here in my room. [prp - portland.]

[Ludmilla.]

She awakens to something cold pressed against her back. And momentarily the sphinx can hear her heartbeat in her ears, the wild fight or flight instinct that possessed every creature wide and low. And it would have been overwhelming, leading right up to a wrestling and grapple war of dominance and screaming. The sudden realization of how could she be left so open? How could she expect her reputation to keeping enemies from slipping a knife against her throat in the night? But before havoc erupts in the comfort of her own room, doubles doors wide open for the whole of the house to interpret. A voice familiar says desperately afraid into her ear, "Please don't be upset with me."

And just like that the Chimaera's guard drops, and the silence idles on until her heartbeat thumps at a manageable pace.Adrenaline fading with the influence of hip-bone and stomach kneading so innocently into the dip of her lower back. Chin  buried just beyond her neck at the beginning of her shoulders. 

Something about the moment is awkward, but not unwanted.

"Savannah," Ludmilla begins. And her voice is cautious and kind, and there is a little bit of sleep in the way she enunciates and prolongs the werewolf's name.  The woman tilts her head slightly, catching a hiding frame in her peripherals, and her comment is neither crude or demanding when she ask. "You cant just --" But grows quiet as she hears a soft whimper, a under the breath plea. And makes no other move to make a word. Not for a while.

Not until the stone grip the vet has on her is a lot softer, and a lot warmer. Until the last bits of what she knows is wolf -- rides out with the comfort and silence of someone familiar and trustworthy. A interesting fact she'd have to muse later, when the girl of her close scrutiny wasn't curled up beside her like a comma. 

It was uncharacteristic, driven by fear lately, and she let's the empty drown out insecurities. Not wanting to provoke a wolves temper as much as she wanted to deal with it so vulnerable right now. Plaid in nothing but underwear and a shirt that was borderline to little. A hidden lack of modesty not meant for prying eyes.

"What happened?" She whispers finally.

But doesn't move yet.

[Savannah]

The impulsive trip here has been spurred onward by desperately fleeing feet and a trembling mind. Half awake and dizzy with fear, she finds herself at Ludmilla's house, key in hand.

By no call of her own or tugging string attached, she's unbidden in arrival and unexpected. She slips inside, like the place is known to her, and silent bare feet light to a room she finds by smell alone. To warmth and safety and reassurance.

To the bed, quiet and quick, she makes not a sound, but a whimper as she crawls in and clings to thin, rounded shoulders. Pressed close, she hasn't thought up excuse. She hasn't thought up reason other than truth. Of frightening visions and uncertain consequence.

Savannah feels her even breathing stir to quicken with the realization that she is not alone. Cold from a frantic journey here in nothing but an oversized shirt and shorts, and a purse dumped at the doorway of her home after procuring a precious key, the chimaera offers warmth more valuable than the blankets that have been so rudely shoved aside in her mindless haste.

"Please don't be upset with me," and shivers.

Panic doesn't come, but Savannah has yet to relax even as the sphinx breathes her name. Wide eyes stare at a moving cheek, then a rolled and cautious eye. Perhaps she can't barge into her home uninvited, but she has. Nowhere else promises safety and comfort, or warmth and acceptance.

They stay curled for some time, neither moving as the wolf relinquishes it's grip on her mind. Body more limber and supple in the covers, she loosens her hold, but doesn't let go.

Short breaths have yet to slow completely. She answers quiet and shallow, in a shaky whisper, "…I shifted. In my sleep." Or something like it. Savannah isn't certain. From a dead sleep to nightmares of her wolf, or what she could only hope were nightmares and not reality. Confused, she cannot separate the two, but she has shifted sometime today. The wolf has only refused to sleep within the confines of her mind. The human counterpart had not been allowed rest.

Frightened, she tucks the crown of her head into the crook of the chimaera's neck, affectively shielding her eyes from the darkness of the room. It threatens to envelope the two curled close on the bed and Savannah does not like it. Hair spilling and wild, she noses close to the only comfort she's known in recent months.

[Ludmilla.]

The girl explains, and where sympathy had not always been her strongest most characteristic emotion.It washes over her and ushers her into silence. But she cannot wait forever. And the day's activities catch up to her and punch her in the eyes with weariness.
Long before Savannah is ready to talk, Ludmilla is already fast asleep. Momentarily forgetting the embarrassment of the situation,or the uncomfortable - but reassuring - presence of Savannah close by. Scared and vulnerable.

When the werewolf wakes up, awkwardly stumbling for purchase in the form of a missing weight on the other side of the bed -- she'd be surprised to follow the tracks to the shuffling sphinx. Filling the empty of a parlor room with the notes so soft of a piano she'd promised glamorous. 

And with brows furrowed, Ludmilla works anxiously at something. Steaming and smoothing out all of her thoughts with the lovely melody of circumstance. All of the bitter worry and sudden fear fading with each stroke of fingertip on key. She'd been down there for who knows how long. Since the queerness of a body beside had woken her up and estranged her to solitude. Clearing the hired help for a couple of hours, she'd wandered the kitchens to try to sate a hunger she feigned. She'd wandered the halls to her study to read a book she'd never quite finished. And nothing had kept and caught her attention.Not until she'd grown so feverish to touch along at her piano. Five hundred years worth of confidence offered to the instrument as it sang. Keeping up when she wanted a fast and hard tempo of anger, or a soft and steady string of notes of complacency. 

But neither describes what she works on now. Bent over the brim like a great composer of sonata's with just as much vigor and maybe more than a handful's worth of tragedy too. 

It was a quite the wonder, even,  it hadn't woken up her company the moment she'd began.

Careless of who heard, what they interpreted, or of the emotion she so easily transferred through her bones to music. She continued.

[Savannah]

Her mind scrambles in search of a better explanation, but Ludmilla demands none. Soon the werewolf is drifting too, since the other finds no reason for alarm at the sudden intrusion, or the reason for it.

The rise and fall of the solid form beside her lulls her gently to sleep in presence alone. Quiet acceptance has her wondering and doubting; should she still be scared? Ludmilla is not.

Before she can figure out an answer, fears have since calmed considerably. Curled and exhausted, her mind can finally rest in peace.

The woman awakens much later in a foreign room to find a stark lack of warmth. She rolls to the vacated side, hoping to find it again, and buries herself deeper in the covers. Memory comes trickling back, aided by a familiar scent attached to a pillow that does not belong to her. Arms strike the mattress and she shoots straight up to sit on tucked-under knees. Head whipping around, messy hair on end, she searches for a few frantic seconds.

Until notes drift to her ears and convince her shaky limbs to follow, does she shuffle from the bed, accidentally pulling a blanket to the floor that had been tangled in her calves. Hands on the walls, she ventures hesitantly down the hall. Ludmilla?

Blinking and squinting, she sniffs before running a shaky hand through her hair. How has she ended up here?

Events replay slowly in her mind, and Savannah feels she owes an apology. Teeth grind behind closed lips, thoughts giving voice to quiet notes played by skilled hands beyond. Beautiful and entrancing, they pull her like a moth to the flicker of a candle in a dim-lit room.

Working up the courage, she rounds the corner and watches the woman lean over keys, body slightly moving in rhythm and time. A hand holds the joint of her opposite arm as she contemplates moving closer. Her feet carry her forwards anyway, wholly unbidden, across cold hardwood floors.

Hands cross and rub her arms as she coaxes warmth back into her body. She knows Ludmilla can sense her approach so she's not intentionally quiet. It's beautiful, and she hates to interrupt.

Lingering near, she comes to a stop standing beside the piano bench. Eyes follow the movements of hands against keys. A seat on the bench tempts her, but she's already here, uninvited. So she stays standing, hovering, and awkward in her place.

Only when the last note fades does the werewolf give comment, voice hushed in the sudden silence of the room.
"You play beautifully."

[Ludmilla.]

The last note carries out to it's finality, and if not for the presence so stark beside her. Hovering in impolite greeting and shame. She would have continued until breakfast had turned into lunch. It wasn't often she could afford the time to sit and get lost in thoughts of herself. So worried about micro-managing everything and everyone else. It was a welcomed distracted, perhaps even much needed where the werewolf was concerned. And she mourns the loss of it with the oncoming words of Savannah.

"Yes," she says quietly. And settles her palm gently on two key's. And the notes echo throughout the hall, heavy and thick. And when they are finished it's then she whirls. In a fit of anger and intrusion, a trait perhaps picked up from the demon she loathed so much. A fallback when vicious silence just couldnt suit the situation.

But she's standing, and her anger knows no bounds. Fingers that press half-moon's into her palms. And eyebrows that shift together and tangle with the other emotions on her face. And had Savannah expected to be met with the usually stoic business-woman. Who'd showed her no ill will beyond an occasional sarcastic comment. She'd be entire surprised at the spit-fire in front of her. Seething with emotions incomprehensible. "Is there something you are neglecting to tell me?" She demands. And knows neither if it's the right thing to say, or if Savannah had even known the meaning behind her little visit.

A meaning the sphinx had been riddled with all morning. Two hundred years dealing with werewolves that'd left her knowing more about them than they might themselves.

But she cannot force feelings unspoken out of the woman, as much as Savannah could her. But damn if she doesn't try. With the piano forced behind her ever looming with the emotions she had never been able to properly express.

Ludmilla reels back suddenly and effortlessly. And she's got a mild look accusatory and disgusted tone somewhere in the lilt of her voice when she hisses. "How dare you."

"I did not give you my key so you could sneak into my house and climb under the covers with me. I did not give you my keys so you could wrap your arms ar--" She pauses, stops and reiterates. "So you could use them the way you did last night."

And there is a whirlwind in her eyes. And danger in the promise of her growing voice.

"I'm not your mommy to come crying to after a nightmare, Savannah!"

[Savannah]

Two notes bounce to the wall with an agreement and Savannah inclines her head. No time to prepare for the abrupt change, Ludmilla is suddenly standing with a vicious intent that not even Savannah could have foreseen for all her behavioral insight.

She's left blinking and confused, leaning back on her heels, and staring blankly at the following accusation. Tell her what now? No, she hasn't prepared any speech. Does Mal expect one?

The pianist has morphed into a whirlwind that Savannah has no escape from. While she doesn't fear the sphinx, she doesn't understand the implications of her own actions. New to her kind, she's had little experience or tutelage from any other than Ludmilla. She doesn't know what she expects to hear.

As quick and sudden as the storm has appeared, the lady turns away, tone dripping and disgusted. Oh, Savannah, what has she done? The werewolf does have an inkling--an impromptu visit in the middle of the night, frightened and alone, and begging for familiar comfort she hadn't realized she needed prior. Yet the girl remains horribly confused and ill-prepared for this onslaught of emotion from one usually so stoic and poised.

"I- I didn't assume you were!" She counters, stuttering in surprise. Palms lift in surrender, but she stubbornly refuses to relinquish ground.

"I didn't mean to- To come here at all." Finding her voice at last, she straightens, "I realize I shouldn't have, I do, but I couldn't stay alone when I woke up and- I wasn't thinking straight!" She had been scared, vulnerable, and completely disoriented in her own home. Naturally, she'd sought shelter elsewhere with someone safer.

Closing her mouth, she searches frantically for explanation, but finds she has none to offer. A tense hand moves to her her head, jaw clenched.

"Look, I don't know what you want to hear, but I can go alright. I didn't think it'd upset you this much." And then a bitter anger of her own bubbles in her chest, like this reaction is unfair and uncalled for after last night. She'd been accepted then. Unquestioned.

Eyes narrow and her tone hardens, "I'd hoped you wouldn't get upset, I told you- And you didn't say anything then!" But her 'please' has apparently expired, and she knows she's never been granted a welcome to overstay. While the words leave her lips, Savannah still makes no motion to act upon them.

Perhaps Ludmilla's opportunity for complain has likewise expired.

She could have booted her from bed then and there, ushered her to the door, taken away her key… But here they stand. Angry and maltreated.

[Ludmilla.]

The early morning, starting out perhaps so kind and beautiful, shifts into something dangerous and heavy. Both Ludmilla and Savannah buckle under the weight. One lifting more than the former. Innocence granting exemption. Leaving the sphinx to suffer with all of the struggling feelings unrecognizable.

She only knows of it thinly, subconsciously, by the way she'd felt years ago. Seemingly lifetimes, for a person so selfless she'd loved them perhaps more than they loved themselves.

But where the girl's response should have irked her even more. It offers answers unknowingly. Rationality returning with the once again realization that Savannah hadnt been around as long as she had. Hadn't willingly traveled into her bed to stir a response versus for the simple sake of sating her instincts for the night. But the immortal still feels the confused whirlwind of emotion feeding flame to her self preservation skills. And where she backs down slightly, not nearly as confrontational as prior. There is still hints to venom in her choice of words and the tone she delivers them.

"That's right, you dont know anything.'' She says, meant as much as a saving grace as it was condemnation.

But finds herself neither wanting the werewolf to stay or go.

So it's rather childish, but she's tossing her hand up in such a flippant careless gesture -- and her jaw's set closed shut and demeanor switches entirely when she suddenly calms down. Sit's back at her piano and touches one key as if to begin. Their argument over as soon as it'd started.

"Do what you want to do."

And eagerly begins to touch down at keys. A thoughtless mantra and repeat of a endless song to settle her inner turmoil. The sudden realization that maybe her words were unwarranted, and maybe the werewolf wasn't fiddling with her emotions in the so blatant way she was. Red with embarrassment and quick to begin a melody, the telltale signs all too apparent if one looked hard enough.

It was a wonder, the girl already so revered for her unannounced skills to decipher werewolf motives and thoughts based simply on their body language -- could not decipher the rod-straight stiff of her back. Or the movement of her fingers, following along to a thrumming heart-beat.

[Savannah]

Mal calls her out on the most obvious of facts. She doesn't know anything.

Her upper lip curls in the silence of a human snarl, truly hurt in a sensitive region of her being. A doctor, DVM and all, dumber than the rest of them. It's a blow to her pride, her ego, and her confidence, but she doesn't remove her stubborn gaze from Mal.

Most of all, because it's true.

How dare she pull the trump card of age. Of experience. Then abuse it and look down on her like a child.

For the first time, Savannah doesn't know what she wants to do, even as the woman poses her question. Standing rigid, music fills the air again, beauty to the ears. A snort through the nose, and she turns to walk… Only to turn right back around and pace. Feet hit the floor in rhythm as she turns, back and forth, three times over.

She thinks it's only proper to waltz on out, but Ludmilla makes that impossible. The fit she had thrown weighs heavy on her mind. Never before has the sphinx shown such emotion, gotten so worked up, over her actions. And the wolf has screwed up in etiquette plenty of times before. Ludmilla ought to be used to it by now. So why has it upset her so?

These weird behaviors aren't anything like those she's accustomed to. She has no experience in these matters, and it confuses her to the core. Unsure, she's tired of stomping and pacing behind Ludmilla's back like a child ignored.

So Savannah huffs her way to the piano bench and plops herself down beside, backwards facing from where Ludmilla plays. Setting her elbows on her knees with enough force to rattle the hands that cup her jaw, she decides she would rather listen to the piano than leave.

It makes her feel no better and none the wiser.
Even grumpy and pissed, she keeps the pianist in her peripherals and her mind.

Time is lost as the sphinx plays for what could be a couple hours. Teeth grind, but she's no less confused. If the sphinx looks her way, she's met with an equally dirty look. What. This cannot be completely her fault, so don't try and pin it all on one stupidly naive werewolf. Even so, she's painfully attune to the movements Mal makes. From the arch of her fingers over ivory keys to the slight movement of her back as she breathes. The sharp set angle of her jaws and those piercing eyes with each tempered glance.

But eventually the sounds soothe her enough to stand once more. Sighing, short and abrupt, she brushes off her shorts and begins to walk away. Her head is killing her.

She doesn't know what she wants.
But Mal's gotta have coffee somewhere.

[Ludmilla.]

They both settle into their own stubborn place. Ludmilla's fingers gracefully scaling the mouth of her piano. While Savannah sits beside her like a child scorned. And neither the sweet sounds drafting from the instrument or the peripheral peeks seem to satisfy either one of their ego's. And it's the steely resolve that keeps the sphinx in check. Belching out song after song,symphony after sonata just to fill the silence of the room and never be the first to give up her ornery attitude. And maybe it does go on for hours, both the sphinx and werewolf losing track in their thoughts. But finally one of their grips slacken and Savannah get's up to disappear into the kitchen.

With their game tempo dispersed, and a small immature lording of victory in her eyes. Ludmilla barely touches down a last note before she moves to follow. Hovering and smothering the girl and likely to use every excuse to do so without her cover being blown.

"What are you doing?" She says sharply, with attitude obvious in her tone. And rather the vet decides to interrupt or not regardless Mila is stopping her before she get's too far. Suddenly all too territorial of her home and all that's in it. "Dont touch anything, least you break something you'd never be able to afford." she argues.

And maybe it's a attempt to belittled the rest of her guest's pride. Or it's genuine courtesy layered with irritation. But either way Ludmilla's going to snatch whatever Savannah has in her hand away, and march to finish whatever kind of coffee she's trying to make. "Let me do it." she says defensively. And doesnt allow objection anywhere in the tone of her voice.

If this was as close to being civil as either of them would get, well, it was going to be a long day.

[Savannah]

The silence of the piano sounds deafeningly loud.

Eyes slip to look over her shoulder and a frown settles deep on her lips as she answers. "Whatever I want," as Mal herself has said she could. Right now, she wants coffee. The sphinx can go take care of her own wants and needs. Go back to your piano, Ludmilla... Savannah would much rather listen to the music than her condescending voice.

The sphinx bids her to keep her hands to herself and Savannah is stricken with the defiant urge to place her middle finger on a lampshade, followed by a pointed look at Ludmilla. She pauses by the piece, contemplating, and almost does... How dare she.

That won't solve problems, however, so fists and teeth clench. Back straight, she makes her way from the room with the woman on her heels. Low blow, and the woman stands completely offended. Hell if she can't afford breaking a ten dollar coffee pot!

This whole house is huge and needlessly adorned with the finer aspects of living. It screams 'Ludmilla' from the breezeway with its tall columns to the marbled counter tops. It puts her modest two bedroom rental to shame. Finding the kitchen by the scent of food alone, the appliance sits in a corner. Ah, heaven, and the sphinx had better have some good coffee grounds nearby, something dark and exotic and stronger than a shot of adrenaline. They're going to need it if they're to tolerate one another today.

Disobeying the earlier command, Savannah scarcely has the pot in her hand before it's so rudely pried away by greedy claws. Shoulders tense, she interprets the move as authoritative and controlling. There's no room to argue and the pot doesn't belong to her. Despite how much she'd like to make a grab for it, Milla's tone rings with finality.

Arms cross. "What? Scared I'll mess it up?" And cranes her neck back to eye the woman, balance positioned on one hip, offended.

"Better brew it strong," she critiques. Long nights of veterinary school have altered her palate to prefer coffee black and kicking with caffeine.

Moving towards a table, she warns. "Sorry, I'm going to have to touch this chair too, unless you'd rather pull it out for me. But I'm sitting in it anyway." Sorry, not sorry, and scoots the legs across the floor before sitting to judge Ludmilla's barista skills.

Then the harshness of her own tone worms it's way into her conscience, like the wafting scent of good coffee fills the air. Ludmilla hasn't asked for this. Then again, neither has Savannah. An apology almost finds her tongue, but pride shoos it away.

An elbow on the table, a hand moves to support a heavy head, and she admits, slower and kinder. "...I was going to cook some eggs too." Tone nicer, but if Ludmilla intends to do all the rest, why not make some eggs while she's at it. Make me a sammich.