Learning Rite of Contrition

3/21/2005

05:10 PM
Logfile from GarouMUSH.

Currently the moon is in the waxing Gibbous Moon phase (76% full).
Currently in Saint Claire, it is raining lightly. The temperature is 46 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius). The wind is currently coming in from the southwest at 8 mph. The barometric pressure reading is 30.11 and steady, and the relative humidity is 65 percent. The dewpoint is 35 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degrees Celsius.)
It is currently 16:53 Pacific Time on Mon Mar 21 2005.

Odeon - Lobby(#4049RJ)
The Odeon's lobby is testament to a faded and perverted glory. The deep crimson carpet is thick in places but in others stubbly as velveteen, and the rich pattern of tangling flowers is everywhere marred by dark stains. The walls are clothed in kingly purple tatters of wallpaper, and covered with faded posters featuring women and men in various states of undress, posing with various degrees of tastelessness, and screaming out titles like "Male Service", "Bang Bang: a Sexual Explosion", and "A Slip of Her Tongue" in garish lettering. There's no light in the room but what comes in from the street, and during the day the actresses look grey and ghoulish, and the bright reds and purples of the room faded and dusky; and at night, the place might as well be covered in thick black paint.
Immediately in front of the entrance is dull matte turnstyle which no longer turns, where once tickets were taken. To the right are a pair of doors which some joker has labelled "Pimps" and "Hos" with red spraypaint: these are the washrooms. To the left are a pair of doorways which lack actual doors, and opposite is a grand set of boarded doors which lead into the theatre proper.
Please check +view for further description.
Contents:
Olga(#4061PJceq)
Obvious exits:
Upstairs  THeatre  Street  

[look Olga]
Olga is tall, strong, and pale. Her face is long, her nose protrudes, and her shoulders are hunched up, making her look a little like a bird trying to warm itself in the cold. She is better dressed than one might expect from her poverty: her clothes are trim and well-constructed, and though far from fashionable, far, also, from tatters. She prefers layers of clothing, wearing as much as possible short of sweltering. Her fine blonde hair is always tucked neatly under something, be it a hat or a cleverly tied 'kerchief. Olga has in fact so managed her wardrobe that she looks more like one of the faux homeless, a rich kid in dirty boots and patched jeans, than a real street person; with the difference that Olga wouldn't be caught dead in dirty boots. She wears a long, stiff, green army coat, which while presumably quite warm, doesn't suit her in the least. She's almost always seen with one arm thrust up around a shoulder, clutching the mouth of her heavy orange bag (look Olga's bag). Olga is in her early twenties.
Carrying:
Garbage Bag(#3091Jh)

The rain comes down softly outside, just enough to wet the sidewalk. There's a preparatory stillness in the air, like the sprinkling is just practice, like the real spring cleaning and washing away is yet to come. Inside the Odeon that stillness is still there. Olga sits on the lounge floor, staring at the square of blue light that spills in through the office doorway. She's thinking, hard, wrapped in her coat, cigarette lit and between her lips, 'kerchief clutched in one greasy hand.

Yi comes in out of the drizzle, wet on her hat and shoulders like she's been outside for a while. Slung over her shoulder, a black shoulder bag that bulges slightly with its contents. From her lips, a sharp whistle sounds before she calls out. "Badger? Isla?" A pause. "Squeaks?"

Olga looks up as the door opens and lets in the wet light of late afternoon. She coughs to announce her presence and because the smoke is beginning to build in her lungs, and then jerks her finger at the closed theater doors to indicate where the animals the Ragabash mentions are. "Hey Three-Blades," she calls out to her in casual greeting, tugging the cigarette from her mouth like she's embarassed of it, putting it out against the floor.

Yi arches her brows up as she sees Olga under the dim light. "Hello Olga," she greets back with a glance to the theater doors. Shutting the front door behind her, the ragabash steps in and unslings the shoulder bag. "Just making sure they aren't loose in the lobby," Yi explains with a digging about in her bag, walking towards the theurge. "But I brought some snacks for them. And for you." Out of the bag comes, with the crinkle of plastic and what sounds like a paper bag, a few still frozen popsicles in their wrappers. "I remember Anneka showed me these. Very sweet, and quite tasty. Would you like one?" She holds out a trio of brightly colored Otter Pops.

Olga hides her cigarette with a quick movement of her fingers, tucking it into an inside pocket. She slowly forces herself up to her feet, walking her hands up the wall, finally standing shakily upright, stiff from a long sit. "Ooh," the Theurge says as she stretches out a grateful hand, to take one. "Popsicles. Thank y'. Who was Anneka?" The question trails right on the heels of the thanks, and slightly distracted, she leans back against the wall, unwrapping the frozen ice.

"Anneka?" Yi echoes, at first surprised that Olga would ask her. Then, remembering, the ragabash smile thinly. "A philodox of the family. We called her Otter when she was a cub, and that's when she showed me what these were." A flick and quiet click after, Yi slices off the tip of her popsicle before offering the knife handle first over towards the theurge so she can cut off the tip of the wrapper and enjoy. "Was a good skateboarder too." There's a pause, as the ragabash glances back over the lobby. "It's been a long time since she left."

Olga gingerly takes the knife with another "Thank y'." She begins sawing away at the thing, saying with a thin grumpiness, "They really overpackage these things, eh?" Finally the top comes fluttering off, falling onto the threadbare carpet. "Yeah, I don' know as much about who was here 'fore I came as I'd like to," she says to Yi with a sour grimace, eyes again finding the patch of blue on the floor where the light from the office window spills in. "History."

Yi nods slowly with the sense of nostalgia, but feeling better with the touch of frozen, flavored sugarwater on her tongue. "History, yes," she murmurs around the icicle in her mouth. Then, pulling that out, she licks her lips once. "Do you think you would be willing, Olga, to teach me about that rite we spoke of before? I feel... burdened to ask you, but still more urgent is my feeling that I should apologise to the Guardians."

Olga pushes off the wall, popsicle stuck in her mouth like some freezing cigarette. "Ymf," she says, trying to talk around it like she does her tubular bundles of poison, but not finding it quite so easy. "Yeah," she clarifies as she pulls it out. "Yeah, sure. No burden. Le's get to it now then, eh? Um, le's see." She holds out her hands a little, looks around, like she's trying to place herself, to get herself ready.

Yi smiles back with a mixture of expression, unsure of whether it would be a good thing to know this rite or not. Still, the ragabash dips her head and waits for the theurge to get settled. Crunch goes the first small bite of freeze-pop. "You said I was to bring something that I would miss, correct?"

Olga bobs her head, and sticking the popsicle back in her mouth she stretches out her arms, linking them behind her back, touching her toes, like in preparation for a rigorous workout. There's something strange in her face, something that suggests that, even in practice, even pretend, this isn't an easy thing for her to do. "Le's see it?" she asks cautiously, as if she doesn't really want to, but is doing as she must.

Yi licks her lips again, nodding and finding a place to sit and rummage through her bag. There's a number of things she takes out of it - notebook, pen, a dictionary of Chinese-English appearance... and then a small rabbit-skin pouch. It is somewhat poorly made though, and shows definite signs of age. This one takes a bit more time to let go of, and it is deposited down in front of the ragabash for the theurge to see. "This was... a pouch that Leonard Brings-Buffalo, my packmate in Salmon's Leap, had showed me how to make." She smiles a bit again, before resuming the look of serious nature. "I wasn't exactly sure of what to bring..."

"What you bring depends on a lot of things," Olga says slowly, moving up towards the Ragabash, looking over what she's collected. She hunches down in a squat, reaching out towards the assembled articles but not quite touching any of them, just sort of feeling the air around, screwing up her face. "The important thing is that you miss it, that it's somethin' you hurt to lose. That in six months you'll thing, `shit, I wish I still had that.` You'll know you gave away the right thing if afterwards, you feel you've given too much."

Yi nods again, eyes shifting from the theurge to the pouch. "In that case, then, I think I will know what to bring them." The ragabash swallows down hard with a silent thought, and then looks back up. "What about other things? I suppose the more the better? But it would feel like a lie... I mean, I /am/ sorry that I had insulted White Bear, but at the same time, he..." And here, she clips off, shaking her head. "It is still my mistake though."

Olga shakes her head, and she dismisses the proceeding statement with a sour look, turning away. "Only one thing, unless it's a set. Like a hairbrush and a mirror, sure, but nothing disconnected." She doesn't ignore the statement of uncertainty, of second thought, but she doesn't address it either, not yet. She doesn't look at her either though, she walks away, eyes sweeping the ground and sucking at her popsicle. "Then you gotta choose a spot. Where depends on where you're doin' it. If it's out in the woods you want a tall tree, standin' alone. If it's inside you want a big room with only one door. If it's somewhere else - well, y'figure somethin' out. In the woods you get the person you're performing it to to stand at the tree, inside, they stand right in front of the door, which's got to be closed. They're both ways out and in, y'see. The tree connects the underground with the sky, the door the inside with the outside. So the person you're performing your contrition to stands at change, and you gotta sorta come at the change, from about-" and here she finally looks back at the Ragabash, and begins to count off steps away from her, mumbling to herself, mentally measuring, "from about twenty feet or so."

Yi looks up from the pouch, watching the theurge with furrowed brows. She'd take notes, but that sort of thing would look bad. "It will probably be in the woods." She utters after it a number of foreign words, but otherwise continues to pay attention. "What do you mean by 'come at the change'?"

Olga gestures towards the door, with an off-handed swipe of her hand. "Jus' mean that it's what you go towards. Like, it's flux. It's forgiveness, there, the door. And you come towards it, and the person who stands there, like a guard. And you do it in four stages. The first is right where y're standing, so here," Olga explains, from her spot as the imaginary penitent, pointing down at the ground. "What you do first is say what you did, what happened. Y'should do it in Homid; never ever enter Crinos or any of the middle forms during the Rite, except for to move between Homid and Lupus. So you state down, like for the record, what it was that occured, just literally."

Yi wets her lips at that, remembering what happened. She nods slowly, making like she understands even though it will take a bit to parse. "Four stages?" she asks, not meaning to sound impatient. "So the first is to tell of the deed."

Olga's head comes down like a judge's mallet. "Four," she says simply. "That's right. First is to tell of the deed, and then y'move forward, about, uh-" she stops for a second to do the math, fractions were never her strong point "-about a third of the distance towards the person. If you can shift, you should do so, down to Lupus, and crawl on y'r belly; if you can't, if you're sort of in public and don't want to disturb the veil, you just sort of slink forward, looking sad and regretful. And then you stop, and you say that what you did, then, was wrong, and you explain how come it was wrong, what rules it broke, who it hurt, or whatever."

Yi sucks in her breath slowly, expression still getting a touch grimmer with the dimming of the sky outside. Rather than comment more, she watches the theurge's movements with sharp eye.

Olga takes some more steps forward, until she's about seven feet from Yi, close enough that her voice is conversationally quiet. "Then," she says slowly, "y'say you're sorry." Her own face is fairly grim, fairly still, there's a thick line along her brow right above the eye. "You can use fancy flowery language but all you're really doing is saying you're sorry, that y'regret it, that you wish you hadn' done it."

Yi nods again, but asks after, "After this is the point that I bring what it is I wish to offer for amends?"

Olga's nod is again short and sharp, like the smack of a gavel. "Yeah. As you come to the final thing," she says, moving up towards Yi until she's just a step distant. She looks down at the slight woman, and she says, slowly, "Y'should never be taller than the other person." Slowly, with creaking joints, Olga gets down onto her knees, the movement awkward, and she raises her hand. "This's when you give the other person your object. You explain that it's important to you, and why. You explain that you're not giving this to them in exchange for what you did, or as a reward or payment or anythin' like that; you're giving it so you'll miss it, and you'll always remember." She stands there, hands outstretched, quiet now, as if the ritual were real, as if she were waiting for Yi to accept her apology; the Theurge's eyes are cloudy, distant, and strained.

Yi doesn't move quickly, but she nods one last time to play the part of the forgiver. "One can only hope White Bear doesn't decide it is not enough," she murmurs softly, before reaching out with her hand to gently touch the other Gnawer on the shoulder. "Do you think it will be enough?"

"Better fuckin' be," Olga says tightly, the disdain in her voice evident, though it's definitely not directed at the Ragabash in front of her. "So he takes the thing," the Theurge say, moving on tensely, with terse words. She moves back now, back along the line she'd walked earlier, and then stops. A frown pops quickly onto her face, small and twisting, but it bursts quickly into a faint embarassed half-grin as she holds up a hand, fingers all outspread, and announces quickly, "Five things." She continues walking until she's about half the distance she'd started about, and then she turns, and faces Yi again, manner more casual now. "And then you ask him to forgive you."

Yi bites her tongue before she ends up saying something in agreement with Olga's temporary tenseness. With a sharp nod, and a quirky grin, she watches the elder without distraction. Even the Otter Pop is melting quickly in her now-cold hand. "And should he forgive me... that is the end? Or if he does not, then what?"

Olga bobs her head, she rubs at her chin with a hand, and then takes another quick lick at her popsicle, aimed at lapping up the cold sticky liquid that's about to drip around her fingers. Secretly she's wandering over her memories, trying to organize them right. "Then a couple of things could happen," she explains. "He accepts, and then he could run towards you, which means, sorta, `Oh hush, you don't need to do all this. You're bein' silly.` Or he could walk towards you, which means, `Yeah, you're right to apologize, and I forgive you and accept it. But, I's sort of at fault, too, it's not just you.` Or he could just stand there, which means, `I accept your apology and absolve you. No worries, buddy.` It's not really about your relationship or how much you like each other or anything, it's about the thing itself, you know? It's about this one thing, here. And then you thank him, with a handshake or as wolves do with a nuzzle or something, and, and this's very important, you go off through the door or past the tree. If he _doesn't_ accept, he's a bastard; but in that case he goes off beyond the tree, and you go sit in the corner until he's gone, if it's a room, or you go off in the opposite direction, if it's the woods, until he can' see you no more."

Yi bows her head, thinking a long time on this. "I remember, some small pieces of something similar to this Rite," she starts to say. "Grandmother and even Uncle had bowed many, many times to the ... the Glass Walkers that I had wronged. Begged them." Her popsicle is almost forgotten, but instead gripped slightly harder. "In the end, it will depend on the whim of the forgiver, no?"

"Which'll be affected by how penitent you are on the Rite," Olga notes quickly, as she covers the ground back towards the woman, finishing off her popsicle, tucking the remaining stick into a pocket for some obscure later purpose. "But even if he says `no`, the spirits'll know you're sorry," she says further, pointing up with a finger, casting her eyes around, as if the spirits are hanging out up there on the Odeon ceiling. "And they'll forgive y'."

Yi looks up again, dispelling the negative thoughts that turned back to a blacker past, and shoves the popsicle in her mouth. "So that is what makes it a rite, instead of simply a formal apology?"

A grin splits wide Olga's face, as she admits with good humour, "I guess so? Plus it's bad form to refuse a Rite of Contrition, unlike a regular apology. White Bear's not gonna refuse. Ice'll kick his ass if he does." Finally standing more or less conversationally beside Yi, she slowly gets herself off the line she'd be using for the rite, circling around with a sense of finality, the weight slipping from her shoulders. "It's different when you're apologizing to a spirit, though. Tha's a whole 'nother ball game I'll show you another time."

Yi winces at the thought. "I would rather not ever wrong a spirit, unless it would think me clever to do so afterwards," she notes with a wrinkle of her nose and a crunch of ice. "Do you mind if I ask you something... that could be personal?"

Olga moves back towards where she was sitting before, setting her back against the wall, sliding her way down. "Can't always be helped, spirits don' follow our rules, we don' always know what we're doing wrong. That's why the Rite of Contrition, 'cause it's something we both know, eh?" the Theurge says as she comes to a slow halt against the sticky floor. She begins to rummage in her bag, but the question Yi asks makes her stop, look up, her face dry and curious. "Uh, no," she says, uncertain but with curiosity pressing her on. "What's up?"

Yi sucks slowly on the open end of her nearing empty popsicle bag, chewing lightly on the plastic. "Well," she wonders softly at first before daring to push. "What was it that you learned the Rite of Contrition for?" There's a smallish pause, before she quickly adds, "You don't need to tell me, if it is something you would rather not talk about."

Olga explains, with a small tight look on her face that promises at any second to break into a reassuring smile, though it never quite does. "I didn' learn it for any real reason. My Athro when I was jus' a young Cliath was an old Philodox named Concrete-Law. He said `Every Gnawer should learn the Rite of Contrition when he's young because you can be damn sure he's going to fuck up, and when he does, his apology's not going to be good enough for any hi-falutin Fang bastard.`" She mocks him, in a way, her tone goes stentorian and gruff, but there's love and rememberance in it too, that's easy to see, her smile finally bursts. "I only ever used it once, that was with Emma."

Yi hms thoughtfully, but her eyes smile back at the other Gnawer. "You know... I do not think we have ever told each other much about our backgrounds either. I... don't even remember if we ever shared stories about our passage rites before."

Olga reaches over and she digs into her bag, yanking out what's right on top, a small flanel blanket, a soft chalk blue. She hands it over to Yi with an easy grin, but not before giving it a rough shake to rid it of all the little bits of chip and crumb that cling. "You're right," she concedes, while she waits for Yi to take the blanket. "We should sit down a bit. We should chat." She reaches in again, this time yanking out a glass bottle filled with a bright amber liquid that langorously reflects the fast-fading light. "And we should drink," she says with a sense of force and finality, but also with a broad amused smile that spreads out just under her nose.

"D-.. Drink?" Yi takes the blanket, but pauses with her hand in the air as she looks worriedly at the bottle of what she presumes to be liquor. "Well, ah..." And not wanting to refuse what seems to be a precious commodity for the elder, the ragabash clears her throat and draws the blanket down, laying it out so that they can sit upon it. "Okay," she concedes finally, slowly sitting first. "Who should go first?"

Another grin takes Olga's face, but it's not quite so easy, there's a note of disappointment in it, though, a tightness there. "You don' have to," she says, letting the bottle drop from her fingers, back into the bag. The next order of business for the Theurge is to reach out with her long stiff arm and snatch a McDonald's cup from the floor, complete with its top, and taking a long white candle, half burnt down, she sticks it in the middle like a cheap candle holder. Olga produces a lighter and as she flicks it to light the thing, painting the two Gnawers orange flickering it light, soft and secretive, she asks quietly, voice tinged with curiosity, "Tell me where you come from, Yi?"

Yi shakes her head. "No no, please. If you want to drink, and I do not deny... it is a great way to keep warm," she says with a glance out towards the fading light, "well, only that Uncle never liked me drinking because he said it was a bad habit." She waggles a finger towards the air though, as if she were talking like the old guy was right there grinning. "Never mind that he smoked /and/ drank beer a lot." Getting back to the real tracks, though, she looks from the dancing candle flame back to the theurge's face lit by candlelight. "Well, I'm from Hong Kong. Oh, it is a nice place, lots of food all the time anytime. Lots of people... /Lots/ of people. But, before I came here... even before I changed, I was just another girl there. Supposed to be, anyway. My family was poor, but I suspect that because my mother and father must have been some kind of kin, or otherwise. No one ever truly told me, but by that time, I had been found out." She shrugs once, tucking in her legs. "So my mother worked in the red light street, and my father gambled much. But we... we were happy. After that, they disappeared, leaving this world. And I lived alone for a little while, still happy because I had my classmate and sister, Li."

Olga pulls out another blanket, this one a patchwork quilt she's been making herself but is still only partially finished, pins stuck in at inopportune places. She spreads it over the two of them, and her eyes head to the bag where the bottle seems to stare back at her, the liquor strangely beautiful in the gritty orange light of the candle. "Oh what the hell," the Gnawer announces as she reaches out to grab the bottle, and then leans back against the wall. She listens to Yi's story but herself keeps quiet, as she unscrews the cheap cap, watching her. She doesn't drink yet, she leans forward on her knees, showing her interest. Her eyes wander about the other's face, seemingly fascinated by this story of another culture.

"And that continued for a time. She and I, we went to school," Yi says with a slight nod. "Uniforms, worrying about boys, worrying about girls. I do not know how it is here, but the worst thing that could happen to you is to get on the bad side of the.. ah, the popular girl." She shrugs again. "I did that a lot, but I didn't care. We always just played day by day, you know? And then, of course... we had... boy troubles." She glances at the bottle of liquid, then back up to the theurge's face. "That was when I changed. I found out who... what, I was. And then, I ran away. I had in my frenzy, killed the leader of an important group on my street, and a couple of his friends. They had machetes.... so that was where my name came from. Three-Blades, for the three of them."

Olga holds the bottle forward just a little when Yi looks at it, offering her a drink if she wants one, but she doesn't press; well, not too much, at least. She rubs her nose at the girl's story, and when she speaks of getting on the wrong side of `the popular girl` she gives a sympathetic crook of a shoulder and a mild "Oh yeah, know how _that_ is." The rest of the story she listens to with curious silence until she explains her name, at which she looks up, quietly curious. After a second she asks, "You still go by your cub name?"

Yi decides after all, to take the bottle as it's offered. And slinging it back like an experienced drinker, she bolts down a mouthful without even touching the rim. The bottle is passed back with a grateful nod. "Well..." she starts to say, and thinking on it, she has to nod again. "No one has called me anything else. Well, aside from some nicknames I have gathered since my coming here, but." She pauses, glancing to the theurge. "Is it strange?"

Olga watches Yi slug back the drink with appreciation and some growing respect. At the question the woman grins a bit, like she's amused by the exoticism of it, not so much disparaging as simply curious, though there is perhaps a touch of the ugly American in her smile. "Well, it would be where I'm from, but differen' strokes for differen' folks, eh?" she answers the question. "Where'd you Rite, anyway?"

Yi sets the bottle down, pushing it back over to the theurge. "In Shanghai," she explains, at first using the actual foreign pronounciation, and then correcting it to an anglicized version. "I rited with some other cubs at the time. Bold, Ken... Hanna. We were all, so to speak, Bone Gnawer cubs. Only over there, our groups do not share the same names. And, Uncle Lau, he is a galliard. Passed information between our small sept and the larger courts." Here, she does look up. "You... know of the other changers, right? Well, there is J.C. here in St. Claire, and then Val."

Olga nods her acceptence of that, dismissive almost. "Yeah, yeah, I kn-" she says, as she reaches for the bottle, but then her hand stops, and so does she; she looks up at Yi, curious and uncertain. "Wait," the Theurge asks, tilting her head to one side with something like suspicion in her eyes. "Who's J.C.?"

Yi was looking down at the bottle, but then looks back up. "J.C.? She is a ratchanger." The ragabash tilts her head slightly. "I only have seen her a few times, but she was a friend of Ren--.. of Eve's. And she once did take care of Squeaks for a short time as well, but otherwise I have not seen much of her."

Olga's eyes go just a bit wider and she rubs quickly at her mouth, trying to wipe away her surprise. "Really?" the Gnawer asks, voice getting high, excited. "Holy crap." A pout, terribly exaggerated, fat as a pair of swelled fingers, suddenly stretches out on her face as she complains whinily, "I wanna meet one." The complaint isn't too serious, though the surprise and interest is; she takes another gulp of whiskey, not doing it the cool and hygienic way Yi does, wrapping her lips around the bottle's neck, and sets it down. "That's so cool."

Yi looks far more surprised by the reaction of the theurge. But she too, recovers with a quick blink and a small smile. "Well, maybe she will come by again some time, but in my experience the rat changers are not all that friendly towards us in general. Not even the rats at home liked us, but they just worked with us. The ravens feel better about it, but I think our wars have been bad for the relations." She shrugs lightly, giving the theurge a bigger grin. "So, well... how about you? Where are you from?"

Olga answers quickly, easily, listening to all Yi's objections though they do little to impact the intensity of her curiosity, "Well, I still want to at least _meet_ one, y'know? We both follow Rat, eh?" She leans back, she tries to regain her composure, tries not to ask more about the furry disease-ridden critter. "Me? Nowhere special. Victoria, up on Vancouver Island. B.C." She adds, with a hint of suspicion, "Canada," just in case it's needed. "But you aren' done yet, missy. You promised you'd tell me about your Rite of Passage, eh? And why'd you come here, then?"

Yi slips her gaze away to the candle, then back. "Ah. Yes, my apologies... I guess I'm just anxious to know more about you as well." She smiles embarrassedly, and nods. "Shanghai... so my ritemates and I, we were taken out to Shanghai, dropped off by Uncle, and told to return to Kowloon within a week." She pauses, thinking back to the adventures then. "Sounds simple right? But then we were all young, cubs, and most of all we believed that we could do it without trouble. Of course, that is a cub's foolish dream. And with Bold being a lupus, he was... not exactly able to stay out of trouble often. Ken was the one who took the lead though, and Hanna took up the job of keeping Bold in line. And you can guess what I did... lots of scouting, and looking for something we could use that would get us back to Shanghai. Us four, young, but with barely any money. And we could not simply return without gifts!" The ragabash extends her arms wide, and big smile climbing up to her face. "So we found this very Big boat. Down at the docks, and we thought it was abandoned. But when we did some more investigating, we found it was actually being used to traffic drugs."

Olga takes another sip but as Yi just begins her story, the Theurge suddenly stops her. As soon as she sets down the terms of the Rite of Passage Olga's arms go out, a big grin breaks her face in two, looking rather disturbing in the dim orange candlelight, and she says quickly, "Holy shit, that's like almost exactl-" and then she breaks off. She cools herself back down, gets out a quick "Sorry, sorry, I'll tell y'later, go on," and lets the woman continue with the rest of the story, listening intently, hunched over, getting drawn up into the tale.

Yi hms, pitch raising almost in question at the theurge as she starts to say something before bidding her to continue. "O..k..," she says with a suspicious smile, and then does so, "Well you can imagine that we tried to.. steal the boat, without knowing how to actually pilot one. And then, as surely as Bold was Bold, he saw the owners of the boat coming back to the boat and let us All know about it." The ragabash chuckles softly, shaking her head as she remembers. "They weren't very happy of course. And the battle... well, it was very quick. We tried not to shift, and then we realized the drugs were not just belonging to humans. And we all ended up, well, tearing the ship down to the point it was just barely still afloat." The ragabash rubs at the back of her neck, smiling back at the theurge as if she were telling this to the Grandmother. "But when they were dead, and we had the drugs and the ship... we sold the drugs to the Glass Walkers of the area. And then, we used the money to repair the ship, buy our gifts, and took the ship back to the harbor. We, of course, spent the next months cleaning that ship... which wasn't very pleasant."

The grin still sits easily on Olga's face as she listens to the story, leaning back, occasionally snagging herself a quick but small drink from the bottle, just a taste, just enough to coat her tongue. "Wait, the next months?" she asks, with sudden concern. "I thought you had to get back in a week?" The concern is really, oddly, as if she's worried Yi might might not make Cliath after all, despite the fact that she's sitting there right next to her her equal in rank; but she's drawn into the story and time has lost its meaning. "You better've brought it back first!"

Yi blinks a couple of times, and then ohs quickly as she realizes. "Ah, yes. We did bring it back... but we brought it back, ah, uncleaned. Grandmother did accept the gift, but, you know how grandmothers are. She made us clean up our mess. And we built the ship back into a sort of usable floating residence." The ragabash uses her hands to kind of illustrate. "The boat itself was big, from about there, to here. And we had to change the look and the name, or else someone might recognize it. Someone who would want it back, of course. Now it is the home for the new cubs, if they want to sleep there instead of the warehouse. Our sept actually, was divided into two halves. One side was one part of the harbor on the mainland, and the other was on the island. We used the boats to pass between the way, but the large boat that my ritemates and I brought back had been turned into our quarters. We couldn't stay at the antique shop that Uncle owned for long, because he would complain All the Time that we scared away the customers. And Wind's-Touch wouldn't take us in of course. He was a Stargazer, we were Gnawers..."

Olga grins again as she comes to understand. "So you guys did a sight better 'an expected, eh?" she asks, visibly impressed. "Good job, Three-Blades. Bet you guys got lots of glory for that one, huh? But it sounds like you were set," she says, leaning forward, unsure. "So how come you came here? And did your Rite pack ever turn itself into a real pack?" The Theurge is all questions, all curiosity.

Yi shakes her head. "We weren't cliath for very long, because we were decided to do a bit more. Ken and Bold always were rivals, so they ended up forming their separate packs. Ken took the west wind under Dog, and Bold the east under Rat. Hanna decided she wanted to learn more from one of our theurges," she pauses to translate his name, "Stickreader. Though he had been higher ranked than she at the time, older and more experienced, he let Hanna take the south wind pack under Gull. And I... well, I hadn't decided." The ragabash shrugs. "I wasn't sure who I would follow, until one day Grandmother took me aside and asked me to come here. She wanted to make contact again with a kinfolk we hadn't heard from, so I was sent to scout for him out here. But," she pauses again, thinking. "But, I was going to refuse. I was, but then Uncle somehow talked me into coming. I'm glad I did come now. It has been quite an adventure. Oh, and I did find the kin. Xia Doh, but he had at some point decided to be Glass Walker kin instead." At this, the ragabash shrugs. "I don't really put blame to him... especially when you are in need of money."

Even if Yi doesn't blame him, Olga will, though she limits her disdain to a puffed out, derogatory "Pfff," and a "Damn spider monkeys." The woman pauses for a second or two, still absorbing the story, puzzling it out; questions seem to come to her but she puts them aside, just saying, "I'm glad y' come too, Yi." Olga takes another quick sip from the bottle, and then passes it back over.

Yi has to smile at that, and bows her head in grateful appreciation. "I am glad for it. Though, when I first came I didn't expect to stay nearly this long." The ragabash shifts about her legs, one eye twitching slightly as she moves her right leg a little too far and gives the battlescar on it a bit of a pull. Her hand reaches over for the available bottle, and she gulps down another shot before leaving it between the two. "I went back a few years ago, because Hanna had written me in a bit of worry. She said something about, well, things were changing. And I realized when I had gone back... I too, had changed. And..." she trails, voice softening, "by the time I had managed to return there, I guess I was a bit too late to stop some things. But not too late at the same time. I discovered... Ken had great ambitions. He and some of the younger cliaths had decided they were not willing to follow old Grandmother and Uncle's ways. Typical headstrong thoughts, you know?"

Olga ducks her head at the question. "I know," she confirms, her voice getting dry. She can sense the obvious change in the tone and she stays quiet now, her face gets rather still and slightly drawn, and she looks away from Yi, towards the small flicker of the candle's flame.

Yi looks back down to the bottle. "Truth told, I was just as headstrong. I found my first packs here in St. Claire. Jay, Banecruncher, Nevada... together we were going to form the Junkyard Dogs, until Jay and Banecruncher died. But, after that, I ended up packing with Sepdet Hope-Star, Joseph Soulcatcher, Leonard, Duane. Salmon was kind, and showed me such wisdom with my packmates. It was almost strange that I felt I should have left. When I went back to the Rat's Tail, I felt very... disconnected. But, determined to set things right with Grandmother and Uncle, and determined I was, to find Hanna. She went missing soon after I received her note, and after that, well." The ragabash pushes back her sleeves, where the scars are there and flicker like tiny snakes under the dancing lights. "I was headstrong. Thought I would be able to find out where the vampire had been hiding her, and... I did." She swallows hard, closing her eyes briefly and willing herself onwards. "By the time I had come out - and it wasn't on my own - I had only heard about the things I had done. Many terrible things. And things that I believe, I will probably be paying for in the next life and the next."

"Jesus," Olga says softly, as it's all she can think to say and she feel she has to say something; after looking away from the flame at the dark spaces in the corners of the room, looking at the scars on Yi's arm, she then looks up, watching the woman with eyes creased with concern. They get wide and then tighten up again; they see new things in the woman across from her, new things which seem to worry and disturb her. But she reaches across to touch that battered skin, just once and softly, like she doesn't believe it, if Yi will let her do so; and then she holds the woman's hand. Again she doesn't know what to say, but she gives a squeeze, and with her free hand, reaches down to offer up the bottle, looking into Yi's face with a sympathetic and knowing look.

Yi doesn't withdraw her hand, though she does seem to grow a bit distant at first. "I'm sure at the least, I broke many of the laws. Not just of the Garou here... but of the Garou back home. They, we, followed similar laws, but not all the same. And then, well, some things you just don't need to have a law for to know that it is wrong to do." The ragabash looks back up, a smile forced onto her face. "I'd like to say it is in the past, but I do still owe the Glass Walkers a lifedebt. For... doing some terrible things to them, and their kin. Some would argue that it was because of Him, that I did these things and I shouldn't have been blamed, but it was only appropriate punishments. Some things, not even the Rite of Contrition could fully apologize for." Then, she shrugs slowly, taking in a deep breath. "I was sent back here, as Grandmother thought if I stayed there longer I would not fully recover. And perhaps she was right. When I returned here to St. Claire, I had my pack still waiting for me. And they all helped me. All the Garou here, I cared for. And so I stayed." She looks back up now to the other Gnawer, softness overlaying the dark inside. "And I don't really plan on going anywhere else, unless I am called to do so."

Olga quickly offers her banal reassurance, like she's glad for the opportunity to finally say something useful, to try to help; but "That's good," is all she gets out. "We need y' here." The woman reaches out and takes another swig from the bottle, this one deeper, swishing the dark liquid around in her mouth before putting the bottle back down. "I'm sure you done everythin' you could do, Yi, everything you had to. I's sure, uh-" but words again fail, and she trails off, looking away, her face knitting tightly up, feeling a pain of her own at her inability to find the right thing, some easy salve. She looks up again, cheeks drooping, bright eyes sad, the candlelight exaggerating everything. "That's horrible," she finally gets out softly, before giving her hand another squeeze. "But you're a tough kid, eh? We all are."

Yi here squeezes back, as if proving that the theurge's words aren't lost upon her. "We sure are. After all... after I came back, and not long after the caern here was attacked." The hand squeeze gets just a bit tighter, but not significantly enough. Then, she withdraws the hand and Yi sits a bit straighter. "We took the caern back with much force too. Never again will it happen - at least, not while Three-Blades breathes this cold American weather." The ragabash laughs softly after the boast, running her hand back and taking off her baseball cap. "Ah but I talk so much, so much. Now it should be /your/ turn, Mama Olga." She emphasizes the Mama, as if the title is a subtle, playful prod.

Olga lifts the bottle in an equally playful gesture, accepting the challenge to speak. She can't help, though, before she begins, saying, teasingly, "`Cold American weather`?" and giving another one of those dismissive "Pfff!"s, this time much less pointedly. She also, before beginning her story, takes another long slug from the bottle; it seems to be beginning to affect her, her eyes are getting brighter and her cheeks ruddier even in the flickering yellowed light, but she's still just in the pleasantly buzzed stage, perhaps a little more energetic than usual, now that the topic of conversation has lightened. "Yeah, so, my turn, eh?" she begins ditheringly, looking around. "I don't got much to say really, haven' had much of a life with the Garou, but I can tell you about my Rite of Passage and how I ended up here. Well like I said I's born in Victoria, that's on that big island just north of Washington. My folks were Ukrainian immigrants but I's pretty western. Went to school, done my shit, was a good li'l kid, mostly, yelled at my parents, that sort of thing. Bit of a dork. Um, cubhood didn' go so good. They called me um, well, Fire-Starter, when I's a cub. I kept on trying to escape, y'see, and it usually involved some sort of, well, a distraction. Poof. But this ol' Philodox, he took me in, taught me. Concrete-Law, I tol' you about him. Real tight-ass but the best guy ever. And eventually I's sent off on my Rite of Passage."

Yi chuckles lightly. "Sounds like you and I had something in common even as cubs," the ragabash notes, reaching into her pants pocket and drawing out a lighter. "Admittedly, I did one time smoke, but otherwise this little thing was for other reasons." The Zippo clicks on, then off, all in one smooth action before the ragabash flips it away. "Anyway, please go on. What was your home sept like? Was it big?"

Olga looks at Yi's lighter the way a computer nerd looks at a palm pilot, her mouth closing into an 'o' even though the "Ooh," doesn't quite come out. She digs out her own, a cheap bit of plastic with tape holding it together, and flicks it, dejectedly looking at a weak and unimpressive little spark. "You gave up the habit, eh?" she asks, looking up at Yi then, curious. "Good call, but hard to do. Law took me to see a tar-bane once. Nearly scared me straight, but I didn' have the resolve for it." Slowly she moves back on track to answer the questions, looking up at the ceiling and scratching her neck. "It was a nice li'l place, very urban, in a park. They had the ugliest statues there of these giant frogs. It's called the Sept of the Empty Peace Frog but I could never get anybody to tell me what the name meant, I don' know that anybody remembers. They's sort of, uh, slackers. It was a teeny place, there's about this many Gnawers," and she holds out a hand outspread, all fingers and thumb, "and this many Walkers," two fingers, "and tha's it, plus travellers."

Yi looks over at the theurge's lighter, and decides to offer her lighter out. "I didn't really... give up the habit..." she says softly, "but it is easier to save money when you don't do it. Unless you mean the Other habit, in which case... I claim innocence. I haven't actually started any without a really good reason to." Then, she continues listening, brows quirking at the strange name of the sept, and then counting over the number of sept protectors. "So, this Concrete-Law was the Sept Alpha then?"

"Yeah, drains up jus' about every last penny I got, smokes and matches," Olga answers, woefully, sounding quite bereaved. She picks at a camel cigarettes patch on the blanket, there just for decoration, outlining the pyramid behind the beast. Eventually she wrests her attention back on the topic though, answering, "Uh, no. He's more the sept crazy person in the woods, if y'know what I mean. He didn' want the position, and the place didn' really need him, so he's happy outside things. Anyway, I went off on my Passage, after near a year and a half bein' a cub. They wouldn't let me go home 'cause they were afraid I'd run away. But there I was, expecting, y'know, some great grand adventure, fighting off the depradations of the Wyrm, rightin' the world's wrongs, and ends up I had to go off to New York City and come back within three weeks, along with two other of the Sept's `socially dysfunctional` cubs. So y'can see why I burst out at your story, eh?" the woman asks with a twisted grin and a look up.

Yi cracks out a grin, and nods emphatically. "Were you expected to do other things as well? I mean, we were sure that while we were left in Shanghai and told to return, they didn't say anything more but we figured out we should have brought back proof of our worthiness."

Another grin draws a tight slit across Olga's face. "Oh, believe me," she says distinctly. "Three weeks with these guys were test e-freaking-nough. By the end of it though we were all unbelievably tight. We were like family. I didn' really know what they meant by family, before. I didn' get it; after that, I did. Anyway we did it and - oh, wanna know how I got my deedname?" The woman doesn't stop to wait for an answer to that question though, and the grin and the way she motors through it indicates it's a story she's eager to tell. "Anyway we'd managed to scrounge enough cash for a bus ride through, uh, I think it was Wyoming or Dakota or somethin'? One of the states that's like all those other states it's like. Bus pulled into a gas station and Sarah got out. Sarah y'see was a bit of a bumpkin, she had, like, hay in 'er hair, and overalls. She dressed like a fuckin' Green Acres reject. And we, we _hated_ each other. We fought all the damned time, we were determined we were gonna kill each other one day. This one time, the caern centre was full of frogs you see, and she put a frog in my cereal and scared me half to frickin' death. And then another time she was tryin' to work the TV but she didn' know what a remote was, she was really completey up to her shoulders hick, and I kept on flickin' it off, and asking her, `Why the hell's the TV not working? What'd you do now, y'dumb hick?`" There's strangely enough a wide grin on Olga's face as she's recounting all this, like she's got no sense of the cruelty in it, or perhaps it just all ended up well enough that she can look back out in and smile. "So anyway she went out to grab snacks at the gas station, and we stayed in the bus. I watched out the window..."

Yi really does have to wonder about geography, but then as the theurge proceeds on she has to laugh at the various pranks being pulled on the rivals. "Ah, sounds much like some of the rivals back home." She chuckles a little, and then leans in some more, apparently lacking a sense of cruelty in the prankings as well. Go figure, ragabash.

"She was walkin' down out of the bus when this horrible lady," Olga continues without stopping for breath, her voice exaggerated, her hands flailing about to try to get each point across, a shallow layer of intoxication covering pretty much everything now, "this horrible lady starts laughin' at her, 'cause she looked like something out of Beverly Hillbillies. She just said such mean, stupid things. She was a giant of a thing, too, and 'er clothes were so tight she looked like a walrus in a corset. And I could see as she was talkin', Sarah'd get redder, and redder, and redder, 'til she looked like a beet head on top of overalls body. I could tell she was hurt; and y'know I'd done the same to her, but - it's not that I felt guilty about it, it's just that, I wasn't going to let somebody _else_ do it. When I saw her face, y'know, it hurt me, too. I could feel it cuttin' a knife right in my belly. It was like, blah, I just, it was all sorts of bad, alright?" She stumbles for words, stumbles with a drunken tongue, grinning stupidly. "So I snapped open the window and I just yelled at that bitch 'til my face was sore! Called her every foul name in the book and a damn sight many that ain't. I really flayed that woman alive, really ripped into 'er, you know? She turned the colour of custard and crammed herself into her tiny foreign car and just went bookin' on out of there! And when Sarah came back, y'know, she sat beside me, handed me my Pringles, and she just sort of grinned, y'know? She just sort of grinned. That was - that's when things started to change, when we started to get close, y'know, like family should. And I got my deedname from that, acshully," she says, starting to slur. "'Cause I right ripped that fat lady." She's beaming now full of pride and memory, the dourness of moments ago forgotten in intoxicated bliss.

Yi nods, but can't resist a good laugh with the story's conclusion. "I see, I see. And you won your rival over too!" In celebration, the ragabash grabs up the whiskey bottle and takes a new swig of it, one eye closing as she feels the burn. "Mm, that must have been quite a sight and see and hear. Haha!" The bottle is set down, and Yi wipes her lips lightly. "How did you all make it back to Canada after you were dumped in New York?"

Olga says happily, grandly, "Moonbridge and hoof, wheel and paw! Jus' whatever way we could, same way we'd got there. Bus mostly. Caught a moonbridge out of New York but had to wait around 'til somebody important would've been usin' it anyway, and just sort of tag along. Man, New York's a hell of a town." She breaks, suddenly, into song, though it's more spoken than anything else. "With the something something up and the batteries down!" She indulges herself in another mouthful of whiskey, and then, letting the bottle dangle from her fingers, she says, "So we got back, we were all zapped into Cliathhood, and we went our separate ways. I wanted to stay, y'see, go back to my folks and all that, go back to school. But mum thought I'd tramped off with some guy during the year and a half, called me a harlot, and kicked me out, so, a pox on her, eh? Went to school, got good grades 'cause I was a smart little brown noser, went to uni, and finally i's just too fuckin' much for me. I didn' snap, I didn' snap, that much I didn' do, but I had to go, and so I jus' started wanderin'."

Yi wets her lips, and briefly turns a head as the lupe kin in the theatre bark, as if encouraging the Gnawer elder's singsongy tones. "Mm... I see," the ragabash nods solemnly. "Your mother, sadly. She didn't even miss you? What a shame." She shakes her head widely, and wipes a bit at her cheek in a fake tear for the po' ol' woman. Then, she leans in a bit closer and narrows her eyes slightly. "You actually went to a university? What did you study?"

"Oh, psych," Olga answers offhandedly, dismissively, waving a hand like it was a waste of time, or something not really worth talking about. "Jus' a couple years of it. I was really into myths and legends and primitivism and that sort of thing, y'know? Just blew my skirt up. But I didn' get much out of it, prob'ly did more harm than good. Didn' end up a fuckin' wannabe Walker or anything," she assures the other woman, just in case she needed to. "So, I toodled around for a bunch of years, maybe four, maybe five, I don' remember, just wandering up and down the coast, not really doin' much of any use to anybody. And then I ended up, somehow, back near the old sept; I wasn' really headed there, I just sort of - well I guess I's headed there, maybe, just unconscious-like. And I found out Concrete-Law'd passed on. I felt bad, real bad; and I felt bad about myself, too, 'cause the old guy'd given years of his life to me, to make sure I turned out right, and I hadn', really, I was jus' fuckin' around, blowin' my time away, wastin' it on cigarettes and stories. So I was listenin' around, and I decided, `A'right, so, the Sept of the Hidden Walk, that's the closest place I haven't been to and made an ass out of myself. Le's give it a try.` And I did. And that's my lousy ramblin' story, Yi honey."

Yi's expression changes here and there with the story's points, but she finally nods with some understanding, and some lack of understanding. "Well, at least now that you are here, you have created a great..." The ragabash pauses, searching for the word, "Air? No no.. uhm. Aura. Atmosphere! Yes, atmosphere." The word is not a commonly used one for the ragabash, but it gets out nonetheless. "I believe your being here could very well be something like Fate too. Everyone who comes to this Hidden Walk sept has contributed well, in their own ways, I think." She nods slowly, believing this. "And I don't think your story was lousy at all."

Olga's grin is friendly, easy, and awfully appreciative. "Y' really mean that?" she asks genuinely, like she doubts it herself, but rather than let the question be answered she brusts it off with a joke: "Well I'm sure all the non-Gnawers out there don' think too much of what I've done for the atmosphere when I've come around, if y'know what I mean, eh? Eh?" She reaches out and pokes the Ragabash in the knee to make her point, to make sure she knows she's making a terribly sly joke. "I do believe in fate though so mebbe. Although I do gotta say, there're some around I wish had kept their atmosphere back wherever it is they came from if y'know what I mean, eh?" This too is said in a playful voice, and again she pokes.

Yi outright giggles, nodding her head up and down and definitely feeling like she knows what the theurge is getting at. "Well if it weren't for them, we wouldn't have such interesting life." Sweeping up a new gulp of the drink, she clunks the bottle down just a little harder than she should on the ground. Good thing there's a blanket. "Well, at least from what I hear, this new moot will be Very interesting."

Olga swipes the bottle almost as soon as Yi sets it down, lurching out, steadying herself with another hand against the ground. "Oh God yes, thank heaven and blame hell for interestin' moots, eh? Do you think, uh," she begins to ask, but then loses herself in the question, struggling, creasing her eyes. "Oh, do you think, if we get this cub 'napped in time, we should take 'er? I mean it might be a bit much for a new cub, and we don', y'know, we don' want her to think bein' a Garou's all about eating people and shit."

Yi watches the liquor moving about in the bottle for a time, as if she has to take a good long bit to ponder this. Then, she breathes out a long, seemingly satisfied sigh and is contented to lean back. "Well. When it comes down to it, there is no real easy way to help a cub understand what we do, would you not agree? But, maybe something can be thought of. She... doesn't seem to be exactly in need of anything though?"

Olga finally puts to use the bottle she'd snatched, upending it and taking a sizeable gulp, before setting it back down on the sticky floor. "Nah, but there're some particularly not easy ways, like, uh, shoving 'em off a cliff and hoping they'll shift. Or telling 'em `Hi, you're Garou, it's the apocalypse and WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE OH MY GOD`. Those are bad ways," the woman says, firmly, though what her point is seems to have become obfuscated even to her. "So um," she says, leaning forward, peering at Yi like she's suddenly very far away, trying to order her thoughts, "so um I been thinking we'll get Cass to talk to her. It's in Birdseye turf, the cub, so I mean she is, not it's, 'cause she's not an it. So we wanna be, y'know, cool about it. Subtle. Casual. Impress Jana, she's such a snotty bitch. Don' want to give her anything to sneer her arched li'l nose about, y'know? So, uh, yeah, I figure, the cub's at a public school, so I's going to get - I mean, the cub's at a Christian school of some kind, so I'm gonna get Cass to talk to her, since she teaches at a Catholic school nearby. Convenient, eh?"

Yi bobs her head, agreeing. "And this Cass, though I haven't met her... will she be able to handle her? I mean, the cub. This will take some time, though, gaining trust. The question is, do we have time? The full moon is fast coming too." She rubs at her exposed arms, like the moon's touch prickles at her skin. "If we're lucky, nothing will happen while we are at the moot."

Olga gives her head a shake, a loose and sloppy movement. "I don' think she'll burst. I talked to 'er, I figure we got time, figure we got time to do it right. But I figure it won't take too much trust, either, we'll just have to think of something clever. You see, I got a plan. A plan that -" but she stalls, looking down at the carpet, at its bare stubbly spots, running a hand along it. "A plan that I forget right now, but it's a good fuckin' plan, eh? S'gonna work so good."

Yi leans forward to catch the plan, but then she gets disappointed. Or, she would be, but the theurge's catch makes the ragabash just lean back and laugh. "Oh, you are smart Olga, I am sure you will think of something. I just hope that she will take to our tribe. But, then, who wouldn't? We are Bone Gnawers! The Wang Tong! A gathering under the kings, and freer than the birds."

"Yeah!" Olga concurs with more vibrancy that sense. "The W-what? The Wang Something! Freer thank kings, gathering with the birds, feedin' them bread crumbs and stuff! There y'go li'l birds, eat our Gnawer breadcrumbs!" Olga laughs at how silly she's being and apparently deciding that's not silly enough she grabs herself another sip of whiskey, before again settling the bottle on the carpet, being very careful now, using two fingers to adjust it just perfectly. "Thank Yi," she says suddenly, looking up at her, looking almost concerned for some reason. "You're smart too. And quick! Kung fu, waaah."

Yi puts a hand to her chest, a bit more wideeyed and surprised at the compliment at first, then deeply bowing. "Ah you honor me much, oh Wise One," she says with a soft chuckle. Straightening after, the ragabash glances back towards the theatre. "Hmm... well I came to give our kin some treats... I should do that shouldn't I?" Planting her feet down well enough, she pushes herself back up to her feet. "I'll be back in just a moment. Really! And it's Wang Tong... which..." She waves a bit of a hand and then laughs. "Which I will explain later sometime."

[The two Gnawer elders thus drink themselves silly and tell each other stories into the night 'til they pass out or go do something else.]

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