Chiquq grits her teeth even as Aitut lets out a mournful bellow.
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Chiquq's prayer completes, and an overly-large mosquito appears and drones its way towards the doors...!
"Aitut! Come!" Chiquq calls over her shoulder and then sprints through snow as best she can towards the entrance.
Aitut bellows in confusion.
"Let me send something else in ahead for us," Chiquq says softly to her allies, and begins a prayer. Given no immediate command, Aitut bellows inquisitively at Chiquq, but her attention is on her prayer.
Sorry to ask, just been a long time-- I know we sold some gear in Waldsby, but did we already sell the +1 mancatching spear? I'm absolutely fine if we did sell it, but I was under the impression somehow that it was so small a town they might not have been able to afford buying it (as well as our other more expensive items). I did look at the loot tracker but couldn't recall if that was "stuff we plan to sell" or stuff officially already sold. (The only reason it matters is for getting accurate weight encumbrance stuff up for Chiquq and Aitut right now)
No sooner has Chiquq said her bit about 'doing no harm' when... Harm gets done.
"WARE!" she cries out. "ARCHERS!-- hang on, Yrja!
Her arrow streaks true. "Aitut!" Chiquq shouts. "Teach the wolf the power of the land-- and your antlers!" The elk snorts and tosses its massive head, then lumbers around the bushes to the other side of the wolf. Its eyes flash a strange, icy blue as it registers its enemy. Aitut attacks!
"...Ila's eyes never burned blue," Chiquq says to nobody, momentarily distracted.
"I do not know if we can assume that, yet," Chiquq says with a shrug to Dez's words. Her eyes flicker briefly to Aitut, then back to the birds. "And I am loathe to kill someone's animal until it seems there is no better choice. If they take wing, we take them down. Until they they are harming nothing."
Chiquq waits long enough to see if the falcons are going to make any sign to her speech, then shrugs. "I will keep my bow trained on them. Orik, will you help with that? Ogon and Dezso, do you wish to investigate the entrance? Yrja...." Chiquq half-smiles. "...provide moral support?"
Chiquq purses her lips with a dark gaze at the falcons. She takes some steps back to have a good view of the birds. "Hai! If you can understand speech and mean no harm, then stay where you are. If you fly away we will assume you go to tell someone we are here." She watches, an arrow on the string, to see if the birds react at all. "If they are just birds it may be better to strike rather than risk it," she says warily to the others. "But if they are more than that... "I do not wish to simply pass by. We still need shelter. And the spirits have given us a sign, with Aitut: we should be bold, when we can."
"....falcons on the roof. Two," Chiquq says quietly. "...not wild birds; they have jesses. This place may not be as abandoned as it seems. I do not think of falcons as servants of the witches, but... they might be."
Chiquq looks several years younger, though that may just be the smile that recurringly finds its way onto her face every few seconds as she gazes at the magnificent elk and hand-feeds him choice bits of grass for as long as they stand on the periphery of the summer pocket. "There were wolves?" she says, vaguely. "I did not notice them. My heart was running with Aitut." Shaking herself, she says, "But I believe you. And I thank you for your protection during the night, Dezso, Ogon. We are a strange group to be thrown together, but like the braided grass we are stronger together. I thank you for your words as well, Ogon." Her smile does not fade as Aitut and Sasha get acquainted, probably with some sniffing at each other. "Whatever comes, I feel ready again. It is good, not to be alone." *** Even the chill wind does not immediately dull Chiquq's new high, though by hour two of slogging in it she has stopped humming snatches of childhood songs to herself. She walks with a hand on Aitut's hide, muttering low apologies to him that she took him from the green warmth into this. The village sits like so many snow-covered gravestones around them, and Chiquq shivers once for a reason other than the cold. "I think the spirits do not rest easy here..."
"...but that symbol, that is probably the goddess Desna. If any power remains to her temple there, then it is a good place. Let's go see." She starts trudging towards the temple with Aitut, scanning all the same for trouble, Desna or no Desna.
Chiquq is oblivious, all her energy focused on the draining trance-like state of recitation... She has no idea of the interference the others are running for her, yet!
Chiquq blinks at Orik's touch, and straightens, feeling the bone-deep weariness suddenly gone. "...thank you. --yes, thank you. Then we are definitely ready to travel." There is a smile on her face that has been gone for ages.
With her traveling companions' agreement, Chiquq returns to the stage, and to the long prayer of her people that bonds their fates together. At times she cries, during the ritual-- remembering doing this with Ila, remembering Ila's blood white on the snow. But it is a cleansing cry, a mourning that lets go of something she had held onto until now just as Baba Yaga's winter holds onto the land. The warm, grass-sweet breath of the stag washes over her face as the minutes turn into hours, and still Chiquq remains seated before the elk, chanting, even when her voice falls hoarse. Even when the others bed in for the night the low drone of Chiquq's half-song, half-speech continues to permeate the springtime air of the pocket.
By the time the ritual is finished Chiquq is near asleep on her feet with weariness, but she fights her yawns as she coaxes her new... and somewhat diminished?... companion along with handfuls of tender grass. "I hope you will not be mad at me when you realize there is much less of this out in the rest of the world," she mumbles sleepily to the elk. On reaching the others, she says, "I thank you for your patience. The walker will go with us. He has told me his name in my tongue is to be Aitut. It means 'gift'," she says, forgetting that several of the group speak Hallit in their own right. "I am very tired. But we have spent a great deal of time already. I will travel when we are ready." Partly to fight off the desire to lie down and sleep, Chiquq begins to wrench up handfuls of sweet grass and tie them off in little bundles-- Chiquq knows quite well that food will be scarce for the stag outside of this pocket. Herbivores cannot feed easily on ice or snow.
Chiquq exhales as the warm breath of the elk tickles her skin. Slowly, she touches the velvety-textured short fur of the great beast, and then, just as slowly, with great care, rises from her kneeling position. Calling to the others Chiquq says, "This one will walk with me. But I must thank the spirit of this beast for what he is giving up-- this peace and this green place, for danger and the witches. It will take some time." She hesitates. "The way of my people is to spend one day and one night making the path one path. I understand that witches will not be idle during that time. But I think that we should take the time. This beast: he is a good sign. A sign that the spirits and my ancestors are with us. Or Orik's god, maybe. Maybe all of them. It is not good to turn away from gifts such as this. "But I have blood debt to all of you. If you think we need to hurry instead, then I will not put this gift above the will of the pack."
Chiquq falls to her knees some feet away from the elk, her hands raised up to the sky above with its shining sun and crisp clean blue expanse. "Mikuluk Ah-kane! Ado ekkuk mo diyuk! Kaqena hou, takka em mo ekituq baha mo-in..." Hallit:
"First Grandfather Mikuluk! Old and wise One who lets free the warm winds in their time and who gathers the clouds back to his home! In your house is the great feast where my ancestors eat and grow fat.
"Ancestors, aunties and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers: your daughter sees what you have sent towards her and her heart is small with this gift! May I be worthy of this good thing, may the spirit of this great beast find me worth walking with!" Her hands drop from the heavens towards the grass, plucking forth tender green shoots and swiftly braiding them into a loose cord, one end of which she coils around her own wrist. "Ho-a, great walker," she whispers softly, her eyes fixed on the elk. "Look, I tie myself first. I do not come to you thinking I am your master. I tie myself to you. I will serve you with food, with warmth, with prayers, with the blood of my heart to be wounded when you are wounded. Walk with me and I will do these things."
GM:
Chiquq is silent at first, simply taking in the sight of the majestic beast. Her thoughts slowly drift from survival and hunting-- the hard reality of struggle against the elements, the land itself, and the spirits as well that has seemed to dominate their lives since the ambush in the village-- and drift back to simpler, more carefree times. Before the Black Rider, before Baba Yaga was anything more than the ruler of another land with nothing to do with her life, and when the greatest trouble to haunt her and Ila was a petulant southerner complaining about how they hadn't thought it would be so cold, up here. Ila. Chiquq's breath hitches, though in the warmth of this pocket of summer, it doesn't steam in the air in a tell-tale way. The Kellid woman peels off her gloves and crouches to touch the brave, soft shoots of grass that speak to something other than endless winter. Her heart has felt so cold since watching Ila fall to the weasel-thing. But the children playing: there had been a touch of thaw there, yes. Seeing the beast ahead-- lord of its land, living in harmony with the earth and its cycles as it is supposed to-- brings another fresh breath like a soft southern breeze upon the ice. "....I would like to go closer to him, yes," Chiquq says softly. "I do not know if he comes from the god Erastil, who my people call Mikuluk. But I think maybe he comes from the spirits of the earth itself, to remind us that winter is not forever. Or to remind me, anyway." Chiquq takes a breath, and looks around. "I will go forward showing I respect the earth and its creatures and its spirits." She scans the snow-free soil, hunting out something with her nose as much as her eyes-- any dung-heaps of the great elk. To the city-born in the group it might seem strange, but it is the simplest way she has just now of burying her own strange human scent under one familiar to the beast ahead, to show she comes forth in friendship.
"Well.... let us go and see, then. Perhaps the elk is a sign from your god after all..." Chiquq says thoughtfully, plucking off some tender-looking tree branches from a tree, where the needles are still the new-green of fresh growth.
Chiquq gazes at the majestic beast over the intervening distance, fingers resting easily on the shaft of her bow as she pushes back her parka's hood with the other hand in order to appreciate the warmth. Yes, it IS a fine beast; what a hide it would yield... and the antlers... She goes from vague nodding to a sort of blank look at Orik, and then kind of bemused guilt. "--ah? Ah.... you want to... befriend it?"[/b] A plaintive addition: "...not hunt it?"
"Your responsibility is to your boys first," Chiquq agrees to Nadya, and briefly rests a hand on the other tracker's shoulder. "I am sure the spirits will bring us all together... in this life, or the next." After she says it, Chiquq seems to grasp this is downer talk, and clears her throat. "...but most likely this one. You will teach your boys well, I am sure. Give our regards to Hatch if you see him again."
Taking the scraps of bones with a nod of thanks, Chiquq rummages in her pack for a set of tools wrapped in a deerhide...
Little bits of twine and sticks join her working, becoming two little figures with the suggestions of faces carved into the white-bleached bones, though the work is a little rushed. "Here," Chiquq says simply, handing over the two figures to the boys. "Maybe these are the great heroes Orm and Mjoli?" She shakes her head at the suggestion that the floor is anything less than perfect. "As Dezso says, this is better shelter than we have had in many days. May the spirits bless you for your hospitality."
Chiquq is satisfied at last with the explanation of the 'troll' that never was, and shakes her head in a sort of bemusement at the ways of the world. Around the fire, she huddles close to the heat. Such a night as this, it would be good to lean against Ila, to feel the mammoth's warm-if-stinky presence at her back, the heaving bellow-sighs of her dearest friend. She watches Orik tend to Sasha, and says little... though the ghost of a smile crosses her face as she watches the boys at play, with their toy figures. "I need bone," she eventually announces, to both her companions and the couple they have saved. "It does not need to be large bones. Do you have any scraps of bones, left from meat?"
Chiquq still looks wary, but the man undeniably looks more... well.. human with the moss off him. "She sent us to look for you. Where is this troll that supposedly grabbed you away? We find you looking like a troll, but taken by moss. Was there ever a troll?"
"So... now we shoot?" says Chiquq, doubtful herself that this is the husband-- the story seems strange to her, that a troll would take the husband and not eat him long enough for a mold to infest him-- but she is trusting to Dezso's education and judgment.
What with her attempts not to hit the maybe-a-man, Chiquq's arrow goes wide.
"Just because the troll has the mold in it does not mean it isn't still a dangerous enemy," Chiquq says with a headshake. "The troll may have taken the husband well before it got this mold in its skull, remember."
Twang! An arrow arcs over the heads of the party towards the troll. "Do trolls shoot things?" Chiquq asks with knit brows.
Chiquq casts a prayer to strengthen her arrows!
Chiquq looks down at the slope, reaches into her pack, and looks bemused when she doesn't find what she is looking for. "....did I not pack any?" she asks the air bemusedly. Shaking her head at herself, Chiquq assesses the terrain, and then Ogon in his bulky armor.
"Let's take our time getting down. Careful and steady, yes?" she says, gesturing at the spiraling slope, and scanning it for any hazards.
Aww, thanks guys/gals/others <3
"Yrja can stay at the back and be safe enough, I think," Chiquq says, breaking a long taciturn silence with a half-smile at the tiefling woman. With her bow held loose in one hand and a lit torch in the other, she also takes a rear position. "If trouble happens, Yrja, take my torch so I can see and fire my bow as well, yes?"
Sorry to have been so quiet lately! I got promoted at work from a part time position to a full time one that has a lot more responsibility-- ultimately good, but I'm still adjusting to the longer hours and more work. I'll try and be more regular. Going to go post now.
"I will light a torch," Chiquq says. "Fire may be the best way of destroying such a creature."
And what does Chiquq know about trolls.....?
Hopefully she knows enough to bring fire.
Chiquq would have sent the stirge chasing the fey, but the new arrivals makes that unnecessary. "Well met. I know that several of us.... look strange... but we mean no harm. And you have helped us, so by debt of the north, we will help you in turn. I am Chiquq. Tell us all you know of this troll?"
Chiquq's prayer finishes, and a very big mosquito, or something rather like a mosquito, appears with an insectile whine. Chiquq hurries to be able to see, and then points at the fey; the stirge buzzes off across the ice to reach the little fiddler. For herself, Chiquq nocks and looses, again...
Cursing under her breath, Chiquq begins to call on the spirits of the wild...
Eyes narrowed at her miss, Chiquq targets a wolf instead. "Hoa! Over here!" she yells at the beast.
"Hai!! Spirits of my people, mark the enemy!"
A shimmering green fire envelops the fiddler. Chiquq draws an arrow and sights along the shaft...
Chiquq squints out over the snow. "We should pull back. Too dangerous to try anything with the herd, if the giants spot us we cannot outrun them in this terrain. Caution rather than speed is our ally here."
Chiquq purses her lips, none too pleased with the giants... or the caribou herd, under the circumstances.
"...the trouble is that the caribou are coming our way anyway," she says, finishing Nadya's sentence in a somewhat dry, chagrined manner. "This is not good. Let me think a moment." The scout and huntress crouches in the snow, fingers tracing absent patterns in the cold white powder, shaping tiny hillocks as if mimicking a little model of the terrain around them.
"Whatever is magic we should take, at least-- wise not to use it until we know what it does, I agree. Some of these things may be valuable even if not magical..."
"Hmfff... I suppose we'll have to keep a further eye out for them, but yes, in the meantime, we will claim our recompense." She grimaces at the soiling. "...carefully, and with created water." She suits action to word, trying to rinse off the worst of the filth before they add it to their packs.
Chiquq can't understand the words, but she grasps the tone well enough. She snorts.
"If they will not talk to us," she says with the hint of a half-smile, "then we will just have to make up the cost of our ruined food from their possessions, won't we? That crown and that scarf, for instance..." Chiquq makes to move towards the items to grab them, testing to see if the nasty little spirits will rise to her bait.
"The trees over there," Chiquq says with a narrowed gaze. "That little copse. I do not want to be harangued by these pests in more deadly ways; I suggest we see if we can find them now?"
Chiquq, as soon as the rotted food is brought up, shakes her head. "An inconvenience-- I also know a prayer similar to the one you used, though," she remarks with a wry smile to Orik. "I suppose you get yours through your god. Mine is simply a prayer of my people. But it is good we are both prepared in this way, so that this tactic of whoever is harrying us is pointless."
She doesn't know the nature of the presumed fey who spoiled their food, but she has an eagle's eye for tracking, especially in the snow. She follows the tracks Nadya points out as long as is feasible... "Give me a moment. I want to see where these go."
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