December: Stories and Songs

[kai]

[Threads for the December 2013 moot will open on December 8th and close on December 17th. In character, the moot occurs on the night of December 17th, the full moon.

Go, Tamsin!]

[tithe]

Oh no. Oh no no no.

The cracking's done. Plotting, challenges, blood, pack v. pack, blood v. blood, concerns, territory disputes, all that's finished with. The laws of war, right here. Cracking's done, bone's gone away, moon's still full, oh, moon's still cold and watchful, moon's brimming full of pale fire and it's brimming in their bones, riding high, Rage, Rage what separates them and makes them into another species, not viable, can't breed, another species, and the cracking of the bone's done so now it's time for stories

now it's time for the Talesinger to stand up and

ok, ok, ok, ok, right before, right just before this happens, it's worth saying, worth stating, that the Fianna-wolf is wolf-shaped pressed against her pack close-close tight-tight rib-to-rib as small-a-ball as she can possibly be posture alert but wary a lie because she is nervousnervousnervous wants to puke wants the Beloved Horror to attack right now that'd be fine wants to die gloriously right now please right now now now

and when the cracking's done, she whines, low-sound, barely-heard sound, don't want to do this don't fucking want to do this how could you guys let me

not that she told them when she'd made up her mind to challenge

but she just can't

can't for what feels like a forever but isn't actually all that long not long enough for heckling to start up naw

because Tamsin forces herself to jump four-footed up and shake herself shake the cold moonlight off her fur shake it sluicing back down onto spare-stony-or-snowy ground and she shakes herself right out've wolf-shape into woman-shape and she

is absolutely (nope [no!]) calm

throwing all her will into opening the Songs and Stories perfectly.

--


By the Cold Moon, she says, (and listen to her voice. Impossible that she's anything but Fianna. Impossible that the Cold Moon itself isn't burning more brightly; isn't polishing itself up to shine white conjured like this - so clearly, so simply, so unwaveringly. By the Cold Moon, she tells them,) you know my name. Cinder Song, Furious Lament. By the Cold Moon and the Fallow Field, she says, grave: grave as a headstone. By the shadow spun by moonlight and by my voice. You know my name. Cinder Song, Furious Lament. Fianna of Celduin. By the season of hunger and by the oldest point of the year, we've reached this peak, we've come here, here by roads carnage-strewn and long ways that are warm only 'cause no one stands alone, 'cause we've got pack and friends and allies. By all these things we've come here (and listen, see? Listen, okay, because at some point Tamsin stopped speaking and began singing, each word clear, each note strong, but chaunting, drag-you-in, drag-you-down, this is a promise, and she became and is:

still figure, un-moving, chin up, dark, breath a ghost in front of her, fog,) and you know me. Cinder Song, Furious Lament. Fianna. You know my pack. You know, let's hope for Gaia's sake, my auspice. This slim conspiratorial smile, a waning moon's smile. You know who I am. Talesinger under the Cold Moon. Talesinger under the Cold Moon for the Sept of Forgotten questions. By my name and by my shadow and by my voice: Here I stand, and you know me.

By my breath, I know your names.

Simplicity. A pause to conjure silence out've noise. Who's she going to talk about now? What names will she conjure by?

Don't I?

The Fianna woman pats herself down, unbuttons her jacket. Her breath steams, but there's something rhythmic about the patting, distant echo drum-flush, ba-dum, ba-dum, until she finds what it is she was looking for, dedicated for just this moment. This little tiny flask, ceremony: she undoes the cap, pours the Grain-water down, stomps her feet, Galliards, she says, or sings, By your breath in the winter's air, tell me who we are. By your heartbeat under the dark sky, the heat of your pack's bodies, tell us all what we have won and lost this long year. Galliards, she says, and others with a tale to tell, an anecdote, a half-song, a memory, a hope. By your hatred of the Wyrm, by the blood that has been spilled, and now,

let it never be said that Furious Lament, Cinder Song, doesn't go for broke,

also, f' you, Fenrir, Fianna are totally as hardcore,

Tamsin rakes her nails down her forehead down her cheek as if she were doing up some war-paint but it's not war-paint on her fingers she digs hard enough to bleed. Blood-calling-up-an-oath, watch her simmer with furious intensity as she flicks a drop down onto the ground or the snow, says,

By the sweetest splash of booze-y spirits since the Fairies invented it as a reward to the Fianna for being so fucking badass which now soaks into the ground. By your honor and the honor of your ancestors. By my blood,

get down here. Tell the Sept of Forgotten Questions that a Forgotten Question does not mean everything has been Forgotten.

Mood-change, then, an easing of shoulders as she watches the Elders and Athros and Adrens and Fosterns and so on, watches to see who'll come first, watches them ready themselves but doesn't really see not yet because she's still performing still Tale-singing them down still kicking this shit off:

I'll start.

And she tells a short and awesome opening story, and it is very awesome, and it is about [Some Elder NPC--probably related to Phoebe], or maybe it is about Raspberry Sky, Fern, and Law in War her pack-mate and resurrection, and maybe Tamsin's player will write that opening story later or at least a paragraph that says a bit more about it, but it is time for somebody else to post in the Tales thread now and here's the mood-setting.

---

As Talesinger, Tamsin never sits down.

Never completely recedes. Cedes the floor, certainly, but is ready to cut anybody off for going too long, for stuttering too badly, for being less than their best -- after letting them have a good show, of course. Ready, too, to be used as a prop for anybody's tale, ready to clap along or be the chorus or lend her voice or paw or howl, anything that'd make a tale better, burn brighter.

She keeps an eye on the crowd. Tries not to think.

(And I wasn't going to roll, but then I wanted an excuse to write a sloppy opening, and this happened:

Need A Witness
[Char + Perf/Expr + PB + WP.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 6 ) [WP]

Need A Witness
[ YAY!]

Is a witness
Witnessed!

Need A Witness
[Thanks, Seb! Tonight: you are a god! Among witnesses!]

Is a witness
[It was my pleasure! Make sure to save a transcript!]

[Damon]

Erich's sort of getting the hang of this story thing. At least he's not standing there all awkward like he doesn't really know what to do with his hands. He's still not doing anything with his hands except tucking them into his pockets, but at least his shoulders are loose and his balance isn't all rigid. His head is down for a minute, and then he lifts it.

"We went down into the darkness that night."

He doesn't have to say which darkness. Which night. Everyone knows.

"We went down there, Avery and Javed. Hector and Tamsin and Thomas. Phoebe, Keisha, Sophia. Milton. Ingrid. Charlotte and me. We went down to have a look at that Pit, down past those graves in the basement and the bodies that the Beloved Horror had put there. Down past where the floor had melted away, like fuckin' Chernobyl of something. All the way down the Pit. And I know when I say the word you guys who've never seen it are picturing some yawning abyss. But that's not what it looked like at all. It was ... glowing, milky-white, like ... like pus come alive. Eech.

"Anyway. We're down there, trying to figure out what the fuck and what the fuck to do, and then they come for us. Beloved Horror. That's what they call themselves, right? All of them, all six of them with all the strength of their sick pact with the devil behind them. They passed Raspberry Sky on the way down and they killed her. And honestly that's not even what bugs me most. It's that they killed her while she was mourning at the grave of her sister, who they also killed. It's that they killed her family, and that wasn't enough for them, and then they killed her, and THAT wasn't enough for them, and then they took her heart out of her body and threw both down at us. Like she was a broken toy they were done with.

"And that wasn't enough for them either. Because then they laughed at us, and laughed and laughed and laughed when we told them just what we were going to do to their sorry hides. They didn't believe us. They thought they were so strong no one could possibly touch them.

"And y'know. Before that night? I think most of us thought that too. Most of you probably already know, but they weren't just normal Dancers bonded to a strong Totem. They were that Totem. They'd sold out in every way possible, and they and the Green Dragon were the same thing. The Green Dragon was in them, and their own souls were cowering in some dank corner of Malfeas while the Green Dragon ran the show and channeled all its horrible strength through them, put all that strength toward their one and only goal of gaining control of that Pit so they could pull god-knows-what from whatever-other-world that Pit is connected to.

"Props to the ones that figured that link out. Shoutout to my kinswoman Eva, who decided not to show her face tonight damn her, for figuring out just what that Pit was.

"'Cause we used that information, see. Our Theurges down in the darkness that night -- we called our ancestors and our dead. We called them back to fight for us. And then we called the Beloved Horror too. I mean: we called their souls back. We dragged those tainted spirits back from whatever corner of Malfeas they were hiding in, and forced 'em back into their bodies, and in doing so -- forced the Green Dragon out.

"And then they were weak, the way they'd made us weak.

"And then we killed them, the way they'd killed us.

"And then they were afraid. The way they'd made us afraid.

"And then they ran. Like the scared little rabbits they were.

"Oh, I bet if you ask them now -- not that I want any of you to ask them because seriously let's not have tea parties with the enemy, all right? -- but I bet if you asked them, they'd say they weren't running away. They'd be like OH IT WAS A TACTICAL RETREAT. WE WERE JUST ADVANCING TO THE REAR. EL OH EL, ROFFLECOPTER. But no. I was there. I saw what happened. I saw us rip them down from their glory and go at them with tooth and claw and tear half of their pack to bloody little shreds. And I saw them tuck tail and run.

"So don't any of you forget that. Because if they were weak, it means they can be made weak again. And if they were killed, it means we can kill the rest of 'em. And if they were scared and running, that means -- for the moment -- we have the upper hand.

"Let's not waste that, guys. Let's not get complacent. Let's not give them breathing room and time to recover. Let's get our Sept back up in the city. Let's keep watch on the Pit. Let's figure out where they ran off to, and let's go after them, and let's make sure they never come back. Let's do it for Raspberry Sky, and Champion of Honor, and Wind on Concrete, and Circuit Runner, and all the rest of our people that they took from us.

"We're wolves. They're prey.

"THEY. RAN FROM US.

"Let's hunt those fuckers down."

[jamie]

Storm's Teeth recounts the tale of the battle between the Sept of the Cold Crescent and the Beloved Horror. Raspberry Sky's demise. The revelation of the pit's nature. And while he tells it Echoes of the Lost sits forward with his chin in his hands like he hasn't heard the story before.

He hasn't, really. He was there and he's told it and he and his sister and brother have practiced telling it but he hasn't heard it told. That's different.

When he laughs at the characterization of the Dancers speaking in txt-speak it is a quiet abrupt thing and it comes from Storm's Teeth phrasing and not the content. And when the Full Moon reminds the lot of them that Beloved Horror ran from them, rallies the rest of them to hunt the fuckers down, the moondancer lets out a war whoop that would have been an anthem of war in another form. Maybe he's saving that for the Revel.

But he's up next and in his human skin the whoop is crude but effective.

---

jamie @ 9:06AM
[stam + empathie: lol wtf autocorrect that is not how you spell empathy]
Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 7) ( success x 2 ) VALID

Umbralwind @ 9:06AM
HAH!

Umbralwind @ 9:09AM
App+Brawl
Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 ) VALID

jamie @ 9:09AM
HAHAHA WHAT IS THAT FOR

Umbralwind @ 9:09AM
I just thought I'd roll a seemingly senseless roll like you!

jamie @ 9:10AM
THAT WAS CALL OF THE WYLD YOU JERK

Umbralwind @ 9:10AM
*Laughs*Oh!

[jamie]

Alright alright. Hector stands up and shoots Tamsin a look that is mostly admiration and pride but that's laced with threads of teasing Great I have to follow your bomb-ass opening way to set me up for failure. Executes some sort of collision of fists and shoulders as he and Erich cross paths one sitting down and the other trotting the rest of the way to the circle.

"Some of you are probably wondering what's going on at Cold Crescent." He frowns and waves his hands to smooth away potential misunderstanding. "No. No no. Not the goings-on we went over after the Truthcatcher cracked the bone. I'm talking about how you'll walk out of a room and come back and everything'll be upended. Or you'll think you're alone out in the hall and then you turn a corner and BAM, there's a glowing orb right in front of you."

No. That's not right.

An aside to himself: "Actually the last I heard it was materializing again."
And back to the story: "It didn't just show up at the Broadway building. It showed up at a Sports Authority in Aurora."

It sounds like a joke. It is not a joke. Look at his face. This isn't funny.

"Listen: it was minus... ten degrees that day. Before the wind chill. And it was a Friday which to humans means it's time to load their entire life into the car and go to the mall. There's a holiday coming up. Something about a fat man in a red suit. I don't understand it. My parents were Hindu. Ganesha doesn't drive a sleigh. Anyway there were about a thousand people at this sprawling mall on the other side of the city, and a handful of Garou just happened to be there."

Buying skis and Orange Julius and small electronics. Irrelevant. This is the part of the buildup where Hector paces back and forth like the movement of his feet is helping his mouth keep pace with the story.

"So this handful of Garou happened to converge upon the Sports Authority and chanced to notice that people were not calmly walking in and out of the front door anymore. One minute everything was calm and the next folks were running out of the store. Some of them were screaming. The asphalt was all covered in snow and ice, so the people driving cars were already sliding all over the place, but people were running out into the road to get away from whatever was going on inside. Some of them almost got trampled.

"Reverence of Dawn, Radiant Honor. She was the first one in the store and even with everybody screaming and elbowing each other, knocking each other out of the way, she stood her ground. She saw Pokes the Minds Eye, told him to find a way to keep the front doors open so people could get out. She saw Siren of Persephone, asked her what could possibly be causing all these people to panic.

"At first they thought it might be something mechanical just from the sounds it was making. It wasn't the Wyrm. They knew that much. It was something whirring and clanging around and people freaked out to see it. Of course they freaked out. They didn't understand it and they couldn't do anything about it. So they ran."

He swipes his hair back out of his face and finds Milton in the crowd. Pulls a puzzled but curious face.

"I still don't even know what you did, man."

Back to it:

"Pokes the Mind's Eye pulls out this... iPhone, it looked like. One of those smartphones that can do a million things. And the front door was one of those automatic glass sliding situations, it'd been opening and closing on the people trying to leave so it was clogging things up, they were starting to panic. And Pokes the Mind's Eye just waves this thing at the doors and the doors stayed open. The store emptied out after that but now the floor was shaking. Things were falling off the shelves. It wasn't Grandfather Serpent, the Wyrm. They still didn't know what it was. Radiant Honor said:"

He shores up his shoulders and stops stalking the stage. And he can never say it the way she said it, can project that kind of authority and imitate the luminescence but can never truly awe the others the way she does. It's alright. He's not one of Falcon's. He's just telling a story.

"I do not know what you are! I do not know from where you came. But you are harming those within my protectorate. You are frightening those who deserve no fear, and whose hearts should not be troubled further when the world is already so dark.

"I will end that harm! I will end that fear!

"I will end you!"

Deep-deep breath. He glances back over his shoulder at the fire crackling and nothing happens for a moment. Not I-forgot-my-lines nothing. Calm-before-the-storm nothing. The Galliard drifts back into the shadows and cups his hands over his mouth. Makes a pounding-thundering noise as he moves forward again slow. Like a big and ponderous creature assured of its strength and its territory and the power of its strength and territory.

"It made a body out of whatever it could find," he says when he drops his hands. The innate athleticism in his body comes out now as he loosens up his shoulders and holds his hands down at his sides like his fists are weighted down with muscle. "Helmets and bicycles and hand-weights. Little things like shirts and jump ropes. Big things like pool tables and kayaks. The ceilings in this place were so high a wolf in her war form couldn't reach the ceiling with outreached claws but this thing could have reached up and busted a light out of its fixture if it wanted to. It cast a deep shadow over the Garou and as it came towards them - that was the crashing and the quaking. It shook the earth as it walked. Knocked over shelves not with its bulk but with the vibrations from its feet and fists hitting the floor. It was furious. They were in its territory."

He cannot summon lights or call on Luna himself to light up his body but he can use his hands to make a glowing gesture as he switches from the mark of the Wyld-spirit to the mark of the Fostern Silver Fang Philodox.

"Radiant Honor armored herself. Pokes the Mind's Eye had a plan to dispatch it but Siren of Persephone said It's Wyld, I can't say for certain why it's here, the Weaver is strong and it may just want to push it out. I have a few gifts that may help in reducing its power that I can try."

He takes on a hulking threatening posture again.

"The spirit in its mass-body wasn't going to stand there all day and wait for them to act. It kept rushing forward, you know how gorillas do, feinting at them like it was going to charge and then coming back. Radiant Honor didn't want to kill it. Siren of Persephone didn't want to kill it. Pokes the Mind's Eye was like Son of a bitch I wanted to blow things up! but he didn't want to kill it.

"It brought up its fists and it busted a light out of its fixture and it ran at the Garou."

The energy in his movements becomes as frenetic as the Wyld-spirit they fought that day. Big gestures and sharp turns of his body. Mental imagery of things flying everywhere and bodies falling down.

"And they didn't want to kill it but it beat its fists on the ground and knocked half of them down and they were biting at it, tearing away at the miasma of plastic metal things it fashioned into a body and it started hurling these things at them, tents and poles and knives, things that covered up their eyes and scratched at their hides, just this flurry of stuff, but they hurt it more than it could hurt them, it was outnumbered and their teeth and claws were sharp, even Pokes the Mind's Eye hobbled it a little without blowing anything up, and it tried to escape. It was going to climb the shelves it hadn't toppled and bust a hole through the ceiling and run out into the night, but they stopped it. Took it down with their claws--"

And he hates snow hates cold hates the wet cling of it on his clothes but he crashes to the ground like a creature made of junk losing its body and crashing to the ground. Smaller than before. Bristling and crippled and furious.

"Not to kill. Just to stay."

It wasn't going to understand that. Not without a spirit-talker to apologize.

"Siren of Persephone had gotten knocked down when it sent that shockwave through the place."

He picks himself up. Doesn't have to do as much to imitate the Black Fury. He could be her stunt double, they both have the same build that disappears when they turn sideways, the same long dark hair. Her spiritual connection is greater than his though. Her affect is softer. She is not as angry as he is, will never be as angry as he is.

His voice goes calmer and even. Siren of Persephone follows Pegasus and is the youngest of a long line of fierce and protective warrior women. Even his gaze goes softer.

"She got up, and she walked up to the Wyld-spirit. It didn't speak any human tongue, or the High Tongue. She spoke to it in the spirits' tongue. Asked it to come with her so she could find it a new place."

Minute shift in demeanor. Compassion turns to distrust, softness to smallness.

"new place... has things to pushmove?"

Another of those silences without the glance backwards now. He draws another deep breath that he might transition back into the conversational shooting-the-shit tone he'd started off in without jarring the audience.

"That's all it wanted out of the store. It wasn't fighting anything or looking to destroy anything. It wanted its own space. Things with parts that popped and burst and spun, it just wanted to move these things. It likes the way manmade things shine and splash and make noise. They couldn't let it roam free and they knew it would be lonely and angry if it was out on its own. Siren of Persephone figured it would find companionship with the other spirits guarding the place and it would have a lot of shiny metal things to play with. Pokes the Mind's Eye figured what the hell, it'd be great security, it could throw intruders out the window and drop shit down the elevator shafts."

All that to say:

"So Radiant Honor, Siren of Persephone, and Pokes the Mind's Eye took it home."

He swipes his hair back from his face and starts to leave the circle. He's not done. He'll be back up in a few minutes. Before he steps off into the shadows again he adds:

"Oh, word of advice: if you're up at Cold Crescent and you've got a banana you're looking forward to eating, don't leave it lying around. You won't get it back."

[-ix-]

Thunder's Cry Echoes From the Sea tends to come up to tell stories like he's caught in some unseen electric pulse, the sense of energy humming just under his skin so intense it seems like you could taste ozone and feel the prickling sense of a lightening strike. Even when he was deliberately engaging people, there was the sense that under all those words he could not wait to slip back out of a human skin and go rushing off to hunt.

This story, he doesn't tell like that.

Instead, for this story, he slips into homid and walks up to speak with a few deliberate, even steps. The moon is full and both Siren of Persephone and his alpha are in the process of riling everyone up, so this isn't calm. This stillness of the surface of water with lurking currents beneath and possibly a sea monster or three is something else entirely.

"I have learned that the nights Dances with the Hurricane, Still Waters, and I meet are nights I will be telling stories about soon enough." His eyes do not search out either Dances with the Hurricane or Still Waters, but then he never seeks them out. Fate might throw the three of them together, but outside of those meetings they are ghosts to each other. Some shared experience doesn't lend itself to anything but silence.

"And so, when the three of us met outside a warehouse, I think we all expected that something would happen even before Still Waters set her gaze into the Umbra and saw the banes and before Dances with the Hurricane led us creeping past boarded up windows silent as drifting fog." He does not stalk through the cleared space tonight and his gestures are clean, elegant things. Tonight is a night of minimal movement, of letting his tone and his words carry the story more than his body does.

And his eyes. Tonight he looks at those gathered around him. Never for long, and he directly meets the eyes only of those he is closest to, but his eyes are directed at the crowd more than the ground or the sky or some open space.

"Dances With the Hurricane found us an entrance and picked the lock. Let the door open to reveal a massive bloated creature. It gave a gurgling cry and came forward. Dances With the Hurricane did not hesitate, not at the sight of it so gorged already that it seemed to waddle more than it walked, not at the unnatural wailing, not distracted by the man who fled the room. She bade the Theurges, Still Waters and Over Sea, Under Stone to distract it while she flanked it.

"As they distracted it, Dances With the Hurricane rushed forward and sliced deeply into the creature's ribs. It tried to catch her with its tongue, long and covered in sticky ooze, but failed. Desperate, it tried to summon some other Tainted power, but it failed, and the dying thing collapsed to the ground.

"Just as it crashed to the floor there was the sound of a gunshot, close by, and then silence. We searched through a hall of rooms, most of which could only be opened from the outside and most of those rooms held the bodies of those who had only suffered partway through their transformation into monsters before death claimed them. In one of the rooms, a shrine rather than a prison, we found the body of the man who had been attempting to create them. With his only guardian creature destroyed he knew that like those he had experimented on, his only hope for escape was death and he had chosen bullets over our claws."

Victory. Siren of Persephone conjured up the certainty that they would have it by bringing them all in for a crashing refrain, Echoes the Lost drives them all to hunt, but this is something hushed and calmer for them to echo over and through. Certain and patient. Lakes instead of oceans and rivers.

[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.