(1942-11-13) Iron and Salt: The Ties that Bind
Iron and Salt – The Ties that Bind
Summary: Wolf is back again, apparently from Chicago again, and has heard of the things going on with Kitty's porch. She knows very little about demons, but knows enough to believe that's what's going on. What she can't find is the page in her books that has a key of Solomon on it. So she tries to make due with lines of salt and iron, the salt in a form of putty covering the iron wire.
Date: 2017.11.13
Related: None
Players:
kathleen..wolf..

It's about fear. Fear that the worst sort of supernatural thing, far worse than a witch, is nosing around the Wright household. Worse, it's something that Wolf knows very little about, and she's desperately trying to find out more. There's a tool against them, against demons. She knows there is, but she can't find it. She's flipped through all her books, all the sections on demons she has (given that her personal occult library is mostly about witches) and the most basic thing, the key of Solomon, the Devil's trap. She can't find it. And magic sigils are things you don't want to guess on. "Damnation, was that one of the books back at the convent?" She grumps to herself. Demons on the front porch, of HER home threatening HER people. This will not do. At all. So instead of the proper demon trap she intended, she heads toward the door with her roll of soft iron wire and tacks and hopes that the aversion to iron and salt works for demons as well as it does for witches. This is where Kathleen finds her, a determined, annoyed expression on her face, her work coveralls on her body, and carrying a hammer. Wolf 's muttering sounds like "I KNEW I should have looted the library before I set fire to the place.

There are certain things that appeal to Kathleen.. strongly, in fact: Charlie Chaplin, aged bourbon, a job well done and a lover in work attire. So when the carpenter walks up the street toward her homestead and turns onto the walkway leading through the sentinel-like shade trees, it's the industrious Wolf that catches her attention. Always one to save money wherever possible, Kitty left her old Ford in the driveway and walked her way over yonder toward Pine street to check in on one of her 'usual' patrons. Said patron is an elderly woman whose husband is long dead, who refuses to move out of her ramshackle house until she's carried out in a pine box.

.. Kitty does her repairs for free. Plus it's nice to walk home on a cool, clear evening. She is not alone, either: Madeline strides at her side, pretty as a picture and wrapped up in a lovely peacoat of deep violet. Kitty meanwhile is rangy and dusty in her overalls, a large plaid flannel coat piled up on her shoulders, hair a terror beneath a bandana. Both sets of Wright eyes observe Wolf, talk of torching a library lost on them. Kitty's lips curl up into a puzzled albeit appreciative smirk; Maddie beams. "Oh, Miss Wolf! Good evening!" She chimes in her belle-like way.

Wolf smiles a little weakly. It's hard for her to turn her emotions on a dime when she's genuinely herself and not wearing a role. She'd hoped to be done with this by the time the other two got home. Better they don't know. Especially if it doesn't work. She crouches down to get to work. The motion, particularly in these coveralls, in her Raphael face (more importantly bust), might be fetching, might be intended to be fetching, under other circumstances. Today, this evening, she's just trying to protect her people. And herself.

Worry not, Kitty never expects others to be 'soppy' in her presence, at least with their emotions. So while the elder Wright is wondering what Wolf is exactly doing here on the porch, the younger spies the hammer in 'Raphael's' hand and tilts her golden gilt head. "It's after supper, ya'll don't have to be working now?" Madeline asks chipperly, and Kathleen's lithe hand lifts to rest at the base of the girl's skull. It's a light, affectionate gesture. "Yer right baby, can ya go in and fix us some of yer famous lemonade?" She asks randomly, brow furrowed over golden eyes. Madeline looks up quizzically.

"In the fall? You sure I should be using some of the sugar?" The child asks shyly.

"Sure can. I ain't usin' sugar, and it's worthwhile with the lemonade ya fix. Can ya do us the kindness? Can stay up an hour later too if ya want." Kitty sweetens the deal, no pun intended.

The girl flounces up and into the house, and the carpenter watches Wolf again. "Ya doin' okay?"

Taptaptap. Wolf slowly runs a line of iron wire across corner where the porch joins the wall, across the foot of the door, pausing every few tacks to putty it in. Hey, putty seals the house for winter, right? Actually this stuff doesn't really like water that much. Too much salt in it. She nods at Kathleen's question. "After what you told me happened on this porch, I'm takin' some steps to try and keep you and her…and me… safe. I wish I knew more about this kind of thing." She waits until Madaline is in the kitchen before whispering, just loudly enough that hopefully Kitty can hear her. "I know about witches. Not demons. There's some overlap but not so much as you'd think. I didn't manage to get into any good libraries while I was in Chicago."

"Ya.. ya know more than I do." Kitty admits after an uncomfortable moment or two, following talk of witches and… demons. She glances toward the door through which the preteen flounced, then back at the porch swing that has been successfully revitalized. "I ain't never thought a… demon would be on my doorstep. I heard of people havin' the devil in 'em but it was always a figure of speech, I never thought…"

The barest look of defeat; of a woman who is in an element unlike what she is accustomed to… or even wants to believe. "Thanks for thinkin' of us, though, uh…" She pads up to the top of the steps, squints at the putty. "What exactly.. is this…? How's this s'posed to keep people… things like that away?"

You say, "There's salt in the putty. A lot of salt. Salt's a purifier. The iron wire… iron blocks a witch's power. Whether that works on demons, I don't know. I wish I did." She hammers some more. "IF it works, it should give any demon a lot more trouble crossing into the house." Her shoulders hunch forward. "But I don't know. I'm pretty specialized. My usual approach was find a witch IN a house and do this so he or she can't get out. Then burn the place down around 'em, or shoot 'em with a 12 gauge load of ball bearings if they did try to get out. And I only had myself to worry about, and the Church kept telling me my soul was protected no matter what. So what's a little death compared to that?"

She takes a long breath. "Now I find that the Church I fought for has been corrupted. They also excommunicated me, so if I die…I go to Hell. I keep askin'…myself, God, whatever… if a corrupt official serving a witch or a demon can still do that to me, but I'm pretty sure if the Church's power relied on the purity of the men running it, it'd have no power at all, so. Let's say between that and having a family, I have a lot more to lose.."

As the nightbirds hollar in the woodlands beyond the town, and the evening tapers off toward a true late-autumn chill, Kitty hardly considers these very typical things. No, she's too caught up listening to Wolf's words: talk of these uncanny, unspoken things… never before, not even through Clifton, had Kathleen heard tale of these things that go 'bump'. She cannot supply anything here, for she had been over with Bernice when Frank and Clifton came to look at the wreckage on the porch. "A.. purifier…" Kitty blinks, tilting her head, one brow quirking. One cheekbone has been marred with soot, the other clean and surprisingly feminine.

"Should I have salt in… the bedrooms, ya think? Does it work that way? Or am I needin' a holy man to say some words 'round it?" She asks, feeling and sounding naive and hating it. Her eyes round at the talk of witches and how they were dealt with. "What'd the witches look like that ya chased down? Were they like the fairy tales?" She asks.. it's almost cute, how naive she is in this realm.

Lowering herself to sit atop the step, Kitty watches Wolf as she talks, her gaze rather intense. "Ya consider us yer family? Ifn' that's the case, it's a… a right honor t' hear ya say that." Kitty admits, looking touched.

Wolf looks over at Kitty, and that look on Wolf's face is fear, barely controlled, She squeezes her eyes shut and looks back to her work. "Salt doesn't care who wields it. Neither does iron. Time I'm done every door, every window, and all the fireplaces are gonna have both salt and iron lines in front of them. I don't know if it will work. There are stronger measures, and I thought I had a diagram of one, but I can't find it anymore. I may not have the book it was in. You know that old legend that you can summon a demon and trap him in a pentagram? It's like that, only there's more to it than just a pentagram."

She finishes with the porch presently, and looks at Kitty again, meeting the gaze as long as she can bear it. "And no, witches aren't always old women in black clothes, and I've never actually seen one ride a broom, although it's possible. They know those stories too."

She sets the hammer down and stretches. It was a strenuous day working too. "And demons… hell, what I know about them wouldn't fill a match box. The one I got at the bar…someone handed me a crossbow and I just shot and hoped…and it worked." She looks back toward the line across the porch. It seems so terribly fragile, even if the salt putty sets up very hard the way its supposed to. She looks at Kitty again, faces that gaze. How do you tell someone that they've gotten under your skin(s), that the idea of them being stalked by the supernatural is keeping you awake at night, that you've never felt this way about anyone, not even your own mother, before? Wolf doesn't know. The words that come to mind are words she's misused so much to get what she wants from people that they seem fake, the very tissue of lies. So she doesn't use them. But there's not much to take their place. "Honor or no. It's the truth," is all she adds.

Did the carpenter catch that brief flash of fear in Wolf's eyes before the other woman looked away? Eyes are closed as if in a defensive measure and Wolf returns to her work, while Kitty goes on looking for half a minute or so before flicking golden eyes back to line of putty that has been placed hopefully, with intention for it to harden and form a line of defense. "Yer doin' better than I could… I grew up thinkin' salt were meant for puttin' on my taters, saltin' driveways and pickling cukes. This is beyond me.." She trails off, not wanting to interrupt this fascinating and terrifying tangent of conversation. "Clifton has dealt with this… kid that did this, that came by here. Talk of this bein' a possession… that the boy is being driven' by a bad spirit like a daredevil behind the wheel of a car…"

Wolf sets down the hammer and Kitty watches her again, meeting gazes once more and at least on Kitty's part, not looking away. "The fucker hit when there was still daylight… I ain't thinkin' he wanted to hurt me specifically. It were a shot against Clif, a way to get at him somehow.. ain't been back since. But the demon sure ruffled my feathers… I ain't knowin' much on how to kill 'em, but my shotgun ain't one to discriminate…"

Unknowing of the turmoil in Wolf's mind and heart at getting close to Kitty and perhaps even Madeline, the carpenter nonetheless meets the topic of being 'like family' head-on. "Ya been here for months, Wolf.. yer carin' so much about this property. Can see yer nerves sparkin' across yer face… it's at the point where ya can call that room yours, and not have t' pay me a cent in rent. Not anymore. Yer doin' so much.. whom am I t' charge family to stay under this roof?"

Wolf closes her eyes again and smiles weakly. "And who am I to not chip in to help family?" She gets up and walks over to the stairs. Unless Kitty seems to object, she draws Kitty to her, and touches the other woman's lips with her own. If Madiline sees… well then she sees. She's a bright girl and would figure it out eventually.

Needless to say, Kitty isn't the best with words. She may be a gruff workaholic, like her drink a bit too much, be terrified of commitment and hard to get to know… but her words are genuine. One can place their wellbeing and life on Kitty's truth and actions. She is yet seated, but she recognizes the other woman's intent in this hour of dusk and she stands slowly, wincing a bit at a pop in her lower back. Pulled in with perhaps a touch to the hand or elbow, Kitty certainly obliges to the kiss and returns it affectionately… well, as affectionate as she can get. Madeline is busy in the kitchen, happy to be charged with so important a task and the offer to stay up late on this school night! Well, not too late. Did the girl see the two embracing? It's hard to tell, given how the kitchen looks off toward the side-yard..

Either way, Kitty doesn't mind. Measures have been taken to protect her hearth and kin, and that's so incredibly important. She rests a palm warmly to the base of Wolf's neck, lightly anod not gripping. "Let's get in on that lemonade, and I'll thank ya proper once Mads is settled in." A promise. Some things Kitty just cannot hope to understand, this talk of demons and witches.. but she knows how important these measures are to keep the baddies away.

Wolf smiles a little more warmly and entertains a faint blush. "I should finish this first, but after that…I got all night."

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