John Barrister

[Princess] The EMT house. Princess is in the kitchen; her hair is getting long, and she needs to cut it. For now, though, a loose and messy braid suffices to keep it out of her face. The braid is wet and dark; somehow, her hair is dyed again, that same color, that fuck off bitch red - and it deepens, when wet, to the color of a scab, or a wire, or a snake's tongue. She is in the kitchen, a pan over the stove, frying; eggs in the skillet, and onions, too. All scrambled together. Last of the milk, farewell.

[Henry Allard] ((::does the cigarette dash::))

[Tristan Stern] The EMT house. Princess is in the kitchen, where the scent of an egg scramble originates and drifts through the house. A scent that is immediately breathed deeply into his lungs as a certain pretty boy - ignored by many - has been camped in front of the TV with headphones on, stretched out with his hands behind his head, fingers laced, and ankles crossed on the opposite arm of the couch along the other side. He's completely comfortable indulging in his totally fabulous addiction to faghags galore.

Yes. He's watching the Daytime Emmy Awards. Tyra is gonna be there looking fierce, after all! It's no wonder all they boys have left the pretty one alone to watch the big screen all by himself.

At least he's using the headphones.

[Princess] Now, Princess isn't a terrible cook; there are a few things she's learned to cook well enough. And, what with Guinevere, she knows herbs; she uses these, liberally, in the scramble. Tristan's presence hadn't been acknowledged, but it was noted; there are enough eggs to feed, well, a couple of boys. And her. Which says quite a lot. The weather's good, and she's been sleeping in the woods; sleeping in the cars; sleeping in the beds of strangers. Eggs don't take very long, either, so she eventually turns off the stove and scrapes some onto a plate. Considers, then scrapes some onto another plate, grabs a couple of forks, and - balancing them carefully - walks into the living room.

[Princess] (( Dex + Ath! WILL SHE BALANCE THEM! ))

(( ...smirk. What? ))

[Tristan Stern] (DICE ADDICT!!))

[Henry Allard] ((*LMAO* TEH CALL OF TEH DICE IS STRONG))

[Princess] (( AM NOT!

(rolls WP!) ))

[Henry Allard] It had started late today. The beeper's call, that is. It had started in the middle of the afternoon, having lulled its captive into a false sense of safety, into a sense that the city was taking it easy today, that it was giving its dogged soldiers a fair fight. That had not been the case, not for long. It had gone off at a rather inopportune moment, and since the interruption Henry has been absent from the house, with its door constantly opening and closing to allow in and let out occupants who were otherwise enjoying their Saturday off. Richard, most notably, had been banging in and out the backdoor all afternoon long, trying in earnest to get the old lawn mower working again, while Noah had been happily working away in the little mudpit the guys have tried year after year to turn into a vegetable garden. Where those two have gone off to now is anyone's guess, but so far as either of them have been able to tell, Thaney and Tristan are the only two currently occupying the modest house in the relatively quiet section of town.

Now, though, there comes the sound of footsteps on the front porch, the screen door croaking open. A key in the lock. One of them will hear it; the other is happily engaged in a television event geared towards bored housewives and... well, Tristan.

[Tristan Stern] Funny. He used to make sleep in the beds of strangers too. Now, however, he sleeps in one bed only, and sometimes it still takes getting used too. Not that he's complaining.

He doesn't hear Princess coming, but there is one thing that a Gnawer never misses - not even Kin, like Tristan, and that's the appearance of food that's proceeded by the intensifying scent and the matching growl of his belly. He tugs the headphones down and lets them rest around his neck - who really needs to hear it anyway, right? - as he pulls himself up into a sitting position to look over at Thaney and just how many plates she's juggling. He grins to see that there's more then one, and the smile warms as he reaches out to help relieve her of her burdon.

"Mah hero! Assumin one of those plates is for me, of course."

Then the noises in the entry way, and he tips his head to see who's kicking his boots off. "Heya hotstuff. They finally let ya off, huh?"

[Princess] Her ear doesn't flick. Princess is not a wild animal (even if: if: if: frisson; see? Feel it, contained, restrained, invisible: monsters). She is just a girl. When Tristan takes plate dos from her, the Fianna girl's mouth quirks; easily, baby. Because she's an easy-going girl, and there's not even the hint of a moon in the sky. "Yeah, it's for you." Princess cranes to look over her shoulder, whilst simultaneously taking a seat and forking up a bit of scramble; when, lo! It is Henry, she says, serious and grave, "Food for you, too, if you want what's left in the skillet."

[Henry Allard] Normally, when Henry returns home, it is difficult to tell what sort of a shift he has had. Tristan, by now, has learned that there is a system at work, a way to readily deduce whether a shift was Great, Good, Bad, or Horrible by looking at what he is wearing when he strolls in the front door. Today he is still in his uniform, which from a distance one might deduce meant his shift went Great. It might mean that the shift was so quiet, so uneventful that there was absolutely no need for a shower, that all he needed to do was to grab his bag and catch a ride home and get himself fed and beered up once he returned to the house. From a cursory glance, it seems cut and dry.

Yet he moves slowly, he sits down on the stairs as soon as the door is shut behind him, he rakes his hands through his hair and he plucks at his shoelaces and he peers through the slats in the stair's railings when acknowledgement comes his way, and in the dim light of the entranceway, he has to put legitimate effort into smiling.

Which means it was Horrible.

"Yeah, it finally quieted down enough for them to let us off."

Thaney is given a wave, and when he has both of his boots off he hoists himself standing, gingerly sets them beside the smaller-sized sneakers waiting on the black doormat beside the door.

[Tristan Stern] He watches. He knows these signs. He has seen them, learned them, picked them apart and deciphered them over and over again. He sees how much effort goes into that smile, he hears the smallest of waverings in the voice of a man who always has himself in complete control.

It was Horrible.

He watches the way he pulls himself to a stand, and then the headphones hit the coffee table, and his plate follows a moment later as he winks at Thaney before calling out to Henry. "I'll get your plate. Sit."

There's no arguing, either, and Henry knows it. Tristan disappears back into the kitchen to make a plate for his better half, and then takes the time to get out the water bottle, and fill it with water as hot as he can make it. He wraps it in a towel, to return to the living room with it, and the plate of goodies lovingly made by Thaney.

[Princess] It takes Princess a moment - she does not know Henry as well as Tristan, will likely never know Henry as well as Tristan - before she, too, picks up on the mood of Henry's day. The teenager is an observant creature, and sensitive to the internal life of the people she stays around. Some people, busybody people (like she can be, it has to be owned), would say: Why do you do it? Would press him to get another job. To get another assignment.

And Princess will never, ever do that. She knows, you see, about jobs that you don't like. She knows about doing things that give you nightmares, about dirty jobs, about, about, about that kind of thing, you see, about staying awake, about feeling ripped to pieces, spine on display, and - horrible days, but with capitals. Yeah, she knows all about them.

So she doesn't say a single thing, except - "What the hell is this?" - once her gaze has fixed on the television. "Hey," she adds, "I made the eggs myself; used some herbs I still have from my job with Gwen. Hope you like them." Anxious. She really does.

[Henry Allard] Hands on hips, sharp knees poking against the thick fabric of his utility pants, he moves slowly into the light. Once he's there, once Tristan has left his station to fetch fixings from the kitchen, of a sudden there is a blue bruise on the bridge of his nose also, the sort of thing that one might have difficulty believing was there at first glance. It doesn't look particularly painful, doesn't look as if some great blow had to have been dealt to plaster it there in the first place. It's just there, and given his great reluctance to discuss his day to begin with, given the (thankful) proclivity of present company to not embarrass him with questions, with prying, that is likely to be all there is to it.

"What the hell is this?"

The expression on Henry's face mirrors that of Thaney's question, the proceedings on the television bringing a dogged smile out of lips that don't seem fit to move in such a direction.

"Oh, yeah, the Emmys," he says. "Tyra's on."

As if that is supposed to mean anything to Thaney.

"How've you been, Thaney? Haven't seen you in a while, I was starting to get worried."

Despite the crack of exhaustion in his vocal cords, despite the slump of defeat in his shoulders, there is genuine interest to be found in the man's eyes, in his question, as he deposits himself in the unoccupied recliner.

[Tristan Stern] He stares at Thaney - and gapes at her. "It's.. it's..." and then he rolls his eyes. "I'm surrounded by heathens. It's the Daytime Emmy Awards! Tyra's a presenter this year - looking FIERCE as always and ya gotta love Tyra! Ya just.. just... gotta - did ya tell her Henry?"

He hands Henry his plate, and when the other man is settled and comfortable, he has him lean forward just enough to slide that hotbottle down behind him, situating it perfectly against the lower back muscles he knows will be throbbing and aching.

Then he sees the bruise. A brow arches "Need ice too?" He doesn't ask how it happened, or what happened, or who he's going to have to kill for bruising his man. He just offers that same easy grin.

And let it be known he isn't mean enough to unplug the headphones and force them to listen to what's certain to be inane nattering on the show.

[Princess] Princess takes a bite of her eggs, spearing a large sliver of onion; chews it, swallows. Oh, stomach as empty as a hollowed-out egg; hurts, it does, contracts around food. Her eyes half-close - such strange eyes, too, eldritch, two different shades. They open a little, so that it's this: the wide-eyed, misleadingly young (solemn) gaze. "Tell me what?" Honest perplexment. "Are you guys going to meet this Tyra chick in real life, or something?"

And - Henry inquires. Princess takes another quick bite of eggs, wolfs it (ha, ha) down, and says, "Oh. I've been trying to - uhm." Here, she frowns, slightly: "Been spending a lot of time on the otherside." Here, even, the refinement of a shudder: "Also, like, uh." Drinking, a lot - but, no, can't tell Henry and Tristan, they'd go all parental, and - "Stuff. Been okay, though, mostly. You know."

And Tristan inquires. Princess? Does not touch that. Eats more eggs. Yum!

[Henry Allard] That gaze has Henry both completely captivated and compelled to avert his gaze. Such an intensity in such a young face would be difficult to handle were he not faced with remarkably diluted versions on a daily basis, were the young mothers and the heroin addicts and the gang leaders not marked with the juxtaposition of youth and solemnity found in this girl's cast. There is no way to compare to two, yet one has managed to prepare him for the other. He is able to look on the girl's face without feeling a jarring sense of discord.

"Huh-uh," is his response to the matter of ice, and the other man is given a muted smile of thanks. As always, there is a great reservation about him in the presence of others, whether they be trusted friends or complete strangers, and Henry does not hold Tristan's gaze for very long. It's a matter of keeping himself and Thaney from being mutually unnerved, it would seem.

That plate comes to rest on his thigh, and Henry fishes around the mass of fluffed eggs with the tines on his fork while the girl staggers her way through a response. The longer it goes on the further his lips spread themselves. Not far at all, all told, but far enough. He chuffs out a small laugh through his sinus cavities, then finally succeeds in spearing a hunk of egg.

"I know."

A pause to bring the utensil past his lips, and he nods his approval at the girl's culinary skill.

Green eyes slide over to Tristan once, almost negligibly, and then he asks, "Have you seen Marissa around, lately?"

[J.B.] Princess' cell phone rings.

[Tristan Stern] Harumph. Meet her in person. Why, that'd be.. that'd be... [fanboysigh] totally awesome. But he doesn't say it, he just winks at Henry and retakes his place on the couch and takes up his own plate and begins to shovel it down. A pause, a lifted brow, and that forever easy grin for Thaney. "S'good!"

And he's not just saying that. He attacks his pile of eggs with gusto, with one eye and both ears on the conversation between Thaney and Henry, the other eye watching the daytime stars dressed to the nines wandering across the stage on the big screen tv.

[Princess] "Not in the past couple of days," Princess says, with a frown that is -- unfortunately -- coming to be associated with her packmate's name. Whenever it's brought up. Just this faint shadow of a frown, between her eyebrows; over her eyes. "Why? Is that what you need to tell me?" Calm girl, Princess; even the half-smile, the reluctant - now, anyway - curve of her mouth, is calm. Despite the frown.

And, lo, the cell phone has minutes. This is such a rare occurrence that she is startled by it. Does not know the proper etiquette.

"The - oh." Princess gingerly fishes her phone out of her back pocket, pulls her braid from one shoulder to the other, and says, "Question by May Swenson?"

[J.B.] There is a hesitant -- startled -- pause. Then, composed and polite, John's deep rumble (though not so very rumbly on a cell phone): "May I speak to Thaney, please?"

[Henry Allard] The phrasing of her question, the second, provokes his brow to crease in on itself by a few degrees. Several more passes through the small sea of food on his plate are made before another bite is procured, and he is mid-breath to respond to her inquiry, evidently confusing though it may be, when the phone in her back pocket rings out against the cushions of the couch.

Jaw closes momentarily, to staunch the premature flow of words, and then he concerns himself with chewing and swallowing rather than formulating a coherent sentence. It is slow going, his arm not moving with nearly the speed and vigor that Tristan's does. Normally the man can keep pace with his better half, can put away a good deal of food in a small expanse of time, but lately it has been with bird-like hesitance that he pecks at his meals.

Something that happens on-screen makes him shake his head in bemusement, but does not go so far as to draw forth words.

[Princess] "Uhmyes?" Behold: Fianna eloquence, in the very flesh; in the very

[Princess] .

[Maya Nevskaja] (you know, i came in with the idea of playing! but now I think I may just spy. *beam*)
to Henry Allard, J.B., Princess, Tristan Stern

[Maya Nevskaja] (...i mean, why! RP! my lord, yes! I shall! *dives in*)
to Henry Allard, J.B., Princess, Tristan Stern

[Henry Allard] ((That's the spirit!))
to J.B., Maya Nevskaja, Princess, Tristan Stern

[Tristan Stern] Thaney's phone rings, and Tristan uses her distraction to catch Henry's gaze and hold it for a long moment. He has seen how little he's been eating, how tired he's been, and there's concern written across his eyes - naked and open.

Until something happens on the screen and Henry's bemused and Tristan - well he just grins and goes back to watching the pretty girls in their pretty outfits talking about pretty things. Yes, if there were any doubt at all - he is certainly as gay as they come. And he grabs the headphones and holds one side to his ear as Tyra comes on screen. He's waited all night for this, after all!

(Stereotypes, ahoy!)

[J.B.] Another pause, confused. Then, "Thaney?" Acknowledge assumedly given, he continues, surer now, "Hi. It's John. The book you asked me about the other day, that I thought I might have in stock? I found it. I'm going to be driving home from the pawnshop in about 10 minutes, so if you're somewhere along the way, I can drop it off."

[Princess] "Uhmyeah." No, Thaney? Is not one of those teenagers who talks on the phone a lot - or very well. Actually, she's pretty horrible.. "I mean, cool! I mean, uh; I'm at - uhm? The house, the one in Lake View, you know where it is, right? Don't knock loud I think - uhm. Just call again. Because there might be sleepers, even though - well, and I should hang up now, before my minutes run out, kay? Seeya!" Click.

Phew. That's done with. Princess/Thaney eyes the cellphone for a moment, lest J.B. call back, all why no I have no idea where it is, then - always supposing that doesn't happen - warily slips the cell back into her pocket. And takes another bite of eggs, attention back to Henry, expectant like!

[J.B.] The house, the one in Lake View, you know where it is, right? "Yeah, I think -- "
Don't knock loud I think - uhm. Just call again. "Okay, sure -- "
Because there might be sleepers, even though - well, and I should hang up now, before my minutes run out, kay? "All right, but it'll take me -- "
See ya! Click.
" -- about forty minutes to get there," John says to himself, bemused, and puts his phone -- a landline, imagine that! -- into its cradle.

Ten minutes later he's closing up the pawnshop, turning the OPEN sign over to CLOSED, locking the door, double-checking it, rolling down the steel-grate gate and locking that down. All the while he shifts a book from one hand to the other, sometimes pinning it under one elbow when he needed both. When he's done, he turns away from the tiny storefront, walking the half-block or so to where his truck was parked. Parking was always tight on a weekday morning, but by this time of night his truck is the only one left on the whole damn street as far as he could see.

[Henry Allard] That exposure in the way Tristan looks upon him is nearly ignored. It would be incredibly easy to simply dart a glance over and then turn his attention back to his plate, but Henry doesn't do that, doesn't have the gumption to look away while Tristan is so evidently attempting to communicate without speaking, and so Henry gazes back across the space, ceases his fruitless swiveling of metal through protein for a moment. There is no response in his own eyes, no defense; he simply looks, and then there is a pulling at his lips, a Yeah, I know forming on his face.

It lasts but a moment, and then there is the business of the television to attend to. Henry sees the host of that show Tristan watches so religiously, that one about the models, before Tristan does; and then there come the headphones, and the Coggie kinsman just shakes his head again and continues to eat his eggs. Thaney flies through her conversation as quick as one possibly could, and then she is looking at Henry.

All this looking, and so few words. One might think Henry would be perfectly comfortable in an atmosphere of Not Speaking, but this doesn't appear to be the case.

"Boyfriend?" he asks.

[Maya Nevskaja] There is no moon in the sky.

This sort of thing disquiets many people, they walk a beat quicker on ill-lit street corners, the thugs and pimps for a moment reconsider a deal going down and wonder if its some omen of bad luck, if finally, tonight, they'll get caught, take a bullet in the brain for double-crossing.

Maya knows the moon is there, she feels it like wind breathing down her neck. But it is dark, and her eyes are darker, her hair the exact shade of the sky above and her skin the pallor of the newly dead in the wash of headlights. Too pale, her face for that ebony hair. She is walking without purpose, but without fear. The Godi's heart does not palpitate with the lack of moonlight, though her eyes do occasionally flicker upward, as though to read the faint smattering of stars as a human might a street-map.

She is closer to John that perhaps, he realizes.

The Fang-raised-Fenrir emerges from the opposing side of his truck, night-time playing tricks and drawing shadows under her eyes. She wears a denim jacket, and it rustles when she moves.

Her bracelets rattle.

Her voice quiet, a shock of unpolished english. "Hello, John Barrister."

[Tristan Stern] He's still listening to Thaney and Henry, thought one side of the headphones is pressed to his ear and dark eyes are riveted on the screen for a few moments. It certainly doesn't stop the shoveling of those eggs from plate to mouth via the tines of his fork, either. He's all about multitasking, Tristan.

There's a twitch of a grin for someone said on screen - unheard by the others, but amusing him none the less. Only when his goddess of Top Model Fame walks off the stage again does he toss the headphones back on the table and lean back into his corner of the couch.

[Princess] " - where?" Perplexed, again. "Whose?"

[Henry Allard] Blink. Blink.

"Um..."

There's a touch of uncomfortable laughter, monosyllabic and rough. In the silence built by the television's filtered sound and the lack of other bodies in the house, Henry is afforded the opportunity to sit a moment and attempt to reason out why Thaney is so... un-Thaney-like this evening. That befuddlement is what tips him off, ultimately, and he chooses to ignore it in favor of taking another bite of eggs.

Without anything to wash it down, it becomes necessary to move. Henry leans forward to place his plate atop the heavy coffee table, the ceramic of the dish pushing aside the edge of several hastily-lain magazines in the process.

"Im going to grab a beer." A beat, and the next question is diverted out of traffic towards Thaney. "You want some water or something?"

[J.B.] John Barrister looks like the sort of man who's not easily rattled, and he's seen more rattling sights than he lets show. All the same, the rattling, purposeful, solemn-eyed apparition gives him a start. Then he steps up to the passenger's side of the truck. The lights blink and the horn toots as he unlocks the doors. John deposits Thaney's book on the dashboard.

"Hi, Maya. How long have you been here?" -- a little perplexed: he wasn't sure which was more disquieting, the idea of a Theurge loitering over his truck for hours, or a Theurge knowing exactly when to come to the truck to meet him. "I'm about to head home, but first I need to drop something off for Thaney. She's one of yours. Well, not exactly; she's one of Stag's, I think. You're welcome to come along, though."

[Princess] "Yes, please," she replies, sinking into the couch cushions; she lists a little to the side, toward the pretty, pretty gay boy, and watches the screen with intense interest.

[Tristan Stern] He reaches over and tugs on Thaney's braid a little, affectionately. And then, with that same grin. "He meant you, by the way - with the boyfriend? It was his way of asking who was on the phone and if it were anyone interesting."

He leans back his head, fingers sliding through those curls as he watches Henry upside-down like over the back of the couch for as far as he's able. "Grab me one too, babe? Just put a fresh case in the fridge, grabe from the front left."

[Maya Nevskaja] The Godi blinks once, a slow, cat-like motion that brings long dark lashes to bed against her cheeks. A tilt of her head, and she smiles at him across the width of the truck as though it brought her amusement, his starting at her appearance.

How long have you been here?
"I have been walking."

You're welcome to come along, though.
"I would be happy to."

She grasps the door and pulls it open, climbs inside and her senses react to the new environment. It has always been a thing of wonder to the Godi, how a person's presence coated their belongs, their spaces. An extension of oneself in cars, clothing and as she saw so often, even in death.

She waits for the kinman to turn the engine, watching him discreetly, his motions. Her eyes are not heavy, but they are felt.

[Maya Nevskaja] (belongings, for god's sake. Spell, jacqui! *shakes self*)

[Princess] Tristan reaches over to tug on Thaney's braid; her response is delayed by, oh, just one second. Then: a snort of laughter, swallowed, but: undeniably a snort of laughter. "Oh." But - there's a note of appreciation (frankly, my dear; it's a direct response to something specific) underlying the irrepressible bubble of amusement. Then: "No. That was J.B. Do you know him? He's," here, a shade quieter, so Henry might not hear, unless he's come back already, "Get of Fenris kinfolk."

[Monty] (locations?)

[Henry Allard] His footsteps fall heavy on the wooden floors, his course from the living room through the dining room into the kitchen just about palpable, vibrations casting themselves along in waves. Although he is not a hefty creature, although he looks as if he could stand to pack on some weight, it is easy to forget that there is still some mass to him. Times like this, that mass asserts itself, all 190 pounds of it. They can hear him moving from and to, they can hear him moving around in.

There is no way he is going to move as quickly as Tristan had. There is no way. Exhaustion comes along for the ride, latches itself as if by heavy metal chains about his ankles, and every move he makes is deliberate and heavy--removing a glass from the overhead cabinets, filling it with ice from the freezer, filling it with water from the tap, this all takes sizeable effort. Beer, then. Beer from the front left, as instructed, which then has to be opened. A drawer roars to attention, one by one beer caps clatter to the floor, and as Thaney is introducing the absent man to Tristan, Henry is stooping to gather up said bottle caps and deposit them in the trash compactor.

At some point he reaches up to pinch the exhaustion from the bridge of his nose. This turns out to not be a terribly bright move.

[Princess] (( *GLEE* MONTY!!!!!! ))

[J.B.] There is a certain quiet, intrinsic confidence in John. It is not arrogance; it is something more like belief in oneself. It's hard to ripple his pond. Nonetheless, he is starkly aware of her awareness. His movements are steady and unhurried, but they have a studied quality that is not native to him.

He turns the key; the engine turns over. John drives an enormous Chevrolet Silverado, perhaps two or three years old. It's a work truck, the heaviest breed of the class, with a double rear axle and enormous towing capacity. Nonetheless, trucks nowaday are designed for aging baby boomers with wives, children, expanding waistlines and expanding wallets. There's significant attention to luxury involved. The seats are leather and fully adjustable, a navigation system lights up the dash, there are six or eight or ten speakers arranged throughout the spacious king-cab, and various little amenities soften the macho edge on the truck.

As for personal touches: there are coins in the little cubbyholes scattered throughout the cabin. Maps in the door pockets. A rather chewed tennis ball rolling around the floor. A plastic bag not very full of various bits of driving trash -- fast food receipts, gum, a cigar butt or two, though it should be noted the cabin doesn't smell heavily of smoke. Then again, neither does John.

It's quite silent in the cabin while he points the big truck in the direction of the freeway. After a while, to fill the space, he turns the stereo on with a glance at the Godi: "Mind if I put this on?" And provided she doesn't, he advances the CD to some track or other he finds acceptable for a past-midnight drive.

[Maya Nevskaja] (Maya is getting into a strange man's car because he offered her candy. *grin* okay, not really. She's about to go with JB to visit Princess, Henry and Tristan at their house.)
to Henry Allard, J.B., Monty, Princess, Tristan Stern

[Monty] (Bah! So much for Monty.)

[Princess] ooc: *crushed!*

[J.B.] (*lit LOL*)

[Tristan Stern] He arches a brow, and then shakes his head slightly. "Can't say as I know him yet. Get, huh? What kinda get.. the mean rar sulky i'm a stud even if I can't go furry type, or the nice kind?" That grin is unrepentant as he listens to Henry's progress through the house, as attuned to him as he is his own self, some days, in some ways. He hates when the days have taken so much toll on Henry. He works too hard, he cares too much, trying to take care of the whole wide world while Tristan has to remind him to eat. And sleep.

He shovels some more eggs - his plate more then half gone, already.

[Princess] "There's only one kind," she says, quietly; "But he can socialize, if that's what you mean."

[Henry Allard] ((BRB, keep on going))

[Tristan Stern] He snorts. "Liar. There is no 'one kind' of any group, and ya know it, Miss Thaney. But the socializing part is good to know. The more people to drink beer with the better."

[Princess] "That's not true," she says, suddenly earnest. "I think everybody's mostly one group. I mean, they all fight, of course; don't see it, don't listen, think their way, go their ways, separate, but it's still all mostly one group. Maybe I'm wrong, though - I probably am." Meditative, now, instead of earnest: slide into melancholy. Lift out of it, with, "Beer's nice. Henry!" This last is lifted still further - voice projected, the way she's good at projecting her voice, not yelling, but carrying it elsewhere. "Maybe a beer instead of water?"

[Maya Nevskaja] She does not intend to unsettle him, but as a shark cannot pretend to be less than a predator (a brush of its skin would serve a non too gentle reminder), a Garou cannot be less than it is, and the presence of one does what it was designed to do.

She explores his space with her eyes, smoothes her palm along the dashboard, touches the windowpane but eventually, her actions still and she remains quite motionless, a small figure bundled in the seat across from him, eyes fixed quite purposely away from the driver on the passing flashes of nightlife -- not that there was much to be seen at this hour -- out the window.

His voice draws her eyes, a shake of her head. Hair falls into an eye. She should have tied it back at this length, but she liked the feel of the wind in it too much to restrict it. "How long have you known Thaney?" She attempts the name, it comes out awkwardly.

It does not seem appropriate to blush over such a thing, the woman is thankful for the lack of moon.

[Tristan Stern] "One group, sure. But not one kind. I'm not just like you, and wouldn't be even if I were a female Fianne. Though granted, my violin playing might earn me an honorary rank or something." A wink, followed by a chuckle. "But we're all distinctly individual, which means there is most certainly not only one kind of Fenrir, nor Gnawer, nor Coggie, nor Fianna. And it's not that your wrong, its that you were overgeneralizing. I mean really, do you find me the same as every Gnawer you've ever known? I'm by far the prettiest..."

Gotta love a guy who'll make fun of himself.

[Princess] "Yes," she says, very seriously: "You're making things too complicated, I think; I mean, yeah, they are. But they also aren't. You know? And all the Fenrir I've ever met, no matter whether or not they've agreed with each other, they've all been of one kind. A kind of group. AnneMarie and Decker, Skadi and J.B. and Loki and ... The others, from back before."

[J.B.] Ah, the ever-troublesome dental fricative, th. Ask a foreigner the hardest thing about the english language, and she'll be liable to name it. Some will substitute a T, others a D, a B -- whatever it is Maya substitutes, it is incorrect, but gives Thaney's name (which is incorrect, anyway, insofar as it is not really her name) a certain exoticity.

"Hm," thoughtful, "since March? April? She was one of the first I met when I came back to Chicago. First of the Nation, I mean."

[Tristan Stern] "Stereotypes are a slippery slope, kiddo." He says it with a grin though, easy and sure. "I like the things that make folks individualistic better, myself. It's what makes some folks tolerable, where they wouldn't be otherwise."

[Princess] Here, sheer curiosity - "Are there people you don't tolerate well?"

[Tristan Stern] That brings actual laughter - light and free and easy. "Oh yeah. There's quite a few I'd just as soon never deal with again."

[Princess] "How come?"

[Tristan Stern] "Because they are too busy condemning me for what they think I am, to discover anything of worth that may actually exist. They rely on stereotype, on generalizations." Simple, yet not. A shrug.

[Maya Nevskaja] Here Maya does in fact turn and look directly at, or at what is directly in her line of sight of John. His ear, the profile of his face. Her eyes move along the length of his arms, his fingers on the steering wheel.

His wedding band.

Drifting back. The Godi shifts her weight in the seat with the faint stirring of her jewelry. Her accent makes her voice seem harder than it perhaps was intended to be, by curse of where she was born, she comes across as aloof, perhaps even mean. Tactfulness was a learned subject when you already struggled to communicate.

"You must like the Fianna. I will be interested to see her." She means meet, but her choice of substitute is somehow fitting.

[Princess] "Everybody thinks you've got worth," the Fianna says, uncomfortably: "You got clawed by a monster and lived. The boy who lived," she says, with a faint smile, although it doesn't echo in her eyes. No, now? Her gaze is mildly anxious, and completely (once more, once again) serious - studious, even. "'Sides, there are lots of different types of stereos. Those are those big boombox things in 80s movies, right? And in cars?"

[Tristan Stern] "Do they?" He turns to look at her, stretching to set his plate on the coffee table - empty, of course. He was starving - he's always starving. "There are lots of different types of stereos you say - but just a bit ago you said there is only one kind. So which is it? Can it be both, or only one?"

The show on the TV ends, forgotten, as he settles into his corner of the couch and studies the girl [monster] beside him. "Not everyone thinks I have worth. Your Skaldi doesn't. Many Fenrir don't. Many Gnawers don't. All because of what I do behind closed doors, all because of who I love. Clawed by a monster? There are worse things then the monsters that did that. Many times after that day, I thought it would have been easier if I had not been the boy who lived. Many times since I've thought the same. I have to fight to prove there is more to me then who I like to fuck day in and day out - and still, there are far, far, far more folks who find me worthless, then those who are awed by my scars..."

[Princess] "It's both," she says, perplexed; "It's both in one. You see?" Then - she listens. Places her (empty!) plate down on the magazine-stacks, near Henry's; Henry, who might be in the bathroom, might be dead asleep, gone Henry. Then she rests her chin in the palm of her hand, and listens to Tristan. Your Skadi causes her eyebrows to lift, just a very little, and - well. A listener, you see? When he's done, she makes a sound, noncommittal, unsympathetic but - understanding. Follows it with: "You think so? I guess it's a bit startling to think you're never going to have children. You'd make a good biological paw, I think. But I'm never going to have children, either, so - " Here, a shrug. "I don't think about who you fuck." Beat. "Because, ew, Henry. He's like a brother. Ew."

[J.B.] "I like her," he affirms, sealing it with a nod. "Thaney's a good person. She seems genuinely nice, which is a rarity sometimes. I think she's probably a good -- good Philodox, too. Though I'm happier when I don't have to deal with that side of her," he adds, laughing.

The truck rolls onto the freeway. The engine is sonorous and strong, the acceleration smooth, though nothing awe-inspiring. He merges with the sparse late-night traffic, heading north along the great wheel of Chicago's transportation web, where downtown was the hub. During the day, especially at peak hours, this drive is a nightmare of brake lights and stop-and-go. This late, though, there's hardly anyone around; the sights of Chicago's skyscrapers rising up out of the plains is theirs to admire. Through the car windows, in the night, the skyscrapers seem marvelous and pristine, without the inescapable grime of the city that daylight would reveal. Late-night workaholics have some lights burning still, dappling the great towers in pinpricks of light. John takes an interchange across the river and the heart of the city slides by them, passes them by. Now it's fading into the rearview mirrors as he navigates off the freeway, into the quietly affluent uptown district of Lakeview with its trendy little shops, its brick condominiums, and its small, astronomically priced houses.

[Tristan Stern] He laughs then, by the end. Two months ago, these kinds of conversations were impossible to have. Two months ago he was about to give up, move on, get away from all of this. Two months ago, he was at his lowest low.

This is now. Thank goodness.

"Thaney, love, despite the protestations of the Nation, this is 2007. Should I decide to have a child, there are ways to make that happen. Thanks for your confidence, though - I always hoped I'd be a good dad if I had the chance. Someday I might - but right now, things are just too unstable and all. If I'm going to go about getting clawed almost in two, it's not fair to a baby. Sides - i'd want to be stable before that - be sure I could raise him or her right and shit. Things normal folks want, even if we ain't at all normal."

If he noticed the look when he mentions Skadi, he doesn't go back to mention it again. It's a nice friendly conversation, see? And things will likely be real complicated soon enough anyway. Take the easy bits when ya can.

[Princess] ooc: okay, I? am dying of kitten induced CUTENESS. OMG. how can it be SO EVIL and then SO CUTE?

[Princess] "Life isn't fair," she says, with the sudden, angle downward of a frown - that's her reply to pretty much all. Her change of subject is deft, and as obvious as an elephant in a bathtub of dubious size: "So you liked my eggs?"

[Tristan Stern] "Nope, it's not. And even if I don't ever have kids of my own, I'll be content to raise as many of my friends' kids, and stray puppies as need me." A wink, and a nod. "And I'll most certainly ask you to feed them eggs when I do. Those were awesome!"

[Maya Nevskaja] "Most people are."

Maya looks away when he laughs, physically, she draws herself further from him toward the window; reshuffling her approximation to him. She watches the city fold atop her, the buildings swallow the night sky and all the Godi can sense is the Weaver, her web.

Maya's kohl-darkened eyes narrow.

For the remainder of the trip she seems withdrawn from the kinfolk, her focus is certainly elsewhere. Beyond his companionship, beyond understanding. "I do not like cities." She says abruptly, drawing herself upright in the seat. "There is too much here, not enough space."

[Princess] "You can do that, without stability?" Here, a quirk of an eyebrow: "What's the difference?" Also, a flush of pleasure - turns her ears pink. "Praise will get you more eggs, you know. Not now, since there aren't any left, but in the future."

[J.B.] John has a talent: that talent is adaptation. With the passing minutes, he has grown accustomed to the eldritch Theurge. Her stillness, her abruptness, no longer perturb him the way they had. When she speaks suddenly, his glance is brief -- if only out of necessity, as he navigates a corner.

"I've never met a Garou who really liked the city," he says. "I met one of the cityfolk once. A Glass Walker? She told me, I hate the city. I'm just evolved for it, that's all."

For a moment, John can remember the Glass Walker clearly. Her smoke-and-brandy voice, her dark hair, savage eyes. He remembers what became of her, too: those eyes flecked in blood, the back of her head crushed in. It was less than three hours, from one memory to the other.

"I thought it was ironic," he adds. They're on a quiet residential street now, and he parks under an elm. Belatedly, he wonders if he should've asked her where she'd come from, instead; what wide-open spaces might lie in her past.

[Tristan Stern] He chuckles softly. "The difference is taking in an existing child that needs me - or say, a teenager - and doing my best by them vs. actively participating in bringing another life into this fucked up world." He shrugs, and grins. "I don't know, exactly. One of those little odd things, I guess."

But at the promise of more eggs, he clutches his heart with a bright grin. "Yay! - but you do know what they say about feeding Gnawers, right?"

[Tristan Stern] (HA! JB has too. *harumph*)

[Maya Nevskaja] One day a person shall learn about Maya Nevskaja. One day she will meet another she can tell secrets to the way she is told them by her spirits. It will not be a pretty tale, of victory and conquest (if any ever are) but one filled with bitter memories of ruined innocence and violent ends.

Violent beginnings, those too.

Maya looks straight ahead, and she has no makeup to conceal her pale cheeks under, they are drawn tight, not suffused with any false color. It makes her seem more wolfish, less of a woman, more of a thing. Hard and lean and hungry -- yes, that seemed about fitting for her.

She cuts John a smile, beginning bland and then real, captivating, full. "I will not come to love it, but I will come to understand it." She captures him fully for a moment with her eyes, and then pushes open the door and slips out, Maya's wake leaving his truck untouched by perfume, shampoo. As though she had never been at all.

[Princess] "Don't eat anything they give you, unless you know how old it is?"

(( Sorry for belatedness, sorrry, sorry! ))

[Tristan Stern] He blinks, then laughs agian. "nah, that's EATING with a gnawer. Otherwise - they're like stray puppies - feed em once and ya never get rid of them.."

[J.B.] It's like moving from one world to another. The quiet sound-insulated space of the truck, with the road rushing under the wheels; the Godi. And now this: Henry's home, comfortable, welcoming, with chatty kin and a genuinely nice Fianna inside.

It is too warm for a coat. But John rolls his sleeves down nonetheless, to seem at least partly presentable. Then he takes Thaney's book off the dashboard and gets out of the truck. He seems the type who might've opened Maya's door for her if she hadn't herself; she, however, seems very much the type to do it for herself.

They walk up the path to the front door. John clears his throat once, but neither speak. John's big thumb pushes the doorbell. He's forgotten he was meant to call.

[Princess] "There's this one girl - " she says, begins to say. The door-bell rings. Princess' shoulders lift up, hunch; she curses, quietly, and under her breath, with a glance upstairs. Then she's on her feet, saying, "Where's Henry, anyway? Do you think he went to sleep?"

And, the two Get of Fenris will have to wait for a moment, while the house wakes, and somebody comes to find them.

[Tristan Stern] He frowns, slightly, and shakes his head. "He may have - he was pretty tired. I'll go check on him - you get the door. And don't worry, the boys are our living it up tonight. Bell won't wake anyone."

He tugs her braid again with a grin, before he heads to the other room to find his wayward boyfriend.

[Maya Nevskaja] How unexpected a couple they must seem at the door. The affable, polite kinfolk who has brought a book to a genuinely nice Fianna and the dark, petite woman with the long black hair beside him who seemed entirely out of place.

At least she had not worn her necklace of animal bones this evening.

To another Garou she smelled like the earth, something subtle, something alive and vibrant, yet tinged with death. Perhaps that was the way a Theurge ought to smell, to look. Beguiling, even charismatic, but at the same time best glimpsed from afar. A safe distance between.

Nobody answers the door, Maya's amusement grows. A flicker of mild curiosity at the man beside her, she must look upward to see his face. She reaches across him, and settles a finger on the bell for some time.

[J.B.] Maya looks at John. John shrugs his shoulders. Maya pins the doorbell down and John suddenly sucks a breath in through his teeth - "Shit." - and puts a hand out to stop her. Mind, he never actually grabs her by the wrist or anything of the sort. "I was supposed to call when I got here. Some of the house is apparently asleep. Well; damage is done. Let's just wait."

[Princess] Princess catches her braid, once it's tugged - head falls back, natural-like, and then she says, "Okay." This is when the doorbell starts to go on repeat: repeat: repeat: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: --

"Ack!" The door is wrenched open but a moment later. "J.B.?" Beat. Take in Maya. "And guest?"

[J.B.] John, or J.B., does indeed darken the doorstep. He makes for an imposing shadow, very tall, very broad; then he steps into the light and his eyes crinkle when he smiles. It looks a little like a wince.

"Sorry. I forgot to call." He holds out the book to her, then gestures to his companion. "This is Maya Nevskaja. She's a Crescent Moon of the Fenrir. I ran into her on the way up."

Not literally, one hopes.

[Maya Nevskaja] First rule of entertaining a Get of Fenris.

Do not keep them waiting. Maya pressed a finger to the bell, John puts his hand out toward her wrist and the Godi's muscles draw in, tense. Her eyes are on him suddenly, intently and she breathes out through her nose, a quiet huff of -- what? Warning? Agitation? The door is wrenched open, Maya's hand falls to her side.

She looks over the Fianna's shoulder, then at her. Her smile rising, a sharp, teeth-filled thing. "Half Moon," She says to Thaney, not trying her name again it would seem.

[Tristan Stern] The kitchen first, and then upstairs. He hears the ring go on repeat and winces, but just shakes his head, chuckling. And he disappears into the bedroom.

[Princess] "I noticed," she says, seriously; there's a tinge of wryness, of course. Duh. The ringer just went ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: ring: etc. Forever. Ad infinitum. "But," she adds, to be fair, "my minutes might have been up, anyway. The middle of the month: hard to know."

And Princess takes the book with all due seriousness, running her fingers over the edges. She would read the cover, or behave with more - well; she might behave differently, were it not for Maya, who, of course, she could smell was garou as soon as she opened the door. Who she regards, curiously, quietly, directly.

"Yes," a reply, answer. Then: "Maya Nevskaja?" The last name is slightly butchered. She tries the name again, to better effect - still. It'll be a while. "Well, it's nice to meet a Crescent Moon in this city." Or it will be, until she finds out who Maya packs with! But that's another story, for another day. "Come into the kitchen; have a drink. Only one, for drivers." Oh, hospitality - inescapable.

[Maya Nevskaja] The Half Moon's regard is natural, and Storm's Eye is quite accustomed to the ritual that comes with first greeting. She knows that she appears out of the ordinary with her pale face, her darkdark eyes and that long, unadorned hair. A small thing, not build as a Fenrir should be, or as statistics would have her be she is still something to be aware of.

"If it is easier, you may call me Storm's Eye." A small mercy, spoken on a thickly accented tongue. A pleasant voice, husky and soft, if hardened by something beyond her moon or tribe.

[J.B.] "Actually," John says, "I think I'm heading back. It's getting late." Actually, it's already quite late. Closer to early. Still: "Unless you need a ride?" -- this, to Maya.

(sorry to bail guys, but i had like 4 hrs of sleep last night and i'm falling over!)

[Princess] "Hm," she says, with a flick of a glance for J.B., thoughtful: concentration makes her sober, rather than the lucid, half-girl thing she'd been up until now. "Thaney is what I'm called. If it's easier," here, well - submerged flicker of amusement. "You can also call me She Whose Tongue Knifes Flame Into Equal Halves." The last is said with a half-glance, again, for J.B. - we'll call it a half-glance because she doesn't really look at him, but is keenly aware of the kinfolk's presence, not entirely comfortable with it, finds it odd, salt in the eye - whatever. At the same time, doesn't notice it.

[Princess] Add, all, "It already is late; seeya round, J.B.? Maya?" Beat. "You can also call me - hm. Juniper, if you want."

[Tristan Stern] (gonna bail too! night all!)

[Maya Nevskaja] (*declares a pause*)

[John Barrister] It's another slow night out in Bronzeville. This shouldn't come as a surprise. Bronzeville, after all, is not a place one should wander after dark.

Still, Barrister keeps his store open until well into the night. Maybe he's banking on furtive midnight customers, the eccentric and the guilty. Maybe he just doesn't see a reason to hurry home. To appease Bruin, he's taken to leaving a jumbo-sized pet bed behind the counter, where the hound usually sleeps while his master goes through the inventory or pages through some book or other behind the counter.

It's the latter, currently. John Barrister is sitting hunkered on a stool, his heels propped on the middle rung, his arms folded atop the counter. A rather large, dusty hardback is open in front of him. He chomps a cigar between his premolars, occasionally rescuing it over to the ashtray before it hemorrhaged ash all over his book.

The night is cool and still. He can hear the crickets through the slatted windows high up in the rear of the store. A little rain would make it perfect, but the weather is clear.

[Maya Nevskaja] Does he have a bell in place over his door that chimes softly to signal her arrival? Or perhaps it will be Bruin that feels the en-cringing approach of something not quite human before the door is opened, and a woman enters the kinman's store. There is chiming anyway, her wrists are adorned by various small bracelets, they slide into one another noisily as Maya Nevskaja carefully fits the door back in place behind her.

The night is cool and still, but her skin feels hot with the crawl of Luna fresh upon it, the prickle of the animal caged in layers of skin and muscle and bone. She has left her jacket tied to her waist, her hair loose and stirred by the Chicago air. She can glimpse him through the shelving, the kinsman to her blood, she can smell him.

She had sought him out, listened to the tales of the wind, cross-legged on the roof of the Eagles' kinhouse. She wandered his store, and her hands slid over the shelves caressingly, sweeping along fine plumes of dust in their wake.

[John Barrister] The store is, frankly, tiny. From front door to back wall there is perhaps twenty, twenty-five feet; from wall to wall, fifteen or so. The counter bisects this store across the middle; behind it are more, higher shelves, crammed full of un-inventoried inventory.

As for the shelves in front: they are stocked with all manner of things, useful and useless. The organization is haphazard at best. Dust is settling over the items at the backs of the shelves. The already narrow aisles are cluttered with overflow from the shelves: lamps, books, candleholders, baskets, bags, a sony boombox circa 1992.

John doesn't look up at the bell jingling over the door. He reminds his late-night shopper: "I'm closing in about half an hour, or when I get to the end of this chapter. Whichever comes second." Behind the counter, though, Bruin awakens. Keenly attuned to rage as only an animal can be, the loose-jowled hound shakes his head, ears flopping, and then gets to his feet, tense.

[Maya Nevskaja] Her shadow seeps into his reading light, cast across him. A rather obscure artifact set down upon the counter. It's some old fashioned lamp, gold-trimmed and in dire need of rewiring, and then beside this is set a dog-eared copy of The Call of the Wild, the cover depicting a pack of snow-covered wolves, heads raised to the moon.

"How much for these?"

She has a heavy accent, the woman, barely past her teens if she is that, the hints of adolescence almost gone, a touch of something very un-American there in her deliberation on each word. Her face devoid of makeup, save for the heavy decoration of her eyes, leaves her bared, open for scrutinisation.

[John Barrister] Distractedly, John drops a hand atop Bruin's head to scratch the hound behind the ears as he stands. The gesture is familiar, affectionate, familial. When the woman speaks, Barrister looks up, startled: perhaps because it was a woman, perhaps because of the unexpected accent.

There are a lot of accents in Bronzeville. Not a lot of heavy Russian accents, though.

The store is lit in unpleasant fluorescent. It washes colors out, leaves people looking pallid and tired. John Barrister looks every day of his thirty-five years. In fact, he looks like he might've spent those years dug into a trench somewhere behind the Allied lines, 1911. Husky, weatherworn, heavy of shoulder and jaw, the backs of his hands are furry. Judging by his twelve-hour bristle, his hair, beard and chest hair would form one unbroken carpet if he didn't take a razor to it now and then. His tribal affiliation is faintly but recognizably proclaimed in his heavy bone structure, the deep-set eye orbits and sharp cheekbones, high nose and square jaw.

He looks at the book she holds up. "A dollar," he says, "but I have a better copy back here somewhere." He leaves the flap of the dustcover between the pages of his own book as he closes it. The title is Hunger, the author a single word: Chang. When he gets up off his stool he has to duck to avoid the fluorescent bar-light hung low over the counter to light the display inside: cheap jewelry on one side, guns on the other. As he wanders back into the tall shelves behind the counter, "Are you lost?"

[Maya Nevskaja] She is patting down her jeans, searching between the skin-tight layers of fabric for a crumpled fistful of notes she had collected since she'd come to the city. She really had no use for them in the wilds of the last Sept she called something close to, but not quite, home. Storm's Eye finds them, and begins to sort them, searching for the correct change when he asks -- "Are you lost?" -- and she smoothes out the bills against the counter, her eyes betraying the faint confusion. "This city is easy to lose yourself in, but no, I am not lost."

She watches him, searching for the book, turns her dark eyes on his dog, and receives the benefit of a soft growl for her troubles.

The Godi smiles, and continues to watch the animal until its owner reappears, her brown eyes shifting focus, the smile remaining, brightening her face from concentrated irritation.

She had never enjoyed the way she felt, the first night of her moon. At odds with the world, and all within it. "I was looking for you, as a matter of fact."

[John Barrister] JB is in the back of the store for a long time. She can hear him there, shuffling and thumping through his anonymous stacks of random items some down-on-his-luck junkie or other had unloaded on him; or perhaps some widow who could no longer afford to pay the bills and pawned her wedding ring for it. The idea of being a glorified junk collector had appealed to John Barrister, but the reality of it left him cold and sorry. To assuage his guilt he paid out more than he made selling some of the junk in here, and as a result his ledger was looking more red than black lately. But that was all right; this is, after all, only something he did on the side, in the end.

He reappears: blowing the dust off a hardcover copy, old but in good repair, the binding still tight. He's smiling as he runs his big hand over the leather cover. "Here. This is a second-edition printing. Not worth much, but it's nice for conversational purposes." He lays it down on the counter, and that's when she tells him: I was looking for you, as a matter of fact.

His hand hovers atop the book for a moment. Then his face closes up some and he sits down behind the counter, hunkering over it, his shirt tight across his shoulders. "Were you?" he asks, neutrally. "Is that why Bruin's up in a snit?"

[Maya Nevskaja] Maya Nevskaja would probably have made a wonderful Fury, to judge her by her history with men. To judge the Furies by an outdated stereotype, too. Certainly, she had foul beginnings, to be created in an act of revenge, to find her first change at the hands of a hormone-driven boy.

To be hung from a tree, and be called upon to prove herself worthy, again and again -- she takes up the book, and roves the cover with her eye, dances the pads of her blunt fingertips over the pages and lifts it to her face, inhaling the scent of the novel, the history, the imprint of a dozen other owners. John Barrister's face closes as quickly as the pages do, flipping closed.

"Da, but I am not here for a purpose, I do not," Maya hesitates, and the frustration leaks into her noble features, the crease of her brow, the pinch of her mouth. "Seek you, I only wished to know who you are." She pushes the money toward him, stays her hand until he will give her his gaze again. The smallest sliver of her moon, as irritant as an insect's bite, itching her very blood.

"Bruin should not be so quick to judge," She taps his book, her bracelets jingling, sliding against the fine bones of her wrist. "The cover is misleading, it can be changed."

[John Barrister] She does not, pause, seek him -- and in spite of himself Barrister feels a smile creeping onto his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes.

"I didn't mean -- " he falters, at a loss for a delicate way to put it, gives up, "I didn't think that for a second." His wariness has been broken, if only for a second, and it's hard to put it back in place. "It's just that usually when strange Garou have been looking for me, they need me to do something for them." He realizes this sounds not much different, and turns one palm skyward in a helpless sort of gesture. "A job, I mean."

She slides the money across the counter. He looks at it. There's a pause when neither of them move. It seems fairly ridiculous to him, to deal in amounts of single dollars. Still, he takes it, dutifully putting it away in an old cash register.

"You don't need a receipt, do you?" he asks, wryly, returning to his seat. "As for Bruin, I don't think it's prejudice." He gives the hound another rough pat, then points him back to his pet bed. "It's more like fear." He gets a small plastic bag out from behind the counter and bags the book for her. "I'm John Barrister. I guess you know that already."

[Maya Nevskaja] "If you did, I don't blame you." She offers, brushing aside strands of heavy hair, sifting through it with her fingers. Weaved into the ebony mane are small beads, and then more again adorn her neck, rest against the beating pulse point in her throat. In many ways she is awkward, her upbringing so disjointed, sheltered in its own way that the woman across from him finds herself at a loss to express herself as she would wish.

She was not taught to be a man's equal -- and then she became something beyond most she met. It had never left room for any kind of interaction on a social standing. "Hello John Barrister," Maya repeats, softly spoke and throatily pronounced, her tongue stumbling briefly before regaining itself on the form of the english names. Her eyes smile before her mouth, a pleasant, if sharp-toothed thing.

"I am Maya Nevskaja, and I am of your blood." Pause, the warmth of reciprocated wry humor. "But Bruin guessed that already."

[John Barrister] "Maya Nevskaja, huh?" John is not a man without humor, nor particularly one who insisted on hiding his humor behind a hard facade. He reacts well to the smile insinuated in her eyes before her mouth follows, and smiles back. "That doesn't sound much like a name of 'my blood'."

It might be noted he does, in fact, meet her eyes. His own are dark, shaded beneath thick eyebrows just this side of bushy and a deep brow ridge. They might be blue, but it's impossible to tell in this light.

[Maya Nevskaja] At that, her smile dims a little, though it returns with the mangled pronunciation an American offers a traditional Russian's name. "My mother was born to the Silver Fang courts of Russia." She explains, keeping hold of his eyes, taking possession of the bag with her newly purchased second edition, faintly worn copy of Call of the Wild.

"It was my father who carried the blood of great Fenris." There is a pause, a stretch of silence. "You wish to close your shop, I will not keep you."

[John Barrister] "But you carry your mother's name," Barrister notes. Then, perhaps realizing he was likely pressing on a bruise now, he grimaces. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to pry." He straightens, unfolding his arms, retrieving from beneath the counter and impressively old-fashioned ledgerbook. "It's all right. I have to balance the books anyway. Do you want to sit?" He indicates a chair in the corner, low-backed and high-seated, the sort designed for the bar at a traditional pub. There's a price tag on it, and a coating of dust that suggests no one's been even remotely interested in the past few weeks.

[Maya Nevskaja] Maya sets her purchase on the countertop, and passes toward the indicated chair, earning herself the watchful eyes of the hound, even from the far reaches of his pet bed. Her actions are musical, hidden beneath the long cut of her jeans are more adornments around her slender ankles, as much disguises as jewelry.

The spirit talker wraps her feet around the stool legs, and then talks into the relative stillness surrounding John Barrister's store at this late hour, with only the crickets chorusing their orchestra in the grasses outside. "I do not know the man who fathered me, I know only his name, and his reputation in deeds he has done."

The Godi's fingers absently search out the faint scars on her wrists, her thumb feeling the throb of her pulse, the puckered skin around the scarring.

"It didn't seem fitting to take the name of a stranger."

[John Barrister] It's an uncomfortable topic. The sort you typically didn't discuss with strangers. The sort that has the potential to make both the discusser and the discussee uncomfortable, and perhaps the former more than the latter. Under normal circumstances, John reflects, he would've cut the topic short. Then again, under normal circumstances, the topic would've never come up at all.

And maybe it's their shared blood: it makes them family, right? Or maybe it was her strange manner, removed, distant, eldritch, that made convention a non-matter. Whatever it is, John Barrister finds himself oddly not uncomfortable. He seems to keep half of his life's belongings under that counter, and now he pulls another one out: a large thermos, which he unscrews the reveal the humid no-smell of hot water. His other hand brings up a handful of single-pack teabags; nothing fancy, just bigelow's, in several flavors.

"A good reputation, I hope?" He puts the handful of teabags down in front of her in offering. For himself, tonight, he picks a cranberry-apple chamomile tea. Nothing that'll keep him awake.

Also, he finds a mug under the counter. She might wonder what else he kept down there. Dog biscuits, most likely. More books. Trail mix, perhaps. A gun. He remembers his cigar belatedly, and ferries it over to the ashtray just in time. He leaves it balanced on the edge, the scent of herb-cut tobacco making redolent the air of the cramped little store.

[Maya Nevskaja] Her eyes darken, but it is more the turn of phrase that applies than the actuality of the term, because Maya's eyes are already quite dark enough, so perhaps they show a flicker of the temper so well received as a virtue of Fenris. "It would depend a great deal on whom you asked, I think." She retorts, a breath expelled from her nose her sign of controlled anger, a tip of her head downward to study the proffered offerings of herbal teas.

The Garou chooses lemon tea, and watches with concentrated effort as he prepares it, shifting herself on the seat, covering her posterior in a light dusting of month-old stagnation. "What about you, John Barrister, what lies behind your name, since we are sharing ourselves."

[John Barrister] Maya is not a full-moon, or even anything close. The Crescent is known as the most placid of the moons, at least in the less warlike tribes. Even so, a show of anger, no matter how well controlled, would be enough to pale a human. It's certainly enough to raise Bruin's head and bring a low growl to his throat.

The big man across the counter, however, simply shifts his seat. His stool creaks under him. Seen from the back, he would be vaguely ridiculous: a huge bear of a man balanced on a small, creaky stool -- the very definition of top-heavy. However, there's a certain rough dignity to his actions. An unflappability, as it were, to his bearing. His hands are perfectly steady as he fills first her mug, then the cap/cup of his own thermos.

"Nothing so interesting here," he replies, sharing a small smile along with his hot water out of the thermos. He rips a satchet open and drops the teabag in, pinning the paper tab under the thermos cup. "My paternal grandfather was English. I suppose one of my more illustrious ancestors was a barrister; hence the name. At least he wasn't a smith. Then I'd be another John Smith out of millions." He makes a wry twist of his mouth, raising the cup to sip gingerly at the piping hot tea. "Anyway, I suppose if you traced back far enough, my father's side of the family descends from the Anglo-Saxons. My mother's ancestry is Norweigian. We haven't had a Garou in the family for years." His brow furrows in thought. "I think maybe a cousin of one of my great-grandfathers was a Forseti."

[Maya Nevskaja] Maya notices many things, and among the most fascinating to the Godi's eye is the wedding ring that flashes dimly as he offers over her mug. She accepts it, gingerly cupping the steaming mug against one jean-clad thigh as the kinsman speaks of his ancestors.

The tea scalds her throat, warms her belly and leaves her with an overheated system, her cheeks flagging pink as she sips, as silent as another who bore the name as his own. When he finishes, she considers his words, and her wrists rattle as she lifts her mug to her mouth, leaving a trace of tea behind, glistening her lips to be compressed away by the frown that forms, gathers weight in tiny lines. "What of your wife?" Her eyes find the ring again, a focal point.

[John Barrister] Just like that the caution is back in his eyes. Or perhaps not caution, but a shuttering away. Involuntarily, his thumb rubs over the underside of the ring, which rests snugly at the base of his left ringfinger. There was some superstition about that, though John was never quite clear about it; something about the blood vessel there running straight back to the heart, which never really made sense to him. Didn't all blood vessels run back to the heart? Despite that, he wears his ring there anyway, and has for the last eight and a half years without fail, night and day, even when he showers. The only times he's taken it off have been to wash blood off, and in those times he's seen that his hand has developed a tan line at the precise circle of the ring -- a wedding band engraved into his very skin.

He's left the question hanging for a long time. Her eyes find the ring as a focal point. He has none; his eyes wander restlessly, touching here and there on her face, the many bangles she wears about her wrists. When he'd first looked at her there'd been an instant, a brief flicker, in which his eyes widened. She must be used to the reaction -- mostly from men, sometimes from women, and sometimes from children. She stands out: her Slavic cheekbones, her fierce and noble profile. She is beautiful, in an unusual way, and makes no attempt to make herself usual. Still, at the moment, he doesn't like to look at her. Eventually he folds his hands, turning the ring around and around the base of his finger as he speaks.

"She died last fall. Emily-Anne Thompson. She was a Skald, from Nebraska. I'm sorry, I don't remember her Garou name. I think she was -- Adren?"

[Maya Nevskaja] It was like admiring a wild stray. It was unusual, and beckoned the eye with its obscurity in such a familiar setting, Maya Nevskaja was appealing in so much as she was bathed in mystery. But there was that hint, that flare of something darker, repulsive. Too primal and overwhelming to be ignored, even in spite of the smoothness of her skin, the flawless shape of her cheekbones, her beauty was magnified because it was not obvious, it was a gem that caught the light occasionally, glimmered and shone with a smile, but died like morning dew beneath the rising sun when it chose to.

She was moulded for her moon.

Finely crafted, it was a shame she had not known her father, because the chances were high that many of her ways stemmed from a parent who cared more for his weaponry that a girlchild who chanced to breed true. She waits for his words to find expression -- Storm's Eye had great patience when she chose to, when it was required of her -- and when they do her smile is waning, empathizing.

"I will remember her name, I will keep the memory of Emily-Anne Thompson, Adren Skald from Nebraska." Now it is her turn to mangle the names of things, in her Russian tongue.

[John Barrister] This earns her another smile. He gives his ring a last turn and leaves it be, opening the heavy ledger and taking a pen from his breast pocket. Barrister was the sort of man that always wore a buttondown shirt; he was also the sort of man who wore them often enough to be able to wear them casually. His shirt is plain and rumpled, the sleeves currently rolled down, but unbuttoned and showing the creases of the many times he's pushed them up past the elbow over the day.

"Truth be told, I didn't know her as well as I should have. We didn't see each other very often, all the years we were married. I guess that's not unusual, being what we are." Another object produces itself from beneath the counter: a big accountant's calculator -- nothing but the simplest functions, the keypad big, the numbering huge. "Still, it's strange. The house isn't any more empty now than it was before, when she was away. But it feels different.

"What about you?" He slips the cap off the pen with his thumb. It's an expensive piece, heavy and well-crafted, liquid ink from a fine nib. It, and the subtle quality of his clothes -- casual and far from new though they may be -- proclaimed access to a means well beyond the income of your average Bronzeville denizen. It seems that while John Barrister might do business here, he was not truly of this world. "Mated yet?"

[Maya Nevskaja] "Knowledge of time changes perspective," She draws out from beneath the hem of her camisole her tiny hourglass, the glass very warm from being kept in the hollow between her breasts. She lowers her face to study it, to turn it between her fingers, fingers that were rougher than many of the women John likely saw day to day on the streets of Chicago.

Maya's hands sifted dirt, cut birds and smelled faintly of charred offerings, something cooked, something bled to appease a spirit, to coax a favor. She was not a delicate flower, Storm's Eye, no matter what first impressions told. Mated yet, he asks and she gives a huff of laughter, her eyes lifting, connecting, lingering.

"I spend too much time in conversation with spirits, and not enough with kinfolk." She stirs, tightens her hold on her mug as he crunches numbers with his big hands. A rueful, teeth-baring smile. "It was my mother's heartbreak that I was born beneath a crescent moon."

[John Barrister] "It's usually a mother's heartbreak that her child is born Garou at all, isn't it?" His fingers are not very dextrous on the calculator, and from that alone she can tell he hasn't been at this shopkeeping business for long. He pauses often to look at what he's doing and make sure he's hitting the right keys. "No matter what the party line is, I think it's generally against maternal instinct to wish the Good Death for a child." Lift, connect, smile. Then he looks back at his calculator just in time to save himself an extra zero or a misplaced decimal. "Even Achilles' mother begged him not to go to Troy."

He finishes a page on the ledger and, in careful block print, writes the date and sum at the bottom. Then he turns it over, the big page making a sound not unlike ripping cloth as it leaves over, and starts anew.

[Maya Nevskaja] She has finished her tea down to the dregs, and now merely cradles it for the sake of having something to curl her fingers around, soaking up the lingering warmth. "I think it depends on the mother, and greatly on why her child is born to begin with." Maya supplies with quiet brevity, her dark eyes no longer searching for the kinman's at all, instead they are roving, sliding from object to object as though she would find purpose in something in the small space.

"For some it is a relief when their child leaves them, more so if the choice is removed from their hands. They only," Again the break in the flow of her words, frustration as she loses the word she seeks. "They have only guilt, but heartbreak, Net."

[John Barrister] For this, John has nothing to say. But there's a penetrating sort of understanding in his eyes; as if he knows by choice rather than ignorance that this is one topic too harsh to broach here and now.

So there's only that. A long regard, and then the quiet clacking of the calculator as Barrister finishes up his accounting for the night. Below the last line of annotations -- item sold and price in a strong block hand, the writing cramped into the narrow lines of the ledger in a way that suggests Barrister's native handwriting tended toward the generous -- he draws a line in a smooth freehand slash. Beside that, he writes the date.

Then he caps the pen and slips it back into his pocket. Draining his tea as well, he drops the teabag into the trash and whistles Bruin out of his sleep. Turning back to Maya, "I'm going to close up and go home. Do you need a ride?"

[Maya Nevskaja] She finds his regard, she receives it with her dark, dramatized eyes, with lashes that seem too feminine and delicate for such a thing as her, because she was a thing, leashed within a woman's body. A monster, yes.

But there were as varying types of monsters in the world as there were men.

"Ne-No," She corrects, strains to keep to english and stands, slides from the stool with a wash of dust that covers the back of her jeans, her shirt, tiny specks following in the raven-haired Godi's wake, as she reclaims her book, the plastic bag rustling in her hands. "Spaseebo, but my moon is out, I will walk with her," With her, she gestures, meaning Luna, meaning the night.

Storm's Eye smiles her bright, tooth-filled smile, sharp and pointed and radiant for that moment. "But I will come back, another time."

[John Barrister] "I'll be here," Barrister says, smiling a little because it seemed somehow funny to him to say such a thing in all seriousness. And, as he stands, his height and breadth alone marking him as one of Fenris' even if the cut of his jaw, the tone of his voice and the very scent of him did not, he adds, "It was good to meet you, Maya." He means it; his sincerity is a thing rare in this day and age.