By the waterfall, Jarred is sitting, knees gathered up to his chest, gazing into the water of the pool, lost in though, his face emotionless.

You head southeast, towards the waterfall.

By the Waterfall
The edge of the valley forms a sheer rock face on this side of the Caern, perhaps 10 meters straight up, studded with outcroppings and lined with narrow cracks in a tracery of spidery fractures. Over the top lip of this natural wall streams a narrow, glass-like sheet of water that hurls itself into a small pool at its base, throwing up spray to soak the stones there, the rock behind it, and the surrounding earth. From this pool the water flows in a shallow bed toward the southwest before disappearing below the surface of the earth again in what must be an underground stream.
To the west, cool mist kicked up by the falls mingles with warmer steam from geothermal sources; these mists swirl around the caern to the north. The caern's center lies northwest of here. You can pick out what seems to be a hazardous trail over rock and up the wall, to the side of the waterfall.
Contents:
Jarred
Kaz
Smokes
Obvious exits:
Steam Vents Center Windy Spot Up the Trail

By the steam vents, Dante comes into the caern from the southwest.

By the steam vents, Dante heads on down into the caern.

Smokes gently noses Kaz's shoulder. Two legs? she whines. Heal! is the sharp command after that. Ears isn't Smokes.

Kaz explains, with a small grin, although she winces just a touch as well, "That's one've the only advantages've bein' metis, we get to heal in homid. So I don' gotta blare my ears all over th' place."

Coming from the caern's center, Yi is taking a bit of a walk through the woods. At the sight of the three gathered, and Kaz being relatively burnt up, her brow furrows. Approaching slowly, she meanders over and waves to the three. "Hello," she says with a relatively cheery voice, though tinged with concern for Kaz.

Jarred doesn't respond. He seems to be lost in his own little world, there.

Smokes's head swings around and she growls a little under her breath before turning completely to sit in front of Kaz, nose quavering as Yi approaches. She whumphs a closed-mouth greeting to the cliath.

Cheerily, Kaz says, "Yo, Yi," and then blinks, twice, evidently getting hit between the eyes by something. Slowly, turning to look at Jarred, she says, slowly and quietly, "Aw, fuck. Jarred, you ok? Like, at all?"

By the steam vents, Dante heads back around the Walk towards the waterfall to the east.

Jarred nods slowly, still gazing into the pool intently. At length he looks up and sees Yi, and his jaw clamps down, unsuccessfully trying to hold rein in the moisture that forms in his eyes. His look to her is one of pity and sorrow.

Dante approaches the gathered Garou, tight-lipped but slightly curious. "Good morning."

Yi eventually reaches the trio, greeting them again with a nod. "Kaz..." she winces slightly, now getting a closer look at the metis' burns. Looking over Jarred, the Shadow Lord doesn't seem any better off, and more zoned than anything. "What's wrong?" she asks, the concern growing in her voice. She turns and sees Dante, also a bit tense. Her hand comes up to run through her hair like she usually motions. Brown eyes flicker around, hoping for an answer.

Kaz tells Dante, "Yo," still looking at Jarred. She seems almost guilty, except that doesn't quite fit her posture -- mostly, it's sadness. Rising, she mutters, "Jay didn't make it," and heads toward the Shadow Lord, reaching out a hand to touch his shoulder.

Jarred whispers hoarsely. "Yi... He died right next to me by the hands of a Spiral we were fighting. There was nothing I could do..."

Smokes, sitting sentinal-like in front of Kaz's left foot, looks over to the emotional Shadowlord, one ear flicking forward asymmetrically. A hoarse sound rolls around in her throat.

Dante frowns, just slightly. He steps back, not getting in the way.

"What...he..." Yi's brow creases, a look of someone whose just been told something ridiculous. "Where's Jay?" she asks again to the Shadow Lord, to the metis. "What did he not make?" Unusually calm, though it's one fighting down panic.

Jarred shakes his head slowly. "He was killed, Yi. There were 3 of us against 4 adren spirals. They were too strong. I... couldn't stop it..." His voice chokes off. "His blood is on my hands. I invited him to join the battle...."

Smokes's response to Yi's question is a slight baring of her teeth. She pushes back to all fours and circles around Kaz several times, her tail hanging toward the ground.

Kaz slips her arm around Jarred's shoulders. "It ain't your damn fault," she mutters. "He came on his own, he fought on his own, he died like a Garou oughta, and you'll miss him, that's /all/. Don't go carryin' around guilt that ain't yours, it's too heavy."

Yi shakes her head, refusing to believe it. "No, he's just..." she starts, trying to force words through an ever clenching throat. "He, I..." She steps back, away from them, not believing, refusing the fact. "Jay's not dead. He and I were just talking the other night. He..." her hand clenches into a fist. "Why are you telling me that lie?" Anger replaces the choking feeling.

Jarred just looks at Yi. "I'm not lying... He died in battle last night, fighting at my side."

Kaz squeezes slightly, then lets go, raising her eyes to look at the Asian woman, solemn, and above all sincere. "I don' lie about people dyin', Yi. It's too important. I -- I wish it weren't /so/, but it is."

Dante remains silent, watching, not bringing any attention to himself.

Yi's open mouth shuts, her jaws tightening and her eyes hardening with a threat of stinging fire springing into her gaze as she stares at the others. A few moments pass by without her saying anything, just staring with a glare that would make a Talon cringe. "Why?" The question she forces out through her teeth, a slight quiver in her body visible.

Soulcatcher wakes with a slight whine, the Wendigo lifting his hispo head and shaking out his fur. It ends with another wince and the wolf licking his muzzle before looking around bleary-eyed.

Kaz seems, suddenly, very tired. Crouching down by the pool, she splashes her face with water. She looks up again. "Why do any of us die? He was doing what he loved, what he was good at. What we're /here/ for. /That's/ why. Nothing more, nothing less."

Jarred is looking back into the pool now, once again withdrawing into his thoughts.

Yi's tone brings another half-hoarse growl from the cub at Kaz's feet. Smokes barks once, Yi's emotion catching at her and putting Smokes on edge. She sidesteps, her ears falling back against her head as Kaz moves over to the pool.

Dante turns his attention towards the wounded Wendigo. He slides down into lupus and asks if he needs healing?

Soulcatcher indicates to Dante that he does not. ~Both Nightflash and Hope Star have done what they can. The rest Gaia and time will take care of. I need to go see Lightfeather, though. Will you walk with me? I would like to talk about something.~ He gets to his feet slowly.

Leaves-His-Past blinks, then indicates he will.

Yi turns slightly, her profile now towards the group and her body shaking harder, fighting down the tears, the rage, the disbelief. Her eyes close tightly, a soft gripping whine escaping her yet no tears fall. "Why did he go?" she asks to no one in particular, maybe questioning the heavy handed Fate that evidently found her brother's death cruelly amusing. A soft murmur arises from her in the language of her nativeland, and she repeats the phrase over and over, feeling her knees weakening. The constant roar of the waterfall seems to pound the fact into her, whether she likes it or not.

Soulcatcher turns to make his way up the southern slope, stopping to nose the Gnawer metis once. Why is anyone's guess, but mostly likely the tired Wendigo is simply thanking a comrade.

Soulcatcher starts along the trail up to the rim of the valley. Soulcatcher has left.

Jarred looks up at that. "He went because I asked him to. I wanted him to fight along side me. I thought there would be glory in it for us both. I was a fool."

Leaves-His-Past starts along the trail up to the rim of the valley. Leaves-His-Past has left.

Smokes crouches down a little when the Wendigo approaches. She watches him and Kaz, her nose wavering a bit as she regards his wound. Then when he moves away she licks at her nose and resettles to a seat beside Kaz's left side.

((You paged the room with 'Anyone else find it ironic, that today's Veteran's Day?'.))

This is too much for Kaz to just watch. After a soft scritch of the cub, she goes still for an instant, and then she's up out of her crouch and over to Yi in the space of a thought. Something in Yi's posture or gaze warn her off, though, and she visibly restrains herself from some form of touch. Instead, she backs up slowly and mutters, "Why? Because he was a damn good Garou who we'll fuckin' sing about for a damn long time, that's why. Don't cheapen things by acting like he wasn't."

"Glory..." she repeats, now sunk to a knee, her breath coming very shallowly. "He died because /you/ told him that he'd be famous for it?" Her rage bubbles into her voice, the cracks in the floodgates starting to widen. "/YOU/ told him to fight for /glory/?" Lips peel back in a human snarl, and the liquid fire in her eyes drip slowly down like molten lava. There's just a few seconds following her question, before she lifts her voice in a strangled howl and lunges at Jarred's form, bursting into warform almost as fast as the time of her Firsting. Claws and fangs bared, her form leaps off the ground in a blur straight for the Shadow Lord galliard.

Jarred watches the transformation numbly, but doesn't react.

Smokes comes to her feet, echoing the snarl reflexively, though her body language doesn't relay Yi's anger. Her ears are tight back against her head now and the fur at the ruff of her neck is raised. She stands tensely, then dives forward as Three-Blades knocks Kaz over going for one of the other ragabash's ankles with a snap of her jaws.

The metis certainly reacts, mostly by getting bowled over by a stampeding Crinos. After a brief moment of getting to know the ground like a new friend, Kaz is up, into Crinos, and after the Ragabash, in a blur of motion, attemptng to slam into her and either knock her /out/ or knock her /over/, to the ground.

The dark brown, black-striped blur barrels headlong into the Slord. Max's fangs snap down on Blades' ankle but the enraged crinos doesn't feel much more than stings shivering up her leg. Kaz's body, however, is felt in a slam against the newmoon's back and all four of them are sent into the pool with a large, awkward splash.

Jarred, now under the water beneath a helluva lot of werewolf, reaches out for the edge of the pool, trying to regain his grasp and pull himself away from the others.

Smokes may not do much damage in un-rage-fueled lupus attack, but she does not unclasp her teeth from around Three's ankle until she's been submerged for a handful of seconds. She comes up sputtering and snapping.

Kaz snarls loudly. ~Get the fuck away from her.~ Suiting action to word, she scrambles up onto the bank and just glares at the frothing Crinosed Ragabash, silently.

The still waters of the pool come alive in great sheets of spray as Blades spins in the water and lashes out at Kaz with her fist. The steam blinds her further in her frenzy, and the swing is rather wide, slowed by water-soaked fur. A roar of rage splits the steam as the frenzied crinos sends white waves splashing in all directions as she lashes out at figures in the steam, images of Dancers, Jarred, Jay, and other things springing to her mind's eye in the moment of delirious froth. Eventually though, her rage-driven swipes come to a stop and instincts kick in to reach the bank, where she stands, then flops down onto her side and shifts back down to a rather soaked breed form.

Once Kaz is out of the water, Smokes follows directly though the statement spurs a bit more hurry into her paddling. She scrambles out on the bank and shakes the water out of her fur in an almost amusingly uncoordinated shimmy that most certainly gets the left side of her body much drier than the right.

Jarred coughs up water and pulls himself out of the pool slowly...

Rides-Fire limps into the caern, still looking bone-weary, though most of his injuries seem relatively shallow. The scarred hispo pauses to look at the wet homids dully.

Once Yi shifts down, so does Kaz, growling a little and moving back a bit to give the flopping Yi more room.

Smokes slinks half a dozen feet from Yi and, after another uncoordinated shake, settles soggily to the ground, resting her head on her front paws and watching the other Ragabash.

Yi lies half in and half out of the water, spitting out a few mouthfuls of water she'd swallowed in her crazed state. Minutes pass with only the waterfall's constant, unaffected roar to accompany the stillness. Then, the ragabash pulls herself fully out of the water, lying on her side and curling into a fetal position. A soft, strained sob finally makes its way out of her, tears flowing down into the wet ground with little to block them but blades of grass.

Jarred slowly stands, wobbling a little after the impact from the crinos ragabash. He moves off into the woods, apparently heading for Shadow Lord territory.

Rides-Fire just continues to watch, obvious not understanding.

Kaz watches, slightly stonily. After a long moment, she unbends, sighing, and creeps over to the woman. "I'm sorry," she mutters, quietly, touching her shoulder.

The one of Smokes' ears that was trained on Yi falls back to her head as the sobs are vocalized. The cub watches her tribesmates then utters a throaty sound somewhere between a growl and a whine but marrs the moment by sudden rubbing her nose vigorously against the grass and then sneezing loudly.

Rides-Fire finally gives a snort of disgust and limps to the caern center.

The sob-racked and water-soaked ragabash gradually quiets down into soft whimper at Kaz's touch and words. Yi gradually uncurls, only to lie limply as dull eyes stare through Smokes with a sort of dead kind of air. "Jay..." Her eyes close and she winces slightly, the bite to her ankle bringing the sting of reality to her with physical pain. She blinks a few times, then somehow wills herself up into a sitting position. Eyes gaze dully at the ground as a question emerges from her cracked voice, "Where is his body?"

Kaz extends her touch slightly, gently patting the woman's back until she rises. At her question, the metis jerks her head westwards towards the Mountains. "I put 'im in the Mounds. 's the Sept's place for the honored dead."

At the center, Rides-Fire limps on, leaving the sorrow at the pool.

Yi finally lifts her head up to gaze at the metis with tear-filled eyes. "Who else?" she questions, the thought of how many Garou going into the fight against the Dancers surfacing. "Who else is dead?"

Kaz shakes her head, mute. Well, not quite mute. Attempting to speak fairly clearly, for the non-native speaker, she says, "He's the only one. He basically put himself out there, as an ahroun, so he could do as much damage to this big ass Dancer dude as he could. Guy had to be at least an Adren, and Jay stood up to him for as long as he could. Let some other folks get some shredding in. But... He's the only one."

Yi's tears threaten again to rise. Her brother, the only one to die. She nods slowly as if her mind is finally, slowly, registering the facts. The process is slow, but after closing her eyes and breathing deeply, she swallows and tries to stand shakily. The attempt fails, her ankle bitten with a little bit of blood oozing into her sock and jeans. She's working on minimal thought now, going only by instinct to do what is needed, and shifts into Hispo to heal and walk. The light amber eyes of her enlarged wolven form just gaze at the two other Gnawers, and she growls softly. I will go, now. With a human-like nod of her head, she heads towards the burial mounds in the west, to see her brother.

Kaz says, softly, "We'll be here. When you're done... Done respecting him."

Smokes lifts her head to follow Yi's departure with her gaze, then she pushes to her feet and slinks closer to Kaz.

Three-Blades swishes her tail once, then slinks off to the west.

You are always gonna be the one... Now and forever...
Lyrics from: 'First Love' -- Utada Hikaru