6/18/2004

07:36 PM
Logfile from GarouMUSH.

Big Red Barn(#3420RA)
The barn is built in the old style, a vast three level structure that is greater in height than a mere three stories, actually closer to five. Great wooden posts support the weight of the upper levels and roof, sunk into the hard-packed dirt floor of the first level like a sparse forest of regularly spaced, naked trees. The stalls and flagstones which once were here have been torn out to leave a rather open area where even crinos Garou may roam freely without fear of running into anything but the supports or the walls or the ladder at the back which allows access to the other two levels.
The first two levels are relatively open to each other, the second being only little wider than a catwalk going around all the walls but the front one, which has massive, twenty foot tall doors set into it. The third level is a true second floor except for a place cut out that allowed hay to be tossed down to the ground floor when the farm was actually worked. Now, it is a hayloft where Garou can sleep outside of the house.
(Non-Garou, please "+view curse")
Contents:
Taslyn
Obvious exits:
BarnYard  

[look Taslyn]
Short blonde-brown hair hugs the round and pretty face of Tas. It often flys into her hazel eyes and her hand is usually pushing it back out of the way. Often her face has a wry grin that comes from a lightly tanned and slightly freckled face. A few holes in her ears usually show off some sort of steel hoop. Her fashion is often what feels comfortable and not necessarily what looks good. Around her neck can be any number of one to many necklaces, but there is always the one with the charm of the small half-moon.
She wears a blue t-shirt with some kind of wild design on the front, covered up by a sweatshirt that allows the t-shirt to stick out at the bottom. A pair of faded and worn jeans with a hole peeking out of one knee adorn her legs. Through the hole you can see a plaid fabric, most likely a pair of sleep pants thrown on to keep warm in the cold weather. A leather jacket is thrown over all of it for warmth, along with a baseball cap with blue flames along the bill. On her feet are a pair of black Doc Marten boots that have lots of wear and tear on them. One boot shows off a pair of rainbow laces while the other has laces of blue flames. On her ring finger is a band of platinum, surrounded by gold that looks like a wedding band.

Carrying:
Thing


This is the only place you can shift in, his elder said. Don't assume anyone's a Garou until they've introduced themselves, his elder said. I'll pick you up tomorrow, his elder said. Never mind the polite greetings that should have occured, but perhaps he was left alone as a test of his trustworthiness. Kenneth sits atop a haybale at the back of the barn, face and form half hidden in the shadows as he contemplates his situation here. The past couple of days have been rough on the youth, but maybe, just maybe, he's seen worse. Headphones turned on and connected to a CD player, he listens to a burned piece of hardware with some of his more preferred songs, unaware of anything else but the melodies and rumbling bass.

Taslyn had been walking past the barn when she heard the thump of music. Curious. She steps to the door and opens it, looking into the barn and finding a form in the corner. She steps in further and takes a deep breath of the air. "Garou, I smell you. Make yourself known. Your scent is somewhat familiar..."

The thumping continues, given the fact that Kenneth doesn't hear a word of what the Fianna says. Given his eyes are closed too, he could be taken completely unaware. He rocks back and forth slightly, lips forming silent words in time with the lyrics.

Taslyn steps closer to the cub. She reaches out and taps the knee of the boy, leaning down and giving him the universal sign for get those things off your ears so you can listen to me.

Kenneth jerks up with a start, eyes snapping open as his knee retracts from the touch. It's a marvel he doesn't fall off the bale, but a quick hand goes up to the phones and turns down the volume setting upon them before pushing them back behind his ears. He leans back out of the shadows, and into the light, revealing his face.

Taslyn takes a step back and blinks a bit. "You..." She blinks again. "It's you." She leans in a bit. "You.... Are Garou?" She takes a sniff again, using her gift to see that Kenneth is.

Kenneth's eyes widen up at first and then narrow back to half size as he peers with a look of disbelief at the Fianna. "You," he echoes, for a moment, unable to move anything else. Then he hears the term that Jarred was using. Drawing his knee up, he plants his foot on the bale and pushes off, this time walking out of the shadow and into the meager lighting of the barn. "You're that woman." He doesn't exactly answer her right off. It's just too much coincidence for him.

Taslyn nods. "I am that woman, yes. I am glad to see you actually and know you are all right. Face looks better too." She states in matter-of-fact tones. Her arms fold over her chest as she stands there in front of him. "You are garou, werewolf. I can smell it. You must have just had your first change as I couldn't smell it the other day."

Kenneth wets his lips as she looks right at him - at the now completely healed face of his. He's lucky he was Garou alright. But it's her next words that cause him to shift his gaze down more towards the ground behind the woman. "Small world," he replies, hands at his sides tensing ever so slightly. "You're Tas, right?"

Taslyn nods. "Taslyn Forrester. Defends-Her-Worth, Fianna half-moon and one of the guardians of the farmhouse." The tense motion of her arms relaxes and a smile grown across her face. "But you can call me Tas. And you are...?"

"Kenneth..." the boy replies, not exactly sure what else to say about himself at this point. Kenneth's black eyes look up from the ground to meet the halfmoon's gaze, even if he doesn't match the smile. He doesn't even say it's a pleasure to meet her, considering the memories he associates with the Fianna. Hell, like he knows what a Fianna is. He just stands there, kind of expecting her to drill into him all her requests of information.

Taslyn smiles a bit more. "You hungry? Be glad to fix you something to eat... Maybe introduce you around? I'm guessing an elder brought you here?"

Kenneth shrugs a shoulder, glancing back towards the haybales. "He just said he'd pick me up tomorrow." Not exactly rainbows and sunshine, this one. But getting the matter of something weighing on his mind out of the way, he asks straight out, "If you're a werewolf, does that mean... that Todd is one to?"

Taslyn gives a sigh. "Yeah. He is... One that got into a great deal of trouble for what he did to you. If that matters at all." She moves to sit down near the cub. "A lot of trouble for that matter." She thinks for a bit. "Would you like for me to tell you just what he did wrong to you?"

Kenneth clenches his left hand into a fist, diverting his gaze off into the black of the barn. "Nah," he answers quickly. Perhaps, a little too quickly, as he swallows down the urge to pretend the wall has the other cub's face on it, and put a hole or two in it. "How many more of you are out here?" He means werewolves, of course. Never really got much of an answer to that one - then again, he didn't ask.

Taslyn gives a bit of a shrug. "There are lots of us... But not nearly enough." She rests back a little. "There is a punching bag over there if you need something to punch... Or I will gladly let you punch on me some if you need to." She seems to be in a good enough mood, and sounds like she is trying to help.

Kenneth glances back to the halfmoon, before looking down to his hand and uncurling the fist it formed. "No thanks." He's curt, but essentially he is doing his best to be a rough-edged polite; it's the way he treats new people at church. "You, came from the house over there?" He notions with a tilt of his head in that direction. "Lotta people and stuff?"

Taslyn nods. "Yeah. People come and go. Sometimes we have a lot... Sometimes we don't. But there is always Trevor and me. We try to be there for the cubs and all." She gives a bit of a shrug. "Kenneth, it's hard being what we are. But we are what we are... And we have a place in the world."

Kenneth sucks in a breath and then sighs out in frustration. "It's nothing like that." The boy takes a couple of steps further out into the dusty beams of light fast fading from the barn wall's cracks. "I know what I am. Kind of. I don't deny it, now. You don't have to keep telling me." His eyes watch the little motes in the air. "Just... tell me what I need to know. I'll stay out of your hair."

Taslyn cocks her head to one side. "What did your elder say when he brought you here?"

"I'm a werewolf. A.. Garou." Kenneth swallows something down, jawline working as he remembers the change yesterday. "Though the way he says it, sounds like we're kings of the earth or something." Again, another shrug. The boy looks back to the woman on the bale. "Said I would learn a lot about what I need to learn about, being here."

Taslyn nods her head. "And you can. A great deal." She leans back on a bale. "Do you know the litany?"

Kenneth shakes his head in answer. "All I know is I'm here, I'm a werewolf, and I'm supposed to learn stuff." He pauses, rolling one shoulder. "Learn to control myself so I'm not some raging monster." He pauses again. "And I'm supposed to be a Shadow Lord." At that, he just kind of shrugs. The title holds little meaning yet.

Taslyn nods her head. "You are not a raging monster. What we are is controllable and tolerable." She rises up a bit and starts to say something but then stops. "Why don't we leave the lessons for another day?" She gives the cub a slight smile, "Can you shift?"

Kenneth looks off to a wall of the barn, hands slipping into his pockets. One holds the CD player, but the other remains decidedly empty. "Yes ma'am," he replies, less than enthusiastically really.
You paged the room with 'Well Jarred didn't ask or anything.'.

Taslyn nods. "Good... Do you know what the forms are called."

Kenneth shakes his head in answer, still with eyes diverted off from the Fianna. "There's human and bat-shit scary. And, something in between." That's about as far as he got. Oh, the cub is so new, he's almost squeaky.

Taslyn ponders for a moment. "Would you like to see someone else shift?" She rises to her feet.

Kenneth blinks once, before turning so he faces the Fianna. "I've seen a couple people shift." Obviously he doesn't really /know/ how it's done; only that it can be.

Taslyn looks to the cub and nods. "There is homid, which is what I am now. Then glabro, crinos, hispo, and then lupus. Lupus is the the full wolf." She begins to shift, running through all the forms, holding up fingers for each one... one, two, three, four, and then her paw for five. Then back through, holding up fingers again for each one.

Kenneth, though he tries to hide it, still looks rather disconcerted somewhere down in his guts when he sees the other forms, especially when the Fianna shifts beyond Crinos and down into the near and full wolf. As she shifts back to breed, the boy just blinks and lowers his gaze. Either he doesn't know what to say, or doesn't want to say what he thinks. Seems like his brain is continuing to parse all that's been happening, trying to compress it along with scattered bits of logic and a sprinkling of simple gut instinct.

Taslyn looks to the other and smiles. "You look like a deer in headlights." She gives a little smirk. "All part of the package."

Kenneth schools his look at the comment, turning away with a slight sulk to his expression. "Can't blame me," he utters, a hand coming up to rub at the back of his hair as he works up and over the stubborn urge to just shut it and be silent. "How... how is it you keep your clothes on and stuff?" At the risk of sounding like a complete pervert, the boy glances over his shoulder.

Taslyn looks at the cub and nods. "Called Talisman Dedication. A rite that makes our clothes and other objects blend into our shifting."

"A rite?" Kenneth echoes, unfamiliarity breeding in his tone. "Like, some sort of ceremony?" He doesn't understand the process, nor the real workings behind it all, but for the moment, it's just all these hordes of vocab coming at him that he's struggling to remember.

Taslyn nods. "Like a ceremony. That's it." She nods her head. "What do you say for a nice run in the woods in... What is the name of the form that looks like the wolf?"

Kenneth catches himself before he responds with plain 'wolf'. Lips go straight, as he answers with a quick count of shifting order, "Lupus." He does not, however, look enthused about going anywhere just yet.

Taslyn nods. "Very good..." She grins some. "And what form are we in right now?"

Kenneth shifts his gaze off, pacing towards the punchbag. His hand comes up to feel the battered equipment. "Homid." So he does pay attention, sort of. "Listen..." he starts to say, before shaking his head. "Nah. Nevermind."

Taslyn cocks her head to one side. "What? Go ahead and ask. No bad questions here..."

"It's nothin'." Kenneth leans against the bag, headbutting it lightly once. Another moment of silence passes, before he sighs and looks to the halfmoon. "What do you guys do if... if your family isn't a bunch of werewolves?"

Taslyn shrugs. "You live with us... And we are your family."

Kenneth looks away at the response, teeth gritting together. He shakes his head again, and stalks away from the punching bag and the halfmoon. "I mean the family you came from. I know they're looking for me now. Been gone for more than a couple of days." He looks towards the barn doors. Oh how easy it would be to just run away from it all.

Taslyn looks over at the cub and nods. "Do you know if they are kin, meaning people that know of the garou... Or just human?"

Kenneth shrugs. "I don't know. They're not my real parents." He goes over to a wall and slides down along the wood to sit on the floor, arms draping on both knees. "But none of that is going to matter now, is it? Stuck here 'til I'm no longer a 'danger' to everyone."

Taslyn moves to sit down next to the wall next to the cub again. She looks over at him and thinks for a moment. "You are here to learn who you are and to grow with your own kind." She rests her head on her own knees, drawing them close. "With people that know what you are going through and understand. We are here to help."

Kenneth swallows again, dryly. "Rather'd you not make it sound like some rehab clinic."

Taslyn laughs and leans back. "Hey... We have good food, beds, and good people to hang with. Trust me. It's a good thing. You make friends and family here... I have."

Kenneth snorts, his hair hiding the roll of his eyes at that like he's heard it all before, just in a different key. "Whatever." And try to stuff it as he might, the boy's stomach rattles out a protest to its emptiness.

Taslyn reaches over and plops a hand on the boys shoulder. "Like spaghetti? I make a killer spaghetti. Famous for it." She winks and rises, heading for the farmhouse.

Kenneth tenses at the touch, but it quickly dissipates as the Fianna rises up and heads away. Just the mention of food is good enough for him, but he makes sure to not appear eager for it. Rising slowly, he brushes off his pants and adjusts the phones on his head before following after like a black cloud behind the Fianna.