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jeremiah_garou) wrote2014-02-02 12:15 pm
jeremiah_garou) wrote2014-02-02 12:15 pm
Entry tags:
Matchsticks and pizza.
February 2, 2014
The moon is in the waxing New (Ragabash) Moon phase (18% full).
The old rail station is, in theory, abandoned. On the side fronting Grym Broder's Avenue, the windows are boarded up, walls and boards so liberally covered in graffiti that it's hard to tell which is window and which is brick. Nevertheless, the railings have no gate, and it's clear enough that a portion of St. Claire's population continues to make use of the old buildings, at least in passing. On the platform side, it becomes clear that this is not merely a stop-over for the displaced, dispossessed, drunk and drugged. The boards on some windows have been removed, replaced with glass and shutters. Empty doorways and smashed splinters clinging to bent hinges have given way to new doors. There's surprisingly little garbage around. There's also light and music spilling out onto the grubby platform from what was once the main building— some modern pop tune, accompanied with tuneless enthusiasm by a loud female voice.
A morning of running means that Jeremiah has entered from the street to perhaps catch his breath somewhere sight unseen. It also means that he's not dressed in as many layers as usual, merely a light long sleeve shirt against the weather and the large army jacket, and has broken a good sweat nonetheless. Steel-toed boots are difficult to be quiet in, especially once one gets to the platform, but there's an alert wariness to the way that Jeremiah walks around. Looking for somewhere warm and dry has turned to curiosity about who else might be here, and he hesitates a distance off from the doorway, trying to catch sight of the inside.
The wonderful thing about windows this new is that, despite the best efforts of the city grime, they are still see-through. There's electricity here, despite the external air of abandonment. There's the smell of fresh paint, once in this close. Inside the room, there's also a woman attempting to assemble some variety of flat-pack furniture, with no noticeable success. The singing stops as she shuffles through a sheaf of paper covered in diagrams, glaring at it hard enough that any sensible piece of paper would immediately get its act together and tell her what to do. The paper, regretfully, is unmoved.
Jeremiah watches in silence once he's gotten a vantage point… but not for very long. There's another glance about, hands shoved into his pockets until he comes out with a beanie that gets tugged down over his ears and over his face, and instead of running away or leaving, the young man moves over to the doorway, mutely standing there, but with enough noise to announce his closer presence and provide a distraction. Even with the small moon, there's a coiled and tense aspect to his movement, and he looks from her to the papers, then back again, and just shrugs.
Most women, alone, in a deserted building— most sensible, stone-cold-sober women, that is— would be wary of a strange man appearing in the doorway. Especially of a haggard-looking but visibly athletic man with piercings and shit-kicker boots. Most of them don't straighten up briskly from a heap of unassembled furniture parts, turn on a searchlight smile, and ask, "Can I help you, dear?" without even the slightest trace of nervousness, or even of sarcasm.
The young man leans against the doorway, looking at her. If anything, Jer's the one slightly nervous, and he offers a wary half-smile, no teeth. He opens his mouth, then shuts it, then opens it again, unused to speaking, and when he speaks, it's clear enough why. His voice is squeaky and ruined, nothing at all suited to his appearance or frame. "Didn't mean t' intrude," he says. Jackal-voiced, in fact, "Y' looked like you're having trouble wi' that." Despite nervousness, Jeremiah looks right at Topsy for as long as he possibly can. There's no challenge in the look, just his own version of searching, trying to gauge true friendliness. "I'm handy enough when I'm not mad at things."
For all her visible friendliness, Topsy's is the sort of gaze that many Garou find it hard to meet for long (instinct tending to cough loudly and shuffle its feet if they try). She may not even be consciously aware of the way her shoulders straighten, five-foot-something frame somehow conveying the impression of being several inches taller. "New in town?" she asks, no less friendly (and there's a transparency to her which suggests she couldn't dissemble to save her life) but with sharpened attention.
Jeremiah holds out a fair while when he does. Maybe it's long experience, maybe it's sheer willpower, yet without turning it into a staredown, and when he looks off, it's only a few inches behind her. "No… not no more," he answers, after some thought to the matter. "I sort of. Fell out of the sky here near… nearly a year 'go now."
"Out of the sky, hmm? And I followed a unicorn here," Topsy says, incongruously. "Nearly two years ago. Made a few friends in the area. You settled in? Or just passing through?"
Double-take double-take double-take. The younger ahroun seems to realise quite who he's talking to (it couldn't be anyone else) and takes a step in, a step to one side, craning his head as to get a better look. And then he squints, and then he adds, "Storytellers make yez sound a whole lot bigger," slightly apologetically, and crouches against the inside of the doorframe, rather regardless of any lack of invitation. There's quiet, and then he speaks again. "Passing through… kind of. Jeremiah Bullfrog, Mama Rat accepted me Lives-On. Full-moon. The rest's a long story I didn't 'xpect tell today but it's as good a moon as any. Short side, rhya… I…" Pause, deep breath, and the young man, as he settles to sit on his heels, has an iron grip on his rage. "Fell out of the Umbra last year. And then, I accepted punishment for what I did, here, 'fore I's was a Bone Gnawer. I was a shit of a Shadow Lord who didn't know trust, or anything but how t' kill what I was set to, and it… cost me. Dearly. One of the things is I… need permission t' stay 'round, as anruth, all th' elders. The other is my voice."
"Rat's people here are good people," Topsy says firmly. "None of us can change the past, but if you're going to do your damnedest to keep your feet on the right path from now on then you have my blessing to stay and do just that." She gives him a searching look, like the world's scariest strict-but-nice kindergarten teacher. "Just be sure to come ask if there's anything I can help you with," she adds, "rather than waiting until there are pieces to pick up."
Jeremiah sits, statue-still except for breathing and looking up at Topsy. "Thank you," he says. It's a trained posture of someone who has worked very hard to get that sort of control. "I'm not the man I was before Broken Prairie fell," Jeremiah responds, "and I'm not the one I was when I came here afterwards, broken in new rage and grief. Mama Rat gave me a chance to live, and I try to do right by that every day." He lifts his shoulders then. "It's hard, with all of it, sure. But it is, and I try to help as much as I can, too."
"I can always use the help around here," Topsy says, waving a hand. "I'm turning it into a place… a place for my Tribe, but also a drop-in, for anyone who needs it. I'll keep the human-only part clear of the rest, of course. There's plenty of work still to do, including some things that need a sledgehammer taking to them, so you're welcome to take a bit of Rage out on that if you ever need to."
When the younger ahroun sprouts a true, non-nervous smile, he lights up, easily enough. It's a quick transformation over angry and sullen and the hidden pains of old wounds. "I'd be happy to help," Jeremiah says. "I did… some remodel work for Val, the bird-lady, when she moved out of her apartment, while back, fixed it up. I've helped Lefty out wi' the Library while I've been in town, too. And well, teaching Charlene to fight," it comes out more like 'ficht', the traces of hillspeak-learned English over an originally Russian accent, "and such that she wanted to work on, while I'm in town, since it ended up so long." He chuckles, though it's a rather awful sound under the punishment rite, and he motions to the flatpack furniture, getting up again to go over and look at it. "What's it supposed to be?" he asks.
Topsy tries not to wince at the grating voice, throughout the conversation. The fact that she makes the effort not to do so is just as blatant as any other reaction would be. In answer to the question, she holds out the crumpled sheets of paper, instructions in several languages with line-drawings that somehow manage to make things even more confusing than no diagrams at all. There's a poor-quality black-and-white first-page picture of a two-door floor cabinet, and from the amount of material and packaging, there's more than one of them to assemble.
Jeremiah takes the papers, and looks over them, and he settles on a line of instructions, muttering nearly inaudibly to himself as he starts to sort out the pieces of the parts, already grouped by like, into a more coherent arrangement with the parts out, screws and bolts and shelves and for the moment, he reaches and holds up the piece that's to be the bottom in one hand. The muttering, reading the instructions, it seems, isn't in English, and he studies it for long minutes, looking occasionally between the papers and Topsy and the things and moving things, and the muttering gets interspersed with sign language, apparently still talking to himself. "Da, there," Jeremiah pronounces, then snorts at himself. "Their instructions suck. But I think I see where it all goes."
"Oh good," Topsy says, without even the slightest trace of sarcasm. "I was about ready to turn the whole lot into matchsticks. Do you eat pizza?"
The moon is in the waxing New (Ragabash) Moon phase (18% full).
The old rail station is, in theory, abandoned. On the side fronting Grym Broder's Avenue, the windows are boarded up, walls and boards so liberally covered in graffiti that it's hard to tell which is window and which is brick. Nevertheless, the railings have no gate, and it's clear enough that a portion of St. Claire's population continues to make use of the old buildings, at least in passing. On the platform side, it becomes clear that this is not merely a stop-over for the displaced, dispossessed, drunk and drugged. The boards on some windows have been removed, replaced with glass and shutters. Empty doorways and smashed splinters clinging to bent hinges have given way to new doors. There's surprisingly little garbage around. There's also light and music spilling out onto the grubby platform from what was once the main building— some modern pop tune, accompanied with tuneless enthusiasm by a loud female voice.
A morning of running means that Jeremiah has entered from the street to perhaps catch his breath somewhere sight unseen. It also means that he's not dressed in as many layers as usual, merely a light long sleeve shirt against the weather and the large army jacket, and has broken a good sweat nonetheless. Steel-toed boots are difficult to be quiet in, especially once one gets to the platform, but there's an alert wariness to the way that Jeremiah walks around. Looking for somewhere warm and dry has turned to curiosity about who else might be here, and he hesitates a distance off from the doorway, trying to catch sight of the inside.
The wonderful thing about windows this new is that, despite the best efforts of the city grime, they are still see-through. There's electricity here, despite the external air of abandonment. There's the smell of fresh paint, once in this close. Inside the room, there's also a woman attempting to assemble some variety of flat-pack furniture, with no noticeable success. The singing stops as she shuffles through a sheaf of paper covered in diagrams, glaring at it hard enough that any sensible piece of paper would immediately get its act together and tell her what to do. The paper, regretfully, is unmoved.
Jeremiah watches in silence once he's gotten a vantage point… but not for very long. There's another glance about, hands shoved into his pockets until he comes out with a beanie that gets tugged down over his ears and over his face, and instead of running away or leaving, the young man moves over to the doorway, mutely standing there, but with enough noise to announce his closer presence and provide a distraction. Even with the small moon, there's a coiled and tense aspect to his movement, and he looks from her to the papers, then back again, and just shrugs.
Most women, alone, in a deserted building— most sensible, stone-cold-sober women, that is— would be wary of a strange man appearing in the doorway. Especially of a haggard-looking but visibly athletic man with piercings and shit-kicker boots. Most of them don't straighten up briskly from a heap of unassembled furniture parts, turn on a searchlight smile, and ask, "Can I help you, dear?" without even the slightest trace of nervousness, or even of sarcasm.
The young man leans against the doorway, looking at her. If anything, Jer's the one slightly nervous, and he offers a wary half-smile, no teeth. He opens his mouth, then shuts it, then opens it again, unused to speaking, and when he speaks, it's clear enough why. His voice is squeaky and ruined, nothing at all suited to his appearance or frame. "Didn't mean t' intrude," he says. Jackal-voiced, in fact, "Y' looked like you're having trouble wi' that." Despite nervousness, Jeremiah looks right at Topsy for as long as he possibly can. There's no challenge in the look, just his own version of searching, trying to gauge true friendliness. "I'm handy enough when I'm not mad at things."
For all her visible friendliness, Topsy's is the sort of gaze that many Garou find it hard to meet for long (instinct tending to cough loudly and shuffle its feet if they try). She may not even be consciously aware of the way her shoulders straighten, five-foot-something frame somehow conveying the impression of being several inches taller. "New in town?" she asks, no less friendly (and there's a transparency to her which suggests she couldn't dissemble to save her life) but with sharpened attention.
Jeremiah holds out a fair while when he does. Maybe it's long experience, maybe it's sheer willpower, yet without turning it into a staredown, and when he looks off, it's only a few inches behind her. "No… not no more," he answers, after some thought to the matter. "I sort of. Fell out of the sky here near… nearly a year 'go now."
"Out of the sky, hmm? And I followed a unicorn here," Topsy says, incongruously. "Nearly two years ago. Made a few friends in the area. You settled in? Or just passing through?"
Double-take double-take double-take. The younger ahroun seems to realise quite who he's talking to (it couldn't be anyone else) and takes a step in, a step to one side, craning his head as to get a better look. And then he squints, and then he adds, "Storytellers make yez sound a whole lot bigger," slightly apologetically, and crouches against the inside of the doorframe, rather regardless of any lack of invitation. There's quiet, and then he speaks again. "Passing through… kind of. Jeremiah Bullfrog, Mama Rat accepted me Lives-On. Full-moon. The rest's a long story I didn't 'xpect tell today but it's as good a moon as any. Short side, rhya… I…" Pause, deep breath, and the young man, as he settles to sit on his heels, has an iron grip on his rage. "Fell out of the Umbra last year. And then, I accepted punishment for what I did, here, 'fore I's was a Bone Gnawer. I was a shit of a Shadow Lord who didn't know trust, or anything but how t' kill what I was set to, and it… cost me. Dearly. One of the things is I… need permission t' stay 'round, as anruth, all th' elders. The other is my voice."
"Rat's people here are good people," Topsy says firmly. "None of us can change the past, but if you're going to do your damnedest to keep your feet on the right path from now on then you have my blessing to stay and do just that." She gives him a searching look, like the world's scariest strict-but-nice kindergarten teacher. "Just be sure to come ask if there's anything I can help you with," she adds, "rather than waiting until there are pieces to pick up."
Jeremiah sits, statue-still except for breathing and looking up at Topsy. "Thank you," he says. It's a trained posture of someone who has worked very hard to get that sort of control. "I'm not the man I was before Broken Prairie fell," Jeremiah responds, "and I'm not the one I was when I came here afterwards, broken in new rage and grief. Mama Rat gave me a chance to live, and I try to do right by that every day." He lifts his shoulders then. "It's hard, with all of it, sure. But it is, and I try to help as much as I can, too."
"I can always use the help around here," Topsy says, waving a hand. "I'm turning it into a place… a place for my Tribe, but also a drop-in, for anyone who needs it. I'll keep the human-only part clear of the rest, of course. There's plenty of work still to do, including some things that need a sledgehammer taking to them, so you're welcome to take a bit of Rage out on that if you ever need to."
When the younger ahroun sprouts a true, non-nervous smile, he lights up, easily enough. It's a quick transformation over angry and sullen and the hidden pains of old wounds. "I'd be happy to help," Jeremiah says. "I did… some remodel work for Val, the bird-lady, when she moved out of her apartment, while back, fixed it up. I've helped Lefty out wi' the Library while I've been in town, too. And well, teaching Charlene to fight," it comes out more like 'ficht', the traces of hillspeak-learned English over an originally Russian accent, "and such that she wanted to work on, while I'm in town, since it ended up so long." He chuckles, though it's a rather awful sound under the punishment rite, and he motions to the flatpack furniture, getting up again to go over and look at it. "What's it supposed to be?" he asks.
Topsy tries not to wince at the grating voice, throughout the conversation. The fact that she makes the effort not to do so is just as blatant as any other reaction would be. In answer to the question, she holds out the crumpled sheets of paper, instructions in several languages with line-drawings that somehow manage to make things even more confusing than no diagrams at all. There's a poor-quality black-and-white first-page picture of a two-door floor cabinet, and from the amount of material and packaging, there's more than one of them to assemble.
Jeremiah takes the papers, and looks over them, and he settles on a line of instructions, muttering nearly inaudibly to himself as he starts to sort out the pieces of the parts, already grouped by like, into a more coherent arrangement with the parts out, screws and bolts and shelves and for the moment, he reaches and holds up the piece that's to be the bottom in one hand. The muttering, reading the instructions, it seems, isn't in English, and he studies it for long minutes, looking occasionally between the papers and Topsy and the things and moving things, and the muttering gets interspersed with sign language, apparently still talking to himself. "Da, there," Jeremiah pronounces, then snorts at himself. "Their instructions suck. But I think I see where it all goes."
"Oh good," Topsy says, without even the slightest trace of sarcasm. "I was about ready to turn the whole lot into matchsticks. Do you eat pizza?"