Sacrifices

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Well, that answered the question of why she hadn't seen AK around.

Ash's next few sentences were an irrelevant buzzing in Sulien's ears as she pressed her lips together against the sob that choked in her throat, gritted her teeth against the burning in her eyes. All eyes were on Ash. Nobody would notice. Or understand, even if they did.

She sat with her back against the ridged and cracked bark of the oak, one foot swinging free, half-hidden by the leaves. Gaelen assured her that these bouts of emotion would subside, along with the residual cramping in her ravaged womb, but until they did, this was the safest place to be.

A ball bounced off the trunk by her elbow and she looked sharply down, prepared to be furious. But the little metis form that appeared below her never even looked up as it searched with increasing desperation through the leaf litter for one of its few toys. It searched for half an hour before giving up and throwing itself into the hollow of the tree roots, sobbing like the poor bereft child it was.

AK had been fine when she left. A year or two from First Change, perhaps; it was hard to tell with metis. And safe, she had thought, on the Caern.

"Tell me again how shops work?"

A number of strange objects were laid out on the ground behind the eager child. After a moment's staring, Sulien realised it was an attempt at a shop counter, with feathers and snail shells for sale.

One corner of her mouth twitched. "It's really not that exciting, you know."

"Maybe it isn't if you've ever seen one," he replied disconsolately.

Sulien stared at the pitiful display for a few seconds longer.

"You've arranged it wrong," she said at last. "It needs to be like this..."

They hadn't been close. They hadn't even spent much time together. And what time they had spent together she had largely spent beating not leaving himself open in the attack into his thick little skull.

They had been closer than she would ever be to her daughter.

A week ago she had run to Celyn; but Celyn wasn't in Anglesey anymore. There had been nobody to keep an eye on Rosalie. Nobody to defend her.

"Ow! Sulien-rhya, that wasn't fair!."

"Yeah. And the day the Spirals fight fair will be the day I do. Now let's try that again, and this time don't bloody overextend..."

Anything that had happened to Rosalie... had already happened. There was no time left. None to travel to the Heart of Albion after Celyn. None to grieve.

"Stop daydreaming, AK. You'll see the world soon enough."

Far better to believe that her daughter was still alive.

Someone had to be.

Comments

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I love this story. Thank you so much for this. I've been feeling bad that the poor little metis cub died without ever being given much of a personality by me - I really like the fact that he's able to live again here for a bit.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

It seems that Sulien had a fairly good idea of who Achyuta was.

I had no idea that would hit her so hard.

[castorlion.livejournal.com]

*cue more comic exasperation from Mattmatt*
Sarah, how exactly is it that whenever our characters interact you manage to pre-empt my downtime actions with your tat?!

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

What?! What did I do?!

Is it my fault if I don't know that you've taken these things out of my brain? :)

[adze.livejournal.com]

That's really wrenching.

I never did enough about him, and I really wish I had.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Sulien pretty much ignored him too, until after she gave Rosalie away. And then, even though he was metis, he was a child...

She never showed him much affection; she's Sulien, after all. But she taught him to fight, and all the things he'd need to know in order to deal with the outside world, and I think she and Patches took him for a couple of trips in the Umbra so he could see a bit more of the world than just the Caern.

I don't think there were actually very many people to whom Achyuta was a person. But I think he had more than many metis ever do.

[adze.livejournal.com]

I used to put bits in my downtime, way back, that were 'spend time with Perfect Metis'. Just not enough effort there OOC, mainly.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Which is fair enough, really; there's a limit to how much OOC effort you actually can put into something like that.

As I say; for a metis, he had a decent life.

[isalani.livejournal.com]

nice story but thats all it is to someone who wasn't even aware that he existed.

[(Anonymous)]

What's your point?

It was announced IC that we had the Perfect Metis at the Sept, at a game ages ago, before the four year break. That's how I knew about him.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

That last comment was me, btw. Forgot to log in! :)

[isalani.livejournal.com]

I wasn't even aware IC that it existed.

Nobody told cedric anything

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

That would be because he was a weirdy ex-Mage maybe-Howler who abandoned his heritage to become one of those odd Eastern sorts :)

Garou aren't really known for their open and trusting natures.

And nobody knows everything that's going on.

[isalani.livejournal.com]

but it be nice to be aware of something no matter how small.

Also I tried to fit in for a long time before becoming eastern courts

Errrrmmmm....

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I ran multiple games based around the Perfect Metis plot. I gave out prophetic visions to those who receive them when he was conceived and when he was born. It was tied in to the Skin Dancers plot, which MSR lost a full rank over in a large public scandal that took up a game. Since then, the existence of the Perfect Metis has been mentioned during the start of game announcements at least twice that I can think of off the top of my head.

I didn't think it was one of my cool or secret plots. It was something I was certainly always quite open with from my end.

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[dainul.livejournal.com]

I don't think I was aware OC he was at the Sept either. I think I was vaguely aware that he existed. I think I may have come in after the fuss, though, as I seem to recall something about MSR being scandalled horribly just before I turned up, and I think the Skindancers plot was being wound up around the time I was deciding that I didn't want to be a Ragabash no more.

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

That he was at the Sept should probably have been publicised more. His rescue was fairly well detailed, but I didn't make announcements about him living there and relied rather on word of mouth.

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[isalani.livejournal.com]

that where you fell down then.

expecting players to pass on all of the information.

I can safely say that I wasn't aware that it even existed yet until after it had died and people starting making comments about how more should have been done.

The only plot that I am aware of in garou is the end of the world - and that is all I know that there is an end of world plot.

I have not one of those lucky characters that gets passed information - thus my games are largely me socializing in a corner unless we are doing a combat run and then I'm only told what I need to know.

You could say speak to your pack to find out more and too this I would say what pack. I haven't had a properly formed pack on my garou character since I lost God

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Those all appear to be IC issues rather than ST ones.

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[isalani.livejournal.com]

I never said they weren't.

The only point I said was a failing was expecting the players to pass on all the information to the other players

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[flamma-lupus.livejournal.com]

Hey there, just thought I'd put another perspective in play for you here...
If I recall correctly, 4 pc's were involved in the rescue of the perfect metis.. it was a plot I was very tightly tied in to at that point because it was linked with the Skindancers.
I didn't involve you in the skindancer plot, because you were a mage who could turn into a werewolf, I wasn't entirely sure you weren't some kind of skindancer. You were a mage, we couldn't trust you. (Yes, I trust a couple of mages, but thats because time after time they proved trustworthy (if irritating) to me).

*I* wasn't aware the PM was at the sept. I had a bit of a gripe about it myself, but that said I had a large number of IC reasons why I'd not be told things over that period.

There was no reason for you to know that some little metis child running round the sept WAS the perfect metis... he just looked like a metis, only people who would have known who he was were those directly involved in it, or told directly by pc's.

No, you don't have a pack, because rather than being a white howler of western persuasion, you went and became a stargazer. You *RENOUNCED* being something that could potentially have been HUGELY important to the garou. Rather than sucking up a bit of people being suspicious of you and poking you with sticks, you ran away to the orient to get new cheese.

Now, other people have got eastern ties, like de zu... (who's name I still spell wrong)... but he's not DIRECTLY called a spirit of great importance to the garou into the middle of a fight in which we were told all spirits would be corrupted, he's not caused one of the HUGELY important spirits to be corrupted by the wyrm. Thats two very direct slaps in the face to the garou nation, and then you ran off and hid (by my ic perception) rather than actually facing scandal for it, even when we knew every time an issue was raised with your actions, you were just brushing it off as "I'm not judged by you, the eastern courts judge me" with a little chuckle and a "I don't give a fuck" expression.... and we NEVER heard of the eastern court judging you for anything, so it certainly seemed to me to be a "cause as much shit as you want and get away with it" option you'd taken. Are you suprised nobody wanted to pack with you, or tell you information IC that could be directly tied with the world going to shit? If you'd gone off and done something dumb...there'd have been nothing we could do about it than kill your pc... and when you were walking around a low rank pulling *ELDER GIFTS* that wasn't really an option.

You're fairly sporadic in garou as to whether you're turning up, as such you don't hear everything thats going on... hell I think I've missed like 2 garou games ever since playing marcus, and poke a LOT of things, and there's stuff *I* miss, some of which is because it's not mentioned much OOC, some of it is kept from me IC, some I just don't notice. Nothing wrong with not turning up at every game, people do other stuff, but at the same time it means you DO miss stuff.

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[isalani.livejournal.com]

Cheers for the post si.

Some very nice reasons - ones that I'd not actually heard before other than dont take anything near anthony as he might blow up the world.

I have asnwers to your points but I'm not going to go into them here as its not appropiate. Though some of your points are flawed and have never actually been riased by me in character but I'll leave ic perceptions as they are.

The only point I need to correct you on is the sporadic garou bit. Garou is the game that I play on a regular basis - even if I am away at a rubber sword event I still make it back for garou. I am actually in a similar basis to marcus with the number of games that I have actually missed as a player. The only reasons why the character has not turned up is becuase there has been an external factor that has kept him away - like being stuck in flux for 3 months

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

I still think MSR secretly was the perfect Metis and didn't know it.

But sometimes I like to cling to things that have been disproven.

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I think if he'd gone through Flux before I'd run that plot, I'd have made him the Perfect Metis. It would have been _so_ much neater. But jez banned me from ret-cons like that, and said that they make the angels weep.

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

Maybe he could have been a perfect metis and not the perfect metis. After all perhaps the celestial prophecies were a bit loose on the definite and indefinite articles.

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I said that.

I got looked at funny.

I think sometimes fate just plays cruel tricks on one, and the perfect plot hook only becomes apparent when you've hung your plot hook on the one two doors down.

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

Damn fate.

Re: Errrrmmmm....

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

It is a cruel master...