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October: Cracking the Bone
#1
[...]
my whole life is thunder.
#2
The time for stories and songs has ended.

And the blood of the garou is high, the fire lit. There has been laughter and hope and anger and shock and honor given. The mood is light, but underwritten with bloodlust and joyous frenzy. This is why the people chose to crack the bone before the amplification of the stories and songs, before the buildup of that tension that is released so perfectly in the revel. Perhaps it is a mistake to have switched them tonight.

Try telling the Great Alpha this. Tell him this,

as he cracks the bone.

--

There is still bloody flesh on the bone. He has been eating it, laying on his belly in hispo for most of the moot gnawing at the remains of a mule deer. The stories and songs were occasionally punctuated but the twist and snap of a joint being broken, a limb being torn off for one of his packmates. When the hunchbacked Talesinger reclaims her place in the crowd, no cliath or fostern philodox walks into the middle to lead this part of the moot. The Great Alpha rises with one smooth, efficient motion to his enormous paws.

On his muzzle is the stain of new blood. Dragged between his teeth to the center of the moot is one half of the deer's rack. In truth, the antlers are artful in their curve, wicked in their branching spikes. Skin still holds to the place where he tore it from the skull. He drops it between his forelegs into the dirt, a hulking mass of fur, muscle, heat, and rage in their midst.

Behind him stand the Warder, the Ritemaster, and the Master of Challenges -- the highest elders of Forgotten Questions. With them is the Keeper of the Land, and the Gatekeeper. They stand together, as they do not always do, for they are not all under the same totem. Tonight they do.

The dust that raised up when the antler hit the ground settles again. Somehow, suddenly, the energetic septs, gathered tonight, have gone silent. Still.

--

The Great Alpha says nothing. Everyone is waiting, waiting for some awful pronouncement. It does not come.

So: he moves down to lay on his belly again. And a few moment interminable moments pass, and then

a brave Athro walks forward, picks up the rack, bows to the Great Alpha, and brings a dispute before him that lies between she and another of her rank, an issue of territory and their boundaries. Both arguments are heard. The Great Alpha rules in favor of the defending party. Another wolf comes after that, with a challenge of grievance against a garou of lesser rank regarding ill treatment of a protected kinfolk. The Great Alpha rules in favor of the higher-ranked wolf. And so it goes.

The cracking has begun.
my whole life is thunder.
#3
The Cracking begins and Ingrid sits with her Alpha and she waits. She is not the Fool this month, that position - to honor or disgrace the one who holds it - rests on another Ragabash's shoulders. No, tonight Ingrid is merely Cliath, so she must wait through the stories, and she must wait for the elders to speak their peace. When finally she rises from her place among the crowd, tensions are high. If she feels it, it doesn't show as she threads her way between the various other wolves, past other packs, her head held high, hands folded before her until she reaches the Great Alpha.

Ingrid lowers her head respectfully as she dips to collect the rack in both hands. As soon as she's upright, she bends at the waist, to the Great Alpha, and then to each of the Elders behind him in turn. Because the question she has is for him and for them.

"Honored Elders of Forgotten Questions," she says, her head lowered, humble as she stands before them, so small and so fragile before the great dire wolf form of the Great Elder.

"What has happened to the leaders of the Sept of the Cold Crescent?"

Whatever else this Shadow Lord Cliath may be, she is Ragabash. It is her duty to question. And though it may end with her torn and bloodied for her insolence, crumpled on the ground at their feet, it will not un-ask the question that must be on so many minds tonight. Question asked, she lowers the bone to the ground and steps back.
#4
Time goes by during the Cracking, and yes: tensions grow ever higher as disputes are settled and questions are answered. As challenges are issued and winners rewarded. As information is given, both new and reiterated. No one actually, physically takes the bone from the Great Alpha, whose heavy paw rests atop it. All know that to interrupt the speaker would be to invite his wrath, and all know that when it is time for them to sit down, he will make sure they are aware.

When Ingrid walks forward, as the night is growing darker and colder and almost everyone has taken on a furred form or is wearing something that will stave off the chill, the Great Alpha does not rise from his belly. Even so, Ingrid seems a slight thing, as breakable as that antler he tore from his meal tonight.

She questions.

The Great Alpha looks at her, then looks away. He sweeps the gathering with searing, golden eyes, and then he pushes to his feet. The rack of the mule deer gives a soft snap beneath his paw from his sheer weight. Now indeed he rises above Ingrid, as tall at the withers as some men. Very slowly, his head comes back around, eyes fixing on Dances With the Hurricane once more. As he has in the past, he reshapes his throat and speaks with the voice of a mortal, though

he does not sound mortal.

"They wait for judgement."

Once again he looks around those gathered together tonight, the wolves of Cold Crescent and the wolves of Forgotten Questions, wolves of all the tribes known to these septs and standing for each face of Luna. Pack alphas, lone wolves, squirming omegas. This time when he speaks, he speaks not solely to Ingrid but to all of them.

All of you.

"Your judgement."

There is a ripple through many there. Some bite back protest; others all but gasp relief. The reactions are varied and here and there, one feels the spike of bloodlust, vengeance, anger. The Great Alpha ignores them all.

"Curved Sky, Warning Threshold, Retribution's Fist, Forge of Nótt and Hunter of Peace failed their sept. The enemy came. The guardians died. The sept was violated. The elders have spoken. Now we ask the people to speak. To condemn,"

he does not look at anyone, but near the elders of Forgotten Questions there are two large garou who have recently been seen all over the Sept of the Cold Crescent -- one stocky, one tall, both brutally muscled -- who cannot help in that moment but glance over at Storm's Teeth and Still Waters,

"or to defend."




--



[For reference:
Curved Sky - Sept Elder, Athro Glass Walker Galliard
Warning Threshold - Warder, Athro Glass Walker Philodox
Retribution's Fist - Master of Challenges, Adren Shadow Lord Ahroun
Forge of Nótt - Master of Rites, Adren Godi
Hunter of Peace, Goddess's Silence - Keeper of the Land, Athro Child of Gaia Theurge

All but Warning Threshold were removed from Cold Crescent in this thread. PCs are welcome to speak regarding any of these NPCs. I even accept/encourage you to make things up about them (positive or negative) regarding interactions with your character(s) if you feel inspired to. Given that appearances/interactions have happened much more frequently with Warning Threshold it's fine to just focus on him.

This is a very, very important turning point in not just the SL but the chronicle as a whole. SPEAK UP.]
my whole life is thunder.
#5
The eyes of the two Forgotten Questions Garou who have been seen so regularly turn toward the packs of Baklava Republik and the Desert Oracles, where both Erich and Keisha stand. And Keisha is already glancing at them when they look her way; it isn't a surprise that those sets of eyes meet. This was the moment that they had asked about—Erich more specifically but the spirit of the question was in Keisha's initial approaching of them as well, once Forge of Nótt and Hunter of Peace had been taken.

And that moment was here. When the Great Alpha says that it is up to them, the Theurge looks at her packmates but only for a moment. A brief sign that she is speaking up, so they are not caught unaware by it. Not that they should…not that anyone should be caught unaware by the fact that the hippy-dippy Child of Gaia who values life above all things would speak out on a matter of this level of importance.

And then she's stepping forward, taking the bone and holding it in her hand. "I'm Keisha Still-Waters, Desert Oracle and Theurge of the Children of Gaia." She looks down at the bone, and while it may surprise some…there's conflict in her face. A shadow that passes over her expression, like she's still going to decide what she's going to say. Surely she would speak out immediately with her naïve, misguided peace and love bullshit about how all life is sacred and they should give a chance, yes?

They forget something though. Keisha values life as sacred…this is true. The girl doesn't kill any form of life; she doesn't even eat meat, if you can believe that. But Keisha was also up there on the forty-third floor when the Guardians were lost to them. Only four people living on this earth can speak to what happened up there from personal experience, and none of them are the same; one is no longer even in the vicinity of Denver. The other three…this experience has formed a bond between them. One that they don't speak of, one that doesn't draw them together the way a pack bond does…in fact, probably the opposite, it drives them apart. Keisha hasn't spoken to Ingrid since that day, and only briefly to Thomas on occasion.

The point is, they haven't spoken about how that event scarred them all, and how they feel about it. They haven't spoken about the guilt that at least one of them, perhaps more do. They haven't spoken about the fact that, it could be argued, their horrific experience was because the elders of Cold Crescent didn't do their due diligence.

And when Keisha looks at the gathered Garou of the moot, make no mistake. There's anger. And there's betrayal, and even a desire for vengeance. These are natural feelings, and ones that anyone would feel. They are perhaps strong enough to make Keisha question her ideals and argue against the Elders who did this. And in that moment, even Keisha doesn't know; there is a wavering in her ideals, felt across the bond that she shares with her pack.

She begins, slowly. "The elders of Cold Crescent have done wrong. No one can argue that there were mistakes made. And those mistakes have been…" A pause there, as she shakes her head. Clenches her jaw. "Unbelievably costly. Information was withheld. Precautions were not taken. All of these things…these were disastrous. People suffered. People died."

She fights the lip that curls up, forces it back to evenness, and looks up to the Garou around them. So many of them higher ranking, with accomplishments far greater than hers. But she is the one who speaks, now.

"Do we honestly know that we would have done different? Or more to the point—" She stops, corrects, starts again. "Yes. Sorry, yes…we would have done different. Or I would have done different, at least. I can say that much. But does it matter what I would have done? We want to judge them for not doing what we would have done in the same situation, but who is to say that what we would have done would have changed anything?"

She looks here to Erich. "Erich…you argued that transparency is needed, when we were in Cold Crescent asking these things. And you're right. But do you honestly believe that our leaders can and should tell us everything? We're not a democracy, and I know people probably expect me to say that we should vote or some shit because of who I am, but the fact remains that I'm realistic. We have leaders for a reason. And those leaders have to make the difficult decisions of what to tell and what not to tell. Did they choose wrong? Yes…or at least, I think so. But how many times have they chosen right?"

"Does anyone here think that any of them held this information back because of any other possible reason than it was the right thing to do?" She looks around, her voice rising. Emotion is shaking here…there's conviction in that tremor as much as it was anger in her expression earlier. "If anyone thinks that Warning Threshold-rhya held back because he wanted any of this to happen, I would love to hear that argument. And if anyone honestly believes that Forge of Nótt-rhya remotely suspected that Champion of Honor would tear Cold Crescent apart like a fucking bomb of corruption and death, then speak up. Their mistakes weren't mistakes of weakness, but of making the wrong freaking call. And they were horrible mistakes, but we could have made mistakes that, if not the same, were just as bad."

She takes a moment, gets the tremor out of her tone. "For every mistake that has cost us, I wonder how many times they've made decisions that have saved Cold Crescent, or contributed to its welfare. Think of Hunter of Peace, Goddess's Silence-rhya, tending to the Sept. I've seen him perform his duties honorably. I've seen him tend to the Graves in Cold Crescent…think about how much he's already suffered, knowing how many were added."

"Think of Forge of Nótt-rhya, who many of you have learned Rites from, either the common ones of the ones that you would never even think to ask. Think about coming up to her and asking 'I need to know how to do a ritual that does this thing' and she just knew. Do we condemn her after all the good she's done for all of us, because there's been some bad, too?"

"I could go on," she continues. "We all have stories. Hell, I've been here a shorter amount of time than many of you, who grew up here. But I have stories I could tell of each of them. I'm no Galliard and I would sputter my way through some bad retellings, but I could. Warning Threshold-rhya, Retribution's Fist-rhya. Curved Sky-rhya. All of them."

One more pause here. "I'll be honest…there's a big part of even me that is saying that they need to be punished severely. That cries for blood and vengeance for those we've lost. Champion of Honor shouldn't have died a Cliath, his accomplishments struck down because of what happened. Nor any of the other Guardians. No one who's been lost should have been lost.

"But part of me can't help but feel that, if we do that, we're punishing them for deeds that were perpetrated by the Beloved Horror. They exploited a weakness in the Crescent elders, got Champion of Honor in under their nose. And…" She goes quiet there, but only for a moment before she continues. "…they exploited me to do the same."

"I atoned, and they didn't. Which again, I think that they did not because they were afraid of their misdeeds, but because they were trying to do the right thing. We've all made our mistakes, but that's the only one I really want to hear them answer for.

"To want justice? That's understandable. That's honorable, and that's wise. To want vengeance? That's not."

And with that, she hands the bone back to the Great Alpha, moves to join her packsisters. She's not any less angry than she was when she began. But she is resolute.
"The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules."
"Good men don't need rules. And today's not the day to find out why I have so many."
#6
Phoebe is among those who step up to speak about the elders of Cold Crescent. The Fostern Black Fury Theurge is in her homid skin, tall and willowy, and she moves with a little more steadiness than people have seen of her in the past. She does not look so likely to trip over her own long legs and tumble face first into the dirt as she makes her way up to the clearing before the Great Elder.

She turns there, when it's her turn to speak, and she faces the gathered, standing tall, watching them with bright, clear eyes and a tension in her brow.

"Warning Threshold-rhya lied to us," she starts. "He kept things from us. He tried," she says, and for a moment her brow tightens and her eyes widen. "He tried to stand alone against the darkness of the Beloved Horror. He kept things from us. He let in only a few when he could have had so many more standing at his side and at his back.

"How many people might have been saved by knowing?" She looks out then, searching and finding the faces of her family, her mother and her aunt. "Brothers and sisters." Next, she seeks the stern face of her great-aunt, and Phoebe's voice breaks when she says, "Children and grandchildren." Her gaze sweeps the crowd, reddening as she fights back a sudden onslaught of tears. "Cousins. Lovers and mates and packmates and friends. How many might still be with us if we had only been allowed to stand together, if we had been armed with knowledge?" she asks, voice ragged with the loss and the anger that even she can feel.

She realizes, suddenly, that's she's leaning forward, that her hands are balled into fists at her sides now, that her arms are shaking, and she takes a moment to make herself relax. With a sniff, she lifts her chin, hand lifting to scrub her cheek.

"But," says Phoebe, her mouth quirking down at the corners. "He thought he was doing the right thing. And he - and they. They've lost people just like the rest of us. And, which may be worse, they've had to watch our people, our friends and family fall, and know. They failed us, and they failed the ones who were lost."

She turns then, looking toward the elders of Forgotten Questions. "Should they be punished? I want to say, 'Hell yes!'" Phoebe even lifts a hand in a balled fist to shake through the air before her. A beat passes and it falls again, hanging limp at her side. "The leaders of Cold Crescent made mistakes. They have also paid for them. They have to see them reflected in the faces of those left behind.

"I ask that they be shown mercy. And that we cease this destructive divisiveness. It should not be us and them. We should be united. It's the only way we're going to get through this."

Thus spoken, Phoebe walks away to rejoin her sisters, throwing an arm around Keisha's shoulders and Winona's in a tight squeeze before releasing one of them to embrace Sophia.
#7
"The Elders of Cold Crescent fucked up when they kept all the info to themselves and then couldn't deal with their own mess."

Perhaps Keisha would be surprised to hear Erich say this after the way he stood with her against those of Forgotten Questions who came to drag those very elders away. That is what he says, though: very firmly, without a single waver.

"I mean, okay. I get it. Sometimes some info is need-to-know only. Sometimes it's just not smart to tell every random cub off the streets that your Sept is built over a goddamn hellhole. But if you're gonna stamp shit Classified, then you damn well better make sure whoever has access can adequately deal with what's in the brown folder. Otherwise, when that shit hits the fan, you're gonna look like a real dumbass. Which is exactly what happened at Cold Crescent.

"BUT, and this is a big but: it's not like the Elders and the Elders alone are responsible for what happened. I mean yeah, generally when your Sept gets blown up from within it looks really bad if you happen to be a Guardian, a Warder or an Elder of the Sept. But -- they weren't the only ones that didn't catch that Champion of Honor was rotten at the core. They weren't the only ones caught totally off-guard when he turned like that. They weren't the ones that rescued him and brought him right back to the heart of our stronghold, and they sure as hell weren't the ones that lost him in the first place.

"We can't lynch one group of people for something we all had a hand in. And we did all have a hand in the debacle at Cold Crescent. So: the Elders deserve to be punished for biting off more than they could chew with that let's-keep-this-hush-hush thing. I'm not sure they deserve to be punished for letting Champion of Honor go banzai like that. At least, if they get punished, then all of us who hang out at Cold Crescent even part-time need to stand by them and share the burden.

"All that said -- whatever punishment you guys ultimately put on their heads and ours: it needs to be a suspended sentence. We can't drag the Elders away from Cold Crescent and lock them up. Or demote them or execute them or whatever the fuck. Not right now. These are goddamn Adrens and Athros of the Nation. Say what you will about their recent fuckup, but they held the line on Cold Crescent for years. And by god we need them to help us hold the line now.

"'Cause -- Eva went to talk to Warning Threshold, right? Along with Javed and Avery and Pheebs. And what he told them, and what she told me, was this: Cold Crescent sits over ... like ... a gateway. Or a 'mine', as he put it, full of horrors that'll answer if someone calls them.

"Beloved Horror is strong as fuck, we all know that, but they don't get their power from what's under Cold Crescent. That's not their interest in it. They want Cold Crescent's basement so they can stand there over the gateway and call all day and night. And man, if we thought Beloved Horror was a tough nut to crack -- just think how bad what comes through will be. Just think how bad it has to be, if a pack as strong as Beloved Horror is devoting all their time to making this happen. Just think about what happened that night with Champion, without limit or end.

"If we drag the strongest wolves of Cold Crescent away in chains, and if Beloved Horror overwhelms the rest of us and gets their way, we'd really be fucked. So I'm saying this as an Ahroun:

"This is war. We need all the claws and teeth we can get, and we need them undulled and unbroken."
BECAUSE OF LIGHT AND DUTY AND REASONS.
#8
Charlotte watches and listens and listens and watches and she is a girl now wearing her girl-skin. Lanky and awkward and a little bit strange looking, with a haunted or perhaps haunting fragility, though look. She is growing into those long-bones of hers. The bird-ones, which make her seem all hollow, standing beside her packmate like a kid-sister. Humans think they must be related: platinum hair and those icy blue eyes and each with a certain bred-in-the-bone attraction. Erich and his solidity and strength; Charlotte and her spare nobility.

Tension is all bright and sparking and luminous about her. She is half-moving in time with her packmate, this stiff-armed echo of his movement as he speaks. As soon as he leaves the center, the girl is in motion and she's not thinking about it, it is just happening. She has things to say and by the gods, even if she is merely a cliath, something about her makes most Garou just want to listen.

But she gets that bone and looks around the circle, stiff-armed, wide-eyed. Mulish in a way that somehow feels sulky and adolescent and looks -

- well, like something else entirely.

In the end, all she manages to get out is,

"Erich's right!" A quick, darting glance around the circle. She seems to be on the verge of giving up the bone to the next cliath when she inhales again. "I mean, they didn't even really lie. To me. I just assumed - "

Someone or something stops her; and Charlotte breathes out sharply through her nose, frowning down at the bone in her hand. Worrying a piece of shredded, striated muscle with a blunt thumb.
"Take them away or - or - "

But she cannot get it out. The words clot in her throat and fill up her mind and make her head ring and she doesn't like their eyes on her, all of those strangers. She doesn't -

"Erich's right. I mean, mostly. I mean, he is."
But my heart is wild and my bones are steel
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.

- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula
#9
"She brings up a good point!" Says the fool in his capacity as the fool, while indicating Kiesha, letting his voice chime in appropriately the Glasswalker makes his presence known before the others present here. He stood tall, even adjusted his glasses, before his peers as he makes it known that he was here among them. "We're not a Democracy. I hear that a lot!"

Milton wasn't imposing, he wasn't powerful, he wasn't particularly good looking or... Really much of anything to look at! He was, however, eager, and standing before the garou like he thought he was the king of the mother fuckin' world. Because right now, he might as well be! It was his chance to step forward and play the role of the fool, and in order to play that role this month he picked a topic that was likely dear to any Cliath New Moon's heart! If he was an elder... This wouldn't be nearly as important, he'd be an elder, he'd be in charge, so it would't make quite as much sense for him to question his own authority.

He says as he looks around at the others present. This position that he took was one of the utmost importance and it was. down to their very core, the place of the Ragabash to stand up and question the ways of the garou, to pick and poke at the wounds and rifts so that the wounds don't simply scab over, infected and forgotten, only to fester and spread into something far more insidious.

"Why the hell is that?" He asks. Letting the matter sink in. He had more to say but he wanted everyone to reflect on it. "I get it, in times of war we don't want 50 people shouting out orders... Yet, who in the hell do we follow when our elders can't decide?" He asks, this time looking around. "Do we follow the whims of the Eldest Ahroun? Certainly... When it is time for battle, but which Ahroun do we follow? Do we follow the Silver Fangs, who have led the Garou to the point of near Extinction? Do we follow the Shadow Lords, who would doubtless exploit our loyalty until we were nothing more than their petty servants? Do we follow the Fenrir to our unnecessary deaths? Do we follow the Children of Gaia and sit here and let our enemies kill us off? Perhaps we could throw caution to the wind and follow the Bone Gnawers into hiding?" He pauses a moment. "Oh but don't think for a second that I am not about to include my tribe, we're the worst of all! My tribe who, if given the chance, would march us all straight into the servitude of the Weaver! Which is pretty much the same thing as marching off to serve the Wyrm! Six of One, a Half Dozen of the other! We lose either way. The point is, even following the eldest has it's flaws, and ultimately... Turns into a popularity contest anyway, in the end we follow who we feel is the most suited to lead when the question of which elder to follow arises. So isn't that a form of Democracy anyway?"

"Please don't get mad if I singled out your tribe and not someone else's... If you wanna hear me insult the other tribes then I'm more than happy, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make!"

"We follow our elders because they are our elders, they are the strongest, and they can kick our asses, yeah they might have done many amazing things to get there, but that doesn't necessarily make them right all the time! We follow our elders because that is what is written in the litany, and who enforces that litany? Our Elders! Who interprets that litany? Our Elders!" He looks around. "Most modern civilizations have gone through a period of decreased Autonomy on the part of their leaders... Now that doesn't mean they don't have a place for specific authorities to do specific jobs, but overall the trend of thinking people has been towards increased individual freedom. One which has been choked and beaten out of us since we were young! One which has been beaten out of us by the biggest bullies of us all..." He turns to look towards the greatest here among them. "And I say this with the utmost respect for your position, and all you have accomplished, and I truly hope that you do not chop my head off right in front of everyone for pointing this out!" He draws in a swift breath. "Our Elders!"

"We follow the strongest, because we must... We follow the strongest, because they will rip our throat out if we do not, they will beat us to a bloody pulp. If I wasn't the Fool I am pretty sure they'd do just that right now! I'm still not sure they won't do that anyway!" He laughs softly after pointing this out. He was a ragabash and that meant getting punched in the face a LOT, especially by Ahrouns! No matter, he loved his job, and wouldn't change it for the world!

He takes the time to spin around. "Why?" He asks with a curious smile. "Why don't the majority of the Garou simply rise up and take control? Why don't we vote? Why do we adhere blindly to a set of archaic policies which have been failing us for thousands of years? Why... Doesn't our society adjust and adapt with time in order to meet the increasing demands of a more modern world? We follow our elders because we are told to follow our elders by..." He pauses a moment to let others answer that question in their head. "You guessed it! Our elders! What kind of circular logic is that?" This was the challenge, and it was dangerous territory but it was also important... The place of the New Moon was always to question, and sometimes that pissed people off, and Milton was sure as fuck not pulling any punches despite his slight stature.

"Why the fuck aren't we a democracy? Why the fuck don't we vote on shit? I'm not talking about times of war and battle... So if you're gonna respond do myself, and yourself, a favor and just don't mention it! Not even the Generals in Democratic nations lead their soldiers Democratically, that's not what I am asking. Bring it up and you're just gonna make yourself look like the Fool! Which is really bad at a moot when you're not the fool!" He says. "While the elders are certainly welcome to respond all they please... I think It's gonna mean a lot more coming from Cliaths and Fosterns, even cubs if we've got any."

He finally pauses and looks around at all the others present and adds these final words. "Just remember, if you can support the position of your leaders despite the fact they have failed to win us this war for centuries, then you can sure as hell stand the fuck up and defend the elders of Cold Crescent because they fucked up a little while back! If you can't stand up and defend your elders, because it was their leadership that failed us after all, then how in the hell can you defend the elders of Cold Crescent? If you've got issue with what I have to say then now is the time to stand the hell up and represent! Either way, the ball is in your court, I'm out!" He says before hitting his fist against his chest and extending a peace sign to the crowd. He makes as if he is about to drop the Bone as if it was the Mic, but he decides he's already been shitting on tradition enough for one night to meet the requirements of the fool, instead extending it to whomever wants to go next and dropping it gently into their hand!
#10
[this actually should go before the Fool's post! sorry, i wasn't up late enough to see Liz's post last night]

A flicker of surprise -- happy surprise! -- ricochets through Erich as his packsister stands up. Steps up. Comes right on in the middle of everyone and holds her hand out for the Bone. Which he passes to her solidly, slapping it into her palm as he brushes past her.

Erich goes back to where they'd made their little camp, next door to Desert Oracle. He sits on his butt, knees up and elbows draped over. They do look like brother and sister, and not merely siblings of the spirit. The blond hair, the pale eyes, the height, the features that hark back to some clearer ancestry than merely American Mutt. And Erich is looking at Charlotte at she speaks, smiling, all but aglow with so-evident pride and love and that's my sister!-ness that

when she falters, he nearly leaps out there with her.

Doesn't, though. Bolsters her another way instead: a quick, bright, hard-angled presence suddenly alongside hers in her own mind; his strength quite happily lent to hers.

Go on, sayeth the Erich-thoughts to the Charlotte-mind, don't give up just yet. Say what you have to say. Even if you're disagreeing with everyone else, even if you're disagreeing with me -- say it. Take a deep breath. Sort your head out. I'm right here. You can speak your mind. I know you can.
BECAUSE OF LIGHT AND DUTY AND REASONS.


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