--log courtesy of LA Melloy, who ran the coyote spirit. Read and eep.
Date: Saturday, March 30, 1996
Place: Somewhere in the Umbra
Luna is fat and pregnant in the sky, lighting the Umbral landscape with a
cool, nacreous sheen. Faint wind stirs loose strands of your hair, biting
with the last of winter's chill as you meditate. Of course, you aren't
affected by it, but it cools the heat of the rapid metabolism. Time passes,
and something, feather-light, intrudes on the perfect roundess of your
consciousness, sending rainbow ripples along the soap bubble sphere in
gentle music presence.
Dylan tilts his head toward the change, not yet opeining his eyes.
The spinning of the soap bubble increases, the chaotic patterns seeming to
flow easily, and it almost looks as if more defined shapes are chasing each
other around the surface playfully, enough so that the bubble itself
threatens to pop under the pressure of decreasing focus.
Dylan starts to smile very faintly, just watching, waiting to see what will
happen.
The meditative state pops, in your mind's eye it almost appears to disappear
in a soft explosion of pearly rainbow light, and a sound reaches your ear,
that of a canine of some sort scratching itself with a hind leg. *You
should work on that more. Last one took me much longer to distract.
Although, I like the soap bubble. That was pretty.*
Dylan's smile broadens, and he opens his eyes.
Before you sits a winter-grey coyote spirit busily scratching behind his ear,
with great clouds of shedding fur billowing in the aether around him. His
eyes are dark amber and fixed on you, and he appears to be in a state of
utter bliss. *So, what are you waiting for?* he asks, with the lofty
impatience that prima donnas have when another actor has missed his cue.
Dylan tips his head curiously. ~You are speaking, I think. But I do not know
what you are saying.~
Dylan contorts and blurs as he is transformed.
Dylan shifts into Glabro form.
Coyote gaffling stops. *Oh? Right.* ~I forget you wolf people aren't quite as
with it as the rest of us. Is this better? CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?~ he asks
loudly, as if Dylan might be deaf.
Dylan laughs, a rough bark of a laugh in this larger form. ~I can hear you.
How do you do?~
Coyote gaffling shakes out his fur, sending out yet another cloud of shedding
fur. ~Oh, quite well, thank you. It was a terrible journey up here, but I
made it, and that's what counts, right? And I'm far away from that
*terribly* interesting thing. I swear, if I'd stayed much longer, I think I
might have never been able to leave it! Do I look like the meditative,
thinking type to you? Well, do I?~
Dylan tips his head to one side. ~I've never known what to look for. What does
a meditative type look like?~
Coyote gaffling pads over to peer at Dylan this way and that, circling around
him round and round, poking him with his rather cold nose like a doctor
examining a patient. ~Stargazer. I can scent your type in a garbage dump.
Never fails me. *You* look like the meditative type. A little green around
the nostrils, and could use some help,~ he pronounces loftily. ~I came
*all* the way here to find you, I think. Yes, quite right. Knew it all
along.~
Dylan nods solemnly, eyes gleaming. ~Of course. It was quite clear you came to
find me, urgently. What can I do for you?~
Coyote gaffling suddenly leans hard against Dylan's legs, looking up at him
piteously. ~Take it! Take it away from me! The awful thing! I don't *want*
to be the meditative type! I'd be so boring at the parties if I was
philosophical and pondering the mysteries of the universe, like why the sky
is pink and whether or not Helios and Luna have a thing going!~
Dylan leans down to scritch the gaffling, smiling again, but there is a
speculative, curious glint to his amusement now. ~What awful thing must the
meditative Stargazer rescue you from?~
Coyote gaffling's eyes go big and gold, trembling all over. ~The...the...orb!
Solid crystal quartz, touched by Gaia herself! To look into it is to fall
into trance, tracing the paths...the patterns...~ he trails off as if his
attention is wandering, droning slightly, eyes glazing over.
Dylan's long black hand settles on the back of the gaffling's neck, as though
he'd rather like to shake it but is restraining himself. ~You,~ he says,
looking down at the spirit with indecision and amusemnet. ~Are a Coyote.
Trickster. Are you telling me the truth?~
The touch breaks the mesmerization the poor Coyote gaffling was suffering, and
he yelps and throws himself at Dylan's legs again. ~Yes, yes! Terrible!
Awful! But,~ he says, suddenly looking up, amber eyes brimming with hope.
~You could take it, and use it, and then Coyote couldn't break your trance
so easily!~
Dylan crouches down, putting himself almost at eye-level with the Coyote.
~Could I? What Orb is this? And whose is it, now?~
Coyote gaffling shakes with eagerness, now. ~Jeret's Eye! I hid it in a cave,
deep down in the darkness of a deep dark cave, so no *light* would hit it,
especially not Luna's light, because then it would make poor Coyote
be...be...be like Confucius! Poor, poor Coyote! I don't want to think about
what Gaia must do on her day's off!~
Dylan laughs. ~What cave? And if it is well hidden, then why need you be
rescued?~
Coyote gaffling cowers to the ground. ~Cave nearby. Not far. It...*calls*...~
he says in a fearful whisper. ~Calls to poor coyote. It says, 'Come, look
at me, look in my depths, and you will discover the secret of why there are
10 hot dogs in a package but only 8 buns!'~
Dylan laughs helplessly. ~Will you lead me there? I will, I assure you,
protect you from the dread state of introspection. I can, as you have no
doubt observed, take it all on myself, if the need arises for such
martyrdom.~
Coyote gaffling springs up like a pop-toy, yipping excitedly. ~I will! I will!
I came all this way to *find* you! You will use it properly, and then
Jeret's Eye will not call anymore to poor Coyote, to answer how many licks
it *does* take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop! Follow, Stargazer
wolf! Follow Coyote!~
Dylan continues laughing, and holds up one finger. ~I must ask you to wait for
a few moments, while I tell my packmates what I am doing. Because then you
will not have a horde of meditative garou at your heels, desiring that you
explain my absence.~
Coyote gaffling flops to his haunches. ~Oh, very well.~ He begins to bite at
his flank fiercely, mumbling something about fleas and pumice stones.
>> From afar, to Soulcatcher and Coyote gaffling, Dylan goes (a month ago,
this is) to find a packmate and, stumbling across Joseph, tells him that he
is going to be away for a little while - not bvery long, he thinks -
following a coyote spirit on what is almost cvertainly a wild goose chase,
but might be very intriguing, anyhow.
>> Dylan pages to Soulcatcher and Coyote gaffling: Oddly enough, he keeps
starting to laugh, in the middle of explaining. :)
Dylan returns, eyes gleaming. ~Very well. Lead the way.~ He does not seem
overly credulous, but he also seems quite willing to be hoodwinked, if that
is what is happening. Rather like someone watching a very entertaining
stage magician. Perhaps he has heard too much about Coyotes. Or perhaps it
is just the Tootsie Pop reffernce.
Dylan contorts and blurs as he is transformed.
Dylan shifts into Lupus form.
Coyote gaffling is once again scratching behind his ear when Dylan returns,
the loose hair settled around him like a grey-reddish gold ring at least
six inches tall. He bounds up as the Stargazer returns, amber eyes
laughing. ~Wolf-kin ready? It called me while you were gone, making me
wonder where all this fur is coming from, more than poor Coyote should
wear.~ He leaps over the small hurdle, and scoots through the underbrush at
a pace almost too quick for Dylan to keep up with.
Dylan trots after, keeping pace as well as he is able.
Player Name On For Idle Doing
Dylan 01:43 3m HeWhoFollowsACoyoteGetsWhatHeDeserves
5 Players logged in.
The coyote spirit pushes you to your limits, all your concentration on keeping
up to the elusive gaffling and running as fast as possible. Tunnel vision
sets in, the center of it the grey-red-gold of the fleet coyote's tail. You
lose track of time as it blurs past the tunnel in grey-cloud streaks,
until, nearly exhausted and Luna moving down in the sky to, perhaps,
Helios's house for an after-work apperatif, you catch up to the coyote who
is sitting on a rocky ledge somewhere int he mountains before the gentle
mouth of a cave. His tail thumps eagerly. ~Here it is! We go down down
down, swing low sweet Wolf-kin!~
Dylan pants, too tired for verbal response, but the set of his ears indicates
that he will follow again.
Coyote gaffling draws back, paw cocked in the air, suddenly fearful. ~No, no.
You must go first. There is nothing down there but...it. I cannot touch it
again, even now it is loud in my ears, making me wonder what would happen
if a Rokea-Gurahl Kinfolk and a Bastet-Mokole Kinfolk bred, if their child
would be called Morris "Grizzly Jaws" Rex.~
Dylan looks a little baffled by that one - apparently he has spent too much
time being a wolf, and not enough in front of the television. Then he
shakes his head, clearing it, and looks speculatively at the gaffling,
considering. ~I am lost,~ he points out. ~If I look away from you, perhaps
you will disappear, and I will be trying to find my own way back.~ He licks
his nose. ~On the other hand, you are a spirit, and can disappear even if I
am looking at you. Very well.~ And with that, he turns, and pads toward the
mouth of the cave.
The cave is small-mouthed, but wide enough so that your lupine form can fit
easily through it. The passageway sometimes narrows so that the cave walls
press against you uncomfortably, but not painfully, and it is only a small
effort to push through. It twists and turns, utterly black, until you feel
something hard and round, about the size of a pool ball, go skittering out
from under a poorly placed paw, scraping lightly across your nails. It hits
the wall after only a second or so, a solid *thunk* which gives you a good
idea of it's location.
Dylan pads toward the sound, nose down to the level that ought to find the
object.
Your nose bumps into it, a cool spheroid of smooth weight. It clicks softly
against the wall once more, rolling back against your nose gently.
Dylan licks the ball once, then gently closes his jaws around it, and tries to
turn around within the confining space of the cave, to take it back up to
the light.
Where the eye was is a little more open than the rest of the cave system,
allowing you to turn nose to tail around to head back up, following the
same torturous path. Weak light is your first sign of nearing the surface,
then the fading moonlit negative of the cave entrance is before you.
Dylan looks around as he emerges from the cave, first looking for the
gaffling, then setting his prize down gently in order to examine it. He
does both with an air that is neither cynical nor expectant, but simply
curious.
Coyote gaffling is there, yipping with laughter. Out of the confines of the
cave, you can feel the wind blowing across you, and it feels odd. Upon
scrutinization, it appears that pieces and parts and patterns of your fur
has been sheared off, probably while you squeezed throught he narrow
passages, so that whorls and swirls decorate your body in patterns of fur
and light. Worse, the barer spots appear a bright, vivid red. The orb
itself is clear and cracked and fractured quartz, the moonlight sending
slivers of opal through to its center. The coyote dances up to a spot above
the cave, looking down at you. ~Swirls and whirls and pretty curls.
Meditation, frustration, humiliation. Twist and tight and dark and bright.
Jeret's Eye, Jester I!~
Coyote gaffling yips once more. ~Travelled far, kin of wolf. Meditation
broken, shattered, followed coyote across the deserts and mountains and
rivers to home. Travel far, far from home, go north to place you roam!~
With that, the gaffling scampers up the rocks, yips echoing throught he
moonlight, proclaiming the success of his trick to the sudden cacophany of
voices that echo off the mountain face, that sound much like him.
Dylan gives his new decorations a rueful look. Then grins tiredly. He picks
the shattered orb up gently, and begins picking his way back to find a
place to rest, before beginning the process of finding his way back to the
Wheel.
