Of beechen green and shadows numberless (anybody)

[Anonymous]

The air smelled green and vaguely foul, as of rot, and was heavy with bird-call. Corb rode down a narrow, skeleton of a trail through a dim corridor of saplings, and meanwhile wondered at its origins. He was too far up, and too much to the West, he calculated, to have run upon the beginnings of the merchant road he aimed for, but, he thought, the young growth and the apparent age of the road made it an unlikely deer track; probably it was an old shortcut some boy from the nearby farm had trodden down decades ago, for he figured that in the farm’s wealthier days the stable lads had probably made the occasional run for beers down in the city. He imagined them shuffling down the mouldering track, pockets heavy with coin, the low laugh of now-grown boys as they discussed the debauch of the city, surrounded by green and growing things and shadows numberless.

 It was necessary for Corb to daydream like that, his hood pulled tight over his face, for he was miserable. It was difficult enough to think with the constant swarm of green-black flies which blackened his shabby gelding’s haunches, crawled along the thin-skinned underbelly, crowded into the boy’s mouth whenever he breathed. His pants were soaked with the rainwater of the night before, which had collected in the jungly underbrush, and which now dampened the already vaguely heaving sides of the old gelding he was riding. His hair was wild and his clothes were travel-worn beyond a hope of repair, mud-stained and sodden beyond recognition; he wore his hood tight against the flies and hunched totally exhausted in the cracked leather of his saddle.

It had been a difficult journey. He lived with his large family of lowly noble birth in a farm up in the highlands of Kilanthro, and so had begun there, from the rickety gate of the old farm down through the rocky wastes, which had proved treacherous and consuming but at the very least simple; one watched what one was doing and one did not fall off a cliff. There had even been something of a feeling of joy in him; the old horse gave off the impression of being ready to collapse at any minute, but it was inevitable that his first journey from home, the overpopulated squalor of home, should leave him with such a rush of excitement. He felt, in those first days, free to go anywhere, do anything, and even though his destination was in fact more ominous then where he started off from in the first place, well, he didn’t have to think of it just yet. He had a week at least, he calculated, and he vowed to enjoy himself.

Then he had hit the lowlands, and they were a completely different sort of place altogether. There was a frenzy of growth there, and one felt almost as if that very black, fertile earth was ready to suck you in, feed you to its green children, bury you in undergrowth and suffocate you with decay. There were flies everywhere, and it was continually wet and marshy and there were places along the shallow brown creek where the path was treacherous and had half-fallen away, and he had to get out of the saddle and pull the raw-boned old nag along, drag him out of the reeds, and finally let him drink when it seemed he was ready to fall over into the river from exhaustion. The tall, rough-coated young hound who trailed at his heels would swim, sometimes, his long, clumsy legs paddling determinedly in the smelly brown water, until finally he would become tangled up in the reeds and Corb had to help him out, totally wet and smelling like death. Corb looked at the dog. There was no other animal in the world so totally suited to its vocation: he was dripping wet, dirty, and smelled like Hell, but it had a wide grin as it trotted along, there, and was obviously utterly content to be coated in flies, feet half-sunk in the mud of the road, unsure of where it was going to or when it would be fed next.

“I wish I were more like you, Dagda,� he told it, “you’re happy whatever happens to you.�

The truth was that from aside from being tired and dirty and wet and hungry, Corb had other reasons to be unhappy. His family, badly-educated, poverty-stricken, banking their estate and their misplaced pride on a centuries-old Mordecai (and not even a particularly honorable oneâ€"in fact, quite the opposite) had placed upon him the totality of their hopes for their own well-being. They struggled somewhere well-beneath the middle-class, forgotten, isolated, and fostered in themselves an intense desire to better their social standing; how else to do it then to hope that somehow they had sprung forth another Mordecai, the breed for which their blood had once been revered? It was tradition for them to send the son to Reajh for testing on his eighteenth birthday, but Corb’s duties lay somewhere beyond that; if he disappointed them, they had warned him, he shouldn’t indulge in any idea of any sort of homecoming. There were paid positions within the Connlaoth army, they knew; lowly positions, but nonetheless, beggars can’t be choosers…

Their words, beggars can’t be choosers, rattled around in his brain as he rode through the cool, sun-dappled wood; the old gelding coughed wetly, and Corb could hear Dagda rustling about in the undergrowth, sniffing at something. Stupid dog.

[Anonymous]

((The language issue: seeing as Tharan is from far, far away (haha), I'm just going to say her country uses some version of what they use here. So she'll have an accent, and may or may not be able to speak it very well, but they WILL be able to understand each other! :)))

For over a year, Tharan had travelled, by foot, horse, chariot, carriage, camel, ox, boat and mule; she travelled by whatever her particular talents could pay for, and her monastery was far, far behind her now. It had been weeks, however, since she had last come across any town at all -- perhaps more than weeks, for here in this jungle days blurred into each other so much so that it seemed it was the same day, every day, repeating endlessly. Not having any people to buy food from, Tharan subsisted on the plants and tubers she plucked from the ground every day; if they were poisonous, she was always able to heal herself by magic. She was not allowed to trap, nor eat any meat at all; to do so was a violation of her pact with All-Face, her god, the only god worth serving, and if she ever knowingly ate meat she would lose every scrap of magic in her mind and body.

Today was much like any other day. She had woken up before dawn, wet with dew and faintly hungry, did her morning meditation, found some breakfast, and continued walking. Tharan hoped that the vague depression she followed was, in fact, an old and wearied path, and not some hallucination or trick of the forest. It had been too long since she had seen anything with a human face, or even a voice to talk with. She wondered, since she had come so far from her homeland, if the people she eventually met would even speak her language. She hoped so; Tharan was a quick learner, but all the same language difficulties were one more trouble that she did not want to deal with.

If she ever met another human, that is.

Of course, her appearance would undoubtedly frighten off any human she encountered anyway. With no change of clothing, Tharan had done her best to wash what she owned, but the original white of her robes had long since faded to a murky, rotting grey. She would have to purchase something new, or else fashion some form of coverage from the huge and dripping leaves that made her passage through the jungle so difficult. Her pale face was smudged with dirt, her braid stuck by twigs and berries, and her shoes -- oh, her shoes! -- were as mouldy and unreliable as the most decayed log in the forest. Tharan had considered holding a mourning service for them, but decided that All-Face would probably not get the joke. Instead, she had decided to wear them until they fell completely from her feet and she could repair them no longer; she had only one other pair of shoes, and they were sandals, no less, and she wanted to save them for more civilized roads.

The sun was high, now, and the mosquitos thick and cloudy around her skin. Tharan could heal the welts, but that did not make the insects any less annoying. Her clothes clung to her sweaty body and it was fortunate she wore two layers, for otherwise the white would be near transparent, but she knew to trap her sweat as moisture in the dead heat, and besides, the likelihood of encountering someone this deep in the jungle was not very high.

It was time for noon meditation. Tharan sat cross-legged in the wet soil and closed her eyes; without any effort of hers, the insects departed from her skin respectfully. Inwardly, she thanked her god, but then with the practiced speed of an expert her mind blanked and she became lost to the world around her. Tharan had no fear for her safety from jaguars or pumas: whatever disrupted her from her wordless conversation with God would be by His will, and Tharan could never be frightened by that.

She was disrupted by the sound of snuffling and the press of a wet nose to her bare knee, and suddenly found herself wrenched from the heights of meditation to find herself face-to-face with a hound. "Good to see they have dogs here, too," Tharan said to it with a smile. She let the beast sniff her hand, and then carefully stroked its ear. It was as filthy as she -- all the better! Having long forsworn any violence or even aggression, animals could usually sense that she was a harmless friend; of course, sometimes that led them to attack her, thinking she was easy prey, but most of the time it meant they took a liking to her.

[Anonymous]

It was some time before Corb finally tethered his pony in order to begin to look for the dog. Dagda was in the habit of exploring the wood as dogs often do, that is, burying their noses in the earth, sliding along beneath tumbled treetrunks on their bellies, drawing wet smells loudly through their nostrils; but it had happened before that the dog had got itself caught, somehow, and needed Corb to pull him out as he wriggled, for he was in the bad habit of squeezing his big, clumsy body into odd hollows and corners and eventually getting himself hopelessly stuck. So Corb whistled softly through his teeth, rattled the odds and ends that had collected in his pockets, and ducked beneath the half-rotted limb of an old pine as he slipped deeper into the wood.

Dagda, meanwhile, had long smelt Tharan Edassi, and had finally decided that it was high time to meet her; he tripped over beetled wood and panted, somewhat, as he trotted hastily in the direction he judged to be the right one. He hadn’t learned, yet, what it was to be afraid, other than the smaller fears to which he was sometimes prone: thunderstorms, and the Old Man’s boot. He, like his master, had lived a highly sheltered life in which the scullery maid fed him milk out of a little china bowl and the occasional traveler would absentmindedly feed him things beneath the table. He had no natural instinct for self-preservation, and so when he finally found the object of his search, deeply folded in meditation, he snuffled her knee and looked at her, a minute, then gave her a great sloppy kiss on her left cheek and pressed himself up against her. He lived in a simple world in which people instinctively liked being covered with spit.

“Dag’!�

The dog shook itself casually, leaving behind it a faint smear of muck and the strong smell of river-water, and trotted off in much the same way that he had come, that is, his mind strictly centered upon the single thought it was able to nurture at a time; Dagda was still just a stupid young thing, and would learn with the years what it was to be wise. He approached Corb, oblivious to having done anything wrong, and bit Corb’s dirty trouser leg (there had been a fly, there), stood breathing shallowly at his feet.

“What have you found, Dag?� The boy asked, peering around the fat, sappy bole of the oak, not expecting to see anything, really, for as of yet none of Dagda’s finds had proved to be of any particular interest; he would find the carcass of a long-dead deer, an old badger hole which he dug at and ruined enthusiastically, that sort of thing. Dagda had proved to be little better than useless when one considered him in the light of an animal that is supposed to be able to hunt things, and defend one. On the other hand, he expected his boy to protect him from various dangers, among them thunderstorms, and squirrels, and the dark, and slowed their progress up interminably by wandering off track and getting himself lost or stuck or exceedingly wet and dirty.

And yet, this time… Corb clicked his teeth, and thought about running away (a boy who had been raised to the measure of Hilda’s old wives’ tales about rogue mages in the mountains could have been expected to do no less). At almost the same moment, however, he realized that he had been seen, was caught, and, finally, had been had by the empty-minded young dog, a sun-warmed, river-soaked presence at his thigh who coughed quietly, panted, drooled slightly. He hesitated, decided that her noon-hour prayers (one could not mistake the deep peace about her, the kind that reminds one of a dark and depthless well) had been unmistakably shot to Hell already, and drew closer.

She was twice his age, at least (he was but eighteen), but peaceable and friendly-seeming. Dagda made a motion as if to run at her, but Corb clicked his tongue at him, and jutted his chin; the pup retreated, collapsing heavily at the foot of a blackened stump, staring at them good-naturedly and yet somehow invasively, as dogs sometimes do (his eyes were very yellow, and very fixed). Corb pocketed his big, calloused hands, which had been hanging limply at his sides, unused as they were to not being better occupied; “Hello,â€? he said, and tried to smile.  He felt very awkward standing there, very tall, very lean (almost to the point of being gangly), and above all without anything much more intelligent to say than hello. He felt that the mere fact of having approached her, having said “Hello,â€? had exhausted the supplies of his social know-how, for he was very reclusive, very young, and very poor, finally; his hadn’t been the life which tended to foster the sort of genius that some people had for interaction. If Tharan longed for some of the civilities of the monastery she had left behind, well, she had not exactly found them in Corban dub Sainglend.

[Anonymous]

The snuffling dog trotted away from her and there was a stunned heartbeat before Tharan, with a gasp, realized it was a voice that had called the beast away. A human? Here in the jungle? It sounded like a boy, or a young man, a mix of the two that brought back memories of her own youth with a flashing smile. I was a much different woman then.

Dangerous? A woman travelling alone in the wilderness was easy prey for evil men, and fear briefly flickered through her body; she stamped it out thoroughly, and drew deep, calming breaths to dispel the negative energy. A hint of the god played at the edges of her consciousness, remnants of her interrupted meditation, and she was soon soothed by All-Face's presence. When she opened her eyes again, they were bold and peaceful, both, and she was faced with the sight of a tall, bashful youth with long legs and an awkward smile -- she got the sudden impression that, had she opened her eyes a second later, he would have fled from her immediately. Not the threatening thug she was afraid of, to be sure!

Tharan smiled reassuringly, and got to her feet with the flexible grace of a cat. She let a moment of respectful silence pass before she replied, then: "Hello." Her voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper, yet so clear it was near impossible to miss. Tharan was relieved he seemed to speak some version of her language from home; his 'hello' was a skewed version of the greeting they used where she came from.

She bowed deeply, and her braid swung over her shoulder to fall into the murky soil, but Tharan did not seem to care. Another moment of silence passed, and Tharan suddenly realized he was staring at her like a frightened fawn, and she couldn't help but laugh at the idea, muffling the sound beneath one dirty hand. The laughter quickly subsided when she realized that she might hurt his feelings.

"Good dog," she said, pointing at the inquisitive pup. "God-touched. I am Tharan. Yourself?" She spoke slowly and hoped that he recognized enough of her dialect to understand what she said.

[Anonymous]

((Hello vetiver!  Hopefully you don't mind being assimilated into the little plot kaldin and I steamed up ^__^ ))

As long as he could remember, the rain had always been able to soothe him to sleep.  Even now, when Hyacinthe needed to put as much space between himself and Arca's guard.  After passing through the mountains he hadn't sound or sight of them, but since he wasn't sure where he was didn't want to get comfortable.  They could easily have told their fellows in the next city to expect him.

Though no matter how many times he pinched himself, began to chew an errantly long fingernail, prodded an insect bite so it would itch or hummed a half remembered drinking song, the patter of rain made his eyelids heavy.  It was only when he dozed off and woke mid-fall that Hya finally gave in and clumsily hacked at the brush under a tree by an abandoned trail.  In the end he mostly succeeded in hacking a few leaves off the bushes, decided it would be good for cover, huddled next to the tree with his hands on his weapons and fell asleep.

Hya slept deeply.  His head full of the scent of sweat, oiled leather and musky perfume.  A burning that promised ruin of everything it touched.  A drop of blood gliding down a girl's thin, pock marked face; her cracked lips a sad smile; her scruff of dirty brown hair floating limply in a breeze just for it.  It wasn't too long since she was banished from his waking world, all his fault for turning his back on her.  Sometimes he missed her.  He couldn't say the same for the red lady.  Only once she was gone it woke the first pangs of guilt for leaving the girl he once thought his Protector.  Last there were the sounds of rustling plants and the murmur of voices.

Not the usual background noise in his dreams.

He woke slowly and had to blink a couple times before he was awake enough to take in his surroundings.  The sun was high; his wakening annoyed several flying bugs away (while the others were content to be moved around if it meant enjoying a warm, shady perch with 'water' readily available); a toad crouched on the coils of his bullwhip and sometime during the night... or the morning, he flopped against the tree, losing his hold on the weapons and leaving an imprint of bark on the side of his face.  Now that he was awake the murmurs sounded more like voices than animal sounds.  There were people around.  Maybe the guards, maybe locals.  Hya hoped they were locals, even if he was trespassing he would have an easier time dealing with them than his persuers.

If they were locals he could ask them where the nearest town was, so he could avoid it.  

He didn't think he could creep up on them quietly enough to check.  Usually he'd been content to tromp through the marsh and cut down any foilage blocking his path with his machete.  Tromping and hacking wasn't a good way to creep on anyone.  Neither was tripping around in an attempt not to tromp and hack.  He'd have to risk being heard.  Being able to avoid the guardsmen was too sweet to ignore.

And if they were the guards... there'd be some problems, but he hoped he could incapacitate one or more before running on.  A task that seemed a lot easier before he made a half hearted attempt to shoo the frog off his whip and almost impossible once he stood.  It felt like every muscle in his body was stiff.  He scratched a newer, itchier bug bite on his neck and shook his legs, one at a time. as far as he dared.  Once they were responding he reached up and ran his fingers through his blue-grey hair, which loosened the muscle in his scratching arm and made a fright out of his hair.  Smoothing it flat brought the other arm around.  The toad made a hasty retreat over a few thin sticks that couldn't bear its weight.

Getting to the deer trail seemed to involve stepping in every single puddle along the way.  A step away from the trail his arm brushed against a bush and it rustled loudly in protest.  Hya ducked at the sound and peeked around the bush to look down the trail, making out one tall person before he drew his head back.

[Anonymous]

(Don't mind? You're doing me a favor  :) I need to flesh out his character a little bit. Hope the post's okay; I just assumed that Hyacinthe had just killed somebody and is now running away from the guards, but correct me if I'm wrong.)

The boy would not otherwise have in him the potential for tragedy, had circumstance not enfolded in him certain openness, a wideness that did not bode well for him or for any man with whom Fate seems to have a particular bone to pick; he was sweet, and bad people have been known to take advantage of sweetness. Already the goodness was worn down some with what little time he’d had, that is, with frustration, and with loneliness; for loneliness is proven poison for superior-minded boys of such devastating openness. He’d developed an inclination to be brutish at times, and had become determinedly philistine. He already had features too strong to be handsome, and that, certainly, was a step in the right direction if one’s direction was being decidedly common-place. He had heavy brows and a bold, slightly hooked nose that was vaguely disjointed (he had an older brother, and three younger ones that had to be put in their place unquestionably and often).  His eyes were asymmetrical and were gray, or green; one couldn’t always tell, for at times they were quite green and yet often were much the color of pond-water. He was brown from being outside so often, and had ugly, calloused hands from work. He had corn-colored hair and was quite tall, and these in and of themselves were attractive traits; however, when paired with a slouch and infrequent care (he washed, but did nothing beyond; he had never seen himself in a mirror before) lent him the distinctive air of a rogue. And yet he was still sweet, and shy, and a good hand with horse-flesh, for above all the boy was unlearned, and afraid, and self-hating, and so any turmoil that surrounded him was directed decidedly inwards.

So he appeared to Tharan Edassi. Mold grew in the pockets of his sheepskin coat, which was soaked through, the mud of the road crusted to his boot, and he was thoroughly wet. He smelled like a great green tree, for there was a sharpness to his smell, as of sap, but an underlying, mouldering tincture, as if the boy himself were locked in death, would disintegrate very soon into gray-green dust, would be caught up in the little wind bearing to the Northwest and would land somewhere on the broad haunches of some old carthorse in foal, in somebody’s garden, between the pages of Yeats. The boy loosened his hood so it fell to his shoulders, heavy with water, and raked his hand through his hair. Corb was still a little stuck in his natural awkwardness, breaking through the barrier of quiet only with great difficulty and strength of will (the woman was pretty and kind-seeming, wasn’t she? What, then?). He didn’t know quite what to do when she bowed, except nod his head (strong face shadowy, uncertain).

“God-touched, eh?â€? He remarked, with a low, shaky chuckle. “Funny you should say it, for Father Carmichael always hated the damned dog. Said it was too loud, and too rough. He was right, I guess.â€? The boy hesitated, thumbed the dog’s ear (Dagda having long since crept up on his belly, knowing he was being talked about, hungry for companionship). “And yet,â€? he hesitated, and then said, finally, “I like him. And I’m glad you like him too, though you seem the kind who could find reason enough to like anybody, even a dumb pup.â€? It was more than Corb had said in any length of time, possibly ever (and yet, winter nights, shivery with cold, whispering poetry to Malcolm as the little boy sucked on his thumb comfortably, curled his tiny right fist, enjoyed the dim peace of being four years old and protected by somebody). He was still a little weary, for if anything Tharan was too peaceful, too nice, and he knew well the dangers of the religious extremistâ€"he resorted to inner monologue (You’d be scared of your own mother if you met her out in the wilds with nothing much to defend you but a bow and arrow that you aren’t much good with. Stop projecting all that superstitious foolishness onto this character.) He smiled blearily, realizing belatedly what he had actually said to Tharan, and tried to pretend to himself that he hadn’t just pulled that string of nonsense about Dagda, who really was a dumb pup, out of his ass.

After all, how could Corb, who could undoubtedly look after himself and (arguably) follow a train of thought to its conclusion, identify himself with the hound who was currently occupying himself by probing Corb’s dirty fingers with his mouth, wreathing the boy’s ruined knuckles with big, silvery globules of spit? The boy looked about him for something with which to wipe them before realizing that he had left his gelding on the road, had, in fact, nothing but the clothes on his back, not even the sodden rag which he used to wipe down his saddle; it was as he thought this, ponderously rubbing his hands against the thighs of his trousers, that he saw the stranger.

There was a rapid intake of breath, and a brief, unclear expletive. It only makes sense that the most inarticulate mind known to man, one that has difficulty even fleshing out simple thoughts, possibly the most socially handicapped of the Connlaoth nobility, should, in the wilderness, in the dead middle of rain season, happen to run into more people then he’d ever talked to at a time (true, he was the third of nine, but he’d never actually talked to more then two of them, and of those two one was but four years old). He thought to himself, you are crazy, Corban dub Sainglend; you are most certainly crazy. Thinking that, he relaxed, somewhat.

Meanwhile, Dagda had run and found the stranger, blinking at him owlishly, wheezing, and generally crowding him in the unbridled joy that dogs exhale, having found somebody who might, possibly, love them. Yet Dagda was perplexed with this man, and with his smell, which reminded Dag’ of the chicken carcasses that the dub Sainglend dogs sometimes fought over, and of the henhouse when there had been a fox. It was not an unpleasant smell, to Dagda’s mind, for he liked meat as dogs do; and yet it was not suiting, and he was uneasy, and finally, having sniffed the man’s pockets (he was a tall dog, and wasn’t tall for nothing), he retreated to his master and his succoring green smell.

[Anonymous]

The boy's awkwardness made Tharan smile; if not for that, Corb would have long been called a man where she came from. Concentrating on his words made a small wrinkle appear in her forehead, but once she had unlocked their meaning, her happiness at the success sent a huge smile, as if a beam of light, across her face. "Well, think here," she said. "If not for loud and rough, who is to say grace and quiet? All connect." The last two words were spoken as if holy, and her hands made the symbol of an 'O' in front of her stomach. Tharan glanced upwards, quickly, gratefully, a small recognition of the beauty of the universe. "The dog has purpose like all things. Father Carmichael perhaps did not see it." She smiled again, stretching out an arm for the dog to sniff at. "I see it, I like him. Dag is his godsname?" It was an odd name, but then again, so was the name 'Corb,' and naming practices varied the world over. 'Corb' and 'Dag' were both earthy, simple names; looking at the boy before her, all mud and sweat and uncertainty, the names suited them perfectly.

Tharan had the impression, though, that Corb would outgrow his unsophisticated name soon. Anticipation flashed across her mind, but Tharan stamped it out immediately. What will be, will be.

And apparently what will be was another stranger, reeking of violence and passion, joining them. Tharan was mildly surprised at his appearance; one so drenched in hatred should have been sensed long ago by Tharan's particular powers. Do they not work here? That would be a problem. How else could she earn her keep?

God will provide.

Tharan realized her muscles had tensed as the bloody man came into view, and it was with effort that she carefully eased each one back into the calm, collected looseness proper to one of her status. Only the briefest desire to wonder whose blood that was crossed her mind; mostly, though, her mild eyes looked at him in acceptance and without judgment. The dog, Tharan noticed, was uneasy around the man; that was not a good sign. The God-touched knew who was safe and who wasn't.

Corb was clearly nervous for a different reason, and Tharan laid a gentle hand on his arm to reassure him. "Hello!" she called to the man approaching them, as if he did not stink of aggression and fury, as if it was normal to encounter so many strangers in the jungle, as if he were a neighbour, or even a friend. "Hello," she said again. "What is your godsname? I am Tharan Edassi." She bowed deeply again, no more or less than she had bowed to Corb, and once again her dirty braid swung into the mud. Her accent was pronounced, but the crystal clarity of her voice, never lifted in anger, was still easy to understand.

[Anonymous]

((You win!  Hya has indeed killed somebody, several somebodies, in Serendipity so there's nothing wrong with the post.))

The sound of conversation brought Hya's eyes peering above the bush.  Two people, one man, one woman.  They weren't moving, the man was young, the woman foreign.  The subject of their conversation was a dog.  

It didn't reassure him.  Guards could be young, women, foreign, own dogs, and bullshit out of sheer boredom.  He needed a better look before he decided whether or not he could approach them and crept slowly towards them.

As soon as Hya got a good look at the young man, and well before he could figure out if the cloak had once been blue, he was seen.  He froze, beetle black eyes flicking quickly up and down to check the rest of the man - and that was when the dog found him.  Said dog wouldn't have a problem reaching Hyacinthe's pockets, since the shock of seeing an actual dog come at him made Hya jump and topple backwards and he wasn't tall enough to give the dog far to reach for them if he'd been standing.

Layers of sweat and grime from travel had long robbed his long sleeves tunic and trousers of their original colour.  They were now a dark grey though around the hems of the sleeves, the cuffs of his trousers and spattered pell mell across his chest were darker blacker stains with just a touch of red.  Some layers were fresh enough to throw off a scent, but others were only spots.  The bullwhip and machete had the same scent.  For all of his adult life, Hya was assumed much younger than he was.  His slight frame and hairless chin were all most people needed for that assumption.  Once they made that decision, most then went on to think he wasn't all too threatening.  Big eyes with long lashes, a tiny nose, cupid's bow mouth, little hands and dainty feet (even if they were usually in thick boots) weren't too menacing to anyone that wasn't afraid of children's toys.  Even the scar, half hidden by a matted lock of hair, that ran from the corner of his left eye, over one high cheekbone and curving down to touch the corner of his mouth seemed more like a crack than the echo of some fight.

Hya exhaled when the dog tired of him and was scarely back on his feet when the woman spoke to him.  After quickly looking over her, he gave the whip's handle a squeeze and narrowed his eyes, brows furrowing.  One rose slightly when she bowed so low.

Those robes had never been blue.  She knew the young man and didn't seemed to be too surprised at his appearance.  None of them seemed threatening and he wasn't keen to attack anything he couldn't eat later.  His expression softened, he took his hand off the whip and crossed his arms over his chest.  "My name is Hyacinthe."  Like the woman he had an accent, a rolling rumble that came from speaking a different dialect of a language rather than originally speaking another.  "Is t'is your home?"

[Anonymous]

(Sorry if the post doesn't make any sense; I'm kind of tired and I tend to get weird ideas and let all my sentences run together when I'm that way  :? I just wanted to post something because I'm going away for a few days)

The man did have the sort of face that one identified with sin, Corb thought, acknowledging Tharan’s hand with a smile less awkward, sweeter, in fact; her way with him was much the manner that the dub Sainglend boy had developed with horses, and with his father’s hunting dogs. It involved losing one’s own particular character and succumbing to a dark peace representing the largest of the smaller deaths (forces that threatened to change who one was, what one did); but Tharan was like nobody that he’d met before, and he figured, when one came down to it, that she probably was not even much like Tharan at all. Not just god-touched, he concluded finally, but god herself. Not god, he argued, hastily rehashing the thought, penetrating to its origin (a strangeness, a wholesomeness), but certainly not human. He couldn’t figure whether she was better then human, or worse, or whether her peacefulness limited her at all. The man was visibly bloodstained, carried a bullwhip and a machete; and though Corb had come to terms with his own fear, somewhat, she had not felt any fear whatsoever that he could discern. What was life without fear, he thought, uncertain of himself, whether he wanted it at all.

He shook the thoughts (that occurred simultaneously, intruded upon one another, were indistinguishable) from his mind with a slow breath. He did it in much the way that Dagda sometimes shook himself before settling, an instinctual habit through which he encouraged himself to arrive at a relative peace. He perceived things, sometimes, as if intercepting some errant thought-wave which suggested to him certain intrinsic truths about people. He did not read thoughts or minds or people but sometimes by accident plumbed the common thoroughfare through which all unearthly axioms moveâ€"but that doesn’t make any sense, and so Corb tried not too think too much of it, or of the fact that maybe Tharan, too, knew more of him then his face, unreadable only because it was determinedly average, could reveal to her.

His attention returned to the newcomer. The two, Corb and Hyacinthe, were as different in body as two people could be, for Corb was in fact very tall, brutishly so, and Hyacinthe only average, if not smaller. His hair was blue-gray, and Corb decidedly tow-headed, wild-haired; Hyacinthe’s hands suitably little, and ‘dainty’, and Corb’s long, calloused, and raw-knuckled (equally well-suited to his vocation as determined philistine). Corban’s look conjured merely an idea of an underlying genius, a strangeness; Hyacinthe appeared to be the kind of boy that somebody somewhere probably referred to as “darling dearestâ€?â€" that is, sweet, and pleasingly clever. He was the sort that people displayed in sheltered little salons somewhere in the dense, cloistral matrix of Le’raana nobility, and yet that sweetness was distinctly exaggerated and distorted in him, or so it seemed to Corb, who was perhaps unfairly biased against people particularly good-looking, or ostensibly spoiled and snot-nosed.

Corb thought of this, and it made it easier to smile at the journeyman, for his smile was driven in part with ashamedness at his new-found inclination to think the worst of anybody. First to be scared of Tharan, obviously committed to some higher power, accepting of all people (had she not tried to calm him as he did his horses?) and second to be scared of somebody who had given him, so far, no justifiable reason to be so afraid. And yet there was blood on him, and Dagda, Corb knew, was, if not afraid of the wanderer, then wary of him (the dog sat at his side, pressed closed to his thigh, hard, steady, smelling still of river-water). Well, thought Corban, suddenly rooted in a deep, uncharacteristic calm, what is there to do but try and not be afraid, for how could I protect myself, how protect Tharan, otherwise? Fate often requires of us a great and inhuman trust, he thought, suddenly.

There was a wind, decidedly distinguishable above the rough dialect of the newcomer. It rumpled the verdurous, frenzied silence which collected in that forest, mislaid the strong green grip which that young and growing mountain lowland had wrought on the boy; a beam of sun and dust motes split the shadowy, dappled clearing, and everybody became very calm, and the whole thing (of three people lingering travel-weary in a muggy clearing) became very simple to Corb, and he determinedly convinced himself that he was quite wrong to be anxious about anything. The man released his bull-whip, and the boy found it easy enough to pretend that he hadn’t been nervous about it in the first place. He wasn’t sure about whether the man intended to address him; his smile had faded, somewhat, for his face was not the kind to foster smiles.

“My name is Corban,� he said, his low, husky voice painfully unobtrusive; it was exceedingly easy to ignore Corban, son of the doddering House dub Sainglend. “I live in a country house farther up the mountain.�

[Anonymous]

It was almost as if All-Face's teachings had physical manifestations in this clearing, and once again Tharan's heart lifted at the thought of it. The delicate man soaked in violence, and the lanky youth with the good heart -- like she had said earlier, neither could exist without the other. A smile played upon her lips: was this why her Lord brought her here? Such opposites surely had some greater purpose. Was she to be a witness, or a participant?

Still a relatively young woman, Tharan still had remnants of the unenlightened human about her: she could not help but feel some relief when the bloody man took his hand off his whip. She would be able to heal any wound he attempted to inflict, of course, but still -- the fact that she had not sensed him coming tickled her mind with worry. Yet why would her powers not work here? Some ploy of the God's? Everything has its purpose, and that purpose is often unfathomable, but Tharan was still a living, breathing woman and was not so wise as to accept those fundamentals as strictly as she should. It had become easier in the last few years, as she finally grew used to the ascetic, passionless life she had signed onto, but sometimes it was still a struggle.

They never lasted long, though, and Tharan, through entirely human instincts, sensed the guards slightly lowered on both men. Good. Perhaps her purpose was merely to keep these two from fighting, and there would be no need for her magic at all.

She hoped so. Magic left her very weakened, and in a jungle she did not think she would last too long if she were called upon to use it.

"Home is far away," she replied. "Past mountain and jungle and ocean. I travel... many. Much?" Tharan hesitated; should she invite these strangers on her journey? Or should she journey with them? Or perhaps they would all meet, just this once, and then scatter again -- although she did not see the purpose in that. Then again, she very, very rarely saw All-Face's purpose, and when she did she guessed it was more because He had placed the notion in her head, and that it was not a result of any mental or intuitive genius of her own. "We are going all the same way?" There would be no harm in it, right? These were the first humans she had met in a long, long time, and though she dared not admit it the sight of them and the sound of their voices was like water on parched soil.

[Anonymous]

((No problem - sorry this post is so short, my brain's left the building.  I wanted to get something down tho.))

As first the man and then the woman spoke, Hyacinthe fought the urge to look away from them, to focus on something else for a second before peeking back at them.  Keeping focused on others while they spoke was easy in thought, but harder to practice when one wasn't used to it.  Though the memory of Love-lies-bleeding's annoyance kept him looking at the pair.  

"I need to get avay from Arca." He closed his whip hand into a loose fist, tightened his arms across his chest and despite himself looked sideways.  "Avay from Serendipity itself, if possible.  Do you know-" A glance for Corban, a glance for Tharan.  "If t'is vay is correct?"

[Anonymous]

The day had grown hot. The jungle was torrid and virile and in Corban dub Sainglend too there was a frenzy, of thought, of feeling, of restlessness; he was a man (or a boy?) driven almost entirely by the corporeal, so that the heat (the silence, the cloud of flies) distracted him from his purpose, if indeed he had ever had a purpose (he could not now remember it). A crow barked somewhere in the spruce; Dagda twitched, panted heavily, sighed. Corb had never known such heat, for he lived deeper in the mountains and had grown up amongst the juniper and the horsetail, in the shadow of centuries-old firs; in the overgrown, algae-ridden depths of mountain creeks. The air was clearer there, and colder, whereas now he practically choked upon the thick, teeming wind… and had it not been last night that he had folded himself up beneath a dusty saddle-blanket, wet and chilled to his marrow? He had thought that he would never shake that cold from his bones; now he could not even imagine what it was to be cold.

Corban wished that he had never left the farm. That is, he didn’t, really… but still indulged a certain nostalgia for the place, and fashioned in his mind an image of what Saingliu should have been to him rather than of what it was. It was a dirty hole, he granted even now, squalid, he would have said, once, but did it not provide him with miles and miles of empty, verdurous gloom in which he could hide out for hours, days, weeks, and never be found unless he should wish it so? Was that not what he wanted above all, that freedom to crawl into the boughs of some big mountain-grown tree and turn the leaves of his grandfather’s old tomes, at liberty to puzzle out their meaning? Could he not watch Malcolm trace his letters upon the rimy window-panes at midwinter, or tramp through alpine meadows catching grasshoppers in his fists? Yes, he thought, I did those things, once, but I am not a boy anymore, and I must make my own way. So he thought, scratching his nose (a Roman nose if ever there was one), heavy brows knitted in a mixture of restlessness and deep thought.

The purpose of this meeting, any conception of predestination or of some sort of network of providence, did not occur to Corb. It was not that he was stupid, though he determinedly perpetuated the idea; it was that he thought in abstractions, and was inclined to approach a thing sideways. His thought was cyclical in shape rather than linear, too; it churned. Also, Corb was not only not religious (dubious in nature, apt to question) but devastatingly weak at social intercourse; the whole of his mind was bent upon Tharan’s expression, the way she looked, the little lines bedded about her eyes, Hyacinthe’s motion even in stillness. He was endearingly tense and awkward, his throat tightened, he found that his voice was husky with disuse (he did not often call Dagda, or talk to him, but only whistled through his teeth when he wanted him, stared at the dog when he was unhappy with him, scratched his ears when he was pleased). How could he not, then, see that Tharan’s motives, if not Hyacinthe’s, were as easily discernable as his own, that she was simple, as he was; was, in fact, much the same as him? He was young, that’s how, and stupid in at least one way.

Brief intake of breath; he ventured, “You’re… pretty far from Arca by now. In fact, you’re on Connlaoth soil. Keep on going and you’ll hit the capital.�

He shifted his weight, crushing a false azalea underfoot; the clearing was hot and still. A great, pressing pain descended upon his skull, crowding between his temples, and he jutted his chin at Tharan recklessly (again the crow in the spruce). He thrust his hands in his pockets.

“That’s where I’m headed; the military academy at Reajh. If that is the direction you are headed in, well, we’re safer with numbers, anyhow. That’s the only real city you’ll find going North,� he added, thinking of Hyacinthe.