2020-12-11 Potlatch
Potlatch
Participants: Bites-The-Hand Alexa
Location: Sept of the Smiling Angel
Date and Time: December 11th, 2020
Summary: Alexa and Bites-the-Hand exchange the Gifts of their tribes, just like you aren't supposed to.
Biter has set up on the side of the training area, marking off an area with candles and setting down cardboard suitable for sitting on without scratching up the legs too badly. There is no incense, but Biter smells terrible. Perhaps that can suffice as a substitute.
Alexa comes into the the training room with a bit of a pensive, absent look in her eyes. It seems her mind is somewhere else today - but she does unsling her pack when she notices Bites-the-Hand, setting it down near the practice weapon stands, and then joins him among the cardboard and candles - looking at the very Bone Gnawer setup with what looks to be a bit of an approving smile. She sits across from him, cross-legged, and then nods her head slowly in his direction.
They'd both known coming into it that training gifts from half-spirit to half-spirit was much harder, but Alexa had been grateful for the opportunity to take him up on his offer - and so she smiles as she sits, gently, without showing teeth - the Fostern Sept Officer now patiently playing the role of the student. There are no words, simply a seat down, and... the attempt once again, to feel out the shape of the other's soul.
"You look like you have had a bad time today," says Biter. "Do you want to talk about it?" Trying to feel out someone else's soul is hard enough when you're not carrying pain, and guarding it.
Alexa bows her head, closing her eyes. She looks up and opens them. "... Silverhoof has been a quiet pack for some time now," she says. "And my heart aches for the losses I've felt in the wake of the Siege. Recently, one of my Sisters in the Furies asked if I might form a pack with them. Silverhoof was always meant to be a training pack - we'd assemble for a few seasons, Liam-Rhya would teach us what he knows and give us experience, and then we would go off to make our own packs." There's a pause.
"The time may have come to do that, but... my heart is heavy for it. The Sept Alpha hurts lately, and I fear causing him further hurt."
She pauses. "How about yourself, Bites-the-Hand?"
"I think I have been betrayed," says Biter, his voice heavy and his eyes down-cast. "By someone who I thought I could trust. Not someone of the Sept," he says, hurriedly, raising his hands as though in defense. "Someone... else." He frowns. "I am tired of my friends being like this. I am so young, and I do not understand why I am teaching others things... I should be learning."
"But this is different, of course," says Biter, gesturing to the circle he's created. "The gift I can share with you can make you stronger." He smiles. "I hope it gives you great confidence, whatever comes of it." His smile wavers. "It... is hard to let go of a pack."
Alexa's smile wavers a bit too. Her eyes turn down to the cardboard. She nods. "I... am sorry, for what happened. Giggle-Thief. The... Black Mesa coming apart. You deserved better, Bites-the-Hand. You've been an upstanding wolf. You've been honorable in your conduct and had Gaia's love in your heart. I'm sorry that the world has failed you like this - again and again."
Her eyes turn up. "If you need the help of a Sept Officer," she says, calmly, "... or of a wolf, or of a friend. I'm here to help. If there's anything you need to help rectify this betrayal - I am here to help. And even if not... just know that your heart does not bleed alone. We will see better days, Bites-the-Hand. We will make it happen."
"I am honorable," says Bites-the-Hand, "But I am not wise. I must become wise - but I am not wise enough to know how. The first step is the longest step in that journey." He settles himself. "Enough talk. I know it is more difficult to learn the rat-wisdom than to learn your unicorn-blessings... But there is no simple path to it. You must endure the suffering, in the Ahroun way."
He extends his hands, palm out, fingers up.
Alexa nods. "Rat is a survivor," she says, extending a hand back. "I am ready and willing to endure what I must for the sake of becoming stronger. Especially if I am to soon lead others - I must be ready to stand against the worst of what the Defiler might throw at us."
Her hand moves into his, clasping it gently.
It is not a matter of learning. You do not study a secret art. You do not practice a move, again and again, until it becomes innate. There is no wisdom here. There is no 'lore' as Biter puts it.
What there is, instead, is osmosis. Two souls, pressed close enough together that something in one soul can drip in to the next. The DNA unravels, and presses its codons against the boundary; on the opposite side of the impenetrable barrier between Self and Other, something transcribes the message as it flies past. Like a viral infection.
The change hurts. It has to hurt, to become low. To become a rat. Because Rat's gift is not just a gift of being like a Rat - it's something stranger than that. At least, the gift that Biter received. It is like sinking in to a deep, dark place. Like sinking in to cool, dark, clean, lightless water. And then, as the light vanishes, and you sink deeper still, the water stops being clean. Poison swims there with you. Chlorines. Tetrodotoxins. Nerve agents. Feces. You sink in to a place of impurity.
You begin to become something that sees home in such a place.
Alexa's fingers tremble slightly. Her breath trembles for a moment, until she forces herself to stop, and begins doing cyclic breathing. A meditation technique. Still, she hardens her heart, and attempts to avoid flinching. There's something deeply alien about this to her Wyld heart, borne of the Furies at it is. She's going someplace her Mothers would never have wanted to be.
For the good of the People.
She holds onto that thought, even as she drowns in the filth. She'll do this, play out this horrible dance, again and again - and she will THANK the person who does it to her. She did, after all, ask for this. She did ask to walk through radiation-smeared dens of the Wyrm and hold fast. This is what it takes. This is what it MEANS to be able to resist toxins, on a spiritual level. And unlike one of Rat's children, it is not over quickly.
She visualizes her steady flame - a source of calm in her soul, attempting to maintain it while she's down here.
In legend, the Unicorn is a thing that purifies, and which loves purity. In legend, its horn was said to have the power to cleanse poisoned water, and to heal sickness. The power inside of you aches to lash out against this poison - to reject it. Perhaps, in another world, Unicorn could have given you this power - but the power to repel poison and the power to drink poison cannot be the same thing.
There is a wrongness in this. In becoming something unclean. You understand, now, the warnings the elders gave - why it is not proper to learn too many gifts this way. Surely, surely this leaves a mark...
But there is a subversive thrill in that first moment when you take a deep breath of a poison and don't give a shit, because *how could you possibly be more impure than you already are?*
Alexa's fingers clench slightly. A feeling of bile rising in her throat. Her breath grows heavy again... and there's tears in her eyes. Bites-the-Hand was right - this WAS an Ahroun's way to approach the problem. And who better to know how to thrive among the refuse than Rat? She chokes down the feeling, keeping the connection - both physical and spiritual - for as long as she can.
Sweat begins to form on her skin, clammy and cold. Her breath comes in - deep and heavy, struggling to hold on, struggling to-
Her hand rips free, as though of its own accord. Alexa's eyes snap open, and her body immediately lurges to the side. Her stomach cramps, and in a horrifying moment, she vomits off to the side. Stomach acid burns at her esophogas, and slowly, reality slips back into view. She stares at the pool of her own vomit, and then - again, she feels her stomach cramp, and she vomits again, pale and sweaty. It is only twice, though - with that, the Galliard, her dignity lost, stares down at the puddle of vomit, regathering her bearings.
It took her longer to pop this time. It's sinking in, slowly, but surely. She hands her head, continuing to pant, wordless now.
Alexa gives a nervous laugh, gratefully accepting the towel and wrapping it around herself. She pulls out some napkins from her back pocket, blowing the stomach acid out from her nasal cavity as best she can - gross - and giving Bites-the-Hand a tired but grateful smile. "It's a hard one," she agrees, sitting upright and accepting the mug of tea. She curls into the blanket a bit. "But necessary," she says, looking down into the cup. "... I have to be strong for my people. I have to be strong to face what they're throwing at us."
There's a pause, and her eyes close. She gives a weak smile. "Thank you," she says. "Bites-the-Hand. It is an ordeal, but we are both made better for it."
"It is also very nice to be able to eat anything, forever," says Biter. "It is not all suffering. Los Angeles smelled very, very, very bad before I had this power. It still smells not good but it is not as bad at all."
Biter ties his hair back with a shoe-lace. He ties his plume of hair back with a traditional shoelace knot. "I am ready to begin."
It isn't as difficult for him as it is for you. Unicorn is a gentler creature than Rat, kinder - and the gift itself is purer. But receiving a gift this way is never easy. It is alien to his nature, so his nature must change to receive it, and change is effort, always.
Alexa takes a moment to recover herself - actually gets up, gets cleaning equipment, and deals with the vomit rather than making some poor kinfolk do it - perhaps as a matter of principle. If she weren't choosing to do this, after all, she wouldn't have made the mess in the first place.
In time, however, the spot is cleaned, the tea is consumed, Alexa has gargled and spat water and gotten the worst of the vomit out of her system - and she has sat down, folding herself into a meditative position again. The Galliard smiles across gently to Bites-the-Hand, and much as he did to her, the Talesinger's calloused hand turns upside-down, offered freely to the Ahroun.
Biter helps, of course. You're senior to him in Rank, and he's the sort to take that kind of thing quite seriously. He'd clean it all up himself if you didn't insist on tidying your own messes. That's most of what the towel is for.
Biter's hands close around yours. Callous to callous, dark skin on dark skin. His eyes close. He centers...
Mother's Touch is a gift of healing. Though classically one of the Theurge's gifts, it is also offered freely to every one of Unicorn's children - which is how Alexa came to know the art of sacred healing despite her moon. It is a gift which taps into one's empathy, one of reaching out and touching another - physically, emotionally, spiritually.
Some think that it must be easy to serve Unicorn. She is, after all, a being of love. She is, after all, a being of mercy. These people underestimate, perhaps, what it means to be truly - truly, unconditionally loved. A love that breaches beyond the bounds of frail mortal compassion - a love given which cannot be given back in equal kind. How can one hope to return such love as given by a spirit of pure love? We are inadequate, we are filled with Rage, Mother's dying screams burn in our souls, and yet through it all we are asked to keep this Love in our hearts.
And to reach out with that love. To give of one's self - to pour that compassion for the other into and through one's self, and to use that to foster back the flame of life within another. That distance between selves is like a murky sea, and that love - that love inside, it is seeking to find its way across. It is seeking-
Biter does not merely touch your hand. He has to hold your hand. He has to feel an intimacy which is alien to him.
Since his injury, he has been warmer. Reaching out to others, accepting touching, and being touched. Embracing, and being embraced. But... he is not doing so because the fear is gone, because the pain is gone. He is doing so because another fear, the fear of being alone, of being isolated and unloved, is even stronger.
Of course it hurts to be loved. Hasn't it always? To accept the love radiating down upon you, knowing that it will end someday, without warning or a proper ending - that your friends might die, that your mother might die, that your friends might leave you behind, or betray you, or curse you for a mongrel? Of course it hurts.
He deserves to live. But believing he deserves to be loved... The pain of it threatens to burst from his chest. Tears stream down his face, his teeth grit until they crack. How can he be worthy of this? How can anyone in the world?
It's an experience that connects them. That experience of crying, of not feeling worthy - the experience that had washed over Alexa upon first seeing her pack's totem. It is not only Bites-the-Hand crying, though Alexa's tears are silent, her stance, meditative. This gift... to take but a portion of that all-encompassing love, and to weave it into the spiritual essence of one's being - and to breathe that love into another.
It is a gift wholly incapable of being used on one's self - one can only learn this gift to safeguard the lives of another. How easy will it be, though, to tap into that feeling of cosmic love in the heat of a life-or-death battle, with rage firing high? How easy will it be to find this calm when a loved one bleeds to death before one? It's something that must be internalized - deeply - again and again. A state to slip back into, a difficult practice - to hit the 'pause' button on all-consuming fury for just long enough to give the gift of life. To remember that all this rage and hate and fury has a reason, and that the reason is holy - and not only, to harm that which is unholy.
He cracks, of course, as Alexa did, though in a different way. He recoils away from you, fleeing the love of Unicorn like a rat fleeing light, twisting away like a startled animal and curling in to the shape of a wolf. It's a sound like a man dying, being shot, as he cries out once in god-awful anguish and is then silent, save for the soft, muffled sound of a mewling, whimpering wolf sobbing without tears in to its own belly, pressed against the wall.
This is not like the vomit. There is nothing you can do to pry him from the dark place in himself he's sheltered in. All you can do is give him the minutes he needs to escape himself.
Her face is tearstained. Alexa smiles sympathetically, wiping her face. There must be gifts that are... emotionally easier to learn, than these, she reasons. There must be. An emotional tremble in her breath, her eyes close... she sits silently, patiently. Reflecting, perhaps, on why this was seldom done. Yet... they were also going to be stronger for it, wiser for it. The both of them.
"I think that we will win," says Biter, when he returns, wiping the tears from his eyes and the phlegm from under his nose. He hiccups, a lingering sob. "I think... that our enemies will not defeat us. I think we are strong."
He clenches a fist. "Because we understand that there is strength, and holiness, in suffering... But, we know that it is not only there. Not only."
That gives Alexa a moment of pause. The look she gives the man in homid - it's almost like she's looking through him for a moment. Then, slowly, a warm smile spreads to her still-tear-stained face, and she nods. "You know," she says. "I think there's some wisdom in that thought. Compassion will see us through. Love, too, is holy."
She relaxes a little, closing her eyes and giving a chuckle of disbelief, shaking her head. "I think I am learning why we are not to do this too often. We will have to do this more. A full cycle of the moon, it was said to me... and yet despite everything, this is as new to me, far into Fostern, almost Adren... as it is to you, Ben. Though you are no longer an untested Cliath either. You have after all begun to be acknowledged for your deeds." Her eyes turn up to the scar on his face, and then she closes her eyes with a gentle smile. "... how are you feeling?"
"There is holiness in pain. Compassion, and love, are a kind of pain," muses the Ahroun. "Bu'ut, I do not think that is why they are holy."
"I feel... tired," he admits. "I thought I would be a great hero and warrior and I would change things, like I had changed. But the world cannot change as fast as me. Our enemies are too big. I understand, now, that I will be fighting them forever, and that I will die fighting them, and the world will still be here, after." He scratches his neck. "Unless the world ends?"
"But... maybe that is okay. I think it will be enough to be holy, to fight and then die, as an Ahroun should."
To anyone besides a Garou, it would be a fucked-up sentiment. Alexa, however, smiles her understanding and nods slowly. "It is said that on the day of the Apocalypse," she says, "there will be a great battle. A final battle, for the fate of Gaia and the future of the world."
"One of my goals in all this is to give the Wyrm as few tools as possible... and to build bridges among those who fight it as much as possible too. That we might stand in solidarity when the Imminent Strike comes - whether or not we live to see such a day. And however such a day should end - there is honor and dignity in doing one's purpose. In healing this wounded Earth, and in standing against those who would harm it." She chuckles. "You say you lack Wisdom. And yet I see you growing in Wisdom, young Cliath. Keep at it. We will be at your side. Always. You've a Sept, and a Tribe, and a People now. Never forget that."
"Do you know a good place to plant an oak tree?" says Biter, a little nervous. "I have to plant one for chiminage, to show wisdom, but - I asked the oak what would be a good idea but oaks do not know these things. Oaks just drop seeds, and hope."
Alexa pauses in thought. Her eyes turn to the far wall, and then she smiles a bit, glancing back to Bites-the-Hand. "Have you ever been to Griffith Park, Bites-the-Hand?"
