The Night After The Party We Don't Talk About

[Posh-Tim]

Keane thinks for a moment, his Aura awash with contemplation and concentration. It actually takes some time for him to come up with an answer. He turns to Valentina his face oddly serious for such a whimsical request.
"It is not an easy thing to consider. There are so many stories to choose from and so many more that could be spun from the threads of dream in but a moment. So I think I will pick them, or the story of them. The tale of Haroun Al Raschid, last king of the fabled city of Baghdad and how he saved his city to live forever."
Suddenly,seriousness over, he raises his eyebrows and smiles.
"I would be very interested to hear what others favourite tales are as well."
He looks around encouraging others to share.

[Manacledairman]

[Posh-Tim]

Keane nods,
"I have, oddly linked to my own in fact. Perhaps the theme of dreams has brought inspiration."

[Valentina Audley]

Valentina shakes her head smiling, her aura sparking with curiosity. She's pleased her subject change appears to be taking off.

[alanwrotethis]

"That story has many names. It exists in Babylonian times as well, with a gender reversal. And in Spain and the South colonies it is the ghost story La Llorona..."

Dukes continues to watch the room, sedate.

[Manacledairman]

[L .]

“Mine is not so much a story as it is a...”

Aurelia thinks for a while. She is beginning to reconnect with the conversation; Aurelia enjoys Keane’s question, very much so, and it has taken her mind off other things.

“It is a philosophy. It contains within it a surplus of stories, one of which is my favourite. I can share it with you, the philosophy and the story both, or just the one.”

“The philosophy...” Aurelia draws her legs up under her, sitting very casually and relaxed. “I knew a woman once, who could call on El Duende, the wind that blows soul into the faces of listeners. This Gangrel was a trance-teller, and her stories could take any trail. They could be turned upside down, be filled with porridge and dumped out for a poor person’s feast; be filled with gold for the taking; or chase the listener into the next world.”

“This Teller never knew how her words all come out, and that is at least half of the rich magic of her tale.”

“This Gangrel collected the essence of stories. It was a constant paleontologic endeavour. The more story bones she had, the more likely the integral structure of the tale could be found.”

“I have been studying archetypal patterns for years - and myths, fairytales and folklore for twice as long. But I learned about the bones of stories from this trance-teller, and know when and where the bones are missing in a story. Through the centuries, various conquests of nations by other nations, and both peaceful and forced religious conversions, have covered over or altered the original core of the Old Stories.”

“But they are still there, for those who know how to look. Even story fragments, as they exist today, can foreshadow the shape of the entire story.”

“My favourite tale is about a single archetype, and her medicine: it is a story of the The Skeleton Woman.”

“If you wish it, I will share it, but I offer a warning first. This is not a story as those you find engraved in the corpses of trees; this is a story about the bones and flesh of the body upon which it was made, it is a story about her Truth. Men especially should have some preamble, so as to better decide whether they still wish to hear it. Words have weight, the Old Stories more than any. I can share my philosophy without telling that tale.”

“Over time you see, we have seen the wild feminine nature looted, driven back and overbuilt. For long periods she has been mismanaged like the wildlife and the wildlands. The spiritual lands of Wild Woman have, throughout history, been plundered or burnt, Her dens bulldozed, and natural cycles forced into unnatural pains to please others.”

“The span of my unlife, which has been primarily focussed these last centuries with rooting out stories, has taught me that there are ways to recover Old Things, those stories we do not Speak of anymore, that dig into the ruins of the feminine underworld and the very basis of our psyche.”

“I associate my personal medicine with Panther, but I associate all woman with Wolves. Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion. Wolves and women are relational by nature, enquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mates, and their pack. They are experienced in adapting to constantly changing circumstances, and they are fiercely stalwart and very brave.”

“Yet both have been hounded, harassed and falsely named to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, or less value than those who are their detractors. The wild witches and wolves are the villains of all modern tale. The predation of wolves and women by those who misunderstand them is strikingly similar.”

“In this day and age, women have become infantilised and treated as property. They are kept as fallow gardens. Dancing and singing and screaming and howling are barely tolerated, if at all, so they dance now only in the forests where no one can see them, or in the basement, or out in the stable yard while pretending to take a turn about the estate. Self-decoration causes shame. Joyful body or dress increases the danger of being sexually harmed or assaulted. The very clothes on ones shoulders could not be called ones own; it is society’s.”

“We are in a time when women are said to ‘break down’; girls are tightly girdled, tightly reined, and tightly muzzled. Silent girls are called Nice girls, and those who split the collar for even a moment are called Bad girls.”

“I lived as a disguised creature through my life, both as a mortal and then as a vampire. The Embrace did not take from me my collar. Like my kith and kin before me I swaggered on high-heels, and I wore a dress to church. But my fabulous tail often fell below my hemline, and my ears twitched until my hat pitched and fell, down over both my eyes, and sometimes clear across the room.”

“I howled the hambre del alma, the song of the starved soul. And this is where I first learned of the archetype Wild Woman. I learned how the first shapeshifters were women, how even among the Gangrel, to reach the heights of elemental mastery and wild magic, you need to be woman. Only they can call to the oldest of the world bones, because men have forgotten.”

“She is Wild Woman because the words, wild and woman, create llamar o tocar a la puerta, the fairytale knock at the door. Llamar o tocar a la puerta means literally to play upon the instrument of the name which opens the door. It means using words that summon up the opening of a passageway. No matter by which culture a woman’s bones is born into, she intuitively understands the words Wild and Woman, respectively.”

“When women hear those words, an old, old memory is stirred and brought back to life. We may have forgotten Her name, we might not answer when She calls, but in our bones we know her, we yearn towards the wild places, we know she belongs to us and we to her. When we assert intuition, we are like the starry night: we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes.”

“To find Her is to establish territory, to find one’s pack, to be in one’s body with certainty and pride regardless of the body’s gifts and limitations, to speak and act in one’s behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as possible.”

“In actuality, in the psychoid unconscious—an ineffable layer of psyche from which this phenomenon emanates—Wild Woman has no name, for she is so vast. But, since this force engenders every important facet of womanliness, here on earth she is named many names, not only in order to peer into the myriad aspects of her nature but also to hold on to her. Because in the beginning of retrieving our relationship with her she can turn to smoke in an instant, by naming her we create for her a territory of thought and feeling within us. Then she will come, and if valued, she will stay.”

“So, in Spanish I call her Río Abajo Río, the river beneath the river; La Mujer Grande, the Great Woman; Luz del abismo, the light from the abyss; La Loba, the wolf woman; or La Huesera, the bone woman. She is called in Hungarian, Ö, Erdöben, She of the Woods, and Rozsomák, The Wolverine. In Navajo, she is Na’ashjé'ii Asdzáá, The Spider Woman, who weaves the fate of humans and animals and plants and rocks. In Guatemala, among many other names, she is Humana del Niebla, The Mist Being, the woman who has lived forever. In Japanese, she is Amaterasu Omikami, The Numina, who brings all light, all consciousness. In Tibet she is called Dakini, the dancing force which produces visionary Sight within women. And it goes on. She goes on.”

“I believe that all women and men are born gifted, and able to find Her. However, and truly, there has been little to describe the psychological lives and ways of gifted women, talented women, creative women, therefore I tend to focus on women. There is much writ about the weakness and foibles of humans in general and women in particular. They deserve the limelight now. However: I have shown Men how to find Her, too. They have only to seek.”

“From the viewpoint of archetypal psychology as well as in ancient traditions, she is the female soul. Yet she is more; she is the source of the feminine and the wild, in men and women. She is all that is of instinct, of the worlds both seen and hidden—she is the basis. We each receive from her a glowing cell which contains all the instincts and knowings needed for our lives.”

“She is the Life/ Death/ Life force, she is the incubator. She is intuition, she is far-seer, she is deep listener, she is loyal heart. She encourages humans to remain multilingual; fluent in the languages of dreams, passion, and poetry. She whispers from night dreams, she leaves behind on the terrain of a woman’s soul a coarse hair and muddy footprints. These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her.”

“She is ideas, feelings, urges, and memory. She has been lost and half forgotten for a long, long time. She is the source, the light, the night, the dark, and daybreak. She is the smell of good mud and the back leg of the fox. The birds which tell us secrets belong to her. She is the voice that says, ‘This way, this way.’

“She is the one who thunders after injustice. She is the one who turns like a great wheel. She is the maker of cycles. She is the one we leave home to look for. She is the one we come home to. She is the mucky root of all women. She is the things that keep us going when we think we’re done for. She is the incubator of raw little ideas and deals. She is the mind which thinks us, we are the thoughts that she thinks.”

“Where is she present? Where can you feel her, where can you find her? She walks the deserts, woods, oceans, cities, in the barrios, and in castles. She lives among queens, among campesinas, in the boardroom, in the factory, in the prison, in the mountain of solitude. She lives in the slums, at the university, and in the streets. She leaves footprints for us to try for size.”

“Where does she live? At the bottom of the well, in the headwaters, in the ether before time. She lives in the tear and in the ocean. She lives in the cambia of trees, which pings as it grows. She is from the future and from the beginning of time. She lives in the past and is summoned by us. She is in the present and keeps a chair at our table, stands behind us in line, and drives ahead of us on the road. She is in the future and walks backward in time to find us now.”

“She lives in the place where language is made. She lives on poetry and percussion and singing. She lives on quarter notes and grace notes. She is the moment just before inspiration bursts upon us. She lives in a faraway place that breaks through to our world.”

“So I can spin you a yarn. I can tell you a secret of Skeleton Woman. But this is not a story like those you find in books, and some stories cannot be unheard.”

“It is your choice, Listener. It is perhaps safer for women - but She calls still, to those burning men who howl in the rain and scream at the storms, who take up arms against the pyre upon which the feminine is set alight, as the witches burn. She is there for them too; She whispers to all who have ears.”

[Laurence]

Laurence nods, a smile spreading across his face at the take told by Aldrich. As Aurelia starts talking, the smile fades from his face and Laurence listens with rapt attention as Aurelia speaks of her philosophy. He blinks, taking in Aurelia’s words. When he speaks he does so faintly, as if unsure he should speak.

“I think my favourite tale is The Wendigo in the Night. A tale of how there are forces at work in this world beyond the will of evil.”

Laurence frowns, then looks around.

“Apologies Elders..I didn’t know if you wanted to tell your tales first.”

[L .]

“Go ahead,” Aurelia smiles. “That’s one I like, too. Besides my tale might well disrupt things, so we should leave it until last.”

[Laurence]

Laurence blinks, then shakes his head a little and blinks again.

“Once on the plains of America, a tribe of Native people were travelling. But in their desire to reach water, they crossed over the territory of a Wendigo. A skinwalker, creatures of evil who could slip from one from to another as easily as changing a hat. The Wendigo decided to make an example of the people who trespassed on its land and so followed the tribe. It took the strong and healthy over two nights, leaving nought but mutilated remains behind with faces locked in a rictus of agony.”

Laurence stands, hands clasped behind him back and started pacing slowly backwards and forwards.

“But then a boy, on the cusp of manhood took up his fathers bow and spear. He left the illusionary safety of the firelight to confront the skinwalker. The Wendigo was amused and decided to play with the boy, a death by a thousand cuts was what the evil thing planned. And it almost succeeded...”

Laurence’s face grows grim

“So confident in itself, the Wendigo thought to leave the boy to suffer for a quarter turn of the moon across the night sky. But as the boy lay in pain, his life sleeping into the earth...the Great Spirit whispered to the animals of the plains. The Wendigo was nowhere to be seen when the bear approached the boy. Leaning down it breathed into his ear the secrets of strength. A fox came to whisper of its cunning. A bobcat whispered of its agility. A bison whispered of its endurance. A eagle whispered its wisdom.”

Laurence continues pacing, his tone changing as he reaches the climax of the story.

“When the Wendigo returned, it took the form of a great beast with claws to cut through the boy. But as the Wendigo reaches out to end the boy, it’s claws came into contact with the thick fur of a great bear. The bear lashed out and struck the Wendigo, causing a injury. Throughout the night the boy and the Wendigo battled, shapes changing as fast as water flowed over a rock to counter each other.”

Laurence stops, sitting down.

“When the dawn’s light rose, the skinwalker was dead. And the first of the Shamans had been forged in a night of blood and terror.”

Laurence takes a moment to breath in and out, shaking his head to clear it. Then looks around to try to gauge reactions.