Night's Omen

Skye strolled through Onyx's quiet halls, wondering why it was that everywhere on a Sunday was silent as freshfallen snow between the hours of six and eight AM. She reminded herself once again why she was angry, and stomped her feet a little as she walked out of spite. Nick had come in late, promptly passed out, stolen -her- blankets, and then almost edged her off of the bed. She thought about pouring ice water on him, but decided that while she was awake she may as well run by Onyx to drop off some data she'd been going through for Lucien's records.

She wore her standard 'out' clothing, which consisted of a pair of twill khaki coloured pants, tennis shoes, and a pastel peach coloured tank top with a white button down left open. It was strange how utterly innocent and unintimidating Skye could appear, but everyone well knew the established killer within. She left the data on Lucien's desk as per request, and was headed back down the hall when she caught a whiff of Ebere.

Ah, so she was awake! Skye always enjoyed the company of her other Pakana counterparts, and since Nick was hogging the entire bed and didn't miss her one little bit, she decided she'd stop in and see what the woman was getting into. She followed her nose.

Hunters sometimes kept strange hours, a fact that was proven that moment by Ebere. She had just come in, after having been up half the night off taking care of a mark. She smelled (at least to the sensative nose of another pakana) like blood, but you wouldn't really know it just by looking. She'd cleaned herself up fairly well.

Thank heaven for shifter blood - while she was a bit tired, she'd still be able to function that day more or less normally. Speaking of shifter blood....

Ebere looked up suddenly, the motion incredibly bird-like, when she thought she... well, sensed something familiar nearby. It wasn't exactly that she smelled whatever it was, or heard it, or felt it, but sensed in a way that seemed to somehow be a mixture of all. It was that 'sixth sense' feeling. Instinctive. And when you were a hunter, you learned to trust your instincts - therefore, she stood and walked out into the hall. And broke into a smile.

"Skye!"

Skye was almost on the door when Ebere popped out the other side, and she extended her arm to wrap it around the other hyena. These were little moments that she lived for - when she'd first met Ebere she wasn't sure how she was supposed to behave around her, but with the addition of Stella into the little group, things had finally slowed to a comfortable roll.

"Hey," she said warmly. It was a tone she reserved for very few people; the other Pakana and Nick were the only ones who were so well received by Skye, despite her naturally friendly and sweet disposition. "Whatcha doin?" she asked, peeking around.

Skye had normal hours, unless she had an engagement that ran over her personally alloted time. She tried to match her schedule with her husbands, taking longer jobs on nights where he would be gone until extremely late. It allowed them some normalcy to their hectic lives. This was still kind of early, but her day was certainly already better.

"Seen Stella lately? She left her Lion King DVD at the house. I think she did it on purpose. Nick saw it yesterday and I swear to god he actually put something on top of it." She smiled.

It was still strange to be around another pakana, and strange to want the nearness and the hugs and all the rest of it. Strange in a good way, though.

"Nothing much, I just got in." She laughed a little, softly, somewhat ironically. She seemed almost normal, she would have seemed normal were it not for the hint of something wrong still at the bottom of her gaze, but then that seemed to be the case a lot. She often seemed to be at her most sane when she was with the other pakana, or Ash, or even Ritya. With the exception of times when she felt like doing stuff like remove all the blood from her body, but whatever. Besides, that wasn't crazy. No, really. "So it's more the absence of doing something, which is a nice change. What about you?"

"And no, I haven't seen her."

Skye would always pick up on Ebere's unrest, but she knew that the woman had many more things to bury before she truly let the rest of the past go, and she wasn't going to try and capitalize on that fact. Quite the opposite, actually, as she nuzzled into Ebere's cheek for a moment. Affection, love, pure and kind. Then the moment had passed, and Skye pulled away, to listen to what was being said.

"Ah, I remember those days. I think I alternate between a stable day and night schedule and an out-all-night schedule enough to know which I prefer," she said with a chuckle. She was damn good at her job, but she would take being at home over it any day of the week. There was just something much more appealing about laying on the couch and watching TV than there would ever be anywhere else, but she could attribute most of that to the fact that her husband would be on said couch. She smiled a little at the thought.

At the mention of Stella, she grunted. That girl had the worst schedule. DJing for the local rock station at night, and then sleeping until 3 PM. She was larger than Skye by a margin of height, but Skye still somehow felt responsible for her. It was sort of silly, the group of girls had become glued together so instantly. She was glad, though - Ebere was teaching Stella how to defend herself. That girl was a walking target.

"How has her progress been coming? I assume better than Ritya's did? Or worse?"

Ebere didn't know if the past would ever be buried, really. She would like it to be, would like for it to be gone altogether... but then what would she be?

She shied away from the thought. She didn't know. Her past was why she was what she was, and while she hated so much of that past, this was all that she knew how to be.

Ebere shrugged a little in answer to the question, and then laughed. "There are days when I wonder.... She doesn't like hurting things, that's the real problem. I'm hoping I'll be able to cure her of that, but thus far, no such luck."

Skye tugged at her own hair a moment, and smiled a little when Ebere described Stella's unwillingness to hurt things. That sounds like her, she thought to herself.

"Well, you have to understand she hasn't had the same sort of lifestyle a lot of us have had, especially those of us in the Guilds. I'm sure you're far more patient with her than anyone else would be, though." She paused. "Get her to think about her ex. I'm sure she'll gladly punch through as many boards as you can stack up for her."

It was a sore subject. They all had them, mostly, anyways. Skye had very few precious things she didn't deem necessary to ever converse about, and most of them were specifically surrounding the death of her parents. She would normally just breeze through that part; she didn't prefer to allow people any pity, because she was just fine.

"That's true," Ebere said. "Very true." Thank the heavens for such things. Words could not tell how glad Ebere was that Stella hadn't had to go through the same things she had. It was the same with Skye. Her parents had been killed, true enough, but that was as nothing to what seemed an eternity, a lifetime, spent at Midnight....

She laughed a little at the other hyena's suggestion. "That might help," she said with a smile.

She wished they were touching again. It was strange and new, the sensation of wanting physical closeness with another being. Any other being. She had clung to Ash at first, yes, but that was more to convince her that everything was still real, that it wasn't merely signs of a world gone mad. That was in desperation. This... this was different. This was a desire for closeness merely for the sake of being close, and it was so strange....

"Are you hungry?" she asked suddenly. It occured to her that she hadn't eaten yet. "Walk with me while I grab something?" she asked, even if Ebere said no. Skye liked company. She unconciously reached up and pushed a few strands of Ebere's constantly disshevled hair away from her face, and smiled warmly again.

These were small moments that she lived for. She had never found completion among mortals the way she had around other shifters, especially Pakana. She could never hope to explain to Nick what exactly she felt, though she felt that the pull was just as strong towards him sometimes, and it was a good thing.

Stella and Ebere were thus far the only that she had known since she had been infected when she was a child. She had searched, and given up. Stella said her mother was a Pakana, too, which gave her some lingering sensation of hope. Maybe there were a lot of them somewhere, waiting for the three girls to find them. Maybe.

Ebere automatically closed her eyes and leaned slightly into the touch, enjoying the closeness and instinctively wanting to prolong it as long as possible. This... it was still all very new to her. She'd never met a pakana before that she knew of, and had never known to - or even been able to - try looking. Her brother was one, yes, but she hardly even knew that she had a brother. Sometimes she seemed to remember faint scraps of something, but....

In any case, neither of them had shifted until after she had been taken. Neither of them had known.

"Mm? Yea, sure." Ebere probably wouldn't have cared where they were going, it was... nice to be with another hyena. Very nice. Like wrapping up in a soft, fluffy, fuzzy blanket that just came out of the drier and was still all toasty.

Skye walked with Ebere slowly, engaging her in casual chitchat as they proceeded to the kitchen area for her to get something to eat. She had tried to put into words over and over what it felt like to be around her own kind. She had been told by the sparrows even at a younger age that Pakana were set apart from all the other known shifters for their constant want and need to be around eachother. They were terribly social and gentle creatures when given the chance to be.

She fixed herself something light, knowing she was going to catch a nap before she started her day. She leaned against the counter, trying not to spill her peanut butter toasted banana sandwich thing on herself, and wiggled her foot as she spoke to Ebere.

"So, other than, how have things been? And what's on the agenda for next week, or are you engaged?" Skye had begun to refer to targets as engagements to make things sound easier than they actually were, though she knew even an actual engagement was hard.

"I think Nick will be gone all of Saturday and I was hoping the three of us could go do.. something. Or stay in. I don't care which. Nick will be gone and we will have the couch, and that makes me happy."

Ebere and Stella would both know well the Neverending Battle For the Couch that was a nightly war in the LeCroix household.

"Not that I know of," Ebere replied, smiling a little - as usual - at how Skye referred to marks as 'engagements.' "I suppose something could come up, but unless it does...."

She decided that the peanut butter-bananna-toast thing that Skye was eating actually looked pretty good, and began to move around to make one for herself. "Hmm... yea, Saturday should work." And Ebere wouldn't particularly care which it was, as long as she got to curl up with the rest of her pack, as she still thought of them. She laughed at mention of the couch. "Good. So then, you gonna go talk to Stella later, or you want me to?"

Skye watched Ebere move in on the bananas, and stepped aside from the counter. She'd learned not to get in the way of animals and their food, as had been proven in her own household several times. She'd jabbed Nick with a fork before for much less of an offense.

"You can call her. I'm sure we'll hear from her before the day is out." She sighed a little. She was damn awake now, and it was a foul hour. She couldn't understand how people could be up before the sun.

"You know, I wondered something. Do you think other Pakana that hear her on the air can pick her voice out? She always does a little giggle thing at the end of her sets and I swear it's like she moves into demi form just enough. I remember when I heard it for the first time I almost drove off the road."

Stella, their homing beacon.

"I'm sure we will," Ebere said as Skye moved away from the bananas. She was tempted to sigh a little herself - because really, she didn't want innocent Stella exposed to this world as much as she had been. No helping it though, the hyena was like a stray that followed you home as soon as you paid attention to it. Besides, Ebere also didn't want to cut off contact, though she now had Skye. She didn't want to do that to a surrogate sister. Stella, after all, wouldn't understand. She barely would herself.

At least she could do one thing - Stella did not know most of her history. Skye knew more, but she didn't know all of it either. She could protect them in that much, at least.

Ebere rarely told people her history.

Skye asked about Stella's show then, and Ebere paused. She rarely listened to the radio, and wasn't quite sure. When did Ebere ever do anything normal, though? She said as much. Not the 'never doing anything normal' bit, the 'I don't know.'

((OOC: To give them subject matter, making this thread after Jason is found))

Skye smiled brightly, moving into more mischevious topics. "What do you think of Jason?" she asked coyly, bending into the fridge for a bottle of water. Not that it went with her sandwich, but she was feeling like it was too early for anything soda just yet. The bubbles would have her buzzing all day.

She threw the uneaten crust away and shook the water lightly before opening it, then took a long drink of it. Myah. She still had peanut butter stuck to her mouth. Even being a hyena couldn't avoid the globby mess that the substance was.