She took a single step forward and pulled the shadows around herself like a cloak. There was no doorway here, no river to throw herself into to gain access. She simply made a new, temporary, door and walked through. Flashing a palm to the watchers and pulling her hood back the shadows gave way to disclose her form. Sasha was the first to greet her, "Synneve, you have been summoned by the keepers of the Chatterlings, are you prepared?"
She nodded, this was something she had done once before. Stina had only lived a few short decades before the Embrace, and few after.
"Then follow." Her watcher had gone through this many times. It was one of their many duties to the Manus Nigrum, the creation of a new Kindred from the Kine children saved from abuse or abandonment at the hands of their mortal guardians. The Hand protected humanity in its own ways.
Stina had been a Swedish girl of an impoverished peasant family. Her brothers were important to the family structure and as the youngest and a girl, she was deemed less valuable during the famine. She was abandoned in the wilderness and found by members of the Hand. Taken to the Shadowlands and raised by Kindred, her knowledge of languages and the arts was vast, but her feelings for Kine were stunted. Her request for Synneve to Sire her was granted and she became a soldier in their fight against the Souleaters, a good soldier until she met Final Death at the hands of a Tzmisce infected with the evil.
The new Childe would be much the same. She was told he was called Toivo and that he had been born in Finland. He would also fight in the continued battles of the Hand, doing as he was told by the Elders until he was killed or became skilled enough to be asked to take more duties. Synneve would not be affected by the outcome and would probably never see him again after this night. Her blood was requested and would be granted and that was all.
+
She missed Julianna. It was't anything she could really point out that she wanted, other than company, but a dozen times or more during the night she would remember something that Julianna would do or say or think. It would jar her thoughts and she would remember how the younger Gangrel had become a fixture in her existence for a very long time. Her presence had been taken
for granted in many situations and now there was an empty space at her right side. She ached to fill it sometimes and yet there was a freedom she had lacked which took its place. She didn't know what to do with such freedom now it was presented.
Synneve sighed, it was like waiting for something to happen that had already occurred. She was bored and needed a new hobby, a new addiction. She just had to leave the Zoo for a while. There would be no replacement of Julianna, no Childe to be made to fill that vacancy. It would be too complicated. She thought about creating a Ghoul; going to Illusions or the Wild Rose and choosing one of the young people who struck her fancy. That wasn't what she really wanted though. Granted, a Ghoul would be useful and the Zoo could use the cleaning, but she didn't want to worry about the housebreaking process.
Maybe an animal pet would be better for now. Something to cuddle. Like a jaguar. Synneve grinned, that was exactly what she needed, a nice pet to keep her company and to watch over the house in her absence. She would start contacting the proper Kindred and Kine on the matter one night very soon.