Look for the Humor - 10.7.2014 [Otto]

Goldie Lennox

Federal itself was no glistening stretch of road in some high-rise and sleek-glass city.  The buildings didn't stretch for the sky here, and the people who walked the streets didn't trod payment in expensive high heels or loafers.  The one thing that Federal did have to match the big city, though, was neon.  Neon and plenty of it-- in the windows of bars, pawn shops, tattoo parlors and the like.

It wasn't the kind of place that you found classy bars, but if you were to spend any time reading reviews in the city paper or searching for recommendations online, a good number of names popped up with an address on Federal Boulevard.  It wasn't pretty, but it was precisely the kind of place to be if you found yourself wanting a drink on a Tuesday night.

Which was precisely what seemed to be Otto's case, since he was leaving one of those very bars less than an hour before the clock would strike midnight and princesses would turn into pumpkins (or however that fairy tale goes).  The bar he exited was built into a row of other building faces, and shared the sidewalk block with a business for rent, a bicycle shop, two tattoo parlors, and a Mexican drive-thru restaurant.  At least he was being responsible enough to see himself home before midnight.

Or, perhaps, he would have, had a familiar voice not called to him from the narrow alley that existed between the bar and bike shop.

"Your Eminence, what a pleasant surprise.  C'mere, c'mere!"


Otto Larsson

He’s left the bar wearing a pair of jeans and a simple cotton, long sleeve shirt under a warm suede jacket. He had a scarf too, some light grey thing that probably cost a pretty penny, it was all smooth knit, maybe cashmere. It’s this that he’s folding into place, tucking it into the collar of his jacket and so forth, when he hears his name called. Well, ahem, not his name but…

There’s only one person that calls him that and he’s certain that he hasn’t drank that much. Just a few, maybe one too many, or at least too many to get behind the wheel of a car. For him that could be three drinks, depending on what was on the menu, because he’s responsible and safe and all that.

Pausing, he looks first behind him, then back over the street until he takes another step and can see down the alleyway. How he hates those things, particularly at night. He expects to see some inappropriate behaviour in places like that in neighbourhoods like this. Neon lights, indeed.


Goldie Lennox

No inappropriate behavior to be found in the alleyway, but Otto is smart to distrust them.  If you didn't look up the alley to see someone jamming a needle in their arm or chugging mouthwash because the liquor store wouldn't sell them Sunnybrook anymore, then chances were equal that you might find two bodies entwined against a wall, or against a wall but with guns and knives in the picture instead of alcohol-loose tongues and fumbled belt buckles.

No, nothing of that sort.  The alley was full up with shadows, even while stark moonlight (the moon nearly full, reaching and stretching but not quite there yet) cut pale streaks across the topmost walls.  If anything, that contrast of pale bright light on the bricks above made the depth of the dark below and within seem that much more daunting.

But through this alley, it seemed, there would be a guide.  Goldie's there, a couple feet back from the sidewalk.  She was wearing a black miniskirt and sheer black stockings up the length of her legs as well.  Brown boots were on her feet, flat-soled and laced up, and she was wearing a forest green jacket of some sort.  It was pulled closed, and she had one hand tucked underneath it like she was posing to be Napoleon Bonaparte.  The other hand was on the alley wall itself so she could lean, but it may as well have been crook-fingered in front of her for how she was grinning at the Kinfolk that peered inside.

"You wanna see something wicked?"

Are all of her questions so loaded?


Otto Larsson

Looking down the alleyway, he searches the shadows even after spotting Goldie posing there, seeking to see through the depths. He immediately wonders what she’s doing there alone because wolves are meant to run in packs but everytime he’s seen her – no, there was Mary.

He focuses on her, down to her brown boots, then up to the hand in the jacket, and the gap-tooth face. She asks him such interesting questions and he remembers clearly the last time that he saw her, what they spoke about then. Matthew. Cultural expectations. Faith. Love.

“I… don’t think so,” he anwers with a lift of brows and the ever so brief downturn of his mouth. Like, this girl is crazy, sort of look, that is much more open on his features that are loosened with alcohol. Otto doesn’t continue to look at her after either, casting a glance while he buttons up the jacket over the now neatly folded scarf.

Who knows what she was about to show him. But now he’s in that awkward position where he can’t just walk off, even if he might like, and he didn’t want to go into that alleyway either. Or see her little wicked surprise. Was she stalking him?


Goldie Lennox

Inky shadows filled the rest of the alley, but there are still shapes that can be made out-- light existed ambiently behind the alleyways somewhere, trickling in from the back, some waxy orange color to indicate light thrown from some other adjacent parking lot.  Otto could make out a small fleet of garbage cans against the bike shop wall, some discarded cardboard boxes creating a tower against the bar's wall instead.  Lumps on the ground near the trash cans that must have been garbage bags that didn't quite make it all the way to the cans.

Aside from that, though, the alley was vacant-- save one New Moon Fianna.

His answer earned him a laugh, and the sound was louder, carried better than her words before that had done.  She was being quieter about calling him over-- not conspiratorially whispering like she was about to sell him drugs, but more like she wasn't shouting so that pedestrians in either direction would hear.  When she laughed, though, it was loud enough to hear a flag of exhaustion in her voice.  Normally she had true mirth about her, but tonight the laugh carried something darker and more hollow there instead.

"That's a real good answer," she told him.  "Smart one, too.  Alright then, I won't."  Her hand left the alley wall, but she was still leaning to the same side a little and her other hand stayed under her jacket, somewhere around the left side of her rib cage.  She looked, for a moment, like she might step out of the alleyway proper, but decided against it with-- first, a wrinkle of her nose and mouth with irritation, and second, a chuckle.

"How about just something kind of gross?  You don't pass out when you see blood, I hope."


Otto Larsson

His smile is tight, forced, at this compliment about his answering. He thinks himself quite smart, some times, at least in the things he does know. And he does know that Garou asking things like that is rarely a good sign because Garou live with different values and aren’t, frankly, human. They see things in a completely different light.

Though Goldie right now- “You sound like an eight year old boy,” he tells her, sparing only a quick glance in her direction. Quick enough that he’s looking back to the street without seeing her full expression. It’s in that sort of way people do when they’re trying to avoid looking at something, of paying too much attention. Often this happens a lot on public transport or even walking down the street. Make no eye contact. Maybe the same could be said about dangerous predators.

“Sorry Miss Goldie, but is there something that you wanted? I’m on my way home and I didn’t expect you to be waiting for me in an alleyway.”  Brushing his hand down his chest, not clearing imaginary dust or dirt, wiping filth off him, but to compose himself. Guarded, as he turns to look at her, not with just his head but full body, because he’s been rude and was only now becoming aware of it. Nevermind that she makes him uncomfortable tonight.


Goldie Lennox

Another reason why Otto was smart-- he recognized that Garou weren't humans, and what all that entailed.  Many of them-- most, these days-- were born from man, certainly, but from varying ages onward they were raised very differently.  They had different understandings of the world, they saw it in an entirely different scope since they could see the many, many layers that existed beyond just this Physical plane.  On account of all this, they also had different morals, and when the moon was so close to full any Werewolf, even a petite Fianna with little Rage in her heart, could be a predator.

"Waiting for you...."  Goldie said it as a bit of a scoff, shook her head and raked the fingers of her left hand through her hair-- it was curled earlier in the day, but now those curls had fallen loose into waves and miniature curls of their own.  "I told you it was a pleasant surprise, didn't I?"

A more perceptive thing would have picked up on Otto's discomfort, would have better understood that he was worried about this apparent lone wolf that kept popping up.  She noticed that he was glancing away, about, anywhere but toward her and the alley as much as he could, and she'd equally noticed when he had his 'pull it together' moment, but what it all meant was lost upon her.  She was apparently distracted anyways.

Instead, she cleared her throat into the fist of her free hand and stepped nearer to the alley mouth.  Where she stood, people on the sidewalk on which Otto stood still could not spy her unless she took a step out onto the pavement proper.  Close enough, though, that she was better lit, that she could lean her head out to glance left and right both.  As she did all this-- the stepping forward, the cautious glance about-- she explained herself.

"Anyways.  Don't confuse me, this isn't really set up.  I'm not here because I want anything from you.  But since you are here?  I am wanting for some help."

Rather than explain what she wanted help with in words right away, she instead pulled open her jacket.  Underneath she was wearing a creamy-beige colored shirt, snug-fit and made of thin fabric with buttons from chest to neck.  Her right hand was pressed overtop her shirt, just at the bottom of her ribs, and the fabric bloomed red from beneath her palm.

"Maybe a way across town?  Where I can heal up?"


Otto Larsson

Some things are best left alone, like offering some response to her comments. Silence is golden sometimes and he knows when to open his mouth and shut it. He’s no man lost to impulse or loose with his tongue. Kings are diplomats, even ones that have had a few beers and a couple of whiskeys, all of which she can smell on him when she’s much closer, peering down each side of the street.

Despite him saying that he didn’t want to see, she shows him anyway, opening up her jacket. That downturn of mouth, the beginning of disapproval, matching the slow forming frown did not begin because of what he saw – but that she had showed him in the first place. But seeing that blossom of blood and clear signs of injury, his frown doubles instantaneously.

“Shit, Miss!” He knows Garou are miraculous healers. “How can you joke around about something like this?” Chastising a Garou seems to come naturally to him, but those Silver Fangs are arrogant sorts that think they can talk to whomever however they liked when they felt justified. In this moment, he had stepped towards her, touching an hand to her arm and, with a tsk, casts a quick glance up and down the street. “I didn’t drive. I’ve been drinking.”

“I’ll hail a cab.” All this, quickly, decisive.


Goldie Lennox

The way Otto's frown doubled down on itself delighted the Ragabash in some way, because her face split into a grin once again when that happened-- even as he was cursing and scolding her for making light of the situation.  Goldie had held the jacket open just long enough for the blood stain to process before pulling it closed again.

Nearer, near enough to reach out at least, Otto would smell the blood on her-- even human noses could pick that out when there was enough of it in the air.  Nearer to the alley as he was, he would also pick up a smell similar to oil, or some other mechanical lubricant, wafting out from it.  Not an uncommon smell in the city, but particularly strong in that one whiff anyways.  At least, from what he could tell after another look over with eyes keyed in for red, she wasn't slick with enemy gore or wounded anyplace else.

"Yeah you have," she added with a wag of eyebrows when he commented that he'd been drinking.  Certainly she smelled it on him, but..  "But I'm a Fianna, who am I to judge, 'eh?"  The hand at her arm wasn't shrugged away, but she was protective of the spot she had covered up.  Given that she was keeping pressure down, one could imagine that it felt pretty awful;  it was no wonder if she didn't want the Fang Kinsman accidentally brushing or bumping.

"That's really what I was hoping for," and given the sag of relief in her tone of voice, that was the honest truth.  Just a cab to get home.

As a distracted note, Goldie did cast a glance over her shoulder and smirk a bit.  "The 'something wicked' I was gonna show you was the other guy.  Some spider gone stray from its Web."


Otto Larsson

“It’s not funny.” He continues to scold her, not showing an ounce of mirth of his own. Her grin would have to do for them both because he wasn’t sharing it.

That smell, beyond the blood, had him look towards the alley and sniff once, twice, like someone that had just walked into a room with a bad smell, or stepped in dog shit, and has him turn away from the darkness that lies within. “Well isn’t that just great.” His tone is wry, brittle, too. “That you think I might be inclined to find it as enjoyable as you seemed to have.”

Stepping away from her, he’s looking up and down the street, going so far as to step off the curb and onto the asphalt of the road. Back and forth, his head turns, as if he’s watching a tennis match or hoping that some cab would materialise out of nowhere.

So Garou aren’t human, don’t heal like those either, and it’s not like she’s going to die right at this moment. He’s never heard of a Garou that has bled to death – hacked to death is a different story. But, kinsmen as genetically coded as they are, or at least this one is, has somehow forgotten this in light of the fact that a young woman is hurt in his presence and is asking for his help.

His hand shoots out and he steps further into the traffic. Lets out a whistle that isn’t going to keep Goldie concealed from the general public if that’s her intention, and otherwise makes some frantic motions so he gets the eye of the driver of a cab he just saw slip around the corner and onto the street. No matter that it’s on the opposite side of the road.


Goldie Lennox

The sharp whistle to hail a cab would draw attention from at least half the block up, so if Goldie was actively trying to hide from anyone or anything in particular that wouldn't keep up for long.  That was okay, though.  After another brief glance up and down the sidewalk, Goldie straightened her back up a little (made a faint hissing noise of discomfort when she did) and ambled her way out of the alleyway to stand on the curb behind where Otto had stepped out into the street.

After he'd finished gesturing at the cab to catch it's attention and charades his way through a message of 'please turn around I want to be your customer', Goldie shifted her weight so she was standing more comfortably, again with the slight lean forward.

"Of course it's not funny."  She wasn't smiling anymore when he glanced back, and was watching the cab instead of looking at the Kinsman while she addressed him.  "And of course it's not enjoyable.  Enjoyable is a really good spliff on a nice cool night out on your back porch.  Or a consequenceless one-nighter.

"But if we-- and I'm counting you Kinsmen in on the 'we' here-- if we don't look for the humor then this shit would drive us to tearing ourselves and the world apart."


Otto Larsson

“I can understand that, Miss Goldie, particularly where you stand.” And he appreciates that this is how she has to view the world in order to life through what she has to. It’s this sympathy that stops his scowling and scolding of her earlier antics and any further that may arise. She is entitled to a bit of laughter instead of tears and he understands that copying mechanism even if this was not how he coped.

When the cab pulls up, he opens the back door and extends out his other arm, as if he would gather her up and package her in the vehicle, but allows her to walk on her own accord and get in as slow or as fast as she would like. Then, once she’s seated, he either climbs in the same side if there’s room or shuts the door and walks around to get in the other door. He doesn’t mind and does not expect her to be shuffling around on back seats while injured.

Once he’s in and the door is shut, he looks to Goldie. “Where are we heading?” Because the driver needs a destination.


Goldie Lennox

Goldie was a Ragabash and a Fianna first-- that was her place, her role in life.  But she was also a young woman, bursting with the sort of pride and insistence that she was fine that came when little wolf-birds first flew from their nest-Septs and struck out to make a name for themselves.  Or, in Goldie's case, the sort of jutting-lipped stubborn pride that came when you were kicked out of that nest-Sept and told to start making a name not just for herself, but to fix another person's name as well.

Too proud too cry, too much a Ragabash too.  So instead she laughed and grinned and jested.  The tears would probably come only in small hours hidden away in her bedroom where no one would see them.  Otto understood that, so he relented in the stern scolding that she'd been receiving previously.  So he told her as much-- he understood her stance, and returned his focus to the cab that had flipped a U-turn in the street and was rolling up to the curb to let them in.

Otto was careful with ushering Goldie into the back of the cab, available to help her but not going so far as to actually put her in the back seat himself.  She sat down with a knitting of brows and a pained expression, but did not move like a creaking old woman to do so at least-- the cab driver wouldn't need to be too suspicious about her this way, the Rage already put people on edge in a low-humming-in-your-skull manner anyways.  Hell, she even scootched her way across the bench to let Otto get in from the curb rather than needing to walk around into the traffic lanes once again.

Where are we heading?  Oh, shit, yeah that's right, they were going back to her house weren't they?  Goldie settled into the seat behind the driver, out of easy view of his rear-view mirror unless he chose to twist it about to focus on her instead.

"Highland," she told the driver.

But he wanted an address, something to plug in to his GPS system, so she muttered and pulled her phone free from her pocket (fizzle-frazzle of frustrated Rage, just for a moment there, because she still had yet to memorize the new address).  After a few quick swipes of the thumb she provided a street address to the man.

When they pulled away from the curb, Goldie let her head fall back to rest and closed her eyes.  She realized keeping her hand under her jacket looked suspicious, so she tried to balance and make it less weird by tucking her left hand under there as well.  Symmetry, right?

"Thanks," she told Otto without opening her eyes or lifting her head.  "And sorry."


Otto Larsson

Through all of this, the Silver Fang Kinsman sat tall in the back seat and dipped his fingers into the space between his scarf and neck, gently tugging opens the folds to let some air in. The cab was much warmer than outside and his suede coat was plenty warm enough as it was.

“Neither are necessary,” he assures her, glancing across the dim, small confines of the back seat and offers her closed-eyed profile a small smile.

He settles back for the drive, alert to the outside world as much as he was to those encased in the moving metal cart with him. It wasn’t Goldie’s Rage that he felt beating against the back of his brain but the few drinks he had across the course of the evening, providing him with warmth that occasionally grabbed at his temples, making them pound. It took the edge off anxiety, too.

Along the way, he fishes out his phone and turns on the screen. It’s not a bright light of shocking white, his screensaver, but a photograph snapshot that disappears shortly after he unlocks the screen and dives into his inbox. He fires off a text with a quick tap of a nimble but large knuckle thumb.


Goldie Lennox

"I suppose," Goldie agreed, or at least agreed to mull the fact over.  She opened her eyes and turned her head to look out the window as they drove along.  "I mean, at least you were finished drinking before I talked you into taking me home."

At this point the cabbie's eyes flick up into the mirror, between Otto and Goldie both.  Clearly observing the age difference, given the judgment that seeped into his eyes and brow.  He made a small 'hmph' noise, reached forward to turn his radio up just a little more, and put his attention back forward.  He'd been doing this long enough to know which customers to chat with and which ones not to.  Sometimes it led to a better tip, but probably not in this instance.  Better if he just minded his own business anyways, he felt that instinct somewhere in his belly (wolves not just at your door, but past it now).

The motion of fishing a phone from one's pocket caught Goldie's attention in the peripheral, and she turned her head to glance toward the object in his hands instead.  A phone, and perhaps she caught a glimpse of the picture on the screen before it went away?  Either way, she at least had some shred of respect for privacy because she looked up and out his window instead when he took to typing and firing off a message.

"You don't have, like, a missus and kids at home?  I mean, not to pry, but it is pretty late, and I had it figured that you lot all married and mated before you were twenty."

'You lot', of course, means Silver Fangs.


Otto Larsson

He doesn’t like this game, the way she words things in front of others, and the cabbie’s little sound had him look up to the review mirror and meet that flickering gaze with a very steady and serious gaze. The sort that stops him from replying right away, because, kin he might be, but those are Garou Kings and Queens in his blood and that look is a warning and, wrapped within in, some challenge or dare.

The reply comes when the cabbie has looked away and Otto’s gaze returns to his phone. “I couldn’t leave you in the cold of the alley, could I? Not in your state.” He will not be a pawn and he can play along with word games like the best of them, when his hand is forced. Ragabash or not, he will not have rumours circulating, not even amongst the lesser humans.

On the screen, in that flash under the join-the-dots code, is a picture of white-coated mountains and a deepening blue sky, the other details, much smaller, could be trees or some landscape scenery. He’s already into inbox by then, with coloured blocks and black text.

“I have,” he says. “And we do.” But as open as that admission was it was as equally closed. This was not a subject that he was going to discuss with her. Not now.


Goldie Lennox

[Perception 3 + Empathy 0:  Goldie you don't know diddly squat about feelings but maybe we can try?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )


Goldie Lennox

Goldie wasn't paying particular mind to the stare Otto gave the cab driver in the rear view mirror (and mind you, when that eye contact held for more than two seconds the cabbie certainly did look away, he wasn't going to meet Otto's challenge no sir he just wanted to do his job and make his money and go home).  She still smelled the alcohol coming from him int he shared space of the back seat, but he seemed a man that held himself together after a couple of drinks all the same.  Were it not for the smell Goldie wouldn't even have noticed that he'd been drinking at all.

She wasn't great with empathizing with people.  Goldie Lennox liked to march to the beat of her own drum, and often times that would lead to her plowing over and fucking up the rhythm to everyone else's drumlines in the process.  But she was perceptive, at least, and she wasn't an idiot.

She didn't have experience with trying to relate to and understand the emotions of others.  The short answers and tone to Otto's voice, both in the parry about her state of being and in talking about his family, however, managed to ring a clear message for her this time around.  You could perhaps blame it on the exhaustion, the battle-weary kind that followed burning yourself out while scratching/clawing/kicking through a fight.  Ordinarily the tone would have flown right over her head and she probably would have kept right on going.

"Ahh," she said, and sounded as though she was reacting to what she'd picked up on rather than what he'd actually said.  She looked forward through the windshield and straightened herself up in the seat a little better, left hand on the door frame to help her along the way.

Some quiet passed, a dozen dragged-out ticks of a second hand, and Goldie added quietly, no longer seeming nearly so intent on poking and prying and distracting herself with the games that Ragabashes play:  "Guess I'll save hospitality for another time."


Otto Larsson

If she expected protest, she will be disappointed, because he did not rise to the bait of her original ‘Ah’ and settled into the silence. The Kinsman, through this quiet, receives a text and gives another back and, when no more were forthcoming, sets his phone back into his pocket with the screen powered down.

“Probably best,” he agrees with her last statement, giving only a cursory glance to note her watching out the window, before looking forward again. He keeps both an eye on the cabbie and the world outside, watching the change of neighourhoods and, with it, atmospheres. There’s no way that he would remember which streets they have taken or even which way his North, and even if he could see the small directional instructions on the GPS, he’s not paying attention to it.

While Otto is sympathetic he does not extend it with a heartfelt warmth or gush. This was not the only time there has been friction between them and he doubts it would be the last. She reminds him of many young Garou and they, in turn, remind him of the wide chasm that divides the true and the lesser born. Alcohol does not soften him but it does strip a layer of his warmth to bare the cold core of his heritage. Until then, maybe it was easy to forget that he was a Silver Fang. 


Goldie Lennox

Outside of the cab the scenery changed in ways both subtle and dramatic, depending on the turns they made.  Federal was the kind of stretch of road that housed homely buildings that were weathered, with fading paint and sun-bleached business signs.  The rooftops were low, did not stretch toward the sky or frequently reach taller than two stories up.  It looked like the kind of place where you didn't want to walk alone to your car after hours, for risk of robbery and not to mention what else.

They drove Federal southbound for a while, passing through intersections that neither of them were counting to know how many had gone by.  Eventually they would turn east on another road, and once they'd left the Boulevard the scenery changed in a much more dramatic way.

Highland was a distinct district in the city of Denver, one that existed near the Union Station and had old streetcar lines to be found within as well.  The buildings here were older, more established and typically built from brick.  Tall older trees lined the blocks and existed in the yards of homes, and that helped to mark the drastic visual shift between retail corridor and (largely) residential neighborhood.

Once quiet fell in the vehicle, a chilly kind of ambiance filled the gap instead.  Otto was good at keeping up a warm and friendly exterior during the daytime hours when he was sober, but if you asked Goldie it was absolutely impossible to forget that he was a Silver Fang.  The constant barrage of pure-blood that she found in the Garou community here left her feeling all the more sensitive to the impact of good breeding in a person; like when you wash your hands too many times and then hot water began to hurt and your skin began to crack and bleed.  Too much, too often, and it would leave you a little raw.

The chill was new, though, and Goldie was left to ponder what had the man so irate.  She understood that he was, but grasping a full understanding of why was another story entirely.  A glance cut down to her lap, and she tugged at the short-hemmed skirt she was wearing to smooth it more appropriately over the very tops of her thighs.

Unless Otto broke into the quiet himself, Goldie would remain uncharacteristically silent and introspective until the cab pulled up to a curb in front of a little 1920's bungalow home without much curb appeal or particular character-- something simple and affordable and easily overlooked.  Goldie herself had been resting her head against the window for the last bit of the ride, and didn't lift it right away when the cab stopped.

"Rental sweet rental," she said with a small bite of bitterness when twisting a common turn of phrase into a more stark version of itself, with all the warmth associated with 'home' banished when the word was replaced with something associated as 'temporary' and 'not mine'.


Otto Larsson

The cab cruises to a stop and Otto looks out, following Goldie’s glance to the bungalow. That’s her home, a very temporary and not very welcoming one, by the sounds of it, and he takes it all the details that one can under the darkness of night before he reaches for the door handle.

“Leave the meter running,” he tells the cabbie without so much of a glance in the drivers direction. Then, pushing the door open, he gets out of the car with his scarf loose about his neck, and reaches a decent sized human hand back in through the doorway to help out the Garou. She does not need it but then no woman really does when offered a hand in our out of a car or through doorways, and they are perfectly capable of pulling out their own chairs and carrying their own shopping bags.


Goldie Lennox

Certainly Goldie was capable of getting up out of the car by herself, but her blood-free hand accepted his offer all the same.  Another night she may have given the cabbie a toothy smile and flicked the backs of his ears, but with knowledge that the closest thing to sanctuary that she could claim was just a walkway away she just wasn't in the mood.  Knowing that you needed to shift to mend yourself, knowing that you couldn't go to a hospital to have someone help you heal, and knowing that there was a hole in your abdomen kind of took the playful right out of you.

There was no fence around the front yard, but he could spy one for the back.  The lawn had some dead patches but it was mowed and watered at least.  There wasn't a garage, but a driveway hugged the side of the home and parked in that driveway in the shadow of the house was some used beater of a car.  There were two pathways to the front door, one that led from the driveway and another that was a straight line from the sidewalk.  There wasn't a full porch on the front of the house, but there was a sizeable enough front stoop with a built-in awning (shingles and all) and posts that someone had decorated with some wind chimes and drying bundles of sage (of all things).

Goldie stood on the sidewalk in front of the house when Otto helped her out and frowned lightly at the front windows-- not like she was angry with the place, but like she was working through a puzzle.  Truthfully, she was considering the best way into the house and upstairs without encountering her Kinsman roommate in the living room on her way through.  Even hurt, she was pretty sure she could stealth her way through the back door and into her room without being noticed.

"Look, man."  Oh no, she was about to level with him.  There wasn't humor to be found in her tone this time around, and she wasn't calling him 'Your Eminence' or anything so fun.  Just a straight and simple 'man'.  "I appreciate your help."  A glance over her shoulder to make sure the doors and windows to the cab were all closed, so the man behind the wheel with the meter running wouldn't overhear.  They were, and she wasn't exactly shouting, so she continued.

"And that you're such a gentleman.  But if you, like, ever want to tell me to fuck off, you really ought to.  I like that better than going on under the impression that folks are having fun when really they just hate playing along."


Otto Larsson

Outside the cab, he is not much interested in her house or the shadows, or the wind chimes and sage hanging from the property. He might find those quaint at another time but it’s late, he’s been drinking, she’s been hurt by some wicked creature that she had wanted to show him, and now he’s late home.

On top of that, she stops and levels with him. He looks at her without a single give to his demeanor. There’s no narrowing of his eyes or tic in his jaw, but there is a short silence that follows, hanging in the air thick with potential.

“Miss Goldie,” he says evenly, when he decides to speak. “I know that you have an important role and that you’re injured and not having the greatest of nights, and for those last two I should still my tongue, but let me remind you, that although your role is great, not all revolves around you.”

Just this. No turning from her, no fleeing from her potential wrath, but a directness that comes from his line and their kind, offered in  just a calm tone that it doesn’t even hold the bite of that factual edge that many like to use, pretending that they are not angry. He is no more irritated than he was earlier, annoyed actually, but simply along the same lines. But that warmth that had leaked along the back of his skull and into his temples is now a pounding throb that won’t be denied.

“Why don’t you go inside and let your kinsmen tend you.” Her kinsmen of which he is not. His family were waiting for him. 


Goldie Lennox

The 'Miss Goldie' pulled the Ragabash's eyes from the space of the backyard, where she was watching for flickers of light that would indicate a BIC lighting something up.  If she was going around back through the gate then she certainly didn't want the person she was avoiding to be back there-- then she would be caught sneaking, and nothing was quite so embarassing for someone who prided themselves on their skill with stealthy feet.  But that focus switched, being called 'Miss' anything was uncommon in her life (outside of the "MISS Lennox!" that she would get in class back in high school, for probably just as many reasons as one could imagine), and she looked up at Otto when he imparted his advice.

Goldie's answer was to raise one eyebrow at him.  There was, again and ever-present in the breasts of Gaia's Wolves, a flicker of that Rage, something electric and sharp that felt like a jab in her chest and pulse in her muscles-- something that helped in combat but outside of it really could just feel uncomfortable.  It took young Garou time to grow into their Rage, even those with the smallest batteries of it.

But, as is equally almost always the case (and the true blessing of carrying so little of Luna's burden), that moment passed and Goldie forced a smile.  The funny thing about forcing a smile through Rage was how it wound up coming across looking just a little bit like a baring of teeth instead.  At least she was buck-toothed, so the impact was lessened.

"Around me?  Otto, my dear savior of the evening, I was asking about you."  She started walking backwards up the driveway, and at long last took her hand away from the wound hidden under her jacket so she could spread her arms out for effect.  Her jacket opened to show the sizable bloom of red on her pale shirt-- it wasn't a stretch to imagine the flash of injury was intentional, just to put one last thumbtack on the teacher's stool by running the risk of his getting back into the cab with a question of 'what the fuck happened to her?' to greet him.

She called back to him (not shouting, no, but distance did mean she couldn't just speak at the volume you did when standing by someone's shoulder).

"I'm real good at fucking off.  Watch me."

She didn't touch the comment he made about her kinsman, didn't bark that she didn't need him to tend to her and that she could tend to herself now that she was somewhere safe, thank you very much.  Instead, she opted for a cooler closing statement and found her way through a gate and into the backyard.

Pillar of Mist - 10.6.2014 [ST'd by me][Mary]

Goldie

[Wits 4 (Cunning + Investigation 3]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 2


Mary

[Wits + Investigation + Specialty (Cunning). No Moon Sleuth Agency Is Operational?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1


Goldie

After a night of garlic fries and delicious pizza and a couple of cocktails, a pair of Ragbash made a pact.  This is not to be confused with a pack, and if any curious Cliaths sniffed around asking questions Goldie would insist that firmly-- this is not a Pack.  Not yet.

But, a pact.  An agreement to go on the prowl for something out of the ordinary, something that stank of Wyrm and Suspicion.  That way they could drag it out into the light to set some other sets of teeth on as well.  Goldie in particular took that to heart.  After her third (and final) drink, she had insisted with some buzz of alcohol in her bones and voice that this place had to be rife with things to find.  She'd been sprung upon twice before already, and she'd only just arrived a month ago.  Hadn't gone hunting, but happened upon shit lurking in daylight.

"Someone was going to be eaten up by a fungal pod, just right there on the street.  This place needs all the help it can get."  Somehow, said like a profiteer suspecting oil fields on the horizon.
So they would hunt.  They even clinked glasses and said cheers to it.

----------------------

"There he is," a Glass Walker Kinfolk, a man in his early thirtied who worked at a vinyl record store (one of the few floating alive these days still), pointed at a picture that he'd flipped to on his phone.  It was a picture of another man, this one probably in his mid-twenties himself, wearing a hiking backpack and sitting on a rock out on a mountainside somewhere-- probably outside of Boulder.

"I saw him last at a get-together some of us were having around the end of August.  He said he was planning a trip out camping in the mountains with some friends.  I hadn't seen him since."  He'd handed the phone over to her so she could see the picture, but now held a fuzzy-knuckled hand back out to accept it back.  He knew she was a Garou, maybe even that she was a Silver Fang, but he was unaffected by the presence of Purity.  He would have a least offered to email or text the picture to her if she asked.

----------------------------

Further snooping into the case of a Kinfolk gone missing led Mary to find that there was a missing persons report filed about him, as well as three other men around the same age group (all employees at the same workplace, she may notice, is how they were associated), but that report was quietly tucked away and not under any active kind of investigation.  News had cycled around the beginning of September that some campers had gone missing, but names weren't released and the story was left to be forgotten by the media machine.

It could have been intentional that the missing persons report had gone to grave prematurely, but there were no leads on that.

-----------------------------

"Have I got a story for you," Goldie started the phone call over the weekend before the Moot.

"Can we go get coffee and have a walk-and-talk park date like they do in West Wing?"


Mary

Mary. Mary is an architect. Mary is a leader. Mary is who she is by blood by right by virtue of birth by pain and by salt. Mary is an architect Mary is an architect of this pact. Pack? Mary is clear, too, as clear as water and oil, anointing the hands of those who've gone before, Mary is anointed, see, Mary wanted to be clear with Goldie, too, back when they made their pink swear promise, back when the plot was cooked:

They're not promised. But they're working in tandem, pack-like, temporary (perhaps), and that's how things should go. We'll see what happens. If it works, it works. If one day it seems like a good idea to get some help from a spirit who recognizes their deeds, so be it. If one day they go their merry way, but the Sleuthing Sleuthiness of No Moons on the Prowl continues, so be that too. We'll see.

Pacts and Promises. Mary is a builder, born when the Moon was just thinking about shining so bright and so silver, but was still dark and occulted:

Mary is noble and isn't it noble to be of use?

--

This is Mary talking to a Glass Walker Kinfolk. Urrah Kin. Barely kin. Useful kin. Mary is noblesse oblige even without the coruscating reminder of her lineage, of her potential heroism, flavoring every gesture; some of it has worked its way into her marrow. Noblesse oblige means that she doesn't care who she's talking to; they're all to be protected by the Silver Fangs, aren't they? They're all duty.

Mary takes the phone and looks at the picture. "I'm going to text it to myself," she tells him. "That way if anything turns up, I've got your number, and you've got  mine. Thanks."

--

This is Mary in the morning, Henry kissing her on the forehead as she pours over her laptop and a couple of old taken-from-a-library newspapers.

Campers going missing, but nothing much else. Maybe Mary turns to facebook and twitter, looking for impromptu online shrines, gathering places for prayer.

This is Mary in the mornin, curling her tongue against the back of her teeth, Juliet running screaming around the table, Mary twisted up like a pretzel ew gross how do you twist like that. Mary reaching out to tell Juliet, no running.

---

"Of course. I'll be there wearing my most grumpy looking pants suit and shades.

"Maybe we can shop for music, too."

--

Mary doesn't have a job and Henry would never just let Mary be the only one responsible for Juliet. Mary has family. Mary has a lot of family.

And now Mary is at a park, ready for a walk-and-talk, and she is wearing shades, even if whatever pants suit she may have scrounged up to go over her curves is hidden by a raincoat, drizzly gray day that it is.

Maybe they meet at a coffee cart, and this time Mary buys.


Goldie

A coffee cart was perfectly sufficient, and there were two to choose from.  People were recognizing that the chill and drizzley weather was worth capitalizing on, so someone had set up an actual coffee cart and a local hot dog and sausage salesman got a better coffee machine and a new sign to say so.

Today was gray and rain came and went in patches along with the density of clouds-- ever present and ranging from a sheet of white up above to a blanket of rolling gray when the rain came about.  Goldie was dressed in a pair of leggings and boots, with her brown bombadeer jacket and a wool cap on.  She happily let Mary pay for the coffee, added an unsurprising amount of sugar to it, and started them West Winging their way along a path through the park.

"I love the pants part of your pant suit, so far."  To begin.  And then, after a sip of very-hot coffee that clearly burned her mouth a little, based on what she did with her face and tongue right after the drink, she continued.

"I've been chasing ghost stories and caught a big fat one.  What have you been up to?"


Mary

Mary grins. The grin doesn't come complete with a lolling tongue, but shouldn't it, when Mary grins? Mary who is a wolf-girl. Mary who is the wolf at the door. Mary, the wolf, the monster; but no tongue lolls. She grins and her cheeks get more squeezable and her coppery hair is in curls that have been teased and combed into a respectable half-do thing, one curl slick at her arrogant Silver Fang chin, and her eyes sparkle like illicit treasure, like energy can't quite be contained, like her attention is ready to spring at any thing that happens to move too quickly.

The coffee steams. 

"I've been thinking about vinyl, vinyl, vinyl," her head hops to the side at each word, "I've been thinking I should get myself a record player, I've been thinking about broken records, I've been thinking about," and she is talking a little fast, with a languid drawl behind it, "Okay, I've been chasing around this missing kinfolk story, something seriously skinny and toothy and leechy and squiggly about it, but it looks like it's more than just the one kin, it's some walks on two legs can't take the rar," the fingers of her hand not wrapped around her coffee cup curl like she's a Werewolf-monster, "pressure too. Or that's what it seems like so far. More to look into before we, like, bring it up to more people, for sure. And a couple places to start."  

"Now you! What's the ghost story? The weather's ... the weather's perfect for it."


Goldie

"It's Trevor Hanson, isn't it?"

It was.  That was the Kinfolk that Mary was looking into, the missing person.  Goldie grinned with the affirmation.

"You see, I started looking for him too."  Kinfolk didn't just go missing through the cracks all the time.  They vastly outnumbered the Garou, so statistically there were plenty of them to be found dappled throughout the population of Denver, but tribes tended to do a good job of keeping track of their Kinfolk-- the ones that they were aware of to begin with, at least.  The case of Trevor Hanson hadn't caught the attention of the Nation yet on account of those missing records (and his terrible communication habits with his family).

The two began on the same lead, but Goldie was about to explain after the next sip of coffee how they'd branched off in different directions, and how hers could constitute a 'ghost story'.

"I went asking his friends and found that he'd been on a kick of finding haunted houses and old mining towns and stuff.  And this time Trevor went out to look for some haunted house out to the West, in the mountains."  Mary knew that he'd gone out to the mountains-- she'd found that in the stashed report she pulled free from red tape and neglect.  A vehicle belonging to one of the friends, with some camping gear still stowed in the back, was found abandoned off one of the state highways that led up through the Western towns and into the mountains.

"So I looked into this house, and it's got a legitimate urban legend associated with it!  Like, a ghost story that some of the people in the area like to tell people who ask.  There's some 'lady in white' that flags people down asking for help, I guess, and when she leads them back to the house she reveals she's a ghost.  You know, standard ghost story bullshit."  Goldie sounded unimpressed with the story itself, and who could blame her?  It was uninspired and told a million times before.  Stories like that didn't even give five year olds the creeps these days.

"Turns out, though, that some dude actually did kill his wife in that house like seventy years ago.  It was a real gruesome scene-- he tucked the body away into the walls in parts and the police never found all the missing pieces.  So maybe it is a real ghost?"  Goldie's eyes went wide and she lifted her eyebrows, and she grinned and wriggled the fingers of her free hand in a gesture for 'ooh, spooky'.  Another sip of the coffee, and she carried on.

"I looked further and that place has always had a nasty history.  The guy that built it back in the mid-eighteen hundreds?  His whole family went missing, wife and a couple kids.  He was spooky for another twenty years before going missing himself.  And another family that lived there died of 'mysterious circumstances'."

Goldie grinned a nigh-feral and very toothy grin at her Ragabash counterpart-- the story was too perfect for the weather and season, and Goldie was having fun telling it to be sure.  She was all bright and alight in the eyes when she looked to Mary to conclude.

"I got some coordinates to where the place should be.  Should we fire up the Mystery Machine?"


Mary

("It's Trevor Hanson, isn't it?"
"It totally is!" Mary says, excited laughing.
This is no laughing matter, Mary.)

They're walking like they're on West Wing, having a coffee date, a tete-a-tete, and Mary lets a pair of sunglasses rest low on the bridge of her nose, concealing her perfectly made up eyes darkly limned in liner. Goldie can see herself ghostly on the lenses, behind which the shape of Mary's eyes can still be made out- they're not mirror glasses.

She clutches her heart at that ooo spooky expression. Takes another judicious sip of her coffee.

"Yes." A pause; and, "You know, we might be poking into more of a Scooby Doo episode than you'd think. The report on those poor suckers who disappeared got ignored pretty hardcore." 

"Do you have a map of the area these coordinates might be found on? If you do, don't tell me what they are and let's do the stone test for Trevor." 

Mary means the Rite of Questing Stone, use it to try and get a general location; they've got a picture on a phone after all, and an idea of where he might've disappeared: maybe it will confirm that yes this way lies darkness.

"If you don't, I'm sure we've got something in the glove compartment. Some people are so worried about being lost!"

And there are indeed a number of maps of Colorado and the surrounding areas in Mary's car, which is not the expensive sleek piece of car one might expect from a Silver Fang, but is a rather sedate and silvery (oh, of course silvery, like a drop of mercury) safety vehicle.


Goldie

"So someone's helping people go missing even easier," Goldie mused, sip-sip-sipping from that paper cup.  She had arrived looking red-rimmed around the eyes, even if she was wearing mascara and even if it was the middle of the afternoon.  Garou pulled odd hours, and Goldie probably would have even if she didn't have the excuse of being True Born to back it up.  She wasn't wearing sunglasses, so Mary got to see how Goldie looked when she was still a little tiny bit hungover and praising a cup of coffee.

Agreement came in the form of a head nod.  "There's maps online that I saved.  I can print them out, and we can pick up an atlas from a truck stop on our way there."

So the plan was hatched and another date was made;  the two would meet up again on Monday (Goldie had work, was helping Matthew pay rent and utilities, they hadn't hit their stride enough for Goldie to abandon income just yet).  Goldie would gather up the maps and everything that was needed, Mary could look further into the reason the report went missing if she would like.

Conversation may have turned to other things while they finished coffee, but eventually Goldie would break way from her Silver Fang partner-in-crime and be gobbled back up by the city.

---------------

It's afternoon on that Monday by the time that Mary and Goldie pull off on the side of a gravel road that cut through the landscape some fifty miles northwest of Boulder.  Goldie had led them off along Highway 122 through the national reserve until they'd located a gravel road, which Goldie indicated they should take (based on the maps and directions and coordinates she'd all managed to find and put in an order that made sense).

With mountains in the west, and the peaks climbing up high since they were much closer to the Rocky Mountain ranges, where the land started to take drastic slopes upward, where peaks would stretch to reach the sky.  Even though it was still the afternoon, even though the sun had only just begun its descent toward setting, shadows were already beginning to creep over the land.  Peaks blocked the sunset from view here, all they would see is the colors the sky turned when dusk started to spread further into civilization to the east.

"There," Goldie pointed out the window once they'd parked, gesturing to a small marker sign off the road's shoulder with a faded milemarker number on it.  "That's the mark-- it's supposed to be like a mile or so up the ridge."


Mary

[Questing Stone Advance Test. Wits + Ritual Diff 7. Unless Mary could get some sort of physical item-y thing owned by Trev from that Glasswalker dude, in which case Diff 6.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )


Mary

Mary's car has cheetohs crunched into the backseat. Mary's car has a couple of toys and some LeapFrog games under one seat. Mary's car has a juice stain, spreading across the back. Mary's car seems used, second-hand, anything but spotless; Mary's car gets only one radio station when she uses it and Mary lets Goldie sift through her ipod to find appropriate music. Mary pulls off the road, those maps stretched out across the back, Mary shifts in place and she is remarkably agile and flexible for someody so voluptuous, for anybody in any shape, the way she squirms, and they do their control, their test, their Trevor Hanson, are you here? And Mary flashes this dark-eyed, testing glance at Goldie, to see if they nailed it before she lets the stone and thread drop into her palm; there is casual, offhand reverence in these things, power made mundane.

And then they're

There.

Goldie, pointing. Mary, both hands on the wheel, chin lofted as she looks. She's wearing shoes for hiking today, dark jeans, a brown sweater button-up still kind of cute still kind of retro, blend-in things.

"Let's do this. That urban legend didn't say anything about a certain time, now, did it? I sure hope we're not too late or too early to poke around this house."

"What do you think, take this from the otherside or not?"

Mary opens the door to her car.


Goldie

Maps and snacks and juice stains and Mary herself were poured all over the backseat to ensure that their target, their lure, their missing Kinfolk, was where Goldie had suspected he would be.  She had leaned out the window to gesture at the mile marker initially, and waited patient-as-can-be outside the car having a cigarette while Mary utilized a handy ritual that hunters like themselves picked up on.  When the Silver Fang finished and climbed out of the car, Goldie leaned down to snub out the cigarette butt on the heel of her shoe.

"Nah," said Goldie, answering first to the question about how they approach the situation.  "I don't like going over there without scoping the situation out from this side first."  The cigarette butt got flicked off into the road.  Next, the Fianna girl stooped down to scoop up her knapsack by its straps and sling it across her shoulders.  "I had a nasty surprise when I was a Cub still, sneaking around in the Reflection.  Haven't quite gotten past the emotional scarring from it yet."

Goldie looked at Mary and beamed a big wide Cheshire smile at her.  Clearly, she was emotionally damaged for life.

"C'mon," she said, gathering her sandy hair into a bunch on top of her head so she could work it into a topknot.  "That legend says 'midnight' and '3 a.m.' both, but I wanted to stake the place out and see if this Lady in White slinks around at other times of the day too."

And with that, she turned and stepped off the shoulder of the road to begin their trek into the woods.

---------------------

Up here it is cold, and it makes the girls grateful for their sweaters as they continue going.  The hike started off down a bit of a slope, but the rest of the way it's been a gradual uphill climb, with the occasional twist or turn around a ridge that's too steep to keep going.  There's an area map that Goldie had printed out at home and marked up in a way that made sense enough to help them find where this house was marked on the records.

"We gotta be getting close," said Goldie from where she was crouched down beside a tree.  The printed map was propped up on her legs and she was trailing their path with an orange fingernail.  She did shit like check where moss was growing and peer at the beginning buds of stars in the sky to orient-- even if she did show up with lilac-colored lipstick and heavy eyeliner today, the small-town wolf learned her way around out in The Sticks.

That didn't make her accurate with guessing distances, though.  She's guessed 'a mile or so', and the hike actually turned out to be three and a half miles.  For that she'd shrugged apologetically, but onward they went.

Light from the phone was extinguished and the device itself tucked away, then Goldie stood and folded the map back up to stick in her back pocket as well.

"Right over that hill."

She said that last time.

"Really this time, though."


Mary

"If it's not, you're buying dinner," Mary says, not quite breathless. Mary is a Silver Fang, Mary is a climber of mountains, Mary is from a place where hills roll and fields stretch and vinyards tangle with wild cypress over rocky promontories and everything is gold, gold rippling against a breeze, everything is gold and lucent as a crown except by moonlight when it silvers; Mary is a Silver Fang, and she bears herself well, even after hiking further than expected. How far does one expect to hike when one is scouting?

"And I'm taking the map, wait, wait, hold on hold on, I can say that gruffer." Pause; her eyes go a little dead. "And I'm taking the map."

There has to be a serious cop and then the rambunctious rookie, and they both are hilarious: that's the score. Mary takes a deep deep lungful of air, and it is not a fact that one's wolf-shape is any less exhausted than say one's girl-shape if one is to switch skins: but Mary considers being a little faster.

Covert glance around before becoming a radiant-as-a-ghost dappled-by-milk-and-shadow into the scrubland wolf, bright-eyed, massive (the female of the species are the most dangerous, queenly), in order to get a bit ahead pushing forward find it find it. Cheating, maybe.


Goldie

Mary could play 'tough cop'.  Goldie liked that better, it was more convincing when coming from a Queen of Wolves than when coming from a wiry little thing like her anyways.  Plus, 'rambunctious rookie' was practically on her name tag up through to her Rite of Passage.  So Goldie just grinned when threatened in the pocket book and navigator's pride.

When the Silver Fang became a ghost-white wolf, Goldie watched her scoot on ahead as though she was temporarily starstruck (just a little-- breeding had a different impact from skin to skin), like she wasn't accustomed to seeing those bright white wolves of the northern empires.

Keeping to her own girl-skin, for her legs were able enough, even if she did have to pause and catch her breath more often, Goldie adjusted the straps of her knapsack, leaned into the incline, and kept on moving.

-----------------------

Up ahead, the Mary-Wolf climbed and pushed, sniff-sniffing like wolves do.  The hillside grew a bit more steap near the very top, but Mary can see a top and when she reaches it she finds that it flattens out for perhaps 500 yards or so before angling into another incline much as before.

She also finds that Goldie no longer owes her dinner and gets to keep her map.  There, tucked into the crook of the next hillside, was their target.  A grand old in thing in its time, perhaps a welcome escape that one man dreamed of and built once upon a time ago, out here in the wild and away from everything.  Now, though.

Now the three-stories that the building rose from the ground seemed intimidating instead of exquisite.  Wood that once glowed with health was now gray and dead and weathered, standing out like a piece of death from the backdrop of green-yellow shrub on the ground and the dappled orange-brown-yellow-green of the trees growing sparsely around and behind the property.  There were many windows, half of which were broken, the other half of which so aged with dust and weather that they'd gone opaque.

There were double doors at the front of the house, on the second story from where Mary had come upon the house from.  To reach them, a cement staircase stretched like a dying man's hand away from the front door, as though some giant were trying to escape its shell and just didn't quite make it.

The area around?

Dead and still.


Mary

[Sense Wyrm! Perception + Occult. + 1 die (Helios, thanks bro!) -2 diff (Gaia, thanks ma!). +WP. New day on the job, feelin' that pressure.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 5, 7, 7) ( success x 5 ) [WP]


Goldie

A deep breath in, and wolfish nostrils blessed by Helios himself, for that wolf was a faithful wolf who said her prayers and performed her rites and minded the Gods that many neglected, smelled the utter decay surrounding the place.

There was some natural decay, the smell of leaves dying and fallen to the ground, old ones kicked up from their first thaw still trying to turn to proper mulch on the ground.  But then there was something different not just over top of it all, but under it, laced within, a very part of the scenery that she was taking in.  It was a stink of decay that was thick and sweet and cloying.  Like something deeper than bodies alone had figured out how to rot and was holed up in that house, rotting and seeping and oozing into the landscape around it.

Twisting through the air like steam that hangs instead of evaporating, through the atmosphere and squiggling-squirming its way into whatever walked into its path.  Mary was pretty sure she could feel that taint combing through her fur like a breeze, catching and worming under her pelt.

Ah, but that smell.  It was enough to make one's mouth water and their stomach turn all at once.  For Mary, for just a moment, she could have sworn that the watering mouth was for some sick, uncomfortable want for whatever it was that was decaying in there.

Just a bite.

Just the one.

"Hey," said Goldie quietly about a dozen yards behind her.  Footsteps were slowing as she recognized herself reaching the top of the hill she had been climbing.  "See anything?


Mary

Up there on the ridge, by the dessicated twist of wood, the golem-carved solemn lifelessness, the royal-wolf is bristling, bristling, fur on end, shaking her head once twice as if something's caught on her mouth an almost gag and a soft chuff huff teeth clicking back together tongue like peanut butter is stuck curling except it is not, snout wrinkled, wrinkling, too, low rumble of an almost-growl - subliminal how it wavers in the air; an almost palpable expression of curiousity and rage, and then, in the language wolves use to communicate, Mary tells Goldie,

Here it is. Rank. Rank decay rot Wyrm everywhere everywhere sticking in my mouth like caramel apple candy but rot fester disgusting. This is totally the place. We've done good so far.

- almost smug, that last; a surfacing gleam of it. Warriors have to joke or else they'll stop being warriors they'll just stop. That's what wars like the war against (Destruction) the Wyrm do.


Goldie

"Delicious," Goldie commented with a bit of a sympathetic wrinkle to her nose.  She didn't smell anything herself, just the smell of trees and leaves and cool mountain air.  In looking at poor Mary, she opted to keep her human skin just a little longer after all.  Maybe the Wyrm stink here was actually bad enough for her to smell it without the spirits having taught her how to.

Goldie had dressed appropriately for laying low and going unnoticed, after all.  She wore a pair of dark gray jeans and a very faded, many-times-washed black tank-top underneath her brown bombadeer jacket.  All muted tones, all intended specifically to break up and blend into the landscape (outright black made you stick out as a shape in the shadows, Goldie learned from a wise Ragabash once when she was young).  So, instead, she stayed crouched low nearby Mary and gestured to the right of the house, where the incline picked up to wrap toward the mountains as well.  There was a particularly nice growth of shrubby bushes that would make for great cover.

"Plus," Goldie added quietly in argument for the shrubs, "higher ground."

And so, leaned forward and siddling her way through the sparse foliage on those lean and bendy limbs, Goldie started over that way.  It looked like as good a place to set up and watch and see what happens as any.


Goldie

[Perception 3 + Alertness 2]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )


Mary

Good spot, wolf-Mary agrees, though she drifts further from it at first, poking around a little off the beaten track, straying, straying, before Goldie reaches the good hiding spot all sparse foliage and spinding shadows and dry skeletan rushing and then she joins the Fianna there hunkering down that-a-way or that is the plan that is always the plan: watch and wait and watch and wait and listen and listen and listen and Mary, Mary can curl into a tight knot can't she, can wiggle into small corners tiny places one wouldn't expect a wolf to hunker, and so: that is what she does.

That is the plan that's always the plan. What do the No Moons see?

[Perc + Alert]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )


Mary

[2 suxx because of the -2 diff, whoops!]


Goldie

Premature dusk on the mountainside, when the peaks are to the West, was a chill and dim thing to begin with.  Once the pair of Ragabashes had found a place to stake out comfortably, out of sight but able to see the house from the side themselves, so they can see both the front entrance and the back one alike, the night only grew darker and colder.

At first, nothing happened.  They would wait, anxious and eager to see what happens.  After the first hour or so passed, maybe one or the other suggested that they go investigate.  That would leave the other or the one to balance that, because going into a place that stank so badly of such rotting Wyrm as just a pair of scouts was a death wish.  Maybe because of that neither suggested a thing.

Ultimately, though, they would wait.

And wait.

Though they knew how to be quiet and patient, boredom would still sneak in through the cracks.  It always did, that's why soldiers brought decks of cards to trenches.  It was somewhere around ten in the evening, when the sun had long since set but the witching hour was still a good wait away, that something finally picked up on the edge of the girls' attention.

"Hang on, I think...," Goldie said, and twisted about from where she'd been laying on her side to crouch instead, so she could peer just over the top of the foliage that kept them hidden.  She peered, squinted, scrubbed a heel to her eye and squinted again.  Not quite sure what she was seeing, but seeing something.  "You see that?  On the stairs."

She meant the ones on the front of the house, and yes, Mary did see what Goldie was pointing to.  Matter of fact, she saw it first, but Goldie was the loudmouth wasn't she?  Motormouth, anyways, she at least knew not to be loud when stalking the enemy.  But there, sliding out from under the door was a mist.  Nothing that was naturally occurring by the woods and rot of the earth beneath the house, no, but something distinct and different seeping and pushing out from under the stairs.

Then down, down, pouring down the steps and into the air.  What came pouring out of the door came to an end, and that pale white mist puddled at the bottom of the stairs before arranging itself into a pillar approximately four feet tall.

Yes, Mary saw that very much.


Mary

I see it, the wolf-Mary says, in the way that wolves say such things, and her demeanor is calm in spite of the live-wire tension the anger moving through her pelt moving her pelt, her eyes flint-spark chips in the -- is it dark now? Is it glooming? 

Wait. Watch. (Steady. Steady.) Mary-wolf says, pressing briefly against Goldie, to hold her and still her if necessary- but perhaps it isn't.

The veteran keeping a level head a cool heart.


Mary

[Int + Occult!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )


Goldie

To the little Fianna's credit, she wasn't itching to go barreling down the hill and start trying to pull apart a cloud of mist.  That was something a Get of Fenris that has never been slapped by a Theurge might do, but Goldie Lennox new better.  Still, when Mary pressed into the lean girl body (twang where Mary was bass), she could feel the hum of energy, of excitement at seeing some activity at last.

But, steady steady, Goldie watched and waited.  The most she did was situate where her feet and knees and hands were so she could rest her weight more comfortably, lean just a little bit further forward to try and better see what was going on with that cloud.

That cloud, that mist, that seemed to behave as though it had a purpose, Mary would note.  That was a thing, not a side-effect.  Not an extension of, either.  Mary was a smart thing, she's read up on the things that bump in the dark and gnash teeth at the Wyrm's underbelly hoping for a chance to suckle.  From this distance, she couldn't see precisely what the cloud was.  But she did know that there were several options:
A wraith.  It could actually be a ghost, a shade, a human spirit gone lost and manifested in the wrong plane, and the ghost stories may be true.  In which case, bring on the Theurges.

A wyrm-minion.  A fomori of some kind; a freak.  She's heard tale that some of them have burst into clouds of vapor when attacked and managed to slither-slip-escape through windows and chimneys or just blown away on the breeze.  But then, the Wyrm could do just about anything it put its twisted mind to, couldn't it?

A vampire.  Some of them could alter their physical forms, and haven't there been tales and stories and whispers and old, old recordings of vampires descending upon prey and trespassers as a hanging mist?  It could also explain why this thing only came out at the witching hours, too.

Whatever it was, it would need closer investigation, perhaps some actual interaction before Mary would be able to confirm what it was for certain.  It seemed that chance would not come, though, because within a minute the dense and stationary pillar of mist stretched taller, grew thinner as it did, taller and thinner until it had simply--

--disappeared.


Mary

Gone.

The Mary-wolf doesn't make a sound and doesn't twitch a muscle at first. The Mary-wolf stays brace-legged curled-tight waiting, a moment another and another. Boredom has lifted at long last, monotony chased away by the thrill of discovery; or is it a thrill? Be matter of fact.

The Mary-wolf says, Time?

To check against the urban legend's time.


Goldie

"The fuck...?"  Goldie whispered this quietly, very quietly, breathed it really as the mist began to stretch and grow dim and thin and fade, become less visible the more it stretched.  Once it had vanished, apparently stretching itself thin enough to be dispersed through the air--

(but Mary knew better, she knew it didn't actually disperse-- it had to stay together because it was an entity, a being of some kind, and it couldn't be all places at once, no it had simply stretched and faded and gone intentionally invisible, wherever it was that it had gone off to)

-- Goldie was silent to the point that she was even holding her breath.  At no point had there been any indication that they had been spied, but without a line of sight with that vapor it was impossible to tell where it had gone.  The chance was there, slim but present, that it was about to try and get the drop on them.

But no drop came.  A flick of ears and low 'whuff' from the side wouldn't be understood by any that wasn't born of Wolf People, but Goldie reached into her hoodie pocket and managed to peek at the screen without having to pull the phone out and let the light of it be a beacon to the enemy of where they were.

"Almost quarter after ten," she said softly, and watched the rotting hollow house simply sit in its mountainside for a little while longer.  Perhaps several minutes would need to pass before she felt comfortable enough in their security to lean back and eyeball the sleek white wolf at her side questioningly.  "Should we watch and see if it comes back...?"


Mary

No drop came. The Mary-wolf takes a step (drifts a step, soundless) nearer the house, derelict, decrepit, creaking in its rot, in its wrongness; can't she just feel it still, between her teeth? Doesn't the rise and fall of her ribs call out to go into it and rend? The Mary-wolf takes a silent step, waiting, waiting, tense with waiting, and then the Silver Fang shifts from wolf-Mary to girl-Mary, Mary-in-red-hair, Mary-in-curls and her makeup is still impeccable, because Silver Fangs are neat a veneer over their wildness. Her voice is pitched low.

"I want us to take a look at the other side. Then we'll wait another hour, and if it doesn't show, we'll go. If it does," she grins, a sharp wolf's grin, something that isn't quite manic but is full of bright energy, "we'll watch it do the reverse of what we just saw, I bet."


Goldie

[Peeking! Gnosis 2, diff 8]
Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (5, 10) ( success x 1 )


Mary

[Peeking! Oh man, don't botch, we're gonna WP this too.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (6, 6, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]


Goldie

I want us to take a look at the other side.  Then we'll wait.

Goldie thought about the suggestion for a moment, then grinned right back at the woman who replaced the wolf but still smiled like one.  "Like a film in rewind?"  But the question was, obviously, rhetorical.  Soon the Fianna's big brown eyes were turned back upon the house, finding a balance between pinprick-sharp and loosely unfocused so that she could peer through the invisible binds and webs that separate the Spirit World from the Physical Earth.

It took her some time of sitting concentrated like this.  At least a minute before there was a shift in her shoulders and a prickling tension in the air around her (for Goldie, along her spine and neck and arms).  She was at last seeing.  Seeing not the same exact lines and details as Mary, but the same thing all the same.  Mary saw, too, she saw--

-- that house standing far more solid than any manmade structure had right to in the spirit world, outside of a church or some other place of strong strong faith like that.  It had been there for time, long enough to impress upon the Reflection Realm, but it still seemed very solid.  Solid and black and the windows were sickly yellow-orange instead with no holes in them.  The shingles shimmered like scales, almost, black beetle carapices stacked atop one another, and when the wind cut just right they would shiver their way to start standing before calming once again.

The cement stairs did not crumble, but they were slick with black-red gore that oozed from the front door, that also leaked from the foundation and the windows just at their edges.  Around the house itself, the ground was gray and dead as ash, dried and withered and sucked free and sapped dry long ago, dead and decayed long past the point of rotting any more.  This gray circle stretched a good thirty feet away from the house's foundation before the trees and rocks and earth and shrubs could call themselves out of range.  At that point everything even seemed to curl back just a little bit, as though recoiling from whatever toxic touch that establishment had been pressing into the land.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Goldie breathed in quiet, disgusted awe.  The way that she scrubbed her fingertips into her eyelids (hard enough that she smeared her eyeliner about) told that she couldn't be more happy to get the image out of her eyes when she pulled her full consciousness back to the physical plane.

"That's.... just awful."

It was an easy understatement to agree with.

------------------------

An hour was the agreed amount of time to keep waiting, and when that had passed (plus an extra thirty minutes that Goldie had talked Mary into hold up, just wait a little longer just to see) there were no other changes or fluxes of activity to report.  The mist never reappeared, no other noises or movements could be detected around the place.

Since they sure as hell weren't about to go inside, and since there was no telling if/when that mist would be reappearing, the girls would finally call it a night.

After all, this was plenty of information to bring back to a Sept, wasn't it?