A Deeper Pass

Subject: A Deeper Pass Thu May 09, 2019 2:11 am

The sun had tracked lazily to its peak in the sky, the heat of the day making itself known in earnest and throwing shimmering veils of heat off the seemingly endless expanse of rocky ground. Each gust of wind, carrying the faintest scent of salt from the far-off sea where it originated, whipped up particles of sand and dust into a stinging cloud which then settled back to the stone with a soft rattle. As yet another wave of grit rose up towards her, Yatha ducked her head and pulled a cloth more securely over her nose and mouth, blocking out the worst of the sand. Silly as it felt, she couldn’t help but attribute a feeling of hostility to the canyon, which seemed to be opposing her journey at every turn.

It really was every turn, too; as she rounded a jagged outcrop where a few entrepreneuring shrubs has managed to grow, Yatha’s attention was caught by a sudden clatter of sound to her left. With a frown, she turned to see her mule righting himself from a stumble. She scarcely had time to feel thankful that he hadn’t fallen and damaged any of her belongings- or, more problematically, his own leg- when she saw the tension he’d suddenly gained in his stance and the awkward angle of his foreleg. Clearly, the stumble had injured him. She’d known the loose, rocky ground here could be dangerous for the animal; not to mention the general inhospitality of the environment towards the both of them. If Yatha had wanted to see something different to the Isle Triad, she’d certainly succeeded there; if she’d known this had been what she was going to find, though, she wasn’t sure she would have had quite the same level of enthusiasm.

For a moment, she crouched to inspect the mule’s injured leg before rocking back on her haunches with a puff of exasperation. Yet even as she leaned back, her gaze moving idly over the imposing nearby cliff face, she saw exactly what she’d been looking for over a period of some days, revealed now that she had rounded the last spur. The trail was small and unevenly etched into the rock, but it was a trail nonetheless, and a damn sight better than continuing in her current miserable vein or back tracking all the way to the canyon’s entrance. Eyes alight with thought, Yatha rose slowly back to her feet, reaching out to calm the pack animal in its pain and stress and cast a critical eye over the trail she’d spotted, not so far from where she currently stood.

Subject: Re: A Deeper Pass Thu May 09, 2019 12:21 pm

Cathriona murmured a few choice words under her breath as she was working on rearranging her herbs after her grandchildren had had a lesson. They still had not learnt to put everything back into their exact places, even though that was one of the most important things on a workbench where sometimes time was of the essence when it came to putting together a brew or poultice.

A few ingredients were slowly coming to an end and she made a mental note to go to the next market day and hunt down her favourite herb merchant no matter what. The last few market days she had been busy with various other duties and couldn’t attend, not yet trusting either one of her apprentices to do his on their own yet. But one of the herbs could be found in the surrounding desert areas, the ones where the sands weren’t quite as harsh on its surroundings and a little proper earth was still in the mix.

Calling out, she waited for young Bal to pop his back into the room. Cathriona held a plant up in front of him. “Do you remember what this is?” she asked. When he nodded, she continued: “And you also know where they grow?” When he nodded again, she smiled at him. “Good. In the kitchen, you will find a small basket.” Bal grinned at that, not needing any further instructions. He loved going out to gather herbs and he rarely ever made mistakes. “Off you go then.” He didn’t need to be told twice.

The young boy knew exactly where he was supposed to go and wasted no time in getting there. His face was completely covered by a scarf, tightly wrapped around his head to leave no openings for sand to get in. The wind had picked up over the past few hours and if it kept increasing in strength for the remainder of the day, chances were they were going to have a small storm on their hands. He still had more than enough time to run his errand and return to his grandmother’s before there was even any risk of that, but he had learned early on from his father to watch out for certain weather patterns as they could be treacherous.

It was only once he was halfway down the path that snaked along a small cliff face that he noticed he was no longer alone. Stopping dead in his tracks, Bal crouched down to make himself a smaller target and looked at the strange woman and her animal.

Subject: Re: A Deeper Pass Sat May 11, 2019 12:15 am

From her cursory examination of the cliff path, it certainly seemed to climb all the way out of the ravine. What Yatha was less sure of was the quality of the track; it seemed narrow at best, thinning to more of a handhold than a true path at some points. Yet if it was her only option… The problem with exploring unmapped areas was that it was nigh on impossible to get where you wanted to go by any sensible route.

For a moment, when a cloud of dust appeared at the top of the trail, she thought that a particularly unstable-looking section of rock she’d been eyeing up had packed it in and broken away from the cliff face; but even as she resolved that the path clearly wasn’t safe enough to use, the blur suddenly resolved itself into the figure of a young boy scampering down the precipice. He moved with the fearlessness of a child and the certainty of somebody who had traversed the path many times before; clearly, he was a local. With this thought, a train of possibilities suddenly presented itself to Yatha. He couldn’t be far from home; visiting a village sounded very welcome after uninterrupted weeks on the move, much of it in the desert. More importantly, though, some local knowledge would be invaluable to her, both for getting herself out of her current predicament (“being lost”, if she was honest with herself, though how she could be anything but lost when she didn’t even know where the island ended was a mystery in itself), and for mapping the area over a longer period, if the boy or his village could be persuaded to be of any more help.

It became clear that this wouldn’t be as easy as she might hope as the lad suddenly caught sight of her, the boulder she’d just rounded clearly no longer shadowing her, and suddenly dropped to the ground like a stone, presumably trying to evade notice. Well, it was a little late for that… Trying her best to appear non-threatening, Yatha stepped away from the shelter of the outcrop behind her and raised a hand in greeting to the boy, standing well clear so that he could see she was armed with nothing more than a large pack and good walking shoes.
“Hi, there! I’m a traveller; are you local to these parts?”
She wasn’t sure that he’d hear her from where he was, but it was certainly worth a shot; she knew from unfortunate experience that first impressions counted for a lot with the more remote human populations, and she wasn’t in the mood to be turfed out of the area by a load of farmers with pitchforks. Had the boy seen that she was an elf..? Certainly her colouring wasn’t typical to the humans of this hot area, but if he at least thought she was human, he’d perhaps find her a bit more trustworthy. Then again, plenty of children seemed to be either fascinated or simply unperturbed by the novelty of meeting an elf.

Subject: Re: A Deeper Pass Tue May 14, 2019 9:02 am

Bal wasn’t sure why he had noticed someone who was barely visible, and he also wasn’t sure why he thought it was a good idea to play dead when he had been whirling up dust and small stones on his way down the path, which was inevitable considering the surroundings. He felt a little ridiculous, but then, he was still young. He was allowed acting and feeling like a fool from time to time, wasn’t he?

When the woman down in the valley waved and called out something to him, he rose to his feet and began walking down the path. If she had wanted to kill him, she no doubt would have done so already. He hadn’t heard what she had said, but the wave had seemed friendly enough. And curiosity was a powerful beast.

Once he was down the path, sliding the rest of it down, just because he could, he cautiously stepped closer to the woman but didn’t move close enough that she could grab him in a sudden move. He ventured a “Hello?” but wasn’t sure if she understood him. She looked different from him and the other people in the village, but he had seen strangers coming through the village on a semi-regular basis. Some of the merchants were different. Maybe she was one of those and she was lost?

“Are you lost?” he asked, cocking his head to the side as he examined her further. His grandmother had taught him a few things but most of those had jumped out the window now that he was in the middle of an adventure of his own. But not all of the lessons had decided to skip this day. Bal noticed that the woman was wearing no weapons, which was good.

He pointed to himself and said: “My name is Bal.” Then he pointed to her with a questioning look on his face. But before the woman could answer, his eyes fell on the animal she had with her and the way it held one of its leg. A look of alarm came across his face and he pointed at the animal with an even more questioning expression on his face. “What’s wrong?”

Subject: Re: A Deeper Pass Wed Jun 05, 2019 3:07 pm

Thankfully, the boy seemed to have taken her overtures with the friendly air Yatha had intended. She couldn’t restrain a slight wince as he skidded his way down the path- that couldn’t be safe?- but then again, it looked like he’d used the jagged little walkway plenty of times before, from the confidence he showed. Or maybe that was just the perks of being a child. It had been a while.

As the child eventually approached her, she realised to her annoyance that she couldn’t quite understand whatever dialect they spoke here. That had turned out to be a more common problem in her travels than she’d thought when she first set out. All elves were perfectly able to communicate with each other, so why did the humans think they needed a whole new language every five miles? Well; there were more of them, but it still didn’t seem in proportion. Fortunately, she’d found that with a little time and practice, most of them became comprehensible; this boy’s speech didn’t seem any more different than some that she’d heard before. His first sentence was lost in the clatter of pebbles as he came to a halt, but she picked up enough of the next to understand the gist, when his gestures were factored in.

“Bal?” she repeated carefully, echoing his actions by pointing at him with an encouraging nod. Then, after a moment’s hesitation: “I am Yatha. I am an elf; I live far away.” These were accompanied by a clear gesture towards her ears, currently exposed with her hair bound back in the heat; and a broad sweep of her arm behind her, where a trail in the dust clearly marked her passage. It was usually better not to surprise anyone with these things; that was something else she’d picked up over the past year.

As the boy’s eyes turned towards the mule, her gaze followed, her brow creasing in concern. She could only assume he was asking after the animal’s health, though she wasn’t sure she recognised the specific word he used.
“He’s… hurt. I don’t know how.” She shrugged, caressing the animal’s neck. He didn’t look to be in too much pain, at least, but he wasn’t putting any weight on the injured leg, either. He clearly wasn’t going to be walking far any time soon.
“Is your village nearby?” she asked, as slowly and clearly as she could manage, in the hopes that Bal would take her meaning.

Subject: Re: A Deeper Pass Wed Jul 10, 2019 8:09 am

Bal cocked his head at the lady, who seemed a little strange, now that he was closer and could look at her more clearly. She had a different build than most people he had encountered so far and there was something about her ears that seemed odd but he couldn’t finish his examination when she spoke.

He nodded enthusiastically when she repeated his name, with only a hint of a foreign accent to her speech. When she introduced herself, he carefully repeated her name and smiled happily. “Yatha is a beautiful name,” he proceeded to add, a broad smile on his face.

When she continued to speak, he cocked his head, trying to understand. She didn’t use his dialect but whatever dialect or language she spoke didn’t seem too different from what they spoke in his village and he managed to sort of make out what she was trying to say. But only sort of. He was confused by a couple of words until the woman pointed at her ears. Upon seeing how pointy they were, Bal’s face lit up with excitement and a growing sense of adventure. That was why they had seemed so off before. Pointy endings. She must be an elf! How wonderful!

Whatever else she said, he wasn’t quite sure, but assumed, from the state of her clothes and the animal, that they had been on the road for a while. And at that thought, he immediately turned his attention back to the mule who was happily not leaning on his injured leg, seemingly enjoying the break.

Bal looked at the woman, not quite sure what she had said, but assuming that she didn’t know what was wrong with the beast. The boy moved closer to the leg in question and ever so gently let his hands slide down it, waiting for any kind of attention on the animal’s part. “Might be a strained muscle or something,” Bal muttered, more to himself than the woman. “But of course, I can’t be sure.”

The boy was never the most silent of the bunch but he felt immensely proud to be able to help this woman in distress and a sense of importance came over him as he watched the mule pull away from him when he touched upon a sensitive area on the leg.

Walking back to the animal’s head, he took the reins from the woman. “Come, I’ll take you to my village. William is surely going to be able to help with this.” Waving at Yatha to follow him, he proceeded to lead the mule with slow, careful steps toward the path he had just descended, his errand completely and utterly forgotten. “William is our village blacksmith and while he does not do medicine, he knows what to do. And if necessary, my grandmother can make a healing salve for him to make him better. She is very good with herbs. I’m learning the herbs from her. I am often collecting plants for her and helping her around the house when she is brewing potions and salves for the people in the village.”

Bal kept chit-chatting about various herbs and the people in the village, all the while leading the mule, waiting for the animal to pick the best possible way to put its hooves and carry its weight while he showed it where the path went. He regularly glanced at Yatha, smiling at her as he chatted, oblivious of whether or not she understood a single word of what he was saying.

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