Field trip.
The Barracuda up and running again, Silence drives up to Volo Bog. He avoids the most direct V-45 highway, instead taking a smaller highway north along the shore of the lake, only swinging west when he intersects the A-26 that will take him right past the north edge of the Bog. Neither he nor Ruhiger being the talkative type, the trip passes largely in silence — a half-sanded, ugly as shit Plymouth rolling north through the hazy golden afternoon light of a plains spring day.
The trip takes an hour or so. A few miles away from the Bog proper, Decker leaves the highway for a rutted dirt road. He parks the car in a ditch and uses the rearview mirror to cross into the Umbra. From there, Silence — wolf-formed — lopes steadily southwest into the Bog.
[Ruhiger] Neither of them are the talkative type, and AnneMarie has been even more silent then usual – if that is possible. The trip passed in relative quiet, but for the Barracuda, of course.
Once the car stops, she uses the side view mirror to study her reflection, and crosses over but a moment behind Silence. Once she shifts to matching form, she follows Silence toward the bog, a half a step or two behind and on his left.
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] Small rolling hills bristle with forests; now and then, the view opens up, but only so far as the next valley. There are times in Maelstrom’s Caern when one has a sense of vastness – of distance – the great plains, flat from the horizon to the horizon, and the sky endless, everything below it inconsequential. The land is different here; so close to Chicago, so close to the plains; the sky has less resonance. The horizon is simply the point at which one’s line of sight breaks against the next rolling hill. Now and then, there is a break in the trees, some minor summit topped, and they can see the glittering disc of a glacial lake in the near distance.
The land here is not so corrupted as it is south of the Hive, but the glade children are twisted and sickly, blighted if not yet corrupted, their branches as yet bare, their eyes closed, their growth stunted. Once, Silence catches sight of something in the distance, its many and oddly jointed carapace whirring as it clicks otherwise silently through the trees. It stills once, its jointed maw opening wide as if it were gulping air, then it reorients itself south and continues its many legged crawl through the trees, away from the two Garou.
Soon enough, the land begins to slope down again, then flattens; Silence can scent water in the air, or at least the damp. The quality and character of the trees has started to change – interstitially – they become shorter, dotted with evergreens; for all that it is afternoon, tendrils of mist float passingly through the trees.
[Silence] While they run, Silence speaks on totemphone. Their bodies slide effortlessly into that heightened steady-state that marathon runners and wolves knew: a pace where the heartbeat is quickened, the breathing deep but still slow, and the entirety of one’s awareness becomes a little more finely honed. They are not pushing themselves; they are setting, and keeping, a pace.
Imogen been lookin’ inta this. Tha Bog usedta be owned by some… family ‘r somethin’, I think, ’til a coupla years back tha Hollin’becks got hold’a it. ‘s still pertected by law so they cain’t do nothin’ but hold onta it ‘n keep people out, though. Imogen found some tapes’a some kin who snooped ’round here. Talked ta some old Injun woman out in … Oklahoma ‘r somethin’. Her tribe come from these parts. They have a story ’bout a moon-water woman ‘n a fire-god, ‘n some water dancer people that worshipped ’em led by some shaman man. When tha people left this place they split up, one goin’ with each’a tha shaman’s three sons. His three daughters ‘n him s’pposedly stayed behind. ‘ventually they say the moon-water woman vanished ‘r somethin’ on tha way ta Oklahoma, ‘r maybe vanished back where they left ‘er behind, but tha fire-god was still there. ‘r here.
A pause.
I don’t ‘member all tha details ‘n she weren’t too clear ’bout ’em. I got tha tape somewhere if ya wanna hear it. Perty confusin’, but sounds a l’il like a garou legend told by humans. ‘r maybe kin that fergot. Old woman said somethin’ like ain’t nobody seen water-walkers per generations, so. Could be lost kin. ‘n tha moon-water ‘n fire-god shit sounds a bit like spirits, big’guns.
Anyhow, ya see how this place looks, all corrupted ‘n shit? ‘Gen says tha Bog’s so clean even tha humans kin tell. Water quality measurements ‘n shit. She thinks maybe it has somethin’ ta do with the ‘gods’ in tha story. We’re here ta see if we kin find some sign’a them, ‘r maybe these three daughters that s’pposedly stayed behind.
[Ruhiger] It is exhillerating, running like this. Muscles stretch and contract, body falls into a steady movement that seems like it could last for days, weeks. There’s a cadence that is soothing, the monster within contained and controlled, yet thrilling in every movement. Deeper breaths, elevated heartrate, sheer delight in the effort, in the run.
As she moves, she listens to the larger gray wolf by her side. Across the totem he tells a tale with less eloquence then detail, with a stripping of the extras from his tongue to give the details remembered.
There’s a sense of accent, of acknowledgment, of understanding – such as it is. They seek the daughters, or the god. Most of all, they seek answers.
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] The mist begins to coalesce and thicken; the trees continue to change, from tall, slender deciduous trees – oak, locust, shagbark hickory, white ash, hackberry, redbuds and dogwoods give way to a bristling line of understory trees, the narrow, mismatched lines of the tamaracks, their needles still golden from the autumn and winter, not yet green with spring.
It is a world of browns and grays; the sky is a memory, although it is difficult to tell when that happened. Wolves do not navigate by the sun or stars, after all. As the scent of water grows stronger, so does the land beneath their feet; so do the trees around them seem to growth healthier, the blackscale rot afflicting bark and branch becomes more rare. The tendrils of mists become banks; visibility sometimes drops to more than two paces ahead of them, then opens up for another half-dozen yards through the trees.
Silence leaps across a deadfall and lands below, in a narrow defile with a small seeping spring, the waters no more than a scant three inches deep where they pool on the damp mast of the changing forest floor.
The trees here are close together, narrow marching rows, with shallow systems of knotty roots just beneath the surface of the ground that breach the soil, the debris like knotty, arthritic joints. The mists have closed in around them again; they can see no further than the first rank of trees, which march around the small clearing like dark ribs in a white field. Then, abruptly, a hissing sound, like flesh being stripped, living, wet, from tissue below: the line of white between the trees breaks as a living spirit of murder – all flayed bones and acid suggestion – staggers through the row like a drunk walking the deck of a ship in the middle of a raging storm, disoriented, near-broken, forward.
[Silence] The mist is thick as pea soup here. It brings to mind an unpleasant memory — another place, another spat of thick mist, and a pack and then some of garou stuck, trapped, rats in a cage.
The big grey wolf pulls up short upon sighting the murder-spirit. He stands silently in the shallows, the water stirring the feathery fur at the backside of his forelegs. Head up, tail angled down but out, he watches the creature shamble its way along. For a moment, hopeful, he watches to see if it was making a beeline toward something — or rather, away from something. No such luck. The thing is addled, wavering, and he has only the vaguest sense of where it came from.
No matter then. Without warning, Silence falls upon it, claw and tooth, meaning to shred it and see if it dropped any clues. (Because like certain video games, monsters always drop potentially valuable things — right?)
[Silence]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Silence] (+20!)
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] Scrag
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7
[Ruhiger] There were times, as they ran, that she could not see Silence ahead of her, the thickness of the mist too much to see through. In the way of pack, however, she always seems to know where he is, and as she jumps over the deadfall, she lands in exactly the position she started out as – a foot or two away, and behind her Alpha.
She crouches, slightly, as the murder-spirit comes into view, shambling and wandering. She watches – just as Silence pounces.
(wits +7 +whatever form mods. because I never go about in lupus so have no clue. *L*)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] Silence leaps; there’s a bone-leavened purity in the movement; a pulverized poety: brutal and efficient, fast and then faster. The scrag stumbles by, its long scalpal fingers leaving raw furrows in the damp mast, slicing effortlessly through the ephemeral leaves and needles lining the forest floor. It looks directly at both Fenrir – just once – red eyes gleaming inside the deep cavities of its shadowed skull, but does not seem to register their presence. It makes no feral, hostile moves. It does not even so much as hiss a dry-dust warning against further interference. Instead, it stumbles forward, brushing down a fan of tamarack branches, catches itself with its listing arm, then staggers on.
The moment passes. Silence leaps; Ruhiger can feel the power in it; the poetry in it as he moves; she sees him snap his jaws around the foetid creature’s spine, hears the crack, scents the rotten marrow, the familiar, undertaste, graverot, pungent in the air. Her Alpha rolls over, continuing his leap, literally whipping the thing from its scrabbling feet by its cracked spine and then the heavy white mist closes in; she can hear her Alpha’s breath, the spirit’s confused whine just before another powerful bite ends what remained of its life – but the sound seems to come from her right flank, and just behind her, above the deadfall, not ahead of her, and to her left flank, the path he took.
For his part, Silence rolls over, the taste of death myrrh-bitter on his tongue, sharp and pungent. The scrag is already dissipating, folding back into a handful of bones and winding cloth and gleaming, sharpbladed scalpels on the damp ground. Like Ruhiger, however, he finds himself alone, in a damp and silent collation of trees. He can hear the trickle of water, but it comes from ahead of him, rather than behind. Something above him, some sound, a dance of claws on dry branches.
[Ruhiger] (per+enigmas)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Silence]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 4, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Silence] (HAIL KAHSEENO!)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10 (Failure at target 8)
[Ruhiger] She crouches, hackles raising, watching and listening as Silence disappears into the mist and sounds get distorted. She shifts to hispo then, waiting, strong and powerful, as she listens intently to the confusing distortion of sound.
Pale gaze narrows, as she sweeps the area, as if by will alone she could see into the mist and what exists there..
[Silence] Through the mist — landing — alone.
Again.
For a moment, a stark, bonechilling moment, an oppressive sense of claustrophobia is in his throat. He forces it down, just as he forces down the bile that rises at the taste of the dead-thing he has killed. Slackening his jaws, he lets it drop dissipating onto the ground, getting to his four feet. His attention turns inward. He presses against the soft wall of the gauntlet and is relieved when it begins to give, his extremities turning transparent. The hispo-wolf draws back from the brink, back into the penumbra.
His ears swivel; he turns in place, pivoting on his powerful hindquarters. The water catches his attention; the thing above, even more so. Taking a page from Hyde’s book he … checks “up”.
Simultaneously, he nudges his totembond: Kin ya hear me?
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] There is a small, brilliantly colored frog sitting on the branch of a tamarack tree to her left. It is about the size of a toddler’s fist, and the green is an astonishing hude, absolutely emerald, with an irridescent sheen across its back.
to Ruhiger
[Ruhiger] Yes.
She narrows her gaze at the branch of the Tamarack tree on her left. studying the brilliantly colored frog seen there. Like animal planet poisonous frog coloring – that can’t be good.
Can’t see anything – sound distorted. There’s a frog on a branch… colored like the bad ones on the discovery channel… other then that, nothing….
[Silence] I got a raven.
Slowly, the great direwolf turns to face it — or the best he can, anyway, what with it sitting so far above him.
White one.
Experimentally, Silence barks at it: a soft, gruff sound that barely parts his jaws.
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] The mists do not seem solid; they move. There are shadows in the pallor; or perhaps she stares at them too long. Abruptly, she can hear a soft bark – it comes from well behind her, a good half-mile, she would judge.
to Ruhiger
[Ruhiger] Her head snaps to the side, and brow furrows deeply in thought as she turns in a circle, only to come back to look at – or for – the Frog again. The bark is…
You are farther away? Sound way behind me now…
It is disconcerting, and frustrating for the Mute Modi. She depends much on her hearing, on her eyesight, on how clear things are since she is without voice. She shakes her head, clears her mind, and tries not to stare at the shadows to judge if they remain still, or really move. While keeping an eye on that frog, of course.
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] The frog stares back at her. She can see her long lupus snout reflected in its bulbous eyes. As she turns a circle, the amphibian (…spirit) stretches out a delicate forelimb as if to test the space before it; then it gathers itself and leaps – astonishingly – to the head of the small circle she made. She passes between a pair of Tamarack trees, ground seeping between her paws, her weight sinking her a good half-inch into the already waterlogged ground; but when she completes the circuit, she has not returned to the spring and its clearing; instead, she stands beside a jagged stump of a tree, in bracken up to her withers. The frog sits atop the stump: watching.
to Ruhiger
[Silence] Black eye to gray eye, the raven stares at the direwolf stares at the raven. This could go on all night.
Then Silence sits on his haunches, throws back his head, and lets loose a howl. It’s a rare thing for him. He isn’t fond of yawping; seemed to do it only when necessary. It’s not a beautiful thing, this howl, but it’s savage and raw, and far above — something answers, screaming across the night sky.
Silence calls his totem down: a monstrous raptor, like some madman’s impressionistic painting of an eagle spreading its wings across the sky. Where light touches it, the bird-of-prey is solid, all lightning eyes and golden pinions. Where shadows fall, it seems to dissolve into a murky nothingness touched with crawling veins of electricity — like the underbelly of a thunderhead.
I ain’t moved, he replies briefly to Ruhiger. Gonna try ta talk to tha raven. So far ‘s jus’ sittin’ there lookin’ at me.
The hispo backs up a few slow steps, the posture of his head and shoulders indicating this is no retreat, only a sign of … solidarity, of sorts. He sits on his haunches again and shifts, the shoulders widening, the chest flattening and widening, the hindlegs lengthening. The totem descends, and all laws of perspective seem to have been broken. Once, long ago, Eagle lifted Silence into the sky, into the Aetherial Realm. He was sky-high, sky-wide then. He had gripped the whole of the modi’s crinos form in his talons like an eagle with a salmon, effortlessly, mercilessly. Tonight, diving, Eagle diminishes and solidifies until it is merely a large eagle, large but nothing spectacular, perched on the white-ruffed shoulder of the now-Crinos Modi. It doesn’t matter; his eyes are still full of lightning.
“Speak for me, Mighty Eagle,” murmurs his Fenrir-touched Garou speech. Addressing the Raven now (and when did it earned the capital on its name, anyway?): “Where am I?”
[Ruhiger] Staredowns with irridescent frogs. This is not exactly how she planned to spend her evening, of course. but then again, she hadn’t planned anything. The spin completed, the frog jumps, and she…
shit. the mental curse is low, tense but no less explosive.
She acknowledges that Silence hasn’t moved with more of a feeling then actual communication. She’s a little busy trying to figure out how she got sunk a bit into soggy ground, and up to her haunches in bracken next to a stump that wasn’t there before.
Ah, but the Frog is still there. Naturally. She leans forward, just a bit, and huffs a breath of air toward him. More of a snort, a sort of question, in air without sound.
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] She turned a circle; but the circle lead elsewhere, and its endpoint was noplace she had seen before. The ground here is saturated, the sharp pungence of peat fills her nostrils; if she backs up two steps, the small divots in the ground left by her forepaws remain impressions in the matt of soil and vegegation, gradually filling with tannin-laced waters.
She whuffs, leaning forward toward the frog; the delicate thing leaps away, forward, landing the tall, slender stalk of a young locust tree, bending it almost double over to the ground. She can hear Silence’s howl ahead of her, immediately ahead of her, so close it that the sound of it rings in her ear for long seconds later; so close she feels almost compelled to join in.
to Ruhiger
[Ruhiger] She backs up a step and watches her pawprint fill with water even as she jerks her head up, ears swiveling forward. Silence is RIGHT there. So close she can feel the howl, so close it rings in her ears and sounds loud reverbs through her mind.
There is an urge, primal and true, that speaks to the animal’s [monster’s] soul – wanting to join in a howl is one of them. She has never had that privilege, she has never had the ability, and sometimes, when it is this close, when the triumph sounded is right. ahead. of. her – sometimes she bemoans what she is, and how the deformity – so deceptively mild, changes everything.
A step forward, and then a second. Toward the frog, toward the howl of her Alpha.
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] She paces forward; just two steps. The ground gives further, but the mists grow more opa
to Ruhiger
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] The ground gives further; when she steps down, when she presses her full hispo weight forward, her paws sink into peat almost to the ankles; the ground sucks at her feet, and the mists – if anything – grow denser and more obscuring. The howl comes again; this time, it is so close than she can feel its physical rumble through the ground beneath her feet, like an earthquake. And every step she takes, cautious or otherwise, the frog watches, then backleaps, disappears, only to reemerge a half second later, perched on a floating, rotting log, or the slender stalk of a tall reed.
to Ruhiger
[Ruhiger] Cautious, or otherwise. She is at a disadvantage here, and frustration grows within the Modi. She watches the Frog, and where it reemerges, and disappears. He is always ahead of her, leaping backwards; leading or just staying out of reach she has no idea which.
A decision made, and she gathers herself, and without any further warning, leaps ahead as far as she can.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] Ruhiger leaps; she leaps forward, wild and mighty. The mists part, as do the trees. She has an impression of vast vegetative space shivering forward into open water; the sky above. Already, it is night, and a Luna is brilliant above, her gibbous face coy in the velvet darkness. The mists take on a luminous silver glow, absolutely touched with light. The hispo gains her feet on a hummock of land too saturated with water to support her weight. She scrabbles for purchase, struggling – sinking – but the saturated land here cannot support her weight and is already giving way, to the looming impression of open water beyond.
Across the water, she could swear that she hears the silvered sound of a woman’s laughter, rising, and through the clear water, she sees the silverfinned flash of swimming fish; fish she will be joining, momentarily, unless she retreats or shifts.
to Ruhiger
[Silence] Abruptly the totemlink opens.
I been kicked out. There’s some humor lurking there; rueful. If you kin, axe ’em what they want. Fer a gift, like. Watch yer back. ‘ll meetcha at tha car.
And without further ado — kicked out, after all — the Modi rises to all fours. The eagle takes flight off his shoulder; for his part, he returns to his wolf form and lopes swiftly out of the bog.
[Ruhiger] Ask them what they want.
Ask them what they….
Ask them what…
Ask them… how?!?
The words don’t come though, but the incredulous-ness of the request reverberates as she’s leaping and hovering for a split second in brilliant light and then it’s an all out struggle for footing and she’s losing and there’s laughter and… fortunately, she regains enough thought to snapshift downwards, hoping her homid weight is not too much for her precarious position on the saturated land.
If steady footing is found, she searches for the woman who laughs, eyes narrowed, pale gaze seeking even as she contemplates just how in the world she’s going to ask anyone anything without a damn translator. Maybe the Lady in the Water speaks sign! Or…something.
Eagle gives his children benefit of talking to one another via Totemphone. Perhaps she can call him totemphone as well? Worth a try, at any rate.
…Eagle…? Would you speak for me? If the question sounds timid and unsure and un-modi-like, it is. She is Modi. She is no Theurge. She is… left to speak without speech. This could go very, very badly.
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] The impression of open water has already disappeared; she shifts to homid, and still finds the shivering, vegetative matt precarious footing indeed; but crouched, her weight distributed between four or at least three points rather than two, Ruhiger finds some equilibrium, with the saturated “ground” beneath her feet.
The mists have drawn in again. She can no longer see the sky above her; she can no longer see open water, except for that lapping at the edges of the hummock of ground on which she crouches, except for the silverfin flash of irridescent scales beneath the dark, clear surface of the water. Cattails poke up through the matted vegetation that holds her up, cattails, tall, slender reeds. When she looks around, she sees the frog, a bright spot of color in the otherwise neutral world – the luminous white mists, the silverfish, the many colored browns and grays and damps and barks of the still half-sleeping winter world, seated on the very tip of a cattail, which doubles over underneath the emerald creature’s weight until it almost touches the surface of the water.
As she stands there; as she crouches there, she has the absolute sensation that she is being watched from every direction, from every angle; as if the mists were living; as if they breathed and coiled and unfurled, bellows, lungs.
From the pack’s totem, a sensation of assent. Abruptly, it appears beside her, backwings on its descent, then lands, delicately, on her right shoulder.
[Ruhiger] She remains in a crouch, weight evenly distributed on her toes – one before the other – and her hand pressing into the ground before her. She stays low, and watches, listens, feels the mists gather closer, denser, cut off everything beyond them into a sound distorted wall of ever shifting white.
The feeling of assent, the sudden appearance of Eagle near her, touching her, inspires more then a touch of awe, a touch of pride. The last Eagle touched her was to leave his mark above her heart, a deep press of talon that pierced The Modi’s warrior soul and bound her Eagle in a way she had never experienced before. And here, now, Eagle touches her again, by resting on her shoulder. It is a moment to be savored, without any time to do so. A brush of her lashes across cheeks, a glance down shows respect, and appreciation, before she turns again to search the area, feeling the eyes upon them.
We wish to know what they want, who they are, if the Sisters still roam the bog…what we can do to help.
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] Ruhiger can hear, but not understand, the sibilant, twisting speech Eagle offers to everything and nothing on her behalf. The words settle thick in the air; they have a contained quality, weighted, the sound damped and channeled by the banked, opaque air all around her.
Nothing. The emerald frog watches her unblinking, clinging to the cattail apparently by will along. Except for Ruhiger and the subtly shifting mists, except for the occasional flash of silverfish beneath the water, the bright green frog seems to be the only living then on the whole of the earth; riding the curve of the cattail as it dances and sways beneath its weight.
We wish to know Eagle whispers – and what. The totem repeats the request after a moment. The frog blinks a translucent membrane over its bulbous eyes, briefly removing its attention from the Garou to the raptor spirit seated on her shoulder, then looks back.
A minute passes.
Five.
…nothing, just the words echoing in the close darkness.
[Ruhiger] A minute.
Five.
And nothing. She is more patient then most – or perhaps all the remaining eagles. She had lessons they did not, she had a task master more formidable then the Grand Elder for all she was only kin. She had many days when she was forced to think, and rethink, and rethink again the way she had phrased a question, what she had asked, uncertain who she had offended, if she had offended, what she needed to do to receive an answer faster, or an answer at all.
She waits a while longer, and then her gaze focuses on the frog. And she starts again – relying on Eagle to relay her question into a form the frog, perhaps, can understand. Where am I? Who are you?
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] The emerald frog simply lids its right eye, then its left. It stares back at her, the tiny amphibian, absolutely calm, still unmoving except as its weight sways the long length of its flexible cattail perch back and forth. Something seems to buzz in the air –
– then zot disappears, with a flash of the creature’s long, brilliantly pink tongue. Abruptly, the frog gathers itself and leaps, a great and singular leap, landing neatly on the shivering three steps back toward the treeline, just inside her line of sight. Twitching over the damp hummock of land, it rotates its bulbous eyes back at her, then gathers itself to leap another three feet toward the trees, again.
[Ruhiger] Frustration builds, but at this point is still controllable. She glances toward Eagle on her shoulder, then back to the frog that seems to be leading her still. Of course, he could be leading her off a cliff, but well, what’s a scratch or two in the name of information gathering, right? Right.
He leaps, a nice little three foot leap, looks at her, and leaps again. Another glance to prepare the Eagle on her shoulder, and she lifts, slowly, and then with grace inborn, she jumps off her precarious foothold toward the trees, following the Frog.
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] Through the shivering land, to the trees, through the trees – the low-growing tamaracks, shrugs for all intents and purposes near the waterline – then taller and taller and more numerous with every dozen feet out further, in an expanding radius, after each leap, the frog stops and pauses, glance back and assures itself of her presence, then gathers itself and launches itself forward. It says nothing, nothing at all, in response to any inquiries, but as the ground grows more solid beneath her feet and the trees grow more numerous, she has the absolute impression that it is leading herback to the borders of the land.
[Ruhiger] It says nothing, and the land is firmer under her feet. The trees change, the land changes, and the Frog leads her on and her brow furrows in frustration as she gets the distinct idea they are going backwards, back to the edges, back where they began. She stops, and studies the frog next time it stops as well. She deliberately turns, again, back where they had come from, and takes a step. Testing the silent frog, perhaps. Trying to get an answer of any sort…
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] One step: the frog does not follow. The air is close; the trees loosely appointed but anonymous, dark back. The sensation of return is just that: a sensation. She has been wandering blind through the soup of the mists without any physical markers, without any landmarks except for the land itself, the way it changes. No matter what path she takes, she has yet to see the same tree twice, the same pattern of loosed bark on a trunk, the same arrangement of trunks, or branches, the same bogflowers growing in the same profusion, in a hummock of soil raised up by the twisting gnarl of a root.
She turns back, and no longer knows which way back is. She walks forward – she is confident that she is walking forward, straight ahead, a vision of the open water directly ahead of her – only to find herself, frustratingly, walking right toward the frog. Her sense of directly, her sense of place dissolves into the immediate: that which is in front of her, and that which is behind her. That which flaks her, on either side.
The frog stares; it lids one eye, then the other, never together. It tests the air and turns to leap again, leaving her to stay or follow, follow or stay.
More than that, this time, draped over the low sweeping branch of the tree on whose roots the brilliant little frog rests (and only now does she see it, fat and milk white, a sheathe of muscle covered with absolutely opaque, milk-white fesh, a serpent coiled through the branches of the tree, staring at her with flat black eyes and a pythonic menace from its perch, a dozen feet in the air.
[Ruhiger] Frustration grows. She is is out of her league here and she knows it. Worse, the little frog knows it too. Hell, Eagle knows it. A hand lifts, mud and all, and brushes through short hair. If she were the verbal kind, she would be muttering. If she were the verbal kind she would be cursing. Instead, she is silent in all ways, and only body language gives way to her mounting irritation with the whole thing. And she is always. following. this frog, it seems.
And then she sees it. Fat and white and serpantile and draping over the root the frog is sitting on. Gaze narrows, slightly, and with a lift of her shoulders, a slight roll to attempt to ease tension, she steps after the frog. Again. After all, that seems to be the only thing that gets progress – even if the sensations are so twisted she is completely unsure of where she is, or what she’s to do.
Hopefully that Python isn’t hungry.
((for the player’s sanity, at least. *shudders, closes eyes, peeks through fingers*))
[Ruhiger] (1)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 7, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) Re-rolls: 3
[Ruhiger] (2)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2
[Ruhiger] (3)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Ruhiger]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3 (Failure at target 6)
[Ruhiger]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2 (Failure at target 6)
[Ruhiger]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2 (Failure at target 6)
[Tibik-kitzaniabi] And the frog leaps; and Ruhiger follows; and the land changes, constantly shifting beneath her feet. She has never wandered lost for so long. Every few steps bring another narrow view, and an opaque white room defined by the lingering mists and the ribs of a pair of dark trees, or one, or a knot of five, their growth twisted together.
She walks beneath the python once, and has the sensation that it is dropping from its perch, perhaps directly onto her shoulders, a coiled tube of menace. Instead, it explodes into a shower of white pinfeathers and takes flight, long wings beating as it rises into the night sky: not a raven, as Silence described, but an owl. For the rest of her journey through the waterlogged lands, she is shadowed by the sensation of wings above her, or the sibilant hiss of something at her feet; but the mists never part to reveal either owl or snake: just the frog, leading her on what is now a damnably endless trudge. After losing her sense of direction, Ruhiger begins to lose her sense of time.
Silence has left the lands, by now – and although she can still her connection with her pack still intact – she receives no responses to any queries she might send to them; there is just the sensation of their presence, out there, somewhere, along the hazy wires. Time passes, even if she no longer knows it. Time passes, and miles, more miles than she can even begin to believe she might have trudged over the lands to arrive here. An endless circuit outside: the frog and the mists, the trees, the damp, seeping ground, the scent of tannins and water, water and tannins sharp in the nascent air.
Leap. (Trudge.) Leap. (Trudge.)
The world dissolves to a terrible and trying physical drudgery; she continues, hale and and whole for some time, forging forwarding in the frogs water, but by the the time the mists begin to thin, by the time the ground grows firm enough that she no longer sinks with every step, by the time the tamaracks and the mixed tamark-deciduous forest has given way to a wholly decidous forest – a wholly deciduous forest subtly attainted by its proximity to the Hivelands, by then, the Ruhiger is physically and emotionally spent, down to the last nubs of whatever patience she might possess.
The way ahead is clear; weaily, perhaps unconsciously, she realizes that the frog has disappeared and she can see the sky. It is no longer night; false dawn yawns above her, clear through the spindly skeletons of the bare trees bristling over the rolling hills – and then came in the afternoon. Should she look back, Ruhiger will see a great white oil (serpent) perched on the highest branch of one of the golden-needled tamaraks, watching her with opaque black eyes.
[Ruhiger] She tenses, as the thing drops and the sensation of menace hovers over her, only to fly above in a sudden shift to wings. Alright then. A moment’s pause, a breath, and she slogs on.
And on.
And on.
And on.
There is no time here, no direction, she knows only that she follows the frog. Even with the miles she walks day in and day out, she grows tired, weary in the constant battle of wetlands that clutch at her boots, dragging her feet under, the constant slosh through water and mud. She is rumpled, dirty, and tired looking by the time she stumbles into the clearing. There has been no interruption by Silence, or by the others. They are there – somewhere, out there – but not reachable. She is on her own. Not alone, but on her own. There is a difference, that perhaps only those in the pack will understand.
She pauses as she steps into the clearing, physically drained after the damnible long trudge. She crouches, forearms resting on thighs, hands hanging between her knees, as she rests, just a moment, and takes in her surroundings. The sky – predawn now, when they had begun midday. The hills, and the sky, and behind her, the Serpent turned Owl on the highest branch. She studies him the longest, perhaps before studying the way ahead of her again.
She does not rest long, and it is with effort that she presses against her thighs with her palms and stands again. A moment’s time to straighten her coat around her, smooth the wrinkles (spread the dirt) from her clothing, and then – she moves on. Straight this time, into the clearing, forging her way ahead.