Dale and Rane were working together on an early morning, first fetching water, then using it to wash the patios of each of their houses. Wives normally did the washing, but scrubbing floors in public view was too immodest a chore for claimed women, so husbands were exclusively tasked with the patios.
"Decent weather for this," Dale remarked as they worked.
"The air is dry enough for it," Rane agreed.
"The new barn coming along well?"
"Marc can't even engineer a stool from a stump," Rane groaned. "Couldn't say why he's been made lead on the project."
"It is his barn," Dale remarked.
"Won't be his anything if it collapses under its first storm.
"What does Cord think about it?"
"That slop won't care a shred if it falls or not."
"But he knows a bit about barns."
"Knowledge only matters when it's applied. And he doesn't apply his to much of anything anymore."
"No disagreement there," Dale remarked. "Haven't seen your dumb girl in a while."
"Oh, naw. Haven't had cause to bring her out for… it's always an ordeal and I've been avoiding it."
"People are going to start wondering how well she's fed if they can't see," Dale warned cautiously.
"There's sense in that," Rane admitted begrudgingly.
"I want to say something personal, as your confidant, and I can't risk your reprisal about it."
"Then do so," Rane mumbled uninterestedly.
"I've seen a lot of people overcome a doubt on their deeds, Rane. But I can't recall a single one who managed two."
"What do you suggest I do then?"
"I suggest you don't allow any more doubt on you to stick. You can't afford ambiguity now, not like before," Dale sighed. "It just won't abide."
"That's what you've heard?"
"That's what I know. I'm old enough not to need to be told."
"I'm older than y–"
"And I'm telling you anyway."
"You… haven't got a single thing to be concerned about."
"I'm glad of it," Dale nodded. "When you're done on the barn, is there anything of yours you need other hands on? The current docket doesn't come to mind, I'll have to check and see what my current wife remembers, you know how that is."
"I know exactly."
*** *** ***
Decker waited until the tail-end of evening, most other children were already inside by then, but he'd intentionally been quiet and secluded around the house on recent evenings to normalize his absence. In a small ditch hidden by miscellaneous greenery, he knelt in secret and tended to his tinder with long embittered strokes. He didn't allow himself the luxury of savoring the action due to the inherent danger of being caught that would be present until he had rehidden the fire plow and returned home unnoticed.
When the heat of the powdered embers matched that of his contempt, he carefully slid them onto his tinder and blew upon them steadily. Then he used the small flame to ignite the twisted corner of a tightly tied rag enriched with tallow. He didn't have long now, efficiency of movement would be imperative. Concealing his miniature torch with his cloak from wind and wayward glances, he ran towards the back of Mrs. Stoppenhook's house and flattened his body against the closed shutters of a window. All the shutters were closed and latched, preventing any inconspicuous entry. But this specific window's shutters bore one tiny defect. A gap in one of its bottom corners where friction and frost had worn away at its outermost edge over the years. The gap was barely wide enough to push two fingers through, or the twisted corner of the rag he'd fashioned for precisely this purpose. Mindful not to let it slip through his fingers, he poked the lit end of the bound rag through the gap until it barely reached the window's curtain long enough to share its flame. As soon as he saw the faintest flicker from the curtain he yanked the rag from the window and sprinted away to where he'd buried his fire plow. He had mere moments before the fire would be noticed, and he absolutely had to make it back home before it was, not a splinter of suspicion could be allowed to prick his parent's thoughts. In three swift motions he dropped the smoldering wick into the small ditch containing his fire plow and smothered it with loose dirt using the inside of his boot, careful to keep his hands visibly unmarked by his actions. Once the patch of ground was indistinguishable from the surrounding grass he sprinted home with a technique so well practiced and prepared, that after he'd jumped back into his bedroom through the open window and closed the shutters behind him, his breathing was no heavier than if he'd been lounging lazily across his bed, waiting for dusk to conclude its daily task.
*** *** ***
Cadi lounged contently in her bath, having just ridden the fantastical nostalgia of her youth in addition to a shapely tool of her own making. The room was dim and warm, warmer than usual. Normally she'd supplement the water with the contents of a closely placed kettle at least once before she was finished. This time she must have been impatient, she reasoned. An unfortunate mistake but not one she'd allow to spoil her mood. There was no great harm in continuing to relax within the water, even if she'd already loosened every crumb of tightness within her. A looseness which was now so thorough and serene, that merely by leaning her back against the side of the wooden basin in a subconscious effort to maximize this moment of comfort, she surrendered her consciousness altogether to the soothing pull of the same fondly constructed daydream she'd recently completed.
*** *** ***
Rab took to bed early, as he often did. Relaxation was his only ethic, and one he would regularly rationalize as more important than any form of work. But before he could fully release his waking mind, a sound slipped through his approaching slumber: undecipherable shouting. There was a hint of hesitation to pursue the sound, and instead remain splayed out across his bed in uncaring ignorance. This possibility tempted him greatly for a brief moment before the shouting was overwhelmed by the unmistakable crash of collapsing wood. Rab leapt out of bed and ran outside, not bothering to change out of his night garments, and followed the obvious source of the shouting as quickly as his bare feet could propel him.
A house had been replaced by a towering fire, radiating heat outwards much farther than he would have thought before feeling it. He looked around at both of its neighboring homes to deduce who had failed to properly tend to the fireplace. Just as he realized to whom the abode belonged, he saw her silhouette collapsed forward on her knees at what seemed to be the minimum safe distance from the fire. One of her hands was planted firmly against the ground, straining to prop up her torso. Her other arm was coiled across her chest with her palm attached to her opposing shoulder. It looked to be an awkward position at first, but her reasoning for maintaining it became clear as he came nearer and noticed her nakedness. The entire town's populace had emerged from their homes to watch the building burn and take the necessary measures to contain the blaze. Houses were rarely condemned, and those that were usually still had much usable material to plunder before burning its unwanted pieces. So no one had ever seen a fire burn as high or as hot.
The children had all been ordered to stay inside. Most onlookers were watching the fire with moderate interest. Even if it hadn't already been beyond any hope of fighting, there would have been nothing to be gained by trying. The shouting came from approximately ten people encircling Cadi Stoppenhook from a considerable and uniform distance. Curses and rebukes of every variety spouted from their mouths, flowing along their pointed fingers and raised fists towards their intended recipient, who could not comprehend their words as she desperately tried to continue breathing through the continuously cycling pain of her charred lungs.
*** *** ***
Fourteen of the town elders sat on stools inside the living room of a recently vacated house that would be occasionally repurposed for gatherings requiring privacy. They faced each other in a somewhat circular formation, fitting where they could within the given space.
With dismayed voice Wilnum began, "This emergency meeting is concerning Cadi Stoppenhook's public indecency, who is being detained for the night while this council decides her sentencing. And before any mention is made of customary communal strangulation I must protest on account of not only her lack of previous infractions, but also because due to the fortunate timing of her crime, no unassigned boys were exposed to her."
"She was naked in the street," Elleena spat from across the room.
"While all children were already inside," Wilnum clarified cautiously.
"So we're just supposed to ignore her flagrant disregard for modesty, after she walked her bare bosom around like that. You say no boy saw her, so what? How many husbands did? Spoken for, otherwise loyal, lawful husbands?" Ellena demanded.
"Frenik wasn't there either," Wilnum argued.
"He has nothing to do with this. And besides, he easily could have been. Only good fate and fortune saw to that. And I'm not just talking about me and mine. Are all the wives going to have to start competing with any salty slit that flaunts around?" Ellena asked heatedly. Grunts of indignation started to affirm her grievance before Wilnum hurriedly interjected.
"I'm not suggesting leniency, I'm suggesting further discourse."
"This woman has been flagrantly keeping her lodging separate from her husband," Roj stated crossly. "And we've all just been looking the other way for years. Now see what happens? Let one think this kind of dereliction, this defiance is tolerable, then… I mean it's the principle of the thing, Wilnum. The principles that have kept us pure for more than a century."
"Perhaps," Linia said suddenly, turning the room's heads curiously towards her. "What my husband means to propose, is a more nuanced response. Such as posting her instead?"
"I'm not going to aid her tending after such a filthy display," Muri said, nodding to Ellena in agreement."
"I will do it," Linia confirmed. "Alone. Without Wilnum."
"Or Lindow," Ellena demanded.
"Without Wilnum or Lindow," Linia agreed.
"Better be the whole day then," Dale sneered. "If a posting is all we're going to do about it."
"Then it's confirmed by the council, is there any objection to the sentencing?" Wilnum asked, trying to close the matter before any tempers had chance enough to flare. "Then it's decided. Cadi will be released overmorrow to my wife's custody until recovered, then back to Hal's residence where, as circumstances have made obvious, she should have been to begin with." he concluded. The elders all agreed with differing degrees of reluctance, but none among them thought it wise to press the matter unnecessarily. So long as the indecency wasn't repeated, then most of their practical concerns were allayed. And after tomorrow, there would be no risk of that.
*** *** ***
In the dark of that descending night, Lindow carried a single candle down into a windowless cellar, wherein sat a woman wearing a large sack with a hole haphazardly cut to fit her head through.
"Put these on," he instructed as he tossed her a raggedy shirt and shorts.
"Mercy, I beg," she whimpered through a voice so hoarse it might have been overheard as a man's.
"You are being posted until dusk," he uttered quickly, relieving her desperation for survival and offering its explanation in the same sentence. She looked straight down in response, suppressing any expression of whatever feelings she might have of the unexpected news.
"Come up when you're dressed," he ordered, "Oh, and pee again, rather you need to or not," he reminded, then left to stand outside the door to wait for her. Once she was decent to his eyes he walked her all the way to the dead end of the town's lone road, where a rotting wooden post protruded from the ground. It had a thickly carved dowel protruding horizontally from opposing sides slightly above its base, one of which was slightly shorter than the other, being unevenly worn by the elements; as was its intended purpose.
"Which side," he asked plainly once they reached it.
"I.…"
"They wanted to maintain custom, did you know that? But I stopped them. You should be thanking me, and my wife for that matter."
"Tha–"
"Which side?" he repeated.
"L–left."
"What?"
"Left side."
"If that's your choice," he nodded. "Take your position," he gestured boredly. She complied, sitting down and leaning her back against the post with the inside of her elbows wrapped over its protrusions behind her. Lindow proceeded to loosely bind her wrists together. "Don't breathe through your mouth," he muttered as he finished knotting the twine. "Linnia will bring raisinwater at dusk and carry you back. She'll be your tending," he sighed. Cadi intentionally turned her head away from him in response. A fitting rebuttal approached Lindow's tongue, but he squelched it and said nothing instead, thinking that there was no need to be cruel.
Posting was a punishment usually reserved for especially insolent children when the season happened to be near either solstice. It was rarely used but once or twice per decade, the sight of its wood being a more than sufficient deterrent to disrespectful outbursts or other forms of inexcusable behavior. Customarily, the boy (girls usually knew better) would be posted from dawn to midday with only torso and pelvis covered. And oriented such that the sun would only touch one side, whilst shading the other. The days of ensuing bruising of the arms and peeling of the skin was invariably enough to permanently rectify the individual's disorder, as well as reinforce the point to anyone who viewed the aftermath.
Knowing this, as he trotted back to his home, Lindow relished in a flicker of satisfaction that he had successfully convinced the council to accept a modified child's punishment for a fully developed woman's crime, as they had plainly seen.
*** *** ***
Decker waited out the day's schooling with a preoccupied mind. Participating only enough not to draw unwanted notice. When he was finally released and there was no one paying him any mind, he slinked towards the location of his own. Inconspicuously, he wandered up the road, feigning interest in innocuous things along the way. When he approached its dead end, he walked perpendicular to it and then curved his path in a wide semicircle. He turned behind him and scanned for any adults who may be checking on him or other children who wanted his company, but found neither. With his secrecy confirmed, he ducked inside the surrounding greenery and crouched towards the post to improve his view of it.
Posting was a threat he'd been given once before when he'd verbally defied his father, and it was something all children knew to fear. But he had never heard of an adult being punished so, their punishments were unknown to him but he was sure this wasn't customarily among them. He grinned widely to himself at the sight of Mrs. Stoppenhook being treated like a child for everyone to see. He thought of how mad he'd been after she'd struck him and how it was her fault that Sal didn't play with him anymore. In righteous satisfaction he stared at her from his hidden vantage point for a long time, until his elbows were sore from supporting the weight of his chest. As he shifted positions an unplanned thought occurred to him; that the wooden dowel sticking through the post was much harder than the ground that was straining him. A realization that branched into a larger one, which was that she couldn't shift her position at all. With this altered perspective he watched her again with curious interest and a refreshed perspective.
Now he looked at the bend of her knees, how she'd wedged her heels against herself to relieve as much weight from her glutes as she could. How she'd layed one arm higher on its dowel to relieve the other of some pressure, a measure she was probably alternating as each arm reached its limit. But he found the most poignant part of her was the angle of her head. It had collapsed completely onto her shaded knee, facing the back of her head towards the sun. Written across the wholistic position of her body was a feeling that troubled him but he could not manage to define. It was unadulteratedly resigned helplessness, something he had yet to previously experience or witness, and so was yet unfamiliar with. But as he watched her longer and longer, his growing familiarity with it became more troubling still, altering his perspective further. An alteration which did not result in humanizing her, he had less fondness for her than he did for mice, or any other awful creatures. Instead, it resulted in dehumanizing her past the point of personal recognition. Until she existed to him only as a faceless endurer of a universally maligned agony that ravaged all of sentient life. An agony that hungered ceaselessly in every moment and across every domain. And one who was feasting before him as a result of his own doings.
A pit formed in his stomach at this thought, heavy in his gut and sour in his mouth. The spite that drove him to this spot had now rotted into a putrid mass within him that he could do nothing to remove. Disgust, both of himself and of the sight before him flooded his skin with slimy sweat that coated across his brow and ran down into his eyes. While futilely attempting to clear his vision with his sleeve, he turned around and rapidly walked back the way he'd come, whilst grimacing contemptuously at the repugnance he'd played his part in producing, and being bitterly certain that he could never whisper a word about this feeling to anyone.
*** *** ***
A girl wandered around looking for Tail. The dog didn't like to play very often but the girl looked for her anyway out of a mixture of boredom and hope. She checked under the platform boards but the dog wasn't resting, at least not there, not at the moment. The girl visored her eyes with her hands and looked around for any signs of the mildly friendly mongrel. As she squinted across differing directions, the girl saw something strange in the distance and walked towards it to aid her vision. It was by the– she stopped suddenly once she understood. The girl looked down and walked neither towards nor away from the posted woman at the edge of town, wanting to seem nothing but indifferent to its presence. Once she'd cleared considerable distance she angled her path towards the woods. Her pace was casual and had been since she'd started walking away. Until after a long time of moving her legs through what felt like unheated honey, she reached the forest's edge. The instant her outline was concealed by its greenery she broke out into a run, nearly tripping several times on risen roots and innocuous looking patches of loose ground as she did so. She ran as quickly as her tiny feet could propel her proportional frame, not out of fear of pain, but need for comfort.
Right now, she wanted to see just one face, and hear just one voice, who she was absolutely sure would never punish her the way that she'd just seen. She was exhausted as she approached Cliff's cave. Her breath was shallow, quick, and threatening to keep running off without her if she didn't address her hyperventilation immediately. So she stopped before reaching the cave and collapsed against the trunk of a tree, pressing both hands out and leaning on it heavily for support as she panted. She didn't want to be like this when he saw her. She wanted to look like nothing was amiss, like just another walk in the woods. The first time they'd met he'd thought people were there with her to catch him. And she was afraid if he saw her running then he'd think this time she was here to catch him, that a bunch of others were right behind her ready to run in once she gave the signal. But that wasn't true. The truth was: she was alone. She had never felt so alone. Not until she reached Cliff's cave and found that he was not present in or around it. She could try calling him, she thought. A nervousness erupted up her spine at the notion. She could shout, she knew that, she'd tried practicing before. What she couldn't do was shout a whole word. Words required more concentration and specificity of her than shouting allowed. If she tried calling him loudly, she knew that it wouldn't come out right, and that when it didn't if Cliff heard her and came, that he'd be disappointed she still couldn't do a whole word correctly just because it was louder than usual.
Instead of calling out, and instead of going back home, she hopped up onto a stump that he frequently sat on, and waited in quiet silence for him to come back before the day was through, before he'd make her go home again.
*** *** ***
Cliff sat on the base of a thick branch roughly three men high that overlooked everything around him. This spot was as deep as he would go into the forest. Any farther away and he feared he might accidentally miss his rendezvous. It had been multiple years since his unexplainable dream. That aspect of it didn't perturb him, there was so much else unexplainable about him already. What did perturb him was the setting. He preferred deserts, deserts or tundras. Nothing could disturb him there. Unlike here; a veritable cacophony of disturbances. Badgers, birds, and bats all crawling and calling in perpetual shifts from the diurnal to the nocturnal. What sleep he could find was always invaded by incessant proddings of simpler forms of life. But these were all tolerable, or at least partially redeemable in their own way.
What truly irked him were the insects. The bugs. The crawling things too miniscule to match a mouse's size. Rather of fur or feather, the conscious animals had dynamic perspectives. Finding food, obtaining shelter, pair-bonding, all understandable drives. But the mosquitos, the beetles, and the many legged monstrosities that burrowed their tongues in flesh and their holes in dung, had insidious effects on his psyche. They had no thoughts, only directives. They hunted the way humans breathed; without the slightest consideration. Their every action was an unknowing and uncaring pursuit of their basic instincts. Hunt, feed, fight, propagate. A ceaseless and deafening tone whose note never varied. They mangled their kin and others without cruelty or remorse, only practicality. Impediments were neutralized, ground was moved, and food was obtained from any edible source available.
His contempt was smoldering for all boneless beings. And they were plentiful in this place. Surrounding, engulfing, everywhere around him. Buzzing away and crawling nearer in a perpetuating churn. There was no relief to be had here, not in a setting so dense with life. Yet he remained here still, trapped until the Weaver's associate arrived.
He'd been making the best of his circumstances, spending the winters fasting and the summers training, but after enough years that too became insufficient. Recently he'd inadvertently turned to reciting the prayers of his childhood just to anchor his mind into itself and segregate it from the surrounding onslaught. Of most he did not remember more than a word or two, but a select few were burrowed into him too deeply to drift away, no matter how long it'd been since he'd last heard them uttered. There was one he never liked, about a little boy whose cloak snagged on a fencepost as he ran from a flock of crows, which didn't make sense to him then and made even less to him now. There was one about a farmer whose field was blighted by a curse of some kind. And another that contained the esoteric lines: The holly hole was never drole but neither was its lid. Into the dark was brightest spark wherein it lied and hid. A couplet whose continuation he could never manage to deduce or recall. But there were also some which brought him comfort, not necessarily just by their words, but also by their association with his youth. An eon ago that it seemed no related stories or writings remained from, perhaps fortunately so, since things used to be so much less organized. Savagery begetting tribalism begetting barbarism begetting the beginnings of civilization. This progression, however an improvement, was not as integrated as appearances suggested. Cliff had seen the cities and walked their streets. Met many citizens and saw through the veils of their projected personalities exactly who they really were when the sun went down and all torches were extinguished.
One of the burrowed prayers that blew across his quieter moments with inescapable frequency was a warning about those he recognized as an adult to be spiteful. The dead will try to trick and pry you into their own box, and keep it closed to decompose you with their chains and locks. So never trust the words of dust or bones from bodies dead. They mean to trade the grave they made and keep you there instead. Whenever he'd catch himself muttering this prayer, among other such recitations, he used to wince and scold himself for speaking words that were not his own; a personal resolution he'd made long ago after witnessing too many followers of too many tyrants commit too many atrocities. But, if nothing else, somewhere along the undefined time he'd been subjected to this environment, a modicum of nuance had slipped through the previously impenetrable platform of his principles, like a growing stem through the crack of a stone floor: if the sentiment of someone else's prayer wasn't untrue, then what harm was there in its remembrance?
This change in perspective would have been minor for most. But Cliff's modes of being were fossilized, and bore only marks made during their formation. So on the rare occurrences when sufficient sediment had solidified to form a new texture along the walls of one of his well-established reasonings, he would meticulously note its implications.
These, and many other disconnected tracks of thought waded within him amongst the psychological muck of the nearby animals, birds, and insects. Which eventually became exhausting enough to compel his return home before the day was spent. As he walked back towards his station of rest, his feet gradually grew heavier in anticipation of his arrival. But such was the symptom of knowing one's destination, he supposed that the closer it gets, the slower it is reached. Perhaps that was true, perhaps only partially so, but wrestling with fresh axioms was presently of no interest to him. His only focus now was completing his increasingly urgent plan to lie down. A plan which was on the brink of reaching its fruition when Gilly did something that he could not remember any other person successfully doing; she surprised him.
There she sat, blocking the entrance to his cave, squeezing her knees together and into her chest, and staring off into a distant space that only she could see. As soon as she saw him approaching she hopped up onto her feet in anxious anticipation.
Cliff hid his agitation at seeing the child so unexpectedly, as well as his twinge of annoyance that he somehow hadn't noticed her before his eyes did; an oddity that he wouldn't decipher today.
"|...."
"Me?"
"|...."
"I'm just some man who's made camp for too long."
"|.... |.... |...." she repeated, jamming her finger towards him with as fervent emphasis as she could manage.
"Gilli…" he sighed, having not the resolve to argue with her or the coldness to send her away. "Where would to begin? Before I lived here I was– I was a bannerless soldier. Before then I was uh– a woodsman," he lied. Just like now, but somewhere else.
"||.."
"It's a man, who lives in the woo–"
"||.."
"A soldier is someone who fights against armies for money. Bannerless means fighting for anyone who pays."
"Yuhoo f-fi?"
"Tuh, there's a tuh sound," he reminded softly.
"Fieetuh."
"I did, yes."
"Whher?"
"Places far away from here," he said reminiscently.
"Clifgilli awehee," she suggested urgently.
"I think I understand," he said, mistakenly. "But there's more to that than you've considered," he knelt beside her as he spoke, and paused to plan his phrasing with due care. "Kids can be cruel to each other sometimes, especially to ones they can't understand. It'll get easier for you the better you get at being understood."
"Clifgilli ahwehee," she repeated.
"This… won't be what you want to hear right now. But I hope you trust in me enough when I say it's true. Children… children need three things: a father, a mother, and other children. If I stole you away, you wouldn't have any of those things. And that would damage someone your age in ways that you don't see yet. So whoever it is that's making you think that running off is the best option, try thinking about it a little longer and… we can uh– discuss it some other time if you haven't changed your mind with the shedding of today's mood."
"....."
"Did you want to practice today?" he probed.
"Fituh thhen," she reasoned.
"I haven't done that in a very long time, and I don't think that me fighting someone's child is going to solve your problems in the way that you're hoping," he answered, more insistently than before.
"Teesh me thhen," she said after considering his answer. He sighed with a knowing nod.
"Fighting isn't for children," he refuted. In response she tried to abruptly push him over, as if by sheer will her hands might move him in ways her words were not. "You know not what you speak of," he said with a growing sternness.
"B-buttt yoor stong fieetr. Y-yoo cun teesh."
"No one's good at fighting, Gilli," he sighed. "Everyone else was just worse at it than me. And fighting isn't what you think. It's not going to protect you from being shoved or goaded. There will always be sources of hostility around you. Fighting isn't for those, it's not about threatening other kids into being nicer to you, fighting is whatever it takes to be the one who climbs out of the pit."
"Whut p-p-et?"
"It's a very large ditch," he answered evasively. "And you're not fully grown yet. No unarmed blow you land would damage, and any weapon you wield would just be taken."
"Teesh," she insisted. And rather by his own fatigue or just a temporary lapse in his better judgment, he relented.
"You really want to learn about fighting? So be it, I'll teach you something. One move, then I'm done hearing about this," he said. She nodded in agreement. Cliff knelt down before her and opened his hands, facing her with his palms side by side. "Bring your hands to your chest," he directed. She did so excitedly. "Now press your thumbs into my palms. Harder. Yes. Now hands back to your chest. Do it again, but this time both thumbs at the exact same time, not one after the other. Again. Same time, that's right. Back to your chest," he instructed more formally than before. "Do it again, and after you press hard with both thumbs grab the outside of my hands and pull them straight down," he said. She did it but hesitated out of confusion. "No, not like that. Not outward, straight down, with a quick yank. Good. Back to your chest… Now do it again. Thumbs then yank. Back to your chest… Hold there, wait until I say… Now," he said. This time she did it as instructed, quicker than she'd done before. "If you ever use this, it can't be just because you're angry or– or some other child is trying to intimidate you. Only use it if you're being attacked and seized. Because what you're jamming your thumbs into won't be your assailant's hands, it'll be the eyes, and what you're yanking down will be the ears. If you ever use that, there will be a window, a brief window when the grip of your enemy is loosened. That's when you'll need to run. Run as fast and as hard as you can and don't stop until you get home. Then explain to your parents exactly what just happened, and they'll know what to do next," he finished. She looked down in uncomfortable dismay, a gesture that he would reinterpret later, and revisit continuously throughout his life. "May we return to the practice of words then?" he asked impatiently. She nodded, despite the sudden numbness of her tongue.
*** *** ***
Bridan waddled around the borders of town and savored the cool breeze against his flushed face. He couldn't drink any more, not yet. It wasn't a binge day today and walking was becoming more dubious an activity than he could allow. So he found his relief in what other ways he could, one of which was pacing. He kept clear of anyone else's path, careful to avoid having to relinquish the deniability of his current state by any obliged exchange of pleasantries. He wasn't sure if he could presently manage to avoid slurring; an easily testable question whose answer he preferred not to know.
In the distance at the end of the road something unusual caught his eye and drew him a few staggering steps closer as he peered at it. It appeared that some boy was being posted again. Which was odd, since it was rather late in the day for that sort of thing. But the weather was fortunate for it at least, he thought as he rubbed his strained eyes. He started to wonder what the crime was this time but quickly discarded his curiosity from a lack of lasting interest.
Every handful of years some adolescent with delusions of personal import tried to swing his will around like a pair of bull's balls. Personally, Bridan had never understood the need. He thought insolence to be a pointless pursuit. He had few concerns outside of his own, and of those all were subordinate. If everyone just kept to themselves then there would be no need for these reminding displays, he reasoned. But these thoughts, and any others he might have entertained all flickered away as a sudden welcome gust cooled his heated brow, causing him to close his eyes in momentary comfort. When the burst of wind concluded, he turned around and waddled back towards home, waiting out the throbbing in his head with a brand of acceptance that was many previous experiences in the making.
*** *** ***
Fil stayed inside after school, being too intentional of mind to play and too distracted in action to work. His window shutters were closed as tightly as he could tie them and his hearing was muffled by a thick winter hat he'd pulled down from the rafters. Something was troubling him in a way that never had before. A newly discovered brand of turmoil that seemed to seep into his mind and claw across the edges of every thought. He couldn't ascertain the cause of this psychological ache, and his efforts to block it out of sight and sound only served to seal his sickness in more encompassingly.
He pressed his forehead against the wall beside him and heaved his neck muscles towards the unyielding stack of logs. An effort that quickly became unsatisfactory enough to compel him to bring his shoulders into it, then his back, and finally his hips, until his entire core was strained and struggling to inflict upon his head enough physical pain to sufficiently overcome the mental variety that now afflicted him. Which he succeeded at, briefly, but was disappointed by its unavoidable impermanence. He'd felt this way since walking down the road to school this morning, and then again as he walked back up on his way home. He had hoped an early evening meal would reinvigorate him but there was no morsel of food that he could bring himself to swallow. So he only riled against the various surfaces of his bedroom in careful silence, so as not to alert his parents of his anguish, since they would predictably attempt to inquire as to its source. An inquiry he couldn't yet manage to answer for himself, and thus had no desire to be compelled to answer for them.
*** *** ***
Gilli strolled through the brush with Cliff close behind her. The daylight was still plentiful, but already she could feel the encroaching hooks of the inevitable dusk creeping towards her, ready to uncaringly signal that she'd have to go back home. She tried to trick herself into forgetting by inciting Cliff to speak more voluminously, either by asking pedantic questions or feigning more ignorance than she carried.
"|...."
"That is some sort of beetle, I'm not sure which."
"|...."
"That's an empty snail shell," Cliff explained, squatting down and lifting it between his outer-two fingers with a technique she thought peculiar. Snails are just slugs that take their homes with them."
"|...."
"That? Oh, it's a tiny toad. Most types are much larger than that, careful, don't touch it. It's too fragile for that.
"||..."
"Fragile means easily broken."
"|..."
"Stop. Stay completely still," he ordered coldly. She obeyed, looking only at him now. "Let it crawl away on its own, keep your feet planted and don't move towards it," he said. Gilli didn't understand his sudden seriousness but didn't want to risk his disapproval either, so she complied in curious confusion.
"That was a serpent, seems it was just a harmless variety. I've driven out most of them over the years from this area, but it appears they are gradually testing the territory again. Watch your step for their kind. Especially any brightly colored ones, serpents are the only type of beauty that can harm you."
"|...."
"Beauty?"
"Yeshh."
"Pfft, there's one for the ages," he sighed. "Wiser men than I–, ehhh I'll just try anyway. It's uh, it's the opposite of ugly… Nah, that won't do… Means pleasing of sight or sound. It's that feeling when you behold a particularly radiant skyline, a prosperous landscape in the luminous moonlight, the first song of morning birds waking from their rest. I've heard compositions of plucked string or blown flute that– but it's been too long to describe… Succinctly: it's the result of natural harmony in all its forms; when things are the way they're supposed to be." he concluded. Gilli looked at him in puzzled contemplation. He only shrugged in response, as if to say that was the best he could do, and she needn't bother pressing the matter further. "Serpents are the exception, because they are of the scaled, not the furred, or the skinned, like us. The scaled ones don't feel or think of anything besides hunting and heating themselves. Even the ones too small to eat you may nuzzle themselves around you, but not out of affection, only to steal your warmth for themselves.
Some types can kill you with one bite, some types can squeeze your breath away until it won't come back, and most types will only hunt easier prey than you, but none can be trusted. Those of the scale are cold of body and thought, make no moves towards them," he warned casually, sensing her worry. "But the one that just crossed your path was only seeking mice, not humans," he reassured. "You should try asking something with words this time," he suggested, trying to change the subject. Gilli looked at him with nervous eyes and tried to prepare herself, she liked it more when he spoke instead, he was so much better at it that she often felt inadequate by comparison, including now.
*** *** ***
Corlin brooded in his bedroom, alone, furious at the council's decided punishment. Their decisions were so despicable to him. He thought it obvious that they were fearful of losing their grip of control and were escalating their power out of rising desperation.
Someday, when enough of the weak old geezers and menopausal gals were finally dead, he'd be the one to take the reins and steer the fresher blood onto better ground, he was sure of it. The results of his many planned successes and future achievements galloped through his thoughts in an escalating fantasy that concluded in him being lauded by everyone in town for his unparalleled guidance and exquisite leadership in all matters he influenced. This fantasy would recur with increased frequency proportionately to his own indignation at the relative lowliness of his station and the continual incidents of dismissiveness from his elders. When he'd feel especially dominated, he'd think not of his elders, but of the younglings to whom he was superior, and became satisfied that eventually they would defer to him in due time, so long as he patiently waited out the waning ones with their antiquated ways.
He felt preemptive pride that someday he'd be the one who people relied on to make the important decisions, it was as certain as tomorrow's dawn. And all of these deflated bags with spines that craned just to see their own toes would be nothing more than an irrelevant recollection of worse times in the minds of his constituents.
*** *** ***
Tail watched the sunset with the exhausted Cadi from the post at the dead end of the road. The dog laid down pressed sideways against the woman's leg, waiting out the day in a matching pace of breath and with a mutually maligned melancholy. Sharing between them a commonality of having survived an attempt on their lives and being met only with communal disdain afterwards. A mutual experience that while being wholly unknown to the other, was jointly felt as deeply as a forcefully-swallowed stone in one's gut.
Time didn't flow in such a setting and circumstance as this, it trickled. Dripping with an unceasing, unslowing, and unapologetic steadiness that while still bearing the promise of all things coming, made no urgency of their arrival. Eventualities would not be rushed by a mortal's reaching any more than the clouds could be quickened by the blowing of lungs. And when this experience's trickling had lasted long enough to fill the lake now submerging Cadi's drowned spirit, the eventual largening of Linia's silhouette emerged from the distance. Then Tail squeaked quietly, and looked at Cadi in mourning at the forced conclusion of their fellowship before standing up and skittering away into the shadow of the encroaching night.
*** *** ***
Rane led Dale inside his house to Faleen's surprise.
"Dinner won't be ready for a while," she said.
"He's not here for your food," Rane groaned dismissively. Faleen only looked at him with confusion in response, refusing to guess. "Dale and I have been trying to arrange a solution to our problem."
"What's he want for her?" Faleen asked.
"Not a thing, just came to look things over first. Don't want to get anything officiated without being sure."
"Girl!" Faleen belted, "Get over here, we've got company wants to see ya." The girl walked out of her room, down the narrow hall, and into the livingroom to meet her parents, only looking up to check which one she was to stand beside. Rane pointed on the ground in front of his foot so she obeyed and stood atop the mark. Dale walked around her slowly, scrutinizing her features he could outline with his eyes, and tracing his hands along the rest.
"Not much of a bosom on her," Dale muttered.
"What use for one?" Rane retorted.
"Some use."
"It's still early for that, besides."
"It is… it is." Dale admitted.
"But she's already got a plumping little ass, be ripe before you know it," Rane suggested.
"Perhaps," Dale shrugged then turned squarely towards the couple. "I don't want to over-promise anything. I'm not one to rescind obligations once taken. So I suggest that I come over and check on the developments in four or five seasons, assuming nothing's malformed, we can officiate her over to me then."
"A most reasonable consideration," Faleen interjected before Rane could manage to reply. "Girl, that'll be all, back to your room," she ordered, trying urgently to reduce any possible interference from as many directions as possible under the guise of casual conversation. The girl slid away and smoothly sank along the background of the livingroom until she reached the narrow hall, wherein she disappeared as seamlessly as a raindrop in a pond. "We appreciate your interest, just let us know when you're ready to check again," Faleen concluded.
"I'll be sure to do that, Mrs. Kallerd," Dale responded before turning to leave. Rane leaned towards him, instinctively attempting to make his voice heard, despite having yet to fully decide which words to use, but Faleen squeezed his arm with a resolve that overruled his instinct. She knew better than to taint an agreement with further dialogue, and this was as favorable a one as they would get today.
When Dale had vacated their home and was surely out of ear-shot, Rane collapsed into a chair. "Another year then, my forsaken luck…" he groaned.
"Better than your wilderness plan," Faleen sneered.
"They were both, my plan. And some lucky wolves could relieve us any day."
"If there was a spec of sense in that then it would have happened by now," Faleen argued. "But that doesn't matter, just a while longer and I– we won't have to be associated with a… Just a little longer," she sighed in pain riddled relief.
*** *** ***
Cliff squatted in front of his cave enclosing a pile of wood with clay; a step involved in producing charcoal. His hands worked in gradual and smooth movements, piling the material into a dome with the minimum care required to complete the task. Because to him, this was all tangential busying. His rendezvous could arrive at any point, and potentially pull him away from here immediately, which was why at first and for many days into his encampment he hadn't bothered to craft any comforts or store any foods. But when the first winter approached and his stores were nonexistent, necessity forced his hand.
It had been so long since his orders were received. And there were brief moments when his patience began to question The Weaver's words, or even doubt her existence as a figure of his own imaginings. But then he'd remember her form, towering over him like a living mountain, and his resolve would be reaffirmed. He must do as he was bidden. There were no alternatives of action.
A focus he had previously acclimated to in relative peace, until his thoughts and business were recently muddied up with the trite demands of that wandering child. The regular tending to her was evolving from an inconvenience to a nuisance. Another consideration was that if his rendezvous was met he might be instructed to move without warning. An event that would be harmful to the child if she found him having suddenly vacated without explanation. It was an implausible occurrence, but its likelihood grew to be more likely the longer she persisted in returning.
She was not just hindered of tongue but slow of mind, often requesting repeat explanations to ones he had already made previously. It would take much longer to restore her cognitive and vocal competencies than he had prepared to allot when he'd first found her exploring around his encampment. There would be no conclusion to her sharpening, whatever the combination of causes, she could potentially remain dull for many years yet. It would be best to transition her away from seeking his counsel, he rationalized, and to rely instead on that of her parents, peers, and otherwise unoccupied elders who could tend to her more consistently than he could, without risk of sudden abandonment.
As he formulated this thought, solidifying its structure in tandem with what he was building and shaping with his hands, he sensed her approaching from the shallows of the forest. She exaggerated her gate and loudened her step as she arrived. A harmless yet puzzling gait that took Cliff a moment to trace back to a previous warning of his not to try to sneak on him, her clumsy and intentional obedience brought him slight amusement, but only until she brought herself directly before him again, as a little pile of neediness that would soon steal another afternoon.
"Tell me what you've practiced then," he instructed coarsely.
"Fa-rruh, neeer, lawoo, hieee, fhound, loust-t, uh– wawtur, ieee-suh, suhnooooh," she finished.
"My legs are tightening, let's walk while you practice those again, none of them were correct," he said with yawn. She obeyed dutifully, sad to have disappointed him. He walked a familiar trail they'd taken multiple times so as not to over-burden her focus as she followed.
"Fa-ruh–,"
"Far, one beat, again."
"Fahr."
"Well enough, next."
"Nuheeer."
"Near."
"....."
"Near," he repeated.
"Emm I d-doo well?"
"Are yo–"
"Me?"
"You're improving," he admitted with a shrug.
"Do yoo lieee meh?"
"What? Try it slower," he demanded, without slowing his stride as he focused on re-enlivening his legs.
"D-duhoo yoo liee-kuh me?"
"Yes. yes. You're plenty likable," he answered, oblivious to the nature of her question.
"Beecuz I hav a p-plump lidul ass?" she pressed. Cliff froze still as a statue, considering his response with a higher degree of caution than he'd prepared to employ.
"It's a normal enough one," was all he said as he resumed casually walking, instantaneously returning to motion in sync with his words.
"Do you remember where you might have heard that from?" he inquired. She stopped suddenly as a wave of uncertainly flooded her feelings. "Was it one of the older boys? Older girls?" he asked. Overwhelmed with a brand of sensations and fears with which she had not yet become familiar, she avoided his question the only way she could manage to, she turned and ran.
Cliff watched her sprint for a few strides before erupting with three great leaps that reached her so quickly that her fear turned to panic. Cliff seized her ankle with one decisive hand and lifted her high off the ground to save her head from the fall of her abrupt stop. Then he gradually lowered her down to the ground onto her back, keeping a hold of her ankle and only lifting it enough to remove her leverage when she tried to kick at his arm with her other foot. He couldn't engage with her like this, and it was too important a time to be in hysterics, but he knew nothing about the calming of young temperaments. Their volatility was as far from him as a river from the desert dunes. But he did recall, somewhere in the buried bowels of his memory, an untapped image of a sorrowful boy too burdened by the burgeoning sensations of his surroundings, a soothing recitation that resurfaced completely enough to regale to her with as much of a tune as he could manage.
"In the sound of winds too loud to bear, there's a voice that sings the hymn, of a breeze that brushes gently by and a torch that doesn't dim," he paused for an obtusely long interval before continuing when he managed to remember the rest of the song. "So listen for the song behind the tempest and the gale, and let her quiet voice remind you that within the wail. There's something stronger than the gust and deeper than a dive, that through the fray will light the way to keeping you alive…" he finished, his voice nearly trailing off before his focus was reinstated by the softened protests of the child before him.
"I need to explain something to you, Gilli," he said quietly. "I'm not sure if I'm the best person to introduce it, and I won't burden you with the details… but it's important that you know this now," he clenched his jaw as he hesitated, calculating which words would be simple enough to use for such an explanation. "What you said relates to physical coupling. It's what post-pubescent– it's what grown people do when they like each other, when uh– they want to be so close that their skin is too thick of a barrier between them. But that's not something you need to worry about for a while yet," he said. Gilli sat up as he spoke, looking at him contemplatively. "And while we're still thinking about it, try and remember where you first heard about such things. I'm not going to be upset with you, there's no wrong answer, but you do need to tell me."
"....."
"There's no urgency, just think on it, we can wait here," he reiterated. She looked down and tried to pull her foot away in response.
"I know you don't want to answer, and I know you'd rather– but you do have to. If it's easier, I can start by asking. Did one of your friends tell you that? Hm?"
"....."
"An adolesce– someone younger than the other adults? Is that who's been mean to you?"
"....."
"A relative maybe? One of your grandparents? Uncles? Aunts? A sibling perhaps? Do you have any siblings who might know?"
"....."
"Whic–"
"Raeen. F-f-f-fa."
"You're doing well, try it slower."
"F-f-f-f-f-fa."
"Was it your father?"
"....."
"Are you certain?"
"yes"
"I understand. You don't have to speak any more on it, if you don't want to," he said, with an enigmatic chill permeating across his voice. "I'm going to need to pick you up and carry you for a while, are you going to let me do that?" he asked politely. She nodded and reached two limp arms out towards him. In one sweeping motion he heaved her up and into his sternum, bearing her weight beneath a forearm and balancing her against him with his other hand. "Could you close your eyes for a while and hum the tune to that song for me? That's it, just like that, keep going," he said as he walked. His strides were so heavy and long that from her position it nearly felt like flying, only in deeply dipping arcs, instead of straight the way birds do. She hummed his tune a bunch of times, forgetting herself in its repetitions, and for the first time in her life, forgetting everything else too. After a transcendent period of riding the relaxing rocking of his gait, her consciousness was reinstated when he stopped suddenly, against her wishes.
"We're not going to go near it, we're going to go around it, but in order to do that, I need you to look out and point to your house for me," he ordered. She opened her eyes and saw he was standing sideways and facing her towards Saddletown from a distant vantage point she'd never used before. A sight which silenced her humming as heavily as would a blow to her belly. She looked at him confusedly and obeyed, pointing onwards."
"That one?"
"....."
"The one just farther?" he asked. She nodded, thinking the matter closed. "And where does the person in charge live?"
"....."
"Your leader."
"Nono."
"It's–"
"NO-n-no."
"The other people have to know, you don't have to talk to them, I can do it for you. Then we'll–"
"Dontduntdunntd-d-d-d."
"If no one else knows, then more children will be in danger. And I have find out if your mother knew before we–"
"Ssstop."
"I'll take care of everything," he said as he walked towards the town. "You just hold on," he reassured. Gilli's mind raced even faster than the pounding in her chest. She didn't know what to say and could barely bring herself to speak. But if ever there was a time to become clear, it was now."
"Cliffgilli, snailshell. Snail ssshell. Snailshell us," she clarified.
"Try to calm yourself, it's going to be an uncomfortable day, but soon everything will be better. You won't have to live with him anymore, you won't be endangered again," he said, ignoring her babbling as the senseless expulsions of stress. This wasn't working, she realized. But she had to warn him, he was too different in too many ways, there was no explanation he would understand. So she focused herself and went still for a moment, directing every iota of skill that she now had.
"Theyall ugLY," she declared.
"Ridicule isn't–"
"UGLY!" she screamed.
"We're almost there," he sighed, "It would be better not to yell insults at them while I explain things," he said. Hearing the heedlessness of her words, she changed tactics and tried to push and pry his arms away so she could get off of him and run for herself. But his strength took little notice of her struggling movements. He was not unsympathetic to her distress, but neither could he relent to the whims of her tantruming. Although he didn't blame her for wanting to avoid resolving the issue entirely. There was much to work through: rather the mother was ignorant or culpable, what other children might be endangered, who the rightful godparents would be. All logistical complications whose necessity a child could not be expected to navigate or understand, especially one so stunted as her. Cliff was already more involved than he wanted to be, but he knew there was no one else to see it through, which necessitated him to act on the matter himself.
He reached the town's road from its ended side, passing a weathered and precariously positioned post as he staggered onto the road, the cleared ground eased his feet as his balance was already hindered by the heaving child he carried. He saw someone close by, a cripple with crutches tending to some innocuous task.
"Citizen," Cliff beckoned formally. The cripple stopped and turned to him in surprise.
"Citizen, where is the lodging of your leader?" Cliff inquired. "I have an important matter to discuss pertaining to this child," he said. The cripple looked at him, expressionless and silent. "Who is in charge?" Cliff clarified, altering his demeanor to that of peasantry. The cripple stretched his hand towards an obtusely shaped house in the middle of the town, but did not turn his eyes off Cliff as he pointed. "I'll try there first, thank you," Cliff said before continuing towards the structure. As he approached, people from all around started emerging from their homes and peering towards him in what Cliff first assumed to be curiosity. Upon eventually reaching the home, he stepped up onto the porch and knocked on the door with a hand as heavy as his heart. This would be unpleasant, and he was eager to conclude it as expediently as was possible. A man answered the door and looked at him the way one might expect toward an unexpected stranger.
"My name is Cliff. I have distressing news to report, pertaining to this child. May I enter?" Cliff asked.
"You may," Wilnum said, gesturing towards a desk with facing chairs surrounding. Two other men happened to be discussing something independently across the room which Cliff passed and turned away from as he sat down.
"Are you the authority of these people?" Cliff asked.
"As much as anyone could be," Wilnum answered. "What brings you here with the girl?"
"Gilli," Cliff placed his palms over her ears and gently tapped his fingertips against her scalp, "has unambiguously informed me that she is being sexually abused by her father at home. I haven't heard anything of the mother."
"This is distressing to hear. Before you provide further details, perhaps it would be best to shield her ears by sending her to another room instead," Wilnum suggested.
"That would be wise."
"Albern, take her upstairs please, while we converse," Wilnum instructed one of the men Cliff had passed on his way inside. Albern nodded and approached them wordlessly, rudely fixating on Gilli without acknowledging Cliff in any manner. As Cliff passed him the frozen child, Gilli looked at him helplessly and did something she saw a couple do once during one of her watchings, and kissed his hand. They had her now, she knew, and soon they were going to get him too. She followed the back of Cliff's head with her gaze as she was carried away for as long as she could. Until the corner was turned, and he was gone.
"And how is it that you know the girl?" Wilnum asked skeptically.
"I'm not here to answer to you, only to inform you of the malfeasance within her household. The child is being–"
"Obviously the girl has been defiled," Wilnum interrupted. "And I assure you the source will be promptly stomped out. But I do wonder how you have come to know her to begin with?"
"Wonder as you will, but do as you've promised. She is in danger at home."
"What troubles me though, considering what I've plainly just seen from her, is the directionality of the accusation. Because this town has always survived by unexceptionally forbidding parental incest, and Mr. Kallerd is a respected, upstanding member of this community. So it seems to me, that what I'm actually hearing, are the misguided projections of an intruder's guilty conscience," Wilnum declared.
As Wilnum spoke, Cliff noticed several things with simultaneous clarity, some retroactively. He noticed that the curious citizens he'd seen, were all eerily similar of feature. He noticed that their gradual steps towards him were not those of casual walking, but flanking in a steady and uniform stride. And, most critically, he noticed Wilnum's eyes glance behind him. Cliff had been distracted in coming here, trying to console Gilli while keeping her harmlessly restrained. But with her gone, there was nothing to dullen his innate knowledge that the third man was now standing directly behind where he sat. Cliff didn't wait for the confrontation to be initiated, because of two crucial facts he was already deathly certain: it was him who was being accused, and a mob was now waiting for him just outside the door.
In one fluid movement Cliff slid off the side of his chair, ducked, and swung it behind him, striking the side of the man's legs. The man screamed in agony as the chair shattered against his knees. Then the front door slammed open in quick succession. Cliff knew he had the span of a leaf's fall before he'd be overwhelmingly outnumbered in an enclosed space, so without any available alternatives, he smashed one of the chair's broken legs against Wilnum's extended arm, and sprinted two strides towards the nearest window shutter. Upon reaching its aperture, he leapt straight through its loosely-tied planks, breaking them by the mound of his protruding shoulder before rolling across the ground and sprinting away as hurriedly as a lone ibex from a pack of ravenous wolves.
When he eventually reached the cover of the forest, he turned to check behind him for pursuers, of which there were none, either by lack of interest or his unexpected route of escape. With the threat of being lynched now circumvented, Cliff's concerns immediately shifted to the imprisoned child. He took the briefest of moments to recover his breath from the sprint, just as quickly as he could manage, he could not afford to exhaust himself now. Then he jogged back home, sliding through the brush and bouncing off the bases of trees with the agility of an animal yet undiscovered by modern exploration. Upon reaching the cave, he flung open a sealed sack of pristinely clean garments. In complete contrast to the clumsy carelessness with which he stripped himself of all clothing, he put on the clean garments with devotional attention and reverence in the securing of each article's ties. From feet to hood he covered himself in the specially commissioned material. One uniform layer of unscratched, unmarked, and unseeable shade of black too dark to distinguish in any unlit setting. Its caveat was that when exposed to direct sunlight it rendered its wearer's silhouette an unmistakably obtuse void that attracted every eye towards its shape. Which was irrelevant to him, being that by the time he returned to the town's border, evening would already have begun to dwindle. Previously unplaced lamps now hung lining both sides of the road that cut between its houses, but he had no interest in its road, or the houses that stretched along it, except for one.
His suit required a specific manner of movement to be effective. No notice would be taken of him, provided he moved silently. Were he to trip or attract the attention of a territorial animal, he would be irrecoverably discovered. Scanning his surroundings with each forward step he slid and slithered towards Gilli's house, where he hoped beyond reason that she would have been returned. She'd tried to tell him what they were, he understood now. But in the midst of his regretful frustration, he caught a glimpse of uncanny familiarity along the edge of his periphery. Details were not perceivable from this distance and in this dimness, but the line of lamps that stretched along the singular road pointed to either ends of the town, slicing through the encroaching dark of the passing evening in a way that emphasized both the open end of the road along with its opposite. The post planted at its dead end, which Cliff had incidentally neared himself towards during his approach, was busier by look than it had been before, although he couldn't quite figure as to why.
Determined as he was to stay on task, the temptation of the sight beckoned him closer to the undefined object of his familiarity. Nearer and nearer he lurked towards the last lamp in the line, whose illumination rocked by the breeze that apathetically worked against his designs. Moving light granted depth to the flat, and detail to the undistinguishable. He needed to be weary now. One stray look was all it would take to doom his mission, and for the sake of a useless distraction such as this. But he soon felt justified in the slight diversion, as dread struck his shoulders and knees in a conjoined effort to throttle his footing. He was close enough now to see two unsettlingly oriented shoes belonging to the purpose of his coming. They lay near the post, but strangely seemed to both be balanced on nothing but their toes, with their heels pointed upward. What Cliff knew before seeing it clearly, and what caused his pace to quicken in desperation, was that the breeze that rocked the hung lanterns would not have discriminated in its effects, and would surely have knocked those boots over from their narrow points of purchase. Unless, something else was holding them up whose rigidity could overcome the wind. As he approached, his perceptions clouded, unable to properly calibrate the inconsistencies before him. There was too much incompleteness to it. A reasonless display that defied the very prospect of recognition. But as he approached nearer still, unable to resist the pull of its strangeness, every unusual element was made unmistakably clear.
Gilli's shoes were being propped upon their toes by her feet within them. Feet that froze in perfect stillness by the position of her limp legs. Legs that led up to her pelvis. A pelvis which was now the highest part of her from the ground. Ground which he could plainly observe to be as flush and flat above her hips as everything around it, almost seeming as if half of her had disappeared into an unknowable void. But once his own feet met hers for their penultimate time, he saw the truth of the scene, in all its blatancy. Bootprints scattered all around the dirt, encircling and trudging across the corpse. Her torso and head had been flattened by the boots of multiple assailants, whose numerous overlapping prints were too haphazard to accurately differentiate or count. There was no telling which side her gaze was facing last; left, right, or perhaps just straight into the dirt. But the orientation of her hands was simple enough to decipher. Her left pointing straight out to the side, and her right over her head and parallel to the other, she had been reaching towards the woods.
Such an outcome had never occurred to him to have been a possibility. Savagery had never been among his concerns in the years since he'd first seen the town or in the time since he'd walked into it. Desperate questions bombarded his thoughts of possible alternatives to his choices that could have saved– had he not returned home to retrieve his cloak, had he stayed to resist the mob, albeit unarmed and unprepared, had he never carried her here, had he asked her better– had he cared enough to ask any at all…
These closed possibilities all flooded him as heavily as the horror splayed before him. This portrayal of cruelty whose involvement required a totally forsook humanity. Then, the inarguable culmination of these thoughts rang inside his soul with all the penetration of a squarely struck gong: that he never should have brought her here, and he was too late to take her back.
Before his voice, his stomach, or his emotions could betray his location to the town's occupants, he slipped away as silently as he'd approached. Returning to his cave at a measured pace, unhurried in speed and unwavering in resolve. There was no cause for rushing anymore. Time was not a factor. As he made his way through the brush towards his encampment, his every movement and action were as choiceless as a meteor falling through the sky, each becoming only a physical manifestation of inevitability.
When he reached his abode he changed his dress in efficient methodical motions. But Cliff's armaments were not nearly so lavish and owed no aspect to appearances. His cloak he removed with solemnity, feeling its softness to be a reminder of its uselessness to his revised purpose. He brushed the dirt off of a large sealed sack which rested in the back of his cave. He'd kept it for the rare occasions when a predatory beast dared to threaten his own sovereignty, or to thwart the efforts of any ill-intentioned travelers he may encounter. Uniquely, this time he unpacked its contents to contend against both.
Over a thin layer of meticulously woven netting, he fastened fitted steel plates over his shoulders and around his torso, calves, and forearms. And fastened hardened leather covering over the elbows and knees to preserve the freeness of the joints. After carefully inspecting the ties of his boots, he applied a scarlet gambeson over everything else, fashioned to be thick and broad enough to accommodate and conceal the layers underneath without restricting his mobility. Lastly, he adorned his helmet and affixed his gauntlets. The weaknesses to his customized accouterments were his feet, his wrists, and his eyes, which were uncovered to allow the full scope of his periphery to be unhindered.
With the acceptance of circumstance, he heaved his weapon from its resting place along the floor. A blade would be much better for this, a great-sword, ideally. But blades needed to be constantly honed, sharpened, and periodically oiled against moisture even when not in use, so he hadn't kept one. More critically, his edge-alignment was too irredeemably unpracticed to make such a tool usable to him without performing drills for many days. The only weapon he had with him beyond wooden handled hatchets and carving knives was his linebreaker. Many soldiers, rather they fought for a kingdom, a god, or for hire, named their weapons with pride. But Cliff took no pride in his. His hexagonally flanged mace, which stood as high as his sternum, was not designed for tonight's purpose. It was for smashing gaps through lines of armored men in battles much larger than this, where he could safely retreat behind reinforcements once his task had been completed. This was a different task entirely. At his strongest and most diligent of training, he could only complete nearly three-hundred swings of changing angles before fatigue rendered the weapon's weight too unwieldy to safely use. The town's size observably exceeded this limitation. He'd eventually have to put it down to finish it, if he could finish it. He knew his limits, the endeavor was unrealistic, impossible even for him. A calculation that his experience made without his intention or interest. Yet he still allowed no consideration of delay for the sake of tactics. Instead, only welcoming the approaching answer to a question he would bring his whole weight to pose: rather or not they could manage to hurt him more severely than his fall had, all that time ago.
*** *** ***
Fil laid in bed with his eyes wide and restless. An uncanny despair encapsulated him for reasons he couldn't identify. He laid there in that state for a time so long he presently wished more than anything that he could somehow accelerate through its unknowable duration. As he counted down from a thousand, hoping to have found sleep by then, he noticed a faint flicker along the cracks of his window shutters. The lantern line had been hung that day, which disturbed the usual darkness of his room through the edges of his window shutters. His parents hadn't told him directly why, but insinuated that the dumb girl had done something again and now they needed to keep the road lit through the night. What caught Fil's attention, was that the glimmer went from a static annoyance, to sliding away in a quick sweep across the wall. This compelled him to rise from his bedroll and open his shutters out of curiosity. A curiosity that, once indulged, brought him no measure of relief. The thing he saw through his windowpane instead filled him with a confused dread. The lanterns were being unhooked from their hangers and collected one by one by an oddly shaped animal of unrecognizable proportions. Hanging them each along one of its horns before retrieving the next down the line. Fil stood statuesque of stature, transfixed in total by the fading lanterns being carried steadily away from his view. This hypnosis continued until, when the ninth and final lantern was collected, they started exploding against the houses on the opposite side of town.
*** *** ***
As the flames ran across the walls, Cliff waited at the center of the open end of the road. He tested his grip on the shaft of his weapon, finding the proper balance between the head and the pommel for swinging wide and long. It would be optimal to begin as efficiently as possible, two or three per strike for as long as he could sustain the pace. His plan was to draw as many to him as would come. Pursuit was an expenditure of energy he could not afford. He had to prioritize two things, avoid running, and stay on open terrain. If he was cornered, if he tripped, or if he tired, he would fail. Which he resolved with all remaining fortitude his wounded will contained, would not happen again, not on this night.
The savages flew from their homes in panicked surprise at the sudden commotion. As they called for aid and announced the magnitude of the emergency to their neighbors, Cliff took his aim. Without squaring up, stating his intentions, or waiting to be noticed, his weapon swung across the knees of four foul beings who chose the wrong direction to flee from the fire. He avoided killing blows at first, he needed the rest to hear, compelling more to come and stop him, he needed them to try, it would save him energy.
When he'd finally accumulated enough cripples to sustain a constant combined shriek between their individual gasps for breath, his aim became consistently fatal, so as not to limit his available footing with the threat of too many conscious assailants scattered across the ground.
*** *** ***
Decker jumped out of the low window of his bedroom, seeing the roaring blaze that faced the front door of his house, and hearing the staggered screams from the same direction. As he took two terrified steps to improve his view, he saw the source of the mayhem as it smashed through the charging crowd surrounding it. Upon seeing it, there was no mystery in his mind as to the monster's identity. He'd heard enough cautionary stories about the Red Ram that came in the dark to steal insolent children from their bedrolls, to recognize it at first sight. He could see the adults were trying to stop it, but however coordinated their efforts became, they each fell like wind-shorn branches from a dying tree. It was plain that no one had a chance as soon as it saw them. But Decker was smaller than them, and the sun had only recently set past the horizon, so by his fractured perspective, he'd be able to get closer than anyone else, all he needed was– the completion of the idea struck him in a flash. Now he could prove that he wasn't stupid or worthless, which everyone would know once they saw just how fast and brave he really was.
Thus, with pace propelled by excitement for his suddenly inspired plan, he stealthily scampered away from the fighting, and towards Mr. Massy's toolshed.
*** *** ***
Cliff shifted his grip up towards the head of the mace, swinging upward with a long lunge that crushed the ribcage of one charging assailant, then swung the pummel in a wide arc beside him to strike another in the side of the head. As he plowed through his enemies by the light of spreading fires and the sounds of the multiplying screams, he stayed passively mindful to protect vulnerable spots from any haphazard blows, but most critically to conserve as much momentum as possible between swings. Every time his weapon slowed and he had to reapply power to either side of its shaft's center of weight, it quickened the encroaching failure of his arms. He could partially delay this eventuality by heaving it with his legs, abdominals, and back, but his fingers, arms and shoulders would still be the first to relent in function. He was determined to finish before then, however impossibly.
They were starting to organize now, with groups of five or more engaging him at a time, all armed with hoes, shovels, pitchforks, and axes. But these efforts brought him less worry than clouds bring to a roaring wind. What did worry him were the potential attacks of archers, stone slingers, and spear throwers. Projectiles against which his only defense was to immediately eliminate their wielders before a coordinated volley could be fired. This was a flawed strategy, he knew. It relied far too little on his prowess and too much on random chance favoring his own ends. Part of him welcomed the danger of it, fantasizing that it might bring him the relief he'd always wanted. But it was a small part, miniscule in comparison to the bloodrage that surged through him now like whitewater through rock beds. Crashing over his joints and flooding his muscles with overflows of force whose singularly conditioned use Cliff had no reservations in obliging. No reservations at all.
*** *** ***
Corlin sprung from his house in fear from the noise of the fighting and brightness of the blaze. He paused to observe the carnage in frozen disbelief. He stared at it blankly for much more than a moment, taking it in. Until the heavy crash of a collapsing roof broke his focus, brimming him with a panic that disallowed any competing thought that distracted from his only directive: to get away. Wearing nothing but his undergarments, he fled. With feet as bare as his mind, he sprinted clumsily away as quickly as his cold and lanky legs could propel him across uncrafted ground. Without a spec of concern for his home, his direction, or his fellows, he ran from a degree of destruction he instinctively knew would be total. An instinct that was as ancient as the skies, and as insistent as gravity. He had to get away, he knew of nothing else. For there was nothing else to know.
*** *** ***
The savages were starting to hesitate now, Cliff noticed. Each individually reaching the same collective thought that their resistance may be futile, despite their numbers, for they could see no apparent signs of the growing exhaustion steadily threatening to drag Cliff's limbs to the welcoming support of the ground. He was at nearly ninety swings now, with many of them contending against the resistance of multiple bodies. Between the widening pauses between waves, Cliff would move his weapon to one hand at the top of its shaft, and use his free one to seize a nearby well-clothed corpse by the arm, drag its legs over the edge of a fresh ember, and toss it through the shutters or onto the roof of an unsullied house to draw out anyone who may be trying to hide inside.
Eventually they became privy to his method, and would try to charge him while he was otherwise occupied. But this was easily disregarded. The fraction of an instant it took Cliff to properly rearm himself, with his upper grip at the center of its weight, was in no manner hindered by the miniscule encumberment of having to drop a smoldering corpse.
At first he'd had the incalculable advantage of fighting in the dim and dark, but that boon was fully spent by now, so wide was the reach of his arson that the road on which he fought had become more illuminated as it would have been under the highest sun with the clearest sky. Being that the day sends light only downward, but this hellscape brought it in from all sides. Drawing the attention of every breathing being towards the splattered behemoth who was indiscriminately smashing the bones and igniting the homes of everyone who lived in this wretched place.
His task was over half done now, but he was nearly finished. What structures still remained were few and doubtfully had many more armaments for them to retrieve. However, his arms protested emphatically with every exertion, threatening to give out without warning at the slightest miscalculated strain. Until Cliff saw something that relinquished his flesh from every form of fatigue, and sent him into a fury rivaled by neither the most ravenous of bears nor the largest of deafening tornados. Among the last large mob that gathered to resist him, was a man whose trousers Cliff recognized. What prodded at Cliff though, was not the wearables on his legs, but those over his head. The sides of which were both bandaged thickly and completely, along with one of his eyes.
*** *** ***
Throughout the frenzied defense, Fil could see the fate that would befall him. His parents had told him to hide in the basement but he'd ignored them and gone outside to observe the battle from a distance. Despite only seeing the shadowed side of the faces, he could still recognize most of whom he saw. All of the adolescents and at least thirty adults were trying to form lines against the monster. But Fil had already watched the previous wave try to do something similar, who were all now fallen in a loose pile in the middle of the road, his parents included.
He didn't understand what was happening, and had no presence of mind remaining. What to do, where to go, or how to act were concepts so alien to his collapsed consciousness that the only remaining drive within it was terror. So he sank into a deep stupor, sitting on open ground and pressing his hands against the impacted dirt, with all functions and faculties disabled.
When a distinct sound overcame the rest within his ear; his name being called through the torrent of noise. He hurriedly sought out the voice's source and saw nearly his entire class of children had huddled together against a wall on the steadily shrinking unburnt end of town. He didn't know where the idea came from, and yesterday even the suggestion of doing such a thing would have seemed unthinkable, but as he saw their helpless despair in the wake of their imminent demise, he knew precisely what he had to do. So without a sideways glance or a single pause of hesitation, he sprinted across the glowing road towards his classmates. None of them said anything to him, the air was too thick for them to open their mouths, except for the one who'd beckoned him, who was now coughing for the trouble. Fil held out his hands for the children to touch, which they all immediately did either in body or in spirit.
"Don't move, I need to get something. I will come back. Wait. Here," he ordered, with every shred of authority that he'd ever accrued over them. They all nodded with varying levels of dismay. This order wouldn't buy him long, one of them would soon panic, then the rest were sure to run, probably in all directions. He'd never be able to find them then, not all of them, he knew he needed to be quick.
And quick as a falcon flies, so did he, past two houses and towards the incoming fires, he did something so wrong that he had to consciously reorder his hands at multiple points to perform his will. He entered Mister Altnoy's barn without permission, and stole four things he could have previously been pelted for just for touching: a rope, a pull cart, a saddle, and one of the draught horses. From his lessons he knew it would take a couple of days to make it to Herrelef, and they'd need to go off the road at least once to water themselves, but they could make it. It was all they had now, everything else, everyone else… was gone. The adults just couldn't accept it yet, and Fil knew beyond doubt that he'd never be able to convince the ones who were still standing.
*** *** ***
As he plowed through the few inconvenient individuals who happened to block his path, Cliff turned his weapon around in one smooth rotation just before driving the short spike of its pommel into the bandaged savage's solar plexus. Then he angled it upwards with a lunge, driving it up into his ribcage and propelling him high off the ground in a gratuitous display. This was a tactical mistake, a fact which he did not recognize until a sickle wrapped around his right thigh from behind him and attempted to tear at his flesh. It slid dully against his armor for the briefest instant before Cliff overcame his state of hazardous irrationality. Without wasting another breath he dropped the defeated savage from his temporary perch, seized the sickle from around his thigh, and drove it deeply into the assailant behind him without even bothering to turn.
The grip of his hands was threatening to loosen around the shaft of his mace, his arms protested with cries as fervent as those around him, and his legs were steadily rotting underneath him, but he knew he couldn't stop now. He was so close. So tantalizingly near to vanquishing this blight from the land he walked and the air he breathed. Their numbers were much fewer than the town's size suggested. Of those he could see there were few remaining, and any who still hid would be burned away soon enough.
He had camped with barbarians before, never for long, but enough to experience their civility. Different tribes from different regions in different times had many variations to their ways. But of those that took him in, all maintained a plain baseline of morality that manifested its aims in all they did. But these savages had fooled him, though they did not sleep under tents and marquees, and their constructs were built for much more permanence than yurts, their entire order was merely a sickening facade; a stuffed glove masquerading as a hand.
Unexpectedly and from an unchaseable distance, he noticed a carted horse of considerable size skipping away perpendicularly to the road he was presently blocking. What initial disappointment he had in being unable to end every citizen of this sinful place soon became relief, in that it also meant he had even fewer necessary strikes remaining before he was finished.
Fewer than twenty stood before him now, united in formation and all facing him. Some were frightened, some were brave, some were anxious, two were excited, and one was ready. Cliff dove towards the ready one first, smashing the section of shaft between his hands into the enemy's nose and knocking him down on his back. Cliff trampled him as he fell and stomped in his skull with his heel just as what seemed to be a wedded couple confronted him in unison, one with a splitting ax, the other with a wooden club likely purposed for driving posts, Cliff eliminated the one with the ax first, out of practicality. After those two fell he confronted the rest with all his remaining might, spending it as freely as a child's autumn afternoon.
Even of breath, clear of mind, and heavy of hand, he engaged these incarnate affronts to his senses indiscriminately. Hearing not their conjoined yells, but only one stuttering whimper. Seeing not their expressions, but only a young and curious face. And mourning not their shared ends, but one snuffed future denied of its potential in the name of no cause higher than bestial cruelty. None of these assailants were capable of defending against his wrath, for their counterfeited strength was immaterial unless used against the helpless.
Only nine were left now, screaming and jabbing in useless defiance to his designs. One of whom swung a cold cutting chisel at his neck. Cliff rolled his head under the blow and punched his gauntlet under its extended arm hard enough to break the ribs, then he gripped his mace again and turned sideways, arching the pommel of his weapons over and down onto the assailant's head. Using that momentum, Cliff continued the turn and jammed the rounded top of his mace into another enemy's nose, caving her face in with an audible crunch.
The eighth he dispatched with one sweeping swing to the right. The seventh he downed by turning with the continued swing and lowering his grip along the shaft to extend the range. By then the head of the mace was halted by the combined resistance of those two bodies. So as he reestablished his grip upon it he raised his knee and kicked his right foot to the side, driving through the knee of the seventh as it tried to jab him with the spike of a fire poker. Cliff then executed the cripple with a swift swing of his pummel into his temple. The sixth had snuck behind him now, which Cliff could not abide. So he ducked low and arose with an upward arch of his head, smashing the top of his helmet under the assailant's groin and launching it over his back to absorb the multiple blows that had already committed to where he'd just been facing. The fifth he tackled to the ground by the forward impact of his plated shoulder and crushed his throat with a quick kick. The fourth and third both landed simultaneous blows against his torso which nearly broke his footing, but only served to leave their makeshift weapons extended and their arms exposed; arms which he concurrently broke before efficiently smashing through each of their skulls in turn. The final two stood alone before him in deflated panic, suddenly aware with undeniable certainty that they were out of compatriots to linger behind. This hesitation was unaffordable to their predicament. A deficit which Cliff exploited as he noticed his grip could no longer bear the weight of his weapon. With the very last vestige of his finger's capacity to contract, he flung his mace towards the second enemy's chest, and released them entirely from the shaft, propelling it through the air with a poorly aimed throw that only glanced against the assailant's arm. Cliff palpably understood that his hands were functionless now and could not be relied upon for anything. So he crashed his forearms in front of him with a loud grunt to distract the second assailant before spinning into a back kick against the first, striking him in the belly and sending him collapsing on his knees in agony. He quickly turned back to the second who had just turned away to run but was hindered by cradling her elbow that had just been impacted by the head of the thrown mace. This hindrance proved too great as Cliff sprinted behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pivoting it up and over his hips, driving her head downward with all his weight, and shearing the neck against the unyielding ground.
With heaving breath and staggered step, Cliff approached the final felled assailant who was still keeled over meekly upon his hands and knees, struggling to wheeze through his wounded belly. Cliff collapsed his body over his enemy's back and viciously coiled his arm around his neck, wedging it tight with the aid of his other forearm. He jerked the shoulder of his strangling arm downwards with concussive blows against the desperate flailings of his enemy several times, until no motion remained, and Cliff was finally left lying alone in abject exhaustion, surrounded by a company of mangled corpses in the midst of a widening inferno whose consumption would imminently reach the spot where he currently lay.
As he lay there, still as stone, accepting the shallow comforts of strainlessness and allowing the inertia of rest to permeate along his spine and down the ends of his limbs, he entertained the possibility of remaining here. He'd never been immolated before, perhaps that would be enough to do it, he thought. But that thought was immediately overruled by the jarring realization that he still had something left to do. So Cliff heaved himself back up in unheeding defiance to the protests of his flesh. He looked around briefly, then retrieved his weapon, and a recently unclaimed shovel. Carrying them both by the top of their shafts wedged inside the flexed bend of his elbows. With his back to the incoming blaze, he walked towards the post that marked the dead end of the road. It felt like an unbearably long way. His legs howled in complaint against continuing to support him, his chest and back were so badly bruised that his every movement reiterated some particular spot of freshly layered pain, whilst his neck threatened to give out more and more belligerently with each additional step.
When he reached his destination, he collapsed again, this time for much longer, long enough for all the flames behind him to burn to embers, and for all the darkness in front of him to turn to day. Eventually, as the function restored to his extremities and the full bodied soreness reached a stable equilibrium, he crawled up onto his elbows and knees and looked mournfully forward towards a pair of shoes suspended on their toes. He was filthy, coated in coagulated crimson, and wanted nothing more than to shed every layer from his skin, wade in the stream, and scrub off every trace of scum until he was as clean as the upstream flow of water. But he had provisions he still needed from his cave, he wouldn't be able to carry his armor back without its sack, and once he took it off, it would need to be washed before it was supple enough to put back on again. So he couldn't remove it before he went back, but he couldn't leave either, not yet.
As dutifully as a fresh disciple of a sacred cause, he stood up, careful not to be fallen by the brushing breeze, and grasped the shovel with heavy hands. It was malformed, and poorly crafted, but he had fought worse foes than dirt, and with duller tools than this. So he continued digging, little by little, lest he snap its narrow shaft. He made no care of the hole's shape. Its lines were rounded and sloppy, and its bottom was bumpy and sloped. The only measure that mattered to him was its depth, such that it would be enough to prevent scavengers and bugs from disturbing its contents. After a long and laborious while, with the day nearly spent and the depth to his satisfaction, he painfully struggled to climb out of his hole, and gingerly scraped the stiffened partial remains into its dusty embrace. Filling the hole was faster, of course. But it was no easier. The difficulty being that with every single heave and scrape of soil, he was forced to reconfront how avoidable this was. How he could have done it differently, had he been attentive enough to look twice at what he'd seen, or listened once to what she'd warned.
Alas, he'd been too preoccupied with his directive to understand its true meaning. As he methodically filled the gruesome grave, he considered where he would go after this. There was no reason to subject himself to this place anymore. His rendezvous was missed, and the remains of his teacher were being buried beneath him. As his hands worked, he thought fondly of a better day than this, when he'd heard a band playing for one of his previous employers. He'd pontificated at the time if he could ever learn to draw such sultry sounds from instruments so fragile of form. And since then, he'd sometimes return to that thought on rare occasions when his mood allowed broader possibilities of himself than the present sum of his experiences.
That was all lost to him now, he knew. Whatever chance he had of being something better than a breathender had died with her. His hands could play no strings, provide no comfort, be of no benefit, only strike things down, so he was and would always be.
Finally, when the ground was level, and every remaining hold on him was either buried or burned away, he threw the shovel behind him to join the discarded remains of his enemies, rested the head of his mace just over his shoulder, and headed back to his cave with bitter satisfaction in having purged this patch of land from such lowly forms of life. As he gradually walked the familiar way back through the forest, his imaginings were not of when he would soon be able to strip, wash, and rest, but on where he would go next.
If he traveled south of winter's frost, he reasoned, then he'd need little to subsist, and he had no other remaining cares to drive him. He wasn't sure yet precisely where he'd go, or how he'd know when he got there. He supposed, upon further reflection, that after a few days of recovering and packing, he'd just head south until the weather was warm in every season. Then find somewhere to make camp… Somewhere secluded enough to be unsullied by the presence of predatory beasts, or the pernicious patterings of people. Somewhere quieter.