6/28/2006

12:00 PM
Logfile from GarouMUSH.

Currently the moon is in the waxing New Moon phase (17% full).
It is currently 11:48 Pacific Time on Wed Jun 28 2006.
Currently in Saint Claire, it is mostly sunny today. The temperature is 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius). The wind is calm today. The barometric pressure reading is 30.12 and steady, and the relative humidity is 67 percent. The dewpoint is 48 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius.)

Farmhouse: Kitchen and Dining Room
Homey is the first word to come to mind when looking at the farmhouse's kitchen. Dark, wood-paneled wainscoting covers the walls to about waist height, dark beige wallpaper continuing to the ceiling. Twin refrigerators occupy the north wall, facing the large six-burner stove on the south. The kitchen counter runs the length of the eastern wall, broken only by the double-basin sink. Cabinets run above and below the counter and a twin-pane window is set in the wall above the sink. A small pantry is set into an alcove alongside the refrigerators, presumably holding the deep freezer as well as shelves of dry goods.
Some twelve feet above the floor, a large chandelier hangs from the ceiling, lighting the dining room and casting long shadows over the bar to the kitchen. A long table occupies the center of the dining room, three chairs setting along each side, and one on each end. On the west wall, a large window looks out on the trees alongside the western pasture. Set into the north wall is a large cabinet, its glass doors closed on shelves containing a full compliment of fine china and glassware as well as a few decorative nicknacks. On the east, a wide bar separates the dining room from the kitchen.
An opening in the southern wall allows passage to the front entryway of the house, while a sliding glass door in the kitchen opens to a clearing behind the house.
Contents:
Stacey
Alesia
Ruth
Obvious exits:
Hallway/Living Room  Back Door  

Ruth squeaks and scrambles for the oven, pulling open the door to let out a pall of black smoke. She casts about for a glove, then sadly removes a tray of blackened objects that might have started life as cookies.

A little before noontime, Kenneth comes down from the infirmary to get food. A hand brushes through his hair - doesn't look like the Shadow Lord slept very well himself. The smell of burnt cookies makes his brow furrow and nose wrinkle, as he eyes the Coggie cub.

Alesia has odd timing, as she enters through the back door just about the same time that Kenneth enters.

It's the smoke that wakes Stacey from the nap she had been stealing on the couch. Wrinkling her nose, she walks sleepily into the kitchen, almost running into the Shadow Lord.

Ruth sighs and puts the tray aside to cool. "I was making a new training schedule and didn't hear the timer," she explains to the world in general, although perhaps an explanation wasn't needed. She gives Stacey a halfhearted smile, then pauses and turns to regard Alesia with curious eyes.

Kenneth stifles a yawn with a wave of his hand in front of his face, by the same action trying to wave away smoke scent. "Training schedule? What schedule?" He turns when he hears footsteps, and sidesteps to avoid collision. "Mornin' Stace."

[look Ruth (homid)]
A caucasian girl somewhere in her mid-teens and barely into puberty, standing a little under five feet high. She is skinny rather than slim, with pale skin just lightly touched by a faint tan. Her hands look soft, with scabbed knuckles and uneven fingernails. Her face is an unremarkable oval, with smallish brown eyes set beneath rather heavy brown eyebrows and looking out from behind a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. Her nose is notable only in its lack of any obvious deviation from the average, and is set above a wide mouth and a rounded chin.
Her chestnut brown, shoulder-length hair has been dragged back into a reluctant and slightly straggly ponytail, with small whisps escaping to join the square-cut bangs that overhang her eyes. She wears a close-fitting blue T-shirt that rather highlights her lack of conspicuous female attributes, with slightly worn blue jeans and sneakers that might have been white once, but are now vaguely dust-coloured.

[look Alesia (homid)]
Long dark black hair frames the fair-skinned face of this teen girl. There's a bit of firmness to her jaw line and her brown eyes bracket a thin lipped mouth and a smallish nose. Alesia's frame is a bit thin or lithe while still maintaining a hint of classical features. Her frame is thin and almost wiry. There's almost a sadness in her eyes and her mouth looks like smiles might be foreign to it. She stands just just over four and a half feet tall. She has no piercings or jewelry.
Alesia is wearing a newish sweatshirt that's a light pink shade and looks like it might have picked out by guess as it's a tad large on her. Her pants are blue jeans that while tight only show that she doesn't have much in the way of curves, but more look like they are tight because she grew some since they were bought. Her shoes are a bit out of date as well, just a well worn pair of gym shoes.
Carrying:
Spear

[look Stacey (homid)]
Stacey has long, light brown curls that frame her oval-shaped face. The preteen's features are soft and childlike, with a small nose, slightly prominent cheekbones, and large hazel eyes. A fading tan and a few freckles color her otherwise fair complexion. This slender girl is wearing blue jeans with a black short-sleeved shirt that reads "PEACE" across the front in bold, white lettering and "...or else" across the back, along with white tennis shoes. A leather thong necklace with a pendant of a dove carved of smooth white shell with bits of mother-of-pearl on either side is tied around her neck.

Alesia hesitates as she spots... well, people. She pauses at the back door, looking first at Ruth then at Kenneth and Stacey. She gulps then offers a brief, "Um... hello?" She closes the door behind herself and steps fully into the kitchen.

"No more pink," Stacey mutters sleepily at the mention of the schedule, then shakes her head. "I mean, they make *yawn* schedules about when to do push-ups and runnin'. Don't care when they schedule, long as it gets /done/." She eyes the cub, as though to emphasize that it better be getting done. "Morning, Kenneth, Alesia," she nods to the Fury cub.

"Um. Hi," Ruth offers, mainly for Alesia's benefit, then glances away from the other cub towards Kenneth, gesturing at her own skinny frame. "Training schedule. Beacuse I'm about as much use in a fight as a rubber teaspoon and I get out of breath climbing the stairs," she says, "and I want to be better than that."

"Go running every morning. 4 AM." The Shadow Lord glances over at Alesia, giving her a mild nod of acknowledgement. "Stace, as long as you're here... you hear anything about dreams? Nightmares, and something about mirrors and wolves?"

Alesia looks unsure what to do next, as clearly there is a garou she doesn't know in the room, and yet... seems like now might not be the proper time for formal introductions. She looks around then seems to notice the oven is still on and quickly moves over to turn it off, even though the cookies are already out of it. She seems unsure what else to do so sort of stands there, watching the other three.

Stacey blinks at Kenneth's question. "Uh, yeah, there's been a lot of talk about dreams. Dillen had some that really shook him up, and then Cole and Laura were talking about dreams with mirrors and wolves, Morgan, too."

Ruth scoops a scattered handful of paper from one end of the table, where she must have hastily slung it to dive for the oven, and sorts it tidily, eyeing Alesia once more. "Anyone want a drink?" she offers. "I can put the kettle on, or there's stuff in the 'fridge?"

Kenneth's already calm, but unsmiling features get tight. "Fuckin' a'," he swears quick and hot. "And did they say anything about the cause of it? I have a sick kin upstairs and I'm ready to tear someone's throat out for makin' her tha--" He jerks his sentence to a halt midspeech, remembering there are two others, cubs, in the room. "I'll just, grab some water," he recovers.

Stacey shakes her head, eyes widening. "No, no one knows. Laura seemed to think some of the dreams were warnings. You ask Cole and Dillen, maybe they know more now, since it's been a while. I'll go find Laura." She heads to the sliding door, passing the cubs, pausing only briefly to say, "I hope she'll be okay," and then ducks out.

"Someone's sick?" Ruth wrinkles her nose, then translates from Americanese into Britishese. "Oh, someone's ill? Um... can I help? I could..." she pauses to think about it. "Uh, wash sheets I suppose. Or try and make soup or something? Not really that helpful at all, I know," she adds, pulling a face.

Kenneth sets himself down at the table, water bottle cap cracking open. "Not that kind of sick," he grunts, hunching over it like a falcon mantling. "This is sickness of the spirit, I think. Wyrm taint."

Ruth fetches herself a can of cola and joins Kenneth at the table. "Taint?" she queries.

"No one's told you about the Triat yet?" Kenneth asks, eyeing sidelong at the cub. "Or am I your only teacher these days?"

"The Triat? I've been told a bit," Ruth answers. "But Stacey's mostly been doing things with us in Lupus. And fighting, of course, while the moon's small."

Kenneth lifts himself a bit, taking a sip. "Have you stopped tripping over your paws now?" If it's his attempt at humor, it's quite blackly, and perhaps insensitively said.

"As long as I don't try to walk and chew gum at the same time," Ruth says, equally deadpan. "But what was that about taint? Um... some sort of poison or something?"

Kenneth cants his head a moment to consider his answer. "That's something like it," he replies candidly. "Except this is worse, because it eats at your spirit. Think of it like, an imbalance. When you're not balanced, you're thrown out of whack. In this case..." He lifts his gaze, staring towards the ceiling and imagining the infirmary above, "it's of the worst kind. Wyrm taint makes you do ... bad shit."

Ruth pops the can open and slurps the first frothy mouthful from inside, licking a stray drop from her upper lip and putting the can back down on the table. "/Makes/ you? Sort of 'the voices told me to' makes you? Or 'I didn't think, I just got angry' makes you?" She frames the quotes with her fingers, drawing little speech marks in the air.

"A bit of both. Those who are tainted, don't know they are. Most of them anyway." Kenneth contnues after drinking another gulp. "When your spirit is being eaten away, influenced and corrupted by forces outside of the norm, and suddenly everything is out of place, that's when it starts. Taint doesn't come, like that." He snaps his fingers. "It's a process. A slippery slope. If you don't catch it in time, there's a point where you just can't save 'em." When he says that, it's with a distant resolve, with a tone of past experience. "Luckily... there's ways to counteract it."

"How?" Ruth asks, reaching for her drink again.

Kenneth seems to have expected that, as he launches into an explanation. "The Rite of Cleansing. It's a ritual of the Garou, designed to right the 'levels' inside someone, or something. I was sayin' about how when you're tainted, it's an imbalance, right? Cleansing will remove that. I learned about it from a Child of Gaia, in fact. And as far as I know, there's probably a rite for just about everything when it comes to matters of spirit."

"A sort of bell, book and candle thing?" It's a comment rather than a question, and Ruth doesn't seem to expect an answer. "So there's spirit rites, and funeral rites... and are there rites for anything else? Auspice rites?"

Kenneth curls an end of his lip, vaguely humored. "More like burning sage, fire, and possibly blood and battle," he quips. "If there's a formality, there's probably a ritual. Punishment rites, for example." The philodox's tone drops a level, and he clears his throat before drinking down a good portion of the water. "Is that kettle still heating?"

"Kettle? Oh." Ruth slides to her feet and crosses the room to switch the kettle on and set it heating. "No. But now it is. Tea or coffee?"

"Tea," answers the halfmoon absently. Kenneth glances over when she gets up to turn on the stove. "You been, ah, practicing your Garou Tongue?"

~Yes,~ Ruth answers with a grin as she hunts out a clean mug and the box of teabags. "I'm not an expert or anything though. Yet."

~Good.~ Kenneth finishes up the water and stands to help, grabbing another mug as well. "By the time you attend moot, you'll be ready to listen to what others say, with minimal translation."

Ruth looks at the second mug, slightly puzzled, and pushes the one she already had towards Kenneth. "Aaand there's a rite for the moot as well, right?" she guesses.

Alesia returns to the kitchen. The most notable thing about her really is the fact that she has a rather large spear in tow. One that if examined closely is clearly Jamethon's spear. She pauses at the kitchen door again and asks softly, "Um, mind If I join? Sorry about running off."

Kenneth holds up the mug for a second pour. "Gonna bring one upstairs for Xia," he says with a tilt of his head towards the infirmary. "And yeah, there is. Moots are the most traditional of meetings, you could say. And sometimes, the most dangerous since they take place on the full moon, or close to it. Bunch of werewolves, hyped up on Rage and power... you could say only by codes of behavior can so many get together in one place without shredding each other to ribbons." He turns at the sound of Alesia's return, and stares at the spear far more than the Fury wielding it. Any other comments he was about to make about moot, get lost in the presence of the weapon.

Ruth nods at Kenneth's explanation, her expression growing rather alarmed at his description of the explosive potential of a Moot. Her only response to Alesia, other than to stare at the spear, is to lift a teabag and then point at the kettle in enquiry.

Alesia nods to Ruth, "Um, sure, I'd like some tea." She looks at her spear, or the one in her hand anyway then looks to Kenneth, "Um... Jamethon-Rhya gave me his spear. He told me to make good use of it for a full turn of the moon." She explains a little nervously.

"And that requires you to bring a weapon into a safehouse?" Kenneth queries, tone disapproving. "What exactly were you planning to do with that in here? Usin' it as a shishkebab?"

"That would have to be an awfully big barbeque," Ruth comments, adding another mug to the growing collection beside the kettle. "Um... it's okay to practice in the barn, I think. But the punchbag's looking a bit ill already. Um. I kind of clawed it a bit. I'm not sure it would cope with a spear as well."

Alesia frowns and looks at the spear in her hand then says, "He told me to take it with me and to guard it well. Laura told me to stay at the farmhouse. So... I have the spear and it is in the farmhouse. I do not disobey my elders. I was unaware of any rule against having a spear in the farmhouse?" She ventures, "Um, I can't exactly leave it out in the woods to get lost or damaged. Jamethon-Rhya would be very upset at me if I let anything bad happen to it becuase I left it in the woods." She says softly then gives a small shrug, "Is it against the rules?" She asks, looking to Kenneth, unsure of herself it would seem.

Kenneth takes another look up and down the spear, and points with a hand outside. "I don't know what exactly he was expecting you to do with it, but call it common sense to not bring potentially lethal weapons in a place not meant for weapons training?" The question is asked as if the answer were obvious. "Why didn't you leave it in the barn or something? Afraid someone's going to steal it?"

Ruth listens critically to the rising sound of the heating kettle, taking it off the heat and pouring water onto the waiting teabags. "It should be safe. You could always leave it on the upper level somewhere."

Alesia hesitates then nods to Kenneth's question, "I'm afraid so