Spirit-Dizzy - 10.12.2013 [Hector][Some NSFW Content]

Hector Ghosh

He didn't want to get out of bed this morning because it was warm and he was perfectly content lying with his face against Lola's shoulder blade. Went out to chop some wood eventually because they need it for the furnace and chopping wood at least lets him work up enough of a sweat that he can pretend winter isn't about to come along and bury them. Gives him an excuse to take off his shirt so the sun can hit his skin. But then he went out to the Sept after lunch and didn't come back.

That isn't aberrant behavior. Things come up. He's a Cliath. He's a foot soldier. Sometimes he has to babysit Theurges.

Around sundown a lean figure appears at the edge of the undeveloped acreage at the back of the property and overtakes the distance between the woods and the backdoor. Climbs the two steps led up from the ground to the porch in one step and tries the screen door. Tries the inner door deadbolt-and-oak that keeps the rest of the world outside the kitchen.

Lets himself in and his eyes do not have the wide no-light-but-that-beyond look of someone who's tripping on sympathomimetics but his Rage is sapped and he's got bits of blue flickering in his half-beard.

"LOLA!" he says as soon as the door is open so he does not frighten her appearing out of the darkness if she's in another part of the house.


Lola Hawkes

Days do not bleed together in any mundane way for Lola.  There was too much happening in the area surrounding the two local Septs, and too much potential for their spell of quiet to be torn away and for everyone to be shown precisely how flimsy 'peace' is.  A few nights ago Lola had come home with broken, mutated bodies in the back of her truck under a tarp, and she had worked all through the night to burn them up in her oil drums and make sure that no evidence was left of the four-armed monstrosity and his reanimated brother.

When her weeks were punctuated with the promise of battle, carrying out day-to-day duties seemed less of a chore.  Today she didn't leave the property.

She didn't wake immediately when Hector left the bed, opting instead to stay and catch an extra twenty to thirty minutes of dozing time before getting up.  She's been doing that the past week or so, since the Warmoot had gone by.  She'll wake up in the middle of the night, toss about uncomfortably, sometimes get up and use the bathroom or go for a drink of water, then come back to bed.  This restlessness has been wearing on her during the day-- she's been more prone to breaks during her patrols or naps when there was time to be still.

When Hector came back home tonight, Lola was till there.  He came in through the kitchen door and bellowed her name into the log house, alerting her of the fact that he came back home so he wouldn't startle her and run the risk of suffering a broken arm as a consequence.

In his efforts not to startle her, though, he accomplishes the opposite.  Lola was no more than six feet away, standing at the sink in the kitchen.  A loud 'clatter-clang!' followed his shout, as she'd dropped a tin baking sheet that she was scrubbing by hand onto the floor.  She curses loudly, defaulting to Spanish instead of English this time around, and smacks her hand on the water faucet to stop the running water.  She'd wheeled around, apparently ready to bear down on Hector for scaring her so, but only gets partway through it before his appearance derails her wrath.

"God damnit, Hector, what are you-- ...What the hell is on your face?"


Hector Ghosh

His outfit dedicated for winter consists of the boots and the jeans she has seen before and the sweatshirt and the pinstriped blazer she has seen before. The temperature drops fast up here in the mountains and Hector is slow to gain fat to pad his frame though he is not burning near as many calories he was as a transient creature. When he comes in the door his hood is up over his head and rolling off of him is the sharp smell of cold-wrought sweat.

If he hadn't hollered like that no one would blame Lola for thinking he was an intruder. He knocks the hood back after he shuts the door and tries not to laugh at the wrath come on the heels of a fright.

"What?" he asks. "The blue stuff?"

His moon rages outside and the fact that he doesn't seethe with it means he's come back from a fight of his own. No bodies to bury. His eyes rested on her face as she questioned him but then they moved down her body and caught up on her hips. They have a tendency of doing that these days.

He pulls his gaze back up to her own and throws the lock on the backdoor and moves towards her. His long stride brings him to the sink in a matter of seconds and then his hand is at the small of her back. Kneads as he lays down the outline for a future story.

"Lights. Wyldlings, I think." Now he's touching her face with his other hand and his eyes are moving across the planes of it, her hairline and her cheekbones and her mouth, barely aware of the words coming out of his mouth as his fingertips graze and his thumb traces. Light dances off his rings from the edges of her vision. "I was out with Phoebe and Keisha getting water for the Ritesmaster and they got distracted by the lights, you know, ran after them into this marsh even though I tried to tell them not to follow the lights, they were just..." His eyes widen brief like to affect bewitchment and that wandering hand goes into her hair rakes it away from her face and finds her neck. "... and then these trees came up out of the ground and grabbed both of them. The lights were making the trees move and they swarmed around me so I couldn't see what was going on. So I bit 'em."


Lola Hawkes

While Lola had no real plans of going back out of the house tonight, she hadn't yet changed out of her day clothes into pajamas instead.  So she was in a pair of straight-legged jeans that were frayed and torn on the right thigh but intact everywhere else.  This, with a loose dark gray T-shirt and a comfortable beige cardigan (yes, a cardigan) overtop of it.  Her feet were in socks but no shoes.  Her hair was, as usual, left down to fall down her back to stretch and reach toward the center point of her shoulder blades.

While Hector laughed and clarified what she was asking about, Lola stooped down to pick up the still-wet and half-scrubbed baking sheet from the floor.  While she was stooped over, Hector's eyes climbed her frame and settled at her hips and rump, which have been simply more noticable lately.  When she straightened, Hector had closed the door and come close enough to touch the small of her back with one hand.

"Yeah, the blue stuff," she clarified.  "It's... is it glowing?"

Then he was touching her face, demanding her full attention.  Dark eyebrows knitted in something akin to concern and confusion, but her expression wasn't laden with it.  She knew full well the state of the moon, but she couldn't sense the push and force of his Rage like she'd expected.  He seemed well, though, so she wasn't worried to check him for wounds.  Instead she lended him her attention, setting the baking sheet back in the sink.

He explained that there were lights that lured a pair of Theurge women away and that they were ensnared in moving trees, so he tore them apart with his teeth-- the lights, the trees, all of it.  While he spoke he touched at her face, brushed her hair back, cradled her neck along with her back.  He kept her near, close, and in physical contact.  His eyes were wide, abnormally bright, and glued onto her.  Rather than leaning into his touches, pressing her chest to his as he seemed to be luring her to do, she reached up and scrubbed his half-a-beard between her fingers, smearing some of the glowing blue onto them.  Her eyes broke from his long enough to inspect what was on her fingers, to rub the substance between them, but she was focused on him once again in not much time.

"Will 'O Wisps," she said simply, then moved on to what she was clearly more worried about discussing.  "Everything's okay, though?  You seem almost dazed or somethin'."


Hector Ghosh

Normally he would pick up on the fact that Lola is balking despite his advances. All it takes is the presence of her hands on his forearms or her face leaving his and he can calm himself down long enough to have a conversation. This is new for her and Hector took so long making his first tentative advances in the first place for his knowing she did not know where the path would take them. He is a young man and still saddled with a young man's appetite but that doesn't mean anything.

A full turn of the moon they have shared a bed and she has seen the polarity of Hector's moods since then but she knows that he speaks true when he tells her he loves her. Doesn't say it near as often as other young people in the first-stage throes of a relationship but she knows the feel of it when it leaves his lips close to her skin and she knows he could not lie even if he tries.

Never has she seen him with his Rage drained and his will sapped down below his connection to the side of things she may never see unless he learns the Gift that would let him bring her with him. Hector will have to survive to their people's third rank first and that is as distant a notion as that of their having grandchildren.

So she doesn't lean into him but he is leaned into her now and his breathing has deepened and his disconnect is more the fault of the spirit world but his body's distraction certainly isn't helping.

"Everything's good," he says. Her pelvis is trapped between his hips and the counter now and his chest is against hers and his face is in her hair. "Everything's good, it's just bright, you know."


Lola Hawkes

Being a creature born under a Moon of War, Lola understood what Rage was.  It was something that she was almost intimately familiar with, for the frequency in which she would flank Garou into battle.  When she waged war she moved sharply and precisely, her actions quick and furious.  It was as though she carried a furnace of Luna's Anger herself.  Though she didn't have her own Rage, she knew the way it crackled through the air when discharged, snapping and blazing and heating the battlefield so she would almost always come into the quiet aftermath with sweat on her skin.

Gnosis, though, was something else entirely.

She couldn't relate with it nearly well enough to understand it.  She didn't hang around with Theurges on a very regular basis, and she never made it a point to hang around when they performed their rites or forged their Talens or did their dealings with the Spirits.  She was very far removed from the World of Spirits.

So that Hector was dazed from the exhaustion of his will and Rage but bursting with spiritual essence still, and that this caused him to almost drift away from this plane, Lola couldn't quite understand.  All she knew was that his words were distant, different in a way she couldn't put a finger on.  He'd turned her some so that he could press her against the counter, with his hips and chest flush to hers and his hands on her body, keeping her held near, his face breathing in the smell of autumn air and shampoo from her hair.  The expression of concern didn't leave Lola, and though things more basic stirred in response to her man's insistant presence she was hung up on the differences.

Such things were forgivable and easily overlooked in a human's world.  In this one, though, they meant things like Taint (be it Wyrm or Wyld or Other) or possession or alterations within the mind.  So instead of letting it go and letting go, she leaned her head away from his and reached up to put a hand on his collarbone and press him back.  She's firm to move him, but doesn't push him far enough away to force him to take any number of steps back.  She just wants his eyes again.

"Wait, wait.  Slow that roll.  I don't trust it's all good, Hector, you're different.  Feel and sound like it.  You bit the spirits?  Did they maybe infect you or something?"


Hector Ghosh

He eases back without Lola having to apply great pressure to his frame and one of his own hands leaves her body so he can anchor himself on the countertop. Doesn't skirt back from her like she knows he would have if he were firmly planted in her world but it lets her have his eyes back and the eyes being what they are she can look in them and see if she recognizes him.

And they're the same color as they always have been. His pupils react to the light around them in the same way hers do and he does not have a vacant cast to his gaze. When she bids him slow down and come back to her Hector blinks and hard. Shakes his head like to clear something from his face. His hair was tied back tonight and the band still holds tight to it but big shocks have fallen loose and he misplaced the presence of mind to tuck them back behind his ears. The small steel hoop he wears is still punched through the helix of his ear and as she keeps talking his vision focuses.

"Siren--Phoebe checked me out," he says. "And then when we got back." He frowns like words evade him and then something occurs to him and he laughs the too-near-to-let-go laugh that shows more teeth than gives off sound. "Love... love, no no no, I'm not infected. I'm not. It's just..."

The hand not propping himself up comes up to indicate something near both their temples that she cannot see. His eyes drift from her face brief but then come back.

"S'like the Gauntlet's thinner." That hand cradles the side of her face. "I'm still me. I'm not different. Everything's just... it's pure out here. The earth's so old and I can hear it singing, you know. Under everything. And the stars are so..." His eyes rest on hers too long and he loses his train of thought. "You're so beautiful. I love you so much. I'm fine, I swear."


Lola Hawkes

He's still the same, she comes to find.  At least the core of him is.  His eyes are the same, in that there's the same person there underneath them.  It's difficult to explain how she knows this, but she was quite certain that if there was another being there within Hector's skin, or if this was something else entirely that was posing as him, she would know.

But she sees him, and after blinking and shaking his head he's able to clear whatever oddness there is clouding him tonight long enough for her to be reassured.

He says that he was checked out and came across clean, then went on to explain that the Gauntlet was thinner and he was hearing and experiencing the world as a whole differently right now because of it.  While she still had no way of understanding on the spot why he was more sensitive to the Spirit World and where it bled into the Real World tonight, she could take that information and run with it.  Whatever the reason, he was Spirit-Dizzy.  That was infinitely better than being infected.

"Alright," she relents.  There's still a habitual sort of caution to the word, like she's letting him get away with it this one time but she has her eye on him for anything to indicate something other than the information she was given.  But then he's losing his focus again and telling her how beautiful she is and how much he loves her.

Lola was a war-hardened beast, but that still managed to soften her.  He sees it in her face and body language.  Her hand is gentler and motion is slower, smoother when she reaches up to wipe the blue stuff from his facial hair and the side of his mouth where he'd somehow managed to miss a smudge.

When that's done, palm rubbing the blue away on her pant leg, she loops her arms around him and invites him back in, back near, with a kiss.  When their mouths part she tells him:

"I love you, and believe you."

The unspoken part is:
It's okay to relax and let go now.  I'm done fending you off.


Hector Ghosh

With his Rage down to its dregs and his eyes not on the cloud-clad moon but on his woman Hector does not kiss her with the fever with which Lola has become familiar. Time has passed and their worlds have fallen in smaller for the losses that brought him back here to begin with. They're learning to know each other as creatures beyond friends and tribesmen.

Her body was softer now but underneath the softness was the power and the strength of a woman born and bred for war. He is and always has been thin as an electric wire but he is not an easily broken thing. No one who has run with Celduin ever has been. Not when they followed Coyote and not now that they follow Fog. Even if they step out of the murk and choose to tether themselves to a different spirit they will not be able to run with those who cannot withstand blows that do not stop.

Both of them know this calm they are in not just tonight but the moon turned since they fell into each other's arms the first time is a fierce one and it will not last. The war will rage on long after they are both dead and as they still live the city sept sits over a goddamned Hive and that Hive houses a league of unholy warriors. This calm is all they have tonight and it is untouched by the Rage that unchecked burns the air from Hector's lungs.

Lola pulls away to tell him she believes him when he says he's fine, he swears, and by then his eyes have gone dreamy again. With his fingers in her hair and his eyes on hers and their bodies flush despite the persistence of clothing this is as grounded as she's seen him since he walked in the door and it doesn't last.

And he has been desperate and almost savage in her arms before but tonight he is like a fuse instead of a wire. He kisses her as if time has stopped and kissing turns to caressing turns to clothing crumpling to the kitchen floor and by then he's too far gone to even fathom moving.

---

Eventually they do.

Later, later, the house is dark and the furnace banked and the two Uktena in bed. Hector ought to be tired and ready to sleep but more than her blood or the spirits or time it is the moon that natters at him that he is too distracted to shut up and hold her until he drops off.

This is what it means to be Kinfolk. This is the patience her father spoke of. The line she has to walk. He is not human and he never will be human and sometimes he will come home and she will not understand him and she has to love him anyway.

Silence outside the house. They can still remember the city. The city never stops. Always sirens or tires or human voices caterwauling out their own symphony of unending hardship. None of that here. Crickets and crackling fires are the sounds one expects to hear in this place. Lola has Hector's voice.


"The first time I went in the Umbra," he says. Sweat dried to his skin from their earlier lovemaking and voice low for the darkness and the nearness. He does not still pant for breath. "Not even very far, we just crossed into the Penumbra, but I--" That this-isn't-funny laughter. "I didn't want to come back. End-Sight, one of the other Theurges in the pack, she was a Fostern at the time, she ended up... you can drag Garou across. If your spirit's stronger than theirs, you can just hold open a tear and push them through. When we got back she told me this story about a stupid Cub who wandered the Umbra so long his body dissolved and he couldn't come back across so his spirit was doomed to wander the otherside for eternity. I thought she made up the story just to scare the crap out of me but it actually happens. You know?"


Lola Hawkes

Time ticked by, and while the hands circled the face of the clock that hung on the wall Lola and Hector made their way from kitchen to bedroom.  Their shirts were left on the kitchen floor.  They could be collected later.

The house was dark, just as the land was.  The moon was outside, peeking occasionally between clouds that continued to threaten the land with more moisture (because that's just what we need, right?  more rain?), but that aside the land was pitch.  There weren't any city lights to reflect off the clouds and create ambient glow in the sky.  The lights were off in the house, Lola had flipped the switch for the kitchen as they'd passed by it.  Here in the bedroom it was the kind of dark that had you groping for walls and furniture to prevent banging up your knees when you need to leave to use the bathroom.

They were under the covers because it's cold at night now, and while the wood burning furnace did its job heating the house just fine, it would lose force when left untended for several hours on end.  Lola was laying on her back, one leg stretched out under the sheets and the other pulled up at the knee, brought nearer to Hector, flush to the outside of his legs.  She liked to find some kind of contact with him when falling asleep-- it was a matter of comfort and grounding, to know that he was there and settled in and resting.

One of her arms was behind her head, tucked under the pillow it rested on.  The other arm was stretched out above Hector's head, between the top of his skull and the headboard of the bed.  Fingers had found some of his hair splayed out over the pillow and were absently brushing at it and smoothing its ends.

He told her a story about how he didn't want to leave the Penumbra the first time he saw it.  He also told her that if you stay with the Spirits too long you can't find your way back anymore, your physical body dissolves.  She rolled her head on the pillow to look over at him.  Her hair was a wild mass from brushing and touching and seizing, her eyes sleepy and cheeks still pink.  She'd long since caught her breath (she didn't pant for long after, Lola's stamina was astounding), so her voice was level, quiet to match his, when she commented on what he had to tell her.

"My dad worried about my mom that way.  Sometimes she'd come home and almost float around the property, but she wouldn't come inside.  When Maria and I were old enough to understand it he explained that time shifts differently on The Other Side, and that's why she'd be gone for months on end.  I think he always knew he'd lose her to the Spirits, but he was always scared it'd be that way-- the way where you get lost.


"Why didn't you want to come back?"


Hector Ghosh

Beneath the covers he molds himself to her. Rolls onto his side and a lazy hand moves from her bent knee to her hip and back and no hunger saws through his flesh to find hers. Last month he had to run himself ragged before he could rest and the gibbous moon sandwiches the full. He's a madman this time of the month but looking at him in the dark Lola can convince herself he's sane for as quiet as he keeps his voice.

Rare is mention of either of their parents. He can tell a hundred tales about hers because the Garou of the Sept of Forgotten Questions can tell a hundred of them. The spirits of the Sept can tell thousands for they remember her sister and they know of her cousins and her ancestors and the deeds they've done. Doesn't mean he doesn't listen when Lola mentions her dad, who died not long after her mom, who was like all spirit-talkers in that she could have drifted off were not for the people left on this side bidding her stay.

His reason for not coming back was the same reason her mother never wanted to come back but they're two different people. Their moons were not the same. Hector draws in a breath and reads Lola's face in the scant light come through the window and she can feel his ribs press against hers just before he lets go the air inside them. It blows over her skin.

"You know how vast space is? There isn't even a word for it. You can't quantify how big it is and the mind can't even come close to grasping it. Apparently when humans launch themselves up there, you know, they run the risk of being overwhelmed looking out into it. Through the portals or their visors. I mean they have to look out occasionally but if they look too long. It's like the void reels them in and they give themselves over to it.

The arm bent between them moves so he can grasp the hinge of her shoulder and the hand traced her thigh slides across her belly until the forearm rests there.

"I didn't grow up hearing about any of this. I wasn't ready to consider there's another world beyond what we can see. You know? All I had was... my parents were Hindu, right? There's no afterlife, in Hinduism. The gods are all..."

He sighs again, but frustrated now, his words failing him. His fingers start to move against her opposite hip, like he can find his words in her flesh if he's gentle enough.


"Everything that ever existed or ever will exist is all here, in this world, in this life, and it doesn't ever stop existing. Physical bodies change but the essence of everything, it keeps going. Is what I grew up hearing. So the idea of spirits being separate from the body, or there being another layer of reality..." A huff of laughter. "It's like I'd had this caul over my eyes my entire life and someone pulled it off."


Lola Hawkes

As they lay, Hector slides nearer to her within the bed.  An arm hooks behind her, rests at her shoulder.  The other travels all about, sliding from her knee to her hip to her belly.  She curves her back, pressing into his touch when he passes fingers under her navel.  His arm comes to rest over the top of it, and Lola huffs a quiet contented sigh and situates herself so that she can rest her head on his bicep, face turned toward his.

He compares the Umbra to Space.  He explains that sometimes astronauts lose themselves if they stare into the depths of space and contemplate its vastness for too long.  He then went on to explain the religion that he grew up with in his home, and that it expressed that everything was the same and only the shells changed.  This was why he didn't want to leave the Umbra-- it was so new, so vast, and so different.  He'd wanted to stay in this whole new world and explore it and come to understand it.

Lola was very attached to her land, but she could understand being enthralled by something so new and beautiful rather than terrified by it.


That didn't mean it was how she thought she would've reacted in his shoes, though.

"I think I would've reveled more in the Change than in seeing the Umbra," she tells him quietly.  His arm was still rested over his stomach, and his fingers touched and moved across her hip like they were searching for something, or memorizing it, or playing it like an instrument perhaps.  She rested her arm across her stomach as well, just above his, and let her fingers rest above the hinge of his elbow.  The other arm was still above and behind his head, circled almost protectively.  If something were to break down the front door of this house in the middle of the night, it wouldn't be the case that the man springs forward and goes to check it out.  Hector and Lola would both launch out of bed and go to meet whatever invaded their home teeth first.  They'd protect one another, and not one would cower in the bedroom waiting for the all clear.

"I think the Umbra might be terrifying.  I've heard stories of Wolves being caught between worlds like flies in a web.  I've heard worse ones about packmates being lost to Realms where they couldn't escape.  My mother's uncle lost a packmate that way-- they say he slipped from the Moon Bridge and spiraled away and they never heard of him again."  She shook her head and switched her eyes from Hector's face to the ceiling.


"I'd be worried about not making my way back here, back home.  I'd rather Change than Travel."


Hector Ghosh

When she takes her face away from his Hector finds the hollow of her neck and presses his lips to it. In the dark his chest still moves with every respiration and she can feel his heart beating against her and despite the fact he has forgotten what it is to sleep deep enough to startle awake at incoming war both his breaths and his pulse are slow and steady.

She speaks of a world where she Changed instead of staying in her own skin and Hector keeps tracing formless notes on her hip. Keeps his lips against her skin and his eyes canted up at her even when she can't see him.

"You do one, you have to do the other," he says. Soft but unyielding in his conviction in this. Kisses her neck against and stops writing nonsense on her hip to cup her elbow with his palm. His fingers don't stop just because the landscape has changed. They just move over the articulations of the bones in her elbow instead of the sharp jut of her pelvis. "It works both ways. If you don't cross the Gauntlet going that way for too long you'll stick to this side. Starve the spirit right out of you. We all contain... multitudes. You know? It's a balance. Just as much can happen on this side as the otherside."

Willow and Glen and Maria all died in the Umbra. They never found Willow's body. They had to bring Glen's back across the Gauntlet to the Wendigo Sept without its head. He doesn't tell her any of that but she knows the stories beneath the silence because they never really leave him.


"I'd rather risk getting stuck or disappearing than not have the option of stepping sideways ever again at all."


Lola Hawkes

In a world where she Changed, things would have been vastly different.  She would have joined a pack and either stayed to defend Forgotten Questions or traveled to someplace where her claws were needed more.  A Kinfolk would have stayed at The Homestead, because Garou couldn't be relied on to stick around and defend the land.  They died too young.  They were sent away on missions by their Septs.  More than likely, Lola's local cousin Anthony would have needed to move out to tend the land, and boy would he have disliked that.

She wouldn't be here, with a Galliard warming her bed, that much was for sure.

Lola was sorely disappointed that she didn't Change as expected.  She would have been a hell of a Warrior.  She would have led the charge into every battle she met.  She would have burned like a great pyre, commemorating all that was their War, and she would have died vicious and young.  Instead she had to settle for being a pillar of strength instead of a raging fire of it.  She would keep the land, raise the children, and be there for whatever Garou that would be able to step up to the plate and claim her as a mate.  While she was already doing an effective job at keeping the land, and while she and Hector were (clearly) open to continuing their lines, Lola would still be a Warrior.  Perhaps not with claws and fangs, perhaps not with that bright burning flame that would mark the night from miles away, but she was ferocious and hard and fearless, and she would back up her Garou with her guns and skills, even in this soft human body.  If they weren't fast enough then she would go without them-- as she'd nearly done a few nights ago before a Metis clapped a hand on her shoulder and dragged her back.

Hector said you couldn't have one without the other-- the Change and the Spirit.  Lola would have neither, she recognized this, but she could get close to the War regardless.

The Umbra, though?  No chance, as far as she knew.

"Alright," she provides in a conceding tone of voice.  "It's something I'll have to take your word for, I suppose."  Just as she can feel his breath and pulse, he can feel hers.  She runs warm lately, easily blamed on the shifting of the seasons.  Between that and the fact that Garou burn hotter than regular humans as well, the bed was toasty and comfortable, well sheltered from the cold sprinkle-spatter of rain picking up outside.  He's been kissing at her neck, thoughtlessly enjoying the taste, the touch, and the simple knowledge that he could share this affection with her now.


"I get the Rage, though, you know?  I can recognize it.  I know what it feels like, from the outside looking in anyways.  It's the Spirit that escapes me."  She gives a low huff of breath that carries a note of irony in it.  It might have been a chuckle if she was a more humorous person by nature.  "You'd think havin' a Spirit Speaker for a mother it'd be the other way around."


Hector Ghosh

For as much as she would have made an Ahroun about whom tales passed to her children's children it's just as likely that Lola could have burnt out quick for the fire in her belly and the quickness of her claws. As it is she knows she is a quick draw and a sure shot. Now she knows she can handle a blade. She can protect someone who cannot protect either himself or her.

They haven't talked about that night because nothing lies prone to discussion. He could not fend off a supernatural attack and lay screaming while she killed a creature that could have lopped off his head without his ever realizing the danger existed. If Hector had been alone he would have been dead. Of all the times he has said this this is the only time where it was a certainty and not simply a branching-off from the current timeline.

Alone at Jackass Hill Park he would have shifted sooner for he would not have hesitated in fear of scaring her. Alone with Thomas at the Fomor's dungeon-house he would have taken down the two-faced abomination and walked away with wounds.

That confrontation on the side of the road would have had no other outcome were Lola not there and Hector, being Hector, does not dwell on it but he can play it back in his mind without detaching from the present and he knows as sharp as anything he has ever known before that he would have died that day without her.

He kisses her like this because he knows there come a day when either he will be dead or she will be dead and this is all the time they have. Not so much enjoyment as insurance.


"Nah," he says. "I couldn't dissect frogs in biology class without making a mess. Some things aren't hereditary. Besides... Rage is something even humans can sense. It's what makes us different from them. It scares them, too. Spiritual strength doesn't scare them, it just makes it harder for us to deal with them because they're so rooted on this side. You know? But it isn't something Gaia only gives us. I've heard stories of Kinfolk who've got that connection to the otherside. They could contract with spirits, learn the same powers they teach us." A beat. "There's some powers Kinfolk don't have to have that connection to learn, I've heard. You just gotta find someone to contract with the spirits for you."


Lola Hawkes

When any number of couples lay together in bed, waiting for sleep to cart them off, they tended to speak on things both more personal and mundane all at once.  They would talk about their futures-- what will we name our kids?  Where should we buy a house?  Do we need a new car?  What can we afford with the bills we have to pay?

When a Garou lays down with a Kinswoman who is not content to stay home waiting, who forges War along with the rest of them, they speak on other things, both more vivid and ethereal.  They speak on Rage, and on Spirits, and on the Gifts that those spirits can bring.  Even while their limbs were all but entangled, while the Galliard wrapped his Kinswoman up in his arms and kissed at her neck and breathed the scent of her deeply.  This not just because he reveled in the simple joy of access, but because he knew full well that by the end of the month either of them could be dead.

He said that some Kinfolk could reach the Spirits.  She knew about this, she's heard the tales-- never met one in person that she was aware of, but she'd heard of Kinfolk who were able to lay hands and heal wounds just like a Theurge would.  It was when he said that there were some things that any Kinfolk could learn, regardless of innate ability, that her attention was snagged like a fish on a barbed hook.


"What kind of powers?"  The question is simple in structure, but clear in tone.  She was asking not out of curiosity alone, but because she was already forming a plan to learn something new, make herself more capable and valuable to the Cause.


Hector Ghosh

Only if she's turned towards him can Lola see that he stops his idle adoration of her neck to lift his eyebrows and tilt his eyes up like to see if he has truly gotten her attention. His fingers stop their spindling and drape across her elbow. He lies still a moment longer and then draws a deep breath like he draws in the morning when he's awakened with the sun and is about to grumble his way out from between the covers.

No grumbling now. He pushes himself up on the elbow wedged between their bodies so he can look on her face through the darkness. Doesn't reach over to turn on the light but he's considering her. She can feel it. Can't feel the relieved elation at even the barest shred of a possibility that he can steer her towards a Theurge and the possibility of using her brain instead of her Browning.

If it sounds to Lola like the Galliard starts talking faster the more words leave his mouth: that's because he does. He might have been calm and somnolent a few minutes ago but he's gotten himself all wound up again. Like the thought of convincing a spirit to bless her had not occurred to him before now and now that the thought is in his skull he can't get it out fast enough.

"This Glass Walker Ahroun I used to know--"

Gee. Wonder who that could be.


"--used to be able to concentrate for a minute and it would make the spirit in whatever manmade thing he was holding wake up and help him use it. Like... driving a car, or firing a gun, things like that were easier for him. All he had to do was focus, he didn't have to sacrifice anything to do it. A lot of these powers you have to give up something but that one you didn't. An ancestor-spirit teaches that one, they're all over the place at the Caern, it wouldn't take very long to find one--OH. Oh, and one power our people have, you can feel mystic energy in the air. Not just Gaian powers either, dreamcraft and blood magic. Things wizards and leeches do, you know?"


Lola Hawkes

There is a light of excitement in Hector that grows and grows as he talks about the types of powers that Kinfolk could learn, if they could just convince the right spirit to be patient with them and teach them.  He spoke of a Glass Walker with a gift that let technology work better for him.  He spoke of a gift that their Tribesmen had that let you sense when there's a magic kind of energy in the air, be it spiritual, Gaian, Wyrm, Wizard, Leech...  It didn't matter, if it was magic she would sense it.

He spoke faster, with more energy, as he went on.  Hector, propped up on one elbow beside her, looking down into her face with a feverish sort of inspiration and realization on his face.

Hector was eager to put the idea of learning a Spirit's Gift in his woman's head because it would direct her away from battle, toward the Theurges and the Spirits.  It would give her something to do that wasn't fire her guns and slice at Fomori with nothing but a hunting knife to protect herself with-- a Fomori that was able to nearly cleave open a Garou.  He had every right to worry.  Lola was able to take care of herself, but any monster could get in a lucky hit, or be just too fast for her at the end of the day and overwhelm her.  Lola, despite her might and tenacity, still had just this one body, and while it was sturdy it didn't have the ability to regenerate, not like a Garou's did.

Lola carried a similar light in her eyes.  She didn't prop herself up to match him, but her posture did shift so that both arms were behind her head now.  One hand scrubbed at the top of her scalp thoughtfully, and she listened to what he had to say carefully.

While the Galliard wanted her to get amped up about learning a gift because it would keep her off the battlefield, Lola was ticking through the gifts that she had heard about and seen utilized personally, thinking of which ones would better prepare her for that battlefield.


"... So, what, I go and find a Theurge and tell them I want to learn a power...  How do I know what's out there?  And what would it take to convince a spirit to teach me instead of a Cliath?"


Hector Ghosh

Propped up as he is Hector's hair falls in a curtain across one shoulder and all he can see in the dark are the whites of Lola's eyes and the shape of her face where what little light come in from outside finds the bones. He is more occluded above her as he is but she can still feel the warmth of him where his hand rests on her sternum, forearm on her ribs.

Accusing him of having any conscious ulterior motive tonight is a stretch. More so than when he lets his Rage overtake him he seems limited in his ability to focus on anything other than what is right in front of him. They talk of spirit blessings and how they can give her more of an edge and though he doesn't mention combat that is doubtless what rears up in his mind as he looks at her.

This war-bred woman whose body grows soft for what they think is preparation for winter. A turn of the moon they've shared a bed and Lola would not find it much of a stretch at all if he were to tell her he wouldn't be surprised if she goes before he does. He has been torn apart in combat twice in front of her now but the wounds healed before the damage to his pride did. If Lola were to take a shotgun blast to the belly or a mutant's clawed tail to her chest she would have to depend on the contents of Hector's medicine bag to keep her alive.

Of course it wouldn't surprise him but Garou are not meant to outlive their Kin. He isn't thinking about the future tonight. He's rambling on about things Lola doesn't understand and the thought of seeing her learn something new for the sake of learning, because the Umbra is so cool and spirits are so cool and she's so cool, that's enough motivation for him to keep talking. That hand between her breasts is still, even. He's distracted from her flesh talking about her mind.


"Everybody at the Sept knows you're out there fighting just as hard as the rest of us," he says. "The spirits know it too. If the spirits know about you it won't take much convincing at all. The only problem is most of us just step sideways and find the spirit we want to ask to bless us. You need a spirit-talker to pull one over to this side and explain what you want but that's not even really a problem, it just means you're gonna owe someone a favor." A beat. "Y'know, I did kind of save a couple of spirit-talkers from getting eaten by angry trees when we were running an errand for the Ritesmaster tonight. I could just ask Phoebe if she'd do it." Flashback to the warmoot: "Or Keisha. Keisha would do it in a heartbeat, she likes you. And she knows a lot about rites, she could tell you what other spirits are out there that would bless Kin."


Lola Hawkes

Balancing the chances of who would fall first between the two of them was difficult.  They were split-- one was a Garou, whose duty it was to be forever waged in war, to be sent on missions that almost always carried the danger of death in their very nature.  She's seen him injured far more times than he's seen her bleeding or damaged-- in fact, despite all the fights she's been in beside him, the worst Lola has walked away with is superficial damage-- cuts and pricks that bother but do not actually injure.  But that's the thing-- if Lola were to take anything more than that moderately annoying cut or this uncomfortable bruise, then she would be at the mercy of time and the healers nearby to hope for a recovery.

Truthfully, the chances of who will go first probably lay one side of a coin still flipping in the air.

Though they're engaged in active conversation now, not just lazy pillow-talk, the couple still touches.  Hector's arm is still rested on her torso, hand splayed on her chest plate, between her breasts without being distracted by them.  This was a statement to how engaged he was in the thought of pulling favors and asking Spirit-Talkers to help Lola find a Spirit willing to teach her something new.  She stops scrubbing at her scalp with her fingertips and thinks through a few options, then nods her head slowly.

"That'd be good."  And then, reaffirming, she nodded a little and continued.  "Yeah, let's ask.  I want to know more about this."

He'd said that Keisha specifically knows plenty about rites, and that she likes Lola which would be helpful in convincing her to do them a favor.  While Lola knew that Phoebe, the Black Fury, was a Fostern and therefore probably had a bit more spiritual power and pull to her, she still agreed that Keisha would be a good option too.  "Keisha the Child of Gaia?  She's alright, I like her too.  She's got a good head on her shoulders.  Doesn't complain about War and Killing at all like the other half of her Tribesmen I've met."

Her eyes shifted, distracted, away from Hector's face and down to his body, gauging his posture and the energy in his bones.  A hand moved from behind her head to brush an errant chunk of hair back in line with the rest, then she dragged her fingertips lightly down the arm that supported his weight, until her hand landed to rest at his forearm.  She shifted so she was laying rolled just a few degrees onto her side, toward him.  A yawn was the preamble to what she said next.


"You're awake, clearly.  I can't stay that way with you much longer, though.  I'm beat as hell."


Hector Ghosh

Lola brings herself out of the conversation for its conclusion has come: they'll talk to the Crescent Moons. It settles him enough that his hand moves on her chest. Does not grab at her like an inexperienced young man would have. For fumbling around as he had working up the nerve to kiss her now that that levee has broken she's learning that all of that wayfaring he's done over the last four years has taught him how not to embarrass himself in bed.

Nothing he can do for the fact that every twenty-eight days or so he loses an entire week to something akin to madness. Some aspect of his being overtakes his reason and he ceases to resemble a human being. He abandoned that charade weeks ago, hasn't cut his hair and only trims his beard for as fast as it grows, but at least he can rest beside her when the moon is thin.

As soon as her hand touches his face she hears him close his eyes and draw a breath. Then her hand reaches his forearm and he knows she's about to either tell him to lie down or go run around until he can lie down. It doesn't jolt him out of bed. He laughs at her assessment of his state of wakefulness and the sound is quiet for the darkness around them. Energy jangles in his voice even as he does stay quiet.

His fingers comb hair back from her brow and his smile lingers a moment, white teeth in the dark, before he leans down and kisses her on the mouth. Quick. No insistence in it.

"I'm not even sorry," he says to the matter of her being worn out and kisses her again before telling himself enough, enough, lie down. There have been nights when they have stayed up until dawn talking with cannabis for fuel but tonight is not that night.

So he does lie down. He tucks himself back underneath the covers beside her and hauls them higher. Stillness in mid-autumn means they'll grow cool and if it were summertime Hector would have climbed out of bed to run this off but he has more reasons to stay than he has to leave. Slides an arm beneath her shoulders, the pillow, and tucks her in against his side. Runs his fingers through her hair and keeps his lips against her forehead and his heart and lungs take their cues from hers.


Hector doesn't drift off before she does but Lola finds herself still in his arms, his eyes cleared of stars, when she wakes up.