The Far Lands of Rhûn - Free RP

"Going to Mordor!" Cried Pippin. "I hope it won’t come to that!"
Post Reply
Balrog
Points: 5 867 
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon May 18, 2020 11:02 am
Image
The Far Lands of Rhûn
Credit to Colin Chan for the original image


"Eastward he looked into wide uncharted lands, nameless plains, and forests unexplored."

- “The Breaking of the Fellowship”, The Fellowship of the Ring

Far to the east Gondor and Rohan and Eriador lies the lands of Rhûn, sometimes called Amrûn, a vast primordial landscape largely unexplored by the Free Peoples of Middle-earth. It is home to the Easterlings, a people often at odds when the Dúnedain with feuds going back to the First Age and great War of the Jewels. Aside from the great inland Sea of Rhûn, almost nothing is known about the lands themselves. Cuiviénen and Hildórien, the sites of the awakening of the Children, are said to be in the far east as well. Rhûn itself stretches for untold leagues and contains vast amounts of mountain ranges, forests, fields, and steppes until it reaches the end at the Uttermost East where the mountains of the Orocarni tower above the plains. Like any place, Rhûn is filled with good and evil men, dark warlords and dauntless heroes, occult secret societies and everyday travelers. Almost nothing of the lands, the people, or their stories are known to the people of the West, until now…

Image

Cities
Carcosa: a hidden city ruled by an entity known as the King in Yellow (Frost Original, sort of)
Tumunamahal: one of the great capital cities of the dwarves of Rhûn (MERP)
Firouroun: the capital city of the Sarmatians, a tribe of Easterlings (Frost Original, sort of)
Colchis: the capital city of the Uldorian Easterling tribe (Frost Original, sort of)
Al-Kanakh: the capital city of the Borian Easterling tribe (Frost Original)
Kurvasagh: the capital city of the Ulgath Easterling tribe, located on the Sea of Rhûn (MERP)
Korb Taskral: a hidden island city on the Sea of Rhûn (Frost Original)
Interesting, deuterocanonical chart about the lineages of Rhûnnish people

Regions and Places
The Great Inland Sea of Rhûn: a place of great cultural, economic, and political importance to all the people of Rhûn
The Shelf-Lands: lands far to the east, home of the Steppe tribes (MERP)
Ered Harmal: all that remains of the Mountains of the Wind, were legend says the valley of Hildórien was
The Orocarni: the Red Mountains, sometimes referred to as the Pelóri of the East
The Last Desert: a semi-mythical place, home of the fearsome Were-worms
The Wild Wood: a wild forest that grew near Cuiviénen
Lemuria: a region in the Uttermost East (Frost Original)

Note: This a far from complete list of cities, regions, and places, please feel free to add or own (and if you like I will add them to OP)


Rules and Guidelines:
1. Read and enjoy other people’s hard work but respect their privacy (go to the RP Request Form if you would like to join an existing story or start a new story)
2. All races are welcome! Timeline is whatever you like, from the beginning of Arda through the fourth age
3. Keep any OOC comments to the The Hall of Barad-dûr: Mordor OOC
4. Refrain from using overly bright colors or potentially incur the wrath of the TR (Frost)
5. Icons and small images are welcome, but please no moving gifs
6. Anyone can use any canon characters in their stories, there is no ownership in this thread
7. We are all adults here and can decide for ourselves the stories we want to read so rather than dictate what can and cannot be written in this thread, we will ask that any CW (at the discretion of the writer) be placed at the top of the post
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

Balrog
Points: 5 867 
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon May 18, 2020 11:02 am
Image
The Mother of the Mountains
The Ered Harmal

(Private)

When the sun finally peaked above the eastern horizon, Cybele was already hard at work. By the time the golden orb of celestial fire was fully careening through the sky, the young girl had already put in a full day’s work. She was tired, there was a bright sheen of sweat on her forehead; a breeze out of the east and down the mountain. The breeze was sweet, filled hints of snow and wheat and salt. Cybele decided she was done with the day’s work. The goats, chickens, and rabbits were fed and the fields looked after. The farm was not hers, but she worked it alone all the same. It had belonged to her father. But her father was gone now. He wasn’t dead. Not in her mind at least. He was just gone. Same as her mother. There was a village further down the side of the mountain, but they were more alien and foreign to her than four horned goats and black chickens she raised. She did not belong within the bounds of society. She didn’t understand how they worked. She didn’t want to. As hard as the work on the farm was, it was what she understood. It was what grounded her. It kept her mind from wandering, demanding the focus of a sharp mind. It kept her mind away from the dreams.

The dreams were sometimes more real than the reality of her monotonous, day in, day out life. They were so bright and vibrant and painful that the rest of the world was drained and sad. The first time she had the dream, nearly a year and a half ago now, she woke flushed, covered in sweat. She could feel the fire. She could feel the burns on her skin. When she woke, she looked in the mirror and behold, there was a scar under her eye. At first, she was convinced that she was sleep walking, that she was wandering through the mountains and found a hidden forge. Yet in her waking hours, no matter how much she searched the hills and cliffs and stony arroyos there was no forge. There were no people. This mountain was hers and she alone scratched a living from it.

The next time she had a dream, she awoke with another wound, a monstrous claw mark across her belly. She believed it to be the work of one of her more rambunctious, more tenacious goats. It was not the work of a dream. It couldn’t be. Dreams were not real. And yet, and yet how could she deny what she was seeing and feeling?

She was angry at her father for disappearing. She was angry at her mother for abandoning her. She could have lived a happy, simple life with a family that loved her. She was alone. Her father had vanished without a trace, without a note, without a warning to his one and only daughter. Her mother, supposed a wealthy merchant, had left Cybele screaming and pink on her father’s doorstep nine months after a chance encounter in a country tavern. Her father would wax poetic about her eyes, golden red like bloody diamonds. Cybele inherited those eyes, according to her father.

She screamed. The sound echoed off the mountain. The chickens squawked; the goats screamed. Rocks tumbled and skittered down the side of the mountain. She was tired. She was more than tired. Cybele had left exhaustion behind long ago. The repetitive routine had kept her standing, like some undead wight unable to break the cycles that held it together in life.

No more.

Cybele was done farming. She was doing looking after rabbits and goats and chickens. If her father didn’t care enough to stay with her and keep going, then why should she be trapped here? She never consented to this existence.

NO!!

The sound resonated across the mountains. She was done. Then young girl with golden red eyes, a scar across her cheek that looked more like scales than skin, was done. She set loose the animals from their pens. It was time for all of them to escape the bonds that kept them tethered to a doomed bit of earth and stone.

“I’m coming,” she said to the dragon of her dreams. “I’m coming to get you.”
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

Balrog
Points: 5 867 
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon May 18, 2020 11:02 am
Image
The Mother of the Mountains
The Ered Harmal

(Private)

It had been a week after she’d abandoned her homestead, abandoned the ghosts of her memories, abandoned the tiny village with all its tiny people and already she felt different. The young woman wasn’t sure if it was the weight of responsibility that had been lifted or the burden of guilt she’d shed. She had assumed that she would have been overwhelmed with nostalgia and regret once she left. Those feelings, however, never came. The further she got from her old home the more alive she felt. It was a strange sensation, feeling alive. How could she have known what it was that she was missing? There was nothing here that she could compare it to, she had never noticed the absence of “living” and therefore had no basis to measure how dead inside she felt. Yet now, now it was all different. Even with nothing more than a walking stick, bed roll, and a knife she felt more vibrant and colorful.

The same, however, could not be said of the landscape around Cybele. She travelled from the high hills of the Ered Harmal to the mountains proper and everything, everything, around her was one shade or another of brown, blue, or grey. These mountains were labyrinths of washed-out colors so drab it was hard to tell where the mountains ended, and the sky began. The world around her was slate grey. And cold. There was a massive rumble of thunder behind her. It dislodged a few stones around her, they came clattered down in ominous, descending scales. The winds picked up, carrying a scent pregnant with rain and dust. She swore under her breath, then wondered why she was being quiet and swore aloud. It made her smile, that act of defiance, but she knew that the oncoming storm did not care whether she swore aloud or in her mind, she needed to find shelter. She looked back, toward the west. The sky was swollen and black, the sun tried to shine from behind the dark clouds, but it only made the sky look like a massive, ugly bruise. She grimaced. There was a life in those clouds; how she knew that she couldn’t say, some sixth sense that provided her with enough information to be useless. She found a little dugout about a hundred or so yards off the goat track she’d been following. It smelled of rotten cow but it was spacious, just being enough for her and a small fire. The ceiling of the cavern was ventilated. She built a fire out of sticks and dry grass. It was smoky and small, but it was enough. She plucked the feathers off the pheasant she’d caught a few hours earlier, cleaned, and gutted it before setting it to roast over a makeshift spit with wild onions. She hadn’t eaten the previous two days and while she was not exactly ravenous, she knew she was going to enjoy the food.

The air grew colder and colder as the storm approached. The little fire barely provided enough to cook the food; she would have had to sit in the fire to get tangible warmth from it. She wrapped herself in the bed roll. It was clunky didn’t wrap around her like a decent blanket but was better than nothing. Before long the cave was filled with the smell of smoke, roasted poultry, and petrichor. The rains came down harder than she’d expected. On her little homestead on the slopes of the little mountain the rains had never come down with any sort of malicious intent. The rains could be playfully destructive, a great childlike beast that didn’t know its own strength when it tore through the skies with jubilant ferocity. Storms like that were common in this season. They washed away the heat and sticky humidity (and one or two chicken coops) but were gone before the sun had a chance to rise and chase them off. This storm was an older brother, or perhaps it was the matured form of those very storms she endured under thatch and timber. This storm was an angry one. There was nothing playing if the roaring sounds above her. There was no pleasant, pure call to play in the rain. Anger, pure and simple, was all she could hear now. The destruction was wanton and callous without a second thought. As storms matured, they grew more and more angry, a spirit of absolute violence rode them and drove them on. Lightning and thunder and winds that ripped at trees, tearing stone from stone and set fire to the timbers raged all about her. She huddled so close to the fire that she inhaled more smoke than air. She coughed and hacked, spitting a greenish-red glob by the mouth of the cave. It was washed away by the constant barrage of water. This storm may as well have carried some of the primordial waters with it, the kind that wiped mountains and wastelands from the earth and left behind deep and unknowable pools.

What was she doing here? Where was she going? Where was she now? Who was she? A dozen questions rattled in her brain, creating almost more noise than the storm that raged and spat all around her. Cybele would receive no peace tonight. While she had gained a measure of life and freedom since leaving her old home, she’d collected doubts and questions the way a horse draws burrs and espinas. How certain was she that her father was her father? He’d said he was, but what did that even mean? What was a father supposed to do for his daughter? He taught her things and told her stories and went away on long journeys to trade good. If that was all a father was then what was so special about him? A blast of thunder stopped that particular rabbit hole, distracting her just long enough that her mind jumped to another question. Where was she going? She’d picked up and left without any clear idea where she was going or what she was going toward. The only real thing she knew was what she was leaving behind. The world had expanded exponentially in the last week, but her growth, it is to say, was rather minimal in contrast. She saw a different sky, but it was still the same sky she’d seen all her life. There were different sets of stone beneath her feet but none of them told her anything different than the stones she’d seen a hundred times before. The clouds were mysteries in this obelisk maze as much as they were on the farm. Had she merely traded one home for another?

She was being led by a dream. A dream made of dragons and gold. She followed the dragon in her dreams every night. She felt the roaring horn blast of the creature in her bones as if it were coming from her own mouth. She followed it, regardless of the mountains and bones she stepped on. Nothing mattered but that dragon. The eyes of the beast were feral and atavistic, but they housed an intelligence far older and deeper than anything the Elves might have had. She’d never met an elf, but she if she did, after this dragon had gazed upon her, she would have found them banal and uninteresting, chattel and chaff. The dragon vanished in the presence of a black hole moon, a shimmering, radiant, sinister light that devoured and destroyed the landscape. Everything was shadows. Tendrils of smoke like fingers of a giant corpse rose off the steaming landscape, escaping the husk of the earth. The earth itself was nothing more than a shell, a cracked egg that once it has released its precious contents withers and dissolves into primordial foam. Light existed but only in the minds of the few remaining inhabitants, it was silvery and soft, it withered at the simplest touch. There was an endless ocean, deep and blue. It stretched on forever and ever. There was no shore nor was there a bottom. There was nothing but the sea. No boat, no ship, no construct of mortal or immortal hand could cross the vastness. It was a hungry sea that devoured the sky. One day it would conquer everything and wash anything living into Stygian and uncountable depths. It was beast of incalculable ravenousness. It exuded a cold that turned the very stars to shattered remnants. There was a single burning mountain, wreathed in orange and red, that rose above a landscape desolate and malignant. There was a monster inside that mountain. The mountain is where she must go. The dragon would be there, waiting for her. Any question she could ask would be answered there.

Cybele woke, hacking and coughing as she breathed in a mouthful of expended ash. She gagged and felt the bile reach the back of her tongue. The storm had passed. Apparently, she was got some sleep after all. Her head throbbed with the visions now etched on her brain. It hurt to breath for a long time after.

“I have miles to go…” she whispered to herself.
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

Balrog
Points: 5 867 
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon May 18, 2020 11:02 am
Image Image
The Mother of the Mountains
The Ered Harmal

(Private)

The dreams continued, as dreams are wont to do. She walked and climbed and climbed and walked, directionless as a blown dandelion. When she woke each morning, she wondered if the dreams meant something, if they were some sort of map she should follow, but that feeling faded each morning as the images, vivid and sharp in her dreams, faded and dulled along with the morning mists. She would not admit she was lost. She’d wondered for days and days but the end of the Ered Harmal was nowhere in sight. She had no idea how big the world was, she’d never been beyond her little farm until a few weeks ago. For all she knew the mountains reached until the end of the world. The end of the world. Before she started this journey “the end of the world” sounded frightening or mysterious, now it seemed like just another place she would never be able to reach. The peaks and shards and little hills all looked the same; they were all beautiful to start, but as time wore on, the grandeur and wonder wore off. Where at first she could see peaks like the teeth of dragons, now she simply saw another peak she needed to move past.

This morning was no different from any other morning. Until she found a man sitting opposite her, warming his hands in a fire that should have long ago turned to ash. The sun was already in the sky, higher than normal. She blinked away the sleep and grogginess, half convinced the man was an apparition left over from the dreams. When he did not disappear she grew alarmed, skittered backward on all fours like a cockroach. He didn’t move or acknowledge her existence in any way. He stared into the fire, tilting his head as if he were listening, as if the cracks and pops and roars were a secret language that only he understood.

“Who are you?” Cybele was only able to ask the single question, too stunned to say or do anything else.

At first he didn’t answer, he stared into the fire and nodded absently. “I’ve gone by so many names in my life. Sometimes it’s hard to keep them all straight in my head. Who are you?”

Cybele squinted and frowned. “I’m not anyone. I’m the girl whose fire you stole.”

He laughed, the sound was like thunder and silver bells. “Your fire? Well now that is interesting. Did you create the fire? Nurture it? Name it?”

“What?” she looked at him incredulously. She couldn’t decide if she was alarmed or annoyed. She grabbed a stone beside her, just in case.

“All fires have names, you know,” he said as if that was just a known and accepted fact. “Like you or I, they go by different names in different forms. This fire had a name too.” The sound he made after was strange. It was not human or animal; there were no words or screeches or growls, no clicks or anything discernible as a language. There two notes she could distinguish, the higher note was like the hissing and popping of a fire, the sound of sparks flying and consuming kindling, the lower note was like the rumbling of the earth, deep, resonant, and ceaseless. They both came from the man’s mouth at once. Cybele watched, dumbstruck until the man closed his mouth again. “He said he wishes that you could understand what he was saying and that he was happy to spend the night with you. It was cold, and the cold is kept at bay only by companions willing to help one another. I told him I would tell you just that.”

This man had either lost his mind, or he was sorcerer. Either way he was dangerous. Cybele’s grip on the stone tightened as she coiled herself, ready to run. He did not move or even seem to notice his surroundings. He was tall, or he would be if he were standing. His robe looked ragged and torn, but the closer she looked at it the more it looked like it was simply ancient with patches of detailed imagery sewn in. The cloak, and everything else the man wore, was a dozen different shades of blue. Cybele had never seen something so blue. It was dizzying. She’d only experienced vertigo a few times in her life, but the more she looked at the swirling colors, haphazardly slashed in a dozen different directions and a dozen different shades, the more she felt like she was going to fall off the world and float into the endless sky above her. She dropped the stone and tried to grab a handful of earth to ground her.

“Who are you?” she asked again weakly.

He looked up from the fire and straight at her, his eyes were an even more piercing shade of blue than his clothing. They were bright, containing the images of a thousand stars long twinkled out. There was something behind his eyes too, a deeper shade of blue that melded with the cosmic infinite that drifted behind the stars. He smiled at her the way a man might smile at a rainbow. She couldn’t tell if that was infuriating or not.

“Who am I?” he mused, rubbing his bare chin. “How often, do you think, we actually consider what that means? Who we are is so much more than a name, a few syllables, a few sounds of breath and color. Yet that is exactly who we are. With each day, each moment, each thought, we apply a meaning to the names we are given or the ones we take. We add a depth to a sound where depth did not exist before. We place so much importance and reverence to those sounds, they are grander than the swirling stars above us. Names, too, are sacred secrets we can only share with our shadow selves. Each person or animal or thing we met wants that name, but we cannot share it, no matter how much we try, we cannot convey to them who we are or what we are. Have you ever tried to talk to a waterfall?”

Cybele squinted. What kind of question was that? “No,” she answered curtly.

He laughed, thunderous silver bells. “Well I assure you; it is an experience everyone must try in their lives. You especially.”

“What do you mean by that?”

He smiled and looked passed her, toward the eastern sky. “You are unique, young child. The scales of your ancestry are plain, if you have the foresight and the knowledge of where to look.”

“Who are you?” she repeated.

“I am so many things, so many people. I have lived so many different lifetimes.”

“Who are you now, then?”

“Aha! There’s the right question! Or at least on the path toward the right question. We change so much from day to day; it is a wonder we do not give ourselves new names with each dawn. But then, we don’t know who we are upon our waking. We don’t’ know who we will be or what we will do. Only the elements have names that remain the same. They are immutable in their inconstance. And our dreams. What do our dreams do to us? What do they mean to who we are?”

Cybele was hungry and getting tired of the psychobabble. “Right now, I am hungry,” she said, thick with petulance.

He barked a laugh that didn’t sound human, it sounded more akin to the quacking of a duck. “Now there’s a truth! Hungry, it is good to meet you. I, too, am Hungry in this moment. Let us sit by the fire and shed the name to see what lies beneath?” The fire roared to life once more as he spoke, sending sparks and embers so high into the sky that they were blown away by hundred different breezes. Cybele’s eyes widen out of fear, concern, and curiosity. “Now, now” he chided, seeing the look in her eyes. “None of that. You’ve nothing to fear from me child. I’m not going to eat you.”

The thought had not occurred to her until he said something, now it was all she could think about. She picked up the stone once more, gripping it tight in her small hands. Her hands burned; she could see something like golden scales beneath her skin. She moved closer. There was something in the fire, a massive iron pot. How had she missed it before? It was half the size of the firepit. Smoke and steam alike rolled off it, licking the sides of the metal and hissing as the tendrils skittered into the sky. There was a smell too. She couldn’t tell if she liked the smell or not. It was earthy and ripe with the slightest hint of soil and rot. Her stomach growled all the same.

“You did not jest when you said your name was Hungry, child. I can hear that all the way passed the Orocarni. Come and have some of the broth. I promise you will like it.” Out of, well out of somewhere, he produced two clay bowls. He dipped each bowl into the pot and extended his hand to Cybele. The broth inside was golden and steamy. She took it despite her misgivings and took a sip. It tasted of mushroom, but no mushrooms she’d ever tasted before. It was sweet and savory at once, umami and sour and bitter. A single sip warmed her innards and calmed the nerves.

“Who are you, now?” she asked, having taken three more sips.

“I am less Hungry now,” he chuckled, “and a little more myself. I am Awake and Anticipatory. What about you?”

She grumbled; this crazed fool was never going to tell her anything important. “I am Cybele.”

“Just like that?” he said with a sinister looking grin. “Three sips of broth and you are Cybele already? I assumed it would be at least five.”

She froze. The smell and taste of the broth had taken her off guard. She felt woozy. She looked at her hands and the bowl between them. The air shimmered, steam passed over her fingers and they rippled like water. She should be alarmed, she thought somewhere deep in her mind. But she was not, she was fascinated.

“Well, it is good to meet you, Cybele,” the man said, brushing a strand of blueish white hair from his forehead. “You are a child on a journey. I cannot tell you what lies at the end of your journey, Cybele. Though I can see far and know much, the path which you walk is currently cloudy to me, it is nebulous and hazy. You walk on paths that many would fear to tread. You are like a panther, but you do not know yet if you are stalking prey or imitating your mother.”

“My mother…?” Cybele looked up from her mushroom broth, tilting her head and looked at the wizard with new, glazed eyes. “What do you know about her?”

The man smiled, but it was a hidden smile, the locked chest kind of smile. “I know many things, child. I know your name is Cybele and you are looking for something. You are hunting but you are also being hunted. There is something out there that knows you as much as you know it.”

“What?” Cybele was still tired of psychobabble, even though the mushrooms had made her more amenable.

“Be aware, young Cybele. I can see the winds twist around you, but I cannot tell if it is to lift you up or to bind you. I can see you wreathed in golden fire, but I cannot see the eyes of the fire to know to whom it belongs. You are a strange child, Cybele. I have been searching for you for weeks now. It is a miracle that I ever happened upon you in this maze of stone and timber.”

“Why were you looking for me? I’m… I’m no one.”

“We all think we are no one at some point in our lives. Even me. I think I am no one at the end of each day and each night I watch the world drift by without burden or care. Yet each time I wake, I find myself and gird myself with that knowledge.”

“That sounds… like a bad poem.”

The thunder and silver bells rang across the stones. They were oddly comforting. “I admit, my brother is better at poetry than I. He’s better with mushrooms as well.”

“What’s his name?” she asked, thinking she might get something out of him.

“He has fewer names than me, but he is more well known. He is Pallando. Have you heard of him?”

She looked at the man with wide eyes. The blue clothes, the blue eyes, the blue hair. It all made sense for a moment. He was… the answer slipped through her fingers like sand.

“I have,” she said, her voice thick. She took another sip of the broth, disappointed when she drained it. “He’s a wizard, and a magician, and a sorcerer, and a warlock.”

“All those things?” the man chuckled and nodded. “Aye, you might be right. He is many things, my brother. It was he that told me I needed to look for you.”

“But, why? Why didn’t he come himself?”

The sun was rising fast in the sky. Too fast. The air was moving too swiftly. Something in the earth moved with great rapacious speed, she could feel it through the tremors.

“You are more important than you think, Cybele. I cannot say why he didn’t come himself. Perhaps he was too busy or wanted to sample a new kind of pepper in the market. My brother’s mind is a maze that only he can navigate. He is brilliant but he is more than a little crazy.”

“Like you.” Cybele said before she could stop herself.

“Haha! You think I am crazy, eh?” there was genuine mirth on his face, inscrutable but plain. “You might be right. I’ve seen so many sunrises, so many shades of the moon that I wonder if I’m living in a waking dream.”

“Who are you?” she asked a final time. The sun was setting before she realized it. The air was growing dark and cold. The fire though, the same fire that had tried to talk to her with sparks and rumbles, was still lit and cast orange shadows on the rocks. She wanted a blanket.

“I am called Alatar, my child. I am here to tell you this: your dreams are made of dragons, follow them and they will take you where you need.”

Now that she had his name, she felt a sense of loss. There was no point in talking to him now. The mystery of his person was gone. She drifted in and out of sleep, or what passed for sleep.

“It is time to wake, Cybele. Your mother is waiting for you at the end of the world.”

She awoke with the crash of thunder. The fire was bright, but the man was gone, so gone it was as if he had never been there.
Last edited by Akhenanat on Sat Sep 17, 2022 6:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

Balrog
Points: 5 867 
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon May 18, 2020 11:02 am
Image Image
Prosperity and Beauty
Sunju, Lemuria, the Uttermost East

(Private)

Ryu Sachi and her twin sister Ryu Miin Si stood on the battlements of the fortress overlooking the bay. The waves were crystal blue, tipped with white. The sun glinted off them, cascading a thousand thousand rainbows in all directions. There was not a cloud in the sky, the clear blue sky stretched from the sea green horizon in the east to the shadowy mountain purple in the west. Gulls called noxiously, screaming at each other as they fought and wheeled about, searching for fish or crabs. The sisters were too high to hear the noise of the streets below, naught but a dull cacophony reached them. The wind was sweet, a mixture of salt and mango. Sachi was leaning against the stone under an umbrella, reading from a book, Miin Si was pacing back and forth staring fixedly at the ship coming into harbor. The more she watched it, the more she felt like it was never going to get to its destination. It was their ship, their freedom, their redemption. How could Sachi be reading at a time like this?

“You know, it doesn’t matter how much watch the boat come into port, it’s still going to take another day for us to leave,” she did not look up from her book.

Miin Si scoffed leaned further over the edge of the stone embankment. It didn’t matter to her that it was still going to be a full day before they were on their way, the fact that they would be on their way was what mattered to her. She squinted and shielded her eyes from the sun. “I can see figurehead, it’s a Fenghuang. The same kind as
on the hilt of my sword.” She ignored what her twin said.

Finally, Sachi looked up, fixing a lock of white hair that had fallen out of place. “I heard the town criers this morning. Apparently, a man was found nailed to the doors of the police station. They said he had his bits removed from him. They said he was the one assaulting women over the last fortnight.”

“And?” Miin Si asked, shifting the weight of the hwando at her hip. “Sounds like he got the punishment he deserved. Too bad the police couldn’t do what they’re paid to do.”

Sachi sighed. “Indeed. Where were you last night? You weren’t in your room when I came home.”

Miin Si continued to stare out at the bay, “What are you asking, sweet sister?”

Sachi stared at the back of her sister’s head. They were nearly identical, save for their hair. Sachi had been born with hair as white as snow and thick as river moss, Miin Si had black hair, wispy as a willow’s branches. Their mother named them for the two things she had wanted most from them: Prosperity and Beauty. It had been a presumptuous act. One that did not benefit her at all. She had died before the twins’ fifth birthday. She died a pauper, convinced that her daughters were about to bring her fame and fortune. They were taken in by the state, then by an uncle they’d never heard of. He lived in this fortress, the mayor of Sunju. Since then the twins flourished. They did not have to live with a mother ready and willing to force her daughters to do anything that might give more honor to her name. Sachi was able to attend school and study the classics of Lemurian art and literature. She received the very best tutors in all the providence. Miin Si was allowed to attend an academy for Geomdo where she learned how to fight. The time was coming when they were going to have to pay their uncle back by accepting marriage proposals that would bring him more power and influence. They’d be shipped off in opposite directions to rich, old, wrinkly faced fools, or, worse, to young inexperienced manchildren. Naturally, neither of them was going to do anything of the sort. Their uncle was getting on his years. His once raven black hair had long since turned to a sickly gray. Each day more and more liver spots could be counted on his thinning head.

Many of the stairways in this old fortress were crumbling as well. Many of the stones were loosening by the day. It was only a matter of time...

“All I ask is for a little subtlety.”

Miin Si laughed, her voice had the same resonance as a zither, but with an edge of hard steel. “Afraid it might bring attention?”

Sachi rolled her eyes and closed her book. “If what we are planning is to succeed, we can’t have this many death’s attributed to us,” she hissed.

“Relax,” Miin Si turned and sat under the umbrella with her sister, “no one saw me. If anyone saw anything, they’ll have just seen the Winter Dragon doing work the police are incapable of.”

“And when we’re gone, and no one sees the Winter Dragon for a year? Sister, I don’t think you have thought your vigilantism through.”

“You are too serious, Sachi. Truly, stop reading for once and look up at the blue sky!”

They spent the next few hours together, each in their own thoughts. The sun peaked in the sky. The heat came in waves. Both sisters were glad of the umbrella. They dined on spicy beef soup for lunch. The servants barely looked at them, they returned the favor. It was not until the sun began to vanish behind the mountains of the west that they spoke again. The city’s populace was loud tonight, and why not, it was a holiday after all. In any other year they would have begged their uncle to take them down to the streets so they could enjoy the crowds and lights and colors. It was different this time. Each sister felt a sort of detachment from their surroundings. The celebrations and fireworks barely registered. The smell of sugar and confection barely reached their noses.

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Miin Si was the first to break the silence.

“I am,” Sachi sounded like she wanted to say more, but she remained silent.

“And you’re sure that our plan will work?”

Sachi sniffed haughtily. “You know I have the gift of foresight. I told you exactly what I dreamed and what we had to do. Are you doubting my interpretation?”

“Sweet sister, I do not doubt you or your interpretation. I just like to have reassurances from time to time.”

They looked each other in the eye, the sun’s dying orange and gold light catching the deep ocean blue color. Sachi brushed her sister’s cheek and pushed back a strand of black hair. “We will be off tomorrow. Uncle thinks we are simply going to sail down to Huinrae to visit a prospective pair of husbands. As soon as we arrive, we’ll, you’ll,
dispatch those that need to be dispatched and then we can continue around until we reach the port city of Umbar. We won’t be the only children of our father converging on him there. We’ll give him no other option than to come back home with us, and once dear Uncle has passed on, we can use him to get us the estate. Our cousins won’t know what hit them.”

They both smiled, eyes glimmering. They had an empire to build. It was foretold by their mother after all, prosperity and beauty. She was simply foolish enough to believe those things were going to belong to her.

“We’re coming, father.” Miin Si whispered into the sweet evening air, “we’re coming.”
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

Balrog
Points: 5 867 
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon May 18, 2020 11:02 am
Image Image
Prosperity and Beauty
Huinrae, Lemuria, the Uttermost East

(Private)

Freedom smelled good. It smelled like salt and seaweed and sunlight. Sachi was below decks, but she could smell the sea. It was an all-consuming, monumental smell. It made her thirsty. She took a drink of her soju. It went down smooth. She went back to reading. There was not much for her and her twin to do on this voyage except wait. The real journey would not take place for several days. As excited as she was about the prospect of their journey, she did not bother getting as animated and eager has Miin Si. Her sister was doubtlessly pacing the deck, challenging any and all of the sailors to a duel. Some might even take her up on it, thinking it a jest. Sachi expected to see at least three men pass her on the way to infirmary with various contusions, broken limbs, or worse. Miin Si would never go so far as to kill someone, not unless it served her needs. She was reckless and impulsive, but she was calculating. She was trolling the deck, watching the men as they worked and how they reacted to her. Some of them would have to be culled and disposed of. There was no way around that. For their journey to be a success, the twins required absolute loyalty from the people under their command. Doubtlessly, their cousins and uncle had planted spies here and there to keep on eye on them. Though they had been careful, kept their ambitions under wraps, spies were an inevitable part of intrigue. Each of the sisters had their own way of sussing out the traitors.

The longer Sachi tried to read her book, the more the words drifted out of her vision or sloughed off the page. She’d read the same poem four times now and she could barely remember what it was even about. Was she letting her nerves get the best of her? She closed her eyes and let herself drift back and forth, counter to the motions of the boat. In her mind’s eye, she stared at a single part of the sky, a speck of cloud that was darker than the rest of the great blue vastness. She drifted toward that point, leaving her body behind. She floated far above the ship, the sea, the earth itself. She could see beyond the great western wall into the lands beyond it. Sand, jungles, and steppes. There were hundreds, thousands of leagues between them and their goal. It seemed so far at times, but here, now, she felt like she could reach out and grab it, she wanted to hold Umbar in her hands and squeeze it until her father appeared. What would he be like? She’d seen things in her dreams, knew what to look for and where, what her did not show, was the character of the man. Was he a flaccid noble, a white knight? Or was he a ruthless pirate, hungry for domination and control? She and her sister had to have gotten that urge from somewhere and their mother was a head-in-the-clouds fool. She was as ruthless as she was rich.

Sachi was bored. Poetry was not the thing to read on a long boat ride. But it was what was expected of a lady of her station. Reading campaign journals of conquering generals was generally frowned on if it were found. Thankfully, among her things was hidden the complete works of On Yeong-Ho and his campaign against the Variags of Khand in the form of poetry. She’d spent weeks painstakingly copying the material in secret. It was a masterpiece of deception. She put to down the book of flowery, purple prose and began rummaging to find the first volume.

“How can you read when the boat keeps rocking back and forth like this?” She froze for a second, having turned her back to the door temporarily. But it was the voice of Ga-In, an old schoolmate of hers going to Huinrae to meet a prospective suitor. She relaxed her muscles and released the grip on the knife she had secreted under the sleeve of her hanbok.

“The secret,” she said in a perfect false smile, “is really to read, just appear to read. It’s the perfect camouflage.”

“Oh you are so smart Sachi! You are going to find a wonderful husband. You are going to marry the Prince of Huinrae, I just know it.”

Sachi hoped not. The Prince of Huinrae was a fat balding man with larger breasts than her. They had met once when he came to Sunju to celebrate the New Year Festival last year. He smelled so overwhelmingly like lavender and honeysuckle she thought she was going to vomit, and his skin was already starting to jaundice. He was rich, but he was dying and the power he held would evaporate. No.

“Oh I would be so lucky! Have you heard how large his libraries are? They say they all have seven wings, one for each day of the week. How extravagant!”

They giggled together like they did back in school. Ga-In was a precious thing, pretty with a perfect heart shaped face, round green eyes, and a demure attitude. She was not the smartest girl in school, or the prettiest, but she was the nicest. That, along with good birthing hips would fetch her a decent dowry. They talked for what felt like hours, catching up on all the gossip of their schoolmates, who was sleeping with who, who was about to ruin who’s reputation, who was going to fail out in the coming years, and of course, which of the boys they’d be sad to see join the military. Sachi felt a strange sense of normalcy when she talked. She hated it, but she hid it well. She and her sister were not meant for normalcy. They were meant for greatness. They were meant for empire building.

The sun was almost ready to dip into the great eastern sea when they came to the deck. The sky was beautiful, streaked with red and gold. She came to her sister who was pestering a young sailor, hanging on his every word as he explained the different types of knots to her. For a moment they locked eyes, deep ocean blue looking into a mirror. She shook her head ever so slightly then went back to listening to her sailor as if her sister was never there. Sachi did the same, ignoring that her sister was even there as she and Ga-In made their way to the prow of the ship, hand in hand.

“If I am being honest,” she said tenderly, moving closer so that their fingers just grazed on the railing, “I am not looking forward to finding any man to marry in Huinrae.”

“Oh whatever do you mean Sachi? You are sure to get all of the attention at all the balls and galas. You always were the brightest star in school.”

“I...” she hesitated and pulled her hand back. “I shouldn’t say...”

“What do you mean, you know you can tell me, Sachi.” Ga-In moved closer and placed her hand on Sachi’s.

Sachi’s smile was timid and beguiling. “I know I can trust you,” she whispered.

“Is there someone else? A boy?” Ga-In asked, “A girl?” she added as an afterthought.

Sachi’s cheeks reddened. “Well, I...” she giggled softly and turned to look at the sea as it expanded the distance between them and Sunju. “Will you promise not to tell? I... I have never told anyone before...”

Ga-In’s smile was a fox’s behind sweet eyes. “I swear,” her voice was husky, intimate.

“I... well... oh no, I couldn’t. I don’t want to burden you with a potential scandal.”

Ga-In reached for Sachi’s cheek and caressed it. “Scandal might be the only thing helps me find a match half as good as yours. Tell me your secret.”

“Oh okay,” Sachi’s shoulders rounded and she took a step closer to Ga-In, she could feel the girl’s heat as if it were her own. “I think I have feelings for... for you...” she hesitated for a moment then took Ga-In’s face in her right hand and pulled her in for a deep kiss. At first her schoolmate froze; she could feel her body stiffen in confusion for just a moment before relaxing and melting into her.

She pulled back, her deep ocean blue eyes cold and calculating, her right hand still on Ga-In’s cheek. “And I know you’re working for my uncle.” The knife appeared in her left hand and jammed itself into Ga-In’s stomach. It did not take long for blood to start welling up out of her mouth, staining her perfect, pouty lips. “You should not have been so obvious. You are a good kisser though.” She kissed her once more, tasting the thick red blood, then pushed the dying girl overboard. She didn’t even have time to squeak as she fell. The splash was soft and unremarkable. She didn’t resurface.

She returned to her quarters below deck, nodding to her sister on the way.
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

Balrog
Points: 5 867 
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon May 18, 2020 11:02 am
Image Image
Prosperity and Beauty
On the Coasts of Lemuria, the Uttermost East

(Private)

They’d been sailing along the coasts for so long now it felt as if she’d spent her entire life on this boat. The claustrophobia and boredom had taken their toll on Miin Si. There were only so many places she could go, none of them private, and only so much she could stand having eyes on her. Her sister’s eyes were one thing, those had never left her since they’d been born, but the eyes of the sailors were another. She could feel their eyes watching her as she went up on deck to practice her forms. She could feel the way they gawked and stared. She could not read minds, but she didn’t have to in order to understand what these wretched people wanted. Miin Si wanted to toss them all overboard. She’d even given Sachi a good pitch to do it. They’d drug the soju and toss them overboard, one by one, under the cover of night. It was a brilliant, foolproof plan. The sailors were not a careful lot and took great pleasure in drinking and drinking and drinking. Miin Si never understood the love of alcohol. It was mostly flavorless and burned her throat going down. She much preferred tea. It didn’t matter anyway, Sachi vetoed the idea as soon as it was out of her mouth.

They’d been on edge since she sent the spy overboard and it had taken a long time to earn this much trust in them. Sachi told the captain that the girl insulted their mother and she reacted as any good Lemurian girl would do to such a brazen dishonor: she stabbed her and sent her overboard, all without thinking of the consequences. The captain seemed to buy it, but the rest of the crew were suddenly wary of them, looking at them with orange tinted mistrust. They used to sing songs at all hours of the night, drunken tales of port misadventures and soft-eyed girls, now they whisper stories about “the kumihos” that they’d brought on board. It was a dangerous cat and mouse game. Miin Si knew that it would not be long before something happened and set the kindling alight.

Sachi proposed a different idea. Instead of killing them all and leaving the pair of them to sail the ship, she proposed a feast. The lunar new year was approaching and, being nobles, it was their duty to provide sustenance and celebration. The reasoning was almost as flimsy as her own but required less subterfuge and was less risky. They would be stopping to resupply in two days, Sachi gave Miin Si a list of things she would need to procure and admonished her to do it without the crew’s assistance. The less they were involved, the better. That suited Miin Si just fine, she was not convinced there was not another saboteur sneaking and slithering amongst the crew.

They finally made port, a tiny village whose name escaped Miin Si as soon as she heard it. There were a thousand little towns all along the coast of the world that looked identical to this one, why was it so important? She could smell a sweet cacophony of a thousand fruits long before she made it to the market, she had been able to smell it before she even left the ship. She didn’t like leaving Sachi aboard by herself, but her twin sister assured her that she didn’t need a guardian.

The market was busy. The town could not have been home to more than a hundred or so people but the marketplace itself seemed about to burst with five times that number.

“Fresh caught river catfish! Eels! Lampreys! Herring! Get your fresh caught fish here, perfect for a new year celebration!”

“Rice cakes! Rice cakes! Can’t have a new year feast without rice cakes!”

“Soju! Soju and exotic whiskies and ales! Herbal teas of a hundred different varieties!”

“Silk! Cotton! Cashmere!”

“Kittens! Puppies! A new year means a new pet! Kittens! Puppies!”

There so many carts and kiosks and stalls and so many people that Miin Si thought she’d stepped through some sort of portal. It was impossibly loud and impossibly packed. There was a lingering odor of feet and human mixed with the fish and fruit and tea. She couldn’t tell if it was truly unpleasant or just unnerving. Sunju was just as loud and invasive, but the market there was also a hundred times the size of this place. Someone was trying to pack as many people as possible into the smallest area. And Miin Si had merrily joined the troupe of trapped fish without so much as a yelp of protest.

Still, it was not a bad place. There was so much food here, so many varieties of meat with more spices than she thought possible. Street cooks plied her with all sorts of samples until her mouth felt like it was on fire. She’d never had beef so savor or peppers so hot. It was invigorating, her fingers tingled with anticipation. She could feel the fire ready to burst off her lips with fangy bites. She grinned and bought a hogshead worth of the peppers. It wasn’t on Sachi’s list, but they soon found their way on their anyway. She wedged her way through throngs of people, squeezing through bodies hard and soft. She was nearly done with the list, the sack on her shoulder was growing heavier and heavier. It was filled with onions and cuts of beef and rice and crabmeat and eggs and spices as myriad as the sand. She was nearly done when something landed on her opposite shoulder. Her eyes went wide with momentary terror. There were more than a few birds fluttering around the market and for a heartbeat, she feared the worst. She turned and stared directly into the eyes of a monkey.

“Excuse you!” she tried to shoo it off, but it only grabbed her finger and began chittering excitedly. She was about to go for the knife at her hip when a plump lady moved into view, arms waving about frantically.

“Akercocke! Akercocke what are you doing, get done from there!”

Miin Si did not release her grip on the dagger. “This little pest is your pet? Remove it before I remove its head.”

The woman’s face reddened with terror and embarrassment. “Oh! Oh my lady I am so sorry! I did not mean to offend such a highborn lady as yourself. He gets away from me from time to time and likes to go off and cause trouble. Akercocke, get down!” The monkey did not let go of Miin Si’s finger, but he did turn to look at the woman and giggle. “Oh no! Oh! Akercocke! Get down this instant, you ill-behaved imp!”

“What is he?” Miin Si asked, a hint of genuine curiosity.

“A menace,” the woman said, wiping her brow. “Come on now, the noblewoman is going to eat you if you don’t get down.”

“I daresay I am not!” Miin Si said with a chuckle and a scowl. “Is he your pet?”

Akercocke screeched at her and let go of her finger. However, he stayed put on her shoulder.

“No, no he’s a pest that found me a few weeks ago and decided to stay with me. I have no idea where he came from or what he is, besides some kind of monkey. Get down!” she moved, quick as an adder, and scooped him off her shoulder. Miin Si finally released her knife’s hilt.

“So you’re his pet?”

The woman rolled her eyes and glared at the monkey. “He would like to think so. I am so sorry my lady. Please, come to my stall and pick yourself out something for the inconvenience he’s caused you.”

She grabbed Miin Si’s hand with a grip tighter than steel and led her through the throngs of people. Soon, she lost all sense of direction, the people, the fabrics, the smoke and shadow, it was all too much for her to keep track of. She was about to pull her hand back and slap the woman when she stopped in front of a stall crowded with stuffed animals. There were so many, all different sizes and shapes and textures. They were all well-made and well-formed. They had structure and recognizable shapes rather than blobs of linen and thread like Miin Si used to make before she gave up sewing for swords.

“Please, my lady. Accept my most humble apologies for Akercocke’s behavior and take something for yourself. New years is coming soon. Perhaps you know someone who would like this as a gift?”

Miin Si didn’t see the harm in looking. She wasn’t pressed for time and there was a bubble around this stall that most of the marketeers would not cross. There was a busker across the way, juggling fruit whilst balancing on a thin stick. Miin Si wondered if the monkey would bother him and make him fall over and break something. That would be a nice end of her day. She smiled.

“What about this one?” Miin Si picked up an orange stuffed dog with an almost noodle-like middle. At first, she thought it was a dragon of some kind but the face was all wrong, he was jowly with bright eyes and no feathery lashes. “What is this supposed to be?”

The big woman’s face brightened with glee and pride. “That is Jake.”

“Jake?”

“Yes, Jake.”

“What’s a Jake? Some kind of hound or dragon or…”

“Oh no!” the woman reassured her. “Have you not heard the tale of Jake the Dog and Finn-Adan?”

Miin Si certainly had not. It sounded like some western colonizer story. “Jake” was not a name one heard in Lemuria. It sounded like a fruit dish.

“Jake is a dog,” the woman began. “and he goes around having adventure times with his friend. They once saved my village from a horde of dokkaebi. He was all stretchy and grew to a great size to smash the goblins while the boy used a sword made from grass to cut them down. I make these dolls as a blessing to them.”

Miin Si pursed her lips. It was an odd story indeed, but not a bad one. The little stuffed dog looked rather cute, in an ugly sort of way. “I’ll take him. I think my sister would like him very much.”

“Oh!” the woman yipped with glee, a bright toothy smile bouncing on her face. “Oh mistress you do me a great honor. I know your sister will love Jake. He will bring protection and security wherever he goes.”

Miin Si cocked an eyebrow.

“I give all my toys and dolls blessings so that they bring good fortune to their new owners. All my Jake dolls carry spells and incantations of protection, far-seeing, and song.”

“Far-seeing? Well, fate must be on your side today good mistress. My sister favors herself a seer. She will love him.”

Miin Si returned to the ship, laden with supplies for a new year's feast and then some. The ship was ghostly quiet, she slipped below decks and found her sister in their room, nose in a book of poetry. “Sachi! You’ll never guess what I found!”
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

Balrog
Points: 5 867 
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon May 18, 2020 11:02 am
Image Image Image
Harlequin Forest
TA 3003, The Wild Woods

(Private)

His woods were quiet; a breeze smelling of honeysuckle and jasmine blew down from the mountains north, insects buzzed and chirped overhead, a few hundred paces off the path he could hear a pair of cuckoo birds singing to each other. Sunlight filtered down through gaps in the feuillemorte leaves. He smiled and dared to close his eyes for just a moment. He liked to conceptualize his killing move before he made it. He gripped the spear, one of his most prized possessions, in his hand. He’d had this spear for years, decades. He could still remember the heat of to forge when he made the spearpoint, could still remember the intense fragrance of the wood as he cut it and shaped it. He made each step furtively, walking on the balls of his feet as he moved closer and closer. The elf was close by, a willow tree in the midst of cedars. He looked so out of place that the hunter wondered if this hunt was going to end prematurely, without the thrill of a chase. He loved the chase. It did not matter the quarry, elk or boar, the chase was the most exhilarating part, chasing or being chased did not matter to him. The air in his lungs, the fire in his blood, the inability to predict the outcome. He was a man that loved danger; it was danger, at his age, that kept him alive. He could feel his pulse in his fingers. He held his breath. The unsuspecting sounds of his prey drew him close. He tightened the grip on his spear and readied himself to –

“Look out Yolfist!” The elf cried.

The hunter whirled around, his rage building into an instant crescendo. How dare this elf…

Then he saw what the elf saw. The boar he’d been hunting was immediately forgotten and instead he started backpedaling as fast as he could. Out from the underbrush was coming something much larger, much more dangerous that a boar. It roared as it burst onto the forest’s path. A bear. A massive bear, larger than any he’d ever seen. The creature pushed a tree out of its path and the wood toppled over as if it had been constructed by children. The hunter looked wide eyed at the beast as it sniffed the air angrily. Bears were not uncommon in the Wild Wood, no animal could be said to be “uncommon” here, but more often than not a bear was a rare sight. They preferred the steppes to the northwest. This bear though, this was no common bear. The fur was thick and matted, shades of black, brown, grey, even blue. It moved under the shadows of the trees, disappearing and reappearing. This was an old bear, that sort of camouflage took a very long time to develop, and even more time to utilize. The bear’s eyes were sharp and fierce. They stared at one another, hunter and bear, for what seemed like an eternity. His heart sagged in his chest when he saw markings on the bear. He had hoped to be able to scare this bear away, to send it back into the forest and let them both go on with their lives. Bears could be convinced, more or less, that some opponents were not worth the battle, but this bear would not be one of them. At the elbows and shoulders were thick bony protrusions that could be mistaken for stone or daggers. This was no ordinary steppe bear wandering down into the valleys. This was a direbear. He was still confident he could take the bear, he was a hunter and a chieftain, confidence was in his blood, sweat, and tears. This battle, though, was not going to be an easy one, nor would it be quick.

Then the elf jumped between them, landing with the grace of dancer. The hunter looked at him with wide eyes. Only a fool would do something like that. Catching the attention of a direbear was a death sentence to anyone without experience. The elf stretched his arms out over his head and walked forward. Something came from his mouth then, not speech or song, not quite, but something like that. Pure music came from the mouth of the elf, notes and rhythms that seemed impossible. He took a step forward. The hunter griped his spear and took a step behind the elf. The elf then put out a hand in warning, halting the hunter in his tracks. Both he and the bear were transfixed by the music. He swallowed hard and felt his hands grow heavy. The elf took another step forward. The bear stepped back, it had been standing on its hind legs, nearly sixteen feet tall. He blotted out the sun with his massive shadow. The air caught in the hunter’s throat. The bear moved back though, the music from the elf effecting in it in some queer way. His own head felt like it was swimming. The world stretched and squeezed together, breaking his depth perception. He felt drunk or perhaps like he’d spent the evening in the shaman’s quarters. What was happening? The elf took another step forward. The music was commanding but gentle. He couldn’t quite place what instrument it sounded like, it sounded like all of them and none of them all at once. The bear was moving backward, its head down. It growled, but the sound was weak and sad. The music turned mournful, it spoke to the hunter of all the broken days that stretched behind him and all the tragedy he’d seen. He wanted to cry, to drop his spear and weep. The elf took another step forward, but his hand was outstretched now, rather than trying to appear large and intimidating to the direbear, he was looking to take the beast’s paw. The music never stopped. There was no pause, no breath, no break in the illusion. The hunter watched in awe. The elf took the bear’s paw in both his hands, the music turned to something joyful, something bouncy and silly that spoke of rambunctious youthful dances. The bear growled something that might have been a laugh.

“It’s alright then, young one,” the elf said. “Go home and rest.”

The direbear inexplicably turned and wandered back into the forest. After just a heartbeat, the great ursine beast was gone and the forest that had been holding its breath, relaxed. The hunter straightened and exhaled. He had been holding his breath without realizing it, anticipating a bad end. He blinked, trying to clear the fog in his mind, and flex his hands over and over, trying to bring life back into them.

“What was that, Laergulron?” he asked, recovering his breath.

“Well, that was a direbear,” said the elf, turning and grinning. “Oh, you mean the song. Well, you and your people call me ‘The Man with the Sorcerous Song’, don’t you? I did not earn that name lightly.”

“You… you sang, but that was not like any song I’ve ever heard,” he said, bewildered. “I’d heard that some elves had a power in their voice that could change the world around them, shape earth and air at their will. I never thought it was real, I thought it was just a myth, a story.”

The elf smiled and nodded his head. “Aye, Chieftain Yolfist, it is a myth, but all myths are born from a kernel of truth, a seed of story. I was born with a talent for singing. Most of my kin can sing with voices clear like silver bells and waterfalls, but only a few of us can sing, if you catch my meaning. We cannot shape reality or bend the world to our will, but we can create illusion, change moods, move even the angriest, wrathful creature to pity.”

“It is a gift from the gods themselves, surely. How did you learn such a talent?”

The elf nodded, solemnly. “It was inborn. Even as a child, I found I could affect and influence the world around me. I lived in an apple orchard for a time, and I could sing to the trees and make them produce larger fruits than any had seen.”

“You are a wizard, the one they call Incánus in the southlands.”

The elf laughed and shook his head. “No, no my friend. I am no wizard. Nor have I even met the one of whom you speak. He is something else entirely, a creature of the uttermost west. I am an elf, pure and simple.”

The hunter laughed then. “A pure and simple elf? A pure and simple elf? As if there was ever such a thing. Tell me Laergulron, have you ever met anyone who agrees that you are simple elf?”

“I suppose I haven’t,” the elf mused. “But I am not one worthy of song or tales. That is an honor reserved for ones greater than I.”

“Not worthy of song? Laergulron, my people will tell stories of what you have just done. A direbear. Do you know what a direbear is? How dangerous they are?”

The elf stretched his back, spreading his arms and chest wide open. “I know a little. My foster father once captured some on Númenor, Westernesse, and brought them to Middle-earth.”

The hunter blinked. “What? Your father wrestled with bears? He must be a great elf indeed, the lord of some great land? Perhaps you are the son of Celeborn?”

“Again, I must disappoint you, Yolfist. My father is not the lord of some vast land, nor is he the Lord Celeborn of Lothlórien; nor did he wrestle the bears. He has a way of speaking to them, a way of making them understand him.”

“Elves are magical folk,” the hunter said breathlessly.

“Perhaps,” agreed the elf. “But we are not quite so heroic or mysterious as we come off in songs and tales. I tell you the truth, Yolfist. I am no great elf, no lord or warrior or wizard. I am a gatherer of tales and memories.”

“So that is why you have come to see me? Not to dissuade me from going to war, but to hear my stories?”

The elf bit his lip and took a deep breath. “I will not lie, my friend. I have more than a singular purpose here. War is coming, that much has been clear for nigh on a century, and it could very well be the war that ends all wars. I do not wish to fight in it though, nor do I wish for others to be drawn in unnecessarily.”

“But,” the chieftain said, “if war is coming, if it is to be the greatest war of the age, should I not take part? Should I not ride my steed into battle and win glory?”

“I have lived for a very long time, Chief Yolfist. I have seen wars that end ages. I have fought and understood the price of glory. I have lost more than I could ever put into words.”

“As you say though, you have lived a very long time. And you will continue to live on,” countered the chief. “I am a man, a fleeting shout across the mountains. If I do no shout loud enough, my echo will not outlast me. If I am forgotten by my people, then what was my life for? Glory might not be what you seek, you may seek anonymity, elf, but I cannot afford that. Glory is the currency of time, and that is all I and my people have.”

“Surely, though,” the elf said, “you would rather grow old with generations three and four beyond you at your feet listening to your tales? Surely a life of peace is worthy of songs and a glory of its own?”

The chief put his hand on the elf’s shoulder. “I think there more things for you to learn and understand, Laergulron. Peace and glory are what we all hope for, but we can only have one. And peace, sadly, does not make for fantastic tales.”

“Then who would you fight for, Chief Yolfist? In this coming war, a war to end an age, what side will you and your people take?”

The chief sighed and shook his head. “Elf, I will protect my people. If that means fighting alongside the tribes that fight for Mordor, so be it. If it means adding the men of Gondor and Rhovanion, then I will ride with them. Come. Come with me and let me show you something. Have you ever seen the world tree? The sacred cedar? Come with me and look upon it. Perhaps you and I will learn something and come to a better understand there.”

Without waiting for the elf to respond, the chief turned to go. The hunt could continue some other time. He still had a hunger for boar but now something had come to his attention that overrode his hunger. It was time to visit the witch.
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

Balrog
Points: 5 867 
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon May 18, 2020 11:02 am
Image Image
When Shall the Wheel Come 'Round Again?
Years After the War, Near the Borders of Gondor
(Open)

She looked at the boy again. Still asleep. His sleep was untroubled by the turbulence around him. He had not stirred since the thunder began rolling outside. She envied him that. Sleep, untroubled sleep. What a beautiful thing it could be. She hunted untroubled sleep as if it were a deer yet she never found herself within striking distance. Untroubled sleep for an orc was too wary a prey, too canny and too alert. As of now it had been four days since she’d slept. She could go for longer, orcs were built for endurance, but the prospect was an unwelcomed one. She could watch the boy sleep. Whenever she found herself troubled, worried, whenever her anxiety and fears began to overwhelm her, she could look at the boy. He slept soundly, snoring gently, all wrapped in animal furs. He was insulated against the worst fangs of the storm outside, wild winds and sleet. They were deep enough in the cave, too, that maybe the rumblings did not reach him in the depths of his dreams. What did the boy dream, she wondered. He was an imaginative child, she saw that in the carvings he did, in the paintings he left on walls, in patterns in the dirt, but he rarely spoke of the tourbillion of his mind in the mundane art of speech.

There was a peel of thunder so loud it shook the stones around Gaoth. She jumped. She hadn’t seen the lightning bolt ride in front and was caught off guard. The boy, though, did not stir. His breathing remained calm and steady. She breathed heavily. She was envious and she was grateful. They had not had easy lives in the past years. He deserved whatever little sleep he could get. She would kill anyone that disturbed her child, even a storm. He was not really her child, a voice told her for the umpteenth time, he was a child of a slave she managed to save in the carnage of the post-war hysteria. His real mother was long dead, a shell of a girl before she gave birth. Gaoth could not even recall what her name was or what she looked like. The boy was very much his own creation. He appeared out of the formless void and beckoned unto her. He was born of a slave, but he was a child of no one, nothing. Gaoth missed her sister. How long had it been since they had seen each other? Before the Tark Purge, they had managed to take refuge on the southern shore of the Sea of Núrnen. Without the Nine or the One, there was chaos, no true leaders, just fools ready to grasp at any power they could. She and her sister owned the breeding pits and were seen as valuable. That kept them alive in the tumult. But then the Purge came, Gondorians bright and white as the shining solar eclipse. They killed everything they could set a blade to and that which they could not, they set a flame to. Fields of wheat, rapeseed, and barley all gone in an instant. Four years. That’s how long it had been. She and her sister lost each other in the Purge. Was she still alive? Was she looking for her sister? Some questions could never be answered, no matter how simple they might feel.

The boy stirred again, shifting in his sleep. He let out a gaseous flatulence that would have made any male orc proud.

He was all she had left now. They had been wanderers, vagrants, unwelcomed refugees everywhere they went. He was all of her old life that could be saved. She could have been called opulent in Mordor. It would not have passed for much elsewhere, but in the Black Lands she was a member of the upper crust, and still rising. Now she hid in caves with a human child to wait out storms. They never had enough provisions, often she would go hungry to make sure her son had something to eat, and even that was not enough. He was an edain, at least that’s what his features told her, his father was a mystery and his mother was a craven, yet here he was, nonetheless. Who would trust an orc and a child? No one, of course. They were hunted more often than not. Indeed, the only reason they were in this cave, braving this storm, at all was for that reason. A hunter, a ranger, was on their trail. She’d managed to avoid him, cutting through a too-narrow ravine, but he was as tenacious as he was bloodthirsty. He was dogged, hungry, and malicious. He caught up to them again two days ago, Gaoth and the boy managed to ford a flooding river, but it would only be a matter of time before he caught up to them again.

Was this really what she had been reduced to? It galled her. Hunted like a frightened rabbit. That’s why she had not slept. Every shadow could be him, every scrap of rock. How far down did this cave go? Was there an exit? Had she doomed herself and her son by coming here? They had gone to bed hungry tonight. They were near the end of their stores of dried meat and hard tac. If they did not find something tomorrow, once the storm cleared, they would be in trouble. Gaoth could go without, but not a growing child. Not her son.

She looked at him again, a crack of lightning appearing above him to give him a momentary, unearthly glow.

How strange it was, that she, Gaoth, should behave so maternally. She disliked children. Of any race. She reveled in the process of making the children but hated the end result. Why did this boy matter to her? The question did not really matter. She could navel gaze on the philosophies and metaphysics of the situation until she was a crone, but she knew the end result would be the same: she was never going to leave him, never going to allow harm to come to him. Orc or Tark, she would kill anyone that stepped between them. Her stomach growled. It had been growling for years, unsatisfied and unfulfilled. She would give her red right hand for a mug of black ale and a shank of beef or a turkey leg. She looked at the boy again. He was still sleeping deeply. His features were relaxed. He was too skinny though. That unbidden voice of the mother told her that he must eat and he must he well. She watched him, still as a statue. Thunder and lightning boomed and flashed about her.

She sighed. There was nothing for it. She was going to have to brave the storm and see what she could find. Surely there was something caught out in the torrent, or mayhaps there was a farm nearby whose sheep she could steal, a wandering horse, anything. She had a sword. It wasn’t exactly a hunting weapon, and it wasn’t a very good sword to begin with, but it was better than her bare hands. She moved silently, fearing any stray sound would wake the boy, a ridiculous notion given how deeply he was sleeping through the rains, but motherhood did not always equate rational.

She took one last look at him, then climbed to the entrance of the cave and out into the storm.

Image (17)
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

Balrog
Points: 5 867 
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon May 18, 2020 11:02 am
Image Image
When Shall the Wheel Come 'Round Again?
Years After the War, Near the Borders of Gondor

The hunting was good, if wet. The storm continued to rage and sound about her, crashing and booming and drenching the landscape in such waves that one could have believed a forgotten storm god was rampaging through the heavens. The lands about Gaoth was hilly and pockmarked with caves and tunnels. At the zenith of Mordor’s influence these fields might have been excellent training grounds, places to practice the lightning assaults they used to be known for. Now, it was a lonely, forsaken landscape who held on the ghosts of past civilizations. Each burst of lightning revealed a greying landscape flecked with green, set against a vast, monstrous sky. Gaoth could swear there were teeth in the clouds and eyes that watched impassively. There were trees here and there, hardy ones with thick trunks and gnarled branches. There were likely some bird nests tucked away until evergreen needles, but the winds from the storm drove out all notions from the orc’s mind of climbing and finding out.

While orcs, humans, and elves might have abandoned this place, nature had not. The fields were teaming with life. On her belt were four rock squirrels already. The creator, whoever and wherever they were, had a cruel sense of humor. The smallest, most difficult to catch prey had barely enough meat to satisfy even the smallest of orc children. Gaoth had never been a great hunter, she was a slaver and administrator, bureaucracy was her hunting grounds, not fields and meadows in the dark of stormy night. She was not patient, elsewise she might have more than just four of the beasts tied to her hip. How much longer could she go without eating? How long could the boy? It was a cold question, a knife in the back of her mind to which she could not find the sheath. Food and its lack were permanently on her mind. Each trudging mile the questions cycled and resurfaced. She could go without for quite some time, but the boy, her human son, could not. He needed to be fed often, a bottomless pit. Orcs his age were voracious eaters; she wasn’t much of a mother, but she knew how to raise a child. What she previously lacked in maternal instinct she made up for in eugenic efficiency. Or at least, she had.

Every day with the boy made her feel her deficiencies keenly. Each day she learned just how deep the well of her unknowledge went. It was staggering, motherhood was a constant dance on the edge of a crumbling cliff.

She was far too cold and wet for these thoughts now though. She needed to find something more than squirrels.

Gaoth crept along down the rocky slope of a hill, moving slow despite the cold urging her to move faster. There was the glimmer of a stream at the bottom of the hill, the flashes of lightning revealing a moderate flow. It was turbulent and awash in the storm, uneasy and deceptive. Gaoth did not trust water. She lived most of her life near the Sea of Núrnen and heard enough tales of drownings and near drownings and things that crept in the dark muck of the bottom and slimy betentacled horrors that demanded worship and fleshy tribute. The waters of this stream were far from the inky doom of the sea, far from the brackish sludgy deltas. But all water has the mind of a trickster, from a trickle to a torrent. They had minds that no terrestrial being could hope to comprehend, and a malice that not even the Dark Lord could have contended with. Gaoth stood at the bank. She could feel the weight of the rain pulling her down, driving her into the mud. The wind lashed at her, screamed, and laughed at her reticence.

There was movement in the water.

It was barely perceptible, but it was there. Gaoth’s eyes caught it and tracked it amongst the hundreds of thousands of raindrops. There was something in the water, something large, larger than her. It moved stealthily but steadily, bobbing as it walked along the stream floor. Gaoth smiled. Water buffalo were rare. She’d never seen one live and in the flesh. The pictures and descriptions she’d read, the traveler’s accounts, and wild fireside tales did not do it justice. It was not a magnificently huge beast, but it was far more atavistic and splendid than the squirrel carcasses that hung from her belt.

Gaoth watched the beast move in stream. The world died away as she watched. The cacophony of the storm downshifted. The winds and cold did not subside, the world around the orc mistress whirled and swirled like ballerinas without a routine. The world continued to crash and rage, light mixed with dark, and shadows stretched and shrunk. Hours could have passed, days. Gaoth and the water buffalo. They watched each other in complete silence despite the roar of a storm.

She felt a hundred miles away from her own limbs the longer she stared. More and more disconnected with her physical self as she retreated into herself. A voice in the back of Gaoth’s head whispered something. Sweet and sinister. Just stop. Wait. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Let go. Stop. Wait. Give in. Stop. Wait. Don’t move. Stop. Let go. Let go. Let go.

She could not deny how tempting the suggestion was to her tired ears. Her limbs were tired. Her mind was exhausted. Her heart was broken. She had been going forward for years without even realizing she was dead. She was nothing. No one. She was a blank space to be filled, but unable to be completed. She was a purposeless wraith blown about by a directionless wind. Mordorian detritus. Let go. Let go. Let go.

She took a step closer to the stream and felt her foot sink into the ice-cold mud. Freezing tendrils crawled up her legs like centipedes. She could feel the bite of the wind even if she could no longer hear it. Far away in her mind, far from the storm, she felt the rains batter her. She could not move. Her body moved forward but she could not move. Each step brought her closer to the edge of the stream, closer to a swirling, inky torrent. She wanted to scream, but her mouth was not hers. Let go. Let go. Let go!

“NO!”

The sound of her voice was an ill-conceived counterpoint, arhythmic to the music of the storm.

All of the noise came rushing back to her. Thunder boomed overhead, shaking everything. The world quivered and she stumbled to her knees, falling deeper into the mud. The rain was colder somehow, it bit at her hungrily. She could barely feel her feet, so numbed by the cold. The boy’s voice broke through momentarily, a single, soft word in the back of her mind that cleared the darkened, cobweb-riddled corridors. “Mom?”

The word was so soft and so clear she could whirled around, expecting to see the young human child standing there in the rain, drenched and shivering. There was nothing there, of course. No child. Her son was still safe in that cave, warm, covered in blankets, dreaming of days that might never come.

Gaoth pulled herself from the mud and wiped her face. The world was still a wild, angry torrent, but she could see. The water buffalo was gone. The self-induced trance had given the beast time to escape! She cursed, loudly.

Wait.

No. It was still here. It had moved, going downstream, but the beast was not gone. Gaoth shivered but smiled.

She moved into the stream. She could feel the cold but instead of numbing her, it pushed life into her, pushed drive and purpose into her blood and bones. Her breath fumed like a dragon. The air was getting colder and colder, but the orc could not be stopped. The stream was not deep. It could not deter her, could not impede her. She clenched her jaw, set in a wide, frantic grin.

The water buffalo moved faster, without turning to look, it knew Gaoth was behind him. He could smell her, smell the hysterical need building in her and knew, instinctively, that need would explode in violent fashion.

As soon as it was clear of the stream, the water buffalo became moving quicker. It pulled itself onto the mud and nimbly stepped through it.

Gaoth was not far behind. She was no hunter, no warrior, but she was still an orc. Her blood knew what it was like to kill, even if she had never done so.

The sword, such as it was, burst from the sheath and in the same instance as a flash of lightning crashing on the other side of the stream the blade sliced through tendon’s of the water buffalo’s back left foot. It stumbled, then began to run. Gaoth howled and gave chase…

The rain had not let up by the time Gaoth returned to the cave, with a massive water buffalo carcass slung over her shoulders. She returned without fanfare, without catcalls and wolf whistles. She returned to see the form of her child still sleeping, curled in on himself. He woke when she set the carcass down, whimpering as the world came back into focus for him.

“Mom? Is that you?”

“It’s me Silmorien. How did you sleep?”

The boy smacked his lips and stretched his arms out in all directions, doing his best imitation of a cat. “I slept okay. Is it still raining outside?”

A crack of thunder and another downburst of howling rain answered his question.

“I found us something to eat,” Gaoth said.

“What is it?” the boy asked.

“A water buffalo.”

“Do those taste good?”

“I suppose, my child, we will have to find out.”

“Okay,” the boy said, standing. He accepted his mother’s answer without hesitation. He walked to the cave wall opposite Gaoth and traced his fingers along imaginary lines. “I wish we had something to draw with,” he decried.

“I know, I know,” Gaoth answered. “Perhaps when we come on a trading town we can find you something.”

“You promise?” he asked, turning to face her.

“Yes. I promise.”
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

Balrog
Points: 5 867 
Posts: 3513
Joined: Mon May 18, 2020 11:02 am
Image Image
When Shall the Wheel Come 'Round Again?
Years After the War, Near the Borders of Gondor

The rain did not stop by the next morning. Outside the cave, the storm raged and battered the earth with more water than either Gaoth or Silmorion could have thought possible. Thunder continued to boom, and the winds continued to howl and tear at the earth. The pair moved deeper into the cave. The world was dark, colder, but it was drier. They moved their fire, huddled around the sparse, smoky flame like cult initiates. The boy was wrapped in so many blankets he looked at least twice his normal size. He was not a large boy, but now he looked positively round. It was a comical sight, and it brought a small measure of joy to Gaoth’s heart. It was not often they experienced anything close to happiness or joy or even contentedness. They had to latch on it, hold it, savor it. The fire made her nose itch, and the smoke made her eyes burn, but she stayed close for the boy’s sake. For her sake too, she’d grown dependent on the boy in her own way. He was the one consistent thing in her life. He was a point of light on which she could focus.

She sneezed, rubbed her nose, then put an arm around the blanket bedecked six-year-old. He wiggled as if he’d been woken from a light sleep, then shuffled closer to her. The furs were beginning to smell ripe. They were going to need to wash them soon, but this storm had to let up before they could do anything.

Gaoth had gone out again last night in search of wood. She found a good amount but of course it was all soaked through. It would be a while before it was dry enough to use in the fire.

There was another fire a few paces away, deeper into cave in a smaller alcove with what looked like a natural chimney structure. Meat was drying and smoking over that fire. It was far, far too smoky to sit around.

“Mom?” the boy said at length.

“Yes?” Gaoth answered a few moments later.

“What are we going to do?”

She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean? We’re waiting out the storm. I’m doing my best to make sure you stay dry.”

“No, not about that stuff,” he said, his green eyes intent on the small flame bouncing back and forth in their pit.

“Then what ‘stuff’ do you mean?”

“I mean with all this travelling. What are we going to do?”

The orc sighed. This was not the first time he’d asked about this, and it would not be the last. That did not, however, make answering this question any easier. “I don’t know,” Gaoth said, “I wish I could tell you I’m looking for something or someplace, but I don’t know.”

“What if we found a place we could stay? What if one of those trading towns lets us stay?”

“They wouldn’t, Silmorion.”

“But what if?” he insisted. “What would you do?”

Gaoth stopped to think. What would she do if they actually allowed her stay? Most trading towns they’d come through were in Rhûn or Khand and were nominally more accepting of orcs than Gondor or Rohan would have been, but they were by no means friendly. Gaoth had never felt so many eyes on her as she did when she was in those makeshift villages, and she’d lived her entire life under the gaze of the Lidless Eye. Tensions were always high around her. One wrong move, one wrong word, and the passing civility would turn to bloody hostility in a moment. It galled the orc that she had to remain calm, had to follow rules and play polite and demure. It was worse with the boy though. An orc and a human traveling together? There was something evil afoot, most of the traders would imagine, and Gaoth and her child would have be make a very hasty exit before violence erupted.

“I’m not sure. I don’t have a trader’s skillset.”

“But you could learn. I could learn,” the boy insisted.

“I suppose we could. Why do you want to live in a trading town?”

“I don’t,’ he said with a shrug, “but it might be nice to stay in one spot for a little while. We move around too much.”

We move around too much. We move around too much. Those words stung Gaoth. They were true, and that truth was sharpened and poisoned by the Gaoth’s own inability to find an answer. What did she want to do? She didn’t want to live in a trading town, but she would if it meant her son would have a chance to live in a normal environment. Moving and traveling as much as they had was not natural. There was nothing for him to do, nothing to engage him. It didn’t matter how much she could teach him because it was never enough. She herself was learning things as they went and more often than not, they were wrong.

This was not the life a child should lead.

“We do move around too much,” she agreed.

“Can I have a cat?” he asked, the change in subject dramatic enough to make Gaoth turn from the fire to look at the boy. His face was wreathed in shadow, dancing flames casting a dozen shades of light across his face obsured by blankets and furs.

“What on earth would you do with a cat?” She asked, bemused.

His grin was wide and genuine. “I would name it Othren and let it sit on my shoulder. I would teach it to hunt so you didn’t have to go out in dangerous storm anymore.”

“What would you have it hunt? Mice and squirrels and birds? It would take an awful lot of them to make a decent stew.”

The boy rubbed his chin as if he were deeply considering her point. “True. Do cats like stew?”

“I suppose a cat will eat anything. But I’m not sure if we can manage that.”

“Yeah, I know. I wanted to ask. I’d really like a cat.”

Gaoth bit her lip. An animal companion was the last thing they needed. It was difficult enough to keep the boy fed. She sighed. It was hard to say no. Why the hell was it hard to say no? She could cow the nastiest orc in Mordor and make the smelliest troll back down, why could she not say “no” to a child? Motherhood was a strange beast.

“We shall have to see.”

“Promise?”

This boy made her make (and keep) more promises than she was comfortable with. “Once we figure out what we are going to do, Silmorion, I will give it more thought.”

The boy nodded and watched the fire. They both watched the fire. The flames were hypnotic and alluring. Gaoth swore she could see things dancing between the flames, wisps of something not light or shadow or smoke but tiny little beings that became visible just long enough to dance through each individual flame. It was mesmerizing.

Gaoth blinked. How long had they been staring at the fire? The air around her seemed colder somehow. Harsher. There was a prickle along the hairs on the back of her neck. The horrid sensation of being watched returned to her in sharp relief. Had something followed her from her hunt? The unreachable spot between her shoulder blades itched fiercely.

“Mom?” the boy asked, bringing Gaoth back to the present.

“Yes darling?” she asked, barely more audible than a whisper.

“Can we stay here?” his voice seemed so small against the sound of the raging storm outside.

“In the cave?”

“Yes,” he said, “It feels comfortable.”

The itch had not left Gaoth’s shoulders, she could still feel something watching her. “You might be an orc after all,” she said after a moment, “Are you sure this is a place you want to live?”

The boy, still bedecked in blankets, turned to regard his foster mother. His viridian green eyes watched her then moved to the cave walls. A smile grew on his face. He was dirty, just as much in need of cleaning as his blankets. “I think so. Did you ever live in a cave?”

Gaoth laughed, louder than she intended. “No, no there weren’t any caves around the Sea of Núrnen, none that would be worked as housing anyway. They were mostly tin or salt mines. Too busy for people to live in,” she reflected, “Prone to seasonal floods too, the great Sea was not a kind companion, no matter how much we worshipped it and tried to gain its favor.”

“Should we leave an offering here, in this cave? What should we leave?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Gaoth said.

“But maybe it will help. It might keep us safe,” the boy insisted.

“Fine,” Gaoth said, relenting. “Fine. What do you suggest we use as an offering?”

Again the boy rubbed his chin, an old man in thought. He tilted his head back and forth, actively considering things in his head and dismissing them. Gaoth was envious. She wanted to know what was going on in the mind of her son. Tonight’s outburst of questions was a rarity, too often he was quiet, not sullen or moody, just quiet. She wanted to know what he was thinking, what worlds of imagination and introspection was he creating and delving into? She supposed, in a practical sense, none of it mattered. As long as he did as he was told, as long as he didn’t cause a scene, he could be as introverted as he wanted.

“Maybe we should leave the squirrels?”

“The squirrels? That seems a rather poor offering.”

“I know, but we already have plans for the water buffalo parts. Maybe we can find something in the trading town. I think that would be enough.”

“You might be right,” Gaoth said, her eyes inadvertently moving about the cave, looking for signs of… signs of what, approval, disapproval, anger, welcome? She couldn’t say. The stone said nothing either. It remained as cold and impassive as ever. “Let’s get some rest though. If we’re going to live here for a while, we’re going to need to do some work.”

Silmorion’s grin was wide and toothy. “Thank you, Mom.”

Maybe Goath would actually get some sleep tonight. The itch between her shoulder blades faded to a dull reminder. They were still being watched, they were still seen by something, somewhere, but that was not a problem for now. Now as a time for sleep. Gaoth desperately needed it. She watched the fire as the boy laid back down and soon began snoring. Her eyes felt heavy, her mind drifted, and soon she was overtaken.
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

Post Reply