Questions, Answers, and Questions
Setting:
R.V. Town Center!
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A large tree sits growing in the middle of the center, the weeds and vines removed from the area, the paths lined with stones. A new bench sits near the tree, looking around the town has been repaired on the outside at least. The smell of food drifts down from the Dinning hall. A small sign sits at the entry way to the Market place, with words notice on it. The very faint sound of running water echoes from the residentals and marketplace.
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Characters:
Samara, a scholar
Cinaed, a mystery
Previous logs were lost, so to recap: as Cinaed, a mysterious shrew, tries his best to stay hidden, he and an acquaintance – Samara, a scholar and botanist – found themselves running into each other yet again in Ritters Village. On an errand assigned to her by her father, Sam has finally found the last of the tomes she was sent to seek out, and now faces the even larger task of unraveling their mystery. When they last met, Cinaed threw himself from a cliff in order to escape his pursuers, whom – for unknown reasons – referred to him as “The Bloody Grin”. Now two beasts, with fates wrapped in mystery, meet once more…
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|Questions, Answers, and Questions| ===
Even the most avid of scholars need to take breaks sometimes - and, more often than not, the most avid of scholars tend to be a little... Eccentric. This is a polite way to describe the petite, bedraggled, silver squirrel who is currently sprawled on the steps of the inn like a homeless beast - and, even here in the Village, she looks worse for wear. Her clothes are too large and liberally cut to allow for adequate aeration, as the heat of Summer edges closer and closer to them. Her eyes are buried in the crook of her elbow, and her other arm dangles from the inn's porch, her tail twitching every once in a while - though it isn't clear if she is sleeping or awake.
Of all the beasts least expected to be in a town and around an inn, of all places, there's Cinaed, trundling along with a wheelbarrow of tools and materials from the shack around back to fix up some of the facade along the front. He slows as he sights Samara, seemingly suspicious at seeing the silver squirrel surprisingly surface with such swift succession.
While the shrew's presence alone would not be enough to rouse the apathetic botanist, the sounds of tools bouncing and clanging in the wheelbarrow certainly do. First, the arm drops from her face, then she - slowly - raises herself up onto her elbows to glare at the source of this disturbance, but her expression dissolves into one of befuddlement... And then she smirks? "So, what, are you following me now?" Sam asks, pushing herself the rest of the way up. After days locked up with three mind-boggling tomes and enigmatic correspondence, she's surprisingly starved for a voice other than her own... Even though Cinaed may be the worst beast to go to for that.
"Just work here," Cinaed replies gruffly, jerking a hammer from the barrow and trucking up to the wall with a few slats of wood in paw. "Ain't much for followin'." The stolid laborer raises the slat to the wall, judging the length in comparison to the old, rotted one he's replacing. Too long. Back to the wheelbarrow, and he tosses the hammer back, pulling out a saw instead, and a piece of charcoal before moving up to the wall again, where he starts marking the line to cut.
"Ah - how civilian of you." There's a small knot of beasts who look a little out of place within this cheery locale, and it draws the squirrel's eye. She nods towards them, her smirk still lingering across her muzzle. "Still causing trouble?" It's not that she just /assumes/ that every group of angry-looking, armed beasts is after Cinaed, but after what happened last time... Well, if he's around then it certainly becomes more likely. "Although I guess the whole jumping-off-a-cliff-debacle would be enough for most beasts."
"Ain't me they're lookin' for, at any rate," is his answer, sniffing heavily and putting the slat down on the stair next to her, one sturdy little knee pinning it flat against the structure with the end sticking out over the edge while he gets the saw in position. "Just unlucky, I guess." Cinaed's beady brown eyes are firmly fixed on the plank as he begins to saw, like a master putting rosin on a bow before a hoedown.
"Mmm." Samara hums, draping herself against the railing to peer down at him, her chin resting on top of her forearm. She just watches for a few moments; a little creepily, but she's a little creepy, so there's that. "So. Handyman, huh? Seems boring." Says the squirrel who has been reading for three days straight. "Do you know much about history?"
"Not much," Cinaed answers, sawing the edge of the plank and letting it clatter to the cobbles. "Can't read." With the trimmed segment in paw, he heads back up to the wheelbarrow, exchanging tools again for the hammer, and then works the claws on the backside under the old plank, starting to peel it free of the wall. "Ain't a whole lotta folks interested in tellin' me stories, neither."
"Oh." Well, she isn't going to offer to teach him. "I've about had my fill of 'stories'..." Samara settles onto her tail, her legs stuck through the railing to dangle from the porch. Sorry, Cin, she's settling. "I've got a stack of them, half of them are in some dead-language, and it's apparently /so important/ that I 'unravel the mysteries they have to offer'. Pfft." She exhales, grumbling as she mushes her forehead into the bars. When she leans back, allowing her poor face some relief, her gaze flicks back towards the characters from before - but they must have moved on. Her eyes narrow a fraction on the empty space, but she says nothing. She's more focused on antagonizing over the mound of work awaiting her, and the futility of it all. It's making her talkative, and she's too frustrated with the scope of the job she's trying to tackle upstairs to worry about the self-contained enigma currently fixing a building.
"Curiosity has a way of comin' round t' bite you in the arse, if you ain't watchin' it real close," Cinaed warns ominously, prying off the old rotted plank that splits into two chunks under his fingers, then flakes into several more. "Secrets, they ain't always meant t' be told." With the new slat in place, he fishes out a nail, awkwardly pressing his elbow against the slat while his fingers keep the nail aligned.
Samara actually laughs. "Not sure that I agree - all of the best things that are worth knowing start as secrets. They say scholars are almost monk-like, but that is all a lie. Scholars are the most greedy beasts of all - we seek power, and our power comes from knowledge. It's a thrill... Otherwise, what are our minds for?" She shrugs, straightening back up again before she braces her paws against the small of her back and pops it. "I like a challenge, I suppose. It would explain why I keep pestering /you/, but I have to -" What she has to do isn't immediately apparent, as Sam instead finds herself leaping from the porch in a spray of splinters: a thick spear wobbles, almost comically, from the side of the building. "At least my secrets aren't trying to kill me." She growls, scrambling back and away from the inn as it appears to come under fire. Rationally, she wants no part of this. Realistically, she's been cooped up with nothing but her growing frustrations to keep her company... Maybe a little bloodshed is what she needs to clear her head. It would appear that their friends are back.
"Well, don't say I didn't-" And then the spear crashes into the wall. Cinaed turns, almost lazily, to face the assault, noticing that this time it's vermin who want him dead instead of woodlanders. "Now, I just finished replacin' 'at," he shouts, pulling the spear from the wall and tossing it onto the ground. "Ain't no reason for that sort-a fool nonsense." His commentary draws a sneer from the large ferret who seems to head the unsavory group. "You're comin' wid us, shrew. Don't play dumb."
And, of course, she is unarmed. Why would she have a weapon on her? Nothing could possibly happen three steps away from the inn, could it? Of course not! Samara's paws ball into fists, and she looks from the shrew to the vermin with a darting, nervous glance. "What did you even /do/?" She laments, taking a cautious step forward. The chaos has started to draw a crowd, and several beasts have taken off running - presumably, at least one of them is going to fetch the guards. The squirrel doesn't move, though she looks spring-loaded, ready to fly in one direction or the other at the drop of a pin. "Run?"
Cinaed seems set on playing dumb, at least for a little while longer. "Ain't nothin' here for you," the pygmy repeats, standing there, eyes downcast. "Whoever you're after, it ain't me. Leave this place be." The ferret doesn't seem quite satisfied with that response; he does seem to find it jaw-droppingly hilarious, however. A cackling, sniggering snort rips from his muzzle. "Yer bloody rich, you know that? A friggin' riot, you are! We knows exactly who you is."
Rich? Why do the mysterious, rich, old men always live in squalor? Seriously, they all do it. Squalor or very wealthy exile, though squalor most certainly fits Cinaed better. "How interesting." Samara's grin is slowly growing more wicked, tail twitching in increased agitation behind her. There is a clamor, further up the street as the guard force rushes towards the disturbance. She clears her throat and speaks up, fighting the urge to throw herself into a losing battle. Instead, she does the only other thing she can really think of: she buys time. "The shrew is telling the truth. He's homeless."
"Listen, Squirrelly, our fight ain't wid you," the ferret begins, still chuckling a little as he wipes a mock tear from his eye at Cinaed's 'joke'. "You be on yer merry way an' let the grown-ups talk as to what's what an' what." With that, he turns his attention away from her (perhaps unwisely), and continues to... monologue. "We know /exactly/ who you are, an' it sure 's hell ain't /nobody/. Now you comes with us or we kills you on th' spot, that's your choice an' make it right quick." The sound of the constabulary is approaching. Cinaed, the shrew of the hour, is unarmed, and looking far too tiny to be the cause of all this hubbub. "Well, way I see it you're like t' kill me now 'r kill me later," he mutters darkly, glaring up at the ferret, "Don't make no mess for these folks, though. I'll go with ye."
While Samara's care for her own self-image may be lax enough to leave her happy with her clothing the way it is, or with completely missing verbal cues like the complex meaning of 'rich'; to her very core she hates being snubbed. She is most certainly /not/ just happy to let the grown-ups talk about what's what: she's an adult, dammit! A renowned scholar! Validate her! Swallowing the bubble of rage that threatens to overtake the slighted scientist, she turns her glare towards Cinaed. Why is he being so... /Noble/? Ugh. "Alright, ignoramus, listen here..." The tiny squirrel growls, stepping forward and pulling herself up to her full, and very under-whelming, height. "My family are very important beasts here -" Lie. " - Very powerful." Lie. "- So you will leave this place now or be submitted to the fullest extent of the law, and I will /personally/ -" Lie upcoming. " - See to it that your heads are removed with the /dullest/ of executioner's axes." ...Actually, that last part could be true. She stands there a moment with her chest all puffed out and her ears perked forward - simply buying time, because in a sleepy little town(!) like this, the guards have grown complacent in their training, apparently. "HALT!" The sudden shout almost makes her jump. "PUT Y'WEAPONS ON TH'GROUND!" About bloody time.
"Yeah, you an' who's army, y'dirty little scumbag?" the ferret calls back rudely to the guards. Given that the guards are about five mice in brightly-colored uniforms and the vermin, nearly a dozen, are rough-and-tumble looking fellows, this might... end badly for the happy(!) town of Ritter's Village. Closer to the inn, Cinaed casts a long, meaningful glance at Samara. The guards and the vermin are sizing each other up, staring menacingly at each other, the guards with their weapons drawn and the vermin with their paws on theirs. "Sod it," mutters a low voice, and the pygmy suddenly darts off to the left. "After him!" shouts the ferret. "After them!" shout the guards. "Blast," murmurs Cinaed.
And, all at once: they're off! As soon as the shrew races away, the squirrel is hot on his heels, the vermin are hot on hers, and the town guards are hot on theirs. It's all very confusing, and the descent into total chaos is a rapid and satisfying one... And Samara inflames it further with something akin to glee. She overturns a cart in passing, scattering cabbages across the street (she even kicks one back behind them), and continues the crazed rush from their pursuers. A throwing ax sails past her, aimed for the shrew, and she winces as it whistles past her ear. Thankfully, even in a peaceful little town like this one, the villagers(!) are not totally willing to just let vermin rampage after [seemingly] peaceful woodlanders. One old marm opens a window and chucks her chamberpot into the fray, knocking a hefty rat out cold on the ground, unconscious and now covered in a disgustingly homogenous mix.
It seems like every time this squirrel shows up, Cinaed is on the run again. The shrew's short legs pump like twin pistons as he chugs along like a tiny shrew-ish locomotive, not tossing things into the street because he knows Samara is behind him. The axe crashes into a wall after sailing past his head, but he runs on.
Samara yanks the axe from the wall in passing, and keeps on running with it clenched in her paw. She's not particularly skilled in weaponry past that tiny sword of hers, but how hard can an axe be, really? It's a hack-and-slash method that might suit her quite nicely, actually. "Right!" She hisses, reaching to tug at the shrew's elbow as they careen down a side alley - that ends in a solid brick wall. The mass of villagers and guards are enough to waylay their pursuers and buy them some time - but a dead-end is just that. It's a low building that they face, and the wall is grooved by the brick-layers lazy job - no problem for a squirrel, but for the shrew... "How are you with climbing?" The silver-furred maid pants, casting an anxious look over her shoulder.
Excellent work leading the way, Samara, you've brought them straight to a dead end. Cinaed glares at the brick wall, easily twice his height, while the noise of their pursuers still clatters in the street behind them. "Not good," he grunts, still eying the bricks uneasily, "but it seems we ain't got much of a choice!" With that, he abruptly darts forward, flinging himself at the wall. It's not the best approach, and he scrapes painfully back to the ground, wincing and hissing, looking at his fingertips frustratedly before sinking them between the bricks, prising their way toward the mortar, as he slowly, painstakingly, begins to climb.
For squirrels, the ascent is much smoother and less... You know, /grumbly/. Samara streaks past the shrew and spins about once she's at the roof, extending a paw down towards him. "Come on!" She hisses, ears pinned back as the sounds of their pursuers comes clamoring closer - still hounded by the villagers! as they riot at this disturbance of the peace. "You know, for someone who 'keeps to themselves' you certainly have a way of inciting mass chaos." She comments, airily.
Still glaring as he looks up after the squirrel as he goes easily up to the roof, Cinaed, a few dragging seconds later, reaches up to grab for her paw. As he clambers to the top, a cacophony of grunts, wheezes, and groans escape his tiny body, until finally he rolls over the edge, scrambling back into a semi-upright position to heavy-breathe, paws on his knees.
"Alright, there? Let's go!" There is no pause with her, she's almost giddy with the excitement of the chase. It's been a good stretch since she had some real action to liven up the redundancy of study (though she does find her own brand of thrills within that). Sam starts off along the roof at a trot, bent low, as their remaining few pursuers turn the corner of the alley, only to be faced with a dead end. "We should go back to the inn!" She whispers with a sly smile. "There's a fireplace - let's just hope it's not lit." If the vermin don't kill Cinaed, his companion just might.
"A fireplace?" Cinaed isn't quite following, and the look of confusion on his simple face would seem to indicate that fact. "No, we need t' get /outta/ here 'n' stop endangerin' that place. Decent folk runnin' that inn." He straightens up slowly, wincing as he does. "You're /mad,/" the shrew notes as he notices the smile on her face, backing carefully away as if to avoid the infection. "We're still alive, 'n' I'm plannin' t' stay that way."
"And where do you propose to go?" Sam skids to a halt as he backs away from her, and she bounces impatiently on the balls of her feet. "I know you've got this whole 'enigmatic traveler' thing going on, but those aren't the same beasts as before. Whatever it is you did has ticked folks off in a rather... Diverse way. Where can you go that it won't follow you?" The adrenaline-fueled grin still pulls at the corners of her mouth, and she keeps it trained on the shrew. "Look, we slip into the inn through the chimney and nobeast will know that we're there - then you can slip out into the night and on your merry way." Below them, there is the crash of shattering glass and a heavy thud.
"Away," offers Cinaed uncertainly, staring down at the shingles. He certainly doesn't seem like someone who'd be wanted on three continents, but that's the impression he's starting to give. When Samara offers her plan, his mouth tightens into a hardset line, his visage darkening. "Let's do it, then."
Score! The adventure continues. The squirrel sweeps about and takes off across the flat roof, pausing at the edge of the building to check the alley for prying eyes. With the coast clear, she clears the gap and lands with a muffled roll onto the adjacent, building. It's easy enough to clear the simply constructed abodes with their flat tops, but this ease is not universal: the inn, with the field of the roof sloping upwards, will prove a small challenge. The squirrel tosses herself across the alley and clutches at the shingles, her paws sliding slightly as she tightens her purchase... But this plan, while adequate enough for a squirrel, may not translate as well across to Cinaed. Then again, she watched him jump off a cliff and live to not tell the tale, so her faith in him is, perhaps, a bit inflated. "It's easy!" She tries to assure him, hovering at the closest edge. One foot is braced against the gutter as she extends a paw out over the expanse between buildings, cautiously. "Do you... need help?"
"Easy" she says. "Help" she says. Cinaed says... nothing. He says nothing. He stands there, staring across the expanse after having just watched the squirrel, who's actually a bit taller than he is, clear the gap and scrabble up with some difficulty. No doubt he's remembering the time he had climbing the wall that she easily scaled and working out the relative likelihood of his thick little frame tumbling to the cobbles below.
It isn't difficult to see the hesitation and overwhelming distaste Cinaed has for the whole thing, but Samara knows that he wouldn't be standing at the edge of a roof if his distaste for dying wasn't that much greater. Keeping one foot planted at the gutter, and the other braced against the flat of the roof, she inches forward with her arm stretched out in front of her. There isn't verbal encouragement, just a curt nod.
This is going to end with both of them as grease stains on the cobblestone, Cinaed can feel it. In his mind's eye, he watches his body hurtle forward, latch onto Sam, and inextricably linked, drag her to the pavement below. An ignominious fate, to be sure. But no matter. He takes a few steps back, heaves a deep breath, sprints ahead, and leaps, arms outstretched.
As much as gravity and their pursuers may try, Cinaed and his squirrely companion do not wind up as grease stains on the cobblestone. The shrew is heavier than he looks, and as he latches onto her outstretched arm, his weight pulls her for a sickening, forward lurch. She struggles to pull him back, and has to release her hold on the roof to bring her other paw to his, but with a final yank she is able to drag him to the edge. "See? Easy." She pants, leaning back against the slope of the roof.
It's almost like rappelling, except way less safe and that Cinaed doesn't know what he's doing, so his legs crash painfully into the side of the building rather than cushioning the impact, and the rest of his body hits it pretty hard as well. The little shrew finally clambers over the edge, clinging desperately to the shingles, half frozen for fear of falling.
Not to mention that he's swinging from the arms of a waspish squirrelmaid and not something more... Sturdy. But he's alive! So alive. Right? "Easy." She repeats, mostly to herself, and then turns to claw and slide her way up the shingled rooftop. Sam peeks over the ridge, her bottom half trailing out behind her, and only when she is satisfied that she cannot be seen does she swing herself up towards the chimney. She spend a brief moment crouched beside the jutting structure, and casts a final look over her shoulder towards the shrew before disappears into the soot-blackened opening.
"Shurd," Cinaed breathes, clambering on his chest to the chimney. Haltingly, he pulls himself up the side, sits on the top, and, swinging his legs over, scoots his rump off the edge to plummet down the chimney.
After their tumble down the chimney, the two beasts seem to be surprisingly intact. Though draped in black soot from head to toe, a little bruised, and earning the appropriate amount of stares from the inn patrons who happened to be sitting nearby, Samara seems rather... perky. "Splendid! My room is up the stairs and to the left. Second door - and there's a wash basin in the corner. You can wash up first." Without waiting for the older shrew to answer, or even stand all the way up, the scholar is speed-walking the way towards the stairs, passing through the room now heavy with stunned silence. A quick jog up the steps, the jangle of keys in a lock, and Samara rushes back to the makeshift desk that she's thrown together near the window. The two are fated to spend the next several hours of 'hiding' in a gruff silence... Two or more pass before the squirrel finally tears herself away long enough to wash herself, and the light has long left the sky by the time she lets out a hiss of surprise, her face framed in flickering shadow by the candlelight. "There's no way..." She breathes, arranging the three massive tomes before her, all the while cradling, not one - but /two/ smaller, battered looking journals in her left palm and knee. "But -" Her break in the silence goes un-explained for a few more moments of fervid muttering and shuffling, during which the candle moves around an awful lot, and finally - she stops. Samara turns towards the shrew, clutching one of the journals in white-knuckled paws. "/Cinaed/!" She scrambles upright and crosses towards him, brandishing the little book at him like the Holy Grail. "It was all... It's all.. /All of it/ - just look!" Why this would make her so excited is... Quite frankly, inexplicable. Especially since the shrew has already made it clear that he can't read, so there is really nothing for him to gain as she flaps the journal at his face like a wounded bird. "Right - oh, yeah, that's right... Just - look." Fully aware that he could care less, but in desperate need of someone to bounce her thoughts off of, Samara plops next to Cinaed. "Kihn ha lutz." She recites in a stumbling accent. "According to my father, that is the De'Arundii saying for 'trust the light' - and I found this on the same page in the middle of all three of these volumes. Trust the light - three times, all in a dead language, in books that mention the De'Arundii only in passing." The botanist's eyes flash fiercely. "When I held the candle up to the pages, I could see that there were things written between the lines of text on all three. All in that same, dead language... All of the work I was left... My father was onto something and this was /it/!" Her breath hisses through her teeth on her next inhale, overcome with the thrill of the 'chase', so to speak. "This passage could be the secret to finding a civilization that disappeared a hundred seasons ago! It's - it's-" His impassive face finally reigns in her excitement and dulls her victorious babbling. "...Feel free to sleep in the bed, tonight... I'm going to translate this."
Come morning, scraps of parchment litter the floor surrounding the squirrel, who now lays slumped and crumpled against her desk. Her journal lays open beneath her elbow, with the copied passage visible:
Gah shi lahnai hi qri na-kay'ih,
Hi mira'shi, hi mira'sha, ha mira'shin cray'a ves'Vaeyl.
Ija nam hareja, hina reve ha na'rea,
Nul fi tiva bah hu na tivan.
U hi templar'und bahna nul fi tiva clar:
Enijin sin ha arunda a shi'varae.
Beneath her other paw, the quill still hovering over the final word, lay the fruits of her labor. Bathed in sunlight, the finished parchment reads:
Along thin lines a course laid bare,
A mirage, a trap, the mind's cruel snare.
In golden sand, there lift the shroud,
One may find what cannot be found.
To a buried temple where one may find clear:
It is only the worthy who persevere.
Underneath her translation, Samara has written a single word... SOUTH.
