| Present day On the road from The Spires It was already getting darker under the trees and the entire camp was starting to fall asleep, except for the ones on guard duty. Of course they complained about it but they were paid for it so their complaining was more of a professional habit. The writer had set himself with his back against one of the wheel of one of the many wagons that had started out from The Spires. He had gotten his hands on a smooth piece of wood, taken from the wagon that had broken down a few days before. Now it served the writer as a mobile desk. The parchment was placed on it and the writer could write as if he was at his own desk. He wondered for a moment how his books were doing, or if his house was still in one piece. He dipped the quill into the opened ink vial. |
| Spring, 60th, Year 458 Undrykas' Pavilion, Endrykas The Undrykas had sat himself a little away from the camp, still well within the borders of the camp but away from the busy tents. At thirteen years old, the Undrykas was a stringy and thin child with barely enough strength to move around. He was dangerously bony in his appearance and he often had dark bruises covering his skin. Today that was the case as well. The young boy had a dark mark around the side of his lips, where another Drykas boy's fist had hit him in the face. Playing they called it. The rest of his body showed similar marks, although they were covered by what was left of his leftover clothes. The pants he wore were patched up and a little too short. The shirt he was wearing was baggy and too large for someone like him. But at least he had clothes. As his stomach growled for food, the Undrykas sighed and sat down in the grass. There was nothing around him but grass. Grass and a single piece of wood stuck in the ground. The Undrykas had planted it to give himself something to practice on. There was a limit to how much you could learn from lifting leaves and coins. With his legs crossed underneath him and his hands lying in his lap, the Undrykas was preparing himself for his exercises. First he closed his eyes and mentally stepped out of himself. A trick he had learned from the Crone. The 'Eye' she called it. It came from eye of the storm, which meant the peaceful middle. Where she had gotten it from, the Undrykas couldn't understand. Everytime there was a storm it wasn't peaceful anywhere. There was rain and lightning and thunder everywhere. But he had learned to step into the 'Eye'. It had been easier for him as the 'Eye' needed one to distance oneself from everything around them. Pain, suffering, happiness, feelings, thoughts and ideas. You put it all aside and looked at something objectively. Although the Undrykas already knew pain was only momentarily, it had been the most difficult one to seperate from, as it was all he had. Suffering he didn't understand, happiness he had no idea what that meant so stepping away from it was the easiest. Thoughts was the second most difficult part since he loved to think. Ideas were basically thoughts as well so they posed the same problem. In time he had managed to overcome them and had learned about the sideline called the 'Eye'. Nothing happened to him there, it just happened around him, moved past him without him feeling the impact of it. With a series of breathing exercises, the Undrykas took air in and let it out, emptying his mind more with each breath he let escape. He ignored the pain from his bruises and set it aside. He distanced himself from his thoughts of hunger and the grumbling in his stomach. He was still hungry and objectively he knew he was still hungry but his body's demand for food seemed distant and less important now. With every breath, he let go of more feelings and thoughts until there was nothing left. An empty mind and a body that didn't disturb him anymore. He wondered if this was 'happiness'. The Undrykas opened his eyes and looked at the wood sticking out of the ground. Although he wasn't supposed to feel anything, he could always tell when his body was seperating from his spirit. Partly because he had to focus on it to seperate it and partly because he enjoyed the tingling feeling, for which he often had to scold himself. The purpose of the 'Eye' was to have him not notice those things. With his mind he took hold of his fingers, although his hold was not like a hand holding something. It was difficult to describe but it felt like holding. He held the tips of his fingers and started peeling away the spirit from within the flesh. As he did, the familiar nipping spread out over his fingers, starting from the tips and slowly spreading out along them towards the hand. The seperate nipping feelings joined one another near the knuckles, where they blended together. From there the Undrykas continued with his peeling, moving over the back and palm of his hand towards the wrist. Near the wrist he often slowed down, as it was a little trickier to get everything peeled off here. But practice had made him perfect and the nipping spread out over his wrist. The Undrykas looked at his hand as he peeled the spirit out of it, detaching it from his body. Often times it reminded him of the hunters, who cut the pelt off their prey, except the pelt was on the inside and the Undrykas to seperate the pelt from the body from the inside. He set the thought aside, pushing it out of the 'Eye'. As his brain told his right hand to move, the flesh remained where it was, resting in his lap, but the spirit rose out of the flesh and hovered a little above it, moving at his command. He flexed his fingers to see if everything worked alright and turned his hand around, the palm towards his face. With the tip of his index finger he pushed his own nose and smiled as he could feel the effect. He floated the hand to his knee where he rested it on it. With one hand disconnected, the Undrykas turned to his left and looked at his hand there. He repeated the process for his left hand as well. First he grabbed hold of the tips of his fingers. It was like holding onto the tip of one finger with your entire hand. From his mind he started to nip away at the flesh around his spirit, slowly severing the threads that bound the two together. The nipping spread from the tips of his fingers and slowly made it's way down to the knuckles of his hand. By the time he had reached there, the tips of his fingers were devoid of any nipping or other feelings as he started to peel the spirit out there as well. From his knuckles he worked his way further down to his wrist. The wave of nipping came to a halt at the end of his wrist as the second wave slowly caught up with it. Where the first wave introduced a different feeling to the skin, the second wave, originating from the same starting points, introduced a lack of feeling in his hand. A lack of all feeling. His hand just lay in his lap, as useless as the right hand. His brain sent the signal for his hands to move up both neither of them moved. Only both spirit hands moved up, which were invisible to other people for the moment. So where the Undrykas saw his hands move and turn in a myriad of ways, others just saw him sitting in the grass staring at the air in front of him. He flexed all ten fingers to see if everything was working properly. Although unaware of it, the Undrykas had a small smile on his face as he rubbed his spirit hands together in mid-air. As he thought about it, his hands moved over to the wooden plank stuck in the ground. He placed the palm of his left hand against it and pushed it, trying to see the result. Although the wood did nothing more than wobble back and forth a little, the result was always good to see. Yet at the same time, the Undrykas had expected that result. He pushed a little harder against the wood and could see it bend backwards from the force applied. It was just as if he was really pushing against it. He pulled his left hand back and pushed his right against the wood. The wood bent backwards once more. It was a strange feeling to influence something with your hands, knowing what it felt like without using your hands or feeling it. A thought that kept occuring to him every time he used his spirit to touch or move things at a distance. His mind registered the fact that he was holding, or in this case, pushing something but the feeling was never transferred. He pulled his hand back from the wood a short distance and then slapped it against it, high-fiving the wood. The sound of something hitting wood reached his ears as the Undrykas watched his hands move. He pulled his hands back more and hit the board again with the palm of his hand. As soon as he drew his hand back, the other one struck the wood. And again and again. He moved his hands back and forth, slapping the wood with his palms. At first he moved slowly, one hand struck and pulled back, then the next one. The wood had plenty of time to recover from each hit. Every time he hit the wood, the sound exploded out of nowhere. Although he was still sitting in the same place, the Undrykas could feel his heart starting to beat more quickly, egged on by the natural reaction to things happening. As his heartbeat picked up, so did the speed of his movements. As one hand drew back, the other already struck the wood and the time between strikes decreased. Less limited by the restrictions of the flesh, the hands hit the wood one after the other and each strike caused the wood to bend backwards more. As the Undrykas focused on the wood more, the hits kept raining down on it. Then it suddenly snapped with a loud crack, startling the Undrykas. He jumped a little in his seated position. Without realizing it, he had put more force into his strikes, cracking the wood and breaking it in the end. Still shocked by the sudden noise of cracking wood and his practice target splintering in half, the Undrykas picked up both pieces. As they floated in front of him, the Undrykas tried to put the two halves back together, trying to match the two pieces but they didn't stick and fell apart as soon as he let on go. Not used to actively breaking things, the Undrykas felt sorry for the piece of wood as he put it gently on the grass, putting the two halves together. He handled it almost like a dead pet, the way he tried to fix it. The Undrykas withdrew his hands from the wood and settled them on his knees. Matching his left spirit up with his left hand he slowly started to attach it once more. From the fingertips first he inserted the spirit in his body again, almost like trying to slide a parchment in the middle of a stack of parchments. He had to thread carefully in order to put everything in the right place and order before he could start 'sewing' everything back together again. From his fingertips first, feeling returned to his left hand as the spirit moved and settled back into place. The familiar nipping started from the top once more and the young boy slowly moved it down as his spirit settled back into the flesh. The feeling moved down his fingers towards his knuckles and quickly engulved his entire hand. The nipping stopped at the top and made it's way down as well. The right hand came second. More practiced with this side, the spirit settled in more easily and connected more easily. The nipping feeling, as if uncountable little mouth were biting his skin with their lips, came and went, washing over his right hand from the fingertips down to the wrist. To make sure everything was alright he slowly moved each finger in turn. He rubbed his hands together once he was finished with the tests. For some reason his palms felt numb. |
| Present day On the road from The Spires The writer put the parchment aside after having moved hrough the motions of covering it with sawdust and sand to dry up the ink. He put it safely away in one of the many bags he carried with him. He looked at the piece of wagonwood he had used as a mobile desk and let his fingertips brush over the smooth surface. It was good wood and it would serve the writer for quite some time. And it wouldn't break either. |
