[Izzy Montoya] (oh! hi! Yay! :) )
[Izzy Montoya] She didn’t call ahead.
In fact, she wasn’t sure she was headed to the church until she made the final turn, and pulled into a parking spot along the street a little ways down from the packhouse of the Last Watch. Sure, she knew she would report in, but the timing is always a little iffy – but a dinner break, and a lull at work, and she’s taking full advantage of it.
She calls in to dispatch, letting them know she intends to take a dinner break, and perhaps not come in for the rest of the night, then turns off the engine, and steps from the car – unmarked police issue, that does nothing to really hide that it’s an official vehicle – shutting the door and keying the lock automatically. She takes a final drag off her cigarette, exhaling slow as she flicks the butt into the gutter to die a wet, sputtering death.
Only then does she make the rest of the walk toward the church, up the path to knock on the door, a file folder in her other hand.
[Roman Turner] (only for a short bit and will be slow typing one handed)
to Izzy Montoya, Kora
[Kora] Izzy needn’t knock on the door. The pregnant Skald is sitting at the top of the steps. It’s chilly out, but well above freezing and the sky is unutterably blue. The deep, impossible color of dusk painted against the west, falling to dark in the east. Everything down here is enshadowed, while the sky is a brilliant, watercolor display against which the imposing bulk of the abandoned church sits, dark and still. A hint of light glazing across the stained glass windows.
Kora has a refillable mug from some coffee shop in one hand, a danish in a napkin balanced on her knee. She’s not paying it much attention, though. She’s sitting back, looking up at the sky as the light changes minute by minute with the sun sinking in the west.
Izzy turns the corner to come up the walk, and Kora straightens, sitting up, reaching to catch the danish before it falls off her knee. “Izzy,” the creature greets her kinswoman, lifting her chin faintly. Her mouth twists, the expression both supple and subtle. ” – evening.”
The scrap trees and weeds that crowd the grounds of the old cathedral are starting to green. Here and there stray strands of forsythia are in bloom, pale yellow ghosts against the soft dark shadows in which they are sunk. Most of the trees still have bare branches, but now those branches are faintly red with the promise of new growth, buds are starting to open beneath.
[Roman Turner] It was as the faint tingle of awareness crept across his conscious that the Ragabash appeared. The first indicators of his presence was the opening of the door and a crunch. It looked like dinner was Salt and Vinegar Kettle chips. Very salty, very tangy, very crunchy as evidenced by the next bite.
“Howdy Izzy.”
Yep, he left off the honorifics.
“Want some?”
The bag was tilted towards Kora first as he neared her, then Izzy.
[Izzy Montoya] She doesn’t need to knock – as the pregnant skald is watching the sky, soaking in the sunset that gives a promise of spring, the hope of an unbearably hot summer. Kora offers a greeting, and Izzy nods, slightly. “Kora.”
She does not often, willingly, come to the church with no reason to be there. Her visits are few and far in between, and usually there is a reason other than wanting to see their happy shiny faces. (…cough…) Today is no different.
She offers the file folder to Kora, and turns to take a seat on the steps with the Jarl. “Bit of a clusterfuck in the park a couple nights ago. Not sure if you’ve heard about it yet, but figured I’d get you the info I had right away.” She runs her fingers through her hair, and then over her face briefly. The detective looks tired, more so than usual. She isn’t sleeping well, so say the dark circles under her eyes, and there’s something more, something deeper under the obvious signs too. She’s… tired. Of a lot of things.
Then Roman joins and actually calls her by her name. Just her name. Izzy blinks in surprise, and then she chuckles, briefly. “No thanks, Roman.”
[Kora] Kora lifts her chin, cutting a glance aslant at Roman when he walks out of the door. Shakes her head, briefly, narrowly, her pale hair gleaming in the remnant strips of sunlight. She wears it pulled back, twisted at the nape of her neck, secured by a chopstick and a rubber ponytail holder – black against her fine pale hair. The weight of it pulls the hood of her sweatshirt sideways as she cuts him that glance. “No thanks. I have pastry – ” waving away the bag a moment after.
Then her dark eyes are on Izzy again; nearly black in this light, and that’s all shadow. It makes the pupil and iris bleed together somehow and gives the level look she casts Izzy some illusion of a penetrating stare. Her attention is keen but not piercing, now it touches the detective’s sharp, sharply defined features before it drops to the file folder she has in hand. Pale brows arch together as she drops her gaze to the file folder, reaches out for it and runs the meat of her thumb over the edge of the folder. “You okay, Detective?” – she asks, perhaps surprisingly, before she broaches the subject of the other night.
[Roman Turner] He took up a perch a few steps down from the two females and several feet away. Here the crunching continued as he half listened and mostly watched the street for signs of approach. No Stetson tonight. And though the jeans were just as new and stiff looking as usual, they were topped by a blue flanneled shirt.
[Izzy Montoya] She reaches into her pocket automatically for another cigarette, but then stops and shoves the pack back, remembering at the last moment Kora’s pregnancy, and deciding against it. It’s almost surprising, sometimes, the little considerations Izzy shows, the small bits of respect, of appreciation. At times she doesn’t even realize she does it. Most times, even. She settles, in the end, for leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees, her hands clasped lightly between her thighs.
“Yeah. Just tired.” Exhausted. Every day that passes is another where John’s return is cemented into the ‘impossible’ instead of ‘improbable’ and it wears on her, no matter how she drowns the thoughts in the flesh of other men. [They’ve their own rules, see? Something most wouldn’t understand.] But anyway, that’s another story. Then there’s this. “That clusterfuck of a meeting got to me, too. Just dug up some things I’d rather leave buried, ya know?”
[Owen DeTerizzi] *It was a time for arrivals. Its a Glasswalker’s turn, and it appears he and Roman shop at the same store – but thats where the similarities end. He approaches on foot, a light flannel shirt hanging open loosely overtop a black wifebeater as he gallops long legged down the sidewalk, jeans caked with mud, hair a messy shag that – combined with his dark facial hair, made him look like a sort of modern jesus. A small terracotta pot is dwarfed in one long fingered hand, held close as he slows to a stop. Theurge taking in the three gathered on the steps. *
Fate. Sorrow.
*A pause, its been awhile, and he has to search through a mind addled with things of a far less corporeal nature to place name to face. Finally rumbling in half question.*
… Detective Montoya.
*Owen’s hazy green eyed gaze falls on the pregnant jarl. His expression grave.*
I’ve come about you child.
[Owen DeTerizzi] [aw fuck. nightmares.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 6 (Failure at target 6)
[Kora] “You should take a week off from work,” the Skald suggests, opening the folder now, but not yet looking down. Her attention is fixed on Izzy in that closely observed way she has – observant without being invasive. Though her pastry (her second, if the crumbs on the steps are any indication) remains untouched, she picks the mug up and lifts it to her mouth, taking a drink of the now-cool contents. ” – go someplace tropical. Or just stay home, eat ice cream and watch Matlock.”
Her attention lingers on Izzy, dark eyes touching the kinswoman’s gaze, now. Frank, direct, buoyed only by the brief, narrow twist of Kora’s curving mouth. “I’m serious. This – ” a flick of a look, ” – doesn’t do you any good, yeah?”
The drink smells like chai tea. Do not tell Great Fenris.
Then the Theurge walks up the sidewalk. Kora is sitting at the top of the step, balancing her pastry, holding her cooling chai in her left hand. The right keeps the danish from falling off her knee. There’s a subtle trick of awareness; she catches sight of him in her peripheral vision, but looks away from Izzy only when he rumbles his greetings.
“Riddle Me This,” she returns, accompanied by a subtle lift of her chin. Which stops, mid-gesture, when he declares the reason for his visit. I’ve come about your child. The Skald goes still; luminously still. Still enough that it seems more like motion than the lack of it. Everything’s in shadow down here, and the sunlight that remains comes from behind them, behind the bulk of the old church.
At last she breathes out, a controlled exhale that does not go far to conceal a certain – tension, a shifting defensiveness. “Have you?” she returns at last, dropping her eyes to her stomach, which strains the fabric of her sweatshirt. ” – it’s not here yet, so – ”
[Roman Turner] He had already started to his feet with Owen’s approach, but the opening line was enough to have him moving in closer so that he was damned near between Kora and Owen. The wrong move could bring a lot of sorrow as fate took it’s path.
[Izzy Montoya] She should take a week off work. Kora’s serious. And this – well, it doesn’t do her any good. “I know.” Soft, the admittance, though she’s not sure what she’d do, where she’d go, if she could get away… what they’d do without her. She takes a breath, holds it, exhales. Admits only this, again. “I know.”
She doesn’t say she will, however. She might, but well, chances are slim. All she has is her work and the Nation. If she takes a week off, all that leaves is the nation, and what kind of vacation is that, really?
So, in the end, she just looks up as Owen joins their little group. She lifts her chin in greeting, but falls silent – other than the huff of amusement after Kora’s comment about the baby not being here yet.
[Owen DeTerizzi] *Riddle Me This was as deceptive as a brick. Kora shifts. Tenses. Roman slides with the subtly of a stilleto blade between his alpha and the approaching glasswalker – and it spooks the theurge visibly. The little plant is drawn back almost protectively as his shoulders roll back. Head tilted to look at the pair through one eye only. Protective. Defensive. Anger rising like bile in his throat in exactly the way it wouldn’t on a night free of sleep robbing horror. Wary and Ready to fight or flee – Owen continues.*
I know. Thats why I am, Sorrow. For the child.
*Yes. For the child. Eyes narrow, and it occurs to him half a heart beat later to elaborate. Quickly.*
To lend a healer’s help in the event of its birth.
[Kora] When Roman slips in between them, Kora stands. The abruptness of the movement makes it more fluid than she would be given time to remember how unbalanced her body is. She uses the mug of chai for leverage and snatches the pastry (though not, unfortunately, its waxed paper wrapping) before it falls – and is standing, two steps higher than Roman and consequently taller than the Ragabash. Whatever his instinct to protect her in her – delicate condition – may be, she’s Fenrir. There’s something insulting about it; about the idea of it – it’s the helplessness she mislikes most. Owen might imagine the flat, bristling line of her mouth, the drawn up shoulders are all for him.
He’d be wrong. There’s nothing for it. She is fucking helpless right now, except in her dreams when she runs, flat out on all fours, the taste of blood in her mouth. And wakes: wanting more. Wanting movement. Wanting –
(The brightness in her eyes is brief and imperfect. It’s feral, though; gleaming animal. Gravid as her body is, there’s still a wolf beneath her skin.)
Then Owen clarifies.
And Kora – Kora makes a small noise in the back of her throat, an unspent, unvoiced laugh followed by a huff of air from her nostrils. The tension in her body does not precisely dissipate so much as it – dissolves back into her frame, recedes without being wholly spent.
“We should go inside, yeah?” she returns, lifting her chin toward the wooden doors. “Roman, Izzy has some info for us. Something that happened the other night. Pinch hit for me, would you?” she asks him, offering the (now-pastry and sugar covered) folder to the Child of Gaia.
All this before she turns and leads the way in, back through the living area to the sanctuary proper, with its rows of hard wooden seats, and its soaring spaces opening above.
[Roman Turner] (( I can’t need to hit the bed and don’t want to leave her hanging))
to Izzy Montoya, Kora
[Roman Turner] It likely never occurred to Kora that the one he was protecting might be her unborn child when he moved with instinct to an intercept position. Kora would handle offers of healing the way she normally did, he had no doubt about that.
Asked tho show Izzy in, he accepted the folder and waved the way inside.
“Come on in Izzy, make yourself at home. I’ll take a look at these a little later, but right now I gotta be somewhere soon. So stick around, maybe Kora will get a chance to take a look too.”
He saw her inside,pointed out drinks and snacks and headed out the back door.
((I gotta sleep guys. Night))
[Owen DeTerizzi] Detective. Fate.
*A low nod to both – tension not entirely out of lanky muscle and long strides as he follows the encumbered female into the sanctuary. Rubbing at the back of his neck like a man set for hanging that had been given the gov’s last minute pardon. Owen was not a meek man. But he was a tired man, and not at his best when running on fumes.*
[Izzy Montoya] They should go inside, Kora says of herself and Owen, and that has Izzy reaching for her cigarettes again. This time, hands complete the task, finding the pack and lighter, and bringing them to light. She shouldn’t smoke as much as she does – no one should – but it’s a very real possibility that by nature of her birth that gave her the blood of Vikings and cemented her fate to that of her Tribe – there’s the chance that should someone check, she has the lungs of a newborn babe, without buildup of harsh chemicals.
Which is good, because she smokes like a chimney.
Roman says she should come in, and someone will get to the folder. She nods, and takes the folder back. “I know my way in.” She lifts her unlit cigarette then, as explanation, before flicking her bic and setting flame to tobacco and paper, and inhaling deeply.
She’ll go inside in a moment.
[Kora] There are braziers lit, mounting to the soaring columns that flank the aisles on either side, and an electric torch sitting low on one of the tables closer to the front doors. A pair of empty pizza boxes on a table, near a handful of Goodwill-quality couches underneath the choir loft.
“I take it you’ve done this before, yeah?” the creature asks as they walk. Then Kora stops by the table, toes one of the coolers with the side of her heavy black books and cuts a look back at the tense theurge. Drops her eyes to the plant he’s carrying around, then back to his face.
“You want a beer?” The space echoes. There’s the drip drip drop of water somewhere close, the quiet song of the tangle of weeds and trees clattering against the stone, the leaded glass windows in every breeze that comes by. It’s cool but not cold, and the heaters they have used throughout the winter are mostly off, at least in this great open space.
[Patrick Llewelyn] Patrick does this a lot.
Showing up, unannounced, or as unannounced as a man with his newly elevated degree of Rage can, anywhere. Sometimes he swings by the Church after work smelling like grease and petrol and sweat; a day’s hard labor in a Garage, his scent marred by humanity; by spilled soda at lunch, by his co-worker’s tuna sandwich he gave half of to Patrick; by cigarettes smoked on his break while testing a newly tweaked engine.
On those nights he’s always spotted in his coveralls; navy blue and often pulled down to his waist and tied; his shirt beneath offering a glimpse to the strength of the Fiann. Explaining his capacity for brute force, for how he’s managed to survive on his own before the pack so long, even survive while part of another less solid one.
Tonight he doesn’t appear that way, he appears this way.
Outside, in the shadows of the building, the air stirs, draws itself in like a pair of lungs and then there’s a ripping as the two sides of reality and drawn apart and he steps through. He’s a little battle damaged; his shirt is torn on one side; ribs scratched by something’s claws. There’s a piece of something meaty in his hair.
Prayers to Broken Stone shakes something off a boot.
[Izzy Montoya] Patrick shows up – outside, in the shadows. There’s a ripping, and the unmistakable sound of a Garou ripping between the worlds that has her falling utterly still. She tenses, spine straightening, muscles flexing, her free hand reaching for her weapon. For all this is a ‘safe’ place, Izzy, more than anyone, knows how fragile such a concept is.
When she recognizes him, though, half a beat later, she relaxes subtly. Cigarette makes it’s way back to her lips, and she retrieves the file from where she’d placed it on the step in order to reach for her weapon which now remains safely in it’s holster at the small of her back.
When he looks up, she lifts a hand, slightly, in greeting.
[Janis Ian] “Did ye remember the eyeballs, Patty?”
The voice is rough, harden and laced with a twinge of whiskey, whispering through the shadows. A chill clings in the air, it isn’t as cold as the sharp nip of winter winds; warm and moist with spring, the threat of rain on the horizon. The Rotagar tilts her head, slipping from the shadows and her blurred form to step more into the light.
Her nostrils flare out, the smell of Izzy’s cigarette, her breeding inhaled suddenly. She doesn’t cough or clear her throat, just lazily draws thick lashes over her brown eyes in a dreamy expression. She takes two steps forward, extending arms over her head, curling and arching her back like a cat. Bare feet make very little sound on the grass, the paleness of her skin hidden in the darkness of her clothes: Dickie trousers that fit a woman’s frame rode low on the swell of round hips, the softness of her curves increasing, hiding the harder layers of muscle hidden beneath. She’s slowly putting on more weight with her time here, staying in one place, and not having to scrounge the streets for food.
“Evenin’, Detective.”
[Owen DeTerizzi] *Owen follows, Theurge’s eyes slipping to the raging fire with no small interest. He would approach, were it not for the precious charge tucked close, and his fear of wilting it. The fires were as out of place here as he was. He hadn’t been in a church since his cousin’s wedding last summer, and that had been a very awkward experience for all involved.
The pot clunks quietly on a table, leaves shimmying and going still as Owen inspects it for damage.*
I have. I’ll also perform a Baptism by Fire if your child’s born True. Seems fair.
*He’d done it for a bonegnawer, afterall. The pot scrapes along towards Kora, Owen’s eyes raising.*
Miniature pear tree. It should grow with the baby. Congratulations.
*His tone is flat, but not insincere.*
[Fire Claws] Patrick was not the only one hunting this evening. However what Fire Claws hunted was not so glorious, was not so vicious as the creatures that Patrick took down with claw and tooth. Fire Claws prey were much less dangerous, but just as important. He had 6 large rabbits, carried within a backpack from his hunting along the perserve tonight. A decent meal for each of them, enough to feed his pack mates, should they wish it.
Stale, day old pizza was okay, but nothing was as good as fresh meat, fresh rabbit meat.
And Fire Claws knew better than to enter the chruch through the front door, where people could see him. Through the back door and the overgrown yard, towards teh side entrance to the church. His face still had some spatter of blood across his cheek, drops missed when he tried to clean himself up for the trek back into the city and back to the stone den.
Of course his first action was to bring the haul to their pregnant alpha, to ensure she was well fed, and the pup along with her before the rest would eat in turn.
[Patrick Llewelyn] “Y’know what,” the Fiann sounds torn between frustration and disgust, and yes, in one of his hands there is something dangling that looks disturbingly [and smells disturbingly] like a pair of eyes with stems attached. “Next time Linus needs something for one of the spirits, I’m not losing the game for who gets sent.”
he gestures at Janis as he speaks; his bounty jiggling.
Stepping into the light cast by moon and window, Patrick’s encounter is brought into clearer light. The shirt he’d been wearing was unfortunately white and perhaps spoke to his method of arrival — he wouldn’t have been able to explain away the bloodstains; his torn fists, that gash in his side where the cotton hung in strips. He’s hurt, but not badly, not enough to slow one of his breed down.
Just enough, apparently, to irritate.
“I need a drink,” he’s grumbling, and starting forward, noting Izzy saluting him he raises his chin at her; and his path deviates toward her. The chiminage goes into a pocket — best not produce those in one hand while he bums a smoke like a handful of morbid flowers.
“Hey, Iz. Bum one?”
[Izzy Montoya] She lifts her chin again. “Janis.” She takes a slow drag, seemingly unbothered by the thought that ‘Patty’ might have forgotten eyeballs. She’s seen worse, in her tenure. Eyeballs are nothing in the grand scheme of things.
She settles against the top step again, leaning forward to brace her elbow against her knee, sliding her free hand through her hair briefly. She looks tired. Exhausted. Enough so that Kora has recommended a vacation – which is likely a good idea, for all that it probably won’t come to fruition. Her exhaustion shows in the dark circles under her eyes, in the line of her back, the way her shoulders fight to stay strong. Patrick knows her well enough to note these – if he’s not to busy picking meaty bits from his own hair.
Iz, he calls her, and she doesn’t correct him. There’s an intimacy in that, for all her expression doesn’t change. Instead, she digs out her pack again, shakes a cigarette up from the depths, and offers it to Patrick. She offers one to Janis a beat later, than hands off her trusty Bic for fire.
“Lose a bet, did ya.”
[Janis Ian] “Suck it up, Patty.” The grin that Janis gives him is too wide and full of teeth, visceral in its curvature. Her lungs fill with air, diaphragm sucking inward as her voice pitches in a rumble of laughter at the Fianna’s frustration and disgust. She never had a problem with bringing the chiminage, took the trophies from everything she killed and hunted.
It amuses her now to watch him, “I never lose the game. ‘Tis done willingly, Patty.” She croons at him in a purr of soothing words, “Ye did fine, would ye like me to give ye a sponge bath to make it up for yer troubles, Patty?” There is a teasing jest that filters through, a gentle ribbing that makes it hard to discern if Janis was actually joking or serious.
Janis turns, lifts a hand in polite refusal of the cigarette, which leaves more for the Fianna and the kin to smoke. She moves towards the steps, bouncing up them quickly to the top; stops, and turns to slide down into a crouch in one single movement. Her eyes move between them, the playful feral grin still worn on her lips.
[Kora] Strange, to have this conversation with a stranger. A Hippie-Jesus style stranger, who seems more superficially suited to life in the youth hostels of Europe than in the Garou Nation. Despite his flat affect, the correspondence with her earlier life – that sense memory, of sorts – makes her easier with him that she might otherwise be given the circumstances. Stretching back her shoulders, extending and decompressing her spine with the extended movement.
“My brother’s a godi,” Kora tells Owen frankly, setting her mug of tea down on the table. “I don’t want him playing midwife when the time comes, though I’d like him to perform the Baptism of Fire, yeah?” Her shoulders lift and fall in a narrow, expressive little gesture. “I’m not sure when he’s gonna be able to get back here, though. So I might take you up on that.” Long fingers steeple over the metal card table as he puts down the pot and pushes it toward her.
She reaches out, snags the lip of the terra cotta container and tugs it closer, gaze dropping to the leaves as Owen inspects it. “I don’t exactly have a green thumb,” she remarks, quietly, turning the pot on the table. A little distant, now. Distracted by the sense of her packmates in her periphery. That supple, familiar tug of their presence in the back of her mind. “My mate does, though.” It is enough to pull her briefly – outside the cage of her too-human body, her too-soft skin, her too-
The curve of her generous mouth feels less forced, in that moment. Somehow. “Thanks. You have – ” another shrug; her voice low here. Her references somewhat oblique. She doesn’t say child. Or daughter. Or son. No pet names. No pronouns. Just: kid, sometimes, and then rarely. ” – a phone number or something, someplace I can reach you when it’s time?”
Then Fire Claws enters, on the far side of the Church. Kora swings a look unerringly back to the door through which he comes in, then looks back to Owen. “You remember my packmate, Fire Claws, yeah? From your challenge.” From the distance, she lifts her chin in greeting to the feral Forseti.
[Owen DeTerizzi] Mmph.
*Is the gruffed response of the city wolf, as he digs out a worn and dirt spackled card from his jeans pocket. A pen lid gripped in his teeth as he scrawls his number on the back of the rumpled rectangle.*
There. You can reach me there. Stop in if you need help with the plant, or the delivery.
*Fire claws is acknowledged with a double take. He had rabbits. Interesting.*
I do. Fireclaws. Bella remains outside.
[Patrick Llewelyn] There’s no doubt if Izzy’s exhausted then Patrick and Janis’ nearness won’t help; physically, anyway, it’s hard to fight the tensing of muscle as all that Rage comes toward you housed, in the Fianna’s case, in a rather large package of bulk strength. Izzy offers over a cigarette and Patrick takes it gratefully with stained fingers.
His knuckles are torn open; the blood under the nails no doubt from another form when they were rather better suited to tearing into whatever had left the lovebites all over his side.
Lose a bet, did he? “Unfortunately,” he breathes out, smoke and sigh combined; perching a leg up a step beside the Kinswoman and directing a blue-eyed, narrowed stare his almost-pack-mate’s way. “Yeah, but only if you shampoo my hair and make it smell all sexy.” Another inhale; his eyes contain his shared amusement, his voice a rough reflection of the merriment in Janis’ at the teasing.
There’s a silence then, just for a moment. Patrick’s attention is drawn inward, he glances past both at the doors to the Church.
Got Linus’ eyeballs for him, don’t even ask me what I had to do to get them. Man he owes me.
When he glances back, it’s the Detective whose face he pans, studies a good minute. “You look about as good as I feel.” Trust Patrick to give it to you straight.
[Fire Claws] The forseti seems intent on delivering his goods to the table that Kora and Owen are sitting at. The bottome of the back pack is starting to pool the blood of the kills within. He had been wise enough to try and place another bag within the bag, to keep from creating a trail through the city and into the chruch.
The feral born seems to let off to the rest of the pack that he had brought food, a mental nudge to whomever was within range of the church that he was fresh from the hunt and he had enough food for the pack. Kin and others… well they would have to ask his alpha nicely before he would be willing to share.
His attention left only to Kora for the moment, when he hands over the pack full of fur and blood and, especially, meat. Letting her examine the kills as she saw fit and take whatever she wanted, should she be hungry. Sometimes he forgets how females are at this level of their pregnancy, sickness and need to feed all at once. Strange it seemed. But soon enough, after the kills were offered up to the female-alpha, he finally addresses Owen.
“Gud. Tuffen ‘er up. Mayba ‘unt wit me soon. Earn ‘er meals.”
Like a proper wolf should.
[Izzy Montoya] Janis offers Patrick a sponge bath, and a brow quirks over dark eyes. She turns down the cigarette, and the pack disappears to the depths of her pocket again. When the lighter is returned, it goes into the same pocket. Amusingly, she’ll forget which pocket by the time she needs another one. Such is the plight of someone with too much on their mind.
She settles her hand onto the file folder in her lap, again. If she is bothered by the closeness of their rage, it does not flicker visibly through her. There is a subtle tension, a tightness dancing under her skin. But this is a man she’s pulled closer despite his rage. This is a man she’s fought over a gaming remote with. This is a man who has seen her relax, has seen her laugh.
Exhausted or no, she does not fear him. At all.
Even when he tells her she looks like shit.
She smirks, slightly, and nods. “Yeah.” She lifts up the folder, and offers it to him, though. “Roman was gonna look at this, since Kora’s inside talking baby shit with DeTerizzi.” She shrugs a shoulder. “Can give you the rundown instead, if you want. Nothing much, just a clusterfuck I was involved in the other night.”
[Kora] “Cheers – ” returns the Skald, as she reaches to pick up the card with Owen’s phone number scrawled on the back. She has taken to painting her nails again; the boredom setting in from enforced inactivity, the limits she’s aware of, the others she imposes on her self all chafing her spirit. All that needs some outlet. So: chipped orange polish on the nails as she reaches for the card, produces a pen and small notebook of her own from one of the pouch-pockets of her sweatshirt and returns the favor. A number: KORA (xxx) xxx-xxxx. Another: TRENT (xxx) xxx-xxxx.
“Thanks,” she says, quietly, breathing out like a sigh. Infused with feeling, though. Animated against Owen’s flatter tones. “That’s my contact info, and my mate’s. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to be,” she continues, a minute twist of her shoulders. “A few weeks, maybe a moon, yeah? I’ll be in touch.
“Oh, and Sofie mentioned that you wanted her to get permission for the garden, yeah? I’ve got no problem with that.” This she offers as she reaches out for Fire Claws’ pack full of rabbits. She knows what’s inside before she opens it; can smell the blood through the fabric, with that peculiar perspicacity of pregnancy. “I think I’ll cook mine,” she remarks, wry, to Fire Claws, ” – though.”
[Janis Ian] Janis just laughs more, shifting her body until her ass meets the cold stone of the porch, legs drawn up to her chest. She draws her arms around her calves to hug them. Muscles twitching reflexively in her tattooed skin.
She quiet as she listens.
[Owen DeTerizzi] *Another gruff nod, and the tightening of lips that must pass as a smile among Glasswalkers. Or perhaps only the DeTerizzi family. His card is from Bulgur’s greenhouse – presumably where he works if the plant was any indication. Another nod to Fireclaws.*
I leave you to your rabbits. I’m in the caern, or on top of the brotherhood most days. Find me when you want to court that spirit.
*Eyes a strangely luminous green rise to the jarl as Owen takes her information in a dirt stained hand, tucking it in his back pocket for safe keeping, turning to go. Business concluded.*
Goodnight and Good luck.
[Kora] Then, a subtle sort of inattention as she focuses inward. Listening to Patrick, her attention drawn out, before she returns. He might owe you that for a while, man. Some fucker’s – it is rare to hear her curse, particularly in their mind. There’s a sudden, immediate viciousness to it though. – tried to claim our mom.
Little wonder, since the woman with no pure breeding produced three true born garou. At least.
He’s gone home to deal with it.
—
Even sharpened with that spike of inborn rage, Kora’s smile is more natural, more full than Owen’s. Her mouth is wide, naturally curved. He wishes her good night and good luck. She wishes him, “Good hunting.”
[Owen DeTerizzi] [G-dub OUT! thanks for scene!]
[Patrick Llewelyn] Patrick shifts his cigarette from one hand, placing it in his mouth as he reaches out to accept the folder; his fingerprints will be left on it; smeared bloodily across it. He balances it on his knee and glances down at it without yet opening it.
“A shit storm, huh? Tell me about it.”
He raises his eyebrows in expectation that she will do just that, as Kora tells him — “What the fuck,” a mutter, directed at nothing that makes sense around them, Patrick’s expression distant, hazy a moment. What the fuck, repeated silently across the totem link.
I hope he kicks whoever it is around the neighborhood a few times. Izzy is showing me some info about something that went down the other night, you wanna come hear first hand or you trust my storytelling skills. He seems dubious about them, himself.
[Fire Claws] He watches the Glass walker depart the church while Kora still holds onto the rabbits. She made some sort of comment about cooking hers and he doesn’t say much to that. He just watches her as she picks at the bag. And as he stands there before the Jarl, something seems to spark in his mind. Something he wonders about.
He listens to the reason for Linus’ disappearance. But soon that is forgotten in place of his uncertainty about how to go about the subject that sits in his mind. Something that has wondered for some time. Maybe Kora can feel it across the link, an uncomfortable issue pressing his thoughts. She could certainly see it in his stance. He bounces on the balls of his feet, rolling his feet forward and back as he wonders how to say it.
“Fate~rhja. Aye gotta question for ya. Ok? Sumtin aye need ta ask ya.”
[Fire Claws] (err.. Sorrow~Rhya. Sorry)
[Janis Ian] “What sort of shite?”
Janis isn’t privy to the thoughts tumbling over a pack totem phone, she blinks as she stretches to stand, looking between the Fianna and the Fenrir kin out on the porch with her.
[Remy] [whoops, sorry guys, gonna drop ivan into the strip joint instead *LOL*]
[Izzy Montoya] The folder is far from pristine, with a coffee stain from her own cup, with pastry icing and crumbs from the moments in Kora’s possession. She’s not worried at all, then, that Patrick will add further grossness to the simple folder. Inside, is a sheet of paper, with typed information. Descriptions. A name – partial, and a name – full. Addresses. Times.
But it’s the pictures that draw the eye, instantly. They show a break in a concrete path, a….thing – animated corpse at best – crawling out of it, snarling, screaming. And Izzy, gun drawn, hand steady, firing, in multiple frames. Close up. Dark eyes focused, determined, jaw tense and set. Another shot of her firing again, into the thing after it was killed.
She never forgets to double tap.
[She is strangely beautiful in these pictures, intensity bleeding from them. She is fierce. She is Fenrir.]
Other pictures are of a little girl, dancing, and posing proudly afterward with someone presumably her mother, in a self portrait of sorts.
“I was walking through Grant, and the paths were fuckin’ blocked off, forcing a group of us to a single path. Broken water main, something, whatthefuckever. A woman – this one.” she points to the mother in the picture. “Went past, then there was a scream. There was a kin – Delilah – and two Trueborn” Descriptions here, as she didn’t get names – she describes Kieran and Natalie, to a T. “They approached from other paths. I saw a woman crawling from the concrete, intent on getting at that one.” The mom. “I drew and fired. Delilah did as well. Almost shot the garou, as they jumped in the line of fire. They didn’t shift, but they would have soon – could fuckin’ feel it, you know?”
She pauses for a drag on her cigarette, and then nods as she exhales. “Delilah got in a good shot, then I killed it. Then saw the camera flash. Sent the True to deal with it, as I took that last shot, to make sure. The true asked for the camera, grabbed it, broke it. She told the Garou she was Olivia, and part of the Western Illinois Society for Paranormal Investigation and Research. There’s the info I could get on it – not much. Bunch of fuckin’ crazies looikin for the crazier shit. She wanted to keep the pictures as ‘proof’ of supernatural presences.” She snorts. “The garou bickered back and forth, and then wandered off, pleased they’d gotten the camera. Olivia ran off, but looked back. Both Delilah and I saw where she was lookin – knew she stashed something. Delilah found the memory card. Those are the pictures that were on it.”
She pauses, and takes another drag. “I dunno if ya wanna go find this chick, but if ya do, out of the 39 dance studios in Chicago that teach tap dance, 7 had recent recitals. I included all the addresses and class times for that kids age groups. Should help ya find her if ya need to.”
Thorough, that’s Izzy.
[Kora] I trust your storytelling skills. The Fenrir returns, mind-voice wry in the aftermath. She does not add to Patrick’s wishes about Linus success, though there’s a certain non-verbal response in the back of her mind, like a greek chorus, hear hear, hear hear. Fervent, tinged with the rage she swallows rather than spends these nights.
“Lemme put these in the cooler, yeah?” she remarks to Fire Claws, bending carefully over, picking up one of the spare coolers from underneath the card table and loading the fresh kills into the cooler. There’s a moment half-way through when the smell of raw meat and blood just hits her wrong; wrong entire. She grimaces, mouth pulling flat across her teeth and swallows hard, then finishes the task and leaves the feral Garou’s back empty on the floor beside the table.
“C’mon,” quietly to Fire Claws when she’s finished. There’s blood on her hands now; she wipes it off on the thighs of her jeans, the gesture familiar and remembered. “Let’s walk.” And so she begins, walking back toward the altar through the vast, open space of the sanctuary. “What’s on your mind?”
[Janis Ian] (needing to bail out! sorry)
[Fire Claws] There is a sort of unease about walking along your elder while you have a question that needs to be addressed, something that was.. almost a question of her authority to the lupus born. He knew his duty was to council, that was what a forseti was there for, but part of him readied himself. A challenge brewing at the edge of his mind.
He walks with his alpha as she suggested they do so. His pace matching with her own, his steps just slightly behind her own, giving his alpha potential for leading if she so decided to do so. A natural action ingrained in the feral born brain of Fire Claws.
“Aye ‘erd word dat ya feel useless, dis tru’?”
His eyes were on her now, sharp and intense. Still not meeting with her own, not openly challenging her right to lead, merely focused on her cheek at the moment as he listens and waits.
[Kora] Her reaction is sharp and immediate. She’s a half step ahead of him, somehow both waddling and prowling, expending energy that has no place to go except into her body and back out. Some law about conservation of energy, some fucking lay of physics comes to mind.
“Who the hell told you that – ” it’s a question, but her voice does not rise at the end to mark it out as such. He is looking at her cheek, her eyes are on his face. Direct and without filter now. There’s a way she bristles, squares her shoulders and pulls herself further upright, expanding her spine to give her further illusion of height. The voice is low and intense.
[Patrick Llewelyn] Patrick is silent, a smoking figure as Izzy talks of her experiences in Grant Park. He examines the pictures she’s drawn, shifting his stance a little and flipping pages, the cigarette smoking, held gingerly between two fingers while he holds open the folder and reads; glances up at her sharply once or twice when she mentions some Paranormal Investigation Unit.
Some chick with a camera.
A child dancing.
He’s silent for a moment longer when she’s done, contemplating everything. “Ghost Hunters and all, huh,” he surmises, scratching his cheek with blunt fingertips. Patrick’s eyes in the dark are twin points of vivid blue. “Fucking fantastic,” he breathes out, chuckles lowly. Then closes the folder, hoists it up a minute.
“I’ll look into the kid. S’good work, Detective.”
He’s smiling vaguely, without more than what he says. Must be a compliment.
[Izzy Montoya] She shrugs, slightly. “It’s what I do.” It’s who she is.
She flicks the ashes from the edge of her cigarette, takes a final drag and kills the cigarette against the step at her hip. She scrubs her hands across her face, and takes a breath – then simply lets it go again. “Didn’t know if you’d consider ehr a loose end, or whatthefuck ever. The other two idiots were too busy fighting, an’ fuckin telling me to quit being a jerk to realize the bitch got one over on them.” A shrug. “So yeah. If ya need anythin’ else, lemme know.”
She stretches slightly, then looks up to meet his gaze, a little smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. “Wouldn’t consider a Halo rematch, tonight, would ya?” That she asks, speaks to how deep the need of company she feels tonight, even if she doesn’t say it, even if she doesn’t ask for what she really needs.
Company. Time spent with someone who gets her.
[Fire Claws] In the wild, when a lesser wolf addresses a greater wolf there is a certain dance involved, even more so within a pack. A careful test of boundaries and status, should the line be crosses violence occurs. Challenges are set forth in such a manner. Status either established, or disrupted.
To Fire Claws there is no difference even among true born, two-leg and feral born alike. He listens to her response, process how she reacts and pushes the boundary that much more. A need to council, to defend the standard of the Fenrir. Leaders must be tested and proven, it keeps the pack strong, keeps them hungry. Keeps them well among the best.
Kora meets his question like a proper predator should, making her bigger, seem more fierce. Determined to shake him from his course. But he was not mere prey, no wuss. He met her reactions with fery intensity. His voice deeper, more vicious in its snap. A low, gutteral retort.
“Does aint matter. Is dis tru?”
[Patrick Llewelyn] Prayers to Broken Stone tucks the folder under one arm, and straightens; stretching slightly. A grimace knits his brow as the movement reopens the slashes in his side. “I’ll go show this stuff to Kora, get her take on it first before I do anything with it.” A beat, she wants a Halo re-match and the Fianna’s eyes — well, to coin a cliche — twinkle.
He studies her a moment.
“Tell you what, come inside and have a beer with me, need to slap something on my cuts and bruises, oh,” he glances down at his pocket. “And give these to the right spirits or whatever.” With that, the Galliard moves up the steps and pushes into the Church itself; the door wearily giving to the Garou’s pressure against it with a creaking the reverberates inside.
[Kora] “It does matter,” Kora returns, hands on her hips now. It’s all part of the dance; and it’s enough to bring the riding tension in her body forward, to pull it out of her. Make it part of her stance. She has an attractive face; sharp jaw but a generous mouth, dark eyes framed by blond brows and pale lashes, a certain openness that seems human, inviting. But the curve of her mouth is flattened, now – a flash of white teeth evident between her unpainted lips as she draws the expression wider. ” – because it’s not true.”
That’s a flash; another gleam of teeth in her mouth before she presses her lips together and lifts her chin dismissively toward something in the middle distance. “I’m a liability in a fight with the enemy right now. There’s no question about that. But I’m not useless.” Dark eyes refocus on Fire Claws, then. “Now, who told you this?”
[Izzy Montoya] “What, no sponge bath from Janis?” Lips curl into a smirk, as she pushes to a stand, and studies him for a moment. Then, she shakes her head, slightly.
“I’m gonna head home. Have Kora call if she has any questions.” A beat, and then the slightest curve of her lips. “I think I’ll indulge in bath, myself. You know your way, if you decide to join.”
And with that, she watches him push the door open, and inside, before she turns and heads back down the walk, and toward her car, and the hot water that awaits her at home.
[it’s bedtime for Lessa!]
[Izzy Montoya] [thanks for the sceneage. Night!]
[Patrick Llewelyn] [Night Lessa! Thanks for RP!]