A subtle undulation of the land forms an curious, natural spiral in the open ground. One side of the formation rises to create a half-circle or crescent of earth surrounding and encompassing the spiral. The ground is littered with rock and flagstones, both large and small. Someone has carefully gathered up a trove of these and erected a clear fire pit. Flagstones with smooth surfaces have been laid along the upper lip of half circle of earth around the fire pit, turning it into a nice seating area. All debris and flammable material's been removed from within the spiral, and a fire has been laid. Just beyond the spiral's edge, wood has been collected and piled for future use. Surrounding this, the rugged walls of the canyon have been half buried by the Wyld surge, making the upper slope of the valley more gentle than it was before. Stands of Douglas fir and white pines mix with hemlock, lodgepole pines, and western larch trees to fill much of the open space, but the trees here are not nearly as dense as they are in the surrounding forests of the bawn. The sparse woods allows a partial view of the sky, and both sun and moonlight filter down to create enigmatic and beautiful shadow patterns on the forest floor. That floor is blanketed with a thick, soft rug of shed pine needles, lichen and leaf debris. The moss-covered relics of old, dead trees occasionally mark a place where once great sentinels loomed above.
The caern expands in two directions from here. The escarpment wall and raised dais form one point of the new triangle, while the center of the caern and its gigantic, Wyld-influenced tree marks the other. The only obvious way out of the caern is the valley slope that leads to the central bawn.
Compact is the word for him: wiry, maybe 5'6" in his beat-up black combat boots, with a sense of compressed energy and imminence like a coiled spring -- or a cocked gun. Never quite still for long, balance flowing through the balls of his feet. There's a striking intensity to his narrow blue-green eyes, the colour contrasting with his fair skin and spiky copper hair; just below the left is what at first appears to be a faint mole, but closer inspection reveals as a small, long-healed scar. His features are appealing, with high cheekbones and a good jawline, but it's the confident mien and roguish smile that most often seem to draw people in.
He's in a well-worn biker jacket of the traditional sort, all fairly closely fit black leather and silvery zippers and snaps. Beneath it, he's got nicely-fitting dark indigo jeans with a plain white tank, its ribbed cotton skimming close enough to hint at the musculature beneath. Over that, he's wearing a long-sleeved, navy blue shirt, unbuttoned; judging by the white-on-red number patches on the left arm, the flag patch on the right shoulder, and the round fleur-de-lis patch to the left of the collar, it was once part of someone's Scout uniform... probably not his. Okay, the 'Boy Scouts of the USA' patch over the right pocket's a hint, too. There's a couple leather-and-bead bracelets on one wrist and a length of ball-chain disappearing beneath his collar; his nails were apparently painted black some time ago, since they're starting to show chips. Late teens, most likely, and when he speaks it's in a mellifluous, southern-accented baritone voice.
This is a young woman of average height or a little above, maybe 5'6 or 5'7, who looks to be somewhere in her early twenties in age. She has olive skin, shoulder length dark brown hair that's almost always pulled back into a simple, tight ponytail, and even darker brown eyes that look black from any distance when they aren't catching the light. She is neither ugly nor particularly pretty, and there's a certain haggardness to her features, a sharpness defined less by genetics and more by hard living. Her build is athletic, of a sort; not the sort you see on track fields, but the sort you find among young soldiers in distant countries, or refugees that are used to moving at a moment's notice and from which reality demands a certain sort of fitness or death.
Her clothing isn't ragged, but it does tend to be rather frayed around the edges. She wears faded jeans and old but sturdy sneakers with decent treads, a variety of cheap shirts, a long sleeved button-up shirt when the wind is up, and oftentimes has a light jacket tied about her waist, as if she wanted to be prepared just in case. Her hands are well calloused, both on the palm, fingertips, and knuckles. Oftentimes she wears a very well used pair of fingerless gloves, though often these appear to have been made fingerless after the fact.
Short and slender, Nieve would appear to be a latina woman in her early thirties. A little paler than most of her cafe-au-lait contemporaries, the structure of her face and her accent both bear out the Mexican blood in her veins. Long black dreadlocks hung with metal charms frame a heart-shaped face, dark and almond-shaped eyes made bolder by the application of thick eyeliner and mascara, the former drawing out to points at her temples. She has a small nose and mouth, both pierced, matched by rows of small rings marching up the outside of each ear. Bodily she is quite petite, though this is hidden in part by loose or bulky clothing, and she seems the sort of girl to always be moving, doing something, fidgeting.
She's wearing fairly generic clothes; rough black jeans held up by a steel-studded belt, a two-size-too-big 'Slashed Rabbit' rock band t-shirt over her torso. Over this is a battered leather jacket, again a size too large and with sleeves that cover her hands. Her feet are shod in beat-up Converse sneakers, the left with a bright pink lace, the right with a day-glow yellow one.
"Shall we try a cleansin'?" Nieve suggests to Ghost, cocking her head slightly as she regards the prickly Metis. "Your eyes; is that somethin' the coyote did also?" she prompts, reaching down to her leather satchel to rummage in there for a moment or two.
Ghost shakes her head sharply. "No cleansings," she says. Said eyes aren't her usual; they're completely flat black, in such a way as to not even seem to catch the light. "This side...yeah. My eyes are normally, uh, normal."
Nieve's brows raise slightly. "Y'got somethin' against the Rite 'f Cleansin'?" she wonders aloud. "If so, I'd like t'hear what." She sets her butt down on the log once more, regarding Ghost with even greater curiosity.
"Not normally." Ghost, nevertheless, sounds a little breathless. "Just right now. Okay? Because I feel like I'm going deaf as it is." She runs the fingers of one hand over an eyebrow, and her nails briefly dig at the skin before she drops it.
And, speaking of Coyote, part of the relevant pack edges into the caern with something not quite as insouciant as his usual saunter; Felix glances around as though looking for someone and not entirely sure whether to be relieved or disappointed not to find them. He's got a McDonald's bag with him, and lifts the other hand to the women present in something resembling a small wave. "Hey."
"A'right. Was it Oh No, or another Coyote spirit?" Nieve asks of Ghost, absently scraping a hand back through her dreadlocks. "Because if I can't do a Cleansin', then we'll have to resort to more basic stuff."
Ghost shrugs at Nieve. "I don't know. A coyote spirit showed up, so I ran. I don't know what that one looks like." She gives Felix a short, sharp glare. "He does though."
Felix glances skyward at the glare, and moves toward the logs, though not overly close to the others. "You askin' whether the spirit that showed up at the moot was OhNo!? 'cause yeah. That was him." He doesn't sound exactly thrilled about it himself.
There's a faintly lopsided grin from the Theurge. "A'right, that makes things easier. D'you figure you can ask 'im to take his hoodoo off Ghost, mmn?" Nieve prompts Felix, stretching her hands out in front of her briefly, fingers laced. "Th' alternative is me summonin' 'im and makin' 'im sweat for a bit."
"Yeah, if you're doing that, I'm going for a walk." Ghost even stretches a little, and starts off at a considerable pace towards the woods.
Felix drops down on the log he's nearest, glances after the Metis as she leaves, then leans back, looking up toward the sky again. "Well. Broadly speakin' yeah, I could ask, if he was here. Pretty sure it ain't gonna work, though. He ain't taken it off =us=. He wants everyone bein' less serious an' openin' their minds to change an' possibilities, see."
"I dig," Nieve agrees languidly. "But the kid's freakin' out a bit. D'you have th'ability to talk with 'im when he ain't around?" she prompts the Galliard, shrugging her jacket back on.
"What'd she end up with, anyhow?" Felix asks, looking the way Ghost left again, and then back to Nieve. He sighs, closing his eyes. "Hey! OhNo! You around an' got a sec?" No answer, and he shrugs apologetically to Nieve. After asking him to relay to OhNo! that she's got an offer for him, and to come chat to her soon, she takes her leave.