July: Revel

[kai]

[Go nuts, Erich!]

[Damon]

None of the moot positions were taken unopposed, but this one is the only one that had six Ahrouns vying for it. Six wolves of the fullest moon, the highest rage, the shortest tempers, the stiffest necks. The one that had won in the end; well. It can hardly be argued that he barely deserved it. How long had he been in the area, anyway -- two days? And a Shadow Lord, too. A Shadow Lord of Fenrir blood. A Shadow Lord of Fenrir blood who might as well be packless, nevermind that he hangs around with that skinny oddball of a Fang Theurge and that sly sphinx of a Lord Ragabash.

So, this month, there are plenty of eyes on Storm's Teeth when the talesinging begins to wind down. A few pairs might actively hope he'll fail. A few are curious, interested. Most just want to see what he's all about. If he's up to snuff. If he even knows how to lead a Revel, when he doesn't even seem to know how to run in a pack properly.

Don't think Erich isn't aware of the eyes on him. Drifter, pseudoloner that he was, he's well aware when he's being watched. He's well aware of the interest that turns his way every time the tales take a lull. Every time there's a longer pause between one story and the next.

And as the night wears on, as the moon climbs higher, as the fires burn lower -- he's aware, too, of a growing burn within himself. That restlessness of rage, licking like a fire at the marrow of his bones.

--

The last tale ends. They know it is the last, because no one else steps up. And because they can feel it behind their breastbones. The urge to run. The urge to hunt. The urge to shed their facades, to stop pretending to be humans, to stop pretending even to be wolves. The silence doesn't last long. It begins to fill with murmurs, with chatter, with voices; the errant snarl or snap. The ambient noise rises.

And then it falls. Quickly, expectantly. The grey(ish) wolf crowded with the rest of the Cliaths gets to his feet. He stretches, lazily and luxuriously, first digging foreclaws into the earth as he arches his tail; then dragging his hindlegs out, flattening his pelvis toward the ground. When he's done he shakes his thick fur out and trots out of the crush, into the emptied center of attention.

All eyes on him, then. His heart beating fast in his chest, awareness and exhilaration both. He stands in the middle of the ring for a moment. He looks around, his fur riffling as his heavy head swings this way, then that. He gives a little prance, hopping his forepaws off the ground. A small cloud of dust goes up as they strike again, four times as big.

Hispo-wolf now. He lolls his tongue at the gathered Garou. He paces back and forth. He ignores the audience. He sniffs the dirt, his tail wagging slowly. He sits. He yawns. He flops down at one point, as though he'd forgotten entirely his job here. A moment later he gets up again, suddenly tensed -- but then it goes nowhere. He's practically teasing them. He's making them wait. There's a rising anticipation that he allows to build, and build, and build, until it borders on frustration. On fury.

An instant before that line is crossed,

(and he knows where that line is because he feels it himself. oh, he feels that frustration, that fury, the short leash on the terrible beast that he keeps locked in his breast fraying, fraying; he feels it better than anyone)

Erich Storm's Teeth throws back his head. His sides expand outward. He lets loose this howl. Lets it roar across the sky. And it is not beautiful, it is not ethereal, it is not haunting. It is raw. It is red. It is visceral, and terrifying, and brutal, and --

it is joyful. It is joy itself. The exhilaration of survival. The celebration of the hunt. The elation of battle and the exaltation of the kill. The revelry in and of their most violent, destructive selves: that is what that howl encompasses.

And with that howl Storm's Teeth works some of the only small magic an Ahroun is capable of. He calls from the heart of the Caern a prey-spirit; a sacrificial lamb of an Engling that spirals beautiful, and ethereal, and haunting from the very earth. It lights them all with its radiance, blue-white and shimmering, and then in an eyeblink it is gone, fleeing into the night.

Erich Storm's Teeth, with snarling howls in his throat, with savage laughter in his heart,

plunges into pursuit with the Sept on his heels.

[mnemosyne]

Charlotte was nervous when Erich challenged for a moot role at their first moot at Cold Crescent / Forgotten Promises. They'd hardly slept and she still did not grasp the two septs, one caern arrangement shared between the two septs and everyone around them were strangers and she slunk to the strange moot in Erich's shadow, lupus, not changing out of her wolf-form, not once, ears up and her body language both wary and alert.

Now a moon has passed - the full cycle of the moon from birth to death - and the moot has passed too and she's four-pawed but dire-formed this night. The better to feel her rage, to give it expression, to let it run through her veins.

Not even Charlotte-wolf knows if Erich-wolf knows how to lead a revel, and now the hush ends, shifts, the wolves open themselves to the drumming beat, the insistence of the moon above and around her there's jostling, barely restrained movement, this terrible, leashed energy building to a crescendo and she's still nervous, can feel it in the pit of her great stomach, an uncertain sourness and then he's there, in the center of the ring and she's tensed through the withers, front paws planted, ready to -

- not move.

Charlotte-wolf gives herself a great shake as that little cloud of dust reaches the edges of the ring and begins to dissipated, snaps soundlessly at the air when he lolls his tongue, tastes the metallic undertone of the rage of the gathered and swings her head as Erich paces.

When Erich-wolf sits, she yips, and she cannot be the only one but she can't help it, he's making her heart both hurt and swell like the moon and he flops down and she barks! and someone near her she cannot see whom is growling and it gets her hackles up and Erich jumps up then goes still and Charlotte-wolf takes a half-leap forward and twists to snap at a strange cliath and the nervousness is swallowed up by something large, something brighter, something that opens --

-- huge and hot in her chest when that howl finally comes.

The Wyrm Foe calls that luminous Engling from the heart of the Caern, and plunges in pursuit.

The Sept, including one skinny weirdo of a Silver Fang, surge after.

[kai]

Reverence of Dawn is one of the wolves who not only witnessed the challenge last month for the Wyrmfoe but noticed that the winner was... that... mish-mash of a wolf. She noticed him first because he rolled into the moot with one of her own tribemates, and she noticed him again when he won the challenge, and she noticed him one more time when he got up during the Songs and Tales to tell of a battle with exploding slingshot talens and a Ragabash with a sword.

She is as curious to see how he handles the Revel as she was to see the members of Celduin stand before the sept for the first time to tell their stories, oh, their stories.

--

Avery is in hispo for the Revel. After she's laughed and rolled her eyes and stared-in-anticipation through the stories and songs told tonight, she shifts to the form best suited for hunting, running, destroying. She paws at the ground a bit. At one point she snaps her jaws towards the center, about ready to jump out there, out of her place, and get into it with the Ahroun for teasing them, but she's not the only one. There are so many of them here, and the bonds of pack and tribe and sept are dissolving slowly, descending into rage, making them one being, one mass of Gaia's warriors, one entity of her children.

Her hackles are up. Her fur is standing on end, her eyes gleaming. Every exhale is a growl, and she is, again: not the only one. They are growing restless, they are growing infuriated, and in any moment they are going to leap for Erich's own throat, tear him apart if he will not give them something to hunt,

and then he howls, and without even thinking, because the time for thought is gone, Avery throws back her head and joins it, roaring, snarling, wild, <i>mad</i>. Dust and gravel kicks up behind her when she pushes off from the ground, claws tearing at the umbral earth, a shocking white streak diving after their joint quarry. They will catch it and it will escape, they will corner it and it will reform behind them, they will tear it apart and it will coalesce once more for them, again and again, a sacrifice to their rage, a sacrifice to the caern, to Earth, to Gaia and Luna at their zenith.

--

This time they do not forget the Revel. A moot beginning in the spirit realm with glorious song, with wisdom and calls to war and acts of contrition given in the cracking, with tale and song and story given so freely and so joyously, a Revel of union: Earth does not take it from them this month. In the end, all packs, all tribes, all wolves feel a joint heartbeat with Earth, a joining that will last until sunrise,

and linger in memory for far longer.