We Didn't Start the Fire
The Long Patrol
Players: Dagda, Sersi
Beach holiday! It's a beach holiday from the weary drudgery of his sergeantly duties, and Dagda is enjoying the opportunity. The buck is clad simply in a pair of cut-off trousers and nothing else, and even his satchel is missing. Not entirely true- it's serving beach-bag duty, grounded in the sand out of the reach of the waves. Dag himself is ankle-deep in the water and wading in deeper, a stupid grin on his face. Sometimes the simple pleasures are the most fulfilling. Sometimes.
Not far off, Sersi marinades her toes in the brine of the shallows, the skirt of her cotton smock catching the beach breeze. At peak of summer, this is as close to cool as it gets for the doe, and sheen of sweat is still observable. She blocks the sun from her eyes with a catty-cornered arm, watching the gentle mid-day waves break across the figure of the familiar buck. "I have been told there are krakens in these waters!" she shouts. "P'haps we could bring one back as an offering to the great badger lord!"
"By who?" Dagda wades in further despite her cautionary tales, getting his scut wet and finally sinking down to submerge everything beneath his chin. "I don' even bally know what a kraken /is,/" he replies loudly, long ears sticking up like twin periscopes. "Oh, it's /glahrious,/" the buck oozes from his spot in the surf. A moment later, an arm springs from the water to point at a round fist-sized object floating about, closer to Sersi than he. "Whazzat? Just theah."
Sersi's ears grow stiff as most of Dagda slinks below the surface, her eyes wide and sharp, unable to shirk their vanguard duty. "It's a, ahm," she begins to explain, though an exact description eludes the doe; it is, after all, just some imaginary tale told to leverets to keep them shoreside. "It's a big, ah. Rubbery thing. With, ah. Hm. It has lots of legs. Or are they arms?" Her ponderous moment is shattered by the buck's find, and her gaze grow even wider. "And... eyes." She blinks. "It has eyes. Like... /that/."
"Is this some Northehn thing," Dagda begins, before she identifies the object. "An /eye?/" The buck springs upright, water sheeting off of him, and immediately begins striding resolutely towards it, big, slow steps on his long, strong legs. The wake of his passing pushes the orb closer to shore.
Sersi is clearly startled by the filmy globe, too large to belong to any land-bound creature, but she is not too squeamish to try to touch it. Whatever lost it would be far too large and unwieldy to sneak up on the hares this close to land, but the doe still sets a vigilant ear toward the sea. "/Aye/, an /eye/," she returns, quickly drawing her paw back as soon as she feels the slick, foreign texture. She crouches, skirt undulating as it settles over the water's ripples, and closes the distance between her gaze and the floating eye, nose within a few inches of it. "... p'haps we northerners have a better clue as to what's in your waters than /you/ do. I can't imagine what sort of creature this came from," she pauses, looks up, "if not a kraken."
"Tha' could float heah fr'm almost anywheah," Dagda replies, shrugging off her assertions of ignorance. Nobody knows the Western Shore like the Long Patrol! Nobody! His eyes turn towards, well, the eye, about the size of a small melon and a disturbing shade of yellow, with an almost golden gleam to it. A large black slit peers upwards, a bit of trailing nerve making it float pupil-up. "Is it magic?"
"Aye, anywhere-- as in, any depth of the sea, any reach of the ocean. Who has detailed all that lies beneath these waves?" The doe dares another prod at the gelatinous ball, this time giving its sclera a squeeze, careful not to touch dark void of its pupil. She shudders at its underlying firmness, but she continues to handle it, fascination beginning to rival her disgust. "My mother knew magic," Sersi states. "She sometimes used things like, ahm, herbs an' trinkets an' stones. She once took an old toy of mine for-- something about protection. I didn't pay much attention. But it seemed like, ahh, certain objects had certain, ahm, properties?" Eyeing the eyeball, she finishes, "So... maybe?"
If anything in the whole world has ever been magic, it's surely this eye. "Mebbe we c'n take it t' some magicky pehson," Dagda recommends, poking at the eye off-hand with a finger. The buck doesn't seem to have the same sick fascination with it as Sersi, but there's no doubt that he's entertaining a scientific curiosity. "I know a gel in Halyahd claims t' see th' futcha an' such. Mebbe she'd know."
Sersi dips both paws beneath the orb, fingers outstretched to fully cradle its underside, lifting it from its marine lodging. The gauzy film that wraps the sallow sphere catches hold of the sun's rays, and it's probably a trick of the light, but when lifted, the pupil appears to blink. "Aaay!" the doe squeals, eye plopping back into the water, staring dead above, pupil back to its original dilation. Fluttering laughter follows Sersi's panic and she meekly queries, "Is there room for it in your bag?"
"Theah's room f' /anythin'/ in th' bag," Dagda replies, scooping it up to prevent any more consternation from the doe. The healer is used to the texture of organs, and despite its size, an organ this remains. The buck splashes up out of the water before falling to his knees next to his satchel, throwing the flap back and pulling out his towel, which gets wrapped around the eye. Another towel comes out and is passed to Sersi. A shirt comes out of the satchel, as well as whatever the doe might have had him cart along for her, and the eye goes in.
With the towel, Sersi ruffles her damp leg fur, smock already wrung, thin cotton already starting to dry in the bright light of the day. Two thigh sheaths with accompanying daggers are also retrieved, for fashion's sake, to secure beneath her skirt; and for modesty's sake, she turns away from Dagda to fix them in place. She folds the damp towel and she hands it back to the buck. "Thank ye." Now, off to Halyard!
- WE SHALL NOW MOVE TO HALYARD FOR ACT TWO*
Halyard is in the midst of its mid-day bustle, or at least as busy as the place gets anymore. A bit away from that noise are Dagda and Sersi, a pair of hares looking like vacationing tourists in their beach-y attire and one, the male, toting a satchel. Dag leads his companion by the paw down the alleyway, eyes picking over the occasional doorway. "It's one'a these," comes his low voice, nodding at the alley in general.
The fresh sea spray of the beach is long lost in the alley. Sersi's nostrils fill with stagnant scents trapped by the walls, mildew and mollusks that have turned mingling with the area's nonexistent plumbing. It's the foundation of romance and intrigue. The doe covers her nose and squints at the buildings; to a non-native, every door looks alike: derelict, splintering, uninviting. But there is one with markings, though faded, that could be interpreted as peculiar-- and peculiar is what the two are after. "That one?" she points.
"/Tha'/ one," Dagda replies, pointing to the rickety entry next to her's. There's an illegible sign posted over the door, and a faded symbol of some sort painted directly on it, though half is missing where a slat has been broken out and replaced. But seeing Sersi's choice, it's easy to understand why she may have chosen it instead; "Y'rs died," the buck explains with a rueful grin. "They say she put a cuhse on 'im." He steps up to the appropriate door and raps firmly thrice. After a few moments, he knocks again, but still no answer. As he raises his paw to knock again, Sersi's door pops open and a crotchety old vixen appears. "Whaddya want?"
"A curse?" the doe echos, doubt creeping through her voice, vagrant gaze searching for any exits. She finds two: the way they came from behind, and the way in front, but before she's able to choose either, the unexpected door swings to reveal the fox. Shifting light clatters across the vixen's face, odd shadows meandering across her features. The doe reaches instinctually for her tactical belt, forgetting she's not in uniform, woodland biased evident; her paw fumbles uselessly at her side, then settles into a fist. The paw in Dagda's grasp tightens concurrently and Sersi whispers, "Is she th' one?"
"Tha' would seem t' be th' case," Dagda murmurs, military bearing unshakeable as the vixen appears, her face cringing in the meagre light that filters through the door to play eerily across her wrinkled visage. She sneers at Sersi specifically, hawking a loogie and spewing it onto the ground before the doe. "Yew blasted Fintan boys're always tryin' t' bring y'r friends around f'r a cheap thrill! Well now yew've had one!" She turns to go, slamming the door behind her. "Bran," Dagda mutters darkly, and steps forward to rap on the door again. "Madam," he calls persistently, knocking incessantly. "Madam, we brought y' a... a.. an object!"
Resolve blighted, Sersi steers her gawking from the vulpine's expectorate to Dagda, whose shirt garners a light tug from behind. She does not dare breach her current proximity to the door. "Dag," she says, voice continuing its low and cautionary tread, assuming that the vulpine could very well be all-knowing and all-seeing. "Maybe we should just--" She falters, poking the bulge in his bag, struggling to shed her idea of 'magic' in favor of reason. But country folk sure can be superstitious! "You may be joking, but what if the eye is something more than just... an /eye/?"
Dagda ceases his knocking at Sersi's tugs, turning to face the doe and putting his paws on her arms near her shoulders. Soft eyes of frosty blue find her worried ones, one paw nudging her under the chin to draw their attention. ""ey. If y' don' wan' t' meet this crazy fox lady, no one's makin' y'. I thought it bally well /might/ be magic or I wouldn' 'ave brought y' heah. Now it's y'r call, if we knock," and he kips his head towards the door over his shoulder, "Or if we go," with a nod towards the square.
Sersi's feet shuffle as she hums and haws, eyes dipping in and out of Dagda's gaze as her chin remains in place. "... right," she eventually responds, brought partway clear of her foggy feelings of foreboding by the buck's reassurance, and partway by a sudden whiff of sick just down the way. Let her nose not suffer in vain! The doe dusts herself off and raps knuckle upon door. "Madam fox," she calls out. "We did not come to you for cheap and lowly thrill!" She continues tapping, hollow thwacks rattling the slatted wood door. "We've brought something that may be of interest to, ah, to one of your /talents/! Madam fox, please!"
Finally, the door slowly creaks open once more, and the hunched hag of a fox sticks her face back into the alleyway, scowling determinedly at the pair. "Yew know Madam Tildee's price?" she half-drawls, half-hacks.
Dagda watches Sersi with pride and waits to see what she'll do.
Price? Oh, right, beasts who provide service to others usually require payment. Even fortune tellers need to survive. "What is it that you require?" asks Sersi, craning her vision for a chance to view the building's interior. "Coin? Or favor?"
"Eith'r or," the vixen replies noncommittally, gathering her shawl about her shoulders. "S'truth, yew lot are thee only payin' customers I've 'ad in /weeks./" She throws the door wide, which threatens to come right off its hinges, and waves them inside. With a look at the doe, Dagda nods her in first, keeping himself between the two females as they enter.
Sersi spares a moment to inspect the security of the doorway, thumbing the loose nails which strive hold its hinge. "P'haps you'd attract more business if your entry were more inviting. One more customer and it might fall off," the doe observes without a hint of judgment; rather, it appears to be an offering by the way she eyes the frame. But the hares have pressing want for kismets told so the doe continues on, careful not to touch anything. She looks to Dagda, eyes flitting between him and his bag as if to ask, 'should we show her now?'
"Well maybe yew kin pay f'r /that!/" the vixen grates out irately as they head into the shack, throwing up her withered paws as the door bangs shut behind her. Dagda follows behind Sersi as they wend their way through veritable fog of linen hangings, beadstrings, and the occasional paper lantern. The buck gives her a slight shake of the head to answer her question, and before long they enter into a room with a stereotypical crystal ball on a round table, the walls and table all decked out in cheap embroidered tapestries and rugs.
The increased traffic in the rickety room stirs plumes of dust to gather in its broken light and must to linger in its heat. Sersi catches the hem of her smock, fluttering its skirt to send a burst of air across her body while she studies the room, eye eventually finding the crystal ball. Hah! So that really /is/ a thing. "I've never been to a fortune teller," she admits, stopping before the table, idle fingers catching the tendrils of the table's tassels. "Is this where we sit?"
"Yis, git yerself comfy," the crotchety old hag imposes, bustling around the room. There's a few cushions strewn around the low table, and Dagda lowers himself onto one of these, eyeing the wallhangings suspiciously. It's hard to tell what's actually behind them; maybe a secret passage...? The vixen scurries off into another room, and when she returns, an elaborate turban is perched atop her head, her ears poking out between the wraps. "Madam Mooki will see yew now," she intones, plopping down on the dias at the far side of the table. Crooked claws alight on the surface of the crystal ball, and a flickering light begins to emanate from within.
"I thought her name was Madam /Tildee/," Sersi whispers to Dagda as she plucks a pillow from the floor. With the back of a paw, she frees it of its looser grime before settling down with it beneath her knees, feet tucking together behind. "... or maybe it was just Madam Tildee who set the price that Madam Mooki demands. Are they the same beast?" The doe smothers a smirk, eyes bouncing from the turban to the vulpine's apparent scrying tools, then to Dagda. She's set at ease by the absurdity of the teller's flair. Quiet still, she again presses the buck, suggestion plain behind observation, "The eye is about the same size as that ball of hers."
"QUESTION NOT MADAM MOOKI, for she an' Madam Tildee art one an' th' same!" cries the old vixen in a high, quavering voice that is hopefully mystic. Her outburst finished, the fox glares over the crystal ball at the doe. "Theah's y' ansah," Dagda murmurs softly, nodding at her eye-related comment. The fox speaks up again. "Now... tell Madam Tildee... what fortune do ye seek?"
Like corn stalks in a field, Sersi's ears react to the vixen's transcendental decree; they shoot high and straight and bob in the wind of her words. The doe boggles and blinks, then awkwardly blips, "Ah, um, my fortune?" Despite the long walk to Halyard, it seems the doe never considered what exactly to /ask/ the teller. Will she be rich? Will she stay pretty? "I wish to know, um." When will she marry? How will she die? "I wish to know what fortune it is I ought to be seeking," she finally confesses, ears still anxiously on point.
How exactly is she lighting the crystal ball? It's not abundantly clear, as the light seems to be a variety of colors on any given point of the ball, but the flickering quality is definitely reminiscent of a candle. Madam Mooki/Tildee's wrinkled fingers trace mystic patterns over its surface, her filthy claws making a slight scratching noise as she stares into the depths of Fate and dredges up an answer. "I do see... many things... strange, an' winderful t' tell..." Dagda, for his part, sits quietly on his cushion, eyes alternating between the fox and the hangings, ever cautious. "I see... a hare on th' roof of a... a fishing shack... An' a... a /hook./ Yes, a hook..."
Relief wrings from the doe when her confession elicits a positive response from the fox. Her posture slopes toward the ball, paws anchoring her to the floor while her biceps press into the table, shoulders curling past its edge. The flickering light illuminate the doe's black eyes, painting within their reflection the colors that emanate suspiciously from the sphere. She is awed, for a time, though the vixen's dubious and disconnected vision soon triggers Sersi's skepticism. "A hook? Like a... fishing hook?" she inquires. "I... saw a hare, of that description, on our way here. He was... fishing. Are you sure...?" She breaks off to glance at the bump in Dagda's satchel, indicating its presence to the fox. "Perhaps you might see more clearly with fresher aid...?"
"What be that?" Madam Mooki snaps, breaking from the mystical accent she's affected while using the ball. "Just, um," Dagda replies, leaning over to flip the satchel open and rummage around inside, drawing the bundle of towel out and cradling it in his lap, unwrapping it to display the eye to the 'seer'. The dull golden gleam becomes visible first, followed by the lidless pupil. The vixen leans forward in awe.
The glister of the eye ensnares Sersi's regard as well when the vixen's becomes trapped. The yellow seems somehow brighter despite the shelter, and the fuliginous pupil appears to have gained more clarity. Or perhaps, just as well, it is simply the doe's superstition. She looks down at the paws which held it only hours ago when it blinked. Or when it seemed to, anyway. "We discovered it in the shallows downshore," the pale doe imparts. "Just before we came your way. Or perhaps it guided us your way. Have you insight?"
Withered paws tremble as the vixen shoots her arms forward to beg for the eye. "Let Madam Tildee hold it," she whines in a surprisingly ingratiating tone. The buck reluctantly offers up the orb, passing it into her outstretched paws within the towel. She immediately casts the article of cloth aside, turning the bare eye around in her paws and staring down into its pupil. "Cetus, /Leviathan,/" she coos, eyes locked onto the golden globe. "Oh yis, Madam Tildee sees many things, but none so winderful as dis."
"Is that its... name?" queries the doe, hushed and reverent at the vixen's treatment of the eye as if it were revenant. Sersi's incredulous gaze is unfenced. "Madam Tildee, would you be able to... share? What it is-- that you... see?" She scoots even closer to the table, light of the crystal transforming the hue of her fur as it stands on end. Goosebumps!
"Madam Tildee sees th' /hook,/" she reiterates in a decidedly more sinister tone. "Th' /hook,/ oh yis, th' hook... He will come soon, he will, an' when 'e does dis place will feel th' dread o' 'is passin'... I sees yon fire mountain, its halls empty an' cold..." She trails off, eyes still fixated on the golden globe. Long moments pass, and Dagda looks increasingly concerned, although he's significantly less enthralled than his feminine companion. A trail of drool begins to crawl from the corner of her mouth.
Sersi melts into the table's edge, languish clear in her her wilted ears and forgotten posture. Her gaze ceases to focus on the eye or the fox when Tildee's augury is spoken; glazed, her vision is consigned to rumination. "The hook is not a hook," she softly decrypts. "Is he a /beast/? Of flesh and bone?" The doe turns to Dagda, eyes slow to refocus, to gauge the buck's view, then to the fox when it's apparent she has little more to say. Blinking, she spots the drool. "/Dagda/," she prods. "Is she… OK?"
"Hard t' say, really," Dagda replies, peering at the vixen. "Seems t' be in some sorta catatonic stupah, though she seemed a bit off-kiltah before we evah walked in th' door." One paw rests on the table edge as he leans slowly forward to poke, ever so slightly, at Madam Tildee's hip. With a start, the old hag whirls back to life, eyes flashing as she turns on the healer. "Yew! What're ye doin' in Madam Mooki's 'ouse?!" The golden eye is held protectively away from him. "Th' both'a ye! Get outta 'ere!"
"B-bu," stammers the doe, one impulsive paw grabbing at the eye. But any threat by Sersi is buffered by the teller's setting, waist catching the table's edge. The jolt appears to knock some sense back into the doe as she rebounds. "But the eye," is her final, ineffectual plea. "Madam Tildee! You /must/ tell us /more/!"
"Belongsss to Madam MOOKI!" comes the sibilant shriek of the fortune teller. "BEGONE from dis place!" The crotchety old crow leaps atop the table with surprising dexterity, kicking the crystal ball at Sersi. It reveals itself as a hollow shell, but the candle inside is still lit and comes tumbling out onto the carpets. Grabbing his satchel and flailing for one of the doe's arms, Dagda begins to back hurriedly towards the door. "M'dear, this may not be worth th' trouble..."
The obvious sham of the crystal's power juxtaposed with vixen's shielding of the eye stun-lock the doe, though she's already to her feet, and there is very little effort needed to drag her along. She stumbles, still staring, though now at something less mystic than the eye or the vixen herself: the candle's small flame is quickly fed by the building's dusty offerings, erupting within the folds of the rugs laid to cover the hollow, splintered floors. "A fire!" Sersi cries, though they're already out the door.
"A fiyah?!" It's true: as the pair flee into the safety of the village, the smoke from the shack rises into the mid-afternoon sky.
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