Flame of the Ainulindalë
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Wearing rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves in a field behaving as the wind behaves
Posts: 9,308
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Night2
”Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!”
The nanny woke up to the scream and hasted herself. She rushed through the ante-chamber and past the corridor. Finally she reached the heavily bolted door and unbolted it. She pushed her mightiest to force the heavy door open as fast as she could.
“What is it my child? I’m coming!” She yelled as she forced the door open and ran into the room.
The girl was sitting in her lavish bed sweating all over. She was trembling violently trying to gasp for air.
“My love! What is it? There’s no harm! … Everything’s fine now!” The nanny tried to calm the girl taking her into her arms and pressing her tightly towards herself.
“The people are dying!” she cried and trembled even if the nanny held her tight in her embrace.
“Cool down my love! I’m here! Nothing’s wrong.” the nanny tried to sooth the girl swaying her gently to and fro.
“Everything’s wrong!” the girl protested and jerked herself off from the nanny’s grasp.
“They are killing each other! Something makes them do that!” She screamed in anguish. “Believe me! I saw it!”
“Cool down my child… No one is killing anyone here…” The nanny tried to grasp her again but she ducked away to the other corner of the great bed.
“You don’t know it but I have seen it!” the girl cried escaping from the nanny’s arms that tried to reach her.
“What is it? Who is killing who?” she asked giving up the pursuit.
The little girl halted and went silent. The nanny tried to read her face but it was empty of any feeling. The girl just stared into nowhere.
“What is it my darling?”
She swallowed her tears and straightened her back. Then she looked like concentrating hard on something.
“The men killed an innocent woman in the evening nailing her into a tree because some beasts had killed two of them. And now those beasts killed two again. And there's this woman from whom everything is ripped off so violently. I know they’re going to kill someone for revenge again. And it will not stop until they’re all dead.”
“You’ve had a nightmare my dear Edelfried. In your father’s lands there are no beasts killing people or lynching mobs. There is the court and justice and men at arms to enforce it.” The nanny looked at the girl and shook her head and sighed. She had raised a host of children and this wasn’t the first time someone had nightmares. “Now you get back under your quilt and I’ll change the coals and bring you a mug of hot blackcurrant with honey. You’ll forget that dream when the morning comes.”
The old woman rose up and straightened her nightgown. “Fresh dreams kill the old… That’s what my grandma used to say. And she was a wise woman. A healer she was… mother of nine children and a guardian for a host of grandchildren. Believe me, she knew things better than you or I.”
Edelfried watched the old woman go and then jumped off from the bed. There was a blackbird singing outside. She went to the window and tried to catch it with her eyes. It was still dark but she could identify the shapes of the walls and houses downhill. The silhouette of the mountains was clearly darker than the surrounding countryside. A tiny dark shape of a wheeling swallow caught her eyes and she followed its dashes and dives in the slowly creeping morning.
There must be a way to stop it! There must be a way… I know it. I can stop it…
*~*
“Grandpa is dead! Grandpa is dead!” Legate ran through the empty courthouse still shaking all over. He had been bringing his grandpa his usual morning tea walking through the empty hall when he had found him laying face down on the front door of the courthouse in a pool of blood. Legate ran up the stairs to the wing they slept. “Grandpa is dead!”
Roa came from the bedroom she had slept alone for a first time in months. And this time his husband had not flaked out in the tavern or been on a trip to neighbouring village. Roa was not sure she could manage the pain of her son’s words.
“Ring the bells! And go wake your sister! ” She ran past her son and hurried downstairs.
Roa rushed to her father-in-law and bent down to his torn corpse unable to believe what she saw.
“Kit is not here!” Legate ran down his voice breaking off. “Kit has vanished!”
Roa was not sure she could take it any more. She fought bravely the tears but her hand was shaking when she pointed to the open door. “Go call your uncle… Go call everyone!”
Legate rushed out from the door calling alarm as he went. Only to suddenly fall silent.
Roa noticed the sudden silence. There were no cries neither the sound of a rushing pair of feet anymore to be heard.
Then there was the sound of the steps coming backwards, very slowly.
“Mom? … Mom? She’s out here…” Legate walked the steps up to the doorway and stared emptily to the wall in the back of the hall.
Roa felt she could die. How much must a woman take? The werewolves kill my husband, you lynch my niece and then I lose both my daughter and my father-in-law!
She rose slowly from her father-in-laws torn body to embrace her son... and to stay upright herself as she felt her knees were failing her. The mother and son embraced each other shaking wildly.
“Wh-whh-at is it? Wh-hhat happened to her? Why is she not here?” Roa felt she was going to faint.
Legate felt he should act like the man in the house as he now was the only one.
“Let’s not talk of that mummy? She’s… she’s dead.”
The villagers had heard the bells and Legate’s calls. One by one they gathered in front of the courthouse learning the evil tidings.
Morm had come to see his dead father and had turned his torn body around.
“Oh noooo!” he cried out.
All went silent and every pair of eyes and ears were tuned into his direction.
Brinn had been standing behind morm to see her grandpa and saw the same. “They have pulled his eyes off… what savagery!”
There was a disquieting silence.
“My father was our seer… the one the swallow tried to help us with.” said Lalaith slowly her voice breaking in the end.
*~*
Alive:
+ A Little Green, a fortune-teller - folklorist - herb-grower - unofficial therapist, advisor and midwife, most presumably a witch, the gammer (the eccentric mother of Lommy & Mac)
+ Shastanis Althreduin, astrologer/fortune teller, gaffer (Greenie's husband, father of Lommy & Mac)
+ Isabellkaya, a gammer who loves asparagus and throwing knives (Shasta's sister)
+ Thinlómien, a bird tamer, adult (married to Nilp, Macalaure's sister)
+ Nilpaurion Felagund, a house-bound sandwich-maker, adult (married to Lommy)
+ Eönwë, Rikae's unofficial helper-person, 22 (their son)
+ Kath, tavern owner, 20 (their daughter, Brinn's life partner)
+ Satansaloser 2005, Lommy's assistant, 17 (their daughter)
+ Macalaure, apple farmer, adult (married to Rikae, Lommy's brother)
+ Rikae, a lumberjack, adult (married to Macalaure, Roa's sister)
+ the phantom, sheep herder with Legate, 21 (their adopted son, Di's brother)
+ Diamond 18, dissolute, 11 (phantom's pre-teen littlesister)
+ Cailín, guinea pig breeder, adult (Nilp's sister)
+ Lhunardawen, healer's apprentice, 20 (Cailín's daughter, good twin of Durelin)
+ Durelin, poisoner 20 (Lhuna's evil twin, daughter of Cailín)
+ Roa_Aoife, school teacher, adult (mother of Legate, Brinn and Kit, wife of Nogrod, sister of Rikae)
+ Brinniel, Greenie's apprentice, 21 (Legate's sister and Kitanna's twin sister, Kath's life partner)
+ Legate of Amon Lanc, sheep herder with tp, 19 (brother of Brinn & Kit, Sally's boyfriend, Agan's ex-bf)
+ Lalaith, chocolate maker, adult (sister of Nerwen, mother of Aganzir, Volo's daughter)
+ Aganzir, the little match girl, 15 (Lalaith's daughter, dates McCaber)
+ The Ka, a dog whipper (a fatherless and ageless little child of Lalaith)
+ Mormegil, adult (son of Volo, husband of Celuien, father of Gwath and McCaber)
+ Celuien, a candle maker, adult (wife of morm, mother of Gwath and McCaber)
+ Gwathagor, a highwayman, 20 (McCaber's big brother)
+ McCaber, a henchman, 18 (Gwath's little brother, dates Aganzir)
The dead:
Eomer of the Rohirrim, adult (Cailín's husband, Lhuna's and Dury's father); An innocent beheaded by the werewolves on Night1
Nogrod, the judge, adult (Roa's husband, father of Legate, Brinn and Kit); An innocent torn in two by werewolves on Night1
Nerwen, the healer, adult (sister of Lalaith, Volo's daughter); An innocent nailed to the oak-tree on Day1.
Volo, the guy who knows everything about staying alive, the gaffer (Father of Nogrod, morm, Nerwen and Lalaith); The seer mutilated and eyes pulled off on Night2.
Kitanna, a tavern wench 21 (Legate's sister and Brinn's twin sister); An innocent ripped into pieces and thrown into the well on Night2.
Day2 begins.
Feel free to talk.
__________________
Upon the hearth the fire is red
Beneath the roof there is a bed;
But not yet weary are our feet...
Last edited by Nogrod; 06-04-2008 at 05:14 PM.
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