Hope in Pox-time

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

51st Fall, 512 A.V. around noon Since returning to Cyphrus, Sama'el had been working on the maintenance and repair of the Drykas Web almost constantly, sometimes skirting dangerously close to letting himself drift off on that energetic matrix, never to return to his dumb flesh. But since returning from the last major push to fix things, he had been utterly frightened. There was a pox going on, and while his pavilion was still close enough to the others to claim it was within Endrykas, it was farther from that center than normal. He would be damned, much harsher than the curse of Oriana on his shoulder, if he was going to allow anyone in his pavilion to die from this thing. As such, he sat in the middle of the encampment, shirt off as it was still early enough that he would not get cold. One wanted to enjoy the warmth while one had it, especially after last Winter's trek north into the blizzards of Taldera. His son, the bear cub, lay asleep in his lap, dreaming his bear dreams. But Sama'el himself was not within his body. Instead, it wove a web, spider-like, from tent to tent, person to person, horse to horse. He cast it farther out than normal. In Endrykas, they normally had little to fear. But now he was weaving his fiery res into that outer boundary, scrawling his illiterate glyphs into the energy such that any who approached would be greeted by a wall of Fire that tapped into the Web itself. They would be protected.