Watching Wrath.

[Imogen Slaughter] It is not a pretty part of the city, every building decrepit and crumbling at the corners and edges. The yards are brown or they are concrete.

A school, its windows blank undecorated holes and its playground a flat plane of asphalt, marked in places by old outlines for dodgeball games and hopscotch. Brighter are the graffiti tags, left to fester and fade because cleaning it is a lost cause.

It smells here. Exhaust and old garbage and cigarette smoke and the vinegar. Unwashed bodies and greasy spoons.

She does not carry a purse, and does not wear expensive shoes as she walks down a cracked sidewalk in jeans and a simple unlined corduroy coat.

Even so, she does not look like she belongs here.

[Bob] You need a reason to be in this part of town, some purpose for moving through this crumbling neighborhood with its crumbling buildings and its crumbling citizens. There is no green here, no real signs of life, no sense that the Mother is anywhere to be found. All there is is concrete and broken glass and brown, the occasional splash of color coming from graffiti or a pair of shoes tied together and tossed over a power line. It smells horrible in this particular part of town, as though the earth is just dying for a stiff breeze or a hard rain to wash away the grit and the exhaust and the hopelessness here.

There is a tall, ugly white man walking down the street. He looks like he belongs out here if only because he looks homeless, because he looks as though he's been wearing the same combat boots and black jeans and black t-shirt since the dawn of time, because his hair is a tangled rat's nest of curls that may or may not have been washed recently, because the knapsack slung over his back is making a ruckus and it looks and sounds as though everything he owns is being toted around with him.

It's been a week since Kemp's Gathering for the Departed. The world is moving on without him, as is the fear of most mortal men; the Rotagar had been fighting a war that the city at large was unaware of being waged, and even those who were aware of the war had no choice but to keep moving.

It's been a week since Imogen stumbled upon two Garou sitting in a park not far from here, drinking awakened whiskey and cranberry-flavored vodka. There is no sign of the blond female who had been with the creature who tells humans to call him Bob. There's just Bob.

[Imogen Slaughter] She comes to a stop near an old Volvo, reaching into her jacket pocket to retrieve a bronze cigarette case, a zippo.

Her hair is up, pulled back and held in place unceremoniously with a covered elastic band. Strands have come loose, tumbling down to brush against her skin, offering a pleasing contrast of the flaming red to the pale porcelain of her flesh.

Bob is down the street from her, but she has seen him. Her eyes are on him as she thumbs open her cigarette case and retrieves a slender fag. She fits it between her lips before lighting it with a zippo which, in all appearances, matches the case. The flame flares, catching the tip of the cancer stick, then gutters out and dies.

The zippo snaps as she shuts it, pocketing it as she exhales her first drag into the air. By now, the monster who calls himself Bob to humans is within speaking distance.

"Not drinkin' tonight?" she enquires, lifting her cigarette hand to push back hair from her eyes.

[Bob] Imogen's eyes are on the tall creature heading down the sidewalk, and he sees her a moment after she sees him. There are not many people out on the soggy streets at the moment. The street lamps are coming alive, sending sick yellow light to illuminate the steps of nonexistent travelers, and the sky is threatening rain again. All day long there have been clouds and intermittent showers, but it has done nothing to cleanse the area of the taint of poverty that clings to it like a layer of dirt.

He's smoking a hand-rolled cigarette as he walks. Lopes, is more like it. He isn't strolling like a human but prowling like an animal, all of the power in his body coming from his hips rather than the major muscle groups of his legs. He's got the lean, hungry look of a mongrel but there is a visible strength in his body. One can imagine him getting into a fight at the drop of a hat. Most people can sense the violence in him and give him a wide berth.

The kinswoman reaches out to him.

An inquiry, a push of hair from eyes, and Bob stops walking when he reaches the front tire of the Volvo. The scar tissue on his throat is beginning to lighten, time taking away the wet slap of pink where death had left its mark on his flesh. His voice is no less scratchy or raspy than it ever has been. It still sounds like sandpaper going to work on a piece of wood.

"Not yet," he says, sounding vaguely amused. "Why, you want a drink?"

[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen's mouth twists faintly. "More that I've yet to see you without one," she replies. "Than I need to depend on a full-blood to supply me with alcohol."

Her voice is low, naturally quiet. There is music in her tone, though no warmth. A voice that is pleasant to hear; a voice that if she chose to, could sing.

She takes another drag of the cigarette, her attention flicking away, then back again.

A lift of her chin indicates him, or perhaps his bag, "Have you got something to offer?"

[Bob] "I'd think it'd be the other way around," he says, to needing a full-blood to provide her with alcohol.

What she says is true: with the exception of Truth in Frenzy's Gathering, there has not been an occasion that the two have seen each other without the metis having some sort of drink in his hand, and even after the Gathering, there had been booze passed around the congregated Garou. One might posit that the Godi has a drinking problem; he certainly doesn't argue with Imogen's observation.

He finishes his cigarette as she indicates him, or his bag, and drops the pinched roach onto the sidewalk, where he crushes it with the toe of one boot. A cough to clear his lungs, muffled by the side of his fist, and he says, "Just picked up a bottle'a Jameson. Haven't awakened it yet."

[Wrath] Walking the streets as a man is something that comes but slowly to Wrath. Growing accustomed to the lack of stability, balance, natural warmth. His skin raw and naked without the covering of fur, something that only the youngest of cubs ever experience. The world hidden, obfuscated behind a veil, his nose non functional, his hearing stunted so that only the most strident of sounds reach him. His eyesight the only thing that remains acute.

He stalks the streets. Somewhere along the way he's picked up a black wifebeater, faded to gray except at the seams where it runs still jet black. It hangs loose over his rangey frame, the prominence of clavicle, the swell of deltoid, the slooping slope of his back. Skin tanned nutbrown dark, hands heavily callused, feet doubly so.

Bottle green basketball shorts, tied off at the waist with a filthy drawstring. Chromatic in hue, ridiculous on his lethal frame, but somehow his very obliviousness to it makes it simply part of the whole. Worn as camoflage in a different kind of jungle. Hair a thick mop of black that is clean if in bad need of a cut. Eyes sharp and flinty through the thatcht that falls before his rough, angular, face, a visage rendered inhuman by the intensity of the expression, the curdled distaste and repugnance that reigns.

In homid, Wrath appears but sixteen. A kid. A kid who's passage causes others to pull back, instincts screaming at them, his movement fluid and boneless, his head swinging from side to side as he surveys, ready for the slightest instigation to leap at somebody's throat and tear it out with his teeth.

[Drew Roscoe] This part of the Cabrini Green is no place for solo, pretty white women to be walking alone. Any fool who has been in Chicago for longer than a week knows that. This is where people go missing, it rivals with Bronzeville in crime rates. It's a commonplace thing growing up here to have your money and cellphone taken from you weekly as you walk home from school, you know the person who mugs you on a first name basis. You know the drill, cash and phone. -- Randall, come on, I still haven't replaced the old one.

But people still live here, and the people who live here tend to have families and friends. The tree of who you know branches into odd places sometimes, and the branches of one particular house up the street from Bob and Imogen, but two houses down along the sidewalk that Wrath was stalking tonight, happened to stretch out to reach Drew Roscoe.

The Young family knew Drew well. For over two years she had dated the oldest son, Abraham. They'd lived together for a year and a half. She'd come to family functions with him, holiday dinners, and all but become a part of the family although no wedding bells ever rang and grandchildren were never brought into the picture. Even after Abe's death, she kept in contact with them. Tonight she didn't have to work, so she had come to this particular house to babysit Rochelle Young's children while she went out on a date.

The front yard was wrapped in a chainlink fence, and within it were an infant and a toddler and a Get of Fenris Kinfolk. The little girl had her hair in fat, heavy black braids with multicolored barrettes to keep them in place, dressed in a pink and orange outfit and chasing a soccer ball around the yard. Drew sat on the dry scratchy grass, dressed in jeans and a faded vintage Coca~Cola T-shirt, with an infant perhaps five months old sitting in her lap gnawing away on a rubber ring.

The little African-American girl, four years old at best, stopped in her tracks at a corner of the yard, up against the fence, to stare at the dark-skinned teenager approaching. Her stillness was that of a deer facing down a mac truck on the highway.

[Drew Roscoe] This part of the Cabrini Green is no place for solo, pretty white women to be walking alone. Any fool who has been in Chicago for longer than a week knows that. This is where people go missing, it rivals with Bronzeville in crime rates. It's a commonplace thing growing up here to have your money and cellphone taken from you weekly as you walk home from school, you know the person who mugs you on a first name basis. You know the drill, cash and phone. -- Randall, come on, I still haven't replaced the old one.

But people still live here, and the people who live here tend to have families and friends. The tree of who you know branches into odd places sometimes, and the branches of one particular house up the street from Bob and Imogen, but two houses down along the sidewalk that Wrath was stalking tonight, happened to stretch out to reach Drew Roscoe.

The Young family knew Drew well. For over two years she had dated the oldest son, Abraham. They'd lived together for a year and a half. She'd come to family functions with him, holiday dinners, and all but become a part of the family although no wedding bells ever rang and grandchildren were never brought into the picture. Even after Abe's death, she kept in contact with them. Tonight she didn't have to work, so she had come to this particular house to babysit Rochelle Young's children while she went out on a date.

The front yard was wrapped in a chainlink fence, and within it were an infant and a toddler and a Get of Fenris Kinfolk. The little girl had her hair in fat, heavy black braids with multicolored barrettes to keep them in place, dressed in a pink and orange outfit and chasing a soccer ball around the yard. Drew sat on the dry scratchy grass, dressed in jeans and a faded vintage Coca~Cola T-shirt, with an infant perhaps five months old sitting in her lap gnawing away on a rubber ring.

The little African-American girl, four years old at best, stopped in her tracks at a corner of the yard, up against the fence, to stare at the dark-skinned teenager approaching. Her stillness was that of a deer facing down a mac truck on the highway.

[Imogen Slaughter] Her cigarette is no where near half finished and she simply takes a drag. They are posters for vices and incivility, though perhaps more he than she. Though she is not particularly finely dressed, her attire is not grungy or poor. It is the concession she makes to he surroundings, but perhaps the only significant one.

She has too much poise for these streets. Too much elegance.

Though she had broached the subject of alcohol, she does not follow it up. Fills her lungs with cigarette smoke and turns away to exhale it. As she does, an angry boy with calloused feet catches her eye.

She regards the wolf-born for seconds before saying, simply, "Know him?"

[Bob] A feral young man is stalking down the sidewalk, and it's to him that Imogen looks now. Her wandering attention has Bob looking away from her and towards the scraggly, violent-looking teenager, his brow furrowed in thought.

He remembers the reluctance with which the wolf-born had taken on his human skin for the trip out to Tekakwitha Woods the other day, how quickly he had shifted back into his birth form as soon as they were out of the parking lot. He doesn't tell Imogen this. He grunts, then realizes this isn't an acceptable response and looks back to the kinswoman.

"That's Wrath," he says.

[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen's eyebrow arches as she turns her attention back.

"That must be his deedname," she says.

[Wrath] You grow up in the woods, grow up running along convoluted paths in a world in which there are no straight lines, and city blocks cannot seem anything but foreign. Geometry, angular buildings, the regularity of it all. Every corner with its lamp post, predictable intervals with storm drains, the traffic lights, the order of it all. To homids it must seem as if the Wyrm holds sway, but to Wrath, the Weaver here is supreme.

He doesn't stride, he stalks. Hands slowly opening and closing, forming fists, knuckles whitening. Gazing across at a corner bodega were a group of older men straighten off the wall, their conversation quietening, their stares morose as they gaze across the street at him. Lips pull back from Wrath's teeth, puny and white and small, and he bends his legs, hunches his shoulders. Looking like he's about to race over there for the sheer release that throwing himself at them would bring. But they turn away, unnerved by him, and resume their conversation, laughter fitful and uneasy. Relunctantly, Wrath uncoils, and then his gaze sweeps across the street before him and he picks out the couple by the car.

Godi, Fostern. Strange woman, breeding on her. Continues to scan, and sees the garden, Fenrir kinwoman, playing with cubs not her own. His hands slowly open and close, clench and unrelease. A tick of muscle playing over his jaw. Considering them. Breathing in long, slow inhalations and exhalations. Finally, he begins to walk once more, reaching out with a claw of a hand, nails long, to rake his fingers over the chain link fence, making an aggressive rattling noise as he approaches the garden within which Drew sits.

[Bob] There are pockets of the continent where wild wolves still run free. Those are the places where the Get of Fenris tend to settle down, are those rare places where their wolf Kin still exist. Bob could tell stories, had he the blood of a Skald, about the number of wolf-born he had met while at the Sept in Canada, about how out of place they seemed when they would go into town, even a small town like North Bay.

To say that he has never seen a wolf-born in the city wouldn't be saying much. The Godi hasn't been in this city for very long, and those who have heard his story can tell you that he comes from a Sept in the South, that he isn't from a huge city like Atlanta or Memphis or Louisville but from a village on the Mississippi River, surrounded by trees and water, teeming with wolves. Yet for as long as he has been in the city, he has grown familiar enough with it to know that it will never be familiar, that he will never be comfortable here, that even if he dies fighting in defense of Maelstrom, he will die wishing that he were out in the wilderness again.

This is where he needs to be right now, though. Maybe it's the same for Wrath.

That must be his deed name, Imogen says, and a small huff of laughter leaves Bob's throat.

"You know that girl over there?" he asks, indicating the babysitter with a jerk of his chin.

[Drew Roscoe] A rake, a rattle, and the shrill scream of a four year old girl follow one another in the air.

The little girl that had been frozen by the fence squalled her horror at the hooked fingers dragging over the chainlink and coming toward her, spun about, and raced toward Drew. The Kin's eyes widened, and she looped one arm around the infant in her lap and pulled him off to onto her hip, twisted the rest of her body enough, and in just enough time, so that when the girl leapt upon her and jammed herself under her free arm she didn't squash her little brother. The toddler cried, whimpered, begged incoherently for Drew to make the bad man go away. "Shh," Drew would chide, and rubbed the little girl's back as she glanced up and out toward the sidewalk.

Heavy features, strong nose, full mouth, black eyes and seething Rage. She blinked twice to clear her mind, to make it up, then pushed the girl back enough so that she could stand, hiked the infant up on her hip, and ushered the child to the front door. "Go on in, Raquelle. I'll be right behind." The girl didn't even look up, shook her head into the curve of Drew's side, and Drew glanced toward Wrath once more before addressing the little black girl once more. "The couch is base, Raquelle. Alright?" A little push got the girl going, and she raced in through the screen door to disappear into the house.

Drew adjusted the infant on her hip, kept her body turned to block Wrath from view, kept her distance from the fence just enough to try and avoid the boy from noticing Wrath and the predatory vibrations in the air around him.

"Wrath," she called, her tone best described as cordial and cautious.

[Imogen Slaughter] "I do," Imogen's attention has shifted, as has her body language. There is a thread of anticipatory tension thrumming beneath the skin as she watches Garou approach kinfolk, and the kinfolk to send the children inside.

"She is one o' yer kinfolk." Yours, not ours. If Imogen had felt any true connection between herself and her adoptive tribe, it is doubtless she would have phrased it differently.

[Wrath] Wrath slows as he draws abreast the yard Drew's in. His fingers rippling over the wire diamonds, until finally he stops, casts one last look up and down the street, and then leans over the gate that comes little more than waist height.

Leans, resting his slight weight on his forearms, black wifebeater hanging loose from his chest, so that Drew gets a view of smooth skin over tight muscle. The same hue across his whole body. Easy to imagine him naked, free of this clothing, these trappings of the city.

His gaze smolders. He stares at her, and she can't tell what wrong she did him. He leans over the gate, wolf at the door, and simply stares. His gaze moves up her frame. Starts at her feet, traces a trail up the length of her legs, pauses for awhile on her crotch, and then slowly up to her face, gaze like twin white hot pokers being dragged up her frame. That muscle tic over the jaw as he clenches, releases, clenches, releases.

So easy to imagine him vaulting over the gate. That momentary slowing down as his body glides through the air, then hitting the ground and exploding into full speed to attack.

Instead.

"They yours, the cubs?" Voice rough, his English strangely accented.

[Bob] There is no answering tension in Bob's body. He seems wary, as though he's waiting for the Rage-drenched Cliath to vault over the fence and launch himself at the children, but he doesn't hurry down the sidewalk to intervene. He keeps an eye--okay: both of them--on the Cliath, his head vaguely turned toward Imogen as she explains that the young woman is one of his Kinfolk.

His chest visibly rises and falls with the cycling of respirations through his lungs, but he doesn't say anything. He rumbles, a low noise of assent, and keeps watching the Cliath.

[Drew Roscoe] When Wrath leaned his weight against the fence, stared hard at her, let his eyes flick, even if only briefly, after the sprinting child stumbling her way up the front few steps to get through the door, Drew's stance shifted into one that was braced for action. She was remembering the first time she met Garou. Remembering that it was running that got her in trouble. She ran from Kemp, narrowly escaped when he'd given chase, only to be hit like a freight train by Thomas. The Skald had quivered, ground her into the pavement, forgotten his control, and shifted. All because she ran. It had something to do with being a predator, seeing prey flee.

She was ready to intercept, had it in her head that Wrath was going to launch himself over the fence and bring the little girl down like a foal in the pasture that had wandered too close to the trees. She'd have to let the baby roll onto the ground, but he'd be okay, his neck was strong enough that it wouldn't snap from the mild jar. She'd tackle the Lupus, and probably have claws raking down her sides and blood spilling in the lawn as consequence. No matter, though, at least the child would be spared.

...but this didn't come to be. Instead, his sharp attention returned to her, hovered uncomfortably at her groin for a few seconds too long, then landed on her face. Rather than shout, rather than snarl or attack, he spoke, voiced a question. Her eyebrows lifted, just a touch, and she shook her head, adjusted the little boy on her hip and played a finger over his nose and mouth to keep him preoccupied. He gave a small giggle, and she kept away from the fence.

"No, they're the children of a close friend of mine. Mine would probably have lighter skin than this." True, the children were both darker than mahogany. She gave a brief glance to the door, then returned her eyes to Wrath's, holding them in an unwavering way that spoke of determination against the urge to look away. Her head rolled on her shoulder, back toward the house. "Will you wait while I put them to bed?"

[Wrath] Slowly, Wrath turns his head. Slowly, he looks over his shoulder, turning his body only so that he can gaze up and across the street to where the Godi and Imogen stand. Feeling the weight of their gaze. He looks at them both. Eyes hooded, gaze flat, no flicker of recognition or acknowledgment on his expression. A beat, and then he turns back to Drew.

Considers her. Waits far too long for it to be comfortable, and then he pushes away from the gate, the fence whistling and clinking, and straightens.

"Do what you want," he says, voice low. Looks up and down the street once more, and then turns to begin slowly making his way up the street, in particular rush.

[Drew Roscoe] "To make amends, I suppose."

The child made a gurgling, wet noise and dropped the rubber ring in the grass, and Drew stooped down to retrieve it automatically, still taking care not to let the little boy notice Wrath. If he became spooked, getting him to go to sleep would be impossible. So she kept her body twisted just right, moved the boy around so that he was pressed to her front with his chubby little legs wrapped around her slim waist, leaned back enough that he could grab at the logo printed on her shirt, as though he could retrieve it and put it, too, in his mouth. The girl fixed plain brown eyes on the wolf, and lifted her eyebrows some. "Please, just wait."

Too focused on the children, on the Lupus, on past events and potential for future ones, Drew hadn't bothered to glance up the street, hadn't yet discovered the presences of a familiar red-haired doctor and a troll-like Godi. Rather, she turned to head into the house, disappearing into the shadows through the flimsy tin-and-mesh screen door for the time being.

[Imogen Slaughter] Drew heads inside, and Wrath starts to walk away, toward her and Bob, but not quite. She turns her attention back, taking another drag from her cigarette and dropping it to the ground, crushing it out beneath her shoe.

"I think that I'll leave you all to it," she says, simply, without really clarifying (or perhaps needing to clarify) what 'it' is.

"Have a good night."

She steps off the curb, starting around the Volvo.

[Sparrow] The prius is parked somewhere.

Somewhere, of course, is a relative, wibbly-wobbly term that Sparrow used to make herself feel better. she didn't know where she had parked the prius, but had assumed, possibly falsely, that the cracked back windshield and the bad Toyota scandalls that had been going around would have kept anyone from wanting to steal her car.

It might accelerate unexpectedly and kill them in a rather horrific, and also unexpected, manner.

This was a rough neighborhood, though. Rough enough, however, that the female spent her time looking around, taking it in instead of panicking about her car. So, this is where she starts. The only Child of Gaia in a five block radius, making her way down the street while Fenrir are... well... doing whatever it is that Fenrir do in bad neighborhoods.

[Bob] The wolf-born pushes away from the fence and starts up the street, and only after the kinswoman leaves the lawn and heads back into the tiny excuse for a house does the Godi seem to relax. It isn't an exaggerated, obvious thing, but Imogen is close enough that she can see his shoulders slump somewhat. He draws a breath and looks back towards her in time for her to say that she thinks she'll leave them all to 'it,' without saying what 'it' is, and he doesn't attempt to change her mind. If anything, he has to be thinking that this is no neighborhood for a purebred woman like Imogen to be caught out in at night, and night is falling like stained water over a cliff. It's about to be dark as Hell.

Have a good night, she says, and Bob lifts his hand to give her a stiff attempt at a salute.

[Jesmond Krutova] Perhaps people should have a reason for being in this neighborhood. Goodness knew its reputation didn't spring-board for tourists, and the young woman stepping from an old, crumbling apartment complex understood its dangers. Or the ones implied by the darkness of the streets, the lack of police presence, the gangs and the graffiti strewn buildings. On her drive in, Jesmond Kr&+367;tová had passed a man urinating into a doorway.

It was just that sort of area.

Still, it hadn't stopped the brunette Shadow Lord Kinfolk from visiting her Aunt, though the visit had been short, and mostly comprised of disapproving stares and an air of placid resistance from one that resulted in needled agitation in the other. Duty done, the Nurse was closing the glass door behind her and pausing to survey the street before stepping out onto it. Her uniform seemed unfairly bright in the dim; the starched white material did not breathe particularly well, or lend itself to giving, it was firmly rooted against her slender shape and the dark-haired woman pressed the sides of her jacket around it, flat shoes almost inaudible as she descended the stairs.

Her old car, dark brown and weather-beaten was parked under a flickering street-light -- it did not flatter the vehicle's roof, which was missing spots of paint.

[Drew Roscoe] It doesn't take long for Drew to get these children to bed. She was 'Auntie Drew' to them, she's watched them many a night, and they didn't give her any guff about routine. The little girl got her revolving nightlight turned on, the little boy got his bottle and blanket, and the pair were quiet.

Five minutes after disappearing into the house and Drew was stepping outside once more, propping the front door open to let a bit of a breeze in the house that had grown too warm under the sun, and so she could hear if either child began to fuss. She closed the screen door quietly, turned, and crossed the front yard to step outside the gate and close it behind her.

Wrath had crossed the street, stood on the sidewalk across the way, and Drew jammed her hand into her pockets and glanced back toward the house, up and down the street, then simply leaned back against the fence and nodded her head to the Lupus. He would recognize the posture of territory and protecting it around the Kin. She wasn't going to leave the 'cubs' unattended, wasn't going to stray too far away, just as a wolf wouldn't stray too far from the territory lines, would stay where she could hear the yips if the pups came to be in distress.

"Wrath," she called faintly, to catch his attention.

[Wrath] The lupus doesn't move fast, doesn't seem to have much direction. He moves along, following the fence, hand ghosting along the top. Feeling the prongs and spikes of twisted metal where the diamonds expire, deliquesce and become air. Moves, slowly, almost gliding as if in a dream, face blank, eyes staring at nothing, until one of the twists of metal, sharp as barbed wire, catches at his palm, and bites deep.

With a hiss he jerks his hand back, to his mouth, sucks on his blood, even as the wound closes. Grimaces, fury welling up within him like the worst case of heartburn, and with a roar he launches a kick at the fence, which takes the blow and absorbs it with ease, rattling loudly. This serves to only infuriate him further, so that he latches onto the top with both hands, heedless now of how the metal bites into his hand, and begins to launch kick after kick into the fabric of the wire mesh, a blur of blows that rattle and shake the fence. Finally, after a blistering five seconds, he throws himself off it, as if electrocuted, and shoots the whole mess a venomous look. Looks down at his hands, sees the new puncture wounds closing up right before his eyes, blood smeared across his callused palms. Growls, and curls them into knotted fists.

Then, his name, floated across to him. Head whips around, hair falling before his face, eyes livid and sullen both as he stares at her. Begins to stride in her direction, fists still clenched, chin lowered. A low growl deep in his chest.

[Imogen Slaughter] And with that, she's gone, the old Volvo rattling its engine as she pulls away.