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"Don't you know that vampires are wyrm? What could be a more obvious sign than this that you're wrong?" It was old Cazteyn, yelling at Rain, her mother's mentor. "They're going to steal treasures right out from under our noses, in the guise of protecting us from themselves. In my day gangsters used to do it all the time. Are we that weak that we must buckle under to such, such thuggery?" The old man's voice cracked.
Rain's tones were soothing in comparison, but Diane, well acquainted with the Philodox who'd been like a grandmother to her all her life, could hear the steel beneath the softness. "It is their own kind, they clean up their own messes on our land. We ask the same of them, and get it."
"I think not. Just last year---" and the battle of words and raised voices raged on, more joining in...
Diane had listened to the argument silently, but she had questions. So of course she took them to Mommy.
She was six. A hulking, gangly Crinos six, Diane had outgrown the stage where she was part of Mommy and shifted as Mommy did, from baby to wolfcub without noticing. She hadn't yet reached the age where she could make her own shape change of her volition. So: five feet tall, deformed ears sticking up another three inches; face covered in fur, mouth unable to shape human speech clearly, though she could easily understand it, having heard it from birth on; six years old, growing mentally at the human rate common to Garou.
Mommy always talked to Diane in English, and tried to get her to answer in it. Mommy was the only one who could always understand when Diane talked English. Diane asked in Garou, "Mommy, what's a vampire?"
Mommy answered in English, telling her the new word first. "Vampire. That's how you say it in English." Diane tried to restate her question in her slurred English. "Hongni, huss a zantire?" She sat down awkwardly next to Mommy to listen to the answer.
Mommy thought for a little while, then began to explain. "A vampire is a human person that's been changed by Wyrm to prey on other human people. Wyrm started it, but it's the vampires who do the changing now, so they have tribes and lineages, like Garou, tracing who gave them the Wyrm curse."
Something about how Mommy phrased this caught Diane's curiosity. "Hongni, hy goke oo cah den ates? Hy goo oo say hunan heehull inshkeg?"
"Human beings aren't really apes, Diane. That's like calling wolves, dogs. They're the same in some ways but they have a different status. It's rude to say apes or dogs when you mean human beings or wolves."
Diane nodded, thinking she understood, wondering why so many of the Garou at the Western Eye were rude all the time, but not thinking Mommy would know -- Mommy was never rude unless she was really, really mad. "Hy goo Kestrel ang Cazteyn think ee should kill all the zantires? Are dey right?" She was proud of herself for saying it so well in English.
"No, they aren't right. There isn't any point to it, because they can make more vampires any time they want to. We could never be sure we'd killed them all, and if one was left, they'd all be back a few weeks later. And some of us would be killed, because the Wyrm makes them strong. It's wrong to waste Garou lives that way." Mommy looked kind of mad, until she took a deep breath and went on. "The reason the Uktena think we should kill the vampires is," Diane nodded to Mommy, because she knew Cazteyn and Kestrel were Uktena tribe, while Diane and Mommy were Children of Gaia tribe. Mommy went on, "that they think we should always kill the Wyrm if we can, which is right of course, and they want the treasures they think they will get from the vampires, which is greedy and wrong. And, we can't kill this Wyrm, we can only wound it, because killing individual vampires is just wounding the vampire Wyrm. Wounding the enemy isn't always a good idea, because a wounded enemy is dangerous and furious."
Diane nodded again. Though she didn't really quite understand it all, the main points made sense to her. Uktena were greedy and didn't understand the true nature of things. Mommy always knew the answers. She smiled, a scary sight with all those Crinos teeth, a happy six year old smile.