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Old 04-11-2004, 03:49 AM   #158
piosenniel
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Rog

The little bird flew to the rocky outcropping that stood on the edge of the camp. Hidden in the recesses of a scraggly desert bush he poked his head out to see if the way were clear. A young man, patrolling the edges of the camp, drew near his hiding place, and Rôg just had time to withdraw his head from sight. He wondered, as the fellow paused for a moment to bend over and retie a loose sandal strap, that the man’s ears could not pick up the loud, wild thumping of his heart. An eternity passed, or so it seemed to the little bird as he stood frozen in place, before the brawny legs went on and out of sight.

Rôg hopped out to the edge of the twiggy bush and flew quickly to the top of one of the outlying tents. There was a light breeze that riffled his feathers as he clung to the pole that held a pennant. A grey barred pennant, he noted. This was indeed the camp he had spied out that previous night, he nodded in a pleased manner to himself, remembering the glint of the firelight off the small streaming banners that fluttered round the story-teller’s campfire. He cocked his head, looking for the tent on which he’d perched to hear her tell her stories. And there it stood, further in at the hub of the encampment.

The tent flap was closed, but he could see a small streamer of light come out from beneath it, and there at the top, a small stream of smoke bent in the wind and flew east. He was about to fly closer to this central point for a good view of the camp, when the flap of the tent was thrown back quickly and a familiar looking figure stepped out into the moonlight.

Surinen!

So this was the camp for which he’d been an outrider. Worry warred with duty on the man’s face, and duty won as he shrugged his shoulders back and hurried off on some errand. A sense of sadness had passed over his features as he turned from the tent. ‘What’s this?’ wondered the little bird, gliding quickly to one of the tent’s poles, and peering down the hole from which the smoke was escaping. He could hear the quiet, worried murmuring of voices from below . . .

~*~

A small, unremarkable brown moth clung to the fabric of the tent and inched its way into the shadowed valley between the folds. Below him on a low bed lay an older woman, face turned up toward him, eyes closed; her dark hair lank as it splayed out on her pillow. Her skin was flushed and damp, her breathing shallow and a little rapid. The light covers that were drawn over her chest fluttered up and down but barely. She was quite ill, he could see, and the two who sat near her bed spoke softly so as not to disturb her, though often their hands lay lightly on her arms or forehead when some tremor came on her.

Her face looked familiar, and for a brief moment he thought he was looking again at the one whose stories he had heard round that earlier fire. But then the woman who sat on the mat closest to her bed sighed and arched her head backwards, easing the strain of worry from her shoulders for a bit. This was the story-teller! The lovely features of her aquiline face were now pinched with concern for the woman beside her. Her daughter, thought Rog to himself noting the similarity in their features. Rôg strained his tiny moth ears to pick up the muted conversation of the pair below.

‘. . . poisoned,’ he heard. Something unknown to them; they could not stay its course as it crept through the older woman’s system. Talk of someone or someones unknown who had been in the camp . . . Rôg’s antennae twitched uncomfortably at this, thinking that one of those scents was probably his. He caught the name, ‘Ayar’, and with it the man had spoken of her as ‘the Meldakhar.’ His breath already suffering from the smoke’s egress, caught in his throat.

Some one had tried to kill the clan’s leader, and it looked as if the attempt would prove to be successful . . .

~*~

The little moth stayed a little longer, wanting to hear the man speak. He could tell from the way he sat close at the clan leader’s side he was fond of her, and fonder still of her daughter, his eyes straying often to assess her worried face. Thorn’s words, he had heard the woman use that name, brought a chill to Rog’s heart. He was speaking of some news he had hurried to bring from Umbar. News of one of the other clans moving against this one. Wyrma, it was, the leader of the Wyrm clan and the supposed leader for all the maenwaith clans had contracted with an assassin.

An assassin! Maenwaith killing maenwaith . . . the idea so appalled the little moth that he lost his grip on the tent fold and went spiraling down toward the floor, tail end over antennae. His six feathery little legs scrabbled frantically in the warm air current from the fire until he had righted himself, and was able to open his wings to catch the rising thermal. His faceted eyes caught the movement of the man as he turned his face upward to see the falling moth. A few flaps of his wings and Rôg was out the smoke-hole and heading toward the meager camp where Aiwendil had bedded down.

~*~

Flying as a moth was tricky business - progress subject to the whims of any breeze. As soon as he was beyond the perimeter of the camp, Rôg quickly changed back to his Bee-eater form and flapped furiously until he had reached the old man’s snoring figure. With an unceremonious landing by the sleeper’s face, he kicked up a cloud of dust with his feet trying to halt his forward motion and careened into the man’s nose.

‘Wake up!’ he squawked, backpedaling with his wings to avoid the hand that had come up to push away the disturbing ball of fluff and feathers. Rôg grabbed hold of a long tangle of grey streaked hair and gave it a decided yank.

‘Wake up! You were right about there being some trouble. If you have any talents as a healer you’re needed.’ Rôg bent down and cocked his head to look at the blurry eyes just coming to wakefulness.

‘You’re needed . . . did you hear me?’ he asked again. ‘Some awful creature has poisoned the clan leader . . .

Last edited by piosenniel; 04-13-2004 at 11:31 PM.
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