[Sorrow] "Mouse," says Sorrow. "I will call you Hungry-One, I will call you Remembers-Death. I will tell this story and I will call you Mouse, and you will be remembered, as great and great and many times great grandfather's greatgreat grandfather remembered the red wolf.
"Listen, there is more to your story. The red wolf was named Burns Within, and he harried a great darkness from the winter land, a darkness that would have swallowed everything, even the narrow spaces, even the burrows and warrens where you hide. We remember how he lived - distantly, through a distorted mirror, but then his name fails us, because we do not know how he died. Left behind, his woman mourned him until her hair fell out, so red it seemed like blood on the snow, keened for him until her throat closed and the moon turned away, so as not to hear. Named her children Misery and Grief, and so went the rest of her days.
"I have told you this," all this is quiet, is sinuous but solid as cinderblock, is made of aggregate words, half-remembered languages, the breath of sighs, the meaning of gray. " - now listen, quick. Tell me what you remember. His pointless death, and I will feed you, because it is winter, and your are hungry."
[Waking Dream] The ladder is cold. Not winter-cold, not cold as a pure concept of cold; not cold as it might be, quintessentially. But cold enough to bite. The ladder is metal. The ladder flakes rust under her fingers, staining them. Mouse who will be Hungry-One, Remembers-Death, is liquid-eyed, and its whiskers drip more light at a quicker pace, quickquickquick, mouseheartbeat fast, and it washes its whiskers with one hand, then lifts its head and looks off to one side.
- this is what the Mice in this Land of Lands and Doors and Fields know of the red wolf and his pointless death. He came many times. The first time he came he said what is this place it is waking. He left behind breadcrumbs. They were big crumbs, and tasty. His pockets promised more breadcrumbs but we did not get too close because he (twitch) smelled of (twitch) bad things blood and he showed teeth when he saw the Mice like humans show teeth. He walked through halls and tested doors and wanted to know what they were for. He did not know that doors are for going through and closing. That was what the Mice think he learned.
The third time he came there was something in the house that ate. It ate and it ate and it ate ate ate and it was hungrier than I am very hungry I am hungry and I am old. The Mice remember this time because they were all very hungry. Hungrier than winter. We thought that his pockets might still have crumbs and what might be inside and the Mice ate each other. More than just the weaklings. We made each other weak and ate ate ate and some of us tried to eat the red wolf too. Then the hunger went away although our bellies were still not full. The last time the red wolf came he walked to the door you are going to but it took him many days. When he was asleep a thief took something from him and when he woke up and saw he became a monster and tore up many things.
We the Mice thought that maybe he would snap us up so we did not see. We hid we hide from things like that and there is a falcon. The falcon is a good hunter. The falcon is swift. We do not like its talons, we have thought many times that perhaps we will eat the falcon when it sleeps, but we have not yet. Not yet. And the falcon is watchful. The red wolf's blood was good they say. They say it was everywhere. They say that he did not heal. But only the bad mice say that. I do not know. I cannot smell it.
When he reached the door he could not open it because the key had been left in another door. He wanted to go back but he couldn't. He opened the door by being hurt. We the Mice do not understand it, but we think that maybe, maybemaybemaybe, it is because he was weak, so what was behind came to see, and he said he would give something, and then he just died. We the mice did not see him give anything. He did not have anything because it was all taken. That is his pointless death. He went into the door and then he never came out. But then he was dead and we could smell him. We did not go near the door for manymany years.
- and with that, the Mouse dashes away. Or begins to. A sleek shadow, shape.
[Sorrow] Sorrow listens, does that thing that humans due when they bare their teeth. Which is to say: she smiles, a generous curve of her generous mouth, the gleam of white teeth behind her soft lifts, the promise of the wolf inside, a hungry thing, moon-made and sure. Hungry-One, Remembers-Death, Mouse speaks and the wolf-girl listens, rust from the ladder flaking beneath the pads of her fingers, drifting down through night and night and night and hungry to some quiet landing place, some shadow, raining down through some ceiling door onto the still, stripped floorboards below.
"Thank you," says Sorrow, low-voiced, still as the horizon shrouded by mist on a cold winter's morning. Her fingers are cramping, in truth, and the cold eats its way into her bones, and inside her is another life-to-be, maybe not even a heartbeat yet, just some promise there, just some need. She reaches out, fingers except for the rust, turned up. Sorrow does not have pockets full of breadcrumbs, but she does have her spirit, and she offers a kiss of it to Mouse for the story as promised. " - here."
Offers Gnosis for his hunger.
- and then she moves again, straightens, reaching upward for the next rung, and the rung after that, eyes closed against the rust as it falls like flakes of ash from a fire; like a first, fat snow onto her cheeks, her mouth, into her lungs as she climbs and climbs, imagining a door, and remembering that they are for going through and closing.
- and coming back, and opening, too.
[Sorrow] stamina! (homid!) plus ze athletics!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 10
[Waking Dream] There is a moment where her muscles protest. They've stiffened. They quake. The moment passes. Athletic, limber Kora - determined, well-aquainted with her own physicality. When she reaches the very top of the ladder, which happens now, now that she has walked so long and climbed so far, now that - surely - dawn is beginning to silver Chicago's snowclouds, and pokes her head above, what she sees is another portion of the (another?) attic. A lower portion, perhaps; something at the root, somehow unnoticed before, no door that lead to it, nothing.
The ancient thing with the ancient voice and the mellow, ponderous way of speaking waited for her - it took the shape of a stag, and she saw the room through its hooves, which it pawed the floorboards with. A stag, yes - but so large, so vast, so greatgreatgreatgreat that its shoulders hulked against the ceiling and it had to bow its head, 'lest its mighty rack tear holes in the ceiling, rip right through to the - attic. The other attic. The sky. Whatever. It says -
- and here we are. Remember what you promised -
There are windows here, too, and feathers everywhere, soft and moon-translucent, as if this little room was a place for birds to roost. The windows here are not boarded up. The wood is new, and smells new, still smells of trees - of pine. Go on, Kora; smell it, Sorrow? This is a room made out've a wood which was made out've pine, perhaps; some evergreening thing, some winter-strong, dark and stark thing, and the metal charm hanging from her earring means she can hear the sleepy caught-in-slumber dream-talking of the wood-spirit within the timbers. There is a well-made dresser, pressed against the wall. On it, a copper chocolate pot. A little copper spoon. A little wooden tray, a little oil lamp. And one of the drawers is half-open, and from it comes a spill, a froth, of yellowing old lace, something that looks like it might ash into dust if someone looks too hard at it.
And there is a door, set against the wall. The door is stone. The door does not belong. The door is stone, and the door has a sun carved on it; maybe a glyph - too far for her to see. There is also the whisper of a stain on the floor in front of the door, and it lies there like the shadow of a thought. She will notice, too, after a moment, maybe more - one bone, another, the remnants of yet another; human bones, maybe. Or Garou. Just scraps.
[Sorrow] "Three times three minutes," she says, nodding a slow, solemn nod, the seal on a pact, the - "when you ask. When I can."
This is after she has pulled herself forward, her arms liquid now, her strength spent, her breath harsh even in her charged lungs. Wolves are made for long-running, ranging across the snows, but humans are not made for climbing, and she is more than one human, now - and she feels the exertion, feels the exhaustion - in dead center in her spine, in the palm of her hands, in her burning calves and thighs, the great slabs of muscle flanking her spine.
There is more there, though. More inside, underneath, and so she pulls herself up until she is seated on the floor of the attic, the root-of-attics, breathes in the dust, the desicated lace, the feathers and pine, the sharp scent of raw, new wood, the musk of bird-things that reminds her of the belltower, the low gleam of the bell she tends every week, atop the church.
The bones and the door: her attention is fast upon them, and after several liquid moments on the floor, where she feels every ache in her muscles, every sort, overworked fiber in their attachment to bone - she pushes herself upright, drawing her dangling feet out of the long, dark shaft through which she climbed. Sparing a glance for the moon and the dresser pushed against the wall, Sorrow crosses to the bones and the stone and the door with its etched maybe-glyph. Her dark eyes settle on the door, still, wary, and then she sinks to her haunches, touches the scraps, one and then another, the shattered little shards, the scraps of flesh, cloth, fur - whatever's left there, gathers them up and turns them over and over in her hands.
After several moments quiet contemplation, Sorrow reaches behind her shoulder, and pulls away something that wasn't there. A narrow olive backpack, half-full, appears against her shoulder and falls to the ground, though she catches one of the straps before the contents spill out and shatter. Carefully, she tugs off her black t-shirt, leaving the thermal behind, and carefully, she folds up the bones, with a quiet sort of - reverence, with an unremitting, quiet grief, remembering her losses, all the deaths before. And carefully, she folds up the bones in the t-shirt, slips them into her backpack, and allows the pack to slide back into her spirit.
And then, there is a door.
A stone door.
And Sorrow has the key.
And so, she opens it.
[Sorrow] Strength!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 7, 8
[Waking Dream] And so, she opens it.
And so, the hungry wind comes for her.
And so, the hungry wind drags at her.
And so, the hungry wind seeks to slough the flesh from her bones, cuts through her clothes, drags at her.
And so, she is almost lost in the roar, the unrelenting ferocity, of what lies behind this door. All wind. All fury. All noise, noise, noise, and for a moment she cannot see: the wind whips at her so, understand, it stings her eyes -
But beyond the door, she can see a carpet of stars, of moonsilvered fields, of a moonsilvered lake, of leaves, shaken from the branches. Winter, again - stark, and helpless, and friendless, and cold. The perfect place for a hungry wind to prowl. And in the distance, wolf-song, wolves speaking each to each, hints of tales, of things lost, of names lost, a search in progress, again -
But she knows these are the voices of the dead. And she knows the stars are fires, as well as stars. And she can smell, in that hungry wind, something redolent of spices, of warmth, of resurrection, of woodsmoke.
[Sorrow] Every shred of concentration, every ounce of her strength goes to keep her rooted: here. Sorrow imagines herself a tree with great, twining branches and deep, endless roots. Imagines herself a mountain, imagines herself stone - in staccato moments as she holds fast, plants her hands on the frame, resists, in the end, the hungry wind.
It steals her breath; steals away her warm breath, blisters her with cold. She's still human-skinned, though now this is so only because the moment's inattention required to shift might be her undoing. The animal in her bares its teeth, the rage in her burns hotter to restore the warmth lost in the lashing wind, and she holds fast until she can pull the stone door about, and push it, finally, closed - the voices of the lost dead clear in her eyes, the distant promise of warmth, woodsmoke, clear skies, a burning hearthfire.
The door shut, she rises to her tiptoes and traces the shape of the glyphs etched into the stone.
Hid(Mem)den(ory).
The bones are in her pack, and her eyes are bright with unshed tears.
Call it the work of the wind.
--
There is still the attic drenched in moonshine, drifting with bird feathers. There is still the sky beyond, the gleam of stars in the dark fastness. She pauses by the dresser, fingers the copper pot, the oil lamp, shifts the yellowed lace beneath her fingers. She opens the drawers, each of them, one by one by one, touches the marker's mark on the bottom of the copper pot, the grain of the wood in the tray. She picks up feathers from the floor and sets them floating in the air like motes of dust in the moonlight, she climbs to her tip-tip-toes and peers out the windows.
She remembers the stars.
And them, quietly, she writes them into her fur. The moon and stairs, the birdfeathers, the dresser, the howl of the hungry wind from the opened door, turns a memory into a memory, a disc of it that clings to her skin the way bubbles cling to flesh when you're breathing underwater.
This is not quite enough.
It never is.
When she is finished - when she has looked through every drawer, traced every groove in the glyph etched into the stone door - when she is finished Sorrow melts from her human skin into her sleek wolf form. She is slender and gray and brown, with keen brown eyes and a short snout, alert eyes, elegant legs, white teeth, and a voice -
well, here she has a voice, a throat that she opens, a howl of loss, a howl of memory, a howl to the moon and the dead.
And then, only then, does she shift into her humanskin, and begin climbing down.
[Waking Dream] The door doesn't want to close. There is effort. Almost, she loses the key. Almost. Almost, she loses her life, and the other life she is just beginning to kindle into a flame-thing, into brightness. Almost. The door closes, and the glyphs are there to be read. They're faint. They're old. And she looks through the attic room, the beneath-the-attic room, and beneath the lace (which does ash when she touches it; half-disintegrates, sighing against her fingertips as it gives up even a semblance of form, a memory that couldn't quite hold in this other-world, not strong enough), she finds a deerskin pouch, something cracked, stiff with age.
And within, three talens - a painted clod of clay, one to wake the heart; an egg, tiny, blue, one to call for aid; an unmarked glass bottle [old, filmy] of some old brown liquid almost hardened/crusted against the glass, one to summon light out of the dark. And within, a (used, ew) handkerchief, monogrammed J. B., wrapped around something hard. When, and if, she unwraps it, she'll see a ring, and hiding in the ring something that almost tries to float-away, and oh: she knows. A memory, contained in a circle, a record, bound by Gnosis, a song. A thing, important enough to keep, to replay.
Through one window, the meatpackers' Chicago, Wyrm thick on the ground, smoking, flickering on and off like the memories they are, almost antiqued, ugly as a bone caught in the throat. Through another window, a Chicago that is burning. Through the third, final window, a Chicago with onions, growing green by the river, onion spirits playing pranks.
And then she howls. And her howl carries, long, strong, outward, down - enough to reach her True Time. Her Now Time.
And, below, there is a howl of answer, Waking Dream's, strong and sweet, I'll take this, carry this, and then after Waking Dream's, while Sorrow shifts down to Kora-shape again, human-skinned begins her descent (there is always a descent; that is the story of every ascent), Dreams in Summer Snow howls his reply.
And then she is on the stairs, down, and down, and down again, and the spirits avoid her, hide away, whispering stories, gossip, half-insults.
They do not stop her. Waking Dream and Dreams in Summer Snow have ceased howling long before she reaches the bottom. She feels as if she's been climbing, talking, thinking all night long - how many hours has she lived?
[Sorrow] The talens are spirits bound to flesh; and so she takes them. How many years have then remained here, well beyond their bargained use, trapped inside the cage of their maker's making, waiting to call for aid and ready to wake the heart and dreaming of bringing light of out darkness.
And the handkerchief,
and the ring,
and the memory,
- disappear neatly into her olive green backpack, which disappears into her skin, a dark line of curves and bundles against the bunch of her trapezius, the swell of her deltoid muscle.
Sorrow is tired now, she is spent. She has climbed and climbed for a day and a night, and her body is beginning to fail, and her mind is beginning to fog. She is hungry enough to eat a hungry mouse and she knows how his hunger feels, how it flays at his ribs, how is yawns beneath his diaphragm, how it makes him -
- weak, I am old.
And down she goes, still, her treats against her body, the story in her mind, her fingers dark with rust, aching, spent. Night whispers around her and sometimes she bares her teeth at the insults, but the gesture is subdued now.
--
When Sorrow emerges from Hill House, when she returns the key on its knotted rope to itshook, when she opens the front door, an ordinary door, a door without a key, when she half-stumbles down the four steps to the solid ground, her hair is half-loose, gray with dust and cobwebs, with chips of rust, with memory.
When she reaches Waking Dream and Dreams in Summer Snow, Sorrow sinks to her haunches, pulls the pack loose from her shoulder again, shakes the old olive canvas panels out, sighing. The bag has been around the world with her, twice, and is held together by duct tape, by big, inexpert stitches, by roaddust.
Squinting up at Lila as she undoes the laces holding the bag closed. "The Fianna, Burns Within, died in Hill House. He gave himself to a door marked with the glyphs for Hidden Memory, and is no more." She pauses, long-fingered hands pale on the dark cotton of her dedicated t-shirt, wrapped around talens, wrapped around bones, and pulls it out, unrolling it on the ground. "These are his talens."
"These are his bones."
[Waking Dream] "What will you do with them?"
The question is simple. The galliard watches the skald - who looks weary, tired; determined, steady - steadily. Watches as she brings out the bones.
[Sorrow] "Return them to his Sept and his people," says Sorrow, still crouched on her haunches, one foot forward, the other back, the pack at her booted feet, empty, sighing. No: there are things inside, a gourd here, a clay disc there. A volume bound in black and white, and another in the skin of a death thing, flayed from the bones. " - so that they may remember him."
Her smile is a weary thing; simple, half-formed, curving quite across her mouth. "And the talens, I will release the spirit inside, and return the vessels with the bones."
[Waking Dream] Now, understand.
The spirit world is a moonsilvered thing just now. The scab is a stinking, festering wound, but Hill House is unique. There is less taint here. Nowhere near as pure - as worth saving; as worth defending, dying for, sacrificing to - as Maelstrom's Heart. But it is lovely, here; it almost feels right - rage can almost feel itself banked. Waking Dream, wide-eyed, as still as any creature out of myth that hasn't a prayer of being real, unflinching, tilts her chin downward to stare at she who offers sorrow, cliath skald of the Get of Fenris, and then she looses a held breath. Her gaze flickers to the bones, and she, too, crouches, reaches out and takes Kora's hand. The hand which, earlier, had a circle marked on it: scratched out in blood.
There is no wound now. Of course not. They've shifted. They've fought. And Kora has climbed, hand over hand, higher and higher, so any mark there was must be mixed in with the rest. Waking Dream takes out that antler tine, again, (it came from below), licks the tip, and scratches a circle on Kora's palm, then presses her own over it, tightly, clasping, tightly -
"I would howl this," she says, and then - "I will howl this, she who offers sorrow, renders bone-yuf,"
and then she is on her feet, the circle smeared - broken, and then she is four-footed, war-wolf, hispo-wolf, powerful jaws, powerful throat, lean, a thing between skins, unnatural, more-than-natural, and she howls:
" - flee, wyrmlings;" fierce, joyful; glad, undaunted-thing, "shrivel, taint; be uplifted, Gaia, let your heart beat with hope - know She Who Offers Sorrow, Renders Bone, Fostern Skald of the Get of Fenris."
And she'll howl it into the stones and the stars, howl it unwavering: triumph, see?
[Waking Dream] [...finis.]
[Sorrow] (confetti!)
"Listen, there is more to your story. The red wolf was named Burns Within, and he harried a great darkness from the winter land, a darkness that would have swallowed everything, even the narrow spaces, even the burrows and warrens where you hide. We remember how he lived - distantly, through a distorted mirror, but then his name fails us, because we do not know how he died. Left behind, his woman mourned him until her hair fell out, so red it seemed like blood on the snow, keened for him until her throat closed and the moon turned away, so as not to hear. Named her children Misery and Grief, and so went the rest of her days.
"I have told you this," all this is quiet, is sinuous but solid as cinderblock, is made of aggregate words, half-remembered languages, the breath of sighs, the meaning of gray. " - now listen, quick. Tell me what you remember. His pointless death, and I will feed you, because it is winter, and your are hungry."
[Waking Dream] The ladder is cold. Not winter-cold, not cold as a pure concept of cold; not cold as it might be, quintessentially. But cold enough to bite. The ladder is metal. The ladder flakes rust under her fingers, staining them. Mouse who will be Hungry-One, Remembers-Death, is liquid-eyed, and its whiskers drip more light at a quicker pace, quickquickquick, mouseheartbeat fast, and it washes its whiskers with one hand, then lifts its head and looks off to one side.
- this is what the Mice in this Land of Lands and Doors and Fields know of the red wolf and his pointless death. He came many times. The first time he came he said what is this place it is waking. He left behind breadcrumbs. They were big crumbs, and tasty. His pockets promised more breadcrumbs but we did not get too close because he (twitch) smelled of (twitch) bad things blood and he showed teeth when he saw the Mice like humans show teeth. He walked through halls and tested doors and wanted to know what they were for. He did not know that doors are for going through and closing. That was what the Mice think he learned.
The third time he came there was something in the house that ate. It ate and it ate and it ate ate ate and it was hungrier than I am very hungry I am hungry and I am old. The Mice remember this time because they were all very hungry. Hungrier than winter. We thought that his pockets might still have crumbs and what might be inside and the Mice ate each other. More than just the weaklings. We made each other weak and ate ate ate and some of us tried to eat the red wolf too. Then the hunger went away although our bellies were still not full. The last time the red wolf came he walked to the door you are going to but it took him many days. When he was asleep a thief took something from him and when he woke up and saw he became a monster and tore up many things.
We the Mice thought that maybe he would snap us up so we did not see. We hid we hide from things like that and there is a falcon. The falcon is a good hunter. The falcon is swift. We do not like its talons, we have thought many times that perhaps we will eat the falcon when it sleeps, but we have not yet. Not yet. And the falcon is watchful. The red wolf's blood was good they say. They say it was everywhere. They say that he did not heal. But only the bad mice say that. I do not know. I cannot smell it.
When he reached the door he could not open it because the key had been left in another door. He wanted to go back but he couldn't. He opened the door by being hurt. We the Mice do not understand it, but we think that maybe, maybemaybemaybe, it is because he was weak, so what was behind came to see, and he said he would give something, and then he just died. We the mice did not see him give anything. He did not have anything because it was all taken. That is his pointless death. He went into the door and then he never came out. But then he was dead and we could smell him. We did not go near the door for manymany years.
- and with that, the Mouse dashes away. Or begins to. A sleek shadow, shape.
[Sorrow] Sorrow listens, does that thing that humans due when they bare their teeth. Which is to say: she smiles, a generous curve of her generous mouth, the gleam of white teeth behind her soft lifts, the promise of the wolf inside, a hungry thing, moon-made and sure. Hungry-One, Remembers-Death, Mouse speaks and the wolf-girl listens, rust from the ladder flaking beneath the pads of her fingers, drifting down through night and night and night and hungry to some quiet landing place, some shadow, raining down through some ceiling door onto the still, stripped floorboards below.
"Thank you," says Sorrow, low-voiced, still as the horizon shrouded by mist on a cold winter's morning. Her fingers are cramping, in truth, and the cold eats its way into her bones, and inside her is another life-to-be, maybe not even a heartbeat yet, just some promise there, just some need. She reaches out, fingers except for the rust, turned up. Sorrow does not have pockets full of breadcrumbs, but she does have her spirit, and she offers a kiss of it to Mouse for the story as promised. " - here."
Offers Gnosis for his hunger.
- and then she moves again, straightens, reaching upward for the next rung, and the rung after that, eyes closed against the rust as it falls like flakes of ash from a fire; like a first, fat snow onto her cheeks, her mouth, into her lungs as she climbs and climbs, imagining a door, and remembering that they are for going through and closing.
- and coming back, and opening, too.
[Sorrow] stamina! (homid!) plus ze athletics!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 10
[Waking Dream] There is a moment where her muscles protest. They've stiffened. They quake. The moment passes. Athletic, limber Kora - determined, well-aquainted with her own physicality. When she reaches the very top of the ladder, which happens now, now that she has walked so long and climbed so far, now that - surely - dawn is beginning to silver Chicago's snowclouds, and pokes her head above, what she sees is another portion of the (another?) attic. A lower portion, perhaps; something at the root, somehow unnoticed before, no door that lead to it, nothing.
The ancient thing with the ancient voice and the mellow, ponderous way of speaking waited for her - it took the shape of a stag, and she saw the room through its hooves, which it pawed the floorboards with. A stag, yes - but so large, so vast, so greatgreatgreatgreat that its shoulders hulked against the ceiling and it had to bow its head, 'lest its mighty rack tear holes in the ceiling, rip right through to the - attic. The other attic. The sky. Whatever. It says -
- and here we are. Remember what you promised -
There are windows here, too, and feathers everywhere, soft and moon-translucent, as if this little room was a place for birds to roost. The windows here are not boarded up. The wood is new, and smells new, still smells of trees - of pine. Go on, Kora; smell it, Sorrow? This is a room made out've a wood which was made out've pine, perhaps; some evergreening thing, some winter-strong, dark and stark thing, and the metal charm hanging from her earring means she can hear the sleepy caught-in-slumber dream-talking of the wood-spirit within the timbers. There is a well-made dresser, pressed against the wall. On it, a copper chocolate pot. A little copper spoon. A little wooden tray, a little oil lamp. And one of the drawers is half-open, and from it comes a spill, a froth, of yellowing old lace, something that looks like it might ash into dust if someone looks too hard at it.
And there is a door, set against the wall. The door is stone. The door does not belong. The door is stone, and the door has a sun carved on it; maybe a glyph - too far for her to see. There is also the whisper of a stain on the floor in front of the door, and it lies there like the shadow of a thought. She will notice, too, after a moment, maybe more - one bone, another, the remnants of yet another; human bones, maybe. Or Garou. Just scraps.
[Sorrow] "Three times three minutes," she says, nodding a slow, solemn nod, the seal on a pact, the - "when you ask. When I can."
This is after she has pulled herself forward, her arms liquid now, her strength spent, her breath harsh even in her charged lungs. Wolves are made for long-running, ranging across the snows, but humans are not made for climbing, and she is more than one human, now - and she feels the exertion, feels the exhaustion - in dead center in her spine, in the palm of her hands, in her burning calves and thighs, the great slabs of muscle flanking her spine.
There is more there, though. More inside, underneath, and so she pulls herself up until she is seated on the floor of the attic, the root-of-attics, breathes in the dust, the desicated lace, the feathers and pine, the sharp scent of raw, new wood, the musk of bird-things that reminds her of the belltower, the low gleam of the bell she tends every week, atop the church.
The bones and the door: her attention is fast upon them, and after several liquid moments on the floor, where she feels every ache in her muscles, every sort, overworked fiber in their attachment to bone - she pushes herself upright, drawing her dangling feet out of the long, dark shaft through which she climbed. Sparing a glance for the moon and the dresser pushed against the wall, Sorrow crosses to the bones and the stone and the door with its etched maybe-glyph. Her dark eyes settle on the door, still, wary, and then she sinks to her haunches, touches the scraps, one and then another, the shattered little shards, the scraps of flesh, cloth, fur - whatever's left there, gathers them up and turns them over and over in her hands.
After several moments quiet contemplation, Sorrow reaches behind her shoulder, and pulls away something that wasn't there. A narrow olive backpack, half-full, appears against her shoulder and falls to the ground, though she catches one of the straps before the contents spill out and shatter. Carefully, she tugs off her black t-shirt, leaving the thermal behind, and carefully, she folds up the bones, with a quiet sort of - reverence, with an unremitting, quiet grief, remembering her losses, all the deaths before. And carefully, she folds up the bones in the t-shirt, slips them into her backpack, and allows the pack to slide back into her spirit.
And then, there is a door.
A stone door.
And Sorrow has the key.
And so, she opens it.
[Sorrow] Strength!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 7, 8
[Waking Dream] And so, she opens it.
And so, the hungry wind comes for her.
And so, the hungry wind drags at her.
And so, the hungry wind seeks to slough the flesh from her bones, cuts through her clothes, drags at her.
And so, she is almost lost in the roar, the unrelenting ferocity, of what lies behind this door. All wind. All fury. All noise, noise, noise, and for a moment she cannot see: the wind whips at her so, understand, it stings her eyes -
But beyond the door, she can see a carpet of stars, of moonsilvered fields, of a moonsilvered lake, of leaves, shaken from the branches. Winter, again - stark, and helpless, and friendless, and cold. The perfect place for a hungry wind to prowl. And in the distance, wolf-song, wolves speaking each to each, hints of tales, of things lost, of names lost, a search in progress, again -
But she knows these are the voices of the dead. And she knows the stars are fires, as well as stars. And she can smell, in that hungry wind, something redolent of spices, of warmth, of resurrection, of woodsmoke.
[Sorrow] Every shred of concentration, every ounce of her strength goes to keep her rooted: here. Sorrow imagines herself a tree with great, twining branches and deep, endless roots. Imagines herself a mountain, imagines herself stone - in staccato moments as she holds fast, plants her hands on the frame, resists, in the end, the hungry wind.
It steals her breath; steals away her warm breath, blisters her with cold. She's still human-skinned, though now this is so only because the moment's inattention required to shift might be her undoing. The animal in her bares its teeth, the rage in her burns hotter to restore the warmth lost in the lashing wind, and she holds fast until she can pull the stone door about, and push it, finally, closed - the voices of the lost dead clear in her eyes, the distant promise of warmth, woodsmoke, clear skies, a burning hearthfire.
The door shut, she rises to her tiptoes and traces the shape of the glyphs etched into the stone.
Hid(Mem)den(ory).
The bones are in her pack, and her eyes are bright with unshed tears.
Call it the work of the wind.
--
There is still the attic drenched in moonshine, drifting with bird feathers. There is still the sky beyond, the gleam of stars in the dark fastness. She pauses by the dresser, fingers the copper pot, the oil lamp, shifts the yellowed lace beneath her fingers. She opens the drawers, each of them, one by one by one, touches the marker's mark on the bottom of the copper pot, the grain of the wood in the tray. She picks up feathers from the floor and sets them floating in the air like motes of dust in the moonlight, she climbs to her tip-tip-toes and peers out the windows.
She remembers the stars.
And them, quietly, she writes them into her fur. The moon and stairs, the birdfeathers, the dresser, the howl of the hungry wind from the opened door, turns a memory into a memory, a disc of it that clings to her skin the way bubbles cling to flesh when you're breathing underwater.
This is not quite enough.
It never is.
When she is finished - when she has looked through every drawer, traced every groove in the glyph etched into the stone door - when she is finished Sorrow melts from her human skin into her sleek wolf form. She is slender and gray and brown, with keen brown eyes and a short snout, alert eyes, elegant legs, white teeth, and a voice -
well, here she has a voice, a throat that she opens, a howl of loss, a howl of memory, a howl to the moon and the dead.
And then, only then, does she shift into her humanskin, and begin climbing down.
[Waking Dream] The door doesn't want to close. There is effort. Almost, she loses the key. Almost. Almost, she loses her life, and the other life she is just beginning to kindle into a flame-thing, into brightness. Almost. The door closes, and the glyphs are there to be read. They're faint. They're old. And she looks through the attic room, the beneath-the-attic room, and beneath the lace (which does ash when she touches it; half-disintegrates, sighing against her fingertips as it gives up even a semblance of form, a memory that couldn't quite hold in this other-world, not strong enough), she finds a deerskin pouch, something cracked, stiff with age.
And within, three talens - a painted clod of clay, one to wake the heart; an egg, tiny, blue, one to call for aid; an unmarked glass bottle [old, filmy] of some old brown liquid almost hardened/crusted against the glass, one to summon light out of the dark. And within, a (used, ew) handkerchief, monogrammed J. B., wrapped around something hard. When, and if, she unwraps it, she'll see a ring, and hiding in the ring something that almost tries to float-away, and oh: she knows. A memory, contained in a circle, a record, bound by Gnosis, a song. A thing, important enough to keep, to replay.
Through one window, the meatpackers' Chicago, Wyrm thick on the ground, smoking, flickering on and off like the memories they are, almost antiqued, ugly as a bone caught in the throat. Through another window, a Chicago that is burning. Through the third, final window, a Chicago with onions, growing green by the river, onion spirits playing pranks.
And then she howls. And her howl carries, long, strong, outward, down - enough to reach her True Time. Her Now Time.
And, below, there is a howl of answer, Waking Dream's, strong and sweet, I'll take this, carry this, and then after Waking Dream's, while Sorrow shifts down to Kora-shape again, human-skinned begins her descent (there is always a descent; that is the story of every ascent), Dreams in Summer Snow howls his reply.
And then she is on the stairs, down, and down, and down again, and the spirits avoid her, hide away, whispering stories, gossip, half-insults.
They do not stop her. Waking Dream and Dreams in Summer Snow have ceased howling long before she reaches the bottom. She feels as if she's been climbing, talking, thinking all night long - how many hours has she lived?
[Sorrow] The talens are spirits bound to flesh; and so she takes them. How many years have then remained here, well beyond their bargained use, trapped inside the cage of their maker's making, waiting to call for aid and ready to wake the heart and dreaming of bringing light of out darkness.
And the handkerchief,
and the ring,
and the memory,
- disappear neatly into her olive green backpack, which disappears into her skin, a dark line of curves and bundles against the bunch of her trapezius, the swell of her deltoid muscle.
Sorrow is tired now, she is spent. She has climbed and climbed for a day and a night, and her body is beginning to fail, and her mind is beginning to fog. She is hungry enough to eat a hungry mouse and she knows how his hunger feels, how it flays at his ribs, how is yawns beneath his diaphragm, how it makes him -
- weak, I am old.
And down she goes, still, her treats against her body, the story in her mind, her fingers dark with rust, aching, spent. Night whispers around her and sometimes she bares her teeth at the insults, but the gesture is subdued now.
--
When Sorrow emerges from Hill House, when she returns the key on its knotted rope to itshook, when she opens the front door, an ordinary door, a door without a key, when she half-stumbles down the four steps to the solid ground, her hair is half-loose, gray with dust and cobwebs, with chips of rust, with memory.
When she reaches Waking Dream and Dreams in Summer Snow, Sorrow sinks to her haunches, pulls the pack loose from her shoulder again, shakes the old olive canvas panels out, sighing. The bag has been around the world with her, twice, and is held together by duct tape, by big, inexpert stitches, by roaddust.
Squinting up at Lila as she undoes the laces holding the bag closed. "The Fianna, Burns Within, died in Hill House. He gave himself to a door marked with the glyphs for Hidden Memory, and is no more." She pauses, long-fingered hands pale on the dark cotton of her dedicated t-shirt, wrapped around talens, wrapped around bones, and pulls it out, unrolling it on the ground. "These are his talens."
"These are his bones."
[Waking Dream] "What will you do with them?"
The question is simple. The galliard watches the skald - who looks weary, tired; determined, steady - steadily. Watches as she brings out the bones.
[Sorrow] "Return them to his Sept and his people," says Sorrow, still crouched on her haunches, one foot forward, the other back, the pack at her booted feet, empty, sighing. No: there are things inside, a gourd here, a clay disc there. A volume bound in black and white, and another in the skin of a death thing, flayed from the bones. " - so that they may remember him."
Her smile is a weary thing; simple, half-formed, curving quite across her mouth. "And the talens, I will release the spirit inside, and return the vessels with the bones."
[Waking Dream] Now, understand.
The spirit world is a moonsilvered thing just now. The scab is a stinking, festering wound, but Hill House is unique. There is less taint here. Nowhere near as pure - as worth saving; as worth defending, dying for, sacrificing to - as Maelstrom's Heart. But it is lovely, here; it almost feels right - rage can almost feel itself banked. Waking Dream, wide-eyed, as still as any creature out of myth that hasn't a prayer of being real, unflinching, tilts her chin downward to stare at she who offers sorrow, cliath skald of the Get of Fenris, and then she looses a held breath. Her gaze flickers to the bones, and she, too, crouches, reaches out and takes Kora's hand. The hand which, earlier, had a circle marked on it: scratched out in blood.
There is no wound now. Of course not. They've shifted. They've fought. And Kora has climbed, hand over hand, higher and higher, so any mark there was must be mixed in with the rest. Waking Dream takes out that antler tine, again, (it came from below), licks the tip, and scratches a circle on Kora's palm, then presses her own over it, tightly, clasping, tightly -
"I would howl this," she says, and then - "I will howl this, she who offers sorrow, renders bone-yuf,"
and then she is on her feet, the circle smeared - broken, and then she is four-footed, war-wolf, hispo-wolf, powerful jaws, powerful throat, lean, a thing between skins, unnatural, more-than-natural, and she howls:
" - flee, wyrmlings;" fierce, joyful; glad, undaunted-thing, "shrivel, taint; be uplifted, Gaia, let your heart beat with hope - know She Who Offers Sorrow, Renders Bone, Fostern Skald of the Get of Fenris."
And she'll howl it into the stones and the stars, howl it unwavering: triumph, see?
[Waking Dream] [...finis.]
[Sorrow] (confetti!)
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