new clothes.

[Amelia Conway] Owning a business is a matter of give and take, with a whole lot of give and only an instance of take if you were successful. Success was what Amelia was working toward, she had a good base left behind by deceased family, but it was still predominantly give. She took a little yesterday by leaving two hours early, and for that she stayed four hours later than typical tonight.

The door to Conway Butcher Shop was closed and locked, and Amelia was walking up the sidewalk away from the storefront, oversized bag-turned-purse hanging at her hip from the shoulder strap that crossed her chest and back, workshirt removed and folded over one arm and tucked to her stomach. She wore plain khaki shorts tonight with a black A-shirt underneath. Her short hair was kept out of her eyes with a simple headband, and her homely square work shoes were quiet on the sidewalk, quiet like the rest of the neighborhood.

She'd parked a few blocks away, the street had been full for some convention or another when she'd arrived. Unlike others that lived in so urban and technological an environment as the dense city of Chicago, she did not turn her attention to a cellphone or a PDA or an MP3 player. No headphones came to cover her ears, her eyes didn't drop to a lit screen of any kind. She watched the sidewalk, occasionally glanced across the street, watched cars that drove by.

Two days ago she'd left a gift card at The Brotherhood of Thieves, pegged to the corkboard in the common room with 'Robbie-- Galliard' on the card envelope that came with it. It was for Target, and no price was scrawled onto it. Inside on the top flap, written in small handwriting, was a brief message:

Don't know what you need, trust you to know for yourself.
-- A. Conway

She trusted the meetingplace of Garou to be a good spot for him to find it.

[Robbie Murdoch] The gift is so completely unexpected that Robbie doesn't even see it for two whole days. In the end it's Jenny that brings it to him, knocking softly on his door and handing it over with her head slightly bent, turned away to hide her scar. She's his kin, too, and every time he sees her do that he wants to tell her that the scar only proves she's survived what others would not. That it never disgusts him, only angers him,

though that's probably exactly why she hides it.

Anyway. She brought him the envelope. He'd taken it curiously, not recognizing the handwriting, not expecting to recognize it. When he sees what's inside the simple unasked-for generosity of it almost makes him uncomfortable. He wrestled for himself for a long time -- use it? return it? scorn the charity of it? be grateful for the generosity of it?

In the end he keeps it. And uses it. Not a lot, though. Twenty-five, thirty dollars. Enough to buy himself a new pair of jeans and a new shirt from the clearance aisles. A pack of Hanes underwear and a pack of Champion socks.

That's what he's wearing when he comes looking for her. The clothes are so new they still fit stiffly on him. The jeans are Levi's. The t-shirt is Mossimo, a slight v-neck the only thing on it even approaching styling. One is dark blue and the other is dark brown, and the t-shirt's still creased from its original factory folds.

When he sees her, he holds his hands out in a tada! gesture, a small wry smile quirking his lips.

"Thanks," he says. "Appreciated it. You didn't hafta, 'specially after I knocked ya down in the street."

[Amelia Conway] Amelia was convinced that all Garou were born with a special talent that allowed them to manifest into existence without warning-- and not only because of being able to slip through the cracks of the Gauntlet. Her brother Peter was able to sneak up on her like that even before his First Change, when he'd pegged her first facade of a junior high boyfriend (just some poor human kid) into a chainlink fence and shook him 'till he was dizzy. Neither had warning, and that boy never came a'knocking again. Proof in this was held when Robbie just seemed to pop out of the grainwork on the sidewalk in front of her, stepping from behind a car or from out a shop or alley, because she'd glanced down at her watch, across the street, and when she'd looked back up he was walking toward her.

Dressed in clothes new enough that she was willing to bet the shirt still smelled like the plastic it was packed in, no less. He was smiling just a little, and she answered with a similar expression, something that always managed to look slightly lopsided but oddly winning on her wide mouth. She slipped her hands into her shorts pockets and slowed to a stop, letting him stop as well to greet her, allowing him to chose the distance between (to an extent, anyways).

"You could'a done worse," she answered with that glaze of Texas twang to her voice and shook her head a little bit. "Anyway, it's what I'm here for, to help. Not sure how to make the better point of opening the door to you and the others besides how I did. See, if I just say 'call me anytime' or 'let me know if you need anything', it's just words. Anyone can talk."

She glanced across the street again, briefly, to see someone go from their car to a deli door, then returned her attention to Robbie. "I didn't realize there was so many of us here in this town. Ran into a veritable shitload at that Brotherhood place two nights ago."

[Robbie Murdoch] Actually, it was nothing so supernatural as materialization, this. Amelia was looking at her watch, or across the street. Robbie turns the corner. And because he's lean and longlegged, swift when he walks, he's closer than you'd expect him to be by the time she looks again.

He bobs his head, half-embarrassed, as she offers continued help. Support. Material wealth. Whatever. There's a strange socioeconomic dynamic amongst kin and Garou. In almost all things kin -- regardless of gender -- seem to correspond to chauvinistic ideals of femininity: passive, submissive, stay-at-home, raise-the-kids. In this, though, it's the other way around.

Garou don't bring home the bacon. Kin do. Garou bring home dead things with too many eyes and slimy skin.

"Yah." He's happy to let the subject of generosity -- or charity -- slide on past unremarked. "Think only two of us been around any length of time though. Liadan," he slaughters the name again, "and the mule." There's a sort of careless bigotry in that, so engrained he doesn't even recognize it as such. "Everyone else is new.

"Where ya going?"

[Amelia Conway] In this town, bigotry like that tended to be flinched over, scoffed at, pointed out and trampled over. Amelia, however, was brought up by Fianna, by a traditional father and an aggressive mother. She knew what she was taught, and what she was taught was that there was a damned good reason the First Law was first. She hadn't yet met a Metis that wasn't damned in some horrible way. She'd met one once whose skin blistered even as you watched them, with no provocation by heat. She'd met one whose face was non-existent save for a slit in the center that she figured to be for breathing, watching how the flaps of skin around it moved inward a little every couple of seconds.

They were grotesque, the ones she's met. They gave her reason to keep up the suspicion and hate of their kind, and offered none to argue the beliefs of her tribe.

So she seemed slightly confused when he mentioned a mule, and it showed in a brief surprised expression on her face that faded away when she instead answered his question. "To my car, and from there probably just home." Her bare shoulder, a sturdy if not somewhat broad thing shrugged, and she lifted pale eyebrows at him questioningly. "Who's the mule? I thought I met all'a y'all the night before. That Ruarc said it was a meeting."

[Robbie Murdoch] They start walking again. And while there's a certain awkwardness to his manner, as if Robbie weren't used to civil conversation or the company of semi-mundanes, there's no awkwardness at all to the way he moves: long, low, grace like an animal's. His hands slip into his back pockets as he paces his kin.

And frowns, "If it was a meeting nobody invited me. Sorry meeting though if no Galliard was on hand to record it, so I guess it wasn't a meeting, huh." He grins sidelong at her, briefly.

"Anyhow the mule's a full-moon. Forgot her name. You'll know her if ya saw her. Red red hair. Poof." He mimics an shock of curly red hair around his head. "Doesn't say much. When she does her words are all tangled up." He snaps his fingers, "That's it -- Tongue Twister. That's the name."

[Amelia Conway] They began walking again, and each had a distinctive stride all their own. Robbie walked with no attempt to mask what he was: a predator. He had a fine grace to him, when he moved he didn't seem quite so lanky, those long limbs had purpose. With Amelia there was nothing but capable confidence to her steps, all without arrogance. Her posture was strong, as much of her was, hands comfortably tucked away in her pockets, no need for them to be free as her bag was secure by that strap that cut across her chest and her hair wasn't coming loose from the band it was contained by.

She listened as he described the Metis in question, and recognition flashed on her face, then a hint of a scowl followed it up before her face relaxed into its more neutral way once more. She nodded after he'd snapped and followed her voice on the tail of his. "She was there, cuddling up to a tall busty woman in an armchair."

There's only the slightest hint of disdain present when she says this, and it isn't in the tone of her voice so much as a fine crinkle at the bridge of her nose. Homosexuality in Texas was something frowned upon, and that was putting it lightly. You could take the girl out of the country, send her through college and give her a degree and a business to manage, but that wouldn't take morals and upbringing out of the equation, not when she had no reason to turn against it anyways.

She paused at a crosswalk, waited patiently for it to switch from a red hand to a green figure, and looked over to the Galliard. "I wouldn't 'a called it a meeting myself. More like a happenstance encounter cemented with whiskey and loose inhibitions."

[Robbie Murdoch] Robbie's face contorts with disgust. He doesn't even try to hide it. He grew up on Boston's North Shore, and not the nice wealthy parts of it. The working-class, blue-collar little fishing villages dotting the shore; the sort of place where rich WASPs descended in the summers with their yachts and their tips and their subtle condescension disguised as appreciation for 'local flavor'. They didn't have much money for luxuries such as liberalism, tolerance, and cosmopolitan culture there.

And beyond that: a metis. Such things were not supposed to breed. Where Robbie was fostered, such things weren't even allowed near the kin. They had foul appetites, twisted desires. It's not their fault; that's the way they are. But that's why there are rules about that sort of shit. The thought alone turns his stomach.

"The other woman a Garou or a kin?" He sounds like he's not sure which is worse. "Ugh."

[Amelia Conway] "Garou. Fiona, Full Moon. Real pretty gal, but I think she either had too much to drink or she just gets a kick outta flirting." She shrugged those sturdy shoulders again, as though she was willing to dismiss the topic and move right along. Gossip was a mean and evil thing, and only petty girls partook in it. But Amelia figured out that holding your tongue could cause more damage than good in plenty of cases, and when you're speaking truth there wasn't much wrong with it at all.

"Fianna too, that gal. There was the Metis, Fiona, Ruarc-- a Full Moon too-- and some Kin whose name I can't remember.. don't think I really caught it in all the hullabaloo. Some other man came in and it got too hard to breathe all of a sudden, so I'd left the room."

The light switched over, and she moved across the crosswalk and up onto the sidewalk across the way, continuing straight rather than taking any corners. There was a small space without parking meters or red painted curbs or signs declaring when you could or could not park up ahead, that's where she was heading.

"I had ta work in the morning, though, so I wouldn't've stuck around to keep an eye on them anyways. Let them be what they want, but they're adults and I sure ain't familiar enough with them to tell them to cut it out."

[Robbie Murdoch] "Christ," Robbie mutters. "Then we wonder why every other cub's a metis now."

They're a good distance from the butcher shop now, the lights sweeping past as they walk. Their shadows catch up to them with every streetlight they pass, panning ahead of them until it's dispelled by the next light.

She starts giving what sounds like an explanation for not stopping it. The Galliard shakes his head, a quick sharp gesture. "Not your place anyway," he says. "Or mine, to be honest. We need a goddamn half-moon in this town." His shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. "Well, don't worry about it. We'll figure it out, the Garou."

He nods up ahead, then. "One of those ya car?"

[Amelia Conway] "I would say I worry about the future because'a stuff like this, but like ya said-- it's not my place and I'm not a Philodox."

She pulled her hands from her pockets to dig in that tote bag turned purse for a second, then pulled a relatively simply keyring out from it, one with only a few sets of keys that looked to belong to doors and a car remote and key set attached as well. He'd asked if one of these parked up ahead in the available space were hers, and she grinned some at him, bounced her eyebrows up and down once, and pressed the 'unlock' button on the remote.

In response, the lights on a surprisingly modest red sedan flashed. It was new, a nicer make, but it didn't scream money or luxury or expense. It suited her, she was too practical for anything besides a small gas efficient car within the big city. One could imagine her back in Texas driving a big Silverado truck instead, but driving it across country and then about in a city made no economical sense. And that was precisely the kind of sense that she specialized in.

"Sure is," she replied verbally as well, and paused at the curb just behind her car to better address the man, speaking to him directly now rather than while walking beside him. "Did you need a lift somewhere?"

[Robbie Murdoch] Robbie's laugh is low and easy, a subtle exhale of humor. "Was just gonna ask if ya wanted to drive me back to the Brotherhood, actually. But if it's real outta ya way you can drop me off at the nearest Metro."

[Amelia Conway] His manner of laughing paired with her manner of smiling like sauteed mushrooms to a good steak. Subtle and easy was his laugh, quirked and comfortable was the grin she answered it with. She opened up the back door of the car and set her tote bag on the seat, which was predominantly empty, free of toddler seats or wrappers on the floor, the seat behind the driver's occupied only by a manila file folder with documents tucked within and a water bottle in the seat crevice beside it.

"Not real outta the way, no. Get on in."

The Kin stepped down off the curb and rounded to the driver's door herself, and ever the practical one the first thing she did upon sitting was, of course, to fasten her seat belt.

If you asked her she had too much to do with her life and a lot more glorious ways to go out than in a thirty mile an hour collision.

[Robbie Murdoch] With a shorter distance to the passenger's seat, Robbie's already pulling open the door when she's rounding the trunk. By the time she buckles in, he's already secured, ready to go. He looks around the car. It's modest in the grand scheme of things. He still seems impressed, running a hand over the paneling beneath the window.

Then she shuts the door. He faces forward, hands in his lap, like someone taught him not to fiddle around in someone else's car. As she pulls away from the curb he asks if he can open the window a little, and if the answer is yes, does so.

A block or two later, "Mind if I ask where you live?"

[Amelia Conway] She didn't mind if he opened the window, matter of fact she let him know he could roll it all the way down if he wanted to. It was cool enough out that she didn't need the air conditioner on, yet warm enough that the wind wouldn't chill them. So she'd rolled her window down as well, hitched her elbow into the space, and checked mirrors and over her shoulder before pulling out onto the road and heading toward the main street that would be the lump of the drive across the town to the docking district.

She grinned some when he asked where she lived, and there was a hint of knowing mischief to the expression. She drove with her hand at the top of the wheel, leaned back comfortably in her seat, and tended to go perhaps five miles over the speed limit or so, just like any average person is prone to do. "For now, just north of here by maybe eight miles, about. Just renting an apartment 'till I find a house I want and go through all the paperwork involved."

Light hazel eyes, some curious blend that trended between amber, brown and green (more toward brown tonight) hopped over to Robbie and studied his profile for a moment before returning to the road so she could switch lanes into the left one. "You're awful polite, you know. Damn stark contrast from what I picked up the other night."

[Robbie Murdoch] For the most part, he faces forward, watches the road. Watches speed with a sort of rapt fascination, like he likes the sensation of travel, movement, velocity. Robbie's not a handsome man, but there's strength in his face: the bones strongly etched, the nose long, jaw angular.

And Robbie catches that look, that grin, when he asks where she lives. It sets off one of his own: all crooked and lopsided. "Hey now," he says, "know how it sounded but that was a totally innocent question. Might as well know so I can keep an eye out, make sure ya house didn't burn down. If I was thinking of bootycalling I wouldn't beat around the bush."

He's straightfaced, saying that. Maybe he didn't intend the pun.

His manner changes, though, when she calls him polite. Contrasts him to the other nigh. There's a camera-quick flick of his eyes, a certain stiffening of his joints. Robbie shifts in his seat, and there's no lie in him. No capacity for deceit. She can see clear to the bottom of him, and he's uncomfortable now, put on the spot.

Rolling his head on his neck once, he clears his throat. "Am I?" His tone is noncommittal. "Guess I was pretty tense that night. Didn't put me in a good mood." Seems like there might be more -- he doesn't say it. A hand rises to scratch idly at his chest, then drops.

[Amelia Conway] "Well, I don't really blame ya for that night-- runnin' all frantic and wearin' blood like red haired kids wear freckles." She shook her head and brought the vehicle to an easy stop at a light when it turned red just in time for them to be at the front of the line of vehicles that would grow waiting for red to turn to green. Now that they were stopped, she could afford him more of her attention, turn at the neck to actually look at him, keeping her attention only lightly on the light and the car that had rolled up beside her. When either moved it was likely time to switch her foot from the brake to the gas again.

"But that wasn't really what I was talking about, sorry. Wasn't very specific. I meant the other night with the other Garou hanging out at The Brotherhood of Thieves. Granted, again, that could be all the whiskey, but I always had it in my head that it didn't affect you all that much. Not unless it's that special spirit shine." She waved a hand somewhat dismissively at the steering wheel without lifting her palm away from it and pretended not to notice that he had been made uncomfortable by the question. To call someone out on discomfort was to draw attention to it, to amplify and worsen the sensation. To politely let it pass on its own accord was best unless requested otherwise.

"Not too worried about booty calls, anyways." Her generous mouth, perhaps the only feature on her otherwise plain face that was worth notice, curved into a grin once more, and a bare shoulder only lightly freckled, by sun damage rather than a normal complexion occurrence lifted and dropped in another shrug. The light changed again, and she drove on. "I'm pretty forward about not being a one-night-stand girl. You can ask that Ruarc guy about that," she added that last part with a smirk this time.

[Robbie Murdoch] Oh. She wasn't talking about that. Now Robbie's worried she'll ask why his mind flew immediately to that incident: bloody on the streets, dazed, running on instinct and rage.

He does his best to answer, though, "Ya mean the night I ran into the Carnival from Hell and then some prick Shadow Lord called me a sheepfucker before offering to heal me?" There's a twist of irony there -- then he frowns. "No wait, you weren't even there. Wait...

"What?"

[Amelia Conway] She stared at him for a few seconds with the vacant kind of expression that one couldn't help when they were trying to process something that made absolutely no sense. Something about a carnival, being a sheepfucker (but he wasn't from New Zealand..) and getting healed by a Shadow Lord, and it had her staring blankly for quite some span of time before blinking hard, looking back to the road, and jerking the wheel just a touch when she realized she'd begun to drift a bit closer to the median of the road than she was comfortable with.

"What?"

She reached out to turn off the radio, some country station had been playing quietly in the background of their conversation but not anymore. Perhaps she'd thought it was jumbling the transmission between thought translation.

"No, I'm talking about that so-called meeting you weren't at. You're a downright gentleman compared to how those kids were behavin'. I got uncomfortable and thought, honest, that the Fiona girl was going to jump on me for it. Physically, not figuratively."

"...Was the Shadow Lord's name Thoth or Mila? Because I ran into some yesterday by those names."

[Robbie Murdoch] Wait. What?
What?

-- and all at once Robbie bursts into laughter, a short blurt of it that dies with the music. He's still amused, though, the spark of it dancing in his eye. "Oh," he says, and, "Oh," as a lightbulb goes on in his head. "Okay, yah. I get it now. I guess I just never really lived up to the whole extroverted aggressive-flirting Fianna stereotype thing.

"And nah, I didn't catch his name. Weasel-y looking guy. Thoth isn't a Shadow Lord anyway, he's a Silent Strider. Least that's how he looked at the moot."

[Amelia Conway] "Oh."

Blinker on, and she turned a corner onto a street that Robbie would recognize. The car ride wouldn't last much longer, even if the speed limit did just drop by twenty miles an hour. "See, I just figured since he was with that Mila girl... Looked the big dark sort anyways, and he was sneaking." She waved her hand dismissively outside the car, just beyond the window in front of the side view mirror.

There was a pause, then she lifted her hand to take the headband off her head and set it in the two cupholders that separated the front seats from one another. With that done she moved her hand to muss her short blonde hair while she massaged her scalp where the plastic hairpiece had been pressing into it all day. "Me either. My brother Isaac, though?" Her tongue clucked and she shook her head. "He's ridiculous. And still playing at it. Were Ma alive today she'd have beaten him black and blue fifteen times over by now."

"Not my thing, though," she murmured in a winding-down kind of way, and took another corner that would, after perhaps fifty more feet of driving, would have her pulling up in front of the tavern/brewery/hostel that so many of the city's Garou called home.

"Here we are."

[Robbie Murdoch] He recognizes this place. He's usually on foot, but he knows it: it's home. Something like it, anyway. Robbie unclicks the seatbelt as they get closer, drawing his lanky body together to move.

"Stag protect ya mother's soul," he says, almost an automatism. Then she's pulling up, stopping, and some unspoken law of courtesy rules out continued conversation. He opens the door and gets out; flows out, actually, smooth as silk. Sometimes it's easy to forget how well he moves -- his personality isn't half so graceful.

He turns back around, then, ducks and speaks in through the open door to the blonde. "Thanks for the ride, Amelia. And," he tugs his shirt in indication with a grin, "new clothes and all. You come by some night and I'll fry up some fish 'n chips for ya, alright? And if the other Fianna bother ya I'll beat 'em up. Or at least try."

Most likely the latter. Just look at him.

[Amelia Conway] "Sounds like an offer I ain't half ready to turn down. I'm so tired of Chinese take-out that it ain't even funny."

Her grin seemed to be getting gradually wider and wider each time it manifested throughout the night, growing more comfortable every time it was summoned. When he was bending that long lanky body down to talk to her through the door and tugging at his shirt in indication and making his offers and pseudo-threats, she just watched him with a closed-lipped yet relaxed smile and bobbed her head once.

"There was fifty bucks on that card, so you know. Don't know if the cashier would'a taken the time to give you the receipt or not." She leaned forward into the wheel, both arms folded over the top of it, and flashed a hint of teeth when she answered his offer to beat up tribemates. "Don't worry too much about them, though. I can handle myself alright. If it comes down to it, though? Won't hesitate to call ya out on that."

There a pause, a moment of prolonged eye contact, and a sense of relaxing and growing comfortable about the Kin. She was family oriented, it was easy to see, the way her voice went when she spoke of her family, how she was so willing to give him a ride wherever he needed and pay for some sets of clothes, all because he was a Fianna, which qualified him as a cousin at the very least. It was good, when switching from Houston being the biggest town you've visited to living in the third largest city in the nation, to have someone to familiarize with. She was just glad it didn't take her months to track someone down.

"G'night, Robbie. I'll catch ya later."