[Sorrow] These are cold, gray days full of snow and bluster, and long, dark nights - colder still. Outside the city, the fields are full of corn stover, dry husks shrouded in drifting snow. The harvest is finished, the hunter's moon come and gone. Barren winter is all that is left to the land, until spring comes again.
If spring comes again.
Sometimes it has to be dug out of the earth, wrenched out of the soil. Sometimes the sun has to be charmed back into the sky, lest it turn away forever, and leaving the face of the earth in darkness.
--
The Caern always feels barren. Maelstrom is spirit of sacrifice, the red waters churn with the blood of his dead. Now the softer spirits of spring and summer have gone to hibernate, leaving the flat planes of broken concrete and poor, sodden soil to the spirits of the north. A murder of Hrafn wheel back against the dark sky tonight, and Luna is just a sliver, a crescent-smile, the trickster's promise, the seer's thin smile.
Sorrow is not a silent-thing. Beneath the sound of Maelstrom's constant churn: booted feet on the hardpacked earth, the swing of her long gait, the formality of her greeting - "Waking Dream-rhya - " from just below and just behind.
Sorrow's voice is quiet, contained, warmed by familiarity, the pleasure of Lila's return - but only just. She stops a handful of steps behind Lila, her face turned toward the cold north wind that carries arctic temperatures in from the vast northern plains, hands in the pockets of her jeans, her stance loose, alert and aware. And she waits, quiet - not interrupting any communion Lila might have with the Caern's heart - utterly patient until Lila makes some sound of acknowledgment, until the Child of Gaia turns and looks back at her.
Then, and only then, does she continue, her generous mouth still, her dark eyes level, her hands in her pockets still. "I have come to challenge you for the rank of Fostern."
[Waking Dream] They call her Waking Dream more often than they ever (ever) call her Breaking Heart. Give it time. Give it another year. Give it three more years. Then we'll see what name they remember her by. Give her the right death. Then we'll see. They call her Waking Dream in all the caerns she's ever walked - barefoot, booted; bloody, raging; smiling, laughing - her green eyes spring-leaf green, so lucent and intent they're inhuman, they're straightforward, insightful in a way theurges are not.
Lila wasn't human at all no matter how many kinsmen have decided to forget that fact over the years. Lila wasn't human, and she would never be, could never have been, and there is something very contained, very still, something fleeting-grace, something, something that speaks of her tribal totem, always, always, about the golden-haired galliard, womanshaped and intent on the Maelstrom so many (too many) have died to defend (or have they?).
Sorrow does not have to wait long for acknowledgment. And maybe, maybe, Sorrow would've suffered through a hug, if not for that appellation: rhya.
If not for Waking Dream's ability to hear a story coming in somebody else's voice, to see it in the way they hold themselves.
A second passes, and Waking Dream stares at Sorrow, looks her in the eye, her own eyebrows raised, her self held so still, so utterly, any moment, there'll be an attack, any moment, any moment the teeth will be bright (but this is Lila [this is a Child of Gaia]), and then the second has passed, and Waking Dream says,
"Ah? Then we'll begin now, she who offers sorrow," and she takes, from a soft pouch of some animal's skin, deerskin, something gifted which she wears just now travel-stained and slung around her hips, a tine from the rack of some stag (hunted in the otherworld, the underworld; brought down by a pack of cubs-who-were-not, who-could-not-feed themselve, and oh, winter starves itself). Waking Dream reaches out and takes Sorrow's hand, angles it in the air, fixes it in position and holds it beside her own palm. Then she scratches a circle which crosses both creatures palms, draws beads of blood. The challenge circle's on their flesh, you see. They'll be bringing it with them.
And then she widens the circling, scratching it around the both of them. And when she's done, she says,
"Ask me three questions whose answers should be remembered," she says, and she's quiet, beneath the roar of the Caern's spirit -- although clearly heard. Yes, clearly heard.
And also, "I am a cub who has just been found. My blood tells, but it does not. What is this Sept's will? Why?"
And also, "I am harano. What guises have I visited Chicago in before? When have you seen me, and what name did I wear? What is to be done?"
And also, "I choose not to die. I choose not to stay. Who am I? What have I been in the past? Who might I be in the future? Am I friend or am I foe?"
[Sorrow] This is how she looks, Sorrow, like winter’s child – with eyes like dusk and hair like the first kiss of morning – like a winter’s child – ordinary. Nearly human, except for the traces of the animal inside her as it crests the skein of her skin like the skin of a darting fish riding the crest of a wave, just underneath, always visible, not breaking the surface until the tension shifts, and the wave crashes forward under its own weight.
But: ordinary, human trappings – old worn clothes imprinted with enough of her spirit that the can slide from the other side to this – a thermal, old jeans with blood on the hems and blood in the seams, blood holding together the places where the weave has worn thin. Blood and sorrow.
There’s new weight on her, the change subtle – the way an animal prepares itself for winter, gorging on late summer bounty – subtle enough that it could be the bulk of her winter things, a trick of perception, some imperfect thread of physical memory. Oh, so that’s what you look like.
And Sorrow would endure a hug were it not for that name, that – rhya – title that weights her down, that holds her here, that names her among the wolves who will call her Waking Dream while she lives, and remember that she was Breaking Heart when she dies. There’s a hint of that – a twist of her generous mouth – a glint of greeting in her dark eyes when Lila turns around, but it melts away like snowflakes against the warmth of someone’s cheek with the words – we’ll begin.
The circle is on their hands, in blood; and written around them, and the Hrafn wheeling above the pair of go still, draw back, black features glossy in the darkness, their chatter insensible to the Garou, a language made of broken eggs and the ends of string, lost matchsticks and whatever grows in the cracks of the sidewalk, but their interest – for all that – clear.
“Three questions whose answers should be remembered.“ Sorrow echoes, after.
“What is my name?” – there is a twist to her mouth with the first question, a certain direct acknowledgment of her awareness of the question, its irony, the arrogance underlying it. But more, this is belied by the steady directness of Sorrow’s dark eyes. She has lived longer than she ever would have believed, once, on the rocky headlands of the distant islands where they first met, when she was nameless, when she was nothing but a cub, but a new-made animal.
The next question is quiet, but not soft. “Who is buried in Maelstrom’s first grave?” She asks. They both know the answer. The litany of answers. “Who in the last? Who is buried in the least? Who in the greatest? In them, what have we lost? Of them, what will we remember?”
And the last question, well – shifts tone, like quicksand. Sorrow’s mouth quirks again, narrow. This is not a smile.
“How does the north wind sound when it comes keening over the lake, sweeping through the broken ships, at dawn?”
And also, "I am a cub who has just been found. My blood tells, but it does not. What is this Sept's will? Why?"
“My will – “ says Sorrow, quietly, directly, “ – would be to send you away, to a rural Sept, stronger, where the kin have some sort of settlement close by, and where there may be two cubs, or three with whom you might grow, against whom you would strive until it was time for your Rite of Passage.
“This Sept – “ a twist of her shoulders, and then her mouth, closer to a grimace, as she had never really considered the question before. “ – does not have a will about its cubs, the few that we find. If the blood is clear, they’re given to their tribe to be raised – and if not – there is no den mother, no pack leader, no training unless they find a mentor, or seek one out. It’s a failing, one I had not considered before, and perhaps a fatal one – if not to the Sept, then at least to the cubs left so, to pick up what they can, from whomever might provide it.”
And also, "I am harano. What guises have I visited Chicago in before? When have you seen me, and what name did I wear? What is to be done?"
“I have seen harano in the maddened eyes of Silence-rhya here in the heart of the Caern. When we burned Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya in his funeral pyre, when kept the corpse of his last packmate until putrefaction set in, and he was forced to bring the body to his tribe to be remembered. Silence-rhya – not Adren, then, but Athro – went made with it, swallowed despair until it started to rip him from the inside out, it opened his rage until there was nothing left inside him but the madness of it, and drove him, in the end, away from his mate, away from the Caern he fought to raise, where those with whom he fought died and were buried.
“And I have seen the echoes of it in Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya. When the Eagles left the Sept, he left the Eagles, and did not have enough pack until we came – War-Handed, Gut Song, and me – moons past, seasons, years – moot after moot – he lived alone, fought alone, on the knife’s edge between grief over his loss and bitterness over the dispute.
“What must be done comes from within. We contain our grief and remember our joy, we fight that battle as we fight every other battle. War-Handed and Gut Song and I did not drag Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya back from the edge of harano into pack-life. He drew us in. He never lost his sense of his wolf; the first night I met him, he offered me his hospitality, and I lived with him – like pack – until he died.
“And no one drew Silence-rhya back from his raging madness. He fought his way back. He stalked and destroyed five cursed things – ten – for each of his losses, and then, only then, did the danger pass.
“And what is to be done – “ here, a half-curve of her mouth, too subtle to be a smile, “ – the Skalds must sing -not just the joy of war, and the grief of death, the glory of our earthbound works. We have to remind the Nation of the rest of it: the promises on the other side of Ragnarok. As the seer said:
I see Earth rising a second time
Out of the foam, fair and green;
The eagle wings down from the sky’s vault,
And again pure waters flow.
Boards shall be found of a beauty to wonder at,
Boards of gold in the green green grass,
Groan with the bounty of harvests arising
From the barren earth, from the
Acres sown with the blood of the dead
In the final battle.
Evil be abolished, the curses broken
Balance restored and shining Baldr returned
To the lands of the living,
From the prisons of the dead.
Fairer than sunlight, I see a hall
A hall thatched with gold in Gimle:
There the hallowed dead will live in delight forever.
And also, "I choose not to die. I choose not to stay. Who am I? What have I been in the past? Who might I be in the future? Am I friend or am I foe?"
“You’re Joe War-Handed.” There’s a tightness there; in her mouth, in her knuckles, in her voice – a subtle flare of his nostrils, a dark bead of contempt still clear in her voice. “You’re Thomas Gut-Song. You are Muerte Fria and Kindly-One. You are Covered Sky. You were – once – sklora-Myrgen, before you returned, and now you are Night’s Reprieve and Laughs in the Face of Death. Sometimes you’re faithless, a broken promise; sometimes you’re an open, unexpected hand. You’re Matthew Oliver. You’re Silence-rhya.”
A pause, quiet. This time, not contempt, just a quiet hint of fatalism. “And you’re Sparrow.”
“This is a Caern of sacrifice. Some Garou pass through – fight with us for a moon or a season before moving onward, following another path. Some Garou pledge their troth and find that the final cost is too high. Some leave for glory, some leave for ruin. You’re friend and foe, faithless and true.”
[Waking Dream] "I am angry," she says, her wide and lovely eyes so intent. "I am angry, and I hate you. I am your ally, and I have bitten your hand. I have seen my brothers fall; I have smelled them, dying. I have buried my last sister. I am angry, and my kinsman - my kinswoman - is dead. BECAUSE OF YOU, I say." And she roars -- howls: "BECAUSE OF YOU." A pause, and she is quiet: tension, singing, in the line of a body, although her eyes are still steady, intent. Different. "Because the rest of you weren't quick. The rest of you weren't swift. I am angry, and I hate you. I am your ally. What will you say to me?"
"I am happy," she says, her wide and lovely eyes so still. So focused. "I am happy, and I do what I want. I don't care what you say. You can say it, but I know you're wrong, unless of course you're happy with me. Aren't you? I am happy, and I have a lover, and I am close to my brother, and I walk the streets and bring trophies to the pole. People may approach me, but I am happy. Why should I note them? I am happy," and she says this, with a note of fierceness, of fierce, upturning joy, "And I am brave, and my teeth are red with blood. What story will you tell me? What will you say to ME, so joyful?"
"There is a choice. I lay it before you. There is a story, and it is the story of Truth in Frenzy. There is a caern, and it is a Caern of Sacrifice. And it is abandoned. Listen. It is alone, and it is dying, and all of its warriors lay, gut-yanked, eyes-torn, limbs-rent -- black and blacker with blood, carrion-food, and the city is almost overrun.
"This is a choice, she who offers sorrow. This is a choice of what to give. The spirit of our Sept asks you for the story of Truth in Frenzy, and it will swallow that story like a pebble, and it will never, ever be heard again, it will die, and his name will die with it, all tales of his deeds, of his glories, his triumphs and his failures, they'll be nil. They'll be nothing. They'll leave everybody's memory, save for yours. And you will die.
"But the caern might live, sustained by that story -- the caern might stay, long enough tobe found again. Or it might not. What choice do you make? What is more important? Why?"
"Tell me a story. Tell me a story of this Sept. Tell me a story, naming Garou whose names are rarely spoken, which can be twice-told: true both times, but different each -- a different moral, a different lesson, a different ending."
"I say that there are no Galliards - " a long look " - in this Sept. What say you?"
[Sorrow] "I am angry," she says, her wide and lovely eyes so intent. "I am angry, and I hate you. I am your ally, and I have bitten your hand. I have seen my brothers fall; I have smelled them, dying. I have buried my last sister. I am angry, and my kinsman - my kinswoman - is dead. BECAUSE OF YOU, I say." And she roars -- howls: "BECAUSE OF YOU." A pause, and she is quiet: tension, singing, in the line of a body, although her eyes are still steady, intent. Different. "Because the rest of you weren't quick. The rest of you weren't swift. I am angry, and I hate you. I am your ally. What will you say to me?"
“I was too slow.” Waking Dream expands with a snarl – embodies a howl, her green eyes intent, and she who offers sorrow is unflinching in the face of this singing tension in the green-eyed wolf-girl except for this – a thinning of the skin beneath her eyes, a momentary echo of the power of loss, the memory of it. The way grief becomes rage, when the graves are torn open and death is all they find.
Not human now: Crinos. A different creature entirely; whatever softness has accrued to her hips and her breasts in the long moons that have passed, whatever softness is gone in an eyeblink. Sorrow rips into her Crinos form so immediately that Waking Dream can feel the rush of displaced against her forehead, that her hair ripples in the breeze. “We’re cliath and we followed him, when some of us should have led. I protected my mate; I protected the veil. I thought my packmate would shield her. I failed. I did not give the order; I did not take the blow. I did not hide myself in the shadows, and all saw me and gave us away.”
This is a litany – with the tension of fury, but not the volume and so it is closer to the shallows of shame.
“I failed. I was too slow, and your sister died. I did not order my packmate to protect her, and your kinswoman died. I broke cover, and your brother died. I did not heal him first, and your elder died.
“I will not shrink from my shame; I will not lie in the face of your fury. I failed, and the dishonor is mine. Let the Nation know my deeds. I owe you now a debt of blood and honor.
“But the Unmaker killed your brother, and your sister, and your kinswoman; the Fallen killed your elder, the Cursed ones killed your mate, and vengeance is the first debt of many I owe you.
“And now” – a snarl this, not high-tongue but animal-speech, feral as the Crinos falls to all fours, direwolf, tail high and alert, teeth gleaming, gray fur ruffling in the play of the north wind. “ – we hunt.”
"I am happy," she says, her wide and lovely eyes so still. So focused. "I am happy, and I do what I want. I don't care what you say. You can say it, but I know you're wrong, unless of course you're happy with me. Aren't you? I am happy, and I have a lover, and I am close to my brother, and I walk the streets and bring trophies to the pole. People may approach me, but I am happy. Why should I note them? I am happy," and she says this, with a note of fierceness, of fierce, upturning joy, "And I am brave, and my teeth are red with blood. What story will you tell me? What will you say to ME, so joyful?"
Human again; or rather – humanskinned, for the wolf is closer to the surface than ever now, Sorrow continues. “I will tell you a story of blood, the blood that reddens your teeth; give you back the song of your joy, the comfort of your brother, the intimacy of your lover, remembered from across the centuries. I will give you the glories of the past that mirror your own, a simple life, sustained and self-sufficient, within the realm of pack and family, with no past or future, just an endless present.
"Hrothgar Hammerfall, who ranged the north sea, who brought his kills to the trophy pole and fought with his brother, ignoring the warnings of the Godi, the word of the Skald – who went back to the sea, seeking another kill with his brother instead of standing with his Tribe and Sept. Who was not there when the darkest things born in Malfeas’ bosom were sloughed off the sea’s floor, when the oozed up from the depths and the Sept was beset on all sides. He was not there when a nightmare opened his lover’s breast, and hammer-headed spirit of murder swallowed his only child.
“He did not listen, and they had no warning, and so they fell, and so he returned from the sea to find the sept battered but intact, mourning their losses – and his own.”
“There is a choice. I lay it before you. There is a story, and it is the story of Truth in Frenzy. There is a caern, and it is a Caern of Sacrifice. And it is abandoned. Listen. It is alone, and it is dying, and all of its warriors lay, gut-yanked, eyes-torn, limbs-rent -- black and blacker with blood, carrion-food, and the city is almost overrun.
"This is a choice, she who offers sorrow. This is a choice of what to give. The spirit of our Sept asks you for the story of Truth in Frenzy, and it will swallow that story like a pebble, and it will never, ever be heard again, it will die, and his name will die with it, all tales of his deeds, of his glories, his triumphs and his failures, they'll be nil. They'll be nothing. They'll leave everybody's memory, save for yours. And you will die.
"But the caern might live, sustained by that story -- the caern might stay, long enough tobe found again. Or it might not. What choice do you make? What is more important? Why?"[/i]
Here, for the first time, Sorrow looks away from Lila with her steady gaze and grass-green eyes – not briefly – over Waking Dream’s shoulder, toward the constant churn of the Caern’s heart. There’s grief there, a sort of rage withheld, subsumed. “Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya gave his life, all of it, to raise and defend this Caern. And this is a Caern of sacrifice, Waking Dream-rhya. The Caern is more important than a Garou, and if his story is what will sustain the Caern’s heart, then I would give it, not gladly – never gladly – but freely, and carry it with me until world’s end, in my heart and in my mind alone.
“His story belongs to Maelstrom. Our duty to the dead is exceeded only by our duty to the living – to sustain a living Caern, to ensure that whatever scraps of the sacred linger in this broken world can live until Ragnarok comes.”
"Tell me a story. Tell me a story of this Sept. Tell me a story, naming Garou whose names are rarely spoken, which can be twice-told: true both times, but different each -- a different moral, a different lesson, a different ending."
“Moving Mountain, a cliath and a Glass Walker and an Ahroun, died alone, behind a juice shop operated by cursed humans. He was alone; and this was on purpose. The Sept knew of this place; Garou died once shutting it down, and when the corporation returned, the Sept sent more Garou with him – Blood Summons, Laughs in the Face of Death – and together they planned plant evidence in the back of the building – something that would bring the human authorities in to shut down the business forever, rather than the year purchased by the last death. He had renown enough that he would soon have been able to challenge for rank, but he had no pack, he had no kin. He did not seek any. I fought with him once; when I received my first battle scar. Just once.
“Together, this group – who were not a pack – decided to sent Moving Mountain, the Ahroun, to sneak into the back of the store and plant evidence, while Laughs in the Face of Death and Blood Summons distracted clerks by – ordering smoothies in the front of the shope.
“But Moving Mountain was not a Rotagar. He made noise, and attracted attention – and attention came with a shotgun, and he was dead before he could shift, and dead again before he could heal.
“That is how he died, alone, without allies. No one felt his death; no one saw it. They found his body later, riddle with buckshot. You can live this fight like any other in the Battleground, but there were no true witnesses that day, except a human cursed by the wyrm, dead now, too.
“When Brutal Revelation led his Gathering, she promised his spirit that he would not be forgotten.”
Sorrow, here, gives a twisting, brittle little smile.
“I don’t think his name has been spoken in the Sept from then to now, except once, when I named Maelstrom’s dead for Night’s Reprieve, so that the Keeper of the Land would know them.”
“This is a story you can tell, of Garou rarely spoken of, rarely remembered – a story of the futile death of an Ahroun doing the work of a Rotagar, while a Rotagar did the work of an Ahroun. The story of a Garou who eschewed not simply pack, but the company of Garou for so long that loneliness had become more than a habit. The story of a death we promised to remember, which has now been forgotten.
--
“And there is another story, there. Moving Mountain was scarred by war, lost in it, too human for the nation, too animal for humans – but he came here anyway. He did not hesitate in battle, and threw himself in front of every foe. He died fighting; he was packless, but he was not alone, and by dividing the well-organized group of cursed humans, by taking on the strongest of them, alone, he may well have saved the lives of the rest.
“And I have not forgotten him. Though his name is rarely spoken, it is etched into the stones like the rest. Though his story is not oft-told, the twice born here remember, and can whisper it into the ear of any who would hear.
“He was a cliath, nearly fostern, born in another land, racked by human wars. He was a Garou, who died fighting the Wyrm – as we all will, someday.”
---
"I say that there are no Galliards - " a long look " - in this Sept. What say you?"
“I told you five stories, tonight, Waking Dream-rhya. Say it again and I’ll have your throat.”
[Waking Dream] [INTERMISSION!]
If spring comes again.
Sometimes it has to be dug out of the earth, wrenched out of the soil. Sometimes the sun has to be charmed back into the sky, lest it turn away forever, and leaving the face of the earth in darkness.
--
The Caern always feels barren. Maelstrom is spirit of sacrifice, the red waters churn with the blood of his dead. Now the softer spirits of spring and summer have gone to hibernate, leaving the flat planes of broken concrete and poor, sodden soil to the spirits of the north. A murder of Hrafn wheel back against the dark sky tonight, and Luna is just a sliver, a crescent-smile, the trickster's promise, the seer's thin smile.
Sorrow is not a silent-thing. Beneath the sound of Maelstrom's constant churn: booted feet on the hardpacked earth, the swing of her long gait, the formality of her greeting - "Waking Dream-rhya - " from just below and just behind.
Sorrow's voice is quiet, contained, warmed by familiarity, the pleasure of Lila's return - but only just. She stops a handful of steps behind Lila, her face turned toward the cold north wind that carries arctic temperatures in from the vast northern plains, hands in the pockets of her jeans, her stance loose, alert and aware. And she waits, quiet - not interrupting any communion Lila might have with the Caern's heart - utterly patient until Lila makes some sound of acknowledgment, until the Child of Gaia turns and looks back at her.
Then, and only then, does she continue, her generous mouth still, her dark eyes level, her hands in her pockets still. "I have come to challenge you for the rank of Fostern."
[Waking Dream] They call her Waking Dream more often than they ever (ever) call her Breaking Heart. Give it time. Give it another year. Give it three more years. Then we'll see what name they remember her by. Give her the right death. Then we'll see. They call her Waking Dream in all the caerns she's ever walked - barefoot, booted; bloody, raging; smiling, laughing - her green eyes spring-leaf green, so lucent and intent they're inhuman, they're straightforward, insightful in a way theurges are not.
Lila wasn't human at all no matter how many kinsmen have decided to forget that fact over the years. Lila wasn't human, and she would never be, could never have been, and there is something very contained, very still, something fleeting-grace, something, something that speaks of her tribal totem, always, always, about the golden-haired galliard, womanshaped and intent on the Maelstrom so many (too many) have died to defend (or have they?).
Sorrow does not have to wait long for acknowledgment. And maybe, maybe, Sorrow would've suffered through a hug, if not for that appellation: rhya.
If not for Waking Dream's ability to hear a story coming in somebody else's voice, to see it in the way they hold themselves.
A second passes, and Waking Dream stares at Sorrow, looks her in the eye, her own eyebrows raised, her self held so still, so utterly, any moment, there'll be an attack, any moment, any moment the teeth will be bright (but this is Lila [this is a Child of Gaia]), and then the second has passed, and Waking Dream says,
"Ah? Then we'll begin now, she who offers sorrow," and she takes, from a soft pouch of some animal's skin, deerskin, something gifted which she wears just now travel-stained and slung around her hips, a tine from the rack of some stag (hunted in the otherworld, the underworld; brought down by a pack of cubs-who-were-not, who-could-not-feed themselve, and oh, winter starves itself). Waking Dream reaches out and takes Sorrow's hand, angles it in the air, fixes it in position and holds it beside her own palm. Then she scratches a circle which crosses both creatures palms, draws beads of blood. The challenge circle's on their flesh, you see. They'll be bringing it with them.
And then she widens the circling, scratching it around the both of them. And when she's done, she says,
"Ask me three questions whose answers should be remembered," she says, and she's quiet, beneath the roar of the Caern's spirit -- although clearly heard. Yes, clearly heard.
And also, "I am a cub who has just been found. My blood tells, but it does not. What is this Sept's will? Why?"
And also, "I am harano. What guises have I visited Chicago in before? When have you seen me, and what name did I wear? What is to be done?"
And also, "I choose not to die. I choose not to stay. Who am I? What have I been in the past? Who might I be in the future? Am I friend or am I foe?"
[Sorrow] This is how she looks, Sorrow, like winter’s child – with eyes like dusk and hair like the first kiss of morning – like a winter’s child – ordinary. Nearly human, except for the traces of the animal inside her as it crests the skein of her skin like the skin of a darting fish riding the crest of a wave, just underneath, always visible, not breaking the surface until the tension shifts, and the wave crashes forward under its own weight.
But: ordinary, human trappings – old worn clothes imprinted with enough of her spirit that the can slide from the other side to this – a thermal, old jeans with blood on the hems and blood in the seams, blood holding together the places where the weave has worn thin. Blood and sorrow.
There’s new weight on her, the change subtle – the way an animal prepares itself for winter, gorging on late summer bounty – subtle enough that it could be the bulk of her winter things, a trick of perception, some imperfect thread of physical memory. Oh, so that’s what you look like.
And Sorrow would endure a hug were it not for that name, that – rhya – title that weights her down, that holds her here, that names her among the wolves who will call her Waking Dream while she lives, and remember that she was Breaking Heart when she dies. There’s a hint of that – a twist of her generous mouth – a glint of greeting in her dark eyes when Lila turns around, but it melts away like snowflakes against the warmth of someone’s cheek with the words – we’ll begin.
The circle is on their hands, in blood; and written around them, and the Hrafn wheeling above the pair of go still, draw back, black features glossy in the darkness, their chatter insensible to the Garou, a language made of broken eggs and the ends of string, lost matchsticks and whatever grows in the cracks of the sidewalk, but their interest – for all that – clear.
“Three questions whose answers should be remembered.“ Sorrow echoes, after.
“What is my name?” – there is a twist to her mouth with the first question, a certain direct acknowledgment of her awareness of the question, its irony, the arrogance underlying it. But more, this is belied by the steady directness of Sorrow’s dark eyes. She has lived longer than she ever would have believed, once, on the rocky headlands of the distant islands where they first met, when she was nameless, when she was nothing but a cub, but a new-made animal.
The next question is quiet, but not soft. “Who is buried in Maelstrom’s first grave?” She asks. They both know the answer. The litany of answers. “Who in the last? Who is buried in the least? Who in the greatest? In them, what have we lost? Of them, what will we remember?”
And the last question, well – shifts tone, like quicksand. Sorrow’s mouth quirks again, narrow. This is not a smile.
“How does the north wind sound when it comes keening over the lake, sweeping through the broken ships, at dawn?”
And also, "I am a cub who has just been found. My blood tells, but it does not. What is this Sept's will? Why?"
“My will – “ says Sorrow, quietly, directly, “ – would be to send you away, to a rural Sept, stronger, where the kin have some sort of settlement close by, and where there may be two cubs, or three with whom you might grow, against whom you would strive until it was time for your Rite of Passage.
“This Sept – “ a twist of her shoulders, and then her mouth, closer to a grimace, as she had never really considered the question before. “ – does not have a will about its cubs, the few that we find. If the blood is clear, they’re given to their tribe to be raised – and if not – there is no den mother, no pack leader, no training unless they find a mentor, or seek one out. It’s a failing, one I had not considered before, and perhaps a fatal one – if not to the Sept, then at least to the cubs left so, to pick up what they can, from whomever might provide it.”
And also, "I am harano. What guises have I visited Chicago in before? When have you seen me, and what name did I wear? What is to be done?"
“I have seen harano in the maddened eyes of Silence-rhya here in the heart of the Caern. When we burned Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya in his funeral pyre, when kept the corpse of his last packmate until putrefaction set in, and he was forced to bring the body to his tribe to be remembered. Silence-rhya – not Adren, then, but Athro – went made with it, swallowed despair until it started to rip him from the inside out, it opened his rage until there was nothing left inside him but the madness of it, and drove him, in the end, away from his mate, away from the Caern he fought to raise, where those with whom he fought died and were buried.
“And I have seen the echoes of it in Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya. When the Eagles left the Sept, he left the Eagles, and did not have enough pack until we came – War-Handed, Gut Song, and me – moons past, seasons, years – moot after moot – he lived alone, fought alone, on the knife’s edge between grief over his loss and bitterness over the dispute.
“What must be done comes from within. We contain our grief and remember our joy, we fight that battle as we fight every other battle. War-Handed and Gut Song and I did not drag Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya back from the edge of harano into pack-life. He drew us in. He never lost his sense of his wolf; the first night I met him, he offered me his hospitality, and I lived with him – like pack – until he died.
“And no one drew Silence-rhya back from his raging madness. He fought his way back. He stalked and destroyed five cursed things – ten – for each of his losses, and then, only then, did the danger pass.
“And what is to be done – “ here, a half-curve of her mouth, too subtle to be a smile, “ – the Skalds must sing -not just the joy of war, and the grief of death, the glory of our earthbound works. We have to remind the Nation of the rest of it: the promises on the other side of Ragnarok. As the seer said:
I see Earth rising a second time
Out of the foam, fair and green;
The eagle wings down from the sky’s vault,
And again pure waters flow.
Boards shall be found of a beauty to wonder at,
Boards of gold in the green green grass,
Groan with the bounty of harvests arising
From the barren earth, from the
Acres sown with the blood of the dead
In the final battle.
Evil be abolished, the curses broken
Balance restored and shining Baldr returned
To the lands of the living,
From the prisons of the dead.
Fairer than sunlight, I see a hall
A hall thatched with gold in Gimle:
There the hallowed dead will live in delight forever.
And also, "I choose not to die. I choose not to stay. Who am I? What have I been in the past? Who might I be in the future? Am I friend or am I foe?"
“You’re Joe War-Handed.” There’s a tightness there; in her mouth, in her knuckles, in her voice – a subtle flare of his nostrils, a dark bead of contempt still clear in her voice. “You’re Thomas Gut-Song. You are Muerte Fria and Kindly-One. You are Covered Sky. You were – once – sklora-Myrgen, before you returned, and now you are Night’s Reprieve and Laughs in the Face of Death. Sometimes you’re faithless, a broken promise; sometimes you’re an open, unexpected hand. You’re Matthew Oliver. You’re Silence-rhya.”
A pause, quiet. This time, not contempt, just a quiet hint of fatalism. “And you’re Sparrow.”
“This is a Caern of sacrifice. Some Garou pass through – fight with us for a moon or a season before moving onward, following another path. Some Garou pledge their troth and find that the final cost is too high. Some leave for glory, some leave for ruin. You’re friend and foe, faithless and true.”
[Waking Dream] "I am angry," she says, her wide and lovely eyes so intent. "I am angry, and I hate you. I am your ally, and I have bitten your hand. I have seen my brothers fall; I have smelled them, dying. I have buried my last sister. I am angry, and my kinsman - my kinswoman - is dead. BECAUSE OF YOU, I say." And she roars -- howls: "BECAUSE OF YOU." A pause, and she is quiet: tension, singing, in the line of a body, although her eyes are still steady, intent. Different. "Because the rest of you weren't quick. The rest of you weren't swift. I am angry, and I hate you. I am your ally. What will you say to me?"
"I am happy," she says, her wide and lovely eyes so still. So focused. "I am happy, and I do what I want. I don't care what you say. You can say it, but I know you're wrong, unless of course you're happy with me. Aren't you? I am happy, and I have a lover, and I am close to my brother, and I walk the streets and bring trophies to the pole. People may approach me, but I am happy. Why should I note them? I am happy," and she says this, with a note of fierceness, of fierce, upturning joy, "And I am brave, and my teeth are red with blood. What story will you tell me? What will you say to ME, so joyful?"
"There is a choice. I lay it before you. There is a story, and it is the story of Truth in Frenzy. There is a caern, and it is a Caern of Sacrifice. And it is abandoned. Listen. It is alone, and it is dying, and all of its warriors lay, gut-yanked, eyes-torn, limbs-rent -- black and blacker with blood, carrion-food, and the city is almost overrun.
"This is a choice, she who offers sorrow. This is a choice of what to give. The spirit of our Sept asks you for the story of Truth in Frenzy, and it will swallow that story like a pebble, and it will never, ever be heard again, it will die, and his name will die with it, all tales of his deeds, of his glories, his triumphs and his failures, they'll be nil. They'll be nothing. They'll leave everybody's memory, save for yours. And you will die.
"But the caern might live, sustained by that story -- the caern might stay, long enough tobe found again. Or it might not. What choice do you make? What is more important? Why?"
"Tell me a story. Tell me a story of this Sept. Tell me a story, naming Garou whose names are rarely spoken, which can be twice-told: true both times, but different each -- a different moral, a different lesson, a different ending."
"I say that there are no Galliards - " a long look " - in this Sept. What say you?"
[Sorrow] "I am angry," she says, her wide and lovely eyes so intent. "I am angry, and I hate you. I am your ally, and I have bitten your hand. I have seen my brothers fall; I have smelled them, dying. I have buried my last sister. I am angry, and my kinsman - my kinswoman - is dead. BECAUSE OF YOU, I say." And she roars -- howls: "BECAUSE OF YOU." A pause, and she is quiet: tension, singing, in the line of a body, although her eyes are still steady, intent. Different. "Because the rest of you weren't quick. The rest of you weren't swift. I am angry, and I hate you. I am your ally. What will you say to me?"
“I was too slow.” Waking Dream expands with a snarl – embodies a howl, her green eyes intent, and she who offers sorrow is unflinching in the face of this singing tension in the green-eyed wolf-girl except for this – a thinning of the skin beneath her eyes, a momentary echo of the power of loss, the memory of it. The way grief becomes rage, when the graves are torn open and death is all they find.
Not human now: Crinos. A different creature entirely; whatever softness has accrued to her hips and her breasts in the long moons that have passed, whatever softness is gone in an eyeblink. Sorrow rips into her Crinos form so immediately that Waking Dream can feel the rush of displaced against her forehead, that her hair ripples in the breeze. “We’re cliath and we followed him, when some of us should have led. I protected my mate; I protected the veil. I thought my packmate would shield her. I failed. I did not give the order; I did not take the blow. I did not hide myself in the shadows, and all saw me and gave us away.”
This is a litany – with the tension of fury, but not the volume and so it is closer to the shallows of shame.
“I failed. I was too slow, and your sister died. I did not order my packmate to protect her, and your kinswoman died. I broke cover, and your brother died. I did not heal him first, and your elder died.
“I will not shrink from my shame; I will not lie in the face of your fury. I failed, and the dishonor is mine. Let the Nation know my deeds. I owe you now a debt of blood and honor.
“But the Unmaker killed your brother, and your sister, and your kinswoman; the Fallen killed your elder, the Cursed ones killed your mate, and vengeance is the first debt of many I owe you.
“And now” – a snarl this, not high-tongue but animal-speech, feral as the Crinos falls to all fours, direwolf, tail high and alert, teeth gleaming, gray fur ruffling in the play of the north wind. “ – we hunt.”
"I am happy," she says, her wide and lovely eyes so still. So focused. "I am happy, and I do what I want. I don't care what you say. You can say it, but I know you're wrong, unless of course you're happy with me. Aren't you? I am happy, and I have a lover, and I am close to my brother, and I walk the streets and bring trophies to the pole. People may approach me, but I am happy. Why should I note them? I am happy," and she says this, with a note of fierceness, of fierce, upturning joy, "And I am brave, and my teeth are red with blood. What story will you tell me? What will you say to ME, so joyful?"
Human again; or rather – humanskinned, for the wolf is closer to the surface than ever now, Sorrow continues. “I will tell you a story of blood, the blood that reddens your teeth; give you back the song of your joy, the comfort of your brother, the intimacy of your lover, remembered from across the centuries. I will give you the glories of the past that mirror your own, a simple life, sustained and self-sufficient, within the realm of pack and family, with no past or future, just an endless present.
"Hrothgar Hammerfall, who ranged the north sea, who brought his kills to the trophy pole and fought with his brother, ignoring the warnings of the Godi, the word of the Skald – who went back to the sea, seeking another kill with his brother instead of standing with his Tribe and Sept. Who was not there when the darkest things born in Malfeas’ bosom were sloughed off the sea’s floor, when the oozed up from the depths and the Sept was beset on all sides. He was not there when a nightmare opened his lover’s breast, and hammer-headed spirit of murder swallowed his only child.
“He did not listen, and they had no warning, and so they fell, and so he returned from the sea to find the sept battered but intact, mourning their losses – and his own.”
“There is a choice. I lay it before you. There is a story, and it is the story of Truth in Frenzy. There is a caern, and it is a Caern of Sacrifice. And it is abandoned. Listen. It is alone, and it is dying, and all of its warriors lay, gut-yanked, eyes-torn, limbs-rent -- black and blacker with blood, carrion-food, and the city is almost overrun.
"This is a choice, she who offers sorrow. This is a choice of what to give. The spirit of our Sept asks you for the story of Truth in Frenzy, and it will swallow that story like a pebble, and it will never, ever be heard again, it will die, and his name will die with it, all tales of his deeds, of his glories, his triumphs and his failures, they'll be nil. They'll be nothing. They'll leave everybody's memory, save for yours. And you will die.
"But the caern might live, sustained by that story -- the caern might stay, long enough tobe found again. Or it might not. What choice do you make? What is more important? Why?"[/i]
Here, for the first time, Sorrow looks away from Lila with her steady gaze and grass-green eyes – not briefly – over Waking Dream’s shoulder, toward the constant churn of the Caern’s heart. There’s grief there, a sort of rage withheld, subsumed. “Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya gave his life, all of it, to raise and defend this Caern. And this is a Caern of sacrifice, Waking Dream-rhya. The Caern is more important than a Garou, and if his story is what will sustain the Caern’s heart, then I would give it, not gladly – never gladly – but freely, and carry it with me until world’s end, in my heart and in my mind alone.
“His story belongs to Maelstrom. Our duty to the dead is exceeded only by our duty to the living – to sustain a living Caern, to ensure that whatever scraps of the sacred linger in this broken world can live until Ragnarok comes.”
"Tell me a story. Tell me a story of this Sept. Tell me a story, naming Garou whose names are rarely spoken, which can be twice-told: true both times, but different each -- a different moral, a different lesson, a different ending."
“Moving Mountain, a cliath and a Glass Walker and an Ahroun, died alone, behind a juice shop operated by cursed humans. He was alone; and this was on purpose. The Sept knew of this place; Garou died once shutting it down, and when the corporation returned, the Sept sent more Garou with him – Blood Summons, Laughs in the Face of Death – and together they planned plant evidence in the back of the building – something that would bring the human authorities in to shut down the business forever, rather than the year purchased by the last death. He had renown enough that he would soon have been able to challenge for rank, but he had no pack, he had no kin. He did not seek any. I fought with him once; when I received my first battle scar. Just once.
“Together, this group – who were not a pack – decided to sent Moving Mountain, the Ahroun, to sneak into the back of the store and plant evidence, while Laughs in the Face of Death and Blood Summons distracted clerks by – ordering smoothies in the front of the shope.
“But Moving Mountain was not a Rotagar. He made noise, and attracted attention – and attention came with a shotgun, and he was dead before he could shift, and dead again before he could heal.
“That is how he died, alone, without allies. No one felt his death; no one saw it. They found his body later, riddle with buckshot. You can live this fight like any other in the Battleground, but there were no true witnesses that day, except a human cursed by the wyrm, dead now, too.
“When Brutal Revelation led his Gathering, she promised his spirit that he would not be forgotten.”
Sorrow, here, gives a twisting, brittle little smile.
“I don’t think his name has been spoken in the Sept from then to now, except once, when I named Maelstrom’s dead for Night’s Reprieve, so that the Keeper of the Land would know them.”
“This is a story you can tell, of Garou rarely spoken of, rarely remembered – a story of the futile death of an Ahroun doing the work of a Rotagar, while a Rotagar did the work of an Ahroun. The story of a Garou who eschewed not simply pack, but the company of Garou for so long that loneliness had become more than a habit. The story of a death we promised to remember, which has now been forgotten.
--
“And there is another story, there. Moving Mountain was scarred by war, lost in it, too human for the nation, too animal for humans – but he came here anyway. He did not hesitate in battle, and threw himself in front of every foe. He died fighting; he was packless, but he was not alone, and by dividing the well-organized group of cursed humans, by taking on the strongest of them, alone, he may well have saved the lives of the rest.
“And I have not forgotten him. Though his name is rarely spoken, it is etched into the stones like the rest. Though his story is not oft-told, the twice born here remember, and can whisper it into the ear of any who would hear.
“He was a cliath, nearly fostern, born in another land, racked by human wars. He was a Garou, who died fighting the Wyrm – as we all will, someday.”
---
"I say that there are no Galliards - " a long look " - in this Sept. What say you?"
“I told you five stories, tonight, Waking Dream-rhya. Say it again and I’ll have your throat.”
[Waking Dream] [INTERMISSION!]
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