The Message
by Simon W.
Inge sat on the lake's edge. The cool breeze off the water blew her hair around, strands that weren't caught and tamed by a braid flying about free in the orange and yellow light of sunset. This was one of her favorite times of day; even in the cold, dark days of her early widow-hood when she had been overwhelmed by the combination of grief and caring for small children, she had been able to find a moment's peace in the moment of sunset. Lately she had found herself feeling very far away from those dark times.
Dagmar had regained much of the spark she had lost in the Battle of the Sept of the Crescent Moon. No longer was she hiding behind beer or duty. She was willing to live again. Inge smiled to think that her sister might be granted a second chance at living. It had taken a long time to get to this point.
Her children were all living relatively happy lives. Relatively, of course, because any child born of the Nation was going to face hardship, work, and a never ending battle against the Wyrm. But for the moment her shifter born children seemed to find fulfillment in their duties to Gaia and her kinfolk born children had their jobs in the more mundane human world to turn to as well as the support they offered to their Garou family.
And then there was Wulf, and the beginnings of the new family to come. Inge hugged her rounded belly closely. She hadn't expected to fall in love a second time in her life, and she'd tried for a while to tell herself it was something different. But no, it was love and she was happy to fall, no to dive, into it and see where it led in all its glorious chaos.
Life was actually pretty good lately.
Her vision went dark. Darker than a cloud in front of the sun. Darker than night. Darker than what she could see behind her eyelids. The communications spirits that normally whispered their messages softly screeched in her mind:
"The Gaians will kill you all. Unite or die! Unite or die! The Gaians will kill you all. Unite or die! Unite or die! The Gaians will kill you all. Unite or die! Unite or die!"
And then followed a message of wrongness; a message told with reverence and love for the Wyrm. A message of Gaian victories told as failures, but even so, ones that could be overcome in the ultimate fight to bring victory to the Corrupter, the Destroyer, the End of All Things.
Nausea swept over Inge. It was far worse than anything her pregnancy had yet thrown at her. It was a visceral, physical reaction to the wrongness of what she had heard. Nearly instinctively she called up her power to make a cleansing circle with herself as the epicenter. There was no pain, no burning of corruption from her spirit, simply the cool, soothing feeling she associated with the magic of Gaia.
She sighed in relief. She still felt unclean and unsettled but at least it was simply an emotional reaction instead her having become actually tainted by hearing the message meant for the Wyrm's minions instead of herself.
Shortly afterward there was no woman on the shore, only a splash and a ripple on the waters of the lake as Inge dove in to see if the cool embrace of water would ease her mind.
