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Old 06-07-2008, 06:48 AM   #132
shaggydog
Animated Skeleton
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 50
shaggydog has just left Hobbiton.
Oeric cursed softly as he caught a sight of the cause for the call for help. An extremely odd looking individual was stuck up to his shoulders in a patch of bog! The marsh was riddled with them, and those who were luckless to stumble into one were destined to remain, until and unless rescue came their way. And this man, if man he was, was certainly going nowhere by virtue of his own exertions, except perhaps further down into the hole. For that was the way of these boggy patches, the mixture of water and land gripped the body and sucked you down. Struggling only resulted in sinking deeper and could easily result in bringing about a swifter death.

The strange looking man seemed to have realized this as he was not attempting at this point to extricate himself. His dark face was unusually composed for one in such a predicament, and by this Oeric reasoned the fellow was one used to dealing with crisis. That was a plus. If he stayed calm, the chances were greater that someone would come to the rescue in time. . . if they had heard him call out.

Oeric silently willed the man to call out again, and again if necessary. Casting his mind back to his childhood days, Oeric tried to gage how well sound would travel over the ridge. He also was mentally calculating both the time remaining before the man sank completely and what materials might be at hand to get the fellow out, if it should come to that. As several minutes passed, he could see that the man was also apparently making some calculations of his own. Several more times he did call out, waiting to listen between times for sounds of approaching footsteps. But as the minutes passed, no such sounds came to either man’s ears. This added to Oeric’s growing conviction that, as no sounds of the new settlement to be reached him here on the far side of the ridge, in all probability the man’s cries were not going to reach his companions, assuming he was one of them.

Cursing again, Oeric made up his mind and wriggled as quickly as he could backwards out of the copse of willow scrubs, got to his feet, and ran as swiftly as he could back in the direction from which he had come.
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