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 Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 6:56 pm
Marissa followed suit and dropped to the forest floor. She grinned.
"You've got the weapons."
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 6:57 pm
Em rolled her eyes, smiling. She pulled one of the shorter daggers out of her belt- of highland-gelm make- not too unlike the one Pierre had been in his first stage. Now was no time to be nostalgic, however. She didn't know how long the opium lasted.
"Did Val say there was any particular way it had to be killed? Stabbed, sliced, diced? Blood collection, what?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:03 pm
Marissa recalled. "I only have to bring it back to Valleldia." She studied the slumbering body. "Try to keep it as intact as possible, I suppose. Not too much blood loss...I don't know what exactly is entailed in the process..."
Gulping, she glanced away from the weapon in Em's hand. "Also, make it swift?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:12 pm
"Swift is the only way I know how to do it," Em said, kicking the creature over onto its back. "Ew, I'm going to be stabbing eeeeeyeees..." she said, shuddering a little as she dropped to her knees.
"The squeamish will be warned to look a-wa-ay," she said in a sing-songy voice, and brought the dagger from about chest level in one swift motion down between the creature's forelegs, pinning its chest to the ground. Blood spurted out onto the earth, and up into the air- Em backed off, just in case it was poisonous as well, and wiped the blade on a leaf that had fallen from the oak.
Suddenly she wrinkled her nose in thought, and turned to Marissa.
"Wait, its heart is in its chest, right? And it only has one?"
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Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 2:53 pm
Marissa turned away, peering into blackness with her eyes crinkled in discomfort. She was faint of heart when it came to business like this. Simple wounds, scrapes, and obscenities she was fine with. In fact, being around plants all of her life made her quite a medicinal soul. But this, this was bodies, and death, and blood, and internal organs...! Hearing the sound of flesh against a blade, she blanched. When Emelyn voiced her question, she answered in a wavery voice, "Yes, as far as I know," doing her best to settle her uneasy stomach. "Let me know when you're finished," she said.
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Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 6:04 pm
"No worries, then, sweetie." She tucked the now-clean blade back into her grass-woven bag. "It's stopped spurting blood- er.. I mean... it's gone to heaven. S'all yours." She grinned.
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Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 1:37 pm
Marissa thanked Em, sighed, knelt, and pulled a rough sheet from her knapsack. She covered the Panoptes, and in one movement hoisted it up against her hip. It was quite heavy, and she hated the cold fell of it through the sheet.
Cocking her head in the direction of camp, where a distant gypsy fire was flickering, she guided Emelyn away. As she walked back, it hit her: She had completed her quest. Even ater a failed attempt, she had managed to succeed.
Their faces were illuminated as they reached the threshold of the camp. She was mostly silent until she reached her wagonm where she laid down her load with a thump. She smiled at Emelyn. "Thank you so much for what you've done," she said. "I couldn't have done it without you, you know." She wrapped her friend in a quick, tight hug. "I'll repay you somehow." Turning and gathering the Panoptes (she made a face as she picked it up), she retreated into her wagon to check on the sleeping Kale.
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Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 2:22 pm
III. A Long-Awaited Healing...
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 12:09 pm
"Shhh, Kale, don't worry iubito, it's dead, shhh..."
A deafening racket sounded from outside Valleldia's wagon door. Kale, his fox-ears plastered to his head, was wailing something terrible. Marissa was sure the other gypsy's would be roused by the noise, and so did her best to quiet the child. The source of his unhappiness was the lifeless Panoptes balanced against Marissa's hip. It was obviously frightening him. He cried his discomfort, pressing himself in the crook of Marissa's arm furthest from the creature, eyes wide and tearful. The mother did her best to provide comfort- rocking him, bouncing him- but to no avail. She could only wait through the noise for Val to open her door.
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 12:17 pm
And open the door Val did indeed, with a watertight sack in one hand, made from the stomach of an adult Veedi Beast, and a small, round bone in the other, smoothed on the edges into a seamless disc. In its center was a section of soft, sweet marrow. She slid the common gypsy "teething ring" into the fox infant's good hand.
"Here, little one. Suck on that." She smiled at his mother. "I could hear him screaming," she explained. "Here, hand me that..."
She took the wrapped Panoptes from Marissa. "Ooh, it's heavier than I remembered them being..." she said to herself, but forced it into the sack anyway.
"So, how was it? Oh, please, come in," she said, pushing the door wider open and stepping back into Whistle Stick.
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 12:25 pm
Kale quieted a bit when he took the teether, and quieted completely when he put it in his mouth. His mother dried his cheeks with her sleeve.
"I'm thinking everyone can hear him," she said as she shuffled thankfully into the quiet confines of Val's abode, "He's awfully scared of it."
She took a seat. "The hunt went surprisingly well," she reported happily. "With Emelyn's help we were finished before the night was over." Kale sucked on his teether and peered at the sack with narrowed eyes.
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 12:40 pm
Val laughed. "Em and her knives. I'm not surprised you enlisted her aid." She sat opposite Marissa, at her rune table, and threw a cloth over it. Then she dropped the bag, Panoptes and all, onto it.
"Well, the hardest part is now done. Now, we just have to invoke the meij stream- the magic stream that runs through all of life, but us in particular, as gypsies- and tell it that we have revenged the dark meij for what it did to Kale. Then, it should reverse the damage to the young one. Hold him in your lap, and try and keep both of your attention focused."
She took three long pins from under the table. They were black and thin, like long splinters from a dead oak, but straight- and at their tips were small, almost drop-like crystals, clung to the top as if to topple at any moment. Val placed her left hand on the watersack, and lifted her head to the sky.
"Seija, Yonila, meij, we invoke thee. Dark meij pursued this child, and injured him.." She took one of the pins, and thrust it through the sack, into the Panoptes. "We invoke thee to see a mother's revenge, taking the safety of her child into her own hands, and forsaking the power of the meij." She thrust the second pin into the sack. Then she handed the third pin to Marissa.
"Here. Say these words, and thrust the pin into it. The words are: 'His mother demands retribution from the meij.' ...And allow yourself to feel rage at his being hurt, or sadness- whatever emotion is strongest."
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 1:17 pm
Marissa concentrated on the sack as the ritual began, a hand on each of Kale's shoulders. The baby boy no longer emitted any sound at all, and watched the table as intently as if he knew what was going on. She listened to the incantations, following their cadence and focusing her mind.
When the third pin was handed to her, she already trembled with emotion. She glanced down at her son's hand, which so piteously housed the arrow of a crossbow, and although she knew he felt no pain, she quaked with anger at the thought. How dare these creatures inflict any harm to her child..!
She took the pin with a steady hand and readied it above the sack. The woman then let every ounce of feeling she harbored for the darkness come forth in her words as she cried: "His mother DEMANDS retribution from the meij." The pin pierced the sack.
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 3:47 pm
As the third pin took its place, anchored with the force of a mother's anger and righteousness, the three globes at the pin's tips began to glow. First, they shone red, the color of righteousness, then black, the color of the dark meij- then an ethereal yellow, bandying light up into the air with the answer of the meij stream: we hear your call, and we turn back what has been wrought.
They were bathed in this warm, yellow light- and before their eyes, the wound on the young Fortunette's hand was healed, turned right as if he had never been injured.
The light died, and the color in the globes died.
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 7:00 pm
Kale squeaked as this happened. He looked down at his hand; it felt cold, then went warm, and then...nothing. In the dying yellow light, the air thick in silence, Kale experienced the peculiar ripple of regaining a sense into something that before had been unable to know feeling. And yet... where sensation had been granted none was present at all, for the boy felt no pain.
The silence was broken by the clatter of an arrowhead against a wooden table.
In a flurry Kale was swept into his mother's arms, and his hand became victim to the most meticulate of examinations- his fingers were prodded, his palm poked and squeezed. Irritatedly, he pulled his hand away and murmured his annoyance, promptly sticking his violated left hand into his mouth to gum on. "Oh..." whispered Marissa, and it was this simple gesture that sent her into tears. "Val, I..I don't know how you do it. Thank you. You... ah. Gods bless the gypsies."
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