It occurred to her that the purpose of this latest jaunt was not that different than any of the others, yet more specifically aligned to her. All the assaults on the Ronin were dedicated to distracting them from solving the riddle of their destiny; this one in particular had been intended, she thought suddenly and with conviction, to distract them from pursuing her vision, that had seemed so important a week or so earlier and now had faded into the mists dreams went -- the vision also had come to Tobias, and he too seemed to have lost its focus. She struggled to recall the urgency she'd felt. Something about the color of Canth's eyes, it had been -- how could that be important? But it had to have been. Still it could not be as important as to overshadow Niko's near death.
So, the bad guys -- she always envisioned them as the group she'd seen in the Umbra near the circus, Maurice in his unbearably clashing dress and the weirdly obedient Spiral Dancers, though she knew they were more than that, they were legion -- had taken Sid and done something unspeakable to him, giving the Ronin a substitute that first they had to uncover, then destroy, then rescue the real Sid. All of this another distracting game, like the unicorn and the circus before them, and probably the ring and the woman bearing it before that... Diane shook her head angrily, then gasped again for breath at the motion, head and tail drooping.
The problem was really that they had no goal. Ceallach had suggested pitting the Weaver and Wyrm against one another, and as a goal that was a fairly good one -- but the problem was, they were agents of Wyld and of Gaia, and had little knowledge or effectiveness when it came to manipulating Weaver and Wyrm. A good goal, but not a reasonable one with the resources they had. What goals could they favor? Strengthening and protecting Wyld, perhaps. They were doing their best but their best was not going to be very significant, in general.
But it was, really. Otherwise why was everyone's vision converging on them as the ultimate place of the final confrontation? The destiny was real, and approaching. What did they have that was so special? And how in Gaia's name could Canth's eye color be related? Maybe it was symbolic in some way. The true color was the deep sapphire blue, or indigo; the false color was the glowing green. The true blue could represent the blue mists of Entropy caern; the green was then, as in the BSD's eyes, the color of corruption. Get the BSD's out of Entropy?
But why eyes? Something about seeing clearly. The problem was, she couldn't see clearly. She was confused, she was hurting, she was careworn to the bone. She looked at Niko a moment, but he was resting as peacefully as she could expect following his ordeal. The Talesinger slipped out of the cave and made her way quietly to the caern, padding nearly silent to the spiral glade.
She stepped into the very center and lay down, head between her paws. Please help me, she silently asked the caern itself and its guardian spirits. She closed her eyes.
Diane felt something very lightly ruffling her fur, and opened her eyes again quickly. The indigo mists were rising silently, and one was sliding along her back to her face. In front of her eyes the mists formed themselves into a face, and Diane recognized the solitary beauty of the one portrayed -- Canth. With a kind expression, the indigo mist face opened its mouth, then the centers of the eyes vanished, so that Diane could see through to the green grass beyond.
"Don't think too hard," the voice of one of the ancestral caern spirit guardians, a Garou who had given his life in the making of Entropy. "Sometimes eyes are just eyes." She heard a bit of humor to his tone, despite its seriousness. "Sometimes you feel like a wolf, sometimes you don't. Right?" The last two words were barely audible as he faded from her hearing again.
Diane had thought her eyes were open, then she opened them and noticed the mists were gone. Had she dreamed it? Did it matter?