The Blues

Calden White

Well, Eva let Calden pick the spot this time, and that is why they are not at a classy, discreet, subtly luxurious whiskey bar. They are, instead, at a blues joint where the music is loud and live and always excellent; where the air always seems a little smoky smokeless-bar-laws notwithstanding, where the furnishings are a little on the dive side and the clientele runs the gamut.

They are not by the stage, where some sultry middle-aged bluestress is bawling her heart out over dirty bass, slow drums. They are not by the bar, either, where patrons jostle for precious space and the bartender's attention. They've found a happy medium: off to the side, under an old photograph of the place circa 1970, sharing a small table with wobbly legs.

There's a well-stocked bar here. There's food, too: what passes for food, anyway. Microwaveable nommables, chips, maybe some salted almonds. Calden has a generous glass of scotch on the table. He has a plate of BBQ rib sandwiches, too, the meat unrecognizable, the bread imbued with that characteristic texture of freeze-thaw.

Eva

"Interesting choice," Éva greets Calden with the faintest of smirks as she finds the table, dark eyes rising with a distinctly wry expression to touch on the photograph over the wobbly table, then sweeping downward to take in the less-than-appetizing appearance of the freeze-thawed bread. Someone's moving after her from the bar, a shadow behind her that resolves into their waitress or possibly the tender as she removes her jacket, drapes it over the back of her chair, and slips in opposite the Fiann.

That's her drink, ordered at the bar and delivered before she has even managed to sit. Whiskey, not Scotch. Local whiskey too, neat, along with a small bowl of smoked almonds. It seems that she will not assay into the realm of the microwaveables, and prefers salty bar food when actual food is not available.

"How are you?" She asks, taking up her whiskey as the waitress leaves. Glancing down at the play of light across its surface. A brief pause, then - with a sparing directness. "Heard anything more from or about your recent guest?"

Calden White

"Best blues bar in the state," Calden replies, utterly unashamed. He rises, of course, as Eva sheds her jacket. He is a gentleman.

They take their respective seats. She has smoked almonds; he picks up one of his sandwiches and demolishes a third in a bite. For a little while they are occupied by the thanking and tipping of the waitress, and then by the simple pleasure of settling in.

She inquires of his guest, then. And Calden smiles, brief and fond, wiping his fingertips on a napkin before folding it across his mouth.

"She's down at the Caern now," he says. "Basic training. Every other weekend they let her come home with me. I usually swing by after I drop the cattle off. We go up to the ranch and the boys spoil her because they're trying to make it up to her.

"I furnished up the spare room downstairs for her. I was going to put in frilly pink, because that's what girls like, right? But she wanted raw wood and pictures of horses. So now her room looks like my dad's, and they both seem pretty happy with that.

"Maybe when she's got a better grip on her temper," he adds, "Ellie can come up and play with her."

Eva

"Girls are always more surprising that you might imagine." Éva returns; quietly.

Lifting her whiskey and taking a few smoked almonds up into one elegant hand. Sifting some of the excess salt from her fingertips as she cups the nuts themselves in her palm. There's a frission to her expression which is subtle but mostly supressed. An echo of his fondness, more distant, overlaid with that complex matrix of awareness and quietly attenuated empathy that framed her response even on the night they first met Tenderfoot.

Then, a quiet nick of her tongue against the roof of her mouth. This resolution where her focus pulls in: on Calden, in this precise moment.

"I think she's lucky she found you. And I'm glad you're able to give her - " a pause; a brief inhale. " - someplace to be home." Not call: be. She is a trial lawyer; the choice of words is deliberate, precise. " - though I'm not sure that she and Ellie will really be able to play together. Is she really a child anymore? Perhaps it's not fair to say otherwise but - "

The change is a stark one.

"I wouldn't mind them meeting. Knowing one another, but I don't know that they'll ever play."

Calden White

More surprising than he might imagine: Calden's smile widens briefly, turns a touch rueful.

"I have to admit I don't know much about them. I have four brothers and a lot more male cousins than female. I suspect you weren't the frilly-and-pink type either, though."

A small pause, then. Another bite of his sandwich, and another, and then the first is gone. He looks at the second one. Doesn't start in on it yet.

"Truth be told," he says -- with care, and with his eyes lifting to Eva's, "I sometimes suspect Ellie won't be a child for very long, either. It might be good for her to have someone like Jill around. And Jill, to have someone like Ellie."

Eva

"You're better off not to think of girls as girls," her voice is low; her eyes gleam in the faint light. She picks up the glass by the rim and lifts it to her curving mouth. Inhales; see. Draws the scent of the whiskey over her palate, then drinks. " - but as individuals. Makes it easier."

Is she teasing him? She may well be; there's no correction to be found in her tone, just a certain lilt that is not as poignant as rue, not so pointed as sarcasm. Call it: bemused.

That bemusement stills and then dies on her mouth and in her eyes as she continues. He can perhaps see a certain sort of door - well - closing. A certain composure asserting itself.

A brief breath, sharply indrawn. "I will protect the sanctity of Ellie's childhood until I have no other choice. I want her to have time. As much time as she can. And I'll fight the world for it, if I have to."

Calden White

Girls are individuals too. That's basically what Eva just told Calden, who is now wearing the faint smirk of someone who has been subtly and rounded schooled and knows it.

The conversation moves on, though, and with it that smirk. They are serious now: they are talking about her daughter. They are talking about the destiny that they both, it seems, suspect lies in store for Ellie. Eva is quietly ferocious; Calden would expect nothing less of her. Calden, however, is more measured. He is quiet a moment. He sips his scotch. He sets it down and he looks at the way the light refracts through it, scatters across the tabletop.

"Maybe if it's just the world you have to fight, you'd win," he says after a while. "But I think in the end you'd have to fight Ellie, too, if you wanted her to just stay a child a little longer."

Eva

This is not the moment where Éva gives in; perhaps there is never a moment where Éva gives in. Her eyes are subtly flashing and there is a rather steely determination to the set of her jaw. There is no concession in her face or manner; just a mild shift of her gaze, from his features, to some far corner of the room.

Then back; a lilting glance. The glass of whiskey is still held lightly in her right hand. She swirls it, an elegant motion of her wrist.

"Did I ever tell you that I met your royal?" An arched brow. The subject change is deliberate. "At a legal aid fundraiser at a gallery in Sante Fe. I was impressed.

"With her not the art."

The conversation shifts; expands; contracts, changes. They finish their drinks.

They each order another.

He is a gentleman: he walks her to her car.

She is a gentlewoman: she then gives him a ride back to his.

So it goes.

tenderfoot

Calden

This isn't Eva and Ellie's first trip to the ranch, and like the last, it's an overnight event. It's only reasonable, after all: it's a two-hour trip up from Denver, and staying only the afternoon would mean about as much time on the road as at the ranch.

So now it's sundown. The day is over, the horses -- because of course there were horses and horseback riding and expeditions to that gully in the north of his land where a little winter snow still lingered -- are put away, Ellie's hands and face are washed and the lights are on in the house and out on the large deck, Calden is firing up the stove to grill burgers and steaks.

It's warm enough these days that outdoor barbecues are not entirely absurd, though they'll still eat inside later. It's warm enough that he makes do with a thick-stuffed vest over the same flannel shirt he took them riding in, his bootheels still traildusted. Eva's younger children aren't here tonight, and neither is her mother-in-law.

It hasn't entirely escaped Calden's notice that Ellie gets just a little more of her mother's time and attention. Maybe it's because she's the oldest. Maybe it's because she's the only girl. Maybe it's because of the three children, wildness burns most strongly in her, and there is a phantom window of opportunity that narrows with every passing year. Month. Week. Maybe it's because she had a different father than the others, and though all three children have now lost their father, Ellie never knew hers in the first place. Never knew his family; does not have a grandmother to shadow her.

It's fair, Calden thinks, turning steaks over on the fire. It's only fair that she gets special treatment from time to time. A nice little mom-and-me weekend at a friend's ranch,

with real horses and real cowboys.

Éva

Ellie has done than merely wash her face-and-hands since returning from trail riding; she was sent to take a bath or a shower immediately on returning and told that she could put on her PJs or the dress she insisted on packing when she packed the Trunkee she has had since she was four, and which she is a little bit too big to ride on now, but which she still prefers over anything so mundane as a suitcase.

She's still downstairs (?), in the guest suite turned over to mother-and-daughter, where they can curl up together almost like a sleepover, while Éva lingers on the deck, a glass of red wine in hand, as Calden sears the steaks. Perhaps there was prep work in the kitchen to which she contributed - chopping greens and fresh vegetables for a salad, dressing it lightly in lemon juice and olive oil - or trimming the slender stalks of early-season asparagus shipped up from Mexico, yes, but so much like spring that it is impossible to resist when one sees it in the grocery story for a quick, flashing sautee.

Now, though: the table is set and the vegetables are ready to go and there must be a fire laid in the great fireplace and the two kinfolk are outside. Éva with a glass of wine in hand, and a dark leather blazer over jeans and a clean blouse, crisp in black and white.

"She insisted on packing a dress," Éva is telling Calden. "Bet you a dollar to five that she shows up wearing it and her cowboy boots. And calls her milk white wine and demands it from a stem glass."

A glance at the horizon, the last threads of daylight still barely visible, the warm light thrown out from the interior thrown out across the wooden decking. The scent of the steaks rich in the bright cold air.

Calden

"I am not," Calden says, quirking a wry grin over his shoulder, "going to bet against a mother about what her daughter is or isn't going to do. But I will say that's just about the cutest thing I've ever heard. I'll make sure to get her a proper glass for her white wine."

A drop of melted fat sizzles as a small orange tongue of fire darts upward to lick it from the steaks. Calden nudges the beef absently, testingly, then moves on to flip the burger patties.

"So how's life down in the big city?"

Éva

"That's where you got it wrong. Technically she's a pre adolescent, which means I am going to get virtually everything wrong. You should always take that bet."

Éva breathes out a laugh over the mouth of her wine glass. Shoots Calden a bright glance, which is illuminated but not sparking. This wry edge to the shape of her mouth.

"It's been quiet. Which is rather a relief after the summer and fall. I've been traveling a bit for work, too. Which sometimes takes me to the strangest places. What about you? Heard anymore from that Hawkes girl?"

Calden

"Oh boy," Calden huffs, wry humor now a thin veneer over genuine annoyance. "Have I. I think on some bizarre level she means well, though. Thinks she's setting wrongs right, preventing disasters. Something of the sort.

"I'm sure you've had similar experiences of your own. Got any tips?"

Éva

"Actually, I haven't," another quiet breath, quiet and warm enough that it makes ripples in the surface of her wine. "Perhaps it's a tribal privilege. Maybe it's my inclination toward a particular kind of discretion. But no: well-meaning busybodies have not tried to save me from myself.

"And I'm not sure I would tolerate it if they did."

tenderfoot

Outside, they both hear it: the sound of a truck's engine, the kick of gravel and dirt grinding up into the air from wheels turning rapidly onto the drive. Whoever is driving up, they're driving fast, and Calden knows the particular roar of that vehicle just before it cuts.

They turn and look, they go to the railing, and he sees ranch hands who should be out handling the ranch and watching over the cattle tonight coming up the drive to the house like the Devil itself is behind them. Which may make Eva and Calden both, given their experiences, look for that very Devil.

No devil to be seen. Just Jimmy and Paul, one in the driver's seat and one in the bed, and Jimmy positively leaping out of the cab to run around back to the bed where Paul is hunkered down. Ian must still be with the herd. But Paul is waving Jimmy off; they're talking but where they are, the wind is catching everything and making it hard to hear. That wind that keeps picking up, stronger than before. Good thing they're planning on eating inside. Jimmy starts running from the truck to the house. Not jogging.

Running.

He's going for a door, not seeing Calden and Eva up there, his eyes wild with a strange form of panic.

Calden

"Well, at this point I think I'm just going to remove myself from any conversation with Miss Hawkes that seems to be going that way," Calden says. "But enough about that subject. How's your mother-in-law? I seem to recall -- "

that's when the truck pulls up. The truck containing Jimmy and Paul but not Ian, slashing up onto the drive and rocking to a stop. Calden pauses, mid-sentence, mid-steaksearing, frowning. When his cousins start running for a door, he puts his barbecue tongs down. He kills the fire on the grill, lowers the lid, and -- with a jerk of his head indicating that Eva should come with -- heads for the large glass sliding doors into the house.

Éva

(Likelihood that Eva came to dinner armed. 1 in 10.)

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )

tenderfoot

Paul stays in the bed of the truck, hunched over, his arms straight down but his back curved. He's not wearing his hat, and his hair is sticking up in multiple directions, blown by the wind. Jimmy is going full throttle, meaning that he's storming up the stairs when Calden and Eva come in from the terrace, his mouth open to shout for Calden, for Calden's dad, anyone. The blood is drained from his face,

and there's blood all over his shirt. Thank god Ellie didn't see him. Did Ellie see him?

He's the youngest of the ranch hands, the cousins that babysit Calden's herd. And he's shaken. Not shaking, but he's not okay. And with that, he doesn't know where to begin, except by blurting out:

"We shot her."

Calden

It's absurd, completely illogical, but Calden's first thought is

a night in April. A wolf in white.

"Who?"

Éva

The Shadow Lord is favoring Calden with a look of wry agreement and has her back to the drive when the truck comes tearing up. She's sipping her wine with the ebb and flow of the conversation, certainly intending to drink more than the glass or two she might ordinarily allow herself, but no more than three or perhaps four. Enough to become pleasantly inebrieted; to let down her ever present guard. Perhaps even to laugh, openly and without that particular edge of wry self-awareness that cuts into every evidence of her humor.

The look over her shoulder is brief; spare. She expects to see nothing more than a pick-up truck on a graveled drive. She doesn't know the rhythms of the ranch or the expected speeds or the needs of the stock or any of it. The sweep of headlights cutting through the darkness, and -

Éva breathes out a curse. While Calden is putting down the tongs and shutting the lid of the barbecue she is setting down her wine glass on the railing and easing a nine millimeter from her shoulder holster and scanning the driveway behind the truck, holding the weapon with a keen and steady hand.

Nothing. Just the men, running, which catches her heart all sharp beneath her sternum and sends her into motion, quick toward the glass door and inside -

"You shot whom?"

Calden and Eva speak quite nearly at the same time.

The muzzle of the weapon nine millimeter is pointed toward the ground. Inside, she has thumbed the safety back on and but for the answer to that question Éva is ready to circle the kinsmen and head downstairs to find her fucking daughter.

tenderfoot

"I don't know," Jimmy says, choking on the words, not even noticing Eva's firearm yet. "I swear, Calden, we thought it was a coyote going after the cattle like usual, she wasn't so big --"

He pants, gripping the railing of the stairs. "Shot her three times and she just ran at us like it was nothing, and so we kept shooting til she dropped. That's when she changed. It's just a kid, Calden, she's a kid."

Éva

Now at the top of the stairs, really a step or two down - holding that gun at a loose remove, though not carelessly - Éva gives Jimmy a glancing blow of a look. Asks:

"Is she in the truck?"

Calden

"Oh, god." Calden's hands just find their way to his head, clasping atop his crown as though to keep the top of his skull from flying off as the words sink in. "Oh, my god. Where -- "

Eva asks. Calden backs it up with a look: piercing, questioning. Is she?

tenderfoot

Jimmy just nods, panting a breath out. "She hasn't moved. She went down and then twitched a little and changed in front of us, didn't get up."

Calden

"Well," he's starting across the broad spaces of the great room now, around that rather grand staircase, past the formal dining table and toward the front door, "is she still alive? Christ."

Éva

Éva is quiet long enough for Jimmy to answer Calden. She just listens, then gives him a rather spiked look. While Calden heads for the front door, she herself is starting down the staircase up which Jimmy just came running. Her daughter, after all, is downstairs.

"I'm going to talk to Ellie. Where - " this is clearly directed at Calden's back. Her voice is rising to carry in the greatroom. "are you going?"

tenderfoot

They're heading out. Jimmy is following, feeling safer now: Calden is in his mid-thirties, Calden and Eva are adults who handle things like this far more often than the cousins do, it's going to be okay. He's calming a bit, now that he has questions to answer and things to say that make sense outside of his head.

"Paul said she is. She's --"

Someone outside yells. It's got to be Paul, it's a man shouting. Then thuds as he hits the ground. They can't see him but he's tucking into a roll as he flies out of the bed of the truck.

Calden

"Out," Calden answers Eva, which in the grand scheme of things is rather self-evident. "You," he drops a hand on Jimmy's shoulder as the young man starts to follow, "go downstairs. Stay with Eva's daughter. Keep her inside."

The front door is still yawing on its hinges. Calden pulls it open wide and steps out -- just in time to see Paul go sailing. Biting back a curse, Calden picks up his pace and runs for the cab of the truck,

and the rifle racked across the roof. Just in case.

Éva

The Shadow Lord sets her jaw; she is three or four steps down the stairs when Calden declares that he is going out and there's a stubborn set to her jaw as he does that. This time whatever curse she mutters is almost wholly non-verbal. Not even sotto voce, just evident in the spasm of her jaw.

"Take off your shirt," to Paul, who is bloodied, and now she's coming back up the stairs. One and then two steps. Her dark eyes cut over the ranchhand with a rather critical though dispassionate survey. "Tell her that I sent you. Lock the doors. Tell her there's something dangerous outside and she has to obey you and she has to be ready to run.

"Tell her to remember the code."

Another two steps up and Éva is in the great room once again. Calden pulls open the front door and Éva follows at a clipped pace behind. She does not see Paul go sailing but she does hear him and so she thumbs off the safety as she goes.

tenderfoot

Jimmy balks. "I've got --" he gestures at his bloodied flannel shirt. He knows Eva's daughter Ellie. She's a kid, too. She's a little kid who doesn't want pink boots. Eva tells him to take it off. Well: she is a Shadow Lord. He just nods, yanking it open because his fingers are fumbling with the buttons. He starts heading downstairs. His undershirt is soaked through; he takes that off as well, trying to remember everything Eva says.

Your mom sent me. I'm going to lock the doors. There's something dangerous outside, and your mom said you have to obey me and be ready to run and... remember the code?

Outside, Paul hits the earth, arms up to cover his head. There's even more blood on his shirt, on his sleeves, but it's not his, just like Jimmy's shirt isn't covered in his own blood. It's coming from that girl, that girl who is now not a girl at all, climbing over the edge of the truck-bed as Calden is running to his own, grabbing the rifle.

She's in glabro already, but she's not very large. She's only about five and a half feet tall in this form, her hair lank and dark and bloodstained, her eyes glowing golden, fur sprouting on her arms and claws and body and face that is reddish-grey. She's growing larger though as she digs her hands into the truck's side, denting it, pushing into crinos. The gunshot wounds she's suffered already are closing, healing, despite the blood she unleashed all over Calden's cousins.

Jimmy has run downstairs to Ellie. Calden is outside near his truck with his rifle. Eva is outside the house with her handgun.

She's just about the smallest war-formed monster they've ever seen. She's only just head and shoulders above Calden's height when she drops to the ground, eyes twitching between them, teeth bared in a snarl of warning.

Calden

"HEY."

Calden has a rifle in hand. The driver's door of his truck is open; the bed of the truck is between him and the small -- if such a word could ever be used for such a thing -- Crinos. He is not pointing the gun at her, though he does have it ready, the safety off, a round chambered.

"Calm down. It's all right. We made a mistake. We don't want to hurt you."

Éva

There is only so much a gun can do against a Crinos. How very well Éva remembers that singular night in June when she told Calden to smash her Lexus into a Crinos Spiral and they spun out into a field by a lake and -

So. Outside.

The safety off her nine millimeter, the weapon still pointed at the ground. Tension electric riding the circuit of her spine, an alertness, an awareness about her tall frame as she takes in the scene; glances at Paul where he has been thrown on the ground and holds the weapon, two-handed, see? Like a fucking cop.

"They thought you were a coyote - " Éva is neither particularly brace nor especially foolish, but she is edging forward as if to cover Paul. Not with her body with the possible range of weapon's fire. Except for that brief glance at Paul, her eyes are on the Crinos now, though. " - attacking the herd. They brought you back to make sure you were okay.

"You understand what I'm saying, right? Shift down. We'll help you, or we'll get you help."

tenderfoot

HEY.

She flinches, snarling, whipping her head towards Calden. Instinct has her moving toward him a bit, paws lowering to the ground, claws digging into the earth. Those claws are not the size of Avery's claws, not the size of Hector's or Erich's, but they are just as lethal. She growls low, but flinches back again, the sound turning slightly into a whine.

Paul is picking himself up. He was thrown, that's true, but by a glabro no bigger than an average-sized woman... that is, not an average-sized pro body builder. He's picking himself up, bruised but not broken, even though he's favoring one shoulder. Probably dislocated. He has no weapon. He's hanging back as Eva steps forward, adding her voice to Calden's.

It was a mistake. They don't want to hurt her. They thought she was a coyote.

She growls at that. They tell her to shift down and the growl whines again, keening again, as she hunkers down, clawing aimlessly and anxiously at the ground, shaking like a dog might. Only she's not trying to shake water from her fur. She's trying to shake off something else. This body. Her own rage. Something else.

Calden

To call this situation tense would be an understatement. The kin are not particularly brave nor particularly foolish. They are not invulnerable to fear, to the dreadful knowledge that as small, as lost, as uncertain as the Garou appears, she is a deadly thing and she could tear them to pieces in a flash. She was not, as she was for Jimmy and Paul, a quarter-mile away and unaware of their presence until they fired the fire shot. She's ten feet away. Twenty at best. It'd take her a single blink of an eye to get to them.

Two to tear them to pieces.

And yet for her, too: perhaps not a situation she feels entirely, or even a little, in control of. Hungry, hunting, and then suddenly shot at, shot down, piled into a car and hauled somewhere else and now,

now, her wounds still closing, she's surrounded and beset again. There are guns pointed at her again. Two of them.

And then --

one. Calden straightens from behind the truck. He raises his hands where the wolf can see him, and then he lets the rifle swing loose: muzzle to the sky, stock to the ground. "Okay," he says. "Okay. I'm going to put the gun down... if you'll shift down. Or at least sit. Okay?"

tenderfoot

She whines. She edges back, spine to the wheelhouse of the truck, flicking her eyes back and forth.

It's possible that right now, she doesn't know that she could tear them to pieces before they got a shot off.

Éva

"Paul," Éva's eyes do not leave the strange Garou, but there is a calm strength to her tone that belies the tension that must be evident in her body. "Get up and go inside. Let me know if you have trouble with the door."

The Shadow Lord is wearing hiking boots tonight, and the leather blazer over jeans and a silky blouse. The blazer is open and there is the hint of the shoulder holster that - yes - she apparently intended to wear to dinner evident beneath.

She is backlit and even as Calden reassures and promises to put his gun down, Éva makes no such promises. Nevertheless, the muzzle of the weapon is still pointed at the ground. Nevertheless, the safety is off. Could she pull it up and get off one shot, two, before she was taken down?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

-

"How old are you?" The strange beast's size is only now becoming clear to Éva. At first all she saw was monster. Now, with time and clarity: more. "My daughter's nine. I don't think you're much older, though I could be wrong.

"You're going to be okay. Alright? Everyone here is going to be just fine, and Calden and I are going to help you. If you can't get out of that skin, that's okay too. We can find someone to help you. Paul is going to go inside so he can call the Sept, okay? So we're going to let him go in. It might take a little while, but they'll be able to send someone to help you figure out what's going on.

"How does that sound?"

tenderfoot

Paul wants to stand his ground. He casts a look at Calden, but ballsy as he is, he's not an idiot. He moves for the door. In front of them, the cub -- there is almost doubt now that it is a cub, in fact -- snaps her vision to him, the thing moving, running, as instinct tells her to go after the Thing That Hurt Her. She doesn't see him much right now as the man who also hauled her into the bed of a truck and held his coat down over her gunshot wounds trying to staunch the flow of her blood. She was unconscious for most of that.

What she remembers is the world going white, and the surge of anger and pain coming from some hollow place up from inside her, wrenching her back into red and shadow and noise only to drop her like a stone into unconsciousness again. And none of that means anything to her.

Calden points his gun at the sky, Eva points hers at the ground. Neither of them are quite willing to set them aside yet.

How old are you.

My daughter's nine.

She's looking at Eva with those golden, searing eyes of hers. She's being told again that it's going to be okay. Even if

if you can't get out of that skin.

She whines. Loudly, achingly, clutching at the earth, whimpering. Because she can't, you see. She can't find her way out of this skin. She wants to talk, and answer, and she wants the pounding in her head to stop and she wants to stop wanting to kill everything that moves but she can't get out. The sounds she's making --

she keens like an animal. She is also, at once, in a strange and somewhat grotesque blend of noise, crying like a child,

curling up on the ground.

Calden

There is a brief moment where Paul -- thoughtful, levelheaded Paul -- casts a look at Calden, which Calden returns with an ever so subtle nod of his head door-wise. And meanwhile before them there is a wolf, a wolf who is almost certainly a cub, and almost certainly trapped in this skin, who Eva bargains with in that no-nonsense, maternal way that makes Calden think of the deals she strikes with her own daughter.

How about you take a bath now while Mr. White is making dinner, and then tonight you can stay up half an hour later for hot cocoa and marshmallows? How does that sound?

The little crinos claws at the ground. She keens like an animal, and also like a child, and Calden, heart twisting even as it beats fast fast fast out of adrenaline and fear, lowers his rifle slowly and carefully to the bed of the truck. Slips the safety back on.

"Okay," he says again, coming around the bed of the truck now -- walking low to the ground, hands held out and open. "Okay, then. You'll be all right. Can you write? Can you use your claws to write your name for us?"

Éva

As Calden edges closer to the young Crinos, Éva thumbs the safety of her weapon back on. With the safety engaged, she allows herself to hold the weapon with a bit less care, a bit more casually. It is now pointed directly at the ground rather than at the ground but in the vague-direction-of-the-strange-Crinos and as Calden asks if the girl can write her name,

Éva nods a quiet encouragement.

"If you can, it'll help us. Maybe there's someone at the Sept who knows you. Maybe there's someone you want to come help."

tenderfoot

Calden is the first to put his gun down. To turn on the safety and just put it down. He moves, his hands empty, and this time she doesn't flinch away or growl. She just trembles, crying the way she does, curled away from them. But after a while she -- trembling, not with terror but with the effort to restrain her own rage -- reaches out and claws, very slowly, into the dirt, in tall and ragged letters;

J I L L

And beneath that, after a few more seconds:

1 1

It takes her longer, more control, to get the rest out:

N D A K O T A

Calden

Calden edges a little closer, and a little closer yet, to read what the wolf writes. The letters are ragged. There isn't much light. Still, he manages to make out the words. A name. An age. Home state.

"Hi, Jill," Calden says, lowering himself little-by-little to the ground. There's maybe six feet between him and the girl. "I'm Calden. This is my friend Eva. My cousins Paul and Jimmy were the ones that brought you here. They're real sorry to have hurt you, okay? They didn't mean to.

"We're all kind of like you. But not exactly. We can't change our shape like you can, but we have friends who can. They're going to come help you change back to a girl, and figure out what to do from there. All right?

"Is there someone who can call for you?"

Éva

"Hi Jill." Quiet and sinuous and in the wake of Calden's greeting.

Éva does not edge closer. She does hide her wariness; the cutting edge of her fear and the other things that flare inside her with those very simple words. Jill. 11. NDAKOTA.

"I've been to North Dakota. Quite a bit recently? Our folks keep getting into trouble near Williston. Have you been there? You've come a really long way, all the way to Colorado, so you probably won't know any of the people we can call to come help you, but they'll be better able to help you than we can.

"Are you hungry? If you're hungry we can get you something to eat. It'll take a couple of hours for someone to get here, probably."

tenderfoot

She's grunting a little from effort, or maybe pain, though by now every single gunshot has healed. It's a bit awful, to think of how much steel now lives in her body. Maybe someday she'll be hardcore, she'll dig it out with her claws or find a kinfolk surgeon. Is it worth it? That depends on her. But right now she is healing, whole, and there are used bullets stuck inside of her.

Calden slowly lets himself down to the ground. Even crouched, even though she's curled up still, her head is above his. Every few words she misses one, loses the thread of what he's saying, but she tries to follow.

The truth is, they both have the blood of their tribes. They smell like rain and earth to her, and it is intrinsically comforting. Something about Calden seems wholly trustworthy, even before he put his rifle down. But Eva has a daughter who is nine. Eva knew, somehow, that she wants to shift but can't, she doesn't know how yet, these things just happen.

She doesn't attack when Calden comes closer. She slumps slightly, whimpering. They're going to help her change back to a girl. But she shakes her head to both of them: no one to call. No, she's never been to Williston. Maybe she didn't know until now that she'd run all the way to Colorado.

Eva asks if she's hungry. And then Jill moves. She lurches slightly towards the kinswoman, then stops, now kneeling on the ground, hunched over, drawing her hand-paws up to her face. She just... starts crying. Bent forward, brow almost on her knees, she just starts sobbing,

as her fur begins to recede. As something other than rage or fear or instinct pulls her away from the brink, back towards them. Towards rain and earth, things like 'friend' and 'cousins' and 'daughter', towards adults who are going to take care of her.

It turns out that Jill is actually tall for her age. She's lanky and angular, with mid-length brown hair. There is a thin white streak in the locks. She's dirty. Her skin is fair but it's positively packed with mud and dirt and bloodstains. She's tiny compared to both of them now, crying so hard.

Éva

"Come on, love." When Jill starts to cry, Éva at last puts her weapon away. Holsters it beneath her arm with only a small second thought and takes several half-steps forward, sinking to a low, crouch, the sort that humans often take with strange, distraught children and wary animals.

She is settled on her haunches, easily and thoughtlessly balanced and she half-stands and closes the distance to the girl as Jill slips into her girlskin.

"It's okay." A hand in Jill's filthy dark-brown hair, another on her shoulder, picking her up and turning her slowly and and steadily toward Éva's body. Murmuring, steady and quiet. "It's okay. It's okay. You did it, didn't you?

"We'll get you a bath, and some clean clothes, and a meal too. Calden was grilling steaks, but you can have anything you want. Popcorn or brownies or steak or a half-gallon of ice cream, the whole thing eaten straight with a spoon."

Calden

It is okay. She did do it. And as Eva gathers the girl up, Calden shrugs out of his vest and folds it over Jill's narrow shoulders. Sideways, because it's so large for her now that it just about wraps around her like a blanket this way, warm still from being on Calden's body.

"Come on," he says quietly, a hand on Eva's shoulder, another rubbing slowly and comfortingly on the girl's back. "Let's go inside. It's warm and we have a fire."

They rise together: two adults and a girl-wolf. Two adults carrying a girl-wolf, who would in any other setting be too old to be carried like this. What was it Eva had called it? A pre-teen, and therefore automatically the opposite of anything an adult might think.

Calden leaves his gun in the bed of the truck. At some point he'll have to come out and re-rack it, keep it from the elements. Not now, though. Right now, he opens the front door of that large, warm, rustic home of his, which smells like the salad dressing Eva used and the smoke-and-char scent of half-cooked steaks and burgers.

Paul is still on the phone. Clutching it white-knuckled. It's only been a few minutes. "It's all right," Calden tells him. "Tell them they can come in the morning. Or we can drive her down. Her name's Jill. She's eleven, and she's from North Dakota."

tenderfoot

Eva Illeshazy is nothing at all like Jill's mom. Jill's mom is in North Dakota. They are starting to wonder where their daughter is buried. It's been long enough that they should have gotten a ransom. They've been looking at everyone in the girl's life -- that's what you do when a child goes missing. Immediate family, extended family, family friends, teachers, coaches, people at church. Anyone and everyone who has access to the child, anyone and everyone who might be trusted enough that a child of age 11 would go willingly. Jill's mother and father, right now, are losing their minds. This is their nightmare.

Maybe if they knew that Calden and Eva were taking care of her, offering her popcorn or brownies or steak or ice cream, or anything she wants, they would pass out from sheer relief. Maybe one day they'll get to see her again, even if they can't know what she is. But Jill isn't thinking about that. She has no frame of reference for what her parents might be going through other than that one time she wasn't at the pick-up spot after soccer at the appointed time and her mom looked so pissed off, and she doesn't know that her mother's anger was actually panic.

All she really knows right now is that Eva is not like her mom at all, not with that leather blazer and that silky shirt and a gun, but there are common threads. The way she holds her, and pulls her in, and how she almost sounds proud of her for being able to make the change: you did it, didn't you? And the way she says bath, because moms do that, they always want you to be clean and they'll ask you if you washed your hands after you use the bathroom. Eva looks and feels and sounds and smells nothing like her own mom, but there is mothering there, and she sinks into it with ache and sorrow and desperate, desperate need; she has not had anyone mothering her for a long time now, and she is young enough that she needs it.

Calden does what dads do, even if he doesn't know it. He does what gentlemen do. He is out of that vest, which is going to be long on her, shearling-lined. He's going to make sure she's warm and she's covered up, because don't think for a second that Jill doesn't realize she's naked and there's a man right there, but he covers her up and rubs her back and when it's time for them all to get up, it's into Calden's arms that the girl goes. She's uncertain but that desperation is there, too: she is hiding from the world against the shoulder of someone stronger than her, someone who looks about as upset that she got hurt as she is.

They keep saying it's going to be okay. Neither of them have told her she did wrong. It's going to be okay.

Even if, god damn you Gaia, it's not ever going to be fair. She's eleven.

--

Inside, Paul is on the phone with one of the rangers from Forgotten Questions working a night shift. They've already got a guardian heading toward the ranger to talk to Eva and/or Calden. But Paul hesitates, and he nods, relaying what he does over the phone. When he hangs up, he looks at the girl, guilt and shame rocketing through his eyes. He shot a kid. He hasn't even told Calden yet about the one dead, two injured head of cattle out there on the pasture, not to mention how many are spooked beyond sanity, or how scared-angry the dogs were. Ian's got things under control now, but they still have a dead asset, two that might need to be shot,

none of which matters as much, right now, as the fact that he shot a kid.

He hangs up. He moves his eyes from Jill to Calden. "They said they're gonna send a couple of Guardians up here from Forgotten Questions. They won't barge in, but I think they want to stay nearby in case --"

his eyes flick at Jill, but he's conscious of her consciousness. He doesn't want to indicate that they're gonna be there, on the fringes of Calden's property, just in case this girl frenzies, just in case she loses control again. But the Guardians are wise, and the sept is old, and the White name is as known in these parts as the hospitality of Fianna is known all over the world: it will be better if they wait til morning. If they let the Fianna take care of her for tonight, feed her and house her and warm her and give her a safe place to rest, it will be better in the morning.

"I'm sorry," he says to the girl, to her back, because she is still slumped against Calden. "Jill --" he just learned her name. "I'm real sorry. I didn't know, I --"

She's tensing up, a soft sound in her exhale of breath that is almost a growl. She isn't looking at him. Paul backs off. He is still holding his shoulder. "I'm gonna see if Jimmy'll drive me out to the clinic," he says, a bit heavier. He excuses himself.

Jill relaxes again, inch by inch, saying quietly to Calden: "I wanna get down."

Calden

"If they're sending Guardians," Calden says, "might as well invite them in. I'm not gonna have people sleeping out in the cold like beggars. We can set a couple cots up in the study, and let Jill have the spare room. I just think it'll be better if she can get a good night's sleep."

Before. That's the word that's unspoken, and so is the rest of it. Before they take her down south. Before they keep her all but locked away in a Caern, cut off from her family, cut off from the rest of the world, while she learns. While they teach her what she is, and what that means, and why she was chosen, and all the other heavy, terrible, awful things that no eleven-year-old should ever have to learn. That no one should ever have to learn.

That's tomorrow. That's the future. Tonight: what is merciful in Calden wants to make tonight hot baths and ice cream and steak and a warm, soft bed.

Paul hangs up. His eyes are full of guilt and shame. Calden looks at him with compassion, but without urging Jill to accept that half-spoken apology.

"Go on," he says quietly. "I'm sure Jimmy'll drive you. Tell Ellie everything's all right and her mom'll be there soon."

--

Jill relaxes. She wants to get down. So Calden lets her down, keeping that vest wrapped sideways around her for warmth and modesty both. "How about I find you an old t-shirt of mine," he offers, "that you can wear like a big old nightie until we find something better? And then you can eat something. I bet you're starving."

Because: why else would she go after the cattle?

Éva

"You might take Ellie with you," to Paul. Éva's dark eyes are steady on him. She does not react to his guilt, and does not try to reassure him that all is alright. Not here and not now. Not in Jill's presence. "While we get Jill settled. If there's a line and it's taking a while I'll come down and pick her up."

--

"My daughter packed a dress for the weekend," Éva is telling Jill as they walk the girl back toward Calden's room to pick up one of his t-shirts. "You're taller than she is, but that shouldn't matter much with a dress, and I don't think that she will mind. Especially when she realizes we're all family.

"You can shower after dinner, and put on the dress then. Then you'll have it tomorrow to meet some more new people. That way you can feel like you look nice. If the dress doesn't work, we'll come up with something else. Okay?"

--

They do retrieve the t-shirt and then head back to the kitchen and by then Calden's cousins have loaded themselves into one of the trucks along with Ellie to head down to the clinic and Éva and Calden find themselves on the porch again, grilling steaks.

It hasn't been that long.

Their own dinner is forgotten. They pile food in front of Jill and watch her eat and do not finish the bottle of wine because there is a child in the house and she is a Garou and that would be foolish and they are not foolish.

After dinner: these familiar rituals. Bath and toothbrushing and Éva combing Jill's long hair carefully, to get the tangles out without making the girl cry.

And on and on. They put Jill to bed in a warm bed in her own room, which is far away from the room where Eva and her daughter are staying.

Oh the morrow, though -

tenderfoot

Jill has no earthly idea what a guardian is. Only that they are, as Calden and Eva claim, people who can help her. And 'guardians' doesn't sound scary, though she'll learn later that they are in fact quite frightening in some ways. A good night's sleep sounds good to her, though.

So does a hot bath. So does eating.

Eva decides that Ellie should go to the clinic, too. They'll have Highlights there, and crayons. A bit young for a nine-year-old but safer than being here, right now. Eva makes these decisions because she's the one in charge of Ellie's safety, Ellie's sanity. She trusts Jimmy and Paul. They'll get fresh shirts. They'll drive out to the rural clinic, get someone working the night shift to pop Paul's shoulder back into place. They aren't the types who will demand X-rays; this is the nature of living where they do.

It's Eva who will help Jill get changed into something more covering. Eva who will sit with her while she devours a whole steak and a burger and then, yes, some ice cream and maybe something salty like chips or popcorn. Eva who will make sure she has towels and so on and a fresh shirt to change into for bed after she takes a very long, very hot shower, who tells her not to scrub too hard at her skin to get the blood off, it'll come off, just be patient. Calden will make sure they find a nail brush so she can get the grime out from under her fingernails, too.

Calden will set up the cots and the spare room, waffling over a nightlight before he decides to plug one in and turn it on. Calden who finds a spare toothbrush for Jill, and Eva who combs her hair out after her bath while the girl sits silently, exhausted and well-fed and still terrified and sullen and very, very sad. It might be one of them, or both of them, who sit with her or stay nearby while she falls asleep. Calden who greets the guardians and tells them the cub is asleep, shows them where they can stay, offers them the same: hot showers, food, the hospitality they give because

they are all family, here.

No one sleeps very easily tonight. Not even Jill, who wakes at one point crying, muffling her sounds in her pillow, reciting to herself her house's phone number even though she knows she's not going to sneak out and call it. Jimmy and Paul come back, Paul in a temporary sling, Ellie asleep between them in the cab of the truck, Jimmy carrying her in to her mother. He admits they stopped at got burgers at some all-night drive-through. Says they let her get a small milkshake, too. Sounds very much like they were trying to make it up to her that the night didn't go as planned. Sounds a bit like they were trying to make it up to Jill, via Ellie.

Ellie is told quietly, half-awake between truck and bed with her mom for their sleepover-at-Calden's, that this other girl doesn't have any clothes of her own, and no: she doesn't mind. Not enough to argue. Ellie is not as young as most children her age are. Ellie is also a Shadow Lord, with the sharp eyes and keen mind that mark their tribe as much as warm hearts and open arms mark the Fianna.

--

In the morning, Jill is one of the last to wake. There's a dress for her to change into, which is not terribly girly, and two people who are not even remotely, slightly afraid of her sitting down with her in one of Calden's big rooms to start explaining to her

what she is,

and how she came to be.

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.