Currently the moon is in the waning Gibbous Moon phase (72% full).

Though she was gone - utterly gone, her truck as well - on Monday, Tuesday morning found Natalie back in her usual routine: waking up far too early, taking both Kevin and Grey on a jog, breakfast and shower. Then down to the basement for, "More lessons, kiddo." She takes the steps sedately enough, considering the moon, flicks on all the lights to illuminate corners and send roaches scuttling. Then it's to the center of the room, where she paces in a small, tight circle with her hands tucked behind her back and eyes on the floor.

Steps lead up from the southeast corner.

Kevin bounces energetically down the steps after his elder. The cub, for his part, spent much of the weekend asleep, reveling in being able to do so without the constant threat of an unwelcome visitor from inside his own head taking the chance to cause trouble. He looks a hundred times happier and fitter for it, and on the morning's jog he acquitted himself very well, thank you. As he reaches the bottom he chuckles benevolently at the scuttling roaches and waits attentively for Nat to reveal today's syllabus.

Natalie lets him stew for a few more seconds as she completes her rotation, then straightens to study the boy dispassionately. "How are things going? Any... holes need shoring up?"

Kevin rubs his still-scarcely-bristled chin as he thinks. "Well, I don't know what you think, but I'm getting the hang of Mother's Tongue steadily... got plenty to still learn, but it's a matter of time, really, and practice. Shifting I'm getting slowly better at too. Still not as good as I'd like. Tu's promised me another trip to the Umbra. And the other day, who should come knocking but Emma and KL, and Emma's all jubilant that you've given her permission to teach me. Now, what's that all about, huh?" The question is made in a tone of simple inquiry, rather than confrontation.

"Emma needs to pay rent for living here," comes the steady-voiced answer. "And you need to learn how to work with other tribes. She's got as much right now to smack you down as any of us, so if you need it, you'll get it. --How about glyphs? Have you been shown those yet?"

Kevin nods affirmatively. "That's cool. I'm guessing she'll be doing fighty stuff, maybe taking me out to the woods and stuff some? I know I'm going to be an urban wolf mainly, but I guess even urban wolves need to know how to handle themselves in the wilderness. I know we've squabbled some, but I'm cool with Emma-rhya, I really am." At Natalie's next question, Kevin pulls a face. "Only two of them," he says, cryptically, and looks at Nat as though he expects her to know what he's referring to, and not to like it much.

Natalie doesn't, at least from the vague look she gives the boy. "--Huh. All right, we can either work on them today, or on more language lessons. The glyphs are... we don't have a written language, not like English. It's more like... ancient Egyptian. Each glyph, each symbol represents one word or idea. We don't go leaving each other notes in them, but if you need to convey a message and there's no one around, they're useful."

Kevin nods. "I figured it must be something like that. From what they carved into Thomas's arms. Those are the two I've seen, every time he rolls his sleeves up." The cub scowls discontentedly.

"Charach. Dishonor," she repeats, lips peeling off her teeth in disgust. "Yes. Visible reminders to everyone who sees him." A snort, and she jerks her head at him, pulling him farther into the room even as she heads over to the sawdust-covered workshop. "We'll start with the basics. Breed, tribe, auspices. This is best done with Crinos claws, but we can approximate them without."

Kevin's face remains a little dark as the lesson proper begins, but as he starts to learn by the fingers-in-sawdust method he brightens up some. It doesn't take him long to get the point behind the five auspices, but some of the other so-called basics come less naturally to him.

Natalie tschs and irritably bats his hand away from the sawdust. "No. That's not Wyld. That looks more like a cat had an epileptic fit." With a 'stay there' scowl for him she stands and sweeps more sawdust to a little pile, then motions for him to smooth the stuff out as she kneels again. "The Wyld glyph looks chaotic, but it's not. If you can't make it properly, no one will know what you're talking about. Here." Another attempt - the strong first line like a sine wave that reverses on itself before cutting across and trailing off. "You try."

Kevin bites his lip and tries to replicate the complex glyph, like a kid at a festival trying to thread his way along the electric wire game without sounding the buzzer.

Natalie presses her lips together and hrms unhappily, but wipes a hand across the sawdust, smoothing out his attempt. "Better. Still not good, but better." She demonstrates the two easier of the Triat: the Weaver, with its regular cross-hatching, and the inward-turning spiral of the Wyrm. "This one," she taps at the Wyrm, "Is the base for several other glyphs. Like the one for Caern is as well."

Kevin gets the Weaver glyph first crack out of the box, as befits a Glass Walker. The Wyrm glyph, though equally simple, elicits another scowl from him before he draws the spiral, almost as though he fears that by inscribing it in the sawdust he may summon the Wyrm itself.

Natalie waits until he's finished with the spiral, then reaches over and binds it with the three-sided box of 'human'. "There. Fomori. Wyrm-tainted human. You see?"

"As in the thing that gave Emma her scars," Kevin nods. "Heard of them. Sound nasty." He draws a defiantly large Glass Walker glyph alongside it, dwarfing the fomor, as though to show it being overpowered.

"Gave me some of my scars too," the Galliard says, reaching over to dribble sawdust in the claw curl at the bottom of his added sigil. "There. Now it's 'city'. Add the claw, and you have our tribe. Wolves in the city. You see? It's not a flexible written language, but once you have the basics down you can usually figure out what people are saying."

Kevin bends over the sawdust again as teacher and pupil recap the lesson. When he comes to do the three breed glyphs, he manages to get 'lupus' and 'metis' the wrong way around.

Natalie tsks again and smacks the boy on the shoulder - and not particularly gently, either. "No. Look," she adds as she rocks back to her haunches, "I'll write them out for you so you can practice. Down here. The paper never leaves the basement, and once you've learned them it's getting shredded. You understand? You can practice glyphs all you want in the sawdust. But nothing even remotely permanent."

Kevin looks reproachfully at Nat. "After all you've taught me, you think I'm going to leave bits of paper round all over the place to break the Veil?"

"It's just bits of paper," she retorts, frowning. "And unless you can read them, they're harmless." A quick shake of her head negates her own argument. "No. It stays down here, period. And when you're not using it, the paper with the glyphs is hidden. Under something, so they can't be read, not just left out. There's a... a mage in town. He can read things from afar, and I know he likes to do a little spying on us."

That does get a response from Kevin. "A mage? What's that? Like, a magician? A la Harry Potter?" The concept appears novel to the cub.

Natalie's lips curl again, reflexively almost. "Yes. Sort of. Some people call them world-warpers. They can... change things. Read things from afar, like I said. This particular one has also fried all our computers - again, from afar - and keeps an eye on us. So for the love of Gaia, be careful when you're in the city. Always, always clean up after yourself. --Which reminds me. I need to get you in a crash course on body disposal. Probably from Thomas."

Kevin, already wide-eyed from the first revelation, reacts to the second statement in a similar way to a punch in the gut. "And whose body will we be disposing of?" he croaks through suddenly dry lips.

Natalie flicks dismissive fingers and pushes herself to her feet. "Dunno. Won't have the practical until it's needed. Theory first, then application."

Kevin adopts a wry expression. "How often do you need to dispose of bodies? And are we talking human ones or... not?"

"Often enough," she answers. "And sometimes. A firsting goes bad and we have to get rid of witnesses. Or we come across something Tainted - a fomori, usually - and we have to get rid of that. I like to confuse things by starting electrical fires, but sometimes there isn't enough time. Usually the body ends up in the Columbia."

"A firestarter, a twisted firestarter," Kevin quotes with a smile. "Well, what a jolly lesson that promises to be. But it's gotta be done. What now, though?"

Nat echoes, "Now?" and beckons him to her, backing up a good ten, twelve feet. "Now we get you started on brawling. In homid. Or glabro, if you can risk it, but it's generally safer to stay in homid in the city. Once the moon gets smaller we'll see about getting you set up with pistol lessons with Jon or Jeremy."

Kevin's smile doesn't diminish at all at this remark. "Yay. I like brawling. Though I've not won one yet. And don't expect to, not against the people I've been matched with..." He rubs his hands together and watches Natalie with a very keen eye indeed, as though expecting her to spring at him.

Natalie doesn't - instead she braces her feet and settles her weight into a pose that looks faintly Oriental. Martial arts-ish. "And I'm not going to brawl with you, either. Not for real. Not with Wolverine gnawing on me. Wolverine says to take down your opponent -fast- and without mercy. That's not what you need. That won't teach you squat-all. So. You're going to punch me and I'm going to block."

Kevin clenches his hands into fists. "Say the word." He adopts a pose of readiness for action.

Natalie rolls her eyes and lifts her hands, her whole attitude one of lazy disregard. "You try and hit me, Kevin. Your opponent isn't going to politely wait for you to punch him in the kidney, or turn her head so you can plug her behind the ear. Don't wait for an invitation. Just do it."

Kevin gives a slow, almost lazy nod. Then he seems to shift up a gear and darts in towards Nat, swinging his left fist at her head and his right towards her torso. Even though the elder knows him well enough to beware of his speed, she still has to react swiftly to dodge the head-blow and block the body-blow. Kevin's momentum, meantime, carries him on past her and out of range of any immediate retaliation. "Like that?" he grins, bouncing on his feet like a featherweight boxer.

Natalie wordlessly follows him, keeping the boy in front of her at all times. Like Morpheus and Neo sparring in _The Matrix_, she beckons him to her again with a casual flick of fingers. Again he leaps for her, again she fends off each of his blows almost as easily as breathing though she never tries to land a blow of her own.

Kevin regards Natalie with respect after she's blocked all his attempts to slip a fast punch through her barriers. "Damn, you're way good," he compliments her. He tries a feint, but it doesn't fool the Galliard for an instant -- her arm's right where it needs to be instead of where he tries to send it. Again he dodges back and looks her up and down as though searching for a chink in her guard.

Natalie's not even breathing hard, an implacable brick facing the boy. If there are chinks in her defenses, weak points, they aren't apparent. Not to him She does unbend long enough for a quiet, "Thank you. Sensei'd kick my butt if I wasn't."

Kevin, after circling Nat a couple of times, goes for broke in the absence of any more obvious line of attack, throwing not only his fists but his whole bodyweight into a direct onslaught on the Galliard's own body with a would-be defiant yell.

Natalie blocks the first punch, twists her body to rob the second of nearly all its effectiveness, and finally lays hands on the boy. With one hand in his hair and the other at the small of his back she 'helps' him pass her by, stepping around even as she sends him flying so that she's still facing him. By the time he's able to stop his momentum and turn she's back in the ready position, hands up. "--That's enough, I think."

Kevin is effectively shut down by the galliard's skillful deflection and needs all his agility to keep his feet as he's sent twirling past her. "Aw," he grins, throwing a couple of shadow-punches before relaxing his stance. "Well, did I do okay?"

Nat says, "Well enough," with a neutral delivery that gives no real hint to her actual feelings. "I'm going to head up. I'll have the sheet of glyphs for you by supper tonight. Sooner if you want to work on them this afternoon."

"May as well," Kevin replies, gratefully. "It can live under the spare breezeblocks there when I'm not studying."

Natalie boggles at him as she relaxes out of 'ready'. "--'Breeze blocks'?"

Kevin indicates the concrete blocks that were used to create the rumpus room, a couple of spare examples of which are stacked by the wall. "OK, what're they called over here?"

Natalie glances at them, then back at him as if she's expecting people with cameras and lights to leap out at any minute yelling 'surprise!'. "Concrete blocks," she answers flatly. "Now I'm heading up. Work on the glyphs you remember until lunch."

[End of log]