Stairs in the foyer lead up to the second floor, while a doorway tucked under the curve of the stairs heads down to the basement. A heavy door in the foyer with a monitor and intercom beside it goes back to the area set up for communal use by the Sept's Garou.

Like a modern-day Cinderella, the littlest Walkercub is hard at work in the disaster pit that was once the safehouse computer room. Broken bits of hardware are piled in one corner, and furniture in another. Bleach fumes waft from the open door as she attacks a particularly stubborn blood-spray on the wall, bucket and sponge at hand.

Some two hours after a short errand took her to the other side of the house Natalie comes slowly down the steps from the second floor. She still looks like she was the loser of a cage match, but none of her re-applied bandages are showing any signs of blood. The Glabro elder pauses in the doorway, leaning up against it in what, to the casual eye, might look like a careless pose. Her left arm's still splinted - re-splinted to match her greater mass - and she is dressed in her usual t-shirt and jeans. "--Morning," she offers after a few seconds of watching.

Oblivious to her audience, the girl turns at the word with a start and a flash of teeth. The expression drops away as soon as she spots the Galliard, and she lets out a breath. "Mornin'," she murmurs, wincing as she wipes her nose with the back of the hand that's still dry. The little Philodox is in the best shape out of any of last night's veterans: only a faint swelling on one side of her face, and a few healing claw-marks on the arms that look a bit older. She stands there uncertainly, first eyeing the Galliard, then the bloody floor.

"If your clothes are Dedicated," Nat says mildly, "You'd do better to shift. You'll heal faster that way. But any painkillers you've got on board now will burn out of you."

Cy nods briefly, looking pensive. "'S'what I was doing in the bunkroom." She rotates her jaw a little, narrowing her eyes. "S'not too bad," she says gamely, tossing the sponge into the bucket with a wet *plop*.

"You're still not going to heal," Natalie presses. "You can stay in homid and be all better in," she considers the girl's injuries. "Oh, a week or so, or spend as much time as possible in some other shape and be better by Friday." That long of a sentence tires her out; she sags against the door and studies the unbroken computer desk. "Your choice."

The girl nods again, but she shows no sign of shifting. She's too busy studying her injured elder, taking a step forward. "Does it--" She stops, arms crossing over her chest with a worried expression. "--Can I. Um. Get you anything?"

Natalie merely closes her eyes and shakes her head. "I'm good. Good as I'm gonna get. Like I said, I could use morphine - if we had any - and be in homid and out of pain for a couple hours, or stay in Glabro, be in pain, and... heal." Three guesses which she's chosen. "How're you? Sorry 'bout last night."

Cy doesn't look too convinced about how 'good' the woman's doing, but she lets the subject drop with a shrug. "'S been a long week," she concedes hoarsely. One sock-clad foot scuffs against the floor, punctuating her understatement. "--Is Thomas in trouble?" She switches gears rapidly, with another look at Natalie's splinted arm.

Natalie shakes her head, then pushes off the door and limps over to the sole remaining computer chair. She settles heavily into it, both she and it wincing before she continues. "No. It wasn't his fault. Kevin, though... wins the stupid hat for the week. If I hadn't been right there, he'd be... well, he'd be the blood you're trying to clean up."

Reminded of the mess--or perhaps the other cub--the red-haired girl wrinkles her nose and bends to take up the sponge again. "Y'mentioned he said something stupid," she notes as she starts scouring her chosen bloodstain of the hour.

Sitting seems to give the Elder ease, or at least take most of her mind off her pain - whatever it is, her color's a bit better and she's more willing to talk. "Yes. He made some crack about Saul's death. --Saul was an Ahroun cub who died on his Rite of Passage. Just, hm. Just before Kevin joined us." She keeps her voice even, and it's hard to tell if her winces are from her words, or from the pull of injured skin.

"Full moon," the girl murmurs, mostly to herself. "--How old was he?" She keeps her eyes firmly on her task, scrubbing with gusto.

"Twelve," she answers. "Just a kid. He went into the Umbra and made a mistake. Got killed by spiders before Scratch and I could get to him." Bland, her recitation.

Cy's scrubbing slows to a halt, locking her eyes on the wall in front of her. "Is that supposed to happen?"

"No." And from bland, her tone drops straight into 'flat'. "No, it's not. He wasn't supposed to die. Cubs... He wasn't supposed to die. The Rite of Passage is just a test to see if a cub can be considered an adult. To let the spirits judge, to recognize..." Taking refuge in lectures only lasts so long; Nat lifts her eyes to the far wall, her expression hollow. "They're rarely fatal."

Dark eyes slip a sidelong look at the woman, watching for a long silent moment. "Kevin's scared." Her observation is very quiet, and she starts scrubbing again.

Natalie massages her Klingon-esqe forehead with her good hand, eyes drifting closed. "He... he shouldn't be. Not about... I'll talk to him."

"So I'm supposed to go through one'a these rite thingies?" Scrub scrub scrub. The cub seems grateful to have a physical task to focus on.

"Each cub does, yes. It's a... well, it's a Rite of Passage, like I said." She massages a moment longer before her hand drops back to the arm of the chair, completely bypassing the gouges on her cheek. "We - an adult Garou - invokes the spirits, letting them know to watch the cub. Then they're set on a test of some sort. The test varies depending on the cub. For mine I had to talk my way back into school, keep my grades up, and convince classmates to help me on a Habitat house."

Cy looks over at the woman quite openly, now. "Habitat for Humanity?"

Natalie nods, not looking over. "Yup. Got about five of the fluffbrains..." A corner of her mouth tweaks up in remembrance. "'Scuse me, cheerleaders to spend an afternoon doing some good. Good for them, good for Habitat, good for me."

The girl actually narrows her eyes and grins , showing the gap in her teeth briefly. She turns her attention back to the wall with a very decisive and approving, "Awesome."

"That's what I thought," Nat agrees, finally glancing over at the girl, her smile widening fractionally. "So at the end of that winter quarter, I was officially recognized as Cliath. Picked my name, and there you go. I was in a pack just a few months later."

Cy's smile is quick to fade as she falls into thought, leaning into her work. "So... how come you got Habitat for Humanity, and that kid got spiders?"

Nat watches her for a moment. "Saul. His name was Saul. We called him Hunts-the-Web. Like I said, Cy, every cub's test is different. He wasn't supposed to fight the spiders. His real test - the one he never got to - was to fight a bane. Prove that he could function in the Umbra, prove he knew how to take care of himself."

The young Philodox has her tongue half-out, glaring intently at the wall now as if she could remove a particular spot with her very stare. "So what's Kevin's test gonna be?"

Nat says, "Don't know yet. It's still about a month away. --Do your best on the blood," she adds kindly. "But if it doesn't come out, we'll just prime and repaint. It's not a big deal. I'm more worried about the carpet. I think it's going to have to come up and out."

Cy readily takes the invitation to relax, and chucks the sponge back in the bucket after eyeing her progress dubiously. There's still faint ghosts of blood-splatter everywhere. Letting out a breath, the cub slides to the floor and leans her head back for a moment, hands over eyes. "I'll help," she notes after a long beat.

"Good," the Galliard says, offering after another second, "Thank you." Another, longer pause. "--I'm thinking of making Kevin take point on cleaning it, since it was his stupidity that caused it in the first place."

The girl grunts and shakes her head, leaning forward to prop elbows on half-bent knees. "Thomas said two weeks. 'S my job." Her voice is heavy with resignation.

"And you are cleaning," Nat retorts, shifting around to face the girl with more wincing for the movement. "There's a difference between Cinderella and Katy the Steamshovel, though. Kev's not going to get off unpunished for his idiocy. --What happened yesterday, by the way? All I know is I heard this screaming and saw Kev clock you one."

Cy looks up at the older Garou, then down, with a nonplussed shrug. "Can't remember," she mutters, touching her swollen jaw gingerly. "Thom's been showing me that shifty thing, but--Dunno. Kevin tried t'grab me. Din't want him to touch me." Another shrug, and a grimace at the bloody carpet.

Natalie blinks at her. "You frenzied," she guesses, not unkindly. "Big blank spot where memory ought to be. That happens... well. The bigger your moon, the better your chance of flipping out. Has Thomas said anything to you about Frenzies?"

The girl nods once. "He was showing me how to work around it, the other day." A somewhat pleased, dark look comes over her features. "We brawled."

Nat blinks again, then offers a simple, "--Good." She considers her position with a grimace, then reaches behind her with her 'good' arm to push herself forward. She doesn't gasp, but her eyes go big for a second, and her grimace seems etched in stone. "He's got more experience than I do."

Cy's on her feet in moments, offering a nail-bitten hand of assistance to the Galliard. She frowns down at Natalie with considerable awkwardness. "Y'should go lie down," she mutters.

"I think," she replies, grabbing at the girl's hand and using it to help pull her to her feet, "I will." Despite the near-foot difference in their heights, and the obviously restrained strength, she's really quite gentle with Cy. Hardly pulls her over at all. "Try the Oxiclean on the floor. Or more peroxide. I'm gonna go nap."

The little Philodox releases her grip with a nod, stepping out of Nat's way. "Take it easy," she murmurs.

[End of log]