Metis Tête-à-Tête

Another non-earth-shattering log. I’m posting it mostly because it’s got a lot of Thorn in it.

The Master of Rites and Groundskeeper discuss recent Dancer attacks, Sepdet’s fears for Toxic, and visions by Eligio and Sepdet, the opening chords of the “Who Dreams the Dreamers?” plot.

Sepdet bites her lip. ~Gaia. I.. I think I can give her that.~ She ducks her head, almost ashamed, then says firmly. ~I will. For the pack. I wish it could have been different, Thorn-rhya, I’m sorry.~ The guilt in her eyes is far too easy to read, before it’s shoved back and away.  [[ Annie, Thorn's packmate, had just been killed by Black Spiral Dancers ]]
Thorn simply stands there for a while, leaning very slightly against Sepdet’s hand. He looks up after a time, having met his sadness again and moved past it, and wonders now how the duties of Groundskeeper sit with you.
Sepdet smiles. ~It is a welcome respite from patrolling the scab. I will be almost sad, if Oaken-r.. yuf wishes his post back.~
Thorn blinks in surprise, not quite understanding this about Oaken.
Sepdet’s chin lifts as she breaks into a brilliant child’s smile. ~You did not hear? The Sneetches brought him home. He /didn’t/ die, though he was badly wounded. I do not know the details.~
Thorn’s mouth opens and his tongue lolls out again, pleased to hear this. He will have to find out from the Sneeches how he is doing.
Sepdet nods. ~We’re all anxious to know.~
Sepdet grows a bit more sober. ~Thorn-rhya. There’s a thing you should know. About why Eligio-yuf and I are so concerned.~
Thorn cocks his head, curious to hear with this might be.
Sepdet says, ~It began with Eligio’s vision of an airborne wheel of birds, that burned Gaia where it fell to earth. This is the vision that brought him here. It has repeated itself in various forms, and has grown more ominous lately.~
Thorn mouth clops shut once again, and he questions whether others have had this vision.
Sepdet says, ~The last few have shown the Wheel spinning terribly out of balance, the bird-spirits shot down or killed, and behind this, a figure… homid in form… Buffalo is there, warning us.~~
Sepdet says, ~I have. Eligio-yuf has. No one else, yet.~
Sepdet rubs the scar on her cheek. ~There was one, just recently, where Buffalo was pushing me towards the sea. And the tide pulled away from me, like a curtain retreating. Or a barrier. As if something is drawing the spirit world away, tugging at the barriers the birds guarded. And too Porthos noticed, the dreams hold Buffalo, the birds…Magpie? And water. As if we are missing a water spirit.~
Sepdet spreads her hands. ~Stormcrow-rhya keeps looking for the caern’s third Totem. I can’t help thinking it’s water. We have earth and air.~
Thorn stands and paces a short path back and forth, he looks at Sepdet, wondering if she or Eligio have had any luck interpreting these visions.
Sepdet says, ~There is an Uktena song I keep hearing in my mind. ‘We circle the earth.. the boundries of the earth’. About the bird-spirits that guard the passages between this world and the next. And Eligio-yuf thinks that Uktena has turned his eyes away from the Wheel. This, the Great Hunt… the spirits are pulling away. Slowly but surely.~
Sepdet sounds tense. ~At least, that is how I read it.~
Thorn pauses in his pacing, thinking that is not a bad interpretation. He wonders, though, if you have determined if the vision would have you do anything.
Sepdet shakes her head. ~Reaching for the sea… that is what Buffalo asked me to do. I think we must seek that which is retreating from us. This is why Eligio’s so eager to hold a Rite, with all the safety the caern has to muster, and try to contact the spirits. Uktena especially.~
Sepdet blinks. ~Salmon.~
Sepdet says, ~I wonder if Grandmother Salmon would help. She gave Jess a scale, on our Rite of Passage, when we helped Her.~
Thorn cocks his head, noting that Salmon is nothing if not predictable. If she helped once, she should help again, Thorn believes.
Sepdet smiles wistfully. ~Think I’ll leave an offering to Her at the Arches. Just in case.~
Thorn sits down again on his haunches, wondering again what the major elements, or symbols, of the vision were.
Sepdet considers. ~The common elements of most are the Wheel, sometimes made of birds flying, sometimes of Fire. A feeling of loss of control. The one by the sea… I was on the beach, and a bird weathervane was spinning crazily, as the sea pulled away. This last one..~ she winces.

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+read 27
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Message:  27/27 in folder main             Received:  Fri Sep  9 18:49:08 1994
From:     Sepdet
To:       Sepdet D’siaH
Subject:  dream
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The memory of last night’s dream still lingers with you. A dark figure perched on a high stone fence, one leg draped casually over the side.
A shock of awareness courses through your dream body – you have seen this man before. Memories of sweltering heat and pungent herbs, a cry of anguish echoing through your mind.
Straw hat casting shadows over a strong face- course, homespun clothes- roughly woven straw sandals- dark, bottomless eyes somewhere in the shadows of his face.
A wheel of fire takes shape in his hands, white-hot flames like molten silver. He holds it,concentration intense at it as it burns into his hands. White fire spinning madly in the setting sun.

The pounding of your heart in your breast echoes in your own ears like…like…memories flitting away as butterflies on a warm summer day. Like rain on a metal roof or a friend’s remembered drums, perhaps.

He turns, as if drawn to the thundering beat. Lips move but this sound is lost in the falling darkness like wind in the trees.
Then, as the setting sun drops the last few handbreadths below the horizon, the wind sweeps him away in wispy tatters.

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Thorn yips slightly, encouraging Sepdet to continue.
Sepdet says, ~The man was sitting on a stone fence. I could smell the heat of the sweat lodge, from the first time we sensed him. He had a straw hat, straw shoes, coarse clothes. Deep eyes. He wove a wheel of Fire, which spun faster and faster. It was sunset. And as the sun fell from sight the wind took away from my eyes.~
Sepdet breaks off with a shudder. ~Sorry. That one was very real.~
Sepdet says, ~The fence was the barrier, again.~
Sepdet says, ~Eligio-yuf told me about one, where the birds were wheeling in the sky above a crowd. A town from his home country. And a man in ‘Western’ clothes came up… this same man… and pulled a pistol and began shooting the birds from the sky.~
Thorn chuffs agreement. He has noted, though, that you have associated the wheel with this place. This, he thinks, may be right, but the wheel is a Greater symbol, meaning much.
Sepdet dips her eyes. ~This is so.~ She rubs her face. ~I almost hope it only refers to ours, however. I would prefer that this vision not be an even broader warning.~
Thorn cocks his head, because he has found that dreams and visions are often narrowed too early. What, then, should be thought of the birds?
Sepdet traces rippling motions in the air with her fingers. ~Spirits. But which? I am not sure, yet. They are the flow of the Wheel, in many of the dreams.~
Thorn tips his head, ~They are always at the barrier, are they not?~
Sepdet nods.
Sepdet says, ~Guarding it, if our reading is right.~
Thorn considers the man opposing the guardians.
Thorn stands and lets his tongue loll again, thinking that the man must want the barrier breached, and that the barrier is a wheel.
Sepdet nods nervously. ~I hope we’ll be standing on the wall with blades bare, when the time comes.~
Thorn chuffs, understanding that this man makes you worry.
Sepdet shrugs. ~Maybe we will gather more from this next Rite. I hope so. I don’t like not being able to See where a road leads.~
Sepdet looks at you a moment, if there’s anything else to be said about the subject. ~There is one last thing, Thorn-rhya. We are plotting an ambush for the Dancers. They seem to be able to sense us, better than most, and to hide when we track them. Can you think of a Fetish, or gift, we might use to hide an ambush party?~
Thorn looks down at the ground, a little sadly. The Dancers hunt us using our selves as guides, we can hide from them by hiding from ourselves. ~I do not know how to do that… yet.~
Sepdet winces. ~Gaia hope you never learn that, Elder. But thank you.~
Thorn contorts and blurs as he is transformed.
Thorn shifts into Homid form.
Adam emerges from the rim of the Wheel to the north.
Adam has arrived.
Hazmat emerges from the rim of the Wheel to the north.
Hazmat has arrived.
Adam says “Scuse us?”
Oscar emerges from the rim of the Wheel to the north.
Oscar has arrived.
Sepdet’s shoulders droop for a brief moment, before she catches herself and straightens. She nods a gentle smile at Adam.
Thorn now stands easily before Sepdet, in his customary form. ~They are using personal things to track with…~ He breaks off as the others arrive, and he nods.
Adam blows a kiss to Sepdet.
Sepdet blinks. ~Metis hater~ she mouths teasingly at Adam, before returning her attention to Thorn-rhya.
Adam sets off down the path to the south, and is quickly lost from sight.
Adam has left.
Hazmat looks. Hello.
Hazmat sets off down the path to the south, and is quickly lost from sight.
Hazmat has left.
Oscar sets off down the path to the south, and is quickly lost from sight.
Oscar has left.
Adam pages: Well, I tried… You’re just too darn cute.
Long distance to Adam: Sepdet winks. Oh well.
You paged Adam with ‘There’s a new crop of metis-haters, and I get my angst elsewhere.’.
Adam pages: Rik’s one of them.
Sepdet smiles thinly. ~I have the ‘business card’ of one of the Dancers. A little Rite of my own may turn the tables…~ she sighs .~Though I fear he may have something of me now. I had to draw his attention; if he keeps focussing on Toxic, who /will/ hunt alone, she’d be killed eventually.~
Thorn watches the others leave, then looks back at Sepdet. ~I believe Toxic will hide for a time… but I do not know where. She has provided much information to Crossing, though… we know what two of them look like.~
Sepdet says, ~Piper, and Cyrus? I have met those. Do you know how many there are?~
Dougie pages: How goes?
You paged Dougie with ‘Accomplishing more in one evening than in a week. Thorn and I are comparing notes about the Dancers and visions and all sorts of plotlines.’.
Sepdet’s emphasis on the word ‘met’, a shiver and a clenched fist, suggests the encounter was predictably unpleasant.
Thorn furrows his brow, ~No. I did not know we had names.~
Dougie pages: Ace
Long distance to Thorn: Sepdet apologizes; her posing is losing creativity as she grows sleepy. She’s on EST. Should probably go soon… but it’s been good to RP with you!
From afar, Thorn smiles. “Likewise, it’s been too long. I’m sorry I’m a little slow, I have another scene going in another window.”.
Thorn bites his lower lip, ~There are too many hands in this, Crossing should join you and share knowledge and effort.~
Sepdet sighs, nodding agreement. ~This is so. I did not realize you were hunting, for most of this has happened in my absence.~
Sepdet thinks. ~The names they gave me. Piper is a musician who plays a fiddle at times no homid should be out on the street. But he /smelled/ like human! And only barely wyrm-tainted. Long hair, yet when I–~ her eyes twinkle ~asked to try his fiddle, I found not a hair to steal, for Questing Stone.~
Sepdet says, ~He gave me a card.~
Sepdet digs into the leather pouch hanging from her belt, and draws out something wrapped in silk. It’s a business card that declares the fellow to be Piper, of the Bone Dancers.
Sepdet says, ~This just happened last night.~
Sepdet wrinkles her nose. ~The other. Cyrus. I met him patrolling the umbra by the bridge. He taunted me. Knew I couldn’t fight him, not alone. Said if I was worried about him, what about when the Wendigo come back to our Caern. And when Traveller, Mike’s familiar, came to my call, and then Diana, he fled… jumped five stories to dodge me.
Sepdet rubs the back of her neck. ~Dia and I are doing most of the sniffing and looking. Porthos and Brutus have been helping. Please, if you do not mind Coyote with you, I think our two packs might stand a better chance in hunting these Bone Dancers.~
Thorn nods slowly, considering this. ~We have right of Vengeance, you understand. After… Annie… but we are Garou. Garou fight together.~
Sepdet nods, wincing. ~I understand. I will explain this to Dia.~ Her eyes glitter with some of the wistful hope that’s been too absent during most of the conversation.
Sepdet says, ~I offer what I have. For I have tasted the death of my own alpha with these Dancers, and will not rest easy til they are gone and she is not.~
Thorn nods slowly, ~Very well, I shall speak to my packmates. We are adept at tracking, both in the Umbra and in the Realm. We will find these Dancers… I only hope the Uktena can keep them from what they hunt for long enough.~
Sepdet lifts her chin. ~We will, for we must.~ She draws a weary breath. ~Now, perhaps, I should be getting back to my city duties. We will talk again soon, Elder?~
Thorn nods, smiling slightly, ~I hope so…~ He blinks, “Er… do you have my pager number?”
Sepdet shakes her head in the negative.
Thorn fumbles in a pocket for a moment, then procudes a small bit of paper with an elegently written number on it. “Here” he says, presenting it to Sepdet.
Sepdet closes her brown fingers over the paper, nodding. ~Good.~
Thorn smiles again, ~Goodnight, then, Groundskeeper.~
Sepdet dips her head, short priestess-lock bobbing. ~Dream well, Keeper of Rites.~ She draws her jacket around her shoulders and trudges north.
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