Currently the moon is in the waning Half Moon phase (49% full).

Holds-the-Line howls that she looks for Pierces-the-Ice. Where is she?'.

Pierces the Ice, after a brief delay, howls in response. She sends her location, the center of the caern, and the sound of her howl was eager though tense.

Around you, twenty yards in every direction, stretches the caern. To the southeast, a waterfall plummets over the edge of the chasm into a small pool in the caern; nearby, to the southwest, steam comes from cracks in the ground, perhaps some of the same water. Northwest, a rocky spar juts out of the ground at a low angle, showing a sloping but smooth top. The chasm walls narrow a bit to the northeast, causing some of the mist to swirl in that area.

Some ten or fifteen minutes after the exchange of howls, the beige Walker bounds down the trail beside the waterfall, emerging from the omni-present mist like a ghost. Once away from the wet she stops to give herself a thorough shake, then stretches fore and aft, her tail flagging behind her.

Jacinta stands now in homid in the center of the caern, not far from the crystal shards. Her posture carries an air of anticipation, and intensity, anger held at bay. She looks as though she has been working out, hair tied back with a leather thong and sweat beading along her brow and the bridge of her flat nose. As she watches Natalie approach, the longknife in her hand is replaced in its sheath.

Holds-the-Line doesn't appear to notice the other until after both of her back legs have been shaken in turn; when she does her ears prick forward, tongue lolling out. Firewatcher-rhya said you wished to speak with me. Only then does the Galliard approach, plopping her butt down a polite conversing distance from Jacinta.

Jacinta looks down at the Galliard, arms rising to cross over her chest. She sniffs inwardly, a sharp intake of breath through her nose, for a moment silently watching the other. "My kin," she says, finally, and with slow and deliberate enunciation, "are not Glass Walker slaves."

Holds-the-Line's ears swivel backwards, flattening, before slowly returning to their upright position. She agrees that they are not. She also agrees that no kin are slaves, no matter their tribe. Jacinta's words have squelched the wolf's good humor, where her body language did not.

Jacinta continues, noting Natalie's agreement. She doesn't move other than a twitch at her jawline as she speaks. "If you have contact with my kin, expect him to perform tasks for you, speak with you, I expect that you will come to me. He is my kin. Wendigo kin. Because he lives in the scab does not change this."

Holds-the-Line remains silent for a good long while, though the expressive wolf-form does nothing to hide her own rise of anger. I understand. Then when your kin speaks to me of city matters, I will tell him he must find you and speak to you to gain your permission. Her tail wraps tightly around her haunches, her eyes dropping off the homid's as she forces contrition into her body language. I should have spoken to you of him.

Jacinta bites off a snarl, the contrition in the Glass Walker's posture doing something to ameliorate the Wendigo's outrage. After she takes two slow deep breaths, she speaks again. Once more, her voice is slow, her words carefully chosen and carefully spoken. "I am on the bawn. Guardian. He cannot easily find me. You can. If he should come to you, you come to me. If you should need to go to him, first you come to me." Now her anger rises to the fore, "I should not find out at Moot that my kin is involved in a veil breech."

Holds-the-Line carefully, cautiously, points out that he is not involved in the veil breech. She keeps her eyes fastened on a tree to her right, well away from the angry ahroun. He has been asking about things it is his duty to know as his position of caretaker for part of the city. I have not asked him to do anything dangerous, or that would call attention to himself.

Jacinta's homid lips curl away from her teeth, fingers digging into her bare arms as she repeats, "If he should come to you, YOU come to me. If you should need to go to him, FIRST, you come to me."

I will tell him you do not wish him to speak to me alone, the wolf agrees, not moving. I will call to him when I return home and give to him your words.

Jacinta's arms snap downward, frustration now winning out over anger. "No!" Her lower jaw juts forward, teeth clenched on an underbite while she takes three deep breaths. "No," she repeats, somewhat more calmly. "While you remain Garou of the Sept, I do not need you chaperoned with my kin. I merely," she bites off the word and her eyes flash, "wish you to keep me informed. Ask before you set him to tasks, tell me when he comes to you."

Holds-the-Line flicks her closer ear toward Jacinta, then turns her head to look at her out of the corner of one eye. I have duties that keep me in the city, as yours keep you here. Do you wish to know ... I will shift. She does so, surging up through Crinos and down into homid in a handful of seconds, her eyes still held away from the irate Ahroun. "Am I getting it that he calls me, I get the information from him, come out here and find you, then go back and tell him whatever? As in, immediately? Or is within a couple of days good enough?"

Natalie's discussion of duties in the city is met with a narrowing of her eyes and a clenching of her jaw. The Wendigo waits while the Galliard runs through her forms, impatience clear in her face. When the other completes her statement in English, Jacinta clenches her fingers at her sides. "Before you tell him to do anything. Before. You ask me. I do not care if you send someone. I do not care if you come on a ski-doo. Before you give my kin orders, you ask me." As she pauses, she works to relax the death-grip fists she's holding at her sides. "If he brings you word, you bring it to me. You tell me, Harold came to me and said the sky is falling down. You are a Galliard. You can find ways to bring me news." She allows a small lifting of one shoulder, a half-shrug. "How much time? I do not have a watch. I have a sun and a moon to tell time. Decide what is right. Do that."

Natalie lets out her breath through her nose, equally exasperated. "Yeah, and if I decide that a couple of days is good enough," she clamps her mouth down on anything else. "--And you don't, I'm up shit creek again, aren't I? Look, Jacinta - if you want to give me orders about Harold - and face it, you are - either tell me plain what you want or don't say anything. I don't want to hear from you three months from now how you're unhappy with me because I screwed up when I didn't know I was screwing up. Like now. I think you ought to be telling Harold to toe the line as well. I'm not ordering him around. I say please, and thank you, and everything. Treat him like one of my own, if that means diddly-squat to you."

Jacinta's carefully won control leaks away in that single moment. Her fingers reflexively close around the hilt of her knife, though she has enough left to replace it in the sheath before it is completely withdrawn. Still, her fingers remain wrapped around the hilt. "What I have to say to my kin will remain between the two of us! I ask you to keep me informed where he cannot. Since you cannot do this, have no further contact with my kin. None! Do not speak to him! Do not speak of him! I will not have your qussaq Urrah ways." There is a trembling in her upper arms, a warring for control even as her lips pull back again in a deep snarl.

Natalie flings up her hands, her own temper reaching the fraying point. "FINE! I'll delete all his damn messages, won't return his phone calls, and I'll just let him go hang. Then he won't do anyone any good, and the veil breech can just heal itself. I'll even pass the word along to Havoc and everyone else that he's persona non grata. Will that make you happy?"

Jacinta's form ripples, and there is a flicker of a heartbeat in which it seems that the Wendigo may lose control entirely. She snorts out a breath through her nose and the knife flashes up into an aggressive position. "Arrah!! No! That will not make me happy. But if it will keep your filthy qussaq hands from my kin, so be it!"

"Filthy?" Nat repeats in a snarl. "That's it. I've had it with you insulting me in whatever damn language that is, and you can damn well apologize for it now. I've agreed to every single one of your terms, and you keep snarling and swearing at me and treating me like I'm something the cat brought up. Enough. E. Nough." She has no weapons but her fists, and those clench and unclench at her sides as she stares fixedly, furiously at the Ahroun.

Jacinta roars upward into Crinos, ~Accepted!~ The knife has flashed back into the sheeth in the quarter second before she shifted forms, though now her claws rise instead. ~To death or submission.~

Natalie's in crinos in an instant, not bothering to otherwise reply to the Wendigo's terms. She lunges for the other, jaws bared, rage-fuelled, claws thrusting forward to rip through Pierces-the-Ice's soft belly fur and into the intestines below.

Pierces Ice lets the Galliard come forward, allows her claws to strike first blood, drawing lower as the other is drawn in. But even as the flesh of her belly is torn open, the Wendigo's legs push upward, her claws grasping and holding the glasswalker by the shoulder. She uses Holds-the-Line's momentum to turn her claws tearing into and through the muscle of the shoulder. Natalie turns again, claws flying with the speed of rage. The Ahroun finds her chest torn as the Glass Walker attempts to draw her close, to grapple, and gain control. Jacinta's hind legs draw upward to rake down on Natalie's leg, using her grip on the shoulder as leverage and knocking the other off balance. Together the two go down, claws moving too fast to follow. The Wendigo lands on the top of the pile, however, and soon has Natalie's throat grasped between her teeth.

Holds-the-Line attempts to escape the other's jaws, front claws scrabbling on the ground even as her hind legs come up to try and continue the punishment. Jacinta's weight prevents them from moving far. After what to the rage-maddened Garou seems endless but what is surely no more than a second, the Walker tilts her chin under the other's teeth and goes limp.

Pierces Ice holds tight around the throat for a beat, two, blood dripping from the Wendigo onto the tan fur of the Glass Walker. Then she lets go with a snarl and rises, one ham-hand clenches to her stomach, holding closed the gaping tear. She growls something, unintelligible even if there were meaning attached, and moves several feet away. Hard eyes remain on Holds-The-Line.

Holds-the-Line doesn't move, not to tend her own wounds, not to look around for the Ahroun, not to lower her chin an iota. She just lays there on the damp grass, thigh bleeding freely, hands splayed submissively with their palms up at her side.

Pierces Ice snarls again, and before she turns to limp away growls out, ~Stay away from my kin.~

~I already said I would,~ Holds-the-Line replies. ~I keep my word.~ Not until the Ahroun has left the Caern's center does she lower her chin and roll onto her side.

[End of log]