July: Stories and Songs

[kai]

This month, to the surprise of many, it is a sniveling, nail-biting Bone Gnawer from Cold Crescent who stands as the Talesinger. He is obviously nervous when he walks forward after Jack has finished the Cracking, chewing on the cuticle of one fingernail. He's a young thing, obsessed with note-taking, and he even has a pad of paper and a pencil with him, which makes some of the older Galliards cast glances at each other, which makes some garou raise their eyebrows. Does he need flashcards?

"Um..."

Barely heard. He clears his throat.

"So, um, hey. Hi! Hey. I'm Never Shuts Up and I'm the Talesinger right now, so... uh..."

It takes effort, for some, not to drop their faces to their palms. Never Shuts Up notices and only grows more nervous, huffing some strange, awkward laughter. "Great Cracking, huh? Yeah. Okay, so... I know a lot has happened in the past month. I haven't gotten out much to see it but, uh, I hear about stuff? After it happens?"

Every time his voice lifts in question?????, a Galliard in the gathering struggles not to groan aloud.

"So like, I wanna hear about it now! Y'know? I heard there's this thing from like, under a bridge? Or something? And maybe Celduin was there, I think, and you guys,"

he looks right at Hector and Tamsin,

"you're galliards, y'know, right?" He grins, shakily. "So like, you should tell us about it! And stuff. And y'know, the older galliards, too,"

because he's got it backwards, and spins around quick to stammer over his honorifics to the Adrens, Athros, and Elders of his moon: "you guys are like... I mean. Rhyas, please... teach us... with um. With the tales of old and the songs we know by... like... heart?"

In the back, there are some garou laughing. They are trying to stifle it. He is this close to being heckled by some Ragabashes who are rapidly losing the ability to hold it in. Never Shuts Up is turning bright pink in his ears, the color flushing up his throat. He quivers a bit with anxiety and rage, both.

"HEY!" he shouts, to quell some of the whispering, and it works for a few seconds, but his glare isn't that frightening. "Hey," he repeats, which definitely doesn't help. "So this is your duty, you guys. It's not like moots are just to argue and pee and talk about packs and kinfolk and whatever and, y'know, you should just..."

and he keeps going. Seriously. He just keeps going, fumbling his words, wavering between lambasting the garou for not speaking up and trying to encourage them to do so, never quite managing to intimidate or inspire. Until, of course, someone comes forward and ends this nightmare with a song, or a story, or a dance, or fucking anything at this point, because just about anything would be better than listening to him stutter any longer.





--
[And here we have an example of a Cliath performing their moot role poorly. Someone please put Never Shuts Up out of his misery.]

[tithe]

Never Shuts Up is basically living Tamsin's nightmare right now.

Tamsin is watching another Galliard live her own nightmare. Her own soul-shaking, nerve-wracking, heart-wrecking, terrifying nightmare of Not Being Good Enough, of Failing To Be What She Should Be, of Crashing and of Burning, just when it really matters. Because this is where it really matters. This. Here. Now. Tamsin watches the bonegnawer with her heart in her throat and her pulse beating at her like it just wants to get out break out crawl away from his shame and maybe string her up into a living, breathing Tamsin who can move to go save him, seriously, just save him, because that's her nightmare, and she doesn't want anybody else to live her nightmare.

First she is still a wolf. Her hackles are up. There is a deep low burn growl in the back of her chest. Her rage is a coruscating halo, sparking when That Garou Over There Almost Laughs, or when That Ragabash Over There whispers some heckle-remark too-too loud, and she just cannot let it continue.

First she is still a wolf. Then she is a girl, jumping to her feet and striding out to sling an arm around the young 'gnawer's shoulders and to say, just to him, just before she really gets going, "It's fine. Just do it like it was part of the plan."

[ooc: and I realize that just editing this will not bump thread, so post-will-be-split-in-two]

[Damon]

[ -- TO WHAT! OH GOD THE SUSPENSE.]

[tithe]

Then the slim, compact Fianna galliard gives the Sept(s) a long, measuring look, and lifts her voice. She does not look or sound as if she is nervous. That is because she already stood up. That is because she is on auto-pilot. Because Tamsin's gone away, leaving the galliard and the Fianna, because puking is for later.

No. Her voice is clear and it carries.

What she uses it for is this:

"Never Shuts Up heard that Celduin's got a tale to tell and he wants to hear it. Well all right! Can't blame him for being excited about it. Fog rolls in, sometimes you lose yourself in it. Get high mixed up with low, left mixed up with right.

"I knew a wolf once got himself lost in a story about Fog and everywhere he turned there was nothing but gray. The kind of gray you can't get out of your eyes. The kind of cloud that stays and muffles smells and claws down your throat and you try to yell or howl but the Fog takes that too. This little lost wolf spent weeks in the story about Fog trying to reach the end. He grew thin enough you could run a stick 'cross his ribs and it'd've made this clackclackclack sound.

"Then one night -- he thinks it's maybe night, but he's not sure -- he sees this glimmer of light. Makes him glad in his heart. Not just because he's so sick of not knowing anything about where he is except maybe the wet feel of grass or stone or dirt or road under his paws. But because he knows this light. He recognizes Luna.

"He runs to her calling, Luna! Help me! I don't know where I am! I don't know which way I'm going! I'm so hungry I ate my shadow and let's just say it's a good thing for my tail I can't see it! My nose is worried it's next! and I've got a handsome nose! The handsomest nose ever! My mother tells me so!

"But Luna didn't answer him right away. He's running still, yeah. The light was a long ways away and he thinks that's okay maybe he's just running up into the sky wouldn't a damned thing surprise him in a Fog story except maybe seeing the way clear. He tries again: Luna! Help me Help me I don't know where I am or which way I'm going and I'm starting to forget my name! Where am I?

"But Luna's quiet or he thinks she is 'cause he can't quite hear her. He's making too much racket. He's more concerned with his nose, which I'll tell you now was just okay. This wolf I knew, he never listened real well."

He's running now and his chest's a-heaving and his tongue's pantpant lolling and he's almost there. He can see her real clearly, Luna-wolf, woman-Luna, Luna-the-Moon, and as he flings himself into her embrace he opens his jaws and tries to howl all anguished, Help me, I don't know what to do and I don't know where I am. But this poor wolf never made it past Help Me because he was a wolf lost in a Fog story and he embraced Luna's reflection in a vast big still water. That big anguished howl for help he'd opened his jaws to make turned into a big gulp of water that was like silver in his lungs. By which I mean: it was pretty bad for him.

By which I mean to say: He drowned."

Beat.

"Or," and here, a slender and fey grin, "he would've if a galliard familiar with Fog hadn't been there to see him leap like a goose convinced it's a stag into the reflection of Luna's arms and plunge down into the water. That galliard whose name got left behind in the Fog story hauled this wolf I know out of the water. He says, once he can properly speak again, Help me! I don't know where I am anymore! Up is down and down is up and left is right and right is left but I think right is also right sometimes which makes it all extra confusing.

"The galliard tells him: Well you were lost in a Fog story. Sometimes that happens. He says again that he doesn't know what to do. How do you find your way out of a story about Fog, once you're lost in it? The galliard knows this one. Do you? I bet you do. The galliard says: Well. The only way you can get to the point of a story about Fog, which is not coincidentally its heart, is to listen to somebody, like me, who can tell you how to get out, because you can't ever tell what lesson's hiding in a story about Fog until the end.

"This wolf I knew, he thinks about that. He opens his jaws again to say something, then snaps 'em shut. He says: If this story about Fog gets out, you'll be sure to mention that my nose was handsome and I didn't try to eat it, even though I was hungry enough I ate my own shadow?

"And the galliard tells him: Sure. Your nose'll get a mention. If anybody here ever meets a garou called Follows His Nose who seems mighty proud of that appendage and looks startled when you mention Luna and the lake then you can tell him it did."

Pause.

"So thank you, Never Shuts Up. You heard Celduin's got a tale to tell and you want to hear it. But you heard wrong.

"We've got more than one tale to tell this moot. Celduin's a pack of three now and we'll be telling you folks about what happened when Law in War and Echoes in the Lost, Laughing Battle went hunting down one of our missing kinfolk. How what they found was poison and darkness and sorrow masquerading, as Snails and Tails can attest, as human hope.

"We'll be telling you another story, concerning a House of God. That human hope I mentioned before, taken and twisted, made into a Wyrm-weapon. This is a story of Celduin, following the Wretched, looking to foil them. And it is also a story of and concerning Reverence of Dawn, From Whom the Stars Shall Not Be Hidden By Sunlight of the Silver Fangs. It concerns one of my kin." She beats her chest. "Stag's kin." Here she seems to look for other Fianna. To say this to them directly. "The Whites family, been here for generations."

"Quite frankly, it's concerning."

"I'm Cinder Song. I'm Furious Lament. Relax. Enjoy. And listen up. Prepare to get used to the sound of my voice."

[jamie]

And Hector springs up from his seat with the same un-self-conscious lemme-at-em attitude inherent in every theatre geek's being and grins at Tamsin. He saunters up to the center of the circle and points out into the audience.

"Never Shuts Up-yuf, you're the man!"

For those laying eyes on him the first time: in his birth form as he is, Echoes of the Lost is a young man of average height, with black hair and dark-brown eyes, looks as if he's wearing every piece of jewelry in his possession. Rings on nearly every finger, a captive bead through the helix of his right ear, a couple of necklaces strung around his neck. He wears heavy black work boots and sturdy jeans and a t-shirt advertising a band whose hey-day came and went before he was born. The sleeves have been cut off.

He about vibrates with energy but the Uktena isn't nervous. His voice projects.

"Alright so let's rewind to the end of June. Real bright sunny day that stayed warm and bright even towards dusk. Singing birds, laughing kids, booming boomboxes. I was on my way out of the Sept of the Cold Crescent when I heard--"

Here, an imitation of Snails and Tails, Fostern Ragabash of the Bone Gnawers:

"New Kid! Do this right and I might remember your name next time!"

Here, a pantomime of whipping around like to ask Who, me? Choreographed-uncoordinated pointing at himself, then over at nobody else, before he shrugs.

"She was concerned. The uncle of the cousin of the boyfriend was missing. One of Rat's, mostly homeless, good guy if you ignore the fact he had acquired a taste for spirits and disappearing when he could find a place to crash long enough to drink a liter of the stuff. I had no idea who he was but Family is Family and this particular family was staying with a human gal named Carlita. Sounded alright: ex-con, graduated from a halfway house to a Section 8 one-bedroom with heat and hot water, used to let Gerhart crash with her when he was fallen harder on his luck than he was used to.

"I can see some of you thinking: alright, that's great, but why's she sending an Uktena to track down a Bone Gnawer? Well, a: what kind of question is that, we're awesome at tracking things down. But b: I wasn't alone. This story isn't about me. You see that humble-looking bag of fur parked over there?"

He points to where Rabid Jack sits beside Cinder Song.

"Looks like a bulldog fell out of the ugly tree and broke every branch on the way down? Snails and Tails-rhya rounds us both up and gives us Carlita's address and sends us on our way. And I'm thinking to myself, great, I'm going to knock on some toothless broad's door with a dude who wouldn't know subtlety if it tiptoed up and tapped him on the shoulder. So we ended up on East Colfax at the walk-up building where this lady lived, and we see someone moving around up there and I'm thinking this is going to be a cakewalk. Optimism, you know.

"Then we went inside."

Dramatic pause. Time enough for Tamsin to appreciate the fact that this is the first time he's told the story without going off on a romantic tangent about Jack and his motorcycle and how that was the baddest of badass things he's ever done in his life.

"That sense, that something you can't point to on this side of the curtain the way you can smell rotting meat or hear buzzing flies and know what you're about to walk into. It bubbles up out of the center of you, that oily warning that Grandfather Serpent is slithering around. Even if you don't have the gift sometimes it comes to you anyway. Law-in-War, man, he smelled it, he knew what was on the other side of the door before it even opened. He smelled the rotten meat and the droning flies, and we knocked anyway.

"She looked as normal as we were expecting. Like a woman, you know, a human woman who'd been through the wringer, but that's how they get you. Other than a glass eye that didn't match the one she had left and a jaw that was a little on the trollish side Carlita looked... you know. Normal. We saw the other one, her daughter, on the couch. She held real still and kept as out-of-sight as she could get, like we would go away if she didn't make any noise.

"And of course Carlita acted like she didn't know where Gerhart was. Said he'd probably gone to church and if we saw him tell him send her back her good china. Grandfather Serpent is like an oil slick, man, and if you aren't paying attention because the light's no good or you're not at the right angle he looks just like water.

"Law-in-War, he looked across the Veil and saw Banes drifting around, three of them, like they were waiting for another soul to latch onto, and he pulled me back into the stairwell. Made like we were going to leave the building altogether, just go back to Gerhart's nephew's cousin's girlfriend and tell her we couldn't find any more of a trace of him than anybody else had so far but then we heard this voice behind the door."

And his voice stays his own but he warps it just-so, leaves it sounding like it's come up from the bottom of a muddy grave:

"You see this, honey? You see what the devil sends? You see why he gives you the gifts you got?"

Back to the voice Gaia gave him:

"And the other woman was begging her to stop, calling her Momma.

"We got out of there, went back down to the sidewalk outside the building, but we didn't leave." Points back to Jack. "This crazy son of a bitch is like No one says we gotta be polite and use the front door!--" Stops pointing. "--So we snuck up the fire escape, right, and I'm thinking they're going to hear us, he's going to make the metal scream the whole way up, maybe knock some bolts loose, be like trying to sneak a cement mixer up the... huh-uh. He was like a spirit. Just... whoosh! Up that rusty ladder, up the rusty stairs, moved an air conditioner that hadn't been touched since about nineteen-ninety-two, squeezed through this fire-trap of a window..."

He projects an air of unawareness as his packsister slinks up from her place in the audience to stand in the fire-shadows, hunched and muttering prayers to a god that does not exist or care if she believes in its existence. As he carries on the story the conservatively-built Uktena holds himself up taller and puffs out his chest, holds his arms out like they're all muscle and Rage, loping, a near-man's posture in a human form. Eventually Hector pantomimes what he witnessed, his voice rising in volume for the adrenaline of the activity a month past, terrible violence laid overtop of duty howling up inside of them.

"... and we heard them, through the bedroom door. They weren't plotting anything, didn't even know we were there. Wouldn't have known we were there or cared if they had known. But Law-in-War wasn't going to knock on the front door, and he didn't knock once we were inside either, he took on the skin of the near-man and he kicked the door in and he walked right up to Carlita and he snapped her neck--"

Hector made Tamsin practice this days ago, the part where Jack went storming into the living room and grabbed the Fomor by the head and twisted savage so a human's neck would have snapped, she raving first at her daughter and then raving louder on her knees about God and His glory and Tamsin echoes what she heard Dorlene say during her interrogation, before they extinguished her own light, and if Carlita who was Gerhart's girlfriend were human her neck would have snapped and she would have lost consciousness and she would have fallen to the floor and she would have stopped talking and breathing, certainly would have stopped praying, but she did not stop praying and Tamsin does not stop with the echoes of the prayer as she falls down on her knees.

"--and he dropped her--"

They had to practice this too because Hector is not an athlete and he could just as easily kick her in the head as pretend to kick her in the head. He pretends to kick her in the head and she does fall then, silent but not dead, and Hector does not lose his breath but he's gaining steam, stalking the circle-center now, pointing at things that only exist in his memory there in the flickering of the fire they can see it in his eyes dark as those oil slicks he mentioned already and revealing nothing that his voice does not reveal but reflecting back the flames and the fury that's sparked up in him recounting this.

"--and her daughter went down fast, throat gone but not the rest of her, and she would have gotten up off that couch and sunk her claws in my neck if Law-in-War weren't paying attention. We were too late though. We didn't save Gerhart that day but we found him. We found what this church is doing to people, what their idea of salvation is: says it right there in the name of the transition program old Carlita went through, rEEntry, but they aren't reentering into light, man. We didn't know it at the time, we didn't even know the name of the church she said he'd gone to, but when the thing that used to be Carlita stopped praying and the thing that used to be her daughter Dorlene lay back on the couch we looked around and Law-in-War found a calendar with the name on it, Church of the Covenant, big old fiery blood-swollen heart right up at the top and the candles in the place couldn't cover up the smell of flesh gone bad and I told you we found him. We found him. We found him under the bed, and we found him in boxes in the closet, and we found him in the icebox, in the oven. We found him in a photograph next to old Carlita and she was smiling then, both her eyes matched then and her teeth weren't fucking fangs."

He takes a breath like to tamp down his own Rage and he told Tamsin he'd tell the ending right. Now he steps back to where she's lain on the dirt and reaches down with his hand to haul her up.

"Next month I'm going to tell you the story about what Law-in-War and Cinder-Song found at the Church of the Covenant and how bad-ass they both were."

[COSTUME CHANGE]

[Damon]

[THIS COMES AFTER CELDUIN'S STUFF]

Boy, isn't Erich-wolf just the initiative-taker today. During the first lull, after the Galliards with the best stories they were just bursting to tell have taken their turn, the not-very-shadow-lord-y Shadow Lord gets up and trots into the middle of the circle. His paws send up little puffs of dust from the parched earth. His tail is carried high but straight, purposeful. He sniffs around for a bone for some time before remembering --

oh. There's no bone in this part.

So then he flows upward from his four-legged form. He stands before them in bare feet, in old jeans, in a t-shirt advertising something called THROWED ROLLS, and he tucks his hands into his pockets. Looks relaxed-but-nervous, if such a thing is possible: his stance loose, but tension knotting across those sizeable Ahroun's shoulders.

"I'm not a Galliard," he says, almost like a caveat. "But I wanted to tell a story about some stuff that happened to me and my friends before we came to Denver." He glances at whoever the eldest Galliard is, almost for permission. And then back to the audience:

"So we were down in Baja..."

And so he tells them. About being down at the very tip of the Baja peninsula. About living on the beach in that funny little tinyhouse of his, that some of the gathered might have seen hitched behind his truck. About the little stormbeaten, sunworn shanty that sat at the end of the little stormbeaten, sunworn pier, against which only tiny little fishing-boats were ever moored. About the old man and his wife that owned that shanty. That grilled up fish and shrimp and chicken and beef by the bucket, and sold cervezas and orange sodas in glass bottles with names Erich and Charlotte couldn't understand, and rented surfboards out to them and taught them to surf, and kept his little shanty-shop open deep into every night so villagers from inland could drift out and have a beer, have a barbecue, cue up a song or two on the creaky old jukebox, laugh and talk and dance.

And -- about those men. The guys that would come out from godknowswhere every so often, stinking of bad things and bad thoughts, who'd take up half the tables at the shanty-shop, who'd scare all the villagers into quiescence and bully the boys and leer at the girls. Charlotte hated them. Erich

waited for them to make a move.

--

"So then one night," he says, "they're there again. And me and Charlotte just came in from an afternoon of riding the waves, and we're having dinner out in front of our tinyhouse, watching the last light go out of the west. Suddenly we see one of them like... out in the dunes? Just watching us with binoculars. And I'm like whatthefuck and Charlotte's like EW and so I go inside and grab my hammer and I throw it at him! But it kinda just clunks off the side of his head. And then they're like 'derp, did they see us? DERP.' And we're like, YEAH WE SAW YOU. ASSHOLES. NOW WE'RE GONNA KILL YOU.

"And then we charge them. Or... I charge them. And my sister Charlotte -- you guys see her right? She's over there, she's the skinny one that's turning all red and -- stop trying to hide, Charlotte! -- yeah, her. She PULLS OUT HER SLINGSHOT. And fires this little pebble at them and they're like LOL? and then her pebble goes KABOOM. Because it explodes. She thought of that herself. I bet you even some of the Elder Theurges in this Sept never thought of exploding pebbles and slingshots. Oh, you guys have? Bullshit, then why haven't I ever seen you -- okay, you know what, we can argue about that later.

"Back to my story. Now those guys are half-charbroiled, one of them is running around screaming 'cause he's on fire, and the rest are really mad. There's like four of them and they have guns and stuff, and they weren't right, some of them had flesh feeling off or slimy poisonous skin or ... I don't even remember. They were messed up.

"And Charlotte is -- okay, honestly, I lost track of what Charlotte was doing, because I was kinda busy biting them to small bloody pieces. And right after I tear one open, and I mean I tore him open, there were guts everywhere, and you know how that stinks -- I'm wheeling around to take on the one at my back, and all of a sudden!

"There's just this -- shiny thing popping out of his chest. It's a sword. There's blood kinda oozing down the blade, and he's making this gurgling noise, and then Ingrid -- can you guys see Ingrid? That's her, she's near Charlotte. No, not that one. Look harder. She's a Ragabash, you have to look really hard. No, guys, look where I'm pointing. Her. Yes.

"So it's Ingrid. And she pulls that sword out, kicks the guy over, he's just dead, and I'm like who the hell is that because I can barely see her and plus -- last I heard she was back in New York City, I didn't really expect her to show up in the middle of a fight in Baja. But between the three of us, we pretty much just clean up shop. I got the second-to-last one. Tore his arm off and he bled to death. Ingrid got the last one. I snapped at him and he turned around to run and Ingrid was just waiting for him and --

"Fwp!" Erich slashes a finger across his throat. "Decapitated. It was badass."

A pause. He blinks.

"And uh. Then we came here. That's my story."

[jamie]

From the back, after Erich's story, comes a lone yet appreciative

"Woo!!" Clap, clap, clap. "Exploding pebbles rule!"

[This is totally a placeholder for another story. Tamsin and Hector aren't done bringing shame upon their ancestors yet.]

[tithe]

Furious Lament

The Fianna begins this next tale thus:

There was a man who'd been replaced by Hunger. The Hunger'd been put right into him. Forced down his throat and now it wore his skin like a winter coat in July. He wore a leather coat, too, bulky, for-to-hide things, and maybe he remembered who he was, thought he was still a person. But he wasn't. He was Hunger. I saw him, his tattoos, his face, and recognized it from this story we'd been following down, story of a Covenant with the End of the World. He was in the middle of a July-celebration but he didn't belong to it. He was turning himself into somebody's shadow. We watched him eat everything he could. We watched him lick the grease from his fingers, swallow up a wrapper whole, then look like he was going to eat his own fingers next, like it was just too much, but Hunger like that. Hunger that foul, Hunger that Wretched, Hunger that gets put into a person like that, that kind of Hunger, it's there for a purpose.

Celduin followed him through the crowd. The crowd was a fireworks crowd. Watched this dark Hunger come out've the stories surrounding this House of God looking like he was about to consume his own godamned flesh if he didn't find something better and watched him find that something better.

We were his shadow as he became Reverence of Dawn's shadow.

Laughing Battle
He stands off to the side while Tamsin speaks and only the fact that he's stood there at all warns of his impending giant-step out to join her. No spotlight to draw the audience's attention to him but Hector isn't shy and they hear his voice before he's even started orbiting Tamsin.

"Celduin followed him. More like Hector and Jack followed him and Tamsin thought she saw David Wenham getting a hot dog and just stood there gaping for half-a-minute."

A preemptive dodge of any incoming retaliation and he walks it off. Meant to do that. Joke. Has to mark the narrative transition with a fucking joke.

Furious Lament
The retaliation seems as practiced as the switch-off, swapping one tale-telling style for the other. This exaggerated eye-roll, this shake-of-her-head and a swift kick to the general vicinity of 'flat ass.' But then she stares dreamily off into the crowd.

That lasts all of a second. Then she subsides into something more solemn and intent.

Laughing Battle
"This dude was eating out of the trashcans the entire way down the street, too. Not the way Bone Gnawers do. He wasn't looking for the choice bits people throw away when they're not paying attention. Empty fry container--ate it. Dirty sock--mm, delicious. Old Band-Aids stuck to cigarette butts and spilled milkshake all dried onto newspaper so it looked like garbage casserole...

"Not even exaggerating. I bet if there weren't a bunch of people straggling out of the arena after the explosion show he would have just turned the trashcan upside down and emptied it into his mouth but he had an audience and besides, he was following Reverence of Dawn.

"Ended up going for a stroll along this old trail south of Civic Center park, brush and exposed drainage pipes and stuff that didn't make into a trashcan for scenery. Real romantic. Not real good for sneaking around. Our anti-heroes made a classic horror-movie mistake and split up, so Reverence of Dawn and her gentleman friend heard the Boomer come crashing down the access path them. Whistling."

And he holds out his arms at half-length, demonstrating the size of an oversized creature.

"Like the Wretched son-of-a-bitch didn't have his size working against him he was whistling."

Lets his arms down.

"That was when Law-in-War called on the Curse of Aeolus and the fog came rolling in."

He doesn't say it because he's Taking This Seriously but it's in his tone anyway: fucking bad-ass.

Furious Lament
Then it's her turn again because the fog came rolling in. The female Galliard raises her voice and says:

The fog came rolling in. First time he called it and it came to him like the sea were just two steps to the left. Fog came rolling in, and it clung to Hunger. Behind him, there was another would-be murderer with the name House of God carved on his heart and festering. Thin and sharp with his skin trying to run up off've him and something glistening beneath. Reverence of Dawn and the Fianna kinsman she walked with saw Echoes of the Lost and myself as we came creeping down behind this Other. This Other who stopped and hissed like that'd scare us away, but he didn't know us then, what were we.

Kin do this nice, Hunger says. Kin do this ni-ice. Not-nice.

- and Tamsin's voice gets ugly, worked over and folded up like an over-welded thing, quivering with Hunger, with Want. That's how her voice gets, curdling with Wrong.

Then it's her own again. Clear.

He wants not-nice. He doesn't know what that is but he wants it.

Laughing Battle
In the space where Tamsin speaks her alpha fades back into the nonexistent wings and gives her space to weave. Then she hisses with the bell-clarity of a bird repeating something it heard once and Hector pulls the band keeping his black hair back and combs his fingers through it once before he steps back out of the darkness. Doesn't speak in a falsetto like to truly imitate the Silver Fang. Ignore the long hair: this isn't a comedy. He mimics her poise and assurance and he mimics it close enough not to turn into a purebred blond lawgiver but to give her words their proper shape.

"That's enough." She didn't shout or even raise her voice then. He doesn't shout or raise his voice. "When I am finished, I will take your head as a prize and keep your skull as a gift to present to one of the mystics of my tribe, should one prove deserving of the honor. Your skin, however: of that I will take the largest identifiable piece that is left, and I will have it delivered to whoever your master is."

The half-moon smiled in the past, in the story. As they practiced Hector laughed more than once because he couldn't believe what his memory brings back to him but he doesn't laugh in front of two Septs' worth of warriors.

"'Nice' is an archaic word for 'precise, tidy, neat.' I think my way sounds quite nice indeed."

Furious Lament

There is a pause because this is a moment for a pause. And then Cinder Song, Furious Lament says:

"And that fog, it just comes rolling in, rolling up, blanketing everything, and Hunger doesn't see 'til Law in War's teeth are at his throat. 'Til Reverence of Dawn's teeth are burying in his gut. Is he still Hunger, then? What does the creature think about nice now? -

a smile, slim and sharp and knowing

- Echoes of the Lost and I. We're battle-ready, battle-weary: Echoes of the Lost is quicker this time, but we slay the one whose skin wants to run away from what it is he's become and becoming, and then the bullets come down from above.

This isn't a story about coincidence."

Tamsin is more still than otherwise. But she paces now to lend her shadow to the frenetic energy of the Uktena's next part, in order to better be his inversion, physical baseline, punctuation and physical elevation of the threat.

Laughing Battle

And that fog--

He steps back again. Needs to pull his hair back, does it in the shadows. This isn't a comedy. This isn't a story about coincidence. He steps back out of the darkness and his voice has that cocky boyish quality now, not that grown-heiress stoniness he'd affected before.

"Two of them, up on the bridge. We didn't see them. She didn't see them. We didn't even see her, the red in her, until she was racing up to the bridge, bam!--"

And he leaves out how he killed another combat to whom no one had been paying attention, took him two bites but he took him down while the Silver Fang was flying towards the shooters. Is getting all frenetic with the storytelling, gesturing between Here and There and throws his hands around to indicate small bullets hitting their target and huge eruptions of blood from throats, but his tone remains steady even when the pace increases.

"--fast as her gentleman friend could fire off two shots, faster than we could turn around to see what she was even running after, we felt the bullets but it's July, it's humid, they were terrible shots, thought they might have been mosquitos or something, you know, Wyrm mosquitos that aren't afraid of anything, barely even nicked anybody but they were dead and gone and the next thing either of us knew, Law-in-War, he said--"

Furious Lament

The Fianna Galliard speaks, Rage licking along her word like fire'd lick a bone before cracking it:

"The Veil."

Then -- and her voice is as taut as a whip, lashing -- conjures up a Dire-wolf's gravitas without needing the transformation:

"The Veil!"

Then -- and she exchanges a look, the first one in a long time, her pupils large and swollen, with Laughing Battle -- and she is no longer a two-legged slim wolf-girl creature. No, she is Crinos, monster who bears Delirium on its shoulders. This is in the High Tongue.

And thus did he drag those bodies back down below, and thus did Reverence of Dawn - whose teeth were so sharp, whose bite was so certain and true - return, down where Hunger and his friends lay torn, while the sky was bright with fireworks. This isn't a story about coincidences, huh?

They died up there. They died thinking they'd be impervious to What-Comes-After. They died thinking their Apocalypse-Was-Here.

They died because of Celduin. They died because of Reverence of Dawn. They died because they'd been sent by their Masters, worried, that Reverence of Dawn saw them too clearly. They died because it was right that they should because they were corrupt in Gaia's eyes.

And they died with a warrant in their pockets, calling for our kin's death, calling for Avery Chase's death. They died, but somebody out there has dared -- and is daring -- to devour our own, to stalk our kin and to believe in our weakness.

They aren't done dying yet.

Celduin was there. Furious Lament. Laughing Battle. Law in War. The Silver Fangs were there. Reverence of Dawn. Our kin were there. Calden White. Gerhart of the Bonegnawers. Don't forget.

[kai]

[Avery will very politely and demurely applaud, but only after everyone else starts to, and she will smile and turn a bit pink with pleasure, but KAI is whooping and hollering and stamping her feet. Jamie, Tithe, Damon -- you made this part of the moot outstanding!]