[Forum scene, right after AnneMarie’s death.]
Serafine:
She had done her best. For all that she was not built for battle in the way that her companions were, she dove into the fray with an equal amount of ferocity as any among their number. And when it came down to the end, she had made a mark…if but a small one. And, at the least… her injuries were minor. Only that of the trap set for them within the gauntlet when they crossed over.
By and large, she had AnneMarie to thank for that. AnneMarie, who had jumped headlong into battle and taken the brunt of the attack. AnneMarie who had done her tribe and her auspice proud. AnneMarie… who was lying on the ground, still in her battle form… dead.
Bitter Grace. Her first friend in this strange country. Whom she liked, because she was quiet and honest. When Eagle soared overhead, she heard the totem’s death knell as if it were an aching crack within her own heart.
Now she stood over the Modi’s limp and bleeding body, and Hatchet was asking her to carry it back to the caern.
That’s not where she belongs…
She knew this much. The Eagles had their own territory, and AnneMarie Ruhiger deserved to be with the only family she had. Her pack. Yes, Serafine would carry her. Carry her home… for the last time. She would do this much for her friend, at least. But first, she lifted her head and howled. Howled a long and rough and keening note of pain and loss that echoed through the umbra. It wasn’t the most beautiful sound she’d ever made… but it was one of the most heartfelt. A last goodbye. A tribute.
Lo there do I see my father. Lo there do I see my mother, my sisters, and my brothers. Lo there do I see the line of my people, back to the beginning. Lo they do call me. They bid me take my place among them in the Halls of Valhalla. Where the brave may live… forever.
Then she stooped to wrap her arms around the Modi’s body, and began the long walk back to Eagle’s home.
Evan:
Evan had heard that howl. He could feel that howl deep within the very pit of his soul. He sense the pain that hung in the air as that howl echoed though the mist of the umrbalscape, not that horribly far from the Eagle’s own territory. He could tell…
He could feel it, but not from the howl. No it was the searing pain of that lost link to AnneMarie. That continuous connection they all shared as a pack seemed to blink out. The feeling of the silent Modi’s thought and feelings noticibly absent now. And not from and distance that the Eagle’s could cross.
He reached out for them all.
~Rugiher is down. Something is wrong. There is a mourning howl in the umbral.
Looking around in the mist as his senses grab at him to run, to shift and to run towards the howl that screamed through the night sky of the Umbra. His form shifts and contorts as he moves, moving through the forms as muscle and flesh twist and bend. He could feel his mouth shift to that maw. His body shooting up to that form that claimed so much of the Wyrm’s own. Gaia’s blessing to them all, the war-from.
And as he came on the form of Sera, his eyes fall upon his the Fury as she holds onto the Metis’ limp body. Life seemingly had fled her form. His eyes sharpen as he looks on the Fury still holding his pack mate. His silvery fur only touched with matted brown and reds, tainting what would be a perfect coat of silver. His gravelly, harsh tongue coming over him as he address Sera.
~HT~ What happened? Who did this?
Waiting for answers, impatiently.
James:
It seemed that whenever AnneMarie was concerned, the Fianna was nearby. That the metis was dead struck a rough chord with James. He had known her for a very long time, nearly as long as Decker himself. When she had returned, the Galliard had been truly happy at the event. He’d finally been given a chance to repay the debt he owed to Ruhiger. She had saved his life, and for that he had been grateful beyond words.
Now he would never get that chance, the Sandman thought as he approached the group, Evan’s totem-bourne words echoing in his thoughts like a hammer.
Ruhiger is down.
James hadn’t been there to make sure she was alive, like she had done for him those years ago, but then the two of them more than knew and understood that there would be a time when one or both of them would fall without getting back up. AnneMarie Hoch, Ruhiger. James’ metis buddy.
He stood there, his black and grey coat of the Sandman’s war-skin rippling with umbral wind as he stared for a long time at AnneMarie’s still form. Serafine was ignored – dimly he recognized her as one of the ones that had been there at the fight in Chinatown. The Evan talked, asked questions, but when all was silent between the Black Fury and Child of Gaia, James let out a heartbroken wail of a howl.Only a Fianna Galliard could ever come up with the serene beauty enough to make even the doughtiest of warriors shed a tear. The howl was long, full of pain and anguish – and promised vengeance.
Finally when the howl died down, James turned his eyes upon the Black Fury, Serafine. Tell me who and where, he said softly in the High Tongue, so that I may kill them. Kill them and smash their bones to ash. His axe had materialized within his grasp.
Silence:
Alone of the three remaining Eagles, Silence is in the form farthest from his birth. On four legs the Modi comes to complete the pack — an enormous wolf, steel-grey, his shoulders crowned with a ruff of white.
His fur is thick and loose; the muscles beneath lean and powerful, supple. The wolf’s legs are long, his loping stride smooth and sure. He comes to a stop between his packmates, dwarfed by the Crinos to either side, but the way he holds himself, head and tail high, marks his rank both in the pack and the nation.
A shadow crosses the ground before him: silhouetted against the umbral moon, an eagle whose proportions defied comprehension.
The Modi does not look to it. He looks directly at the bearer of the dead. Much could be made of this, a Black Fury bringing a Fenrir home to her pack. Silence is not one to read much into symbols.
In this form his eyes are pale, pale grey, nearly colorless. He lifts his muzzle and scents the air, but neither howls nor speaks, chuffs nor barks. James is rage and grief; Evan is outrage and impatience. It’s perhaps unexpected that of all the living Eagles, Silence is the calmest, the gravest. Then again, of all the living Eagles, he’s the only Fenrir left, and the Fenrir always did view a death in combat … differently.
He remains where he is, waiting for the answer.
Serefine:
It had been a difficult journey. Serafine was hardly built for feats of strength and stamina, and even as she was… a towering creature of fur and claws… it was still plain enough to any Garou looking at her that it must have taken some considerable willpower to carry the body of a dead metis warrior this distance without dropping or dragging her along the ground.
Serafine couldn’t abide that. She herself would drop before it happened.
She did not need to be concerned about finding the Eagles. As she neared the boundary of the pack’s territory, they found her… as was to be expected. And as the three approached, she finally unburdened herself of the weight that was AnneMarie, laying the Modi’s body down upon the ground reverently. As she did so, she kneeled down, closing her eyes for a moment and flicking her ears back against her head. It was an expression of sadness and respect.
As she stood once more, her body melted fluidly between forms, until it was her almost delicate human body that stood before them now. She herself seemed largely untouched by the battle. Merely exhausted. She had been lucky.
“We fought a pack of Black Spiral Dancers. AnneMarie, Taggart, myself and one other.” Taggart she knew only by that one name, and Matthias she hadn’t known at all. “They are dead. AnneMarie fought the hardest.”
Of course she did. She was a Modi.
James:
When Serafine told the Galliard that they were already dead, the Black Spiral Dancers, James gave a sharp chuff and licked at his muzzle a moment before grounding the top spike on his axe. Reverting to his Homid form, he cocked an eyebrow.
“Aye, she would o’ fought th’ardest. AnneMarie e’er was once tae take th’ fight right tae yer face an’ nae back down n’matter ‘er inj’ries.”
Sliding his axe through his belt, he walked over to kneel down at the body of the dead metis and lay a hand over her brow. Murmuring to lowly in Gaelic, it seemed as if he were saying goodbye in his own way.
Silence:
Silence’s pale eyes flicker again to the slain metis as James bends to her, but the big wolf doesn’t move a muscle otherwise. His attention once more comes to bear on Serafine, who, if nothing else, must be commended on her courage for being the messenger of such bad tidings.
“Where did this happen?”
The Fenris-wolf’s High Tongue is harsh and pure, as uncompromised and uncompromising as the northern fjords and forests and frozen lowlands his tribe hails from.
Also:
“You are of Maelstrom’s Sept?”
Serafine:
“I am… on my own, at the moment.”
She didn’t like to admit it. It was unhealthy for one of their kind to exist alone, with no ties and no connections.
This land does not belong to me. But I will defend it. She had said this to the black spiral alpha in response to his challenge, and now more than ever it rang true. Chicago was not her home. This country was not her home. She didn’t really have one, unless you counted the country mansion in Nevers where she’d spent her childhood. But even that… had changed.
Everything changed, and much sooner than you expected it to.
“The attack happened in Bronzeville.”
Silence:
The wolf’s implacable stare remains level and unflickering for another moment. Then it seems to relent ever so slightly. Silence gives his head a slow shake, almost lazy, the long guard hairs of his thick ruff trailing his motion by a split-instant.
“I am Silence, of Eagle.” He doesn’t bother with rank, or tribe, or auspice. All these things are obvious from the way he stands, smells, looks, burns. “These are my packmates, Sandman and Judgment-of-Sterling-Silver.”
There’s an expectant pause there; after Serafine presumably returns introduction for introduction, the grey beast continues.
“You’ve brought ours back to us. We’ll remember that.”
It’s at once gratitude and dismissal. Silence’s regard drops from the girl; falls to AnneMarie, at once monstrous and somehow pitiful in her birth from, silent forever now.
Bear ‘er up, Decker’s voice is startlingly different on totemphone — it’s almost a shock to hear the crude-formed sentences, the slurred consonants, after the purity of his high tongue. We’s buryin’ her in tha Caern.
Wait — what?
Evan:
Evan was the first one to get there, but not by very long. The pair of war-formed garou flanked their alpha as he stood in form more suited for the swift flight towards the call of Annemarie’s fall. He had put the questions to Serafine.
Black Spiral Dancers.
She fought the hardest.
That was all he asked, wanted to ask. He could feel his voice, even as he now was silent, started to flee from him. This was his second pack mate in Chicago to fall, fall without him even doing one thing to stave off the deed. And no matter how many times he had seen someone fall, had experienced the pain of losing one of his fellow mates, it would never get easier.
He stayed silent as Decker took over speaking, his alpha directing the questions now. Evan only could move to the fallen form of Rugiher. She was the reason that he had become an Eagle. The circumstances were not the most ideal and the beginning was not the most comfortable. But he had learned well from the warrior metis. She was a hard but fair instructor, she was a wise ahroun even if she was not so recognized for it.
She must have died with Honor.
And as that statement rang across the link they shared under Eagle’s wing he was taken back a bit. He hid it from Serafine, but looks to Decker when he speaks. His answer must have seemed stupid and yet necessary at the same time.
Now?
Silence:
Throughout all this, Silence has been so stoic one might easily mistake him for being unaffected. That misinterpretation dies now. The Fenrir wheels on his Silver Fang-turned-Child of Gaia packmate, his hackles on end, his teeth snapping once in the Philodox’s direction.
If Serafine has not yet departed, the sudden crack! of his teeth together, hollow and sharp as a gunshot, seems ex nihilo, utterly without provocation. There’s nothing to explain it, even after the fact. What conversation there is continues to be silent.
NOW. Silence roars into their minds. She helped raise that fuckin’ Caern they’s all sittin’ around smug in. I ain’t buryin’ her in a fuckin’ shoebox in the backyard, Ev.
Like that the blast of rage ceases. The wolf shakes his head again, harder, whuffs. Lowers his head between his forelegs, shoulders stiff with fury, until he has himself under control.
If they’s any reason we should’n go back, speak up now. Otherwise, go git whatcha need fer a Rite’a Contrition.
Imogen:
NOW!
Imogen’s totemlink shuts abruptly, silencing the sound of the Eagle packmates in her mind.
James:
Decker’s orders are to bear AnneMarie up and take her to the caern, and James nods without question. It was only fitting. The metis did a lot more for the caern’s protection, indeed all of Chicago’s protection, that many will never know or even care. Such was the lot in life of these creatures, these metis. Fianna were those that disdained and shunned mules roughly, but for James? He respected AnneMarie, considered her a friend. Beyond that? She was of Eagle.
Shifting to Crinos without much hesitation, he bent to lift AnneMarie on his own over his shoulders. She was female, thusly smaller in stature perhaps than his own Crinos form, but any war-skinned Garou was large and heavy, and James was not the strongest of men.
Come, he said to Evan. She belongs in the caern.
Heartbeat.
I have no objections, Silence-rhya.
With or without Evan or Decker’s help, James began to move off in the direction of the caern with the metis over his shoulders.
Evan:
I will catch up to you. They may demand more than just a rite of contrition to return to the Sept.
He had moved off once Decker had given him the okay to do so. He wanted to gather up some items that would given to the Sept to the Caern once they arrived. He wished he had more time to prepare for this situation, help prepare the pack. But sometimes one does not have enough time to prepare. Odds were that he would have to teach them the proper motions in the rite. In some ways he believed that Decker never jad a reason to be contrite, let alone through himself upon the mercy of others. It was possible that the embarassment of such an action could force him to go into a rage. And James was likely just in the same boat.
(moved to the boards)