Coming of Age in the Summer of ’94
Good Old Days? Well, who knows; everyone’s first time seems like a good time. But these days weren’t good. They were exciting, as in the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”. Alas, due to a hard drive wipe, I’ve lost my logs of March through August. Those months made Sepdet what she is, so I summarize them here, as best I can remember:
April 7 (my RL birthday): Storm dies fighting against a Dancer, Silvernails, alongside the rest of her pack. Toxic, covered in blood and shellshocked, is carried home; Sepdet, Erik, and Tep look after her, and Sepdet begs Erik to teach her Cleansing so that she’ll be of some use.
Late April: Snowdon, a twisted mage, leads astray a Lost Cub, a professorly 40-year-old man named Dr. Wilhelm, who was another of Sepdet’s friends. Wilhelm reveals the caern’s whereabouts to Snowdon, and, when he confesses, Anubis judges that he did it unwittingly, so may die honorably in the Great Hunt. Anubis let Sepdet join the hunt. Sepdet ended up slitting Wilhelm’s throat when the warriors were having fun taking him apart slowly–first time she got a killing blow with her father’s klaive. Killing a friend as an act of kindness: one more step away from innocence.
Other victims of Snowdon were a Bone Gnawer buddy of Sep’s, Shaz, who came lurching into the caern one afternoon. Sepdet, trying to do Rite of Cleansing and hold her friend together, had banes like shards of glass explode in her face (picture “Help Me!” from ALIENS) and was herself put back together by old blind Seer. Something similar happening to Jess’ friend Sean Grey, who didn’t however die because better healers were on hand. It was during this latter experience that Sepdet vowed to become a healer, as she sat at White Veil’s shoulder trying somehow to give the woman gnosis to help (which doesn’t work).
April-May: Dusty and Dia arrive. Those two and Jess become Sepdet’s best friends among the cubs. Dusty was a lonely Gnawer cub with a dark past, whose entire caern had been slaughtered by Dancers led by his own father; but he never spoke of it, and kept his grief close. Somehow he managed to steal young Sepdet’s heart (and Dia’s too). Dia was an impetuous Get Galliard, passionate and fierce. I still remember their first meeting: a young woman drumming by the fire, painting a story with music (it was a deer-hunt) and Sepdet, enthralled, dancing to it. Sepdet called her Fire-drums that night and Heart-sister later.
Sepdet had mentors too: first two disreputable Stargazers, who taught her fighting and the rudiments of Kailindo (IC, dammit!). Cindi continued tutoring her and taught her Mother’s Touch. Eligio Sacateca, an Uktena Cliath, came to the caern in May with a vision Sepdet had seen too: a burning wheel in the sky.
Sometime during this period, Dia was almost killed in the showdown with Snowdon on one of the wharves by the river–a wild fight; I came for the tail end of it, only to be @dested when the MUSH crashed! Sepdet put Dia back together the first of many times.
June, the breaking:Sepdet was tortured by nightmares sent her by a macabre old BSD named Granny. (For instance, Granny baking gingerbread cookies which were real children). And Granny did more, as Sepdet only learned much later…
A howl on the hilltop! Sepdet arrived to find Hecate, dazed with blood on her claws, and Dusty with his life bleeding out through his throat. Sepdet’s first attempt at Mother’s Touch almost took her with him. Thorn did a strange Rite to bring back Dusty’s spirit long enough to learn Hecate’s innocence, and that a Dancer had done the deed; Dusty asks to say goodbye to Hope, and that’s where her wolfname comes from. However, it was originally only used by Dia, and it wasn’t until Dylan and Joseph were given permission to use it that it became public.
Sepdet was also paralyzed from the neck down for a week or so, when as a cub she held off a Dancer until the Guardians arrived. (Earth-Child was there when the Dancer showed up, but was too busy browbeating Sepdet saying “what are you doing here?” to hear Sepdet’s “This Garou reeks of WYRM!” or help until the intruder shapeshifted and attacked. Sep had to howl for the guardians and get in the way.) This was the Dancer accompanied by a bane of pure lightning, one of the most terrifying battles I’ve seen. I remember a huge cloud of roiling darkness, a sudden purple stroke of lightning, silhouetting the fighters, and Spooner went down. Then Stormcrow. Archer. Porthos. Something huge and bone-jarring shot past Sepdet like a flying boulder, and Actaeon was gone, splattered across the umbra. And then lightning hit Sepdet too, and I don’t remember how the battle ended, but I assume we won. :)
July: Horus returned in a dramatic Moot: the caern celebrated with music and dancing. Shortly after, Sepdet, Dia, and Jess went on a Rite of Passage north with Cindi and Cyllan’s pack Moonshadow. The Exploding Great Hunt and the hunt in which Maury Stands-Defiant took down Buffalo happened while Sepdet (or I) was gone. Arjun appointed Sepdet Groundskeeper after Oaken’s apparent death; she had been serving as Oaken’s assistant since late spring. And Dylan arrived walking in one summer’s evening.
It was a full summer, and the innocent, happy cub had weathered into a young cliath with a pack, a place in the world, a position, a ton of scars, and a simple battlecry: “Do I rage as my world and loved ones fall to the Wyrm? Gaia, know. I tango in its face.”