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December: Cracking the Bone
#11
"I'm totally down for spreading the word and seeing what our allies know. In fact I think maybe a GALLIARD," Erich casts a pointed eye Tamsin-wise, "ought to do just that. I mean worst that can happen is no one knows anything, right? But maybe people will even want to come by and see for themselves. And help out.

"As for sending spirits in, or our ancestors -- that's a good idea, but man, I can't in good conscience tell someone or something else to go risk their existence because I don't want to. So um." Erich swallows. His hands grip the Bone very tight for a moment, and then he gets it out: "If we really need to go through the pit, and we really need a test dummy to do it, then I volunteer.

"But I'd rather not. And I'd rather not send anyone else either. Not yet. Dude, can't we try dropping a webcam through first? Or something like that? Something ... inanimate?" He looks at Milton. "You got anything in mind? And I don't mean a talen or an awakened something. 'Cause that's like. Defeating the purpose. I mean something not-self-aware.

"Also: I wouldn't mind setting up boobytraps and stuff around the Pit. I don't wanna use Cold Crescent as a trap, period, 'cause yeah. That's like ... it's not home for me? But it's like my best friend's house. I don't wanna use it as bait. But I'm all for setting up some barbwire. I mean, metaphorically. Maybe that oughta tie into whatever spiritual defenses we can rock. Hey Pheebs-rhya," whup, it seems he can no longer resist the urge to use the nickname, "what do you think you and your Theurges can cook up? Like spirit defenses slash boobytraps-wise?"
BECAUSE OF LIGHT AND DUTY AND REASONS.
#12
Sophia gives a soft laugh to herself when Hector mentions learning more when he's NOT being ripped up by Black Spiral dancers, and otherwise the Crescent Moon sits, quiet and reserved, and she listens to what everyone has to say.

Like a court reporter she puts their words to memory, filing each one in an as appropriate a place as she can manage to cram it in a head already far too full of memories for any one lifetime. She lets the gears in her mind turn, and grind, and spin, and somehow she managed to keep the system from breaking down by constantly working to keep it together and focused to such a degree that she often neglects the world outside her head. Tonight, however, was a special night... It was a night in which Treads-the-Ashen-Path would come before her kind, and she would speak.

She made her intent to speak known, and she waited... She formulated her words within her mind. There was laughter, there were tears, someone stole a pie... It was crazy, but somehow they all managed to pull it together, and by the time the bone got to her Sophia wasn't a gibbering, weeping mess trying to figure out what in the hell just happened! Go Sophia! You're off to a great start!

"Nothing is forgotten... Nothing is lost..." Her voice was loud enough that others would hear her, so long as they remained quiet. "Every beat of your heart, every dream, every childhood memory... It moves through this world, and the next, like a leaf caught in the current drifting past where it can touch the hopes and dreams of those who have yet to open their eyes and breathe in the warm gift of life that has been granted to them."

"Some are like faint whispers, in the back of your mind, something you know is there but you just can't seem to grasp! Others reach out and smack you right in the face!" She gives a labored laugh as she fought the urge to drift off into slumber land. "Memories aren't just stories... They are us, they are our gift to the world, and they are what carry us across history among the giants and monsters of old into the future we have yet to realize."

"Yet there are stones beneath your feet who have been sitting there since before our kind was even conceived. The well of memory is deep... Deeper than your dreams, deeper than your nightmares, deep enough that even the tiniest fraction could suck you away for ten thousand lifetimes and you wouldn't have even scraped the surface. The mountains have presided over this land since before there were humans, or wolves, or trees, or life... The earth remembers, even if it doesn't remember that it remembers, and that means it needs someone to remember for it. But the road of memory is dark, and long, and without guidance it would be easy to get lost in the ages as they unfold before your very eyes."

"I would like to try, with the permission of my elders, and I believe with the help of my pack... I might even manage to find my way back home again." She says this while curling into one of her pack sisters as she prepares herself to drift off into sleep.

She reaches out, presenting the bone to anyone who might want to take it. That was all she needed to say, so there was no point in clinging to it any more. The matter of finding out what they were dealing with would be solved, so they could focus on the more immediate threat of the protection of whatever that sleeping thing was.

[Redoing this because a number of things were brought to my attention that required I revise this!]
#13
Cold Crescent is closed. Everyone knows that.

Cold Crescent is still called Cold Crescent, even among the elders in Forgotten Questions. High-ranked guards stand watch in the lower levels and patrol the tunnels and surrounding areas to make sure the Beloved Horror -- and others -- stay out.

Cold Crescent has shrines, and patrols, and people sort-of-almost staying there or near there.

Everyone knows that, too. No one brings it up at the moot, until the Cracking has begun to wind down.

--

And then the Cliaths and Fosterns talk. Older garou listen. Some, newcomers, tip their heads in both confusion and sometimes nod in agreement with one statement or another. Those who have been here longer cross their arms. Frown or smirk at turns, shake their heads sometimes, watch the younger werewolves circle the topic.

In the end, it is a New Moon who takes the bone. He spoke earlier. He is an Adren, and his name is Vigor and Rigor, known for the scales of his renown tipping more heavily towards wisdom and honor than glory. He was born and raised here; he lives in a house just down the street from the entrance to Roxborough Park. He completed, and won, a challenge of grievance last month by debating circles around the wolf who issued the challenge. The other wolf gave up. When he walks forward to take the bone, some of the garou who have sort of stopped listening because they don't pay too much attention to Fosterns and Cliaths perk a bit, attending more closely.

Bone in hand, Vigor spreads his arms.

"All right," he says clearly, with a smile. "Obviously all of you care about that place. A lot. But some of what you think you know is mixed up, and some of you just... don't know some pretty important things. Which is perfectly fine, only one of you I've heard speak is a Ragabash, and we can't expect all the auspices to give the same attention to detail that a No Moon would."

The smile spreads briefly to a grin. He turns to Erich, who spoke of Cold Crescent first. "Storm's Teeth: please do not jump into that pit-thing. I mean it." He pauses, and he's not smiling now: "Small spirits have been sacrificed. They went to see what they could find, and they did not come back. We don't know if they were changed," he glances at Tamsin briefly, then back at Erich, "or destroyed. We only know that they did not return. Hey, Warning Threshold-rhya!"

He looks into the gathering, at the wolf who cannot shift, who stands now as he has since his punishment, in the form of a tall, broad-shouldered man. His eyes meet Vigor's.

"Did the Walkers send any cameras, tech, things like that?"

And Warning Threshold, former warder of the very sept being discussed, gives a single deep nod.

"Nothing came back?"

Warning Threshold shakes his head.

Vigor turns back to Erich. "So really: don't jump in there. I'm willing to lay money on you not coming back." He turns to Tamsin, then, whose idea that was to begin with, and his head cocks to the side, his brows tugging together a bit. "They know about the caern. They know where we are. The first time we encountered them, before Cold Crescent was even built, was here. They weren't as strong then, and they were beaten back. Hunted, for a while, before they got so far from our borders that no one bothered. We had no idea what they'd become. But oh yeah: they definitely know we're here."

There's an undercurrent then, a faint chastisement, but he doesn't voice it. He doesn't need to. Chances are Tamsin knows exactly what he's saying, what he means to say to her specifically, without him coming right out and saying it. No big deal to him, though: she's only a Cliath, after all. Can't expect her to know everything about the local history right off the bat.

So far, Vigor isn't addressing Erich's suggestions, or Javed's passion, or anything but the gaps in information he's been hearing. The places where the inexperience and newness to the area of some of these younger wolves smashes against the disinformation and withholding and outright lies inflicted on all of them, even up to the Great Alpha, by those who built and sustained Cold Crescent to begin with.

"I won't deny it's a confusion situation," he says, more broadly. "Siren is right," he says, of the Black Fury he's known for years now, "when she says that we've tried. The Elders and Athros and Adrens and others among you have tried, and tried, everything we can think of, to understand that pit or close it somehow. I'm not saying stop coming up with ideas. You never know when you'll hit one that's new. Just... don't be discouraged when you keep hearing us say that we tried, and it failed. Top to bottom, we're all in the same boat with you regarding that thing in the basement of Cold Crescent: we have no clue."

Vigor flips the bone in his hand idly, dextrously, thoughtlessly. Perhaps some glare from Final Word or raised eyebrow, some signal, reminds him that this is a sacred rite. He stops flipping it and takes a breath.

"Siren is also right that it stays dormant until something is called, and only the Wyrm's tongue seems to answer it. I know: that puts my hackles right up, too. Can't be good if it only answers to the Wyrm, right? But that isn't certain... at least not in my mind. It could be many things. It could be unthinkable things. We don't know unless we ask."

Oh, they hit on an argument he's had many times already. With elders. Vigor isn't looking at the Fosterns and Cliaths right now, but at those who are his peers and superiors. Just a glance. A point being made. He turns back around to them, though.

"And before I forget: as far as I know, the management firm that owns the building and vets the tenants it leases to is... I don't know. I guess you'd call it a corporate kinfolk fellowship. Regardless of what they call themselves: we've got the building. It's not going to get yanked out from under us easily. Even without a sept there, I don't think anyone in the nation who is half sane would say we should just abandon the building or let it go without a few lawyers or real estate brokers getting death threats. Just... to set your mind at ease on that front."

He turns to look at Javed. "Bear in mind," even though he is speaking while looking at the metis, he addresses all who can hear him, "the Beloved Horror called Green Dragon to bless them once. They may do so again. They have recruited, time and time again. They will do so again. They're weakened now, and no one has caught their scent in the area lately, so I think they've run and hid again. But they've run to hide before... and always seem to come back stronger."

Vigor exhales. "All right. Ideas that I think are good: one, keeping our people on the ground at Cold Crescent, sept or no sept. We're doing that. I think we'll always have high-ranked guards down there as long as the pit is there; we failed before to guard it properly. We won't again.

"Two, letting other garou know about this thing. Really. The fact that we're this close to Cold Crescent and some of us didn't know that thing existed should send a wet chill down every single one of our spines; the fact that there are other caerns and septs in this state and surrounding states who don't know about it is appalling, especially since apparently some toothy lizard-man with a taste for the blood of kinswomen has been pushing architectural projects to try and create more openings for unknowable awfulness based on our naturally-occurring one. We do a great job of minding our caern; we've not been doing very well minding anything past its borders, though, and I'm tired of it."

Vigor pauses. "Three, many garou have spoken to their ancestors about this thing, but every garou who has that connection should be trying. Weep for a vision. Do peyote til you forget your name, whatever it takes, but it's like I said before: just because every answer so far hasn't worked doesn't mean we stop looking for one. Even if we have to look into the past for it.

"Four... traps should be a part of the defenses, particularly in the tunnels and access points. But I'm with those who oppose luring the Beloved Horror into Cold Crescent." He shakes his head. "That building is full of mortals, but it's also full of some of our kin, who are still working there. The basement levels and the upper levels aren't isolated entirely from that, and I'd rather see them deterred from getting in at all, even if it means we don't kill them as fast.

"Five..." and here he pauses. He turns, taking a deep breath, and looks at the Great Alpha. "Rhya," he says, very low, and inclines his head and shoulders. The Great Alpha, only one eye open in the shadows, stares at him with something like indifference.

"Rhya," Vigor repeats. "Forgotten Questions is my home. But I urge you to listen to the passion being displayed by those who fought the most recent battle against the Beloved Horror, the one that drove them away for the third time. Some of these garou, though low in rank, took the lives of enemies who have killed so many of our friends and even taken our kin from us. They killed them, rhya. Now they come and say they are still fighting for that sept that you closed and emptied. They are filling it again and trying to defend it.

"Hear them, Alpha-Rhya. Give them your blessing. Because if nothing else, they obviously care enough to do this whether they have it or not."

He inclines his head again, returns the bone to the Truthcatcher, and returns to his place.
my whole life is thunder.
#14
Sophia lays down like she might fall asleep, and Phoebe stretches her lupine head forward and gives her a hard nudge. Vigor and Rigor-rhya is taking the bone, is clarifying and tying together the disorganized information the younger Garou, the Cliaths and Fosterns interested in Cold Crescent and its underground hot tub for monsters. This is important. Listen.

And when he's finished, Phoebe nudges Sophia again, and speaks across the totem link.

"Go. Tell them what you need for what you want to do. Ask. We're with you."
#15
She wakes with a start, and those greyish-blue eyes of hers scan the other garou among them. She seems out of it, lost, for the briefest of moments. She wasn't asleep, so much as... Gone. She heard everything that was said, she was just watching other things... So it takes her a moment or two to remember exactly what was going on.

She holds out her hand, with the judging from her Alpha, and when the bone comes back to her, she smiles warmly and nuzzles gently against it. "I missed you old friend." She says in the softest of tones, far too low for anyone without heightened senses around her to hear though it was entirely possible others read her lips...

"I am a dreamer." She says, with her attention moving to the Elders of the sept. "Only mine is the dream of memory. Memories live within me. They sing their songs, they whisper their words into my ears, they share their anger and their fears..." Her eyes snap to attention and her face suddenly gets surprisingly serious. "In all my life. I have never known a moment of silence, but this is who Gaia made me, this is my gift and my burden to carry. It is for this reason I am the most qualified to undertake this journey..."

"I wish to have the Caern opened. I wish to delve into the well of memory and bring back the answer to the questions that plague our minds. What is this thing beneath the earth? Why does it exist? What is it's purpose? Who are these strange creatures associated with it? I realize, such questions may require me to dive deeply, and I ask that my pack be allowed to accompany me. It could take days, weeks, I will need them to tend to me, and when the time comes, I will need their voices to guide me back home."

She pauses and gives a smile, then glances around, and then back at her elders, before presenting the bone.
#16
Phoebe threads her way forward to take the bone again.

"As for spirit wardings and booby traps...I imagine reactivating the ward in the elevator shaft will require someone who can freely make pacts with Cockroach's brood [DERP I FORGOT IT WAS A FETISH]. Themis forbids my sisters and me from getting too close to spirits aligned too closely with the Weaver, however," she smiles, "Cockroach is not the only guardian of the city. We'll see what we can do."
#17
"Okay, so..." Erich looks around the circle, left and right and all around; everyone who's spoken. "Looks like we've kinda got a plan to go forward on?

"We're gonna make some sort of patrol schedule so there's always someone up in the Sept. Phoebe and pack's gonna look into getting more spirits on board to watch over Cold Crescent. I think we've still got the hardware up for security in the upper floors, so ... maybe someone can look into getting them wired up and active again. And maybe we can make some boobytraps too down in the basement to back up the Forgotten Questions warriors down there.

"Galliards are spreading the word about the Pit and see if you hear anything back. Or get anyone willing to come lend a hand. Sophia's gonna do some ... memory-digging, I guess? And anyone else with ancestors can maybe try to see what they know. I guess I have ancestors too, but I dunno if they're still talking to me. 'Cause of Reasons. Anyway.

"We're nixing the putting spirits/cameras/Erichs through the Pit idea, at least for now. It's been tried but it didn't work. Annnnd yeah. I think that's it for now. Am I forgetting anything? 'Cause if not, we've got our work cut out for us."
BECAUSE OF LIGHT AND DUTY AND REASONS.
#18
It is the Keeper of the Land who takes the bone next, younger wolves deferring to her eldership. Summer's Early Dawn takes it in hand and looks to Erich. "You are going to patrol... the sept. You are going to set spirit guardians for... the sept."

It's not hard to see the point she's building up to.

"You are going to install... things... and turn on systems that used to be in... the sept."

There's a pause. She's not the greatest speaker in the caern, but she is a Theurge. She speaks to spirits in pulses of information, memory, sensation, in body language, and she speaks a language that most of them will never know. But some of the people in the back actually have trouble hearing her, and she isn't very expressive or subtle. She's no Hector or Tamsin, is what we're saying.

"The sept that was closed by the Great Alpha."

Here, Summer's Early Dawn turns to look at one of their eldest, one of their most revered, who watches the moot through slitted, golden eyes. He looks from the bone to the Keeper, and for a moment, the two of them -- rather far apart in rank, and age, and temperament -- seem to carry on a silent conversation. Just before David is starting to wonder if maybe he needs to take that bone back before the Theurge forgets where she is, Summer turns back to Erich.

"And who will lead this sept, Cliath? You?" Her head tips. "Who will keep its spirits happy, polish the windows so that Glass is happy, sweep the challenge floor, care for the 'land' that others think beneath them?" She looks at Phoebe. "You, Fostern, born and raised by this caern?" She looks into the crowd, at wolves who used to live there, at wolves who forsook the place from the start. "Who will ward it, never to leave its grounds? Who will bind themselves to guard this place, and walk in the footsteps of its former guardians?"

A shudder goes through the crowd at the memory. Summer's Early Dawn looks over the Desert Oracles, looks at the Falcons:

"Who," she goes on, head straightening, going much more slowly to the other side as she stares at their faces, "will teach the rites, and who will settle the challenges? Who will face punishment, if you fail? If you fall?" Her eyes have come back to Erich, and they are piercing.

"I remember you, the night of judgement. You were one of many who could not bear it. Believe me," she says,

she: dotty, gentle, merciful, who shifted to crinos with the other elders and harried a now-nameless garou to a bloody, silvered death, whose eyes quiver with the memory even as she calls it to mind,

even as her voice falls even quieter,

"it was not an easy thing to bear."

Those words hang in a moment, as Summer's Early Dawn finds herself somewhere else, somewhere darker. She rounds her shoulders down, watching him as her eyes re-focus. It is a mercy when she takes them away, looking over all those who have spoken, a few who have not.

"Are any of you willing, for the sake of this sept, against the order of the Great Alpha, to shoulder such a burden?"

--

There is silence. Summer's Early Dawn holds the bone still. She breathes in deeply, and turns to David, holding it out to him. She even inclines her head to him slightly, a gesture of respect if not submission, and as soon as it hits his palm,

Shieldwind, an Athro Philodox who has taken more than a few shifts guarding the Pit, the Portal, whatever it is, has reached forward to take it.

"I will," he says firmly, at Summer's Early Dawn's back. "I'll die in that basement if it keeps Cold Crescent protected."

His eyes shift to Warning Threshold, who refuses to shiver despite having no fur now to guard him from the cold. The two meet eyes a moment, and Shieldwind chuffs a rough breath from his nostrils, animalistic. He gives a sharp nod. "I'll die without a wolf, by silver, if while I live I keep that sept safe."

--

The next, and the next, and the next. There's a clamor for the bone, and it's some of the young and it's some who are of middling-rank... none beyond Adren, none as high-ranked as Shieldwind, but there are multiple garou of each auspice, some who came to Denver for Cold Crescent, some who were born and raised in Forgotten Questions, some who have lived in both.

A few decry the sept in the city.

Most say, to answer Summer's Early Dawn: I will.

I will.

I will.


--

The bone moves on. The voices have not stopped.
my whole life is thunder.
#19
For a while Phoebe watches as the bone is passed from hand to paw to paw to hand. For a while she listens to voices lift again and again in assent. And while she watches and while she listens she thinks. Some of these thoughts she shares with her pack. They are shifting, half-formed things, even less coherent than one might expect among a pack specifically honed and attuned to a single Auspice. Her thoughts are jumbled and longing and confused and and and

at some point she sits up straight and she looks around. She looks for her family. Her mother stares ahead, gaze hard and unreadable. Her aunts watch the younger Garou speak up for or against reopening the sept. Chara, older, face lined with the passage of time and weighted by the burden of great wisdom, watches with chin lifted, her eyes cast down. The Stavros family have been staunchly aligned with Forgotten Questions these many years since Cold Crescent opened. Knews of the lies and the hidden truths of the city sept have done nothing to sway their opinions of the place.

Phoebe watches them, one hand resting over Keisha's, the fingers of the other laced with Sophia's. She smiles as she rises from them. For a moment she stands among her pack, tall and proud with her eyes on the passage of the bone.

"Go where your heart leads you," she says to them across the totem link they share. She looks at them, her sisters. Brave and steady Keisha. Drifting, aloof Sophia. Quiet, burning Winona. And she knows which way her own heart has been leading her for some time. Phoebe looks away from her pack, towards the center of the gathering and the cluster of Garou passing the bone. "We'll deal with tomorrow when it comes."

She goes to take her place among them. With Erich and Javed, their packs perhaps. With Shieldwind and, surprisingly, with her Aunt Penelope. Well isn't that going to make Christmas dinner more interesting? Phoebe smiles at her aunt who grins back, and one after the other the two youngest Stavros Garou take up the bone to declare, "I will."
#20
Milton takes in a deep breath and he looks around at everyone present and then he lets that breath out.

"I won't just die to protect that place... I'll die rather than see that place go undefended." He shrugs his shoulders. "Let's face it, I sure as hell don't belong out here in the woods with everyone else. I'm urrah, but I still belong to this nation and understand enough to know that what is under that building is important to the Wyrm... So letting the have it... That'd be kinda dumb."

"You can sure as hell bet the Dancers won't be stopping once they've got their foothold in the city. Once they have that place they're coming here... So, yeah, I'll throw my life away to defend that place if it means keeping it out of the hands of the Wyrm."

"So... Uhm... I will!"

He says this with a little smile before passing the bone on to whoever the hell wants it!


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