Despite the melange of emotion that could reasonably wash through the woman's body in this moment, potentially bringing about a break down, the woman did nothing but smile for a long time as she watched the two small pups successfully tackle their gigantic father. For all intents and purposes, this was her girls' first time meeting their daddy, and Orin wasn't about to make it all about her. This was for them. All three of them.
It did help that the girls gave the two adults no time to react to their haphazard meeting before filling the air with bell-like giggles and squeals. Even a scrooge would find it difficult to be unhappy in the face of such uninhibited joy.
“Sorry, they're a little shy,” Orin joked when she thought she found a moment to speak over the girls. Ideally, they would not have come upon Shawchert by accident. She would have had time to speak to someone and properly inform him that they had arrived (although some part of her was a fan of this surprise meeting). Orin knew nothing about Shawchert relinquishing the Cercatori leadership, and felt guilty for not showing the Alpha the respect he was due. I may be the mother of his children, but that doesn't mean I can walk all over him. she reminded herself silently. After all, she had just disappeared for months with those children.
A sudden bolt of worry shocked her, and she scuttled over to the mass of writhing fur. “Juliet, I told you, you lost your runes.” She spoke sternly as she scruffed her daughter - although she did it with her hands, the action was harmless, and had she been in her wolf form she would have done the same thing with her teeth. The girl wriggled in her fingers, but tried to hold still in the face of the excitement while Orin slipped the necklace over her daughter's head and then let her go. As if she was spring loaded, Juliet was back into the mess of father and sister as soon as Orin released her.
Pacified, Orin moved away from the group and sat on the bottom step of the bookstore. Blood had once been spilled on this stoop. She was aware of where she was sitting, but still the overwhelming sadness could not dominate her in this moment. The cloaked woman rested her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands and sat silently as she watched the reunion. Orin should have joined in, and before she would have, but now she was strangely mollified.
She waited a while for the noise to die down a bit, but if her daughters had anything, it was heart, and the girls seemed to be dauntless in their merrymaking, so finally Orin decided to just try to talk over them. “You should have gotten this moment sooner,” she spoke to Shawchert, but of course at the first sound of this adult conversation her daughters tuned right in. They shot looks of confusion and question to their mother, their father, and each other. But just as it seemed one would ask a question, Juliet became distracted with a motion of her father's hand, and the girls were childishly giddy again. “There is a lot still that they don't know. Or that they don't know they know, anyway. But I ran into... somebody... a few weeks ago and it was the reality check I needed. The girls deserve to know their father.” And then suddenly, as if to distract from the gravity of the conversation she was starting, she added, “How have you been, Shawchert?”
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