Open And this is how it was

[Starling Frost]

Forth day of fall, year 513

Starling had just started working at the Amphitheater and as yet she did not have a place in the act. It would take another cycle for her to be worked into the next production but she still loved going to the place. As crowds gathered, waiting for the show to start, Starling set up a stool in a likely corner and began to tell stories to keep the children entertained.

Starling liked to target her stories to her audience, and so today she created one that seemed like the sort of thing an Akalak might like. Setting her hat nearby in case anyone felt like tossing her a coin, she began her tale.

It happened like this:

Once there was a man named Kerris who was born into a family of wealth and fame. As a child, his parents doted on him because of his keen intellect and manners. Rarely if ever did he misbehave, and always could be counted on to do his chores. He was a fine looking man, but his hair grew with unusual thinness and so he shaved it all off by choice, and made baldness his style.

As he grew, subtly and by degrees Kerris began to fall out of favor with his parents. His obedience and devotion to routine was a great virtue in his youth, but as he grew older they began to take on a disturbing other flavor, one of blandness, lack of imagination, and if not actual cowardice at least a strong tendency to avoid confrontation or take risks. The girls also avoided him, describing him with various metaphors often centered around the image of a pretty lake that when jumped in turns out to be only six inches deep.

On his 18th birthday, Kerris decided it was time to take himself in hand, and went to see Babba Seragow, a witch of notable powers who lived in a swamp well past the edge of town. The trip to see the witch would require a day and a night, and Kerris packed a knapsack with a sleeping roll, a selection of sandwiches, and a mirror and razor so that he might look his best. He also brought a carving of a crow done in jet with an eye of blue lapis, as he had heard that the witch valued such trinkets.

Kerris made the long walk to the swamp without great difficulty. The day was fine if cold, and he met few people along the road. The swamp itself lay off the side of the road and as he walked along it he saw no obvious way to get into the dense underbrush that grew along its edge, nor any path or track that seemed like it might lead him to Babba Seragow’s home. At last he came to a halt, and stood considering how to proceed. As he thought, he was startled by the harsh cry of a bird, and turning about he saw a great black crow watching him. The bird stood on the fence surrounding the lands of an apple farmer, and it strutted back and forth along the split rail fence performing ever stranger poses and antics. And then, suddenly, the bird flew off, flapping high above the tangle of cypress trees that bordered the swam.

As Kerris turned to watch the animal go, he discovered that during the crows performance a pack of wolves had come silently out of the swamp and surrounded him, and they now stood in a semi-circle around him, silent except for the gentle whuffling of their breath going in and out. Then suddenly the wolves all lunged forward, and Kerris ran, driven by the pack into the underbrush and through, into the dark and murky interior of the swamp.

Now swamps come in any number of different sorts. Many are open marshlands with mostly reeds and lily pads and the melodic call of redwing blackbirds. This was not one of those swamps. Instead it was a shallow muddy lake, heavily forested with black trunked cypress trees, which had somehow gathered the swampy much up about their roots so that each one represented a tiny island. Overhead their spreading branches formed a roof through which sunlight came only rarely, so that the whole place was bathed in a green gloom. Through this landscape Kerris was driven, the wolves ghostly gray shapes darting through the murk their unearthly howling echoing in the green stillness. It seemed to Kerris that he ran for hours, but in truth he ran but little- a minute or two- before he came upon a small cottage made of logs that squatted like an imperious toad upon a rise of land. The windows of the house were dark, but a dull flickering light washed over them from the inside from time to time, and a low chimney of baked swamp mud belched tendrils of smoke into the fecund air. Kerris realized with a start that he had come to the place of Babba Seragow, and with a further start that the wolves now were gone, whether they had escorted him here on purpose or they were simply afraid of the witch within he would never know.

Kerris approached the house and knocked on the door a single time, but found that the door was unlatched and his knocking caused it to swing open. Inside was a single room, and Babba Seragow crouched by the fire working over a steaming pot of black clay. She was a small woman, and squat, although far younger than Kerris had expected. Her fingers were long and her hands were perhaps the cleanest thing in the house.

“I…” Kerris began, but the woman held up a hand to cut him off.

“First, let me see it.”

At first Kerris did not know what she meant, but then realization dawned and he fished the carving of the crow from his pack and wordlessly handed it over to her. She took it and examined it from all angles, smiling with pleasure before suddenly casting it into the fire. Kerris cried out at this, but once more she raised her hand for silence.

“You have come with a question, but it is the wrong question, or you would ask it in the wrong way,” she said. You have brought me a fine crow of goodly jet and flawless lapis and so I will answer the question that you should have brought to me. Take these things.”

The cottage was very dark, with the firelight only barely being augmented by sunlight filtered through cypress leaves and the dirt of the windows, and Kerris was not sure where she took them from, but in a moment Babba Seragow was handing him two things. The first was a bucket made of oak and bound together by bands of bronze. The second was a simple forked stick.

“Take these things and return to the road. When the morning sun comes, point one end of the forked stick at it, and then travel in the direction of the other fork. Bring the bucket with you, you will need it.”

Babba Seragow bent back to her concoction, indicating that the interview was at an end. Kerris looked down at the twig and bucket he had traded his fine crow for, and nodding once, left the cottage, and with considerably less speed than he had come, returned to the road. Night would soon be upon him, and so he set up a meager camp in an empty field.

Now, when a witch gives you a bucket and twig and sends you off willy-nilly on an unknown adventure, the thing to do is sit down and think it over and decide if you are going to do it or not. It is easy to sit secure in our own homes and imagine what a fine thing and adventure would be, but when you’re camping by a swamp you have a better feel for the fact that adventures are rather uncomfortable affairs and sometimes a giant will try and squish you. How much easier would it have been for Kerris to simply go home and life out a comfortable if insipid life? And yet, when the morning sun arose, he decided that he wouldn’t go home and instead held out his twig and found that the second branch did not point in a convenient direction at all, and so he had to go off crashing through heather and woods and climbing hills and wading in streams in order to obey its directions. Kerris traveled for three days, and by that time his sandwiches had run out and he was beginning to get quite hungry. The towns and villages had fallen away as he walked, and now he moved through untrammeled wilderness, or at least wilderness with a bare minimum of trammeling.

On the morning of the fourth day, Kerris woke bleary-eyed from a dream about roasted chicken, and though the sun was still lying a twitch below the horizon he got to his feet, took five steps, and then said a bad word as his leg disappeared into water. Looking down, Kerris found that he stood on the edge of a pool. The pool was small, perhaps 8 feet long and 4 across, and lined with cut and finished stone. A second pool lay alongside of the first one, but this second one was empty expect for some leaves that had blown into it.
The sun began to peek over the horizon, casting a golden light over the landscape, and by its rays Kerris saw that there was a man lying in the bottom of the pool, naked except for the hair which grew in great abundance on his body. Kerris looked for a moment and then stared in wonder as he noticed his reflection in the pool- the man at the bottom looked identical to himself.
Kerris ran and got his bucket, and began to scoop the water out of the one pool and throw it into the other. All morning he worked, scooping and throwing, until at last he moved all the water and the hairy man lay still and glistening in the sunlight. Kerris looked down into his own face, unsure how to continue. The man was dead, clearly, and what had he been planning to do with the body anyway?

But then in an instant the man’s eyes opened and he sprang up, flailing his arms about and giving a great whoop. Before Kerris could reach the man clutched him in a bear hug and lifted him off the ground, still whooping and carrying on.

“What? Wait!” Kerris said in alarm. “Who are you? What’s going on?”

“Korris,” the man said by way of explanation, and it soon transpired that this was the only word the man could say.

Kerris found that he had quickly developed a strong emotional bond with Korris, although it was not exactly a pleasant thing. The creature was wild, dirty, a thing of unrestrained emotions, and yet he felt the mode of Korris’ existence to be oddly compelling. When Korris ran off into the woods, Kerris followed, yelling at him to return, and by the time he’d caught up he found that the wild man had caught a boar and strangled it with his bare hands. Borrowing Kerris’ eating knife, Korris skinned the beast in savage and inefficient way. That night the two ate a fine meal of roast pork, and slept well under the glittering stars.

Kerris awoke refreshed, and by signs and gestures tried to impress on Korris the need to return home, but Korris did not seem interested in travel in the correct direction and try as he might Kerris couldn’t persuade him. Making grand gestures, Korris waved in the direction that Kerris had been traveling these last few days, and at last he regretfully agreed to continue on.

On the second day of the travels together, Kerris and Korris came to a valley which sloped gently down before them and then up again a mile distant into a low hill. The valley was green and lush, with tall grass and wildflowers in it, and cows of extraordinary size grazed upon these, gently lowing in a rumble an octave below the sounds of a standard cow. Atop the distant hill stood a castle, a large rambling stone affair built to a scale that like the cows was a good deal bigger than typical. Kerris believed that they ought to give the place a wide berth, but Korris because instantly excited and nothing would do but to go onward, directly towards the castle.

As the two travelers emerged from the grassy meadow, they found a small hut at the foot of the castle’s grand wall. At the sound of their approach an old man came out of the hut, dragging a chain behind him which had been affixed to his ankle by a silver chain. Kerris saw that the chain was attached to a pin driven clean through the ankle bone and he became afraid, and said that it was an evil place and they ought to go, and immediately, before some similar fate befell the, but Korris would have none of it.

“Greetings, half men,” the old man said. “What brings you to the castle of the Red Ogre?”

Kerris began to relate the story of what had happened to him, but the old man waved away his words impatiently, as if he had already heard it.

“I am old, I am old, and I would as lief go home at last. You must do what you came to do. Come.”

The old man brought the two travelers into his hut, which was small and dusty but well kept. He bent down and began to pull at one of the floorboards, which was somewhat loose, and Korris ran to help him, pulling with his great strength so that the board came loose and was broken in two. Underneath the board lay two swords, one midnight black and the other white and gleaming like porcelain. Korris fell upon the black sword, which was the larger of the two, and began to swing it wildly around the room, endangering everyone’s life. With the old man’s urgings Kerris was at last convinced to take the white sword, which was long and thin as a rapier.

“Go and slay the Ogre, and bring me back his daughters needle,” the old man said.

Kerris began to object to this, but Korris took hold of his arm and dragged him out the door, so eager was he to be about his bloody business.

If Korris had his way the two brothers, as brothers they were, would have gone straight to the gate house and banged on the door and things would have gone very badly indeed, but now that life was on the line Kerris at last found some gumption in his deepest pocket and fetched Korris a wallop on the ear so that he became fretful and followed along mumbling. The two travelers made a complete circuit of the mighty castle, and this took them the rest of the day because of the size of it. At last they came to a place where ivy grew upon the wall, think and strong, and together the two men climbed it, sweating and panting, until at last they reached the walkway that ran along the top.

Inside the castle walls lay a great courtyard, and in this courtyard several buildings; a great keep who’s windows shone with the blazing of a thousand candles, a large armory dark and cold, and a deep and forbidding well. A woman sat on a bench in the courtyard hard at work at her sewing, singing quietly to herself as she worked with a fabric dark as night and glittering with stars.

As the two men watched, the woman at last looked up and saw them, though the night was falling and they were but dark shapes against a darkening sky. Kerris saw with some surprise that the woman’s face was beautiful, or at least moderately so, with handsome dusky skin and hair like a tumble of foaming river, and her teeth gleamed like a rack of torture instruments polished with a loving hand. She waved at the two men to come down, and at last they did so by way of a staircase that led down from the wall. Tall as she was from ogre blood she looked down at them and smiled her gleaming smile.
“You have come to kill my father. This is the way of things for ogres and I shall not oppose you, but one of you must marry me when you have done.”
Korris began to jump and hoot around in an unseemly manner, making various pelvic gestures to indicate his willingness for the match, and Kerris was none to displeased to allow his brother to have that honor and so in a second it was settled.

“My father will have his meal now, and I will take it in to him. You two must hide among the dinner rolls and when you can you must do your dirty work.”
The plan seemed as good as any, and so Kerris and Korris followed the ogre’s daughter into the great kitchen, where she prepared a meal for her father. A whole roast ox was taken from the fire and put on a tray and garnished round with boiled tree branches and the bleached skulls. Loaves of bread, each as big as a wash tub, were loaded onto a second tray and these were placed on a great wagon. Kerris went to sit among the loaves, but Korris climbed into the body of the roast ox and would not come out, even though the heat was fierce.

The two men sat in still in their places and felt the wagon rolling beneath them. It seemed to Kerris that the wagon rolled for miles along the ancient stone corridors, and when he looked up between the loaves he saw an arched ceiling a hundred feet above, with gargoyles leering down at him from every corner and crevice. At long last the motion stopped, and Kerris peered again between the loaves and he saw the ogre.

The Ogre’s daughter had seemed big, 10 feet tall or so, but her father was twice her height and bore two heads, each uglier than the last, one with three eyes and the other with only one. His skin was the red of boiled lobsters, and his breath smelled like a bad thing that had died long ago and been left in the warm sun. The one-eyed head peered down at the dinner as if suspiciously.
“And how is it today my dear?” he asked, like an avalanche trying to be polite.

“It goes and goes, as things typically proceed,” she said casually.

“Ah!” the ogre said. “It is ever the way.”

He reached down and seized the ox, lifting it whole from the plate. At once Korris sprang from the carcass and sunk his sword into the eye on the ogre’s one eye’d head. The ogre bellowed in rage, flinging the oxen from him, swinging himself to and fro. Without thinking, Kerris leapt from the loaves, and more by luck than skill buried his own sword into the middle eye of the ogres other head.

And so it was that Kerris and Korris slew the Red Ogre, who wasted no time in lying down on the dining room floor and expiring. Korris did a victory dance all around the room, but the ogre’s daughter was soon upon him, and she led the two men out of the castle and to the hut of the old man.

“Do what must be done,” she told him, and handed him her needle.

The old man set straight to work. The ogre’s daughter set Kerris and Korris back to back, and quick as a wink the old man sewed them together, the needle passing painlessly through their flesh, until at last they were one. Kerris went to look in the mirror when he was at last set free to do so, but no sign of Korris remained. Or then again, perhaps there did. He let his hand linger on the top of his head, and found that it was growing in thick and coarse, and when he looked away from the mirror he felt the blood rush through his veins, thick and vital, and in his heart emotions danced that before this day he would never have dreamed of.

And so the old man was set free, and Kerris went to the Ogre’s castle where he and the ogre’s daughter was wed, and though she was a good deal taller than him he found that now that he was a man, she was only just barely enough woman for him.

[Yulio Ules]

Yulio Ules had chosen to visit the ampitheatre on this day. It was on her very short yet ever expanding list of things to see during her time in Riverfall. Of course she was uneducated in what an ampitheatre was but the ad in the scroll guide had made it sound very entertaining. So now she was wandering around the place aimlessly until she came across a lady who seemed to be swamped with children. Yulio went over to investigate and was quite surprised when she heard the lady speaking to them. She listened intently and when she finally understood the lady was telling a story she rushed over excitedly and sat down right in the middle of the group of children. Finally! A story. About land walkers. Told by a landwalker! Oh this was going to be exciting!

Yulio hung on every word that was said by the storyteller. She reacted to points of drama and danger with childish fear that it was hard to tell whether she was trying to imitate a child or was actually scared by the events of the story. At the exciting parts she bounced on her butt excitedly and at the strange or amazing parts she just stared on in awe with wide eyes. She was really into the story by the time it finished and clapped excitedly and appreciatively. After she got over her excitement she looked over at the hat that was on the ground and wondered what it was doing there? Did it have a purpose?

It was rather close to the storyteller...maybe it belonged to her and she had dropped it. Or she didn't want to wear it while storytelling. Either way it was strange and new to her for a hat to be upside down on the ground and she did not know what to do about it or what to think.

[Starling Frost]

Starling's eyes went back and forth over the crowd as she spoke, sizing up the audience, but her face betrayed no reaction, busy as it was with expressions appropriate to the story. She saw a strange looking woman and realized suddenly that it was a Charoda. She had seen one once in Zeltiva, but only from a distance. What a fine thing it must be to swim through the seas breathing the water! Just like flying, but never feeling that you might fall.

When Starling finished her story a few people tossed coins into her hat, but she earned no great amount of wealth; she was a child and spoke to an audience of mostly children, and children were not usually rich. She scooped the coins out into her hand, then dropped them into her pocket.

"You seemed to like the story," she said casually to the Charoda. "Do they have story tellers in the sea? I should think that everything would sound like blub blub blub."

[Yulio Ules]

Well she certainly fooled Yulio. Then again she was easy to fool. She was not practiced in the recognition of land walker expressions. But she was indeed learning. And enjoying it. And of course the fine thing of floating in the sea to Yulio was jut another ordinary day. But to walk on land was amazing! Somehow the limitations of being firmly stuck to the ground made her feel...well she didn't know. She was still sorting out how she felt about it. 4 days ago it was fantastic but the other day when she had tried to swim out of bed....well she had gotten a sore head. So now she was a little unsure of it. But still enjoying it.

Yulio watched carefully as the kids all tossed coins in the hat. She tilted her head curiously then took her seaweed back pack off her back and searched through for her coins. When she found them she counted out three and then walked up to put them in the hat. But the storyteller had already picked it up. So now she stood there awkwardly, unsure if she should ask if she can try and throw her coins in the hat or if that would be rude. But she was glad that the storyteller engaged her in conversation, made the situation less awkward.

She giggled at the storyteller and nodded her head.

"I loved the story! My first land walker story ever. I've never heard one...after?" she said, accidentally using the wrong word for the end of her sentence. She then shook her head but then had to think about it.

"Well...yes we do. And i'm not sure what you would hear. Your ears are different to mine. But my mum always said land walkers love it. I would show you but it sounds very bad when i use it on land."

[Starling Frost]

Starling hadn't thought of a whole special kind of words that only worked underwater, and she rather enjoyed the thought of it. It was an angle she would likely modify and use in a story some day.

"Well it is a pity because I should very much like to hear you speak underwater, but I don't suppose it would be good for me to, you know, submerge."

She shuddered delicately. The idea of swimming and breathing water was fascinating to her, but she had grown up in Avanthar where going in the water meant dying of cold in almost no time at all. Consequentially she'd never learned to swim.

"Are you new to the land? Did you get quite lost in Riverfall? I certainly did my first day here but if you like I can show you around. Although maybe you're about to go to the show? I work here myself, but my play doesn't start for two weeks."

[Yulio Ules]

Yulio had never thought that her words wouldn't work on land. But three days ago she was proven so. So these days she was never sure what to expect. But it was all great fun.

"Maybe I could let you listen the next time I have to wet myself. I have to do that quite often. " Yulio suggested, hoping to make a friend. She really needed one to show her how everything works.

And then this hope became reality.

"Oh yes ive only been here three days. I did get lost but the handy map a nice blue man gave me helped a bunch. But would you really show me around and stuff? Just like that? Cause that would be fantastic!" She said excitedly. She looked confused as to this show concept though.

"A show? What are they showing? Is it a good show? They're showing you? I don't understand."