Buried Beneath the Abbey
~//~ A Tale of Redwall ~//~
Players
- Mirabella
- Silverstorm
RW Abbey: Upper Dormitory
The upper dormitories have long lain unused and damaged from the quake, leaving a nagging question about their stability. The hallway is covered in dust, and the windows have been boarded up or replaced with oiled canvas. This serves to cast the hallway into a long twilight during the day and a hollow darkness at night.
The upper floor of the main Abbey building is still sparsely populated, as even after all this time, much of the damage of the quake seasons and seasons ago has been cleaned up but not really repaired. The walls are all in one piece, the windows were replaced, it's true, but that warm sense of Abbey belonging and homeness has never returned to this floor. Most of the populace still avoid it, and those who come here usually do so to seek solitude. It is into this quiet bleakness that Mirabella paces, like a single candle in a dark room. She's carrying a basket, as she so often is, and she stops outside the office door to fumble around in her pocket for a key.
Silverstorm has arrived up the stairs, she had promised her friend she get some books from the attic sometime today. She stops as she sees the mousemaid, "Hello Miss, I was not expecting to see another beast up here this early."
"Oh!" Mirabella's voice comes tumbling out of her mouth as she jumps with surprise, dropping the skeleton key to the floor where it clatters heavily against the stone. "My, Sister Silverstorm, you gave me quite a fright!" Blinking prettily, she holds a paw to her chest to still her racing heart. The mousemaid hunkers down to pick up the key, her skirt billowing out in a small circle around her legs, then straightens up again. "I wasn't expecting to see anyone either," she admits, looking a bit embarrassed about her outburst and dropping things. "No one is usually here while I'm doing my chores."
Silverstorm offers a smile, "Sorry, I am not usually up here either but Sister Zinnia had mentioned some books in the attic, so I was going to get them down for her to look at and see what can be fixed and not fixed." She looks around, "It's intresting on the top floor, or maybe the attic is seen as the top floor."
"The attic is just there," Mirabella replies, pointing at the loft door with the pronged end of her skeleton key. "I've only been up there once or twice. It's just terribly dusty," she adds, turning and jamming the key abruptly into its hole, giving it a sharp twist. "Oh, it was already unlocked," the mousemaid observes, giggling softly to herself.
Silverstorm walks over closer, "There is a room up here, whats in it?" She looks to the attic loft door and nods "I guess I should go up there, hopefully it's not too dusty, or dark."
"Maybe there are some books in here," Mirabella offers with a lift of one shoulder, indicating the old office. "You never know!" She throws the door wide and bustles in, basket held under the crook of her arm.
Silverstorm just nods, "Maybe, one never knows. I have yet to really go many places in the abbey, guess I find it hard to make friends and even harder with other otters, even sea otters. So I usually avoid most beasts, except the few I do know"
"Strangers are just friends you haven't met yet," Mirabella replies from inside the room, hurrying around with her basket and distributing candles to their proper places. "Besides," she calls from the far side of the room, her voice echoing out into the hallway, "You never know who you're going to meet!" There's a thud and a scuffing sound inside the room, and a shout of "Ouch!"
Silverstorm frowns and quickly goes inside the room, least its lit up some now, and looks for the mousemaid "Are you ok Mirabella?!" She calls out.
"I'm /fine,/ really," Mirabella answers, sitting on the stone floor and holding her foot. "I just stubbed my toe on /that./" She points in front of her at an old, dusty hard-covered book.
Silverstorm frowns as she goes to pick up the book and dust it off some. She coughs and lets out a sneeze. "I wonder what it's about? And how old it is if it's in an almost empty room."
"I really don't know." Mirabella's still preoccupied with her stubbed toe, rocking back and forth a little on the floor as she clutches her foot. "It's terribly heavy and hard, though." The book itself is decorated with strange symbols on the front cover, revealed as Silverstrom wipes the dust away.
Silverstorm tilts her head, "Strange.." She sits the book down and walks back over to the mousemaid to look at her footpaw, "Let me look at your foot, I know some basic first aid as by the time your a Brother or Sister in the order, your to know some basic first aid."
"It's just a stubbed toe," the mousemaid protests, waving her off and getting back to her feet. "Let's look at the book! There might be dark magic inside, or a treasure map, or.. or a secret diary!" For some reason, Mira sounds most excited about the last possibility.
Silverstorm shrugs, "I suppose, but if it hurts motr later it may be best to tell a healer." She slowly stands and looks over at the book, "It may not be readable, or the covering was just done all fancy maybe."
"Well it's worth /checking,/" Mirabella argues, hurrying over to the book and plucking it up off the ground, eagerly moving towards the solitary window to get a bit more light. "Ooo, look at the cover! What could these symbols mean? I just find this sort of thing terribly fascinating."
Silverstorm looks at them and shrugs, "I am not good at symbols really, I can read fairly well. Long as it's not too large of words that is, I can read just fine. This looks like...well maybe just odd drawings, an art book?"
Mirabella opens the cover, eyes wide with excitement, to reveal a blank first page. "Well that's disappointing," she remarks, wilting somewhat. But then she turns the next page, and an old, scrawling hand litters the page, the letters replete with flourishes and loops that just make their crampt shapes harder to distinguish. The mousemaid perks up again immediately. "Now /that's/ what I was hoping for!"
Silverstorm looks it over "Fancy writting of some sort it looks like. I wonder who it belonged to?"
The mousemaid doesn't reply immediately, too absorbed by the writing in front of her. She peers intently down at it, slowly identifying familiar letters beneath their archaic disguises. "It says, 'The historie of Mossflower,'" Mirabella announces, letting the odd spelling roll slowly off her tongue. "'Part three,'" she adds, getting through the next bit.
Silverstorm looks at the book and frowns, fancy writting is not her thing. "Well, looks liek something Zinnia would like. Maybe we can take it to her or let her know it's up here?"
"I'm not done yet, who /knows/ what it could say!" Mirabella practically bounces with excitement, looking down at the book in her paws. There's a whole library of the things downstairs, but none of /those/ books were discovered by yours truly under mysterious circumstances, after all. "'The fall of the Lord of all Mossflower...' Something 'Green-eyes, and his wicked... wicked daughter,' um, it's hard to read, but then it says, 'buried beneath the Abbey.'" She looks over at the otter. "What is? What's buried beneath the Abbey?"
Silverstorm shrugs as she listens, " I have no clue, some old vaulables of some sort? Maybe things from the past of seasons and seaons ago?" She then frowns " Not sure we should go digging anywhere, you never know what could happen, and it's probally dark under the....ground, besides the living belows above ground not under it"
"What about..." Mirabella trails off, tapping at her delicate chin with one dainty finger, mulling it over. "What about- Oh, I fell down a hole weeks ago under the wall." She says it casually and off-the-cuff, not a big deal. "It was terribly dark and cold down there, but it wasn't dirt. It was stone. The walls were stone, and so were the floors. Sister Zinnia dropped me a candle, which was ever so sweet of her to do, and when I got it lit after a dreadfully long time, I could see a sort of door to more." She waits to see what sort of impact her story will have before continuing.
Silverstorm blinks and then speaks "Maybe you bumped your head and dreamed it all? It is possible if you had a very bad fall, to have an odd dream or maybe you think you saw something you didn't in the dark. When I was a dibbun I kept thinkin' this one cloak on the door was a bat, it looked like a bat with a big mouth in the dark."
"No! Absolutely not," Mirabella hotly refutes, with a shake of her head, sending her tresses waving. "It was real. It was terrifying and awfully dark, but it was /real./" She points her finger pack to the line in the book. "'Buried beneath the Abbey.'"
Silverstorm reads the words over a couple times, "But, why bury a building under another building, thats..thats silly, I mean isn't it?"
"...I don't know," Mirabella admits after thinking it over for a second, lapsing back towards her normal cheerful attitude after her defense of her experience. "But I know that something is down there, whether that's what this means or not."
Silverstorm nods "Well , lets keep it down there. I mean like you said it was dark and there was no light down there and we are a mouse and an otter, not moles who like being...under the ground."
"What, are you scared?" Mirabella teases, poking a finger at the otter and her habit. Mira's dress is markedly not a habit. She's not an Order member, after all. "You don't have to go down there if you don't want to, but I want to figure out what's under the Abbey. It'll be an adventure!"
Silverstorm folds her arms over her chest, "Adventures are for warriors and...and I said NOTHING on being scared, just...I mean it could be a long ways down there and hard to get there, let alone back up here, best ta stay where you know."
"It's okay if you're scared, Sister Silverstorm," Mirabella replies, putting out her paw to rest it on the otter's shoulder, a supportive expression on her face. "Everyone has fears."
Silverstorm controls the urge to glare and speaks "I am not....and yes all have fears, it makes us ...well us, but still why worry onsomething that could be 100's of seasons old?"
"...I really don't know." Mirabella doesn't know a lot of things, but she doesn't have much of a problem admitting it either. "But I'm just terribly curious, aren't you?" She gathers up the old book, thumping it closed and hugging it to her chest. "I think I'll hold onto this for a while."
Silverstorm nods "I am sure thats ok, maybe we should try and find out more before we worry on looking down there. Maybe the abbey had like, an old forgotten building before this one."
"Well I found the dusty old thing," she replies, clutching it protectively as she heads for the door. "Or at least my poor little toe did." Mirabella walks back into the hallway, then calls, "Oh, my basket!" and hurries back inside the office.
Silverstorm goes to follow her out and chuckles a little as the mousemaid hugs the book, "Thats true and it's just one book"
Her basket safely looped on one arm and her new/old book tucked under the other, Mirabella finally exits back into the hallway. "I really must be getting about my chores, I'm terribly behind now," she remarks, shaking her head at her own distractibility. "It was wonderful to see you, Sister Silverstorm!" And with a warm smile, the mousemaid bustles off, book and basket in tow.
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