All Hail the Shifter King
Title: Lords of Kensington, Part 11
Word Count: 1701
Note: I half-assed the hell out of this because I've been suffering from a wretched chronic pain flareup lately and I want to write about as much as I want to chew my own foot off. So this is ... it's bad. It's just wretchedly bad. But I'm keeping it for a couple amusing points of dialogue and the sake of actually making this meeting happen so I can get back to writing people being mauled by animals.
"Kitten!"
Melissa Shan practically threw herself through the doorway to embrace her daughter, squashing Katrina in a hug that looked about to snap the young woman's ribcage. Katrina just laughed, returning the embrace with happy tears in her eyes.
"I missed you so much," she said, sniffling. "It feels like it's been years."
"For us too, sweetie, us too." Melissa pulled back and turned to Ryder, giving him an appraising look. "And you're Ryder, hmm? The poor fellow she picked up in Rion Fell?"
"I'd say she was far more unfortunate to end up stuck with me, Doctor Shan," Ryder replied, smiling. Melissa laughed at this and wagged a finger at him.
"I'm only Doctor when I'm working," she told him. "It's Mel, please." She led them through the wide entrance, a stately sitting room, and into a kitchen so large it could easily host a dinner party, provided the guests could find a space amid all the papers, journals, and textbooks to place their drinks. "Probably looks the same as you remember it, hmm Kitty?"
"Exactly the same," Katrina said, and breezed around the large island to pour herself a glass of water. "Where's Daddy?"
"He had to take Grandma to visit your cousins. Should be back any minute."
"She didn't want to visit?" Katrina asked, trying to sound disappointed. She did miss her grandmother - it had been almost three years since she'd seen her - but after the brandy-fueled tirade she'd heard that morning at the airport, she wasn't sure she felt like introducing her to Ryder just yet.
"Just for the day," her mother assured. "We're trying to..." Her eyes flicked to Ryder a moment and she managed a weak, somewhat embarrassed smile. "We're trying to warm her up to the fact that Katrina is dating again," she said.
"Not to the fact I'm a terrorist?" he asked, accepting the glass of water that Katrina passed him. Melissa sighed and covered her eyes with one hand.
"She's something else, that woman," she said, and laughed. "You need to understand, Katrina's the only grandchild on her father's side. Grandma Shan is -"
"Senile and crazy," Katrina quipped, grinning. "Don't be so nervous, Mama. I call him far worse than that on a good day."
"It would be nice if one actually stuck around for a bit, don't you think?" Melissa asked. She stepped close to the open sliding door that led to the back patio and cocked her head to one side, listening to the sound of an approaching vehicle. "There's your father now," she said. "Why don't you meet him at the door, help him with the groceries?"
Brunch was a familiar affair - eggs benedict prepared with smoked salmon rather than ham, her mother's famous homemade hollandaise sauce smothering the crisp english muffins and soft-poached eggs. She'd winced a little as her father handed Ryder a plate, wondering if he would at all object to the fatty foods when he was accustomed to eating extremely lean, but to her relief Ryder simply took the meal with a smile. It made her grin a little, remembering the production it would be whenever Eli cooked and the special meal he'd have to prepare on the side just to convince Ryder to dine with them. What would Eli say now, she wondered? She made a mental note to mention it the next time she talked to Rebekah.
"So, Kitten," her father said after they'd passed some time talking about her flights from Rion Fell ("Long and boring," she said, rolling her eyes dramatically as if delays at the airport were the most frustrating thing she'd ever encountered) and the drive up the coast to Kensington ("Also long and boring," she said. "But at least the scenery was pretty."), "I'm dying to hear about the work you were doing."
"It was a lot like field work here," she said, noticing from the corner of her eye how Ryder watched her as she spoke. "A lot of walking around, cataloging... wishing I had bug spray..." Her parents both chuckled at this and it made her smile, brought a warmth to her that she hadn't realized she'd been missing. "There are so many ruins there," she continued, stabbing an errant chunk of salmon, "and most of them are entirely untouched. We recovered a lot of carvings, a lot of pictographs." The lies rolled easily off her tongue, and her parents nodded happily. "I've never been so in my element." She paused. "And out of it. I saw a lot of amazing things," she finally finished. "More endangered species than I thought I'd see in my lifetime. I held..." She put her fork down and cupped her hands in a bowl shape. "I held stalker lilies, a handful of them, just like this. And I got to catalog two unidentified species of flowering vines that might actually be entirely new. And..." She hesitated again, cleared her throat. "But there's not much more that I can say," she added, making a show of thinking carefully. "I had to sign so many confidentiality agreements, I'm not even sure I'm allowed to say I was there."
"The nature of the beast," Melissa agreed, sipping her orange juice. "Your father has to deal with similar annoyances when he goes out of town."
"I had to fill out more paperwork to bring Victor and Logan home than I did to buy this house," Preston joked.
"Those are his cats," Katrina said to Ryder, who seemed a little lost in the conversation. "I'm sure you'll meet them later."
"They're not pets so much as children," Melissa quipped, smiling around the rim of her glass. "You don't have issues with cats, do you Ryder?"
"Issues?" he asked, and actually seemed to think about it before adding, "I'd say it's a bit of a love-hate relationship."
"We've something in common, then," Melissa said with a wink. "So tell us a bit about yourself, won't you? Katrina is awfully lax with the details."
"She mentioned that the two of you worked together," Preston added. "Does that mean you're a botanist as well?"
"Me?" Ryder asked, and chuckled as he leaned back in his chair with his glass of water. "No, no, not in the least. I'm a physicist."
"A physicist!" Melissa seemed absolutely delighted, her brain instantly turning over from mother to scientist - Katrina would recognize that information-hungry smile anywhere. "That's marvelous!"
"I wouldn't go as far as saying it's marvelous," Ryder mentioned, reaching over to hook his fingers beneath Katrina's jaw and push her open mouth closed, "but it's interesting."
"I'm curious what Taggart wants a physicist on the payroll for," Melissa mused. "Seems a little outside the scope of his work."
"It probably is," Ryder agreed. "I wasn't brought on in that capacity though. I was hired as security." When her parents seemed surprised - and in her mother's case, almost dismayed - she braced herself for an inevitable testy tirade from him, but he again surprised her by simply continuing to speak. "The locals are not particularly educated people," he told them, "and the idea of a northern company wandering about in the forest bothered them. There were some altercations when the camp first opened and some archaeologists, I believe it was, were injured. Taggart determined that private security was necessary to keep the work crews safe." He leaned forward to refill his glass from the pitcher on the table. "I was born in Makeh, grew up between there and Rion Fell. Apparently knowing the sociological climate comes in handy."
"So you're the knight in shining armor that kept our girl safe, then?" Preston asked, grinning.
The question visibly caught Ryder off guard - the easygoing smile vanished instantly and for a moment he seemed entirely shocked. He glanced at Katrina as if not sure what to say, and with a laugh she leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder.
"He most definitely did," she answered, and felt him shift in his chair so that he could slip his hand around her waist, rest his cheek against the top of her head.
"Yeah," he said. "I guess I did."
When brunch was finished Preston did, in fact, drag Ryder off to meet his various furry children - Katrina watched them go with a faint smile as she helped her mother clear the table and load the dishwasher, her anxiety calming somewhat now that they'd managed to get through a meal without her parents telling him to get out of their house. It was her mother's quiet laugh that brought her back to herself, and she glanced over at the older woman with a raised eyebrow.
"What's so funny?" she asked.
"You're adorable when you're smitten," Melissa said, winking as she filled the sink with water to wash the few pots and pans that wouldn't fit in the dishwasher. "I don't think I've ever seen you like this."
"Like what?" She settled herself onto a stool at the island and picked up a framed photograph half-buried under enormous fold-out maps - it was of her in costume for one of her ballet recitals, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old.
"You seem very... contemplative." Melissa dunked her hands in the soapy water. "You quite like him, don't you?"
"I think I do," she mused, picking at the cracked and dented wooden frame. She'd made it in junior high - the lines were wobbly at best, the sanding brutally lacking, the paint job well below amateur with mutated daisies and a barely-circular sun. It had been a Mother's Day gift, and unlike gifts her friends gave their mothers, she'd yet to see any of hers stuffed at the bottom of a drawer.
"I can't say I blame you," her mother said, scrubbing away at a pan. "You've dated a few lookers here and there, but Kitty, that man is beautiful. Those eyes?" She shook her head as she rinsed the pan and placed it in the second sink. "Do you have any idea how rare heterochromia is?" she asked as Katrina slid off her stool and grabbed a drying towel.
"Yeah," Katrina said, smiling as she pulled the pan from the sink and dried it. "He's one in a million."
Word Count: 1701
Note: I half-assed the hell out of this because I've been suffering from a wretched chronic pain flareup lately and I want to write about as much as I want to chew my own foot off. So this is ... it's bad. It's just wretchedly bad. But I'm keeping it for a couple amusing points of dialogue and the sake of actually making this meeting happen so I can get back to writing people being mauled by animals.
"Kitten!"
Melissa Shan practically threw herself through the doorway to embrace her daughter, squashing Katrina in a hug that looked about to snap the young woman's ribcage. Katrina just laughed, returning the embrace with happy tears in her eyes.
"I missed you so much," she said, sniffling. "It feels like it's been years."
"For us too, sweetie, us too." Melissa pulled back and turned to Ryder, giving him an appraising look. "And you're Ryder, hmm? The poor fellow she picked up in Rion Fell?"
"I'd say she was far more unfortunate to end up stuck with me, Doctor Shan," Ryder replied, smiling. Melissa laughed at this and wagged a finger at him.
"I'm only Doctor when I'm working," she told him. "It's Mel, please." She led them through the wide entrance, a stately sitting room, and into a kitchen so large it could easily host a dinner party, provided the guests could find a space amid all the papers, journals, and textbooks to place their drinks. "Probably looks the same as you remember it, hmm Kitty?"
"Exactly the same," Katrina said, and breezed around the large island to pour herself a glass of water. "Where's Daddy?"
"He had to take Grandma to visit your cousins. Should be back any minute."
"She didn't want to visit?" Katrina asked, trying to sound disappointed. She did miss her grandmother - it had been almost three years since she'd seen her - but after the brandy-fueled tirade she'd heard that morning at the airport, she wasn't sure she felt like introducing her to Ryder just yet.
"Just for the day," her mother assured. "We're trying to..." Her eyes flicked to Ryder a moment and she managed a weak, somewhat embarrassed smile. "We're trying to warm her up to the fact that Katrina is dating again," she said.
"Not to the fact I'm a terrorist?" he asked, accepting the glass of water that Katrina passed him. Melissa sighed and covered her eyes with one hand.
"She's something else, that woman," she said, and laughed. "You need to understand, Katrina's the only grandchild on her father's side. Grandma Shan is -"
"Senile and crazy," Katrina quipped, grinning. "Don't be so nervous, Mama. I call him far worse than that on a good day."
"It would be nice if one actually stuck around for a bit, don't you think?" Melissa asked. She stepped close to the open sliding door that led to the back patio and cocked her head to one side, listening to the sound of an approaching vehicle. "There's your father now," she said. "Why don't you meet him at the door, help him with the groceries?"
Brunch was a familiar affair - eggs benedict prepared with smoked salmon rather than ham, her mother's famous homemade hollandaise sauce smothering the crisp english muffins and soft-poached eggs. She'd winced a little as her father handed Ryder a plate, wondering if he would at all object to the fatty foods when he was accustomed to eating extremely lean, but to her relief Ryder simply took the meal with a smile. It made her grin a little, remembering the production it would be whenever Eli cooked and the special meal he'd have to prepare on the side just to convince Ryder to dine with them. What would Eli say now, she wondered? She made a mental note to mention it the next time she talked to Rebekah.
"So, Kitten," her father said after they'd passed some time talking about her flights from Rion Fell ("Long and boring," she said, rolling her eyes dramatically as if delays at the airport were the most frustrating thing she'd ever encountered) and the drive up the coast to Kensington ("Also long and boring," she said. "But at least the scenery was pretty."), "I'm dying to hear about the work you were doing."
"It was a lot like field work here," she said, noticing from the corner of her eye how Ryder watched her as she spoke. "A lot of walking around, cataloging... wishing I had bug spray..." Her parents both chuckled at this and it made her smile, brought a warmth to her that she hadn't realized she'd been missing. "There are so many ruins there," she continued, stabbing an errant chunk of salmon, "and most of them are entirely untouched. We recovered a lot of carvings, a lot of pictographs." The lies rolled easily off her tongue, and her parents nodded happily. "I've never been so in my element." She paused. "And out of it. I saw a lot of amazing things," she finally finished. "More endangered species than I thought I'd see in my lifetime. I held..." She put her fork down and cupped her hands in a bowl shape. "I held stalker lilies, a handful of them, just like this. And I got to catalog two unidentified species of flowering vines that might actually be entirely new. And..." She hesitated again, cleared her throat. "But there's not much more that I can say," she added, making a show of thinking carefully. "I had to sign so many confidentiality agreements, I'm not even sure I'm allowed to say I was there."
"The nature of the beast," Melissa agreed, sipping her orange juice. "Your father has to deal with similar annoyances when he goes out of town."
"I had to fill out more paperwork to bring Victor and Logan home than I did to buy this house," Preston joked.
"Those are his cats," Katrina said to Ryder, who seemed a little lost in the conversation. "I'm sure you'll meet them later."
"They're not pets so much as children," Melissa quipped, smiling around the rim of her glass. "You don't have issues with cats, do you Ryder?"
"Issues?" he asked, and actually seemed to think about it before adding, "I'd say it's a bit of a love-hate relationship."
"We've something in common, then," Melissa said with a wink. "So tell us a bit about yourself, won't you? Katrina is awfully lax with the details."
"She mentioned that the two of you worked together," Preston added. "Does that mean you're a botanist as well?"
"Me?" Ryder asked, and chuckled as he leaned back in his chair with his glass of water. "No, no, not in the least. I'm a physicist."
"A physicist!" Melissa seemed absolutely delighted, her brain instantly turning over from mother to scientist - Katrina would recognize that information-hungry smile anywhere. "That's marvelous!"
"I wouldn't go as far as saying it's marvelous," Ryder mentioned, reaching over to hook his fingers beneath Katrina's jaw and push her open mouth closed, "but it's interesting."
"I'm curious what Taggart wants a physicist on the payroll for," Melissa mused. "Seems a little outside the scope of his work."
"It probably is," Ryder agreed. "I wasn't brought on in that capacity though. I was hired as security." When her parents seemed surprised - and in her mother's case, almost dismayed - she braced herself for an inevitable testy tirade from him, but he again surprised her by simply continuing to speak. "The locals are not particularly educated people," he told them, "and the idea of a northern company wandering about in the forest bothered them. There were some altercations when the camp first opened and some archaeologists, I believe it was, were injured. Taggart determined that private security was necessary to keep the work crews safe." He leaned forward to refill his glass from the pitcher on the table. "I was born in Makeh, grew up between there and Rion Fell. Apparently knowing the sociological climate comes in handy."
"So you're the knight in shining armor that kept our girl safe, then?" Preston asked, grinning.
The question visibly caught Ryder off guard - the easygoing smile vanished instantly and for a moment he seemed entirely shocked. He glanced at Katrina as if not sure what to say, and with a laugh she leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder.
"He most definitely did," she answered, and felt him shift in his chair so that he could slip his hand around her waist, rest his cheek against the top of her head.
"Yeah," he said. "I guess I did."
When brunch was finished Preston did, in fact, drag Ryder off to meet his various furry children - Katrina watched them go with a faint smile as she helped her mother clear the table and load the dishwasher, her anxiety calming somewhat now that they'd managed to get through a meal without her parents telling him to get out of their house. It was her mother's quiet laugh that brought her back to herself, and she glanced over at the older woman with a raised eyebrow.
"What's so funny?" she asked.
"You're adorable when you're smitten," Melissa said, winking as she filled the sink with water to wash the few pots and pans that wouldn't fit in the dishwasher. "I don't think I've ever seen you like this."
"Like what?" She settled herself onto a stool at the island and picked up a framed photograph half-buried under enormous fold-out maps - it was of her in costume for one of her ballet recitals, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old.
"You seem very... contemplative." Melissa dunked her hands in the soapy water. "You quite like him, don't you?"
"I think I do," she mused, picking at the cracked and dented wooden frame. She'd made it in junior high - the lines were wobbly at best, the sanding brutally lacking, the paint job well below amateur with mutated daisies and a barely-circular sun. It had been a Mother's Day gift, and unlike gifts her friends gave their mothers, she'd yet to see any of hers stuffed at the bottom of a drawer.
"I can't say I blame you," her mother said, scrubbing away at a pan. "You've dated a few lookers here and there, but Kitty, that man is beautiful. Those eyes?" She shook her head as she rinsed the pan and placed it in the second sink. "Do you have any idea how rare heterochromia is?" she asked as Katrina slid off her stool and grabbed a drying towel.
"Yeah," Katrina said, smiling as she pulled the pan from the sink and dried it. "He's one in a million."