standing against the waves [Cassian]

[Linnea Bartlett] Some Garou of the Caern of Echoes avoid the crater that opened near the heart of their Caern the way sinners avoid church. Some cannot be reminded, some do not wish to be reminded, some bear scars enough, physical and otherwise, and take nothing from the ghastly scene that they cannot create just as well from their own hearts. Others visit daily or weekly, to pray, or remember, or bestir their rage or gird their courage, or to search for the remains of some vanished friend.

Linnea is often found there. Usually, she sits above the battlefield, on the ledge where the tunnel bypassing the Caern’s heart opens into what seemed the heart of Malfeas, studying the pieces below as if they were a chessboard or a diorama, gods and generals, generals and gods. This evening, however, she does not sit above the battle, she has sunk herself in the bathos and the glory. The teenager is crouched in the middle of the black and white statues, her pale hair drawn back, shining in the light as it spills down her worn and dirty thermal undershirt. Her feet are poised over a lumpy whorl of onyx intestines, frozen where they escaped the grasping claws of a massive Black Spiral Dancer in his death throes, staggering from the massive white mountain of what the Caern’s dead Warder, Blood Eclipse. Her perch is a precarious one, but she is as balanced as a well-made blade, as she sits there, studying the Fenrir’s unmoving, unchanging visage.

[Slow Avalanche] Some come here to remember, to pray, to shudder with morbid voyeurism. Heavy footsteps echo down the tunnel that leads out onto the ledge, and then a confused looking Godi emerges and looks out over the frozen tableux with a look of mild frustration on his face. It would seem he has come here by accident.

Frowning, he sets both hands on his hips and stands above it all, looking out over the contorted bodies, eyes wandering over forms and shapes with locking in on any in particular. Slowly the frustration eases from his blunt features, and he seems to sink into a reverie, his eyes growing heavy lidded. Accident has brought him here, but finding himself before the hallowed grounds, he seems content to survey them and think, setting aside whatever previous purpose he may have had before.

Reaching into his pocket, he draws forth a battered iron flask. It looks old, with ornate flourishes now banged and dented out of their original shape, ruined some might say. But it holds the liquid within, the thick metal still hermetic, and it seems that is what matters most, aesthetics be damned. Unscrewing the cap slowly, the Godi lifts the flask to his lips and takes a nip. Just as slowly he screws it closed, and secrets it away within his voluminous leather jacket.

Then, perhaps for the first time or only now deigning to take note, his eyes lock on Linnea and observe her. A moment as he chews the inside corner of his lips, and then he casts about for a means to descend to her level. Ten seconds later, he's carefully making his way down the scree of the slope, arms extended, balancing as he steps from rock to rock, brow furrowed as he tries not to dislodge any detritus.

[Linnea Bartlett] The teenager turns sharply at the sound: chin rising, neck twisting quickly enough to send her heavy braid swinging over her left shoulder. Her eyes flicker, narrowing into focus as she watches the Godi work his way down the scrabbled slope of shambling earth, rock and debris. It requires a careful eye and a careful foot - concentration, particularly for someone so large - to make it down the slope without dislodging a small avalanche.

Her gaze unfocuses as he descends, drifts to the compacted rock and earth that form the crater's roof, the wiggling little worms of blind seeking roots that have pushed their way this far into the city's soil, seeking nourishment from the inhuman dead who had been laid to rest here since time almost immemorial. When he reaches the bottom of the slope, looks up and finds her again, turns his steps toward her, her gaze sharpens again. The young teenager rises, turning away from the Get who was once her Alpha, and lifts her hand in a faint wave.

[Slow Avalanche] It's a near thing. A few yards from the bottom Cassian stops, stranded, casting about with dismay for another rock or safe patch of dirt to step on from his high perch. He looks like a man caught in a fast flowing river, trying for a crossing but suddenly realizing he's gone too far in the wrong direction, and must now brave the waters or turn back. Frowning, he straightens, places his hands on his hips, and turns around, placing both hands on the rock, and lowering himself off the rock like a child climbing down a highchair, arms bracing for a moment as they take his weight before his boots connect gently with the dirt below.

Turning, he wipes his hands together, and picks his way on down. If he's aware of having looked less than graceful, of having betrayed a clumsy demeanour, it doesn't show on his face. Wending his way through the statues and around the broken geography of the crater, he catches sight of the tentative wave, and raises a large mitt in response, looking like a caricature of the Queen Mother for a ludicrous moment. A wide smile lights his face, a clumsy and yet pleased expression for perhaps having been noticed, or for simply seeing her. Either way, a few moments later he's standing before her, wiping his hands on his butt.

"Hello Linnea!" He nods, and turning, looks at the mildly treacherous slope, "Somebody should put in some steps or something." He turns back to her. "Or - would that be sacrilege?" His brows furrow. "I don't think Bear would mind. He is a spirit of peace and healing after all. Now, if Fenris was the Caern spirit, well." He gives her a knowing look. "We'd all have to dive over the edge. And enjoy it."

[Page from obscurum] Everyone have a blessed night. Enjoy the company and the RP....love you all

[Linnea Bartlett] The young Silver Fang flashes one of her quickening grin as Cassian returns her wave, then - for wont of anything better to do - shoves both hands into her hip pockets. Her jeans are stained dark, the denim stiff and awkward over her narrow hips and lean thighs, with spots of blue rather than otherwise. She's quiet, as he approaches, but not still - shifting from foot to foot and back again on the black loops of intestine she has taken as a perch.

When he reaches her, she response "Hiya Cassian - " in the space between his words, as he turns to contemplate the scree slope. Her gaze flickers, following his to the slope, the ledge overlooking the crater, then flashes back to his face. She jerks her left shoulder upward in a half-shrug, "I - I don't know. If it'd be sacrilege - " She snorts out a breath, her mouth twisting into a briefly sullen pout that hardens at the edges, before being forcibly softened. "I - I, uh - well" - here her mouth twists, faintly. "- we all have different ideas? About the sacred, I mean. It - it's not like there's, like a pope or something. But - but you could talk to Casts Bones-rhya. She's - she's a Shadow Lord," muttered, then, rising, "and Keeper of the Land?"

[Slow Avalanche] "Hmm," rumbles Cassian, and slips both hands behind his back into the backpockets of his jeans, elbows flaring out on each side and splitting his tan jacket open down the center. He looks down at the Wyrmfoe, his face impassive, his eyes clear and thoughtful. She speaks, and he listens, but Linnea gets the suggestion that he's not technically listening to her words so much as feeling the texture of the emotions behind them, reading the expressions on her face and the inflections in her voice. He nods slowly as she finishes, and rocks for a moment from ball to heel.

He looks about himself for something to lean on, or rest on, but finds nothing to his liking. Returning his gaze to her, he raises an eyebrow and asks, "How are things going, Linnea?" His voice is a deep, velvety burr, rumbling within his chest. "I don't mean to pry, but..." He shrugs, and its like hills rolling. "Can't be easy." A simple judgement.

[Linnea Bartlett] His question catches her offguard, weight shifted to her left foot, her left hip akimbo, her shoulders curved to offset her constantly changing center of balance. The curve continues, as her shoulders round upward beneath the worn old thermal, her mobile mouth flattening into the early stages of a frown. The girl's eyes skid away from Cassian's face, then flash back, pale and narrowed - guarded.

No one has bothered to ask her that question.

"I - " she takes in a breath, chest swelling, her shoulders leveling and rising with the possibility of it - and then exhales in a long singing sigh. " - I - " another breath, more like a gulping swallow of air and she hooks her shoulder in another negligent shrug. "That - that's a pretty big question. You - you know? But - " Her weight shifts forward, from the central arch of her foot to the ball, and she unhitches her hands from her pockets to swing them out as crossbraces. "It's - it's really fucking hard. Everyone - everyone wants something. And - and they all have - " She snaps her jaw shut, abruptly self-censoring, returns her weight to both feet and shoves her hands back into her pockets, all at once. "I mean - you know?"

[Slow Avalanche] The Godi listens, his face neutral, nodding slightly every few moments as she speaks, as she forces herself to dislodge the words that have been buried - possibly quite deeply - for some time within her mind. His face is grave, almost, his brow slightly furrowed as he listens. When she finishes, when she cuts herself off, his frown deepens, and he scuffs the toe of his boot on the hard floor, moving his weight to the other leg as he does so. He's thinking. He's not the kind to give glib responses. Not the kind to rattle of sacchrine wisdom. So, her words hang in the air, and he looks down, frowning, and thinks.

Finally he sighs, and nods. "Yeah." That deep rumble. He seems sad, almost, and looks back up at her. "It's gotta be hard." He thinks, seems to mull over different things, half opens his mouth to say something, but then closes it. "Shit," he says, and that seems to be his final opinion.

"One thing I can tell you. And this is something I learnt from my Pa." A fleeting look of pain. "People tell you to lead, yeah? They tell you to be the big boss. They tell you have to this, do that, all which way. But, if you simply do what they tell you, you ain't no leader." He pauses, letting this sink in. "So. Tell them to fuck off occasionally. You're the boss. Or will be. Take your time when you need it."

He pauses, and shrugs, and suddenly seems to remember himself. "Hell, I don't know. I ain't a legend reborn. But, the way I see it, you got to stand on your own two feet. Listen to your instincts, and the rest be damned. Or you'll just go to pieces trying to please everybody."

[Linnea Bartlett] "I wanna do everything," the teenager whispers, her voice catching hard at the back of her throat, ev-ree - thing, in the middle of one word as she sneaks a glance back at Blood Eclipse: frozen, dead, relieved of the burdens of his duties and his sorrows and his rage, welcomed back, maybe, to the Valkyries' Halls to await the final battle, or whatever comes. It's a guilty look, sneaking. She wipes her cheek with her shoulder as she turns back. "But I know - I know I can't. And I don't know always what part of everything I - I can do."

Linnea is silent again, silent but (as usual) not still, her weight shifting from foot to foot, her arms curling, her skinny frame moving, in supple rhythm to the sighing sweep of Bear's snores. After a moment, "Your Pa - he - he sounds like a good man. I'm - I'm glad you shared him with me."

Silence again. Linnea likes to talk, sometimes kicks up maddening whirls of words that fit together most precisely in her mind, and filter outward to the wider world like a Nor'easter kicked up by a winging Amazonian butterfly, but she lapses back into silence again, her eyes drifting unfocused to the ground at Cassian's feet. "Were you - here for a reason? I could - " she tosses a pale-eyed glance up, over her shoulder, at the wild riot of chiaroscuro near-hell frozen about them. "I could show you around or - or something."

[Slow Avalanche] The Fenrir waves his hand at her last offer, as if pushing aside something too trivial to be dealt with, shaking his head.

"Tour? Are you a tour guide as well as the Wyrmfoe?" He smiles, and shakes his head, "No, I'm ok. Maybe another time. But..." He stops, uneasy, and shifts his weight. "I want to help," he says, struggling to find the right words. "You are up against..." he pauses, half closes his eyes, "Great things."

He stops, shakes his head. Clearly unsatisfied with his delivery thus far. Tries again, "Listen." Stern now. "My mentor, Hundred Man, used to tell me a lot of things too. I don't remember all of it because I didn't always pay attention, but some things stuck." He nods as if agreeing with himself. "You got to be able to stay - calm inside. Sometimes things - events, pressure, stuff - can be like a lot of large waves battering around a ship, or on a cliff. You feel - overwhelmed, in danger, and become likely to do sudden things you'll regret later. Or panic. Or feel like you're about to break. So - you can't let that happen. You have to learn how to handle pressure. Which there is a lot of, no?"

He pauses again, going slightly red in the face as he rambles on. Becoming more and more self aware as he does so. "I'm not very good at this. Sorry. But what I mean is, if you feel like things are too much, find a way to center yourself. Your pack should help. But you need more. You need - well, Hundred Man used meditation. My old Wyrmfoe liked to kill things. You - you need to find something that is just you. That reminds you of who you are. Your personal history. Your sixteen years. You need to keep that firmly in your head. And let everything grow from there."

He pauses, shakes his head, and then finally breaks down and grins, "I'm not very good at this."

[Linnea Bartlett] "I'm also Miss Teen - Miss - " she mutters, after his question regarding tour guides, with a feckless and sudden grin, pale eyes alighting on his coarse features and brightening. "I've got a tiara and like, a sash?"

Then she falls quiet, again, listening closely, watching his face, looking away, abashed, when his cheeks reddened. Somewhere in the middle of his speech, she slides her fists from the stiff pockets of her stained jeans and crosses her arms, delicately weaving them over her narrow hips. Except for that sliver of insularity, of self-protection, her posture is open, her head tipped to the side, her gaze intent, mouth caught in a pensive almost-frown.

"Have - have you ever been to the ocean?" Momentarily wistful. They are so close to the sea - a two hour drive, less than - but duty is what it is, and ties them here, as surely as the roots of the trees of the church graveyard worming their way through the crater's dark, dank roof are tied to one place. "I did? I liked to ride the waves, but - I - I wasn't the wave? I wasn't standing against it, I mean."

She frowns, breathes out, her wrists flex against her flank as she draws her metarcarpals, flexing her fists, hidden beneath her elbows. "I mean you're right. One time I was caught by one, and it - threw me under, and I dragged the ground? And I didn't die or anything, but I could hardly come up for air, and then it was just like, the edge of the beach and this moment where it was all inside my ears? The wave and the sky - " She managed the last in one long breathless flourish, and when she comes up for air it is on a high note - the sky that inspires her friendly grin.

"I think you're pretty good." It's a pronouncement, all adolescent finality, cross her and be shunned. Then, quietly, a lifting pale glance. " - what do you do?"

[Slow Avalanche] "Hmm," he says, a feeling of relief swamping him now that he no longer has to seem wise. "Yeah, I've been to the ocean. I used to go a lot as a child. Spent a whole summer on the coast once. My mother told my Pa she'd leave him if they didn't." He grins, and shakes his head. "Ha. My mother. But I didn't like the water so much as I liked the rock pools. I spent a whole summer crouched over them, just looking and seeing. Discovering what was caught. Bright fishes, invisible looking shrimp, blobby purple anemo - anemanes?" He pauses, tripping on the word, shrugs it off and continues, "Crabs and seeweed and sometimes stranger things. I'd actually get into the bigger pools, and it felt - good, dangerous, scary. Like something might come out from under a ledge, big and with claws and feelers and snatch me under."

He smiles almost wistfully and shakes his head again. "But yeah." He takes a deep breath, blinks once or twice as if emerging from the depths of memory. "Me? I'm a Godi. A Theurge. Or did you mean? I don't really have a job. I've been fixing to do something, but haven't quite got around to it. I'll probably go work somewhere or something." He's clearly not too fixated on that.

[Linnea Bartlett] "My mom didn't take us - " her face lighting up, re-engaging the conversation. "It was this nanny we had? Me and Lauren and Franklin's nanny, Maggie was a baby and had a nurse and James - he was - well - anyway. She was supposed to take us Places of Historical Importance" - the words offered, almost capitalized, with a just-exagerrated bobble of the girl's fair head. " - that summer, but she just took out to the Jersey shore, like, everyday?

"And we had to like, shower and vaccuum EVERYTHING and read about whatever on the drive home so we could say oh, yes, I loved seeing Benedict Arnold's house, or isn't the cultivation of - of - of paeonies interesting? Well, I was pretty little, that was before - so I didn't have to, but Lauren did and she could like, make - she could like, knit all these things? Together, and we only got caught - well, I don't know how she got caught, really."

Linnea finishes the excited speech lamely, the capstone to what might have been the second-to-most exciting summer of her life a small family mystery rather than a neatly constructed finale. She shrugs, her half-shouldered little jerking shrug she uses to dismiss things that can't quite be helped. "But she went away." Then, an afterthought. "She let us watch TV too."

The remembered mirth melts from her face, and she reaches out, the tips of her fingers brushing the Godi's bicep, gentle correction. Her voice quiets and she shakes her head, her long braid swinging heavily with the gesture. "I meant, what do you - what do you do to stand against the waves?"

[Slow Avalanche] "Oh." Cassian blinks, and suddenly feels stupid, but the feeling passes and his smile resurfaces, subdued as he ponders her question. "What do I do to fight the waves?" This asked of himself. He crosses his arms and thinks.

"I don't really know. I mean, not too much is expected of me. I - I'm sort of not taken all that seriously in my Tribe." He shrugs, as if this were simply a fact, "Because I'm not..." His brows scrunch up, "I'm not really... Fenrir enough? Or - I don't quite act as I should. As - as... not angry enough, but... I kind of like a lot of other things besides fighting and honor and Ragnarok." He smiles, making it clear that he's simplifying a bit.

"Things have become kind of tense these past few years. Everybody's girding up for war. Everybody's howling and runnning around and swearing blood oaths and... well, being all serious and angry. Revenge and duty and all that."

"Which! Which are important - don't get me wrong. But - I don't know. Sometimes - sometimes when I wander the Umbra - when I walk the forgotten paths through the forests, and I'm surrounded by the spirits, when I find little secrets and learn stories and see things - things that I never could have imagined - I sort of - I sort of feel like - there's more. That - that we're missing something here. That it's not just blood and war. That - that there's a richness we've lost. Or maybe have lost the luxury to... appreciate. But I can't quite take my mind off it. I just... I like a drink and good friends and a laugh and maybe a good scrap afterwards but... I don't know."

He ends lamely as well, and looks at his feet. He breaths deeply. "The waves... the waves usually wash over me. I don't notice them so much. People don't expect much of me. Which is alright." He raises his face, eyes sharp. "I'm not feeling left out. I'm just - walking a slightly different path, I think."

[Linnea Bartlett] "I hope it doesn't come. You know?" She steals in a clear breath, her pale eyes luminous, catching and reflecting the sparks of ambient light illuminating the battlefield. "The Apocalypse, I mean. I mean - I think we can stop it. I think - "

Her eyes are shining, and not just with the light. Unshed tears swim across their surface, reflective. She blinks twice, rapidly - to dismiss them, but they aren't wholly gone. The intensity of conviction, or something akin to - hope, that's it. Hope in the middle of a macabre battlefield where three-quarters of the Sept's Garou died in its defense, including the best of them, the greatest of them, warriors whose names will live on the lips and tongues of the Nation until the end of time, and warriors whose names have already been forgotten.

"I just think we can. I - I love it too much to - " If one hand can stop an avalanche, if one heart could make whole the world. The girl uncurls her both arms and scrubs her hands over her face, surreptitiously wiping away whatever leaking tears have gathered at the corners of her eyes on the back of her sleeve, then draws herself up again, to her full (and contrary to the popular view of her as "little" not inconsiderable) height. The hem of her jeans, stiff with dried blood, swims well above the tops of her hiking boots, and the cuffs of the thermal barely reach the delicate articulation of bone against the skin of her wrist: still growing, still hopeful. " - you know. Any of that. I just love it too much."

She pauses again, as the second hand turns around the face of her inner clock, hesitates, then continues. "I hafta go, Cassian. I have guard duty? But - uhm, thank you? Come - come see me or something. We could have a drink? I live here. Uh, in the guardians' quarters, I mean. I am - " a flashing glance back at Blood Eclipse. " - well," faint crinkling frown. " - sort of was. Will be for a little while, you know? So -" Tipping forward on the preserved ridge of intestine, she readies herself to leave.

[Slow Avalanche] Cassian nods, listening, face grave, eyes plain and clear, looking and seeing simply that which was before him.

"Yeah. I'd like that. Take care, Linnea." He seems once more about to add something, to tag a rejoinder or piece of advice, but doesn't. Instead, he raises a hand in a gesture of parting, and stands still as he watches her leave.