Race Through Time:
Night On The River
Rosetta nearly tilted her head over the ship's hull until Tristan stopped her.
"I doubt you want your vomit to turn the river's holy water into unholy ones," he said as he handed a small basin to the child. A grimace appeared on his face when he saw how much came out of her stomach. "You've never been on a boat, have you?"
"Never," groaned Rosetta. She grabbed a nearby towel and began wiping her mouth. "And I'm never going to put another foot on a boat once I go back to Storybrooke."
Dwight, Maurice, and Aaron had to have the splendid idea of traveling out of the Eastern Highlands and to the shrine of Canterbury by using the river, which as a bonus would protect them from any possible attack from goblins. As much as Rosetta was fascinated with Dwight's skills into turning all their carts into one big boat capable of carrying the pilgrims, the sheep, the mules, and the equipment , and moving at ease on the river, she still hated the fact that she might have to spend the rest of her journey on a boat. Her incapability of swimming was enough, thank you very much.
She held onto her blanket, shivering and sneezing. The river might have been holy, but they didn't prevent her from catching a cold.
"Drink some water," Tristan said as he placed a canteen over Rosetta's lips. The little girl couldn't take it much longer: she grabbed the canteen and began drinking large sips of water, ignoring how painfully they went down her throat.
"Stop it or you'll get a tummy ache!" Tristan scolded her. He took the canteen away from her and placed it next to him.
"Sorry," Rosetta said sheepishly. Her eyes then watched Tristan has he grabbed the basin full of vomit and began pouring some sort of yellowish liquid from a bottle into the basin. "Uh...what are you doing?"
"Making skin ointment," the Batrishan shrugged.
Rosetta felt like her stomach was going to get sick. "You can't be serious!"
"People back in Camberley use vomit in order to produce homemade skin ointment." Tristan looked offended. "You'd be surprised how much nutrients can be found in leftovers that you spit out of your stomach and how much homemade skin ointment can cost in the market at Camberley."
"Sorry." Rosetta bowed her head in shame. "I'm still guilty of my previous actions."
"You mean the jumping in a river to save us from a bunch of goblins or the fact that you know about the race through time?"
"Everything! This is what I get for being a demigoddess with advanced foreshadowing powers! You get kidnapped, your life on the line, treated like a frail creature who needs protection all the time, visions that bother you almost every single minute, and gods who put the weight of history on your shoulders. I'm only eight and I make messes out of everything!" Tears began rolling down her cheeks.
"There, there," Tristan said soothingly as he pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and began wiping the tears from Rosetta's cheeks.
"Is everything all right back there?" Dwight called from his position of maintaining the boat's tiller. Along with Tristan and Rosetta, he was the only one awake on the boat: everyone else had fallen asleep.
"Don't worry, Dwight!" Tristan called out. He and Rosetta were sitting by the boat's hull while stars began to reflect on the river. It was rather ironic: the river was brown colored by day, and yet by night it reflected the sky the same way a mirror perfectly reflected its viewer.
Rosetta sneezed into Tristan's handkerchief while the latter was busy stirring the vomit with a wooden spoon. "What was that stuff you poured into my vomit just before I had my tantrum?" she asked him.
"Bourbon. The alcohol helps destroy any unwanted bacteria," Tristan explained. "Right now I'm just stirring it a bit before letting it sit for five to ten minutes. Usually we put it near an open window, but tonight's breeze should work."
The more he explained, the more Rosetta forgot about her disgust and wanted to now more. "How old were you when you learned to make skin ointment like that?"
"You'd be surprised, but Dwight actually taught it to me when I was a kid," Tristan chuckled.
"Wait, you knew Dwight since you were kids?" Rosetta quickly glanced at the Tapiser, who was pulling the tiller towards the right in order to keep the boat in the proper direction.
"No, I knew Dwight since I was a kid. Dwight's eleven years older than me."
"Aren't you like 23?"
"Lucky guess. Anyway, like I told you and the others, Camberley is known for welcoming humans and nonhumans alike, and like the other children of the Batrishan survivors, I grew up working in the royal palace, and since my father was a knight, I served him as his squire.
"When I was ten, there came the warm season along with a bad spread of chicken pox. Of course, the pox could easily be cured by skin ointment, so when my father and a couple of the other knights got infected by the pox, I went to go buy some at the market in Camberley.
"The only problem was that with many people infected by the pox, many others tried to get skin ointment to cure them. The market was thus crowded with people pushing one another in order to reach the stands selling the skin ointment. I had a hard time moving through the mobs of customers storming like army ants that I fell into the dirt, leaving me as a possible victim of trampling.
"That's when Dwight stepped in. Back then, he had recently moved to Camberley and began running his small, yet productive tapestry shop. He saw me falling from his shop's window, rushed outside, and pulled me inside. He chided me at first, asking me what on earth was a young child like myself doing out there in a mob that could have nearly killed me. I told him that my father, along with other knights, needed skin ointment to cure their pox, and surprisingly, Dwight took me to his kitchen and showed me how to make the ointment using pig's vomit. I brought the ointment back to the castle and a few days later, my father and the others were cured."
"So that's how you met Dwight," Rosetta concluded. "Who knew that vomit could bring friends together?"
Tristan chuckled at her joke. "Yes, vomit brought us together. And ever since then, I kept visiting Dwight during my spare time. He's like a big brother to me."
Rosetta nodded. Her hands pulled her blanket closer to her skin in order to gain more warmth while the ship continued to go further down the river. The Eastern Highlands seemed to become less vast with plains and signs of trees were appearing around every ten minute. Hopefully, the pilgrims and Rosetta would find a forest by dawn.
"So...why are you going to the shrine of Canterbury, Tristan?" Rosetta cut off the silence. "What's your individual problem?" Tristan had been filling a jar with the now smooth, lime-colored skin ointment when Rosetta asked the question. He then went on to answer her question once he had corked the bottle shut and put it inside a black leather satchel he kept by his side.
"Remember what I said earlier today about the nomadic Batrishans hearing a revenge-promising prophecy and about the race through time when you mentioned it?" he asked.
"I do...Are you saying they're the same?" Rosetta asked.
"They're related, but not the same. Matter of fact, the two prophecies are so confusing that none of my fellow surviving Batrishans have ever found which one was the most accurate."
"What do you mean?"
"Well like I said previously, the nomadic Batrishans received a revenge-seeking prophecy before leaving the Batrishan Sanctuary for good. The prophecy came from Ashiva..."
"The almighty four-armed god?"
"You've heard about him?"
"Partially from visions and because Fidget keeps cursing with his name."
"Oh, right. Your Batrishan friend from Storybrooke." Tristan looked uneasy at the mention of Fidget. "Anyway, Ashiva prophesized to the nomadic Batrishans about the Evil One being punished for his sacrilegious by facing his doom at the hands of the thing he wrongly created from one of Ashiva's followers."
"The child he got from raping Svjetla. You're saying that Ashiva predicted that in order to avenge the Batrishans killed in the genocide, the Evil One must be killed through patricide?"
"Precisely. However, the race through time was a prophecy that existed long before the first Batrishan put his foot on the ground and around the days where the Evil One was 'punished' by the allied gods for some sort of crime. The prophecy was that, in order to avenge himself on those who wronged him and the universe, the Evil One would bring to life a child on the day an annular eclipse bringing unimaginable darkness would arrive, and the next time that the eclipse returns, the child would grant the Evil One access to an infinite power of darkness that would make him rule the universe. And the thing that doesn't make sense is that the annular eclipse was said to return 300 years after its last appearance. The Evil One's child might be dead by now...unless of course, he or she managed to live for almost 300 years."
He gave a glare at Rosetta. She didn't need to ask, for she got the message
Tristan suspected Fidget of being the Evil One's child and the said destroyer of the world.