The Crescent Moon of Wisdom [attn.: EVERYONE]

[mnemosyne]

They are all shaken from their sleep. Not merely the adults and not by the flat pounding of a hand against the door, but by an urge that is bone deep and instinctive, by the nameless imperative of the sickle moon.

--

Among those kinfolk navigating the trails through the dark and enduring light to Persse Place: Éva and her children. Listen, none of them are crying. Ellie, now a very adult ten, takes the flashlight handed to her mother by the kinfolk guardians and handles it with a steady gravity, conscious that she is lighting the way for her family. Conscious of the slice of moon visible through the threaded, angular slices of dramatic red sandstone. Conscious of the strangers all around.

Éva carries Jozsef, wrapped in a well-worn blanket. He is an armful, heavy, but wraps himself so readily around his mother, arms around her neck, forehead resting on her left shoulder, index and middle fingers tucked thoughtfully into his mouth, watching the trail they hike uncurl like a ribbon behind them through sleepy, half-open eyes. Andris, who is five, has been wrestled into jeans and tennis shoes but is still wearing the Batman pajama top he went to sleep in. Ellie velcroed his cape back on at his insistence, but the pleasure of the thing is wholly lost when he was wrapped up in the coat he tried to insist he did not need. Sometimes he holds his mother's free hand. Sometimes Ellie's, and once or twice the girl permits her younger brother the deep honor of bearing the flashlight and lighting their way.

Rozsa waits at the park's entrance for her other children to arrive, then comes after. She is older, slower on the trails, but knows them as well as any here and despite the pain in her knees and her shoulder - there will be a change in the weather soon, Rozsa always feels them in her bones - she will arrive in the clearing soon enough.

The boys resemble their mother. Dark hair and pale skin, although Jozsef has his father's blue eyes where Andris' are as dark as Éva's. The girl though, who is turning leggy now, almost but-not-quite pre-adolescent, has darker skin, and long, gleaming, near-black hair. All of them smell like thunder.

--

The quartet stand with the rest, outside the homestead. Éva shifts Jozsef from her left shoulder to her right, but never puts him down. It is cold, but they do enter the shelter reserved for those who require it, although when Rozsa finally reaches the clearing - in the hushed few minutes just before the gathering, and judgment, begin - Éva surrenders the half-sleeping toddler in her arms to his grandmother, who takes him inside. Then she crouches down, picks up five year old Andris, not to shield him from what will come, not precisely, but to be close, assured, steady, protective, and

(perhaps)

because she needs him too. So they stand, now a trio, mother, and daughter, and son. The boy wraps his legs around her torso and his arms around her neck. The girl is kept close, just in front, and sometimes feels the rough, present slide of her mother's hand through her hair.

--

And thus, they bear witness.

Éva keeps her arms wrapped around Andris, keeps him there, but facing away from the center of the loose circle of Garou and kin. Ellie, oh Ellie, the girl watches nearly all of it, serious and wide-eyed and grim-mouthed. Nearly all of it,

but, she is a child. Ellie turns away at the end, seeks refuge against her mother's body. Ellie turns away at the end.

Éva never does.