[Tibik-itzaniabi] The countryside has changed in their absence: from the raw green of early to mid spring, to the full out flush of summer. The pack follows by-now familiar routes through the by-now familiar landscapes: rolling hills bristling with twisted, stunted glade children that seem a sparse and terrible parody of their fully leafed counterparts in the close heat, green and humid, of the summer heat outside.
A half-hour’s run, perhaps more, in familiar formation, through the well-trodden grounds. What were once merely obstacles have become familiar landmarks. A particular rib of rock, jutting up through the umbra ground. Farther on, a copse of three trees arrayed so closely they seem to be triplets, conjoined at the roots, limbs twisted and narrow, leaves silvered in Luna’s changing light.
The pack knows, too, when they have entered Her lands. The character of the air changes; and a low, distinct sense of oppression – recognized only in restrospect – lifts like fog burning away before the morning sun. The trees are more slender and straight, taller, with healthy canopies that soar above the downy green carpet of moss and ferns, grasses and vines. The light is more diffuse here, less direct – the sky an imperfect, patchy rag only rarely visible above them. They are enveloped in the sounds of silence, broken only by the sounds of their passage; faced with a long blank downslope; and given no familiar visions – no landscapes, no intimation of life, beyond the sounds of running water – somewhere, somewhere, just (always) ahead.
[Silence] Ranging ahead on all fours, the direwolf Silence leads his pack into the swamp again. It is the solstice, the very longest day of the year; the twilight stretches deep into the night. Though the half-moon rides high already, there is still a glow in the sky, enough to see by even without the moon’s light.
Behind him comes the Godi, the Modi, and the Philodox not of Fenris’ blood. This last carries the items collected from the tainted lands near the Church: a stone from an abandoned well, a branch from a tainted old oak. The spirits within are awakened, but as such things go, not very talkative. Content to be carried along in their physical vessels for the moment, they lie quiescent, visible only as a shifting texture on the face of the stone, a leaf that rustles in no discernable breeze on the tip of the branch.
[Ruhiger] The terrain is familiar, as are the people she travels with. She pulls up the rear of this expedition, to guard the Coggie’s ass should it be needed, as he carries their cargo, their gifts, that will tell the Raven their story, and lend the heaviness of truth to their own.
Step after step, her lighter lupine form falls in calm silence.
[Maya Nevskaja] There is almost a kind of excitement, tremoring through the Godi’s small body, she is close behind Silence, almost close enough at various points to collide with him when he halts, slows down. This, a return to the swamp — it felt like purpose, direction.
For a lost wolf, this was taking a child to the proverbial candy store.
There had been the briefest moment of unhappiness, a mother tender after her children, when the Philodox took possession of the awakened ones. The Godi had circled the other, snuffled the ground and stamped her paw, leaving a muddy imprint of her impatience in the soft ground.
But now, lightly padding along, Storms Eye seemed entirely too concerned with the moment to remember her earlier mood with Evan. Though occasional glances at the spirits were not unexpected.
[Tibik-itzaniabi] Silence, in the lead, finds no straight path. He pads downslope, his pack arrayed behind him, the Godi and the Modi and the Philodox who is not one of Fenris’ own children, the sounds of water ahead of him, the lean silence, slippery and rich, padding the damp air that encloses them into a narrow corridor of forward-motion. Except for the trees, lean, swaying, silvered by the light shed from high above, their path is empty of spirit life. There are no frogs; no ravens; no snakes coiled in upon themselves, milk-white skin sheathing the long cylinder of muscle and bone. The sound of running water is always ahead of them – just ahead – unvarying, unwavering. No matter how far they pad in, it remains: just ahead, within earshot, but out of reach. Once – then, twice, and quite inexplicably – Silence finds himself unaccountably marching uphill rather than down, past a pair of twisted Tamaracks they have certainly seen before – and when they pause and stop, turn to take inventory of the setting, listen closely, the sounds comes from not one, but every direction, constantly running waters, just out of reach, just beyond their position, just over the hill or behind the rock or down another –
[Silence] The familiarity of routes and landscapes, unfortunately, runs only to the borders of the supernatural bog. Once inside, it seems nothing is as it was the last time they were here — or even as it was five minutes ago. The pack finds themselves wandering aimlessly for minutes, then hours, until even the most basic sense of direction is confused.
Abruptly, Silence sits on his haunches with a disgruntled growl. “I’m lost.”
[Ruhiger] They wander, and wander some more, and still more, and she is growing more impatient and frustrated as time goes on. It is not the first time she has been lost in the bog, nor the second. It is just as irritating as it was the first time.
Silence stops, and she follows suit, pale eyes still watching the Coggie and his charges until she is assured that they are still all in one piece. Other then that – silence. She has no words of wisdom.
[Maya Nevskaja] Maya’s head lifts, she scents the air, trots a small circle around the patch of swamp they have settled on and then her paw hits the earth once again. She scratches a line into the mud, and growls out, a soft rumble. “Not lost, more games.”
She turns to the others, her ears pricked. “Give her reason to play.” The awakened spirits are given a glance. “If she is nearby, she can listen to other voices. Stories.”
[Silence] The great grey hispo looks over his heavy-ruffed shoulder. Then, with a chuff, he rises to his feet and turns to Evan. “Well, put them down, then.”
The silver-coated Coggie complies, setting his burdens on the marshy ground — the rock on its mossless side, the branch with its distal end up. Then Evan backs away from them and Silence looks to Maya.
“Ask them to tell their tale, Godi.”
[Maya Nevskaja] Maya rises, and pads to the awakened ones. She addresses the rock first, nuzzling it with the tip of her nose, whispering, coaxing it to come forth and tell them of its story, of what it has witnessed. Then to the branch, a similar ritual.
There is something almost intimate in the way the Godi tends to the spirits, speaks with them and then falls silent, her tail dusting the earth back and forth — waiting.
(so sorry guys, my house is busy today!)
[Tibik-itzaniabi] The rock speaks first. Its voice is low, grinding, forged in long depths. It speaks in a language none of them can understand, except for their Godi, and even then its language is a strange thing, leavened by time, compacted by pressure and gravity, slow moving, bony, low – forged of memories infinitely old than those they have asked it to recount. The spirit drones; its greatest grievance is more ancient than the more recent insults to which they have asked it to give voice – torn from the breast of the ground, yes, chiseled and shrunken and rolled into shape, formed and important – a barrier, a border, then forgotten, all detritus, all dusk, all time-passing to oblivion, all recursive solidity.
An hour passes. Two – these are old wounds; asked to speak its tale again, the tumbled hunk of mossy granite cannot help but begin at the beginning, its first memories tied to a large strata, far to the north, ground up by great ice-fathers of glaciers with names that take longer to speak than a warformed Garou has breath in his lungs to sustain, left behind in their shrinking retreat, abandoned to the immediacy of the present, turned under beneath a skin of soil, turned over then by the human hands that wrested it to shape and form – but we have heard that before. They require patience, these spirits; they require a fine hand to continue their histories from the ancient past through the modern and uncountable present, the long and unremitting decline, the chilled and creeping darkness, the retreat of their untainted, mobile brethern a long, sighing loss.
Three hours. Four.
They have lost any genuine appreciation of time’s passage. Ruhiger’s stomach rumbles; it’s been hours – perhaps a day – and abruptly her hunger is raw and keen.
The Godi senses them first; it is faint, to be sure, a prickle of awareness kissing the periphery of her spiritual awareness, a ripple in the fabric of the place, in a direction she can identify only as that way. Silence is the first to look up, however, to see the raven sitting in the highest branch of a fully leafed pinoak, obscured by the sweeping lower branches and the full banks of drifting fog. “This is why you have returned, son of Fenris?” The bird preens at the pinfeathers layered across its chest. ” – to bore me to death?”
[Ruhiger]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to Tibik-itzaniabi
[Silence]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Evan McCollach] (Percep+alert)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Maya Nevskaja]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Silence] Some time after the rock has begun to speak — and some time before it stops — Silence stands, no longer able to contain his jagged impatience. He paces to the edge of the crust of dry land they stand on. He sniffs at the water of the bog, then lifts his head and scents the wind, then paces a few steps laterally, then sniffs again. The waterways are torturous and uncertain here; stagnant waters may lie no more than a few feet from a pool that has some deep-hidden, live source.
This time, the Modi lowers his head and drinks. Then he returns, his huge paws soft on the soft, saturated ground. He lowers himself on his stomach, puts his head down, his ears tipping this way and that.
Hours go by.
And then, eventually — perhaps long after the rock has finished — Silence suddenly becomes aware of the silence. The prickling sensation of awareness. He looks up, sharply — and is greeted by not-unexpected disdain.
“We have returned,” he replies, rising swift and smooth to his feet, “with the proof you required.” Pause. “Don’t you recognize this stone?”
[Ruhiger] Her stomach grumbles it’s empty state, and she does her best to ignore it. The Rock and Branch speak and speak and speak and speak and to be honest, she shares the Raven’s sentiments.
But she’d never admit that. No more then she admit that the hunger is threatening to eat her stomach itself, and then perhaps her liver for desert. All she needs is a decent Ciante.
Finally Silence speaks, and she turns her head to watch him, then up to the Raven to await the reply.
[Evan McCollach] Tonight Evan’s duty was to carry the items into the bog, the stone from the church wall and the piece from the tree that was in AnnaMarie’s vision. And for the most part he just kept his mouth shut and his eyes open, following Decker back into the bog. The bog itself however was not the easiest thing to keep track of, and that was what made it impossible to escape if the spirits didn’t ant you too.
And dear Gaia he hoped that the spirit would let them leave again when the business was done.
But that was for later, right now he was just trying to be patient, listening to some strange spirit speaking in some arcane language going on and on and on and…. If the pair of bound Eagles were just starting to feel the grinding of the spirit, he definately was. He was not sure if the rock would ever stop, if was even talking about what they needed. He just tried to stay patient and as vigilant as possible. And that is when the Raven once again joins them. Another game has begun it seems.
[Evan McCollach] Evan didn’t seem to actually look at the Raven when it arrived on the tree. Something else seemed to gain his attention. Maybe he was looking at the mist, but that was unlikely. He was squinted, focusing his eyes beyond the Raven, into the mist. There was something out there.
[Tibik-itzaniabi] “I demanded that you leave, son of Fenris.” The spirit announces, its hauteur arch and evident in the sharp tone of its created voice, in the sweep of its great and beating wingspan, in the gleam in its wholly black eyes. ” – and required nothing more of you, except that you not return. So you return: with rocks and twigs, as if I should recognize every branch, every bone of the mother’s earth. Take your tricks and begone from here. I have no more patience for your endless games.”
[Silence] I demanded that you leave, son of Fenris–
And here, perhaps strained to the breaking point by the longwinded rock, or this long-stretched quest — or perhaps simply gambling — here, Silence interrupts.
“I did not say I brought you what you wanted!” It’s a snarl, a roar, splitting the stillness of the swamp in its suddenness. The very crickets stop for a second, two, ten.
Then, quiet: “I brought you what you needed — needed to see and hear.”
His blackclawed handpaw closes on the rock and lifts it aloft — its grinding, grumbling narrative coming to an abrupt and startled stop. “This is a rock from the well behind the Church, Raven. I stake my honor on it. The same Church in the vision your mistress, the moon water woman, showed my packmate Ruhiger. The Godi Courts-the-Storm’s-Eye awoke it; the Philodox Judgement-of-Sterling-Silver will vouch for its tale and its origins. Have you listened to it, Raven? Have you heard what has become of the lands to the west, just outside the boundaries of your enchanted swamp?”
[Tibik-itzaniabi] “I have listened to it.”
This comes from behind and beyond the white-winged, black-eyed raven; from the drifting bank of mists into which Evan is staring. A form is indented in the opaque bank; or perhaps no more than the suggestion of a form, the possibility of a shape outlined against the luminous pallor that changes the vast swamp into a series of intimate rooms, shaped, narrowed, shunted like cattle one into the next. “I have listened to it – ” and the shape shudders and then is forward, detached without taken a step, coalescing in a swirl of smoke into the tall frame of a black eyed and black haired woman, her temples touched with gray, her eyes filmed in a peculiar skein of smoke such that they seem blind.
She stares directly at Silence; she will not be the first to break the eye contact.
Her mouth is set, neutral. There are brackets of lines at the corners, not deep, but evidence, which suggests that impassive is not (or, and this must be considered) was not her usual state. There is age in her eyes, too; something unyielding about her posture, or the intimation of her shoulders, formed, it seems, from a translucent smokeskin.
“No – ” the raven interrupts, backwings, furious. ” – it isn’t – it can’t be – ”
“Silence,” the smoke-eyed woman demands; her voice has a depth, a clear resonance that cannot be denied now. “Sister.” Then, to Silence. And again, with all the gravitas of ritual, a third time. “I have heard.”
[Ruhiger] Her eyes lift, pale and clear, as the woman appears and silences the Raven. She does not stare so long as to be disrespectful, just long enough to gather the feeling of the woman there, the Sister that has appeared, the Elder. She then lowers her head, her gaze.
Respect.
And, of course, silence.
[Evan McCollach] And then it seems that the image, the shape seemed to come to more of a form. His eyes stay concentrated on the image until she speaks, until she seemed to pierce the mist with her presence. And as she speaks he doesn’t seem to stare any longer.
This was what they have been searching for, the woman they have been pursuing for some time, since before even Evan was apart of the Eagles. This was the woman whose power was remarkable, the Moon-Water-woman, or so it seems.
[Maya Nevskaja] For a moment, when Silence’s great paw closed around the rock spirit, she feared his break of patience meant he intended to hurl it at the raven herself. Maya’s muscles coiled, reacting to his anger, the impending threat of action, snarled words thrown the raven’s way, and she had risen to her feet, pressed into a sleek line, her vision narrowed to the point of black that was the bird.
A flicker, the ripple of awareness and Storms-Eye’s fur feels like a cold wind ruffles it — the Godi turns to witness the figure forming from mist, moving toward them from the bank.
[Silence] For a long time, even after the stranger speaks, Silence’s hurricane eyes are fixed on the Raven.
Slowly then — slowly, they turn to the newcomer. He looks keenly at her, searches her face and form for some indication that she might be, might just be who they’ve searched for for so long.
Sister, she calls the Raven. Silence’s brow furrows. Nevertheless, he lowers the rock slowly to the ground, taking time to plant it right-side-up beside the branch. It begins its narrative again, ruminating over past outrages in its quiet, age-slow, rocky voice. When the rock is planted, Silence remains crouched, and gives the newcomer the respect of a briefly lowered gaze.
Then he is direct: “Are you the Moon Water Woman?”
[Tibik-itzaniabi] Some curl of humor – what sort, unclear – inflects her mouth without moving it. An accident of translation, that. Like Silence, the strange woman speaks the high tongue; for all that he is warformed and she is garbed in the illusion of a human skin, her accent is no stranger than his. Perhaps the words are different; archaic, shaped by another time and civilization. “The tibik-itzaniabi – ” she repeats, her eyes fixed on his face, “No. I am her memory and her voice.”
[Silence] Perhaps he’s disappointed. Still, after a pause, he forges ahead: “And the Raven, the Frog and the Snake? Are they all aspects of her as well?”
[Evan McCollach] He looks at the woman, his eyes do not fall upon her directly. She was the memory and voice of the what was called teh Moon-Water-Woman, she spoke and kept her memory. Then why would the Raven speak as well and challenge them?
[Silence] Look like ya got a question, Ev. The mindvoice, so starkly different from his High Tongue, is startling. Ask it. Cain’t git us in no worse shit than me yellin’ at tha Raven. A hint of humor, there.
[Tibik-itzaniabi] “Is that what we have been reduced to – then? An animal incarnation and nothing more?” Overhead, the Raven stares balefully down, skipping in place from foot to foot. “I had a name once, not unlike yours; time has passed. What matters to you is that we are her servants; we tend her lands; we assure her strength; we await the return of her people so that we may be released from the oaths we have sworn, and continue our journeys to our tribal lands.”
[Evan McCollach] He looks over at the woman and just seems to sniff, the crinos maw seemed to just be taking a whiff of the air. But Evan was looking for something else, something more. Maybe these servents were once that of the Nation, those that became lost among the mist and instead of disappearing or dying they became servants of the Moon-Water-Woman and lost their physical form. It was afterall a limited possibility.
[Evan McCollach]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 5, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[riki tiki tavi] (ok if i ghost for a bit?)
to Evan McCollach, Maya Nevskaja, Ruhiger, Silence, Tibik-itzaniabi
[Silence] (i don’t mind!)
to Evan McCollach, Maya Nevskaja, riki tiki tavi, Ruhiger, Tibik-itzaniabi
[Tibik-itzaniabi] Is okay with me!
to Evan McCollach, Maya Nevskaja, riki tiki tavi, Ruhiger, Silence
[Ruhiger] (I dunno – i’m kinda offended that you didn’t want to lurk in my other scene and ran away so fast….
J/K. S’fine with me. *grin*)
to Evan McCollach, Maya Nevskaja, riki tiki tavi, Silence, Tibik-itzaniabi
[Evan McCollach] “And what was your name once? Before becoming the Servant of the Moon-Water-Woman.”
Evan watched the Raven as it danced above and then back to the woman that stood before them.
“Are you the pair that was in AnneMarie’s vision?”
[Evan McCollach] (Whoa your up late aren’t you Phil? And sure you can watch the scene)
to Maya Nevskaja, riki tiki tavi, Ruhiger, Silence, Tibik-itzaniabi
[Silence] Silence puts in another question, and one more — “Are you the ‘daughters’ of Kanekuk? To whose tribe did you belong?”
[riki tiki tavi] (good night, and good luck!)
to Evan McCollach, Maya Nevskaja, Ruhiger, Silence, Tibik-itzaniabi
[Tibik-itzaniabi] “You insult me, Wyrmbringer, and you insult yourself.” The woman is less whip-sure than the Raven who clings to a fat branch high above them, her skin of downy white feathers puffed with irritation, doubling her size. The air about her sizzles with possibilities, distorted to wafer-thinness. “I have given you the truth of her name; the mouthful of words you ape back at me has as much resonance with the tibik-itzaniabi as gruff gray crinos has to your Alpha. Consider this: you ask my name, but refuse to speak hers.”
The woman’s gaze returns to Silence, then. “Daughters – ?” she echoes; human emotion has been erased from her face; the pale eyes flick from Evan to Silence, and remain there. A vague and passing dismissal. “No. We were packmates, once. That is all; Uktena. But you have not come here to ask me questions; our history is not yours. What do you want, son-of-Fenris?”
[Silence] “Will you give us your names, and allow me to tell the tale from the start?”
[Evan McCollach] “Forgive me, that was rude of me, forgive my ignorance.”
He lowered his gaze from the Raven and then from the mist of the woman. But he did not stop listening to what was spoken, what tribe they were from, what they once were, everything.
[Tibik-itzaniabi] The creature flickers a brief glance at Evan. There is no give to her mouth; nothing changes in the shape or set of her shoulders. Her attention returns to Silence. “I was Ikwe Miskwà Nigamo,” she says, foreign intonations sharp in the high tongue. “You packmate – would call me, Woman who Sings the Blood Red Songs. Tell your story.”
[Maya Nevskaja] The Godi has been tending to her rock, its repetition of the story underpinning the entire encounter with the raven and the memory of the Moon-Water-Woman. Courts the Storms Eye silences the two awakened spirits, and shifts, rising in her homid form with the branch and rock securely held in each hand. She watches the mist-formed-apparition with ill-disguised fascination, her dark eyes keenly absorbing each motion and glance.
[Ruhiger] One may think that she is no longer paying attention, or that she has faded into the background. It’s only partially true, for she still listens, still watches, and all of her attention remains on the apparition before them.
She spares only the occasional glance to her packmates, before returning her eyes once more to the woman before them.
[Silence] So Silence tells it — from the start.
He speaks of the first discovery of the tainted churchwoman in Elk Grove — the churchwoman who guarded the very church that had stood since the time of Kanekuk’s people. He speaks of the Church, the last bastion against the encroaching taint the Garou found there. He speaks of the Hive they found, and the deal they struck to bring the Hive Elder down. And he speaks of the retreating of the taint away from the immediate vicinity of the Church, and away from the Chicago protectorate.
Then he speaks of the Bog and its mysteries — how the Wyrm have sought to keep it bound and inaccessible; how it remains pure, despite the taint literally next door. He speaks of what Imogen found; the story that the slain kinfolk told, who heard it from — perhaps — modern-day descendants of Kanekuk who have long since lost the changing blood. He tells the story as it was told to him, the best he can remember; the metaphors of fire for rage and water for spirit; the legend of the Moon Water Woman, tizik-itzaniabi, who was the god of water of Kanekuk’s people. He tells the story of how Kanekuk led his people out of the bogs and split them into three, one for each ‘son’, and how his ‘daughters’ remained to guard tibik-itzaniabi.
Then he tells the spirits what they’d managed to piece together between the legends, the testimony of one Mark Hollingbeck, son of the slain Hive Elder, and what the spirits themselves have told them:
That Kanekuk was perhaps an elder of an Uktena Caern that guarded or was guarded by a great spirit, the tibik-itzaniabi; that the Changing Blood of his people was fading; that his weakened Sept was attacked and conquered by the Fianna, his people were driven out, scattered amongst his three sons or packmates, led across the continent to eventually forget all that they were. He tells of how the tibik-itzaniabi spirit was forgotten, and how in time the Fianna Caern fell in turn to the Wyrm, who raised a Hive where a Caern once stood.
“It is this Hive that has tainted the land the rock and branch were taken from,” he finishes. “It is this Hive that we have come to ask the tibik-itzaniabi,” he fumbles the name badly, as can be expected, “to Cleanse, or to contain. What must be done to awake her, and stir her from this place? Must we find the Uktena that share Kanekuk’s blood?”
[Tibik-itzaniabi] Those astute enough can see – or sense, perhaps – the subtle change in her demeanor as she listens to the pieced together story, to the chorus of agreemet, Greek, from the mumbling cobblestone in Maya’s arms. The pale-eyed spirit woman does not sag or sink. She does not cry. She does not frown. She has no heart left in the burned and hollowed substance of her spiritual self to beat its outrage or grief against the inevitable and inexorable denouement, but it is there, nonetheless. The mists seem closer; opaque and shirred, the color, now, of oxidized egg yolks, as if there were the possibility of a storm behind their uncertain and imperfect light.
The end comes; and then, another end comes. The woman shakes her head no, just once, and smiles for the first time – slow and terrible, radiant – call it radioactive with grief. “I am sorry, Silence. The power you see here is a function of this place; she cannot leave. She is tied to the land more surely than any oak. Once upon a time – before the death of the place, which precedes its corruption – she could be there and here. The Caern with two hearts, we called it, when we spoke the words aloud. No longer. There is nothing we can do.”
[Evan McCollach] And in that moment, the hope that Decker had about the spiritual power of this place, of the power that this spirit could bring down upon the taint the Wyrm wrought. It was only a dream, a fantasy that was beyond their skills. Maybe they could one day try and once again give life to such a place, once again awaken the two hearts of the Caern. But between the four of them, they would not have such a skill. There was not enough power between then, if it was even possible at all.
He just looked down, the mission’s objective was a failure at this point. They could not bring the spirit to the Hive, the Hive would still exist and this land would still be here and never the twin shall meet.
[Silence] Really, this should come as little surprise. They were told as much once, not too long ago, by the Raven. Perhaps Silence had not believed her, though; had thought her refusing them out of pride and fickleness. Perhaps he had not wanted to believe that all this — all of it; the hiking, the slogging, the confusion, the weariness, the trips down south and the fetishes abandoned — was for nought.
There is, however, no arguing against this declaration. Silence’s ears fold flat against his skull for a moment. It seems he might snarl at the spirit; or worse, allow his head and tail to droop in despair.
It passes. The Crinos draws himself upright, grey and white in the failing light.
“So tibik-itzaniabi will slumber here until the Hive falls or until Apocalypse itself comes and the world is no more, and you and your sisters with her. That is a sorry fate, Woman who Sings the Blood Red Songs. If the Uktena return to these lands, will the three Daughters of Kanekuk,” he says it now as a title, rather than a description, “be freed to seek their tribal homelands in the Deep Umbra?”
[Maya Nevskaja] Courts the Storms Eye feels the intended grief of the moment — of all the moments, all the time that led her here, of the spirits awakened that lay in her arms, of Jakob’s abrupt departure, his belief that they ran a fool’s errand, her deep resentment that what he had said would turn out to be the bare-boned truth of the matter.
That in this, like in many things, they were surpassed. Helpless against the enemy.
It is enough to draw a impotent growl from her throat, a noise that begins and ebbs in her throat, never passing her lips. She drops her face, drops to her haunches and places a hand to the Umbral ground, for the Godi, the loss of the earth was nothing short of the death of a beloved. She will feel this fate, she lifts her eyes when Silence speaks.
[Tibik-itzaniabi] “Do not weep for us, son of Fenris. We chose our Faith – ” Some semblance of serenity has returned to the luminous, translucent woman before them. ” – and our Fate. It is not so easily altered. Kanekuk should never have broken troth with her, and uprooted the remnants of our people; look at the fate to which he abandoned our lands. If the Uktena return – not one, but several; if the people remember her as she was meant to be remembered; if they cultivate her waters; then, yes – perhaps then our obligations will be discharged, and then we may seek our tribal homeland.”