awoken mid-sentence (a keep story)

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awoken mid-sentence (a keep story)

Post by Foleo »

and somehow their wings which are little more than flakes of dead skin
have carried them to this blackened disembodied question

what dirt shall we visit today?
what dirt shall we re-visit?

—Excerpt from Alice Oswald, “Flies”
ImageImage
_______________

TABLE OF CONTENTS _______________

featuring
Bel — Iliad
Zuhra — umbreon241
Donovan, Lachesis — Kestrad
Ariel — xmands

and me
Image

_______________

Thanks for reading! Comments and critique always appreciated.
Last edited by Foleo on January 3rd, 2023, 5:29:01 am, edited 10 times in total.





keep story

art by @c.kim.ovo

asa (left) created by Iliad. kanoi (right) mine.

formerly Applemint, PhoenixFireDream.
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Re: awoken mid-sentence (a keep story)

Post by Foleo »

chapter i. bel
Image
“...Bel?”

“Yes, Moscas?”

The next part is mumbled, sheepish. “Where are we going, again?”

“Try to remember, Moscas.”

A few minutes pass in silence, during which time Bel hears the footsteps behind him lose their rhythm and come to a stop. He takes the opportunity to pull out his map and pen in a few notes.

It’s been longer than he cares to remember since he’s been through this part of Silva, and the pig trails he had oriented himself by in the past have now well since overgrown. Combined with the lengthening shadows of dusk, it makes for slow going. He runs the calculations in his head. If they rest now and head out at dawn tomorrow, they’ll still easily make it to the Junction before the sun sets.

“...Bel…”

He injects as much levity into his voice as he can, and asks, “Where do we keep things that are easy to forget?” Slowly and dramatically, he lowers his hand toward his hip.

Halfway through the motion, the boy behind him gasps. “Oh! Right, the notebook!” Bel hears the furious rustle of paper being flipped through, then sees a head of gray hair bound up beside him. “Bel! It says here we’re going to the Keep!”

Bel rolls up the map and tucks it away, hefting his pack back onto his shoulders as he nudges Moscas up the incline to their left. “That’s right.”

“And—and it says the Keep is where wizards live. Are we gonna meet wizards?”

“That’s the hope.”

“Wow, are we gonna learn magic from them?”

“Hopefully not.”

Moscas makes a disappointed sound, but dutifully comes to a halt and scribbles his new findings into his notebook. Bel walks ahead, poking at the denser bushes around their path with a stick as he goes. For an Alveu, the boy was awfully fearless around topics of magecraft. Then again, Bel’s not sure how much of an Alvean upbringing Moscas even remembers. Perhaps that was for the best, considering.

The soft, hurried patter of feet soon comes into step with him, and they continue on for a half-hour in silence, following distant hints of old memories through the underbrush. Bel’s beginning to get concerned at their lack of progress when, with his next step, he finds himself suddenly squinting into moonlight. Moments later, Moscas bursts out of the tangle behind him.

Bel feels tension he didn’t know he was holding drop from his shoulders. He’s glad that this place, at least, had remained untouched by time. “We’ll rest here for the night,” he tells Moscas. “Can you gather some sticks and make a fire?”

“Yeah!”

“Don’t go too far,” Bel calls out half-heartedly as Moscas runs past him, then turns his attention to the task at hand. They had emerged into a rounded clearing, roughly twenty paces in diameter. At the center of the clearing stands a thin stone monument, which Bel approaches.

He kneels and places a walnut shell, face-up, at the foot of the monument. “An infusion,” he says, uncorking a vial, “for vitality and good health.” He bows his head, and pours. “We humbly request sanctuary for the night.”

As the last drop hits the surface of the pooled liquid, wisps of green bloom from the center of the shell. The tiny leaves spin around, forming three runes in quick succession. Bel suppresses a wince. It’s been a while since he’s revisited his studies. The first rune, he is sure, was amity—the second, with the body radical on the left and guardian to the right, perhaps meant protection? The third is not even worth trying to decipher. He knows his limits.

Regardless, it appears that his request was heard, and that they needn’t fear direwolf attacks during the night. He dips his head once more, pockets the empty vial, and rises to his feet. Grits his teeth as vertigo washes over him.

There is one other reason he chose this place to take their evening respite. As he walks to the west end of the clearing, drooping bells of wetland grasses begin to peek through the deciduous undergrowth. Bel casts a furtive glance around him—Moscas is nowhere to be seen, for now. He ducks his head and follows the trail, stepping on muddy kirin hoofprints on the way, until he comes into view of a brightly-lit, impossibly clear pond.

The Caliginous Pool.

He unfolds his pack, taking out disinfectant, analgesic, and a tin of salve. Then, he finds a boulder overlooking the water, sits down, and begins to unpeel the gauze around his right arm.

It is.

Not healing as well as he had hoped.

Bel gives his stomach three seconds to drop, then steels himself and begins to blot away the pus from around the blistered wound. It hurts, more so than he thinks it should, more than he can make sense of. The analgesic he’s been applying daily barely puts a dent in the pain, but he’s already been feeling the side effects. Anything stronger and he wouldn’t be able to walk. (And they needed to move.)

Bel doesn’t like to brag, even in the comfort of his own mind, but a burn like this, normally, would barely even warrant a note in his records. It took him a few days of puking up whatever potions he tried to ingest to realize that, as with everything that happened around this kid, this couldn’t be solved with knowledge he once thought immutable. No, he would have to improvise.

Hence, the Pool. Bel’s own healing magic, though channeled indirectly through the potion-making process, is earth-based—it draws power from the herbs and insect’s-shells he uses to fortify his medicines. It’s an aspect of magic naturally weak to fire. The Pool, meanwhile, has purifying properties strongly in the domain of water. An aspect strong against fire. It—it’s the best lead he has, for now, as to why nothing else has worked so far.

He doesn’t want to think about what it would mean if this doesn’t either.

He starts by dipping gauze into the water and wiping it against the surface of the wound, but even that small friction makes his vision go white. Of course, it’s only after he’s rolled his sleeve up and plunged his arm under the surface of the pond—heavenly, scintillating relief, but with a chill that gnaws down his spine until it’s unbearable—that Moscas appears.

“Bel, what are you doing?”

“Taking. A bath.”

“But you have all your clothes on?”

Okay. So maybe improvisation isn’t his strong suit. Backup plans, however, are.

“Moscas,” Bel barks, “your notebook. Hand it over.” He wrenches his arm out of the water and extends it, dripping wet, towards Moscas, palm facing upwards. The sudden movement leaves a high-pitched whine in his left ear; he keeps his face schooled, putting his full focus into keeping his hand steady and level.

Moscas takes a few steps back, eyes wide. “No,” he says, “I don’t want to.” His hands tighten around a bundle of sticks he holds to his chest. “I’ll forget.”

“I’ll remind you,” Bel says. “I’ll always remind you. Don’t you trust me?”

Moscas hesitates, biting his lip. Bel gives him a smile, beckoning him closer with his outstretched hand.

“Go on, put the firewood down. I only need your notebook for ten minutes, then we’ll go back to camp and build the fire together. We can sit here and chat in the meantime.”

“...Okay.”

Bel takes the proffered journal, tucking it under his folded leg. “Thank you, Moscas.” The boy remains sullenly silent, refusing to make eye contact.

Considering the way his heart still pounds from the shock of the cold, Bel doesn’t think he should go for a second dip in the pool. But he’s glad he made this stop—the numbness currently buzzing across his arm is so welcome he could weep. While it lasts, he gives his arm a thorough cleaning. A generous layer of analgesic and herbal salve later, he has his arm wrapped back up and tucked into his sleeve. Not bad, for a one-handed job.

“Moscas, help me carry some water back to camp.” Bel sets their cooking pot down on the ground behind him as he refolds his pack into something that can be worn. He makes sure to slide the journal in a clean spot, away from any reagents. “Careful not to fall in, it’s cold.” He hears the shuffle of feet as Moscas gets up and retrieves the pot. Bel sighs.

“Mos-cas,” he calls. “What do you want for dinner? We have some cheese from the last town, we could cook that with rice and carrots?” When there’s no response, he tries again. “We have some honey. We can heat that up with some jerky?”

There’s a slosh of water against metal, and then: “...That sounds pretty good.” Bingo.

From there on, it’s easy to relift Moscas’s spirits. They make their way back to camp, where Bel sets Moscas to work dribbling honey onto a panful of turkey jerky. Bel starts cutting vegetables—he, for one, can’t survive on protein and sugar alone.

“Moscas, could you light the fire?” Bel asks, when Moscas seems particularly focused on his task.

“Uh-huh,” Moscas says, and the pile of unlit sticks a few feet away from him ignites.

Bel coughs to hide his smile. When he asks Moscas to conjure up a spark, he gets looked at like he had grown a second head. But give the boy a distraction, and he’s indistinguishable from an arrogant first-year. Bel’s flint and steel have gone unused for months now. “Silly me, it’s already lit. I’ll boil the water.”

Dinner passes uneventfully; halfway through, Bel places Moscas’s journal next to him. Moscas notices it a few minutes later, patting at his empty hip holster in surprise before replacing the notebook to its proper location.

Before turning in for the night, Bel quaffs a potion. With luck, everything would be back to normal by the morning.
Last edited by Foleo on January 3rd, 2023, 4:42:17 am, edited 4 times in total.





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asa (left) created by Iliad. kanoi (right) mine.

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Re: awoken mid-sentence (a keep story)

Post by Foleo »

chapter ii. moscas Image
Moscas finds himself in a very loud room. There’s a bowl in front of him, which he’s looking at. It’s empty, and there’s a wooden spoon inside of it. Further ahead on the tabletop is another bowl, this one full with some sort of vegetable-y broth. And beyond that is Bel, dozing off.

Moscas sits for a while, watching Bel’s head bob up and down. He sneaks a spoonful of what he guesses is Bel’s soup, but it’s cold and he’s full already, besides. Finally, he makes the executive decision to get up and…do something, he supposes. Make a nuisance of himself. Or whatever. He’s bored.

He picks up his bowl and starts to wander, rattling the spoon around the inside because he likes how it sounds. The room he’s in has a big fireplace, and all sorts of tables spaced throughout. There’s everything from little, two-seater tables, like the one he and Bel were at, to a huge, irregularly shaped slice of tree, around which currently seats about fifteen people. Most people are seated, except for two people in black aprons who are walking around. And himself, he supposes! Wait, what was he doing up again?

Right, rattly spoon. He’s trying to figure out where to put it, actually. Bel always says he should return his plates once he’s done with them. But he can’t see any sinks or buckets or any conveniently placed stacks of dirty dishes, so he’s at a loss, here. 

He supposes he could ask someone. He scans the room until he sees a woman sitting alone, writing in a journal. There’s a steaming mug in front of her and no plates, which means she probably put them away somewhere already. Perfect.

Moscas walks over. The lady looks up and gives him a smile, eyebrows raised.

“Uh, hi,” Moscas says. “Sorry to bother you. I was wondering where we should put our dishes?” He rattles his bowl again, for emphasis.

The lady flips a page and starts writing again. Moscas wilts a bit. He’s about to give up and try another table when the woman pushes her journal in front of him.

Just leave them at your table! ^_^

“Oh! Okay, thanks. You know, I have a notebook like yours too. It’s ‘cause I forget things so easily. Is that also why you have a notebook? Actually, I should write this down so I don’t keep coming over and asking.” Moscas squats down, putting his bowl and spoon on the floor. He’s pulled out his notebook and has it open on his knees, pen poised, when the lady’s journal slides in front of his vision.

You can have a seat while you write if you want.

“Oh, thank you.” Moscas stands up, pulls out the empty chair, and plunks himself down. He jots down some quick notes—keep plates at table—and puts his notebook away. When he looks up, the woman’s journal is facing him again. Curious, he reads.

I write in my journal because I have problems speaking. Usually my friend translates for me, but they’re taking a nap right now. Glad to meet another journaler! 

“Wow, no way! My friend’s sleeping right now too. We’ve got a lot in common!” Moscas peeks over at Bel—he’s transitioned to burying his head in his arm, face-down on the table. Yep, still asleep. “I wonder what else we’ve got in common. My name’s Moscas. I sell medicines and potions with my friend Bel over there. He makes them, but no one can beat my na-tu-ral cha-ris-ma.” Moscas gives the woman his trademark grin, and she laughs silently into her hand. Works every time. 

She begins writing again, and Moscas waits patiently, trying hard not to sneak glances of her page as she writes, because that would be rude, probably. But she writes fast, so he doesn’t have to wait long before she’s turning the journal over to him again.

My name is Freya. I’m a magus doing my thesis at the Keep. My research is on aurora whale social behaviors, so I’ve been in the Arkene for the past winter. Finally coming down south for the spring!

Wait, the Keep? That rings a bell, and that doesn’t happen often. Moscas digs out his notebook, skimming through his notes. Then—”No way, we’re headed for the Keep right now! To sell stuff. And you’re a…magus? Does that mean you do magic?”

The woman takes her journal back, but a few words in, she stops writing, pen hovering over the paper. Her gaze gets distant for a bit, which Moscas totally understands. Happens to him all the time, too. Then, she reaches into her bag and pulls out a…fish bowl?

Wow, there are a LOT of youse!

Moscas nearly tips out of his chair as a voice suddenly speaks into his ear. He swivels his head around, searching for the perpetrator, but there’s no one looking at him except the magus in front of him. She smiles, and taps one finger against the glass of the bowl. 

Down here! the voice says, and Moscas gasps and leans over. 

“Whoa, talking fish!”

Speak for yourself! You’re talking like people!

“Well, yeah, ‘cause I am a person. You’re a fish!”

Eh, I’m three fish, really. And you’re—well, I can’t even count how many you are!

“Just one! ‘One’ is the first number of the numbers, by the way.”

Oh, you’re funny. I guess that’s a nice way to think about it. There’s a pause. So, Freya’s sayin’ to introduce myself. I’m Jer. I love to talk, and Freya doesn’t, so we make a great team. 

“Hi Jer! I’m Moscas.” And so a conversation happens. Moscas is pretty sure, at least. Because Moscas laughs, and—

A finger taps against the top of his notebook. Moscas looks up, blinking.

“Hey,” the owner of the finger says, “we’re closing up for the night.” She wears a cheery, patchwork apron with dancing animals on it, which seems at odds with the murderous look she’s directing his way. But what does Moscas know. 

“Oh, sorry!” Moscas reaches over, gives Bel’s shoulder a shake. “Bel, we gotta go.” Bel doesn’t stir, his face pillowed into his elbow. 

The woman sighs. “How much did he have to drink?” She begins gathering up the dishes on their table. 

“Uh…” Moscas tries to catch a glance at Bel’s bowl before it’s whisked away. The soup inside sloshes against the bowl’s rim, nearly spilling onto the woman’s fingers. “Not much, I think?”

“Right,” the woman says, “that’s what they all say. Give me a minute.”

Stacking the bowls that were once on Moscas and Bel’s table onto a mountainous tower of dishes laid across her other arm, she marches across the room and disappears behind a door. 

“Bel,” Moscas tries again, “I think you can’t sleep here. I think this lady is going to actually kill us if you sleep here. In a minute, she said.”

“I’m not,” a voice says behind him, and he jumps with a squeak. The woman is back, apron gone. She’s left in a black button-down and slacks, and she peers down at Bel. “Do you have a room here?” 

Moscas waits for Bel to respond. After a few beats, the woman turns to look at Moscas expectantly, and he straightens to attention, grabbing his notebook. It takes several jittery seconds for him to remember what division of the notebook he needs to flip to, and then several more to find his latest notes. Right, he met some fish tonight—talking fish! And before that there was—

“Don’t worry about it.” Moscas looks up to see the woman dangling a key between her fingers. “Found it in his pocket. Room 14?”

Moscas nods mutely, and watches as the woman first shrugs on Bel’s pack and then scoops up Bel proper from his seat. He’s taller than her, but it seems she has this down to an art: hand under the knees, another over the shoulder, Bel’s head pillowed in her clavicle. 

“That’s very impressive,” Moscas says, in absence of anything else to say.

“Oh, you should see some of the drunk bastards I’ve carried to bed.” The woman jerks her head toward the side of the tavern, and Moscas trots after her as she leads him into a hallway lined with doors. “I’m Zuhra,” she says. “What’s your name, kid?”

“I’m Moscas! And that’s Bel.”

“And Bel is your…brother? Father?”

“Nah, he’s my busy-ness partner.”

The woman—Zuhra—snorts. “Okay. What’s your business?”

“We sell medicines! Do you want to buy a potion, by the way? You seem pretty strong but you never know.”

“I’m alright.” Zuhra pauses a step to shift her grip on Bel before ascending the stairs. The steps creak under their combined weight. “So. Does your business partner often sleep through dinner like this?”

“I don’t know,” Moscas says truthfully. 

“Huh. How long have you two been traveling together?” 

“Ah,” Moscas says, scratching his nose. “I’m not sure about that either.” He almost bumps his nose when Zuhra stops walking and turns to face him, Bel’s legs swinging beside her. 

There's a pause that Moscas doesn't understand. He smiles uncertainly at the woman, who looks back at him, expression unreadable. Finally, she speaks, words slow and stiff. “I’m wondering, uh, Moscas. How did you and Bel. Meet?”

“Well.” Moscas’s hand goes towards his notebook—he’s proud of himself for remembering it. He begins to flip through the opening pages. Surely, something about their first meeting would be there. “I-if you give me a second, I’m sure I can find it. But I think Bel could tell it better.”

“I’m sure he could, but he seems a little sleepy right now.” There’s a dull thump as Zuhra leans her side against the wall. “That’s a very nice journal you have there. Do you write in it often?”

“Yeah! It’s to help me remember things since I forget so often.” It’s strange—there’s only notes about herbal cures here. Marking his place with his finger, Moscas quickly flips to the back of the notebook and scribbles a reminder for future-him to reorganize his notes. IMPORTANT STUFF FIRST, he writes, underlining it twice.

“Moscas, do you—”

“I would appreciate,” Bel says, voice soft against the sudden silence, “if you did not interrogate my charge.”

“Mr. Bel,” Zuhra says tightly. “Good morning. Common courtesy usually dictates speaking up before one is carried up the stairs.”

“Apologies. You two seemed to be having such a nice conversation, I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“And yet you did.”

“And yet I did. Would you be so kind as to let me down?” Zuhra opens her arms—Bel stumbles only a little as he finds his footing. “Thank you. Ah, I see you’ve brought us right to our room, that was very thoughtful of you. Moscas, could you let his nice lady have a look at your notebook? And, Miss…”

“Zuhra.”

“Miss Zuhra. Would you give Moscas the key to our room so he can retire for the night? It’s been a long day, and I seem to have lost track of where I put my copy.”

Wordlessly, Zuhra produces a long, metal key, tilting it toward Moscas. Moscas walks up, notebook open to a drawing of a fern he was particularly proud of. 

“Thank you, Moscas,” Bel says, and pinches the cover shut. 
 





keep story

art by @c.kim.ovo

asa (left) created by Iliad. kanoi (right) mine.

formerly Applemint, PhoenixFireDream.

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