trans_9 | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

True to his word, Allen has diagnostic exams ready for the taking. A stack of personal screens from the media lab sits next to his work table in the Engineering department, all programmed with tests. Long ones, since they're diagnostic, not cumulative.

One of them is, in fact, programmed with Superboy's name on it. Because Allen is a smartass like that.

"You know Stace, it would be nice if I could have a sign for the door. 'Open Call for Students-slash-Teachers,' something like that," he says, as he roots through the engineering department, looking for just such a thing to make a sign with.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"School?" Bella flicks an ear at the familiar word. She knows that the Glass Walker kids at her sept still had to go to school. Not the new cubs that could finish out their high school education being homeschooled, but the ones in college. She's not looking forward to her Alpha going to college, it will probably be very inconvenient.

"I know this word. It is a place for learning things. I know all that I need to." Yes Allen, Bella pretty much thinks she has no need of your "school".

"I do not like signs much," she adds. "They do not have smell or make sound and I cannot read them."

"You could learn how to read them at school. If you wanted to."

Just sayin'!

"Anyway, what's up? Omnicom problems, flight ring needs adjusting, or are you just bored?"

"I am a wolf. Wolf does not need to read." She has this great combination of grumbling about things she can't do, and flatly refusing to learn.

"I come to see the Weaver things here," she says. "I watch them. Never keep your back turned to something that may be your enemy."

"Well I hope for my sake that doesn't happen." Allen chuckles as he tugs out a sheet of flexible, chitinous stuff he has previously used for blueprints. "I have a very low resistance to being bitten."

A stick of something like a dried tentacle scratches the surface of the chitin-roll enough to simulate writing. Allen begins scratching away as he talks.

"What are Weavers anyway? I'm betting you don't mean textiles."

"I only bite that which is a threat to me or my pack," says Bella dismissively. "You are no enemy of mine, now."

She watches Allen making his sign with some curiosity, but not enough to admit to it.

"The Weaver is one of the Triat. The Great Spirits below only Mother Gaia herself," she says. "Wyld. Weaver. Wyrm."

"The Weaver is... stopping. Not changing. She is in electricity and buildings and cities. She snares with her webs and lulls into security with technology-things. It is she that maddened the Wyrm. The Wyrm is my enemy. The Wyrm hunts Garou, Garou hunt the Wyrm. But the Weaver gives and the Weaver takes and she is dangerous."

"Interesting."

And it is. The occult is a subject of study, too!

"So the Weaver is the force of stagnation?" Pretty converse to his experiences with technology, but you could make arguments . . . "Tell me more about these other ones. Wyld and Wyrms."

"The Wyld is the energy in things. Rawness. Freedom. Life. And the Wyrm is the destroyer. Many many years ago, longer than anyone knows, there was balance. Weaver made the patterns, the Wyld changed them and gave them life, the Wyrm destroyed so that new life could be made."

This is a story Bella knows well now, it was one of the first she was told as a Garou cub at the sept. "Then one day the Weaver became jealous and angry because the Wyld changed things and the Wyrm destroyed things and she wanted them to stop. So she tried to catch them in her web. But the Wyld got away. The Wyrm went mad. So now the Wyrm is trapped and insane and the Weaver is angry and the Wyld is weakened and the Wyrm is trying to destroy the world. The Apocalypse comes. This is why Garou fight," she explains. It's kind of a lot at once, and simplified heavily into Bella-friendly terms.

"Hmm." Allen pulls up a fleshseat and sits, leaning on his hands as he listens to Bella. "So the Weaver wasn't content with her role in the triad, and now the triad is broken? How long has this been going on? And who do you fight?"

Bella sits also, she has to pause and think. "I think it was that the Weaver was angry that things changed. She liked her job, but she thought that the Wyld and Wyrm were ruining it. She does not like it when things change. Some say it is broken. Some say it is just unbalanced. But if that is true then I do not know how to fix it." This is Bella, speculating. She remembers a lot of what she's been told, and that there are a couple different versions of the tale to boot.

"It has been a long time. Years and years and years and years. Longer than anyone can remember. Before humans made cities, even. I have walked two winters, it is more time than I know how to say." Bella, were she human, would shrug here. The concept of centuries is already a stretch for her in-the-present mind, much less the deep, ancient history of the world.

"Garou are Gaia's warriors. We fight the Wyrm's spawn wherever we can. Its spirits feed on anger and hate and vile things and wrongness, and then they in turn make more of it. The Weaver may not attack us immediately, and we may use her things sometimes, but she will pull us into her claws just as surely."

"What kind of things do the Wrym spawn? And tell me more about Gaia."

"Banes. Lots of Banes," says Bella. "Bad spirits. They take over people and turn them into Fomori sometimes. My pack has killed Fomori before, it was very messy. There are many kinds of Wyrm spirits. None of them are good. I have not seen very many of them though." She flattens her ears a little. Bella likes fighting Wyrmspawn, she wants to get to do more of that. "There are even Garou that the Wyrm has taken and made mad and evil and broken. They are called the Black Spiral Dancers." She growls at the thought of them. "They are the worst kind of enemy. I have never met one but if I do I will kill it, and I will tear it into pieces, and I will burn what remains of it," she says with a sudden fierceness that she just manages to hold back.

Gaia. About Gaia. Gaia is a good thing, this relaxes her a little. When Bella continues, it's with a little more concern.

"Gaia is Mother. Gaia made the world and everything. She made the Garou and the other changers, and the triat. She is... I think she sleeps. She is very weak and very sick now. That is why she needs us to fight the Wyrm."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only