09-30-2013, 09:26 PM
They do not have a Galliard to tell the story and it will never be clear who can claim ownership of the idea. Who said it first aloud, who brought the notion from something vague and half-formed that the kicked from thought to thought, at the edges of consciousness, to something stronger: a promise, a plan, a story.
Maybe in the days and weeks after Charlotte woke up with her own death in the back of her throat and the sudden scissoring immediacy of it a bright fire in her spine, the girl found her tongue. Maybe it was Erich, returning from a raid-gone-nearly-wrong with the copper burn of a tribesmate's blood still on his tongue. Maybe it was, in the end, Melantha who knocked their heads together:
but knocked together they were.
--
Charlotte does not know the rite and they have decided on it just as the skies are opening and the mountain streams are becoming torrents and the roads are being overrun and washed out and the mountain towns cut off, homes flooded, businesses washed away and the trio have some warning - the whisper of it in the air - so they fold up the steps and fold down the shutters and bring all the many things that have ended up outside back in and take the tinyhouse and the big truck to higher ground. Which is more precarious and less idyllic and they stare out over a great valley that has been utterly though only temporarily changed by the impressive spectacle of an undamned waterway - even a small one - in flood. Debris churn in the surging waters and the snaking banks of the small stream are reshaped by the press of water and the trees are drowning and the disruption delays the process somewhat, as Charlotte must craft their chiminage by hand. Must make the talens and infuse them and bind them, must consider carefully to whom to offer them, and where, and why.
There are many things Charlotte wishes to learn. A Glass Walker named Trigger Finger teaches her the rite she wishes to learn. She remembers it from another lifetime, someone else's lifetime, and not-so-long ago. Garou do not live long lives; each generation accumulates a new trail of corpses. But listen: the rite is bloody, requires needle-and-thread and the first several times Charlotte attempts it something goes wrong and leaves them merely with bleeding fingers.
Charlotte considers carefully whether to ask a Shadow Lord or a Silver Fang to perform the other rite, which she does not have time now to learn. In the end, she asks a Black Fury to perform it. Sara's Rest.
How you hunt a volcano?
Listen to the earth beneath your feet.
--
In truth, they do not know what spirit they will seek when Sara's Rest performs the rite. They know merely that they want and need a totem, and that there must be some spirit out there that will accept their spirit and flesh and bind them more solidly together. No engling comes for them to chase. They do not catch a glimpse of Falcon through the leaves or of stag through the solid, stolid trunks of the trees.
Justice does not appear to them, blinded and robed in white. No, nor the muses nor the city's embodied spirit nor do they hear Grandfather Thunder's low, familiar rumble on the horizon.
But they do feel the call, so deep underground that it is hard to know and credit, so hot, so molten that it cauterizes even as it burns. Through the familiar regions of the front range, the slopes of their valley, and then beyond, through the spine of the front range to the lands of Never Summer. The mountains are younger here. Richtofen and Norku Crags. They remember how and where they were formed; are still raw with the work of creation. Weathered masses of granite covered with lichen, surrounded by scree from the old peaks broken apart in their making. This is where they are drawn, called, where they go, the wolves. Padding past alpine lakes, following the hard line of the steep ridges higher and higher, past the tree line, where the free remaining trees are stunted and pennant-shaped, all their limbs flung out in the direction of the prevailing wind.
--
Needle and thread. Thread and a fine, steel needle. Charlotte is no seamstress but each time she pushes the needle through her packmates' skin her stitches grow finer, more precise. And there is a day when the rite works, when the work catches, when the thread that binds truly binds.
And the feeling is indescribable.
Maybe in the days and weeks after Charlotte woke up with her own death in the back of her throat and the sudden scissoring immediacy of it a bright fire in her spine, the girl found her tongue. Maybe it was Erich, returning from a raid-gone-nearly-wrong with the copper burn of a tribesmate's blood still on his tongue. Maybe it was, in the end, Melantha who knocked their heads together:
but knocked together they were.
--
Charlotte does not know the rite and they have decided on it just as the skies are opening and the mountain streams are becoming torrents and the roads are being overrun and washed out and the mountain towns cut off, homes flooded, businesses washed away and the trio have some warning - the whisper of it in the air - so they fold up the steps and fold down the shutters and bring all the many things that have ended up outside back in and take the tinyhouse and the big truck to higher ground. Which is more precarious and less idyllic and they stare out over a great valley that has been utterly though only temporarily changed by the impressive spectacle of an undamned waterway - even a small one - in flood. Debris churn in the surging waters and the snaking banks of the small stream are reshaped by the press of water and the trees are drowning and the disruption delays the process somewhat, as Charlotte must craft their chiminage by hand. Must make the talens and infuse them and bind them, must consider carefully to whom to offer them, and where, and why.
There are many things Charlotte wishes to learn. A Glass Walker named Trigger Finger teaches her the rite she wishes to learn. She remembers it from another lifetime, someone else's lifetime, and not-so-long ago. Garou do not live long lives; each generation accumulates a new trail of corpses. But listen: the rite is bloody, requires needle-and-thread and the first several times Charlotte attempts it something goes wrong and leaves them merely with bleeding fingers.
Charlotte considers carefully whether to ask a Shadow Lord or a Silver Fang to perform the other rite, which she does not have time now to learn. In the end, she asks a Black Fury to perform it. Sara's Rest.
How you hunt a volcano?
Listen to the earth beneath your feet.
--
In truth, they do not know what spirit they will seek when Sara's Rest performs the rite. They know merely that they want and need a totem, and that there must be some spirit out there that will accept their spirit and flesh and bind them more solidly together. No engling comes for them to chase. They do not catch a glimpse of Falcon through the leaves or of stag through the solid, stolid trunks of the trees.
Justice does not appear to them, blinded and robed in white. No, nor the muses nor the city's embodied spirit nor do they hear Grandfather Thunder's low, familiar rumble on the horizon.
But they do feel the call, so deep underground that it is hard to know and credit, so hot, so molten that it cauterizes even as it burns. Through the familiar regions of the front range, the slopes of their valley, and then beyond, through the spine of the front range to the lands of Never Summer. The mountains are younger here. Richtofen and Norku Crags. They remember how and where they were formed; are still raw with the work of creation. Weathered masses of granite covered with lichen, surrounded by scree from the old peaks broken apart in their making. This is where they are drawn, called, where they go, the wolves. Padding past alpine lakes, following the hard line of the steep ridges higher and higher, past the tree line, where the free remaining trees are stunted and pennant-shaped, all their limbs flung out in the direction of the prevailing wind.
--
Needle and thread. Thread and a fine, steel needle. Charlotte is no seamstress but each time she pushes the needle through her packmates' skin her stitches grow finer, more precise. And there is a day when the rite works, when the work catches, when the thread that binds truly binds.
And the feeling is indescribable.
But my heart is wild and my bones are steel
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.
- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.
- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula
