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 ChaseSomewhere 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 IllésházyThree 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 ChaseAvery 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 IllésházyThe 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 ChaseEllie 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 IllésházyÉva 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 ChaseAvery 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 IllésházyAvery 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 IllésházyÉva'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.
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