Sepdet is curled up on the rug in front of the hearth, asleep.
There's the sound of the car in the drive. The silver Audi pulls up, its ignition turns off and the lights follow suit. Dressed in jeans and a high necked wool sweater that hangs just past her hips, Robin gets out of the car and grabs a few bags from the back seat. She nudges the door closed with her hip and heads for the house. The front door opens and she moves in to set the bags down on one of the couches, only then catching sight of Sepdet. She moves back to pull the door closed, then steps out of her shoes and makes her way over to the floor in front of the hearth. Before speaking or touching the Strider, she puts another log on the dying fire and stokes it a little.
Sepdet stirs and wakes slowly, recognizing the sound of the car like anyone with enough doggy blood in them, but she waits where she is, uncurling slowly and stretching out. There's still too much quiet around her, the wrong sort, but she gives the woman a thin smile.
Robin turns on her knees to face Sepdet, her silence a query.
Sepdet shakes her head. "I told you I'd still come here," she tells the woman softly. "How are you doing?"
Robin clasps her hands loosely atop her knees, her gaze sliding over Sepdet. "I bought a boat." she answers evenly, her dark eyes warm as they find the smaller woman's.
Sepdet's smile grows a little easier. "Good. The water's -very- cold." She shudders slightly. "Keeps the place safer, but mostly it just keeps away those I want to see." A sudden thought knits her brows towards one another, and she looks at Robin sharply.
Robin tips her head to one side, waiting for the thought she sees to actualize. The fire pops.
Sepdet leans forward, rising up from the ground slightly to settle her hands on Robin's shoulders, looking earnestly into the woman's face. "A boat doesn't tell me about /you/," she growls.
Robin's lips tip up faintly. "I am well enough. Today there is no battle fever." She unclasps her hands and reaches over to touch lightly at Sepdet's sleeve.
Sepdet's mouth turns up a little at the edges. "Fierce Wendigo. I didn't think it was possible for a human to frighten a Garou. It always goes the other way, I thought."
Robin draws her hand back and settles her palms on her knees. Her dark eyes hold good humor. "Would you prefer to frighten me, Hakhata Niyaha?"
Sepdet's gaze falters immediately. "Not at all, so I suppose it's just as well." She covers it with a smile. "Were you coming home for dinner? Can I help?"
Robin watches said faltering, leaning a bit forward now. "Why is it just as well?" She doesn't let the subject drop just yet.
Sepdet grimaces. "We don't need more walls."
Robin's gaze steels a bit now. "How many do we have?"
Sepdet's voice flattens slightly with the ghost of irritation. "Let's see. Garou and human. Strider and non-Strider. Wyrmcomer and Wendigo. Healer and warrior. Lonely and owned." An eyebrow lifts. "How many does that make?"
[Had to pause for the night and pick up next day]
Robin listens attentively to the spelling out. "Strange, kunsi wicin. I had seen the hills and cliffs as a strength between us."
Sepdet bites her lip. "Well, they toughen up the feet, anyway," she says wearily, looking away towards the fire. "But my feet are very sore."
Robin smiles now, but gently. "You must let me do more of the travelling, She-Strides-Deep."
Sepdet rises silently and touches her shoulder, moving towards the kitchen, padding across the floor like a cat that comes inside the house by choice and not because she can't be elsewhere. "Then come find me," she says over her shoulder. "Come down to the water's edge and bring your stories, your silences. I need those things."
Still kneeling, Robin watches Sepdet move away, no less attentive than she was before. "Shall we go now? I have some food and a tarp. And the boat." She tips her head with what could be invitation, possibly even teasing. "Would you like a bath first? The water is very warm."
Sepdet's eyes leap at the first suggestion, but the rest of her face melts at the second. "Oh. I..." she rests her hands on the counter, halfway to the kettle and her purpose there quite forgotten. "You know how to make the wanderer come in from the open road, Satshu't," she murmurs wryly.
"It is one of my favorite walls," Robin answers in low tones, her dark eyes glimmering as she plays with Sepdet's complaint.
Sepdet removes herself from the kitchen and prowls after Robin's invisible lure, taking the stairs with hands as well as feet. Robin's remark elicits a pained smile.
You go up the stairs.
Loft -- A-frame
Obvious exits:
Down
Robin comes up the stairs from the great room below.
Robin has arrived.
Robin remains where she is, kneeling for a time after Sepdet goes upstairs. She listens for the running water, now smiling that small smile of hers.
Sepdet flips the faucets on, warm but perhaps not quite as hot as some humans prefer; compared to the stream where she usually bathes, it's a hot spring. She strips unselfconsciously-- Collin's disastrous prank hasn't changed that, at least-- and sits down with her toes hanging over the edge, shivering slightly while she waits for the water to fill. "Robin?" she calls meekly.
Robin had intended to let Sepdet bathe in privacy, but the call draws her upstairs with unsurprising alacrity. She stops in the bathroom doorway, then moves to kneel on the floor behind Sepdet, her fingers tracing the nape of her neck. "Yes, Hakhata Niyaha?"
Sepdet tips her head back, shoulders arching against the woman's hands. "Well, I could have taken a bath -before- you came home," she observes shyly, "but if you have work or some other thing you meant to be doing, it's fine."
Robin presses her smile to the skin her hand just touched. "It was one of my favorite parts of this house," she confides. "--this bathtub. But if you are salmon," she begins. "What am I?"
Sepdet closes her eyes with a spreading smile. "You'd know better than me," the Strider guesses softly. "But perhaps... mointain lion, puma. Grooming cubs one minute, running down a deer the next."
Robin draws back and away, leaving humid warmth from the flowing bath between them as she pulls off her sweater and the cotton undershirt beneath. She stands and steps out of her pants and underpants as well, pushing all the clothing away from the bath's edge before tracing a the line of Sepdet's spine queryingly with a fingertip. "Sometimes I guess a nightbird. Always watching and waiting."
Sepdet shivers, her body moving unconsciously under the sinuous touch. Old scars are there, unfortunately, marring the lean muscles of her brown back. "Does that make you owl, then?" the Strider teases softly.
Robin pages: Would Robin know the significance?"
You paged Robin with 'I'm really not sure. She may not have heard anyone ever refer to the Striders as Owl's children.'.
Robin is distracted by the scars, musing over them as she finally answers, "If Owl would share the name."
Sepdet rolls her shoulders. "There are many people besides mine who understand the shadows under his wings, just as some may pack under a spirit other than those allied with their own tribe." She turns her head. "Be owl. It's another reason why we understand each other." She fumbles with her hair, unbraiding the single piece into which the feather has been woven, setting it aside gently far out of range of the tub's edge.
From afar, Robin is aghast that she can't remember the source of that feather.
You paged Robin with 'It's the one Chloe wore in her hair. A raven-feather the size of an eagle's, from Chloe's spirit-familiar. Bound into Sepdet's hair by a white cord dyed red. :}'.
Robin pages: Gotcha.
From afar, Robin is going to have to sleep very soon.
Long distance to Robin: Sepdet nods.
Robin tips her head, suddenly seeming to glean from Sepdet's words the significance of the bird. She remains silent as the feather is set aside, waiting for Sepdet to get into the water before she moves to do so.
Sepdet slides in like an otter, gasping slightly as she immerses herself, but holds a hand up silently to signal for Robin to wait. She tips the hand outward and flat, parallel to the water's surface, spreading her fingers. Brows knit in concentration, she exhales slowly, and then, so quietly that it almost looks natural, a sheen of tiny flames dances over the surface of the water spreading out in ripples from the Strider, lapping up over the edge of the tiles and flickering out.
Robin watches, her lips parting in surprise and fascination as the flames appear and ripple outward. She looks back to Sepdet, her query -- as usual -- silent.
Sepdet smiles delightedly and shoots Robin an all-too-human look, eyebrows telegraphing, /See?/ Then she leans back in the water and paddles, beckoning Robin in next to her with swirls of water.
Robin unfolds one long, dark leg and touches her toes tentatively to the water, half expecting to see more flames. When she doesn't, she slips in as well, and settles, chest-deep the warm water. "That is new," she notes with her eyes smiling.
Sepdet nods, pleasure devoid of the pins of recent memories flashing across her face. "I'm still learning it. I'll be able to make rain, too, if I get it right!"
Robin pages to the room: Okay! I'm stopping here because if I don't I won't. :)