Disclaimer: Hrm... Yep.
AN: Hm... I suppose there are spoilers here if you've only just begun the game, but only about the unknown element. No real biggie. In other news... Aye, I really dislike Gurdy's poetry, simply because it's so random. Unless you scour the Lynari Desert and know it like the back of your hand, something too tedious for a lazy soul like me to bother with, or decide to cheat and look at an FAQ or guide, it can be rather difficult to pull the answers together in a timely manner.
For the Tipa caravan, lunch was the most important meal of the day, mostly because it was so much fun. They would always choose a suitably shady, beautiful spot by the side of the road and spend hours chatting, eating, joking... Doing all the things they couldn't usually do when in the midst of slaying monsters and gathering myrrh. It was their daily opportunity to relax and they cherished it.
This day, Millie, the caravan's only Clavat and unofficial scribe, brought out her journal and was leafing through it. The book was, in a way, the running account of the caravan's exploits. It was also a repository for Millie's personal thoughts, so there were pages she refused to let the others read, but for the most part it was a tale of their adventures and often pulled out to reminisce over or help draw up plans by learning from past mistakes.
Its purpose at this particular lunch, however, was to stump, puzzle, and frustrate as the four caravanners clustered around it reading lines of poetry.
"Lightning brings the cactus pain, now it all begins again." Aldan, the caravan's Yuke, winced at the awkward rhyme. It looked much better on paper than it sounded spoken aloud. "Of crumbled inn few reminisce, its faulty beams will not be missed." He paused, then shrugged, turning his helmed head to Millie. "I can't read the rest, your handwriting is... 'Illegible' is too kind."
"So I wrote it in a hurry! Give me that." She took the tome, none to gently, from his feathered grasp and began reading where he left off. "Lonely mushroom bursts into flame, in the land that quicksands claim. Three rocks await the winter's kiss, one by one they find their bliss." A pause, then a frenzy of flipping as she quickly searched through the pages to locate the last verse. "I should have written them all together... There. In the end shall bloom a flower, sacred light reveals its power."
The four fell silent, munching quietly on their meal of grapes, bannock, and fish as they mulled over the meaning of the lines. They had tried to figure it out before, but all their previous attempts ended the same way. Each of them was slowly counting down to the moment when their hot headed Lilty, Jormand, would say his piece. Five, four, three, two-
"Ach, what the hell does it mean?! Curse that Gurdy! We've saved his life, what, four times now? The least he could've done was give us some commentary on those ridiculous lines of his!" By the time he was done, Jormand had stomped halfway across their picnic spot and was brandishing his lance as he continued to mutter disparaging things about the ill-fated traveling swindler. The other three were used to it and continued to deliberate, occasionally ducking to avoid rogue lance swings.
"Maybe..." Zan Dol was unsure, but of the six ways he had tried to explain the poem before, this theory seemed the most likely. "Maybe it's talking about things that have to happen in the Lynari Desert." His fellow caravanners stared, unable to believe their ears. It seemed a miracle that Zan would come up with such a sane-sounding explanation. (His last theory was that the poem was actually a description of Orcish mating habits because it included the words "inn" and "kiss.")
"Go on Zan, continue." Aldan knew he was treading on dangerous ground, but he was intrigued.
"I want to hear it too; this is the most realistic idea you've had yet." Millie narrowly dodged the grape lobbed at her head by Jormand with an admonition to 'not encourage him' before the Lilty returned to his mutterings.
"Well, the rhyme mentions quicksand and cactus, which we've only found in the Lynari Desert. And I think I remember there being three huge rocks there too." Zan stopped, tallied something on his fingers, then resumed his explanation. "The things Gurdy talks about... Fire, falling, winter, thunder, sacred light; they're all things that can be made by spells. I bet we have to go to the desert and cast spells on things."
The others were stunned, even Jormand stopped ranting to try and place what he was hearing. Zan, their Zan, came up with a possible idea. It was unprecedented! Sensing and misunderstanding their shock, Zan cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in his place.
"Well, um, if you don't like that idea... The poem mentions a mushroom bursting into flame. We could go to the Mushroom Forest and try for a Firaga, burn the whole place to the ground..."
"No, no!" Zan blinked. He'd never heard his friends shout something in unison before. It was a day of firsts for everyone it seemed. Once they composed themselves, Millie spoke up in her trademark comforting, now-Zan-let's-not-destroy-anything voice.
"No, your Lynari Desert idea sounds great. I think you may be on to something!"
"Besides," Jormand added, grinning slyly from across the clearing, "We already tried your Mushroom Forest idea, remember?"
AN: Personally, I like the idea of burning down the Mushroom Forest. I wonder how many months it took for all their eyebrows to grow back after they tried it...