Searing 46, 122
Imogen Ward stood once again in the broken shrine of some forgotten god and tried to sell something to a crowd of curious lemurs. It was only the second time that such a thing had happened to her, but she had to admit that this was two more times than she would have predicted a month ago.
”...right, you remember when we first met, yes?” Imogen asked.
The lemurs stared at her, which she instinctively understood meant that… no, they did not. Even Halftail, who hardly came out of his new house except to forage and lord it over the other lemurs, didn’t show any signs of remembering the ambush where she’d nearly bisected him.
After spending so much time in Lemur-form and meditation upon the Rune of Animus, Imogen thought that her understanding of the little monkeys was advancing precipitously. What she understood now was that the lemurs could act with impressive organization and precision… sometimes. When they wanted to. But not most of the time.
And not now.
Imogen shook her head to clear it of unhelpful thoughts. The issue wasn’t disinterest, or not just disinterest. The lemurs thought of places less in terms of event as in terms of description. They could remember where the fruiting trees grew, or where the safe places to ride out the tempests of early Glade were, but they had a hard time connecting the time they had ambushed her with the place it had happened.
”Where the high canopy is much, much higher than the low canopy…” No, this wasn’t going to work. That described far, far too much of the jungles of Ecith, and if they ranged that far in one direction, they probably covered a lot of distance in others.
”Okay, let’s try something else. Do you know where the, uh, the big lizards who shoot sound live?”
This question piqued their interest, and many of the lemurs began to confer amongst each other. Imogen observed with some fascination as small groups of lemurs argued with each other, came to a resolution on what she might mean. As each group came to a conclusion, they would disperse, conferring with the other groups lagging behind, until, at last…
“Well,” said Halftail, who apparently was trying to assert himself as the dominant male after becoming the colony’s only landowner, “We know where some of those are.”
Well, that was something, but she didn’t rightly know how much of a thing it was. She’d need to narrow this down more. Perhaps if she described the-
“You said it yourself, didn’t you? In your little lie meant for your best friend? As soon as the lemurs took your book, you should have turned around. That was a gift, Imogen. A gift from the gods of this land- a reason to turn around, a salve to your insane pride.”
“Altogether, it might be safest for her if you don’t come back. You’re a liability to the Railrunners; you were discovered three times in a month when you set foot in Kalzasi, and this new Kelgarde woman isn’t like her predecessor. Carina’s smart, stealthy, and good at improvisation. She could make it if you weren’t playing the albatross on her neck.”
“And the Railrunners have her doing important, safe work, except where you and Gerhard come in. And then, suddenly, it’s dangerous. You remember the Warrens, don’t you? Do you think she’s ever been closer to death than while in your ostensible protection?”
”Nope!” Imogen said aloud, her voice suddenly brighter and more cheerful than a moment before, ”Let’s not talk about that monster, actually!”
Halftail blinked at the Orkhan woman in surprise (quite the event, given the size and startling golden hue of the eyes doing the blinking) and the other lemurs rustled in confusion at her outburst. She decided against trying to explain what she wasn’t going to explain; that sounded neither productive nor, frankly, entirely sane.
”Look, do you know where the big Orkhan city is?”
Halftail thought about this. “The one with the big plant?”
Okay, so they did know what a city was, anyway. Wrong city, but- hey. When the hell had this colony of lemurs had the opportunity to travel all the way to Kythera, anyway? Were the lemurs… plundering tombs?
Well, it seemed there were only so many questions about lemurs the Rune of Animus could answer. Imogen filed the quandary away in the depths of her mind and returned to her present task. What other phenomena might these lemurs understand and take note of?
And then it came to her, like a divine revelation. Perhaps it was a divine revelation, a gift from whichever god’s sanctum she was using as a bartering-house for monkeys.
”Do you know where the bees go every year?”
“Of course.” Halftail said, promptly, “Everyone knows about the bees.”
The lemurs chorused their enthusiastic agreement. What sort of self-respecting creature of Ecith didn’t know about the bees? Cities and ambushes were one thing, but the bees were important.
”Okay.” Imogen said, voice steady even as excitement overtook her. ”I need to go where they go. And I have to go pretty quickly, too. Can you show me how to get there?”
The colony conferred again; this time, instead of civil lemur discourse, Imogen could hear many excited squeaks and hoots of disapproval. It seemed the colony was not of one mind about this request.
Before the lemurs could even come to some decision, Halftail hooted once, then pointed at Imogen, a distinctly un-Lemurian gesture. “We could do this, but what will you give us if we do?”
And there was the rub, in theory. In her last visit, Imogen had only to barter with Halftail to learn where they had taken the statuette–she bit off another flashback before it could start, having no time to waste with memories of the Vonaid Koid at the moment–but now she was asking for the assistance of many lemurs. She would need not just direction and protection traveling through the canopy, but also assistance in carrying her few possessions. Whatever excellent qualities the Rune of Animus offered, taking the shape of a lemur meant that you couldn’t take very much with you.
What could she offer to an entire colony of lemurs which would capture their imaginations, but not cause any sort of widespread ecological damage?
The answer was simple.
”Do you know” asked Imogen Ward, ”What swords are?”
When she had first discovered the lemur colony outside of Gihah K'uvfoi'uv Fi'uv, Imogen had been struck by the fact that a bunch of tiny monkeys had somehow ambushed her, made off with her belongings, and beaten her to her destination. Granted, she had spent a bit of time recovering in the custody of the Shield legionnaires, but she thought she had otherwise made excellent time. The lemurs could hop quickly along the ground, to be sure, but they seemed to take constant breaks, and were easily distracted by shiny objects, colorful fruit, and gentle breezes. Surely they couldn’t have gotten through the forest all that much faster than she had?
Lemurgen Ward found her assumptions very, very wrong. As she hopped from branch to branch, trying to follow Halftail’s example, she realized that the upper canopy was like a goddamn highway compared to the winding paths on the forest floor. The lemurs swung confidently through the densely-interlocked boughs; although Imogen had feared falling at first, it soon became apparent that one could miss a half-dozen branches and still have six more to hand within a few feet.
Thankfully, the motions to shift from hand, to hand, to foot, to hand, to foot were very instinctive. Even more handily, the number of large predators up here on the roof of the forest were few and far between, and the lemur colony knew their signs far too well to stumble into them.
From above, the forest was truly, indisputably beautiful. Without the humidity, the bugs, the constant threat of dinosaur predation… Imogen had to admit that the wild lands shone with a vibrancy that shamed the cities of men and Ork alike.
Lemurgen stopped on one particularly broad and mossey bough, closing her borrowed eyes and breathing deeply, nostrils flaring. The air rising from above was wet and sweet, laden with the scents of ten million tiny creatures, an indecipherable symphony of life. It was enough to make her empathize, for just a moment, with the God of Suffering- she could only imagine that Malgar had once stood on these shores and breathed that same breath, and understood that this bright forge of life was the ultimate canvas upon which to paint.
The lemurs (and Imogen) traveled through the skyways of the forest for only a few days before the great mountain appeared on the horizon, spiraling out of the ocean of treetops to pierce the clouds.. It was still two more days after that to reach the edge of the forest; the mountain was simply that unbelievably tall.
And it was also… smoking?
White plumes rose into the sky above the great mountain; for a moment, Imogen wondered if the mountain was, perhaps, preparing to belch fire like the great vol-canoes of the old myths. But no, these plumes were not ashen, and were small, but manifold. It seemed that the city was under attack?
Back on the outskirts of Gihah K'uvfoi'uv Fi'uv, a single Orkhan man trudged into the woods, a bushel of wrapped objects slung over one shoulder. As instructed, he walked slowly up the spiraling path into the golden stand of trees, and the ruins within.
It was roughly the weirdest thing anyone had ever asked the man to do, but the foreign woman had paid upfront, and she seemed awfully sincere about how important it was to her. Pretty little thing, though not to his taste; in any event, he’d learned decades ago not to make passes at women who showed up in the dead of night with commissions like this one.
As the man reached the interior ruins, he felt a wave of nostalgia wash over him. He could remember being a wee runt, running about with the other children, bothering the capybara, teasing the odd flame gazelle with buckets of lakewater… and, of course, finding colorful things in the jungle to leave on the old altar, each child pretending they were a priest to some god or another, waving and chanting until the others broke down into laughter.
Still, he wasn’t a sproutling any longer, and he hadn’t been for most of his life- he had a job now, however stupid the buyer might be. With a shrug, the Ork unshouldered the bushel and dumped the flax-wrapped contents onto the stone altar. He unwrapped the contents, his hands surprisingly dexterous and gentle for their huge, grizzled size, and stuffed the wrapping back into his bag.
The Ork began to turn, but an echo of a feeling stopped him. It felt wrong to simply leave without any sort of… prayer? Explanation? The man thought about this for a bit.
“Dunno who this is for” he told the altar, “But I hope they, uh, meet your expectations. Alright. Goodbye.”
The man hustled off, leaving the dozens of child-sized wooden swords, polished and varnished, in a pile on the stone altar behind him. They glistened in the golden light, an entire bushel of toy weapons left in the middle of nowhere.
High above, a lemur chattered.
Imogen Ward stood once again in the broken shrine of some forgotten god and tried to sell something to a crowd of curious lemurs. It was only the second time that such a thing had happened to her, but she had to admit that this was two more times than she would have predicted a month ago.
”...right, you remember when we first met, yes?” Imogen asked.
The lemurs stared at her, which she instinctively understood meant that… no, they did not. Even Halftail, who hardly came out of his new house except to forage and lord it over the other lemurs, didn’t show any signs of remembering the ambush where she’d nearly bisected him.
After spending so much time in Lemur-form and meditation upon the Rune of Animus, Imogen thought that her understanding of the little monkeys was advancing precipitously. What she understood now was that the lemurs could act with impressive organization and precision… sometimes. When they wanted to. But not most of the time.
And not now.
Imogen shook her head to clear it of unhelpful thoughts. The issue wasn’t disinterest, or not just disinterest. The lemurs thought of places less in terms of event as in terms of description. They could remember where the fruiting trees grew, or where the safe places to ride out the tempests of early Glade were, but they had a hard time connecting the time they had ambushed her with the place it had happened.
”Where the high canopy is much, much higher than the low canopy…” No, this wasn’t going to work. That described far, far too much of the jungles of Ecith, and if they ranged that far in one direction, they probably covered a lot of distance in others.
”Okay, let’s try something else. Do you know where the, uh, the big lizards who shoot sound live?”
This question piqued their interest, and many of the lemurs began to confer amongst each other. Imogen observed with some fascination as small groups of lemurs argued with each other, came to a resolution on what she might mean. As each group came to a conclusion, they would disperse, conferring with the other groups lagging behind, until, at last…
“Well,” said Halftail, who apparently was trying to assert himself as the dominant male after becoming the colony’s only landowner, “We know where some of those are.”
Well, that was something, but she didn’t rightly know how much of a thing it was. She’d need to narrow this down more. Perhaps if she described the-
“You said it yourself, didn’t you? In your little lie meant for your best friend? As soon as the lemurs took your book, you should have turned around. That was a gift, Imogen. A gift from the gods of this land- a reason to turn around, a salve to your insane pride.”
“Altogether, it might be safest for her if you don’t come back. You’re a liability to the Railrunners; you were discovered three times in a month when you set foot in Kalzasi, and this new Kelgarde woman isn’t like her predecessor. Carina’s smart, stealthy, and good at improvisation. She could make it if you weren’t playing the albatross on her neck.”
“And the Railrunners have her doing important, safe work, except where you and Gerhard come in. And then, suddenly, it’s dangerous. You remember the Warrens, don’t you? Do you think she’s ever been closer to death than while in your ostensible protection?”
”Nope!” Imogen said aloud, her voice suddenly brighter and more cheerful than a moment before, ”Let’s not talk about that monster, actually!”
Halftail blinked at the Orkhan woman in surprise (quite the event, given the size and startling golden hue of the eyes doing the blinking) and the other lemurs rustled in confusion at her outburst. She decided against trying to explain what she wasn’t going to explain; that sounded neither productive nor, frankly, entirely sane.
”Look, do you know where the big Orkhan city is?”
Halftail thought about this. “The one with the big plant?”
Okay, so they did know what a city was, anyway. Wrong city, but- hey. When the hell had this colony of lemurs had the opportunity to travel all the way to Kythera, anyway? Were the lemurs… plundering tombs?
Well, it seemed there were only so many questions about lemurs the Rune of Animus could answer. Imogen filed the quandary away in the depths of her mind and returned to her present task. What other phenomena might these lemurs understand and take note of?
And then it came to her, like a divine revelation. Perhaps it was a divine revelation, a gift from whichever god’s sanctum she was using as a bartering-house for monkeys.
”Do you know where the bees go every year?”
“Of course.” Halftail said, promptly, “Everyone knows about the bees.”
The lemurs chorused their enthusiastic agreement. What sort of self-respecting creature of Ecith didn’t know about the bees? Cities and ambushes were one thing, but the bees were important.
”Okay.” Imogen said, voice steady even as excitement overtook her. ”I need to go where they go. And I have to go pretty quickly, too. Can you show me how to get there?”
The colony conferred again; this time, instead of civil lemur discourse, Imogen could hear many excited squeaks and hoots of disapproval. It seemed the colony was not of one mind about this request.
Before the lemurs could even come to some decision, Halftail hooted once, then pointed at Imogen, a distinctly un-Lemurian gesture. “We could do this, but what will you give us if we do?”
And there was the rub, in theory. In her last visit, Imogen had only to barter with Halftail to learn where they had taken the statuette–she bit off another flashback before it could start, having no time to waste with memories of the Vonaid Koid at the moment–but now she was asking for the assistance of many lemurs. She would need not just direction and protection traveling through the canopy, but also assistance in carrying her few possessions. Whatever excellent qualities the Rune of Animus offered, taking the shape of a lemur meant that you couldn’t take very much with you.
What could she offer to an entire colony of lemurs which would capture their imaginations, but not cause any sort of widespread ecological damage?
The answer was simple.
”Do you know” asked Imogen Ward, ”What swords are?”
~~~
When she had first discovered the lemur colony outside of Gihah K'uvfoi'uv Fi'uv, Imogen had been struck by the fact that a bunch of tiny monkeys had somehow ambushed her, made off with her belongings, and beaten her to her destination. Granted, she had spent a bit of time recovering in the custody of the Shield legionnaires, but she thought she had otherwise made excellent time. The lemurs could hop quickly along the ground, to be sure, but they seemed to take constant breaks, and were easily distracted by shiny objects, colorful fruit, and gentle breezes. Surely they couldn’t have gotten through the forest all that much faster than she had?
Lemurgen Ward found her assumptions very, very wrong. As she hopped from branch to branch, trying to follow Halftail’s example, she realized that the upper canopy was like a goddamn highway compared to the winding paths on the forest floor. The lemurs swung confidently through the densely-interlocked boughs; although Imogen had feared falling at first, it soon became apparent that one could miss a half-dozen branches and still have six more to hand within a few feet.
Thankfully, the motions to shift from hand, to hand, to foot, to hand, to foot were very instinctive. Even more handily, the number of large predators up here on the roof of the forest were few and far between, and the lemur colony knew their signs far too well to stumble into them.
From above, the forest was truly, indisputably beautiful. Without the humidity, the bugs, the constant threat of dinosaur predation… Imogen had to admit that the wild lands shone with a vibrancy that shamed the cities of men and Ork alike.
Lemurgen stopped on one particularly broad and mossey bough, closing her borrowed eyes and breathing deeply, nostrils flaring. The air rising from above was wet and sweet, laden with the scents of ten million tiny creatures, an indecipherable symphony of life. It was enough to make her empathize, for just a moment, with the God of Suffering- she could only imagine that Malgar had once stood on these shores and breathed that same breath, and understood that this bright forge of life was the ultimate canvas upon which to paint.
~~~
The lemurs (and Imogen) traveled through the skyways of the forest for only a few days before the great mountain appeared on the horizon, spiraling out of the ocean of treetops to pierce the clouds.. It was still two more days after that to reach the edge of the forest; the mountain was simply that unbelievably tall.
And it was also… smoking?
White plumes rose into the sky above the great mountain; for a moment, Imogen wondered if the mountain was, perhaps, preparing to belch fire like the great vol-canoes of the old myths. But no, these plumes were not ashen, and were small, but manifold. It seemed that the city was under attack?
~~~
Back on the outskirts of Gihah K'uvfoi'uv Fi'uv, a single Orkhan man trudged into the woods, a bushel of wrapped objects slung over one shoulder. As instructed, he walked slowly up the spiraling path into the golden stand of trees, and the ruins within.
It was roughly the weirdest thing anyone had ever asked the man to do, but the foreign woman had paid upfront, and she seemed awfully sincere about how important it was to her. Pretty little thing, though not to his taste; in any event, he’d learned decades ago not to make passes at women who showed up in the dead of night with commissions like this one.
As the man reached the interior ruins, he felt a wave of nostalgia wash over him. He could remember being a wee runt, running about with the other children, bothering the capybara, teasing the odd flame gazelle with buckets of lakewater… and, of course, finding colorful things in the jungle to leave on the old altar, each child pretending they were a priest to some god or another, waving and chanting until the others broke down into laughter.
Still, he wasn’t a sproutling any longer, and he hadn’t been for most of his life- he had a job now, however stupid the buyer might be. With a shrug, the Ork unshouldered the bushel and dumped the flax-wrapped contents onto the stone altar. He unwrapped the contents, his hands surprisingly dexterous and gentle for their huge, grizzled size, and stuffed the wrapping back into his bag.
The Ork began to turn, but an echo of a feeling stopped him. It felt wrong to simply leave without any sort of… prayer? Explanation? The man thought about this for a bit.
“Dunno who this is for” he told the altar, “But I hope they, uh, meet your expectations. Alright. Goodbye.”
The man hustled off, leaving the dozens of child-sized wooden swords, polished and varnished, in a pile on the stone altar behind him. They glistened in the golden light, an entire bushel of toy weapons left in the middle of nowhere.
High above, a lemur chattered.