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[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

The Elder Theurge frowned quietly.

The Elder Theurge was named Moonlight Shadows, and was a metis of the Children of Gaia. She had been born in London in 1969 and had moved to America in 1983. She had traveled across the world, and had finally settled in Oregon, in a small and battered Sept on the coast which had long been torn between the Fianna and the Uktena.

In that Sept, she had tried to fulfil her role in the eyes of Gaia. She had stuck to the Litany, and had battled the Wyrm, although sometimes she worried that that had almost come second to the demands of the political system of the Garou Nation. She had never taken a mate, never had a family, but had done her best with every cub and kinfolk who came through the Sept. She had honoured the spirits, treated them fairly. She had done her best by the Sept, although she felt her best had not always been good enough.

Still, she had tried.

And yet now...

Moonlight Shadows sighed.

She no longer knew what her best was supposed to be.

Four nights ago the last of the Red Talons that had once been members of the Sept had left. They were moving north to join their breathren in the great attack on the Weaver. She had heard some of the songs being sung of the battles in the north. The Talons up there were now battling Namers in service to the Weaver, and casualties were heavy on both sides.

Were they fighting for Gaia? Is this the war that the Garou were meant for? Half the Sept seemed to believe so. Black Furies, Get of Fenris and Fianna had left for the war in the north as well. Moonlight Shadows didn't want to believe it. Surely the Wyld, creation, couldn't be saved solely through destruction?

She didn't know anymore.

Last night she had had a strange visitor - a man she had met once, many years before, when traveling in the south of America. He was a man with golden eyes, and leathery skin, and she knew that he claimed to carry the memories of Gaia in his blood.

He had sat beneath her under the moon, and smiled at her worried expression.

"Yeah..." he said "World is changing. Ain't like it ain't happened before..."

She had frowned.

"What do you mean?" she had asked.

"You think this is the first time the world has ended?" he had said. "I reckon it's happened a dozen times before. And then we rebuild from what we've got left. We all talk about the cycle. Why should Mother Gaia be outside of it?"

"What do you mean?" she had said, her voice sharp. He had shrugged.

"You know," he had said, "some of my folk have got memories which go way back. Way way back. They talk about something happen' before. Something a lot like we imagine the Apocalypse to be. They call it the Wonderwork. Don't know much about it, personally. Folks who talk about it reckon that there was another world - civilization and everythin'. Not sure if it was rightly human or not. Might not have been. They talk of dragons, you see."

Moonlight Shadows wrapped her arms around herself.

"I don't like this," she had said sharply, and he had grinned at her.

"Then you don't have to listen, darlin'" he had said. "I just want to tell you that it ain't quite so strange that the world is changin'. It has to. Either that or it stays glued up and static and we both know that ain't a good thing. The world has to change. Maybe it has to end, so it can be born again. And maybe that has happened before."

She had got up, and begun to walk away.

"The memory of Gaia..." he had called after her. She hadn't stayed to listen.

Now she wished she had.

The memory of Gaia.

She frowned. It was said that the fera had all had their role. And now where were they? Who had asked the Corax what they knew, or the Bastet what they had heard? And who knew what the Mokole remembered.

There had to be an answer out there. And she needed to get it, somehow...