get out of the city again.

Erich

It's Friday night. The weekend's beginning, the traffic is ending, and for most of the world, the workweek is over. With Celia it's always a little harder to say. Still, Erich can hope. Her phone chimes and there's a text:

Almost spring. Camping? :)

A moment later another one follows. Just a link to Google maps indicating a proposed campsite: somewhere quite deep in the western wilderness, away from the city, away from the coastal plain, in the first rises of the Appalachians.

And then a third text. Maybe he's getting her back for the other night.

I'm downstairs if you wanna let me up. We can leave in morning :D:D:D

Celia

Friday night, and Erich is standing outside of the Hay-Adams (or sitting in his car, or on top of it, or has already left or may very well be on his way to the foothills by himself. He sent Celia those texts an hour ago and she never answered.

Wherever he is, right that moment, his phone buzzes. Lights up. Makes noises -- whatever it does.

YES!

a moment later

Oh god you sent those forever ago

and after that:

Are you still there? I'm sorry he hates if I check my phone

and, not to be outdone:

I'm omw to the hotel I hope you're still there

but because Celia never does anything half-assed:

Or you can just poof up and wait!

Erich

An hour later he's -- well, he's still downstairs from her hotel, but he's moved from the front seat into the back. He's stretched out and he has a little clip-on Kindle light on, only he has no Kindle, just a library book. So, he has a book light on. He's reading something fluffy and silly and he picked it because the cover was vaguely interesting. It has to do with zombies. It's actually pretty bad. He's not sorry at all when his phone goes off; he sets the book aside and he picks the phone on.

There's a pang there, a sharp little twang on the cords of his heart, when he reads that offhanded bit about he hates it if I check my phone. It instantly brings back memories of that day when he found her by the roadside, coming out of yet another hotel, drunk, starving, wearing a skirt so short he couldn't even see it under her coat. Until he found out she wasn't even wearing a skirt, anyway. That was the day he started wanting her, but it's not want that makes his heart sore for a moment. It's some complicated intermeshing of basal instinct -- the instinct to guard, the instinct to ward, the instinct to protect -- and a slightly more abstracted sense of affection.

Devotion.

Love.

Which is a scary word in the 21st century, but not in the way he thinks of it now. Love as it exists between friends. Love as it exists between two wolves in the same pack. He would never voice it out loud, having been immersed in modern pop culture where that word means so much specifically, but he loves Celia, and he loves Charlotte, and he loves Jake, and he loves Ingrid. They're his friends. He loves them and would protect them; he'd be upset if anything bad happened to them. That bond doesn't need to be guarded and defined and qualified: you don't need to have slept together, you don't need to have done anything or become anything or finalized anything or officialized anything. It's simpler. As simple as saying:

will you be my friend?

As simple as saying:

what are you doing this Sunday?

Anyway. He reads that, he pangs. And then, because he's a fairly reasonable creature, he gets over it and doesn't dwell on it because he knows she wouldn't want him to. He taps back:

I'll wait downstairs. Weird to load into your space without you. Plus mark might be wtf if he hears about me following you up again >:)

A moment later:

Load = poof* stupid swype

Celia

Charlotte and Erich both pang like that, knowing what Celia does. Charlotte met her, saw her later, wanted to say I don't think you should ever let him touch you ever, ever again. but didn't. She held back, just as Erich does. Erich wants to help her. Celia is fighting a different sort of war than Erich is, but it is in the end the same war, against the same enemy. She will bury this fucker. She will discredit him, shame him, send ripples throughout his entire world of what happens to men like him, and

it is not a righteous war, and she does not earn renown in the eyes of her nation,

but she also has never lost a battle.

Celia doesn't text again. The long, dark car pulls up about half a block from the hotel perhaps seven, nine minutes later. She gets out of the back when the driver gets out and opens her door for her. Long legs first, like the first time he saw her. High heels, only this time she is wearing them before she swings her legs out and not slipping her feet into them afterward. Her dress is short, because of course it is, and it is rather sparkly and short and there is fringe that dances along hem, hips, breasts with every step she takes, flashing light and color like diamonds back into the eyes of those who watch her.

Her hair is straightened, which marks the first time he's seen her like that. It makes her look older, more mature, than the nineteen or whatever years she claims to be with her mark. Her dress has no sleeves, and her coat is folded over her arm even though it's still cold outside. She gets out, holding her satiny clutch, earrings dangling brightly from her lobes,

and makes sure the driver sees her noticing Erich's car. Makes sure he sees her scowling, storming towards him, all but stomping in those runway heels of hers, knocking on the window. Makes sure he sees her glaring at Erich, her jaw clenched and her lips pursed, until the driver is wondering if he should get out and do something or just let it be, since it's just her stepbrother.

Eventually he drives away.

Celia is at the window, glowering at Erich. The limo leaves. Her face twitches like she wants to smile, but she just keeps on scowling. "Hey!" she says, her face looking terrifically angry while her voice is bright. "I'm really happy to see you! We should like, pretend to argue while we go inside!"

Still scowling. It looks, to someone several yards away -- like the doorman -- like she's yelling at him. "You can follow me and help me pack, okay?"

Erich

Limos like that aren't a rare sighting in this town, and certainly not in this part of this town. Still, some sixth sense makes Erich perk up in the back of his Mustang when he sees it pull up. By the time Celia emerges --

oo, she's sparkly tonight!

-- he's pulled himself into the front seat by the oh-shit bars like an olympian on the rings. He swings his legs into the underdash, kills the engine to kill the heat. His hands are on the steering wheel when she stomps up to him. He has to resist an urge to wave. He also has to resist the reflexive wave of confusion to see her looking so angry. When she raps on his window he rolls it down, and

what the limo driver sees is his boss's bit-of-fluff-on-the-side's stepbrother cocking his elbow out on the window's edge. He looks nothing like Celia. Of course he wouldn't; they're not really siblings -- but this dichotomy is sharper than most. Where she's vivid, golden, olive, he's all fairness, lightness, paleness. Where she's a warm soft squealing handful in his boss's big brutish hands, this stepbrother of hers looks like he could put a fist into someone's face and out the back of the skull. Even through that damn sherpa-hoodie of his there's an impression of blocked-out, sharply defined muscle mass. Biceps, triceps. Shoulders. The imposing, gyring meat of the forearm. Bro, he definitely lifts.

And she's yelling at him. And he makes some sharp, dismissive gesture, gives her his rigid profile as he snaps the keys out of the ignition, flings the door open so hard it nearly clips her.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to say," he fake-fumes. "Angry sounds! Exclamations! Calling you mean names now! GESTURE!"

-- and he makes this two-handed wtf! gesture. They're closing on the hotel door. He snaps his mouth shut. Glares at the doorman as they're passing. Stomps in her wake. Disappears inside.

Celia

In a way, Celia is always sparkly. At least to Garou. At least to those that notice her even when they can't see her, feel her near even when she's yards away. Celia's like that. Most of the time, she behaves as though she's unaware. Erich knows she isn't.

Like an animal whose pack mentality could never be driven out of him even at his most domestic, Erich senses a game and gleefully jumps at it. Everyone on the street, doorman and passerby included, look wide-eyed at him following that poor girl into the hotel and worry for her. He's bigger than her. He looks angry. He looks like he could break her in half if he lost control for a moment -- just a moment, and that would be it.

She whips around, pointing at him. "Furious pointing! Gendered insult to your intelligence!" Again she whips around, hair flung behind her. "Dramatic stomping!"

They pass the doorman in what looks like enraged silence, a break in the madness. All the way through the lobby. Celia never quite tells him to stop following her, just grits her teeth and pouts, until she punches the button on the elevator hard. It opens, and she goes in, and the doors almost close before Erich shoulders his way in.

Celia bursts out laughing.

And hugs him, throwing her slender arms around his beefy middle.

Erich

She grits her teeth. He clenches his jaw. She pouts. He huffs. She gets into the elevator and spams the CLOSEDOOR button. He shoulders in, and the doors don't know what to do with themselves, and then they finally close and

this is when she bursts out laughing so suddenly that he goes shh, shh! while she's hugging him. He gives in. He laughs too, hugging her back. He wants to know if she saw the look on that receptionist's face.

As they approach her floor, he settles down. It doesn't take them long to ascend; the buildings in DC aren't high. Mustn't overshadow the glory of the President and Congress, after all. They're grand, though: wide and marble-white and columned, very Federal. He's not squeezing her so tightly by then -- his arm is draped loose and heavy around her shoulders, and he's leaning against the gently swaying walls of the elevator car.

"So does that driver know who I am? Occasionally you should just be like, 'oh, my stepbrother was actually NOT quite such a douchebag today. He brought me ice cream,' or something. I bet that'd set all the alarm bells ringing."

Because of course, ice cream was the best thing ever. Who could resist it?

Celia

That hug lasts for a while. It's not because Celia is almost on the top floor. It's because he hugs her so tightly, and because even after the main squeezing part is done, she relaxes against his side, resting her head on his chest for a time. The hug eases and fades more than 'ends', and by the time they walk out into the palatial hallway of her floor, his arm is around her shoulders and she is smirking up at him.

By then he's already noticed how she smells. Like herself. Like her own sweat, healthy and athletic and vibrant from exertion. Like someone else's sweat, souring with age and fat and bitterness, but that's faded somewhat. So has the smell of sex, but he isn't human. Something about her just smells off. It's all that closeness with someone like 'Jack'.

"Yeah, he knows," Celia says, answering his question as they step out. "And if you want to really ring the alarm, you should actually bring me a pint of ice cream and ask the doorman to bring it up to me -- but tell him not to tell me it was you." She smirks up at him, eyes twinkling with mischief -- and not a small degree of viciousness. She knows this game. She's been playing it a very long time.

Her arm squeezes around his waist, and then she slips away, reaching into her tiny clutch purse to get her keys. Rather than a card, she has a small fob on her keyring that she simply taps to the lock on the door. It glows from red to green. She glances over her shoulder. "Let me just shower and grab a few things and we can head out, okay? Unless you really were set on tomorrow morning."

Erich

The smell of her, if he's honest, turns his stomach a little. It's somehow worse that that sour scent, that scent of physical and spiritual decay, is mixed with the smell of her. That scent that was so potent the last time he was in her room, when she poured herself onto his lap like molten honey made flesh; when she kissed him in places he would have never thought erotic until she did it. That memory comes to the surface too. It all mingles -- the awareness of her, where she's been, who she's done, what they almost did.

He's a little quieter as he approaches her door. Maybe a little distracted. But he raises his head when she mentions ice cream and doormen; he gives her a half-grin to go with the side-hug he squeezes her with.

"And a red, red rose too. Right? Or is that too much?"

The door beeps, then whirs. He lets her go so she can go in, scrubbing his feet perfunctorily on the doormat. "I'm not set on tomorrow morning," he says, "but aren't you tired?"

Celia

"Too much!" she says, laughing. She seems excited. Happy to see him, to be sure. Eager. She seems... triumphant, in a way. Even though, underneath that, her skin is crawling.

They go inside. Celia kicks her heels halfway across the room. They thump and thud from the edge of the chair to the floor. She wiggles her bare toes on the carpet and sighs. There are red marks on her heels and a curving line around the top of her foot. She stretches, gleefully and fully, and when her arms lift over her head, the hem of her dress rises until it's very nearly indecent. And then it is, for a half-second, very indecent indeed, and from behind he sees twin lines of lace hugging the pert curve of her ass. She drops her arms. The hem drops, too.

The room is no cleaner than it was before. It has maintained the same level, as though occasionally she goes around tidying things up but then gets bored or distracted or busy or simply reaches the level of cleanliness she finds necessary or tolerable. Thankfully, after stretching, she doesn't strip out of her dress. Even hugging him -- especially hugging him -- she's not forgetting where they're at. And where they aren't. Nor is she forgetting how she makes him feel. What's new, and what's notable, is that she's trying to adapt to it.

And not telling him to just be different.

"Kinda," Celia says, hair swinging down along her shoulder as she stands by the desk, weight on one hip, the other leg bent at the knee, the tops of her toes resting gently on the carpet. She is taking off her earrings. "But I also just... wanna get out of the city again, you know?" White gold and diamonds pool, clinking, on the desktop, forgotten. She turns to him with a grin. "And my new friend gave me a present I want to try out! She said you're her friend, too. You know Charlotte, right?"

Erich

His eyes do follow her. He doesn't try to hide it, no more than he ever did. He glances down at the rising hem of her skirt; he doesn't look away when he catches himself looking, but he does pull his gaze back up where it belongs.

After a moment, anyway.

And then the faintly wry cant of his smile widens into something much more uncomplicatedly delighted. "Yeah," he says, coming fully into the room, dropping down on the couch while she takes off what might as well be her arms and armor. "Charlotte's awesome. I met her at that fountain in DuPont Circle. We climbed it. What'd she give you?"

Celia

"A talen!"

Celia is delighted. She turns around, bright-eyed and big-smiled, her shoulders lifting and tightening close to her neck at the word. She's the picture of glee, of happiness, and god if it isn't appealing. No wonder they fall over her the way they do. She is light, she is joy, she is effervescent and bubbly and crawls all over their bodies like no woman has done since they were teenagers.

"It's water," she explains, coming over for no reason and giving him another -- but quicker, smaller -- hug. She steps back after that, beaming. "It won't cleanse taint, not like a ritual will. But I think ultimately it's sort of like this ritual we used to do, me and the other girls who do what I do. Charlotte said it will..." she pauses here, her brow wrinkling a little, but only for a second. "She said it will wash the city off of me."

The city.

Jack.

Celia smiles again. "If we could go tonight that would be great. That would be really great, and we could just be outside and in the moonlight and I could use her talen and just breathe a little and it would be nice." She pauses, slipping away, stepping away. "I think when I'm done... you know, when I can't do this anymore... I'd really like to live somewhere that I can go outside and start walking and not encounter another person for miles. I'd really like that."

Erich

Erich has that look on his face again. That look like she's breaking his heart a little bit and making it grow a little bit all at once. There's a line between his eyebrows too, but she's not so silly as to try to scrub it away. Some of the things she says,

wash the city off me,
if we could go tonight, just be outside in the moonlight, breathe a little,
when i can't do this anymore,
i'd really like that

makes him pang. It's more than a pang this time. It's a deep throb of ache, which he smiles through even though he looks so sad.

"Okay," he agrees. He rallies: a deep breath, his shoulders squaring up again. "I'm gonna grab some drinks out of your fridge if you don't mind. And maybe a blanket for you. Do you have a tent?"

Celia

Celia frowns again. Looks right at him, the way so few people do. Or can.

"Why are you so sad?"

Erich

He shakes his head a little. "We might fight."

Celia

Celia gives him a third hug, but this is longer than the second but not as tight or as long and lingering as the first. She wrinkes her nose when she pulls back, looking up at him. "I know it makes you feel weird," she says, which is a mild way of describing how what she does makes him feel. "Just... imagine what it must feel like to us when our sisters and mates and brothers go out to fight and we don't know if they're going to come back. I know it's hard. But it's necessary."

She, thoughtlessly, perhaps even drunkenly or something more sinister-ly, kisses his chest, resting her brow on him a moment. "I don't want to fight. I want to go camping," she says, muffled into his shirt.

Erich

This hug: it doesn't come as easy as the ones that came before. She hugs him and he rocks with it a little. Sways into it a little. Doesn't put his arms around her for a moment, though, bowing his head instead, watching her bury her face against his sternum.

Then he does touch her. His hand rises, cups the back of her head. He folds his arms around her slowly but tightly, holding her a moment.

"I know," he says quietly. "I don't want to stop you. Well; no. I want to stop you, but I won't. I know I can't. And you can't stop either. It's a war. It's necessary.

"You're my friend." Perhaps that's just a little bit deliberate, that label. "It makes me sad when my friends are endangered, that's all. Sometimes I like to imagine if I fight hard enough and give enough, then my friends won't have to."

Celia

The blood in Celia's veins sings of ancient battles. Men descending into the underworld for the wife they lost, their weakness turning her to dust before their eyes. Daughters torn from mothers, mothers ravaging the earth with cold and emptiness in retaliation against death itself. She's a warrior. He sees her in pajama pants and he can remember, instinctively, what it is like to face a true Amazon, a true oracle of the goddess. He sees her feet reddened by heels, her breasts imprinted from lingerie, and it is so easy to forget that one of the greatest destroyers in any pantheon was

Kali, wearing a necklace of skulls, who only stopped gorging herself on blood when her husband laid beneath her foot, willing to die if it would only appease her lust for violence.

Celia is so small, compared to him. She's so... vulnerable. He hates it. He hates that it's necessary. He hates it like he would hate it if he had a spirit-bound pack and felt them die inside his own mind. Hate, sometimes, is born of love.

She lifts a hand and scritches his lower back. "I don't want you to do that," she whispers, and her hand flattens on his side. "I really don't, Erich."

Erich

He thinks about that for a moment. No one will ever mistake Erich for a genius. Then again, few people ever imagine the colossal intellect that hides behind Celia's facade. In Erich's case, though, the surface isn't far from the underlying truth: he really is rather simple. Not stupid, but simple. Simplistic. Straight lines, clear thoughts that take a while to assemble.

So he assembles them. And all the while they're perhaps a little dangerously intimate. It doesn't feel sexual to him, though. It feels -- close. Like sleeping, wrapped all around her. Like whuffing against her neck and growling to keep the darkness at bay.

"Because you want to fight?" he asks finally.

Celia

Just the other day, Celia sat with a scarred Fostern and met him every step of the way in chess until she finally slammed her last piece down and quietly told him:

checkmate.

Of course she knows how to play chess. Of course she's good at it. Of course she beats fully grown Garou at a game of chess. She can't come back from the dead when she makes a mistake. She can't shake of burns or scars and just keep on going. She has to plan ahead. She must see several moves into the game and decide which route to take towards the king.

She would destroy Erich if they played chess. He is simple; she is complex. They are both bright; they burn with different fires.

"We all fight," she says quietly, almost a whisper in the halfway, golden lamplight. She looks at him, frowning that frown that drives him as insane as ...the rest of her. "But I meant... I just don't want you to die."

Erich

His thumb is halfway to that wrinkle in her brow before he thinks better of it. His hand cups the back of her head instead. There's a curious expression on his face: equal parts frown and smile, ache and gentle humor.

"Well, I don't want to die either," he says. His lips press against her forehead instead: right there on the furrow. "But we all fight."

He lets her go then. Nods her toward her bathroom. "Go on. Go shower. I'll pack some drinks, and then we'll get out of here for a while. I'm not tired; if you want to sleep in the car it'll be all right."

Celia

Celia is not so easily comforted, so easily soothed. He imagined once that she must have been born under a heavier moon. Galliard moon, Ahroun moon. Something full and aching and ragin in the sky. He isn't wrong.

She scowls at him. "Well, don't talk about giving everything you can to protect other people, then!" she tells him, more of an order than a snap. She doesn't soothe to his hand on her hair, his lips on her brow. She just glowers through them, then balls up her fist and thumps it, knuckles first, onto his left pectoral muscle. "You're not the boss of me," she concludes, just before

walking toward the bathroom.

Erich

Of course. Of course she doesn't soothe to paltry things like a hug, a hand on her hair, a kiss to her brow. She punches him. His mouth quirks to that, wry. "Ow," he remarks. She heads for the bathroom.

"Duly noted!" he calls after her.

The shower runs. Erich finds a bag somewhere -- maybe she has a reusable grocery sack lying around, or maybe he simply "borrows" the hotel's laundry bag in the closet. He doesn't quite empty her minibar out, but he's pretty generous about what he packs: six bottles of water, a six-pack of coke. Some ramen, some apple chips -- for Celia, of course. He doesn't really worry about food. He's a wolf. He can hunt. He wonders if she can too: perhaps with bow and arrow. That was the image that flashed in his mind when he saw her the last time he was here, her wet hair braided, her eyes fierce.

When she comes out, he's stretching out lengthwise on the couch, resting a bit before the drive. Seeing her, Erich sits up, reaching down by his feet to lift the bag.

"Do you have a tent?" he can't remember if he's asked already. "If not we can always sleep in my car. Or you can sleep in my car, and I'll just curl up in my fur."

Celia

He kissed her once, mid-speech, when she was telling him she didn't know if he wanted her or not. She punched him in the thigh, just as pointedly but ineffectually, and snapped I was talking! Of course she doesn't soothe and settle just because he touches her hair, kisses her frown as though he could maybe erase it with his lips if he can't rub it off with his thumb. She walks away to go shower, but leaves the door cracked to let the steam out.

The water runs, but not for very long. Not luxuriously long. Long enough to get deeply clean, though. When Celia comes out, her hair is braided the same way it was the other night, a thick plait down her back. She's wrapped in a towel, and looks curiously over at the bag Erich has. "Oh, silly," she says, shaking her head. "We have to stop and get wine anyway."

He asks if she has a tent. She scoffs. "Do I have a tent." It isn't a question. "Of course I have a tent. And a sleeping bag that's rated to twenty degrees." The towel is tucked around her underarms, folded in, so when she lifts both arms in a triumphant gesture, fists up, it doesn't unravel and fall to her feet. "I am a Black Fury, bro," she reminds him, walking over a couple of piles of her things -- a dress here, one of the heels she kicked off, a purse -- to the dresser. In the bottom drawer she has things that Jack never sees her wear, that most people in D.C. never see her wear. Celia pulls out a pair of dark, sturdy jeans, a couple of thermal shirts, a couple of tank tops, and a couple of plaid flannel shirts. She has a few pairs of cotton underwear and a single plain bra that she digs out of another drawer, too. Some wool socks, multiple pairs. Digging around in the back of a closet, she pulls out hiking boots.

Whether Erich turns away or not, Celia gets dressed. The thermal shirt goes under one of the flannels, its sleeves rolled up to just beneath the elbow. She doesn't button it up all the way, either, just to her sternum. It turns out that her small two-person tent, sleeping pad, and sleeping bag are under the bed, hidden away from prying eyes. So is her backpack, which is already half-packed and into which she throws her clothing. Celia looks, as she was in the elevator, simply... excited. Delighted. No way would she have waited until tomorrow morning to leave. She is all but humming under her breath.

"We can share the tent," she's saying, as she dresses and packs. "You might need to wear fur though, since I only have the one bag." She digs something else out from under the bed and tosses it at him. "Could you fill this up?" It looks like a thick square of plastic with a handle and a nozzle, until he unfolds it, and then it is a plastic cube with a handle and a nozzle, likely capable of holding a good five gallons. It seems that camping out is Celia's jam.

Erich

He can tell, just looking at the stuff she pulls out, that she's not planning to drive a luxury RV to a stand of trees, hook up the hot water and electricity, pop out the TV satellite dish, plug in the cell phone and the mobile hotspot, and call it camping. Nothing of the sort. She's bringing warm clothes. Weatherproof tent. She's bringing fresh water, like she's not expecting to see any plumbing for a day or two at least. And she wants wine, like her ancestors, like those Bacchantes in the wilderness.

He should be surprised. Just look at how she usually dresses, how she usually lives. He should be -- but he's not. There's something ferociously, unapologetically physical about her. Something feral. It's in the way she punched him just now, the way she smacked him once, even the way she patted her hands against his chest out of sheer glee when she first came up with the whole stepbrother thing.

So he grabs the water jug and he goes to fill it, going to the suite's kitchen area to fill from the tap. Of course a place like this would have a filter-tap. He turns it on, leaves it on as the big jug starts to fill.

"How long can you be out there?" he asks, coming back to the living room to help her start closing up zippers and snaps on her bags.

Celia

Celia takes just enough clothing to get her through a few days. Longer, if she washes things, longer still if she re-wears whatever she can. Her sleeping bag is rated to well below freezing temperatures. Her sleeping pad is simple but thick, rolled tight and strapped to her sleeping bag. There is equipment in that backpack that will fascinate a mind like Erich's, to see how things nest and then unfold, to see how many uses Celia can get out of a single item. He will, at some point, discover that Celia does not shy from digging a latrine any more than she shies from hugging him. Or hitting him.

She's done packing in minutes. The water jug is filling up. She hasn't even looked at her phone sitting on the nightstand. "All weekend," she says, digging around under a pile until she finds a hoodie of her own. It, too, is sherpa-lined. It is just much smaller than the one he has. There's a windbreaker rolled tight and packed in her backpack already. It won't be getting that cold. "Jack actually lives out of town, so weekends are 'family time' unless he, y'know... sneaks off and lies and is a general bag of dicks to his wife." She lashes down the top of her backpack. "And whenever I'm out camping and he can't reach me, I just tell him that Daddy cut off my phone line as punishment for something or other. I pout and apologize that he couldn't get a hold of me and... stuff,"

and of course she trails off there, mercifully, where a moment before her words had been coming a mile a minute. thoughtless, because she has never had friends before who shudder so much to think of what she does, who do not see the triumph in it, who maybe can't.

She smiles. "He'll get me another phone pretty soon, I think. After this trip. One only he can reach me on. It'll be a control mechanism, a subtle isolation attempt. But I'll be able to use it for pictures, and him getting the phone and line for me in the first place is pretty incriminating." Celia doesn't sound embarrassed or tense, just serious and exhilarated, like she gets a rush from this. It's no different, in a way, from an Ahroun planning a strategy, setting up the pieces in order to knock them down with the greatest efficiency and damage done. "I get why some Furies really aren't comfortable with technology, and in some things I agree with a lot of them, but ...it's a tool, you know?" She leaves her backpack where it is, going over to her purse to get her wallet, her key fob, nothing else. "It's a weapon."

Erich

The advantage to living in one's car is that there's never any packing to do when one goes somewhere. Other than that bag of goodies, Erich packs nothing else. He sits on the couch. He peers curiously at some of the ingenious primate tools inside her backpack as she deposits it by him, and then he's the one to start closing it up until she takes over and shows him how to lash down the top. Then he shifts to watching her, listening to her, smiling as she calls technology a weapon. Smiling at the focused, hunting rush in her eyes, because he recognizes it. Of course he does. Just look at him that night in the alley.

"I can see the glory in what you do, you know," he says quietly. It's not that he's a mindreader, or even a particularly good reader of faces. It's on his mind too. It's on his mind because he heard how she skipped over the part she thinks he can't handle, and she's probably right to do so. It's on his mind because he hears the strategy, the ferocity in the way she sets the pieces up. The board. "I can see you hunting.

"It's just weird to me sometimes because it's so slow. So intimate. You have to really get to know your prey. Let him get so close." He shrugs, getting to his feet, picking up the bag of drinks and road snacks as he heads for the kitchen area. "But then I bet what I do seems slow and intimate to someone who shoots his target from a hundred yards away."

Celia

Celia swats his hand gently when he starts poking around in her bag. "I have panties in there," she scolds him, and cinches the backpack shut. "You'll get to see all the neat camping gear later." That same hand that swatted his knuckles moves easily, smoothly to the skin above his ear, scritching rounded fingernails against his scalp. It's very gentle, but sudden in how natural it seems to be to her to touch him like that.

Then again, she touches him often. He might be getting used to it.

She's turning off some lights and shouldering into her hoodie, coming back to him, when he says he can see the glory in what she does. Celia pauses a couple of feet away from him, and her head tips. She listens.

glory.

hunting.

intimate.

As he finishes, her head slowly tips to the other side. She takes another couple of steps toward him, in reach again, just as she was a few seconds ago. She smiles at him as he gets to his feet and looks at her. "Thank you," is all she says, and lifts her pack, swinging it around to her back. "Let's get out of here. Get some wiiiine, get some more food, and hit the rooooaaad."

Erich

[wat dat meen!]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 10) ( success x 1 )

Erich

It's true; there's a part of him that's used to contact, and not just from her. Something about Erich is intensely, warmly physical. It's not hard to imagine him sleeping in a pile with packmates, walking the streets shoulder to shoulder with packmates, sitting beside them with arms and thighs resting comfortably against packmates.

He doesn't have packmates, though. He doesn't seem to have a lover either. He is swatted, which he accepts amicably. He is touched then, and this brings his head up, brings his clear eyes to hers.

Then she's getting into her hoodie. Shutting down the room. He's getting up and grabbing the snacks, the five-gallon jug. She swings her back onto her back. Passing her, he shifts his stuff to his right hand, gives the topstrap of her backpack a quick, weighing tug. The stuff inside jangles a bit.

Celia

Celia, settling her backpack on her shoulders, feels that tug and jangle and turns her head to look at Erich, her brows tugged quite suddenly together. She puts her palm on his ribcage, shoving. It isn't violent, or at least it isn't meant to be. Were Erich her own size, he might sway a bit. It's not a very carefully thought-out reaction, though; she pushes on him, but her body also pulls back an inch, even while they're in contact.

"Don't do that," she says, shaking her head.

Erich

Erich tilts his head, canine. His brow furrows. That's human. "Okay," he says, and lets his hand fall to his side. A beat. "Why?"

Celia

She goes back to resettling her pack. It's heavy, you see, and he could tell that when he tugged on it. It has more in it than clothes. Some of it is metal. She doesn't belt it around her waist, not when she's just going to be carrying it down to the car. Celia looks uncomfortable. Angry, for a moment, or quite close to it. The fury has quickly melted, replaced with just... unease.

"Because it's my pack," she says after a moment. "And it's on my body already. Nobody does something like that when we go out into the mountains, or the woods."

She means the sisters. At some point or another, she always means her sisters. They're her home. They're her family. There is pack, and then there is this sprawling existence of them, communal and yet far-flung at times, and she remembers an unspoken understanding even between strangers. They are Celia's heart, dark and wild as they are. "Not even to the little ones. You pack what you can carry. If it's too heavy or you get hurt, you ask for help or you leave something behind. Nobody checks the weight of your pack but you. And sometimes the heavier the burden, the more strength you build by bearing it."

Celia looks at him again, up at him.

Erich

Erich thinks for a moment. Then he nods. "Okay. I get it."

And that's it. Simple and unadorned, the way these subtly significant moments so often seem to be with him. He shifts his burden to both hands again, evenly distributed and balanced, and nods Celia toward the door. "Let's go," he says.

It's not until halfway down to the first floor that he adds: "I didn't do that 'cause I thought you couldn't carry it yourself. I guess it's just old habits dying hard. When I was a kid and we went hiking, me and my family and my cousins and uncles and aunts or whatever, we'd do that. Check each other's weights, make sure we all had water and snacks packed. And sometimes on the trail we'd trade backpacks or give each other a hand. It was just something we did. Seemed natural. Guess it was a way to show we cared."

He glances at her. The elevator is slowing, reaching ground floor.

"I'm not telling you that to change your mind or whatever. Just wanted you to know where I was coming from."

Celia

Okay.

Celia watches him for another moment or two, then nods, and they head out. The lights go off. The door is shut behind them. And they head down the hall, Celia in her hiking boots and jeans and flannel and braid, carrying a hiking pack, and Erich

in whatever Erich usually wears, which usually involves that hoodie of his.

They aren't talking in the elevator either, and Celia still seems uncomfortable, distant, watching the lights switch, counting down. She turns her head to look at him after he's several words into his explanation. He tells her he's not saying she should change her mind. She's quiet a moment, and then all she does is give a small shake of her head.

The doors ding open, and she waits until they're outside to speak again. In the meantime, the doorman watches them, bewildered, but not saying anything, not staring. He watches Erich like a hawk, blue eyes piercing from beneath the shiny, solid black rim of his cap. As they head toward Erich's Mustang, he hides a yawn behind a gloved hand.

"It wasn't like that for me," she says, as they're opening up the car and shoving the backpack inside, the sleeping bag and pad lashed to it, the tent in a separate bag for now though it doesn't need to be. She isn't saying this and letting it lie there, either, as they start to clamber into the car. It isn't a complaint. It isn't even a reminder.

Celia looks forward, sitting in the passenger seat. "I did almost nothing for myself when I lived with my father and brothers. Not until Damaris came to live with us. She's the one who insisted I make my own bed, pour my own milk, wash my own clothes. For a very long time when she first lived with us, after my mother died, I hated her. No one had ever made me do anything for myself."

There's a pause. Her brow furrows. "No one ever let me." Celia turns to look at him now, whether driving or sitting still. "She didn't just teach me how to take care of myself, she taught me how good it feels. How... solid the ground under you becomes when you know what you're capable of and you become the one who can give someone else a hand up, or take on a few more pounds of someone's burden when they can't, or -- conversely -- tell them that they are lying to themselves when they think they can't, or they're too weak. You find your own strength, however great or small it is, and then it can't truly be diminished."

Settling in, leaning back, Celia looks at the vents, a faint smile on her face. Aching. Longing. Soft. "When I live with the sisters, no one ever checks my pack or asks me if I remembered to pack something. No one ever asks me if it's too heavy or if I'm tired. No one stops by just to 'check on me'. Even the ones who think less of me and women who do what I do... they know who I am and what I'm capable of. They don't come to me to 'help' me; I go to them when I need their help. And they come to me when they need help that I can give."

Her eyes close. She remembers all those days, in between jobs and during her youth. Nights under the moon. The warmth, the smells, the voices. "Knowing I can trust someone not to think I am weak because I ask for their help, and then receiving that help... it's comforting in this simple, purified way. And being trusted to help, having my strengths seen and understood and sought out... that feels even better." Her lashes lift again. She looks at Erich. "Where I come from," she says, as quiet as she has been since they got out to the car, talking about the Black Furies the same way that he talks about his family, his cousins, his sister, "that's the way you show you care. That's the way you show you know them. You only help without asking when..." she sighs, trying to find the right word and, she thinks, failing: "when they're an outsider, and you don't know them at all, and they don't even seem to know themselves."

For a few moments, after this long description of her home, her strange and distant home, Celia is quiet. She watches the crescent moon out the window. "I'm not like... arguing with you, or trying to change your mind. I just wanted you to know where I come from."

Erich

They come from wildly different worlds. But then again, they were born into tribes that most would consider polar opposites. Never mind that both the Fenrir and the Furies -- and the Shadow Lords, for that matter -- stressed strength above all.

Erich hears other threads of commonality there. How solid the ground becomes when you know your own strength. How your strength, once found, can never really be taken away from you.

And in what she says last. There's commonality there too, not abstract but immediate. He hears an echo of himself, and he turns to smile at her.

"I know," he says. "Thanks for telling me. It's... really different. It makes sense, but it's different. You'd never catch a Fenrir asking for help. So we just do it. Not that anyone'd let anyone else actually start slacking." He quirks a smirk her way. "Not even making your bed, Celia. Now I know why your hotel room's such a pigsty."

Celia

Wildly different worlds. Sometimes they seem like they rotate around different suns, that different moons circle their skies. Erich thanks her, and she smiles softly back at him, resisting the urge to point out that he said Fenrir and then he said we. Present tense.

That comment about her bed, though teasing, strikes between the ribs, though. Her smile fades, and she looks away. She isn't angry, though. It's something else.

"Don't tease me about my childhood," she tells him, quiet but firm. "I don't have a lot there to laugh about."

Erich

It's for the best that she resists that urge. Probably would have made him uncomfortable, awkward, sad. Truth is they both have rather scarred childhoods. She's just obviously better at not poking sticks at bruises.

Erich was, in fact, getting ready to back out of his parking space when Celia says what she does. It stops him where he is. He leaves the car in park; his shoulders slump a little.

"I just keep putting my foot in it, don't I?" he says quietly, and looks at her. "I'm sorry."

Celia

Celia looks back to him, frowning again, but with some measure of confusion instead of anger or sadness. "Where I'm from -- and I don't mean the people I'm used to, but the sort of people I would ever call friends -- if you need help, you ask. If you don't like something, you say so. And most of them just... take that in stride. You learn from it and move on. Remorse isn't as important as the recognition of failure or the gaining of knowledge."

She reaches over, pushing on his shoulder. It's not unlike the push on his ribs, a shove that wouldn't make Erich sway even if he had the flu, which he could never get anyway. But this one is tender. This one is like... another wolf brushing up against him, bumping against him. It's sort of a thanks. Or something.

Erich

He can and does feel the difference between her shoves, thwacks, smacks and slaps. Most of them are playful. Tender. Perhaps a little tomboyish, or perhaps just a little puppyish.

This one hooks the corner of his mouth up again. He catches her hand against his shoulder and kisses it -- not across the knuckles like some silver screen gentleman, and not on the palm like a lover. An odd little kiss, really: a gentle press of his lips against the angle between the metacarpals of her thumb and forefinger.

"Thanks," he says. This one's aloud.

The engine rumble changes slightly as he drops the Mustang into reverse. They back out of the space, and then they bump over the speedbumps in the parking lot, exit the back. The streets are getting empty. It's a couple hours before midnight. The mountains are three, four hours away; it'll be quite late by the time they set up camp. Besides, they still have a stop to make. They have to get wine.

And not at a grocery store. At a gas station -- of course -- where he fills up his tank and then goes into the convenience mart to pick up a few bottles of mediocre-average red. Also some beef jerky. And some hot chicken tenders. Standing in line at the cashier, he starts nomming on the chicken tenders immediately. They're salty and a bit dry. He offers one to Celia.

Celia

His hand, rougher and larger and warmer -- to the point of feverishly hot, to the point of her shoving him away while unconscious in bed next to him because he was too warm when combined with her own body heat -- takes hers and kisses it. Her thumb twitches, reflexive, and she breathes in, just slightly, but in the closeness and darkness of the car he can see it and hear it clearly.

See her eyes clearly. In the dark, his are clear and piercing still. Hers absorb the shadows, reflect them, let them dance against the backdrop of her irises. There is a whole mysterious play being performed in those eyes, in this light and lack of light.

The doorman has noticed that they haven't left yet. He is watching without watching, his eyes skating to the side, seeing only that Celia and her stepbrother Derek are staring at each other for a moment. Then the car pulls back, pulls away, and Celia's hand returns to herself.

They do find a gas station. Erich parks there. Celia flat-out refuses to get out of the car. Time is, clearly, not of the essence to her. She sits there stonily, refusing beef jerky and hot chicken tenders, until he takes her somewhere else. And there, it is not a few bottles they get, but a case of six. Standing there, Celia very clearly is considering more. She holds off. The wine is not top shelf, but it is not gas station wine either. It's some merlot from Macedonia. Erich still has chicken tenders to nom on. Celia, experienced camper that she is, takes the time to grab some real food. She can't survive on meat alone. She does not eat beef jerky and gas station chicken, as she tells him primly.

Once they're all set up in the car again, she wiggles into her seat and says: "You know I can drive too, right? I know how. I can take some of the road."

Erich

Well, fine. So they don't get wine at the gas station. They still go to the gas station. Because he wants to top off the tank. And because there's sort of a miniritual to that. I met you at a gas station, remember? he says as he's getting back in the car, chicken tenders and beef jerky and all. As if she wouldn't remember. As if it was so long ago and she's just so forgetful.

At the supermarket she gets real food. Vegetables that don't perish easily -- squashes and melons and potatoes. Some apples and oranges. He gets another two bags of beef jerky and some ice for his little cooler in the back. As they're getting back in the car she offers to drive, and he looks at her for a moment, thoughtful, keen-eyed.

Then he settles in. "Lemme drive the first leg," he says. "I'm pretty nocturnal, and you just got off work. Maybe halfway there we can stop and stretch out legs, and switch up."

Erich

[FINE. NO SKWASH. BELL PEPPERS.]

Celia

I met you at a gas station, remember?

Celia rolls her eyes all over the top of the car before they meet Erich's. He is ridiculous. She doesn't even need to say it. At the store they get wine, and a lot of it. They get fruits and vegetables -- well, she does. She does not get meat. Neither of them mention getting meat. Winter is only just beginning to fade, and the prey will not be summer-fat, but they will be waking. They will be out there.

just got off work he says, and she leaves the euphemism alone even though it isn't how she sees it at all. She looks at him askance. She leans over, the car starting to rumble in the parking lot, and hugs his arm instead of saying anything.

"Okay," she says,

and not right away, and not without shifting around for awhile, she goes to sleep, her brow resting on the glass.

Erich

Well, fine. So they don't get wine at the gas station. They still go to the gas station. Because he wants to top off the tank. And because there's sort of a miniritual to that. I met you at a gas station, remember? he says as he's getting back in the car, chicken tenders and beef jerky and all. As if she wouldn't remember. As if it was so long ago and she's just so forgetful.
At the supermarket she gets real food. Vegetables that don't perish easily -- BELL PEPPERS and melons and potatoes. Some apples and oranges. He gets another two bags of beef jerky and some ice for his little cooler in the back. As they're getting back in the car she offers to drive, and he looks at her for a moment, thoughtful, keen-eyed.

Then he settles in. "Lemme drive the first leg," he says. "I'm pretty nocturnal, and you just got in. From like. Hunting. Maybe halfway there we can stop and stretch our legs, and switch up."

Celia

I met you at a gas station, remember?

Celia rolls her eyes all over the top of the car before they meet Erich's. He is ridiculous. She doesn't even need to say it. At the store they get wine, and a lot of it. They get fruits and vegetables -- well, she does. She does not get meat. Neither of them mention getting meat. Winter is only just beginning to fade, and the prey will not be summer-fat, but they will be waking. They will be out there.

hunting he says, and she leaves the euphemism alone. It isn't really a euphemism, anyway. She looks at him sideways for a moment. She leans over, the car starting to rumble in the parking lot, and hugs his arm instead of saying anything.

"Okay," she says,

and not right away, and not without shifting around for awhile, she goes to sleep, her brow resting on the glass.

Erich

[whoops, the whole drive is only 3 hrs and change. not 4!]

He gets an arm-hug. It makes him smile, quietly and a bit secretly. She gets a weird one-armed retrohug that's really more of a pat.

Later on, she gets comfortable. He reaches into the back and drags his blanket forward. Also a pillow that, frankly, hasn't been washed in a pretty long time and smells rather potently of Erich. "Buckle up," he reminds me, and

she goes to sleep while he drives into the wilderness.

An hour and a half later, they're nearing the edge of the coastal plain. They're leaving the interstate for the series of successively smaller highways that will take them into the Monongahela National Forest. They're a handful of miles from the West Virginian border. Erich slows, pulling off the freeway toward a roadside pitstop -- a tiny gas station where he'll get some coffee and maybe some chicken wings.

The road noise diminishes. There's a rumble as the car goes over some rough surfacing. Then Erich's pulling to a stop, leaving the engine running as he starts to get out. If Celia doesn't wake, he doesn't wake her.

Erich

[HER. he reminds HER.]

Celia

Anyone with eyes to see would be able to tell them that they aren't fooling anyone. If they could just see the way that the two of them embraced in the elevator of the Hay-Adams, lingering and tight, not letting go even after the main squeeze was over. They didn't let go; his arm stayed around her. They held each other, him in his hoodie, her in her short, sparkly dress.

His eyes followed the hem as it rose, lingered on her ass, on the lace that barely covered the edges. And that was when she smelled like another man, and a horrible man, a man she should never ever ever be alone with. Erich still held her, still wanted her, still stared at her like that. And Celia, worn out, wanting to wash that man off, knowing exactly what he is and what she is doing and what is holy about it and what is still just... war... wanted to hold onto him a bit, too. Wanted to be close.

He kissed her hand, soft and informal and intimate without being seductive. She stared into his eyes. She hugs his arm. He smiles, secret and quiet.

Anyone would be able to tell.

Celia doesn't mind his pillow. She sniffs, huffs breath out of her nostrils, and just turns it over and plumps it, stuffs it against her head, but this is some time after they've started driving, in actuality. She already has her seatbelt on and is punching his pillow into shape when he tells her to buckle up. She swivels her head to look at him, eyebrows stitching, and he says it's a joke! and when her frown eases but still remains wary, he says something about that night when she was drunk, when she refused over and over --

and Celia laughs. She shakes her head, and she curls up, and she yawns against his pillow. "You're dumb," she says, fondly. She closes her eyes.

The road goes by, and the night with it, all around them. Celia sleeps. She does stir when the car begins to slow, her body recognizing it even if her mind doesn't yet. She yawns, eyes still closed, and Erich says nothing. Then he gets out, and she feels the weight of the car shift, hears the door open and close. She lifts her head, opening her eyes, looking around. Her eyes blink a few times, and she stretches. She unwinds herself from the blanket and pillow and gets out of the car, looking at him over the top of it.

She's not the first friend he's made in D.C. that he's given his keys to. But there's no trade. Just Celia, stretching and going into the bathroom of the gas station to piss, grabbing a cup of coffee, and then adjusting his mirrors, sitting in his front seat. She consults his map, talks to him briefly about where they're going, and then

they drive some more. Celia doesn't bother him if he sleeps, but truthfully, she doesn't really say much even if he doesn't. The night is thick and velvet outside, the temperature dropping out from beneath them even though they're warm inside the car. Not too much colder than it was when he first came to get her, but cold enough that she'll be glad of the hoodie.

When they get to the forest, there's the process of a bit of money in an envelope, a pass put in the windshield of the car. Celia grabs a map from the available stack and if Erich is awake, she discusses with him the campsites available across the area. She points to one: Lake Buffalo. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's the least-used dispersed camping area in the entire forest. Celia, as Erich has already figured out, is not fucking around when it comes to camping. They drive out -- at least as far as they can.

Then they take what they can carry, and only what they can carry. Celia unlatches a small flashlight from a carabiner on her backpack. That backpack is now lashed around her waist as well as her shoulders, holding it up. She has the straps of the tent's case over her arm as well. It's to Erich to carry things like wine and water and food, whatever else he might need or want from the car. And so they hike.

Celia goes through several fine-looking campsites before she finds one she finds suitable. It's not even strictly a site. This is at least somewhat illegal. But there is an empty patch of packed ground where the tent spikes will not damage foliage. The trees are near. They can see and smell the lake but cannot clearly be seen from its edges. This is where she sets her tent-bag down, puts her flashlight between her teeth, and then unbuckles and removes her backpack.

In that backpack there is a small battery-powered lantern that she hangs from a tree. There is a length of rope that she tosses to Erich to hang the food over the highest branch he can. Working quickly, her hood up, Celia begins setting up the tent. She's done this a hundred times. The tent is small, if Erich were on his knees and sitting on his heels, he would still need to hunch over a bit inside of it.

In that backpack she also has a stainless steel spade that has a flip-out handle that locks into place. She has biodegradable trash bags that are sturdy enough to also be hung by rope, compostable toilet paper. A set of cookware that nests, unfolds, and recombines into new arrangements. Most of what Celia has took up no more room than her clothing. She shows him, by lanternlight, her toiletries: also biodegradable. Will not harm lake water. They will share a cup for drinking water.

It happens quickly, if only because of Celia's familiarity with all these tasks, but soon enough the tent and bedrool are good to go, whenever she wants to go to bed. A latrine has been dug several yards away by the flicker of the flashlight, so no one has to bother with it in the middle of the night or early in the morning, fumbling with a spade in the dawn's dim light. She slips out of the tent again, zipping it closed, and brushes off her knees, standing up. She pushes her hood back as she rises, looking at him.

"We should build a fire. The lantern is just... temporary. It gets in the way."

Erich

It's true. They aren't fooling anyone. Not with their adamant friendzoning; not with how they're careful to only hug, never kiss. Well; not on the mouth, anyway. Still, there's the way they tend to linger sort of close together. There's the way she snuggles up against his arm easily, wordlessly, as though she doesn't need to ask permission. Of course she doesn't need to ask permission. He didn't ask permission either, later, when she was asleep and he tugged the blanket up a little where it had slipped down from her shoulder.

At the pitstop they go to the bathroom, switch drivers. Erich comes back with coffee, two styrofoam cups of it: one for her and one for himself. Cheap coffee, but freshbrewed at least. Bitter and black. Hot. He holds it between his hands, relaxed in his lap, as she adjusts his seat and his mirrors. He gives her a few pointers on the quirks of his car -- thirteen years old now, well-maintained but still no spring chicken.

She tends to pull left if you push the throttle too hard, he says, sipping. And the right turn-signal sticks sometimes, so you just have to wiggle it a few times to turn it off. The clutch is a little bald too. I'll get that replaced soon.

Celia drives. Erich drinks his coffee. He talks a little bit: tells her a story about one of his cousins, and boosting his uncle's tractor for a midnight joyride, and taking it all the way to the nearest town and getting pulled over by the cops. Like something out of an americana movie, he says, laughing at himself. Later on he puts the pillow against the window and dozes a bit himself.

When he wakes they're stopping at the gatehouse to register their car. The slip goes in the envelope, and the envelope goes into the night box, and the tag goes on the dash. They look at the map awhile; Erich is somehow wholly unsurprised that Celia chooses the most out-of-the-way campsite she can find.

They drive as near as they can. They park. Celia grabs her bag, and Erich grabs his sleeping bag out of the back of his car. He grabs a duffle bag, empties it out, replaces the innards with a couple changes of clothes, his toothbrush and tumbler and washcloth, a bar of soap, a tube of toothpaste. A pot and a spoon. The water he brought. The drinks. The snacks. The veggies. The case of wine.

It's a damned heavy load, truth be told. All that fluid. So it's not too surprising when, ten minutes or so into the hike, Erich begins to shift. He grows taller, broader, hulking, huge, monstrous, grey-furred, bestial, wolflike. He drops onto four paws. Enormous, hispo now, the dufflebag slides off his back and clanks to the ground. Erich sits. He whines. He paws at the air until Celia helps him, and then his tongue lolls out as she tightens the straps and binds the pack solidly to his back.

His great paws crush fallen leaves, break twigs. Branches break across his chest. One gets in his face and he snaps it off with his teeth, gnawing it playfully way back on his molars as they walk. He's a living breathing Veil breach right now, but then again: they're the only ones out here. So far, so deep.

Eventually they get where they're going. Erich shifts; he drops the duffle bag on the ground. Celia puts out a lantern. Erich watches her, curious, as she unpacks her gear. He's reasonably adept with a tent; drives the stakes deep, wedges the support struts into their respective grommets. By the time he's done, she's well into digging a latrine. He cocks his head at her. That looks fun. Next thing she knows there's a wolf barreling up to her, bounding around her, standing up on his hind legs to put his paws on her. Eventually he settles down, plants his hindpaws, and starts to dig ferociously from the other end. They meet somewhere in the middle. He licks her.

She says they need to built a fire. His ears swivel to the sides. Then he pop!s back to his birth form, dirt under his nails, and sort of takes a cautious glance around like he's afraid someone might hear.

"I don't know how," he says. "I have one of those fireplace lighters in my car."

Celia

There is a lot to carry. Celia winces a bit when she realizes water + 6 bottles of wine = an unfair load. But Erich picks everything up, packs it all, laods himself up and starts to walk with her. When he starts to shift, she glances over, half-startled, then just nods and keeps walking. His eyes are sharper in these forms. The flashlight is twisted off.

And then something slides, clanks, thumps. Celia turns around and Erich is whining, paws up, each one larger than her face, looking utterly ridiculous. She blinks, and then walks over and starts to re-adjust the duffle across his back. The strap tightens firmly across his chest. She reaches inside, digs around, and takes out some of the food -- the vegetables, the fruits, the things he can't and won't eat, the things he didn't buy and doesn't need. Those go in her pack this time, and yes it's heavier, and yes he can carry it all himself, but he's in hispo. If he argues, it's in nudges and whuffs, and she ignores it.

Kisses him, in his fur, along the top of his snout. And walks with him again, her hand in his fur. The light is off. She has to trust his eyes, and does not want to sear them with the artificial light when he's in this form.

He gnaws, happily it seems, on a stick as they walk. His tail is wagging. But they do stop, they find their ground, and he's the version of himself she's more familiar with. The tent goes up, and this is something they both know how to do quite well. He wants to help dig the latrine and jumps on her. Celia staggers bag, grabs his forepaws, and eases them off her middle til he gets down on all fours again. He wants to dig! Dig dig digdigdig. She laughs, shoving his side gently when she's dropped to a crouch with her spade. "It doesn't need to be so big!" she teases him, as he's pawing up dirt. "It's not an Army trench."

He licks her. She bumps his skull with her forehead, growls against his neck ruff, shoulders her body against his heavily. That she's familiar with these forms, comfortable with them, is no surprise.

Walking back to the campsite, she mentions a fire. He looks over his shoulder. Celia stares at him a moment. "But --"

it's a fire. how do you not know how to build a fire?

But she knows. Every persona she wears does not know how to make a fire. It's not common knowledge anymore. Not among mortals. She just figured he would. "That's okay," she says. "I have a little tin of matches in my pack. I can make the fire ring if you gather wood. It won't need to a big fire, or one that lasts a long time. Just try to get as much of it as you can from what's already fallen. We should have packed some in, but -- eh." She shrugs. Grins. "Wanna help me find rocks for the ring?"

Erich

She gets a wry smirk. It's her tone. Her question. Wanna help me...

"Okay," he says, "if you let me cheat with matches, then I can make a fire. And I know you have to make a pit with stones, and how to stack tinder, and all that! I just, y'know. I just thought you wanted me to use a Black Fury firebow or something. Or a prism to concentrate the moonbeams. Or a flint. Or just start rubbing sticks together."

He plants his hands on his knees, pushing himself up. There are big pawprints all around. Some of them are merely large; others are fucking enormous. He absentmindedly scuffs them out of existence, then smiles at her.

"All right. Let's get rocks and firewood. Split up or go together? We should just stay up til dawn at this point," he adds. "We can Greet the Sun."

Celia

Celia laughs. A Black Fury firebow. "I have flint and steel, too. But it's late. And I have things to do."

She leans over, squeezing his forearm, then walks over to some of the beaten-down earth near the tent and starts to mark out the circle where the pit will go. It's a rapid eye-measure of about two feet, and she draws a circle with the point of her spade. "You should probably dig," she says, "and I can start getting rocks and wood. We can split up, but don't go far. And no, I wasn't planning on sleeping."

Erich

His arm turns under her hand. He grips her forearm in return. Just for a moment; gently. He's smiling again, unconsciously. When he lets go she makes a circle, and then he

deigns to take the spade from her instead of using his paws. "Okay," he says. "I'll go look too after I finish digging."

Which is what he does. She can hear the sound of the shovel behind her, crunching into earth. He makes a shallow pit within her circumscription, piling the loose dirt outside in a raised ring that they can later line with stones. When he's done, he shakes excess dirt off the spade and sets it by her backpack, then crashes into the woods himself to find fuel for the fire.

They regroup ten, twenty minutes later. Erich has firewood under both arms, awkwardly gripped: the bigger pieces on the left, the smaller on the right. He drops them with a terrific din beside their firepit. He didn't really have hands free for stones, so he starts to go out again, but then Celia is back and she does have stones. They make a ring around the firepit, wedging the stones in the earth. Erich adds a few more from the edge of their campsite.

Then comes the delicate, architectural task of building a fire. There are twigs for kindling; then larger branches. Last, the big chunks that he broke apart over his knee or against the trunks of trees. They don't build an enormous fire. Dawn isn't that far off. Anyway, it seems somehow more proper to build a small, modest blaze on their first night here.

When the fire's started, Erich unzips the tent and folds the flaps back. He sets his duffle bag a couple feet inside as a backrest, pads it with his sleeping bag.

"Couch," he quips.

Celia

There is something natural, and poetic, about the fact that Erich returns with wood and Celia returns with stones. They don't seem to notice, either of them, that he has returned with that which is burnable, flexible, more changeable and she went to and fro in the woods, carrying back heavy stones larger than both her fists clasped together. Solid stones, so much harder to alter, who do not share fire but withstand it.

Maybe because it's the night, or maybe because she's tired, they work quietly for a while. They mortar the rocks with dark, moist soil. They lean over the pit, arranging sticks, shredding a few smaller ones, snapping them into kindling. Celia sets aside pieces she thinks are too wet to burn well. They both have dirty hands, splinters dusted across their jeans, sweat on their cheeks.

Celia lights the first match, blazing in front of her face, and nearly singing her fingers as she feeds it to the kindling. She had a small bag of cotton balls with petroleum on them, but they didn't need them in the end. The fire takes, and grows slowly, lazily, eating at the wood. It takes a long time, though. Longer than it would in a fireplace, longer than it would if they had packed in their own logs.

That done, Celia stretches. Erich builds a couch. She smiles, but shakes her head.

And there, she reaches down, unlacing her hiking boots and taking them off. She stuffs them with her socks. Her toes dig into the ground. With dirt-stained fingers she undoes her braid, shaking out her long, thick hair, which is now creased with waves from being braided wet. Thankfully, she does not strip herself naked, but she does remove her hoodie. She wiggles past him to put her clothes inside the tent, then grabs her camp corksrew from her pack and goes to the first bottle of wine, opening it up and throwing the cork into the fire.

Holding the bottle by the neck in her fist, she tips her head back and drinks. Heavily, as though it's water. Trickles of deep red run down the corners of her mouth. And she drinks until she chokes, until she nearly coughs up the last mouthful, but she forces it down, and it burns her throat though wine is not meant to burn. Her jaw is stained. She lifts both her hands, the bottle still held, and

begins babbling in a language that even Erich may not recognize. She is looking at the moon.