clayforthedevil | Into the Woods

The day Ysalwen and Bahorel settled on to go exploring the forest has chanced to have fine clear weather, if a little breezy. When Bahorel sees Ysalwen and Liranan walking up, he laughs; there's wind enough to ruffle the dog's coat as he lopes along.

Bahorel, leaning against a tree very near the one where they first met, lifts a hand in greeting, to Ysalwen and Liranan both. "Good weather for a walk!-- Though I don't know what it'll turn out to be farther along. Are you ready?"

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Ysalwen laughs, tucking flyaway strands of hair behind her ear.

"My cloak is oiled, and Liranan doesn't mind water. Snow -- snow we might not be prepared for, but we'll make do."

She reaches back to adjust her pack, balancing the load a little more comfortably, then strides forward on solidly booted feet.

Liranan barks twice, making his way to Bahorel for scritches. You would not leave a dog hanging, would you? He is nice!

Liranan is a very good dog, and a very stout fellow, and will surely send all potential enemies running away in fear. Bahorel agrees with him about all this, emphasized with enthusiastic scritches and pettings, along with stray barks and yips of his own that are, perhaps, a little more fluently coherent to a dog than they would have been a few months ago.

"You are dressed for the occasion! I'd say lead the way; but I find it works best if you don't try to head any particular way at all. So wander where you will, and the woods will find us." He's already sauntering in under the canopy himself. "-- Has it been long in your world?"

((the narrator apologizes for asking timeline questions and grants full leave to punt! :P))

Edited Date: 2015-10-27 07:57 pm (UTC)

Liranan is very terrifying! He has fought dragons! He may also lick Bahorel's face for having learned some Dog! Maybe.

Ysalwen, meanwhile, follows him into the trees, Liranan pacing them both.

"Long enough for no few things to be accomplished, and for me to set off on the road again. Not so long that I've forgotten the faces of those I know here."

She smiles, quick and crooked.

"And for you in here? The season certainly doesn't seem to have changed, but I've been told that might not mean much."

Oh no, not dog kisses! This must be met with immediate counterattack; can the dire assault be led away by the decoy of a thrown stick?

"A few days, that's all. Still not past Halloween-- have you seen Halloween here? I've had conflicting reports on what exactly happens, except that it's definitely something."

Ysalwen raises one incongruously dark eyebrow, even as Liranan chooses to ignore the stick and stay for the explanation.

He can get it later! Or another, better stick!

"Halloween? Is that something I'm supposed to know?"

"Ah! Then you haven't seen it. Halloween, sometimes All Souls? It's when humans, on a surprising number of worlds, celebrate the dead, and honor our fears of the unknown and our own mortality." He is being very serious. This is his serious face. "This is of course generally accomplished with very loud parties, disguises, and setting vegetables on fire; I promise all of the observances have very serious meanings, and I can even invent more right now if you like."

"Oh!"

Her expression turns itself into one of enlightenment at about the part where he says 'All Souls', and continues through mentioning the dead.

The wild parties part, however, is where her comprehension stops.

"We have that, too. All Souls, I mean to say. But it's -- there are bonfires, but not of vegetables. It's to commemorate the death of Andraste, and to remember all the rest of the world's dead. I think in the north -- maybe Rivain and Antiva, possibly some places in northern Ferelden, but I can't be sure -- they do wear costumes. But those are usually for silent parades. And of course there are plays in the streets, about Andraste's life and death. The loud parties and disguises part sounds more like Satinalia, to me, but that has very little to do with death."

"Then I want to know about your Satinalia!--The vegetables are really made for lanterns- they're meant to give a light to passing souls, or scare the ill-meaning away, depending on who you ask. It's the same with the disguises, except they have even more purposes. And the rest--" he shrugs, grinning. "Why be solemn? If I could spend a night back in my world, I'd want to go back to a party, not a lot of dire faces and silence."

"And using actual lanterns is -- forbidden by your religion?"

She sounds a little dubious, but then again religions make the strangest proscriptions for the oddest reasons, occasionally involving economic concerns.

Anyway.

"Do your dead actually come back? That sounds -- interesting and potentially uncomfortable, at once."

Oh, they were speaking of Satinalia.

"As for Satinalia, there is great feasting and revelry, masks and disguises are worn, and we choose a fool for the day. Antiva has a week-long party, but most other places the festival only lasts a day or two. It's not so bad to revel in freedom for awhile, even though it's not -- well. If it's limited in scope it's not exactly freedom, is it?"

" Hah! It's surprising oversight, but no, there's no prohibition on lanterns, though not everyone can afford one; which is probably where it started. And then the carving's fun, itself. -- Your Satinalia sounds like our Carnival. That's not until almost spring for us, though;and then everyone goes properly mad, and then when it's over anyone who cares what the Church says has to let themselves be more sober than ever for a while, and give up all manner of enjoyments and a good many practicalities."

He hops over a little dark trickle of a stream, aware without paying attention that it's one he hasn't seen before. "--As for how often the spirits of the dead really visit the living, you'll find no certain answer in our world; but I am hardly the one to say it can't happen! For all I know that's where all our other neighbors stay,or perhaps there's some other hotel taking them all in, and those of here missed a turn somewhere."

"That does sound like Satinalia," she says, mouth curving wryly.

At the close of those words she similarly steps over the dark stream, while Liranan merely splashes through. She does not seem much surprised by this, though --

"Hmm. Elfroot. I wouldn't have expected to find it here."

Odd, that.

"Better than deathroot, though, given our conversation. I don't know how I would feel knowing for sure the dead watched me. Or could watch me. Or that I could watch the world of the living once my own living was done. Here feels like it might be different, a little, because here at least there are things you can touch. And it has its own kind of solidity -- changing but not exactly ephemeral. Though I'm not speaking from experience, so what do I know?"

"Oh, this place is solid enough-- and if anyone's able to go spying on their living friends I haven't heard about it. But there's faiths enough that hold it happens all the time; I knew plenty of people who'd say the dead watched from heaven, though mostly what you'd see watching you, if you looked up, was birds waiting for you to drop your breakfast. As you say-- I never saw the appeal. If heaven's half what it's meant to be, why don't they have better things to do? And if it's not --mind this bit, it's like swamp--" he hops across a broad flat patch of leaves on a row of smooth. rounded white rocks "-- I think all of us here have done what we can to learn-- what happened after. Mostly that's national, politicians, countries-- it matters, but we all expect those to go on. But I had friends who left more personal records and it's-- ah!"

That last comes as the second to-last of the stones suddenly tilts, showing itself a strange sort of imitation of a skull, and bites at his heel. "Stay down, or roll yourself out if you're feeling lively!" He steps onto more solid ground with an exasperated wave at the skull-stone; they've had these debates before.

But the plants on this side of the pool aren't all the usual. " -- Is that more of your elfroot? I've never seen that before."

"Well, if you're going to be like that about it," she says to the skull-stone that tried to bite at Bahorel's foot.

Then slings her staff off of her back and taps it lightly against the swampy ground to the side of the stones. A slim, solid patch of ice forms, and she steps onto it and makes her way across the ground, watching the stones for more evidence of skulls as she does so.

Liranan trots behind, bringing up the rear. And once on more solid ground --

"You expect them to go on, but you hope they go on well without your input? I -- know the feeling, or I expect I will, when all is said and done."

Maybe thirty more years if she is supremely lucky, or maybe un-.

Hmm.

"Personal records? Such as journals and the like? Did you get to read them here? I assume the library has copies of almost everything, so -- "

"Oh, full memoirs, for some of them-- not a quiet bunch, my friends. I know, you're shocked! And me so retiring--" this he says while meekly tearing out a bizarre little knot of bramble and dead branches that's across a path he definitely hasn't seen before "-- But they all had a good deal to say before then went on their own way."

...And right, copies of everything. Again, Bahorel is grateful the spy is so willfully stupid.

"--And it's fine, to know they went on well on their own." What was holding that snarl up? The vines were too dry to be sticky, but they've been covered in coarse threads of...something. "--When they did. Better than knowing where it went the other way."

Knowing that part is something else. He scrubs his palms off on a tree trunk. "If they're going to hang that over people in Heaven, then Heaven can go strangle."

"I'm shocked and appalled," she allows, crouching down to look at the knot of brambles and branches. "Here I thought it was just me that had a difficult time carrying on a conversation with you and your monosyllables."

Sometimes those can be witch symbols, or other things, and it's good to know if these might be her own memories leaking out.

Just in case.

"Heaven is your afterlife, then? If they're going to hold anything over a person after death, it's probably time to upset any and all states of affairs. Presuming it's manageable. I don't know how it would work, especially if the dead are like the spirits I've met, who were never corporeal people to begin with, so the comparison is probably terrible, but -- having them hold ideas for longer than a few minutes at a time can be -- difficult. But still, if it's not better than down here something has gone horribly wrong, and there's no sense going through those in charge because they probably like it just as it is. Most of them always do."

But no, it's just a knot of forest detritus, stuck together with --

"So tell me, Bahorel," she says conversationally, standing up and slinging her staff off of her back to use as a walking stick. Presumably. "How familiar are you with spider silk?"

Spiders? Liranan picks his head up and growls a little. Are there spiders, Ysalwen??

Bahorel looks again at the --yes, silk, that's clear now-- threads he's wiped off on the tree trunk. He grins and takes his knife- a simple, worktool of a knife, one he'd had in his pocket when he came over, and no real weapon, but all the knife he has--out of his pocket and glances up into the canopy.

"Never sewed with it, myself. You are an interesting sort, aren't you?"

Giant spiders aren't his. At least not any that would actually be a problem.

She laughs, letting the sound hit the air without stifling it.

Best to get things moving, right?

"I'm glad you stuck with interesting instead of something less complimentary. And this is far from the worst we could be facing -- except for the poison. Try not to get bitten? Or spit on."

Her hand flashes out in a quick signal to Liranan. Watch him. Because that is a very small knife.

"Do you want something larger? Just so you don't have to get quite so close when -- "

Well, when the inevitable happens. As it is just now, dropthreads coming down from the trees and being immediately followed by really big, really hairy, really brown spiders.

"Never mind."

Too late!

Edited Date: 2015-10-29 02:51 pm (UTC)

...Well, yes, a bigger knife would have been an excellent thing to have! But Bahorel can work with this.

It's not too different than fighting pigs, right? Just more legs and teeth and poison spit and oh, hey they're fast! But then so is he, and not fenced in, and he can probably keep dodging until --what, exactly?

"Any hints?" He can always try just jumping and slashing, but if there's a weak point he should look for, now would be the time to tell him!

"Partner with Liranan, feint when you feel comfortable, throw rocks when you don't, keep them distracted and let him take them down."

She delivers these instructions scattershot, in between firing small boulders from her fingertips and smacking spiders away with her staff.

"Actually, hold on."

She disengages quickly, fingers twisting in a swift, complex gesture as she hurls a hex at the spider in front of Bahorel.

"That one will be less able to hit you now. Have at."

Maybe now is the time for a judicious local blizzard with which to knock all their opponents down. Eight legs are difficult to coordinate, or they ought to be.

Liranan, meanwhile, darts in low at a spider coming at Bahorel from behind, getting a leg in his teeth and ripping. Ew, spider blood. Not tasty!

Edited Date: 2015-10-29 03:40 pm (UTC)

Yeha, there are probably things a man has to do for himself, but fighting a scuttling poison-spitting abomination of nature is not one of them. All the magic buffs, that's great! And he'll trust Liranan to know what to do on that side; the dog's clearly had more practice with this sort of thing than he has.

But this isn't entirely unlike some of the sport back at the farm...

When the hexed spider charges at him again, he plants one hand on its head and flips himself onto the spider's back. From that position, it's a lot easier to stab at the thing's eyes with his own knife.

...Spider blood, ew. Bahorel's with Liranan on that.

Liranan, meanwhile, bowls over another spider and starts worrying at its exposed abdomen and thorax-equivalent with his teeth.

Spider guts, worse than the blood! Ichor, whatever. But it does take said spider out of the fight very effectively.

At the same time Ysalwen whirls, smashing another spider with a boulder and also knocking it away from the mabari at the same time. "Bahorel," she yells, almost immediately afterward. "Please do not be alarmed when your tiny knife bursts into flame."

Because fire is super-effective against spiders. And their webbing.

Flaming weapons spell, activate!

Hey, it's a perfectly average size for a working knife!

...this story is going to turn into so many "little knife" jokes if he lives to share it with Legle and Courfeyrac. For right now, he slashes at the narrow connection between the spider's head and body a few times; it does part for more easily than even the eyes had punctured when his knife wasn't on fire.

Another spider goes down under Liranan's weight and teeth, and Ysalwen finishes off the last one near her that's moving by --

Well.

She turns it to stone, then touches it very gently and shakes it to pieces with a small localized earthquake.

Handy!

"Bahorel, are you all right?"

His seems to be the last one twitching, though even that is probably just death-throes now.

Hmm.

He waves, with the hand not currently poking a stick at a twitchy monster spider. "That was exciting!" It was! He's bouncing a little, still keyed up from the fight. "Is this how your quiet walks usually go?"

"Actually, pretty much yes."

She flashes a smile in his direction, even as she scrapes spider goo off of the butt of her staff.

And gives Liranan some water with which to wash the taste of ick out of his mouth.

"Especially in caves, very dark areas of forest, and the Deep Roads. When it isn't deepstalkers or darkspawn. Or enraged wild brontos."

Or Carta, or --

"We're too small a party to be intimidating, apparently."