Curling Smoke - 9.25.2013 [Hector]

Lola Hawkes

A week and a half has passed since the floods, the fights, and the reconciling.  Since Lola and Hector became an item.  Between then and now, he has made the habit of sticking around the territory, because the City didn't need them so much anymore, and because he had a Kinswoman and bed to keep him warm at night these days.  The yard space at the back of the house had been transformed, posts and a fence put up and the earth turned and churned to create a considerably sized garden.  Lola explained that she didn't want to have to run into the suburban grocery stores nearly as frequently anymore, so she would make what she could off the land instead.  She was going to look into what seeds you were supposed to plant in the autumn in order to harvest the next year.

The rains had continued, off and on again, and today was another cold, wet, windy day.  The Roxborough State Park had just officially been reopened to the public that day, although not all trails were accessable at this time.  The flood waters at the dip of the road leading out to The Homestead hadn't had a chance to recede entirely yet, so Lola hasn't traveled off the property in some time.  She's simply stuck to her patrols, worked on clearing the land as well as she could after the flood waters had ripped through the area, and worked on her garden project.

It was a simple life, and she seemed relatively content with it.

That would only last for so long, though, because she would soon be itching for news of the War.

Tonight Hector had come back from whatever business he had been attending to, and Lola suggested that they go hang out on the porch.  Which was code for Let's get high.

And they did.  Fast-forward to them on the porch together, in the pair of wooden rocking chairs with the small table between them.  The mason jar that hosted her modest kit of pipe, grinder, and stash was open on that table, and the pipe was being passed back to Hector after Lola's first pull.  When the little glass pipe was relinquished from her possession, she leaned back in the chair, holding the smoke in her lungs for a dozen seconds before letting it out in a dense plume of white.  She tucked her hands into the stomach pocket of the hoodie she was wearing and rocked herself lightly with the toe of her boot.

"I saw Erich today," she commented, initiating the conversation.  "He said that his Kinswoman, that older severe looking lady from last time, that she has news that we all need to hear.  He's called a Warmoot, and it's this Friday evening."

Hector Ghosh

Before he started spending his nights here in Lola's bed the Galliard could not truthfully claim to have a schedule. If anything he had adapted to life in the city without a safe place to crash and was used to bouncing from public place to public place and moving whenever someone caught him filching unattended food or sleeping someplace he shouldn't have been. The university library was a fabulous place to live because no one noticed if he fell asleep. Students fell asleep in the middle of reading all the time.

No chain restaurants or massive hotels or 24-hour university libraries out here by the park and no need for them anyway. For the first several days his nerves jangled for the fullness of the moon and then came the Moot and the waning of it and he seemed to have an easier time adhering to her schedule. It meant abandoning the urban primitive aesthetic to which he was not accustomed nor was he fond.

He showers every day now. Sometimes twice a day. Hasn't shaved his face but he also isn't burning through his Rage just to keep himself calm. Doesn't smell like dried sweat and old blood half the time she sees him anymore. This arrangement turned out to be a vast improvement for him.

They're sat out on the porch and the weather is crummy but he's not wearing anything on his feet. Has on a pair of jeans she hasn't seen before and several layers to keep out the chill. The blazer he's wearing as a jacket is wrinkled to Hell and back but it looks warm.

He accepts the pipe when it comes to him and he watches her face as she speaks of running into Erich at the Sept. Draws that first hit into his mouth and sucks it back up through his nostrils. Muscle memory and a private joke. She'd teased him for that trick once. He takes a second deeper hit before he passes it back. He knows her tolerance is lower than his.

"Maybe she's got more information than the Elders have. They shut us down--" Us. The Fosterns and Cliaths. "--when we brought up scouting for Beloved Horror at the Moot. They're starting to act just as weird as the Cold Crescent Elders did, man, you wanna hear a story?"

Does she wanna hear a story. Is water wet?

"Okay, so check it: last-last Moot the Master of Rites from Forgotten Questions was all THEY HAVE FAILED THEY WILL BE DEALT WITH about the Guardians at the Spire Sept, right? And everybody was like HOLY SHIT? So--" He starts ticking off with his fingers. "--the Master of Rites, the Keeper of the Land, and this old-old Gaian Athro go missing. So Keisha and Erich go to talk to these two Forgotten Questions Warders who are hanging around the Broadway building. Just out of curiosity, where'd they go, a little transparency would be nice, you know."

Sigh. Huge hit off the pipe.

"None of our business."

Lola Hawkes

"Huh."

This is all that he gets as a reaction from Lola when he tells the story of what's going on at Cold Crescent.  High ranking members of the Sept were going missing, because at the last Moot at Forgotten Questions, the Rural Elders had roared their outrage and insisted that where Cold Crescent had failed, it would be addressed and 'dealt with'.  Naturally, Lola doesn't seem shocked or bothered by this.  As a matter of fact, when she finally went on to comment, she confirmed her support.

"Well, they fucked up."  This was stated simply, matter-of-fact in tone and delivery alike.  "Someone gets knowingly kidnapped by a Black Spiral Dancer pack, and then when he shows up out of nowhere no one's suspicious enough to really look into the matter?  They just let him back in, put him in a sick bed and go about their day just glad that his face returned?  They did that to themselves, it was a rookie mistake and everyone suffered for it."  She reached across, accepted the pipe and lighter, but simply cradled it in her hand for the moment, not rushing forward to the next hit and instead choosing to gauge where the first one got her.

"I will say, though, I don't approve of the cloak-and-dagger method to remedying the situation that they're taking.  If you're gonna punish someone for their failings, it should be public.  There should be a ceremony, everyone should gather round and see their shame and shortcomings and learn from that shit."  Her nostrils flared in a moment of anger, but that anger didn't go too far.  "Wish I could say that going and talking to those Warders would do any good, but I'll tell ya know it won't.  They aren't listening to those two-- Keisha and Erich, so there's no reason they'd listen to you or me."

Her thumb tapped thoughtfully against the curved glass in her hand, and she resumed that slow toe-driven rock in her chair.

"Has anyone gone looking for the Council members that went missing?  Like, scoped out Forgotten Questions and its territory to see if they're in holding someplace there?"

Hector Ghosh

"It'd be hard to pull off without drawing mad attention to yourself."

The edge that's with him all the time now that he does nothing to dampen his nature has softened with the cannabis and Hector sits back in his chair. Still watchful for the gloom hung over everything with the temperature dropping rapid from the height it attained during the day. Not a fog so much as a humidity in the air born of all the water leaving the land sodden so long after the torrential rains moved on.

"You know? They've got all these rites going to tell if somebody's someplace they aren't supposed to be and even if we did find where they're holding them..."

He's staring off into the distance as if he can see the heart of the Caern from where they sit. In his mind he can. The minds of those whose memories hold tight to places and people and the collision of them in time threaten to let them spill forth without warning but Hector finds solace in knowing once he's told a story that it passes on to others as if they themselves were there. As - if - he ages he will learn to tell the tales of comrades fallen in his presence without letting his grief swarm him each time he thinks of it.

"I wouldn't be surprised if they took them out back and shot them."

Lola Hawkes

"That's a good point."

She said, apparently to most of what Hector had to say.  For a moment they sat, quiet on the porch, watching the sky go gray and the world go damp, looking off toward the Caern together.  If they were humans, this could be a window fifty years into the future -- an old and gray couple, rocking together on the front porch of their rural home, watching the weather and days go by.

They weren't human, though, even if Lola was some close approximation to that.  She may have the opportunity to grow old and gray (although at her pace, it seemed unlikely, she had too much War in her heart and charged forth into battles unquestioningly far too often), but Hector certainly would not.  He was a Garou, and he was probably going to burn out young.  Lola's mother had survived into her fifties, but that age was the human equivalent of being in your mid nineties.  It happened, but not very often.  If they were fortunate, and if Hector was some perfect balance of smart and lucky both, he might get to be middle-aged one day.

For now, though, they're both in their early twenties not questioning what the next decade will bring for them.  Lola finally lifts the pipe and snaps life from the lighter.

In.  Hold.  Out.

Through the plume of smoke, from unpainted lips and white teeth, she said:

"I wouldn't be too shocked if they were executed either.  It was a big fuck-up.  But that's a hell of a waste of manpower.  I mean, every Garou's precious, right?  Numbers keep falling, need to repopulate..."  She gestured with a 'so-on-and-so-forth' twirl of her hand and set the pipe and lighter both back down on the table.  "If we're just taking high-ranked Garou to the chopping block behind closed doors.... That's a problem.  I support Forgotten Questions, it's my Sept, but if it turns out that's what they're really up to then there's gonna be trouble-- like, a big political shit-storm and the possibility of an uprising.

"I sure as hell hope it doesn't hit that point, though.  That shit sounds exhausting."

Hector Ghosh

The only task more difficult for a Galliard than memorizing the entirety of the Silver Record is surviving to the age of 75. If not for the war and the Glory come from living so long there is the weight and the burden of memory. Given that he has four years beneath his belt and was fostered by an Athro of dubious sanity and been to places not only in this world but in the Umbra that he can only attempt to describe to others and has not yet called upon his Rage to save him the odds are good that he may at least live long enough to see 25.

But Hector doesn't think that far ahead. Consequences are not anything he ever really bothers himself with. Lola knows if he isn't impulsive then he is at least intelligent enough to skate by when his ability to control his mouth or his hands fail him. Doesn't bother with consequences and doesn't bother with goals. It didn't occur to him until recently that he ought to start thinking of himself as leading a pack and not just keeping the seat warm for when it's alpha came back.

It would be nice to imagine a future where they could while away their twilight years sat out here knowing that the land would survive for Lola had descendants to care for it but Hector still wakes up with the sun some mornings and an arm draped over her hip or his head on her chest as if he's surprised to find himself in bed with her. Like he's waiting for her to regain her senses and kick him back into the other room. The joked-about grandchildren may yet be a reality but his sustained presence in Lola's life is not at all assured. Never earned a scar but that doesn't mean he's invincible.

That shit sounds exhausting.

"My mentor's pack had a Philodox in it," he says. Looks over at her now that the pipe is back on the table and reaches out to run his fingers through her hair like to draw strength from her as he tells whatever story he's about to tell. "Fostern, name was Broken Dawn. Dude hated getting stuck with cub-sitting duty but deep down he totally thought I was going to grow up and be a huge badass. Woke me up when it was still dark one morning all--" His voice goes drawling gravel, pitched like one who grew up speaking the Navajo tongue. "--'Get up, whelp, today you see what happens to traitors.'" Drops the voice. "I'm seventeen, just failed my first Rite of Passage, don't know what the hell's going on, and here's Broken Dawn's hauling me through the Caern at the Sept of the Painted Sands just about by the arm. He tried explaining the rite to me before we got there but that didn't do any good."

His ring-heavy hand leaves Lola's hair so he can pick up the pipe. Tamps down the ashes atop the buried grass but doesn't light it yet.

"Anyway, we rock up to this scarred patch of rock in the heart of the Caern. Whole Sept's just standing around like they're at a funeral or something. My mentor, Blood-on-the-Leaves, was the Sept's ritesmaster. He and four other Garou have this Adren trickster chained up and they're just dragging him along. They get him to the middle of this gnarly-looking rock and Blood-on-the-Leaves opens his own palm up with this arrowhead and starts reciting all the things this poor bastard did."

Here he lights the pipe and takes a killing drag off of it. Holds onto the smoke until he's sure he's got the image down right and then he lets go the breath.

"Apparently he'd been seduced by a Black Spiral Dancer. Like it wasn't bad enough that he was a Charach. Gave away the Sept's position to her Hive. Don't know what that was supposed to accomplish but her entire pack was wiped out and here he was. And Blood-on-the-Leaves was telling the whole story only he was... crying and screaming it at him, and smearing his blood all over the trickster's face while he was doing it, and the blood and his tears were dropping onto the rock, and I don't know exactly what happened but the rock started cutting him. Wasn't just the rock. When they let go of the chains so he could run the other four chased after him in their war forms and you could just see the sand and the desert grass eating up his feet. He ended up falling down not that far away and just..."

Hector blows out a breath and runs his hand down his face and comes back to the present.

"It is exhausting. Maybe they'll end up having a public punishment rite later and they're just keeping them for now. I really don't know."

Lola Hawkes

While she didn't expect that the day would come soon that she or Hector would decide they were finished sharing a bed, that didn't mean that Lola wasn't just a little surprised each morning when she'd wake up with Hector wrapped about her with an arm keeping her close, or resting at her side with his head on her chest and her arm about his shoulders.  The surprise was a pleasant thing, rest assured, but she would feel the occasional twinge of uncertainty.  Having someone around to touch, to relax with, to share a bed and your body with... this was all foreign to Lola, and it felt too good to be true.  Oh sure, she knew there was nothing wrong with it.  They were from the same tribe and everything, so they didn't even need to worry about tiptoeing around age-old issues of tribal possession.  For a change of pace, a Kinfolk and Garou were doing what they were supposed to do.

But when he would wake and greet her with a squeeze, and when she would watch him stretch his way into consciousness and rise from her bed, uncertainty would be pushed aside.

Why be so hung up what was down the road?  Their people lived in the fast lane anyways.

Hector had a story to tell, and he reached over to touch her hair, which was left down to hang about her back and shoulders as it so often was.  Lola flashed a brief smile to him and her chin lifted, angled to answer the affectionate touch, but relaxed and settled into her chair to hear the story he had to tell.  When his hand leaves her hair, after fingers ran through it until that portion was smooth and tangle-free, she brought the heels of her boots up onto the very edge of her chair and wrapped her arms around her knees.  This pulled her legs to her torso and helped to keep warm and comfortable while breathing the crisp, damp autumn air.

When he finished, she was bobbing her head a little to keep enough momentum for her chair to rock.  This was a thoughtless motion, she was staring out to their left and into the distance of her property.  Though her eyes suggested she had gone elsewhere, the fact that she issued a low, impressed whistle confirmed that she'd been listening.

"That's fucked up.  But then, so is betraying your Caern to a Black Spiral Dancing piece of ass, so..."  And she shrugged.  The story was impressive, the rite sounded like it would have been horrific to witness, but she wouldn't show sympathy to Hector for having been forced to see it.  Things like this built Garou into what they are, and she would never wish experience away from one of them.

"That's just the problem, though, isn't it?  No one really knows.  I don't think it's the fact that punishment's being dealt that's bothering people-- it's the secrecy behind it that makes it worse.  I'm certain that the Forgotten Questions elders have their reasons...," and her nose and between her eyebrows scrunched up in displeasure for what she confessed next, "...I just don't trust that they're good reasons."

Hector Ghosh

And she knows by now that Hector does not want nor would he know how to react to sympathy. Every experience he has becomes an adventure by virtue of the fact that it becomes a fantastic story by the time he's done with it. Told right he could make the death of his pack sound amazing. They fell taking down two Banes that aimed to latch onto Garou hosts and drag them down into a fate worse than death. Nothing more honorable or true than that.

He was young and had not yet proven himself but Lola can glean from his telling of the story, imperfect as it is, that it shaped him. It spoke of the level of immersion he experienced in a culture foreign to him. Four years ago he was failing out of high school because his personality took a hard turn left and his parents and his teachers and his friends lost their grip on him.

Now he belongs to a world that reveres his Rage and makes use of his energy and his propensity for showmanship. He sits next to a kinswoman who loves him and the land is safe and he is hazy but not stupid. Nothing in this life now that he would exchange for anything in his past occurring differently.

She doesn't trust that the reasons the elders have for withholding their actions are good reasons. Hector has since set down the spent glass pipe and the light. His hand is free and he reaches out to run it up the back of her hand, up her forearm, up up to her shoulder and then back down again. Loose grip on her wrist that she might take his hand if she wants to turn her palm towards his.

"Maybe it's not as bad as all that. You know? Like maybe the lawgivers are working them over so they can figure out what to do. That stuff takes time. It'll be alright. If we can't trust the people guarding the Caern we've got a huge problem." A beat. "Wow, I'm stoned. That made no sense."

Lola Hawkes

His hand ran up her arm and back down again to rest at her wrist, and it's not surprising to find that she endorses the end goal.  Her fingers lace through his and turn his arm so that the back of his hand is facing the table, the back of hers pointed upward.  Her other hand reached back to tug the hood of her sweater up over her head, and immediately retreated into the pocket at her stomach.

He voiced a thought, then contradicted it by saying he made no sense.  Lola laughed, more than she would have were she sober, certainly, but did not burst into uncontrollable giggles.  Lola preferred to know where her stopping point was and stick to that-- flying too high through the night wasn't something that happened often with her.

"I think it made sense.  I'm just hoping that you're right, and that we don't have a huge problem on our hands after all.  Y'know, as if Beloved Horror isn't bad enough on its own."

She's content to be quiet with him for a minute or two.  Her rocking slowed, legs fell back away from her torso and feet found the floor once more.  The night somehow found a way to grow colder within that time, as the wind kicked up and shifted directions so it was blowing at them from their right side, promising to carry more damp weather to the land through the evening hours.

"....Wanna wrap this up out here and come inside with me to fix dinner?"

Hector Ghosh

When Lola laughs he grins slow and humbly pleased with himself and squeezes her hand for the chill he finds in it. Packed so long as he was with tricksters his sense of humor has remained an attribute near as strong as his combat prowess but he still seems relieved to find he can make her laugh. So many of their conversations hinge on heavy things and that is unlikely to change. Nothing they can do about it either. Balance in the universe hinges on the Triat and so long as they fight to keep the Wyrm at bay their conversations will go like that.

But she heard the truth in the midst of his consciousness stream. As much as he knows and as much as he has seen in his life Lola knows the Nation and the potential depth of their betrayal better than he can. She has heard more stories and seen the workings of the Sept from a different and more difficult angle. He trusts her and he trusts her judgment and he trusts her input.

The wind picks up and Hector does not react to it but Lola is hunkered down inside her sweatshirt. She hasn't got Rage to burn against the chill.

"Yes," he says to fixing dinner. Unintentional enthusiasm from someone with a fast metabolism and no natural defenses against the munchies. He picks up the pipe without letting go her hand and shakes it out over the edge of the porch. Pockets it so he can properly clean it out inside and follows her inside. "I could eat an entire cow right now."

And it must be a sign of some semblance of peace with his past and the losses he's suffered one stacked atop the other but he does not joke about his parents as he used to as a younger Galliard. No point bringing them up when they're as far gone from him in California as Willow or Glen in their own separate Homelands, as Corey gone back to Houston. The impulse doesn't even come to him with her fingers entwined with his and the Sept of Forgotten Questions so near and food and shelter under the roof. His surviving packsister and their new packbrother a shout away through their totem.

Hector does what he can to help in the kitchen. Possessing of knowledge and technical skill but now amused by everything and moving slow and distracted by her hips and her hair. Easily distracted by something to chop or something to stir or something to sauté on the stove. At the end of the night when they've cleaned and washed up and the rain has started pouring down again he waits until she's climbed between the sheets before he sheds his human clothes and then he cuts the light and follows her.

Their lives are so short and uncertain. If never comes the morning when they awaken close to each other and feel comfort instead of relief or surprise then that's just as well. They still have the nights before all the mornings they don't.