Narrative: Prior to this scene, organized and discussed out of character without a written scene to accompany, Lola Hawkes had gone to explore the Lane house. She discovered some useful information, such as a journal hidden under floorboards. She was headed home from the Lane house when a dark car had fallen in to place to start driving behind her.
A glance in the rear-view mirror told Lola that the person behind the wheel of the car following her had no face-- no distinguishable features, at least, it was as though some great cosmic artist had taken an eraser and smudged the face of the man away. She drove faster to see if he would keep pace, and when she did this an identical figure appeared standing in the middle of the road.
A good Drive roll prevented Lola from hitting the man or rolling her car when she swerved to avoid him. Not far past this, a third figure (this one in another car) was idling at an intersection she was about to cross. When Lola drove through the intersection, the car moved to try and jack-knife her. Lola managed to avoid this car wreck as well, but fed up with the chase and unwilling to lead these things further home, she pulled off to the side of the road to confront.
One of the two cars pulled off to the side of the road ahead of her car, and the figure got out. Lola got out of her car as well, shotgun in hand. However, she didn't see one of the mysterious faceless figures creep up behind her. The figure behind her did something, Lola has no idea what, but whatever it was she was instantly rendered unconsciouss.
The scene that follows is what happens when she wakes.
-----------------
Hector Ghosh
He's
been gone all of two days and he's already blown up Lola's phone so
much it may feel as though he hasn't even really left. That maybe he's
just a train ride away. Though he hasn't come out and said it yet Lola
knows he is glad to be spending less time in the city after what
happened two weeks ago.
Not necessarily spending less time in the
state. He's been gone so much if their situation were any different it
would be easy to forget he considers her home his now.
Anyway:
it's early evening on a Tuesday when Hector's phone starts ringing. Lola
never calls him. That only happens when something has happened.
Wherever he is it's loud.
"HELLO,
BAAAABY!" he lows over the noise. It's a passable Jerry Lee Lewis
impression but now's not the time. "Hang on, lemme go outside."
Clomp clomp clomp hinge-whine sudden fresh-air silence.
"What's going on?"
Lola Hawkes
When
she came to, Lola was leaned forward over the steering column of the
Subaru Forester. The engine was off, the car door was closed, and there
was a mark on her cheekbone from where it was rested on the wheel. She
was stiff and fuzzy feeling, but that uncertain discomfort and groggy
sense of 'where am I' was quickly tossed by a sudden jolt.
The
black cars (plural). The men with featureless faces. Swerving to
avoid one only to nearly be T-boned by another at an intersection.
Getting out with her rifle. Seeing the gun. Then...
Her hands
went down her chest and stomach, and though she cringed to move and flex
about her right hand she's experienced worse, and has bigger
ice-bucket-in-chest concerns to focus on. Palms pressed to her stomach
and pushed. Faint rolling and kicking answered, and she breathed a sigh
of relief before doing an inventory check.
No blood, no wounds.
The car started and the tires were all intact. There was dirt on her
clothing and her hand suggested that she fell on it or hit something
hard-- she wasn't sure. After a few minutes of worrying and straining
her brain and cycling possibilities of what happened in her mind, she
got her phone out of the center console of the vehicle and called
Hector.
When he answered, she started to try and talk but cut off
and was quiet until he had moved someplace he could hear. Once out
wherever it was he'd vacated to, she tried again.
"I need your
expertise. You ever heard of a type of Fomori that has no facial
features and that's the only obvious abnormality 'bout them?"
Her voice was shaky and urgent. Something happened, but she didn't outright tell him what just yet.
Hector Ghosh
[wits + occult: IDK HAVE I?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Hector Ghosh
Give
him some credit for not immediately panicking like he did when she
called him to say she was in the hospital and needed him to come get
her. Though he hears the breathlessness and the implication of an
incident in her voice Hector focuses on the question. As far away as he
is he can't help her if he doesn't keep his shit together.
"That could be a couple of things. Actually."
A
short spell of silence as he gathers his thoughts. But there are few
things in the universe Hector can't remember hearing something about if
he hasn't actually seen it before. It makes the pit situation especially
frustrating.
What can you do though. Tribal elders have no idea what it is either.
"It
could be a--wait no it can't. It's still daylight. It's not a leech.
There are some leeches that can walk around when the sun's out but
they're practically not leeches. Fomori don't usually have... I mean
they have these really grotesque, you know, mutations to their face
structure... what do you mean, obvious abnormality? What's the rest of
it look like?"
Lola Hawkes
"There were three of
them. I think." She shook her head, and Hector can hear discomfort
along with stress. Something about the way she breathed through her
teeth with the next intake of breath suggested at least minor pain.
He'd
hear the sound of the car engine turning over. It was cold, she wanted
the heater running. She wasn't sure where she would be driving just
yet, though, so she stayed against the shoulder of the road with her
headlights off.
"They just looked like men. Average men, wearing
black suits. But they had sunglasses on, and I couldn't see a nose or a
mouth. It was just blurred out, like the reality in front of their
faces was smudged like wet paint, you know?
"I'm worried they're Pentex. I'm worried they did something. I lost... Jesus Christ, I lost a fucking hour. They knocked me out."
Hector Ghosh
"You're alright."
That's
the best he can do for her from six hundred miles away. Unless he
wanted to take the moon bridge back home to Forgotten Questions and hope
she could make it back to the Homestead without incident. Which she has
to guess he does now want to do that.
"You're alright, I... I
don't know what they're called, I've just heard stories. They're like...
androids or something, or cyborgs, you know? Robots that are supposed
to look like humans. Or humans that have robot parts. It's--"
Come on Hector you walking encyclopedia of fucked-up information help her.
"If
it's not Pentex then I don't know what the hell it is. But if they were
going to kill you they would have just killed you, they wouldn't have
bothered knocking you out. Where are you right now?"
Lola Hawkes
He
can hear her fussing around inside of the car a little. The ruffling
of clothes, the sound of the heater blowing heavily when the engine has
worked up enough heat to turn the air warm. He assures her that she's
fine, and when she speaks next her tone is a little more even, at least,
though no less grim and severe sounding.
"The baby's fine...,"
mostly announced for him, but a little bit for her as well. She was
scared of what things the men in suits could have done to the
still-growing baby while she was out, but Hector had brought up the
point of motivation. She couldn't imagine that they had any interest in
her pregnancy-- this was probably triggered by her snooping around.
She rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand.
"Outside
of Ft. Collins by a couple of miles-- out of the suburbs and everything
at least. Along the highway, just parked. The fuckers tried to wreck
my car to stop me, but I got out and one pulled a gun. The other snuck
up on me and then--..." She stopped herself and sighed heavily. She
sounded frustrated again.
"I gotta figure this out. But androids, 'eh? ....Shit."
Hector Ghosh
Until
she volunteers information about the baby Hector had been focusing on
Lola. She can tell it was a loud and blaring fear he was ignoring by the
heaviness of the breath he lets go then. Like he had been holding it
all this time and just remembered he needs to come up for air sometimes.
"Yeah, I mean, I don't know,
but you only lost an hour instead of like, a limb or something." Or the
baby. "I feel like if it were anything else you've be in seriously deep
shit right now."
She cannot see him as he drops back against the
side of the building and blows out his fear and the panic he didn't let
himself feel to begin with. But she can hear something. Some rustling
and some delayed-reaction breathing.
"How did they...? I just don't understand why they were messing with you."
Lola Hawkes
"An
old acquaintance came by-- Sweet Caroline of the Fianna. She asked me
to check on her grandparents. So I've been trying to track them down.
They've been missing for like a fuckin' week. They off adventurin' and
chasin' mysteries and shit. I was at their house and..."
She
trailed off. She was having trouble remembering what the inside of the
house was like-- specifically because she was trying to retrace her
steps from room to room to remember what she'd found out. She couldn't
remember which rooms she'd checked or what she'd found. Concern creased
into her voice when she continued.
"...when I left they were following after me. I think the old fuckers got mixed up in something too deep."
Another pause, and then almost begrudgingly she stated:
"I'm gonna have to go save them."
Hector Ghosh
"You're gonna..."
Oh he doesn't like that. He doesn't like that at all.
"Wait
a minute. Wait wait. Sweet Caroline? Oh, Lo, come on, her grandparents
are like the fucked-up love child of Teddy Roosevelt and Indiana Jones.
Twins fucked-up love children. Only they're not related because that
would be-- Don't... no no no, don't go after them, if they can't get out
of it themselves they're fucked."
Lola Hawkes
"Hector, I'm going after them."
She sounded firm about it. He can be sure that there's a stubborn set to her jaw even though he can't see it there.
"It
sounds like it's real trouble. I mean, if it's bad enough that I got..
got... fucking memory wiped or whatever just for looking into it?
They're in trouble. And they're fucking old. Whatever happened I don't
think they're gonna be able to handle it on their own, and they might
not be our Kinfolk but they're still, y'know, part of this."
She
sounded distracted, like she was rambling a little bit. He hears the
engine rev up a little and the phone shift and shuffle about, like she
was adjusting her hold on it. She was pulling off the shoulder of the
road and getting to driving again. Once comfortably on the road she
worked the wheel with her left hand and cradled the phone to her ear
with her right shoulder. "I've gotta get somewhere safe. I don't want
these fuckers following me back to the Bawn."
Hector Ghosh
"I don't want them following you at all."
He
would have lost this debate even if he were in town. He knows it. She
can hear in his voice that he knows it. The only time Hector can win any
sort of argument against Lola it's when he knows in his bones that he's
right.
If he were a more traditional wolf he might have told her
they dug their own grave and it wasn't worth the potential loss of life
trying to bring them back.
Hector sighs.
"Alright." Like
he's reassuring himself now instead of her. "Alright. If anyone can get
these two old bats out of trouble, it's you."
That said:
"I
swear, when I get back, I'm not leaving you alone again. Like, ever. I'm
going to be a stay-at-home dad. The kind that actually puts on clothes
and shit, not the bathrobe-and-sweatpants-all-day kind."
Lola Hawkes
The
quip that Hector made about being a stay-at-home dad earned him a
chuckle. That he managed this much in her current state of nerves spoke
volumes.
"That's just fine. I'll go... I don't know, shoot fuckin' bad guys for a living. People get paid for that, right?"
She
seems willing to let the conversation drift that way for now-- to just
talk with him for a few minutes before letting him get back to what he
was doing. Hector gave her an idea, a direction for the origin of those
men in suits, and that's what she'd called him for. That, and he
calmed her down-- that was the other reason she'd called. She wanted to
hear him, reason things out with him, and they'd accomplished this as
well.
So she'd spend the next minute or so continuing the 'what
if' scenario of her getting a job as a bounty hunter and him staying
home with the children. They'd make an A&E television series about
her, and it would get cancelled three-fourths of the way through the
first season. But at some point the conversation ends-- Hector goes
back inside and Lola turns off onto a driveway to ask for help from a
man that she'd broken her friendship with.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Maybell - 2.9.2014 [Killough, NPC'd by jamie]
P.D. Killough
In another season this drive would have been scenic. Gone west out of Littleton Lola and her Subaru Forester handled the winding sylvan mountains and the snow-slicked roads and did not bow underneath the fog and the mist. But if she started to think she had made a mistake after the first fifty miles she also made the decision to keep on going. Hours of daylight still left and she had made a promise to Caroline.
Besides. She had already made the longest drive of her life a couple months back. Even if she has to stop to pee and can feel her feet swelling it isn't that bad. At least she isn't driving across the country to be the sole source of emotional stability in her mate's quest to reclaim his blood relatives.
As of 2010, 72 people lived in this place. It is designated as an unincorporated community by the U.S. Census Bureau. Nothing can grow here. Its climate is highly variable and the winters are extreme here.
It is 37 degrees outside when Lola finally reaches the town limits. It will be ten degrees colder and snowing in Littleton by the time she starts to head towards home but along the Yampa River the sky is choked with thick gray clouds and threatening drops instead of flakes. The temperature will hold. One of the only things she can consider herself grateful for.
Here is the unfortunate part of her day: it isn't until she gets to town that Lola realizes the return address belongs to the Maybell Post Office. Which she will have trouble finding since all of the buildings along Collom Street look like they could be anything else.
There is a General Store. And a bar. And a Game Processing Station. And a gas station. And an elementary school. And a couple of double-wide trailers.
A green library sign and a smaller white POST OFFICE sign point her off of Route 40. The bar has no fewer than five vehicles in its prideful parking lot and the lights are on.
Welcome to Maybell, Lola.
Lola Hawkes
The drive really wasn't all that bad, in comparison. Lola had gotten used to driving a big ancient truck everywhere she went, so the smoother handling and lower center of gravity that the Subaru had to offer made the wet and foggy roads nothing for her to be concerned with. She'd had to stop once to pee, finding a gas station off the highway to do so.
Once in Maybell, which really was just some homes surrounding one functioning street-- probably some city that sprang up around a mine or large ranch or something. Nothing could grow out here, though. It was difficult to understand precisely why people lived out here except simply to be away from everyone and everything (which was something Lola could honestly understand).
When she found herself parked up in front of the post office she cursed and idled for a moment, glancing here and there. The bar, eventually, was where she wound up. It was the only place with vehicles, and perhaps she could ask around to see if anyone knew who this Killough person was.
Lola wore a pair of jeans and brown work boots, with a red-and-other-colors flannel shirt and a navy blue down vest, both of which had to be unbuttoned to accommodate her stomach, which stretched out against the gray tee she wore beneath it all. There was a red knit scarf about her neck and her hair was back in a ponytail, and the persistent gray glare of the sun against the blanket of gray clouds above was cut away by a pair of sunglasses as well. She walked into the building with her chin high and her shoulders square, as she ever would and probably ever will enter new territory. Posturing and challenging and daring anyone to try and push for dominance of the room right out the gate. All in body language and nothing more.
The sunglasses were pushed back up into her hair and she approached the bar, envelope folded up and in the inside chest pocket within her vest. There she would lean and wait, elbow on the bar and other hand in an exterior vest pocket.
P.D. Killough
This isn't the sort of place where everyone in the joint stops what they're doing to turn and glower at the door when it opens but it sure feels that way. The floorboards groan underfoot and the whole place looks and smells like it's been here since the land still lived within Mexican territory.
On the inside the bar has the appearance of a restaurant with booths and tables. One cowboy-looking young mestizo sits at a booth by himself with a newspaper and a plate of food and a bottle of beer. Everybody else is hunched onto a stool at the bar.
Hank Williams is playing over the stereo. That kind of place.
The bartender looks over at her and he doesn't step up to meet her clear challenge. Everybody else glances over and she can see interest and confusion mingling in the men's eyes as they read her obvious pregnancy with her unfamiliar face. It ends quickly though. The men turn back to their drinks and the bartender finishes washing his glass before he addresses her.
"You lost, ma'am?" he asks in a rural drawl.
Lola Hawkes
Her entrance earns her a moment of notice, but then dismissal and acceptance and little else. Honestly, Lola preferred it that way. She didn't walk into places actively wanting fights-- not always, at least. Today she was simply seeking information.
When the bartender came and asked if he was lost, Lola answered back in the very competent English that she possessed, tinged ever so slightly with Mexican Spanish accents or rhythms here and there.
"Just a little," was her confession. She didn't look distressed for the fact, though. Lola was always sure to give the demeanor of somebody who was in control. She could not be intimidated, oh no. That only worked the other way around.
"I'm looking for a man named Killough. I think he's an older man. You know where I could find him?"
P.D. Killough
"Aw, shit, Paddy, what'd you go and do now?"
This come from one of the older ranch hands sitting nearest the door. He like many of the rest of them are weather-beaten and leather-skinned with laugh lines in more plentiful number than teeth. He has to turn his head and raise his voice to catch the attention of a similarly well-worn fellow who has taken up a place at the stool closest to the wall. Keg taps or other men's shoulders and heads partly obscure his face from Lola's vantage point but when he leans to see better Lola gets her first glimpse at P.D. Killough.
If the folks she is looking for are in their 70s he looks to be about the same age. He wears a flannel shirt and jeans same as she does. A trucker cap on his head and a can of chewing tobacco in the breast pocket. Blue eyes bright even in the dim light.
All of the other men seated at the bar laugh at the question and the older fellow who posed the question grins and cackles at his own wit. The bartender just rolls his eyes at them and jerks his chin towards the one fellow in the place who isn't laughing.
"That'd be him, right there," says the bartender.
"Well god damn, Loujunior," says the buddy of the guy who'd make the first wise remark. Says it like it's one word even: Loujunior. "Ain't no secrets around here, is there?"
Loujunior just shrugs an open-armed lack-of-fucks shrug and by the time the exchange has run its course P.D. Killough has taken his tall boy can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and carried it over to meet Lola. The ribbing carries on without them. He stands 5'9" in his cowboy boots and is slightly stooped. Hair gone the colour of silver underneath his hat. Little more than skin and sinew overtop his bones.
"Ma'am," Killough says. "What seems to be the trouble?"
Lola Hawkes
The bar lit up with laughter-- as luck so had it, P.D. Killough was there in that very bar, so she needn't go far to find him and continue her errand. When the man in his seventies at the other end of the bar straightened and peered over at her, Lola did precisely the same. Her elbow left the bar, she distractedly nodded her thanks at the bartender, and after that she was simply watching the old man-- she assumed an old Kinfolk, but couldn't know for certain.
When the older man came nearer, Lola stuck out her right hand and turned to face him straight on. If there was one thing that her father and mother both managed to beat into her brain, it was that good first impressions were important. Of course she interpreted that as a strong impression, and whether it was good or not was debatable on the other side.
Either way, regardless of whether the man shook her hand (and he seemed like he would), Lola would hitch her thumb toward the door. "I'm here huntin' after some friends, and I think you might have seen them recently." The way she spoke, you'd think she was a fucking police officer or something. That might be what some of the locals start to think, especially since next she asked:
"Do you mind if we step outside for a minute?"
P.D. Killough
"Not at all."
Yep. Pretty much everyone in the place is watching to see what happens. Only person who doesn't give two shits about the proceedings is the young man sat in his booth. It isn't that he doesn't speak English or that he can't hear. It's just that he's been coming to this goddamned bar every night after work since he landed this job at the coop farm outside Craig and he's had it with listening to the old coots tell the same fucking stories over and over.
Killough is the only one who hardly ever talks. When he does talk it's some dry one-liner come out of nowhere. Lola has no way of knowing that. He holds the door open for her as they step back out into the gravel parking lot and coughs a rattling death's-door cough that ends in his spitting something big and thick into the shrubbery as the door closes behind them.
"Which friends're we talkin', here?" he asks once the din of the inside has died.
Lola Hawkes
Whatever it was that the old men in the bar would say after she left couldn't matter less to Lola. As far as she was concerned, she would probably never interract with any of them again. That said, she didn't burn the bar as she walked from it or break anything on her way out the door. She simply left, nodded politely to the old man who held the door for her, and stood outside near the headlights of her parked Forester and waited for the man to join her.
When he did she stood with her arms crossed between her chest and her stomach, work boots set firm in the gravel.
"Seamus and Agnes Lane. They're grandparents of a friend of mine. She hadn't heard from them in a while and had a friend swing by their house since he was in the area. He found this."
It's here that she unfolds her arms just long enough to fish the envelope from her pocket and hand it over to the man. She'd wait patiently for him to recognize it before continuing:
"Given your name's there on the return address, I figured you'd be a good place to start and see where they're at."
P.D. Killough
And he does take the envelope. His answer isn't instantaneous because he has to check and confirm that that is his return address and that is his handwriting but the answer comes as a gritty affirmative noise in his throat and the envelope coming back to her.
"I sure do wish I could tell you where they're at, ma'am. You're talkin' 'bout Caroline, ain't ya? Nora's girl, lives out near the Caern?"
He pauses in his answer to take his tobacco can out of his pocket and prep a plug to push between his lower lip and gums. The older man coughs another of those sickly coughs but does not spit again. Old timer like him will spend the rest of the conversation gutting the tobacco juice. He's dying. What the fuck does he care what it's going to do to his stomach.
Doesn't give a fuck if she isn't actually Kinfolk but dropping the C word is a good way to gauge if she is or not.
"Listen, I'm real sorry you had to drive all the way out here just fer me to tell you this, but Jim and Nancy came on out here 'bout a week or so ago to root around and I got no clue where they gone off to. Started out a month'r so back, folks was sayin' their dogs were running off and comin' back changed. Sick in a way their people would rather put em down than let 'em keep on sufferin'. Then last month it got worse." He doesn't elaborate on how it got worse. "That's about the time I wrote to Jim and Nancy."
Another cough. This one he buries in the side of his fist.
"I'm sure they're fine."
Lola Hawkes
The old man dropped the 'C' word-- not the vulgar one, the one that flagged him as In The Know, and Lola barely batted an eyelash. If anything she simply let her chin sink a little lower and sharpened her eyes to give a significant look of recognition to him (Kinfolk, she now knew. If he was a Garou she would have recognized that, plus he would probably be dead by now). Beyond that, she was simply quiet and listening.
Up until he coughed and said he was sure they were just fine she was still. Her arms had returned to folded after she'd tucked the envelope away again. When she spoke again she didn't sound aggravated or impatient, but simply matter of fact. This was a woman out here for business. She didn't have desire to waste time and wasn't the sort to beat around the bush. So she cut to the quick, just the same out here on the gravel as she had done in the bar.
"I'm not so sure myself," she stated flatly. Someone with more social grace would flinch and give a no offense here, but Lola did not. She simply continued.
"Who was Honora and what were the circumstances of her death? The letter asks for them specifically to come help figure out someone's passing."
P.D. Killough
"Christ, I'm gettin' my girls mixed up."
Blame it on the wet cold or the hardship of standing when he's clearly got one foot in the grave. Killough is mixing up names. It happens even to people who are in the prime of their lives.
"Nora was Jim and Nancy's older daughter. Caroline's aunt. She had some trouble when she was 'round your age, her folks sent her out here to stay with me hopin' it would straighten her out. Reckon it worked. She was doin' alright for herself up until the end. Way I heard it she was huntin' elk with her husband Bob last year. He shot her in the head. Done himself later on. I got the coroners' reports back at the house. Jim and me were up talkin' it over a few nights past. Might not have nothin' to do with what's goin' on now but we got reason to suspect Nora weren't herself the night Bob shot 'er. Or Bob weren't himself."
Another more wracking cough than any he's loosed so far.
Lola Hawkes
Lola's face had otherwise been fairly blank throughout the encounter. She didn't smile much, it didn't seem her style. She would be described as gruff, though some argued she was simply too young for that to apply to her just yet, and 'surly' better matched the description. Up until that point she hadn't seemed in a particularly bad mood either, though. It wasn't until this point, when she listened to the story of Nora and Bob's demises, that the Kinswoman's face pressed into a scowl.
Her arms snugged a little more over her ribs, and she raised her dark eyebrows and asked next:
"You know where they were when this happened, by chance? And when was it that they died, respectively? Like, how long ago?"
If there was anything left in the area that might be worth looking into, Lola could go for a walkabout and see what she found.
P.D. Killough
"Ma'am."
Like he's trying to stop her from asking any more questions. Has to be he recognizes where this stranger is going with the ones she's dropped so far. He holds up a palm to slow her down or to barter for more time. He readjusts his stance and turns his head to spit out whatever comes up when he clears his throat.
"If you come out here just to ask questions, you're askin' too many. If you come out here to find Jim and Nancy, you ain't gonna do it tonight. Now, you can come on back to the house and I'll answer anything you wanna ask me and I'll put you up for the night, or you can come on back later. This ain't nothin' you're gonna do nothin' about tonight."
Lola Hawkes
The way the old man put his hand out to slow her was met with a furrowing of eyebrows for a moment and not much more. She did quiet herself, though, and begrudgingly with a scowl on her face accept his terms. She had wanted to make this a whirlwind one-day adventure, but that wouldn't be the case it seemed. He was unwilling to answer her questions just yet-- not here out in front of the bar, anyways.
He said she could come back later, or he would put her up for the evening and they could have this conversation in the morning. Lola shifted uncomfortably. He could imagine that she wouldn't want to sleep outside of her own bedroom, but this drive was a very long one and she didn't like to burn that much gas money going home empty-handed just to come back later.
Besides, what was the worst that an old Kinfolk would do to her?
So, with a nod, she relented.
"I appreciate the offer, Killough. Provided we can talk about this more effectively in the morning. Or tonight, whenever you're ready to leave here and we can get some privacy." Her eyes flitted to the bar, then back to the somewhat hunched coughing old man. "I'd prefer tonight, frankly. Got a home to get back to. I'm sure you can understand."
Which translated into: Lola would wait up on the man to let him spend what time he needed to finish wrapping things up socially at the bar. She would hover outside if it was less than fifteen minutes, go inside and drink some water if it was more. She would then follow the man back to his home in her Forester, and when they were done having whatever it was they would speak about (The Lanes, the sick dogs, the death of Nora and Bill's later following demise and what evidence there was surrounding that itself) Paddy Killough would offer to put Lola up for the night but despite the time on the clock Lola would shake her head and decline the offer.
She would sooner just drive back home, despite the hour and the cold and the promised snow.
In another season this drive would have been scenic. Gone west out of Littleton Lola and her Subaru Forester handled the winding sylvan mountains and the snow-slicked roads and did not bow underneath the fog and the mist. But if she started to think she had made a mistake after the first fifty miles she also made the decision to keep on going. Hours of daylight still left and she had made a promise to Caroline.
Besides. She had already made the longest drive of her life a couple months back. Even if she has to stop to pee and can feel her feet swelling it isn't that bad. At least she isn't driving across the country to be the sole source of emotional stability in her mate's quest to reclaim his blood relatives.
As of 2010, 72 people lived in this place. It is designated as an unincorporated community by the U.S. Census Bureau. Nothing can grow here. Its climate is highly variable and the winters are extreme here.
It is 37 degrees outside when Lola finally reaches the town limits. It will be ten degrees colder and snowing in Littleton by the time she starts to head towards home but along the Yampa River the sky is choked with thick gray clouds and threatening drops instead of flakes. The temperature will hold. One of the only things she can consider herself grateful for.
Here is the unfortunate part of her day: it isn't until she gets to town that Lola realizes the return address belongs to the Maybell Post Office. Which she will have trouble finding since all of the buildings along Collom Street look like they could be anything else.
There is a General Store. And a bar. And a Game Processing Station. And a gas station. And an elementary school. And a couple of double-wide trailers.
A green library sign and a smaller white POST OFFICE sign point her off of Route 40. The bar has no fewer than five vehicles in its prideful parking lot and the lights are on.
Welcome to Maybell, Lola.
Lola Hawkes
The drive really wasn't all that bad, in comparison. Lola had gotten used to driving a big ancient truck everywhere she went, so the smoother handling and lower center of gravity that the Subaru had to offer made the wet and foggy roads nothing for her to be concerned with. She'd had to stop once to pee, finding a gas station off the highway to do so.
Once in Maybell, which really was just some homes surrounding one functioning street-- probably some city that sprang up around a mine or large ranch or something. Nothing could grow out here, though. It was difficult to understand precisely why people lived out here except simply to be away from everyone and everything (which was something Lola could honestly understand).
When she found herself parked up in front of the post office she cursed and idled for a moment, glancing here and there. The bar, eventually, was where she wound up. It was the only place with vehicles, and perhaps she could ask around to see if anyone knew who this Killough person was.
Lola wore a pair of jeans and brown work boots, with a red-and-other-colors flannel shirt and a navy blue down vest, both of which had to be unbuttoned to accommodate her stomach, which stretched out against the gray tee she wore beneath it all. There was a red knit scarf about her neck and her hair was back in a ponytail, and the persistent gray glare of the sun against the blanket of gray clouds above was cut away by a pair of sunglasses as well. She walked into the building with her chin high and her shoulders square, as she ever would and probably ever will enter new territory. Posturing and challenging and daring anyone to try and push for dominance of the room right out the gate. All in body language and nothing more.
The sunglasses were pushed back up into her hair and she approached the bar, envelope folded up and in the inside chest pocket within her vest. There she would lean and wait, elbow on the bar and other hand in an exterior vest pocket.
P.D. Killough
This isn't the sort of place where everyone in the joint stops what they're doing to turn and glower at the door when it opens but it sure feels that way. The floorboards groan underfoot and the whole place looks and smells like it's been here since the land still lived within Mexican territory.
On the inside the bar has the appearance of a restaurant with booths and tables. One cowboy-looking young mestizo sits at a booth by himself with a newspaper and a plate of food and a bottle of beer. Everybody else is hunched onto a stool at the bar.
Hank Williams is playing over the stereo. That kind of place.
The bartender looks over at her and he doesn't step up to meet her clear challenge. Everybody else glances over and she can see interest and confusion mingling in the men's eyes as they read her obvious pregnancy with her unfamiliar face. It ends quickly though. The men turn back to their drinks and the bartender finishes washing his glass before he addresses her.
"You lost, ma'am?" he asks in a rural drawl.
Lola Hawkes
Her entrance earns her a moment of notice, but then dismissal and acceptance and little else. Honestly, Lola preferred it that way. She didn't walk into places actively wanting fights-- not always, at least. Today she was simply seeking information.
When the bartender came and asked if he was lost, Lola answered back in the very competent English that she possessed, tinged ever so slightly with Mexican Spanish accents or rhythms here and there.
"Just a little," was her confession. She didn't look distressed for the fact, though. Lola was always sure to give the demeanor of somebody who was in control. She could not be intimidated, oh no. That only worked the other way around.
"I'm looking for a man named Killough. I think he's an older man. You know where I could find him?"
P.D. Killough
"Aw, shit, Paddy, what'd you go and do now?"
This come from one of the older ranch hands sitting nearest the door. He like many of the rest of them are weather-beaten and leather-skinned with laugh lines in more plentiful number than teeth. He has to turn his head and raise his voice to catch the attention of a similarly well-worn fellow who has taken up a place at the stool closest to the wall. Keg taps or other men's shoulders and heads partly obscure his face from Lola's vantage point but when he leans to see better Lola gets her first glimpse at P.D. Killough.
If the folks she is looking for are in their 70s he looks to be about the same age. He wears a flannel shirt and jeans same as she does. A trucker cap on his head and a can of chewing tobacco in the breast pocket. Blue eyes bright even in the dim light.
All of the other men seated at the bar laugh at the question and the older fellow who posed the question grins and cackles at his own wit. The bartender just rolls his eyes at them and jerks his chin towards the one fellow in the place who isn't laughing.
"That'd be him, right there," says the bartender.
"Well god damn, Loujunior," says the buddy of the guy who'd make the first wise remark. Says it like it's one word even: Loujunior. "Ain't no secrets around here, is there?"
Loujunior just shrugs an open-armed lack-of-fucks shrug and by the time the exchange has run its course P.D. Killough has taken his tall boy can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and carried it over to meet Lola. The ribbing carries on without them. He stands 5'9" in his cowboy boots and is slightly stooped. Hair gone the colour of silver underneath his hat. Little more than skin and sinew overtop his bones.
"Ma'am," Killough says. "What seems to be the trouble?"
Lola Hawkes
The bar lit up with laughter-- as luck so had it, P.D. Killough was there in that very bar, so she needn't go far to find him and continue her errand. When the man in his seventies at the other end of the bar straightened and peered over at her, Lola did precisely the same. Her elbow left the bar, she distractedly nodded her thanks at the bartender, and after that she was simply watching the old man-- she assumed an old Kinfolk, but couldn't know for certain.
When the older man came nearer, Lola stuck out her right hand and turned to face him straight on. If there was one thing that her father and mother both managed to beat into her brain, it was that good first impressions were important. Of course she interpreted that as a strong impression, and whether it was good or not was debatable on the other side.
Either way, regardless of whether the man shook her hand (and he seemed like he would), Lola would hitch her thumb toward the door. "I'm here huntin' after some friends, and I think you might have seen them recently." The way she spoke, you'd think she was a fucking police officer or something. That might be what some of the locals start to think, especially since next she asked:
"Do you mind if we step outside for a minute?"
P.D. Killough
"Not at all."
Yep. Pretty much everyone in the place is watching to see what happens. Only person who doesn't give two shits about the proceedings is the young man sat in his booth. It isn't that he doesn't speak English or that he can't hear. It's just that he's been coming to this goddamned bar every night after work since he landed this job at the coop farm outside Craig and he's had it with listening to the old coots tell the same fucking stories over and over.
Killough is the only one who hardly ever talks. When he does talk it's some dry one-liner come out of nowhere. Lola has no way of knowing that. He holds the door open for her as they step back out into the gravel parking lot and coughs a rattling death's-door cough that ends in his spitting something big and thick into the shrubbery as the door closes behind them.
"Which friends're we talkin', here?" he asks once the din of the inside has died.
Lola Hawkes
Whatever it was that the old men in the bar would say after she left couldn't matter less to Lola. As far as she was concerned, she would probably never interract with any of them again. That said, she didn't burn the bar as she walked from it or break anything on her way out the door. She simply left, nodded politely to the old man who held the door for her, and stood outside near the headlights of her parked Forester and waited for the man to join her.
When he did she stood with her arms crossed between her chest and her stomach, work boots set firm in the gravel.
"Seamus and Agnes Lane. They're grandparents of a friend of mine. She hadn't heard from them in a while and had a friend swing by their house since he was in the area. He found this."
It's here that she unfolds her arms just long enough to fish the envelope from her pocket and hand it over to the man. She'd wait patiently for him to recognize it before continuing:
"Given your name's there on the return address, I figured you'd be a good place to start and see where they're at."
P.D. Killough
And he does take the envelope. His answer isn't instantaneous because he has to check and confirm that that is his return address and that is his handwriting but the answer comes as a gritty affirmative noise in his throat and the envelope coming back to her.
"I sure do wish I could tell you where they're at, ma'am. You're talkin' 'bout Caroline, ain't ya? Nora's girl, lives out near the Caern?"
He pauses in his answer to take his tobacco can out of his pocket and prep a plug to push between his lower lip and gums. The older man coughs another of those sickly coughs but does not spit again. Old timer like him will spend the rest of the conversation gutting the tobacco juice. He's dying. What the fuck does he care what it's going to do to his stomach.
Doesn't give a fuck if she isn't actually Kinfolk but dropping the C word is a good way to gauge if she is or not.
"Listen, I'm real sorry you had to drive all the way out here just fer me to tell you this, but Jim and Nancy came on out here 'bout a week or so ago to root around and I got no clue where they gone off to. Started out a month'r so back, folks was sayin' their dogs were running off and comin' back changed. Sick in a way their people would rather put em down than let 'em keep on sufferin'. Then last month it got worse." He doesn't elaborate on how it got worse. "That's about the time I wrote to Jim and Nancy."
Another cough. This one he buries in the side of his fist.
"I'm sure they're fine."
Lola Hawkes
The old man dropped the 'C' word-- not the vulgar one, the one that flagged him as In The Know, and Lola barely batted an eyelash. If anything she simply let her chin sink a little lower and sharpened her eyes to give a significant look of recognition to him (Kinfolk, she now knew. If he was a Garou she would have recognized that, plus he would probably be dead by now). Beyond that, she was simply quiet and listening.
Up until he coughed and said he was sure they were just fine she was still. Her arms had returned to folded after she'd tucked the envelope away again. When she spoke again she didn't sound aggravated or impatient, but simply matter of fact. This was a woman out here for business. She didn't have desire to waste time and wasn't the sort to beat around the bush. So she cut to the quick, just the same out here on the gravel as she had done in the bar.
"I'm not so sure myself," she stated flatly. Someone with more social grace would flinch and give a no offense here, but Lola did not. She simply continued.
"Who was Honora and what were the circumstances of her death? The letter asks for them specifically to come help figure out someone's passing."
P.D. Killough
"Christ, I'm gettin' my girls mixed up."
Blame it on the wet cold or the hardship of standing when he's clearly got one foot in the grave. Killough is mixing up names. It happens even to people who are in the prime of their lives.
"Nora was Jim and Nancy's older daughter. Caroline's aunt. She had some trouble when she was 'round your age, her folks sent her out here to stay with me hopin' it would straighten her out. Reckon it worked. She was doin' alright for herself up until the end. Way I heard it she was huntin' elk with her husband Bob last year. He shot her in the head. Done himself later on. I got the coroners' reports back at the house. Jim and me were up talkin' it over a few nights past. Might not have nothin' to do with what's goin' on now but we got reason to suspect Nora weren't herself the night Bob shot 'er. Or Bob weren't himself."
Another more wracking cough than any he's loosed so far.
Lola Hawkes
Lola's face had otherwise been fairly blank throughout the encounter. She didn't smile much, it didn't seem her style. She would be described as gruff, though some argued she was simply too young for that to apply to her just yet, and 'surly' better matched the description. Up until that point she hadn't seemed in a particularly bad mood either, though. It wasn't until this point, when she listened to the story of Nora and Bob's demises, that the Kinswoman's face pressed into a scowl.
Her arms snugged a little more over her ribs, and she raised her dark eyebrows and asked next:
"You know where they were when this happened, by chance? And when was it that they died, respectively? Like, how long ago?"
If there was anything left in the area that might be worth looking into, Lola could go for a walkabout and see what she found.
P.D. Killough
"Ma'am."
Like he's trying to stop her from asking any more questions. Has to be he recognizes where this stranger is going with the ones she's dropped so far. He holds up a palm to slow her down or to barter for more time. He readjusts his stance and turns his head to spit out whatever comes up when he clears his throat.
"If you come out here just to ask questions, you're askin' too many. If you come out here to find Jim and Nancy, you ain't gonna do it tonight. Now, you can come on back to the house and I'll answer anything you wanna ask me and I'll put you up for the night, or you can come on back later. This ain't nothin' you're gonna do nothin' about tonight."
Lola Hawkes
The way the old man put his hand out to slow her was met with a furrowing of eyebrows for a moment and not much more. She did quiet herself, though, and begrudgingly with a scowl on her face accept his terms. She had wanted to make this a whirlwind one-day adventure, but that wouldn't be the case it seemed. He was unwilling to answer her questions just yet-- not here out in front of the bar, anyways.
He said she could come back later, or he would put her up for the evening and they could have this conversation in the morning. Lola shifted uncomfortably. He could imagine that she wouldn't want to sleep outside of her own bedroom, but this drive was a very long one and she didn't like to burn that much gas money going home empty-handed just to come back later.
Besides, what was the worst that an old Kinfolk would do to her?
So, with a nod, she relented.
"I appreciate the offer, Killough. Provided we can talk about this more effectively in the morning. Or tonight, whenever you're ready to leave here and we can get some privacy." Her eyes flitted to the bar, then back to the somewhat hunched coughing old man. "I'd prefer tonight, frankly. Got a home to get back to. I'm sure you can understand."
Which translated into: Lola would wait up on the man to let him spend what time he needed to finish wrapping things up socially at the bar. She would hover outside if it was less than fifteen minutes, go inside and drink some water if it was more. She would then follow the man back to his home in her Forester, and when they were done having whatever it was they would speak about (The Lanes, the sick dogs, the death of Nora and Bill's later following demise and what evidence there was surrounding that itself) Paddy Killough would offer to put Lola up for the night but despite the time on the clock Lola would shake her head and decline the offer.
She would sooner just drive back home, despite the hour and the cold and the promised snow.
Nothing Else Going On - 2.9.2014 - [Sweet Caroline, NPC'd by jamie]
Lola Hawkes
The weekend has been a damp one, and that's made Lola stay around the house rather than go out on patrols. It was a cold damp, the kind that sank into your bones and whispered promises of bronchitis and pneumonia into your lungs. Though Lola had never been sick from damp before and doubted that this would be the time to start, she still heeded Hector's request and stayed around the house.
Saturday had been a good day, one of spending time together and recharging. Hector had produced a pair of bright hex nuts and declared them rings. They dusted off a flamenco guitar album that Lola recommended because her dad would listen to it often and she liked the sounds and sat about near the furnace with baby books because God damnit if we're not doing anything else today we're naming this poor child.
Sunday came and Hector left that morning through a dense blanket of fog that draped the land. The day was still damp and cold, so Lola opted to stay around the house again. Sure, she went out into the shed to practice with her knife and hand-to-hand. She would be spending more time practicing with the bow and arrow, but there wasn't enough room in the shed for that. She'd wait until the weather dried some more. She was decent enough that she managed to kill a small buck the previous week and drag it back home to drain and clean and butcher. There was now a good amount of roughly but effectively cut meat in the deep freeze in the shed.
It was now about mid-day and Lola was standing in the living area, fists on her hips, looking at the twin walls of pictures that carried faces of generations within them. It was tradition to maintain the wall-- something her mother took particular pleasure in, and something she figured Maria would be more responsible for than herself. She was contemplating the fact that there were no pictures of her and Hector up there when her otherwise quiet day was interrupted.
Sweet Caroline
Everyone at Forgotten Questions knows by now that the only living daughter of Knows the Whispering Ones and Javier Tirado still lives in the Homestead at the edge of the Bawn. That she'd just as soon put buckshot in your shin as invite you in for tea. That if she hasn't gotten more violent since her pregnancy became public knowledge she at least hasn't gotten any less violent.
She's also recognized for her battle prowess and her bravery in combat. Probably because her mate made the mistake of telling a story about her at the moot when he was supposed to be acting as Talesinger. For belonging to the Uktena Hector has made it difficult for Lola to maintain much in the way of privacy.
Nobody said loving a Galliard was easy. Neither is being Kinfolk. Or part of the Nation.
Anyway: a knock. That's how these things always start. A knock on the door and a cloaked figure stood on the porch in the midst of the frozen rain. A tall slender freckle-faced Ragabash. Her skin tells of mixed-race parents and her eyes are bright and mischievous.
It isn't a laughing matter that's brought her to the Hawkes family's door this afternoon but she always looks as if she's about to laugh. She can't help it.
Lola Hawkes
The knock on the door came as a surprise, but did not cause Lola to startle or worry immediately. Her property was far displaced from the rest of society. She didn't get salespeople coming to her door, and she wasn't an easy target for crime. The only people who really knew she was out here were the Sept and the DWR, but most of them were Kinfolk anyways.
This close to the Bawn, it was unlikely that a Wyrm agent would brave to step out here either. So, really, aside from a ruffling of feathers at the concept of somebody coming to her territory unsummoned, Lola wasn't storming the door with negativity. She didn't bother to peek to see who it was, either-- simply pulled the door open inside and looked to see who stood on her porch through the screen door.
"Sweet Caroline," Lola announced, immediately recognizing the face for how long she's known it and how unique it is. She's known the Ragabash long enough to know to say the whole name to avoid a tail-circling conversation about its relevancy or authenticity to her persona. Sweet Caroline used to pal with Maria a little, but was better friends with Ivan (age difference and all).
Lola didn't push the door to invite the woman in, not just yet at least. She stood in a pair of slippers, dressed in leggings and a figure-fitting T-shirt with gray and white horizontal stripes. Over that, left open, was a comfortable gray cardigan. The world knew of her pregnancy by now, and she was big enough that it was a hinderance to actively try to cover up any longer anyways, so Lola was no longer shy to detracting attention from her stomach. She stood with one hand on a hip and the other hand braced in the doorway. Her hair was in a ponytail gone a bit loose for lack of care.
"What can I do for ya?"
She'd see how long this conversation would take before inviting the wet Ragabash into her home.
Sweet Caroline
Though the Ragabash looks pretty cold she is also just about humming with anticipation and excitement and oh my god look at her little baby bump she's getting so big it's like a goddamned hand magnet but everybody's already heard about Hector beating the shit out of Milton because of how that intel-gathering mission went last October she isn't going to be the one to test and see if that shit-beating extends to people touching Lola's stomach.
Besides. The screen door's in the way. Lola isn't stepping out yet. Sweet Caroline beams at her anyway and wrestles one arm out of its knapsack strap. Whatever she's carrying with her has to be sodden by now.
"Hey, Miss Hawkes," she says. "I'm real sorry to bother you, but this isn't something I can take to the Sept, you know? Everybody's even more stick-up-the-ass about utilization of resources and oh we can't spare the bodies than usual but this is important. You got a minute?"
Lola Hawkes
For the fact that Lola suffered a severe lack of social skills, she seemed to be genuine enough a personality that she managed to forge alliances despite it. Typically, it had to be with people who were patient enough to forgive her tempers, or charmed enough by them not to care. Sweet Caroline had always regarded Lola with a distant air of fascination. She'd made a point of being careful with Lola's ego time and time again, particularly when she'd been hanging around with Ivan on a more electric and intimate basis and the Ragabash and Kinfolk were seeing more of each other. Lola appreciated that the woman made a point to be nice, so she regarded the freckle-faced New Moon to be simply 'my older sister's nice friend'.
When asked if she had a minute, Lola did not hesitate to push open the storm door and step back to allow Sweet Caroline inside. She'd gesture to the hooks on the wall for coats to be hung on, and retreat into the kitchen. Body language invited the Ragabash to sit where she liked, but if she wanted a conversation that would probably be at the kitchen counter.
While Lola busied herself with putting hot water on the stove (because the cold and the wet combined were far worse than any dry cold, Lola knew on a basic survivor level), she asked:
"Well alright. You've got my attention." The way her eyes had lighted when Sweet Caroline explained herself were evidence enough-- she did have the Kinfolk's attention. "What's going on?"
Sweet Caroline
The door opens and Sweet Caroline about melts with the stoic act of kindness.
"Oh my god, thank you so much. It's freezing out here."
Once inside the Ragabash doesn't peel out of her boots but she does drop her knapsack to the floor and start undoing the buttons on her overcoat. She knocks back the hood. There was a time when the young woman would keep her kinky orange-red hair tied underneath a handkerchief but she doesn't make the effort unless she knows she has to interact with people who are primed to form a first impression about her. Lola already knows who she is. Her hair springs out from underneath the hood and she does nothing to try and contain it.
"You're probably going to laugh, but I'm still worried. It's my grandparents. You know they live in the area." A beat as she turns around. "Sort of. They're pretty far out in the sticks. I asked my buddy Redbone, you know Redbone, since he was coming back from Wyoming anyway if he wouldn't mind dropping in on my grandparents, I hadn't heard from them in a while--"
She drops into a crouch and starts to rifle through her knapsack.
"He came back with this... shoot, where is it..."
Lola Hawkes
"Don't mention it," is Lola's similarly stoic dismissal of the thanks. Lola was a territorial creature. Around the Sept it was common knowledge that you risked being shot if you crept up on her property the wrong way. She protected the Bawn and her lands with a fire in her breast and her weapon as well. But along with being territorial, this made her proud of her land and her home within it. That made it a point for Lola to offer hospitality. She might not have snacks and meals at the ready, but she would offer hot drink to cold travelers who came through. She carried the heavy duty thermos of grog when patroling for a reason.
While the Ragabash crouched and told her story and searched for something to show, Lola was getting down two mugs and a pair of green mint tea packets. Up until the point that it was made evident there was tangible evidence to share with this story Lola hadn't paid the Ragabash much mind on a visual level. She knew the woman would respect her property, so she busied herself readying things for easy tea pouring.
When the rifling about began, though, Lola's interest was snagged and she looked back over to the mop of vibrantly red hair and the bag it hovered over. Her hands went into the pockets of her cardigan, for comfort's sake, and she wandered closer to see.
"...Were your grandparents not there?"
Sweet Caroline
"They weren't."
Sweet Caroline finds what she was looking for and yanks it free with a plastic-crinkling flourish. She crosses the distance between them. She has to in order to hand Lola the plastic freezer bag responsible for keeping a postmarked piece of correspondence dry. Envelopes are not waterproof. Everyone knows that.
"Have you ever met my grandparents? I love 'em, but holy moly, they're--"
She's about to describe people who belong to the same social stratosphere as her host. She cuts herself off before she can say anything inflammatory in the woman's house.
"--theeeey get cabin fever real easy. When they were younger they were always going someplace and having some kind of wild-ass adventure, you know, fighting Pentex and all that good stuff, and that was totally great and all, but Ma was hoping they'd settle down once they started having to take calcium supplements. Right before she died she said to me, she was like, 'Now, Carrie, you keep an eye on your grandparents, you know they don't want to settle down' and I was like 'Okay Ma' and then, you know."
Sweet Caroline's mother died of brain cancer not too long ago. The stories make it sound like that's why she left New York where she was born. Her mother was from Colorado. A few people knew who her mother was when she arrived not too long ago but those people have dwindled even more with the ages. Her grandparents are about the only Kin she has left.
"Anyway Redbone said he found this on the kitchen table. You can read it. I was hoping you could do me a solid and look into it. I'm sure they'll be back pretty soon. It's probably not that big of a deal. It's just... argh, you know? Just stay home and be old!"
Lola Hawkes
The wet freezer bag was caught with a snatching motion, snagged from the air like a slow cobra strike. Lola was fast and capable, but not impressively fast. Not like Hector was. Where Lola could take a hit and break someone's fist on her jaw without blinking, Hector in turn could land the first hit almost every time. They were impressive in their own different ways.
Anyways. Lola nodded along with the story, either not noticing or neverminding the tip-toe around potentially touchy topics of conversation, and opened the bag to find the envelope inside.
She had started walking back into the kitchen, and abandoned the freezer bag on one corner of the counter. The teapot-- a modest little copper bottomed thing that was dinged up but reliable-- wasn't whistling just yet, but steam was beginning to pour from the spout. It'd be ready to pour soon, and she was hovering nearby in anticipation.
In the meantime, she didn't answer anything that Sweet Caroline had said. Not verbally, anyways. She just flicked her eyes over to the Ragabash, made a moment of eye contact to confirm that yes, she was still paying attention and had heard what she'd said, before she turned her eyes down to the paper within the envelope.
Sweet Caroline
If the Ragabash continues rambling on while Lola is reading the contents of the envelope she has learned by now to tune out pointless conversation. She has already admitted to knowing little about her grandparents' fate and asking for help in showing up at the Homestead unannounced. But Sweet Caroline does not ramble on while Lola reads. She just stands on the threshold between the great room and the kitchen.
This is her first time inside the cabin since Hornet's Nest passed. She and the Uktena trickster were not exactly best friends forever but Maria never was shy about inviting the townies over when they were having a bonfire. The more the merrier.
The outside of the envelope was postmarked 19 January 2014 in Maybell, Colorado, and addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Seamus Lane. The stationary on the inside is adorned with flowers and written in spidery uncertain handwriting.
Dearest Jim and Agnes,
I hope this letter finds you well. I'm terribly sorry to have heard of Honora's passing. Were not for the circumstances of her death I would never even think of asking you two to come out of retirement, so to speak, but I believe this matter is one that we can use your expertise in resolving.
The nature of the problem is sensitive, as you can imagine, and I am reluctant to disclose too many details through the human post. My phone number has not changed, nor has my address.
May Gaia bless you and keep you.
Sincerely,
And she will find deciphering the signature difficult. The return address belongs to a P.D. Killough of Maybell, Colorado. So maybe it's a Peter, or a Patty.
"Do you think you can help?" asks Sweet Caroline. Her expression is dubious and contrite and anxious at once.
Lola Hawkes
Whatever the Fianna Ragabash might have been saying, Lola didn't hear it. She wasn't the kind of person that was able to split her attention between what she was reading and what she was hearing while retaining information from and following the threads of thought of both mediums. So she held the letter with her left hand while taking the now-whistling kettle from the burner and pouring it over the teabags in both mugs. The mugs themselves mismatched and borderline eccentric: one a vivid orange and crafted from baked clay, the other black with turquoise designs on the inside.
When she finished reading, the letter was tucked back into the envelope, the envelope abandoned near the bag it had been transported in. She offered the black-and-turquoise mug to the woman, kept the orange to herself, and allowed time for the tea to steep.
In the meantime, she considered the return address written on the envelope and had to think to remember where Maybell is.
"Isn't that out near White turf?"
Sweet Caroline
The Ragabash accepts the mug with a murmur of gratitude but does not immediately start to quaff it down. Steam still rises from the surface of the steeping tea. It warms her cold-reddened hands while Lola thinks.
"What, the ranch?" she asks. Like there are so many Whites floating around that a Garou of Caroline's lineage ought to have to worry about. "I thought they were in Fort Collins. My grandparents and them are practically neighbors. Maybell... I don't know where that is."
When someone gets around to checking a map they will see that Fort Collins is about fifty miles north of Denver and Maybell is more than two hundred miles west.
Lola Hawkes
To be fair, Lola was the kind of person who stuck to her turf. She knew Roxborough like the back of her hand, but her concept of the world on a geography stand-point only went so far. She was a smart woman, but her attention in school was selective at best, let's remember that. She thought she was going to grow up to murder bad guys.
In a way, she still kind of did. She was happy with it.
So Sweet Caroline explained that Lola was confused, and the would-have-been Ahroun accepted the correction with a single-shouldered shrug and a nod of acceptance and moved on from there. She plucked up the tea bag's tag between her fingers, with nails cut short and clean, and dunked the bag a couple of times to mix the contents up.
"Yeah, I'll check it out. I've got nothing else going on today, anyways."
Sweet Caroline
"Oh my gosh. Thank you so much."
Between the effusiveness of her tone and the lifting of a weight from the young woman's shoulders Lola can almost expect she's about to rush around the island to throw her arms around her. But Sweet Caroline does not violate her personal space like that. Friends with her sister or not she doesn't know Lola all that well.
Lola can hear it in her tone though. The rush of relief that comes into the Ragabash's voice is nearly enough to have her staggering.
"They used to do things like this all the time. Cinder-Song had to have heard some stories. She's packed with Echoes of the Lost, isn't she? Yeah, stories, man. Back before they had my mom and my aunt they were like, Fomori-killing machines. You should see their gun room. Yeah. My granddad's got a room that's pretty much just all guns. They're locked up and everything, but..."
Sweet Caroline clears her throat and mimics Lola's dunk-dunk-dunking of the bag.
"If this is the buddy of Granddad's who I think it is, the dude's got a few screws loose. It could be nothing. Or he could've found something and now they're off trying to deal with it themselves and somebody broke a hip or something. I don't know. It's just a real far drive and we all pretty much suck at talking to people, you know? Even Kinfolk. So. Yeah. I really appreciate it, Miss Hawkes. I owe you a big ole favor."
Lola Hawkes
For a second there, just a brief flash of time, Lola braced herself as though she sincerely thought the Ragabash was going to come throw arms around her. She didn't look like she would have fought her off, hands didn't curl into fists or anything, but she did ground herself on the floor just a little heavier and square her shoulders up some. When no such approach happened the Kinswoman relaxed and left her tea alone, settling for simply warming her fingers on the sides of her mug.
"Well, when I'm an old bitch pulling stupid stunts like that, I'd probably appreciate someone looking out for me too. Whether I said so or not."
Her eyes flickered toward the clock that hung on the wall over the dining room table. It was thirty minutes past the noon hour. She could get there by early evening if she left promptly. She looked down at her mug, then nodded her head to indicate that the Ragabash should take a seat.
"I've gotta go change before I leave. You sit, though. We'll stick around long enough to at least drink this fuckin' tea since I made it and everything."
And, with that, Lola would retreat back into the hallway and to her bedroom to do as she had said.
The weekend has been a damp one, and that's made Lola stay around the house rather than go out on patrols. It was a cold damp, the kind that sank into your bones and whispered promises of bronchitis and pneumonia into your lungs. Though Lola had never been sick from damp before and doubted that this would be the time to start, she still heeded Hector's request and stayed around the house.
Saturday had been a good day, one of spending time together and recharging. Hector had produced a pair of bright hex nuts and declared them rings. They dusted off a flamenco guitar album that Lola recommended because her dad would listen to it often and she liked the sounds and sat about near the furnace with baby books because God damnit if we're not doing anything else today we're naming this poor child.
Sunday came and Hector left that morning through a dense blanket of fog that draped the land. The day was still damp and cold, so Lola opted to stay around the house again. Sure, she went out into the shed to practice with her knife and hand-to-hand. She would be spending more time practicing with the bow and arrow, but there wasn't enough room in the shed for that. She'd wait until the weather dried some more. She was decent enough that she managed to kill a small buck the previous week and drag it back home to drain and clean and butcher. There was now a good amount of roughly but effectively cut meat in the deep freeze in the shed.
It was now about mid-day and Lola was standing in the living area, fists on her hips, looking at the twin walls of pictures that carried faces of generations within them. It was tradition to maintain the wall-- something her mother took particular pleasure in, and something she figured Maria would be more responsible for than herself. She was contemplating the fact that there were no pictures of her and Hector up there when her otherwise quiet day was interrupted.
Sweet Caroline
Everyone at Forgotten Questions knows by now that the only living daughter of Knows the Whispering Ones and Javier Tirado still lives in the Homestead at the edge of the Bawn. That she'd just as soon put buckshot in your shin as invite you in for tea. That if she hasn't gotten more violent since her pregnancy became public knowledge she at least hasn't gotten any less violent.
She's also recognized for her battle prowess and her bravery in combat. Probably because her mate made the mistake of telling a story about her at the moot when he was supposed to be acting as Talesinger. For belonging to the Uktena Hector has made it difficult for Lola to maintain much in the way of privacy.
Nobody said loving a Galliard was easy. Neither is being Kinfolk. Or part of the Nation.
Anyway: a knock. That's how these things always start. A knock on the door and a cloaked figure stood on the porch in the midst of the frozen rain. A tall slender freckle-faced Ragabash. Her skin tells of mixed-race parents and her eyes are bright and mischievous.
It isn't a laughing matter that's brought her to the Hawkes family's door this afternoon but she always looks as if she's about to laugh. She can't help it.
Lola Hawkes
The knock on the door came as a surprise, but did not cause Lola to startle or worry immediately. Her property was far displaced from the rest of society. She didn't get salespeople coming to her door, and she wasn't an easy target for crime. The only people who really knew she was out here were the Sept and the DWR, but most of them were Kinfolk anyways.
This close to the Bawn, it was unlikely that a Wyrm agent would brave to step out here either. So, really, aside from a ruffling of feathers at the concept of somebody coming to her territory unsummoned, Lola wasn't storming the door with negativity. She didn't bother to peek to see who it was, either-- simply pulled the door open inside and looked to see who stood on her porch through the screen door.
"Sweet Caroline," Lola announced, immediately recognizing the face for how long she's known it and how unique it is. She's known the Ragabash long enough to know to say the whole name to avoid a tail-circling conversation about its relevancy or authenticity to her persona. Sweet Caroline used to pal with Maria a little, but was better friends with Ivan (age difference and all).
Lola didn't push the door to invite the woman in, not just yet at least. She stood in a pair of slippers, dressed in leggings and a figure-fitting T-shirt with gray and white horizontal stripes. Over that, left open, was a comfortable gray cardigan. The world knew of her pregnancy by now, and she was big enough that it was a hinderance to actively try to cover up any longer anyways, so Lola was no longer shy to detracting attention from her stomach. She stood with one hand on a hip and the other hand braced in the doorway. Her hair was in a ponytail gone a bit loose for lack of care.
"What can I do for ya?"
She'd see how long this conversation would take before inviting the wet Ragabash into her home.
Sweet Caroline
Though the Ragabash looks pretty cold she is also just about humming with anticipation and excitement and oh my god look at her little baby bump she's getting so big it's like a goddamned hand magnet but everybody's already heard about Hector beating the shit out of Milton because of how that intel-gathering mission went last October she isn't going to be the one to test and see if that shit-beating extends to people touching Lola's stomach.
Besides. The screen door's in the way. Lola isn't stepping out yet. Sweet Caroline beams at her anyway and wrestles one arm out of its knapsack strap. Whatever she's carrying with her has to be sodden by now.
"Hey, Miss Hawkes," she says. "I'm real sorry to bother you, but this isn't something I can take to the Sept, you know? Everybody's even more stick-up-the-ass about utilization of resources and oh we can't spare the bodies than usual but this is important. You got a minute?"
Lola Hawkes
For the fact that Lola suffered a severe lack of social skills, she seemed to be genuine enough a personality that she managed to forge alliances despite it. Typically, it had to be with people who were patient enough to forgive her tempers, or charmed enough by them not to care. Sweet Caroline had always regarded Lola with a distant air of fascination. She'd made a point of being careful with Lola's ego time and time again, particularly when she'd been hanging around with Ivan on a more electric and intimate basis and the Ragabash and Kinfolk were seeing more of each other. Lola appreciated that the woman made a point to be nice, so she regarded the freckle-faced New Moon to be simply 'my older sister's nice friend'.
When asked if she had a minute, Lola did not hesitate to push open the storm door and step back to allow Sweet Caroline inside. She'd gesture to the hooks on the wall for coats to be hung on, and retreat into the kitchen. Body language invited the Ragabash to sit where she liked, but if she wanted a conversation that would probably be at the kitchen counter.
While Lola busied herself with putting hot water on the stove (because the cold and the wet combined were far worse than any dry cold, Lola knew on a basic survivor level), she asked:
"Well alright. You've got my attention." The way her eyes had lighted when Sweet Caroline explained herself were evidence enough-- she did have the Kinfolk's attention. "What's going on?"
Sweet Caroline
The door opens and Sweet Caroline about melts with the stoic act of kindness.
"Oh my god, thank you so much. It's freezing out here."
Once inside the Ragabash doesn't peel out of her boots but she does drop her knapsack to the floor and start undoing the buttons on her overcoat. She knocks back the hood. There was a time when the young woman would keep her kinky orange-red hair tied underneath a handkerchief but she doesn't make the effort unless she knows she has to interact with people who are primed to form a first impression about her. Lola already knows who she is. Her hair springs out from underneath the hood and she does nothing to try and contain it.
"You're probably going to laugh, but I'm still worried. It's my grandparents. You know they live in the area." A beat as she turns around. "Sort of. They're pretty far out in the sticks. I asked my buddy Redbone, you know Redbone, since he was coming back from Wyoming anyway if he wouldn't mind dropping in on my grandparents, I hadn't heard from them in a while--"
She drops into a crouch and starts to rifle through her knapsack.
"He came back with this... shoot, where is it..."
Lola Hawkes
"Don't mention it," is Lola's similarly stoic dismissal of the thanks. Lola was a territorial creature. Around the Sept it was common knowledge that you risked being shot if you crept up on her property the wrong way. She protected the Bawn and her lands with a fire in her breast and her weapon as well. But along with being territorial, this made her proud of her land and her home within it. That made it a point for Lola to offer hospitality. She might not have snacks and meals at the ready, but she would offer hot drink to cold travelers who came through. She carried the heavy duty thermos of grog when patroling for a reason.
While the Ragabash crouched and told her story and searched for something to show, Lola was getting down two mugs and a pair of green mint tea packets. Up until the point that it was made evident there was tangible evidence to share with this story Lola hadn't paid the Ragabash much mind on a visual level. She knew the woman would respect her property, so she busied herself readying things for easy tea pouring.
When the rifling about began, though, Lola's interest was snagged and she looked back over to the mop of vibrantly red hair and the bag it hovered over. Her hands went into the pockets of her cardigan, for comfort's sake, and she wandered closer to see.
"...Were your grandparents not there?"
Sweet Caroline
"They weren't."
Sweet Caroline finds what she was looking for and yanks it free with a plastic-crinkling flourish. She crosses the distance between them. She has to in order to hand Lola the plastic freezer bag responsible for keeping a postmarked piece of correspondence dry. Envelopes are not waterproof. Everyone knows that.
"Have you ever met my grandparents? I love 'em, but holy moly, they're--"
She's about to describe people who belong to the same social stratosphere as her host. She cuts herself off before she can say anything inflammatory in the woman's house.
"--theeeey get cabin fever real easy. When they were younger they were always going someplace and having some kind of wild-ass adventure, you know, fighting Pentex and all that good stuff, and that was totally great and all, but Ma was hoping they'd settle down once they started having to take calcium supplements. Right before she died she said to me, she was like, 'Now, Carrie, you keep an eye on your grandparents, you know they don't want to settle down' and I was like 'Okay Ma' and then, you know."
Sweet Caroline's mother died of brain cancer not too long ago. The stories make it sound like that's why she left New York where she was born. Her mother was from Colorado. A few people knew who her mother was when she arrived not too long ago but those people have dwindled even more with the ages. Her grandparents are about the only Kin she has left.
"Anyway Redbone said he found this on the kitchen table. You can read it. I was hoping you could do me a solid and look into it. I'm sure they'll be back pretty soon. It's probably not that big of a deal. It's just... argh, you know? Just stay home and be old!"
Lola Hawkes
The wet freezer bag was caught with a snatching motion, snagged from the air like a slow cobra strike. Lola was fast and capable, but not impressively fast. Not like Hector was. Where Lola could take a hit and break someone's fist on her jaw without blinking, Hector in turn could land the first hit almost every time. They were impressive in their own different ways.
Anyways. Lola nodded along with the story, either not noticing or neverminding the tip-toe around potentially touchy topics of conversation, and opened the bag to find the envelope inside.
She had started walking back into the kitchen, and abandoned the freezer bag on one corner of the counter. The teapot-- a modest little copper bottomed thing that was dinged up but reliable-- wasn't whistling just yet, but steam was beginning to pour from the spout. It'd be ready to pour soon, and she was hovering nearby in anticipation.
In the meantime, she didn't answer anything that Sweet Caroline had said. Not verbally, anyways. She just flicked her eyes over to the Ragabash, made a moment of eye contact to confirm that yes, she was still paying attention and had heard what she'd said, before she turned her eyes down to the paper within the envelope.
Sweet Caroline
If the Ragabash continues rambling on while Lola is reading the contents of the envelope she has learned by now to tune out pointless conversation. She has already admitted to knowing little about her grandparents' fate and asking for help in showing up at the Homestead unannounced. But Sweet Caroline does not ramble on while Lola reads. She just stands on the threshold between the great room and the kitchen.
This is her first time inside the cabin since Hornet's Nest passed. She and the Uktena trickster were not exactly best friends forever but Maria never was shy about inviting the townies over when they were having a bonfire. The more the merrier.
The outside of the envelope was postmarked 19 January 2014 in Maybell, Colorado, and addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Seamus Lane. The stationary on the inside is adorned with flowers and written in spidery uncertain handwriting.
Dearest Jim and Agnes,
I hope this letter finds you well. I'm terribly sorry to have heard of Honora's passing. Were not for the circumstances of her death I would never even think of asking you two to come out of retirement, so to speak, but I believe this matter is one that we can use your expertise in resolving.
The nature of the problem is sensitive, as you can imagine, and I am reluctant to disclose too many details through the human post. My phone number has not changed, nor has my address.
May Gaia bless you and keep you.
Sincerely,
And she will find deciphering the signature difficult. The return address belongs to a P.D. Killough of Maybell, Colorado. So maybe it's a Peter, or a Patty.
"Do you think you can help?" asks Sweet Caroline. Her expression is dubious and contrite and anxious at once.
Lola Hawkes
Whatever the Fianna Ragabash might have been saying, Lola didn't hear it. She wasn't the kind of person that was able to split her attention between what she was reading and what she was hearing while retaining information from and following the threads of thought of both mediums. So she held the letter with her left hand while taking the now-whistling kettle from the burner and pouring it over the teabags in both mugs. The mugs themselves mismatched and borderline eccentric: one a vivid orange and crafted from baked clay, the other black with turquoise designs on the inside.
When she finished reading, the letter was tucked back into the envelope, the envelope abandoned near the bag it had been transported in. She offered the black-and-turquoise mug to the woman, kept the orange to herself, and allowed time for the tea to steep.
In the meantime, she considered the return address written on the envelope and had to think to remember where Maybell is.
"Isn't that out near White turf?"
Sweet Caroline
The Ragabash accepts the mug with a murmur of gratitude but does not immediately start to quaff it down. Steam still rises from the surface of the steeping tea. It warms her cold-reddened hands while Lola thinks.
"What, the ranch?" she asks. Like there are so many Whites floating around that a Garou of Caroline's lineage ought to have to worry about. "I thought they were in Fort Collins. My grandparents and them are practically neighbors. Maybell... I don't know where that is."
When someone gets around to checking a map they will see that Fort Collins is about fifty miles north of Denver and Maybell is more than two hundred miles west.
Lola Hawkes
To be fair, Lola was the kind of person who stuck to her turf. She knew Roxborough like the back of her hand, but her concept of the world on a geography stand-point only went so far. She was a smart woman, but her attention in school was selective at best, let's remember that. She thought she was going to grow up to murder bad guys.
In a way, she still kind of did. She was happy with it.
So Sweet Caroline explained that Lola was confused, and the would-have-been Ahroun accepted the correction with a single-shouldered shrug and a nod of acceptance and moved on from there. She plucked up the tea bag's tag between her fingers, with nails cut short and clean, and dunked the bag a couple of times to mix the contents up.
"Yeah, I'll check it out. I've got nothing else going on today, anyways."
Sweet Caroline
"Oh my gosh. Thank you so much."
Between the effusiveness of her tone and the lifting of a weight from the young woman's shoulders Lola can almost expect she's about to rush around the island to throw her arms around her. But Sweet Caroline does not violate her personal space like that. Friends with her sister or not she doesn't know Lola all that well.
Lola can hear it in her tone though. The rush of relief that comes into the Ragabash's voice is nearly enough to have her staggering.
"They used to do things like this all the time. Cinder-Song had to have heard some stories. She's packed with Echoes of the Lost, isn't she? Yeah, stories, man. Back before they had my mom and my aunt they were like, Fomori-killing machines. You should see their gun room. Yeah. My granddad's got a room that's pretty much just all guns. They're locked up and everything, but..."
Sweet Caroline clears her throat and mimics Lola's dunk-dunk-dunking of the bag.
"If this is the buddy of Granddad's who I think it is, the dude's got a few screws loose. It could be nothing. Or he could've found something and now they're off trying to deal with it themselves and somebody broke a hip or something. I don't know. It's just a real far drive and we all pretty much suck at talking to people, you know? Even Kinfolk. So. Yeah. I really appreciate it, Miss Hawkes. I owe you a big ole favor."
Lola Hawkes
For a second there, just a brief flash of time, Lola braced herself as though she sincerely thought the Ragabash was going to come throw arms around her. She didn't look like she would have fought her off, hands didn't curl into fists or anything, but she did ground herself on the floor just a little heavier and square her shoulders up some. When no such approach happened the Kinswoman relaxed and left her tea alone, settling for simply warming her fingers on the sides of her mug.
"Well, when I'm an old bitch pulling stupid stunts like that, I'd probably appreciate someone looking out for me too. Whether I said so or not."
Her eyes flickered toward the clock that hung on the wall over the dining room table. It was thirty minutes past the noon hour. She could get there by early evening if she left promptly. She looked down at her mug, then nodded her head to indicate that the Ragabash should take a seat.
"I've gotta go change before I leave. You sit, though. We'll stick around long enough to at least drink this fuckin' tea since I made it and everything."
And, with that, Lola would retreat back into the hallway and to her bedroom to do as she had said.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Quick Hot Burn of Anger - 1.27.2014 [Calden]
Lola Hawkes
Mondays are probably pretty uneventful out in the rural region north of Denver, Colorado. Anybody who lived out that far was either working their lands or gone into town to work their day jobs. The weather was cold as winter snapped itself back below freezing, and the skies above were gray. Most people who weren't out working were staying home and keeping warm and waiting for the snow to come and liven up the landscape later that evening.
Calden must have been out on business or something. Perhaps visiting a business prospect or acquaintance, or lending his services to a neighboring farm that his family had good history with. Who knows? All the same, he would find himself winding his way along a narrow, rural two-lane road that was lucky to be paved, making his way back out to a main highway to take himself back home. It wasn't too far from his ranch, perhaps twenty miles if even that.
Out here there are trees that line the road. They aren't especially tall in most places, and scrub lined the floor between the trees, poking out through the snow. They're still dense and clustered enough to throw some shadow across the road. Not a deep one, but the fact that the sun wasn't out and the skies were gray and wanting to go slate with the coming snow made it dim lighting to begin with. The roads ran the small risk of ice, due to the snap in cold, but Calden's truck was well equipped to handle conditions much worse than this could dream of being.
Goodness knows what that man kept himself entertained with while in his truck, be it radio or book on tape or simple silence.
Whatever it was, it was interrupted by a god damned arrow flying across his windshield, from driver's side to passenger's. The feathered tail of the arrow cuffed on the passenger side frame of the truck and went twirling haphazardly into the trees.
Calden White
An arrow.
Just smacked his truck on the A-bar.
And went spinning into the trees.
Now if Calden hadn't noticed the feathered tail, he might've just assumed a pebble had smacked his truck, cursed road hazards quietly, and driven on. But he does notice. And so he does curse, but quite a bit more loudly, and certainly not at road hazards. Maybe at goddamn kids! And then he hits the brakes.
About thirty yards down the road the truck comes to a hard stop. The driver's side door opens. Calden shoulders out, jamming his hat on his head with one hand, grabbing his rifle off its roof rack with the other. Which he promptly lays over the side of the bed, taking cover behind the truck cab.
"Now, I assume you're either a blind bowhunter," he bellows at the treeline, "or an idiot kid raising hell. Which is it?"
Lola Hawkes
The truck skidded tires on crumbling paved road and came to a stop a couple dozen yards away from where the arrow had cut its way across the road. Either side of the road was dense with trees, but the lack of leaves and the deeper shadows and cover they created meant that Calden wouldn't have too difficult a time spotting someone if they were trying to hide. He got out of his truck, grabbed his rifle, and took cover behind his vehicle. He was prepared for anything-- including another arrow, bullets, and since he was a Kinfolk probably even monsters too.
He bellowed out into the trees, but didn't get a shouted answer immediately, not just yet anyways.
Instead, he sees movement behind skeletal bushes and passing through layered tree trunks. Then comes the crunch-crunch of boots on snow and fallen twigs and branches. Whoever it was, they weren't trying to keep quiet anymore-- the sound of a truck screeching to a stop and the shouting that Calden did would have spoiled whatever quiet they were previously trying to achieve anyways, and apparently the weren't trying to hide their existence from the person whose truck the arrow had clipped.
Rather than finding a blind person or an 'idiot kid' (although that was probably highly debatable), Calden would see a woman with her head down, watching her feet, making her way down the sloped hillside to the driver's side of the truck, walking toward the road. She was 30 yards back, where the arrow had come from, and appeared to be dressed not in standard American attire but rather wearing a winter cloak-- no arm holes or sleeves, and it swept too close to the ground to be considered a poncho. It looked like it should be an inconvenience, but she moved without being much hindered anyways.
He'll recognize that it's Lola Hawkes only once she reaches the gravel of the road's shoulder and lifts her head to peer up the road at the truck. The distance is too far to see the details, but she wrinkled her nose in distaste before lifting her bow (no arrow in hand, they're all in a quiver at her hip) and pointing out toward the trees on the other side of the road. If Calden glanced quickly, he'd spy a deer fleeing across a field that's on the other side of the trees there.
It's her voice that gives her away. She doesn't recognize him just yet, having never heard him yell she didn't know his voice right off the bat.
"More like a hunter that had a clear shot 'till your fuckin' truck was the first in an hour to make its way down this road." There's a pause, and then a follow up that sounds more indignant than before: "Is that a fuckin' gun? You gonna shoot?"
Calden White
Oh of course it was Lola. Who else would be mad enough to fire an arrow across a road? Immediate anger -- not the diffuse, undirected damned kids sort but a focal sort -- flares through Calden. She dares him to shoot.
He immediately fires a single round into the air. The gun's report cracks sharp as ice through the winter air.
Then Calden throws the safety on, shoulders the rifle, and steps around his truck. "I know you're young, Lola, but damned if you aren't the worst sort of young sometimes. You're reckless, you never admit a mistake, and you just do not give a damn about anyone who isn't in your little circle.
"Who the hell hunts across an open road? What if a kid on a motorcycle came by instead of me? You could have laid someone out on the asphalt with an arrow through the neck."
Lola Hawkes
With the crack of the gunshot firing through the air, Lola's entire body tensed and bucked much like the deer that she'd been aiming to kill when she clipped the Silverado. Shoulders hunched up, knees bent and leg muscles bunched like she would have to run. The bow was brought forward, but it wasn't as quick to aim and fire as a gun was. She didn't have the reflexes for a bow and arrow built into her like she did for a gun, so she didn't reflexively reach for her arrows at her hip to defend herself either. She just startled, stood lower and steadier to the ground like she would be ready to run if need be.
Before she had the opportunity to really make a decision where to run or how to react, the rifle was shouldered and the man was coming around from around the truck. He called her by her name, and she looked more carefully now that she had a better view of the man, no longer blocked by much of his truck.
"Fuckin' Calden," she announced, more to herself than to him, and straightened up once more. Her teeth were clenched and bared a little in front, and with her hand grasping her bow too tightly around its middle she walked toward the truck. In the middle of the road, too, like she was making a statement about how little it was used by vehicles.
As she walked, she barked back with the same sort of fire and indignant anger as he felt flare up within him.
"There ain't no goddamn kids on motorcycles out here, it's the fucking sticks. That hill--" she gestured fiercely with the bow, pointing to the side of the road she'd been shooting from-- "gives good vantage of that sweet spot." And she gestured just as harshly to the other side of the road, where the trees thinned a little more and apparently, if you were to believe Lola, deer liked to be.
She didn't try to get into the older man's face (yet), and instead stopped to stand a few feet from the back of his truck, feet finding the gravel on the shoulder of the road again. She had a knit cap on her head to keep her head and ears warm, but the broader hat that kept sun out of her eyes and off her face was pushed back to rest on the backs of her shoulders, supported by the attached twine that stretched across her collarbone. Her eyes flashed, her cheeks were red (probably from the cold more than anger, though), and she looked at him as though he was the instigator in this whole thing.
"What the fuck was that last bit, White? 'Bout not giving a damn? What the hell kind of mud are you slinging, huh?"
Calden White
Calden gives a short, angry shake of his head. He yanks the driver-side door of the truck open, slams the rifle back into its roof rack.
"Do I have to repeat myself? There's no hidden meaning here, Lola. You are literally firing across a public road without giving a single damn about who might come rolling down that road. When I call you on it, you fall back on stereotypes and assumptions.
"What, you've never seen a kid on a dirt bike out here? You've never seen a farmer on a tractor using the roads to get around the snow? That's a hell of a thing to bet innocent lives on. What exactly were you going to do if you hit someone -- yell at them for using a public road?"
Lola Hawkes
The way the grown woman scowled at him, it had her looking for a moment like a petulant teenager. Her nose was turned up, and acknowledgement that she'd fucked up flashed clearly in her eyes before they had clouded up with anger once more. Calden slammed doors and guns and gun racks while lecturing her, and Lola simply frowned almost defiantly.
Almost. Soon the young 'fuck you dad' air had faded and been replaced with something that was more of a slow burning anger. Violence trained and written into bones for years upon years that had been left with no outlet mid-pubescence. If Calden had friends who hung out in bars and liked to tell stories, he may have heard by now about a fight that broke out in Castle Rock, where some Mexican chick threw some girl to the ground by flipping her chair. How the criminal playing guitar that night had dragged her out of there in a fury like he was going to beat her raw for it later. How they ripped off up the road in a car and no one got the plates but thankfully no one really got hurt. If Lola still thought she could get into fights with everyday people, she clearly hasn't completely transitioned that part of herself from Wolf to Kin just yet.
All the same, she just scowled hard and heavy and retracted her arms back under her cloak, for the sake of warmth-- to reach out from under the cloak meant to open it up in the front, revealing an outfit consisting of jeans and three layers of shirts stretched over her stomach and chest both. When she wasn't gesticulating actively, it was warmer to keep her arms by her sides. The bow disappeared under there as well.
"Well, no one got hurt, so dig that stick out of your ass. Jesus, man, did I fuck up your truck? Or were you already having a bad day?"
Calden White
Calden shakes his head, the quick hot burn of anger transitioning into something more like disbelief; disgust. " 'No one got hurt, so dig that stick out of your ass'. Can you even hear yourself? I've got eight year old nephews who understand responsibility better than you."
The door of his truck is still open. He plants a foot on the running board, ready to swing back inside, and for a moment it seems like he's about to. Seems like he might just slam the door and drive the hell away. Then -- perhaps against his better judgment -- he stays. Tries one more time:
"It's not about whether or not someone got hurt. It's that someone could've gotten hurt. It could've been me, it could've been a stranger, it could've even been you. And you don't seem to give a damn.
"You're out of control, Lola. You do reckless, dangerous things. You think that's the same thing as bravery, but it's not. It's really not."
Lola Hawkes
He accuses her of having the responsibility of an eight-year-old, and whatever ground he may have hoped to gain crumbled out as though pushed loose by the foot that moved to propel him back up into the truck's cab. It may have been better if he just chose that moment to drive away and left the Kinswoman to stew and rage and curse his name at the empty wilderness. Instead, though, he paused and looked back to try again.
Lola's arms were under her cloak still, she wasn't gesturing madly at him or trying to take a swing to defend her name by forcing words back through they mouth they'd fallen from.
However, she is seething. It's a quieter, slower thing than the explosive Rage that she would've had were the soothsayer's initial prediction of her heritage an accurate one. Instead of bellowing at him in a show of teeth and brute force, she crossed her arms tightly over her chest so that the bow created a curious, sharp-cornered looking lump under the big wool garment she kept the winter away with. Her eyes hooked onto the Fianna Kinsman's face, and she all but sneered and threw back at him:
"Nah, I don't give much of a damn. The worst that happened today was I lost the deer and you spiked your blood pressure. I clipped your fuckin' truck with an arrow and you wanna call me outta control? Wanna accuse me of having no responsibility?" Here, a huff. She sounded like she wanted to laugh, like she was assured of her own victory in her argument here. Under her cloak her shoulders tensed and trembled with ready energy, like she was expecting what was to come next when she swung the limelight around wouldn't be good at all.
"I've got my responsibilities where they need to be. With the Nation. And my Tribe."
She didn't have to say more. The way she rocked her weight like she was waiting for him to throw a fist and the sharp anticipation in her eyes was plenty enough to speak to what she meant.
Calden White
No fist comes flying, no matter how much Lola might expect -- or want? -- it. Instead, only a short glance; a hint of exasperation in his tone.
"Really; this again, Lola?" He steps down from the running board, turns toward her. "I don't tell you how to live your life. I don't tell you to sit at home and I don't tell you to be a good little kinswoman. Whether or not I agree with the choices you make, and whether or not I think they're good choices for you and your loved ones, you're a grown woman and it's not my business to mind yours.
"By the same token, I'm a grown man with no ties to you other than a tenuous friendship that you keep trying to blow up. It's not your business to mind my business, either.
"As for Tamsin. I get it. She's your friend and you don't want to see her hurt. I don't either, and she's my blood. But she's also a grown woman, and you need to stop minding her business. Give her this much credit: if she has a problem with me, she can -- and I believe she would -- come to me with it. She doesn't need you to help her fix problems she doesn't ever have."
A small pause, as though considering whether or not to go on. In the end he does --
"I gotta say, Lola: you surprise me. And not in a good way. For someone who's so vocal about kin being more than the studs and broodmares of the Nation, the property of their respective tribes, you sure as hell seem to have different opinions deep down.
Lola Hawkes
It's surprising to say that Lola was still and quiet and heard the man out. She didn't appear to enjoy it, by any means, but she set her lower lip firm and stubborn and wrinkled her nose and clenched her teeth and she kept her quiet until he was done. By the time his final statement was presented she appeared to be seething-- boiling with indignance and chewing on tacks. Her chest was alight with fire that she used to think would propel her to take up claw and fang, but that day never came.
She didn't gesticulate violently, though. Just shook her head sharply and scowled hard. When she spoke, her voice was strained from the effort not to shout.
"You're confusing 'minding your business' with 'giving a shit', White. If you wanna take responsibility for yourself and no one else? Fuckin' fine. But I'm looking out for Tamsin 'cause I care. Don't you tell me how to watch over or care for my loved ones when in the same breath telling me to stop fuckin' around with what you do with yours. Goddamn hypocrite anyways."
At this point she shrugs her cloak back, exposing the layers of snug insulating clothing underneath and freeing up her arms. She now pointed at Calden's chest with the bow. If the thinning thread of respect that she had for him weren't still intact, and if she didn't hold appreciation for hospitality shown before, she would have whipped him in the chin with the handcrafted weapon instead.
"And another thing you've got all mixed up: Just because I know I'm worth more than a broodmare, as you put it, doesn't mean I don't know what duty is. I respect my Tribe, my Family, and our traditions. I know they exist for a reason. And just because you're content to fantasize about human life and live away from everything out on your land, that doesn't give you the right to shit on the way things are supposed to be and then drag everyone down with it.
"I'll tell ya who you should be worried about-- your Avery. She's a fucking Silver Fang Philodox, Calden. You think diddling with some fuckin' Fianna Farmhand is gonna go over well with her Elders?"
She took two slow, dragging steps backward. Ready to be on her way, wanting to leave before more damage was done, but unable to turn her back on the fight just yet. She gripped her bow and brought it back to her side and the cloak fell closed once more. She had a look on her face like she could both smell and taste something horrible.
"But nah. You keep on. No one's complained or said anything yet, right? Everything's sure to work out okay."
Calden White
Somewhere in the midst of that, sometime between when the bow is jabbed at him like a spear, and when he's as good as told he's disrespecting tribe, family and tradition, and when he's called a Fianna farmhand, and when she tells him -- the height of sarcasm, here -- that everything'll be just fine,
Calden's face just closes like a book. After that, he's just waiting for her to finish: stone-faced, stone-eyed.
When she does finish, a beat of silence goes by. Then: "I think we're done here." He pulls his car door open again and, unless she stops him, gets in.
Lola Hawkes
Oh, she saw when Calden's face closed up and his eyes when stony. She knew he was done listening to her, but she kept on anyways. Sometimes it was just about having your say-- the release of getting the words out itself soothed whatever ache of pride or hurt she might have felt for the exchange by substituting the balm of victory. When she was concluding she was already moving backwards and away. So, when Calden announced they were done and got back in his truck, Lola was already leaving. Again, she was trying to steal the chance to say who ended it, so as he tugged his car door Lola was turning already, moving off the road and into the trees.
Still on the hunt. Not for the same deer, clearly, it would be too alert now. But there was food to bring home, and now she'd probably have to drag the carcass farther to her vehicle than she was hoping before.
She could try to blame that on Calden, on his truck getting away, but she wouldn't. That was a minor offense in light of the confrontation itself.
As far as Lola figured, she would be done with the White family for the time being. If he wanted to shame himself and his lover then so be it. It would take high water and harsh circumstance to get her back onto that man's side again.
Mondays are probably pretty uneventful out in the rural region north of Denver, Colorado. Anybody who lived out that far was either working their lands or gone into town to work their day jobs. The weather was cold as winter snapped itself back below freezing, and the skies above were gray. Most people who weren't out working were staying home and keeping warm and waiting for the snow to come and liven up the landscape later that evening.
Calden must have been out on business or something. Perhaps visiting a business prospect or acquaintance, or lending his services to a neighboring farm that his family had good history with. Who knows? All the same, he would find himself winding his way along a narrow, rural two-lane road that was lucky to be paved, making his way back out to a main highway to take himself back home. It wasn't too far from his ranch, perhaps twenty miles if even that.
Out here there are trees that line the road. They aren't especially tall in most places, and scrub lined the floor between the trees, poking out through the snow. They're still dense and clustered enough to throw some shadow across the road. Not a deep one, but the fact that the sun wasn't out and the skies were gray and wanting to go slate with the coming snow made it dim lighting to begin with. The roads ran the small risk of ice, due to the snap in cold, but Calden's truck was well equipped to handle conditions much worse than this could dream of being.
Goodness knows what that man kept himself entertained with while in his truck, be it radio or book on tape or simple silence.
Whatever it was, it was interrupted by a god damned arrow flying across his windshield, from driver's side to passenger's. The feathered tail of the arrow cuffed on the passenger side frame of the truck and went twirling haphazardly into the trees.
Calden White
An arrow.
Just smacked his truck on the A-bar.
And went spinning into the trees.
Now if Calden hadn't noticed the feathered tail, he might've just assumed a pebble had smacked his truck, cursed road hazards quietly, and driven on. But he does notice. And so he does curse, but quite a bit more loudly, and certainly not at road hazards. Maybe at goddamn kids! And then he hits the brakes.
About thirty yards down the road the truck comes to a hard stop. The driver's side door opens. Calden shoulders out, jamming his hat on his head with one hand, grabbing his rifle off its roof rack with the other. Which he promptly lays over the side of the bed, taking cover behind the truck cab.
"Now, I assume you're either a blind bowhunter," he bellows at the treeline, "or an idiot kid raising hell. Which is it?"
Lola Hawkes
The truck skidded tires on crumbling paved road and came to a stop a couple dozen yards away from where the arrow had cut its way across the road. Either side of the road was dense with trees, but the lack of leaves and the deeper shadows and cover they created meant that Calden wouldn't have too difficult a time spotting someone if they were trying to hide. He got out of his truck, grabbed his rifle, and took cover behind his vehicle. He was prepared for anything-- including another arrow, bullets, and since he was a Kinfolk probably even monsters too.
He bellowed out into the trees, but didn't get a shouted answer immediately, not just yet anyways.
Instead, he sees movement behind skeletal bushes and passing through layered tree trunks. Then comes the crunch-crunch of boots on snow and fallen twigs and branches. Whoever it was, they weren't trying to keep quiet anymore-- the sound of a truck screeching to a stop and the shouting that Calden did would have spoiled whatever quiet they were previously trying to achieve anyways, and apparently the weren't trying to hide their existence from the person whose truck the arrow had clipped.
Rather than finding a blind person or an 'idiot kid' (although that was probably highly debatable), Calden would see a woman with her head down, watching her feet, making her way down the sloped hillside to the driver's side of the truck, walking toward the road. She was 30 yards back, where the arrow had come from, and appeared to be dressed not in standard American attire but rather wearing a winter cloak-- no arm holes or sleeves, and it swept too close to the ground to be considered a poncho. It looked like it should be an inconvenience, but she moved without being much hindered anyways.
He'll recognize that it's Lola Hawkes only once she reaches the gravel of the road's shoulder and lifts her head to peer up the road at the truck. The distance is too far to see the details, but she wrinkled her nose in distaste before lifting her bow (no arrow in hand, they're all in a quiver at her hip) and pointing out toward the trees on the other side of the road. If Calden glanced quickly, he'd spy a deer fleeing across a field that's on the other side of the trees there.
It's her voice that gives her away. She doesn't recognize him just yet, having never heard him yell she didn't know his voice right off the bat.
"More like a hunter that had a clear shot 'till your fuckin' truck was the first in an hour to make its way down this road." There's a pause, and then a follow up that sounds more indignant than before: "Is that a fuckin' gun? You gonna shoot?"
Calden White
Oh of course it was Lola. Who else would be mad enough to fire an arrow across a road? Immediate anger -- not the diffuse, undirected damned kids sort but a focal sort -- flares through Calden. She dares him to shoot.
He immediately fires a single round into the air. The gun's report cracks sharp as ice through the winter air.
Then Calden throws the safety on, shoulders the rifle, and steps around his truck. "I know you're young, Lola, but damned if you aren't the worst sort of young sometimes. You're reckless, you never admit a mistake, and you just do not give a damn about anyone who isn't in your little circle.
"Who the hell hunts across an open road? What if a kid on a motorcycle came by instead of me? You could have laid someone out on the asphalt with an arrow through the neck."
Lola Hawkes
With the crack of the gunshot firing through the air, Lola's entire body tensed and bucked much like the deer that she'd been aiming to kill when she clipped the Silverado. Shoulders hunched up, knees bent and leg muscles bunched like she would have to run. The bow was brought forward, but it wasn't as quick to aim and fire as a gun was. She didn't have the reflexes for a bow and arrow built into her like she did for a gun, so she didn't reflexively reach for her arrows at her hip to defend herself either. She just startled, stood lower and steadier to the ground like she would be ready to run if need be.
Before she had the opportunity to really make a decision where to run or how to react, the rifle was shouldered and the man was coming around from around the truck. He called her by her name, and she looked more carefully now that she had a better view of the man, no longer blocked by much of his truck.
"Fuckin' Calden," she announced, more to herself than to him, and straightened up once more. Her teeth were clenched and bared a little in front, and with her hand grasping her bow too tightly around its middle she walked toward the truck. In the middle of the road, too, like she was making a statement about how little it was used by vehicles.
As she walked, she barked back with the same sort of fire and indignant anger as he felt flare up within him.
"There ain't no goddamn kids on motorcycles out here, it's the fucking sticks. That hill--" she gestured fiercely with the bow, pointing to the side of the road she'd been shooting from-- "gives good vantage of that sweet spot." And she gestured just as harshly to the other side of the road, where the trees thinned a little more and apparently, if you were to believe Lola, deer liked to be.
She didn't try to get into the older man's face (yet), and instead stopped to stand a few feet from the back of his truck, feet finding the gravel on the shoulder of the road again. She had a knit cap on her head to keep her head and ears warm, but the broader hat that kept sun out of her eyes and off her face was pushed back to rest on the backs of her shoulders, supported by the attached twine that stretched across her collarbone. Her eyes flashed, her cheeks were red (probably from the cold more than anger, though), and she looked at him as though he was the instigator in this whole thing.
"What the fuck was that last bit, White? 'Bout not giving a damn? What the hell kind of mud are you slinging, huh?"
Calden White
Calden gives a short, angry shake of his head. He yanks the driver-side door of the truck open, slams the rifle back into its roof rack.
"Do I have to repeat myself? There's no hidden meaning here, Lola. You are literally firing across a public road without giving a single damn about who might come rolling down that road. When I call you on it, you fall back on stereotypes and assumptions.
"What, you've never seen a kid on a dirt bike out here? You've never seen a farmer on a tractor using the roads to get around the snow? That's a hell of a thing to bet innocent lives on. What exactly were you going to do if you hit someone -- yell at them for using a public road?"
Lola Hawkes
The way the grown woman scowled at him, it had her looking for a moment like a petulant teenager. Her nose was turned up, and acknowledgement that she'd fucked up flashed clearly in her eyes before they had clouded up with anger once more. Calden slammed doors and guns and gun racks while lecturing her, and Lola simply frowned almost defiantly.
Almost. Soon the young 'fuck you dad' air had faded and been replaced with something that was more of a slow burning anger. Violence trained and written into bones for years upon years that had been left with no outlet mid-pubescence. If Calden had friends who hung out in bars and liked to tell stories, he may have heard by now about a fight that broke out in Castle Rock, where some Mexican chick threw some girl to the ground by flipping her chair. How the criminal playing guitar that night had dragged her out of there in a fury like he was going to beat her raw for it later. How they ripped off up the road in a car and no one got the plates but thankfully no one really got hurt. If Lola still thought she could get into fights with everyday people, she clearly hasn't completely transitioned that part of herself from Wolf to Kin just yet.
All the same, she just scowled hard and heavy and retracted her arms back under her cloak, for the sake of warmth-- to reach out from under the cloak meant to open it up in the front, revealing an outfit consisting of jeans and three layers of shirts stretched over her stomach and chest both. When she wasn't gesticulating actively, it was warmer to keep her arms by her sides. The bow disappeared under there as well.
"Well, no one got hurt, so dig that stick out of your ass. Jesus, man, did I fuck up your truck? Or were you already having a bad day?"
Calden White
Calden shakes his head, the quick hot burn of anger transitioning into something more like disbelief; disgust. " 'No one got hurt, so dig that stick out of your ass'. Can you even hear yourself? I've got eight year old nephews who understand responsibility better than you."
The door of his truck is still open. He plants a foot on the running board, ready to swing back inside, and for a moment it seems like he's about to. Seems like he might just slam the door and drive the hell away. Then -- perhaps against his better judgment -- he stays. Tries one more time:
"It's not about whether or not someone got hurt. It's that someone could've gotten hurt. It could've been me, it could've been a stranger, it could've even been you. And you don't seem to give a damn.
"You're out of control, Lola. You do reckless, dangerous things. You think that's the same thing as bravery, but it's not. It's really not."
Lola Hawkes
He accuses her of having the responsibility of an eight-year-old, and whatever ground he may have hoped to gain crumbled out as though pushed loose by the foot that moved to propel him back up into the truck's cab. It may have been better if he just chose that moment to drive away and left the Kinswoman to stew and rage and curse his name at the empty wilderness. Instead, though, he paused and looked back to try again.
Lola's arms were under her cloak still, she wasn't gesturing madly at him or trying to take a swing to defend her name by forcing words back through they mouth they'd fallen from.
However, she is seething. It's a quieter, slower thing than the explosive Rage that she would've had were the soothsayer's initial prediction of her heritage an accurate one. Instead of bellowing at him in a show of teeth and brute force, she crossed her arms tightly over her chest so that the bow created a curious, sharp-cornered looking lump under the big wool garment she kept the winter away with. Her eyes hooked onto the Fianna Kinsman's face, and she all but sneered and threw back at him:
"Nah, I don't give much of a damn. The worst that happened today was I lost the deer and you spiked your blood pressure. I clipped your fuckin' truck with an arrow and you wanna call me outta control? Wanna accuse me of having no responsibility?" Here, a huff. She sounded like she wanted to laugh, like she was assured of her own victory in her argument here. Under her cloak her shoulders tensed and trembled with ready energy, like she was expecting what was to come next when she swung the limelight around wouldn't be good at all.
"I've got my responsibilities where they need to be. With the Nation. And my Tribe."
She didn't have to say more. The way she rocked her weight like she was waiting for him to throw a fist and the sharp anticipation in her eyes was plenty enough to speak to what she meant.
Calden White
No fist comes flying, no matter how much Lola might expect -- or want? -- it. Instead, only a short glance; a hint of exasperation in his tone.
"Really; this again, Lola?" He steps down from the running board, turns toward her. "I don't tell you how to live your life. I don't tell you to sit at home and I don't tell you to be a good little kinswoman. Whether or not I agree with the choices you make, and whether or not I think they're good choices for you and your loved ones, you're a grown woman and it's not my business to mind yours.
"By the same token, I'm a grown man with no ties to you other than a tenuous friendship that you keep trying to blow up. It's not your business to mind my business, either.
"As for Tamsin. I get it. She's your friend and you don't want to see her hurt. I don't either, and she's my blood. But she's also a grown woman, and you need to stop minding her business. Give her this much credit: if she has a problem with me, she can -- and I believe she would -- come to me with it. She doesn't need you to help her fix problems she doesn't ever have."
A small pause, as though considering whether or not to go on. In the end he does --
"I gotta say, Lola: you surprise me. And not in a good way. For someone who's so vocal about kin being more than the studs and broodmares of the Nation, the property of their respective tribes, you sure as hell seem to have different opinions deep down.
Lola Hawkes
It's surprising to say that Lola was still and quiet and heard the man out. She didn't appear to enjoy it, by any means, but she set her lower lip firm and stubborn and wrinkled her nose and clenched her teeth and she kept her quiet until he was done. By the time his final statement was presented she appeared to be seething-- boiling with indignance and chewing on tacks. Her chest was alight with fire that she used to think would propel her to take up claw and fang, but that day never came.
She didn't gesticulate violently, though. Just shook her head sharply and scowled hard. When she spoke, her voice was strained from the effort not to shout.
"You're confusing 'minding your business' with 'giving a shit', White. If you wanna take responsibility for yourself and no one else? Fuckin' fine. But I'm looking out for Tamsin 'cause I care. Don't you tell me how to watch over or care for my loved ones when in the same breath telling me to stop fuckin' around with what you do with yours. Goddamn hypocrite anyways."
At this point she shrugs her cloak back, exposing the layers of snug insulating clothing underneath and freeing up her arms. She now pointed at Calden's chest with the bow. If the thinning thread of respect that she had for him weren't still intact, and if she didn't hold appreciation for hospitality shown before, she would have whipped him in the chin with the handcrafted weapon instead.
"And another thing you've got all mixed up: Just because I know I'm worth more than a broodmare, as you put it, doesn't mean I don't know what duty is. I respect my Tribe, my Family, and our traditions. I know they exist for a reason. And just because you're content to fantasize about human life and live away from everything out on your land, that doesn't give you the right to shit on the way things are supposed to be and then drag everyone down with it.
"I'll tell ya who you should be worried about-- your Avery. She's a fucking Silver Fang Philodox, Calden. You think diddling with some fuckin' Fianna Farmhand is gonna go over well with her Elders?"
She took two slow, dragging steps backward. Ready to be on her way, wanting to leave before more damage was done, but unable to turn her back on the fight just yet. She gripped her bow and brought it back to her side and the cloak fell closed once more. She had a look on her face like she could both smell and taste something horrible.
"But nah. You keep on. No one's complained or said anything yet, right? Everything's sure to work out okay."
Calden White
Somewhere in the midst of that, sometime between when the bow is jabbed at him like a spear, and when he's as good as told he's disrespecting tribe, family and tradition, and when he's called a Fianna farmhand, and when she tells him -- the height of sarcasm, here -- that everything'll be just fine,
Calden's face just closes like a book. After that, he's just waiting for her to finish: stone-faced, stone-eyed.
When she does finish, a beat of silence goes by. Then: "I think we're done here." He pulls his car door open again and, unless she stops him, gets in.
Lola Hawkes
Oh, she saw when Calden's face closed up and his eyes when stony. She knew he was done listening to her, but she kept on anyways. Sometimes it was just about having your say-- the release of getting the words out itself soothed whatever ache of pride or hurt she might have felt for the exchange by substituting the balm of victory. When she was concluding she was already moving backwards and away. So, when Calden announced they were done and got back in his truck, Lola was already leaving. Again, she was trying to steal the chance to say who ended it, so as he tugged his car door Lola was turning already, moving off the road and into the trees.
Still on the hunt. Not for the same deer, clearly, it would be too alert now. But there was food to bring home, and now she'd probably have to drag the carcass farther to her vehicle than she was hoping before.
She could try to blame that on Calden, on his truck getting away, but she wouldn't. That was a minor offense in light of the confrontation itself.
As far as Lola figured, she would be done with the White family for the time being. If he wanted to shame himself and his lover then so be it. It would take high water and harsh circumstance to get her back onto that man's side again.
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