Human remains.
June 26th, 2018 00:55![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mc776Samaëlle didn't know why she stopped. Hot moonlit December night, the world a cacophony of endless rolling swaying grass and crickets, and the slither of distant trees forgotten in the darkness. Shouldn't have been a soul around for miles on this old dirt road.
But there those dusty old bones were.
To anyone else it would have been indistinguishable from a rock sticking out of the dirt, an old chunk of the paving that used to mark this century-old back road. She could not say if it was intuition, or divine inspiration, or a calling of the Black Fire, or maybe another piece had gotten dislodged and begun moving erratically once it had strayed into her field of influence; but there she was, for no discernible reason walking towards some skeletal remains from a hundred-year-old war that no one missed and no one had asked her to find.
Sam beckoned her horse to follow. It was getting old and stiff, and often got stuck or fell over in rough terrain that a live horse would have been smart enough to get around; but out here on this grassland there was little to worry about. She's had to patch a few bones here and there already, first with steel, then wood, then rattan, then steel again; whatever she could find or afford at any given time.
The horse opened its leather trunk and she retrieved her spade and brushes. When she squatted beside the bit of protruding bone, ensnared in old dead grass and an escaping centipede, a small triangle rolled up to the top of the bone and tapped on it. So there was a fragment that had been activated, whether or not it was what had caught her attention.
It rolled away again at her command.
The extraction took less time than she suspected. Or perhaps it was already almost morning and she didn't notice. She'd taken the power crystal out of her watch and had no recollection whether she had wound the backup spring. No matter. Before her lay a skull, or at least a broken dome and some visible eye sockets; some crumbling bits of collarbone and rib; two arm bones, one gnawed by dogs, who knows what became of either of them below the elbows; two halves of a femur opposite the gnawed arm, and another that had been used as an improvised meat tenderizer by some passing goblin long dead and gone. In the middle was the triangle, atop a little pile of what used to be pelvis and spine.
She was not whole. This child could never be whole, even within that very limited meaning the necromancers gave that word. Sam resisted the word "miracle" to say that the bone shard had directed her here at all: the Lawful one, Occasionally-Merciful, All-Victorious God of the Republic had no time for such trifles. It was merely coincidence, and only up to her to give it the meaning it deserved.
Joints groaned as Sam resolved to stand up from where she was kneeling. The moon was gone. There didn't seem to be anywhere better to bury the child. Perhaps best to just dig deeper, guide them in, mark it with a stick, pour out what's left of her wineskin, say a few prayers to the local gods and move on--
A tiny clatter caught her attention. She went back down to see that the tiny triangle was tapping against another knobby bit of dry bone. It stopped when she looked at it. And they stared at each other for some time.
She drew the pieces together under the skull. The words seemed to draw themselves together in her mind as she did. "Remember, child. Remember the stars who smile upon you. Remember, O earth, the one who had been your child, and shall be again. Remember the wind, and the grass under your feet. Think nothing of those who say"--she could already hear the useless inane chattering part of her mind say, The child has no feet--"that it is futile, for they too will be as you were. Remember the sun, not for her cruelty but for her life that she grants to you, to me, to the grass and all the earth. Gather yourself, child, if you so wish to be free, if you so yearn for what life you have left and what life is to come. Arise, child, and wake, before you are no more."
And then the words stopped. She did not start them again, not even in the chattering, for this moment could only be the moment for her and nothing else. The child re-membered: not as before, but in such shape as could only suffice for what was left of her, and the one thing she yearned to do once more. The bones joined together in new ways under the skull, flapping about in swirls of shifting dust as four variously jointed legs protruded beneath the eyes.
She slowly gathered the dusty, faded, clattering creature into her hands and set it down in the grass. It skittered and bounded away, and in a few minutes the sound and sight of its movement was lost in the blades and the wind.
Somewhere in that wind Sam heard the laughter of a child at play.
But there those dusty old bones were.
To anyone else it would have been indistinguishable from a rock sticking out of the dirt, an old chunk of the paving that used to mark this century-old back road. She could not say if it was intuition, or divine inspiration, or a calling of the Black Fire, or maybe another piece had gotten dislodged and begun moving erratically once it had strayed into her field of influence; but there she was, for no discernible reason walking towards some skeletal remains from a hundred-year-old war that no one missed and no one had asked her to find.
Sam beckoned her horse to follow. It was getting old and stiff, and often got stuck or fell over in rough terrain that a live horse would have been smart enough to get around; but out here on this grassland there was little to worry about. She's had to patch a few bones here and there already, first with steel, then wood, then rattan, then steel again; whatever she could find or afford at any given time.
The horse opened its leather trunk and she retrieved her spade and brushes. When she squatted beside the bit of protruding bone, ensnared in old dead grass and an escaping centipede, a small triangle rolled up to the top of the bone and tapped on it. So there was a fragment that had been activated, whether or not it was what had caught her attention.
It rolled away again at her command.
The extraction took less time than she suspected. Or perhaps it was already almost morning and she didn't notice. She'd taken the power crystal out of her watch and had no recollection whether she had wound the backup spring. No matter. Before her lay a skull, or at least a broken dome and some visible eye sockets; some crumbling bits of collarbone and rib; two arm bones, one gnawed by dogs, who knows what became of either of them below the elbows; two halves of a femur opposite the gnawed arm, and another that had been used as an improvised meat tenderizer by some passing goblin long dead and gone. In the middle was the triangle, atop a little pile of what used to be pelvis and spine.
She was not whole. This child could never be whole, even within that very limited meaning the necromancers gave that word. Sam resisted the word "miracle" to say that the bone shard had directed her here at all: the Lawful one, Occasionally-Merciful, All-Victorious God of the Republic had no time for such trifles. It was merely coincidence, and only up to her to give it the meaning it deserved.
Joints groaned as Sam resolved to stand up from where she was kneeling. The moon was gone. There didn't seem to be anywhere better to bury the child. Perhaps best to just dig deeper, guide them in, mark it with a stick, pour out what's left of her wineskin, say a few prayers to the local gods and move on--
A tiny clatter caught her attention. She went back down to see that the tiny triangle was tapping against another knobby bit of dry bone. It stopped when she looked at it. And they stared at each other for some time.
She drew the pieces together under the skull. The words seemed to draw themselves together in her mind as she did. "Remember, child. Remember the stars who smile upon you. Remember, O earth, the one who had been your child, and shall be again. Remember the wind, and the grass under your feet. Think nothing of those who say"--she could already hear the useless inane chattering part of her mind say, The child has no feet--"that it is futile, for they too will be as you were. Remember the sun, not for her cruelty but for her life that she grants to you, to me, to the grass and all the earth. Gather yourself, child, if you so wish to be free, if you so yearn for what life you have left and what life is to come. Arise, child, and wake, before you are no more."
And then the words stopped. She did not start them again, not even in the chattering, for this moment could only be the moment for her and nothing else. The child re-membered: not as before, but in such shape as could only suffice for what was left of her, and the one thing she yearned to do once more. The bones joined together in new ways under the skull, flapping about in swirls of shifting dust as four variously jointed legs protruded beneath the eyes.
She slowly gathered the dusty, faded, clattering creature into her hands and set it down in the grass. It skittered and bounded away, and in a few minutes the sound and sight of its movement was lost in the blades and the wind.
Somewhere in that wind Sam heard the laughter of a child at play.
(no subject)
Date: June 30th, 2018 23:22 (UTC)Then particles aloft, whirling, dancing,
Until the wind itself dies,
As wind too must.