[Michael Powers] It’s a mere three blocks beyond the purvey of Eagle pack territory, but those three blocks make all the difference. Here the Eagles don’t come by as often. It’s not their purvey, and one pack can only cover so many blocks on a consistent basis. But, on the surface, it doesn’t look much different; the same kids playing dice on the street corners, the same knot of men standing outside the entrance to the deli, the same old folks leaning out their windows, watching the world pass them by.
Michael’s place is a three story tenement building, hemmed in on both sides by identical places, the stoop a weathered and battered series of three steps that has seen generations worth of use and abuse. Had the onwer not lived on the ground floor, Michael would have taken it; as is, he’s had to settle for the first floor, the room facing the front of the building, with a single large window opening up over the front door.
Inside, Michael’s working. The window’s open, and faint music comes out, a fusion of orchestral music with drums and bass, high energy and with a guy singing and twining his voice through it all. A huge box dominates half the floor; Michael’s fingering a knife, and eyeing it with a mixture of hope and excitement.
[Joss Lehrer] She’d promised she’d stop by, and stop by she did. She didn’t even call first – she sometimes forgets things, after all. None the less, it’s about 4pm when the Godi steps away from her finished patrols of the Eagle territory, and wanders down toward Michael’s place. She’s dressed much as she was the night before, her skirts of many earth-toned colors balanced out by an tanktop, and a warm brown sweater today, as the temperature has dropped. She even has her shoes on, though they’re light ballet slipper flats and thus almost as good as actually being barefoot. Her bag hangs at her hip, the strap cutting across her torso diagonally, and her dreds are gathered back in a loose ponytail, keeping them under control.
She looks up at the window, and tips her head, listening to the music a moment, befoe she laughs softly and calls up. “Michael? Hey Michael!”
Always the subtle one, Joss…
[Michael Powers] Michael, about to advance on the box, pauses at the sound of his name being hollered from outside. Few people know where he lives, plus the voice sounds familiar; a smile crosses his face, and he turns and sans cane hobbles over to the window, where he places his one good hand on the sill and leans out, into chill afternoon air, to look down over the broad ledge and at the street below.
“Joss!” he calls out, sighting her immediately below. He’s dressed in a white button up shirt, open at the neck, and his grin is sincere. “Come on up, I’ll buzz you in!”
He steps back, snatches up his cane, and quickly makes his way over to his front door, where he does as promised.
Inside the building, it’s dark, just shy of being gloomy. Two security doors are opened by the buzzer, a battery of bronze mailboxes filling one of the narrow walls between them both. The entry hall is just as narrow, barely a passageway running back to the ground floor apartment door, with the stairs swooping up along the right. A thick coat of glossy white paint covers the walls, and catches the light dimly, making them glimmer like pearls sighted in shady water. The stairs though, and the wainscotting, are painted a dull, shit brown, and seem to fade into the shadows.
[Joss Lehrer] She waves as he looks out, and nods, moving to the door so that he can buzz her in. If she’s bothered by the conditions of the building, she makes no sign of it, moving just as easily, bouncily, as she moves through anything. In fact, there was this one time recently where she moved just as easily through a green slime-filled tunnel – though there as little cause for bouncing then.
Soon enough though, she moves up the stairs, and her knuckles rap on his door. “Girl Scout Cookies!”
[Michael Powers] The door opens, and Michael steps aside, welcoming her in. He’s dressed in the same pair of jeans from yesterday, and the white shirt’s untucked; creased around the bottom though, as if earlier on it had been more smartly worn, and only recently, perhaps with his arrival at home, pulled out to make him more comfortable.
Michael smiles, and his rather plain face is lit up, not like a Christmas tree but as if his attention, prone to wandering, had come round to inhabit his face, his head, and in doing so given his features a certain animation that elevated his rather common features into something more striking, interesting.
“Joss,” he says again, letting her in, closing the door behind her. “Glad you came. Just in time for the fun.”
And turning, he points with his cane to that which can’t be missed; a great cardboard box, easily some eight feet long by almost five wide and high; bands of white plastic tape criss cross it, holding it altogether, while recylcing triangles, shipping stickers and the like mark its smooth brown surface.
“Arrived but twenty minutes ago.” Michael looks at her with one eye closed, head tilted slightly to the left. “You guess what it is?”
[Joss Lehrer] Her smile is warm, as always – and should be noted that it reaches her eyes, every single time. She is not one to hide her emotions, and it’s when that mirth doesn’t shine in her eyes that one needs to watch out – just ask Sam. It’s odd enough to know a Fenrir that smiles at all – it’s becoming well known that when the Godi isn’t smiling, run.
He points out the obvious crate, and she laughs as she moves inside. “Oh, I got here just in time! That’s your new tub, isn’t it?” Her steps make little to no sound as she moves past him, and studies the crate with a delighted grin. “Want help opening it?”
[Michael Powers] Michael regards the great crate, and then limps past Joss, back to the window where he’d put the crowbar down. Taking it up, he smiles at her, and gives a nod.
“Sure would. Have at it.” And between one step and the next he’s grown two inches, broadened across the shoulders, deepened in the chest. His face grows heavy browed, his chin lantern jawed, and his eyes seem to recede deeper into their ocular cavities. Hair whispers down to cover his pale cheeks, and his hand, which grips the crowbar, now is large enough to palm a basketball, heavy knuckled and with veins like earthworms across their back.
Thought’s Resolution limps to the crate, and with ease slips the crowbar’s head beneath one of the wooden slats, and pops it off.
[Joss Lehrer] She all but actually bounces with delight, and while he shifts, she doesn’t. She’s just a little slip of a girl, really, but she’s has the use of both hands. She steps up by his side, and as he pops up the first slat, she grabs it and wrenches it the up and the rest of the way off, setting it on the floor, gently, and returns for the second.
If she thinks anything of his disabilities, there’s nothing to show it in her interaction with him, or the way she steps to his side to help. He does the heavy lifting – so to speak, and she simply pulls the wooden slats up and off – augmenting what he does singlehandedly. (..ha.ha.ha..)
And she doesn’t seem to care if she gets dirty doing it. No pretty princess, this one!
[Michael Powers] Off the slats come, nails sticking out like viper teeth, and then with a crack the corner mounting comes undone, and from there it’s child’s play. Within two minutes a neat pile of wood adorns the apartment to one side, and then it’s just a matter of cutting the white bands of plastic tape, something Michael accomplishes with the nails of his one hand, and tearing the actual cardboard box right off the tub.
Which, when revealed, is beautiful. Freestanding, with porcealin as white and glossy as virgin snow, a rounded lip that circumnavigates the tub and a thick depth to it that might even house a crinos if he lies still. Where the afternoon light from the window hits the tub it glimmers white; where shadow falls across its surface, inside it, around the sides and back, it deepens to the coolest of greys, tinged almost with a touch of blue.
Michael shifts down to homid, and sets the crowbar aside. Reaching out, he runs his fingertips along the edge of the tub, and then turns to smile again at Joss. This smile is different, however; it comes from deeper within, and is touched by plans, by ambitions, by a certainty of things to come.
“I’ve got plans for this tub,” he says, voice low, quiet. “Going to Cleanse it, Awaken it. And then I’ll be getting to work.”
[Joss Lehrer] “Ooooooh…” is all she says as they finally pull the last bits of packing away from the tub, her fingertips smoothing along the sides, her eyes shining as she takes in the perfection that is the free standing tub. Being a girl – and make no mistake, despite the animal that rests so thinly beneath her skin, she is indeed a teenage girl – she’s likely imagining it filled with bubbles, surrounded by candlelight, with a good book and a glass of wine to complete the experience…
He’s seeing bloody bandages and other things, but that’s ok too. He’s a boy. Boys are gross like that. Though she can appreciate those uses for the tub as well, and the fact that he thinks so highly of the talens he wishes to make to purchase the very best to use in their creation.
“It’s beautiful.”
[Michael Powers] Carefully, watching his balance, Michael lowers himself into a crouch, wincing almost by reflex as he extends his right leg out straight to one side, knee soldered solid, hand resting and the generous, almost sensual lip of the tub. He sights along its length, runs his hand along the almost preternaturally smooth surface.
“Sure is,” he says, agreeing with her after a moment. “I don’t know,” he says, voice falling almost to a whisper. “I get this sense of potential. Of things beginning. Of my sticking my spoon into a the broth of this city, and getting ready to stir. Nothing’s noticed me yet, and if my luck don’t hold true, maybe nothing will, but.”
His eyes are still gently running down the length of the tub, but then he turns and looks up at Joss, where she stands. “I’ve got all these questions. These desires. Where does our Rage come from? Is it truly from Luna, and if so, why does the Wyrm come to us when we lose ourselves too deeply in it? How mutable is the nature of a bane? Can one be changed, fundamentally, into a Gaian spirit? Could you create a – a virus, for the lack of a better word, that would infect Banes, bring visions of Gaia to them? Could – “
But then he stops, stops what seems to be an almost veritable flood of questions, ideas, that he was on the verge of losing his grip on. Laughs, and straightens, using the tub to stand. “Yeah.” He reaches up, rubs the back of his head, smiling wryly.
[Joss Lehrer] She just watches him, as the questions spill forth, one after the other of the things that they deal with on an every day basis, on a far deeper level than most; the fundamental values of good versus evil, what makes one good, another evil, is it nature or nurture, can one be changed from good to bad, from bad to good again? Is a bane forever evil, where does the wyrm come from, why does it stalk us, what of weaver and wyld, what if, what if, why why why can we…
And she laughs, softly, as he stops and straightens. “You are a thinker, clearly. That’s good. We can always use someone that wants to find out the whys instead of just jumping in and destroying the results. The trick is finding the balance between the two extremes.”
[Michael Powers] Michael eyes her, his expression slowly settling, becoming grave. It’s not that he’s withdrawing, but rather, after that flight of enthusiasm, he’s coming back to himself. Returning, as it were, to the context that is his body, his past, his abilities and restrictions.
“My name, rhya,” he says, voice still quiet, reflective now, “Is Thought’s Resolution. It is through my thoughts that I am able to act, to fight.”
A smile creeps back onto his face, so slight it’s but the curling of the corner of his mouth. “And I plan to fight a whole ton.” He turns then, and given that his studio is devoid of furniture but this vast tub that takes up almost a quarter of the space, he sits himself on the tub’s edge and looks at her, resting his hand on his lap.
“But tell me about yourself some. How long you been in town? Where you from, originally, and what brought you here?”
[Joss Lehrer] She waves aside the Rhya with a grin. “Just Joss. There’s no need to be formal here, in pleasant conversation between two colleagues.” She nods, though, afterwards, as he explains his philosophy, his name, his resolution. She nods, when he says he figures on fighting a ton. “Then you came to the right place.”
He asks her about herself, and she makes a face as if it’s not anything interesting at all, but she answers anyway. Because he asked, and because she loves to talk. Shocker, right? She wanders around the room as she does so, as if she has too much energy in her frame, unable to stand still for very long.
“I’ve not been in Chicago too long – a month and a half or so. I came to present myself to the Eagles, in hopes of becoming their Godi – they have needed one for a some time. I grew up in the Sept of the StormHammer, where Decker’s Father is Jarl. For a time, the Eagles were not affiliated with the sept here, so they came home for Moots, and I grew to know them then – more than just the stories I’d heard as I grew up. When I arrived, they’d just lost one of their Modis too, killed in battle. It is her death that brought the Eagles back to Maelstrom – which is AWESOME because my one regret in seeking Eagle was that I may not get to see MAelstrom. It is something to behold…”
She smiles, softly, remembering, and then shakes herself with a grin. “They find me weird, you know. The Eagles. But I work well, and have proved myself to them, and have been found worthy of Eagle.” It’s said with a quiet pride, a goal achieved, one in a long list of them, but achieved.
[Michael Powers] The room is plain. His studio is small, dominated now by the great white tub, the walls white, the floor made of old, honey colored boards that creak beneath the lightest tread. One large window looks out over the front door, the same she’d seem him lean out of before, and from it comes all the natural light one could want, clear and pellucid and showing that he’d been keeping the place clean, furniture or no.
But there’s more. More that she can pick up, peripheral, intangible, but something that her senses in particular would notice. The room feels good. Clean, the air fresh like the kind of air one might experience when they step out into a glade unexpectedly, high up in the mountain woods. There is a sense of the pressure of being in the city having been alleviated, of feeling lighter here, more at peace.
Michael remains seated as she speaks, tracking her passage, nodding occasionally as he listens.
“I’ve found that the more I attune myself to the Umbra, the less I seem to make sense here in the mundane.” He looks down at his hand, at his knuckles. “I think most see the Gauntlet as a metaphor, being more than just for the seperation between Umbra and the physical. I think they see it as the line that represents a duality in us Garou, as if we were half spirit, half flesh, each half distinct.”
He knows he’s not saying anything she’s not heard of before. “But of course, it ain’t like that. We’re not like oil and water in a jar. We’re both, at the same time, inseperable. The only creatures of Gaia’s creation that remained as such when the world was sundered. And when I try to stay true to that, to be as spiritual as I am physical, to think of the Umbra as present as the mundane, well.”
His smile now is sad. “People end up thinking me weird too. But it ain’t us.”
[Joss Lehrer] She nods, listening, and turns to smile at him again. “I don’t mind them thinking I’m odd. I’m a walking contradiction – how many Fenrir have you know that smile more easily than scowl? I am also young, especially young to have achieved Fostern, and my background is not one that so many of us have, our change one of pain and blood and fright, facing the unknown. I knew. I was prepared. I was ready and I was loved. I am what so many of us could be. I am what so many of us should be.”
She lifts a shoulder in a shrug, and laughs softly. “Of course, it doesn’t help their perceptions that I like to play tag with elementals.” She wrinkles her nose at him, and laughs again, easily, freely.
“and you are right – we are both. We are more.”
[Michael Powers] “Yeah,” he says, and then shakes his head, gives a snort. “Ain’t that the truth.” He looks past her then, out the window at the light of the dying day, and then back to her. Cants his head to one side, one eye squinted shut, and them smiles.
“Listen, if you don’t have to be anywhere in a rush, how about you showing me how you perform a Rite of Cleansing? I’m going to be preparing this gleaming white monster for a bunch of rituals coming up, and was planning to do it myself. But seeing how the Fenrir do it, especially one that’s come out of a traditional Sept like Stormhammer? Well, that’d be a treat.”
[Joss Lehrer] She laughs delighted, and lifts a hand to push back the dreads that have stolen over her shoulders, so that they hang heavily along her back once more. “Of course. I’ve no where to be until joining Evan on late night patrols. You know how it is – an Omega’s job is neeeeeeever done.” She tries to look put out about it, but doesn’t succeed. It’s clear she adores each of the Eagles individually, and as a pack. And Evan is just plain fun to pick on.
She crouches down and unslings her bag from her shoulder, tipping her skirts settling around her to pool on the floor as she digs inside for her supplies. “I always am willing to lend a hand – though I will admit to pulling a prank or two as well. James – another Eagle – I turned his hat into a talen that flew off his head each time he said a word. THAT was a piece of awesome right there… The look on his face was priceless.”
She’s utterly shameless in admitting she was behind that prank. That’ll teach the Fianna to lick her face in public! She takes out a small cloth wrapped bundle, a wooden bowl, and a small vial of water, then sets about replacing all the mishmash of toys and whatnot that she had to displace to get at them back into her bag.