Deer Hunters

[Avis]

They'd left that evening, embracing the lingering hours of summer sun to set up camp and prepare dinner, as well as their breakfast for an early morning hunt. Or, well, they did eventually. Avis had never really been camping. She'd never been hunting. She'd only brought a sleeping bag, a tarp, a few pieces of extra clothing, and food. Her bow and arrows were something she always carried. So it had been a learning experience for her, to say the least. And as for Fisher, well, Avis wasn't quite sure what the Shaman thought of it. The Warlock was still learning to read the other Talon. Still learning to discern the difference between that which was fleeting and that which was not.

Thankfully, they'd managed to set up a decent campsite and had their food already cooking. The sun was beginning to set, and with their work done, the only thing left to do was to talk until they retreated into sleep.

[Fisher]

If Avis didn't come all that prepared, Fisher, as an old hand more familiar with camping out than city life, more than made up for it. She had her large pack, a two person 4 season tent designed light and strong, dried foods that would carry well, sleeping bag, and numerous other little tidbits for convenience. Where Avis brought a bow, Fisher had brought her Mauser rifle.

The thyrsus had set up the tent on a nice piece of flat ground with the skill and ease of practice. She sat by the fire poking at it to stir it up a bit and frequently stir the food so it doesn't scorch to the bottom of the aluminum pot. Scorched food was a bitch to clean.

She was sitting on her leather coat, like a cushion, on a large rock by the fire. Under her linen shirt she wore a lightweight merino wool base layer that someone into mountaineering may wear. Cotton and linen provided no insulation when wet after all. She had her blue jeans on, but some spare synthetic pants if the weather turned bad.

The dark-haired woman looked relaxed and completely at ease as if she were finally home. She hummed lightly finishing her prodding of the fire and then glanced around at the nearby river. Using some stones she had set up a fish trap in the river which she wondered to herself how well it would work out for breakfast.

"So what do you think?" Fisher asked with interest. "I do feel more myself out here in a place like this, the city has its own life to it, but this is more calming."

[Avis]

"I've slept a lot of nights without a roof over my head," Avis replied, staring into the fire, "but I was never in a place like this. I mean, my parents took me on day trips to places like this when I was small, but...well, ok, no, what I said wasn't right. I have been camping. Once. My mentor took me out into the woods when I was still a hopeful for the Talons.

"Actually, that's part of why I asked you to go hunting with me," Avis continued, though her eyes were still fixed on the flames. "You have a perspective that I've only had the slightest of brushes against. But I want to learn. I want to learn to see things like you do. At least...when it comes to matters of life. I thought hunting might be, well, a good way to find out if you wanted to teach."

[Fisher]

Fisher listened and nodded as Avis spoke and shared about her personal experience. She didn't say why she was outdoors a lot and not camping. Fisher didn't wanna press her about it either she would share it or she would not. With Fisher's experience with social work she thought that there could be a number of reasons why, homelessness, drugs, bad relationships, trouble with the law. Lots of things, but that was for Avis to say.

"Since I was about 10 or so I think I've spent much of my years like this. It gets a little lonely at times, however, the occasional dicking helps alleviate some of that though," Fisher said with a wicked smile and a laugh. "but there is something special about the wilderness to me. I imagine that my reasons were far different from your own. I saw it as a way to get in touch with my past, my people, to understand life, the world around me, and my place in it. I guess you could say that I wasn't like other girls," Fisher said laughing in good humor at the understatement.

She took a cup and poured herself a glass of coffee that had just finished percolating. She held out the pot to Avis if she wanted some Fisher would pour her a cup. When she set down the coffee Fisher took a sip and then set down the cup. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up taking a few drags and sighing in relief. She'd hold out the pack to Avis, not sure if the other woman smoked.

"So, I was this weird whippersnapper with hair in pig-tails running through the woods half naked half the time. I got it in my head that I should try to teach myself to be a survivalist. Which meant all my own food hunted and gathered, made all my clothing and tools from kills. That went over well. My god did I get hungry at times," she said with another laugh. "I was stubborn so I refused to admit I was in over my head. I didn't wanna worry my grandparents either. But as misguided as I was at the time I learned a lot. I learned to respect my people's stories and because of my survivalist lifestyle one day everything came together and it all just clicked one day out in the woods. I remember it like yesterday, It was when I saw a mother Fisher defending its kits from a lynx. It all made sense, the stories, life, the spirit world, heck even all the teenager sex drive made sense at the watchtower. It was all part of one big massively amazing and beautiful system. Everything was a part of it. Everything. Even this rock I'm sitting on," Fisher said gesturing down and then pointing to various objects around her. "That tree, the grass, you, me, the air around us, our clothes. It is all life. The rock, the air, and our clothes might not be a living organism, but ideas, concepts, objects, matter, deities, all have a spirit. Not all of the spirits are awake or even perceptible, but all of it can be roused and communicated with if it is too far dormant. All of it effects everything else. The spirit world interacts with living things and changes how people interact, what we feel, and can influence behavior. Our behavior and actions have a direct impact on the spirit world influencing the gathering of spirits as well as impacting the immediate world around us. Everything we do casts ripples."

Fisher took several more puffs of her cigarette blowing out a long stream of smoke and watching it rise into the air. Once it was a few feet up the wind caught it and dragged it away.

"Do you have any experience at all with life? I'd be happy to teach you what I can. We can start with the sight I think...that would be a good place to begin," Fisher said looking at the woman over the flames with a smile on her face.

[Avis]

"I think I've learned as much as I can on my own, Avis replied, shifting off of her seat and bringing her legs under her so that her knees were bent and she sat on her heels. In Japan they called the posture seiza. In India, it was called vajrasana. She wasn't hubristic enough to think she understood the full meaning of those concepts, but it had been something she'd been taught and thus, to some degree, she understood what it meant for her. In that moment, for what she had planned, it seemed appropriate.

Avis reached down for the hem of her sweatshirt, and mindful of the flame, drew it up and back, stripping it off so it fell behind her. Then she did the same with the t-shirt that had been underneath, leaving her torso bared except for her sportsbra.

In the firelight, it was to Clear to Fisher what Avis had been wanting to show her. Traceries of scar tissue ran up her arms, some seemingly chaotic slashes, others finer, more delicately curved lines, though all were faded with time. On Avis' stomach, however, was a new scar. Large, and still healing, was a blended rune that compined the glyph for pain with the glyph for enlightenment.

"I've always had an adversarial relationship with the body. Drugs, hunger, pain, lust, they were all things that I thought eclipsed me, and so I would fight to ignore them. To seperate from them. To free myself from this organic cage. But that was all actually an illusion. It was only recently that I've realized what I've been blind to, and when I carved this," she explained, gently touching the rune on her stomach.

"I learned a lot about the body, like how to heal my own wounds. But like I said, I don't think I can learn more without help. Without someone that understands better than I do.

[Fisher]

Fisher, while smoking and drinking her coffee, watched Avis strip off her sweatshirt and top. When she saw the scars, old and new, it was clear that she resisted the urge to get up and touch the marks. That she resisted the urge to interfere and try to help Avis. Fisher knew from the words that followed that the woman as capable of healing herself and she felt that she needed to scar her own flesh.

The Thyrsus thought for a moment and recalled numerous tribes and groups that used ritual scarification as initiations or rites of passage into adulthood or into a warrior caste. However, it was the words about how she felt about her own body that disturbed Fisher the most. Yes, they lived in the lie and their bodies are a part of this world, but matter pre-existed the fall of Atlantis, didn't it? So there has to be truth hidden down in the depths of organic and inorganic structures, right?

In order for Avis to do that to herself Fisher thought that it spoke to something deeper, that there was shame, bitterness, resentment even that she was taught or learned about her body and impulses. Some of those Fisher felt were all very natural ones. Was a Warlocks path that alien to her own understanding of the Supernal? Is that why Mind and sometimes Space came harder to her path?

"Well," Fisher said finally after seeming an eternity of thought. "I know nothing of the arcana of your path, and know very little of the Path of Scourging. But from what little I know it basically is forming a powerful Imago and imposing your will to affect change? Essentially strength of mind and thought are important? I hope that I'm not too far off." Fisher said carefully and waiting to see if the other woman would correct her for her childlike understanding of the other's path. The road the Warlock walked did not come easy for people of her path.

"Well the Path of Ecstasy from my understanding is basically almost a polar opposite, but I see from your markings on your flesh there might be some slight overlap in application. If you have reached the point where you can heal yourself, then I'm only a slightly beyond you, I'm a Disciple of Life so I can heal others and myself, I can alter my body slightly and mix and match traits of lifeforms, as well as control and influence lower levels of life than human life. I don't like to use that term, lower levels of life because all life is connected and we are brothers, but it suits our purposes here." Fisher set her empty coffee cup down again and reached up with her free hand to stroke her chin pondering how best to reach the other woman.

"Let me start by giving some information about the Primal Wild as I experienced it, what it means, and what the Path of Ecstasy is. My path does not put any stock whatsoever in careful thought, higher reasoning, dry book learning, etc. We experience life, we experience magic. There is no thought, no reasoning in the Primal Wild only a base primal and animal instinct. Emotion is a massive part of what we experience there. I found myself in huge jungle ecosystem more vibrant and filled with life than anything else here. There the spirit and the material are the same thing, there are both spirits and animals there, but they are essentially the same in that place. There is an overwhelming sense of terror and panic as a prey animal would fear a hunter, only far more intense than you would feel here. There is a sense of elation of the hunt of lesser beings, and an overwhelming arousal. My god you would not believe how wet it all made me. It was like I sprung a leak. Anyway, you don't stop to analyze your situation, you run, you flee, you chase, you hunt, you kill, you get killed, you mate, you hunger, you eat. Impulse and drive are all that matter there. Everything there is literally a god. The sun is actually the manifestation of the sun god himself, the ocean is a god, the earth or shore is a god, the primal wilds itself is a god. You get hunted or you hunt. You are surrounded by life, but there is death everywhere because through death comes new life for plants and predators that feast on remains. If you die you are reclaimed and purified by the Primal Wild."

Fisher paused for a moment as if she was remembering what it was like, the longing for those intense feelings clear on her face along with the sadness in the knowledge that she would never experience them that completely this side of the Supernal Realm again. She sighed out another long puff of smoke and continued.

"Ecstasy is not a word understood by modern man any longer. It has come to mean only physical pleasure such as in sex. It is far more than that. It is an altered state of mind that can be reached through many ways. It can be reached through sex, intense pain, drugs, very intense exercise, ritual dancing and drumming, and other ways. What matters is that you loose yourself. You loose your higher reasoning and mind. In ancient Greece there were the maenads, women followers of Dionysus, well they had a few men but they dressed like women, but mostly women. They would worship him by their reveals, wine, dancing, sex, savagery. They worked themselves up to a frenzy and would tear apart, with their bare hands, the sacrifices a bull or panther, sacred animals to their god, and consume the raw flesh. I suppose it is possible that people were torn apart too, there are myths about such things happening with Dionysus when he was with his followers. I'm not saying that you need to go insane and go on a killing spree. But, the underlying element is there, loosing yourself to your base drives. Everyone has them. For some it is food, others sex, hunting, violence, or terror. There is no good and no evil, morality is a lie. There are only consequences of our actions and we have to live with the end result of choosing those actions. As humans my path is always about trying to balance civility with the animal nature, those of us who choose to take part in human society that is. So essentially we want to induce an altered state in you. we can do that through drumming and dancing until you loose yourself here around the fire, we can exercise you and run you until you can't think and you drop from exhaustion, we came out here to hunt that could be done too, but with tools like bows and guns it is kind of hard to get immersed in the hunt. Some people use drugs to induce the state, I use alcohol a lot in rites, however, I tend to save my drug use for recreational purposes, but to each their own."

Fisher paused for a moment uncertain if she should bring this up or not. She didn't want Avis to think she was pressuring her or pushing her to an end to take advantage of something the other woman said but continued anyway. She felt like she needed to be honest and her path does not shy from this.

"...there is sex as well," Fisher said cautiously. "However, if your involved with someone I don't want to lead you somewhere that can cause problems. It could be done with a lover or a partner that you have, you would just need to go about it a little differently than usual."

Sorry for the word dump! She had a lot to introduce!

[Avis]

Don't apologize, that was an amazing post

"There's also pain," Avis replied, now gazing into Fisher's eyes across the fire. "You mentioned that, too. Dancing, drugs, those aren't things I'm interested in, and sex is something that's complicated by what I have with Star. Like you said, we need to get away from ideas and concepts to connect to that primeval essence. So, that would leave pain.

"Because, as much as it might sound confusing, since most of my path is entirely focused on everything that's metaphorical, Warlocks aren't strangers to pain. Our souls touched the Realm of Nightmares. So when we talk about strength of mind, it's not just Neil Degrasse Tyson and crazy philosophy, it's also about emotional endurance. In fact, I'd say that's really the center of what we are. We're the Path of Scourging. The path that flays the literal essence of who we are so that it will heal and become stronger. Mostly that's just in our heads, but the mind and the flesh are linked.

"I mean, the Supernal isn't just Pandemonium. It's also the Primal Wild. They're both realms of Higher Truth. So...even though there's difference, there has to be a connection between them," Avis argued, her eyes now looking past Fisher into the shadows between the trees. "We might have different perspectives, we might have different philosophies, but no matter which Watchtower we went to, we all connect to the same realm. So, in some ways, I almost wonder if the Watchtowers, as necessary as they are, are also a kind of hobble. A sort of...constructed divide that makes it all the harder to learn the lessons we need."

[Fisher]

Fisher winced noticeably as Avis mentioned pain. That was by far the most unpleasant of the possibilities and Fisher feared that Avis would hear that and latch onto it tightly. It sounded like the closest fit based on her history of scarification. She also suspected that Avis and Star were a thing based on the snippets of things that she noticed, conversation, the rings. Which was one reason she had hesitated to mention sex as an alternative.

"Yes?" Fisher said with great trepidation and then sighed out another puff of smoke. "I was afraid you were going to pick that one. I don't like this way personally, but I think this is the best way to reach you and fulfill your needs...so...because we are cabal mates I will help you with this."

"If that's the case we may be a little closer than I thought as a path, it is weird then that thyrsus have such a difficult time if there is this overlap. I guess it is because we approach if from two different sides? I suppose the watchtowers were the only way they could think to anchor souls to the supernal across the abyss? If the abyss didn't exist we likely wouldn't need them like before the fall. Unless you think the stories of their founding were false and it was all a move to cripple our resistance? Hm...I don't know. I think it is possible that the resistance at the time saw it as the only way when they weren't winning the war in the supernal?" Fisher didn't want to think about the fact that someone would intentionally damage people in this way, and that everything that she was taught about her path was intentionally misleading. Her fear, which made up her core, kept her from contemplating that possibility seriously.

Fisher thought for several long moments staring into the fire releasing rhythmic puffs of her diminishing cigarette. She stared into it as if the answers were contained it in. Then she nodded once and looked up to Avis

"Ok, I think I have an idea." Fisher said after her long moment of contemplation. "There is an old Sioux warrior initiation ritual I think that could be adapted to serve our needs...It won't be pleasant...it won't be pleasant at all, but it could work well for you. The initiate is pierced with wooden rods, one in each pectoral and one all the way through each calf. They are then hung by ropes tied to those stakes in the chest and buffalo skulls are tied to the poles in their calves. They are then beaten with a pole until they pass out from pain and lowered to the ground. When they wake up, they are run around a ritual field until the rods in their calves fall out and they collapse from exhaustion. This simulates death and helps them accept the idea of yielding to our concept of god, giving of themselves to rest well in god. We don't have buffalo skulls, but I have some excellent climb rated rope with me and we can use stones of the proper size. I believe that I can conduct this safely by monitoring your life signature and healing you if things go too badly. If you don't wanna do that we can try something else like what you have already done with yourself we could use knife and coals I suppose. Unless you have an idea?"

[Avis]

"You have the insight that I don't," Avis replied stolidly after several long moments of thought. "If you think losing myself to sensation is the key I need, then I trust you. What I'm not sure about is copying a ritual for a tribe I don't know anything about."

Avis grimaced momentarily, her legs starting to go numb underneath her weight.

"That's one of the things about our paths. Where you see Spirits, I see Symbols. The buffalo skull isn't just a buffalo, or a skull. It has meanings attached to it, ideas that resonated for those people. To try and recreate that practice without understanding those ideas would neuter the power behind that ritual. It would tear it's heart out and leave it meaningless. Without power. And sure, I'm sure I'd still feel pain, and maybe I wouldn't bother thinking about the meaning, but that wouldn't be matching our intentions with our actions. So I'm fine with a ritual, but I need to know what it means, and I think that means that we're going to have to invent it."

[Fisher]

Fisher flicked her cigarette butt into the fire and pulled out another one at lit up one more. This felt like a two smoke issue to her. All this sitting and over-analyzing things was making her antsy. She was always more comfortable letting her emotions guide her and doing something with her hands which drove her mentor insane with her constant pacing.

The thyrsus purposely stayed still, her mentor would have been proud, the only movement being her hand and her smoke. What did she know about Avis? Precious little. She was very serious, constantly. She is very private and doesn't like to open up. Guarded. People like that have been hurt in the past, almost always. The thought of it made Fisher's own heart begin to ache in sympathy, before she quashed it.

Later, Fisher thought to herself, that can come later. Work now. She needs your help.

Ok, hurt in the past. Lived on the street. Fended for herself. Accomplished in space and mind. Surly, confrontational, angry. Defense? A Warlock...avoiding emotional pain? Betrayal maybe? Found Star and opens up to him. Respects him. Doesn't know me. Me the idiot and clueless greenhorn. Have done nothing, have earned nothing.

No...I don't think I can help her, Fisher thought depressed. Too soon for us to mesh well together. Too soon for opening up.

"I hear what you're saying," She said finally after an eternity. "I think you're right. You see meaning and symbols...maybe the mind works that way...I know magic can. That's wrong for a thyrsus for the most part. I feel magic emotionally, it might excite, scare, feel warm and joyful, cold and malicious. You see something and try to dig into the meaning behind it. What does it stand for. To understand life you need to kill everything but the lizard brain as the modern scientists call it. That animal part deep down inside you. The part of you that you are scared of. That modern man fears."

Fisher paused for a long moment and took several more long drags on her cigarette. She felt it might be time for that lame adage about fish and fishing. She would give Avis the tools she needed to help herself and if she needed more in depth and further guidance later on, then Fisher would be there to be her friend and help her. But, she didn't think Avis was ready for that yet.

"I think that I don't know enough about you to craft something that would be a perfect fit to fill your needs. Not yet. I don't want to force you to open up to me. That won't work and we don't know each other well. So I'll help you by teaching you a framework, give you some tools so that you can craft something that holds meaning to you. If you want my help at that point fulfilling something in that then I would gladly help. However, I think you understand pain well enough. You need to understand the other aspects of life. For that...maybe your lover can help. You open up to him, and I imagine he would be more than happy to help. He is a man after all. I can teach...by teach I mean pointers...some tricks to focus on if you want to purse something sexual with him. I could teach you about drumming, ritual dance, or using exercise. Some of that crosses over with pain...yes...but I think you need more meaning than just me devising ways to torture you. What you do you think Avis? I'm here for you after all. If you think you would like to proceed we can. Otherwise I can teach you what I can instead."