RP Session 10: "Mired in the Mire"

A bad feeling took hold of Rawiya when she went to conceal the boats.
Dedicated to the notion of preserving their valued vessels, in her head she likened the attempt to her past use of disguises. Make the little boats play a different role, appearing as some inaccessible deadfall and they might remain for a spell, in the event the Bravos required hasty passage back this way. But then some curious premonition tickled the edge of awareness, a scuttling amorphous terror teasing her mortality, making her abandon the chore in a hurry.

Rawiya clung to a more cautious approach for as long as she could bear among the mangroves. Until the promise of exotic, displaced wooden limbs seduced her into an unexpectedly leggier embrace.

"Not insect," she hissed at Bendane, unable to resist the lure. And the Yarin regretted uttering the words. Her teeth were jittering again, like they'd lost all desire to stay in the bright and orderly chorus line that won her so much acclaim. Lowering her voice to a desolate murmur, Rawiya added, "Only did what they do. My fault. Stuck big, dumb hand in her home. No hard feelings." Her eyes ranged far away from her grievously injured arm.

In past studies, she'd learned of toxins harvested on the Amber Coast that changed how fingers moved and senses felt. She didn't look towards her belongings, where her duduk and riqq waited with bated breath to learn if they would ever play with her again. Inanimate friendships hung in the balance. Anguished tears suddenly squeezed out at the corners of the girl's pale green eyes and she turned away from her sapient companions in shame. Hopefully, they would mistake her misery for the singular and decisive pain of her affliction. Agony could prove insightful if you let it, though she doubted she'd miss the sensation when it left. Assuming it eventually would. At least the puking phase had passed.

"Wish I could explore too," Rawiya insisted. "Dezhwin Tread-In-Green put venom in her tea. Made her strong. Commonly believed fable. Probably not as strong as you." Like a sleepy child, she smiled up at Rahkazar, her real-life hero more often than not. With a weak gesture at their gorgeous, primordial surroundings, the entertainer ominously mused, "Snap and Tooth would love it here."

And then the world began to spin again. Was this what halfling sailors meant when they said heading to Valani was always the roundabout way? She closed her eyes.

Idly Rahkazar swatted at a mosquito. The least of the insects that plagued this mangrove swamp, to be sure, but certainly the most numerous. Certainly no sting quite like the one that Rawiya had suffered.

"We are exploring, Rawiya," Rahkazar said with a smile. "I'm sure Dezhwin would be proud. Some poisons can be taken in small doses, but you're weathering a large one well. As for the two crocodile pups, well..." Looking around at the sweltering halfsubmerged environment, Rahkazar took a deep breath. "...I'm sure they'd be right at home."

Looking back down at the delirious Rawiya, Rahkazar softly cupped her cheek. "Get some rest," she ordered, before turning to the others. "What do we think about taking a day? Get some rest, see if this fever passes for her? I don't mind taking the time and going out in search for your plant, Bendane, if you can give me a description or spare a page for a drawing..."

Bendane craned his head around, looking at the low, disreputable mangroves and swamp baobabs that framed the glade. It had been an arduous trek thus far, but it seemed as if they were deep enough into the jungle to begin searching in earnest.

He nodded at Rahkazar's suggestion, taking a few squelching steps away from Rawiya before speaking in a low voice. "A temporary encampment would be advisable. These are hardly the most salubrious surroundings... but I have delivered care in worse. Once we are settled in place I can administer treatment. Incisions and leeches to release the befouled blood. Emetic and laxative tea to, ahhh, clear both ends. A marrow-wart poultice to stimulate the rejuvenation of good fresh blood. It will be messy, but what function has the swamp if not the world's own latrine?" He smiled grimly. "Sometimes I wonder if physicians did not design the treatment to be more unpleasant than the illness on purpose, to prevent malingering."

Without hesitation Bendane pulled a page from his workbook and handed it to the orc. On it was the summary of his research into the purported miracle tree. It resembled a bald cypress, with a thick, gnarled elephantine trunk at the base that narrowed gracefully as it rose, at home in shallow lakes and stagnant water. Unlike the cypress, though, its leaves were large, fleshy, and shaped somewhat like a hand with five splayed tines.

Despite the weariness of the day's slog he set to work gathering bark, branches and undergrowth to build a platform to keep his patient and the rest of them out of the saturated ground, while Chauncey dragged an entrenching tool around the camp to make a drainage ditch with invisible resignation.

Ej and Rahkazar eased through the brackish wetland, picking their way carefully through the gnarled roots and dangling fronds of moss, searching for a match to Bendane's diagram.

With Rawiya so... vociferously... opposed to his prescription of extreme purgatives, Bendane decided to resort to a curative protocol that was less chirugical, and more alchemic.

Ensuring she was lying as comfortably as possible in a nest of dry leaves and branches in the camp (after having set up a ward of alertness in case any of the marshland's inhabitants grew curious), he began by scrubbing her less-favoured forearm down with spirits to remove the grime of the jungle adventure. Then with an obsidian scalpel he made incisions in the wrist an elbow, scolding any signs of discomfort by reminding her of the many, many Valani denizens that had come after her with teeth and claws and swords in less salubrious conditions. Using channels made of bamboo he set up an arrangement whereby blood would be extracted from the elbow vein and passed through the twin bulbs of an empty hourglass, then returned to the wrist. Inside the first bulb was placed a toadstone, to sympathetically attract poison; in the second was a crystal of amethyst, to neutralise it.

After that, it was a matter of monitoring to ensure that the incisions remained clean of dirt and clots and did not tear, and patience to let the trickle of blood through the circulation filter do its gradual work. In order to quell the patient's restive disposition, Bendane cast about for a story to keep her distracted.

His familiar swooped down from the underside of a branch where it had been mimicking sleep while keeping an ear on the camp. It landed on Rawiya's leg with an inquisitive chirrup, cocking its polished ivory head with those wide empty eye sockets and curling its tiny pinprick claws in her leggings, offering company and a rather rattling sort of cuddles.

"It surprises me that you have never inquired about the name of my familiar," Bendane said, settling down with as much ease as the deadwood and leaf litter platform could manage. "Even Chauncey has a name, and he is merely a figment of labour given form. Are you not, Chauncey?" The scraping of the entrenching tool paused as the unseen drudge gave its summoner a mutinous, silent moment of consideration.

"Once – many years ago – this was prior to... well, a great many regretable things," the wizard sighed with a pang of morbid nostalgia, "The barley mow was particularly abundant one year. My father hired a hay wain from the manor to bring our bumper crop to market. As I was helping, in a child's way, to load the wagon I saw one of our mousers staring at the it with a flicking tail. I suspected it was merely a field mouse, such things being pestilentially common at harvest time, and shooed it away. Only then did I realise that the cat's attention was on something on the underside of the wain, not inside it. I ducked to peek underneath, and saw something I had never seen before in daylight, but only as a fluttering ghost in the night: a bat, perched under the wheel rim. I was immediately taken by its difference from a common mouse; the elf-like ears, the folds of skin stretched between wings that I realised were like my own hand in structure, but the bones elongated and extended. I stared at it, and it stared at me with sleepy eyes. I saw no need to be rid of it, as I knew bats did not feed on our grain."

"Soon the wagon was loaded, and my father drove it into down. As he departed, I heard a squeak and a crack, and to my horror I saw the bat in the muddy rut, its wing partially crushed. In its panic to escape the wain it must have been caught by the wheel. As gently as I could, I picked up the struggling little thing and took it inside. My parents would not have approved of the frivolity of keeping for a creature that did not serve the farm, much less an injured one, so I concealed it in my room. That was my first experience providing care and treatment to a living thing. I think its struggles had exhausted it, so it did not resist. I bound its wing in wool and twigs to keep it straight and protected, and fed it on bread, milk, cut up earthworms and crickets from the garden."

"In the time it took for its contusions to heal, I became fascinated with its anatomy. I sketched the delicate structure of the wings, the ears, the pug-nosed little face with those voracious teeth. Part of me wished to keep it as a pet, but as it recovered it grew more restive and I knew I had to liberate it to the air. This is sentimental folly, but I like to imagine there was some gratitude it its crooked flight out of my window into the moonlight."

"So in honour of my first chiropteran patient, I dubbed my familiar after the source of its injury. This man's bat is named Bruised Wain."

Crouched alongside Rahkazar behind a gnarled mangrove, Ej surveyed the little floating platform they had found. He leaned close to murmur in a manner pitched just for her to hear.

"The recent rains would have lifted the water level sufficient to get that in here, but getting it out would be a chore now. If it belongs to someone," he continued, very close in the heat but somehow not uncomfortable, "they're either stuck here with it or not coming back. And it's never smart to bet a den is empty. Your thoughts on ... an approach?" He met her eye as she glanced over.

"Khulchgar khün khezee ch ükhekhees aij amidardaggüi," Rahkazar replied from where she knelt, leaning on the haft of her polearm while they evaluated the stranded platform. Turning her head to face him, she translated, "For fear of dying..."

The words tapered off. Ej had a little bit of gold in his eyes. She wasn't quite sure how she'd never noticed that before, but for a heartbeat and a half it was all she could see.

"...the coward never lives..."

Blinking hard and bringing her awareness back to the task at hand, Rahkazar said, "I've always preferred a direct approach. You?"

The moment was redolent with energy. Her eyes met his, and Ej could almost taste that something, that braided twist of ethereal forces he felt on the beach when Bendane involved the Bravos in his identification ritual. For that moment Rahkazar held his gaze, he could feel only the dizzying sense of something both so close he could feel its breath and yet somehow ... what? It was just outside his memory, like he could remember once remembering ... what?

"You ... " he began it in the direction of a question, but the way she matched his gaze almost overwhelmed him. He couldn't phrase it. Her resetting blink broke the moment, and he forced his own eyes back to the boat, cushioning the nearly orphaned word with "... may be right."

"The direct approach," he nodded, standing forth from their cover. "Let us see if the place shows signs of a current occupant. Watch my back?"

He started, cautiously but directly, toward the little barge.

Ej glanced back at Rahkazar to be sure of where she was, at at her nod of readiness he gripped the boat's edge, pulling himself up just enough to peek.

Ej continued his lift, easing onto the deck proper and making room for Rahkazar to follow him. He turned the sliced clothing with the toe of his own tattered footwear that might have once been a shoe.

"Not bloody," he murmured with a hand cupped to his nose against the smell. "But it's owner doesn't smell to be in good form."

As they approached, the smell creeped up on the two of them, slowly building beneath the background scents of the swamp until it became almost unexpectedly overwhelming. Glancing at Ej and keeping her mouth covered with a sleeve, Rahkazar too lifted herself up on the deck, using the shaft of her polearm to stabilize herself as she did so.

Once aboard, she took it into both hands, readying the head and pointing it guardedly towards the cabin. Without saying anything, she again glanced at Ej, and prepared to follow his lead.

Ej stepped to one side of the open door, gesturing Rahkazar to the other.

"Hello in there," he said, loud enough to be heard but in a tone of simple salutation. "Is anyone aboard?"

"Well, then," Ej mused absently, then took a deep breath and stepped into the cabin.

"Back!" Ej coughed, Rahkazar stepping neatly aside at the ready as he retreated past her. "Back," he repeated absently to no one in particular, wiping stench-induced water from his eyes and barely registering that Rahkazar rushed the cabin in case of danger. He rubbed furiously at his nose, and spat as though he could taste the stink before drawing a deep breath of the marginally fresher open air.

"Skin thieves have been here," he said when the Orc emerged. "I can't be certain how long ago. Bendane might be able to tell us, though given where we are ... " he scanned the boat's surroundings, "... perhaps the neighbors saw something."

Stepping deftly out of the way as Ej recoiled out of the doorway, Rahkazar did the opposite of his instructions, bursting into the room and bringing the head of her polearm to bear as her companion recovered outside. With a held breath she cleared the room, thrusting her blade into shadows until she was satisfied that there was no danger to be found aboard their ship. Only once every nook and cranny and shadow had been probed did she loose her breath, only to catch it halfway lest she be forced to breathe in the rotten air that already twinged at her nose and eyes.

"Well," she coughed, aggressively forcing the remainder of her breath out to clear her nostrils of the stench, "that certainly puts a dent in the salvage value." After a moments consideration, she took a second, closer look at their surroundings. "What do you think happened?" she asked, simply putting the question aloud. "Wrong place wrong time?"