brzy, můj zadek.

[Lukas] On the corner of Michigan and Pearson, across from a Macy's and next door to a Victoria's Secret, is a Borders -- the only bookstore on the Mile. Lukas, not being too proud or hip or independent to avoid chain bookstores like the plague, is spending a Friday evening in the first floor cafe.

He takes a table for two. The Ahroun himself is sprawled in the chair in the corner, tipped back on two legs, relaxed and uncharacteristically casual in scuffed blue jeans, a navy blue pullover shirt that's saved from being a plain tee only by the orange ribbing at the seams. He looks like he's just had a trim: his hair is short and straight, the hairline at the back of his neck, his temples and his sideburns neatly angled off.

An white-and-grey messenger bag occupies the other chair. The moon, unseen behind a heavy cloud cover, is risen and gibbous tonight. No one else occupies any of the chairs in a one-table radius. In lieu of other company, Lukas's laptop sits atop the table alongside a smoothie. He's reading a book, though, and not what's on the laptop screen. The cover is almost childish: a cartoonish rendering of a young-looking policeman, face turned away, dashing into a moonlit graveyard armed with his pistol and a flashlight, his body posture reading either eagerness or apprehension.

The title is Alive in Necropolis. Lukas is more than halfway through, totally engrossed.

[Danicka] Not that he's checking tags, but most of Danicka's lingerie -- of which he has seen only a fraction of, even in all this time -- comes from La Perla, or Agent Provocateur, or Aubade. He's also seen the t-shirts she gets for ten and fifteen dollars a pop from websites devoted to geeks and nerds, references to the molecular structure of caffeine or chocolate, Portal, World of Warcraft, coding. He knows her goddamn camisoles are fine as spidersilk and cost as much as a dinner for two, her jeans are a car payment, her shoes are unfuckingholy.

She's walking out of Victoria's Secret, though, a trademark pink-striped bag swinging from one hand. Her chocolate brown skirt looks as soft as jersey cotton, a wide fold at the top hugging her hips, the hem swishing around her knees. Her boots come about halfway up her calves, the heels high and the leather stamped and stained in swirls of chaotic design. Her shirt is a few shades darker, more orange, than peach, with a wide scoop neck, a cut that hugs her torso, and sleeves that cut off just above her elbows. A long pewter chain hangs around her neck, a collection of pendants bouncing gently below her breasts as she walks, purse over her shoulder, hair in a messy bun with a dozen tendrils or more hanging down around her face, her neck.

Danicka walks right by his window. Not past it, though. She slows as she goes by the door to Borders, twisting a bit to get her phone out of her purse. She taps the screen casually, lifting it to her ear as she starts walking again. But there's a pause, a split second, where she's still.

[Lukas] The morning of the last time he saw her

(and for them, with their meetings as rare as they are, this is a sort of holiday, a sort of observation day in and of itself: The Last Time They Met.)

her roommate banged something around in the kitchen and woke Danicka, but even as she started awake he was already starkly, preternaturally alert, his head up, the tendons in his neck tense, his eyes cast in the direction of the noise. When he recognized the voices muffled through the door, Lukas lay his head back down. Sighed in mingled annoyance and contentment, one for the roommate and one for her; wrapped his arms tighter around her as she burrowed. They slept.

The morning of the last time he saw her, she texted him to ask when she would see him again. His reply was simple:

Soon.

but soon stretched from days to weeks; weeks to -- now. It's something of the same razoredged alertness that calls his attention from the book he's all but lost in. Makes him raise his head and turn it, seeking some target he doesn't know he seeks. He looks to the window where Danicka -- as blonde and beautiful and apparently emptyheaded as a hundred other women on this swanky block of this glittering street in this great city, but utterly unique amongst all the women in all the world -- paused for a second, and then moved on.

Lukas puts the book down. He stands up, swiftly but unhurriedly, and raps loudly on the window with his knuckles. There's a pane of glass between them, but rage is not heat, is not electromagnetic radiation of any sort. It crosses all barriers with impunity. A step away, a passerby on the street startles at the noise; skitters sideways as though pushed.

If Danicka turns, Lukas smiles at her through the window. No one has ever known Danicka as Lukas knew her the night of the solstice, or the last night they spent together. No one has ever seen Lukas smile the way Danicka sees him smile, with mute and absolute and clear, guileless pleasure. He lifts his hand and waves.

[Danicka] From a surprisingly young age, Danicka has usually ignored the catcalls, hollering, honking, whistling, or cheeky upwards nods given to her by men around New York. It isn't consistent, though. In other moods she'll flip the offenders off without missing a beat. Occasionally she's smirked, laughed, shaken her head, made kissy faces, and on a couple of memorable occasions she's just flashed them. More times than most people would like to imagine, she's ended up getting laid.

Someone rapping on a window to get her attention has happened before. Danicka would ignore it if she were a foot or two farther away, but as it is, when the windowpane rattles from the force of some eager hand, her step hitches even if her conversation doesn't and she whips her head around to look back, her expression constructed to be curious, a little startled, mostly droll.

Until she sees who it is. He can see her more clearly simply because of the windowtinting and the angle of the sun, but she can sense him now as surely as he can feel her, smell her, miles away and weeks apart. He can see the way she smiles back, and it's almost...goofy. Awkward, like some part of her is still trying to hold back a pure or open manifestation of delight.

Her lips move as she speaks to whoever called her, and her hand lifts to wave back, but she doesn't go for the door. She walks back to the glass, shifting her Victoria's Secret bag to her wrist, and lays her fingertips against it at her hip level, opting to stay outside while she finishes her phonecall rather than bringing it indoors. She doesn't push up her sunglasses, but she is still smiling at him through the glass.

Her hand falls away after a few moments, and after perhaps five minutes, she wrangles herself off the iPhone, putting it back in her purse as she finally goes to the door and weaves her way to the cafe. Now her shades leave her face, get put on top of her head. Now she smiles again, though more carefully, more radiantly. Now she walks over to him, the pendants on their chain swinging slightly.

"'Brzy', můj zadek," are the first words out of her math.

[Lukas] When Lukas's hand drops from the wave, his fingertips brush against the glass, press. Danicka comes back and he takes a step forward and now there's a foot and a half, and a pane of glass, between them. They smile at each other -- like idiots, like primitive humanoids too stupid to figure out how to get around a glass wall; like the lovers they are.

She stays outside to finish her call. She puts her hand on the glass as well, lower, and his eyes drop to it. When his hand falls it seems to a moment he'll try to meet her fingers through the glass, but then he thinks better of it, checks that graceless and sentimental impulse.

Danicka's call takes five minutes to finish. He sits down again after one, turns his book right-side-up and closes it after two, using the flap to mark his place. He reaches over to his computer, his head turned toward the screen but his body squared toward Danicka. He taps a few keys. Clicks the touchpad. As Danicka's finishing her call, he's closing the lid on the laptop, and when she comes in the door he stands again.

The smile comes back, becomes a grin; gentles as she approaches. Then she speaks. He laughs -- throwing his head back, laughing hard, laughing for the joy of laughing and of seeing her, because what she said was funny now even though it wouldn't have been, wasn't funny, when he thought of her sometime in that endless stretch of days between last time and this.

"Promiňte," he says, and he's smiling still when he reaches his hand for hers. His hand closes around her fingers and for a moment the way he draws her hand upward suggests he might do something so silly as kiss her knuckles ... but then he pulls her into him, drapes her hand over his shoulder and wraps his arms around her body. The size difference between them is considerable. He's inches taller; inches broader. When he squeezes her against him, she all but disappears into the warm suntanned circle of his bare arms. Her feet all but come off the ground.

"I missed you," he says, after, letting her go. His eyes are on her, ceaselessly: moving from her face to her hair to her hands to her face. "Where are you headed?"

[Marrick] Marrick Fisher wasn't what most people called a "book learner." In middle school, she spent the better part of her days sitting at her desk, knee bouncing and bright blue eyes staring out the window at clouds passing and butterflies fluttering past.

The monarch migration had been her first instance of quiet fascination. She had been thirteen when she had found herself enthralled with little orange and black and white floating . She remembered watching droves of them come down and head towards Mexico like they did time and time again. She remembered asking her friends about it, to which the response was a glazed over look and eventually a little teasing. Look it up, you ain't Kyle Austin

At that time, she had no clue who Kyle Austin was, but Marrick did remember inexplicable irritation that she was being compared to another idealized male.
Later, she learned two things: one related to monarch butterflies, and the other related to Ms. Austin. Yearbook editor. Reluctant. Theurge. Friend.

We weren't talking about memories, though, not really. We're talking about butterflies and the overreaching need to learn. Marrick Fisher wasn't what someone called a "book learner." It didn't come easily to her- not like running did. Just because it didn't come easy, however, it didn't mean that she didn't practice. Marrick liked learning, even if she did graduate in the middle of her class. She could boast something few ahrouns could- a high school diploma. [Even if her senior year made her nearly unbearable. Even if she made the faculty uncomfortable- people wrote whatever they could into her history and what they knew. After all, she wasn't living at home anymore. In Oklahoma that could mean anything]

The young blonde walked through the door of the place, and attire was something comfortable. She was wearing jeans- they were well worn, they had been no doubt been dragged behind a truck for several miles. They had those tragically hip holes worn into them. Coupled with a hooded sweatshirt [Abercrombie, circa 2002. Men's. Derek's.], Marrick Fisher was the epitome of boring and like any other teenager.

Those that weren't shying away from her thought that she was going to steal something. Either way, no one was bothering her.

[Danicka] Two blondes have entered through the same door in a matter of minutes, a glass portal situated comfortably so that entrants can go either into the ground-level cafe or into the store proper just by turning this way or that. The first one is not quite 5'10" in heels, and she is a City Girl. She is a City Girl of a variety not native to Chicago but a hard, shiny island that never sleeps and never quite gets dark. She holds summer in the color of her hair, the tan of her skin, the brightness of her smile. The calculation behind it is imperceptible. She seems warm, and open, and vibrant.

There is intense Rage at her front, intense Rage at her back. She walks quickly to one, but isn't unaware of the avatar of wrath behind her, though she doesn't know Marrick from Eve and at the moment could not be said to care. She has never met the girl. She doesn't know that this is the Ahroun who was chosen, instead of Lukas, as Auspice Elder. She barely missed meeting her the night that Marrick beat the tar out of Katherine Bellamonte. She doesn't know that the girl in torn jeans and an Abercrombie hoodie is a Black Fury.

Rick was a Black Fury. He did not talk much about the Tribe. He protected Yelizaveta, Helena, and Danicka with a literally lethal chill in his dark eyes, so intense that after a couple of months Danicka was certain that she could tell the difference between the report of any firearm whose trigger he pulled and the same gun shot by anyone else. He never refused her entry into his bed if she came in the middle of the night, or hesitated to follow her if she wordlessly invited him to hers. He never tried to kiss her. He had a collection of fangs wrenched from the mouths of Louisiana bloodsuckers, and kept them in a box with a picture of his mother taped to the inside of the lid.

There's no denying, however, what the Shadow Lord who tore Marrick to a bloody mess before she became his elder is to the blonde woman crossing the cafe to get to him. The way he laughs at what she says to him in some uncommon language, private between the two of them in the middle of a retail establishment. The way he takes her hand and tugs her forward with movement that is graceful because of Danicka's lack of resistance and Lukas's lack of expectation of such. She simply flows, putting her hand on his shoulder when he places it there, letting their top halves press together slightly...then more, as he squeezes her.

Her heels leave the floor. For a moment.

Danicka steps back, reinserts a foot of space between the two of them, though the damage is done: everyone with a pair of eyes can tell... whatever it is that they, personally, want to call what they see. Lovers. A couple. Love. Happiness. The motions of affectionate greeting, if they're cynics. An attractive man, a beautiful woman, a wannabe serial killer who probably holds a gun to her head and makes her cry when they fuck and a woman too thin, too weakened by consumerism and cultural messages of helplessness to fight back, or even cry for help.

Perspective is everything.

Or: an Ahroun who keeps rising in strength and renown, a paragon of his Tribe, who holds the claim over this woman and every other Kinfolk like her in Chicago. Her breeding marks her as her features and coloring do not: she looks nothing like the icons of the Shadow Lords, as Lukas quite clearly does. She belongs to them unmistakably, though: a certain edge to her softness, a dark secrecy to her bright smile, a distant chill to her seeming warmth.

"Vím," she says softly, as he runs his attention all over her without touching her. Her head nods northward. "I was going to go to the water tower park and call my father, then head up to Michael Kors."

A beat. She resists the urge to look over her shoulder to see if the freckled girl is still there. "What are you up to?"

[Marrick] Women like Danicka Musil didn't exist in Oklahoma. If they did, they were soon smothered by the lack of bright lights, even the cities become little more than a suburb. Oklahoma City, or even Tulsa, was nothing compared to New York City. Frank Sinatra didn't sing about red dirt. Their cities slept and observed the Sabbath, and the high end stores were few and far between.

Marrick has never seen a woman like Danicka, and the closest she's seen was a pretty girl from Texas. Marrick had beat the ever loving crap out of Katherine Bellamonte one of the few times that she could have met Danicka. Which, well, was a little fortunate, but had only proved that the eighteen year old girl had a hot head and Katherine had a big mouth.

Even along tribal lines, Marrick had never met a woman like Danicka. She could count on one hand the number of Shadow Lords she had met. When she looked at Danicka Musil, she saw blonde hair and soft skin and class. She was as much a Shadow Lord as Marrick was a Black Fury- blonde hair and atypical color palate aside. Marrick looked at Danicka, and she saw secrets, something hidden and protected. Distance, even if Danicka was standing right there. And dark, even if she was blonde.

[Emilio was the first, and only, Shadow Lord Marrick had known back home. We use the term 'known' loosely. What she had learned from him, however, was something that she carried with her. An ahroun's body was a weapon, and it could be used for psychological warfare. Thus far, that lesson has served her fairly well.]

Marrick just looked at at them- Lukas and Danicka trading comments and obviously lovers. Or something. [Facebook status: it's complicated. Danicka was kin, Lukas was garou. Of course it was complicated.] She sees Danicka as the sum of her parts- a well bred woman who who seems confident, who dresses nicely, who isn't falling all over a fairly attractive male. Who is classy.

In her eighteen year old brain, she wonders what it's like to be Danicka. In her eighteen year old mind, she builds this stranger up as something glamorous and gives her qualities she may or may not have. [She doesn't realize, of course, that she's standing there near the entrance, making customers shy away from entering or exiting] Without knowing her, Marrick's eighteen year old brain tells her that she wants to be like Danicka Musil.

And then, Marrick's eighteen year old stomach reminds her that it demands satisfaction (preferably, in the form of a muffin and coffee.) And, surprise! There is a place that sells pastries! So, she goes to quiet her stomach. If she was blowing money today, may as well splurge on the three dollar muffin, too.

This made Marrick pass by the two, or made her in close enough range that Oklahoma sensibilities dictated that she wave. So, she did.

[Lukas] When distance is reintroduced between them, Lukas doesn't linger. His hand doesn't hover at her elbow, unwilling to let go; he doesn't hold her hand.

He just looks at her. Runs his eyes all over her.

And back to her face, when she speaks: "How's your father?" This could be lip service, a passing nod toward concern. It's not. His eyes are keen on hers; he's interested. It's a question in truth. An unnecessary statement of fact, then, "I haven't seen him in years."

What is he up to, she asks. The corner of his mouth turns up, a little wryly. "Reading." He gestures at his book. "It's good. I want to buy it, but I couldn't put it down long enough. Do you want -- "

his eyes slide over Danicka's shoulder. Marrick waves. Something in Lukas closes up, folds on itself. He doesn't grow unfriendly, per se, or even particularly cold, but some part of him is tucked as neatly and quietly away as his personal effects in his tiny little room.

He nods to the young Fury. "Hey, Marrick." He turns. Aligns toward his auspicemate. A human man might put his arm casually around his girlfriend's waist now or otherwise shift her slightly in front of himself. It's courtesy; it's politeness; it would be instinct. Lukas, however, stands a little ways in front of Danicka.

This is also instinct.

"Have you two met? This is Marrick, my team leader. Marrick, Danička."

[Danicka] Years.

The man was in his fifties, the last time Lukas saw him. It's been over a decade and a half since then. Danicka doesn't talk about him much; Lukas knows more about the woman who died when she was fifteen than he does about the man who sired two Garou and two Kin, whose grandchildren now number more than half a dozen, who could not guard his uncle's scythe until his second daughter was old enough to take it up... because he was Kin. Because he was not worthy to hold it. Even if what Lukas knows about Night Warder is mostly in hearsay -- songs and tales, this blonde woman's recollections -- it is still more than what he knows of Miloslav Musil.

He cooked well. He played cards with Jaroslav and Marjeta. He had a curious smell, sawdust and woodstain, with calloused and scar-notched hands. He did not come quick! that sunny afternoon when Danička fell! but walked with deliberation and certainty that the tiny female with the dirtied dress and the skinned knee, scraped palm, could not have hurt herself that badly. Because he knew she could not have gotten up all that high to begin with. In Lukas's dimmest memory, if it even exists in his mind any longer, Miloslav had a powerful build and a soft voice, and whenever Jaroslav shouted for one or both of his children and Danicka became sharply startled, she ran and hid behind the prematurely aging man with the intensely blue eyes and the fair hair, wrapping her hands around the loose fabric of his pants and burying her face against the side of his leg.

At least when she was seven. And even then, she was too old to be doing so.

He hasn't seen him in years. Danicka just smiles, her lips together. Deep in her pupils there's a flinch that doesn't make it farther than those medium-sized voids. "He's got some of my cousins visiting him. He said I should come over to help them with their English." Oddly put, that: come over.

His eyes track off of hers and she hesitates. Danicka only turns her head and looks at Marrick when Lukas's physical attitude shifts along with that subtler discretion of tone and posture, when he turns slightly towards the teenager with something like deference, puts himself forward with undeniable protectiveness. Guardianship. Which is known, and accepted. Danicka sees it, even as she's looking at the blue-eyed girl instead of at the blue-eyed man. She smiles pleasantly.

"We haven't." Lifting her right hand, the left still holding the bag from the lingerie store next door, Danicka gives a small wave. Team leader. No amusement or confusion accompanies her greeting, after hearing this; she looks like she didn't even hear it, or process it. "It's good to meet you," she says.

[Marrick] "Hmmn-mmn," she says. Which, of course, is more of a hum and vocal pattern than an actual set of words. The meaning, however, is just the same as no, I have not met her, but I would like to. There was shake of her head to accompany it. She was the youngest person in the conversation, and also the smallest in stature.

In heels, Danicka was a few inches taller than Marrick.Lukas was already a head or so larger. She was the most distinctly under-dressed, and she was the one who was, on a certain level, physically incapable of hiding whatever it was that ran through her head. When she was hppy, she was happy. When she was sad, she was sad. And, right now, she was openly pleased. the ahroun elder, in the best of times, had many of the endearing qualities of an overeager puppy.

One that, today, seemed to remember her manners and wasn't frothing excitement to meet people. She was plesant, but not overly anxious. It was a nice change. "It's great t'meetcha... Danicka?"

Pronounced: duh-Neesh-kuh. With the inflection raising at the end, asking for confirmation that the woman's name wasn't being butchered.

[Lukas]
to Danicka

[Lukas] Come over, Danicka said, which makes Lukas wonder for a moment. He might've asked, but some instinct tells him to leave it be, to wait. He looks at her for another moment, but by then she's turning toward Marrick, and so is he.

Lukas introduces the two; Marrick is pleasant and polite, pleased, very young. Watching her makes Lukas feel faintly ashamed -- not so much, or at least not merely to have lost, but also to be so set on winning. To be so set on competing, on matching himself against this essentially good-intending Cliath of the Furies who so often seemed little more than a girl to him. When I challenge, he said to Dietrich once, unflinchingly honest as ever. When I challenge is always the thought in his mind, not if; when he's worthier, when he's stronger and wiser than he was, when he's more ready than he was, and she is.

He doesn't bother to correct Marrick's pronunciation. He asks, "You want to get a coffee or something and join us, Marrick?"

[Danicka] The first syllable is too heavy, the susurration of the accented c utterly wrong, and there's too much emphasis on the last syllable. Spoken properly, Danicka's name is almost impossible to say without endearment, without softness. It's hard to say it without sounding tender towards the woman herself. She smiles at Marrick, though, and nods to her. Yes, those twinkling, amber-splattered green eyes say, that's exactly it.

In the presence of two Ahrouns, it makes absolutely no difference that Marrick is younger, that she's dressed casually, that she can't hide her feelings. She's a Cliath, and she is, in this sept, recognized as Lukas's superior. Danicka does not make suggestions. She does not indicate pleasure or dissatisfaction with Lukas's invitation to the Fury. Without diminishing her smile or ducking her head or slouching her shoudlers, she carefully and slowly limits her presence. She fades slightly, becomes smaller, with an easy silence that almost seems companionable.

[Marrick] It wasn't quite a lie, it was a softening a blow. Marrick Fisher would, more than likely, never be physically capable of pronouncing Danicka's name right. So, for now, she is completely content to believe that she didn't completely screw her name up. Neither Shadow Lord bothered to correct her. This being said, there was quiet pleasure in new company. Marrick and Lukas never shot the breeze. The extent of their interactions included brief conversations in the doorway of his room that consisted of little more than a few sentences.

The interactions Danicka and Marrick shared were building as they spoke, or rather didn't speak. That started with a look and grew in quiet, avoided blows to an eighteen year old's ego. But, there was a standing invitation. Would she like to get a coffee or something and join them.

"Sure," she replies. "Y'all need anything while I'm up?"

[windyness] ooc:: rckmtl here, is it ok if I lurk a bit?
to cricket, Danicka, Evan McCollach, Lukas, Marrick

[Lukas] (i don't mind, though lurkers should play too! :D)
to cricket, Danicka, Evan McCollach, Marrick, windyness

[Lukas] "I'm fine," Lukas says. "Thanks."

The table he's chosen seats only two, and the spare chair is currently occupied by Lukas's messenger bag. While Marrick goes for coffee or pastries or whatever she might get, Lukas picks the bag up, puts his laptop away, sets it beside his chair and against the window. Then he goes to retrieve a third chair from an adjoining table.

When he returns to his seat, Marrick is just getting to the counter. He speaks quietly to Danicka, "Váš otec je stále ještě v New Yorku?"

[windyness] ooc:: ::g:: not sure if Trace would work so well here. Might consider it anyways, but a little too tired tonight to do much of that whole forming coherent sentences thing.
to cricket, Danicka, Evan McCollach, Lukas, Marrick

[Danicka] "No, thank you," Danicka says a moment after Lukas declines, as though she was waiting for him to answer before she gave her own input.

The smile is still there, even as Marrick walks away. It doesn't fade as the Fury gets to the counter, even though Marrick's eyes are no longer on Danicka. She continues holding back, standing out of the way, as Lukas gets a third chair for the small circular table. The bag she has from Victoria's Secret is actually quite large, compared to the lunchbox-sized ones most commonly seen up and down the Mile. That should be no surprise; to Danicka, VS is low-end. She's going to Michael Kors, she said.

Because there's an eight-hundred-dollar skirt she wants for this fall.

Danicka doesn't sit down. She gives Lukas a small nod, murmurs: "Ano," but does not elaborate. "Měla bych jít."

[Lukas] "Zůstaň," he says, so instantly that anyone could be forgiven for hearing a command there. A beat passes. "Prosím."

Marrick is heading back by now. Lukas's attention stays on Danicka for another second before turning to the other Ahroun.

[Evan McCollach] There were few reasons that Evan would ever visit the Mile. He was not exactly a shop-a-holic and the people that dotted the streets around here seemed to not exactly react very kindly to the rage that brew under the skin. Some people could stand him, some people could feel that beast and not run in fear. Those were few and far between.

But the coffee in the Green was horrible. And he needed something to help him wake up a little more. The earlier run that had him chasing some wyrm-tainted gremlin across the umbra had exausted him a little, coffee would help regain some strength.

And one of the cafe's in the Mile seemed to be just as good as any other. One not so populated by normal people.

[Marrick] She's at the counter. The Fury doesn't fidget, on the contrary, she's standing very... very still. She's thinking, pondering while the person at the counter debates whether or not she's going to hold up the place. The little brunette behind the register tries to rationalize her fears. She tries to think of why on earth this small, blonde creature is so off-putting. She imagines that, possibly, she looks like a girl she went to high school with. The ones that got suspended for fighting, that flipped desked and screamed at teachers.

The girl behind the register pushed the thought out of her mind that, despite the Abercrombie sweatshirt and freckles, the blonde looked feral. Something about Marrick's smile seemed too much like a bearing of her teeth. Something about the customer's gaze was a little too intense to hold for long. Something about her, however, was also undeniably attractive. It was a conflicting message, the physical prowess and general fitness that made her seem so predatory was also part of her alure.

When poor, brunette, underpaid Staci gives Marrick her coffee (decaf, two sugars) and her muffin (the size of Lukas' fist, blueberry), she comes back to the table. Coffee goes down on the table, the muffin stays in her hand, and she takes a seat that gives her a halfway decent view.

Observation was everything.

[Danicka] By the time Marrick returns to the table, Danicka has slide into the chair to the side of the table, leaving the one across from Lukas empty. One bag is slid under the chair's seat, the other taken off her shoulder and draped over the back. By the time that the other Ahroun brings drip coffee and a muffin back with her, Danicka is sitting with her knees together, towards Lukas, one ankle crossed behind the other.

What Marrick misses is not so much that instantaneous order in another language, the secondary word that could be emphasis or warning or any number of things, but Danicka's reaction to it. The first word has more power than the second, for some reason. The first word pulls at her so hard it's almost a wrench, as though he'd reached into her chest, grabbed a hold of something vital, and not so much twisted as just held on.

It doesn't hurt.

She looks at him, and then gives a simple nod, tucking her bags away, removing her sunglasses from the top of her head, and sitting down in the chair that places her between two full moons.

[Lukas] The seat Danicka takes is arguably the worst at the table. It's off to the side, out of the direct flow of conversation. It's in the aisle; people will brush her on their way past. Its back is to the rest of the cafe, and indeed, the store. It's exposed, beset on all sides, vulnerable, uncomfortable.

Lukas is entirely unsurprised that Danicka chooses that one rather than the one across from him.

But it's also closer to him, if only by a little. And by the time Marrick returns, his foot has moved forward a little, the side of it nudging against Danicka's toes. Nothing overt. Nothing particularly meaningful or seductive about it.

Just ... contact.

Lukas smiles when he sees Marrick's choice of muffins. "My favorite," he says. "Amongst muffins, anyway. Amongst bakery goods, I'm going to have to go with candied orange koláče."

And then, nodding out the window, "Isn't that Evan?"

[Evan McCollach] His eyes were a little red tonight as it seemed that even his kind could get tired now and again. And coffee was just the order of the night. He didn't seem to notice the pair of trueborn as he passed by their window, nor as he made his way in those doors. However as he moved to the counter just as it seemed that poor little Staci had finally recovered from the previous customer that had nearly scared her into a coma.

And it seemed that she was not yet out of the woods. Evan was by no means a monster that called up memories of monsters that would sneak around in the darkness of night nor lay in wait under your bed until you slept. He didn't seem to be like one of those trouble-makers that caused more headaches for the school administrators. Not in these clothes, dressed in Ralph Lauren polo and a pair of dockers. But there was something that still did not sit right in the little girl's mind.

And the quicker he order, the quicker she was able to get rid of him.

But it was that same rage that seemed to make him stop just after he got his coffee. That made him crinkle his nose as if he could smell it in the air, turn his head and notice the pair of ahrouns. Offering the trio a smile and heading over to their table.

"Good evening. Small world isn't it?"

[Marrick] Marrick Fisher knows what a koláče is. The entire mention of one makes her perk up.

"There's a town in Oklahoma that started out as a Czech setlement, an' now they have this whole koláče festival every year... well, it's more like a small town carnival than a festival, but there's a lotta baked goods. And candied orange anything sounds freakin' awesome, I'd like t'try that sometime."

Let it be noted, briefly, that Marrick comes very, very close to pronouncing koláče correctly. Or, as close as a non-Czech-speaking Okie can get to pronouncing it correctly. Isn't that Evan?

She looked and she watched as the redhead passed by. She studies the male, and then gives a solid nod once she determines that, yes, this is Evan. The ahroun takes a bite of her muffin, and by the time she finishes chewing and swallows, he's there. She smiles, and gives him half a wave- it's little more than a raise of her hand and half an upward nod.

Small world, isn't it?
"It's a small world, but I wouldn't want t'paint it," she tells him. "How're ya holdin' up?"

[Danicka] Of course she takes the worst seat, the most exposed, the one of least honor. Of course she takes the one that will be bumped, rather than leaving it open for one of two intense, furious Ahrouns to whip around and throat a clumsy passerby. Danicka's knees are pointed at Lukas, which means her feet are actually angled towards Marrick when the teenager sits with them, but his foot crosses the extra few inches of distance and nudges against her own.

Without looking at him as the Black Fury comes back, she uncrosses her ankles and sits with her feet flat instead, knees still together, one foot turned slightly outward, not encouraging further contact but reinforcing what is already there. Call and return. Question and answer.

"I'm partial to cranberry," she says, on the subject of muffins, with a slightly detached air that seems more like nervousness than boredom. But there's Evan. She looks up and smiles. It's been ages since she tried suggesting gifts he could give to his mate as he and Lee and Danicka sat around a table not unlike this one. This table looks more and more odd the more people sit down at it. Marrick is still most definitely the most of out place, as far as appearances go.

Fuck appearances. They all know they're sitting at a table with the Alpha of the Unbroken Circle, the Ahroun Elder and Beta of La Familia, and the Philodox Elder and Beta of Eagle's Chosen. That's what matters. Danicka knows she's sitting at a table with two Full Moons and one far more tolerable presence. Her hands are folded on top of the table's surface. She looks from Evan to Marrick, her eyebrows quirking slightly. "I could make you some. There's a trick to the filling, but if you want to try them, it's no trouble."

[Lukas] "Evan." In a few things, Lukas is almost as openly expressive as Marrick. This is one of them. There's no mistaking the pleasure in his tone. Whatever Evan did,

(Evan and Danicka know very well what Evan did)

it apparently earned him a permanent place in Lukas's good book. He gets up to haul another chair over: four stuffed around a tiny table barely large enough for two now. When he sits down, he reestablishes contact.

And he kids, lightly, "How are things down in the no-fly zone?"

[Lukas] (alert! i am going home in ten min. and i am going straight to bed. so in ten min, lukas is gonna turn into a conversational pumpkin. *LOL*)

[Danicka] [Yeah, steal my thunder, Damon. Fuck you.]

[Evan McCollach] He nods in return to Marrick's greeting. The Okie girl seemed to be just as vibrant as she did the moment she earned her position as Ahroun Elder. It was odd to think that one of such youth, such life held a beast that snarled to life and fought to death and beyond.

"I am doing fine, a little tired it seems as I am getting old."

He was also twenty-two, and even though that was nothing in the human world. For them, for garou, that was close to being ancient, especially how young he had made his first change. To live to his age was a miracle to some. Turning to the other one whose rage seemed to eclipse his own as well, he nodded.

"As for my place. Well seems its only limited air space now, very limited. But more open if your respectful. I wouldn't go throwing any parties over it however. And yourselves?"

He looked back to the the only one who was not so much a threat. Smiling to her, but not that toothy smile that seemed to scare so many. One that called up memories of the long forgotten passed. However he did not call her by name, becuase for the moment it seemed that he may just well have forgotten it. It was something difficult and unusual, something with a D but he wouldn't insult her by screwing it up. So yes he just smiled and nodded to her.

[Lukas] (ok folks -- time for me to go home! Lukas will hang out for a while, and then go back to his book or buy it and leave. thanks for the play, and sorry i'm ducking out early!)