Cold
New moon. No moon. No moon dark in the sky and it's night again and night once more and it's cold outside but not as cold as it's going to get as it is going to snap, cold teeth closing, just like this: snap-jaw, shut, teeth-grind, pull. That building with a church and a veteran's ghost guarding, pit upon pit upon pit and a portal to who knows what and who knows where and who knows why it's contained like that who knows why they don't just tell. Near that building, or at that building, and here comes Tamsin, Fianna-girl stag-blooded feyling, cheeks rosy, breath tobacco-flavored and a determined look in her eye as she searches out a theurge. There's always one hanging around this building, isn't there? Her steps have a sharp staccato ring to them, a ringing, see? Yes.
Charlotte
Charlotte does not like that building; all glass and steel, all girded and undergirded, all electronic and tangled up in the things-of-man. Charlotte is a wild little creature, and she is fey herself, a winter-thing, made by it, formed by it, bright and alive in the metallic cold and Tamsin finds her in the square beneath the building, at the base of the statute of a nameless shoulder, wearing a hoodie and jeans and a t-shirt, seated on the plaza like a hobo, eating a seaweed salad from a plastic clamshell and looking up at that statue, her nose wrinkled in thought.
She glances up as Tamsin's steps come ringing. It is late and the men-who-belong have nearly all gone home and Charlotte ventures a little wave with a little plastic fork.
Seaweed stuck on it, all bright green.
Charlotte, she's brighter, coronal, some star-being-born.
Cold
The Fianna-girl looks at the seaweed-salad-Charlotte-is-eating with a wrinkle of her own nose. Not a wrinkled-in-thought wrinkle but a puzzled-how-can-that-be-good wrinkle. The wrinkle is lost in the general brightening of her expression, the leavening of back-of-mind worry no-one-will-be-there and she smiles quickly at Charlotte, says, "Um, hey. Come with me to see something on the other side of the mirror." Beat; this is a Silver Fang. Equal-rank. "Please. I don't know what it means."
Charlotte
This puzzled shadow-of-a-look passes over Charlotte's face. Slides from Tamsin to the fork and back again. Charlotte is sitting all slouched on the cold concrete of the square and there is that sense of adolescence about her: that she is still-forming and: see, shadow-of-a-look, a sort-of-defensiveness that does not rise to something baiting but is rather more internal, entirely internal, then comprehension and a clearing brow.
"It's good. It tastes all green-and-salt. The sea's in it. Who doesn't like the ocean?" A half-shrug. "Okay." And acceptance. "We have to go inside, though. The lady's room's probably empty."
The veil. So: the pair walk back into the building, skirting the guard's desk with what is now the usual wink and nod, slipping back through the gleaming lobby toward the public restroom. Charlotte stalks, see. Checks each stall and starts at one end while Tamsin does the other and when they are sure that the coast is clear, across the gauntlet they go.
Cold
"Fog likes the ocean," Tamsin says, and if Fog likes the ocean, well then - the half-shrug swallows it. Then the Okay. The plan. The pair, walking back into the building. As they walk, Tamsin says, "Ever been to the Atlantic? Celduin was there once near this old tatty boardwalk and on-the-other-side there was this thing just squatting in an old ice cream shack, made every scoop of ice cream taste like licking the sole of a rubber shoe, a foul rubber shoe, a rubber shoe that's been walked through dog shit, just nasty. But it was addictive too, like you couldn't stop. But the thing about the shore by this tatty old boardwalk and ice cream shack: Fog liked it. It was one of Fog's favourite spots. And the thing squatting in the ice cream shack, the nasty thing, was forcing Fog to stay underneath the waves. Like: the waves would curl toward shore. Fog would be there, but underneath the wave." Hand-motion, curling wave. "Couldn't get out. Couldn't conceal. Couldn't keep secrets."
It's not actually nervous-talking, this; Tamsin falls into storyframework so easily like it'll hold her up, like she can stretch herself out on it, and she sneaks a thousand peeks under her eyelashes at her theurgely companion, all thin and awkward and witching, and once the coast is clear
coast is clear!
and they can cross-over, she huffs a deep sigh: puts hands on either side of the sink, peers in - pauses, looks over at Charlotte who can probably fall through a mirror as easily as water, then back at the mirror.
Take me across take me across take me across and through the gauntlet and the cobwebs Tamsin goes and Charlotte too maybe Charlotte is waiting
waiting in the building that has a spiritual presence, sharp, tended, delineated; still liminal, still limned in attention even though the Sept's being taken apart, the Sept's no more. It was never a caern, but the spirits attended it. Tamsin shakes herself, shifts into her wolf-shape, says,
This way!
and races on out in the ways wolves'll race out into the city. Big city for little wolves and Tamsin's a little wolf, but she knows where she's going exactly.
She's going two streets away; they have to pass a place that looks full of darkness, a place that's just bad, that's got no spirit at all, a thinning-away, waning-away, a rubbed-all-out sort of place. They've gotta pass the umbral equivalent of a bad neighborhood even so close to a place theurges regularly work; it's a scab. It's a city. It's healing but it's still a wound.
And then! Then then then then Tamsin starts skulking, communicates a sense of: ready almost there almost here don't think it's bad just puzzling or maybe it's bad what to do.
Charlotte
Charlotte isn't a storyteller, not precisely. She is a story-listener, though, head canted all animal as Tamsin slips into story-telling mode easy as pie. Easy as ice cream melts on a hot summer's day on some New Jersey beach, where the ice cream tastes foul-and-rubbery and nasty things keep Fog under-the-sea. Somewhere in there, Charlotte nods though - agrees, reports that she has seen the Atlantic, and might say that she has seen the Pacific, but does not because they are inside by then and there are other stories and Charlotte does fall through the mirror easy as water, the world bends all passing-strange around her, light through a prism, and on the other side a wolf-girl waits for a girl-wolf and wolf and wolf, loping through the darkness, too small to draw the ire or awareness of larger things soiling the scab but -
- almost there, almost there. Charlotte-wolf cocks her head and there is a whine back-of-throat in her, curious and perhaps a bit intent. Even before they get there to the puzzling-thing she is reaching out with her senses to see if she tastes the foul burnt-oil sludge taste of the unmaker in the air around them: his scent, all dark and grotesque in its incarnation.
Charlotte
Per + Enigmas!
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Cold
Wyrm in the city. Wyrm's always in the city. Wyrm's down that-dark-way and wyrm's over-there it's all around like trying to smell for one cigar in a sea of cigarette smokers it's a cloud of could-be-wyrm there and probably-wyrm there, but even for its immediacy, even for its vague, general staining, its tak-tak-tak back-of-nose stickiness, it's not here, it's not right ahead, the thing Tamsin went to get a theurge for has nothing to do with the Wyrm -
Tamsin-wolf who slinks low now, creeping, using cover, ears pricked forward; wolf-puppy, imagine that, she-wolf too-young, all limbs, easy to imagine what never was the bright-eyed way she creeps forward, quivering with caution -
and there. There it is. Middle of the city, there's a profusion of Wyld-touched greenery, a dense past-board construction cut-out foliage-explosion where in the real world weeds push through cracks and there's a tiny park barren now, here its umbral reflection it's Wyld-Wyld-Wyld under the dark of the moon no moon no light just Wyld-green and a gold-limned glowing, leaves speaking, wind in the leaves, voices shaped half-shaped shaping, spirits talking, a spirit talking, arguing, angry, and beyond the green and the gold, under which something four-footed and furred seems to be darting, leaving behind a strange scent, sweet-scent, musk-scent -- just just just beyond that there's the echo of a park bench that has somehow become solid enough to exist in the umbra (weaver touches everything; weaver builds everywhere), and ice.
Thick ice. Solid ice. Wall of ice, thrusting out've the earth like gravestones. The air: thrumming, humming, like one syllable of a VERY LOUD WORD that sets the ears buzz buzz buzzing
and what Charlotte unriddles with her eyes, unriddles after watching, sees is an nasty argument between seasonal spirits:
summer and winter
snow's in the air
but the temperature's holding
Charlotte
Charlotte has half-a-dozen questions for Tamsin-wolf. These questions would require several human breaths and a forward-tumble of words to accomplish but the bright dart of subtle physical communication across her frame: mostly who what when why how how how did you find this this is brilliant just joy, to find all this crackelure of strangeness, the font of Wyld-green amidst the bleakness and concrete and hum of electrical elementals and tattoo of information beating its way through the glowing spider-web that gleams above the dark, bleak tangle of calcification and foulness that defines the core of the city.
Except here: where the concrete is being slowly pulverized by the roots of growing-things and summer wars with winter.
Tamsin is all bright-eyed and bright-nosed, creeping-quivering forward and Charlotte slinks alongside her, bellycrawling while she studies the scene, and then abruptly she breaks her cover and just so:
- shifts up into her massive, gleaming, silver-furred warform, all bright bright brilliant.
They are fighting the Crinos rumbles, quiet-as-she-can. Summer and Winter.
--
And then, she approaches the park, the wall of ice, the warm air. Why are you fighting each other here?
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