Post by Moira ap Eiluned on Sept 20, 2012 15:40:13 GMT -8
It is still dark when Moira opens her eyes.
Behind her, wrapped around her, she can feel the warmth of Hans’ form. Her head is pillowed on his right arm; Devotion is draped across her, protectively. He is still asleep; she can hear his even breathing, like the comforting deep grumble of old, faithful machinery in the hours before dawn.
Carefully, slowly, she slips out from Hans’ arms, out of the warm bed – her fault, that bed; no way would she have let him keep sleeping on his horrid old cot – and into the chill air. For a moment she hears his breathing falter, and Moira holds very still. But his breathing resumes its rhythmic flow, and Moira slips hastily into her clothes.
She doesn’t want to explain this, doesn’t know if she can. She doesn’t know why she feels ashamed, scared, about what she is going to do, why she doesn’t want this friend of her soul to see. Maybe, she thinks, it is pride, or shame, or both. Maybe there are some questions whose answers so frighten you that you don’t even want anyone to know you have asked until afterward, until you have had a chance to drink down the fear, the humiliation, in private.
The sky is fading from black into deepest blue as Moira starts her car and heads east onto 90. She knows where she is going; she remembers the place from years ago. The sky is a rich dark blue by the time she exits the freeway, driving down winding roads, moving from pavement to gravel to dirt until she pulls off to the side of what could only with great charity still be called a road, parking in the weeds.
The sound of the river roars to life as Moira opens the doors; the soundproofing on her car is excellent.
The dim light of approaching dawn darkens again as she moves under the trees, then returns when she breaches the treeline onto the bank of the river. She comes out, as she remembers, at the one calm place along this stretch. A hundred paces to the left of her, the water storms down a rocky waterfall three men high; to the right, a smooth drop off plunges the river out of sight with frightening absoluteness.
The air is cold and damp with the spray from the waterfalls, and Moira shivers as she strips off her mortal clothes and then her Chimerical garb, folding first one and then the other, neatly stacking them with her gown on top, to keep it off the dirt. Before she can think about it too much, she runs and dives into the river, gasping as the ice-melt river briefly closes over her head. She stands up; it is shallow enough that her head and shoulders are above the surface when her feet touch the bottom. Her long black hair tangles around her, floating. Her teeth chatter as her body begins to shake in earnest, and she walks back on shore.
The sky is pink as she heads back into the woods, onto a different path than the one she entered on. She walks along the path; her body still shakes violently from the bitter cold, but it hardly affects her steps, so great is her concentration. Around her, on all sides of her, she can hear the noises of an awakening wood. Tentative birdcalls, rattling branches, the crack of a footfall of some larger animal, these she sets aside; they will not lead her to what she is seeking. Her bare feet step on stones, on branches, on thorns; she winces but does not avoid them, nor seek to tend them. This, all of this, is part of the offering to the Dreaming. In lesser forms, in casual times, she would call it a “bunk”; for situations like this she finds herself preferring the Garou term for payment to their spirit allies – chiminage. An older, more somber term. Moira likes it.
Blackberry runners arch across the path, and nettles frame the narrower sections. Moira feels her skin scraped and torn at; long, thin bloody lines laid across her naked flesh. But still she moves forward; she does not disregard them, but rather regards them as right and proper, in their place, and the pain they bring a suitable toll for her passage.
The sky is bright but the sun not yet out from behind the framing mountains when Moira sees what she was looking for – a large spider web spanning the path, still damp with dew, the spider still resting at the center from her labors. Moira walks up, waits. She looks at the web as it sways ever so faintly in the whispering breeze. Another branch snaps, another bird cries, but she ignores them. At last, the sun rises, the first rays of direct sunlight filtering through the branches to make a few bright patches in the green shadow.
Moira holds her hands out before her, and walks forward. She catches the web across both her palms, moves forward into the nearest patch of sunlight. She turns around, puts her back to the sun. As though she were clearest glass, the dawn light passes through her to illuminate the palms she holds up. She casts no shadow, not here nor in any light.
Moira looks at her hands…the left hand, the heart-hand, for emotion; the right hand, the hand of action, for reason. She notes the network of lines and marks upon lines now written across them – the faint lines of her palm, the thin bloody scores of thorns, the pale purple shadows of bruises starting to rise, the sticky silken threads of the spider’s web, even one stray tendril of hair that tangles across the whole.
She looks, and the Glamour rises from within her, and she opens herself, to read her own Augury in flesh and blood and spider-silk.
Behind her, wrapped around her, she can feel the warmth of Hans’ form. Her head is pillowed on his right arm; Devotion is draped across her, protectively. He is still asleep; she can hear his even breathing, like the comforting deep grumble of old, faithful machinery in the hours before dawn.
Carefully, slowly, she slips out from Hans’ arms, out of the warm bed – her fault, that bed; no way would she have let him keep sleeping on his horrid old cot – and into the chill air. For a moment she hears his breathing falter, and Moira holds very still. But his breathing resumes its rhythmic flow, and Moira slips hastily into her clothes.
She doesn’t want to explain this, doesn’t know if she can. She doesn’t know why she feels ashamed, scared, about what she is going to do, why she doesn’t want this friend of her soul to see. Maybe, she thinks, it is pride, or shame, or both. Maybe there are some questions whose answers so frighten you that you don’t even want anyone to know you have asked until afterward, until you have had a chance to drink down the fear, the humiliation, in private.
The sky is fading from black into deepest blue as Moira starts her car and heads east onto 90. She knows where she is going; she remembers the place from years ago. The sky is a rich dark blue by the time she exits the freeway, driving down winding roads, moving from pavement to gravel to dirt until she pulls off to the side of what could only with great charity still be called a road, parking in the weeds.
The sound of the river roars to life as Moira opens the doors; the soundproofing on her car is excellent.
The dim light of approaching dawn darkens again as she moves under the trees, then returns when she breaches the treeline onto the bank of the river. She comes out, as she remembers, at the one calm place along this stretch. A hundred paces to the left of her, the water storms down a rocky waterfall three men high; to the right, a smooth drop off plunges the river out of sight with frightening absoluteness.
The air is cold and damp with the spray from the waterfalls, and Moira shivers as she strips off her mortal clothes and then her Chimerical garb, folding first one and then the other, neatly stacking them with her gown on top, to keep it off the dirt. Before she can think about it too much, she runs and dives into the river, gasping as the ice-melt river briefly closes over her head. She stands up; it is shallow enough that her head and shoulders are above the surface when her feet touch the bottom. Her long black hair tangles around her, floating. Her teeth chatter as her body begins to shake in earnest, and she walks back on shore.
The sky is pink as she heads back into the woods, onto a different path than the one she entered on. She walks along the path; her body still shakes violently from the bitter cold, but it hardly affects her steps, so great is her concentration. Around her, on all sides of her, she can hear the noises of an awakening wood. Tentative birdcalls, rattling branches, the crack of a footfall of some larger animal, these she sets aside; they will not lead her to what she is seeking. Her bare feet step on stones, on branches, on thorns; she winces but does not avoid them, nor seek to tend them. This, all of this, is part of the offering to the Dreaming. In lesser forms, in casual times, she would call it a “bunk”; for situations like this she finds herself preferring the Garou term for payment to their spirit allies – chiminage. An older, more somber term. Moira likes it.
Blackberry runners arch across the path, and nettles frame the narrower sections. Moira feels her skin scraped and torn at; long, thin bloody lines laid across her naked flesh. But still she moves forward; she does not disregard them, but rather regards them as right and proper, in their place, and the pain they bring a suitable toll for her passage.
The sky is bright but the sun not yet out from behind the framing mountains when Moira sees what she was looking for – a large spider web spanning the path, still damp with dew, the spider still resting at the center from her labors. Moira walks up, waits. She looks at the web as it sways ever so faintly in the whispering breeze. Another branch snaps, another bird cries, but she ignores them. At last, the sun rises, the first rays of direct sunlight filtering through the branches to make a few bright patches in the green shadow.
Moira holds her hands out before her, and walks forward. She catches the web across both her palms, moves forward into the nearest patch of sunlight. She turns around, puts her back to the sun. As though she were clearest glass, the dawn light passes through her to illuminate the palms she holds up. She casts no shadow, not here nor in any light.
Moira looks at her hands…the left hand, the heart-hand, for emotion; the right hand, the hand of action, for reason. She notes the network of lines and marks upon lines now written across them – the faint lines of her palm, the thin bloody scores of thorns, the pale purple shadows of bruises starting to rise, the sticky silken threads of the spider’s web, even one stray tendril of hair that tangles across the whole.
She looks, and the Glamour rises from within her, and she opens herself, to read her own Augury in flesh and blood and spider-silk.
