the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes...

[goddessnanshe]

Morning of 21st June

It's still raining, though not as heavily as earlier, but I couldn't wait any longer to come out here and see what has happened. I was wakened in the early hours of Sunday by a strange feeling of pressure and brilliant light, but my cell was completely dark. I walked through the abbey, and all was still and shadowed. Anyone else

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[samuel_durand]

The air tastes somehow different in Excolo. Not in a literal sense (the rain has made sure of that), but there is a palpable tension in the Whitechapel that has me itching to check beneath the dormitory beds: it's a teeth-on-edge wordless anxiety bleeding into the air, the kind I tend to associate with waking on a cold night to discover a viper has sought refuge in my bedroll and twined itself around my feet

[goddessnanshe]

Syl is here, of course. It makes me smile a little.

"So you heard't too, huh?"

"I woke up with light behind my eyelids," I say. I look at the devastation, and reach out and touch a charred tree trunk.

I hear the soft snap of a twig, and I turn.

"Fine morning to find ourselves with a mystery.I can scarcely credit it."

"Gaue-" I begin, surprised, then look again. "I'm sorry; I thought you were someone else." He does look a great deal like my old acquaintance, and my skin prickles a little. I am so much more vulnerable in this body; I am not used to not feeling safe.

[syl_thorn]

She's gotten 'erself dressed pretty inna coat't't's too big for'er anna pretty scarf over'er hair. She's settlin' inta bein' human, I think. Whether'at's a good'r bad thin', ain't m'place t'see. But she smiles when she sees me, an'I smile back. "I woke up with light behind my eyelids," she says, strokin' a burnt tree.

"Wuz smoke'n m'throat fer me," I nod. 'm 'bout t'call'er over, see what she c'n make outta'is...when a snappin' twig catches both 'r ears.

"Fine morning to find ourselves with a mystery. I can scarcely credit it."

Nanshe starts, 'n starts t'say somethin', but she catches 'erself. "I'm sorry; I thought you were someone else."

Ain't seen'is fella b'fore, not 'round town, 'n not on th'Lot. Nanshe looks right nervous, an'I straighten, takin' a step closer. "Ain't seen you 'round b'fore," I says, cas'al. "New'n town?"

[samuel_durand]

The smaller of the two women looks at me with mild shock, and for a moment, something like recognition. She utters something, or part of something, that I do not understand. Phonemes that are assuredly not English, but that I cannot immediately categorize. She recovers swiftly.

"I'm sorry; I thought you were someone else."

"No harm done," I say, as warmly as one can when talking loud enough to be heard at some distance over the low rushing hiss of rain. I wonder who she's mistaken me for. While I don't exactly stick out everywhere I go, my Continental features don't usually lend themselves to cases of mistaken identity half a world from the land of my birth. Another traveler, perhaps?

The other woman stands up then, and she is taller than I expected, not far from my height. It is her footprints I am standing in, unless the other woman has someone else's shoes on and a pocket full of rocks. When she speaks, her consonants tend to leap over vowels entirely and mash each other together, so it takes me a moment to adjust.

"Ain'

[goddessnanshe]

"A friar?" I say, and raise my eyebrows. "I am surprised you didn't seek a bed at the abbey, then. It's a comfortable place. My name's Noma," I say. I will leave it to Syl to decide whether she wants to offer her name. "What sort of skills do you have, Brother?"

[samuel_durand]

"I am surprised you didn't seek a bed at the abbey, then. It's a comfortable place.She's at least the third person since my arrival to openly express surprise that I didn't seek shelter at the abbey. I sometimes wonder if such places are less retreats devoted to lofty pursuits than colonies of a certain sort of leper. It's not just that those like my own order shut out the outside: in another sense, it's as though the world is happier to have walled them away. "I spent a lot of my young life cloistered, but I've spent many years traveling, and to be honest, I'm in no hurry to be put walls between myself and the world again. I do intend to pay my proper respects one day soon

[goddessnanshe]

cont here