Stand In Again
7/17/2007
10:38 PM
Logfile from GarouMUSH.
Currently the moon is in the waxing Crescent Moon phase (20% full).
It is currently 22:34 Pacific Time on Tue Jul 17 2007.
Currently in Saint Claire, it is mostly cloudy. The temperature is 67 degrees Fahrenheit (19 degrees Celsius). The wind is calm today. The barometric pressure reading is 29.88 and falling, and the relative humidity is 81 percent. The dewpoint is 61 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius.)
Bawn: Western Forest(#3018RA)
Tall Sitka spruce and sequoia crowd around and above you. Many of the trees are old, their branches twisted into impossible shapes, trunks broad and draped with lichen, mosses and creepers. Tendrils of moss hand down from them like green spiderwebs, snaring the unwary with cold, ghostly fingers. The patches of younger growth are dense and pale, needles tinged with silver. Matted undergrowth huddles sullenly in the occasional small clearings, clutching with thorns and burrs at the legs of those who would pass. Deer seldom venture here, but the forest is full of rustlings, and tiny glints from wary, watchful eyes.
The forest spreads out to the east, bounded on the west by Sunrise Road. From farther to the west, one can occasionally hear the distant sounds of the town of Kent's Crossing.
Contents:
Helen
Olga
Obvious exits:
Southwest Highway 22 Overgrown Path Sunrise Road Farmhouse Caern of the Hidden Walk Creek Central Bawn Southern Bawn Northern Bawn
From the direction of the Fury House, there's rustling amongst the trees and crunching of leaves and grass. Helen is walking carefully, humming to herself.
Runner, having rotated her patrol closer towards the Fury House's general direction on the bawn, sniffs eagerly at some random animal trail leading towards its path. It's the sound of humming that catches her ears, and she hurries through the brush and trees to investigate the sound. Of course her hurrying is done with that stalking feeling, moving almost silently through the wood. When she does come upon Helen, though, it is with a happy bark that she greets the Fury ragabash.
Helen tenses immediately at the noise, but it takes her about a second to relax and smile at the familiar Runner. "Arf," she says with a grin. The Fury opens her mouth again to say something, but it's interrupted by her snickering--at herself. She shifts down into the same form, taking a few steps towards Runner. Hello!
Runner trots over, bumping a shoulder gently against the Fury ragabash in a more affectionate sort of greeting. Hello, hello. Long time no see, Cycle-Breaker! I keep trying to track you down, but can only go so far. And now, for my patience, you come to me. The Gnawer smiles with a drop of her jaw at the other now-lupus'd newmoon.
Cycle-Breaker chuffs, a friendly, happy sound. You found me! You are a good hunter, jokes the Fury. What do you need, Runs-the-Gauntlet?
Remember, I asked you to be Guardian before? Runner flicks her ears back and forth in good humor, appreciating the joke, before continuing. Now, I would ask you again. For different reason, for a different task, I need to go off the bawn again. The Gnawer plops her backend down, considering a moment before adding, Not a very straight Guardian, am I.
Cycle-Breaker's head tilts to the side. She chuffs an affirmative, she'll do it. Her tail wags like a happy, silly puppy. What new task is this?
Fat-Ripper travels through the bawn in Crinos, the better to carry her bright weathered bag with her, the moon not yet thick enough to make her mood an impediment. She lopes on all fours, covering decent ground but making a racket as she goes, cutting a swathe through the dry summer bushes, like crackling kindling. She stops and slows as she finds the scent trails of the two Garou, and turns to follow them, making no less noise.
Runner scratches an ear with a hind leg, stalling on the explanation. But in the end she reveals, Ears-to-the-Ground and I go to the Scab, to find a mother of a cub. A Lost Cub, here. The fostern's ears are about to flip back when the sounds of large crinos moving through the forest catch her attention, and alarm the Gnawer. Runner gets to her feet, looking squarely in the direction of the noise.
Ohhhh. Then, ears flicking, Cycle-Breaker looks to the creator of the noise, stepping to the side then pausing, one paw up as if she were a tentative horse, before trodding towards Fat-Ripper. Recognizing her once she's close enough, the Fury chuffs happily in greeting.
Fat-Ripper trundles noisily and innocently through the brush, making her greeting only when the trees have parted enough for her to be sure there's no one else there. ~Runner,~ she calls out to them, in thick Crinos tongue. ~Cycle-Breaker, my pigeon. The night is cool. How are you both?~
Runner follows along after Cycle-Breaker, but ends up greeting her tribemate in a more investigative manner than the Fury. She takes up a position with the night's breeze towards her, nose poking forth in hopes of scenting what's in the bag. In reply, though, she raises her tail and wags it a couple of times. Good, good. But Fat-Ripper. Why warform?
Good, good, chuffs Cycle-Breaker. She steps towards Runner to nudge the fostern in the shoulder with her wet nose.
In response the large Crinos merely lifts herself into an awkward hunch, so that she's two-legged but not at full height, and she hefts her bag, small-seeming now in her massive paw, displaying the digits she needs to carry it. The bag itself smells of plastic and stale bedsheets, old sandwiches and tobacco, a rich, stinky, foul, earthy smell that would take several seconds to piece entirely together; Fat-Ripper smells of little other than a faint stink of oranges and cloves: wonder of wonders, she's bathed recently, and even used some fancy citrus kind of soap. She greets the others only with vague and curious sniffs, not in the lupine way at all, but with a different sort of enthusiasm: ~Good,~ she barks out across the woods. ~Good! Did you hear of Kills-the-Cries cubs, Runner?~
Runner bumps the Fury lightly in reflexive response, nudge for nudge, but her nose twitches in response to the multitude of scents wafting from the theurge. And even more so, Fat-Ripper's words get a stronger response of surprise. Runner's ears stand right up. Kills-the-Cries' ... cubs?!
Who? What? asks Cycle-Breaker, practically whining in curiosity.
Fat-Ripper takes a half-second to consider her course, and decides cruelty's the best course: ~Well,~ the large Crinos admits, with a modesty that seems entirely ill-placed on a beast that could rip a man in half. ~I'm no Galliard. Perhaps I'll just let him tell you himself?~ This form isn't well-suited to deception, either, and the enjoyment she's getting out of witholding the information is obvious in the salacious way she licks at her front teeth.
Runner thus senses that enjoyment, and her ears splay. There's even an almost begging whine from the Gnawer newmoon, but it's one that she stops with a quick click of her teeth together. You are tricksy, Fat-Ripper. Very. Raven, Fox, and Mouse all spy upon you! Said as if trying to curse the knifemoon but obviously not being serious about it, Runner turns instead back to Cycle-Breaker with a snort and a flick of her tail. She tries not to continue looking curious. Tries, but fails.
Letting out little chuffing noises as if she were laughing, Cycle-Breaker's eyes focus briefly on Runner. You are not good at that, she tells the other ragabash. Aren't the ~Glass Walker~ cubs here at the farmhouse now?
Either Fat-Ripper is drawn in by Runner's ruse, or her cruelty only goes so far, because eventually she explains, with flattened, anxious ears: ~He has sired a litter on one of the dogs,~ she says, and though that one word does carry a faint note of disdain, the news is, in general, good, at least as she tells it. ~In two moons, he says, she'll birth them.~ She answers Cycle-Breaker's question immediately, not taking time to enjoy Runner's reaction. ~Yes,~ she says, slightly resentfully. ~They made me bathe.~
Runner switches back to a more relaxed peer at the theurge, a touch over her shoulder, when Fat-Ripper 'confesses'. The fostern looks a little surprised, but at the same time... not put off. Her simple reply is a short, Oh. Followed by the second confession of the night, and then Runner looks purely amused. Made you bathe? Cubs? Her glance over to Cycle-Breaker is purely in admission that no, she's not good at being mean to those she cares about. And it's followed by a lupine smile for the both of them.
More wolf-like laughter from Cycle-Breaker. You do smell different, acknowledges the Fury. You smell like...~bad soap from one of those stupid stores~.
There's chagrin in with the evenness of Fat-Ripper's explanation, and perhaps if the moon were bigger it might turn to anger, but with Luna's thin and brittle in the sky she can fully appreciate her friends' amusement. Still she tries to look big about it, proud, slightly affronted. ~I met them at the farmhouse,~ she explains, like the fault's theirs and not hers. ~They - well, they ran away. I decided it was time I had a bath.~
Runner cants her head then, sniffs again, and does wrinkle up her nose with the strength of the product to her lupine sense. Think you should go back and make them smell you in their lupus form, Fat-Ripper, she comments with a vague tilt back of her ears.
Fat-Ripper lopes back down onto all fours, defensively, her back up just before she slings her bag back over it. ~I like it,~ she argues back at them, her tone defensive and almost snide. Her lips flicker back to expose her hard yellow teeth. ~It makes me smell pretty,~ she reasons.
It is strong, agrees Cycle-Breaker. Smelled better when you did not smell like ~women's soap~ and flowers. She chuffs then, bobbing her head firmly as if she were surely the last word on the subject. But if you like it...
Runner is with Cycle-Breaker, offering a neutral ground. It smells like strong herbs. And... clean. She flipflops her tail to either side of her, thus settling on a non-opinion, and just stating fact. Does this mean you are going to bathe more often?
Fat-Ripper doesn't answer that question except with another quick, defensive flicker of lip. Instead she changes the topic, stretching herself up onto both legs, to full height, her bag perched precariously on one shoulder. She rests against a young tree barely able to take the Crinos' weight. ~I have other news,~ she announces, her tone slightly more serious, but still with that casualness about it that suggests friendliness, and the ultimate unimportance of what's under discussion. She tries to school her body to stillness and evenness, so as to betray little opinion. ~Ears has challenged me for Eldership. We're both to bring food and drink to the storytelling moot, to feed everyone who comes: whoever brings the most and the best will be Bone Gnawer Elder.~
A very Bone Gnawer challenge, muses Cycle-Breaker. She scratches her right front paw against the dirt, almost antsy, and begins to step here and there in place. I should go. But Runs-the-Gauntlet, she adds to the fostern, I will do the favor for you.
Runner once again grins, betrayed a small flick of her ear before she notes, Ears told me of this challenge. I think it is good. Bring lots of food, lots of drink. Share with others, and they will be happy with filled stomachs. Chuffing her good bye at the restless ragabash, Runner looks on after the Fury as she disappears again, and then settles with a sigh of relief. Turning back to Fat-Ripper, she flicks her ears twice. May the best of the Bone Gnawers win in this challenge. Both of you have been great leaders, even if Ears has the rank. Here, Fat-Ripper, you should consider too what you will do next. Not for family yet, but for yourself.
Fat-Ripper speaks quickly, sharply, defensive anger rising into her voice even though it's not placed directly on Yi. ~Even if I am not Elder, Squeaks will still be mine,~ she specifies, brooking no disagreement. ~I will still have family to look after. What I do will depend on that. I depend on that.~ She's quiet for a couple seconds, suddenly restless; she leaves her tree, and it eases back into vertical. The tapetum of her eyes flashes in the darkness, in the thin reflected light of a sliver of moon. ~But yes, you're right,~ she admits, dourly. ~There's much to consider.~
Runner doesn't move to disagree about Squeaks, only adding that Squeaks needs you, yes. There's even a small sense of guilt from the fostern on that note. How is she?
~Well,~ Fat-Ripper answers automatically, without feeling or consideration. After a few more seconds thought, she adds, ~She needs air and freedom. I'm trying to find Fights-for-Hope, to ask if she can stay on the bawn. Now that the `pure ones`,~ she says the word with every last ounce of sarcasm and every last dram of spit she can conjure up, ~are no longer guardians, I'm no longer concerned for her safety.~
Runner's sense of guilt ratchets up a couple more notches with the ire felt from the theurge. She gives herself a shake, however, to shake it off and looks back up to the theurge. If need be, I will look for Reflection's-Howl too. I must find him to ask for permission to go off the bawn, myself.
Fat-Ripper's gratitude is palpable. ~If you see him, ask him, yes,~ she requests, ducking her head towards the much smaller wolf. ~Please. He likes the kid - at least I think he does - and I think there will be no difficulties.~
Runner licks at her muzzle again, and so flicks her ears in a good humored way. Yes, I will look for him too. And he may be more acceptable, once he sees Squeaks is no threat to the caern. She gazes up at the theurge one more time before turning to go. But she pauses with a paw in the air, as if remembering. Fat-Ripper? How will the amount of food brought to the challenge be judged?
~The old man will judge,~ the Theurge answers. ~The old man in the woods, the one who thinks he's from long-ago. I forget his deedname. He is our Philodox.~ Solidly she slings her bag over her shoulder, and throws out her shoulders, before dropping again to all fours. ~I will go look for Fights-for-Hope,~ she tells the Ragabash. ~Perhaps he is by Chimera's waterfall. Our moon is waxing high, tonight.~
Runner looks confused at who the theurge names at first, but then realizes and flips her ears back. He is a confusing one, the Old One. But he has not done us wrong yet, so that is fine. You look by the waterfall. I must go check the bawn's borders before I look for the Warder. Gaia watch, and grant you good hunting.
With a swift but well-meaning goodbye, Fat-Ripper resettles her bag on her shoulder before beginning to move off through the thick trees at an even lope, disappearing into the night.
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