Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Tatterdemalion
Raw
GM
Avatar of Tatterdemalion

Tatterdemalion Trickster-in-Veils

Member Seen 23 hrs ago





Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Tatterdemalion
Raw
GM
Avatar of Tatterdemalion

Tatterdemalion Trickster-in-Veils

Member Seen 23 hrs ago

Episode 2: Ven.

Everyone gains 3 XP from the End of Episode resolution.

Tatters currently has available 5 Generic Strings out of 5 for the episode.
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Tatterdemalion
Raw
GM
Avatar of Tatterdemalion

Tatterdemalion Trickster-in-Veils

Member Seen 23 hrs ago

Episode 3: Hunt!

Everyone gains 3 XP from the End of Episode resolution.

Tatters currently has available 5 Generic Strings out of 5 for the episode.
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Anarion
Raw
Avatar of Anarion

Anarion School Fox

Member Seen 1 hr ago

Giri short - the danger of being a young witch

When Giriel was around fifteen, she felt like all her interest in her mom’s work, in the witch stuff she was doing wasn’t enough for her. She was fifteen after all, which is a typical age for questioning the boundaries of your world, and her mother had been somewhat careful, having a witch in training, to stick mostly to the countryside.

They had spent a year with the N’yari just before this, but Giri felt like she’d somehow missed out on the time. Her mom was honored among them, and also distant. Mom made a point of never fighting, never flexing, never being weak enough to be tied up or kidnapped but never starting the confrontation that would have forced her to overthrow someone else or be overthrown.

Giri had followed along, but she hadn’t understood it. Witches are special was about the extent of the lesson. She didn’t think the N’yari were reasonable, after all, she’d heard too many stories from too many farmers, and she’d seen them fighting and worshipping, drinking and dancing and sweating. Heard them too. They just didn’t involve her or her mom, and Mom liked it that way. Giri, being a dutiful daughter, simply followed along, matched the example. Mixed potions and did chores and cast simple spells for healings and blessings that the N’yari needed.

Then they left, and she felt like she’d wasted a year and hadn’t made a single friend. It hurt inside her. Was being a witch nothing but being everyone’s babysitter? Was she limited to just raising the younger kids, and giving the old men potions for their warts? She wasn’t a jerk, the old men needed wart potions, it made them a lot more comfortable and she understood that was a good thing to do! It just wasn’t…it wasn’t satisfying her and she felt like her heart was burning inside her chest.

So, of course, she did the thing that one does at age 15 in the countryside: she tried to seduce a young shepherdess. Not that she’d have put it that way! She was treating the sheep, they were in the rough, mountainous sections of the flower kingdoms, far from where most people lived. Giri met someone her age, they hit it off, she thought it was fun, spent more time together and, well, let’s back up.

Families were spread apart out here, a single house and then miles of fields all about. Giri and her mom were living with a family her mom knew from the past. A couple, now middle-aged, their son, age twenty, his wife, and their new baby. Two younger daughters, 15 and 12. And two old grandmothers who’d both lost their spouse. They had a house set just below a little cliff side in the mountains. The top of the cliff had one little old pine tree on it that was one third the size it ought to be because its roots had cut their way into the rock and they couldn’t get as big as they should, making it a natural bonsai. Below the cliff, the house sat in a little flat section of land that allowed for a few fruit trees and a barn before hitting the main path and leading back to the evergreens that wound their way down the mountain. They were on the east side of the mountain, so they got morning sun and the trees thrived well enough alongside the sheep pens. The mountain path wound past their house, dipping into valleys in either direction before winding up again, so they had to take the sheep each day to graze in the valleys and then bring them back up the road at night.

The family offered Giri and her mother free room and board in exchange for some simple magics. Easing the backaches of the old ladies, healing an injured sheep, and so forth. Some of the days, Giri and her mom would go together down one of the paths and walk a few miles to the next farmstead, offering their services for a little coin. On the weekends, they’d take a longer route, almost six miles to reach the nearest proper flower village, where they’d offer their services in the market, rain or shine.

It hadn’t taken long for them to divide and conquer. Mom would go one route, Giri the other, and they’d only go together on the weekends for the market. Giri was fifteen, already big and strong, and her mom was coming to grips that she needed to give her daughter more space and freedom, so this all seemed to line up.

So, Giri found herself leaving in the mornings with the older daughter, her name was Mizi. She’d be herding the sheep out to the valley, Giri to make the hike to the next farmstead. Mizi hadn’t had that big of a life. The most exciting thing she knew about was how to figure out which mushrooms were edible, which ones would kill you, and which ones you could eat a few of to make the world shift beneath you. She had the cutest black hair though, with just a hint of blue sheen that told you someone in her family had been from the sea folk long ago. And when she laughed, her cheeks would lift up and she would close her eyes like she was in ecstasy.

Giri loved making her laugh, lived for it on their morning walks. Started looking for gifts to bring her on the way home. First flowers for her hair, which she’d braid in at the temple sometimes. Then food. Giri brought some honey once, and some jams that one of the farmers had given her but that she kept secret for just the two of them to each in the field (her mom had been disappointed that she hadn’t brought back more that day, pickings had been light). Then she started getting more esoteric. She made things for Mizi. First a special shampoo with just a hint of magic to make her hair bounce, then some potions to try. She liked the mushrooms, so Giri made her something to see the little spirits that dwell all around and animate the rocks and trees and the weather and such, which was spectacular. Then it was a bargain with a spirit to carry them up to the mountaintop for the afternoon where they kissed as the cool breeze whistled past and the little pine tree kept the afternoon sun from troubling them.

For Giri, this was a little slice of heaven. Having the days with Mizi made the rest of her work bearable. She could keep her eyes open as she traveled for special ingredients for her spells, and that made being a witch a lot more fun than just healing sheep and making wart potions.

It was the N’yari that caused them trouble. A raiding party coming through the mountain trails spotted the two lovers giggling in a meadow, along with several choice sheep. The raiders took them unawares. They weren’t the same ones that Giri and her mom had stayed with before, and didn’t know they’d found a witch. They’d bound and gagged the both of them, taking them along with several sheep as a well-earned prize. Giri had to admit that she enjoyed being slung over a N’yari’s back with Mizi, but she was worried. She worried that they’d be found out, that her mother would be mad, that Mizi’s parents would be even more mad! She worried about the rest of the sheep, and the family. And she worried that Mizi would think she was stupid and worthless because she hadn’t been able to protect her.

By the time they were in the N’yari camp, Giri was beside herself. She’d been drawing symbols in blood on her own wrist with her nails as they’d travled and when the N’yari finally let them down, Giri struck. She stomped her foot and shouted “you, how dare you! We. Were. Busy!” And she let out a breath as a demon formed in front of her out a small whirlwind of butterflies and the sky grew dark.

She wasn’t ever supposed to use this magic, not even in defense. Witches learned demon summoning because you needed the principles to do demon Unsummmoning, and because a controlled demon summon did offer access to various sorts of knowledge and magical ingredients. But this was not a controlled demon summoning. The butterfly demon wasn’t even especially powerful as demons go, just a tiny facet of the soul of a facet of the soul of a facet of the soul of the great desert wind that blew unceasing through the hells.

But she was enough. N’yari raiders yowled and grabbed spears. The sky grew darker and clouded blocked the sun. Giri grabbed Mizi and ran as fast as she could, pulling her girlfriend along. Bloody ruins on Giri’s arm glowed with a slow pulsing for miles, until, presumably, the N’yari dispatched the demon and they faded, leaving darkened scabs.

When they finally got back to the fields and caught their breath, they found the sheep scattered, and Giri found Mizi weeping. “What was that? What was that?” She screamed, looking at Giri with terror in her eyes. Then she felt ashamed of her terror, and at the same time full of her terror and she cried again, hiding her face in her arm, her dress dirty and torn from the flight.

Giri didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t, this wasn’t how anything had been meant to go. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was…trying to defend Mizi. She was trying to protect both of them. They could have been kidnapped a whole year! She didn’t want…she didn’t know. And being ashamed and being fifteen, she grew angry and proud and so said nothing as they got back.

Returning empty-handed and late they were met first with relief, and then with fear. Giri’s mother full well recognized the scabs on the arm and whisked her daughter away. Mizi simply cried in her parents’ arms.

When they were alone, outdoors in a cliff overhang down the path, Giri’s mother looked at her. For a moment her eyes were soft and shone with pity. But then she sighed and looked away. “We’ll need to leave” she said. “You stay here, I’ll get our things.” Then she left, came back a while later with all their travel bags, water skins, and a sack of food. “…did anyone die?” She asked, as they began walking down the mountain trail, and Giri could only say “I don’t know, I….we ran before I saw.” And then here Mother said nothing for a long time, which made Giri’s heart hurt fit to burst.

At last, she couldn’t contain herself, and stopping beneath a pine as the sun was setting, she turned to her mother. “What was I supposed to do?! I was in love with her and, we were taken, and tied up, and I couldn’t, I didn’t know what else to do!”

And all her mother said was “I know. When I did it, I stayed. Five N’yari were wounded. One won’t ever walk again. I was lucky.” She sighed again. “Being a witch means we don’t get the luxury of letting ourselves feel that strongly. If you get overcome, if you want something so badly that you stop caring about anything else, it will kill someone. I know you already knew the risks. But now you’ve seen them. Maybe…that will help.”

Then she shook her head and shouldered her pack, leaving Giri to her thoughts as the rain began to fall in the mountains.
↑ Top
© 2007-2024
BBCode Cheatsheet