Disclaimer: The concepts and ideas relating to the world of Velgarth, such as Heralds, Companions, Tayledras, the Haighli Empire, the city of White Gryphon, The Pelagirs and the kingdoms of Valdemar, Karse et al are the sole property of the author Mercedes Lackey. I'm not her, I'm me and as such it follows, that I'm just loosing control of my imagination. Again.
Dancing Winds.
"Thisss," I wave one fore claw around myself to illustrate my point, "isss why the wilderrnesss iisss called ssuch." The scenery in question ignores me totally and continues practicing perfecting the arts of being gloomy and impenetrable.
"Hmmm…" Fallingstar isn't paying the blindest bit of attention to me; as is evidenced by the fact that everything I have said for the past quarter mark has been met with a non-committal grunt. I suppose he has an excuse— what with trying to get our campfire going and all— but still! I'm a gryphon; we can't be ousted out of the limelight by a pile of twigs!
I shift myself slightly, settling my weight more evenly on my haunches, before staring back out beyond our camp perimeter at the gloomy forest beyond. I've already eaten— whilst Fallingstar was setting up the two-person tent that is currently acting as our home I went hunting and managed to bag one of the leaping-deer that the Haighli call 'gazelles'. The Scoutmaster, a Haighli man called Sherlomis, had always taught us that gazelles rarely entered the forests, and if they did it was generally at the edges only. I guess the gazelle I found discovered why you don't go into the forest.
A crackling sound and the smell of wood smoke brings my attention back to Fallingstar and the campfire, in time to see him coaxing it into feeding off larger twigs and then branches, until it is finally burning merrily and throwing out a circle of light and heat. Once he is sure it is going, my partner scout skewers himself thin strips of the gazelle steak that I saved for him and begins to cook them over the fire.
Juice drips from the meat into the fire, causing it to spit and hiss and I shuffle backwards slightly. As nice as the warmth from the fire is, feathers are flammable and turning up back at White Gryphon little more than a week after leaving it with a distinct 'crispy' theme is not on this gryphon's list of things to do… besides, we have other problems at the moment.
"What were you saying before Halli?" Fallingstar looks over the fire to me, the red and orange glow catching highlights on his dark brown hair.
"Ohhh… paying attenssstion to me now?" I tease him good naturedly, gaping my charcoal coloured beak slightly in a grin.
In keeping with our long tradition of good-natured bickering that makes up a good part of our friendship, Fallingstar claps one hand to his chest and poses dramatically. "As if I could ever ignore a gryphon so lovely and graceful as you Halliran, especially since you caught my dinner for me!"
"Ass it ssshould be." I draw myself upwards and preen briefly. "Ssso, oh masssterrr flatterrrerr, arrre we wherrre yourrr mapsss ssay we ssshould be?"
"Pass me the bag, silly bird, and I'll tell you." The Kaled'a'in scout indicates the canvas and leather pack next to me serenely and continues to chew on his gazelle meat skewer.
"Tchh." I rummage in the pack, fumbling the ties slightly with my talons before managing to extract the waterproof and rigid tube that holds the maps for our expedition. A quick flick of my beak removes the stopper from one end and I carefully extract the rolled wax treated vellum with one gentle claw. Whilst not being a full gryfalcon, I am possessed of far more hand like fore claws than a truly hawk-type gryphon, as well as having more pointed wings than some of my brethren.
The wonders of evolution in White Gryphon, I guess.
"You have grrreasssy fingerrss," I admonish my partner soundly before stepping around the campfire and settling next to Fallingstar, spreading the relevant map out on a dry patch of ground, "you know what Dassva would ssay about fingerrr marks on one of the mapsss." That last turns into a trilling chuckle as I eye Fallingstar sideways.
He responds by groaning and flinging the wooden skewer, now empty, into the campfire. "Gods," he rolls his eyes expressively, "don't remind me! One telling off courtesy of Dasva about equipment maintenance was more than enough!"
The pair of us fall into silence as we glumly survey the inked and waxed map lying in front of us. My tail flicks restlessly as I survey the surrounding areas as Fallingstar uses his fingers to roughly measure off distances.
"How far do you think that wind storm took us?" He finally asks me, turning dark eyes to look at me.
I snort and shrug. "I don't know anything exscept that it blussterred uss norrth." I admit slowly.
"Hmm," he looks back down at the map and frowns.
You see; we are a pair of Silvers with a problem. We were supposed to be relieving the pair of scouts at the northern Outpost eleven, and we were in fact on our way there when a completely unexpected and vicious storm blew up and proceeded to tumble myself and the carry-basket holding Fallingstar and all our supplies about most of the sky for a fair part of the rest of the day. It was all this poor gryphon could do to tell up from down and I damn near wrenched my wings off trying to keep the pair of us alive.
All far too much excitement to be having with really.
When the storm finally blew itself out, I found myself sort of flying low over a thick forest that resembled the Great Forests around White Gryphon, but much more northern seeming. That was all I managed to notice, apart from this stream-bordered clearing that we are now camped in which I messily landed in and then pretty much collapsed for a while.
When I came around, it was to find Fallingstar just returning to that land of the living, half hanging out of the carry basket. The pair of us managed to produce a sketchy shelter for the first night and simply slept. Luckily, this wilderness that we've ended up in doesn't seem to share our home wilderness' trait of chucking it down with rain every day so we didn't up as a pair of drowned rats.
Which brings us to this morning, when I decided to go out hunting and left Fallingstar to partly set up a proper camp.
I sigh fitfully and stare upwards at the strange tree canopy far above, pupils contracting as the sun glitters between the leaves. "I sshall trrry the telesson." I announce finally, gaining another distracted mumble from He Who Grunts who is still pouring over his maps. Now he has gained a pair of compasses and is measuring more distances off. If you haven't gathered yet; Fallingstar is a bit of a geographically minded person and loves his maps.
I get to my feet and nudge the tent flap aside to wander inside, the camouflaged canvas around me is patterned with a jigsaw of sunlight and shade, which I mainly ignore as I fix my attention on the current bane of my existence. The bane of my existence apart from unexpected storms, that is.
We actually have three telesons— two are the blackened copper headsets that all Silvers use to boost Mindspeech between scout partners when one has the Gift. One is mine, gryphon sized and currently hanging from one of the stiff rope crossbars that forms the roof of the tent, and Fallingstar's smaller one is poking out of the top of one of his travel packs. The third is a smallish box made of dark matte polished wood which has a large polished crystal nested in it, surrounded by patterned strips of beaten copper and bronze. The detachable view-lens that allows non-Mindspeakers to use vocal speech if they wish. This is our long-distance teleson— the one used to communicate with other scouts or with White Gryphon itself. It is also broken.
I fix another sour glare at the damnable pile of junk and rumble my disapproval as I poke it with one fore claw. Being an approximately Master-class mage means that I can charge and drain telesons, but I can't make them. Not long-distance ones at any rate; and complete re-making is what this one needs.
Ancestors throw it all in the sea! My tail lashes from side to side as I sit down and it catches in the waxed cloth and bedding that forms the floor of our temporary home. It looks like we're on our own.
"I think I know where we are." Fallingstar's voice floats through the parted tent flaps and I prick up my dark coloured ear tufts. "It looks as if we've been blown up along the same route that Treyvan and Hydona were going to take."
"What?!" I gape my beak open and stare at the far wall of the tent in shock. Treyvan and Hydona are both gryphons and experienced Silvers— they left White Gryphon almost a year ago after the Star-Eyed made herself rather… clear… to several of the city's shamans. Essentially, she told us that it was time to head back up into the lands we had thought destroyed by the Cataclysm and go say zhaai hileeva to our cousins.
The arguments about that particular revelation— that we weren't the only Kaled'a'in… or rather we were but there were these folks called the Tayledras and the Shin'a'in who looked remarkably like our humans and had a pretty similar pair of languages and so on— kicked up an argument that could probably be heard all the way down in Khimbata.
As a result, Treyvan and Hydona offered to be a sort of advance scouting party; they would go and make contact with some of these cousins and sound them out, so to speak. Because of the great distance they travelled, reports back from them were sketchy and infrequent but, as a Clan, we managed to find out that the Tayledras were the most similar to us— they even had a prevalence of the long-lost Bondbirds, and the Shin'a'in seemed to have formed from the Kaled'a'in Clans who were most involved with the Changed horses— and they set themselves up in residence near to a Tayledras Clan home on the edge of the crater that had once been the Kaled'a'in lands.
Lots of excitement really.
And now we appear to be in a similar position, albeit very accidentally. Oh joy. The thought flits across my mind as Fallingstar continues chattering on about local foliage and such forth. I guess I'm glad now that I paid attention in our languages classes… Oh, yes, the Star-Eyed also saw fit to Gift a few of the Shamans with a basic understanding of the Shin'a'in and Tayledras tongues— they have drifted from they original Kaled'a'in base in distinct and interesting fashions. There is still enough similarity that a Tayledras or a Shin'a'in could make out the general gist of what someone from k'Leshya was saying.
I don't know about Fallingstar, however I certainly feel more comfortable knowing that I can shout "Don't shoot!" and be reliably understood, but then I'm funny about things like that. Fallingstar has his bits of rock and his maps and I have my pathological dislike of being a target.
Oh, and a newfound dislike of all things cloudy, rainy and full of entirely too much wind.
I clack my beak slightly as I survey the long distance teleson again in the unformed and vague hope that maybe it will magically fix itself if I stare at it long enough. Not happening.
Humbug.
Suddenly I become aware that Fallingstar's background mumble about trees and rocks has ground to an unceremonious halt and outside the tent is ominously quiet. A cold feeling settles quickly in my belly and crop and I tense and freeze before reaching out a thin, thin tendril of Mindspeech to my fellow Silver.
:?:
Fallingstar acknowledge me. :Halli— I think we can safely say that we're very far north.:
:Why?: I shoot back worriedly, vision of marauding bandits and long lost makaar dancing across my imagination.
Fallingstar's voice sounding from outside the tent answer my question indirectly: "Zhaai hileeva," as do my sharp sense which indicate that there are two humans outside… and one smells of raptor musk and the forest.
I think the Tayledras have found us then.
~~~~~
Yes, 'tis I! She who procrastinates frequently~! So, something new from me, and look, no Companions and practically no angst… what a rarity *laughs* ^-^ This is just an introduction type to set up the storyline… this was originally going to be a one-shot, but Halli had different ideas… Apologies for the non-updating of Grass is Greener, or Can't Catch Me, but I'm afraid that this particular writer couldn't concentrate on one project if the fate of the world depended on it… eheh… ^-^