Something like a ghost trail clings to it, the empty cartons, the creak and sway of chains rattling against empty warehouses. Half finished tasks and sandwiches, abandoned for the day and left to sit. She finds the serenity in the freeze frame of the moment. A capture of a thousand lives, many lived just as hers has been.
She sits on an overturned crate, the figure. Nothing special illuminates her, and she certainly is not the type to turn heads. There is a crudeness to her features, a trace of innate force to her physique, as though she’d been hewn together by the elements — sharp, green eyes and dark tangled hair, tied messily to her nape in a knot. An oversized workman’s shirt rolled up her arms and torn jeans on her dangling legs.
In one hand she balances what smells suspiciously like a drug a girl her age should not be smoking on a knee, and in the other there’s a can of soft drink she sips from and leans back, watching the empty calm of water before her. If she were wiser, she’d have estimated that she was sitting on someone’s property, someone’s turf to guard.
But she’s simply another of the thousand and one ghost trails left behind when the sun slips gone and the fishermen head home to warm beds and wives, or to nothing at all.
She’s just a solitary figure among the rest.
She’s just a young woman with the air of the misused, malnourished youth of the country — a common species. Except that beyond the stench of the joint in her hand, there’s another that draws attention.
Breeding.
[Decker Rohl] Flatlands, and concrete. Arching overpasses of the highways branching off from Chicago’s downtown in the distance. A lakefront drive, a two-lane highway the belts off the docks from the rest of the city, the state, the continent.
The docks are, and have been since time immemorial, Eagle turf. Or at least, since a couple years back when they moved out of the warehouse district, closer to the caern they have now apparently forsaken. But Joss might not know this. The markers are sparse, even in the umbra. Realmside, they hardly exist at all. The Eagles relied on word of mouth and their own (dis)reputation. And if someone were to make a mistake — well. That wasn’t their concern.
There’s a crunch of someone’s foot on the sand-littered tarmac of this particular dock. It’s still functional, and during the day men still worked here. At night, security’s loose. It’s easy enough to get in.
“Gonna pass that?” A crate sets down beside the unremarkable girl’s. Decker straddles it: twenty-three years old, the prime of a garou’s life, tough as nails, tough as fuckin’ titanium. He wears stubble on his jaw; he hasn’t shaved for days. He wears rage like a cloak, blood-crimson and terrible.
[Joss] And how long as it been since the great and mighty Decker Rohl, Alpha of the Eagles met someone who did not have any knowledge of who he was? That he came across a girl — or maybe she’s really a woman hiding her age with moonlight’s gentler illumination — that didn’t stare in awe at him.
A breeze scatters strands of dark brown hair across her cheek, her profile to him, the briefest hint of a smile as his presence seeps into her like blood from a wound. The slow stain of rage as palatable as a bullet lodged in her chest, stifling, making her exhale a little longer.
“Sure, why not.”
She takes another breath, and blunt fingertips, stained with ink offer the joint to the twenty-something that wears his attitude like armor. She shifts, turns a little and adjusts her weight back on the uncomfortable wooden surface. “Come to tell me to shove off?”
It’s a pleasant voice, not remarkable, like most things about this girl, but pleasant. She reminds easily of the girl that may have lived next door, or down the creek, or a thousand other places and times.
[Decker Rohl] “Naw. Why. Should’I?” Decker reaches out to take the joint between thumb and forefinger. It’s a perfect half moon tonight, on the wane. His rage is formidable, but it’s on the out-tide. The unfolding of his arm is lazy; the coiling, careless. He takes a hit and holds it, even as he holds the joint up to study it with smoke-narrowed eyes. “Decent shit. Git it from tha ratfaced one on Fourth ‘n Henry?”
[AnneMarie Hoch] Flatlands, and concrete. It always has, and always will be Eagles Territory. She would know – for she has walked every inch of it, over and over and over again. Her nights, her days, random times, continuous at times, the click of her boots can be heard clicking steadily across cracked concrete, through the flatlands.
Patrols.
Her stride is long, steady, constant. Her hands are tucked into the pockets of a calf-length leather coat, that is unbuttoned and hanging open due to the spring warmth in the air. Underneath is a simple blue button down blouse, tucked into perfectly pressed slacks. She is a well-dressed Eagle, taking care of her appearance from the tip of her boots, to make-up carefully applied under short shorn hair.
The rest of the eagles are thuggish, they’re street, they’re grit and grime and steel and strength. She is all these, in a more expensive package. And she is rounding the corner that brings her to the block where Decker and Joss rest on crates.
[Darla Jo] Buses run all night. And the trains. The trains run all night too – rattling down the elevated tracks, near empty cars rushing off to practically nowhere, following the lines that spider through and enervate the city’s sprawl. The problem with night is that the trains and the buses and shuttles and ferries and the whole patchwork (and that is all it is: patchwork, a constant scramble to keep up with it all) don’t run regular. Night service is imperfect. For someone scrambling across town, exhausted, in the early hours of the morning, traveling is an exercise in improvisation. And so: across the street from the couple sharing a joint with such oddly casual familiarity, an exhausted woman props her head against the frame of a busted up bus shelter, counting each breath she takes as a way to ward off exhaustion. If she falls asleep now and misses the next bus, she might not get home until daylight.
[Horus] Watch he said..
With eyes of gold, bright as a desert sun and as silent as a whispering breeze..
Watch and see, listen and hear.. gather for me what I alone cannot and in doing so serve me well
Nakhti sat out side of territories relaxing in his lupine form, the long legged and lean jackal wolf that seemed cast from the ancient carvings of khems pyramids. Eyes closed he rested in the cold abandon and half torn down building man had all but forgotten.
Riding the winds that seemed to restlessly sweep the world a pale gold form floated, wings beating an endless rhythem that kept its form aloft while its eyes cast down on the dark world seemed to search for trouble.. search for information.
These were dark days and news of any kind could change the tides.
[Joss] She closes one eye, inhaling again as though it hurt and craning her head back slowly as she exhaled through her nose, reveling in the hot thrum of blood to her temples, the sluggish venom weaving through her system, turning the world a calmer shade of dreary.
“Nope, my own stash. Got it in New York.”
She opens both eyes and they turn cattishly thin, mere slivers in the dark: green and vibrantly so. “Want me to hook you up?” She reclines on an elbow, somehow folding her body mass into a package neatly situated on the half-broken crate. “Unless you’re a cop, here to bust me.”
Joss’s smile is subtle. She turns her attention back to the water as it curves her lips, and she stretches out her arm to reclaim her joint from this strange boy. “Doubt it, though. Not with that accent.”
[Decker Rohl] Decker casts the girl a sidelong glance, careless as ever. Strange sort of girl. Didn’t seem bothered by the rage. Didn’t even seem to notice it, though he doesn’t believe that for a second. She’s kin after all. Purebred for Fenris, and Fenris bred ’em strong. That’s what drew him anyway; the beacon of a stranger’s purity of blood, one of his own.
Still. She didn’t seem inclined to break the tenuous sort of veneer they had between them. He’ll let it go a little longer. There’s something almost placid about the docks tonight, or maybe that was just the MJ talking. He takes another hit before passing it back.
“What,” hwat, he pronounces it, “‘n suhth’ners cain’t ever be cops?”
[Darla Jo] Her feet are tired. Her feet are aching tired. It’s the shoes – of course, the shoes are impossible, inhuman. (Not the shoes now, no. The shoes then. An hour ago. Three.) Tonight she seems to have developed a new ache, low in the small of her back. It’s not even an ache, precisely, not yet, just a sensation of tightness that bands through her midsection, alerting her to the likelihood of pain, come morning.
Morning. It’s already morning. Three oh nine in the a.m., and the street is deserted. The bodega on the corner by her first stop was closed after a routine robbery homicide, so she wasn’t able to pick up the bologna Seth likes. Wasn’t able to buy herself a coffee, something to keep her alive, awake, aware through the long commute back home. Though it’s brushed flat now, her hair is both sticky and flaky with old hair spray, and the nauseating scent of smoke clings to it. Her chin falls toward her chest, as her mind succumbs to the need to sleep that pulls it down, and then she starts to fall forward and awakes with an abrupt jerk of her head upward.
Count raging werewolves, Darla thinks, indulging her most morbid side, in her exhaustion, count your dead. She sits up, rubbing furiously at her eyes, shaking the sleep out of her limbs and stares across the street, at the docks. Count them. Narrowing her eyes until they come into bleary focus.
[Decker Rohl] (Decker and Joss are in some random dock. Feel free to put it near Darla’s busstop, or whatever — oh, you just did *grin* cool.)
to AnneMarie Hoch, Darla Jo, Horus
[AnneMarie Hoch] She knows where Decker is before she sees him – or at least the vague sense that he is nearby. It is a tightening between the shoulder blades, a familiarity along the spin, it is a knowing that she is not alone. Pack. A sweep of pale gaze in that direction pinpoints his position exactly. Relaxed, next to a girl, smoking a joint, on some crates.
The return sweep of her gaze finds Darla Jo, just as she starts to nod off/forward. A step closer rests long strong fingers under the elbow of the exhausted woman who is all but sleeping on her feet. The response was automatic, the touch there before she realized she was even moving.
There is no comment from the Modi, however. Instead, she simply arches a brow in wordless question to see if the woman is all right.
[Horus] The blood of fenris like a becon shone, its blood pure though with rumors abound among spirits..its honor and intentions were questionable. To much darkness in these times and the tension hung in the air like a physical force as the wings of the falcon cut the air like a knife, circling in.. decending only to hover once more out of sight within shadows.
He watched as forces gathered, as the threads seemed drawn in by the fates and started to weave themselves together to form a pattern, something to pass on assurably.
[Joss] She’s noticed it, she just doesn’t acknowledge it.
It’s rage, it exists just as solidly as the crate digging into her backside did but she didn’t seem too inclined to pay that much heed either. Maybe that’s the joint talking, it’s hard to know sometimes, really. But there is a time-limit to their casual exchange. She knows the inevitable will happen, like it has a thousand times over.
Before she runs, there’s the ‘talk’.
A discussion whereby her breeding is called into question and life ceases to just be dreary and becomes — hard. Real.
“None I ever met.” She responds, tilting her chin to look at him for a minute. “Not as attractive, either.” She sits back up, and scratches a hand into the knot of dark hair at her nape, loosening more strands and stretching. She reclaims her soda and sips from it slowly as AnneMarie becomes more than just the feeling in her gut that something was wrong with the picture here.
Goodbye placid dock scene, hello gathering storm.
Joss gives a sort of sigh, and takes another hit. “There’s a woman staring at you over there, she need you or something?”
[Darla Jo] AnneMarie takes her by surprise. It’s more than surprise, though. It changes into more than surprise, not when AnneMarie touches Darla’s elbow, but when Darla turns and looks up and momentarily meets AnneMarie’s eyes. An audible indrawn breath, the way her shoulders hunch forward with wary tension. Maybe AnneMarie has seen it all before. The way people change in her presence, the way humans react to the rage she carries with her always. There’s no pure breeding in Darla to give her kinship away. She isn’t marked, visibly, with a glyph, stamped with a tribe. There’s no subtlety of expression like an expressively arched eyebrow, like a precisely calibrated smirk – just the passing startlement, the way her green eyes flare wide and way her mouth pulls in on itself, inexpressively blank.
But in those few startled seconds, the exhausted woman in the bus stop looks directly back at AnneMarie, her eyes wide, her nostrils flared with alarm, all the physical signs of tension clear, and does not run.
“‘m fine, thank you.” Mumbled. She sits straight now, her spine a rod. The exhaustion that had been haunting her has been chased away by a flood of stress hormones, leaving her aware and preternaturally alert.
[Decker Rohl] Even before the girl mentions Annemarie, something in Decker had drawn tighter. There’s a subtle but definite change. A closing of doors.
And when she points AM out, Decker turns to glance over his shoulder though he doesn’t need to. “Naw. My packmate, Annemarie.” Goodbye placid dock scene. He turns back to the girl, and there’s something level and steady in his eyes now. A Fenrir’s eyes. “Decker Rohl,” he says. “‘n yer my blood.”
[AnneMarie Hoch] The moment that Darla Jo gathers herself, and stands straight and pulls her wits about her, the moment the fight or flight response has been narrowed to a thin margin of control, AnneMarie steps back, and release the press of rage against skin, if only by a bit. The moon, thankfully, is not full, and the heat of such fury does not pulsate as much as then. But it is still there, still felt, still tingling across skin and singing through blood.
She lifts her chin, in something of acknowledgment to the woman for her prostest and sudden return to clarity of thought, if only by fear. Lips twitch upwards, just a bit, the briefest of expressions that fades to quickly to be named. That Darla Jo does not run has been noted.
[Darla Jo] Some people give themselves over to nervous conversation when confronted with silence. Darla Jolene Wilcox does not. She sits up straight and pulls the duffle bag lying forgotten at her feet closer to her with a discrete twist of her heel. The battered canvas bag shusucks across the broken concrete, the lumpy contents outlined indistinctly, but she doesn’t look down. And she doesn’t look back at AnneMarie, not after that first, so very direct look. It is almost comical. Or rather, in a comedy it would be comical, the care with which she directs her gaze relentlessly forward, while keeping her head just turned so that the strange Garou remains in her peripheral vision. This is not a comedy, of course – and there is nothing funny about the situation in which Darla finds herself.
Hell, at least this way she won’t miss her bus.
[Joss] A closing of doors that isn’t one sided.
The girl stands up, she’s tall. Taller than might be expected from her long stint on that packing crate. The jeans, hard to clearly see in the darkness have paint smears all over the thighs and there’s a carefully concealed duffel page wedged behind her seat.
There’s something in his eyes, in Decker Rohl’s eyes and it’s the tiny flinch that validates that all is changed in a split second. “Yeah, I kind of figured that out myself.” She mumbles, and lowers her chin a moment.
“Any way I can make you forget that I am?”
She reaches down to scoop up her bag, sling it over a shoulder.
[AnneMarie Hoch] Where Darla Jo may not be amused, there is a part of AnneMarie that certainly is. Outwardly, however, there is simply a dip of her head in something of a nod, before she continues her way, her steps no less even and steady then they were moments before.
[Joss] (wtf is a duffel page? duffel bag might make more sense. oh jeez.)
[Broken Glass] A rather odd man seems to stroll through the area he seems unafraid of the possibility of their being gangs here.
[Decker Rohl] He watches her stand without making a move to do the same, himself. Obviously, no one ever taught him to stand up when a lady does. The silence hangs for a moment. It’s no longer comfortable, if it ever was — in those few moments when he’d sat down, and she’d passed a joint, and they were just strangers 420ing on the docks.
He doesn’t lie: “Naw.”
And then he does stand up, dusting the seat of his pants off with two or three swipes of his palms. There’d been a hitch in his motion as he stood; a brief flicker of something that couldn’t have possibly been a grimace. He’s wearing a heavy winter jacket. If he’d briefly pressed a hand to his side, it’s impossible to tell.
“Why,” he continues, “you tryin’ ta stay under ta radar too?”
[Darla Jo] It’s just a passing moment, but by the time AnneMarie continues on her way, or really, more precisely, just after the woman has passed, just when the pressure of her presence, the singular personal stress of her presence has eased, a dull throb asserts itself, behind Darla’s left eye. The incipient headache is competes with her aching feet and the tension in the muscles of her low back. She reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose and closes her eyes, passingly, as AnneMarie continues on her path.
There are masks we all wear. Sometimes we grow into them. Sometimes they start shaping our hearts and heads rather than the other way around. There are masks we all wear: and this is one of them, blankfaced and watchful to hide the racing pulse that throws in her veins, the deepseated alarm, the clamor in her heart and head. It’s not the fear, precisely, that leaves her raw and acting in the aftermath of such peripheral encounters with members of the Nation. In fact, it isn’t fear at all; it’s something else so strange and complex it has no name. It’s nameless: all that fear and grief and terrifying love.
The past, the future. The children, sleeping somewhere blamelessly in their beds.
All that from a moment, a mildly amusing moment meaningless to the stranger even before it began.
Distant headlights wash down the empty street, a row of amber lights gleam along the top of the bus.
[Broken Glass] He is wearing, a red leather jacket and a pair of slacks, he seems rather confident, he seems to be smirking slightly looking around. He doesn’t try to draw attention to himself, but people seem to try to avoid him on the side walk.
[Joss] Her shoulders sag a little underneath the oversized shirt she wears and it’s clear that she’s borrowed it from somewhere — the kind of borrowing that doesn’t lend to a return. It’s a checkered work-shirt, and her arms seem thin and insubstantial, swimming in layers of flannel.
She waits for him to stand, watches the way he holds himself, judging for herself maybe if he’s the type of Garou she can lie to and manage herself alright, or if he’s the other type: the rarer kind she’s met only once or twice.
Honestly doesn’t lend itself to their kind.
Why, he asks in his Southern twang, and her face alters into something formed of memory and distance but not quite enough. The jackals of her past seem to be biting at her heels in that moment, standing in the shadows across from a stranger.
Make a choice, Joss.
“Sometimes it’s just easier that way.” She pauses, and tucks hair behind her ear. That hand then extends itself the same way it had with the joint, only this time it’s on the empty side — the offering is of a different kind.
“People call me Joss, you can if you want, or… whatever.” The tagged on utterance solidifies her age, teenage. The later stages, maybe eighteen.
[AnneMarie Hoch] Many things can happen in a moment, many things can be understood. Unfortunately, many more have the opposite effect. Either way, the Modi does not turn again until she reaches the corner, and only as she moves to cross the street. She sees the glow of the bus lights, and sees the woman’s reaction to their encounter. Either way, she is now, most certainly, awake enough not to miss her bus. A somewhat silver lining.
AnneMarie crosses the street then, with every intention of moving on. There are others here, of course, even at three am on a sunday morning. One of those is wearing a red leather jacket, and receives a once over, quick and easy. The others, of course, have already been noted. She steps up onto the curb, and continues her walk.
[Joss] (honesty. *kills the rebel ‘l’ and stomps on it*)
[Broken Glass] He snickers oddly noticing her weighing of him and he watches her pass. His eyes seem to lack the humor his face betrays there is a deep seated rage there something dark and violent. His smile though sincere seems a hollow thing.
[Decker Rohl] ” ‘That way’,” he says, “don’t never last very long.”
He looks down at her hand. He’s not the type to shake hands. Surely she’s deduced that. And if not, the pause that follows her offer will nail it for her. Finally, he does take her hand. His grip is as firm as one might expect. He doesn’t so much shake her hand as he crushes it for a moment, then releases.
“Tha docks is my pack’s land.” He starts toward the fence, the street, the bus stop AnneMarie’s walking away from. She’s free to follow or not as she chose. “‘n ’bout a mile’r two inland too. Ya need help ‘r whatever, come out here. But guess you’d rather be left ta yerself, huh.”
The totemlink opens briefly — Who’s tha blonde at tha busstop?
[Darla Jo] The headlights continue, growing stronger with each passing bus. Anyone who has ever waited for one knows the particular sound of a bus’s engine, the hydraulics of the breaks, the way it swishes to a stop against a curb on a street damp from melting slush, and kneels, sighing its peculiar sigh. The way the doors sweep open.
That’s not what happens this time. The destination sign reads “OUT OF SERVICE” and the bus neither slows nor stops. Even when Darla stands up and crouches low for her bag and leans out into the wash of the headlights, the bus neither slows nor stops. The driver doesn’t seem to even notice her, and she has to scramble to jump back onto the curb before it rushes past and in the fucking wake of that – is this what it means, insult to injury? – in the fucking wake of that, the woman throws her duffel bag furiously down on the metal seat in the bus shelter swearing in frustration as the endless day sags in on her.
[AnneMarie Hoch] She arches a brow, and turns as the strange man snickers. She remains silent, watching a moment. hands remain tucked in the pockets of her coat, her stance relaxed, her posture ramrod straight. She betrays nothing in her demeanor.
She simply watches the hollow man. There’s a glance back toward the bus stop, as well, when Totemphone flickers to life. Her mental voice is smooth, silken in ways no one other then Pack would ever hear. Don’t know. Possibly Kin. Stood her ground, at least. a slight amusement tinges the words as the blond begins to cuss. Make that a pissed off possible kin. No breeding.
[Broken Glass] “Were you looking for someone in particular?” he says chuckling lightly.
[AnneMarie Hoch] There’s another glance at the man in red leather. Only a glance. Nothing more, nothing less.
[Broken Glass] He stands there only watching not moving not commenting again. just standing there. Then he looks to the bus shelter and walks over sitting down nonchallantly.
“is ther esomething wrong?”
[Horus] Hovering still in the shadows the fleshless form seemed to linger, listening to the scattered words it catchs cast on the winds, mortal and those who bare a nobler blood.
He was no ordinary bird to flutter on wings but something greater who rode the winds and gathered the knowledge nakhti could not.. to a spirit there was no border of territory to deny him while nakhti remained bound by such technicalities and legalities..even as a wanderer.
[Darla Jo] The blonde cursing a blue moon at the bus stop is a tall woman. And the blonde is relative: AnneMarie was close enough to see the scant quarter inch of dark roots already growing in; if she looked for such things. If she took the time to see. Now, standing, it’s clear that the blonde is also tall and leggy, with a long frame, lean and narrow. It is the dead of night and a cold wind blows howling through the damp streets, colder in the wake of the OUT OF fucking SERVICE bus. She wears a puffy blue coat against the chill, faux down, with a long rent in the right sleeve.
The stranger in red leather makes his way to the bus stop and his presence is enough to snap her out of the brief, wild spell. He sits, and she grabs the much abused duffel bag from the bench seat, stepping forward and to the side, stiff again, heart hammering convincingly in her chest.
“I thought that was my bus,” it sounds like conversation. On paper it sounds like conversation, but there is nothing conversational about the way Darla replies to Broken Glass. She stands stiffly at the edge of the bus shelter and casts the red leather-clad beast-in-man’s clothing a tight, dubious glance. Her words are tooth-grindingly even, perfectly measured. “but it was out of service.”
[Joss] Decker crushes her hand, and she sucks in a breath and bites off what might have been a curse-word. She flexes the fingers when he lets go, and shakes out her hand with a soft issue of laughter.
“Nice grip.” Joss shifts her weight, shrugs her bag higher up her shoulder and watches him ambling off toward the street. She weighs up the choices, glancing along the docks. Out over the water, and then with the fast-paced crunch of dirt beneath her sneakers she is walking beside him, glancing at his profile every so often as though to reassess his appearance.
The buzz from the joint is slowly fading, and with it returns some sense of self preservation, a deliberate pace set to have the tall girl a few paces away from the hulking Modi, and the flare of rage. “I don’t mind people,” She begins, “It’s more that I don’t get them. And most of the time people only speak to hear their voices.” The girl called Joss, with her long brown hair and her green cat-eyes shrugs again — it’s a motion she seems to find fitting to answer most things.
[Broken Glass] “Then rest your legs. It’s too cold a night to be standing, would you like my coat the wind in here is a little less but you can still feel the chill.” his face softens, it is just short of a visible softening. He seems very pleasent, he even removes his jacket holding it out to her.
[Broken Glass] His words are pleasent and inviting, his irish accent just enough to make his words seem more delightful suggestion.
[Decker Rohl] She comments on his grip. He does grimace now. A faint shrug rolls his thick shoulders under the jacket; there’s another hitch to that motion, a little gingerly completed. “Sorry.”
It’s a shallow slope up to the fence, the gate of which is closed and chained at night. That’s all right. She must’ve gotten over it the same way he did. Found a hole, or climbed. It’s the latter in this case. He grabs the chainlink with both hands, fits his shoe into one of the grids. It doesn’t take him too long to be up and over. She wouldn’t know that he’d normally be over quicker than that, and smoother. She doesn’t know him well enough to assess this, at least.
On the other side, dropping down, “‘n you ain’t?” Speaking to hear her own voice. A girl could be insulted, a comment like that.
[Darla Jo] “I’m fine.” The woman replies, cutting a narrow look at Broken Glass over her right shoulder. Her face was flush with frustration moments before, but now the blood is draining from the stiff blank mask of her face. “I’m fine.” It seems like a clarification, the second iteration of the words, more forceful this time, and breathless as he stands up and begins to undress.
The charm of his faint Irish lilt seems lost on the peroxide blonde. Instead, she slices another dark look back at him, over shoulders so stiff they seem to be formed rather than grown. Already, she is shouldering rather than simply grasping the duffel bag, her body primed and ready to break into a flat out run, her left hand hovering near her left pocket. “Get dressed. I don’t want your coat.”
For all the Garou’s good and kind intentions, she sees none of them. Instead of taking shelter from the wind, she has drifted a foot further away from the bus shelter.
[Broken Glass] “Hostile. Thats odd. Well i mean you no harm.” He puts his coat back on and then moves to the farthest point on the bench and sits down.
“Day was that bad huh? I’ve had days like that. Not too much fun at all. Just wish there was some way i could put you at ease.” he says starting to scowl at his own hands. his face becomes unsure, and slightly worried.
[Joss] She stops short at the fence, watches him haul himself over it. As he drops down and straightens, tosses the potential insult her way, her duffel bag is arching a fine journey over the fence to land beside him with a gentle rattling like a collection of pencils rolling together.
She sinks her fingers into the fencing, and smiles benignly at him through the holes in it, through her matted hair. There’s a smudge of charcoal, or grease or something dark and forgotten streaking across her cheek from when she’d rubbed the skin in frustration earlier in the evening.
“Maybe.”
She begins to climb up the fence, though her method seems clumsier in the Modi’s wake and she slides down on the other side till she’s hanging by her fingertips for a moment, strung out.
And then drops to her feet, patting off her hands.
“You don’t like to talk much, though.” She reclaims her bag, tugs down on her shirt.
[Decker Rohl] He watches the duffle fly over the fence. If it comes at his face, there’s little doubt his hands would have shot up and pulled it right out of the air like a hawk skimming fish from a river. But it doesn’t — so he just watches it fly, and then watches it fall. Thunk, rat-rattle. Wonder wtf she had in there. She lands next, and fortunately, doesn’t seem the type to expect him to hand her her bag. Because: surprise, he doesn’t.
Decker does, however, shoot her a sidelong glance, a snort that may or may not be amused. “Naw, I don’t.” He watches the guy in the red jacket across the street, the woman poised on the edge of bolting. There’s a frown etched on his brow, but he holds his peace.
“Where ya stayin’?” Though his attention’s still on the pair across the way, the question is for Joss.
[Darla Jo] Darla does not reply. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t offer him any sort of motherly reassurance. She does not acknowledge his sudden lack of confidence in any way. She doesn’t even glance back at him, now, except as it is necessary to keep him in her peripheral vision, to remain aware of his position in the world, to know what the hell he is up to at just this moment.
The bus shelter is shattered. the plexiglass forms jagged teeth in the frame on either side, and the back is covered with all manner of graffiti. It’s not just gang tags. It’s the scratchings of people memorializing their youth or its passing, honoring their dead, passing the time, making and keeping and publicizing a name for themselves.
Darla continues edging away, silent now. In spite of her throbbing feet, the incipient backache, the angular, hollowed out pulse behind her eye that makes her head feel like a split and slightly rotten apple, she is already measuring the cost of walking home; walking home or walking someplace and summoning a cab: in singles, in fives, in the odd ten dollar bill or twenty dollar bill. What that will buy her, what it will buy her children, and how much her own life is worth.
Something about the posture of the pair across the street, decides her. It’s the male. It’s his attention, the way he trains it on the two of them. The way she feels exposed, wired, uncertain. It’s the thought of dawn, which must be coming soon and a rather prescient fatalism that has angled its way through her body and soul – all of it. Before Broken Glass manages another word, before he repeats his offer or begs her pardon, before he tries that empathy trick on her again, she turns her back in the ruined bus shelter, pulls her duffel bag up over her shoulder, and walks away.
[Horus] ( Aww darla your crushing his self confidance… now he will never face down the wyrm, constantly questioning his manhood because a strange woman didnt accept his coat. damn you.. force of evil! spawn of the devil )
to AnneMarie Hoch, Broken Glass, Darla Jo, Decker Rohl, Joss, Nexus Crawler, You seeing things
[Darla Jo] OOC: Thanks for the roleplaying everyone. Apologies for the suspicious nature of my character – but I did have fun! *G* If no one minds, I think I’m going to bow out now. :)
[AnneMarie Hoch] Red leather drives away bleach blond, while Decker and his current companion head that way. A final glance, and she simply continues her patrols.
(Thanks for the scene! It’s bedtime for Tired Lessa’s! Night!)