Lysi smiled. "Well, I can agree with that. They are very exciting stories. You should hear Diri tell them sometimes. He does voices and everything. It's awesome!"
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"So? How does someone else doing the same thing before you could make it any less special? People get married all the time, and that is special! People make friends, read books, travel, build, and create art and it's still special! I'm am not going to stop seeing what is special just because some else already has! I am not going to give up on that!" Lysi nodded and looked at the man with pity. "I think that's probably the saddest thing I ever heard. There's miracles all around you and you're missing them."
Lysi shakes her head sadly. "It must be so sad being you. Something wonderful could be right in front of you and you'd just complain about how boring everything is. I'm surprised too. To have traveled away from everything familiar and still not appreciate things....your loss." "Oh, look, there's that squirrel again. I wonder if we followed it if we would find a nest of baby squirrels...I think a squirrel would make a very good pet. Maybe if we find baby squirrels we can take one and raise it and teach it fun tricks...."
"Well, that's your problem right there. No one is actually boring. You're just unimaginative. Why, even the crazy lady on brook street with twenty five cats isn't boring. Do you know, she brushes all of her cats every day and uses the fur to spin yarn that she knits into sweaters? It takes almost a whole year just to make one sweater. I think that's fascinating. Creepy, but fascinating. If you want to find things that are interesting you just have to look harder," she said cheerfuly.
"Oh, cool! I learned new words today...I don't think the caravan master knew all of those words even though he did brag that he could swear in twelve languages ...but he seemed kinda hesitant to demonstrate. I think he was exaggerating. I like your tattoos. They're interesting. Do they mean anything or are they just for decoration? Ooh.....that necklace.....what kind of teeth were used to make it? Is there any particular pattern? Does it mean anything specific? I want to make one like that ...what kind of cord do you use? Hemp? Leather? Well, it would be silly to use a metal chain with something as natural as teeth so that wouldn't work....Hey, do you live in that shrubbery? How does that work? Don't you get cold? And what about when it rains? I don't think I'd like sleeping out in the wet very much. It sounds uncomfortable." "Oh, where are my manners? I'm Lysi. Who are you?"
Normally she'd have argued, but after yesterday she decided to do as Diri asked and get behind him. She saw that Diri was watching the bushes. "Is there something in there?"
Lysi is trying to coax a squirrel over to her with some bread crumbs.
"So do newts, and you thought those were gross!" "But I still spent a whole day helping you find the slimy things. I just don't want to repeat the experience."
"But they have so many pretty colors!" she protested.
Lysi has become distracted by a butterfly with colorful wings and has wandered away from the conversation.
"Hi, Mr. I've forgotten your name," she says cheerfully. "I'm Lysi and this is Arry. Were you able to find a new spear yet?" she asked with wide-eyed curiosity.
Lysi wipes her eyes, feeling better for having had a good cry. "Yeah, we should definitely leave a note. We don't want Mr. Jobe to worry about us....although if those guys know where Mr. Jobe lives we might want to be extra careful when we come back," she added thoughtfully. "And all the more reason not to hang out here by ourselves all day."
"Diri! I am so glad to see you. Yeah, we're okay now. Though I'd like to not repeat that particular experience. We're staying with Mr. Jobe for a while. But since he isn't here, we're going to go play in the park. That sounds like fun, right? And you can tell us some stories later? You know all the best stories....and I'm just so relieved that you're okay. Arry said you were, but I was afraid he was being overly optimistic so I'm really glad he was right." Stops for breath. Smiles. Bursts into tears.
"I think that's a great idea. That way we won't be wandering around alone. And Diri definitely tells the best stories. Plus, after yesterday, I'd like to see that he's okay."
Lysi nibbled at a piece of cheese. "Probably. You know how adults get. Well, we don't really know where he went, so we can't follow. We'll have to take steps to make sure we don't get left behind so much in the future." "I dunno, Arry. I don't feel like busking today. The mask guys might recognize us. And since Mr Jobe is giving us food and a place to stay we don't really need the money just now. Maybe we should go to the park and play?"
"I'm guessing a little bit of both. She'll be able to charge extra for this cause it's clean. She'll probably be upset she didn't hire us to clean the other places too," she said cheekily as they left, hiding the key under the mat like they were supposed to when they were done with the place. "Alright, let's see how lost we can get on the way to where we're going," she said with a wink.
"That's why the landlady likes us," she said with a grin as she changed into her unripped clothes, stuffing all of her other possessions into a battered old backpack. "Let me know when you're done packing." As soon as Arry has all of his things gathered, Lysi casts prestidigitation to clean the room thoroughly, leaving no traces of their occupancy.
"Well, it's not like we got involved on purpose," she said, skipping across the cobbles in her own strange version of hopscotch. "It'll probably mostly be waiting around and other boring adult stuff. But it's better to know what's going on instead of getting caught unawares. After all, if it comes to that we'd be caught in it somehow anyways. I'd rather be a participant than an innocent bystander....bad things tend to happen to the innocent bystanders."
She grinned, clearly doing better from an emotional perspective and acting more like her usual self. "It is my favorite spell...even brussel sprouts are edible when you can make them taste like licorice," she said with a wink. "Hey, Mr. Jobe, if you tell us where you live we can go get our stuff and meet you there. I mean, you've obviously got a lot of important people to deal with so we don't want to hold things up any."
"Oh, yeah, you're right! It still leaves a tear, but at least I won't be getting crazy suspicious looks walking through the city. Thanks, Arry, I can't believe I didn't think of that myself," she said, quickly casting the spell to remove the bloodstains from her clothes.
"Sis, where do you want to stay?" Arry asks. It didn't really matter to him, but he thought she might. "Well, our room at the boardinghouse is paid through the end of the week, but I don't really feel safe staying there after today. If those guys figure out who we are and where we live then we wouldn't be safe at all and there'd be nobody to help us. But we don't know Mr. Rodrik very well at all and it seems weird staying with someone we don't really know. No offense, Mr. Rodrik, I'm sure you're nice and all. So I guess we should go stay with Mr. Jobe for a little bit. It's not like it's permanant or anything. Once this blows over we can go back to the boardinghouse if we want. The landlady is nice and I'm sure she'd let us come back whenever we wanted to, so yeah, I think that will work out just fine. But wherever we're staying we really should go back to the boardinghouse first and get our stuff. I'd really like to change into some clothes that aren't torn and blood-stained."
"I'm fine now, Mister," Lysi says in response to Vandrake. "You know, you seemed pretty mean at first, kinda like our old teacher, but actually you're pretty nice. Thanks." She turns back to Jobe and looks at him very seriously. "Arry and I take care of ourselves and earn our own living. That's not very childish, is it? But it's a lot more peaceful than having adults constantly blame us for everything that goes wrong just because of our abilities. And no matter what you think about our age, well, the men in masks didn't care that we were children, now, did they?"
Lysi wrinkled her nose in disgust at the word orphanage. "I know you mean well, Mister Jobe, but schools and other organized stuff...they don't like us much. And by much I mean at all. If they couldn't handle us at school in Nethys, I doubt they can deal with us at some orphanage."
Taking a level of sorcerer, average hit points.
"Sis, the Khallans... I want make them fail." Arry whispers. "They hurt you, and I can't let that go. It's up to you though." "These are bad people,"she whispered back, thinking of the servant who had died trying to help them escape. "I think making trouble for them is probably a good thing. But we have to be careful. I don't want to lose you either. You stay smart and I'll try to be smarter, okay?"
Lysi gulped in big breaths of air as she tried to stop crying. She hugged Arry back. "I'm (hic) glad you're (hic) okay too.(hic)" She said, having come own with a bad case of hiccups as a result of her crying fit.
Lysi feels relief as the healing energy washes over her. Her wound still felt a little tender to the touch and there was an angry red line she could see through the hole in her dress, but no more blood was seeping out. She looks up at Jobe as he tells her she was brave and her lower lip starts to quiver. "I wasn't brave. I was stupid. When we saw that there were bad people down here with the diplomats we tried to run away. There was a servant who was helping us try to escape. Only there was another bad man guarding the back door and he killed the servant and there was so much blood, and then Diri killed the bad person and there was even more blood. But we didn't know if there were more bad people in the alley and we were scared so we came down here because even though we knew there were bad people we knew there were allies too who might help us, but when we got here the bad people were going to kill them too and I just wanted to make them stop and I wasn't thinking things through and I only was able to knock out one of them and then the big one put a sword right through my belly and I thought I was going to be dead too only I was really, really lucky. And there's still too much blood and Diri is gone and I don't like this..." she said much too fast before dissolving into tears.
"It's...an awful lot of blood though...I don't wanna look again. It makes me feel all funny and lightheaded," she said, leaning against Arry for balance.
"Ar....Arry? Are you okay?" she asks, white as a sheet and looking like she might fall over any minute.
Lysi tries to scream as the shortsword goes through her, but she can't seem to breathe. She knows it should hurt, but she can't seem to feel anything at all. This is definitely bad.
Without thinking Lysi runs forward and casts Color Spray on the attackers.
And then her brain caught up with the rest of her and she relaized all the reasons why this was a bad idea. "Uh-oh."
"Come on," Lysi said slightly panicked as she picked her way past the body, trying to pretend it was something else so she didn't start crying hysterically. "If we hurry maybe we can catch up with the other group. I bet it's safer with more people."
"Right. Yes, that's right. Good idea," she said, her freckles standing out extra clearly as her face has gone very pale and slightly green as she is trying very, very hard not to think about all the blood on the floor in front of them. "Let's head for the catacombs then."
"What do we do now? Should we go try to help the ones downstairs? Or run after the ones who went to the fire to tell them what's going on? Or just plain run away?"
When the sword had gone through the blonde servant, Lysi had stood frozen for a few seconds and then proceeded to scream like the little girl she was. And then the masked man hurt Diri. That was not okay. Now she was really mad. She shot an elemental ray of fire at the masked man.
Lysi nods, but decides to do better. She follows Arry listening carefully, ready to cast an illusion of the room without them in it if she hears pursuit. She tried to ignore the fact that she was shaking. She definitely hadn't expected dinner to suddenly become scary.
"There's no guarantee that it's safe there either," she said, stubbornly standing guard over her brother. "Arry is bringing some help in case we need it."
Lysi stands guard over Arry as he summons ready to shoot an elemental ray at anyone trying to attack him.
Lysi shrieks a little when the explosion happens because she's so startled. "Yes, Arry, I think we need Diri here right now," she said, looking scared.
Lysi shrugged. "Not that I recall. They were too busy yelling at each other. Besides....there are so many worse things that I could be doing," she said with an impish grin.
Lysi had reached the stage of mashed root vegetable castle construction where the peas were now defending the castle from an invading army of green beans, who were now bringing up a small bone to use as a battering ram.
She looked up at the person who had asked her if she had any tricks with an expression of pure innocence. "No, not at all. I'm completely ordinary." *smile*
Having eaten her fill, and the weasel no longer providing a distraction, Lysi starts playing with her food. She remembers to use her fork at first and then she starts getting creative, building a tiny castle out of the mashed root vegetables as she stares off into space. She hums to herself as she thinks up a new performance routine, completely oblivious to the table full of boring grownups.
Arry: Spoiler: Lysi whispers back, "Aww. Too bad. But at least you got a cute friend to make this less boring."
Lysi rolled her eyes. It was like the schoolmasters all over again. Always wanting to test everything and see demonstration after demonstration.
"Ah, here it is," Lysi said cheerfully, stooping to pick up an apple from the floor. "It rolled away. Wouldn't want anyone to trip on it," she said airily, handing the piece of fruit to a servant. She smiled at Pravus and waved vaguely in the direction of his plate. "Enjoy your food," she said sweetly before skipping back to her seat.
Arry: Spoiler: "Yes," she whispered back, "I think that would make a lovely accompaniment to the 'flavoring' I added to his food."
"You shouldn't use that kind of language at the dinner table Mr Pravus, cause I think Miss Milena might actually wash your mouth out with soap and that would ruin the flavor of your food and that would be such a waste because it's really good food. Unless you're food has gotten too cold or too warm or something? I can fix that for you in a jiff if you like, change the seasoning too. It's a handy trick to have. I learned it when I was very little cause that way even if I got sent to my room for being too disrecpecketfill...er disresspitful....for talking back too much, and only got porridge for dinner, i could still make it taste like cookies." ^.^
Lysi was deliberately vague in her responses to questions about how she and Arry arrived in Corail. "Oh, you know, the usual way. We traveled with a caravan for most of the way, of course. Because it's dangerous traveling in the wilds alone, although we did have to go that way for some of the time cause the caravan was going in a different direction and all. But you see a lot of interesting things in the wild if you're not traveling with a caravan. We saw a bear once and it was really big, but it's pretty lucky for us that it didn't see us, don't you think cause I don't think we would have much liked being bear food, although I'm sure we would have thought of something to keep that from happening, cause well, we would have had to, cause nobody wants to be eaten by a bear. That's just common sense....what were we talking about?" She smiled sweetly.
"Oh, come on, it's not like that many people know about us...and I bet our folks aren't even looking for us. It's not like they like us or anything." |