pack.

[Cassian] A blisteringly cold day, sharp and fierce and occluded, the sky a miasmal wreath of low pressing clouds that threaten more snow. Banks of it collect in the lees of the streets, shrug up high on window ledges and threaten to bury parked cars altogether. The City musters its forces, sending out platoons of snow ploughs to clear roads and sidewalks alike, and phalanxes of men to sprinkle coarse salt over the busiest sections so as to prevent the buildup of ice. But despite this show of resistance, Philadelphia is clearly a city under seige.

The sheer weight of the snow has caused power lines to go down in a few sections of the city, while others, having glimpsed the sheer volume without their homes have decided to call in sick. Children across the city dance and boogie in their beds, yelling and throwing pillows at each other when a general Snow Day is announced, and school is closed. Homeless men freeze and stagger into any warm nook or shelter, or die by the dozens in this flash freeze, only to be found days later when the snows are properly cleared, blue faced, eyes hard and dry and without tears.

Cassian Nikolaus finds his plans rudely disrupted by the blizzard. He'd struggled through the early morning hours to forge paths through the city to some of the sights, a vague idea about ending up in the caern lurking in the back of his mind. But the need to see bells and buildings, churches and graveyards all evanesced before the need for warmth, so that it's little past midday by the time he relents, postpones his voyage of discovery and retreats to the familiar warmth of the Brotherhood.

He's a large man, not given to great grace or poise, and the numbing effects of the cold have only excacerbated this so that when he shoves open the front door of the Brotherhood he nearly stumbles inside. The cold blast of air that whirls in around his refrigerator like frame is almost visible, can be nearly seen as fanciful curlicues that might surround some puff cheeked depiction of the North Wind. With a growl he shuts the door quickly before him, and then shoves both hands back under his armpits.

The Godi was clearly unprepared for the severity of this weather, and looks quite visibly unhappy about how cold he feels. Shrugging quickly several times, blinking at the sudden warmth and dimness of the Brotherhood's interior, he simply stands in the entrance, seemingly happy to just absorb the warmth. A few more shrugs, and then he slowly disengages his hands from his armpits, blows into them once or twice, and stomps over towards the bar. His face betrays a determination that only a bottle of Jameson can assuage.

[Linnea Bartlett] Shortly after Cassian’s dramatic entrance, the Brotherhood’s front door swings open again, sending more whirling near-dervishes of stray snow into the dim interior, to dance and die in the dry, hot air of the pub. Linnea is thoroughly wrapped and padded and protected against the frigid hair: hand-made mittens, bright orange, snug and secured over more practical leather gloves, stand out starkly against oversized parka, bulging with down. The hood is drawn up, so overlarge that the fur-lined lip plunges almost to the tip of her nose, obscuring her vision. Beneath it, an improbably slash of bright aqua muffles and warms her nose and mouth. She stamps her feet, shedding crusts of snow from the legs of her jeans and the surface of her hiking boots to melt a slippery mess on the old wooden floor. The bartender, Will, grumbles and calls for someone from the kitchen to bring out the mop and bucket again, to clean up the mess before someone falls.

The girl stands there, a comical figure – tall, roly-poly from the down, for all practical purposes sexless – as the dry heat unthaws the frozen skin around her eyes and reddened cheeks. The warmth is almost as great a shock as the cold, and shivers that had not taken her during the furious, tramping walk through the streets of Kensington now do so. She clamps her jaw shut to stop her teeth from stuttering, then throws her head back, pawing at the hood of her parka with her awkward, mitten-covered hands so that she can see, damnit.

She divests herself of all the winter gear – the mittens first, then the fine leather gloves, the parka, the toboggan half-hidden beneath the parka’s hood, the trailing bright flag of a scarf – and stuffs them all into an empty booth that has been pressed into service as a makeshift coatroom for the duration of the weather emergency, then tromps her way across the room to the bar.

Will, the tender, has just poured Cassian’s Jameson when he turns to the pale and plainfaced girl who has claimed the next to next stool over. “Hot chocolate, sprat?” He says, a momentary grin splitting his face. She hunches forward on the bar, spreading out her elbows, sniffling as her slowly thawing sinuses want to stream clear mucus, and gives him a glowering look.

“Don’t call me that,” the girl says, sullen. “I’ll have tea.” By the time Will returns with a mug of hot water, a slice of lemon and a teabag, she has recovered enough of her good graces (or been shamed to it by some internal voice) that she attempts a shadow of her usual smile and offers a reluctant almost apology to the kinsman. “’msorry.” Such a child. “But you really shouldn’t call me that.” He waves it off, crosses his arms, and goes back to tending the bar. His duties do not include counseling adolescent Silver Fangs in the midst of a snowstorm, on the eve of the fullest of moons.

[Cassian] Cassian has staked out a chair in the middle of the bar, one of those high stools with a fanned back which offer the illusion of support should one make the mistake of leaning back into them. Several attempts are made to hook his hiking boots onto the lower rung, but his legs are too long and thick for this to be managed comfortably, so after the third attempt he simply stops and allows them to rest on the floor. The leather jacket, dark tan in color and worn and nicked and scraped, is left on, the smooth fabric stretched taut across the space between his shoulder blades, making those shuddering sounds of protest whenever he shifts his weight as he leans forwards on both elbows, massive hands creating a well around the glass of Jameson set before him.

Though by no means the most monstrous in size in the Garou nation, there's something about his presence, his width even, that make him seems monumental. Almost akin to a geological fixture, heavy and solid, his lantern jaw hanging low over his drink, eyes half lidded, toffee colored hair pulled back into a rough pony tail from which unruly strands fall free and are occasionally snorted away from his eyes.

The lights that cause the bottles arrayed on the wall behind the bar to sparkle and flash illuminate his face quite clearly, revealing a bemused and now contented expression on his broad features. He seems distracted, almost half asleep, but then blinks, sits up, takes his glass and drains it slowly with obvious pleasure. A small shiver runs through his whole frame, and he sets the glass carefully down before him. Licking his lips, looking like a bear trying to get the last of the honey off his whiskers, he turns and regards Linnea with a rather frank look, guileless interest clear in his expression. As if a small voice had told him she were there, off to his left, and he had turned in response to simply stare at her.

[Linnea Bartlett] The teenager leans over the bar, her elbows spread wide, her spine curved forward, the transverse processes clearly articulated in marching order against the cotton of her long-sleeved tee-shirt, whose logo is obscured by the protective curl of her body, forward. Her nostrils flare over the tea as Will sets it in front of her, and she bathes her face in the steam without bothering to take a drink. Not at first. She likes it sweet as sin or doughnuts, and when she darts a glance across the bar looking for the sugar shaker, she catches the edge of Cassian's frank regard.

Her pale eyes widen, her jaws sets itself mulishly forward, the skinny shoulders twist 15 degrees to the side as she shifts to meet that look. Her moon is burning white and hot and molten somewhere in the sky, and its presence is heavy at the back of her mind - but she spent her rage yesterday, and the clouds today have kept the full face of luna from her sight. That huffed-up response that wants to come out doesn't have quite the same weight as it would, on another day like today, on some cloudless night, and after a moment, the sixteen-year-old defaults to a sheepish approximation of her usual grin. "Uhm, hiya - " her pale eyes dart toward the sugar in front of him. She draws in a breath that swells her shoulders, "uh - nice to meet you?" sniffle, look. " - could you - uh - pass the sugar?"

[Cassian] "Huh?" His voice is a deep, basso rumble, the sound of boulders shifting against each other, perhaps, almost felt rather than heard. He blinks his muddy brown eyes at her, and perhaps for a moment she thinks him simple. Unable to understand the simple request for sugar. His eyes widen for a moment as he processes her words, and then he leans back slightly, an abashed grin appearing on his face. It's fortunate that his skin is already chapped and rubicund from the cold outside, otherwise she might see a flush spread across his brow.

Or perhaps she doesn't think he's simple. Perhaps she's almost used to this kind of response, first reaction to her presence. To the blood that sings and thrills the air around her, that sets other Garou, if not on the defensive, then perhaps on edge, alert, aware. That makes her stand out in dull crowds of surging plebians as if shimmering silver light played over her skin, her own personal aurora borealis. She sits before him, sniffling and awkward, but the Godi pays this no mind.

No, for even though his eyes are guileless and simple, as muddy as the banks of the broad Mississippi and as clear as the sky of a summer day, he seems to see more. To look at her and sense her lineage, intimations of it that defy the merely visual. If it were a sound, he might hear the faint and far off clarion of spalpinxes, the deep choruses of heroes calling down the dusty passages of history, making his heart pound and his mind unable to focus on her request.

For sugar.

Which he turns to, frowning, and takes hold of. Then, instead of simply sliding it down the length of the bar, he stands, a foolish smile on his broad features, and walks down over to her. He pauses, unsure of himself, looking down at the white ceramic bowl, and then sets it before her.

"Here you go, miss." He doesn't sound abashed, exactly, but nor does he sound like he's addressing a coltish young girl. With a curt nod, he takes a step back, pauses, and then sidles back to his stool, chewing on the inside corner of his lips.

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] This was the weather of the motherland, the home of the Silver Fangs, the seat of power of the Garou Nation. Cold winds, slush covering the sidewalk, frozen piles of dirty snow. And yet he reviled it, born and bred in the south outside the time spent in academy. This was the part that his sister had warned him about and wished to avoid.

But he had meetings to come across, people to entertain and of course guidance to usher. He had to deal so much and the fullness of the moon only seemed to draw upon him further. Making his thoughts more muttled and the upcoming Moot was to be a hard measure indeed. He needed to speak with his alpha and soon.

And wrapped in his casual formal wear of a suit jacket underneath a marine overcoat, bundled to the brims. And where else but the brotherhood would he find one such a Linnea.

"Thank you Ms. Bartlett... yes assure you I will make time for a Valentines Day dinner. It would be a pleasure.

And once he pushes through those doors, he scans the place hoping the information is accurate.

[Linnea Bartlett] Linnea is stopped, stark and still by Cassian's reaction to her presence and she watches him, almost breathless, as he makes a ceremony of the sugar bowl. She does not simply watch him, however, she responds almost in kind, removing her elbows from the scarred wood of the bartop, sitting back on her coccyx, finding her perfect center of balance, stretching her spine, expanding the vertebral spaces until she has reached her full height, straightening her skinny shoulders to receive the tribute of -

- sugar, white crystals, lumped together in an ceramic bowl. After another moment's strange, stirred pride, she chances a glance down at the sugar, retrieves the spoon, and shovels the stuff into her mug of tea, not bothering (or perhaps too polite) to use the communal spoon to stir the crystals into her steeping tea.

"Thanks," she replied, looking up, bushing the bowl away from her, her sullenness retreating centimeter by centimeter. "Uhm, I'm Linnea. Are you - " she glances briefly at Will, seeking confirmation of that which must be clear from his reaction to her otherwise unremarkable presence, " - uh, new? There's a place we can talk?"

Another flashing half smile, the door sweeps open, cold wind blasting into hot mass of the Brotherhood's Interior. Ferdinand. Oh crap. The girls eyes dart wide, then she turns around abruptly, barely, her smile going just momentarily frozen. Maybe if she's really really still the Philodox won't notice her. It's a foolish hope, and her shoulders begin to melt, curl inward again as she shifts reluctantly on the stool.

[Cassian] The Godi gains his stool, turns it round just in time to catch his sinking frame, causing the wooden joints and cross beams around the base of its legs to groan and creak as it seeks to accomodate his weight. He automatically tries to hitch his feet on the lower rungs once more, fails, gives up without even noticing. Leaning forwards, he takes hold of the glass, pushes it forwards towards William with a friendly nod and turns back to look at the girl, almost reluctantly. Almost as if he wishes that he himself could sort of fade into the background, become just another personage in the vast and invisible entrouge that seems to swarm around this plain looking girl with luminous blood.

She speaks, and goes to answer, and then stops for the same reason that she shrinks back into herself. The opening and closing of the door, the sudden stirring of yet more nobility in the air. Craning his head around, almost against his will, Cassian sees Ferdinand in the doorway, and feels a shiver run down his back. If possible, this youth has more presence then the girl. Was the Brotherhood in truth some traditional court into which he had unwittingly trespassed? This fanciful thought is dismissed, and Cassian remains quiet, mouth closing slowly as he waits to see what will happen between these two.

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] The problem of having a Silver Fang Philodox as Grand Elder is that other Silver Fang Half-moons will seek council. And should such things as potential information and infractions of the litany and tradition come across in said conversation, well that makes it all the worse.

Such potential, just so much potential. Why do this now.

Deep brown eyes focus on the shrinking girl sitting upon the barstool. Determined to get to the bottom of what has happened. And why must it be that this hapens when he has just as important issues to discuss.

"Linnea, I think we need to discuss something... privately."

[Linnea Bartlett] Linnea's knees draw together, her legs hang down awkwardly, her right foot anchored on the wooden facade of the bar. She spins her stool from side to side, balanced and leveraged in place by her foot against the bar and shoots Ferdinand a reluctant, molten look as he gains her side. Her eyes narrow, and her shoulders straighten, abruptly, firmly. "I already talked to - " Her nostrils flare, briefly, and she shakes her head, her braid slithering heavily down her spine. "I already talked." Her eyes pass over Ferdinand, then dart away. The bartender, Will, is no longer looking at her. He has absented himself from the girl's immediate presence, giving the pair some modicum of privacy, and she cannot catch his eye. There is no quarter there.

Then her chin rises in Cassian's direction, her mouth firming at the corners. The gesture would be imperious, almost, were she not so fundamentally easygoing. There is no half-smile to soften the gesture, however. It stands naked, firm. "And I was just meeting this gentleman, Ferdinand. He's new. We were just introducing ourselves. You don't want me to - to be rude, do you?"

[Cassian] Cassian hears this last and inhales quickly, turning to look down at the bottom of his empty glass, thinking, Shit. The air scintillates with the contention between the two, and William seems a wiser man than most for having faded away in such a timely manner. Would that he could do the same.

But there's somethings that can't be ignored, shirked or dismissed. So, placing both hands flat on the bar, Cassian pushes himself to his feet, and walks over to the pair of them. The initial resolve that had propelled him forwards dwindles as he approaches, so that with but a few steps to go he's suddenly struck by a moment's panic - what on earth was he doing? His face perhaps registers this, and then closes down, brows beetling over his brown eyes, and he stops, not meeting either of their eyes.

"I, er." It's not an eloquent start, but again, both of them are perhaps accustomed to receiving such tongue tied greetings. He clears his throat, reaching up with a massive hand to rub the back of his neck, and then looks from one to the other. His mind is a blank. He has no idea as to what he was going to say, so instead simply stands before them, frowning.

[Will Kaldrthvari] (heh, for

[Will Kaldrthvari] (heh, forgot to click the char.)

[Will Kaldrthvari] (wtf! *just shuts up and sits on hands* carry on.)

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] William was a wise individual, moving from the duo that were so bred to be lofted high among the chosen of Gaia. And it made his case all the stronger.

However that was soon cut short as a new face approached the pair, this new figure to grace the Sept and, if Linnea was correct, another warrior for Gaia. And that was one of his achilles heel, politeness and decorum.
"No you are correct there, it would be ever rude to not be a welcoming face to those who come to the city. Especially one in your unique position."

He then turns to the man who approaches and nods, balanced features and an aura of regality make it all the more obvious that his breeding stock was not that of the corner fluzey.

"Good evening, I am Ferdinand Corozon Jr, it is a pleasure to meet you, sir."

His voice held that of training, of status, of leadership. Mixed together with the dialect of southern birth.

[Linnea Bartlett] Linnea sucks the skin of her cheeks between her teeth, causing her mouth to bulge like that of a fish, as Ferdinand says something about her unique position. Her cheeks catch a touch of high color, and she wants to sink into herself again - but she cannot quite manage it. Pride and abashedness are at war in her, each in sharp relief against the other. Her nostrils flare with another exhaled breath, and at last she slides off her stool with an easy curl of her hip.

The two Silver Fangs are almost of a height with each other, Linnea fair, Ferdinand dark, both unconsciously singing the aura of the ancestors - although the Philodox wears his mantle far better than Linnea does. "I'm Linnea - " she repeats herself, her mouth twisting into a hint of a smile at last, pleased - at least - to have temporarily redirected Ferdinand. She holds out her right hand, by way of greeting. "George Katherine Benjamin Bartlett. It's very nice to meet you."

[Will Kaldrthvari] Will comes in out of the cold, stamping his feet to shake snow loose from his shoes. They're not shoes suited for the weather: just sneakers, worn but sturdy, the seams a little frayed. The collar of his old leather coat is turned up against the back of his neck. His hair is dark and cut too short to afford him much warmth, so the scarf he's wound around his neck is pulled up almost over his ears. Piece by piece, he dismantles, out to in, until his scarf is stuff in one pocket, his gloves the other, the coat itself doffed and carried over an arm. Beneath, he wears a thermal long-sleeve, the sleeves of which he rolls up, and a t-shirt advertising some underground band or other over it.

"Hey, Cassian," he calls an offhand greeting, friendly. His matter is somewhat stiffer to the silver fangs: "Linnea, Ferdinand." A barstool grates out. Will levers himself up on it with one hand, the cords and tendons in his thin arm standing starkly out for a moment. The other hand tosses his outer gear over the neighboring barstool.

[Cassian] The Get of Fenris stands still before these two scions of their Tribes, looming over and nearly as broad as both combined. Where they are elegance and nobility, he is solid and plain, made brutal by their refinement, made crude by their poise. His tan leather jacket stretches taut over his boulder-like shoulders as he stretches them out, and he lowers his head, not in a bow, but more in a manner of centering his head like a bull. His wide nostrils flare out as he inhales, as if savoring the rarefied air in which he stands, and unconsciously he wipes the flat of his palm against his jeans before enfolding Linnea's hand in his own. It's like shaking an old, well worn baseball mitt, who's grip is delicate, hesitant, the strength held in abeyance by a cautious will to not damage.

"A pleasure to meet you both," he says, nodding in agreement with his pronouncement. "I'm Cassian Nikolau, out of Washington DC." He turns his head as if checking on the locations of those not of the blood, and decides to not push further details. He releases Linnea's hand, his shake tentative and brief, and steps back. The shadows seem to flow across his features, pooling into his eyes under the heavy brows, causing the elevated planes to appear like islands of light surrounded by valleys and dales of dusky shadow.

"I don't mean to intrude none into your conversation." He finds it easier to look at Linnea, to address her. There's something about Ferdinand that comes across as cold, as perfunctory and polite, whereas the girl has a more natural ease and warmth to her that makes it easier to face.

Will’s arrival is a line thrown to a drowning man. With a stiff nod, unsure as to the protocol, he steps back, turns away, and quickly moves over to take a stool next to the young Forseti, relief plain on his features.

[Linnea Bartlett] "You too - " the girl responds, with a quick, sudden smile. Will's arrival is a lifeline for Cassian, and a sentence for Linnea. Her gaze flashes sidelong at her Tribemate, her voice drops a fractional third. "Ferdinand, that's Will Reiter. He's new, too. He and Ben share common heritage." Her gaze flickers back to Will, jaw briefly firming. "Have you - have you made it to Church since your arrival, Mr. Reiter?"

[Will Kaldrthvari] "Me, Ben and Cassian," Will affirms. And then, that curiously sharp-calm gaze of his steadies on Linnea, "Yeah, just got back." A flicker of a grin - excitement that he tries not to show too much - as he tosses a glance at Cassian, "Met Sam Cutler too. I think he's a good guy, real solid."

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] He stands like a mentor aloft of the Wyrmfoe, Linnea. If she so wishes to hold the title, so too must she carry the burdens of its responsibilties. And only through trial and error shall she learn the full extent of its powers and restrictions. For now he shall await for her to speak on behalf of not only the Sept, but that of the pair.

"It is nice to meet you William."

And let more of Linnea hold the conversation. A first test of leadership, just waiting to see if she needs any encouragement.

[Cassian] Cassian sits down heavily next to Will, throwing an arm around the other’s shoulders as he does so and pulling him in and squashing him against the larger man’s side in a brief expression of mingled pleasure and relief in seeing him. Up close, Will can smell the various earthy scents that cling to Slow Avalanche: the sharp tang of whiskey on his breath; the faint and acrid smell of sweat brought upon by exhertion in the cold; an equally faint smokey smell, like that of burning leaves in Autumn.

The tall bar chair rocks as the Godi leans forwards, and his muddy eyes catch those of William’s down the way, a raised finger indicating a desire for a drink. That seen to, he half turns, one elbow on the bar, to regard the young Get and raise a thick eyebrow. “Cutler, eh? Well good. Good good good. We’ll be needing solid men.” He nods in confirmation of his statement, and turns with a smile to William as he approaches, baring his golden libation of choice.

[Will Kaldrthvari] "Vilhelm, actually," the possible rebuke in his words is blunted by a smile, "but Vill sounds pretty stupid. So, just Will. To differentiate me from the tender -- " he's brusquely and roughly bear-hugged, nearly yanked off his barstool. Afterwards, a little more disheveled, the skinny Forseti reseats himself and requests a coke from William.

"Yup," he agrees with Cassian, though he'll say no more in front of non-tribesmen. "Oh, hey, we'll be meeting up Wednesday night. My brother's out looking for a place to use. I'll letcha know."

[Linnea Bartlett] "I - " she shoots another glance at Ferdinand, her pale eyes narrowing faintly, a moment's evident suspicion. " - good, it's nice to - " her smile rallies, flickers, and rallies again, her jaw shuttering outward, tendons swimming taut beneath her skin. Ferdinand's (judging) presence stretches her momentary nervousness, expands it like taffy beneath her feet. The floor doesn't quite feel right, and the moon's hot in the back of her mind. Linnea shifts from foot to foot, stuffs her hands - knuckled fists - into the pockets of her jeans and looks back at Will. "I mean I'm glad you made it." Her smile rallies again. "To Church. I met another of your - " she draws in a sharp breath, pushes it out through her nostrils, voice shading darker, her mouth snapping into a flat, closed line, coiled with smoke-hewn or moon-tinged distaste. " Adrian. But he wasn't interested, he said he'd come back later. I think he was concerned about your solidarity. Maybe you could introduce Mr. Cassian at his convenience. We need - " yet another glance at Ferdinand, her pale eyes darting over his closed, composed features. " - the strength of fellowship."

Her shoulders dart and fall again, as she steels herself, her voice dropping to a private register. "If you wanted to talk, Ferdinand, we can head out. I need to be back soon, anyway."

[Cassian] The sight is nearly identical to that of last night’s mild revelry: Cassian looming over a beveled glass of Jameson, the overhead lights causing the whiskey to appear a buttery gold, strange currents beneath its still surface carrying smoky wisps of nothing around its body. Cassian notes the drop in register, the polite separation of conversations, and some tension seems to flow from his body. Where Will was able to meet their greetings and make conversation with the poise and tenseness of one that refuses to be overwhelmed by their evident breeding, the larger Get seemed unwilling or unable to weather it with ease.

Cracking his neck, jerking it sharply to the left to release tension in a sharp triple pop, he rolls his shoulders and hunkers down lower over the bar, forming a protective ledge over the drink, content for now to simply inhale the fumes and let his eyes grow heavy lidded.

“Good to meet up soon.” Said in an almost unintelligible rumble. “Good to get things moving.” He seems almost to be speaking to himself. “Good to weave threads into a rope.” He juts out his lower jaw pensively, and then, as if awakening from reverie, turns his head fractionally towards Will, eyebrow jutting up.

“Older brother?”

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] He watches her words and actions carefully, watching her stumble and pick herself back up again. And his calm composure never left that of his stance nor his features. And maybe he had some choice words for her, maybe not.

"Yes if you need to be getting back, well I can walk with you. And we most certainly speak of a couple of things. Some that I have heard of, some that I have to speak of directly."

He never removed his coat, never removed that of his gloves. he just stood there awaiting Linnnea.

[Will Kaldrthvari] "Yeah, I've met Adrian." Something to be said for his ease with social circumstances, youth and tribe notwithstanding. It's in the easy way he carries multiple conversations, weaving easily between them without losing track. There's a hint of polite finality to this, though, an unspoken sense of insularity: "We'll all make it to the moot tonight, I think. Probably do our introductions and the like there." Then, a hint of guilty apology, "Thanks for checkin' though."

As she turns away to the other Fang, Will receives his coke from the 'tender and pays up. "Yeah, way older. Like seven years. You got siblings?"

[Cassian] “Yeah, a bunch. Big family back home. Brothers and sisters and cousins, oh my.” Said with a dead pan rumble that at once manages to convey an old weariness and comfort. Reaching down, he dips the tip of a square index finger into the whiskey, and draws it forth to begin tracing something on the bar’s scarred surface. Arcs and squiggles, slowly drawn, the finger occasionally wetted once more to maintain the golden ink. The Sigil is made without much thought, Cassian’s expression abstracted, his large features almost slack as he gazes over the bar at the near distant bottles.

The large man seems content for the moment to simply sit in the warmth of the bar, a glass of whiskey before him, a friend by his side. Outside a fierce Winter rages, harrowing the streets and freezing those who dare its wrath. A Winter that works as metaphor, such that this moment of calm, of tranquility and mild pleasure is savored all the more for its rarity.

[Linnea Bartlett] The teenager lifts her eyes to the Forseti again and holds him briefly affixed in her pale gaze. "I'll look for you there." Her voice is quiet again, briefly charged. She lifts her chin and again softens the comment with a quick, small coil of a smile, turns back to the bar.

Linnea pulls a pair of crumpled dollar bills from her hip pocket and shoves them under the rim of her untouched mug, turns and shadows Ferdinand to the door. She pauses long enough to retrieve and reattach her mismatched cold weather gear and then follows him into the wild howl of a winter landscape that is now Kensington. Outside, on the deserted, snowbound street, she waits for Ferdinand to broach the subjects on his mind, half-dreading them, half-grateful for the clouds in the sky, the distracting bite of the wind against her face.

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] The biting cold air and wind seemed to crash against the pair of fangs as they set forth from the warmth that is known as the Brotherhood. Walking a little while before Ferdinand even starts off some sort of conversation.

"I am happy to see you struggle against the desire to stay quiet, when otherwise you would so wish it. But may I ask, did you find my watching you more unnerving then normally?"

[Will Kaldrthvari] "Heh. I always envied that. I was an only child growing up." A pause, then the paradox unraveled, "Alaric's my half-brother. I've got lots of those, and half-sisters too. My dad's a Skald," as if that explained it. He concludes, "But we're tight, 'aric and me."

The conversation lapses into an easy sort of silence. Will's an open sort, when all's said and done. He doesn't have time for games. There's no malice in him, and little in the way of dissemblance. He lays his cards on the table and plays off instinct and first impressions. Friendship is accepted at face value, without suspicion; enmities are made just as quickly and absolutely, and though they may be forgiven, they're never quite forgotten.

"Hey," he says a little later, "you been in the back yet?" A jerk of his head toward the Den, where Garou went to talk shop without fear of eavesdropping.

[Sal Cohen] The heavy oaken door of the tavern opens with an insweep of chill air and the particles of grimey snow blown inward with its wake. A hell of a Nor'eastern ravaged the state yesterday, leaving its pristine blanket of white fluffy stuff...
...that turned into rubbish stained and dirt flecked mush as soon as the shovels, plows, and sun got to it. Outside of the city in the suburbs and the country one no doubts sees a winter wonderland, offset by the odd red-glow of the sky that comes after just such a snow storm. Nothing remains clean and unblemished in the city, though. Nothing.

Either way, along with the chill air and the swirls of dirty snow, a woman steps in from the cold, bundled up in a somewhat tattered, woolen ,thigh-length sweater-coat of a deep moss-green colour. A long striped scarf winds its way around her neck, a fold up almost to her nose with her shoulders hunched as they are, hands covered in fingerless gloves. Well worn jeans cover the tops of her boots stomp, stomp, stomp-stomp to beat off the snow and dirt and sludge. A baseball cap bearing the red "B" for the Boston Red Sox calls her an outsider [but, really, who the hell roots for the Pittsburg Pirates?], the knowing measure to her look says otherwise, seeking out specific spots, specific people. The place hasn't changed. The people have. She doesn't seem surprised.

Moving to the fire, she continue to openly scan the tavern and it's occupants while prgmatically trying to coax some warmth back into her hands, her face, and her backside.

[Cassian] The large head rises, and Cassian turns his gaze past Will’s shoulder to scrutinize the rear of the bar. His eyes wander for a moment over the wall decorations (framed black and white photographs, crossed antique rifles, a bronze bell with some inscription around its rim, the like), and then catches sight of the unobtrusive entrance to the rear room. Frowning slightly, he looks back down to Will, and shakes his head.

“I ain’t had much of a chance to do more than drink at the bar, really.” A rolling shrug. “Why?”

[Linnea Bartlett] Linnea's arms are folded tightly against her body, causing the down-coat to puff and bulge prodigiously above and below the restriction. She's left the hood down, knowing that it's too big for her, knowing that it obscures her vision and makes her flail like a blind thing, not wishing to seem wholly a fool in Ferdinand's eyes.

Silence meets his first question, the quiet, sullen sort of silence into which Linnea can sometimes lapse as easily as she offers up one of her glancing smiles - but she isn't one to linger there, and as she kicks at the heavy snow in front of her, feeling the presence of the storm as a strange, insulating blessing - and luna's pregnant face above - she resigns herself to reply, "yeah - I do. I don't mind talking," she explains, her voice a supple thread beneath the wind. "I just don't - sometimes the words don't come the right way. But yeah, you - " she snorts, her breath steams from her nostrils, the scarf slipping from her mouth as she speaks. "you make me nervous. You're always so formal/i]." That sounds aggrieved, but she follows it up, hard on the heels of the statement, more quietly. "You do everything [i]right.."

[Will Kaldrthvari] Will's surprised. A moment lapses. He flicks a glance at the newcomer, which lingers a moment longer than the average glance of a teenaged boy toward an attractive woman. In that extra second or so, he seems to have assimilated a crucial extra piece of information. When his attention swings back to Cassian, he doesn't make an effort to lower his voice.

"It's a private hangout for Garou." William the bartender shoots him a startled frown, which Will shrugs off. "Well, it is. I just figured you already knew, or I would've told you sooner."

[Cassian] Cassian turns his gaze from Will to the lady who’s moved over to the fire, looking at her ruminatively as he listens to Will.

“A private hangout, eh?” He seems amused by this. “Like a club house? Or… or a tree house?” He smiles, though it’s clear he knows that didn’t come out as humorously as he’d hoped. He stands, the chair creaking with relief as he does so, and takes up his as of yet undrunk Jameson. The sigil has already begun to blotch on the bartop, the alcohol drying quickly, but a smooth, unhurried sweep of his palm smears the remnants into incomprehensibility.

“Let’s go have a look, shall we?” A polite suggestion, more murmur than comment, and then he’s moving forwards, Jameson held carefully in both hands snuggled over his stomach as if he were bearing frankincense or myrrh into a grange.

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] He pauses as she speaks, looking down towards the snow that had hardened and cluttered the walkways. But never has he stopped listening to the younger Fang. Waiting on her finishing words. And then.... a chuckle. A smile and chuckle from one normally so reserved.
"Never make a mistake? I am mortal Linnea, I can and will make mistakes. However we are watched by all of our kind. We must make sure to limit our mistakes and make amends when they happen. People do not wish for a flawless leader, but one who acknowledges their flaws and learns from them."
He paused and looked back towards the one who could possibly be the future leader of this Sept.
"Even I have flaws and make mistakes."

[Will Kaldrthvari] It wasn't the joke of the century, but Will still seems glad enough to laugh at it all the same. "Yeah, but without the tree."

Will's answer is simply to slide off the stool and pick up his coat. His other hand grabs his coke, and it's some consolation that while William won't serve him alcohol, he at least uses the big glasses for coke. A glance over his shoulder finds the kinwoman (or Garou... with very little rage) again. The flash of his eyebrows could be greeting, invitation, both, or neither. Then he follows Cassian, lumbering and huge to his lithe and thin, into the back.

[Sal Cohen] The glance is caught - or felt is more like it - drawing her own gaze, slightly. Slowly. Held for the barest second and then drawn away, moving instead to William, the bartender, in all his stout, bald glory. Unhaunching her shouldrs as the heat of the fire seeps into leanly fleshed out bones, her lips - slightly chapped with the wheather - curve into a hint of a smile. Conservative.

"They still have the backrooms, then, Will?" It's the bartender she's speaking to though her low-pitched voice carries, the barest touch of a Southern twang to the elogation and softening of her vowels, the faint silibance of her 'th' and 's'. The bartender lifts his chin sharply, eyes narrowing as he focuses on the woman, her face rather in shadows between the bill of the cap and the fire blazing behind her. Finely his stubbled face eases slightly in tentative recognition...
"Sal?"
A pause.. and then a slow nod.
And the woman moves to the bar.
"So many new faces. I wasn't sure who I'd find, if anyone..."
She's at the counter now and he's behind it and what transpires between them can only be called a silent conversation, their joint gazes doing the talking. And whatever the conversation was, it ends with his clearing his throat gruffly and her looking away, the expression of her fine chissled features difficult to discern. Distant.
"Yer here to take care of the kids, then?"
"Yes. Consequentially, I could use a job if you can find a place for me..."

The Garou exist and the kinfolk go about their own business.

[Cassian] The Godi moves through the assorted tables and chairs towards the back, at one point inadvisedly picking a route that forces him to stop and carefully wend his way through a gaggle of interlocked chairs. He does so with patience and care, at one point reaching down to simply pick up a chair with one hand and move it aside. Finally, having extricated himself from that mess, he steps free and pushes open the heavy double doors and steps through, passing away from the front bar and into a wide entrance passageway that opens up on the left to the kitchens proper.

Curious, Cassian slows, drifting forwards but letting his eyes feast on the rather cramped and old fashioned kitchen. Massive gleaming pots and old, black iron burners, a few aproned cooks who look blankly in his direction before averting his gaze. Some windows set in the back wall allow a watery, white light to filter into the heated haze over the simmering soups and the like, and the world outside looks all the more frigid for being seeing beyond a warm kitchen.

And then, turning his head as if surprised at having arrived already at his destination, he stops before the backroom door and after a quick glance in all directions, shoulders on in.

[Linnea Bartlett] That comment draws a flicker of her gaze back to the Philodox. Linnea stops still in the drifting snow, tendrils of ice creeping through her sodden boots - hiking boots, water resistant, not waterproof, and not meant to protect one while tromping through a foot or more of drifting, haphazardly shoveled, melting, freezing, and refreezing snow. "I know - I - " her mouth narrows again, she pauses on the cusp of her sentence, unmoving, forcing herself to keep her gaze leveled on Ferdinand. "I really - " her jaw pushes forward again, the roping bands of her scarf slide further from her mouth, exposing her pale skin to the bite of the wind. She isn't a girl, though, she is Garou - the weather's sting will pass. Low: "Ireallyfuckedup yesterday." Her nostrils flare, delicately. A swirling snowflake is caught in her pale lashes, melts into her left eye. "Ben. And Carmen. I - " She swallows, hard. "All the way around, I fucked up it." So pristine, so well-bred, so young, and so - upright, the curse sounds all the more foul, all the more disgusting on her lips.

[Will Kaldrthvari] Will chooses the longer, but more direct route. In the kitchens, he makes a stop to grab a plate of buffalo wings. He's already gnawing on one by the time he's in the backroom, pushing the door open with his back before catching it on his foot and letting it swing quietly closed.

Not much in here. A few tables -- round, wooden ones, unmarked and undecorated -- and accompanying chairs. A dartboard. A jukebox in the corner with a surprising array of selections. There are gouges on the hardwood floor indicating more than one Garou has hit one warform or another in here, and toward the center of the room are four indents where something heavy had once sat. A pool table, perhaps, though it's gone now. Someone probably broke it. Or one too many cuesticks got jammed into eyes in some heated argument or other.

"Nothing fancy," Will says, setting his pilfered plate down on one of the tables, "but it's a place where you can talk without lookin' around to make sure no one mundane's listening in. Have you been to the Caern yet? Moot's in like an hour tonight if you haven't, good time as any."

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] A deep sign becomes visible by the vapors of frost that burst forth. He had heard that something happened after his departure from the garden of stone and statues. He worried about it, especially it being with one known as the Talesinger, however he still reserved his judgement for another moment.

"Well why don't you tell me about it. And we can work across the problem as it arises in your description."

[Sal Cohen] It would seem that the unknown woman's request for work was granted; not long after the two Fenrir head into the infamous 'back room' there comes a knock on the door that starts off a touch tentative, then gain character at about the third strike. A brief staccato.

[Cassian] The large Godi prowls through the room, sniffing audibly at random spots of air. He pauses in one corner, seemingly bemused, and then reaches out to touch a section of the wall with the tips of his fingers, drawing them back at the last moment as if the wooden panel were hot. Frowning, he turns, walks back towards where Will has settled himself, shooting a last, confused glance at that corner before setting his Jameson down next to the plate of wings.

“No, I ain’t visited the Caern yet. I meant to today, but.” He shrugs, and then, seemingly restless, goes around the table, passing behind Will and moving towards where the pool table might once have stood. He pauses in its center, hands on his hips, and gazes down at the floor, and then looks up at the ceiling. He frowns again, reaching up to scratch the bridge of his nose, and then, after glancing all about him to make sure there’s room, shifts.

It’s a smooth change, and fast. One moment a bear of a man is standing still and looking rather nonplussed, the other he’s hunching over as he grows taller, his face elongating and growing vicious, knees buckling clothing melting away like a film of ice over a heated pan. He shifts, moving all the way through into Crinos, the warform, his form growing wider almost more than it does tall. A thick, shaggy winter pelt covers his frame, the ruff around his shoulders and neck deep and thick, heavy and looking almost akin to a mane. There’s a primal power in his stance, in the massive, cavernous chest, in the thickly muscled arms that hang down almost to his knees. His smell grows sharp, acute, the smoky tang from before filling the room.

Reaching up, Slow Avalanche places both palms on the ceiling, grabbing hold of a cross beam, and stretches. His back arcs out, his chest opening as the pectoral muscles grow taut, his shoulders wide as he tenses. His mouth, his maw, opens in a yawn, and a thick rope of saliva hangs from his left canine. For a moment it looks like he might tear out the cross beam, and then he relaxes, lets go, curls into himself, all tension gone, the stretch having done him a world of good.

Hunkering down, looking like a small, furred hillock, the Godi licks at his muzzle and turns his brown, muddy eyes towards the Forseti. His voice, when he speaks, is if possible deeper yet, soft like a rumbling avalanche of velvet boulders.

[b]It’s been too long since I stood tall.[/i]

An explanation, a declaration, tinged through and through with quiet pleasure.

[Will Kaldrthvari] Will watches from his seat, bemused, as the Godi investigates the room. With his coat off and his thermal sleeves rolled up, he seems thinner than ever, all long bones and sinew. When he slouches in his seat, hunkers down to gnaw on buffalo wings, his elbows stick out a mile on either side. He's lank and length held together by a tenuous, undeniable thread of grace and striking beauty.

"What do you smell--"

That grace exhibits itself in the quick, fluid straightening of his spine as Cassian becomes Slow Avalanche. The chicken wings are forgotten. There's a smear of sauce on his lip, and his eyes are wide the way a four-month Cliath's are wide when someone goes warform in front of them. The Sept of the Storm Hammer is nothing but old-school Fenrir who go by old-world ways, and the sight was common enough there. And yet still, even now, or perhaps even more so now, he's aware of the meaning of warform; the potential of war.

A beat passes. Then Cassian's meaning becomes clear. There is no threat, no imminent Wyrm-battle. Will relaxes, his spine arcing out. He bends to his food and starts in on another wing. "Thought you'd smelled something you didn't like. What's over there?" he nods at the wooden panel Cassian had drawn his fingers back from, even someone raps on the door. "Crap. Bet they want money for the wings." Sucking his fingers clean, Will climbs out of his seat, throwing a leg right over the back of it on his way over to the door. He calls through the wood: "Yeah?"

[Linnea Bartlett] "I took - " she shoots him a glance. They've been still long enough that the chill is creeping beneath their muffling coats, and Linnea has to clench her jaw so that her teeth don't chatter. She shakes her head, and starts walking again, slowly though, picking her way with enough care that Ferdinand can follow. "I took Andrew - the cub?" another pale-cast glance at his features, waiting for a moment's flicker of recognition. Surely she told him about the boy - the rarest of rare things a lost Silver Fang , and her cousin to top it all.

"I took him to the battlefield," her voice is subdued. She was there, after all: on the field littered with dead, old and new, when it was still a living mass of chaos and blood. "to show him what we fight. I thought that he would - " her breath sweeps in, her shoulders swell again. " - that he would find - inspiration? there?" Arms crossed, she bows her head against the sudden assault of the wind as they turn a corner. " - I don't know how to talk to him, sometimes. He doesn't know anything, he's brand new. But we - we share ancestors, and they're there, I thought he might feel them, or find them. I thought it might give him courage to - to change. And - " her nostrils flare again, her shoulders curling protectively inward as the wind ratchets up another notch. "he did, after we taunted him - and they - " she shakes her head again, shakes off the telling of the story, shying away from the parts she doesn't want to mention.

"Carmen - " a sullen weight of sound, her story gaining momentum and losing the thread of coherence, "showed up and she said we had no honor and no respect and she yelled and Ben? He challenged her? - to make her stop yelling and so she wouldn't - so she wouldn't pay attention to me - but I couldn't - she didn't understand - and Ben - she hates him, and I still, it didn't work because I couldn't even shut up."

Her voice isn't low anymore. Ferdinand might think the girl had snuck a glance at the moon's disc in the sky, from the spiraling vehemence of her speech, that her rage has been suddenly and plentifully renewed. [i]I did not mean any disrespect. I meant - "

Her arms explode suddenly, she wants something at which to slash - and settles for kicking the crown off a mouldering pile of ashen snow and black ice pushed up by passing snowplows, left to wait for spring or thaw, sinks her foot and leg half-way into the mound, finds the whole exercise thoroughly unsatisfying, but repeats it, nonetheless, twice over before picking her way out of hte marooning mountain of snow and ice, wet to the gills, but subdued again, briefly, watching Ferdinand with that pale, sidelong look.

[Sal Cohen] It is, perhaps, rather wise that Will refrains from opening the door. It's all kinfolk back here but even so, suddenly looking into a room witha Crinos formed Garou has a way of giving the heart an unhealthy kick-start.

Through the door comes the response, her voice raised to be heard, taking extra care to enunciate so it is understood.
"Just checking to see if you could use anything. Drinks? Food?...."
Pause.. two.. three...
...alas, he cannot see the wry humour on her features as she adds:
"...and, by the way, the wings are on the house this time."

[Cassian] As if the stretch has been the apex of his transformation, had been the crest in his burst of energy, the Godi continues to subside, to slowly shift down, his form falling through Hispo and finally into that of lupus. He lays down, resting now practically out of sight, his form blocked from view by tables and assorted chairs. Leaving the door talks to Will, he turns his attention back to the room, eyes bright and inquisitive as he explores it through his now acute senses.

[Will Kaldrthvari] Hand to the door as if to hold it closed -- just in case the polite-sounding woman outside suddenly decided to force her way in, and all -- Will debates for a moment. The door needed a damn peephole. A glance over his shoulder at the big Godi, and finally he comes to a decision. Pulls the door open...

...just enough to see outside. Sal sees a sliver of face: delicately handsome, exquisitely formed. Pretty as a painted archangel, yet with pale and steady eyes. Those eyes flicker over her, then all around her. Satisfied that there were no loitering mundanes lurking to break the Veil, Will opens the door a little wider. The air inside feels stirred somehow; a hint of Crinos musk curls against the senses. All she'll see, though, is the shadow of a wolf beneath tables and chairs. If she looks hard enough.

"I guess we could both use a refill at some point. I've got a coke and he's got -- he's got some kind of whiskey, William would know." Pause. Awkward topic. "Where's the bathroom?"

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] He just watches her attack the pile of snow with fury and rage that only one of the full moons can. Ben was right that she wanted to get into some serious fights, but he didn't want her to do it.... just yet. Vigilance compunded with patience makes for a war bred leader.

"Yes I now of Andrew. I guess that you had inspired him as it were."

And after a few more moments of walking, and seeing that Linnea is soaked to the bone he decides that maybe he should just drive over. It would be warmer. So the remote key is taken out of the coat pocket and ready to activate the Bently.

"Care to continue this discussion in a warmer atomsphere?"

[Cassian] The room looks vastly different from lupus height. A forest of geometrically stiff table and chair legs extend in all directions away from him, fading into the darkness that suffuses the corners and drapes the walls. The undersides of tables are visible, scored and pocked with dry gum, while the floor itself leaps into startling clarity that his enhanced vision and proximity causes. Motes of dust float before him, a lattice work of interweaving scratches and gouges cover the floor, and a million details besides.

But all this pales by the fluorescence of aromas and scents that suddenly suffuse the still air. The stale tang of spilt beer that lies in a dry yet sticky puddle under a table to his left, the heavy, tongue numbing scent of varnish over the wall panels and table tops, the vinegar that lies in a fine film over the floor where the cleaning lady had mopped the night before. And more – Will’s scent, sharp and clear, clean and distinctive, interlaced with the aromas of the kitchen, leaking in through the door and causing his mouth to water. A hint of the lady within its center, different and elusive, but a welcome scent.

Rising to four feet, Slow Avalanche begins to meander through the room, simply reveling in his senses, but making his circuitous way back to that one corner.

[Linnea Bartlett] Linnea glances down at her soaked jeans, and then a flickering look toward Ferdinand's car. Her eyes dance briefly wide, but she swallows the expression with a half-lowed nod of assent as her breathing returns to normal. The girl skids over the ice and climbs gingerly into the car, conscious of the mud and snow crusted to her jeans, concerned about the car's upholstery, but eventually simply sits, pausing to close the door and to pull the seatbelt across her chest.

When the warm blast of the heater has partially unfrozen her cheeks, now ruddy with cold, she presses her forehead to the cold surface of the window and continues, "I told Judgment's Teeth-rhya. What happened."

[Will Kaldrthvari] (ok -- i need food and must make a run for it. Will will (heh) go to the loo whenever Sal points it out. i'll be back!)

[Cassian] (I need to run to the post office real quick - it's just on the corner, so I'll be back in 15!)

[Sal Cohen] In a quick transformation, she has abandoned the scarf, the sweater-coat, the baseball cap. The jean remain, the top is a turtle-neck jumper of burgundy colours, rising a hint of colour to an alabaster complextion, which softens some of the sharper lines of her distinctive, sleek-cut facial features. Black as a ravens wing is her hair, held back in a simple, casual knot, bits of hair sticking out, wavey tendrils of it wishing to go loose and half-curl...
..and green-grey eyes that slip perceptively from Will, to the shadow of the lupus and then his all out appearance as he begins to move about. Search. Sniff. Something tightens in her gaze, not fear, but otherwise unnamable. It is held there..
..a wolf is not a dog. A wolf commands more attention that eer a mere dog could, simply but its sheer existance, it's simple presense. Without thinking about it she is sighing, a sound touched between appreciation and melancholy.
A brief sound, faint as that of the stirring wind outside. She blinks. Turns her attention back to Will and nods...
"I'll get that... and the bathroom -- go out to the---" And she proceeds to explain.

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] "It was my sister's idea, help her blend into high society better and give me a better opportunity to dig out those minions that have inflitrated the upper class. However she has yet to remove herself from Fairfield long enough to even make the rounds."

He shakes his head, knowing that one of his breeding would find it appropriate, however being a garou it was a waste. As the funds could go to more worthwhile causes.

And as the warm air begins to fill, he waits to ensure that the car is warm enough to drive before taking it out of the spot.

"And what did Judgement have to say?"

[Cassian] (And back!)

[Linnea Bartlett] "I'll find out at the moot," she says, flicker-flash on the heels of his question, her breath pooling foggy condensation on the frigid glass, her forehead rolling back and forth. "I'm - " Her chin rolls down further, the crown of her blonde head now pushed against the glass and she swallows hard, her spine straightening. Her voice is firm again. "I'm fine with whatever he says. I can take - " she shakes her head again, and the gesture is not human, but wolfish, dismissive, animal. "I'm - I'm concerned about Carmen - and, and Ben. He did that to protect me." Her chin rises, she catches the glancing edge of her reflection in the window glass. "And her too. And I didn't even let him." She swallows, her mouth twisting in response to her ghostly reflection. "I couldn't let him? That makes it worse."

[Cassian] The room is at once larger and smaller when seen through the senses of a lupus. The walls, the Cartesian boundries of it all are more confining, seem to impinge themselves more cruelly on the mind of the wolf. Slow Avalanche’s primal sense of self longs for open vistas, for the snow outside, for the plunging and harrowing of prey through the forests. To be boxed up in this room, no matter how comforting the smells and ancient the tradition is nothing but short of cruel.

But the room expands in connotations, seems illimitable to both his mind and spirit. Layers of information are exposed about him, rich for exploration and delving and mining. Todays scents overlay yesterdays which in turn cover the stronger odors from last week which in turn do nothing to cover those smells that are tinctured with the headiness of Garou emotion. Blood washed clear weeks ago yet leaves trace elements in the air, steeped as it is with anger and fury and pain, shadings more evident perhaps to a Godi nose than that of the wolf. Moving around a table, the theurge stops by an empty spot which resonates with presence, which seems filled with a soft and gentle smoke, a shape impressed into the very fabric of space by the continual physical presence of a Garou many years past. A favorite seating spot for an old Elder, decades dead? Perhaps.

Resonance. Urges and odors, aromas and faint associations. This is the wonderland in which the Godi walks, exploring this room rich with history and interactions, with revelry and mourning. Larger by far than its walls could ever allow, but always too small for his lupine sensibilities.

[Sal Cohen] The Ragabash goes walking by, heading off for the bathroom. The lupus-formed theurge moves around the room, senses aware of things the kinwoman watching would likely never understand. All the same, she watches. Watches his cadence and stride, through the room, around its simple objects. Her eyelids slip slightly lower, as though watching him had a hypnotic effect, drowing her into a lull that is once a clarifity of singular focus - watching, wondering, willing - and also the slow spread of fog as her thoughts slip and fades. Tendrils that sneak out to touch upon a subject here,a subject there, a light, vaporous touch but obscuring for all of it. Again she sighs faintly, memory, longing, contentment, awareness....

Stop being such a damned romantic
All at once she closes her eyes only to open them a mere moment later. Upon their opening a hard-edge laces itself over her, over the way she holds herself, over the previously open depths of her gaze. Walls are set back into place, re-named and restructed. Nothing bitter or angry, rather the steel of pragmatism to a fault: no time for imaginings and poetry. There is work to be done. Money to be made. Mouths to be fed. A life to re-arrange.

She reaches in slightly, taking the door knob and drawing the door shut behind her as she goes back about her business.

[Sal Cohen] ooc: Alas, it's almost 1am and a work day tomorrow. So I must get my arse to bed. (waves) Go well, all! Thanks for the play!

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] He didnt start to drive, not just yet. He just watched Linnea for a moment and shook his head. Listening to the balance of her plight.
"Ben has very high hopes for you Linnea. He believes you can be... And even though I do not know Carmen, your name holds high esteem and many of those of the Sept will go out of their way for you, but they will expect more from you then."

He started to take the car out of the parking space, and down the block, towards St. Micheals Church.

"I can teach you many methods on being a leader, different tactics and skills. But a leader falls into three categories, just like our renown. A leader who focuses on glory, one who focuses on honor and one who focuses on wisdom. But you must choose and when you do so you must make sure to stay the path for wisdom, honor and glory, however they cross do not equal each other. And you must make sure that your pack understands your decision."

Wisdom for wisdom's sake. It is her choice to accept it or not.

[Cassian] The Godi comes to a stop in the corner, and sits back on his haunches, examining the seemingly random panel of wood with a deep and equivocal gaze. His ears flick occasionally, as if bothered by flies, but there are clearly none in evidence. After a moment, he steps forwards, sniffing closely at the base of the wainscoting, moving his nose from side to side as if following an invisible and tangled string, and then lifts his head to sniff at the wall itself.

It’s a strange smell, convoluted and old, as layed as the pages of a book and rich with restless shade. It triggers associations deep within the Godi’s mind, so that the smells meld with images and sounds, bring forth not simple odors like cinnamon, but moments in time, almost Proustian, that flicker through his mind like melting slides projected on a wall.

Restlessness, and bitter sweat. Long shadows beneath autumn trees along a quiet avenue, and a feeling of hope, of bitter hope.

The lupus sits back, breathing it in, the rest of the world fading from view. He considers crossing over the Umbra for a moment; decides against it. The stimulus would be too strong over there, perhaps washed over by more powerful smells.

Guilt. There, that is what had originally caught his attention. A dark guilt, like a cancerous organ deep in the body of a man. Tincturing all the others, making of the hope a more poignant and sad inflection.

Sniffing some more, the Godi whines softly under his breath, and then stands. The smell is old, perhaps years and years. Vague memories and odors are all that is left. No threat or further information to be had.

The sudden awareness of the wings on the table impinges on his mind, and Slow Avalanche feels his indomitable appetite awaken. Leaving the corner, he moves back towards the center of the room.


[Will Reiter] Will's gone for longer than one might expect. Maybe he had to take a shit -- who knows. But long after the (new) waitress has come and gone with their refills, the young Forseti is still gone. Cassian has plenty of time to explore the room, its nooks and crannies, its scents and memories.

At some point, though, Will does return to the back room. His hands are wet to the elbows, his hairline beaded in water as though he'd splashed it on his face. He moves back to the table and picks a chair, any chair, sits himself down. There's a certain economy of motion about him despite the grace. Nothing superfluous to Will: no extra flesh, no extra muscle, no extra gestures. As Slow-Avalanche approaches, he's momentarily awkward. A year or so of Fostering doesn't quite erase the effects of sixteen years of mortal life. When a canine approaches, sometimes his first instinct is still to put out his hand, fingers curled under, so it could sniff at leisure.

He curbs that thought. Looks away, more or less deliberately. There's a certain restlessness to his manner. Had Cassian been in Homid, he might've missed it. In Lupus, it's unmistakeable: a curl of scent like slow-burning wood simmering beneath his skin; a slight tic in his finger, tapping gently on his thigh. Will studies the dartboard for a moment before he gets up suddenly and crosses to it. Pulls the darts out of the board, paces back ten steps, and stands side-on to it as he aims his first dart.

"Listen, Cassian -- " a flick of his thin wrist and the dart flies straight and true from his fingers. His aim isn't great, though. The dart strikes the edge of the board and hangs at an angle, nearly dropping off. Will shakes his head and tries again, " -- I know we just met last night and I never laid eyes on Ben Cutler 'til today, but I got a pretty good feeling about all this." Thok! -- another dart hits the board. This one is better-aimed. And three more follow, until his hands are empty. Then Will turns to Cassian, because this is something that a Garou says looking in the face of another, no matter how he might try to trivialize it, "So I was thinking maybe you could meet him at the tribe moot, and then afterwards, if it all works out okay, we could, y'know, pack up."

A beat. Then Will's suddenly smaller, conscious of himself and his request. Whatever unconscious strength of bearing his blood bequeaths him, whatever confidence his auspice and tradition leaves him seems to desert him momentarily. He doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands, so he shoves them into the pockets of his jeans. "I mean," he adds quietly, "if you think it's a good idea, and all."

[Will Reiter] (*coughs* Sam Cutler. SAM Cutler.)

[Cassian] The Godi approaches the table, padding silently up, weaving his way between chair and table legs as if passing through a medley of saplings. As the Forseti speaks, he rears up on his hind legs and places both forpaws on the table's edge, snout lowering and sniffing at the plate. It's clear that he simply wants to turn his head onto its side and lap up a few of the wings, simply curl them up in his tongue and munch on them. But sense of misgiving - a human aversion to leaving copious amounts of drool on dinner plates - perhaps - prevents him.

Will finishes, and the Godi pauses, his attention momentarily distracted from the wings. He trains both eyes on the kid, and then pushes away from the table with forpaws, a move that might overbalance a wolf but flows into a transformation back into homid, rippling and surging and then finally shrinking till Cassian stands - looms - before the kid once more.

Reaching up, the Godi rubs at his chin, taking a chair with the other hand, spinning it around on the front right leg and sitting down on it once it's reversed. He's clearly heard Will: he's just thinking. Face creased in thought, he reaches out and takes a wing, slathered in a rich and deep brown bbq sauce. Holding it in both hands, he pulls it apart, and slurps the meat of the slender bones.

"Will, that's awesome." He looks up and smile a sauce smeared grin, following this with a palm across his lips which wipes most of the sauce away. He seems genuinely flattered and delighted at the suggestion, but something hovers within his eyes that makes of this no simple matter or acceptance. "Shit, to meet somebody within days of reaching Philly who feels this way - " He bobs his head and shifts in his seat. His smile fades, and he frowns, looking at the young man with consideration, "But mate, I don't know you well enough yet." He says this slowly, as if hesitant of using the wrong word.

"I mean, there's a question I have before I can give you an answer." He reaches forwards and takes another wing, examining it as if for answers. Then he looks up, and his gaze is sober, perhaps as lucid and serious as Will's yet seen it. "What's this mission Fenris has for you?"

[Adrian Vaughn] He left behind the emptyness of the apartment he had been staying in for a night out. He tooted right before leaving, so he was riding high. The Brotherhood was still a name that didn't quite sit well with him, a his scowl deeped every time he thought about it but that still didn't curb his intentions of going there. He pulled up on his bike, riding dangerous with the lack of a hemlet on, but he still wore the leathers.

He slipped off the machine, one hand moving to draw down on the zipper as he stepped into through the front portal. His eyes moved over to the tender Will for a brief moment of acknowledgement. His eyes, those deep pools of a stoic chocolate scanned the room as he stood at the entrance for second. A push from his back foot and lurched into motion, his body drawing closer to the bar as he leaned his frame into it.

"Coke, no ice"

That voice distinct, melodic -- divine, slipped from the confines of his throath and pass his lips into the ears of those that dares to listen him. He got the attention of a passerby, who just so happened to brush him across the back in passing, his attention was caught for a moment. His eyes turned upon her, watching as she made her way through the Valentines Day crowds to go and check up on her table. Their was a hint of a flirtaious smile that made its presence known upon his lips.

And soon, his coke was served and with that he pushed off of the bar and made his way towards that back room, just curious as to see who was in it. It gets no simpler than that right there. It was a large ordinate door with the usual carvings to make it stand out, and he pulled/and/or/pushed it until he slide into the back and aways from the other patrons.

His eyes took upon the forms of Will and someone else, for just a moment, he watched in silence. A nod came first followed by his words, his acknowledge. "...Wha's up" He walked with a sway, there was a certian swagger about him, the way he moved, the way he spoke. It echoed with pride. Fenrir Pride, from the heart that pumped the blood, to the bone support the frame.

[Will Reiter] A bevy of emotions chase one another across Will's clear face. Burgeoning, unrestrained delight is hounded by reservation, then the beginnings of the look a young man might get when some girl he's just asked out says Aw, Will, that's so sweet, but... -- and finally hooks a right turn and settles into understanding and his customary good humor, touched by his also-customary sense of irony and fate. It's a moment before he answers, while he weighs whether or not to answer at all.

"I'm supposed to cleanse the tribe of corruption," he says, straightfaced, though the tone of his voice shows he knows every bit how ridiculous this sounds. There's caution there, like he was afraid Cassian might laugh -- but tenacity too, like he didn't care if he did. He might've told Cassian to just hear him out first, except that the Godi's never done anything but. So he goes on, "I don't mean the whole thing, or... but I'm supposed to try my best and do what I can to bring Fenrir back to the old ways. Too many of us wander around thinking it's about being brutal and rebellious. Do what you want, kick ass if anyone tries to stop you. I guess I'm supposed to remind them it's more than that.

"You know, the first time I met Ben the Rotagar, he was actin' like some half-Fang, too good for his own blood, too poor for Falcon's. We had words, and he threatened to come cut my throat in my sleep. Right here, he said it." Will points five feet off to the side, quiet and contemplative. What rage there was -- and there was plenty -- is subdued, a bare shiver of iron far, far below. "I almost tore his head off. You know what he said? He said it was his job to be honorless, because a Rotagar didn't need honor. And I think he actually believes it. He actually believes that honor has no place in a Rotagar's life.

"Glory, honor, wisdom. We've always been a glorious tribe, but lots have forgotten we're an honorable one too. And that the Skalds and Godi of old had a bloody wisdom the likes of which no Uktena or Shadow Lord could even begin to imagine. And there are some among us who've forgotten that utterly."

Will pulls the darts back out of the board, smoothing out the fletching between his fine fingers. "I know it sounds stupid," he says. "And I know it's not something I could ever hope to achieve in a... in my lifetime. But hey," and he raises his head, and raises his hand, and flicks the first dart at the board, "same goes for the holy duty Gaia set before us, right? I figure in what time I've been given I can get at least some of it done. I can pick a Sept, and try to find a good solid Get to lead our tribe in it. I can help show the Sept we're more than delinquents and killers. We're warriors with a code."

There's a silence while three or four darts hit the board, and Will's brow is knit with thought. "And I guess I wanna find a pack that feels the same."

The door opens. Will shuts up, and goes pull darts out of the board.

[Cassian] The large Godi sits still through all this, slowly and methodically working his way through the chicken wings. There are three small piles: bbq, honey mustard and plain. His thick fingers pause over the plate each time as he tries to decide which kind he wants next, frown of concentration marring his brow. Usually his fingers pincer up a bbq wing, with the occasional honey mustard straying into the mix. The plain wings sit mostly untouched, though from the way he's chomping them up they're unlikely to escape.

The Forseti speaks, the Godi listens, and when the young man finishes his potentially ridiculous story - one that could speak of hubris - Cassian leans back, looking across the table and at him where he stands, darts in hand. One by one he places a thick finger in his mouth, pulling them free clean and white. Slowly he cleans them, a human variation on the wolf's self grooming, his expression as grave and set as that of a rock.

His eyes. There's something in them. That despite their plainess, their muddy simplicity and almost naive appraisal of the world convey - an understanding? A traditional theurge-like connection with matters unseen, unsensed by the ordinary, the plebian, those caught up in the frak and fray of their day to day lives to notice? They seem as ordinary as Mississippi mud, but a mud that might have no depth, that might suck in a limb inadvertantly placed in it, swallow a boot, and then a leg, a body, all down into their muddy depths.

He listens, and his gravity is that of a child listening to a serious explanation about a family misfortune. It's a singular focus in which his mind is brought to bare, but is incidental. What's really listening to Will is a larger, more basic force. Not even listening to the individual words, perhaps, but the tone and texture of the speach, the form and force behind the words and phrases. The emotions both spoken and writ on the Forseti's face.

It's an assesment that seems broader, deeper, simpler than the customary. And when Will falls into silence, the Godi seems ready to mull it over further, but doesn't. Is interrupted by the opening of the door, and Adrian's arrival. Brows lowering over his eyes, displeased in a general way for being interrupted at such a crucial moment, he turns in his chair, his back to the door, shifting his shoulders around so as to eyeball the intruder.

[Adrian Vaughn] He walked and silence gripped around Will's thoath as though he was just talking about Adrian himself and drew a supisious stare, a flicker of consideration as one hand dug deep into the his pocket while the other held onto a glass of coke, the moisture running along the crevices of his fingers till it rolled off -- a decent into the floor.

His eyes moved over to Cassian, he never him before. They settle on him for a long moment as he waited for him to speak, waited for him to say something, waited his voice to shatter that silence that crept up inside the room and just turned this akward, even for a few seconds. sip. He took a taste of the coke, letting the acidic fluid flow down his gullet.

But no ever spoke -- No one shattered the silence, it just loomed over the room like the dark clouds of a snow storm in the horizon. His glowed a brief hint, flicker/flare of his inner anger. "...Like that eh..." His hand lifted up the glass, where he pressed it to the berth of his lips and downed it all. There usually a sharp burp that follows such a display but none came.

He pushed off of that wall, his eyes settled his gaze on will and he started for the door. "Fuck it -- I'm out" He had other things he could be doing, better things. Like that cute waitress, it was in his nature after and it was better than the sausage fest that was going to commence into the backroom. As quick and silent as he came he left. The coke, paid for on the way out.

[Will Reiter] Will turns as the Skald starts out. A black boy out of the projects, amongst a brotherhood of white-skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed norsemen, at least some of which were known to openly despise the other races, and perhaps most of which harbored some doubt or derision. These things aren't things that are discussed at the council fire, but they sure as hell seethed below the surface. Small wonder Adrian turns and walks out.

For a moment it looks like he might say something, but ultimately Will does nothing. He lets the Skald go, lets the door shut. Shrugs at Cassian, then. "I'll talk to him later." He comes back to the table, sets all the darts down, picks up a wing. One of the plain ones, if only to see how it tasted. "If you want more time to think it over, that's not a problem. I mean," the grin is a little hobbled, "I haven't even talked to Sam yet, and you haven't even met him."

[Cassian] The Godi turns back around, hunkers over his untouched Jameson. It seems almost more of a talisman today than a drink, a symbol he carries with him to keep him connected to something. Will sits, the Godi frowns, purses his lips. Heavy things are being discussed. He's not one to change the focus of his mind easily when he sets it, and the arrival and disappearance of the other Fenrir barely registers.

"Cold Arrow," he says, his voice low, slow, pensive, "I like your words. Better, I like what I feel behind them." He half squints his eyes and gestures vaguely as if feeling up an invisible mutant woman. "I'm not the smartest Fenrir." A shrug, as if dismissing this. "I..." He's searching for words. He closes his mouth, tries again.

"I hear you." It's a basic assertion, working perhaps on deeper levels. "It is a noble mission. A good one." He's stating the basics. Warming up. "Even the smallest victory is... enough reason to fight it. Never mind about changing, you know, the whole world." He's losing his grip on what he's trying to convey, or feeling it slide out from under him. He frowns, leans forwards again, intent.

"I... I'm not a very... aware, Fenrir. No. I mean. I am who I am." No conscious irony here, no mimicking of God. "I'm me, Cassian Nikolau, Slow Avalanche." He's on safe ground. His face grows almost stubborn, as if behind Will stand arrayed the vast mass of the Tribe, for good or ill, judging or indifferent as they may be. "I am Godi, and I do what I do. I... don't know if I am traditional like you say. You be the judge. I'm not going to change easy, so this is me."

He frowns again, shakes his head, trying to cough up these basic ideas as plainly as he can. It's like watching a bear try to get at the honey in a small pot. "So. If you have this mission, and you think I am what you want, then you be the judge. I like you. For me, that is enough."

He's done. Relieved, he takes up the Jameson, and downs it.

[Will Reiter] Will doesn't listen like Cassian does. There's something slow and deliberate about Cassian; something glacial, slow-building and ultimately weighty. When he settles to listen, he settles. Will has an immediacy to him. He can't help it. It's how he's wired, and it's how he has to be. He listens, intent and riveted on the subject at hand, but several times he draws breath to speak and has to curb himself.

When the Godi is finished, though, Will is smiling. His is a smile that transforms his face. They say it all the time in second-rate novels: his smile lit up his face. His smile lights up a room. In this case, there's truth to it. When Will smiles like that, he's smiling from his core, and it's imperfect, unpretty, lopsided, real.

"Cool." It's hardly a statement of the proper weight, but it's all he's got. "Yeah... cool." Pause; briefly awkward, unadept with this sentiment: "Y'know... I don't need you to be traditional or aware or anything you aren't. I wanna pack with you like you are, 'cause I think that's -- enough." He's past that patch, and pulls a face that momentarily renders him as young as he is. Laughing, "Shit, I don't think I could sound any gayer if I tried."

He's sure of himself again, focused and steady. "Let's go talk to Ben Cutler tomorrow night. Even if he isn't up to joining us, I think if we stick together we're gonna be okay."

[Cassian] Cassian sets the glass down on the table with a sharp crack, and the winces, taken aback by how hard he had accidentally done so. He picks up the glass, checks its underside and then puts it back, relieved that it hadn't cracked.

He stands. The chair skids back before the pressure of his knees. He stands, and there's a new look on his face. Something has been decided, agreed upon, a first and perhaps tenuous bond linked. There's a connection now where before there had just been intimations of a friendship; something deeper is being forged between the two, ancient instincts rousing themselves and realigning priorities and loyalties. Things beyond the human ken, but which the Godi feels stirring within him, a sense of elation and a surge of confidence. As if the world, seen askew until now, had fallen into a frame a little.

"Come on," he says, his voice a rumble that's tinctured with muted excitement. Turning, offering no further explanation, he walks out the door, leaving the backroom.