The door bangs open. Sunlight floods in. Vampires everywhere cringe, or perhaps they do not notice. Reality is subjective; it is what you make of it. At least here, at least tonight.
So:
the door bangs open. Sunlight floods in, and then a young man ambles in. He's in jeans; he's in a t-shirt, which is red, which reads STAY CALM AND KILL ZOMBIES. His hair is buzzed on the sides. A little longer up top, though not by much. He has a skateboard hoisted over his shoulder, and no: he does not leave it outside.
He does close the door, at least. And he sort of squints around for a while as his eyes adjust to the dimness. Then: to the bar, tallyho!, climbing up on a stool, striking a short drumroll with his palms to get the bartender's attention.
"THIRSTY MAN O'ER HERE!"
Feila Montefiorewhowhowho
you're a tsalagi, not a wizard
Feila reins in whatever she thought to say to that. To both of them. "Forget it," she says sullenly, and doesn't get that second drink. It would go on her tab, too. She has a long tab here. They know her. She doesn't always remember coming here. She just walks away, exhaling heavily, somewhere down a hallway, a restroom maybe, a bench outside the restroom.
Iris DahlstromThe Penny Saver rustles and snaps as she turns a page and resets it to prime reading position. She's not a girl at all, not a young woman, just A Woman, entering her thirties and settling into them with an unapologetic, breezy fabulousness. At least that's what she'd say if you asked her.
In comes a very loud man -- young man, boy -- with a skateboard. She snaps the Penny Saver down, looking at him past her rose-cardigan'd shoulder, her gaze a bit severe and a bit prim and a bit wry all at once, no one trait outclassing the others.
"DO you mind," she says, not a question. Loudly. Leans forward, hissing a stage whisper toward the bar. "SOME people are trying to ENJOY themselves."
Her scolding done, she leans back again, snapping the Penny Saver one more time.
GrisedaGriseda snorts. "Wizards."
But she gives Coll the biggest, toothiest grin when he joins her at the bar, apparently rather unconcerned about the departure of a wizard.
When we say toothy, we mean it. The vampire has nothing on this green woman sitting at the bar. All of her teeth are sharp. Tusks protrude from her bottom jaw, covered in bas-reliefs of her mighty deeds. And she turns those tusks toward Iris -- that grin turning more feral.
"Oh really?"
LancasterAgain that dangerous, mercurial edge.
Again that gleam in his eyes, that look in his eyes, the thousand savage deaths that play out in his primordial beast's mind every second. He stares at her, eyes as golden and molten as the sun,
eyes not so unlike those of her reckless, wayward childe, come to think of it.
"Careful, gravewalker." Soft, soft. Prideful; bladed. "You can do what you wish with what I give you. It is indeed a gift. Accept it as I have accepted yours, and we will part as friends and never meet again.
"But try again to eke a petty victory with your words, try one more time to imply that I am a liar, or a beast to be owned or tamed, or somehow -- a thing to be enjoyed by whatever thing you consider to be your progeny, and I might change my mind. I might suddenly find myself
"hungry."
Coll MacCullochColl's head snaps around. He looks startled. Momentarily stunned.
Then: laughing. Laughing in great uproarious HA HA HA HAW HAW HAs, leaning on the bar, snorting, bursting into laughter again.
"Oh!" he cries. "Oh, 'tis too much! Some people are tryin' tae enjoy themselves! BY READIN' A PENNY SAVER MAGAZINE!" -- and he's losing it again.
A Host of NamesMirth: where is Mirth? Feila says - forget it. Sullen; like a stone. Mirth, startled-still, watches her go with wide eyes; her gaze darts back to Griseda and she says, "They are rotten, wizards. I met one that could only turn into a rotten tree-stump once upon a time but it could never remember the time so it was just a tree-stump. It wanted to be rotten, I think, because if it was rotten it could find its one true love, who'd been turnt into a maggot - it was a curse, you know? Um. I feel sick. Sick, sick, sick, I'm sorry - "
- and like that: Mirth, she flees. Flees, toward the bathroom. No, not the bathroom; a knot in the wall, a place to slip-between, ghost-between, pale-skinned creature thing.
Iris DahlstromSass. That's that word for prim and fierce and wry. That's what we were looking for. Sass. The total lack of taking any shit from anyone. Mr. Man laughs his weirdly-shaped head off and her eyebrows just arch higher, unimpressed, until he stops beating on the bar.
"I was TALKING," she says, flicking her wrist, palm upward, fingers curled, one extended in the direction of the pale woman and the bright man, "about THEM." That finger swirls back, jabs at the paper in front of her. "I am looking for a JOB."
Constanta IliescuThe strangest thing is the way she nods. Bearing the blast of his rage without challenge, but without wilt.
No surrender.
No quarter.
No give.
No sway.
Just an efficient crisp of a smile and a rather businesslike, "Of course. Thank you for honoring our agreement. It is not something I will forget."
Coll MacCullochColl is still bubbling laughter. He manages calm for a few seconds at a time. He laughs a little more. He quiets with a contented little hah. Glances at the people supposedly enjoying themselves, who are now people heading separate ways, who might've been people quite close to tearing each other's heads off.
Not her, though. Not she, the prim and fierce and wry, Reader of Pennysavers, Looker for Jobs.
"Well," he says -- those rounded vowels, those curling end-consonants, "tha' is a fine endeavor indeed. An' wha' kind o' job might ye be lookin' for?" Oh, look at him. So serious. So innocent. Just waiting to unleashing some sort of likely entirely inappropriate quip.
Griseda"Hey, barkeep. Room for the night? I don't have to give you a literal arm and a leg do I? Though I could probably get away with giving you hers," Griseda smirks and nods toward Iris. "I don't know though. She seems feisty."
The coin she gave earlier seems to be enough, though. A gold coin is a gold coin -- worth a hundred ales even in a place like this. And good for a bed to sleep in at least. When the innkeepers aren't gouging because of some disaster or what-have-you. Like, say, a reality storm.
"May we all find a way back," she says to the room, lifting her steel mug like she's giving a toast. "And if not, there's always the next plane over. Hahaha!"
Then, it's time for the large green woman to make her exit. Upstairs, to the room that matches the key given her by the barkeep.
Iris DahlstromIris exhales through her nostrils. She's across the room, a room full of strange scenes and stranger sights, or it might have come to him earlier, but her scent is familiar. Not personally familiar. Just familiar-familiar. Nameable. Descended from Names, though now hers is Reader of Pennysavers, Looker for Jobs, EmphaSIZEr of Key WORDS.
She knows his type down to his shoe size, especially as he sets down that foundation of seriousness, that trap for the gullible, that gleeful hunting of an opener for something else to say. "Oh, I thought I'd be a waitress. Maybe open up my own diner one day," and here there's a girlishness to her smile, sort of tremulous and fine. She's got a sunny disposition. "Serve homemade pies."
There, Coll. There's your opener for something truly inappropriate, if you really want to say it.
Coll MacCullochColl -- let's admit it -- doubletakes at the large green woman going up the stairs. GREEN. Is she sick? Is she a fomor? Is she a plant? Possibilities abound. He's still staring after her in consternation, but then Iris is telling him: waitressing. Diner. Pies!
Coll shakes his head. "Nahhh, tha's no way tae live. Waitressin'll never make ye enough money ta open your own diner. An openin' your own diner's a good way ta go broke in this day 'n age o' fast food an' burger chains.
"Wan' some advice?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "I woul' sell your eggs if I were you. I hear it's twenty thousand an egg."
Iris DahlstromIris snaps her fingers, looking back down at her Penny Saver. "Surprised someone of your... background... missed the chance to make a fur pie joke there," she says, tsking her tongue. He mentions selling her eyes and she flicks her eyes back at him through the fringe of her hair over her brow, smirking. "I doubt I'd get that much for mine," she says, with a cute little wrinkle of her nose above her grin.
She looks back to her 'paper'.
Coll MacCulloch"Bah, too easy," he says. "Plus I got the feelin' you were jus' layin' it out for me. An' I never wan' ta be predictable.
" 'EY, AM I GOIN' TA GET SOME SERVICE HERE OR NOT?" That's not for her. That's for the bartender, who's just about to pass him up for the fourth time.
Iris DahlstromHer eyes flick up and over at him. He yells at the bartender. She cocks her head to the side, observing. Then she sets down her paper, sweeps out of her booth, and strides across the floor. Her heels tap on the wood. She has a way of walking, upright, shoulders back, chin lifted, that looks like finishing school, charm school, all that. Books atop the head for balance. There's great confidence in that. And she has a pleasant rack and nice legs and a derriere made for patting.
She comes up to the bar, leans forward on it, arms folded, and beams. She's got a bright, charming smile with those half-hidden eyes and that slight youthfulness that time can't erase or even begin to touch. She just beams, impishly, catches the bartender's eye, smiles at him as he comes over.
"My friend here," she says, gesturing absently to Coll, "and I hope you know I mean 'friend' in the loosest of ways, would like to order a drink. And you just keep skittering back and forth behind the bar when there's no other customers." Her head tips. She has not stopped smiling. She never seems to. "Now that's not very good service, is it? No, I didn't think so," she finishes for him, with a sage nod, compassionate and gentle with his ignorance.
"Now," she goes on, the grin sliding back into place, her fingertip sliding across the bar towards the bartender's hand, "how about you do your job, and while you're at it, let him buy me another Diet Coke for my trouble. Chipped ice, please. Thanks."
Coll MacCulloch"Well, well, well."
When Iris is through with that charming, gracious, thorough set-down, Coll is looking at her with new eyes. He is suitably impressed, turned toward her now with his elbow on the bar, his body leaned back a bit as though to give him a better view.
"Seems I may 'ave underestimated ya, an' now I owe ye a drink an' a thank-ye. I'll 'ave the darkest, stoutest, bitterest beer ye've got, tender, an' the lady'll 'ave just wha' she ordered." That completed, he extends one of his great big paws toward Iris. "Coll MacCulloch, miss."
Iris DahlstromThe bartender takes Coll's order. And is going to get it, and is going to get Iris's Diet Coke, and Coll is going to pay for both of those things -- of this Iris is quite certain, even before Coll garishly confirms it aloud. She holds her hand out to him when he offers his, but her palm is down, her fingers drooping gracefully.
"Iris Dahlström. A pleasure, Mr. MacColluch."
Coll MacCullochHe sees the way she positions her hand. He smirks. It is an impish smirk, and he is an impish lad, so he plays along and picks that graceful-wilting-violet hand of hers and lays a wet smack on her knuckles.
"It's like ye stepped out o' some finishin' school poster," he says. " 'Tis a bit alarmin', really."
Iris DahlstromNo less than she expected. In fact, if he'd given her a gentlemanly smooch she might have been disturbed, but as it is: she takes this in stride.
"I haven't the faintest what you're talking about," she tells him airily. "I've never been to finishing school. Or charm school. Or a debutante ball." A bat of her lashes. "You?"
Coll MacCullochColl pretends to think about it. "I ha' been ta more than a few keggers. Does tha' count?"
Iris Dahlstrom"No."
Simply, firmly, not unkindly. She says it gently and yet there's no gentleness about it. His beer and her Diet Coke appear, hers with a straw. She doesn't thank the bartender but picks up her glass and sips the soda through a straw.
"Mm," she says, also as fake as her gentleness. "Thank you for the soda, Mr. MacColluch," she says, and sashays back to her booth and her Penny Saver.
Coll MacCullochColl is so taken aback he's simply agape for a moment. Agawp, even. Then he turns, half-standing up off his barstool, all lean and lanky and astounded.
"Wha-- tha's it?"
Iris DahlstromIris has gone back to her booth and settled onto the green vinyl-covered cushions. She is sipping her Diet Coke through that straw when he looks at her with all that young man's shock and awe. Her eyebrows arch. She slips her lips from the straw. She swallows a little more theatrically than necessary. She gasps a laugh.
"What's 'it'? Goodness, try a little diction."
Coll MacCulloch"Well, it's jus' -- I thought we were 'avin' a pretty litt'le conversation, an' now ya've jus' upped an gone back to ye booth. Tae read a Penny Saver! I 'ave been bested by a Penny Saver! Oh, the indignity, miss!"
Iris DahlstromFrom across the distance between her booth and the bar, they're continuing to --
"Well it seems our conversation has continued, now hasn't it?" she points out, and then shakes the Penny Saver. "And I believe you would have to have a bit of dignity before I could smack it away with a newspaper."
Coll MacCulloch"Now, now," Coll chides, "it's hardly up ta finishin' school standards ta assault my dignity or question its very existence. However, I'd be willin' ta overlook your appallin' lapse in manners if ye'd invite me to sit doown at your table."
Iris DahlstromShe spreads a smile. "As I said, I've never been to finishing school. And I don't question your lack of dignity, Mr. MacColluch, I simply stated what is obvious to anyone in your acquaintance for more than a few seconds, or anyone who happens to stand downwind."
Charming, all that. Smiling, voice lilting and curving and sly. "I wouldn't expect a man who stormed in with a skateboard yelling about getting a drink to wait for an invitation."
Coll MacCulloch"Well," he grins, sensing a minor victory of wits, "as I ha' already said -- I do hate ta be predictable."
Iris Dahlstrom"What a predictable thing to hate," she comments idly, twirling a lock of hair. She hasn't invited him over.
Coll MacCulloch"Now ye're jus' dooin' it ta spite me," Coll accuses.
Iris DahlstromIris just smiles a little more again, contrary. "Doing what to spite you. Diction, Mr. MacColluch. We've talked about this."
Coll MacCulloch"Oh, ye knoow exactly what I'm talkin' about. Ye're dooin' it righ' as we speak. That's it, I am goin' ta be unpredictably predictable." He picks up his brew on that note, crosses the room, and plunks his beer down on her table, sets his skateboard on the floor. Sits.
Iris Dahlstrom"I'm afraid I'm really at a loss," she sighs, but only after he's marched over, plunked his beer down, and plunked his skateboard down, and plunked himself down. She has her hands laced in front of her, forearms creating an apex, arms against her sides. "What am I dooin'?"
Coll MacCullochHe's about to fire something back. He stops. He doesn't hesitate: he just stops. Changes tack, or perhaps simply thinks better of it. His mouth quirks.
"Bein' interestin'," he says. " 'Tis quite the mortal sin."
Iris Dahlstrom[perception + primal urge]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Iris Dahlstrom[FINE. EMPATHY.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Coll MacCulloch[he's amused! and genuinely finds her interesting and fun to talk to. and sort of thinks they might be flirting a bit? but is not quite sure. and sort of thinks he might not mind flirting? but also is not quite sure. mostly just: "THIS IS AN INTERESTING PERSON. I BE TAWK TO :D"]
Iris DahlstromHer hand flutters to her heart, brushing the pearls that descend in one, two strands toward her décolletage. "A mortal sin," she repeats, in mock horror, whispered. "Are you sure? Oh, my. I must get down on my knees this instant and pray for forgiveness."
Coll MacCulloch"Oh, I doon't know about tha'." Coll casts the ground an exaggerated look. "Ya never can tell wha's been on these floors."
Iris Dahlstrom"But a mortal sin, Mr. MacColluch," she repeats, with that same whispered, reverent mockery. "A mortal. Sin." He really has to understand this. It's serious. "I have to find a way to become dull and bland again."
She gives a look of profound distress. "Maybe I should order some oatmeal?"
Coll MacCullochBy the second -- no, third repetition of mortal! sin! Coll can't hold his laughter in anymore. It spills forth, much the way it had the first time she insisted on reading her Pennysaver: great belly-deep peals that he manages only moments later to cut short. A fist pressed to his smiling mouth, he laughs in silence a little longer before he composes himself.
"Or perhaps a full an' detailed confession o' your mos' interestin' sin." He manages gravity in his look. "Tha' would suffice, I think."
Iris DahlstromThat garners a smirk.
"Fair enough, though it's no cleaner than getting on my knees." She jabs her straw at her Diet Coke a few times, takes a sip when she leans over, then shakes her hair back and says, with a deep intake of breath that seems more proud than anything else:
"I was a whore. Not just any whore, mind you. More of a... camp follower. Do you know what those are?" She peers at him.
Coll MacCullochColl is thoroughly caught off guard. He is all agape again. He is all agawk. He opens his mouth on an inhale, fails to find words, closes it. He does this at least once more before he manages:
"Ah -- well." An attempt at a thoughtful frown. "I do b'lieve I ha' heard the term. In Game of Thrones. An' I will confess myself: tha' was one o' th' more interestin' sins I've heard recently. Quite not what I expected, really."
Iris DahlstromThe 'detailed' (it's not detailed) confession of her most interesting sin does not, in fact, make her dull and bland again. It doesn't fix her mortal sin of being interesting. She was a whore, a camp follower, and he's heard of thse from Game of Thrones.
"I suppose it doesn't fix our mortal sin problem," she says, with a faint sigh. "Guess all I can do is go for the oatmeal now."
Coll MacCulloch"Oatmeal," Coll opines, one sardonic eyebrow quirked, "is bloody awful, miss. It oughtae be a mortal sin ta serve it."
Iris Dahlstrom"It sounds like your mother didn't take very good care of your breakfasts, then," she says,
OH NO SHE DID NOT,
yes she did.
Coll MacCulloch"HAH," it's a bellow of a laugh, "well, you are of course entitled to your opinion, but if I were you, I woul'nae say that to my dam if I valued my pretty fron' teeth."
Iris Dahlstrom"I wouldn't dream of it," she smirks. "Not unless she served me some bloody awful oatmeal and proved me right. Then she'd have it coming."
Coll MacCulloch"Well, I dare'na argue wit' ye, even for the sake of my dear ol' ma," Coll says, eyes twinkling. "Goodness knows what ye migh' do tae me."
Iris Dahlstrom"Win."
Coll MacCulloch"What!"
Iris Dahlstrom"I'd win," she says, more clearly this time, slowly, remembering her diction.
Coll MacCullochExaggerated mock-offense: "Oh, I am insoolt'd, miss. My tongue an' I both. Ye do knoow ye speak to a man o' the bards' tribe?"
Iris Dahlstrom"Not really," she says, with a smile and a waggle of her head. "See, I was a camp follower. I followed packs of warriors around," she goes on, with all those generous applications of emphasis, talking to him a bit like a five year old. "So obviously I wouldn't have much experience with bards from your tribe."
Coll MacCulloch"Ohhh, is tha' so." Coll leans back. Consummately smug, he spreads his long arms over the back of the seat. "Well, for your information, miss, I am a warrior of the bards' tribe. An' I wager I'm more'n a match for a whole pack of wolves from your tribe. And I even ha' a personality."
Iris DahlstromIris smiles. It's gentle. It's condescending. She reaches over and pats the table beside his beer. "You tried," she informs him.
Coll MacCullochAnd now, an exaggerated slump of shoulders, hanging of head. "Aye, I did try," he says. "I tried so hard. Alas, you are a daughter of your tribe, carved from ice an' flint."
Iris Dahlstrom"Now, Mr. MacColluch, do I look like I'm carved from ice and flint?" Just in case, she leans back, making a motion with her hands that is straight out of a dish soap commercial, all hands and femininity.
Gabriella BellamonteFood and drink were part of a forever quest when you didn't keep a place to lay your head and call home-- when you roved. Gabriella herself preferred to call it a quest, but disdain threaded the voice in the seldom calls she would receive from her uncle. When she cut ties and left the city with few belongings and a wad of money Lucian had little to hang over her head any more. She would check in with him here or there, and for now he tolerated the Kinfolk's need to roam. Barely. For now.
This wasn't ancient times, so she didn't roam on foot. She drove, with her guide in the passenger seat. The ride wasn't impressive, a used model of some economy car, but it served its purpose. Its nearly bald tires crunched gravel to pull to a stop in the parking lot of this tavern out in the middle of nowhere. Hardly the luxury that she was born into.
"Should I get you anything?" Gabriella had asked her companion, a short and wiry-haired young man with forever-wide forever-startled dark eyes.
"Nah, gonna run. Stretch." The rangy little spirit-guide flitted his eyes out into the night, and didn't wait long to see Gabbie's response before taking off at a jog. She could spy two legs turn to four on the other side of the road, and frowned at the boldness but turned and entered the tavern anyways. Food and drink, and then they'd find a place to settle.
Coll MacCullochOkay. So: Coll looks. In all fairness, he had an invitation. He looks for a good long moment, head tilting a bit. Then he pulls his eyes back up and smirks.
"Aye, ye do. A mighty fine carvin' o' ice an' flint, miss, but ice an' flint all tha' same."
--
Who knows where people are coming from. Going to. When Coll stepped in, it was sunny and warm outside; a late spring afternoon. When Gabbie steps in, it's cold and dark and the wind is rising. Still, whoever comes, whoever goes, the tavern is the same: warm and welcoming, well-stocked, good drinks at a fair price. Good food. Rooms upstairs, simple but comfortable. And most importantly, no one asks too many questions. Origins and whereabouts, futures, paths. No one really seems to care.
A few folks at the bar right now. Somewhere in the shadows of the stairwell, a tiger of a man and a vampire's thrall. Somewhere ever-alone and ever-attended, a pale witch of a woman. Somewhere upstairs, an orc.
And Gabriella, stepping in. Drawing a few glances; including one from the lanky young scotsman sitting with a blonde woman a good five or ten years older than him. Closer to ten than five. He glances Gabriella over, then raises his foaming mug of the-darkest-stoutest-bitterest-beer-they've-got in a friendly greeting between strangers.
Iris Dahlstrom"Well," she says crisply, "I suppose I'll have to take that as a compliment," and it's hard to say if she does or not.
He looks over at the door as it opens. Iris turns her head over her shoulder as well, glancing. She gives a tiny wave. She picks up her Diet Coke, sipping it through a straw.
Gabriella BellamonteHere time blurs lines gray-- it's tough to say how Gabbie showed up, how others wound up there as well. Perhaps some odd Celestial alignment that created a pocket, only for a time, only until the alignment passes and things return to normal. Maybe she wound up here due to some untapped deep well of Gnosis in the scrawny Theurge Lupus that she'd somehow convinced to guide her about.
Here some time has passed, unstated and undetermined. She's older now, not by a lot but at least old enough to buy herself a drink in the United States. Hair unbound, a tawny-copper mane down to the middle of her back. Dressed in a pair of tight black jeans (faded, worn often) and a light gray blazer jacket (stylish, but cheap, not the designer labels that she would have paid for in another life). White tank top underneath. Tired black sandals on her feet. No matter how worn through her clothing was, though, it did nothing to mask truth from those who could see it. Some-- at least one lanky Fianna who was present at a table with a blond woman-- understood that the defined cheekbones and jawline and bright blue eyes not only looked regal, but actually did come from Royalty. Or some vein of it anyways.
The cheers was met with a raise of light eyebrows. The man's companion waved, and Gabriella glanced to the left, to the right, moderately suspicious by the friendly strangers. But, seeing no immediate danger, she smiled small and polite and waved back, then made way to the bar.
Something to eat, and something strong to drink.
Iris DahlstromThe blonde woman has green eyes. She has a youthfulness about her, but she's quite comfortably lounging in her early thirties or so. She turns back to Coll as the girl waves back to them, eyebrows up. "Friend of yours?"
Coll MacCulloch"I ha' never seen her 'afore in all my livin' life," Coll says cheerfully. "Looked like she coul' use a friendly smile, though." A pause; a faint flaring of his nostrils, quite literally sniffing. "Royal blood," he adds, an aside.
Iris Dahlstrom"I've seen your friendliness so far and it amounts to speaking incomprehensibly and telling people that being interesting is a sin," Iris says primly. "Your ability to help others is quite suspect, Mr. MacColluch. You haven't even bought me a drink yet."
She sips her Diet Coke, making a noncommittal hmm regarding the royal blood, indicating with as much false politeness as possible how little she cares about the girl's royal breeding.
Coll MacCulloch"Ouch. Did I nae buy ye tha' Diet Coke? Or does tha' no' count?"
Iris Dahlstrom"To someone of your tribe, I'd assume this barely counts as water."
Coll MacCulloch"Nae, 'tis worse than water. More akin tae poison. Wha' will ye be havin', then?"
Iris Dahlstrom"Guess."
Coll MacCullochThus challenged, Coll narrows his eyes. They are, by the way, green: sharp, crystalline, wolf-green. He considers her a moment, hair and eyes and mouth and throat. Then he turns, throwing an arm over the back of his seat to shout bar-ward:
"OI. A LITT'LE SERVICE HERE, PLEASE."
He turns back to her. He grins at her. No wait, that's a smirk. While he waits for someone to show up he turns back, he picks up his mug, he gulps it down in a series of prodigious swallows. By the time someone -- a waitress? really Iris, this is your dream? -- shows up, his mug is empty, and he pushes it to the edge of the table. Flashes a smile.
"The lady wants a scotch on th' rocks. Wait, no. Chipped ice. Get her the nicest stuff ye think I'd be able t' afford. An' I'll have the same, but neat."
The waitress is dismissed. Coll turns back to Iris with a crooked smile. "'Tis nae my faul' if she brings ye paint thinner," he claims. "I cannae help lookin' broke."
Iris DahlstromShe gives a soft little laugh. As though she might pat the table again, or his head if it were in reach. If she really were a character from Game of Thrones, camp follower or not, this would be a good time for a oh, you sweet summer child.
"What exactly do you think Warclaws drink?"
Coll MacCulloch"I donnae gi'e a swimmin' fuck what they drink," Coll replies instantly, blithely -- blithely and with perhaps just an edge, just a hint of vexation. "I'll buy a lady the bes' I can afford."
Iris DahlstromTo that -- in particular, the hint of vexation -- Iris merely raises an eyebrow. "Mr. MacColluch," she says, with false-tender evenness, "so touchy. I was merely indicating that I've drunk far worse than paint thinner."
Lifts her glass. Sips from her straw. Keeps watching him.
Gabriella BellamonteThe pair go back to their talk, and Gabbie did not have ears well-honed so she couldn't overhear anything they had to say. The ambient sound of the bar and whatever music was playing over the speakers was enough to distract her from their voices. She bee-lined toward the bar.
Inside it was warm, felt rustic in a way though the atmosphere was generic at best. She shrugged off her blazer to sit in a white tank-top that showed shoulders freckled by time spent in the sun these days, time that put copper in her hair and splashed more freckles to the bridge of her nose. Set a warmth to her bones to counter the cool blue of her eyes.
She was a pretty thing, it was a wonder she was out without some kind of guard. She had a polite and full-lipped smile for the bartender that was whispering along the edges of opening flirtation (please be heavy handed with my drink) and asked for a simple burger and a whiskey.
The blazer went over the stool to her left. The place was vacant enough to accommodate.
Billy McCannOh those doors and oh that variable night/day and it is neither night nor day where he is, just some imperfet amalgam of the both of them. The bright chill and the frigid warmth and everything in between. A man with rage; with a guitar on his back; with a taste for Kentucky whiskey, not scotch, pleased to be alive. Alive again. His brothers outside, right? also close. Walks right up to the royal flirting with the bartender and sliiiiides the the stool out. Pushes it in again.
Raps sharply on the bartop. Glances at Gabriella.
"You don't look like the sort've girl who should be out here all alone."
Coll MacCullochColl settles back into his half of the booth. Sinks into the cushioning, eyes still sparking. Then dimming a little. Dropping to the tabletop, where her half-finished diet coke still sits. Rising again to meet hers.
"S'ppose I took it a diffarent way," he says -- not quite sheepishly, but a touch apologetically. "Anyway, ye havenae told me. Was I righ' or was I wrong? On what your drink is."
Iris Dahlstrom"Oh, I'll drink just about anything," she informs him brightly, breezily, waving a hand.
Gabriella BellamonteA man who looked like the classic spirit of the Appalachians (or of someplace more Southwest, perhaps?) had come to sit on the stool to her right, and Gabriella cut a glance in his direction when he knocked his knuckles sharply on the counter and accused her of being out of place there, alone at the bar.
More time in the sun warmed her overall, but she was still able to set chill stares when she wanted to. The way she looked at Billy was cool, but only because it wanted to look capable. She was considering him more than anything else.
"You assume I'm alone."
Coll MacCullochColl stares at her a moment longer. Then on a soft, snorted laugh he turns away, looking to see when their drinks might be arriving. A small silence falls between them.
Billy McCannAppalachians, sure, or the midwest. Handsome in the way that some men are handsome because their bodies were made by work and their skin was scoured by the sun, with a frame of wiry muscle beneath - well, honestly, beneath the sort of overcoat that went out with everybody but the white wolf set circa 2003. Billy hung on to the look until 2005 and then murmured poetry into the ear of a crisp little slip of a far too pure bred thing and then - well,
suffice to say, this place, out of time, is -
"Ahh. That one's your chaparone, then."
A glance at Iris, not Coll. A skim of awareness.
"Truth I'd like you better if you told me that you were precisely the sort've girl who sohould be out here alone."
Iris DahlstromA silence falls. And then their drinks come: scotch, neat, and scotch with chipped ice. And when the waitress sets them down Iris beams at her, waits half a second before she turns away, and then reaches and switches the tumblers before she and Coll.
Gabriella Bellamonte"Mmm."
This is all that Gabbie does to answer at first, is hum something akin to affirmation but not necessarily or entirely agreement. She glanced over to Iris and Cole as well and tipped her chin up a little as she considered the pair further-- the couple that had waived and hailed her. She didn't deny association outright, but did shift her gaze back to Billy instead when he spoke further.
There's a hint of humor to the Silver Fang Kinfolk's eyes, but it's a somewhat lofty thing. She lifted her whiskey glass to her lips and said:
"Should I be invested in how much you like me, then?"
And concluded with a drink.
Lukas Wyrmbreaker"She's not alone. And she, like any young lady with half an ounce of self-esteem, is certainly not invested in how much you like her."
A dark, solid, familiar presence on Gabriella's other side. A Shadow Lord, a creature of winter and storm, rage and control, settling in against the bar. His eyes rest cool and steady on Billy a moment, then turn to the girl with some fond exasperation.
"Well; just like old times, hm Gabriella? I almost expect Kate to come barging in behind me. What are you doing out here?"
Coll MacCullochThe silence goes on a while. It is interrupted by the arrival of the waitress and their drinks, for which Coll is thankful. But then the waitress departs and the silence has gone on long enough that it's on the verge of becoming awkward, except --
-- except Iris reaches for the drinks. She switches them. Coll watches, bemused, then amused, then suddenly laughing.
He picks up the scotch with the chipped ice. With very little hesitation and absolutely no embarrassment, he dips that big paw of his into the tumbler, scooping out the chipped ice, dumping it on an napkin to melt.
"Good girl," he approves, though really -- she should be the one calling him a boy. "Tha's no way tae drink a scotch at all."
Billy McCann"Fuck no." He returned, with a slow-crawling grin. Nothing lofty to his regard. Just this sideslanting look. Green eyes and dark hair, nondescript except for the infectiousness of that expression. "You shouldn't give a fuck what I think."
The tender brought him, almost without asking, a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and glass and Billy poured himself a drink and threw it back; poured himself another. Stepped back, flashed a glance at Lukas as he waltzed up up to the bar.
Probably he didn't waltz.
Probably he oozed, or something similar.
Billy, though.
Billy was just solid.
Glances at Lukas. "Friend of yers?"
Iris Dahlstrom"I'm not the one who ordered it like that!" she tells him, without batting a lash at the 'girl' business. She's been called 'girl', and sometimes nothing but that, for plenty of years now. She lifts her glass. "Now what do we toast to, Mr. MacColluch?"
Gabriella BellamonteLike a cold front pushing its way in, Lukas was there out of nowhere, a presence near her side. Gabriella straightened up on the stool that she sat upon and looked surprised. Turned to see Lukas's profile, and when he looked to address her after chastising Billy for speaking with her at all the Fang Kin was looking at him with an expression that was balanced someplace between being caught (reflexive) and genuine pleasure to see the familiar face.
"Yeah," she told Billy when he asked if Lukas was a friend of hers. She lifted the gray blazer from the stool and draped it over her lap instead, opening the stool up for the Shadow Lord to sit at if he were to choose. This Gabbie was a bit taller than Lukas remembered. Older, leaner in the face and limb and body.
"Very nearly," she agreed about her older sister coming sweeping in, indignant with how Gabriella had been found when she should have been home keeping herself out of trouble. Not feeling caught or busted enough to stop drinking, though, she took another sip of her whiskey before addressing Lukas's direct question as to why she was there. "I've been... soul-searching, I suppose, is the best thing to call it anymore."
Coll MacCulloch"I took a stab in th' dark," Coll smirks, "on account o' how ye took your cola." He too lifts his glass. It's small in his large hand, though he handles it with a certain accustomed grace.
"Tae ice an' flint an' the desperate hope tha' this is no' a glass o' paint thinner," he says, and slams it back, because: well. It might be paint thinner.
Iris Dahlstrom"Well then you should have ordered it with a straw," she informs him.
But they are toasting. To ice and flint and desperate prayers for cheap scotch. Iris taps her glass to his and then, yes, they both slam them like shots. When she sets her glass down, she opens her mouth, tongue lolling out, making an expression usually only seen on DON'T DRINK ME - POISON stickers.
Lukas Wyrmbreaker"More like a brother," Lukas tells Billy. "She's my packmate's errant little sister."
And it's true that she is a little older, she is a little taller, she is a little leaner and looks like she's seen some measure of hardship now. But he, too, is at once the same and different. Older, to be certain. Steadier, and somehow more controlled than even before; but also a little more -- dare we call it mellowed? Not so rigidly proud. He wears his humor a little closer to the skin. He wears his ferocity deeper down, better hidden, better sealed away for those who deserve it.
The eyes are the same, though. Pale and stark and glacial-blue. They study Gabriella for a moment. Then:
"I'm not here long. Just picking up some takeout for Danicka and the girls. We're having an Easter egg hunt in the yard tomorrow and the kitchen's a war zone of food coloring." He smiles a little. It's warm. "Just saw you and thought I'd say hi.
"And I thought I should tell you: your sister misses you. Maybe when you're done soul-searching, you should to come home."
Billy McCannSummerteeth's packmate. Ragabash or Ahroun?
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
Coll MacCullochColl, on the other hand -- grimacing, mouth open, turning to the side to blast a thoroughly toxic gust of alcohol fumes out.
"HOOO. Well, tha' answers tha'."
Lukas Wyrmbreaker[you should come home. christ. I CAN GRAMMAR.]
Billy McCann"If you've the chance," Billy echoes, picking up his bottle and pouring out his glass. "You should also go home."
Iris DahlstromIris waves her hand at her face, her mouth. "I can't feel my tongue. I can't. I can't feel my tongue."
Coll MacCulloch-- which sends Coll into gusts of laughter again, and then a loud hiccup, and then another avalanche of mirth. "It'll come back t' ye," he promises, gasping, laughing, laughing again. "Jus' wait for'it. Want another in th' meantime?"
Gabriella BellamonteBoth older, from different points in time. Lukas mentions 'Danicka and the girls'. Gabbie hadn't been gone long enough for him to have had kids, not for them to be old enough to eat takeout and dye eggs. A furrow creased into Gabbie's brow, but she didn't comment. This place, it was strange, but in her time crossing country and state boarders indiscriminately with a Theurge Wolf-Born companion she's seen strange things before. She's learned how to better roll with the punches since her time in Chicago.
"I've been in touch enough to know that she's holding the fort down fine. Give me my time before they arrange someone for me to give girls to myself." She says this pleasantly enough, casually almost, and finishes her whiskey. It's by this point that her burger arrives, and she interrupts the flow of conversation long enough to inquire about a room upstairs.
That could be arranged. And, through one way or another, it was. While Gabbie waited for things to finalize with a room key, she looked away from Lukas, back to Billy, to the glass that he refilled for what she thought was a third time but wasn't actively counting for him.
"You look like a man who roams. Doesn't make for much of a platform to tell people to go home."
summerteeththe door opens and the door closes and the world shifts; and "FUCK" here is a girl a girl like summer made of summer, with all of her teeth. the blast of heat and the remnant sun and the suggeestion of a desert parking lot. the hum of neon backgrounded against, the heat so baking it is blistering, so blistering it -
- well it hardly need be mentioned. blond and a girl and a blond girl; jeans, blood stiffening the seams, a t-shirt, likewise abused, shielding her eyes, the quick clip of her grin.
"doesn't look like a roadhouse, fuck."
girl, godi, glances over her shoulder and, "you think we can even get a Coors in a place like this?"
skeptical, what the fuck. royals everywhere and it makes her spine stiffen. she thought this was a barroom attached to a no-tell motels somewhere between albuquerque and phoenix.
Iris Dahlstrom"Absolutely," she says, somewhat lisping the word, her tongue 'numbed' by the poor scotch.
summerteeth"My mother sets a spare place at her table every night, in hopes that one of her boys'll come home. eat a meal at her table, sleep a night in one of her beds. keeps the sheets clean and the beds turned down. portions out a plate and keeps it warm in the oven until true night comes and it is time ti turn off the gas and turn down the lights and pull the bolts home and the curtains closed and climb the steps to sleep alone in a lonely house.
"But I'm not coming back, and they won't either. Dead ten years.
"Go home, girl. You don't know what you're missing."
summerteethBILLY SAID THAT GRUMP.
Billy McCann"My mother sets a spare place at her table every night, in hopes that one of her boys'll come home. eat a meal at her table, sleep a night in one of her beds. keeps the sheets clean and the beds turned down. portions out a plate and keeps it warm in the oven until true night comes and it is time ti turn off the gas and turn down the lights and pull the bolts home and the curtains closed and climb the steps to sleep alone in a lonely house.
"But I'm not coming back, and they won't either. Dead ten years.
"Go home, girl. You don't know what you're missing."
Lukas WyrmbreakerThere are disconnects. Discordances. They seem easier to ignore under this roof, these eaves, and somehow no one ever thinks to mention that they came in from
downtown Chicago
southern Appalachia
some lonely road in New Mexico
the Oregonian shore
and so on, and so forth. No one says where they're from. When they're from. If they're dead or alive. Even when the words are spoken, sometimes it just -- doesn't -- quite stick.
Lukas gives Billy a long, strange, measuring look. It ends when he laughs a little, under his breath, straightening up. "I think maybe Kate won't be so hellbent on marrying you off at this point," he says to the girl. "She's got bigger fish to fry."
His hand falls on Gabriella's shoulder for a moment, squeezing. "I've got to get home. When you're ready to come back to us, we're right where we've always been."
invictusThe door opens and the door closes and the world shifts;
and look it's a unicorn. Not really a unicorn, just some girl with unicorn's blood, a promise of heroics - extant - in her carriage, in the wiry shoulders, in the lean long torso, the lean-lean flank, a resentful tangle of honey-brown hair like she was conceived in a hive, conceptualized somewhere bees were sharpening their stingers, skin on her arms is all goldened up but there's a sunburn on the bridge of her nose and a lot of freckles and she's got long eyelashes that are honey too and this way of making a fist over and over reflexively like the Rage that's burning under her skin she doesn't know what to do with it yet it's too too too much and it worries on her gnaws at her bones and that worry's a ghost behind the surprised expression she's flicking around the World's End Bar & Grille but it's just a ghost because really:
The girl's swagger; walks solidly, heavily, like somebody who's never had an upset; somebody who's never lost a fight: with sheer brash arrogance. Doesn't matter if it's true: that's how her feet hit the ground.
So she's looking around surprised, coming in after summerteeth, and she's saying, "Nope. This isn't right. What did you do? You did something, didn't you," the accusation is followed by a flick of a side-long look, then a sliver of a grin. "You sly dog!"
Gabriella BellamonteFor what Billy had to share about his mother and the fact that he and his brothers won't come back, for someone was dead (him? his brothers? Gabbie didn't have much doubt in this weird place), the Kinswoman's brow softened. "I'll consider it." That's the most he gets.
For Lukas, and for his hand on her shoulder, Gabbie reached up to give fingers that have caused more death than she could begin to try and calculate an affectionate squeeze. A grateful one, maybe. Then she stood from her stool, pulled her blazer on, and managed to talk the bartender into giving her a box for her burger though she hasn't bitten into it yet.
"It's not Kate I'm worried about, Lukas. You know better than that."
It's their tyrant, devilishly intelligent uncle that's the problem, of course.
"Give her my love. I've got to be on my way, though. Before the trail goes cold." There's an apologetic smile here, but she's not wavering.
"Goodbye."
And she was on her way.
summerteeth"i did not." listen, she even speaks in the lowercase. speaks, yes, slyly, like she knows a thousand secrets, see. "maybe kráka did. all I did was pull us across the gauntlet. thought you might 'preciate a chance at some awakened hooch or maybe a guy who didn't look at you cross-eyed for being such a fucking badass."
summerteeth is golden, is brash, is brilliant. summerteeth gleams like the noon sun on chrome.
she's a slight compared to invictus, all lean promise and slouching ruin. she's going to be a fucking star.
glances around the room, and pronounces it,
"lean pickings, though. maybe you can start a barfight instead."
Coll MacCulloch"Hah! Well, ye ha'e guts, I'll gi'e ye tha'." Is it just her, or is getting more incomprehensible. He turns, he signals the bartender, he holds up two fingers and yes, they want another round of that atrocious stuff. "NO ICE THIS TIME," he shouts, because really: you can't pantomime that.
And turning back, settling again, throwing his weight back against the booth, slouching. "Can I ask ye somethin', Iris?"
Iris Dahlstrom[ONOZ]
Coll MacCulloch[thank you. :D]
Iris DahlstromIt's not just her, and he is growing more and more incomprehensible by the moment. On the other hand, she's used to grunts. Grunts for yes, grunts for no, grunts for c'mere, grunts for thanks or something like that, grunts for get out, grunts for I have a lot of complicated feelings right now that I've been deeply socialized not to express by both human and Garou society except in raw violence, and I'm not sure how to proceed so please accept this gift of meat in the stead of all the things I might speak, if I could speak truly of what's in my heart, aka my penis, which I have confused for an emotional center.
So Coll's doing fine, conversationally.
"Can you?" she throws back.
invictus"I could - " - she says, the sliver of a grin hooking into a sickle scythe of a thing, and right there, if you were going to make a map, that! that's where Invictus's charisma is, that's where the promise of something to follow is, follow right into fucking trouble this is how true north does it
but then the grin is quashed becomes a hard line and an even harder look and Invictus makes a gesture like she's going to cuff summerteeth upside the head but she does not because Invictus wouldn't do that no Invictus instead picks a strand of summerteeth's hair and looks at it critically then drops it with a snort. " - not. 'm not supposed to start barfights anymore. There's no glory in it just sawdust and sorrow. Momma said she was going to rename me if - "
"That old guy looked kinda familiar. I mean like an even older guy don't you think. Oh hey. Do you think you could awaken like - "
The girl pitches her voice real low. " - like the actual bar? The one people spill their drinks on. I bet it'd be really mad and need talking down."
Coll MacCullochGive him time. He can devolve into grunts with the best of 'em. Grunts for I'm hungry, grunts for I'm drunk, grunts for I'm really drunk and sorry baby I don't think I can get it up and also I am about to vomit, BUUAARGHH, and possibly even a grunt for sorry I threw up on your sweater.
But now. Right now, he is still capable of some speech, and it is perfectly intelligible to his ears, and so he smirks at her for a good ten seconds or more and then says:
"Nah. I'm afraid tae ask now. Ye've frightened me inta silence."
Iris Dahlstrom"I'm sure that's not true," she says forgivingly. "Though Coll, I must say, your frequent silences and staring are going to give someone the wrong idea if you're not careful."
summerteeth"ha!" summerteeth is all.... teeth, see. is the flash of them, the edge. stands close so she can take the cuff if invictus dishes it out, stands strong so she can sway with it. stands,
well, honestly after that first stand the girl ducks just in case and bobs and weaves for good fucking measure. she's bronzed. she always looks like the sun is rising.
"old guys always look kinda familiar. they look like every other old asshole: boring. for fuck's sake. anyway, not like your mom's gonna walk in on you if you just throw a few punches.
"and yes I have awakened a bar. at the starlight casinao remember? it was grumbly more than mad."
ShontarelleHey, look.
A girl. She's not very old at all. She's in fact very young, still a teenager, a teenager forever, forever, forever, a teenager who could maybe get away with not being carded if she tried very hard, with very very dark eyes and ears that aren't readily visible because the fall of her extremely long hair is, well, it is not in fact falling in an improbable torrent of silver-washed strangeness, 90s punkstress strangeness, but it is braided and pinned in a large bun at the nape of her neck, and anyway her ears are tufted like an animal's now because once she lost control and if you look really close she's probably like got something else that's somewhat animalistic about her now, years and years and years have passed for the Outlander,
and,
okay. Here's a girl. She's very pale; this is because she's a vampire. Her jaw is long and sharp, and she's wearing a teeshirt that smells like sap and dirt and musk and must and she's wearing combat boots too and between the combat boots and the teeshirt there're cargo pants and the cargo pants have a lot of places for-to-hide knives.
Juggling knives.
She goes by Shon. Shon comes out of the bathroom but it is not because she was using it, it is just because it is a convenient place to come out of, and she gives the whole place a wary look around, toying idly with this gypsy-woven bracelet wrapped around the too-fine bones of her wrist.
Coll MacCulloch"Oh?" He doesn't even bother to feign innocence. "An' wha' idea migh' tha' be?"
Margot de Castillhon"Is he dead?" The woman to the girl; the woman made of smoke and made of shadows, made of darkness so entire as to be implicit. Made of shade and its memory. Made of longing, made of rain. Still and brief, her presence the barest and sparest sort of conspiracy at the edge of the room, to the strange and pale-skinned girl just emerging from the bathroom because this is a convenient place from which to emerge.
She emerges from nowhere and everywhere. From the shadows; from the longings of the four corners of your heart. She is breathing. She is breathing-warm. Her skin seems kissed by the sun and her eyes are the shadow of candleflame and every sin you have ever intended to forget, every forgotten intention to sin. Every -
A beat, a breath. She breathes so easily and so wholly, see.
"Did he suffer?"
(The truth is, she would prefer that he suffered.)
Iris DahlstromIris, perky as ever, no matter how false it may be, just cocks a brow at him.
invictusInvictus doesn't sigh because Invictus is a swagger of a thing, and swaggering things like Invictus don't sigh unless it is to dramatically undercut how swaggery they are, how solid, how planted, how ready to do something at the end of the sigh and Invictus isn't ready to do anything at the end of a sigh so Invictus doesn't sigh no the girl with her honey-brown hair and her honey-gold lashes and that spectre of worry gnawing at her bones making her mask more delicate because there's just too too much fuck
she stomps over to the bar like she means to do it harm except of course she doesn't mean to do it harm even though she did just ask her packsister to maybe she just means to piss it off a little (no she doesn't shh) and she smacks her palm against the wood and says, "'tender, fucking get my buddy here a fucking Coors,"
ends it with a beatific, "please," which becomes a distracted perhaps alarmed glance toward the door and then summerteeth, "First off you know she doesn't gotta walk in on me to find out what I'm doing you should know this it's not like you don't have the same, ugh, you know, anyway, second of all throwing punches just to throw punches isn't anything worth glorying over and if it's not worth glorying over what's the point."
"Uh, wait what starlight casino when did we do that."
wolfstoneIt's sunny outside, and the girl who comes in is dressed for it. Loose t-shirt, says Led Zeppelin, you can get these at any Hot Topic and you can even get them a few sizes too big like she does. She doesn't swagger in her skinny-skinny jeans with the zippers up the ankles and the bright blue shoes with the white stars on the side of the heel. No, not All-Stars. These are high heels. They are satiny blue, the stars are bright white. The angel on her shirt is outlined in blue, too, vivid and electric.
She's got really interesting eye makeup on that took way too long to apply and pearl-iridescent lip gloss on. She is young and she is confident but no: she doesn't swagger. She walks in, a slender-looking, very young fiery pillar of rage.
ConstantaWhat happened in the backroom will remain unspoken. What happens in the backroom always remains unspoken. The staff are remarkably tolerant and particularly discrete and if a patron requires blood she shall have blood and if a patron requires the blood of a hundred virgins she shall have the blood of a thousand virgins. All the delicate blond woman requested was the blood of a false prophet and all she required, truly, was the blood of a prophet because they are all false.
There is but one truth in this world.
There is but one god, and he is dark and bloodhungry, and we all serve him, in our way.
Listen, she returns pristine and unruffled as she was when she left, tugging on her gloves with a clipped and rather remarkable precision. The attendents trail in her wake, one capping a small flask with a degree of proper reverence, the other alert for threats to her person.
"I am through with waiting." The creature informs her Things. "We will brace the storm."
Coll MacCullochShe calls his bluff. He is staring again, silent again, that faint smirk sitting aslant on his mouth. A few beats go by. Then Coll sits up, sits forward, does it all slow and steady, and at least part of that is because if he does it quickly the room will spin.
Their refills haven't arrived yet. Those toxic, scouring, drunkifying things.
"All righ'," he says, and oh, now his r's are rolling, pretty soon she won't understand a word out of his mouth. "I really have tae ask a question now."
Iris Dahlstrom"After last time, I'm beginning to doubt that you can," Iris says with her ever-tender, ever-falsified patience with this boy in front of her. She's so gentle. She's so fake about it.
ShontarelleThe girl whose hair is - regrettably we must inform you, certainly best described as silvery, as pewter, even when it is tamed in that braid-bun - looks to the side quick-sharp, feral, and what's that along her jaw that we now see? Ah, yes, a scar, thin but deep it was once the wound that made it thin but deep a matter of somebody's pride maybe it was made with a claw with a talon with just the point, slowly, maybe it was a scratch that healed over wrong into that white thickened tissue, there it is up her jawline to her temple.
Anyway: her head snaps to the side, her very dark eyes fix on the breathing woman, and it is one of those moments where there is a growl moving up the girl's long throat threatening to curl her mouth into a snarl but never quite appears because now it's a still still still long stare and then Shon shrugs one shoulder.
"Why do you care? You people; asking me 'did he suffer,' 'did they scream,' 'were they afraid,' I don't get it."
summerteeth"it was the one before the junkyard beside the used car lot and after the mine with the bubbling pools of goddamned blood. you remember," a pause and a glance toward the door; this vivid slash of a look, which is equal parts bright and sly and watchful and wary and welcoming.
"the one with the blob-thing."
A beat.
"the lady blob-thing. ugh, parents are the worst." her voice rises to include wolfsong in the measure of the comment. "it's not like she can officially rename you. that's such bullshit.
"and barfights,"
see? her teeth
"are fun. that's worth glorying in." eyes on wolfsong again, see? "amrite?"
wolfstoneparents are the worst, she hears, as she's striding toward the bar, and she's looking over to the other one, the other two, probably younger than them. Barfights are fun. Glorying in them is fun.
Irena, because that's her other name, doesn't comment on parents one way or the other, because she's already learned that no other teenager ever can deal with what she has to say about her own parents.
"I wouldn't know," she says, moving a little closer to the other two. "I've never been in a barfight." I would get in so much trouble, she doesn't say.
Margot de Castillhon"I asked but one of those questions," the correction is gentle, is sinuous, is elegant. It is also a correction; a nudge to right-thinking. "and I ask on behalf of the Prince, because he will inquire, because he will want to imagine it. Because I will give him what he wants, truth or no."
"So," smoke around her eyes, around her mouth. A certain delicacy. " - did he suffer?"
invictusInvictus is looking, looking looking looking, at the bartender until the Coors appears all nice and icy for summerteeth because summerteeth likes 'em icy doesn't she and Invictus is looking, looking, looking until she sees herself reflected in a frosted mirror-pane of glass hanging behind glasses which are hanging like uncolored grows transfigured into glasses just waiting to be maybe it was kráka or whatever. The sight of herself in the mirror causes her brows to draw together sharply and tremble like a warning and then she flicks another sidelong look toward summerteeth and her brows are still sharply drawn together but this time because she actually does not fucking remember a lady-blob and then the sidelong look skims past summerteeth to wolfstone and there's an insinuation of a smile again. This one's hopeful because hope's one thing the unicorn girl has in her, besides that ghost of worry, besides all the swagger like she's never once been beaten, like she'd come out've any battle unmarred regardless of scars:
"Wanna try it? New experiences are good for the spirit," and she leans forward, earnest, "I mean so are old ones, but - " and she shoots the godi a look that isn't defensive, but is rimed in something like a lake at the beginning of winter just before the ice does set in " - this wouldn't count. Because it'd be like, uh, fucking dancing or something, consensual, nobody too hurt. Or - "
a frown. Invictus; she'll talk herself out of violence and be unhappy for days.
Coll MacCullochThere's something tempestuous about him. He is laughing and he is witty and he is charming and he has a ridiculous accent that keeps getting more unintelligible, but -- sometimes, once, there was an edge where his good humor abruptly wore thin. Here, now, it flickers close to the surface again. It's her endless falseness. It's that false tenderness, that false gentleness, that false patience, the condescension of it. They are playing, but
suddenly he is quite serious, leaning across the table.
"Are we flirtin' here?" he asks her. "Because I honestly cannae tell, an' I'm startin' tae wan' the cards on th' table."
summerteeth"oh for fuck's sake."
summerteeth, the godi, the wise one, right? scrawnier but still somehow physical, solid, immediate. summerteeth is not made of violence but she never talks herself out of violence and she is perfectly happy, quite regularly, to talk invictus in to violence.
also, to talk invictus in to tequila, to the boys on the corner, to an all-night run to the border, to whatever seems impossible.
summerteeth, the godi, the girl with loose blonde hair and a smile like a slash, vibrant and violent and warm, summerteeth pulls back and punches her packmate in the jaw.
then punches wolfstone for goodmeasure.
turns back and takes a long-ass drink of her stupid fucking Coors.
"it's not a goddamned barfight if you spend the whole time asking permission."
GriffinAh, but.
Upon the creature's reappearance, who should be waiting for her but her very own, dear, reckless childe?
There he is: sitting at her table, no less. As though, like one of those base beasts he seems so enthralled with, he could track her by scent. He lounges, lean and languid and deadly and beautiful, he with his strange eagle's eyes and his too-perfect symmetry and those hands, those lovely longfingered hands that bend flesh and warp bone with so little effort.
He is not alone. There beside him, a young girl, or what appears to be. Forever frozen at the cusp of womanhood, slender, pale, silent, unnatural-still. She is not beautiful -- not yet -- but there is something about her. Arresting.
She watches, unblinking, as Griffin coils to his feet.
"Sire," says he, sketching the very rudiments of a bow. "Hell of a storm outside. Thought you'd appreciate a ride." His hand falls to the girl's shoulder. "You remember Ysolda. My childe."
wolfstonePunches at Wolfstone, Shadow Lord Ahroun, who sees the violence towards Invictus and is ready for it. Side-steps, drops down with a hard smack of palms to floor, sweeps her leg out, jabs the heel of her shoe into Summerteeth's kneecap. Her teeth are bared from the effort, and also from the rage, but for all the savagery in her teeth there's a cold calculation in her eyes.
Iris DahlstromHe's so serious, leaning over, asking her if they're flirting, and he can't tell, and he wants --
Iris laughs. "You can't tell?" She finds this hopelessly amusing. Their drinks arrive. There's a break there, as she takes them, thanks no one. She doesn't offer a toast this time, not yet, but looks back at him. "Mr. MacColluch, half the fun of flirtation is that uncertainty you're feeling in your chest right now." She waggles a finger in a circle towards his chest. "If you're not walking a tightrope, someone's doing something wrong."
ShontarelleMargot de Castillhon asks on behalf of the Prince and that just makes Shon's wary gaze flick upwards toward the eaves of the place; there is nothing there. No heaven; no snowy owl, be-feathered, silent-killer, a shadow and then talons. Or is there? There is.
"Just tell the prince what he wants to hear; you don't need my input to taletell. He is dead - " - and that is when her dark dark eyes flicker with concern; concern, and a sardonic edge. "I think that's enough."
A pause; a long look. Then, "Stay safe." Because everybody should.
Up goes her chin, and if you're going to leave: do it with a certain veritas. Shontarelle; her hair is silver, fuck, just say it, and the mist she becomes is silver, too, silver while the bar-brawl begins, then shading white, then shading gray, coiling and curling like a deep dark secret then dissipating just ambience and then there's a window or there's a crack beneath a door gone the wary-eyed girl.
invictus
- and this is the unicorn girl now, see? This is her, the strength of those sharp knuckles of summerteeth's still ringing in her mandible making it an instrument the one that leads the orchestra into the crescendo the moment when the noise hits the halls hits the eardrums hits hits hits the ground and makes it shake makes the bones shake makes the pulse forget what metronome it is following because loud because violence but first there's that note. The note in this case is summerteeth's sharp knuckles startling Invictus, at least one sliver of Invictus, the sliver of Invictus which is complicit in finding an excuse to let herself be angry, let herself use that burning Rage, that sorrowing Rage, that fucking Rage she doesn't know what to do with; here's the unicorn girl, all brown honey and gold, rubbing her jaw so it clicks and over there's an Ahroun Shadowlord surging at summerteeth in response and what is she doing in that here is moment?
This smile; it's not a scythe of a smile it's so easy to miss it's like a twitch of the eyebrows, it's something contemplative and so pleased and so sharp and if concern's a ghost it's because that kind've smile and this serene little before-moment kills the concern every time so it will just keep its fucking mouth shut, and then:
three young garou are in a mother-fucking bar-brawl and Invictus already has her earrings out because her earrings are always out.
Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight!
Constanta"Griffin." The spares sense of indulgence about her. It is, merely, some ease around her fine eyes; some give in the spare and rigid curve of her mouth, something that ghosts in that expression, even after it is erased from her features, replaced by the cool, prim certainty that marks her every night. "Ysolde."
No indulgence there, but a quiet and quite deliberate pride. A sense of inquiry, "my dear one. How do your studies progress?"
Then, a glance over her space shoulder, a supple beckon, a threaded beacon, to the Thing behind her. "I have procured a small treat for your father. Perhaps he will share a taste of it with you."
summerteethfenrir do not dodge, or so summerteeth believes.
she is kicked in the kneecap.
she does not get to finish her coors.
FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.
fightfight.
fight.
fightfightfight.
you know, fight.
this might not happen, summerteeth, if you would drink better beers.
Coll MacCullochShe starts to waggle a finger. Then he catches it. A shot of horrid scotch hasn't begun to put a dent in his reflexes, the speed of those great big paws. He grins. There's an edge of savagery in it -- and a spark of play.
"I am a terrible tigh'rope walker," he confesses, "but I ha' ne'er minded a tumble."
A fight breaks out behind them. Cliaths in a fierce and joyful brawl, like pups in a spring meadow. Coll glances over his shoulder, laughs in a tooth-baring flash, loves it, loves the violence and the noise and the fun of it all; turns back.
"A tumble from great heights, I meant," he adds, letting go her hand, picking up his horrid horrid drink. He is still grinning as he lifts that glass, "Of course."
Iris DahlstromColl grabs Iris's index finger, wrapping his hand around it like the neck of a beer bottle or the grip of a spear -- though she doesn't know that about him. He's a terrible tightrope walker, even if he can't say it clearly, and he doesn't mind a tumble.
Iris glances aside at the cliaths-and-cub caught up in a sudden brawl and shakes her head, but looks back to Coll. She hasn't slipped her finger away; she retracts her hand when he lets go, lifting her glass. "There," she says, approvingly. "Now isn't that more fun?"
And slams the second scotch.
Coll MacCulloch"Fun," he echoes, laughing. "Well, ye are tha', miss."
Not to be outdone, Coll slams his scotch too. Starts it on something almost like a sip but then: down the hatch. Makes this face, eyes squinched and teeth clenched and lips pulled into a rictus grin, which turns into a true grin, which turns into a laugh.
"Och, this is awful. This is the wors'. Let's 'ave another," and he turns to signal the bartender again.
Iris DahlstromA beer for him, a Diet Coke for her, and now two shots of paint thinner for each. They both make faces, grossed out but stalwart. He laughs: this is the worst. LET'S HAVE ANOTHER.
Which makes Iris laugh, looking up at the bartender with that beamish brightness of hers. "I'm starting to not even taste it as much," she admits.
Coll MacCulloch"Oh, miss, I still taste it, but it's startin' tae taste good. Tha's when I knoow 'tis workin'." He settles back; they are brought another round. Coll reaches out to divvy up the spoils, one glass to her, one to himself.
"I'm goin' tae ask ye another question, Iris," he says. "Ye ready for'it?"
Iris DahlstromThe truth is, everyone here has a tab. A long tab, a seemingly endless tab. When you leave to settle up it will be a blur, a confusion: maybe you signed something, maybe you dropped coin on the table, maybe you counted out paper. But no one here really worries about it. They bring you what you expect: maybe it's the cheapest scotch in the bar. Maybe it's blood of a saint. Maybe it's a Diet Coke, chipped ice, a red straw, to drink while you read your 'newspaper'.
Iris takes her third glass, lifting her brows at him. "Go for it," she encourages him, not drinking yet.
Coll MacCullochColl has his forearm folded across the edge of the table. He has his elbow on the table. He is no gentleman, but then: she never mistook him for one. He plays with his glass, watching her, half-smirking at her, turning that little tumbler of scotch around and around and around.
Nods toward the door.
"Hypothetic'ly speakin'," he says, "if I were tae walk through tha' door an', let's jus' say, mysteriously end up in an entirely diffarent time an' space than yourself. If tha' were tae happen, an' if I were tae wan' tae track ye doown for another thoroughly entertainin' night such as tonigh' --
"Where, Miss Iris Dahlström, should I look for ye?"
Iris DahlstromThe woman is wearing a dress that may be modeled after a slip and reading a PennySaver, insisting brazenly that someone else buy her drinks, and every ounce of her politesse is false. If Coll has it in his mind that she's a lady, he's mistaken. If he thinks she wants to be treated like a lady, he's still mistaken, but a little more fairly so: she does, after all, talk about diction a lot.
Their glasses are still full. Of paint thinner, but still full. That's how you know that 'glass half full' isn't much of a measure for whether someone's an optimist or not. The glass could be half full of hemlock.
If he were to --
he brings up a thought that's been in the back of her mind for some time now, but unspoken. Iris glances over her shoulder at the door in question. She looks at it for a moment, and her green eyes are serious when she turns them back on Coll. "I have this feeling," she says quietly, "that if we walk out that door, you might not even remember to look." It is, and isn't, an acknowledgement of what they both are thinking might lie on the other side -- and what might not.
After all. She could just be intimating that she doesn't think he's the type to call.
Coll MacCullochThe corner of his mouth curls. There's a touch of bittersweet in it.
"Humor me anyway," he says. "An' if we forget then we forget."
Iris Dahlstrom"I haven't decided yet," she says, shrugging, lifting her glass to her mouth. "Regarding where you might look for me. I was driving when I came here. Looking."
Coll MacCulloch"Lookin' for what?" A quirk of a smile -- a throwback to an earlier thread of conversation. "A waitressin' job?"
Iris DahlstromAnother slight shrug of those narrow shoulders. "Just... a place. To be."
Coll MacCullochThe smile lingers. Then it fades. Then Coll extends a hand across the table, palm up, fingers open.
Iris DahlstromIris quirks a brow. She has her glass in one hand, as he does. Elbows on the table, akimbo and everywhere. Then: what the hell.
She puts her hand atop his, lightly, as light as a ladybug, given to fly at a moment's notice, a half-twitch of his hand.
Coll MacCulloch[AND THE TIMELINE SPLITS.]
"Bit o' a sad thought," he says softly, "walkin' out o' here an' not even r'memberin' tae look fer ya."
His hand doesn't twitch. It closes, slow and steady, loose and gentle, wrapping fingers around the base of her palm; the span of her wrist.
"Wha' do ye think, Iris. Shall we cut our losses, shake hands an' bid farewell?"
Iris DahlstromHis hand begins to close. But like a bird, a butterfly, a number of things, hers lifts. Gently, as though the air just picked it up. She uses it to switch hands, lifting her glass with the hand she gave to Coll for that moment.
"There are sadder things," she says, with some coyness, which
is a cover, as her mouth is covered, as she drinks. He asks her if they should cut their losses. She begins to lower her glass, meeting his eyes again. "Eventually," she answers.
Coll MacCullochSadder things, she says. Coll laughs the way he does, openthroated, openhearted, open. "Sadder than a warrior o' Stag forgettin' a beautiful face? How litt'le ye must knoow of my tribe, miss. Why, the very thought -- " he presses a too-earnest hand to his heart, a none-too-earnest twinkle in his eye, " -- heartbreakin', I say."
She drinks. He draws his hand back -- that hand that had tried to catch hers, and failed. He picks up his glass instead. She is sipping this time. He takes a hearty swallow, and
it's true. It's almost starting to taste good.
"Eventually," he agrees, then.
Iris DahlstromOf course, someone from the bard's tribe would think there's nothing sadder, no greater tragedy, than a warrior of their kind forgetting the face of a beautiful woman, briefly glimpsed only to be lost. But she's not a Fianna. She's one of the daughters of Great Fenris, but she was never -- will never be -- a shieldmaiden. She's willing to bed a good amount that most of the warriors who have looked at her face forgot it easily enough. They aren't to concern themselves with what is tragic. You do what you need to do, not to survive but to fight the war, win the war. Remembering her face would be a weakness.
She smirks at him, her own eyes twinkling right back. "What about the meantime?" she asks him.
Coll MacCullochThey share a smirk. "What about th' meantime?" he fires right back. "I am drinkin' paint-strippin' liquor with the lovely lady I am doomed tae forget. A Fiann oughtae be satisfied wit' somethin' so poetic as tha', should he nae?"
Iris Dahlstrom"I'm not a Fiann," she informs him. Reminds him. Tipping her glass his direction, which only has a few sips left in it. She holds it well, hand around the base, finger extended in his direction.
Coll MacCulloch"Trust me," he assures her, "I ha' no' forgotten."
A few seconds tick by. He looks at her hand on the glass. He follows her arm back to her shoulder, her shoulder back to her face. He is watching her again, watching her with those steady fiery eyes.
"Now I ha' a confession tae make."
Iris DahlstromIris nods at him, permissively. Like a blessing.
Coll MacCulloch"I'd like tae take ye upstairs," he says. He doesn't look away. He doesn't bite his lip. He doesn't even have the good grace to flush. Just says it: low and steady. "I'd like tae take ye t' bed. Tha's wha' I'd like t' do in th' meantime."
Beat. Then, irrepressibly, that grin:
"So if ye happen tae be th' slappin' sort, ye migh' as well take ye best shot now."
Iris DahlstromIf they walk out the front door, Iris thinks there's a good chance that they aren't going to end up in the same place, much less the same time. She doesn't know how she knows this, or why she believes it, but she believes it. But even if that didn't happen, it's not as though she intends to see him again. Invite him over for coffee or to see if he'll help paint her house, when she finds one. Go on whatever someone like him considers a 'date'. She hasn't even considered what that aspect of life is going to look like from here on out.
People settle down. Find a place to live. Work. Make friends. They aren't constantly on the move, operating a one-woman brothel out of a camper on the back of a pickup truck, opening the little back door most nights for men who are not men, men who pay sometimes with cash but more often in some form of trade: meat, furs, loot taken from the fallen, occasionally labor if they didn't have anything else to offer but their bodies, in exchange for hers. It's not the classic arrangement of whore and john, doing what she's been doing. She's found it hard to describe, when she's ever tried describing it. She would weep, privately but deeply, when one of them died, a loss like a pain in the middle of her chest. But she would still sell the furs they gave her, even after they were gone.
A couple of times, when she didn't know any better yet, she even worked for free.
--
Coll, who she may never see again even if they walk out the front door and find themselves still sharing the same plane of existence, wants to take her upstairs. To bed. In the meantime. And she finds her heart giving a little tell-tale thud, her body warming in response. He'd like to take her upstairs to bed. She'd like to take him upstairs, too. And to bed.
She might say now that she only slaps when asked, and sometimes not even then, because it's true, but she has a feeling that will send a message she's not intending to send. He's young. She wouldn't blame him.
Iris isn't grinning. She is thoughtful, rolling her glass in her hand. Then she lifts it, taking the last drink slowly, then just as slowly setting the glass down as she swallows. No grimace, now. And deliberately, while holding his eyes, she turns her cup over, rim to the table, a drop or two of liquid pooling between glass and wood. It makes a soft sound.
Coll MacCullochShe is not the slapping sort.
She does not smile at the wan little joke, either. Because it was a joke, and it was wan, and it was small. It was a bit of an out, that. A small and unmentioned little convenience, in case either of them needed it: something they could seize on and laugh about and let the rest slide if they so chose.
She ignores the joke. She doesn't ignore the rest. Her answer is not verbal, or even vocal. She finishes her last drink,
that horrid scotch which was the best he could afford, or the best his mind thought he could afford in this strange half-place,
and his eyes have not left her, never seem to leave her for very long, follow her fingers and her lips and her mouth and her cup. Catch the light. Glitter and spark.
For a second neither of them move. There is simply her cup on the table. His in his hand.
Then Coll rises to his feet. He is a tall creature. Rangy and hard. No spare, but far from scrawny. A full-moon, after all; not so very different from those wolves she knew before in some ways. So very different, in others. He lifts his glass from the table in the same motion that he stands, and in the same motion that he holds his hand out to her. Whether or not she takes it he turns his head to the side and drains his scotch, tips it all the way back, his throat working as he swallows.
It burns. He does grimace: bares his teeth like one animal scenting another. Drops the cup. Just opens his fingers and lets it fall, lets it break or roll as it will. She might take his hand or she might not; if she doesn't, he puts his hand on the back of her waist instead.
The staircase is long and shadowed. Dark wood, the faint scent of smoke. The boards creak under his feet as he climbs.
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