Thursday: bumping into Naomi and meeting with Jacinta

[nick_garou]

Thursday morning, after a night of trying to track down a missing teenager, I got a lead that she might turn up at eventually Andy's Donuts. Sitting in a heated restaurant with coffee, a cinnamon roll, and a free newspaper beats an in-care stakeout at 4am, so.... Shortly after dawn, in walks Naomi! Coincidence? Mages are surrounded by them. I flagged her down and then--both hands on the table so she could see I was unarmed--told her I'd talked with Mouse about who she was and used to be. That I knew she was kin and used to be garou. And I disclosed to her that I was kin as well (and left off the mage bit, as I always do). After some back and forth to ease tension and reassure Naomi this was not a setup, we finally got to talking about her situation. Is she interested in coming back into the fold? Yes. Is she interested in seeing if Mouse can restore her stolen wolf? Yes, but she doubts Mouse will have any luck because a number of other theurges tried for a year.

Backstory? Naomi was on her fostern challenge (she was a cliath Walker Ragabash before the incident), which involved tailing a mage who'd arrived in the city recently--see what he was up to. After a few weeks of spying, she was following him and he went down an alleyway--a break from his usual routine. She turned the corner and there he was, waiting for her, having made her despite her using a gift that made it harder for her to be seen. (Lots of ways to detect an invisible person: Correspondence? Life? Prime? Spirit? Mind? Forces? Entropy?) He reached out and touched her, and that was lights out for her--she came to hours later. (Mind? Prime? Life? Matter? Time? Entropy?) That's when she realized she could no longer shift or use gifts. (Prime? Spirit? Life? Mind? Entropy?) She spent a year going from theurge to theurge trying to get fixed. Some said they could sense something off about her, but couldn't unwork the mage's magick.

I dropped Naomi off after getting her contact information, where she lives, and telling her that Mouse will likely contact her to arrange for a talk and/or examination of her to see if she's clear to go to the safehouse.

After pulling that all-nighter, I opted to crash at my place on the 5th floor of the safehouse. I slept like the dead. Woke up that afternoon. Mouse and I rode out to meet up with Jacinta at the farmhouse.

We met up with Jacinta in the field behind the farmhouse. There was some back and forth discussion about the mage who was killed earlier, and Jacinta offered to do what she could to make things right to the mages. I informed her that, as far as I knew, there wasn't anything to make right--yet. And that I was not seeking justice or vengeance for Samantha's actions. Jacinta said she'd already talked to her about how Samantha's actions might have been taken to protect the caern and sept, but they might ultimately have cost the sept an ally--or made it enemies it did not have before. (I am going to have to stop stereotyping the rural fuzzbutts as being idiots. Jacinta is clearly thinking, thinking critically, and thinking in advance of the present. Granted, she's the Warder and it might be all downhill insofar as thinking goes for the rest of the country bumpkins--and it could be one hell of a steep slope.)

In discussing the artifacts the mage left behind, it looks like he was exploring for a source of power--be it a node, caern, glade, or supernatural critter. I told Jacinta I'd done some prospecting on my own, but not on the bawn because that was garou territory and I respected their claims--but other mages might not or might not be aware of it. I offered to put up sigils on their places of power (minus the caern) to alert any mage that found them that they were claimed by another mage. Most mages are respectful of other mage's nodes and won't mess with them. I think Jacinta saw the benefit of taking me up on the offer, but she said Elliot would need to be involved in approving this. She's hoping to get a yay or nay before the moot. All in all, I think the meeting went fairly well.