10-14-2013, 04:11 PM
The time for stories and songs has ended.
And the blood of the garou is high, the fire lit. There has been laughter and hope and anger and shock and honor given. The mood is light, but underwritten with bloodlust and joyous frenzy. This is why the people chose to crack the bone before the amplification of the stories and songs, before the buildup of that tension that is released so perfectly in the revel. Perhaps it is a mistake to have switched them tonight.
Try telling the Great Alpha this. Tell him this,
as he cracks the bone.
--
There is still bloody flesh on the bone. He has been eating it, laying on his belly in hispo for most of the moot gnawing at the remains of a mule deer. The stories and songs were occasionally punctuated but the twist and snap of a joint being broken, a limb being torn off for one of his packmates. When the hunchbacked Talesinger reclaims her place in the crowd, no cliath or fostern philodox walks into the middle to lead this part of the moot. The Great Alpha rises with one smooth, efficient motion to his enormous paws.
On his muzzle is the stain of new blood. Dragged between his teeth to the center of the moot is one half of the deer's rack. In truth, the antlers are artful in their curve, wicked in their branching spikes. Skin still holds to the place where he tore it from the skull. He drops it between his forelegs into the dirt, a hulking mass of fur, muscle, heat, and rage in their midst.
Behind him stand the Warder, the Ritemaster, and the Master of Challenges -- the highest elders of Forgotten Questions. With them is the Keeper of the Land, and the Gatekeeper. They stand together, as they do not always do, for they are not all under the same totem. Tonight they do.
The dust that raised up when the antler hit the ground settles again. Somehow, suddenly, the energetic septs, gathered tonight, have gone silent. Still.
--
The Great Alpha says nothing. Everyone is waiting, waiting for some awful pronouncement. It does not come.
So: he moves down to lay on his belly again. And a few moment interminable moments pass, and then
a brave Athro walks forward, picks up the rack, bows to the Great Alpha, and brings a dispute before him that lies between she and another of her rank, an issue of territory and their boundaries. Both arguments are heard. The Great Alpha rules in favor of the defending party. Another wolf comes after that, with a challenge of grievance against a garou of lesser rank regarding ill treatment of a protected kinfolk. The Great Alpha rules in favor of the higher-ranked wolf. And so it goes.
The cracking has begun.
And the blood of the garou is high, the fire lit. There has been laughter and hope and anger and shock and honor given. The mood is light, but underwritten with bloodlust and joyous frenzy. This is why the people chose to crack the bone before the amplification of the stories and songs, before the buildup of that tension that is released so perfectly in the revel. Perhaps it is a mistake to have switched them tonight.
Try telling the Great Alpha this. Tell him this,
as he cracks the bone.
--
There is still bloody flesh on the bone. He has been eating it, laying on his belly in hispo for most of the moot gnawing at the remains of a mule deer. The stories and songs were occasionally punctuated but the twist and snap of a joint being broken, a limb being torn off for one of his packmates. When the hunchbacked Talesinger reclaims her place in the crowd, no cliath or fostern philodox walks into the middle to lead this part of the moot. The Great Alpha rises with one smooth, efficient motion to his enormous paws.
On his muzzle is the stain of new blood. Dragged between his teeth to the center of the moot is one half of the deer's rack. In truth, the antlers are artful in their curve, wicked in their branching spikes. Skin still holds to the place where he tore it from the skull. He drops it between his forelegs into the dirt, a hulking mass of fur, muscle, heat, and rage in their midst.
Behind him stand the Warder, the Ritemaster, and the Master of Challenges -- the highest elders of Forgotten Questions. With them is the Keeper of the Land, and the Gatekeeper. They stand together, as they do not always do, for they are not all under the same totem. Tonight they do.
The dust that raised up when the antler hit the ground settles again. Somehow, suddenly, the energetic septs, gathered tonight, have gone silent. Still.
--
The Great Alpha says nothing. Everyone is waiting, waiting for some awful pronouncement. It does not come.
So: he moves down to lay on his belly again. And a few moment interminable moments pass, and then
a brave Athro walks forward, picks up the rack, bows to the Great Alpha, and brings a dispute before him that lies between she and another of her rank, an issue of territory and their boundaries. Both arguments are heard. The Great Alpha rules in favor of the defending party. Another wolf comes after that, with a challenge of grievance against a garou of lesser rank regarding ill treatment of a protected kinfolk. The Great Alpha rules in favor of the higher-ranked wolf. And so it goes.
The cracking has begun.
my whole life is thunder.