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Why, if it's not another of Sierra's very long walks to nowhere that end up, by turn or by twist, by subconscious intention or by fate, actually taking her somewhere. In this case, she was about fifteen blocks from the Altman Foundation when she realized the proximity, and started to move in that direction, picking up the pace as wet, barely-frozen snow flurries start to come down.
Ludwig said she could use the library any time, so, why not now? Sure, it's the middle of the night, but it's also wet-snowing, which makes fifteen blocks of speed-walking and a library sound all the more attractive, not that she needs much more of a reason to swing by the stacks again.
She knocks, but the moment of waiting is too long and the weather is starting to kick up a little bit more, so she pushes the door open and nearly mows down the person who was (finally) on their way to answer it. "Oh, sorry, I'm sorry, I'm friends with Ludwig, he said I could," and she gestures in the direction of the library, making all the apologetic sounds and faces as she removes her somewhat damp self from the immediate proximity of the Wolf-Blooded she nearly toppled.
Very smooth.
The shenanigans in the foyer calls the attention of the younger of the Altman siblings: Sigi stopped by the Foundation for much the same reason that Sierra did. She'd been out running at night (though not whistling in the dark, as Jano seems so fascinated by) and it got gross, so she decided 'fuck that' and came to the Foundation for a hot shower and a change of clothing.
Thus it is that she comes padding out to the foyer in socks, black yoga pants, and a black t-shirt fitted across her shoulders. It's Sonja's, so it's a little small.
She's in the process of braiding her damp hair, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. There's a pause in the doorway as she watches this all go down, and then a grunt. "She is," Sieghilde confirms. It's nice to be able to confer with your brother with a quickness. "Do not knock him over, he is not as sturdy as you are." Her accent is sharp-edged Austrian, just like her brother's, crisp and clear.
Sierra swivels her attention in the direction of a recognizably stark accent, pushing a hand back through a dark and damp mane of hair as recognition settles. "Oh, hello," she replies automatically, gathering her bearings. "I didn't know if anyone would be awake at this hour. It's disgusting out, and I was near," she hooks a thumb back towards the front entrance, the door, and the bad weather beyond it.
"Sieghilde," she tests the name; accent is pretty good, probably actually speaks German. "We met a few weeks ago, at Amadeus, you were there with your wife. Ludwig offered me access to the library," she reiterates, ignorant of the immediacy of the Altman pack bond, but when you waltz into someone's joint, show your invitation seems like a prudent move. "I hope I didn't disturb you."
"Frau Roen. I remember now," agrees Sieghilde, crossing the distance between the doorway she'd lingered in and the woman in question. She tosses a glance aside to the staffer who answered the door, offering a vague shrug as if to say, it's fine. Her long-fingered hand is offered out for a handshake, the other one plucking her cigarette from the corner of her mouth so she can blow the smoke out of the corner of her mouth and away from Sierra's face.
"Ja, he would do that. It is not bad to be here. I was out running and it was disgusting, so, I too am here. And you are not making any disturbance. Do you want something to drink?"
Sierra meets the extended hand for a handshake that is firm enough so as to be respectful and sure of itself, but without anything to prove, and quick, just a hair quicker than most people's, ready to retreat back. "Ah, yeah, that would be great. Weihenstephaner?" She curves the corners of her mouth into an amiable grin; Ludwig had likely told her that, too. Once the handshake has ended, she starts to slough out of her jacket, a garment that's two shades just shy of black, and little droplets of water start to peel away from it, sprinkling softly in her wake. "Should I put this somewhere?"
Sigi's handshake is formal, precise, exactly so. She has nothing to prove and knows it, and handshakes are a big part of Austrian life, even more so than American life. An eyebrow rises, and she grunts amicably. "We have plenty of that," the Rahu agrees, taking a step back and gesturing with one hand. The bar is in the library, after all. Where else would you drink but near the books, right? Or it's near it, anyway. I forget the exact layout. "Let me take it," Sieghilde answers, reaching a hand for the garment. There's a closet for coats, undoubtedly, and she wasn't raised to be a terrible host.
Sierra loosens a scarf from around her neck, stuffs it in the pocket of the jacket, and hands it off to Sigi for the coat closet, then starts to make her way towards the library and its attendant, centrally located bar, moving at that slower-than-usual pace that one does when they are a few steps ahead of someone that they would rather not be a few steps ahead of. "Are you also going to be traveling to Europe in the next few weeks? For the," and at this, she uses those exaggerated air quotes, "Lecture tour?"(edited)
She hangs up the coat, shaking it out over the mat first so that all the water comes off and the coat will dry out. Sieghilde absently reaches up to unbraid her hair because it is not laying right against the back of her head, and rebraids it with practiced motions as she follows into the library. She doesn't slow down, though, just heads for the bar like she lives here or something. She doesn't, but she might as well, on account of, you know, her brother owns the place. This isn't the funeral parlor, though.
"If my brother thinks that he can go back to Europe without me, he has a ... " And then Sieghilde pauses, and revises. "He is sadly mistaken. So yes, I am on the lecture tour with my brother going." She leans down to the small fridge in which the beers are stored, retrieves two, and passes over a bottle to Sierra before biting the cap off of her own and spitting said cap into the trash can at the bar's end. Like you do.
Sierra absorbs the response for a contemplative moment as she accepts the drink, eases herself into one of cushions, and hardly makes a sound; Irraka to the letter. Inwardly, she feels herself regretting just a little bit that someone quite as damp as she is sitting on furniture quite as nice as this, but alas. The ghost of a faint wince at the fleeting thought flickers across her expression, but passes quickly. "You're eager to go back, then? Do you miss it?"
She gets her own beer open in a more mechanical fashion, holding the under-lip of the ridged cap against the corner of the bar and giving the top a small, short bop, snapping the little white and gold bottle cap free and spinning on the bartop.
"Prost," she supplies, raising the bottle to clink it against the neck of Sigi's.
Sieghilde answers without hesitation: "Of course I miss it. I lived in Austria all of my life with a few exceptions, some time in Berlin, some brief weeks in other places. Most of my life, I lived in Vienna. It would be a bad homeland, and I would be a strange person, if I did not miss it, a month living here. Plus, your politics are very strange and your health care system is terrible." The latter sentence is probably some sort of obscure Austrian humor, the very dry way in which she says it.
The Rahu clicks her bottle neck against Sierra's, curling up the corner of her mouth. "Prosst," she agrees, and then slings herself up onto the bar, because apparently her formality doesn't extend to not putting her butt on her brother's bar. "I am eager to visit. It is good to be here, for our son, for him to go to college. But I will always want to visit home."
"That's what I have heard," she buzzes. "Your whole life? But I haven't been in one place for longer than a couple of years -- and even then, that was only once -- since I was a child," Sierra responds after considering Sigi's response for a moment, sipping from the frosty Bavarian brew. "And most of it abroad. There are many places that I liked, and there were even some that I loved. I miss certain things about some of them, little details and wrinkles. But I can't think of any that I long for."
Another sip. "That's probably why I kept moving." She tilts her head back, casting a deep, dark green gaze around the library. "And now I'm back here. Well, aside from this trip -- then I'll be back here again," she states the utterly obvious, narrating the thought process as part of the conversation. "I went to Vienna in 2013. I stayed in a room right across from the Ankeruhr clock, there was a grocery market or something just by it." She sips from the beer again. "It was a quick stay. I was only passing through."
"Why did you do so much moving?" asks Sieghilde, folding her legs in the style that kindergartens now call criss cross applesauce and setting her bottle on her knee. Her cigarette, which has been hanging from one of her hands most of this time, gets deposited back in the corner of her mouth, and she leans behind the bar to snag an ashtray. "Military -- what is it, military brat? -- or something?"
She blinks slowly. Once, twice. "Our territory was not far from there. Clockface, he was -- mmm, a friend of Ludwig's. An ally, better to say."
"I wanted to," Sierra supplies bluntly, sipping from the beer. "That, and the idea of staying for anywhere for too long, and getting settled and being anchored down, possibly missing out on the rest of the world made me want to claw my eyes out. I Changed right here, in Philadelphia, and left a little while later." She exhales a sigh with some weight on it, some heft, and heave. "And came back after," a flat gesture. "The Wounding." She doesn't linger on the topic, too somber for less than halfway through the first beer of the night.
"But, yeah, because I wanted to. That became my life. And my Lodge. Going from one place to another, piecing together a global network of allies and associates, a patchwork of People and Shadow-adjacent almost-People from one side of the world to the other, and pursuing the matters of," she uses those air-quotes again, "Highest import. That is to say, Shadow anomalies that locals can't deal with, for one reason or another, sometimes because of a lack of information or bargaining power. In summary," she says with a small, circling swoop of her beer-bearing hand, "I have never stayed anywhere very long. Except Peru. I stayed there two years. Mm," she reminisces, sipping from her beer again. "Peru's good." Not great; just good. Good enough for two years, though.
The ashtray snagged, Sigi sets it next to her knee and stubs out the butt end of one cigarette before reaching under the edge of the bar for her pack. It's a European brand, and she shakes a cigarette out of the soft pack, rummaging for a lighter next. "That's fair. Moving because you want to, that is a good reason. Many people, when they say 'I moved a lot,' it is a military reason, or work, or the like." The scrape of the strike wheel follows, a blossom of flame, the cherry lit. A little ritual marking off chunks of time. "Mmm," she agrees to the words 'the wounding.' "We came for my son's education, mostly. But the timing, it works."
"Why is Peru good?" The rest of it is merely accepted. "And which Lodge?" She doesn't know, after all.
The Bone Shadow takes a moment to consider Peru's qualities, answering with a nostalgic sigh. "The sun. The ruins. The colors. The Amazon. The plentiful and cheap pisco sours. The people are okay, too," Sierra notes with a touch of sobriety, but she moves on to the next question. "That would be Endless Horizon, for those of the new moon and wanderlust variety," she supplies, tapping her finger on the bottle's neck in a thoughtful affectation.
She drops the cigarette into the corner of her mouth, leans on one hand for a moment, considering the qualities as enumerated. "I do like sun. I am used to the ... dourness. Of Austria. Even when bright, it is somehow dour, my city of death." And Sieghilde chuffs at that, something like a very very low-key laugh, then straightens up and plucks her cigarette free again, taking a long swallow of her beer that requires tilting her head back. A thump against her breastbone with the base of her thumb. "Ah, yes. I have known some. If it is the life for you, it is good, yes?"
"It is." Sierra nods her head in agreement like someone who has considered the question many times. "For better or for worse, I'm here now, for a little while, but naturally I couldn't help jumping at the chance when your brother mentioned a trip," she admits with the ghost of an indulgent grin curving her features. "I've reached out to my people with a soft itinerary. We'll be good to go once we arrive. Inroads won't be a problem. If I had known that you wanted to stay in Europe a little while, I might have gone a little slower," she cajoles.
She snorts in amusement at the cajoling from Sierra, idly rolling the bottle's neck between her long fingers. "Oh, I cannot too long stay in Europe. We must set up the funeral home here in America, which requires work and being present and paying attention for a little while. If we do not do this, then who will have a crematorium for the times when one is necessary?" One of her eyebrows rises just so, and she abandons her cigarette to let it smoke slowly in the ashtray. "It is good, that someone is handling the itinerary. I am meant to show up and make the appropriate things stop moving." Her tone is drier than usual, quite the feat.
Sierra shifts where she sits, crossing one leg over the other and resting her elbow on the armrest of the chair she's occupied. "I'm not sure what to expect. I guess these are places that Usum was seen in the past, and we are meant to investigate their properties and history as much as possible. But I wouldn't be surprised if its presence left deep, lasting scars on the Hisil," she muses in contemplation in between sips from the bottle. "Ludwig mentioned that you had dealt with a Wound before?"
She thinks about that, considering the philosophy of it all, and then rolls her shoulders. "I don't know," she agrees. "But we shall find out. I try not to go in with assumptions, the assumptions which I make are usually wrong, and when people like me are wrong, then people die. I do not like this." A grunt. "In Wien," Sieghilde agrees. She finishes her beer, then grips the front edge of the bar so she can lean back and drop her empty bottle into the bin behind the bar with a clattery-thunk. "Not so far from our home, unfortunately. It was a long time ago. Lots of politics around who would do the fighting. Too much dick-waving, you know? So people got hurt."
"Mm. I think the dick-waving is a luxury we don't have," Sierra supposes back, a little slower with her own drink. The Blood Talons had been cut down by more than half, in addition to the other heavy losses at the Wound. Theirs was not a question of who would fight, but if there would even be enough. "What was it like afterwards, after the Wound was healed? Was it healed?" she wonders. "Did it go back to normal, or were there scars?"
"It was not a luxury we had then, either, but people did it anyway." Sieghilde shrugs, straightening back up and tugging on the stomach of her shirt absently. She fixes her gaze on Sierra for a moment, letting out a small sigh. "I think it is sort of an inevitable thing with us, the posturing." She shrugs, reaches for her cigarette. "It took a long time, but things got to ... I would call it a new normal, I guess. Things are never perfect again?"
Whether she means to or not, Sierra's dark green eyes flicker at the tugging before snapping back to meet Sieghilde's gaze. "I think that may be so. Everywhere I've been, I've seen it, so much of it. Not by all, in fairness. Nothing's ever all." She takes another long sip from that beer, draining it down to the dregs. "With the Wound and the Anshega out there, I think it will be a long time before any of it feels normal." She exhales a ponderous breath, like setting down a weight. "Things were not this tense when I was here last."
She goes quiet for a moment, and turns her head to look across the room. "I think that 'normal' is probably a lie for people like us." Picking up her cigarette, she ashes it absently. "Whether in Wien or here, it feels a little bit like we sort of stumble forward from one crisis to the next, going 'where is normal' and 'when will it be normal again' and it is never normal. I don't think normal is a thing that exists."
"Maybe for humans. Not for us." Sieghilde slings herself off of the bar, back behind it, and opens the fridge again. "Do you need another beer?"
Sierra glances at the bottle in her hand and gives it a small shake. "I do."
She wags her head from side to side in consideration. "Maybe so. But we can acclimate," she muses, pushing up out of her seat to move to the bar and cover the distance that one of them was going to have to travel to make that second beer happen in Sierra's possession. She leans on the countertop with her elbows. "But acclimation is deadly. People get comfortable, and then they die." She ticks her head to the side. "So. We run on Essence and adrenaline. And vices," she adds, raising the empty bottle in her hand before leaning over to let it clank into the bin.
Snagging two beers, Sieghilde looks at the bar like she's considering vaulting it for funsies, and then doesn't, instead leaning over it like a normal person, passing off the bottle to Sierra and taking the empty in trade. The empty goes into the bin, and she bites the cap off of her bottle again, apparently that's the only way she can open a bottle for herself. Or just habit. "Mmm," she agrees. "Essence and adrenaline and vices, this is true. We find the comfort the best way that we can. Good counterbalances, you know?"
Sierra does her trick with the side of the bar again, popping off the top and tossing the dented cap into the bin. "Mm," she affirms in a murmur, raising the bottle to clink the neck against Sieghilde's once again. "Prosst," she says in cheers, sipping and enjoying the crisp flavor of a freshly opened one. She lets the silence linger a moment; she is an Irraka, she is native and comfortable in silence.
But after a moment, she sneaks a look back over at Sieghilde and something occurs to her. "Have you met the Blood Talon Elder yet? Elizabeth Stone?" she queries. "I think you would like her."
"I haven't," admits Sieghilde, scratching her cheek absently. "Wien had far less organization in that sense than many other cities. Perhaps I am not used to checking in, neh?" She clicks the neck of her bottle against the neck of Sierra's, and replies, "Prosst," before hopping back up on the bar like the heathen that she is.
A swallow of beer. "Why do you think I would like her in particular?"
Sierra considers Sieghilde and the question at the same time, and ticks her head to the side. "Ah, I think you'll see when you meet her. She's very direct. Half Moon, and quite even keeled, but very... direct," she says the word again, but with a faintly different inflection, and doesn't it always mean something else like that? She moves on.
"I've only seen the Bone Shadow Elder in passing, myself," she adds. "Though I suspect there will be more Hunts soon, so I'll get more chances."
"English is my third language, so perhaps you can explain what you mean by direct in that tone," drolls Sieghilde, leaning on one hand and using the other to hold her beer. A swallow of said beer and she watches Sierra, thoughtful, those sharp eyes considering. "I don't even know who the Bone Shadow Elder is. I suppose I should, given my brother, but."
Sierra doesn't wilt under Sieghilde's own directness, and she glances back into her eyes. "She doesn't waste words, and she's got a bore-through-to-your-soul quality about her if, for some reason, she should pay attention to you long enough to do so. Mother to Cody Stone, who's maybe about Anton's age."
She clicks her tongue behind her teeth and sips from her own beer, climbing from her leaning position into one of the seats at the bar. "The Bone Shadow Elder is Josiah Katz. But I'm sure you'll see them all, soon," she supposes, raising her shoulders. "As we stumble from crisis to crisis," she adds with a self-amused huff of a soft exhale.
"Well, at least then perhaps Anton can have a friend who is less -- Anton." There's a sort of dryness about Sieghilde's tone there. She loves her son, but she knows her son, too. Another swallow of her beer, and she watches Sierra, then grunts and sets her bottle down on the bar. "As we stumble from crisis to crisis, I am sure I will meet them all. Still, it is best to know what I can know about them ahead of time."
"Fair enough," Sierra intones, tapping her thumb again on the neck of the bottle in her hand. "Stone is retired now, we think. No one is sure exactly what she did, but supposedly it was a role in intelligence, the CIA or something like that. Her mate, Perry, was killed at the Wounding." She sips from her beer again. "I've not really spent that much time around her, but I'm told she's a tough customer."
A click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Being retired is good," says the retired professor. "I definitely like it a lot. Though I guess we never actually retire." A vague shrug follows. "I would not be surprised that our elder is a 'tough customer'," and the quotes around the words are definitely audible. "You kind of do not get to that point without it." A puff of breath. "I cannot imagine losing your partner."
Sierra nods her head at that, flickering her viridian eyes down to the bartop that she leans her elbows on, perched in the bar stool as she is. "Yeah," she muses. "Yeah, that must be hard. Though, not too many reach old age, so..." she trails off. "Anyway." She runs her empty hand down over the lines of her shoulder, back and forth, checking for dampness, and tilts her attention over towards the nearest window to eyeball the weather. "You're retired? What, what did you do?" she asks, looking back over at Sieghilde.
"Sonja's gotten a lot older than most of us do," admits Sieghilde, "but she specializes in going where other people don't, and coming back alive." A vague shrug of her shoulders, there. "Anyway," she reiterates after Sierra says it. "I was a professor of literature. I am retired from that, and then -- I am running the family business now. Technically. I should bring my cousin from Wien to take it over for me so I do not have to fuss over it." Her chin tips up. "What is it that you do for your living? Other than wander?"
Sierra gives Sieghilde another uncertain shoulder shrug. "I don't have a job, or a career. I made my way brokering Shadow deals and getting things done that others couldn't, like a well-intentioned mercenary," she jokes, not taking the designation very seriously. "My parents passed away and my brother and I inherited their assets. He was here, he stayed and oversaw the execution of all of that. The day to day stuff." She clicks her tongue behind her teeth again. "Then he died at Bancroft, so." She raises her beer. "Here I am."
"I am sorry for your loss." That's where Sieghilde starts, still leaning on her hand and watching Sierra thoughtfully. That's kind of her default expression at the moment, apparently. "It is not easy to lose a sibling." There's no further commentary, there. "Hmm. That is a good way to make a living, if you do not want to settle anywhere, or are unable to settle because of reasons. Especially if you have an inheritance to fall back on." One corner of her mouth curls up just so.
"Thank you," Sierra moves through the social niceties, the polite interplay with the rote familiarity of recency. At the word inheritance, Sierra huffs another amused sound. "In the words of a contemporary thinker: more money, more problems," she responds in a chime. "Notorious BIG. Well, it is what it is," she says, raising her shoulders helplessly. She couldn't do anything about the fact that she had come into money by birth, and it was evident beyond mentioning that, like most people, there was nothing she wouldn't immediately trade back, but she bore the reality of it with an only-occasionally fidgety languor.
A lopsided half-smile from Sigrun, there, and there's something knowing in the way that smile plays across their face, a little sad, a little weary. She's been ... some version of there, at least. "Mmm," she agrees, hopping up from the counter. "I have always been provided for, so I cannot ... have any comparison point. But my wife would probably disagree that more problems come with money. Just different ones, perhaps." She tosses her bottle into the bin. "Speaking of my wife. I should go home, before she comes searching."
Sierra tilts back some more of her own beer and gives Sieghilde another nod. "It looks like it's cleared up a bit out there." She raises the drink in indication. "Probably won't be far behind you," and she tips her chin faintly. "It's a pleasure."
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