I mean she has a sword... [ attn: Calden, Hector, Tamsin, and Ingrid ]

[Damon]

"No," Calden interrupts, furrowing, "you don't have to do that. Your hygiene isn't the problem, and I didn't ask you to leave."

Hard to tell, the way he's sitting up in the saddle and the way that horse is dancing nervously under him, but Calden might just heave a sigh. Then he leans forward, stacking his forearms on the saddlehorn, and frowns down at the youngsters. They all look like youngsters to him. Few Garou survive to old age, but it's not that. Some just seem young.

Then the woman by the gate speaks up. Calden's head turns; he squints at her through the afternoon glare. Then he points a gloved hand in her direction

"She hit it on the head. 'Unexpected'. That's the problem. I'm a son of Stag. I keep the covenant of hospitality. But a host has a right to know who his guests are before they start helping themselves to his home and everything in it. Otherwise, the line between guest and trespasser blurs.

"Tamsin told me she and her packmate would be staying here occasionally over the next month. There are four people here. I know Tamsin. I know Jack. I seem to remember Jack is a packmate. I saw this fellow on Independence Day. I assume he's another packmate. And I don't know you at all, Miss." He cuts a glance to Tamsin as she introduces the fourth. "Ingrid," he amends.

He has to stop here. He has to wheel his mount around in a tight circle, sidestep it a few paces one way and then the other. The kinsman leans over the chestnut's neck, murmuring to it, unwrapping the reins from the horn and rewrapping them loosely around his fist as he brings the horse back to a standstill.

"Let's start again," he says, "from the beginning. I'm Calden White, of the Fianna."

[WTFBBQ TOO MANY THINGS TO KEEP TRACK OF. Some assumptions I made with that post:
1) Jess oocPMed me about telling Calden about Jack joining Celduin. So I assumed Calden would have a vague memory of that.
2) Since we handwaved the aftermath of July 4th, I assumed Calden would have at least seen Hector in his homid form at some point and seen him working with Tamsin, but was never formally introduced since... well, since we all went to bed.]

[jamie]

Ingrid starts to walk off and Tamsin's kinsman tries to stop her. The young man whose name Calden doesn't have does stop in his tracks, not sure if he's still leading the others away to the Caern, and slowly turns around to face the Fiann. Calden has the Garou's full attention as he speaks but then Hector clears his throat to speak up. He should have done that to start out instead of tearing ass off the property. That's what he's supposed to be doing as the alpha, right? Leading?

Anyone looking at him can tell he has no clue what he's doing.
Tamsin is the only one who can tell by looking at him that he's silently cursing someone who ought to be here right now.

"My name's Hector Echoes-of-the-Lost," he says, standing up straighter. "I'm a Cliath Moondancer of the Uktena. Tamsin Cinder-Song, Furious-Lament and Jack Law-in-War--" He points between Tamsin and Jack. "--are my packmates and I think I was the packmate she said might stay with you before?"

He looks to Tamsin for confirmation but carries on regardless of the answer. May have to point at Ingrid's retreating backside or the empty space where she'd been a moment before but he still introduces her.

"That's Ingrid Dances-With-The-Hurricane. I haven't shook her hand or anything yet but, uh. You know. She was at the Moot. I was totally paying attention. She's one of Thunder's. Jack says they were off on official sept business and came back victorious but tore-up. We weren't gonna take them inside or stay or anything, Jack here is a Bone Gnawer and wolf-born and thinks cell phones are for chewing and had to come find me and I don't want to cleanse them here because it involves a bunch of dancing around and burning-stuff and your horse is already spooked--" Pause for breath. "--so it was more like Jack was just rolling up and tootling the horn and we were jumping in and bailing anyway. You know. If he had a car. Which he doesn't."

Ahem.

"So we'd better get going."

[Damon]

This time Calden definitely sighs. It's somewhere between exasperated and remorseful. He lifts the hat from his head, hangs it over the saddlehorn, and scrubs a hand through his hair. Scrubs a dusty glove through his hair, actually.

"Nice to meet you all," he says. "And the horse'll survive. This isn't his first time around wolves.

"You don't need to get lost. You really don't. If you need to wash up, there's a shower in the guest room. If you need a place to rest and recup' from coming back victorious and torn up, there's a bed in there. Try not to bleed on the mattress. If you need food and drink, there's food and drink in the fridge. If you need any of these things, ever, just ask. I'm not being the most ... gracious host right now." There's a ghost of a smile; some private little joke. "Or even a polite one. And I know that. But I will help anyone of the Nation that needs it, any time."

A pause.

"There's a stand of trees about a quarter-mile that way." He nods northeast. "Stream runs through it. Might be a good place to dance around and holler. Come back when you guys are done. Take a shower. Have dinner before you go. I'll have one of the ranchhands drive you guys."

[Joey]

For a second the man perched on horseback gets a look from the Philodox. Like Jack doesn't quite understand what claim he has on this place, on all this open space that is legally White land. To Jack, it looks like it might even be the horse that has more of a claim.

The Philodox recognizes a different law.

But he does glance at Tamsin as she gives introductions. He's still leaking clotted flesh from his side and down to his jeans, but at least he doesn't seem to be bleeding anymore.

He finally looks like he's going to pipe up when Hector does. Thankfully. Because who knows what he would have to say. But Calden has seen this game before, when Jack starts like he's going to say something, but someone else speaks instead. Not as confrontational as the night they'd met Fern the tainted cub. Quiet beginning of words and phrases like growls he never intends on finishing anyway. "I'ma packm-," Rackin'-frackin'-varmint-Yosemite-Sam, if you're a Looney Tunes fan. "We all ain't goin'-," says the bloodied Bone Gnawer, finally letting the fabric fall back over that open wound to his side. "'House nice and I ain't-," this a note of deferment in his scratched washboard of a voice. Of deferment, but not much.

There is a stink, but there isn't much mess, the back of a motorcycle having gone far toward drying on the caked human waste. "I jus'-" and he's only made it a step or two from that gate by the time Hector has started apologizing and explaining and introducing. Ingrid's bow and words finally get an answer. Jack is starting to look frustrated. Calden had seen this before as well. And he finally withdraws, shutting up as Hector says what he can't nicely.

Hector had already started leading them out.

So when Ingrid turns around to leave, and his alpha is already making toward doing so - seeing as he's the one he'd come to for cleansing - Jack gives a sniff as he looks around the land, then back up at Calden, then down at the horse, before finally heading on out as well. "Hos-p-frickin'-hell-these-people-talitly," grumbling again.

[errin]

Ingrid had started to leave, yes. She had followed Jack out here first because there was mention of cleansing, then because of her love of the open road, and then finally because well she was already all the way out here. But instead of cleansing she found herself inadvertently trapped into dishonorable trespass. On the property of a kinsman of someone else's tribe.

Cue the long, drawn out, internal sigh.

The only sign of her exasperation had been a faint edge to her statement to Jack.

So she turned to go, but then everyone started chiming up in her wake. Calden says it's the unexpectedness that bothers him. That his offer of hospitality had been offered to one, maybe two people who had then extended it and extended it on their own is not lost to Ingrid. And it does not sit well with her, not at all. Hector speaks up, adjusting the fit of his mantle of leadership, trying to get it to set a little more comfortably on his shoulders and finding it uncomfortable, anyway, but he tries. That's what stops Ingrid at the gate. That he tries. Hector introduces and explains. Says they better get going.

And then Calden extends his offer of hospitality. Ingrid's shoulders tighten and her mouth tenses. The rest of her expression is obscured by those overlarge sunglasses of hers. It's one thing to offer and accept genuine hospitality. It's another when the hand that offers it has been sort of mostly forced into it.

Then she smiles. The bow she offers him is slight, an angling of her upper body at the waist. "Thank you, Mr. White, but for my part at least that won't be necessary. Perhaps sometime in the future we may try this again." Her words are polite and courteous, until the this last which is made of ice. "Properly."

This entire affair had been approached all wrong and she found herself an unwitting participant. The most she can do now to salvage her honor is to respect the territory of this kinsman in the only way she can right now. By leaving it.

[jamie]

Hector looks sufficiently rattled by the time Calden extends the offer. The young man can stand up in front of a Sept full of complete strangers all higher ranked and judging him and he'll gladly embarrass the hell out of himself if it serves the purpose of the story and will make someone else look good. As far as goofing-off in the name of storytelling goes he has had ample practice. His pack was mostly tricksters when he joined them.

A part of him knows he needs to stop goofing off though. The knowledge that he managed to just-barely salvage Ingrid's first impression of him is no reassurance.

"Okay," he says to Calden, and he smiles a flicker-quick almost-grin that takes care not to show teeth because that's a sign of all sorts of things to his people. From where he sits all Calden can see is that the kid is embarrassed. "Thank you, sir."

With that he throws an arm over Jack's shoulders and marches him off. Shoots a look at Tamsin like to say gee thanks a lot even though it wasn't her fault. It's cut short by his inhaling too deep too close to Jack and coughing the cough of someone who's almost lost his lunch.

"Holy," he says and takes his arm off his packbrother as the lupus is grumbling, pushes him away playful and without force. "Hey, next time you see a Highlander riding towards us on a freakin' horse, warn me, would you?"

And off they go.

[Damon]

Calden's seating the hat back on his head when Jack grumbles something about hospitality and these fuckin people. It arrests Calden's motion for a second. He looks at Jack, a frank, level regard that holds a moment longer than most people would be able to bear.

Then he cuts to Ingrid, who is bowing. Which of course makes Calden tug the brim of his hat in response. "Miss," he says.

Off she goes. And off go Hector and Jack -- at least for the moment -- which leaves just him and Tamsin. Calden clicks his tongue at the big gelding, turning it around toward the stables.

"Can you stick around a minute?" he says to Tamsin. "Let me put Tanner back in his stall and we'll have a word, all right?"

And off he goes, too.