[attn: kai, Samael, CourtCat, Umbralwind] seeking a Spiral cub

[errin]

Finally, it seems as though maybe Denver's spirit population is calming. Finally, the Theurges that have been working endlessly for weeks to soothe and banish and cleanse and calm the denizens of the Umbra can take longer breaks. They can rest. They can regain their full strength.

Over the past few weeks Phoebe hasn't done much outside of her work as a Theurge. Her brother has watched over her gallery on Santa Fe in her stead while she made talens or summoned or commanded spirits away. In between these times, she's slept. A lot. It hasn't left much time for investigation. She hasn't had the opportunity to seek an audience with the young Ahroun cub like she's wanted.

Today, she's rested enough to ride from Littleton to Roxborough. She and whichever of her sisters could come with her park outside the park's gates. And they walk. And they walk. Phoebe in a tank top and shorts and hiking boots, her long hair twisted up off the back of her neck. She walks until she's more than sure they've been spotted by the Guardians of the sacred Caern, and she stops.

Tucked inside her bag, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, she has a gift as well. A little clay figure of a flower, glazed green and blue. The first attempt at the little creation was not so good. Phoebe couldn't help but think of the people she's lost, friends dead and gone beneath the claws and gullets of the Beloved Horror. She thought about Champion of Honor and his easy presence, corrupted. She thought about the Guardians of Cold Crescent, all dead. When she saw what her hands had created she'd frowned, threw it on the table, and left it there. The next day she tried again, and the result is something she can be proud of, something that can show that even though she hates, she's trying.

"I'd like to speak with Fern," she announces to the quiet, seeming emptiness.

=====
Included UW because I asked but he never answered, so here's the proof that he was in the room with me when I rolled:

Umbralwind @ 9:55AM
How're you?

niko @ 9:56AM
Nah bad, you?

niko @ 9:59AM
Actually can you witness a roll for me really quickly?

niko @ 10:02AM
[Phoebe: dex+crafts (pottery)]
Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 4, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP] VALID

niko @ 10:07AM
[Phoebe: not good enough, taking a day to make another]
Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP] VALID

=====
[[edited to allow for pack time!]]

[errin]

[[I lied, it's totally a white flower because I don't feel like photoshopping the crap out of something. This is the last time I describe a thing and THEN go looking for it!

The flower (is a hairpin):


via midori designs]]

[Umbralwind]

[PS! I Did answer, I guess Niko never saw it! I DID however Witness that roll!]

[errin]

[this is the first reply i'm seeing to this thread, so post in!]

[Samael]

Phoebe isn't alone when she arrives at the Sept of Forgotten Questions. Keisha has, like Phoebe and most of the Theurges in the city, in a state of constant motion over the last month working to return Denver to a state of relative normalcy. It's helped the Child of Gaia from dropping too far into her own thoughts, which all of her packsisters can probably guess at this point is a dangerous place for Keisha to be. Now things are easing off just a touch and Still Waters has, like the other Desert Oracles, found herself trying to work certain mysteries out.

Phoebe has a plan, and it is one that Keisha is solidly behind. She accompanies the Fury to Roxborough, having put on a simple sleeveless white top and full-length skirt. It's not particularly suited for long walks but it's comfortable clothing for her. Her dreads hang free and she keeps pace easily enough with her alpha as they approach.

Phoebe's thoughts are on the people she's lost when she made her gift; Keisha's hinge on loss now. The weight of those lives taken weigh heavy on the ahimsa, whether she knew them or not. Of course, the heaviest weight are those of Cold Crescent's Guardians.

She stands there next to Phoebe, staff in her right hand, as the leader of the Desert Oracles makes her declaration.

[Umbralwind]

Of course Sophia would come along with, any chance to spend more time doing something useful was always welcome, so Sophia would have rode with Phoebe, asking questions about the area along the way. Her curiosity seemed immense despite her somewhat more advanced rank. It was almost as if learning were her driving goal, and she wanted to know everything, every single little thing, whether that be the reason a rock is red in color or someones favorite ice cream flavor.

Still she knew when to be quiet and she kept close to Phoebe... Except, of course, when they got far enough out that they were allowed to shift. As soon as she had the opportunity the woman disappeared, leaving behind a shirt, some pants, and some underwear somewhere near the car, in favor of a form she seemed to delight in wearing. She wasn't born a wolf, but she wore the skin with such surprising comfort. The fact that she could do this was a blessing in itself and she was more than happy to explore the form and get comfortable in seeing through the eyes of a wolf.

So the silver furred wolf trotted along, never far outside of Phoebe's line of site for more than a minute or two, and she took the time to get to know the sights and smells of this place, especially the smells! Wolves primary sense was their sense of smell so it was important to get to know one's surroundings through the proper filter.

When they came upon the sept her tail wagged and her ears perked excitedly. She was here to do what was needed... She was here to assist her sister!

[kai]

The first time Phoebe and her sisters come to Forgotten Questions, well:

Fern runs away and hides. The garou who are sort-of watching over her and rehabilitating her can't quite explain it, and end up running after her to make sure she doesn't get herself lost in the umbra, but she doesn't want anything to do with garou from Cold Crescent.

The second time, the cub is losing it a bit. She throws some rocks at the Oracles and bolts. She yells GO AWAY a few times until her caretakers... guardians... whatever you call them drag her off before she offends a couple of fosterns too much.

It takes a third visit before Fern is, quite plainly, brought to them with heavy hands on her shoulders steering her skinny frame towards the Desert Oracles. She's got her arms tight to her sides, her body tense. Her hair is long and lank and greasy; they can't get her to bathe very often and she actually isn't allowed to spend much time out of lupus form.

"Behave," says the philodox who has been tasked with mentoring the girl until she's sane enough to submit to another ahroun's leadership, and Fern just... looks miserable standing there, keeping a solid six feet between herself and the Oracles. She's dressed in jeans with blown-out knees that are too short for her long legs and a plain t-shirt grabbed from some lost and found bin, both of which are pretty filthy because she doesn't do laundry any more than she bathes. Her feet are bare. Her arms are crossed high and tight over her chest, hands under her biceps.

Fern doesn't say a word. She just stares at Phoebe, Sophia and Keisha, giving them a wary glower.

[errin]

Phoebe isn't a Garou of Cold Crescent. She lives closer to the rural sept than she does the city, she is found around the sept often, dealing with spirits, making talens, roaming barefoot along the trails. Most of the Garou here remember when she was a child, playing in the dirt, making shapes with the mud. Toddling in the wake of her mother or another family member.

Fern doesn't know her, though. Phoebe has stayed away from the rehabilitating Cub. Fern sees Phoebe and her sisters and thinks she's a city wolf and she flees. But Phoebe is patient, and she is persistent.

And finally, Fern is brought before them. Phoebe stares at the girl who glowers at her and her sisters, her green-and-brown eyes taking in the torn clothing, the greasy hair, the bare feet. On this meeting, she has removed her own boots, left them neatly placed somewhere else. Her bag is over there, too, wherever 'there' is. The figure she presents isn't all that different, at least on the surface, from the Ahroun's. Phoebe is tall and too-skinny, but she stands with the weight of rank. She is a Fostern. She is an Alpha.

Seeing the girl's condition, her fear of them, it's not hard for the Black Fury to be gentle. She doesn't have to swallow down a sudden spike of her Rage. This girl wanted to join the ranks of the monsters that cleaved the Stavros family in half, but she is a child. A dangerous child, but a child still. And besides, Phoebe told her sisters they were going into this as good cops. Well, not really cops at all, but still, they're coming to her with kindness. Fern has seen enough bad cops to last a lifetime. Among the Spirals maybe. At Cold Crescent perhaps (not sure how much of the Warder's spirit-breaking is known to the septs at large so leaving that as not-definitive).

"We brought you a gift," she says, but she doesn't move closer to give it to Fern. Instead she holds it out to the Philodox. "You can take it or leave it."

=====
niko @ 2:15PM
[charisma (captivating) + empathy: i come in peace, seriously.]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1 VALID

Samael @ 2:16PM
Witnessed!

Shay @ 2:16PM
Witnessed!

niko @ 2:18PM
Thanks!

[kai]

Fern stares at Phoebe, then looks at the thing in her hand, which -- at her distance -- is mostly a white blob. She flares her nostrils, looking feral as any born-wild creature. She didn't look feral the first night that she was seen outside of Pints Pub. To mortal eyes she looks far more dangerous now, far more savage and murderous. Fern is among garou, though; outside of the city and outside of tidy little shoes and a Peter Pan collar and so forth, her animalism is a sign that maybe... finally... she's actually starting to get better.

She looks at the thing in Phoebe's hand, then at the ground in between them, like drawing an arrow. Her eyes dark right back up to Phoebe, questioning.

[Samael]

Keisha hasn't seen Fern since that first night when she came up to Jack and fawned so creepily over him, and then was drugged and taken off by Cold Crescent's…well. Let's not think about that, because that's about where Keisha stops herself to avoid falling into depression. The point is, she has not pushed things to visit her. There are people better-suited to trying to repair Fern's fractured mind and soul than she is, and while everything in her has been itching to drop by at every one of the regular trips she's made to Forgotten Questions as one of the Oracles, she held off. Besides, there was new crisis that had kept her busy for so long.

But she's here now, and the change in Fern is startling. She isn't at all surprised that it takes three separate visits for them to be able to see her; she expects that the cub will consider anyone an enemy at this point, and that they work with both septs probably doesn't help. She takes a stand just behind Phoebe and to her right, her staff laid down a few feet behind them so as not to appear threatening. The suspicious glare that Fern sends their way is returned with a gentle and sympathetic smile from the Child of Gaia that is truly genuine. Keisha has her times when she uses deception as a tool (what have we said about her being among the most human of Garou?), but now is not one of those times.

The plan was to go in as "good cops" (but not cops), and it was one that Keisha readily agreed to for obvious reasons. Some call the Gaian naïve, and that could be an apt description depending on who you are, but the fact that Fern is here and being worked on rather than just having been ended outright speaks to the fact that, with this girl at least, she's not alone in the idea that there is hope. Keisha's counting on that hope because she wants to see this poor girl find her way…and in a small part because Goddess damn it, they need a win.

When Phoebe offers the gift and Fern suggests it be set down, Keisha smiles. That's a start.

"How are you, Fern?" She asks the question in a softer voice; not quieter, but gentler. The last thing they need is to spook the girl and ruin all of this.

Samael @ 2:49PM
[[Charisma+Empathy: You're safe with us.]]
Roll: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP] VALID

jamie @ 2:50PM
Ka-ching!

niko @ 2:54PM
Witnessed!