the gate of song.

[descent.] They sleep.

They sleep, though they know that the rite must be completed before the end of the equinox. All the same, the sleep is deep and relaxing. They are not disturbed for some time, though Time is a mystery here that none of them dare try to puzzle out. They all wake to the same sound: a bell, a touch more resonant than the one that put them to sleep. The musical among them identify it as a D.

As they wake to the sound of the bell, heavy, fat drops of rain begins to fall on their faces, churning the ground beneath them into slick mud. Naomi is there, putting her bell away, looking exhausted. Now it is most definitely night, and the underbrush is filled with the noises of little animals and snakes and bugs and whatever else running about, shuffling themselves into shelter. They can all but smell the storm on the horizon. Wasted Winter is gone now, and the wind carries the messages of nourishment into their nostrils. It's too dark to see: the moon is still thin, the sky is black, and there are no stars here.

In seconds, they're all saturated. Their hair and skin and clothes get washed of mud and muck, but the earth at their feet is turning to such sludge that they're still filthy up to the ankles, the shins, the knees for some. They're cold. They're wet. It's dark. And yet there's a sense of restoration in their bones and bodies, a cleanness to the air that's... promising.

And in the distance, flickering to life on the horizon, that utterly indistinguishable border between sky and ground, flame. A campfire roaring to life, and a shadow breathing nearby it. The sound of a guitar drifts towards them



[Everyone except for Blood Summons is at full WP again. Everyone has healed 1B, Blood Summons has healed completely.]

[Wyrmbreaker] Rain is what Lukas is aware of next. Rain, cool and heavy on his face -- the sudden torrential downpour of spring, or early summer. He blinks his eyes open. There's water on his lashes already, water in his hair, water washing the dirt from his hands and his face, soaking through his pants and the slice of his shirt exposed beneath his jacket.

The leather does a little better than that. Water rolls off of it; ruining it perhaps, but that's no matter.

Lukas sits up. His neck aches. He grimaces faintly, reaching back to rub it. That'll teach him to sleep on the cold ground until it's dark and raining. He looks around, ascertains that the others are still there, are awake, are all right.

Then he tips his head back to the sky. Opens his mouth to the rain, closes his eyes. His face is wet when he lowers it again, and suddenly, impulsively, he grins at Kate.

"It's like Perun is here," he says, and gets to his feet.

There's light in the distance. He looks at their guide, the girl who calls herself their protector.

"Did we pass the first gate? Is that the second?"

[Rain of Brass Petals] She starts to stir, and her body is sore. The theurge winces as she moves her neck slowly from one side to the other. She realizes that she must have slept wrong... which is odd, because she was so comfortable when she had laid down. There's a bruise on her arm she doesn't remember, and the theurge is somewhat puzzled by this. She makes half a groan, but that is all there is.

She stands, and there is a campfire in the distance. There is life there. She's wet, and the Fury looks a little more like a drowning cat than a daughter of Pegasus. Her shins are cold, her knees are damned near touching all the mud and muck. It's cold, wet, and dark. And she is with strangers.

Not strangers, not really, septmates.

She looks at the Shadow Lord- at leaast someone is happy about being soggy.

[Truth's Meridian] When she awakens, it is to raindrops on her face, it is to the saturation of her clothing; pasting her pale blouse to her fair skin, her jeans against her thighs; calves. Her boots are coated in thick, sludgy mud. There is panic, again, blossoming within the chest of the young woman packed beneath a God of Storms; like the Shadow Lord beside her she tilts her face up and lets the water sluice over it; cleansing it.

But still, the fluttertremor of panic sits like a toad in her chest.

She returns Lukas' smile; but her lips strain to do it. She gets to her feet with a grimace. Her muscles ache, her hands move to her clothing out of instinct. The water can rinse away only so much, she's half turning in circles, trying to discover any remaining flecks of mud attacking her. It takes effort to draw her focus away, to pay heed to the light not far, to the stirring shadow, to Lukas' question.

[Face of Death] Joey wakes to the feel of rain splashing against her face. For a girl born in the desert, who lived her whole life in a place as dry as the Mojave, the rain is always surreal. So much water, falling from the sky, turning the ground to mud and muck. She likes the rain, likes to stand up on the roof of The Brotherhood and let it wash over her, despite the chill.

That's what she does now, at first. When she pulls herself to her feet, the Rotagar turns her face up to the sky, closes her eyes, and smiles. Her arms hang loose at her sides, her clothing sticks to her skin, her hair gets plastered back from her face.

She's not alone here. Of course she's not, the others are still gathered. Joey rolls her shoulders, rotates her head on her neck, stretches out kinks and stiffness. Lukas points out a light in the distance, and Joey follows his gaze.

The sound of the guitar reminds her of something, or someone. Joey squints against the water pouring into her eyes. She ignores the cold and the discomfort of the wet, and she starts to move, toward the warmth of the fire, like a moth to flame.

[descent.] Naomi looks drained. Her eyes are sunken, her skin pale, her hair dripping wet. She's shivering a bit as she closes the clasp keeping the second bell silent on her bandolier. A snap, and it's done. Lukas asks her something about the fire in the distance, and she reaches up to wipe her hand across her brow. Water drips off her tiny fingertips.

"We've passed through the first gate," she confirms with a short nod. Then, to his second question: "Yes. I can only assume it is."

Naomi takes stock of the seven of them, then nods towards the flame. "Come on. The gatekeepers are ...demanding. But they are not our enemies."

With that, she starts to trudge through the thick mud towards the offering of warmth and light.

[Sorrow] Kora wakes with the bell in her mind; she knows the note, she hums it, absently resonant in the back of her throat. The skies are opening and all around them the earth is coming to life, all the things that crawl and slither, all the things that shuffle and whir snaking back beneath whatever shelter they can find.

She turns her head to the skin as the heavens open; heavens – the sky was blue and now it is not. The sky is opening; they are no stars. Her face is soaked, drenched, the rain falls first like tears down her face, and then like a flood, glassine, drenching, soaking her hair dark, soaking her dark tee, pooling and falling, a half-hundred little rivulets on her soaked skin. Hands at the small of her back, she stretches, arches back – she remembers this feeling, passing – sleeping hard on a thin cot in a cheap hostel, or out, all night, underneath the stars, stretched out on some stranger’s antique futon, cat-napping in the third-class compartment of a railway car.

Remembers it, stretches, but the ache doesn’t fade.

The mud sucks at her feet, her ankles, her calves. She slogs through it – looking once at Lukas as the Shadow Lord, the Warleader – grins at the Philodox Elder.

Joey begins to move. Kora gives Blood Summons a sidelong look, dark eyed; then Lila, then Adamidas. She is – considering them, a flash of profile, the set of a jaw, the sheen of rain over the skin, cold and wet, gleaming. Come on – is on her lips, almost, but their Guide says it first. She does not remember wanting to sleep, but she slept; and she awoke, the confidence of this firms her narrow shoulders beneath the sodden cotton of her t-shirt.

And so: she begins to slog in Joey’s wake, through all the sucking mud.

[Waking Dream] And, awake.

Awake, and the sky has cracked open, is falling. The green-eyed (lovely) galliard opens her eyes quietly and stares up at the deep dark overhead. Her body aches. Her muscles, too. Beyond that, though: she feels rested, tranquility knotted over her heart. Lukas sits up, and Lila pushes up a moment after he does -- her elbow in the deepening muck, her palm pressed flat into the earth. Then she pulls herself into a crouch -- hips slung low, something lean -- and she rubs her shoulder with her unmudded hand.

Her eyes are not animal radiant right now: they're dark, human, pupils swelling, drawn toward the light then deliberately moved elsewhere. She is getting soaked, and looking up, up and up again, "Hmmm"ing once. D, that's the note she hmms. She drags her fingers through her hair, gaze turning to Naomi when Lukas asks his question. And when the child-woman answered, she nodded briefly, almost to herself. And her gaze went sidelong, toward prey, baby toward Kora, and, mud sucking on her heels, she bumped into Blood Summons as she made her way over to Kora, looped her arm through the other galliard's, gave her a little spin [dance (c'mon!)], then let go and grinning (ow, aches!) went to do the same thing to Joey.

PUDDLES. MUD. MUUUD! RAIN. SPRING.
It's glorious.

[Rain of Brass Petals] Moving wa an interesting experience, and it was a moment where she realized that the earth wasn't exactly fond of people who didn't weigh very much. That also said, she looked at the ground, at her muck-splattered pants, and grinned. She inhales, and she exhales, and the air feels like the elements of spring. They don't have much time to finish this, they have until the equinox is over.

They're bringing spring, and they're headed for the campfire. The Fury moves forward and is content to head for the campfire. Somewhere warm that she could dry out from.

[Blood Summons] When he opens his eyes again, there is no lingering residue of pain in his body. His spine does not hurt, nor do his muscles. Whatever damage he'd sustained, his tissue has healed quickly and without his noticing. He doesn't even remember falling asleep, but he must have: he's on his back when cognizance returns to him, squinting, flinching as rainwater falls into his eyes, cleansing his body of the dirt and the blood that had fallen down the hole with him.

He pushes himself up into a seated position, then chuffs, a sound that's wholly strange coming out of a homid throat, and pushes himself standing. He does not move stiffly like some of the others, does not rub at his flesh as he takes stock of his surroundings.

The Ahroun elder asks where they are, and Naomi answers. The eyes of his tribeswoman are on him, briefly, and he cuts a glance back at her before his boots squelch in the mud and begin to propel him forward, following the others toward the campfire.

[Wyrmbreaker] People are squinting, slogging. One is panickedly brushing dirt off her clothing. Another is looping her arm through another's, grinning, which lights off Lukas's grin again, which is sudden, brilliant, brighter than any Shadow Lord's had a right to be.

"Come on, people," he says, addressing them as though they were not fostern and cliaths of his Sept but the young men and women they looked like, teenagers and twenty-somethings out on some sort of nature hike. "Lighten up. These are tests, but I don't think this is war. This is for the spring."

Jaro, he thinks to himself. And laughs: because it's raining. Because he's muddy. Because his neck aches from falling asleep on the ground, but it was still the best nap in recent memory. Because the equinox is coming. Because he's happy.

Without much warning, Lukas abruptly breaks into a run toward their next gate. "Come on!" he shouts over his shoulder. "Let's move!"

[Rain of Brass Petals] "Rhya? I will lighten up if, and only if, I get a piggy back ride to the bonfire."

Then he's running, and she's half trotting to catch up, but really it's a futile effort. She calls out, muscles tightened and built for projecting her voice.

"Hey! I'm making irrational demands here!"

[Truth's Meridian] The further she gets from the thick, swirling mud around her ankles, the more her Alpha's words seem to affect her. Her shoulders square back, her breathing evens out and she even flicks some degree of amused-but-not-quite-there expression Lukas' way as he bounds off like an over-sized retriever after a tennis ball at the beach. Katherine hmms, and calls after him.

"You try running in soggy jeans."

[Face of Death] Lukas tells them to lighten up, to move, and he runs. Joey watches him go for a bit, the tall, long-limed Ahroun Elder. She lets him get a ways ahead of her.

Then her face splits in a grin, and she's after him. Mud tries to cling to her shoes, tries to slow her down, but this is Joey. Wind spirits couldn't slow her down. She catches up to him easily enough, bumps her shoulder against his. She's strong, made all the stronger by the totem she follows, but she doesn't careen into Lukas with the intent to knock him over.

Laughing, she cuts ahead of him.

[Waking Dream] "RACE!" That's the Child of Gaia's contribution: "For spring, then! For dawn and for -- " a breath sucked in. Exhale, wholly honest: " -- renewal and rebirth! For winter's end!" Lila says, sings, and they can't see the smile. Most of them can't. They can't see how it's this edge of something (burning [simmering]) bright. "I'll carry you, Rain of Brass Petals. Hop on!" Yep: the 5"3 galliard is UP for that challenge.

[Rain of Brass Petals] Don't have to tell her twice!

The theurge is, surprisingly enough, adept at pouncing-on-and-being-situated-ontop-of people who were... oh, wow, Lila was a tiny woman. Adam overestimates her height and ends up sliding down on Waking Dream's hips. She nearly cleared her on accident.

"Ohmigoshyertiny!"

[Sorrow] And there is Lila, dancing with the Fenrir – which could be a blood sport in other places, in other lives. She hooks a crooked elbow through Kora’s arm, spins her around, the mud sucking at the heels, making the whole of the movement – the wind-up, the unfurling of it – inelegant, the pair of them wobbling around in a half-spin like an unbalanced top, fast enough to kick up clots of thick mud. Lila frees her, then, runs for Joey.

Kora hip-checks her fellow Galliard – familiar, physical that – all, hello, I’m here, and so are you – and then, as she breaks into a jog – brushes past Blood Summons in much the same way. The Skald offers the Godi the edge of her smile; it is curved like the edge of a sickle, though not so sharp.

It is a jog; not a run.
Part of her wants to see where they’re going.
Part of her wants to know where they’ve been.

And so: it is a jog that kicks into a run only if and when she must to keep up with the group and then it is a run because she is running, the rain lancing cold on her face, her breath harsh and sure in her lungs.

[descent.] "Ack!"

That's approximately what Naomi says when many of the much taller, older Garou all break into runs, some faster than others. She starts sloshing through the mud. "Hey wait up!"

But she's laughing, as Joey tries to race with Lukas, as Lila spouts encouraging words, offers to carry Adamidas. And for some reason, as they run, they catch sight here and there of the little red-haired female 'leading' them. Guiding them. Guarding them while they slept.

She has tears on her face. She runs anyway.

The ground beneath them gets firmer and drier the faster they go, as though the imminent campfire has warmed and dried the earth itself, as though it is the sun that the flame so often symbolizes. Naomi lags behind, but it seems at least partly willful. She has rung her bell. She has woken them sleepers, and they have crossed through to the second gate by the sacrifice of their own strained vigilance.

They get closer to the fire and see logs arranged around it, like this is an old, old site. Four of them in a diamond. Four lines like that mean 'pack' in their glyphs. Sitting on one of them, half-lit by the red-orange flames is a woman in a thick jacket, keeping herself warm. The rain's slowed to a drizzle now, faint and hissing on the fire. The woman has stringy blonde hair, stringy from not being washed or from being out in the rain or both. There's a guitar on her lap, and she's pulling aimless tunes from its strings, idly playing.

As the running Garou get nearer, slow to their stops, she looks up.

At Kora.

[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's reply: not verbal. He simply cuts back, comes straight at Kate, scoops her off her feet and over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. That's dignified.

"Better now, your majesty?" -- and off they go.

Across the soggy field, onto firmer ground. It's still raining, splashing off the Ahroun's face and his leatherclad shoulders; soaking into his broad chest. He's not as fast as the Rotagar -- few people are, were, or ever will be -- but he's tireless, bounding along until he's finally had enough of jostling Kate around and lets her down. Then they're all running together, loosely, like a pack, with the girl racing ahead or behind or alongside them with tears on her face, which they can hardly see in the darkness and the rain.

Lukas is breathing harder as he reins in at the outermost circle of firelight. He walks now, panting quietly, sobering, swiping rainwater off his face in one pull of his hand. The woman looks at Kora. Lukas looks at Kora. Then he falls back a step, letting the Fenrir walk ahead.

[Truth's Meridian] Lukas cuts back toward the more moderate, paced Philodox, whose face twists into first surprise and then an indignant half-horrified, half-amused thing as he swoops her up over his shoulder in a fire-man's hold. "Lukas!," she thunders, beating his back with a little closed fist of [faux] impotent fury.

Because honestly, if she wanted down, she could make it happen.

"Put me down this instant! I am capable of --" but then he sets her down; red-cheeked, eyes alight with renewed energy and she smacks him, smiling, furious, invigorated all at once before her eyes turn on the woman at the fire and pale brows rise -- then fall. She too, steps to the side and lets Kora forward.

[Face of Death] Joey leads the way, racing ahead of the others. Sometimes Naomi runs beside her, tears streaming down her face, but Joey can't tell. All of them have water on their faces, streaming from their eyes and dripping down their cheeks.

The ground hardens beneath her feet. Rather than going faster, pushing harder, Joey slows. The sucking mud had given the others at least some chance of keeping pace with the Rotagar, but solid ground means she could leave them all behind.

So she slows to a halt, her breathing coming harder without gasping. Joey was built for movement, to be in motion, to run and play and fight. She looks at the woman by the fire, dark blond brows furrowing, her head tilting to the side. When the woman looks over to Kora, Joey follows her gaze with her eyes, looks back to the woman with the guitar, looks back at Kora.

And she steps back with Lukas and Kate, allowing Kora the space needed to come forward.

[Waking Dream] By the time they reach the circle of firelight, Lila is almost breathless.

A woman who could be Kora looks up at the garou who is Kora and a hushed intensity that isn't yet tension takes possession of Lila's limbs, strokes over her bones (moon-mad thing). They've reached firmer, dryer ground and she releases Adamidas' legs, lets the Black Fury touch earth again. She stares hard at the woman by the fire. She stares hard at Kora, mapping out differences, and then looks back again, watchful, head canting,

pensive.

[Rain of Brass Petals] From her current mounted position, when they find themselves on the fire, she looks...

She looks a little confused. The Fury ran a hand through her hair, letting dirt go back to where it belonged (in her hair, of course). She had laughed on the way there, and the quality was one that seemed unfamiliar to some. t was a sound most of them hadn't heard, and if they had heard it, it was behind a closed door within her first few weeks of being in Chicago.

The Fury was on solid ground, now, and silent again. She looks at Kora, and then the woman.

She said nothing.

[Sorrow] Kora is running but she is not laughing; not like Lila, not even like Lukas, who has his voice again now, and gives it voice – throat and heart and lungs – not like Adamidas who is carried or Kate, elegant, dignified Kate, who is carried over her Alpha’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry – upside down through the rain – how could she not laugh?

Not the last to arrive at the campsite, not the first, she is last – but she is alive to, aware of the position chosen by their guide and looks back at Naomi, once – within the circle of light, standing on the warm, dry ground – without. The glance is passing.

It is likely even she does not see the tears.

Then, then – Lukas steps aside, and figure at the campfire looks back up at her. This time, the Fenrir woman does not cast about – does not look to the Godi, does not look to Galliard elder – does not look away. It’s her duty to witness, even if she must witness the shadow of her own face looking back at her. There’s tension in the line of her spine again; her clothing is fitted enough that those behind her might well see the spasm of strained muscles in her low back, the lingering stiffness from their (bloody) enchanted sleep.

She casts one unguarded look at the guitar and – walks, forward, toward the echo of herself – or the thing of which she is an echo, written back into itself like some elegant recursive script, a word turned inside out.

“I’m next.” Her voice is quiet; it so often is. The firelight licks long striations of dark and light around the ground, make her shadow dance for all that she is still. “Right?”

[descent.] The differences are there, but they have nothing to do with appearance. Yet: they're strong enough that even some of the Garou running with Kora don't immediately recognize them as physically identical. Same height. Same hair color. Same eyes, though the gatekeeper's seem... darker. Laughter turns to silence as the weight of the gatekeeper's rage settles on the participants of the rite. And it is heady. Thick in the air, just as tense and creeping as the arousal from the field they appeared in.

Each of them will meet perhaps a small handful of Garou in their lives with this much rage. A couple of them may become like that themselves, and the picture is horrifying. Not-Kora looks so filled with hate, righteous or not, so burdened by grief, that one wonders how a frail homid-formed body can hold it in, can hold even a drop of that anger.

This is the sort of rage that can drive a werewolf mad.

Naomi walks up behind some of them. She puts herself between Lila and Adam, wedges herself in there, and puts her fingertips on the handle of the second bell. She doesn't say anything, but she seems wary.

"What are you?" the gatekeeper asks, her voice shaking with the effort at controlling herself.

[Sorrow] Her heart is beating fast again; this is a different sort of heat. Her lungs are burning – though she is not holding her breath, she feels starved of oxygen, opens her mouth of breath in through her parted lips, not her flared nostrils.

“I’m a Skald.” Kora says, tension baking off her like heat-haze from some empty desert highway. She has a rich, low, resonant voice, but now her words are clipped, precise, hard as stone. “I’m a cliath. I’m Get of Fenris. I’m Garou.”

[descent.] "You're also full of shit," says Not-Kora, who picks up a rock and flings it at the Skald, Cliath, Get of Fenris, Garou. "What. Are you? What are all of you?"

[Wyrmbreaker] When the resemblance between the woman at the fire and Kora becomes clear, the last of Lukas's good cheer turns to tension. When the stone is flung, the Ahroun reacts as any Ahroun might to an assault on what is, for this night at least, his pack:

by bristling. By taking a warning step forward, and showing his teeth.

He has an answer. It wants to leap out of his throat. As before, he has to restrain himself: to not lunge forward at the keeper of the gate; to not blurt out an answer that he thinks Kora is meant to give. A second after his teeth bare, the Ahroun deliberately steps back again. He bites the insides of his lips as though to seal them over his jaws.

[Sorrow] The rock hits her square in the chest. She turns with the blow, but that does not ease the impact. She bares her teeth, it is not-a-smile, and flings a sudden, wild look away from her changed self – echo, prognostication – at the rest of the ritewalkers, arrayed behind her, their faces painted in dancing shadows from the fire.

"We’re Maelstrom’s children," she looks back, remembers the sacrifice, remembers what remains of it, folded twice and twice over in her hip pocket, and her hand reaches there, involuntarily. "Falcon’s, and Thunder’s. We belong to Unicorn and Pegagsus, and to Fenris, and to Gaia. What else are? Their instruments; their weapons against darkness, their hands and their hearts and their claws. Their bulwark against Ragnarok. Their last hope of victory."

[Truth's Meridian] Truth's Meridian stiffens when the questions are thrown back -- physically -- in Kora's face by means of a rock. She does not quite bare her teeth as Wyrmbreaker does, but she does stir herself enough to turn a deep frown the gatekeeper's way; to allow her pale eyes to narrow on her drying face; her fair hair that is listless now, no longer falling in pristine waves but in tousled, unclear disarray; as if [quite rightly too] she had woken up recently from a nap and forgotten to comb it smooth.

Kora responds, and the Silver Fang's eyes trek between the two; watchful.

[Waking Dream] The keeper of the second gate's rage curdles her blood and sings a song she doesn't wish to join. Naomi wedges herself between Adamidas and Lila; Lila gives easily to allow the tiny young/old garou space. But the way she gives: it's a song, this, the ease of movement, the slink of hip; how she stalks aside. The firelight casts them all [bronze (copper) rose] and the hushed intensity bleeds into the way she carries herself, head high, eyes bright. The galliard glances sharply at Kora when Not-Kora flings her rock, asks her next question. Then Lila opens her mouth, and swallows her own reply with an audible breath, because Kora had it right. I'm next. Right? Watchful, then. Her pupils are pinpricks, swallowing themselves. She is witnessing.

[Face of Death] Joey doesn't react when not-Kora hurls a rock at the Skald. She does react when Lukas steps forward: she frowns, but she doesn't pull him back, doesn't try to step between the Fostern Ahroun and her tribesister's challenge.

She slides her hands into the pockets of her jeans, stands with her feet braced shoulder-width apart. And she watches. She watches the woman with the guitar with the immense rage. She watches Kora throw her answers back. Like the others, if Joey has any idea what the answer to the question might be, she keeps it to herself.

[descent.] The rage in the air pricks at the Garou's own, brings it to the fore. The Fostern Ahroun -- of course, the Fostern Ahroun -- is one of the first to respond with his own rage, with the threat of bared teeth, with the protectiveness of an alpha wolves among those who are, by virtue of their very race, all alphas. All given the urge to dominate, to lead, to protect.

Naomi, their protector, stands near the warmth of the fire, near the warmth of the wolves she's with. She has given them precious little help, but then: this is only the second gate. The second of seven trials, seven sacrifices, seven sorrows and joys.

"I think it's interesting," says the gatekeeper, leveling the words at Kora like a sword pointed at her throat, "you put Gaia at the end, there."

"This isn't fair," whispers Naomi, and the gatekeeper's blue eyes flick instantly towards her. "They don't know what you want," she dares, watching the testing spirit.

"I want what I always want," Not-Kora says to the girl, in a far kinder tone than she's using with the other Garou. "I want them to see." She turns back to look at Kora. "Why do they care if you win, she who offers sorrow?"

[Rain of Brass Petals] She is watching far too intently. By virtue of what she was, she had to have a great deal of focus on the things that were in front of her, what was presented. These were tests, and whatever this was, it looked so much like Kora... only... not like Kora at all. She Who Offers Sorrow- sorrow being something that could be given and accepted. What do they care if she wins?

Adamidas was an attentive creature. She tuned out, at times, all the rest of the world to focus on one minute detail because it was necessary. There were times where she was too far away, too distant even if her body was in the physical realm, her mind was elsewhere.

This was not one of these times. Right now, Alethea Adamidas was focused very much in the here and now. In the reaction, in the answer, in the question.

[Sorrow] Kora’s dark eyes are narrowed, now, her body cheated just away from the Gatekeeper – open to the fire this time, and not to dark outside of it. For all that her rage thrums inside her, a dark wave in answer to that without – it’s not challenge that narrows her gaze, but thought – consideration, even care.

Interesting the gatekeeper says, as if the word is a blade, and the blade is a word. Kora lifts her chin then; Kora bares her throat. She snorts once, nostrils flaring, moves her eyes to Naomi as the other speaks, just her eyes, dark in her pale face, then cuts the glance back to her echo. “Not last.” Sorrow says, looking back to the keeper standing before her. “ – but in the end, which is also the beginning. There’s a difference.”

Then: another question. This time, her motion is physical, she turns, still stiff-shouldered, craning her neck around the circle of firelight, dark eyes resting briefly, minutely, on each still face.

“They don’t care if I win; they care that we finish the rite, that we open the gates, that we finish the rite, that we bring spring back into the world.”

[descent.] "Not the rite," whispers the gatekeeper. "Victory against the darkness. Against Ragnarok. Why do Fenris and Pegasus and Unicorn and Grandfather Thunder and Falcon and Gaia care if you're victorious? You -- instrument, weapon, bulwark, hope -- what's the point of your war?"

[Wyrmbreaker] Some of the tension has leached from Lukas. Or rather, it has subsumed. The Shadow Lord stands motionless now, hands clasped behind his back. Those behind him can see how tightly his one hand grips the opposite wrist, but he says nothing; merely watches.

He wonders what lies ahead. Two gates. How many more? Five, logic dictates: seven of them, seven gates to pass. This is only the second, and it is noticeably harder than the first.

[Waking Dream] Her interest in the way that she who offers sorrow answers this question perhaps equals the testing spirit's. Lila's hair is drying, wheat-waves, corn-maid, and she is still readied and readying, still alert, head still canted just so. Only her eyes had moved from Naomi to Not-Kora to Kora again and back.

[Sorrow] The Skald’s eyes shine; the question makes her breathless. It is not because she does not know the answer; it is because she knows the answer all too well – the ache of it, the promise of it, and the wages of the failure, the darkness that their death will surely bring.

Is it raining? Kora doesn’t remember; she is looking at the fire, watching the snap and sear of the wood, breathing hard again with the hot-coal promise of it. “The seer says,” she begins, and looks up, away from the fire, back to the gatekeeper, “ – the seer says:

In anger smites the warder of earth,--
Forth from their homes must all men flee;-

The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea,
The hot stars down from heaven are whirled;
Fierce grows the steam and the life-feeding flame,
Till fire leaps high about heaven itself.

Now Garm howls loud before Gnipahellir,
The fetters will burst, and the wolf run free – ”

Her voice is low and intense; there are no theatrics. These and ancient words, remembered and remembered and remember again through a half-hundred lifetimes, a half-hundred deaths. Her ancestors breath in her bones and skin, they live in her dreams. Her face is still and it is grim enough for the words she utters; the world will end. The world will end soon; fire will pain the sky, hot stars down / from heaven are whirled – but – but. “The seer says -

Now do I see the earth anew
Rise all green from the waves again;
The cataracts fall, and the eagle flies,
And fish he catches beneath the cliffs.

In wondrous beauty once again
Shall the golden tables stand mid the grass,
Which the gods had owned in the days of old,

Then fields unsowed bear ripened fruit,
All ills grow better, and Baldr comes back;
Baldr and Hoth dwell in Hropt's battle-hall,
And all the might gods. ”

She’s smiling now; eyes shining, breathless with the unfettered promise of the Völuspá. “Ragnarok doesn’t have to be the end. If we fight and if we win, even if we die, we make the world anew.”

[descent.] The seer. It makes Not-Kora bark a laugh, short and harsh and pained. The seer, who wants them to see.

The fire burns on, and a storm moves on down the horizon. Slowly, the Garou begin to dry as they stand within the diamond that spells out pack, that tells them gather. safe. warm. Fire would keep many predators away from humans. Not a werewolf. Not a hungry wolf, even. The Garou, though: they don't fear fire. They've mastered it. They know it well, the homid-borns. They can create it, the metis. They have learned it is not what their fourlegged brethren fear so, the lupus have. Fire means rage. Fire means stories, and songs, and the gathering of like with like.

The Skald offers poetry, ancient and rhythmic, and her doppleganger stares. Midway, she begins to play along. Not by drums or chanting or deep breathing but with that guitar on her lap, taking her fingers and adding faint musical accompaniment to the recitation. It is the sort of thing one finds at a Fianna fire, not a Fenrir's.

At the end, Kora is smiling. Not-Kora isn't. She also hasn't stopped playing, even when the other blonde's voice has ceased. Cycles. Death and renewal. It's a part of the rite.

It's just not the answer.

As she plays: "I ask you what you are. You tell me: Garou. Not the simplest answer, the always-true: I am me. I ask you what you all are. You tell me: warriors for Gaia, last stand against the Wyrm. Not the simplest answer, the always-true: We are alive. I ask you the point of the war. You tell me: to save the world." A beat. A rest, in the song she's strumming. "One way or another." It begins again, the music, sleepy and sorrowful.

The gatekeeper shakes her head. She changes paths, comes another route. Looks up at Kora, away from her strings. "I want you to see, daughter of Gaia. I want you to look in front of you and tell me what you see." The music stops. She puts the guitar down, leaning it against a log, and rises to her feet. "A controlled and tended fire. A guitar. Felled trees turned to benches.

"Your own self, separated from you, staring back at you with hatred and misunderstanding."

She frowns. "The greatest illusion in existence is the separateness of things. That there are beginnings. That there are endings," which Kora herself says, speaking truth to the seer, "that one thing is not the other. You can see the Wyrm in your rage, the Weaver in your strength of purpose, the Wyld in your soul, the power of totems in your eyes. But you can't see the world around you, filled with no Garou but yourselves. Or your humanity, staring you in the face."

Not-Kora turns to walk away. Naomi tenses considerably between Adam and Lila, hands going to fists, backbone rigid. She holds her breath. The gatekeeper walks into the darkness, leaving only what she told them to see:

a fire. A guitar. Logs to sit on. And themselves.

[Sorrow] Sorrow watches. She is transparent; she is made of glass, watching her doppelganger strum while she speaks, and then – just, speak. She has given the true wrong answer, the wrong true answer and the smile she wears, which could be transporting and is this so rarely, filters away, subsides to something else, quiet and solid and dark and watchful – solid at the core.

Her mouth is still. So is her tall, lean frame, shoulders set. Only the cant of her head changes, following the gatekeeper’s path around the fire. When the other has disappeared into the darkness, Kora looks over, once, at tense Naomi, the corner of her mouth crooked, laughter in her mouth – not bitter, but far from sweet – and hinted at in the curve of her cheek, in the listening tension of her posture.

The fire spits and crackles. She can feel its heat on her face.

“Sit.” Kora looks up to Lukas, who is nearest to her just now. Touches him lightly on the shoulder and indicates a log with a neat arc of her free hand – an open gesture, that, an invitation. The Philodox is next, the Skald touches her too, circles behind her like one strand of a brain, one hand on either shoulder, repeats the invitation – “ - asseyez-vous.” – quiet, sure.

Blood Summons. “Sit,” – she touches him beneath the elbow, just as Wasted Winter did, casts him an sidelong, upslanting look, her lips pressed together at the end, compacted but curved at the corners.

“Sit,” she repeats, quiet in Adamidas’ ear, leaning down to do so, the tips of her index and forefinger just grazing the small of the slender maiden’s back, her other hand open in invitation. Laughs in the Face of Death. “ – sit,” they are nearly the same height, the two tribesmates. Sorrow touches her lightly, the left hip, the right shoulder. The invitation is almost wholly non-verbal when she reaches Waking Dream at last, brushes past the Galliard as if she were wearing her feral skin, except that she looks down and meets her elder’s eyes. “Sit.”

In the end, she has made a full circuit of the fire, and ends almost where she began, reaches out and lifts up the guitar, holds it by neck, feeling its weight then – sit – seats herself, settles the instrument across her lap, leans over the body and begins to tune, listening, awkward on the fretboard, finger noise on the strings clear beneath every gliding note. When the guitar is tuned, she sets forward, settled around it now, flexes the fingers of her right hand and – experiment, wrong, experiment, wrong – plucks out the first few notes of Wave of Mutilation, acoustic, looking down as she listens for the right notes and the wrong, as she begins to play.

[descent.] There are no squelching footsteps into the distance to mark the gatekeeper's walk away from the fire. As Kora makes her circuit, Naomi watches, arms crossed over her chest, standing near the fire for its warmth and its ability to start to dry her off. She watches, not quite participant nor gatekeeper herself, as each of the others are told: Sit.

The guitar is familiar in Kora's hands, warm from the gatekeeper's closeness to it. It isn't perfectly in tune; it needs her fingers on the keys. But the sound is good: warm, resonant, clear. It travels through the night around them, even just as she toys with the strings, finding her way again.

She knows this guitar. Or knew it once. Or it knows her.

[Wyrmbreaker] So, after a brief and curious hesitation, Lukas sits. And listens.

[Sorrow] (Charisma + Performance)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 7, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) [WP]

[Rain of Brass Petals] Still muddy, but less wet, she is invited. There is a hesitation for a second, but she does sit. She lets her hands rest in her lap, and she knows this song. She nods with it, or rather, the first few nots. The Fury stops, and looks at Sorrow. She waits, and she focuses on the woman instead of the fire. (The woman, the fire, they're the same thing)

[Face of Death] The rain is drying in her hair, still hangs heavy in her clothing. Joey smiles a small, close-lipped smile at her tribesmate, and she takes a seat between Rain of Brass Petals and Waking Dream.

She sits with her weight forward, her spine as straight as it can be with her elbows resting on her knees. And she listens.

[Truth's Meridian] Katherine is invited to sit, and so she does in the Shadow Lord's wake; so they each do, like pretty little dominoes, falling where bid. She seats herself, crosses one leg at the knee and rests her hands atop her lap. Waiting, watching, much like the others to see if this is the answer the Not-Kora seeks.

[Blood Summons] Kora rests a hand on his arm, cleansed of dirt and blood now; there is no bone-wrenching tension in his muscles when she does so, no sense that standing still is just about driving him out of his mind. Blood Summons makes a low noise in his throat, then steps over one of the logs and does as she asks: he sits, feet flat on the ground, one arm draped over his homid knees and the other propped on its elbow, chin in his palm, watching the Skald with her guitar.

[Waking Dream] What does she think?

Their guide is bone-rigid, staring after the Not-Kora's departure; this gets a flash of a glance from Lila, something thoughtful, which rests a second, reads, then lifts to the dark. Lila watches Kora, then: watches Kora as if she were corn-maiden coming back to life, springing from the mud; watches Kora as if she were a shape, limned in a dark door; watches Kora, accepts the touch, the give, gives back, when she brushes (whispers [feralthing]) by, and there's something at the corners of her mouth, not a smile yet, no, but something sweet.

She sits, too, climbing over a log to slide down to the packed earth, rest her back against it, angled so that she can see Kora through the gold curtains, Kora through the circle, listen. She sits so she can touch whoever she's nearest if she stretched out her hands or leaned far enough to the side.

[Sorrow] Sorrow leans over the instrument, turns the strings until they are in tune, finds that her fingers know the frets, finds that her body remembers the motion, the chords in her left hand, the pattern of strings in her right. She plays a song that she remembers picking out, picking up, on the roof of the her middle school when she was twelve, the cinders warm beneath her body; and then - another that she learned later, later still, sitting in the back room of a closed pub in Inverness. Not one song - not two; a handful, a half-dozen. More, perhaps - until there is blood on the strings if she must. Until the instrument feels natural in her hands again.

She does not look up, watching her fingers over the frets, over the strings, her head canted just so to listen to the harmonics, the intervals, head moving with the hypnotic undercurrent of the beat.

[descent.] They seem to have no beginning or end, the shapes and shadows she sees in the firelight.

Of course they don't.

Here is a memory of that rooftop. Here is the back room of a pub. Here is a hostel, here is Jen, here is her mother. Here is her adopted father. There is the transition between night and day, once when she sat with her headphones in, staring at the water. There are the Wyrmthings coming at her from the deep, and a very human rejection of the vastness and terror the ocean holds rising up in her like a scream, only to be stamped down by rage and ancestry.

Some of the things she sees aren't quite in pictures.

There is her first kiss. Here is her first fuck. There is the boy, the man, the youth. Here is a birthday cake that she helped decorate herself and that's why there were sprinkles, oh yeah. There is the blanket she slept with in her crib, twisting in the flames like a sail batted by the wind. Here is a tall drink of beer, and a there is the softness of silk, the beauty of tooled leather. Here is music, cultivated by instruments.

The faces she sees in the flame are all human. Not all of them were humans. Some Garou, some Kin. But all that form, that shape. Four fingers and an opposable thumb. Fearlessness of fire, the struggle for control over nature, all the things that make mankind so great, so dominant on the planet. All the things that the Garou simultaneously use and disdain: phones, cars, shovels, plastic bags, showers, beds, soap, computers, shelter. All human makings. All human things.

All of them here but Blood Summons: born human. Most of their lives in that unchanging, fragile flesh.

The fire talks to Kora all night, as she sings to it. It shows her twenty years of life. Her life. The lives of her friends, her family, the people she met once on a highway who talked to her or gave her a ride. All alive. All of Gaia.
to Sorrow


[descent.] It is not necessarily the music that Lukas might listen to on the iPhone he got for Christmas, or what Lila might sing at a moot. It is not necessarily what Joey has on the radio in Cassius, or what Adamidas might like. It isn't necessarily Bob's style. It probably wouldn't be found on Kate's gleaming stereo system in the Loft.

Thankfully, that isn't the point. Kora's playing, while out of practice, is instantly recognizable as the effort of someone with some talent here, some training, even if it is self-taught. Once upon a time, at least, she did this often. She does it well tonight -- if indeed it is night -- and the music seeps into their very bones the longer she plays.

Their hair dries.

Their clothes get stiff.

The fire fades, but there's wood and kindling nearby to feed it with. If they tend the flame, it won't go out on them.

Naomi never sits. As the music goes on, she seems to age. The darkness encroaches on her eyes and her hair. Shadows play around their guide until she looks a bit taller. A little thicker at the hips and bosom. The face a little wiser, if a bit amused. She closes her eyes and tips her face up towards the sky... which is beginning to turn indigo and violet, hinting at the coming of orange and yellow and cream and pink, lavender and blue. Naomi ages with them as the night and the songs progress, becoming the one they said was a Galliard, the one they called Birth of Song.

Kora's hands are swollen and red. Kora's hands are cut, because they have not held callouses in the right places for so long. The night gradually unrolls into pre-dawn dimness. If they rest, they rest. If they murmur requests, they murmur requests. If they simply sit and listen: they simply sit and listen. The music goes on, and as it does, a heaviness begins to lift from the Skald's shoulders.

She alone sees what the fire tells her, as it burns through the night.