Freya is dragging Kreig backwards in Crinos form when she bumps into something. She turns around and sees Brad standing there. "So this is where you've got to" he says rather abruptly. Freya changes back to homid form and they argue - Brad says that he's sick of Freya not being there for him, not being there for Jordan. Freya protests that he is being unreasonable, he knows who she is and what she has to do. Brad tells her that he didn't know when he married her, and its obvious now that her pack are more important to her than her family, so he's going to Sydney, and he's taking Jordan with him. Freya tries to snatch Jordan back, who starts to cry. More rather bitter arguing and Freya finds herself getting angrier and angrier -
Freya talks to Brad about Cernonous' experiments and wanting her to be a host mother. He's not immediately opposed, as he was thinking that another baby would be cool, but is a bit concerned about it impacting on their existing family. He points out that Jordan has been missing her mum, and that he wouldn't want a 'special' baby to take attention away from Jordan. Freya mentions rituals and all to help pregnancy along and learning them. Basically it ends up being a cautious maybe, depending on more information to come.
Freya heads to Ireland with Brad and Jordan, and also with Abby. They go their seperate ways shortly after arriving. Freya spends most of her time visiting family (extended) as well as getting to know more about the Fianna. Brad heads back after a month or so, but Jordan and Freya stay for nearly 3 months.
About 2 weeks before she is about to head off back to Australia, Freya receives a call on a Friday night. Its from a Garou named Howls-at-Days-Ending, and he asks her if she could come out and help them out. It seems that a young fellow by the name of Sean has gone through first change, and he's not exactly dealing well. The use of her calming fetish might help them out quite well in such a sitution. Freya checks with the great aunt and uncle she is staying with (Mae and Gavin), and they are perfectly willing to babysit Jordan while she's gone.
The drive there takes about 30 minutes. When she arrives, Freya finds a young pack from the same sept as Howls-at-Days-Ending minding the store. Paul, their packleader, fills her in on the details - young Sean was home with only his babysitter, his parents having gone away for the weekend, and unable to take him. He went through his First Change for some reason, and hasn't taken it well. The babysitter was a young lass named Mary, and she was a kinfolk, and had the presence of mind to run off and secure a room, then ring for help. Unfortunately the way she secured the room was to use wolfsbane, which Paul and his cousins (which make up the rest of the pack) are really badly allergic to - they can't even enter the house at the moment.
Freya creeps around looking in windows. Sean is still in crinos form, and is running rampant, although not frenzying. Freya tries to approach him directly, but that just gets a fruit bowl flung at her head. Eventually through much coaxing and judicious use of gifts, she talks the poor 14 year old down. He is reassured and given some clothes and once the wolfsbane is disposed of, the others come in and help clean up. Paul anecdotes about his first change ("I were in school, and being picked on") and makes Sean laugh.
Its about 11.30pm before Freya gets away. Its started to drizzle and so she's driving slowly around when her headlights catch two young kids huddled under a street light. She pulls over and asks them what they're doing, and they rather forthrightly say that they are running away from their da cos he hurts them. Freya offers to take them somewhere nearby but they seem to be a bit leery that she might take them to the police like the last time, cos the copper is a friend of their da. Freya grinds her teeth and manages to persuade them that she's taking them somewhere safe. On the way she asks some questions of the kids, about their dad and all. Andrew (the younger of the two at 8) is sporting a winner of a black eye, and he doesn't say as much as Rachel (who is 12) - Freya finds out that their dad is Thomas McEwen, and that he seems to be physically abusing the kids and has since their ma died (about 2 years ago). They've tried to run away a couple of times and been brought back each time. Thomas is apparently on workers' comp and spends a lot of time drunk. Andrew says something his da's eyes glowing when he was really drunk and hitting Rachel, but Rachael tries to shush him. Freya is starting to think fomor.
They get home and Rachael and Andrew are sleepily put to bed. Gav is filled in on the details, and he says its fine to keep them here for a bit if that will help. Freya rings the sept and speaks to Bethany, the Caern warder. She says it sounds like a random fomor to her rather than someone's minion - fomor can form when a human's soul rots, and a bane finds its way in. Seeing as how Freya found him, she's welcome to deal with him, but Bethany will make sure that there is backup available if she needs it.
Come the morning, Freya spends some time with Mae and the two children. Feeling that it would be better to not ask them outright where they live (no encouraging paranoia that they'll be taken back) the kids are subtly interrogated about their homes. Mae, knowing the area much better than Freya, gets a better feel for where it might be, and after a bit of lunch, gets a map and shows Freya a number of spots where the kids might live. Freya heads off in lupus form through the Umbra.
It seems that she lucked out first go, as the small cottage seems to match what the kids were telling her almost exactly. She peeks quite well and looks through the house - small two bedroom dwelling, both kids living in the same room, some small amount of belongings desultorarily thrown about the place. There is a heavy scent of another human, thick with sweat and not too healthy around the place. When she's sure that Thomas isn't here, Freya steps into the house so that she can look around. She checks the kids room out in detail, and finds a piece of paper under Andrew's bed which says in childish writing "why won't god make the pain stop?" She finds evidence that Thomas is getting a pension for his back, but that he has missed at least some physio appointments (which seem to be a hurdle requirement for getting the pension). He also gets an allowance for the two kids, being an only father and all. There's no special member of the Wyrm brigade badge or anything though, so there's no firm evidence that he is a fomor.
Freya decides to spy on him in person. She opens a window, changes to lupus and leaps out into the backyard. She is looking around for a scent to follow when she can suddenly sense old blood. It seems to come from the garden shed. She heads into the shed and looks around. The shed is full of old jars of paint and oil and the like. The scent didn't come from here - the other scents are much stronger. Freya pokes about with hands, and behind an old set of shelves, she finds a collection of children's clothing, male and female. The clothes are torn, and appear to have old blood on them (not where the tears are - ie, its not claw marks leaving blood, just tears in the cloth and blood spilt on it elsewhere.) Freya stands there trying not to lose her rag at Thomas, find him and kill him find him and kill him. Once she has her calm back, she tries to find the original smell that hit her.
At the back of the shed is a sad looking kind of garden. By carefully looking about, she finds a recently turned bit of earth where the scent of old blood is strongest. Digging gently downwards, she hits flesh, and quickly uncovers the face of a young child, maybe 8 or so. Amazingly she doesn't frenzy now either. Careful examination of the yard reveals 3 more locations which appear to have dead flesh beneath them. Freya would guess that they are spread over 2 months or so. She heads for the nearest village, following Thomas' scent, thinking up new ones to pull him out of his skin.
She finds his local, and once having established that there is no way out of the pub other than the front door, sits nearby and watches it. Amazingly no one calls the pound and reports this snarling, muttering huge dog scratching the concrete near a pub. Eventually Thomas leaves, and going via a fish and chip shop, heads home. Freya shadows him to the point where she can slip in the front door before he closes it. She scuttles along behind the couch and tries to think how to do this - ideally she would like confirmation he's a fomor, but really, he sucks. She would just prefer not to leave too much evidence that it wasn't a human that shucked him out of his own nervous system.
Thomas slams down in his chair after muttering about fooken kids not home when they should be, and turns the tele on to some vacuous gameshow. Freya comes up with a plan. She very quietly and nimbly changes from lupus up through crinos and into glabro (leaving the very cool mental image of a crinos shape growing up behind the fat human, lit by the tv). She punches Thomas in the head, which isn't as sucessful as she had hoped, so she leaps the couch and punches him again. Thomas swings at her with the beer can, and barely connects. Freya kicks him once in the stomach and once in the balls, and he falls down, unable to breath - a drawback when she was hoping to question him. She ties his arms back behind him, ignoring his frail struggling. When he can breath, she starts to question him. He denies knowing what she's talking about with the dead kids. Freya thinks to use Truth of Gaia and asks again, and again Thomas denies it. The gift says that he believes it, although Freya is starting to think that maybe the fomorness doesn't let him remember. She gags him and is about to lead him outside when there is a tinkling laugh behind her. She spins around and changes to crinos - Freya can see Rachel and Andrew floating just inside the room. Rachel says "Hello Mr Beastman".
They look emaciated, almost skeletal, except for their eyes, dark and shadowed. They are floating about 3 feet off the ground and Freya can see that their mouths are full of sharp, pointy teeth. Rachel speaks, thanking her for killing Thomas - after all, everything she said was true, except that it wasn't Thomas who had changed, it was them. A voice had come to them and said it would take the pain away, and it did. But they are so hungry, and other children don't take the hunger away. She knew that if she waited, a Beastman would come, and that they would be enough to fill her stomach. They are always so hungry - not even the titbits that Freya left them at the other house were enough. Figuring they mean Jordan, and being on the edge of frenzy, Freya makes to attack them. The two kids also rush Freya, who dodges Andrew and then Rachael, leaving herself near the door. She tries to find out what they are, but the children just hiss and keep coming. Freya is seriously thinking of punching out whoever said there were no vampires. Andrew rushes her and she manages to grab him around the neck so he can't bite her. Rachel rushes her too, and bites at one arm. Freya knocks her aside and she lands on Thomas, taking a bite out of his leg and making him scream.
Using Andrew to hold Rachel off is only going to be a short term solution, so Freya tries to find some way of stopping them. She spots a cross next to her on the wall and slams Andrew into it, but to no avail. Dodging Rachel again, she tries to punch Andrew into submission, opening up a cut on his forehead - however it doesn't seem to bleed, and the flesh is unnaturally pale underneath the skin. Rachel grabs her leg and bites, drawing blood and drawing off some of Freya's precious, precious gnosis. Figuring that she needs to perhaps even the odds, she grabs Andrew's head with her other hand and twists until she feels his neck pop and tear under her hands. He keeps hissing and slashing at her with small claws even with his head flopping about on his shoulders. Rachel tries to bite her again. Freya, a little desperate now, pulls Andrew's head off and flings his body aside. The little head keeps hissing and snarling even without its body.
Rachel makes a break for it, nearly making it to the door before Freya catches on leg quite firmly. Freya tries to roll her forward and onto the grass so she could be pinned, but Rachel twists somehow, and bites at Freya's abdomen. Freya moves to use her grip on Rachel's leg to slam her onto the ground, but with a grotesque popping and grinding, Rachel's entire leg parts at the knee, and she flies behind Freya and up into the dark, dark night.
Freya tries to minimise the weirdness of the scene. Thomas is dragged onto his own bed and a torquinet is used to stop some of the bleeding. She puts Andrew's torso and all on the bed with his head, then heads for the nearest phone, looking upwards the entire time. She calls the Sept and explains the situation, and also asks them to send someone to Mae's and make sure that Jordan is ok. They promise to send someone there and to Mae's. Paul's pack show up at Thomas' house and examine the situation. They suggest that a fire is the best option - most of the evidence will not survive a decent fire. Thomas is smoker and the house isn't exactly tidy. That, plus finding the bodies (which can be arranged through kinfolk in the police) should keep any investigation from being particularly nosey about Thomas's actual cause of death.
Freya heads back to Mae's once the fire is well and truly burning, and meets Gazes-Ever-Outwards, a lupus Fianna from the nearby Sept. Everything seems to be on the level here - Mae says that she put the two kids to bed an hour or so ago, and didn't think to look in on them until Gazes-Ever-Outwards arrived. Jordan is fine, if a bit bemused by all the attention from mum.
Howls-at-Days-Ending speaks to Freya the next day. He says that it seems that it wasn't Thomas who suffered from the spiritual rot, but the children - the horrors they faced appears to have made them vunerable to bane posession. However, they don't sound like any fomori that Howls-at-Days-Ending knows of, so he's not quite sure what is going on. Freya says that she is concerned that they "knew" a Beastman would come, and Howls agrees, promising to pass on the warning to any lone Garou.
Freya stays until the next Moot, where she tells the story of the children and her efforts.
Freya has drifted off to sleep in the feather beds provided by Lord Lysander when she feels a calling to come out into the central room. She does so, glancing out the window - the white stag is out there, staring at her and tossing its head. It turns and walks off towards the forest. Freya shrugs and climbs down the ivy wall to follow it, slipping into lupus form.
The stag leads Freya through the forests again, and stops at the edge of a clearing, where it seems to vanish away. The clearing is brightly lit by the moon, although the moon itself can't be seen. In the middle of the clearing is a low stone cottage, and from this distance, Lysander can be seen pacing on the step as if waiting for someone. Freya begins to head that way, but stops when she sees another figure emerge from the woods, and Lysander stop and stare. This figure is definately female, with pale, pale skin and dark hair. She steps up to Lysander and they take each other's hands. There is much staring into eyes. Freya faintly hears Lysander say something about being frightened of the power she has over him, and she replies that it is the same for her. They turn and go into the cottage. Freya creeps close enough to hear their conversation, with much talk of love and similar topics. She glimpses backwards and sees the stag again, and figures its time to go.
The stag leads her through the forest, vanishing as it steps out into moonlit fields. Freya runs back to the castle and climbs back in her window.
Freya and the others Moonbridge to Rippling Water, and before they get settled into a long conversation, she takes Leaps-in-the-Light aside. He looks a little trippy, but is focused on their conversation. Freya tells him about having been led to see Lysander and the mysterious woman by Stag. Leaps-in-the-Light doesn't see there being anything particular dangerous about Lysander having a relationship - Lysander doesn't seem the sort to let his duty suffer from personal matters. However, the fact that Stag (the Fianna totem) led Freya there indicates that it might be important in some fashion - he basically recommends that she keeps it to herself for the moment, but to keep an eye out for related trouble.
The sheet of silver seems to spread out, like a movie screen, and Freya sees images start to form in the shadows on the surface. Glances of herself, being petty, or angry for no reason, or experiencing or expressing any one of a number of other minor, but negative emotions or thoughts or actions. Its sort of a litany of petty sins, and it is somewhat unsettling. Suddenly the sheet collapses and the images are gone.
Freya and Brad and Jordan drive out to meet some of their family. Leaving Brad and Jordan with the kinfolk celebration, Freya attends the Fianna moot - a celebration of bounty and fertility. Much is made of the traditional Fianna spirit allies and one of the senior Galliards uses Shadows by the Firelight to draw some of the Garou into a long story.
Freya is one of the first up to perform a story - she broadly tells of what her pack has been doing in the last 8 weeks, from the point where Monash approached them to now, about to go to the Deep Umbra. She skims over the Watcher's story a bit for the moment, but gives details about the fae being they found in the Dead Umbra. Although her content is good, the presentation isn't the best, although as one of the first as least she isn't shown up too badly.
During the night the kinfolk and Garou parties mix. Freya has a loverly relaxing night. One odd note was noticing a young woman with a year old youngster who looks familiar... damn, the boy looks like Corey. Freya does some counting and gets the giggles - its about the right time to match up with the big Fianna party just after they restored Scars Atoned.
Freya and Malajimbarra step through the Moonbridge into a flat plain, covered with flowers. A small number of Uktenna await their arrival, including Tjinderi, who welcomes them both to the Sept. Malajimbarra explains that Freya has come here to make a petition on behalf of their Sept. Freya explains the situation (evil Wyrm attack with black goo that seemed to come from the Green Dragon spreading corruption, imminent loss of the caern) and asks for help from the Uktena.
Tjinderi doesn't seem to be in much of a hurry. She suggests in fact that Caerns in cities are a flawed idea - they divert attention away from the defence of the truly Wyld places that need protection, and are constantly under attack. Freya says that they need to be where the enemy is, and Tjinderi counters that they wouldn't move in next to a hazardous waste dump to fix it - after all, Grinding Stone is near enough Melbourne to surely deal with it? Freya makes a couple of good points about being close enough and well resourced enough to help, and how the Bonegnawers want to be near their Kinfolk. Tjinderi seizes on this and points out that Freya is not a Bone Gnawer, nor is most of her pack - two Fianna, a Get of Fenris and Shadowlord seem a strange mix with a couple of Gnawers. Is it that the Fianna really regard Melbourne as their territory? After all, Melbourne is in the space between the Silver Fangs and the Fianna, not one of the worlds most relaxed boundaries. Freya grits her teeth and says that a caern is a caern and its wellbeing is of importance to all Garou, and that their mixture of tribes is their strength - they bring different skills and benefits to the Sept.
Tjinderi suggests that if perhaps the present guardians are still not up to defending the caern - maybe it is better that the Caern be destroyed rather than risk its seeming inevitable corruption. This time it might only require the Uktena's help to perform a rite to stop the Wyrm, but next time it might be a fetish, or the lives of some of the Uktena. Tjinderi is the guardian of the strength of the Uktena, and must look to her own people first. Freya says that all Garou fight the Wyrm and Tjinderi counters that when the white Garou came to the PureLands to "fight the Wyrm", the Uktena mysteriously found themselves having lost several caerns and untold numbers of their kinfolk and Garou - so she must look to their own strengths first rather than worry about "all Garou". If she was to grant the Claws of Wisdom this favour, it would deplete the Uktena strength somewhat, and she would not be able to do so without an equivilent or stronger replacement to their resources. Freya sighs and says that her pack could owe Tjinderi a favour, a promised deed to replace the one they are asking for. Tjinderi agrees and waves a tall aboriginal man forward, introducing him as Franklin Ash-Hand. Now that business is done, Tjinderi sweeps Freya away through a Moonbridge back to Jindabyne.
Freya dives into the dream worlds, and moves as best as she is able towards Christian's dreams. It only takes a short time, having been here before. She appears again in the georgian-looking study, with its green leather chairs, and books. Christian appears to be asleep on the couch. Freya pokes the books again, but can't remove them from the wall.
She turns towards Christian and is nearing him when she feels a strange lurch. Christian opens his eyes, but they are black within black, and he leaps at her. His face becomes a skeletal parody of Christian and he tries to grab and bite Freya. Freya moves to respond in kind when the floor starts to sink away in the centre of the room, swirling as it drops. The depression darkens in colour as a blackness spreads from the centre dip, eddying and spreading as if the floor were a whirlpool of liquid.
Freya tries to pin the fauxChristian down, and is assisted by the Chimera spirit, which reaches out through her body and fights it. Freya senses rather than sees something slip "past" her, and finds that she cannot escape the dream either by returning to her body or changing the environs. The spirit and Garou wrestle against the fauxChristian, but the floor is increasing its speed of decay, and is now accompanied by a roaring-whisper of a sound, voices unresolved, but in no way reassuring. The chaise lounge starts to slide across the floor towards the centre of the room and Freya leaps away. When it reaches the blackness, the colour fades out of it from the legs up. The dream spirit continues to fight the mage's double despite their inpending doom, but the creature shifts again into Jordan's face and body and looks at Freya, now clinging to the walls. "Mummy! Help me!" The floor tips further, spilling both spirits into a void. The fall freely towards the roaring vortex and are torn to pieces.
Freya clings to the bookshelves, and then begins to climb the shelves as the books themselves start to sag towards the floor. She tries a call of the wyld to yell for help, but senses no response. The void reaches the fire place, and the red and yellow flames fade to a pale grey as the bricks sag and spill it into the growing nothingness. The sound of the dream room being torn to pieces is very loud in Freya's ears as she leaps from the decaying shelves to the ornate chandalier hanging from the roof. Her leap sends a couple of candles tumbling to the void below, and they are torn to pieces by the forces growing below. A wind, carrying the stench of carrion and death blows up from below.
Freya is running out of ideas. She still cannot return to her body, and she can't seem to get out of this dream. As the top few shelves of books melt and droop, she calls out to her totem spirit, Merlin. Merlin appears flying manically around the room. Merlin says that it is her link to her body that traps her here, and than that she should trust her brothers and sisters (ie: the pack). She says she does trust them; Merlin says she must then let go of her body, and trust that they can will be able to reunite her spirit and body later - functionally to die, but remain in the dream world. Freya screws up all of her courage and tears her connection away....
The walls seem to soften ahead of her, and Freya flees her prison. She is floating amidst the bubbles of dreams in the ocean of the night. Knowing that this is a dangerous place to be without the defense of being able to flee back to her body, she thinks about whose dreams to try and hide in. Fortunately its late, so many of the people she knows well will be asleep. After briefly considering Jordan or Brad, Freya tries to find Emma's dreams.
After some time questing, Freya sense the familiar touch of Emma. She emerges into a dream - she is in Emma's kitchen, and the Ritemaster is going through drawers. Emma sees Freya and asks her to help look for her breadknife - its got a bone handle, with runes carved into it, and a curved handle. Frankly, it doesn't sound like a breadknife. Emma can't find it though, so Freya helps her look. Freya casually mentions she's lost something too - her body. Emma says she seems to have it now, but Freya says this isn't her real one. They move from room to room, looking for the knife, while Freya tries to give Emma as much info as she can about being stuck in dreams. They look upstairs for Emma's knife (even though her house doesn't have an upstairs), and Freya finds it jammed into one side of the bed in the main bedroom. She points it out to Emma, who says "ah, yes, of course" - and then looks sharply at Freya, who sensibly bails from the dream before it ends.
Freya considers her position and who would be awake or asleep. In the end, she decides that Brad is who she should visit - Jordan's dreams probably don't need her lumbering about in them.
Brad's dreams are not very coherent, and somewhat short lived in context, but he's just bumbling around at home. Freya is a bit weirded out by Brad's dream-image of her - taller, a bit scarier, thicker accent, maybe a bit more well endowed than she considers herself. She tries to just keep out of the way.
An indeterminate time later, she realises something has changed, but she can't figure out where or what. Freya is peering at the various parts of her real world kitchen trying to figure out what is up when she realises that the words "Freya are you here?" are written on the white board near the phone. She moves towards the board to write something when Cossack materialises at her elbow. He says he's here to take her back, but he's not sure it will work. Neither of them particularly want to body swap. He suggests recreating as close as possible the circumstances that their physical selves are in, so he sits on the ground with her head in his lap. The world wrenches...