Post by Shade on Oct 26, 2010 16:08:18 GMT -8
OoC>>Holy crap, it felt like this would NEVER get done.<<OoC
It was dark in the center of the earth; dark and warm, and full of shadows.
There was a small fire, and four figures sitting around it. One stared into the darkness like a stray cat, two were glaring like dogs afraid to fight, and one had her eyes hooded shut, beating gently, slowly on the upturned bucket inside her crossed legs. The sound echoed hollow and soft – takka-takka-tap, takka-takka-tap, tap tap tap, takka-takka tap.
“Will you stop that racket?” the glaring man snapped.
The drummer smiled, and stopped.
“Sorry, Jake,” she said, eyes half-shut. “Habit.”
He grumbled, and kept glaring at the woman across the fire. She raised her lip a little, almost snarling.
“Don’t look at me,” she growled. “I told you I smelled fresh air from the left fork.”
“The left fork went down.”
“Trust a homid to believe his eyes,” she said, and spat into the fire. Jake lunged at her; she was on her feet in a flash, crouched and snarling with her fingers flexing, growing into sharp claws…
“Hey now, hey, hey!” the drummer said, and standing, put a hand on both of their shoulders. Her eyes were still sleepy and mostly closed, and she smiled faintly. “Sit down, sit down.”
The woman pulled away. “Mind your own business, scavenger.”
“The pack’s business is my business,” the drummer said, still smiling. “If our warrior and our tracker fall biting each other’s throats, we’ll never get out of this mess. Sit now, sit. We’re in the mother’s hands now, hey? What would she say, to see you fighting so?”
The staring one spoke then, and his voice grated like stone.
“The way is closed,” he groaned, and closed his eyes. Sweat beaded on his brow. “The way is closed. I cannot see the path.”
“Now what?” Jake snarled. “More of his blathering?”
“Ignore him,” the woman said, tossing her short hair like a flea-bit dog. “He’s been useless since the cave-in.”
The drummer sat back down, wrapping her legs around her bucket-drum. She looked at the staring man for a long moment, as he groaned and rocked, arms wrapped around his legs.
“What do you see?” she asked quietly.
“Darkness,” he sighed, and twisted suddenly. “Too dark. Too dark. Darkness devouring. Where are the shadows? Where is the light?”
“We’ve got a fire right here,” the drummer murmured, and began to drum again. A slow beat, a heart beat. “The light is here.”
“No. No, no. It’s…” he shuddered, twisting again, and clawed at his shoulders. “It’s here.”
“He’s got foaming-sickness,” the glaring woman observed, mildly curious. “We should kill him now, before he bites.”
Jake stood. “That’s it. If you get up on your lupus high horse one more time, I swear – ”
The woman crouched and bared her teeth.
“I accept your challenge,” she purred, and lunged, taking on her true form as she flew. He braced to meet her and failed, falling, and together they rolled into the darkness. Snarls and cries followed in their wake.
The drummer’s eyes flew open, fixing on the rocking, groaning seer across the firepit.
“I know you,” she said.
The drumbeat stopped. The seer raised his head, grinning deathly and terrible, and his eyes burned with pale nuclear fire.
“Of course you do,” he said in a voice that was and wasn’t his own. “I’m your friend, Raoul. Are you alright, Lisa?”
The cries stopped, out beyond the circle of firelight. Two pairs of gleaming green eyes paced from the shadow behind the seer. The drummer did not take her eyes from his face.
“I wasn’t sure before, but now… oh yes, I know you. I know you, elder brother, lost one. I know you. Nidhogg, they call you; Echidna, they call you; the hate a parent bears for their child, the child ripping wings off flies; the hands that rip and grab and tear and have never known mercy. The darkness-that-devours. The nothing. I know you, Wyrm, and you’re no friend of mine.”
The thing inside the seer’s body laughed.
“Do you fear me?” it asked.
“Would it help?”
“No.”
She began to drum again: the heart beat, the back beat, the pulse of living blood in living veins. Bom-bom, bom-bom, bom-bom.
“Give me back my friends, lost one.”
“But I didn’t take them,” it wheedled, spreading its hands wide. “They came to me, of their own free will.”
“That’s as may be,” she said (bom-bom, bom-bom). “But I’m calling them home now. Let them go, elder brother.”
Its grin widened; Raoul’s lips cracked and bled. “No.”
“Let them go.”
“They don’t want to go.”
“Yes, they do.” There was a hint of a knife’s blade in her languid voice. “They got your poison apple in them, making them forget. If they knew who they were, they’d break your power. You’re all lies, elder brother, and lies are fragile things.”
“Lies?” It sneered, and Raoul’s teeth seemed to lengthen and twist in the dancing firelight. “You’d know about lies, Lisa. That’s how you made your living, feeding people lies, blinding them to the truth of existence. You’ve always served me.”
The beat paused for a moment, then resumed.
“I challenge you, Wyrm,” she said, formally, voice a little too level and little bit strained. “I challenge you. You tell your story, I’ll tell mine, and the pack be the judge. Winner take all. Let’s see whose lies are stronger.”
Raoul’s eyes gleamed, sick and vacant, and the thing behind them looked at her almost lovingly.
“Accepted.”
And it began to speak.
It told of the darkness before creation, the envious black that snuffs out life, of stars snuffed out and living worlds left to spin into cold ash. It sang of cancer that eats the young and the old before their time; it praised the hideous fire that pierces the skies and lets the cruel sun in. It spoke of hate and hate and hate, of creeping rot, of inevitable doom. Of despair without the chance of comfort; of suffering without compassion; of rage for its own sake; and of hunger that could never be satisfied, because its joy was all in the consuming.
Give in, it told her. Give in, and at least the pain will lessen towards the end. Surrender and put an end to all this pointless strife. Let Gaia spin into the devouring dark and be unwoven, and finish this joke – this joke of life, that’s gone on too long.
The heart beat faltered.
The thing reached for her in the dimming firelight.
She began to speak.
The words came to her from the deep place, the still place where the waters bide. It was a summoning-song: for Jake, proud and frightened and growing towards wisdom; for Raoul, sighted and ghost-plagued and soft as snowdrifts; for the wolf-girl who refused a name, fierce and hurt and grieving. She knew them, now. She had walked with them in the dark places. And she called them, in all their glory: brave, fierce, patient, wise she called them. She called them in their shame. She called their pain, and their courage, and their loss, and their gain. Remember, she told them. Remember.
And it seemed the fire grew brighter.
The pale witchlight was fading from Raoul’s eyes.
She kept speaking, invoking the clean mountain air, the flowing stream, the smell of the earth after rain. The flowers growing from the fallen tree trunk and the rotted flesh. The leaping fish glinting silver under the green-bottle sea. The fog rolling through the valley. The killing frost of winter and the wild life coursing through the meltwater spring. She spoke until she had no more words, until her throat was dry and cracking and her lips moved soundlessly and all her being resounded with the one story, the true story, the only one that matters: the story of the balance-that-was, that all things still strive for even through the madness of the devouring Wyrm – which was not evil, no, only lost.
And she changed the story, then, because it seemed right to do so – because of something she felt, sounding in the depths of the story, that spoke of pain and grief beyond enduring – and said that what was broken may be fixed, the wounded may be healed, what was lost may be regained.
If.
Only if.
It was enough, barely. She watched what came next as one half in a dream: Raoul vomiting darkness into the fire, which flared in agony and guttered; Jake and the wolf falling on it, biting and tearing and burning themselves on the embers; the agony of its death-throes; the bloody foam specks on their muzzles.
Then exhaustion found her and for a long time she knew no more.
~*~
The paint was cool against her skin, drying swiftly. She felt the pain radiating from the wolf beside her – Bites-the-Wyrm, now, nameless never again – pain and pride, as she sniffed secretly at her new wounds. Sees-in-Darkness, who had been Raoul, stood on her other side, eyes haunted and calm as a forgotten lake. Jake, now Tailbiter, stood at the head of the line.
She was last to be painted, the last to be named.
Twisted-Tail looked deep into her eyes.
“Men named you Lisa, daughter. Is it your will to cast that name aside?”
“It is.”
“Then it is yours no longer. Lisa returns to the cycle; Explains-the-Plot stands before me now.”
She bowed her head, aware of the rising tide of whispers, shaping the name soundlessly. It felt good. Right.
Twisted-Tail leapt up on a stone, the bonfire licking at the edges of her silhouette. She spread her arms.
“The cubs are named, children no longer!” she called. “Now, let’s party!”
Music began, drums and flutes, and the tension of the rite eased into the current of a gathering. Knots formed, lines redrew themselves; the Garou Nation divided itself into fluid portions. Joyful wolfsong came from outside the circle and Bites-the-Wyrm tossed her head one final time. The wolf who had marked and named her nudged her side.
“Fare well,” she said, with grudging grace. “May the moon light your steps.”
And they were gone, bounding through the crowds to the night-forest and the wolfpack beyond. Tailbiter raised an eyebrow.
“Good riddance,” he muttered, then turned to Explains-the-Plot. “Explains-the-Plot?”
“Yes?”
“I mean,” and he ran a hand through his hair. “Really?”
She tilted her head. “Really what?”
“It’s an odd name, that’s all.”
“If you say so,” she said, and grinned. “Tailbiter.”
Sees-in-Darkness laughed. Tailbiter threw up his hands, surrendering. “Point taken. Want to dance?”
By way of an answer, she broke into a jig.
~*~
Towards dawn, a light rain began to fall. The sky was graying into morning, and Explains-the-Plot closed her eyes, seeking the east, and the rising sun. She was tired, and too awake, heavy with profundity.
A twig snapped. She opened her eyes. Twisted-Tail crouched in front of her, two-tone eyes smiling. Violet for the left eye, gold for the right.
“There’s a crack in your heart, daughter.”
Explains-the-Plot considered this.
“It said I was a liar,” she said, slowly. “That I’d always served it.”
Twisted-Tail sat back on her haunches.
“Are you? Do you?”
“I don’t know. I changed the story, the end of it.” She shifted, sitting cross-legged. “Was that wrong?”
“How did you change the story?” Twisted-Tail asked, eyes gleaming.
“I said things could,” and she grasped helplessly at air, eloquence stripped from her as a deep, remembered pain welled up inside. “Could be better. The balance-that-was could come back. I don’t know why.”
“Are you sure?”
Explains-the-Plot shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. Then she nodded. Then she shook her head again, and shuddered. Twisted-Tail laid her head on the younger woman’s shoulder, nuzzling her like a mother wolf with a cub. It made her wonder, not for the first time, what form the mystic had been born in.
“Rest it for a time,” she said softly. “It will tell you what it is, when it’s time for you to know.”
“Did I lie, though?”
“What is a lie?” Twisted-Tail asked, smiling.
“When you say something that’s not true.”
“What is truth?” And she blinked, slowly, like a cat in sunlight.
“… something that’s not a lie?”
“What do you think it means, when a thing is defined only by what it is not?”
Explains-the-Plot thought for a while, breathing in the scent of the warming earth.
“That… no one knows what it actually is?” she said, picking her way carefully over shifting ground. “Which means it could be anything. And… it’s dangerous only knowing what something is by what it’s not. Because then you can say that because it’s not one thing, it must be that thing’s opposite. That if it’s not cold, it must be hot, and if it’s not hot, it must be cold. And… that’s not true. If you only know what something’s not than you only know half of what it is, and it’s the whole of the thing that matters.”
Twisted-Tail’s smile became a proud grin. Explains-the-Plot relaxed; she’d grasped something, though she wasn’t sure what; it padded softly in the back of her mind, searching for its proper place.
“Well done, daughter.” She paused for a moment, and then spoke briefly to the air. “Yes, I know. I thought so, too.”
Explains-the-Plot waited.
“You will go west, I think,” Twisted-Tail said to her at last. “West and north, following the yellow brick road. Go to the emerald city and find a buddy.”
“A buddy?”
“It’s good to have friends.” There was laughter in her eyes. Explains-the-Plot couldn’t help smiling back.
“You need to learn, daughter,” Twisted-Tail said, ruffling her hair. “Learn stories. Learn wisdom. And then… we shall see what Gaia makes of you, little gibbous moon.”
The sun was rising.
It was dark in the center of the earth; dark and warm, and full of shadows.
There was a small fire, and four figures sitting around it. One stared into the darkness like a stray cat, two were glaring like dogs afraid to fight, and one had her eyes hooded shut, beating gently, slowly on the upturned bucket inside her crossed legs. The sound echoed hollow and soft – takka-takka-tap, takka-takka-tap, tap tap tap, takka-takka tap.
“Will you stop that racket?” the glaring man snapped.
The drummer smiled, and stopped.
“Sorry, Jake,” she said, eyes half-shut. “Habit.”
He grumbled, and kept glaring at the woman across the fire. She raised her lip a little, almost snarling.
“Don’t look at me,” she growled. “I told you I smelled fresh air from the left fork.”
“The left fork went down.”
“Trust a homid to believe his eyes,” she said, and spat into the fire. Jake lunged at her; she was on her feet in a flash, crouched and snarling with her fingers flexing, growing into sharp claws…
“Hey now, hey, hey!” the drummer said, and standing, put a hand on both of their shoulders. Her eyes were still sleepy and mostly closed, and she smiled faintly. “Sit down, sit down.”
The woman pulled away. “Mind your own business, scavenger.”
“The pack’s business is my business,” the drummer said, still smiling. “If our warrior and our tracker fall biting each other’s throats, we’ll never get out of this mess. Sit now, sit. We’re in the mother’s hands now, hey? What would she say, to see you fighting so?”
The staring one spoke then, and his voice grated like stone.
“The way is closed,” he groaned, and closed his eyes. Sweat beaded on his brow. “The way is closed. I cannot see the path.”
“Now what?” Jake snarled. “More of his blathering?”
“Ignore him,” the woman said, tossing her short hair like a flea-bit dog. “He’s been useless since the cave-in.”
The drummer sat back down, wrapping her legs around her bucket-drum. She looked at the staring man for a long moment, as he groaned and rocked, arms wrapped around his legs.
“What do you see?” she asked quietly.
“Darkness,” he sighed, and twisted suddenly. “Too dark. Too dark. Darkness devouring. Where are the shadows? Where is the light?”
“We’ve got a fire right here,” the drummer murmured, and began to drum again. A slow beat, a heart beat. “The light is here.”
“No. No, no. It’s…” he shuddered, twisting again, and clawed at his shoulders. “It’s here.”
“He’s got foaming-sickness,” the glaring woman observed, mildly curious. “We should kill him now, before he bites.”
Jake stood. “That’s it. If you get up on your lupus high horse one more time, I swear – ”
The woman crouched and bared her teeth.
“I accept your challenge,” she purred, and lunged, taking on her true form as she flew. He braced to meet her and failed, falling, and together they rolled into the darkness. Snarls and cries followed in their wake.
The drummer’s eyes flew open, fixing on the rocking, groaning seer across the firepit.
“I know you,” she said.
The drumbeat stopped. The seer raised his head, grinning deathly and terrible, and his eyes burned with pale nuclear fire.
“Of course you do,” he said in a voice that was and wasn’t his own. “I’m your friend, Raoul. Are you alright, Lisa?”
The cries stopped, out beyond the circle of firelight. Two pairs of gleaming green eyes paced from the shadow behind the seer. The drummer did not take her eyes from his face.
“I wasn’t sure before, but now… oh yes, I know you. I know you, elder brother, lost one. I know you. Nidhogg, they call you; Echidna, they call you; the hate a parent bears for their child, the child ripping wings off flies; the hands that rip and grab and tear and have never known mercy. The darkness-that-devours. The nothing. I know you, Wyrm, and you’re no friend of mine.”
The thing inside the seer’s body laughed.
“Do you fear me?” it asked.
“Would it help?”
“No.”
She began to drum again: the heart beat, the back beat, the pulse of living blood in living veins. Bom-bom, bom-bom, bom-bom.
“Give me back my friends, lost one.”
“But I didn’t take them,” it wheedled, spreading its hands wide. “They came to me, of their own free will.”
“That’s as may be,” she said (bom-bom, bom-bom). “But I’m calling them home now. Let them go, elder brother.”
Its grin widened; Raoul’s lips cracked and bled. “No.”
“Let them go.”
“They don’t want to go.”
“Yes, they do.” There was a hint of a knife’s blade in her languid voice. “They got your poison apple in them, making them forget. If they knew who they were, they’d break your power. You’re all lies, elder brother, and lies are fragile things.”
“Lies?” It sneered, and Raoul’s teeth seemed to lengthen and twist in the dancing firelight. “You’d know about lies, Lisa. That’s how you made your living, feeding people lies, blinding them to the truth of existence. You’ve always served me.”
The beat paused for a moment, then resumed.
“I challenge you, Wyrm,” she said, formally, voice a little too level and little bit strained. “I challenge you. You tell your story, I’ll tell mine, and the pack be the judge. Winner take all. Let’s see whose lies are stronger.”
Raoul’s eyes gleamed, sick and vacant, and the thing behind them looked at her almost lovingly.
“Accepted.”
And it began to speak.
It told of the darkness before creation, the envious black that snuffs out life, of stars snuffed out and living worlds left to spin into cold ash. It sang of cancer that eats the young and the old before their time; it praised the hideous fire that pierces the skies and lets the cruel sun in. It spoke of hate and hate and hate, of creeping rot, of inevitable doom. Of despair without the chance of comfort; of suffering without compassion; of rage for its own sake; and of hunger that could never be satisfied, because its joy was all in the consuming.
Give in, it told her. Give in, and at least the pain will lessen towards the end. Surrender and put an end to all this pointless strife. Let Gaia spin into the devouring dark and be unwoven, and finish this joke – this joke of life, that’s gone on too long.
The heart beat faltered.
The thing reached for her in the dimming firelight.
She began to speak.
The words came to her from the deep place, the still place where the waters bide. It was a summoning-song: for Jake, proud and frightened and growing towards wisdom; for Raoul, sighted and ghost-plagued and soft as snowdrifts; for the wolf-girl who refused a name, fierce and hurt and grieving. She knew them, now. She had walked with them in the dark places. And she called them, in all their glory: brave, fierce, patient, wise she called them. She called them in their shame. She called their pain, and their courage, and their loss, and their gain. Remember, she told them. Remember.
And it seemed the fire grew brighter.
The pale witchlight was fading from Raoul’s eyes.
She kept speaking, invoking the clean mountain air, the flowing stream, the smell of the earth after rain. The flowers growing from the fallen tree trunk and the rotted flesh. The leaping fish glinting silver under the green-bottle sea. The fog rolling through the valley. The killing frost of winter and the wild life coursing through the meltwater spring. She spoke until she had no more words, until her throat was dry and cracking and her lips moved soundlessly and all her being resounded with the one story, the true story, the only one that matters: the story of the balance-that-was, that all things still strive for even through the madness of the devouring Wyrm – which was not evil, no, only lost.
And she changed the story, then, because it seemed right to do so – because of something she felt, sounding in the depths of the story, that spoke of pain and grief beyond enduring – and said that what was broken may be fixed, the wounded may be healed, what was lost may be regained.
If.
Only if.
It was enough, barely. She watched what came next as one half in a dream: Raoul vomiting darkness into the fire, which flared in agony and guttered; Jake and the wolf falling on it, biting and tearing and burning themselves on the embers; the agony of its death-throes; the bloody foam specks on their muzzles.
Then exhaustion found her and for a long time she knew no more.
~*~
The paint was cool against her skin, drying swiftly. She felt the pain radiating from the wolf beside her – Bites-the-Wyrm, now, nameless never again – pain and pride, as she sniffed secretly at her new wounds. Sees-in-Darkness, who had been Raoul, stood on her other side, eyes haunted and calm as a forgotten lake. Jake, now Tailbiter, stood at the head of the line.
She was last to be painted, the last to be named.
Twisted-Tail looked deep into her eyes.
“Men named you Lisa, daughter. Is it your will to cast that name aside?”
“It is.”
“Then it is yours no longer. Lisa returns to the cycle; Explains-the-Plot stands before me now.”
She bowed her head, aware of the rising tide of whispers, shaping the name soundlessly. It felt good. Right.
Twisted-Tail leapt up on a stone, the bonfire licking at the edges of her silhouette. She spread her arms.
“The cubs are named, children no longer!” she called. “Now, let’s party!”
Music began, drums and flutes, and the tension of the rite eased into the current of a gathering. Knots formed, lines redrew themselves; the Garou Nation divided itself into fluid portions. Joyful wolfsong came from outside the circle and Bites-the-Wyrm tossed her head one final time. The wolf who had marked and named her nudged her side.
“Fare well,” she said, with grudging grace. “May the moon light your steps.”
And they were gone, bounding through the crowds to the night-forest and the wolfpack beyond. Tailbiter raised an eyebrow.
“Good riddance,” he muttered, then turned to Explains-the-Plot. “Explains-the-Plot?”
“Yes?”
“I mean,” and he ran a hand through his hair. “Really?”
She tilted her head. “Really what?”
“It’s an odd name, that’s all.”
“If you say so,” she said, and grinned. “Tailbiter.”
Sees-in-Darkness laughed. Tailbiter threw up his hands, surrendering. “Point taken. Want to dance?”
By way of an answer, she broke into a jig.
~*~
Towards dawn, a light rain began to fall. The sky was graying into morning, and Explains-the-Plot closed her eyes, seeking the east, and the rising sun. She was tired, and too awake, heavy with profundity.
A twig snapped. She opened her eyes. Twisted-Tail crouched in front of her, two-tone eyes smiling. Violet for the left eye, gold for the right.
“There’s a crack in your heart, daughter.”
Explains-the-Plot considered this.
“It said I was a liar,” she said, slowly. “That I’d always served it.”
Twisted-Tail sat back on her haunches.
“Are you? Do you?”
“I don’t know. I changed the story, the end of it.” She shifted, sitting cross-legged. “Was that wrong?”
“How did you change the story?” Twisted-Tail asked, eyes gleaming.
“I said things could,” and she grasped helplessly at air, eloquence stripped from her as a deep, remembered pain welled up inside. “Could be better. The balance-that-was could come back. I don’t know why.”
“Are you sure?”
Explains-the-Plot shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. Then she nodded. Then she shook her head again, and shuddered. Twisted-Tail laid her head on the younger woman’s shoulder, nuzzling her like a mother wolf with a cub. It made her wonder, not for the first time, what form the mystic had been born in.
“Rest it for a time,” she said softly. “It will tell you what it is, when it’s time for you to know.”
“Did I lie, though?”
“What is a lie?” Twisted-Tail asked, smiling.
“When you say something that’s not true.”
“What is truth?” And she blinked, slowly, like a cat in sunlight.
“… something that’s not a lie?”
“What do you think it means, when a thing is defined only by what it is not?”
Explains-the-Plot thought for a while, breathing in the scent of the warming earth.
“That… no one knows what it actually is?” she said, picking her way carefully over shifting ground. “Which means it could be anything. And… it’s dangerous only knowing what something is by what it’s not. Because then you can say that because it’s not one thing, it must be that thing’s opposite. That if it’s not cold, it must be hot, and if it’s not hot, it must be cold. And… that’s not true. If you only know what something’s not than you only know half of what it is, and it’s the whole of the thing that matters.”
Twisted-Tail’s smile became a proud grin. Explains-the-Plot relaxed; she’d grasped something, though she wasn’t sure what; it padded softly in the back of her mind, searching for its proper place.
“Well done, daughter.” She paused for a moment, and then spoke briefly to the air. “Yes, I know. I thought so, too.”
Explains-the-Plot waited.
“You will go west, I think,” Twisted-Tail said to her at last. “West and north, following the yellow brick road. Go to the emerald city and find a buddy.”
“A buddy?”
“It’s good to have friends.” There was laughter in her eyes. Explains-the-Plot couldn’t help smiling back.
“You need to learn, daughter,” Twisted-Tail said, ruffling her hair. “Learn stories. Learn wisdom. And then… we shall see what Gaia makes of you, little gibbous moon.”
The sun was rising.