The Spark [Kora]

[Drew Roscoe] Several days ago, a storm had wiped through the city the likes of which hadn't been seen by most residents still alive. Snow blasted the ground, buried vehicles, ate up small houses whole, knocked down powerlines and tore branches off trees and buried the streets. Lightning had split the air, thunder had rumbled heavy enough to shake window panes... And confrontation was thrown all over the floor in the sanctuary of the Church.

Drew brought it here, like a leper brings disease to an otherwise healthy house. She didn't mean to, not really, but that was neither here nor there. Kora wanted a word with her. Drew had waited until the storms had died down and the plow had passed by her street, then got into her truck and made the drive out to the church.

As usual, it parked against the curb along the flank of the building. She locked her doors, got out, wrapped up in that thick blue coat of hers with her hair left down, heavy and long enough to warm her ears and neck without the help of a hat. Sneakers crunched the ice on the sidewalk, and the front steps also as she approached the massive double-doors that entered the church, knocked twice, and let herself in without waiting for a response.

"Kora...?," the Kin called out, "It's Drew."

[Kora] The power is back on; there's a new warmth just inside the doors and Drew can see the glow of the heaters among the couches scattered beneath the choir loft. Someone's been filling the cracks about the window frames with expandable foam to make the frames rather more airtight. Someone else has boarded over some of the more exposed of the windows with missing glass.

The front steps are shoveled, but the rest of the grounds of the church are covered in big, scattered drifts of snow carved into elegant shapes by the wind. Dead vines, bare branches twist through the surface like broken spines, rheumatic fingers, clinging to the carved solid stone of the church.

There's no one inside. An empty pizza box is open on one of the tables. A book was left on a couch cushion, turned face down. There's a slow drip of water somewhere near the back, where the sun has been melting the snow on the roof, even on the coldest days, and the quiet hum of traffic in the distance.

Fifteen minutes or so after Drew arrives, a wolf pads into the center of the sanctuary. Impossible to tell where it came from; one moment there was nothing. The next: she was shaking herself free of the twist of webbing clinging to her fur and peeling away toward the warren of passages where the kitchen and old sunday school classrooms remain. Five minutes after that, Kora emerges from the same passage. Her footsteps are quiet but audible, her clothing ordinary. Jeans. A muted smoke-blue t-shirt over a thermal, both large and long enough to accommodate the firm swell of her stomach. Once she would've walked with her hands in her pockets. Now, she lets her arms swing free.

"Drew." Kora says, when she's close enough for ordinary speech. Doesn't offer a beer; or other refreshment. Not now. Not yet. If Drew's standing, Kora invites her to sit. She herself remains standing. A glance away from the kinswoman, a faint frown furrowing her brow as she looks off into the middle distance. "Do you know why I want to talk to you?"

[Drew Roscoe] Time ticked by, and Drew let it. This place wasn't ever empty for very long, sooner or later someone would come rolling through. Chances were it wouldn't be Kora, but instead Roman or Rain or Linus, someone like that. She'd ask them where the Skald was and either wait, track her down, or come back another day.

When the wolf passed through, Drew was settled onto one of the couches under the choir loft, jacket removed so she was left in jeans and a pale green sweater. Her legs were crossed at the knee, one foot bouncing, and her head was rested on the back of the couch, arms stretched out over the back as well. Quite comfortable indeed, she'd made herself at home waiting. The wolf caught the Kin's attention, her eyes followed after it, then wandered again while she waited for whoever that was to come back.

Sure enough, the wolf did, but this time the wolf was Kora. She wasn't offering anything, she didn't join Drew to sit on the couch. Rather, she stood near enough for easy conversation but not close enough for familiarity, and asked right off the bat if Drew knew why Kora wanted to talk.

Drew wasn't a disrespectful whelp, when Kora addressed her she sat straighter, planted both her feet on the floor and put her hands in her lap. She didn't stand, she wasn't so young and eager as a freshly named Cliath to clap heels for ranks, but that didn't take the attentiveness out of her, or the proper posture from how she sat, back straightened and chin level to the floor.

"I figure it has something to do with Remy and Erek and the fuss that they caused." A beat, and she admitted. "Predominantly Remy, I'd presume."

She didn't expand on that, didn't tick off the laundry list of topics she figured it could've been while waiting for the storm to pass. Rather, she let the Jarl clarifiy on her own.

[Kora] Kora's dark eyes are level, easy. There's a certain sharpness as her attention returns to Drew, settles on her soft features; the rich dark eyes, the snub nose. "Roman has a kinswoman," she begins, lifting her chin toward the warren of interior rooms in the old social hall. " - and she has a young daughter. She's working to stand on her own, but does not earn enough to pay for both child care and household expenses. And she's pregnant again, so she has to save money so that she can go without working after the child is born. And she could use company as well. An example, if you will.

"She would pay her share of the rent and bills," a subtle movement of Kora's shoulders, here. Nearly - though not quite - a shrug. "and would not be a burden. She can't stay here with an infant. I'd like you to speak with her, share space and expenses until she can afford to live on her own."

[Drew Roscoe] "No."

The answer comes too quickly, too curtly, most likely for Kora's liking. But Drew's expression is resolute. There's no hate, no envy or animosity in her expression. Her tone of voice isn't angered or insulted. She's calm, her brow is furrowed just a touch, portraying some hint of apology, but her answer was still the same.

"There is Mary Alice. There are government assistance programs. There are other Children of Gaia and their Kin that can help her." She shakes her head again, and this time rises to her feet. She doesn't look like she's leaving, she doesn't reach for her coat. She doesn't appear to be escaping Kora either. But she is no longer comfortable sitting down, and not one to argue with what her body and instincts hummed into her joints too often, she went along with it and now stood with her hands tucked into her hip pockets of her jeans.

"My house isn't suitable for children in several ways. Garou are welcome in and out. I am home again gone again, not always in town, I cannot be there to watch the children for her when she needs them watched. My money is intended to help my Family, not a stranger's."

There's a pause, and her voice is soft, but firm. "I'm sorry."

[Kora] "There is no reason for you to have Garou in your home. Not now. You're unmated, alone, a widow. I'm your guardian, responsible both for your honor and your safety. You are the last breathing memory of your mate, who will not have a son to follow him, to fulfill the promise of his blood left undone - " There's steel underneath the coil of her voice; a rough flare of anger that sparks bright against the curtained dark of the church. It peeks under the rough surface; Kora glances once at Drew, then looks away. "And if you denied him that - "

There's the spark. (No, said Drew. Can you imagine? one night before the Solstice.)

Kora looks back at Drew, something visceral, something alive in her dark eyes. Animal, the bright burn of rage. A sharp sense of propriety, an archaic, visceral sense of honor.

"Let me make this clear. Garou have a place, here at the church, or at the Brotherhood. They do not need your bed, until and unless one offers proper challenge for you. Do you understand that?

"I have asked you to do one simple thing: share your home with a kinswoman. It's honorless for you to refuse, utterly honorless, no matter the excuses you make for yourself. You would give a kinswoman and her child over - to the government? To strangers? I would have imagined that you of all them would understand the shared responsibility of kin.

"If you have returned to me, pregnant, alone, your mate dead, I would have found a place for you. You have a duty beyond the duty you owe to Garou. And if you do not see this, then you are blind.

"Now get out."

[Drew Roscoe] "That's not fucking fair, Kora."

Once upon a time, when Drew was new and Rage still caused her spine to quake with the sheer terror that came without trust and understanding, she would snap and push at the Garou in retaliation. Because if she gave up without a fight, if she let them be right all the time and have their way, she would lose control, her life wouldn't be hers, and then she feared she would no longer be herself but some broken thing in the wake of harsh obedience lessons and a snapped spirit. Since those early days she'd tempered that down, her fury didn't rise, wrath didn't leap forward to burn venom into her throat so easily.

Yet Kora's accusations for what she denied Joe, for what she was apparently doing now to besmirch his honor... She couldn't let that stand uncorrected.

"Joe and I weren't ready. For your information, the very next conversation I planned on having with him was about kids. His end was untimely and unjust, not what it was supposed to be. Don't you dare turn that back on me. And not a single goddamn head has laid in my bed. None before Joe once Abe had gone. None after him. You're assuming and it's wrong.

"And I said government assistance. They hand out welfare checks to girls like her. I'll hold her hand down to the WIC building and help her sign paperwork if you want. I'll help her find a home in price range. I'll help her find a babysitter she can trust. But I am not going to be her crutch when she's not even Family."

She drags her coat on as she talks, does up the buttons with fingers that trembled with rage. The impotent sort that made sour her tongue in her mouth and had her heart ablaze, but could do nothing to be honed into the fight for Gaia. It was useless anger, and all it did was make her shake.

"I'm goin'."

[Kora] "We're a dying race in an endless war, Drew." Kora snaps back, her voice is still low, nearly level, but it is coiled with violence now, sharp as the crack of a whip in the cold, bright air. "There is no fucking room for we're not ready."

[Drew Roscoe] "Hey yeah, thanks for the newsflash."

The Kin's shaking her head, growling and tugging her hair out of the back of her coat, digging her keys up out of the pocket and walking around Kora-- wide around, well out of lunging distance, on her way to the door. "You give me a call, Kora, if you need something other than a babysitter for Kin that ain't even ours."

And, unless stopped, she's out the door.

[Kora] There's no out of lunging distance with Garou. In a breath, Sorrow could snap into her warform. In an eyeblink, she could leap half-way across the sanctuary to run down her prey. Drew circles, choosing a wide path. She circles around one of the half-empty tables, the empty pizza box, steps over the beanbag chain slowly sighing out its stuffing onto the cold stone floor.

The air is cool, a brief point of contact against the heat of her anger. After the singular flash of rage, Sorrow is entirely contained. Her hands are half-fisted at her side, knuckles white with restraint.

The Skald's chin rises; her eyes narrow, and she traces the path Drew makes with her gaze. Otherwise, she is has the unutterable stillness of an animal. A predator.

A wolf.

Contained, now.

Nearly silent, until Drew tosses off the last phrase. Babysitter complains Drew, and Kora breathes out, a sharp sound of distaste.

"There are two sides in this war, Drew. Ours. And the enemy's. You're an arrogant fool if you think anything else. You choose, one, or the other."