20 december 2013
Atlanta GA
Hector refused to stop in Louisiana or Mississippi.
The Galliards at the Sept of the Unending Horizon assured him they would spread news as far as they could reach while he kept pressing east. So he did not have to stop in Louisiana. The moon bridge carried him past it. Mississippi would have gotten him killed. He's got a Yankee accent and long hair. The Northern hippie aspect of his appearance was the least of his worries. So the moon bridge took him past that too.
In the morning he stopped at the Sept of the Unending Horizon. Late that afternoon he arrived at the Sept of the Gate in Atlanta. The Bone Gnawer and the Shadow Lord who stood guard at the moon gate greeted him with suspicion at first. They hadn't ever heard of him and besides, he rocked up unannounced. Lanky-ass long-haired breedless thing that he was. Didn't protest when the Ahroun who the Nation deeded Boner-Killer grabbed him by the collar and put him on the ground because he wasn't getting to the point quick enough.
By the time he got through explaining what in the hell he thought he was doing they were invested in the story's ending only it didn't have an ending yet. That's what he was out here doing. Writing an ending.
Boner-Killer was five-foot-four in her human skin and had gold capping several of her front teeth so they glinted when she hauled him to his feet again and smiled at him.
"You crazy," she said. "Come sit your ass down and tell us some more stories, man."
So she took him to her brother's auto body shop on the edge of the Bawn and mass-texted a bunch of people who weren't connected to the American Dream who her pack had followed for years. Her kinsman drove a Cadillac Escalade and asked Sup? when Hector got in the back but otherwise they didn't talk.
At the shop Hector met the rest of Boner-Killer's pack. Deep-Shit and Oh-No-You-Did-Not and Smashes-Cans-With-Her-Head. Younger Garou who didn't have deed names yet but who had earned similarly colorful nicknames.
He drank the beer they shoved at him out of hospitality. When he started getting tanked off of one of Smashes-Cans-With-Her-Head's homebrew beers he stood up and lifted his shirt to show them the scar on his right side.
"Lemme see the other side!" Deep-Shit the Theurge said.
Hector turned around long enough for the others to whoop and laugh at the exit wound on his flank. Someone wolf-whistled before he dropped his shirt.
"Shit, little man, you got fucked RIGHT up."
"Yeah I did!" Hector said. "It was AWESOME."
"TELL THE FUCKIN STORY, MAN!" said Smashes-Cans-With-Her-Head.
Were not for the fact that 400 miles lay between him and his destination he might have just stayed there all night getting jacked up on beer and stories but no no guys seriously. Gotta keep on moving. No more beer.
The Sept of the Gate rustled up their Galliards and one of them slapped the Uktena on the back and bade him good luck on finding his sisters. Hector was just proud of himself for not puking. He shifted to his wolf skin and burned off the liquid damage done. The temperature was warmer here than it would be in New York but today he was not in New York. He ran until the dead hours of the next morning and then he bedded down in the forest and slept dry and warm in the middle of December.
Don't ever go to Atlanta, was the advice he gave the rest of his pack. They party like it's 1999.
21 december 2013
Cherokee, NC
No one threw Echoes of the Lost to the ground or goaded him into a game of Show Me Yours I'll Show You Mine at the Sept of the Seven Clans the next morning and he did not come through the moon bridge. They were not expecting him. The Uktena of the Qualla Territory had already heard whispers of a Lost Galliard risen in renown out in Colorado come this way to spread news of what was happening in a city sept and negotiate an exchange of information.
He came in through the Bawn and he spoke to the Warders. They did not trust that he was who he said he was until he told them who his great-grandfather was. Ashkii He-Who-Waits-For-Dawn. Athro spirit-talker and son of Manaba Ten-Claws, the woman warrior whose mate died in the Padre Canyon incident of 1899. All of her children were born true and all of them died young. They knew these names but their lawgiver cut his hand with silver to test his truth and his heritage anyway. He was who he said he was. The last of his line if his unborn child did not survive.
Though he flinched when the knife bit into his palm the Cliath did not pull his hand away. The lawgiver grunted at what the blood told her and she told him to come with her. They would ask for a vision. Sweat until they thought blood and smoke would come up out of their pores.
And he went with her. Told the moondancers what he knew and what he hoped to know and then he sat in the wood smoke filling his lungs with tobacco and cannabis when the pipe came to him and drinking the tea when it came to him. He does not remember what happened but he saw something. Nothing that could help him right at that moment. His face was damp when he came back to his body and they asked him if he wished to stay the night.
Night had turned to day and he had lost track of time.
His woman was at the Bawn waiting for him and he had to find his sisters. He gave his hosts the journal he had kept all year. The stories he had written down of Hives in Wendigo territory and pits out west. What happened to Maria Hornet's Nest who died a Fostern when her wisdom went unheard. Their moondancers could not promise to broker with the other septs but they would try.
He did not vomit this time either but he felt no pride as he left the Sept of the Seven Clans. He didn't feel much of anything. He saw the future laid out before him like the branches of an old and stubborn tree and he did not know which branch to climb or which ones would snap and cause him to fall but it did not cause him fear.
Hector left the Bawn and kept walking until he found his woman's car.
22 december 2013
Durham, NC
Everyone in the nurse's station stared as the young man nodded at whatever Helen had said and turned and walked back out of the pediatric wing. Helen was a first-year resident. No one had a problem with her. She was sharp and tireless and had a bedside manner that did not condescend either the patients or their parents. Though she did not laugh often when she did it was an honest and hopeful sound. She liked to spend her free time in the break room eating popcorn and watching old black-and-white films with the sound off so she and the nurses and other residents could insert their own dialogue.
No one approached her to ask her what had happened. They had watched the young man orbit the wing several times before someone thought to call security. The glint in his eyes unnerved the secretary. She was covering a shift for the permanent daytime secretary and normally worked in the emergency department. If she thought someone looked unhinged and needed to leave no one was going to argue with her.
He had cornered Helen by the linen cart and though Helen looked terrified she had not raised her voice or called for her. After her initial shock had worn off she had embraced the young man and gripped his jacket and spoken low in his ear. Whatever she said went unheard by the others and when they parted she told him she got off at eight. Wrote something in her notepad and tore off the paper and shoved it into his hand and told him he had to get out of here.
Ten seconds after he ducked across the threshold and back into the hallway two security officers arrived. Helen intercepted one of them but the other one recognized the description the secretary had given them and broke away to follow him.
"Wait!" she said. Her eyes shimmered but she did not cry. He waited. "That was my brother. Please, don't, he's leaving, he's not here to cause trouble."
The secretary just shrugged through the glass at the security officers and went back to her phone call.
---
Later that night as she changed back into her street clothes Helen called her older sister Cassandra. She had texted her earlier to tell her something had happened but both women worked long hours and Cassandra had a seven-year-old son besides.
"What's going on?" Cassandra said when their call connected.
"I think I'm losing my mind."
"Is this about one of your TV shows or did something actually happen?"
"Hector came into the peds ward today."
Slamming locker doors on one end and droning voices on the other.
"Cass?" Helen said.
"That's not funny."
"I'm not trying to be funny, someone called me yesterday from a number I didn't recognize saying they were Hector and I didn't believe them, so I hung up on them. Then this guy showed up today and… it was him. I'm not making this up."
"Holy sh--schnitzel."
"Yeah."
"You're absolutely sure it was him."
"Either that or he has a doppelgänger who's decided to come back and go on a havoc-wreaking spree in Durham. He's gotten taller and like. Meaner. This guy looked mean. It's… yeah. It's him."
A pair of new voices came into the locker room cackling at something that died with the door's closing and her sister sighed hard into the receiver.
"A doppelgänger? You need to lay off the TV."
"It could happen."
"I just… that's unbelievable."
"What do I do?"
"Well, what did you do?"
"I told him to come by the apartment after I get off work."
"Are you freaking kidding me."
"What was I supposed to do?"
"God, Helen, I don't know. I failed to ask for a he hunts down my sister at the hospital where she works contingency when that creepy FBI guy told me what to do five years ago."
"Four. It was four years ago."
"So you're going to be alone with him."
"I can handle myself."
"That's great. So…"
"I can't handle Dad though."
"Helen. No."
"I never ask you for anything."
"I am not telling Dad."
"So tell Mom. She can tell Dad. She married him."
"You owe me."
"Yeah, okay."
"Well, don't die. If I have to find another babysitter when Jay and I go on vacation next year because you let some creep pretending to be our brother into your house I'm going to kill you."
Atlanta GA
Hector refused to stop in Louisiana or Mississippi.
The Galliards at the Sept of the Unending Horizon assured him they would spread news as far as they could reach while he kept pressing east. So he did not have to stop in Louisiana. The moon bridge carried him past it. Mississippi would have gotten him killed. He's got a Yankee accent and long hair. The Northern hippie aspect of his appearance was the least of his worries. So the moon bridge took him past that too.
In the morning he stopped at the Sept of the Unending Horizon. Late that afternoon he arrived at the Sept of the Gate in Atlanta. The Bone Gnawer and the Shadow Lord who stood guard at the moon gate greeted him with suspicion at first. They hadn't ever heard of him and besides, he rocked up unannounced. Lanky-ass long-haired breedless thing that he was. Didn't protest when the Ahroun who the Nation deeded Boner-Killer grabbed him by the collar and put him on the ground because he wasn't getting to the point quick enough.
By the time he got through explaining what in the hell he thought he was doing they were invested in the story's ending only it didn't have an ending yet. That's what he was out here doing. Writing an ending.
Boner-Killer was five-foot-four in her human skin and had gold capping several of her front teeth so they glinted when she hauled him to his feet again and smiled at him.
"You crazy," she said. "Come sit your ass down and tell us some more stories, man."
So she took him to her brother's auto body shop on the edge of the Bawn and mass-texted a bunch of people who weren't connected to the American Dream who her pack had followed for years. Her kinsman drove a Cadillac Escalade and asked Sup? when Hector got in the back but otherwise they didn't talk.
At the shop Hector met the rest of Boner-Killer's pack. Deep-Shit and Oh-No-You-Did-Not and Smashes-Cans-With-Her-Head. Younger Garou who didn't have deed names yet but who had earned similarly colorful nicknames.
He drank the beer they shoved at him out of hospitality. When he started getting tanked off of one of Smashes-Cans-With-Her-Head's homebrew beers he stood up and lifted his shirt to show them the scar on his right side.
"Lemme see the other side!" Deep-Shit the Theurge said.
Hector turned around long enough for the others to whoop and laugh at the exit wound on his flank. Someone wolf-whistled before he dropped his shirt.
"Shit, little man, you got fucked RIGHT up."
"Yeah I did!" Hector said. "It was AWESOME."
"TELL THE FUCKIN STORY, MAN!" said Smashes-Cans-With-Her-Head.
Were not for the fact that 400 miles lay between him and his destination he might have just stayed there all night getting jacked up on beer and stories but no no guys seriously. Gotta keep on moving. No more beer.
The Sept of the Gate rustled up their Galliards and one of them slapped the Uktena on the back and bade him good luck on finding his sisters. Hector was just proud of himself for not puking. He shifted to his wolf skin and burned off the liquid damage done. The temperature was warmer here than it would be in New York but today he was not in New York. He ran until the dead hours of the next morning and then he bedded down in the forest and slept dry and warm in the middle of December.
Don't ever go to Atlanta, was the advice he gave the rest of his pack. They party like it's 1999.
21 december 2013
Cherokee, NC
No one threw Echoes of the Lost to the ground or goaded him into a game of Show Me Yours I'll Show You Mine at the Sept of the Seven Clans the next morning and he did not come through the moon bridge. They were not expecting him. The Uktena of the Qualla Territory had already heard whispers of a Lost Galliard risen in renown out in Colorado come this way to spread news of what was happening in a city sept and negotiate an exchange of information.
He came in through the Bawn and he spoke to the Warders. They did not trust that he was who he said he was until he told them who his great-grandfather was. Ashkii He-Who-Waits-For-Dawn. Athro spirit-talker and son of Manaba Ten-Claws, the woman warrior whose mate died in the Padre Canyon incident of 1899. All of her children were born true and all of them died young. They knew these names but their lawgiver cut his hand with silver to test his truth and his heritage anyway. He was who he said he was. The last of his line if his unborn child did not survive.
Though he flinched when the knife bit into his palm the Cliath did not pull his hand away. The lawgiver grunted at what the blood told her and she told him to come with her. They would ask for a vision. Sweat until they thought blood and smoke would come up out of their pores.
And he went with her. Told the moondancers what he knew and what he hoped to know and then he sat in the wood smoke filling his lungs with tobacco and cannabis when the pipe came to him and drinking the tea when it came to him. He does not remember what happened but he saw something. Nothing that could help him right at that moment. His face was damp when he came back to his body and they asked him if he wished to stay the night.
Night had turned to day and he had lost track of time.
His woman was at the Bawn waiting for him and he had to find his sisters. He gave his hosts the journal he had kept all year. The stories he had written down of Hives in Wendigo territory and pits out west. What happened to Maria Hornet's Nest who died a Fostern when her wisdom went unheard. Their moondancers could not promise to broker with the other septs but they would try.
He did not vomit this time either but he felt no pride as he left the Sept of the Seven Clans. He didn't feel much of anything. He saw the future laid out before him like the branches of an old and stubborn tree and he did not know which branch to climb or which ones would snap and cause him to fall but it did not cause him fear.
Hector left the Bawn and kept walking until he found his woman's car.
22 december 2013
Durham, NC
Everyone in the nurse's station stared as the young man nodded at whatever Helen had said and turned and walked back out of the pediatric wing. Helen was a first-year resident. No one had a problem with her. She was sharp and tireless and had a bedside manner that did not condescend either the patients or their parents. Though she did not laugh often when she did it was an honest and hopeful sound. She liked to spend her free time in the break room eating popcorn and watching old black-and-white films with the sound off so she and the nurses and other residents could insert their own dialogue.
No one approached her to ask her what had happened. They had watched the young man orbit the wing several times before someone thought to call security. The glint in his eyes unnerved the secretary. She was covering a shift for the permanent daytime secretary and normally worked in the emergency department. If she thought someone looked unhinged and needed to leave no one was going to argue with her.
He had cornered Helen by the linen cart and though Helen looked terrified she had not raised her voice or called for her. After her initial shock had worn off she had embraced the young man and gripped his jacket and spoken low in his ear. Whatever she said went unheard by the others and when they parted she told him she got off at eight. Wrote something in her notepad and tore off the paper and shoved it into his hand and told him he had to get out of here.
Ten seconds after he ducked across the threshold and back into the hallway two security officers arrived. Helen intercepted one of them but the other one recognized the description the secretary had given them and broke away to follow him.
"Wait!" she said. Her eyes shimmered but she did not cry. He waited. "That was my brother. Please, don't, he's leaving, he's not here to cause trouble."
The secretary just shrugged through the glass at the security officers and went back to her phone call.
---
Later that night as she changed back into her street clothes Helen called her older sister Cassandra. She had texted her earlier to tell her something had happened but both women worked long hours and Cassandra had a seven-year-old son besides.
"What's going on?" Cassandra said when their call connected.
"I think I'm losing my mind."
"Is this about one of your TV shows or did something actually happen?"
"Hector came into the peds ward today."
Slamming locker doors on one end and droning voices on the other.
"Cass?" Helen said.
"That's not funny."
"I'm not trying to be funny, someone called me yesterday from a number I didn't recognize saying they were Hector and I didn't believe them, so I hung up on them. Then this guy showed up today and… it was him. I'm not making this up."
"Holy sh--schnitzel."
"Yeah."
"You're absolutely sure it was him."
"Either that or he has a doppelgänger who's decided to come back and go on a havoc-wreaking spree in Durham. He's gotten taller and like. Meaner. This guy looked mean. It's… yeah. It's him."
A pair of new voices came into the locker room cackling at something that died with the door's closing and her sister sighed hard into the receiver.
"A doppelgänger? You need to lay off the TV."
"It could happen."
"I just… that's unbelievable."
"What do I do?"
"Well, what did you do?"
"I told him to come by the apartment after I get off work."
"Are you freaking kidding me."
"What was I supposed to do?"
"God, Helen, I don't know. I failed to ask for a he hunts down my sister at the hospital where she works contingency when that creepy FBI guy told me what to do five years ago."
"Four. It was four years ago."
"So you're going to be alone with him."
"I can handle myself."
"That's great. So…"
"I can't handle Dad though."
"Helen. No."
"I never ask you for anything."
"I am not telling Dad."
"So tell Mom. She can tell Dad. She married him."
"You owe me."
"Yeah, okay."
"Well, don't die. If I have to find another babysitter when Jay and I go on vacation next year because you let some creep pretending to be our brother into your house I'm going to kill you."
Look. I have school. And RP. And all my other time is taken up by sheer, unreasoning panic. I don't have time for Reddit.
-- ixphaelaeon
-- ixphaelaeon