41.3 Misery and Company

General Summary

Day 673

We tour the water buffalo gardens before we leave. Dear Liliales spends a significant amount of effort convincing all of the women that they could have stood up to the winged tigers on their own, and he was just extra effective. I keep my own intervention to myself - I think they could have held strong even without me…but it wasn’t worth the risk of finding out in the moment.   Starfield and Skyen, in the meantime, have been happily touring the city. Starfield is certainly not recovered enough to cast protective wards over their entire farmland, but she can at least create a starfield barrier over the inner city. From this unassailable position, the buffalo ought to be better equipped to withstand the winged tigers. Sometimes the thing you need to be powerful is simply a place of safety from which to practice your own methods of power. She insists that this is, in part, a way of building up her own magic again, refusing any implication that this is a debt or a favour.   We acquire a boat, after much analysis and pickiness from Ausha. But it will be our home for several weeks, and I’m glad to have her expertise. We wind up with a two-storey longboat with living quarters and cargo below deck and a shallow draft. An arch of fabric covers the deck, though Ausha sends Liliales off to find more colourful fabric to form our own canopy. By the time we leave, the boat feels very fae and we are all eagerly discussing the possibility of potted plants on board.  

Day 676

Three days’ of uneventful travel brings us to a canyon where the river is slowly descending through the hills. It is widening and joining with small tributaries and we have reached the point where even the tributaries are the size of rivers up North.   We encounter 5-6 large boats, tied together into a grand floating market with small boats alongside them with produce and other wares. Crosswalks made of ladders let the non-winged folk cross over as they need.   It’s nostalgic for Ausha - she wonders if Osyr might have been boat people if they’d chosen not to come ashore. She speculates about paths not taken as choices made “before her time” and Magdalena rolls her eyes.  

You say ‘before your time’ just to make me feel old…

  I point out that Magdalena, of course, is old. And that teasing is a good thing! In time, I’m sure we’ll get Kaide to tease Magdalena as well.   Ausha passes out pouches of small stones that are used for currency here - small semiprecious stones with a tiny hint of spiritual energy in each one. Evidently Ausha had done some trading and mercantile business in the city in order to buy the boat and get some spending money for us all.   Aboard the market boats, we find much more diversity than we had seen beforehand. Birds, bears, some buffalo - all seem peaceable and humble, selling goods that cater mostly to people’s basic needs. Apparently there are other markets down the river, especially because the magical energy in the water will recover the further we get.  

Day 678

Two days later we join a small queue of boats stopped to watch a fight between…two people. One elegantly dressed gentleman, clearly a three-eyed black crane, and a white-clad woman (some sort of swan, I think).   Their swordplay is dazzling, imbued with enormous magical energy and clearly not meant to hurt one another. It is no surprise that the entire flotilla has stopped to watch!   Eventually the man crashes through the surface of the water, clearly defeated, and the water calms before he surfaces again, bows, and flies off. The woman rejoins a small boat with only one another person aboard.

Apologies, all. And thank you for the space.

As the traffic jam dissipates, the woman and her attendant head in our direction to greet us, noting Qing Chen as a rare demon on the river. She introduces herself as Mireen and Skyen immediately bows very deeply. Apparently she is a princess of one of the major empires, at least.   Aboard our own boat, Mireen lays out her own tea set and prepared tea for everyone. I introduce everyone and she takes note of Starfield in particular (“A dragon?”). I tell her that we are heading to the Vermillion Birds. Tea is polite and friendly, and she departs shortly thereafter with her attendant and boat in tow. In spirit form, she is a gleaming white swan exuding life energy similar to the Grotto, though her attendant is a plain grey goose.   Heaven’s Grace Swans, Skyen tells us, are all but extinct, belonging to no Empire or faction and existing as something of a divine resource that others court for their power but not their personhood. They’re said to be able to change a person’s fate for the better and bring people back from the dead. Evidently the fight on the river was something of a courtship display amongst birds, though the suitor was clearly unsuccessful. Qing Chen says that similar things happen amongst demons.   I can’t help but think we’ll meet her again, the way my presence seems to entangle with fate.   Travel on the river continues and we do see some genuine conflict, but it largely moves ashore to be resolved. On the Southern bank of the river, the landscape opens up and we can see grazing antelope (only some of which are spirit folk). Many of the spirit folk we’ve met so far are enormous and powerful, but here it seems more common that the animal forms are less distinct from average animals.  

Prey is prey.

  Skyen says he won’t cause trouble, but doesn’t seem troubled by the thought of killing these lesser spirit folk. Most civilized folk, however, consider it inappropriate to kill spirit folk who can speak.  

It reminds me of The Covenent and their opinion of Lesser Races - can’t awaken their personal magic, can’t have a place at the table.

  Up ahead is the city of Silvara and people are heading upriver to enter the marsh. We haven’t seen many people going upriver until now, and it is a much wider variety that what we’ve seen so far.   As we dock at the harbour, I notice a man in red robes and hair split in half, red and white, standing atop a lamp-post overlooking the crowd. He seems surprised that we’re not ‘treasure-seekers’ like everyone else following something he describes as a spiritual storm. Clearly - something that was caused by our work at the headwaters. At the heart of the marsh there’s now a vortex…which people have assumed means that treasure will be born out of it. This, evidently, is common knowledge here - a vortex gathering energy means that a spiritual treasure of some kind will be produced.  

Treasures go to those who are meant for them.

  It seems that there is some kind of competition and it is usually the youth who compete, so of course Liliales is eager to join in. Qing Chen, too, is encouraged to participate by Magdalena, so long as he only carries his own inscribed weapons and nothing else. His pouting is short-lived when she reminds him that everyone else in the group has faced similar constraints at times.   Ausha, Starfield, and I go off in search of food but the gate guards are firmly rebuffing everyone who tries to enter. Eventually we do find a shop with brothy noodles and eel, which Ausha is delighted by. While we’re eating, an oppressive sense of sadness sweeps over the pier as a young fae enters the area. His wings swirl from deep blue and purple to pure black, with dark hair and markings that seem textured as well as visual. Tooled, almost. He orders two skewers from the pale grey moth at the shopkeep and steadfastly ignores everyone else. The shopkeep asks if the fae is here for the treasure, and is neatly rebuffed.   It seems that the magically weaker folks in the area are more affected by the sadness - some are weeping into their beer. Skyen looks terribly sad, but the rest of us are fairly unaffected. When the fae leaves, the mood lifts and I play some music to help people along the path back to happiness.   Back at our boat, we can see where the fae has ended up. He is parked at the mouth of the river, playing sad music that calms and deters some boats. Magdalena seems impressed with his playing and control over how he is affecting others. No one is hurting themself, no one is throwing themself into the river. His presence is notable enough that Magdalena and I have to talk about whether it’s safe for Liliales and I to reveal ourselves as fae, and I conclude that I will test the waters before making a decision.   I fly over to him with my instrument. He gives me a brief nod, finishes the song, then looks at me properly. He’s very young - maybe Liliales’ age, relatively speaking. He introduces himself as Detoura. As we sit in quiet companionship for a bit, he offers me some of his flask containing a very strong, burning alcohol with a floral aftertaste. He begins a song for sunset - the sound the light in the world leaving. The end of your best day, drawing down of light. It carries the deep, resonant feeling of dusk with it, and it’s a pleasure to play with him.   He asks about being Dusk, about Dreaming, about reaching people who are hard to reach. A little probing and I find that there is someone he has been trying to reach in Clearwater City. It has been 5 years since he has been able to connect with her either in Waking or Dreaming. He’s come treasure-seeking in the hopes that it will help him. I offer to try to reach her, for it is the sort of far-fetched grasping at any possibility that I recognize.   Back on my own boat, I hurl myself into the Dreaming and Detoura leads me straight South, along a tributary that is much brighter in the Dreaming. Clearwater City is very large but I don't have time to look around; he takes me straight to a small inn to find a fae who is just barely visible in the Dreaming. She’s thin, clearly unhealthy, with crimson hair and black-red wings that remind me of Uncle Red.   This is Cantha, in the cycle of Agony. She has been poisoned by 'cruel disharmony toxin', which is apparently something that people here commonly use against fae, from what Detoura tells me. It lets their nature overwhelm them so as to incapacitate them...in Cantha's case, it has removed her ability to sustain her own agony, and she is in too much pain to Dream. I can draw upon the magical pain relief that Wayin taught me back in the Grotto, and I watch her stabilize and solidify in the Dreaming as I pump the magic into her.   As soon as her eyes open, she falls into an embrace with Detoura. With the two of them united, I leave a lingering sense of the pain relief and retreat to give them privacy. Back in the Waking world, I describe the toxin and our little group immediately sets to working on the problem. It's possible that Grove tree pieces are involved in the creation of such a poison...but it might also be a generalized creation that could interfere with anyone's nature. It doesn't occur to any of us that we might just... not try to find an antidote.