33 hours.

Melantha

No one has to ask her how she will serve the tribe with her plans. No one, in fact, asks her to serve the tribe any longer at all. They all know what she has given, and what it has meant to her. It is in her own prayers: she has offered their goddesses a maiden, untouched and consecrated. She has given Gaia the taste of sweet, long vengeance instead of a quick, bloody execution, and she has done it again and again. The tribe gave her a home, and she gave them her life, and together they offered up her heart to Gaia, Luna, Hera, Demeter, Athena, Artemis.

Now they stand, prepared to let her go, to smooth her way, to let her belong once again to herself, and

it breaks her heart.

There's paperwork to sort out, and favors to ask and others to call in and exchanges that must be paid for one way or another, but through it all, Melantha keeps wanting to ask: what was it all for?

and

why is it so easy for you to let go of me?

--

Of course she doesn't complain. Complaints, tears, begging for succor -- these are the things one leaves behind in childhood. They are initiated into womanhood by blood, every last one of them. Pain is heritage. Strength, too.

There are, however, embraces. Tight ones, close and firm and warm and lingering. Damaris holds her for a long time, but not at the sept. Not until they are at the airport, two olive-skinned women with dark hair and very different eyes. But they know the myths and the truths of those myths: when mother holds maiden too jealousy, death steals the maiden. The seasons stop. Time ceases. An endless summer is as dangerous as an endless winter.

Still. She holds her a long time, before she lets her go.

Melantha wishes, for a moment, that she wouldn't.

--

The conspiracy theorists claim that DIA has lizard-people living underground, that the demonic-looking bronco sculpture guarding the road in and out of the airport really is possessed, that artwork inside is Masonic, Illumnati, what-have-you, but really, Melantha is just disturbed by the volunteer ambassadors in their cowboy hats and vests. She worries that she's just left the middle of nowhere to come to a cowtown that hasn't changed in forty years. Still: she can find her way around well enough without asking them for help. It's larger than the small airport she just came from, but it's not too confusing.

No one is there to pick her up. She has no one waiting for her as she makes her way out, dragging her carry-on wheeled suitcase with her. It doesn't have much in it. Most of it is new; they bought her some changes of clothes and luxuries that most of the country considers necessities before going to the airport. She opts for a cab; the buses from here into town don't take cards, and that's all she has so far.

The entire way into Denver, she rolls the pigeon-shaped bead tied to her wrist between her fingers. Sometimes she gets the urge to exert pressure, to crush it, but she wants help. She has a message to send with its spirit.

--

At the Sept of the Cold Crescent, they're surprised to see her. Not many Black Furies opt to stay in the city. There are apparently several of her kind at the actual caern. They ask her a few questions. They ask her for a phone number, an address, contact information, none of which she has yet. They ask her where she's going to stay, then. And her crest falls a bit, her eyes and her voice wavering. It isn't false. Not this time.

That is how she ends up on the floor that has been converted into living spaces. And on that floor is where she meets the Theurge cub. And that is where she asks that cub to help her send a message.

--

It is the middle of June, trending towards the solstice. The days are growing so long the sun seems to ache in the sky. Melantha feels alone, even though she knows the Theurge is just on the other side of the gauntlet, waiting for the little pigeon-spirit that has been kept against Melantha's skin all this time. She unwinds the leather from her wrist and leans over, setting the bright-eyed clay bead on the ground. She realizes she'll be sad to see it gone.

All the same, or perhaps with that sadness, she brings her heel down quickly, sharply, and crushes it to powder against the hard floor.

--

Charlotte feels its cooing, more than hears it. It remembers her, and it remembers its promises. But it remembers this, too: months spent held against Melantha's skin, months of dreams of closeness, months of her heart, her spirit, the spirits of her ancestors all wrapping around this fragile bound spirit. The pigeon perches on Erich's shoulder, nuzzling a transparent, very soft feathered head against him, cooing all the while in words only the Theurge understands.

The message is muddled, more the fault of the cub wrestling with spirit speech than anything else, but a few pieces are clear enough: moonbridge. fast. come. longing.

Wherever she is, there's a moonbridge there, too. And as it turns out, it's a moonbridge that reaches very, very far. Erich's own pigeon will have no trouble finding it, following the spirit-trail back the way its twin came, leading them to back to her.

Erich

It's well past midnight when those two kids living on the beach -- those blond-haired, pale-eyed, white-skinned kids who showed up two weeks ago with their garish yellow truck and their absurd little house-on-wheels, who've spent those last two weeks or so riding the waves, lazing on the beach, eating homemade-by-the-kettle food from that little shack on the pier -- burst into a sudden flurry of excitement and activity. They're far enough down the beach that their voices don't carry often, but even so the boy can be heard whooping, shouting, laughing.

At one point, inexplicable: he takes that handsome little bird-bead he always wears around his neck on a leather strap

and he STOMPS ON IT.

The girl is quieter. She usually is, but recently they've heard her laughing as she came into shore, delighted with herself and the spindly strength in her limbs, her balance, her ability to ride a wave. She helps the boy: taking down that tarp he's stretched from the side of the tinyhouse like an awning, rolling it up and stashing it away, grabbing their sandals off the porch, packing it all away.

There's a third with them. She is aloof and she is dressed sharp as a blade. Her hair is black, at least in this light: sleek, tumbling waves of black that catches the light sometimes like a raven's wing. She seems a little skeptical of that tinyhouse.

Yet when everything's packed away and the boy and the girl jump into the cab of the black-racing-striped yellow truck, she goes with them. She gets into the back, and they trundle slowly down the beach, and as they pass the shack where they rented their boards and bought their food the boy rolls down the window and yells,

GRACIAS.
HASTA LA VISTA.

which may be two of the only spanish-esque phrases he knows. And may or may not be welcome notice of their departure at wtf'o'clock on a school night.

--

They drive. They drive in shifts, the three of them: one in the driver's seat, one keeping the driver company, one sleeping in the backseat or in that tinyhouse rolling behind them on its trailer. And behind the tinyhouse, an absurd sort of caboose to their equally absurd train: Ingrid's sleek little Nissan roadster, jet black, gorgeous, worth more than Erich's truck and his house and all his belongings put together. Times two.

Through the night they drive, north from that southernmost tip of the Baja peninsula where they found themselves. They reach the eastern shore at dawn, taking a ferry from La Paz, crossing the Gulf of California to the Mexican mainland. It is by far the slowest leg of the journey. Erich is beside himself with impatience on that ferry, wondering why it goes so slowly, wondering why it takes nearly eight hours to go across a hundred forty miles of ocean. He paces the bow. He paces the length of the ferry. He paces the stern, and he wanders the dining room; he doesn't sleep, though really, he probably should.

Because when they finally reach Los Mochis, it is past noon. They have twenty-two hours of their thirty-three-hour journey remaining. They follow the coastline for much of the afternoon, Erich behind the wheel, passing through a string of tiny, destitute villages without stopping. Around four in the afternoon their road turns north, and inland. Around six, they turn northeast, into the foothills of north-central Mexico,

cross the border at Agua Prieta, Sonora, and Douglas, Arizona two and a half hours later as night falls. It's a small highway that leads them into American soil, Arizona-80. Erich doesn't have a passport. An illegal emigrant and an illegal immigrant both, now, he crosses the border on the Otherside, meeting them by the roadside like a hitchhiker. He flashes his thumb at a few passing cars for larks. None of them stop. Several of them snap their locks shut just in case.

He sleeps for the next leg. He's been up all night, up all day; the exhaustion finally drags him under. He sleeps curled up in the backseat, wolf-shaped, warm and furry and secure in the presence of two friends he trusts implicitly, thoughtlessly.

Out of the flat limitless deserts, then. Into the sere mountains and the scrubland of New Mexico. There isn't much to see by night, though the view is awe-inspiring at times by day. They drive northeast, northeast, always northeast, find an interstate at last. It's midnight. They're on the I-25, on the southernmost tail of what becomes the Rockies, farther north.

Albuquerque, two and half hours later. They've been away from civilization so long the city seems huge, enormous, though it's not even a fraction the size of Los Angeles. Dawn finds them crossing into Colorado, finds Erich rising in the backseat like a zombie from the grave, shedding his fur and his fangs, rubbing his rumpled human face in his hands as he asks them where they are.

Four hours. That's the answer he gets, and the only one he needs. He's hungry, so he digs around in the noms-bag they have in the back, finds some beef jerky and some fast-food hamburger remnants Charlotte and Ingrid stopped for in the middle of the night. He chews, scooting aside while one or the other climbs into the backseat to shift and sleep, then clambering awkwardly forward to slump into the passenger's seat.

"Four hours," he repeats, quietly, happily, like it's the happy ending to his favorite story.

--

It is nine in the morning. They are a mile above sea level. The Dodge is hot under the hood, hot from running nonstop for a day and a half, hot from dragging a house and another car up the gradual ascent to this city. It parks under the gleaming monolith of the Cold Crescent building, ticking as it cools, and three Garou in various states of rumpledness (Ingrid: not. Charlotte: somewhat. Erich: very.) blink up at its heights. They go in, and there's all this business of security and verification because things are gettin real in Denver, yo, but eventually they're cleared, they're allowed access, they're escorted up.

And up.

And up.

And up. To the dormitory floor, the hostel floor, the temporary-holding-cell floor, whatever you might want to call it. Erich is looking every which way, head swinging left and right like one of those den-den daiko drums, until

all at once he sees her. Melantha. Persephone returned from the dark; a flower reborn into silver. She can see him take a big breath, heaving his shoulders like words are suddenly way beyond him. And then

he's grabbing her in his arms, swinging her around, putting her between himself and Charlotte and just hugging her, holding her, bowing his head to her shoulder

rather like a bird, twining necks with its beloved.

Ingrid
It's a long trip, and one that's made immediately following another long trip. Erich and Charlotte have had days to rest and relax, to soak up sun and build up balance and muscle riding waves and playing in the ocean. Ingrid only just joined them when they started packing up their things, and after her own drive across the country to find them. And after a brief but brutal skirmish on the beach, she finds herself stowing away in the backseat of the truck for that first leg, sleek and lupus shaped, head tucked almost daintily atop her front paws. She does not sleep in the tinyhouse, but surprisingly prefers to keep quiet company with the other wolves.

She finds a space on the ferry to sleep, too. No one bothers her, at least no mortals do. She is small and slender and graceful like a dancer, and she is terrifying. Where the boy in her party feels like a thug, this beautiful, elegant, obviously rich Asian woman has the presence of an animal, and a predatory one at that. Only the boy comes near her, and she doesn't let him stay there long. When she can take no more of his ceaseless pacing, she tells him to Go away. Catching up on her sleep puts her in better spirits for the next leg of their journey, not that it shows much on the outside.

By the time they reach the Broadway building, Ingrid is not so sharply dressed as Erich might expect. He can count on one hand, leaving off thumb and pinky, the number of times he's seen the Shadow Lord Ragabash looking less than impeccable. That includes this time. When they pile out of the truck her hair, short and choppy around her heart-shaped face, is disheveled. Her clothing is wrinkled, her sleeveless shirt untucked from the hem of her high-waisted, navy blue shorts. Even looking rumpled Ingrid holds herself with dignity while she looks up and up at the great black monolith of glass and steel and concrete.

They make their way inside, and they clambor into the elevator where the panel slides back and examines them and chirps at them oh so cheerily. When the doors open onto the dormitory floor, Ingrid waits for Erich and Charlotte to step out first, but she doesn't follow them out. Instead she presses the 'door close' button, leaving friends and lovers alike to their reunion with a relative sense of privacy. She'll rejoin them after she's offered her services and skills to the Warder. 

Charlotte
Charlotte does not like to drive.

The first half-dozen times Erich tried to get her behind the wheel, the theurge refused to touch the keys, her arms crossed firmly over her narrow little torso, looking tense. Not the shell-shocked tension that turns her stiff as a corpse and saucer-eyed some small prey animal, but the other tension, sullen and sulky, some adolescent protest against the world. The pedals were too far away. She couldn't reach. She didn't like the engine or the noise it made. She didn't -

- he convinced her, eventually. Took some time to find the right tack. Asked her what she would do if he was hurt and she told him: she'd heal him. Asked her what she would do if he was tainted and she said: she'd cleanse him, or summon a spirit that would. Asked her what she would do if he was poisoned or - well, Charlotte-wolf had an answer for every scenario until Erich asked her what she would do if he was dead. They were in one of those cheap hotels off the side of an interstate, somewhere in one of those long states that remain nameless to this day in her head - just long expanses of mostly flat though sometimes rolling land covered over with corn, bisected by long, straight stretches of asphalt. The sort where Charlotte never disturbed the sheets and refused to bring her pillow in from the car and slept curled up on her bed, a small white wolf, noise tucked beneath her tail. She charged him, then, the way Erich Storm's Teeth charges his enemies. With a sort of abandon, a thoughtless commitment to -

--

So she learned.

Plowed her way into a half-dozen cornfields and took her turn thereafter, very occasionally, on the road. Places where the traffic was light and the lines were straight, in broad daylight because, well. Charlotte all too often has many other things on her mind.

But still: Charlotte does not like to drive.

Hates the truck, all metal monster, the way it cages them in. When she's a passenger she can tip her forehead against the windowglass and watch the countryside roll by, all dreamy, half here, half on the other side, her breath fogging the window and distorting her view, giving everything a foggy halo. When she's driving, she has to sit up close, both hands on the wheel, and remember eight things too many at the same time. And roads: roads as black and yellow and far too straight. They make you follow them when maybe you'd rather go some other direction. Full of laws and directions and signs and instructions and demands, roads, and on the otherside, Erich, they are bright humming blue corridors of Weaver energy, and even the most minor ones are crawling with spiders, and sometimes you can feel the layers of earth beneath the asphalt, shivering with potential energy, aching shrug them off. Shrug them all off.

--

In the cab of the truck, Charlotte's quiet around Ingrid. Alarmed and slightly-in-awe of the Shadow Lord Ragabash, with her sleek clothing and that animal presence that drives away all human beings. Charlotte feels neither like a thug nor a predator: she is skin-and-bones, stark as a starving bird, all angles and edges with strangers - strange humans and strange wolves, all borderlands. All boundaries. All places-where-things-meet, and only wolves can see the glory of her blood, the way it limns her with that halo of Luna's promise: Falcon's wayward daughter.

As a passenger she sits with her seatbelt fastened and her heels on the seat and her knobby knees sharply bent and her farmer's tan (because all that time she spent learning to surf, she did it wearing an oversized t-shirt over her bathing suit, shrouded in it, and her tan covers her arms up to her elbows only, and her legs from mid-thigh down. Odd bits of her shoulders and all of her face and neck) and her arms wrapped around her calves and her nose against the glass. Quiet with Ingrid (maybe she says, "Uhm, that's a nice sword." Or "Uhm. That's a tinycar." Or "Uhm. Erich really missed you. He talks about you all the time.") and chatty with Erich. Chatty chatty chatty, watching the bird's trail on the otherside or discoursing at great length on subjects he cannot really follow, these flights of ideas that come and go. The way trees remember slow and how sap moves and why the desert through which they are driving feels so much more alive than Iowa (cornlandia!) and and and -

Erich paces and paces and paces on the ferry but Charlotte loves it, finds a place as close to the prow as she can and sits where she can smell the ocean and watch it coming toward them in dark, swimming waves, her face turned into the wind. Is delighted when they make landfall and on and on.

--

1999 Broadway has Charlotte looking up. Up and up and up. She's doubtful; she does not understand how a Sept can be contained somehow in one of those things but she can feel the potentiality up there, someplace above, someplace high, someplace where winged things and soar and stormclouds reign and lightning splits the night, coruscant.

Spends all that time in security rigid and wide-eyed but the delay, this last obstacle is just enough to spark the faint corona of her rage so that when she gives them her deedname she says it not with her usual half-swallowed shame over it but a sort of growlingly adolescent energy that makes it sound - well, defiant, like a mantle or a promise rather than an anchor.

And, and, and - upstairs, our Charlotte hangs back, like she doesn't want to intrude on the reunion between Erich and Melantha - except, this is no intrusion at all, and after Erich Storm's Teeth swings the kinswoman around Charlotte grabs her from behind and aslant, wraps spindly arms around the Fury's strong, familiar form, buries her face in Melantha's hair and just -

- breathes.

Melantha
The bird flies faster than the wind through the penumbra, darting around storms, soaring over pits of darkness, diving beneath predators. It is small and bright-eyed and it no longer feels quite like a normal pigeon. Cooing has been turned to adoration. Hunger has been transformed into longing. It is filled with dreams of a goddess and dreams of another winged creature. It is filled with love for a blue-eyed Shadow Lord and a pink-haired Silver Fang, and when it finds them, oh

when it finds them, it circles and circles and lands on their shoulders, nuzzles their skins, fluttering happily and cooing, cooing.

It sees: the whooping boy smashing the bead that the quiet girl made. It sees: its twin fly overhead, circling them until they are ready to go, then darting eastward. Towards the mountains, towards tomorrow's sunrise, towards Melantha. The pigeon is perched on Charlotte's shoulder at that point, watching, feeling curious and delighted. It does not understand anything: it is a bird. But it knows that it aches for reunion, and now that reunion is to be had, it feels a sort of desperation.

--

In Denver, Melantha sleeps on a narrow bed that thankfully is not fashioned after those in Victorian orphanages. She sleeps high above the city, which makes her feel strange indeed after so long spent in the wild. She dreams of birds in flight and dancing wolves. She has no idea they've been surfing. What. She has no idea they are coming with a third.

--

The second pigeon leads them as best it can; they have to interpret how to follow it when it is used to flying, not attending to the roads of humans. Charlotte has to talk to it a few times, tell it to slow down, and the second pigeon does not understand this madness. The first pigeon tucks its head under its wing to sleep whenever Erich or Charlotte sleeps, resting in one of the rafters of the tiny house. A couple of times it peers curiously at Ingrid, but she is not familiar to it.

It goes with Erich when he has to cross the border on the Otherside. He sees it there, cooing and trilling at him, fluttering its wings in hello. It perches on his shoulder and awkwardly tries to groom his hair with its beak as he walks. If he shifts to another form, it sits atop his head, which is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing anyone could see, if anyone were around to see it.

Maybe a Nuwisha does, and takes a mental snapshot of the image to share with their friends. You will not be-LIEVE...

--

They get some looks at Cold Crescent. Curious ones, interested ones, steady long looks as well, but not wariness. The Warder passed them. The elevator drags them upward, swift as flight, and now there is one spirit-bird on Charlotte's hand and one perched on top of the building, considering its next move or maybe just watching over the place, watching over all of them. It considers staying: this is a good roof. Pigeons don't need much more than a decent roof, really.

The other one, though, needs far more. It needs to stay near the two young garou in that elevator, though three now, even if the third is one it doesn't know yet.

There is always some amount of activity on this floor. There's a couple of cubs and there's kin and there's some others and there's people who have other places to stay but stay here most of the time, too. And there's a girl who stopped lifting her head from a book and looking expectantly at the elevator doors whenever they dinged some time ago, because her neck was getting sore.

She's in the lounge, at the apex of the building's triangle and the first wide-open room that one sees when one steps out of the elevator bays. She cannot see the spirit-bird on Charlotte's finger any more than she could see the one that flew towards the windows and then swooped up to land on the roof. She can, at the moment, only see the book in front of her, the one she started reading in D.C. and couldn't finish: the signal and the noise.

Her dark hair is longer, the way that hair is only noticably longer when you haven't seen someone for a few months. It has not been trimmed and the ends are split and it is not glossy and curled but held up in a plain ponytail and she hasn't even showered yet today. She's in pajama pants and a tank top and sitting in the sunlight coming through the windows, her legs tucked up and crossed on one of the lounge couches. She has lost weight, not frighteningly but enough to show that the softness she showed in her physicality in D.C. was as much an illusion as her painted lips, her silky hair. There is firm athleticism and a survivor's stamina in those arms, in that body.

Outside of the elevators, Erich is swinging his head around, looking til he finds her, but all he would need to do is close his eyes and inhale. Even after a short time, this entire floor is suffused with the scent and feel of someone of her breeding, someone of her inexplicable purity. He could find her in the dark; they all could. She doesn't see him, or Charlotte, or Ingrid, until a few moments go by. Then she senses the rage, the danger of a nearby predator rippling through the air, which is not uncommon here but is amplified by Ingrid's presence, and she looks up.

She used to wear makeup that made her eyes look rounder, look wider, look rather childish. She doesn't now, and the almond-sharp points at the corners of her eyes are more evident, the ancient wisdom and strength shining through, unhidden now. She looks more herself than either of them have ever seen her, except perhaps in one moment months ago, when she came back from pouring purified water from a vial over her head, praying for cleansing. That was in the dark, though. Now she's in sunlight, and she's widening those young-and-not eyes and her mouth is opening and her book is dropping to the floor.

--

The pigeon darts everywhere inside the building, freaking out. It is freaking out you guys it's freaking out she's here and they're here and they're all together and it just can't anymore it has lost its tiny mind with joy.

--

The truth is, Melantha hardly notices Ingrid. Of course she sees her, she's aware of her, but with the way the woman presses the Door Close button immediately and departs, there is nothing to suggest to Melantha that she even came here with her two friends in the first place.

Her arms and her body feel taut and strong and wild when she collides with Erich, yes, Erich first because Erich came at her like a madman and picked her up, squeezed her til her ribs ached, swinging her around. But when her feet touch cool flooring again she's between the two wolves and she's shaking like a leaf despite all that strength. Melantha is also crying, and it's uncertain if either of them have ever seen her cry except that one night out in the woods where she was a screaming, murderous, sobbing bacchante and Charlotte wasn't there but Charlotte was there in that vial of holy, holiest water, and Charlotte was the reason Melantha was out there to begin with, so if Melantha thinks that Charlotte has seen her weep, she may be right.

But now she is overcome, tears streaming openly down her face, her eyes red-rimmed with them, her body trembling as she is squeezed between boy and girl, storm and falcon. She turns her back to Erich, and this seems natural as anything else: he has long arms and a large body and when Melantha turns to Charlotte, it is like he becomes a shield for both of them. Melantha kisses Charlotte, adoring and tearful, kissing her brow and her temple and her cheek and her mouth and then hugs her, hugs her tight and puts her head down between the Theurge's neck and shoulder. She knows this is okay, even though her teeth are near Charlotte's throat, because if not her, no one.

They bow their heads around her and they breathe her in and Melantha shakes, and cries, and grabs Erich's arm and hugs it between her body and Charlotte's body and doesn't move for a very, very long time.

--

Pigeon finds a perch inside of 1999 Broadway. It looks down on the three of them. It is content. Finally.

baja.

Charlotte

(http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000P2Jr7iQA0CQ/s/750/750/Happy-dog-on-a-Baja-beach-Mexico-CD-900-MarkAJohnson.jpg)

This is where they've ended up.

Somewhere in Baja California, way down the coast. Well past the busier tourist areas. A tinyhouse on a wide and mostly deserted beach, with a surf shack and a ramshackle little café up by the winding, two lane road that cuts through the desert that encroaches on the sea.

The surf shack is run by a grizzled and hairy and hoary old Californian with white hair and skin the color of and texture of an old leather briefcase, left too long to the elements, gone cracked and stained. He is married (or 'married') to the round little mestizo woman who runs the café, which serves up warm handmade tortillas, fresh ceviché, and ice cold cerveza to anyone who wanders this far south.

Like these two blond-haired blue-eyed strangers, both of whom were born so far from this tropic paradise that it seems surreal, neither of whom were made for the water. Still, Charlotte takes to it like she was simply created to float on one of the old man's rented boards, bobbing gently like a cork in the serene blue ocean, watching over her shoulder, waiting for - if not the perfect wave, at least one she can ride, sometimes for no more than ten, fifteen, twenty seconds before it spills her back into the Pacific in a churning mass of breaking wave and churned up sand and pure aristocratic upended blood.

Charlotte stays out in the water until her fingers are wrinkled and her hair is stiff with salt and the black YELLOWSTONE t-shirt she wears over her bikini for modesty's sake is so thoroughly saturated with seawater it is hanging down to her knees and may come close to doubling her weight. Stays out there until she catches and rides just ahead of the crest of a wave as far as its crashing, dissipating energy will carry her, and is still standing at the end, her feet back, digging into the rear of the board just as the old man told her, watching the wave spill out ahead of her onto the sand. Feeling all triumphant and looking resplendent, like she had just laid out the throat of some dark enemy at the feet of her Queen.

She is constantly smiling. And if Erich's inland, lounging on the beach, or maybe even on the porch of the now-completed tinyhouse, Charlotte waves wildly to him and shouts something that's lost in the pounding of the surf.

She probably wants him to take another picture with her iPhone.

To show Melantha when they find her again.

When she calls them home.

---

They drove west from Nebraska through Wyoming, then up into Yellowstone. There is a Sept there, a large one, where they were welcomed. The duo offered chiminage of sorts by way of joining the Guardians' patrols up through the high country, running with the wolves and wolf-kin, hunting in the physical world, four-footed, elk and deer and bison and bighorn sheep with the Mary Mountain and 8 Mile packs.

Hunting other things, too. The darker things that constantly test the boundaries of that great and still-holy place, that throw themselves forward, always trying to steal another scant half-inch back from the Gaians for the darkness that surrounds and laps at them, whereever they still think to hold on.

Once, a fight at the 8 mile pack's territory's edge, quick and short and vicious, as all such battles are. The Guardian on patrol with them - a bluff, Fianna Ahroun with a wide face and strawberry-blond braids and a keen dislike for Shadow Lords, thank you very much - died and came back. Surged to life in a chaotic frenzy that spent itself on the slick, bleak, nucleated group of fallen Garou that dared to probe the boundaries of the Caern's wide and sacred and porous bawn.

Perhaps more by accident than design, given the way he gives himself to battle, Storm's Teeth stood over her when she fell again, this time not-quite-dead but assuredly unmoving, laying into their attackers with such viciousness that he sent them scattering, fleeing into the night, baying their threats to regroup and return and devour his intestines link-by-link and fuck a hole into his heart.

The two Ahrouns were so sore-wounded, the trio so far out that Charlotte-wolf called down her ancestors to help her heal them. And, under a bright and star-spangled sky, Storm's Teeth met, for the perhaps the first time, the austere priest Coeur d'Hiver who is closest to the surface of Charlotte's skin. Who had fine hands and clear eyes and a gentle, eerie smile, and a madness starkly different from Charlotte's own. Who spoke, once, with and for and by and too the dead, now slips into Charlotte, when she invites such company, lovely and ancient and rare.

They should have stayed for at least the moot, where Gravity Hurts would have uttered, for the first time in her young life, words in praise of a Shadow Lord. Except: when one of Erich's elders came to inspect the tinyhouse and the visiting Ahroun of his own tribe who had performed valiantly on the battlefield at the northern edge of the Caern's territory, he and Erich met another of Charlotte's ancestors, who lives just as close to the surface as the first and lacked her clear-eyed gaze.

In elaborated, arcane, and artful language, little Charlotte threw down a grand challenge at the feet of an Athro Shadow Lord to whom she had no right to speak, let alone offer challenge. Carried herself as if she were six feet tall and standing at the right hand of some hoary King, his seneschal, his Voice and started to articulate in no uncertain terms her (his? her physical body language was wide and masculine and she held herself as if she expected she should be carrying another fifty pounds of muscle to go alone with the extra seven inches in height) exact opinion of lesser tribes who think to exceed their stations and touch the artifacts and weapons given by Gaia to Falcon's own, and no others.

When he won the artifact back, he declared, he would have to find another worthy of carrying it. The creature the spirits had given him to inhabit was hardly worthy of her blood. Perhaps, he conceded, he might permit her to convey the klaive to its next rightful owner.--

So, that was awkward.

For Erich's sake, Blackadder's Smile forgave her. Laughed it off, really, because: seriously, little sparrow? Then there was the service Erich had done for the Caern and the service Charlotte had done for Erich. So he accepted the Rite of Contrition she offered him afterward, preferably somewhere where his klaive was not on display on his person, to draw out the madness of her ancestor again. But after that, there was no question of the pair staying, let alone staying for the moot. Had she offered such a dishonorable challenge publicly -

- well, few would have looked askance if he had had her throat.

And he would, assuredly, have had her throat.

--

Charlotte apologized to Erich, very very quietly, much much later, as they drove away from Yellowstone. She already missed the wolves. She wanted to run with them beneath the full moon. She tries to keep him down but sometimes he comes back and swallows her up, like he's just inhaling and she's in the background, paralyzed and unable to speak.

No wonder the Silver Fangs never let her out to play with other tribes.

--

From Yellowstone they continued north but mostly west, through Montana and Idaho, into western Washington, and then east and east and east. Somewhere near Astoria they found the 101 - two kids in a pick-up truck with a tinyhouse, now with ROOF! - that they'd work on finishing inside each night. They saw huge redwoods and a tree you can drive through, drove across the Golden Gate bridge and detoured out to Monterey then Carmel-by-the-Sea. Ate cheese crackers (Charlotte) and beef jerkey (Erich) and drank bottles of coconut water as a picnic in the shade of Library Park at noon, talking about where they'd been and where they might go next and what color curtains should the tinyhouse! have and where was she right now.

They never knew how close they came.

And if Charlotte marveled at San Francisco, she hated LA and kept her hands over her ears and/or her eyes the whole time they hurtled through its tangled web of overheated freeways, strangled to near-incoherence by the asserted presence of the Weaver. Hating the bundles of light and energy and brilliance down which they had to fling themselves to get through the gordian knot of the greater LA metro area.

Maybe Erich wanted to stop and sight-see or gawk at the Hollywood sign or search out some hand-and-footprints on the sidewalks or buy a map of the star's homes and drive around and peer at their mansions or take one of those double-decker bus-tours and pop into Universal Studios and check out the Chinese theate, but Charlotte, oh Charlotte was so tight and rigid and stiff that she could hardly move.

So they kept going south. South and south and south and south. Across the border and onward, leaving behind all the people, the tourists, the narco lords, the sex shows, the strip clubs. Letting it all peel away from their skins until they found this place.

With the ceviché and the cerveza and the surf lessons.

Charlotte bought a white bikini for $10 from a roadside vendor somewhere south of Tijuana. She wanted one of those old-fashioned swimming costumes with the ruffles and bloomers but all they had were two-pieces. So: white bikini plus oversized Yellowstone t-shirt with a picture of a grizzly bear roaring is her beachwear, and they're renting their boards from grizzled old man essentially in exchange for the pleasure it gives him to see them learning to surf and the cash they spend on food and beer they buy from his wife, daily.

And the way they keep those creeps from town away. There's that, too.

Erich
The ocean is a deep, unbelievable blue. The sand is golden. The foam is white. Erich

is lobster red.

At least for the first few days. At least through those days when he burns and peels and burns again. Then gradually, slowly, little by little-y, even Erich's north-bred skin grudgingly begins to generate melanin. He tans. He learns to surf. He swims like a fish, he lays out in the sun with the sand clinging to his wet skin and then falling off as it dries. He wears sunglasses; he squints into the horizon. He eats burritos and burrito-bowls; tostadas, tacos, quesadillas, sopas, tamales, tortas, moles. He puts the finishing touches on that tiny little portable house of his, which is hitched to the back of his absurd bumble-bee yellow truck; which sits on its two wheels with its teeny little porch and its teeny little windows and its teeny little rooms.

Charlotte has her own room. It's downstairs from the sleeping loft, and it even has a skinny little door that closes and locks. The bed inside is full-sized, wedged-in, and fills almost all the space. There's storage beneath it -- big drawers that slide out, though only as far as the wall. There's some storage along the walls, too. Plenty of space for a Theurge to tuck whatever Theurgely little things she has.

Then there's the cramped little bathroom, which miraculously manages to fit a toilet and a sink and a shower. There's the kitchen built along one wall, which also sort of doubles as storage space. There's a couch along the other wall, as well as a small sitting area that turns into a dining area when the 'table' folds out from the wall. Above it all is the loft where Erich sleeps, where he's hung a drape for ostensible privacy just in case Melantha visits him here someday, though for the most part that drape remains pulled back to let air and light circulate.

There are windows everywhere. And a ceiling fan. And every bit of spare space imaginable is some sort of storage; hides unbreakable plastic dishware or a toaster or a microwave or a broom or a stick-vacuum or a Clue board game. Everything has its place, chaotic and rule-less as it may seem; everything is bolted down or lashed down or tucked away or pinned back because

after all

they're sort of like gypsies. They're on the move, even when they stay in one place.

Like right now. They've been here in Baja for a week, maybe two. They like it here; it's open and the seagull arc white against the sky. Charlotte is out on the water, and Erich is sunning himself with a battered old book casting a shadow over his face. They are tanned now, but still so very White Kids: with their blond hair and their names and their music, which sometimes plays out of the cab of Erich's truck. The sun is beginning to dip toward that endless, limitless western horizon. It raises moisture out of the ocean, casts the horizon into a blinding white haze. The waves seem born out of that light itself: rolling white out of nothing, ex nihilo, de novo, ab initio.

Erich yawns. He raises his head and looks down his body, past his feet, down the beach, out to sea. There's Charlotte. There's his packmate, bobbing like a cork, waiting for the next riser.

Charlotte
They've been in Baja for a week or two on this beach. It's a lovely one, far from the maddening crowd, the sun starting to puddle on the horizon now, the strand long and nearly deserted. The surf shop is closed by the little beach bar / taqueria stays open late and locals will start wandering out from the two a mile or two inland. Hard to call it a town when it's little more than a cluster of shacks and adobe houses, squat and spare, with dusty roads and stray dogs and the odd guest house, but none of the development you find closer to civilization.

Not yet.Not here.

There are dark things everywhere and the townspeople come out here to escape them. Maybe they give Erich a wider berth than Charlotte but somehow they sense that the anger that radiates from him feels brighter and cleaner than - well, it does coming from the whoever it is they're avoiding.

So the pier lights up and there's dancing and there's laughter and the taqueria fills up and music opens up bright from the tiny speakers of the radio. It's all in Spanish, which Charlotte could perhaps puzzle out with the help of her ancestors, but she does not go looking for them and out here, they do not come seeking her.

The theurge spills into the beach on the last wave with the last sinking rays of the setting sun brilliant and huge and orange behind her. Party's in full swing up on the pier and she's dragging her board up onto the beach, wrinkled and salty and happy, t-shirt hanging down to an inch about her knees, soaked and dark, sand coating her stick-thin legs, her blue eyes bloodshot from the salt and spray.

She stows the board like she was taught and bounds up the three tinysteps to some cash for their dinner, then jogs back to where Erich has been soaking in the sun and is now soaking in the sunset. Sinks to the sand, holding her owl-shaped coin purse carefully weighing the feel of the pesos inside. Glances at the pier and then back at Erich, lazy, with a battered old book whose text it is now too dark to see.

"Whatcha want for dinner?"

When it's crowded, Charlotte always grabs there meals. No reason to scare people before they've had enough cerveza to mellow them enough to bear Erich's presence in close quarters.

"I'll go pick it up!"

Erich
 The first couple days on the board, they rarely made it in to shore. They toppled off, they nosedived off, they slid off sideways, they stepped on the board wrong and it squirted out from underfoot like a peeled grape. Now, looking at Charlotte, you'd hardly know it. The waves bear her into shore. The board grounds, she jump-jogs off, then hauls it up by the leash and takes it in.

Erich levers up on his elbows. He uses the book as a sunshade, blocking the direct light of the sunset as he squints at the crescent-born. "Meat," he says, and smiles, and sits up -- sand sheafing off his back, trickling, tickling, bouncing gently on the beach. "Barbacoa? A pound of barbacoa. Annnnnnd one of those orange sodas they have in the glass bottles."

Over on that old, sunbleached pier with its cracked boards and askew pillars: the people coming out from inland, the distant music, the music of distant languages, the laughter that rises and ebbs; the clink of glass, the flap of the tarp that shades the small cluster of benches and tables. The little hut isn't so much a building as it is a shanty teetering over the ocean, its walls seemingly made of driftwood, palm, and tiki-torches, all of it poised to collapse or catch fire at any moment. Even from out here, half a beach away, Erich can see the glow of the cooking fires, smell the smoke and charred meat.

"Maybe a couple beers too," he adds, "but only if you're gonna have one."

Erich
[I'M NOT THAT SHARP OKAY. percep+alert]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Ingrid
Somewhere in Baja a pair of wolves are relaxing, having fun, getting away from it all if only for a while. They've wandered all over the country. They've had adventures. And now they're relaxing. They surf, they eat, they drink...they got sunburns and now they have tans. They've built a tiny little house. They're living a life, THE life. The life of drifters. They are gypsies, and the worries they have are the usual kind. But there is one worry of which they are currently unaware.

They're being hunted.

There is a particular kind of animal that is stalking them. She's been hunting them since they left San Francisco, though she's never set foot in that city herself. Her car had been pointed in that direction, though, until the stone - a smooth, beautiful thing hanging from a lovely chain because of course it is - hanging from the rearview mirror shifted, pointing vaguely south. So, breezing past the Gateway Arch, she turned her car onto I-44 and drove and drove and drove.

Days, five in fact, pass between Saint Louis and Mexicali. She's not in a hurry to catch her prey, and she has some adventures of her own. Quiet ones, the kind that no one talks about and no one recognizes her for but she has them anyway because it's what it's fun.

Eventually she gets to the area with the ocean of endless deep blue and the golden sand. She gets closer. She's almost there. And then she parks her tiny little black car, puts the top up, and she continues on foot.

Charlotte
Charlotte: Per + Alertness:
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Charlotte
"'Course I am," Charlotte declares, free out here and as bright and as sure and as assured as he has seen her in all the time he has known her. There's something almost smug about her assurance, there. She can do whatever she wants and the sun will still rise over those spare ridges to the east and then sink down beneath the endless curve of the dark blue ocean and then the stars will come out, one by one by one, and waves will roll in, endless and unceasing, a rhythm as close to perfect as the tidal wash of the womb.

--

She darks off, all salt-stiff and sand-stained and small, kicking up sand as she goes through the gloaming. He can follow the glow of her blond hair in the darkness. She's been out of pink dye for weeks and only the last third of her lengthening hair retains a hint of the color. Now it is pulled back in a ponytail and sticks out at all angles like straw, stiff from the salt and sun. He can see her until she disappears into that laughing, shifting, oh-so-human crowd, locals all it always seems. As the horizon darkens and the stars begin to come out the music is turned up and some people start dancing. Bottles of beer or even tequila in hand, welcoming the release from a long day's work, refusing to leave yet - to return to their, dim homes on their narrow, dusty streets with the prospect of another long day in the heat and sun looming in front.

At this hour, on these nights, it takes forever. Erich's left to nap on the beach, with the excuse of the book put aside because it is too dark to read unless he retrieves a torch or booklight from the tinyhouse! parked on the strand. So he watches the changing and changeling light and the shifting crowd, listens to the open peal of laughter up there, on the pier, half a beach away, and listens to the way it alters and changes and closes up, too.

That's enough to pull his attention back to the pier. He marks the shift in the crowd's enjoyment of the moment, the way they grow quiet. This has happened before - a handful of guys from town, though mostly they stay away since Charlotte and Erich landed out here on the beach.

---

It's just fifteen minutes before the crowd noise starts to open up again, all bright against the night, and that's when Charlotte comes trudging back along the beach, kicking up sand with every step. She has a six-pack in one hand, packed with two orange sodas and four cervezas, and two big white bags of food. Meat and meat and barbacoa for Erich, chips and salsa and tacos and ceviche for Charlotte.

They sit down to their quiet meal on the beach and as she starts unpacking her bounty, she wrinkles her nose and remarks, all quiet. "Those guys were there again."

---

That's all though. The dinner hour will pass in peace and quiet and the party on the pier will continue well into the gloaming, before it begins to die out as quietly as it does on nights like these, as the patrons slip back to their dusty homes in that dusty and nameless town.

Charlotte
Erich also has a sense of movement closer to him; catches a view of one of the guys on the dunes closer to the tinyhouse and truck than the pier, watching him with a pair of binoculars raised, though he's trying to be stealthy in the darkness, it is clear that the guy was studying Erich on the beach.

Erich
By the time Charlotte comes back, Erich is dozing on the beach with the book over his face. Farther north -- San Francisco, even San Diego -- a chill comes every afternoon as the winds shift, as they rush away from the setting sun, as the marine layer rolls in from the west. They're far enough south here, though, that the ocean itself is warm. Warm to the west and warm to the east, just as the land between, this narrow strip of Baja, is warm. It's not chilly to nap like this. He doesn't ever wake with his belly knotted from the cold, seeking shelter and warmth.

He wakes, often, just like this: because someone's come close. Usually it's Charlotte. Sometimes it's the old man who owns the hut, who rented them the boards. Sometimes it's his wife. Sometimes it's one of the kids from the village, wide-eyed and wary, but so far it has not been one of those guys.

Erich's brow knots when Charlotte mentions they were there again. He makes this noise, this little grunt of acknowledgment and displeasure, as he reaches up to help her with the bags and the food.

They have a little picnic sitting on the steps of the tinyhouse. The last of the glow goes out of the west. Erich eats his barbacoa, which is spicy and tender and probably not the best cuts of meat but it doesn't matter; it tastes good. He washes it down with a bottle of beer, which he clinks against Charlotte's once in a while. She's more sure of herself here. She's grown more sure of herself, he thinks, with every step away from the cities, her brother, all those loud and opinionated and too-certain people whose will she so easily comes to accept as her own.

Then it's dark. The music stops. The cooking fires go out, and the old man closes up shop -- leaves all those sunbeaten benches and tables out under the rack and the awning; buttons down the latticed grate that seals off the front of that little hut. The last of the villagers drift back home, away from the sand, across the scrub, down those bare straight roads into the subtropical inlands.

Erich, who has devoured almost that entire pound of barbacoa (except for the bite he gave to Charlotte to try), is crunching his box between his hands, preparing to pack it into the trash bags. He's getting to his feet and something about that shift in viewpoint is just right that something catches the corner of his attention and tugs. His head turns. He looks

(unsubtle creature that he is)

straight into the binoculars looking back at him. Through the 'nocs, his secret admirer gets a perfect look at Erich's surprised expression. Then the turn of his head. The movement of his lips as he says to the blonde girl who surfs in a big baggy t-shirt:

"Dude, Charlotte, I've got a stalker."

Charlotte
Sense Wyrm: Perception + Occult
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Ingrid
[percept+alert]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Charlotte
Charlotte stands up, all abrupt and upright too. In these matters, she is precisely as subtle as the Ahroun, which is to say: not at all. Sometime in the evening she washed the sand off her calves and retreated into the tinyhouse! and changed out of her bathing suit into a different baggy t-shirt and shorts, washed her hair maybe too and now, hours later, it is dry and shaggy and a bit flyaway and entirely unstyled. She has not eaten all of her meal (she never does) but she has consumed far more than a girl of her size might be expected too and her trash is being stowed with Erich's though she'll save some of the ceviche for the gulls and tortillas for the shorebirds that might be tempted close enough to dart in and steal the torn-up piece of hand-made corn tortilla from where she's tossed them all around her the next morning.

Now though: one girl, half-empty beer bottle in hand, standing up beside one tall boy, frowning at the faint glint of the binoculars in amongst the dunes.

Moonlight against those lenses, gibbous and waxing. Brilliant in the dark fastness of the night sky.

"Erich," the girl reaches up to tug on the tail of his t-shirt. "He smells."

--

Meanwhile, Ingrid wanders down a moonlit, twolane road, bevvied between the dry hills and the sea. Her small black car is parked in that small dusty town. One hour after sunset, the town was virtually deserted. Three hours after sunset, the townspeople have all returned to their homes and closed up for the night, so the streets are nearly as dark as the ocean. Darker, as the waves reflect all the light in the sky, while the adobe and asphalt merely absorbs the light.

She follows the urge of the rite or her gift forward on foot then, the mile or two from town, out towards the beach. As she's getting close and closer, close enough that she can smell and hear the ocean, can see perhaps the distant glassine glimmer of the moon on dark waters near the horizon, can see the walkway groomed through the dunes to the now-quiet pier with its shuttered cafe and surf shop, there's this: a dark pick-up truck and cheap old hatchback parked on the shoulder of the two-lane road, far enough back from the dunes. Three men, no - four - mostly hidden behind the dunes, though one's climbed up the crumbling sand and appears to have a pair of binoculars in hand, watching something on the beach.

They are armed. Quietly checking their weapons and chatting between themselves. All three - no, four - look normal until one of them turns.

Half the skin on his face has sloughed off, leaving behind this charnal house mess like hamburger meat, skin and muscle bubbling and gross, eroded through here and there to the bone.

He appears to be molting.

Erich
He smells does not, not for a single minute, make Erich think Charlotte is referring to his secret admirer's body odor. Well; secret admirer might in fact stink, but -- what Charlotte's talking about runs deeper than the skin. Right down to the bone.
By his side, Erich's hand curls into a fist tight enough to pop his knuckles. His grin comes suddenly and savagely. "Kay," he says, "just a sec."

And he turns and goes into the tinyhouse. It is so tiny that if they moved the dining chairs out onto the porch, each chair would pretty much take up one side of the porch. It is so tiny that when the Ahroun goes in, his shoulders pretty much fill up the door.

Which stays ajar. Charlotte can hear some banging around, some rustling and stuff. Erich reappears; he has a hammer in hand, a jaunty blue-handled thing that saw quite a bit of use when he was building their den. He pulls the door shut behind him, and then -- without any warning whatsoever -- cocks his arm back, takes a long, light-footed, skipping step forward to add the momentum of his entire body to the motion,

and whips that hammer at secret admirer binocular man.

Ingrid
Ingrid is indeed walking down the twolane road. In heels, cork wedges in fact, the kind with straps that look like they lace all over the tops of her feet but which, in fact, fasten by way of a single clasp on the outside of her ankles. And shorts, too, and a halterneck shirt, both which probably cost singly more than that tinyhouse cost altogether. It's not proper walking-for-ages-along-barren-roads wear, but when has she ever been seen in something practical? She follows the tug of the stone, the chain now wrapped around her fist, that points in the direction of the Ahroun.
When she's a little closer, she sees she's not the only one who is hunting that particular Shadow Lord. She stops on the road, lowering her hand to her side, and watches them for a moment. Sees that they're milling about with a purpose. Sees that one of them has the audacity to spy on her own prey.

Quietly, she slips the necklace into her pocket with one hand, bending the other way to unclasp one of those shoes and then the other. Her feet freed she straightens, holds her hands out before her, and moves her fingers like she's a puppeteer making invisble puppets dance. And, in a way, that's exactly what she is. Tugging just so this way and that, she pulls the shadows around her like a cloak.

[probs unnecessary 'cause dark but I wanna use this new gift!-1G Shadow Weaving: dex+occult, diff 7]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 1 )

Ingrid
[and a blur]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 5, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )
Ingrid
[and a stealth!, diff -1 for shadow weaving]
Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 5, 5, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
Erich
[HAMMER TIME! dex specialty is "quick" - lemme know if i should reroll!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Ingrid
[I should probably also note that once Ingrid is invisible she unsheathes the chest sword]

Erich
[reroll!]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Erich
[CAN'T TOUCH THIS, DA-NANANA.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Erich
[+7 cuz homid...FOR NOW!]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )

Ingrid
[-1R snapshift to Crinos 'cause guns, how unclassy *smh*: +9]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Ingrid
[1: Run up behind Dude the Second
R: Hi! Slash 'im!
R: And again!]

Erich
Reflexive: WELP I GUESS I'M GOING HISPO
1. running!
R1. UGH something's wrong with you and that's no bueno. Spur Claws on Meathead!
R2. DON'T SPIT ON ME BINOC DUDE THAT'S RUDE. BITE!
R3. SRSLY I'M VERY CROSS WITH YOU. BITE!
Erich
[spur claws!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 1
Erich
[damage! 4(base str)+3(hispo)+2(claws)+6(succ)]
Dice: 15 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Ingrid
[R: Slice!: dex+melee, diff -2 (behind)]
Dice: 8 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Ingrid
[dam: str+4(crinos)+2(sword)+5-1][L]
Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 8 )
Erich
There's a blur in the dark -- Erich-wolf, one forepaw now denuded of claws, snarl-yelps in surprise. Then: he whips around and BITES that eyebally motherfucker.
Cuz seriously. Rudity!
[dex 4 + hispo 2 + brawl 4!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 8 ) Re-rolls: 1
Erich
[damage str 4+hispo 3+teeth 2 = base 9, +7 succ. DON'T YOU DARE PWINK ME AGAIN KAHSEENO.]
Dice: 16 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 9 )
Ingrid
[R: DIE DIE DIE]
Dice: 8 d10 TN4 (2, 2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 6 )
Ingrid
[dam: +5][L]
Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Erich
[hi molting dude! i probably shouldn't bite you but i'm not too smart so: BITE. +1diff.]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Erich
[dam base 9 +3]
Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 7 )
Erich
[OW I KNEW IT.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
Ingrid
[1a/b: Slice/slice on molting dude?]

Erich
Ingrid can see Erich hasn't changed a bit. He still throws himself headlong into danger, unconsidering and unconsidered, savage, joyful. Overhead some tiny missile soars and detonates and he roar-barks, a great gleeful noise as he gains the low sandy hill and

springs.

His teeth snap: like a steel trap, one might say if one were being cliche, which is perfectly fine because Erich does not mind being cliche so long as bad things die, yes they do. There's a honed gleam in the night, a whistle of a blade that lays Erich's ears flat, makes him growl-yelp in startlement, but in the heat of the moment there's hardly time to process anything beyond friend, foe. This one doesn't cut his spine out, so: it must be a friend! He turns his attention elsewhere, tearing, ripping, down that first spitting admirer goes.

And: okay. Maybe he has learned a little. Because he doesn't just keep chewing on that one target! He turns, he snaps for the next, the one his claws are hanging out of. His teeth close. Blood everywhere. Blood in his mouth, burning his throat, bringing a rough retching cough to his throat: no bueno AT ALL.

And still -- undeterred, singleminded, and too damn bite-happy to even consider another approach -- he goes in teeth-first again.

[1a. BITE IT! IT'S GROSS BUT OH WELL!
b. Another bite!
c. Another!
R1. Bite!]

Erich
[1a CHOMPITY. 10-3]
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Erich
[dam +1]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 7, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
Erich
[HACK, COUGH.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Erich
[b BITE ME BABY ONE MORE TIME. 10-4]
Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 4, 6, 6, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 4
Erich
[dam +6]
Dice: 15 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 8 )
Erich
[BLEEHHHCHHH]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Ingrid
soak!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 3) ( fail )
Erich
[OH GOD WHY MOMMY]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 7, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Erich
[OH YAY I LOVE CHASE GAMES!
harry him toward charlotte + ingrid!]
Erich
[dex 6+primal urge 3 - 5(third split)]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
Erich
[that should've been diff 7, but it would've slid by!]
Ingrid
[1a: 8-2(split)-2(ow!)]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Ingrid
[dam: +1][L]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 7 )
Erich
[rage action:
o_o
o_o
O_O!
POUNCE ON INGRID.]
Ingrid
Ingrid: -_-

Charlotte @ 10:07PM
Ingrid: 4 aggravated
Glock dude:  2 aggravated
Erich: IS FINE
Charlotte: 2 aggravated

Charlotte @ 10:17PM
...was that ten seconds or fifteen?  The explosion of flesh is soundless, just more grotesque sloughing, this great unbinding as whatever held the most grotesque of the quarter is just... loosened and then bursts free of its confines, showering all in his vicinity with gore.  His skin, flesh, muscles, blood all sizzle like acid against the skin, eating through layers until what you see beneath is: just more meat, like he was.

They are left in the quiet aftermath, the ocean rolling ashore, the quiet sea.  The pier beneath the gibbous moon, the dune dotting by sizzling hunks of slow-dissolving acidic skin.

Charlotte @ 10:21PM
Mother's Touch on Ingrid -1 (ouch) ??? dif is her rage,
Roll: 5 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 4 ) VALID
Charlotte @ 10:21PM
Gnosis for summoning
Roll: 6 d10 TN7 (4, 4, 7, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 5 ) [WP] VALID

Erich
In the aftermath, Erich-wolf, sides moving with his breath, stares for a moment. Two.

Then he bursts into exuberant, gleeful little yelps that Charlotte can clearly hear over by the tinyhouse. And he appears to more or less jump on the shadowy, sword-wielding creature that's come mysteriously to their aid. By the time Charlotte gets to the blood-splattered dune, Erich-wolf has one forepaw slung over the shadowy creature's back. He's so beside himself that he is

actually

nomming her ear, grinning with his sharp teeth up at Charlotte.
Ingrid! he chuffs. Ingrid! Charlotte! Ingrid!

Ingrid
She'd left her shoes behind, drawn the shadows around her to cloak her presence, and moved forward quietly, but confidently. She made no sound, not in the sand, not when she withdrew her sword from the sheathe of her own body...not even when she exploded upwards, becoming a hulking beast made of pure shadow. Unseen, unsmelled, unnoticed.

Erich hasn't changed much, is her first thought as she sees him become a beast on four paws and launch himself full tilt into the heat of battle. There's no time for hellos, however. Ingrid pulls free of the shadows, in time to slash through her enemies, unabashedly cutting one to pieces from behind. When the one thing exploded, she was too close. Its guts and acidic blood washed over her, but it doesn't slow her down, not even a little. Erich harries the last thing toward her and Dances With the Hurricane lifts her blade one final time, slides one foot forward, and neatly separates the thing's head from its shoulders.

There's quiet then, in the aftermath. For two seconds, anyway. Before Ingrid can even begin the task of cleaning her weapon, before she can grab a talen and heal the damage to her body, there's a hispo wolf jumping onto her, almost knocking her down. She sucks in a breath against a blossoming of pain, but she keeps her feet.

One heavy hand-paw moves to shove at his face, her own head tilting and one golden eye squeezing shut against the shredding of her ear, but the pressure is half-hearted.

Charlotte @ 10:34PM
And Charlotte: well, there's no mistaking her.  In crinos or homid or any other form: particularly in crinos, small for a Garou but still - warformed and whitefurred and bathed brilliantly in the light of the gibbous moon - charging up the dune just in time to be spattered herself with remnants of the dissolving man.  She gains the crest of the dune and chuffs a laugh at Erich - actually - nomming Ingrid's ear.

The Silver Fang pauses at the top of the hill.  Sniffs the shadowed beast whom Erich is nomming - and then, satisfied, lays on hands heals the damage done to the Shadow Lord.  Leaving them to their reunion while she crosses the gauntlet to summon and negotiate with a spirit to cleanse the filth that befouls the beach.  Hopefully sometime before morning.

Erich
For his part, Erich seems to want all three of them to just ... dogpile together. He lets Ingrid go as Charlotte approaches, laughing -- he laughs too, or seems to, his great bloody tongue lolling, tail wagging, paws smushing huge prints into the soft sand as he dances tight circles around the females.

Eventually, though, Charlotte -- shy, fae, feral daughter of Falcon that she is -- excuses herself to tend to her duties. Erich nudges her as she begins to dissolve across the Gauntlet, a questioning whine in his throat. Then she's gone, and he's turning back to the so-mysteriously-resurfaced Ingrid. His tail wags again. He stamps his paws. He playbows, he runs around the beach, he comes back and picks up one of the horrid carcasses and tosses it into the air like a stick, catches it, razzles it, rolls with it on the ground and finally

finally

comes to a stop, sprawled in the sand, dropping his grisly toy.

A moment later he's human again. Human-ish. All the more horrific in this form, really: red on his face, red down his neck, red on his hands and the nails of one growing back at a surreal speed. He spits a bit of blood and sand out of his mouth, sets palms to the ground, and pushes himself agilely to his feet.

"They kicked you out of New York, didn't they," is the first thing out of his mouth. His smirk keeps wanting to be a grin.

Ingrid
The Silver Fang approaches shyly while the Shadow Lords reunite. Either Ingrid doesn't notice her (unlikely) or she doesn't mind when the Theurge sinks her hands into her dark fur and she heals her. And for a moment while Erich chews her ear and the light of healing washes over her wounds, Ingrid remembers something. Or thinks she does. For a moment she's back in New York and everything is old, faded, perpetually grimy no matter how much they clean. But a pair of warm soft arms wrap around her and then

it's gone. The healing ends, the images fade, and the Ragabash is back in the present, back on the sand with carnage all around her.

She watches the others interact. Charlotte quiet and shy in her presence. Erich concerned, letting out that whine. While they are distracted with each other Ingrid takes a moment to swipe her sword over her fur, cleaning it before returning it to her body.

A moment later and they're both human shaped again, though Ingrid never looks entirely human. None of them do, really, but her difference is a different flavor of off. The Ragabash wears the skin of a human, she wears the fine trappings of humans, but she always looks hungry, like she's going to pounce on and bite the jugular of whoever happens to be closest. Erich looks like a monster, a very happy, very smiley, bloody monster.

He mentions New York and her smile turns sly, and it's almost like no time has passed. Except it's not winter, and her hair is much, much shorter.

"Yes," she says, and the way she says it, it's hard to tell if she's telling the truth or not.

Erich
"Hmph." He's the one teasing her about it, and he's the one to one-eighty around and grump about it. "Well, if they did, that's their loss. Or your plan all along, anyway."

Erich swoops down, grabbing a double handful of sand, scrubbing it between his fingers and over his palms as he rises. There's an ocean just a stone's throw away, and a shower in that absurd little house-thing hitched to that equally absurd black-striped yellow truck, but this: this is the method of cleaning Erich chooses for the moment. A sand-bath, scrubbing until the grains fall in moist clumps, taking with them the worst of the blood and gore. He shakes his hands clean, pale eyes flicking over the Ragabash.

"Not sure about the haircut," he opines, grinning, "but you don't see much worse for wear. What the hell are you doing here?"

Erich
[seem* much worse for wear!]

Ingrid
As if in defiance of his comment, she gives a flick of her head, sending the short-ish strands that try to fall across her face back to the side. They fall again almost immediately, but they stay there this time.

He scrubs away the blood and bits with handfuls of sand, and she rests her hands on her hips and watches. She doesn't clarify if that was her plan all along, to go and come back, or not back but to go and leave again. She doesn't tell him what she did or didn't do while she was away. He might think she was possessed if she did.

"It's summer, summer is for the beach," she says, with the slightest of accents, and the slightest of grins. "I missed this." She surveys the sandy battlefield, pleased. "So I came looking for you."

Erich
Summer is for the beach makes him snort, casting her a sidelong smirk while he bends to scrub his hands again. Straightening, that smirk softens into that irrepressible grin.

"Yeah, I missed you too," he says, deliberately mishearing her.

"Charlotte and I left DC not too long after you did," he adds. It's not her style to tell him what she's been up to, but the same can't be said for Erich. "We've been kinda just wandering around ever since, waiting for our friend Melantha to tell us where she's gone. When she does, I think we'll probably go find her. Maybe even put down some roots. Little ones.

"If you want," Erich adds carefully, "you could totally come with. I've got a spare couch in my house you can crash on." And he hikes a thumb over his shoulder. His house, he calls it.

Ingrid
[i haz a empatchee! i'ma use it!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )

Ingrid
[seems legit]

Erich
[he'd like her to come along! but he doesn't want to badger her into it only to have her go UGH and vanish later.]

Ingrid
He pretends to mishear her, but doesn't misunderstand her. It's been months since the saw each other, feels like longer since they spent time together, but that was always sort of the nature of the thing. They were always bumping into each other at random, two loners who occasionally were alone together.

Now Erich isn't alone at all, but Ingrid is. Or seems to be. Her gaze doesn't glaze like she's hearing someone else's voice inside her head, and no other wolves crested that dune with her to aid her comrades.

He's careful with his offer to her, which in itself is strange. Erich? Not barreling headlong into something? She leans a little, stretching up to peer over his massive shoulder and see...a tiny, tiny little...structure. Ingrid looks at it, and she looks at him, and her look is disbelieving. As disbelieving as the usually cool and aloof Ragabash can look, anyway.

"You have a...spare...couch?"

Erich
Erich grins suddenly. "Well, no. I have one couch. Sort of. It's more like a bench with padding. But it's pretty awesome. Wanna see it?"

Ingrid
She looks at him with her eyes narrowed oh-so-slightly, like there's something that's getting lost in translation here, there must be. She doesn't answer, not with words. Instead she starts off in that direction, curious.

Erich
So Erich follows her, trotting to catch up, then falling in beside her with his rangy stride. He could take the step up to the porch in a single lope, but he stubborn insists on going up those three tiny steps. He built them. He'll use them.

And up on that porch, there's really ... only room for one of them in front of the door. She can either wait behind him or squeeze to the side. If she does the latter, she can look in through the window to get a glimpse of the inside. Soon enough, though, he sweeps the door open with a flourish, stepping aside to let her have her first look of the incredibly cramped little dwelling that Erich and Charlotte share.

It still smells like fresh-sawn wood in there. Everything's sparse and spare. There are layers of weatherproof clear-coat on the outside, but the inside is mostly bare wood, bare metal, clear glass. Charlotte's door is closed, and the bathroom door is slightly ajar. She can't see into the sleeping loft from here, but she can see the foot of his mattress. Erich comes in behind her, and together the two of them seem to just about fill the whole thing up. If Charlotte was in here too, they'd literally have to shuffle around each other to move.

"Isn't it awesome?" Erich says. "See, that's the bathroom, and that's Charlotte's room, and I sleep up there, and we keep the toaster down here, and here's the microwave, and here's the sink, and I'm thinking about putting an oven in here, and dishes are here. Oh, and my vacuum." Doors and shelves are opening, closing as he shows her everything.

"And this," he stops by the couch, which is indeed a padded bench along the wall, "is the couch. See, it folds out," and he lifts the seat, tugs, the back slides down, everything flattens out. Now there's almost no room between the couch and the kitchen cabinets. "So it's sort of a cot, too. If you want more privacy we can probably hang a curtain up around it." He frowns at the ceiling. "Though it'd really clutter the place up."

Because it's just so open and airy right now.

Ingrid
[okay Ing don't be a dick to your friend who is so proud of his little house: subterfuge!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Ingrid
Ingrid, though she belongs to a camp that prides themselves on their (seemingly) loyal subservience, isn't the type to stand meekly aside and follow Erich in, not if there's room for the both of them. No matter how small that room might be. It's a good thing she's small, more than half a foot shorter than Erich and carrying a fraction of his muscle. She goes up the three steps, her bare feet making no sound, and she slips to the side to peer in through that window. What she sees makes her eyes almost narrow, but she catches herself. Slanting a glance at Erich, that big, burly puppy of an Ahroun, she takes one last look then lifts her chin and schools her features into their usual mask of superiority.

Isn't it awesome? he says as she enters and gets her first look at the interior. It's barely big enough for the both of them. A part of her is put off by the cramped space. Another part of her remembers that time they traded cars. All of his belongings had been in that car, because that car was his home. And now he has a "house." The corner of her mouth quirks, the start of something genuine cracking through that mask as he gives her the tour from where she stands in the...is this the living room? From the common space.

Erich
"Oh, and check it out." Since he's looking up at the ceiling, he sees, of course, the dormers with their windows, and! The ceiling fan. Which he reaches up to now -- grabbing the cord and yanking it to turn it on. "I might put an air conditioner in if we end up in like... Arizona or something," he says. "But right now, the fan's enough. Especially if we open all the windows."

He drops his hand, looks rather earnestly and eagerly at Ingrid. "So what do you think? Wanna live the wandering life with us?"

Ingrid
Check it out, he says, so happy and so proud, and she feels a touch of that resonating, echoing through her. It's strange and unfamiliar. She's not used to feeling...fondness...for people. She's not used to treating people like people. And yet here she is, covering up her horror at the size of this place - if she stretched out her hands she could probably touch the counter and the edge of the couch-cot at the same time.

She looks up at the fan, and she mutters, "Jagi dangsin-eun michyeoss-eo." Then the grin grows a little more and her dark eyes slide over to him.

"What about Charlotte?"

Erich
"Did you just curse my fan?" Erich asks in mock horror.

Then, a little more gravity. For the first time since running into her again, Erich doesn't seem to be constantly fighting a grin. "Charlotte's cool," he says, and since there really isn't that much room and him standing around made everything seem all the busier, the more crowded, the more claustrophobic -- he sits on the couch-turned-cot. "She's one of the nicest, smartest, biggest-hearted people I know.

"She's really shy, though," he adds. "She's a Silver Fang," as if Ingrid couldn't tell, "but I think she kinda had a hard time growing up. She's still kinda learning to be her own person. She is learning, though.

"I think you intimidate her," Erich says frankly. "But I remember she was really sad for me when I told her you weren't coming along when we left DC. I think maybe you guys should meet for-real, though. She's umbraside right now, doing some Cleansings." He thinks a minute, shrugs. "I can go with you if you want. But maybe it'd be better if you guys talked first without me, 'cause I don't want you guys to feel like you gotta like each other for my sake or something."

Ingrid
Hearing that she intimidates the younger Garou doesn't cause much of a reaction in the Ragabash. It's as if he's made some other statement of the universe, like the sun rises in the east, or there's blood all over the sand and someone should clean that up or the mortals will notice. For a Cliath, for a Ragabash, and for a slender, slip of an Asian woman, Ingrid tends to intimidate most people. She doesn't usually get that reaction from other Garou, though.

But, then again, the only times Charlotte has ever seen Ingrid, it's been in the heat of battle or in its aftermath. And even then their meetings were brief.

The suggestion that he go with her, though, to talk to the girl and have a real, honest to goodness meeting, maybe even a...chat...gets a raise of a brow.

Her eyes rise up to the ceiling fan. "This may come as a surprise, Erich," her gaze falls back to him, sitting there on what might be her bed for a time, frank and serious. "But I am not in the habit of liking someone for someone else's sake."

She lifts her chin then, glancing about for the nearest reflective surface. Whether she finds one or not, a moment later there's a pop!

And she's gone.