It is hard for Cainneach to witness the old man receive the confession from Dochartaigh, though the wayward youth seemed properly contrite. The draining sorrow of losing a child draped itself over Cainneach's mind, taking him back to the day in the foothills of the Pagans where he realized or accepted that his parents were almost certainly gone forever. Then jumping forward to the day that Drusilla died right in front of him ... Properly numb, the forester takes some comfort in the mindless ceremony of preparing the camp site and dinner, helping where he can to take his mind off those haunting recollections, but keeping out of any conversation. Occasionally his gaze drifts to where Loch is bound, apart from the civilized company. Not a hint of penitence in that one, nor any particular fear of what Meadh would do to him come nightfall. Cainneach could only imagine what confluence of inheritance and experience had conspired to render such a reprehensible individual ... It was good that the father knew, had some closure from his daughter, though it was hard to imagine how that meeting went. Would she still visit her dear pa once her vengeance was complete or would her soul be forced to cross over? And what of Dochartaigh? Was his remorse sufficient to avoid an icy demise? Could she leave him to spread their cautionary tale instead of finishing him off? Cainneach mindlessly consumes the stew that Ori prepares, petting Salt occasionally and stealing quick, self-conscious glances at Famh. She was a wonder, so strong, yet feeling so much and so strongly. Did she look different? How could she? It must be the fading light, the flickering of the flames. Thatch and Ori spoke so well to the lads, with wisdom and conviction that the forester hoped to find some day. Even Almeric impressed along an artful line of force and restraint. Vardi only stewed, as though this femicide affected her deeply, even more quiet that Cainneach had been. Hopefully he can shake this dour affect, maybe come the morn, when we will see what is to come of Loch. When it is time to turn in, Cainneach simply sits with Almeric on the watch, unable to sleep easily.
Vardi seethes under the surface of an indifferent guard's blank expression. She keeps her tongue still, and her hands flat as the whole of the sorry tale is told between blows and curses, and simply watches as an unsettling revelation is made by Morag's father after the contrite lad, Dochartaigh's account to him. There is murder in her heart, duty in her head, and justice between them both preaching patience in an increasingly nervous tone.
...Bloody idiots, all four o'them. But as fer tha' damn lad Loch? There be something twisted about him...the Lyften woman thinks darkly, pondering Loch's furious depth of apparent hatred of anything woman-shaped.
...Who turned tha screw on tha' lad, or did he twist himself out'o'true, nayone ta blame fer it but himself? she silently asks herself, then sighs quietly, knowing whatever the reason, the consequences of that twisting are already too dear to allow it free reign again.
Vardi puts her qualms aside and accepts that whatever geas of Lord, People and Land has dragged her forth from castle's walls to this matter and these outlandish yet solidly good-hearted folk must be answered for, feud settled, bloodprice paid or unquiet lie the dead and the living as well.
So she does what she can, until what else should be done becomes clearer to her, unsure that all is as simple as it seems to be on the surface, but trusts in Ser Almeric and his gathered champion's wide experience in wyrd goings on to offer guidance past the hazards unseen.
The Joturnkin murmurs to an apparently aloof Skoggi on her shoulder "I cannae turn away fra this quandry, aye, but I cannae fathom it's roots either. Whatever tha' outcome, I will do what I can ta see justice fairly done though, rough and ready as tha' may be..."as she sits huddled in her cloak, cold not from the winter's chill, but by the evil that lads do in the name of a bit of fun.
Dochartaigh assisted Ori numbly with the stew and supper passed in mostly silence, as the group bedded down for the night the younger lad kipped in next to Ori, Loch leaned back against the inner wall of the broch and Almeric and Cainneach stood watch.......the night was chill and mist hung over the hills but nothing was seen by either man during their vigil....
Vardi and Ori settle in for their watch with Dochartaigh sandwiched awkwardly between them, the chill was really setting in and their breath misted in front of them as they sat vigil.
A few hours in there was a quiet wet sound of water droplets falling into water and a pale wan hand appeared gripping the edge of the interior well, then a sodden mop of sable hair above glittering green eyes in a face as pale as moonlight. She crouched on the edge of the well, she had obviously noted Vardi and Ori but her eyes flickered constantly between Dochartaigh and Loch.
Dochartaigh let out a whispered shriek and tucked himself further between Ori and Vardi......
Loch simply stared into the middle distance.......
Ori will put a big hand on Vardi trying to tell her to relax and stand down for a moment. He rises and tells Dochartaigh quietly "stand up lad, if it's time to face judgment, face it on your feet. " He starts moving towards her, hands out trying to look as non threatening as he can. As he walks towards her he purposely walks away from his club, still unarmored (just his mask). He talks quietly trying not to disturb the others but such she can hear him. "We don't want to fight. Dochartaigh here confessed the crimes committed to you to your father, and he said that you had told him already. Can we talk, before your revenge?"
The dead woman cocked her head slowly to the left as Ori spoke, he didn't know if perhaps his greying temples or soft tone reminded her of da or if it was something else entirely but she remained motionless, dripping icy water onto the stones, regarding him with her flat black eyes as Dochartaigh trembled beside him.
Not sure how to take her lack of response, Ori figured she was not being violent was a sign that she could be reasoned with. "Dochartaigh here explained what happened that day, to us and your father. I feel like your side of the story must align with how he explained it because your father said he already knew since you told him. So I believe what he had to say. What the group of them did to you justifies you drive for vengeance against them, him as much as the others" nodding his head towards Loch. " Dochartaigh here needs to pay for his part of the crimes, but he said it those final moments you reached out toward him for help, and he froze. He said his crime was the worst towards you for that moment of inaction. He shouldn't have been a part of what they did to you, and he shall pay for those actions, but I think you saw the same young kid I do, regretting not doing the right thing in that moment and it haunts him to this day and the rest of his days. I'd stake my life that he wouldn't make the same mistake again. Now I know you want vengeance, and I don't blame you one bit but I also don't believe vengeance will set you free from what you have become. I'm not a spiritual man and I don't claim to have any answers for you, but I believe the only way your spirit can be at peace is to forgive those who could prove worthy of your forgiveness. Hate is powerful and harder to let go of then any form of vengeance. I know, I've made mistakes I can't undo either and I carry both the burden of regret and of hatred. So I'm asking you to do what I am not strong enough too, take you frustration on the ones who really deserve it, and to take pity and understanding to one who still savable. Hatred will never let you rest in peace. " Ori had heard a speach similar to this before, though much more elegantly put. He tried to use the words and phrases as they were told of him, though the words didn't work last time he now understands them better.
Meabh stared at Ori for some moments her face a blank slate and eyes empty voids of darkness.....
Then she stepped down off the edge of the well and placed her bare pale feet carefully on the floor and stood motionless for a few more moments before suddenly she was mere inches away from Oris face.....
He could feel the cold chill seeping into his bones from her mere presence.
She moved slowly across to focus on Dochartaigh, who was pale as a sheet and almost vibrating with fear.
Her hand reached out to hover over his heart but stopped as her head cocked again to regard Ori......
"......forgive...."
Again, in a burst of inhuman speed she was gone from Oris sight......until he turned his head to look at Loch.....
The young mans sneer was, for once, not present....instead he gasped like a landed fish....Meabh stood against him, cradling the side of his face in one frozen hand......the other was within his chest slowly turning his lungs to ice.
She turned to regard Ori again.
" .....forgive...."
Then with a final strangled scream and a flash of sodden white dress both Meabh and Loch were gone in a rush of frigid air and the sound of something heavy landing in the well water...
Ori stands there arms still outstretched to the sides as Meabh moves in close to him. He could feel the cold radiating off her so much he could see his own, surprisingly, steady breaths. Frost started to form on his chest and pants from the cold, but Ori stood firm. After hearing the single word that came from Meabh, A smile crosses Oris face and memories flood his mind of the time he had that similar, but much more elegant speech was told to him so many years ago. His arms slowly fall back to his sides as Meabh seemingly dashed away. He didn't need to look over to know where she was headed and what she was planning to do, but he did anyway. It was over. Ori was hoping for a bit more assurance that forgiveness would settle Meabh's spirit or soul, whatever it was that was still of the old Meabh in there, to be able to rest and not need to disturb the living any further.
The smile from Ori's face disappears as the memories in his head turn from the hopeful ones that he doesn't allow himself to revisit very often to the one he tells himself everyday. He turns towards. Dochartaigh, without actually changing size he when from trying to seem docile towards Meabh to looming towards Dochartaigh. "You are not off the hook for your crimes just because she was able to find forgiveness. You have received what better have not, a second chance. A second chance to atone for your mistakes and make something of yourself love one might actually be proud of. You do not deserve this, but you WILL earn it. Someday, if you make it that long, you will have an opportunity to pass this privilege to another and only when you find peace in yourself will you be able to do so. Dochartaigh is dead, you failed living up to using birth name given to ya. Do you have a nickname that others have given you? That will be your only name you go by hense forth. Take this gold and and these hand axes. Return to Meabh father tell him of what happen here, how she forgave you. Buy the bull with the gold and offer to work for him for nothing but room and board to help his family survive without Meabh until he either releases you of your service or I come for you. You watch over that bull. Am I clear? Leave now with what little sleep and food you got. If you do not live up to her forgiveness, well I will come looking for you one way or another, understood?" With every word you can see Ori's breath like he was still in the cold air from Meabh, the frost still showing on his skin and clothes. Suddenly remembering Vardi is watching all of this, he looks over to her and back to the youth in front of him. "Best go now before she changes my mind."
Meanwhile, in the camp below, Famh lies in an uneasy dream. She sees herself striding down a narrow dirt path somewhere among the folded dells and slopes that fill northern Albion wherever the mighty Pagan Mountains spread their cloak of foothills out towards the Erewhon Madhir coast on the east or towards her own western Mergeld shore. A misty sun is rising above the higher slopes behind her, outlining every nearby knoll and pebble with its own crisp shadow. Her face is calm, but alert; and she holds Snatha'd drawn in her left hand. The dagger's form holds steady as she walks, though it is a form she has only seen with her waking eyes in the flickering moments that pass as it is transforming from needle to blade. Salt is walking by her side, at first, with his noble head uplifted and his eyes filled with the same bright interest he always shows when a pleasure jaunt or serious hunt was afoot with either his master or his master's rather peculiar but kind-scented mate. Cainneach himself she does not see, nor any of the others; but she knows he is in the nearest brae that the sun rises above, and that some of the mist under the great-limbed lone oak tree is actually the smoke from a fire he'd just new kindled. But then, like the often-vexing and never-predictable Thulish mist, her dream swirls and changes.
For a moment she sees herself as she was a bare season and a half - and so many lifetimes and transformations - ago: standing a moment that last day on her long road down from the Shriven Hills, and before that her far too often self-made path wending between the Pagans and Fenring Forest with no idea that her future heart's beloved had lived within the mazy pathways of the latter's trees until just a few months before. That last day of her hunted, fugitive misery of aching loneliness before reaching Igham where she was to meet first kindness and then companionship and then true love sic lak whit the auld tales tell of. She'd not known that morning so long ago that the triple dream she'd just woken from was of Cainneach in one of the most anguished moments of his life, still less that she was about to meet the man himself and win acceptance in the retinue where they'd come to love each other. But she recalled vividly now with the memory of dream that it HAD almost seemed as if she could see a ghostly image flickering in and out of perception as she walked ... now ahead of her on the road, now behind ... and that her girlish heart had reflected at once what a handsome fellow he was for a shade from across the veil of Faerie, and that it wouldn't be a bad thing if her dream WAS a calling of geasa and the man of flesh turned out to be only half so easy on the e'en. Also that his countenance looked neither terrifying nor majestic as she saw him then, though she'd felt that both were within that face ready to their master's call should the occasion require. But even though she'd known nothing yet of the loss he'd just sustained, her instinctive kindness had marked at once the deep sorrow that welled up in that face to overspread all the rest. The Famh of today smiles happily in her sleep as the warm thought wells up that his face is much more joyful today as a general thing ... except when the uglinesses of present life call forth some echo of darkness from the past. She stirs uneasily as she herself is reminded of the retinue's current less-than-pleasant commission; but as no sound from the reckoning taking place in the broch above is loud enough to wake her, she only hovers a moment between sleep and consciousness before her dream billows up about her once more.
She is back in the scene she dreamt at first; she still has Snatha'd drawn but somehow frozen between needle and dagger form; and the sun is still rising over her right shoulder. But Salt is gone; and there is no sense in her mind that Cainneach or any of the retinue are making camp in the hollow behind her. Rather, she is striding to meet them at some unknown but deeply familiar place that she had always been able to reach but could only actually come to when the wounds in her soul had been fully healed and her brightest dreams were within her grasp. Her beloved and his faithful deerhound,, she knows, had helped her on the journey as far as they could; and now have gone ahead with the rest of their dear friends to prepare the encampment where they plan to celebrate her spirit's full rebirth. (Or ... um, since she was baptizit byBrither Cadfael, perhaps that should be re-rebirth. Or, as she's had some dreams of a faerie ancestress whose blood micht run in her mother's line and be part of the reason her father chose her, re-re-re ... Some other things about herself are different as she walks down the road to a lower hummocky river-brae between higher but less frequent downs. But these are indistinct and fade in and out of the background mist like the strange lizard that tales say lives i' the Principalities of the Crusades, wha wears a kilt o' mair colours than the ane Joseph haed? Anyhou, Famh's ain appearance fades hither and yon betwixt the mien she bore in the first part of her dream, the familiar countenance and cut of garb she's finally settlit doon on as pleasing her dear ane and herself alike the best; and a reflection very like the one that now gazes out of her looking glass whenever the retinue visits a place where their quarters are fine enough to have one, but with some ... changes.
A thrill goes to her heart as she recognizes the leather traveling garb and simply patterned silver-headed staff of a junior ollamh still upon her first journeyings; these are traditionally held to be all-important to the spiritual growth of the new filidh and symbolically represent visits paid to the four great cities of Faerie at the four geographic corners of Thuland ... the west naturally being superseded by the High King's palace in far-off Erewhon in the predominantly Madhir Thulish bardic order Famh knows. An idle curiosity drifts across her mind for a moment as to what places the skalds of Vardi's home might visit in their apprenticeship, and whether they too correspond to the cardinal directions, as seems likely given the usefulness of the mnemonic. But before she can note what else might be different, the scene blinks again. She is farther down the road in the same high rolling foothill country, striding like one who has traveled far and has yet far to go. Holding Snatha'd drawn in her right hand, now fully transformed into its familiar dearg form, she steps forward rhythmically with the support on her left of a shoulder-height walking staff topped with a blade. But the blade is not her sgeain dubh, and it is not held on by the usual rough lashings of hempen cord or tanned feorag skin. The staff ends in a curved, flowing metal cap that looks as if the simple silver head of the other had flowed together and lengthened at the top even as it hardened into a silvery-bright steel. And pointed. And sharpened. Wickedly sharpened. Her simple, bent-limb wooden walking staff was topped by a wicked-looking blade that looked like the get of a mating between a randy glaive and the wanton poleaxe that had the mixed fortune to be bedded next him in the arms rack one eventful nicht ...
(OOC: there may just possibly be a reason that Famh keeps mentioning feorags ';-$-D ... LOL)
Famh suddenly jerks back to full consciousness at this point as a cry tears the night breeze asunder like ripping vellum. It sounds something like the foxes' scream she came to know as a nightly sign that all is actually well" when she was journeying between the Pagans and Fenring, and for a moment she cannot recall where she is, or whether the past or the present is the world that is real while the other is but a dream shadow. As she sorts this out in her mind, she slowly realizes that the scream is far more likely to come from one of the justice-haunted lads than from any fox .... and then she loses no more time. The Thulish earasaid is essentially an upgraded plaid; and she has gone to sleep this night with hers wrapped closely about her and belted for warmth. With only a brief pause to shake Cainneach awake and gather the most crucial of her gear ... staff, dearg, Cailleach's bag, and the pouches that hold Snatha'd and her sling ... she is on her feet and moving quietly upslope towards the broch where she knows Ori and Vardi are keeping watch. As she nears the shadow of the ruined walls, she whispers quietly, "Whit's happenin i' thare? Dae ye neit any help?"
===***----===
Stealth 12 (does she draw the attention of some, all, or none of the parties involved before she whispers?)
Perception 11 (how well does she notice what actually is going on?)
*(OOP: literally. I live in the small city of Burlington Vermont, and while I was recovering from my hip replacement surgery a few years before the COVID pandemic I stayed with my mom in her condo on the outskirts because she had a walk-in tub and shower. It was a beautiful, wooded area a mile or two off Lake Champlain in the Winooski River valley and I heard foxes scream several times. I literally thought at first that the scream was a woman being murdered. Luckily a neighbor had been there long enough to have heard the noise before, and she said that was the cry of the fox kits when their mother leaves them a while to go hunting and they get hungry. But it also means that no predators large enough to threaten a fox kit are nearby, or the mother fox would hush her brood as soon as she could get back to the den)
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
"Before wha changes her ... och!"
Famh stops short as she sees the two impressive figures of Ori and Vardi standing in the shadows of the broch; and notes how watchfully the big Lyftenwoman glances up as she approaches. For a moment ... being Famh ... she naturally supposes that the tender warmth and bliss she shares with Cainneach ... and which she has secretly been wishing they had another couple in the retinue to share and gossip about it with ... is finally blossoming between the two companions she'd bet on with herself as being the most likely candidates.
It takes her startled faculties a moment to get beyond this point; and a slight blush rises on her face as she looks about in confusion, trying to gauge how delicate a moment she may have interrupted (Perception 2 ... to hopefully spot whit's actually gaein' on round aboot here ... )
The hint of a blush that had sprung into Famh's cheeks becomes full blown as she absolutely fails to spot Dochartaigh trying to come out of his terror enough to run, the frost on the edge of the ruined well or the conspicuous absence of Loch. Instead, she is now certain she has walked in on the blossoming of new love between Sergeant Ori and the Kingswoman who has grown from being the retinue's guide on the journey north to being a friend and companion equal to any of the rest. So great is her misperception that for the moment she even goes back to thinking the strangled scream which woke her must have been some wild creature in the distance.
Her confusion lasts just long enough for her to realize that whatever may have been going on, she's already interrupted it beyond recall without intending the least harm. Then her happiness for the joy she erroneously supposes has come to these two friends rises above all else and she grins at Vardi with happy encouragement. "Go for it, hen! What's fur ye'll no go by ye! He's a braw lad, sae gie it a bash laldly, lassie!"
It is hard for Cainneach to witness the old man receive the confession from Dochartaigh, though the wayward youth seemed properly contrite. The draining sorrow of losing a child draped itself over Cainneach's mind, taking him back to the day in the foothills of the Pagans where he realized or accepted that his parents were almost certainly gone forever. Then jumping forward to the day that Drusilla died right in front of him ... Properly numb, the forester takes some comfort in the mindless ceremony of preparing the camp site and dinner, helping where he can to take his mind off those haunting recollections, but keeping out of any conversation. Occasionally his gaze drifts to where Loch is bound, apart from the civilized company. Not a hint of penitence in that one, nor any particular fear of what Meadh would do to him come nightfall. Cainneach could only imagine what confluence of inheritance and experience had conspired to render such a reprehensible individual ... It was good that the father knew, had some closure from his daughter, though it was hard to imagine how that meeting went. Would she still visit her dear pa once her vengeance was complete or would her soul be forced to cross over? And what of Dochartaigh? Was his remorse sufficient to avoid an icy demise? Could she leave him to spread their cautionary tale instead of finishing him off? Cainneach mindlessly consumes the stew that Ori prepares, petting Salt occasionally and stealing quick, self-conscious glances at Famh. She was a wonder, so strong, yet feeling so much and so strongly. Did she look different? How could she? It must be the fading light, the flickering of the flames. Thatch and Ori spoke so well to the lads, with wisdom and conviction that the forester hoped to find some day. Even Almeric impressed along an artful line of force and restraint. Vardi only stewed, as though this femicide affected her deeply, even more quiet that Cainneach had been. Hopefully he can shake this dour affect, maybe come the morn, when we will see what is to come of Loch. When it is time to turn in, Cainneach simply sits with Almeric on the watch, unable to sleep easily.
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Vardi seethes under the surface of an indifferent guard's blank expression. She keeps her tongue still, and her hands flat as the whole of the sorry tale is told between blows and curses, and simply watches as an unsettling revelation is made by Morag's father after the contrite lad, Dochartaigh's account to him. There is murder in her heart, duty in her head, and justice between them both preaching patience in an increasingly nervous tone.
...Bloody idiots, all four o'them. But as fer tha' damn lad Loch? There be something twisted about him... the Lyften woman thinks darkly, pondering Loch's furious depth of apparent hatred of anything woman-shaped.
...Who turned tha screw on tha' lad, or did he twist himself out'o'true, nayone ta blame fer it but himself? she silently asks herself, then sighs quietly, knowing whatever the reason, the consequences of that twisting are already too dear to allow it free reign again.
Vardi puts her qualms aside and accepts that whatever geas of Lord, People and Land has dragged her forth from castle's walls to this matter and these outlandish yet solidly good-hearted folk must be answered for, feud settled, bloodprice paid or unquiet lie the dead and the living as well.
So she does what she can, until what else should be done becomes clearer to her, unsure that all is as simple as it seems to be on the surface, but trusts in Ser Almeric and his gathered champion's wide experience in wyrd goings on to offer guidance past the hazards unseen.
The Joturnkin murmurs to an apparently aloof Skoggi on her shoulder "I cannae turn away fra this quandry, aye, but I cannae fathom it's roots either. Whatever tha' outcome, I will do what I can ta see justice fairly done though, rough and ready as tha' may be..." as she sits huddled in her cloak, cold not from the winter's chill, but by the evil that lads do in the name of a bit of fun.
Dochartaigh assisted Ori numbly with the stew and supper passed in mostly silence, as the group bedded down for the night the younger lad kipped in next to Ori, Loch leaned back against the inner wall of the broch and Almeric and Cainneach stood watch.......the night was chill and mist hung over the hills but nothing was seen by either man during their vigil....
( Who is taking 2nd Watch?)
(Ori will, he has a feeling this be the eventful midnight shift and will stir up Dochartaigh to sit with him if no one is on shift with him.)
(Vardi will. Whatever is going on, she'll be there.)
Vardi and Ori settle in for their watch with Dochartaigh sandwiched awkwardly between them, the chill was really setting in and their breath misted in front of them as they sat vigil.
A few hours in there was a quiet wet sound of water droplets falling into water and a pale wan hand appeared gripping the edge of the interior well, then a sodden mop of sable hair above glittering green eyes in a face as pale as moonlight. She crouched on the edge of the well, she had obviously noted Vardi and Ori but her eyes flickered constantly between Dochartaigh and Loch.
Dochartaigh let out a whispered shriek and tucked himself further between Ori and Vardi......
Loch simply stared into the middle distance.......
Ori will put a big hand on Vardi trying to tell her to relax and stand down for a moment. He rises and tells Dochartaigh quietly "stand up lad, if it's time to face judgment, face it on your feet. " He starts moving towards her, hands out trying to look as non threatening as he can. As he walks towards her he purposely walks away from his club, still unarmored (just his mask). He talks quietly trying not to disturb the others but such she can hear him. "We don't want to fight. Dochartaigh here confessed the crimes committed to you to your father, and he said that you had told him already. Can we talk, before your revenge?"
14
The dead woman cocked her head slowly to the left as Ori spoke, he didn't know if perhaps his greying temples or soft tone reminded her of da or if it was something else entirely but she remained motionless, dripping icy water onto the stones, regarding him with her flat black eyes as Dochartaigh trembled beside him.
Not sure how to take her lack of response, Ori figured she was not being violent was a sign that she could be reasoned with. "Dochartaigh here explained what happened that day, to us and your father. I feel like your side of the story must align with how he explained it because your father said he already knew since you told him. So I believe what he had to say. What the group of them did to you justifies you drive for vengeance against them, him as much as the others" nodding his head towards Loch. " Dochartaigh here needs to pay for his part of the crimes, but he said it those final moments you reached out toward him for help, and he froze. He said his crime was the worst towards you for that moment of inaction. He shouldn't have been a part of what they did to you, and he shall pay for those actions, but I think you saw the same young kid I do, regretting not doing the right thing in that moment and it haunts him to this day and the rest of his days. I'd stake my life that he wouldn't make the same mistake again. Now I know you want vengeance, and I don't blame you one bit but I also don't believe vengeance will set you free from what you have become. I'm not a spiritual man and I don't claim to have any answers for you, but I believe the only way your spirit can be at peace is to forgive those who could prove worthy of your forgiveness. Hate is powerful and harder to let go of then any form of vengeance. I know, I've made mistakes I can't undo either and I carry both the burden of regret and of hatred. So I'm asking you to do what I am not strong enough too, take you frustration on the ones who really deserve it, and to take pity and understanding to one who still savable. Hatred will never let you rest in peace. " Ori had heard a speach similar to this before, though much more elegantly put. He tried to use the words and phrases as they were told of him, though the words didn't work last time he now understands them better.
20
Meabh stared at Ori for some moments her face a blank slate and eyes empty voids of darkness.....
Then she stepped down off the edge of the well and placed her bare pale feet carefully on the floor and stood motionless for a few more moments before suddenly she was mere inches away from Oris face.....
He could feel the cold chill seeping into his bones from her mere presence.
She moved slowly across to focus on Dochartaigh, who was pale as a sheet and almost vibrating with fear.
Her hand reached out to hover over his heart but stopped as her head cocked again to regard Ori......
"......forgive...."
Again, in a burst of inhuman speed she was gone from Oris sight......until he turned his head to look at Loch.....
The young mans sneer was, for once, not present....instead he gasped like a landed fish....Meabh stood against him, cradling the side of his face in one frozen hand......the other was within his chest slowly turning his lungs to ice.
She turned to regard Ori again.
" .....forgive...."
Then with a final strangled scream and a flash of sodden white dress both Meabh and Loch were gone in a rush of frigid air and the sound of something heavy landing in the well water...
Ori stands there arms still outstretched to the sides as Meabh moves in close to him. He could feel the cold radiating off her so much he could see his own, surprisingly, steady breaths. Frost started to form on his chest and pants from the cold, but Ori stood firm. After hearing the single word that came from Meabh, A smile crosses Oris face and memories flood his mind of the time he had that similar, but much more elegant speech was told to him so many years ago. His arms slowly fall back to his sides as Meabh seemingly dashed away. He didn't need to look over to know where she was headed and what she was planning to do, but he did anyway. It was over. Ori was hoping for a bit more assurance that forgiveness would settle Meabh's spirit or soul, whatever it was that was still of the old Meabh in there, to be able to rest and not need to disturb the living any further.
The smile from Ori's face disappears as the memories in his head turn from the hopeful ones that he doesn't allow himself to revisit very often to the one he tells himself everyday. He turns towards. Dochartaigh, without actually changing size he when from trying to seem docile towards Meabh to looming towards Dochartaigh. "You are not off the hook for your crimes just because she was able to find forgiveness. You have received what better have not, a second chance. A second chance to atone for your mistakes and make something of yourself love one might actually be proud of. You do not deserve this, but you WILL earn it. Someday, if you make it that long, you will have an opportunity to pass this privilege to another and only when you find peace in yourself will you be able to do so. Dochartaigh is dead, you failed living up to using birth name given to ya. Do you have a nickname that others have given you? That will be your only name you go by hense forth. Take this gold and and these hand axes. Return to Meabh father tell him of what happen here, how she forgave you. Buy the bull with the gold and offer to work for him for nothing but room and board to help his family survive without Meabh until he either releases you of your service or I come for you. You watch over that bull. Am I clear? Leave now with what little sleep and food you got. If you do not live up to her forgiveness, well I will come looking for you one way or another, understood?" With every word you can see Ori's breath like he was still in the cold air from Meabh, the frost still showing on his skin and clothes. Suddenly remembering Vardi is watching all of this, he looks over to her and back to the youth in front of him. "Best go now before she changes my mind."
Meanwhile, in the camp below, Famh lies in an uneasy dream. She sees herself striding down a narrow dirt path somewhere among the folded dells and slopes that fill northern Albion wherever the mighty Pagan Mountains spread their cloak of foothills out towards the Erewhon Madhir coast on the east or towards her own western Mergeld shore. A misty sun is rising above the higher slopes behind her, outlining every nearby knoll and pebble with its own crisp shadow. Her face is calm, but alert; and she holds Snatha'd drawn in her left hand. The dagger's form holds steady as she walks, though it is a form she has only seen with her waking eyes in the flickering moments that pass as it is transforming from needle to blade. Salt is walking by her side, at first, with his noble head uplifted and his eyes filled with the same bright interest he always shows when a pleasure jaunt or serious hunt was afoot with either his master or his master's rather peculiar but kind-scented mate. Cainneach himself she does not see, nor any of the others; but she knows he is in the nearest brae that the sun rises above, and that some of the mist under the great-limbed lone oak tree is actually the smoke from a fire he'd just new kindled. But then, like the often-vexing and never-predictable Thulish mist, her dream swirls and changes.
For a moment she sees herself as she was a bare season and a half - and so many lifetimes and transformations - ago: standing a moment that last day on her long road down from the Shriven Hills, and before that her far too often self-made path wending between the Pagans and Fenring Forest with no idea that her future heart's beloved had lived within the mazy pathways of the latter's trees until just a few months before. That last day of her hunted, fugitive misery of aching loneliness before reaching Igham where she was to meet first kindness and then companionship and then true love sic lak whit the auld tales tell of. She'd not known that morning so long ago that the triple dream she'd just woken from was of Cainneach in one of the most anguished moments of his life, still less that she was about to meet the man himself and win acceptance in the retinue where they'd come to love each other. But she recalled vividly now with the memory of dream that it HAD almost seemed as if she could see a ghostly image flickering in and out of perception as she walked ... now ahead of her on the road, now behind ... and that her girlish heart had reflected at once what a handsome fellow he was for a shade from across the veil of Faerie, and that it wouldn't be a bad thing if her dream WAS a calling of geasa and the man of flesh turned out to be only half so easy on the e'en. Also that his countenance looked neither terrifying nor majestic as she saw him then, though she'd felt that both were within that face ready to their master's call should the occasion require. But even though she'd known nothing yet of the loss he'd just sustained, her instinctive kindness had marked at once the deep sorrow that welled up in that face to overspread all the rest.
The Famh of today smiles happily in her sleep as the warm thought wells up that his face is much more joyful today as a general thing ... except when the uglinesses of present life call forth some echo of darkness from the past. She stirs uneasily as she herself is reminded of the retinue's current less-than-pleasant commission; but as no sound from the reckoning taking place in the broch above is loud enough to wake her, she only hovers a moment between sleep and consciousness before her dream billows up about her once more.
She is back in the scene she dreamt at first; she still has Snatha'd drawn but somehow frozen between needle and dagger form; and the sun is still rising over her right shoulder. But Salt is gone; and there is no sense in her mind that Cainneach or any of the retinue are making camp in the hollow behind her. Rather, she is striding to meet them at some unknown but deeply familiar place that she had always been able to reach but could only actually come to when the wounds in her soul had been fully healed and her brightest dreams were within her grasp. Her beloved and his faithful deerhound,, she knows, had helped her on the journey as far as they could; and now have gone ahead with the rest of their dear friends to prepare the encampment where they plan to celebrate her spirit's full rebirth. (Or ... um, since she was baptizit by Brither Cadfael, perhaps that should be re-rebirth. Or, as she's had some dreams of a faerie ancestress whose blood micht run in her mother's line and be part of the reason her father chose her, re-re-re ... Some other things about herself are different as she walks down the road to a lower hummocky river-brae between higher but less frequent downs. But these are indistinct and fade in and out of the background mist like the strange lizard that tales say lives i' the Principalities of the Crusades, wha wears a kilt o' mair colours than the ane Joseph haed? Anyhou, Famh's ain appearance fades hither and yon betwixt the mien she bore in the first part of her dream, the familiar countenance and cut of garb she's finally settlit doon on as pleasing her dear ane and herself alike the best; and a reflection very like the one that now gazes out of her looking glass whenever the retinue visits a place where their quarters are fine enough to have one, but with some ... changes.
A thrill goes to her heart as she recognizes the leather traveling garb and simply patterned silver-headed staff of a junior ollamh still upon her first journeyings; these are traditionally held to be all-important to the spiritual growth of the new filidh and symbolically represent visits paid to the four great cities of Faerie at the four geographic corners of Thuland ... the west naturally being superseded by the High King's palace in far-off Erewhon in the predominantly Madhir Thulish bardic order Famh knows. An idle curiosity drifts across her mind for a moment as to what places the skalds of Vardi's home might visit in their apprenticeship, and whether they too correspond to the cardinal directions, as seems likely given the usefulness of the mnemonic. But before she can note what else might be different, the scene blinks again. She is farther down the road in the same high rolling foothill country, striding like one who has traveled far and has yet far to go. Holding Snatha'd drawn in her right hand, now fully transformed into its familiar dearg form, she steps forward rhythmically with the support on her left of a shoulder-height walking staff topped with a blade. But the blade is not her sgeain dubh, and it is not held on by the usual rough lashings of hempen cord or tanned feorag skin. The staff ends in a curved, flowing metal cap that looks as if the simple silver head of the other had flowed together and lengthened at the top even as it hardened into a silvery-bright steel. And pointed. And sharpened. Wickedly sharpened. Her simple, bent-limb wooden walking staff was topped by a wicked-looking blade that looked like the get of a mating between a randy glaive and the wanton poleaxe that had the mixed fortune to be bedded next him in the arms rack one eventful nicht ...
(OOC: there may just possibly be a reason that Famh keeps mentioning feorags ';-$-D ... LOL)
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
( For those asleep without the broch:- A loud strangled scream echoes over the misty night-clad hills and then is gone....)
Famh suddenly jerks back to full consciousness at this point as a cry tears the night breeze asunder like ripping vellum. It sounds something like the foxes' scream she came to know as a nightly sign that all is actually well" when she was journeying between the Pagans and Fenring, and for a moment she cannot recall where she is, or whether the past or the present is the world that is real while the other is but a dream shadow. As she sorts this out in her mind, she slowly realizes that the scream is far more likely to come from one of the justice-haunted lads than from any fox .... and then she loses no more time. The Thulish earasaid is essentially an upgraded plaid; and she has gone to sleep this night with hers wrapped closely about her and belted for warmth. With only a brief pause to shake Cainneach awake and gather the most crucial of her gear ... staff, dearg, Cailleach's bag, and the pouches that hold Snatha'd and her sling ... she is on her feet and moving quietly upslope towards the broch where she knows Ori and Vardi are keeping watch. As she nears the shadow of the ruined walls, she whispers quietly, "Whit's happenin i' thare? Dae ye neit any help?"
===***----===
Stealth 12 (does she draw the attention of some, all, or none of the parties involved before she whispers?)
Perception 11 (how well does she notice what actually is going on?)
*(OOP: literally. I live in the small city of Burlington Vermont, and while I was recovering from my hip replacement surgery a few years before the COVID pandemic I stayed with my mom in her condo on the outskirts because she had a walk-in tub and shower. It was a beautiful, wooded area a mile or two off Lake Champlain in the Winooski River valley and I heard foxes scream several times. I literally thought at first that the scream was a woman being murdered. Luckily a neighbor had been there long enough to have heard the noise before, and she said that was the cry of the fox kits when their mother leaves them a while to go hunting and they get hungry. But it also means that no predators large enough to threaten a fox kit are nearby, or the mother fox would hush her brood as soon as she could get back to the den)
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
Famh catches the last few words of Oris speech to Dochartaigh, Vardis watchful eyes flick up as Famh approaches....
"Before wha changes her ... och!"
Famh stops short as she sees the two impressive figures of Ori and Vardi standing in the shadows of the broch; and notes how watchfully the big Lyftenwoman glances up as she approaches. For a moment ... being Famh ... she naturally supposes that the tender warmth and bliss she shares with Cainneach ... and which she has secretly been wishing they had another couple in the retinue to share and gossip about it with ... is finally blossoming between the two companions she'd bet on with herself as being the most likely candidates.
It takes her startled faculties a moment to get beyond this point; and a slight blush rises on her face as she looks about in confusion, trying to gauge how delicate a moment she may have interrupted (Perception 2 ... to hopefully spot whit's actually gaein' on round aboot here ... )
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
The hint of a blush that had sprung into Famh's cheeks becomes full blown as she absolutely fails to spot Dochartaigh trying to come out of his terror enough to run, the frost on the edge of the ruined well or the conspicuous absence of Loch. Instead, she is now certain she has walked in on the blossoming of new love between Sergeant Ori and the Kingswoman who has grown from being the retinue's guide on the journey north to being a friend and companion equal to any of the rest. So great is her misperception that for the moment she even goes back to thinking the strangled scream which woke her must have been some wild creature in the distance.
Her confusion lasts just long enough for her to realize that whatever may have been going on, she's already interrupted it beyond recall without intending the least harm. Then her happiness for the joy she erroneously supposes has come to these two friends rises above all else and she grins at Vardi with happy encouragement. "Go for it, hen! What's fur ye'll no go by ye! He's a braw lad, sae gie it a bash laldly, lassie!"
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
(I'll give Vadri a chance to respond that all that happened but Ori is definitely going to think Famh's comments were about Dochartaigh!)