Completed Cages

[Gad]

Continued from "Chattel"

Summer 10, 505AV Road to Zeltiva Early that morning, just after sun up, we set out. The wagon got to rocking and I had to be careful not to move when they started me awake, considering I was still pretending to be sleeping. I heard one of the slavers worrying over the fact that I'd been sleeping for two days now and he was worried I was killed or had been made slow, and thus harder to sell. For the most part, though, it seemed like their stay in the hot springs had washed away any thoughts they had about straightening me out and now they seemed more concerned with the trip ahead of us and making it to their camp grounds before night fall. From what I was able to gather there was a place ahead of us that they mentioned, a clearing on the side of the road where we'd spend the night hunkered down. For most of the morning us slaves in the three carts were quiet but around the 10th bell the slavers took a five chime pause to piss shoot the shyke. They also passed a water-skin to each of us and warned we wouldn't be getting anymore until we got to the camp grounds, and so not to drink too much. As our water-skin was getting passed around one of the brothers nudged me to open my mouth and they poured some of it down for me. The slavers had all moved ahead of our little procession and were discussing something or other, I could tell this by how far their voices had gotten. By this point I could just about recognize everyone of them by their voices and was sweating a little less as I heard them get far away. It was half a tick of them being out of earshot that I could start to hear the low murmuring of the slaves in the other carts, and then the ones in our carts. Tuck was talking to Tina, I heard him say “Hey, take some of these rations. You're eating for three after all.” She thanked them and then there was silence for a tick. I guessed the boys were giving Jeff a look because I heard him say; “What? I ain't eaten this good in weeks!” I opened a solitary eye and looked down by my feet, I could see they were all chewing on some crusty bread, so I spoke up asking; “H-Hey, where's mine?” The brothers shared a glance. Then Tuck spoke up “Well kid, we figured since we're covering for you so friendly like, and all your doing is just laying there, pretendin to be asleep and all, you wouldn't mind us eating some of your rations.” “Some-?” “-all of your rations.” Lefty corrected. I sighed and harrumphed but realized I wouldn't do too good to make a big deal of the whole thing. I was kicking myself though, because now I realized I shouldn't ever have put any faith in a couple of extortionist like those two. For awhile there, I was thinking that I might want to try and escape with these guys, as they seemed to be able to keep quiet and move quick. Now, I wasn't sure, they coulda been more of an obstacle to my freedom than an aide. That reminded me, though, of the plan I had for snagging the keys to the cage last night. Obviously I couldn't try it right that second, but I could try and get a good look. Well, how would I do that? I was sitting right there, still making like I was out could, you know, so I had to get creative. I've heard, over the years and from different folks, that when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well, I guess Projection has always kinda been like my hammer. Doesn't seem like such a bad thing to me, though- at least it didn't at the time. What's more simple than hitting a nail on the head?

[Gad]

I let my right eye relax. Real slowly I started to pump it full of djed like I'd have done my hands if I was trying to project them. See, here's the thing some people don't really get about projection; it's a process. You don't just jam a bunch of your djed into whatever you want to be projecting, but you do it slow, methodically. They way I did it was to feel my pulse. Now, I tried to match the ebb and flow of my djed, in and out, with that pulse. I started slowly, of course, but soon it was going at about the same rate. Then, I added a little more juice. Pumped it up, and pumped it up. The rate of my djed behind my right eye was starting to get a little faster now. Faster than my heart rate, faster than my pulse. And then. Pop! Well, it didn't make a noise like that, but that's how it felt. I could feel my eye roll back in it's socket, even though the eyeball itself went numb. All that feeling and sensation was now floating a few inches above my resting face. I whirled it around a bit and got a good glimpse of everything about me. The vision through the eye was on the bleary side, blurred with an intense light and poor definition. With Projection, it always seemed like you were scrapping off a layer of skin and making your nerves bare. All that sensation was so much closer than it was before- but that didn't mean it was keener. No, it could be quite the opposite; there was too much contrast to get any really good details. The light parts were too bright and anything even under a light shadow was almost indiscernible. At any rate, I could make out well enough the things around me. I could see Tuck and Lefty talking and Tina there with her baby, Jeff sleeping. I swiveled it around and could see where the slavers had gathered a good number of yards ahead of us. There were seven all together that I could count, and I pushed my floating eyeball forward towards where they were. I could feel some strain on it, and my vision got a little dimmer, but I could see them better. I made a point of memorizing each of them, and trying to put the voice I'd heard to the faces. There was wild eyed one who was brawny, with a red feather in his wide-brimmed hat. There was a skinny rake of a man in all pale yellow, with long greasy black hair that was thinning on top and a long goatee. There was a jowly one with a fat body and frogish neck, with thick silver hair, the side of his mouth was turned down like a fish. There was a man who looked like that last man's son, not as fat, and his hair was black, but the same fish face. There was a cross-eyed redhead who was tall. There was bald young man with tan skin and eyes that were shifting from red to yellow. Their leader- and I pegged him as such because he had the nicest clothes, even nicer than that other man's yellow doublet- was wearing fine, smooth, dark greens and blues and reds, with a cape, and a top hat like the man with the red feather, but his held a Whip card in it's band. He had a long mustache that curled upwards at the ends like tusks hanging down over his lip. And he was missing an eye. Now, he didn't have the courtesy to cover it up with an eye-patch or anything so you could see the grisly wound stuck right there on his face. It didn't look like it was cut out, but burned in, and you could see the jagged mass of keloid scar tissue that was patched over the whole of the right side of his face. His eyeball still must have been under there or something, because as he looked left and right, I could see some movement under that scarred over skin. I couldn't here what they were talking about, not really, but I could make out the cadences of their voices and the pitches and tones of them. It wasn't like I had anything but learn those sounds, so even though I couldn't piece together their conversation, I could recognize the mumbled sounds of their voices, and match them to those faces.

[Gad]

I was having a little bit off fun there with my eye floating out of my head, but figured I should be cautious, even thought I doubted anyone could have been onto me. I tried spotting where any of them held their keys, but couldn't see it. I did see the whips and short swords several of them kept tight on their waists. I'd have to work my best to steer clear of those things. At this point, there wasn't really anything left for me to see, so I floated my eyeball's ghost back over to my head a set it in place. I worked at slowly sliding it in to it's flesh and gently reconnected the meat body with the astral one. I started to hunger, and worry. How long could I keep this up? I didn't know how long the road to Zeltiva was but I figure it'd take us at least the season, if not longer, to get there. I doubted I could keep this ruse up for much longer, but they way I saw it, I didn't need to. When I thought on it, I decided I'd only have to lay in wait long enough for them to forget me trying to escape the first time. After a few days on the road, they'd be too tired and exhausted for them to waste their energy on me. At least, that's what I liked to think. My stomach growled, and I felt Tina slip a piece of dry bread up to my mouth. I curled my lips in at first, resisting, but soon I took a few discrete chomps of it. We were back on the road soon, traveling at a good pace, as I could tell by the feeling of wind on my skin. There was some joking and bickering among the slavers, but it was quiet for the most part, and so was I. They say time goes by fast when your having fun, but I have a different theory. I think time slows down when you're having fun. Everything seems to stretch out and expand, cause you're having fun and doing things you don't get to do all the time. But, it speeds up when you're bored. Doing the same thing over and over, even if that thing is nothing, is the quickest way to see your life slip by, at least in my book. So, as a person might imagine, laying there in that cage made time run by ugly quick for me. They stopped again in the late afternoon, I think it was the 14th bell, to take another break. I used the opportunity to move my arms and legs about a little bit and get the blood unsettled. Once we got back to it, I filled my mind with the idea that I'd only have a few more bells until sundown when I could move around. I guess my mind responded to all that boredom and waiting by putting me to sleep, since I wasn't doing much else. I didn't wake up again until the sun was down and we were stopped, to the sound a crackling campfire. When I came to, I was cautious to mark the position of those voices. I heard all the slavers speaking in turn over by the sound of the fire, so I felt safe none of them were hanging around where I was. I rolled over on my side so that I faced their direction and opened my eyes slowly. I watched them eating their beans and dried meat, which I could smell from where I was and I didn't much like that. Being able to smell, to taste something I knew I couldn't have. Maybe I should've just gotten used to the slave life, it probably would've turned out better. But- that's not me. That's not me at all. So, instead, I hatched a little plan. I would stay up at the night, when no one was away, and that way I could move and do as I pleased, as long as it was quiet, and I would sleep during the hot day. That way, I wouldn't even have to pretend to be asleep, because I really would be. Now, if that was the extent of my plan, it probably would've been a good plan that worked out well, but- and perhaps this is just my gambler's blood- but I was a little more ambitious than that. I estimated that it was well with in my abilities to use a little projection to snag some of those more tasty morsels these slavers were keeping to themselves. I was so confident in my plan's ability to succeed, I was even thinking about generously sharing my gains with my fellows in bondage. I had moved up onto my elbows as I watched the gang of slavers eating their supper. The man in the yellow doublet- who was one of the slavers responsible for the slaves in my wagon- stood up and made turned towards me. I laid down really quiet, and stayed still.

[Gad]

In a few steps he was on us, but I guess he didn't see me moving because all he did was open a sack that was sitting on the driver's chair, and put away some of that jerked beef they had been eating. I knew from the smell. I waited still, until I heard the splash of water on their campfire, and heard the sounds of them turning in. Once it had been quiet for five chimes or so, I sat up, and scanned the area. They were all tucked-in, in their sleeping rolls and tents, fast asleep. Now was my opportunity. I sat there, pulsing my djed as was my fashion, down to each joint in my hands. First the wrist came undone, then, slowly, the fingers, down to the tips. My hands were numb, as my eyed had been, but now I could use their floating energy as I saw fit- within a limited range, of course. I moved my hands forward, through the air, to where I saw the rucksack sitting. I couldn't see it really, because the back of the driver's seat was in the way and it was night. I fumbled with the knot on it for a few chimes, and I worried as I did so, how I might tie it back up like it was before. But, once I got it done, I forgot my worries. My hands floated into the bag and tugged out a little chunk of that sweet salty beef jerky. It wasn't much, and I hoped that meant no one would miss it. I bit pieces off and sucked and gnawed on them for as long as I could help my self, but eventually would scarf them down. I moved to put my hands back into their place, but stopped myself when I realized I was planning to stay awake until sunrise, and that I'd need to busy myself some how. I poked my head right up to the bars of my cage and saw, in the pale moonlight, a few rocks on the ground by the wheel of the wagon. I pushed my invisible grips over to where one as laying. I grasped the stone and tugged but it was perhaps a few pounds too heavy for me to lift, so I felt around until I found another stone that was lighter. That one I lifted up to my cage, and it did take some effort. As I reeled it in, I even began to move my arms around, extending them and pulling them in like I was beckoning the stone to me. It must just be that a better part of magic is belief and self-confidence, and those motions seemed to help. I pulled the stone up and could see that it was chalky. I set the stone to the wooden bottom of my cage and scraped it across the surface, still using my projection. It made a white mark, though I had to put my eyeball just about a hair away to really make it out. I knew some little bit of glyphs at this point and wanted to practice my vocabulary. My thinking was that I could hit two magics with one stone, and I had time to kill, so I started working on my glyphing. I suppose that might be taken literally, as the first glyph I started writing was actually “me”. I worked for fifteen chimes just focusing on me, and the idea off me, and who I was, and what that meant, if it meant anything at all. Then I tried to distill that- all those ideas- into a symbol in my mind. I focused on that, and breathed in, and out, really slowly until an image appeared in my head. It was this weird kind of squiggly thing, that I didn't think was entirely accurate of all my nuanced character traits and such, but I spent the next quarter bell struggling to transcribe it down on the floor of that cage nonetheless. I got it down good, but erased it with a rub of my projected hands, which were tired now. I set the chalk down and started to put my hands away slowly, and once I had done so, got to work on glyphing again. I took the chalk up, and say there, leaned against the bars of the cage in the dark of the night. I thought, not about “me”, but “I”. You see, when I was thinking about “me”, I was thinking about all these thoughts I'd had, and things I done, and these preferences- you know “I like this” or “I don't like that”- and I had used those criteria to help define “me”. But after I'd seen my work, it didn't think it quiet fit the script. So, I started to think instead “Hey, what is that does all those things.” I mean, instead of thinking about the thoughts I had and things I'd done and ways I'd felt, and calling those “me”, I started thinking about what was it that was doing all of those things. What was making those thoughts, forming those preferences, preforming those actions? That was the question I was trying to answer, and I figured the glyph that might correspond to that would be “I”.

[Gad]

The “I” glyph took a lot longer to come to my head, maybe a bell. Once it had, it was fleeting, I could barely keep the image of it in my mind, but eventually I was able to hold the thought of it long enough to start transcribing it down on the floor of that cart. It was much more simple in design than “me”, but if seemed more accurate to what I wanted to say than that glyph had been. Next, I thought about putting down the glyph “am”. “Am” was not as difficult as “I”. To me, it was just the same as “is”, which was the same as “exist”, and that may seem strange but it made sense to me. I held onto the thought of existing and existence, and was able to conjure up something that resembled it close enough that it satisfied me, and so I started putting that down. You may not know this about glyphing, but it can be pretty interesting once you get going. What makes it take so long isn't even that the glyphs are complex. See, you're writing, basically, in djed, or something like djed, at least that's how it feels to me. Now, I know I said I was using chalk, but that's just how the djed expresses it self, that's just what it clings to. That's how think about it anyways. The reason it takes so long to write isn't because the glyphs are complex- simple glyphs can still take bells- it's that your writing into the djed of something. Your grafting on your concept, your ideas, about something, whatever it is, onto something else, and there's resistance in that process. I think that when you fill something up with your ideas of it, or something else, you change it on a deep level. You add potential, but you're also taking potential away, so that it serve the purpose that you want to. It's like, graffiti on the walls of the universe. All of that aside, I was able to get “am” down next to “I”, and so it looked like “I am”, which in my glyphs is synonymous with “I is” or “I exist”. I needed a little something to finish it off, and decided a signature was as good as anything. I went back into the blank space of my mind, or as close to it as I could get, and tried to pull out that symbol that was of “me”, not “me, me”, but “me, Gad”, which I hadn't realized until I was trying it were basically the same and yet subtly different. The thought was quick to come up, and I worked on jotting it down there on the bed of that cage-wagon. When I looked at my work, or squinted at it in the dark, really, I felt this weird feeling. It was kind of bad, or untrue, this statement. Actually, what made me not like it wasn't that it wasn't true, but perhaps that it was? It said “I am Gad”, but also “I exist Gad”, or “I exist [as] Gad”, and when I started to read it that last way it made me look at myself a little different. It seemed I was temporary, when I said, “I am Gad” and that also meant “I exist [as] Gad.” That may not make sense, let me clear it up. It read to me like it was saying “I exist [as] Gad, [for now]”. And at that my brows furrowed up and I couldn't stand to look at it anymore, and so I erased the “Gad” glyph, so that it said what it had before. That statement was a bit more pleasant to look at, though I could tell it still needed some work. I smeared it away and leaned up against the bars. It struck me that I had never knotted up the bag I took the jerked beef out of, and so, working as quick as I could without hurting myself, I pulled my projected hands out of their mortal coils and went about doing that. I was able to reattach them to just as the sun was peeking over the horizon, and the slavers were grumbling awake in the camp. Just as they were raising their heads, I was lowering mine and nodding off to sleep.

Continued in "Charity"

[Zandelia]

Gad :

Skills
Acting – 2
Observation – 3
Projection – 4
Glyphing – 2
Philosophy – 1

Lores
Slaves: Only Useful If Healthy
Past Prisoners: Lefty, Tuck and Tina
Djed Tech: Pulse Powering
Projection Tech: Eyeball Recon
Philosophy – What Is Me?

Notes :

Well thought out, well written. Inventive use of Projection too.