Charlotte
Near Akron Street and East Sixteenth Avenue, Westerly Creek emerges from belowground, its corridors and shunting tunnels, to inhabit perhaps a block-long, narrow little wallow that is protected by chain link fencing and a concrete culvert. It emerges from a concrete tunnel and disappears into another, only to emerge again later somewhere else in the city, loop its way through parks and greenways before spilling into the Platte. Here, though, in East Colfax, not far from the glow of cheap motels and neon signs advertising the Home of the Sugar Steak, it is merely a concrete lined culvert.
There is: a lanky creature with platinum hair tipped in pink crouched at the edge of the culvert, on the muddy bank, frowning with a certain intensity at the dark water rushing past. She has: collected all the trash from the narrow greenspace into a recycled plastic bag and has a small vial of water in hand. And is considering the current, the glimmer of lights on the surface of the water, and on and on.
Tamsin
Tamsin is fairy-blooded some-how, some-where, has spoken to wolves who know stories about their fairy-ancestors and who believe in them, who speak of the cities not only as a blight on Gaia's-face, scabs over gaping wounds, but what happens if you pick a scab? It'll never heal, the wound, oh um I'm sorry, um, sorry so sorry, and they speak of the cities as a thing of iron, too, and Tamsin is listening to a melody she wrote earlier and borrowed somebody's computer in order to record and put on her ipod, drumming her fingers as she considers what to change, what chords to add or take away, what words to use, and she is thinking about fairies and about darkness lurking below cities, and her expression is grave and serene and that is how one wolf-girl who follows Fog finds Charlotte who is lanky and burns so brightly with the promise of heroes and heroes and heroes and heroes and the men of Numenor would bow-before and Tamsin's gaze snags on the fair hair and then the chainlink fence rattles as the Fianna winds her little fingers through the links and rattles them.
"Charlotte?" she calls. "Um," flushing, blushing, because -- because. "HI." She waits a second and then untwists her fingers from the fence and accidentally bops her braid into her mouth and spits it out while climbing unnecessarily over in order to come closer, galliards are social creatures where theurges are dreamy half-elsewhere-things, so. So.
Charlotte
so. SO: theurges are dreaming things and Charlotte does not know of or believe in faeries but she certainly seems like a fey thing, small and made of moonlight, the sort that kills softly, seven daughters for seven slights for seven days and seven nights or -
- well, she also looks like a girl who would be pretty if she were not so strange and awkward and long-limbed and coltish and weird weird weird.
Charlotte has in hand a small glass vial and the vial seems to glow with promise-or-something. Purity. The faintest hint of power. She is wearing worn jeans and hiking boots and a Mexican Sprite t-shirt and the boots are muddy and she looks up startled when someone calls her name but then oh Tamsin Charlotte flashes a shy(ing) little half-smile.
"Tamsin." Quick-clear, the glance drops back to Westerling Creek. "Hi! Uhm, did you come to see the creek too?"
Tamsin
Tamsin hits the ground hard her boots ragged and water-splotched and there's a tear in one of the soles not quite a hole but it's opening, opening soon she'll need a new pair of boots and, and, and hitting the ground also jolts one of her earbuds out've her ear, she pulls the other one out and shoves them into the pocket of her coat. It's a thin coat, and there are goose bumps up and down her forearm, cold enough to shiver which she does occasionally, should've had a drink, should've - actually she does have a drink, Tamsin, has a little flask, nothing smart, nothing special, the kind of silver-colored thing you'd get at a camping store, and it's got something for warmth inside, something she finds suspect because of where she got it, the back of some musician's house, home-brewed, lifted from a recipe book of moonshine, and her mind wanders to it when her tread brings her up and over to the Westerling Creek. Naw, not to the creek, to the Silver Fang, to the weird changeling-limbed should-be-pretty is-actually-pretty girl with the big eyes who is not a girl nope, "Nope," she says. "I'm just out walking. Don't have anything to do. Kind of bored, trying to write a song, trying to - you know. Um, sorry, that's boring. Being bored is the ultimate in boring, um. The creek? What'd you come to see it for? I mean on this side. Because it's pretty?" She brightens, "Does it need clearing out or help or anything? How are you? Um, and how's Erich? and stuff."
Charlotte
"Well it's not cause it's pretty." Charlotte explains, uncorking the vial and then yes indeed, pouring the water into the creek. No more than a few ounces, hardly enough to be noticeable except that there is the silver-quiet hum of something in the air and Tamsin can feel the seal of a binding dissolving, the brush of the spirit bound and now free. " - it's because it's not-pretty and sometimes gross and sort of all chained up beneath the concrete and they just let it out some places but only a little bit.
"Sometimes it gets mad and then when the rains come it floods and it stole this one guy and carried him a long way it told me 'til some men pulled him out but I told it that the guy was probably poison anyway so it's good it spit him out.
"I would've too. It should just eat concrete and streets if it wants to eat stuff.
"Oh, but I brought it water! From the mountains, clean from the rain and stuff. It's a talen and it helps clean up the water for a little while. This goes all the way to the river and I like the river. I mean the river saved my life. So that's why."
Then, a bit wistful as the last of the talen-water swirls away.
"I like songs."
Tamsin
Tamsin preserves a respectful silence as the river water is poured into the creek something pure and moonlight-touched and wild, something like a little prayer, a little talen, a little gnosis, and she tries to watch the water disappear into other waters, but that doesn't really happen now does it: can't track water through water, not unless it's colored.
"I haven't been up to the mountains since I got here. Now I kinda wanna go. Before it gets too snowy. Have you been to Blue Lake before? How'd the river save your life?"
Tamsin bites the side of her mouth, shy, shy, shy, fiddles with her zipper, then says, "Ummm. Do you know how to sing or play any instrument or anything? 'cause maybe you can help me out with one! with a song. You don't have to though. I just," and she pulls on her hair, biting her lip again, "ugh. I like songs too but sometimes they don't like me and they keep trying to get away, but they try to get away and like, if they do get away they'll disappear and be nothing, you know?"
Charlotte
Charlotte doesn't do any of those things: play an instrument on sing or anything and she's frowning, faintly - not a mad-frown but maybe a thoughtful frown or a sad-frown that she doesn't - and shakes her head no. No, she doesn't know how to do anything like that. The no has her shoulders a bit tense but then the frown folds into a different sort of frown, considerably more thoughtful, more things-under-consideratino than the first frown, the way it folds into itself and Charlotte nod-nod-nods as Tamsin explains how songs try to get away and if they get away they disappear and Charlotte does not notice the shyness she herself is such a -
- well, look at the darting way she glances at Tamsin, which is sidelong and curious and animal. Think bird, think bird-winged, thinks sparrow before you think hawk but then think: hawk, red-tailed and curious. Think merlin, think kestrel.
"If it's trying to get away you oughtta stalk it. From the side maybe. Pace after it until its distracted, or get your pack to flush it out for you so you can snap it in your jaws.
"And you can come visit our tinyhouse if you wanna come to the mountains. That's where we keep it. Maybe I could tell you about the river then too, I don't know. It's a long story and I'm not good at stories."
Tamsin
"You don't have to be good at stories to tell me," Tamsin says, suddenly earnest and -- or okay, maybe not so suddenly. Tamsin is always earnest. Almost. Unless she's lying, or being a manipulative brat, but even then there's a well-spring of earnestness, of gravity, and that's what's here now. "Because you know stories aren't very good at being stories either until I get to 'em, sometimes. So if you tell me, maybe I can make it good. Not that it won't be already, um, I mean - fuck. I'm sorry, I think I'm screwing this up. I just mean that you can't really be bad at stories and even if you don't tell it like a bard or anything that's okay because that's my job, you know? I'm not very good at talking to creeks or rivers. I did once almost drown in one. My foot got caught under a bike that was caught in the mud. Oh! and my pack, one of the first battles we were ever in together, it was under a river. Celduin means the river running, you know? Can I," a delighted smile, "really come visit your tinyhouse? Uh, is it just like, a small house or... is that it's name or... something?"
Charlotte
"Well," the creature frowns to herself, darts a glance up at Tamsin, takes her in aslant, then makes the decision to tell something of the story. Whatever she can. So, Charlotte rises and grabs her bag of trash and tosses it over the fence and climbs the fence and waits for Tamsin to come following-after and when Tamsin comes follow-after Charlotte shows her beneath the ground where the stream moves, beneath the ground-and-concrete, where it snakes and stirs and burbles, hidden away.
And tells a story. Charlotte is not particularly good at telling stories but this one is a strange one, full of imperfect, slanting movement. It starts with, "It wasn't now it-was-then."
See: Charlotte woke up and wasn't in her bed. Wasn't anywhere she'd ever been before. She was on a hard ticking mattress in the attic of a saloon except she doesn't quite know all the proper old West-like words but it is easy to gather what she means: Charlotte woke up 150 years ago. Charlotte and Avery woke up 150 years ago, in old Denver, and older-Denver, when it was a stone house and a bank and a jail and dusty streets and falling-down buildings and horses and whiskey and spurs and gold miners and everything was close to the surface closer than it is now, not so terrible and calcified and separated and
- well. They were under attack.
There was this gang the Kane Brothers Gang and everyone in Denver City not-a-city knew that they were coming and knew that they would take everything and knew that they were wrong. The Sheriff was a kinsman who asked the Sept for help and Charlotte and Avery were that: help. They had a few kin and then mortals and a town to organize and defend against an assault by a gang of Spirals and others.
So they did. See? Charlotte is not especially good at telling stories but she knows that Avery talked all the men into staying to defend their houses and arrayed and organized them for the last stand while Charlotte oh Charlotte made deals with the spirits-of-earth and the spirits-of-the-river to open up and swallow swallow swallow if they could, or storm the banks and flood and drown. Charlotte made talens too, clever little talens called arrow killers to protest the men firing their guns from places with too little cover.
And when they were done Charlotte - who got to ride a horse named Misty - and Avery and the kinsmen and the men fought against the Kane Brothers and their gang. The earth opened up and swallowed some of them and the men killed others and Avery and Charlotte, the two of them fought an Adren Ahroun who killed Charlotte with one bite. She knew she was dead and clawed her way back through not even to consciousness to barely-conscious unable to move lying covered in blood and mud and -
- the river. She had a deal with the spirits of the Platte River curling through the town and so instead of flooding and drowning the fallen the river rose up and up and up, and healed her.
So she could continue to fight.
And she and Avery killed Sherman Kane and the kin and the men and the earth killed the rest and many of the men died and often bravely in the face of monstrous odds but: they still died.
And then they started to fade and Charlotte woke up in her bed in the tinyhouse, damp.
And it is a tinyhouse, a Very Small House on Wheels and of course Tamsin is invited. Of course of course.
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