swings her eyes back to Kora, gaze scrutinizing, red furrowing inward slightly to crease the smooth skin of her forehead.

[Rain McKellar] Janis, too, gets a lift of her chin in greeting as the Rotagar passes. It seems to be the safest show of comraderie with the non-Gaian packmates and the Fenrir that inhabit the church. Except Melody. One should always run, at the soonest opportunity, from Melody.

"I asked them to hold your table," Rain says, to Bronwyn, with a smile that is still just a little constrained. The kinswoman understands the tension of the last few minutes, if not the whole of its underpinning reasons. "So they shouldn't have cleared it."

Isn't she just the most helpful little thing?

Rain's glance slides past Bronwyn for a moment, as if verifying that the Ragabash did indeed head away from the cafe and not mysteriously sneak back into it.

"I'd like that," she answers, to the invitation. "If you two don't mind, that is. I'm sure you've got plenty to catch up on." Incrementally that warmth is coming back. It's effusive, infectious, and unlike the Prom Queen Grin, it's wholly genuine.

[Jackson Montgomery] Roman tells Jackson that it's okay to still call him Roman. Whether that ship has sailed or not though, time will tell. He nods to the man as he departs, then looks back to Bronwyn and leans against her a bit.

"Yeah, let's go in." He looks at Rain and smiles. It's an easier smile now. "C'mon. You know I don't mind."

[Kora] Once she gains the sidewalk, Kora starts walking in the direction her packmates are taking. She's a good ten feet ahead, but her pace is slower than that taken by the pair of no-moons. In odd moments, she catches a glimpse of herself reflected in the glass of some shop window - as now, when she cuts a glance back over her shoulder, not to gauge their presence (Roman she can feel), but simply to place them in context of the street, or perhaps to watch the strange Garou with that enduring steadiness that characterizes her. Dark eyes in a pale face, a levelness in the daylight few can match.

Soon enough, her direct line of sight is interrupted not by strangers, but by the no-moons. Strangers would never come that close to her, even when she is bathed in bright sun, the clean, sharp lines of her features softened by the weight of pregnancy, her generous mouth neutral - which means, still somehow curved: the Mona Lisa's subtle smile, that.

"New blood?" quietly, to Roman as he and Janis gain her side. The look drops away from the Children of Gaia, then. She turns and continues walking past the coffee shop.

[Bronwyn Montgomery] "Of course not, Rain." She likely doesn't mean it to sound as condescending as it comes out, and she gestures for Jackson to open the door.

[Rain McKellar] Bronwyn probably doesn't mean it as condescendingly as it comes out, and if she can hear the note in her own voice it may surprise her that the kinfolk has little to no reaction to it.

She waits until the siblings have headed in to follow behind them, unless Jackson insists on holding the door for her. She waits until they've reclaimed their seats, shrugging out of her coat and slinging the messenger bag across the back of a free chair before settling in and drawing her coffee toward her, almost like a talisman against the tension.

"Um, so that's Roman..." she says, into the awkwardness at the table. It makes no apologies, excuses or judgments. Just a and that's our Cousin. Rain sips at her mocha; it's a more tolerable temperature now.

[Roman Turner] "Yep, one that ain't been to the Caern or made herself known to the Sept I reckon. Ain't heard word through channels about her and that's her duty, though she seems to think everyone should know about her for some reason."

He shrugged, a faint lifting of one tee shirt covered shoulder and changed the subject.

"How ya feeling today?"

[Bronwyn Montgomery] "He seems lovely." She is a society girl, and things that are displeasing are always lovely.

She sips at her plain iced tea, watching Jackson more than Rain now.

[Janis Ian] Janis tips her head down in a slight dip to Kora, her long gait slowing down instantly, shifting to move away from Roman and more towards Kora, flanking the other side that Roman does not stand on. She shifts the small bakery back in her hand, fingers now curling around the thin paper handle.

She still bears no connection to their totem, a prospective member, so she takes her queues visually; her eyes watching Kora and Roman as they speak.

[Janis Ian] (back = bag)

[Roman Turner] "Her name was Bronwyn and seems she's Jackson's older sister. Well..."

He frowned slightly.

"...Maybe older? Looked and acted older. Hard to tell with the bitterness seeping from her. Bless her heart."

A term used to cover anything from Damn that is one ugly baby. to You smell like you bathe in skunk piss. It was used to cancel out anything that might be taken negative.

[Jackson Montgomery] "He seems like he's been replaced with a pod person." He frowns, taking a seat again. "I don't remember him having laid out any ways of making it public how he wanted introductions handled. Hell, when I was looking into other places, some of our family in other cities didn't even care if you stopped by to say hello to them for a couple weeks. He should lay that stuff out in an official capacity so things like this don't happen more. I don't think people know what to expect in the transition from his predecessor to him."

He sighs and picks up his coffee and takes a sip. "Sorry. I'm...in a mood, I guess. Ignore me."

[Kora] Roman asks how a Fenrir is feeling; that earns him a look - dark eyed, direct, accompanied by a wry twist of her mouth. It is a look that says: really, you are asking how a Fenrir is feeling. and is accompanied by an expressive lift of pale brows above her steady gaze. She flickers that look briefly toward Janis. Solidarity, maybe. Or this is what packing with Coggies gets you. There's a quiet affection touching the wryness.

At least he hadn't tried to hug her.
This, as they say, is progress.

"I think that's par for the course," says Kora quietly, hands still in her pockets, walking. "Maybe it's an urrah thing. Those Walkers would probably only get pissed if she was using their wifi without permission." She neatly sidesteps the question about how she's feeling, then. "Talked to Lukas last night, though. About the work on the docks, yeah? I think the doc's going to get the kin together. Until they have a plan, though, he wants you to hold off on any further monkeywrenching."

[Rain McKellar] She glances between the siblings, rolling her fingertips against the side of her mug in a steady tapping cadence. This a moment of consideration, thinking, and then Rain shrugs and keeps her comments noncomittal.

"Well, at least you can find him. I never did meet Lila before she went..."

There's nothing defensive in the words; Rain isn't overly pleased about the show of politics or dominion. She sips at her mocha again and leans over to nudge Jackson a bit with her elbow.

"An' I don't mind your moods. We're artists, remember?" she says, lilting the word, infusing it with a wry self-aware humor as if it would absolve them of their highs and lows and render them merely mortal somehow. "We're supposed to be moody."

She quirks a grin to Bronwyn, too, to let the Philodox know this much is in jest.

[Bronwyn Montgomery] "I had assumed that when Father made the arrangements, he had alerted all parties, not simply Mr, Haynes' contemporary in the city."

She had assumed that a lot of information would be passed on, though this seems to not be the case.

"It is my fault for waiting to be sought out when they were ready for me."

[Roman Turner] He was Ragabash. It was like breathing for him to stir shit, to test folks by needling any way he could. It was also in his nature to lie like there was no tomorrow. Like when he said someone looked good in something he thought was ugly as something the dog barfed up. Kora mentions monkeywrenching and he just fell in with.

"Don't mention it. Done."

With a vague wave of his hand. He was still thinking about how he'd tested Jackson's sister and the interaction that had brought. Interesting enough to keep that vague look on his face.

[Janis Ian] "No monkey wrenching, hmm..." it seems she had missed out on whatever fun Roman was having with the construction site. She shares a brief glance with Kora, arching a red eyebrow at the pregnant Skald, and then frowns gently. Her gaze dropping to the other's belly with a hidden expression of concern. She may have wanted to ask the same question as Roman, but she doesn't, less Kora school her the same way as she did him.

"Since we can't really do any retaliation against them fer the moment, did ye 'ave a mind to watch'em, keep an eye on'em?"

[the fuzz] [*looks forlorn* ]

[Jackson Montgomery] He frowns when Bronwyn takes the blame, but lets it go. Rain's comment draws a grin from him.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. I can be moody if I damn well want to. Thanks for the license to do so." He winks at her, his good humor returning a fair amount. Easy to frustrate, easy to relax. That's the way of the Gaian film student.

[Rain McKellar] Things seem to be coming back to an equilibrium fairly quickly. Jackson is relaxing, which puts Rain a bit more at ease. Bronwyn isn't carrying her frustrations forward -- whether that's because she's over it, or because she's plotting someone's inevitable undoing remains to be seen -- so Rain's happy to let whatever misgivings she has go, too.

"So, ah, what were you two up to before we dropped in on you?" she asks, trying to gently right the conversation to something lighter, she hoped. And Rain quietly takes responsibility for Roman wandering over, in that statement, subtly and indirectly, in case Bronwyn needed a target for her remaining ire.

A ready scapegoat; Rain could be that.

[Nash] Don't ask what he's doing in this part of town. It's a nice day for a drive, or a walk, or a bike ride, and tens of thousands of people are out doing just that today, taking advantage of the warm weather despite the fact that there isn't much in the way of brilliant sunlight. It isn't stopping people from wearing shorts and sandals, the youth from allowing their jeans to hang down around the backs of their thighs as gravity combines with lack of common sense.

Nash comes walking out of the distance, his long hair and wiry build identifying him to those who know him already, his breeding to those who don't; to both groups, his drawling admonition to one skateboarding kid who nearly bowls into him is more than audible.

"Learn how to drive, Short Round!" he hollers, goodnatured despite the decibel level of his advice, and waits for a break in traffic before he scoots across the street. It's well into the sixties and he's still wearing boots and dark jeans and a button-down shirt with long sleeves.

He's from Alabama. This still qualifies as Fucking Cold.

[Bronwyn Montgomery] "Just getting lunch." She reaches across the table to rest her fingers on Jackson's hand for a moment before giving Rain her full attention.

Attention that is without any malice, despite the irritation that's clear in her eyes. "I'm glad that you dropped in. We can get to know each other better.

[Rain McKellar] "Uhoh, Miss Bronwyn," Rain says, leaning back a bit in her chair and holding her hands up playfully with mock concern. "With a smile like that, them's fightin' words," she teases, trying to help lighten the mood at the table a bit.

The songbird's smile shifts to something sideways canted, amused and unafraid despite her apparent protests. It only takes a moment before her hands come down again, and Rain settles a bit more.

"What is it you want to know?" she asks, either baiting the Philodox or falling right in step with her plans.

[Jackson Montgomery] [[Mental note: When you work from home, turn your work-related messengers to invisible. It makes your off-time much more off.]]

He smiles at the touch from Bronwyn, moreso when she's talking with Rain. He's staying quiet for the moment, sipping his coffee and letting the two get to know each other a bit.

[Kora] Janis glances at Kora's stomach; the Skald either fails to notice or deliberately ignores the hidden concern. The solicitousness makes her shoulders stiffen, though mostly she swallows back the underlying defensiveness such questions flare in her; the spark of instinct. Of lupine dominance and submission. Her generous mouth pulls briefly flat across her teeth but she makes no show of them, and the expression soon settles back into a natural curve.

"Hard not to keep an eye on them, since they're on our doorstep." Kora's voice is low; but there's a subdued anger beneath it. The first touch of passion. How many has she buried, there, in the sandy, sodden soil under the flat, bare sky at the lake's edge.

It's nearly a year.
She never forgets.

"Right now," she returns, glancing across at the pair of them. "We're letting the kin take the lead. See if there's some pull they can bring to bear, some pressure that'll get this resolved. I'd like you to go to whatever meeting the doc gets organized, though," this to Roman first, a touch of her dark eyes on the no-moon's face. "Could be there are ways that you could give the kin a hand, I'm not sure. Seems a natural pairing, though."

Kora sees Nash from a distance. Raises her hand by way of greeting. The sun glazes her pale hair with light and there's no mistaking her. Not pregnant like that. Not by a long shot.

Then she looks back to Janis. They're walking, more slowly than most. "That's a good point, though," thoughtful. Musing, the irritation pulled out of her by the thoughtfulness. "Would be wise at this point to have an organized watch on them, day and night. Hidden, yeah? but 24-7. Log their comings and goings, their suppliers. See who comes at three a.m. and who comes at broad daylight. Get to know the rhythm of the shifts, all that.

"You two should get the other no-moons together, look into setting up that sort of hidden surveillance. Get volunteers, take shifts. Keep a log that you can give to the kin. The more we know, the better off we are."

[Bronwyn Montgomery] "What made you decide to become a musician?" It's a loaded question, and she well knows it.

[Rain McKellar] It's a loaded question, but certainly not an unfamiliar one. Rain sits back in her chair, rests her fingertips on the edge of the table. She isn't afraid to look up at the Philodox, but she certainly doesn't make eye contact. Someone has trained this kinswoman to be cautious. Very careful.

"It's one of the first things I was good at," Rain explains, her voice slipping into the easy, low cadence of storytelling. Had Gaia marked her differently, it's possible the girl would have made a striking Galliard. As it is, her voice is unaided by Breeding; it's naked, its strength is clear on its own. "And it gave me a good way out of a bad place.

"I started playing as a kid. My brother and I learned guitar together, shared the same six-string, but he didn't really have the heart for it or the ear. After a while that guitar was just mine. A little while longer and I left home with it."

She smiles.

"I just never stopped playing, or singing, or making what I could from it, y'know?"

[Jackson Montgomery] He smiles and nods at Rain's words. It's probably easy for Bronwyn to see where the friendship between her brother and the songbird grew...they got into their arts in somewhat similar ways, and they're of similar temperaments. Rain may come from a deeply different background than the Montgomeries, and he's certainly more casual and a bit less stuck-up than he was at home as a result, but at their core, they're very similar.

[Roman Turner] "I'll get in touch with the doctor."

His attention had drifted towards the on coming Nash when Kora lifted her hand towards him. For just a second Roman stepped in close enough to ask low voiced of Kora. "Ya know him?" Then the space between them was back. She'd been so damned cranky lately she might as well have a force field around her. Every night he prayed the child would be healthy and he prayed just is hard that it would soon be over with, the sooner the better. Calls home had told him that it wasn't going to get better till after the child came and sometimes it even got worse then. Like a blessing and cursed mixed, talk about unfair jokes.

"Between Janis and I, we should be able to reach some of the other New Moons and see what we can do."

[Janis Ian] "I don't mind speaking to the other no moons whilst Roman tends the meetings, we can keep in touch as we go, there isn't I'm doing at the moment 'sides patrols."

It was a good point, to keep track of the comings and goings. They could figure out watch the workers to see what they did and how close to the caern they were treading. She wrinkles up her nose, pulls the little bag of bakery goods up, opening it as she peers down into the bag, a hand dipping inside to part the wax paper and peers down at the donut holes inside.

"There needs to be a new No Moon Elder. Joey is gone bye-bye." she extends the bag out to Kora first to see if she wanted any, and then to Roman.

[Bronwyn Montgomery] That friendship is what saves the girl. Normally, she would have torn into her by now, questioning the decision, asking if there isn't something more useful that she could be doing with her time.

None of this comes forward though. Instead she just nods, and sips at her tea. "That's nice for you."

[Roman Turner] He slipped a hand in to the offered bag, snagging a doughnut hole which he popped in his mouth to talk around as he chewed.

"Folk seem to come and go like the weather around here."

[Nash] [GOD DAMN IT IS REALLY HARD TO TYPE WITH A STARBUCKS EMPLOYEE STANDING RIGHT BEHIND YOU AND BLATANTLY STARING AT YOUR SCREEN BITCH I CAN SEE YOUR REFLECTION IN MY SCREEN]

Well, he'd better stop and say 'Hi.'

Nash trots up onto the sidewalk, his eyes drifting between the three Garou before he jerks his head in a nod. He has a toothpick in one side of his mouth, which seems to be a bit of foresight on his part; Kora won't suffer any adverse effects from inhaling cigarette smoke, and it's unlikely her unborn child would, either, but he'll be damned if he'll be the person to test out that theory.

"Afternoon," he says, dispensing the greeting between Kora and Janis and Roman just about equally though he's never seen Roman before in his life. If he's comfortable standing with Kora, he has to be at the very least Kinfolk. He doesn't stop to ask, nor does he just invite himself into the congregation; he's heading in the opposite direction as the three of them and looks like he's just going to keep right on moving if he isn't halted.

His right arm is still bandaged, the pattern and padding of it visible beneath his shirt though the sleeve is cuffed down. He is still protectively holding it against his midsection; the damn thing is healing faster than it would if he were human, but as anyone who saw him the night of the meeting at the Brotherhood can attest, he was royally messed up to start out. He still has a ways to go.

[Kristen Burke] ((Where is everyone/is this open?))

[Rain McKellar] It's a mixed blessing that Bronwyn does not air her inner thoughts with Rain. On one hand, it's always nice to have one's life choices go unquestioned. On the other, it gives them no opportunity to better understand each other.

"It's nice enough," she says, offering Bronwyn a less nuanced smile that the Philodox casts her way. Maybe that invites further questions; it certainly doesn't seem to turn them away. She sips at her mocha and admits: "I'm trying to turn it into something more stable, here, but you mostly need schoolin' for that, so it isn't easy."

They are from very different worlds, Bronwyn and Rain. The assumptions they make about one another may not be sound. And it isn't even just the pretty mean girl and the sweet naive girl clashing across a lunch table at high school. They're so different it's hard to even find common ground, besides that they both care about Jackson. That they're family, by Tribe.

[Jackson Montgomery] [[Jackson, Bronwyn, Rain in a cafe near the window. The rest of them are out on the street somewhere-ish.]]

[Janis Ian] Janis hadn't considered that the tall, leggy blond kinfolk never met Roman, she was certain Nash had come to the Church enough to know everyone under Last Watch. The bag rustles in her hand as Roman takes one of the donut holes, she kept it held out for Kora, simply waiting as they walked to see if she'd accept one. Only then, does the bag pull back to her midsection, her own hand diving inside to separate the wax paper to pull one out and pop the little ball of glazed cake into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

Brown eyes sweep across Nash, she regards his injured arm and wrinkles her nose, Janis offers him a smile as he greeted them, "Hey, Marlboro Man, how's the wrangling up anymore lost girls lately?"

[Jackson Montgomery] "You have the talent," he quips, speaking up now. His admiration for Rain's musical skills is genuine, that much is simple to see. He turns his attention to his sister, touching her hand.

"Seriously, she really is good."

[Kora] Kora makes a low noise in the back of her throat when Janis says there should be a new no-moon elder. "You don't need a Shadow Lord to enshrine a leader to know when to lead and when to follow. You just do it." There's a brief, supple touch of aspersion there. "In the time I've been here, I've seen them do - nothing. Just change hats and give themselves titles, yeah?" Otherwise, her opinion regarding the auspice counsel goes largely unspoken.

A glance at Roman when he leans close and asks her if she knows him. The direct look and brief nod is answer enough. Quiet, she supplies, " - kin," dropping the word between then like a stone in clear, cool water.

"Just show up at the meeting. Mostly to listen, you know? Let them take the lead, brainstorm. I'm thinking you could be helpful in their plans though. Planting evidence or - " a narrow-shouldered shrug. "Slipping in and out of someplace, yeah?"

Nash comes up, and doesn't linger, but Kora detains him briefly with a glance. "Doc's gonna be working on the stuff by the docks, yeah? She's going to have a meeting, soon. I'd like you to attend."

AND THEN: "Shit, I gotta pee." - she makes her exit. (Sorry, guys, gotta go!)