"I stare at the painting for hours, sometimes, trying to make sense of those stars," the theurge says. "I've asked the painter and she says they don't mean anything, but I have my doubts. I suspect my wife was trying to tell me something. Though the glyphs aren't Garou, they're human alchemy. Her friend Harmonie was a human sorceress and occult scholar."
"That's your wife?" you ask.
Elton gestures to the painted woman.
"Katherine died defending the caern, like so many others," he says. "Before she died, she was one of the greatest theurges of her generation, a true prodigy. The spirits are silent now that she's gone. Most of the world is just…dust."
He follows the starfield with his eyes, then looks down into the fire.
"Kate told me a story once about the Milky Way. Long ago, during a winter worse than any winter in history, the god of fire stole straw from a greedy king. As he fled, bits of straw escaped from his bag, and they scattered across the sky, forming the Milky Way. What we see, then, exists as it really is, and also exists as a remembrance of an act of mercy. The same thing, but two ways of understanding it."
"I'm not much for riddles, Elton."
"I think I prefer mercy to the justice I've seen from my fellow Garou."
"Wait, do you know a god of fire? Can I get him to heat that shitty cabin I'm renting?"
"Did Katherine intend that as a moral lesson, or as a riddle?"
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