multiversallogs | → it is a lovely thing that we have.

Who: GG and YOU. GET IN HERE.
What: Fun with a warwulf.
Where: Everywhere! Particularly Mafaton and in and around Flag Hill, but she really is exploring everywhere.
When: All week and more.
Notes: Specify when and where in the header. Feel free to meet her in human or wolf form, though be aware that she doesn't speak when wolfed; if she's on all fours, she'll be either in Mafaton or in a fairly rural, isolated area, particularly the forests and mountains around Flag Hill. The write up here is just a prompt or an infodump, don't feel you have to base anything on it. And feel for to PM me for more stuff. /jazzhands
Warnings: TBA.

The question is this: what to do first?

Food. Shelter. Medical attention. They repeat themselves over and over in her brain, a mantra of survival. Except the first two, at least, come easily; Lea's already landed herself an enormous stretch of land in Flag Hill, and food is...everywhere. There's prey- lots of it, too, none of it mutated by an apocalyptic blast or hardened by living life in a wasteland, not as thin and wiry as it was at home and not the subject of intense competition between her and any other starving predator.

Of course, while she enjoys the freedom to hunt, the things that happen in the forests around Flag Hill aren't exactly sweetness and light. It's easier as a wolf; she went deep into the woods in her human form once, and very quickly went out again.

Anyway, Baedal has restaurants.

Not that renourishing herself is as easy as that. She ends up throwing up a lot of what she eats, unable to stomach nearly as much as she wants to. Wolves are built to feast or famine, but humans aren't. Werewolves aren't. So: medical attention. The tricky part. Healthcare is free for newcomers- she needs some proof that she's a newcomer- she can get proof from the Valhalla Inn if she stays there and she doesn't want to- she can get proof from the Employment Office but they say they can't sign anything if she isn't working or looking for work- she says she's not well enough to work- they require a note from the doctor- that's not free.

Crisse. Out of the fire and into the bureaucracy. So it is, then, that GG spends a lot of her first week or so in Baedal shouting at people behind desks and eventually starts hanging around one of the werecreature support centres (yes, really). The people in there (it is blissfully dark and cool, though it does smell of frightened animals, which puts GG somewhat on edge) sigh and say things like yes, this happens a lot. Xenians tend to be in worse health than humans, she learns from pamphlets; the unemployment rate is higher amongst them. They are in general poorer, less represented, with a higher chance of being murdered, attacked...

GG puts the pamphlet down (on the floor, where some of them are placed for the ease of clients who find themselves most comfortable on four legs- it's strange, being somewhere that's made with you in mind) and leaves. The service put her in contact with a thankfully sane and capable xenian doctor happy to take charity cases; a blessing, though a charity case isn't what GG enjoys being, so she tries not to think about it and promises to pay once she has a job.

In the meantime, she explores. She familiarises herself with the city- nose first. It's not uncommon for her to close her eyes, all the better to build up the picture in her head; the warm smell of horses, cigarette smoke, mud, cement, cold blood, hot blood, human blood, vampires, a something else and a something else- she can't put names to them, but she knows them by scent. She goes out at night, mainly, though coming to Baedal left her rather jet-lagged, for want of a better word; in her world it had been night, in Baedal, day. She bears the sunlight occasionally. After all, the city, while not sleeping, is rather balanced in favour of those who prefer daylight- apart from Mafaton, where she wanders a lot, conscious of the fact that people here likely know what she is; one only needs a halfway decent sense of smell to know that she's a wolf playing human. Once or twice she shifts, leaves her clothes in one of the discreet changing rooms the were service provides with the dingy lockers operable without opposable thumbs, and gives up on the disguise. She's not sure taking to the streets as a wolf would be a good idea elsewhere, but no one in Mafaton bats an eyelid. ...Except when they do.

She's not out of apocalypse mode just by virtue of washing her clothes and taking a bath, of seeing doctors and fussing about bureaucracy. When presented with food she still catches herself thinking how much of this can I save for later, how much of this should I ration out to the people depending on me- she's still wary of buying things (you can buy things here) because what if she has to move suddenly? She can't weigh herself down. But she tries. She still looks like a soldier- straight back, long stride, unflinching glare, unsmiling mouth, practical clothes, a kind of regimented shabbiness that speaks of a woman who has bigger things on her mind. She has never been party of an army- but apocalypse survival is a kind of fight all of its very own.

Perhaps it's wrong to be so unnerved by a city that works- well, that nearly works, she corrects, thinking about that pamphlets again. There's almost a desire to pronounce it too complicated, too difficult, too alien and stay indoors, or stick to the compound and the forest- but that would feel like giving in.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Another pause, as Clio looks steadily back at GG - evaluating her, the situation, the conversation they've found themselves in.

"I think we should talk," For both their sakes, because right now they have the time and luxury for things like feelings and it's better, in Clio's opinion, to get this stuff out if there's a chance for it. So she pushes herself away from the sink (dishes can get done later), heading over to the small table in the kitchen and sitting down in one of the chairs, pushing the other out for GG.

"He stayed in Montreal?" He must have, if GG could track him down, but she's still surprised.

"Yeah." She throws herself down into the offered chair, raking her hands through her damp hair and leaning back. She shakes her head almost disbelievingly. "Ugh. Cocky little shit. But it made sense. Lea was gone. Half the god damn estate was gone- some of them didn't have to be taken, some of them just gave up and left, thought they'd be better off elsewhere."

She's staring intently at nothing in particular, her brows drawn close, but she looks at her suddenly, and leans forward, forearms on the table. "He was high up in a gang practically running the place. We were compromised, starving, injured, and we'd lost a leader. Of course he stayed. Like he was lording it over us." A beat. "I don't know. That was how it felt."

Clio listens, watching GG as she speaks. The fact that people left surprises her at first, but then she realizes how scared people must have been, after the Numen came in through their front door and dragged so many of them away. Her brows go up when GG leans forward and there's a further moment of silence as Clio weighs up what's been said.

"I wish I'd been there to help," Is what first comes out of her mouth. It's so true it's painful. She wonders if more people would've stayed if she'd been there, and then wonders if that's a bit self-important of her. (But she knows how much effort she put into making the estate feel like a home for people).

After another second, she adds, "Hopefully it sends a message to the rest of the gangs that we're not easy pickings." That they'll defend their own when they can, and take revenge when they can't. It's not normally the sort of message Clio would want to be associated with, but she's also aware that it's safer for them, to be seen as dangerous.

"So do I," GG sighs, and those three words express a world of exhaustion. She has tried to lead; that's all she can say, really. She's not Lea, larger than life and burning with charisma; she's not Clio, patient and capable of giving people what they need. And things worked best when they were all there.

But that's not the way things happened. She wrenches herself from the past, her tone becoming slightly less weary, though that same exhaustion lurks in it somewhere. It seems to be everywhere. She sleeps a lot, at odd hours, but her dreams are murky and she wakes with anxiety burning in her chest, terrified of something which in the waking world she can never remember. She tends to sleep as a wolf more and more lately- animals don't have the same subtle, unfathomable nightmares.

"I don't know. There were already tensions, I might have just invited them to call down fire on us in revenge. On them, I should say, now that they don't even have me."

"They'll be alright. Even at half strength, they can handle a bunch of men with guns," As long as it's just the gangs that retaliate. If Numen gets involved again, things are much less likely to work out well for their friends. But there's no point in saying it out loud; words won't change anything here.

Instead, Clio reaches out to put her hand on GG's arm, "You did the best you could. And yes, it was a terrible time for you to be taken away from the estate, but that is not your fault."

She hopes nothing bad happens while they're gone, as much for GG's sake as anything else.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know." Her hand brushes over Clio's and she gives her a wan smile. It's crooked and wry- but directed inwards, as if at her own expense. "Don't worry, I know. They're all survivors."

And so are they, Clio and Lea and GG and everyone, really, from their world. Built to last- in one twisted form or another.

Her own smile is a little warmer, pleased that GG doesn't seem to be blaming herself for the situations that are out of her control. She leaves her hand resting on GG's arm; she's missed being able to touch people so easily.

"Once we're back home, we can work on fixing the problems that Joseph caused," Clio has a feeling that things are going to be very different from now on. They can't just carve a little safe space out for themselves and protect it, they need to do more. She isn't sure exactly what that will involve, but she wouldn't be surprised if a trip to New York was somewhere in their future.

GG knows she shouldn't, which is a rational understanding and which is what gets shown to the world- but there's a part of her that sometimes can't help it.

Oh, well. It's not particularly useful. "Joseph's a symptom of the bigger picture," she sighs, saying what they both know, raking her fingers through her hair. "There's more to clean up than his mess. Ugh, I don't know." She looks at her straight-on, brows together. "How long do you think we've got?"

--the idea of staying here forever doesn't seem feasible at the moment.

A much bigger picture, and one that scares Clio a little, if she's being honest with herself (which she usualy is). But that won't stop her from doing what needs to be done, once they work out whatever that is.

At the question, and the look, Clio's smile turns a little rueful, "I don't know if I can make anything resembling an accurate guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was some time around a few months."

Which seems both like too long and not long enough. Clio isn't entirely comfortable settling in for the long haul but she also isn't going to rely completely on Lea for everything. She'll need to get a job soon.

"Few months," GG repeats, and then exhales in a noisy sigh. "Okay." She frowns harder for a few seconds, and then her eyebrows go up as something occurs to her.

"We're going to have to act normal," she says in a tone full of rather grim humour. Perhaps it's not that funny to laugh at something which could get them killed- their abnormality, such as it is- something fueled by the apocalypse they come from...but it is funny, to GG at least, to think of getting a job, making plans, meeting people, if only because of its incongruity. It's also terrifying.

"I'm not sure I remember what normal is," She sounds both amused and bewildered, because it's true. It's been six years since she's had to be normal and London seems like a million miles away (it is).

She never even had a real job back home - working in retail when she was sixteen, and being in a band doesn't count - and even things like going to the movies is completely foreign to her after so long. But, "At least we don't have to hide what we are."

Not completely. Clio's not sure she could, because she never had her powers before the storms, and after them, there was no need to pretend to be human.

→ it is a lovely thing that we have.

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