Visions of Death

Tamsin

A Time Warp Game. Tamsin's been in and out of town ever since the December moot. Lola'll remember Tamsin was going to be Talesinger. Lola'll remember because the moody Fianna was at her moodiest. Because maybe Hector made a few cracks. Maybe Hector even stopped making a few cracks because Tamsin grew so terrible to be around. Afterward, a relief. Like letting a wound flow clear. Less of a moody Fianna, but then like most of the Sept's young Galliards on the road to spread word and on the road to accompany Hector to be his satellite when he's doing this or that, but Tamsin, Tamsin's phone always stays on, although she doesn't always catch it when it rings so when she checks her voicemails and skips past the couple she just doesn't want to deal with listens carefully to another about maybe a paying gig and calculates too close to Full Moon what and then there's Lola sounding near-tears. She doesn't sound anything like Maria. The register of their voices is different. Was different, since one of those voices is gone. But Tamsin's heart goes wibble-wobble and she calls the kinswoman back right after. Maybe it's the asscrack of dawn and she's a little drunk, her clearly enunciated, "Hi Lo-la. Are you fine or are you not?" an indicator if nothing else is. "I didn't, um, well I don't understand what you said."

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Lola

Tamsin had two missed calls from Lola on that same night, specifically. The first time she'd called and left a voicemail, but the second time she called and hung up before the line had a chance to switch to record.  The voicemail is brief and has the white noise drone of driving on the freeway in the background.  Lola's voice is tearful and thick and sometimes her breaths hiccup with a repressed sob, but the gist of what she said was: "Tamsin, I need to know-- Is Hector gone?  Is he dead?  I just saw-- I thought...  He's just been missing and not answering and now after that and--...  Just..  Call me back and tell me you can feel him, okay?"  The message had ended there, and the second phone call was time stamped as being two and a half hours later. When Tamsin had called back the next morning, it was early enough that the sun was nothing but a gray glow on the eastern horizon.  The phone rang four times before Lola answered it sounded simultaneously alarmed and half-asleep.  "Yeah?  Tamsin?"  Following that, she was quiet and the Fianna would hear the rustling of sheets.  The Kinswoman was no doubt asleep in bed at this point. "I..  No, thanks for calling.  I had a vision that Hector died, then got a message from some spirit when I got home tonight that Hector got lost to the Umbra on New Year's Eve.  Can you still feel him?  Y'know, through the...  niebla."  That was Spanish for fog, but Lola was tired and the two languages she learned from birth were lacing together some. [Quoted text hidden]

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Tamsin

There's a pause between what Lola says and Tamsin's response which could be because she's drunk or could be because her connection's bad or could be some mixture of both. Truthfully, Tamsin leans heavily against a wall back curled like a C and slides down it like she's a teenager from an 80s movie in slow motion, but she doesn't stick one leg out, she keeps both her knees together and they meet to bump against her collarbones, compress her breathing for a second, and if she had a cord she'd twist it around one finger, but she doesn't. Instead, her mouth is open and she twists a lock of her hair around her finger and shakes her head, and then that little pause has happened, and she says, "Yeah no he's fine. He's there, sparkling in the foggy dew like a statue of gum wrappers. He's questing, tho. He's doing something like. You know. He'll tell it soon. Be back soon I think. What spirit gave you a message?" Her tone sounds a little more alert here. "Like, uh, was it a prophetic dream, or?" And there's an earnestness, because Tamsin who is Fianna who believes in Fairies and Portents more than perhaps many certainly believes in prophetic dreams. "Wait! Um, what's the niebla??? Was that in your vision?" [Quoted text hidden]

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Lola

Lola sounded appropriately exhausted when she spoke next.  Where Tamsin was curled back sitting against a wall and half-drunk, Lola was desperately tired as she'd been unable to fall asleep until probably about two or three hours ago.  She was laying on her left side, for her stomach was finally getting uncomfortable to lay on directly, and had her head propped up in one hand with her elbow on her pillow.  Her eyes were closed, but the news that he was still there had brought audible relief and wrung some of the confused, manic, half-asleep tension out of her voice. "Niebla."  She said it like she was correcting Tamsin's pronunciation, regardless of whether the Fianna hit it on the nose.  "It's... ah...  mists or fog." There's a pause, a silent 'anyways' before she moved on to answering the other questions. "There was this Wyrm-beast that I took part in killing tonight.  It opened its mouth and I saw Hector's death inside it.  It was.. like falling into a scene and seeing it actually happen.  And then I get home and there's this see-through image of a sparrow on the kitchen table.  It told me that he was lost from the Vancouver Sept and they thought he may have died." [Quoted text hidden]

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Tamsin

That I took part on killing tonight. "I--" and then she stops talking, one of those quick-awkward break like maybe she didn't realize that Lola was going to talk or maybe it's just the jump into dutch-jump-rope awkwardness verbal-style. The point is she starts to say something and then she says nothing, just makes this listening sound in the back of her throat. Maybe she resists the toxins she put in her body, still weary-as-weary, but with a less muggy-headed clarity. "I see." Some Vancouver theurge is going to have a Fianna kicking his or her ass; it's a promise in the crack-of-knuckles. "What a bunch'a fuckin' putzes. I'm a Northerner myself you know, but I swear, they're so fucking delicate. No respect for the quest." A pause a beat and, quietly but quietly like she's shielding the phone, keeping the sentence intimate, quiet like she's trying to respect that exhaustion she can hear in Lola's voice, "You know Hector won't stay dead. I don't know if you saw a true vision or just some Wyrm trick, like you know that story about the mirror in the Snow Queen? Well basically these demons were trying to drag this mirror up to Heaven so God could look in it because it was the kinda mirror that whatever you saw reflected in it you only saw it as its most terrible twisetd, uh, distorted self. My pack before Celduin. There was a 'Fang," she sounds all shy. "Had this sister who was a seer and she only ever saw the world as, like, rotting. Rotten I mean. Everything. She wasn't Wyrm obviously but it was a Wyrmy trick played on her to have that kind've sight. Shit, I don't even know if I'm making sense now. I guess just even if what you saw was going to be real it's not like it'd stick." Beat. "And if he stays disapeared, I'd tell you first girl. Promise," solemnly, she swears. [Quoted text hidden]

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Lola

There was quiet on the line while Tamsin spoke.  Lola might be nodding along drowsily, or she might just be laying still and listening.  Truthfully, she had since rolled onto her back and was laying down once more.  One hand kept her phone to her ear, and the other arm was draped over her face, covering her eyes and rested between her forehead and the bridge of her nose.  Behind closed eyes she tried to picture seeing the world as rotting all the time, and frowned sympathetically for this ex-packmate's plight. But then, she was a Silver Fang.  That kind of thing happened when family trees tried to grow in upon themselves. "Alright," is all that Lola has to say to Tamsin's reassurance.  She sounded like she was ready to start nodding back off.  "I didn't mean to... ah...  be emotional on your voicemail."  Tamsin could hear the scowl in the Kinswoman's voice, like she hated to admit to the fact that she was crying in the first place.  She could only hope that Milton would be good enough not to mention it the next time she saw him, he was one of the few to witness her breakdown. "I should'a trusted you or Thomas to reach out to me if something happened.  I've just been worried." [Quoted text hidden]

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Tamsin

"Yeeeah," Tamsin says, drawing the syllable out like she has something she wants to say or has lost what she wants to say or something there is to say that is not in the syllable. "But it's whatever Lola, I mean, you gotta feel what you gotta feeeeel," like she is losing her ability to be eloquent. "Um, Lola I'll let you get back to sleep. I just wanna say... like, um. Ennh. You shouldn't fight so much. If something happens to you it's not like Hector can ask me if my mystic connection to you snapped. Which, whoa, wait, isn't the point," Tamsin shakes her head, although Lola can't see it. Shakes her head, looking hard at her shoes. "I guess I'm just like... uh, concerned by you like... getting in a position where you are staring down the maw of some Wyrm thing, when... not that you aren't concerned when it happens I'm sure, just-" a pause. "You still there?" [Quoted text hidden]

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Lola

"I'm still here." It was easy for Tamsin to think that she might have nodded off or the line may have disconnected, though, for all had gone quiet on the other end.  Even the shuffling about or occasional breaths huffed into the receiver had stopped.  All the while Lola had been listening, though, and without having a face or body language to line that quiet up with there was no way for Tamsin to know if she'd just pissed the Kinswoman off by trying to caution her not to bowl into fights so much. "I know what ya mean, though.  I get why ya worry.  But.... don't, okay?  Just like I've managed to stay alive before through every fight I've been in, I will now.  Me and the baby.  Alright?" [Quoted text hidden]

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Tamsin

"Yeah okay except like it's not like every fight you've been in before because the baby doesn't really get a choice and it's just, please try to like, I mean just for a while, until, you know, just try to avoid them, because," and Tamsin sounds like she is rushing through this, though there's a certain deliberate now that I've begun, I will continue, even if I do hear the click! There's no way for her to tell if Lola is angry at her, so she appears to assume that Lola is angry at the Fianna who's recommending caution. "It's just, you're fucking smarter than this. You've got wiles, Lola. And I'll be pretty sad when you die, but like, way sadder if it happens soon, you know? Ugh and I realize I'm assuming things and I really do wanna hear the whole real story for shit later, just you know. I hope you get that I respect you as a warrior lady and what I'm saying has nothing to do with that and it isn't really to do with Hector and how nice it is not to have him be a total fucking mope for a while 'coz he's happy with you. Um. Um. Alright?" Echo. [Quoted text hidden]

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Lola

Somewhere near the end of Tamsin's rambling, Lola starts to chuckle.  The sound is low and humorless, muffled by nothing but the dark quiet in her bedroom that she didn't used to register as such until she grew accustomed to Hector's flank warming her side.  The answer that the Fianna gets is just as humorless as the chuckling was. "Death can't catch us.  Death ain't got shit on us.  Tried to take Hector twice and failed.  Tried to take me and this baby before and failed then too." Of course, she's bitterly ironic in her declaration that Death can't touch her.  She knows full well that this isn't the case.  She probably just firmly does not want to talk about her decision making when it comes to continuing to lend her prowess to the battlefront.  Of course she shouldn't in the first place-- she was a Kinfolk, she couldn't heal like the Garou.  She couldn't even rely on them to heal her, as was discovered during her mission when she nearly lost her leg and a Ragabash with no healing abilities had to leave her at a hospital. Rather than continuing the conversation and enabling a fight (it's too fucking early in the morning for a fight), Lola chose to say goodnight. "Keep in touch.  When you hear from him let me know.  Goodnight, Tamsin." [Quoted text hidden]

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Tamsin

Death can't catch us, Lola says, and Tamsin makes this discontented sound, little huff-out, growl-of-a-sound; twice and failed, Lola says, and Tamsin preserves a silence which could be taken any number of ways. Maria would probably say it was a smug silence; Tamsin could be awfully smug about being 'proved right,' which might be why Tamsin and Corey got on the way they did. It's not smug, though; it's teeth glued shut together jaw snapped. Failed then too, Lola says, and Tamsin says, "Yeah, THEN--" Keep in touch, the Uktena kin's saying, and Tamsin thunks her head into the wall. "Well I'll just pass on a message now. I'll make sure it's full of kiiiisses," devolve, briefly, into the lilt of grade-school teasing. Then, soberly, seriously: "Goodnight, Lola."