Otatso Wetlands clarice...your case file

OOC: This is hard because you're really good at this and playing SWB traditions out and I am still clumsy with Jinx haaaaaah so if I'm slow posting it's cause I'm sitting here trying to decide how to reply so that it's worthy

IC: She listened intently to his recount of his experience, unsure what to make of it all, for if any a wolf could have answered her own questions, she would have suspected it was Lecter. She supposed even now, Nutaaq may be beside himself with worry for the Shaman and the Mambo, if what Lecter said was true. If Sos had forsaken Lecter, then surely he had also forsaken Jinx, and Atka had forsaken Kerberos. Maybe the Gods had forsaken them all, and Shearwater Bay even now was succumbing to its Godless drought... But she would not allow herself to think those things, for the mere thinking of them could bring them to fruition, if the Gods so willed it.

Deep in the recesses of her memory, there were other, more ancient forms of Shearwater's traditions, seated more in the knowledge of her father than in any true education Jinx had been given. They preceded a time when the wolves and the Great Bears had been in close connection, and worship had been directed... Elsewhere, at spirits instead, and elements. It was knowledge locked deeply away in Koios' memories, unaccessible to all... But in a dreamscape, perhaps Jinx had encountered this knowledge in one form or another, so that it was subconscious but unknown; and had it been a ready knowledge, she might have concluded that the Gods, or at least Sos, favoured a return to the Old Ways, and that was why he had "abandoned" them to find their way and reseek their roots. Unfortunately, that knowledge was nothing conscious, so she could take no comfort — and give no comfort — in that.

Recognising that her mind had fallen into an irrelevant rut of thinking, whose topic she couldn't even define, she shook herself back to reality. Thankfully, only a few seconds had passed since Lecter's conclusion and Jinx's movement. So as to make the touch appropriate for their statuses, she pulled away from him, though there was a hidden primal part of her that loathed herself for it. “You must have crossed many mountains in a Dream Walk,” she mused, “or Sos spirited you here, for we are very far from there now. It would take many moons to return.” But, of course, he had figured that out for himself, and she could only confirm it, having walked those miles herself. “He has purpose yet for you, Lecter... We cannot know what it is, but I know He would never forsake you. He is just silent now, waiting... For what, I'm afraid I cannot say.” Nor was she certain, but she held fast to her faith, even now.

The thought came briefly that maybe He had brought Lecter here for the same reason He had brought her, and Atka had brought Kerberos; there were the beginnings of a plan forming at the edges of her consciousness, niggling little distractions, but surely they could not all have arrived here for no purpose? It was not coincidence, she decided. Plucking at that thread of chance that had delivered all of them to what seemed to be a Godless Hell, Jinx brought up a topic that he might find unsavoury, as they had never been very close: “Atka brought Kerberos here, and forsook him as well.” The name of the White Bear Goddess was said with some contempt, as she firmly believed that Atka, for whom she had worked tirelessly as a child (at one time having followed in the footsteps of her mother and fearing Sos above all other, and hating Him) and who had chosen not to notice her, but nonetheless, she was curious what his reaction might be.

Of course, Kerberos' lineage was entirely unknown to Jinx but that he had come from the Nereides as a gift, to be cared for by Nanuq Kesuk of Shearwater Bay... The hatred between father and son was nothing but a mystery to her. Nonetheless, she hoped he might find the fact interesting, or take some faith in it; maybe they hadn't been forsaken after all, but could not be reached here. She searched in her mind and in his empty eyes for any sign that there was still hope for them, that their Gods had not merely discarded them as used toys.