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An ambush predator is Teagan: they wait in Downtime, drinking one of the weird off-brand sodas that the Hollow provides. They're in their tank top and sleep pants, curled up in the pillows and blankets in the sleeping pit, waiting. Lurking.
June comes in from through Downtime's door dressed in yoga pants and a long sleeved athletic top, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She's also sweaty, so chances are she was just working out, or running, or some other such thing that she spends so much of her free time doing to keep herself in shape. "Here I am!" she announces, like people have been waiting for her. Or just to see who responds.
Sigrun has been in a slowly diminishing state of hyper vigilance for a while. It isn't really until she disconnects from the recent events and takes her altar off into the woods to commune with her gods that her head seems to get screwed on right. She's been taking to the woods ever more frequently, to the point of having slept in them at least once. Now, however, she's all cleaned up, freshly dressed, and looking much more like herself than she has all week so far. She has a bottle of mead in hand as she trails in after June, stooping over a bit to swat the playmate on her backside as she passes her by, "There you are!" Swat.
"Here you are, both of you," Teagan drawls, rolling up to their feet with their usual boneless grace. They're not as freaky-fluid as Johnny, but then, who is? They're just, you know, human levels of weirdly fluid and flexible. They shake their limbs out, setting down their bottle of beer, and wander over to scoop June up for her usual swing-and-smooch greeting. "Hey, sweatysexyJuneyJune," they greet, setting her back on her feet before they go to kiss Sigrun at the corner of her mouth. "Hello, Significant." Also butt-grab. They're mandatory.
Teagan's expressions are hard to read for most people, but the motley has learned to read their micro-expressions pretty well. This is a Teagan With Something On Their Mind.
June jumps when swatted on the butt, and then moves to follow Sigrun while repeatedly more or less using her butt as bongo drums. "And here you are, too! Looking a lot more yourself. Are you feeling better today? Sort out whatever feelings you were wrestling with? Are you ready for some ADVENTURE? I don't have any waiting, but we could go find some." She pauses in bongoing Sigrun's bottom when she's scooped up and spun about, because she's definitely not Mr. Fantastic, and can't reach in this situation. Also, because she ends up busy smooching Teagan. "What's up, Tea? You're wearing your 'of course I'm not spinning my wheels thinking about something' face on."
Sigrun wags her butt hither and yon as it's playing a rumba beat. They're ADULTS. Being GROWN UPS. When the butt swatting ceases, she waits her turn at giving June further attention, stepping in once she's back on her feat to lean in and place a kiss on her lips. Mwah. It also contains a brief tight hug. Squish. "Yeah, for the most part. I'm still scared, I'm just functionally terrified now rather than see-sawing between resignation and dread. I'm guessing it'll be a while before I'm not convinced the old dirty bastard isn't intending to send his goons after us." Sigrun then spins about and plops herself down into the cushions, deadfall style. Arms outstretched, and just sort of tipping over into them. Flump.
They're ADULTS. Very much so. Teagan laughs at the rumba beat that's, well, beat out on the Fairest's butt, and then wanders over to settle back in to the pillows, taking a slight detour to pick up more beers from the icebox. They bring those back and wander into the pillows, folding their legs criss-cross applesauce as they fold down to seated. "I hear you. And that's, like... kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. I ran into Sturm at the Freehold Hollow the other day."
"I get it. I'll admit I get scared by a lot of things, off and on." June goes over to get herself a bottle of mead before heading over to flop down on the pillows with it. "I'm glad that I haven't run into anything that really reminded me of my Keeper, even if I run into things that bring my Durance to mind on a regular basis." She lounges on one side and lets her gaze move between her boos. "How did that go?"
Sigrun remains on her back, staring up at the ceiling. This is another in a series of conversations she doesn't really want to have, but knows she must have anyway. She lets out a profoundly resigned sigh and lifts her bottle to her lips. She has to block the mouth of it with her thumb, since she's lying on her back. And stopping the pouring causes a bit of a mess. But so it goes. She suffers for her comfort. "Yeah? How'd that go." She and June on the same page, there. She keeps right on staring at the ceiling, though.
They reach out their hand to touch Sigrun's hair, but slowly enough -- very deliberately slowly enough -- that Sigrun can say no, or move her head away. "Well, actually. And not in the 'fedora guy' way. It was rocky, but it went okay." Teagan looks for a place to start, glancing over at June and giving her a lopsided little smile. "Yeah. I deal with shit that reminds me of my Durance on a regular basis. But uh. Yeah."
"So... she and I talked. A lot. And I think I kind of get her a bit. She wasn't trying to say you were a skinhead, just that you looked enough like one to freak her out. We talked about reclaimed symbols and how those can still freak people out, if you don't know someone, as well as whether or not we should cede those symbols to Nazis or Them or whatever. And then she brought up that you had frozen her in place, and how that kind of fucked with her. She felt humiliated, because she hadn't really gotten a chance to fight, she felt like you pulled some mind bullshit on her that was, like, reminiscent of shit she'd been through. So, like, each of you has something the other person did that hurt them."
A big swallow of beer, and Teagan burps loudly, if only to break the tension for themself. "But the thing that kind of, like, got through to her was my opinion on why it's important that the two of you agree that you hurt each other, and that you each agree to, if not forgive each other, then at least to say 'we hurt each other, and that doesn't serve us to keep hanging on to that' and maybe fight each other and then move on."
"And that-- frankly --is that because if the two of you stay at loggerheads, rather than learning to work with each other and not view one another with suspicion unto violence? Old One-Eyed Fuckface wins. Every day this drags on is a victory for him."
June sips and listens, because that's what the situation currently calls for. She's definitely not the sort to talk all the time just for the sake of talking.
When it is a good point for her to say something, the only thing she interjects at the moment is, "should we unpack the holmgang hide?"
Creaaaak.
Just as the sense that the doors all lead Someplace Else settles in, Johnny slips in through the Hedge-facing door, Autumn leaves scattering into the room and vanishing as they move away from him and his Mantle. He shuts the door behind, scanning the room. June flopped with mead, Sig lying down with mead, Teagan lying in pillows with beers. Johnny's shadow shuck him out of his coat and boots, leaving the hilt of Sigknifr poking above her sheath at his belt as he moves to sit at the edge of the pit, aiming to be near Sig's feet- Teagan's smoothing her hair- with his own body as near to the other two as he can manage.
He steals a beer. Cuz.
"I said before. If she wants a fight, she can challenge me to one. I used my Presence on her so I wouldn't have to cave her skull in. Going back to be like, 'yeah, let's totally be violent to one another for no useful purpose' isn't my idea of a good time. So. If she wants to cross swords, she can let me know. I walked away from what I wanted to walk away from. Her on two useful legs with a non-perforated skull." Sigrun tilts the mead back again, taking a longer series of gulps this time. When she lowers it again it comes away with a hollow thrum of sound. "I'm fine with burying the hatchet. I don't see why that has to involve a fight. But if she wants one, she can have one. Seems a weird move, though. To claim to want a 'fair fight' with someone you clearly don't trust."
"Well, I didn't say you had to fight, I just agreed that might be a thing that would make you both feel better. I don't know, because I'm not in both of your heads." Teagan blows Johnny a kiss, slowly running their hand over Sigrun's hair. "I know you said that, and I'll bring that back to her again if she wants to fight. Honestly, I forgot you said that when I was talking to her, because she had tools hanging from her freaking horns when she was trying to fix the hole in the wall she made by throwing the table without using Hedgespinning and the whole thing was really fucking distracting. I wanted to grab her and be like 'could you please just paradigm shift this shit'. Which, I'm gonna teach her to do."
"She's new, I think. Like real new." Pause. "Well, compared to me, almost everyone's new." And then they roll their lips in. "I get why you did what you did, and I explained that to her. Like, as soon as she told me what you'd done, I understood why you'd done it."
"I dunno, Significance. Maybe a fair fight is her way of establishing trust. I don't live in her head. And I'm an ambush predator. I don't do the whole 'honorable duel' thing. I'm guessing."
June is listening still, but she shuffles around so that she can snuggle up to Vorpal while they have all have this conversation. "I'm not the sort to feel better about fighting someone, unless they're someone who needs to be hurt. I think I get Sigrun's perspective, even if the reasons for my feeling that way are different."
Vorpal twists to settle June up against one of his legs, with the other turned across her belly, leaving her shoulders back against his own middle, reaching out briefly to squeeze at Sig's calf. "As someone who does often feel better having fought someone, I can understand. It's additional understanding of the person, it's knowledge of where you stand compared to their skill, it's trust that when given the chance to hurt you in ways that mattered, they passed it up- or vice versa." Shots in the dark. He can't speak for Sturm, obviously. "And if it's not the last bit, it's enforcing that if they cross you, they stand to get their asses absolutely devastated."
"I already established that. I had a chance to tear into her with my baton and I walked away. I can and often do enjoy a fight. I admit that I get a thrill from toppling an enemy. Because I like taking the enemy's pieces off the board. It's tangible. One more dead briarwolf is one less living one to tear into our trade caravans or pick off new escapees in the briars. But outside of Holmgang, there's no point. My style is entirely based around quick and effective kills. It's not really conducive to 'friendly fights' whatever the hell those might be. I'm either going light with wooden blades, or I'm going whole hog with live steel." Sigrun pours the last of her mead down her throat and shakes the bottle over her face before tossing it away into the pillows. Stupid empty mead. "I don't trust her. And I won't trust her, outside of a Holgang oath. And, frankly, I see no reason TO trust her yet. So. Like I said. If she wants a fight, she can issue a challenge. It puts me in control of the term. And if she balks at Holmgang, then either she wanted to actually hurt me or her motivations are other than she claims. Or both."
They blow their lips out in a tired raspberry. "Aight. I'll go talk to her, then, and see how it all sorts out. If you don't need a fight and she doesn't, then maybe we can all move on with our lives?" Teagan offers, not seeming to argue with anything that Sigrun said: they probably agree with her, but they're not arguing with her in any case. "I get it that you don't, and I'm not asking you to trust her. I'm just asking you, and her, to not actively try to throttle each other, which you've already agreed to, so if she does too, and I think she does, then we're good."
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