A chance encounter

Melantha Argyris

The reason that Melantha does not spend much time in Cold Crescent is out of her control. The Garou notice her when she's there; they can't help but notice her. A cub staying in the dorms or a Cliath walking by or even the higher-ranked wolves; they turn their heads, they watch her round the corner, they sometimes sniff. The worst don't hide it at all, don't show any restraint. The better ones catch themselves, try not to. The best of them ignore her, treat her as they would any kinfolk. But it makes her anxious, coming here.

When she does, because of a mini-sept moot or a meeting or just regular patrols by her packmates, Melantha does laundry or watches t.v. but does not nap. She talks to people occasionally -- more than she used to, though that isn't saying much. She used to never talk to anyone, or go anywhere near them.

Sometimes she strolls the hallways, especially after night, when most of the building is empty. She doesn't steal anything or do anything untoward; she just looks around, imagining the lives in those offices. They are not like the life she grew up with, by far. They are also nothing like the lives she pretended to be a part of, which were so extreme and so gauche in their own ways. These people, though most of them are kin, mostly just seem normal. Well-off, maybe. But far from living in the woods, and far from living in palaces.

She walks by one office, one night, and sees a light on. She sees, through the glass, a woman she recognizes. And maybe that woman looks up, sees her. And then,

Melantha gives a tentative smile. Gives a wave.

Éva Illésházy

Empty buildings are never precisely empty. Not buildings like this one, even without considering the Sept. The floors are lit up and then singularly darkened again as the cleaning crews move up and down and down and up the structure. They do not start until well after sunset.

Sometimes, they work until dawn.

--

And there is always someone else here. Some deal, some negotiation, some dispute, some late-night this-job-is-ridiculous bullshit, some deadline that some office bee, somewhere is working late, or early, or forever to address.

--

Éva is here late more often than most.

She does not have a corner office, but it is a large space with floor to ceiling windows and a view of downtown, half-shaded by blinds pulled down enough to obscure a distinctive view of her from the street when hers in the only window on the floor so illuminated, not so much as to entirely obscure the glittering vista of downtown.

--

This is how she works, late:

she has taken off her suit jacket. Beneath, a sleeveless sheathe dress, but the air conditioning - even in a firm run by kinfolk and for the Nation - is so cold that after hours she has slung a pashmina around her shoulders. Cashmere.

and she has slipped off her shoes, barefoot beneath the desk, a pen not just in her hand, but between her teeth.

A container of yogurt and a cooling mug of tea arrayed around the files.

She glances up at the darkened hallway: the shadow of movement, or the halo of it. Returns the wave with a spare but genuine half-smile of her own. It is not tentative, but any warmth in it is banked, you see. Unleavened.

The lift of her chin serves as invitation.

"What has you up so late?"

Melantha Argyris

Upstairs there is at least one office always occupied. The new Warder is up there. Reverence of Dawn, Master of Challenges, is watching two Cliaths wrestle on the challenge floor to work out their rivalry and angst without bloodshed. There are lower offices, accountants and tech firms, who have a few people working late. And then there's Eva.

Melantha takes the upward nod as the invitation it is and gently, quietly opens the door. She steps inside, and shrugs. "I usually work closing shifts. And live with Erich and Charlotte. So I'm used to nights." There's a pause; there's more there, longer used-to-it-ness, but she doesn't mention it.

"I know I've seen you, but I'm not sure of your name. It's Eva, right? I'm Melantha."

Éva Illésházy

"Erich Reinhardt?" It is less question than it is confirmation. The barest suggestion of a lilt near the end that invites mere assent - or perhaps forbearance. "I know Erich. We've met a few times.

"And yes, I'm Éva. Illésházy, pleasure to meet you, Melantha." The pen she places down, then she is rising in greeting, comfortable enough given the hour or the space or the circumstances that she does not feel any need to toe on her heels and augment her height with a few additional artificial inches.

"I'm afraid I do not have much hospitality to offer. Half-eaten yogurt and cold tea, though sometimes Erich has been known to raid the staff's breakroom and find undiscovered goodies."

Melantha Argyris

Melantha just nods. That's the Erich. She crosses a bit closer, and glances at Eva's toes ever so briefly, and huffs a laugh. "That's kind of uncool of him," she says. "He should buy his own snacks."

There's no malice there, just a comment. And one she's not afraid to voice, not afraid of being disloyal or unsubmissive or threatened, in any way, for just saying what the hell she thinks. She looks around, then back to Eva. "Why are you here so late? You're working?"

Éva Illésházy

"Mmm." One of those indefinite noises, except it sounds precisely like assent. Éva makes no extraneous noises, nor does she slides unnecessary articulations into her speech. "The Firm supplies the food, a business expense. Even a Garou with an appetite is unlikely to bankrupt us.

"I did tell him to stay away from anything in the fridge with a name or initials on it.

"And, yes. I have a hearing early in the morning, then a flight to catch to Coeur d'Alene for an arraignment in the afternoon. Last night my son had a soccer game. This was the only time I could dig out to prep for either."

Melantha Argyris

These things -- the small noises, the measured smile -- Melantha understands. She feels strangely at ease here, with this woman that perhaps not many people feel at ease with. Melantha feels that she is familiar. Melantha reminds herself: her feelings aren't universal. Projecting them on other people is a good way to fool yourself.

Hurt yourself.

"Still. It's not like he's starving. Just seems tacky to me." Tacky. Not dishonorable or so forth, just tacky. As though that matters.

She smiles. "You have a kid? How old?"

Éva Illésházy

"Three," this brief curve of her mouth, elegant as the leading edge of a dying sun. Assured somehow, and wholly contained, and lovely, lovely. Éva's expression - when she speaks of her children - cannot be considered unguarded. She is always guarded; and yet, some things - some few things, some distinct, personal pleasures, both profound and minor, warm her in ways that are easy to read and hard to quantify.

She has that look over good wine, and whiskey, too. Or a lovely piece of fish, thoughtfully prepared, not for but by her. The feeling of potting soil between her fingers.

"Two boys and a girl, three, five going-on-six, and ten. Do you have any?"

Melantha Argyris

Melantha's look, which was pleased, grows. Brightens. She smiles a little broader, her bright eyes that much brighter. "Three?" As though she were personally affected by this in any way, personally happy to hear it. The eldest is a girl. Her brothers are three and almost-six.

Eva asks if she does and Melantha is caught off guard. She wears it all up front, every expression, every thought. She would not need to. She could hide it all. Maybe even from someone like Eva. But that is not Melantha. That is Celia. Maria. Antoinette-called-Toni. Peyton. Anyone but her. All the not-hers she has been.

"Me? No. I'm like twenty-four." A pause. "I'm twenty-five." Another pause. A dawning: "I forgot my birthday again. Crap."

Éva Illésházy

"I was in my thirties before I had Ellie." Éva returns, quiet. "I had cousins, though, who started when they were in their late teens."

Then, a quiet huff. A certain awareness, a certain hike of her sculpted brows as Melantha reveals that she has forgotten her birthday again, curses her lax memory.

"I haven't remembered mine in years." She has not had someone to remember her birthday in years, but she does not mention it, and it does not make her mournful, that. "If you like, I'll buy you a drink for your birthday when I am back in town."

Melantha Argyris

"Well, you have kids," she says. "Parents don't tend to think about their own birthdays." Eva offers to buy her a drink and Melantha laughs, and it's a pretty thing, shy almost, the way she ducks her head. At least it's genuine. She wouldn't look goofy, doing that, if it were an act. She'd look so sweet. She'd look delicious, being shy.

"I haven't thought about my birthday in a long time, either. It wasn't really a big deal, the way I grew up." She hasn't said yes or no to the drink idea. Because she's curious. Because she is asking: "So you're a lawyer? What kind?"

Éva Illésházy

"Criminal defense." Éva returns, a certain wry note rich in her voice. "I started out as a public defender, now I'm in private practice. I do some appellate work too."

Melantha Argyris

Melantha is quiet for a moment, hearing that. She catches the wryness, doesn't understand why it's there. She is watching Eva mindfully, thinking of her three children and how she doesn't mention a husband or a mate in any of that, as though -- if one exists -- she doesn't think to do so. She looks at her bare feet on the carpet and her cashmere pashmina.

"Well," she says, "I should let you get back to work. So you're not completely exhausted for your hearing because I distracted you or whatever. And... maybe when you get back I can visit again."

She smiles. "It was good to meet you, Eva," she says, by way of excusing herself.

All ripples and clouds

Éva Illésházy

A chance encounter in the Nordstrom's at Cherry Creek.

"And the alterations will be finished no later than the 11th," - the fragment of a conversation half-overheard as Avery is rounding a display of the fine fabrics in which bespoke garments may be made, near some corner the small 'salon' of the store's in-house tailor inhabits.

The author of that overheard piece of conversation is familiar. A tall(ish) woman made taller by dark professional heels 2 or 3 inches - no more - in height, who interrogates the consultant with whom she speaks in the slightly detached but still exacting tone of a professional interrogator. They are standing quietly back from a trifold mirror in which a young woman - a very young woman, a child really, though one on the edge of - on the edge of something - stands there in a semi-formal summer frock the color of a Caribbean sunset, while a Vietnamese man pins up the trailing hem of the dress.

There is not a cloud in the sky, but both the woman - and the girl - smell of Thunder.

Avery Chase

Somewhere in this Nordstrom's there are light fixtures that hang down in clusters of dodecahedrons, golden as grapes and angular as pixels. Beneath them are porcelain white mannequins without heads, with necks that elongate into spikes, which are horrific and Avery has been watching them carefully since she entered, waiting to see if they come to life and start trying to charge at shoppers, rhino-like.

Avery is running her hand along some silk, and then chiffon, and the chiffon reminds her of Flaming June. The orange has always reminded her more of August, though. She thinks she'll have a dress made from this, or something like it. She takes out her phone to capture a picture of the fabric.

In the back of her mind, she feels a rainstorm that is not the typical rush of thunder and water that accompanies late summer in Denver, and she knows the sensation. She knows the scent, as she turns, cocking her head. She spies the young, as one does when one is a protector, and her eyes drag slowly toward Eva.

The moon is heavy outside. Soon it will be full. Avery's thoughts are full, too: of the moonlight that is there even when it cannot be seen, and of the sunset orange of the chiffon, and of the sensation she gets when she sees the young-girl-little-woman.

"Eva?" she says. And it isn't just a confirmation; it is a request. The girl has Eva's look about her. And even Avery knows better than to dishonor a mother by coming too close when their offspring are near.

Éva Illésházy

Three women look up as one.

The kinswoman, with her dark, dark eyes.

The twenty-something saleswoman, whose attention is drawn by Avery's voice, and then quickly shunted away by something else about her that makes the young woman uncomfortable, that makes her feel like her body is trying to crawl outside of her skin.

And the girl.

The tailor does not look up, he just keeps working, pins in his mouth, fingers trailing thoughtfully, professionally, along the hem of the dress.

--

The girl.

Something about her is subtly lupine, even here. Even now. Both beneath and beyond the faint thread of the blood she shares with her mother. Something about the angle of her head, the alertness with which her attention catches on Avery, then shunts downwards, but never wholly away. Something about the living tension in her little body in that sunset dress. Something about the prickling awareness evident in every inch of her frame.

--

"Ms. Chase," the kinswoman returns, and quietly. Eyes briefly on the wolf, and then settled on her daughter. There is an equanimity to the greeting and perhaps a hint of warmth. "My daughter Ellie was asked to be the flower girl in a cousin's wedding in New York in two weeks. Do you think she'll suit?"

Avery Chase

Avery just laughs. It's a bright thing, a bright sound, like crystals full of champagne clinking together. It's midnight, it's New Year's, and all is cold and dark around but that laugh is a shining, delightful thing regardless.

"Miss Ellie," she says, addressing the girl rather than her mother, "you are, of course, the very picture of a flower girl. Are you looking forward to it?"

Éva Illésházy

The girl holds herself, you see, quite still beneath Avery's regard. Animal awareness frames her body; something about the stillness and the way it suggests not rest but motion, and it is bright enough in the girl that even the tailor with the mouth full of pins stops for a moment, glances up at Avery, then over at Éva, then back to the girl.

Sliding a pin out of his mouth.

Ellie shakes her head. Slightly, but: no.

She glances at her mother who is both watching her and watching over her, and looks back at Avery.

"I haven't seen them since I was a baby. Rosa says they want to get a look at me."

Avery Chase

Ellie shakes her head. Avery's brows draw together. She gives a sparing glance toward Eva, just before, but then takes a few steps closer so they're not standing a gulf apart, talking across the chasm. She looks curious. Which is honest, because she is.

"I suppose that's true. It's quite easy to get a look at someone when they're walking down an aisle alone." She pauses, both her steps and her speech, thoughtful. "Forgive me if I'm prying, but since you aren't looking forward to it... are you dismayed at the prospect?"

Éva Illésházy

Éva has opened her mouth. There was something on her tongue or the cusp of her breath, which goes unspoken. Her dark eyes are lingering on her daughter, searching, you see, with a slight remove and a banked awareness and a drawn concern.

Her attention flickers to Avery as Avery approaches, but otherwise she's quiet.

--

Ellie, for her part - oh, Ellie. Thoughtful child. She considers the question for a long moment, and she must be moving something inside her body, turning something over, assessing , arriving at a conclusion. Then, she shakes her head.

"No." A little frown, as her dark brows draw together. "I'm nervous, not dismayed." The smallest cluck, her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

"And I think it's rude. To want to get a look at someone. If I wanted to get to know someone I'd write them a letter. Or ask them to dinner."

Avery Chase

Avery is, perhaps surprisingly for someone of her prestige and general removed-ness from the world and its peasants, very perceptive. She is warm. She cares. She pays attention and has an almost pretenatural insight into both her surroundings and those people around her. But right now, she is focusing those crystalline blue eyes on Ellie, and not Ellie's mother, and she misses the opening of the mouth, the almost-words. She somehow does not miss the concern.

Avery is a wolf. And she is a wolf, white and powerful, walking slowly towards a woman's child.

She is very aware of that.

--

Avery's eyes, so stark and dark, hop up. She is -- someone older might register -- a touch impressed, and it's not the fake 'oh my you're so smart!' that adults give children. It is genuine. You can tell, because it is so subtle. "Well," she says, considering this herself, "I have been a flower girl before, and if I recall correctly, it is usually a tedius and short-lived ordeal followed by what seems like a thousand years of being photographed. If the bride thinks of it, she will often let the flower girl and ring bearer be seated in the front rows after performing their duties so that they needn't stand for the whole ceremony."

She shifts her bag, a white leather Michael Kors with black piping and a gold lock dangling from the strap, to her elbow, putting her phone away finally. "Nothing at all to be nervous about, in hindsight. Difficult to apply hindsight ahead of time, though."

Her eyes come back to Ellie, her back straightening. "As for rudeness, I cannot account for that. You may, if you like, try to cultivate a forgiving attitude towards adults, many of whom have a tendency to forget that children are merely people who lack a certain depth and breadth of experience. Some do tend to forget that children already have their own ideas and opinions and can be perfectly brilliant conversationalists if you give them a moment to speak. But I suspect your Rosa may have merely been employing a turn of phrase. Inviting you to the honor -- and it is an honor, if a dull one -- of joining someone's wedding party is just the pretense of occasion to see you, and meet you, and discover what sort of person you have become. In a way they did invite you to dinner."

Avery gives a small shrug after a moment of thought. "Perhaps they thought that the opportunity to wear a fine dress and stand in a titled position of esteem at a community ritual would be a suitable gift to offer, in exchange for your company. But I am only speculating, and regarding perfect strangers to me, at that." She gives a small huff of laughter at herself. "Now who is rude?" Also at herself, dismissively.

Éva Illésházy

Avery comments that it is difficult to look back in hindsight ahead of time and Ellie nods quite seriously and does interject - conversationally - "That's because it's looking back at what's already happened." She has a small bow mouth, that flattens when she goes thoughtful, rather than dipping into a frown, and here and now it flattens. "I guess you could ask yourself what it would be like when you're done and looking back, but then it is still just your imagination."

There is one other small interjection, when Avery says your Rose, Ellie inserts, "She's my Baka, except she's not really mine. She's my brothers' Baka."

--

After that, Ellie is quiet. She takes in what Avery has to tell her and Avery can read that consideration in both Ellie's brows and in her body. The tailor has finished hemming the garment and is straightening it around Ellie's knees, pulling it this way and that. Urging her to lift her arms and turn around, which she does, and as she does so she glances at her mother, then looks back to Avery.

Something definitive about the girl's mouth.

"Maybe you're right. And also if I think they are rude before then maybe I would just see rude no matter what. It's hard to stop thinking a thought once you've had it, though. And I've already had that thought."

--

"Ms. Chase," Éva interrupts here. Her voice low, and yet still, somehow, carrying. "I have not had a chance to thank you for your assistance in the park the other week. I promised Ellie gelato when her fitting was done. Would you like to join us?"

Avery Chase

"I'm afraid I don't know what at Baka is," Avery says, with some note of apology but not embarrassment in her voice. Perhaps Ellie will tell her.

Ellie gets back to her fitting, while Avery murmurs a mild apology to the tailor for any interruption. She holds her bag in front of her now, the handle clasped gently in both hands, her frame long and steady and elegant. Classic. She listens, attentive, when Ellie speaks again. "You are quite right," she tells the girl, "on all counts."

Her eyes move to Eva, and she smiles. "Oh, think absolutely nothing of it. It is my calling," and duty. She does not call it a pleasure. "I had heard of your resourcefulness and bravery before, but that was my first chance to see it in play. You honor your house,"

and by this she means her family, and her tribe, and the nation, their people. And Eva herself, as though your house encompasses it all.

She brightens. "Oh, that would be lovely. I love the way it looks in the bins. All ripples and clouds. Miss Ellie," and when she says this, she does not mean it as condescension. She uses it as a term of respect for someone she does not know well. Someone she has not fought alongside, like Eva, who used to be Ms. Illeshazy and nothing else. Someone who has every reason to fear her and perhaps could use a few extra reasons to feel respected by her. Miss Ellie, "Would that be all right with you?"

Éva Illésházy

Éva's mouth ticks wider when Avery praises her resourcefulness and bravery. It is the word bravery that pulls the expression - unbidden - out of her body, onto her mouth. Some twist of mild irony she tastes the same way one tastes iron: the tinge of it loose on the tongue.

"Baka means grandmother," Ellie is explaining, in her rather serious and assured way. "In Croatian. Rosa's parents were from Croatia. My mother's from Washington, D.C. but her father was born in Hungary. But I have Rosa's same name because Andraj adopted me."

Avery asks Ellie if that would be all right with her, and Ellie's dark, solemn little eyes track toward Éva in that moment. Touch there, thoughtfully, then glance back toward Avery. The girl nods, once, seriously and virtually echoes back to Avery, "OKay. I think that would be all right with me."

Before she turns around to disappear back into the dressing room, to change into her street clothes. Her cowboy boots despite the fact that it is mid-summer, and her jeans and her stripped purple t-shirt, ready for gelato.

As they wind their way out of Norstrom's, Ellie takes Éva's hand. Éva squeezes her daughter's hand, and savors every moment. She knows she will not be able to hold her daughter's hand for very much longer.