Lola Hawkes
Today was a good day, for the most part.
Lola
threw up for the first time in two years, though, and that was
disheartening. It happened when she was driving back to The Homestead
after running an errand out into the suburbs. She had to pull over on
the side of the road to empty her stomach into the ditch. It came out
of nowhere, but she felt fine after driving for another five minutes so
she thought nothing of it and continued her day as normal.
Hector
has been home for the past hour or so. They've had enough time to fix
together some leftovers from mutual cooking endeavors into a plate that
you could call a full meal and eat that for dinner.
Now, post
dinner, they sit outside as has become customary when one or the other
suggests that they get high. It's too cold to rock comfortably in the
chairs on the front porch, though, so Lola has kicked up a fire in a pit
that was dug out and enforced with stone floors and walls a dozen or so
years ago by Lola and Maria's father. It's the same pit that they used
to hang around as a pack when they came back to visit.
Lola sits
on one of the two chairs they pulled down from the iron-wrought patio
set on the back porch. She's wrapped up in layers of
camisole-shirt-sweater and has a blanket over her shoulders for good
measure as well. She's waiting for Hector to finish with the first hit
(green-zos for Hector), and commenting toward the moon hanging nigh-full
and fat in the clear night's sky.
"It's gonna be about time to
put chains on the truck tires, otherwise the rust bucket isn't gonna be
able to make it off the property... The cold fell earlier this year
than usual."
Hector Ghosh
It's hard for him to sit
beside the pit without his pack. A lot of things are hard for him when
his moon gets like this. She knows he has been out of control in the
past. Met him for the first time fresh out of his Rite of Passage when
he was still young and angry and hadn't learned how to handle the Rage
inside of him. Willow soothed him and Glen and Maria kept him from
flaring up too hot and by the time the three of them died one and then
the other two so close together Corey hadn't had time to recover from
the first blow before the second one staggered him -
Time passes.
He's accepting this. But it's still his moon overhead and tomorrow will
be the full and she can read the tension in his lean frame as they sit
and smoke. The pot will mellow him. Hector had already run and killed
and sated the monster that lives beneath his skin earlier but soon as he
catches that first glimpse of Luna through the clouds tonight it's all
over. He's going to well right back up again.
Despite the memories flickering at him through the fire he laughs at her assessment of the season.
"When
Tamsin and I first got here," he says, takes a second hit off the pipe
and passes it to her. Blows out the smoke and coughs for the cold come
into his lungs. "In June. I couldn't believe how hot it was. Hella hot.
Now it's snowing. These really are the End Times."
Lola Hawkes
"Well, between now and then there's been the Fires followed up by the Floods, so...."
The
Kinswoman shrugged her shoulders and leaned into the space between
their chairs, accepting the pipe and lighter as they were passed to
her. "Plus, there's the fact that it was June then and it's not weird
for it to be hot in June. And it's October now."
The lighter
flicked, a miniature flame burst into the air to pale in comparison to
the one burning full and healthy in the pit, and she directed that
mini-fire to the bowl. Her breath was held for a time, as was her
sentence. When the smoke did leave her, it was in a plume that was
stark against the cool night air.
"It snowed pretty early, but I'm
sure there's been years where it was sooner. Either way...." She
glanced down at the pipe and poked at the contents with the fingernail
of her pinky finger, attempting to stir it up and make things less
tightly packed, easier to pull through. Ash would get on the knees of
her pants, but she hardly seemed to mind. "Gonna have to get the
vehicles ready. The snow makes the patrols a pain in the ass-- I need
to switch between snow shoes and the four wheeler when it's deep enough.
"But,
it might be end times. The Spire Sept is crumbling at its base,
because monsters eat its roots." There's another pause, enough for her
to take a second, smaller hit before passing the pipe back.
Hold. Breathe out slow.
"That
Reese guy should be getting back to me with what he finds out about
that Fentress fucker. If all goes well, tomorrow I'll be headed into
town to follow up on whatever it is he finds out."
Hector Ghosh
If
he knew anything about vehicles or what the hell she's talking about
when she says she has to put chains on the ATV Hector would have all but
knocked her over offering to help. In the morning when the sky has not
mystically cleared and given them back the warm weather more southerly
areas enjoy he will offer to help her that he might learn to perform
helpful tasks that don't involve chopping wood or swinging a hammer.
Cooking occasionally.
She'd gotten along just fine without him but
to deny that their lives are easier together would be a lie and he
still struggles with lying.
The pipe comes back to him and he sits
a moment to let the chemicals suffuse his system. Looks at her huddled
beneath the blanket and takes in her profile and nods when she shapes
tomorrow.
"I had a feeling that was going to happen." He stands
from his chair and then realizes he's still holding the bowl and sits
back down. "When we go back inside, I've got something for you." Points
at her with the hand holding the lighter. "Don't let me forget."
He takes another hit off the pipe.
Lola Hawkes
He
says that he has something for her inside, and her mentioning
tomorrow's agenda reminded him. With a pointing finger, he told her not
to let him forget. This is answered with a wry smirk that pulls one
side of her mouth but lets the other be. Both eyebrows raise at him,
though, instead of just one. This helps the expression to look less
like she's suffered a stroke.
"I'l do my best." They were passing that pipe back and forth, after all.
Her
profile hasn't changed, not like other parts have. The weight gain
seems to have levelled out for the time being-- she isn't gaining weight
in her arms, legs, face or belly at all. What she did put on stayed
centered around the pelvis and the chest. Her face, though, still
carried the same defined nose line (softened and rounded at the bottom
so the severity didn't bleed down from the bridge, this the result of
mixing a race with strong faces with a race that tended toward rounder
features) and expressive eyebrows and hard jaw that only softened when
she was coaxed into letting it, or made to forget about being a hardass
by default.
Lola shuffled the big green blanket around her
shoulders, closed it more securely in front of her gray sweatshirt, and
leaned back in her chair to let her head rest back and eyes land on the
stars.
"....What've you got for me, though?"
If he said something corny like 'this dick', heaven help him.
Hector Ghosh
"So impatient..."
This
isn't news. What counts as news for Hector he can tick off on one hand.
His woman's weight gain was not news. It hardly amounted to more than
some added padding about her hips and chest that he wouldn't have known
was new or not for his lack of familiarity with her body before last
month.
He'd been careful not to ogle her even though other people have been catching him staring at her since he was a teenager.
A
big-big drag off of the pipe and he blows the smoke out his nostrils
like he's impersonating a bull. With his hood pulled up and the army
jacket on top of the sweatshirt and a stolid expression on a face that
is kind in healthy light he looks like he's preparing to declare war on
winter.
"Stuff that's gonna help you. I have to explain how to use it. You wanna go in now?"
Lola Hawkes
He
calls her impatient and drags a big, deep pull from the pipe only to
blow the smoke from his nostrils. Lola tried to emulate that trick once
about two years ago, but wound up in a coughing, sneezing fit that left
her eyes watering and her calling it a night, all full of embarassment
and a headache from the coughing. She hasn't tried since, decided it
wasn't worth building up the resistance, and instead is content to just
watch Hector look like a minotaur.
At this rate it'll be a while
before either of them figure out the reason Lola threw up today, why she
was more willing to comply with the eating habits that Hector carried
over from his human life. Perhaps two weeks, perhaps six. Maybe it
would take as long as it would for Lola to feel a stir in her stomach
and notice that her pants fit differently. Maybe she would spend enough
time with someone else, someone Not Hector, that this would be pointed
out for her.
Tonight, though, neither worries. Hector had a gift
to help her for tomorrow, and wanted to know if she was ready to go
inside and see it so he could explain to her how it's used. Lola made a
low 'Hmmm' noise in her throat, then rolled her skull where it rested
against the back of her chair so she could point her face to the sky
again. Her nose and cheeks were flushed with the cool air, but the fire
was warm and fended off the real bitterness of the night just fine.
"Nah.
The fire's got plenty of burn left in it still, anyways. We should
probably stop stoking it, though, and let it start dying down." Not
because either of them had a bedtime, or because they had alarms set for
the morning. Lola tended to wake earlier, but Hector was in the habit
of following her out of bed because the mattress wasn't nearly the same
without Lola's weight denting it in on one side (almost always the left
side of the bed, by the way-- they're falling into a pattern of who gets
which side of the bed at night).
"I think they're saddling me
with that new Glass Walker, though. They probably wouldn't want to send
a wild wolf like me in on a city search without one Urrah or another,
I'd imagine." She doesn't sound very giddy at the idea. But then, when
has she ever been excited to pal around with Glass Walkers?
Hector Ghosh
"You're the one who keeps stoking it. I only stoke it when I'm alone."
He
thinks he's so funny. So witty and charming. Doesn't do as Lola does
and loll about on the chair so his eyes aim upwards. The temptation is
there but this time of month it is dangerous to let himself brim with
Rage around her. It saved her from hypothermia or worse last month but
he is a young man still and his blood runs hotter than it did a few
months ago.
In a few days' time Hector will nearly frenzy in a
public library because his packsister - who he loves more than he can
claim to love his own blood-sisters for he has not seen his
blood-sisters in four years and they are all operating as if they are in
a world where he no longer exists - clicks the wrong link in an
Internet search engine compilation. That will be the only trigger.
Right
now he is chill if he isn't exactly calm. Even when he's drained down
to his dregs it's like the moon still screams at him. No silencing her
when she's so bright overhead.
Lola thinks they're saddling her
with the new Glass Walker and Hector looks over at her without
comprehending until his mind reels back to stories about some skinny
dweeb of a white boy who's been wandering around this part of town
lately.
"Yeah," he says. "You definitely need a handler. The
urrah-ier the better. You twitch when you're in the city too long, you
ever notice that? You've got to notice it. It's like, your whole eye.
Like it's trying to escape."
Lola Hawkes
He made a
joke about her stoking his fire, and she rewarded the humor with a
laugh. She seemed content with just the two hits for the time being and
left the pipe and lighter in Hector's possession. The mason jar that
she used to house everything related to this habit is on the ground
between them, so he could easily put things away when he decided that
he, too, was finished.
Hector had to be mindful of the sky,
especially with how thin the cloud cover was tonight. He'd already gone
out running tonight before coming home to her, she could feel that the
blunt and forceful edge of his presence had dulled and softened
considerably. But, as they all knew full well, a simple glance upward
could reverse all that hard work. This could be why he was anxious to
get inside.
He could still blame it on the cold, though, if he
wanted to. Lola figured both would be equally true. Neither impacted
her heavily, though, because she was warm with her fire and sweaters and
blanket and she was enjoying the smell of campfire and autumn in the
air and she wanted to breathe deep the smells of the wild before she had
to go fill her lungs with gasoline the next evening.
"Well he
sure isn't gonna make it better. If it's who I think it is-- that
little guy-- then the last time I talked to him I told him to shut up.
Fucker talks too much. We'll see if he's worth his time or if he blows
our cover."
Or if he blows up half of a city block. But that's something that they'll find out another time.
Tonight,
though, they will hang out in those chairs until the clouds vanish
before the fire has a chance to die down completely. Lola bids Hector
to go inside, that she will meet him there, and she ensures that the
fire is stomped out and thoroughly stirred before joining him.
He'll
explain what a Hero's Mead is to her, and give careful instructions on
how to use it and what it will do for her. Lola's eyes light up, and
she explains that she still has a kit of old herbs her mother had once,
and wonders aloud if there are still spirits resting amongst the ground
up greens and browns and yellows in the packages there, tucked away in a
corner up in the loft. This is something they might investigate.
Hell, they could even get halfway through exploring the loft before Lola
decides over the span of five to ten minutes that she's very tired and
ready to call it a night.
If all goes well, tomorrow will be a big day, after all.
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