Intoxicated Kinfolk [Cordelia, Mattheiu]

[Cordelia] Caucasian females are notorious for doing things like jogging at night in very little clothing, accepting drinks from complete and total strangers, and wandering around in parks in the middle of the night with their translators because-

"Celiaaaaaaaaaaa- I wanna hotdooooooooooooog!"

Because this particular white girl wants cheap park food in the middle of the night and she is willing to do just about anything to find it. She had been out in the middle of the night, in a short, short skirt and some ridiculously tall heels that she's carrying around in one hand loosely. Cordelia's barely existant ass is sparkling because of the stupid dress and Celia-

remember Celia? The one that holds the keys to the Spaniard's hotdog having privileges?

is sitting on top of her boyfriend on a parkbench trying to see if she can reach his tonsils with her tongue. She's a short-ish Puetro Rican woman who got half an education thanks to someone feeling guilty about not admitting Latinos and the other half because she was damn good at what she did. They aren't brokering real estate, though. Right now, she's deadset on drunkenly making out with her boyfriend and trying to make a baby on the bench.

"Ceeeeliiiiaaaaaaa-" Cordelia whines.

She gets no reaction,a nd half staggers off to go find her damned food.

"CeliaI'mgoinghomehastalueeeeegoooooooo"- and this is where we start our scene. With a tall blonde, a little tipsy, searching out some sausage.

[Winston] Sometimes a guy just couldn't get any sleep.

He'd figured that the park would be a decent place to crash tonight, softer than an alleyway floor, with the smell of autumn and a soft cushiony bed of grass and dead leaves to curl up in. Just so long as he stayed in the shadows and out of sight, patrol probably wouldn't find him and make him move someplace out of the tourist's eye. But this:

Ceeeeliiiaaaaaaaa, hotdooooooog!

would wake the dead. Winston awoke rumbling and scrubbing his unshaven face, rolling over onto his stomach and squinting up past the dark toward the sound of a voice bleating out into the darkness in some mish-mash of English and Spanish, betraying her position (and condition) shamelessly. He huffed, groaned, coughed and wheezed, then pushed himself up onto his feet and went to go see what all the commotion was.

He recognized Cordelia right off the bat once he crested the hill he'd been sleeping at the bottom of, but he didn't approach her right away. Rather he slipped onto the path behind her and started following, some fifteen or twenty feet behind. As he walked, holey and chewed up sneakers nearly silent on the ground, he adjusted his clothing, which was something to be surprised by tonight. He wore a navy blue pinstriped suit, now rumpled and slightly wet from laying in the dead leaves. He was tugging the jacket straight and plucking leaves free, out from his hair and off his shoulders and waist, adjusting the sleeves and the cuffs, and just watching those long, long legs walk while he followed, nothing but maliciousness and curiosity in the air around him.

[Cordelia] Silver Fangs are slowly but surely breeding any desireable trait out of their kin. They have no survival instincts, and it seems that the only thing that Cordelia has going for her are impeccable breeding and the factt aht she could probably scream loud enough to wake the dead.

Which, sadly, seems to be part of the problem. There's only so much a Bone Gnawer can sleep through. Mack trucks passing through, freight trains at three in the morning. Cordelia half obnoxiously demanding a hotdog is just... too painful to listen to.

She wasn't wearing her glasses, which meant she either was wearing contacts or she really was suffering from White Girl Syndrome and couldn't see on top of being tipsy. She squints, and cresting the hill there was a man in a pinstripe suit, who she did not recognize. Cordelia starts to head forward-

She grumbles about something in spanish, and then looks back to realize she lost a shoe somewhere around here.

"Aww."

[Winston] "Darling."

The word was all that there was for a time, left hanging in the air in a way that felt... curious; best compared to dropping food coloring into a glass of water and waiting, watching, while it spread throughout. That's how Winston's voice seemed to be in the dark, filling and stretching, touching the trees and the path and the ears of the Silver Fang Kinfolk all alike. He stood with his hands in his pants pockets, a posture that pushed the bottom of the suit jacket up some.

Surprisingly (and though she couldn't see it without glasses) the suit flattered him well. It lengthened his frame, gave the illusion of shape even though the only shape he had was narrow, it made his shoulders seem sturdier and his chest less concave. The pink handkerchief in the breast pocket was a flamboyant and expensive looking touch, even if it was folded over wrong and crumpled up looking. His hair was a mess, his face unshaven. Someone had dressed him up, or he'd simply stolen a victim's clothing. It was impossible to tell.

When he spoke again, it was surprising. At first it seemed 'darling' was all he had to say.

"What in fuck's name are you doing?"

[Cordelia] "You're not bleeding," she tells Winston, as though this is some huge revelation. There's a bright grin on her face, but her lips are closed.

She bridges the gap enough that she actually can look at him. Blue gives way to blue pinstripes. On her end? Well, leave it to Fangs to rock a white dress. While we're on the topic of illusions, it gives the impression that Cordelia is heavier and curvier than she is. There's not a lot up top, but... she has muscle definition. Actual muscle definition, like the princess invested in a personal trainer.

All he seems to say was darling. And even without her glasses, her eyes are large. Constant, consistent deer-in-the-headlights.

What is she doing?
"Finding fooooood," she drawls, "muy guapo... who did you mug?"

[Winston] He stands still, leaned back, straightened up so his posture was erect (this was possibly the first time that anyone's seen him stand this way since the disappearance of a certain heavyset pikey), and doesn't move while the tall and leggy Kinfolk approaches. Bland hazel eyes give her a quick up-and-down, but settle on her face and stay there up to the point of her talking, asking who he mugged.

His answer is a shake of his head that was completed by pausing so he could cough a few times into his shoulder, then popping out his right elbow away from his body and turning it toward her, offering it for her to take. There's not an awful lot of amusement on his face tonight-- it seemed Winston wasn't at his most cheerful when roused from much needed sleep. Two hours wasn't much to function on, even for a creature used to living in the now. "Don't worry about it. You got any cash hidden in that itty bitty nightgown of yours? I'll find you your damn hot dog if you do."

Up close, it's a surprise to find he doesn't smell like old sweat and grease and garbage cans, but instead the dominant scent on him is mulch and dead leaves, precisely what you'd expect on a person that just got done laying in a pile of the stuff.

[Cordelia] Cordelia looked up and reached into her bra. She doesn't seem to have much in the way of modesty, but that's neither here nor there. She pulls out...

"Huh," she says, and stares at the bill. She pulls it up a little closer and determines that, yes, a twenty is acceptable to buy hotdogs.

Cordelia nods and again and casts her half glassy gaze on Winston. She smiles again, and looks at his lack of amusement, She looks up and shrugs at that, "aw, you want one?" It was the sort of good will that ame from five year olds, the kind that had them sharing their half crushed oreos and dirt-speckled lollipops with people because... well... it's the right thing to do.

As that Winston was a Bone Gnawer, they never seemed to care much about dirt.

[Winston] His elbow wiggled at her now, rolling from the shoulder to the boney joint below, poking out toward her in indication for her to take it so he could at least pretend to play the role of proper escort. That was all the effort he put out, though, because his hands stayed in his pants pockets and his eyes stayed a little on the side of half-lidded rather than glassy. She may or may not be able to make this out, but there were bruises from lack of rest under his eyes, and his back muscles were tight and tense.

Even so, she offered him a hotdog, and without batting an eyelash he answered, perhaps as a reflex. "Of course I want one."

What Bone Gnawer turned down food? He'd wait for her to take the elbow for perhaps another thirty second, maximum. If she complies, he'd start leading her back up the way she came from. If not, well, he'll start walking in that direction anyways and trust that she'd have enough sense to follow.

That's not to say that he doesn't keep one eye on her to make sure of it.

[Cordelia] They are what they are. Bone Gnawers don't turn down food, and Silver Fangs, on some level, latch on to pleasantries and sink their teeth into them. She takes the elbow without really thinking about it. Cordelia walks with one shoe in her hand and the other on his arm.

Her non-existent-hips sway.

"I'm missing a shoe."

Cordelia looks over at Winston; her head turns slowly and curls displace from behind one shoulder to slightly over it. She realizes that she's looking at his ear rather than his face. Cordelia adjusts her position accordingly. Winston couldn't be what one would consider attractive... well, strike that. He's not handsome, but he doesn't make Cordelia want to throw up or gouge her eyes out with her shoe. She does, however, see him and think that there is a solid chance he is about to try and sell her a used car. She inhales and, for the life of her, she can't place what the smell is.

Cordelia wasn't good at getting dirty.

"You look tired," she says again, as easily as she announced her lost shoe, "where are you sleeping?"

[Winston] Winston wasn't tall, but he wasn't short either. This meant that Cordelia was several inches taller than him, and it was a mercy that she'd taken off those high heels because it would look even more awkward if she'd kept them on. But still, the unshaven rumpled man in the too-nice-for-him suit and tattered tennis shoes that made the suit look more like a costume than an outfit escorted the tall, willowy Kinfolk out toward the flat grasses of Grant Park, where the vendors set their carts and where she'd lost a keeper to the sexual allure of her boyfriend.

I'm missing a shoe.
"You can buy another one."

The answer wasn't exactly curt, he wasn't snapping at her, but it certainly was dismissive. He's quite close to conducting a scientific study on the effect of alcohol, Kinfolk, and the Metis condition. Thus far he's quite convinced that when Kinfolk get drunk this initiates some kind of magnetic attraction between them and Metis Garou. He hasn't met a Kinfolk yet that hasn't somehow wound up wandering nearby him whilst intoxicated. Now it just wasn't surprising him anymore, it felt like routine.

She'd asked where he was sleeping while staring intently at his ear, then at his cheek, and he glanced up at her, raised one heavy Groucho-esque eyebrow, then looked forward again, to the path that they walked along.

"Tonight, in the most comfortable pile of leaves in all of Chicago. Yesterday, in my bus. Why, oh inebriated one?"

[Cordelia] There is a little known, less cared about fact regarding the kinfolk of Chicago: they are, by and large, heavy drinkers and heavier partiers. When one really analyzes the plight of kinfolk in general, it's a wonder why more of them aren't alcoholics. This particular kinfolk comes from a tribe thathad a life to look forward to where she could be traded for the sake of political gains, who will pop out little brats until she's used up and bitter.

She's lucked out. All things said, she managed to get a relatively long leash in the wake of familial mourning (Your sons were kin, and the only credit to your name preaches voluntary extinction. Failure, failure all.) Cordelia livs her life with blinders.

We digress.

"Nuh-uh," she tells him, "choo canna have tried all the piles of leaves an' determined that particular pile of leaves es the most comfortable."

She totally misses the why.

[Winston] "You better believe it, honey."

He licked at his teeth, running his tongue over the front of them in a way where that it flashed from between his lips, and paused when they came to the end of the section of the park with trees and paths and sloping hills and reached the part that was intended for tourists-- complete with fountains, pieces of well known structural artwork, hot dog vendors and wandering bodies alike. "Why, are you offering a bed as well as a hot dog?" She'd missed the 'why', so he asked it again.

Somewhere off to the left was a small Puerto Rican woman all wrapped up on top of her boyfriend's lap, rubbing hips with him and fighting the type of science that insisted you couldn't procreate through clothing. His head tipped to the side, and he stared openly, as though pondering the couple as a whole, or turning over a plot to ruin their evening in his mind.

[Cordelia] "Si," she tells him. All solid and certain, "and a shower. You smell funny. Es verdad."

She looks at Celia, and... uh... fuck, what was his name. Cordelia looks at him, and seems to completely miss the fact that they're, essentially, making babies with their clothes on. Instead, she's looking at his Jersey Shore hair and his overly defined triceps and she's wondering, not out oud of course but it's so obviously written on her face, how Celia can try and make out with this poor guy.

Cordelia doesn't seem to realize she's acquired a trophy boyfriend, but that's neither here nor there.

She does, however, decide that they're taking too long, and lets go of Winston's arm in favor of wandering off after something shiny.

[Winston] [Random die!]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7

[Winston] Cordelia let go of Winston's arm to wander off, but that didn't mean that she got terribly far. His hand jerked out of his pocket to snatch at her wrist. Something that made him seem almost like a teenager, despite the body hair, the gruff appearance, and the weathered away about him, was the fact that his hands and feet seemed a bit too large for the rest of him, like he was still growing into them. It wasn't just because Cordelia was thin that his fingers fit easily around her wrist.

With the Kinfolk secured, he went back to walking, hauling her with him toward the nearest hotdog stand, pointedly away from the couple having hanky-panky on the bench.

"This is the best I've smelled in a long time, you can ask anyone and they'll vouch for me." And quickly, following up after that: "Did you drive here? How am I getting you home?" Followed up even further by him curling his free arm over his face and coughing into the crook of his elbow.

[Cordelia] She thinks she's going to get a good distance,w hich doesn't do her much good because she's taken all of four steps before his arm shoots out, before his hand is around her wrist. Cordelia doesn't pull away, she just looks down and just... looks. Cordelia blinks slowly, inspecting the dimensions of his hands versus the width of her wrist.

She looks back and him, sidelong and almost... perplexed. It's as though she is trying to put some kind of puzzle together. She looks back at his face, then to his hand, then back. Whatever thought she had is abandoned in favor of-

"You have a bus we can take the bus!"

a beat passes.

"I don't drive."

[Winston] She studies the way his hand, complete with tawny-furred knuckles and tiny paper-white scars here and there, contrasted against her wrist. It was large and rough, a contrast to the rest of him, which was narrow and underfed, hardly fit for battle like so many, many other Garou were opposed to him. Most were tall, had muscle from years on the job, scars to boast and masculinity to spare (even the females). Winston, though, he was a spy. A sneak, a sleuth, a bastard. He was no warrior, and that would never be confused.

She'd studying him, looking confused, then bleating about a bus and admitting she can't drive.

"My bus is on blocks, toots," he regrettably informed her, and paused in front of a vendor. "Two with everything, chief. Barbie's paying." He wagged his eyebrows and flashed his teeth with a smile to the vendor, which encouraged the poor man to put the hot dogs together with haste, so that the weird guy with the suit and sneakers would get the hell away with his gigantic hooker. Something about the pair of them (Winston mostly) felt illegal, and he didn't want any part in it.

"If you didn't drive," he said while waiting, looking up to the absurdly tall Kinfolk again, "how'd you get here? Totter drunk and unstable on those heels in that slip of a dress?"

[Cordelia] "Yo no soy una Barbie," she tells him firmly. Surprisingly firmly.

It was hard to take her seriously when she's pulling a twenty out of her bra and handing it to the vendor, who would much rather walk away and not have anything to do with the pair of them. Cordelia has this weird girl-next-door thing going on. That sort of faux innocence that wasn't fooling anyone, but she looked atht eworld too sweetly to be anything but.

It's also hard to be mad when she's about to get food. She holds one hotdog in hand, and promptly shoves it in her mouth.

This is also proof that she can't possibly be anything other than vaguely adorable because... well.. the girl can't get an absurd amount of suggestive food in her mouth at one time, "Shee-yaa rove."

And she swallows. Cordelia half coughs and clears her throat. Too big of a bite.

"I usually take the bus or a cab."

[Winston] The hot dogs and change were handed back, and Winston at least had the humanity left in him to leave the vendor alone right away. He nudged Cordelia's back with the flat of his knuckles to get her moving, and without another word back to the wary human he started moving them out of the park, toward the street, and took a few good bites out of his hot dog.

She might be built like a swan, but she ate like a seagull.
He found that amusing, and that was apparent by the smirk that uncurls from his mouth like he were the Grinch.

"Bus or a cab. Alright, well, let's get one of those." Chew chew, bite, chew chew swallow. "We'll get you home, get you into bed all safe and sound and asleep, and I'll just pretend that I was never there so that Miss Bellamonte doesn't come down here to discover who I am and stick me with her manicured claws for sullying her Kinfolk."

"Sound kosher?"

[Cordelia] She takes another bite, and she might just choke on the damned thing if she wasn't so committed to... you know... eating...

She makes a sound like it's absolutely heavenly. She sighs, from high to low and her head goes back. She smiles like this is just as good as a decent cup of coffee or mediocre sex. Not good sex. She's not having an orgasm over chili cheeze jalepeno dogs, but she is decidedly pleased with all of it. Cordelia swallows, and life is good.

Sound koshed?
She blinks, all wide-eyed.
"Huh?"

A beat.

"Oh, okay? But you should sleep inside. You've walked me home twice now. Yoooooou neeeeeed temperature control," she says, "look at you, being courteous."

[Cordelia]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5

[Winston] She sighed with pleasure over the last bite of her hot dog, and Winston stares at her appropriately, one eyebrow lifted higher than the other, mouth left slightly open for a few seconds longer than typical before filling the space with the rest of his hot dog, chewing and swallowing as well. He adjusted the suit jacket, tugging the lapels and then shoving his hands back into his pants pockets as well. It's best not to comment on the teasing mannerisms of a drunken Kinfolk, that's just asking for trouble.

Rather, he stops at the side of the park, along the sidewalk, and leans forward to watch the road, keeping a look out for a taxi cab.

Silver Fangs had money, right? Them and Glass Walkers. He didn't feel bad taking advantage of either members of the tribe, not one bit. She could pay for the drive home, but as for sleeping at her home...

"Look, lady, my skin may be flea-bitten and grease-stained but I've kind of grown attached to it. If I fall asleep at your place, regardless of whether I'm at the front mat or curled up at the foot of your bed, some angry fucking Ahroun is gonna break his way into your home and my ribcage alike. No thanks."

[Cordelia] "Aeeiii, you are always thinking ahrouns will pop out of nowhere and kick your ass when you're around me, why is this? No es bueno. No es manera de vivir su vida. Además, no ... bueno, está bien, tal vez usted tiene que preocuparse acerca de Christian, pero me gustaría ... uh... huh. Something," her response was immediate.

[Winston] "English, toots."

A hand lifted to scratch at the back of his neck up to the back of his skull.

"English was hard enough to learn for me, I didn't tackle Spanish on top of it."

[Cordelia] "What else do you speak?" her head cocks to the side.

[Winston] "The language of our people." This was said simply enough, and Winston reached out a hand to flag down a cab, who slowed only enough to get a good look at Winston's face before catching the chill of Rage and continuing on. He frowned, nose wrinkling, then muttered and nudged at the Kinfolk with his elbow to get her walking again, up the sidewalk now for a bus stop instead.

"I didn't need to know anything else, I stayed in the Caern for the first half of my life. And let me tell you-- oh wait, you already know. English's fuckin' hard." They'd come upon a bus stop not too far from where he'd had them standing initially, and here he plunks down on the bench, sitting with his knees apart and letting his head fall back and eyes close while he waited. It seemed he fully expected her to do the same, only hopefully sans the knees apart thing, considering her tiny tiny dress.

[Cordelia] He has to really nudge her, because she's just looking at him like he sprouted a second head. Her jaw is slack. Cordelia is amazed, impressed, and she lights up with open and unapologetic fascination.

"What was that like?" oh god, it's become storytime.

She plops down on the bench, her arms are across the back of it, and she stretches out. The female looks comfortable enough to say the least, and she looks at her toes. Her toenails are pink. That sort of understated, boring pink, but they're pink. Behold Cordelia Sarafin Diego, the only person to look at a metis like they're a freakin' rockstar.

[Winston] Cordelia's arms sprawl over the back of the bench, which positions Winston's head on one of her forearms to be treated as a pillow. He decides he doesn't mind, it's more comfortable than the back of the bench. So long as she didn't fuss over greasy hair, he wouldn't move and she probably wouldn't either, not until the bus showed up.

It seemed this was becoming routine for the Kinfolk, waiting for buses with Garou.

She observed her pink toes and asked him what it was like, and also found time to stare at him like he was Mick Jager. He just let his eyes close, relaxed into the bench, and muttered his reply.

"What, the language learning or the shitty life?" Metis don't have pleasant childhoods, this is a fact.

[Cordelia] "Both."

She has one Hell of a short attention span. Cordelia looks at her toes, then at Winston. She looks fascinated now. She doesn't look away just yet. COrdelia catches the muttered reply, though, and some part of her catches that he seems... well, fuck, it took her long enough to finally realize that Winston looks tired.

Cordelia takes up space like she owns anything she touches. Things are hers by virtue of existing and falling upon her gaze.

"I don't meet a lot of-" she then looks a little uncomfortable, her brows pull together and she bites her lower lip. "Well..."

[Winston] Cordelia was a Silver Fang by blood, by birth, by nurturing as well. She was raised up to the attitude of owning and ruling over whatever it was she deemed needing to be ruled. If it happened to be that bench and he was her only commoner for the evening? So be it. He was the ultimate omega, as low as they come, if some drunken inquisitive Kinfolk decided she needed to know things, that she needed to be entertained until she was home and safe, then he was fine with that.

Besides, if he kept her entertained with words, that would keep her on the bench and prevent wandering off, and that would require a hell of a lot less energy than physically herding her home.

"Mules." He finished her sentence for her easily enough, and a lazy smirk curled over his unshaven face. "I can imagine why you haven't, I hear your people kill 'em the instant they come out.

"You know what learning a language is like. I don't need to explain that to you." Even if the difference between learning one spoken latin-based language after speaking another one, and learning a spoken and written language coming from growls and gestures and yips and howls was in fact very different indeed, he left it there. "Growing up in the Caern was like growing up in an orphanage. You don't get out, you don't see past the walls, and you get stepped on and kicked around and just wait and wait for that day when you get to have a job and get the hell out."

[Winston] [Dodge!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 5, 8 (Failure at target 6)

[Cordelia] [dex+brawl, because hugging is a martial art, +1, druuuuuunk]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 8 (Failure at target 7)

[Mattheiu] He whistled softly to himself and made his way slowly through the park. The young man positively stunk of wealth right down to the way each and every fiber in his coat looked as if it were put here on this earth for the sole purpose of serving as little more than a decoration to go atop his outfit. Mattheiu was a spitting, shining example of what one could be... Not the kind of man one could become but what one could have been had they been born to the right parents and then, subsequently, raised by them with the intention of creating a creature brimming with self confidence and grace. Mattheiu was perfection... Not born but forged by the fired of Gaia's own passionate fantasies, given shape and form by her will, and blessed with the breath of life which carried with it the harmonious tone of perfection from which he had been spawned. Matheiu was a Silver Fang wherever he stepped the earth beneath his feet trembled and the wind itself existed for the sole purpose of stroking his cheeks to bring forth the pleasure and comfort of a brisk early winter stroll.

[Cordelia] Mules.
Her eyebrows raise up again and the intoxicated kinfolk makes a sound like she just choked on air. This is accurate because she did almost choke on air. She then frowns, and sits in that sort of uncomfortable white-person-silence that she doesn't quite know what to do with.

"... that's a horrible name," she blinks again.

They go on, and she just looks at Winston. Really, really looks. And the more time goes on, the less she looks at him like a rockstar and the more she looks at him like some malnourished, mangey, underfed puppy that, quite obviously, could not be held responsible for the fact that he was smarmy and a little oily. So, she leaned in, because he looked like he needed some kind of assurance that, despite the fact that he was smelly and a little awkward, he didn't... you know... deserve to be treated like crap.

So, she leans in, and he can tell that something's about to happen because her arm twitches. Winston leans in one direction, Cordelia leans in the same direction, and as that she has, in fact, been drinking, she doesn't have the best luck with her equilibrium right now, so this is where we stand: Cordie leans, winston leans, and she leans far enough that her head ends up in his lap...

Kind of...

More like she ends up half-draped over him like he's a boney, smelly coatrack. She seems fine, though, her underwear isn't showing.

[Winston] Cordelia was staring at him with big doe eyes that he could swear were going to start tearing up with pity for him at any second. Her arm jerked funny, and she started to lean in toward him, face tipped toward his, smelling strongly of alcohol and all the fine silks and golds that came with her breeding, a vague promise of frost along with the fineries that can be found in any palace hall. His eyebrows knitted together, and he leaned back, shifting his head and shoulders away so that she couldn't quite reach that long, awkward body to him in the way she wanted.

So they leaned. And leaned. And leaned. And eventually they run out of space and Winston ends up with the heel of his hand on the bench to support his torso so he doesn't fall off the bench, and Cordelia ends up with her head in his lap.

Well... that's compromising.

The Bone Gnawer blinked at her, straightened up, and just stared at her pretty blonde head for a few seconds before muttering lackadaisically (even though his spine and thighs were clenched stiff and he was doing his damnedest to just not think about it), "What the hell're you doing now, lush?"

A flickerflash of Rage behind him, another chill of that royal breeding, and Winston glanced over his shoulder back into the park from his position on the sidewalk that wrapped around it to see... Mattheiu, the High and Mighty Silver Fang that believed he'd contracted the Rat-Fink out to gather information for him. He would be one of many in the city under that delusion.

See? This right here is why he's always worried about Ahrouns manifesting to rip his ribcage out of his body. Because it actually happened.

[Mattheiu] In a perfect world there would be no such thing as the metis, hell there would be no such thing as Bone Gnawers. All would be as pure as one another and they would roam happily in some kinda paradise where flowers and birds roam freely and everyone eats cotton candy or some such cause nothing would ever get hurt in a perfect world. This, as we all know by now, is not a perfect world. It is cold and ugly and dangerous and full of more twists than most could imagine. Mattheiu knew well the dangers the city could bring and it was usually the reason he tried to avoid it.

That soft voice of his was lovely, was he trained or was it simply natural talent? Whatever the case it was quite apparent that Mattheiu was created with the intention of being heard. This was his art and his craft even if there were many who did not appreciate it as such it honestly never mattered to Mattheiu. There is a reason his kind have ruled the Garou for two hundred thousand years and would continue to do so for another two hundred thousand years and on and on until the end of time.

That whistle seemed to carry him closer up until the point he was smiling at the sight of Winston the Gnawer who had been privileged to be taught a little about the perspective of a Silver Fang last time they had spoke. So Privileged that he has apparently taken it to heart and seen fit to go prancing around with their kin as if he were one of them!

Fortunately Mattheiu is an honorable, and civil man, and though his eyes slipped down to Cordelia they snapped back quickly enough and his smile remained brilliant as he made his way closer to the pair. Footfalls clumping gently against the path beneath them, and he even paused to draw his iPhone from his pocket. Something to keep his hands busy while he paused to talk with Garou and kin.

"Winston... Cordelia. Funny thing running into the two of you here."He says with a flick of his eyes towards the screen before him."Lovely evening out tonight wouldn't you agree?"He adds before snapping his eyes towards the kin.

[Cordelia] She just kind of sits there for a mimnute, and she's finding herself posed with a particularly difficult question. Does she get up from her slightly unpleasant smelling pillow and feign dignity, but not go take a nap like she wants to do... or, she can sit up and not have her head somewhere comfortable. Ish. Comfortable-ish. This is Winston we're talking about, here.

She hears a voice, and it's familiar enough that she goes rigid immediately. Her eyes widen, and for the time being she doesn't actually go somewhere. Her processors aren't firing on all cylanders, but thats better than most people can really way.

And the only plan she can come up with is to sit up. It's slow and purposeful, or as purposeful as she can get. Cordelia smiles, and one side of her mouth turns up a little more than the other. "Nooo," she drawls out, so spake the blonde woman in the tiny white dress, "es freezing. Como estas? Esta bien?"

She covertly puts a little distance between herself and Winston. Just a smidgeon.

[Winston] If Winston were any smart, self-preserving sort of man he would act offended, he would blame everything on the alcohol (blame it on the al-al-al-al-al-alcohol baby) that the Kinfolk had imbibed, turn things around to blame the Silver Fang for not keeping better track of his Kinfolk, and that's what started the whole situation in the first place.

...you know what? He was kind of self-preserving. He held onto all of these thoughts.

But he didn't let Cordelia be embarrassed all by herself either. With some smidgen of misplaced protectiveness, he dropped a curiously large hand onto Cordelia's shoulder, tugging a strap, he wasn't sure if it was her bra or dress or what, back up where it was supposed to be before patting her shoulder a couple of times, bracingly, comfortingly.

But his eyes stay glued onto Matthieu. He doesn't smile a whole lot, there are circles declaring lack of sleep under his eyes. He's dressed in a slightly wrinkled but still rather nice navy blue suit with faint pinstripes and a pink handkerchief stuffed into the breast pocket for flair. But his feet were clad with rough, grayed old sneakers and his face was unshaven. God knows where he got the suit from or why he was living in it.

"Lovely as the inside of a whiskey bottle, Gabriel." It was hard to say why the Metis couldn't just use someone's name, or couldn't land on a nickname and keep it. He had to keep jumping from one name to the next, giving people perhaps fifteen new ones within a single conversation. "Your Kin here got off whatever leash you guys had her on. I'm just making sure the pup gets home. Good samaritan and all that."

[Mattheiu] There is a slight rush of steam past his nostrils in response to Cordelia's comment, and it is soon enough followed by a nod of his head."I wouldn't quite call it freezing..."He trails off as he speaks though he does look around."But still cold enough I suppose."He says this while looking Cordelia over slowly, appraisingly, you see Mattheiu has been trying to get the girl to dress up a little more fittingly all this time and here she goes and does it when he isn't looking? Then again Cordie and Mattheiu haven't ever gotten along much... Hell Mattheiu doesn't get along with pretty much any of the Silver Fangs in this godforsaken town! Oh well he will drag their asses, kicking and screaming no doubt, back to their rightful place whether they like it or not.

He then turns his attention to Winston and his smile brightens."Funny in all her time here I can't once imagine that we've ever placed Cordelia on a leash. Oh I can assure you Winston if I were to find out that a member of my house were being treated in such a manner there would not be much that could save them from the punishment I would deliver. No no... Despite what others might believe there are few things in this world we Cherish more than our kin. They are our past as well as our future... Our hopes for a brighter and glorious future. Indeed without them all would be lost. Our tribe would be shaken apart, and the ivory tower would doubtless crumble and with it... I suppose so too would the hopes of the nation itself no?"He asks with a smile."I assure you Winston we do not keep our kin on leashes. We are not Fenrir."He adds this with all the grace and kindness one wouldn't expect from a Silver Fang. He was being civil right now anyway.

"Nice to know you're looking after her. We have all kinds of terrible things out and about, roaming and lurking, so pleasant to know we can count on others to do their best to look out for our kin."He turns his attention back to his iPhone.

"Do you need a coat Cordelia?"He asks while busy with the screen before him but his attention, soon enough, flickers back to Cordelia and once again she had his direct and immediate attention.

[[ Fade, Winston slips away ]]

Winter Wolf [Simon, Harmony, Fire Claws, Kora][ST'd]

[Calamity] Convergences.

The circumstance under which, parties not normally associated with one another through time, experience or relationship, come together to perform an act or event not otherwise planned, performed or practiced, leading toward a Goal of considerable weight, value and meaning.

The invisible threads connecting previously unconnected persons and places, achieving a fundamental change or alteration.

A subject of Fate and/or Destiny.

Thursdays in the Garou Nation.

* * * * *

There is a humidity in the air, a vague threat of rain in overcast skies that have long held that clutch in Chicago. Dreariness and gunmetal are a fond pair within the skies of the Cityscape and the Garou of Maelstrom's Sept know well the hardships, tensions and stress that comes with being part of this protectorate. One almost has to relinquish and let go of that sense of normalcy and comfort that might interject in the life of a Garou, because here there is no reprieve.

Every moment is a demand for more. Every second, a potential for sacrifice. Thus, grim resolution and stoicism are considered a Pride. Weathering and Endurance, a source of Solace. One does not bellow or scream defiance here, they stare and stand. Stare and Stand.

Each of those gathered today has been brought to the outskirts of Town for varying reasons:

The Metis with Secrets, the Lupus in service to Great Fenris, the Daughter of the Wolf~Lord and the Young Law~bringer of the Peace Tribe can feel him in the distance. An ache that defines the heart, gives formula to the ribs and flushes into the stomach with profound discomfort. The tug and pull draws from several parts of the landscape of Chicago and yet each arrives within minutes of each other, perhaps even seconds. From various parts of the city, they come, rushing on two legs or four.

The Call itself is something of distress. Or...triumph? It isn't entirely clear just what it is, but within it, is housed something further than the Garou lungs are capable of. More and brittle all at once. A Terrifying clarion rich with the stuff Terror dreams of each night. It skates the aether and tugs on the umbral travelers, each caught within the spirit world, and draws them to this:

A Hillside. Spotty grass over hard packed dirt, leading down a gradual and infantile hill into a broad and inky plain, which comes to an end in the glaringly inaccurate stretch of dark woods that...does not belong on Chicago's edge. Not here, according to any map looked up in the physical. Yet there it stands, a half mile distant.

The moonless sky provides little respite, no matter the threat of it's Fullness, yet the open terrain before them houses little cover or promise of threat, still...

The dark, the open and a Baleful Howl in the winds above is enough to still any but the greatest of fools from simply charging out alone to explore.

[Barks Secrets] This Metis had a job these days. A pack,a totem to please. It was an unfamiliar sensation for him. Certainly he'd been a part of a pack more than once before, but these were short lived occurrences without any strong bonds forged, and it had been quite some time sine he'd felt the pressure to please a Totem spirit (beyond Rat, of course). It wasn't that he cared particularly for the Silver Fang or the Black Fury, but they fed the totem, and the totem gave him more strength, more air in his lungs and more sureness to his step. His thoughts were clearer, his eyes were sharper... hell, he was pretty sure that even his skin was less dry and his hair less oily (that, of course, was an illusion).

So he was in the Umbra staking out, keeping an eye on what could easily become a festering Wyrmhole within the city if given a chance, waiting for the chance to give his pack a stab at some Glory, to give themselves a name and to give Momentum a little more of a shove so it rolled faster and happier with them. The night had been dull, drab, and Winston was ready to put his tail over his nose and take a nap when a chill cut through his spine and seeped into his chest. His breath wheezed noisily, he stared at the horizon, and the chill tugged him toward the city's boundaries.

Not one to argue with the Spirit or the Wolf, he went.

Surely enough, others had felt the call as well. Winston stalked on all fours in his birth form, a tall, long, Crinos made of sinew and patchy brown fur, with ridiculously long fingers and toes and ears that tended to flop. Sickly muddy yellow-brown eyes hopped from wolf to wolf, those nearer and those still coming up the horizon. He stopped to squat a couple dozen yards from the foot of the hill, scratched at his lower abdomen with wicked black claws, and spoke in a way that seemed drawling and lazy even in the mostly guttural language of the Garou.

"You all felt it too, huh?"

[Bone-Grinder] Simon was here. Dark clothing covered his arms, legs, and feet, and a bandanna was worn around his neck, tied tightly enough to be pulled up to obscure the features of his face. It fit him well, what he might identify as the "Urban Ninja" look others would just identify as the "Burgler" look. His nostrils flared at the air the second he heard the howl...

Garou sometimes missed the importance of their senses, sense of smell in particular, relying all too often on their sight without ever realizing how important a keen sense of smell is to a wolf. It was a tool that led them to their prey and warned them of dangers. You might not always see an individual but their scent lingers in the air long after they are gone like a memory left behind for others to glimpse provided they know how.

He stood fast without making the slightest hint of a motion. His eyes scanned the darkness as he drew in the scents and sounds around him. There was an air of seriousness surrounding the Full Moon as he assessed the situation to the best of his ability. Death was an all too real reality for their kind, so each and every step made must be made cautiously.

"Naw... I was just standing around staring ominously into the darkness. It's a Shadow Lord thing."He finally says as a smile takes shape on his face. His eyes slip towards Winston and then back to the Woods."Not a good place to be... I don't like it. Walking into someone or something else's territory... Without prior knowledge of the area."He says this with a little shrug of his shoulders. He was a Full Moon he rarely cared much for any situation he walked into. However, this one had the air of a trap surrounding it which was an even less welcome feeling.

[Dreams in Summer Snow] The routine defense of a Sept is a bit different than Harmony had imagined it would be, when he was far out in the suburbs and thought about coming to live in the city. He had imagined constant assaults and skirmishes, with suicidal fomori running headlong into the Sept, and then the brave Garou would be summoned to the defenses. He'd imagined that he'd walk outside the bawn and see corruption. In short, he'd imagined it to be more like the stories the Galliards tell, where they cut out the long periods of waiting and the parts in between where one is just left to be human.

Adamidas is out of town. She was the first person he really connected with in Chicago, and so for the first time since arriving in the city he is on his own. He's all right with that, though. He makes friends easily.

He's in his room at the Brotherhood when it calls him, watching a movie, and young though he is he isn't one to ignore his duties. So he claws his way into the Umbra and he goes, arriving at the hill not long after the Bone Gnawer. Dreams in Summer Snow emerges in Hispo, his fur glossy and thick and brown, and steps over toward the Ragabash and the Ahroun.

"Felt something, yeah."

[Fire-Claws] Four legs good....

His hunting tonight seemed to provide him little this evening. Even with Luna strong, deep into her pregnancy, his rage and howl seem to scare away any thought of a possible kill. The wyrm has feel silent this evening. The wyrm fears that which kills by a full moon, the wyrm hides back in its hives awaiting darker times.

But there are other things besides hunting to enjoy. Duty is strong, but to something is just as important. Protecting one's family, one's pack, one's tribe. To revel in the joy of a great kill, to sing of those who gaurantee a new generation, to feast and drink and live. You fight and die so that you and yours may truly live. It was instinctual, something even the monkeys could understand, some of them anyway.

His hunting pattern changes half way through his night. Hunting for a proper kill to hunting down those instincts that drive him here, outside of the scab. Away from the weaver tech and wyrm taint and their horrific offspring known as modernization, to the inky darkness he has not seen before. But he is still new to this region, this territory held many new places.

And the lupus bounds towards the hillside, following the felling in his gut. His fur a motley assortment, made mostly of grey as any proud Fenrir, mixed with red and black. Brown eyes moving in the darkness, as he gathered with the rest of them. He yips and cuffs in response to those not so naturally inclinded. The monkey born and the sin-born are not so intuned with such communication even if they feel it. They cannot truly feel it.
{ws}
"Garou. Stronger than normal natural howl. Aided by spirits. Seems it wants something away, scaring. Is is renowned more than any of us."

His eyes look around, before finally comin up on his Jarl. His attention focused on her now. Only her.
{ws}
"Seems it hunts. Found prey. Making it fearful as it should be."

[Sorrow] The note finds her umbral, in the hard packed land that is her territory, human-skinned along the banks of the river. There's that fat, full moon riding over the city now, clear and bright in the back of her mind even when she cannot see it. The world feels sharper on nights like this, more pointed, more present. The moonlight is so strong it casts shadows where the city's lights are not so bright as to drown it out. Across the river, electrical impulses gleam and sing along the twisted, knotted webs of the weaver's domain, skeining over huge, faceless skyscrapers, an oppressive tangle of soulless.

She runs through the city, underneath the humming pattern-web, the blue light gleaming in her fine gray fur. In her feral form, Sorrow appears almost adolescent - slender and alert, with soft paws and rich, amber eyes. Her scent is sharply female, though - mature, alive.

--

At the edge of the wood-that-should-not-be, Sorrow gathers with the rest of them, a sharp whuff of greeting as she circles, taking in their scents. Her tail is high as she greets Fire-Claws, before she melts out of her feral form, into her human skin.

Human, she's a young woman, likely older than all of them, but young nonetheless. Her hair is a pale blonde, touched silver, platinum in the light of a full moon, and it falls in errant coils around her head and shoulders, the usual hairbands lost with the change of forms. Her clothes are worn, practical - jeans, a long-sleeved thermal under a black t-shirt, and a pair of black shit-kickers. There are leather bracelets around her wrists, and a thin band of braided leather around her neck.

A glance at Fire-Claws, her eyes - deep blue, the color of twilight - just shadows here, except where they catch the light. "A gift," she confirms, when the lupus is done speaking. "a Galliard gift, Call of the Wyld carried the howl to us. He's using another gift to of some sort to terrify whoever he hunts. I couldn't say for certain, though."

Another look to Fire-Claws. "Can you catch a scent - or track the sound?"

[Barks Secrets] Shame wasn't necessarily the word behind Winston's behavior, he didn't maintain his birth form to remind everyone what he was born as, that he was a crime against the world by existence alone. Shame wasn't present even by a portion in his voice or posture, he seems to forget what he is, what with the certainty and lazy half-confidence that he kept about him. However, despite that, with all the other Garou about, even if he was over all other heads simply by being the only one in Crinos, he kept his own head ducked just a little, his shoulders and back hunched, and his tail low.

He watched blandly as all others arrived, then moved from his squatting sit to stand up fully, moving those deadly scratching claws from his lower belly up to his collarbone. It wouldn't be surprising if he had fleas. With his chest at the height of a few heads, be it the bottom of his ribs or the top, the labored wheezing was more noticeable, scraping and scratching in his chest and rattling in his throat. Ears flicked forward and out, as though he could find trace elements of the soul-sound that had drawn them all here.

"Well, it could be a trap, but don't you think they'd draw us somewhere with fewer routes of escape were that the case?" Mud-colored eyes dropped down to Kora, focused on her face, then jumped back up to the hill crest. "I can scout ahead if you need."

Not like that was his job or anything.

[Bone-Grinder] Simon takes in the information as it is fed to him and listens on his own. Every sight and sound surrounding them had some degree of importance and he did his best to read all that he could. After all... A Black Spiral Dancer was just as capable of summoning them with the call as anyone else. So it did not change his feeling that such a thing could be a trap but there was more to this.

"It's more about getting your enemy somewhere you are familiar with and have had time to prepare. A wolf who knows the woods is just as deadly as a dude trying to run you down in a truck."He says with a shrug of his shoulders. His eyes turning back towards Winston."Well we're not gonna figure anything out standing around here all evening. Scout up ahead and the rest of us will keep up behind you. You see anything you fall back to our position and let us know if something is coming, yip or hollar like you got scared... But don't let them know that you're leading them back to us."He says with a shrug."If there's something out there I'd like to hope we can get the jump on it still even if it more than likely expects us."

With that much said he looks at the others curiously. Sizing each one up before turning to look back towards the woods."That sound like a workable plan?"He asks the others to make certain they were on the same page.

[Fire-Claws] His tail wags slowly as he listens to Kora's queston. But he knows better, that was not a question of his ability, it was a command for his skill. Maybe Sparrow told her of how he hunted that stag with Rainer and Night's Reprieve, maybe it was natural for monkey born to expect if of their lupine brothers. No matter the reason, he was already on it. His nose first to the air, then to the ground, back to the air as his muscles begin to flex and tense. His answer back towards his Jarl first before evening thinking of addressing the... well...whatever Barks~in~Secrets was.
{ws}
"Have his scent. Easy to track. But rain threatens in time.

He is still curious of the other scent, but it meant little to him at this moment. However he does go back to the one that seemed to want to lead. Narrowed eyes set on the other as well, as if he knew better than his Jarl. A growl nearly escaping his lips, nearly.

[Sorrow] While they talk, Sorrow pulls back her pale hair, twists it around itself, ties it out of her face, back against the nape of her neck. She's quiet, still, scanning the edge of the wood-that-should-not-be, listening to the whisper of the wind in the air, the lingering echo of the terrifying howl. "Look - " she tells them, gesturing down the hill toward the dark march of trees. " - there aren't any spirits there. Maybe they've been frightened away by the gift. Maybe it's something else - though it's hard to imagine that a Garou's howl could frighten away living spirits of trees.

"I don't want to be too far separated. You're Barks-Secrets, yeah?" This to Winston, whom she remembers only from the moots. " - scout ahead. We'll follow, down to the edge of the woods at least. Don't get too far head of us, and don't do anything especially stupid. Bring back whatever you can, and don't get caught. Go in lupus, I think. Follow the scent that Fire-Claws found into the woods, don't flail around if you lose it. Let's go."

[Dreams in Summer Snow] Harmony is not much of a tracker. He isn't much of a strategian, either: most of what he knows has been picked up on the fly in Chicago. So here, he is more than happy to defer to the Garou who are much older and more experienced with such things. Most of his time as a Garou has been spent acting as a mediator and judge, not on the battlefield.

Still in Hispo, he looks back and forth between the others as they talk about sending Barks Secrets ahead of the rest of them.

"If we end up needing a healer, I can do that," he says. "I'll keep an eye on the rest of you."

[Calamity] The Five that are that. Five and not one as a Pack should be, gather themselves together and decide. Forward...

Maelstrom's Garou are nothing if not cautious. Time, experience and circumstance have made them this way. As easily a trap, painted in their minds as anything else, if not a little easier perhaps. Does the Garou in question present them a foolhardy errand? Or is there genuine trouble afoot? Or something else entirely?

Barks~Secrets is told to move forward and do what his Auspice demands. The Garou remain on the hillside, as the Ragabash vanishes down the grassy and hard packed dirt. Soon enough he is little more than a moving shadow and eventually, the cloud cover above and the darkness of the woods beyond, he is not even that.

[Barks Secrets] [Perception + Investigation]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
to Calamity

[Calamity] Winston is no stranger to jaunts like these. Being what he is, who he is, one has to know how to get into the dirt, grime, muck and thick of it all and sometimes that means going places no one else is willing, wishing or desiring to go. Suitable? Perhaps, but dutiful most definitely.

He creeps across the landscape and there is that same stretch of spirit, a clinging, almost longing feeling that digs into the pit of his stomach and houses itself there. It is not quite sorrow or sadness, none of the depression or outright terror that accompanies such fates as Harano. This is something different. Something odd and off.

The darkness thickens slightly as he creeps forward and yet his vision is not terribly obstructed. The landscape beneath remains fairly flat and unremarkable, patches of grass popping up between islands of packed down earth, almost as if this landscape had been tread by the great beasts of prey long ago roamed these lands.

It isn't until Winston reaches the edge of those woods, that the strange Howl that had brought them here abruptly ends and that he begins to notice the oddity of it all, expanding:

The Trees are almost two-dimensional. Flat from the frontal view and yet maintaining the 'image' of a tree all the way around. It is as if the each is a cardboard similaricum of what a Tree should be, right down to every fine detail and yet...a mockery or imitation no less. It is through these odd standing pines and evergreens that Winston can see the span of movement.

Swift and furious and...loud, if muted against echoing further than the 'treeline':

"Ha! Thought you could escape?!"
"Take that! Wretch! Bastard!"
"Enough from you, wyrmling! I'll gut you and the mother that spawned you!"

Boisterous and thick of tongue. Powerful lungs, deep and baritone. The movements in that 'Treeline' continue to lumber, back and forth through what could be a clearing. The shadows though, are thick and the darkness from the above 'canopy' (little more than stiff cardboard leaves, jumbled together like some childish decoration) is sufficient to keep his errant eyes and notice limited. The sounds are audible though. The voice, it's threats...

...the the Whumping thrum of a very heavy Axe, colliding with...well, many things.
to Barks Secrets

[Fire-Claws] He begins to pace now, the smell still lingering in his nose. This was no claith they heard howl. This was something more, something more powerful than any one of them. The rage that surrounding him was pungent, overwhelming even as far from him as they were. His fur bristles with potential. He did not think he would get a chance to hunt tonight, now he has a wonderful opportunity to hunt with his Jarl. It might not have been the best time but some reason he remembered it now and figured he should tell Kora.
{ws}
"Found Tongue-Twister. Returned weapon to her. Had words. She will see to them. Will not touch kin."

Strange things wolves come to think of. No real linear process of thought, just whatever comes to their mind at the time. But there was logic, wolf logic to it afterall. And with that he pads at the hard dirt, stil lingering over the scent that came with the garou. Scuffing up, possibly, more scents of dust and dried blood, death in its true, natural state.

[Bone-Grinder] Simon's form shifts. What was once a man standing in dark clothing is soon replaced by a wall of fur and muscle blacker than the night sky. The sound of muscle and bone popping into place as his body shifts and swells and erupts from within himself is not entirely unfamiliar to the other Garou. Soon enough the beast was standing in it's Hispo form on all fours and sniffing at the floor.

"You see anything... Lead it back to us."He once more reassures Winston. The responsibility of the New Moon was a rough one but at least it could feel safe in knowing that the other Garou would leap upon anything that brought it the tiniest hint of trouble. Simon's ear twitched and it looked about at the others and then back towards the woods. He still didn't like any of this but it was his job not to like it. It was his job to see the potential danger in anything and everything and think up how to best confront it. The life of an Ahroun was not so simple as throw oneself blindly into combat. See it as one might he knew the reality... The Ahroun not only threw himself into combat but he was also the one whose advice would either save or end the lives of his peers. Everything he said had to be carefully weighed and understood... In the end however it came down to a balancing act. Maximizing the damage inflicted against the enemy while minimizing the damage inflicted upon the Garou. A healthy 5,000:1 ratio was about the right number... Sadly it tended to be more like 5:1.

He watches Winston and the area he is about to head into curiously. In the meantime listening to Fire Claws to see if the wolf decides to make any sense. His primary interest, however, lay on his single most important role. Making certain each and every garou present here makes it to whatever they call home tonight.

[Sorrow] Here they are in the skins they were born in - the feral lupus, the human Jarl. She has a certain easily physicality, dark eyes shaded in the stillness. What a strange group is ranged here. Harmony in Hispo, who will be their healer. Kora glances at him; does that thing that humans do with their mouths and smiles. It's not a feral smile, not an intimation of threat, a show of teeth. Easy, " - thank you." she says, her voice throaty and assured.

Then, watching Winston disappear down the hill, she sinks to her haunches, balanced close to the horizon, her forearms braced against her thighs, her feet flexed in the heavy boots balanced forward on the balls of her feet. Thoughtlessly, she pushes the cuffs of her thermal up her forearms, runs the edge of her thumb over the bracelets she wears. The materials are natural, the adornment slight, earthy and eclectic - hemp rope, bits of string and line, suede and leather, braided thinly, twisted around her wrists, part of her now.

"It was the honorable thing to do," Kora says, quiet, speculative. "I need to find her, too. I've seen other of her kin in the city - one I met the first day I met Cigney - who have had no contact from her, no tribemates to turn to, no knowledge that the city is at war."

[Barks Secrets] As suggested, Winston eased down into his smallest body and took on the visage of an underfed omega, the kind of wolf that had been ostracized from his pack and left to roam lonesome until sickness and starvation took his life away. He moved at a pace that he knew best for himself-- walked rather than trotted so that his breathing would not become elevated in the least and cause it to wheeze, which would certainly give away his position no matter how well he could flank the ground and shadows.

On he went, large paws nearly indicative of lingering pubescence tapping lightly on packed dirt that had him wondering if old buffalo herds pounded it flat and ate it dead in the realm where they still ruled the land by the millions. On and on, until things shifted further. The sound, the stone in his belly, they faded away and instead things began to... for lack of a better term, fall flat. He paused to stare at a tree, wondering if he was dying and his perception was failing him for it. He drew nearer and sniffed at one, huffed quietly, and slid further forth until new sounds, words and language, replaced the howl.

Thought you could escape..? Take that, wyrmling!

So there was a Wyrmling and something attacking it... Sure, he could go running back with that alone, but he wouldn't be doing his job then, would he? There was plenty more information to be had (and let's be honest, it was the greed in him that wanted more, not concern for those waiting behind for him), and in a world like his information was really the only currency he had.

So onward, Scourge Dog, onward you sleuth.
to Calamity

[Barks Secrets] [Dexterity + Stealth +1Momentum]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Calamity] (Whozzat!?)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 7)
to Barks Secrets

[Dreams in Summer Snow] That howl continues on, and the Philodox tilts his head as the sound carries, as he listens to the music beneath it reverberate and waver. They aren't just a primal thing, the cries the Garou give. Most Galliards make an art out of sculpting sound into something more, something expressive. This one certainly strikes a certain chord in Harmony as he listens, his head tilted.

"It sounds kind of sad," Harmony says to the others. "The howl, I mean. Kind of bittersweet and...nostalgic, I guess," he says, with a look toward the others. "Like they're mourning."

But he doesn't know for sure what that mourning might be for. He just hears it, tells the others, even though he has no idea why they've been summoned or what they're here to do. The mention of the Kin just draws a sad silence from him, but he has nothing to add.

[Calamity] ...And suddenly, only a minute or so after Winston departs from the Hillside, a few seconds after Harmony's revelation, the standing Garou hear the sharp and abrupt end of the Howl, the timor of that Fearing sensation beginning to dissipate with the absence.

[Calamity] Winston creeps as good to his word and duty as one can hope to be. The paper trees and their flattened state seem to make this easy on him, sifting between and through with nary a brush or scrape of the standing dopplegangers. Kora had made mention of the lack of spirits here and this only seemed to serve as proof positive of that fact.

Winston's movements take him a couple dozen feet into the 'Forest' enough to get him up against the edge of several open pockets of land and grassy turf, where he can see a larger clearing yet a dozen yards further in. Within said clearing, a bulky frame can be seen, swinging an overly large object in broad vicious arcs that slam down into the ground around it. Where the object thuds a splash of movement erupts around it and falls with only a dried, crackling sound, like the breaking husk of a burnt out log.

Each swing is punctuated by a deep

'Ha!'

And each turn or movement of the Behemoth in the clearing, reveals vague rippling motion behind him, as whatever he is fighting seeks to rear up again...only to be smashed back into the ground by another fall of that massive weapon-

'Ha!'
'Take that!'
'Ha!'
'You-'

Crack!

A massive object comes sailing through the opening Winston finds himself in and thrums into the ground not three feet to his immediate left, swifter than his eyes could have hoped to have followed:

The Axe is double sided, the head itself as large as Winston's Crinos' chest. The haft is of solid brown oak, well notched and scarred, while the metal of the blades is polished to a grim sheen. The etchings and carvings that inscribe the axe's interior face, are worn and weather and foreign to Winston's eyes but then...that might just be the sudden surge of adrenaline telling him that Pretty pictures on large weapons are the least of his worries right now-

"Who's that come?! Be yah'nother Wyrmling?! Step forward so's I can rip out yer tongue 'n slap you 'round with it!"
to Barks Secrets

[Fire-Claws] His head turns up to Kora as she speaks about kin and not knowing there is a war in the city. It seemed to him that most did not know a war was brewing and they could be collateral damage in a blink of the eye. He also met another Fianna kin, a strange little kin. A monkey kin not like other monkey kin.

Maybe he should use their given names. Yeah and give the Spider Bitch Queen even more power. Not all too likely.

But with the howl starting to give way, the sound moving to quiet. He becomes unnerved. His body no longer waiting, padding. He can feel it in his skin, they wait far too long. He can feel it, the howl was a call to them. And now they have lost the moment.

[Barks Secrets] In a classic show of lupine curiosity, Winston's shaggy head rotated clockwise, and his belly touched to the ground, sliding softly and quietly to get closer, closer, until he could see what was happening.

There! Aha! A visual! His nostrils quivered and wavered, his eyes focused on the massive, burly figure he'd found, followed the flow of muscle and the gleaming slice of the gigantic axe through the air. They hunted for more detail on the thrashing motions blocked out by the too-broad back, then searched the rest of the area for others that could be off to the sides, watching and/or keeping watch. He sniffed again with intent of finding blood, or the specifics too it, then--

CRR-ACK!

The ground hummed against his legs and stomach, and every muscle in his body leaped to the direction opposite of where the, as Winston would describe it, Oh-My-Fucking-God-Huge axe had landed, embedding itself into the ground dreadfully close, proving its might by proximity, by shaking the ground, and by being larger than his whole wolf body.

Yelling and hollering from the guy that had wielded the axe, and Winston knew the gig was up. His tail tucked, his hackles bristled and smoothed in quick succession, and he heaved a breath before rolling up onto his paws (and his larger, sturdier, Hispo body as well), and stepped forward with every submissive posture he'd memorized from years of having his face pressed down and heels on his neck to remind him of them traced into his frame.

Through the language of the society he was born of and to, he communicated.

"Barks Secrets, great Wyrm-Killer. Just a humble Bone Gnawer that's lost his way."
to Calamity

[Bone-Grinder] Simon waits until an appropriate distance has been made between them and Winston before moving to follow in the direction of the creature's scent. His keen nose searches for the scent of the wolf when he manages to disappear. He pauses to look once back at the others. Nothing needed to be said, he was following behind the New Moon as was promised.

He perked his ears when Harmony chimes up and he files the information away. This might very well be a funeral... In which case they might not be invited, and yet they were invited. If these were, in fact, Garou letting out such a howl then they knew full well what they were doing by unleashing that howl. They knew others would hear and they knew others would come. Inversely if they were the enemy they would still know exactly the same. There was little difference in the overall knowledge what differed was how the situation would need to be handled.

Right now Winston was his largest concern. The slightest hint of a peep from the wolf and Simon would be off. It was the deal they made. You scout ahead and we get your back. That and keeping his ears peeled for any unusual sounds. So for the most part the wolf appeared silent and focused and tensed.

Silence was good. It allowed the Full Moon the opportunity to not only breathe in the scents in the air but to draw in the sounds.

[Barks Secrets] [Manipulation + Subterfuge +1Momentum (Spec. Twisting Words)]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 6, 6, 9 (Failure at target 7)
to Calamity

[Barks Secrets] [Reroll, +1 diff]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 10 (Failure at target 8) Re-rolls: 1
to Calamity

[Sorrow] "Not like they're mourning, not precisely." This is why she lingers in her human skin. The promise of complex thought, the shifting association of words, language, a skin around her framed thoughts. "Just remembering, something lost, long past, the ache that lingers after grief has gone, the hollow underneath the skin."

The woman's gaze is fixed on the horizon, the dark trees still against the shadows.

She looks sidelong at Fire Claws, then Harmony. "Let's go."

- and then she is leaning forward as if she intended to roll down the hill. Instead, the Skald changes, her body rippling outward and then inward, all the way down to her fleet lupus form. Soft footed on the wiry grass of the slope, she pads down toward the border of the trees, in the wake of the ragabash and shadow lord. Tail is straight, her ears are returned forward. Under the moon, her fur shines with good health, her now amber-eyes are bright with it.

[Calamity] ...Through the paper trees, which bend, bow and seem to snap back into place behind him, the Monstrosity of a creature levels part of the Forest on his path to Winston who comes scrambling forward slightly. The Ragabash doesn't make it terribly far before he steps into the looming shadow of a thick bellied Mountain:

Winston can't see much, unless he were to raise his head higher than the Man's boots, which..all instincts scream...is a bad idea. His quivering voice betrays itself against the rush of adrenaline and resultant wheeze which squeezes out on his throat, constricting around his lie and making it what it is.

The Hispo isn't answered. Not right away. Instead, a large shadow looms over him, further and the Axe suddenly creaks loudly and is plucked from the ground without ceremony.

"Aye, a lil' shit-seed of a mongrel you are, huh?"

And then, with a grunt of effort, the Monster of a creature simply wraps thick stone fingers around the nape of the Ragabash's neck and plucks the Hispo up off the ground. Winston is jangled around in the air a bit, before being slung over a shoulder, jaws facing behind them, now a pair. In this position he can notice several things:

1) He's a good eight feet off the ground at eye level.
2) The 'Forest' is beginning to right itself in the wake of this Mountain, paper unfolding and straightening once more as if nothing had happened.

And all at once, they are moving. Back the way Winston came, without any of the stealthy ability of before.
to Barks Secrets

[Dreams in Summer Snow] When the howl dies away Harmony straightens, shattered out of whatever reverie he might have been entering, and his shaggy Hispo head nods once to Kora once she gives voice to what she heard in the song. She put it better than he could have - then again, she's a Galliard, and expressing such sentiments is part of the role of her Auspice.

As Sorrow's form ripples and rolls down into something four-footed and lupine, Harmony pads after her and Fire-claws. He has some of the same readiness about him that Simon does, though it isn't because he's preparing to leap into combat at the first sign of dismay from Barks-Secrets; he's prepared to go after him with healing hands if need be. Harmony has never drawn much of a differentiation between his pack mates, those close to him, and other Garou who just happened to be around in need of help.

He keeps his eyes on the horizon, and he keeps watch on the others to make sure they're all together.

[Calamity] The Four Garou come trailing in Winston's wake, drawing across the landscape even as the cloud's above seem to...thicken. The darkness is not as oppressive as it could be. Should, probably be. The Garou find little effort in tracking Winston's trail, both his scent and the vague impressions of clawed toes digging the dirt, barely recognizable unless you knew who and what you were looking for.

The four are moving for no more than two dozen yards, a quarter of the way to the Treeline, when something begins to bulge and finally emerge from the Treeline itself:

He is massive. Glabro is the sprout of hair along bare forearms and bestial flush of features is any indication (jutting jaw, sloped brow, bushy brows) and a thick mane of brown hair, tangled up in thick dreaded curtains that fall around face and over shoulders and back. The vest at his shoulders and chest is barely large enough to contain the impressive girth that stretches him well broad, both to the side and out front in the form of a considerable belly.

His gait is slow and easy, lumbering almost yet the strength with each step...in the way he carries the massive double-headed Axe, who's head is as large as a Crinos' torso, as well as the slung over Hispo shape of the Ragabash, dangling at his shoulder by the nape of Winston's scruffy neck...tells stories of cracking mountains, damming rivers.

He marches through the woodland, pushing trees aside like saplings; they crumble in his wake, inviting a hollow into the darkness of the treeline itself, ignored for the most part by the broad monstrosity that marches forward to meet the Four Garou. It's only as they draw to within twenty yards of one another, that he Stops and, Winston still dangling, hoists the Ragabash forward to hang in the air and shake about rather unceremoniously.

"This Shit~Seed belong to you lot then?"

And whump! Winston is dropped from his grasp to land on his feet or ass, whichever the Ragabash seemed more capable with.

[Barks Secrets] Winston may as well be a slain boar for all intents and purposes in setting this scene.

He rides into view on the shoulder of this gigantic Glabro of a man (and that says something, that the Glabro is carrying the Hispo like a sack of potatoes), limp with zero fight in him, but the sound of his labored wheezing is the next loudest thing to this mountain man's approach itself. It's been bothering the giant's ear, but rest assured that was the only thing to. The instant he had been picked up, he went limp, his tail curled between his legs, and he was silent.

You know, he was thinking,[/i] paper trees aren't so bad. You could re-use the leaves. And if I could breathe, this ride wouldn't be so bad either. I don't have to walk.[/i]

Then there was the rumble of a voice in his side, and he was thrown down onto the ground. His feet may normally find ground first, but he was still playing himself as the cowering, submissive Shit-Seed that he was, so rather he hit on his side, which was, as a matter of fact, a terrible idea.

There's a yowlp of pain, the oversized wolf beast squirms, then rolls up into a sit. His sides shiver and quake, his tongue lolls out and his jaws stretch wide, and there's a hanging couple of seconds where he's simply not breathing. Then, punctuating the silence and shifting it to obnoxious staccato bursts of sound, he hacked and coughed and wheezed as though he may literally dislodge a lung.

He must make his pack proud.

[Bone-Grinder] Simon couldn't help but growl at the creature as it drops Winston on the floor. It was the one who brought them all the way out here... if it didn't wish to be bothered it shouldn't have made use of a gift it knew would carry for miles. It asked folks to join it and since Winston was lying in a heap on the floor at the moment it implied to him that the beast was here for a fight and he would be more than happy to oblige.

He could see the creature was talented and capable perhaps even a full moon in his own right but it honestly didn't matter if the beast was an elder. Garou's strength came in numbers... He stood alone therefore it mattered little how talented or skilled he might be he was at the disadvantage. The thing was more than happy to fight... Which was funny because this full moon was as well.

[ws]"Stand down... Or step up..."The Full moon gave that simple warning. If you're here to fight then let's fucking get to it. But he wasn't going to negotiate this was either a Parlay or it was a battle and by his stance the Full Moon showed that he was fully ready to back up his words. The intruder had already harmed one of their own and Simon wasn't about to let the thing so much as move without having to pay dearly for every step he gets past that point unless of course... He can show he is not their enemy.

[Dreams in Summer Snow] Harmony's first reaction is concern for Winston: fear that this massive, primitive looking creature hurt him somehow before bringing him back. The moment he drops the Bone Gnawer to the ground, though, Harmony's fears are laid aside even if he feels a sharp spike of indignation on the Ragabash's behalf when the stranger insults him.

That's when he notices the glyphs inked across the man's skin. The dark hazel eyes of his Hispo form squint, the way a human's might, as he tries to make out the symbols and suss out what they're for. But all he can make out are a few words, and those few words in conjunction alarm him a little. Not enough to convince him that the man is some sort of enemy, but enough that he is immediately a touch wary.

They're the marks of an old ritual, something hazy that he wasn't sure was used any longer. He has no way to communicate this to the others without the man overhearing, but he tries to catch Kora's eyes and direct them to the symbols scrawled across the stranger's chest.

[Fire-Claws] He moves in line with Sorrow, his pelt already starting to take on the winter coat as the northern frost was rolling in on Chicago. He was ready for the cold and it was starting to show. And his pelt was not as beautiful as Kora's with the impurities in color, but still quite heathy nonetheless.

As he moved with grace and agility that one could only expect from the nature born.

He moves into file with the others, his Jarl being his lead, not the shadow lord he seemed to think himself a worthwhile warrior on par with a Fenrir Jarl. He watches in response to the monster of a garou who seems to handle the no moon with little ease, even as Winston is in his hispo form. Watching him cower and act like a dog more than a wolf.

He moves besides his Jarl once more now as the Glabro creature seems to stand before them, brown eyes take in the creature and through the hair along his arms and neck he can see something. Something he tries quite hard to understand, to remember. Something he should know, but doesn't.

He growls at Bone-Grinder as he barks commands to this one. He didn't kill Winston and for all they know, they were intruding on a special rite. Or a solemn one. But he does not stop there, his body nudging up against his Jarl, taking the risk of her possible reprisial. A cuff to the Glabro form, and the Glyphs along the bare skin of the monster. Maybe she might recognize them. He does not speak however. He leaves communication to the Skald of the group.

[Sorrow] Sorrow snaps at the air as Simon starts to growl, just once, a subtle suggestion that he hold back, that he stay his rage. Both Harmony and Fire-Claws work to draw her attention to the glyphs on the warrior's chest, and she huffs ou a faint breath, a hint of negation there. The Skald does not see what they do not, not even on a second look.

Still for another half-secnd, she watches the stranger, dwarfed by the pair in their hispo forms. Then, she changes form again, matching him Glabro for Glabro, her lean frame bulked with layers of muscle, her brow sloped, her jaw squared, the protoclaws tipping the fingers of her now blunt, strong hands. Her clothing remains, stretched and strained, bound together with spirit to fit, but her hair is uncoiled, loose again.

A glance down at Simon, then Winston. Briefly, her brow furrows - she tilts her head as if hearing a different note, a still-older sng, then glance up at the other Glabro, affirming, "He's ours. And you are on the edge of our lands, stranger. Who are you, and why have you come hunting here?"

[Calamity] "Oh Aye, then?"

Loud. Thunderous, even, the mountain in Glabro turns toward Simon with the glaringly enthused offer of challenge. The massive Axe, thuds into the ground beside him, without a backward glance from the Mountain of muscle and power who spreads his legs wide and assumes a bowed wrestler's stance. He faces off in Simon's direction, a broad grin lighting his features, thick brown mane of matted hair falling over part of his face.

"I ain't one to go movin' off a Fight, Boy." A pause, shifting slightly, grunting with the exertion of the position. It isn't until Sorrow pipes in, that the fellow's bushy brow rises and a brief moment of consideration, almost forgetful really, for duty creeps into his features. He clears his throat, frowning obviously before righting himself again.

"Your lands than, girl?" He turns to look past their shoulders, frown all but banishing his eyes beneath those bushy eyebrows, a negligent hand waving at the distant landscape behind him. "Ain't see nothing but open realm, s'far as I can tell. Gaias bounty 'yond your mention."

And oddities continuing, the large fellow is correct, as the Garou might glance back the way they had come and see behind them nothing of Chicago's skyscrapers or horizon. Not even the glare of Weaver blessed illumination. Simply the roiling thickness of overcast skies and pungent clouds. What was there when they were upon that hill is now no longer. As if they'd stepped from the familiar tread of one world and found themselves in another.

"...But that don't excuse an introduction missing does it?" He chortles deeply and slaps a hand against his chest, body seeming to take that cue to shrink down into Homid, his height diminishing to just under seven feet, thick ropy muscles and thinned hair given him an aging look. Not quite grandfatherly, but certainly middle-aged in the crow's feet and haggard sag of cheeks and belly.

"Roaring~Calamity, Adren-..." A pause, a frown almost of...confusion...scratching through his thick tangled hair. "...Aye, Fostern" That frown deepens seem, a shadow cast over his eyes "...Fostern Fianna Ahroun to Gaia. Mighty be Klah'thil, Black~Clover-" He hefts the Axe at his side once more, a broad grin flashing his features once again, crushing the brief moment of confusion and sadness "=borne since my firsting and shatterer of the Wrack Laughing..."

He pauses and then nods firmly, turning eyes on Kora, that grin no less feral and fierce. Pleased even.

[Barks Secrets] The hacking is spoken over, ignored for the most part. He's a Metis, this is his burden for it, perhaps they've been around to see and hear it before, perhaps they know that he'll recover. Perhaps they just don't give a damn. It doesn't matter, because with a final disgusting chrrrrruck! a healthy wad of blood hits the ground and he pushes himself up into a more proper sit, hunched down so his head hangs between his massive shoulders.

His tongue hangs from his mouth, stained red with blood, and his breath whistles in a way that suggests he could really use an inhaler right about now.

Shit-Seed learned his place.
He keeps his damn trap shut.

[Bone-Grinder] You see this is where Simon did not feel the same as his peers. The Burden of proof lay in the hands of the intruder. They are in a time of war... If this man who just attacked Winston was not an enemy then he was already doing much to imply to them otherwise. Tonight was the full moon and Simon was a Full moon... This meant that he honestly didn't give a flying fuck who this asshole was or how good he was if it got pushed he and Simon would find out who, in fact, was the superior Warrior. So when the others growl Simon growls back...

He wasn't going to pussy foot around nor was he going to kiss ass. This man has attacked a member of their sept and is already walking on thin ice. The honest fact was that he had already been shown an incredible amount of lenience by the fact he wasn't attacked on sight for what he's done to Winston.

[ws]"Winston get away." Simon says to Winston after an introduction is finally offered. His own focus, however, remains on the other man. The one claiming to be a Fianna. Fine he would let the man talk to the others, but he would not take his eyes off the stranger till he was certain it was safe.

[Dreams in Summer Snow] Roaring Calamity makes to introduce himself, and his bulk seems to shrink and draw into itself a bit as he assumes his Homid form. Harmony is, perhaps, a touch reassured: though things have the potential to sour here, they haven't yet. It would hardly be courteous (and probably a little threatening) should he remain in a dire wolf's shape here, so he too takes a moment, his fur and muzzle receding, his legs lengthening, as he takes his Homid form as well.

Few here have actually seen him in his Homid form, even though it's the form of his birth; when he's met most of these Garou it's been for some battle or other and he's come wearing a war form. When he's been at moots, he's been wearing a war form. When they see him it's clear why: he looks very young. No older than fifteen, just beginning to go through his last growth spurt, just beginning to fill out his frame. His hair, a light brown, is styled into the swirled bowl cut that is popular with teenage boys at the moment, and he's dressed in jeans and a polo in spite of the cold.

He smiles at Roaring-Calamity, even though he can make out the glyphs a bit more clearly now. Even though he's a touch alarmed by them (or perhaps by the idea of what the other Garou must have done in order to have lost rank this way.) Is he a Charach? Is he a coward? Harmony isn't sure. Until his eyes light on the glyph under his chin, and his brows furrow, and he can't help the look of compassion that comes into his eyes.

This Garou was a proud warrior, once. That look might be distinctly unwelcome, but Harmony can't help it.

"Hello," he says, once the Fianna has given his greeting. "Dreams in Summer Snow, Cliath Child of Gaia." He glances once more toward Kora, wanting to whisper and tell her what he's seen, but it would be decidedly rude. Harmony is looking toward the old Garou with respect, now.

[Fire-Claws] He turns behind him and sees the rolling hills of nothingness. The serene beauty of the natural world without the tant of the weaver anywhere to be found. But the spirit world was a strange place, it could leave you anywhere it wanted. Direction meant little when the normal laws of the mundane meant just as little.

They could be in the homeland of the Fianna right now, of in some isolated pocket of the umbra. They could have fallen into some old realm of war. He tries to get a feeling of where they are. The smell of the land, the feel of the Sept they knew. But nothing. The scab and its stench was minimal at best, and only because it clung to them. This was not their territory anymore. This was not their land. He growls to Bone-Grinder again.
{ws}
"He's right. Not at Sept no longer. His words ring true."
He continues to look at the Glyphs. Wondering. But he was no fallen one. He spoke true. Looking to his Jarl first before speaking. He speaks his own introduction.
{ws}
"Known as Fire-Claws, forseti cliath. Born of Stone-Skin, Adren Modi of the Sept of Hidden Smoke. Pledged to the Sept of Maelstrom. Are these your lands?"

[Sorrow] Our hunting ground," Kora begins to affirm with a wry look made feral by her choice of skins. "Chicago - the city - " Then she glances over her shoulder and finds the city gone, the weaver-wrapped skyscrapers disappeared against the horizon. Arms crossed over her torso, she turns back to him, her head aslant, the usual sharpness to her attention somewhat diminished, distracted by some internal music, subtle enough that these Garou - none of whom know her well - are unlikely to notice.

The stranger returns to his homid form, and in this, too, Kora matches him. In a tribe of giants, she has learned the trick of looking up without seeming to be diminished, and she does that now, her chin high, her dark eyes level, her arms still crossed over her torso. Blonde hair loose, curling down over her shoulders, shining in the moonlight, gleaming with the promise of health.

" - we heard your howl from our lands, though we knew your wood did not belong in our city. I am she who offers sorrow, cliath Skald and daughter of great Fenris, fostered at the Sept of Wind and Rain in Hjaltland, pledged to the Sept of Maelstrom, the spirit reborn in Chicago seven winters past, Alpha of my pack and Jarl of my tribe in the Chicago protectorate."

"That," a glance at Simon, " - is Bone-Grinder, full-moon born like you. Your Shit-Seed is our Barks-Secrets. I heard your howl from my pack's territory in the city, followed it to the edge of this wood-that-should-not-be.
"And here we are."

[Calamity] "Hahaha, knew me a Hippy once-" The grin broadens again, the axe settling back into the groove it had created a moment ago, while the broad Fianna turns to regard Harmony to the exclusion of all others. His hands lift and gesture in the air, with all the tender grace and effortlessly a stonemason might possess for the newborn he holds.

"Fond and lovely girl, by the name a Gwen. Given over to all sorts'a mad dashin' 'n dancin' 'bout. Skirts always half an inch shy of showin' yah just what'cha want'd to see. Had the boys 'round the fires trippin' over their own tongues most nights while she played some sort a-" A gruff furrow of the brow, scratching chin, followed by the bright smile of remembrance "-A viola. Aye, was a Viola. Would dance 'n skip with her viola twiddlin' 'n fiddling and..."

He strings an imaginary viola by his chin, eyes closing and body swaying slightly with some imaginary tune that falls from his lips, an approximation both rough and roughshod at best. It lasts for a few long seconds, before his features fall away in a memory's smile, eyes falling to the ground briefly, hands falling away.

"...Fuckin' bastards came into tha' camp one night. Gwen went to her grave spittin' three of the fuckers under her breath 'n claws." He's nodding, eyes flicking back and forth, solemnity climbing his face.

"Was a Good Lass, she was, she was..."

His head lifts back to the moment. The present. Turning then to regard Kora and the rest, perhaps for the first time. He snorts and chuffs loudly, shaking his head with the flap of thick cheeks.

"Aye, aye. Fine names, all." He nods again, brow furrowing once more even as the mighty Klah'thil is tipped into his fingers with little more then a brief flicker of those digits on it's haft. He breathes in deeply and nods once, firmly down at the Cliaths.

"Younglings, the lot of you...." The grin flashes again. Broad and as excited as ever.

"Come then to join me in the Hunt? Aye, knew they wouldn't let me down. Well, don't any of you worry none-" He wags a telling finger at the lot of them "-We've found us a quarry alright. Full 'n wrymsome and deadly to boot, Aye! it'll be a fight that piss-sopping son of a hydra knew, it will!"

And he turns with the heft of a mighty limb, beckoning them on in his wake, marching off toward the East, following a parallel course to the Treeline he'd emerged with Winston, from.

[Barks Secrets] His airway would relax as far as it ever would after some time, the whistling and wheezing quieted while the collective of Cliaths listened to this man marked with runes's story. He suggested they help him in his hunt, spun about, and went to lead them back into the forest of cardboard and paper trees.

The Ragabash wheezed, coughed, and growled quietly as he stood up.
Note, though, that he stands, but does not move to follow after.

"I want a Theurge."
This is said like a guilty man saying that he wants a lawyer.

[Sorrow] As the Fianna begins to turn off toward the east, Kora calls out in his wake, " - you knew who wouldn't let you down?"

[Calamity] A bright laugh erupts as the Mountainous Calamirty continues marching.

"The Sept, Girl! The Sept!"

[Dreams in Summer Snow] It's as he turns that Harmony leans in to whisper to Kora. "He's under the Rite of the Winter Wolf," he says to her.

[Bone-Grinder] Simon simply watched though he did not his head in acknowledgement when he is introduced to the man. He keeps himself quiet and silent as he watches and listens. It isn't until Harmony speaks up that is attention is pulled towards him and then back towards the man. Under the rite of the Winter Wolf? Where is his pack then? SHould they not be tending to him?

[Bone-Grinder] [ws]"Where is your pack? Why are they not with you?"This was a solemn and an important ritual indeed it was important to see it through... If it was this mans time to die and no one was around to see it through then it was their responsibility to see it through.

[Calamity] "...Lot of 'em Died, Lad! Now hurry up! Wyrm to be Killin' 'n yer all Lollygaggin' about like a bunch of flower fuckin' fairies!"

[Dreams in Summer Snow] Harmony looks after the old Garou, and it's clear that he wants to follow him. It's also clear to him that the aid that he'd hoped for from his Sept has not come; they left him to go and hunt alone. To die because they believe him to be useless now. Maybe it will come. Harmony hopes, but it isn't for Calamity's sake that he does. He just doesn't want to believe that the Sept, any Sept, would abandon this once-Athro no matter his faded glory.

"We should go with him," he says quietly to the others. "This kind of judgment...it's wrong, and it's short-sighted of those that passed it."

[Fire-Claws] He almost begins to pad off at the potential hutn offered to them. He could feel the rage start to boil in him, already overtaking his willpower as the beast rides to the surface. The full face of Luna now beating down on him more than it did before.

But hearing the confession that Dreams offers up. He turns to the Child of Gaia wth a quizzical look. As if he was unsure of it, his instinct telling him to go and kill and enjoy the glory that is too come. But there is the fact that this one, once lost his glory, his rank. His honor and name. To be apart of such a rite, it is indeed noble. He sits down and snaps at Harmony. Growling.
{ws}
"NO. Do not rob him of his proper glory. His name. His last rite."

He would have sat down, but not now. He is growling at the Child of Gaia. What do they know of a good death. Of a proper honor, of great glory.

[Sorrow] "It's not a sentence of death," Sorrow corrects Harmony quietly, with the confidence of a true believer - already moving in the stranger's wake. "It's a rite he performed himself, a death he chose for himself, when he felt it proper."

With a brief, winging glance at Harmony, Sorrow taks off in the Fianna's wake, following in his footsteps. "My Septmate tells me you have performed the Rite of the Winter Wolf. We will be honored to hunt with you, stand with you, and sing your deeds when the Rite is completed. Tell me your stories as we hunt - "

[Calamity] (Uh oh. Rage roll.)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 4)

[Calamity] The Monster of a creature is humming something, uplifting and bright as he marches forward...

...and as the others pull forward into his wake, a small ways behind him they watch the landscape seem to shift and alter to the whims...no, not the whims but the necessity of this moment. The paper forest, a two dimensional nothing, spiritless and unfettered, seems to warp and flow into the darkness that exists between until it is an inky haze behind them and slowly swallowing the forestry itself. This odd transformation seems to eat up the ground behind them, not swiftly but steadily, pulling in the wake of the mountainous Fianna.

As he marches forward, the landscape seems to alter and shift, almost imperceptibly, until it looks as if he is marching across rocky turf and terrain, slowing his gait to make sure his steps are more certain and sure. Then, almost at once, unbelievably even, the Garou find themselves scrambling around on rock, the landscape to their left and right a mountain range diorama that looks more like some movie backdrop than a true sight to behold.

Roaring~Calamity, huffs and puffs, Black~Clover bouncing about in his hands as he climbs his way towards the dip in the wall of rock ahead, where stands a plateau waiting to overlook...something...

...Then-

My septmate tells me you have performed the Rite of the Winter Wolf-

"What?!" He wheels, the flush of anger like a gavel hammering the mountain rock, chips and slate peeling down the walk to bounce among their legs and teeth, as the Rage plumes and follows. He stares with feral eyes, restrained fury, the axe hefting to point down at them.

"So they told you then? Sent you along behind me to watch? To chastise as well? Sent you with more of those lies! Like I was the one to betray!?!"

Plumes of white mist begin to seep from his nostrils and words, as the chill air of the mountains creeps into the scene, the last marker of their scenic shift. Still he stares, froth gathering at the corners of his mouth.

"It weren't me, ya little Bitch!" He slaps his chest with his free hand. "They died in battle! Died as heroes! Blood and bold and true, each one! Melody! Thomas! Feral! Winch-"

And he freezes, Pauses. Frowns again, ferociously still.

"Winch...and...and..." And that hand comes up to slap his head. Trying to dislodge a memory.

"Winch and...and..." And something begins to crumble under that veneer. Creeps in-

-Something in the valley beyond. A dozen more yards of climbing, a sound erupts from over the wall of rock. A chittering thing. A vicious and ugly thing and Calamity is snapping his head around as if his eyes could find that sound.

"Aye...Aye you're there...You're there..." And the axe hefts, a growl escaping his lips.

"The Wyrm is come! No more words! None of it! It's time, Lads! Time for War! Time for Glory!"

And he continues marching. Up those slopes. Slowly. Almost...desperately.

[Barks Secrets] Winston didn't move to follow after the marching Fianna. Rather, he listened and gathered information it was a pile of precious dollar bills all crumpled up and floating away on the breeze. The Rite of the Winter Wolf, one wants to go help and another snaps, telling them no, to let him have his glory. Winston agreed with the Wolf, and flinched when the Skald, the leader of the Blind Muscle Tribe, rolls forward and offers help on his last quest.

There's a snap of Rage in the air, and Winston's body hunkers down against the shifted scenery of rock (which his claws had struggled to find purchase on, but managed somehow anyways) when the Fianna bears down upon the Get of Fenris, and he wheezes audibly from stress.

The Fianna seems to press through his Rage without tearing the intestines from any bellies, loses his train of thought, then declares that war is on and starts marching again. Winston stares after for a few seconds, then shakes out his pelt in a wolfish translation of the human gesture of clapping dust off your hands.

"Well, he's crazy and that's not in my jurisdiction."

And with that said, the Metis simply turned and started walking(climbing, struggling) in the opposite direction of the old wolf on his last journey.

[Bone-Grinder] He keeps close, he keeps watch. The wolf showed signs... He showed why the rite had been performed and why it even existed. This was the reason for this ritual, and any warrior could understand and relate to it. it mattered not how able bodies a Full Moon was... Or anyone for that matter. Thangs happen to a Garou, mind or body, that cannot be undone. Sometimes a person reaches a breaking point from which there is no recovery and the only thing left is to alieviate ones peers of their suffering.

Do not suffer thy people, tend to thy sickness

He was Garou. He had fought, he had slain an untold number of their enemies. He stood there with strength, determination and honor and Simon found himself respecting that much. The full moon kept up with the Full Moon. This was an Honor, this was his Honor! This was his night to stand and to shine. This was his night to let loose his fury and in a final surge of unmitigated fury teach the minions of the wyrm a lesson they would not soon forget and they... They would be a part of his final moments. The final breaths of a hero as he falls this night in battle. They would bear witness and they would take part(If doing so were not a suicidal act).

The wolf wins every fight but his last and then... He dies.

This was this warriors final battle and Simon stood ready to see him earn his final little scrap of honor. For all he had sacrificed at the very least they would come to the next mood with their heads held high and deliver to the sept the story of the final moments of this brave warrior.

Simon had been the most apprehensive but Simon was also a Full Moon and he understood the importance of this ritual. The man wished to die while he was still himself, while he could still stand on his own two feet. They would see it through... Either the Wyrm would kill him this night. Or they would emerge triumphant and then in those final moments Simon would personally see the ritual through to completion. Whatever the case this warrior would have his final battle and he would kill anyone who would dare stand in the way of that!

[Dreams in Summer Snow] Even Harmony almost quails from the force of the Ahroun's Rage when he spins to face all of them and howls about his dead packmates. The grimace that had been threatening to form when Kora mentioned the rite actualizes, and he looks between the Jarl and the once-Athro, trying to come up with what words he can to placate, to quell.

Whatever happened, Calamity clearly can't remember much of it. He's older: perhaps something has driven that memory out of him, perhaps it's just an effect of age. Maybe he did kill his packmates. Still, watching him, hearing that note of desperation in his voice, makes Harmony's heart ache and he can't shake the feeling that it's wrong to let him wander off to die alone.

Calamity marches off. Harmony looks once toward she who offers sorrow and then starts after him. At the very least, he wants to be there.

[Fire-Claws] He listens intently to what the monsterous fianna has to say. The monkey jibber-jabber spews forth in verbla diarrhea. These monkeys could talk for hours and never seem to say one thing worth while. Half of his words a mixture of confusion and others lies. He can feel it in his bone, his muzzle.

He watches as the Fianna begins to storm off to war, to kill the creature before him. He sits nearly sits down and watches. The wolf was strange, confused. Maybe the loss of his pack had ruined his mind. Maybe he was just that far gone, disgraced. This would be his final battle. His good death.

He sits first. Watching. Waiting. He would pounce in if anyone tried to stop him from his good death. But he would not. He would wait until it was done. Until the Fianna engaged in battle. And then....

He would howl. A howl that one who goes to face a good death deserves. A howl of lost and glory and honor and righteousness. A howl of pain from a lost warrior and joy that he found the courage to face his final battle with honor and pride. A howl all too similar to the one that brought them there.

[Sorrow] Sorrow stands her ground against the snap of the Fianna's rage, the hot spike of it that seems to warp the air around the Fianna - something about her body language, though, suggests that she's readying herself to dive out of the swinging arc of that great axe should it ever come down to it. Her attention remains on his face as he begins to protest his innocence, the deeds of the dead, their names,

- Melody, Thomas. Feral - Winch.

"Gwen?" she supplies, as they are moving again, prodding him to remember even as he marches to forget.

They are climbing, though - heading toward a final fight, and she has left her softest human skin behind as they go, scrambling up the now rocky slopes in the wake of the adren, her tail high and her eyes - bright, but sometimes distant, distrated by memory that drifts in and out of focus as the Fianna's does. In the sharp morning air she follows to the final fight.

This is not a spectator sport for her. When he fights, she fights alongside him, tearing into the wyrm as if they were pack, fighting in his wake, letting him remember not just the glory of his deeds, the bright burst of rage moving through his veins, but the feeling of fighting with a pack, like the pack-animal he is. Feinting to avoid blows as much as she deals them, swift, light-footed, until the death blow comes to him, as it must.

And she fights so that she will remember this; each blow, his great, hefted swing of his massive axe, the whine of the blade through the sharp air, its shuddering impact on the carapace of his enemy -

- and when it is over, if it so ends, then she will howl.