Caomhnann Dochas Ant-Ingreamach

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Caomhnann Dochas Ant-Ingreamach
Date of Cutscene: 16 January 2022
Location: Manhattan, New York
Synopsis: Meggan traces the arcane landscape of Manhattan to find answers.
Cast of Characters: Meggan Puceanu
Tinyplot: Path of Glory

The world is on fire. Most people cannot tell, no matter the angels stalking streets once graced by Christmas shoppers. Brave men and women holding the beachheads show hints in their hollow stares and clenched fists. To her eyes, the whole island blazes in a limitless skein tempered cool jade and cloudy silver power. Meggan skims aloft on the gusts skimming wet and cold from the southwest, and sings in aeolian chords and zephirine notes to Manhattan.

Sluggish rivers spill their grumbling to her. <<Have you seen them all high-and-mighty, scowling at us? Called us corrupt and toxic. Poisoned!>> Muddied currents of complaint rise from the agitated ocean. <<But we be free, the deep dark sea, our sister sweet!>>

<<Carry the voices and memories of all carried to your shore,>> she calls back. <<I seek peace and peace I will find.>>

Ahead loom bridges threaded in concrete and wire, the viaducts carved under the East River cold and still in ways they should not be. She skims over the water, leaving white caps in her wake. Squat towers build into a great stone sprawl, painted by myriad flags snapping to attention in her wake as she weaves a dance among. Here in the ashes of war, nations consolidated a dream of a better future, using words over tanks and bombs. Here her mother's presence rings true, serpentine and patient under winter's soft blanket.

Focal points. John has taught her as much how arts have a keystone, a knot, something that will winds around. Is it not the same with the great locus of power rising, a spring in a sea of vacated bureaucratic offices? Meggan would bite her lip, but how does the breeze strike with fangs into vapor and spindrift? She weaves around the buildings of the United Nations, lured to the art pieces littered on the lawns. Icons, symbols, art is a voice branded across cultures and times.

Then she flutters before the large weapon, contorted, rendered docile and meaningless by the tender hand of compassion. The sculpture rouses an unseen smile. <<Clever. That's one and well done, brightest heart.>>


Three more secret cairns wait in the sculpted contours of Manhattan. Gaea's daughter soars up away from the lonely towers and embattled fortresses made of subway stations and shops. She feels the restless energy shifting under the limestone and marble strata of the island.

The Orthodox church? Nothing, too deep inland. Central Park glimmers quiet and verdant under the vexed sleep of January, though she tentatively dips a toe in Harlem Meer and whispers to its hoarfrost-crowned undine. When the spirit raises its head, face an anxious mask, she knows her quest must continue. A blown kiss sends a spark of life energy swirling into the dark, flat reservoir to ease its sleep.

Up, higher, she drifts atop East Harlem in the ragged tatters left by a snowstorm blown out over Vermont. Lights burn in the patchwork greys, an opalescent shine catching her eye in the faded grass ringed by a square, hammered path. She can imagine the lay of the map studied, pored over, when giving Zatanna and John targets to chase. The big park by the Harlem River? The one opposite the Little Hell Gate marsh?

Empty sports fields and a covered pool spread out before her in the twinkling of an eye, the wind weaving figure-eights around another metallic installation tilted to catch the wan hibernal sunlight trickling through a gap in the clouds. A curl of greeting seeps into the cold, ice-bound soil, sending warm roots low into the great wellspring that looses its breath in a way of thinking, a warning thrumming in the veins. <<Make haste, no time to waste.>>


Her invisible shape pirouettes to navigate north to the very tip of the island where the ancient marble eroded away from the mainland and left Manhattan an isle in its present form. Regret stabs her heart along with a building, exultant urgency. She would call but braving the lines or broadcast is too dangerous. Features blur, the caves and bare-limbed boughs of Inwood Park reduced to a clearing at Shorakkopoch Rock.

<<Surely this is the place?>> Of all the locations, this was most certain after the United Nations and Riverside Church. Gaea's gifts whisper through the remnant woodland preserved from aged times, but not enough for her purpose.

All around her nature quivers in restless anticipation. It isn't right, the familiar benign touch too weak. Leaves scattered on the ground offer no means for her to divine. <<Zee would see it clearly. Terry too, he spots the patterns in the chaos.>> The elemental of wind slips through the gauntlet of trees, mindful for angels with their burning, curious eyes in all directions.

She orients south from the river, and springs down Isham Street, caught suspended above the butterfly sanctuary like their patron saint. Beyond, a hewn chunk of stone leans crookedly over the lawn and she catches her breath, metaphorically speaking. Striations gleam pure, clean alabaster like the bedrock below. A lone tree, shorn of its leaves, stands resplendent and unafraid still. Shot arrow-straight, she lands before its trunk and sends a tendril of greeting suffused in affectionate warmth. The gingko is such a rarity to bring a soft word, too, in her wind-ruffled voice. <<Oh Mother. The oldest of rocks, the oldest of trees! Hullo, dear friend.>>

Branches shiver as she wraps her arms in an embrace around the century-old tree, her cheek pressed to the bark. A few minutes for sanctuary, before she bids farewell.


One last turn. Riverside Church beckons beyond the familiar expanse of Columbia, the university engraved on her memory and its web of streets something she could walk blindfolded. No one there, but classes still go on and professors still make their demands. <<Would you assign me a good mark for tracing the lines of power?>> No, not enough.

Dusk casts its ruddy fingers across the church's facade. Here where Desmund Tutu and Nelson Mandela preached, where Martin Luther King spoke with great passion, is that not a source of strength for their purpose? Morningside Heights trembles, and soon as she crests the hill, she understands it has been all mistaken.


The answer almost bowls her over, a defiant candle in the dark, provisioned by luminous stained glass and such tremendous size. Where she took a dinner among saints and sinners, St. John the Divine greets her now.

<<John. John at Patmos. John the Revelator.>>

The thought poleaxes the goddess of the Dreaming to pause, the tremor wrapped deep into the earth and she can nigh imagine the ripples passing through. She can touch the Green even here, and feel her mother beyond. Staring up to the altar, her eyes seek not the saint bent over his scrolls or Christ offering benediction but the woman in blue. Stars at her brow. Higher, to the air.

<<Can You hear me?>> A thought, a deed, a word. Silence answers her -- as she expects.

Meggan brushes the church floor to the rafters in a spiral of air, tracing the elaborate symmetries harboured under High Anglican flourishes. Here is her peculiar homeland, her birthright, a foothold of immense power. She'll be damned if it falls.

Retreating through the nave, she takes to the air. An inner line tugs her true to some seedy bar in Brooklyn, due southeast, where her phone waits. Zee might understand the heads of this. John needs to know.

They have an answer, a fighting chance. If John Constantine bloody knows what to do with it.