[Lights Out] He’s not getting enough sleep this month.
They’re only nine days in, only five days from the last Moot, and when the male Fury Theurge arrives at the Caern tonight, he looks completely drained. None of the reinvigoration from the Revel and the Run persists. His reserves are tapped, his Rage overpowers his flagging self-control, and he feels like he’s on the verge of snapping as he moves through the Caern’s landscape looking for the Theurge Elder tonight.
He could have gone into Eagles territory to seek her out before he came here, but this is where she’s always been when he’s had to meet up with her. It has only been a few days since their game of tag in the park, since the Skull Pigs showed up and tore him open, and even though there had been a show of camaraderie that day, he is not feeling quite so bold and quite so cocky as to deign to appear on another pack’s territory without previous warning.
So he searches.
[Joss Lehrer] She had wanted personal experience with the dreams, to get an inside view of it all – but she did not expect this. She didn’t expect to not want to sleep again, not until she had built up reserves in order to face them again. Naturally, however, to do so she has to sleep. And she doesn’t want to sleep because..
It’s a catch 22.
But it leads her here, to the Caern, where she’s been quietly meditating on the banks of Maelstrom for a while, recovering her strength, refocusing, centering herself for whatever is to come next. She is sitting criss-cross-applesauce, her hands resting lightly in her lap, her eyes closed.
And simply breathes.
[Lights Out] His footfalls are not heavy, are not insistent. Charlie is tall, even if he is not one of the tallest males in the Sept, but he’s also, as his packbrother insisted prior to their ass-kicking contest last week, skinny. It doesn’t matter how much he eats or how strong he gets, there is no getting around the fact that Charlie is likely going to have a gangly, awkward teenager’s build until the day he dies.
So, he does not lumber, and he does not stomp. He moves quietly, stones and gravel crunching under his hiking boots, and he approaches the meditating elder without opening his mouth to disturb her breathing. There’s a pause as he comes within a few yards of her, and then he takes a breath of his own, lowering himself into a cross-legged position on the ground arm’s length from her.
And he waits.
[Joss Lehrer] Inhale… [eleven] …exhale.
Inhale… [twelve] …exhale.
Inhale… [thirteen] …exhale.
She takes another [cleansing] breath, and opens her eyes. She knew he was here, that much is obvious when she turns to him and smiles – the same happy little grin she has always offered him. “Hi, Charlie.”
She smooths her hands down her thighs, the ridges of scars under the thin material of her skirt familiar and comforting, grounding her further. She tips her head, slightly, the dreadlocks sliding over her shoulder, until she reaches up to push them back once more. “How’re you?”
[Lights Out] “Hi, Joss,” he replies, his own smile merely hinted at rather than being allowed to become a reality on his lips.
He looks particularly haggard tonight, his curly hair in need of a trim and his dark brown eyes smudged with sleep deprivation, but he doesn’t have that haunted look that he had had the first night they spoke about the nightmares. There isn’t the sense that he’s afraid of what he’s going to see if he lets himself close his eyes for as long as it would take to blink.
Granted, he doesn’t blink very frequently, either. That’s supposed to be a sign of mental instability. That isn’t exactly an anomaly, a metis who is somewhat unbalanced.
How is he.
“I’m okay,” he says, folding his arms in his lap. He pauses a moment, gnawing on his lower lip as he gathers his thoughts, and then he says, “One of the Fury Kin had a dream last night. I wanted to let you know.”
[Joss Lehrer] A fury kin dreamed. “Me, too.”
She takes a deep breath – she’s already learned the trick to NOT seeing the Master everywhere she turns. Stay calm. Don’t get stressed. Relax. Even still, she rubs her forehead, as if it itches – it doesn’t. Not at the moment anyway.
“What happened?”
[Lights Out] Something like concern flickers over the Fury’s face when the Fenrir admits to having dreamed, too, but before he can ask what hers was about, she’s asking after the matter of the kinswoman’s experience. Charlie draws a breath, then plants his hands on the ground behind him rather than keeping them in his lap. It’s cold tonight, but he’s got the sleeves of his stained orange henley pushed up to his elbows.
“She says that in the dream, she was woken up by someone who smelled like mud. When she opened her eyes, she saw like, blurry white and colors. The mud-smelling one told her that the Tumors-Blight, these two Garou who go through the Umbra looking for forgotten lores and rites and stuff, were performing a ritual to give her her sight back… she’s blind. The mud-smelling one told her that someone of her tribe… her father’s of Stag and her mother’s one of Pegasus’s, this person didn’t specify which one it was… asked the Tumors-Blight to try and help her.”
He pauses to swallow, to lubricate his throat, before continuing on.
“The mud-smelling one told her that there’s a talen, a pair of glasses, that could restore her sight, but she needed to do something first. She was supposed to use a stone to help them track down a Wyrm-tainted Garou in Chicago, and if she took the stone to a place where Garou gather and used it, the Tumors-Blight would come back, perform the rite with the glasses, and return her sight to her. It said it would leave the stone by the door in the morning.”
Charlie takes another breath.
“There was a small black stone by her door when she woke up. She wasn’t tainted, but there was something off about the stone, so I took it with me when I left. I stashed it nearby because I didn’t want to take it back to the Brotherhood, or bring it here.”
[Joss Lehrer] She listens carefully. And she listens in such a way that it makes it easy to talk to her – she gives the air of one who truly appreciates it when people tell her things, of caring, of really wanting to know what is happening in their lives. Compassion, understanding, mixed up in curiosity. Her eyes, a curiously crystal blue, are intent and seem to absorb every word.
“Good call- I don’t think bringing the stone to the Caern or brotherhood is a good idea – not the way we’re being targeted for all this… Sounds like an easy way to find a bunch of us at one time.”
She rubs her forehead again, her brow furrowed slightly. “It’s the first time something tangible has been left, if I remember right?” Room for him to correct her there. “Did she try to fight it at all? Any lingering effects?”
[Lights Out] Charlie nods when Joss says that the stone seems like an easy way to find a bunch of them at once, but doesn’t further explain his reasoning or his thinking. He was born into this society; there is nothing more important to him than his duty. He has nothing else to live for, truth be told. There is no human family waiting for him out there somewhere, no mate in the present and no chance of a mate in his future, no mundane job or mundane existence that he can escape to if the War gets to be too much.
All he’s ever known is the War. It doesn’t seem to take much effort to put the needs and safety of the collective whole first and foremost in his concerns.
“Besides the marks,” he says, harkening back to Hatchet’s kinswoman, the one who claimed to have a mark after waking up from her dream.
Did she try to fight it at all.
“I guess she had the urge to like, use the stone, but she didn’t. It didn’t sound like the mud-smelling one was hostile or anything. She was kind of angry when I showed up this morning but like I said, she wasn’t tainted or anything. She couldn’t see anything, like the light or the colors, when she woke up.”
There’s the opportunity for Joss to ask any other questions she might have, and then Charlie is asking a question of his own.
“You said you had one, too?”
[Joss Lehrer] She nods, slightly, taking all this in. Then he asks the inevitable, and truth be told – she’s glad. She hasn’t spoken to anyone about it yet – speaking of… “Did it drain her or anything? Like it did you?”
She thinks a moment, gathering her thoughts, before she nods. “I was thrown from my bed, by someone who claimed she was a former Eagle Packmate. Unfortunately, they don’t pay much attention, because Rune was neither Godi, nor Fenrir, and had never lived in the current packhouse, so I knew right away that it wasn’t right. When I called her on it, they melted away into the form of Valet – the man in the black suit. He bound me up in my christmas lights – they’re home to electric elementals, a ward – and I commanded them to wake me. It didn’t work, he was too strong.”
She sighs. It should have worked. After a moment, she continues. “He said he had questions, and when I told him his world sucked, he washed my mouth out with soap. Then called the Master – she showed up in the form of my mother, at first. She demanded I be unbound. All the while I was using my spirit drum – they didn’t notice. I summoned my electric elementals, and had them attack the man in black. They… tried. He hurt them, pretty badly. The Master stopped – said I was a bad girl and would need to be punished. I felt all the will drain from me – like what happened to you. I tried to head butt her, and missed.”
She grins sheepishly. Still no way she should have missed that… “…she marked me somehow. I can feel it. See her sometimes – the corner of my eye.” And she trails off – rubbing her forehead again.
[Lights Out] “No,” he says, to the question of whether the dream drained the kinswoman.
And then the matter of Joss’s dream. In the past, when there has been more than one person engaged in conversation that he has not been a direct part of, Joss has seen Charlie visibly zone out as if listening to something that isn’t audible to the rest of them, or as if a light has been doused inside his skull. His deed name is not particularly flattering, when one stops to think about it. But he does not zone out or drift off as Joss speaks. He listens, his brow knitting up when she says that Master drained her the way that she had drained Charlie, and when she says she’s been marked, Charlie’s eyes drop to her arms and hands as if trying to find the mark.
“Have you been cleansed yet?”
[Joss Lehrer] He looks for the mark, and she touches her forehead. “She kissed me here. It itched.” she rubs it again, and then nods. “The Rites Mistress cleansed me before I would come all the way into the Caern. I didn’t want to accidentally carry something of them in here. She did not mention if she saw anything as she did so.”
She chuckles softly. “I don’t think I was what they were expecting. The ‘Master’ kept saying that Iw as stronger than they were told. When the Valet called the Master, he opened a portal. I briefly thought to send the elmentals through there, to destroy her garden. That may be an idea worth thinking about on a larger level, though.”
[Lights Out] He seems relieved when Joss says that the Rites Mistress took care of the taint already, as if there was going to be another instance like the one with Warcry running around for weeks on end before asking for succor, and he sits up straight without using his arms for support as she continues speaking. She wasn’t what they were expecting.
A thin, half-hearted smile twitches across his lips, not quite reaching his eyes, and he reaches up to rub at his hairless jaw as she mentions a portal. He frowns again, dragging his hand down his face, and asks, “Do you know how deep in the Umbra her garden is?”
[Joss Lehrer] She is often not what people expect. It still amuses her – though she’d love to hear what they DO expect of the little Godi that could. Her smile remains, warm, yet worried, as they continue to chat. She’s clearly unsettled by the experience, despite the fact that she was able to throw them for a loop, and not make things go as they had planned.
How deep is the garden? “I’m not sure. The portal made it seem very close, but the messenger from Wahya said it was Malfaes, at the edges of the Cruelty Realm. You saw it for a while after you’re dream, right? Was there any sense of distance then?”
[Lights Out] “I’ve heard some Theurges say that Malfeas is in the Deep Umbra,” he says, “but some think that it’s getting closer. When I dreamt I was there I didn’t have much of an idea of how far in the Umbra it was or how to get there.”
Another pause to rub at his face.
“I know Many Tongues is being held captive, but going after Master in Malfeas would be pretty retarded. Even if we were able to get there and get him, entire packs have gone missing traveling to Malfeas… and even if we weren’t like, lost, it breaks people’s minds. It doesn’t seem like it’ll be real hard to get her to come out of hiding, though. Not like, in dreams, but actually in the Umbra, where we can try and trick her into letting Many Tongues go before we fight her. Now that we’ve got something that physically came from whatever realm she’s in, that might make it easier to draw her out.”
[Joss Lehrer] She nods, slightly. She keeps trying to figure it all out, and keeps going in circles in her head – her mind spins, and she has to stop, before she starts to stress about it. She has to keep her head. She is the Theurge Elder of Maelstrom. She is no punk ass cub clawing for some sort of purchase and understanding.
“I think so too. And if we can get them to open the portal – we can perhaps send something through to destroy her garden. While she’s powerful in her own right, obviously, the Valet will have to be killed. He protects her to an extreme level, so that she can go directly for us. He decimated my fri… wards.”
[Lights Out] Neither of them are cubs. They’re both renowned for their wisdom and their experience with the other side of the Gauntlet, are considered more than capable spirit-talkers and healers, and Charlie’s intelligence outmatches many of his peers’. He had been quiet at the Theurge gathering because that is what has been drummed into his skull as appropriate behavior when he is the only male in a group; in hindsight, that might have been to the detriment of the entire populace.
He’s speaking up now.
“Maybe we should try and get to the Valet first,” he says. “Catch them when they’re not together.”
[Joss Lehrer] She nods. “Being tied to the umbra as they are, I think I could summon him. I don’t know if she’d follow, or how soon after, but I think I could.” If there’s one thing she’s REALLY good at, it’s summoning. If anyone of the Theurges she’s spoken with have a chance at doing so, it would be her. Her brow furrows slightly, as considers it.
“Killing him may bring her immediately, too. We’d need to be prepared for that too. It seems like all the dreams are manifested by the Valet, just him and the Master, though we can’t count on them not bringing along others for the ride.”
[Lights Out] This is more planning than they were able to pound out at the meeting they’d had, considering that half the Theurges there had never encountered Master and another half, including the Ahroun Elder, were largely silent.
“If we can get the packs of everyone who was at the meeting involved, we should have enough people to like, take on the Valet and Master and whoever else shows up.”
[Joss Lehrer] She had been frustrated at the meeting, that much was clear with the way she ended it so abruptly. For all her rank, she is still an 18 year old girl, trying to lead a group that is largely older than she is. Not necessarily more experienced, but definitely older.
She nods. “I agree. It is better to have them there and not need them – than the opposite and it not be enough.” Oddly enough, she is a Fenrir that knows she is not invincible. It’s right up there with the smiling when it comes to oddities.
“I’ll try to get a messenger spirit to Wahya as well, let him know we’re working on it, to be ready. No details of course, in case it’s intercepted, but if he could get one to me, than I should be able to return the favor.”
[Lights Out] “That’s a good idea.”
Charlie plants his feet on the ground in preparation to stand, but he has not been dismissed, so he does not actually propel himself to his feet just yet. He waits.
“Should we ask Bones to Dust to organize the packs?”
[Joss Lehrer] She takes a slow, deep breath. A plan is better than no plan. It’s a step in the right direction.
“Yeah, she’s the Ahroun elder, it is her place to do so. I’ll contact her and let her know what we plan to do.”
He prepares to get up, and she smiles at him. “Thanks for coming to find me. Let me know if anything happens with the stone that would see us needing to move immediately.”
[Lights Out] “I will.”
With that, he gets his legs under the rest of him and stands up, his knees and back popping loudly as he does so.
“Have a good night, -rhya,” he says, stiffly, as though trying the words out, before dusting off the seat of his jeans and heading off into the night.
[Joss Lehrer] She chuckles softly. “Just Joss, Charlie. No need to be formal unless the situation dictates it.”
She smiles at him, and gives a little wave before she watches him head off. After a few moments, she stands herself, and follows. She’s some talens to make.
[Lights Out] [Wrap!]