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 Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2013 5:22 pm
Now that she'd recovered her escaped treasure, Miela surveys her surroundings. This new room seemed to be a study, or a library, or something. Hm. In any case there were books everywhere, all knocked off the shelves by....something. She bends to pick one up, rubbing it on her thigh to clear the cover of dust. It's leather-bound with a green cover and smells old. Delicately, she opens it to the first page, and is...somewhat surprised to discover she has no idea what it says. Not only are the words foreign, the very symbols are illegible to her. "Hmph," she says again, idly putting the book back on a shelf.
That's when she notices that, aside from the one she'd just put there, only one book in the whole room is still on the shelf. "That's odd," she muses. What's so special about this book that it would stay on the shelf through whatever trauma had dislodged the others? This one is covered in white leather and has some sort of gold lettering on the spine. Not that she could read it. She reaches for it, then hesitates, glancing toward the door. Well, she knew where the door out was already, and she hadn't heard anyone else around. She'd all but forgotten about the strange being she'd been landed here with. Briefly she hopes he's alright, but seeing as there wasn't anything in here to harm them...
She shrugs. The exit wasn't going anywhere. A little more exploring couldn't hurt. She reaches again for the white book and pulls it off the shelf. Well, she would have if it would've come off the shelf. Instead, it only tilts, then springs back into place when Miela lets go of it. "What the...?" she's saying, when the very wall next to the bookcase opens up! "Well. That's different."
She checks the fuel level in her lantern and begins down the path the bookcase had revealed, without a second thought for the exit.
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 9:06 pm
Miela isn't terribly surprised when the pathway she'd begun down starts to slant upward. She'd been right about being underground, then. It gets steeper and steeper, causing Miela to strain under the weight of her supplies and the things she'd kept.
Sweating, she emerges into daylight. She squints against the harsh sunlight, in contrast to the dim light of her lantern, which she puts out once her vision returns to normal. She definitely didn't need it out here, and she didn't know how much more fuel she had, or how long she'd still need it for.
"Now...where am I?" she wonders aloud, looking around. She doesn't recognize anything, certainly. Judging by the sun, it looks like midmorning. Good. She'd have lots of light for this first day of travel. She rubs her hands together apprehensively. She could be anywhere on the island. She might not even be on the island anymore. But, she decides, dusting herself off and preparing for a long walk, she had to try to get home.
Knowing that Laisidhiel was on the easternmost part of the isle, she starts walking in the direction of the sun. She walks, and walks, and walks, and sees no landmarks except a lot of forest. She hopes Laisidhiel is close by, since it's also near a forest, but she knows that much of the island is forested, and if she were close, she'd be able to see it looming on the horizon.
It's a good two days' walk until Miela finds something other than more forest. She'd been able to do nothing much more than build a fire and camp the night, hoping that nothing ate her in her sleep. So far, nothing had. Perhaps she was either too big (or too small?) for the local carnivores. Perhaps the fire scared them away. Perhaps the local carnivores were also diurnal and wouldn't bother her at night.
At midday on the third day of walking, Miela finds both a hopeful and hopeless sign. She comes to a cliff overlooking a body of water. Now she can see her home, Laisidhiel, large on the horizon, but still quite some distance away. It looks like she'd have a good few days' walk ahead of her. She'd eaten through the roots she'd found in the basket, but water meant fishing. She's sure she can rig up a fishing line from the supplies in her pack.
The problem, then, was how to get down there. The cliffs extended as far as she could see, so there was no going around. The only way for it was to climb down the cliff face...and hope she didn't fall.
Gulping, she says a quick prayer before beginning her descent. She rerigs her backpack so her basket was hanging from one of the straps, just below her rear end, and cinches the whole thing close to her body. She tries to keep images of goats in her mind as she clings to the cliffs, hoofed creatures who did just fine on mountain faces. She pretends to be a goat herself, effortlessly walking up and down the sheer cliffs as she pleased. She even bleats out loud once, causing her to giggle.
At one point she puts her hoof on an unstable ridge, which comes out from under her, but she transfers her weight to her other hoof just in time to avoid falling. Heart racing, and terrified tears blurring her vision, she keeps pushing onward. It'd do her no good to stay here, shaking like a leaf. She had to get home.
After a few more near-misses and crumbling footholds, she's finally at the bottom, but there's no time to rest. Instead of a beach, all that's here is a rocky outcropping. Carefully she picks her way across the rocks until she gets to the edge, slipping and getting her hooves wet in the shallows a few times. At the edge of this rocky outcropping, there's a short distance of just water from here to the beach. Quickly she takes a mental inventory of her knapsack. Nothing in it would get damaged if it were wet, except her matches and lantern. Maybe the first-aid kit? But there's not time to pull out and save specific things.
Miela pulls off her backpack and holds it over her head as she wades across the water. It rushes over her hooves, ankles, then her thighs. Then it's up to her waist. Then her chest. She's halfway across now, and it's up to her chin, soaking her bandana. Luckily she manages to keep her footing and make it to the other side unharmed. Laughing to herself, she collapses onto the sand, not even caring how it got into her fur. "I can't believe I didn't die like four times in the last six hours," she says giddily.
After an hour of rest, she takes inventory of her surroundings again. She recognizes this place. They'd come this way when they'd first made it to Telrunya. It had taken them 5 days to make it to Laisidhiel from here, but she thinks she might be able to do it in 4, being just her and not a whole herd of Faunies. She roots around in her bag for anything to make a fishing line out of, but there was nothing. Not even rope or hemp or anything. She sighs, but finds a treasure trove at the bottom: food! She tears into a piece of jerky with glee, forgetting temporarily that she's usually a vegetarian (with the occasional fish).
She fills her canteen with cool, sweet water from the lake, and continues her journey. It should be just walking and camping from here on out.
Four days later, Laisidhiel looms large before her. She practically breaks into a sprint to reach the gate. Home, home, home! she chants in her mind. She'd never really thought of Laisidhiel as home before, merely where she lived, but she can't get the image of her little apartment out of her mind. She can't wait to be back in her own bed, safe and sound. She'd already gotten the idea of starting up a garden, but she'd need a day or so to rest first.
She greets the guards posted at the gate with a grin, then runs her hands through her hair as they allow her through. Home/
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