[Sorrow] (HAHAHA. I am not it! :) )
[Blood Summons] [123 NOT ME]
[Joe War- Handed] ((I'll go! Gimme a sec. playlist is being an asshole))
[Joe War- Handed] The ghosts of a battle they'd fought over and over again flicker and pass between Joe's scarred and scraped up fingers. He can feel the pass of claws through spirits. Taste the not- quite- there tang of the blood that had slicked his muzzle.
Feel the crush of a failure that was inevitable. They weren't supposed to change the course of what had already gone before. That didn't mean that he hadn't guarded that hope, somewhere deep in heavy bones. Frustration lends faint blue flames in bright eyes as his gaze scrapes across the wall of crushed cars that borders the junkyard. Lingers on the trailor supported on cinderblocks he'd gleefully joked about sharing with a bunch of other Fenrir when it had been just him and Thomas, courting the Adren with all their might.
Joe's jaws close hard around nothing. He puts aside the residue of fury felt and spent over and over again in the battlegrounds. His hands close tight enough to pop, then open again. Arms at his side. Trembling for a moment in loose, animal readiness. The kid's broad neck swings toward Blood Summons, calmer now. Eyes on one's elders is meant to lend a certain amount of self- control, and he uses that hammered- in response now.
"Yew mentioned some uh... conditions, Blood Summons -rhya. Weah all interested... so ya got owah attention."
My attention. The pride of his posture says. Rather than disregarding his packmates, it seems a more collective thing. As though he considered the three of them only as a whole, with himself at the point of that triangle..
[Thomas] ...The Arrival from Battleground had been quick and deflating.
With the pressures of the Moon above, ebbing into the wane, the pack and Godi had come, drained of Rage, bloodied by experience and flushed with the newfound emptiness that normally comes with closure to a moment of grief (Moments are the painted things we try to hide behind art and meaning. Without the paint, they sit there as reminders and nothing more). The arrival of the gathered had left trust and a bond of experience between them. The future however, looked somewhat dimmer then it had weeks ago. Heroes had gone and left behind a true hole and ache that would be hard to push down. The Wyrm had stolen something proud and strong. A memory and a story.
And with it, there were questions to be answered. Methods to be examined.
The Ways of tribes to be considered.
Thomas is nearby, wreathed in the vague sheen of sweat that comes with the exertion of death, rebirth and the waking flush of what had been sustaining for days. Nights. He was exhausted and such was obvious, staring out across the junkyard the Pack called home. Draped in the black hoodie, bare feet and cargo pants he'd changed into upon arrival, he sat upon a milk crate staring at the ground somewhat listlessly, one hand held in another. Joe's voice cuts in and his head tilts slightly, lifting to regard the others for a brief moment, an inhale creeping and flaring his nostrils wide.
[Sorrow] Sorrow is close to Joe War-Handed, crouched easily on her haunches, her elbows on her thighs, her shoulders straight, her spine long and lean. She is more controlled than her brothers, more contained there, in the darkness. The space isn't marked by her presence as it has been by hers. There is a pile of her belongings tucked away in the den, neat and small. She can carry everything she owns on her back, and did so a week ago - from the den she shared with their Alpha to the junkyard War-Handed and Thomas have claimed for themselves.
For the pack.
Her pale blonde hair is pulled sharply back from her face, high cheekbones and a straight nose, a firm jaw dominated by a wide, expressive mouth. Were it not for the beast inside of her, a passing stranger might think her pretty, might remember the way her mouth is made into a faint curve even at its most neutral position, which makes it seem as if she were always smiling a faint, secret smile. A stranger might remember that, were it not for the beast inside of her. Tonight, her mouth is slack, and the faint threads of tension between her brows, around her eyes undercut the impression further. She hasn't slept well. There's ink on her hands.
Still, she is an attentive thing, thoughtful and watchful. Her dark eyes cut from her Alpha as he speaks to the Godi. She isn't looking at him the way Joe does, finding the strength to control himself by looking at his elder. She is studying him; the subtle pattern of his facial muscles, the minute shifts of his position. The way he stands in the space.
[Blood Summons] There was no personal connection to the Godi who had taken part in that recreated fight tonight, no sense of grief or loss or personal responsibility for not having been there. That hadn't mattered. He had fought with the rest of them, had thrown himself into that battle with the full knowledge that there wasn't a goddamn thing that he could possibly do to change the ultimate outcome, to keep the Jarl from falling dead at the hands of the Banes spat forth from that Wyrmhole like birthed nightmares. He had been the last one to take the fatal blow, the last one ejected from the Battleground Realm, and when he had reappeared in the Near Umbra, he had been literally shaking from the force of accumulated, overpowering Rage.
He was born with Rage, though. He was born angry. He made quick work of bringing it back down, of containing himself so that he could at least pass for human if he absolutely had to, and then he had led the Cliaths back to the moon bridge.
It's hard to tell how much time has passed since they left for the Realm. The moon isn't visible through the clouds and the light pollution. They're all exhausted, some of them still carrying the last traces of injuries sustained, and who knows what's going through the Cliaths' minds as they wait for the metis Fostern to speak.
Theirs is a tribe of duty. Theirs is a tribe that lives and dies by their word, for whom honor is as much a driving force in all they do as is the pursuit of glory in battle. There should have been no question as to whether or not the Godi would join the pack, even if not to lead, and yet he had hesitated when it was brought up.
He stands in his human skin before Aesir's Call, before their Alpha. There is blood on his hands; if it stains his clothing, the blackness of the cloth conceals the evidence. His hair is a mess, the backpack slung over his shoulder looks heavy as hell, and yet his spine is straight. His head is held up. There is intelligence in his eyes.
"I wouldn't call 'em 'conditions,'" he says, reaching up to adjust the fall of his backpack across his chest without moving to ease it to the ground. He clears his scarred throat, pauses to consider his words; spirit-talkers aren't exactly known for the conciseness or the forwardness of their speech. It takes effort. "Waking Dream-yuf and I've been talking about packing up. I ain't following a totem without her."
[Joe War- Handed] Confusion. That is the most readily apparent thing in Joe's too- honest face. Confusion, followed quickly by a vague sort of disgust. So vague he's surely unaware of it himself.
"She's a Child of Gaia."
He says it as though Blood Summons doesn't already know that- and the moment hangs in the air, by itself, for several long awkward seconds before Joe shakes his head, snorts briefly. Belatedly aware how foolish that sounded. Joe's battered face creases further, displaying wrinkles that will not be there to stay for many, many years yet. In fact, he'll probably die precisely as far from handsome as he is right now. Hey, a silver lining.
A grunt, then words follow. "Yew made a promise den?"
[Thomas] ...Thomas own reaction is...less then uncoloured:
The Skald stares at Blood~Summons with the same furrow to his brow. A lighting of features, that quickly dissolves into a heavy handed set of lines between the eyes, along and around the mouth. Judgment there, youthful and broken only by the reflexive cast of eyes below the Elder Godi's own. A consideration of chest, knees and finally the ground before him. The frown smoothens out slightly but not completely, the Skald climbing to his feet, planting heels and toes firmly. Once. Then he begins a slow and steady pacing behind the Pack and the facing Metis.
That there has been no immediate reaction of displeasure, simply a guarded concern for the Welfare of his...Fenrir'dom? (Heroes are easy things to construct, easier yet to destroy) is perhaps a good thing. Or maybe simply a conclusion best thought of in the new light they find themselves in.
Thomas remains quiet. Thoughtful.
[Sorrow] And Sorrow: her fine mouth curves. The expression is a subtle thing, tired but well-made. It darkens her eyes as she watches the Godi, but stills, falls away when her Alpha responds to him. She is lower than they are, perhaps deliberately. Looking up from below gives one a different perspective. The light catches in her dark eyes, gleams - animal that - as she cuts a look back toward her pack, watching as Gut-Song returns to the compact group, the rhythm of his footsteps, before her attentive gaze cuts back toward War-Handed.
There is a supple intensity to the look she gives him, studying his bullish features without offering direct challenge, her mouth just parted, breathing steadily, easy in her posture.
[Blood Summons] There are reactions in the Skalds' faces, around their eyes and mouths, but the Fostern isn't paying attention to them. Oh, he's aware of the judgment, can feel the weight of the male's gaze on him as he paces around behind them, knows that the female's gaze is drifting from packbrother to packbrother, but he doesn't appear bothered by it.
The Modi says she's a Child of Gaia as though Blood Summons were somehow unaware of this, as though he'd gone through the underworld with her, stayed at her house all this time, hunted with her and fought with her and talked with her, without somehow figuring out that she is a child of Unicorn and not a daughter of Fenris. That snort is met with a narrowing of eyes that dissipates quickly enough.
A member of any other auspice might have been able to twist words in order to have the situation make some semblance of sense to the young warriors left behind by their Alpha and Jarl; maybe if they were spirits he could somehow relay to them why it is that Waking Dream, of all people, has his loyalty and not members of his own tribe. He's metis. He's born of sin. There are stories about the innate insanity of these people, these creatures. she who offers sorrow had witnessed how he refused to go to sleep at his gate of the Rite of Reawakening, how he had fought resting until his consciousness was quite literally wrested from him.
The others have seen the way he summons, the way he interacts with spirits. He's exactly what one would expect from a Fenrir spirit-talker: he's not all there, and he's not above sacrifice of the flesh, spilling of blood, to get the attention or allegiance of those he deals with.
Anyway. He made a promise, then.
"I ain't given her my word," he clarifies. A beat, and then: "What are you looking for... a leader, or a Godi?"
[Joe War- Handed] An uneasy sort of tension begins to ease from Joe's war- wrought shoulders. That background noise in frame and posture that no one ever quite points out- the look of someone who'd been braced to hear bad, and embarassing news. Joe's attention swivels across Blood Summons' face. Seeking clues to the puzzle he finds before him.
"Weah lookin' feh a Godi fah shuwah.. an' weah gonna be lookin' fah a leader da moment I aint up ta da job myself... like it should be. But we'd only be lookin' ta one of owah own, Blood Summons-rhya." Joe nods resolutely. He looks to neither Skald- simply trusts in them. The moment he weakens.. they will free him of that stain. He's sure and content in the fact. The -rhya sounds deliberately added. Something the brutal skinhead would point out with his tone.
He watches Blood Summons.. blinking fiercely as he tries to assemble the things in his head and present them clearly. Concisely. Make the scream of instinct and indoctrination make sense rendered into simple English. He looks to Thomas, then Sorrow.. watching each for a moment. He meets the female's eyes briefly and honestly. Mouth thinning into a hard line.
"My mentoah was a Godi. Stone- Tooth was 'is name." Bright eyes flick to the sky, then back to the Fostern who stands among them. Above them, but below at the same time.. That part he doesn't really get.. and doesn't try right now. He just keeps trying to put forth the idea he'd begun with.
"He once tol' me dat 'Softness has its place. But it don't have one in Fenris' hall.' I can't have a Child uh Gaia, eldah. An' one wouldn't have me, neiddah." He says it proudly.
[Thomas] ...The Skald's arm cross over his chest, eyes flaring to life, pacing come to cease as he settles into place at his Alpha's shoulder. A brow perks gingerly even as he considers Blood~Summons and the moment this represents. Something flickers over that face, however. Nothing of the brash youth that would stand as Faith in the Modi's words. Zealot to command, frothing and insistent. Instead, his eyes find the Metis' features as if to study and catalogue. As if to decipher and depict. The reaction is everything as Thomas regards, flickering digits roaming over wiry biceps, as hoodie sleeves are rolled up and set to place behind the elbows.
His jaw unclenches, teeth throbbing at the roots, mouth hung slightly open in that regard of the Godi...changing and altering only long enough to flick a glance down at Kora to catch her own reaction as well. Something (un)necessary for the link that binds the Pack and yet...and yet...
[Joe War- Handed] ((Transcript edit: Please add this to my last post: "An' one wouldn't have me, neiddah." He says it with offhand pride. Hammered response deeply ingrained in the formidable Modi. The part that is pure Joe, though, does not abandon a respectful tone. ))
[Thomas] (Manipulation 1 + Expression 3 + 1 for Totem. Diff 5 for familiarity)
[Sorrow] Kora stands, now, in a sure, easy motion, her hands braced on her thighs as she rises, then swinging free at her sides when she stands fully. Her expression is still and thoughtful. There is a faint spark in her dark eyes as Thomas catches her gaze, considers it. Something that a human might read as wry, that look -
- but Thomas is inhuman. Impossible to tell how he reads it. Still, there, her mouth is drawn in at the corners, a considered look, as if she were sucking on a smooth stone, glancing from Joe to Blood Summons.
For a moment, it looks as if she will speak. She takes a breath, stills, and then expells it - now is not the time. Her hands are in her pockets, the look slanted toward Blood Summons is alert, sidelong, wholly respectful.
[Thomas] (Roll is for a future post, carry on.)
[Blood Summons] Blue eyes don't leave the Modi even when the male Skald comes to flank his Alpha, to stand with his arms crossed over his chest and his gaze scalpel-sharp on the metis's face. His focus is narrowed, yet his words are not kept as low as possible to exclude the others.
He pauses to clear his throat again. That scar tissue is still new enough that it catches what little light there is and reflects it like a wet mouth across his throat. His other scars, the ones that Gut Song can find in his examination of the mule's features, are much lighter: a laceration over his right brow, for example, or rings around each biceps near the elbow. He was never a human easily scarred by bumps and bruises accumulated through day-to-day life. These have all killed him. There are more under his shirt.
"I would not suffer you to bring a child of Unicorn before Hermóðr and ask him to accept her, War-Handed, nor would I would ask her to consider following a son of Odin."
He looks over to Sorrow as she stands, and his eyebrows briefly raise as if to bid her speak whatever it is she's thinking.
[Joe War- Handed] The flow of conversation amongst such creatures is almost ironic. When they mean to speak to each other- not to rend, to dominate, to prove- one finds a fluidity that the Rules of Order only stumble through. Blood Summons is a Fostern. Alpha or not, packmate or not, there is no dispute when the tall Metis gives the floor to Kora. The bullish, abrupt, unsubtle Modi reacts as obligingly as if it had been his own idea- and long before he's aware he's even done so. His gaze swivels smoothly to Kora's face. Lovely for now.. the Beast waiting underneath never so far away as to make any of them dwell on something as trifling as beauty. In a moment she, or any of them can be far more beautiful. Terrifyingly beautiful, their kind hold a spot next to dragons in the myths of the men who built the city around them.
With Blood Summons' words, the rest of the tension riding Joe's stubborn shoulders leaks away.
[Thomas] ...Thomas grants pack sister the floor, a foregone thing. Witness to her words, as she is to his when speaking.
[Sorrow] "I would have no such qualms, Blood Summons-rhya." Sorrow's response is a narrow thread. Her voice is rich, and the well-controlled, quiet - but not soft. Her dark eyes cut a line from Blood Summons to War-Handed. There is an expectancy to her in that moment - the look is both direct and inquisitive. If her Alpha cuts her off after that line, she will not continue -
- but he does not cut her off. He cedes the floor. She continues.
Sorrow is tall and lean, with long limbs and a narrow-shouldered frame. Her strength is evident not in her broad shoulders, but in her length, the supple strength of her core, the possibility of movement written into her body, the beast that is both within and around her skin. She cheats her body to include both Blood Summons and Joe War-Handed within her line of sight, but it is soon clear that her words are more for her Alpha's ears than for the Fostern Godi's.
"I've known Waking Dream-rhya since I was a cub. I met her at the Sept of Wind and Rain in Hjaltland. She came to learn the lore of the place; to hear our stories and remember them. She was a cliath, then - traveling alone, but the Sept welcomed her. You heard the story I told of the founding of the Sept, Alpha, of Halfdan the Old and his pack and his kin. I stood on the decks of a fishing boat at the base of that cliff when she came.
"She climbed it just as I did - before I did. I was a cub then, not yet Named. She read the names written into the rock just as I did then. There was nothing soft about her when sat at the feet of our elders and learned the lore of the place; the battles we fought to wrest it back from the enemy; the battles they fight there still.
"I went to the Underworld with her, too, during the Rite of Spring. Her challenge was to take a fractious group of young Garou and show them how to act as a pack. More than that, her challenge was to show the Beta - who was weak and uncertain - how to find her strength. During the rite, there were those who failed their gates. Some out of weakness - " her mouth is still. She does not look at Blood Summons as she says the work weakness. " - and some out of misplaced strength."
There he might get a look.
"Waking-Dream-rhya did not fail her gate. She went to the Underworld as I did. As Hermóðr did when he petitioned Hel to allow Baldr to return to the world of the living, and she did not fail. So - "
There is a faint pause, then.
" - there are children of Unicorn who are weak. And there are children of Unicorn who are strong.
"Silence-rhya knows this as well as I do. He was packed with Judgment of Sterling Silver-rhya for years, before Judgment of Sterling Silver-rhya died in honorable battle, defending the Sept. Eagle accepted Judgment of Sterling Silver-rhya, and Silence - who was then an Adren and is now an Athro - called him Beta, in the end."
Neatly, Sorrow pivots back to Blood Summons, then. Her dark eyes are direct. Briefly, she meets his eyes. Then the look falls, naturally, to just below the level of his own eyes.
"As you can see, Blood Summons-rhya, I have no such qualms. I would ask a child of Unicorn - an Elder in the Sept, Fostern ranked, pure in her blood - to follow a son of Odin, to stand strong below Hermóðr's banner."
[Sorrow] [apologies for the giant speech-making! but - SKALD. :) Plus y'all were like: MAKE A SPEECH.]
[Joe War- Handed] (Yeah. It was totally US, right? ;) ))
[Blood Summons] [123 NOT ME]
[Joe War- Handed] ((I'll go! Gimme a sec. playlist is being an asshole))
[Joe War- Handed] The ghosts of a battle they'd fought over and over again flicker and pass between Joe's scarred and scraped up fingers. He can feel the pass of claws through spirits. Taste the not- quite- there tang of the blood that had slicked his muzzle.
Feel the crush of a failure that was inevitable. They weren't supposed to change the course of what had already gone before. That didn't mean that he hadn't guarded that hope, somewhere deep in heavy bones. Frustration lends faint blue flames in bright eyes as his gaze scrapes across the wall of crushed cars that borders the junkyard. Lingers on the trailor supported on cinderblocks he'd gleefully joked about sharing with a bunch of other Fenrir when it had been just him and Thomas, courting the Adren with all their might.
Joe's jaws close hard around nothing. He puts aside the residue of fury felt and spent over and over again in the battlegrounds. His hands close tight enough to pop, then open again. Arms at his side. Trembling for a moment in loose, animal readiness. The kid's broad neck swings toward Blood Summons, calmer now. Eyes on one's elders is meant to lend a certain amount of self- control, and he uses that hammered- in response now.
"Yew mentioned some uh... conditions, Blood Summons -rhya. Weah all interested... so ya got owah attention."
My attention. The pride of his posture says. Rather than disregarding his packmates, it seems a more collective thing. As though he considered the three of them only as a whole, with himself at the point of that triangle..
[Thomas] ...The Arrival from Battleground had been quick and deflating.
With the pressures of the Moon above, ebbing into the wane, the pack and Godi had come, drained of Rage, bloodied by experience and flushed with the newfound emptiness that normally comes with closure to a moment of grief (Moments are the painted things we try to hide behind art and meaning. Without the paint, they sit there as reminders and nothing more). The arrival of the gathered had left trust and a bond of experience between them. The future however, looked somewhat dimmer then it had weeks ago. Heroes had gone and left behind a true hole and ache that would be hard to push down. The Wyrm had stolen something proud and strong. A memory and a story.
And with it, there were questions to be answered. Methods to be examined.
The Ways of tribes to be considered.
Thomas is nearby, wreathed in the vague sheen of sweat that comes with the exertion of death, rebirth and the waking flush of what had been sustaining for days. Nights. He was exhausted and such was obvious, staring out across the junkyard the Pack called home. Draped in the black hoodie, bare feet and cargo pants he'd changed into upon arrival, he sat upon a milk crate staring at the ground somewhat listlessly, one hand held in another. Joe's voice cuts in and his head tilts slightly, lifting to regard the others for a brief moment, an inhale creeping and flaring his nostrils wide.
[Sorrow] Sorrow is close to Joe War-Handed, crouched easily on her haunches, her elbows on her thighs, her shoulders straight, her spine long and lean. She is more controlled than her brothers, more contained there, in the darkness. The space isn't marked by her presence as it has been by hers. There is a pile of her belongings tucked away in the den, neat and small. She can carry everything she owns on her back, and did so a week ago - from the den she shared with their Alpha to the junkyard War-Handed and Thomas have claimed for themselves.
For the pack.
Her pale blonde hair is pulled sharply back from her face, high cheekbones and a straight nose, a firm jaw dominated by a wide, expressive mouth. Were it not for the beast inside of her, a passing stranger might think her pretty, might remember the way her mouth is made into a faint curve even at its most neutral position, which makes it seem as if she were always smiling a faint, secret smile. A stranger might remember that, were it not for the beast inside of her. Tonight, her mouth is slack, and the faint threads of tension between her brows, around her eyes undercut the impression further. She hasn't slept well. There's ink on her hands.
Still, she is an attentive thing, thoughtful and watchful. Her dark eyes cut from her Alpha as he speaks to the Godi. She isn't looking at him the way Joe does, finding the strength to control himself by looking at his elder. She is studying him; the subtle pattern of his facial muscles, the minute shifts of his position. The way he stands in the space.
[Blood Summons] There was no personal connection to the Godi who had taken part in that recreated fight tonight, no sense of grief or loss or personal responsibility for not having been there. That hadn't mattered. He had fought with the rest of them, had thrown himself into that battle with the full knowledge that there wasn't a goddamn thing that he could possibly do to change the ultimate outcome, to keep the Jarl from falling dead at the hands of the Banes spat forth from that Wyrmhole like birthed nightmares. He had been the last one to take the fatal blow, the last one ejected from the Battleground Realm, and when he had reappeared in the Near Umbra, he had been literally shaking from the force of accumulated, overpowering Rage.
He was born with Rage, though. He was born angry. He made quick work of bringing it back down, of containing himself so that he could at least pass for human if he absolutely had to, and then he had led the Cliaths back to the moon bridge.
It's hard to tell how much time has passed since they left for the Realm. The moon isn't visible through the clouds and the light pollution. They're all exhausted, some of them still carrying the last traces of injuries sustained, and who knows what's going through the Cliaths' minds as they wait for the metis Fostern to speak.
Theirs is a tribe of duty. Theirs is a tribe that lives and dies by their word, for whom honor is as much a driving force in all they do as is the pursuit of glory in battle. There should have been no question as to whether or not the Godi would join the pack, even if not to lead, and yet he had hesitated when it was brought up.
He stands in his human skin before Aesir's Call, before their Alpha. There is blood on his hands; if it stains his clothing, the blackness of the cloth conceals the evidence. His hair is a mess, the backpack slung over his shoulder looks heavy as hell, and yet his spine is straight. His head is held up. There is intelligence in his eyes.
"I wouldn't call 'em 'conditions,'" he says, reaching up to adjust the fall of his backpack across his chest without moving to ease it to the ground. He clears his scarred throat, pauses to consider his words; spirit-talkers aren't exactly known for the conciseness or the forwardness of their speech. It takes effort. "Waking Dream-yuf and I've been talking about packing up. I ain't following a totem without her."
[Joe War- Handed] Confusion. That is the most readily apparent thing in Joe's too- honest face. Confusion, followed quickly by a vague sort of disgust. So vague he's surely unaware of it himself.
"She's a Child of Gaia."
He says it as though Blood Summons doesn't already know that- and the moment hangs in the air, by itself, for several long awkward seconds before Joe shakes his head, snorts briefly. Belatedly aware how foolish that sounded. Joe's battered face creases further, displaying wrinkles that will not be there to stay for many, many years yet. In fact, he'll probably die precisely as far from handsome as he is right now. Hey, a silver lining.
A grunt, then words follow. "Yew made a promise den?"
[Thomas] ...Thomas own reaction is...less then uncoloured:
The Skald stares at Blood~Summons with the same furrow to his brow. A lighting of features, that quickly dissolves into a heavy handed set of lines between the eyes, along and around the mouth. Judgment there, youthful and broken only by the reflexive cast of eyes below the Elder Godi's own. A consideration of chest, knees and finally the ground before him. The frown smoothens out slightly but not completely, the Skald climbing to his feet, planting heels and toes firmly. Once. Then he begins a slow and steady pacing behind the Pack and the facing Metis.
That there has been no immediate reaction of displeasure, simply a guarded concern for the Welfare of his...Fenrir'dom? (Heroes are easy things to construct, easier yet to destroy) is perhaps a good thing. Or maybe simply a conclusion best thought of in the new light they find themselves in.
Thomas remains quiet. Thoughtful.
[Sorrow] And Sorrow: her fine mouth curves. The expression is a subtle thing, tired but well-made. It darkens her eyes as she watches the Godi, but stills, falls away when her Alpha responds to him. She is lower than they are, perhaps deliberately. Looking up from below gives one a different perspective. The light catches in her dark eyes, gleams - animal that - as she cuts a look back toward her pack, watching as Gut-Song returns to the compact group, the rhythm of his footsteps, before her attentive gaze cuts back toward War-Handed.
There is a supple intensity to the look she gives him, studying his bullish features without offering direct challenge, her mouth just parted, breathing steadily, easy in her posture.
[Blood Summons] There are reactions in the Skalds' faces, around their eyes and mouths, but the Fostern isn't paying attention to them. Oh, he's aware of the judgment, can feel the weight of the male's gaze on him as he paces around behind them, knows that the female's gaze is drifting from packbrother to packbrother, but he doesn't appear bothered by it.
The Modi says she's a Child of Gaia as though Blood Summons were somehow unaware of this, as though he'd gone through the underworld with her, stayed at her house all this time, hunted with her and fought with her and talked with her, without somehow figuring out that she is a child of Unicorn and not a daughter of Fenris. That snort is met with a narrowing of eyes that dissipates quickly enough.
A member of any other auspice might have been able to twist words in order to have the situation make some semblance of sense to the young warriors left behind by their Alpha and Jarl; maybe if they were spirits he could somehow relay to them why it is that Waking Dream, of all people, has his loyalty and not members of his own tribe. He's metis. He's born of sin. There are stories about the innate insanity of these people, these creatures. she who offers sorrow had witnessed how he refused to go to sleep at his gate of the Rite of Reawakening, how he had fought resting until his consciousness was quite literally wrested from him.
The others have seen the way he summons, the way he interacts with spirits. He's exactly what one would expect from a Fenrir spirit-talker: he's not all there, and he's not above sacrifice of the flesh, spilling of blood, to get the attention or allegiance of those he deals with.
Anyway. He made a promise, then.
"I ain't given her my word," he clarifies. A beat, and then: "What are you looking for... a leader, or a Godi?"
[Joe War- Handed] An uneasy sort of tension begins to ease from Joe's war- wrought shoulders. That background noise in frame and posture that no one ever quite points out- the look of someone who'd been braced to hear bad, and embarassing news. Joe's attention swivels across Blood Summons' face. Seeking clues to the puzzle he finds before him.
"Weah lookin' feh a Godi fah shuwah.. an' weah gonna be lookin' fah a leader da moment I aint up ta da job myself... like it should be. But we'd only be lookin' ta one of owah own, Blood Summons-rhya." Joe nods resolutely. He looks to neither Skald- simply trusts in them. The moment he weakens.. they will free him of that stain. He's sure and content in the fact. The -rhya sounds deliberately added. Something the brutal skinhead would point out with his tone.
He watches Blood Summons.. blinking fiercely as he tries to assemble the things in his head and present them clearly. Concisely. Make the scream of instinct and indoctrination make sense rendered into simple English. He looks to Thomas, then Sorrow.. watching each for a moment. He meets the female's eyes briefly and honestly. Mouth thinning into a hard line.
"My mentoah was a Godi. Stone- Tooth was 'is name." Bright eyes flick to the sky, then back to the Fostern who stands among them. Above them, but below at the same time.. That part he doesn't really get.. and doesn't try right now. He just keeps trying to put forth the idea he'd begun with.
"He once tol' me dat 'Softness has its place. But it don't have one in Fenris' hall.' I can't have a Child uh Gaia, eldah. An' one wouldn't have me, neiddah." He says it proudly.
[Thomas] ...The Skald's arm cross over his chest, eyes flaring to life, pacing come to cease as he settles into place at his Alpha's shoulder. A brow perks gingerly even as he considers Blood~Summons and the moment this represents. Something flickers over that face, however. Nothing of the brash youth that would stand as Faith in the Modi's words. Zealot to command, frothing and insistent. Instead, his eyes find the Metis' features as if to study and catalogue. As if to decipher and depict. The reaction is everything as Thomas regards, flickering digits roaming over wiry biceps, as hoodie sleeves are rolled up and set to place behind the elbows.
His jaw unclenches, teeth throbbing at the roots, mouth hung slightly open in that regard of the Godi...changing and altering only long enough to flick a glance down at Kora to catch her own reaction as well. Something (un)necessary for the link that binds the Pack and yet...and yet...
[Joe War- Handed] ((Transcript edit: Please add this to my last post: "An' one wouldn't have me, neiddah." He says it with offhand pride. Hammered response deeply ingrained in the formidable Modi. The part that is pure Joe, though, does not abandon a respectful tone. ))
[Thomas] (Manipulation 1 + Expression 3 + 1 for Totem. Diff 5 for familiarity)
[Sorrow] Kora stands, now, in a sure, easy motion, her hands braced on her thighs as she rises, then swinging free at her sides when she stands fully. Her expression is still and thoughtful. There is a faint spark in her dark eyes as Thomas catches her gaze, considers it. Something that a human might read as wry, that look -
- but Thomas is inhuman. Impossible to tell how he reads it. Still, there, her mouth is drawn in at the corners, a considered look, as if she were sucking on a smooth stone, glancing from Joe to Blood Summons.
For a moment, it looks as if she will speak. She takes a breath, stills, and then expells it - now is not the time. Her hands are in her pockets, the look slanted toward Blood Summons is alert, sidelong, wholly respectful.
[Thomas] (Roll is for a future post, carry on.)
[Blood Summons] Blue eyes don't leave the Modi even when the male Skald comes to flank his Alpha, to stand with his arms crossed over his chest and his gaze scalpel-sharp on the metis's face. His focus is narrowed, yet his words are not kept as low as possible to exclude the others.
He pauses to clear his throat again. That scar tissue is still new enough that it catches what little light there is and reflects it like a wet mouth across his throat. His other scars, the ones that Gut Song can find in his examination of the mule's features, are much lighter: a laceration over his right brow, for example, or rings around each biceps near the elbow. He was never a human easily scarred by bumps and bruises accumulated through day-to-day life. These have all killed him. There are more under his shirt.
"I would not suffer you to bring a child of Unicorn before Hermóðr and ask him to accept her, War-Handed, nor would I would ask her to consider following a son of Odin."
He looks over to Sorrow as she stands, and his eyebrows briefly raise as if to bid her speak whatever it is she's thinking.
[Joe War- Handed] The flow of conversation amongst such creatures is almost ironic. When they mean to speak to each other- not to rend, to dominate, to prove- one finds a fluidity that the Rules of Order only stumble through. Blood Summons is a Fostern. Alpha or not, packmate or not, there is no dispute when the tall Metis gives the floor to Kora. The bullish, abrupt, unsubtle Modi reacts as obligingly as if it had been his own idea- and long before he's aware he's even done so. His gaze swivels smoothly to Kora's face. Lovely for now.. the Beast waiting underneath never so far away as to make any of them dwell on something as trifling as beauty. In a moment she, or any of them can be far more beautiful. Terrifyingly beautiful, their kind hold a spot next to dragons in the myths of the men who built the city around them.
With Blood Summons' words, the rest of the tension riding Joe's stubborn shoulders leaks away.
[Thomas] ...Thomas grants pack sister the floor, a foregone thing. Witness to her words, as she is to his when speaking.
[Sorrow] "I would have no such qualms, Blood Summons-rhya." Sorrow's response is a narrow thread. Her voice is rich, and the well-controlled, quiet - but not soft. Her dark eyes cut a line from Blood Summons to War-Handed. There is an expectancy to her in that moment - the look is both direct and inquisitive. If her Alpha cuts her off after that line, she will not continue -
- but he does not cut her off. He cedes the floor. She continues.
Sorrow is tall and lean, with long limbs and a narrow-shouldered frame. Her strength is evident not in her broad shoulders, but in her length, the supple strength of her core, the possibility of movement written into her body, the beast that is both within and around her skin. She cheats her body to include both Blood Summons and Joe War-Handed within her line of sight, but it is soon clear that her words are more for her Alpha's ears than for the Fostern Godi's.
"I've known Waking Dream-rhya since I was a cub. I met her at the Sept of Wind and Rain in Hjaltland. She came to learn the lore of the place; to hear our stories and remember them. She was a cliath, then - traveling alone, but the Sept welcomed her. You heard the story I told of the founding of the Sept, Alpha, of Halfdan the Old and his pack and his kin. I stood on the decks of a fishing boat at the base of that cliff when she came.
"She climbed it just as I did - before I did. I was a cub then, not yet Named. She read the names written into the rock just as I did then. There was nothing soft about her when sat at the feet of our elders and learned the lore of the place; the battles we fought to wrest it back from the enemy; the battles they fight there still.
"I went to the Underworld with her, too, during the Rite of Spring. Her challenge was to take a fractious group of young Garou and show them how to act as a pack. More than that, her challenge was to show the Beta - who was weak and uncertain - how to find her strength. During the rite, there were those who failed their gates. Some out of weakness - " her mouth is still. She does not look at Blood Summons as she says the work weakness. " - and some out of misplaced strength."
There he might get a look.
"Waking-Dream-rhya did not fail her gate. She went to the Underworld as I did. As Hermóðr did when he petitioned Hel to allow Baldr to return to the world of the living, and she did not fail. So - "
There is a faint pause, then.
" - there are children of Unicorn who are weak. And there are children of Unicorn who are strong.
"Silence-rhya knows this as well as I do. He was packed with Judgment of Sterling Silver-rhya for years, before Judgment of Sterling Silver-rhya died in honorable battle, defending the Sept. Eagle accepted Judgment of Sterling Silver-rhya, and Silence - who was then an Adren and is now an Athro - called him Beta, in the end."
Neatly, Sorrow pivots back to Blood Summons, then. Her dark eyes are direct. Briefly, she meets his eyes. Then the look falls, naturally, to just below the level of his own eyes.
"As you can see, Blood Summons-rhya, I have no such qualms. I would ask a child of Unicorn - an Elder in the Sept, Fostern ranked, pure in her blood - to follow a son of Odin, to stand strong below Hermóðr's banner."
[Sorrow] [apologies for the giant speech-making! but - SKALD. :) Plus y'all were like: MAKE A SPEECH.]
[Joe War- Handed] (Yeah. It was totally US, right? ;) ))
Post a Comment