Hector
So. Hall. How old were you when you first discovered your calling in life was to become the poster child for unfortunate haircuts?
Alright, alright! Do over! Quit hitting me!Seriously, though. How old were you when you, you know. Realized lurking underneath that mousy exterior was an unstoppable death machine?
TamsinUm. The girl settles down and back and ceases chewing the inside of the corner of her mouth. That thing she does when she's feeling serious. That thing she does often enough to taste iron which is a shame because iron'll scare away the fay won't it if they still exist. Maybe that's why there aren't many stories about the fairies anymore because garou blood's too iron-y now. Maybe it felt pretty good to hit Hector and to say, acidly, Hey fucking Glen First Light Coelho is the one who, because that avoided the point. This point. This serious, serious point, but it's just Hector, Hector who is treated to a grimace and then a flick of muddy gray eyes.
Uh. Seriously, that's not a realization I've had. Fidget. Fidget.
I was never unstoppable, just uncontrollable. And it was two years ago. I was eighteen and I didn't know anything about the Garou Nation. I didn't know anything about the other side of the mirror. I didn't know a single one of my ancestor's names. I didn't know that you could talk to fire and it had a temper or that those little cinder-sparks of anger over those years which I drowned out with um with pills and um other things I didn't know that it was okay to feel that. I didn't know I'd been born with it for a reason, y'know? I barely knew it was there. I just knew I wanted to be an astronaut but I sucked at mathematics and my vision wasn't 20/20 and maybe I'd take a year or two off to figure out who I was.
It's so fucking stupid, not knowing. It's wrong. It's lamentable. Flick of muddy gray eyes again, this time latching on - looking through. Wide. Coming back, flicking away again, wry.
Then one night I thought someone was following me. I was walking to a friend's house from the busstop and even though I looked around and, like sure, I saw people, they were just doing their thing, most of them going into restaurants, I still thought someone was following me, and it just … The moon was our moon and I guess it was calling me. Maybe it was the thing following me, trying to beat that killing shape out of my bones, shake my other shapes out've prison, a fucking jail break, but I snapped. In the middle of the street.
In a neatly wrapped tale, y'know, one with a bow and a ribbon and something not so fucking stupid, this is when I guess the cavalry would appear to explain everything, but nope. I ran amok. I killed somebody. I killed a cop, too. And I somehow made it back home, dropped out of Crinos from exhaustion. And still nobody came. Nobody knew. Or I guess by then maybe the spirits had started whispering, but nobody knew and I convinced myself it was a really shitty dream, but then my friend got on my case about not showing up and about some violent animal attack right, and I flipped out again. I didn't kill her. Because I ran away, and later I heard that because I'd run away from the animal thing and left her she didn't feel safe around me. She didn't blame me of course, but she didn't feel safe.
She wasn't. I wasn't either. I was in a bad place. Well. You an imagine. Things that I used to be fine with I'd just look at them and it'd start to piss me off and I'd feel it in my gut like my skin was trying to shake off and I'd try not to but it never did what I wanted. And how did our heroine find her true place, you wonder? How'd she reach that fucking realization about -- how'd I find out? I got drunk, because that's a really excellent way to control yourself, don't you know, and I was staring at my reflection in this big piece of glass on the sidewalk, because it was one of those decaying parts of town that are really safe for drunk teenage girls who keep turning into monsters to wander around on their lonesome, willing myself to be anywhere but here, and hey look the spirit world. That sucked for a while, but it was also kind of cool, because -- city umbra. Weaver, but wyld popping up everywhere, and spirits flitting here and there, so it was somehow okay to be crazy. I thought maybe I'd died.
Then this crow started hanging around all the time. When it left, Raven's Friend, Fianna Galliard, and Betsy - um, I mean, Poetic Justice, Ragabash of the Children of Gaia, tracked me down. They'd put two and two together, and they taught me the same math, so I didn't die or go crazy, and uh. I learned how to be more controlled and uh. I learned all that stuff I didn't know about before. I guess? Now you.
I mean, your turn, Heckling Hector. Okay I know that was lame. I'll think of a better burn later. How old were you? I mean, how'd you realize? You're like me, aren't you? Lost cub.
HectorI always liked the way 'misplaced cub' sounded better, you know? Lost, I think of those stories they used to tell us to keep us from wandering off when we were cubs. You hear this one? Young smiling-moon goes off for a day trek on the other side of the curtain and it gets to him, he wants to just keep on exploring, but he doesn't keep himself anchored even though the whole pack fostering him tells him every time he gets back not to go too far because he could get lost? So he ends up going too far into the deep deep Umbra and can't get back, doesn't just lose direction but he loses his flesh too, his spirit ends up wandering forever?
You never heard that story?
Alright, maybe old Farsight was just trying to mess with me.
But you know, the more I think about it, the more I think if someone had known. Like it wasn't that I was lost, it's that my mom was. Someone must've got it into their head they had to get her away from all of this. But she didn't know. Maybe her mom didn't know. I don't know. My dad though, he comes from this real traditional family, they all came over here off the boat practically. It was all grades this and college that and I started losing it towards the end. Nerves or something, they thought. Wasn't like I was this real great student to start out but right at the end, you know how it is, everything gets under your skin, you have all these blood-rich dreams that don't mean anything. Just wanting to run.
Mine went the same way, just about. I mean it was different because afterwards I had these voices that I didn't recognize saying these really smoky loud things I didn't know anything about, found out later they're my forebears, I can ask my great-great-great uncle on my mom's side for help once and a while and if he's not feeling like a total asshole he can help me out, but all the rest of it. Only I was like 'Holy mother of shit, if I go back home something real bad's gonna happen.' Like I could just picture it, my folks getting on me about school, me snapping the way I'd snapped that night. I took off.
Eh, you know, they called the cops, put up posters, go on the news begging whoever took their boy to give him back, but that was when Lara and Naima found me, the cubseekers? And there isn't any giving their boy back even now. That was three years ago. Kid's gone, man.
So who'd you tour with after your math tutors came and grabbed you? A bunch of rogue cosmetologists?
TamsinSure. They make their own, um, make-up. The secret ingredient is the fat of uppity boys. It's cruelty free. Nudge. Hard. With one knee. They talked a lot about the glory days of the 80s which none of them could remember. They, uh, thought Jem and the Holograms were what a pack should strive to look like. Hey, maybe we should go for an 80s Glam look? Glen'd go for it. God knows your hair is fucking lustrous enough, you Fabiolicious stud you. Yeah? Yeah? Got something to say? I can't look at you the light is winking off those pretty pony waves in a most hypnotic way.
HectorAw, Tammy, you don't have to be jealous. I hear hair grows back. I mean, I wouldn't know? Since I've stopped cutting mine I've gained the strength of ten men so I think I'm just gonna keep going with it? But that's what I've heard. That it grows back. I mean... I also wouldn't let First Light near me with a sharp object if I was gonna win a bet, so I really hope--you did win some kind of a bet, right? Like you're being compensated for--
TamsinWait! Fucking -- Tammy? Tammy?? That is it. Listen up, Bollywood. Clearly all that weight pressing down on your brain all the time is muddling shit up, all that strength going to keeping your head held relatively fucking high, but the only bet I'm going to win is -- hey. Did you bet First Light you could get me to -- y'know what fuck you both. Iston i nîf gîn. Eca, a mitta lambetya cendelessë orcova. Now may I continue?
HectorHe doesn't quite fall out of his chair laughing at the was that elvish?! but he comes pretty close. Or maybe he's sitting on the ground like the hippie that he is and falls over. Either way: she may continue when he wipes his eyes and sits back up.
No comments:
Post a Comment