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→ 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.

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Not everyone in Mafaton is as understanding about fellow monstrosities when they're werewolves; to some, they're a more tolerated form of other xenian, a step up from the usual 'slightly more challenging food', 'not food and therefore uninteresting' and 'not food but useful' - but then there are those whose close association with the wolf is more along the lines of 'long-standing blood feud', and in their town they tend to be inclined to do more than bat an eyelid.

It's just an accident of timing that GG appears to be following Ilde at just the right moment as she digs in her purse for her keys, headed towards Ivan's building. They're accustomed to her, here; used to seeing her hanging off his elbow, coming and going from his apartment, peering around him in Gutters. The man watching GG so closely knows to wait, for instance, until he's in Ilde's line of sight to speak.

“Get another dog, did you.”

--she pauses.

The implication is not difficult to grasp. She can feel what the other woman is, in a strange way (in a familiar way, almost, but she ignores that for the moment), and xenian social politics are not exactly something to which she's oblivious. (Still, it crosses her mind that she remembers telling Mitchell, you are the horror movie kind of vampire--)

It's an impulse decision. It's probably a terrible idea. It's making herself involved in a dispute that she has absolutely no part of.

It's Ilde saying, “Yes, something like that,” and holding the door to the building open so the wolf can precede her inside. Fuck only knows what she's going to do if she can't take the hint in that form.

GG goes very, very still, pulling back somewhat to stare at the vampire. She can understand human speech like this even if she's not equipped to respond, but the body language is more instantly decipherable to her; the way in which the man stands sends all kinds of alarms off. And suggests all kinds of challenges, too.

At that moment, she'd really rather not crawl off to safety with her tail between her legs- but that's the wolf talking. Thank God that she's fed enough, relaxed enough, to talk herself down. She even stops herself growling, though she can't help but let her lip curl up, baring her teeth for just a second.

She slips through the offered open door (vampire and fae and blood and freshwater, scents intermingling and many-layered) conscious of the fact that she doesn't want to let the man threatening her out of her sight but also knowing that this is pretty bad and she's being offered a way out which hopefully won't end in bloodshed.

...though whoever this woman is, smelling as she does of the Gross Tar and nothing human, she's fae. GG's familiar with the scent. So, really- who knows?

It's not unwise to be careful of faeries bearing gifts and favours. A lot of people will tell you that, and even in the case of this faerie they probably wouldn't be entirely wrong. Straightforward, she is not.

Ilde smiles at him as the door closes-- then leans against it, hand at the collar of her coat, and scrutinizes her unplanned companion. Ivan will probably have an opinion about her using his apartment as a sanctuary for a strange werewolf - and knowing him it'll probably involve the phrase 'SPCA' because he's a prick - but he's not home right now and this is more interesting than what she had planned today, anyway, so that's a problem for later. Anyway, there are worse people she could be getting to know better. Hal, for one.

“You should come upstairs,” she says, unbuttoning her coat, since GG seemed to grasp the first exchanges. “He might linger. We can see from the window when he fucks off.”

It's always a little incongruous when Ilde cusses with her precise and princessy diction, but if she had to offer an opinion, she'd probably think the fact she's talking to a wolf is really the strange part of this.

(At some point it might occur to her to introduce herself.)

GG gives her a distinctly non-lupine grin. Wolves don't smile, or they don't smile when they're happy, at least. It's not exactly pleasant, seeing a human(ish) smile on a wolf's face, but she is trying.

It doesn't totally express 'hi, I can either be a wolf incapable of speech, a half-wolf monster or a naked woman, which is most appropriate for this conversation?' either, which is a shame, because it's a question GG would like answered- although not before she works out what, precisely, she did to the vampire, and how she can avoid doing it in future.

It would be a shame to lose Mafaton, after all; she likes it. But she also understands the concept of territory, especially like this. Which is why she allows Ilde to go first on the stairs, lowering her body slightly, automatically, in a show of deference. She's not sure Ilde lives here (to translate from wolf-brain, which is a confusing jumble of information from all her senses resulting in the general idea of vampire territory which is suddenly something which seems like a bad idea) but she's clearly here a lot, whereas GG is a stranger.

On a less animalistic level, of course, the gesture's also a mix of 'thank you' and 'don't feed me to your vampire friends'.

The slightly bizarre smile is oddly reassuring, which probably says something about her.

Still, something about being actually followed by a wolf is slightly unsettling, deference aside; she can feel her there but she can't hear her and it makes her feel momentarily blind, unsafe. She isn't helpless (and she isn't unarmed), but she's acutely conscious of her own weaknesses, 'lack of impulse control' chief among them.

--but it's fine. It's fine, and she lets them into the apartment - a singular vampire's territory, as opposed to the vampire-controlled canton at large, but Ilde's perfume lingers in it and some of the more personalizing touches are more her hand than his. She doesn't live here, can't live here, but she splits enough of her time that it's almost-but-not-quite semantics. When she crosses to the window, hiding herself behind a glamour of clear glass and empty space, the irate gentleman is (as anticipated) still outside the building. It's not completely unusual; he has reasons to be there, which is why he knows her comings and goings in the first place, that she has on occasion had reason to bring a dog here.

An actual dog, not a werewolf.

“They tend not to like outsiders here, very much. Sometimes less than others, I guess.” It's almost absent, but from habit she looks towards GG as she says it; that'd be very useful if GG could currently talk or if Ilde were at all able to read the responses of a wolf, which she isn't. “Um-- I don't know how it works, for you, but if you could possibly have two less feet, that might make things easier.”

She's an odd little thing, but politely well-meaning. At least right now.

Edited 2012-04-23 03:38 (UTC)

Clio's schedule is very different from GG's, in that it involves a lot less going outside. Partly because she's still recovering physically and partly because she's fucking terrified of outside, right now.

Instead, she stays at the Eshtazin compound and keeps herself busy. Today, whatever day it is (she hasn't bothered trying to keep track, it's all too confusing right now), she has decided to bake a cake. Except for how it's not actually a day, but rather 2am in the morning, thanks to nightmares combined with having slept almost all the way through her first few days in the city. Lea is - asleep, probably, and GG left a while ago so when Clio had woken up, restless and scared, going into the kitchen and starting to make a sponge cake had just sort of happened.

Almost two hours later, she's perched on a stool in the kitchen - which now smells like sugar, fresh baked cake and strawberries - carefully icing the cake.

GG whines uncertainly, stretching and then, making her decision, shifts- into nothing wholly human and nothing wholly lupine. The process is physical- all straining muscles and lengthening limbs, not flashes of magic or illusion. She stays crouched close to the ground.

It's not a reassuring look, but she explains; "--I'm afraid there is a, a clothing issue if you want me to look more human."

Warning for Ilde's sake, not hers; she's given up on modesty at this point. Of course, whether or not the lip movements of a talking wolf-woman are close enough to human for her to read is rather an important question.

"That smells delicious," GG says, starting to speak before she actually comes into the room. She got in a little earlier and took a shower, washing off the mud and sweat from her time in the forest; when she comes into the kitchen, her hair is wet, and she has a towel around her shoulders to protect her clothes.

She yawns, resting her forearms on the counter to watch Clio icing. "Two AM and I'm tired. I don't know what's wrong with my body clock." She flashes her teeth jokingly. She's aware that most people aren't nocturnal.

She's very aware that Clio is Not Okay, but mentioning it seems like a bad idea. She'll just watch, carefully, and try to help without pushing her way in.

"Let's hope it tastes as good," Not that either of them will be eating much of it. Coming off starvation into carbs and sugar is a very bad idea, although they've had a few days to start eating normally again, so Clio thinks they can both have a little slice of cake.

GG gets a smile, as easy as always, the only thing off about it is the exhaustion around the edges and the fact she's still too skinny, too pale, "And I'm not. Maybe we switched?"

Staying up this late would've been a bad idea back at the estate, since Clio had to get up at the crack of dawn to make sure everyone was ready for the day. But her schedule at the Numen facility was determined by the scientists there, with very little pattern to it. That seems to be lingering a little.

Ilde looks briefly puzzled - it's hard to make out what the words are, beyond 'something something clothing', when GG's facial structure is still a little different to something she can easily read - but she has enough practise with other people's modesty concerns that she guesses at the content.

“I can take mine off as well, if it'd make you more comfortable--?”

--but she's never actually been very good at relating to the concept enough to realize that if GG were having personal modesty issues, this would probably not help.

After a beat, “I'm mostly deaf. I can't read your lips that way.”

"Oh-"

In that case-- GG stretches and twists again, fur recedes into skin and she shakes herself like a dog getting out of water, acclimatising to the new shape. She stands up, not particularly bothered by her lack of clothes. There comes a point where it's just broadly irrelevant.

"Sorry about that," she says. "It's fine. I'm okay with it. I was mentioning it for your benefit. Some people like it better when strangers wear clothes."

She takes a deep breath- not actually having remembered to introduce herself either. "He's still out there." She doesn't have to look.

GG is used to being awake at night- for one thing, wolves are nocturnal, and heat gets to her, and for another it's always just been practical. Since the apocalypse, at least. In life before the end of the world her tendency to stay up late and sleep in wasb't particularly helpful, especially not when it came to school and work.

"Could be. So what's the occasion?" she asks. She's wondering if this is a coping mechanism, honestly. (A delicious coping mechanism- though they probably shouldn't indulge too much).

There's a hum from Clio as she puts down the little ziplock bag - Lea did not have any piping bags, so she'd cut the corner off a ziplock bag: improvisation is a skill - and picks up the strawberries she's carefully cut up, placing them around the edges of the cake. When she answers, her eyes stay on the task at hand and her voice is steady.

"Every time I wake up, I expect to be back in the facility; it's unsettling," Which is putting it lightly, considering she wakes up panicked with a scream ready, "Mark and I used to bake together sometimes, before everything. I thought it might help me relax."

GG should be familiar with the name. Clio would've mentioned him before, back at the estate, one of the people she was dating before the world broke.

“They're useful. And pretty.” --and that's about all, Ilde is a river-creature, and clothing is just not something she really needs. She drops her coat down on one of the oversized sofas, sitting down to undo her shoes, and adds, “He'll be out there a while. Longer if that was supposed to be more than posturing.”

Hard to say; it might just have been a warning, which is nothing out of the ordinary.

Then--

“I'm Ilde. You're from my world, I think.” It's oddly placid, reserved; her world or the other one like it, and either of those options are...complicated, differently. But she's been getting good at discerning one magical signature from the other, and she'd met werecreatures before Baedal. She remembers how it felt, understands it better now with practise.

"GG," she introduces herself, folding her arms and leaning against one of the sofas, though she doesn't sit down. One corner of her mouth quirks up, with not too much humour. "...Rough deal."

She's being wry because being outright self-pitying isn't her style, but she's fairly sure they can both agree that if they are from the same world, said world is- well. Pretty fucked up. "How do you know?"

“Just a second.” She's in the process of dialling a number on her CiD - voice function, something she habitually only uses when leaving messages. It doesn't matter, if they aren't actually having a conversation--

“Hello; I averted a catastrophe in front of your building, so don't be surprised if your apartment smells like werewolf when you get home.” Watching GG by the sofa, not quite on it, there's a voice in her head that sounds alarmingly like her boyfriend making a crack about dogs on the furniture, which prompts her to add-- “If your objections contain the phrase 'SPCA', not only do I not care, I'm definitely not fucking you. Text me.”

--best girlfriend ever.

When she picks up the thread of previous conversation again, she does it seamlessly as if that interruption never happened, or at least as if it never really interrupted anything, switching back and forth between trains of thought like they're all running concurrently. “You know scents. It's like that. But different.”

Helpful.

She nearly says something, opening her mouth, when Clio says that she keeps expecting to be back at the facility- then shuts up and lets her carry on.

"...Cute," she muses, sounding affectionately and wryly dubious (they've long since established how different they are in this area- GG's exes were largely what she fondly terms tough bastards who wouldn't have been caught dead baking), before adding, more seriously; "Did it work?"

GG narrows her eyes at the first part of that message- and then actually snickers at 'SPCA' and Ilde's associated threat. It's very quiet, barely a breath, but it's definitely there.

She actually does know what Ilde means, too; it's probably how she'd describe her sense of smell and ability to differentiate people by it, amongst other things. You know, you just know, it's like seeing things but different- like colours, but different.

"I get it," she says. "So, uh-" She drums her fingers awkwardly on her arm, casts a look around, evidently not exactly relaxed and not exactly sure what to say. "Who's your vampire?"

Yep; chances are, Ivan will forever be Ilde's vampire in GG's head from now on.

“Ivan. He's-- not.” From their world. She's inclined to think, from GG's initial reaction, that it is theirs, even if it isn't rightly hers any more; she ignores the sickly sweet-rotting feeling of relief, because it feels cruel and she isn't sure to whom. Everyone, probably.

(There is a conversation that she needs to have with Sonja and she-- doesn't want to, because it doesn't fit the narrative that she tells herself of them in her head, there's not supposed to be Sonja's path and Ilde's path, they are not supposed to be separate, it is-- not now.)

“There's a few of us. And from the other one.”

Edited (that is not the right icon ) 2012-04-23 16:33 (UTC)

"You should try it sometime," It's hard to tell whether she means baking, or dating someone who bakes. Not that dating would really be something either of them are considering, Clio thinks. Jumping into a relationship is not something either of them do lightly.

The question gets the consideration it deserves, and she doesn't answer until all the strawberries are placed on the cake, "I think so. It's good to be able to do something with my hands."

Not her vampire? That's probably not what she means. She decides not to worry too much about it; she's already come to the conclusion that conversations with Ilde are naturally hard to follow.

"The other- oh." Not something she wants to think about. She's having trouble keeping every new bit of information straight in her head, if she's honest. Fortunately, she's good at dealing with these things...in some capacity. Though right now, honestly, she wants some kind of emergency. When she's left to rest and sort things out in her head, she just goes around in circles. She needs something to do.

"Yeah. I haven't met anyone from- the other yet. But there are people I know here." Though she'll stay. clammed up with regard to their actual identities- for no reason but habitual suspicion, a desire to control.

"I'm new." She glances over her shoulder, in the direction of the window. "I guess I have things to figure out in terms of...etiquette."

"Yeah," GG muses thoughtfully. "I know what you mean. Staying still and doing nothing is- I don't know. I think I forgot how to relax properly somewhere." Somewhere in the apocalypse. Lying down, taking it easy- all things GG can't do for fear of being taken by surprise. Or for fear of thinking too much about the situation she's in.

She nods at the cake-- "That looks like a good solution. I'm better at savoury stuff, but if you ever want a hand with beating eggs..."

There's a wry note in her voice, but it fades into a genuine smile, though her eyes are still distinctly searching, watching her closely.

“Mafaton was the epicenter of an attack on the city recently,” she says, dropping her CiD back in her bag and resting against the back of the sofa, lazily - her voice is pitched slightly too loud, but that's probably just a side-effect of the fact she can't really hear it. “Cruorvores were targeted before that. I don't think it's a good time to take a leisurely stroll through vampire territory as an outsider.”

Having business there is one thing, and it's not as though there's no one outside Mafaton who ever has a reason to come and go, and it's certainly not as though only vampires live there (the goretax speaks to that), but soon after a mess the city is still rebuilding from, and with the way some vampires just don't like werewolves-- Ilde's tone isn't critical, just matter of fact. It's a complicated time to be anyone.

“They're touchy sometimes,” she adds, an affectionately dismissive summary; she's never taken vampires, en masse, quite so seriously as they'd probably prefer her to. (Or as Ivan would prefer her to, given her questionable self-preservation instinct.) “Not everybody. Some.”

Edited 2012-04-24 09:52 (UTC)

There's no response for a moment, as Clio starts putting utensils in the sink and weighs up where to go with that thread of conversation. She did have to stay still; periods of intense, mind-numbing boredom between experiments. She wasn't ever relaxed, though. And she also just - doesn't want to upset GG by talking too much about it.

Eventually she settles on taking it in another direction entirely, "Maybe this place will be good for us, as a vacation. I'll bake, and you can learn to relax."

They're not staying forever, they can't, but maybe it'll help them acclimatise here if they view it like that.

"Yeah? I'll be more careful. I thought it would be...safer, actually, than running around on four legs elsewhere. The ones I knew were more- they had other things on their mind." And she's used to being in some kind of position of authority, too. It's written not in her face, but in her posture.

"Thank you. I don't think I said. For the information, as well as, uh-" She flashes her teeth. "Keeping anyone from ending up as dinner."

She doesn't specify who- although she knows very well that regardless of who would actually have won in a fight, hurting a vampire on vampire territory wouldn't have gone well for her.

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