The Clearing Formerly Known As 'Bone Arches'
Contents:
Dante
Brian
Obvious exits:
Forest
You paged Brian with 'Brian may be upset to note that Sep's wearing that raven feather. :}'.
Brian pages: Not at all, actually. Chloe willed it to Sepdet. :)
"Honor commands loyalty of us, Dante," Brian answers quietly, his eyes moving to the no-moon. "What you say, stays between us."
Sepdet steps silently out of the shadows, holding a rock in her hand before her like a talisman. She makes a soft whuffing sort of sound in her throat to announce her presence, gaze fixed soberly on the Fianna.
Dante nods, his voice a barely audible whisper. "He's a butcher, a bully. I think he believes that being a Child of Gaia means not picking fights with other Garou. But there is so, so much more than that. I am /ashamed/ by his actions. A true Child of Gaia would /never/ slaughter an innocent." Here, he stops, hearing Sepdet's chuff. He glances over his shoulder, at the Strider, then back to the alpha, raising his voice slightly. "Still. The only proper recourse is honorable challenge. Hatred and vengeance only begets the same. You have the power and the knowledge and the will to nip it in the bud. I /know/ you do."
Sepdet's mouth turns down at Dante's words and her hand tightens over the rock. ~So speaks the half-moon,~ she mutters. ~It's too late, Dante.~
Brian sits up, careful not to disturb the candles that burn nearby. "If shedding their blood would bring her back -- or if I thought she would approve of it -- believe me, I'd drag the three of them kicking and yelling to the rocks, and send them screaming down to hell. But it solves nothing, and more importantly, it's not what she would've wanted." He swallows here; though
Dante stands up at Sepdet's words, suddenly full of passion. He's even more inspired by Brian. "Yes, Brian!" He looks at Sepdet, firmly, "It is /not/ too late. Pull youself up out of Harano, Sepdet. Think of her smiling face and do good in her name. Both of you. I /know/ you are both capable of it. Don't give up. Dammit, I have lost Quiet and Derrick and I swear on the graves of my father and brother and Alec and Peter Follen that I WILL NOT LOSE YOU TWO AS WELL!"
Sepdet stares at the candles and then moves over near the Fianna, dropping to one knee. Perhaps it's only coincidence; she looks drained and exhausted. ~Dante, just shut up,~ she whispers flatly, not even looking the no-moon's way. ~I don't think I can stop Nightflash from coming to the island without spilling more blood there, and Steven means to kill me anyway. I was wrong, Brian.~
Tears stream from the new moon's eyes as the passion and fervor fill his small form.
Brian shakes his head in answer to the Strider even as he leans back down onto the ground, to stare up at the sky. "No," he says. "No you weren't. It's easy to lose that faith -- her faith." His eyes close. "It's just harder to find it, now that she's gone."
Sepdet's shoulders slump. ~I'll defend it with my life until they gut me too. Anyway.~ She somehow manages to sound calm, or at least resigned, like stone to Dante's desperate fire. ~Tonight is for her. Tomorrow we worry about the future. Brian, I was going down with candles. Is there anything special you want done?~ Her tone turns gentle, and somehow the lack of honorific here, for all that she has only used "rhya" to him for several years now, is subtly different from the deliberate omission after the names of the other two she's mentioned.
From afar, Max returns and nuzzles.;
Dante's fire is hardly gone. "I'm not going to shut up, Sepdet, because I am right." He doesn't keep after her, though, right now. He turns his attention to Brian. "I'm here, at your side, Brian. Tell me what you need of me and I will give it gladly."
Brian sits back up, half-turns, and snuffs out his own set of candles. "I'll come with you," he says, his movements mostly hiding sudden tears. "Walls between worlds are thinnest tonight. I'd like to be near her for it." A swallow tenses his throat, and he shakes his head at Dante. "Go home, tonight, Dante. Look over the territory. Do the things that need to be done."
From afar, to the room, Dante writes in his notebook. Thursday night: Go shopping. Visit mom. Get Sepdet out of harano.
Dante ducks his head. "I will. But, please, don't keep pushing us away, come back to your pack and let us lend you our strength." He can't help but glance at Sepdet when he says, "Loniliness brings sorrow."
"Peace, too, sometimes," says Brian softly, stuffing candles into his coat pockets.
Sepdet's mouth quirks into a ghost of a smile. ~And other Garou make me want to break jaws right now. But thanks for the thought.~ She turns to go.
Dante feels a pinge of sorrow himself as the adrenaline drains away. He turns and, falling into the wolf form, lopes off.
Leaves-His-Past steps out into the forest.
Leaves-His-Past has left.
Hurrying after Sepdet, Brian ventures, "Shall we give the caern a wide berth? I'm not in much mood for other Garou either."
Sepdet nods mutely and slips into fourlegs for the journey; silence suits her better than ever these days.
Long distance to Brian: Sepdet needs to bum 300 hundred bucks off Robin to buy a boat. Or figure out where Toxic's money went. (It was willed to Sep, but I can't imagine she remembers how to handle it.) @tel #22, yah?
Brian has left.
Brian pages: Sounds good. :)
Rocky Beach(#22RJ)
Contents:
Brian
Obvious exits:
Into the Water Meadow
You have shifted to Lupus form.
Alias removed.
Name set.
Alias set.
Set.
Hope-Star bumps his shin and heads for the water with barely more than a shiver. Come. See what I did today.
Having also dropped into the wolf-shape long ago, for the run, Echen follows the smaller wolf out into the water.
You walk down the slope of the beach and into the icy water. The freezing temperature is arduous and exhilarating at once, and the lake itself astonishingly clear and cold.
Rock Promontory, East End of Arthur's Island
Obvious exits:
Back to the Mainland Up to the Cliffs
Echen has arrived.
Hope-Star still has much more work to do, of course: there are gashes in some of the small trees and disturbed areas that she hasn't yet touched. But the worst signs are gone, and there's at least no smell of stale blood from the Dancers' foul rituals left anywhere. She heads at a slow pace towards the fresh earth where Chloe was buried, keeping a step behind the alpha.
Echen's eyes dart back and forth across the landscape as he climbs towards the burial site; finally, once there, he remarks: Your time as Groundskeeper has served you well. The wounds suffered by the land are already healing.
Hope-Star sighs and bows her head slightly in thanks. Another form of healing, she replies subduedly. She halts in the bushes near Chloe's resting place to change and give Brian a moment alone.
Long distance to Echen: Hope-Star defers to you: I donno what Brian would've wanted to do at the grave, what's already there. Sepdet's brought over wild roses from the woods to plant near it today.
Hope-Star contorts and blurs as she is transformed.
You shift into Glabro form.
Echen's shape twists again; in moments he kneels, in his birth form, before the fresh-disturbed earth. He stretches out a hand to rest it atop the grave, and for a long time is silent. "I miss you, Chloe," he finally whispers, tears sliding slowly down his cheeks. "I miss you so terribly much. I go to sleep each night and wake up each morning aching inside." A bitter little smile plays across his lips for a moment, and he bows his head. "It's selfish of me, you know. I'd give almost anything to be with you right now. But I know -- I know -- you wouldn't want that. I know you'd want me to be strong through this, to remember and not avenge, to not throw myself away. So I'm trying. But it's so hard, sometimes, love." He dashes a hand across his eyes. "Please help me find the strength."
Sepdet is actually gone for some time, perhaps twenty minutes or so, taking a circle of the island to greet stone and twig and leaf and path. Her return is heralded by the candle she cups in her hands, already pooling wax in her fingers. "Black feathers on the ground. Give me strength to still go on," she whispers in echo of his last prayer, evidently quoting something.
Brian exhales a slow breath as he wipes at his eyes again, and stretches himself out on the ground beside the unmarked grave. His gaze finds the sky, the thin sliver of the crescent moon. "She should've been born Garou," he says quietly, not for the first time. "Do you remember the first time you clapped eyes on her?"
Sepdet kneels and sets down the white candle carefully on a flat stone; the wax drips out small tears through her fingers as she sets up her offering. "Not well," she says regretfully. "I was very young, and I only had eyes for Toxic, who was dying. She came to help us before I knew who she was."
"Feinan's bar, for me," answers the Irishman as he tilts his head slightly. "Almost seven years ago, now, it was. I'd stopped in for a drink. She was there with Thorn and Breaker -- I didn't know her name or anything. Some bastard pulled a gun on Thorn, she tried to hold him back, and me... of course, I charged in where angels fear to tread. Breaker ended up prying a silver bullet out of my chest. Was a bloody mess." His grin widens a little. "Not the best first impression, I think."
Sepdet unbraids her hair and sets the feather down with care. "She saw you protecting a friend," the Strider says simply, staring at the feather-shadows cast by the candlelight. "How did you come to know each other?"
Brian lifts a shoulder in a mild shrug, his gaze still on the stars; the smile still lurks around his lips. "You remember Lara-Anne? Back then I was trying to keep her out of trouble, as much as I could. Since she was working at St. Uriel's, I ended up hanging around there quite a bit." He draws a breath. "Found her sitting on the church steps a couple of weeks after the thing at Feinan's. We talked, she invited me back to her place for tea. She was very kind. Very trusting. Very *serious* -- it was real work, getting a laugh out of her."
Sepdet grimaces at the Gaian's name, but her expression softens as he continues speaking. "Yes. I had the same trouble. She didn't always come just to offer help or seek news; sometimes she simply came out to share the sky and the night with me and my pack. But even when I was coyote, I couldn't figure out how to make her laugh very often."
"I think she learned, over the years," Brian says, sparing his companion a sidelong smile. "She'd've had to have, living with me." He pauses again, once more allowing his gaze to wander skywards. "But she was also very brave. Easy to mistake that kind of bravery for foolishness, but it wasn't -- at least, not often. She was just that committed. Even after Silvernails scarred her, she kept hunting him. When we were fighting Nightmare, and the building went up, she ran in after us.
Brian stops there, abruptly. After a moment, he says, "It bothered you, that I named him last moot."
Sepdet's shoulders tense. "Yes. I... you didn't part well with Maury. It seemed wrong to me to name her killer, and not her."
He nods once, simply. "I miss them both. I was closer to him, because we shared our auspice -- it hurt to have him turn." An exhalation. "They both deserve to be remembered. Him, what he was before he turned. Her, what she always was." Another pause, and a small, wistful laugh. "Neither of them liked Chloe very much. Nobody in Blackwatch did, either. It's like they were jealous. I think Dante's the first packmate I've ever had, who saw her for who she was, and not as some kind of threat or freak or something."
Sepdet grimaces. "I suppose that is true," she says tiredly, no great affection in her voice. "I wish she could have found a way to come with Whispers sometimes, when we still were worth anything. We were spirit-mad, with stars in our eyes. They saw a little of what I saw in her, and didn't fear her. But they didn't fit in with most Garou any more than she has, most of the time."
Brian gathers his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them. "You were a good pack," he says. "You just had no more direction than the wind does. You held together for longer than I imagined you could've, and you should have no regrets."
Sepdet shakes her head. "It ended badly." She shakes her head to toss that away and turns around to face him obliquely, although her gaze still wanders to the darkness and shadows at the edges of the feeble flame. "Let me tell you a thing she did here, the thing that made her be more than other humans in my eyes. Before the Children of Gaia claimed this place, and Thorn was still alive, and she was free to come here without challenge."
Brian turns his head slightly, watching the Strider intently as she tells the story.
Sepdet picks up the faintest hint of the musical rhythm she's spoken with since cubhood. "It was five years ago. The Dancers had shattered the last remnents of my first pack, driven me into hiding alone under the city, and I was guarding my brother who turned out to have the same curse as your friend Chris." There's a note of faint apology in her tone, behind the scar of another grief she mastered long ago. "When my eyes were opened to the truth, Sebek turned on me, and we fought for death and life down in the dark. Afterwards I was broken and mad. Joseph and Thorn took me here, and I lived on this island under Crossing's care as the winter came on, and they could not heal me."
"She had found out somehow the Dancers were hunting me, and had offered me aid while I was still hiding in the city. When she could not find me, she tracked me here. I... I saw her as something other than human. She was a spirit, it seemed in my eyes. She came into the cave and gave her magic to me. Purity's Touch. The wounds I had were not serious, but she went deeper, to old scars I'd borne since I was a cub. You know the Dancers caught me once and carved their signs into my bones, hurt me badly. She found all that, and took it away, and made me as pure as any mule-born can hope to be. I could never repay that debt. It was a long time before I could believe she was not a goddess, disguised in mortal shape." The Strider breaks her eulogy to smile lopsidedly. "It was some time before I understood she was only Chloe, and made mistakes like anyone."
Brian's own smile broadens slightly, and now, instead of letting his gaze wander back up to the sky, he allows it to stray out over the water. "Of which getting involved with me was probably her biggest," he quips. "A few years ago my mother died, right around Christmas. I had to go back home, to take care of a few things -- da was already gone, and most of the land went to my uncles and cousins, but I hadn't seen mum in years and felt so damn guilty about it that I needed to go, to say goodbye, to hoist a few drinks at the wake for her. Chloe flew out after me. Helped me get my head around it all. That was when I proposed to her. Turned one of the worst times of my life into one of the best."
Sepdet's hands close, remembering something else that brings the first hint of tears to her eyes, but she nods. "I remember. She was so happy, too, when she came back."
A swallow tenses the man's throat. "She loved you, you know," he says, very softly. "You and Joseph. As much as she loved me. She would've had all of us. She was just that way. I never asked her to make a choice, or stay faithful to just me." He gives a minute shake of his head. "She was like something wild -- a deer. And it felt wrong to try and cage her."
Sepdet bites her lip. "Wyld spirit. I used to call her that. But you are wrong. She loved all three of us, but you were hers, and she was yours. Joseph loved her but never understood her. I would have followed her to the ends of the world. But you... you and she belonged. I was jealous of you, but I could never have given her a life the way you did."
The slight shake of Brian's head grows a bit more pronounced, and he actually dares a quiet chuckle. "What I gave her was nothing, nothing at all, next to what she gave me," he says. "She was a conscience, though I wish I'd listened to her more carefully, more often. A partner in everything I did, in the human life I tried to build. A friend. The best of friends -- I could tell her things I couldn't say to my own packmates. But above all an inspiration. Something to fight for. Someone whose faith was so strong that it tested my own."
Sepdet bites her lip. "She just showed me magic. I grew up with spirits, Garou things. They were real. I understood them. Hers was the first true magic to me, an utter mystery and wonder. I still don't understand how anyone could call it 'Warping', the shaping she did with her hands."
"Her magic wasn't just in her hands," says Brian softly, resting his hand lightly atop the fresh-turned soil next to him. "It was in her. Everything she did. The healing, the spirits -- that was all nothing, next to how we came to feel about her. *That* was her magic, that she could earn that love, that loyalty."
Sepdet paws at her eyes; she doesn't let others see her cry very often, and stops it now quickly before it catches hold. "I know. You know. Joseph knows. Maybe Robin too. We'll remember." Then she turns back to the candle, burning closer to the hard stone now. "What do you want us to do, Lady?" she whispers softly. "I'm not angry anymore--at him, anyway. So where do we go now?"
Brian's quiet laugh comes amid tears. "I doubt she'd want us sitting here, dining on ashes," he says. "That much I'm sure of."
Sepdet corrects gently, "Dining on memories. It's the night for that." She rests her hand down beside the feather. "Tell me about Samhain. It is a way of looking at the world close to the Striders', I think, but I have never studied your lore."
Brian wipes a hand across his eyes, nodding earnestly. "My people celebrated the beginning of the new year, this night," he explains. "Crops were harvested and livestock were fattened up for the winter. But it was the one day where the walls between worlds were weakest. We'd light candles, to help illuminate spirits' passage between worlds. Leave offerings for them."
Sepdet nods. "For us that came in February, because the seasons followed the river. Yes." She looks wistful. "Guide the dead between the worlds. I'm sure she knows the way quite well, and has flown it on raven's wings already. But that was my tribe's job in the old days, to guide and guard them."
Brian glances over at the little Strider once more, and presses one hand to his heart. "It is my honor to perform that duty with you, tonight," he says softly, solemnly.
Sepdet's mouth breaks into a thin white line, her little moon-smile, and she dips her eyes silently.
Sepdet sobers and digs into her jeans pockets, fishing for something. A smooth stone fitted to her hand comes out first, inscribed with red paint in the sign of a fish leaping against a strong current over rocks. That gets set by her knee and ignored. Her quarry seems to be a handful of small red chips that glisten like blood, which she sprinkles on the ground before the candle. ~The husband-who-loves-you is here,~ she murmrus softly, a part of the Gathering rite she has given for many years now. ~The sister-who-loves-you is here. You have the power you need to breathe free.~
From afar, Brian thanks you profusely for this scene. He's starting to heal, which is good, very good. And have a good night, tonight.
You paged Brian with 'And you. Thank -you- for putting up with Sepdet's maudlin side. This is all very sad, but at least it's fixing a few things. :}'.
Brian pages: Yeah. Silver linings and all that. :} Take good care, and be careful.
Brian has disconnected.