wolfsdaughter (wolfsdaughter) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-12-16 13:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | echo bishop, nesryn rowan |
The Sins Of Our Father
Who: Echo Bishop, Nesryn Rowan
Where: El Rey Motel
When: Some time after Thanksgiving
What: Conversation and confessions
Rating: Moderate for language
Nesryn was doing her best to get out of the rut she had been in as the holiday season began to approach. There had been no texts or calls from her father - that meant he was still disappointed in her choice to flee Portland and had not yet forgiven her. She had received a casual text from her mother, Danika, but it had been short and to the point.
Have a great holiday, honey. Miss you!
She didn’t feel like the typed words had any animosity but she knew that if she’d spoken to her mother instead the tone would be laden in her voice.
That was the problem: she was a family person and they’d been close, tight, until recently. Recently.
A little bit before Samhain she experienced something odd - it felt like a presence and she started seeing the tree from the yard in her peripheral vision. It would vanish as quickly as it appeared and she could never get a good look at it to confirm or deny it was the same one though she knew she was certain. And she knew she was crazy considering this climate wasn’t good for those types of trees.
Her yellow Kia Soul eased into the parking lot of the El Rey. This time she hadn’t come looking for Celeste - she had come in search of the brown truck and the woman who it belonged to. Echo.
A small container sat in the passenger side of the vehicle. Gravel crunched under tires.
Shark eyes caught sight of the brunette perched, hunched over what looked to be a sketch pad. Nesryn grinned, parked, and she collected the festive container of cookies.
“Hi Echo,” Nesryn called, waving. She approached the other woman, her smile widening, glad they woman hadn’t yet moved on from town.
“Hey! Uh...hey.”
Echo had bought a lawn chair at the truck stop’s limited camping section, a lightweight aluminum one with a bright blue nylon seat and green armrests, had set it up on the sand close to her door.The days were getting a lot shorter this close to the holidays, and she’d wanted to take advantage of the sunlight while she could. On instinct, she flipped the sketch pad shut, blocking the half-finished tree from view. Nesryn might have been a shifter, but some things weren’t meant to be shared with just anyone.
“Happy holidays, whatever you celebrate. Weather’s finally starting to feel like fall, if not winter.”
She crossed one sneaker-clad foot over the other, added, “I think everybody but me has either gone out for the day or cleared out for good, so you probably missed your friend again. Sorry.”
Nesryn came to a pause a few feet away, politely waiting as Echo snapped the sketchbook shut. It was private; she found that art could sometimes be the same as a secret in some cases and she wouldn’t interject herself into anyone’s business.
“Thank you,” the wolf replied, grinning a bit. “You too. I brought you some cookies, if that’s alright.” The tin would be lifted as if to hone the focus there. And then her head shook gently. “Actually, I came here hoping to find you.” Her instinct told her to come find the other wolf, to check on her.
There wasn’t a dominant wolf pack in Searchlight. They shared a few wanderers of varying types, but a nice wolf was considered family in her eyes and you took care of your family.
“I’m going to miss the snow,” she offered, making a bit of a face. “It’s not as cold here as I’m used to. Back in Portland it snowed a lot. I loved it as a kid, I think winter was always my favorite holiday. I love getting cozy by the fireplace with hot cocoa, you know?”
“It gets cold out on the water,” Echo replied, moving the closed drawing pad as she got up. “Not much snow, really, but the wind coming in off the Gulf gets a bite in it this time of year. S’why most people pack it in for the season until it warms up again.”
She studied the metal tin, which had a Santa Claus on the lid and reindeer pulling a sleigh in an endless circle on the sides. Felt strangely touched at the gift even as she said, “Well...thanks. I, uh, I didn’t expect to be exchanging gifts this year, ‘cept maybe by mail.”
Which reminded her, she needed to see about getting a post office box. If not here, then in Henderson, which wasn’t too far away. It seemed unlikely that Searchlight had an official mail carrier, so that was on the to-do list. The shifter smiled at the other woman. “We weren’t much for cocoa, but Momma makes up this punch around the middle of November that could take the chill out of an iceberg.”
Echo wasn’t wrong about the chill. Nesryn smiled, nodding at the other woman. “I haven’t been here for the cold months,” she confessed, making a face. Her phone had a reliable weather app, but she convinced herself that if she could withstand the Portland winter then she was built to face anything.
Nesryn handed over the tin. Perhaps it was too festive - she’d picked it up at the general store and emptied the contents respectively. The cookies inside were home made, her Nana’s recipe. “You don’t have to get me anything,” she promised. She never expected anything in return for a bit of kindness.
At mention of Echo’s family, her own smile grew. “Yeah? That sounds delicious! Daddy never had real traditions around food, that was more of my mom’s side. But he always made sure we had the best presents under the tree.” Hot punch or anything warm when it was cold sounded perfect.
“Our holidays were always kinda simple. Fix up a bunch of food and invite the extended clan over, usually other pack members and their families. Lots of meat. One thing about coming from a line of extreme carnivores, you never had to worry about protein.”
Echo took the tin and put it under her arm, then snagged her sketch pad. “You wanna come in and hang out for a while? It’s late for lunch, but I bought way too much stuff at the convenience store the other day and I don’t really have that much space to keep it.
That description sounded closer to what she also knew, but then it didn’t surprise her at all considering they were both wolves. “Sometimes simple is the best way to do things.” Her mother could spend hours in the kitchen preparing. Nothing went to waste. When Nesryn got old enough to help that became part of the little tradition with her mother and grandmother.
At the invitation Nesryn smiled and nodded, “Sure! Thank you!” She waited for Echo to lead and fell into stride.
Nesryn thought back to what her friend had been doing as she approached and a question sat on her lips. “If it’s okay to ask, do you like to sketch? I saw you drawing when you came up…” she left it at that, not wanting to pry if the hobby was private or uncommon knowledge.
“Yeah, drawing’s a favorite hobby of mine. Not many people around, at least not during work hours, but the scenery’s good for practice.”
She’d set out her purchases from the store on the dresser, lining them up by expiration date. The bed was made, folded clothes stacked on the table next to the window. Her open suitcase was on the floor, mostly empty. She’d filled out half of the lease she’d gotten, had yet to finish the form. But the motel room was starting to look lived in, not just like a stop-off point.
“Most of that’s free range,” Echo added, indicating the various jars and unopened cans. “So you can have whatever you want, except for the sardines, which are for later.”
She put the sketch book on the dresser, decided she could pull the chair in later. “You have a good turkey day?”
Nesryn nodded.
She liked the idea that her friend had a little hobby that kept her occupied while she waited for whatever it was she counted the minutes down for. Sketching was not something Nesryn had ever really been good at. Or maybe she had never been encouraged to do it.
Noting the things neatly about, she felt some strength in the idea that Echo would be hanging around. If the lived in look was any indication of that, anyway.
“Thanks!” Sweeping up one of the jars, the wolf examined it before setting it back down.
“I wish I’d been back home,” she admitted, selfishly, hating herself. “I miss my family.” As much as she hated what they’d done, she missed them. “But I had a good time otherwise. We had at gathering at Lucky’s, people brought food and stuff.”
“I’m not really in the loop yet, I must have missed that.”
Echo had put the sketch book down on the edge of the dresser, a precarious spot because of the array of things she’d brought back from her shopping trip. Maybe she should speak to the manager about some extra shelving, something temporary.
“Didn’t you call your mom and dad?” she asked, giving Nesryn a look over her shoulder. They hadn’t really scratched the surface as far as anything personal went, and with her own ‘mission’ closer to being accomplished that seemed out of whack. The shifter added, “The holidays can be rough if you’re not close to your family, at least by phone. Ya’ll have a fallin’ out?”
Nesryn recalled that they hadn’t really spread the word out to the public, Brian had sent a mass text. Next time Nesryn would be sure to include Echo in the goings on that the community had. Everyone deserved a chance to mingle and she wasn’t the type to exclude anyone. “I’ll invite you next time if you don’t already know about it!” She would send a text anyway, whether her friend knew or not, just to make sure.
Making a bit of a face, Nesryn shook her head. “No, I didn’t,” she confessed. The wolf bit at her bottom lip. “We did, yeah. Earlier this year, actually. I ended up leaving home and I haven’t had much contact with anyone since then.” Except for that one time Tanner showed up and she and Brian had to send him running back to Portland with his tail between his legs.
But she made herself smile. “It’s not that big of a deal, I guess. Up until this year we were all about family traditions and stuff. I never went back for Thanksgiving, either.”
Echo processed that for a minute, thought about her own mother. Caitlyn had never said ‘don’t go’, not in so many words. She had asked what she’d thought she’d find, and there had been no answer to give. If the invisible pull of Searchlight was part of what was keeping her here, it was only part of it.
“Family’s tough,” she said, realizing she’d been silent for too long. “I didn’t exactly have blessings to come out here, though Momma never put her foot down about it. She believes in free will too much, even if she thinks things will turn out badly, or at least not how I expect they will.”
Nesryn smiled. “Your mama sounds wonderful.” A mother who cared about her daughter but also understood the need to search and wander, to taste the fruits of life in all of its varieties. Good and bad.
“I’m glad you came here,” she added. “I can’t help but feel like there’s an energy around you, a good one.” And Echo wasn’t wrong about her observation about family. It was tough, but sometimes you didn’t realize it was tough because you were cared about deeply.
“Alpha waves,” Echo said with a snicker. “Unca says all the Bishops have at least a little of ‘em, even the girls. Doesn’t matter if they run their own packs or not, it just kind of is.” Pause. “HIs real name’s Rufus, but no one ever calls him that. I couldn’t say ‘uncle’ when I was really little, and Unca just kinda stuck.”
She picked up the remote from the table next to the bed, put it next to the TV set she had yet to spend much time watching. Tomorrow there was a loose plan to go out to Cottonwood Cove and see if the marina was hiring for the off season. Even now that it was winter, the weather was warm enough for some outings on the water if not swimming. If she could catch on while they were short of help, she might find something more permanent there later.
“Not to pry, but maybe you should give them a cal or somethin’,” she said with a small shrug.
Echo was right. She needed to call home. Nesryn had been avoiding it because of what the conversation ahead might look like, she felt afraid, but then she could be psyching herself up for no reason.
When the other woman mentioned her uncle, Nesryn smiled. “That’s sweet! Your family back home sounds so great.”
She couldn’t help but reflect back again on Portland. For some reason she kept coming back to the tree in their yard. Recently that had been a significant area of thought, she kept seeing it places even though it wasn’t really there.
Before she could stop herself, Nesryn opened her mouth to explain the tree to Echo. “We have this tree in our front yard,” she began, trying to sort out the significance of it. “It’s been there for as long as I can remember. I think maybe Daddy put it there. It’s like a fir-type tree, very pretty when it snows. But it’s the most prominent feature in our front yard. I used to try to climb it a lot when I was little. Momma used to tell me it was a Rowan tradition or something, with that tree.”
Echo’s breathing slowed.
She’d been constructing a makeshift pyramid of canned goods on the dresser, and her hands gradually went still as she cut a sideways glance at the closed sketchbook. It had surprised her, how easy it had been to reconstruct something she’d seen once, and so long ago that she’d needed James’ help to recall it. Maybe some things really were so ingrained that even when you didn’t think you remembered it, you actually did.
“I’m pretty sure it’s a spruce, not a fir.”
She was looking at Nesryn over her shoulder, her angular jaw becoming more defined, somewhere between relieved and annoyed. And maybe just a touch pissed, because fair or not she was the first born, who had been denied for all these years. She picked up the sketch book and opened it, showing the page of a charcoal drawing. Right down to the pine cones.
“Like this?”
At the correction, Nesryn blinked. Her frame tightened a bit with surprise and confusion - Echo wasn’t wrong, Nesryn had simply not been sure what type of tree it was called - as to how the other wolf knew. She knew.
Some little bit of fear began to stir in her stomach and she wasn’t sure as to why. Her eyes dropped to the charcoal of the tree and it confirmed exactly what she had been talking about.
“Yeah,” Nesryn breathed, lifting her gaze to meet Echo’s, “exactly like that one.” What did that mean? It was clear now that Echo might know more than she was letting on to, but Nesryn wasn’t typically the one to offer a quick reaction unless she was fighting.
For a moment, Echo had hoped for something like recognition, or if not recognition then at least awareness. That the other woman might have heard something before whatever falling out occurred with her family, that maybe that had been part of it. But she knew confusion when she saw it, and she closed the book and put it aside.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
Though why should she? If even half of what she suspected was true, Rudolph would have been very circumspect about the first time he’d been married. Echo could feel her shoulders tensing, a natural response to aggravation, and she made them relax.
“Momma’s brother Laddie knew a guy named Dolph, or at least that’s what he said his name was. Brought him down to the water a few times, and they got to know each other. Real well. Laddie was her Alpha, plus he was family, so she trusted in what he said.”
It was bitter in her mouth just to talk about it, and it didn’t matter whose fault it was. It could have been no one’s fault, and it would still be Rudolph’s fault. Echo sat down on the bed with a muted grunt.
“I saw the tree in his parents’ yard the first and only time we went up there, to Oregon. They hadn’t seen me yet, or met Momma, and I think they had an argument about somethin’, ‘cause we left early and she was white around the mouth because she was clenching her teeth so hard. I never asked why. You don’t ask Momma questions when she looks like that.”
That question slammed into Nesryn like a ton of bricks. She blinked, her mouth felt suddenly dry. Echo wasn’t lying, she could pick up on that much, or the woman was an A-list actress. Her head swam. She felt suddenly dizzy.
“You’re...we’re….” she began, watching the wolf with wide eyes. Sisters. Her world began to shrink by leaps and bounds. A tornado began to culminate inside of her - Nesryn’s brow furrowed and her eyes narrowed. Her mother had kept it from her, from both of them. And her father….
“...sisters.”
For so long she had yearned for a sibling to share things with. She’d thought selfishly of all the things they would do together, each experience, every moment.
Nesryn moved to sit down next to Echo. She didn’t know what to do, or how really to feel. Happiness made her swollen but she felt a mixture of guilt, anger, and a deep sadness for them both.
“Half. Half-sisters.”
It felt vital to underline that right now, and Echo underlined it again by moving a few inches away when Nesryn sat down. Biology aside, she felt no connection to the other shifter, no sense of family. This close, she could get the similarities in their scent, but that was it.
“She never talks about it, y’know? And that’s the worst part. The thought that he broke her heart so fuckin’ bad that she had to wall it off, and he’s entirely not worth it. At all.”
She studied Nesryn with something that was like sadness and like anger and like, God help her, jealousy. Because even if Rudolph was deceitful and venal and weak, he had at least one daughter he’d wanted. There was always the possibility, no matter how small, that he’d learned from his mistake.
Nesryn didn’t take the movement away personally. Echo was right to do that if she felt it was necessary. She was still trying to wrap her head around the idea that she had a half sister and that her dad —
“I’m sorry he hurt your mother, and your family,” Nesryn offered softly. She lifted her head and looked over at the other woman, frowning. “It seems like that’s something he’s really gotten good at. He was always good to us, treated us right, but I never heard about you. Or your family. I’m not sure Mama knew and if she did then she didn’t say anything either.” That would make sense, though.
What if Echo’s family weren’t in line with what their father had planned for them? Would that be a reason to split?
“I ran away from home,” Nesryn explained. “Daddy was trying to arrange for me to get married to a man that I didn’t particularly care for.” Tanner was not her ideal partner. “He said it was for the good of the pack, to keep the lines pure and straight.”
“Unca said you should never trust a Beta, that they’re sneaky. He was overseas doing something when Dolph first started comin’ around, and he kept his mouth shut until we got back from Oregon. Only reason he didn’t kill him is ‘cause Momma wanted to, and then Laddie said nobody was killin’ anybody. So he got in a fight with Laddie instead, and he stayed pissed for a long time. Unca’s all about honor, and Laddie brought your da---our dad into the house to begin with.”
‘Our dad.’
It felt weird, the word our, something without meaning because there was no context to it. Echo was staring down at her hands, trying to put together what little she knew with everything she thought she knew. What did you do when you found yourself related to a stranger?
“I’m gonna ask you to leave now,” she said in a low voice, and she refused to be apologetic or defensive. “I don’t know how I feel about all this, or about you. I gotta get my head on right.”
Nesryn listened.
Something in the air began to feel a bit charged, her senses tingled with it and she wasn’t sure how to manage it along with the tidal wave of emotions. Those two words sent her stomach into a spiral - their dad - and she wanted to get out of there before she threw up.
It wasn’t Echo’s fault, she wasn’t the one who brought this on.
At the request to leave Nesryn nodded and complied. This wasn’t her space to fight about, nor did she want to. “Okay.” Standing, her knees popped, and Nesryn made for the door. It flung open, washing the room with light for a moment. A single look back over her shoulder at the woman on the bed and then she stepped out and slung the door closed behind herself.
Echo looked at the closed door for a good five minutes before managing to rally herself enough to get up from the bed , and then she just stood there for another minute. She huffed out a long breath, listening to the sound of her heart in her ears as it slowed to its normal pace in her chest. A sister. She had a sister.
No. Not yet she didn’t. Family might not have stopped at blood for her, but it wasn’t just blood. But she wasn’t going anywhere. She liked it here, and she didn’t turn tail and run just because things were difficult, Echo letting out a chuffing sound that was almost like a laugh.
She was here for the duration, however long a duration was.</cut>