Dear Stargazers,

I haven’t actually done a lot of stargazing in the last few days. More like blizzard-gazing. There’s been a lot of snow, and I’m actually starting to get just a little bit tired of it. Thankfully we’d made it to a town, finally, and were excited to finally get ahold of a meal and a phone.

We were gonna start by going into a restaurant, but there was a waitress outside it on the phone, sounding frantic. There was some bickering on how we should approach her or if we should, and I kinda just looked around the town while that happened, eventually asking if we should just use the phone in the eatery. I thought we could worry about the girl later, after making sure we wouldn’t keel over, but Cana decided to go try to help her anyway, which was really nice of her.

In the building, we started talking to the owner, and it turns out he’s a kinfolk, which was a great stroke of luck. He wanted to help us, but then the power in the entire town went out, and it was completely dark in the place. Calliope looked around for a way to fix the power, but we eventually just settled for eating raw food with a table lamp. I was so hungry, it tasted fantastic anyway.

Cana soon joined us, and she said she’d offered to help the woman outside. Her son was sick and Cana thought Calliope could help somehow. I didn’t know she had any medical knowledge; I wonder if I can learn any from her. But Calliope seemed to get mad at this and they bickered again. Eventually the owner of the place told us he was pretty sure the son was sick from some kind of Wyrm parasite, and asked us to help him. Of course we agreed, and Calliope didn’t seem to mind helping now either.

We snuck to the house where he was, and before I even got inside, Merlentirene pulled me into the Umbra. We were joined by Sina, and Calliope and Cana stayed behind to try to help the boy in the physical world. The parasite was this gross squishy thing that we had to chase. I managed to pin it, and Valentine tried to bite it but got a mouth full of nasty goo. It escaped my grip, and Sina tried to stomp it, but it latched onto her and got her leg infected with Wyrm goop.

We managed to kill the thing, and then Valentine (or I think she was Irene at the time?) tried to heal Sina, but somehow caught her on fire instead. I tried to put the fire out and help Irene with the ritual a second time, and it seemed to work. Thinking we were about done, we got ready to leave, but suddenly this big… thing appeared. Irene seemed really alarmed by it, then McFinn showed up and did this really awesome jumping and stabbing thing with a cool black sword and killed it in the head.

Things seemed to go unstable though, and he warned us to escape, but I had to stay and make sure he was okay. Everything settled though and we all got out of the Umbra just fine. It turns out the second creature was actually of the Weaver, and had been created by Calliope because she used bleach trying to disinfect the boy’s room! There was some more bickering, but we realized we need to leave when the kid’s mom showed up. Thankfully he was already getting better, so we snuck out and escaped into the woods.

McFinn then said he wanted to show us something, so led us further into the woods. He told us to go through this area that would lead into the Umbra. Everyone seemed wary, but after all he’d done for us and how heroically he’d stopped that Weaver spirit, I trusted him and went in first. The place had a spiritual… imprint of sorts, showing a scene long passed. It was of two lovers secretly meeting, both Garou. The woman was pregnant, and as the two shared a touching moment, they committed suicide. I was shocked. I didn’t get why they would do something like that, when they obviously had such a great amount of love and passion. Is this was happens to those who form attachments?

I mean… I know our code of conduct says we’re not supposed to mate with each other, but not all tribes even agree with that part. I’ve never heard bad about Metis until meeting other tribes. But just because of a pregnancy, these people killed themselves and their baby… everyone else seemed sad and bothered by this too, especially Irene and McFinn. I vaguely wondered if he might be a Metis too, but I hadn’t noticed anything that would indicate he was.

Then things got bad. Calliope began talking about how it should be obvious to follow the Litany, especially the part about Garou mating with each other. She used… incest as an example, saying if two people both have something that would lead to a defect, they they should never have gone that direction… like… like it was so bad, it wasn’t worth having the results be born. Like Metis and incest babies aren’t worthy to be alive, just because they’re different. I… lost some respect for Calliope at that moment, but even more, I just kind of wanted to be alone, and felt bad for Irene even more than myself.

I left the group as they kept arguing over this, Irene doing the same. I ended up crouching in a tree a bit of a ways off, seeing Irene approach soon after. I told her I liked her the way she was, and I think that helped both of us just a little bit.

You all might have noticed I haven’t come off as cheery and upbeat and adorable as usual today. That’s because… well, I’m sad. That’s not something I’m used to feeling, but it’s just what I am right now. I’m sad that there’s so much hate in the world, I’m sad that Metis have to go through so much, I’m sad that Calliope, one of my only friends, thinks it was bad that Irene… and me, were born. I may not be perfect, but I like being alive, and I’m glad I was born. Nothing can change that, even feeling like this.

I haven’t told the others about my parents and ancestry. I didn’t think there was any need to; I didn’t think it would ever come up. But now… now I’m afraid to tell them. I don’t know if I can, and I don’t know how they’d react. But at the same time, I kind of feel like I should… I no it’s nothing like being a Metis but… maybe if I do tell the others, it would help Irene/Valentine/Mercy stop feeling so alone…

Love,
Cain