January 05, 2003.01.05.02. - mullica revelations [rune] *fog[pine barrens, batsto village, cont'd from previous scene]
(rune)
Outside, the sudden shock of frigid night air blasts Rune full-force in the face. After several hours in the cozy pub, the sensation is shocking, indeed. Somehow, it still takes her breath away. She lifts her eyes to the sky beyond - velvet night, studded with diamonds and scattered with diamond dust - before changing focus and following her packmate's path.The bottles clank in her arms as she walks, an irregular beat that sings in syncopated time to the regular fall of her footsteps on the snowy sidewalk. The car is by now covered with a fine, light film, and snow still falls from the sky. She follows her packmates path through the snow (even Rune can track through fresh snow), but more definitely, she follows the thread of his presence, the invisible pull of pack. It's a pull she could follow if blindfolded, if blinded, if need be, centered somewhere low in her gut, curling along the back of her spine.
Pack.
"Do you want to get these samples now, James" she asks when she draws up beside him, casting him a sidelong glance that is not quite a glance. Her shoulder nudges his own as she shifts the bottles in her arms. "Or wait for tomorrow, or something?"
(james)
pack
there's footprints in the snow
pack
there's the trail of Rage laying like blood across it
pack
there's the form standing and blowing smoke plumes into the air
pack
there's the dreadlocked man that slowly turns to the approach of her heels in the snowshoulders shrug beneath the patchwork coat
he's looking over one at her
and that dark gaze follows her right on up beside him
then drops back to the snow"I'm sorry I almost lost it in there."
it seems he had a pack all along
ashes from the Camel flicked angrily at the ground
earlier, he just had his fun stealing one of hers
the only affection that could be shown and thought nothing of
but even if she's his lo....packmate
she's still Beta above all and infront of others
and there's something of a nod that jingles dreads over shoulders"We might as well, since we're here. You think we know enough?"
for it to be safe?
he didn't hear Carmen's command
but there's a thosuand reasons he'd take extra good care of Rune
and he's not the leader she is
not that he's questioning her decision
but trying to grasp what's enough to know before walking in
if there is such a thing(zoe)
. . .Slow, steady steps out, her staff sweeping softly before her making sure of obstacles. Strange stick to mark her path, but its as much protection as useful. Snow and cold air hitting her as she leaves the Pub. Had what she learned been worth it? Hard to say. Slowly starting her way through the night. Where did a blind woman go? Wherever her feet wandered it seemed. . .(rune)
"You didn't lose it," the Glass Walker responds, red mouth slipsliding into a faint smirk. "so there's no real need to apologize, is there?" She knows as well as he does how Rage rises, unbidden, how it seizes one, how it controls even when you need to be calm, even when your life depends on it."As for the rest," Rune continues, shifting the bottles in her arms. "I don't think we know enough, not really. But I'm not sure that we will ever know enough, and it's an avenue we should explore, if only to rule it out. If it's something as simple as cleaning up a spill to quiet a spirit, well, that's easily enough accomplished."
Sort of. There's a pause, silence, and for the moment her breath spills out, mists, combines with the smoke from his cigarette spiraling into the air. "But let's see what we do know. Some fallen - apparently - spirit fought with a Garou. Another man came and helped the Garou bind the spirit, well beneath the earth. For some reason, the spirit is waking now - " dark eyes skew towards James, and she draws another breath, shifting her gaze to the forest beyond. " - what if the spill woke the spirit, something in the activity of banes and such surrounding it woke it and gave it strength to rise again? And there's some connection to the mountains in North Carolina."
If we keep a connection open, maybe we can sense if one or the other of use starts hearing voices, and get out of there before we do something stupid. We can even go downriver a ways to get the samples. Nothing says we need to get them right here in Batsto.
(james)
there's the slightest semblance of a nod
she tells him not to worry about it
so he's not going to anymore
dragging smoke into a deep sigh"And the spirit telling people that it's their true God." shoulds rolling in another shrug, shaking that Rage off "And that's a good a guess as I've got, I'd prefer it to any other options springing out from my childhood imagination. Better than a vengeant true God, hm?"
and he quiets, then
as the connection between them crackles to life again
some warmth sizzling through and around his brain
he stands in that surrounding warmth for a moment
then begins striding into the forest
holding out a hand to take two of the bottles from herYeh..... I don't feel like jumping on the blind and burnt bandwagon, personally.
(rune)
"Agreed." The Glass Walker murmurs. "On both counts."The connection open, sensations and surface thoughts fizzle along the connection, but more than that, some comforting sense of presence that always comes with pack. She'd forgotten that, when she left. She'd forgotten how right it feels, how naturally it enfolds them, how they cannot live without it.
And so they walk. James has two beer bottles, Rune has one. And so they walk, and they do not speak, and beneath her feet, the texture changes from mildly slippery snow-covered concrete to more slippery snow-coated grassy weedy dead leaf-rot sort of stuff. Her pace slows, so that she can pick her way through the broken ground. Her pace slows, and her hackles rise, as they wind through the trees to the blood red river rolling sluggishly through the woods. The snow falls and coats the trees and the sloping bank, but just melts into the river, which seems (red as blood, lined with cedars) somehow a malevolent presence in the quiet bog.
Rune's penlight flashes over the surface, and then she picks out a careful trail to the water's edge, filling crouching to fill her bottle before handing it back to James, and waiting for the next.
(james)
there's that natural easiness between them
two bodies moving with one connected mind
he lived without it for two years
and it left him hollow, ravaged
no Garou should have to live without it
and he did - it was a decision of faith
and even out here, in the..... creepy?.... woods
there's a level of comfort found in that all but physical touchhackles raised long ago
they never settled from the bar
but they're rising some army up his spine
it's unsettling out here
he understands what Carmen was feeling
though it's not as strong for himtrading the empty bottle for the full, then the next
he doesn't hunker down like her
he's keeping a lookout
and not exactly looking at the river, just in case
Camel clenched between his teeth
lips pulled back in a slight snarl
as if the pine-sol wasn't already bad enough
he's balancing the two bottlenecks between fingers
hand held out to give her leverage to rise against the mud(rune)
The last bottle filled, Rune accepts James' hand and rises gratefully, letting the cold waters of the Mullica roll on, undisturbed by her touch, at least. She wants to take a last glance back at the place where all these crazy folk have come to be blinded. She wants one last look, as if remembering the place (and the creepy feeling, the unsettling sensation, as if her body were half-way outside its boundaries, something's wrong with the world.) itself might somehow help them decipher the many, ill-fitting puzzle pieces which they have managed to uncover.She doesn't look back. She just stands, and with a sweep of her gaze toward James, heads back out the way they came. The Glass Walker follows their very clear trail through the frozen bog, over the light fall of snow, into the quiet town where who knows how many blinded and burned people sit at home, reveling in their silent, ecstatic communion with the one true god (the devil knows how to seduce the faithful) and spreading evangelical word of their conversion to all about. It's like a virus, religion, particularly this religion, infecting the host, using its brain to replicate itself, spreading it to another and another in an ever widening circle.
The thought is alarming, (and shared, wordlessly, over the connection. Some image, infection, the black circle spreading outwards from the strange little town.) and so Rune quickens her careful pace once they gain the streets again. Ten minutes later, there's still silence - though musing, now that the eerie feeling is fading and her hackles have begun to fall - as they take their seats in the cold interior of the Beemer. The windshields and headlights have been wiped clear of snow, and Rune allows the negine to idle several minutes until the blasting heat means she can take off her gloves.
"We've got alot to tell Erik," she says at last, casting a glance at James beside her. He has the unenviable job of balancing three bottles so that they do not jostle and spill, imperfectly topped as they are with bent caps, but she brushes her fingers along his thigh nevertheless, before her hand finds its way to the gear shift. "Let's go home."
(james)
that creepy sensation
that calling temptation
how it can't hurt to look, we hope it won't
but we want to look anyway
he remembers Carmen's words
and there's that careful deathgrip he has on the connection
(don't you dare look, baby)
he wants to crawl out from beneath the rippling blackness that's spreading like a black hole
everything falling into it and the mouth gaping wide and wider and widerdo you remember, James, when you were a young cub, the story that Momma Ruggs told? That ThunderWyrm that lives in the belly of a mountain, a river of blood streaming out from beneath it from the thousands of Garou that it consumes... the blood of his own pack now a part of that neverending stream.... don't think about that, Jamey, ssshhhhhh.
he almost doesn't remember the walk back to the Beemer
snapping back into it when the locks flip
when the engine idles and the wipers begin to fling snow
there's a delicate balance of those bottles"Yea... not even sure where to being with it."
there's a half-hearted chuckle
Posted by james at January 05, 2003 12:00 AM
but a whole-hearted smile at the soft touch
just nodding
yeh. home
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