High heels.
Mar. 4th, 2017 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiananlogsSaturday, 4 March 2017
The moon is in the waxing Half (Philodox) Moon phase (46% full).
Evening finds Yael in the kitchen, apparently pondering the contents of the refrigerator. There's a kettle of water set to boil on the stove, and the Strider halfmoon closes the refrigerator again without taking anything from it, gets three steps away, and turns on her heels to move and open the fridge again. The weight of the moon is there, although masked somewhat by the way her headscarf falls over her shoulders.
There's the sound of a vehicle pulling up in the drive, or at least wheels on gravel, lacking the rumble of an engine. A car door closes, and again a few seconds later, preceding Nolan's arrival at the front door. He doesn't bother to knock, but there's an awkward moment as he juggles paper bags while turning the knob, and as the door opens there's a grunt of discomfort.
Yael comes out of the fridge with a slice of leftover pizza, which she proceeds to eat even as she moves over towards the sound of an arrival and the front door. Once she sees who it is, there's at least no increase in tension and recognition sets in, and she glances at the bags and asks, mildly, "Need any help?" followed by, "Good evening."
Nolan quirks a grin at Yael as he makes his way toward the kitchen, and nudges one of the grocery bags in her direction. "Grab this one before it falls?"
Yael moves fairly quickly, "Sure," she agrees— enough to get the grocery bag and tuck it under her arm to carry it to the kitchen a step or two behind the ragabash. "You been in town long?" she asks as she does so, then adds. "Can't really argue when someone's bringing food."
Nolan shifts the remaining bags for better balance and heads on to the kitchen. "A while," he answers, glancing back to the Strider, and sets the bags on the counter. "Long enough to learn my way around and figure out what'll be needed. And I promised Sandra some coffee." As promised, at the top of the bag Yael carries is a bag of freshly ground Ecuadoran coffee.
Yael sets the bag on the counter and then moves over to lean on the counter next to a somewhat worn-out messenger bag, assumably hers. For a moment, there's silence and only a nod of acknowledgement of the other Garou's words while the adren gets a good half the way through the slice of pizza she was holding when he entered. "I'm usually more of a tea person," Yael says, "especially at the moment."
"What's special, now?" Nolan asks. His attention is half on the philodox, and half on the groceries as he starts to unpack.
For whatever reason, Yael finds this funny, although the laughter is quiet and restrained. "Because I really need more caffeine on top of Luna's pull," she says, shaking her head slightly.
Nolan casts a glance upward, as though he might see the moon right through the ceiling. "Ah," he offers, and pulls a jar of peanut butter from the bag. "I thought you meant a more… general now."
"Oh," Yael says, and shakes her head a little more. "No." She takes a step, and moves to at least unload the grocery bag that she set on the counter onto the counter next to it, although there's care taken not to interfere in the putting away process. "Just right now. Coffee is different here though. The tea is different. Everything tastes different."
"From Africa?" Nolan asks. "There are some regional differences across the US, but for the most part, a coffee is a coffee and a tea usually means Lipton."
Yael gestures to the coffee maker where it sits on the counter, and there's a slight furrow of her brow. "The coffee it makes is thin," she says. "And yes. I'm not sure I really qualify Lipton as tea, although I did find good black tea at the market when I went last week." As if on cue, the kettle starts to boil, and Yael grabs a mug from the counter, moving to go turn it off (and pour water into her cup).
"Not a lot of difference between the caffeine in a good tea and a good coffee," notes the Fianna. A loaf of bread is stuck on top of the fridge, and a jar of jam slides across the counter toward Yael. "Stick that in the cupboard behind you?"
"Feh, details," Yael says with a bit of a grin. Water is poured, the jam is put in the counter, and she moves back over to her messenger bag, rooting around in it before she comes out with one of those self-fillable teabags already set up and drops it into the cup. "Why'd you have to go and use logic to ruin my nice fantasy? I mean, I am going to drink the tea anyway, because it tastes better than Lipton."
"Well," Nolan says, and turns around to lean against the opposite counter where he can watch the Strider, a grin tugging at his features. "If the goal is to avoid caffeine because of the moon, it seemed a good thing to point out. On the other hand, I generally assume anyone who's made it to adren has a bit more control than a cup of coffee can shake."
Yael puts the cup of tea down to let it steep, and grins a bit. "Sure," she agrees, "but I don't go and make something more difficult or more-so on purpose. Do you go and run a marathon in high heels just to prove a point?" There seems to be some line of reasoning to the question. "It's more of a best practises thing than necessarily a goal."
Nolan glances down at his sneakers, raising a brow as he looks back over to Yael. "Now you've set out a challenge. Do you think they make heels in my size?"
"I am pretty sure they do," Yael says, one eyebrow raising just a little bit more before she moves the tea bag around in the cup a little. "And if you prove that point, I will be suitably impressed— high heels… how do you say it? Suck."
"I just might," Nolan says, the grin still in place, and then turns to finish emptying the bags. The cold cuts are fresh, not pre-packaged, the canned goods organic, and there are more vegetables than one might expect.
Yael chuckles, and watches the rest of the process, and then picks up her cup of tea. "Looks like you have a good hand on that whole what's needed bit." She pauses, considering, before continuing. "Where're you from, before here?"
Nolan's back is to Yael as he puts a package of ground beef into the freezer, and he tenses slightly at the question. There's a pause so small it might be missed as he gathers himself before he turns. "Different places. With the turbulence of the riots I moved around a lot." He rubs at the back of his neck, fingers tracing the edge of the pendant he wears before his hand falls back to his side.
Yael sets down her tea, such that she can make the slight hop it takes to sit on the edge of the counter in front of her messenger bag, and her brows furrow. "Riots?" she asks, and shakes her head, brows furrowing somewhat. "Not to be pushy or anything," although her tone isn't necessarily gentle either, "just. Where I was, we heard that some Septs fell a few years ago, but not very much more than that, nor the specifics." She adds, "The cliff-notes version is fine."
"Dancers," Nolan says, his expression growing tight. "Working together with… some creature of the Wyrm." He turns away, hand lifting to his chest, to the pendant, as he turns. "A new type of monster, not one from the old stories, and not a manifest bane. Riots were distractions, as the forces moved against the caerns. Many were lost."
Yael sits, one hand on the edge of the counter and the other on her knee, and listens, and there's a visible wince that she doesn't bother to mask as Nolan talks. Other than the occasional smile, it's the first real expression to have crossed her face the whole time. "Damn it all," the Strider eventually says, quietly. "That's… a lot worse than what we'd heard."
"It was," Nolan agrees, still with his back to the woman. For a moment, he's silent, and then he nods, apparently to himself, and turns back to Yael. "But it's over, now."
She gives the other Garou his time, and space, attention turning to her tea for as long as it takes, and then she finally nods. Another moment of silence follows, and she adds, "Thank you for telling me," she says. "I'm afraid that aside from a few times when I was through Wheel of P'tah, I missed what was going on in the wider world for a while there. I've only been back in areas and the Nation for a few months now."
Nolan nods. "I spent a while out of touch. Coming back into the thick of things can be jarring." He drops his hand to his side, hooking a thumb into his pocket.
"Yeah," Yael agrees, finally picking up the tea and taking a few sips. "This is more of the thick of things even than the rest of where I've been through until I got here. Mostly small, Black Fury held septs everywhere between here and Israel, and one down in the Congo first. This was the last place on my list from that job." She grins. "It's an education in and of itself."
"Job? To come here?" Nolan asks, relaxing some as the topic shifts, and he leans back against the counter.
Yael nods. "I run messages from time to time," she says. "Always have, but a lot more of them the past few months as an adren, actually. I have a gift that is… fairly useful for that." She shrugs. "The Sept near where I grew up is held by my tribe and the Black Furies."
"Ah," answers the ragabash. "So you're not here to stay, then?"
Yael lifts her shoulders for a minute. "I don't know," she says. "But I'm intrigued here, and I'm not in a big hurry to move on. Stay every day out of every month— I'd go crazy. But stay as in come back here, in between jobs and wandering? I think I might, at least for a while. Plus, there's a lot to be done here in the mean time."
With a slow, soft laugh, Nolan nods his agreement. "In fact," he says. "Quite a lot to do."
"Not every job involves going somewhere," Yael says. "Or lost books, or treaties. I figure I will see what comes."
Nolan tips his head to the side. "What constitutes a job?"
Yael lifts her shoulders. "Depends on the job," she says, counting on her fingers as she considers the question. "I agree to do something theoretically within the things I usually do. Find something, find someone, deliver a message, whatever it might be. And I don't always agree." Another finger. "I do the job." One more finger, and this seems to be the least important of the points, "I get paid, some way or another. Sometimes simple, sometimes less simple."
"So, I tell you, say, go tell Trees for Leaves in So Cal that I said hey-ho, and that's a job?" Nolan's clearly enjoying his hypothetical as his arms fold over his chest and one leg crosses in front of the other.
Yael raises an eyebrow. "You have a cell phone," she responds drily. "At least, I have a feeling you do."
Nolan laughs. "Not at the moment, though I could certainly access one. But what if Trees for Leaves hangs out in the woods without one? Does that make it a job?"
Yael grins a bit more. "I'd hope the message is a little more important than 'hey-ho'. Usually messages sensitive enough not to be trusted to electronic communication." She pauses, and then continues, but it's not out loud. It's her voice, and potentially identifiable if the Ragabash has encountered the gift before. Or too sensitive to be said aloud at all. Mental speech. The tea is set down on the counter though, and Yael watches Nolan very carefully, even though she hasn't hopped down from the counter.
Apparently, the gift is one the ragabash is familiar with, but all joviality leaves his expression, posture going rigid, eyes awash with rage. He swallows it all down, taking a second before he looks over to Yael again. "Please don't do that."
It doesn't seem to be an entirely unexpected reaction, because she ducks a nod, and reaches up with one hand to push her headscarf off her head and back onto her shoulders, brushing her hair out of her face as she does so, and slips to her feet. "I'm sorry," she offers, quietly, and then falls silent again, giving the cliath as much time as he needs. "I won't do it again."
A couple more breaths, and Nolan relaxes again, nodding his understanding. "It's not that gift, in particular," he says after a beat. "It's— We don't touch people without consent. It's the same idea." He seems to give up, after that, and offers a simple shrug.
Yael watches for a moment and simply nods, leaning back against the counter, and a moment later, reaching up to busy herself with redoing the headscarf. She doesn't attempt to push the issue, or even seem interested in arguing, but eventually does say, "I can see where it could be, yes." She purses her lips, and adds, tone almost formal for a moment, "I am sorry, Squirrel Talks to No One. I— did not mean it like that, or as a— violation."
"I understand," Nolan says, repeating the nod. "It's… It's fine." He grins, though it's a bit forced, and relaxes against the counter again. "So not a general message, then," he adds, returning to the original subject.
Yael takes a breath, slow and even, and lifts her eyebrows. "Not usually? I mean, sure, I can and I might if the reasons were right, but not usually."
"Reasons like…" Nolan prods. "You were headed there, anyway? It's a free trip to Hawaii?"
Yael cracks a slight small grin of her own. "Sure," she says. "Or there's something I'm trying to learn, or talens or even more mundane items that I need to acquire and delivering a message for someone smooths things over and gets things done quicker. Or no one has heard from the person in several months or knows where he is and no one has been able to find him." She continues, "I've never been to Hawaii before, but I've seen pictures."
"Went as a kid," Nolan replies. "Family vacation, if you can believe it. Spent a week on Maui near Lahaina." He lets out a small chuckle. "My sister was so afraid there might be sharks, she wouldn't go near the water, so I got one of those fake fins you can put on your head and swam right up to her in the pool. Told her I was a were-shark. That was before I was let in on the family secret."
Yael raises her eyebrows. "I've never met any were-sharks, either," she says. "Heard of 'em, but from everything I understand they don't come on land very often. And very few of them are human born, if any."
"Well, I didn't even know what I was," Nolan says through the grin. "Neither did my sister; she was a little over a year younger than me. But my mother laughed so hard. It wasn't until years later that she explained the joke."
Yael grins a bit, and finishes off her cup of tea, walking over to the sink to rinse the cup out. "Yeah. I'm an only child, as far as I know," she says. "No brothers, no sisters. It was just me and my mother when I was growing up, and the furthest I had been before my first change was when we moved from the kibbutz to Haifa. My mother told me a lot of the stories when I was growing up, about the Impergium and about Gaia creating all the shifters." There's a slight shake of her head as she grabs a dish towel. "After my first change I accused the Alpha of being part of some deranged cult my mother hired to scare me."
"I was prepared, well before I could change," Nolan says, nodding to Yael. "Just well after my family thought I might have a loose tongue." He shrugs, the grin softening. "Irish families tend to run large, so there was no shortage of evidence to quell any lingering doubt."
Yael sets the cup on the dish rack after mostly drying it off, and nods. "We were about seventy kilometres from the sept proper, and my mother didn't want to tell me," she says. "And my first change was relatively young, younger than they expected maybe— once I had enough information to understand, I never did get around to asking, and it was so long ago. But it's not unusual for our tribe, either. We're… a bit scattered."
"But they managed to convince you," Nolan supplies. He pushes off the counter and sets to folding the paper bags.
Yael grins a bit. "Eventually there's enough undeniable evidence," she says. she sobers, a moment. "Given enough time and the proper persuasion most people will come around to just about anything." Her brows furrow. "But that's another topic entirely." She glances outside, then, through the window and momentarily visibly distant.
"Indeed," Nolan says. He takes all three bags and folds them again into a neat package he tucks under his arm. "And perhaps for another time." He turns his smile to Yael and offers a lazy salute with his free hand. "I need to be heading back, but I'm sure I'll see you soon."
Yael offers a nod. "Road rise to meet you," she says, although the grin only reaches her eyes and even that just barely, and then turns back to looking at whatever it is was out there.
Nolan completes his salute and heads out through the front.
The moon is in the waxing Half (Philodox) Moon phase (46% full).
Evening finds Yael in the kitchen, apparently pondering the contents of the refrigerator. There's a kettle of water set to boil on the stove, and the Strider halfmoon closes the refrigerator again without taking anything from it, gets three steps away, and turns on her heels to move and open the fridge again. The weight of the moon is there, although masked somewhat by the way her headscarf falls over her shoulders.
There's the sound of a vehicle pulling up in the drive, or at least wheels on gravel, lacking the rumble of an engine. A car door closes, and again a few seconds later, preceding Nolan's arrival at the front door. He doesn't bother to knock, but there's an awkward moment as he juggles paper bags while turning the knob, and as the door opens there's a grunt of discomfort.
Yael comes out of the fridge with a slice of leftover pizza, which she proceeds to eat even as she moves over towards the sound of an arrival and the front door. Once she sees who it is, there's at least no increase in tension and recognition sets in, and she glances at the bags and asks, mildly, "Need any help?" followed by, "Good evening."
Nolan quirks a grin at Yael as he makes his way toward the kitchen, and nudges one of the grocery bags in her direction. "Grab this one before it falls?"
Yael moves fairly quickly, "Sure," she agrees— enough to get the grocery bag and tuck it under her arm to carry it to the kitchen a step or two behind the ragabash. "You been in town long?" she asks as she does so, then adds. "Can't really argue when someone's bringing food."
Nolan shifts the remaining bags for better balance and heads on to the kitchen. "A while," he answers, glancing back to the Strider, and sets the bags on the counter. "Long enough to learn my way around and figure out what'll be needed. And I promised Sandra some coffee." As promised, at the top of the bag Yael carries is a bag of freshly ground Ecuadoran coffee.
Yael sets the bag on the counter and then moves over to lean on the counter next to a somewhat worn-out messenger bag, assumably hers. For a moment, there's silence and only a nod of acknowledgement of the other Garou's words while the adren gets a good half the way through the slice of pizza she was holding when he entered. "I'm usually more of a tea person," Yael says, "especially at the moment."
"What's special, now?" Nolan asks. His attention is half on the philodox, and half on the groceries as he starts to unpack.
For whatever reason, Yael finds this funny, although the laughter is quiet and restrained. "Because I really need more caffeine on top of Luna's pull," she says, shaking her head slightly.
Nolan casts a glance upward, as though he might see the moon right through the ceiling. "Ah," he offers, and pulls a jar of peanut butter from the bag. "I thought you meant a more… general now."
"Oh," Yael says, and shakes her head a little more. "No." She takes a step, and moves to at least unload the grocery bag that she set on the counter onto the counter next to it, although there's care taken not to interfere in the putting away process. "Just right now. Coffee is different here though. The tea is different. Everything tastes different."
"From Africa?" Nolan asks. "There are some regional differences across the US, but for the most part, a coffee is a coffee and a tea usually means Lipton."
Yael gestures to the coffee maker where it sits on the counter, and there's a slight furrow of her brow. "The coffee it makes is thin," she says. "And yes. I'm not sure I really qualify Lipton as tea, although I did find good black tea at the market when I went last week." As if on cue, the kettle starts to boil, and Yael grabs a mug from the counter, moving to go turn it off (and pour water into her cup).
"Not a lot of difference between the caffeine in a good tea and a good coffee," notes the Fianna. A loaf of bread is stuck on top of the fridge, and a jar of jam slides across the counter toward Yael. "Stick that in the cupboard behind you?"
"Feh, details," Yael says with a bit of a grin. Water is poured, the jam is put in the counter, and she moves back over to her messenger bag, rooting around in it before she comes out with one of those self-fillable teabags already set up and drops it into the cup. "Why'd you have to go and use logic to ruin my nice fantasy? I mean, I am going to drink the tea anyway, because it tastes better than Lipton."
"Well," Nolan says, and turns around to lean against the opposite counter where he can watch the Strider, a grin tugging at his features. "If the goal is to avoid caffeine because of the moon, it seemed a good thing to point out. On the other hand, I generally assume anyone who's made it to adren has a bit more control than a cup of coffee can shake."
Yael puts the cup of tea down to let it steep, and grins a bit. "Sure," she agrees, "but I don't go and make something more difficult or more-so on purpose. Do you go and run a marathon in high heels just to prove a point?" There seems to be some line of reasoning to the question. "It's more of a best practises thing than necessarily a goal."
Nolan glances down at his sneakers, raising a brow as he looks back over to Yael. "Now you've set out a challenge. Do you think they make heels in my size?"
"I am pretty sure they do," Yael says, one eyebrow raising just a little bit more before she moves the tea bag around in the cup a little. "And if you prove that point, I will be suitably impressed— high heels… how do you say it? Suck."
"I just might," Nolan says, the grin still in place, and then turns to finish emptying the bags. The cold cuts are fresh, not pre-packaged, the canned goods organic, and there are more vegetables than one might expect.
Yael chuckles, and watches the rest of the process, and then picks up her cup of tea. "Looks like you have a good hand on that whole what's needed bit." She pauses, considering, before continuing. "Where're you from, before here?"
Nolan's back is to Yael as he puts a package of ground beef into the freezer, and he tenses slightly at the question. There's a pause so small it might be missed as he gathers himself before he turns. "Different places. With the turbulence of the riots I moved around a lot." He rubs at the back of his neck, fingers tracing the edge of the pendant he wears before his hand falls back to his side.
Yael sets down her tea, such that she can make the slight hop it takes to sit on the edge of the counter in front of her messenger bag, and her brows furrow. "Riots?" she asks, and shakes her head, brows furrowing somewhat. "Not to be pushy or anything," although her tone isn't necessarily gentle either, "just. Where I was, we heard that some Septs fell a few years ago, but not very much more than that, nor the specifics." She adds, "The cliff-notes version is fine."
"Dancers," Nolan says, his expression growing tight. "Working together with… some creature of the Wyrm." He turns away, hand lifting to his chest, to the pendant, as he turns. "A new type of monster, not one from the old stories, and not a manifest bane. Riots were distractions, as the forces moved against the caerns. Many were lost."
Yael sits, one hand on the edge of the counter and the other on her knee, and listens, and there's a visible wince that she doesn't bother to mask as Nolan talks. Other than the occasional smile, it's the first real expression to have crossed her face the whole time. "Damn it all," the Strider eventually says, quietly. "That's… a lot worse than what we'd heard."
"It was," Nolan agrees, still with his back to the woman. For a moment, he's silent, and then he nods, apparently to himself, and turns back to Yael. "But it's over, now."
She gives the other Garou his time, and space, attention turning to her tea for as long as it takes, and then she finally nods. Another moment of silence follows, and she adds, "Thank you for telling me," she says. "I'm afraid that aside from a few times when I was through Wheel of P'tah, I missed what was going on in the wider world for a while there. I've only been back in areas and the Nation for a few months now."
Nolan nods. "I spent a while out of touch. Coming back into the thick of things can be jarring." He drops his hand to his side, hooking a thumb into his pocket.
"Yeah," Yael agrees, finally picking up the tea and taking a few sips. "This is more of the thick of things even than the rest of where I've been through until I got here. Mostly small, Black Fury held septs everywhere between here and Israel, and one down in the Congo first. This was the last place on my list from that job." She grins. "It's an education in and of itself."
"Job? To come here?" Nolan asks, relaxing some as the topic shifts, and he leans back against the counter.
Yael nods. "I run messages from time to time," she says. "Always have, but a lot more of them the past few months as an adren, actually. I have a gift that is… fairly useful for that." She shrugs. "The Sept near where I grew up is held by my tribe and the Black Furies."
"Ah," answers the ragabash. "So you're not here to stay, then?"
Yael lifts her shoulders for a minute. "I don't know," she says. "But I'm intrigued here, and I'm not in a big hurry to move on. Stay every day out of every month— I'd go crazy. But stay as in come back here, in between jobs and wandering? I think I might, at least for a while. Plus, there's a lot to be done here in the mean time."
With a slow, soft laugh, Nolan nods his agreement. "In fact," he says. "Quite a lot to do."
"Not every job involves going somewhere," Yael says. "Or lost books, or treaties. I figure I will see what comes."
Nolan tips his head to the side. "What constitutes a job?"
Yael lifts her shoulders. "Depends on the job," she says, counting on her fingers as she considers the question. "I agree to do something theoretically within the things I usually do. Find something, find someone, deliver a message, whatever it might be. And I don't always agree." Another finger. "I do the job." One more finger, and this seems to be the least important of the points, "I get paid, some way or another. Sometimes simple, sometimes less simple."
"So, I tell you, say, go tell Trees for Leaves in So Cal that I said hey-ho, and that's a job?" Nolan's clearly enjoying his hypothetical as his arms fold over his chest and one leg crosses in front of the other.
Yael raises an eyebrow. "You have a cell phone," she responds drily. "At least, I have a feeling you do."
Nolan laughs. "Not at the moment, though I could certainly access one. But what if Trees for Leaves hangs out in the woods without one? Does that make it a job?"
Yael grins a bit more. "I'd hope the message is a little more important than 'hey-ho'. Usually messages sensitive enough not to be trusted to electronic communication." She pauses, and then continues, but it's not out loud. It's her voice, and potentially identifiable if the Ragabash has encountered the gift before. Or too sensitive to be said aloud at all. Mental speech. The tea is set down on the counter though, and Yael watches Nolan very carefully, even though she hasn't hopped down from the counter.
Apparently, the gift is one the ragabash is familiar with, but all joviality leaves his expression, posture going rigid, eyes awash with rage. He swallows it all down, taking a second before he looks over to Yael again. "Please don't do that."
It doesn't seem to be an entirely unexpected reaction, because she ducks a nod, and reaches up with one hand to push her headscarf off her head and back onto her shoulders, brushing her hair out of her face as she does so, and slips to her feet. "I'm sorry," she offers, quietly, and then falls silent again, giving the cliath as much time as he needs. "I won't do it again."
A couple more breaths, and Nolan relaxes again, nodding his understanding. "It's not that gift, in particular," he says after a beat. "It's— We don't touch people without consent. It's the same idea." He seems to give up, after that, and offers a simple shrug.
Yael watches for a moment and simply nods, leaning back against the counter, and a moment later, reaching up to busy herself with redoing the headscarf. She doesn't attempt to push the issue, or even seem interested in arguing, but eventually does say, "I can see where it could be, yes." She purses her lips, and adds, tone almost formal for a moment, "I am sorry, Squirrel Talks to No One. I— did not mean it like that, or as a— violation."
"I understand," Nolan says, repeating the nod. "It's… It's fine." He grins, though it's a bit forced, and relaxes against the counter again. "So not a general message, then," he adds, returning to the original subject.
Yael takes a breath, slow and even, and lifts her eyebrows. "Not usually? I mean, sure, I can and I might if the reasons were right, but not usually."
"Reasons like…" Nolan prods. "You were headed there, anyway? It's a free trip to Hawaii?"
Yael cracks a slight small grin of her own. "Sure," she says. "Or there's something I'm trying to learn, or talens or even more mundane items that I need to acquire and delivering a message for someone smooths things over and gets things done quicker. Or no one has heard from the person in several months or knows where he is and no one has been able to find him." She continues, "I've never been to Hawaii before, but I've seen pictures."
"Went as a kid," Nolan replies. "Family vacation, if you can believe it. Spent a week on Maui near Lahaina." He lets out a small chuckle. "My sister was so afraid there might be sharks, she wouldn't go near the water, so I got one of those fake fins you can put on your head and swam right up to her in the pool. Told her I was a were-shark. That was before I was let in on the family secret."
Yael raises her eyebrows. "I've never met any were-sharks, either," she says. "Heard of 'em, but from everything I understand they don't come on land very often. And very few of them are human born, if any."
"Well, I didn't even know what I was," Nolan says through the grin. "Neither did my sister; she was a little over a year younger than me. But my mother laughed so hard. It wasn't until years later that she explained the joke."
Yael grins a bit, and finishes off her cup of tea, walking over to the sink to rinse the cup out. "Yeah. I'm an only child, as far as I know," she says. "No brothers, no sisters. It was just me and my mother when I was growing up, and the furthest I had been before my first change was when we moved from the kibbutz to Haifa. My mother told me a lot of the stories when I was growing up, about the Impergium and about Gaia creating all the shifters." There's a slight shake of her head as she grabs a dish towel. "After my first change I accused the Alpha of being part of some deranged cult my mother hired to scare me."
"I was prepared, well before I could change," Nolan says, nodding to Yael. "Just well after my family thought I might have a loose tongue." He shrugs, the grin softening. "Irish families tend to run large, so there was no shortage of evidence to quell any lingering doubt."
Yael sets the cup on the dish rack after mostly drying it off, and nods. "We were about seventy kilometres from the sept proper, and my mother didn't want to tell me," she says. "And my first change was relatively young, younger than they expected maybe— once I had enough information to understand, I never did get around to asking, and it was so long ago. But it's not unusual for our tribe, either. We're… a bit scattered."
"But they managed to convince you," Nolan supplies. He pushes off the counter and sets to folding the paper bags.
Yael grins a bit. "Eventually there's enough undeniable evidence," she says. she sobers, a moment. "Given enough time and the proper persuasion most people will come around to just about anything." Her brows furrow. "But that's another topic entirely." She glances outside, then, through the window and momentarily visibly distant.
"Indeed," Nolan says. He takes all three bags and folds them again into a neat package he tucks under his arm. "And perhaps for another time." He turns his smile to Yael and offers a lazy salute with his free hand. "I need to be heading back, but I'm sure I'll see you soon."
Yael offers a nod. "Road rise to meet you," she says, although the grin only reaches her eyes and even that just barely, and then turns back to looking at whatever it is was out there.
Nolan completes his salute and heads out through the front.