Fanoun
Overview
The life of the Warrior woman named Dyes-the-Wyrm-in-Blood was short, but glorious. She was a Path Dancer born to the Choctaw people, but some Talesingers say her ancestors also came from the early Cajun people of the Louisiana swamps, pointing to her bright hazel eyes as evidence of her mixed heritage. Whatever her origin, Fanoun took first blood from the Wyrm's minions while still a young cub, living in the home of her Kinfolk mother on the Choctaw reservation in the deep South. Life wasn't easy for the family, but Fanoun learned much of the old ways from her Kin and was ready to defend them when a fomori sought to steal away one of her young siblings. Fanoun, not even a decade old, gutted the man with a butcher knife and hid his body deep in the earth. The Uktena sept who had been watching her brought Fanoun into their midst soon after. Successful in her Rite of Passage, where she undertook an Umbral quest to slay four Wyrm creatures with nothing but her own claws, the Warrior returned home and prepared to join the sept as a Guardian, intent on protecting her caern with her life if needed. Fate had other plans.
Less than a year passed when a stranger came to the sept. He gave his name as Speaks to the Smoke and told Fanoun that she had been chosen to serve the Path Dancers; Uktena had sent him a dream from the mists beyond the world to show him where to find her. Fanoun was respectful, but skeptical. She asked to know more of Speaks to the Smoke's tale, but his path to Uktena had bound him to silence unless she agreed to follow him. She did, and her sept heard nothing from her until six seasons had passed. The Warrior woman returned, looking even more formidable and bearing new scars, several mysterious tattoos and a klaive that seemed to glint with dried blood. Fanoun had obviously been dutiful, but she seemed troubled now, too. Without giving any story of where she had been or what she had done, Fanoun told her former septmates she'd come home to begin a ritual of wisdom and learn what her next task would be.
So the sept helped her gather clean wood for a fire, as she asked. The Kinfolk women, renowned as weavers of baskets and reeds, mixed rich dyes of red, blue and purple. Fanoun immersed her hands in the still boiling liquid, not even flinching in pain. She breathed in a mixture of roses and pepper that the Kin sprinkled on the fire. And she rubbed into her skin a balm of hemlock, monkshood, mistletoe and poplar before wandering slowly into the cypress grove nearby.
Fanoun entered the world of dreams. She saw the sun move across tall orange cliffs, dyeing them purple in the sunset. In the fading light, a pool opened at her feet, and a man hoisted himself onto the shore. The full moon shone on his naked skin and in his eyes were stars that shone bright as he watched her. He was a ghost, she thought, but the look he gave her was one of desire and longing. And as dawn approached, and the vision faded, Fanoun heard the cries of a child, newborn and furious, full of hunger and rage, before the croaking sounds of the swamp returned.
"What must I do?" she cried out to Great Uktena, confused and angry. "I wish to serve my tribe. I have never fled from battle and duty, even with wounds that bled as a river in spring. And now, must I leave my people to go with this unknown Kin who desires me and bear his child? Is that what my vision means? Give me proof!"
With barely a whisper, a snake fell into her lap from the great cypress above. It was a water moccasin, and it slithered quickly into the water. So Fanoun returned to her sept and within three years, had honorably mated and borne a daughter that the Medicine Woman said would be a great and powerful leader. Fanoun left her daughter when she was barely old enough to walk, and again took up her duties as a Path Dancer.
The Warrior's end came not fighting the Wyrm she had opposed all her life, but in the city, against Grandfather Spider's brood. She was meeting with some Kinfolk with a sorcerous bent when they were ambushed by a group pf people who commanded many Weaver magics. She held them off until the surviving Kin could escape, but when she dragged her badly wounded body across the Gauntlet, her last sight was a cluster of war-spiders bearing down on her. One of the fleeing Kin heard her final war cry and carried her end story back to her people. From the moot honoring her memory, Dyes-the-Wyrm-in-Blood's tale spread as one of an Uktena deeply connected to the mystic threads that tug at the lives of all Garou.
References
- WTA: Tribebook: Uktena, p. 2, 95-96