The Rainy Day Trip
(Part V)
by Saphron
Renunciation: (ie: Disclaimer-I'm running out of big scary vocab words here, ::gasp:: Noooo!!!!) Right, anyhow, like I've said before, everything and everything else not included in 'everything' belongs to the Immortal Tamora Pierce and whoever else is associated with her and/or her books. I, as usual, own nothing. How sad ::sighs:: Right. Back to the story, read on fellow TP fans, read on!
A/N: Just for Kira I made this one MUCH longer. I'm talkin' a lot here. You're welcome. =) I just hope it doesn't bore anybody out there to death. Oh, and by the way, this one is really kinda weird, I didn't just want to jump into the battle, so I kind of threw this unnecessary, but fun little (or long) chapter in. Flames mebbe? Eh, who knows, maybe not…
***
"Raoul, what exactly are we fighting?" Kel asked. They had been walking silently up the mountainside for the last forty-five minutes, everyone too busy concentrating on not falling off the edge to have a conversation.
"You know Kel, I have no clue."
She stopped dead in her tracks, "what do you mean, 'no clue,''' she practically yelled in a very un-Kel way. "We don't know what we're supposed to defeat?" she said calmer, her Yamani training once again sliding into place to cover up the brief flash of fear.
He sighed, "unfortunately, no. The villagers weren't exactly helpful. It seems that every-time 'the beast' came by they ran and hid underneath their bed-sheets, so no one really got a good like at it. Or them." He added.
"Mirthros," Kel muttered under her breath, "we're trekking up a mountain to go fight the-gods-know-what." And then to Raoul, "Do we know anything about our mystery beast? Or beasts?"
He frowned, "well, we know it, or they, can fly."
"That's it?"
"That's it. That and it can make a really, really, really, loud sound." These villagers aren't really the noisy types are they?
"But tons of creatures can fly, and roar loudly."
"I know. Now where's that cave? It should be around here somewhere…" he muttered to himself as he went back to looking at a map.
Kel sighed, great, just great.
*
Eventually they went past the tree line, nothing but rocks and more rocks up ahead. And some more rocks too. They climbed over the big ones, pushed the medium ones out of the way, and stumbled over the little ones, which were the most trouble of the three types of rocks. I hate rocks, Kel thought. Cleon didn't share this view, he was happily humming away to his only little chant of, "rocks, rocks, lot's 'o rocks…" And Joren was, well, who cares what Joren thought about the rocks? (I certainly don't, and neither really did Kel.)
I just love that part about the rocks, I don't know why, I just do. Right, sorry to interrupt
As they continued to climb upward they saw signs of slightly unnaturally bent trees, almost as if something (something big) had knocked into them and they had almost fallen over but not quite. The rest of the shrubbery also looked a bit muffed. Only the rocks appeared perfectly fine. (Stupid rocks, Kel muttered, stupid, arrogant rocks. She really doesn't like the rocks y'know.)
As they neared the destined cave they began to smell a very putrid odor, Kel didn't know what it was; all she knew was that is was nasty. (And I mean N-A-S-T-Y)
Eventually the party (who had all been pinching their noses) discovered what the salty smell was. Kel was surprised that she hadn't known it sooner, considering she had smelt it so often in the Yamani Islands.
It was the smell of dead fish. (Yes, you read right, dead fish. In the mountains you ask? Yes, in the mountains I answer.) The group all glanced at each other uneasily, what in the Black God's name (there's no hell so I settled with Black God's name, but the cuss is equivalent to "what in the hell!") was fish doing atop a mountain? They continued on, gasping for air as the maritime smell wafted through the wind.
(For those who sill don't know what it is they're about to battle, does this give you another clue? Check your Wild Magic book, page 200, 205 or something. This particular beast doesn't eat normal beasty foods like cows and chickens. Grass eaters don't taste very good to them, only marine animals like dolphin and fish do. Weird eating habits I know. But hey, that's--------for ya!)
*
It was growing dark and they really didn't want to battle an unknown monster with no light source, so they set up camp, uphill from the smell, or at least as uphill as you can get when you're atop a mountain, and prepared for a stinky night. Raoul sent some men to go and try and find this nasty fish smell, maybe it would lead them to the beast, which all in all would be a good thing because that would mean less trekking around getting lost.
The men eventually came back and reported that they had found a huge saline, lake. Either that or a small, mini-ocean. (Well, technically speaking I'm not sure what the exactly is the difference b/t an ocean and a lake, but I think as long as it's salty it's an ocean.) Well that caused a bit of an uproar in camp. An ocean, at the top of a mountain?
While the rest of the camp muttered and mumbled Kel saw Raoul poring over some papers so she sat down next to him to wait until he noticed her.
"Yes?"
"It's the ocean, sir. What's it doing here?"
He looked thoughtful for a few moments, "well, I'm no scholar but I have an educated guess. Have you ever heard of the Great Salt Lakes? They're east from here, in Utah, Galla."
"No," she said slowly.
"Oh, well, the reason that oceans are salty is because rivers lead into it. And a long time ago, rivers would carry limestone and other salt-based minerals along with the currant, and it'd dump it into the ocean. Or lake in our case. Yes, well, the salt piled up and the water eventually became brackish." He shrugged, "either that or the old legend about the two sorcerers who fought over the right to own water and accidentally slipped up and disrupted the entire earth by creating a giant mountain of salt that got knocked down by an angry god and fell into the water hence making it salty, is true. But hey, you know. Whatever happened, happened, and we have salt in our water."
She was silent. This was so weird. A slat lake in the middle of a mountain! Well, you didn't come across one of those everyday, that's for sure…
A/N: Hey peeps, I think this was the weirdest chapter I've ever wrote, (blame it on Utah) Salty lakes on mountains…riiiiiiight. Sorry, sorry, I know I have no idea where it came from. It's just that the beast(s) only eat fish, which I didn't realize until now. And Kel & Co are nowhere near the sea, according to TP's maps. You see I'm trying to make this as realistic to Tortall's geography as possible, but I needed salt water! So I just kinda, um, created slat lakes. Well, they do have them in Utah I guess, so just imagine it's something like that. As for the reason why oceans are salty, well the legend is completely fictional (duh) and as for the other reason, I'm actually not really sure. I think a history teacher once told me that but that was years ago and quite frankly I don't remember, so I don wanna give ya false ideas, but I'm pretty sure it's something like that. ::shrugs:: Oh well.