Sepdet comes again after darkness falls, an hour or so after Joseph has left for the hunt. As always the soft pawing at the window presages her arrival; unlike cats, she lets herself in.
Robin is sitting on the floor beside the window, her knees drawn to her chest. She's wearing a tailored white cotton blouse and a pair of black linen pants. Her feet are bare and the sleeves are rolled up to just below her elbows. So, when Sepdet comes to the window, Robin is sitting right there; and when the Strider comes inside, she murmurs the Lakota name she has given her. The fierce line across her shoulders and the cold touch in her eyes lessen the slightest bit.
Sepdet moves sideways to the window and sits down next to her stiffly and carefully, mimicking her position. "I saw him off from the shadows," she whispers. "There are many hunting with him."
A strangely out of place shudder rolls up over Robin's back. "I would fight, too." She looks once again out the window into the darkness.
Sepdet moves slowly, like a human near a wild animal, setting her hand on the woman's shoulder. "I know. Staying behind is another kind of battle, and the only victory--his coming home--is out of our hands."
Where the kinswoman was even and steady one night previous, she is angry, quietly unsteady tonight. "I've never been good at waiting," she confides low-toned, never dragging her eyes away from the window. "I'm not what I am."
There's a willful tilt of this woman's chin, a glint of determination behind her dark eyes that is a better indication of her heritage than any of her physical features. Still, she is quite clearly Native American in origin. The lines of her face and her form are angular, strong, her skin dusky with generations of sun. And so, the smooth coiffure of her hair, her clothing, even her subtle manicure contrasts broadly with the woman she could so easily have been two hundred years previous on this same land.
Currently she wears a pair of beige pants and a matching, squarish jacket of the same material. Beneath the jacket the collar of a linen blouse peeks out, the two top buttons undone. Her ebon hair is pulled back from her face at the sides and a mottled feather pierces the twist of hair diagonally. On her feet are a pair of dark brown leather loafers. And around her neck is a somewhat crudely fashioned, close-fitting, leather-strap neck-band.
Sepdet's mouth thins into a tired smile. "No. You're all fire." She reaches out to brush the hair at the nape of Robin's neck slowly, tentatively. "You could cross a river in flood, if you had to, but I don't think you could manage the first duty I ever had: 'get th' bandages ready, mind th' flat, and have cocoa ready when th' warriors come home.'" Her inflection changes slightly, dredging up a little of the street slang she discarded along with that life some years ago.
Robin turns eyes to Sepdet that don't at first see her. She wades through the words finally, and looks at the younger woman. "How many lives have you lived in this one?" she asks finally, almost awed, then abruptly tense once more.
Sepdet blinks and then gives a soft sad laugh. "I lost count a long time ago, Robin. One of my packmates says that's what I do instead of travelling like others of my tribe."
"Which one?" the kinswoman asks unexpectedly, now turning partly away from the window to look at Sepdet. She draws her hand away from the side of her neck and leaves red marks where she had been gripping tightly.
Sepdet's eyes are distracted by the bruise in the making, but the question comes back to her in the silence. "Dylan," she returns wistfully. "A man of peace. I was looking for him up in the sky, this last autumn."
Robin repeats the name after Sepdet, as if to honor it. Slowly Robin seems to drift back to herself. "He did not fight?"
Sepdet shakes her head. "Only against the Wyrm."
"Only," Robin repeats, smiling humorlessly. "He was strong," she guesses.
Sepdet nods tiredly. "Garou did not think so. He has gone to the sky where he can fight with his hands clean." The bitterness of recent days twists her face out of place again, but only for a moment.
One of Robin's hands, chilled, settles on Sepdet's knee. Her throat moves as she swallows, unable to speak.
Sepdet's hand falls away from her hair to fold over Robin's. She leans a little closer to the woman. "I fight too," she tells her softly. "Would sparring help? You can bite -me-, you know; I'll heal right up." There might be a spark of teasing in her expression, although these days it's very hard to find much mischief in her.
Briefly it looks as though Robin considers the offer, then she answers, "I run. When there is nothing else and the battle cries of my people do not tame the fire, I run." But he might come back.
Sepdet smiles genuinely. "Running is always best. It gets the wind going through your ears and your soul." She seems to be poised like a bird at the edge of a branch, nevermind that she's sitting all the way down, and suddenly she hops to her feet again, echoing a little of the woman's own restlessness. Stepping behind the human on the balls of her feet, the Strider shrinks a little smaller.
Sepdet just shifted to homid.
The movement jars the kinswoman a bit; Robin half turns to watch Sepdet. "You came," she murmurs discordantly. "Is there something you need?" She frowns a bit at herself. "You mustn't fall in with me, Hakhata Niyaha." A querying touch to Sepdet's ankle.
Sepdet looks down at her in sudden confusion, wilfully misunderstanding her again. "You were waiting," she says softly. "Waiting is bad. I thought I could make it easier." She sets her hands lightly behind Robin's shoulders, short enough she barely has to stoop.
Robin turns her head, tilting it back for a moment to look up at Sepdet before lowering her chin once more and stilling, holding her breath even, as the Strider's hands settle upon her shoulders. When she closes her eyes she sees red violence. When she opens them she hears growls and cries. But between blood beats, she feels her sister's hands there, stilling the vertigo.
Sepdet still moves hesitantly; one would think Robin were the wild-born and the Garou were the human, tonight. She sinks down to her knees carefully and slips her arms around Robin's waist, steadying her. "Tell me what you hear," she murmurs softly.
One of Robin's hands slides over Sepdet's arms around her middle but she remains a little stiff. She still smells faintly of the oil she tended to the Garou the previous night, a hint of mint. When it seems she might not answer, finally the words come. "There was a dream, you remember. When he was gone. In the gray I heard the pain." Small phrases one at a time. "I hear the wild rage and I hear the pain. I hear it clawing in my mind."
Sepdet's body moves behind the woman slightly as she nods to herself. "Wendigo," she whispers tightly. "Do you want me to sing it down, give you quiet? Or should I let it be?"
Long distance to Joseph: Sepdet continues to peer anxiously over your shoulder.
Joseph pages: It's not going well, but I'm still alive. :/
Long distance to Joseph: Sepdet frets. I should've made Joe a healing talen, dangit.
Robin's chin falls toward her chest. "You are the seer. I do not know how to hold the taste on my tongue but not in my heart. Tell me."Sepdet's arms stay steady and still, bracing her against the earth not many feet down beneath them. "Let Wendigo be your strength when you have battles to fight. But let the feather and the water and memories of summers spent with him be your anchors the rest of the time." She hums a few snatches of something, not the lullabye, but something sweet and distant and childlike, meant to pluck at younger memories.
Robin slowly relaxes back against Sepdet. "What is your strength, Hakhata, Niyaha?"
Sepdet gives a soft laugh. "None at all," she tells the woman in a light voice. "But don't tell them, will you?"