Santiago
Thu 09:53PM EST
Blood in the air. Blood in the earth. Sensing one or the other, Santiago comes out of his cabin. The door, swollen with the rain or the growing heating, squeal in the rough frame. Another might come out on the porch for a cigarette, a beer. Santiago has a can of pepsi in his hand, and comes down the steps to look down at the seeping dark blood.
And up, at the Wendigo from Starling's camp - and a new face. Silver Fang from the looks of her, undeniable. "A fight in a Gaian camp?" Mild, jocular, as he kicks dirt over the stain. "That's unusual. Evening, Billy-Rhya." A sip of Pepsi. "Evening, Silver Fang."
Corran Vong
Thu 09:55PM EST
He nods and gnetly touches her shoulder and then heads out of the cabin heading back for his. He looks less than pleased. Nods to billy and Santiago and the girl with much pure breed
"Good evning... if I'm needed I"ll be in my cabin but am in a rather.. unpleasent mindset. I apoligise."
Corrina
Thu 09:56PM EST
She looks around for a chair, and finding one, pulls it to Jon's bedside. Rage be damned, she'll not step away again until he asks her to.
Ana Kozireski
Thu 09:58PM EST
There's a quiet shake of her head as the young woman's eyes drift back to the cabin. It's an irresistable pull, and an effort of will to draw them away. "No." Her head shakes in quiet negation, "not particularly. I've had some training, and with blades, but - " slim shoulders rise and fall in an apologetic shrug. " - I am no master, nor even a particularly apt student. My skills are of a different sort. Why?"
The young woman looks up as Santiago approaches and offers him an abbrieviated nod of response. Another nod, to Corran as he passes. Her eyes stick to him as he walks across the muddy earth, the greening grass, like a burr. It's with some effort that she looks back to Billy and Santiago again.
Billy Bedlam
Thu 10:01PM EST
He grunts. "Well it's time to learn...come on, we hunt." Looking at santiago, he nods quietly "evening."
Santiago
Thu 10:02PM EST
That's the good thing about unpaved ground. Kick things around a little and you can hit any stain. That's something to remember, that the earth, mother of them all, has drunk more blood back into herself than any of them could imagine. Rich black soil only becomes so by hundreds of years of organisms dying and rotting in its depths.
A nod to Corran as he passes. Then he moves along the path of dribbled blood, kicking dirt over the traces - all the way to Corrina's cabin, and up onto the porch.
Corran must have forgotten to shut the door. It yaws open. Santiago raps on the door and calls into the depths, "You'll want to clean the blood off your porch before it dries, or it'll never come out."
Ana Kozireski
Thu 10:04PM EST
"Who was that?" the young Silver Fang asks, voice pitched low as Corran disappears inside. Both pale brows have risen high in her forehead, an inquiring look, followed by a nod of aquiesence. "My shoes are on Noah's back porch," a mild gesture towards her bare, muddied feet. "...we can pick them up as go."
Corrina
Thu 10:04PM EST
"Yeah, I guess I should do that."
Her clear voice emerges from the interior of the cabin.
"You can come in if you like."
Corrina
Thu 10:07PM EST
She whispers something to Jon, who seems not to hear her, then rises and goes to the door to greet him.
"Sorry for my lapse in manners. I'm Corrina, Child of Gaia kin."
She offers her hand for a shake.
Santiago
Thu 10:10PM EST
"Santiago," he replies. No accent on the voice, but a certain roll to the cadence of his words, unenglish. His grip is firm, the pattern of callouses on his hands the type you might get from manual labor, hunting, skinning animals. Goateed, his hair is black, roman-cut, short and close to the skull. His eyes are black as well. He gestures in the direction of his own cabin. "Half-Moon to Great Fenris. Your neighbor three doors away."
Corrina
Thu 10:13PM EST
"Pleasure to meet you."
Her hand is soft where his is calloused, weak where his is strong. Their shake is study in opposites.
"You're welcome to join us, but I'm afraid I won't be very entertaining right now. And you're right, I do need to get to that mess."
Santiago
Thu 10:15PM EST
A wry look over Corrina's shoulder at Jon, beaten and bloodied. "Us?" - a simple word, eyebrows up. The question could mean any of a number of things. Releasing her hand, he turns to look at the blood dribbled on the floor. "If you have a bucket, some soap, a rag and cold water, it shouldn't take long at all."
Corrina
Thu 10:15PM EST
"Okay Billy, I will."
She calls back to the boy before turning back into the cabin.
"I've just moved in, well not even moved in, really, so I don't know where anything is yet. Please excuse me while I find the things I need to clean that up."
She rumages around for a mop or rag and bucket suitable for cleaning the trail of blood of the porch and floor.
Santiago
Thu 10:18PM EST
"Take your time," sipping Pepsi. Despite the invitation, Santiago stays at the door. After a moment he leans his shoulder to the frame. Not your average Fenrir by any means, he's leanly built, almost lithe. Certainly, he doesn't fill up the doorframe. "Paper towels work too in a pinch."
Corrina
Thu 10:20PM EST
Eventually she finds what she needs to clean up the mess and applies herself to it.
"Yeah, us. Just because he's unconscious doesn't mean he isn't there."
Santiago
Thu 10:22PM EST
Santiago takes a last sip from the can and crushes it, leaving it carefully on the porch railing to remove later. Then he takes up a rag and starts at the other end of the stains. "You're his mate, then? Mind if I ask what happened?"
Corrina
Thu 10:25PM EST
"No, not his mate. A friend . . ."
Although something told her they'd be mates, and her hunches were rarely wrong.
"He and Corran argued over information that Jon swore not to tell, and they fought."
Santiago
Thu 10:27PM EST
Just a friend who'd tend to his wounds with such tenderness and whisper in his ear before she left. Those damn Coggies. Santiago accepts it with a nod and an unreadable look, though. Almost all his looks are unreadable - solidly black, impenetrable.
He's entirely too practiced at this blood cleanup operation.
"Here I thought you Coggies were all about nonviolent means of settling differences," comments Santiago. That's a smile, though, not a smirk. He stands up and wrings his rag out over the bucket, dips it, wrings again, and goes back to his end of the trail.
Corrina
Thu 10:30PM EST
"There's bad blood between the two of them, but I haven't been around long enough to know what it's all about. Only for a week or so."
Corrina
Thu 10:33PM EST
Tenderness, yes, kindness, definitely. And whispering in his ear? Well, she's not sure she can explain that one to herself. It's too early for like to have turned to love, isn't it? She cares for him because that's what she does. For her profession, and as kin.
Santiago
Thu 10:35PM EST
A shrug. "If it's between them, it's between them." Rocking back briefly to sit on his heels, he inspects his work and then gets back to it. "Only been here a little over a month myself. Where from?"
Corrina
Thu 10:37PM EST
"New York City. You?"
Finally, the blood Jon's blood . . . is cleaned off of floor and porch. She takes Satiago's rag, empties the bucket and rinses the two rags before tossing them into a pile for washing.
"Are you sure you won't come in?"
Santiago
Thu 10:40PM EST
"White Sands Sept. Down in New Mexico." Getting up after she takes his rag, he shakes his hands dry and picks up his can. "I will - another day, when your friend's awake. Thanks for the hospitality." He starts to head down the stairs and stops, turning back. "By the way. See the eviction notices?"
Corrina
Thu 10:42PM EST
"Yeah, was here when the lawyer came. My dad is a lawyer and has lots of corporate and enviriomental lawyer friends; they're working on getting proceedings held up as we speak."
Santiago
Thu 10:44PM EST
"Oh." A pause. Then Santiago smiles and reaches out to pick the crushed can off the porch rail. "Good to know. Let me know if they gain any ground."
Corrina
Thu 10:46PM EST
"I will. Thanks for stopping by."
She stands in the doorway to talk to him, close enough should Jon need her.
Santiago
Thu 10:47PM EST
"Anytime." With that, the lean Forseti heads back down the darkened road toward his own cabin. Night and gravel conspire to hide the blood on the path; gravel or not, though, his footsteps are curiously quiet.
Corrina
Thu 10:52PM EST
After the Get leaves, she returns to her seat by Jon's side and takes his hand in hers. Now and then she leans forward and speaks to him, but mostly she just sits, keeping him company.
Kennedy
Thu 10:55PM EST
Shadows drifted lazily across her face, as she reclines back on the top step of Santiago's cabin. A small utility knife in her left hand, a small sliver of wood in the other. She hums softly, dark eyes turned down on the wood in concentration, the knife point pressed into it. Carving small glyphs into its surface.
Santiago
Thu 10:58PM EST
There's one thing good about having spent the first twenty-four years of your life hunting small game in the bleak silent desert. It teaches you to move soundlessly in total darkness, where a single noise can travel nearly a half-mile. It teaches you to sneak up on things, even when you don't mean to -
- like teenaged vandals carving up your top step.
"What are you doing?" Puzzlement rather than anger, really.
Kennedy
Thu 11:03PM EST
"Carving. What's it look like I'm doing." She doesn't look up at him. The tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth in concentration as she finises the last of the small glyphs. Though, it looked more like straight lines than anything, but they held a pattern to them.. A more permanent setting than the ones she'd done before.
Santiago
Thu 11:06PM EST
Carving - so bluntly stated, as if it were obvious (it is), that Santiago stares speechlessly for a minute. Then:
Motion so smooth and quick that for a moment he seems less a man and more a liquid shadow. He stoops. Swoops. A hand clamps around her wrist, stopping the retracting knife. The other hand reaches down to pass fingertips over the pattern on the steps.
"What are these?"
Kennedy
Thu 11:14PM EST
"HEY!!" She makes a face, her head snapping up to glare at him. Dark eyes narrowing slightly. Her nose crinkles, fingers curled tightly aroud that pocket knife. His fingers sealed around her wrist like a band. She looks back down at the markings, pointing to the first glyph, (3 lines, middle line the longest, flanked by two short lines on the sides) "There chicken scratch. Symbols. That one is safe path." She points down to the second one beneath it. (4 small dots, in a cross-point pattern) "This one is food... I got bored."
Santiago
Thu 11:18PM EST
A moment passes. Then his lean fingers, tanned and strong as roots, unwrap from her wrist. "Symbols." He repeats. In the darkness he's hardly visible at all: a flash of white teeth, a glint of dark eye. "Whose symbols?"
Kennedy
Thu 11:26PM EST
She pulls her hand back, closing the pocket knife. "Symbols. Nobody important.." She shrugs her shoulders, stretching alittle as she scoots back on the porch to move away from him. "Say.. have you been around to meet the neighbors by chance? I'm looking for others around here, but I haven't seen anybody..."
Santiago
Thu 11:34PM EST
"Don't change the subject." Something different in his tone; something relentless in his questioning. An echo of the other-him, who wears guns and the mantle of blind justice, and executes without remorse. "Answer the question straight."
Kennedy
Thu 11:40PM EST
"I'm not changing it. It's switched already. What I'm askin' is important anyway." She huffs, turning her eyes upward to stare at him, as she stood up. "Hey.. hey.. hey. They ain't important to you anyhow, so don't worry none. I answered the question. You said nothing about answering it straight." She looks around quickly, scooting off towards the opposite end of the porch. "Not like you ain't got the space to help a brother out, ya know.. Though I don't think it'll be too big of an infestation." A slight chuckle in her voice.
Santiago
Thu 11:47PM EST
One black eyebrow lifts. He seems to consider his words for a moment before he speaks, slowly. "Hospitality's one of those odd little things, Kennedy, that comes free but doesn't always stay free. Push it too far and it becomes a debt. Understand what I'm saying?" A pause, and then he steps past her, mounting the stairs and opening the door to his cabin with a squeal of wood on wood. "Just something you might want to remember."
Santiago
Thu 11:47PM EST
One black eyebrow lifts. He seems to consider his words for a moment before he speaks, slowly. "Hospitality's one of those odd little things, Kennedy, that comes free but doesn't always stay free. Push it too far and it becomes a debt. Understand what I'm saying?" A pause, and then he steps past her, mounting the stairs and opening the door to his cabin with a squeal of wood on wood. "Just something you might want to remember."
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