Hector Ghosh
The last time Hector Echoes-of-the-Lost went to the Denver International Airport it was not as a traveler or a welcomer of a traveler but as the leader of an expedition that by all accounts was as successful as it was going to be considering the entire point of the mission was to gather intelligence on what exactly was underneath the place. It was the first expedition he had led as a Fostern of the Sept of Forgotten Questions and he had had his moment of doubt and his moment of depression afterwards.
It distresses him sometimes how easily he veers towards what looks to be Harano when he runs up against a reminder that the war they fight is impossible to win and all they can hope for at this point is to serve as a bastion against a darkness that would consume the world were not for their people. But at least the last time he spoke on the phone with his mother both he and she sounded better than they did when they reunited in San Jose four months earlier.
His father did not yell on the phone this last time they spoke. Hector did not yell in Bengali. They sounded terse yet polite. Hector lying by omission about work and his friends and his free time. Rina reminded him that his flight was getting in at 11:28 a.m. on Saturday and he told her he loved her before he got off the phone.
The night before her arrival Hector went on a cleaning binge the likes of which Lola may not have thought him capable. Their mother will be staying in the upstairs bedroom he and Corey used to commandeer when Celduin blew through long enough to require a bed and she will be staying here until she's assured that the two of them can handle changing diapers and feeding a newborn baby. Once he could admit that he had removed every last speck of dust and hair from the room and the bed wouldn't get any more sharply made and he really didn't need to lay out more than one set of towels and one stick of incense would suffice with the windows open and the sunlight bound to trickle in in the morning he took his woman to bed and loved her for what will be the last time without another person in the house.
It's 11:40 in the morning on a Saturday and the two of them are outside the arrival gate awaiting his mother's flight. A great bulletproof wall and a federal security officer stands between the concourse and the throng of happy-anxious civilians awaiting their people.
Hector is dressed in what passes for a decent warm-weather outfit. His sister bought him a new pair of work boots while she was visiting last month and the leather hasn't lost its glow of health yet. His black jeans are also new and they fit him better than the old ones did which is a blessing because the belt he had been using to hold them up had busted long ago. A clean dark gray t-shirt underneath an unbuttoned green dress shirt. He has the usual array of jewelry on his hands and around his neck. His hair has grown so long that it's now down past his shoulders but he hasn't given thought to trimming it yet. He just yanks it back and calls it a day.
Right now his right hand is playing with Lola's hair as they wait. His left hand is holding onto the bouquet of flowers he made Lola stop at a roadside produce stand to buy. The last time he saw his mother she was zonked out on anxiety medication and moving through the house like a zombie. She sounded better on the phone when last they spoke but he still has his uncertainties.
The first few trickles of arriving passengers begins. He takes a breath and stands up straighter. His hand rests on her shoulder instead of in her hair.
"I don't see her," he says.
Lola Hawkes
Nerves manifested in different ways, and this was displayed plainly in how Hector and Lola prepared themselves for Rina's arrival.
Lola liked Hector's parents, both of them. She had been worried about his father, for the stories he had to tell painted him as a very stern, impossible to please human in her eyes. The fact that he was human in the first place didn't give him good ground to start with. Upon meeting him, though, he found a quick path to being one of the most respected non-Kin or Garou people she's known. Rina had seemed sweet and patient, but she was seeing through a cloud of numbing pills when Lola and Hector had been out to San Jose back in December. Lola felt like she was meeting her again, in a ways.
Hector was cleaning like a madman. He'd completely dusted and readied the upstairs bedroom that was typically reserved to allow wolves with weary heads a place to sleep. Lola, in turn, was more worried about impressing than making comfortable. She'd spent her time making as ready the nursery as she possibly could-- right down to re-organizing the stout chest of drawers that they'd converted into a changing table (mostly by putting a changing pad on top of it, but still).
Come Saturday morning they headed in to the city.
The airport was crowded-- of course. It was the middle of the day on a weekend, a common day for travel. Hector was dressed as nice as he tends to be, in new boots and pants with a button-up shirt and his mane of hair brushed back and secured. On account of the temperatures already being up in the seventies by ten in the morning, and projected to creep up into the eighties (per the little radio that Lola kept in the kitchen), Lola herself was dressed with skin bared. She opted for a dark blue dress with capped sleeves and a hem that stopped mid-thigh. A thin brown belt was tied above her stomach's considerable swell for the sake of accessorizing, and she was wearing nicer looking brown sandals on her feet. Jewelry wasn't something that Lola owned much of, though. She wore the nut-ring that Hector had given her, but that was about the sum of it.
They'd stopped for flowers-- Lola showed no impatience with this request when they'd pulled over to the roadside. Lola was thankful to be able to smell them over the wafting smell of the food court past the security gate. Lola's dark eyes skimmed faces and figures in the crowd that was exiting the security gates, hunting for the one they'd come for. The crowd thinned to a trickle and Hector's hand abandoned the twisting of fingers in her hair to perch on her shoulder instead. He expressed aloud what she was thinking.
Lola leaned into Hector's side, her flank to his, under his arm, but kept her hands rested folded together on top of her stomach as they have been since they posted themselves to a spot out of the way of people who would nervously tug their children away.
"Maybe she stopped at the bathroom or something," Lola offered. "If she'd missed her flight she would've let you know."
Hector Ghosh
It starts as a trickle. The first-class passengers get to disembark first because they're closer to the exit and don't have to jockey with the others for space in cramped aisles to retrieve their luggage from cramped overhead compartments. The first several passengers to come down the concourse don't scream first-class but they don't have that cramped look about them. Even on a flight as short as San Francisco to Denver people tend to look cramped when they're coming from coach.
"Yeah," Hector says in a tone whose distraction is clear even as he doesn't take his eyes off the partition. Doesn't take his arm off her shoulder. He's gripping her but not tight. Protectiveness in his stance all the same. Being out in public makes him nervous because he makes other people nervous. It's a vicious cycle. As he gets older he's learning how to keep himself calm and he's more in control of his Rage than he was when Lola first met him. Still-growing wild-eyed thing that he was five years ago. There's no trace of the Cliath in him anymore.
The Fostern is tall and his eyes are dark but it's a warning sort of dark. He's grown into an honorable wolf. Honorable and prone to Harano. Seeing his mother drugged into a zombie stupor had left him rattled four months ago and he'd said she sounded better on the phone after he'd hung up the last time he spoke to her but he doesn't know if she is actually better. He hasn't seen her.
It is like his mother and his mate are meeting again for the first time. If she remembers the reunion with any clarity Hector will be shocked.
That trickle starts to thicken as more passengers come off the plane. It turns into a throng. Hector tightens his arm around Lola's shoulders as the concentration gradient shifts and people start to greet each other. She can hear him take and release a deep breath. Can practically hear him force himself to smile as he rubs her shoulder. Yeah this is great everyone's so happy yay airpo--
"Oh shit, there she is."
She's a good hundred yards away when Hector spots his mother. Hard to tell from that distance if she's better than she was but her hair is down and she's not wearing her glasses. She lifts an arm to wave and Hector lifts the flowers in greeting.
"How you feeling?" he asks Lola. Though he releases her he leaves his hand on her shoulder blade.
Lola Hawkes
There's a very good reason why Lola's family has kept close to the Bawn for as long as it has-- why it is seldom that you will find a Hawkes-born Uktena in an urban Sept. This family has known for a very long time that the Rage that wolves carry in their breasts rarely meshes with the Herd very well. Opinions shift and sway as time flows forward and new minds are born. Lola's understanding of the city and the Herd and the presence of wolves within it was a concept of necessary evil and sacrifice. Bless those Bone Gnawers and Glass Walkers and Children of Gaia and other oddballs that would stay in the city and withstand the weight of it crushing around them.
If you asked Lola, though, the stress and anxiety that the crowd was giving Hector was a perfect example of why Garou were clearly intended to be out nearer to Gaia.
To answer the tightening grip on her shoulder and protective bracing of the arm to go with, Lola laid her hand on the middle of Hector's back and rubbed. The gesture was supportive and affectionate in Lola's way-- a little rough, not the gentle squeeze of a hand or whispered words of encouragement or kiss on the cheek that another woman may give, but Hector chose Lola knowing her ways already. She was hardly worried about misinterpretation with him in moments like this any longer.
Shit, there she is.
Lola's eyes hopped and skipped through faces in the ground-- she hadn't spied Rina as quickly. It was only when the smaller, older Kinwoman waved that Lola picked her out. Hector raised flowers, and Lola raised an empty hand in unison with him to return the greeting.
"Warm and swollen," was the answer Hector received, but the small side-smirk and glance that followed it dismissed the complaints before they could be considered. That was just a part of life for Lola these days; she was always hot, and she was pretty much perpetually swollen as well. Her feet did not thank her for continuing her patrols, even if they were shortened and at a slower pace. Her legs didn't thank her for taking a break from them for two days during a period when Lola's lower back was giving her trouble. Despite these things, she was still strong and solid and healthy. That's precisely how she looked when Hector may glance over and down to her.
"Anxious. Nervous. Crowded already." All of these confessed with a straight face and the most neutral, flat expression that you could find. She sure didn't look anxious, but it was easy to understand why. It wasn't often that she entertained guests at the Homestead, and outside of Celduin and her own family they've certainly never stayed for a month.
Finally, though: "But good, overall. Ready, too, I think."
Hector Ghosh
Her first answer makes him huff out a laugh that would have been a ribald retort in any other setting. Time was he and Glen and Corey would sit around the table or the fire or just laze around on the floor and bust each other's balls until Maria or Tamsin came into the room and then they'd bust their balls. Maria and Tamsin didn't have balls but their mouths were just as foul and their language as filthy as the males'. More so even. Hector never used to swear as much as he does now and that's all the fault of the women in his life.
Then she gives him an honest answer.
He sweeps her hair back from her neck to rub the muscle there and kisses her on the forehead when she says he's ready.
"I hope so," he says. Lets her go. "Because I may throw up on you."
Rina Ghosh steps across the threshold. At five-foot-two she's not the smallest person in the airport but she's easily one of the shortest adults. Yet she carries herself tall and she has a gravitas about her between the openness of her facial features and the straightness of her spine. The iron streaks in her hair that falls down past her shoulders.
She's wearing bright spring colors and sensible shoes and though she carries a purse she's checked the rest of her luggage. She's going to be staying for a month. Maybe longer if it seems like either her son or the mother of her son's child isn't acclimating. There's also the minor matter of they don't know if the baby's going to arrive tomorrow or a full turn of the moon from now.
Lola can see the older woman mouth Hi sweetheart or some other term of endearment just before her son throws his arms around her. She laughs at the suddenness and the ferocity of the hug but other people give the tall dark kid his space because he does hug her like the impulse has come out of nowhere. Like he'd thought her lost. Gaia knows what goes through his head just before he hugs her.
With Hector at least words are rarely too far behind his thoughts.
"I'm so glad you're here," he says loud enough for Lola to hear.
Rina rubs his back but doesn't conclude the gesture with an awkward pat. She can't see around him to sight Lola but the hug does end eventually. The Galliard stands up and stands back and then thrusts the flowers at his mother.
"Welcome to Denver, Ma." Hector looks around to find Lola and then reaches out his hand for hers. "Now let's get the hell out of here."
Lola Hawkes
The threat-promise/joke-warning about throwing up on her was met with a lift of eyebrows, but Hector was rubbing the muscles of her neck so being thrown up on became a side-note-- a worry immediately let to slip by and be on its way. Her hair was kept down, brushed free of tangles just before they'd gotten in the car and left. Driving with the windows down partway here (because Lola's driver seat was in the sun and god damnit was she hot) had mussed things up again, but she always did have a certain wild look about her. Her mane of hair carried a few licks and curls and kinks to it, introduced by wind and wear, but it worked. She was there partnered up with the wildest man at the airport (well, in the airport-- they both knew about what existed underneath).
That was something that had been hovering in the back of Lola's mind since they'd planned to bring Rina in through the airport and go there to pick her up. As far as Lola Hawkes was concerned, the basement was a hellhole waiting to burst open and spew some upstart attempt at the Apocalypse into their laps. She was nervous for what sort of taint or spiritual emissions that may be coming from under their feet, around the corner, deep in the earth or tucked in a neighboring realm's mirror-side reflection. What it could do to any of them. It made her just as eager to be gone from the place as the crowds of others hugging and reuniting around them did.
But, she does not rush when Hector's nerves tingle in his fingertips even as he lets go of Lola and moves forward to greet his mother. He, more than anyone, has successfully taught her patience. So, it is with this that she stands and waits with her arms and hands at her sides, eyes skimming the corners and faces around her, hunting for signs of anything wrong.
But, of course, nothing was, and soon Hector's hand was reaching back toward her, searching without looking. Given the height of the reach she had a pretty good idea what he was seeking, so she took his hand up in hers and stepped forward to join him at his side-- stepping around him and into Rina's view. She greets what one would suppose to be her mother-in-law with a smile that is brief and small and polite-- practiced, perhaps. She wasn't the smiling sort by default, so polite smiles didn't wear well or long on her face. She does sound perfectly genuine (because of course she is) when she greets her, though.
"Good to see you again, Rina. You got more bags coming, don't you?" This with a somewhat skeptical look at the purse. The only time Lola traveled by airplane it was with a carry-on.
Hector Ghosh
Without grief refusing to yield to the cornucopia of pharmaceuticals her doctor had given her for years Rina has color in her cheeks and light in her eyes. Where Hector and his sisters got their amber-brown eyes from their father Rina has hazel eyes. They appear brown today. In the midst of her tears they had turned green. Perhaps in the morning when she awakens they're a different shade altogether. The edges of the irises are dark and if one stares at them long enough one can see flecks of gold in them. Rina was a pretty girl when she was still a girl and now that she's a woman on her way towards middle-age one can see where her girlishness is fading is left a strong and caring woman.
She loves her children. Even when Hector went away for years and came back different she still loved him. She still lays a hand on his arm even though it has to terrify her to touch this tall angry young man she doesn't recognize. Something in him sparks a hint of recognition in her. Maybe it's his face or his voice. Something.
Neither Hector nor Lola understand what it is to be a parent yet but they will. One day Hector will understand his mother and father better. Right now he doesn't understand much of anything but he also holds himself to standards that no one else can understand. Without Lola he'd have driven himself mad already.
Their hands join and Lola steps up to greet Rina and the woman smiles bright and genuine at her.
"I do," she says in that soft voice of hers. It doesn't keen with the threat of tears today. She is wearing her age as well as she can and is recovering from the stress of thinking herself bereft of a son. But she's happy. "Oh, sweetheart, look at you."
It's surprise and joy at once. Rina doesn't touch Lola's belly or Lola herself. Just: wow. She hadn't even registered how pregnant she was when they were in her kitchen in December.
"Ma," says Hector.
"Alright," Rina says.
Hector gives Rina his elbow and he ushers his women onto the escalator.
"How many bags do you have?" he asks on the way down.
"Two. I'm sorry, I wasn't sure what the weather would be like, so I probably packed too much."
"It's alright. We actually have weather here. If it snows, try not to panic."
"It snows this time of year?"
"Ma, we're in Colorado. It snows whenever it wants."
Lola can hear the claw-sharp edge to his voice that comes when he's too hemmed in. They're getting into an even more densely populated part of the terminal and the muscles in his back have all but gone to rock in preparation to fight anything that comes at them. Didn't he tell her the story about how fucking Storm's Teeth had ridden around on those baggage carousels like they were at a goddamn amusement park?
Behind them across the great lobby is the stairwell where he'd made his near-fatal decision to go on with only a Ragabash at his side. Where something unseen had shot up out of the dark and grabbed him and nearly killed him before the Full Moons rushed in.
Hector gives it a glance as they approach the baggage claim but he doesn't say anything. Just a hard breath out nearly lost under the din of the crowd and a tightening of his hand on Lola's.
Lola Hawkes
Oh, look at her.
She'd reached the stage of pregnancy where she looked as though she could easily drop a child any day. That was what much of the last two months of pregnancy looked like, honestly. Her belly was large enough that she had no sign of her toes when she looked straight down any longer, that lacing boots and strapping up sandals was a stubborn effort dotted with grunts and growls (sexy, huh?).
Lola was a sturdy woman to begin with, though. Not slight of frame, not like her sister had been (willowy, small-ish, but quick and sly to boot), Lola was a little taller than average (not by much) and strong of shoulder, broad of hip. She carried her pregnancy well, it didn't appear to burden her. Rina could at least rest assured that the baby would probably carry to term, pending any traumatic events.
Modesty wasn't something that occurred in Lola very often at all, but the sentiment from a matron was a rare and sensitive enough thing to stir it. She glanced down at her front and cleared her throat. "Yeah," she agreed, still not the strongest with words.
So, they began to walk together toward the baggage claim, Hector with Lola on his one hand and his mother on his other arm. It probably looked to people like he was hauling them. His discomfort with the place and the crowd around him could be felt and sensed almost as an electric sizzle in the air, and people were quick to look at it wide-eyed then move out of its way. Lola ignored them, as much as she could anyways, and listened instead to the Ghoshes and their talk.
A smirk and a chuckle came with Hector's observation about Colorado's relationship with snow. He was largely right, that was a part of being in the mountains. She didn't know about Erich Storm's-Teeth's joyride on the carousel, or if she did she certainly wasn't recalling it right now. She was wondering the likelihood of Shit Going Down on a Saturday at noon when the airport was as populated as it was. Simultaneously wondering why everything that the lunatics of the Wyrm did always happened to be when places were closed and quiet. This may have begun a wandering train of thought before she vocalized wherever the progression lead her.
"Rina, do you know how to shoot?"
Hector Ghosh
Good god, Hawkes.
They have to stand and wait for the baggage handlers to chuck all of the bags out of the plane onto their truck and drive to the conveyer belt and then chuck all of the bags off of the truck and onto the belt. For the belt to carry the bags through the winding innards of the building and emerge again in the claim area. This takes more time than the slowest passenger at the very back of the plane takes to hobble himself out to where the carousel is.
Hector would like it very much if his mother's luggage would just appear in front of them so they could get in the car and get the fuck out of here. He has it in him to be a patient creature but not when he is trying to keep an eye on his mother and his mate and their surroundings at the same time. He only has two eyes for crying out loud.
She asks his mother if she knows how to shoot and Hector gives her a dark look. The darkness isn't aimed at her. It's just dark.
Rina doesn't think anything of it. She can tell her son is tense the same as everyone else in the place can tell he's tense. Nobody wants to be around someone who looks as if they could snap at any second. The three have a wide bubble of emptiness around them but the chattering of the other travelers and the other traveler's families still comes to them.
The belt is moving but no luggage is on it yet.
"No," says Rina. She sounds bemused. "I don't think so."
"Guns, Ma."
"Guns?"
"She means do you know how to shoot a gun."
"I know."
Where Hector's tone is exasperated Rina sounds placid. Not the drugged-flat sort of accepting that she was in California but the sort that comes from raising three children who all think they know more than she does and don't listen to her ever and forget to call on Mother's Day and her birthday half the time. They love her anyway. She knows this. Rina doesn't ask much of the people around her.
"You should learn," Hector says.
"I should learn?"
"To shoot."
"No, I don't think so." Rina glances down at the flowers in her hands and smells the petals before giving the carousel her attention. "I don't like guns."
Hector draws and releases a loud breath and starts to chew his thumbnail. His palm is damp in Lola's. Maybe she can feel his pulse slamming at the base of his thumb.
"Where the hell are your bags?" he asks.
"They're coming. You know how long it takes."
"No, I don't. I don't fucking fly."
"Hector," she says. Her chastisement is mild. "Shh."
Lola Hawkes
Lola asked the question and nodded at the answer. Was quiet when Hector clarified. The belt was moving and they were standing comfortably back, waiting for the luggage to start pouring out. Hector's grip on Lola's hand was tight but not squeezing, not uncomfortable. She rubbed her thumb over the back of his hand, over veins and tendons and rings, and she listened quietly still when he suggested that his mother learn to shoot.
The exaggerated sigh earned Hector a glance from his mate-- hers not so dark as the one that Hector had cast to her (which had been met with a mild raise to one eyebrow), but rather a checking up. Gauging the expression at his brow and temple, watching as he gnawed on his other hand's thumbnail. Soon as any of it grew back he gnawed it away, with that particular stress habit.
A younger Lola may have swatted the man for his obvious misery and impatience. Were this the pair of them four years ago, when they were both still teens, she likely would have told him to calm his shit or go away for a while. This Lola, though, wriggled her hand free from his grasp and moved it up to the back of his neck instead. Fingertips rubbed up and down, into shoulders and up into his hairline. She spoke in a voice that was quiet because it was low, not because it was particularly soft. Even with the gentle cast that maternity gave by nature's way, not much about Lola was really that soft.
"Nothing's happened yet, Hector. Another five minutes isn't going to change that, I'm sure."
Her hand would then still and come to a rest on his back, hand high enough and elbow bent at an angle that is worked into muscle familiarity from laying hands on the flanks of wolves (dire and modern) to steady them. In a sense, that was sort of what she was doing by spirit anyways.
"You can step out to breathe, if you want. Bags aren't heavy."
Hector Ghosh
Anyone looking at him would think he's having some kind of stress reaction to being out in public. Maybe he's got an anxiety disorder. Times being what they are and xenophobic as this mountainous part of the country tends to be it wouldn't be a stretch to accuse some of the people in the crowd of thinking he had explosive ordinances strapped to his midsection.
Rina flew with her son a few years before he disappeared. He wasn't jittery and clammy then but he was hyperactive as a little boy and as a teenager he was irritable and impatient. Only got worse towards the end. Worse to the point where he would throw books or slam doors or shout at her. It didn't occur to her that maybe she ought to take the shuttle from the airport to her son's place because her son wouldn't be able to hold it together.
It isn't that she doesn't remember how he became a terror towards the end. It's that she doesn't want to remember being afraid of a five-foot-five baby-faced seventeen-year-old. That isn't anything she ever confessed to anyone. Not to the FBI agents who came to her door or the doctor who prescribed her all those pills. Not to her husband. No one wants to admit they're afraid of their own child.
He's starting to breathe faster just before Lola starts to touch him. It isn't a plug yanked but it does work as a reminder to stay centered and present and now. He had been getting himself all riled up talking to his father and a hand on his flank had helped. Lola telling him to breathe, that it was okay, kept him from spiraling.
Nothing's happened yet. She's sure. She gives him permission to leave. Hector takes another slow breath in through his nose and lets it out. Shakes his head.
"I don't wanna leave you here," he says. He drags his hand down his face. Breathes again. "I'm alright. It's... I'm alright."
Nothing comes out of the basement to grab them. He doesn't have to shift to defend his mate or his mother or his unborn child. The crowd doesn't turn on him and he doesn't turn on the crowd. Bags come eventually and it makes him feel useful to heft them off the carousel and carry them even though Rina and Lola are both capable of carrying heavy things. All women are capable of carrying heavy things. They have to be. They share their lives with men.
---
Once they're back at the homestead the day takes on a rote quality all visits from parents take on. Hector gives his mother a perfunctory tour and she is charmed by the place if not slightly disconcerted by the remoteness and the trees and her son's living in it. She gushes over the view and what Lola's done with the place and asks questions to glean a history from her. Present as she was not present when they were guests in her home.
She calls home to tell Narendra she arrived safe and today is a rare day he isn't working. He answers and they talk for a considerable amount of time.
After she gets off the phone they sit in the kitchen and talk for nearly an hour about what their days are like. Rina has her glasses on because she's looking at her day planner as Hector talks about patrols and trips into town and practice with his friend Tamsin. Shows they play for money. They're getting kind of good. People know who Tamsin is. She's the one singing. Hector is just the devastatingly good-looking guy playing the bass for her.
There's a lot they aren't talking about. Over the next several weeks Rina and Hector will disappear more than once to talk in private. Today isn't that day.
Rina Ghosh
Rina doesn't sleep as much as she used to when she was on all those pills. California is only an hour behind Colorado but an hour is a long time when a body's used to wishing more were in the day. That trip into town must have wiped Hector out. His mother made tea after dinner and he fell asleep on the goddamn couch before the water had finished boiling.
It leaves Rina and Lola as the only two awake now. Rina is going to drink her tea before she goes upstairs to an unfamiliar bed in a house with a daughter-in-law she doesn't know and a son she doesn't recognize.
Conversational ball is in your court, Hawkes.
Lola Hawkes
Once they were out of the airport, back in the car and driving away from the city things felt like they were starting to mellow out. The moon was little more than a crescent in the sky, not showing enough of Herself to pull the tides of Rage just yet. They made it home in one piece, with Rina somewhere between in wonder and concern for how remote the place was. After all, the gravel road off some rural highway up into the foothills, easily twenty minutes away from the last town they'd seen.
The place is presentable for Rina, Hector and Lola both saw to that. The day had been warm and the forecast dry so the windows had been left open. The nursery was complete, the crib was impressive, and Lola made a point to mention that Hector had crafted the thing from scratch. It's impossible for Rina not to notice the walls of picture frames in the front room, beginning in one corner and spanning out over the walls shared between front-of-home and dining space. The photos appear to date back to the twenties or thirties, though photos that old are seldom. They're almost all candid shots rather than professional portraits, typically featuring people of Native American descent. Many of them here on this very land, in front of or around this house. But there is the rest of the house to see, and things to talk about. She'd have plenty of time to check these out later.
There was pleasant conversation about the home, about their lifestyle, their schedules and what they do in the day-to-day living sense. Lola alternated between sitting at the table with them and standing up and moving to do something-- get a drink of water, grab a piece of fruit to snack on, visit the bathroom (a few times, that last one). Largely, though, she was present and attentive and participated as much as she could be expected to. She was still getting to know Rina, after all.
---------------
Later that night, she had her opportunity. Hector had crashed out on the sofa, and Lola had tossed a blanket over the lower half of his body and left the rest to keep cool. The kettle couldn't even stir him when the water began to boil. Let him sleep, the Kinfolk had silently agreed. At least for now.
They each had a cup of tea, and Lola was standing on the kitchen-side of the island with her mug on the counter in front of her. She would pick it up to sip here or there, but would set it down to put her hands on the counter edge and use it as leverage to slowly stretch out her lower back. She had since changed out of the dress that she'd worn for the day and into sleeping clothes-- a nightgown of very plain white cotton design. Her hair was tied into a braid-- all the better to keep off her neck and back while she was trying to sleep through the upcoming warm nights.
Quiet had stretched on for a little while, but it wasn't unpleasant or uncomfortable at least. It was more the general sense of mild, polite, away-from-home discomfort that she picked up from the mother of her mate that spurred Lola to ask:
"Do you want to see Celduin?" Pause, then clarification: "Hector's pack?"
Rina Ghosh
"I do."
As if they're talking about seeing where Hector works or meeting his kickball team or something innocuous. Part of the discomfort on Rina's part has to come from the unreality of everything. Seeing her son full-grown without a medication buffer between herself and the rest of the world. Knowing somewhere in her bones where she doesn't have words that he both is and isn't the child who stormed out of the kitchen the last time she saw him.
She has no idea that if the people who found and absconded with Hector hadn't found him that the story would have turned out much different. That the FBI agents who knocked on her door would have been armed with a bullshit story rather than actively looking for him. That they might not have been FBI agents at all. That he could have wound up in a testing facility if he didn't end up dead.
So she's just happy he's alive. Happy he is telling her he has activities and friends to keep him occupied and that he isn't hiding out here doing God knows what with his time. It must be a relief to Narendra to hear their son isn't a terrorist or a sociopath. It's obvious that this is a home for both of them and not a prison.
"Hector said he wants to take a trip out to the park tomorrow, to see the... he didn't call it a temple, he called it a...
Lola Hawkes
"Caern," Lola provided the word that Rina was looking for, and pushed away from the kitchen counter with the heels of her hands. "It's like a temple. Same idea, when you get down to the brass knuckles of spirituality."
By this point Lola had a sway-and-waddle to her walk. It was impossible not to develop past a certain point. But even so she's strong-backed and strong-shouldered, and this showed in how she carried the extra weight the baby gave her. Not the most graceful, her steps weren't so certain and precise and graceful as Hector's were by his nature, but she looked like she would be very difficult to move or slow down if she didn't want to be stopped.
Even when she's simply crossing barefoot over the exposed hardwood of the floors of her own home, Lola walked like this. It's with this same strong sway-stride that Lola crossed past the couch that Hector was still sleeping deeply on and skimmed the wall of many framed photographs. It took her a couple of seconds to locate the picture she was looking for, but when it was spied she took it down from its supporting nail and returned to where Rina had been left.
The picture that gets handed to Rina is medium sized and framed, appears to have been taken with someone's digital camera and printed in a blown-up size. The image shows a crowd of young adults of all different backgrounds, ages ranging from teenaged to maybe edging up close to thirty? They're all out on property that will come to be recognized as The Homestead, out behind the house where there's a hill and a fire pit. It's daylight, and the setting makes it seem like the group is setting up for a fire or celebration of some kind.
There's Willow and Maria standing together. Willow isn't looking at the camera, but at her pack. Maria had spied the camera and slung an arm around Willow's waist to make a face and pose beside her. Tamsin and Glen and Corey and Hector are all together on the other side of the fire pit. They're laughing about something, probably at Corey's expensive given how the young square-faced clean-shaven man looks to be barely laughing along. This picture is from about two years ago, maybe a little more.
While Lola gave Rina a chance to seek and locate Hector's face among he others, she explained: "They're like a family, a pack. Eat and hunt and sleep and fight together. Live together." Die together too, but she didn't want to go down that path just yet.
Rina Ghosh
'Brass knuckles' and 'spirituality' in the same sentence would have made Hector laugh and crack a joke but Hector is sprawled out on the couch with a blanket draped over his lower half and doesn't hear the comment because he is asleep. He didn't acquire his propensity for teasing the people he loves from his mother. The woman doesn't appear to have a mean bone in her body.
Neither does she have any photographs of his son from when he was a young adult. All she has are shots of him as a teenager when he was either oblivious to the photographer's presence or furious at someone else for forcing him to hold still. Even if he loved the person encircling his shoulders Hector scowled in nearly every shot taken of him in high school. His hair was shaggy and his height was unimpressive but he had a wiry strength to him. If he got into a fight he could hurt the other person, maybe even kill them.
So seeing him among friends who did not cower back from him. Seeing him alive and happy and laughing years after his disappearance. Rina draws and releases a breath to steady herself and runs her fingertips across the glass. Glances up quick when she realizes she's doing it. Looks over at the flowers now stood in a crock and sets down the frame.
"Do all of them have this 'gene'?" Rina asks.
Lola Hawkes
"Yes," is Lola's answer to the question posed, and it's with the slow careful motion of a pregnant woman sitting down that Lola eased herself into the chair beside Rina. She'd fetched her tea and brought it along with the picture on her way back. She sipped the warm beverage while leaning forward and tapping a blunt and unpainted fingernail to the frame overtop each face while she spoke.
"They're all Garou. All able to change, and to commune with the spirits." Get ready, Rina, this may be about as much you've ever heard Lola speak. It's going to be enough to recognize that she has a faint accent, Spanish, enough to tell that she grew up speaking both as a first language, not one over the other.
"This is Tamsin. She was born under the same moon that Hector was-- the Gibbous. It makes them our Talesingers, and our historians. You'll meet Tamsin one of these upcoming days, I'm sure she's squirming out of her skin to meet you." The last sentence isn't meant to be ominous-- in fact, Lola sounded affectionate when speaking of the woman, one who looked impossibly young for the crowd she was in, younger even than Hector.
"Here is Corey. He was born under the Full Moon, like me. It makes him a Warrior-- a soldier and an expert of war and tactic. He's down in Houston at a different Caern, so you won't meet him."
"Glen. He was a New Moon, like my sister. They're the Tricksters-- the spies, the sleuths, the sly ones that test everyone else and make sure we're at the top of our game." Her finger kept moving, from right to left, across the frame.
"Maria, my sister."
Rina already knew that Lola lost her sister recently, but it's still a sad thing to hear it in Lola's voice. She still misses her very much, and though her voice does not quake or waver and her mouth doesn't curl down with sadness, nor do her eyes threaten tears, that yearning for another visit and time spent with her older sibling was still there. It was just an accepted thing now.
"And Willow. She was a Crescent Moon. They're the spiritual ones, our priests and guides through the Umbra-- or, the Spirit World." Finally, Lola's hand moved away from the picture frame so her arm and shoulder stopped crowding into the older woman's space. Her hand settled against her stomach, where the baby was stretching and pressing with feet currently. She kept her eyes on the photo and took another drink of her tea.
"Willow was the Alpha, but she's gone now. Then it was Corey, but he left. Now Hector is the Alpha. He leads the others-- they all work together, but at the end of the day they defer to him."
Rina Ghosh
The others.
Rina counts among the faces in the photograph one who is dead and one who is gone and one who left. She doesn't remember her son mentioning Glen or Willow. Certainly didn't mention Corey. It stands to reason that Glen is also dead or he's also gone another way. If she wants to know more about what happened or she wants to ask her son what happened they will have time yet for that.
She already knows more about the roles of the people within the Nation than she did upon first flying out here. It's a small comfort. Rina cannot name all of the phases of the moon nor does she know precisely how many days are in the lunar cycle. When she walks outside at night she doesn't think to look above and see what shape the light takes when it bounces off the rock's surface.
"And the baby?" she asks. "When will you know if...?"
She's trying to find a polite way to ask if the baby will be human or not.
Lola Hawkes
"There is a gift that some of the Garou have. They learned it from the spirits, and it lets them be able to smell what you are." Lola sighed some, but not for the conversation at hand. It was for having the baby and many of her organs pressed up into her lungs. This created shortness of breath when she and the baby sat in certain ways.
"When the baby is born, we will find a wolf that knows this gift. Then we will know." Her tone shifted to something cool-- cool because the bitterness and hurt of her younger years had faded and 'cool' was the next step to replace it. "Hopefully this one won't screw it up."
But, she continued past that hangup and carried on. "The baby won't be a human, though. Not like Cassandra managed to be." Lola glanced to Rina's face, briefly, then back down into her mug. "Either Kinfolk, like you and me, or a Garou like Hector and the rest."
Lola paused here, again, then when she pressed on again to conclude with a last thought she sounded almost ponderous. This was the first time she's explained her world to anyone besides Anthony, who already had a cursory knowledge at least thanks to the Hawkes girls' presence in his life.
"The baby'll be born into our Tribe, by birthright. Uktena. But I suppose it could join whichever would take it." Hector would use 'her' or 'she', but Lola wasn't convinced. Not yet.
Rina Ghosh
This is enough to make anyone's head swim. Rina is of an age that she can expect grandchildren and she has one already. A school-age boy with dark skin who will grow up in the Hindu religion as did his father and his parents. Who will look more like his father as he grows older than he will look like his mother because his mother's blood is the blood of a mix of people. Who may come to resemble his uncle. His uncle will worry until he reaches adulthood that the gene will have found its way to him and he will have done nothing to prepare Cassandra for the possibility of a Change.
The Garou of the Sept of the Green know there is a human descendant of Uktena in their midst. That this descendant has a child. They can be mindful but they cannot prepare when this descendant is so far from them that the word 'werewolf' has never touched her lips.
Rina is not worried about this grandchild. The one still growing in her daughter-in-law's belly is the worry. This makes as much sense to her as it can make sense to her and as Lola describes rites and gifts and what the baby's blood will out one day she drinks her tea and keeps a hand on the photograph of her only son as happy as she has seen him in years. Rina blinks and takes a breath and she doesn't know what to say but she has to say something.
She takes her hand off of the picture frame and reaches for Lola's.
"Whatever it is," she says. "I'm here, honey."
Lola Hawkes
She's not a creature who is quick to affections, Lola Hawkes. This came from fostering the mindset of an Ahroun from a young age, because this was what she was destined to be and what she wanted to be. A part of being a big tough hardass warrior was not giving out hugs or kisses or other affections so well and easy-- at least, that was her young mind's understanding of it. Now that she was older she knew better, of course, but the behaviors were still built into her to some extent.
Yet, she did not grow up in a home without love. Her father was a man with a heart of gold, ask anyone. He was stern with his daughters because he needed to be, but very attentive and dedicated to his family. Nothing snuck by him-- he knew Ivan was spending time in Lola's bedroom weeks before Evelyn ever figured it out. Her mother was between worlds and realms often, and this left her airy and a little distant, but never unloving.
So Lola did not retract when the woman reached for her hand. Instead she felt the fingers and palm on the back of her knuckles and over her fingers and looked solemnly at Rina for the span of a few seconds. She didn't want to yet share with the woman the heaviness that was knowing the fate Garou faced. Many, many of them died young. It was unlikely her son would see fifty years of age, and that would even be an incredibly kind estimate. Chances were greater that Lola would end up finding herself a second mate after about fifteen years, if she even survived that time herself.
Instead of sharing the weight of such worries on the woman's first night, Lola instead pulled a small smile that looked tight and toothy, but at least it was an honest and earnest attempt at bracing enthusiasm. "It would be considered an honor for it to be True, you know. I would like to raise and teach someone with the opportunity to be great for the Nation."
She paused then, and slid her chair out backwards, away from the table. Her hand left the shelter of Rina's when she did this. The huff of breath had a note of finality to it when she rose-- it sounded like the sigh of someone ready to turn in for the night. "I know that a lot of this sounds.... weird and fanatical. But you'll be here for a while. A month's enough time for this to start to make sense."
Rina Ghosh
Flying is tiring even for short trips such as the one she took but the toll of the day has taken its due from all of them. Lola has the weight of new life sapping her reserves faster than her mate's or his mother's but Hector carries Rage with him at all times. He goes through each day knowing he may have to answer a call to war and that trip to collect his mother had been more difficult for him than he had let on. And Hector is not a creature who hides his difficulties. He will learn as he grows older to school his expressions and keep his face as stone but he is young right now and having to return to the place where he had made a mistake that could have cost the Nation more than he has to pay out now has him asleep on the couch dreaming whatever it is he dreams at night.
Lola has been beside him when he awakened from dark dreams breathless and terrified it was an omen and not just an accumulation of worries. That she has been beside him is what lets him sleep so sound though if anything attacked this house tonight it would come for his child and his mother and not just him.
And Rina looks grateful when Lola concedes fatigue and finishes the conversation.
"It is," she says. She pushes back from the table herself. "Narendra's religion sounded weird and fanatical at first, too. But I loved him. I still love him." She looks towards the couch where her son lies. Could be either her husband or her son to whom she refers with that last confession. "Sleep well, dear."
Lola Hawkes
Rina's comment about Hinduism made Lola laugh, and for the first time that this woman can remember hearing Lola actually sounded warm. She was a different person at home, here on her territory. She was more comfortable, less on edge because this was her turf, her place to be confident and capable and in charge. The place she called home was the place she recharged, and here she laughed without a bite of satire or hardened flint to it.
"I grew up celebrating the seasons and praising Gaia and Luna," Lola said. "And Hinduism is still foreign as hell to me."
Lola would offer to take Rina's cup if she's done with it, and would deposit one or both mugs in the sink after draining and rinsing them. Then, with that same strong and steady sway, she moved to the couch and roused the Galliard sleeping there by rubbing fingers and thumb across his forehead and cheek, into his hair by way of his temple (where tiny bits of silver began to sprout but he liked to be dramatic about it so Lola left the matter of his hair alone to save herself). "Come to bed," she urged him, expression flat but eyes loving as they always were. She tended to look at Hector with faith as much as love. She believed in him as much as the Cliaths that rallied behind his name did.
"Goodnight, Rina," she bade, and led Hector into their room.
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