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 Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 7:15 am
This thread is aimed at being a collection of spirit-quests. It's the sort of thing a wolf should do on their own and so I figured it might be best to have a thread where people could do a single-post RP for their wolves to find their spirit companions and complete their rite-of-passage into adulthood.
Details
Spirit Companions:
A list of spirit companions can be found in the Notebook sticky. Spirit companions can be found in a few ways - dreams, visions, strange 'coincidences' or unusual events. They may be found before a young wolf takes on their adulthood quest or during it but rarely after. Most wolves find their spirit companions during their adulthood quest - a time when a young wolf is told to refrain from eating for the whole day before, sent out into some far flung reaches of the territory, and told to meditate upon their connection to the pack. Some of the packs from which the Aves descend also ask wolves to eat particular fungi or herbs during the rite, but Kalain has not yet found a supply of such nearby, yet.
On their return, they should bring something for the shrine - a token of the companion they just realised or something beautiful they've found on their trip. They will have a small ceremony at the shine with their parents and on of the pack's spirit-talkers in attendance (preferably one of Sohenol if available) to confirm their adulthood and entry into the ranks of the main pack.
This bring with it the responsibility of pack duties and the expectation that whatever a wolf picks as their speciality, they will try to better themselves in that area.
Some young wolves, at this point, will be sent to train with other packs - especially young spirit-talkers who wish to train under another who primarily looks to the spirit they feel closest to. Some will even leave before this time - completing their adulthood rite away from home. In this case, a proxy (usually the closest relatives available or an appointed guardian) will take the place of parents in the ceremony.
I don't intend to RP the ceremony out every time as I feel it'd get repetitive and dull - so you can assume it's done and add small details of your own. Feel free to be creative within a very naturalistic, nature-worshipping/respectful theme.
If anyone feels their wolf will have a hard time getting 'spiritual enough' for it then they can have Kalain provide them with mild hallucinogens. I intend for him and Gaias to work on cultivating such things closer to home >_>
Whilst not compulsory for pups born into the pack, I'd love to see people give writing up their wolf 'finding' their companion a shot - even if it's before the adulthood rite. It doesn't have to be that long or detailed, but I think it'd make a cool record!
This is compulsory for those wolves who join the pack from outside and want mortality protection. It will show that they are an integrated part of the pack and not simply 'visitors'.
Poke me by PM / messenger if you have any questions.
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Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 7:16 am
Their own.
He really would be one of them now, truly. That part of his spirit had been set to rest - he no longer worried about 'home', the nebulous dreams of a puppy whom they had surely forgotten and, even if they had not, a place which he might never feel comfortable in. As a pup he'd been washed ashore far to the west of here and all of his life he'd spent wandering these lands. Here, now, through the grace of kindness, he had been given a new home - in the furthest place imaginable from where he had been born.
The cool, crisp highlands of the Aves pack, despite their sometimes inclement weather, provided a rich land, full of prey and sights, dens and away from others. It was a chilly Eden. The black and white male had spent a lot of time in one particular part of the packlands, recently: the shrine. However, for some reason, he had begun to feel a little penned in there, as if all of his problems, his ideas, his thoughts, had started to accumulate and suffocate him in the small, holy space. Perhaps he was polluting it? Either way, he'd decided that today, for this challenge, he would find somewhere else.
Thus, he came to be sitting on top of the steep cliff overhanging the Crane's Rest lake. He could see the birds for which it was named from here: summering in the rich feeding grounds, a raucous clique finding food for hungry young. He had thought he might head up to Eagle's Reach - the summit of the tall mountain onto which the dens backs, but once he had gotten to this small plateau he had decided to stay, at least for now. It was a little more sheltered than the peak and he could still see things on the ground - up at the peak, everything down below was simply a dot or a smudge of colour and he didn't want to feel that disconnected today.
In fact, it was that connectedness that he strove for. Not just to the pack, but to life itself. Sometimes everything just seemed surreal. Sati had told him that he should fast, that he should think on his connection to this as him homeland and that all the rest would happen. He wasn't supposed to think of a spirit to guide him - one should come to him.
He hoped.
There was always the worry he would be left without one - in a limbo neither one nor not one of the pack; an adolescent stuck on the boundary of adulthood. Would a spirit even know to come to him? He wasn't born Aves, or Clemens, he had come from so far away perhaps the spirits wouldn't know his soul - his own internal spirit. He knew, sometimes, that he felt things when sitting in the shrine - a tingle which left a shiver trailing up his spine - but he wasn't sure he could attribute that to the supernatural rather than a fertile imagination and wishful thinking.
Still...
After a few hours, Quin still sat on the ledge, uncomfortable where stone pressed against his thin hide and skinny body. He had been watching a black bird circle for a while now - utterly distracted from his task by discomfort and hunger. He needed to concentrate, to meditate, to... to... spirits be damned, it was cold up here!
With an uncharacteristic scowl, the black and white wolf got up, moving towards the path down. As he did, a soft black feather with a little grey mottling on it drifted down, touching his nose. It drifted on, settling at his feet as Quin stared. Flicking his head around, he looked for the black bird it had come from, but it was gone.
A small chuckle escaped him, an almost strangled gasping sound and he pressed his paw to the feather as he slumped back to his haunches. Everyone always thought of Sati as ditzy, he thought, but she'd been calling him 'crow wolf' since he first met her...
His pale blue eyes were calmer, now, as he walked back down the mountain with a small black feather in his maw, sure now more than ever where his place was in the world.
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Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 7:56 am
He let his feet take him up a rambling woodland path, following interesting plants which took his fancy - wondering if any of them could be taken back to his garden. He'd tried that with a few plants but many of the ones which grew in woodlands did not grow so well on an exposed slope. Similarly, water-lilies did not do so well out of water. Gaias was learning all of this by trial and error - he had no-one to tell him what could and could not be done.
As he walked, he began to wonder what would happen if he brought the forest to his slope. Not the whole thing, of course - maybe a few logs or something? He'd certainly seen al sorts growing even on falling logs though the oddly shaped fungi sometimes seemed very little like other plants.
He walked on, eventually coming alongside a small, burbling mountain streamlet - probably supplied by the snow he could still see on the high peaks through breaks in the forest. He decided to rest and had a drink - not having been prohibited from that, at least.
He was surrounded by conifers here - mainly spruces which always seemed to crowd such high-meadow streams. He decided he liked this place as much as any: it could be where he'd try to meditate, though he wasn't so great at the esoteric practice.
Eventually, tired and lulled to sleepyness by having nothing to do, the caramel wolf drifted into sleep. Around him, the spruces still grew - though they were all one kind: the blue spruce which he loved for its unusual colour. The world began to speed up, the sun wheeling in the sky until it was a blur, and the trees began to move in their slow, vegetative way. Roots snuck out, branches grow and tall tips stretched to the sky. Cones formed and soft seeds dropped to the ground on miniature, whisper-light wings. Gaias watched all of this, entranced, even when the roots and growth of the giant, stately spruces began to grow over him, as if drawing sustenance from his form.
He felt his body dissolving, becoming one with the tree - hearing its chthonic heartbeats and rusting breaths. It slowly began to take over his own until he was no more and was simply another part of the tree, mind dissolving into a simple enjoyment of sun, land, water and a strong resistance against the freezing snow which pulled on his branches. The snow fell thicker as he held strong against it, a blizzard of epic proportions until he could see nothing, only white.
His soft blue eyes snapped open, hos breath gasping as the suffocating sensation from his dream carried over for mere moments. Gulping a few large lungfuls Gaias looked around and down at himself, as if to make sure he hadn't turned into a tree.
As normalcy began to return, he realised a lot of the tension he had been feeling had evaporated. Surely that wasn't... Could a plant be a totem? Cora had said animals but maybe she meant simply a living thing - after all, he was sure Toghelac wouldn't distinguish between all of the living things and plants were alive - they lived and breathed and ate and mated as much as Gaias did if in very different ways.
Waiting until morning, just to be sure, Gaias walked back with a small, bright red-violet cone cradled gently in his mouth.
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