The Night After The Party We Don't Talk About

[Manacledairman]

Aldrich looks up and his eye fixes on Aurelia as she speaks, he appears to lose control of his expressions, he is entirely enraptured by her words.

This is broken when Laurence speaks and his aura flashes railing against him for being the first voice to speak after the tale but this quickly subsides. He struggles to listen however as he is still completely enraptured by Aurelia's words.

He shows as much interest as he is able in Laurence's story, but it is limited.

He shakes his head as if to shake cobwebs and manages to finally tear his gaze from the elder and looks to Laurence.

"Very good, Master Stoker, very good indeed."

he smiles

[Valentina Audley]

Valentina had enjoyed Aldrich's story very much, and thrilled along to it much like a small child being told a bedtime story.

Aurelia's words however, seem to strike her much deeper. Almost as soon as the elder starts to speak Valentina has stilled and then moves unhesitatingly to open her neat little reticule and out comes an embroidery hoop, tiny scissors and several hanks of coloured thread.

Valentina threads a needle with unerring accuracy and barely glancing down at the hoop, she starts stitching. Trying to pin the ideas, the essence of Aurelia's words i to fabric. No Victorian ladylike floral needlework here. Under Valentina's fingers an abstract landscape starts to take shape. Whilst Valentina looks to Aurelia, only occasionally glancing down to see the shapes her needle is making.

When Laurence starts to speak it's like she's trying to wake from a dream. Her hands slow and her head turns to her fellow ancillae, but his words don't sink in and after a moment Valentina abandons her struggle and goes back to her sewing. A small part of her knows how rude she's being and winces, but the words and fabrics call to her as a siren's she's powerless to resist.

[alanwrotethis]

He says nothing. Eyes closed, mouth silent.

His aura is subdued, every colour present and flickering.

[Posh-Tim]

Keane listens along to Aurelia's discourse politely nodding along as if he were familiar with it in parts. He is about to speak when Laurence does, instead he listens to the tale of wendigo with the same quiet respect. When he is finished;
"Thankyou Ancilla stoker. A wonderful retelling, I imagine you have many more tales of the American people's I imagine?"
He turns to Aurelia.
"I have known some of what you describe." He says plainly. Not explaining further. "I for one would welcome the tale of the Skeleton Woman.

Unless has anything they wish to share first?"
He gestures around in a general sense.

[Manacledairman]

Aldrich sits silently, deep in thought, seemingly unaware of anything that's been said since he last spoke.

[alanwrotethis]

Dukes slowly opens his eyes.
"I..."
He takes a slow breath, his aura is centred... pleased... quiet.
he mutters. "You see patterns in how the cults of the world share their histories, the black-feathered woman is an old symbol. Nemesis, valkyrur, furiae, harpies..."
A slight chuckle, a memory of conversation from the night before.
"...they're a symbol of power and warning at the threshold of the oldest caves. I've talked to a few caves in my time... they like those stories too."
He looks to Laurence.
"Excellent tale. I almost spoke yesterday of the Algonquin fable of the mountain mouse. Do you know that one?"
He looks to Aurelia.
"Odd request, I would like to borrow what you just said as an invoking memory... if you would permit it."

[L .]

"Of course, you may have it."

"The story I am about to relate to you is a hunting story about... no... there is no way of softening this: it is about love." Aurelia chuckles. rich and low. "It is set in the frozen north."

"To understand this story, we have to see that there, in one of the harhest environs and one of the most stressed hunting cultures in the world, love does not mean a flirtation or a pursuit for simple ego-pleasure, but a visible bond composed of the psychic sinew of endurance, a union which prevails through bounty and austerity, through the most complicated and most simple days and nights. The union of two beings is seen as angakok - magic, in itself - as a relationship through which the universe becomes known to both individuals."

"The frozen north is not unlike the world of vampires. It is a cold and seemingly heartless place, barren of life, sparingly kept with deeper things in Torpor. Love too, here, when it is rarely found, is not a fleeting thing. Vampires are not solitary creatures; we collect in our packs and our courts, but we are possessive creatures, full of anger and jealous and fear of loss. We fear the loss of our resources and our power. Sex can be easy among our kind. But love... vampires who experience this rarity may understand this tale well: for the unions of men and women in those ancient north wilds may be closer to their own experience than they will ever realise."

"But as this story goes, there are requirements for this kind of union. In order to create this enduring love, one invites a third partner to the union. The third partner I call Skeleton Woman. She could also be called Lady Death, and as such, she is another Life/Death/Life figure in one of its many guises."

"In relationships of these kinds, she has the role of the oracle who knows when it is time for cycles to begin and end. She is the wildish aspect of the relationship, the raw, the unknown, the unpredictable, the one of whom men are most terrified... and sometimes women also, for when fear of the bond of commitment arises, the love is feared too. Many fear the illusion of giving up power to another. To create enduring love, Skeleton Woman must be admitted to the relationship and be embraced by both lovers. Here, in an old Inuit setting and amplified in oratory tale, is Skeleton Woman. Let us peer at the images which arise from the smoke of this tale."

"Speaking of smoke..." The liquid lights are low in Aurelia's eyes, as her gaze slides to Dukes. "Do you have something for - ah -atmospheric effect lying about?"

[alanwrotethis]

Niketas nods.
"I favour flickering candles. Parlour trick, I ask them to twist the flame to make shadows pulse. Goes over well at seances."
He creases his brow.
"I can also make the wax melt upwards if you want silhouettes. Did it once in a lecture about Plato, see, he discussed the truth as a cave wall-"
A dismissing gesture.
"Unimportant. Apt, but unimportant. Short answer... yes."

[L .]

"Very well. I will think how best to preamble this while you set up."

"Wolves are good at relationships. Anyone who has observed wolves sees how deeply they bond. Mates are most often for life. Even though they clash, even though there is dissension, their bonds carry them over and through harsh winters, splentiful springs, long walks, new offspring, old predators, tribal dances, and group sings. The relational needs of humans are no different. And for all that we are unchanging in Lady Death's grip, we were once human too. Our blueprint calls to us across ice-flavoured air and mountains like black glass."

"While the instinctual lives of wolves include loyalty and lifelong bonds of trust and devotion, humans sometimes have trouble with these matters, vampires more so. Some of our greatest unions in vampiric history have created the grandest and most powerful movements, eras, cultures and nations - and also the greatest collapses when this love breaks down. As someone who has maintained their closest bonds for almost a millennium now, I like to think I've begun to understand something of this confusion, and I hope this story can help any alliances you may keep - be they as subtle as the warm hearth or as raging as the inferno. If we were to use archetypal terms to describe what determines the strong bonds among wolves, we might surmise that the integrity of their relationships is derived from their synchronization with the ancient pattern of all nature - what I call the Life/Death/Life cycle."

"As vampires we presume that we are exempt or isolated from the cycle, cut off from it as foreigners looking in. But it is in fact the opposite: the Little Death, the Malkavians call Torpor, and they are not wrong. Each dawn we sink into a state not quite death but not quite life, and it is within this strange hours, these alien moments, that our psyches come to understand how very much in tune with these cycles we can be. If we only take the time to learn how."

"The Life/Death/Life nature is a cycle of animation, development, decline, and death that is always followed by re-animation. The cycle affects all phyical life and all facets of psychological life. Everything - the sun, novas and the moon, as well as the affairs of vampires and those of the tiniest creatures, cells and atoms alike - have this fluttering of animation, then faltering, then fluttering again. Vampires more than any creature of this world, are subject to the natural laws as the sun rises and sets on our lives."

"Unlike humans and vampires, wolves do not deem the ups and downs of life, energy, power, food nor opportunity as startling or punitive. The peaks and valleys just are, and wolves ride them as efficiently, as fluidly, as possible. The instinctual nature has the miraculous ability to live through all positive boon, all negative consequence, and still maintain relationship to Self, and to others."

"Among wolves, the cycles of nature and Fate are met with grace and wit and the endurance to stay tight with one's mate and to live long and as well as can be. But in order for us to live and give loyalty in this most fit manner, in which way which is most wise, most preserving, and most feeling - that which maintains our humanity and conscious power - one has to go up against the very thing one fears the most. There is no way around it, as we shall see. One must sleep with Lady Death herself."

"In wise stories, love is seldom a romantic tryst between two lovers. For instance, some stories from the circumpolar regions describe love as a union of two beings whose strength together enables one or both to enter into communiation with the soul-world and to participate in Fate as a dance with life and death."

"Are you ready? Niketas, if you would open a link to my mind, I will prime what you should be doing with your parlour tricks, although feel free to enhance away and adjust as you see fit. I have a particular way I like to tell this story. Don't be alarmed if the shadows move everybody; he's a very good Tremere. I'm sure you can keep up with my Telling, neh, love?"

"With your flickering candles...."

[L .]

For a moment, the senses of the Kindred wake with a feeling that they are each on the edge of something. But it is gone a moment later, and their Beasts are unaffected. Aurelia's aura flexes and expands, then relaxes in the next, before becoming dense and weighty. She sits on the sofa, intelligent eyes roving over each gathered, before her attention settles on one flickering candle stub, its leaping flame reflected in the glossy convexitives of her eyes. The smile she gives them has a few too many teeth; but Aurelia's expression softens fast, and turns inviting.

The shadows shift slightly.


And so the tale began.

~


"She had done something of which her father disapproved, although no one any longer remembered what it was. But her father had dragged her to the cliffs and thrown her over and into the sea. There, the fish ate her flesh away and plucked out her eyes. As she lay under the sea, her skeleton turned over and over in the currents."

It starts out as smoke, thin tendrils of miasma that curled around the end of one mahogany bookcase. It was a normal colour: dark grey in shade but thicker than any real smoke had any right to be, and its insides glittered weirdly.

"One day a fisherman came fishing. Well, in truth many came to this bay once. But this fisherman had drifted far from his home place, and did not know that the local fishermen stayed away, saying this inlet was haunted."

Aurelia's bare feet meet the thick rug beneath her as she untucks her legs from under herself, and she sits upright on the sofa, which actually seems to make the smoke pause; one dark coil lifts into the air like an antenna. There are tendrils gathering about the room, seeming to originate from just behind each candle stub. Their flames individually cast shadows on the walls, growing longer and longer behind them.

"The fisherman's hook drifted down through the water, and caught, of all places, in the bones of Skeleton Woman's rib cage. The fisherman thought, 'Oh! Now I have a very big one. Now I really have one.' In his mind he was thinking of how many people this great fish would feed, how long it would last, how long he might be free from the chore of hunting. And as he struggled with this great weight on the end of his hook, the sea was stirred to a thrashing froth, and his kayak bucked and shook, for she who was beneath struggled to disentangle herself. And the more she struggled, the more she tangled in the line. No matter what she did, she was inexorably dragged upwards, tugged up by the bones of her own ribs."

One dark tendril darts down the bottom shelf amongst the books. Sliding swiftly onto the rug-strewn floor, the smoke glides across toward Lenore's feet. Meanwhile should he be watching, a second finds Aldrich, and the dark moved over his shiny toes, the leather of his boots vanishing. The swirling shape contracted briefly, then relaxed.

"The hunter had turned to scoop up his net, so he did not see her bald head rise above the waves; he did not see the little coral creatures glinting in the orbs of her skull, he did not see the crustaceans on her old ivory teeth. When he turned back with his net, her entire body, such as it was, had come to the surface and was hanging from the tip of his kayak by her long front teeth."

"Naturally: 'Argh!' cried the man, and his heart fell into his knees, his eyes hid in terror on the back of his head, and his ears blazed bright red. 'Argh!' he screamed, and knocked her off the prow with his oar and began paddling like a demon toward the shoreline. And not realising she was tangled in his line, he was frightened all the more for she appeared to stand upon her toes while chasing him all the way to shore."

"'Arg-ahhhh,' he wailed as he ran around. In one leap he was out of his kayak, clutching his fishing stick and running, and the coral-white corpse of Skeleton Woman, still snagged in the fishing line, bumpety-bumped behind right after him. Over the rocks he ran, and she followed. Over the frozen tundra he ran and she kept right up. Over the meat laid out to dry he ran, cracking it to pieces as his mukluks bore down."

"Throughout it all she kept right up, in fact grabbed some of the frozen fish as she was dragged behind. This she began to eat, for she had not gorged in a long, long time. Finally, the man reached his snowhouse and dove right into the tunnel and on hands and knees scrabbled his way into the interior. Panting and sobbing he lay there in the dark, his heart a drum, a mighty drum. Safe at last, oh so safe, yes safe, thank the Gods, Raven, yes, thank Raven, yes, and all-bountiful Sedna, safe... at... last."

"Imagine when he lit his whale oil lamp, and there she - it - lay in a tumble upon his snow floor, one heel over her shoulder, one knee inside her rib cage, one foot over her elbow. He could not say later what it was, perhaps the firelight softened her features, or the fact that he was a lonely man. But a feeling of some kindness came into his breathing, and slowly he reached out his grimy hands and, using words slightly like a mother to a child, began to untangle her from the fishing line."

"'Oh, na, na, na,' he whispered. First he untangled the toes, then the ankles. 'Oh, na, na, na.' On and on he worked into the night, until dressing her in furs to keep her warm, Skeleton Woman's bones were all in the order a human's should be."

"He felt into his leath cuffs for his flint, and used some of his hair to light a little more fire. He gazed at her from time to time as he oiled the precious wood of his fishing stick and rewound the gut line. And she in the furs uttered not a word - she did not dare - lest this hunter take her out and throw her down to the rocks and break her bones to pieces utterly."