Listening: Things Falling Apart, NIN

By way of explaination I've been kinda a bored this morning. Work is flowing by very quickly and I'm thinking about gaming but unable to dedicate a whole hour or two to. But for some reason I really want to write in my journal about my characters. I don't really know why. It seems like kind of a lame exersize (sp?). But I feel like writing, and for just long enough to have become too long gaming and character creation has been my only creative outlet.

Anyway, this is a quiz I filled out in January and rather than answer with song lyrics I'll respond as my garou character Dolores.

Honors-the-Dead is a Silent Strider metis galliard, recently attained Adren rank(despite playing her throughout the entire chronicle and having started as a cub with certain other folk who are now challenging for Elder). She's hardly bitter, life in the US has been much nicer than merry ole England. Of course she's repeatedly come close to dying bunches of times over here, but in many ways that's better than the humiliation she faced in the UK.

[1] are you male or female?
Pardon my hesitation, but I wonder why you ask. It is perhaps not as clear in my lupine form, especially because I nearly only take it for it's small shape and swiftness of motion. You must know that I am female from my human shape, long and lithe, though not particularly feminine. But my war-form is most telling. I am female primarily for a lack any other definition. But the sin of my forebears is clear on my face and thus any interest in my sexuality must be quickly nullified.

[2] describe your neighborhood
Clearly you know not my habits or predilictions. I rent a room in a Glendale home in a quiet area with half a dozen school-age children. But that is purely for convenience. I stay often with the Sept in the Verdugo hills and travel through that area most often. The caern there is based in healing but has been known to change radically - and dangerously - from one month to the next. My neighborhood, indeed. If you were to know me better you would know that I have no home, only places I stay because I have not been made unwelcome yet. The closest to home I have been was Marakesh where a woman smelling of jasmine sang so beautifully of our long lost Khem. It was there that we traded stories of the thrice-damned children of Sutekh of our victories and our losses as we fight our way back to the grace and favor Isis and her brother Osiris and their scion Horus. It was there we howled to Luna our reaffirmation of our oaths to fight Apep to our last breath. My neighborhood is a creation of words, of memories and of lands that might never have existed. I have never seen Khem, and it is likely I never will, but that is my home.

[3] how do you look?
*sigh* descriptions range from ungainly and awkward to monstrous. I am considerably taller than most women and maintain a wiry frame. Many is the time that a complete stranger will ask if I play basketball. I try not to be rude when I shy away because, in truth, I never have played. But I am a runner and occasionally telling these strangers that I ran track in high school suits their curiousity and affords me a graceful exit. When I was younger and around those who knew her I was told often that I looked much like my mother. Apparently we have the same swarthy skin and eyes the color of desert sand at night and thick black hair. As a wolf my pelt is matte black and my ears rise long and thin and end in points above my head. Some have called it a jackal-shape but I have seen jackals and my head is too wide, too wolfish to confuse anyone who has seen a jackal close enough and lived.

Obviously my eye is the most important feature. A third eye is not only rare it is cause for much attention. Therefore it remains covered by a bandana unless I am in a secluded place with only Garou and kin for company. It is why I take lupus form only rarely, for I cannot keep it covered then. Some garou have speculated that, based on story, it might be cultivated to relate some extra-sensory information to me. But if anything it has grown weak as a muscle, covered as it has for all these years.

[4] if you could say something to the person you like/love, what would it be?
*ahem* I presume that you mean, if were even remotely possible that I might carry on a normal relationship in some contaxt that might approach romantic that would neither breach the Litany nor terribly frighten some poor kin or destroy the veil.... then perhaps I could think of something to say. For now I bury my heart deeply within song. Recently I have been trying to create a quatrain around many excited senses at very presence of the singer's object affection. The metre I will forego for now and simply state that it focusses on the person's wine-dark lips that are as soft as rose-petals, whose eyes are the green of an open field and whose laugh causes all nearby flowers to burst to bloom. *clears throat* It is slow going.

[5] where do you wish you were right now?
*smiles* it is not where, but doing what. I would love to be running, full force through the desert, the sun on my back heating up my fur, my paws sinking softly into the Saharan sand before lifting again like a feather on the wind.

Though I have strongly considered travelling to other parts of the Americas, spcifically Mexico and perhaps Central America. It surprises me that I have spent so much time - four years now - on this hemisphere, but have not traveled beyond these United States. There is much to see here, of course, but there is much else that I have only read of to the south. I have even heard tell of mummies that were created in some parts of Mexico. I wonder why and if they are associated with Isis' Undying.

[6] what would you say to your best friend?
*blink* As it happens I have quite a solitary nature, as befits an itinerant traveller I keep few aquaintances for any length of time. I know a few people, kin and garou, who will take me in should I need it and, if I can, would do the same for them. Were I to discover I had such a good friend as you imply I suppose my words would have to be "I am sorry, I must go now. No. You cannot come with me."

[7] any words of wisdom?
Wisdom is a fool's trade in broken promises. At best an intelligent individual will offer advice that may end up being very worthwhile. I offer stories. Cubs often accuse me of making them up (clearly I do, usually I tell them ahead of time, but not always) and tell me that if I cannot prove their veracity the stories are nothing better than pretty falsehoods. I tell them the facts in the stories do not need to have happened for the story to be true. Sometimes they understand, often they do not.

[8] describe yourself
*long pause* I travel. I tell stories.

*long, long-ass pause* I study various forms of mystiscm and occult to accaint myself with nearly-lost knowledge and to better know the methods of some of the enemies of Gaia.

There is nothing further to describe without more specific questions.

[9] what do you think of drugs and alcohol?
Some are worrisome crutches humans and some of our kin give themselves to. Their lives are hard, it is so, but staying present to that hardness makes a person hard in turn. Avoiding it with weaver chemicals only makes the humans soft, unable to discern where their society of comfort and decadence has let them and the lies of the Wyrm has begun.

[10] if you could say one thing to your enemy, what would it be?
*Long ear-splitting howl mourning a thousand tragedies and promising unrelenting, blood-filled revenge*

[11] what do you usually do on friday nights?
It greatly depends on where I am. If I am no where near a scab or other Weaver-entrenchment I often rest by a fire telling my stories and listening to others tell their stories of glory and honor under Luna's bright gaze. Of course, many is the night when we hear of some trouble that should be investigated which often leads to an enemy that must be put down, but that is rare.

[12] are you for world peace?
*slight laugh/sigh* Peace is a dream many in my Nation dream of, but few of us allow such a dream to be entertained as reality. We have been fighting for too long to think that any such thing could be possible with out the complete eradication of our enemies (or ourselves, but I daresay that seems quite unlikely, as our enemies seem to have no love for peace). We are Gaia's warriors and Gaia has many enemies. Perhaps after the Apocalypse is over Gaia may smile and dance with her children with no cares. But what I have seen lately is that the Apocalypse will a tremendous struggle and our outcome threatens to turn dark with every passing day.

[13] what do you think about school?
school or schooling? Most of the garou that I know and all the human kin were taught in American classrooms and that has been both helpful and unkind. They are taught to think like Weaver's Children, and they understand human society better than I ever hope to. They know computers and databanks and automatictellermachines, but all too often their parents and other family leave the schools to teach them exclusively. So they come to us not knowing a thing about their heritage, history or duties. Being informed is important, my own schooling was given exclusively by kinfolk matrons and a few garou when they were not busy, and they taught me what they thought was important. In fact their lessons have been very important as it comes to the Nation and to explaining the strange circumstances facing a new cub, but occasionally venturing into a new scab is greatly bewildering and wish I knew, as every homid garou seems to know, what to do and where to go.

[14] how do you feel right now?
Introspective, I suppose. But also the niggling at the back of my brain and the itching on the soles of my feet is saying it is time to set out again. Travel without a particular destination in mind and not stop until I have seen something I had never seen before and learned soemthing I had not known before and captured it all in a tale of wonder.

[15] any closing words?
I am hungry. I shall hunt and then settle down to read more about the Olmecs. Return tonight and I shall tell you the story of Groshen the Mighty and how he was defeated by his wife Itarra the mousy.