(switching computers! BRB)
ErichThe deeper the snow piles in the mountains, the closer the tinyhouse moves to the center of Evergreen. At first Erich was sort of hesitant. It was almost like he expected the townspeople to light torches and form a storybook mob if they so much as got a whiff of a tinyhouse in their midst. As the weeks rolled into months and it became apparent that the citizens of Evergreen -- progressive, affluent, natural-living-inclined -- were charmed rather than alarmed, that they found the tinyhouse quaint and cute rather than unsettling and WTF GET THOSE HOBOS OUT OF HERE, he's gotten more comfortable parking it here and there in town.
Today it's parked in the lot of the closest thing Evergreen has to a suburban shopping center. There's a Chase bank here and a pet shop, a mani/pedi place and one of those tiny little computer repair shops you only ever seem to see out in suburbia anymore.
It also has a bookstore. It's called Hearthfire Books, and it is tiny and cozy and not very well-stocked by the decor is kind of mountain-rustic and there are a couple comfortable chairs in the back. There's no cafe, but they let you bring stuff in from outside, so Erich -- lounging sideways in one of the overstuffed armchairs in the back -- has a small cup of froyo from Menchie's balanced on his chest.
He's reading, perhaps with more than a little irony, a collection of werewolf short stories.
Éva IllésházyPerhaps the hint of her breeding will alert him to her presence before she makes herself know. The supple hint of a storm somewhere beyond the horizon; the promise of rain against the roof or the back of the tongue. The hint of ozone that lingers where lightning has struck, or that warns of its coming.
She does not wear her lawyerskin tonight. The crisp dark suits that are both impeccable and unremarkable in the extreme, that blend into the finest woodwork bespeaking quiet wealth and absolute discretion. No, tonight Éva is dressed like any other fit suburban mother might be on a rainy Sunday evening - one who does not give a whit about football, at least.
No: instead a pair of fitted jeans over brown leather boots, which are well-worn and not quite knee-high, beneath cashmere sweater and a shearling coat, toggle-buttons open, a scarf woven loosely around her neck. Capture her from a particular angle, the high cut of her cheekbones is unmistakeable and slightly mysterious. Easy to remember, hard to forget. Compelling enough that it may take Erich a few moments for the rest of the picture to filter into focus: she is not alone. The sweep of her arm, downward, the curve of an elegant hand over a shoulder, a child's shoulder. The dark head tucked neatly against her body.
They are in the bookstore together, Éva and Ellie, whom Erich has never seen and never met. Returning home from the briefest look-in at one of her partners' famous Super Bowl parties. Enough that she could slip out shortly after kickoff to reward Ellie with a trip to the bookstore they spotted on their way into town. It is clear that she has noticed Erich and equally clear that the kinswoman is considering, with a quiet and serious care, whether she will approach him in the presence of her daughter.
The truth is, there is a long and quiet moment where she strongly considers slipping out the back door. Steering the girl away, walking at a quick, clipped pace through the bright, chill air toward the SUV and not looking back.
A moment later, she bends to murmur something into the child's ear, and begins to wind her way through the stacks.
They are not leaving. They are coming closer.
ErichMost people in a bookstore on Superbowl Sunday -- especially one where the home team is playing -- probably doesn't give a whit about football. Looking at Erich, you'd think he'd give more than a whit. You'd think he probably played, at least as a second-string running back or something for one of the local universities. Rangy frame, lean athleticism; not to mention that corn-fed upper-midwest descendant-of-vikings look.
He is, however, reading a book about werewolves. And occasionally, when he remembers, eating spoonfuls of tart froyo with blueberries and kiwi and raspberries and mango. And just now, though he doesn't quite know why, looking up from his book and twisting around to peer over his shoulder and past the edge of the chair to see --
ah. So that's why. It's Eva, who for once doesn't look like a lawyer and instead looks like an affluent wife-and-mother; the sort of woman who goes to yoga and/or pilates and gets biweekly spa treatments and drives her kids to lacrosse practice not in a minivan but in a BMW SUV. Admit it, she probably has a BMW SUV, or has at least thought about getting one.
And! She is, in fact, escorting one of her kids. The eldest, though Erich either doesn't know this or has forgotten it. It is her kid though, they look enough alike that it's unmistakable, and while in predominantly-white upper-middle-class progressive-on-the-surface-but-actually-a-little-conservative-down-below Evergreen, CO it still might raise some mild eyebrows behind the scenes that Eva's kid is actually a tiny bit brown, it is ironically not something that would ping as unusual amongst the Nation. The Shadow Lords are known for being lords of the Caucasus and the Carpathian, but in more recent centuries they've gained a strong contingent from Iberia, from Central America.
All of which is to say: Erich probably thinks a Shadow Lord fathered Ellie. Not the same Shadow Lord that fathered the rest, because he does remember having a conversation about Eva's dead mate at some point, but yeah. A Shadow Lord. Unless Eva told him otherwise. But if she did he forgot so there.
He closes the book and swings his legs off the arm of the chair and sits up -- one hand catching the small cup of froyo as it begins to slide off his chest -- as mother-and-daughter approach. "Hey," he says, raising a friendly hello-hand. "What are you guys doing here? Wait, have I met you?" That's to Ellie. "Hey, I'm Erich." He glances down at this half-eaten froyo. "Want some froyo?"
Erich[nevermind there was never a convo about deadmate! *strikes from record*]
Éva IllésházyThere is a distinctive - protective (call it what it is: ferocious) - wariness to Éva's frame as mother and daughter walk up to Erich. Éva's left hand is still on the girl's left shoulder, long fingers forward, her thumb braced behind the girl's trapezius. Ellie can sense both her mother's wariness and Erich's rage, the song of it such a counterpoint to his friendly hello-hand, his froyo and the sharing-of-it, his book-reading.
The girl glances up at her mother, watching her face for cues as Erich greets them. The gesture pulls her silken hair across the knuckles of her mother's fingers. Éva glances down at the solemn girl with a smile that offers a spare sort of reassurance, a wordless encouragement, then flicks her dark eyes back up to meet Erich's. "You've not met my children. This is Ellie, my eldest. Ellie, this is Erich. He is like Andraj, but a fuller moon.
"We made an appearance at a friend's Super Bowl party. She noticed the bookstore on our way in, and I promised Ellie that we'd stop in here on our way home.
"Since I used her bedtime to escape after the kickoff."
Ellie has not really responded to Erich's offer of froyo, except with a quiet shake of her dark head. He's hard for her to look at, so she's looking at the spine of his book instead, and it is the puzzlement of a werewolf reading a book about werewolves that finally inspires Ellie to speak.
" - do you like that book?"
Rather quietly.He is a monster after all. And a strange one.
ErichIn truth, there was a sort of watchfulness to Erich as well from the minute he saw Eva-and-kid enter and approach. He knows where they live, after all, and it is not up here -- though he knows also that the one time he went to Eva's house and stood at the gate and gave her some semibad news, he also told her he and his tinypack lived up here, and if things got thick down there, what with the Sept closing down and all, she should rent a vacation cabin up here.
So he thinks maybe that's what happened. Maybe things got thick down there, even though the Sept is open again now, and she's moved up here avec les bébés.
Except no. She explains: superbowl game. That watchfulness departs, his shoulders relax. He is formally introduced to Ellie, and he bobs his head in his best approximation of a polite nod, since he has a book in one hand and a cup of froyo in the other. Most of the fruit pieces are still in there. He's eating around them or doing his best to, swallowing one only when he can't resist the delicious fruity goodness anymore.
"Yeah, it's pretty funny," he says, which is a ridiculous thing for someone to say about a book of horror stories. "I mean there's even a story about urban werewolves that are like. DOGS. Like a were-Doberman and a were-Shiba and a were-Pomeranian. You wanna see it?"
Éva IllésházyEllie's eyes dart up to Erich's face; then down the spare physicality of his lean predator's frame. Then down again, to that book in his hand. Skepticism is written across the girl's face, the beat of a tension that Erich may remember from his childhood, bracing for and against the familiar-unfamiliar electric surge of rage against his skin. Garou who seemed so vivid and elemental it almost felt like he could see their wolves just - crawling and lunging beneath their skins.
The girl's cheeks are still soft and round, childlike. But somehow she manages to purse her mouth in a way that makes her look like a slightly elderly chipmunk as she fixes her attention on the book. Licking her lips unconsciously in her nervousness.
Reaches out for the book, and -
"That's not even scary. That just sounds dumb." Ellie proclaims of the story about urban werewolves. Dogs. A were-Pomeranian. "I'm reading Harry Potter."
Through it all, Éva watches them both. Like a fucking hawk.
ErichErich surrenders the book. He is gentle about it, just sort of holding the book out there for Ellie to grab instead of shoving it at her.
"Actually that story was a little scary. It was all about how these cuddly pets went berserk and chewed their owners' faces off and at the very end they all gather in a parking lot and turn into people that look just like the owners they killed and it turns out the weredogs are plotting to take over like pod-people. Oh wait, you probably haven't seen that movie."
He isn't sure he remembers what it was like, being her age and being around Garou. It obviously happened. His family could've been a pretty good werewolf story too. Midwesterner corn and wheat farmers WHO WERE ACTUALLY WOLVES, dun dun DUN. And he had aunts and uncles who wore the wolfskin beneath their manskin, who seemed to make the air crackle when they talked, who always sat at the head of the table if they came by to visit.
One of his aunts was this six foot tall blonde who wore cotton sundresses on Sundays in the summer and always had her hair in braids and she was always nice to Erich growing up, gave him a toy sword for his fifth birthday. One time she was hanging up laundry on a windy Sunday with her skirt blowing up and some dumb boys from the next town over started howling at her from their truck and she threw down the basket full of laundry and ran after them on foot, he'd never seen anyone run so fast in his life, she jumped on the running board as they were trying to gun it out of there and she reached in through the open window and knocked their heads together so hard Erich's mom had to take them to the E.R. in town for concussions.
So yeah, maybe he does remember what that was like. Those fierce, kinetic relatives with their eyes just a little too bright and their grins just a little too toothy. He closes his lips over his grin, remembering it, and shifts his attention from daughter to mother.
"Everything all right down in Denver? They reopened the Sept, did you hear? You didn't move to a cabin up here or something, did you?"
Éva IllésházyEllie holds the book rather doubtfully, her nose wrinkled, her serious eyes fixed on Erich as he unspools the story. Something hot in those eyes, these little flashes of it, when he notes how the were-Dogs chewed their owners' faces off. Then Ellie is looking down at the book in hand, holding it gingerly, still rather doubtful though now for entirely different reasons, frowning as if it might come to dangerous life in her hand.
--
"I did hear." Éva assures him, when he asks if she heard that they had reopened the Sept. There's a brief burst of humor beneath the tension written into her skin, as she reminds him, "I work in the building, remember?"
A brief arch to her brows, the slightest hint of challenge inherent in the expression.
Then she bends down to tell her daughter, "If you want to give Erich back his book, you can go browse. One new book for you. If you see something you think your brothers would like, we can get that too."
Straightening, " - so, no. I have not moved to a cabin up here. Things have been - " a brief, thoughtful pause, a chill of memory written around it " - remarkably quiet, all things considered."
Erich"No I know you work in the building," Erich is slightly flustered, "but I just wasn't sure if, like. I dunno. Nevermind. Of course you knew, duh.
"You can hang on to that book if you want," Erich shifts back to Ellie for a second. "But if you'd rather go get another one that's cool too."
Either way, the girl does what she does. His eyes follow Eva as she straightens again. His grin is lopsided and a little awkward. "Well yeah. It's quiet if you mean no B.H. coming around throwing horror show parties. But uh, we actually went to go poke around at the airport the other night. Good news is it seems to have guardians of its own. Like a lot of the ... the decorations? Were actually kinda patrolling.
"Bad news is there's like this pit under the airport too. Or I think there is. There was all this scary fog and it was hard to see, but then there were all these things in the fog that weren't... actually... Wyrm? But they were scary and hungry and we almost got eaten. Literally. So maybe don't go into the basement of the airport if you need to fly somewhere."
Éva Illésházy"Erich." It sounds like a warning; the way she says his name. Certainly, there is something arresting about it, the way she incises the word quiet neatly in between his flustered of course you knew, duh and his further explication of their venture into the basement of the airport. Something gentle behind her eyes in that moemnt, though. Startlingly so. "There is no of course. It does not matter that I knew, already. I might not have known the news.
"I appreciate that you thought to tell me."
With a clear and quiet gravity that almost - almost - sounds like an apology.
--
Ellie: dark eyes dart from Erich to the book and the book to Erich and in the end she gives him a decisive shake of her dark, gleaming head. "I don't want it. I'll find you a better book though. Have you ever read Harry Potter?"
And, the girl waits for his response, then slips away, with a fair amount of book shopping on her mind.
--
Leaving the adult Shadow Lords along again. Éva listens to Erich's story about the pit in the basement of the airport with a rather disturbing degree of equanimity. Head canted, her keys (to the BMW SUV) dangling thoughtlessly in her right hand, left hand free once Ellie has slipped away.
"I appreciate the warning," Éva tells him, eyeing him with a bit more care now, as if she were looking for injuries. Wounds. " - and I am glad you did not get eaten. Is there anything I can do?"
Erich"I watched the movies," Erich replies to Ellie, which likely drops him a few notches in her esteem. Illiterate barbarian!
--
There were wounds. He almost got EATEN. There aren't any now, though, and even if there were they'd be hidden under his winter clothes.
"Maybe dig into this architect a little more if you get the chance? I mean why the hell does he keep building these doomtemples? Does he even realize he's doing it? Who's his muse? Stuff like that. I dunno. It's just weird as hell.
"I might bring Charlotte -- she's my packmate -- with me to take another look, too. Not at the monsters, I've had enough of that for now. But I wanna talk to those guardian spirits. I don't think we put them there. And they all look like stuff the humans put there. Paper airplanes sculptures and gargoyles and paintings and stuff. So ... I wanna know how they woke up, or who woke them up, and why they're helping us. And anything else they might know. I wanted to ask them that night, but we didn't have a Theurge in the group and I wasn't running the show anyway."
He thinks a little more. Then:
"You've been in Denver a long time, right? You remember the first time B.H. came around? Was there any... warning? Like say I wanted to keep an eye out for their return. Is there anything that'd ring alarm bells for you, other than, y'know. The usual massacres in the streets and people strung up like pinatas?"
Éva Illésházy"I believe Lola and one of you discovered that one of the architect's long-time assistants had - some connection with the things. Indeed, seemed to be merely wearing rather than inhabiting human skin.
"I will track down what I can of his history; determine whether there is anything worth pursuing there; and pursue it if there is."
Then a slight grimace as Erich explains that he intends to return. She does not disagree with his plan and would perhaps not express it if she did. Their worlds are wholly different and she has little to offer him when it comes to awakened spirits, guarding the realm. The whole of it strikes her sometimes as the strangest sort of fantasy.
"Disappearances. For their rituals.
"The disappearances start before their rituals. Without warning and without pattern; they slip them rather seamlessly into the ordinary crimes of the city - but the rituals require murders and murders require men. Unfortunately," a brief, elegant curl of her shoulders. "I cannot think of anything else that might herald their coming."
Erich"People disappearing in a big city," Erich says wryly. "Well, at least Denver's a pretty safe city, so stuff like that makes more of a splash than it probably would in like. Detroit.
"I'll try to keep an eye out, though. And uh. Y'know. Thanks for all the help. I'm glad you're with us."
It's awkward at best, this gratitude. He doesn't want to seem like he's praising her. Him: high school dropout, wanderer of the nation, occupant of a tinyhouse, member of a tinypack, praising a professional lawyer who probably contributes more to the Nation and the world at large in a year than he has in his whole life thus far.
A beat. "You wanna come visit the tinyhouse with Ellie while you're here? It's parked right in the lot."
Éva IllésházyÉva shares a smirk with Erich as he remarks on people disappearing in the big city. Yes: the most absurd of signs and except: they have nothing else. Stll, that smirk, the curving gleam of it like a blade. Then she's glancing away, inhaling, aware of the awkwardness and listening to the shape of it in his mouth, glancing back with the merest of nods.
The tinyhouse.
Éva has no idea what it is; no particular personal desire to tour it, but a glance at her daughter wandering through the stacks, no less than four books in hand, which Éva will soon purchase at the old-fashioned register right by the front door.
"That would be lovely." Éva remarks, quietly, and they will wait a bit longer as Ellie shops, and Éva will indeed purchase all four books the girl has selected and Ellie will indeed hand one over to Erich, all grave, and it will be the first Harry Potter novel so enjoy! Erich.
The duo, mother and daughter, follow him out of the bookstore to the tinyhouse in the parking lot, and so it goes.
ErichSo out to the parking lot they go, and indeed, the tinyhouse is parked there. Eva, despite not knowing what a tinyhouse might be, couldn't possibly mistake it for anything else: it is, in fact, a tiny house. A tiny wooden house with a tiny wooden porch mounted on a not-so-tiny trailer hitched to a not-so-tiny truck. Which is bumblebee yellow, and racing-striped.
Erich is very excited to have visitors. They're actually the first visitors, come to think of it, since Ingrid spent a few minutes here. He takes them on a tour of the outside first, pointing out all the awesome stuff like the freshwater tank and the greywater tank and ew that's the sewage tank, don't unscrew that cap YOU WILL REGRET IT. And here are the windows, and there are the windows in the dormers, and look: more windows in the nooks over front and back, and also skylights.
Then the porch, with its stairs that fold up into a sort of gate; with its tiny little chairs that latch onto the rails when they're on the move. Then the narrow door in, and finally they are inside, and Erich shows them the tiny couch and the fold-out tiny table and the counter and the tiny sink and the tiny oven and the tiny stove and the tiny refrigerator from which Ellie gets a juice-box and everything, everything is tiny. There are windowboxes full of herbs and vegetables; they are inside these days because it is too cold for them outside, but when spring comes they will be hung outside the window again where they belong. There is a tiny fireplace, which is really just a glorified heater with a tiny gas flame. Then there is a tiny bathroom, into which is crammed -- miraculously -- a shower and a sink and a toilet.
He doesn't show them Charlotte's room, though he points the door out. He doesn't show them Melantha's nook, though he points the curtain out. He does show them his own nook, picking Ellie up and hoisting her up so she can crawl around and put his brand-new copy of Harry Potter by his pillow. He moves the ladder over so she can come back down, and then
they're sort of out of things to look at, and anyway it's getting late, and Eva is starting to steer the conversation toward a goodbye and Erich says he's going to drive the tinyhouse back to main street anyway, because that's where it usually is.
So they part at the porch. Erich waves goodbye with his other hand tucked into his jean pocket. He tells them to come again. He tells Eva that he's serious,
they should totally come again,
they're tribemates, and he really doesn't hang out with his tribe enough. And later, as they are getting into Eva's BMW SUV or similar, they have the privilege of seeing one of the more bizarre and charming sights available in Evergreen:
the tinyhouse, towed behind Erich's yellowtruck, bumping its way out of the lot with the lights still warmly aglow from inside its many windows.
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