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August: Stories and Songs
#1
[Dazzle me, Hector!

But watch out! Ingrid-the-Fool can and may interrupt the singing of songs and telling of tales with A QUESTION. *dun dun dunnn*]
my whole life is thunder.
#2
Hector gets up there with more confidence than last month's Talesinger had gotten up there but the mood is different and the audience is smaller and so much more has happened. If the Uktena's nerves jangle then at least his body feeds off of the jangling. His voice is strong and does not quaver.

"Coyote was out walking one day when he met Old Woman. She lifted a hand to greet him and asked him where he thought he was off to even though everybody knew even back then not to pay too much mind to anything Coyote said.

"Oh you know, Coyote said, just out for a stroll.

"Well that way's no good, Old Woman said. You should turn back, there's a giant out there, he's killing everybody.

"Psh! said Coyote, who had never met a giant before. Giants don't frighten me! I always kill them. I'll fight this one too, and leave his head for the others to find.

"Alright... but he's bigger and closer than you think.

"Whatever. Coyote figured the giant would be about as big as a bull moose and wouldn't give him any trouble. I don't care. I'm going to fight him.

"So Coyote said goodbye to Old Woman and went on ahead, whistling a tune. After a while he saw a fallen branch big enough to serve as a club for something as big as a bull moose, so he picked it up and said to himself, Oh, man, this is big enough and heavy enough to kill him, I can just hit the giant over the head with this. Kept on walking. Whistling. Eventually he came to a huge cave right in the middle of the path and, thinking nothing of it, he went in."

Hector whistles a jaunty oh-isn't-it-a-beautiful-day tune and moseys along to the other side of the circle. Gestures to the space in front of him.

"Coyote met a woman crawling along on the ground.

"What are you doing down there? he asked.

"I'm starving, she said, and too weak to walk. What are you doing with that stick?

"I'm going to kill the giant with it! he said. Where's he at? I'm ready.

"Weak as she was, the woman laughed. You're already in the giant's belly.

"How can I be in his belly? I haven't even met him yet.

"You probably thought it was a cave when you walked into his mouth. It's easy to walk in, but nobody ever walks out. This giant is so big you can't take him in with your eyes. His belly fills the whole valley.

"Coyote tossed aside his stick and kept on walking. What else could he do? Soon he came across more people lying on the ground, too weak to move.

"Are you sick? he asked them.

"No, they said, we're starving to death. We're trapped inside this giant.

"That's ridiculous! Coyote said. If we're really inside this giant, then the cave walls must be the inside of his stomach. We can just cut some meat from him and you can eat that.

"Hey, we never thought of that...

"Yeah, well, you're not as smart as I am."

The pantomiming of the readying of a hunting knife. Held like a club but lighter in the hand. Dark eyes cast around the sky like the space was about as big as the one in the story before going back to the dwindled audience.

"So Coyote took his hunting knife and started cutting chunks out of the cave walls. Like he guessed, the walls were the giant's stomach, and he used the chunks of meat to feed the starving people. He even went back and gave some meat to the woman he first met. Then all the people trapped in the giant's belly started feeling stronger and happier, but not completely happy.

"You've fed us, they said, and we thank you, but how are we going to get out of here?

"Oh, don't worry, said Coyote, I'll kill the giant by stabbing him in the heart. Where's his heart? It's got to be around here somewhere."

He points to the east.

"Look at the volcano puffing over there, someone said. Maybe that's it.

"So it is, friend! said Coyote, and started cutting at the mountain.

"Then the giant spoke up.

"Is that you, Coyote? I've heard of you. You're bothering me. Stop this stabbing and cutting and let me be. You can leave through my mouth. I'll open it for you.

"Oh, I'll leave, said Coyote, but not quite yet.

"So Coyote kept hacking at the heart. The others stood behind him, not quite sure what was going to happen next.

"Get ready, Coyote said, as soon as I have him in his death throes, there's going to be an earthquake. He'll open his jaws to take a last breath, and then his mouth will close forever. So be ready to run fast!

"Coyote cut a deep hole in the giant's heart, and lava flowed out. It was the giant's blood. The giant groaned, and the ground under the people's feet started to tremble.

"Quick! Coyote said. Now! Go!

"The giant's mouth opened and all the people in the giant's belly started running, and then all the animals. All the people and all the animals made it out, but the wood tick was straggling. He was the last one to the giant's mouth. The giant's teeth were closing on him, but Coyote managed to pull him through at the last moment.

"Look at me! cried the wood tick. I'm all flat!

"Eh. So you're going to be flat from now on. Be glad you're still alive.

"I guess I'll get used to it, said the wood tick.

"He did."

A moment's pause to let the story settle and then Hector is all elbows as he hauls ass out of the circle to make room for the next Galliard. Or Erich. Or whoever.

More stories!

---

IDK if I'm supposed to roll stuff for Tales and Song opening-ing but here are some dice.

jamie @ 7:46AM
[char + perf: DON'T FUCK THIS UP HECTOR.]
Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 5, 6) ( success x 1 ) VALID

jamie @ 7:47AM
WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF A ROLL IS THAT redoing it.
Roll: 5 d10 TN7 (5, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) VALID

CourtCat @ 7:47AM
Witnessed!

jamie @ 7:47AM
<3
#3
Hector comes back up when the higher-ranked Galliards have finished their epic retellings of battles past if they tell anything at all. None of the lower-ranked Galliards tell anything at all. Without his sister this month he doesn't exactly look like a man walking without a crutch for the first time in years but the mood is different. That has less to do with Tamsin in particular being gone and more to do with the fact that they're missing quite a few bodies in general.

"No, no, that's fine," he says when he takes up his place in the circle again, pacing across it as he's wont to do, "I've got more where that came from. Two more, actually. One from each sept. Anyone else wanna get up here? Anyone? Anyone? Okay good."

He steps into the shadows to let a hush fall over the audience before he rematerializes again.

[LOL placeholder.]
#4
"One minute she was speaking at great length about an actor who had recently sort-of starred in a science fiction film that came out a few weeks earlier and the things she would do to him if she were to get him into her bedroom. The next she was crushing a monster's throat under the heel of her sandal."

Hector's voice comes before he even steps back into the fire-lit circle. It projects as it always does, dragging itself up out of the edges of the audience. In the silent spaces between his words the others can hear his boots scuffing through the dirt. He drags a foot. This is not his normal stride.

"The Hawkes family has been guarding the Bawn here since before the park was born. The true-born of their line were brave and cunning and the kinfolk were honest and tough. This particular Hawkes was born under a Full and the spirit-talkers thought they saw a Change in her future but the future came and it never happened. Her sister Maria died in defense of the Caern near Winnipeg. Her name's Lola and she's the only one left. She keeps a gun in her truck for when she's out doing patrols. She wasn't carrying it tonight."

The scuffing gait brings him to the edge of the circle and closer to the story. He doesn't hold himself like himself and those who follow his voice towards the light can see him slouching like a brain-wasted once-man what can barely hold itself upright. His long hair is yanked back but he's loosened the band so bits hang in his face.

"Near dusk. A park with big open fields and a breath-taking view of the mountains. Quiet. Lola was walking along after seeing a movie with her sister's packmate. They were alone, just about."

Scuff. Scuff. Scuff.

And the party stops for five seconds, ten, just on the border between Purposeful and Uncomfortable. He stands at the center of the dirt-stage with his mouth closed and his eyes unseeing and his balance such that he sways as he stands. Stares out at the audience the way the once-man stared at this story's hero. Just as performance threatens to turn into alarm he bursts out of that stance to imitate Lola, or A Purebred Young Uktena Kinswoman Of Mexican Descent:

"EY! THE FUCK YOU STARING DOWN, HUH? KEEP MOVING IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD."

Back in the circle instead of narrating from the darkness, Hector starts walking forward and one can hardly call it walking because he immediately returns to imitating the antagonist. Lurching is a better descriptor. Jerking occasionally. Like something in him still isn't working right and it's trying to burst out of his skin. In the wake of that outburst his voice is lugubrious. He twitches once or twice and the stage is not the place to be subtle but he is subtle because this story did not take place on a stage but in a quiet park near dusk.

"It came towards them. A young guy, tall, skinny, looked like he didn't get outside much. If he had anything to say to them his mouth didn't open until he was right on top of them. Lola told her sister's packmate her sidearm was in the truck and asked if she should get it."

And Hector leaps out of his impersonation to start walking across the stage instead of towards the audience like he's chasing after the exploded bits of the story, stalking it, back and forth with the fire behind him and not yet in his voice, gaining momentum like the circle is way too small for what they're doing but he has his brain and his voice and that's enough to live in for now.

"The thing threw itself at them and her sister's packmate was standing in front of her so he caught it and when it opened its mouth it had row on row of arrowhead teeth and it bit him and Lola didn't park her truck very far away but she was alone now, she had her back to the fight and if they were up in the city she would have locked the door, right, if they were up in the city she would have had to get her keys out of her pocket and unlock the door and that would have cost her seconds she didn't have, she got there in time to throw open the door and open the glovebox and turn around--"

He rips the band out of his hair so it comes falling down and gives him this wildman look that ratchets when he raises his voice. Throws out his arms as he comes around the fire on this last lap to give himself the impression of being tall and gangling. A different character than the one left fighting the Galliard in another sentence.

"It wasn't alone, must have been his girlfriend when he still had a girlfriend but he dragged her down with him and she was furious, had spikes coming out of her joints, all of them, her knees and her neck and her knuckles, she had spikes coming out of her knuckles and now here comes something to lash out at--"

And instead of pantomiming the movement with precision the Uktena spreads his hands so that the fingers are gnarled and he keeps moving like his joints all hurt him like he's stretched out and might have been pretty and caring and healthy once but now he's bristling with so much human anger he would split out of his skin if the hatred and the serpent's power weren't pushing spikes out of it already.

"--and it grabbed Lola, got her by the ankles and started to haul her out of the truck and if she had hesitated even a second it would have been on her but she didn't hesitate at all she got the safety off and turned around and:"

One of his arms jerks at the shoulder and goes slack out of its hooked state of agony. No sound effects here. They've all heard gunshots before. They all know the ringing deafness come in the wake of it. First his arm jerks and then he falls to the ground like he caught a bullet with his forehead. Lays in the dirt not even panting because he's supposed to be dead. All that running around and yelling and he isn't winded yet.

He speaks from the ground now. Doesn't get up.

"Lola was bleeding from where it'd grabbed her and it was hard to walk but she knew the Littleton cops heard the two shots she'd fired. She looked over and saw her sister's packmate was shaking his hand to get the remains of the other Wretched off his claws. Took him long enough, she thought. Idiot tried to subdue the guy with his fists before he shifted. He didn't even realize a second one was there until he shifted down and turned around. Lola saw the one that came for her was still breathing and she ended that pretty quick. Yelled at her sister's packmate to just grab the one he'd killed and get it in the truck. No time for fussing over injuries. Go go go."

Hector climbs to his feet then but doesn't dust himself off. Leaves the dirt draped across his backside and nestled into his hair. Looks more himself than he has the entire time.

"If Lola Hawkes hadn't been there a true-born would have been ambushed by Fomori and killed that night. The Veil would have been ripped right in half. Sam Evans knows a thing or two about what that's like."

Hector stands still a moment and then slinks back into the shadows to shake the dust out of his hair and yank it back before he tells that story.
#5
“The only light was what came drifting into the windows from the city, yellowed and old, like rotting snow. The only thing white, with the full face of the moon hidden, with the stars blurred into nothing but dreams by the city lights, were their eyes.” Thomas waits until the end of the stories of the stories when the cliaths have their turn, and then he waits until the end of that to shift to homid and speak. Long enough that it almost seems he'll go another moot without more than howling and hunting at their sides. When he does speak, finally, it isn't in the tones that those who know him are used to.

This is something else. Something interwoven with the same confidence that let him signal two people he barely knew and a stranger in a bar without the slightest concern that they wouldn't do as he asked. But that...that is a different story. Another night, perhaps, another swollen moon.

Instead, he drives on with this story, voice low, filled with enough tension it almost seems the words could snap, burst open, and reveal something deeper underneath them. “Nights before, those other eyes had blue, green, brown...but now all of them, all of them white. Windows to empty vessels, hollowed out husks to serve us this last message. What was, on nights before this one, Champion of Honor began the message with the twisted and warbling cry of those who have Fallen. The Guardians, as they had come to come what was in him, followed what was in him.” There is the slightest of pauses.

“They turned on each other, claws shredding and rending, jaws snapping through bones and meat. They tumbled to the floor in pieces. 'Witness,' the thing that commanded Champion of Honor's voice commanded, over the howling and the steady sound of flesh and blood raining to the floor, 'See the fate of all things,' as if uncorrupted truths would come spilling from a stolen mouth.”

“Dances with the Hurricane knew that, knew better than to listen, better than simply to watch. Instead, she drew her sword and offered out to each of us moon stones, the first gleaming and white thing in that room we had seen that was ours. And then, one more gleaming, white thing as Shadowboxer shifts. The moon stone Still Waters throws strikes the thing in Champion of Honor's skin full on in the chest, forces him into his wolf form.”

“When it charges, Shadowboxer and Dances with the Hurricane rise up to meet it like waves from the sea. It's blood pours forth from it like rivers from it where it is torn open, torn almost in half, but does. Not. Fall.” Another pause, another second, just one breath. “They fall away to its sides, flowing around it. It twists, dances, writhes, like the currents flowing into a bay but it is no more their match than the river is a match to the ocean. It's head is torn from it, drops and is swept away across the floor. Still, the thing stands.”

“Until the last of the Guardians rushes forward, throws open the elevator doors, and the room is bathed in fire. That fire burns unnaturally and twists and grasps like a live, serpentine thing. But it swallows up and consumes what remains of the thing, and everything falls into silence.”

Or, unconsciousness, for some of them. But he lets the tale end there, leaving behind, as the fire left behind those that had served the same will, the memories of what was beneath them. One hell at a time is all he's willing to offer tonight. Ingrid may have thought to offer up an apology, but Thomas only really knows how to give them this.

He shifts back to lupus and eases back toward his place.


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