Night · After · Night

Been a lot happening, though, so please be patient while I scribble on you.

The spirit-ghost-whatever thing is gone. I decided to try performing Hekate's Deipnon, more or less asking her to calm down the restless dead (or kick them back to the Underworld). On Joe's recommendation, I did it in the screwed-up room at the Starpoint; he was right, the place was a... nexus? Thinning of the walls between the worlds? Whatever it was, it was cold as hell and I think someone could have lost themselves to the Underworld in there. So, after having asked Hestia to bless the offering, I gave Hekate her sacred Supper, asking her to fix this mess in return. And to my everlasting surprise, She did. Natty saw it from her out-of-body deal - in fact, it chucked her right back into her body. Joe saw some of it, too. She took the offering, platter and all like it was never there. And all the cold and creepiness were gone. Have to say, it was a really uplifting feeling to see the Old Ways bear such fruit.

Then there's the whole Cougar mess. She outed herself on the Gangrel list with regards to the blood of her embrace, and it started a well and true shit-storm. She's back now, and in a week's time there's going to be an Althing - a meeting of the clan as a whole, right here in Delphi at the campfire. As a clan, we're going to decide whether or not she can stand with us as a Gangrel. Personally, I think she's got the support and moxy to pull it off, and I hope to hell she does. But there's going to be some that will never accept her, and damned if it isn't going to cause trouble down the road - for her, for those of us who support her, for the clan. Well get through it in the long run, but we're in for a rough ride. Heh, like Gangrel know any other kind of ride.

There's other bits and pieces, too. Went to a little informal gathering of the Ravenscarred, which was a helluva hoot. Saw Exodus' wings - that was nothing short of incredible, and he says that if I can get to the point where I can mix my forms, he'll teach me to grow my own! Damn, I can't wait to show that to Joe one of these nights: sporting a pair of huge raven wings some night at the grove.

Joe and I, along with Natty and Davina, have been working to try to teach Bob Lee from Columbia some new tricks. It's hard going - I think our respective gods are giving us a bit of extra trials, with it being an interfaith affair - but I think progress will be made in the end. If nothing else, it gives me a chance to spend more time with Joe.

Wish I could spend more time with him. But I've got so much on my plate with the Gangrel, and he spends so damned much time with Natty, and we've got our separate faiths... it makes it hard.

For twenty years, I dreamed of being able to run and hunt with him. And now? Now, it's a memory I'll cherish.

The similarities between Shane and I are... uncanny. We're different creatures, him and I, but our paths run side by side.

Turns out that he's the new Alpha of Pack Firebrand, the pack that I was saddled into helping when Amber dragged me to Missouri in the first place. From the sound of it, he made Alpha at almost the same time as I finished my last trial for Alpha of the Gangrel in Lamar. We talked a bit on the experiences; not really going into details - there's so much that we just can't tell each other, so much that the other would be happier not knowing anyway - but just sort of the general feel of it all: honoring territory, dealing with problems, that sort of thing.

Also found out that he knows at least one of the lupines down in College Station that apparently killed Emerson. We didn't give each other names or any of that, but he's agreed to give me some quiet help by asking some discrete questions about the incident. With a fair bit of luck, we might be able to piece together what really happened... and whether or not Em was set up.

We did talk a bit about the animal deaths that have been happening in Delphi (again, without specifics of names and places). Told him what I'd seen, that flickering form that disappeared. Shane's opinion pretty much matched my own: that it's a spirit or ghost of some sort. He understands spirits a good deel better than I do, and postulated that the thing might have started by emulating us on our hunts, took it a step farther, and now it's got a taste for killing. He even offered to come down and help take care of the thing, but I had to turn him down; brother or not, vouching for him down here in Lamar would happen about three seconds before someone shoved a stake in my chest and opened up on him with a shotgun or twenty. But now that I understand a bit more about this thing, I've got an idea; with tomorrow night being Hekate's Deipnon, a crossroads offering might help to settle the thing down. We'll see how that goes.

Didn't see Amber when I was down there. Frankly, that's for the best; she well and truly hates what I am now, and there's no point in poking her with a stick. But while I was there, Shane mentioned that she was still trying to find her kid in the foster care system. In fact, they've had some wolf-blooded trying to get into the computer records without much luck. So, I made a peace offering of sorts. Had Shane take me to the hall of records... and then I used my strongest protean gift to get inside and get to the actual paper record. Shane will give Amber the address for where her kid is, and if the time is right, he'll let Amber know who got it. Might make her calm down about me. Might just piss her off. Or might leave her wondering which to do.

That was Carlos' reaction: not sure whether to kill or kiss me. When I'd cleaned out Brainpan's cave, there was more than what I took with me, and one of those things was apparently the ashes of this Father Grubb guy that was important to their pack. When I overheard Shane talking on the phone about the missing ashes and how they thought that "a leech called Brainpan" had them, I let him in on Brainpan's death and that the ashes were probably still in the cave. So now, they've got the ashes back, and I've apparently got something resembling respect in the eyes of Carlos.

Same as I have with Steve, who is the new guardian of this "hall of heroes" they have in an old church down there. That was the initial reason that I was heading to meet up with Shane, anyway; I had an old letter from Brainpan's stash from that Father Grubb guy to the then-guardian of this hero hall, and after what happened with that spirit thing, I decided I should probably return it to them. Shane took me to meet this Steve guy to give him the letter directly. Whatever Steve was expecting, it wasn't me, but by the end of it, he shook my hand and only flinched a little bit when he did so.

You know, a year ago the last thing I'd have wanted to do would be to spend a night dealing with a bunch of fucking werewolves. But with Shane... hell, it was actually a good, if occasionally tense and somewhat frightening, night. And it was worth every awkward moment for that wonderful run with my brother - twin wolves on the hunt. If I can hold onto nothing else when torpor someday claims my memories, if there is no other glint from my past that I can recollect, I hope to keep that moment in my mind until my final night.

It did it again a couple nights ago.

On an e-mail list for my family - my Ravenscarred family, that is - my 'aunt' Dominion put a cryptic comment about how, "We are of one of the greatests houses in the Gangrel clan, a noble house... and in at least one covenant royalty." This got my curiousity up, and I started thinking to myself, "OK, so somewhere back in the day, one of our older folks was a Hapsburg or de Medici or something." So I asked her about it... and she insisted on a face-to-face visit if I wanted to find out more, which was weird enough in itself.

My life is full of unexpected delays, and as one thing led to another, most of a month went by before I could drag my feathery butt through the skies clear the hell down to this cabin of hers in the wilderness of rural Alabama. Like something out of a novel, a blind - beautiful, but blind - servant showed me in, and a few minutes later, I'm face to face with one of the strongest beasts I've ever felt: Aunt Dominion, who it turns out looks about 16 or so and is drop-dead gorgeous. If it wasn't for the fact that I halfway wondered if she was going to ask me for a snack like the MacGregors do, I think I might have even drooled a bit. Hey, she's legal at 600+.

Yeah, 600+. She's been around since before Exodus. And I made a pretty decent impression of an idiot when I tried to wrap my head around that before she explained that she'd been ghouled to some Daeva for a long, long time before seeing her last sun.

So we sit at this chessboard, with me knowing full well before she moves a piece that she could mop up the floor with me, and after we stare at each other for a solid minute and both get comfy with the idea that neither of us has eaten any souls, she gets right to the business of this whole 'royalty' thing while we poke pieces around the board. I wait for her to tell me that mad old King George III was in the blood, or maybe Good King Wenceslas.

Boy, am I ever wrong.

The royalty in question is Vlad Tepes. The Impaler. The big "D" himself that Bram Stoker embellished to the nth degree. I'm half tempted to beg or steal a flight to Ireland, kick around to find ol' Bram's ghost and ask him how the hell he knew, or if he was just the luckiest guesser on Gaia's green earth.

The way it was explained to me is that the Unholy was one of the classic "brides" of Dracula - i.e., his childer. You run this through your Jebediah-begat-Jeremiah decoder ring, and it works out that my great-great-grandsire is Hollywood's favorite monster and Halloween's biggest costume seller. I honestly should have guessed it; with Dominion being a High Poobah or something in the Dragons and her "in at least one covenant" teaser, it's kinda right there in plain sight... except who the hell ever thinks of freaking Dracula as being a likely answer for *anything* that has to do with a family line, even a vampiric one?

It's a secret, of course. And I can sure as hell see why. Hell, I'm no Dragon (though I'm apparently descended from the original), but I know enough of them to know that this could cause problems of all sorts if it was public knowledge. And I'll tell Slip as much when I tell her about her Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Vlad and make damned sure she knows that if it leaks, so will she. I hate not being able to tell Joe about this - I like sharing the shiny parts of my life with him - but love him as I may, this is the kind of knowledge that would be dangerous for him to know: both for me and for him.

So yeah. I'm officially no longer going to assume that I've pegged the weirdness meter for my life. Though damn if this one isn't going to be hard to top.

What the hell? How could I even waste the ink on something like that?

I'm still the captain of my soul, for fuck's sake. And this bond with Joe isn't anything that I didn't already feel before ; it's just sort of an official reinforcement of it. I've respected the hell out of the man since I met him. Hell, since Dallas died, Joe's been the closest thing I've had to a father-figure. So what the hell is wrong with making it official? Shit, if it wasn't for the fact that he's a he and I seem not to swing that way, I'd try to pull his eyes away from Nattie and Cougar, maybe try to be the one entering a Crone marriage with him. As it is, he's still a helluva remarkable Kindred, and the only thing that could be improved (other than that little gender issue) would be if he were Gangrel.

So why, in the name of all that is holy, did I write that page-full of tripe?

I mean, I remember sitting on the porch writing it. I'm not some torpor-victim ; my memory is solid. But what I felt then? I can't even feel a shadow of that now.

Maybe it's because I faced down my beast. Maybe it was the envy-riddled monster in me that was pouring out that crap, and when I clamped it down, that fixed it. Makes as much sense as anything else.

I'd be tempted to rip the page right out of this book, except that the offering for Dominion's hunt is on the previous page, and that I'd promised myself at the start that this was going to be a complete, untainted record. So I won't rip it out. But I sure as hell will look at it from time to time as an example of just how big a fool I can be when I let my beast run the show.

"It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul"

It was those words that I quoted to Colin Sage when he asked my why I wanted so badly to be embraced Gangrel. It was those words that warmed me in ways in the nights since - and before, for that matter - when the rest of the world left me cold.

Those words are no longer a comfort; they are a mocking taunt.

For the second time in my very short Requiem, I have had my will bound to that of another.

Mind you, the regnant this time is far, far, far more appealing than it was last; it would be difficult indeed to pick worse than Brainpan. And I admit that I did and do care a great deal for the man who has done this, and respect the reasons he has done so.

Unfortunately, that small comfort does not change the knowledge that I am my own no longer. I am a thrall, a slave, and I am not likely to be anything else again. Every fiber of my being rails against this... but I love it... but I hate it.

Did my actions merit this punishment? I don't think so. Torpor, perhaps. Maybe even final death. But an eternity of slavery, not only of body but of mind? That even the ancient Dodekatheon would not decree, and I think it audacious in the extreme for lesser beings such as ourselves to sentence one to such a fate.

Oh, I had the choice of torpor, if I so wished. They were gracious enough to offer me that. But because of what Artemis and the nature spirit have shown me, I could not take it. I am, as the spirit put it, the last best hope it has for a protector here in Lamar, someone to stand against the Brood with every ally that can be mustered, and as it was the divine will of the Huntress to let this spirit speak to me, I cannot shirk my duty, bond or no bond.

And there are other things besides. The pups of the Pack need their Den Mother. The Gangrel of Lamar need an Alpha, and I have just completed the last of the challenges that stood between me and that duty. My childe needs her sire. All of these things, these duties, hold me here as surely as the taste of vitae holds me to my regnant.

But for all that, I feel empty, for I am no longer the captain of my soul.

Let's see...

'Gini did indeed come back. Sort of. The person that came back, well, it's not really Regina anymore. No, this is Cougar, and Cougar has come out and stated that with her recent change, she's not Gangrel, even in the way that she was trying to be. But - and it's a big "but" - she's still leading the Gangrel of Lamar for the moment.

I say for the moment, because I'm the "Alpha in Testing", for lack of a better term. When she asked if anyone would step forward to lead the Gangrel, I did. Then, she asked - one by one - who would follow me. Wasn't altogether surprised to see Destiny waffle, and given the circumstances at the time, wasn't surprised at all to see Hood say no. Nor was I shocked to see the other Gangrel say yes; we'd had this discussion not a month earlier, when they agreed that I was leading them.

But Cougar has her own ways, and decided that since there wasn't unanimous support, there should be tests for me by anyone who would put them forward. I'm still working on the last of them.

Destiny - who was the one all fired up to have me tested in the first place - gave me a challenge that wound up being the first fulfilled. For the sake of Hood, I'm glad that it was, though it took a good trick by Cougar and the willingness of Fetch to make it happen. Unfortunately, it comes along with a massive price ; if the truth comes out, Hood is as good as ash, and frankly so am I. A helluva lot of my future is riding in Hood's hands now.

Hood's was different. And private. And I ain't even gonna write about it, other than to say that I'll be keeping an eye out for the safety of Iz.

And that leaves Cougar. She hit me with a sticky challenge, but one that is deeply important. After Davina's incident with her little "wolf attack" in town, the Dept. of Natural Resources has been going over the area with a fine-toothed comb, trying to find what they think is a rogue - or maybe rabid - wolf. She wants me to fix this situation. I'm working on it from a few different angles: getting the wolf packs to play nice and normal, getting the Gangrel to not be seen in wolf form for a while, and giving the DNR a sacrificial lamb... or husky, in this case, worked up to seem like it was probably the attack animal. Good progress has been made, though Slip is still working on setting things up with the dog. With any luck, it will get these damned agents off our our land. If not... well, then I have to look at other methods, but I'm not looking forward to them.

So, that's where I am - an Alpha who isn't an Alpha but is, depending on the situation and who is asking. Cougar's still running the clan for now, but everyone involved knows that can't remain a permanent situation, even if I wasn't in line for the job; her blood calls her in different directions.

One of those directions, thankfully, is the Pack. She's back in the Alpha's seat there, too, but to stay... and while it ain't what I thought would happen, I can't complain. Turns out that I was a bit ahead of myself on the Pack situation. What I didn't know is that there's a third step in really becoming a part of it. I'm past that now... and in fact, I'm the new Den Mother, frighteningly enough, with Belle as Cougar's Beta. It's a workable arrangement, I think. There's gonna be times where Cougar does something that chaps my hide, but I'll cope.

There's been a sort of magical flare-up of late. Joe's gym had a bolt of magical lighting hit it - and clear him of that damned disease. Griogar turned it into a big pro-Morrigan, anti-anything-else rally, which is a big part of the reason I'm not Vala anymore. It's become painfully clear to me that the Circle in Lamar isn't so much a Circle as a bunch of clustered dots with missing connections between them. It's become just as clear that the local Acolytes who are powerful enough to get their way are happy to keep it just like that. So I'm practicing Solitary these days, or with my childe, or occasionally doing things with Davina. I'm done trying to bring this group together.

Along with the recent fit-of-the-wierd, a new leyline has cut right through Delphi, right through the middle of the campfire - which doesn't need new wood anymore to keep burning. I'm personally taking it as a sign of what I already knew: Delphi is sacred Gangrel ground, and the campfire is its heart.

The Ordo and the Circle (though not with the latter asking my opinion) have decided that all the recent deaths in Lamar might be behind this flare-up. So, there's a new decree: no more killing. No mortals, not even animals. In an apparent effort to enforce the latter, all of the wilderness around Lamar - not just Delphi - has been handed over to the Gangrel for safekeeping. We might have to kick a few asses, but we'll do what we can to enfore the edict.

One more thing. Cougar's trying to teach me something, and I'm trying to learn it. When he was at his last moments, Dallas left a final message in a rosary. Apparently, part of that message is for me. So, Cougar is teaching me how to reach it. Helps that I've already got a decent basis; turns out that seeing auras like I've been doing since Vincent taught me last year is kinda the groundwork for this. It's still damned slow going, but I have hope that, in time, I'll figure it out. I just hope that I'll be as calm when I do hear what Dallas had to say - it's something that I'm looking forward to and fearing a little bit all at once.

Time for me to go, Journal. I've got things to do, people to watch, wolves to talk to, and a rosary that I very much wish to unlock.

I stopped by the coffeehouse where Stephanie pulls her first Friday night shift tonight. Or at least, *did* pull it. She came in late, and immediately dived into a confab with Tony. Seems there's some sort of interview she has tomorrow for a job....

When she brought my coffee, I worked in a question about overhearing something about an interview, and if Tony was going to lose his best waitress. Steph launched into a ten-minute ramble about one helluva job offer. Government secretarial position, must be through the Job Service with a Saturday interview. Ten bucks an hour, full benefits for her and the kids. It was like someone had given her her life back; she walked away like she was on a cloud.

Left her a five for the coffee - gods, it feels nice to give her a tip, even if she's about to find herself a lot better off. And in all honesty, I think I was walking on a cloud when I left there, too.

I know that there's no connection between the gift of the venison and the job offer. But at the same time, I kind of wonder if maybe the gods were waiting for her to realize that she can catch a break, and that it gave her the confidence to believe, to hope that something would work for her for a change.

Now I just have to hope I'm not still grinning like a godsdamned halloween pumpkin when 'Gini comes back tomorrow night.

Cait laid down a rule for me. That I'm to observe but not help, at least not without Cait's permission, if I'm going to be her student.

I finally realized that I don't want to be her student that bad. And after a long, hard look at my soul and at what she's become, I know that I don't want to be her student at all.

Taking the deer was child's play and sheer joy ; I love hunting, I love the chase, and the end. Usually, I let them live... but not last night. No, this time I took the deer, thanked its spirit for the sacrifice, and after I'd taken my fill of the blood, hung it up to finish draining.

Tonight was the harder work. I've known how to skin and clean game for most of my life, but it doesn't make it an easy job. And tearing something up with my claws is a lot easier than carefully taking it apart with a knife and saw. Still, there was a familiar comfort in the task ; it was a reminder of some of those few happy moments from my childhood, when we'd all work together on the job after a big hunt that would keep the whole Wren clan in venison for the next year.

The big freezer in the Cabin is damned near packed now. And so was the styrofoam cooler that I left at Stephanie's door. I felt like such a damned kid, ringing the bell after I'd made sure she was home, then going to mist and hiding in the ceiling air vent to watch her answer the door to find that cooler. But all the work was worth it for the look on her face when she looked inside to see all those steaks and roasts and ground venison.

I'm gonna have to be careful as all hell bringing the rest of it. Can't afford to set up any regular pattern to it, even though the freezer built into her fridge can only hold so much. Can't let her actually see me bringing the stuff. But I'll make sure it gets to her somehow. Her kids need this. She needs this. And somewhere in my soul, so do I.

Last night, I meant to sacrifice my virginity, and the tool thereof, to Artemis. It was going to be a night of getting more in balance with myself, of giving the grove a better sanctification, of Thargelia sacrifice.

It went horribly wrong.

I was raped. By a ghost. Using a corpse.

He seemed the perfect type. Exactly the smarmy sex-abusing pseudo-Wiccan asshole that I wanted to kill for Her. He was, in retrospect, too perfect; he exactly aligned with what I wanted. And now that I can look back at it, the signs of his noncorpreal nature were all there: nobody really interacted with him or even noticed him except me and one other woman... she must have had the sight too.

The... thing went right along with everything I tried to do, until the quarter offerings were made and he insisted I be on bottom. When I laid down, he bound me with some kind of magic. Massive, hugely powerful magic. And then he raped me. And there wasn't a thing I could do about it.

Tonight, Davina did put it in a kind of perspective for me that makes it almost bareable. Artemis never willingly submitted to a man. And for my virginal gift, neither did I once I had any idea what was really going on.

Afterward, after the rotting corpse the spirit had ridden fell off of me, things got... worse? Better? Either way, it has led me down roads I am only now regretting.

Griogar was there. He must have shown up during the rape. Whenever it was, he laughed. Laughed my failure. Laughed at my trauma. Laughed at my fucking RAPE. He poked at my beast, begged me to go off on him... and something in me snapped. I attacked him. Tore his clothes off, threw him to the ground and... well, it can't exactly be called rape, because he wanted it. My instincts took over, and so did my wolf (which I think only made him all the more excited). When I came back to myself, it was as a wolf, on him, with his blood in my mouth. The bastard got everything he wanted from me: the first drink toward a vinculum, sex, and a solid push in the direction of my beast.

That's the thing that really has me bent out of shape. I'm closer to my beast. What I did to Griogar doesn't bother me... but that fact that it doesn't bother me does. I don't want to become him. I sure as hell don't want to become Hood, who looks like a fucking zombie and damned near acts like one. I have got to get myself back into control. And with my new... attitudes, it's important. I hate - hate - HATE - rapists, and damned if I'm going to let myself become one in some twisted manner of dealing with what happened. As bad as the prospect sounds, I'm going to have to talk to Belle. She's the most humane person I know; maybe - just maybe - she can help me find a way back from the brink.

Everything else seems so damned inconsequential in comparison, but I may as well write it down. The cop-rapist was caught... and Davina killed him (after fucking up and revealing herself as supernatural to him). She did clean up her mess, and I respect her for that; she's going to relocate to Lamar for the long haul, and I think that - this incident notwithstanding - she's going to be a helluva welcome addition to both the clan and circle. Not to dwell on the point, but she crossed a line of her own when she took care of that problem; she's a Scarlet Woman now after over 50 years as a Maiden.

Regina called me to find out what the hell was going on; someone contacted her with the news of the possible breach. In the space of an hour, I was able to call her back and tell her that the breach had been closed by the clan without undue involvement of others. I think she was actually pleased, though I still expect that she's going to tear me a new one when she gets home. She's Alpha of the Pack... but she's not Alpha of the Gangrel of Lamar, and breaking that to her is going to be doubleplus unfun. I'm dreading her return as much as I'm anticipating it.

As for the Alpha of the Gangrel, that's me. It's my calling, and I'm damned well doing what I can to wrangle this wild bunch. I took more damned calls last night than I have in the past month; I think there were nine different crisis calls in the space of as many minutes. But in the end, I pulled it out. The Gangrel carried the night, and I think we're stronger for it.

Time to wrap this up. I want to go find Belle.

For months now, I've had two calls from Artemis : one to nurture, one to lead. For reasons that, in retrospect, were pretty damned stupid, I took the first to refer to the various Gangrel pups that have wandered into my life, and the second to refer to the leadership gap in the Coven of Lamar. It sort of made sense at the time, if I didn't pay attention to how fate was moving me.

But again - as I am so damned often - I was wrong.

There's no getting around the leadership aspect. To be frank, I've been leading the pups of the Pack ever since Regina left on her personal quest... and as such, I've become the default voice of the Pack. Belle talked with me a bit ago, and I should have picked up on how she was talking then as an indicator. And in all honesty, while I do my best with the pups, I'm not near as good a hand at nurturing them as Belle has proven, despite her not wearing the necklace anymore. But it ain't just the Pack ; hell, not two weeks ago, the Gangrel of the city called me their Alpha. Can't get much more in-my-face than that.

The nurturing thing has been sneakier. It's not something I've focused on in the Circle, because I've had my eye on what I thought was a call to become Heirophant. But it's been there, quietly in the background. Talks with Rufus that started to bear fruit for him ; even though he's dust now, I'm hopeful that his soul was in a better place for the end of his cycle than it would have otherwise been, a place that had at least the beginnings of a real connection with Her. And dear gods, the troubled haunt that is Michael Mattox.... I'd give a lot to be able to bring him some real hope and peace, and while I know I've fallen short of the full mark with him, I hope that I've brought him at least some small measure of comfort over the past few months. His rage, his anger, his pain rides so close to the surface, I don't know what can bed that fire down... and now that he's left town, I don't know as I'll ever get the chance to try again. But if his path crosses mine again, I certainly will.

A piece of me is a little disappointed. While I said many times that I didn't want to be Heirophant, now that I can see that it's not my path I can also see that part of me did want it, that it craved the respect that comes with it. Hindsight is funny that way ; it lets us see things about ourselves that we miss in the moment.

But at the same time, I feel a helluva lot better knowing my true calling now. Won't be easy : riding herd on some of the rough-and-tumble types that make up my clan is going to be ugly, and I know that there's time where nurturing some of my covenmates is going to be like finding nice things to say about Adolf Hitler, but at least now, I actually know what I'm supposed to do. And of course, there's going to be flak from folks about me switching gears ; I'll just have to cope with that... and in the long run, so will they.

Shame it took me so long to see the fucking signs.

Right now, the tool I'm considering is probably plowing that little fluffy-headed Wiccan that he was chatting up for half an hour in the back shelves of Blue Star Books.

Much as I don't want to admit it, that creepy bastard Griogar is right. I *do* hold on to things too tightly, and it's long past time that I sacrifice one of the most tightly held of them. To Artemis of course, not his Morrigan, but sacrifice all the same. But for this particular sacrifice, I'm going to need a very particular kind of tool. With any luck, I'll find him in one of Lamar's assortment of occult shops.

I know what I'm looking for ; I've seen the type a thousand times.

He'll be charming, in a smooth and easy kind of way ; that's how he gets all the young things to listen to him in the first place. He's blessed with decent looks, and has taken great pains to grow a goatee so stereotypically pagan that you half expect him to have goat legs and pull out a panflute. He'll know his stuff... that's how it seems to the new Wiccan wannabes, anyway, as he regurgitates feel-good drivel from Buckland and Cunningham and that godsdamned bleach-blonde hack Fiona Horn. He's practiced his lines, and knows how to sell "The Great Rite" as the ultimate in spiritual experiences. If he's on his mark, he has a girl - or a couple of girls - good and conned by closing time, and in his "temple" about half an hour later. He'll keep them on the hook until he gets tired of them, or they wise up and figure out that the only wand he's got is the one in his pants, and then he's back on the hunt for his new "coven".

This is Mr. Tool. And he's exactly what I want for this job. Unlike him, I'm not in a rush ; I don't need to settle for the first one to take the bait on any given night. I want to make damned well sure that I've got the right one. After all, he's going to help me to make one hell of a sacrifice of myself, and help me consecrate my temple as well. Don't want to pick wrong. That's why I didn't take the self-styled "Moonwalker" tonight when I saw him doing what he does best at Blue Star. He might be the right one... but I'll shop around a bit more in the coming nights, and see if there's one more fitting to the task at hand.

I certainly want to pick a tool that'll make Artemis happy.

Yeah, I know, I said I would never set foot in that hellhole again, etc, etc, blah blah blah. Circumstances have a funny way of making an idiot out of people who say "never". In this case, it was a favor to a friend and a sense of responsibility.

The friend is Davina. Because of a number of issues, she wasn't going to be able to be present for the Columbia council meeting. Now theoretically, she's the Heirphant up there and respresents the Circle to the Council. Mind you, I can count the Acolytes in Columbia on one hand with fingers to spare, but yeah. So she called in a favor, and asked me to go and speak in her stead.

That wasn't the only issue; there was also the matter of Elaina, and to be blunt, that's one that I needed to deal with. For good or for ill, she's my thrall... and despite having no knowledge of her asshattery until well after the fact, that still makes me feel like its my mess to clean up.

So, with no shortage of trepidation, I flew my ass to Columbia.

You know, it's amazing how much the place can change in six months while remaining a complete and utter shithole.

Their "Council" is still a largely futile game of musical chairs. The populace still, for the most part, couldn't find its collective ass with both hands and a map. And the same idiotic games are still in play.

Got a helluva shock when Elaina showed up... because she wasn't supposed to be just "showing up" anywhere. Under lock and key (and stake) of Joshua Narrow, or so I'd been told. When I called Narrow and found out that she was *still* under said lock and key and stake, well that was when it got weird. Turns out that Columbia's had a problem with look-alike agents of what they think are VII lately, and this thing was one of them. Eerie as hell, though; the damned thing could tell me things, like what "she" had given me the last time we were in St. Louis together. Thing acted like it was my thrall, too. But when I took a cold, hard look at it with the Sight, I could see the magic masking it, all tangled up in auras of pride and wrath. I wound up being the one to stake the thing; the Columbia fuckers can figure it out later.

As for the real Elaina, she's... well, she's dealt with. As a traitor against the Circle, I had been prepared to end her life. As it turns out, it kind of already has, in a way. Joshua is doing something intensely disturbing to her, is already well along the way of it: he's sort of rebuilding her mind. In a way, the Elaina that betrayed the Mother is already dead, with her memories of her time with the covenant gone... and as the only way I'd get to end her shell would be to start a small war with the First Estate of Columbia, I'll have to settle for that. Part of me would rather kill her as a mercy at this point, but it's just not within my grasp. Gods, I hate politics.

Speaking of politics, sitting in on the Council in Davina's stead was... bizarre. I had tried to forget how dysfunctional they were, but it's hard to do when the bastards are fucking up right there in front of me.

John Doe is still representing the Carthians, and still every bit as much a moron as ever, with all the saavy of a carrot. And yet, he was a marvel of political accumen in comparison to Father York. I've never seen anyone so successfully cut off their own feet before, but he managed: he effectively demanded that the self-damned Sanctified not be given a vote on the Council, a request that the rest - myself included - were only too happy to grant him (with the except of the idiot Doe, who voted against).

York also tried to arrange for a certain degree of autonomy for the Lance on their holy grounds - right to grant sanctuary, that sort of thing. The look on his face when I nodded and agreed and then demanded that the Circle be granted the equivalent was priceless. The rest of the Council made it pretty clear that either both will be shot down or both granted, and either way, that's fine with me; at least I ensured parity with the bastards for the Circle... and if I neglected to mention just how extensive our "holy lands" are in Columbia, oh well.... :)

Oh, to top things off, the idiots decided to not only let that little abomination of theirs keep walking around, but to appoint the thing as "Harpy to the Council Rebecca Washington". This thing is like a showcase for all that is wrong in Columbia; they try to send their precious little "harpy" to visit Lamar - or pretty much anywhere else - and they're gonna get her ashes back in a baggie. I'd love to get my claws into the bastard that embraced a fucking 12-year old.

The old saying is true, there's no place like home. And damned if I'm not glad to be back home now in Delphi again. And now I'm gonna set this journal aside, go hunt with Slip and enjoy the taste of home.

Joe Tillinghast stepped down as Heirophant. He was called to do so by the Dark Mother, to attend to matters of family. This was a major blow in and of itself, even though Natalie had confided that he may do so earlier in the night.

The second blow was when the Dark Mother called me to step up to the plate and stand in his stead.

I didn't want this. I still don't. I'm very young, I'm very inexperienced, and my confidence is shaky as all hell. But I cannot and will not deny the call that I received, the words whispered in my ear by the Huntress that it is time for me to take the horn and the bow, to guide the Great Hunt. I will not shirk this duty that Artemis has laid upon my shoulders.

Still, I know that I will not stand alone. I am Vala, not Heirophant - though I fear that I will be such someday - and my brothers and sisters under the moon will stand with me in this task. Their wisdom and experiences will be as my own ; their many decades will bolster my few years; their faith will be woven with my own to form a cord that cannot be broken.

Mother, as I pierce my flesh with my athame in these coming nights, I do so seeking Your wisdom, Your strength, Your tenacity in the face of what is to come. I do so open to Your teachings in the sacred ways, that I may become toughened in your eyes. I am now as the mortal Stephanie, the one whom I marked before the last dawn as she slept, marked with my own vitae upon her brow as a marker of who I was at that moment, but I must move beyond her compassion and be of a tougher skin. My hardened skin will serve as a symbol, a touchstone for a hardened heart, for I will need such if I am to lead Your Circle, if I am to permit and even encourage the Tribulations that must be visited upon each of Your Acolytes, that Your Wisdom may be found in the souls of each of our number.

As I make this first cut - So Mote It Be.

:blood splatter stains the page:

It's an exercise in both pain and respect.

This woman, five years younger than myself, is living in a nasty little corner of hell. HUD assistance gets her cheap rent, but cheap is a long, long way from free... and to be honest, free is about all she could reasonably afford. Unfortunately, that same HUD assistance doesn't keep the place maintained ; I've watched her three times this week take Roger and Bethany down to 11A to use Mrs. Labrinski's tub, because maintenance hasn't gotten around to getting her bathroom plumbing working again. The only reason the toilet works is that she keeps a bucket of water there from the kitchen to do manual flushing.

I've followed her to work a couple times. She's busting her ass at two different waitressing jobs ; I've had her serve coffee to me (that just sits there and gets cold) a couple times. The bitch of it is I couldn't even tip her ; that would count as help, and Cait was very, very clear on the "no help unless approved" thing. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one not leaving some pocket change for her ; the sad dives that she's working at don't exactly have the most generous of customers.

The child care situation is... creative. She's worked out deals with half of the women in the apartment building : swapping time watching kids, doing laundry, cooking, you name it. It covers the bases (barely), but not by much. And if she's getting more than four hours of sleep on any one night, I'll eat my coat.

It's pure hell. But here's the amazing thing. Even though she's dead tired most of the time, even though there's absolutely nothing to spare, I watch her when she is with her children and see joy shine through. Her love for those kids, her dedication to making sure they have what they need - and not just the material things - no matter the cost to herself, is like iron.

I watch her, then I see what I go through... and I'm almost embarrassed for the times I think I'm walking a hard road. I bitch about my circumstances, about the mess I've built for myself, but Stephanie somehow manages to keep a situation many times worse from teetering over the edge and still manages to keep positive about it.

I really, really need to start counting the blessings I have from the Dark Mother. My tribulations are tiny compared to what this mortal is enduring. I need to shut the hell up, face what needs to be faced without complaint, and learn my lessons. I need to do it for myself, and I need to do it for my pup... 'cause children learn from example, and I want Slip to "grow" into a person with the strength, the perseverance, the ability to remain positive in the face of a world that is as negative as negative can be, that this mortal named Stephanie has shown.