[Glkckrfuff] *The Penumbra is a churning indigo thing tonight. Fat ill-tempered clouds rumble ominously as they drift low, hugging the taller buildings of the neighborhood, leaking grey rain down faded brick and mortar.
A stab of lightning from one heavy cloud to another, light arcing radiant blue with a gleeful sizzle, meteorological warfare. Perhaps it suits that the garou prowling idly beneath the battle in the sky are Get of Fenrir, sons and daughters of blood-tempered warriors both. The Methodist church looms over the street, towering larger than it was in physical reality, years of faith and hope stacked to give the structure a grim decrepit grandeur, stained glass cast colorful as electricity streaks across an purple sky. *
[Joe War-Handed] Bright blue eyes glare out from the bell tower window. All day the pair of Fenrir had been in or around the place. Sweeping, exploring, a brutal hour under the delicately painted frescoe on the ceiling below as well. They'd traded blows, grappled some.. the same thing that looks cute in kittens turned into a churning nightmare of teeth and the flesh they part too easily. A young thug, made of strange, taciturn ideas.. but Joe had proven a merciless fighter. A creature dedicated to a craft that takes no prisoners at all.
By far the most grueling had been working on the bell while waiting for their erstwhile guests to arrive. Tarnish remover, steel wool, two tubes of Bond-o that hadn't even been opened or applied yet. It takes a while but soon the tower is a haze of work- scents and the sharp tang of solvents.
Joe waits at the window- far enough back not to be seen from the street, and turns around again.
"I don' remembah dem sayin' nuttin' 'bout when dey was comin' back... just sometime taday. Couldt we uh missed em?"
[Sorrow] The whole of the day had been spent here. With the bell, in the tower - down in the sanctuary, under the sad-eyed view of saints so universal that even the methodists had painted them on the walls of the place, given them halos and flat, faces grieved for the sacrifice of their desert god. There are places where the ceiling is intact and the rooms are a narrow warren, tucked under eaves, hidden behind belfreys, a thousand rooms. Some classrooms, a library. There is a huge flat space that once had a roof, and now has a forest growing in it, and little invasive locust trees growing everywhere. Ghetto-palms, they call them - the hungriest trees, impossible to stop them growing, slowly disintegrating the mortar, crowding out the sidewalks, retaking the block in the absence of any caretakers low these many years.
War-Handed should not be able to move that quickly, given his size, his once-steroid-enhanced bulk, but move he does, faster than she. They sparred; she didn't use her gift, ensured that she could feel every blow, the better to learn from it. To be faster, to be better, to be stronger, to be quicker. To be merciless, as they are called to do.
---
Sorrow has Nalgene bottles of water for them both, to wash away the stink of the solvents, the little metal filings that have accumulated on their skin, in the back of their throats. The chemical smell mixes with the tang of rain on the wind, with the electric promise of the storm in the air.
"I bet they come back regularly," Sorrow says, always quiet, her eyes gleaming in the nascent light of a jagged band of lightning. With a gesture out the window, toward the street. " - this place, it's the best place to roost for blocks and blocks. Look at the view. And it's not all wrapped up in that spider webbing like downtown."
[Glkckrfuff] *Speak of the devil. Shrill metallic screeching announces Glkckrfuff's prescence, resonating with a tinny twang that pierces through the grumble of clouds and patter of rain, that drowns out the faint monotone command of "walkwalkwalk!" below. It can't however, drown out the brassy resonance in the belfry. No.. that was more a sensation that sunk under the skin and slowly build in a person's bones until they were quivering from the inside out. The fat scab-bird bursts through the broken window and swoops up to the jagged wooden spire that once held the large bell proudly aloft. Metal talons scratch on the wood, red eyes blink glassy at the gleaming torc around Joe's neck, before it turns its attention to Kora's long earing, hopping closer down the spire and cocking its head curiously.*
[Sorrow] [Wonder-twin powers, activate!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 4 at target 5) [WP]
[Joe War-Handed] The burly Modi ducks, swerving to the side as he brings his hands up to guard his face. One shoulder booms off the wall as he knocks into it- but he recovers soon enough, flipping the bird.. well.. the bird.
"Asshole boyd." Its grumbled.
Yet he seems somehow relieved. The tension that had ridden broad shoulders leaks away from him and Joe watches the bird hop its way down the spire. As the day had worn on, he'd been mindful of one or two of Stone- Tooth's lessons in dealing with spirits.. they have their own grapevine.. if one suckers you, the rest see you as a mark.
He'd been anxious. If they didn't come back- was it because they'd tricked what they needed out of the Fenrir? Would they tell others? Would a thousand of the Weaver's best tricksters come to the Church trying to fool these Wyld- driven garou?
Joe tips his chin up to watch the bird hop closer. His eyes comb the metal feathers.. but really, one fat metal bird looks more or less like the others. Appropriate careful solemnity in his braying voice, Joe offers a typical sort of challenge.
"What's yowah name?"
[Sorrow] The feel of the bell in the room is a stark sort of reality, unnerving and intense, the way sound crawls under your skin and expresses itself as a wave through your bones. Physics, Kora thinks, the right edge of her generous mouth curving upward, her molars aching from the sound.
"How is it," she asks, quiet-voiced, rhetorical, " - that physics work here. Sound waves and shit like that." The stuff she could barely remember from some high school science class she spent dreaming of bloodied swords and viscera steaming on the new-fallen snow.
--
Still, she goes quiet when the bird returns, watching it avidly, lifting her chin as it wings through the room, her dark eyes cutting to the reflective torque around Joe's neck as it considers its own reflection in the circular surface.
Joe asks the spirit's name. Sorrow tips her head away, keeping the dangling fetish out of its obvious line of sight, her dark eyes still clean on the creature. You heard what he said, she offers to the spirit in its own language. - are you Glkckrfuff?
Trust the Skald to remember the naming of a thing.
[Glkckrfuff] *The large dull grey scab-bird taps one metal foot atop the other, nails cracking against segmented metal. Haughty. The bird then fluffs his feathers once, pointedly. ~Glkckr~ ~Fuff~ A sound made more than a word spoken, spirit peering from Kora to Joe. Expectant. Waiting. This was a greater spirit than the smaller one they'd spoken with at length, status clear from the gleam of a brassy beak to the way the terrier sized bird rustles its expansive wingspan and nearly knocks both fenrir back a step.*
Deal.Fenrir.Deal.Negotiate.Translate.Quid-Pro-Quo.
[Sorrow] "That," Sorrow translates, for her Alpha, her fine voice low, " - is Glkckr Fuff." The bird peers between them, rustling its massive wingspan. She holds her shoulders straight as her spine, her feet shoulder-width apart, braced as the bird nearly knocks them back, giving the spirit the ground between if and only if her Alpha signals her to do anything other than stand there, show their strength even in the face of its power.
"And he wants to make a deal, quid-pro-quo, something-for-something, the way we discussed last night. He wants to negotiate. I'll translate," the edge of her mouth, upward, turned fully toward him now that she is confident he will not try to pluck the fetish from her left ear. " - what he says for you. He understands what we're saying, though, and knows we're Fenrir."
Which means, Sorrow's mind-voice is clear and neat, faintly ironic. - we'll keep the secret stuff here.
[Joe War-Handed] Respect among the Get of Fenris is a thing of flashing eyes and nothing given until its taken. A hard edged people that usually require blood to paint any ground they give, Joe's knees twitch loose.. just enough to remain exactly where he was standing, despite the buffeting winds. He's impressed... but he's also standing in his own territory.
He snorts agreement, and nods to Sorrow before he nods his head to the bird. Joe doesn't speak right away.. instead, carefully weighing his words.
"I am War- Handed. Cliath Modi of the Get of Fenris, Alpha of Aesir's Call an' Jarl of da Sept of th' Maelstrom." There.. always start at the beginning, Stone Tooth had said.
Joe points his chin toward the window briefly before he continues. "Yew hadda little buddy, said we needed ta tawk ta yew ta loyn wha' th' problem is, foyst. We released yew an' ya... flock.. mate-" He clears his throat. "-But apparently dat aint da only problem, right? Sah tell us wha' yew wan' from us, an' we'll make owah countah offah, Gluck... um.. Sah."
[Glkckrfuff] *It goes without saying that Scar-Birds and Get are vastly different creatures. Never before is it more apparent than when summer sky eyes flash, and the modi stands his ground against the force of the bird's updraft. In the face of a challenge a fellow Get would surely rise to the occasion, or be thought weak and have blood spilled for his sin. The Spirit, faced with the two formidable warriors, has no qualms hopping further up it's spire and shaking its metal down with such agitated force that a feather coasts to the ground. The beady eyed bird scratches his talons across the rafter and chatters it's beak.*
~Glkckr fuff. QuidproQuo. BrokenWindow. WinterSeed. CleanBell. Chatter. Deal. QuidProQuo Fenrir.~
[Sorrow] The pair of them stand there, buffeted by the bird spirit's created wind; and the bird jumps back up its spire. Sorrow's dark eyes narrow, wary and watchful - but the right corner of her mouth is twisted upward, faint and faintly amused.
Not amused. It is bemusement written across the Skald's features, though it stills soon enough as the creature begins chattering its demands back at them.
"Alright boss," Sorrow continues, quiet in the aftermath of the bird's raucous tones, a warm, steady counterpoint to its constant scratching movement, to the constant tapping of metal against metal against taloned, befeathered metal. "I'm going to do my best to get this right, near as right as I can get it.
"Glkckr fuff says, Broken Window. Winter Seed. Clean Bell. Chatter. and Deal. It's willing to deal with us, too. It wants to deal with us, so we should be able to come to a mutually agreeable understanding."
Could broken window be as easy as fixing the window so the bell remains clean? - this into Joe's mind, curious, clear.
[Joe War-Handed] Joe's reply comes quick. Not cocky. Quick. He doesn't assume he understands.. but the kid is energetic. Looking forward to resolution. Awright- I get Broken Window, an' Clean Bell.. but what'sis Winter Seed bid'ness?
Joe cocks his head at the bird- curious counterpoint to the creature's own posturing. Otherwise he remains immobile. The stilled form of a predator that knows what it is, and doesn't want something lower on the food chain to think its looking for a snack. It doesn't seem intentional.
"Sah.. yew wan' us ta fix da window, an' fix da bell.. clean it up. Issat right?"
[Glkckrfuff] ~Chhhhhhhhh~
*A reedy noise of irritation, bird preening beak deep in grey down, one glass eye ever watchful. Say this much for it, the strange scab spirit has patience. *
BROKENWindow.Fenrir!NotToFix.FeedBirds.WinterSeed!Fee-
*Patience - but easily distracted as well. The faint tinny noise of the walklight sounds from the azure world beyond the church window, and the fat spirit nosedives out the window with a great fluttering.*
[Sorrow] "Ha! - " Kora cannot quiet contain her laughter, perhaps at their own misinterpretation, of the bird's demands. There's a moment where it cuts through the chuff of irritation singing from the spirit before the laughter becomes more physical than audible, swallowed back from her throat into her body.
" - I was wrong. The broken window's how they get in. So it wants us to leave the window broken, keep the bell clean, and bring the birds seed in the wintertime, when it's difficult to find food. Or maybe all the time. Do you want the bird food all the time?"
I was lost in the mysteries of winterseed. Apparently, it just wants birdfood. Her mindvoice is bemused. Trust the Skald to overcomplicate language, too. So I think it's up to us to tell it what we want in exchange. That doesn't seem too onerous, though. Do you think there's a catch?
[Joe War-Handed] Yannow... I don' t'ink so, nah.. Joe sounds surprised, across the totem link. It kinda seems like he's bein' straight up widdus.
Joe clears his throat, the sound of Kora's rippling almost- laughter causes the corner of Joe's mouth to twitch upward, then explode into a full faced, gap toothed smile.
"Awright- we'll keep seed up heah foah ya, keep dat window deah broken, an' fix da bell. In retoyn.. we wan' yew an' yah flock ta soyve as lookouts. Let us know when owah enemies an' Gaia's enemies come onta owah territory, tell us about da t'ings yew heah owah see. How's dat soun' Gl-" Joe cuts off, his gaze skating to Kora as he tries out the bird spirit's sound again.
[Glkckrfuff] *Metal cracking against metal. A brief struggle breaking out beneath grumbling clouds in the dim light of an obscured half moon. It takes less than a minute, and the scab bird is back, perched outside the window on a stone buttress, wiry metal legs a squirming flash in it's brassy beak. *
ScabBirds. Glkckrfuff. EyesTheWyrm. Tattles-Tales. Deal.Deal!
[Sorrow] Glkckrfuf Kora pronounces in Joe's mind's eyes, in his mind's ear, supplying the sound/thing across the totemic bond that they share, giving it to him the way she feels the word, so that they can feel it that way too, in his body, in the back of his throat. Language is a physical thing. We move our mouths and our throats, stop air with our tongues against the soft palate, wedge vowels into being between consonants made behind out teeth. This name is all consonants, like a cough, like Polish, or Serbian for god's sake.
---
There is a moment when the bird flies away that Sorrow's heart is in her throat. It feels like she has swallowed a sandwich down her windpipe - something lodges there - too sudden for fury though the blast of anger often comes after. Except the spirit returns, flashing its metal beak, preening at them from some great rib of stone without the belltower.
"Hey boss," says Kora, quiet, this sort of wonder and pride in her velvet voice. " - I think we just made our first deal in the new territory. Glkckrfuff and the ScabBirds are going to watch the wyrm and be tattle tales to us. We've made a deal.""
[Joe War-Handed] Joe watches Glkckrfuff. Eyes half lidded with the sort of calm, confident pride that comes on its own to such moments. One hand dredges itself out of a pocket, turns palm to the ground and slides through the air toward Kora. The fist hangs there, waiting.
No words accompany the gesture. It is 'well done', 'we're badass', and simple agreement all in one. A 'fistbump' they call it.
"Still t'ink da only ways in oughta be a rigged door, dat windah-" He points at the broken window, "-an sumpfin' tricky we arrange owahselves. Dis church is jus' askin' ta be Awakened."
Consternation ripples across Joe's brutish features as his face swings to Kora. "Gotta dew sumpfin' 'bout allat whinin' downstairs, dough."
[Glkckrfuff] *Negotiation over, Glkckrfuff batters the Fenrir with a terrible draft, then careens out the window, winging towards a lightning streaked sky. Business to attend to it would appear.*
[and I think I'm good and out!]
[Sorrow] There is a moment where Kora just looks not-quite-blankly at Joe's fist, as if she were not quite surely whether he were offering something, whether there was more to the gesture, whether she should -
- and so the fistbump comes belatedly, accompanied by a vaguely sheepish grin that curves across his packmate's expressive mouth, a subtle I'm sorry shrug.
"We've gotta make sure our kin can come and go when they need. The important ones, I mean. The smart ones." The ones unlikely to get themselves kidnapped twice by the Wyrm goes unspoken, but there's a certain awareness of it, that they are in a city at war, and some of the danger to them arises through all these loose ends. "The doc, and Drew, for starters. You know?" And others, who go unspoken in this precise moment.
"As for this place," she looks up, at the shape of the ruined belltower, then outward, over the spines of the church, the buttresses and ribs of stone. " - if we're going to awaken it, I think you'll need to get used to the prayers of the faithful. I bet the church remembers what it was, somehow, under all that. Maybe it doesn't believe in that, but those folks gave it enough singularity that it's both here and there. There's a kind of power in that that I bet the spirit of the place would remember well."
[Joe War-Handed] Boot soles crunch against the remembered detritus that carpets this umbral reflection of the tower. Glass perhaps. Metal filings from the Scab-bird's wings. Joe takes a lap around the bell they'd cleaned, moving with purpose. Clarity in his steps.
"Scratch dat idea den. Weah gonna put new prayers innis place. Owahs is gonna be da sorrow of Jormugandr. His screams an' frustrations. Weah gonna make dis place owah own. It'll remembah us soon. It'll fehget dem monkeys."
Joe's lips peel back in an exuberant grin, and he looks from the Bell he'd all but spoken to, and watches Sorrow's face. As he continues to digest her words, his face grows less happy. Grows a touch uncertain, as though he were looking at two different faces in the same person. Yet his eyes are only on Sorrow.
"Is he learnin? Ah yew teachin' im?" Its clear the subject is distasteful. But perhaps the effort is the important thing. A line seperating the fact of disliking a situation, from driving away a packmate because of it. He doesn't seem to think she'd leave if he didn't accept all of her life.. but there is uncertainty there of one type or another.
[Sorrow] "We should bring it trophies - " she says, quiet but vibrant underneath that. " - bring it trophies, post the carcases like Silence did, in the umbra, so that the spirit of the place will know us. We should paint it with glyphs and sing it stories, drink mead and roast food in its halls - make the Church dream of Valhalla before we awaken it, so it'll be ours, whole and entire - or as much as it can be ours."
Then the mood shifts; Joe sees Sorrow, his packmate. Joe sees the girl-who-betrays-her-blood, imposed just atop her, like a stencil, the lines and colors just off. "He's been away," she says, her features growing quiet, her dark eyes fixed on her Alpha, reading through the distaste to the uncertainty underneath. " - he has family, too. They're kin, all of them, but he needed to speak with them, to tell them in person. He's flying back soon." Quiet, this, all of it.
"He'll learn." Then, a faint nod down, and a subtle gesture of her hand. " - maybe he can help us around here, too. He's good with his hands, boss. We'll work it out."
[Sorrow] [fade!]
A stab of lightning from one heavy cloud to another, light arcing radiant blue with a gleeful sizzle, meteorological warfare. Perhaps it suits that the garou prowling idly beneath the battle in the sky are Get of Fenrir, sons and daughters of blood-tempered warriors both. The Methodist church looms over the street, towering larger than it was in physical reality, years of faith and hope stacked to give the structure a grim decrepit grandeur, stained glass cast colorful as electricity streaks across an purple sky. *
[Joe War-Handed] Bright blue eyes glare out from the bell tower window. All day the pair of Fenrir had been in or around the place. Sweeping, exploring, a brutal hour under the delicately painted frescoe on the ceiling below as well. They'd traded blows, grappled some.. the same thing that looks cute in kittens turned into a churning nightmare of teeth and the flesh they part too easily. A young thug, made of strange, taciturn ideas.. but Joe had proven a merciless fighter. A creature dedicated to a craft that takes no prisoners at all.
By far the most grueling had been working on the bell while waiting for their erstwhile guests to arrive. Tarnish remover, steel wool, two tubes of Bond-o that hadn't even been opened or applied yet. It takes a while but soon the tower is a haze of work- scents and the sharp tang of solvents.
Joe waits at the window- far enough back not to be seen from the street, and turns around again.
"I don' remembah dem sayin' nuttin' 'bout when dey was comin' back... just sometime taday. Couldt we uh missed em?"
[Sorrow] The whole of the day had been spent here. With the bell, in the tower - down in the sanctuary, under the sad-eyed view of saints so universal that even the methodists had painted them on the walls of the place, given them halos and flat, faces grieved for the sacrifice of their desert god. There are places where the ceiling is intact and the rooms are a narrow warren, tucked under eaves, hidden behind belfreys, a thousand rooms. Some classrooms, a library. There is a huge flat space that once had a roof, and now has a forest growing in it, and little invasive locust trees growing everywhere. Ghetto-palms, they call them - the hungriest trees, impossible to stop them growing, slowly disintegrating the mortar, crowding out the sidewalks, retaking the block in the absence of any caretakers low these many years.
War-Handed should not be able to move that quickly, given his size, his once-steroid-enhanced bulk, but move he does, faster than she. They sparred; she didn't use her gift, ensured that she could feel every blow, the better to learn from it. To be faster, to be better, to be stronger, to be quicker. To be merciless, as they are called to do.
---
Sorrow has Nalgene bottles of water for them both, to wash away the stink of the solvents, the little metal filings that have accumulated on their skin, in the back of their throats. The chemical smell mixes with the tang of rain on the wind, with the electric promise of the storm in the air.
"I bet they come back regularly," Sorrow says, always quiet, her eyes gleaming in the nascent light of a jagged band of lightning. With a gesture out the window, toward the street. " - this place, it's the best place to roost for blocks and blocks. Look at the view. And it's not all wrapped up in that spider webbing like downtown."
[Glkckrfuff] *Speak of the devil. Shrill metallic screeching announces Glkckrfuff's prescence, resonating with a tinny twang that pierces through the grumble of clouds and patter of rain, that drowns out the faint monotone command of "walkwalkwalk!" below. It can't however, drown out the brassy resonance in the belfry. No.. that was more a sensation that sunk under the skin and slowly build in a person's bones until they were quivering from the inside out. The fat scab-bird bursts through the broken window and swoops up to the jagged wooden spire that once held the large bell proudly aloft. Metal talons scratch on the wood, red eyes blink glassy at the gleaming torc around Joe's neck, before it turns its attention to Kora's long earing, hopping closer down the spire and cocking its head curiously.*
[Sorrow] [Wonder-twin powers, activate!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 4 at target 5) [WP]
[Joe War-Handed] The burly Modi ducks, swerving to the side as he brings his hands up to guard his face. One shoulder booms off the wall as he knocks into it- but he recovers soon enough, flipping the bird.. well.. the bird.
"Asshole boyd." Its grumbled.
Yet he seems somehow relieved. The tension that had ridden broad shoulders leaks away from him and Joe watches the bird hop its way down the spire. As the day had worn on, he'd been mindful of one or two of Stone- Tooth's lessons in dealing with spirits.. they have their own grapevine.. if one suckers you, the rest see you as a mark.
He'd been anxious. If they didn't come back- was it because they'd tricked what they needed out of the Fenrir? Would they tell others? Would a thousand of the Weaver's best tricksters come to the Church trying to fool these Wyld- driven garou?
Joe tips his chin up to watch the bird hop closer. His eyes comb the metal feathers.. but really, one fat metal bird looks more or less like the others. Appropriate careful solemnity in his braying voice, Joe offers a typical sort of challenge.
"What's yowah name?"
[Sorrow] The feel of the bell in the room is a stark sort of reality, unnerving and intense, the way sound crawls under your skin and expresses itself as a wave through your bones. Physics, Kora thinks, the right edge of her generous mouth curving upward, her molars aching from the sound.
"How is it," she asks, quiet-voiced, rhetorical, " - that physics work here. Sound waves and shit like that." The stuff she could barely remember from some high school science class she spent dreaming of bloodied swords and viscera steaming on the new-fallen snow.
--
Still, she goes quiet when the bird returns, watching it avidly, lifting her chin as it wings through the room, her dark eyes cutting to the reflective torque around Joe's neck as it considers its own reflection in the circular surface.
Joe asks the spirit's name. Sorrow tips her head away, keeping the dangling fetish out of its obvious line of sight, her dark eyes still clean on the creature. You heard what he said, she offers to the spirit in its own language. - are you Glkckrfuff?
Trust the Skald to remember the naming of a thing.
[Glkckrfuff] *The large dull grey scab-bird taps one metal foot atop the other, nails cracking against segmented metal. Haughty. The bird then fluffs his feathers once, pointedly. ~Glkckr~ ~Fuff~ A sound made more than a word spoken, spirit peering from Kora to Joe. Expectant. Waiting. This was a greater spirit than the smaller one they'd spoken with at length, status clear from the gleam of a brassy beak to the way the terrier sized bird rustles its expansive wingspan and nearly knocks both fenrir back a step.*
Deal.Fenrir.Deal.Negotiate.Translate.Quid-Pro-Quo.
[Sorrow] "That," Sorrow translates, for her Alpha, her fine voice low, " - is Glkckr Fuff." The bird peers between them, rustling its massive wingspan. She holds her shoulders straight as her spine, her feet shoulder-width apart, braced as the bird nearly knocks them back, giving the spirit the ground between if and only if her Alpha signals her to do anything other than stand there, show their strength even in the face of its power.
"And he wants to make a deal, quid-pro-quo, something-for-something, the way we discussed last night. He wants to negotiate. I'll translate," the edge of her mouth, upward, turned fully toward him now that she is confident he will not try to pluck the fetish from her left ear. " - what he says for you. He understands what we're saying, though, and knows we're Fenrir."
Which means, Sorrow's mind-voice is clear and neat, faintly ironic. - we'll keep the secret stuff here.
[Joe War-Handed] Respect among the Get of Fenris is a thing of flashing eyes and nothing given until its taken. A hard edged people that usually require blood to paint any ground they give, Joe's knees twitch loose.. just enough to remain exactly where he was standing, despite the buffeting winds. He's impressed... but he's also standing in his own territory.
He snorts agreement, and nods to Sorrow before he nods his head to the bird. Joe doesn't speak right away.. instead, carefully weighing his words.
"I am War- Handed. Cliath Modi of the Get of Fenris, Alpha of Aesir's Call an' Jarl of da Sept of th' Maelstrom." There.. always start at the beginning, Stone Tooth had said.
Joe points his chin toward the window briefly before he continues. "Yew hadda little buddy, said we needed ta tawk ta yew ta loyn wha' th' problem is, foyst. We released yew an' ya... flock.. mate-" He clears his throat. "-But apparently dat aint da only problem, right? Sah tell us wha' yew wan' from us, an' we'll make owah countah offah, Gluck... um.. Sah."
[Glkckrfuff] *It goes without saying that Scar-Birds and Get are vastly different creatures. Never before is it more apparent than when summer sky eyes flash, and the modi stands his ground against the force of the bird's updraft. In the face of a challenge a fellow Get would surely rise to the occasion, or be thought weak and have blood spilled for his sin. The Spirit, faced with the two formidable warriors, has no qualms hopping further up it's spire and shaking its metal down with such agitated force that a feather coasts to the ground. The beady eyed bird scratches his talons across the rafter and chatters it's beak.*
~Glkckr fuff. QuidproQuo. BrokenWindow. WinterSeed. CleanBell. Chatter. Deal. QuidProQuo Fenrir.~
[Sorrow] The pair of them stand there, buffeted by the bird spirit's created wind; and the bird jumps back up its spire. Sorrow's dark eyes narrow, wary and watchful - but the right corner of her mouth is twisted upward, faint and faintly amused.
Not amused. It is bemusement written across the Skald's features, though it stills soon enough as the creature begins chattering its demands back at them.
"Alright boss," Sorrow continues, quiet in the aftermath of the bird's raucous tones, a warm, steady counterpoint to its constant scratching movement, to the constant tapping of metal against metal against taloned, befeathered metal. "I'm going to do my best to get this right, near as right as I can get it.
"Glkckr fuff says, Broken Window. Winter Seed. Clean Bell. Chatter. and Deal. It's willing to deal with us, too. It wants to deal with us, so we should be able to come to a mutually agreeable understanding."
Could broken window be as easy as fixing the window so the bell remains clean? - this into Joe's mind, curious, clear.
[Joe War-Handed] Joe's reply comes quick. Not cocky. Quick. He doesn't assume he understands.. but the kid is energetic. Looking forward to resolution. Awright- I get Broken Window, an' Clean Bell.. but what'sis Winter Seed bid'ness?
Joe cocks his head at the bird- curious counterpoint to the creature's own posturing. Otherwise he remains immobile. The stilled form of a predator that knows what it is, and doesn't want something lower on the food chain to think its looking for a snack. It doesn't seem intentional.
"Sah.. yew wan' us ta fix da window, an' fix da bell.. clean it up. Issat right?"
[Glkckrfuff] ~Chhhhhhhhh~
*A reedy noise of irritation, bird preening beak deep in grey down, one glass eye ever watchful. Say this much for it, the strange scab spirit has patience. *
BROKENWindow.Fenrir!NotToFix.FeedBirds.WinterSeed!Fee-
*Patience - but easily distracted as well. The faint tinny noise of the walklight sounds from the azure world beyond the church window, and the fat spirit nosedives out the window with a great fluttering.*
[Sorrow] "Ha! - " Kora cannot quiet contain her laughter, perhaps at their own misinterpretation, of the bird's demands. There's a moment where it cuts through the chuff of irritation singing from the spirit before the laughter becomes more physical than audible, swallowed back from her throat into her body.
" - I was wrong. The broken window's how they get in. So it wants us to leave the window broken, keep the bell clean, and bring the birds seed in the wintertime, when it's difficult to find food. Or maybe all the time. Do you want the bird food all the time?"
I was lost in the mysteries of winterseed. Apparently, it just wants birdfood. Her mindvoice is bemused. Trust the Skald to overcomplicate language, too. So I think it's up to us to tell it what we want in exchange. That doesn't seem too onerous, though. Do you think there's a catch?
[Joe War-Handed] Yannow... I don' t'ink so, nah.. Joe sounds surprised, across the totem link. It kinda seems like he's bein' straight up widdus.
Joe clears his throat, the sound of Kora's rippling almost- laughter causes the corner of Joe's mouth to twitch upward, then explode into a full faced, gap toothed smile.
"Awright- we'll keep seed up heah foah ya, keep dat window deah broken, an' fix da bell. In retoyn.. we wan' yew an' yah flock ta soyve as lookouts. Let us know when owah enemies an' Gaia's enemies come onta owah territory, tell us about da t'ings yew heah owah see. How's dat soun' Gl-" Joe cuts off, his gaze skating to Kora as he tries out the bird spirit's sound again.
[Glkckrfuff] *Metal cracking against metal. A brief struggle breaking out beneath grumbling clouds in the dim light of an obscured half moon. It takes less than a minute, and the scab bird is back, perched outside the window on a stone buttress, wiry metal legs a squirming flash in it's brassy beak. *
ScabBirds. Glkckrfuff. EyesTheWyrm. Tattles-Tales. Deal.Deal!
[Sorrow] Glkckrfuf Kora pronounces in Joe's mind's eyes, in his mind's ear, supplying the sound/thing across the totemic bond that they share, giving it to him the way she feels the word, so that they can feel it that way too, in his body, in the back of his throat. Language is a physical thing. We move our mouths and our throats, stop air with our tongues against the soft palate, wedge vowels into being between consonants made behind out teeth. This name is all consonants, like a cough, like Polish, or Serbian for god's sake.
---
There is a moment when the bird flies away that Sorrow's heart is in her throat. It feels like she has swallowed a sandwich down her windpipe - something lodges there - too sudden for fury though the blast of anger often comes after. Except the spirit returns, flashing its metal beak, preening at them from some great rib of stone without the belltower.
"Hey boss," says Kora, quiet, this sort of wonder and pride in her velvet voice. " - I think we just made our first deal in the new territory. Glkckrfuff and the ScabBirds are going to watch the wyrm and be tattle tales to us. We've made a deal.""
[Joe War-Handed] Joe watches Glkckrfuff. Eyes half lidded with the sort of calm, confident pride that comes on its own to such moments. One hand dredges itself out of a pocket, turns palm to the ground and slides through the air toward Kora. The fist hangs there, waiting.
No words accompany the gesture. It is 'well done', 'we're badass', and simple agreement all in one. A 'fistbump' they call it.
"Still t'ink da only ways in oughta be a rigged door, dat windah-" He points at the broken window, "-an sumpfin' tricky we arrange owahselves. Dis church is jus' askin' ta be Awakened."
Consternation ripples across Joe's brutish features as his face swings to Kora. "Gotta dew sumpfin' 'bout allat whinin' downstairs, dough."
[Glkckrfuff] *Negotiation over, Glkckrfuff batters the Fenrir with a terrible draft, then careens out the window, winging towards a lightning streaked sky. Business to attend to it would appear.*
[and I think I'm good and out!]
[Sorrow] There is a moment where Kora just looks not-quite-blankly at Joe's fist, as if she were not quite surely whether he were offering something, whether there was more to the gesture, whether she should -
- and so the fistbump comes belatedly, accompanied by a vaguely sheepish grin that curves across his packmate's expressive mouth, a subtle I'm sorry shrug.
"We've gotta make sure our kin can come and go when they need. The important ones, I mean. The smart ones." The ones unlikely to get themselves kidnapped twice by the Wyrm goes unspoken, but there's a certain awareness of it, that they are in a city at war, and some of the danger to them arises through all these loose ends. "The doc, and Drew, for starters. You know?" And others, who go unspoken in this precise moment.
"As for this place," she looks up, at the shape of the ruined belltower, then outward, over the spines of the church, the buttresses and ribs of stone. " - if we're going to awaken it, I think you'll need to get used to the prayers of the faithful. I bet the church remembers what it was, somehow, under all that. Maybe it doesn't believe in that, but those folks gave it enough singularity that it's both here and there. There's a kind of power in that that I bet the spirit of the place would remember well."
[Joe War-Handed] Boot soles crunch against the remembered detritus that carpets this umbral reflection of the tower. Glass perhaps. Metal filings from the Scab-bird's wings. Joe takes a lap around the bell they'd cleaned, moving with purpose. Clarity in his steps.
"Scratch dat idea den. Weah gonna put new prayers innis place. Owahs is gonna be da sorrow of Jormugandr. His screams an' frustrations. Weah gonna make dis place owah own. It'll remembah us soon. It'll fehget dem monkeys."
Joe's lips peel back in an exuberant grin, and he looks from the Bell he'd all but spoken to, and watches Sorrow's face. As he continues to digest her words, his face grows less happy. Grows a touch uncertain, as though he were looking at two different faces in the same person. Yet his eyes are only on Sorrow.
"Is he learnin? Ah yew teachin' im?" Its clear the subject is distasteful. But perhaps the effort is the important thing. A line seperating the fact of disliking a situation, from driving away a packmate because of it. He doesn't seem to think she'd leave if he didn't accept all of her life.. but there is uncertainty there of one type or another.
[Sorrow] "We should bring it trophies - " she says, quiet but vibrant underneath that. " - bring it trophies, post the carcases like Silence did, in the umbra, so that the spirit of the place will know us. We should paint it with glyphs and sing it stories, drink mead and roast food in its halls - make the Church dream of Valhalla before we awaken it, so it'll be ours, whole and entire - or as much as it can be ours."
Then the mood shifts; Joe sees Sorrow, his packmate. Joe sees the girl-who-betrays-her-blood, imposed just atop her, like a stencil, the lines and colors just off. "He's been away," she says, her features growing quiet, her dark eyes fixed on her Alpha, reading through the distaste to the uncertainty underneath. " - he has family, too. They're kin, all of them, but he needed to speak with them, to tell them in person. He's flying back soon." Quiet, this, all of it.
"He'll learn." Then, a faint nod down, and a subtle gesture of her hand. " - maybe he can help us around here, too. He's good with his hands, boss. We'll work it out."
[Sorrow] [fade!]
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