Copyright 1999, Lyka. This story may be copied for personal use so long as the author's credits are kept, but may not be posted, archived elsewhere, otherwise distributed or sold without the author's permission.

"So, what’s it like to live without spirits?"

It had been an innocent enough question. She and Cokebottle, a Latino Grawer whose homid name was Richard Cortez, had spent the past four hours in the soup kitchen, ladling out thick, homemade fresh potato soup to a steady stream of South Central homeless bums of both sexes. The soup kitchen could actually afford to pay a little money, although it was below the minimum wage and therefore strictly under the table.

Ariadne had found herself wondering how some of them got there. Some were alcoholics or junkies, sure -- you could smell it on their unwashed clothes, their every breath, see it in their glazed eyes. Others were just crazy -- they muttered to themselves constantly, or otherwise showed their insanity.

But some, like the exhausted-looking young woman with three solemn-eyed kids in tow, had nothing obviously wrong with them.

She’d been warned by Cokebottle not to ask them personal questions.

The woman sat down, almost collapsing, at a nearby table and spooned down her soup, then ate the day-old bread they’d gotten from a bundle of expired bakery goods from the supermarkets, with an air of doing one more job she barely had the energy to do -- dogged, silent. Her kids ate their portions the same way, only the youngest one -- a boy maybe six years old -- wasting energy staring around curiously at the room’s other people between bites.

Ariadne watched them leave with a heavy knot in her stomach.

Now she and Cokebottle were mopping up the floor. For the moment, they were alone.

Cokebottle lowered his mop to stare at her, and she realized she’d asked a question that offended.

First he looked angry. Then his expression changed, astonishingly, into laughter. He laughed at her raucously, as if he didn’t care if the humans in the next room got curious, his big white teeth flashing in his dark face. It was several seconds before his laughter subsided to chuckles.

"Hey, let me in on it!" she demanded.

He turned away from her and began mopping again. With his back turned, he said "What the hell makes you think there aren’t spirits here?"

She was so surprised she stopped mopping. "I mean, it’s the middle of the city."

Cokebottle turned around again to look at her. "There you go again with that crap." He grinned, flashing teeth again. "That country Garou crap."

"Hunh?" Ariadne blinked.

"Thinking there’s no Gaia in the city, no spirits, no nothing." He wiped back greasy black hair and looked her directly in the eye, almost in challenge.

"You mean there are?"

"Sure there are, lady."

"What kind of spirits? Besides Weaver ones, I mean?"

He chuckled. "Lots of different kinds. Rat spirits. Lost Dogs. Building spirits. Garbage heap spirits . . . "

Ariadne felt her eyebrows going up into her hair. "Garbage heap spirits? Oh, come on. You mean, a bunch of garbage can have a spirit?"

"Sure it can."

"You’re putting me on."

Cokebottle grinned. "Nope. I’m tellin’ the truth." Then he stopped smiling, looking directly into her eyes. "Matter of fact, I know one. Want to see her later tonight? I got to bring her some garbage anyway."

Ariadne hesitated. Then she felt a smile form on her own face. Whatever this joke was, she might as well see it. "You’re on."

There. She’d called his bluff.

He grinned and went back to his mopping.

The Gnawer Sept’s hundreds of members spread across much of downtown L.A. and most of East L.A. and South Central. The part of it that Cokebottle was a member of, maybe twenty strong, laired in an abandoned house in Watts.

She and Cokebottle each carried a plastic trash bag full of garbage for the other Gnawers to sift through before discarding. The garbage was mostly cans, bottles and paper plates and plastic utensils. No one at the shelter had questioned their taking it; they probably assumed that Cokebottle would sell it to a recycling center.

The route to the Gnawer lair led across vacant rubble-strewn lots, down streets lined with storefront churches, overpriced, grocery and liquor stores, cheap eateries offering fast food soaked with grease, vacant buildings with smashed windows and cryptic, elaborate graffiti sprayed in layers across their walls. It was past sunset, and only half the streetlights worked.

She was beginning to understand what she saw a little better now, beginning to perceive her environment as a Gnawer might. That graffiti over there on the side of the Korean- owned liquor store wasn’t from Crips or Bloods; it was from a group of taggers calling themselves the 16th Street Locos who worked this area. The back of that nameless Mexican eatery was a treasure trove for a Gnawer, its trash cans often full of discarded food that was only a little overfried or spiced the wrong way, or left over at the end of the day. That black woman who often sat on that doorstep to the Palm Ways apartment complex muttering to herself was a neighborhood fixture, a harmless drunk. She’d started drinking when her husband died in a robbery and her kids had been taken away from her.

The pack of seven feral dogs that they often saw lying around that little vacant field were actually Gnawer Kin, something they showed with their large size. The act of trust the Gnawers had committed in letting her know that still had the power to move her; she’d lived and worked with them for two months before Cokebottle had told her. She no longer dwelled on her disgust at the thought of actually mating with one.

Ariadne wondered what this business of a Trash Heap Spirit was about. Gnawers were well-known for their pranks at the expense of other Garou. Probably it was some kind of joke Cokebottle was about to pull, but something about his manner left her not so sure.

He seemed not worried at all about being mugged or shot at, even though he stayed in homid form. Normally she could never have walked through here safely even by broad daylight, but no one bothered them. No one at all. Maybe it was some kind of Gift the Gnawer had.

Or maybe the Veil was rent here, and these people somehow knew who the Garou were and respected them. No, that was ridiculous.

But -- who outside of this slum really knew what went on with these people? No one she knew had any contact with them. They didn’t get on the evening news except when a crime was committed. Maybe these people could hide anything -- even Garou.

As they picked their way through another vacant field with the shell of an abandoned blockhouse in the middle, she asked Cokebottle, "So, do all garbage piles have spirits?"

Cokebottle, a mere silhouette from behind, stopped to let her catch up. "Nope," he said shortly. "Only some of ‘em." She tripped over an unseen chunk of cinderblock, wishing for her lupus form, and he saw her stumble. "Not far now."

Their goal turned out to be in a much smaller vacant lot, bounded on two sides by private homes that must have been beautiful at one time but were now dilapidated, with missing roof tiles and peeling paint and yards feebly protected with chain-link fences. Two of the yards were full of sofas and chairs, lying there exposed to the elements.

The third side was a commercial building, but all the stores in it were now abandoned. The fourth side faced the dark alley down which they walked. There was no fence. They reached the end, and Cokebottle waded right in.

The lot was piled six feet deep with garbage. All kinds of garbage: paper, plastic, cardboard boxes, an abandoned washing machine, even a toilet, furniture, old clothes, beer cans and bottles, other less identifiable stuff. Some of it must have contained food, because it stank of decomposition.

Cokebottle walked right into the big pile via a vaguely clear route, stepping over bits of garbage. Ariadne had to follow him in, standing behind him in the trash.

It just looked like a rubbish heap. Nothing moved in it, not even the scuttling of a rat.

"This is your Trash Spirit?" she asked him.

"Yep," he said. He put down his trash, bent over and just ripped it open. Then he grabbed the bottom and just shook the contents out into the rest of the garbage.

For a moment, she thought she understood: he’d made the whole story up about a Trash Spirit in order to make that acceptable. He was just dumping trash like any litterbug. She felt a flash of Rage.

But wouldn’t it just have been easier to take it to a dumpster?

Cokebottle must have smelled the quick spurt of Rage, because he turned and looked at her, tossing the flaccid plastic aside into the rubbish. She saw his grin flash even in the darkness.

"Go on, take a feel," he said to her. "You oughtta have sensed it the moment you stepped in."

She looked at the pile again. There was nothing obviously magical about it. The trash bag felt heavy on her shoulder.

She opened her senses, trying to get a feel for the heap, for the presence of anything . . . unusual.

Abruptly, it hit her like a wave. Not of the Wyrm: she would have recognized that before now, she thought. But a Spirit was there, and suddenly it had woken up and was noticing her. A smell that wasn’t a smell pervaded the lot, mixing with the reek of rotting junk.

She felt hairs prickle on the back of her neck, her nonexistent ruff rising.

Then the great pile of garbage moved. At first she thought something big was inside it, moving, but the entire heap seemed to quiver and rustle -- moving all around her.

She screamed as she dropped her trash bag, whirled and ran back down the alley.

That night, Drummer was at the lair.

It had taken Cokebottle a few minutes to catch up with her. By then, she’d calmed down, but she wasn’t up to going back right away.

The Garou had furnished their house with old mattresses and scavenged crates and chairs to sit on and put occasional stuff, but the electricity, gas and water were long gone. Everybody had his or her own corner, usually cluttered with the detritus that they called "stuff" -- piled into a shopping cart or just lying on the floor.

Cokebottle had warned her early on not to touch other people’s stuff. Gnawers took their "stuff" very seriously.

The sheer filth of the lair was what grated on Ariadne the most. The floor was layered in grime and filth; lying on it in lupus form, her fur quickly got as foul as the Gnawers’. She could hear rats scuttling around, looking for stray bits of dropped food. The Gnawers were friends with the rats, so they never killed or even tried to discourage them. The walls and ceiling were cobwebbed and sprayed with obscure Gnawer graffiti.

And Drummer, the local Theurge, looked like shit, too.

She’d seen his homid form when he’d walked in: swaddled in layers of unwashed clothing topped with a worn, torn trenchcoat, sneakers so grease-streaked they were more gray than any other color, with holes his toes stuck through. He was one of the few white people in the Sept, and his blue eyes had a vague, glazed look. Had she seen him on the street and not known he was Garou, she’d have pegged him as a homeless crazy.

Now he was performing a mysterious drumming session on a set of metal pails of different sizes, his eyes staring off into the distance as his hands worked. Ariadne remained silent; at the Fury Sept, she’d learned early that watching was often better than asking questions out loud.

Cokebottle, now in his lupus form, scratched himself vigorously, then put his head on his paws and dozed, eyes closed. Two other Gnawers were sleeping in this room for the moment as well. They also ignored the loud drumming.

Drummer gave the largest pail three resounding final thumps, then stopped. He dropped his hands in his lap.

And then Cokebottle and the two other Gnawers lifted their heads, then pulled themselves up to sit in lupus form, staring toward the open door, toward the night outside.

There was a howl, perhaps a block distant -- the howl not of a wolf or Garou but of a dog.

It rose and dwindled -- and then there were more howls, barks and yelps, sounding from seemingly everywhere in the city. The barking of the dogs went on and on.

Drummer sat listening intently, looking out through the open door. So did the other three Gnawers.

The dogs’ cries at last dwindled and ceased. And then, one of the Gnawers, a female who seemed half wolf and half collie under her grime, lifted her own head and howled. She was joined by Cokebottle and the other Gnawer. They each released one long, loud howl.

Drummer got up clumsily, and then he shapeshifted into Crinos form. All those dirty clothes must have been dedicated to him: they shifted into his fur as he stood up on his hind legs and added his own howl.

Ariadne watched, fascinated.

Drummer dropped back to all fours, shifting down into lupus like the rest of them. One ear didn’t stand up properly but flopped over like a terrier’s; his fur was long, so dirty it was impossible to say what color it was. His left forepaw was paler, as if it might be white if he got a bath. His blue eyes had darkened to a dog’s brown ones, and the glazed look had diminished. Now he merely looked a little stoned.

He padded over to Ariadne, claws clicking on the bare wooden floor.

"Hear you met a Trash Spirit tonight," he said in Garou tongue.

Ariadne’s ears drooped. "I did," she admitted.

He grinned, tongue hanging sloppily out of his mouth. "Come on. Let’s go see her again. You ought to get to know her."

Her? Ariadne’s ears perked up. "Okay."

Despite her misgivings, she ignored the butterflies in her stomach, got up and followed him out of the house. Cokebottle didn’t follow them; he was already asleep..

The first morning light’s rosy rays were warming the concrete as she followed Drummer back to the vacant lot. She wasn’t sure any of the trash had shifted or changed, but it was hard to tell in that heterogeneous mass of debris. She stood as close as she dared -- still a good five feet away -- in lupus form. The garbage bag she’d dropped had vanished.

Drummer padded right up to its edge. "Come on," he said, grinning, teeth showing. "She won’t bite you."

As she reached it, the trash rustled again. The Fox stirred again in her belly, making her neck fur rise. But the element of surprise was gone, and she crouched at Drummer’s side to stare at the heap, the odor of Spirit powerful even above the stink of rotting cardboard.

The heap heaved horribly, like something out of a horror movie. There were no eyes, but she sensed she was being looked at, studied.

" -- She ain’t got much knowing, but she’s good of heart," Drummer was telling the Heap, and she felt a flush of embarassment as she realized he was talking about her. Then he turned to her.

"Go on, talk to her."

Feeling a little absurd, she told that watching Spirit, "Hello."

A voice rose: somewhat gravelly, like garbage rustling. "So this is the one who ran earlier."

"Yep, that’s her," said Drummer, before Ariadne could speak.

"I -- I’m sorry I --" she began, haltingly, taking a single step forward. Her paws crunched into a shoal of styrofoam cups.

The strange voice made a bizarre sound. It took several seconds for her to realize it was chuckling. She sensed a feminine quality about it.

"What’s so scary about me?" the voice asked. She wondered how it could speak, without a mouth. She wondered what it looked like on the Umbra. "What’s so scary about garbage?"

"I’ve never seen anything like you before," Ariadne admitted. "I didn’t know trash could have a Spirit."

There was a muttering sound from the heap, and she was afraid she’d offended it. Then, something heaved again, something in the center of the heap. It emerged, spilling a couple of boxes and a broken-up chair to one side, clear and in the open at last, materialized: a vague figure, tall as a Crinos-form Garou, but its shape indefinite as a shoggoth. It seemed made up of garbage: pieces of metal, of cardboard, of broken wood and plywood, paper, cans, bottles. There were still no eyes, but there was the impression of a head, looking at her.

"See, here I am," it said. Its voice was clearer now.

Ariadne stared back, feeling as if she stood no taller than a terrier. She realized her tail was clamping between her hind legs, her ears were back and her neck fur was raised. With an effort, she relaxed her tail, let her fur smooth down a bit.

"Well, what do you think of me?" the spirit rustled. "Aren’t I beautiful? I’ve got the finest pile of cardboard in this part of town." One member gestured toward a five-foot high mound of discarded, crushed cardboard boxes that looked as if at one point they had been neatly stacked.

She said nothing, not sure what on earth to say. Drummer rescued her with the remark, "She doesn’t know how to appreciate that kind of beauty yet, G’dera."

The spirit made that mumbling sound again. Then its member reached out again, digging into the pile of debris that gave it birth, and came up with something, then extended it to Ariadne: an old beer can. "Here, let me give you something good," it said. "Look at this can! It’s a Phelger’s Microbrew beer can. Best specimen you’re ever likely to see."

Ariadne extended her neck, sniffed at it uncertainly. What on earth was she supposed to do with it?

Drummer’s snout was at her ear. "Take it," he whispered, his voice low. "Don’t be rude."

Cautiously, she took it in her jaws. It smelled very faintly of dead mold from the contents that had long ago dried up, and it had no taste at all. The smell of Spirit on that indefinite, half-material member was much stronger. She looked up at G’dera, the can in her jaws. "Thank you," she mumbled around it.

The Heap smelled strongly of approval. "You’re welcome."

On the way back, as the dawn bleached the sky gray, she ventured to ask Drummer, "How did she get made?"

Drummer didn’t look at her as they trotted down the sidewalk, and for a few moments she thought he’d gone back into that trance mode of his. Then he answered, "Should have asked *her* that. They just grow, though."

"But how? Every trash heap doesn’t have a spirit, does it?"

He glanced sidelong at her, but she couldn’t tell whether he was annoyed or amused. "Hell no."

"Why, then?"

"Who knows? They’re all connected to the Great Trash Spirit, though."