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This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 115, Autem Mort
🕑 Added 2022-06-29 20:27:25 +0000 UTCI said I was going to do shorter chapters this week in the interest of having a backlog, then I decided that I needed these particular chapters to be longer. This one is almost 7K words. So, maybe next week.
~~~~
There was a part of Isra that felt good when Verity was gone, and she didn’t particularly like that part of her. It was a feeling that was hard to put into words, but she had been getting better about putting abstract things into words lately, and practice made perfect. When Verity was gone, it felt like there was suddenly much more time, more world to explore, and while Isra loved Verity, deeply, she also loved the sense of, well … freedom, she supposed. It wracked her with guilt though, to think of Verity being gone as ‘freedom’, but it was the sensation that came through her, if she was understanding her own emotions correctly.
The two days that Verity was gone had blown by. Isra had a talk with Bethany about the upcoming wedding, which was approaching with all the grace of a bull in heat. Isra was going to do everything in her power to make the wedding as good as she possibly could, and Bethany seemed both surprised and delighted. There were limits on how much the animals would listen to Isra — how much she could control them —, especially a large creature, but she was fairly confident that she could have Bethany ride into the temple on the back of a bear, and have an enormous flock of birds to finish the ceremony.
“I’m almost on the verge of being able to get the birds to sing,” Isra had said. “But I don’t think it’s there, and I don’t want to risk it.” With a flock it was a din of squawking, and she’d managed to get a group of just five birds singing something only a little pleasant for just a bit. If you liked the noise of birds chattering at full volume, that was just fine, but most people didn’t like that, including Isra.
“I think it’s going to be wonderful,” Bethany had replied. “And thank you so much for keeping the weather clear, we’re going to be outside for the reception, and it’ll be a disaster if it rains.”
It was fun to be around all those people at the Pedder farm, and Isra had even gone in to look at the hogs for a bit, which had resulted in her telling the Pedders that a few of their hogs had problems that were worth looking into. She hadn’t said which hogs, or how to fix them, until she’d secured payment, but once that matter was out of the way, she had pointed a few things out. An outbreak of fleas could be prevented with the application of citrus, a chronically upset stomach could be alleviated with some yogurt, and a third could fix some urinary problems with a diet of cranberries. It was all small stuff, but they had been suitably impressed, and that had been worth more than the money. She’d given them a good deal, if she understood such pricing right.
The two days that Verity was gone passed quickly. Isra had been enjoying temple days, and this particular time, it had been a sermon from a cleric of Kesbin that was visiting for the wedding, a rather prominent cleric, if what Hannah said was anything to go by. The cleric of Kesbin was a small man, maybe four and a half feet tall, but he spoke with a sonorous voice, loud enough that he could be heard even toward the back of the temple. The sermon wasn’t one of what Hannah called the ‘stock sermons’, which for Kesbin were usually about death or austerity, but instead a twisting narrative about cutting yourself free from the constraints that are holding you back.
Kesbin wasn’t one of Isra’s favorites, largely based on what she had read in the holy book when she was growing up, but the sermon was comforting in a way she hadn’t expected. She came to understand that there was a framing of her journey where Kesbin — or the ideals of Kesbin as espoused by his clerics — played a central part. Growing, for Isra, meant stripping away everything that she didn’t like about her life, leaving things behind, not just the cabin in the woods, not just the life she was supposed to have lived with her father, but her entire way of interacting with people.
They talked about the sermon over the course of a late brunch, which this time was something called biscuits and gravy. Isra had thought she’d misheard or misunderstood, but no, it was several biscuits in a bowl with a sausage gravy poured over them, exactly as the name suggested. It was good though, with sage and other spices, creamy gravy with light biscuits, and there were all the usual suspects on the side, bacon and eggs, toast and jam, sometimes so much food that Isra ended up eating too much. She loved brunch.
“Seemed a bit untimely, with the wedding comin’ up, and with him bein’ one of the clerics,” Hannah had said. “And I agree, it’s the worthwhile part of Kesbin, lettin’ go of attachments that aren’t so good for you, but when you give a sermon, you’re always thinkin’ about context, ay?” Hannah liked to hold forth on religious matters, especially secret aspects to being a cleric. Isra quite enjoyed it. Expertise wasn’t something you got to see every day. It was like getting to peek behind the curtain at an opera.
“Context … meaning the wedding?” asked Mizuki. She had been busy buttering her toast.
“Just so,” said Hannah. “When you give a sermon, even a stock sermon, you think about who you’re givin’ it to, what they might be goin’ through, and so on. If there’s some big hullabaloo about somethin’, and your sermon can be taken as commentary, then it will be taken as commentary, whether you like it or not. That’s juxtaposition, it’s very important, and I wish that Verity were here, because she’d understand it from a readin’ perspective.”
“I almost never see her reading,” said Isra.
“Well, no,” said Hannah. “For her, readin’ is an expectation, a duty, since it’s one of the ‘womanly arts’ or whatever it was she called them. Pickin’ apart a book for its themes or motifs, teasin’ at structure, relatin’ it to other works, that’s what she was trained in, and we have that in common, though the focus of my learnin’ was, naturally, serious study of the gods. Still, I think she’d appreciate the idea that context is of vital importance.”
“So you’re saying that this was a deliberate choice?” asked Alfric.
“No,” said Hannah. “I’m sayin’ that if it wasn’t a deliberate choice, then it was ill-considered. And it might have many meanings, ay, because it could have communicated that the marriage was a poor match, or it could have been a way of sayin’ that when you come into a marriage you leave things behind. But I took the bad meanin’ from it, mostly down to tone.”
The evening was spent with Vertex, ‘helping’ to ‘test’ some of their new entads from a successful dungeon run, which led into a nice time chatting by the fireplace as the night grew chilly. Isra was called upon to demonstrate her druidic powers, to much amazement, which was a feeling that she was really starting to enjoy. The cat, Mr. Tabbins, was quite compliant once he’d been given a special treat of cheese, and did a number of increasingly impressive tricks for the captivated audience.
Then the next morning, Verity was back.
The concert hadn’t been quite the success that the first one had been. There were fewer seats filled, in spite of the glowing reviews, and while there were still more than enough people to make it a quite profitable venture, there had been something foul hanging in the air at the Parson house. There had been a few minor mistakes during the performance, things that only professionals would be able to pick up on, but Verity’s mother had heard about them from confederates, and they had become a topic of discussion during that final night Verity was staying there.
“She was horrible about it,” said Verity. “I tried to be understanding, but she was so mean, as though digging her claws into me was the way that she was going to make everything better. And she was fighting with my father, largely about the issue of his business, in a way that echoed through the house, enough that I could hear it from down the hallway. He was screaming at her, and she was screaming at him, and there was just nothing that I could do about it even if I wanted to, because they were both right and both wrong.” She shook her head. She seemed on the verge of tears. “Then mother came to me, and … I think it was the worst fight we’ve ever had, worse than before I left.”
“How so?” asked Isra.
~~~~
“The next concert needs to be perfect,” Verity’s mother said. She was fresh off a fight with Verity’s father, and something had shattered, possibly from being thrown, though it had been difficult to hear. It wasn’t clear which of them would have done it, since both were shouting. “I need you to spend time practicing, not going out into dungeons where you might be killed. You have a duty to this family, you were raised by us to be a proper girl, and this insolence you’re displaying, the lack of care and respect you give to this family, cannot stand.”
“I’m my own person,” said Verity. Her lips were drawn into a thin line. “I’m doing these concerts, aren’t I?”
“I can keep track of how often you practice, you know,” her mother replied. There was a sheen of sweat on her brow and a few hairs were still out of place. Normally she was perfectly put together, but the fight with Verity’s father had knocked more than just a few hairs loose. “We can see when you play the lute, and we know that you’re not putting time or effort into practice, not like you should.”
“I am,” said Verity. “And if I weren't, that would be entirely within my right.” She was feeling a mix of fear and anger. The sound of something shattering was still with her, and she worried that it might happen here. Her mother had never been violent, but her father hadn’t either, and one of them had been responsible for the sound of broken glass. “You do not own me, you do not control me, I’m performing for these enormous crowds as a favor to you, because I really do think that this family is worth something.” That feeling was leaving her though, and as she said it, she could see the lie.
“I need you to perform,” her mother replied. “To do better than you did tonight. Attendance was worse this time, and it’ll be worse the time after that given your lack of care and effort tonight, and —”
“You should count yourself lucky that I’m doing it at all,” said Verity. She grit her teeth. “From now on, I’m not staying here. I’ll get a hotel in the city, that I pay for myself. We don’t need to speak to each other.” It came out angrier than she’d wanted it to. The words had been planned, brewing, marinating, for at least a month.
“You cannot treat me this way,” Verity’s mother said. She drew herself up even straighter, like a boar rearing up for a charge. “I am your mother.”
“That means nothing to me,” said Verity. It was a barb, meant to be cruel, and it wasn’t even true. Perhaps the family wasn’t worth trying to save, but it was still her family, and she did still care.
“Do you understand what will happen to you if you leave us destitute?” her mother asked. She was leaning forward. “I will have no reason to stay in Dondrian, no money to stay in Dondrian. So I would come to you, and live in Pucklechurch with you, and if you don’t like me, then you should think about how much more you would see me.” She leaned forward, teeth bared. “I would have the time to help you work on yourself.”
Verity screamed, a single sterling note, and the bardic magic flowed out.
Her mother screamed and clutched her head, stumbling back and then fleeing out the door. Bardic magic worked on what was there, amplifying it, multiplying it, and Verity had picked her targets with the aim to inflict real damage. The fear and sadness inside her mother had been spiked, possibly up beyond what she had ever felt before, twisting like a knife. This, Verity hadn’t planned, but she had been angry, and in the moment, had given it her full force, like a slap across the face.
Her mother didn’t come back.
~~~~
“In the morning, it was like it had never happened,” said Verity. “She took me to the warp point, where my transport was waiting, and we barely spoke more than a few words to each other. To apologies, no recriminations, no litigation of what had happened. I felt incredibly guilty, and I suspect she did too, but it’s hard to say.”
“Will you do what you said?” asked Isra. “Stay in a hotel, stop speaking with her?”
“I don’t know,” said Verity. “Yes. If I can manage. What she said though, that she would stay in Pucklechurch out of pure spite, made me feel like there’s no possible way that we could ever reconcile.” She let out a shaky breath, and for a moment it seemed like she would be fine, but then the dam broke, and she started crying.
“Shh, it’s going to be okay,” said Isra. She had learned, from Verity, that sometimes people just wanted to hear something good. “We’ll get through this, we’ll leave if we have to.”
When Verity had finished crying, she pulled back and wiped her nose and face with a handkerchief. “I had never done that before, used bardic magic against someone.”
“It’s good to know that it works,” said Isra.
Verity shook her head. “I’m never doing it again.” She sniffed.
“I don’t think it was a terrible thing to do,” said Isra. She kissed Verity on the nose. “You were angry with her. It’s good you showed that anger.”
“It was like hitting her,” said Verity. She shook her head.
“Sometimes, some people need to be hit,” said Isra. “You shouldn’t feel bad about it.”
“You can’t do that,” said Verity. “You can’t just punch someone because they were making you angry.”
“Why not?” asked Isra.
Verity looked at her. “Are you asking because you don’t know?”
“I …,” said Isra, at a loss for words. She wasn’t exactly sure why she’d asked, whether it was rhetorical or not. “If someone was treating me like your mother treats you, I would think about whether hurting her might make her stop. She uses propriety as a shield.”
“There was nothing proper about that fight,” said Verity. “Sorry, it’s just … I feel wretched about what I did, and I don’t want to be told that it was just and right. It wasn’t.”
Isra didn’t fully understand, and tried to be okay with that. There were, in life, things that didn’t make sense, like biscuits and gravy, and her way thus far had been to wait until the mystery would some day resolve itself, or to ask questions that would illuminate something that everyone else took for granted. But here, the guilt that Verity obviously felt seemed misplaced, and Isra had no idea what, if anything, she was supposed to do about it.
They had spent the rest of the day together, and largely talked about how they’d passed the days while they worked on the garden, which was now late enough into the season to be bearing some actual produce. Isra talked about the wedding, and what she was planning to do for it. They were all pitching in, one way or another. Isra had expected that Verity would offer to play something, though the music was already secured for both the ceremony and the reception, but she said nothing about it.
Two days passed with the quiet rhythms of the house staying about as they had been. The blocks they’d taken from the dungeon were sold in Liberfell, which took very little time, as they were unloaded by a merchant with a telekinetic entad. Isra went shopping with Verity, and that did seem to cheer Verity up, mostly because fashion was an area of expertise for her. By the time they were returning home, Verity’s mood seemed to have lifted, and over dinner, she seemed genuinely happy.
Then the next day was the wedding, and Alfric woke them all early.
~~~~
“Alright,” he said as Verity was still yawning. “This is my second time through the day. The wedding is just after lunch, so we’ve got some time, but there are things that need to get done, and we’re the ones that are going to do them.”
“Why us?” asked Verity, having finished her yawn.
Alfric smiled. “You all volunteered,” he said.
“If I ever find the girl who roped me into this, I’ll give her a piece of my mind,” said Verity.
“You don’t want to help?” asked Isra. “Bethany is a friend to the party. She runs our wardrobe.”
“I don’t want to help in the morning,” said Verity. She looked at Alfric. “But I will, obviously. I just don’t want to. I want to go back to sleep.”
“I’ve scheduled a nap for you, plus you have your napping entad,” said Alfric, nodding. “And there should be coffees all around, the water is heating up now.”
“Lovely,” said Verity. “How can we help?”
“Mizuki, flowers,” said Alfric, turning to her. “The florist was delayed thanks to a ley line problem, which meant that Isra had to help with scrounging up flowers from the countryside, and it wasn’t quite what Bethany wanted. One of our jobs will be to fly far to the north, put the flowers into the garden stone, then fly back. It should be about four hours round trip.”
“Four hours in the air by myself?” asked Mizuki. “Deal.”
“Hannah, clerical intervention,” said Alfric. “It turns out that the cleric of Kesbin has designs on the bride, and while he won’t make a scene, it’s something that you can politely let him know isn’t going to happen. He made his attempt in an undone day, and it didn’t work out. Bethany doesn’t want a confession from him, doesn’t want to know about a confession, and he agreed that he’d rather the whole thing just didn’t happen.”
“Wait, but we get to know?” asked Mizuki. “I’m not sure that seems fair.”
“It was one of my conditions,” said Alfric. “No secrets from the party. So yes, this is the kind of thing that you shouldn’t gossip about.” He turned to Isra. “No bear. It was a bad idea. The birds worked out well though. We’re going to go with a moose instead, I believe that was part of your original plan.”
“The reason I wanted a bear instead of a moose was that a moose would be harder to find,” said Isra. She crossed her arms. “I suppose I volunteered to find a moose and bring it back to Pucklechurch?”
“You did,” smiled Alfric. “You looked at a map and said that there was a lake some miles to the south that might have one. I’ve already got word out to Xy, and she’ll cart you to the right area.”
Isra felt a bit uncomfortable about that, given their recent history. Xy hadn’t actually come between Isra and Verity, not in a real, tangible way, but Isra had been left with a sense of threat, the odor of a rival in the air. “I can get you a moose, or at least try. They have a large range. And if I can’t?”
“Then we’ve got backup plans,” said Alfric. “In the worst case scenario, there’s no animal involved, which would be fine.”
“None of this seems like it was worth undoin’ the day, ay?” asked Hannah. “Unless the bear mauled someone.”
“It pooped in the temple,” said Alfric. “And it also made some people nervous, a few children were crying. Bethany had liked the idea, but so long as we’re changing things, this was one of the things that needed changing.”
“So why’s the day been undone?” asked Hannah.
“There was a fight,” said Alfric. “A portion of the Pedder clan wasn’t invited, apparently, and they crashed the wedding, which resulted in a brawl among the tables. We had clerics there for healing, but it was the closest I’ve ever seen to an actual act of war. Also, the pigs were over-salted.”
“Not the pigs!” said Mizuki.
“I’ve already dealt with that though,” said Alfric. “I made it to the Pedder farm just after the witching hour, when they were getting ready to put the pigs in the pit, and talked to them. They had accidentally added twice the salt they meant to.”
“Sounds like this wedding was cursed,” said Mizuki. “Are you sure we should be messing with it?”
“Look, if all this work can’t save the wedding from being a disappointment, then it doesn’t deserve to be saved,” said Alfric. “But there’s work for us to put in, and you all agreed to do it. Obviously you can back out, but I don’t expect you to. Once it’s done, we can sit back, relax, and enjoy the festivities.”
“There’s nothing for me to do?” asked Verity.
“You’re with me,” said Alfric. “We’re going to talk to the errant Pedders, partly as muscle, partly so I can explain things. We’re leaving soon, with Pa Pedder and the boys. If the fight breaks out there, that’s okay, we can get everyone patched up and be back in time, we just don’t want it at the reception.”
“So you’re taking me to a fight,” said Verity. “And I agreed to that?”
“There are other things we need to do along the way,” said Alfric. “You did offer.”
“I suppose I must have,” said Verity with a frown. “But this is all we’re getting for disclosure? You spent the day with us.”
“I did,” said Alfric. “There’s not all that much to talk about. We had a calm morning, went to the ceremony, then the reception, then home. Ate some salty pork, drank, danced, watched the fight break out, watched the life of the party be snuffed out, and then planned for how we would fix it all.”
“Who’d I dance with?” asked Mizuki.
“Me, mostly,” said Alfric with a nonchalant shrug. “The youngest of the Pedder boys danced with you, and I think you exchanged words, but you didn’t offer up anything, and I didn’t ask.”
“But we had fun?” asked Verity.
“The whole party was a bust,” said Alfric. “So in part, we’re doing this for ourselves. But we’re also doing it for approximately five hundred people who want to have a good time.” He looked at Verity. “We should get going soon.”
“Alright,” said Verity. She leaned over and kissed Isra on the cheek. “I’m grabbing my coffee first though.”
Everyone filtered off to do their own things, and Isra was left alone in the kitchen, eating a cold breakfast of ham and pickled eggs. She did like the idea that their party was going to single-handedly save a disastrous wedding, but she didn’t particularly like that they were splitting up to do it.
Xy came by the house not long after Isra had finished her cup of coffee.
“Xy,” said Xy, holding out her hand. “I’m not sure we’ve really met?”
“Isra,” said Isra, taking the hand. “So … how are we doing this?”
“Here,” said Xy. She held up a fist-sized gem, green with hard edges, like an emerald. It was capped on either point with metal, and at the top was a chain. “You’re going to get inside this.”
“Entad?” asked Isra, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes,” said Xy. “You’ll be totally safe, it’s actually pretty cool. We’ll zip along, you’ll capture the moose, then we’ll come right back, and it’ll all be hunky-dory.”
“You can transport a moose?” asked Isra.
“Before this morning I couldn’t,” said Xy. “But the Pedders have an entad for animal transport, moving hogs and stuff, so it should be fine. Now, I looked at a map and we’re going way to the south, about forty miles?”
Isra hesitated. “I’m not sure how easy it will be to find a moose. I’m only going off what I know. They do come up near Pucklechurch now and then, but their range is more southern.”
“Well, we’ll figure it out,” smiled Xy. “Are you ready? We’ll still be able to talk as we go.”
“Talk?” asked Isra.
“If you want,” said Xy. She looked Isra over. “Do you look different from the last time I saw you?”
“I don’t know when the last time you saw me was,” said Isra. She was standing back, still in the doorway. “But yes, I probably do look different.”
“Suits you, whatever you did. Also, can I go pee real quick?” asked Xy. “Always better to run on an empty bladder.”
“Sure,” said Isra, opening the door. “It’s upstairs, to the left.”
Xy stepped into the house, making no pretense of not being curious, and stopped dead when she saw the three dragons, who were all tussling with each other in the living room, as they sometimes did.
“Herb dragons,” Isra explained. “We took them out of a dungeon when they were just eggs.”
Isra reached out with her mind, pushing a bit of herself into Lerial, the largest of the dragons. Almost at once, she disengaged from the play-fighting and hopped up onto the couch, then went over to sniff at Xy. Isra watched Xy through the dragon’s eyes, smelling through the dragon’s nose, and when Xy reached out a hand, nipped at her finger with the dragon’s mouth.
Xy was pretty. One side of her head had the hair cut short, like a freshly reaped field of wheat, and the boyish way she dressed, with overalls and heavy boots, had its own particular appeal. Her smile was infectious, her eyes bright and expressive. Isra could see the appeal.
“I would love to play with one of these when we come back,” said Xy. “If that would be okay?”
“If you want to,” said Isra. “There’s also a dog.”
“A dog?” laughed Xy.
On cue, Emperor came down the stairs, and Xy instinctively backed away from him before taking him in. It was harder for Isra to get in Emperor’s head, maybe because he was so smart, or possibly because he was resisting her in a way that most animals couldn’t. Even when she tried her older methods, talking to him as though he was a person, he had an instinct to rebuff her, and she had mostly stopped trying. Still, Emperor was a smart dog, and had four hundred years of training, so he held out his paw for Xy to shake.
“Amazing,” she said. “He’s huge.”
“He’s a dungeon dog,” said Isra. “Not ours, we’re just keeping him for a bit.”
“He’s a good boy,” said Xy, patting his head and then scratching him behind the ears. “But I really do need to pee, and then we need to get going so we’re not late for the wedding, sorry for taking time with your pets.”
It was another few minutes before they were ready to go, and by that time, Isra had warmed to Xy, if only a little bit. The idea that she was a competitor, an animal that might disrupt the mating process, was starting to fade away. Mostly she seemed like a happy, pleasant girl with a lot of energy and enthusiasm for life.
The gem was entered by encircling it with your fingers, and once she was inside, Isra was looking out on the world from within it. She was like a figurine trapped in green amber, though there was no tint from the outside. Her positioning was strangely still, the floor not tilting as the crystal swung at Xy’s hip, and for a moment it was unsettling, but once Isra closed her eyes, the nauseous feeling went away.
“Alright, we’re ready,” said Xy. She was out of the house and looking down the road. “Some people get sick, but if you do, just close your eyes.” There was something almost scratchy about her voice, but it did come through to the crystal just fine, even if other sounds didn’t.
“I already did,” said Isra. “I can see through the animals though.”
“Oh, right, druid,” said Xy. “I forgot that you have a bunch of special powers.”
Isra watched from a crow’s eyes as Xy took off down the road. She was fast, faster than even the flying helm, whose speed sometimes felt ludicrous. It was almost so fast that Isra couldn’t find something to watch her with fast enough, since by the time she had located a bird in the right area, Xy would already have almost passed.
“It’s so fast,” said Isra.
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Xy laughed. “On an open road, pointed directly at a ley line, I can get up to ninety miles an hour.”
“What happens if you crash?” asked Isra.
“We don’t,” replied Xy. “Once I’m up to speed it’s all instinct, and instinct is never wrong.”
This was perhaps meant to be reassuring, but in Isra’s experience, instinct could be wrong quite often. She saw it with animals all the time, especially the smaller, jumpier ones that would dart away at the slightest sound. Instincts could save an animal’s life, but they were wrong quite often. It was entirely possible that a cartier had different instincts, something that would never fail to save them as they whipped past fields and towns, but this was magic, not true instinct. As fast as she was going, if Xy ran into a tree, her body would be shattered and broken — but apparently that never happened, and if it could happen, then people would probably not work as cartiers.
“I’ve heard you’ve been traveling a lot,” said Xy. “Over to Plenarch, up to Dondrian?”
“And to Liberfell,” said Isra.
“To me that’s hardly travel,” said Xy. Now that she was moving, her voice was different, caught by the wind and given a rhythm by the thumping of her feet against the ground. “Ten minutes or so from here to there. But I was going to ask how you like it, being in different places. From what people’ve said about you, you spent your whole life in the woods near Pucklechurch.”
Isra thought about that, especially about the phrase ‘people have said’, wondering which people, and why they might be talking about her. She knew why though, she was a druid, and she’d made a splash at the Gardening Club, she’d been talking to people, she’d demonstrated her powers when there was a dungeon escape — it would be weird if they weren’t talking about this mysterious girl from the woods with power over animals and plants, especially when she’d been showing off. But a part of her was still worried that she was being weird in a bad way, and that people were saying bad things, privately scoffing at her naivety.
“Plenarch was good,” said Isra. “Dondrian was a bit overwhelming. It’s hard to know a city from just one visit.” She hadn’t actually thought that she would be talking with Xy all that much.
“Oh, I agree on that,” said Xy. “And a city isn’t just one place, it’s a bunch of places all together, a bunch of neighborhoods and districts and things. I love to travel though, you always get to see new things, new people, new foods — I wish that it were easier for other people. But you’re dungeoneers, you’ll get a lot of travel in.”
“We will,” Isra agreed. “I want to see the jungles.”
“Jungles are great,” said Xy. “Deserts too. A year ago I did the cartier grand tour, went all around the world over the course of about two months.”
“Wow,” said Isra. “You run over water?”
“You can run over water,” said Xy. “But you need to be going at least seventy miles an hour, and that’s not always possible, especially with a headwind, so if you’re crossing the ocean and the winds change, you slow down, your feet start sinking into the water, and then that slows you down more, and eventually you’re swimming, which doesn’t work for cartiers. Then you have to warp and hope that someone has a warp point set up in the ocean, or you’re going to die.”
“That happens?” asked Isra.
“You’ve gotta be pretty dumb to run across the ocean without a plan,” said Xy. “I’ve done it, but it was pretty dumb.”
“Then why do it?” asked Isra.
“Just to be free,” said Xy. “Feel the wind in my hair as I raced across salty water, watched some fish below me … I don’t know, you just do, you know? I loved it. I was off by myself, between nations, no one for miles, and there was a point where I was sure I was the only one in the entire hex. Go anywhere, do anything — ugh, it was great. Super stupid though.”
“You’d do it again?” asked Isra.
“Run across the ocean?” asked Xy. “Yeah, sure, I’d just be smarter. And now I’ve got an entad to take me home, so I wouldn’t drown.”
“That takes the fun out of it,” said Isra.
“Yeah,” laughed Xy. “You get it.”
For a time, Isra was silent, watching the run through the eyes of birds but not offering much in the way of conversation. Sometimes she would try to hold onto an animal’s vision for as long as possible, watching as the leaves settled in Xy’s wake, but she could only do that for a few minutes at most. The trees must have been zipping by Xy so fast they were a blur, but Isra didn’t open her eyes to look out of the crystal, worried that it would make her sick.
“So, you and Isra?” asked Xy as she sped over a lake. Isra was watching from the eyes of fishes, looking up to see the splashing steps and rippling footprints.
“Yes,” said Isra.
“Hope I didn’t make things awkward,” said Xy.
“No,” said Isra, though that didn’t feel entirely honest, and she felt a twinge of guilt.
Isra could see the attraction that Verity had felt, and in fact, felt a bit of it herself. Xy was comfortable in her own skin, divorced from society in a way that was easy to envy, confident and sure-footed. It was, in some sense, what had attracted Verity to Isra, though that wasn’t who Isra was anymore, and probably wasn’t who Isra had ever been. She hadn’t been fearless and confident, she’d been stand-offish because she knew that she didn’t know the right words, stoic because it was easier not to show her confusion.
They talked more, but about less serious things, like the animals of the world, and some of the exotic things that Xy had seen in her time traveling. There were odd animals in the world, some of them benign dungeon escapes, some of them more likely natural, odd plants that had been allowed to grow and take over, a type of desert moss that carpeted a specific desert in Tarbin, a cherry tree that grew a hundred feet tall in Kiromo, enough details to fill Isra with a secondhand wanderlust. Isra offered what she could, but she could only match the breadth of Xy’s experience by her personal depth of knowledge about the area around Pucklechurch. Xy was a good listener though, and responded with enthusiasm.
They arrived at the lake as Isra was explaining about the local ‘naked’ hares, which would shed their fur when a predator came too close. She came out of the crystal, feeling momentarily unsteady on her feet, and Xy helped to steady her.
The lake was a wide one, though it couldn’t hope to rival the Proten Lakes, and Isra spread her essence out wide, in a way that she once would have called ‘looking hard’. She looked through the eyes of birds, sending them high into the air to get a good view, and was starting to despair before she saw a moose moving through the shallow water on the banks of the lake, pondweed in his antlers.
“There,” Isra said, pointing across the way.
“So, what, do I need to run you over there?” asked Xy.
“No,” said Isra. “The moose will swim.”
As they watched, it made its way through the water, splashing about. Isra was digging deeper into its mind. It was odd how helpful it was to know how druid powers functioned, how giving different names to the processes could help her grow her ability.
“Come along,” she said as the moose drew near. It was feeling some fear at the sight of them, though more wariness than outright terror. They were smaller than it was by a good margin, and if it had wanted to, it could stomp them to death. Isra was confident that it would listen to her instructions though, and she did her best to get him to understand that they were friendly. “We’re not going to hurt you, we’re friends, we just want to take you for a little trip. You’ll get plenty of treats, fruits and flowers, and then we’ll bring you right back here.”
“Does it help to talk to him?” asked Xy.
“Yes,” said Isra as the moose drew near. “He doesn’t understand the words, but can sense what I want from him.” It was more complicated than that, but the metaphor was still alluring, and it was what Isra had the most practice with.
“So it’s like being in bed with a foreign girl,” said Xy. She gave Isra a grin.
“Does that … work?” asked Isra, her mind momentarily off the moose. “You get someone in bed without sharing a language?”
Xy laughed. “Eyes on the moose, please.”
“He’s fine,” said Isra as the moose came up to them, striding out of the water. He shook his fur, getting only partially dry, and it occurred to Isra that they would need to give this moose a bath and a brush to get him looking nice for the wedding. He seemed compliant enough though, now that he was close enough, and Isra pressed her hand against his muzzle, trying her best to feel a connection that a year ago, she would have mistaken for something else.
“You make overtures,” said Xy. “Find a pretty girl with a Garos pin, lay your hand on hers, pull her up to the dance floor, talk with expressions and put on a big smile to show you’re having a good time. Language is nice, but I’ve found that it’s secondary, most of the time. You can travel through a country where you don’t speak a single word, it’s not all that hard. Helps if you have a phrase book though.”
“Mmm,” said Isra. She looked up at the moose. She was worried that it was too tall, but they needed something big if Bethany was going to ride it. The antlers were nice and fuzzy, but the moose had a slight limp from a broken bone that had never set right, and a few of the moose’s teeth were rotten. “We’re going to get you some help, that’s another part of your payment.”
“Payment … to a moose?” asked Xy.
“It’s rude to take him from this place,” said Isra. “So we offer payment for his service.”
“Druid thing, then?” asked Xy.
“I suppose,” said Isra. “It feels right to help those who help you.”
“I won’t argue with that,” said Xy. “I was offered some food and a good party, along with my usual, if I helped out today. I guess the moose deserves some fair wages too. Can I put him in the conch?” She was already reaching into her travel bag, and pulled out a shell.
“Go ahead,” said Isra.
Xy pressed the conch against the moose’s nose, and he disappeared, momentarily leaving four gaps in the water where his hooves had been.
“The Pedders told me that the animals actually like it, though I don’t know how they’d know,” said Xy.
“I can’t sense it,” said Isra.
“Well, are you ready to head back?” asked Xy. “I think we’ve got a lot of time left, but there’s a moose to clean.” She smiled at Isra, then narrowed her eyes a bit, as though thinking about a tough problem. “You and Verity are exclusive?”
“Yes,” said Isra. She swallowed. “We should get back.”
“Of course,” said Xy. “We’ve got a moose to prepare for a wedding.”
Comments
AnotherWord
This chapter was such a delight.
fbt
nice bit, ty!
