John Barrister

[machado] Hyperextended needles of rain hiss from the seething clouds and shatter against the buckled pavement. Oil makes gaudy smears of the traffic light reflections, lurid neon scrawls of redorangegreen. Cars slice along the roads, windshield wipers working furiously, futiley. The tops of the project buildings seem to gradate into oblivion, lost in the heavens, making of the world an immediate place. This block. This pool of toxic orange light beneath the lamp. This bottle of beer, this bag of smack, this one quavering cigarette tip glowing cherry red under a cupped hand.

Somewhere, Skadi's cell phone rings.

[Skadi] Late night; late late at night, and Skadi is swinging in the hammock in Barrister's front yard. The half-moon is at mid-point in its path across the night sky, tinged red - but maybe that is the illusion of tint, manufactured by the screen of her pale eyelashes as she stares up at the night sky, half asleep - no, not asleep, just midnight fugue, the sky and the warm night, the motion of the hammock between the two trees to which it has been lashed in the interval since she made her gift and re-appeared, to test it out. Her fingers are laced around a beer, the butt of the glass bottle rests on the hard plane of her stomach. Then the phone - left behind on the porch with the keys to her truck and the rest of the six pack - rings. Sweet home Alabama - )which isn't precisely true, and is also true enough - blares tiny through the speakers. Skadi upends herself from the hammock, startled, and scrambes for the phone before it wakes the neighbors.

Not, mind you, that the creature gives a fuck about the neighbors.

[machado] The phone rings and rings and when she answers it, a stranger's voice: "Is this Skadi? My name is Reggie. We ain't met, but I'm a friend of Susan's out of Hill House? She gave me your number, told me to call you if shit ever got real bad."

Something off about his voice – something discordant, a note of near hysteria bubbling near the surface, of unease melting into fear and disgust.

[J.B.] In the kitchen room, where the sound of rain patters through the open windows in the breakfast nook, J.B. doublechecks the month's expenses and profits in his pawnshop's ledger. The real deal, this: a big, leatherbound book of narrow-ruled, columned pages barred in paler and darker green. The earlier pages are filled top to bottom with cramped, careful script, his normally expansive handwriting forced within the rules. The latter leaves are gloriously clean, devoid of writing.

He gets to the end of a page and straightens up, reaching behind his neck to massage sore muscles. Then, turning the page -- the sound is crisp in the wet silence -- he bends to his task again, all big shoulders and bushy forearms, brow beetled like a schoolboy in the middle of a particularly difficult test. There's a big accountant's calculator beside his left hand, a pencil in his right. He employs both with thoughtless familiarity. The phone call barely nudges upon his consciousness.

[Skadi] "Tha fuck's goin' on?" Keys jingle and the floorboards of the porch creak beneath Skadi's weight as she gains it, havig taken the steps leading up to it all at a go, one long sweep of her long, powerful legs. "'N where tha fuck are ya?" Dashing the rain out of her eyes, she wipes the phone off - a smear of translucent dampness on her t-shirt, rubs the display, then slides it back to her ear again. The voice crackles in her ear, distant and distorted: in front of her, the street is peaceful, the rain slides like lightning, made silver by the streetlights on Barrister's quiet street.

[machado] "Something bad's happened that I can't get into on the phone, you know?" There's music in the background, distant and dull, rhythmic like some techno beat endlessly spooling itself out into infinity. "I'm at a club. A place I help run. Over down by Bronzeville, entrance's down the alley between 37th and 43rd on 17th Street."

The voice is of a man in his thirties, one unused to overt fear, unused to it being cracked by quaverings. "Listen, please, you gotta come over here, you gotta help me figure this shit out. I don't fuckin' know who else to turn to."

[J.B.] Something about Skadi's tone penetrates the haze of numbers, red and black. Barrister looks up in the kitchen. Rubs his brow with one inksmudged thumb. Frowns. Yawns. Then sets the pen down and blinks at the page of numbers, all of them getting blearier by the second.

[Skadi] "Gimme them fuckin' directions again - " the girl counsels, her voice low. When he repeats them - the streets and the cross streets, the alley, the functional markers that will help her to find it - "down a fuckin' alley?" she repeats once, incredulous, peering through the sheers that filter light from the interior on the porch, knocking once - a quiet rap - before she opens the door and ambles in. "You sure?"

Her footsteps echo down the hall; she's barefooted and her feet and damp from the rain - slap slap slap - on the worn hardwood until the shadows of the long hallway disgorge her at the entrance to the kitchen. The phone still on her ear, she covers the mouthpiece (rather than - say - hitting mute) just likeher mother would, catches Barrister's attention, and mouths at him. "Hey - I don't mean ta be a pain, but kin you gimme a ride?"

[machado] The directions are repeated; a sudden voice sounds urgent in the background, Reggie's voice, muted in response, and then urgent on the phone once more, "Yeah, down the alley, no sign no nuthin', just a door, I'll be out front waiting for ya, ok?"

He begins to speak to somebody else in the room again, and hangs up midsentance.

[J.B.] Barrister's bent determinedly over the ledger again by the time Skadi comes in; but, hearing her coming, and hearing the cadence of her steps that means business, he's looking up at her. The lighting in the kitchen is bright and incongruously modern in the homely little house -- tracklights and spotlights -- and it picks out the blue in his eyes.

She doesn't mean to be a pain, but -- and he cuts in with a wry little smile, "You want a ride?"

She confirms. He pushes the ledger back and closes it, marking his page with the ribbon sewn into the spine. "Sure. What's going on?" -- he takes his keys out of the kitchen drawer closest to the door and his comfortable leather coat off the rack directly beside the front door. Tucks one into his pants pockets, shrugs into the other. Last, he steps into his shoes (the double-stitched, tough, suede ones with big thick soles, half hiking shoes, half workman boots, heavy and made to last) and grabs a flat cap off the top and rumples it into the pocket of his coat. She's hardly the sort of lady one opens doors for, but habit or something like it makes him pull the front door open for her anyway.

[Skadi] "Ya heard'a Hill House?" Skadi doesn't wait for confirmation; she plows through to the explanation thoughtlessly, steamroller. ": - s'this Coggie-run place, fer bums'n shit, git 'em off tha street I guess. Guy on the phone says bad shit is goin' down at his fuckin' pub; an' that this kin I met - name'a Susan - give him my phone number, told 'im ta call me if bad shit went down. Said he couldn't get inna it on tha phone - " This as she steps out onto the porch, toes over her boots and steps into them, pausing once to squeeze the rain from her hair. She doesn't have a coat, just her (all-too) familiar clothing - the old jeans, the old tee, the boots into which she wiggles and worms and stomps on the porch.

Skadi passes on the address. "Said it ain't got no sign - " and flashes Barrister a grim smile, one that bares white teeth in the darkness. "Preciate it. Yannow - you got a fuckin' knack fer this shit - "

[J.B.] It's raining, and hard. As soon as the door is locked, and the big Chevy unlocked with a characteristic beep-booping of the remote entry system, he pulls his flatcap out of his pocket and jams it on his head, pulling the brim low over his eyes. You hardly ever see anyone wearing these things anymore; short-brimmed, soft-crowned, wedge-shaped, old-fashioned. It fits him, though, the same way the dark casual slacks, the thin-weave sweater, the button-up shirts and the comfortable old leather coat fits him.

He ducks his head in the rain, trotting out to the truck and climbing in. Skadi's exposition is briefly cut off as doors open and shut, and then she continues in the shelter of the truck cabin while he starts up the mighty towing engine, turns around, puts his hand on the back of her seat and backs the double-rear-axled gasguzzler out. The big cushy springs jounce as he accidentally clips off the edge of the curb, oversteering the edge of the narrow driveway by a few inches. The streetlights plane in through the wet windows, casting beaded shadows across his deep-cut brow, his lean cheeks. She compliments his 'knack' for this 'shit' and he shoots her a wry grin.

"For what -- " turning forward, putting the truck into Drive and, well driving, " -- giving rides at 2am? Think I should start a cab business? (Between 43rd and 17th, did you say?)"

[machado] The drive is slow going. The rain picks up, boils across the windshield, Barrister's wipers fighting a losing battle with each vain pass. Cars are but brake lights ahead of them, dismal strafings of headlights to their left. Traffic signs barely caught as they drive by, directions tenuously followed, until perhaps twenty minutes later they find themselves delving deeper and deeper into Bronzeville proper. Less traffic. The night dark and smothering, the occasional homeless man braving the storm to approach their car while they pause at a red lights, face a beleagured mask of misery, mouth calling silently for a dollar, a quarter, anything.

They drive. 17th Street. It's narrow, hemmed in on both sides by looming three story monoliths who's ground floor units are all stores. Tiny corner deli's, laundromats, adult emporiums, Korean supermarkets, windows grilled, entrances covered with corrugated iron rolldown curtains. A handful of bars, open at this hour, their interiors lit up like the hearts of fires, shadowed shapes laughing and drinking and moving sinuously to the music that plays silently within.

The alley, finally. Too narrow for a car to drive down, long and dark. A solitary man standing by its mouth, shoulders hunched, face obscured under a hood of his raincoat.

[Skadi] "Cab service - " she confirms, somewhere in the middle of that long drive, her face backlit by the dashboard lights, covered in striations of shadow from the rain pounding against the windshield, the rivulets of water dripping down her dry brow, a silvered line across the high curve of her cheek (emphasized by the answering grin, too full to be wry or rueful) down to her jaw, where the water pools and pills and then drips. Gravity's work, that. Her grin is charged, anticipatory; the emotion evident is more than human. " - fer Garou. See? Ya'd need someone ta cover dayshift, though - "

Then the rain picks up; and homeless man is rapping filthy knuckles on the passenger's window and the rain is roaring. Except for the tick of the windshield wipers, the cab is silent. Or: at least, Skadi is silent until they arrive at the crossroads. She frowns - rolls down the passenger's window and reassesses the passage; notes the man standing outside the door. "I thank this is my stop. Y'ain't gittin' tha truck down there. S'too fuckin' narrow - "

The window hums, cutting off the sound of rain against the pavement as the modi closes it before opening the door and sliding out, leaving a train of damp smeared on his leather seats in the pattern of her body, the mass of her hair, the shadow of her hips and thighs and knees. "Gonna hafta run between tha raindrops -! " Skadi calls back before slamming the door closed. She ducks her head against the rain, frowns up at the buildings on either side, shielding her line of sight against the rain with a hand against her brow - then jogs toward the man in the alley.

[machado] Skadi runs across the street, rain pelting down about her, and the man sees her coming, is standing alert and watching as she approaches. He reaches up to tug at the hem of his hoody, pulling it further out over his face, and then steps forwards, once, as she gains the pavement.

"Skadi?" The voice pitched the carry in the weather. He's dark skinned, skin dusky, perhaps Puerto Rican, perhaps Phillipino - it's hard to tell anything beyond his narrow profile, sharp features, slash of a mouth. He's not tall, but rather angular, boney.

"Thank fuckin' god you're here! C'mon!"

Turning, he begins to move into the alley, with purpose, legs extending out with the urgency of his stride.

[Skadi] "You wanna tell me what tha fuck's goin' on?" Her brow knits with a frown that is woven into a scowl by the punch of rage beneath it; she can feel it, the moon above the clouds, fifteen degrees past its highpoint now, feel it the way the ocean feels the moon, sure of its tidal pull. Then he's charging purposefully back down the alley. She snaps a rubber bands from her wrist and pulls her damp hair back, elbows splayed wide, the hem of ehr old t-shirt riding up to expose the remais of old scars in the dispigmented flesh ag her waist, twisting and twisting her soaked hair as she follows, before securing it with the rubber band, keeping it well away from her face ad eyes.

[machado] No; he clearly doesn't. Not out here in the street, not out here in the rain, exposed to idle traffic. He moves into the alley, not running, not jogging, but hustling, head low as the rain splatters across the plastic texture of his coat and hood, perhaps fifteen yards into the darkness. The alley is broad enough that it doesn't get dangerously dark; he remains visible, a silhouette before her as he goes.

Stops, turns his head to check on her, and then pounds his fist on the wall. A moment later and the realization - a dark door, set into the brickwork, without sign or light or any other indication that something may rest beyond.

But Skadi can sense it. Can sense the thrumming of distant, chthonic bass coming up through the soles of her shoes. Can feel something in the air, some tense, tingling sense of unpleasantness. Reggie pounds once more, and he turns an earnest, scared face to her once more, face scrunched up as the rain runs down it.

"We'll talk inside!" he says loudly, pointing even as the door cracks open, and faint red light from some crimson tinted bulb filters out into the night.

[J.B.] Barrister watches the Modi jog through the rain, bemused. Then he pulls out of the narrow sight of the alley, looking for a place to park. Correction: looking for a place to park where his hubcaps might not be stolen.

In the end he settles for the parking lot of an all-night convenience store. It wasn't much, but at least it was well lit. He parks the big truck right in front of the door, as though he really thought the storekeep might call the cops if someone came to jack his car. Well; hope springs eternal.

The engine goes quiet. He wonders what's up. He wonders if he should stay in the car. He wonders if his gun is loaded. He leans over the center divide, pops the glove compartment open. There it is: black and heavy, nestled between his registration and proof of insurance, under his roadmaps and his 2006 Chevrolet Silverado owner's manual. He had a shotgun too, under the counter of his pawn shop, and permits for both. Homemade security system, you might call it. His hands are familiar on the gun. It's been a while since the last call -- not one of Skadi's, but the other sort -- but it's like riding a bike. You don't forget. He finds himself checking the clip, the action, oiled metal clicking and snapping under his fingers. He wonders if he has any extra ammo, and discovers he doesn't. Of course he doesn't.

He double-checks the safety and then tucks the gun into his belt, behind his back. Wishing he'd brought an umbrella, or maybe a raincoat, Barrister pulls the brim of his cap lower on his brow and gets out. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he walks the block or two back to the alley, keeping a good clip the whole way. He gets to the alleymouth just in time to see the door crack open. "Skadi!" he calls; doesn't slow, enters the alley, halfway down it now.

"Want me to wait in the car, or...?"

[Skadi] "Huh - " the girl is frowning, her eyes narrowed against the rain as it sluices down from her brow over her eyes and cheeks, her nose and mouth, streaming. It was gentle before; she was damp, not soaked. Now she is soaking wet, her t-shirt is plastered translucent against her torso, her jeans blue-black at the hips and hem from running through the rain and splashes through the puddles littering the ruinous alley. Skadi has her right hip against the door frame; somewhere between Reggie turning the knob and the door swinging open a crack, she has inserted herself in the space between this stranger and open door. Barrister appears at the alley's mouth and calls her name; she looks back, frowning over her shoulder, momentarily confused by his appearance, or her name out of the darkness, illuminated and contained by the streaking rain.

"You wanna watch his ass - ?" The decision hardens in her eyes as her attention swings back to Reggie. "Git him back ta tha truck?" She is alert, now, alive, her skin crawling, her heart hammering in sick time to the bass that seems subphysical. A shotgun appears in her hand as she ducks into the relative shelter of the door frame, and then Skadi pushes through, into interior, washed with crimson light.

[machado] Skadi insinuates herself between Reggie and the door, sliding in lithely so that half her form is bathed in blood red light, the other still dark in shadow, and then her name is called out, and Reggie turns in surprise, a knee jerk reflect of shock at the intrusion.

"Huh - ?" He takes a step back, looks to Skadi, hears her words, sees the shotgun. "Wait - hold up, you can't just go in there like that - "

Skadi pushes her way within, and sees a tall man bathed in that crimson glow before her. Bald, face lean and hard and pockmarked, eyes almost black in the strange light, wearing a black shirt, black jeans, black shoes. The door opens into a stairwell, that descends out of sight, the walls bare but for a few black and white prints of women bound in leather, long, sensual curves of white contrasting sharply with the gleaming black, the links of chain, their mouths open as they gasp or cry out -

"Hey! Hey!" Calls out Reggie, desperately trying to arrest her progress, the tall man within looking surprised, angry as he hears Reggie's voice, but backing away from the shotgun -

[J.B.] "Come on." Like your standard stereotype bouncer, J.B. lays a hand on Reggie's shoulder. The tone is coaxing; the hand is not. "You heard her; back to the truck."

[Skadi] "Sit down - " The shotgun is leveled familiarly on the bald man in the middle of the bar; the frown that swept across her mouth (not thoughtful; but perhaps considering) has deepened into a patented scowl. Adrenalin spikes through her arteries, teasing the ragged edges of her rage. " - sit yer fuckin' ass down. 'N wait up, with this fucker. Reggie." Her voice whips over her shoulder; she turns just enough to make it so, without taking her attention from the bald man at the mouth of the staircase leading down. "You gon' tell me what tha hell is goin' on here? Why tha hell you done called me?"

[J.B.] John pauses as Skadi speaks to Reggie. His hand stays on the man's shoulder, but he stops persuading him out of the alley. And let's be honest: curiosity pricks at him as he looks in through the open door at the rather interesting decor, the crimson lighting, the bald man and the Modi suddenly carrying a shotgun.

[machado] The tableaux is frozen. Barrister's hand firmly on Reggie's shoulder as he watches Skadi wide eyed through the open door. The tall, hard faced man backed up against the wall, large hands held open and easy before him, large enough to palm a basketball, his face composed, almost somber, leaden. He looks to Reggie, and then slides his back down the wall, his shirt rustling, until he's sitting on his ass, knees against his chest, hands still raised.

And the music. It wells up from the stairwell as if it were a throat, dull and pumping and repetitive and insidious. Makes you want to dance, but not with joy; rather, it makes you want to shuffle rhythmically, just sway, zombie dance.

Reggie angrily shrugs Barrister's hand away, and the kin can feel the tense fury that suddenly surges through the boney Reggie; the fierce snap of the shrug, the slide step away from him. Reggie rakes the hoody off his head, head, and stares at Skadi, at the shotgun, at the man now seated before her.

"Fuck!" his voice is a crack over the night. "What the fuck is this? Huh? What the fuck? Like - like I don't have problems enough?" He turns his head and stares at Barrister. "And who the fuck are you? Who - "

He stops. Takes a breath. Visibly, with great effort, restrains himself. Turns back to Skadi. That music pumping. Pumping. "Ok. Skadi. The situation is that there is a dead fuckin' woman downstairs in one of the rooms, and I want you to take a look at it. Ok? I cain't call the police, and this is the third time this happens that I know of, so I'm calling your fucking wierd voodoo spirit ass in here to help me out like Susan done said you would."

He takes a step forwards, and he's near trembling. "Now put that fuckin' gun away before you really make a fuckin' mess here."

[Skadi] "He's my fuckin' driver." Skadi huffs; a snarl twists her wide mouth, but the words are too low in her chest, in her throat to be touched by the shape of her mouth. Cut that sentence from the rest of the setting and it sounds like the punchline to some endless, post-modern joke. This is no endless, post-modern joke; this is a crimson-lit room with pictures of bound women leading down the darkened staircase. "Gitcher ass in here." She ambles forward, easy, slow - each step is deliberate, and marked by a restraint that seems almost painful. "Reggie. Why doncha tell me what kinda fuckin' place this is, 'n who tha fuckin hell that is. 'N then I'm'a consider takin' my spirit voodoo ass downstairs ta see ta yer dead girl."

Her skin is alive; her breath is hot, and her eyes spike with fury that otherwise remains chained and bottled inside her body, inside the core cavity of her chest, a hard, burning coal lodged midway down her esophagus.

[J.B.] Who the fuck are you? Who - ?

John looks evenly at the man. Noncombatatively; steadily. While Reggie takes a breath, while he explains -- sort of -- the situation, John is looking around the room, standing in the doorway.

Skadi orders them in and he steps over the threshold, pulling the door shut behind him. The monotonous beat drifting up the stairwell starts a matching throb behind his eyes. It's the sort of music that would literally induce a headache if you listen to it too long. Barrister looks for a long time at the pictures on the wall, but not out of interest.

"If it's something -- 'weird' -- I can help you get rid of the evidence." He says this quietly, to Skadi. "But if it's just a drug overdose, some S&M game gone sour, it's probably best if you don't get yourself involved at all."

[machado] Reggie stands, irresolute, his anger turning brittle, ashing before the deeper purer rage that is Skadi's. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, darting a resentful glance at the calm Barrister, and then finally scowls and ducks his head and moves in out of the rain with the Kin, through the doorway to stop a a few feet within, not having enough room to move past the guantlet of seated man and shotgun toting woman.

The bald man seems almost complacent. He simply watches Skadi's face, his heavy, slow eyes undeterred by her fury, her rage. He watches her face, not even the muzzle of the shotgun pointed at him, and sits there quietly, waiting.

"This is Petey, alright? Doorman. That's it. Waits up here, makes sure the customer's are legit before letting them through."

He pauses again, and then rakes his hand through his dark hair, slender face twisted in a scowl. "This place? It's a fucking shit hole, is what. It's the last place I'm involved in, and as soon as I can get my ass clear, I'm done with it. Susan's been - fuck." He refocuses, returns to the question. "It's a brothel. Girls come in, illegal immigrants, and they work here for a year, get their Green Cards at the end. The guy who owns it has connections, see? A senator, or a congressman or something pulls ropes for him. The girls work here for a year, do whatever the clients want, we make the cash, they get to fucking live in the States. Everybody's happy."

At this Petey just snorts, and Reggie looks down at him. Barrister, speaks, and Reggie looks at him, "Yeah, it's plenty 'weird' alright. You think we can't handle some accident? This is all ritual shit and creepy ass fuckin' disturbin'."

[Skadi] "Fuckin' hell - " Skadi swears low, beneath her breath. In someone else it might be a mark of outrage; for her, it is something else, the valve on a pressure cooker, flipped to relieve the initial pressure of thinking about all of that shit, or responding to it with some kind of fucking coherent thought. The young woman flashes a narrow look at Reggie as his explanation folds into itself, then expands into a life history - Green Cards, he says, and congressman.

She snorts; like a fucking bull, she snorts, her attention swinging from Reggie to Pete, and back again. The muzzle remains trained on Pete. "Fine." Her assent is sharp, brittle and pungent. The decision is clear in the expanation of her spine, the orientation of her body - torso and hips - back to Reggie as he responds. "Show me."

[J.B.] There's a certain unruffleable calm about Barrister. When Reggie snarls at him, plenty weird, can't handle some accident? -- he returns the wiry man's look, evenly as before, perhaps wearily. He keeps his silence. His eyes, which are not blue in this light at all, but a strange shade of black, flicker between Reggie, "Petey", and Skadi. And back.

Fine, says Skadi, her decision already clear when Barrister speaks up abortively.

"Wait." There's a hint, just a sliver, of urgency there. He draws himself a little straighter, big, tall, broad through shoulder and chest: good breeding stock. When he clears his throat the bass of it comes straight from the diaphragm. "Could I have a word in private?" -- it's almost apologetic, the look he gives Reggie, even as he's putting out a hand to Skadi's elbow.

He draws her aside to the alcove by the door. The crimson light makes her look bathed in blood. She's a tall woman and he's taller, but he'll never truly dwarf her. There is no rage to speak of there; nothing to clash and spark against her own even when he's barely half an arm's reach away, well in her personal space, keeping his voice down. They'd eavesdrop if they wanted to, but he wasn't going to make it easy for them.

"Do you even know this guy Reggie?" He still has his cap on. It's drawn down until the brim barely rides over his eyes, leaving the orbits shadowed, accentuating the jaw that has, since his last shave this morning, sprouted quite the crop of burgeoning beard. "Just because he dropped a name doesn't make him one of ours. Look at this place. You're really going to walk down there without backup?"

[machado] Petey watches Skadi as she steps back and away, and there's a tightening about his eyes as he gauges distances. He doesn't move otherwise, keeps his hands up, fingers perhaps slightly incurled, relaxed. His face remains hard cheeked, without expression, the expression of a Native American Indian in a 19th century photograph. Inscrutable, quiet, knees against his chest. His feet push out slowly perhaps an inch, the hiss of heels on cement inaudible under the music.

Reggie remains by the door, hands hanging by his sides except for when they flicker up to scrawl his hair back, to rub at his face with the back of his wrist, to smooth back the hair over his ear with the palm of his hand. Water drips from him, from his loud raincoat, puddles about his feet. His face is set in a permanent scowl, and he keeps glancing down at Petey, then at the stairs, then back to the two strangers.

Both of them wait. Watch.

[Skadi] "I don't know 'em," she looks up; her gaze catches and flashes on his own. The color is lost; she is just a lurid reflection in the kinsman's dark irises, a shadow against the crimson-laced depths of the room. "I know tha girl he mentioned, though. An' s'tha only way he could've gotten my phone number. Ain't like I give tha out ta everone. So either he's legit an' his problem is real, or tha girl they's gon' show me is one'a ours." Half an hour before, she'd been grinning at him; sidelong, sly. Now her features are scrubbed clean of mirth; her face a taut mask of awareness. The shotgun's muzzle is pointed down, direct at the ground, she holds it there with the casual carelessness of long familiarity. "Don't see that I got much choice."

The corner of her mouth hooks upward; the right corner. The wry expression just seems hard in this light, her features ridged in diaphenous crimson, charged with rage. She flips the shotgun up, offering him the butt. "Ya said ya kin shot, didn't ya?" She drops her chin at the weapon, if he accepted it. "Her name's Princess."

[J.B.] He's not comfortable putting his back to the strangers, but it's a necessary sort of gambit, to let Skadi face them. She's more effective, anyway.

They have their brief, muttered conversation. She makes her choice, again, and he glances down at the weapon. Princess. My name's Pr-- Thaney, Thaney had said once. Precious? he'd asked. Princess? he thinks now -- but nah, couldn't possibly be. No parent would be that cruel. Anyway, it didn't matter: he looks at the shotgun and he smiles, small and tight, shaking his head.

"I have my own. Toss that one to me if you -- " shift. " -- don't need it anymore."

He lets go her elbow and steps back, turns. And he follows her down the stairs.

[Skadi] Before the small conclave breaks apart, Skadi plants her hands on the kinsman's shoulders and uses his body as leverage, lifting herself up until her mouth is level with his ear. He can smell the rain on her skin; her hands are dry, but her face and hair are streaked with water, and her clothig is soaked through. "Shouldn't hafta say this" her voice is low; her eyes are stark over his shoulder, leveled on the two other men i the room. " -but I'm gonna. I tell ya ta run, you git on. No fuckin' dawdlin'."

The modi releases him, then, skirts around him. "You kin show me." A peripheral glance at the bouncer. "'N he's comin' too."

[machado] Reggie leads the way with ill grace, near stomping on each step as he goes, abusing his joints so that he judders down, the impact of each foot richocheting up his spine, jarring his shoulders. Petey remains seated as Barrister and Skadi follow; he doesn't come down after them, at least, not immediately enough to remain in their line of sight. The last thing they see of him is his head turning to watch them go, his eyes calculating still, his expression blank.

The music grows in power. Insinuates itself into their minds. It throbs and whirls and repeats and pounds, a live thing, stupid and powerful, a beat that resonates in the walls, that echoes in their chest cavities, that is almost more felt than heard. Three turns of the stairwell, and Reggie pauses, looking over his shoulder up at Skadi.

"You're going to freak the shit out of people with that shotgun. Hide it or something, will ya?" And then he takes the final turn, and leads them out into a hallway.

Money has been spent on this place. Money without the guidance of refined taste. A corridor extends away, perhaps ten yards long, two doors set on either side. Polished cement floors, the walls of the corridor designed as modern shoji screens. Near translucent cloud plastic hemmed into squares by broad, black lines. Vague shadows can be seen moving within, people dancing slowly, langorously, or just the sharper lines of furniture. White cotton sheets hang from the ceiling, split down the middle, artfully placed fans blowing them open, apart, so as Reggie leads them down the corridor and towards a distant central room, they pass by their fluttering butterfly touch.

The corridor opens up into a room. The light here is dark blue, everything tending towards shades of black, the center of the room dominated by a raised dias on which two near naked women slowly writhe, chained to an axial pole, their heads encased in leather with bug eyed metallic shells covering their eyes, and no other features on the smooth, leather masks. Wide belts about their waists, and leather skirts reaching down past their knees, slit down the front and back like the curtains in the passageway to reveal glimpses of of flesh within the shadows between their legs.

Couches line the walls, heavy, leather things, with a few men draped over them, smoking, watching the women, talking to girls of their own. Eyes raise to admire Skadi, assess her, and then grow cold, hesitant, cowardly.

Reggie leads them through this room, takes a left. Corridors extend from it like spokes, and he pushes through another heavy curtain into a second hallway, this one long and very dimly lit, the lights pulsing in time to the music, blips of red and muted electric white, enough that you can make out the shape of a person, have it impinged on your retina long enough to last for the moment of darkness, and then exposed again.

Women stand in this hallway, talking to each other. Perhaps four of them, tall and statuesque, beautiful. Faces streaked with bizarre makeup. Hair done in extreme styles. Two of them are simply naked; a third wears dominatrix gear, while the forth wears a Marlyn Monroe dress. Reggie pushes past them, still walking determinedly, and then pauses at one of the doors that lines the walls. Two large men stand on either side of it, faces tight, eyes fierce as they stare at the strangers.

"In here," says Reggie, and nods at the door.

[J.B.] Barrister doesn't keep in shape quite the way he used to, but his shoulders are hard, slabs of granite under the Modi's hands. He bends his ear to her, and then makes some sort of agreeing grunt.

They descend.

For all his size, it seems John is capable of some amount of stealth when required. Or, at least, he does not thunder down the stairs like a pack of elephants. Reggie makes most of the noise. The music grows pervasive, enveloping. It seems to serve as a conduit, drawing them into this netherworld that John Barrister, for one, did not even remotely belong in. He is calm -- this is as natural as saying, he has two eyes and one nose -- but nevertheless does not know quite where to put his eyes. He glances briefly at the women; finds the men scarcely easier to look at, but some amount of pride makes him meet their eyes, if they look his way.

They file through the corridors, the room, the corridors again. In here, and the door is indicated. Barrister half-expects to see Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here written over the door. His coat is still on, heavy, worn, hanging from his shoulders in a way that speaks of quality. He resists the urge to put his hand under the coat, on the grip of his handgun. Instead, he steps forward to open the door, intending to draw it back and allow Skadi to enter first.

Ladies first isn't exactly chivalrous in a situation like this, but Barrister doesn't kid himself. He was only barely backup here. Mostly, he was what she said he was: her driver.

[Skadi] Skadi lowers the shotgun when they hit the hallway, the the room beyond. The double barrels are pointed at the floor rather than ahead of her, or behind, the length of the weapon obscured by the familiar drape of her long left arm along its wake. Both men - the one ahead of her, and the one behind - can hear her cursing, again beneath her breath, as their path cuts through the first room. The curve of her spine straightens as she registers the sights down below, pulling her up through the center back of her skull and down through the tailbone, making her walk straighter, taller, more confident. The first man who looks at her receives a shunted smile, all teeth; thereafter, Skadi bestows those bared-smiles to any and all on their path who might look too closely.

In here. - Skadi frowns at the door, shoots a close look at both men flanking it, then reaches to push it open.

[J.B.]

[machado] Barrister steps forwards, cutting across with that overextension that marks any man's deliberate move to open a door without passing through first. His hand closes on the knob moments before Skadi's, and then he finds that it doesn't open out, but pushes in, and so it's a push he gives it, yawning it open, and he steps aside.

Skadi moves in first. The smell in the room hits her. A heady mixture of honey, resin, smoke and blood. The room isn't large, a bed room in truth and name, a kingsized monster dominating half of it, white sheets tousled under the body of the butchered girl.

It's hard to tell if she was once beautiful. She must have been, to have worked here. No longer. Somebody had worked on her for quite some time, with what must have been care and precision. The blood has congealed. Still gleams in the soft, ambient lighting, but is no longer running. Caking the mattress, splattered across the headboard, up the walls. Streaks and beads and flicks and heavier blobs that then ran upon hitting the vertical surface.

Over the coppery stench of blood is the heavy incense that burns from several thick candles set around the room. Strange runes are carved into the bedposts, painted in blood on the walls, chalked on the floor around the bed.

There are numerous wounds, mutilations. Both of her breasts have been sawn off, savaged muscle beneath. A large section of her thigh has also been removed, down to the bone. Her stomach lies open, splayed like a flower forced to blossom, a pool of blood and missing organs. Several fingers have been cut off, and litter the area about her head. Her cheeks have been removed, revealing teeth, torn gums. Her hair is a bloodied matt about her head. Long, black, still lustruous.

Something is written on the wall, several lines that read like poetry:

We shall know what the darkness discovers,
If the grave-pit be shallow or deep;
And our fathers of old, and our lovers,
We shall know if they sleep not or sleep.
We shall see whether hell be not heaven,
Find out whether tares be not grain,
And the joys of thee seventy times seven,
Our Lady of Pain.

Massive black candles are set on a baseboard that runs along the length of the wall opposite the bed. Their flames flicker and dance as the air moves in through the open door.

[J.B.] (wp not to barf!)

[J.B.] Inward, then.

The door opens inward, which means -- he has to step in first, to step aside. Which means -- he has to look on the bed. It's a terrible instinct, when confronted with something beyond the confines of ordinary life; an evolutionary advantage, but hell on the nerves.

John looks. His face twists and his stomach revolts. The backs of his jaw ache from the narrowly-averted vomiting. He puts the back of his hand to his mouth, his nose, involuntarily -- to stifle the smell, or perhaps to hold in the regurgitory reflex. "Holy Mary," says Barrister. His back hits the wall. He hadn't realized he had backed up at all. But he's there now, and it seems reasonable, wise, to turn around, away from the sight -- to grab the doors and swing them shut.

They are heavy, expensive. They swing easily on oiled hinges. Soundlessly. He hears the tongue click into the groove. And afterwards, he holds onto the sleek metal handles a moment. Takes a breath. Turns around.

This time, quite deliberately, he doesn't look at the girl. He reads the lines on the wall, twice, and then he pats down his pockets until he finds a scrap of paper (some receipt: romaine lettuce, carrots, canned peaches, brisket steak, and dog food). Quickly, his gaze intent, he starts copying down the verse. Roughly anapestic; strange; not unlovely. Our Lady of Pain. This last part, he underlines twice.

[Skadi] The door swings open; Skadi shoulders her way in, index and middle fingers splayed wide open as she changes her grip on the shotgun, levers the muzzle up from its current target - the ground. Her mouth flattens, then twists at the sight and the stench; the sight or the stench, the mutilation, the careful precision of the butchery. She blows out a short, sharp breath through her nostrils to clear her senses, then circles forward, stopping some feet from the wall with its verse. She frowns at the words, reads them, her lips moving unconciously as her mind snaps each symbol to its meaning.

"Fought somethan' with that name once- " Skadi informs Barrister when he has recovered sufficiently to fid his receipt and pull out a pen. She has made it top the end when he is inking the first few words. "Lady'a Pain." Then, and this may not be comforting, "She kicked my ass."

Careful, now, of hte pooled, congealing blood, the blonde picks her way through the room, stopping at the first and second candles long enough to blow them out. "Cain't believe that no one fuckin' heard this. Even with that fuckin' music."

[J.B.] "She might've been drugged." John's eyes are on the wall as he doublechecks all the words. Other than the initial reaction, he seems to have collected himself admirably. There's a hint of rust in the bass of his voice, however. "Though if she was, it was probably a paralytic agent, not an analgesic. That would seem to defeat the purpose."

John folds the note over once and puts it in his pocket. Later, he will photocopy it for Skadi and whomever else she might want to give it to. For now, Barrister steels himself and walks forward, careful not to step in any of the stray puddles of blood. He comes to the edge of the bed. The girl's abdomen is a mess of blood and torn tissue. He's looking to see which organs are missing, though his grasp of human anatomy is coarse at best, half-remembered from sophomore college biology courses. Heart, lungs, stomach, liver. That's the level of his understanding.

The stench of the lower bowels is thick in the air. No one, no matter how lovely or not, smells like roses on the inside. However, he does remember one thing from bio101 lab. If her intestines were even slightly torn, they'd know. They'd smell it, ripe and awful in the air.

(and pause!)

[Moira Tasgall] Moira paced the sidewalk, the sound of her shoes clipping noisily against the pavement as she glanced around at the shopping plaza. A sign loomed over her head attached to the dark brown and red bricked Pagoda shaped roof of the restaurant she was in front of. The Happy Tea Leaf Café written in bold red letters against a white background.

Her cellular phone rest in her left hand as delicate fingers flip it open to browse through the contact listing for Mr. Barrister’s number, the bottom line of her lip tucking inward as she chews on it nervously. A small sigh escapes through her nose as she dialed it and held it up to her hear, waiting for an answer.

As it rang, the young woman fussed with her appearance in the dark framed window of the establishment. She tousled blue-black coils of hair off her shoulders, and way from her face, allowing it to hang freely down her back; dressed comfortably for the weather in a summer dress of a silky royal purple and some black lace embroidery around the strapless neckline.

[John Barrister] Lunchtime on Thursdays is actually quite a busy time for trendy little asian-fusion restaurants like this. The interior is packed with businessmen and women, discussing deals over power lunches. In the less choice seats, a few students are cramming for finals over cups of oolong and tieguanyin tea, fresh-brewed from leaves. And at a small table for two on the second story, John Barrister is reading a book quietly, his cell phone laid out in front on him atop the crisp white tablecloth.

When it rings -- no fancy ringtones for him, just a simple, mild chime -- he has his hand on it before the first ring ends; has it open before the second ring begins. MOIRA, reads the small display.

"You're here?" he assumes, laying his book face-down on the table to mark his spot. "I'll come down. Hold on."

Less than a minute later, Barrister emerges through the front door. He's immediately noticeable, if not recognizeable -- not because he wore an eyepatch, as threatened, and not because he's in coat and collar, either. Plenty of businessmen wore similar attire, with or without a tie, with or without the tie loosened. However, few have the height and breadth of shoulder Barrister has: the physique of a man who worked and fought with his fists, fitted into a dark jacket and slacks that he wore well, but nevertheless didn't quite suit him. He looks like an outdoorsman dressed up for an occasion -- which, one supposes, he is.

"I'm outside," he says, scanning the light crowd. Pretty, Skadi had said. Purebred, which means nothing to him. Young, which was the part he rather dreaded. "Which way should I look?"

[Moira Tasgall] The suited figure of John Barrister emerging through the front door and into her peripheral was not the image Moira had imagined, she listens to his voice on the phone. “I’m here.” A slow widening of heavy lashes over vibrant cobalt blue eyes as they settled on him, or who she presumes to be him as he walked with a cell phone.

“Hold on a moment—” the line goes dead a second later, delicate fingers clipping the phone shut to end the call abruptly as Moira steps away from the window towards John. The phone was deposited into the small beaded handbag she carried with her, stretching out the right hand to reach out and touch him, once she had come within reaching distance.

“Mr. Barrister?” Skadi described it right to say she was pretty, purebreed meant nothing despite the way it shined in her body language and the way she carries herself at times. A soft clearing of her throat, to bring his attention to her, Moira offers him a brief smile. She was young, her appearance making it hard to ping an exact age on her polished image. She wasn’t fat, on the thin side, though not quite athletic. She wore flat shoes on her feet, which did nothing to enhance her already tall height, standing eight inches over five feet. “I’m Moira.” Extending her hand to him, “A pleasure.”

[John Barrister] When she reaches out to tap him on the shoulder (which would be quite a reach, even for her standing 5'8") -- or perhaps his arm -- he's still talking into the phone: "Hello? Did I get cut off? Hello?"

Mr. Barrister? - and he turns around. A little faster and he would've spun around. Whirled. As is, he manages to squeak by at a turn, barely, to look down at her. She's Moira, she says, putting her hand out. John Barrister smiles: he has an engaging smile, slow and warm, genuine. There are crows-feet at the corners of his eyes from thirty-five years of smiling. He takes her hand. His palms are rough, the backs of his hands quite hairy. He's shaved recently -- she can smell aftershave on him, a light, woodsy scent. It doesn't matter; already there's a hint of bristle darkening his jaw.

"Please. John." He's polite; he manages to keep his eyes squarely on her face after a cursory once-over. "Great to finally meet you. That dress is lovely on you." The art of the compliment: not too personal ("you look lovely."); not too impersonal ("that dress is lovely.") It's over in a flicker of an instant, but thought had gone into that. "Come on. I took the liberty of ordering you a lychee margarita. Virgin." A beat of awkwardness -- "I wasn't sure if you were old enough to drink."

Another. Then he offers his arm to her with a hint of a self-deprecating smile.

[Moira Tasgall] Her hand floated, outstretched, in the air until the tips of her fingers brushed against the sleeve of his jacket, over a slight curve of muscle on his arm or the jutting point of his elbow. It didn’t matter, first contact had been registered. She gives him a curious glance over, not bothering to play coy and hide behind the lowering of dark heavy eyelashes. The sweep of her eyes is brisk and quick, a flicker to drink as much of him in as needed.

He was old and hairy, older than Joseph. Did she really want to deal with the drama that came with an older man?

“Very well then, John,” a polite air of mannerisms surrounds her, playing on a soft, submissive feminism that was only one aspect of her nature. The light floral fragrance of herbs clings to her bare skin and perfumes her hair, of cardamom and rosemary, and cinnamon. “Thank you, you look very handsome. Not what I was expecting to say the least,” she takes his offered arm, arching an eyebrow at him.

“In about a year I’ll be legal enough to drink.”

[John Barrister] John literally winces at that. Twenty years old. He says something before he can catch himself. In the noisy restaurant it's lost, indistinct, but it might've been Christ, Skadi.

"Well," frankly, "I'm thirty-five years old, and a widower. I don't expect anything from you." He turns to her with a hint of apology. "Might as well get that out of the way first. Not very romantic, I know."

They're on the upper floor now, which is really a balcony ringing the building, the center of it open to the ground floor, the ceiling inlaid with an enormous glass-pane skylight to let in the sun. Dividing the main restaurant from a bar/lounge downstairs is a thick row of live bamboo, the tallest shoots reaching almost to the skylight. John leads her to their small table, courteously drawing out her chair and then seating himself across from her, unbuttoning his coat with one hand reflexively as he does so. His shirt beneath is crisp and white, the collar open a button. There's hair there, too. In fact, the shading of bristle suggests that if he let his beard grow out, it would blanket uniformly from sideburns to jaw to chin to chest. Still, there's something about the quietly assured way he opens the stylish menu that suggests he's done this before. Eaten at a classy, chic restaurant. Taken a lady to lunch. Etcetera.

A wedding band gleams gold on his left ring finger. That had taken a lot of debate -- to wear or not. In the end he'd settled on leaving it on; partly because he's worn it so long it feels odd to take it off, partly because taking it off seemed almost an act of deceit and denial. He wasn't divorced. He was widowed. There was a difference; Moira deserved to know that.

"So," examining the appetizers, "are you much a fan of cold dishes? Jellyfish and boneless duck's feet?" Barrister smiles at her over the menu. He might be teasing her -- testing limits, so to speak.

[Moira Tasgall] “Well,” to speak frankly, “I’m actually still nineteen. I turn twenty in a month and a half, so it is a bit of a grey area.” She smiles a little at the apologetic note in his voice, “To be honest, I’m not that experienced with older men, so you’ll have to bear with me. I’m not widowed or a mother, so that could be a bonus. I’m not really looking to settle down.”

They had graced the upper floor, Moira kept her pace with him until they reached the table. She settles into the offered chair, laying her small handbag off to the edge to keep it out of the way. She folds her hands in her lap, smoothing her hands over the silken material of the sundress across her thighs. She lifts her head up to look at him, staring a longer to take in a more detailed look at his appearance.

Something about it makes her nose wrinkle up, she finds herself sitting straighter, more poised and polite as etiquette takes a hold. It made her seem slightly rigid and out of place. So unused to classy, chic places and lunch dates.

“I’ll stick to something that doesn’t move or remind me of something out of a sci-fi horror movie. Cold fish might work.” The menu plucked up, sliding apart as it lay in the open palm of her left hand. If she notices the ring, Moira pays it no heed.

[John Barrister] Dear god, now she was only 19. Soon she'll be 17, 15, 12. John tries not to look like he might run away screaming any second.

Does quite well, really, once his mind is off it. Something that doesn't move, she requests, and he grins at her across the small table. "How about the dumplings for starters, then? I'll get a plate of jellyfish as well, but I won't force you to try it. And whatever you like for the entrées. I tend to get several dishes at a Chinese restaurant and share. White rice on the side. Sound alright?"

[Moira Tasgall] “That sounds delicious. I think I’ll go with that.” Spoken over the edge of the menu her eyes cast down to prowl over the offered dishes. Her nose wrinkles up cutely, making her seem younger than her actual age. Maybe she wasn’t really 19 at all, only pretended. What has Skadi got him into now?

The menu flips closed, she lays it down in front of her on the table, hands folding into her lap, hidden from view. “So…” here is where it starts to get uncomfortable for her. “Tell me how you met Skadi and why she felt we would make the perfect match and raise lots of little pittering-pattering paws across the floors.”

[John Barrister] Barrister watches, amused, as Moira puts the menu down without making much of a selection at all. Alright, he'll just order everything, then. And she'll have to put up with liver and kidney and...

...well, no. He'll probably end up getting something normal. Not quite orange-chicken-normal; but normal.

She asks about Skadi. Barrister flicks a glance at her across his menu, which is still open. His eyes are a dark blue, shaded by dark, straight, thick eyebrows; set deep in their orbits. "I met her walking my dog, if you'd believe it. She noticed me. I guess I... 'stand out'. You do too," he adds, offhand. "To them. And I think that was the basis of her matchmaking. I suppose she figured two people who stood out so well would be -- well, outstanding together."

It's a small quip. He finishes with the menu, shuts it, and looks up to signal a waiter over. Meanwhile, their drinks have arrived: a beer for him; a virgin margarita for her.

"I don't really know, truth be told. I half-wonder if this was meant to be a joke."

[Moira Tasgall] “If it were meant as a joke I’d say she had a twisted sense of humor, but—” Moira paused, pursing her lips together as she thought on something he said. “I think she is quite serious. I may sound a bit delusional but I think there has been a scheme to get me settled for some time now. Thinking it would do me good and keep me out of trouble.”

A soft snort cuffs from her nose, the slender slope of bare shoulders lifting up to roll backwards as Moira releases a sigh. The drinks come; her right hand appears out from under the table and her lap to reach for the virgin margarita.

“I think you’d be more of Skadi’s type, frankly.”

[John Barrister] John laughs a little under his breath. Gives a shake of his head, half rueful, half certain. "No. No, I am definitely not Skadi's type. Nor vice versa."

The waiter comes by. John orders, they give their menus over. The waiter departs. Barrister draws his beer to himself, takes a pull.

"So, will it? Getting settled. Will it keep you out of trouble?"

[Moira Tasgall] “Settled with a kin? Never.” She says with a laugh, “A trueborn… maybe, depending on who it was. Trouble seems to find me I do not go looking for it.” Moira glances down at her glass, gingerly sipping at the non-alcoholic beverage.

The glass returns to the table, her hand laying on its surface, fingers slightly curled around the glass. She smirks, “You know what they say about opposites attracting. You and she are on opposite sectors of the cosmos that is for sure.”

[John Barrister] Somewhere between settled with a kin? never. and Moira's second bid to put him up with Skadi -- somewhere there, something at the edges of Barrister's smile hardens a little. Barrister is a straightforward man. A kind man, perhaps; but a straightforward one, and one who has trouble hiding his thoughts. Right now, his thoughts veer toward: rude little brat, and well, what did you expect? she's 19. of course she wants a trueborn. nothing you didn't call from the moment skadi brought this up. and be nice. you promised you'd at least have lunch with the girl. and it never hurts to have another friend. it never hurts--

John takes another pull of his beer and then sets it carefully down. "Moira," he says, just as carefully, speaking mostly to the base of the slim white flowervase in the middle of the table, "I told you at the beginning of this I expected nothing of you. I meant it. In fact, I seriously doubt this is going to blossom into romantic attraction for either of us. So you needn't continue to make clear your preference for a -- trueborn -- while simultaneously attempting to pass me a consolation prize of Skadi. You should know I agreed to this because I thought it could never hurt to have another friend."

At the very end of this short speech, Barrister's eyes flicker up to meet the girl's. There's a certain hardness in the blue; an implacability rare in those not of Garou blood. It's there; then it's gone. A trick of the light.

"So let's just have lunch as friends, shall we?" He settles back, his gaze drifting over her shoulder as he spies the waiter coming with their food. "And please. No more mention of Skadi and I. My wife was of the blood. She passed not a year ago. I don't need that experience again."


(shann vanishes!)

[Princess] There is a pawnshop; this has been established. The pawnshop is near a laundromat; this has also been established. The pawnshop keeps odd hours, a side-business: also established. The owner knows this red haired girl, this girl with hair so red that, so he may not be surprised to see her when she pushes the door open - testingly, as though uncertain whether or not it would really give, or be locked up - and enters his little store. Then, he might be in back, and not see at all.

[J.B.] He doesn't see her; but the bell over the door misses nothing. It rings, and from the dusty shelves, his basso voice: "We're closing in ten minutes."

[Princess] Doesn't say anything for a second. Takes stock; drifts over to the scarred glass counter where the tiny register is. Then, "Hey, I've always wanted to sleep in a shop before. I hear that elves come and make sure the dust is," she wipes a finger, experimentally, on one of the knick knacks, "just so."

[J.B.] J.B.'s head pops up from behind a shaky stack of books almost as tall as he is. He gives her a skeptical, amused look. "I hear it's just the pollen and the dirt. Plus industrial debris. Need another ride?"

[Princess] "No," she replies, and there's something; -- well. For a moment, she gives him a thoughtful, sidelong look that is not altogether like her usual thoughtful, sidelong looks. Beat. "Well, I'd appreciate one. But no. I needed to ask you some questions."

[J.B.] "Yeah?" This time when his head reappears there's a frown. THUMP, he stacks more books on top, raising a small puff of dust that makes his nose itch. Rubbing it vigorously on the back of his hand, he comes around the stack and, with the ease of custom, pulls a stool down to sit behind the counter. He folds his forearms over. "Go ahead."

[Princess] She fights a grimace, for a second; does not give into it. However, her eyebrows do draw together, intent; intense. "Did what Kendra said, about drama and Moira, strike you as mean-spirited slander?"

[J.B.] It's a strange and rapid sequence of expressions: surprise, puzzlement, then a darkening into a frown. And before all that, a glimpse, very brief, very very brief, of something that might've been -- something like -- relief.

But anyway: a frown now. "If you're here to gossip..."

[Princess] "I'm not."

[J.B.] There's a long silence in which he studies her, his brow knit, his eyes flat. There's a certain stiffness in this interaction that had not been there before; like the day by the lake, when he'd discovered her for what she is, there's a certain regret associated.

Still, eventually, he must seem satisfied with what he sees, because he nods and sighs. "Well -- yes. They are young, teenaged girls. Both pretty, by all accounts. It might only be girlfighting, except -- " he stops trying to find excuses for Kendra. "Yes. It seemed a little mean-spirited."

[Princess] There's silence, again. He's noticed the - well, the very subtle differentiation just now, the acknowledgment that they are - each to each - a different species. The same as that day at the lake. There's something - briefly, briefly - weary about her profile, too; a flash of something in her eyes. (This is chased by humor: "Well; you're not un-cute." ) "Did it make you think poorly of Moira, or of Kendra, or of both?"

[J.B.] It seems, for a moment, that he's watching him from someplace far behind his own shoulder. That he sees this tableau clearly: the large man hunkered on a small stool, faintly ridiculous, his shirt stretched tight over his shoulders because if he bought anything larger it would droop almost to his knees, and the sleeves would hang to his knuckles; the small girl on the opposite side; the two of them, speaking almost in formalities now, her with her carefully placed questions and he with his carefully truthful answers. It seems he's seen this before, too many times.

"It made me weary. It made me remember what it was about teenagers, and perhaps Garou teenagers more than most, that makes me steer clear."

[Princess] " - what's that?" The girl's eyes flicker; she would like, really, to look somewhere else. But she doesn't, because she needs to consider J.B., so that when this conversation is necessary to recall, she can recall it. Not just the words; not just the tone of voice. All of it.

[Princess] And, yes, her ears go a little bit pinker.

[J.B.] There's a faint flare of irony in his eyes now. "The gossip." A pause. A smile cracks, like dawn. "The little barbs. The thoughtless cruelties. The, what is it now, three way phone wars? The self-importance of a teenager, plus the ego of being quite literally Chosen by God." Maybe that was unwise. Maybe a lot of this is unwise; but Princess inspires trust, and J.B. did, for better or worse, trust her. "But -- mostly, the gossip." And fades, "Why the questions, Thaney? I imagine somehow the story went around and around and came back to you."

[Princess] Beat. "What," she says, with a faint, rueful smile - and then actually does not say something that she began to say. Usually, she stops before she ever starts; not this time. A quiet inhale. "Is it really any different when you reach your thirties, J.B.? I don't know. Do people change, stop gossiping, stop being thoughtless, become wise?" And she likely won't, ever. She doesn't kid herself. Then: " - well. Whatcha mean by 'the story' and 'came back to' me? I was there, wasn't I?"

[J.B.] The edges of his eyes crinkle: a real smile. "No. But at least," he adds, "we stop thinking we can change the world. Though maybe, given the state of the world, that's not necessarily a good thing." A sigh, and he leans back from the counter, reaches under it for a big thermos, which he unscrews. The no-scent of hot water; he fumbles around behind the counter for a handful of individually wrapped tea-bags, Bigelow's, nothing special, which he spreads on the counter for her to pick from. For himself, he takes a japanese sencha, which really only resembled the actual green tea brewed in japan the way a photograph of the Tour Eiffel resembles the real thing.

"You were there," he replies, "but you certainly didn't have so many probing questions then. I feel like you're trying to get at something; why don't you come ahead and ask it, Thaney?"

[Princess] "The death of idealism; I won't drink to that," she says, idealistically. Then, silence, quiet; hold it, cup it in your hands, there it is. The red-haired girl drags her hair away from her face, holds it back with one hand; keeps the hand on top of her head. "I don't waste questions, J.B.; well," temporizing, as usual, "I try not to. I just want to know: Do you think poorly about Moira because of Kendra?"

[J.B.] "I don't think poorly of her, Thaney." He pours hot water into the cap/cup of the thermos, plunks it down in front of her. As for him: the little paper wrapping is ripped effortlessly apart in his hands, the satchet of tea dropped directly into the thermos. "I won't lie to you and say I think well of Kendra, because I don't; but I don't think poorly of Moira. I just think -- I think it's more of a mistake than Skadi thought it was." Pause. "Moira doesn't know about this, does she?"

[Princess] She listens, of course; that's what she does. Doesn't, not yet, really seem to notice the tea-bags; notice the choice offered - at least not until J.B. plops the thermos of hot water in front of her. Then she gives it a glance, mild surprise, hello, what are you doing here? But, no: attention switches back. "You don't have to tell me - didn't have to tell me, I guess - what you think about either of them; I don't need to know that. I just asked:--well. You answered." Then she plucks a bag of tea off the counter and plops it into the thermos cap. Pokes her finger into it to stir, and, ouch! Stupid.

[Princess] Also, around sucking on her finger, "Don't know what Moira knows. Haven't seen her for a while; I doubt she "knows". There isn't any point to it, you know?"

[J.B.] "Well, good." He wraps both his hands around the big thermos, which is one of those good, quality ones -- the outside very cool to the touch, the water inside piping hot. He thinks about it for a minute. Then, again, "Good. Let's leave it that way.

"You want to know what I told Skadi? -- since," wry, "it's either her or Kendra that told you, I imagine, unless tongues have been wagging more than I thought."

[Princess] "Do I want to know?; sure. But you don't need to tell me; I don't really need to know. I don't think I really want to know." Her eyebrows draw together, again; it's a studious expression, and mildly perplexed. "Told me what?"

[Danny Jones] Bronzeville is slumming it, even by her standards cuz she's living it up in the 'Green, don'tcha know. better boxes in alleys there. But she passes through here now and again, because it's where Brodie and Rafi hang.

And thus, outside on the wall by a certain pawn shop, conveniently and all, walks Danny; she of the two-toned hair, the glitter t-shirt (PINK with Grumpy Care Bear on it, the thought bubble saying +$%@! in glitter. Yes. Glitter.) and jeans under a beat to hell army jacket, and the backpack covered with indy patches and little pithy sayings on her back. Same Danny, different day.

[J.B.] For a moment John Barrister visibly struggles with his temper. His mouth compresses down to a line. He squeezes the thermos between his big hands. Then he lifts it and takes a big gulp that, naturally, scalds his tongue and the roof of his mouth and makes him curse blisteringly afterwards.

"Never mind. But I want you to know, all I said to Skadi was that Moira was nineteen, and there are old nineteens and young nineteens, and Moira seemed to be a young nineteen. That was it; that was the slip of my stupid big mouth; and next thing I know she's got steam coming out her ears demanding to know who said what where and when, and next thing after that you're in here asking oblique questions and answering nothing. Christ."

And another gulp, onehanded, the other hand drumming on the countertop. He doesn't meet her eyes. He drums for a few seconds. Then, "Sorry." He doesn't quite sound it -- sorry -- but he does sound a little ashamed.

[Princess] Her jaw tightens, briefly; her ears go pink, again, and maybe her cheeks too. Just a little. Her gaze remains narrowed, however; focused, grayscale. Then: "It made me weary. The gossip," she says. "Why the questions, Thaney?" she says. "I imagine somehow the story went around and around and came back to you."

"So why do you want me to know things that I'm not asking for; that are yours?"

Beat. Beat. Then, exhale, again: "I'm asking you because I settle disputes, J.B. And it's easier to do so when I know what happened. You know, all the way down to the root; through the root. The dirt. All of that."

[Danny Jones] Maybe it's something in the window that catches her eye, maybe its not that at all. Whatever it is, she pauses in front of the Pawn Shop and peers intently at the windows, and whatever might be on display.

[J.B.] "Because that's what happened. Through whatever -- roots and dirt might've gotten in there in the meantime."

This time he sips his tea. His eyes are a dark, dark blue; it is more evident by day, and less in artificial light like the pallid fluorescents overhead. When he looks down, his upper eyelids fall with a slight slant down at the outer edges; the orbits of his eyes slope down similarly at the lateral corners: anglo-saxon eyes. He fishes the teabag out of the thermos and tosses it with a soft, wet thump into a waiting wastebasket. Like his home, the pawn shop is small, but with a certain orderly disorder that he seems to understand.

"And because," he's noticed Danny; he's getting up off his stool, heading for the door to greet his latest customer -- what is this, a late night shopping vogue? -- "I didn't want you to think I ran and tattled to Skadi."

[Princess] First, she listens; takes J.B.'s posture into consideration. Takes his tone into consideration. Then, that last -- well, look; she laughs, a little, really. It's a surprised (and, again, let us emphasize: little) laugh.

[Danny Jones] Movement, inside, and it's J.B. and she grins and lifts a hand to wave a little finger flutter wave, before the fingers tuck into the strap of her pack, the other shoving deep into the pocket of her cargo pants. She wasn't sure she'd intended to go inside, really. She was just browsin. Everyone browses at 2am... right?

Ok, so only the insomniacs do, but whatever. When he comes to the door to greet her, she grins. "Heya, Mister Barrister. How's it hangin?"

[J.B.] The door is pushed open -- the foggy, murky glass gives way to the clarity of thin air. "Oh, it's you." Barrister looks a little put out at the moment. He clears his throat way deep in his chest and holds the door open. "You looking for something in particular?" And, as though they were in his house and a visitor had just arrived, "It's Danny, Thaney."

[Princess] The red-haired girl has, finally, decided to take a sip of the tea; she didn't look closely at the satchel, but it tastes like mint and roses, with a nutty undertone. Far too good for simple bagged tea; she wonders where he got it. Then, It's Danny, Thaney, J.B. says, and she shifts away from the counter to walk over to the door. "Hi, Danny."

[Danny Jones] Oh, it's you, he says, a little put out, and a brow quirks upwards. Her hand moves from the strap of her pack to brush through her hair. A glance past him. "Hey." and then...

"Nah. Ain't even knowed ya was open." A step past him, a pause, and then a shrug and a lopsided grin. "Have a good evenin, Mister B. Catcha later, Thaney"

And she walks on by. Ain't one to intrude, Danny.

[J.B.] Bemused, John holds the door open long after she's walked off. Then he lets it swing slowly shut (the bell overhead jingles), turning back to the counter and the red-haired girl.

"I'm about to close down," he says. "Want to help me lock up?"

[Princess] Danny continues on; Princess, at J.B.'s side now, at the door now, folds her arms over her chest and nods a farewell. "Later, Danny; that cook out you promised - "

Jingle, jangle. The door shuts; she draggles her fingers through her hair. "Sure. What's that entail, dusting and stuff?"

[J.B.] Barrister stands at the door a moment while bemusement becomes some brand of amusement. He ruffles a hand through his hair, then spreads his hands to either side. The theatricality of the gesture is undermined by his gruff gracelessness. "Does it look like I dust in here? No," his keys from his pocket, tossed at her in a glittery skittery arc, "just lock the front door, but prop it open with this," he points at a doorstop with his foot, "so we can get out. I'll empty out the cash register and get the ledger. Then you can help me with the roll-up gate."

[Ash] Steven pauses, in thought, unsure, and then, suddenly resolute, continues.

[Princess] The keys glitter, skitter; are caught. "Well, maybe if you had help," she says, and doesn't feel the need to finish that sentence. Maybe then you'd dust. Then she leans into the door, so it's half-open; slides the doorstep over with, well, her foot, until it's wedged in place. Sifts through the keys until she finds the right one. Then, while she's doing it, "I don't mean to be thoughtless, you know? I try not to be; sometimes it's hard to think about everything - about all the words. The right words. You know?"

[J.B.] His back is turned to her when she says it, and of course, hers is to him. Still, his reflection is there in the dim glass of the door -- caked with so much dust that dust has become grime, and grime has greased on and stuck fast. His reflection, in that smeared mirror, pauses. Then it resumes. He pulls a ledger, a real, leatherbound, thick, heavy, weighty ledger from under the cash register (which is uninspiring and ordinary), thumps it onto the countertop where he flips it open to a ribbon-marked page and draws with a pen from his breast pocket, freehand, a very straight and swift line at the bottom of the day's transactions. The date is carefully annotated beside it, 5.17.07.

Barrister caps the pen and replaces it. Shutting the book, he lays his palms atop it a moment. "I hadn't meant you," he says, and this time he does sound sorry. "You're an old nineteen." And, hefting the ledger under his arm, "Fifteen. Twelve. Whatever."

The light switch, inconveniently enough, is under the counter as well. When he strikes it the pawn shop is awash in dimness, the only light coming in from the street outside.

[Princess] "Heh," she says, and sounds - briefly? - amused. The red haired girl does not hazzard the pawn shop in the dark; looks out at the street. Her arms are folded, again. "Still. All the right words. It would be nice sometime - " That's it. Princess waits for Barrister; waits for him to finish up; waits for him to show her how to 'help' him with the gate.

[Skadi] Bruin always knows, before anyone else. Somewhere in the small, neatly appointed home, the sleeping hound jerks from his sleep and shakes himself awake. Then, a knock on the door.

It's late; nighttime, but it feels like evening. It's always like this as summer swings around, as the world's axis changes again, the last dregs of the sun fading from the horizon, the sky saturated in the intense, deep blue of dreams and visions of the Virgin Mother's eyes.

[J. Barrister] Barrister's finally gotten around to yardwork. The lawn is mowed, the hedges trimmed -- not quite into the flawless squares of rich people's mansions, but at least into vaguely spheroid shapes. The rosebushes and the gardenias have been culled and pruned, and the first roses of May are drooping on their stems. The night is fragrant with their heavy scent.

The windows are open on the living room. A sheer inner-drape is drawn across the nook. It's a woman's touch -- something a man living alone wouldn't think to put on his windows, or wouldn't bother with, even if he were kin. Something that a woman might consider, and remember, even if she were Garou.

Behind the shade, the blurred shape of John Barrister sits up from his big recliner couch. His footsteps thump across the floor. Deeper inside, the hound -- some ignominous mix of primarily bloodhound and redbone, and perhaps a distant smattering of various pointers or retrievers -- throws back his head on a long low bay. "That's alright, Bruin," Barrister says, automatically, without vehemence, with deepseated and thoughtless affection. The door comes open. "Hey, Skadi." He stands aside, one hand on the door, the broad index finger of the other sandwiched in his book, marking his page. The cover reads LAND OF THE BLIND.

[Skadi] "Hey John Barrister," - Skadi says, when the door swings open, by way of response. She glances at his face, then her eyes drop away, over his shoulders, down the darkened hall that bisects the small home. Following, maybe, the sound of Bruin's call; or just looking, for no reason at all. The sidewalk retains the heat of the day, but the perfumed air that drifts around her is cool. The lake, and the promise of rain - the failure of the day's heat. It's still spring, no matter what the sun says, and the city is still waking up to the coming months. The beaches are open, but no one dips more than a toe into Lake Michigan. The schools are open; and although the kids stare out the windows, dreaming of release, their teachers have not yet succumbed to the inevitable and given them free reign.

Everything is in transition.

- her too. "I ain't meanin' ta intrude - " she says, she will always say, because it is the only real expression of the politeness her momma one tried to tattoo into her consciousness. Please and thank you and be a little lady in your pretty ruffled dress. It's not timid, though; the grin she offers him - by way of apology, already - is fucking savage. A six-pack of something - likely liberal, perhaps Bostonian - dangles from two fingers of her right hand. Shadowed over her shoulder, the bulky shape of an old gym bag. Her clothes aren't clean: a wide smear of dirt across the wifebeater, a crust of something around left ankle of her jeans are the most visible stains. Her hair isn't clean, either - pulled back from her face into a loose ponytail, dark with oil from several days without a wash.

The grin doesn't last more than a split second; before she finishes the sentence, she has the grace to look abashed. " - wonderin' if I could use yer shower."

[J. Barrister] She's been in and out a good dozen times or more already to use his shower, and perhaps a handful of times to use his washer and dryer. He's never turned her down. Really, it would be easier for all of them if he just gave her a key. Or if she just came in through the Umbra. Yet he hasn't given her a key, and she hasn't -- to his knowledge anyway -- come in through the other way. And so she keeps asking, and he keeps agreeing.

"Sure," and that makes a dozen-and-one. He eyes her gym bag, "I've got a load collecting in the washer. You want me to add that on?"

[Skadi] "Naw - " she says, walking in and around him, stopping just long enough to deposit the six pack - call it chiminage to the spirits of cleanliness - in his right hand. "This stuff's clean. I got bored watchin' some fucker last night, so I went and done laundry while I was waitin'. Turned out it warn't nothin' I could see, but I got most'a it done. Thank laundromats is in tha service a tha wyrm, though. Middle'a tha night, all them dryers look like fuckin' deranged cyclopses, an' then what they charge fer them mini-Tide detargents, s'fuckin' robbery. Gi'ya what I'm wearin', though, ya wait a minute."

- the dedicated stuff, the outfit he sees her wearing at least every other time she appears, worn-out old jeans, a sleeveless, ribbed t-shirt, a bikini, pink, tied off behind her neck. Skadi knows the way to the bathroom, shuts the door behind her, and disappears. Before the familiar rush of water through the pipes in the walls, though - "HEY!" ad she asks this sometimes; for reasons he might not wish to know. "WHAT FUCKIN' DAY IS IT?"

[J. Barrister] "You could get an economy bottle and leave it here, you know." He raises the sixpack up and looks at it with some amusement. "Have you gone blue state on me, Skadi? -- I could store it in the closet with the rest of my laundry supplies. You can swing by before a load and bring a little sippy-cup or something. Get what you need and not pay through the nose."

He puts the beers in the freezer to rapid-chill. The last part of his suggestion was spoken to a closed bathroom door as he backtracks to the front door and shuts it, bolts it. Bruin has made himself scarce somewhere. John resettles himself in his couch, waiting for her dirty laundry to come flying out of the bathroom, possibly under its own locomotion. God knows how long since the last wash.

"It's Wednesday," he calls through the door. There's no TV in his living room (though there is a small one in the bedroom, not that she'd know that); he probably doesn't watch hit shows. Still, he had an orderly sort of existence with deadlines and schedules that necessitated a basic understanding of time. Something abruptly occurs to him, "There's a clean robe in the bottom left-hand drawer under the sink."

[Skadi] "Could leave - " no, the door is closed; he can hear her just find, but something about talking through walls means she is going to yell. "COULD LEAVE IT IN BETSY, TOO. I JES DON'T NEVER THANK ON IT 'TIL I FUCKIN' NEED IT AN' THEN IT'S TOO FUCKIN' LATE." And then the clothes come flying; and then the water is cranked on, and the pipes roar with it. Anything else is muted by the natural soundbarrier of the bathroom - the tiles, the tub and shower enclosure, the water pounding against the porcelain bathtub. Maybe there's a radio in there, set into the window, so Barrister can catch the weather or traffic report in the mornings, as he lathers and shaves, as he brushes his teeth, as he renders himself presentable for polite society. If so, he has had to turn it back to his favorite station one dozen (and now one) times from something low on the dial, full of woolly old country songs the likes of which are not often heard on the radio anymore. Patsy Cline and both the Hank Williams, all the cliches of motherhood, and trucks, and the romance of the open road, all the unthinking patriotism, all the pathos, all the fuckin' glory.

Skadi empties the hot water tank, every time. Sometimes it seems like she empties it twice over, in quick succession. Maybe she just stands in the frigid waters when the hot gives out, letting it pound her skin white. Maybe she doesn't feel the cold.

At least fortyfive minutes after her wretched clothing hit the wall in the hall, the door to the bathroom opens again, banked with a billowing cloud of strawberry-scented steam. Dressed in his clean robe, the creature makes a barefooted circuit of the house, passing through the kitchen long enough to grab a beer and stare, ruminatively, at the contents of his fridge for several minutes before rejecting all of them, before reappearing at last in the living room: beer in one hand, nailpolish and comb in the other, wrapped in his robe tied neatly at the waist, her hair darkened by the water, a tangled mass pulled over her right should.

"'Preciate it." She announces as she sinks onto - not the leather couch, but the floor in front of it, crossing her legs Injun style beneath her. "Yannow. I really fuckin' do. Oh - and hey. I talked ta Moira, finally."

[J. Barrister] The robe isn't his, precisely; it's a rather feminine shade of lilac, for one. It has the clean, yet slightly woodsy scent of a washed and put-away article of clothing that doesn't see much airing out. The little loops on the terrycloth are worn, but intact.

When she emerges, having fished a beer from the freezer -- which reminds him and sends him catapulting out of his couch to rescue the other bottles before they exploded -- Bruin is in the living room, on the rug in front of the fireplace. He slinks off into the bedroom at her approach. Barrister returns from the kitchen, picking his book up off the couch as he settles his not-inconsiderable bulk into it.

"Oh yeah?" He frowns a little, twisting the cap off his beer. The washer is churning dutifully away in its small alcove off the kitchen. "How'd that go?"

[Skadi] "Hmph - " she offers a faint, dismissive chuff. He returns; she's already deep into the difficult work of combing out the mass of her hair. Detanglers only go so far; there's good physical work to be done, and she is an incongruous sight, sitting on the floor in a lavender robe, her head canted at a forty-five degree angle, holding the mass of her hair in one hand, and an old, well-worn blue come with fat plastic teeth in the other. Skadi stops long enough to look up at him, directly, as he settles back onto the couch, book in hand. " - told 'er she oughtta cook ya lunch, show ya what she kin do. Give her yer number. She done said she'd give ya a call."

[J. Barrister] His smile looks a little like a wince. "Skadi--" he begins, and stops, and tries again, "Skadi, I heard the girl -- I hear Moira's about nineteen."

[Skadi] She looks up when he says her name; she's looking at him - blue eyes stark, skin still just pink from the heat of the shower, buffed with the glow, maybe, of one of those nameless potions women of every age, economic status, and/or cultural attachment seem inclined to put on their skin, her hair dark with damp. The comb is poised over another hank of tangles; she has hold of both, pulling it through.

"Yeah? -" to her name; then her brow draws close, a furrow appears just between them. "I ain't got no clue how old she is. She's a good girl, though. Real pretty. Has a fuckin' lot'a books. Might be nineteen. Might be twenty. Hell's it fuckin' matter?"

[J. Barrister] "It matters -- " and he flounders for a moment; how does one explain this to someone who does not expect to live to see her thirtieth birthday? Or her twenty-fifth, or even her twenty-first, her eighteenth -- someone for whom the clock ran out the day she changed? "It matters because that's very young, Skadi. I'm almost twice her age. I was learning to drive when she was getting born. I was graduating high school when she was getting potty-trained. The year I turned 30, she was 11 years old and still playing with, with, my little ponies or whatever it is they play with nowadays. You see?" He laughs at himself, a helpless little sound, "I don't even know what her generation's pop culture is."

[Skadi] "Huh." Skadi makes a sound, in the back of her throat; "I had some'a them. My little ponies. Pink with glittery named. Name was Miss Skippity Doo. I love 'er 'til my brother's Cobra Commander beat her tha fuck up. Fuckin' ponies - " she continues, patient, explaining, " - ain't got no magic powers. But Cobra Commander had a destructo-ray, s'what Earl said." She combs her hair steadily, grimacing as she works her way through the tangles. The come through the wet locks has a calming, susserant sound, just above the ambient noise of the city, as it filters into the living room, just above the ambient noise of a living house. He trains off; she gives the last of the tangles one last, furious yankthrough and drops her comb into her lap, frowing down at the worn old terrycloth.

"Moira's a good girl; an' - she - " no, stop. Restart. She looks back over her shoulder, frowning at him, her face otherwise set. "Y'ain't people. Yer Fenrir, ain'tcha? Moira's real pretty. It ain't like ya gotta do nothin' fer goin' ta lunch at her place; seein' how good'a cook she is. Gittin' a real meal an'all - it ain't like - it - I mean, I betcha that ya'd like her. She's got real good blood."

[J. Barrister] "We're Fenrir," he affirms, "and we're people. We're both. And some things... well, some nineteen-year-olds are a lot older than others, Skadi. Most Garou are. But then there are some who aren't. And Moira, well, she just doesn't seem the former sort.

"I'll give lunch a try. I've promised. But don't be disappointed if," he makes a shruggish gesture with his hands, the book flapping in his big hand, "if it's a minor disaster."

[Skadi] "People been talkin' 'bout her?" Something low enters Skadi's voice; low and alert. She has not moved, but is seems as if she has. The comb is forgotten; so too is the bottle of nail polish, which sits like a gleaming pink jewel on his hardwood floor, still capped. The question changes; transmutes, "hell've you heard about her?"

[J. Barrister] John stares at her a moment. There's an electric awareness in the room suddenly. Then he brushes it off, "I'm not going to go about repeating gossip, Skadi. It's nothing. And I don't care what other people say. I'll find out for myself, most times. It's just that she's a kid."

[Skadi] "If someone's talkin' on 'er - " Skadi begins; hand around the comb, one planted on the floor. Then her feet and beneath her and she's rising. "listen, I ain't tellin' ya ta repeat no gossip, but if folks is gossip on 'er, 'r insulting her fuckin' honor, I need ta know. Ain't fair fer tha shit ta go down; an' don't nobody know half'a what Moira done. Ya hear? - " She grabs the bottle of nail polishes and slides it into the right pocket of the robe before she's made it to her feet, twists around to sit perched, on the edge of the second couch, looking at him.

The light falls, slanting forward from his reading lamp, illuminating the back of his head, casting the rest of him in shadow. "Yannow she's been touched? She kin fuckin' heal; ain't like a doctor, snipping around. S'like a theurge; knits ya back inna piece. Healed me enough times, even when I ain't had no sense'a what was happenin'. I ain't - I ain't sayin' ya gotta do nothin'. Hell, ya don't wanna go, I ain't gon' make ya. I jes - I mean - "

The creature's face is tense; her mouth is drawn and still, her shoulders are held tight and narrow against her body; even hidden beneath the fluffy old lavender robe, he can see the subtle, physical tells, the way her irritation, unbidden, unherald, unannounced, pools and pills beneath her skin.

[J. Barrister] As she goes off, Barrister looks away uncomfortably -- at the unlit fireplace, the fur-strewn rug where Bruin liked to lie. When she finishes, incomplete, broken-edged, he glances at her, then at his hands. He still had the book in them. He closes it and sets it carefully aside.

"Look. If she calls me, I'm not going to be mean to her. Or throw accusations, or whatever. I'll take her out to lunch. I'll do it. I want to do it. Most likely we'll be civil, friendly, maybe even friends. You can never have too many friends, right? It's just that this might not be what's right for her -- or me. Just so long as you know that."

[Skadi] "I know it," she responds at last, her voice sullen above all else. The good humor has cracked and drained from it, gone hard, like a seized, scrambled egg. Her hands are in the pocket of the old robe; somewhere in the utility area, the washing machine - or maybe the dryer, now, after so long hums and tumbles, tumbles and hums. There's a siren in the distance; somewhere, someone's dying. Somewhere, maybe, someone's being killed.

The room feels small and far too bright; embarrassment constricts her temper, holds it hard against the base of her spine, is telegraphed through her stiff, straight posture, the way she fills the room, no matter how absurd she might seem in worn out lavender terrycloth, wet hair, bare feet. There's nothing domestic about her; the walls and roof can't hold her in. "Give a yell when my shit's dry, willya?" - she says, still tight, stopping just long enough to sweep up her beer. The bottle against her thigh, she frowns - "I'm onna set out on tha porch." There's still space to fill. "Promised my momma I'd give her a fuckin' call."

[J. Barrister] "Skadi," this, when she's past him already, heading for the cool porch, the heavy scent of gardenia and rose. "It was Kendra."

Barrister gets up out of his chair, leaning over to put his beer down and pick his book up, filling up the tiny living room, filling it with his breadth and height and depth the way she had filled it with her rage.

"But I think maybe you ought to let Moira handle it herself. She might not be Garou, but she -- well, I'd rather handle it myself." A pause. "And I'll tell her about it, if you think it's right."

[Skadi] She's turned around, Skadi, in the shadowy foyer. Her gym bag, having vomited forth the innumerable mysteries of her toiletries into his bathroom, is a dark and empty kidney of nylon, or so it seems, deflated on the floor. Recognition with the name; the narrowing both of her mouth and her eyes. Her posture changes, so subtly, from closed to expansive - a decompression of her spine, maybe, a twist of her wrists, and she is thinking - trying to push words back through the first responsive kick of fury.

"Moira ain't you - " Skadi replies, at last; ruminative through the haze of her fury - thinking, still, clearly - brow furrowed, corners of her mouth turned down - and hard. " - she's jes' a fuckin' kid." The irony is clear; whether it is conscious or not is entirely unclear. "'N fuckin' Kendra's fuckin' Moira's ex-fuckin' boyfriend." - the latter is spat out, all at a go, disgust curdling the words - at the fucking, maybe, or the games of it, at the game made of it, then, perhaps at the expense of her kinfolk. She's gaining mometum; the words come at a fast clip, forward running. "Told Moira I'd stand fer her honor, 'n I aim ta do it. No reason ta tell her; no reason ta git her all upset. Kendra ain't gon' be doin' that no more, 'time I git through with 'er."

[J. Barrister] Barrister makes a slight gesture with his hand, the book: it's her decision.

"I'll let you know when the laundry's done," he says, and turns back to his chair.

[Skadi] Abruptly, she jerks open the front door; the cool night air. The gardenia, the roses, the perfumed air.

Skadi lifts her beer in an odd little toast at the end of it; awkward in the aftermath, the possibility of violence coalescing beneath her skin, knotting through her joints. She closes her eyes against it, feels the night air, and it does not cool, but it does divert her, somehow.

"Ya oughtta! - " she'll call out five minutes later, over the murmured strands of a passing conversation onto which is he not likely to eavesdrop. " - make yerself a fuckin' porch swang John Barrister."

She'll be gone in an hour, hair still wet, toes unpainted as-yet, filthy clothes clean, her ten million dollar-store unguents packed back into the nylon back, someone to see, out there. Debts of honor, or something equally inane, as all that. Debts of fuckin' honor.

[Imogen Slaughter] The pub is dimly lit, with low-hung lits over the booths and little lighting toward the middle of the main room. It's alright - no one in the centre has been attempting read menus today. The tables have been taking away, the chairs set up in a semi circle. The Fox and Feather tries to bill itself as an authentic British pub; right down to having a regular jam session. The hour is late; the session is breaking up. A redhaired woman lowers a fiddle from it's position against her shoulder, near her throat and bends forward at the waist to place the instrument carefully into the case by her feet. Half of the musicians, eight or so, tonight, have already stood.

Imogen Slaughter does not stand until her instrument is put away. Once it is stowed, she unfolds from her chair, standing with an economy that is almost graceful. She lifts her guitar and her fiddle from the hardwood floor and puts them aside before joining the rest in putting away the chairs at the far wall.

As she passes Princess Wolf, there is a glance - one that is sharp and narrow gazed, a tension to her mouth that speaks to more of knowledge than of a reaction to rage. Then, she looks away, lifting the chair to place it at the top of the stack.

[Thaney] The g(arou) girl had come, informally late, and slipped between a school-teacher named Jonas (young, in his twenties) and an exceptionally strong-willed older woman called Tooth, for reasons none were ever able to ascertain, but had something to do with how uncompromising her opinions, once given, were. What all of that has to do with teeth is anybodies guess, but the name is what she was called by her companion, a mellow-eyed man in his early middle age, who might have been her son in law, who also might have been an aspiring writer, or a journalist.

It would be a lie to say she didn't give Imogen a contemplative, oh, reflective look when she noticed her: flame-haired, pale-skinned, and fianna, fianna, fianna says the blood that marches up and down her backbone. She also doesn't move her chair closer. She also doesn't say anything. She's content to play her guitar, treasured like a fatted calf before it's brought to a golden idol.

And now the session has wound down ("You have a ride home, Jane?" "Hnnhm!") and the musicians are drifting back to their regular lives. ("That sound isn't an answer." "I'm good, Porter.") As Imogen passes Princess, the kinwoman - she's gotta be - gives Princess a look.

The serious-eyed teenager (sixteen, maybe? seventeen? fifteen? no, eighteen - naw, no way eighteen, maybe...) settles another chair - muscles cord - on the stack beside Imogen's, just as the older woman is turning away. She says, "Hey. Uhm. 'Scuse me."

Not get out of my way but may I have your attention and whatever could it be.

[Imogen Slaughter] There is something about purebreeding. It is a look, a stance. It is in the line of her jaw, the straight edge of her nose. It is in the curved shells of her ears, and the blood that flows in the tiny veins there, just beneath the skin. It is in the colour of her skin and the hue of her hair.

It is in the way she stands, the line of her back, the position of her neck. The way her hand lifts as she pushes back hair that has escaped from her clip, tendering back tendrils to tuck them behind her ear as Thaney speaks to her.

All these visuals, and still, if Princess were blind, she would know the breeding and be able to know 'Fianna'. The kinship is there, down in her marrow - where blood calls to blood.

The woman - not a girl, too poised and past that teenage and early twenties stage where such a word could still be applied - turns her head to look at the teenager. An eyebrow arches, copper against pale skin.

"Yes?" In a word, her foreigness is made clear, her accent and tone betraying her unAmerican birthplace.

[Thaney] The moon is waning; still gibbous, but not for much longer, and then the moon will be divided perfectly, cleanly. It's just not something people normally think about. Looking up from the street, well, normal city-dwellers are surprised to see that, hey, it's a full moon tonight. How about that. You know what they say about full moons.

Princess notices full moons and moons that are a little less full than full and moons that are black and invisible and all the other moons in between. She feels them, you see. She's feeling it, tonight, the recession of its strong tug on the part of herself that makes her a monster. The rage. It makes her mellow, behind the serious.

"Who taught you how to play like that? Really fantastic. Back when the blond lady and Tooth were doing that snake-thing, that little embellishment - I don't know what to call it? - that brought in? Changed the whole tone of the thing. It was a lot of fun."

[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen steps away from the stacks of chairs - there are still three left and she steps back toward the middle of the room to retrieve one. A glance over her sholulder for the girl. Imogen's eyes are dark - in the dim lighting it is impossible to see that they are blue. Only that they are dark and without light, they are black.

"Thank you," presumably, for the compliment. The slight woman speaks as she lifts the chair, carrying it by a hand on either side of the seats. "S'called 'wrappin' the chord'."

When the redhead had looked at her, that once before they had begun to speak, Thaney could have sworn that Imogen knew what she was. Could have laid her life on it. Now, perhaps it is not so easy. If she knows, she appears to be content to continue the charade.

She's slight - barely over five feet, but the muscles beneath her skin speak of strength - or at least a lack of softness. Definition to her arms as she lifts the chair and puts it on the stack, a sort of easy movement as she turns to face the girl, one that speaks of a comfort in her own skin, an awareness of where her body is, how her joints work.

"No offence," she remarks, off hand, "But yeh're a bit young fer a bar, are yeh not?"

[Thaney] Princess twines a strand of fiery (and false, as false as the paint on a fire-engine, as false as the colors in a sunset in Los Angeles, or in the dirty, polluted air of Mexico, and almost as bright, too!) hair around her index finger. Most of her hair's caught up, understand, in two pig-tails, about level with her ears but closer to the back of her skull. Her eyebrows draw together, slightly. "I don't usually get that," she says, gravely, "from non-Americans. You're British, right?" Beat. "Yeah, I am too young, but the owner said I could stay for the session as long as I don't drink. Or try to." Another beat, and then, her eyebrows draw a little more together. "You aren't a cop, are you? Because if it's illegal, I don't want any trouble for the owner. I just wanted to play, and hear other people play, and not have to know them. You know?"

[Imogen Slaughter] She offers a tight smirk, "Perhaps America is rubbing off on me.

"S'only illegal if they serve yeh alcohol," she says, and steps back from the stack of chairs. Another lingering patron moves in, dragging the last two chairs and stacks them, one after the other.

"So, yeh ha' nothin' t'worry about." A pause, then, "There's another pub, down near Essex Street yeh might try. They're quite inta improvisations," she pushes hair back from her eyes absently. "It's a different crowd than this one, as well."

[Thaney] "Down near Essex?" There's a mild frown in place, but it's a thoughtful frown. Does she know the place? No, she does not know the place. Her eyes tighten around the corners, crinkle, and even in the dim-lit pub it is clear that one of the girl's eyes is paler than the other - the ruin of symmetry. "Thanks. I might check it out. Do you remember what it's called?" Princess looks away from Imogen, who she has been regarding steadily, gaze trailing after some of the musicians. They're going outside, to smoke. The owner is chatting by the bar, nursing something with a lot of hop.

When she looks back, it's to say, "No offense, but - " and Imogen has, perhaps, been around the block long enough to know, know this next before it comes, especially from those who have that answering fianna fianna throb in their blood calls to blood and " - I feel like I should know you. Should I, uhm, know you?"

[Imogen Slaughter] "The Highlander," she offers after a beat of thought - no frown, no real change in expression, only a hitch in the flow of the conversation where presumably she has stopped to consider.

Should I - know you?

The doctor's expression at the best of times is reserved - her emotions are revealed in the smallest of motions; at the corner of her eyes, at the edge of her mouth. Here, the edge of her mouth tightens a fraction, the space between her eyebrows draws minutely in, deepening a crease.

Her awareness expands to the room around them, glancing at the patrons, the bartender, the departing musicians. Then, tightens again as she turns her attention back to Princess.

"Yer kind says tha' I remind them o' someone," she says neutrally. "I cannot tell, myself."

[Thaney] The Highlander, Imogen says, and Princess nods once, the same way musicians - not classically trained musicians, anyway - will sometimes bob their heads to keep the beat. Just a way to mark the memory. Understand, the girl is a creature of thought, a creature of memory, and her wide, clear eyes (one clear, one full of smoke) are steady, now they've returned, and seeing, too.

She just met Imogen, doesn't even know her name, but she recognizes signs, even if they are in an unfamiliar language. Yer kind, Imogen says, and Princess says, "You do remind me of someone. Well, not someone, exactly. It's hard to say."

"What's your name?"

[Imogen Slaughter] "He would ha' died long before you were born." She will never understand how it worked - how a Garou could look at her and feel her blood. Find something compelling in her, not because of herself, but because of something she has no control over. Her ancestry - the heroes of her blood.

She has over time, however, come to accept it. There is so much incontrovertible truth, after all.

"Imogen," she says and after a beat adds her last name, as if it made a difference, "Slaughter."

[John Barrister] "It's an open-mic night," John explains, paralleling the enormous gas-guzzling Chevy Silverado with no small amount of skill. Anything less and the long-bed, full-cab, double-rear-axle monstrosity would easily roll over some poor little civic. Crunch, speed bump. "Amateurs come by and play. Some are terrible. Others are pretty good. They're usually not bad at this place."

The handbrake ratchets into place and he kills the ignition, reaching into the rear seat to grab a sheaf of flyers. "Got your banjo? I can't remember when this one ends, but if they're finished the pub two doors down has open mic until 1am."

[Skadi] "I thank I'm jes' gon' watch - " the banjo is in the extended cab, the truck's fucking back seat, in a battered old case with a bullet hole near the neck, papered over by a faded unicorn sticker beneath a faded 38 Special patch, the stiff kind folks once ironed onto their jean jackets, demonstrating loyalty to one brand of southern rock, or another brand of fiery-fingered heavy metal. The black case hides the bloodstains it has absorded over the years, the beer and the whiskey, the cheap, roadside food - the iced tea. Hell, it's a miracle case. " - first time 'round. Yannow?"

She frowns at him; her reflection in the rearview mirror, and the kinsman's, then back over her shoulder at the banjo case. "Ain't never played too much fer other folks, see, not in a real long time. Mostly jes' noodled around with tha pack. Kin give ya'a hand with them flyers, though."

[Thaney] And silence.

The teenager is quiet; there is a reaction. The eyebrows prick, again, and one corner of her mouth pulls down. Her eyelashes, which are actually long, sweep across her cheekbones. There isn't a sly bone in her body. Silence, and then, "Oh."

And, in case it wasn't obvious, she says, "I've heard about you. I mean," and here, a frown directed at herself, "I heard about you from Tristan. He said you were bad ass. You're with - "

Another pause. Then Princess inhales, small and quiet, and the corner of her mouth curves upward. "Do you know Evan, too? Kind of orange-y hair?"

[John Barrister] "Thanks," he says, collecting a big handful of flyers -- and entire packet of Xerox paper Kinkoed into flyers for some struggling little music shop somewhere or other. WE SPECIALIZE IN STRING INSTRUMENTS! it reads, and, INSTRUMENTS - STRINGS - SHEET MUSIC - ACCESSORIES. The bottom is cut into piano keys, each printed with a phone number and a web address.

"I think I'll just leave them by the door though," he adds, pushing his door open and sliding out. The Silverado is high off the ground, but Barrister's frame is long and he bridges the gap easily. The door shuts behind him. He calls over the bed, "I don't like to push it on people and management doesn't like their clientele harassed. It's sort of a classy joint, this one. The Green Leprechaun down the street is a little rowdier." He's up on the curb now, buttoning his fine wool coat with one hand; the fine wool coat that always, despite his best attempts, made him look a bit like he was playing dress-up.

[Imogen Slaughter] "Bad ass," spoken in a british voice, there is a sort of handling of the word that makes it foreign. It is not a phrase Imogen would ever use - not in a hundred years, and Thaney can almost hear the quotes around it. Unlike the compliment of her music, this, which is a compliment in the Garou world, is received with almost a reluctant mirthlessness. The twist of her mouth might almost be a grimace, if it were more fully formed.

A half finished sentence is ignored. It is dismissed with a misplaced blink, a brief tightening of her jaw. It is gone quickly.

"I know Evan," she says. "Yeh want a message passed?"

[Skadi] "Classy place, huh?" a distinct, sideslanting glance, as she hits the ground, back at Barrister as he circles the truck. Skadi turns to shut the door behind her with more force than was strictly necessary, an entirely unconscious habit after a couple years spent slamming Betsy's doors hard enough to make 'em shut tight; or, sometimes - hard enough to get her point across. The doors latch; maybe the remote chirrups as the kin hits LOCK. Her face swims in the passenger's window as she stands on the sidewalk, and she glances back, surreptitiously checking out her reflection. The edge of a grin, long-familiar - she looks just like her mother - that's what folks say, that's what they've always said, from the photographs. " - ya thank they're gon' let me in?"

There's nothing fine about her clothing. The jeans are from Wal-Mart. So, too, is the pale pink halter - empire waisted and backless. The suede blazer - stylized, western in its details, the broad flare of the collar and hem, the visible contrast stitching - from an end-of-the-season sale at some nameless Chicago store. Hands in the front pockets of her jeans, just to the first knuckle, Skadi waits until Barrister has gained the sidewalk, then falls into step beside him. "Leprachauns are fuckin' rowdy, so that don't surprise me none. Which one d'ya like best?"

[Thaney] Bad ass, with almost audible quotations; Princess's response is, of course, a listening quiet, an even-handed nod. Makes her seem older, almost; makes her seem younger, almost. She slides both hands into the pockets of her jeans, which look as though they could probably use a wash or three, although they're recently cleaned, and the jeans slide a couple inches down the slope of her hip. Belt be damned. She curls her fingers, and hitches them back up. "No," she answers, and this time the hesitation before she speaks doesn't quite evolve into a silence. "I just wanted to know he was still alive. And well. I mean, as far as you know?"

[Imogen Slaughter] "Last I checked," her answer is careless. Then, a pause. It cannot be described as a softening, but it can at least be described as an extrapolation. "He was fine as o' yesterday."

Which was not, precisely, the last time she'd seen him.

[John Barrister] John doesn't give her an empty reassurance. He looks at her thoughtfully, and then nods. "Yeah. Places like this only enforce the dress code for the men, usually." A lopsided grin. "To maintain a male:female ratio that gives us the impression of having half a chance."

He tucks the sheaf under his left arm, opening the door with his right -- a thoughtless sort of chivalry. "Neither," he replies, rumbly. "I'd rather stay in with a good book."

[Thaney] "Cool," she says, with something of a smile, different from the faint motion of her mouth earlier, the curve. It doesn't have a greater percentage of sincerity, per se, but it does actually mean more, a little hook of the almost but not quite luminous. And quiet. And muted. And now gone, thank you.

She's very American. All American. Entirely American, is Princess. Doesn't particularly hide it. Says, because she's inquisitive, and she doesn't really want the conversation to end on that note, doesn't want Imogen to tell Evan that she, Princess (hey, you didn't give her a name, stupid), asks about him, for reasons of her own. Good reasons, too. Says, because, all of that -

"Do you play any other instruments?"

[Skadi] "Huh - " A bank of warm, breathable air as the door opens; the low murmur of conversations, the good, solid clink of glasses against each other, or against warm wood. The light has a different quality inside; and the shadows, the shadows as well. The pair bring a burst of chill with them, the suggestion of rain on the wind to compete with the lively melange of perfume, sweat, and alcohol inside. The unsubtle aura of her rage crackles around her, sunthing, furious and hot and thoughtless.

Skadi ducks around Barrister, gives him a sly, upslanting look - mouth crooked at the edges, not precisely a grin. " - know what I'd rather be fuckin' doin'? Fish - "

- but no. The flash of red hair, authentic and bottled, near the bar. "Fuckin' hell. S'Thaney 'n Silence's Fiann," so she announces, an elbow to Barrister's ribs as he deposits the fliers. "Hey - HEY!" - real loud, right over whatever music the bar is piping in, in the lull after (or between, or something) performances, that's how Skadi announces herself, waving, the thick braid swinging like a pendulum down her spine before she takes off, rage and intent clearing a rather direct path to the pair of musicians.

[Imogen Slaughter] "Bit o' piano," she answers, "Not-" whatever her sentence was, it is incomplete - Imogen's attention is drawn by Skadi's shout. Her weight shifts and she does not look over her shoulder toward her, but half turns toward the blonde Modi, eating the ground between them with every stride.

The conversation is thrown off its rails.

[John Barrister] "You fish too?" Barrister brightens. "There's decent fishing to be had in Tekakwitha -- oof," elbowed: his side feels like a slab of prime beef. He sets the stack of fliers down on the coatcheck girl's booth, takes one off the top and pins it to the much-stabbed corkboard beside it. Heads turn toward Skadi. John takes the time to take his coat off and hand it to the girl for the highway-robbery price of $5 an item. His sweater underneath is dark green, the weave thin but heavy enough to drape. He turns sideways to squeeze through a gauntlet of people Skadi only needed to walk through. She was leaner; she was ragier.

As usual, he lifts his hand in a sort of wave at Thaney. "You just keep turning up, don't you," he says to the girl. The smile is genuine. The corners of his eyes crinkle. "You left your hair scrunchie in my truck," he adds, and then looks at Imogen with the sort of expectant friendliness of someone meeting a friend-of-a-friend. "Hi."

[Thaney] She listens.

And then -
Hey - HEY -
And -

The redheads both turn, each in their distinctive this is the way my body works way, Imogen shifting her weight completely, Princess just turning her head, while otherwise she remains quite still. Of course her serious expression doesn't waver, although there's something pleased to see both members of the Get of Fenris (alive, and well) brood, and she lifts a hand to wave back at J.B.

"Hi, Skadi," she says, once Little Miss Swamp Queen in her Little Missed In That Pink Halter Top is near enough. She doesn't lift her voice, but she still projects. Of course. Then, for J.B., the spark of a smile, "Think you're the one following me." The place has gotten crowded, again, and Princess notices this with a frown, clouds her eyes, pulls them to where her guitar is stashed. It's okay, though, and nobody seems to have mollested, insulted, made inappropriate overtures to and/or otherwise come in contact with it.

[Skadi] Skadi looks younger. Not young - but, younger. Maybe her rage is less tonight; spent somewhere in some hunt. Maybe she's yet to look at the moon. Maybe it's the lighting in the place - all soft, warmed by the woods meant to emulate the genuine British article. Maybe it's the company: there's that, too. She's bright; it's hard to look away. The golden hair, the vivid eyes, the lean cut of her figure - the rage, that too, and for Thaney, if no one else, the Get of Fenris pure breed - the nordic angle of her face, the sharp cut of her jaw. What's bred in the bone.

The path behind her opens and closes and shifts again. Skadi sidles up to the bar, and to Imogen and Thaney beside the bar with a wide grin. "This here's John Barrister, Doc. An' it's Doctor Slaughter. Ain't like a pediatrician, 'r nothin', though. Cuts up fuckin' dead folks." Near automatically, Skadi's eyes flicker to Imogen's stomach, and back again. The creature hooks a barstool - (if someone was sitting there - she found something more interesting and enjoyable across the room real quick) - with the toe of her pink, rhinestone covered cowboy boot and pulls it up beside Thaney, scraping it across the worn wood boards. A glance over her shoulder suggests that the bartender is more interested in polishing his highball glasses than in serving her; her brow draws close, but she struggles to shove it off.

Then, " - done found Loki, too, by the by." - for Thaney.

[John Barrister] "Hi," becomes "Hi, nice to meet you." Some people have a gift of saying it like they mean it. John doesn't, really, but John has something a little better: he does mean it. If only because Doctor Slaughter is the only person he's met in their small, strange circle that's topped twenty-five. "A doctor, huh. My youngest sister is studying to be a nurse." Cuts up fuckin' dead folks, Skadi continues, cheerily enough, and Barrister doesn't quite contain a surprised blink. "Oh -- well." Awkward. "Well, at least you aren't squeamish about it." Recovery. He sticks his hand out. It's big and hairy. John, in general, is big and hairy, thick through the chest and heavy in the shoulder. No one would believe he shaved twice a day, but it was the truth.

"I'm going to get a drink," he adds. "Should I bring you something back?" A glance around includes everyone in the 'you'.

[Imogen Slaughter] The kin's stomach is flat beneath the fall of her light cotton shirt. Another disappointment for the female Modi. If she notices the glance, or the question (criticsm) it implies, she affects not to notice as she picks up her guitar in one hand, the fiddle in the other. The glance toward Barrister is brief, a snap shot that takes much of him in, "A pleasure," she says, without giving much care to the meaning of her words.

He offers his hand, and there's a glance down at it before she lays her fiddle case aside and takes his hand to shake it. Her grip is firm and cool, the tips of her fingers calloused. "No," she agrees, "I'm not very squeamish." Her accent is worth noting - the clipped sounds, the burrs. She is more British than the pub is and can likely point out all its flaws.

As his gaze includes her, Imogen shakes her head - she does not want anything to drink, running a hand over her flame hued hair.

[Skadi] "Shot'a Jack 'n a beer. Anythang what ain't watered down horse piss. 'n git - " a flicker toward Thaney, beside her. Familiar: unfamiliar. Skadi leans back, both elbows resting on the bar, the lines of the blazer she always wears, of late, falling away from her torso and hips, hanging down behind the seat of the backless barstool. "Thaney a fuckin' Shirley Temple. Ain't that whatcha want - "

[Thaney] ( blah. chat ate my post THREE TIMES IN A ROW. one sec. )

[Thaney] - done found Loki, too, by the by. -

There. There it is, again; that brief, muted smile that nonetheless conceals some kind of radiance. It's almost visible, a tantalizing beneath-the-surface gleam. "Good," she says, and is content to be quiet. Quiet, while Skadi slings herself next to the Fianna; quiet, while Imogen and J.B. are made better acquainted. She's about to answer him, too, to politely demure, say, naw, I'm legal tonight, but Skadi answers for her first. And " - a Shirley Temple? - " she flushes, hotly, torn between being good and legal and saying I can drink you and your ancestors under the table, Get! Let's go!

- good and legal wins the day, though. She says, "No. Just some olives. Please."

[Thaney] And, gaze drawn back to Imogen, picking up her violin-case, her guitar-case, "Are you going home?"

[John Barrister] Jack. A beer. And a Shirley Temple. Barrister, who gave Thaney a beer the day they met, is a little doubtful. Thaney asks for olives. He laughs under his breath and turns. His wide back fords through the crowd. The blood of Fenris gives him a height advantage, a weight advantage, and a muscle-to-fat-ratio advantage, but it does not give him the rage that would allow even a girl as slight as Thaney to back everyone away at arm's length if she so much as glared.

He's gone for several minutes. When Barrister comes back, he has four beers in one hand, their necks caught skillfully between his blunt fingers. Some Boston microbrewery or other, some rich golden ale. He hands one to Skadi, keeps one for himself. The rest are set as open offers or temptations on the little round bar table they've clustered around: two garou, two kin, and a guitar.

Also: a small glass of olives, and a shot of mellow amber whiskey. The gold wedding band on his left hand glints in the dim light. Imogen -- hairtouching or no -- is out of luck. However, the redhaired woman's double-teaming catches his attention. He nods at the smaller case: "Is that a violin," and steals an olive from Thaney, "or a fiddle?"

The difference: the shape of the bridge, the attitude of the playing, and whether or not one sues when someone else spills a beer on it.

[Imogen Slaughter] "s'a fiddle," she answers, reaching over to pick it up again from where she had laid it briefly to shake Barrister's hand.

A glance toward Thaney, an incline of her head, "Yes, I am." The answers to both questions are bare bones. They say nothing more than she needs.

"Ha' a good night," this, directed to no one in particular as she steps back and takes her leave.

[John Barrister] It's a fiddle, "Bah. Philis--"
Yes, she is leaving. "Oh, well--"
Have a good night.

"--goodnight," he echoes, and forgets to push his flyers. Imogen departs. In her wake, Barrister raises his eyebrows at Thaney, at Skadi: was it something he said?

[Skadi] "Would'a put my Jack in yer Shirley Temple - " Skadi is announcing to Thaney, out of the side of her mouth as Barrister returns with drinks all around. Instead of putting her Jack anywhere, she tips the mouth of the shotglass between her thumb and pointed finger, swirling the liquid to watch the light reflecting in the glass; to watch her face htere, distorted and distressed by the liquid, the twin globes of shadow/light cast on the bottle of the glass, the illusion of depth - something. Or just - offering up some sort of private toast. Yeah, that: a private toast, silent and internal, the gleam of her eyes and the gleam of the liquid. She tips it back, tips her whole head back, long braid swinging rapidly against the line of her spine, down against the chrome curve of the barstool, swallows it all, swallows hard against the burn of the liquor in the back of her throat.

The modi surfaces, sets the shot glass carefully on the table, and fixes her intent gaze on some midpoint in Imogen's departing back. "Later, doc." - over the heads of a few patrons, who have already sifted between the trio and the kinswoman. A glance, sidelong, at Barrister; then leans forward against the table, the bar, whatever, while sitting back on the stool, squaring her body, centering her hips and weight over it.

"Naw," a verbal response to the unspoken question is what she offers, as she grabs the neck of the microbrew and drags it across the wood, frowning speculatively through the mouth of the bottle before eyeing the label. Hrmm. "S'probably got a body ta go cut up, 'r somethan."

[John Barrister] "Oh, well." A shrug; he lets it roll off his back. And, "It won't turn you into a bleeding-heart liberal," Barrister says, amused, to Skadi's eyeing of the label and the amber fluid inside. "One bottle won't, anyway." A barstool grates across the floor. He plants it under himself and slides up on it, leaning his elbows on the small table, his shoulders like two bowling balls when he hunkers over like this.

[Thaney] "Good night," Princess says, to Imogen, unsure of what to call her: Imogen or Dr. Slaughter. And whatever latent Fianna pride (in their [non]ability to hold their cups) Skadi had pricked, why, Princess is an even-keeled creature in most respects, and it dissipates entirely, replaced by a certain abashment, at the side-mouthed assurance; she nods, just very slightly, and says, "Don't want the owner to get in trouble. He's letting me in on sufferance." And then she eats the olives, pleased by their presence in a whole little glass, just like a child would: she puts them on the tips of her fingers, and then squeezes her tongue through the end, sucks them off - almost delicately.

While she's loading up another hand, she says, "She plays really well. I wish I'd learned how to fiddle."

[Imogen Slaughter] (Thanks for the RP, guys! *runs for bed*)

[Skadi] "Huh. How many then?" - she hasn't stopped eyeing the beer, the art-encrusted label, some picture of a failing sky, tall ships with stylized lines around them, the deliberately folksy font used to display the brewery's name. She picks it up, holding it neatly, carefully cinched, palm around the bottle's long neck, fingers - and, here. Princess speaks; and Skadi stops eyeing the beer long enough to eye the olives tipping the ends of the Fianna's fingers, her hand spread out, the rounded green digits like nothing so much as a mildly dowdy tree frog.

"I mean, two 'r three 'r eight. Gotta know, 'cuz I ain't turnin' inna no bleeding heart, no matter how fuckin' good tha beer is." Alert then, straightening as Imogen disappears into the crowd, then reappears at the door. Skadi watches the final few feet of her progress until she does indeed disappear, the last sight of her hair framed against the darkness outside. The bottle returns to the tabletop with a nice, solid thunk, all glass on wood. "Kin still learn, yannow." Thinking, thoughful, " - tha fiddle. Maybe ask 'er ta teach ya." - inspiring the immediate, still faint-frowning, a furrow between her brows. "I thank her'n Kemp used ta be real close."

[John Barrister] "Well, you've got your guitar," Barrister observes, fitting the bottle to his mouth. "And Skadi's got her banjo. I don't play anything at all." A wry grin, to Skadi -- "Three. Maybe four, if you leave a lot of dregs." He holds up his fingers, an inch apart or so, squinting.

And drops that hand, folds it into the crook of his elbow, folds his forearms over the table. There's a sort of cozy languor spreading through his limbs: a little bit of booze, some nice company, a nice woodsy pub, comfortable silences in the conversation. He looks up, "Kemp? Really?" He can't see that; the Rotagar that had offered/threatened to unpack for him while he was out, the redhead that had slammed the doors on casual conversation once, twice, thrice, and then walked out the door. The thought puts a smile on his face.

[Thaney] Language, again. Princess enjoys language, loves language and something Skadi says causes her attention to become steadfast. There's more weight to the attention, for an instant; then the pressure lifts. She says, after sucking the olive off of her pinky finger and her ring finger, after swallowing them, "Maybe." But she's withdrawn, when she says it, and cautious. "She probably has more patience than Kendra does. But, Skadi, have you ever heard somebody learning how to play the fiddle play the fiddle - ?"

[Skadi] "Yep." - she says to Kemp? And "Yep." - she says to really, nodding her head in time with her own answers, confirming them in case he didn't catch - or believe - the verbal agreement, playing the part of her own Greek chorus. Something like that. "Knowed 'em since he was a kid, she has." Pause; drink. Grin, too - an abstracted, distant sort of grin, which isn't happy, so much as it is aware - briefly livewire, painfully aware. Skadi shakes her head. The heavy braid against the suede coat, her back bare beneath it, against the warm, soft lining. She's aware of both: braid and coat, and the hard edge of the table beneath her forearms. The circle of metal into which she has hooked her toes. And - and -

"And I don't really have my banjo." The creature looks up, shooting an oddly wry glance from Thaney to Barrister and back again, chasing away the shape of that grin from her compelling features, her generous mouth. "I ain't no kinda musician like Thaney. I done heard her song; s'fuckin' poetry, yannow? I know poetry when I fuckin' hear it." The beer is solid in her hand, and slick - sweating.

But, Skadi, have you ever heard somebody learning to play the fiddle play the fiddle - ?

"You ever heard me play tha fuckin' banjo?" It's direct enough to be a almost-a-challenge.

[Sandra Davenport] (ooc: Open scene?)

[Thaney] ( Yup, s'far as I'm aware. )

[Skadi] (Indeed!)

[Sandra Davenport] (OOC: then, places please?)

[John Barrister] (yar)

[Thaney] ( The Fox and the Feather, a "British" pub, 'round a bar-table by the bar )

[Sandra Davenport] (ooc: thank you!)

[John Barrister] He's still a kid. The words are right there, tip of the tongue, tipping the bottle, tipsy, a long swallow. The words are swallowed, because Thaney's a kid, too, and so is Skadi, and so is everyone, and in the eyes of the venerated old elders of the tribe, so is John. Meanwhile, in the eyes of Gaia, or whatever it is they were all fighting for, none of them were children. They were all soldiers, ready to die.

Barrister is quiet, listening to the exchange, engaged, simply choosing not to speak. Silence suits him as well as his easy slow conversation does. It fits him. He leans back -- the bar, the wall, something -- and draws his heels up on the higher rung of the barstool, balancing the beer bottle in his palms, on his lap.

[Sandra Davenport] Unnoticed by many, she was dragged to the pub earlier in the evening by her classmates. Fortunately, there are dark corners where one can hide for most of a night and not be bothered, even though the festivities of the Fifth of May swirled in a constant ebb and flow. (You don't mind, Sandy, do you? Of course you don't. See you Monday!) Now, most are moved on to other places, and the Pub has calmed down.

Even still, it is easy to miss her. Until now - if anyone happens to look her way that is. She stands and pushes from the table with a sigh. The book she was reading is closed, and tucked into her purse which she drapes over her shoulder to fall against opposite hip. She leans back with her hands against her lower back, stretching with a spine popping lean. She can tell whoever asks that yes, she'd gone out Saturday night. She'll just neglect to mention she sat in the corner, drinking water, and reading a book.

Straightening again, she pushes up her glasses, and heads across the pub toward the restroom. She is not a pretty girl, Sandra, but she does attract some notice usually by some. It is the blood of Nordic Heroes in her veins, written across her soul.

[Thaney] s'fuckin' poetry, yannow?

Princess, well, she doesn't blush - not quite. But her ears go a little bit pinker, and her nose goes a little bit paler, and her freckles are a little more evident, and she tips the glass of olives (well, there are only two left) toward Skadi, a silent ya want?

Then she says, serious, "Thank you. And," her tone - well, it doesn't lighten, there's not a big enough change to say that, but it does shift to something less grave, "nope. Not yet. Uhm. Maybe you can play your banjo, I'll borrow someone's fiddle, and we can practice at Jaybee's place."

It's reeeeally hard to tell how serious she is/isn't. She slants a sidelong glance, toward the Fenrir kin, with his bowling ball shoulders.

[John Barrister] "Nn-nn." His attention had wandered: the hip, intellectual, hybrid-driving, indie-label-listening crowd; the earth-tones of their clothes; the fine-boned, fashionably bespectacled women and their designer drinks and their microbrewery beers. It pulls back to the two Garou, the girl just a shade too young for this place, the other girl-woman many shades too wild, too bright. Skadi's beauty is a savage, sharp thing, the fox in the henhouse, the tiger and not the lady. "I don't think so." He finishes his beer and, since neither Imogen nor Thaney have helped themselves, helps himself to one of the two bottles on the table. "I treasure my hearing."

[Skadi] "Kemp kin play tha cowbell." - Skadi offers immediate and very sober agreement, just before she drains her beer all at a go, right dow to the dregs and past them, until you could see daylight through the round patter of the bottle's base; no - not daylight, but instead an unobstructed and untainted and untinted view of the can lights cleverly sunk into the ceiling and directed to illuminate everything with that warm wood glow, the light that makes everyone's skin look healthier and better, warming, washed with soft - never harsh - shadows.

Or maybe that is the dim, golden glow of the alcohol uncoiling through her limbs from someplace that seems like her stomach - but, no. Gut. Seat of instinct and courage, right - no guts, no glory. All that nameless viscera inside. "Ya play host an' make us cookies 'n milk." She pauses, bends lower - just pointing before she grabs the second remaining bear, tucking three fingers around it. " - 'R wings 'n beer, I'll buy ya some earplugs. Git 'em personalized an' shit. What's that called? Mono-fuckin' grammed."

- her eyes touch on Thaney, then swing around. Barrister. His eyes as he looks back at them; the bristle of beard already growing back, dark beneath his skin; - and beyond his hunkered shoulders, bowling balls, boulders, a direct line to Sandra. Skadi blinks once, but then she's following the girl's path through the play, eyes bright, attention narrowed - coruscating, those eyes, heart-of-flame blue in this indirect light, staring, hard.

[Thaney] "Bruin probably wouldn't like it," she says. "Do they make dog-shaped ear-plugs?"

There's something akin to wistfulness in the gray-eyed, youthful-skinned fianna's eyes as she watches Skadi drain her beer, all at a go, or maybe it's just something - something else. Something quiet, something private, something genetic...

Still, her eyes crinkle around the corners, convey a smile without an actual smile needing to be present. Skadi goes still; Skadi goes intense, goes hot, stares at something. So Princess looks, too, and notes Sandra - the smell of her, if that's what you want to call it, the loose coil of something, same as J.B. has, which says, Hi. My name is ______, Get of Fenris.

"You know her?" she says.

[John Barrister] Barrister only laughs at that, quietly, and then both women -- both Garou -- get that look in their eyes, that alertness in their bodies, that je ne sais quoi that says they see something John doesn't, and can't see. He looks anyway: over his hunkered shoulder, in the general direction they look. He doesn't even know what they're looking at, but it wasn't a seven-eyed monster, and that was enough for him. John turns back, starting in on his second beer.

[Sandra Davenport] There's a feeling that you get when someone stares at you. It causes the small hairs at the back of the neck to rise, a tingle in your gut that something isn't quite right, and it leads to the turn of head, the sweep of dark eyes in effort to find the heat burning into the skin. It's a feeling that Sandra has felt before, and will feel again. Quickly, as a second pair of eyes join the first.

Sandra is, as has been noted, not a pretty girl. She wears no makeup, her hair is not styled, and while many of the patrols were glasses for show, hers are purely for actual use. She's practically blind without them. She's not thin, nor is she fat - she's more curves then most, and they are not accentuated with lovely clothing, but rather hidden under jeans and a sweater - dowdy almost.

She swallows, and fingers push up her glasses along her nose as she watches those that watch her and debates just turning and heading out the door and home instead of simply to wash up as she was going to...

[Skadi] "I'll brang Bruin a steak. 'N he won't care what kinda racket we throw up - " Skadi replies passingly, flashing a grin toward Thaney that has the edge of a smirk, but not the fullness. Not the meanness, maybe, not the glinted set of her hot blue gaze. In her feral forms, the eyes go pale - winter's dawn, something like it, the edge of the horizon bathed in a delicate, internal blue as the sun lights the sky. Now, they're something else, found beneath the earth, polished to a deep and abiding gleam, framed by long, pale lashed, defined by high, pale brows.

"Naw." Skadi replies, low to Princess, direct from the corner of her mouth, around the mouth of her beer bottle. "Ain't seen her afore." Sandra looks up; Skadi drops the beer back to the table, her fingers loosely arrayed around it, and crooks her index finger at the girl. C'mere - mouthed, then, to clarify - yeah you.

"Kin - " she clarifies, not for Thaney but for Barrister. " - 'r true, maybe. Our blood." A glance at the Fianna girl, philodox, speculative. " - kin ya read which?"

[John Barrister] Another glance over his shoulder. Barrister is easily the most massive of the three here, thoroughly dwarfing the women but never quite eclipsing them. His back is to the door, and to Sandra, hunched over, his thin sweater pulled thinner across his shoulders. He dresses well, but somehow is not welldressed; he lacks some panache, some element of flair. His eye is dark as he studies the newcomer.

"I doubt she's true," he murmurs, quiet, the corners of his mouth quirking. "You have a 'look'. You stand out." Kindness prevents him from saying it: Sandra does not stand out. To him, anyway, deaf and blind to breeding. To him, and to the humans in this joint, Sandra simply fades into the background -- a wallflower, plain.

[Thaney] The girl looks up; meets their eyes, watches back; and the Fianna (not included in the our, no, no) rests her elbow on the table, and her chin on her fist. Can you read which? Skadi asks, and she gives a brief shake of her head. No.

[Sandra Davenport] C'mere is mouthed, and there's no 'who me' that follows, but more of a 'ohshit' instead. She looks around, takes a breath, and then shifts direction and heads toward the table. She wraps her arms tight around her abdomen as her shoulders hunch slightly. It's a protective gesture, really, and reflexive.

She doesn't take long to arrive, one arm unfolding to lift and push her glasses up, then to tuck her hair behind her ear before it returns. This close, there's a smattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose that can be seen, and eyes of a lighter hue then suggested by distance. Blue, perhaps, though dark and no where near the vibrancy of Skadi's.

And John would be correct. Sandra does not stand out. Anywhere. Ever. She doesn't say anything when she arrives. She just clears her throat, and waits.

[John Barrister] As she approaches, John shifts his seat to the side, opening their circle to give Sandra room. There's a simple, common decency in Barrister. The sort of thing that makes him open the circle; the sort of thing that makes him smile in greeting. The sort of thing that makes him get up and go to the bar to refresh their drinks.

[Skadi] "Huh." - that and a quick sweep of her eyes, away from Sandra, to Barrister and back again. You stand out. - and he means not her, but all of them; she gets that, it clicks through like a combination lock. She knows that already beneath it, sometimes - except, no - but, "Huh." Her chin rises; the head cants at a forty degree angle, lashes lowering as if she were a coy thing - but that's a trick of the light, that, the way the shadows play across her face, and nothing true - just long enough to catch Thaney's gesture.

"Hey - " to Sandra, as she approaches. Skadi smiles; which is to say - she shows her teeth, white between her pink-painted lips. It comes off feral, which isn't what she meant by the gesture, but greeting strangers is generally outside the modi's job description, while kill things is pretty much standard. There's Sandra, plain as an unpolished whistle. And there's Skadi - vivid, intense, lovely enough to be a model, some all-American catalog. J. Crew, with the added distinctions of feral confidence, or rage. "yannow why I asked ya ta come over here?"

Subtly, thy name is not Skadi.

[Skadi] (Well, something like that you don't want to misspell. It's like that quite from Never, about how he's a loin amongst his pride.)

[Thaney] "Hi," Thaney says, and her voice is clear, and her voice is quiet, and beside Skadi she is the most soothing presence ever, as far as intensity goes, as far as gut-instinct runawaynow goes, and J.B. is followed by a plaintive request for chili cheese fries or nachos or food of some sort.

[Thaney] (Which was hilarious. Heh.)

[Sandra Davenport] John opens the circle, and she looks up at him briefly, through dusky lashes, before her gaze falls again. He stands and she dips a shoulder to pull herself away a little so that he can pass. Not that he was going to brush against her anyway, it is another of a long line of fade moves, this one not a cringe, but one that obviously could be drawn into one in a different situation.

Like being this close to a Modi with a feral smile that isn't necessarily meant to be threatening, but with the prickle of rage that drags over skin, a tinge of the familiar. The question brings a little self-depreciating smile that doesn't quite make it to her eyes, eyes that barely meet Skadi's before skittering away again. "Yessum. Leastwise, I can guess. Only reason I'm usually called over anyplace."

Her voice is soft - the strain to hear it kind of soft, and naturally. Thaney's soothing hi gets a glance, and a glimpse of that little not quite smile. "Hey."

[Skadi] Sandra can guess. Skadi nods to that; it seems right. She knows, she can guess. That's enough, thank goodness, for the modi to nod, agreeing with either Sandra's self-assessment, or her assessment of Skadi and her company, or with her own self, about the blood she could scent and sense and feel. Sandra goes skittish; she looks away, she stands and takes up space, but seems narrow somewhere, drawn in rather than outward.

"Well, we all is i tha same- what, fuckin' club, so it's safe'n shit. Ya got a name? Family in these parts?"

The accent is deep fried southern redeck; hillfolk, some places. Swampfolk, otherplace. Plainfolk, others - not the delicate, distinct voice of privilege and Savannah and Vassar, this.

[Thaney] ( Me too, actually. (was gonna head out nextish post!) )

[John Barrister] (errk. i hate to do this, but -- i'm about to crash too. i wanna get my schedule on course for monday!)

[Sandra Davenport] She tucks her hair behind her ear again, before the hand falls to fold around the other once more. She doesn't think twice about answer. Never does, when faced with this much... club membership in the same space, sucking the breath from her lungs with the burning tinge of rage across skin. "Sandra Davenport, ma'am. I met a.. distant cousin once, but I haven't seen him since." a self-depreciating grin, brief but there. "I don't get out much. His name was... something.. something that started with K.. Kemp. That was it."

[Sandra Davenport] (ooc: me too, actually. So closing up soon is fine.)

[John Barrister] When John comes back, it's with a fresh round of beers and chili fries in a to-go box. "They're kicking us out," he announces, handing the latter to Thaney. "Seems like 5:30am is closing time."

[Thaney] The girl is one of those naturally serious things, Sandra can see, when she glances over; when she introduces herself, Skadi's gracious request, something like a shutter pulls down. Her face goes blank, for a moment. Then she straightens, bending under the table to get her guitar, sling the case over her arm. Kemp, Sandra says, so it must be okay. "Hey, I'm gonna hit the road," she says, to the daughter of the Full Moon, daughter of kill things now. Which is when J.B. returns, with the dire news. She nods - that's all - and says, "Ta, Sandra, Jaybee." And - just heads off, ahead of the groaning just one more crowd, eel-smooth.

[Skadi] "I know 'em - " Skadi says, half rising, pulling a napkin and a stub of a pencil from the center console on the table, remnants, maybe, of the evening's betting on the derby, stuck down amongst the napkins. The woman scrawls a phone number (area code: Not From Around Here) onto the napkin which pulls and tears with the blunt graphite, but there it is. "Fuckin' live with 'im. S'my number, Sandra Davenport. Gimme a call, ya wanna talk. I'll send him out ta find ya. Need ta git him out and about."

...and hook him up with someone other than a fuckin' crazy ass commie Shadow Lord plotting against -

- oh, well, that bit, that's all implied in the feral grin Skadi offers Sandra, along with the napkin with her number on it, or maybe it's just there churing through her head, all of a piece, the complicated knot of it. The feral grin remains in place; she tips it up to Barrister, takes one of the "to-go" beers meant to soothe the angry customer and slides off the barstool, boots resonant as they hit the hardwood floor. Skadi rucks back o the hard-used heels of her pink cowboy boots and tips Sandra a farewell as if she were tipping an imaginary hat, then circles the table and follows Thaney's path through the straggles left at this late our. "I'm'a come by - " she calls out to the Fianna, behind her, shouting, and people look, they turn to look. Some look away, of course; ad some can't. That's the way of things: [i]spectacle " - tamarraw 'r tha next fuckin' day."

And that's it,there's a night out there. A world beyond.

[John Barrister] (thanks for the play, all!)

[Sandra Davenport] She blinks, and takes the number automatically. Lower lip is pulled between her teeth as she glances at it, then the quickly dispersing party. She doesn't have anything to add - which is good as they have all gone.

"Huh." She says, to herself, and shoves the number into her pocket, before finding her own way out, and home.