Sepdet sleeps deeply for the whole of the day and night, not moving or turning at all, skin a little dry and cool to the touch. But her breathing is even, and beneath Robin's and Joseph's attention she stays warm. Finally, one time when Robin is checking on her, a hand stirs to find the woman's knee.
Dressed in a white tank top and brown jersey cotton pants, Robin turns back from the small table of first aid supplies near the bed to look at Sepdet, her hand immediately settling atop Sepdet's, fingers twining loosely with the Strider's. She murmurs something to her in Lakota.
Sepdet's eyes unstick and open. She peers up at Robin with a passive gaze devoid of pain or even understanding, only faint confusion and childlike trust. A small querying whine brings a wince--her throat's still tender--and then awareness begins to creep back into her expression, tightening her mouth and the corners of her eyes.
Robin's expression doesn't soften much. She wouldn't insult Sepdet by so doing. But she does lift Sepdet's hand and brush her cheek to the Garou's cool fingers. She reaches over to the small table and then lowers Sepdet's hand, pressing something into her palm. It is a stone, flat and smooth, oblong. When Sepdet eventually looks at it, she'll see something has been painted on it in a red-brown berry-hued paint.
Sepdet is watching Robin's face like the first outriders of a hoped-for rainstorm, and doesn't see the rock when she produces it. But the hard smooth surface draws her eyes down. She looks at it for several moments, then rises up gingerly on one shoulder, turning on the bed, to hunch over it and look. She brings it up to her nose to examine its scent before asking in a flat whisper, "Meaning?"
Upon the stone has been painted a rough likeness of a fish with long curving lines shooting past it. It could be a salmon swimming upstream, jumping up a particularly strong cataract. Robin shakes her head. "Meaning is the gift left to you, Hakhata Niyaha. Hold it to your heart."
Sepdet's hand closes over it tightly. "Salmon," she whispers, remembering. Propped up as she is, her head starts to sag. "So many rocks on this river. What did I hit this time?" Her voice is still too soft, as if there's no air in her lungs to speak louder, but the flatness, the echo of death of the spirit, is gone. There's a little rhythm behind it.
Sepdet's pain cuts through Robin's soul like a red-hot knife. It's there to see in the lines at her eyes, otherwise calm and still, offering the same sort of strength Joseph does but somehow in an entirely different way. She reaches over before answering to a glass of water on the table and turns to offer it silently to Sepdet.
Sepdet nods slightly and asks for it with her eyes, but doesn't let go of the stone to take the water. She pushes herself up onto her right elbow.
Robin brings the glass to Sepdet's lips and gives her a careful drink. Then she answers, "Death is not separation. It is not an end." From the space between statements, a Lakota might guess that Robin is walking the line of the tradition of her people and the need she sees in this beloved Garou's eyes.
Sepdet smiles and shakes her head at the words. "For me it is. But thank you." She closes her eyes to lap at the water, taking what she can.
The philosophical difference quiets the kin. Robin watches Sepdet drink, smoothing her hair back with her free hand..
Sepdet tells the woman, "Most Garou can follow their dead. But Striders, when we die, we die. So I will touch her spirit only as long as I breathe and see the sun." The flatness creeps back into her tone there, putting distance between herself and the trace of tears that gleam in her dark eyes. But she hasn't enough to cry, and addresses herself to the water again, and the stone. "My body she gave back to me. Three fingers that were gone. These things live." Her brows knit together in sudden confusion, on the end of that thought, and she looks down at her hands as if counting the fingers there.
So deep is Robin's listening, she looks as though she has no intention of answering. Finally though, when the quiet stretches out after Sepdet's words, Robin asks, "Does your body not join the earth? Do you not return to the Mother in this way?"
Sepdet shakes her head. "I don't know. My people were guardians of the dead; it was our purpose. The great enemy who turned our kin against us, despoiled our land, laid also a curse on the Striders that our spirits would be lost at death. We tend those of others now, but our own are gone. The road of life: this is all we have." She turns the stone over in her hand, looking at the back of it with the quietness of one who has accepted this other loss long ago.
Robin looks as though she would argue with the curse, but she holds her tongue. "You will never be lost to me, Hakhata Niyaha." Then as if to lay words to Sepdet's memory of Chloe without speaking of the woman, Robin lowers her head to kiss the hand of Sepdet's holding the stone.
Sepdet's lids flutter, again tripping over too little moisture for real tears. She rubs Robin's face at the corner of her mouth, clumsily, with the back of her hand.
Robin remains with her head lowered over Sepdet's hand for a long run of seconds that could almost seem like a prayer before she lifts her head and finds Sepdet's eyes. Without sorrow there, some Lakota say there is a mirror in the eyes. Robin lifts her hand to slide her palm along the curve of Sepdet's neck where it meets her shoulder, ever patient in these moments.
Sepdet's eyes are too calm, too distant, as if the pain is as far away from her and as encompassing as the whole bowl of sky. She shivers at Robin's touch, feeling the tug of newgrown tendons still knitting under raw skin. Her voice comes haltingly. "Her magic went away." It's the plaintive whine of one who has lost something too precious for speech without great protest, but then howls out despair when she finds the only photograph has gone missing too.
Robin frowns mildly now, her hand stilling and dropping away at the response of tender flesh. "If it had stayed, where would be your memory?" The words bring to mind Robin's refusal to have the marks Joseph put on her healed away.
Sepdet's mouth goes flat as she presses the line of her teeth over her lower lip. "But her magic is in me. That is how we touched."
Robin disagrees, ducking her head in to keep hold of Sepdet's eyes. "Your flesh will be rent again and again. It would not have remained as it was. But those scars, they marked the moment." Now Robin pulls off her tank top, wearing nothing beneath. The angry scar across her shoulder and chest remains there. "Do I wish he had killed me as this scar meant to?"
Sepdet shudders and struggles to sit up, half-turning to press herself against the woman. "You remember that by the mark, as I remember her healings by my hands, although Garou prize scars as trophies and scorn those who try to have them healed." She sighs and breathes out, letting the matter go. "But I'll remember. Gaia, each time someone heals me from another fight, I'll remember."
Robin's arms move gently around Sepdet. She holds her close and says nothing more, sharing warmth and closeness.
Sepdet is quiet for some while, taking strength from the human who has it to spare. Eventually she asks softly, "Is Joseph all right? And have you heard any news from -our- pack?" There is a twist of bitterness that hearkens back to Wolverine's madness.
Robin answers quietly, muffled a little against Sepdet's shoulder, "Black Rabbit is well. I have heard no other news. From any pack."
Sepdet growls softly, but it's a feeble sound, nothing but a child's blind kick at walls. "I told Brian not to kill them, not to avenge her. I wish I hadn't. I'm not strong enough to make them regret their crime."
Robin pages: What a -good- description.
Robin growls a little in response. The desire for vengeance and realized regret is not new to the Lakota.
Sepdet continues to mutter softly. "She wouldn't like vengeance. But I can't make the Garou honor her. They're too blind to trust anyone with as much power as themselves. They like humans to be afraid." Now she's taking refuge in insults, painting pettiness with too broad a brush. "If they refuse to see, then they deserve their eyes plucked out."
Robin draws back away from Sepdet. "Trust is a strong decision. And this sept is very large."
Sepdet's shoulders slump. "And I am small. But not above wanting to hurt, or to let that great man who has hurt -me- so much go and kill those who hurt both of us."
Robin's dark eyes hold Sepdet's now. "You are Sepdet," she echoes.
Sepdet turns the stone over again and sets it in her lap, so she can cradle Robin's arms with hers. She settles back, again trusting her weight to Robin's support. "Maybe I know what that means again. Change."
Robin nods silently, brushing her nose against Sepdet's hair.
Sepdet exhales. "And you are also a healer," she whispers almost inaudibly.
Robin doesn't argue, but she does counter softly, "I am jealous." It is doubtful that she is using the colloquial definition of the word.
Sepdet starts at that and starts to turn her head, runs up against physical pain again, and squeezes Robin's arms with her hands. "You are a warrior too."
Robin urges Sepdet's head back around to face forward with her cheek against the Strider's and answers, "I will die for you. Either of you."
Sepdet bares her teeth with a shudder of breath. "I know. But don't say that."
Robin smiles just slightly against Sepdet's hair. "Then I will wish it without words, my sister. I cannot help but hope I might fight someday, that I might be the reason you can kill another >Lakota word<, touch another too-beautiful smile, teach another child."
Sepdet butts her face against Robin's like an animal would, eyes closing and voice going fainter to make the words soft where the meaning is not. "May that happen," she prays. "But live for us. Don't you dare die for us. I've had too many do that."
Robin's laughter is low and sudden, possibly unexpected. "You know me, Strider."
Sepdet's body is slowly tensing up at the thought, tears threatening again. "Yes." She doesn't make any more protests, but the faint squeak in her voice is enough.
Robin pages to the room: Oh! She made Seppie cry again? Dammit. :)
Long distance to the room: Sepdet sorries.
From afar, to the room, Robin pets. She's /mourning/. That doesn't just go away.
You paged the room with 'Chloe just died for her, or at least to heal her. That's the third time someone's died for Sep. She can't deal with that concept even at the best of times.'.
Robin's gentle hold on Sepdet tightens fractionally and the kin presses her lips gently against her ear in an inept attempt at comfort.
Sepdet weeps silently for a while again with those tears that are almost thirsty, there's so few of them. She huddles against the woman shivering, as usual making no sound at all, until the rain passes. Finally her body relaxes again.
Sometime along the way, Robin leans forward to stretch her fingers to the rough woolen blanket at the foot of the bed and pull it over the two of them, warming Sepdet as best she can, sinking back into the pillows and gently urging the Strider to turn around and lay her cheek on Robin's chest.
Sepdet trembles once for some other reason, memories of Chloe too near the surface not to be triggered now and then. But it must be mostly that and not her darker secrets of skin, for after that brief shudder she obeys mutely, settling back down heavily against Robin's warmth as if she would've been unable to keep herself upright much longer anyway. Turned sideways against the woman, she reaches up with one hand to cup Robin like a child's hand against the pillow. It starts to settle at Robin's breast, but skips away immediately to her belly.
There is nothing sexual about Robin's offer, but there is everything intimate. She drew the Strider close this way and does not stiffen at the familiar touch of her, though aside from her breathing she is very still. Her fingers finally move, skimming feather-like over the uninjured parts of Sepdet's side and hip.
Sepdet seems to have fallen asleep again, to judge by the speed of her breathing, and her eyes are closed. But there's a soft murmur. "It's not jealousy."
The kin looks down at the Strider. "Isn't it?" Her fingers make another feather pass.
Sepdet's hip moves slightly, responding to a different level of conversation. "Jealousy says, 'I wish you weren't there.' Envy says, 'I wish I were.'"
From afar, Robin chuckles at the layers of /this/ conversation.
Robin's lips tip just so, holding a secret in their curve. "Perhaps you are right."
Sepdet's faint sigh betrays the other meaning behind the words, but she goes quiet and still, the lids of her eyes relaxing and falling closed.
Robin's fingers drift to and fro, soothing long after Sepdet has fallen to sleep. The kin gazes up at the exposed beam of the ceiling and hums low, cries from her childhood, hoping to infringe just slightly upon Sepdet's dreams.
Sepdet's wan face is peaceful as sleep takes her again. Perhaps Robin has succeeded.

=================

Information for Chloe:
Last connected on Fri Oct 27 16:31:15 2000.
Email address: cari@macasgaill.org
Location: Umbra: Arthur Island(#3066RFJ)
Other Name(s): Chloe Dusev, Dreamwalker
Race: Mage Sex: Female
Tradition: Dreamspeaker
Essence: Primordial Arete: 4
Position:
City College junior, majoring in Philosophy.
Fanatic and fighter in the war of the Garou.
Adept of Life and Spirit.
Fellow of Nightfall Chantry.
Keeper of secrets.

Info:
Some know almost everything there is to know about her... and others don't even know she exists. She has caused more than her fair share of turmoil, certainly, as beautiful young women often do--and most of that trouble has related to the Garou of the Wheel. Those who remember Valentine would recall her as the victim, but she no longer plays that part; those who guard Wolf Woods and the Bawn would know her as the strange-scented one who trespasses (or used to trespass) within the Park's forests and even as far north as the train tracks. Some know of her only as a will-worker, one of those few Awakened humans who shape Gaia by the force of focused will alone. The spirits call her by many names: Purity's daughter, dreamwalker, bending-Shadow, and others. Whether friend, or ally, or weak link, one thing is certain: she knows far more than any outsider should know.

She plays many roles and wears many faces--beauty, healer, shaman, shapeshifter, hunter, prey. But she looks out from all with the same sharp, uncanny eyes... and beneath them all, she walks the same precarious line between risk and right, between devotion and death, between fanaticism and foolhardiness.

"Falling softly as the rain / no footsteps ringing in your ears
Ragged down worn to the skin / warrior raging, have no fear.

Secure yourself to heaven / hold on tight, the night has come
Fasten up your earthly burdens, you have just begun.

Kneeling down with broken prayers / hearts and bones from days of youth
restless, with an angel's wing / I dig a grave to bury you.
No feet to fall, you need no ground / allowed to fly right through the sun
released from circles guarded tight / Now we all are chosen ones..."

--Indigo Girls