The Crescent Moon of Wisdom [attn.: EVERYONE]

[jamie]

Hector told Lola a story about Gaia's Vengeful Teeth once. No one had told the story since it happened and her mate did not tell it well because there was no way to tell it that could make it real. He did not want to make it real and he did not think she'd ever have to see it.

A Garou whose name did not survive any more than his body did. Dragged before his Sept alone even though his former brethren held the chains. His rank and his moon did nothing to keep him from betraying his people. They killed the Black Spiral Dancer with whom he'd spent more than one night and they killed the rest of her pack and then the Athro Theurge who led the pack that took in a Lost Cub, who led the rites there in the desert for a time, he screamed the litany of sins committed by this wolf and anointed him with his blood and his tears and then his former pack harried him onto the earth that chewed up his bones.

Echoes of the Lost had no name then and he had no rank and he had no pack. He had seventeen years behind him but they were seventeen years of a mortal life and a lawgiver of his tribe and fostering pack held him by the back of his scrawny soft neck and growled at him not to dare look away. This is what happens to traitors.

Four years gone since then and he comes to the Caern when he's called. Neither scrawny nor soft anymore. He and his pack and the Kinfolk who run with the pack. And they stand and they watch. No children cling to their legs and none of them call themselves children anymore. They are all gone from their parents in some way. The War and the way they fight the War has made metaphors and orphans of them.

And he sat at the Moot and he did not say a word. With the moon hung heavy overhead he sat with the people he's chosen and he watched and he did not say a goddamn word. The moon is a scythe now and he does not sit. The entire time he does not sit. He blinks because he has to blink and he holds his kinswoman's hand because she has not seen this before.

He has seen it before but that does not mean he does not turn away when one of their own is shunned. That his jaws don't work when a wolf goes along with a patch of fur, that he doesn't put his arm around Lola's shoulders and tuck her in against his side when Warning Threshold asks a question with an answer sharper than the knife that flayed him. Because Hector knows what's coming he reaches out to grab Tamsin's elbow. Not for his sake but for hers.

Don't look away.

Four years ago Hector tried to leave. He'd thought he'd had enough and could just stroll back to his old life like nothing happened but the lawgiver grabbed him and hit him until he showed his throat and he never thought of leaving again. Not even a reverb of a thought of leaving now.

He stands until the judgment is done and when it's done Echoes of the Lost, silent, guides his pack home again.