[Wahya] Zzzzz……
[Wahya] When left to his own devices… the Theurge has a tendency to make rather large messes. Whether or not Wahya is alone, or if Maija leaves him alone for more than five minutes, she is going to find sugar all over the kitchen floor.
The table has been pushed aside, and Wahya sits cross-legged on the floor in a white ring of powder made out of sugar. His eyes are closed, hands perched atop his bony knees, and he’s lacking something in the clothing department. Or is wearing very little… except for something that could remotely pass for as underwear.
[Maija] Wahya is often left to his own devises – Maija has to work, after all. Tonight she stayed late to help close up, and made a trip down to the corner store for some salad to add to the bbq she’s brought home for dinner.
There’s the sound at the door of her keys downstairs, then her steps on the stairs, her key in the door, and she steps in side. “Wahya? M’home…”
He always leaves a mess. Always. This time, as she tosses her keys on the tv top, she stops.. and stares…
[Stella] It’s been two and a half weeks since Stella made this trip in the middle of the day, when she didn’t have to work and wasn’t going way the hell out of her way, but she’s been putting it off and likely half-expecting Maija to come find her first. Yet weekends have stretched into entire weeks, and her phone hasn’t rang, and something about this last client made her decide to call it an early night, and so here she is, clacking down one of the shadier neighborhoods in the south side wearing knee-high high-heeled boots and a skin-tight leopard print skirt and a black camisole. Her hair is curly as hell and unconstrained today, and she holds a black clutch rather than her massive Bag of Doom.
One finger depresses the buzzer at the front door and she waits, smoothing down her skirt and turning her back to the wall.
[Wahya] Maija stops and stares… at Wahya, he blinks his eyes open. Tilting his head up to look at the girl, “Yes?”
His breathing is even, bare chest lifting up and down with each intake. He doesn’t look like he is going to get up anytime soon. His head swings to the sound of the door, frowning.
“Visitor?”
[Maija] She’s been pulling a lot of shifts, and has a lot of excuses as to why she hasn’t called. Truth be told? She doesn’t deal well with rejection – and she has known way to much of it in her life. But everytime she smoked a bowl, there was the passing thought – she needed to call.
Then she’d work a double shift, and come home to find Wahya’s messes, and it got lost in the shuffle again. What feels like minutes, has turned into two weeks, and she’s none the wiser. She sets her bags on the table in the kitchen, side stepping the mess.
Yes, he says. And she shakes her head. “Ya cleanin that shit up.” Though she knows damn well she’ll clean it later.
Then the buzzer goes – “Seems like it…” and she heads back to the door and thumbs the button. “Yeah?”
[Stella] It takes a moment, and she’s about to regain her senses and step down off of the stoop when Maija’s voice comes through the speaker. Stopping herself, Stella tightens her grip on her clutch and says, “It’s Stella. You got a minute?”
[Wahya] Wahya lets out a long sigh as Maija tells him he is cleaning the mess up. He waits until she begins to leave, turning to look down at the mess. He unfolds himself, beginning to stand up.
“You hear lady, start moving.” He orders the little piles of sugar, or more likely the air elemental he has been speaking to.
The faint breeze tickles around his ankles, leaving a little chill that runs up his legs, causing the hairs to stand out. He steps out of the circle as the sugar begins to sweep across the floor into a large pile. Wahya goes hunting down the dustpan.
[Maija] She looks over her shoulder at Wahya, and stares at the piles of sugar and… blink.
And blinks again. Finally… the intercom
“Yeah, come on up.”
A beat.
“Ain’t no canine’s here. S’safe.” She hits the door buzzer to unlock the one in front of Stella. Afterwards, she unlocks the door atop the stairs, and holds it open, waiting for Stella, while still watching down the hall at Wahya in the kitchen…
[Stella] “Alright.”
It’s said with a self-depreciating huff of laughter, and she lets herself in once the door unlocks. They can hear her coming up the stairs, her footwear loud even if the body attached to it isn’t very large, and when she appears at the top of the stairs, she wraps her thin arms around her upper body and lifts her eyebrows, peering behind Maija as if to confirm that the girl’s there by herself.
Stella, for her part, is dolled up as if she’s either going or coming back from somewhere. When she’s convinced that there’s no one behind Maija, she looks back, stopping just beyond arm’s reach and not inviting herself in.
“I was in the neighborhood,” she says, “and I just wanted to apologize for the last time I was here. Should’a told you I’m scared of dogs. Kinda stupid, but…”
Whatever else she was going to say is dusted off with a facial shrug to match the lift of her shoulders.
[Wahya] It was mentioned before that Wahya was in a partial state of undress. What Maija notices now that the Uktena is up and walking around, is what he is actually wearing.
Somehow or somewhere, the Uktena—who has no fashion sense whatsoever, found a pair of those women’s little hot pink spandex booty shorts to wear. Most likely came out of the bags he brought home from the Salvation Army. She gets a flash of bright silver faded lettering running across his flat ass that reads BOOTYLICIOUS in bold font.
He wore a makeshift bandana across his head to keep his hair back, matted braids slither down his back and shoulders. For being short, he is run on the lean side, wiry cords of muscle layer over bone and under skin, not an ounce of fat was on the wolf-born.
He hums to himself as the invisible air elemental waits over the pile of sugar, Wahya crouches to hold the dustpan for it as it makes the sugar slide up into the pan by itself.
[Wahya] ooc: post around me for a few need to use the restroom, Wahya’s… cleaning. lol
to Maija, Stella
[Maija] …..bootylicious. She blink, and then lips curl into almost a smile – hell, anyone else would laugh. There’s that brief almost smile as she calls back “Put some pants on.”
Apparently, she’s not entirely alone. But there’s certainly no one behind her, or even in the hall with her. Stella’s all dolled up, and peers inside. Maija steps back and pushes the door all the way open. “Ain’t a big thing. We’s all got shit like that.” a fear, of some sort. “I shoulda caled, but ain’t think ya’d like.. I dunno. stupid.” a beat, a nod. “I got bbq from next door an fixins for salad- plenty for everyone. Ya wanna come in?”
[Stella] Someone who isn’t Stella is told to put some pants on, and were not for the surprise she had last time she was here, the woman–call her what she is: she’s a whore–might have taken the invitation for what it was and gone inside for a while. As it is she looks wary, and an apologetic expression comes across Stella’s youthful face as she considers.
“I got a ride coming,” she says. “But, y’know, you should call me sometime. Barely gave you enough to pack a J with last time I was here.”
[Wahya] “Pants?” Wahya blinks, calling from the other room, “Why need to wear pants?”
At the sound of Stella’s voice, Wahya has ignored the request to put pants on and comes out to see who Maija is speaking with. He raises an eyebrow, glancing over her shoulder and at the door.
“Who is that?” Stella can hear the raspy gravel-tone of the man that had chased her down.
[Maija] “Stella.” She tosses the answer over her shoulder at the bootylicious Wahya.
She says she has a ride coming, and something flickers over Maija’s face, even with the request for a phone call. It disappears though, fading away to the blankness that she hides behind as she nods. “Yeah. The shit ya had was good – last bit sucked ass.”
Safety in talking of weed for the girl so used to being lonely alone.
[Stella] That’s definitely the guy who chased her down the damn sidewalk two weekends ago.
Maija says that the last bit that she had sucked ass, and Stella laughs, quietly, almost musically. That hint of apology doesn’t vanish from her brow or her eyes, but it’s hard to tell if that flicker across Maija’s face has anything to do with it.
“Well, you still got my number, right?”
[Wahya] Wahya pads over to the door, bare feet making some noise across the floor as he walks. He stops behind Maija, not quite towering over her since they were the same height.
He leans in, head appearing on Maija’s shoulder so he could look at Stella better, and he offers her a wide smile.
“Sorry for last time, Stella, Maija’s friend?”
[Maija] Wahya stops behind her, and imperceptibly there’s a shift of weight that has the waif-ish girl leaning back toward him – not away. He’s different, she’d told him not so long ago. That he still stays here with her and she’s not a ball of tension says a lot.
Not that Stella would notice that.
Speaking of Stella, and her number… “Yeah, I got it.”
[Stella] Wahya comes out of the apartment’s hallway to stand behind Maija, and Stella, four inches taller than last time in her high heeled boots and likely just as ready to go tearing down the sidewalk at the first sign of a threat, looks towards him with a patently stoic expression on her face. If anyone were paying even a ounce of attention to her body language and her words, she had felt profoundly threatened by this man last time they met each other, though right now she seems as though she feels safe in the hallway.
Maija still has her number, and Wahya is sorry for last time.
“Don’t worry about it man,” she says. “We’re cool.”
[Wahya] Wahya attributes the closeness of Maija as something else, when the waifish girl leans back into him. He braces her up, but does not touch her. Or think to wrap an arm around her.
He does, however, in a sort of lupine gestures, drop his head down to rest on her shoulder. Tilting it to the side as brown eyes scope over Stella curiously, Maija might feel something tickle at her feet, the invisible air spirit sweeping by them as it slips out the open door and into the hall.
Stella says they are cool and he nods his head at this, Wahya grunts softly, “Stella stay for food? Need eat.”
[Maija] He drops his head to rest on her shoulder, and her shoulder, her stance relaxes just a touch. For Stella, if she notes any difference between how she’s seen Maija before, the tension that was always present isn’t quite so bad, not right now. Maybe it’s because she’s at home – but there’s far from any threat she expects from Wahya.
There’s a tickle at her feet, and she doesn’t acknowledge it, though she notices it. Instead, she just reinforces Wahya’s invitation.
“There really is plenty…”
[Stella] With the repetition of a question that she has already shot down, Stella pops open the tab of her clutch and pulls out a small flip phone. A manicured thumb depresses a button on the side to light up the display, the time revealing itself in big backlit numbers, and she considers.
“Jimmy can just call me when he gets here,” she decides. “His ass be owin’ me for gas anyway.”
[Wahya] Wahya’s eyes light up, the grin on his face seems to grow wider, flashing Stella with a row of white teeth, the incisors a little to sharp. He steps away from Maija to back up into the apartment.
“Sugar clean off floor.” He calls back to the kin, Wahya makes his way to the bedroom, disappearing behind the closed door to do as Maija had instructed.
A moment later, he reappears in a pair of jeans, just the trim of those hot pink booty shorts and silver lettering peek out of the waistband as the jeans hung off his narrow waist.
[Maija] There it is. The curl of lips that can be an almost grin if it were given half the chance. She tips her head toward the apartment then, after Wahya goes to put on some pants. “Yeah, alright.”
Standard answer – and it works for both Stella and Wahya as they go inside, and close the door behind them. “Ya all dolled up…” she says, and part of it is a curiosity for who Jimmy is- though she doesn’t ask.
[Stella] She’s all dolled up.
“Yeah,” Stella says, almost sighing as she follows the dreadlocked man and the skinny blonde inside the apartment.
Her boots cause hollow thumping sounds to emanate from beneath her as she moves, as though the two shoes combined weigh half as much as she does, and she returns the phone to the depths of her clutch as she moves.
“I had to work tonight.”
[Wahya] “What work Stella do?”
Wahya tilts his head to the left, glancing down as he watched Stella maneuver through the apartment in those shoes, the clomping sound they make causes his eyebrows to ride high on his forehead, almost touching his hair line.
“Why Stella wear tall shoes? Clean windows for frog-skins?”
He is heading back into the kitchen; the smell of the food begins to become priority, rifling through the bags as he looks for the barbeque.
[Maija] She looks over at Stella, then just nods. She could guess. She doesn’t. She wouldn’t care anyway. To Wahya… “the BBQ is in the brown bag there. Should still be hot. You want some salad?”
The last to both of them. “An ya can take them heels off if ya want stella. Wahya just swept.”
She doesn’t say what. Or why. Because that would be too hard to explain. Instead she just grabs three plates, forks and then the salad dressing from the fridge. “Wanna beer?”
[Stella] Stella’s brow knits itself into an expression of bafflement, and she shoots back “What makes you think I be washin’ windows for a living?”
Maija intercepts though, asks if she wants some salad, tells her she can take her boots off, asks if she wants a beer, and that brief flash of hot-blooded temper simmers down. She stops in the doorway to unzip first one then the other boot, revealing skinny calves and tanned legs and dropping herself down four inches as she steps onto the floor in knee-high stockings.
“Yeah, please,” she says, lining her boots up in the doorway and padding into the kitchen. This is a remarkable sign of trust, right here: if she has to run away she’s going to either have to stop to put her shoes on or she’s going to be tearing ass out of here in her stockings.
[Wahya] There was a great sense of trust in what Stella was doing by taking off her boots to leave them by the door. Wahya has found the brown bag and has started to pull the barbeque out of it. He looks around the kitchen, a glance back over his shoulder to the two women before he drifts off to the cupboards to find plates, clean plates, but old ones.
They would have to do… he comes back with them, setting them down on the table. He isn’t sure what else they needed, Wahya digs into the stuff with meat, leaving enough behind for the other two women.
[Maija] She grabs forks, then sets the dressing on the table, then hands a beer over to Stella, setting her own on the table as she opens the bag of Salad and divies it up on the plates, handing one to Stella, and sticking a fork into the bbq so that they can divy it up without risking Stella messing up her clothes.
Wahya doesn’t ask any other questions, distracted by the food, and Maija glances up at Stella with that slight little grin, relaxing as she’s safe in her home and Stella ain’t run this time – yet.
“He ain’t from around here.” obvious. “Ya get used t’the way he talks.”
[Stella] “I ain’t got a problem with the way he talks.”
Stella had accepted the beer and the plate of salad without attempting to jump in and help divide up the barbecue or the salad. The girl isn’t a waitress, has never worked in a restaurant; what skills she has picked up won’t help her in the kitchen, and so she just has a seat at the table and takes a slug of her beer.
“Where you from, anyway?” she asks Wahya.
[Wahya] In a matter of moments, the food was inhale—literally inhaled—into Wahya’s mouth. Sauce covers his fingertips and mouth, tongue lolls out to lick it all way as best he can. He starts to suck on his fingers when Stella speaks to him.
He stops, his eyes going wide like a deer caught in headlights. Blinking, he pulls his hand down, “Wahya come from place where great river flows north over delta, away from great salty lake. Hot, very hot, south.”
[Maija] She puts some bbq on her plate, and sets the container in front of stella before sitting down. And hides the smile with where he says he’s from behind a swallow of beer.
She doesn’t clarify. In fact, she’s not sure she even could.
[Stella] Stella forks a piece of barbecue out of the container and plops it down on her plate, careful not to splatter sauce all over the damn place, then does something that most people outside of the third grade wouldn’t be caught dead doing: she plucks up a napkin, unfurls it, and tucks one corner into her cleavage.
This shirt was hella expensive.
“What’re you doin’ way the hell out here?” she asks, reaching for her beer.
[Wahya] What was he doing all the way out here; Wahya was standing when he devoured the plate of barbeque. He watches the human table manners of Stella with an odd fascination. Staring a little too long in that place she stuffs the napkin, his eyes growing wide.
He half-wonders if she’ll do a magic trick with it, “Quest. Looking for kinfolk, Wahya is shaman.”
[Maija] She glances up at Wahya as he stares a little too long, and then looks away. No way Maija could compete with what Stella has, even if she wanted too.
(Does she want too?)
(….does ANYone know?)
(yeah. her either.
Oh. Look. Salad. Yum.
[Stella] Stella’s brow flickers a bit at the use of the word ‘kinfolk,’ though the follow-up explanation that Wahya is a shaman seems to illuminate whatever confusion she’d had and an unspoken Ohhh comes across her face. If she notices–rather, if she cares that–Wahya staring at her chest, it doesn’t affect her behavior.
“What’s this kinfolk look like?” she asks.
[Wahya] Wahya shakes his head, pulling his eyes away from Stella’s chest and looks up at her. He quickly drops his eyes away, clearing his throat as he begins to look a little uncomfortable.
He pulls his legs up in the chair, bare feet perched on the edge as he wraps his arms around his knees, and he wipes the sauce from his hands on his jeans, leaning down to do the same with his mouth, sliding it across one knee.
“Be right back.”
Wahya says to the two women, immediately hauling himself out of the chair and starts to run out of the kitchen. He goes immediately to the door, checking it out and flips the locks in place, a glance back over his shoulder, frowning.
[Maija] She glances at Wahya and back to stella and just shakes her head. The boy is weird. Of course, Stella doesn’t know HOW weird, just yet, but she has a feeling she’s about to find out. Maija takes another bite of the salad, and chews quietly. A swallow of beer washes it down, and she lifts a shoulder slightly in a shrug in Stella’s direction.
She murmurs. “He’s odd, but he ain’t a bad guy. S’like takin in a stray, ya know?”
[Stella] A long belt off of her beer as Wahya excuses himself, and she frowns a light frown that doesn’t last over long as she busies herself with spearing a hunk of salad and chewing it. She eats neatly, carefully, yet with the speed of a woman who has denied herself food for a period of time. Given how thin she is, how athletic her build, she has to take care of herself, but it’s just as likely that she forgot to eat tonight, or that whatever job she has keeps her physically active enough to burn off whatever she eats.
Maija didn’t ask what she does. With that skirt and those shoes and the jewelry she’s got on, it’s a good possibility that she doesn’t need to.
Maija explains that he’s odd, that it’s like taking in a stray, and Stella snorts, loosening up for the first time since she came up the stairs, and elbows Maija lightly.
“Ain’t they all?” she asks.
[Wahya] Stella is going to be pissed, especially after last week’s stunt. But Wahya had to prove something, and if testing this theory… She won’t remember either way…
He takes his time, not heading back to the kitchen right away as Wahya pulls his thoughts inward. He closes his eyes, heat fanning out from him as he taps into the low amount of rage that calls forth his beast.
He rage-shifts up into his war form, telling himself mentally that this was the only way. Twice now he is going to frighten the shit out of Stella, and dinner will be ruined.
They can hear the noise, the heavy steps… the scraping click-clack of claws on the floor as the Uktena hunches down to all fours, carrying his war form back to the kitchen like an animal. He crouches, his ears falling back along his skull as he pokes his head around the wall and looks in, yipping softly.
[Maija] Oh.
Shit.
Here’s the thing. She’s been raised with Gnawers. She’s been beat up to hell and back, trying to get her to change. She’s dealt with other tribes that make her tremble still to this day… and now – she has to hold it together so she can help Stella.
Hold.
it.
together.
Her back goes ramrod straight, her breath quickens, her eyes are wide, and she’s poised in fight or flight (this is wahya, this is wahya, this is wahya, he’s SAFE safe safe safe safety WAHYA) and she just… waits….
[Stella] It suddenly gets inhumanly warm in Maija’s little apartment, and before Stella knows what the hell is going on, something far more frightening and flat-out wrong happens than a dog disappearing and a full-grown man taking its place. This isn’t a dog. This isn’t a fucking dog, and it’s getting bigger where Wahya had been small enough for her to take on with her bare hands and Stella’s pupils, calm and constricted against the light in the apartment previously, blow out as if she’s just done the biggest rail of cocaine and she gasps in a breath and–
“¿Qué coño?!“
–she’s on her feet in an instant, pitching her mostly-full container of beer in the creature’s direction, and what’s coming out of her mouth isn’t English. She’s equal parts terrified and cornered, and if anyone were to look at this girl and wonder if she puts on the front of bravery, this is about the best they’re going to get considering Stella has never seen anything like this before and is, yet, not reacting the same way that a Delirium-stricken human would.
Namely… she’s not blind with terror. This isn’t supposed to exist, and she’s fucking pissed.
[Wahya] Stella has every right to be pissed; Wahya is not going to fault her for it. It is a dirty trick he plays on both of the women. He can sense the hostility in the room, the language that Stella speaks he cannot understand.
His war form begins to fill up the doorway of the kitchen, erecting himself up as tall as he can before he smacks his head against the ceiling. His ears roll forward and back, giving the two women an apologetic look.
He gauges their reactions, notes how Stella does not react the way a human stricken with Delirium would. He sucks in a deep breath, bracing his claws on either side of the door frame and bows his head; slowly they will see him shift down into the near-man form.
His voice grates out human speech, sounded like he was chewing glass. “Steelllaaa isss kin.”
[Maija] She can’t breathe, she can’t….
(thisiswahyathisiswahyathisiswahya)
So she looks at Stella, who throws something and speaks but doesn’t freak out. Wahya says she’s kin.. and Maija takes a moment, then looks ta Wahya who’s thankfully shifting back down again…
“Kin. Ya kin, Stella. Like me.”
[Stella] She’s about to start screaming if something doesn’t change in the next thirty seconds.
Her heart rate has more than doubled since Wahya disappeared down the hall and came back. Her pupils are blown, her body is shaking with the desire to either rush the thing or run the fuck out of the room, she would be hyperventilating if she weren’t so busy yelling at Wahya in Spanish, but she calms down when he shifts back into a form that she can take.
That’s when they can hear her breathing as if she’s just run a marathon. The woman sounds like a cornered rabbit, and she has to swallow to get the dryness out of her throat.
“What the fuck does that mean?” she asks, looking to Maija as the only source of answers right now.
[Wahya] Wahya is watching the women; he begins to shift down one more time, sliding into his monkey-skin, making sure Stella sees it. He does not smile or look apologetic; he just brings up his arms, folding them across his chest, lean muscles tight with tension.
He is tense because of Stella’s reactions. He waits for her to calm down, watches her body as it changes, his nostrils flare out, tasting her scent the fear. She demands to know what that all means.
Humans may perceive as what Wahya done to be cruel, to scare the living shit out of the kinfolk and force out the truth in all its bluntness. Wahya is not human; he does not follow the social laws of humans and their ethics. He did it the only way he knew how, a wolf did dance around the subject, did not try to flower it with pretty speech to make the blow any more gentle. The initial shock would still be there.
His voice does take on a calm tone, attempting to reason with the frantic Stella. “Kinfolk are the human and wolf ancestors of Werewolves, Stella. Wahya is as you see him, what is called Garou,” he tilts his head to the side, “Think of all movies, books, stories Stella has seen about monsters, what humans portray them as. They are real. I am real and Stella is Wahya’s kinfolk, Stella carries the wolf blood but does not change like Wahya does.”
[charisma + subterfuge: Be the voice of reason!! Listen to the Crazy Red Man!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 5, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]
[Maija] She should go to Stella. She should touch her – but last time she tried, she ran and it was two weeks before she came back and Maija was certain that she wasn’t going to come back at all. She should…
What she does, is take a slow, careful drink of her beer, and stand. She, still trembling, reaches into the little planter on the end of the table that has a small something or another green and leafy in it, and finds her pipe – already packed with her last bowlful – and lighter. She slides them across the table toward Stella and adds on after Wahya talks.
“We’s like.. cousins. At th’basic level, anyway. He ain’t gonna hurt ya. Though I know it seems like he would, an’ could. But he ain’t. He’s.. well, he’s Wahya. I ain’t trust many of em that I done met.. well, ever. But I trust Wahya.”
To an extent.
[Stella] Wahya, God bless him, tries to explain.
Maybe Stella would have calmed down faster, or might have been able to focus herself enough to have a conversation with the two of them, if Maija were actually to step over to her and provide some sort of physical reminder that the world hasn’t suddenly gone to hell.
They have words. That’s all they have right now, and Stella is staring not at Wahya as his body hair disappears and his musculature deflates and his voice loses that gargling gravel quality but at Maija, who is explaining this to her in a voice that doesn’t make her want to push past Wahya and run out into the street leaving all of her belongings behind.
Yanking that ridiculous napkin out of her camisole, Stella throws it onto the table, crosses her arms over her chest below her bust line, and catches her breath.
“This is fucked up,” she says. Her thoughts have gone faraway, as if she’s remembering something, and then she says again, “This is fucked up.”
At least she’s not throwing things anymore.
[Wahya] His eyebrows have arced upwards again, he makes a gesture with his hand, stretching out his arm in Maija’s direction; fingers wiggling and pointing at Maija to go to Stella. He does not attempt to comfort Stella, she has been dealt a major shock and anything else he may do might set her off again.
He keeps a safe distance from her, for all of their sanity’s sake. “Yes is fucked up, how you say…” he replies to Stella, “Is truth. A normal human would freak, run through wall or window to escape sight as war form.”
He bows his head a little, “I am sorry, very sorry to force this on Stella. Understand you will be mad at Wahya, but is only way. You needed to know truth, truth is not always kind.”
[Maija] He waggles his fingers at her, and she blinks – and part of her wants to defy him in this little way – but she has been taught well, taught often, taught painfully to obey.
(thisiswahythisiswahyathisiswahya)
She nods, though, and pushes from the table, moving carefully, slowly, so as not to freak her out any more. She pauses as she moves past Wahy, and forces herself a breath, and lifts her hand to touch his side, briefly.
(this. is. Wahya.)
Her hands are freezing.
She meets his eyes briefly, and then turns to go to Stella, and stand near her. She is hesitant about touching her, hesitant about doing anything really, walking on eggshells in her own kitchen. She finally does though, reaching out with the same hand she’d touched Wahya with, fingertips brushing her arm. “It’s more fucked up than ya ever known. I knowed bout it most all my life an it still fucks me up t’see it. It’s way fucked up. We ain’t tell no one, acourse, cuz well – regular folks freak out. Ya ain’t freak, so’s ya one of us. Ya part o’something bigger than ya ever done know existed.”
And Maija still hates so much of it – this is NOT a fluffy bunny it’s all wonderful speech. It’s fucked up – but it’s th’hand she done been dealt.
Stella too.
[Stella] “Yeah, but…”
She doesn’t have a beer to distract her anymore, the beer she had been drinking having landed on the linoleum and purged its contents in foamy despair. It ought to make some sort of sense that if something weren’t different about her that she would have lost her wits and done whatever she could to get the fuck out of this tiny, danger-filled apartment.
Her shoulders slouch slightly when Maija touches her arm, as though some taut cord has been slackened, and she reaches up a hand, bracelets jangling on her wrist, to cover her mouth for a moment. She tastes pennies.
Dropping her hand, she manages, “Why do I need to know this?”
[Wahya] “Stella must keep this secret, cannot tell anyone that is not kinfolk or Garou. Will be hard to see, to know, some Garou you can tell, you can feel it in them. They give off aura, like heat, feral. It strong in those born under the fullest moon and weak in those birthed into darkness.
Wahya brings his outstretched hand back to his chest, lifts it up to stroke over his face, scratching blunt nails along his scruffy jaw line, and further up to pinch at the bridge of his nose. He gives Maija a nod of approval, the barest hint of a smile.
“Stella must know, because there are other Garou like Wahya, different tribes—like nationalities. Each one belongs like blood heritage, each kin belong to a tribe as Garou. There are werewolves who are territorial, claim kinfolk, especially lost. Abuse them, use them. Other tribes are gentler, kinder to kinfolk. Wahya is Uktena, a Native American based tribe, which embraces other cultures, like Stella’s or Maija. Mine is spiritual tribe…”
He knows this will confuse her, it is a lot to take in all at once, but then they didn’t have the precious resource of time. “Stella is to know for her own safety, as there are Garou called Gaians. There are bad werewolves, evilness that Gaians fight to protect Kin, protect humans… protect earth mother, Gaia.”
[Maija] Stella covers her mouth, and Maija’s hand lifts to touch her chilled fingers against her shoulder, to provide support that is needed, a support she has so rarely felt herself.
“It’s as he says. Ya gotta know, so’s ya can learn what t’fuckin look for. THey’s some a both sides that’ll fuck with ya. I ain’t told ya hardly nuthin bout me. It ain’t pretty. But if ya ain’t know…”
Knowing’s half the battle, right?
[Stella] She’s listening. For as panicked and pissed off as she was, she’s trying to pay attention and absorb what’s being said because as much as she wasn’t expecting this, and as much as she doesn’t know what the fuck just happened, she feels as though she ought to be paying attention because–
There it is. There are good werewolves, like Wahya, and there are bad ones.
There are people who will fuck with her, and if she doesn’t know…
“This is so fucked up,” she says for the third time. “Why didn’t… my father never told me none of this. Why didn’t he tell me?”
[Wahya] “Because Stella is not pure of the wolf blood, it is diluted. Certain Garou and kinfolk possess purity in their blood that refines their pedigree, makes them closer to wolf ancestors. Tribes worship a totem, a tribal animal or spirit, this tribal totem is based off a Garou’s ethnicity and culture.”
He says, his head turning from left to right, rotation the discs in his spine to make them pop. He shifts his weight, pressing more into the door frame using it as a leverage to keep him upright. His arms remain folded across his chest.
“In way is good Stella not have such fine pedigree, some Garou will leave, cannot identify you so easily for what you are. Pedigree is mark of fine breeding, which is what kinfolk are to werewolves, born to be our mates, to further the species. Stella’s father may not have known what he was; we call kinfolk like Stella born without knowledge, Lost Ones.”
A beat, “Wahya cannot tell what her birth tribe is, can ask the spirits, Wahya is shaman, speak with spirits.”
[Maija] She’s careful to have herself partially between Stella and Wahya, just enough to make Stella aware that she’d put herself in between them in a heartbeat, if needed. She Nods slightly. “Might be he ain’t know. Most of em ain’t know me either, until I done tell em, or end up in a situation where I done gotta stand up help do somethin.”
She lifts a shoulder in a slight shrug. It ain’t lost on her that this is the most Wahya’s talked in a while. Not that she’s very talkative either..
[Stella] There’s only so much that can be thrown at this woman in one bight before she starts to shut down, before she simply can’t absorb any more information. She appears to have hit that point, and when her cell phone begins to vibrate within her clutch on the tabletop she lets out a shriek and nearly jumps out of her stockings.
“Christ,” she curses, stepping forward to grab her bag. Popping it open and grabbing her phone, she scowls at the display and says, “Hang on a second.”
Flipping it open, she says, “Yo… Yeah, I’ll be down in a minute, ain’t nobody gonna jack your damn bong while you waitin’. Chill, man.”
Hanging up, she glances down at the table, then takes a deep breath and says, “Alright. I’m gonna go. I’m… I’m freaking out a little.” Another breath, and she looks to Maija. “Call me later. Jimmy’s downstairs and he’s probably tweaking cuz he ain’t in front of his Xbox for longer than five minutes.”
[Wahya] Wahya pushes himself away from the kitchen, stepping out into the main room. He heads to the front door, flipping the locks open so Stella can see her own way out.
He looks tired, the effort to shift up and down so rapidly, depleted his rage. He doesn’t say anything else to Stella, allowing Maija to make the farewells for them.
The Uktena shuffles off to Maija’s bedroom, fingers tugging at the door to swing it shut, but it doesn’t make it all the way there, just swings back on him. He flops down face first on the kin’s bed, pulling his body up into a ball.
Eventually, that human ball will start to change, and he’ll shrink down into his birth form, and start to snooze on the foot of Maija’s bed.
[Wahya] ooc: this does it for me. Thank you for the scene! Lessa and Jamie you are fantastic as always and such troopers to put up with me. (hugs and noogies)
to Maija, Stella
[Maija] She nods, slightly. “Yeah, alright.”
She watches as Wahya goes to her room, after unlocking the door, and Maija turns back to Stella and walks with her toward the door. “Come over any time, ok? I mean that shit. I can tell ya more, or we kin jus get stoned an’ forget all about it. Whatever ya want.”
[Stella] Wahya takes off without a word, and Stella is far too rattled and ready to get the hell out of here to worry that she’s hurt his feelings or that doing what he had just did had been draining. She has no way of knowing this, and so she walks with Maija to the front door as the blonde tells her that she can come over anytime.
Clutch in the hand that steadies the rest of her on the wall, Stella threads first one leg then the other into each boot, then zips herself in and stands up straight, finally at eye-level with Maija.
“That sounds good,” she says, shakily.
[Maija] “I mean it.” And she does – that much is clear in her eyes, eyes so dark it’s almost as if the night was swallowed in them somehow.
She does something almost impossible for her to do, next, and offers the other girl a slight smile. Enough to be noticed, enough to say it’s a rare occurance, and that it means something.
“I ain’t got no phone yet, still. But call the place downstairs. They’ll come get me. If ya need anything.”
[Stella] She means it. She smiles. She reminds Stella that she doesn’t have a phone and that if she calls the place downstairs that they can come get her if she needs anything.
Somehow, she’s a little less afraid to come back to this place.
“Thanks, girl,” she says, and raises a hand to wave before she lets herself into the hallway. When Jimmy sees her on the stairs he lays on the horn, and rather than frighten the neighbors with her screaming, she lifts a finger and holds it the entire way down.
She’s going to be alright.
[Maija] She watches as Stella goes downstairs, seeing that finger gives her a good indication that Stella will be ok. By the time Stella is in the car, Maija flips each of the locks one by one, and then goes about cleaning up the mess.
Again.
[Stella] [Wrap!]