Two Eagles Bluff
To the northeast, the foothills climb upwards into the steep, snow-capped crags
and mountains. Here, the tall summer grasses bend in sporadic waves as
the wind dances on the bluff. The evergreens and aspens give way to an
open field that lends itself to a panoramic and picturesque view to the
south and east. A small stream wends its way unobtrusively through the
eastern edge of the mountain's crags, the scent and sound of trickling
water clear on the hesitant but almost incessant breeze. Wildflowers
litter the green of the grass, coloring them with touches of violet and
bright oranges, yellows and blues. Tucked in along the sloped wall of the
forested foothills to the northeast is a well-worn section of ground.
It is currently 18:57 Pacific Time on Wed Feb 11 2004.
Currently in Saint Claire, it is clear outside. The temperature is 54 degrees
Fahrenheit (12 degrees Celsius). The wind is currently coming in from the
north at 3 mph. The barometric pressure reading is 30.22 and falling, and
the relative humidity is 36 percent. The dewpoint is 28 degrees
Fahrenheit (-2 degrees Celsius.)
Currently the moon is in the waning Gibbous Moon phase (60% full).
Leonard is erecting a skeleton of stripped cedar branches at an old cleared
space surrounded by stones that looks as if its been used for this
purpose in the past, for those with eyes to see such things.
Atcen
At a glance, this is a gaunt Native American girl, mid-teens, a few inches over
five and a half feet tall, with thick, straight black hair that's been
cropped roughly and boyishly short, probably with a knife. Large hands
and feet suggest that she's not quite finished growing.
She's too thin to be pretty, hollow-cheeked and starved. Her teeth have an
unhealthy yellowish hue and there's a pallor to the coppery complexion.
The unkempt hair is dry and looks like it would tangle easily if it
weren't so short. Underneath thick black lashes lurk pale blue eyes, cold
as winter.
Atcen's bony form is clothed in a plain white t-shirt and a pair of faded blue
jeans. Her feet are bare.
Desiree wanders out of the cave with a small bundle and sits it down next to
the structure being erected by the Wendigo Galliard. "Need help?" she
asks him.
Atcen steps barefoot onto the bluff, looking dirty and sweaty and like she's
just finished running all over Gaia. In one bony hand, the left, she
carries a stick as long as her forearm and the width of two fingers.
Leonard glances over at Desiree. "Yeah, need you to do the women's lodge." He
nods to the pile of branches as he lashes two together.
Holly follows Desiree out of the cave. Hearing what Leonard says, she moves to
the kin's side. "I'll help," she offers, grabbing a branch or two from
the pile.
Atcen stops short at sight of all the activity and frowns uncertainly. The
metis cub takes another step forward before stopping again, her
expression wary.
Leonard nods to Holly. "Help Desiree." He grabs another branch, sticking it
firmly into the softening ground.
From the base already in place, Desiree begins to mantle the sides of the
shelter with the thick bark-like material. Handing one to Holly, she
quietly shows the woman how to erect the shelter properly in the ways
that Desiree's mother had shown her and along the line of her ancestors.
Leonard gives Atcen the eye. "You, metis. You gonna stand there and watch or
you gonna earn your keep."
Holly watches Desiree first and then begins to mimic what the kin does. At
first, her architecture leaves something to be desired, but she starts to
get the hang of it.
Atcen _had_ been chewing on one side of her lower lip, but at Leonard's comment
she jumps slightly. She stares back at him for a moment, then juts her
lip out, shoves her stick through a loop of her tattered, muddy jeans,
and then heads over to help Holly and Desiree.
Leonard growls. "No. Go fetch rocks from the riverbank. Rounded stones, big as
your hand or bigger."
The metis cub stops short again and gives Leonard another stare, this one more
sullen. Thin shoulders hunched, Atcen stalks off resentfully to gather
rocks.
Desiree crans her neck to look towards Leonard, muttering something distinctly
Salish and not very nice under her breath. Grunting, she returns her
attention to watch Holly's progress. The kinswoman helps correct the cub
with something with the way that she is erecting the structure.
Holly surreptitiously glances to Leonard and then Atcen as she continues to
build with Desiree. The kin's voice brings her back to her work with a
blink. "Sorry, right," she says quietly, correcting herself.
Leonard finishes the last lashing and steps back to admire his handiwork. Or
find something wrong. He tosses in a few of the stripped branches from
the poles, lining the floor of his skeletal hut with them, then
disappears into the cave.
Holly leans over to Desiree, afraid Leonard will hear even when he's all the
way over in the cave. "Is he /always/ grumpy like that?" she asks in a
whisper.
Desiree gives a bark of laughter at the cub and nods her head, apparently the
woman is highly amused. Finally finishing the rest of the work, the
kinswoman disappears into the structure and then comes back out again
quickly. "Go help the other with the stones," she says.
Leonard comes out, bearing an armload of old skins. He motions to the laughing
Desiree to come get some of them.
Holly wrinkles her nose at Desiree's response, at first not sure what to make
of it. The idea of going out to the stream alone with Atcen doesn't seem
appealing, but she goes nonetheless. "Alright. Be right back," she says,
starting out.
Desiree turns and makes her way towards Leonard to help him with the old skins.
Atcen has removed her shirt and has laid it on the ground, the stones she's
already gathered piled in the middle. The metis has no sense of modesty,
is as flat-chested as a boy, and her pallid skin shows off the ridges of
spine and ribs. She mutters under her breath as she gathers rocks.
Leonard unloads the skins onto the kin woman, and begins spreading them over
the framework of the men's lodge, piling them one on top of the other,
all the way to the ground. He then holds the remaining ones so that
Desiree can do the womens'.
Holly averts her gaze, nonetheless. Whether it's her own sense of modesty or
the discomfort the metis' emaciated shape casues really doesn't matter.
She does it. "Let me help," she offers, crouching in the stream and
picking up two rocks. One, too small and flat, is tossed aside. The other
is selected and added to the collection.
Desiree emits another slow grunt as Leonard unloads the old skins onto her.
Giving him a light glare for a moment or two, she turns and makes her way
to finish off the womans' lodging.
Atcen, looking to be in a poor mood, gives Holly a bit of a glare, but says
nothing and bends her back to the task.
Holly ignores the glare for the most part, though the tension in her shoulders
proves she did see it. She, too, continues, crouched at the edge of the
cold, burbling stream. "How many should we get?" she asks.
Leonard calls out annoyedly, "I need those rocks!"
Atcen answers Holly with a sharp shrug. "Not know. Prob'be get not enough. Or
too many." She brings another couple of stones back to the pile on her
shirt, then straightens up to look annoyedly in the direction of
Leonard's shout. She hrmphs and hauls up the load, using the shirt as a
makeshift bag.
Desiree disappears inside her own lodging space to dump off the old skins into
the womans' lodging. Her head appears again from the entrance with the
rest of her form as she hears Leonard call out.
Holly awkwardly looks like she wants to offer to help carry them. But Atcen
already has it, and the theurge decides asking might simply cause more
trouble. Instead, she falls in beside the metis, walking with her.
Leonard watches Atcen meander on up the hill, scowling. "Move faster, Atcen."
Atcen scowls and manages to pick up the pace a bit, burdened down as she is.
"Where, *unf* you want?"
Holly hurries when Leonard's voice calls out. Atcen's the one burdened, so the
theurge makes it back much quicker.
Leonard points at the ground at the girl's feet. "Just drop them and get some
more. Quickly." He bends down and starts piling the stones around the
base of the hut, pinning down the skins with them. It becomes obvious
he'll need at least four times as many stones as the girl's brought, for
just one hut. He finishes and sits up, putting his hands on his knees and
giving Holly a grim look. "Where's your stones, cub."
Atcen quickly drops the stones and hoofs it quickly back to the stream, shirt
in hand. Quickly, she starts gathering more, trying to get as many on the
cotton garment as it'll possibly hold.
Desiree is at her own task of preparing the womans' lodging.
Holly blinks. "We, I, that is.." she starts, stops, and starts again, pointing
to Atcen's shirt. Eventually realizing she has no real excuse, she simply
heads back to the stream to get a pile of her own rocks.
Leonard shakes his head as the girl stammers, standing and watching her go with
a frown. "Lazy."
Darkfeather comes out of the cave, skin looking a little raw and scratched up,
he walks silently to the stream without so much as a look or comment to
any aside from a calm and knowing glance to Leonard. At the edge of the
water he unties the leather cording that keeps his pants on, and removing
his clothing steps into the water to begin bathing himself. Wearing only
a loincloth he stands now at the very edge of the stream, barely ankle
deep though already he has begun a silent shivering, noticable to anyone
who watches him for more than a second. He scoops up water and starts
rinsing off his skin, starting with his legs. As he moves up to his
thighs, his voice is finally heared, with a small howl from the sheer
near-freezing temperature he can no longer pretend to ignore as he steps
first one foot than the other out of the water as if walking on hot coals.
Holly returns, using her jacket much as Atcen had been using her shirt. A pile
of rounded stream stones are tied up into it, and the theurge lugs it
over. She dumps it out and runs back to the stream for one more load.
Leonard nods approvingly at the running, piling more stones around the base of
the hut.
By the time Holly joins her, Atcen has hit upon an Idea. She's shifted to
Glabro, all gaunt and hairy and stronger, and stripped off her jeans as
well, tying the legs off at the ankles. Once the shirt's loaded up, she
starts putting rocks into the jeans as well, and when finished heaves up
both and makes her way back as quickly as possible.
Desiree watches as the male cub walks past, although she quickly returns her
attention to putting up the structures and doing whatever duties are
asked of her by the elder Wendigo.
Leonard asks the woman to start a fire as he continues to pile rocks around the
hut. The first finished, he looks to the cubs for more rocks for the
second.
Atcen is sweating from her exertion, but looks pleased with herself as she
dumps off her load of stones on the ground. She looks at Leonard and
rumbles, "More?"
Holly watches Atcen, anger as well as competitive sibling rivalry smoldering in
her eyes. She looks down at her own jeans, but seems unwilling to
sacrifice them. Cursing under her breath, she simply moves a little
faster. Nevertheless, in homid, she gets back much slower than Atcen, and
a little out of breath from hauling more rocks than the jacket could
really hold.
Leonard nods to Atcen. "One more load of big ones, then I need smaller ones --
bout the size of your fist. Well --" he points to Holly "--HER fist."
Atcen bares elongated teeth in a sharp grin, then grabs up her makeshift bags
and takes off running back to the stream.
Leonard resumes his stretching of skins and piling of stones, keeping an eye on
the cubs.
Darkfeather then in an interesting display, hard to tell exactly his intent,
leaps and when coming down splashes the water up and all over himself.
His cry becomes a strange calling out to the winter spirits, more a homid
howling than anything. He shivers from pure reaction to the water, but if
he is in pain or extreme discomfort, he doesn't appear to show it
outwardly.
Desiree turns and does as Leonard asks without any question.
Holly stares at the back of Atcen's head as her grinning self goes gleefully
past. The theurge cub, for her part, isn't having much fun and it shows
in the way that glare resembles daggers. She nonetheless gathers up her
own jacket after dumping her latest load of stones and trots off after
the metis cub. She's lagging behind now, but still running.
"Turtle," Atcen mutters to Holly, when the other girlcub joins her. She squats
like a cavewoman in the cold water, showing nowhere near the discomfort
that Michael displayed, her hands feeling around at the stream bed for
the proper stones.
Holly crouches down at the stream, fishing around for smaller rocks. It takes
longer than it probably should before she reacts to what the metis has
said, but when she does, there's a flash of bright anger in her dark
eyes. She cocks an arm with one of those rocks, as if to hurl it towards
the metis, but there's a hesitation, and she just slams it down in the
muddied, wet jacket.
Leonard raises his voice as he finishes piling the last of the stones. "I hear
lots of splashing but I don't see any rocks!"
"Turtle, turtle, turtle," sings Atcen in a not-unpleasing alto. She gathers
while she sings, "Turtle, turtle, crow fly fly, turtle tur--" She looks
up, grabs the stone in her hand, then gathers what she has and jogs back
to the clearing, leaving Holly behind.
Holly huffs, eyes narrowing at Atcen's back. She pulls the heavy load up to her
shoulder, stumbling under the weight of it. "Just wait," she mutters to
herself, suddenly amused. "If I remember right, the turtle won, in the
end." With that comfort, she starts jogging back to the bluff.
Leonard stands, arms folded, watching the cubs. He nods to Atcen as she brings
the stones. "Good. Less talk, more work." He looks past the metis to the
homid cub, who again lags behind. "Slow-As-A-Turtle! Where are my stones?"
Michael finally bends over and with a massive scooping of water with a sense of
drama in the action splashes the freezing cold liquid into his face as he
shoots back up, arching his back tightly with his hair flailing over his
head and behind him wildly. His voice is a whooping scream, deep like
yelling in anger. Those familiar would know it as a call of victory, like
that at the end of a battle. Standing with arms spread and howling to the
sky he drops down to the lupine form, his howling becoming truly that.
Finally, the howl dying down he shakes out the water from his fur almost
violently and stalks slowly from the frigid water. No longer does his
shiver, but one can see his breathing, heavy and deep, as if taking in a
lungful of air and more with each breath.
Holly finds her way out of the woods and drops her jacket among the other
rocks. She's still in homid, although she's muddied and breathing hard.
She leans over, hands on her knees as she breaths. Michael gets an odd
look, but Leonard an even odder when at the naming.
Leonard holds out a hand, fingers wiggling impatiently in the universal sign
language for 'gimme.' "C'mon Turtle, spring is coming. I'd like to get
this lodge done before then." He glances at Desiree. "Take the fire and
start one in the women's lodge."
Desiree nods her head breifly and goes to the women's lodge.
Holly glares at Leonard for a moment, but she's smart enough, and scared of him
enough not to let it last more than a second or two. then she moves to
unpack her latest load of rocks, handing two out to Leonard as she starts
to help build.
Leonard lets the cub finish piling the rocks around the base of the women's
hut, standing. "Smaller rocks this time, metis. Small pile to the left of
the women's door, right of the men's." He disappears into the cave again,
coming out with two stiffened leather....well, they look like
wastebaskets to the uninitiated. He heads down to the stream, filling
each with water.
Finally, everything is ready. Leonard looks to the only male cub.
"Darkfeather." He throws open the right lodge's door, motioning for the
boy to enter.
Darkfeather steps up to the men's lodge now, and taking on once more the homid
form, stands before the enterance, waiting for Leonard.
Leonard motions him in, closing the 'door' behind him. He heads down to the
river to wash up before joining him.
There is no sound from the men's lodge for quite some time, then Michael comes
out into the air and runs to the river, jumping in and splashing around
briefly before running back up into the sweat lodge. Leo does the same.
Then there is chanting, and then sizzling as more stones are dropped in
the water. Fifteen minutes pass and again Michael and Leo emerge, running
down to the river and jumping in, then running back up to the lodge. This
time there are low sounds of murmured voices, then nothing. Finally they
emerge a third time, rolling in the melting snow. Leo stands, shaking the
excess water off, and ducks back into the lodge to get a branch, which he
whacks Michael with. "You are cleansed. Keep your thoughts, words, and
deeds pure until your vision quest tomorrow. Go, sleep, and be prepared
to greet the dawn."
Michael nods to these words, an intended economy of action, words, and thoughts
as he says simply, "Brings-The-Buffalo-Home. I have been honored by your
teachings, and will be well prepared." He then melts down to the lupus
form and falls heavily to the snow on his side, his breathing slowing as
his passes off into sleep after his energy draining day.
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