[Waking Dream] They go.
They go, all three: the galliard who wishes to prove herself fostern in the eyes of the Nation (you wouldn't believe, you, people on the winter streets, what a thick skin between worlds keeps from you: these three), the galliard whom she must (is?) prov(ing)e herself to, and the young (they're all young, who die for Gaia) philodox. They go all three to Hill House, the umbral reflection of which is - tonight - a thing of inky shadows, silvered and spectral in the half-wash of moon's milk, unradiant and unstill. Hill House is much smaller on the street. Hill House looks only vaguely like this, in the human world. Hill House must only dream of these rooms, stacked crazily one atop the other, of the attic's peak, high, high above the ground level. The structure is Weaver, isn't it? Is of the Weaver, wouldn't one think? It's too solid. It's too real.
It's night, and there is no sign of the falcon spirit the theurges'll say watches over ([sacrificial daughter] sacred trust) the House. The air tastes clean, and cold; of winter, but of winter as it could be, winter as such as Sorrow is, and Waking Dream, and Dreams in Summer Snow, all might long to run through, feel the cold strip their bones clean, wick off their fur like water, dissolve into, become avatars of. The air tastes clean, and Sorrow, alert, can see the movement of Things (they are not Wyrm [this does not make them Harmless]) in the shadows. Rat spirits, perhaps - or the spirits of mice, cautious of predators - perhaps cautious of Sorrow, the noise of her Rage.
The Child stays back, now, and impresses on her tribesmate to do the same. Bring some lost thing out of the dark, she'd said. We know where the key hangs. We know that much of htis land's history has fallen into shadow. We know. Sorrow knows where the key hangs, a simple thing spun of twilight and smoke. Sorrow knows there are doors that do not open, improbable doors, doors that need a key. Sorrows know that there is an attic where shadows gather, menacing those who'd touch circles (the city's [memory]) drifting in lazy sunlight (or moonlight?). Sorrow know she is no theurge, and Sorrow knows she cannot trust to time passing in the umbra [Garou have fallen through it before - ].
There are many things Sorrow knows.
This is the third test.
[Sorrow] Blood still racing from the race here and the running fight that ensued with dark spirits of a darker winter, starveling wolves hungry for every trace of warmth in their veins, every strip of flesh from their blones, her spirit spikes, bright and sure, the flare of her rage like a flame around her, so hot at the heart that it cannot be touched.
The trio stand in the shadows of the great encumbrance of the house's memory and the house's dreams and the house's impression - all that pain, all that loss, all that spirit that did not dissolve into wrongness, not ever, not in all these long years - looking up, wolfskinned now, the skein of the moon's rays reflecting in eyes that are opaque and dark in this form, brown as good turned earth. Then she changes again, her body misforming, unforming, reforming, rearing back from four paws to two as she grows massive, menacing, before sinking back into the soft, fair form of her human shape.
The umbral wind pulls at her hair, and in a strangely human gesture Kora tucks her fingers into the front pockets of her jeans, arms crooked, her head canted in an animal sweep as she considers the great facade of the building, the crawling things lurking in the shadows, the secret things hidden in the corners of the rooms, behind the sweeping shutters, underneath the stairs.
"Alright," says Sorrow, her mouth a curve of acknowledgment for Lila, as close to a smile as a peck is to a kiss. "I will."
And maybe as far.
--
And so she goes, opens the gate and slips inside, finds herself in the shadow of the massive spires, the endless gables, the eight-sided towers, all the follies anyone ever dreamed of adding to the already strage façade. So she goes, slipping her hands from her pockets when she climbs up the steps to the porch.
Sorrow hums a tune in the back of her throat, nearly noiseless, soft, a gift to those spirits shearing away from the light of her rage, like a torch around her, a passing gift, remember me, it says, and also remember me? as she searches out the key, smoke memory hanging from a peg by the door, opens up the rope on which it hangs, and drops it nearly around her neck, feeling the swinging weight of it between her breasts.
Inside, she pauses, glances at the doors - the easy ones, foyer, hall, kitchen - and the closed ones, darker than the others, who knows how long unopened, then begins up the stairs.
- which she will climb, and climb, and climb, and climb, past all the doors, closed and open, all the half-solid windows, all the remembered reflections of the past, or dreamed-up future, until she gains the attic she remembers, where she knows memory floats in the air like motes of dust in the sunlight, and there - well - there, she uses the key.
She opens the door.
[Sorrow] Perception with ze alertness!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 Re-rolls: 1
[Sorrow] Stamina - in homid!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 7
[Waking Dream] [?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9
[Waking Dream] [?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7
[Waking Dream] Ascent, then.
Different than digging a grave for winter, different than digging down into the dark to see what'll come up. Different than digging at the hard earth until your nails are unhinged and bloody. Different, not as close. There are improbable rooms. The logic of Hill House is not human logic. Kora passes through a room with a doorframe as blue as a robin's egg, and a door set in the wall cobwebbed over of the same sharp color. When she passes close, out of the corner of her eye she can almost - only almost mind, mind - see some shape in the wood, some hint of unbirthed things behind. Kora passes through a hall that looks as if it's been riot-torn, riot-wrecked, where dirt and dust cake the floor, sift soft in the fall of light from thin wind-shivering windowpanes, except where the dust and dirt and crust of too many days uncared for solidify and moisten into fungus, into rot blooming underneath wallpaper, pushing out've tears in the wall, dark gouges. There's another door, unlocked, unfamiliar, shouldn't be, found there - this one looks like it belongs on a barn, is set two feet above the ruined hall's floor. Going up stairs, she sees yet another door, this one as red as a spanking, as red as Victorian lady's blush, and it is set with a little step in brickface, has a little window, the windows have little curtains. Another door, metal, thick, cold as winter, as Silence's eyes, steelmetal, stormmetal, dull and dead and lifeless, nothing near it. At some point, passing these doors, some of them unusual, some of them looking (and this is almost stranger, truly) as if they belong in this rambling mansion-that-isn't-wasn't-will-be-is, Sorrow feels the knowledge that there are eyes upon her
not Waking Dream's, not Dreams in Summer Snow's
as she makes the final approach to the attic. There is a window, and through the window she can see heat-haze, water-wet air, thick enough to drink, stir some sugar in it, pick out the mosquitos - a summer molotov. Through the window, she can see no such thing as a city. There is no city here: just onion-fields, just water, stillness of a lake where a giant slept (or perhaps a wolf, or perhaps), people moving in the weeds, in the spring-green that shivers at the touch of attention like grease on the surface of water. If she opened the window, who knows what'd really be out there. That's when she gets her watcher, though - her watchers, eyes upon her.
But nothing attacks. There is the key, and there is the door to the attic, unlocked, and when she opens that door, it is not as she remembers it.
The wood floor is the same, and the window seats, and the windows, and the support beams, and the emptiness, the air as if something was waiting, as if something was holding its breath and this was the moment between holding and releasing, but the windows are blocked off. There are wooden slats, nailed haphazzardly over, and a few gleaming filaments of spiderweb. There is a heap of snow at the far side of the attic, and that is where what illumination there is comes through: ruddy, late afternoon - watery, early spring or late winter half-light, and it's in this half-light that a few bubbles drift (starlight [starbright]). Some are large, and some are small, and some are barely there at all: all colors, any colors, prismatic. They drift, and disappear as soon as they leave the light.
[Sorrow] Here is spring and there is winter, beyond the quiet door, in the cobwebbed attic. Oh there are other doors, lower - doors that stared at her with her elder's eyes, doors that promised something salacious, crimson like the flush of blood beneath the palest skin, enough that she can heart the capillaries dilation, the red blood cells rushing beneath the surface - doors in doors, doors in ceilings, doors under her feet, and she passed them all, counting the memory, pushing herself upward to the attic and the anchor and the breathing space of living memories -
- to find spring, onion-green, with quiet shadows dark and damp with life and reeds murmuring in the wind, tall grasses damp against the thighs, swaying in the breeze like dancers, like a thousand sighing dancers swaying in asynchronous motion to the bear of a dream of a waltz no one remembers any longer. And then: winter, in moonlight, the great piled drift of it beyond.
So here is spring and here is winter and here is she: a wolf made for both, a daughter of a winter god, a winter wolf, the great northern snows, all that dark and all that cold, the fastness of the tundra, of storm-tossed arctic seas, and one who - now, carries the promise of spring, of summer, of heat and light, and new-things new-made in her body.
Sorrow reaches up, wraps her fine fingers around the finely toothed key around her neck and considers her choices. Before she enters the attic, she walks over the to summer's window and closes her eyes, leans close, puts her cheek against glass and feels the seductive warmth radiating from beyond the glass, so delicious she shivers with the decadent promise of it.
But she does not linger. She does not wait. She does not throw open summer's window. Instead, she looks up, straightens, smooths her hands over her thighs, looks around at the shadows seeking out her watcher(s) in the rafters, in the eves, in the gables of the place, in all that great keen dark.
"I'm she who offers sorrow," she tells the watches, as she walks now, as if this were a conversation, as if she were making acquaintance with a stranger she could see while she walked toward the snow drifting in the back of the attic. " - Skald and daughter of Fenris. I've come to find a secret - some piece of history here - to share your story with my elder and my kin."
She speaks slowly, carefully, and with a certain - consideration - repeats herself after enchanting the metal charm hanging from the iron ring in her ear. Repeats herself in the spirits' language, her voice quiet, assured.
By the time she has finished the second speech, the translation, she has reached the pile of snow, the dreams drifting in the light shed from above, the promise of early spring, late winter - falling, failing light. Sorrow sinks to her haunches in that light, reaches out for a handful of snow she will allow to drift down from her cupped hands while she looks up and out into that light.
And then, if the window frame is close enough, she lifts herself up in preparation for climbing, after - and simply, looks up.
[Sorrow] Athletics + Dexterousness! (in homid!)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 8
[Waking Dream] The metal charm hanging from the iron ring - activated - does not give her understanding of a reply from her watchers. That is because they stay silent. Perhaps they're guardian spirits of this house. Mistrustful. How many wolves come here, after all? How many has Sorrow heard mentioned in conjunction with Hill House as it is? How many wolves in Chicago seek mystery, as well as blood? Not very many. Even the theurges who're drawn to this city, moths to a flame (and oh, baby, they'll burn, their bodies'll smoulder once they're hit just that damned hard), are more concerned with the physicality of war, of bodies mending, bodies made impervious, bodies made stronger in order to rip, and red, and tear bloody swaths through destruction's kin. Which is to say, perhaps she is being watched by guardian spirits (or feral spirits [they're all feral]), or perhaps she is being watched by something that has strayed down a beam of light, out of some sleeping hero's memory. They do not reply.
But there are other things she hears, now. Understands. There is a weak spirit in the snow she cups in her hands and it says I am cold hello I am cold where it is cold it is still and silent and in the cold there is motionlessness and the cold will dance and cold dreams and cold is winter winter is bloody heap here heap here build higher and higher get inside the air will be cold I will bring cold. When she touches the snow, it says, Ah! warm. Ah! There are half-heard whispers in the corners, Look, they say, and, Did you hear, they say, and far, far-flung off, I remember when the red wolf came, and even further, as if in answer, Ah, I remember what I took, I remember how hard-bargained it was, I remember, and also, grumblings, twice-born, wolves, angry, rip-us, don'ttrust, don'ttrust, and still more murmurings, the spirit of the stairs, muttering to itself about the halls it won't go to, the doors it won't touch, the creak of footsteps that can't actually be, not NOW, Kora would hear, but the stairs seem so sure. It's easy to see (hear?) why theurges, especially just-Changed, just-lost theurges, are said to be mad. This is what they hear.
She looks up. The window frame isn't easy to reach, but she may be able to just touch the bottom of it with her fingertips if she stretches herself as lean and long as she can go and uses the moulding to leverage herself upward. The light - and now that she is allowing herself to be shadowed by it, now that she is standing under the stream of it, it seems thicker; less watery, although perhaps she'll note the air is thin, when she breathes it, mountain air, alpine air, air so taut it'll snap in the lungs and leave one gasping - comes not just from the window, which is ajar, the only window in all of Hill House that is - great, round, Victorian thing - but also from a tear in the roof above it. There is a snowflake, caught there. Or maybe it's another [memory circle (remember me)] ring of light.
If she wishes to climb, she will manage. But only just. The skin of her teeth: her teeth are skinned; cold days.
The window shan't be easy to climb to, but it is possible. Will require agility, if she wishes to avoid the lazy fall of the colored circles, but is possible. There is nothing to stand on, but the walls have nooks, crooks, crannies. There are beams to cling to, to swing oneself up. There is moulding, the window seat: if she wants to go up, if she wants to reach that window, open and slanting from the roof, to see where the snow comes from - why, she can try.
[Waking Dream] The metal charm hanging from the iron ring - activated - does not give her understanding of a reply from her watchers. That is because they stay silent. Perhaps they're guardian spirits of this house. Mistrustful. How many wolves come here, after all? How many has Sorrow heard mentioned in conjunction with Hill House as it is? How many wolves in Chicago seek mystery, as well as blood? Not very many. Even the theurges who're drawn to this city, moths to a flame (and oh, baby, they'll burn, their bodies'll smoulder once they're hit just that damned hard), are more concerned with the physicality of war, of bodies mending, bodies made impervious, bodies made stronger in order to rip, and red, and tear bloody swaths through destruction's kin. Which is to say, perhaps she is being watched by guardian spirits (or feral spirits [they're all feral]), or perhaps she is being watched by something that has strayed down a beam of light, out of some sleeping hero's memory. They do not reply.
But there are other things she hears, now. Understands. There is a weak spirit in the snow she cups in her hands and it says I am cold hello I am cold where it is cold it is still and silent and in the cold there is motionlessness and the cold will dance and cold dreams and cold is winter winter is bloody heap here heap here build higher and higher get inside the air will be cold I will bring cold. When she touches the snow, it says, Ah! warm. Ah! There are half-heard whispers in the corners, Look, they say, and, Did you hear, they say, and far, far-flung off, I remember when the red wolf came, and even further, as if in answer, Ah, I remember what I took, I remember how hard-bargained it was, I remember, and also grumblings, twice-born, wolves, angry, ripus, don'ttrust, don'ttrust, and still more murmurings, the spirit of the stairs, muttering to itself about the halls it won't go to, the doors it won't touch, the creak of footsteps that can't actually be, not NOW, Kora would hear, but the stairs seem so sure. It's easy to see (hear?) why theurges, especially just-Changed, just-lost theurges, are said to be mad. This is what they hear.
She looks up. The window frame isn't easy to reach, but she may be able to just touch the bottom of it with her fingertips if she stretches herself as lean and long as she can go and uses the moulding to leverage herself upward. The light - and now that she is allowing herself to be shadowed by it, now that she is standing under the stream of it, it seems thicker; less watery, although perhaps she'll note the air is thin, when she breathes it, mountain air, alpine air, air so taut it'll snap in the lungs and leave one gasping - comes not just from the window, which is ajar, the only window in all of Hill House that is - great, round, Victorian thing - but also from a tear in the roof above it. There is a snowflake, caught there. Or maybe it's another [memory circle (remember me)] ring of light.
If she wishes to climb, she will manage. But only just. The skin of her teeth: her teeth are skinned; cold days.
[Sorrow] There's no reply; and Sorrow is neither pleased nor disappointed. Nothing worthwhile comes so easily. It would not be a secret if they shared it with the first wolf to speak their language; it would be a whisper, a rumor, a thread to be pulled, a ravel to be undone, a game of telephone, mouth to ear and ear to mouth.
Still crouched by the pile of snow, she cups her hands and pushes her long fingers through the drift, feeling it loose around her bare hands, and blisteringly cold. Still human, she curves her mouth, a passing smile as the spirit exclaims against her warmth, and shakes her hand free of the snow, letting the flakes drift back down and settle over the pile.
All the other stories filter in. She looks up, her keen gaze sweeping the shrouded corners of the dusty attic as she listens to the stray thoughts that drift back to her. And when the low, rumbling dreams of the never-moving stairs break through, she turns her head, looks back down the long, still shadows of the attic, and watches the bannister, the railing, the top of the stairs, her expression keen and even and still.
Before she moves - she hums a winter's song for the spirit of cold embodied in the snow, and it sounds like long dark nights and chill gray mornings, like smoke against a cloud-cast sky, like the crack of ice against the rocks - an apology for the warm, for the shadow she casts over the snow-pile as she pushes herself upward, reaching until she has her fingertips on the lip of the ledge, pulling herself, scrabbling for purchase, climbing until her fingertips are raw and bloody, and she has gained the ledge and hangs, balanced there, looking out over winter, ready to drop down - but careful here, alert, aware of the potential perils - that she might fall through, and not come out again.
[Sorrow] Perception + Linguistics!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10
[Waking Dream] Kora looks out over winter. Ah, Kora. You weren't named for winter's daughter. You weren't named for a life unflowered. Kora looks out over winter, not any Chicago she knows. And she sees: the barest of cities -- more of a town; smoke from chimneys off to the north and the east; smoke from factories (?), from the new (?) stockyards. And when she is inside the attic of Hill House, this image wavers; it re-translates itself as she breathes. Breathing is a struggle. It moves under her eyes like a silent film: jerking forward, bubbles growing, blackening the picture, disappearing without rhyme and without reason. And she sees: storm clouds, boiling over the horizon, pressing down on the fledgling almost-city. And she sees: black woods, and snow, and snow, and ah! so much snow, and there is no winter'slight here. There is gloom: deep, oppressive - deepening, gathering over the not-city, brooding over the land as if it'd sucked in a lungful of smoke and was readying asphyxiation for all below.
And she hears, not quite connected to the winter landscape she sees below: wolf-song, distant, thin as a whine - thin as a thread being torn apart (thin as a memory, diminished), more: Garou-song, People-song, wolf-to-wolf, hears, We stood here strong, we stood here tall, we tore the heart out've the beast, we gnashed it between our teeth, one've us was poisoned, the poison went into the blood, but hah hah, a Fianna's blood is already poison I (he) came from the Old Country, my ancestors pissed poison on the wyrm and made the wyrm beat its own mother, and answering wolf-song, Did any escape, did any escape, and another answering song, wolfish, Humans heard, entrails unreadable, tore them out, they flee, they flee and we can't hunt them. We're being watched -
And the wind eddies up, batters at the window Kora is spying from, makes it snap at her leg, drags ice and snow in through the window, blotching her clothing. She looks out of the window, and vertigo: she is looking out of a tall house, sure - but it isn't Hill House (couldn't be Hill House). Compared to Hill House, it's little more than a shack.
[Sorrow] Per + alertness!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9
[Sorrow] There is a keen and feral part of her that wants to drop straight down, ride the angles of the old clapboard house down to the ground, hit the ground with four paws and charge into the gloom toward whatever might be at the heart of that oppressive cloud. She is not merely that animal, though, that blood-hound, that hungry ghost ready to rend, to scatter blood and guts over the pristine crust of compacted snow. And so:
Sorrow cants her head sidelong, listening, her eyes closed, her heart so still that the way it beats inside her chest cavity feels painful, loud - and turns, slides back into the attic, folds and unfolds her body and drops down from the rafters, all opening-and-compacting as her knee bend to absorb the impact as she hits the wooden floor.
Quietly she retraces her steps, watches the dust motes dance up in her wake, listens to their dry, sad little memories of neglect, absence, of stillness, then pries a wooden slat away from a boarded-over window, one large enough to be wedged into her window to keep it open, and small enough that the window remains mostly-boarded over.
And quietly she drops the wooden rail underneath her winter's winter, and quietly she sinks into a crouch by the snow, listening again when the echo of the rail has fallen away. Sorrow digs into the front pocket of her jeans and pulls out a small disc etched with a glyph, which means: solid and then pulls out a coin, a dime, another glyph etched over the president's face, just so.
"Tell me the red wolf's name," she says, " - and I will give you this clay disc. It has my spirit in it, and will make you stronger when you have need of it. Tell me where he went, and I will give you this dime, which has my spirit in it, and a charm to make you whole again. Tell me what you bargained for, and I will tell you a story told to me by Maelstrom's twice-born, of a sand-filled book found in the corner of an attic."
[Sorrow] Ancestors!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 7, 8, 10
[Sorrow] Perception +2 dice!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 8, 9, 10, 10
[Sorrow] Intelligence + 2 dice!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 8
[Sorrow] Enigmas + Perception!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7
[Waking Dream] The slat is - initially - precarious; a tenuous block, opening this (now [today]) hour into (then [tomorrow?]) yesterday's. This winter into that winter. Her winter into their winter. Kora can still hear - but very distantly indeed; almost too distantly - the sound of wolves, singing; she can recognize in the ruddy, brassy reverbation of the howl a call (demand [compulsion]) for aid. It reacts against her blood weakly, that call; it's too distant a thing - but she can still hear how strong a call it is; how it would blaze up the dark; how it might have chased away a hundred wolf-things, winter howling in their belly, clawing at their ribs. Might have; the howl cuts away - is that a yelp? It's distant, is what it is: only coming to her filtered through today's air, yesterday's not-light today, because of that slat, holding the window open, touching then and now. See?
And Kora is crouched beside the snow and she can hear the spirit hiding in the drift say you've touched it you've touched it your skin is cold but why this ugly warmth why keep it wick and wake when you could be cold don't you want to be cold I like the cold I'm cold, cold, cold, burying deep, burying deep and silent no songs in silence. But even that whisper, that constant murmur, that faint - disgruntled? - protest diminishes when Kora addresses the snow-spirit, or anything else in the House that is still listening - the watchers, maybe.
Tell me the red wolf's name and I will give you this clay disc.
Tell me where he went and I will give you this dime.
Tell me what you bargained for and I will tell you a story told to me by.
There is no reply. Not at first. There is just the silence - the unyielding, space-between-breaths silence - noise, suspended in space - and then. Then the texture of the light changes: shutters on and off - and observant Kora will notice the bat-thing, bat-winged, mouse-bodied, face like a fox, black as the last keen of a dirge, which has settled hanging above her, near the rent in the attic's ceiling, and IT answers her like so - I will tell you what I bargained for. I did not bargain with the red wolf. Would you like to know? I am a clever mouse. How do I know you will not just snap me up, snapsnapsnap?
And then - a pale voice, from without the attic - something moongleaming, something bright and shy, retiring - I will tell you the red wolf's name if you give me the clay disc. His name is Burns Within. His name is dead and gone. His name curdles milk. This spirit is apparently open - giving; without guile. Or impatient? And the part of Kora that dreams ancestor-dreams, dreams things that do not belong to her, dreams things that belong more to her than anyone, dreams that make her a relic, a repository, a book, knows that name, half-knows a story of one of stag's children, bitter-battled, strong-songed, called Burns Within, half-knows - half-knows his story; how he wandered; how they said he was as red as the moon dipped in blood; how they said what he didn't know hadn't happened yet; how they said he disappeared in winter - when was this? Last century; maybe? What's time mean, anyway?
And then - another voice, a snarl-thing, from under the floorboards, the vicinity of her feet - or - no? The walls. No, I will tell you what I bargained for. I will tell you what I bargained for, and where I put it, for the clay disc, for the dime, for the story, but only if they're mine, mine, mine, and you take it back from -
There is a ripple of discontent. Kora can feel it in the ground.
And then another voice - something mellow, old - something that feels like structure - I will tell you where he went. I will take you there, but I want more than a dime. I want to eat your rage for three by three days. I want to take you where he went.
The stairs groan - something disgruntled about attics.
About attics within attics within attics.
About losing things in attics.
It doesn't signify.
[Sorrow] "It's the red wolf I'm here for - " says Sorrow to the batspirit, " - and no other. We have no bargain if you cannot tell me what I've asked: of a bargaining with Burns Within. Another time, though - another night, I will come back, and I will bring you a disc of your own, and bargain with you for what you know."
Her voice is quiet; it ripples liquid in the air, like watered silk crumpled underneath her feet, strange and irridescent from the movement of light over and light beneath.
Then something else tells her the name without the bargain, names the bargain without withholding the goods, and swiftly she turns and swiftly she follows the movement of the voice in the chill air, seeks it out, moongleaming, moonbright, stands and offers the clay disc, open-palmed.
"Yours." - she says, without considering going back on her bargain, without a thought for trickery such as a Rotagar might have attempted.
"I take it back from no one." - she snarls, back to the floarboards, showing teeth, her feet planted wide and firm on the floorboards.
"You ask too much," she says at last, following the shape of the old, mellow voice. "Gaia gave me my rage, that I might fight for her. I used it tonight to drive away winter wolves who would tear a place like this down to the foundations, and eat every scrap of magic here. If it's my rage you would, I'll give it to your for three times three minutes.
"And listen: you want to take me where he went. But will you bring me back again? That is part of the bargain, too."
[Sorrow] WP!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10
[Sorrow] wits!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 6, 8, 8
[Waking Dream] Listen. Bat-song is eerie. Bat-song can scratch a glyph on the bone of a living animal if a batspirit sings it - hits the proper note - just so, like that? Batsong can cut. The batspirit makes a sound, bending echoes in the air just as a blacksmith might've bent metal in a forge - there is even an impression of heat; illusory, because it's just a sound. There is no burning on (in) Kora's bones. Just a bat - diving straight for her face. Scary things, bats. Scarier, when they open their mouths, reveal sharp teeth. Scarier, when they open their blind eyes, and quick-as-a-blink, as two-blinks, another moment of time suspended, strung out from now all the way until then, Kora can see the reflection of a war-formed garou falling in battle: is that the glyph for thought? Isn't that necklace familiar? Kora can see -
- and it dives at her face again, veering off to clip her hair, then swooping (up, down; wavering, eerie) back to the ceiling, but higher, the highest, darkest patch of attic that there is. And it hisses, lowly, another time, as if it doesn't believe.
She offers the clay disc to the moongleaming thing - retiring, withdrawing, staying to the peripheral - open-palmed, and nothing happens. Nothing happens, until she turns her attention downward, snarls at the floorboards - then she can feel the kiss of some Thing on her palm, some Thing that feels like a breeze, it doesn't want to touch her, it doesn't want to be contaminated, it doesn't want her to turn on it, to snarl, to - to -
- and the clay disc is gone, along with the hint of fading brilliance: a fleeting dream spun out've light - its shape indistinct, too swift - disappearing out the door, clay disc with it. Her palm tingles.
The thing under the floorboards is silent. Utterly. As the grave. Then - sulkily: mine. Want. Want most of all.
And then the mellow, ancient voice replies - Three times three minutes when I demand it. Not now. Then. A long, ponderous stretch of silence. And then it says, I cannot go where he went, so I will not bring you back.
This would be too much for some people: the spirits don't answer one after the other; some of their answers sail over the others. They touch. They mingle. They hold to no order. It's not too much for Sorrow - she has no problem plucking strand from other strand, untangling the knot of their discourse, their voices that aren't quite voices, because a voice hints at physicality, and only the batspirit seems to have bothered with such things (unless - under the floorboards - scritch, scratch
the sound of little claws).
[Sorrow] "Three times three minutes," says Kora, and her voice is quiet now. She has her death in her mind's eye, the promise of it thrown back to her in reflection; the end of through, the nadir of memory. It knots itself into the back of her throat and makes her breath, makes her ache, makes her - briefly, unconsciously - touch the curve of her stomach, makes her remember not the glory of the death-in-battle, but the sorrow of those left behind.
She swallows it like ashes, and flares a look up at the rafters where the batspirit hisses, hungry, angry, disbelieving. There are scratches on her skin, shadowed around her eyes, and a certain stillness to her frame there in the attic, in the dark. " - when you demand it. When I can give it, and you will have a deal." There's a certain quiet pause, after.
Then she is standing, stretching toward the open window, the breath of winter coming in from outside. " - show me."
[Waking Dream] The floorboards creak. Not because of whatever lies beneath (and wants more). But because - behind her - something heavy has just put its weight down. When she turns from the window, if she turns from the window, she will see plain young man of around her age, maybe a touch older. His eyes are mellow, animal brown, and he moves slowly, with great care, with great grace, as if each step mattered. He moves heavily, as though he bore more weight than he seems to. His hair is auburn, ruddy, although a close glance - and Kora is observant - will tell her that there is black in his hair, too; also grey. He is deer-dappled, see? With a sinewy, but bulked-up, sort of build - not a lean whippet of a man; something powerful. Also, naked, except for an arm-band of keys: dull, metal. The skin of his left side is much-scarred. He holds out a hand, and says, That is not where Burns Within went when he came across this place. That is something Else. That is something you are not asking for tonight.
[Sorrow] And Sorrow, she turns away from the window, away from winter and the cold, away from the smoke and away from the city, away from the pall settled across it, and the echo of wolfsong both within and without, the call for succor, the howl of warning, the frayed, fraying challenge of a living animal against the howling darkness, mourning the loss of the sun and stars.
--
It isn't sudden, but she's still inside as she moves, alive, alert - her dark eyes tracking, seeking, watchful - up and down the man's frame, the weight on the shoulders and the age in his eyes, the dappled pattern over his hand, like the pelt of an animal running through a shadowed forest, where the sun peeks through the canopy, here and here and there and there.
When she holds out his hand, she palms the dime and turns it over, runs her thumb over the grooved edges, feels the weight of the dime and the touch of her spirit inside, the promise of wholeness inside.
And she drops it into his hand.
Like he, the talen is heavier than it appears.
"Isn't that his call?" she asks, her dark eyes quick on him, aware. " - isn't that part of his story?"
[Waking Dream] The young man (no) closes his fingers over the coin. His eyes squint like half-moons. This, though: he never blinks. Not ever. Kora will notice that. The unblinking steadiness of his glance, although that steadiness is rarely directly touching her. Possibly, he says, features inhuman in their lack of readable expression, after another long moment of consideration. Or possibly not. He does not seem to be quick, this thing. Whatever he really is. But if it is, that is where he was. Not where he went when he came here. That is there. Follow me. I show you. You will see. I will not go and bring you back. You will go.
He turns, and just like that - his humanshape blurs; instead, a stag - no, still human - no, a stag, no, no, no - human? Something bigger, something impossibly big? - he is running. Out of the attic. Through the door. He leaps down the last flight of stairs, and he opens a door, and he passes through it. It doesn't look like one of the doors she'd need the key of smoke and twilight, of gloaming and shadow and breath, to open - but he went through it so fast. Perhaps she thinks she's in danger of losing him?
[Sorrow] He goes and so goes she; unsure now, unsettled now, something deep and swallowed underneath her breastbone, doubting this bargain as much as she has doubted anything. But fear must be lived through, must be swallowed, and there is no time when he turns, quicksilver, moving like a stag, she can imagine his rack, the velvet anters damp in the moonlight, the way he dissolves into the attic -
- and she dissolves after him, not stag but wolf, gray-as-smoke, claws clattering on the wood as she charges after him, down the sighing stairs dreaming of attics within attics and the things beyond them.
The key of twilight, the key of smoke, the key swings around her neck as she runs, gleams like a dream of iron in her fur as she charges after, forward, runs breathless now, runs heedless now, his scent in his nose.
He disappears through the door; and she, she does not stop to think now. She surges, after.
[Sorrow] Dex + ath (in lupus!)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8, 10
[Waking Dream] - through the door, and she is splashing through water, and it is fall-water, autumn-water, not yet as cold as death. Through the door, and there is an icy puddle spreading across a dip in the floor, then a sudden hole in the ground, yawning to swallow her as it is swallowing that black, cold water - a hole she must leap - she does, although just barely; her claws scrabble for purchase - and the spirit, old and unshaped, now? A figment of imagination, blurring into a red, running wolf? - he doesn't halt, he doesn't stop -
- so through the door, into the hall, follow, follow, and then he is (not a wolf) dragging a chair from a closet, something delicate, something wrought of metal which might be placed outside an art deco cafe, the cushion all mouse-nested, dusty, dusky blue fading to brown -
standing on the chair, unlatching a door in the ceiling, and it hangs open like a jaw - wagging, gossiping - and he stretches up (but - impossibly; he is TALL; he is not a person) and drags a ladder down, climbs up -
Follow, huh?
[Sorrow] Follow, huh?
And so she does: follow, up the ladder into through the door, into the hall, her tail low, swishing back and forth behind her, signifying her caution, her alertness, her wariness, and then the chair is like the forgotten chair in a failing charcuterie in some Paris backstreet, wrought iron and mouth-eaten, moth-eaten.
He changes his shadowskins thoughtlessly. Now he has hands and now a mouth, now he has -
now he has -
- but she does not. She has to thing, to push her body to change, to reach into herself and outside herself to find her new mass and when she changes she changes, like now - wolf to human, to girl, to woman, pregnant, wolf-woman, who cannot see the moon in here except in his half-closed eyes. She reaches up, takes the lowest rung in her hand, and then the next, and so doing, hand over hand - climbs.
[Sorrow] Stamina! homid!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 6, 8, 10
[Sorrow] Dex + ath homid!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 6, 9, 9, 10
[Waking Dream] They were in the attic. The highest point. Then they went down a flight of stairs. They went through a door. The rules changed. They went through a door in the ceiling. Now, the ladder is longer than Kora may've thought it would be - if, of course, she had any expectations at all. Now, it is as if she is climbing the service ladder of an elevator shaft, all bloomed over with mushrooms, spongey, livid orange and uncertain reds, blues that cluster tightly to one another - mushrooms that reach delicately off've the soot-stained (smoke-stained) walls and wires to be lovely, to seek more darkness. And, ah yes: it is dark. The light winks out for a few periods of time - at random, it seems, and then she cannot see the ladder, but must feel it; she cannot see the spirit, but must trust to its honor, that it is bound to show her what it said it would. Of course, perhaps Burns Within went here, and now that she is here, it will disappear.
But then. But then. It said it could not go where the red wolf went. Remember him? She can hear, as she climbs, half-asleep, half-waking voices in the walls, little spirits of night, mentioning things, rats, rats, rats, no these aren't rats, what are You doing here, why don't you close your eyes, ah, hah hah, I'll bargain with you, I'll bargain away your firstborn's heartbeat, ooooh it is dark isn't it betterin the dark. Are you looking for lost things? The red wolf came this way, remember what he dropped, remember how it tasted, remember when we tried to eat him, remember when,
but the dark comes and goes. Comes and goes. And once, she feels something grab at her ankle. Another time, something skitters over her shoulders, something heavy touches her head, and she is staring into the eyes of a mouse-spirit, bold, looking down at her, and it says,
Wouldn't you rather do something else. You're young. You have many young to eat. We fight, too, we do we do we fight, fight, fight, why should you care about the red wolf and his long gone name his pointless death
why do you care where he went
you look hungry
i am hungry
you can eat me if you want
I am old
[Sorrow] Sorrow climbs through the elevator shaft, through the blooming rot, through the soot-stained walls, through the chimney, through the shaft, through the air vent, through the mushrooms and the dreaming dark, and she is a stoic creature, contained, self-contained, away of her body in space, alone here, alone now, without the voice of her packmate in her head since Sparrow left - just that link, that brief sense of presents, that knowledge she has that he's out there, somewhere, that they are joined.
She does not bargain with the night spirits, though she listens to their constant chatter but does not engage them, does not response, does not tell them whether (if/why) she likes the dark, or why she wants lost things, where that spool of thread has gone, where that slip of paper with the word she wanted to remember, Sanskrit for yellow - does not interact until one offers to bargain away the heartbeat of her first born and then she snarls, swallowing her voice, turning in the dark, struggling to hold back her own anger, that flare of rage deeper now than rage -
- and she climbs, and climbs, until a bold mouse-spirit insinuates itself above her, swings down and -
" - because, mouse, we remember our dead. We remember their names and their deaths; we tell our children so they will know where they've come from. We tell our fathers so they will remember their brothers in arms. We will our spirits so that they will know the deeds and deaths done in their name.
"We remember.
"And that's why I care. And because it is a secret, something un-known, something I want to know. Because he beat back a darkness - not your dark but what your dark would have been without him - changed, made wrong, just devouring, not just black but cursed, rotted from the inside out.
"And if you tell me and the red wolf and his pointless death, I feed your brothers every night for a solid moon, cheese scattered about my territory, whever I see you and yours. And if you tell me, I will feed you know, from my own spirit, to carry you forward.
"And if you tell me, I will remember you. I will tell others and they will remember you, and if you do not have a name, well, spirit, I will give you one so that you can be remembered."
[Waking Dream] The bold little mouse-spirit stares at she who offers sorrow (what sorrow will you offer? What tale is this you're telling?), its whiskers dripping light. Then it says - I would like to be remembered. I would like of all spirits to be respected by those who use their teeth and claws. I would like to be remembered, I think, for I am old old old, and I am hungry. I will tell you of the red wolf and his pointless death for this oh yes yes I will and my name is Mouse -
how proud it is
- I am Mouse. We are Mouse. We are Mice. I am Mouse! But rage-hunger, this is not where the red wolf went. Your guide waits above. I am stopping you from following him. He will wait forever, and I will talk, talk and tell you. He died pointlessly here at the door, you see. And it was pointless because none of your people ever found him so the thing he made was pointless. He might not have ever even done it, although we liked it yes. My greatgreat greatgreatgreat greatgreat great greatgreat greatgreatgreatgreat great greatgreatgreat grandfather's greatgreat grandfather said.
They go, all three: the galliard who wishes to prove herself fostern in the eyes of the Nation (you wouldn't believe, you, people on the winter streets, what a thick skin between worlds keeps from you: these three), the galliard whom she must (is?) prov(ing)e herself to, and the young (they're all young, who die for Gaia) philodox. They go all three to Hill House, the umbral reflection of which is - tonight - a thing of inky shadows, silvered and spectral in the half-wash of moon's milk, unradiant and unstill. Hill House is much smaller on the street. Hill House looks only vaguely like this, in the human world. Hill House must only dream of these rooms, stacked crazily one atop the other, of the attic's peak, high, high above the ground level. The structure is Weaver, isn't it? Is of the Weaver, wouldn't one think? It's too solid. It's too real.
It's night, and there is no sign of the falcon spirit the theurges'll say watches over ([sacrificial daughter] sacred trust) the House. The air tastes clean, and cold; of winter, but of winter as it could be, winter as such as Sorrow is, and Waking Dream, and Dreams in Summer Snow, all might long to run through, feel the cold strip their bones clean, wick off their fur like water, dissolve into, become avatars of. The air tastes clean, and Sorrow, alert, can see the movement of Things (they are not Wyrm [this does not make them Harmless]) in the shadows. Rat spirits, perhaps - or the spirits of mice, cautious of predators - perhaps cautious of Sorrow, the noise of her Rage.
The Child stays back, now, and impresses on her tribesmate to do the same. Bring some lost thing out of the dark, she'd said. We know where the key hangs. We know that much of htis land's history has fallen into shadow. We know. Sorrow knows where the key hangs, a simple thing spun of twilight and smoke. Sorrow knows there are doors that do not open, improbable doors, doors that need a key. Sorrows know that there is an attic where shadows gather, menacing those who'd touch circles (the city's [memory]) drifting in lazy sunlight (or moonlight?). Sorrow know she is no theurge, and Sorrow knows she cannot trust to time passing in the umbra [Garou have fallen through it before - ].
There are many things Sorrow knows.
This is the third test.
[Sorrow] Blood still racing from the race here and the running fight that ensued with dark spirits of a darker winter, starveling wolves hungry for every trace of warmth in their veins, every strip of flesh from their blones, her spirit spikes, bright and sure, the flare of her rage like a flame around her, so hot at the heart that it cannot be touched.
The trio stand in the shadows of the great encumbrance of the house's memory and the house's dreams and the house's impression - all that pain, all that loss, all that spirit that did not dissolve into wrongness, not ever, not in all these long years - looking up, wolfskinned now, the skein of the moon's rays reflecting in eyes that are opaque and dark in this form, brown as good turned earth. Then she changes again, her body misforming, unforming, reforming, rearing back from four paws to two as she grows massive, menacing, before sinking back into the soft, fair form of her human shape.
The umbral wind pulls at her hair, and in a strangely human gesture Kora tucks her fingers into the front pockets of her jeans, arms crooked, her head canted in an animal sweep as she considers the great facade of the building, the crawling things lurking in the shadows, the secret things hidden in the corners of the rooms, behind the sweeping shutters, underneath the stairs.
"Alright," says Sorrow, her mouth a curve of acknowledgment for Lila, as close to a smile as a peck is to a kiss. "I will."
And maybe as far.
--
And so she goes, opens the gate and slips inside, finds herself in the shadow of the massive spires, the endless gables, the eight-sided towers, all the follies anyone ever dreamed of adding to the already strage façade. So she goes, slipping her hands from her pockets when she climbs up the steps to the porch.
Sorrow hums a tune in the back of her throat, nearly noiseless, soft, a gift to those spirits shearing away from the light of her rage, like a torch around her, a passing gift, remember me, it says, and also remember me? as she searches out the key, smoke memory hanging from a peg by the door, opens up the rope on which it hangs, and drops it nearly around her neck, feeling the swinging weight of it between her breasts.
Inside, she pauses, glances at the doors - the easy ones, foyer, hall, kitchen - and the closed ones, darker than the others, who knows how long unopened, then begins up the stairs.
- which she will climb, and climb, and climb, and climb, past all the doors, closed and open, all the half-solid windows, all the remembered reflections of the past, or dreamed-up future, until she gains the attic she remembers, where she knows memory floats in the air like motes of dust in the sunlight, and there - well - there, she uses the key.
She opens the door.
[Sorrow] Perception with ze alertness!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 Re-rolls: 1
[Sorrow] Stamina - in homid!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 7
[Waking Dream] [?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9
[Waking Dream] [?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7
[Waking Dream] Ascent, then.
Different than digging a grave for winter, different than digging down into the dark to see what'll come up. Different than digging at the hard earth until your nails are unhinged and bloody. Different, not as close. There are improbable rooms. The logic of Hill House is not human logic. Kora passes through a room with a doorframe as blue as a robin's egg, and a door set in the wall cobwebbed over of the same sharp color. When she passes close, out of the corner of her eye she can almost - only almost mind, mind - see some shape in the wood, some hint of unbirthed things behind. Kora passes through a hall that looks as if it's been riot-torn, riot-wrecked, where dirt and dust cake the floor, sift soft in the fall of light from thin wind-shivering windowpanes, except where the dust and dirt and crust of too many days uncared for solidify and moisten into fungus, into rot blooming underneath wallpaper, pushing out've tears in the wall, dark gouges. There's another door, unlocked, unfamiliar, shouldn't be, found there - this one looks like it belongs on a barn, is set two feet above the ruined hall's floor. Going up stairs, she sees yet another door, this one as red as a spanking, as red as Victorian lady's blush, and it is set with a little step in brickface, has a little window, the windows have little curtains. Another door, metal, thick, cold as winter, as Silence's eyes, steelmetal, stormmetal, dull and dead and lifeless, nothing near it. At some point, passing these doors, some of them unusual, some of them looking (and this is almost stranger, truly) as if they belong in this rambling mansion-that-isn't-wasn't-will-be-is, Sorrow feels the knowledge that there are eyes upon her
not Waking Dream's, not Dreams in Summer Snow's
as she makes the final approach to the attic. There is a window, and through the window she can see heat-haze, water-wet air, thick enough to drink, stir some sugar in it, pick out the mosquitos - a summer molotov. Through the window, she can see no such thing as a city. There is no city here: just onion-fields, just water, stillness of a lake where a giant slept (or perhaps a wolf, or perhaps), people moving in the weeds, in the spring-green that shivers at the touch of attention like grease on the surface of water. If she opened the window, who knows what'd really be out there. That's when she gets her watcher, though - her watchers, eyes upon her.
But nothing attacks. There is the key, and there is the door to the attic, unlocked, and when she opens that door, it is not as she remembers it.
The wood floor is the same, and the window seats, and the windows, and the support beams, and the emptiness, the air as if something was waiting, as if something was holding its breath and this was the moment between holding and releasing, but the windows are blocked off. There are wooden slats, nailed haphazzardly over, and a few gleaming filaments of spiderweb. There is a heap of snow at the far side of the attic, and that is where what illumination there is comes through: ruddy, late afternoon - watery, early spring or late winter half-light, and it's in this half-light that a few bubbles drift (starlight [starbright]). Some are large, and some are small, and some are barely there at all: all colors, any colors, prismatic. They drift, and disappear as soon as they leave the light.
[Sorrow] Here is spring and there is winter, beyond the quiet door, in the cobwebbed attic. Oh there are other doors, lower - doors that stared at her with her elder's eyes, doors that promised something salacious, crimson like the flush of blood beneath the palest skin, enough that she can heart the capillaries dilation, the red blood cells rushing beneath the surface - doors in doors, doors in ceilings, doors under her feet, and she passed them all, counting the memory, pushing herself upward to the attic and the anchor and the breathing space of living memories -
- to find spring, onion-green, with quiet shadows dark and damp with life and reeds murmuring in the wind, tall grasses damp against the thighs, swaying in the breeze like dancers, like a thousand sighing dancers swaying in asynchronous motion to the bear of a dream of a waltz no one remembers any longer. And then: winter, in moonlight, the great piled drift of it beyond.
So here is spring and here is winter and here is she: a wolf made for both, a daughter of a winter god, a winter wolf, the great northern snows, all that dark and all that cold, the fastness of the tundra, of storm-tossed arctic seas, and one who - now, carries the promise of spring, of summer, of heat and light, and new-things new-made in her body.
Sorrow reaches up, wraps her fine fingers around the finely toothed key around her neck and considers her choices. Before she enters the attic, she walks over the to summer's window and closes her eyes, leans close, puts her cheek against glass and feels the seductive warmth radiating from beyond the glass, so delicious she shivers with the decadent promise of it.
But she does not linger. She does not wait. She does not throw open summer's window. Instead, she looks up, straightens, smooths her hands over her thighs, looks around at the shadows seeking out her watcher(s) in the rafters, in the eves, in the gables of the place, in all that great keen dark.
"I'm she who offers sorrow," she tells the watches, as she walks now, as if this were a conversation, as if she were making acquaintance with a stranger she could see while she walked toward the snow drifting in the back of the attic. " - Skald and daughter of Fenris. I've come to find a secret - some piece of history here - to share your story with my elder and my kin."
She speaks slowly, carefully, and with a certain - consideration - repeats herself after enchanting the metal charm hanging from the iron ring in her ear. Repeats herself in the spirits' language, her voice quiet, assured.
By the time she has finished the second speech, the translation, she has reached the pile of snow, the dreams drifting in the light shed from above, the promise of early spring, late winter - falling, failing light. Sorrow sinks to her haunches in that light, reaches out for a handful of snow she will allow to drift down from her cupped hands while she looks up and out into that light.
And then, if the window frame is close enough, she lifts herself up in preparation for climbing, after - and simply, looks up.
[Sorrow] Athletics + Dexterousness! (in homid!)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 8
[Waking Dream] The metal charm hanging from the iron ring - activated - does not give her understanding of a reply from her watchers. That is because they stay silent. Perhaps they're guardian spirits of this house. Mistrustful. How many wolves come here, after all? How many has Sorrow heard mentioned in conjunction with Hill House as it is? How many wolves in Chicago seek mystery, as well as blood? Not very many. Even the theurges who're drawn to this city, moths to a flame (and oh, baby, they'll burn, their bodies'll smoulder once they're hit just that damned hard), are more concerned with the physicality of war, of bodies mending, bodies made impervious, bodies made stronger in order to rip, and red, and tear bloody swaths through destruction's kin. Which is to say, perhaps she is being watched by guardian spirits (or feral spirits [they're all feral]), or perhaps she is being watched by something that has strayed down a beam of light, out of some sleeping hero's memory. They do not reply.
But there are other things she hears, now. Understands. There is a weak spirit in the snow she cups in her hands and it says I am cold hello I am cold where it is cold it is still and silent and in the cold there is motionlessness and the cold will dance and cold dreams and cold is winter winter is bloody heap here heap here build higher and higher get inside the air will be cold I will bring cold. When she touches the snow, it says, Ah! warm. Ah! There are half-heard whispers in the corners, Look, they say, and, Did you hear, they say, and far, far-flung off, I remember when the red wolf came, and even further, as if in answer, Ah, I remember what I took, I remember how hard-bargained it was, I remember, and also, grumblings, twice-born, wolves, angry, rip-us, don'ttrust, don'ttrust, and still more murmurings, the spirit of the stairs, muttering to itself about the halls it won't go to, the doors it won't touch, the creak of footsteps that can't actually be, not NOW, Kora would hear, but the stairs seem so sure. It's easy to see (hear?) why theurges, especially just-Changed, just-lost theurges, are said to be mad. This is what they hear.
She looks up. The window frame isn't easy to reach, but she may be able to just touch the bottom of it with her fingertips if she stretches herself as lean and long as she can go and uses the moulding to leverage herself upward. The light - and now that she is allowing herself to be shadowed by it, now that she is standing under the stream of it, it seems thicker; less watery, although perhaps she'll note the air is thin, when she breathes it, mountain air, alpine air, air so taut it'll snap in the lungs and leave one gasping - comes not just from the window, which is ajar, the only window in all of Hill House that is - great, round, Victorian thing - but also from a tear in the roof above it. There is a snowflake, caught there. Or maybe it's another [memory circle (remember me)] ring of light.
If she wishes to climb, she will manage. But only just. The skin of her teeth: her teeth are skinned; cold days.
The window shan't be easy to climb to, but it is possible. Will require agility, if she wishes to avoid the lazy fall of the colored circles, but is possible. There is nothing to stand on, but the walls have nooks, crooks, crannies. There are beams to cling to, to swing oneself up. There is moulding, the window seat: if she wants to go up, if she wants to reach that window, open and slanting from the roof, to see where the snow comes from - why, she can try.
[Waking Dream] The metal charm hanging from the iron ring - activated - does not give her understanding of a reply from her watchers. That is because they stay silent. Perhaps they're guardian spirits of this house. Mistrustful. How many wolves come here, after all? How many has Sorrow heard mentioned in conjunction with Hill House as it is? How many wolves in Chicago seek mystery, as well as blood? Not very many. Even the theurges who're drawn to this city, moths to a flame (and oh, baby, they'll burn, their bodies'll smoulder once they're hit just that damned hard), are more concerned with the physicality of war, of bodies mending, bodies made impervious, bodies made stronger in order to rip, and red, and tear bloody swaths through destruction's kin. Which is to say, perhaps she is being watched by guardian spirits (or feral spirits [they're all feral]), or perhaps she is being watched by something that has strayed down a beam of light, out of some sleeping hero's memory. They do not reply.
But there are other things she hears, now. Understands. There is a weak spirit in the snow she cups in her hands and it says I am cold hello I am cold where it is cold it is still and silent and in the cold there is motionlessness and the cold will dance and cold dreams and cold is winter winter is bloody heap here heap here build higher and higher get inside the air will be cold I will bring cold. When she touches the snow, it says, Ah! warm. Ah! There are half-heard whispers in the corners, Look, they say, and, Did you hear, they say, and far, far-flung off, I remember when the red wolf came, and even further, as if in answer, Ah, I remember what I took, I remember how hard-bargained it was, I remember, and also grumblings, twice-born, wolves, angry, ripus, don'ttrust, don'ttrust, and still more murmurings, the spirit of the stairs, muttering to itself about the halls it won't go to, the doors it won't touch, the creak of footsteps that can't actually be, not NOW, Kora would hear, but the stairs seem so sure. It's easy to see (hear?) why theurges, especially just-Changed, just-lost theurges, are said to be mad. This is what they hear.
She looks up. The window frame isn't easy to reach, but she may be able to just touch the bottom of it with her fingertips if she stretches herself as lean and long as she can go and uses the moulding to leverage herself upward. The light - and now that she is allowing herself to be shadowed by it, now that she is standing under the stream of it, it seems thicker; less watery, although perhaps she'll note the air is thin, when she breathes it, mountain air, alpine air, air so taut it'll snap in the lungs and leave one gasping - comes not just from the window, which is ajar, the only window in all of Hill House that is - great, round, Victorian thing - but also from a tear in the roof above it. There is a snowflake, caught there. Or maybe it's another [memory circle (remember me)] ring of light.
If she wishes to climb, she will manage. But only just. The skin of her teeth: her teeth are skinned; cold days.
[Sorrow] There's no reply; and Sorrow is neither pleased nor disappointed. Nothing worthwhile comes so easily. It would not be a secret if they shared it with the first wolf to speak their language; it would be a whisper, a rumor, a thread to be pulled, a ravel to be undone, a game of telephone, mouth to ear and ear to mouth.
Still crouched by the pile of snow, she cups her hands and pushes her long fingers through the drift, feeling it loose around her bare hands, and blisteringly cold. Still human, she curves her mouth, a passing smile as the spirit exclaims against her warmth, and shakes her hand free of the snow, letting the flakes drift back down and settle over the pile.
All the other stories filter in. She looks up, her keen gaze sweeping the shrouded corners of the dusty attic as she listens to the stray thoughts that drift back to her. And when the low, rumbling dreams of the never-moving stairs break through, she turns her head, looks back down the long, still shadows of the attic, and watches the bannister, the railing, the top of the stairs, her expression keen and even and still.
Before she moves - she hums a winter's song for the spirit of cold embodied in the snow, and it sounds like long dark nights and chill gray mornings, like smoke against a cloud-cast sky, like the crack of ice against the rocks - an apology for the warm, for the shadow she casts over the snow-pile as she pushes herself upward, reaching until she has her fingertips on the lip of the ledge, pulling herself, scrabbling for purchase, climbing until her fingertips are raw and bloody, and she has gained the ledge and hangs, balanced there, looking out over winter, ready to drop down - but careful here, alert, aware of the potential perils - that she might fall through, and not come out again.
[Sorrow] Perception + Linguistics!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10
[Waking Dream] Kora looks out over winter. Ah, Kora. You weren't named for winter's daughter. You weren't named for a life unflowered. Kora looks out over winter, not any Chicago she knows. And she sees: the barest of cities -- more of a town; smoke from chimneys off to the north and the east; smoke from factories (?), from the new (?) stockyards. And when she is inside the attic of Hill House, this image wavers; it re-translates itself as she breathes. Breathing is a struggle. It moves under her eyes like a silent film: jerking forward, bubbles growing, blackening the picture, disappearing without rhyme and without reason. And she sees: storm clouds, boiling over the horizon, pressing down on the fledgling almost-city. And she sees: black woods, and snow, and snow, and ah! so much snow, and there is no winter'slight here. There is gloom: deep, oppressive - deepening, gathering over the not-city, brooding over the land as if it'd sucked in a lungful of smoke and was readying asphyxiation for all below.
And she hears, not quite connected to the winter landscape she sees below: wolf-song, distant, thin as a whine - thin as a thread being torn apart (thin as a memory, diminished), more: Garou-song, People-song, wolf-to-wolf, hears, We stood here strong, we stood here tall, we tore the heart out've the beast, we gnashed it between our teeth, one've us was poisoned, the poison went into the blood, but hah hah, a Fianna's blood is already poison I (he) came from the Old Country, my ancestors pissed poison on the wyrm and made the wyrm beat its own mother, and answering wolf-song, Did any escape, did any escape, and another answering song, wolfish, Humans heard, entrails unreadable, tore them out, they flee, they flee and we can't hunt them. We're being watched -
And the wind eddies up, batters at the window Kora is spying from, makes it snap at her leg, drags ice and snow in through the window, blotching her clothing. She looks out of the window, and vertigo: she is looking out of a tall house, sure - but it isn't Hill House (couldn't be Hill House). Compared to Hill House, it's little more than a shack.
[Sorrow] Per + alertness!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9
[Sorrow] There is a keen and feral part of her that wants to drop straight down, ride the angles of the old clapboard house down to the ground, hit the ground with four paws and charge into the gloom toward whatever might be at the heart of that oppressive cloud. She is not merely that animal, though, that blood-hound, that hungry ghost ready to rend, to scatter blood and guts over the pristine crust of compacted snow. And so:
Sorrow cants her head sidelong, listening, her eyes closed, her heart so still that the way it beats inside her chest cavity feels painful, loud - and turns, slides back into the attic, folds and unfolds her body and drops down from the rafters, all opening-and-compacting as her knee bend to absorb the impact as she hits the wooden floor.
Quietly she retraces her steps, watches the dust motes dance up in her wake, listens to their dry, sad little memories of neglect, absence, of stillness, then pries a wooden slat away from a boarded-over window, one large enough to be wedged into her window to keep it open, and small enough that the window remains mostly-boarded over.
And quietly she drops the wooden rail underneath her winter's winter, and quietly she sinks into a crouch by the snow, listening again when the echo of the rail has fallen away. Sorrow digs into the front pocket of her jeans and pulls out a small disc etched with a glyph, which means: solid and then pulls out a coin, a dime, another glyph etched over the president's face, just so.
"Tell me the red wolf's name," she says, " - and I will give you this clay disc. It has my spirit in it, and will make you stronger when you have need of it. Tell me where he went, and I will give you this dime, which has my spirit in it, and a charm to make you whole again. Tell me what you bargained for, and I will tell you a story told to me by Maelstrom's twice-born, of a sand-filled book found in the corner of an attic."
[Sorrow] Ancestors!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 7, 8, 10
[Sorrow] Perception +2 dice!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 8, 9, 10, 10
[Sorrow] Intelligence + 2 dice!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 8
[Sorrow] Enigmas + Perception!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7
[Waking Dream] The slat is - initially - precarious; a tenuous block, opening this (now [today]) hour into (then [tomorrow?]) yesterday's. This winter into that winter. Her winter into their winter. Kora can still hear - but very distantly indeed; almost too distantly - the sound of wolves, singing; she can recognize in the ruddy, brassy reverbation of the howl a call (demand [compulsion]) for aid. It reacts against her blood weakly, that call; it's too distant a thing - but she can still hear how strong a call it is; how it would blaze up the dark; how it might have chased away a hundred wolf-things, winter howling in their belly, clawing at their ribs. Might have; the howl cuts away - is that a yelp? It's distant, is what it is: only coming to her filtered through today's air, yesterday's not-light today, because of that slat, holding the window open, touching then and now. See?
And Kora is crouched beside the snow and she can hear the spirit hiding in the drift say you've touched it you've touched it your skin is cold but why this ugly warmth why keep it wick and wake when you could be cold don't you want to be cold I like the cold I'm cold, cold, cold, burying deep, burying deep and silent no songs in silence. But even that whisper, that constant murmur, that faint - disgruntled? - protest diminishes when Kora addresses the snow-spirit, or anything else in the House that is still listening - the watchers, maybe.
Tell me the red wolf's name and I will give you this clay disc.
Tell me where he went and I will give you this dime.
Tell me what you bargained for and I will tell you a story told to me by.
There is no reply. Not at first. There is just the silence - the unyielding, space-between-breaths silence - noise, suspended in space - and then. Then the texture of the light changes: shutters on and off - and observant Kora will notice the bat-thing, bat-winged, mouse-bodied, face like a fox, black as the last keen of a dirge, which has settled hanging above her, near the rent in the attic's ceiling, and IT answers her like so - I will tell you what I bargained for. I did not bargain with the red wolf. Would you like to know? I am a clever mouse. How do I know you will not just snap me up, snapsnapsnap?
And then - a pale voice, from without the attic - something moongleaming, something bright and shy, retiring - I will tell you the red wolf's name if you give me the clay disc. His name is Burns Within. His name is dead and gone. His name curdles milk. This spirit is apparently open - giving; without guile. Or impatient? And the part of Kora that dreams ancestor-dreams, dreams things that do not belong to her, dreams things that belong more to her than anyone, dreams that make her a relic, a repository, a book, knows that name, half-knows a story of one of stag's children, bitter-battled, strong-songed, called Burns Within, half-knows - half-knows his story; how he wandered; how they said he was as red as the moon dipped in blood; how they said what he didn't know hadn't happened yet; how they said he disappeared in winter - when was this? Last century; maybe? What's time mean, anyway?
And then - another voice, a snarl-thing, from under the floorboards, the vicinity of her feet - or - no? The walls. No, I will tell you what I bargained for. I will tell you what I bargained for, and where I put it, for the clay disc, for the dime, for the story, but only if they're mine, mine, mine, and you take it back from -
There is a ripple of discontent. Kora can feel it in the ground.
And then another voice - something mellow, old - something that feels like structure - I will tell you where he went. I will take you there, but I want more than a dime. I want to eat your rage for three by three days. I want to take you where he went.
The stairs groan - something disgruntled about attics.
About attics within attics within attics.
About losing things in attics.
It doesn't signify.
[Sorrow] "It's the red wolf I'm here for - " says Sorrow to the batspirit, " - and no other. We have no bargain if you cannot tell me what I've asked: of a bargaining with Burns Within. Another time, though - another night, I will come back, and I will bring you a disc of your own, and bargain with you for what you know."
Her voice is quiet; it ripples liquid in the air, like watered silk crumpled underneath her feet, strange and irridescent from the movement of light over and light beneath.
Then something else tells her the name without the bargain, names the bargain without withholding the goods, and swiftly she turns and swiftly she follows the movement of the voice in the chill air, seeks it out, moongleaming, moonbright, stands and offers the clay disc, open-palmed.
"Yours." - she says, without considering going back on her bargain, without a thought for trickery such as a Rotagar might have attempted.
"I take it back from no one." - she snarls, back to the floarboards, showing teeth, her feet planted wide and firm on the floorboards.
"You ask too much," she says at last, following the shape of the old, mellow voice. "Gaia gave me my rage, that I might fight for her. I used it tonight to drive away winter wolves who would tear a place like this down to the foundations, and eat every scrap of magic here. If it's my rage you would, I'll give it to your for three times three minutes.
"And listen: you want to take me where he went. But will you bring me back again? That is part of the bargain, too."
[Sorrow] WP!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10
[Sorrow] wits!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 6, 8, 8
[Waking Dream] Listen. Bat-song is eerie. Bat-song can scratch a glyph on the bone of a living animal if a batspirit sings it - hits the proper note - just so, like that? Batsong can cut. The batspirit makes a sound, bending echoes in the air just as a blacksmith might've bent metal in a forge - there is even an impression of heat; illusory, because it's just a sound. There is no burning on (in) Kora's bones. Just a bat - diving straight for her face. Scary things, bats. Scarier, when they open their mouths, reveal sharp teeth. Scarier, when they open their blind eyes, and quick-as-a-blink, as two-blinks, another moment of time suspended, strung out from now all the way until then, Kora can see the reflection of a war-formed garou falling in battle: is that the glyph for thought? Isn't that necklace familiar? Kora can see -
- and it dives at her face again, veering off to clip her hair, then swooping (up, down; wavering, eerie) back to the ceiling, but higher, the highest, darkest patch of attic that there is. And it hisses, lowly, another time, as if it doesn't believe.
She offers the clay disc to the moongleaming thing - retiring, withdrawing, staying to the peripheral - open-palmed, and nothing happens. Nothing happens, until she turns her attention downward, snarls at the floorboards - then she can feel the kiss of some Thing on her palm, some Thing that feels like a breeze, it doesn't want to touch her, it doesn't want to be contaminated, it doesn't want her to turn on it, to snarl, to - to -
- and the clay disc is gone, along with the hint of fading brilliance: a fleeting dream spun out've light - its shape indistinct, too swift - disappearing out the door, clay disc with it. Her palm tingles.
The thing under the floorboards is silent. Utterly. As the grave. Then - sulkily: mine. Want. Want most of all.
And then the mellow, ancient voice replies - Three times three minutes when I demand it. Not now. Then. A long, ponderous stretch of silence. And then it says, I cannot go where he went, so I will not bring you back.
This would be too much for some people: the spirits don't answer one after the other; some of their answers sail over the others. They touch. They mingle. They hold to no order. It's not too much for Sorrow - she has no problem plucking strand from other strand, untangling the knot of their discourse, their voices that aren't quite voices, because a voice hints at physicality, and only the batspirit seems to have bothered with such things (unless - under the floorboards - scritch, scratch
the sound of little claws).
[Sorrow] "Three times three minutes," says Kora, and her voice is quiet now. She has her death in her mind's eye, the promise of it thrown back to her in reflection; the end of through, the nadir of memory. It knots itself into the back of her throat and makes her breath, makes her ache, makes her - briefly, unconsciously - touch the curve of her stomach, makes her remember not the glory of the death-in-battle, but the sorrow of those left behind.
She swallows it like ashes, and flares a look up at the rafters where the batspirit hisses, hungry, angry, disbelieving. There are scratches on her skin, shadowed around her eyes, and a certain stillness to her frame there in the attic, in the dark. " - when you demand it. When I can give it, and you will have a deal." There's a certain quiet pause, after.
Then she is standing, stretching toward the open window, the breath of winter coming in from outside. " - show me."
[Waking Dream] The floorboards creak. Not because of whatever lies beneath (and wants more). But because - behind her - something heavy has just put its weight down. When she turns from the window, if she turns from the window, she will see plain young man of around her age, maybe a touch older. His eyes are mellow, animal brown, and he moves slowly, with great care, with great grace, as if each step mattered. He moves heavily, as though he bore more weight than he seems to. His hair is auburn, ruddy, although a close glance - and Kora is observant - will tell her that there is black in his hair, too; also grey. He is deer-dappled, see? With a sinewy, but bulked-up, sort of build - not a lean whippet of a man; something powerful. Also, naked, except for an arm-band of keys: dull, metal. The skin of his left side is much-scarred. He holds out a hand, and says, That is not where Burns Within went when he came across this place. That is something Else. That is something you are not asking for tonight.
[Sorrow] And Sorrow, she turns away from the window, away from winter and the cold, away from the smoke and away from the city, away from the pall settled across it, and the echo of wolfsong both within and without, the call for succor, the howl of warning, the frayed, fraying challenge of a living animal against the howling darkness, mourning the loss of the sun and stars.
--
It isn't sudden, but she's still inside as she moves, alive, alert - her dark eyes tracking, seeking, watchful - up and down the man's frame, the weight on the shoulders and the age in his eyes, the dappled pattern over his hand, like the pelt of an animal running through a shadowed forest, where the sun peeks through the canopy, here and here and there and there.
When she holds out his hand, she palms the dime and turns it over, runs her thumb over the grooved edges, feels the weight of the dime and the touch of her spirit inside, the promise of wholeness inside.
And she drops it into his hand.
Like he, the talen is heavier than it appears.
"Isn't that his call?" she asks, her dark eyes quick on him, aware. " - isn't that part of his story?"
[Waking Dream] The young man (no) closes his fingers over the coin. His eyes squint like half-moons. This, though: he never blinks. Not ever. Kora will notice that. The unblinking steadiness of his glance, although that steadiness is rarely directly touching her. Possibly, he says, features inhuman in their lack of readable expression, after another long moment of consideration. Or possibly not. He does not seem to be quick, this thing. Whatever he really is. But if it is, that is where he was. Not where he went when he came here. That is there. Follow me. I show you. You will see. I will not go and bring you back. You will go.
He turns, and just like that - his humanshape blurs; instead, a stag - no, still human - no, a stag, no, no, no - human? Something bigger, something impossibly big? - he is running. Out of the attic. Through the door. He leaps down the last flight of stairs, and he opens a door, and he passes through it. It doesn't look like one of the doors she'd need the key of smoke and twilight, of gloaming and shadow and breath, to open - but he went through it so fast. Perhaps she thinks she's in danger of losing him?
[Sorrow] He goes and so goes she; unsure now, unsettled now, something deep and swallowed underneath her breastbone, doubting this bargain as much as she has doubted anything. But fear must be lived through, must be swallowed, and there is no time when he turns, quicksilver, moving like a stag, she can imagine his rack, the velvet anters damp in the moonlight, the way he dissolves into the attic -
- and she dissolves after him, not stag but wolf, gray-as-smoke, claws clattering on the wood as she charges after him, down the sighing stairs dreaming of attics within attics and the things beyond them.
The key of twilight, the key of smoke, the key swings around her neck as she runs, gleams like a dream of iron in her fur as she charges after, forward, runs breathless now, runs heedless now, his scent in his nose.
He disappears through the door; and she, she does not stop to think now. She surges, after.
[Sorrow] Dex + ath (in lupus!)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8, 10
[Waking Dream] - through the door, and she is splashing through water, and it is fall-water, autumn-water, not yet as cold as death. Through the door, and there is an icy puddle spreading across a dip in the floor, then a sudden hole in the ground, yawning to swallow her as it is swallowing that black, cold water - a hole she must leap - she does, although just barely; her claws scrabble for purchase - and the spirit, old and unshaped, now? A figment of imagination, blurring into a red, running wolf? - he doesn't halt, he doesn't stop -
- so through the door, into the hall, follow, follow, and then he is (not a wolf) dragging a chair from a closet, something delicate, something wrought of metal which might be placed outside an art deco cafe, the cushion all mouse-nested, dusty, dusky blue fading to brown -
standing on the chair, unlatching a door in the ceiling, and it hangs open like a jaw - wagging, gossiping - and he stretches up (but - impossibly; he is TALL; he is not a person) and drags a ladder down, climbs up -
Follow, huh?
[Sorrow] Follow, huh?
And so she does: follow, up the ladder into through the door, into the hall, her tail low, swishing back and forth behind her, signifying her caution, her alertness, her wariness, and then the chair is like the forgotten chair in a failing charcuterie in some Paris backstreet, wrought iron and mouth-eaten, moth-eaten.
He changes his shadowskins thoughtlessly. Now he has hands and now a mouth, now he has -
now he has -
- but she does not. She has to thing, to push her body to change, to reach into herself and outside herself to find her new mass and when she changes she changes, like now - wolf to human, to girl, to woman, pregnant, wolf-woman, who cannot see the moon in here except in his half-closed eyes. She reaches up, takes the lowest rung in her hand, and then the next, and so doing, hand over hand - climbs.
[Sorrow] Stamina! homid!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 6, 8, 10
[Sorrow] Dex + ath homid!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 6, 9, 9, 10
[Waking Dream] They were in the attic. The highest point. Then they went down a flight of stairs. They went through a door. The rules changed. They went through a door in the ceiling. Now, the ladder is longer than Kora may've thought it would be - if, of course, she had any expectations at all. Now, it is as if she is climbing the service ladder of an elevator shaft, all bloomed over with mushrooms, spongey, livid orange and uncertain reds, blues that cluster tightly to one another - mushrooms that reach delicately off've the soot-stained (smoke-stained) walls and wires to be lovely, to seek more darkness. And, ah yes: it is dark. The light winks out for a few periods of time - at random, it seems, and then she cannot see the ladder, but must feel it; she cannot see the spirit, but must trust to its honor, that it is bound to show her what it said it would. Of course, perhaps Burns Within went here, and now that she is here, it will disappear.
But then. But then. It said it could not go where the red wolf went. Remember him? She can hear, as she climbs, half-asleep, half-waking voices in the walls, little spirits of night, mentioning things, rats, rats, rats, no these aren't rats, what are You doing here, why don't you close your eyes, ah, hah hah, I'll bargain with you, I'll bargain away your firstborn's heartbeat, ooooh it is dark isn't it betterin the dark. Are you looking for lost things? The red wolf came this way, remember what he dropped, remember how it tasted, remember when we tried to eat him, remember when,
but the dark comes and goes. Comes and goes. And once, she feels something grab at her ankle. Another time, something skitters over her shoulders, something heavy touches her head, and she is staring into the eyes of a mouse-spirit, bold, looking down at her, and it says,
Wouldn't you rather do something else. You're young. You have many young to eat. We fight, too, we do we do we fight, fight, fight, why should you care about the red wolf and his long gone name his pointless death
why do you care where he went
you look hungry
i am hungry
you can eat me if you want
I am old
[Sorrow] Sorrow climbs through the elevator shaft, through the blooming rot, through the soot-stained walls, through the chimney, through the shaft, through the air vent, through the mushrooms and the dreaming dark, and she is a stoic creature, contained, self-contained, away of her body in space, alone here, alone now, without the voice of her packmate in her head since Sparrow left - just that link, that brief sense of presents, that knowledge she has that he's out there, somewhere, that they are joined.
She does not bargain with the night spirits, though she listens to their constant chatter but does not engage them, does not response, does not tell them whether (if/why) she likes the dark, or why she wants lost things, where that spool of thread has gone, where that slip of paper with the word she wanted to remember, Sanskrit for yellow - does not interact until one offers to bargain away the heartbeat of her first born and then she snarls, swallowing her voice, turning in the dark, struggling to hold back her own anger, that flare of rage deeper now than rage -
- and she climbs, and climbs, until a bold mouse-spirit insinuates itself above her, swings down and -
" - because, mouse, we remember our dead. We remember their names and their deaths; we tell our children so they will know where they've come from. We tell our fathers so they will remember their brothers in arms. We will our spirits so that they will know the deeds and deaths done in their name.
"We remember.
"And that's why I care. And because it is a secret, something un-known, something I want to know. Because he beat back a darkness - not your dark but what your dark would have been without him - changed, made wrong, just devouring, not just black but cursed, rotted from the inside out.
"And if you tell me and the red wolf and his pointless death, I feed your brothers every night for a solid moon, cheese scattered about my territory, whever I see you and yours. And if you tell me, I will feed you know, from my own spirit, to carry you forward.
"And if you tell me, I will remember you. I will tell others and they will remember you, and if you do not have a name, well, spirit, I will give you one so that you can be remembered."
[Waking Dream] The bold little mouse-spirit stares at she who offers sorrow (what sorrow will you offer? What tale is this you're telling?), its whiskers dripping light. Then it says - I would like to be remembered. I would like of all spirits to be respected by those who use their teeth and claws. I would like to be remembered, I think, for I am old old old, and I am hungry. I will tell you of the red wolf and his pointless death for this oh yes yes I will and my name is Mouse -
how proud it is
- I am Mouse. We are Mouse. We are Mice. I am Mouse! But rage-hunger, this is not where the red wolf went. Your guide waits above. I am stopping you from following him. He will wait forever, and I will talk, talk and tell you. He died pointlessly here at the door, you see. And it was pointless because none of your people ever found him so the thing he made was pointless. He might not have ever even done it, although we liked it yes. My greatgreat greatgreatgreat greatgreat great greatgreat greatgreatgreatgreat great greatgreatgreat grandfather's greatgreat grandfather said.
