[with an emphasis on checking in on the Spiral Kinswoman]
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The life of Samantha Evans - as with all parents - can be divided into two eras: Before Jake and After Jake.
During both eras she has been nothing short of completely busy, but the busy-ness was different. Before Jake she wandered more, did more projects, could devote more time to keeping herself fit and ready should danger rear its ugly head. After Jake, well. All of that was cut back so she could make more time for her son.
Before Jake she tried to visit Forgotten Questions once a week or so, to sit and spend time with Fern or to hike and wander on the days she was told, "Not today, Kinfolk." She hasn't been able to visit since she took Jake in, was too busy figuring out how to juggle her work with her training with spending time with her son, on top of moving from a condo downtown into a house somewhere else. She doesn't expect to see Fern the day she finally makes it down, not with the moon growing so full. She goes anyway, though, looking for and eventually being found by one of the Caern's Guardians, and when she's told, "Not today, Kinfolk," she nods her understanding. And she asks if they'll at least let Fern know that she was here, that she hasn't gone anywhere and she hasn't forgotten the girl. Please let her know that she'll come again.
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That same day, instead of wandering around the park Sam goes back into the city, downtown and to Cold Crescent. It'll be the first time she's been inside the Broadway building since she and three Cliath Garou met a member of the Beloved Horror in a bar. The reason for the wide berth she's given the place - going so far as to move well out of view of that tall building - is a simple one. Twice Sam has been present when children of the Beloved Horror have been taken. The first time was the night she drove a van full of Garou to Forgotten Questions. The second was when she stole her son right out from under a Spiral's goddamned nose. He'd already recognized her, that Spiral, from the night Fern was kept away from his pack. She's not entirely surprised he hasn't come hunting down the one who kidnapped his child and who tried to take his woman, too. The Spiral in that bar hadn't seemed overly attached to the baby, didn't know his name, didn't even question when his supposed mate said that baby was a girl.
Still. Sam's kept her distance from the lightning rod of trouble that is the Sept of the Cold Crescent.
But, today she aims to change that. Her time is limited, but she wants to spend some of it helping where she can. In a building filled with Glass Walkers and their gifts and spirits she doesn't expect to be of much use to them, but she can help out Hosea. She can sit with him like she did the day she realized she not only could take care of the baby she saved, but that she wanted to take care of him.
So, it's the quiet kinsman who looks after the sept's children that Sam seeks out when she gets to the building. First, to see if they even still keep children in the building these days, and second to offer her assistance if they do.
And third: To quietly ask, "Do you know what happened to Jake's birth mom?"
Not today, Kinfolk is a refrain heard, in one form or another, frequently when it comes to Fern. But some days when the moon isn't so full and the twitchy young ahroun cub is a little less twitchy, she has been known to go walking with Sam Evans, while guardians watch from a distance or the penumbra, making sure she doesn't snap. She doesn't seem, on those days when she's safe to see, like she's liable to snap. She mostly asks about the world, and what Sam does, and how she spends her days, and she doesn't have much to share on her part but that's why, in fact, she's asking.
It helps. As much as anything can help her.
--
The Sept of the Cold Crescent feels strangely empty. It's not, not by a long shot, but the absence of almost all of the elders of this sept can be felt in the very air. The elevator doors slide open with a whisper in their tracks and let her out into one of the more residential floors, where it is not hard to find Hosea.
Hosea is angry. Hosea, whose easy demeanor makes him a perfect fit for the job he does, is no stranger to frustration or wrath. In fact, of the three brothers who make up Head of Security, Den Father, and Warder of Cold Crescent, it's laid-back Hosea who is the most kneejerk defensive of their widely varied skin tones and completely different surnames. Granted, they're all equally likely to tear you a new one if you say anything not-so-nice about their mother, but Hosea doesn't even like answering questions about their family ties.
Today, thankfully, that is so far outside of Sam's purpose or even Sam's knowledge that it isn't going to come up. All the same, when she finds the Den Father, it's obvious that he's not in the best of moods. And why not? The moot is coming soon. The elders all around his brother have been dragged off to Forgotten Questions without answers, without anything, and he keeps wondering when Warning Threshold is going to be taken.
There are very few kids here. Hosea has been fostering some of the younger ones, who are few to begin with, among other families. There are a couple of grouchy-looking pre-teens in what has occasionally been a nursery, playing a video game and occasionally getting rough with each other, their arguments -- even playing co-op, for god's sake -- sometimes getting physical. Before Sam even gets in there, she's coming in on the tail end of yet another That is ENOUGH by Hosea, followed by a brief lecture about privileges and how they can be revoked in favor of work details.
The pre-teens are so obviously on the verge of their changes that it explains why they're not at school. Why they're here. Why, this close to a full moon, they're trying to kill each other over games.
He turns to Sam, exhaling, giving her a nod of hello as the kids go back to choosing their avatars. "I don't know," Hosea mutters, coming up to Sam, this his greeting of choice: "Maybe I should just break down and let them play a fight game. Not sure if it would stoke their tempers or sate them."
Maybe she gives advice, her thoughts on the matter. But eventually, she does have to get down to business, and asks about the baby's mother. Hosea looks pained.
"Cindy," he says quietly. "We found out her name, or at least one she'll answer to. She was pretty much catatonic after she got here," which Sam already knew, "but it didn't get much better. Sometimes she talks about having a baby, and asks where the baby is." He speaks quietly, to the side, so the kids don't overhear, and shakes his head. "At first we were just telling her he wasn't here, and she'd accept that. A while ago I tried telling her that someone else is his mother now, and all she did was nod."
He winces, a quick grimace. "Then she cried. While nodding." He glances out the door, then at Sam. "She actually came back up here when it re-opened. I think the work the Theurges did actually had some kind of affect on her, too. She seems to be getting better. More coherent, more awake. She doesn't ask where the baby is anymore, but... I think she still thinks about him." His brow furrows. "You know I'd tell you -- call you or let you know somehow -- if I was worried she'd come after either of you. You trust that, right?"
Hosea's foul mood is almost palpable to someone like Samantha Evans, who has a an almost uncanny insight in the emotional states of those around her. She doesn't let it stop her from approaching him, though, barely lets it affect her except that her smile is a touch more subdued. For all that, it's still very bright, still very warm, still very friendly and full of charm.
She sort of understands that bad mood when she sees the youngsters playing roughly as they try to play their console game. Sam's mouth quirks into a crooked grin. Her only advice is something along the lines of, "When my little brother was acting up..." and ending with the brief recounting of a time literally threw him outside and told him to run until he dropped. It didn't always work, but sometimes the exertion, with the sun in his face and the wind in his hair, helped Henry come back a little calmer.
Of course then it's time to get down to business. The kinswoman, mother of Sam's adopted son, a woman whose fate had been up in the air at the time of her rescue.
Sam listens quietly, but cannot hide a look of faint concern. Cindy, getting better, asking about her baby and then crying for him. It hurts her heart a little, but Sam knows, she knows she won't ever give that baby up again. His care will always be in her hands, for as long as she draws breath he will be her son. He will be raised a Glass Walker. He may or may not Change, himself, some day. She glances at the teens, watching their intent faces a moment, imagining Jake's some day that same way as he maybe struggles with the same thing.
Even if she hadn't allowed herself to be momentarily distracted, Hosea's assertion would startle her. Sam blinks large, black-lined dark blue eyes up at him, brows lifted. The idea honestly hadn't occurred to her, though she would suppose if asked that she is on some level prepared for that. It goes right along with being watchful for the approach of Jake's Spiral father.
"Yeah," she says. "Of course. I just...I really wanted to make sure she was okay. I know that was all uncertain before, but I haven't had time to check in since..." Since everything, really, the attack on the building, the adoption of her son, the moving, all of it.
She offers him that quirking, crooked smile, this time thoughtful and a little distant. "Maybe...no. It's probably not a good idea for her to see him, not yet, anyway."
"Good,"
says Hosea. He nods with the word, as though the physical action repeats the word itself. Then his brow quirks. "Maybe no what?"
Sam breathes in deep, let's it out on not-quite-a-sigh. Her mouth is still twisted upward in that crooked sort of smile. Shoulder lifting slightly, when it falls she says, "I'd like it if...someday...she could see Jake. I'm not going to hide from him where he's from. That means not hiding him from his birth mom, or her from him.
"But," she says a little brighter, a little rueful, "now's not the time. It doesn't sound like she's ready, and I don't want to do anything that might upset her recovery."
Hosea gives a small smile to that. It's wan. It's understandable.
"Of course not," he says. "Just... don't get your hopes up that one day she might be able to be a part of his life. I'm not sure she's ever going to 'recover'. Not completely, at least."
"We can hope," she says, and the way she says it, the way she looks when she says it, she means it. Sam is smart and practical and pragmatic. She knows as well as anyone that Cindy will never be better than she is now. But she can hope. Sometimes, that's all any of them can do.
"I don't expect her to be able to come to Sunday dinners or anything, and honestly, it'll be more for him than it would be for her. So that can definitely wait. It's just..." she trails, looking at those kids playing their game, so close to Change it hangs in the air like a charge. Looking up at Hosea, she continues, "there's so much to figure out. Most adopted kids find out their birth parents were in prison or something. How'm I supposed to tell him his were Spirals?" She shakes her head, not really looking for the answer to that question now.
"Is she still here?" she asks.
Sam's gaze lowers. She nods once, distracted and thoughtful, and again more definitively before lifting her chin. "Good," she says. "Maybe I can see her sometime." 'Maybe' because time. 'Maybe' because it's not up to her whether she can or can't. And 'maybe' because Sam saw that woman so broken she couldn't be roused to save her own child, a child that's now Sam's to raise. That complicates her feelings just a bit.
"Are you doing okay here?" she asks then. She means as far as supplies and help go, but with everything that's been happening lately, Sam wouldn't blame him if Hosea wanted to talk to someone over the age of eighteen a little longer.
These days, the den father only has so much sympathy for those who are not his relatives or in his charge. All the same, he gives a faint wince, a tugging of his brows together.
"Maybe," he says, but there's doubt in that tone that isn't hard for someone like Sam to read. That Cindy wavers between catatonic and alert even on her best days, that whatever was done to her has turned some of her brain to mush, that some days she doesn't even remember she had a child -- and Hosea does not know quite what would happen if she got around Sam. Or Jake.
At best, nothing. Not even recognition.
At worst ...
well. She is Spiral kin.
"As well as can be expected," he says, and that's all. He doesn't resent the offer, but he doesn't seem inclined to open up any more.