Reversal of Fortunes

[Wilhelm Opens-the-Way]

Everything new is old again.

[/b] into the earth, their slack skin dangling from bleach-white bones, their faces dry and cracking and mummified from an eternity beneath the pre-glacial earth. They crawled jerkily backward, in ageless rewind, slipping beneath the earth. A stone dome slid upward around our two packs, unmelting, remaking itself, pebble by stone, hiding the rest of the sept which stood panting from a recent battle. [/i][/color][/ul]A flash of arch-light ambiance slid back into our eyes as the world dissolved and the brilliance receded into the image of a bone that lay atop a stone altar, scrawled with symbols conceived of before man had ever scrawled hash marks to mean numbers. Back, back, before the great glaciers scoured the land like great claws, back before men knew to fear us, back before the Impergium, when the continents were but a short swim away from one-another.

My arm reached back, away from its stretch toward the altar, un-tensed from trying to stop Tak from touching the tyrannosaurus bone when I had noticed the anguish in her eyes from her pack mate's death. We were back in the cavern of the wyrm-thing that had started this all, when things like it had names that warped the world when spoken. In our cavern of trials, in our stolen bodies, our souls returned back to the Ancestors that had stood here when the world was young. We were interlopers, skin riders, time travelers.

We stepped backward out of the altar cave in reverse-motion, carrying the wounded on our shoulders, our Crinos faces grim and resolved or twisted up with mourning, trodding back into the long twisting corridor to where Rage had taken hold of most of us. Where two of our number's claws dipped into, and then out of the flesh of Guy wiping away deep gashes with quick swipes, un-rending flesh from bone, blood spatters sucking backward into his jugular into an artery that closed and revealed a heart beating once more in the throbbing vein.

We stepped backward through the second of two rune-inscribed doorways deep in the hillside beneath the prehistoric world. We ran in reverse-motion, backward down another dark, twisting tunnel, back into darkness, consuming nothingness, only a bleak and hollow void where our worst fears were whispered to us.

In the unyeilding darkness, we twisted and squirmed, bodiless, screaming at the nothingness that lay inside of us, coiling around our hearts. Some shouted for their packs, their totems, their loved ones, some debated, some argued, some meditated, some screamed. It was an oubliette, a lost place, with our darkest voices speaking to us, cajoling us, telling us of the births of our mislaid plans to come.

Then in an instant, back through the first doorway inscribed with an unknown language, this time exiting backward tentatively, debate and discussion in reverse-speak, then in quiet tiptoe backward, our train reverse-traveled, un-following the Ragabash as they brought up the rear of our reverse-time convoy.

Backward, up and up and out of the wyrm-riddled cavern to speak with a bird spirit about the contents of the cave ahead. It cawed and screeched at us in with backward beak. Back to the farthest edge of the wood near the dark cavern's eye, where a young ancient Garou was running back to our stopping place, kneeling in fear. Our guide, he got up from his knees and we all began the long trek back to a Caern of Sacrifice, where we, the Elders of a Sept that long had passed into dust, or so we thought, were in the midst of a ritual to destroy a dark thing. A ritual that was tainted when...

[/b] of the earth, their slack skin dangling from bleach-white bones, their faces dry and cracking and mummified from an eternity beneath the pre-glacial earth. At last our time was set aright. They crawled jerkily upward, in ageless anger, slipping out of the cold womb of the earth. A stone dome slid down from around our two packs, melting, unmaking itself, pebble by stone, revealing to us the rest of the sept which stood panting from a recent battle.

[/i][/color][/ul]We were once Garou, they seemed to moan, Sing us to our rest. [/center]
With shock and sadness, I know this thing: that I knew them. That I was one of them. Finally, at our claws, they are allowed to fulfill their sacrifice. At our fire, they are able to be cleansed. At are memory, they are able to gain their long-awaited Glory.

Everything old is new once more.

[Jane]

OOC (beautiful written, wonderful descriptions)

[Red Moon]

OOC: Perfect music to accompany the memory. I love how you told the story backwards, and how well it works.

[Wilhelm Opens-the-Way]

Thanks for the props!