Post by Kestrel on Oct 12, 2009 4:45:25 GMT 1
((...'cause insomnia really sucks.))
Angels on the sideline,
Baffled and confused.
Father blessed them all with reason.
And this is what they choose.
~
Tool: Right In Two
The Dragon Queen's lieutenant tells her that is all, and she is glad for the leave to go. Small predators among great ones - even as a youngling she never felt easy with dragons, and it has become worse rather than better with familiarity, with actually seeing rather than just knowing the power they hold. When dragons tell her there is cause for worry, there can be no delay.
She doesn't dare use the druidstone to pass the message, not with what might be listening. Instead she sends a hawk to Astranaar, and heads where she is told Sarama will be, by the time she catches up. She goes on foot, because in the end, that will be faster. She won't run as fast as a saber - but sabers need food, and rest. She will too, but that can come later. When the warning and the mission have been delivered.
***
Her hackles rise the moment she catches the scent of the nameless conman and his people. They do not go down when Sarama tells her to wait, and flashes her that evil grin that says not to interfere because she is being more clever than she ought to be. If the others had called their fire anything but a Howl, she would have snarled, dragged Sarama aside bodily, and safely out of view torn some skin off the assassin for confusing her oath and her clever games, even a little. A leader is nothing, if she cannot trust her pack to keep her honest when no-one sees.
But she doesn't. Not at a Howl. Instead she swallows her anger, her impatience, and settles, and waits, watching the gathering with half an eye and the fading sky with the rest. The tales begin, she listens. She is surprised by how many howls describe family and passing feelings, not battles real or spiritual. She is unsettled by these people who would observe a warriors ritual, but speak of anything else, as if the violence she knows they have done somehow shamed them. And that, she decides later, is why she did not expect the obvious.
At a Howl there is only truth - and there is only one true thing she can say in the conman's presence, which he cannot make a weapon of and turn on her if it suits him. She tells why she promised to kill him, once. She tells she still will, if he crosses lines drawn by nature and Balance. And - because it is a Howl - she tells the rest of it too. That until that day, his actions are his own. Do you understand, little fox? I forgive you, until the day you commit the crimes I once kept you from. I did, when she left your city untouched. I am too old, have too many enemies, to carry hate for things undone.
It should bring a sense of relief. That is what Howls are for - for clearing the air between those who will shed blood together, for speaking of things that cannot be spoken of except here, by the fire that demands only truth, peace, and for all to stand and speak as equals. She realises her mistake as she speaks, and sees the conman's pack reach for their weapons, ready to break the ban on violence. She smells it, as the fuming woman with the sharp name snarls about manners towards one's host. And she hears it, as the conman both admits and denies his actions in the same breath, as if she hadn't smelled lust on him then as clearly as she smells his people's anger now. Stupid. Stupid, thinking they knew what it meant when they asked for a howl.
Sarama watches, and says nothing. Nothing but a look, a furious cut from the woman behind the smiling shade. There will be words later. She knows Sarama will resent this secret being spoken, broken, not given to her to hoard like a stone. Foolish. How many secrets of her own has Sarama given to an old wolf, expecting to be somehow destroyed by them? She should know, by now. Truth is not a weapon: it just is.
She sits and keeps her peace, from Sarama and from these angry, unruly younglings, who cannot even respect the Howl they called. It's easily done: she has seen insult and disappointment enough to know they are only as powerful as she lets them be. She sits, and listens, and waits for Sarama to tire of her games so that the oaths Guardians exist for can be served.
***
It is late enough to be early, before that happens, and giving the Dragon Queen's warning leaves her feeling no easier. As Sarama and Mehtomiel return to Southshore, she stays where she can sleep easy - under open sky, on pure earth that sings instead of keening, like it does in the north. Her limbs are heavy with distance, hear head is numb from worry and wear. She realises she never asked what she will fight, on this mountain Sarama told her they will storm two days from now. It doesn't matter. They will fight, and they will win or die, and once wounds have mended they will move on to whatever battle next serves Balance. To Nimiell's citadel - or to the Highborne stones, and Vyragosa.
Vyragosa, who may already have killed one of the five who challenged and slew her mate, not long ago.
She wonders, as she curls by the wolf's side in a windshielded nook, if she should have said that to the human woman, when she finally tired of eavesdropping on a conversation she did not understand and approached them openly. Kit? No, sharp but not hard. Chit. She wonders if it would have made a difference, if the woman had understood what she listened in on. But no. She remembers being that young, that angry. She remembers those burning places, where hurt listened and gave every word vicious teeth. Few things as harsh as love incised, fewer still the truths that can curb its desire to bite, lash out in defence.
And that is the bridge they can't cross, isn't it? One pack sworn to love itself: the other sworn to love a Balance so vast that self can't help but be swallowed by it. They can't understand each other, when they don't even see the same horizon. She wonders why Sarama doesn't see that - or if she does, and that vicious look before the Howl meant that the assassin is grooming pawns to serve the Balance, just once, with sacrifices better made by those who would otherwise waste their blood protecting only family. It would fit her Howl. Few of those to have an impact on Sarama's life have survived the experience.
Neither possibility helps, when sleep finally takes her. Her dreams lead into nightmare, into a sea of screaming creatures of self that make her look away just long enough for vast, blue wings to blot out the sky and drown them all in magefire.
Angels on the sideline,
Baffled and confused.
Father blessed them all with reason.
And this is what they choose.
~
Tool: Right In Two
The Dragon Queen's lieutenant tells her that is all, and she is glad for the leave to go. Small predators among great ones - even as a youngling she never felt easy with dragons, and it has become worse rather than better with familiarity, with actually seeing rather than just knowing the power they hold. When dragons tell her there is cause for worry, there can be no delay.
She doesn't dare use the druidstone to pass the message, not with what might be listening. Instead she sends a hawk to Astranaar, and heads where she is told Sarama will be, by the time she catches up. She goes on foot, because in the end, that will be faster. She won't run as fast as a saber - but sabers need food, and rest. She will too, but that can come later. When the warning and the mission have been delivered.
***
Her hackles rise the moment she catches the scent of the nameless conman and his people. They do not go down when Sarama tells her to wait, and flashes her that evil grin that says not to interfere because she is being more clever than she ought to be. If the others had called their fire anything but a Howl, she would have snarled, dragged Sarama aside bodily, and safely out of view torn some skin off the assassin for confusing her oath and her clever games, even a little. A leader is nothing, if she cannot trust her pack to keep her honest when no-one sees.
But she doesn't. Not at a Howl. Instead she swallows her anger, her impatience, and settles, and waits, watching the gathering with half an eye and the fading sky with the rest. The tales begin, she listens. She is surprised by how many howls describe family and passing feelings, not battles real or spiritual. She is unsettled by these people who would observe a warriors ritual, but speak of anything else, as if the violence she knows they have done somehow shamed them. And that, she decides later, is why she did not expect the obvious.
At a Howl there is only truth - and there is only one true thing she can say in the conman's presence, which he cannot make a weapon of and turn on her if it suits him. She tells why she promised to kill him, once. She tells she still will, if he crosses lines drawn by nature and Balance. And - because it is a Howl - she tells the rest of it too. That until that day, his actions are his own. Do you understand, little fox? I forgive you, until the day you commit the crimes I once kept you from. I did, when she left your city untouched. I am too old, have too many enemies, to carry hate for things undone.
It should bring a sense of relief. That is what Howls are for - for clearing the air between those who will shed blood together, for speaking of things that cannot be spoken of except here, by the fire that demands only truth, peace, and for all to stand and speak as equals. She realises her mistake as she speaks, and sees the conman's pack reach for their weapons, ready to break the ban on violence. She smells it, as the fuming woman with the sharp name snarls about manners towards one's host. And she hears it, as the conman both admits and denies his actions in the same breath, as if she hadn't smelled lust on him then as clearly as she smells his people's anger now. Stupid. Stupid, thinking they knew what it meant when they asked for a howl.
Sarama watches, and says nothing. Nothing but a look, a furious cut from the woman behind the smiling shade. There will be words later. She knows Sarama will resent this secret being spoken, broken, not given to her to hoard like a stone. Foolish. How many secrets of her own has Sarama given to an old wolf, expecting to be somehow destroyed by them? She should know, by now. Truth is not a weapon: it just is.
She sits and keeps her peace, from Sarama and from these angry, unruly younglings, who cannot even respect the Howl they called. It's easily done: she has seen insult and disappointment enough to know they are only as powerful as she lets them be. She sits, and listens, and waits for Sarama to tire of her games so that the oaths Guardians exist for can be served.
***
It is late enough to be early, before that happens, and giving the Dragon Queen's warning leaves her feeling no easier. As Sarama and Mehtomiel return to Southshore, she stays where she can sleep easy - under open sky, on pure earth that sings instead of keening, like it does in the north. Her limbs are heavy with distance, hear head is numb from worry and wear. She realises she never asked what she will fight, on this mountain Sarama told her they will storm two days from now. It doesn't matter. They will fight, and they will win or die, and once wounds have mended they will move on to whatever battle next serves Balance. To Nimiell's citadel - or to the Highborne stones, and Vyragosa.
Vyragosa, who may already have killed one of the five who challenged and slew her mate, not long ago.
She wonders, as she curls by the wolf's side in a windshielded nook, if she should have said that to the human woman, when she finally tired of eavesdropping on a conversation she did not understand and approached them openly. Kit? No, sharp but not hard. Chit. She wonders if it would have made a difference, if the woman had understood what she listened in on. But no. She remembers being that young, that angry. She remembers those burning places, where hurt listened and gave every word vicious teeth. Few things as harsh as love incised, fewer still the truths that can curb its desire to bite, lash out in defence.
And that is the bridge they can't cross, isn't it? One pack sworn to love itself: the other sworn to love a Balance so vast that self can't help but be swallowed by it. They can't understand each other, when they don't even see the same horizon. She wonders why Sarama doesn't see that - or if she does, and that vicious look before the Howl meant that the assassin is grooming pawns to serve the Balance, just once, with sacrifices better made by those who would otherwise waste their blood protecting only family. It would fit her Howl. Few of those to have an impact on Sarama's life have survived the experience.
Neither possibility helps, when sleep finally takes her. Her dreams lead into nightmare, into a sea of screaming creatures of self that make her look away just long enough for vast, blue wings to blot out the sky and drown them all in magefire.