Gone With The Wind
Who: Echo Bishop, NPC Jakob Kingfisher What: Swap Plot When: After dawn at Cottonwood Cove
All things considered, sunrise was about the perfect time for everything to turn to crap. It made the day just so much more interesting when everything went tits up right off the bat.
Echo got up just before the thin rays started peeking in through the blinds in her bedroom because of a full bladder, and she tended to her business while yawning. The end of tourist season meant there was very little to do outside of occasional maintenance and some trash pickup, and she usually spent the days listening to the lap of small waves on the shore and pulling the odd shift in the office. Some bird watchers liked the place during the colder months, coming out with binoculars and notebooks, and they were generally good about cleaning up after themselves.
She'd bought a single-wide trailer near the end of the season, cleaning out a good chunk of her savings. Kitchenette, living area, bathroom with a shower stall, one bedroom. No TV, but she'd set up a laptop at the table near the window in the kitchen and used that to monitor news and local events. She would eat breakfast, then take her sketchbook down to the water before doing a casual patrol of the picnic areas at around eleven.
It was almost eight in the morning as the Were stepped outside onto her tiny porch, squinting against the orange ball of the sun as it climbed just above the horizon. She was holding a black garbage bag. The city didn't send trucks that far out, but Park Services came by once a week to collect trash from the big dumpsters and haul it away. Echo tossed the tied-off bag into the green can she'd bought at the general store in Searchlight, closed the lid.
Down by the water, a man named Jakob Kingfisher was fastidiously tucking his socks into his shoes, which he had just removed for wading. It was finally too cold to swim, the temperatures hovering just around the mid-forties at that hour, but Jakob liked the chill on his bare feet. He was a forty-six year old probate lawyer from Galveston who traveled to Nevada twice a year to see his brothers and their families.
He felt the cold water surround his ankles as he stepped further into the shallows, used his new binoculars to peer across the calm surface of the lake. Breathed quietly into the stillness as tiny ripples started to fan out from where he stood, whirlpools and eddies swirling out and out. Too shallow for whitecaps.
The wind had been with him since he was a child; a whiff of breeze in his hair or a gentle zephyr when he needed cooling on a hot Texas day. An innate talent that he didn't know the origin of, since neither of his siblings had similar gifts. And it was a gift, though he'd had to learn to control it. To master it so that it didn't cause harm. He could feel sand gritting at the unprotected soles of his feet, and he didn't mind it.
Her breakfast finished and dishes put in the drying rack after a quick wash-up, Echo headed down to the water's edge, the new light of the day strengthening even if it offered little warmth. She had a new, untouched sketchbook, heavy white pages protected by the black cover. She had a grocery run planned for after her shortened work schedule.
She saw the guy standing in the water, didn't think anything of it. One of the late-season crowd, probably, with gas conscious car parked someplace close by, maybe a cooler of bottled water. As long as he picked up after himself, there'd be no problems. It was eight-thirty-four in the morning as the werewolf took a seat on the dry sand, flipped open the book.
Later, much later, she would realize that she'd felt an invisible something pulling at her as she drew, that the day had gone even quieter than normal. Duller, too, although the sun had made it's full appearance as the time ticked past on her watch. The sound of the lake's small waves became muted, and she glanced up to see that the man who'd been standing ankle-deep in the water had moved back onto the shore, his shoes in one hand, socks in the other.
The breeze had died out completely, and Jakob waved his hand subtly at the water behind him, but nothing happened. He felt...he didn't know the word. As if there was a new presence that both was and most emphatically was not him. He could smell the water but couldn't move it. His dark, questioning eyes moved in the direction of the young woman who'd come from the direction of the few campers still remaining in the lot.
"Did you feel that?"
They said it simultaneously, then blinked at each other in the light of the new day. Echo got uncertainly to her feet, and the man left wet footprints in the sand as he approached. He was still carrying his socks and shoes, and when he got within half a foot of her, the shifter saw the telltale flash of dull gold in brown eyes. She was left blinking, might have let him pass by if she hadn't recovered herself.
"Did you feel that?"
She asked it again, more sharply, and Jakob looked at her in befuddlement. "I...think so?" It was a question, and he prodded around on his midsection, where he had always imagined his gift rested. Both solid and not, but he couldn't feel that comforting sense of Other.
"What did you do to me?!"
"I didn't!"
Christ, somebody must have been screwing around again. Again. Echo slapped the pockets of her jeans, realized she'd left her phone back at the trailer, plugged into the charger. And the Wolf had definitely left the building, at least for her. She'd have to check her phone, because if she'd learned nothing else from living around here, it was that things like this were never localized to two people. She'd have to see what happened, and soon.
Because there were only a few days until the next full moon.