[K197.65] somewhen, in another root
Jul. 20th, 2010 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quechianThere were about 10 hours of darkness. Cor and Thymelixsen and I planned for the morning: Thymelixsen would wake up partway through the night to put his spell on Jack to be able to be a bird (of prey, like the one May used to avoid troubles), so he could search from above for anomalies as we worked outward from where the drop was. And at some point we realized that our names weren't our local names. Thymelixsen was Cheemest, Cor was Korrun, May was Maya, Jack was Jacquey, and I was Kabchee. Which was all very strange.
At some point I touched a tree, and it felt lonely, and didn't reach back to me, in my current form. Another bit of strangeness.
Cor and I took the first half of the night's watch. I started a small fire in a hollow, and we traded off times of actually watching, so I had time to work on Presence of the Guardian and pray for a while too.
When we woke Jack and May for their watch, Cor suggested he show me the differences in our new bodies. I agreed. It was a very different sort of intensity, focusing on certain points, rather than more distributed. And more peaks of intensity, and then my body was done, though my brain could have done more. The manual senses were very different, more separate. Interesting, but I'm glad it's not my usual.
In the morning, Thymelixsen was done with casting, and I wanted to get into the usual swing of things, checking everyone for disease regularly.
We talked about how to optimize the search in this mostly undifferentiated forest. As Cor and Thymelixsen got more involved in the discussion (Thymelixsen has restrictions on what he can do in a day, and on range), Jack turned into a bird and flew off.
In the end, we went half again as far as Thymelixsen's range in a couple of directions, centered on the spot of blood. First north, then northeast, then northwest. He sensed something there, at the edge of his range. We got to some thorny bushes, and Thymelixsen got injured getting through them, but he found the drop. This time, there were silvery lines radiating out to the plant it was on the surface of. We decided to take the corrupted part of the plant, as Cor cut it and found that there was more inside the veins of the plant. And then more, though fainter, in surrounding plants - these were the thorniest of the plants. Should we burn it? Take all of it? Not worry about it in our search for the source? (And we decided that this was the direction of travel, though the previous drop had less effect, because it had landed on something dead).
May and I tried to sense its nature, and I got that it was of the Defender, a sort of metal armor, while she sensed that it was growing. In other words, of the Defender and of the Mother. So we had the option of trying a ritual to gather up their presence, to pull it out, though usually a ritual like this would put it into a thing or other people. We talked about what we could put it into. My staff, perhaps, but it was unclear how long that might take it to change.
As the options were debated, May and I realized that with Thymelixsen's help, a ritual would not take long (much less time than a bonfire, and likely releasing less into the root), if we could figure out what to put it into. I suggested something more containable than my staff, but still having to do with fighting, like an arrow, or an arrowhead, since it seemed to be a proactive sort of Defender energy. And it turned out that Cor had some arrowheads, so that was the way to go, especially since that would fit into another container. So we did the ritual, intoning and singing, and the silvery lines curled out, going into the arrowhead, which became silvery, semi-luminous. As we poured it in, I could feel it seeking growth, wanting to grow. And now it had the arrowhead's intent.
At some point I touched a tree, and it felt lonely, and didn't reach back to me, in my current form. Another bit of strangeness.
Cor and I took the first half of the night's watch. I started a small fire in a hollow, and we traded off times of actually watching, so I had time to work on Presence of the Guardian and pray for a while too.
When we woke Jack and May for their watch, Cor suggested he show me the differences in our new bodies. I agreed. It was a very different sort of intensity, focusing on certain points, rather than more distributed. And more peaks of intensity, and then my body was done, though my brain could have done more. The manual senses were very different, more separate. Interesting, but I'm glad it's not my usual.
In the morning, Thymelixsen was done with casting, and I wanted to get into the usual swing of things, checking everyone for disease regularly.
We talked about how to optimize the search in this mostly undifferentiated forest. As Cor and Thymelixsen got more involved in the discussion (Thymelixsen has restrictions on what he can do in a day, and on range), Jack turned into a bird and flew off.
In the end, we went half again as far as Thymelixsen's range in a couple of directions, centered on the spot of blood. First north, then northeast, then northwest. He sensed something there, at the edge of his range. We got to some thorny bushes, and Thymelixsen got injured getting through them, but he found the drop. This time, there were silvery lines radiating out to the plant it was on the surface of. We decided to take the corrupted part of the plant, as Cor cut it and found that there was more inside the veins of the plant. And then more, though fainter, in surrounding plants - these were the thorniest of the plants. Should we burn it? Take all of it? Not worry about it in our search for the source? (And we decided that this was the direction of travel, though the previous drop had less effect, because it had landed on something dead).
May and I tried to sense its nature, and I got that it was of the Defender, a sort of metal armor, while she sensed that it was growing. In other words, of the Defender and of the Mother. So we had the option of trying a ritual to gather up their presence, to pull it out, though usually a ritual like this would put it into a thing or other people. We talked about what we could put it into. My staff, perhaps, but it was unclear how long that might take it to change.
As the options were debated, May and I realized that with Thymelixsen's help, a ritual would not take long (much less time than a bonfire, and likely releasing less into the root), if we could figure out what to put it into. I suggested something more containable than my staff, but still having to do with fighting, like an arrow, or an arrowhead, since it seemed to be a proactive sort of Defender energy. And it turned out that Cor had some arrowheads, so that was the way to go, especially since that would fit into another container. So we did the ritual, intoning and singing, and the silvery lines curled out, going into the arrowhead, which became silvery, semi-luminous. As we poured it in, I could feel it seeking growth, wanting to grow. And now it had the arrowhead's intent.
