Who Hath Made All Things Well [Solo]
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2022 8:40 pm
Searing 38, 122
Two things predominate the life of a lemur in the Ecithian wilderness.
First: curiosity. Many animals were stronger, or faster, or more dangerous than the sifaka of the northwestern jungles, but none were more curious about the world around them. In the main, this helped the lemurs survive by permitting them to identify so many sources of food that even if one cache of fruits or nuts was taken by some larger creature, they always knew where to find another. Moreover, the little monkeys were small and nimble, and could afford to swarm about even while apex predators were nearby, having long gauged the capabilities of their competitors within the ecosystem.
Second: fear. Curiosity was a powerful tool, but it wasn’t a substantial one. Leopards, serpents, raptors, large birds, even spiders- true, the very large monsters tended to ignore the sifaka as insufficient to be prey, but that left an entire ecosystem of mid-range predators who would be happy to make a snack of any monkey. The lemurs dealt with this through practiced vigilance, by carefully choosing paths through the middle canopy which were less likely to run into predators, and by ganging up on small predators and scattering at the approach of larger ones.
Imogen Ward dealt with it by chucking flaming spears at things.
It was the same spear, technically, but the lemurs, understandably, pluralized it. The first few times she’d done it, it had alarmed her companions greatly, causing them to screech and flee wildly through the trees and bush. The next few times she’d speared some unwary predator, they watched silently with their huge golden eyes, ears pointed directly upwards with amazement. (It had taken Imogen a few days to understand this, but the body language of the little monkeys was very rich. Intelligent humanoids had a lot of those behaviors trained out of them for the sake of polite society, but the sifaka embraced extraordinarily dramatic ranges of motion.)
Here, however, as Imogen’s attention was drawn to a serpent coiled on the branch a few meters away, the lemurs seemed rapt with anticipation. As soon as she raised her little monkey paw above her head and conjured her golden spear, the sifaka nearly burst with hooting and hollering. The jungle came alive with simian approbation as her spear neatly bisected the snake, sending a dozen startled tropical parrots racing upward towards the cloud canopy.
“Extraordinary!” Halftail bleated, dancing around in a little lemur jig, “So beautiful! How do you do it? How?”
The other lemurs called out, though the Sunsinger monkey wasn’t sure if this was because they also wanted to know or because they’d heard Halftail say “How” twice, and this always seemed to get the whole swarm going.
”Hey, whoa, calm down!” Imogen responded, waving both tiny hands vigorously to call the group’s attention. ”It’s just a… cool trick I know, okay?”
She knew at once that this was the wrong way to put things. The lemurs understood instinctively that there were things other animals could do which they could not–fly, or hurl a rock, or swim well–but the concept of a “trick” played right into the lemur mindset, which was always seeking to collect little tricks and secrets which might prove helpful later. Doubtless, all of the lemurs were now wondering if they might not attain the unfathomable power to kill a snake.
“A trick, eh? A t-r-i-c-k.” Halftail mused, gibbering long and low as he thought. “But how is it done, does she know? Will she say? Can she say?”
The notion of branding a lemur with a Rune of Reaving entered Imogen’s mind for the barest second, and it was all she could do to keep herself from giggling. It would be tragic, in truth. Branding an animal, however intelligent, with a cardinal rune was a recipe for disaster; seldom did one even survive past initiation, and while the lemurs were smarter than most animals they were not remotely disciplined enough to survive the demands of that rite.
Still, it would not have been fair to the lemurs. She could not give them magic, but she could not fault them for seeing her, the very image of their kind, casually wielding such powers and wondering could I do the same? Surely it would transform their lives greatly if they could.
Imogen wondered if this were not the experience of the dragon gods, descending to Ransera in the guise of mortals and using power beyond the ken of men or Orkhan. Maybe men and women were like lemurs to them; too petty to understand the gulf that lay between a monkey and a mage, but too intelligent not to yearn for that power.
Perhaps this is why the gods had created the Cardinal Runes in the first place. To give people a fragment of what they sought, a safe toy with which to make their world a slightly softer place.
”I… can’t teach you this trick.” the Ork-turned monkey admitted, and it wasn’t a lie. She could thrust the power on any of the lemurs at any moment, but she couldn’t make them worthy of it. ”But maybe after this trip, someday, I can teach you another trick.”
This didn’t really satisfy the lemurs, as she’d known it wouldn’t, but men and lemurs both wished for things they couldn’t have.
As Imogen and her devoted band of lemur mercenaries traveled the jungle, they came across something else she hadn’t seen on her way to the village- creatures at rest.
In northern Ecith, especially at the height of Searing, the animals which wanted to survive needed to conserve calories and keep their own body heat low. Resting accomplished this, especially if you could find somewhere with shade and easy access to water, but it also came with concomitant risk. A dozing animal was easy prey for anything, after all.
So everything rested in protected hollows, or in glades which kept them as far as possible from traffic on the ground. Relatively few of the ground-dwelling predators, however, were concerned with the creatures of the upper or middle canopy, which meant that the lemurs got to see beasts of all description in various states of slumber.
As they went, Halftail (who had taken to his de facto role as Lemur Leader with proper aplomb) tossed out “facts” about each creature.
Or,
Then,
And,
That one brought Imogen to a stop. The lemurs were constantly taken with the strength, the armor, the raw power of larger creatures. They were seldom impressed with their speed or nimbleness.
”What do you mean? Are they as fast as you?” Imogen inquired.
“Even faster. Look, look!”
Halftail darted into the hollow of the tree, retrieving a lump of something–a nut, perhaps–and then raced down the tree until he was only a few meters from the dozing yellow cats. With expert aim, the lemur chucked the brown lump down onto one of the creatures, provoking it to awaken in abject panic and dash.
Imogen stared in shock as the yellow cat vanished in the space of two seconds, having escaped the hollow instantly. The other cats woke, alarmed, but quickly realized that no danger seemed to lie, and simply stalked about in circles until they found comfortable beds again.
Well. She could hardly pass that up.
”Halftail…” she said again, ”How close do you think we can get to those without waking them up?”
The other lemur eyed her. “Are you going to take his tail, too?”
”Not, ah, exactly.”
Imogen returned to the treetops some time later, carrying a handful of whiskers, which she’d plucked from one of the hapless cats before it could get to its feet and escape her. The tail had been a tempting target, of course, but after spending so much time with one of her own, she had begun to realize that it was not a superfluous organ, and that cutting off the thing was liable to be a death sentence for the cat. On the other hand, how important could whiskers even be?
“You know.” Halfail opined, “That’s pretty messed up.”
”Whatever, you guys steal stuff all the time too.”
The lemur shrugged, as if to acknowledge the point but to silently assert that Imogen should be better than him, and instead was worse.
She wondered if there was a religious lesson in that, too.
Two things predominate the life of a lemur in the Ecithian wilderness.
First: curiosity. Many animals were stronger, or faster, or more dangerous than the sifaka of the northwestern jungles, but none were more curious about the world around them. In the main, this helped the lemurs survive by permitting them to identify so many sources of food that even if one cache of fruits or nuts was taken by some larger creature, they always knew where to find another. Moreover, the little monkeys were small and nimble, and could afford to swarm about even while apex predators were nearby, having long gauged the capabilities of their competitors within the ecosystem.
Second: fear. Curiosity was a powerful tool, but it wasn’t a substantial one. Leopards, serpents, raptors, large birds, even spiders- true, the very large monsters tended to ignore the sifaka as insufficient to be prey, but that left an entire ecosystem of mid-range predators who would be happy to make a snack of any monkey. The lemurs dealt with this through practiced vigilance, by carefully choosing paths through the middle canopy which were less likely to run into predators, and by ganging up on small predators and scattering at the approach of larger ones.
Imogen Ward dealt with it by chucking flaming spears at things.
It was the same spear, technically, but the lemurs, understandably, pluralized it. The first few times she’d done it, it had alarmed her companions greatly, causing them to screech and flee wildly through the trees and bush. The next few times she’d speared some unwary predator, they watched silently with their huge golden eyes, ears pointed directly upwards with amazement. (It had taken Imogen a few days to understand this, but the body language of the little monkeys was very rich. Intelligent humanoids had a lot of those behaviors trained out of them for the sake of polite society, but the sifaka embraced extraordinarily dramatic ranges of motion.)
Here, however, as Imogen’s attention was drawn to a serpent coiled on the branch a few meters away, the lemurs seemed rapt with anticipation. As soon as she raised her little monkey paw above her head and conjured her golden spear, the sifaka nearly burst with hooting and hollering. The jungle came alive with simian approbation as her spear neatly bisected the snake, sending a dozen startled tropical parrots racing upward towards the cloud canopy.
“Extraordinary!” Halftail bleated, dancing around in a little lemur jig, “So beautiful! How do you do it? How?”
“How?”
“How?”
“How?”
"How?"
"How?"
The other lemurs called out, though the Sunsinger monkey wasn’t sure if this was because they also wanted to know or because they’d heard Halftail say “How” twice, and this always seemed to get the whole swarm going.
”Hey, whoa, calm down!” Imogen responded, waving both tiny hands vigorously to call the group’s attention. ”It’s just a… cool trick I know, okay?”
She knew at once that this was the wrong way to put things. The lemurs understood instinctively that there were things other animals could do which they could not–fly, or hurl a rock, or swim well–but the concept of a “trick” played right into the lemur mindset, which was always seeking to collect little tricks and secrets which might prove helpful later. Doubtless, all of the lemurs were now wondering if they might not attain the unfathomable power to kill a snake.
“A trick, eh? A t-r-i-c-k.” Halftail mused, gibbering long and low as he thought. “But how is it done, does she know? Will she say? Can she say?”
The notion of branding a lemur with a Rune of Reaving entered Imogen’s mind for the barest second, and it was all she could do to keep herself from giggling. It would be tragic, in truth. Branding an animal, however intelligent, with a cardinal rune was a recipe for disaster; seldom did one even survive past initiation, and while the lemurs were smarter than most animals they were not remotely disciplined enough to survive the demands of that rite.
Still, it would not have been fair to the lemurs. She could not give them magic, but she could not fault them for seeing her, the very image of their kind, casually wielding such powers and wondering could I do the same? Surely it would transform their lives greatly if they could.
Imogen wondered if this were not the experience of the dragon gods, descending to Ransera in the guise of mortals and using power beyond the ken of men or Orkhan. Maybe men and women were like lemurs to them; too petty to understand the gulf that lay between a monkey and a mage, but too intelligent not to yearn for that power.
Perhaps this is why the gods had created the Cardinal Runes in the first place. To give people a fragment of what they sought, a safe toy with which to make their world a slightly softer place.
”I… can’t teach you this trick.” the Ork-turned monkey admitted, and it wasn’t a lie. She could thrust the power on any of the lemurs at any moment, but she couldn’t make them worthy of it. ”But maybe after this trip, someday, I can teach you another trick.”
This didn’t really satisfy the lemurs, as she’d known it wouldn’t, but men and lemurs both wished for things they couldn’t have.
~~~
As Imogen and her devoted band of lemur mercenaries traveled the jungle, they came across something else she hadn’t seen on her way to the village- creatures at rest.
In northern Ecith, especially at the height of Searing, the animals which wanted to survive needed to conserve calories and keep their own body heat low. Resting accomplished this, especially if you could find somewhere with shade and easy access to water, but it also came with concomitant risk. A dozing animal was easy prey for anything, after all.
So everything rested in protected hollows, or in glades which kept them as far as possible from traffic on the ground. Relatively few of the ground-dwelling predators, however, were concerned with the creatures of the upper or middle canopy, which meant that the lemurs got to see beasts of all description in various states of slumber.
As they went, Halftail (who had taken to his de facto role as Lemur Leader with proper aplomb) tossed out “facts” about each creature.
“That thing usually lives only in the streams, submerged under the water! They look like logs, but if you step on one, BAM! You’re dead!”
Or,
“See that? It’s like a snake, but it doesn’t sneak up on you- it jumps! Even further than us! Keep very far away, or it’ll chomp you dead!”
Then,
“It looks too big and fat to care about us, but that’ll crush you with those big flat teeth in seconds! It’s the meanest beastie to ever live!”
And,
“And see those things sleeping? If they’re awake, they can run fast, way faster than anything else! They’re like blurs, you can’t even watch them while they go!”
That one brought Imogen to a stop. The lemurs were constantly taken with the strength, the armor, the raw power of larger creatures. They were seldom impressed with their speed or nimbleness.
”What do you mean? Are they as fast as you?” Imogen inquired.
“Even faster. Look, look!”
Halftail darted into the hollow of the tree, retrieving a lump of something–a nut, perhaps–and then raced down the tree until he was only a few meters from the dozing yellow cats. With expert aim, the lemur chucked the brown lump down onto one of the creatures, provoking it to awaken in abject panic and dash.
Imogen stared in shock as the yellow cat vanished in the space of two seconds, having escaped the hollow instantly. The other cats woke, alarmed, but quickly realized that no danger seemed to lie, and simply stalked about in circles until they found comfortable beds again.
Well. She could hardly pass that up.
”Halftail…” she said again, ”How close do you think we can get to those without waking them up?”
The other lemur eyed her. “Are you going to take his tail, too?”
”Not, ah, exactly.”
~~~
Imogen returned to the treetops some time later, carrying a handful of whiskers, which she’d plucked from one of the hapless cats before it could get to its feet and escape her. The tail had been a tempting target, of course, but after spending so much time with one of her own, she had begun to realize that it was not a superfluous organ, and that cutting off the thing was liable to be a death sentence for the cat. On the other hand, how important could whiskers even be?
“You know.” Halfail opined, “That’s pretty messed up.”
”Whatever, you guys steal stuff all the time too.”
The lemur shrugged, as if to acknowledge the point but to silently assert that Imogen should be better than him, and instead was worse.
She wondered if there was a religious lesson in that, too.