Shadow Town (Katherin & Donut)

Griffin's presence hung as thickly in the air as the scent of food and fresh fabric did. His authority, evident in the sideways, tentative glances of the children that had surrounded him earlier. Their glances were in reverence, however, and not fear as Ezra expected, and that warmed him a little bit. He was still wary around the older man as he wondered aloud about his apparently peculiar case. "I'll let you know now that I'm not in any 'tribe', or whatever, unless you consider some of the stinky rodent kids I hang out with in the sewers to be part of my tribe," the words rolled off his tongue as he sat on the mess of cotton on the cot and sniffed the food. "Wow, you eat cooked stuff, even though you're shifters."
 
Griffin smiled. "We try to blend in when we can. Its important for the boys to be able eat cooked food when its necessary. We don't always have cooked meals." He explained. "I'm glad to heat that your aware of what we are. I was shining to have my doubt's on that account. Everyone here is a different type of shifter so I try to have a variety of food available for them. Eat and get some rest. We'll talk again when you feel more human." He smiled at his own joke. He headed towards the door. "Its not so bad here. Yes there are rules. Mostly those imposed by the council. But you get room and board. All you have to do is follow the rules and attend lessons. Think about it." With that he step out if the cage. He relocked the door and headed back upstairs.
 
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"I said 'thank you,' not 'I want to be adopted,'" Ezra mustered his small voice into a retort as Griffin disappeared in his ascent. Whether the man heard him or not wouldn't change his thick mind, as though Ezra had no other option, or never even had any at the beginning. He wolfed down the breakfast as fast as his thoughts ran and let the steam and heat sting the tip of his tongue and smother his cheeks. He hadn't eaten anything freshly cooked, or warm, in a decent place in a long time.

His hands were still on his lap, unmoving, basking in the heat despite the morning chill of the concrete room. He flicked through memories in his head that persisted to surface again and his eyes prickled. He swallowed the lump in his throat before curling up on the soft makeshift mattress. His muscles coiled and loosened until Ezra only felt weightless, floating above the bed, despite the pillow cushioning his tears. Sleep finally came.
 
Griffin kept the other boys busy. Its wasn't exactly hard to do. This house had been empty for months so there was cleaning and stocking to do. He sent Travis and Nick to go get food for them. He had the youngerkids cleaning. They played more they worked but he didn't mind. Most of them hadn't been willing or able to laugh when they had first come to him. So hearing their laughter meant the world to him. It meant that he was making a real difference in their lives. Something that they all desperately needed.
 
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His mind felt less crowded and his lids were less weighted by a headache and confusion. He rolled his shoulders over, tightening and loosening the knots in his muscles to give himself a jolt. Ezra paced around the vacant cage and growled impatiently upon the realization that the lot did not even leave the rest of the room open for him to walk in. The metal stung his nose and made his eyes water; the rust had polluted his smell for too long.

Like a child with a fit, though he wasn't far from it, Ezra groaned loudly as he walked in circles inside the cage, listening to his voice bounce off the concrete walls. "Guuuuuys... I'm civilised now.... Let me go..."
 
"Your not in here because your not civilized. Although I doubt that you have because more civilized in the short time you've been here." Griffin comment as he brought down a lunch tray. "You're in the cage because you have broken Shifter law. You haven't told me who your tribe's leader is. Without a responsible party to take you," Griffin shook his head. "You belong to me just like the other lost boys. And sense your my responsibility you get to stay in the cage until I am confident that you will follow all the Shifter laws."
 
Ezra grumbled under his breath but sat himself down on the sheets as his patient, curious eyes watched Griffin. "Alright, I'll pay up, since you're giving me food and making this sweet jail all nice and comfy for me," he began with a slight smirk to deceive the man of his anxious interest over the jumble of words playing around his head. "What are these shifter laws you're talking about? And what's with having a tribe? Haven't heard those terms before, even after meeting different nasties."

He grimaced, despite the smell of his wonderful lunch wafting to his nose. "There was this one batkid that kept trying to suck my blood. Thought he was going through some sorta Dracula phase, if you've ever heard of that. I never realized there were laws about us animal folk..."
 
"Wow I don't know how it's possible for one of us to know so little about our kind." griffin said as he opened the cage. He closed and locked the door before tucking the key into his pocket. Ever shapeshifter has a tribe. A tribe is basically a group of the same type of shifter with an elder appointed as he lead. Lions, eagles, snakes, monkeys, you name it and there's a tribe for it. Some tribes are big others are small. The laws area little harder to define because they can vary from tribe to trbe. The council makes up the ones we all have to obey. Those include:
  1. Never reveal yourself to humans in anyway.
  2. You must belong to a tribe.
  3. Follow the laws of the tribe.
  4. No killing.
  5. No stealing.
 
"Sounds very polished for a band of beast people runnin' around and gettin' bloody," Ezra examined Griffin to conclude that he was this tribe's leader - his age and wisdom showed on the lines of his face, with the power of a hunter evident in his taut muscles. Ezra swallowed a lump of envy and admiration. "I've probably broken all of those rules..." Ezra admitted out loud, with no care for repercussions. He'd learn soon enough, he told himself, but as he stretched and scratched behind his own ear, lax on the bed, he decided for now to act as impossibly ignorant as he could. It was all he was, at the moment, in the space he had invaded.

Ezra snorted. "Unless me turning into a small tiny kitty-baby in front of my foster parents doesn't count as showing myself to humans, then I've ticked all the wrong on that list." He quirked an eyebrow at Griffin. "Feeling alright about letting a big bad criminal into your boy posse?"
 
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Griffin laughed. "Changing when you a babe doesn't count. We general dont penalize for changing until a shifter is ten or so." He explained. "Let me assure that you are not the only one in the house that has broken the rules. In fact breaking the rules is pretty much a requirement for joining my tribe. Would it make you feel better to know what rules the other boys broke?"
 
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Ezra's eyes widened at the gentler tone - not gentle, he guessed, but friendly, as though he were trying to banter with him - that Griffin took when he spoke about his boys. He almost scoffed, but as his head wrapped around the idea he narrowed his eyes at Griffin. "I don't know, but holy shit, if you're going to tell me one of those little punks killed something that wasn't food, I'm going to flip." He chuckled with a nervous shake in his shoulders, but his eyes for once did not shine with a lying mirth. To be around a possibly dangerous group of creatures felt unnerving in a way that made Ezra want to strive better. Of course, his gut reminded him not to admit that he felt competitive in breaking the rules.
 
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"I've killed someone. I didn't eat him. Probably would have poisoned me if I had." Griffin told him. "But no none of the boys have killed anyone. Although Travis did come close." He admitted. He watched the captive carefully. He thought the boy might be more willing to stay with them now. But trust was a long off. Not that he was worried about that. There was time. "Will you tell me your name now?"
 
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Ezra took a moment to digest the images in his head - they weren't all that terrifying, or shocking, as he would have been appalled to know that Griffin had never killed a man or beast before. He whistled at the other kids, nodding and humming incessantly to annoy Griffin with his loud thinking. He was never the unresponsive one, after all.

"Curious, curious little creatures," he stroked his chin and eyed Griffin up and down, the musings of a filthy-minded joker glinting in his sharp gaze. "Alas, Mr Griffin sir, you still cannot win the heart of I, Prince McHandsome, as much as I hate the situation." He snatched the lunch plate from Griffin, flinching back to his bed in paranoia of an attack, and settled with munching on the food with a wary eye up at the older man. He seemed non-threatening and has been trying to earnestly get to know him, and if he was going to get to walk more than just inside his cage along with the extra food, he'd like it here. "It's Ezra. Like, some knight or something. My foster parents named me that."
 
"Ezra." Griffin repeated the name thoughtfully. "Interesting. It fits you in a strange way." He told the boy. He moved back to the door. "My name is Griffin and I am a griffin shapeshifter. My partners weren't the most imaginative people." He said it casually as if talking about his past didn't bother him. Over the last couple of years he has gotten used talking about it. The boys needed to know that he truly did understand.
 
Ezra felt compelled to press further but paid his attentions to the questions swarming his poor head instead. "I'm not and have never been to a tribe so I know pretty much jack about how it all works. Since you're adopting me, whether I consent or not," he raised his eyebrows at him for effect though his amusement hung in full clarity in his singsong voice. "I think you should be tellin' me what you're haulin' me into."
 
"I'm hauling you into the tribe know as the Lost Boys. Its made up a of male shapeshifters that have been kicked out of their tribes sfor one reason or another. I take them in. I teach them how to blend in with the human world, what the laws are and how to live with them, and mist importantly how to respect themselves and others. I educate them so that when they come of age they have a way to support themselves." Griffin explained.
 
"A family walking around, huh," Ezra murmured and began consuming his second meal with slow, calculating movements. Eating in front of people - especially another shapeshifter like him, though it has never happened in his life before this point - made him rather jittery, nerves off whack as his muscles reeled back into a tension to let him to leap out of any potential danger. His instincts were slow, however, as he concluded his confusion with the situation. "How come I've never seen you lot before? I knew I smelled beastmen like me, from time to time, but I never really bothered to check them out until you guys," he rambled as he braved a chomp from his meal, relishing as Griffin did not move into his space any further. "Practically the whole town was drooling over you. You're rich here, aren't you?"
 
Griffin laughed. "I've done alright for myself and my boys." the truth was that he was not only a renown artist but he was a savvy business man too. He had started with very little. The counsel didn't believe in supporting shifters that didn't have a tribe, but they also couldn't afford to leave him to his own devices. So they had given him enough to survive on and nothing more. He slowly built up his fortune. "My tribe only comes into town when the weather changes. Some of the boys need the city life to thrive others don't. I try to divide our time as evenly as possible. There are a few tribes in town but most of them avoid humans as much as possible."
 
The information soaked in as Ezra kept munching on his meal. He felt less self conscious, as Griffin's courtesy in simple conversation let him calm his flighty instincts. His chest warmed as his pupils widened into large, black balls against the sharp yellow. "Others? You guys are the only ones I've smelled!" Ezra spat some of his food as he spoke and chewed, but his interest had risen so high he could not contain his flailing limbs. "Either my senses are getting rusty - which I know for a fact that they aren't, thanks - or you guys are really shitty in trying to hide yourselves." Ezra swallowed the last portion of the food and leaned back on the bed, eyes never leaving the older man. His fingers tingled and his legs ached to kick away at the door and sprint out, sniff every corner of the house, steal as much history as this home could enrich him. He thought of taking advantage of Griffin's polite coolness - he envisioned himself readying on tight limbs and leaping outside of the cage in a barrel roll through the door - but decided so lawfully against it. The family's hospitality, albeit unorthodox in every manner, beckoned a certain gratitude within him, so he kept his legs sprawled out, lazy, on the bed, and continued conversation.

"Unless the other tribes are really good at hiding," Ezra noted, tongue licking his bottom lip to scrape off bits of the meal. The fresh, thick taste remained molten on his tongue. He would never forget this. "Why would they hide? Why aren't you hiding?"
 
"They hide out of fear and prejudice." Griffin rolled his eyes as he explained. "I don't hide because I didn't see the pint. The human's can't smell us the way other shifters can. As long as I look and act normal no human is going to question me." He hadn't bothered who and what he was from the world. It was his way of thumbing his nose at the system. As much as the elders didn't like it they couldn't argue with his logic. Several of them have tried over the years but not a single none shifter had questions his humanity. As long as that was true there was nothing they could do about it. "I will not hide who and what I am more than I absolutely have to. It's up to the boys to decide when they come of age if they want to hide or not. Until then I plan to encourage them to be themselves as much as they can."
 
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