Shaman

I was mostly joking when I asked Auntie Gytha to send me a bed-warmer and a shaman, both suited to life on station.

Now there's a man waiting for me to finish the day's admin (and oh, what a day it has been).

He is a shaman, right?

Sleepless

It seems I have become uncivilised.

Announcements

| Lutinari Discussion - Announcement |

A short note to let you know that Jacob and I are separating. We're still very fond of each other, but being this close for this long wasn't helping our spirits soar.

I know a couple of you were concerned, when we formed the Syndicate, about what would happen if we ever split. I think we'll all be okay.

========

From: Matariki Rain
Sent: 2011.10.30 18:46
To: Maraueki Atamahara

Thanks for the skirt. The hem weighting moves beautifully. It will suit the dance well.

I have some news for you.

First, Jacob and I have separated. Amicably. Talk to you soon about it. We're trying to make it a tidy break, so here's the formula for the register:

"Matariki Rain Atamahara no longer has, as pera, Jacob Gottii Avenar."

I'm moving out of Hearthstone and looking for somewhere to base myself. New beginnings.

Second, Jonny's back and says he wants to see Maia. I know, he said this last time, too. You know what to do.

Is Kerem resting as much as she should?

Timing

Jonny's is spectacular.

Light-bearers

As of Saturday the Lutinari have been together a year.

Imprints

Hammer my heart into the shape it needs to be; the shape it's allowed to be. To miss him. To take joy in him and with him. But not to relax into that too comfortably.

It's been three months since he said he'd talk to his lodge and to CJ about talking to my clan.

Only three months: I tell people often that the ways of the tribes move slowly, and, especially for us, there's no real need for haste...

But then he speaks about how his assets would be divided by his sept if he should happen to die, as if we'd never spoken of any other way things might be. Could it be that he'd simply forget? I sometimes forget, myself, that he's still under treatment for neurological disorders.

I forget, also, that I'm not so sure about all of this myself. Maybe it's best to leave it as it is. Enjoy what we do have, and hold back enough that...

... that it doesn't tear me apart.

I have a life, kin, work, and other friends. There are connections there to maintain. I've been ambivalent enough about this that I couldn't really blame him for being less than certain himself. And talking about that again could too easily lead us to end something that was doing... just fine. Don't poke at it: enjoy it for what it is.

I'd been willing to take a mark for him.

And I will take his marking again, just as soon as we make some time alone and I can persuade him that he doesn't need to hold back this time.

Company

Where do you sleep?

When do you sleep?

What do you sleep on? With?

Do you sleep in company -- like, I'd suggest, a civilised person -- or alone?

I'm at Hearthstone, listening to Jacob and Altaen breathing as they sleep near the hearth. We've finally had that dinner I'd promised -- threatened? -- if Altaen worked his security status up to the point where he could bring a ship into Pator, and now, instead of going to rooms and beds, we're curled in nests of blankets and furs on the cushions in the flickering light. Sleep will take me soon, too.

We're so different, the three of us. It's a surprise and often a delight. Something that will have one or even two of us ready to call on the spirits of conflict will have the other calmly saying "Should I care?"... and suddenly the perspective shifts.

There have been some hard times for me lately. They say the only way you can break podders is to break their morale...

... but lying here in the dim, dancing light, fed and warm and in the company of these two very special people, I want so much to help make a space where they can flourish.

Odinnsong

we
the dead
are gathered to your hall

against the day
brass giants come again
to take our living kin

when we will fight and strike
and claw and call
and die again... again

will there be battlesong?
I do not know
there will be what is needful
and our will

we will be strong

until that day
we feast and fight and train
and wile the time away
in words and works and gain

in the battle's burnings and rebirths
each layer stripped
tritanium, flesh
and self
again... again

will you recall
falling rain?

Tales My Aunts Told Me: The Hungry God

There was once a god who felt a great hunger.

He sought to sate his hunger with worship, but still it gnawed at him.

He fed on works and riches, but the hunger only grew.

He grasped at souls and lives; at hopes and dreams; at the works of the mind and the truths of the spirit....

But still he could not glut his appetite.

He tried to feast on the other gods and spirits, who turned from him and left him alone.

And when he found that he still ached with hunger despite all the lives and works and riches and loves he consumed....

He ate even his own name.

And that is why the hungry god has no name in the ranks of the spirits and ancestors: he consumed it and became only hunger itself.

Those who follow the hungry god -- the evil god, the god of Amarr -- seek fodder to appease him still, capturing others and throwing them into his maw so they themselves might not yet be completely consumed.

[A similar tale is told in the Mitar clan, as related by Isobel Mitar.]

Insomnia

It's three years since I received my licence.

It's not a good day. That's not about the anniversary, particularly, just that I've not been sleeping well. Tired. Out of the pod things are a little too sharp and shimmery; voices a little too loud. Stuff that normally wouldn't bother me... bothers me. I want to stay in my pod and turn the input settings right down until I'm floating in a soft, fluffy haze.

Instead... instead I'll dance hard despite the stupid blister I allowed myself to get -- working on a new choreography for Gherkana; must make a time on-planet with Helfi to dance it properly -- manage contracts and payments, listen in on the Sleepy Mindsucker Mystery channels, do something -- anything -- to feel alive, and try to sleeeep.

Suicide

What does it mean when pilot chooses to walk into the biomass queue? To turn away from all that we are in a fashion so final?

I should ask a shaman or a shrink, I suppose. I don't want to. What would they know of this?

She was not close to me: her adopted kin were closer.

Is it weakness; unable to bear the life? Or the ultimate power; to say to an immortal "Cease!"?

Cake

This round cake, displayed on a deep red board, is covered with golden-coloured icing and is in the shape of the Minmatar Republic emblem. The separate portions of the emblem are cut from the circle, iced individually and laid back in their appropriate relation to the main portion of the cake. Encircling the cake on the red board is a gilded edible sugarpaste model of a snake biting its tail. Its eyes look suspiciously like tiny chips of morphite.

When cut, the cake proves to be as golden as its rimpon-flavoured icing: sweet-tart, embedded with rimpon peel and cherry-sized round red fruits, and with a soft creamy layer between the cake and the shell of its icing. Embedded in the cake, seemingly at random, are six silver charms.

1. Khumaak
2. Panties
3. Star
4. Torc
5. Rifter
6. Mr. Ouroboros - the Re-Aw Midgardsorm serpent-biting-its-tail

The old-guard Lutinari couldn't make Re-Aw's party. We could send a cake, though.

The tower take-down went without incident.

I renamed my Falcon Millennium Faucet for the op. I don't think anyone had the chance to notice.

Levendi

The planet has its official designation: system and number. The locals there, though, call it Levendi. That's Levendi with a lilt: Le-VEN-dee. And the lilt and the lapping of waves and the breeze in the trees and the sizzle and hiss of seafood on the grill... all these are now part of our thoughts of Levendi, orchestrated by Altaen as he makes the place personal for us.

I barely know the people, yet. I know, or think I know, how it works when the Angels offer them opportunities they couldn't have otherwise. We'd like to provide options there.

And for Benito, something I hadn't known: his first time on a planet. Sun and wind and the sea.

I watched Benito take a pebble from a beach. Now it will travel faster than light.

Reliabilities

The Noctis is still a fine salvaging ship.

Jacob still finds Angel ships delightful. (Especially The Mistress.)

Teon is still too large.

Yours

When it's good it is very, very good.

Maar

Tie-breaker
Casting vote

Deciding scruple in the scales

Erenda who breaks the balance
Bringing movement

Maar

If I invoke you
Am I prepared
To bear what follows?

Nightmares

Sansha Kuvakei attacked Yulai. Didn't do as good a job on the station as the Elders did.

Wormholes; havoc; the scent of fear.

There's a man... a thing... in The Last Gate who's a slave-child's nightmare of a slaver. And Ethan, spirits bless him, would rather be open to meeting someone new than sensitive to the discomfort of those he already knows.

Accursed

My Curses never saw the market. They sold to pilots I know well, and I know they will serve the people of the Tribes. The experiment was informative: it is possible to build slavery-free Amarrian hulls once you have access to the basic blueprints.

Johan suicide-ganked a red miner. "For science!" he declared, and assured the others in the system that they needn't fear, because that pilot was red.

... the first red miner he happened to stumble across.

What's the difference, really, between this and what Rote Kapelle did to CJ?

It's legitimate under our RoE. Does that make it prudent? Does that lessen the evil we do to learn how to avert a greater evil? The techniques of terror are in our arsenal, yes, and we will use them when they further our cause... but do we need to practise them in our own belts?

"On, offspring of Matar! Set free your lands, your children, kin, homes of your ancestors and temples of your gods! Save all, or all is lost!"

But does that justify... anything?

Against the day Amarr invades in earnest.

Against the day we pilots earn our keep.

We are the cursed. So much blood on our hands, to keep the hands of others clean. The people feed our bloodlust, pay the tithe, to make us stronger. We will be their monsters; fight their battles.

Let us be good enough.

Let us be ruthless enough.

Is it weak of me to ask that we not become too ruthless, devouring our own brood?