hunting soon.

[Robbie Murdoch] It's afterhours. There are no humans wandering around. Which is a good thing, because Robbie is upstairs in the bathroom, stripped to the waist, fingerpainting his lanky pale self a blue dye so thick it's nearly a paste. Here and there, where the light hits right, the dye shimmers.

[Liadan] [please don't suck]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 6, 6, 6 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Liadan] It's after hours, and there are no mortals about, and hardly any kinfolk. At least not the ones that technically, legitimately live here. There's a bed in room 7 that's been claimed for the kin of Stag, but that's not why Lee is here tonight. She's not coming off a battle, isn't coming into the Brotherhood wounded or smelling like war. It's late and she came in for a bite to eat.

Finished with her supper now, the redhead wanders up the stairs. The common room is quiet, the bedrooms are quiet. For the second time in nearly ten years, the piano is calling to her, begging to be played. In all the time she's seen it here, she's only seen it played once, after all.

So she takes a seat a the bench, and she uncovers the keys. It's late, so she plays softly. The opening notes of Beethoven's Für Elise drift quietly through the second floor.

[Robbie Murdoch] [...WITH a blue dye.]

Music abruptly beginning outside does not make Robbie startle. This is because Robbie heard the footsteps, heard the creak of the bench, heard the soft sounds of someone folding open the fall. So, the complex whorls and lines on his body do not deviate, and the design is not ruined. When his torso and both arms are daubed with blue patterns, he looks in the mirror and starts on his face. Line by line, streak by streak, his plain, rather somber face disappears into a mask of barbarism.

It's when he's done with all this, done transforming himself into a goddamn throwback to his ancestors -- or someone way, way too into renaissance faires -- that he comes out of the bathroom. Passing the trash can, he dunks the exhausted jar of paint in and heads through the commons to hit the stairs. Going up, not down.

"Piano's not very traditional of ya," he remarks, passing the piano. If she's not prepared, glancing at him might give her a startle. It's almost absurd to hear a conversational tone emit from that brutishly painted face. "Aren't you supposed to play a harp or a bodhran or something?"

[Liadan] Lee isn't prepared to see a man painted blue drift past the piano, but then she's not watching him. She's not watching anything. Her dark eyes are closed as she pulls the music from her memory. So it's his voice she hears first. The voice, the accent, she recognizes. When she opens her eyes, when she sees him there, painted like their barbarian ancestors, Lee quirks a reddish brow. And she keeps playing, without so much as a hitch or a stumble.

"We can't all be traditional," she remarks. She doesn't complete the piece, but lets the notes drift off. Then she turns on the bench to face him. Tonight her hair is pulled up in a ponytail. Her t-shirt is so old the black has turned to grey, it's tattered at the edges, and whatever it used to say has been lost to time and a thousand washings. She's wearing shorts and a pair of Doc Martens. Her skin is very pale, but there's a touch of color to it, where freckles try to form and clump together.

"What are you doing?" she asks, like seeing a man painted blue from the waist up isn't the weirdest thing she's seen all day.

[Robbie Murdoch] "Hunting," he replies simply. "Soon, anyway."

A pause; some expression on his face. It might be a lopsided, faint smile. Hard to tell under all that paint, the streaks and lines of it disrupting the clean angles and lines of his face. Robbie doesn't have the sort of face to make maidens swoon, but there is strength in it; character. And his ancestry. Even if his people weren't glorious, they were Fianna, by god. But we digress.

Point is: some expression, almost unreadable. He adds, "Are ya gonna wish me luck?"

[Liadan] [almost unreadable, huh, we'll see about that!: percept + emp]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Liadan] There's a strength to his face, to the lines and sharp angles, that Lee has noticed. It's not a bad looking face, not when the person looking is analyzing more than they're admiring. Lee has a tendency to look at people like they're works of art, sculptures come to life, paintings made real. That's not how she's looking at Robbie, though, with her hands resting on her knees. Sitting on the piano bench, she almost looks completely natural, almost completely normal. There's still a hint of that awkwardness, that gawkiness, but it's subdued.

His smile is infectious, and is answered in a crooked grin. "Yeah, sure," she says. And she nods to emphasize, "Good luck." After a beat, "Be safe."

[Robbie Murdoch] Now the smile's more obvious, growing to a grin -- a flash of teeth in his macabre face, jarringly white. He nods at her piano. Rather, the piano she's playing. The one it belongs to - albeit posthumously - still has his name gold-leafed over the keys. Neither of them know the history there. Or at least, Robbie doesn't know. Some Galliard.

"Are you sticking around?"

[Liadan] She met Liam once or twice, but she doesn't remember him. She doesn't remember him as the young Garou she and Charlie met in the park one day. She doesn't remember his guitar drifting up the stairs, eventually seeping out onto the rooftop where she attempted to console an emotionally drained and wounded Theurge. It's not because her memory is especially horrible, nor even really that she only saw him once or twice. She just never learned his name, so she doesn't recognize the name engraved on this piano.

Lee doesn't answer immediately. First she raises her arm to check the leather-banded watch face nestled against the inside of her left wrist. She frowns at it before looking back up.

"I wasn't planning on it, but I might stick around a little longer. Get some more practice in." Practice, she says, though her playing is obviously above average. "What time do you think you'll be back?" There's no doubt in that, that he'll come back. Maybe hurt, maybe not. But he'll come back. There's is a strong tribe, resilient against death. Lee herself has the scars to prove it.

[Liadan] [THEIRS, zomg]

[Robbie Murdoch] Robbie screws up his face slightly, thinking. Then his eyes come back to her. "An hour. Maybe two. Maybe more." He shrugs, the broad rack of his shoulders moving under the paint, his skin, his lean sinewy muscle. "Sometimes hard to say."

A brief pause, as though considering. If she hadn't seen him the other night in the alley, if she hadn't already seen that second, psychological Change for herself, he'd probably never add this, "Gonna go let the other guy run loose for a while. If I don't, sometimes he gets pushy."

[Liadan] She did see the change, and she recognized it. Never talked about it, though. That night, she had other things on her mind, like wondering if a strange Crinos Garou was going to murder a strange kinfolk in the street. In the time between, she hasn't seen him to bring it up, probably wouldn't know what to say even if she tried.

Nodding, she asks, "Is that why you're..." Trailing off, she gestures at his painted body. "For him?"

[Robbie Murdoch] There's a flicker in his pale green eyes, genuine surprise chased by appreciation. Liadan doesn't know how rare it is that someone makes the connection; how often even that simplest of causalities goes right over someone's head.

Then again, not many people have all the pieces needed to draw the relationship. Not many people know all the fact. Which, one supposes, makes Liadan somewhat special. A little more unique, if she can believe such a thing.

"Yeah," he says, and nods. "And it helps. Strikes terror into the hearts of foes." There's a note of irony there too. And a note of that flat, flat accent: terrah. "But mostly it's for him."

A pause. Then he angles his head toward the stairs.

"I oughta go. Maybe if you're still here we'll bring ya a gift when I get back." And he laughs. "Count yourself lucky if I don't, though. The other guy's idea of gifts is weird."

[Liadan] Lee doesn't know how rare it is to see that shift of posture, that change of demeanor, and realize that it's not just the nature of the Garou that's changed. In battle, they all become fiercer. Even the jovial, happy-go-lucky Garou become a terror to be reckoned with in a fight. But she saw, and she knew, That isn't Robbie Murdoch. That might make her special, if she could believe that she's special in anyway.

Maybe she does know. Someone was proud she was their kinfolk once, after all. That had been the start of a transformation.

She tilts her head, smiling with her mouth while frowning with her eyes, a strange and dubious expression. The idea of receiving a present, that someone would bring her of all people something at all, is still strange to her. But she's received strange gifts from Garou before. Slowly, the frown leaves her eyes, and the smile spreads.

"Alright. We'll see if I'm still here," she says, and she watches him until he reaches the stairs. Then she turns back to the piano, and she picks up where she left off.

[odds she's gone when he gets back!]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10