Rieka Guðrún Brandt

— nothing left behind but Rieka taking deep, calming breaths, her fists clenched around the cart handle like vices.
“Calm. Calm. Calm.” She repeated to herself in a whisper, telling the burning in her throat to cool itself down.
“Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.”

— cowed the man, if only a little.
“Didn’t have the thing I was looking for anyway,” Max said, his voice just a tad quieter.
“Be seeing you.”
“No, you won’t,” Rieka growled back as he passed them in the aisle, nearly brushing his shoulder against the rows of canned soup.

With that he was gone, —

— maw, the smell of fear, his fear, the stink of death.
She hated him. Pure, uncomplicated hate. A hard thing for a temperamental to harbor, a harder thing to suppress.
“Get. Out.”
Her voice held a sort of power Jules couldn’t understand, something deep within its registers was something that —

There was nothing else to say, nothing else to do.
Either of these two could bring the entire building down single-handedly, the destruction from both of them winding up in a scrap wasn’t something she wanted to think about.

But oh, did she want it. The taste of strange blood wetting her —

— bending beneath her grip, one of the plastic wheels snapping under the pressure she was pressing down with.
“Get out,” Rieka snarled through her long canines, another voice seeming to join hers as if her throat were being shared.
“Before I gut you and leave your meat for the crows.”

— profits doing?”
Max lazily tossed a bottle of cheap wine between each hand, making little glassy ‘thunk’ sounds each time.
“Haven’t seen that little freak you were banging around much lately. Couldn’t take that ‘Queen’ shit anymore, I’m guessing.”
The shopping cart’s metal handle was now —

— as she spoke, Rieka managed to spit out her reply.
“This is my territory, Max. I told you and your gang of rabid, inbred fleabags that you wouldn’t like it if you came near our spread again.”
He continued to speak as if she hadn’t just insulted him to his face.
“Oh, this is your store? How are —

— held little joy and much malice. His long dirty-blonde hair was tied back with leather strips, a lazily trimmed beard covering his angular face.
“Rieka Brandt. I thought you hit up the store off of Tenth and Walnut?” He said airily, pointing his thumb behind him.
Suppressing a throaty growl —

— empty aisle ahead of them, her long claw-like nails digging into the plastic of the cart’s handle.
“Is that who I think I smell?”
A deep male voice floated over the top of shelves as the owner stepped around the corner to face the pair.

He was as tall and as wide as Rieka with a smile that —

On the air, imperceptible to Jules, was a familiar scent. Sickly sweet musk, the sour smell of a warm day’s sweat, the smell of earth and iron.
“Just stay behind me and don’t say anything,” Rieka said through clenched teeth, slyly stepping ahead of Jules.
Rieka stepped forward into the large, —

— “Fuck. Here?” She mumbled through a throaty growl.

— attempting and failing to make herself the size of a regular Gothamite.
“Onward, peasant! To the cereal ai—“
Rieka froze in her tracks, her nostrils flaring as she rose to her full height.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, her nose scrunching in disgust. —

“Juicy steak you’ll have to fight someone for, crispy high-fives are free.”
As they entered the breezeway, Rieka ducked to avoid smacking her forehead on the door frame, making sure she returned to leaning over the cart’s handle. She seemed to be intentionally shrinking herself down, somewhat —

“No more’n anybody else. Although, we do seem to be a bit more…Flexible in that regard.”

“That’s true, that’s true.”

“Sorry.”

— her arms across the handle as they walked into the shop.

— to the front door. Who said she couldn’t be lazy now and then?
“Mind? Hey, I’m the queen. If anybody has a problem with you showin’ up…”
Rieka drew her clawed thumb across her neck and stuck her long tongue out the side of her mouth.
“Off with their heads.”
Rieka snagged a shopping cart, folding —

“Pfft. That implies I got the cash floating around for that. Would you do it pro-bono?”
The pair had gotten lucky. The parking lot for the grocery store was half-empty when they arrived.
Rieka swerved in to one of the few open spaces left at the front, the one with the least walking distance —

Rieka’s expression was distant just for a moment before the smile returned, a finger brushing the scar that stretched from her neck to her cheek.
“He’s been just fine. I’m sure everyone’d love to see you again.”

“Ha!” Rieka laughed sharply as they turned a corner, their destination just a few blocks ahead.
“Not exactly how the whole ‘Queen’ thing works. Don’t tell him that, he’ll start demanding I get a court jester or that he’s entitled to land or something.”

— for the first time a few weeks ago.”
Her chin seemed to be held higher now, her expression absolutely beaming.
“Been hard for him. For both of us. But these things have their ways of working out, thank the Allfather.”

— but she took in a breath, held it, let it out.
“Ain’t been doing much. Watching the others’ kids, teaching my own.
Shit, I guess you wouldn’t know.”
Rieka snapped her fingers, a big smile spreading ear-to-ear.
“I officially adopted my nephew, James. He’s…Well, he’s my son now. Called me mom —

— broken up a beating and whatnot, but never the antics she heard through the grapevine.
“Jeeeezus. Just another Tuesday for you though, huh?”

Rieka considered venting about the absurd politics of werewolf clans, the burdens her ‘crown’ carried, all the stresses that were putting pressure on her, —

“I mean, I guess I am technically big-boned. I’ll leave future archeologists confused for sure.”
Rieka shook her head as Jules spoke, her thoughts wandering to what her life would be like if she counted herself among the spandexed heroes.
Sure she had stopped a mugging here or there, —

Rieka tied back her wild mane of hair, charms and trinkets and all, before throwing the truck into gear.
As soon as they hit the road, the werewolf was as chatty as ever.
“So, watcha been up to? Saving kitties out of trees and getting the key to the city and whatnot?”

“What, you callin’ me fat or something?” Rieka bared those sharp canines again, narrowing her blood-red eyes as she turned the keys to start the truck.
Rieka lasted three seconds into her false anger before she let out a belly laugh that could wake the dead.
“Ah’m just fuckin’ with ya.”
—

“That guy in the blue and red undies? I feel like we’d get along. Wanna challenge him to an arm wrestle.”

“If I have to call an exterminator again I swear to the Allfather that I’ll tell him to use a tactical nuke.”

“STOP FUCKING WITH THE CABLE! THE KIDS ARE WATCHING BLUEY!”