She'd been away from home for too long. Riding the bus through the streets of Pittsburgh that hot summer day, Catalyne found herself gaping at buildings she otherwise would have gone past without a second glance. Heinz Field and PNC Park were definitely new, built only recently while she and Nika were living in Florida. Seeing them suddenly brought a tugging feeling at the back of her throat. The Three Rivers Stadium was truly gone. Somehow, she'd made herself believe otherwise. Maybe it was because that was the only thing she and her oldest brother had in common. They both really liked baseball and had gone to the Stadium all the time before Catalyne turned twelve…when Aunt Nika came and took her away.
She remembered that day very well. The private Catholic school she'd been going to sent her home early one final time accompanied by a note complaining about her 'sudden and sometimes uncontrolable spurts of rage against other students.' She hadn't meant to dislocate the boy's arm and shatter half the bones in his wrist in the process. Honest. Besides, he'd insulted her honor by going on about how her parents were related by more than just marriage and that her entire family was inbred. It was true…to an extent…but he'd gone on and on about it as if they were West Virginians or something.
Mom had told Aunt Nika about it almost immediately, and the latter came for Catalyne mere days later from her—then—home in Monte Carlo. The girl had known some things about her family and the blood that coursed through them, but Nika knew a little bit more. She knew that Catalyne had more strength in her than most of the other family members and that it would have turned a bad situation at school into something far, far worse had it not been caught early on.
That's basically when it had all started. Nika would train the young Garou in as much of the ways of their kind as she could in the time before the first change occurred. Catalyne had learned how to fight like a proper Black Fury, learning to banish all her childhood fears, and had even gone with her aunt to the home of a distant cousin one day to have her labrys crafted by his expert hands. Silver and bronze and Greek in design, that had been her wish. And four years later is when the inevitable struck.
Right in the middle of a cage fight at Nika's club in Monte Carlo between Catalyne and a very drunk Hell's Angel, the young woman lost her cool and concentration. The strobe lights were going, hard rock was playing to deafening levels and the crowd was going wild. Catalyne felt herself growing and her skin prickling, but she didn't care. Her teeth grew sharp and long, but she hardly noticed. Her claws tore through the skin of the man's chest and he screamed, but all she knew was that he'd really pissed her off somehow. Moments later, the fight ended and the feeling passed. She was normal again, and the people about seemed completely confused about what had happened. But the damage had been done.
Nika wouldn't risk staying there when the hospital checked out those wounds on the Hell's Angel even if his story was tainted by drunkenness. It wasn't worth it. The pair of women moved to Miami mere days later, Nika buying out an old bar down by the seafront and renovating it, setting it up like the one in Monte Carlo, Catalyne insisting on the inclusion of a Cage. Only through the fighting did she find a way to dull her mind to the painful memories of ridicule from her peers back in Pittsburgh. She had always been different, and both she and the others her age knew it. That wasn't where it ended, though.
Her father had always been the alcoholic, abusing his children every way under the sun—poor Catalyne most of all. Her mother had tried to stop things early on, but she was powerless against her Kinfolk husband. From those experiences, Catalyne had gained her fierce rage…and she hated her father for it. She couldn't wait for him to die.
The bus followed alongside the slightly tainted and broad Allegheny River for a while before cutting through the tall, close buildings of Downtown and heading east toward Oakland, Squirrel Hill and Shadyside. Shopping…that's what she'd do. It was a typical teenage girl thing, but she figured that anything that kept her mind off her usual life was a good thing right about then.
She stopped the bus in North Oakland, figuring on hitting the cultural stores along Craig Street first. From there, Squirrel Hill was a twenty minute walk at most and Shadyside a quick bus ride from there. She'd get lost later.
Perusing the small shops along the street, she stopped at the local, mostly empty Subway to grab a meatball hoagie before moving onto the more interesting places: the New Age shop full of books on paganism amongst other things, the Irish Design Center overflowing with imports of all kinds from the British Isles set up in a comforting, well-lit atmosphere, and the role-playing store just up the block that was just as over-stocked as when she'd last been in the small, house-like building. She bought a pewter clip for her hair from the Celtic place—she didn't really know why—before deciding to head on out to Squirrel Hill and the stores up in that direction.
She headed back southwest past Subway to Forbes Avenue, a busy four-laner of one way traffic, cutting across it to the modern looking Carnegie Museum of Art before heading due south to Schenley Park. She'd take the shortest route she knew off the sidewalks and away from the traffic and most of the crowds. She cut back to the thirty-six-story, gothic Cathedral of Learning on the University of Pittsburgh campus and passed the classic style Carnegie Music Hall and public library, getting herself on Schenley Drive that took her up past the glass domes of Phipp's Conservatory and into the park itself.
Somewhere along Panther Hollow Road, the street that led through the park's very center, that sixth sense of hers came back in hounding torrents of intuitive tuggings in certain directions. She stopped near one of the baseball fields and looked to her left, facing the north and all the trees. Something was in there. She could feel it down to the very core of her being, and it was calling to her. She tried to shrug it off and continue on her way, but mere paces later, she couldn't but halt again.
There wasn't anything but the wind in the leaves when she listened…but, still, there was something there. Somewhere. Urging her to come to whatever it was wherever it was. She sighed, the paper bag in her hand making a slight crinkling sound as she clenched her fists. Staring at her black platform sneakers for a while, she made up her mind. With a nod to herself at a mental decision, she headed off the paved path through the park and into the trees.
Clothed as she was in her sneakers, a very baggy pair of jeans despite the heat and a plain, hugging blue tank top, she was careful when trudging through the underbrush, grateful that her long hair was pulled back in its usual braid. The leaves crunched like cereal beneath her feet as did the patches of grass when she came to them. It had been a bad summer here, abnormally hot and dry. No rain had fallen since April as far as her mother had told her over the phone once. It was now August, and, though the leaves were still green, they were obviously dead. The chlorophyll had most likely been mummified or something like it. Fall would be interesting to see, to say the least.
The feeling in her gut kept getting stronger with each step she took, a surreal notion coming to her brain that something other-worldly had somehow inhabited the park. She didn't know how else to explain it. The feeling was like one of an adrenaline rush tied to a feeling of coming home with a bit of fear on the side. It was comforting somehow, yet unnerving all the same.
"Ungh? You's got shinies!"
Catalyne stopped dead in her tracks at the sudden, uneducated female voice, a look of abject shock plastered on her face. Looking up, she discovered the source.
A girl no older than she with waist-long black hair and eyes to match was squatting on a sturdy tree branch, holding to the limb above her with one arm. She was very small and slight of build with an angled face and sharp nose. She was somewhat pretty but not outstandingly so, and she was clad in a plain black baby-tee and flared blue jeans. Her feet were completely bare, the toenails painted black.
Without warning, she leaped from her branch—a full ten feet above the ground—landed as lightly as if she weighed next to nothing and ran up to Catalyne, eyeing the silver necklace at her throat with wide, greedy eyes and her lower lip between her teeth.
"You's got shinies," she said again, though much more quietly as she reached a tiny hand up as if to touch the dragon-shaped pendant that held all her attention.
Catalyne backed away, partially in disgust, partially in fear. "Who the hell are you?" she asked in angry curiosity.
The girl blinked as if having been released from a trance and dropped her hand back to her side, looking at Catalyne's face, this time, as if trying to figure out who she was looking at as well.
"Tuuli is my name," she said brightly, a wide smile suddenly spreading across her face. "Though most of the wolfies call me Little Wind. They seems to like it more." She giggled.
"What are you doing out here…in the trees…without…shoes?" Catalyne's voice slowed as her eyebrow went up, her attention once more on Tuuli's feet.
The girl's look became more discerning and thoughtful as she looked Catalyne over from head to foot and back again. It was almost as if she were trying to decide if she were someone worth telling something very important to.
"I live here," she said finally with a shrug, her expression quite unexpectedly sober given her previous attitudes.
Catalyne blinked in disbelief. "Why here?"
"Because I's in charge of helping guard the wolfies' place." Her tone was cheerful again and her little body stood poised as if with pride.
"Wolfies…." Catalyne's expression darkened in thought as she turned the word over and over in her mind, wishing that the girl spoke proper English and not some queer variant thereof. Suddenly, it hit her. The tugging feeling, what she was, what all Nika had taught her, this girl popping out of nowhere claiming the park to be her home…the 'wolfies' place'. It all became clear. She was near a caern.
"Can I go to this 'wolfies' place'?" she asked innocently, already knowing the answer in her mind. She was Garou. Usually, all Garou could enter a caern in new territory. At least that's what Nika always said.
Tuuli's face appeared to be thinking again, the girl wrinkling up her nose as she crossed her arms over her chest, standing first on one foot then the other as her head cocked sharply to the side.
"I's thinks it's okay," she said at last, deciding to remain poised on her right foot with her arms randomly going out to the sides at shoulder height. She then dropped all her limbs and bounded up a leaf-covered bank. "It's this way! Follow me and you's won't lose your way, oh no!" She stood at the top of the rise and jumped up and down excitedly.
Catalyne couldn't help but chuckle a little at the girl's antics, following her guide as closely as she could as Tuuli skipped gaily off through the trees, not seeming to follow a path at all. All the Black Fury knew was that the tugging in her gut was back and still growing stronger.