December: Stories and Songs

[kai]

Avery, for the first time since coming to Denver, walks into the gathering place during the telling of stories and singing of songs. She has shifted, for now as in the Cracking, to the skin she was born in, the face of wealth and privilege and education the likes of which many -- many among the wolves here -- cannot even imagine, much less count among their experiences.

Two months ago, Erich got up here and talked about what a great fighter she is, how she puts the Wyrm to its grave faster and easier than he does, and he's an Ahroun. It was not the first time her name has been lauded at a moot here, and it was far from the last. But it's the first time that Avery herself takes the bone. Maybe she doesn't because she's a Philodox; they are the keepers of balance. They may inspire, they may queston, they may teach, they may remember the tales of their people, but these things are not their true purpose, and perhaps they more than most have reason to leave the floor to those of more passionate auspices. To stand and watch, and -- of course -- to judge.

Tonight, particularly in the wake of the Cracking and the Great Alpha's decision on Cold Crescent, she walks forward, and she looks directly at that aged of elders, wolf of her moon, judge of septs, balance of the caern.

"Siren of Persephone-yuf is an honorable wolf," she tells him, her voice clear, firm, but deferential. "In the lower levels of Cold Crescent, she came with the pack she leads, and they wore the white bone paint of her tribe. Some more traditional would say that this could offend Pegasus and her brood, to permit those not of the Furies to wear it; someone more emotional would recall that it is a gift of great esteem and unity to share the war paint of a tribe with a friend of other blood. A pragmatic -- or perhaps cynical -- mind might say that in these very dark days, we must all do whatever it takes to keep our people alive."

Avery pauses. "I am not here to cast judgement either way: spiritual, practical, or sentimental. What I do know is that the Desert Oracles were attacked often that night by the Beloved Horror, stronger wolves than any Cliath or Fostern had any reason to be facing. And I saw there were times when those attacks shied. Not always. Not every one. But sometimes, they flinched, because of Siren of Persephone's foresight and wisdom. Sometimes they hesitated to attack the Oracles, because Siren of Persephone-yuf was an honorable alpha to her pack, potentially incurring the displeasure of the spirits in order to lead and guard them. In a pack with no Ahroun, no Galliard, none but Theurges, the importance of this kind of foresight and protection cannot be understated."

She looks over her shoulder at the two Striders she has been standing with all night, then back to the Great Alpha, as though he is her only audience. "Anubis Sight-yuf is an honorable wolf. He is proud, but he does not wear his pride as a crown or mantle. He is reserved, but only a fool would mistake that for indifference. He is calm, but when he fights the Wyrm, he is hell.

"When we descended into that terror, when we had just seen Raspberry Sky's body dropped in front of us, when we knew that very likely we would all die beside or within that pit, Anubis Sight-yuf threw himself in front of the Theurges who were with us. Their survival meant that the rest of us might have a chance. Their survival -- and even their ability to focus on their summoning and rituals -- meant that those who fought with tooth and claw might be able to make a dent. If he had not been willing to risk death for those rituals, the Theurges would have died.

"We all would have died.

"What Warning Threshold-rhya called a 'mine of nightmares' would have been opened."

She is silent a moment, watching the Great Alpha. "He would have died for the mere chance of preventing that. He is an honorable wolf, Rhya. There is a reason so many of us heed him when he speaks, and it is not simply his strength in battle."

Avery takes a breath, and exhales slowly.

"Echoes of the Lost would have died right alongside him. And I think he would have done so without regret. Nevermind the mate he loves, the child he waits for. Nevermind the packmates we all see him acting with as though they were born siblings. Nevermind the fact that Echoes of the Lost truly loves being alive. I have never seen him hesitate without calculation and reason. I have never seen him with anything but an expression of well-steeled determination when he is facing odds that are not even odds: they are almost certain death.

"Echoes of the Lost is an honorable wolf," she says, repeating this phrase yet again for the gathered garou. "He nearly died that night in the pit, because he stood between the Beloved Horror and the Theurges right alongside Javed. He covered those that Javed could not cover. And yet: he stayed canny. He gave his packmate time to blind their spirit-talker, he bought time for all of us, and he paid for that time -- he paid for all of us -- with open wounds, dripping blood to the ground."

And she keeps going.

"Storm's Teeth has stood here and told you of how glorious I am in battle. In fact, he stands at nearly every song-sharing and tells the wolves everything he can think of about how wonderful the rest of us are."

She huffs a slight breath from her nostrils.

"Storm's Teeth is an honorable wolf. At the risk of being punished, at the risk of being shamed, at the risk of the esteem that many of us prize so highly, he always speaks the truth. He always follows what he thinks is right. I have watched him, teeth clenched, accept punishment that left him raw because he believed that a greater purpose would be served, one beyond his own reputation. The last time we went hunting together, I was on the verge of death and he healed me, then went on fighting, because there was no one else to do either. In the lower levels of Cold Crescent he was a torrent of rage. He was the teeth of the storm. He was the wrath of hurricanes, and the thing that set him to frenzy was --"

Yes. A pause. Ms. Chase can tell stories too, Galliards.

"-- grief."

She glances, briefly, momentarily, at Erich, then back to the elder. "You may have heard him sing to Raspberry Sky at her gathering. That was real. And as furious as we all were when we saw her body kicked down to us, as disturbed as we all were when they began to laugh at our rage, it was Erich who felt, to the core, the wrongness of it all. The corrosive power not just of their evil, but of every murder, every move in their game. He snapped. He killed one. And never once turned his teeth on his comrades." Her voice is quiet, perhaps from invoking the name of the Theurge that was, if we're frank, beloved by almost everyone listening.

"Storm's Teeth is an honorable wolf, Rhya. His heart is pure.

"Black Sheep is an honorable wolf," and by now the words may very well echo, they may very well be shared by those who believe, because she has repeated them for these people, these names, these garou who stand for Cold Crescent. "In the pit, she, too, focused on the sheer wrongness of the Beloved Horror and all their actions. She did not summon spirits to cleanse, or call the souls of the Beloved Horror to wake from their totem's imposed slumber. She looked up to the graves, and she invited the spirits of our own people to take their vengeance.

"How clever," Avery says, shaking her head. "How compassionate. How ruthless to the Wyrm. How holy, in the way that our kind can be holy. I watched the ghosts she called rip through Green Dragon's bastards, howling their revenge. Raspberry Sky and Wind on Concrete were among them; the Guardians were among them. Friends, family members, packmates -- they all had a chance to pay the Beloved Horror back, because Black Sheep saw the imbalance, saw the void between what should be and what had been for so long, and sought to close it. Rhya, she is sharp-witted, she is powerful, and I know this: she keeps score. Perhaps not individually, but universally, spiritually. When she owes a debt, she pays it. When she sees balance, she clears the debt that is imagined. When she sees what the Wyrm takes, and takes, and takes from us..." Avery slashes the briefest of smiles, "she will pursue the restoration of that balance with a focus and ferocity that would shock those who named her 'Black Sheep'."

A very tiny pause there. She blinks, looks at Charlotte a moment, thinking something unrelated, then shakes it off and returns to the Great Alpha.

"Still Waters is an honorable wolf. She never gave up trying to find Champion of Honor. She never let herself off the hook for what happened to him. She worked herself to the bone trying to cleanse Cold Crescent. She went back to the place where she found him and learned all that she could. She worked tirelessly with Echoes of the Lost to find some way of fighting the Beloved Horror, of undoing what they'd done to themselves. None of us would be here if Still Waters had ever given up, if she had ever flagged, if she had let herself slip into harano, if she had lost herself in frenzies, if she had done anything but bend almost every drop of energy she had to finding a way to make things right again. That sort of moral core does not just happen on its own. That sort of dedication doesn't simply appear out of nowhere.

"Thunder's Cry Echoes from the Sea is an honorable wolf. Every time the moon is full, he speaks for all of us. He tells the tales, he remembers what we have done. I have never heard him speak of himself. I have never heard him use this gathering as an excuse to drag a name through the mud, but I have seen him talk quietly to his alpha. I have seen the work of his advice and his intellect in the way those who listen to him speak and behave. In battle he is steady and fearless, focused like few others. In moots he honors those around him, not for favors or payback or his own esteem, but because he is a keeper of our history and because we need to hear it.

"Pokes the Mind's Eye is an honorable wolf," she says, and one can tell she has to be winding down, because it's all too clear that she is focusing on the people who were most vocal about standing up to lead and protect Cold Crescent. "And he is the one I know least about, but I do know that when you need a volunteer, he is there. When you need someone to think a way that no one else thinks, he has an idea. When you send him in with a kinswoman to guard her back, he kills the thing that attacked her, gets her to a hospital, and grabs the information they went in to get. And you heard him before: he won't just die to protect Cold Crescent. He would rather die than see it undefended. He would rather," she adds, "tell you that you're dumb to your face rather than leave it easy for the Wyrm to get to. His life isn't important to him. Protecting the sept, defending the nation, and destroying the Wyrm is."

Avery closes her eyes for a moment, then slowly opens them again. "Honorable wolves, Alpha," she says, her throat rasping softly now on the words. "Please remember what I have said about them tonight. But more importantly, remember what they have said. Remember what they have done."

She exhales, and with an incline of her head towards the Talesinger, she yields, returning to stand with her packmate and the cub.