Rabbit cants her head, watching him aslant like a chary horse for some moments before speaking. "It is not isolated, to be with us...we will clasp forearms with many. Meet many. Make a place that is free of spilled blood and wickedness, if none exist in the world before...that pain was made by people, too. It can be healed, though it take much working. Believe this."

Rabbit looks up at the stars, clean and unbloodied and cold as they are. "You ar right, that to be guided, ruled by fear is like poison, harm you and others there...but do not be ashamed to feel. That say only that you have want to stay alive. Or, the fear of yourself, that you have desire to live better than your past, make better world than those who are slave to fear."

Still very much tensed, Rabbit paces forward to offer a hand in a gesture of peace - and, perhaps, proof that she is human and here in this moment as he is. "I feel this also. But it not rule me."

"HuhuhaHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhahahahaha!" The shaman cackles. "So stupid. Ready is not the same as willing, Thunder Walker. Did I ask you if you were ready? Surely not! We are always ready to do things asked of us, if it is the will of the spirits, but do not ignore your own will. Ignore your own desire and it will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence."

Gazes at Stars stared at Rabbit's hand. Then back up to her. Then he looked back down and took her hand, gently.

"This is all we can hope."

Rabbit's grip is perhaps surprisingly soft, a relic of not having lived an adult life until this fortnight past. It is also firm, despite the slight tremor there.

She holds a moment, a point of warm contact, then gently pulls Gazes over towards the fire and those she knows will accept his presence. "Come, eat. Tomorrow, maybe, we Dance."

In reply to Laughs At Darkness (msg # 26):

Thunder Walker smiled placidly. He had come to expect a near constant level of ridicule from the shaman, accusations of stupidity the most frequent among them. This time, he was most surprised that the strange character didn't strike him with his stick. In any case, he had learned not to enter discussions with the man about the strange differences between small words. The shaman had asked if he was willing to go, and he had replied that he was ready.

Of course, to be ready to go, one must necessarily be willing. But he knew that attempting to argue the point would only bring some manner of nonsense, perhaps a strike with the stick. Besides that, he had learned much wisdom from this man, however peculiar his preference for exact language was. He did not wish to upset the shaman.

"I am then willing to return."

In reply to Thunder Walker (msg # 29):

"Ha! Finally, a smart answer!" Laughs At Darkness chortles...then stops abruptly. The coyote ears on the skin he wears perk up, and he turns to look at the entrance of the den.

Thunder Walker can hear something. A terrible pounding that rattles the den's wall.

"Trouble." The shaman says, in a serious tone Thunder Walker hadn't heard much before now. "The drums of War. I hear Raven's laughter. Something terrible is being called. Come." He stands and heads over to the burrow's entrance. "And I hear, as it were, the voice of thunder. 'Come and see,' it says. We shall see."

---

As the night's festivities die down, Rabbit and Gazes wander off to sleep. And in their sleep, they dream...

((OOC: Draw me a card for Interlude, Gazes, and then narrate me a dream that follows along the general theme of that card. Rabbit, you already have a dream ready.))

As when a scout, certain signs and signals caused him to naturally enter a state of high alert. At the shaman's change of tone and demeanor, Thunder Walker felt just such a calling. He followed the coyote shaman's gaze to the entrance, and then wordlessly followed at the man's beckoning.

It had naturally taken Rabbit somewhat longer than usual to extricate herself from company, and even longer to be wholly certain no living soul saw her carefully climb down an almost sheer slope to nest amongst long-fallen boulders. Screened from above by the branches of a young pine that had determined to grow there, Rabbit nestled in as best she could, coccooned in the blanket Sky Hawk had kindly retrieved from Horn Chips' tent.

She would probably wake sore from shivering, Rabbit reflected, looking at the stars and tucking her nose under the edge of the wool. She could cope with soreness. Turning on her side to favour the almost-vanished injury inflicted by Huang Li, Rabbit slept.

---

The scent of this place set her heart pounding. Lost to her waking self, for whom the memory had healed to an ugly textured patch of shadow-figures and touch, in the dream Rabbit could barely breathe. Panic flared in her, mercilessly evoked by the warm smells of a south Pacific spring, ship's tar, laundry starch, this one house.

Rabbit drew her naked body into a compactness, holding to her own warmth as her mind fought the past. Her hair veiled her shoulders and laid soft against her back, long as it had ever been.

If I look back I will see the stain from my blood. Rabbit knew this with dream certainty, trembling from the horror of its presence.

I will not look back.

Rabbit stood, shakily, to go in search of clothes. No sound came save the wind and gulls and distant street. Rabbit struggled with nausea, although it was bright morning, not the evening they'd brought a little girl here. The blood was still there.

I can walk out of here.

She did, though the first two steps were like fighting against current, almost stumbling, her chest a tight cage of fear. The corridor was unfamiliar, or every cheapside hotel anywhere; Rabbit paced quickly down, arms crossed over her chest, alert and ready to run. She crossed a courtyard where blossoms tried to create snow out of season, her path softened by fallen blooms. The next room proved to be baths as empty as the rest of the place, big, hot and deep.

Hoping to pass herself off as a patron, Rabbit slipped into the larger pool, swam about a bit and washed, belatedly noticing her markings had become like gold in her skin. She was preparing for something now, she thought, becoming clean for a journey.

A soft tread on the boards  stiffened her spine as she sat on the edge of the rinse bath: she dropped into the cold and waited there, crouched up to her neck as an armed tough walked over fully clothed, decorously turned his attention to the wall, and asked politely if she needed anything.

"Please fetch my clothes," Rabbit asked, wary but unafraid of the man who did not look at her. He bowed slightly and went off. She managed to find a towel and some underthings before he reappeared again, with apologies and what clothes he could find, all unclaimed though he was ignorant as to what she came in with.

Rabbit knelt and looked through them, picking up a silk robe with astonishment at its kingfisher shimmer. The deaths of ten thousand moths laid light as water there, and rich embroidery that would surely turn the worker blind with its heartaching detail flashed on the sleeves...Rabbit dropped it as though it burned at a flash of Imperial Yellow trim, recognising the garment of a high concubine.

"This was abandoned? It should be cut up for prayer flags," she instructed the nameless man. "I will take them with me."

There were jeans - Rabbit thought it would be fun to try jeans, but they were too big for her, as was the foreign military coat. She hesitated over an old-fashioned leather breastplate, but did not think she should be going dressed for war to wherever she was due, such armour tending to bring war with it. At last she found a pale doeskin shirt with simple stars and a rough thunderbird on the chest, and leggings she recognised.

"These are my clothes," she told the enforcer, who was making remarkably swift work of prayer flags, and went out in the garden to change. Rabbit made a sash of the hem of an Iron Dragon shirt, and tied back her hair with bands of the same at her nape and across her forehead. The tough man brought her the flags, a reed mat and "five bowls of rice" that were actually just her one new bowl, brimful, though she knew he spoke the truth. He had companions in the bathouse now, all in various states of dress and staring curiously after her.

Rabbit bowed to them, called her razor to her hand as naturally as thinking, and hung it on her belt. She crossed the cool, green garden to the edge of the forest, balanced her goods in one arm, and began climbing carefully down the slope of a rough shaft, into the earth.

Gazes At Stars, much like Rabbit, found himself at the edges of the camp. His tentpoles were arranged so that he could look up at the sky, and as he drifted off, half-sitting against his pack, he muttered a few goodnights to Dogwa and the many spirits that frequented Bear Butte.

---

Gazes ran, naked, through the dark and twisted corridors of bark and leaves. His deft footsteps made good time through the claustrophobic branches, but even still, his pursuers were at his heels, as they always were. Their chittering laughter, like stone on the rough hairs of a boar, or the grinding of a salt rattler's maw, consumed all other sound, even the shrieks of terror that constantly ripped from Gazes bloody throat.

He turned and pushed open the flap. He ducked inside the lodge, and straightened his cloak, hoping he looked presentable. The war leader was not a patient man at the best of times, and when the Shoshone went on the warpath, he had even less time for personal desires. Gazes gulped, and stepped through the thick smoke that filled the room. In the air around him, bright figures whirled through the smoke. Sky-blue spiders skittered across the smoke swirls while a fiery coyote and a sea-green fox whirled through the air locked in bloodless combat.

He had to stop every few seconds to greet these sacred spirits, and his anxiety grew with each halted step. A laugh, chittering like stone on bristles, sounded behind him, and he felt like he should know it, but instead he just stepped through the lodge toward the low coals, glowing orange at the far end.

The coals steamed and the smoke parted. Before him sat a man who was at once a wrinkled shoshone warrior bedecked in rattler skins and a massive corvid, his black feathers drifting around him.

Gazes opened his mouth but no words came forth.

Please let me see her! Please do not send me away this time! he pleaded in his head, struggling to make the words come from his mouth.

"Puh..Peace..." was what came out. The wrinkled warrior smiled with his rigid beak, the emblem of the raven burnt into his withered wing. His maw opened wide, impossibly wide, so that Gazes could see the stars burning in the darkness of his gullet.

"SCRAAAAW!" it bellowed, and then Gazes saw her. Floating, flapping, fluttering, a small spirit was winging out from her father's mouth. Kimana.

Kimana...do not trust your father. Come with me, run with me. The spirits whisper darkness of him, please. Kimana! he tried. He tried so hard, but he could neither speak nor move, as if he was rooted, or bound. In the air, the nature spirits whispered warnings to the fragile butterfly to fly faster, that her father was not the man she thought, that the ravens were gathering, that Gazes would protect her.

She froze. She hovered, on the edge between the growing darkness of her father and the outstretched hand of Gazes at Stars, the man who loved her.

"K-k-k..Ki..." he tried. The beautiful, radiant butterfly waited, frowned, and turned back into the smoke and guttering embers. The raven warrior snapped shut his beak and pointed his curled talon-hand away. Gazes turned to see, and looked out over the endless abyss. The branch beneath his feet creaked in the howling wind, and the shaman shifted to keep his balance thousands of feet above the Deadlands.

Tears fell freely as his heart pounded in his throat. The manitous behind him laughed and waited, pinning him between them and the drop. The radiant butterfly landed upon his hand, and he brought it to his face, whispering everything he wished he'd said to her. Kimana's spirit hushed him with her wings, and replied with words he had never forgotten.

"You are a liar and a fraud. You strive to tear apart our people for your own selfish desires. You have carved out my heart and asked me to love you for it. Leave me, Gazes at Stars."

The iridescent Kimana did not push him, but he fell nonetheless.

"I hate you."

Rabbit climbs into a smallish chamber decorated by four tapestries -- one on each wall, in the four sacred colors of Red, White, Yellow, and Black.

A fire burns in the middle of the room, the coals sending smoke flowing up to a hole in the ceiling. A kettle hangs over the stove...and Thunder Walker and Laughs At Darkness pass by her, looking concerned. The walls rattle at the sound of distant thunder...no. Not thunder. Drums.

---

The Coyote Shaman leads Thunder Walker to a peephole in the side of the chamber. He doesn't even acknowledge the sudden appearance of Screaming Rabbit, he just peeks in.

"hmmm." He mutters. "Not good."

He lets Thunder Walker take a look.

---

Outside the den is a storm-torn landscape. The Holy Mountain rises in the distance, a beacon to everything, and spirits fly through the air, avoiding the jagged bolts of lightning that tear up the ground. In between the flashes, Thunder Walker can see bodies. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them.

And the bodies, the corpses...all of them are moving, marching in formation. Indians and white men together, all wearing black. And at their head is The Hooded One, riding a horse and urging them onward.

"The Black Riders." Laughs At Darkness says, his voice far more solemn than normal. "And Raven. They are headed to Bear Butte. I do not think he intends to let the Ghost Dance happen."

---

Gazes At Stars falls through a storm-tossed sky. Below him, he sees an army of the dead, vast like a swarm of ants, crawling across the landscape. A terrible drumming pounds, shaking the sky...

And then Gazes finds himself stopped, his fall broken by the glowing green coils of Dogwa, and he hangs from the branches from an immense tree, looking down.

"Be sssilent." The spirit whispers to him. "Be sssstill. Dangerousss thingsss are acrawl."

Gazes at Stars clings to his totem, his guardian spirit, and gazes down into the roiling mass of warring dead. His heart is in his throat, and the stormy skies block all the stars. He screws his face up in terror and despair.

Who could stand against this army? he thinks to himself.

Rabbit climbs down and drops lightly to the floor, looking curiously at those present. Not presuming to squeeze in at their portal nor interrupt, she sets her reed mat out by the fire, puts her (five) bowl(s) of rice upon it and kneels there, humbly awaiting attention.

Black riders?

In reply to Gazes At Stars (msg # 35):

"The army isss vassst." Dogwa whispers. "But the Black Riderssss have a weaknessss. Do not lossse hope, young one." The snake pulls Gazes At Stars into the boughs of the tree, allowing him to grab hold of the trunk.

"There isss a place where the bonessss of these dead men are laid." Dogwa says. "Their sssspiritssss are trapped there, unable to move on. The Black Riders need battle to exissst. They feed on war. Sssstarve them, and they will vanissssshhhh. A Ghossst Dancsssse at the placssse of the greasssy grassss will releasssse them. But you musssst have the heart of their chief, the brother of Yellow Hair. It isss powerful medicsssine. Sssseek the hole in the wall, and the one with rain in the facssse. He holdsss the dead man'ssss beating heart."

He stood quietly watching the scene beside the shaman, taking little notice of anything else, nodding at what he said.

"He never intended to. These...would always try to find a way to stop it. I think there are some there at Bear Butte that could stop them. They have faced these before. I was with them then...when I fell, but they stood. They are strong," he said, expressing confidence in those who stood in support of the Ghost Dance.

"This is true." The shaman says. Without looking, he beckons to Rabbit to join them. "But look -- there are The People among the Riders. Many who dance, dance because they lost loved ones to battle with the White Man. At the Greasy Grass, at Slim Buttes, at Ten Thousand Arrows -- places where The Black Riders harvested the souls of the dead. The Ghost Dance calls the dead to the living. Imagine this -- Red Cloud and Black Kettle called to the living, but their souls are bound to the Black Riders. When they rise, and these angry dead are called with them...what happens then? When the Ghost Dance does exactly what it is meant to do, but instead of reunion, the result is a slaughter?"

Till that point, he hadn't notice Rabbit there. "Rabbit...how...are you also..." He paused, afraid that Rabbit too had somehow fallen, and did not complete his sentence.

But Laughs at Darkness and his question distracted him as well, pulling his attention in another direction. He looks back to Rabbit, his attention with her.

Gazes looked Dogwa in its glowing eyes, then looked back to the Black Riders.

"Greasy Grass. Ghost Dance. Yellow Hair's Brother's Heart. Hole in the Wall, Rain in His Face," he repeated. He began to mutter it to himself, "Greasy grass, ghost dance, yellow hair brother heart. Hole in the wall rain in his face."

"Who is Yellow Hair's brother, Dogwa? Is it right to take his heart, even to do this?"

Dogwa does a slithering approximation of a shrug. "Why not? He is Tom Cussster, and he'ssss not usssing it anymore. The one with rain in hisss facssse cut it out of him on the hill above the greassssy grassss. Now he cannot die while it sssstill beatssss, and he leadsss the Black Ridersss to reclaim it."

Rabbit pads over, more femminine and more confident in her movements than Thunder Walker has ever seen her, and edges in to see what they're looking at. She frowns silently a moment, taking in the scene.

"Is this an idea, great shaman, or will it come to pass?" she asks, unperturbed as a dreamer. A little horror and indignation creeps into her tone as she listens to how the witches might poison the Dance.

"How can Black Kettle be bound to these? Did the People not watch him well?"

She looks up at Thunder Walker, and moves her hand to clasp his forearm if he'll allow the touch, though her question is to Laughs At Darkness. "-and what of Thunder Walker?" Finally, Thunder Walker gets a smile, a little shy but genuine as sunlight nonetheless.

"We still hope you will choose to come back, elder brother," she says, golden markings bright on her neck, then looks back to the dead army. "I have missed you greatly."

The shaman looks over at Rabbit, his eyes hidden by the coyote-skin cowl. The eyes of his cowl, however, seem to sparkle.

He's quiet.

A long time.

And then...

He's still quiet.

Until...

Nope, still quiet.

But then...

Nope. It's getting uncomfortable now.

Really uncomfortable.

Really really uncomfortable.

So very uncomfortable.

But then, one of the pair with him draws a breath to speak...

"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhahahahahahahahahahaha!" The shaman cackles. Oh good, that hasn't changed, then. "Stupid! Why do you think you are here? You are on the Holy Mountain, where the barriers between the worlds are thin. Do you think I brought you here so you could just watch?"

Rabbit takes note of where the stick is, ducking a little at the loud laugh. "My apologies: I am still very ignorant, holy one. If you know where these souls are held, I-" she checks with Thunder Walker "-we will go there and free them."

"That makes things easier," Gazes admitted, "Ghost Dance on Greasy Grass, with the heart of Tom Custer, now held by the one with Rain in his Face. Find the hole in the wall."

He looked back down at the marching horde, and gulped.

"Stop the Black Riders. Did I miss anything, Dogwa?"

He accepted the touch from Rabbit without hesitation. If he had been hesitant to speak earlier, he chose his words even more carefully when in the presence of this shaman. If the spirits permitted it, there would be more words later in another place, but for the moment, he only nodded in assent at her glance and her statement.

"We will go there, and we will find a way to stop them. It is too much to hope, but perhaps those whose minds have not been swayed in favor of the Ghost Dance will change look to their hearts when they see the Hooded One riding with these foul beings and change that could not be convinced in favor of it. We can wait for the Dance when the time is right, but with that many, his purpose can be only war, so we must fight to protect these Ghost Dancers," he said.

"You have much wisdom, elder. Is there some trick you know that we can play on Raven, or perhaps someone we can find to guide us on the other side?"

"Smart!" Laughs at Darkness cackles. "Or at least, smart enough to to when you are still being stupid." He points out to the sky. A small, glowing white figure circles in the air. "Wanbli Luja seeks them. Follow the swiftest eagle, but be cautious. Find Red Cloud and Black Kettle, bring them to me. I will do what I can to hide them from the Black Riders. And I will show you a trick. Thunder Walker is willing to come back. I can help you speed up this process, and there will be another to protect The Ghost Dancers in the waking world."

The coyote shaman moves over to a pile of oddments off to the side, and begins rummaging around. "Hmmm...AH! There it is!" He pulls out Rabbit's straight razor, then rummages some more. "Good!" He says, pulling for a small crystal...it looks like the crystal from an Uktena's skull, similar to the one Thunder Walker took, which feels so long ago now. He lopes back over to the two, holding out the trinkets. "These are yours. They should be helpful."

---

Dogwa nods. "One tasssk more." The sake points his head up to the sky. A lone eagle spirit, glowing a dazzling white, circles above the holy mountain. "Sssswiftessst Eagle ssseekssss a man of war and a man of peacssse. If the Black Riderssss find them, they will become Black Ridersss. And then when the Ghossst Dancssse callssss them back, they will bring with them an army of angry sssspiritssss to sssslaughter the dancssserssss. Follow Sssswiftessst Eagle. Ssssave the men of war and peacssse."

Dogwa then looks down at the mass of dead. "Or you could facssse the Raven." He says, looking at a figure leading the crowd, a man dressed in an ornate patterned cloak displaying the four sacred colors of red, white, yellow, and black, his face unseen -- The Hooded One! "With him diesss the knowledge to turn the Men o War and Peacssse to their caussse."

Rabbit nods, setting the lazor onto the dream-image of itself and feeling the weight turn true as the waking world. She bows, looks to Thunder Walker for any guidance he has for such situations, and asks one more question in the easy language of dreams:

"Perhaps we should paint ourselves black with ashes, noble shaman? There seem to be many of the damned in the way between here and where the most mighty King of Eagles circles."