Log edited with Logedit 2.6.6pl on Wed Aug 5 17:58:24 EDT 1998

Using configuration file /turquoise/homes/ammer/.logeditrc Editing out: arrive/left ANSI tf-messages Regexp stripping: Queue, Semaphore, ^Huh\? +Type, ^I don't see that Word-wrapping at 72, 0, 2 Statistics at end of log -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Scab-Survivor lays on a fur blanket, breathing evenly. He has not awoken since last night.

Andrea comes back from outside, having answered a howl Touch Deer would have recognized as Spirit-of-Words', were he awake. She kneels down to touch his shoulder, frowning worriedly that he is still not awake.

Scab-Survivor jerks in his sleep, and his breathing becomes quicker. He begins to wake up, finally; eyes blinking, he seems fairly confused.

Touch Deer sits up, his strength just about returned since last night's events. "Oh...Andrea?" He shakes his head, and rubs eyes that are bloodshot despite a full day's sleep. "How long have I been asleep?"

You say "About fifteen hours."

Touch Deer rubs his shoulders and shivers. "Oh. Andrea...I can't believe what happened...I almost think it must have been a dream."

Andrea continues to touch the ahroun reassuringly, still kneeling beside him. "What did you see?"

Touch Deer's expression is that of someone trying to discuss a subject that he barely understands, or cannot place into words. "I saw...the Consumer. I fought it...inside the body of a Wendigo spirit..."

Andrea's eyes widen slightly.

Touch Deer swallows. "It was so...so..." He spends a few seconds in silent thought before trying again to explain it. "It was strange and somehow /familiar/...and I was myself, but I was Wendigo more than I was myself. I was hearing voices from inside me and outside me, that told me what I had to do, and why."

Andrea nods, "What'd they say?

Touch Deer says "I had to die, but I would die to save you and the others. Um...I had been waiting for last night for a thousand years...or more maybe. Even though I was going to die, Consumer-of-Stone would still be bound somehow, by /something/."

Andrea rocks back on her heels, saying musingly, "Bound by what?"

Touch Deer shrugs. "I don't know...I think the Wendigo knew, maybe, but I didn't know." He pauses. "Andrea...do you know what happened to me?"

You say "You disappeared through the Gauntlet. When we crossed through a breach into the Umbra, you were unconsious on the ground, but unhurt."

Jade is suddenly here above the old fire-ring, hovering like some last faint glimmer of sunset off high clouds long after all other traces of light have gone from the sky. Yellow eyes track the trio of Garou unblinkingly.

Touch Deer nods. "I know, but-" He cuts himself off suddenly at the appearance of Jade.

Andrea also looks up at Touch Deer's abrupt change, her eyes widening slightly at the colorful serpent's shadowy form. "Jade?"

Cassandra clambers through the brush and down into the cave to join you.

As quickly as it manifested, the glimmering form of scale and feathers flickers out again, fading back into shadow. An echo of her voice beckons, cryptically: *A question*.

Andrea glances among the pack, then moves toward the mirror. "Let's see what she wants. Perhaps we didn't cleanse the other side well enough, after the fight."

Jade fixes yellow eyes upon you as you emerge from the realm, a low more-sensed-than-seen thrumming accompanying her sinuous movements. Abruptly she goes quite still, as if about to strike, and the snake's strange voice returns: *We have found a question. You might seek the answer.* There may be faint teasing in its tone, a hint that perhaps the busy pack may have other matters more on its mind, just now.

Touch Deer looks to Andrea, as he always does in these sorts of situations, eyes questioning.

Andrea smiles crookedly, glancing toward the site where the recent battle occurred. *As usual, your pack is less shy of questions than answers, Jade. But tell us; what question?* Andrea doesn't translate any longer for Jade, at least, as the pack link after Ouroboros became officially formed allows all the members to understand her when she wishes.

Cassandra just listensd quietly, her expression a bit troubled. She does quirk a grin as Jade mentions the questions and answers, muttering softly, "An' the answers we got ain't nobody wanna listen to, go fig."

While it's impossible to read much emotion into the snake-spirit, Jade seems almost eager, or expectant, tonight. Half words, half ideas take shape in Jade's coils, palpable and comprehensible to all three of you. *Long ago and long. The snake of Copper was well honored and high in Uktena's brood. It is gone. It was gone. It vanished when the Newcomers swept these lands. Destroyed, as so many things. And yet...*

Jade deposits a large copper scale, thick, feathered on one edge like the husk of a coconut shell, half green and rusted, half burnished and encased in a thin veneer of calcite.

Touch Deer's eyes widen at the scale, but he doesn't reach down to touch it.

Andrea does bend down to touch it, picking it up to let everyone get a good look at it. She turns it so it catches the light of the waxing moon in reddish-gold glimmers.

Sekhmet GM pages: It feels...old. Old as Stonehenge, old as a weathered canyon, or a long-dormant volcano.

The spirit continues with a subtle shift in perspective, its words less words and more concrete images that may even be slightly palpable to those lacking spirit's tongue. *Thin moon, and the umbra is strange. The spirit-winds blew us astray. We fetched up like a blown leaf against a pillar of stone, in shape like a great tooth. It was the entrance to a cave, a dark fold in the Near Umbra. And there were copper scales and feathers embedded in the stones, and a presence, and a smell: the serpent of Copper's breath, unless I am new-hatched. And in the stones about the cave were Garou glyphs of names, Uktena, not carved, but formed by time from the folds of dripping stone...*

Jade breaks off, a leering grin in its deep eyes. *A secret, yes?*

Patrick peers at the scale, mentioning softly, "That puppy looks like it needs a good dose of polishing."

Touch Deer's brow creases as he looks at the scale. "I've heard of tales that speak of some Copper Serpent...but I never heard the tales myself..."

Jade's tail flicks briefly towards the Wendigo. *Then we begin to share the same question.*

Touch Deer nods at Jade, and then addresses his packmates. "We should go to this cave..."

Andrea turns the scale over in her hands, then hands it to Patrick first. "It feels old," she says softly. "Like it was shed when Gaia was still young. A mystery, yes, though whose secret I couldn't say."

Jade strains and seems to grow larger, more palpable, for a brief moment, then falls back into herself with a hissing sigh, implying something greater than herself.

Cassandra just stands quietly for now, and though she peers intently at the scale, she seems content to let the people who know anything about stuff like this take the lead.

Touch Deer watches Jade's almost-change with a curious eye. "Jade...how far is this Cave?"

The serpent circles once, enclosing empty air. *Not as far as the Deeps, yet not pure Mirror of your solid-world. Close on the bounds of Flux.*

Patrick blinks. "Fuuuuuck."

Cassandra blinks at this too. "Ho boy," she mutters. "Road trip!"

Touch Deer nods. "I've only heard tales of the Flux Realm..."

Jade returns its gaze to the Wendigo. *More questions,* it notes slyly.

Andrea blinks, then looks among the pack. She shakes her head and says, "I know something of that place, but I don't think we can go until we figure out what to do about Consumer-of-Stone." She turns to look at Jade directly again. "In the realm, or simply near it?"

The snake executes a lazy somersault. *Near it, but nearer than. I know a swift way.*

Cassandra shrugs. "Who knows? We might find somethin' useful."]

Jade comes to a halt upside-down, gaze piercing the Fury. *We might find more questions.*

Cassandra closes one eye and peers at the circlesnake through the other. "You make it sound like that's something new."

*With the right questions* the snake observes, *all known is new.* Question and mystery posed, the feathered serpent begins to wind back on itself, nearly biting her own tail. Then she pauses, scales rippling like water, and peers at the others. *Another newness from something old. Your circle returns to its starting-point. Where is the beginning/early one? Where is the ending/recent one?*

"Soren is apart, in vision," Andrea answers. "And Hayes wasn't with us tonight, though he does want to speak to you. He's travelling among the Garou, asking and listening. The Consumer is freed, Jade, and I am afraid." Her face looks drawn and older than usual, as she admits this.

The serpent starts to lose definition more. Then it observes, obliquely: *Was Turtle afraid?*

Patrick notes, "I still say we just need to re-Bind the puppy, and make sure to beat the Hell out of him while doing it. Trap him again. Anyways ... if it's a short-term thing, it might not kill you to get your obsession off him for a little."

Cassandra thinks a minute, then grins faintly. "Jade's got a point, Andrea."

Andrea turns her haunted look on Patrick. "And while we change gears, it has the time to regain its power and begin to destroy? I don't know if we /have/ the strength to bind it again." The theurge is looking toward the end of her rope. She doesn't respond to Cassandra or Jade.

Patrick rolls his eyes. "Change our gears? At what? We hunt the puppy down and some people start Binding while others start whaling away. Anyways, it's better than noping about how the world is in a huge bind now because we fucked up. I mean, shit--that sounds like a whiny goth or vampire or something." He strikes a pose, head tilted back in a striken expression, back of his right hand to his forehead. "Woe is me, woe is me. Life is such a difficulty. The world is going to Hell in a black plastic handbasket. Woe is me."

Andrea snaps, "Fuck you." She then turns around and stalks away toward the treeline, her shoulders quivering.

Jade suddenly unfolds again, blinking intermittantly through the space between here and the trees, rolling to face the frustrated theurge with its unblinking stare. *Answers you want? The Consumer-of-Stones: Old. Mighty.* The snake hisses softly. *And lying.*

Cassandra just watches this whole exchange, crossing her arms across her chest. "Of all the things in the world we could decide t'do, arguing is about the most fuckin' useless thing I could think of." She drops into silence as Jade speaks, raising an eyebrow in surprise. "Duh. Of course he'd lie. He's a Wyrm critter."

The snake flicks its tail impatiently at the frustrated theurge, a feather-tip tickling her arm as it swishes past. Jade elaborates, barely. *A thread yet holds it. The bond is not altogether broken.*

Andrea stops to look at the spirit as she speaks further, the snake privy to the wet cheeks that her turned back hides from the rest of the pack. She doesn't speak in return, perhaps not yet trusting her voice.

Patrick opens his mouth for another reply, then leans back on his heels. "Hm. Something else's holding it. It's not free. It's ... on a leash?"

The snake agrees with maddening vagueness. *Some string yet holds. _Some_ kind of comtrol remains. It is not quite free.*

Andrea finally speaks, "Touch Deer said something like that, from when he was in the spirit. That the Wendigo knew something was still holding it, but he didn't know what." She takes a deep sigh that catches a little in the middle, then wipes at her face roughly. "Maybe Wendigo would know, then?"

Patrick quirks his lips to one side speculatively. "Hm ... do we know /anything/ about the wench who's funding the entire affair, besides the fact she's rich and probably not normal?"

The serpent goes still again, for it does not know all that Younger Brother knows. But there is a spark in Jade's eyes, as she again agrees. *The answer for that is to question.*

Patrick smirks wryly. "As per usual."

Andrea turns back toward her pack now. The bare traces of her brief, angry tears are left for the perceptive, but she meets Patrick's eyes squarely. "I'm sorry, Patrick. It's just, the caern, then this..." She trails off.

Patrick shrugs. "You keep thiking you've fucked up, only to find out that you've done the best you could, given the circumstances. I would've thought you'd be used to progress going around dressed up like apparent failure by now." With a grin, he adds, "Gaia knows /I/ am, given my grades half the time."

Andrea manages one of her wry smiles, then says, "I know that's easy to say. You've told me before I can't carry the weight of the world." She half-turns again, where she can see out over the lake. "It's just, you and I know that I don't have all the answers. Or even a fraction of them. But there's no one here wiser, and those younger...have you seen the way Morgan looks at me, as if I held the wisdom of the world?"

Patrick snorts as he follows Quiet's gaze. "I'd say you're only human, but you're not."

Andrea chuckles a little, then says, "I don't know. I'm not sure being human has much to do with your genes, sometimes." She sobers then. "It's the curse of the End Times, Patrick. I don't dare do nothing, or the Wyrm will win. But each time I try one of these feats, I wonder if we're going to be able to turn it around, or if this will be the one that ends it all, and our pack will be remembered with curses."

Patrick just gives Quiet another one of his patented 'you gotta be kidding' looks. "Right. Like we're fucking revered in the Halls of Power anyways. Of course, that fucking Raven is such a respectable spirit, munching on carrion...."

Andrea just sighs and shakes her head. She closes her eyes, still facing toward the lake.

Patrick shrugs again, looking around the area a little. "We do what we can. 'Sbetter than most can say, even."

Andrea moves closer to Patrick, reaching out to touch his shoulder fleetingly. "It's all we can do."

Home          Main Log Index           Quiet Log Index            Ouro Log Index