Lines

Avery Chase

[evens = eva, odds = avery!]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Éva Illésházy

The Artwork Network is hosting a silent auction to raise funds to benefit the Legal Aid Society of Denver and Amnesty International. The event was advertised as cocktail attire, which has been interpreted by the crowd drifting through the gallery space with a wide degree of latitude. Something about the crowd that wishes to support both the Legal Aid Society of Denver and Amnesty International lends itself to a wide degree of latitude. There are art historians in caftans and the odd hipster in skinny jeans and thick glasses and a beard. There are ex-hippies gone respectable shined up in houndstooth sport coats with suede patches on the elbows. There are glorious women with halos of frizzy gray hair sparked around their heads like newborn nucleii in maxi dresses with seventeen long chain necklaces slung around their necks and arms full of turquoise cuff bracelets they will be happy to tell you they purchased from the artisan himself,

and there are rather a lot of lawyers in the room. They are easy to spot. They are the ones for whom cocktail attire means cocktail attire. One of them is crisp in black and white. A white brocade skirt beneath a black lace bodice, sleeveless. Dark hair loose down her back, a small clutch tucked beneath one arm, speaking quietly with a rather dumpy looking middle-aged man in a rumpled suit who also happens to be the city editor of the Denver Post. They are in front of an oil painting with the crisp, lines, bright swathes and deep curving shadows of an Edward Hopper. A woman lazing in a clawfoot bathrub on a sunny day, the light coming in through open shadows, all the rest of the room enshadowed.

Avery Chase

In Denver, dress codes are relatively fluid. Bankers hire people who show up in jeans, at times. So the variety of sartorial choices in the room is understood as both a product of the local culture as well as the culture of the sort of people who are involved in things like LASD and AI.

There are hipsters. Professors. Hippies turned professional. Women in those dresses, with those beads, those bangles. There are many lawyers. There are also a few representatives from the moneyed elite, the ones who do not even pretend to be poor, to be of the earthly plane, who 'work' for their wealth in ways that are not understood by the vast majority of salaried folk, just as they do not understand what 'work' means to the vast majority of salaried folk. A smattering of them, philanthropists from the old school of old money rather than the sort who stamp their feet and howl about how they're job creators and no one deserves their help. These are the classic sort of rich folk.

One of them glows. She is here on her own, apologizing occasionally for her father's absence, as he was called away to Boston or Charleston or Toronto or some other such place, because usually the invitations go to him. Usually she is at events such as this on his arm, and people are heartbroken and touched and adoring of them, this beautiful silver-haired man escorted by his beautiful golden-haired daughter,

whose mother was tragically lost. Whose father never remarried. They are lovely and their story is dramatic but restrained in way that makes it all the more endearing.

But Avery alone, her long hair bound smoothly up behind her crown. She is laughing and enjoying herself, and people drift in and out of her immediate space, drawn to her and repelled by her, both for reasons they can't fathom. She holds a martini glass filled with some palepink liquid, garnished with a twist of lime. She is dressed in a black, white, and red dress of striking geometric design, wearing no jewelry but a pair of diamonds in her ears, holding a little red clutch. She is hard to miss.

Then again, to something like her, a woman who is not a woman at all, so is Eva.

--

They've met before, sort of. They were both at the shenanigans at Forgotten Questions back when the air was warm, when garou and kin alike were playing chicken, riding on each other's shoulders. So she recognizes Eva, and knows who she is, when she sees her. She excuses herself shortly, walking over to the other woman wearing a smile,

hiding, quite well, how insecure Eva makes her.

"Ms. Illeshazy!" she says, delighted. "I had no idea I'd see you here."

Éva Illésházy

"Ms. Chase," Éva favors Avery with the gleam of a quiet smile and a certain particularity of regard. A certain weight of her own dark gaze, which lingers for several half-formed interstitial beats longer on the wolf than it would on any mere woman. There is nothing disrespectful about the weight or length of the look. Beneath it is a certain acknowledgment of Avery's presence that Éva herself would not understand to be animal in its nature and immediacy.

It is, however, animal in its nature and immediacy.

"I've not seen you since the meeting of the steering committee for the building co-op. You look lovely. How are you? Oh, and have you met Art Farriday?"

A hook of inquiry sketches itself into the kinswoman's dark brows, as she cuts a glance between Avery and the man beside her, in his rumpled suit. "City Editor for the Denver Post. Art, this is -

"Avery Chase," the man interrupts, reaching out an ink-stained hand to offer Avery, along with a business card. "Ms. Chase, we've never officially met, but the Society Pages are part of my purview, so I feel as if we are already acquainted. In fact, if you aren't averse to a bit of publicity, I do have a feature story idea to pitch to you sometime when we're not both off the clock.

"For now, though. You'll have to excuse me. Judge Hemming has a cigar with my name written all over it, dying to be smoked."

Avery Chase

Avery flicks her eyelashes in a blink, then gives a soft laugh. "Thank you! I love your dress," which is the truth. "Truthfully, I hardly remember the steering committee meeting. After my poor notes, my father started sending his assistant instead when he couldn't attend."

None of which is the truth. She knows what building Eva is talking about. The steering committee is a very nice way, she thinks, of describing a warmoot. But she lies with surprising ease, for someone whose entire bearing depends on honesty. There is a higher ideal, though: the Veil. The lie they all live. One must wonder how she reconciles herself with that.

Her attention turns to Art Farriday, and she offers him her hand to shake. Perhaps he's surprised at the firmity of her grip, and the intimidation he feels, given that she apparently is the sort of woman who can't be bothered to take decent notes during a boring co-op meeting. She smiles broadly at him, though. "Mr. Farriday. I'm so happy to meet you." She takes his card, looking at it like a gift, as he goes on. "Of course," she tells him easily. "I'll give this to my steward," people like her don't have assistants, they have house managers and stewards and proxies and people who do all the mundane business of life for them, "and we'll set something up."

After he excuses himself, Avery tucks the card into her little clutch, giving Eva a tiny smile that makes her look... well. Younger than she is. About as young as she feels. "Do you," she says, sotto voce, "want to get out of here and have some scotch? If I don't get out of these shoes I'm going to throw them at someone."

Éva Illésházy

"That sounds brilliant." Éva laughs, the expression spare but no less genuine for it, glancing down rather wryly at Avery's shoes. "The wine is atrocious. I think they iced the red and microwaved the white, and if I stay much longer I might actually end up on a steering committee of some sort or other.

"Which is the last thing I want from this evening."

The win is atrocious enough that the Shadow Lord does not even have a glass in hand to surrender to a passing waiter, or set discretely aside on a pillar that may or may not be part of the art on auction tonight. The truth is, no one in the room is entirely sure.

Avery will find a spare waiter easily enough; how can that brilliant warmth be resisted?

"Barrel 44's not far, just down the street. They have a forty-plus-page menu of whiskeys and scotches and bourbons, not to mention chairs, so you're bound to find something you like."

--

It is winter; they both have wraps to be retrieved - though Éva's is a quite lawyerly thing - a long peacoat, in fine dark wool - from the makeshift cloak room. Tips to be left. Strangers and friends and perhaps even the odd enemy to say farewell to on the way out the door. Perhaps even bids to finalize, but soon enough the sidewalk, where the bustle is dying down. Too late for dinner traffic, too early for the late night crowd, though a number of the galleries and even the small boutiques are still open to catch what extra business they can on a Saturday night.

Barrel 44 is just down the street. They have a sandwich board propped open in front of the door, which reads:

SOUP OF THE DAY: WHISKEY

COFFEE OF THE DAY: WHISKEY

TEA OF THE DAY: WHISKEY

DRINK OF THE DAY: WHISKEY

JUICE OF THE DAY: WHISKEY

and the sort of close, quiet atmosphere inside that feels like it should be smoke-filled as a speakeasy, even though the air is clear.

Avery Chase

"I wasn't going to mention the wine," Avery confesses, she of the martini glass, who eschewed the wine entirely. "I think it came in boxes."

She sets her cocktail aside rather than downing it, handing it off to a waiter's tray as they pass. She nods to Eva's suggestion, and sneakily, stealthily as two women of their respective appearances and purity can,

walk right out of the gallery.

--

She is not too fancy to slip out of her shoes discreetly beneath the table, sighing as she shrugs out of her knee-length white coat. Before they left, she managed to lay down the buyout price on three pieces, scrawling her signature a few times before leaving with Eva,

to come here, to sit back and sigh, leaning back.

"Thank you," she says, still rather formal. "I don't mind those things. I rather like them, in fact. But I much prefer... something like this," she goes on, waving a hand between the two of them. "Smaller numbers."

Éva Illésházy

"Really?" They eschew the bar proper in favor of a leather-wrapped booth, which feels and smells like the old west, or at least the finest facsimile the Sante Fe Arts District has to offer. The booth gives them a degree of privacy; high wooden backs of the benches both shield their conversation from strangers and mute the hum of other conversations down to a quiet, musical murmur. "You seemed quite in your element back there, though I imagine that being on all the time can be rather tiring.

"Bearing the mantle of strangers' and friends' expectations."

--

Éva does not kick off her shoes, though her own may be slightly more sensible than those Avery chose for the evening. Quietly expensive Italian leather pumps, black and white, with a hint of Oxford detailing. Fashionable, yes, but no more than two and a half inches high.

She does, however, relax enough to share with Avery the coil of an ironic smile.

"Can I make a confession?" That ironic twist deepens burnished by a shine of humor in her eyes, leaning forward as if she were about to share a true state secret. "I may well have a box of wine in my fridge at this very moment."

Avery Chase

Eva's acumen startles Avery. It unnerves her. It makes her that much more insecure, to tell the truth. She blinks a couple of times, and she gives a tiny smile, nodding once. "It is the element of a part of my self. But not my whole self."

Which does get tiring. Exhausting, even. No one there, for instance, expects her to unleash the sort of violence she is capable of, all fang and fur and claw. In fact, they would never permit it.

--

Her head tips to the side. "Of course," she says, regarding Eva making any kind of confession. She leans forward, tells Avery about a box of wine. And Avery laughs: "As long as it's not red," she answers, grinning.

A waiter stops by, takes their orders. Avery asks for Lagavulin, neat. When he departs, she inhales deeply, exhales, aware of but not acknowledging the slight awkwardness between them. They don't, after all, know each other. Eva is not her tribe. Avery has hardly had any interaction with her.

"How are you children?" she asks, because that is what you do.

Éva Illésházy

"White," Éva agrees quietly. No, she would not be so foolish as to refridgerate a red. "A Picpoul de Pinet. I claim that I keep it for cooking, but my mother in law does all the cooking, and the truth is I like to be able to have a glass without opening a bottle.

"Without," quietly confessional, "Rosza necessarily knowing that I've opened a bottle."

--

Éva debates settling for a local small-batch whiskey, but orders a Glenfiddich in the end, instead.

"They're well," the Shadow Lord returns smoothly, because that is indeed what you Do. "I had them on something like house arrest for quite some time given the recent troubles. My daughter in particular is pleased to be allowed back to her madcap schedule of a ridiculous number of lessons, up to and including the riding lessons she conspired with Calden White to finagle out of me.

"It started with a request for real cowboy, and escalated from there.

"Ellie's quite fond of Calden. Fond enough that I offered to lend her out if he ever wants to see a Disney film during first run in the theaters without consequence.

"I also consider him a friend." A brief pause, not precisely weighted, so much as weighing. "If I'm not mistaken, so do you. Perhaps more than friends?"

Avery Chase

Avery cannot, in all honesty, quite sympathize with what it's like to want a glass without letting anyone know you've opened a bottle. She is the ruler of her house, the paragon of her family despite the fact that she is a daughter, despite the fact that her father still lives. She is the wolf, though. No one speaks against her for anything so small. Not even her father. Certainly none of her staff.

Her brow furrows at the mention of faux house arrest, in sympathy for Eva's children. It smooths, with a smile, talking of lessons. Including riding lessons! Thanks to Calden White. And there is a chill behind her smile, not directed at Eva but just an arrest of her charm, a tension she can't (or doesn't want to) name.

Her daughter is fond of Calden. To the point of going to movies together if they like. And he's Eva's friend. And they are the same age. And he's so good with her children.

She knows it's an overreaction that her chest feels like it's caving in. She can't help that, though. She is at least breathing, however... shallowly. Thinly. And she smiles, because you smile, and she blinks a few times, glancing downward, wishing she had her glass of scotch already.

"Yes," she says quietly, taut with an emotion she is embarrassed to have, much less name, or be revealing. "He's... quite dear to me."

Éva Illésházy

Éva has a particular sort of lawyer's particular kind of discretion. She cannot but notice the subtle sort of eclipse that shadows the other woman's radiant charm. The smile that is a smile because one does things like smile in such circumstances. She cannot but notice; and yet: she also does not appear to notice. Éva favors Avery with quiet expression that is human and wry and empathetic, meets her eyes and then glances away. She does not wish she had her Scotch in hand, though were it in hand she would indeed employ it admirably in the moment that follows, sipping it and murmuring something about the quality, inhaling to allow the scent to settle over her palette. Turning the glass, perhaps, to admire the color in the light.

She does quite as well without it. That smile, that flicker of acknowledgment is extended and then her attention is quietly and discretely withdrawn, ceding Avery both space and privacy.

"I've heard quite the same from him." Her eyes are no longer on Avery, but across the room. The supple play of light on the rich finishings. A glance back, dark head tipping rather forward to share a confidence, " - quite some time ago, in fact. He is the soul of discretion, though; and shared your name but recently."

Avery Chase

They both have their training. The reasons for it, the methods, differ; the outcome is startlingly similar. But Avery struggles this time. This time, this emotion, this drinking companion, and she struggles in part because she did not think it would be a struggle at all, and she is not finding her footing. She does better than most. Avery at her worst is, after all...

still a royal. Still a Silver Fang. Her worst is some people's unattainable, and she is hardly at her worst even now.

--

She's younger than Eva, younger than Calden, but not young enough to blush pink and duck her head when told that the boy she likes told someone about her ohmigawd. She huffs a soft breath of a laugh, lifting her hand to briefly brush at a hair that has fallen over her cheek, pausing when Eva says that Calden is the soul of discretion. He wouldn't even give her name.

Avery blinks, curiosity arresting some of her anxiety. "Discretion?" she repeats back, as a question.

Éva Illésházy

"Mmm." Éva hums a note of quiet agreement with the question. Discretion is something of which she approves, clearly. She even rather likes the word itself - the hard consonant followed by all those hushed fricative sibilants. There's a subtle twist of her mouth and a banked light in her dark eyes - humor, rather self-directed, which she allows Avery to glimpse if she wishes to glimpse it - which finds an echo in the brief spike of a wry smile. "I prefer a degree of circumspection in my lives, both personal and professional.

"Perhaps I overvalue it, given the nature of my practice." A brief twist of her shoulders beneath the sleeveless black lace bodice of her dress. She is slender, but there is a certain strength to her born of drive. At her age, it must be drive: her fitness can no longer be an echo of youthful athleticism but a specific and daily choice, a series of specific and daily choices to eat like so and run like so and lift like so.

"I've thought of you - generally, not specifically - as Calden's royal for rather a long time. I don't believe I heard your name until he mentioned it in passing when we saw each other at the stock show.

"To be fair," here the waitress returns, with their two Scotches, both neat, which she sets down rather thoughtfully in front of both women. "I hadn't asked, either."

Avery Chase

Avery does not get the answer, or an answer, that satisfies her moment of curiosity, or confusion, whatever it was. She does not understand why Eva would make a point of the fact that Calden was discreet regarding his relationship with her; she looks thoughtful as Eva explains her appreciation of discretion, thoughtful as Eva explains that maybe, just maybe, being a lawyer has some impact on that.

But Calden's royal makes her laugh, a bright sound, and the smile it brings to her face would have a fair comparison in the sun breaking through momentary clouds. Oh, that amuses her. She is grinning now. "That is delightful," she says, reaching to lift her glass from the table after the waitress has departed. "Calden's royal," she repeats, apparently tickled by this.

After a sip of the burning, biteless liquid that threads fiery and sweet through her veins, she exhales. "I have to admit to being a little intimidated by you," she says, forthright, unabashed.

Éva Illésházy

Avery's curiosity goes unanswered, except in the most general of senses. Éva responds without mentioning the marked tension she witnessed at the stock show; without saying anything of Lola Hawkes, or the Uktena's apparent interest in and concern regarding what someone from another generation might call Avery's entanglement with Calden, or any of the rest of it. Avoids the whole subject as artfully and - indeed - quite as truthfully as she can. None of it is her business; she does not wish to involve herself in the private affairs of others.

Instead, they move on. Avery, amused - smiling, brilliant - repeats Éva's locution with such an unselfconscious delight that the older woman decides - really rather deliberately decides - to allow herself to be charmed. It is like a key turning in a lock, the way the gears begin to tumble home deep inside her mind, but beyond that there are no overt signs. Éva does not grin; merely huffs a quiet breath of laughter as she reaches for her own Scotch, turning it thoughtlessly to and fro, long fingers elegant beneath the rim of the glass, two platinum bangles sliding neat and soundless over the spare architecture of her wrist.

---

"Good," she returns, almost immediately, when Avery confesses to being a little intimidated by her. This is not precisely softened by the elegant arch of her winged brows, but there is a banked humor rather inherent in the expression, if one looks closely. "If you weren't I wouldn't be doing my job properly."

Wry.

"Though I'm always surprised to hear that from your sort," by which she means: wolves, though there are many potential misinterpretations of the remark, "given the degree of paternalism that seems rather inherent in the relationship between us. Which seems both more absurd and more poignant to me, with every year that passes."

Avery Chase

good, Eva says, and Avery's eyebrows flit upward a centimeter or two. They descend again, and deepen a bit, drawing together on her brow as Eva goes on. She does not conceal the fact that she is taken aback. Nor does she pretend that the rest -- wolves and kin, paternalism, absurdity -- does not discomfit her.

Instead, she waits for the other woman to finish, then says, with some clarity: "Ms. Illeshazy, I'm a little surprised to hear you say that you think intimidating me is 'good'. I realize you said that with some humor, but... aren't you even a little curious why that is?" She pauses a moment, her eyebrows lifting not so much in surprise this time as open bewilderment: "Beyond that, it doesn't quite suggest that you're interested in the sort of friendliness that sharing a drink would have otherwise suggested."

She doesn't touch the rest. She doesn't need to delve into it to send the message she's trying to get across: that she's a bit put off. And moreover, a little confused.

Éva Illésházy

Somewhere between Ms. Illeshazy and I'm a little surprised, Éva's dark eyes sweep back to Avery's face. The touch of humor settled over her features like a familiar, perhaps favorite dress evaporates and thoughtful little stitch makes an impression between her dark brows. The light here is soft; diffused enough that the faint threads of lines framing Éva's eyes and bracketing her mouth are smoothed away by the ambient glow, the depth of the shadows. There is something considered and perhaps a little bit searching.

For the moment, she leave her Scotch on the wooden table, fingers steepled over its bring; knuckles prominent in the sweep of her long-fingered hands. The bracelets catch the light; they slide like water - quite nearly soundlessly - with the supple movements of her hand.

"I beg your pardon," a brief, sharp sigh from the other woman, the sound has all the controlled force of the release of air from behind some pressure valve. "I took the comment as a compliment. Perhaps the sort I might hear from a stranger born to my blood. I did not connect it with the here and now.

"Why do you find me a little bit intimidating?"

Avery Chase

Daughter of Falcon that she is, Avery's eyes have a birdlike quickness and awareness when they flick back to Eva's face. Her lips move in the smallest, tenderest little smile, not because Eva needs the tenderness but because, perhaps, Avery does. Or is merely, herself, a little tender; a little raw.

She tips her head. "I understand," she says quietly, and she does. "It was not meant as a compliment. But nor was it a chastisement." She does not want to correct Eva. That isn't why she said anything at all.

Here's this, too: she doesn't comment on the Shadow Lords. The thought is there: she forgot the tribe she was talking to. But that's not true, because Avery did not forget Eva's tribe. She just didn't want to assume stereotypes. That may in part be Erich's fault; he's hardly what one considers 'typical'.

"Because of Calden," she whispers, and there it is again: the way she really looked and sounded when she told Eva she was intimidated, however much she couched it in forthrightness and openness. However much she pretended it to be worthy of laughter, there's truth to it, and part of that truth is that Avery merely sounds vulnerable, there. Her brow is furrowed, her mouth turned down a bit, as she looks down at her scotch. "Because you are elegant and intelligent and lovely. Because... he has spoken well of you. He is delighted by your children. You are, forgive me, closer in age, and... in many ways, a far more appropriate pairing than he and I."

Her frown has gotten quite deep, and she is unhappy with herself. But she looks up again, right at Eva. "I know it must sound very foolish. I'm not suspicious, or concocting something to be scared of that isn't there. I know that Calden values his friendship with you. I was hoping that spending a little time with you might... "

Avery moves her hand idly, lightly, with grace so easy and evident that it strikes piercingly at the heart in that flutter of fingers,

"...help me rid myself of this difficulty."

Éva Illésházy

Because of Calden draws Éva's brows up in an arc of mild startlement that is quickly subsumed by her usual equanmity. The easy, mildly detached steadiness she allows to be warmed only by those flashes of native humor, dry and aware and - if anything - mildly self-deprecating. A supple cant of her head as Avery continues, explaining just how much more appropriate a pairing they might be, which is broken only briefly by the swift ghost of a bemused smile as when Avery inserts her forgive me after noting that they are closer in age.

That graceful little gesture Avery makes with her fingers draws Éva's attention down to the her hands. There she lingers, in the silence after.

Once, Éva opens her mouth to reply.

She thinks better of it; closes her mouth around whatever words remained unsaid in that moment. Swallow them down and inhales and allows the words to be reabsorbed into her body, just so.

Éva is glancing away in that moment, her eyes distant and a bit inward. There is still that note of distance when Éva glances back to Avery; a degree of privacy, a certain, rather cultivated, care.

"I think our lives are far too short," a deep inhale, here. Through her nostrils, deep enough that it lifts her shoulders, draws them back in the shell of the dress she wears. " - for appropriate pairings."

She means it. There is the glimmer of memory in those few worlds, a golden patina of loss, which is banked and quiet, which has mellowed to little more than an old and occasional ache.

"Do you mind if I share a confidence?"

Avery Chase

There are things Avery doesn't say, either. About the young man who loved her, who she was simply not appropriate for, who left her even when she was. About her own particular brand of her tribe's madness, and how at once she craves solitude and is terrifed about allowing it to consume her, how deep the fear runs of being abandoned, how deep the fear runs that she will force everyone around her to abandon her. These things feed a wound in her soul.

She washes it with clear water. The water is truth; the truth stings, all the same.

What Eva does say, first of all, casts humor into Avery's aching twist of vulnerability. She huffs a soft laugh, because she agrees, and somehow something about that statement comforts her. Strange, the things that make you feel better. Sometimes you never know what it will be.

Avery shakes her head. "Not at all. And I hope you know it will remain in confidence."

Éva Illésházy

Éva makes a quiet noise beneath her breath, acknowledging Avery's statement, and something about the inflection of that noise also means, of course, it goes unsaid.

"I did not choose Andraj. And I'm not sure that I could have said, truthfully, that I loved him when he was alive." Oh so frank; almost pitilessly so, particularly with herself. Especially with herself. A spare frame of humor outlined with a spare sort of grief, neither of which is allowed to linger long in either the shape of her mouth or the cast of her eyes. "And yet, since his death, I have been especially careful to keep my personal and family lives quite separate.

"I don't want a lover who knows my children, who adores them. Who might think - wrongly - that he could step in as some substitute for the man they lost because he shares my bed.

"Ellie will never remember her father. But she is old enough that she will always remember Andraj. Andris though - and especially Jozsef - they were so young when he died. Their memories of him are so fragile, so passing.

"What else can I give them, of him?

"What else can I give him, of them?

"So, you see, it would be quite impossible. I welcome friends into their lives, if I trust them. And I trust Calden and I do value his friendship, both for myself and my children. But that's all. And that's all it ever could be, even if you weren't in his life.

"And anyway: you are."

Avery Chase

Eva's way is not Avery's way. But Avery knows something about the lines you have to draw in your life. She has been seeing Calden for almost a year now and his interaction with her blood-kin has been at very best, a passing introduction. Her packmate does not enter her thoughts; her packmate will not live where there are kinfolk. They all make lines for themselves, sometimes inexplicable to others, that they cannot cross. Sometimes the people they are closest to are simply the ones who accept those lines, even if they don't understand them.

Someone like Calden isn't even a consideration. 'Personal' and 'family' are different to Eva. And this is how she guards her children, gives them something they cannot otherwise have, because the war took it from them. Because the Wyrm took it from them. Because Th'nak'vis and his pack took Andraj from them.

Avery closes her eyes for a moment, then slowly opens them. "I am glad that you trust Calden," she says quietly, with an earnestness that surprises even her. She is quiet for a little while, then takes a breath and says: "I don't want you to think that I imagine that either of you would... "

It is too distasteful to say. She shakes her head instead.

"It is a difficulty contained within my own mind, my own fears. I suppose if I were to ask you for anything, I would beg imposition on your patience. Your understanding that... I am not entirely as free from such insecurities as I would like to be."

Éva Illésházy

There is a spike of wry humor concealed somewhere deep inside her when Avery assures her that she does not want Éva to think that she imagines that either of them would -

- that distastful word, and the refusal to say it. Éva conceals that irony; does so quitely and quiet carefully, papering over it with a reassuring half-smile, which is the best sort of lie because it is also entirely true. Éva does not think that; and does wish to reassure Avery on that point.

Then that irony rather evaporates. Evaporates entirely in the face of Avery's sincerity; her confession. That she knows her fears; where they live, in her mind. That she is not entirely as free from her insecurities as she would like to me.

This sharp clarity of her gaze, brief and bright: compassion, respect, awareness of the strength it takes to know and face your weakness. To stare them down.

"You have my patience. And if you ever require anything else, you need only ask."

--

The conversation cuts away, thereafter. From the personal to the passing. The art at the auction; the quality of the Scotch. The atmosphere of the bar. After just one drink, Éva thanks Avery for the company, and excuses herself. She has children at home, after all.

Avery Chase

If Calden were here he might be telling Eva with his eyes, some telepathic impulse: do you see?

But any number of people might feel the same way. Why Avery is respected. Why Avery is listened to, given leadership and authority, and just at the same time seen as one to protect, one to stand in front of, one to die for. Calden has come closest to seeing the way she stares down her weaknesses. Eva now, too, sees how she does not hide from them, lie about them, even to herself. She reaches down, pulls them up out of the muck, so that she can fight them instead of being drowned by them.

At the moment, she is a bit overwhelmed by Eva's response. How unequivocal it is, how firm: she has it. And all Avery must do is ask. She smiles, exhaling sharply in something not humor but relief, gladness, appreciation. She reaches for her drink, lifts it to Eva's, and though she does not say it, the toast is for Ms. Illeshazy herself.

They drink.

--

Avery, it turns out, does not hold her liquor in this form as well as Eva does. She is not exactly giddy or flush-cheeked, but even one glass of scotch clearly has an affect on her. She just smiles so openly, so freely, tells some ridiculous story about one of the artists and an invitation they sent. Three hundred hand-made invitations. She found out at the opening of the artist's show and insisted on buying a few pieces just to reward the effort. That sort of dedication, she tells Eva, admiring it even though it was perhaps a bit foolish. She hates to see effort wasted.

Eva excuses herself. Avery insists on picking up the check, as she is the one who invited Eva out, after all. She secretly hopes to meet Eva's children one day. She doesn't say this. She stays behind a few minutes after Eva leaves, to pay and to slip her feet demurely back into her heels, but she cannot quite get the smile off her face.

Avery Chase

If Calden were here he might be telling Eva with his eyes, some telepathic impulse: do you see?

But any number of people might feel the same way. Why Avery is respected. Why Avery is listened to, given leadership and authority, and just at the same time seen as one to protect, one to stand in front of, one to die for. Calden has come closest to seeing the way she stares down her weaknesses. Eva now, too, sees how she does not hide from them, lie about them, even to herself. She reaches down, pulls them up out of the muck, so that she can fight them instead of being drowned by them.

At the moment, she is a bit overwhelmed by Eva's response. How unequivocal it is, how firm: she has it. And all Avery must do is ask. She smiles, exhaling sharply in something not humor but relief, gladness, appreciation. She reaches for her drink, lifts it to Eva's, and though she does not say it, the toast is for Ms. Illeshazy herself.

They drink.

--

Avery, it turns out, does not hold her liquor in this form as well as Eva does. She is not exactly giddy or flush-cheeked, but even one glass of scotch clearly has an affect on her. She just smiles so openly, so freely, tells some ridiculous story about one of the artists and an invitation they sent. Three hundred hand-made invitations. She found out at the opening of the artist's show and insisted on buying a few pieces just to reward the effort. That sort of dedication, she tells Eva, admiring it even though it was perhaps a bit foolish. She hates to see effort wasted.

Eva excuses herself. Avery insists on picking up the check, as she is the one who invited Eva out, after all. She secretly hopes to meet Eva's children one day. She doesn't say this. She stays behind a few minutes after Eva leaves, to pay and to slip her feet demurely back into her heels, but she cannot quite get the smile off her face.

Lola

Calden White

It's the second-to-last day of the 108th annual National Western Stock Show, one of the largest and longest-running livestock shows on the planet. By now most of the stock has already been shown. The auctions have been held, the sales finalized and finished. What remains on these final two days are the crowd-pleasing events, the ones designed for families and tourists and kids: the stock dog competitions, the magic shows, the miniature Hereford exhibitions, and of course: the rodeos.

That's where Saturday, 3pm finds Calden: at the stock show's Coliseum, where a rapidly growing crowd's noise rings off the rafters. It's a shockingly warm day for mid-winter, though rainy and wet outside, but the indoor stadium is brightly lit by dozens of overhead floodlights. Hawkers are roaming the stands with corndogs and bottles of coke. Kids are running up and down the bleachers, riding their parents' shoulders, waving colorful little flags and pennants.

For his part, Calden is exiting the backstage area, calling a good luck! over his shoulder. The lack of a number tacked to the back of his vest excludes him from the ranks of the rodeo cowboys, but someone he knows must be in the competition. He fits his stetson back on his head, looking about to get his bearings -- and then he starts up into the stands, taking the steps two at a time.

Lola Hawkes

Sitting up in the stands is Lola Hawkes. She was never involved in the rodeos herself, despite having grown up in rural Colorado. She existed in a culture where animals were supposed to come to be spooked by her after she passed a particular point in a young werewolf's pubesence. While many of her classmates participated in rodeo events, Lola herself did not.

Calden had discovered her at the goats and sheep exibit. She was dressed for the warmer weather in a wool poncho with traditional southwestern colors and patterns on it, a fitted white T-shirt underneath, and a pair of blue jeans tucked into ankle-height boots. She was wearing a wide-brimmed brown hat on her head to keep the rain at bay, hair in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She was there by herself, Hector was off doing other things tonight.

He caught her attention somehow, perhaps by approaching, and Lola wound up keeping along with him for the rest of the day. He'd asked if she'd eaten, and she'd said she was about to find food, so they went together.

Want to go to the rodeo? Sure.

So, she now sat in the stands with her hat hung down at the back of her shoulders, dripping rainwater near the feet of the people behind her. She was taking a sip from her bottle of water when Calden reached her. It was offered to him after he'd sat down.

"Your friend's up next?," she'd asked.

Calden White

Tonight's rodeo is the biggest of the entire two-week stretch. Broncs and mutton and even that bastardized and bloodless and barrel-filled version of bullfighting the rodeos call freestyle. The stands are going to be packed to the rafters for that one. This one, the 3:30pm show, is comparatively less crowded. Twenty minutes before showtime, there are still plenty of empty seats.

Calden stops on the way up to buy a couple bottles of coke, plus a handful of corndogs. Making his way back to Lola, who one supposes is either his friend or his acquaintance or at least sort of a colleague in the whole ranches-and-farms business, he hands her one of the drinks and a couple of the 'dogs.

"Thanks, I'm good," he says in response to her offer of water. "Nah, I think he's going to be up a little later, with the rest of the steer wrestlers. My cousin Jimmy, actually. Works on the ranch with me. Just look for Number 63 in a blue shirt.

"What about you? You know anyone in the show?"

Lola Hawkes

Truthfully, whether Calden realized it or not, more people were looking at them and assuming they were some kind of couple. After all, what they were seeing was a handsome man somewhere in the ballpark of his thirties walking to sit beside a woman who was undeniably pregnant-- not very far along, only twenty weeks or so, but visbly apparant none the less, bringing food and drink to share. Lola could pick up on this from a woman in her sixties two rows back smiling down at them. She ignored it in favor of soda and corndogs, though.

"No, I don't. I was just here checking out the livestock. I have half a mind to get a goat, for the milk, but I wouldn't stake shit on the poor dumb thing surviving past four moons before some idiot kills and eats it." These were the hazards of living so close to the Bawn. Lola had to worry about some Garou coming and killing any livestock she had on her land while still riding the high from the Revel.

"I just thought I'd tag along. Haven't seen ya in a while-- not since I found ya at that Silver Fang lady's house." Calden's a perceptive man. Even though the woman on the bench to his left was looking down at the corndogs in her hand and distractedly situating where the coke and water bottle were sitting, there was a weight to her last sentence that would probably prickle the hairs on his skin.

"Thought we could catch up." Following the first bite of her corndog, she added: "Thanks for the corndogs."

Calden White

"Even up north, I can't say I haven't lost a steer or two to one of the ... Cousins." Calden says this with a blend of resignation and amusement. "My tribe knows me, and they know they'll find a warm welcome, a meal and a bed at my house if they need it. Sometimes I guess they can't make it as far as the house before they decide they have to eat. Usually the next morning there'd be a bottle of scotch on my doorstep with a sadface smiley on a note or something, though."

Silver Fang lady's house. A new weight in Lola's tone, and a certain shifting of the mood. Calden, who has until now been watching the happenings down-below with idle interest, glances sideways at his companion.

"Avery," he supplies the name. Maybe there's just a hint of returned weight there too: that Silver Fang lady had, after all, introduced herself. Still; he's willing to let the matter slide and rest. As for the corndogs, "No problem. What's a rodeo without junk food."

Lola Hawkes

What's a rodeo without junk food? he asked. Lola took another bite of corndog, chewed and swallowed before answering: "Just a fucking spectacle."

Under the poncho, the long sleeves of Lola's tee shirt were pushed up to the elbow. The poncho edge rubbed her forearm a little when she reached or moved her arm. While Calden had corrected her with inflection she didn't miss, Lola cast her dark brown eyes his way, but didn't snap at him or throw shade along with her gaze.

"Yeah, Avery," she'd simply agreed. "You know, she sent me a fuckin' apology package with all these treats in it? Like, apologizing for correcting my tone." Something about the way she told the two sentence anecdote made it seem as though she'd almost forgotten that it happened in the first place. Frankly, between the first few weeks of December and now, a lot had happened to push that particular memory to the back of her mind.

Lola picked up the soda cup and took a drink, then finally settled back with the heel of her hand on the back edge of the bench. She leaned her weight through her arm and cast her eyes down on the rodeo ring, waiting for the next event to begin.

"Look, man, I don't wanna rain on your parade or nothing...."

It was probably the worst start to a sentence she could have chosen. It was a guarantee that she was going to be doing exactly that.

"...But you two ain't being fucking subtle or anything. And you know it's gonna cause contention."

Éva Illésházy

Down in front, near the barricades surrounding the ring, a dark haired woman leans forward, her elbows resting on the metal fencing. Unlike most of the fans in the colliseum, she is not dressed casually. She does not wear boots, let alone cowboy boots, nor does she sport any sort of chapeau. Glossy black hair is pulled back from her features and twisted into a loose chignon - which is distinctly formal for the venue and distinctly casual for the woman - and a dark, tailored suit jacket is stretched across her shoulders.

She is in close conversion with a dark-haired man, who seems rather intent on the stock at just that that moment. Who gestures voluobly in the direction of the chute. He is dressed rather more appropriately for the venue and - yet - somehow he does not quite fit.

There is no reason for Lola or Calden to mark the pair of strangers in the crowd, except when the woman turns her head to the side and she is visible in profile, her winged brows lifting in the sketch of an inquiry that drifts past his shoulders, up the metal steps, past the marching rows of folding seats toward the boxes high above. She's taking in the crowd too, a glancing survey that rises past Lola and Calden without fully registering them. Something, though, pings her radar because her eyes drift back down, searching.

If she catches Calden's eyes, she offers an ironic curl of a half-smile and a tip of her head.

--

Soon enough the stranger at her side turns away from the stock, and the pair of them are climbing the steps from ground level, a path that will take them right past Calden and Lola.

Calden White

Ah. So the topic of Avery was not to be left undisturbed after all. Though Lola fixes her eyes on the rodeo ring, Calden is now looking rather directly at her. She doesn't want to rain on his parade. He laughs a little at that, dryly, because: yes. It's about as auspicious a start to a sentence as no offense, but...

A moment later he follows her eyes down the ring after all. The dirt has been raked flat. The first contestant is already behind the gate, checking the tack on his horse one more time. The overhead loudspeakers pop loudly enough to make the kids in the crowd flinch. Then, pretty much without warning, they start blasting good old American rock 'n roll.

They're amping the crowd up. They're turning the excitement up to eleven, and in response a cheer goes up from the stands. Whistles, applause, stomping feet.

Amidst the controlled chaos, Calden is a focal point of calm. He takes a bite of his corndog, mullingly, and then turns back to Lola. "I won't say the possibility of controversy never crossed my mind," he says. "My family's been with Stag longer than we can remember, and Avery is a pureborn Silver Fang. But I suppose I've just decided to cross the bridges as they come. And so far, you're the only one who's raised the issue -- at least to me.

"Which leads me to ask: are you going to be the source of contention, Lola?"

--

A beat of a held gaze. Then he looks down the stands again, and here is where he catches sight of Eva Illeshazy, who -- in her suit jacket, in her lack of flannel and denim and chapeau -- is as singular a figure as can be.

His smile back is perhaps a touch strained. But wry. And as Eva and her companion start climbing the stands, Calden tips his hat back on his brow and straightens a little in his seat.

"Have you met Eva Illeshazy?" he asks Lola.

Lola Hawkes

She flinched along with children when the loud music started, and scowled at the fact that it had started her heart to thump too hard in her chest once or twice. The baby flip-twisted at the loud sound as well, and Lola tucked an arm under her poncho to push at her stomach with the heel of her hand a little. Through the noise, Calden turned to fix a stare on her and explained that they would cross the bridge when they got there.

The question that followed had Lola's brow flexing into a frown in the Fianna Kinfolk's direction. He held her gaze, and naturally the Kinfolk refused to be the first to blink. When he looked down again, Lola kept her eyes on the side of his head, at cheekbone and ear, and wrinkled her nose a little before answering. "If I were Trueborn, I would be. Given that this ain't the case, no one will hear me if I yell about it anyways."

There's bitterness there to her words, but Calden will get the feeling that she's still trying to find a way to not let that stop her anyways. He may need to worry about her.

But then, there's a well-dressed Shadow Lord Kinfolk that both of them recognized, walking up the stairs with a man dressed the part but not rough enough looking to really fit the scene. Lola looked at the both of them, then nodded to Calden's question. "Yeah, a couple times."

She'd raise a hand to hail a greeting to Eva, but didn't say anything to verbally greet.

Éva Illésházy

It isn't that her companion is not rough looking. He is rough looking. He's just not cowboy-rough. Not range-rough: no, her companion's roughness has an entirely different sort of cast. A dark-haired main with a blunt and mildly pockmarked face. Round but not childish, with a pair of heavy dark eyes and the sort of mouth a certain kind of author might call sensual, while another would characterize as cruel.

He is turning to say something over his shoulder to Éva when his phone rings, and he starts to pat down his pockets seeking it out. A blackberry comes out of his right breast pocket, old school shit, complete with its full qwerty keyboard and his pressing to answer it with a blunt thumb, shrugging his way into an explanation or apology. Éva settles a hand on the small of his back to catch his attention before he barrels off up the steps, and indicates - quietly and non-verbally beneath the blasting of Kid Rock to be followed by Skynyrd, no doubt, because what is a rodea without Free Bird - that he should go.

That she will catch up.

And off he goes, seeking some relief from the thunderous music, the roar of the crowd higher up. She follows at a more leisurely pace, crisp in a pencil skirt and black suede pumps, pausing at their level, stepping into the aisle from the stairs so as not to block traffic.

"Calden." A sketch of her dark eyes over the tension evident in his shoulders. Perhaps even in the set of his mouth. "Ms. Hawkes."

Calden White

"She's kin to the Shadow Lords," Calden says. Just a hint of an edge there -- as though in a more immature moment he might challenge Lola to complain about his choice of friends as well.

Then Eva is there, and Eva's somewhat disreputable looking friend is seeking a stronger cell signal and a refuge from Kid Rock, and Calden rises to his feet in the presence of A Lady, or perhaps just to let the lady slip in past his knees to take a seat.

"Eva," he returns, some of that tension ebbing into warm humor, "fancy seeing you here. I can't even begin to make sense of your presence. Or, for that matter, why you're dressed for court."

Lola Hawkes

"I know what tribe she is," she shot back at Calden, and the unspoken curse words that she nearly flavored that statement with were caught at the back of her teeth. She sounds impatient, and looks it too, but then the Fianna was standing to greet the business woman, and the Shadow Lord was greeting the both of them.

Lola nodded her head to Eva to return the greeting. "Eva." A name, simple and plain, to match the 'Ms. Hawkes' she'd been met with. Lola hasn't once tried to pronounce the Shadow Lord's surname, and had no plans in trying. She was fortunate that Hector's father had a short and simple last name, she would've had a very difficult time learning to say 'Bhattacharyya'.

Whatever tension there was that was fizzling in and out between her and Calden was left to the side for now. She let herself slide back into quiet to let the other two catch up.

Éva Illésházy

She does slip past his knees to take a seat, turning as she does to drop the leather attaché case she is carrying on her right shoulder to the rather sticky aluminum beneath their collective feet. It has already accumulated a skin if discarded peanut shells and spilled co-cola, which will only worsen as the night lengthens.

"Don't try." Éva counsels Calden, when he remarks that he cannot begin to make sense of her presence or her wardrobe. There is still that ironic twist to her mouth as she lowers herself to the molded plastic seat beside the pair. Conveniently empty still, even as the crowd of spectators begins to thicken. "I'm on the clock, though. And when I'm on the clock I try to dress the part."

A lingering glance from Calden to Lola, and back again, before she drops her gaze to the rodeo ring. "Do you both have - " a mild gesture down toward the groomed floor, which is rather charming in its helpless wordlessness. " - animals entered?"

Calden White

"Yeah," Calden quips, "I've got Ian in the running." And -- at her likely blank look -- "Remember that Fianna shindig last year? He was the one with the white hat. And the really over the top Western get-up."

Because of course he was. Why else would he be hurtling himself off horses onto steers? Though, coming from Calden -- in boots and hat, jeans and vest -- the gentle ribbing of his cousin's over the top get-up hits just the slightest note of irony.

"What about you? Your client a fan of rodeos?"

Lola Hawkes

When asked if she had any animals entered, Lola shook her head and stated, simply: "I don't keep livestock."

Though the man that Eva was with didn't seem to fit in the crowd, Lola wasn't concerned with where he had gone or why he had brought the Shadow Lord Kinfolk here on work. That was their business, as far as she was concerned. Provided no monsters tried to make their way out onto the rodeo arena, Lola probably wouldn't be getting up out of her seat for the next little while.

Calden had mentioned that Ian was entered, and Lola smirked a little to herself but didn't say anything. She remembered Ian from the night spent out at the White ranch. She liked the guy.

The Fianna was a better mouthpiece than she was, so Lola contented herself with finishing the corndog she'd begun eating and shifting her eyes back out to the arena to watch the show. Her ear was keened in on the other two Kinfolk, though.

Éva Illésházy

Ian in the running does indeed draw a blank look, and the lilt of a mildly arching brow. Éva's gaze skews sideways to double-check the Calden's eyes for a glint of humor to suggest that he is having her on, but no. The guy in the over-the-top Western get-up.

"Ahh," recognition sparked with bemusement. Naturally, she remembers him. Naturally, her dark eyes touch with delicate precision on Calden's stetson and Calden's boots. Again, the edge of her mouth is curved with a quietly supple humor. "He was dressed quite stylishly over Labor Day, as I recall.

"And my client," a brief glance back over her shoulder, and up the long flight of stairs climbing toward the skyboxes. "finds himself quite enamored of the Western lifestyle. I suppose he is the living embodiment of the cliché when in Rome."

Éva Illésházy

Then, to Lola, " - no livestock? I thought you owned a ranch?"

Calden White

"Well, he's dressed stylishly today too," Calden replies -- equal measures affection and wryness.

His gaze skates up the long incline to the skyboxes again, then back. "Not a local, then?" Humor downright twinkles in his eyes. "I would have never guessed. And -- though I suspect you're going to tell me it's attorney-client privileged and also none of my damn business -- I just have to ask you what that guy did. Because right now, my imagination is filling in the blanks with concrete shoes and paper-wrapped fish arriving by bike courier."

Eva asks Lola about her agricultural practices, then, and Calden takes the momentary lull on his end of the conversation to take a big bite of his corndog. And also, just maybe, to stew a little more on the previous topic.

Lola Hawkes

On the surface, Lola appears to have let the topic that she and Calden were butting heads at go. It wasn't appropriate for company, and she wasn't going to shame herself or her friend (and yes, she would call him that, rough and prickly though her relationship with and behavior toward him may be). Of course, in her mind she was probably still ruminating on it a little-- keeping her temper consciously low and plotting her next manner of approach.

Eva inquired about the land she owned, and Lola looked up at her and blinked, then shook her head. More rainwater that was caught in the brim of her hat splashed on the floors behind her. As far as she figured, she was doing the sticky surface a favor.

"No. If I tried to keep animals the poor dumb things would probably die within a year. I live too close to the mountains, if you know what I mean." Her home was right along the edge of the Bawn, and some of the property in her name crossed into it as well. She's never tried to keep animals before out of a sense of practicality and frugality alike. She glanced up at Eva and Calden both to speak, but now cast her eyes down to the arena once more.

She then added:

"I've been entertaining the idea of owning a goat, though. For the milk."

Éva Illésházy

"Technically," Éva returns with a quiet equanimity that sparks a certain grim humor in her eyes. "I am representing his son. And it is a matter of public record that Raul has been charged by the United States Attorney with racketeering and felony murder. Since you could easily read that in the paper, I'm comfortable in asserting that naming the actual charges is not covered by attorney-client privilege.

"Everything else, though."

--

Then Lola explains that she doesn't keep animals. Éva lifts her brows in a show of reciprocation: yes, she's listening. She understands, the non-verbal response, though in truth Lola's unspoken, half-spoken considerations about the dangers of having livestock near the Caern would not have occurred to Éva, and even beneath the supple thread of kin-code, she does not precisely grasp the nature of Lola's concern. Just makes an interested noise, a sort of polite placeholder, which is repeated when Lola remarks that she is thinking about getting a goat.

For the milk.

This time, though. "Ahh."

Éva has never considered getting a goat. For any reason.

And she might go on making small talk about goats, except - there is Calden biting his corndog like that and Lola beside them and the strange, unstudied tension she sensed earlier, from down below.

"Excuse me - " she says then, quite frankly and quietly to the both of them. " - did I interrupt something? If I did, I'm happy to leave to you it and kill time by picking out a few souvenirs for the children," which is followed by a brief aside to Calden, "Ellie wanted to come but I'd rather men like that not know that I have family."

Calden White

There is, indeed, a certain tension beneath the surface. It puts a touch of restlessness into Calden: one knee bouncing up and down as he gnaws on his corndog, scans the dirt arena below for some sign of the show's start. He's even forgotten to offer one of the corndogs -- there are two or three more -- to Eva, even after she's taken a seat beside them.

To the goats, which is surely a topic he has more expertise in than either of his companions, he has only a single comment: "They're pretty easy to keep. They can be hard to milk, though. Testy."

And then a sort of appraising glance up the stairs at Eva's client as she reveals -- to the limits of privilege, anyway -- the nature of her business with the man and his son, and his laundry list of sins.

"I don't blame you." Less distracted, that. He does understand that, and better than most. The loyalty to one's family. The desire to protect. The protection of anonymity. All that. "Maybe you could bring her tomorrow. They've got magic shows and another rodeo planned."

A beat, then. A hesitation, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he squints in thought. Then a quick shake of his rather shaggy head -- beard-bristle untrimmed today, thick auburnish hair getting to the point of desperately-in-need-of-a-haircut. A decision in the form of information:

"You didn't interrupt. Lola was just ... reminding me that certain less liberal factions might find my association with Miss Chase objectionable."

Lola Hawkes

The question posed about interrupting was left fielded to Calden. Lola didn't answer, but she did look sharply up at Eva first, then to the Fianna kinsman that she had spent the afternoon tagging around with. Instead of speaking, she picked up her cup and took a drink of the Coke.

When Calden decided to state openly enough what he and Lola were being prickly at one another about, the Kinswoman's dark eyebrows rose in mild surprise and consideration. She huffed a little and leaned back so she could openly, unabashedly adjust the waistband of her jeans where it was sitting low on her stomach.

"Just lookin' out," she followed up, as though she had to defend herself.

Éva Illésházy

"She might have more fun with you," Éva remarks, quietly, back to Calden. "If you're headed back this way. You might actually have more fun with her, too."

A brief glance at Lola; it is not precisely conspiratorial, though were they better acquainted it could be read as such. There is humor beneath it, but that humor is banked and supple and difficult to read in the quiet reflection of her dark eyes. Unless one knows her well enough to have read it there before. "I like to lend my children out now and then, to friends. All the pleasures, none of the responsibilities.

"Calden if you ever have a hankering to see a Disney film in the theaters - "

Then, Calden explains precisely the current of tension between the two of them that Éva sensed beneath the surface. Tasted like the metallic hum of a still-live nine-volt battery against the tongue.

And Lola says she was just lookin' out.

Éva arches a brow, glancing back to Lola from Calden as she inhales, low and quiet. "Just looking out? Or perhaps expressing some more personal concerns?"

A glance back at Calden's rugged profile, a moment of silent consideration. Beneath the road of the sound system, the blare of some bizarre country rap-rock song, they have plenty of privacy for their conversation, and Éva's voice is pitched to carry just to the pair of them.

"Ellie's father was not my blood. I don't regret her for a minute."

Lola Hawkes

"Ya don't regret 'em after they happen," Lola explained to Eva curtly. Her nose had wrinkled, and her expression had gone quite sour. The remaining two corndogs that were in the little paper basket were abandoned on the bench when Lola stood up. The soda was left behind too. The Uktena mountain woman did pick up her bottle of water as she rose, though, and fixed a look onto the older woman that was flavored with stubborn resolve and only a hint of offense taken, however unjustified it probably was.

"But this ain't a people of much forgiveness. And we stick to the laws that we have. It's stirrin' up trouble, and that's gonna come right down on Tamsin's head for not looking out for you." Some point in the brutishly borderline-forceful manner of speaking, Lola had switched from directing her words at Eva to looking straight at Calden, as though she had every reason to be upset with him.

Even though it really was none of her god damned business.

"Excuse me," she said curtly to the pair, and made her way to the aisle to see herself on out.

[[ Bed (and the man I share it with) are calling. Thanks for the scene you two! ]]

Calden White

There; that defensiveness again, which -- as it had Avery several months before -- makes Calden feel momentarily remorseful. More so when Eva speaks and, one might argue, favors Calden in her argument.

But then, Lola again. Snapping, fiery, thoroughly sour-faced Lola, instantly sparking off some deepburied thread of fire in Calden himself. His back straightens and his mouth tightens and he is very clearly on the verge of telling Lola where she could shove her tut-tutting

when

Lola

brings Tamsin up. Quite out of the blue, really. It takes Calden a moment to work backwards through the relationships in his mind. Lola, mated to Hector. Hector, packed with Tamsin. Tamsin, blood of his blood.

Truth is -- shamefully enough for a man who prides himself on his close ties to family and kin and tribe -- Calden had sort of forgotten about Tamsin. He had hardly spared her a thought since she first showed up on his doorstep, one of the many young Stagblooded wolves drifting through looking for a friendly face and a pillow on which to lay her head. Well no; there was that other incident, when she'd invited her whole pack to share his hospitality, but the outcome of that only makes Calden feel a little more ashamed that he hasn't seen or spoken to her since. That he'd all but forgotten that he does, in fact, know at least one of Stag's wolves from the Caern of Forgotten Questions.

There's really no time to reply to Lola, though. No time to compromise or argue or discuss or -- any of it. The woman gets up, she excuses herself, she departs. Calden has the good grace not to attempt false pleasantries. He watches her go mutely, then stares at the dirt ring for a moment.

Turns back to Eva.

"I'm sorry," he says. "That was ... I consider you both friends, and I thought it'd be better to just address the elephant in the room. But all I managed to do was put both of you in a very awkward situation."

Éva Illésházy

For her part, hardly reacts to Lola's prickliness. Indeed, she hardly seems to take note of it. There's no air of offense - nothing curt, nothing sour, nothing smoldering, nothing sparking - in her eyes in response to Lola's brief explanation and sudden retreat. Her expression remains mild, a little bit distant, and otherwise almost wholly interior and entirely private.

Until, at least, Calden turns to her and offers an apology she does not require and does especially acknowledge. His voice, though, draws her gaze back into focus on his countenance.

"She's wrong, you know," Éva says then, rather musingly, the words themselves humming quiet in the back of her throat.

Calden White

"Is she?" He remembers the corndogs at last; picks up that basket and offers them ruefully to Eva. "She's right about one thing at least: if someone decides to blow it out of proportion, Tamsin's going to get the brunt of it. And Avery."

Éva Illésházy

"I meant the first line." Éva returns with a quiet breath of laughter; looking away from him, now. Back down over the crowd toward the ring, now brilliantly illuminated, at the center. Note: she does not disagree with anything he says to her; but also, she does not address it directly. Not yet.

"You do regret them after.

"Just not for long."

Calden White

Furrow-browed, Calden turns back to her. Corndogs forgotten. Spectacle below ignored, even as the announcer begins to boom from the overhead loudspeakers.

"You regretted Ellie?" There's no accusation in his tone -- but there is surprise.

Éva Illésházy

"Deeply." Éva returns, with a quiet equanimity, this time turning to meet and hold his eyes. Her frankness has a different gauge and a different caliber than Lola's. It is stripped-bare, isn't it? Flesh and bone.

"Until the first time they put her in my arms."

An inhale, a lift of her chin and the banked awareness of her eyes.

"But, sometimes, even after."

Calden White

Just a small pause, their subject matter incongruous with the noise, the activity, the cowboying that Ellie likes so much all around. He didn't expect an answer like that. Having no children of his own yet, Calden has yet to comprehend the paradox of unconditional love that exists alongside occasional -- deep -- regret.

"Can I ask why?"

Éva Illésházy

"You can ask." she returns, exhaling a sharp, quiet breath through her nostrils. "It's complicated," Voice low, " - and I'm not sure that I can do the complexities any particular justice."

And it is the strangest place for such confessions. The public address announcer has an auctioneer's big voice and the cadence of a voice-over artist for Monster Truck shows and the crowd is starting to get into the competition down below, but the action is strange, the short, intense bursts followed by the sort of baseball lull as the next contestants and beasts are readied for their return into the ring and so there are always people coming and going, up in front and down in back, carrying past corn dogs and 32 ounce beers and plates full of funnel cakes. Cracking open roasted peanuts with their split thumbnails and flicking the spent shells to the floor.

And yet,

"The pregnancy was accidental. Her father was gone before I knew I was late. Let alone -

"I expect that he died before she was born, never knowing that he was to be a father, never knowing that he had a daughter on the way, though perhaps he's still out there, somewhere.

"I had my career to consider. I still have my career to consider, and the world I inhabit more generally, and the world she inhabits, and the world she will inherit.

"Really, I wanted as little to do with Them as possible, but after she came along, I knew I could no longer hold myself aloof. Providing only what was asked, when it was requested. I had to consider the world. Her world, and not just myself. I had to stop drinking for nine months.

"And then another nine.

"And yet another nine." Wry and sure. "I must handle friends, and lovers, and acquaintances with remarkable care. The deed to my own home is not in my name, so that men that like," a tip of her head, behind them, "never find them.

"Everything changes. And sometimes you wonder: what if it hadn't?

"What then? But this is where you are. And this where you live.

"And this is what you live with.

"And usually, that's enough."

Calden White

Listening to Eva, Calden realizes there are some commonalities between her and the recently-departed Lola. A common theme: everything changes. A common question lingering at the back of the mind: what if it hadn't?

Differences too, though. Eva -- perhaps by virtue of her pragmatic mind, her case-closing intellect, or simply the fifteen or twenty years she has on Lola -- has found it possible to look beyond that question. To see through the doubt and find the truth behind it, which like all truths is cold and hard as concrete.

This is what you live with. This is the hand you were dealt. You can take it or leave it as you will, but it will never leave you.

--

A small quiet afterward. The first contestant bursting out of the gates; the horse tightly controlled between his knees, hooves tearing up clods of earth. The lasso overhead, those wide, archetypical circles. The bolting calf, the sail of the rope, the expert turn of the wrist, tightening of the forearm; a juvenile bovine thudding to the ground, not so much lowing as bawling.

Calden isn't watching. There's still some place for the old-fashioned tricks of the old-fashioned cowboy. There are still days when he rides out on the range, wraps a rope around a calf, hauls it eye-rolling and kicking up the side of some muddy incline. But more and more his trade, like all others, is modernizing. Industrializing. Trucks and winches, electronic inventories. Some of his more precious stock -- the breeding bulls, for one -- are even radio-chipped. So while the circus of the old west cowboy plays out below, he rolls his bottle of coke between his palms. He thinks on what Eva said; raises his eyes to her face.

"On those rare occasions when it's not enough," he says, "if you ever want to talk to another grownup who won't judge you for a bad mother or scold you for dereliction of duty -- " a touch of deliberate humor here, " -- you know how to get ahold of me."

Éva Illésházy

Éva glances up again; past him, toward those skyboxes. Insulated from the crowd noise and the blare of the soundsystem, where business can be conducted and stock can be quietly sold, and franchises, and corporations, and cocaine, and empires.

"Thank you, Calden." Wry, quiet, grateful. Already standing. If he looks back and follows her line of sight over his shoulder, he will see her client. Her client's father has emerged from the boxes at the top of the stairs.

"I appreciate that. I do. I may take you up on that, too.

"Perhaps sooner than you think. Excuse me."

And so, he stands. She slips past him, incongruous in her court clothes, and starts to climb.

The Holidays

Éva Illésházy

January 2, 2014

The bars and restaurants are all comparatively empty after the crush of the holidays. Everyone has some new resolution: to drink less or eat less or spend less or move more; to go home to the husband and children after work rather than slip off to happy hour. To work more: nose to the grindstone, time to mark partner this year.

So it is that Barrel 44 is comparatively empthy on a chilly-but-not-cold Thursday evening. No rain or snow today so the chalk sandwich board outside announces the specials in colorful calligraphy:

SOUP OF THE DAY: WHISKEY

FRESH CATCH: WHISKEY

BLUE PLACE SPECIAL: WHISKEY

--

Éva has already arrived, and has taken up a seat - not at the bar where she might ordinarily sit to savor the one drink she will allow herself on weeknights she feels so inclined - but at a rather more private booth with a clear view of the front door. A tablet glows pale against the warm wood, and she skims through e-mails as she waits.

That one drink is already on the table in front of her.

Though perhaps tonight she will have two.

Calden White

Barrel 44 has some things in common with the blues bar Calden has been known to frequent. Not a lot, though. Good whiskey, good scotch, yes. A similarity in musical taste, perhaps, though B44 plays it low and background, while Ziggie's plays it loud and live. Also: Ziggie's is a decided hole-in-the-wall, and proud of it. This, on the other hand, is a quality establishment. The sort of place at which a trial lawyer with a bloodline as respectable as her win record wouldn't be ashamed to be seen.

She has a booth with a view of the front door. She has her one, or maybe first, drink of the night in front of her. That front door swings open a few minutes after the appointed hour, and her snowdusted cowboy friend comes tromping in, swatting snow off his shoulders, puffing cold with every breath.

Her table is indicated to him by the greeter if there is one. By the barkeep if there isn't. He comes over, shedding gloves and scarf as he comes. Cowboy boots have given way to outright snow boots; shearling jackets to the same downstuffed heavy North Faces everyone else seems to break out this time of year. The hat, however, with which he was dusting snow off his clothing, is an authentic Stetson, which he sets on the tabletop like a badge of office as he takes a seat.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," he says, more out of courtesy than genuine sorrow. "Traffic was worse than I expected." He tosses his coat into the corner of the booth, gloves and scarf following. A sweater underneath, cable-knit, dark green. Calden takes a seat.

"How were the holidays? Did you go anywhere?"

Éva Illésházy

Her response to the courtesy of the apology is quiet noise of dismissal in the back of her throat. Some instinct, maybe from the courtroom, has her almost rising as he finds his way to the booth and begins to dust the snow off his cold-weather gear. She forestalls the instinct with a subtle, arresting motion of her spine, and merely glances up at him, her eyes steady, her mouth sardonic, perhaps at the strange counterpoints between them.

"Don't mention it," she returns, still with that faint curl to her mouth, dark eyes leaving his face to follow the movement of his genuine Stetson onto the table between them. "Gave me the opportunity to attack the accumulation of e-mails. Easier to wade through them without the distractions of the office."

It need hardly be mentioned that Éva is wearing a dark suitjacket over crisp dress, dark gray with a subtle pattern of pinstriping to it, which ends perhaps two inches above her knees. And heels: no matter the snow drifting from his shoulders.

"I stacked business trip on top of emergency business trip all December, but we did manage a quick trip to Vail last weekend. It was exhilarating." Hard to imagine Éva in any garb other than the darkly sheened plumage of a well-healed attorney, but there is a certain gleam in her eye that feels almost animal, there at the end.

"You?"

Calden White

"Vail? As in the ski resorts?" Calden's expression says it all: amusement, bemusement, the faintest touch of disbelief. "Were you tackling the black diamonds or the luxury spas?"

He snags one of the drink menus out of its holder, then, and browses the list while he answers her: "I spent the holidays up at the ranch. Didn't go anywhere. Two of my brothers came to visit, though. Number one and three. My big brother brought his kids. Even my dad looked happy, at least once in a while."

The drinks menu shuts with a faint slap of leatherette on paper. He pushes it aside, then smiles across the table at Eva.

"But no, really. Were you skiing?"

Éva Illésházy

"Mmm." Her quiet confirmation easily and perhaps rather smugly inserted beneath his initial bemused query. There is a quiet gleam of challenge in her eyes too, which he must certainly expect when he dares to question her. It sparks a quietly polished humor that shines beneath the substrate of her skin.

Éva listens to Calden's brief account of his holidays, gives him a supple twist of her mouth, a look of banked empathy, when he declares that even his father seemed happy, now and then. There is an inquiry in her eyes and a question on her tongue that remains unasked, just then, as he returns to the idea of Éva on the slopes.

"We were skiing, yes. I did a bit of it as a child. Took it up again when I moved to Colorado. Afraid I don't do it often enough to tackle the black diamonds with abandon.

"But I did tackle a few of them. At least when the children were in ski school. As a family we stuck to the bunny and beginner's slopes."

Calden White

"There's no shame in the bunny slopes," Calden replies, his gentle teasing relenting to something like compassion. Or perhaps commiseration. "I'll openly admit I'm not terribly proficient on the slopes myself. I know how to ski -- I suspect everyone born and raised in this state knows how to ski -- but I'm not Olympics material by any stretch of the imagination.

"I can't imagine Ellie sticking to the bunny slopes, though. Are you sure you didn't let her go on the blue squares at least once?"

Éva Illésházy

A quietly wry smirk. "She needed the first day and a half to get her sea-legs again, but after that she convinced me to take her on a few intermediate runs. For the most part we had Andris on the mountain, too."

Éva shares a quiet, thoughtful little shrug. "Ellie takes her duties as Big Sister rather seriously, I don't think you've seen that side of her, have you? - so she was quite patient, all things considered, with the limitations of the trip."

--

"You know," a subtle shift in subject; one of those conversation pauses before the new order is introduced. "she wanted you to come trim the tree with us before Christmas. I'm afraid I never managed to get the invitation to you. December was a remarkably busy month.

"I'd hoped to extend the invitation for a plus-one as well. I thought you might bring your royal.

"If I'm not being presumptuous, I hope you stole some time with her as well."

Calden White

"I don't think I have seen that side to her," Calden agrees, "but somehow it's not hard to imagine. She takes after her mother quite a bit."

The subject shifts subtly. Calden leans back, his smile quirked and just a touch wistful. "I actually kept meaning to get the kids presents for Christmas," he says, "but somehow December was busy and the days blurred together and -- well; those are all just excuses, aren't they."

He laughs, then: "Now how awkward would you feel," he can't help this, "if I told you we broke up terribly and dramatically and will never ever speak to each other again on Christmas Eve? But no, your instincts are right. We did steal a little time together. We spent Christmas with our respective families, but I allowed myself to be persuaded into a tuxedo for a New Year's Eve bash.

"Speaking of holiday bashes and missed tree-trimming opportunities," he adds, "why don't we loosely plan for some sort of get-together at my place? I've been meaning to have a few friends come by for a day or a weekend. You could bring the kids and your mother-in-law. I don't think we have a holiday left to serve as an excuse, but that's no reason not to party."

Éva Illésházy

The Shadow Lord's gaze drifts back to Calden's Stetson, not as he laughs, but after - now how awkward would you feel. There is a wry, rather knowing note to the spare twist of her mouth, which seems settled and solid and somehow remote as well. Then her head tips aslant and she lifts her chin, her gaze returning to his face as he confirms that her instincts are correct, meeting his eyes at last as he admits to being persuaded into a tux for New Year's Eve. Her remarkable brows sketch a note of clear skepticism that is balanced by the half-voiced breath of laughter that accompanies the look.

"That sounds lovely, Calden. Difficult as the past year has been, I think we all have reason to - well, at least remember how to breathe again."

Then, as if on cue, Éva's phone begins to vibrate. Her mouth settles into a rather more solemn expression as she pulls it from her leather bag and turns it over in her palm. Breathing out a quiet apology,

" - will you excuse me? I do have to take this,"

Éva rises, phone to her ear, half-finished Stranahan's on the table, seeking a few moments' privacy for a rushed, hushed conversation with whomever is on the other end.

Calden White

There's a moment there -- after he laughs, after he teases again, after her eyes flick from his -- that Calden feels a little uncertain of the ground beneath his feet. Uncertain if he's pushed too far; uncertain if their friendship was familiar enough for that level of humor.

It passes, though. He makes gentle mockery of himself: a tux! as though he did not own multiple million dollars' worth of land and cattle and structural improvements; as though he was indeed a barbaric cowherd, hardly an evolutionary step up from a neanderthal. Though, to be fair, he is in many ways simple and uncomplicated. He likes it that way.

"We'll do it, then," he confirms. "I'll call you when I work out a good date. Probably sometime before the winter's over. I like the idea of everyone crowded in by a roaring fire, a blizzard outside to make us appreciate each other's company all the more."

Her phone vibrates. He sits back, nodding his understanding mutely as she stands. Her call is not short, and it is almost certainly business, and while she makes it he orders a scotch of his own, and checks his own email, and --

-- puts his phone away as she returns. They resume their quiet drink together, growing pleasantly and mildly inebriated over the typical conversation of life and livelihoods, family and love in all its varying and enduring shades.