Post by Amanita Vernia on Jun 7, 2005 5:47:19 GMT -5
Escaping the fire and fight at Silenti, Amanit and Venor spend the night in the Marsh
Debauched Caper: Wet; the only thing that could be said about the ahn or two after that final drop from the tunnel, was that it was wet. And muddy. And it stank like the Blue Flame because of the quagmire they were sloshing away through, generally up-river, but in the marshes that spread about it, who could be sure? Well...she could, of course. But as for him, he'd lost both sandals by now and was using that gladius, wincingly, to hack through the high-grasses to clear the way for her. It...was actually quite odd, that; by no means normally would he even hazard to dull a blade with something so trivial a chore, but this, he started after noticing how she snagged every half-dozen steps. And worse, what had him wondering, was that she hadn't asked him to. Which, made those cuts a bit more vehement in their strikes through the grasses, and him all the surlier. "Damnit woman, this would be much easier if you'd just take off those stinking robes and leave them. They're slowing us down." Well...that may have been an exaggeration, but still! "Where are we headed, anyway."
Amanita Vernia: I would of been furious with him.. had I not seen the orange light in the puddle. I turned to it's glow. It was my home... Silenti, up in flames and black smoke. I didn't cry, but there was a sadness that filled me. I said nothing in fact. I just moved like a ghost silently behind him as we headed towards the river. Amanita, if he didn't already know this, was stubborn. She was too stubborn to cry and too bosk headed to take any suggestions from him. "I'm keeping up fine with my robes on, just keep moving in this direction and we'll come to the river. If you're tired we can camp and start again in the morning." Which meant she was tired, but would make him admit to it first. She had at least stopped speaking to him as if her were her slave... no one to hear her, or maybe saving her life back there, killing two men that would have either cut her to pieces or taken her to Krakatoa, made her less untrusting of him. Had he done it only to keep her alive long enough to learn of his past? Perhaps... but she would still, in a small way, be grateful that he had.
Debauched Caper: A curiosity, that; of course, he would have killed the two regardless for having been a threat to him, but he did tell her to run. Not much of an effort, that, but perhaps he had a motive. One he wasn't on the wise about, at any rate. Hack, slash, hack, slash...It was a calm, repetitive swing of that arm, cutting down for a step, to swing back the arm for another...A man could think with a chore like that, just let the mind roam after the body could take over. "Well we can't very-well make camp in water, and I'm not exactly in the know with the area. So, when we hit the river, you can rest your little legs awhile and we'll move in the morning..." He paused a moment, looking back at her over a shoulder. "And if you're worried that I'll peek, it's rather hard to do this without looking. I'd end up hacking a leg off..." And he fell back to the paces, puffing his cheeks in an exhaled sigh..."Anyway. Tell me something about myself? Or a few somethings, given that we're going to be walking like this for awhile, if my guess isn't too far off."
Amanita Vernia: You're a self-centered, egotistical, womanizer... you're just as stubborn as I am... oh, and you're my brother. She had already pulled the bottom of her robes up between her legs and tied them off, but the weight of the water had added a burden she wasn't about to admit was too heavy. Every now and then she did what she could to squeeze out the water, but trying to keep up with him at the same time made this task difficult. Would she tell him to stop or admit she needed a break? No. She groaned at the question and pushed back the obvious questions as well as the one she couldn't tell him, not without Arculeius and about four other men there for her to stand behind. "You are 32... both your parents are dead... and you have two siblings. Sisters." A small snort came after her words, but it might of been due too her growing tired. Speaking only showed she was running low on energy as they moved through the flooded marsh still less than 10 passangs from the house they'd grown up in, now gone.
Debauched Caper: Knitting his brow as he continued the path, he nodded somewhat, not pausing in that stroke of the arm. "Thirty-two....That is quite a small time for a man to live, considering how old some come to be." Pursing his lips, he nodded. "At least now I know I was not stabalized. I was fearing that I was much older, and perhaps coming to my end. It's a comfort to know you're relatively young, with a time ahead to live...My sisters; how old are they? Am I the older, younger, or middle child?"
Amanita Vernia: She couldn't see his brow knit, nor the nodding of his head, she was busy watching as much as she could ahead of her careful not to misplace her foot and twist an ankle. It was bad enough to be lagging behind, but to need to be carried would injure her pride even more than her body. She did tilt her eyes up hearing him speak again, her own words seemed almost bitter. "Thirty-two that you can't remember.. maybe you'll hold on tighter to the next thirty or forthy... or how many you have left." She half stubbed her toe after saying this, but bit down on her lip holding in the pain from it. "You're the middle... one of your sisters came just a year before you and the younger arrived two after." There she was helping him with his family tree as he chopped their way towards the river. At least once they go into the deeper parts of the actual jungle, under the canopy of trees, there wouldn't be as much underbrush to cut away.
Debauched Caper: Here was to hoping; the first chance he had, he'd be demanding the coin for oil and a stone.."The middle, eh? Hm..That's a comfort. I was hoping to be the oldest, but the middle isn't bad. To be the youngest might explain my temper, but I think my sisters would have played me a hard road." He slowed in his choppings, frowning somewhat. "You probably wouldn't know..but are they well, my sisters? Safe and happy?" He stopped entirely then, hanging his arm for a moment. He needed the rest anyway. "I mean..." Sighing, he shook his head somewhat, reaching up that free hand to rub over his eyes. "I mean, are they still alive, my sisters."
Amanita Vernia: She was flirting with danger now, twice today, but that is what the younest sibling did. She put her hand over the flame and dared it not to burn her. "Last I heard your older sister was living in the desert... and doing well. The younger was banished from your house by your father. I am not sure if she is happy or safe... perhaps you will be able to ask her someday." There was a dry tone she used to tell him these things, not lying to him, but still making him search his own mind for the answers.
Debauched Caper: He nodded, dropping his hand to heft that other arm, and fall back into the repetitive cuttings. "Then I'll just have to make that 'perhaps' a certainty then, now won't I?" He put the dry tone down to the fact that, they were once close. And with her own little emnity towards him apparent, perhaps it hadn't been on the best of terms an ending; which, may explain her apparent distaste in his curiosity about their well-being..."I suppose you can't tell me why the younger was banished?" He didn't mention an excitement about his father...There was none. Which, in and of itself was strange...But to hold no excitement to a stranger, or even well-thoughts, did seem different..He put it down to detachment. "And I think there's a hillock up ahead, or an island; we could bed down there tonight, if it looks like nothing big and mean likes it too."
Amanita Vernia: She was tired, perhaps that's why the answer came so loosely off her lips that she didn't even think to guard it. "She was a whore." That answer might of added to his suspicions that merchant didn't care much for his sisters, she had apparently known them well enough to learn this family secret. Most would not let an outsider know of a woman's escapades even if they were not smart enough to be descreet about them. His younger sister could have been enslaved, but that would be the same as dead where family ties were concerned. Amanita picked up her pace once she heard there was something of solid ground ahead, it also brought her closer to the man with the sword just incase there was something mean head.
Debauched Caper: He stiffened at the answer, spine straightening him up...But almost as soon as he had, he relaxed, simply hopping the hilt from his fist, to grip the blade close to the round guard-disc. "I may not know my family, Woman. But I know my sister isn't a whore." He could be dead-wrong, of course...But, maybe it was a pride in his line, or himself, or something of that sort...He started off with a push and brush of the hand to move the grasses from his way...Which, incidentally, left her to push her way through on her own. "Whatever the case, if she laid with a man, she had her reasons. Of that I'm sure...If she's anything like me, even a hair, it wouldn't have been a pointless encounter." And indeed, there was an isle. Small, perhaps...But even from six paces off, he could see where the tide-line was.
Amanita Vernia: To prevent herself from outright laughing at him she huffed. For a man who'd forgotten his family, his own name, he sure did seem to think he knew everything. She gave no rebuff, he could think the better of her if he wished, Amanita had only repeated what hearsay told. For those outside the family and house there was nothing to tell, the young woman had been sent to Bazi to practice under her mother's sister's caste... but he had not asked about this, so she didn't have to tell. She held back the limbs as she came up beside him to look towards this isle he had spotted, happy enough to see anything that would allow them to rest. "If she were a man, like you... it wouldn't of mattered. Women are either frigid and robed or naked and enslaved... there is no middle." Or at least that is what those considered civilized believed, though not all practiced it this way.
Debauched Caper: "Not ever man wants to share his couch with a slave, Woman," he sighed out, stepping ahead with a gentle probe of the hilt under the waters to rouse anything suspicious on the way. Aside from a fish, some bottom-lier with a spine dorsal roughly the size of an outstretched hand, nothing moved. Which was a comfort, as he came up the muddy slope, where more grass lay atop, lusher...Taking to his feet, he only came head and shoulders higher than the rest, to take a look around. It was a few moments before he pointed a bit off to the right of where they'd been headed. "I think there's some land that way. You can mat down the grass and lie on it...Shouldn't be uncomfortable." And, turning again, he speared the gladius into the dirt with a sigh, looking to her. "I'll keep a watch till I can be sure we'll not be bothered, and then I'll wake you up, aii?"
Amanita Vernia: His retort rang with irony considering the way she explained their previous relations with one another as past lovers. Again she would not argue his point, for lack of care or just being tired. Her dark eyes scanned the place over, then fell to the grass he pointed out as a place to bed. While moving she had been warm enough even in the wet robes, but standing still and in the fallen darkness it was harder to ignore the chill. "Is there any hope for building fire?" She was admitting, though not directly, that she didn't know how to build one... part of her hoping that he couldn't either even if she wished to have one.
Debauched Caper: "There's plenty here to burn, but the light would give us away and we'd have to cut all the grass down to feed it, leaving us in the open." Glancing to her, he shrugged. "You'll have to make due..." And he lifted a brow. "I could stand watch in the water, you know; your robes will dry under you just as well as on you, I think. And it's a warm night...Muggy, but warm." He was suggesting, of course, perhaps a most perverted idea...But it did have it's points of merit. "At the very least you need to dry your feet off, or they'll rot."
Amanita Vernia: She looked around again, not unaware of the dangers that were around them, but she was thinking more of predators than people. "I thought beasts afraid of fire?" She had read about many expeditions from her father's library even if she had no experience herself. Having him tell her to 'make due' just made her groan, but once he started suggesting things about her robes she just let out another long breath, turned towards the gestured grass and did the best she could to squeeze out the water she could and dry her feet. The thick braids that ran down her back were given the same treatment and once she was as dry as possible she flattened a spot in the grass and tried to at least get a little sleep
Debauched Caper: And he simply shook his head, glad she at least took some precaution...Leaving the blade in the dirt, he started walking down a little further, at least till he could rock over, and settle himself about the grasses. of course, that left him in his own tight cacoon of privacy, to push the grasses down with his legs, and behind him with his lay. But still, it left a wall up, if sparse. "Fire can attract an animal's curiosity, and bring them near, if not upon a person's camp....This close to the cities, the animals know fire means men. But they also know once the fire is out, it means food. Go to sleep, woman." And that was that from him, apparently, as he stared up through the heavy blanket of stars above, clear after the windspent storm. He couldn't have slept then anyway...not with all that to chew over.
Amanita Vernia: Add know-it-all to the list... He made it sound as if he'd be keeping watch, but when she heard him settle down not too far from where she had just curled up into a ball herself, one had to wonder what kind of animals were out there. She had read about most of them.... even dreamt of encountering them for as long as she could remember. The jungle was surrounded by so many stories and living at the edge of that boundary for half one's life had both it's advantages and not. As a little girl she had wondered into it's folds and went missing for over two hands, only to come back with a strange half circle mark near her wrist. Here they were about to go back into that same jungle, but she was grown now with that faint scar still on her wrist. She touched it with her fingers laying there silently until she finally feel into a needed rest.
Debauched Caper: Wet; the only thing that could be said about the ahn or two after that final drop from the tunnel, was that it was wet. And muddy. And it stank like the Blue Flame because of the quagmire they were sloshing away through, generally up-river, but in the marshes that spread about it, who could be sure? Well...she could, of course. But as for him, he'd lost both sandals by now and was using that gladius, wincingly, to hack through the high-grasses to clear the way for her. It...was actually quite odd, that; by no means normally would he even hazard to dull a blade with something so trivial a chore, but this, he started after noticing how she snagged every half-dozen steps. And worse, what had him wondering, was that she hadn't asked him to. Which, made those cuts a bit more vehement in their strikes through the grasses, and him all the surlier. "Damnit woman, this would be much easier if you'd just take off those stinking robes and leave them. They're slowing us down." Well...that may have been an exaggeration, but still! "Where are we headed, anyway."
Amanita Vernia: I would of been furious with him.. had I not seen the orange light in the puddle. I turned to it's glow. It was my home... Silenti, up in flames and black smoke. I didn't cry, but there was a sadness that filled me. I said nothing in fact. I just moved like a ghost silently behind him as we headed towards the river. Amanita, if he didn't already know this, was stubborn. She was too stubborn to cry and too bosk headed to take any suggestions from him. "I'm keeping up fine with my robes on, just keep moving in this direction and we'll come to the river. If you're tired we can camp and start again in the morning." Which meant she was tired, but would make him admit to it first. She had at least stopped speaking to him as if her were her slave... no one to hear her, or maybe saving her life back there, killing two men that would have either cut her to pieces or taken her to Krakatoa, made her less untrusting of him. Had he done it only to keep her alive long enough to learn of his past? Perhaps... but she would still, in a small way, be grateful that he had.
Debauched Caper: A curiosity, that; of course, he would have killed the two regardless for having been a threat to him, but he did tell her to run. Not much of an effort, that, but perhaps he had a motive. One he wasn't on the wise about, at any rate. Hack, slash, hack, slash...It was a calm, repetitive swing of that arm, cutting down for a step, to swing back the arm for another...A man could think with a chore like that, just let the mind roam after the body could take over. "Well we can't very-well make camp in water, and I'm not exactly in the know with the area. So, when we hit the river, you can rest your little legs awhile and we'll move in the morning..." He paused a moment, looking back at her over a shoulder. "And if you're worried that I'll peek, it's rather hard to do this without looking. I'd end up hacking a leg off..." And he fell back to the paces, puffing his cheeks in an exhaled sigh..."Anyway. Tell me something about myself? Or a few somethings, given that we're going to be walking like this for awhile, if my guess isn't too far off."
Amanita Vernia: You're a self-centered, egotistical, womanizer... you're just as stubborn as I am... oh, and you're my brother. She had already pulled the bottom of her robes up between her legs and tied them off, but the weight of the water had added a burden she wasn't about to admit was too heavy. Every now and then she did what she could to squeeze out the water, but trying to keep up with him at the same time made this task difficult. Would she tell him to stop or admit she needed a break? No. She groaned at the question and pushed back the obvious questions as well as the one she couldn't tell him, not without Arculeius and about four other men there for her to stand behind. "You are 32... both your parents are dead... and you have two siblings. Sisters." A small snort came after her words, but it might of been due too her growing tired. Speaking only showed she was running low on energy as they moved through the flooded marsh still less than 10 passangs from the house they'd grown up in, now gone.
Debauched Caper: Knitting his brow as he continued the path, he nodded somewhat, not pausing in that stroke of the arm. "Thirty-two....That is quite a small time for a man to live, considering how old some come to be." Pursing his lips, he nodded. "At least now I know I was not stabalized. I was fearing that I was much older, and perhaps coming to my end. It's a comfort to know you're relatively young, with a time ahead to live...My sisters; how old are they? Am I the older, younger, or middle child?"
Amanita Vernia: She couldn't see his brow knit, nor the nodding of his head, she was busy watching as much as she could ahead of her careful not to misplace her foot and twist an ankle. It was bad enough to be lagging behind, but to need to be carried would injure her pride even more than her body. She did tilt her eyes up hearing him speak again, her own words seemed almost bitter. "Thirty-two that you can't remember.. maybe you'll hold on tighter to the next thirty or forthy... or how many you have left." She half stubbed her toe after saying this, but bit down on her lip holding in the pain from it. "You're the middle... one of your sisters came just a year before you and the younger arrived two after." There she was helping him with his family tree as he chopped their way towards the river. At least once they go into the deeper parts of the actual jungle, under the canopy of trees, there wouldn't be as much underbrush to cut away.
Debauched Caper: Here was to hoping; the first chance he had, he'd be demanding the coin for oil and a stone.."The middle, eh? Hm..That's a comfort. I was hoping to be the oldest, but the middle isn't bad. To be the youngest might explain my temper, but I think my sisters would have played me a hard road." He slowed in his choppings, frowning somewhat. "You probably wouldn't know..but are they well, my sisters? Safe and happy?" He stopped entirely then, hanging his arm for a moment. He needed the rest anyway. "I mean..." Sighing, he shook his head somewhat, reaching up that free hand to rub over his eyes. "I mean, are they still alive, my sisters."
Amanita Vernia: She was flirting with danger now, twice today, but that is what the younest sibling did. She put her hand over the flame and dared it not to burn her. "Last I heard your older sister was living in the desert... and doing well. The younger was banished from your house by your father. I am not sure if she is happy or safe... perhaps you will be able to ask her someday." There was a dry tone she used to tell him these things, not lying to him, but still making him search his own mind for the answers.
Debauched Caper: He nodded, dropping his hand to heft that other arm, and fall back into the repetitive cuttings. "Then I'll just have to make that 'perhaps' a certainty then, now won't I?" He put the dry tone down to the fact that, they were once close. And with her own little emnity towards him apparent, perhaps it hadn't been on the best of terms an ending; which, may explain her apparent distaste in his curiosity about their well-being..."I suppose you can't tell me why the younger was banished?" He didn't mention an excitement about his father...There was none. Which, in and of itself was strange...But to hold no excitement to a stranger, or even well-thoughts, did seem different..He put it down to detachment. "And I think there's a hillock up ahead, or an island; we could bed down there tonight, if it looks like nothing big and mean likes it too."
Amanita Vernia: She was tired, perhaps that's why the answer came so loosely off her lips that she didn't even think to guard it. "She was a whore." That answer might of added to his suspicions that merchant didn't care much for his sisters, she had apparently known them well enough to learn this family secret. Most would not let an outsider know of a woman's escapades even if they were not smart enough to be descreet about them. His younger sister could have been enslaved, but that would be the same as dead where family ties were concerned. Amanita picked up her pace once she heard there was something of solid ground ahead, it also brought her closer to the man with the sword just incase there was something mean head.
Debauched Caper: He stiffened at the answer, spine straightening him up...But almost as soon as he had, he relaxed, simply hopping the hilt from his fist, to grip the blade close to the round guard-disc. "I may not know my family, Woman. But I know my sister isn't a whore." He could be dead-wrong, of course...But, maybe it was a pride in his line, or himself, or something of that sort...He started off with a push and brush of the hand to move the grasses from his way...Which, incidentally, left her to push her way through on her own. "Whatever the case, if she laid with a man, she had her reasons. Of that I'm sure...If she's anything like me, even a hair, it wouldn't have been a pointless encounter." And indeed, there was an isle. Small, perhaps...But even from six paces off, he could see where the tide-line was.
Amanita Vernia: To prevent herself from outright laughing at him she huffed. For a man who'd forgotten his family, his own name, he sure did seem to think he knew everything. She gave no rebuff, he could think the better of her if he wished, Amanita had only repeated what hearsay told. For those outside the family and house there was nothing to tell, the young woman had been sent to Bazi to practice under her mother's sister's caste... but he had not asked about this, so she didn't have to tell. She held back the limbs as she came up beside him to look towards this isle he had spotted, happy enough to see anything that would allow them to rest. "If she were a man, like you... it wouldn't of mattered. Women are either frigid and robed or naked and enslaved... there is no middle." Or at least that is what those considered civilized believed, though not all practiced it this way.
Debauched Caper: "Not ever man wants to share his couch with a slave, Woman," he sighed out, stepping ahead with a gentle probe of the hilt under the waters to rouse anything suspicious on the way. Aside from a fish, some bottom-lier with a spine dorsal roughly the size of an outstretched hand, nothing moved. Which was a comfort, as he came up the muddy slope, where more grass lay atop, lusher...Taking to his feet, he only came head and shoulders higher than the rest, to take a look around. It was a few moments before he pointed a bit off to the right of where they'd been headed. "I think there's some land that way. You can mat down the grass and lie on it...Shouldn't be uncomfortable." And, turning again, he speared the gladius into the dirt with a sigh, looking to her. "I'll keep a watch till I can be sure we'll not be bothered, and then I'll wake you up, aii?"
Amanita Vernia: His retort rang with irony considering the way she explained their previous relations with one another as past lovers. Again she would not argue his point, for lack of care or just being tired. Her dark eyes scanned the place over, then fell to the grass he pointed out as a place to bed. While moving she had been warm enough even in the wet robes, but standing still and in the fallen darkness it was harder to ignore the chill. "Is there any hope for building fire?" She was admitting, though not directly, that she didn't know how to build one... part of her hoping that he couldn't either even if she wished to have one.
Debauched Caper: "There's plenty here to burn, but the light would give us away and we'd have to cut all the grass down to feed it, leaving us in the open." Glancing to her, he shrugged. "You'll have to make due..." And he lifted a brow. "I could stand watch in the water, you know; your robes will dry under you just as well as on you, I think. And it's a warm night...Muggy, but warm." He was suggesting, of course, perhaps a most perverted idea...But it did have it's points of merit. "At the very least you need to dry your feet off, or they'll rot."
Amanita Vernia: She looked around again, not unaware of the dangers that were around them, but she was thinking more of predators than people. "I thought beasts afraid of fire?" She had read about many expeditions from her father's library even if she had no experience herself. Having him tell her to 'make due' just made her groan, but once he started suggesting things about her robes she just let out another long breath, turned towards the gestured grass and did the best she could to squeeze out the water she could and dry her feet. The thick braids that ran down her back were given the same treatment and once she was as dry as possible she flattened a spot in the grass and tried to at least get a little sleep
Debauched Caper: And he simply shook his head, glad she at least took some precaution...Leaving the blade in the dirt, he started walking down a little further, at least till he could rock over, and settle himself about the grasses. of course, that left him in his own tight cacoon of privacy, to push the grasses down with his legs, and behind him with his lay. But still, it left a wall up, if sparse. "Fire can attract an animal's curiosity, and bring them near, if not upon a person's camp....This close to the cities, the animals know fire means men. But they also know once the fire is out, it means food. Go to sleep, woman." And that was that from him, apparently, as he stared up through the heavy blanket of stars above, clear after the windspent storm. He couldn't have slept then anyway...not with all that to chew over.
Amanita Vernia: Add know-it-all to the list... He made it sound as if he'd be keeping watch, but when she heard him settle down not too far from where she had just curled up into a ball herself, one had to wonder what kind of animals were out there. She had read about most of them.... even dreamt of encountering them for as long as she could remember. The jungle was surrounded by so many stories and living at the edge of that boundary for half one's life had both it's advantages and not. As a little girl she had wondered into it's folds and went missing for over two hands, only to come back with a strange half circle mark near her wrist. Here they were about to go back into that same jungle, but she was grown now with that faint scar still on her wrist. She touched it with her fingers laying there silently until she finally feel into a needed rest.
