Her Introductory Routine.

[Howard Ivers] They--they being the omniscient, all-knowing yet somehow intangible and never-seen They--say that the easiest way to learn the layout of a new city when in the process of relocating is to get oneself utterly lost within its confines. When a city is the size of Chicago, when one doesn't have a car, this process involves taking public transportation and using the feet the good Lord gave a person. Granted, in places smaller than Chicago, places that consider themselves rural, places that only really have one main road with a few winding dirt off-shoots, there's little point. Those places have character, certainly, but it's not the same as trying to learn one's way around a fucking city. The social terrain, the laws of the land, are different in small towns.

People like Howard don't last very long in small towns. Notoriety is harder to conceal when everyone knows what everyone else is up to without the benefit of the Internet or reliable cell phone service.

The sun has been down for a few hours, which means all the lights on the bus, in the El stations, are cranked on in all of their fluorescent glory, which means the curly-haired Fiann has happily assumed the role of Weird Kid Wearing Sunglasses At Night. They're still on his face in all of their ridiculous black aviator glory when he stumbles off the bus at a stop somewhere near an intersection, sans baggage he had been toting around the other night. He wears mostly black--Converse sneakers, fitted jeans, leather jacket, fingerless gloves--with the only color coming from a blue-and-purple plaid scarf.

Once on the sidewalk he whips his sunglasses off as if he's reached the end of a catwalk, tucks the earpieces into his breast pocket, and hunts for a cigarette. It's fucking freezing.

"Jesus!" the Afrikaner announces with the first sound gust of arctic air that comes by.

[Imogen Slaughter] "You know, if you curse every time a cold breeze comes yer way, you're going t'find yourself sufferin' a very long and foul mouthed winter in Chicago."

Where she is going or from where she came is unknown and likely immaterial. She happens to be on the same sidewalk as Howard Ivers exits the bus, and happens to be near enough to hear him curse when he does.

The redhaired kinwoman is familiar, perhaps, from the bar on the first stop to town. She is striking enough to be memorable from a first meeting. The pale skin, the dark eyes, the vibrant, almost chaotic hair, barely held in check by a clip and several pins. She wears a black wool coat, which only serves to make her skin seem paler, her hair seem brighter, and a blue scarf is a slash of colour at her throat.

Certainly her pure breeding is evident. As is her near aristocratic bearing as she arches an eyebrow at him. "It is, after all, only December."

[Howard Ivers] If he had been paying attention to his surroundings he might have sensed her coming. As it is, though, Howard doesn't seem to pay attention to too much unless it is right in his face demanding his attention: a weird smell, a blood-curdling noise, a spirit that won't stop pulling at his hair or whispering in his ear. He's not terribly observant.

He whips towards the voice, cigarette dangling from his lips unlit, and he squints one eye at the short redhead. Only a matter of days ago he was eying her down the length of a beat-to-shit bar in a beat-to-shit part of town. She and she who offers sorrow had eyeballed him and his packmate and then this one, the kinswoman, had decided to stay right where she was when they all relocated en masse to a table.

His countenance brightens considerably when he sees who it is. To find an analogy for how it is that he looks when someone deigns to approach him is difficult. An animal wouldn't work; outside of his totem, there is absolutely nothing about him that suggests a nature lupine or otherwise. Then again, he doesn't look old enough to drink, either. He looks about twelve.

A very tall and foul-mouthed twelve.

"Y'know," he says, pointing the unlit cigarette at her, "this weather isn't normal. Hell's supposed to be hot, right?" He pauses to light the damn thing and take a drag. "Changed my fuckin' mind." The breath is blown out, wicked white with the tobacco, and he fixes her with a mock-wary leer. "Heyyy, you were at the bar the other night."

[Imogen Slaughter] "Hell is supposed to be torment unending," the slight kinswoman observes. Though her shoes include modest heels, she only reaches his shoulder, or perhaps a little above.

"If you hate the cold, then it seems appropriate."

He's smoking, and after a moment, she reaches into her jacket pocket, retrieving a bronze plated cigarette case, a bronze zippo. She lights up quickly, each movement smooth, as if she has done it a hundred times before.

She has a graceful way of moving, even if it is just a flick of the fingers. Her grace is in the stark simplicity of motion; the way she does only as much as she must to reach her intended goal.

Though he is smoking as well, she turns her head to exhale her cigarette smoke, emptying her lungs before taking another drag. "I was," she says, her words wreathed in toxins.

"Imogen Slaughter." She does not offer him her hand.

[Howard Ivers] He can tell when a woman is smarter than he is. Granted, he goes into most situations simply assuming that if she has breasts and no obvious brain injury that she's going to be smarter than him, but the way the kinswoman talks just seems to drive home the fact that he's completely out of his depths talking to her. Part of it is the disparity in their accents: the kinswoman sounds refined to the American passersby with her West Country accent, while the young man sounds like a criminal of some sorts. His accent is largely muted, as though he's spent a good deal of time watering it down, but there are some sounds that has him sounding--to the uneducated--Australian.

That doesn't exactly help with the criminal impression that strikes most people at first exchange, but there it is.

They smoke, the kid trying to angle his body to the wind isn't smacking him right in the face; in order to do that he'd have to turn his back to the kinswoman, and he doesn't seem to be in too big of a hurry to either do that or to keep on walking.

She doesn't offer a hand. His right plunges into his jacket pocket for warmth, and then he stares blankly at her for a count of three. That's how long it takes for him to realize she's just given him her name.

"Oh!" he says, as if the metaphorical light bulb has just gone on. As if to try and recover, he takes a drag off of his cigarette. James Dean, he is not. "Howard Ivers."

[Imogen Slaughter] It says something about her, that she allows that count of three to pass without clarifying her intent, allowing him to figure it out instead.

A small smirk touches her mouth as the light bulb goes off and he covers for himself. "A pleasure," she says, taking another drag of her cigarette. The words are off hand.

"Normally, now would be the moment I'd offer t'direct yeh to wherever yeh might need to go fer yer family or whatnot," she continues, pausing a moment to exhale cigarette smoke. "But I imagine Kora has already done that, am I correct?"

[Howard Ivers] There is nothing about him that suggests, outright, that he isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, that he isn't operating with a great deal of intellectual horse power. He doesn't have a vacant stare, doesn't speak with a stammer or pepper his speech with 'ums' and 'uhs.' Aside from that blank silence that comes over him when he encounters something he doesn't recognize--which, truth be told, is exaggerated like the majority of his actions are--he is fairly quick on the uptake.

They stand there and smoke, Imogen smirking as he has that momentary lapse into stupid territory, and the Theurge flicks his eyebrows as if to repeat her sentiments: oh, yeah, sure, a pleasure, he can tell. He takes a thoughtless drag off of his cigarette, blows the smoke into the air over her head. It doesn't take much effort; she only comes up to his shoulder.

"Yeah," he says, his speech lazy, his attention easily diverted. "Well... probably. I've been told talking about shit like that makes me zone out and drool on myself, so I really can't be fucked pretending to care anymore. That's more Patrick's bag, man."

He says, as though Patrick is the affable if obnoxious social butterfly and Howard the Harano-bound brooder.

[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen is a brilliant woman. It's clear if you know her profession - one does not become a doctor, even a doctor with no living patients without some modicum of intelligence - though Howard does not. It is clear in her word choice, in her immense vocabulary.

She is can call herself intelligence without boastfulness, and she was likely the kind of child that irritated most in elementary school. Too good at everything, every class easy, every teacher impressed.

Perhaps, at first, she considers everyone less intelligent than her. It would be easy and it would not be altogether inaccurate, at least a good proportion of the time.

Their conversation, currently, is going through the motions. Politeness and etiquette. She has had this conversation a dozen times, more than.

She is quiet briefly after he's spoken, an eyebrow arching slightly. "Is it?" she asks, the question clearly rhetorical. "Alright, then."

A pause, and then a brief tilt of her head. "Let you get back to wherever it is you were going, shall I?" and she moves to move past him.

[Bridget] ((Whats the setting?))
to Howard Ivers, Imogen Slaughter

[Howard Ivers] [Oh! Fuck! Hi! We're on the sidewalk by the bus stop.]

[Howard Ivers] Moving past Howard doesn't take too much effort. Imogen is a little slip of a thing, short and beyond slender, but Howard, for being as tall as he is, does not take up very much room. He's thin as a rail, not by virtue of malnourishment or starvation but because he has the metabolism of a hummingbird. He has difficulty sitting still but lacks athleticism; he smokes and drinks but eats like a goddamn horse even when he hasn't been inhaling marijuana. His hair, that curly mop that it is, probably makes up a good ten percent of his body weight. To look at him, people automatically assume that he's up to no good: he's got that look about him, that air of mischievous failure to take anything seriously that can be sensed from ten feet away.

When Imogen decides that she has better things to do with her night than stand here and continue attempting to be diplomatic with a kid who barely looks half her age, he watches her go. This does not mean he lets her go; he watches her, and he pivots to keep her in his sights, and when she's gone past him, he draws a breath and speaks.

"Oh I'm sorry, I must have forgotten my line. Thought we were havin' a conversation, not goin' through another riveting scene from Nothin' Better To Talk About: The History of the Nation: The Musical."

If she turns around she'll be treated to the sight of Howard moving his hand as though emblazoning the title of a novel, or a play, or whatever that's supposed to be, in the air.

[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen does half turn as he speaks, their distance nearly the same as it had been, though now, she's nearly on the other side of him. The sidewalk is not very busy. It's the time of night, or their location, or the weather. Whatever it is, there are not many about.

"I'm sorry," she says without meaning it, her voice elaborately polite. "Was there somethin' you wanted to talk about?"

[Howard Ivers] "I'm sorry," he says, as if this has become a game of ping pong, as though this is amusing to him, "did I come up to you soon's you got off the bus and start givin' you shit for your testicles crawlin' back up into your body because it's so fuckin' cold out?"

[Bridget] December finally arrived in its frigid glory. Feh. Nothing an Albertan can't handle. So walking a few city blocks from whatever gig Bridget was playing at towards the bus stop was no big deal. She wards off the bitter cold with layers and a knit scarf, like so many without fur of their own to keep them warm. In truth, it had rained all day, and all throughout the city, the wetness threatened to transform into a slick glossy sheet of ice.

Bridget carries an overstuffed canvas bag and approaches the sidewalk while muttering part of a song. "...in a field behind the cages. He walked in circles til he was crazy, and he lived that way forever."

Ahead, she spots a redhead and a somewhat familiar face from a week or so ago.

"Noswaith dda, Howard. Nice weather, huh?"

[Bridget] (Good evening. Meant to add that. Sorry))

[Imogen Slaughter] "I daresay that's a no." The smirk flickers, then fades. "I approached you to introduce myself. I have done so. I'm sorry that yeh confused it fer conversation."

She lifts her chin, indicating Bridget who has approached, "but perhaps you will have better luck, now. Goodnight."

The kinwoman glances at Bridget, and nods slightly, but the other's presence does not stop her from stepping away.

[Patrick Llewelyn] It's not the first time, nor going to be the last that Patrick Llewelyn comes to find his pack-mate and Alpha having a not quite splendid conversation with a member of the Nation.

They were not, either of them, supreme examples of their auspice, or of warriors in the most general of senses. Patrick was also fairly confident that he was not the brightest or the best singer that had ever shared Fianna blood, either. He was, in so far as he could measure himself -- pretty average. Which really was not drawn out of self pity, he didn't care so much about being average. He was the last child of a family that had two other warriors to their name -- not much was expected of him but to perhaps not humiliate them on his way to the grave.

He could do that much, he was confident about that.
Of course ...

Patrick rounds the corner, not so much in search of Howard as tracing him down via other, more standard means. He's rugged up for the weather in an old leather jacket; once a nicer brown than it now is with heavy duty gloves on his hands and a black scarf tied around his neck. The Galliard's eyes were ridiculous; impossibly blue, they drew attention purely for that reason alone, which was not to say there was no reason not to glance at the man. Broad shouldered, with sandy hair and pleasant, if not striking, features, he was a nice package.

Decidedly different to the man Imogen Slaughter was just now stepping away from.

When Patrick notes this, notes Howard and beyond him Bridget; he winces a little. When he's closer to her, he addresses the woman he'd noticed his first night directly. "Hey, sorry if he said anything. He means well, he just doesn't know when to shut up."

[Howard Ivers] Now, he recognizes the language as being Welsh if only because he's heard Patrick speaking it before, because despite the fact that he's a few more knocks on the head from losing another handful of IQ points he does have some semblance of an ear for language. It's not that different than attempting to determine what key a song's written in, really.

That does not mean, however, that he is capable of reproducing the sounds necessary to give off the impression that he speaks the language.

Imogen clarifies what it is she wanted when she came up to him tonight, and he lets one of those bird-like laughs that's far too loud but, thankfully, only lasts for a second. She leaves, as any intelligent woman would do at that point, and Bridget takes her place, speaking to him in Welsh and asking him about the weather.

Green eyes lift, as if to remind himself of what the weather looks like, and then he does something vaguely similar to that display of assholery that he'd put on the first night they met, when he ranted in a cartoonish Irish lilt for two minutes straight.

"Goeie aand!" he yells, spastically exuberant, and then starts chattering away in a language that sounds like Dutch as interpreted by an Australian, gesturing emphatically, his facial expression indicating that he believes her to not only be following the conversation but actually having an opinion about what he's saying. He does this for a good ten seconds before suddenly switching back into English to say, "And then he gave me ten pounds and sent me on my way."

His hands go to his hips and he sniffs, as if to say How about that. Eyes flick to her bag, and he asks his next question as though he already knows the answer.

"Fuck's in the bag?"

[Bridget] Bridget nods to the redhead as she passes, then folds her arms over her chest at Howard as he regales some gibberish to her. She grins and leans into the posture. This ain't her first rodeo, and for fucks sake, she works with kids all day for her real job. She's not even phased that this gesture might well be a laugh at her expense. By now, she figures Howard is maybe a Ragabash-- seems right based on what she's heard.

"Well at least you got dosh out of it," is all she says.

And then he asks about the bag. She smirks and drops out of the posture, hands going to her sides. "Weapons. Of mass destruction. Just some random things I picked up... Got some tear gas, the kitchen sink, and Bristol Palin's chastity belt, or at least that's what the brochure said."

The Canadian leans against the frigid lightpost and contemplates lighting a cigarette.

[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen flicks a gaze over her shoulder as Patrick begins to speak loudly in a language of Germanic descent, though interspersed with words of other linguistic branches as well. Imogen is far from a linguist. It is neither German nor Dutch is as far as she can go. Her eyebrow quirks, and she turns back, half-slowing as Patrick rounds the corner and speaks to her.

Her eyebrow arches, her mouth twisting. "Is that yer default response to anyone leavin' yer -" a pause before she chooses a word, "acquaintance's presence?"

[Patrick Llewelyn] There's actually a vague sense of a smile at that.

He lifts his shoulders as one as if to weigh the truth of that question and whether or not she sees this depends on whether or not the Kinswoman decides he's safe enough to turn and face or rather keep at a disadvantage conversation wise by continuing her half-turn of departure. "Kinda, yeah." He raises his eyebrows after hearing Howard rant in, God, what was that? It was possibly Dutch being passed by a Donkey, he simply wasn't sure, nor going to pay attention to it if at all possible.

Instead, he takes a small step closer, then to one side to gain a fairer glimpse of the red head's profile.

"I'm Patrick, I don't remember if we got introduced the other night or not." There's no ruefulness about that, or about what he says next: "I was too drunk by the end of it."

[Imogen Slaughter] "We did not," she says, with assurance, as she had not been drunk and the lack of introduction had been deliberate.

"Imogen Slaughter," she says, though does not bother to add that it's a pleasure.

"I believe Kora mentioned that you were Fianna."

[Howard Ivers] Bridget has only been in Howard's cloud of acquaintances for a combined five minutes and she already knows enough to be able to assume that if he's speaking in a language no one else in this city can understand, he's probably making fun of her. This is why Patrick spends so much time running around apologizing for his brother. Neither of them can bring themselves to refer to Howard as Alpha unless they absolutely has to, unless he needs to introduce himself or someone else asks for the pack's leader to step forward. More than once someone has summoned Caldera's Alpha and they've both had to stop and remind themselves that it isn't Farrah anymore.

While Patrick wears his weariness like a heavy cloak, his burnt out grief like an extra twenty pounds of weight on his body, Howard seems as though he doesn't have a care in the world. Nothing concerns him; being walked away from is a chance to hurl off some verbal arrows not to draw blood but to see the other person jump. They're the same age, the same rank, but they don't approach life the same at all. It has nothing to do with their auspices; they're just different people. If they were born under the exact same moon, Howard would likely still like he does now.

That is to say: like an ass.

"Hope you kept the receipt," he says, releasing his slim hips and taking one last drag off of his cigarette before tossing it into the gutter. Over the totemphone, Patrick hears Suck it Nature! "It's obviously defective."

[Bridget] The skyglow attracts the kinswoman's attention for a moment. She watches her own breath float away and evanesce in the direction of the bus stop. She overhears the mention of the Tribe and gives a short chuckle.

"I didn't know what a brute I was. I dipped my cigarette and rode the bus. Vengeance built me hastily, and I dragged the clanging notion I was nobody."

The words go without melody, but there's an impression they belong to one. It's not directed at anyone. His pass at Bristol Palin's chastity belt brings her back down to earth.

"Yeah, well. It's a bit of a novelty item, I guess. Might be worth something if her mother ever tries for presidential office."

[Patrick Llewelyn] He doesn't offer her his hand to shake, they remain tucked away inside his coat pockets. He just absorbs the name and files it away no doubt into his mental Rolodex of Kinfolk he's met so far in twenty-something years. She doesn't add that it's a pleasure, which is a good thing as he'd simply have had to grimace and look away.

Instead, she mentions Kora, and he can remain as he is, looking at her with some combination of interest and polite (some might say gentlemanly) detachment. "That's what it says in my DNA, apparently."

He doesn't exactly seem thrilled about it, either, but with Patrick, his enthusiasm was about as easy to deduce as his amusement.

[Imogen Slaughter] "Congratulations," she says, mildly, as if his tribe were something for him to be congratulated on, but not as if she considered it something worthy of congratulation.

"Did Kora direct yeh to where yeh needed to go and such?" Were Howard in hearing range, he would find this conversation familiar.

[Patrick Llewelyn] "Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it." He says, equally as mildly, and then as she asks if he knows where to go and was he directed he cuts through the end of her words without much rancor. "It's alright, I got the whole you are here, do not pass go spiel a few times already.

I won't make you do that for, what, the billionth time." He shakes his head a little, and steps to the opposing side; nodding toward Howard. "I gotta go, but see you around, Imogen." Perhaps she'll be relieved with how painless that encounter was, and the fact that despite his impressive Rage that followed in his wake, Prayers to Broken Stone evidently wanted nothing more from her but to get their introductions out of the way.

[Imogen Slaughter] He tells her he's already had the whole spiel and Imogen's reply is simple: "Brilliant."

He says he needs to go and that he will see her around, and there's a flicker of amusement, but hardly more than a twitch of a single muscle at one corner of her mouth. It is internalized, amusement not meant entirely for him, but for her own thoughts.

She does not bother with goodbyes, and merely steps away as he does, starting down the street. She soon turns the corner which he had turned, in the opposite direction and is out of sight.