nick_garou | (no subject)

I ran into Mr. Lee yesterday at the fountain. He was whittling at a long piece of wood with a decently-sized knife--big enough for use as a weapon. Unsurprisingly, the public was leaving him alone, though there weren't tons of people about at the time. He was making a bow and offered to teach me how to make one. I watched him while he worked and as we discussed the craft and theory behind basic bowmaking. A lot of bowmaking seems to be having good intuition as to the hidden flow of the wood's grain. I was so tempted to fire up some sensory Matter and Correspondence magic to observe what was going on in the wood before and during Mr. Lee's shaving action, but I'm wary about doing anything near him. Hell, I've gotten wary about using even sensory magic in general around garou.

It turns out that Lee may be making the bow so that a trio of new Wendigo cubs can practice with it. The two cubs Val picked up? Wendigo. (I made sure to tell Mr. Lee that Val's assistance cost her two weeks of pay and could have gotten her fired. He hadn't seemed to have considered that, then said that was one of the reasons he had the job he currently has--the freedom and flexibility involved. That's.... part of the reason I left the SCPD, too.) No idea where the 3rd cub came from. Apparently Jacinta--the Wendigo elder--was telling the new cubs a story about the Wendigo tribe as kind of an introduction. I'd have loved to have heard that tale: I bet it was.... well, probably not very factual, but likely full of insightful allegories. Jacinta apparently doesn't leave the woods much, but Lee says he's learning Yup'ik from her. (Lee speaks Lakota and is from one of the Dakotas, but he seems very interested in languages.)

We got to talking about spirits, too. Lee claims that they are what they are, not like people who can change their motivations and desires. An arsonist can go straight, but a fire spirit always wants to burn things. (I need to keep an eye out for those while I'm messing around with fire in the spirit world.) And he's worried that Val befriending a stormcrow--which are known for being sneaky, unpleasant, ruthless, and unforgiving--might come back to bite her in the ass.

I also got a little taste of Mr. Lee's bitterness over the Native Americans being manipulated and abused by the early settlers/garou--and how the European tribal spirits really did not do much (or anything) to prevent the members of their tribes from partaking in the onslaught. Personally, I agree with him in that the Native Americans we fucked over by the Europeans for a long, long time. But there's nothing that can be done about it now. But his ire does seem to extend to spirits (such as stormcrows which support the Shadow Lords) because, in his mind, the tribal spirits never protested to the invading European garou when they came over and began killing the Wendigo and Uktena.