I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.
-Billy Joel

I was born in the wonderful country of Greece. Sadly, Athens has fallen into so much pollution. It really is a wonderful city. I wasn't born there, however. My parents and I lived on the outskirts of the city. My father was wonderful and took great care of me. My mother was wonderful as well, but she would occasionally disappear for periods of time from short to very long. My father always told me that she was doing things that simply must be done and that someday I would understand. I really missed my mother while she was gone. She was a truly wonderful woman. She was tough as hell and I always felt safe when she was around. As for the other going ons in my early life, it was rather normal. I had several friends at school though I always felt like I was different than them. I heard this inner calling, just this voice telling me that they weren't the same... they were too ordinary to be the same. This caused fights among us occasionally. Especially when they would carelessly litter. My mother was very very strict when it came to getting trash into the trashcan. I picked up quickly on the practice of not littering, and I would try constantly to drill it into my friends. They occasionally didn't like that, but that's the way things go. After awhile they all started to not litter at all. So the world's a little better off because of that. I know it may not be much to just get a few people to stop littering, but it's something and we have to take all we can get when it comes to protecting Gaia. Maybe someday more humans will realize just what they are doing to this wonderful planet of ours. I hope so. Seeing the slow decay of Gaia is just too much sometimes.

Well I quickly found out that my dad was right about me understanding my mother someday. This happened when I was 11. I had a rather early first change, and my mother and father weren't expecting it so soon so they didn't get to tell me about what was going to happen before it happened. I would feel a bit worse if not for the circumstances it happened under. There were two bullies at my school, both male, who took pleasure in picking on the girls. They usually left me and my friends alone as word about my mother got around quickly when I entered school. Everyone knew my mother could kick just about anyone's ass. Well for some reason it didn't stop them this day. Maybe it was fate, maybe fate doesn't exist. I don't know. But these two guys decided one day that they were going to pick on me and my best friend. Stupid shits. When we were walking home from school, they cornered us. Now these two guys were rather tall and muscular. They could easily hold their own in a fight and I guess they just figured they could kick my mother's ass if she came to get them for picking on me and they wanted to prove that they weren't scared of me and my mother to the rest of the school. So they started with my best friend. They said they were going to do whatever they wanted to me and her right after they had us helpless. My friend, Janise, was not exactly the toughest woman in the world. Were she a garou, she'd probably be a Ragabash Child of Gaia. So she really didn't hold her own very well at all. Her screams went unheard by the rest as one of the assholes started to beat the shit out of her while the other kept watch on me to make sure I didn't do shit. Well this just pissed me the hell off as you can probably expect. I felt my rage just build up until it broke loose through some sort of dam that was holding it back inside of me. I felt myself start to change. At first it was kind of painful, but that sensation quickly vanished as I got further into the transformation. It was awesome, really. I quickly grew and got a lot stronger. I could feel my rage against these two pumping through my veins and feeding me that strength I felt. My hands, now covered with fur and ending in ragged claws quickly reached out to grab the guy who was supposed to be watching me. That was the first time I heard a man scream and it was very very satisfying. Sadly, or maybe not so sadly, I really couldn't repress my rage at all. It was the first time it had come out so I fell into it and frenzied right off. The guy who was now in my grasp had it easy. He got the quick death. I quickly tore him to shreds and tossed his body to the side. His screams where short and he was then gone. The second guy, however, he was the one in real danger. I was pissed enough at him that I managed to somewhat keep my head. As he started to run screaming, I leaped him and slammed him into the ground, taking more time with tearing him to shreds. I gave him five whole minutes of life, damn was I generous. After he died and I started to change back to my natural form. I was surprised to say the least and I just stared at my bloody hands for a moment before coming to my senses. I quickly wiped my hands on my shirt and moved over to help Janise. She wasn't in great shape, but all the asshole had gotten the chance to do to her was beat on her a bit, nothing more. I thank Crinos form for that. The asshole deserved to die.

I figured my dad would understand since he said that one day I would understand my mother, so I took Janise off to my house. I carefully made my way there as I was covered with blood and I didn't want to scare people, and I made it there safely without drawing much notice. My dad quickly helped Janise get better as I explained the story to him. He looked a bit surprised when I told him about the change, and then he nodded as he finished patching the now sleeping Janise up. After a moment he got her things together and then said he was going to take her home, and when he got back we would talk. So he left and I went to wash up while he was gone with her. The stench of human blood stirred something in me, a more feral part that now had more sway over my feelings now that I had changed, but I held back. The thought of eating the blood of those two creatures was far too bad for my taste. When I got out of the shower, my dad was already home. He called me to the kitchen where we started to talk. Not long after we started, my mother got home and she was quickly pulled into the conversation. I found out then that I was of Black Fury blood. My mother changed herself to show me just what I had looked like when I transformed. I must admit, I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my life. My mother's fur coat was pure black with no blemishes in it at all. The only marks on her at all were her battle scars, but I got more a sense of pride from seeing them rather than repulsion. They showed just how tough she really was. She started to explain to me about the Garou and just exactly where I fit in. I then attempted to change as well and found it to be a rather exhilerating experience. It was just awesome. I went to check myself out in the mirror and found that I had the same sleek black coat of my mother. I was very thrilled with it and then afterwards my mother changed back after explaining things to me and made me change back as well. She ended up taking me to her sept. The other Black Furies of the sept quickly took me in and started to tutor me. I'm not a slow learner, so I took up the ways of my garou nature quickly. It really wasn't that hard to get used to. In my other life, I continued to go to school. Janise quickly got better and couldn't remember much of anything from the attack. I ended up telling the authorities that I had passed out and I didn't know what happened to the two. This seemed to satisfy them as they didn't think it was possible for me to have been the one to have torn the boys to shreds.

Well as time wore on with my sept, I ended up getting close to eight other Black Furies around my age. You see, my favorite hobby of all time was singing. May seem kinda weird after telling you the story about kicking the asses of those two boys, but it's true. I love to sing and I've always seemed to have a natural talent for it. My teachers at school loved me and several tried to get me into the singing business early, but my mother always put down a firm no. This upset me sometimes, but now I understand why she did what she did. I like being the way I am and if I had already been famous, well it might have put a cramp in things. Anyway, my friends were for the most part Galliards as well. They were all about my age, but they were introduced to the sept later as their changes came a bit later. This gave me the most actual Garou experience. But nevertheless, we all got to take our Rite of Passage together. The sept decided we would make a great pack with how well we got along. The nine of us were set out to find a rank 2 Black Spiral Dancer that had been bothering the area around my homeland and killing innocent people to try and get to my Sept. We were charged with the destruction of this Dancer and so we set out to do so. We hunted for days before we found the Dancer's home and there we all slipped in, working together as we split to different rooms of the house and made our way to the living room. I seriously don't think the Dancer even knew we were there. We all jumped him at the same time basically and started to rip him to shreds. As we went along, we turned to Crinos form to better our chances. The Dancer didn't have a chance. We had waited to catch him alone and, in doing so, overwhelmed him. He could have easily taken us out if we had fought him one at a time, but together, we were just too much. A couple of us, including me, got clawed rather badly before he went down and ended up with battle scars, but other than that the job was done completely cleanly. We took the body back to our sept and presented it to the leaders of the packs. After this, we were brought into Garou society and made Cliaths. We made our own pack called The Nine Muses and each of us took a name of each of the Muses of Greek Mythology. I became Euterpe due to my love of singing. I have been Euterpe ever since and will be forever on now.

Well we set out on our own after that to hunt down the Wyrm wherever we could find it. It wasn't long before we decided that we wanted to go to America and see what we could find there. After all, a lot of weird things were happening around New Orleans. My mother agreed as did the others and so we were allowed to leave and make our way in the new world. I was only 16 at the time, so my dad came with me along with the other non-Garou parents of the Muses. They were to stay with us until we were old enough to be left alone according to American society and then return home to their wives. We all got by perfectly fine in America at first. We introduced ourselves to the Sept, but really didn't get much more involved in it than that. We wanted to stay mostly on our own and proved to all Garou society that we had what it takes. Well it wasn't to last very long. That Dancer we killed, none of the Sept had realized that he was part of a large and very nasty Dancer pack. The pack ended up following us to America, deciding that without the immediate backup of the Sept, we would be easier to wipe out. Well I guess they were right. We were out and running about with our parents when we were attacked. There must have been about fifteen of them, easily enough to quickly take down my fellow Garou and then destroy the parents. Well they did really really well sadly with almost everyone. It was a very fierce battle and I sing the songs of my wonderful pack mates and their brave fathers. Polyhymnia fell quickly, which I suppose I'm happy about as she was the weakest among us all and would not have handled what the others had to go through well at all. Calliope fought viciously, but she was the one who was matched up against the elder and so she quickly fell as well, her body twisted into forms that even I could not describe. Urania, who would have also made a wonderful Stargazer, injured hers a bit before she went down, but nothing that would hinder it. I'm sure she left a mark, however. I'm very proud of that. That Dancer will wear the proof the Urania existed. Terpischore did a very good job of staying alive for a while as she dodged out of the way of the Dancer that attacked her, but when another decided to join in that fight, she found it was too much to handle and went down, though the Dancer she was fighting did take some substantial injury. Erato actually managed to take one. She stayed in her homid form in which she was lovely enough and wore just the right clothing that caused the Dancer to make a fatal pause to admire her and she was able to kill him in that pause. After that, however, a female Dancer ended up taking her down in a fury because Erato had killed her mate. Clio, our historian, ended up going down with a howl of fury as she took the one who was fighting her down with her into the watery swamp the was right next to her. I don't know exactly what happened under the water. All I know is neither resurfaced. Melopomene and Thalia had always been a pair. One tragedy and one comedy, they always worked off of the other. They had been born twins who had both gained the gene. When a pair of Dancers came after them, they handled themselves very well, working with each other to keep the Dancers from winning. It wasn't until the elder who killed Calliope got involved that they were both taken down and killed as well. However the Dancers who were placed on them, both Fostern Dancers, I'm proud to say, ended up dying as well due to the injuries that the twins had given them. That's how the other Muses went down. I was the best fighter of the group and only got a couple of Cliaths placed on me. Them I dealt with easily enough, only gaining a few injuries, though bad ones, from the battle. It was my father and a couple of the other fathers that made the true difference that led me to survive. Most of the parents were sliced right through, but some of them had brought with them guns with silver bullets. They ended up starting to fire on the Dancers. Many of them started to fall due to the attack, but a few escaped, including the elder. After the battle was finished, I was the only one standing. The fathers who had the silver bullets were focused on for a couple of Dancers to make their final battle of glory out of as they took them down while the others escaped. I was left alone and my entire pack was gone. I was really upset and disoriented. My leg where I had gained a bad injury throbbed with pain along with my chest where I had taken a Crinos claw right over the heart. I guess the bleeding heart motiff really fit with the end of the battle.

I was ready to just stay there for an amount of time that I wasn't sure had an end. The land was littered with the bodies of those I had loved and I just started to sing as I went to doing the best job that I could to bury them while I started to regenerate. I guess it was really my singing that ended up getting me a new home. What better way to attract a Fianna than to be singing about your fallen companions. I ended up meeting Carmichael shortly after I started along with a few other of the Free Spirits. They helped me finish with burying the dead and when I was ready to just leave, I was stopped by Carmichael and offered a place among the Free Spirits as I really had no where left to go. I was hesitant at first. I had heard about and seen the Fianna and their... parties, but in the end I decided why not? It's not like they were bad at all. So I ended up following them home where I was given warm food and a place to sleep. I called my mother right after and told her everything that had happened at the fight, and my mother at first, was also a little hesitant with letting me be with a pack of mostly Fianna. However in the end, she agreed to it as well and said that she wished me the best and would come to visit me on occasion. I was very happy with this as it's usually not easy for an Elder to get out of her duties long enough to come to another country and see her daughter. So I ended up staying with the Free Spirits and slowly I've more or less loosened up a bit.

I've been with the Free Spirits ever since and here I plan to stay. I just hope this doesn't ended up bringing that elder Dancer down upon their heads. I'm sure he realizes that he didn't complete the job he set out to do, and I'm pretty sure that he won't be satisfied. Though the number of his pack has been cut down significantly, the strongest are the ones who remain. I'm not exactly sure how many there are, but there are enough. However the Free Spirits is a tough pack with a tough leader, and when we have to get nasty, we get nasty. We may seem like nothing but a pack out to have our fun, but don't fuck with us cause we're one of the toughest packs of New Orleans. Carmichael's simply awesome to have as a leader and if that Dancer comes back, I'm sure he'll get what's coming to him. Until then, well I'm here to help with the fight and so I'll probably be here for sometime to come. But then there's no better place to be.

Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought.
-Theodore Mungers

The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.
-George Steiner