Gift of Knowledge

What a scrubby place. She had been here before, and marked the locale, and certainly it was no hardship to return, but rather, a rapid transition; still, rather unpleasant the recent associations as well as the feeling of entering a place where she would once have felt comfortable, yet no longer. Diane sniffed, and scenting nor seeing a human around her, shifted back to her homid semblance. Tucking hair carefully over her ears, she proceeded toward the Library. It was closed, in fact the campus was relatively quiet here, as in the dawn hours, most students who were still awake were not yet ready to head to classes, or were just winding down from a hard night of partying. Diane studied the Library in the dawn light and then stepped to the side of a parked automobile, studying the mirror carefully as she stepped into the Umbra. Once there, she found she could step through the skeletal weaverwalls of the building; it was not a weaver stronghold such as she would have been afraid to enter even were the doors open wide. It was but a weaverling's nest, she had little fear, though some anxiety remained.

She returned, also carefully and slowly, to the world as she searched the shelves for the books Leigh required to continue her studies. Carefully she'd memorized the list before coming here. It would not do to have to return, nor, to get stuck in the Gauntlet this far from assistance. Diane used all the caution and care she could muster. She walked through the stacks, finding each book in turn. When she had a pile of eight, she had found all the required tomes, and proceeded to the next step of her plan. Walking to the back of the circulation desk, where in an outer wall there was a slot through which patrons could slide returned books from outside to interior, Diane carefully pushed each of the books up and out through this slot, thereby removing them from the building completely.

She quickly went to a restroom, gazing at her reflection in its mirror, before once again entering the Umbra to exit the building's locale. Carefully she peeked before stepping back through at the spot where the books should lie. She came through the Gauntlet once again and scooped them up, carrying them with what she hoped was the air of a student walking home after a late night "study date"... She carried the books into the forest, considering if she should shift to the stronger Glabro for ease of carrying. Once her arms began to tire of the weight she did so, far out of the likelihood of meeting anyone.

Finally she sat down for a rest in a clearing, putting the books in a neat stack, curling up into lupus form and napping in a guardian mode. There she had an odd dream...

Diane dreamed... the one with the ruined face came to her again. His eyes were not his own beautiful eyes, somehow; they were another's, deepest blue. He sang to her in his indescribable voice, of how this caern came to be, yet, not its story as she knew it, but far longer ago; not how Entropy came to dwell here in Texas, but, how Entropy came to be, waiting, awaiting the blessing of embodiment in pure land.

Far, far up in the sky, the indigo spiral spread across Gaia's face. Diane felt herself invisibly walking it; one tiny strand of indigo under her feet kept her aloft. Below, far below, she could see the continents arrayed under the clouds. Walking, never stopping, in the darkness, she nevertheless sensed others around her - Garou all, lupus form all, white wolves all. No... all but one... one was a black wolf. Strange. The white wolves and the black wolf walked the endless indigo spiral in the sky, and all was well in Gaia's realm. Then she felt a sudden sickness, and saw, that a bit of blackness had crept into the indigo. It spread, and where it overtook a white wolf walking, the wolf turned black too, and its eyes took on an eerie green glow. Diane felt dizzier and sicker as the blackness crept over each and every strand of the spiral ... no... there were a few indigo patches left... one that Diane herself walked... another under the tread of the one wolf who had always been black. Its eyes, did not glow green; instead they glowed with the very indigo blue of the spiral itself.

Then the indigo spiralling around the indigo-eyed wolf separated itself from the sick black spiral and plummeted toward the ground, leaving Diane walking on the last of the indigo still in the sky. As it turned black under her tread, it would not hold her; she fell through, falling, about to hit ground, to die, when she heard something and awoke... it was Leigh, trying to get the books from her stack without waking her. Diane blinked her eyes open, and tried to separate the dream from the reality.