"We've passed," she says quietly, almost to herself, and immediately goes for the sixth bell on her bandolier, large and heavy.
All of them hear it, in disparate places through the woods, a clear and heavy A, like the chiming of a churchbell.
Lukas, Joey, Blood Summons, and Adam see Kate suddenly vanish.
Kate sees Joey, Blood Summons, Adam, Harvest's Dread and her only present packmate disappear before her eyes.
She is alone.
They have lost her.
[Waking Dream] You did well, Sorrow says, and anxiety leaps up Lila's throat like an imp, something squat, black, that'd just been waiting, just waiting and watching for a moment to make its move. Lila bites it back quickly, swallows her own tongue. Murmurs, quietly - " - let's hope." Then the bell rings, A, tolls out forever, and Lila's shoulders go up and she halves a glance with her auspice-fellow. Vibrant, her voice, with urgency: "Let's find the others. Now."
[Wyrmbreaker] "No."
Lukas could stand the loss of those that are dead, those that he has put aside for one (good) reason or another; he could stand it because he could hold to those that were still here. Those that were still alive, those that still mattered, those that were still with him.
Those like Danicka, Kate, like Sinclair, like Theron and Iona and Caleb, those like Asha, like Kemp and Lila and, and, and...
He could deal with loss because he could still protect those that were still present. And then Kate just vanishes.
"NO!" From calm and replete to frantic, ferocious, in the blink of an eye: the Ahroun dashing amongst the barren trees, clawing at the bark, heaving fallen leaves aside, beating at the twigs and branches as though he expects something out there to answer him. "Where did she go?" He wheels on their guide. "Where did you take her! TELL ME!"
[Sorrow] "Another bell."
Sorrow hums the scale. She hums not just the scale, but the song-of-the-scale. "La," she says, dark eyes distant. " - a note to follow so." Her assent to Lila's command is automatic, implicit in her body language. She has turned back, her path through the trees, and beings to run - human-into-wolf - the run, her paws churning the through the dead leaves, senses swimming again, the note still echoing in her mind's ear.
[descent.] Their guide is implacable, staring back at Lukas as her fingers hook around the clapper of the bell to muffle its song as she puts it back in her bandolier. Her eyes are still that deep, dark brown, but no longer warm. Nearly black, these eyes, filled with the rage and the wisdom of Gaia knows how many lifetimes. They hear the thundering of Kora and Lila's paws as the two females approach,
and the two females approach and see Lukas's chest heaving with anger, but his breath not yet steaming. Not that cold, yet.
"This is a part of her trial," says Harvest's Dread levelly to the other Ahroun. "I did not choose it for her, or her for it. But it is still hers." A beat, a thump of his heart in his chest. "Did you think you would be able to help her, when it was time?"
[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas glares at the other silently, the woman who was so far above him in rank and experience that he has literally no right to challenge her.
He glares anyway. His eyes are full of fire and rage, thunder and lightning, and after a very long moment, he turns abruptly and furiously away -- bursts out of his human skin for the first time in all this. Slams into his direwolf form. Black fur bristles, muscles rippling and tense, the Shadow Lord stalks to and fro, pacing the cold hard ground.
"Who decides these trials?" Never, not in all this long night(?), has he taken a tone this aggressive, this hostile. He's snarling, teeth snapping at air. "Who chooses the order, the task? Who chose us?"
[Blood Summons] Out comes the sixth bell. Blood Summons has not been looking forward to the appearance of more bells, has noticed that their guide has pulled them out and cast them into use when she has needed to maintain some semblance of order within the ranks--to get them to sleep at the first gate, to get them to let the Fury Theurge alone at the third gate. This is the first time they're hearing it in a number of hours, and it does not drop them to sleep, or stop them from moving.
Truth's Meridian, Honor's Compass disappears from view, and Wyrmbreaker just about loses his shit.
Blood Summons gets the hell out of the way when the Ahroun begins tearing through the stick-bare trees and fallen leaves as though he can find reason in his sister's disappearance amongst the underbrush. When he turns on their guide, Harvest's Dread's Rage does not flare up, and she does not bare her teeth. She answers calmly, as she has answered all of their questions, and then she answers a question in turn.
The Godi scrubs at the side of his face with one hand, then starts off towards the returning Gibbous Moons.
"His packmate disappeared," he explains, his voice kept low so as not to overtake the scene going on behind him.
[Truth's Meridian] All that she hears is we've passed and the clear and heavy tolling of the A bell before everyone fades before her eyes, like mist clearing in the early morning light. She has time to blink; has time to register that there's blood still smeared around her mouth and beneath her fingernails; has time to wonder -- will this be my gate? -- before the answer comes in the form of total
and utter
isolation. The Silver Fang's breathing seems loud; it rattles in her ears and the toad that had begun the night/morning/week/month whenever they began to dig that hole in her chest feels like its about to leap from her throat out into the night. She turns in a complete arc; quite slowly and takes in a deep breath of Autumn air.
"Alright," she says steadily, to herself, it appears, and then again, accepting: "Alright."
to descent.
[Waking Dream] [WP! Don't interfere right away!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[descent.] Harvest's Dread watches the Fostern snap into hispo, the form he fights in, the one he chooses for war, and she does not move. She is dressed the same: simple clothes, simply spun, simple colors. She has her arms crossed over her chest, her leather bandolier across her breasts. Most of her is covered, so he cannot see if she is scarred, or how.
"I chose you," she says simply, and does not answer the other questions. Maybe they don't have answers.
[Wyrmbreaker] "Why!"
[descent.] Kate doesn't hear a rustle of dead leaves being crunched. She doesn't hear a twig snap. Just footsteps, walking towards her. And then past her. And away. The man that comes by glances at her, frowns, and keeps walking, hands in the pockets of his gray slacks.
to Truth's Meridian
[Rain of Brass Petals] At once, she is gone.
The Fury's eyes widen and she doesn't gasp. She doesn't-
[The air is cold, the trees are growing bare and the animals are gone. The world feels still. Very still, in fact. Barren, mourning, slipping away. The earth is growing cold, it's natural. It's the way of the world, but at the same time, it feels cold to her. It leaves her chilled, in both the figurative and the literal.]
She looks at Kora, and she doesn't make it in time to try and get her attention. She watches as the Fostern ahroun goes immediately from calm to something close to... no, she's never seen him like that. Not that she had seen much of him before, but this is his packmate. The younger Fury looked at him, intently, then at the ground to find something to write with. The earth was cold; she found a stick.
A stick was a good writing utensil.
She doesn't move away, she doesn't speak up. Though, after a moment, she does start to move to go stand a little closer to the others, stick/impromptu pencil in hand.
[Waking Dream] It's autumn now, and the trees are baring their limbs to the scant sun -- it's autumn now, and things are dying, and spring seems further away, not closer. Blood Summons informs she who offers sorrow and Waking Dream what happened and Lukas' war-shape dwarfs the two wolf-women by a lot. Seeing lupusshapes next to hisposhape is like seeing reality and nightmare, juxtaposed. And Lukas' pelt is so dark, so angry. Lila brushes against Blood Summons' legs, stalking closer to Wyrmbreaker and Harvest's Dread. She growls a little uncertainly. A questionthing, that growl, not a challenge or a statement of aggression.
[Truth's Meridian] She doesn't hear the sounds of anybody walking over dead leaves, over freshly turned earth. She just hears -- somebody. She waits, and instead of turning around in quest of the sound, the approach, she waits and lets them approach, move past and begin onwards.
The man that passes frowns at her; receives the mirrored expression back from the young blond woman with the torn and tattered appearance. Ridiculously, Katherine's hand flutters to her collar, to her mouth; she wipes the traces of blood away with the back of her palm, begins after the figure. "Are you the Gatekeeper?" She asks, not yells, because -- what's the point, there's nothing to disrupt the question traveling.
to descent.
[descent.] He walks, and she follows. She asks, and he ignores. He glances back, and she's still there, and he looks annoyed, walks a little faster.
But she keeps coming. So he whips around suddenly, turning on the heel of one polished shoe, and snaps his fingers at her, pointing at her. "Off."
to Truth's Meridian
[Sorrow] Lila brushes past Blood Summons' legs. Sorrow's muzzle lifts toward the Godi as he reports the news, the rumble of his voice a half-intelligible jumble of disjointed sounds that her human mind picks up from her wolfen senses and translates into something real. The beast chuffs; something like thanks, circles the clearing where the loosely formed pack had drowsed away the hollow hours of the dark bend of night, the early glow of predawn, as the world shifted beneath their feet, and one of their own disappeared.
Lila's flanks brush the metis' human thighs, and Sorrow circles, circuits too. The slight Fury, her lips stained red-yet, feels the wolf's flank against her thigh. And Face of Death, circled, scented, marked, known. The circle continues. She approaches, flanking Lila, still lupus, gray in the cool air, fur ruffling in the passing breeze, tail stiff now, alert - intent - no question, no whine, no words, not yet.
[Truth's Meridian] "No." She refuses, and crosses her arms over her chest. "I've been brought here for a purpose, and here you are strolling by in your patently off the rack suit designed to look designer but clearly not," she sniffs, snaps; her eyes narrowing a touch. "So, I say non. Do not snap your fingers at me.
I refuse to be told to go off."
to descent.
[descent.] He smirks then, steps forward, and grabs the collar of her shirt with one hooking finger. "I didn't tell you to go off, sweetheart," he says, voice rich with amusement. And disdain. "Take. Them off."
to Truth's Meridian
[Rain of Brass Petals] She looks at Kora, and she looks at her intently. The stick gets placed on the ground for the time being, and gestures are quick and fairly sharp. She looks at the other cliath, and puts her fingers into a V-shape. She starts at the base of her own throat, then gestures up and outward, along her throat out away from her body. Then? With her right hang, makes another quick-yet-precise gesture. right to left, a horizontal slicing motion across her own throat with all four fingers. It's executed by a flick of her wrist. The expression she wears is one that is decidedly troubled.
[Truth's Meridian] That startles her; a flush of red-hot color shoots into her dust-stained cheeks. "I beg your pardon?" She puts a hand to shoo his fingers from her torn collar. She hesitates; her eyes instinctively going to their surroundings, to the cool autumn forest, empty and still.
"Why does it matter what I'm wearing?"
to descent.
[descent.] "Would you do this rite alone, Wyrmbreaker?" says Harvest's Dread, her fury like a red flicker around her, an aura too dark for this time of day.
"I chose you because what I heard told me you would not turn back when it became difficult. Or not just difficult but cold and difficult. Not just difficult but cold and wet and difficult. Or cold and wet and difficult and dark."
Her teeth go on edge. "I gave you my word at the beginning that I would protect you. All of you. Spit that promise in my face again and I will tear out your tongue. Bare your teeth at me again and I'll wear them as a fucking necklace. Stand. Down."
[descent.] "Doesn't matter what," says the gatekeeper, slipping his hand from her clothes as she tries to bat at his wrist. "Matters, though, that you respect where you are. Do you have any idea how ridiculous you look, with twigs in your hair and mud on your feet and blood on your face, wearing what you've brought with you? Take it off, or go home."
to Truth's Meridian
[Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker's hackles are up all down his back. His teeth are bared, his thick fur is so bristled he looks half again as big as he is -- and he's big to begin with, a solidly black beast with no highlight or impurity.
Abruptly he throws back his head and howls. This is not a wolf's howl. This is not a Galliard's. It is an Ahroun's, stark and raw, a song of violence, a promise of death. An explosive release of everything that's within him right now: all the unease and fear and anger and dread cast to the cold air, the bitter skies.
When it dies off, Wyrmbreaker hangs his head down between his splayed forepaws, panting. Then he crouches on his belly, averting his pale eyes.
"I apologize for my disrespect, Rhya."
His chin goes to his paws; he waits.
[Truth's Meridian] "I would have thought," coolly this, as she wrestles with modesty and humiliation; and settles lastly on some mixture of the two: self-righteous anger. "That I looked the picture with nature in my hair, and rubbed all over my skin." A beat, she stares at him; breathes out through her teeth and articulates carefully: "Fine."
She unbuttons her blouse and slides it from her arms, wiggles out of her jeans and peels her camisole over her head; it tangles up her already matted blond waves and leaves her looking rather like a maid for country matters. She does not stop with her over-garments; but takes every last article off -- she knows, somehow, knows -- that he meant all of it.
Every last stitch.
When she's done, she fights the urge to cover herself, and instead settles for lifting her chin to meet his eyes.
to descent.
[descent.] "Nature is one thing," says the man, as she starts unbuttoning her blouse. "But if you can't see the incongruity between silk and cashmere and blood and mud, I don't know how much use you're going to be, here."
He's unbuttoning his shirt, too. Well, first his suit jacket, which falls to the ground. And then his shirt. They undress together, facing each other, until they're both standing naked as Adam and Eve. Like this, Kate is instantly the more savagelooking of the two.
Thunder rolls overhead as they're stripping down. Lightning flickers in the distance. Daylight begins to be obscured by an incoming storm. As they find themselves naked, the rain begins to fall. Not the fat, heavy rain of spring but the fast, pelting rain of autumn and thunderstorms.
"Now," he says,
"what would you like to do?"
to Truth's Meridian
[Sorrow] Adamidas stops Sorrow with a hand tightening in her ruff. That is all it takes, that gesture, in passing - coupled with the intent look in the slight girl's dark eyes when the wolf looks up, muzzle lifted to the girl's face, her black nose damp. The beast swings her head again, ears pricked with alertness as Harvest's Dread fury flares around her, the flashpoint of the confrontation, silent for this, tension written into every taut muscle flanking her long spine.
The howl draws a shiver of anticipation from the beast; Adamidas can feel that too. Then, the moment passes. In a moment, Adamidas has Sorrow-as-human, in her softest skin, pale except for the little fevered circles of heat drawn forth in the apples of her cheeks by the Ahroun's stark song - like to like, that; the promise of blood, the promise of spleen - in the mouth, on the snows, dashed and steaming. "You can't talk." Sorrow says, her hair loose again, filthy - smelling of smoke and blood, ash and dust, fallen leaves gone paper-dry on the wind. She is taller than the rest of the female Garou - taller, of a certainty, than the slight Theurge - and she bends her head down, to murmur in the other's ear, dark and light, light and dark. "That's what you're saying." Dark eyes fixed on Adamidas' face, the Skald awaits the Fury's confirmation.
[descent.] Daylight begins to darken as stormclouds appear on the horizon. Thunder rolls in the distance, and after a little while, rain begins to fall. Not the fat, heavy rain of spring but the fast, pelting rain of autumn and thunderstorms.
[Truth's Meridian] She hesitates when he begins to unbutton his shirt, almost asks [demands] to know what he thinks he's doing, but bites the words off on her tongue and instead looks away; up, down, side-long; anywhere but at his body as he undresses before her. She's only ever seen one man fully naked before, and it had been dark, and beneath bed-covers.
Her skin is prickling in the cool temperature; the tiny hairs are not the only things reacting to being bared in the cool air. She glances up as the rain begins; and droplets catch in her eyelashes; she blinks them aside and looks across at him; speechless for once. "I -," she begins, croaks, and then shifts her weight on the balls of her feet.
"I don't understand," she admits.
to descent.
[Rain of Brass Petals] The rain starts to come down, not in soft pellets, but the kind that comes unforgiving in autumn. She nods, once up, once down, just enough to confirm that words spoken were no longer an option for this particular theurge. [Speak the truth or lose the privilege] There's a sort of certainty in the motion, and she glanced back at the ahroun. She looks at the clouds, inhales the smell of autumn storms.
she hopes for the best.
[descent.] He, at least, doesn't try to look away. He doesn't give her any once-overs, doesn't stare at her breasts or tip his head to check out the curve of her ass or the darkness between her legs. He's just... there.
"Pretty simple question," he says mildly. "There's no one else here to ask. So. What do you want to do, Kate?"
The rain is cold, and drenching her hair. Her nipples stand on end. So do his. His dick retreats somewhat from the chill; he doesn't seem to react other than to shiver. Lightning strikes, illuminating the forest for a moment, turning the trees into grasping claws at the sky.
to Truth's Meridian
[Wyrmbreaker] Rain comes, then. Not the soft, drenching rain of spring but the cold hard rain of autumn. Thunderheads on the horizon. Storm in the air.
Wyrmbreaker lifts his chin from paws, taking strength, somehow, at the evidence of his totem's might in the sky. Another moment, and the Shadow Lord stands. A moment after, and he returns to homid form, turning his face up to the rainclouds overhead.
"I'm sorry," he says again after a time, and this time to everyone around him. "Kate has to do this alone, just like everyone else. I'm sorry."
[descent.] Lightning strikes, turning the forest bright again for a moment. The barren trees look like claws, scrabbling at the sky. The storm is coming harder now, colder, faster. Harvest's Dread looks up, looks eastward, and takes a breath. She turns to the others. "We should find shelter. This is only going to get worse."
[Waking Dream] "We're together," Lila says, quietly, with surety. The wolf-Lila had settled down beside Wyrmbreaker, pressed close against his side, when he was hispo-Lukas, angry-Lukas, Lukas-with-blood-in-his-howl, violent-Lukas, and she'd shiftshapes after Lukas returns to human-Lukas, and when she does, she is seated on the ground, her attention touching Adamidas, silent, voiceless, then Harvest's Dread, then Blood Summons. She hugs her knees, rests her chin on her knees, closes her eyes.
Then Harvest's Dread speaks, again, and Lila stands. Graceful. "Why?" An echo of what she asked, what she asked, before they fled into the chasm, even as what the Ahroun says echoes what she'd said as Ragabash.
[Sorrow] "Come on," Sorrow hip-checks Adamidas, the gesture familiar in its physicality. Her voice is low. "Keep the stick. I don't know the gift that would let us share thoughts, but maybe Lila does." They are being pelted with rain now. It pours, it drowns, cold needles of moisture slicing through their filthy clothing. "If she doesn't know it, the stick. You can write - glyphs, or English. I can read. If you don't object, I'm going to tell the others, too." Pause, a glance up at Harvest's dread. " - so that they know how to listen to you."
Then, louder. Respectfully, to the Ahroun. She glances at Wyrmbreaker just once, when he apologizes. Her features are still. " - rhya, do you know the way? Or is this shelter we need to find for ourselves?"
[Truth's Meridian] She thinks that she might well die of embarrassment where she stands. She has never stood in such close proximity to man before when there weren't layers of clothing between them. She thinks that it's a rite, and it's about sacrifice and its about renewal and she remembers looking in the window of the tiny squat house and seeing the Doctor with his arm shoved to the elbow down Adam's throat and she shivers; she does not want be to forced to give up whatever is being asked of her.
what is not given freely must be taken
"But it isn't about what I want," she protests, then listens to the storm breaking over their heads [Perun] and thinks that maybe it is what she wants. The lightning illuminates the man; the gatekeeper standing across from her, shivering like her in the cold and she bites into her lower lip and worries it; thoughtfully.
She's heard her father's voice this day.
She's seen the others push forward; display bravery; defy fear.
The rain beats down on her skin, but the sensation is not wholly unpleasant; there is something almost soothing about it. Awakening. Perhaps even re-awakening. "Is it?" She wonders; and closes her eyes, breathing out carefully. "I want," the words are impossible, impossible. Impossible, how can she push them past her lips. The shame of it would devour her alive. So she steps nearer to her guide; gatekeeper;unknown with leaves sticking to her bare feet --
and puts her hands on him.
to descent.
[descent.] "Why is it going to get worse?" Harvest's Dread echoes, already walking. "Or why should we find shelter? Because I think --" she steps to the right, turns around a tree, going deeper into the woods, "-- you'll find that if you consider the last thunderstorm you were in, you should know the answer to both those questions."
To Kora, calling back over her shoulder, "Not your test, daughter of Fenris! Come on! We may have to build one."
[Blood Summons] The two female wolves pass him once the message has been relayed, Waking Dream brushing against Blood Summons' leg as she goes, and as she brushes he turns on his heel and starts back towards where they had left Wyrmbreaker and Harvest's Dread. His attention, though, is on the gesturing Rain of Brass Petals. Eyes that look colorless in the darkness light on the young woman as she explains to the Skald that she cannot speak, and then drift skyward as the first fast drop strikes the top of his head.
The Fostern Ahroun apologizes, twice, and Blood Summons just says, "She'll be alright, man."
Lightning cracks overhead, and suddenly they're being drenched, rain coming down hard and cold and fast. Even the Godi, with his Rage so much higher than the typical spirit-talker, shivers as his t-shirt becomes soaked with rainwater, and then talk of shelter.
This is only going to get worse.
She keeps saying that. This strikes Blood Summons as amusing, the way that someone running smack into the side of a building is amusing, but he doesn't say anything. He just listens to the exchange between the two Gibbous Moons and their guide, and bumps Waking Dream with his hip as he comes abreast of her.
[descent.] His eyebrows quirk up as she insists that it isn't about what she wants. They lower into a vague frown as she questions herself on that. She wants.
And she puts her hands on him.
Gently, the gatekeeper reaches for her wrists, wraps his hands around them, and pushes them away from his body. He waits until those pale fingers are a good distance away, and shakes his head. "No," he says, "you don't. Besides," he goes on, looking her over, "you're filthy."
And she is. If she looks down, Kate can see: the rain isn't washing anything away. Mud still goes up to her knees. Blood still cakes on her flesh, dried to her skin, tacky and flaking. He lets go of her wrists, turns, and starts to walk again, away from their clothes.
to Truth's Meridian.
[Waking Dream] "I don't, actually," Lila says, half-apologetically - but only half. There's a lot to learn, still. She's only a fostern, after all. And she hasn't been a fostern for very, very long, not yet. Doesn't know the mindspeak gift. "Maybe I'll learn," and she side-glances to Blood Summons when he hipchecks her, exaggeratedly staggering to the side, eyes wide, arms pinwheeling. Then she straightens, reaches out, takes his hand, squeezes it. This is a frolic through the woods. She's not staying still. She's following Harvest's Dread, although she tilts her head back, back, neck very white, to look at the sky, shielding her eyes from the storm, from the violet tines of electricity. Oak'll draw them down.
[Truth's Meridian] Well, she attempts to put her hands on him but he insists that she doesn't and that she's filthy. And she does look down at her own nudity and glimpse all that mud and all that blood and everything; she can feel her hair hanging in thick, unwashed knots and a tremor of horror courses through her system.
She shivers, uncontrollably and closes her eyes. "I want to be clean," she calls after him, opening her eyes. "I'm tired of being muddy, and covered in blood and hearing ghosts and I just want to know how to open the god damn GATE and I'm covered in mud --" and she bends, a hand pressed to her ribcage as if abruptly winded. "There are germs all OVER my skin and I need to wash them away.
That's what I want. I want to be clean. It's not noble, or heroic but it's the truth."
to descent.
[descent.] "Storms," says their guide, ducking under some branches, "tend to get worse as they go on. Especially here. Also," she adds, and here they see flickers of Naomi, of Birth of Song, of Chuckles in Summer Shadows, simply in the way she speaks to them, "lightning hurts when it hits you. Hypothermia, too: not as much fun as it sounds."
[descent.] He's walking away from her. The storm is coming down over her and lightning is ripping through the sky and he's leaving her here. "Well," he calls back, "you don't always get what you want, do you?"
to Truth's Meridian
[Rain of Brass Petals] Into the woods, I dare not go, the song plays through her head. What she knows of the song; the Fostern apologizes, the rain starts to come down harder. She doesn't know what to do, or to tell him, or how to tell him; now was not a time for digging one's thoughts into clay with crude utensils. They needed to seek shelter, though. The Fury looks at the Shadow Lord briefly, long enough to try and give him some sort of nonverbal support. The best she can do is offer sympathy.
Just like she had with her own sisters, she knows Katherine will be back.
She moves with Kora, assuming she's going somewhere. It seems the Fury is a proponent of the Buddy System.
[Truth's Meridian] "I do," she yells after him absurdly, coiling her little hands into fists and all but stamping her foot in a fever of rage. She begins to give chase to him; darting through the pouring rain and thunder and cutting her feet up on Gaia only knew what. "I refuse to give up until I open the gate, and you --" breathless here, she matches his pace, catches him up. "Are the key to it."
to descent.
[descent.] "Oh I'm the key?" he says, laughing at her. He walks slowly, and she chases after him, but the distance between them never changes. And the storm keeps coming. "Then I wonder what you'll do now?"
He turns around abruptly. And vanishes.
to Truth's Meridian
[Wyrmbreaker] There are only six of them now. Seven, including their guide. Wyrmbreaker is the last to leave the relatively coverless area, some part of him, blood and bone, craving the storm.
He does follow, though. And then he picks up the pace, jogging until he's amidst them rather than straggling at the rear.
"Let's try to find a cave or a burrow," he says. Something about this is forced: a deliberate attempt to shake off his concern for his packmate, to turn his pragmatism to immediate concerns. "Failing that, let's fell a few trees and build a shelter."
[Sorrow] "If you need to tell me something," Kora says, not hovering over Adamidas, not tending to her, but walking just ahead of her, in the wake of their Guide. "Snap twice. It'll get my attention. Okay?"
Then, they might have to build something. "I'm shit at carpentry!" The Skald sings out in the Guide's wake, soaked through now, her hair and face wet, streaming, cold. " - just," a crooked smile, beneath the darkness of the storm. " - so you know." Sidelong, this, as Lukas comes abreast of them through the dripping trees. "But I watched Survivor once, so I know how to not get a fire started until they give you a pack of matches."
[Truth's Meridian] What she'll do now -- is shriek.
What she will do now, is rage in her anger and yell curses at him in native french. What she will do is swing around; one way or another and then; trembling; wet; bedraggled; begin to walk in the same direction that the gatekeeper had been last seen trekking out in. After a time, she stops, and looks up at the ominous sky and then keeps walking.
She doesn't shift into her wolf form.
Her teeth begin to chatter together.
But she keeps walking.
to descent.
[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's face is tense -- the angle of his wide, high cheekbones sharp, the lean cheeks taut, jaw clamped. He stares at Kora humorlessly for a second, eyes stark, pale as ice, pale as magnesium fire.
Then, abruptly, a relaxation in the drawn lines and planes. He laughs under his breath -- then more openly. Jaro, he thinks to himself. And rallies.
"That's okay," he says. "I was thinking we could just dig a hole and pile some trees on top, that was all. If we don't find a cave. Scrunched together, our body heat and our fur will keep us warm."
[descent.] The Garou in the woods hear screaming. No. Shrieking. It isn't coming from any discernable direction. It comes in with the raindrops, given power and distance by its frustration. The sounds aren't pain, aren't need. They're just... aggravated. Pissed the fuck off. And Lukas knows that voice, perhaps even knows that exact sound.
They go away.
Harvest's Dread put her eyes on Lukas the second the first shriek echoed through the storm, as though to tell him watch it. The sound is gone a few moments later, and she wipes hair and water out of her face. "I think building something's our best bet. We won't find any more mountains or caves after that last one, I think. I could be wrong, but... a burrow shelter may be for the best. Get ourselves grounded. As long as we don't drown."
[descent.] She curses, but there's no one to hear her. He doesn't come back, even as she tromps through the woods. Lightning hits a tree not two yards from her at one point, and no shelter presents itself. She is cold. And wet. And dirty. And alone.
to Truth's Meridian
[Rain of Brass Petals] There are sounds you can make without making words. A snort, for instance, was a good one. A cough, a gag, a sneeze, all of them sounds made by air instead of the vocal folds. If a snort could sound amused, it did. The corners of her mouth drew upward, and the Fury shakes her head and keeps going.
The expression darkens immediately when she hears the shriek. Aggravated. Pissed as fuck. It doesn't make her tense, but she doesn't have a need to snap for attention as of yet.
She finds herself thinking of shelter instead. A welcome respite.
[Wyrmbreaker] "Let's do it, then. I'll dig. You too, Rain. Everyone else, tear down a few trees, or maybe some branches. We'll pile them on top of the hole and have a nice little den."
Somewhere in the middle of that, Kate shrieks in fury. Lukas's jaw tenses further, but he doesn't react at all.
[Rain of Brass Petals] Adam gives Lukas a thumbs up.
[Truth's Meridian] She is not a quitter.
She does not know how to simply give up on a situation until there are no more means of pushing forward. She walks, a dogged, determined stride. She does not know for how long she continues on; trembling, wet, enraged. Lightning strikes a tree not far from her; but Perun has taught her not to fear the storm, but to embrace it.
Her guide has not returned. Her Gatekeeper.
She is alone.
After a time, Katherine stops walking. She breathes out; raggedly and moves to a tree trunk. She slides down it, and draws her dirty knees up to her chest; her temple rests against them so that rain beats upon the crown of her head. "I'm sorry," she murmurs, whether this is toward the others, somewhere out there, waiting for her, or to her own misery is unknown.
to descent.
[Waking Dream] Kate shrieks in fury, somewhere, somewhere that isn't here, and Lila's head lifts, she straightens, listens hard for any echoes, but everything is an exultation of storm, of dampening, of heavens cracked-open, broke. Joey, quiet, nods and goes to do what Lukas said, and Blood Summons rumbles, and goes to do what Lukas said. Lila drags her fingers through her soaking, tangled hair, and pauses to sniff her skin, her shirt. Her eyes drift closed, and she, sensualist that she is, dreams off -- can smell all the seasons at once, lingering in the weave of fabric, smell 'em like smoke.
Then she lopes off, too, with all of the others, or perhaps just with Kora, and they go to fell trees -- striplings, large branches -- like men do (or monsters -- because noone's got an axe).
[descent.] So the Garou: they dig. Harvest's Dread and Blood Summons and Face of Death and Rain of Brass Petals and Waking Dream and Wyrmbreaker and she who offers sorrow. They dig together, they break branches and drag trees and discuss a moat around the burrow to catch some of the water that will inevitably roll off their shelter, try to limit how much will flow into the burrow itself. They do well. Instinct guides them, and human ingenuity. It takes time, but this isn't their test.
They just don't know whether or not Kate is passing hers.
In the end, it's seven bodies curling up in the den, tightly packed. Harvest's Dread shifts to hispo, enormous and gray-furred, blocking the entrance, shielding those inside from whatever might drip inward. She protects them, even in this small thing, and keeps her eyes on the exterior, watching for... something.
[Sorrow] Sorrow's assent is wordless, but not soundless - a note in the back of her throat. It is not A and it is not B. It is something easier than either - one of the notes that they have passed through already. Maybe re. If so, there's an ironic cast to her features that is difficult to read under the torrent of the opened skies. And so, she goes out, radiates - with Lila, or the rest, or all of them. The rain slices through the dried mud clinging to her boots as she skirts a deadfall, pushes through the woods looking for pine boughs or understory trees easily brought down - takes time and care to strip them, bark and wood, boughs and branches - and returns, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes later with her plunder.
Let's face it: Sorrow's ancestors got better plunder, but she offers the young pine, the stripped branches to the Ahroun elder in perhaps the same way her good-kin once offers squealing maidens and golden torques and everything in between. Then they dig together, burrow under the earth, pack themselves tightly into the darkness, body heat for warmth, all curled together under the dank, dark earth.
[Wyrmbreaker] It's different this time. Each time, one has separated him or herself from the rest. Blood Summons found himself unaffected by the drowsiness that pulled everyone else down with soft fingers. Rain of Brass Petals' exam room had a window. Lila, even, could be heard distantly, howling to her temporary pack.
Truth's Meridian is entirely cut off from them, though. They have no sign whatsoever or what's happening with her. They cannot see her, cannot hear her on the wind, cannot smell her. She may as well have ceased to exist.
In the darkness of their makeshift burrow, Lukas stays as upright as he can manage, which simply means: he's on one knee, his hands gripping at the branches over his head, his eyes open and alert as the rain starts to fall
harder.
[descent.] In another part of the umbra, the same time and place but nowhere she can see, Kate's packmate is settling into a makeshift den with six others, one of them... a very strange sort of Garou, who seems to inhabit all ages and ranks and auspices in their turn, who knows and does not know what waits for them at these gates. They settle in where it is warm and mostly dry.
Kate begins to shiver. Her teeth clack together. Mud crawls up her legs, squelches into the cleft of her ass. The tree's bark scrapes at her back as she sits down. Her tears leave snail's trails of salt down her cheeks, and the blood hardens under her fingernails, coagulates between her teeth. It feels like worms are crawling in her hair, it's so oily by now. The rain never makes her clean.
It just beats on her, until the ground is turned to sludge, until lightning strikes again and again and again and destroys tree after tree after tree, until the world around her turns blackened and charred and the air is vibrating with electricity. Her hair stands on end. Nature lashes at her back, and a few times she thinks she hears voices --
-- only to realize she's imagining things.
to Truth's Meridian
[Rain of Brass Petals] She curled up around whoever was nearest to her, eyes closed and made far too comfortable- she was tightly packed in, but there were warm bodies near her. She inhaled, and she could smell them. She could smell rain and she could smell Fenrir breeding and Thunder's and memories and stories. The Fury wasn't quite tired yet. She stays as awake and alert as she could, but she found herself with little moving room.
In turn, she does take a second to nudge the ahroun elder a little. Enough to, hopefully, get his attention. If she has it, she takes a second to find that damned stick [it's more like a pencil, really, a big, blunt pencil] and starts to carve a message on a nearby wall. Not hard, not enough to cause any kind of structural instability, but enough to be read.
[Rain of Brass Petals] She is strong. Spring will come.
Nothing else.
[Truth's Meridian] [Perception + Alertness, just in case there's something.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to descent.
[descent.] Ain't nothin' here but storms, dormant trees (and dead ones) and Kate. She didn't really hear anything.
to Truth's Meridian
[Wyrmbreaker] Nudged, Lukas looks over questioningly, only following the tip of Rain's writing-stick after a moment. His eyes scan the words. Then the line of his mouth cants; he smiles faintly.
"I know," he replies. But that doesn't keep him from staying alert, watchful, tense.
[Truth's Meridian] She sits, and grows progressively wetter. The storm wrecks havoc all around her, striking down trees and turning mud into a sludgy mess. She feels a scream building up in her throat but refuses to give it leave from her throat. She thinks, at one point, that she can hear voices.
So she grasps harder at the desire not to scream for fear that wherever they are -- the others might hear her.
She sits, and she grows wetter; and eventually, she begins to cry. The tears come from the feeling of impotence, however, not fear. She does not know what the spirits want from her; what is in her to give that they are demanding because she has no offered it. At one point, she begins to try and scrub away some of the mud caked to her legs uselessly, but it stays firm.
She is wracked with the sobs at one point; her chest begins to ache, and she wonders, futilely, if she's dying. Somehow, she knows it's not so, but the desire builds as the storm beats at her to simply curl into a ball and give up. "I don't know what you want me to say, d-d-do you want me to give you my life, or, what?" She is shivering, it hits at the words, making it harder to speak clearly.
"I want to bring on the season, I want to help, I want... I want you to let me help. Let me help!" She's back on her feet, now. Thoughts of not screaming forgotten in her red haze. Fur sprouts over her skin; and she falls to her haunches, snarling. "Tell me what you want!"
to descent.
[Rain of Brass Petals] She nods, and drags her fingertips across the wall to wipe her slate halfway clean. She doesn't tell him that he's next; they all know he's the only one left.
You are strong, too, which he was probably already aware of, but it bore enough mention that she felt it necessary to write it out. A statement of faith from the youngest person in the hole. The only thing that remains from her original statement was spring will come.
It seemed written harder than the other phrase had.
[descent.] Night doesn't fall, because the daylight simply goes on and on. They can't sleep because they already did, dozing after hunting. They can't hunt because lightning will strike them down as they walk, as prevalent as it is in these woods, striking tree after tree after tree. All they can do is wait.
Though after awhile, Harvest's Dread begins to speak. Quietly, she murmurs aloud, just barely audible over the crash of thunder and the crack of lightning and the patter of rain:
"I was still very young, when They taught us the rites of the seasons. Chiminage was all blood and pure energy; the Weaver was weak. So, too, the Wyrm. There was no balance then, either, because the Wyld ...was like an artist. Constantly whirling with ideas. New things it could make, like a child realizing that clay would hold its shape when squeezed in the hand.
"I went alone, because I didn't know any better. And the spirits couldn't warn us, because they didn't realize what our limits were.
"I think that was the beginning of limitations, anyway. The beginning of the Weaver's rush to control all the newness of creation."
[descent.] There's no one to hear her. Her voice echoes back to her as the storm strips everything down. Trees fall and disintegrate into the earth even as she watches. Soon all that will be left is a barren heath, cold and wet and empty. She shrieks, she snarls, she changes her shape because she can and demands that they let her help.
Nothing happens.
No one answers.
to Truth's Meridian
[Wyrmbreaker] Realization trickles down, drenches him like a sudden downpour. Lukas turns away from staring aimlessly at the gaps between the trees, the opening of their burrow, and stares instead at their guide.
An unimaginable stretch of time yawns in his mind. She was that old: old enough to have seen the world before the Weaver rose to power, before the Wyrm was mad, when almost everything was Wyld and mutable and changing.
A long silence; then:
"What happened?"
[Truth's Meridian] Nothing happens; so the Silver Fang, bristling now in her dirty-once-white coat does what any enraged Garou would do; she strikes out at the world around her in a display uncannily like the one her Alpha had performed upon first noticing she had been taken from him.
She bashes against smoking trees, and draws great clumps of dirt up with her paws. She savages the land because she has no other vein for her fury.
She rages, rages, rages.
And eventually; when this too wears down to nothing, the Silver Fang sits back down at her chosen resting point and waits; her great sides heaving from her own created storm. Energy spent.
to descent.
[Waking Dream] Lila's breath hitches in her throat when Harvest Dread begins to speak. Of course, she listens. Of course, she listens, spring-green eyes wide and full of something close-kin to yearning, or compassion, because that's impossible, it's impossible -- but it isn't. This, this, is real, and this -- this is why the rumors said that something big was coming, something important, something as big as the hive. Because it's real, because it's older than old, ancient, something bone-deep, marrow-seeded, something that haunts the blood, ghost-in-blood, something. Lukas and Lila speak at the same time, the galliard's voice overlaying the Ahroun's: "What happened?" Her voice is very quiet, very low; easy to let the drum-beat, percussive-fall of storm wipe it away. And add: "-rhya, what do you want?" That isn't this rite. That isn't spring. That isn't for them to fail or succeed.
[Sorrow] Sorrow lupine head lifts from her paws. The air they share is damp and humid, rich with earth, the detritus of season after season of falling leaves, rotting wood, the work of thousands of small things, burrowing and devouring, consuming and shitting out the gradually settling soil. Roots poke through the ceiling and sides of the burrow. Worms crawl, grubs spasm, wet and blind, dug out too early, too late, to feast on the tender shoots of the new grass, to grow chitin over their soft white bodies, to grow wings, to fly and mate and die, to change.
Her echo of their questions is lupine, wordless - a huff of breath, the alert twitch of her ears, the watchful glow of her feral eyes.
[descent.] "What is not given must be taken," murmurs their guide, staring at the rain. "These are the rites of the underworld."
She is no Cliath, though, no cub, and she knows the depth of the answer. Her head swivels about, taking in the wolves that share the darkness with her. The den. They are a pack, though not bound by any spirit this night. They quest together, have hunted together, have run from danger together. They have snapped their jaws and struggled for dominance. They have forced themselves, time and again, to restrain the urge to help when it is not the right time. Tonight, they are her pack. And when she looks at them, they know
she loves them as such.
"First my memories of my family. Then they blinded me. I had my throat torn out at the third gate."
Written underneath the tale: I did not turn back. Without pride. Without even justification. Because maybe that was wrong.
"The keeper of the fourth gate broke my heart. It was years before it healed enough to be used."
No explanation, there. But then: they saw what Joey went through.
"They made me forget my name, broke my will, tore away my knowledge of my tribe."
Oh.
She stops there. Turns away again, showing something to the rain that she will not show to them. She stares at the storm instead, and is silent for a time. Lila might think her own question is ignored, til finally they see the direwolf -- whose internal throat must be human-formed, to be speaking English still, and so clearly -- take a breath.
"I want to go home."
[descent.] Her rage is gone. Her will to get up and move is gone. She's no cleaner in lupus than she is in homid, either, and there's nothing she can do about it. All she wanted to do was help. All she wanted was to come into the fucking underworld and bring about spring. That's all she wanted to do. Help her packmate. Help her tribe. Help her people, save the mother-fucking world.
It's hours before she finds she's not alone again. She hears a voice, and this time she isn't imagining it. It's him again, lowering himself into a crouch beside her. No trees, now. The ones she's destroyed have sunken into the ground. Nothing but endless flat earth and endless mud and endless rain.
"Wanna know a secret?" whispers the gatekeeper, to the tear-stained, blood-stained, mud-drenched princess.
to Truth's Meridian
[Truth's Meridian] She can barely lift her head to acknowledge him; she's so exhausted. "What?" She asks, too tired to even snap at him now. There's resignation in her, even in her wolf-skin.
to descent.
[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas wants, very much, to say that they will help her get home when the rite is done. They will help her remember, somehow. They will find the spirits that recognize her as their own. They will discover which of the Homelands is hers, and lead her back to her people. Her blood. Her past.
Lukas, however, does not lie. He is not so arrogant to assume that a group of Cliaths and Fosterns will be able to overcome what was done -- longer ago than he can fathom. The Ahroun is silent, eyes reflecting what faint light there is, glimmering until he blinks a few times, looks away, back.
"But you cannot," he says. "And that's why you guide us now. Us and others like us, year after year. Is that so?"
[descent.] He reaches out, and puts his hand on the back of her head. Comes in close. "Don't tell anyone," he murmurs, not so much comforting as he is firmly present, "but Spring will come even if you turn back."
His fingers move through her fur. Despite the fact that she's filthy. Wretched. Bugs fall from her coat, and he doesn't flinch. His voice stays low and soft, yet she can hear him all the same.
"And then summer, and winter, and spring again, just like last year. The moon will wax, and then it will wane. Cities will rise up and then they will fall again. The world will burn like a forest and clear the way for new growth. Bad and good will war. Bad and good will vanish. Tribes will dissolve. They will change. The Laws will be broken, and then forgotten."
All around them, the storm seems to hammer down that much harder, as though angry at his words.
"You will be forgotten, daughter of Gaia. Your pack. Your family name. All that you are, all that you fight for, will pass away, and there is nothing," he goes on gently, shaking his head from side to side, "that you can do about any of this."
He moves to sit beside her, settling down into the mud. It starts to creep over him, onto his lap, all over him, painting itself on him like a mask over every inch of his body, turning him dark brown. "Even the dirt. The dirty things. The blood. Your body makes itself filthy even if you do nothing," he says, with a touch of amusement. "It produces oil. Plaque. Sweat. Blood comes out of you. Piss and shit. Earwax. It's just going to happen."
Gently, so gently, he strokes her fur back from her, scritches her scalp as mud cakes over his hands and smears on her, blurs the white.
"You can no more bring about spring, daughter of Gaia, than you can make a tree grow or a person listen."
to Truth's Meridian
[Rain of Brass Petals] It is a juxtaposition between duty and the ache that comes with it that makes the Fury observe the other female. Naomi, Youngest Mother, Oldest Friend, all of them in between, because they are all the same (oh, but they aren't). Tonight, they are a pack. Tonight, despite the nature of their trials, none of them are alone.
I want to go home, she says.
I know, Alethea so desperately wants to reply.
And, in that moment, she thinks of Katherine, she thinks of Joey, she thinks of Blood Summons and Kora and Lila and Wyrmbreaker, and she thinks of what that would be like... to endure all of this alone. To sacrifice, to give [or have taken, these are the rites of the underworld] to endure so much... alone. All so something could happen, so that the reason could change, long before we had these things. Long before the weaver calcified and the wyrm went mad. While the wyld was still creating, while so much was needed.
All of it alone.
Her stomach hurt worse than her throat.
[descent.] "One day," says Naomi, her voice faraway and descending towards youthfulness again for a moment. One day to home. She doesn't explain this belief; perhaps doesn't realize that they, tied to their tribes, may need explanation for how a Garou of no tribe could find a way to a homeland. "But no. That isn't why."
She lowers her head, nuzzles at her own paws, breathing deeply still. "The need for the rite is not my own. Nor even Gaia's need."
Then, Harvest's Dread gets to her feet, looking as though she aches, as though her bones are creaking. "It is not only the earth that must be reawakened. But come. Up. I think the storm is about to lift."
[Truth's Meridian] It hurts to do it, but she forces her body to shift to her birth-form so that toward the end of his words, its not white fur that he's combing fingers through but tangled fair hair. She turns her face a little; her tear-streaked, dirtied face toward him and looks; and listens.
"But then why," she says through a parched, dry throat. "Why persist with the rite? If all is for nothing, it seems," she swallows, closes her eyes. Shakes her head. "Fruitless."
to descent.
[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas thinks he understands that. That it's not only the earth that must be awakened -- but perhaps themselves, too. Each of them has had to overcome something. Some flaw, some weakness, some barrier in their spirit.
Each of them but him.
The storm is lifting, and all at once, Lukas remembers who it is that has yet to take his turn. Those nearest him can hear the Shadow Lord draw a breath. Then he stands straight -- stands greater than straight, shifts into his warform and, with all his enormous might, begins to push on the fallen trees and branches and logs stacked over their heads.
Like plant life in the spring, they push their way out of the sodden earth.
[Waking Dream] "Ack, hey," Lila says, as suddenly HISPO squishes her against a wall, and there's laughter, radiant beneath -- spring, too, that, something seedling-curled, uncoiling. Because of the storm's over, then they'll be reunited with Kate. That's how the story should go. That's how it'll be, won't it? And when they're out, all of them, Wyrmbreaker, Rain, Naomi, Blood Summons, Joey (brush 'gainst you), she who offers sorrow, Lila looks around at the woods, taking their measure.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6) Re-rolls: 3
[descent.] Dirty, filthy, human-skinned, the two of them sit together in the mud and the muck, and he puts his hand on her cheek. "I didn't say it was all for nothing," he says, with a small smile. An aching one, and maybe even a sad one. "Life is life, daughter of Gaia. Why else create it? Why else is the single strongest instinct in all living things the urge to not only survive but to breed? Life begets life, no matter the destruction it faces. It needs no justification. It needs no reason."
It is cold enough that her human skin remembers how brutal late autumn can be, how wrenching it can be to a body like this. Why they build shelter. Why they made clothes. Why they fuck under blankets with their mates in their dens, curl up with their packmates and their children. Her body aches with the cold, and tells her that if she stays out too long she'll die.
Her body also tells her:
you will die anyway.
So why bother going on?
His hand smooths down and off her cheek. "Fruitless, maybe. Fruit rots, anyway." He shrugs. "Are you done?"
to Truth's Meridian
[descent.] [A lot of what Lila picks up on was pretty much in the post, I think. Some really old sadness. Weariness. She's not currently feeling lonely but she is really familiar with that emotion. At the moment she just means what she says: storm's going to lift soon, so she thinks they should get up and out of the burrow. Also that means they might stop questioning her.]
to Waking Dream
[Truth's Meridian] She thinks it's a gambit this; her answer. The Answer; in all capitals. But she says it none-the-less because she thinks perhaps its what they want of her, what the answer is to that question asked of her right at the beginning of all this mess. What is it they wanted her to offer: surrender.
To give in.
To comprehend that she could not control everything.
That some things, that nature, that the seasons were beyond even one Katherine Bellamonte's iron-clad grasp.
"Yes, I think I'm done." She casts him a weary smile, then. "But it's alright." Just as she said before.
Alright.
to descent.
[descent.] The gatekeeper nods. He stands, mud sluicing off of him. "Begin walking," he tells her. "You will find the others when you are not looking."
A beat, before he turns to walk away from her. "That is how all treasures are found."
He leaves her, then, not walking into the distance or fading from view but simply... descending into the earth. It doesn't open up, but swallows his footsteps, then his ankles, his legs, his thighs, as he sinks into the earth. The rain begins to let up, the thunder and lightning peeling away from the sky. She begins to walk. There is no direction, no sign of sun or daylight moon, nothing to give her a path to follow.
Until there they are. Seven figures in various forms, coming up out of the earth itself, just as the gatekeeper descended into it.
to Truth's Meridian
[descent.] Except this isn't the time for new plant life. The storm has ravaged the woods around them; there's nothing left. Nothing.
The storm's let up, as Harvest's Dread told them it was going to, but as they come up out of their makeshift shelter, they find that the trees are gone. Everything's gone, struck by lightning or torn by claws until they fell, disintegrating into the mud and muck. The air is frigidly cold, and for the first time since the beginning of the rite, they can see their breath steaming before their faces.
Katherine is walking towards them, covered in filth from top to bottom. There's blood on her face and throat still, dried there from the hunt and never cleansed, not even by the rain. She is painted with mud, heir hair matted with rain and oil both, her fingernails crusted with blood and hair and muck. She is naked, her hair unbound, shaking from the cold. There is no rage in the way she bears herself towards them, no energy left for fury.
Just Katherine.
[Rain of Brass Petals] Katherine is taller than she is.
The Fury doesn't hesitate. She is stripping off layers, and the first thing to go is her shirt. It's wet, pulled off over her head, but clean compared to the dirtied female Silver Fang. The smaller female didn't give any indication that she wanted to speak, or that she wanted to share words with her even if she could. She just cocked her head to the side, standing now in a sports bra and a pair of jeans that hung off her hips. Alethea Adamidas bears no physical scars.
The shirt is held out to Katherine, a woman who is a
[Waking Dream] The woods are gone. Long live the woods. They're blasted. And Lila's breath is a visible thing, a reminder of the warmth inside (heart[h]), and she exhales slowly, a little shakily, because they didn't hear this, they didn't hear the entire world being ashed away. And then -- there's Katherine, walking toward them across the apocalyptic landscape, and Lila smiles, something that starts slow, becomes shining. "Kate!" She hails the philodox, joyfully, waving.
Hold, though -- hold.
Lila catches Lukas' wrist and, hopefully, his attention. She says, steadily, with intensity (moon-maiden, poet-thing): "You are going to do well, Wyrmbreaker. I see it in you. "I don't know what you're going to face. But I see it: that you'll do well." Her voice is vibrant with things unsaid, even, even call it prophecy, if you'd like, although it isn't -- it isn't, this thin she has, that's so close to faith.
[Wyrmbreaker] No life coming out of the earth but them. No renewal, but them.
Something about that is fitting, as well. Everything about this is fitting. The blasted earth, the still air, the thunderstorm that's passed, the winter season upon them now.
Lila takes his wrist. He turns toward the Galliard, dark brows up, questioning. She speaks. His eyebrows lower, and then, bright as daylight, he smiles.
"Thank you," he says softly.
Then Lukas sees his packmate coming toward them, and his attention turns away. Focuses, but quietly. As frantic, as furious as he was when she disappeared, he's not the first to run to her or offer his coat. In fact, he neither runs toward her nor offers his coat at all.
He just watches as she nears. His keen, crystalline eyes scan her face, her body for signs of trauma or damage; her eyes, for some hint of what happened. Lukas doesn't ask, either. When Kate's ready, he suspects Kate will tell him. For now: he watches.
He moves forward when she's within the loose circle of their pack-for-tonight. He puts his hand on her shoulder briefly, warm and strong, searches for her eyes. And then turns away, onward, looking for what comes next.
[Truth's Meridian] She's staggering by the time she reaches them. There isn't a hint of Rage clinging to her; her limbs are covered in filth; there are tear-tracks marking her cheeks, cut into the grime there. She'd naked, but she doesn't appear to remember it the way she holds herself, slightly quivering as she walks, and walks.
Because he told her to begin walking, and she'd find them when she wasn't seeking them.
And so she does.
She smiles when the Fury pulls her shirt off and offers it to her; her teeth are chattering together; her lips are faintly blue. Her feet, and hands are covered in cuts. There's blood beneath her fingernails; and twigs, leaves and other debris in her hair. She looks rather like she fought against nature itself -- and it's a draw between who won. But; all this being said; there's a quiet glory to her eyes when she meets theirs.
A private sort of happiness beneath the exhaustion she can't describe. Not right now.
She thanks Rain of Brass Petals, smiles for Lila, and puts her hand on Lukas' own, freezing to the touch as it might be.
[Wyrmbreaker] When he sees what he does in Katherine's eyes, Lukas, turning away, smiles again.
That, too, is quiet. And he draws some strength from his packmate.
