The Preserve to the Nexus Islands, Friday Morning Fandom-Time
Every day for the past five days, Firekeeper and Blind Seer had set out from the dorms, a small bag with everything Firekeeper considered worth taking back slung over her shoulder. It wasn't much; a few knives she'd been given as gifts, the Jedi holocron from Tahiri, the hairclip from Francine... even the dress Katniss's friend Cinna had sent for her to wear to a dance once.
Anyway, for five days the pair of wolves had gone out to the Preserve, spending most of the day walking through the trees, hoping to stumble across a portal back to the Nexus Islands. And for five days they'd had no luck at all, coming back to the dorms with a sense of frustration.
Today, though, as they walked the forest seemed to change. Subtly at first, until they were surrounded not by the trees of Fandom's forests, but those of the Nexus Islands.
Once Firekeeper realized they'd actually made it through, she took a minute to use the address book on her phone (silently thanking whoever had programmed in the pictures to identify each entry) and leave people a quick voicemail informing them that she'd made it home. Hopefully the signal would be able to cross whatever time and space it needed to, and if not? Well. She trusted Ben to pass on what he knew of her plans if anyone asked.
That done, the pair let out a howl in unison, note falling from high to low, before taking off at a run for Derian's cottage. Once they reached their destination, Firekeeper burst through the front door without knocking. She'd improved a great deal about remembering little social courtesies over the years, but when she was excited, some things still tended to fall by the wayside. Like knocking.
Therein she found Derian, of course- as well as Isende, who looked less startled and more amused at the wolves' dramatic entrance.
After a flurry of hugs exchanged between herself and Derian, and a less exuberant but still friendly greeting to Isende, she flung herself down on the hearth rug.
"Derian," she announced. "I need to talk to you."
Isende rose, her posture every bit as polite and proper as Firekeeper's had not been.
"I should be going," she began, but the words were hardly out of her mouth before Firekeeper was flapping her hand in an indication that Isende should stay.
"No. Is not to say I have a secret to talk. You would be good to hear this, too." Firekeeper was perfectly capable of proper grammar and syntax, but she seemed to reserve these for either those times she must translate for someone, or those rare occassions she wanted to make absolutely certain she was not misunderstood.
"Derian," Firkeeeper said. "I think I need to go and find where querinalo comes frome. It is dangerous, to us, to our homes. We need to find it, so we can end it."
The effort she made to insure that she could not be misunderstood made Derian perfectly certain that she was serous.
"And how are you gong to find where querinalo comes from?" he asked, trying not to sound like he was humoring her. "Does querinalo have a scent by which you can track it?"
"It has a scent," Firekeeper said, "if not one I can use to track. I was thinking you could track for me- you and Harjeedian and Ynamynet and all the rest."
"What?"
"Like Lady Melina find the Dragon of Despair," Firekeeper said. "She find it, so Toriovico tell us later, through old stories. THere must be stories from the time before querinalo came. Maybe even there are stories about how it began. The New World does not have them, because we always told that it come from the Old World, but the Old World must have stories."
Derian felt some sense of doubt, but Isende was nodding.
"Firekeeper could be right," she said. "If not stories, then histories, records that tell where querinalo first appeared and how it spread. Was it like a bout of late-summer spots, spreading from person to person, or did it come in waves, like the sneezing fits that come with the blooming of certain flowers?"
"Would there be records like that?" Derian asked. "My understanding is that the upheavals and chaos that happened in the New World after querinalo took hold were nothing to what happened in the Old World. In the New World the abandoned colonies had to make do without their rulers and the support of the Old World, but if those tales Urgana likes to tell are representative it seems to me that the old world fell apart completely."
"But not all at once," Isende insisted. "There was more structure in place in the Old World. As Urgana tells it, the rulers did their best to conceal what was happening. There must be records, archives, something..."
"But how do we find those?" Derian asked. "If they're anywhere, they're in the Old World. And we're here on the Nexus Islands."
"Nexus," Isende said thoughtfully. "Crossroads. Meeting point. A neutral ground between areas that otherwise were rivals. And after the collapse, the Nexus Islands were abandoned for a long, long while. They've only been reinhabited for ten years or so, and many of the old buildings are still untouched."
Derian stared at her. "Are you saying the answers might be right here?"
Isende grinned back at him, and Firekeeper mirrored her expression. "I'm saying we won't know unless we look, will we?"
[ooc: and the wolves are off-island! anyone who thinks they got a message definitely did! some dialogue/narrative lifted from Jane Lindskold's Wolf's Blood.]
Anyway, for five days the pair of wolves had gone out to the Preserve, spending most of the day walking through the trees, hoping to stumble across a portal back to the Nexus Islands. And for five days they'd had no luck at all, coming back to the dorms with a sense of frustration.
Today, though, as they walked the forest seemed to change. Subtly at first, until they were surrounded not by the trees of Fandom's forests, but those of the Nexus Islands.
Once Firekeeper realized they'd actually made it through, she took a minute to use the address book on her phone (silently thanking whoever had programmed in the pictures to identify each entry) and leave people a quick voicemail informing them that she'd made it home. Hopefully the signal would be able to cross whatever time and space it needed to, and if not? Well. She trusted Ben to pass on what he knew of her plans if anyone asked.
That done, the pair let out a howl in unison, note falling from high to low, before taking off at a run for Derian's cottage. Once they reached their destination, Firekeeper burst through the front door without knocking. She'd improved a great deal about remembering little social courtesies over the years, but when she was excited, some things still tended to fall by the wayside. Like knocking.
Therein she found Derian, of course- as well as Isende, who looked less startled and more amused at the wolves' dramatic entrance.
After a flurry of hugs exchanged between herself and Derian, and a less exuberant but still friendly greeting to Isende, she flung herself down on the hearth rug.
"Derian," she announced. "I need to talk to you."
Isende rose, her posture every bit as polite and proper as Firekeeper's had not been.
"I should be going," she began, but the words were hardly out of her mouth before Firekeeper was flapping her hand in an indication that Isende should stay.
"No. Is not to say I have a secret to talk. You would be good to hear this, too." Firekeeper was perfectly capable of proper grammar and syntax, but she seemed to reserve these for either those times she must translate for someone, or those rare occassions she wanted to make absolutely certain she was not misunderstood.
"Derian," Firkeeeper said. "I think I need to go and find where querinalo comes frome. It is dangerous, to us, to our homes. We need to find it, so we can end it."
The effort she made to insure that she could not be misunderstood made Derian perfectly certain that she was serous.
"And how are you gong to find where querinalo comes from?" he asked, trying not to sound like he was humoring her. "Does querinalo have a scent by which you can track it?"
"It has a scent," Firekeeper said, "if not one I can use to track. I was thinking you could track for me- you and Harjeedian and Ynamynet and all the rest."
"What?"
"Like Lady Melina find the Dragon of Despair," Firekeeper said. "She find it, so Toriovico tell us later, through old stories. THere must be stories from the time before querinalo came. Maybe even there are stories about how it began. The New World does not have them, because we always told that it come from the Old World, but the Old World must have stories."
Derian felt some sense of doubt, but Isende was nodding.
"Firekeeper could be right," she said. "If not stories, then histories, records that tell where querinalo first appeared and how it spread. Was it like a bout of late-summer spots, spreading from person to person, or did it come in waves, like the sneezing fits that come with the blooming of certain flowers?"
"Would there be records like that?" Derian asked. "My understanding is that the upheavals and chaos that happened in the New World after querinalo took hold were nothing to what happened in the Old World. In the New World the abandoned colonies had to make do without their rulers and the support of the Old World, but if those tales Urgana likes to tell are representative it seems to me that the old world fell apart completely."
"But not all at once," Isende insisted. "There was more structure in place in the Old World. As Urgana tells it, the rulers did their best to conceal what was happening. There must be records, archives, something..."
"But how do we find those?" Derian asked. "If they're anywhere, they're in the Old World. And we're here on the Nexus Islands."
"Nexus," Isende said thoughtfully. "Crossroads. Meeting point. A neutral ground between areas that otherwise were rivals. And after the collapse, the Nexus Islands were abandoned for a long, long while. They've only been reinhabited for ten years or so, and many of the old buildings are still untouched."
Derian stared at her. "Are you saying the answers might be right here?"
Isende grinned back at him, and Firekeeper mirrored her expression. "I'm saying we won't know unless we look, will we?"
[ooc: and the wolves are off-island! anyone who thinks they got a message definitely did! some dialogue/narrative lifted from Jane Lindskold's Wolf's Blood.]