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.

Evergreen.

Éva Illésházy

(switching computers! BRB)

Erich

The deeper the snow piles in the mountains, the closer the tinyhouse moves to the center of Evergreen. At first Erich was sort of hesitant. It was almost like he expected the townspeople to light torches and form a storybook mob if they so much as got a whiff of a tinyhouse in their midst. As the weeks rolled into months and it became apparent that the citizens of Evergreen -- progressive, affluent, natural-living-inclined -- were charmed rather than alarmed, that they found the tinyhouse quaint and cute rather than unsettling and WTF GET THOSE HOBOS OUT OF HERE, he's gotten more comfortable parking it here and there in town.

Today it's parked in the lot of the closest thing Evergreen has to a suburban shopping center. There's a Chase bank here and a pet shop, a mani/pedi place and one of those tiny little computer repair shops you only ever seem to see out in suburbia anymore.

It also has a bookstore. It's called Hearthfire Books, and it is tiny and cozy and not very well-stocked by the decor is kind of mountain-rustic and there are a couple comfortable chairs in the back. There's no cafe, but they let you bring stuff in from outside, so Erich -- lounging sideways in one of the overstuffed armchairs in the back -- has a small cup of froyo from Menchie's balanced on his chest.

He's reading, perhaps with more than a little irony, a collection of werewolf short stories.

Éva Illésházy

Perhaps the hint of her breeding will alert him to her presence before she makes herself know. The supple hint of a storm somewhere beyond the horizon; the promise of rain against the roof or the back of the tongue. The hint of ozone that lingers where lightning has struck, or that warns of its coming.

She does not wear her lawyerskin tonight. The crisp dark suits that are both impeccable and unremarkable in the extreme, that blend into the finest woodwork bespeaking quiet wealth and absolute discretion. No, tonight Éva is dressed like any other fit suburban mother might be on a rainy Sunday evening - one who does not give a whit about football, at least.

No: instead a pair of fitted jeans over brown leather boots, which are well-worn and not quite knee-high, beneath cashmere sweater and a shearling coat, toggle-buttons open, a scarf woven loosely around her neck. Capture her from a particular angle, the high cut of her cheekbones is unmistakeable and slightly mysterious. Easy to remember, hard to forget. Compelling enough that it may take Erich a few moments for the rest of the picture to filter into focus: she is not alone. The sweep of her arm, downward, the curve of an elegant hand over a shoulder, a child's shoulder. The dark head tucked neatly against her body.

They are in the bookstore together, Éva and Ellie, whom Erich has never seen and never met. Returning home from the briefest look-in at one of her partners' famous Super Bowl parties. Enough that she could slip out shortly after kickoff to reward Ellie with a trip to the bookstore they spotted on their way into town. It is clear that she has noticed Erich and equally clear that the kinswoman is considering, with a quiet and serious care, whether she will approach him in the presence of her daughter.

The truth is, there is a long and quiet moment where she strongly considers slipping out the back door. Steering the girl away, walking at a quick, clipped pace through the bright, chill air toward the SUV and not looking back.

A moment later, she bends to murmur something into the child's ear, and begins to wind her way through the stacks.

They are not leaving. They are coming closer.

Erich

Most people in a bookstore on Superbowl Sunday -- especially one where the home team is playing -- probably doesn't give a whit about football. Looking at Erich, you'd think he'd give more than a whit. You'd think he probably played, at least as a second-string running back or something for one of the local universities. Rangy frame, lean athleticism; not to mention that corn-fed upper-midwest descendant-of-vikings look.

He is, however, reading a book about werewolves. And occasionally, when he remembers, eating spoonfuls of tart froyo with blueberries and kiwi and raspberries and mango. And just now, though he doesn't quite know why, looking up from his book and twisting around to peer over his shoulder and past the edge of the chair to see --

ah. So that's why. It's Eva, who for once doesn't look like a lawyer and instead looks like an affluent wife-and-mother; the sort of woman who goes to yoga and/or pilates and gets biweekly spa treatments and drives her kids to lacrosse practice not in a minivan but in a BMW SUV. Admit it, she probably has a BMW SUV, or has at least thought about getting one.

And! She is, in fact, escorting one of her kids. The eldest, though Erich either doesn't know this or has forgotten it. It is her kid though, they look enough alike that it's unmistakable, and while in predominantly-white upper-middle-class progressive-on-the-surface-but-actually-a-little-conservative-down-below Evergreen, CO it still might raise some mild eyebrows behind the scenes that Eva's kid is actually a tiny bit brown, it is ironically not something that would ping as unusual amongst the Nation. The Shadow Lords are known for being lords of the Caucasus and the Carpathian, but in more recent centuries they've gained a strong contingent from Iberia, from Central America.

All of which is to say: Erich probably thinks a Shadow Lord fathered Ellie. Not the same Shadow Lord that fathered the rest, because he does remember having a conversation about Eva's dead mate at some point, but yeah. A Shadow Lord. Unless Eva told him otherwise. But if she did he forgot so there.

He closes the book and swings his legs off the arm of the chair and sits up -- one hand catching the small cup of froyo as it begins to slide off his chest -- as mother-and-daughter approach. "Hey," he says, raising a friendly hello-hand. "What are you guys doing here? Wait, have I met you?" That's to Ellie. "Hey, I'm Erich." He glances down at this half-eaten froyo. "Want some froyo?"

Erich

[nevermind there was never a convo about deadmate! *strikes from record*]

Éva Illésházy

There is a distinctive - protective (call it what it is: ferocious) - wariness to Éva's frame as mother and daughter walk up to Erich. Éva's left hand is still on the girl's left shoulder, long fingers forward, her thumb braced behind the girl's trapezius. Ellie can sense both her mother's wariness and Erich's rage, the song of it such a counterpoint to his friendly hello-hand, his froyo and the sharing-of-it, his book-reading.

The girl glances up at her mother, watching her face for cues as Erich greets them. The gesture pulls her silken hair across the knuckles of her mother's fingers. Éva glances down at the solemn girl with a smile that offers a spare sort of reassurance, a wordless encouragement, then flicks her dark eyes back up to meet Erich's. "You've not met my children. This is Ellie, my eldest. Ellie, this is Erich. He is like Andraj, but a fuller moon.

"We made an appearance at a friend's Super Bowl party. She noticed the bookstore on our way in, and I promised Ellie that we'd stop in here on our way home.

"Since I used her bedtime to escape after the kickoff."

Ellie has not really responded to Erich's offer of froyo, except with a quiet shake of her dark head. He's hard for her to look at, so she's looking at the spine of his book instead, and it is the puzzlement of a werewolf reading a book about werewolves that finally inspires Ellie to speak.

" - do you like that book?"

Rather quietly.He is a monster after all. And a strange one.

Erich

In truth, there was a sort of watchfulness to Erich as well from the minute he saw Eva-and-kid enter and approach. He knows where they live, after all, and it is not up here -- though he knows also that the one time he went to Eva's house and stood at the gate and gave her some semibad news, he also told her he and his tinypack lived up here, and if things got thick down there, what with the Sept closing down and all, she should rent a vacation cabin up here.

So he thinks maybe that's what happened. Maybe things got thick down there, even though the Sept is open again now, and she's moved up here avec les bébés.

Except no. She explains: superbowl game. That watchfulness departs, his shoulders relax. He is formally introduced to Ellie, and he bobs his head in his best approximation of a polite nod, since he has a book in one hand and a cup of froyo in the other. Most of the fruit pieces are still in there. He's eating around them or doing his best to, swallowing one only when he can't resist the delicious fruity goodness anymore.

"Yeah, it's pretty funny," he says, which is a ridiculous thing for someone to say about a book of horror stories. "I mean there's even a story about urban werewolves that are like. DOGS. Like a were-Doberman and a were-Shiba and a were-Pomeranian. You wanna see it?"

Éva Illésházy

Ellie's eyes dart up to Erich's face; then down the spare physicality of his lean predator's frame. Then down again, to that book in his hand. Skepticism is written across the girl's face, the beat of a tension that Erich may remember from his childhood, bracing for and against the familiar-unfamiliar electric surge of rage against his skin. Garou who seemed so vivid and elemental it almost felt like he could see their wolves just - crawling and lunging beneath their skins.

The girl's cheeks are still soft and round, childlike. But somehow she manages to purse her mouth in a way that makes her look like a slightly elderly chipmunk as she fixes her attention on the book. Licking her lips unconsciously in her nervousness.

Reaches out for the book, and -

"That's not even scary. That just sounds dumb." Ellie proclaims of the story about urban werewolves. Dogs. A were-Pomeranian. "I'm reading Harry Potter."

Through it all, Éva watches them both. Like a fucking hawk.

Erich

Erich surrenders the book. He is gentle about it, just sort of holding the book out there for Ellie to grab instead of shoving it at her.

"Actually that story was a little scary. It was all about how these cuddly pets went berserk and chewed their owners' faces off and at the very end they all gather in a parking lot and turn into people that look just like the owners they killed and it turns out the weredogs are plotting to take over like pod-people. Oh wait, you probably haven't seen that movie."

He isn't sure he remembers what it was like, being her age and being around Garou. It obviously happened. His family could've been a pretty good werewolf story too. Midwesterner corn and wheat farmers WHO WERE ACTUALLY WOLVES, dun dun DUN. And he had aunts and uncles who wore the wolfskin beneath their manskin, who seemed to make the air crackle when they talked, who always sat at the head of the table if they came by to visit.

One of his aunts was this six foot tall blonde who wore cotton sundresses on Sundays in the summer and always had her hair in braids and she was always nice to Erich growing up, gave him a toy sword for his fifth birthday. One time she was hanging up laundry on a windy Sunday with her skirt blowing up and some dumb boys from the next town over started howling at her from their truck and she threw down the basket full of laundry and ran after them on foot, he'd never seen anyone run so fast in his life, she jumped on the running board as they were trying to gun it out of there and she reached in through the open window and knocked their heads together so hard Erich's mom had to take them to the E.R. in town for concussions.

So yeah, maybe he does remember what that was like. Those fierce, kinetic relatives with their eyes just a little too bright and their grins just a little too toothy. He closes his lips over his grin, remembering it, and shifts his attention from daughter to mother.

"Everything all right down in Denver? They reopened the Sept, did you hear? You didn't move to a cabin up here or something, did you?"

Éva Illésházy

Ellie holds the book rather doubtfully, her nose wrinkled, her serious eyes fixed on Erich as he unspools the story. Something hot in those eyes, these little flashes of it, when he notes how the were-Dogs chewed their owners' faces off. Then Ellie is looking down at the book in hand, holding it gingerly, still rather doubtful though now for entirely different reasons, frowning as if it might come to dangerous life in her hand.

--

"I did hear." Éva assures him, when he asks if she heard that they had reopened the Sept. There's a brief burst of humor beneath the tension written into her skin, as she reminds him, "I work in the building, remember?"

A brief arch to her brows, the slightest hint of challenge inherent in the expression.

Then she bends down to tell her daughter, "If you want to give Erich back his book, you can go browse. One new book for you. If you see something you think your brothers would like, we can get that too."

Straightening, " - so, no. I have not moved to a cabin up here. Things have been - " a brief, thoughtful pause, a chill of memory written around it " - remarkably quiet, all things considered."

Erich

"No I know you work in the building," Erich is slightly flustered, "but I just wasn't sure if, like. I dunno. Nevermind. Of course you knew, duh.

"You can hang on to that book if you want," Erich shifts back to Ellie for a second. "But if you'd rather go get another one that's cool too."

Either way, the girl does what she does. His eyes follow Eva as she straightens again. His grin is lopsided and a little awkward. "Well yeah. It's quiet if you mean no B.H. coming around throwing horror show parties. But uh, we actually went to go poke around at the airport the other night. Good news is it seems to have guardians of its own. Like a lot of the ... the decorations? Were actually kinda patrolling.

"Bad news is there's like this pit under the airport too. Or I think there is. There was all this scary fog and it was hard to see, but then there were all these things in the fog that weren't... actually... Wyrm? But they were scary and hungry and we almost got eaten. Literally. So maybe don't go into the basement of the airport if you need to fly somewhere."

Éva Illésházy

"Erich." It sounds like a warning; the way she says his name. Certainly, there is something arresting about it, the way she incises the word quiet neatly in between his flustered of course you knew, duh and his further explication of their venture into the basement of the airport. Something gentle behind her eyes in that moemnt, though. Startlingly so. "There is no of course. It does not matter that I knew, already. I might not have known the news.

"I appreciate that you thought to tell me."

With a clear and quiet gravity that almost - almost - sounds like an apology.

--

Ellie: dark eyes dart from Erich to the book and the book to Erich and in the end she gives him a decisive shake of her dark, gleaming head. "I don't want it. I'll find you a better book though. Have you ever read Harry Potter?"

And, the girl waits for his response, then slips away, with a fair amount of book shopping on her mind.

--

Leaving the adult Shadow Lords along again. Éva listens to Erich's story about the pit in the basement of the airport with a rather disturbing degree of equanimity. Head canted, her keys (to the BMW SUV) dangling thoughtlessly in her right hand, left hand free once Ellie has slipped away.

"I appreciate the warning," Éva tells him, eyeing him with a bit more care now, as if she were looking for injuries. Wounds. " - and I am glad you did not get eaten. Is there anything I can do?"

Erich

"I watched the movies," Erich replies to Ellie, which likely drops him a few notches in her esteem. Illiterate barbarian!

--

There were wounds. He almost got EATEN. There aren't any now, though, and even if there were they'd be hidden under his winter clothes.

"Maybe dig into this architect a little more if you get the chance? I mean why the hell does he keep building these doomtemples? Does he even realize he's doing it? Who's his muse? Stuff like that. I dunno. It's just weird as hell.

"I might bring Charlotte -- she's my packmate -- with me to take another look, too. Not at the monsters, I've had enough of that for now. But I wanna talk to those guardian spirits. I don't think we put them there. And they all look like stuff the humans put there. Paper airplanes sculptures and gargoyles and paintings and stuff. So ... I wanna know how they woke up, or who woke them up, and why they're helping us. And anything else they might know. I wanted to ask them that night, but we didn't have a Theurge in the group and I wasn't running the show anyway."

He thinks a little more. Then:

"You've been in Denver a long time, right? You remember the first time B.H. came around? Was there any... warning? Like say I wanted to keep an eye out for their return. Is there anything that'd ring alarm bells for you, other than, y'know. The usual massacres in the streets and people strung up like pinatas?"

Éva Illésházy

"I believe Lola and one of you discovered that one of the architect's long-time assistants had - some connection with the things. Indeed, seemed to be merely wearing rather than inhabiting human skin.

"I will track down what I can of his history; determine whether there is anything worth pursuing there; and pursue it if there is."

Then a slight grimace as Erich explains that he intends to return. She does not disagree with his plan and would perhaps not express it if she did. Their worlds are wholly different and she has little to offer him when it comes to awakened spirits, guarding the realm. The whole of it strikes her sometimes as the strangest sort of fantasy.

"Disappearances. For their rituals.

"The disappearances start before their rituals. Without warning and without pattern; they slip them rather seamlessly into the ordinary crimes of the city - but the rituals require murders and murders require men. Unfortunately," a brief, elegant curl of her shoulders. "I cannot think of anything else that might herald their coming."

Erich

"People disappearing in a big city," Erich says wryly. "Well, at least Denver's a pretty safe city, so stuff like that makes more of a splash than it probably would in like. Detroit.

"I'll try to keep an eye out, though. And uh. Y'know. Thanks for all the help. I'm glad you're with us."

It's awkward at best, this gratitude. He doesn't want to seem like he's praising her. Him: high school dropout, wanderer of the nation, occupant of a tinyhouse, member of a tinypack, praising a professional lawyer who probably contributes more to the Nation and the world at large in a year than he has in his whole life thus far.

A beat. "You wanna come visit the tinyhouse with Ellie while you're here? It's parked right in the lot."

Éva Illésházy

Éva shares a smirk with Erich as he remarks on people disappearing in the big city. Yes: the most absurd of signs and except: they have nothing else. Stll, that smirk, the curving gleam of it like a blade. Then she's glancing away, inhaling, aware of the awkwardness and listening to the shape of it in his mouth, glancing back with the merest of nods.

The tinyhouse.

Éva has no idea what it is; no particular personal desire to tour it, but a glance at her daughter wandering through the stacks, no less than four books in hand, which Éva will soon purchase at the old-fashioned register right by the front door.

"That would be lovely." Éva remarks, quietly, and they will wait a bit longer as Ellie shops, and Éva will indeed purchase all four books the girl has selected and Ellie will indeed hand one over to Erich, all grave, and it will be the first Harry Potter novel so enjoy! Erich.

The duo, mother and daughter, follow him out of the bookstore to the tinyhouse in the parking lot, and so it goes.

Erich

So out to the parking lot they go, and indeed, the tinyhouse is parked there. Eva, despite not knowing what a tinyhouse might be, couldn't possibly mistake it for anything else: it is, in fact, a tiny house. A tiny wooden house with a tiny wooden porch mounted on a not-so-tiny trailer hitched to a not-so-tiny truck. Which is bumblebee yellow, and racing-striped.

Erich is very excited to have visitors. They're actually the first visitors, come to think of it, since Ingrid spent a few minutes here. He takes them on a tour of the outside first, pointing out all the awesome stuff like the freshwater tank and the greywater tank and ew that's the sewage tank, don't unscrew that cap YOU WILL REGRET IT. And here are the windows, and there are the windows in the dormers, and look: more windows in the nooks over front and back, and also skylights.

Then the porch, with its stairs that fold up into a sort of gate; with its tiny little chairs that latch onto the rails when they're on the move. Then the narrow door in, and finally they are inside, and Erich shows them the tiny couch and the fold-out tiny table and the counter and the tiny sink and the tiny oven and the tiny stove and the tiny refrigerator from which Ellie gets a juice-box and everything, everything is tiny. There are windowboxes full of herbs and vegetables; they are inside these days because it is too cold for them outside, but when spring comes they will be hung outside the window again where they belong. There is a tiny fireplace, which is really just a glorified heater with a tiny gas flame. Then there is a tiny bathroom, into which is crammed -- miraculously -- a shower and a sink and a toilet.

He doesn't show them Charlotte's room, though he points the door out. He doesn't show them Melantha's nook, though he points the curtain out. He does show them his own nook, picking Ellie up and hoisting her up so she can crawl around and put his brand-new copy of Harry Potter by his pillow. He moves the ladder over so she can come back down, and then

they're sort of out of things to look at, and anyway it's getting late, and Eva is starting to steer the conversation toward a goodbye and Erich says he's going to drive the tinyhouse back to main street anyway, because that's where it usually is.

So they part at the porch. Erich waves goodbye with his other hand tucked into his jean pocket. He tells them to come again. He tells Eva that he's serious,

they should totally come again,

they're tribemates, and he really doesn't hang out with his tribe enough. And later, as they are getting into Eva's BMW SUV or similar, they have the privilege of seeing one of the more bizarre and charming sights available in Evergreen:

the tinyhouse, towed behind Erich's yellowtruck, bumping its way out of the lot with the lights still warmly aglow from inside its many windows.

Lines

Avery Chase

[evens = eva, odds = avery!]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Éva Illésházy

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

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

Avery Chase

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

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

hiding, quite well, how insecure Eva makes her.

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avery Chase

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

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

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

SOUP OF THE DAY: WHISKEY

COFFEE OF THE DAY: WHISKEY

TEA OF THE DAY: WHISKEY

DRINK OF THE DAY: WHISKEY

JUICE OF THE DAY: WHISKEY

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

Avery Chase

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

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

walk right out of the gallery.

--

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

--

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

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

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

Avery Chase

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

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

--

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

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

Avery Chase

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

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

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

Avery Chase

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

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

--

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

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

Avery Chase

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

---

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

Wry.

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

Avery Chase

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

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

Avery Chase

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

Once, Éva opens her mouth to reply.

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

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

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

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

"Do you mind if I share a confidence?"

Avery Chase

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

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

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

"What else can I give them, of him?

"What else can I give him, of them?

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

"And anyway: you are."

Avery Chase

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

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

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

Avery Chase

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

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

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

They drink.

--

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

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

Avery Chase

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

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

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

They drink.

--

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

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

Lola

Calden White

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

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

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

Lola Hawkes

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

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

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

Want to go to the rodeo? Sure.

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

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

Calden White

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

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

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

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

Lola Hawkes

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

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

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

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

Calden White

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

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

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

Lola Hawkes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

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

--

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

Calden White

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

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

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

Lola Hawkes

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

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

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

That she will catch up.

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

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

Calden White

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

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

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

Lola Hawkes

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

Calden White

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

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

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

Lola Hawkes

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

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

Calden White

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

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

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

Lola Hawkes

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

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

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

She then added:

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

Éva Illésházy

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

"Everything else, though."

--

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

For the milk.

This time, though. "Ahh."

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

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

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

Calden White

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lola Hawkes

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

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

And Lola says she was just lookin' out.

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

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

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

Lola Hawkes

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

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

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

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

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

Calden White

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

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

when

Lola

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

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

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

Turns back to Eva.

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

Calden White

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

Éva Illésházy

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

"You do regret them after.

"Just not for long."

Calden White

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

"But, sometimes, even after."

Calden White

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

"Can I ask why?"

Éva Illésházy

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

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

And yet,

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

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

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

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

"And then another nine.

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

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

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

"And this is what you live with.

"And usually, that's enough."

Calden White

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

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

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

--

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

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

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

Éva Illésházy

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

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

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

"Perhaps sooner than you think. Excuse me."

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