I had an easy but light sleep, which showed when I woke up from the sound of rummaging. It was again a dark period without mist and for a moment, I believed the moon was peeking through between the clouds, bathing the camp in a pale white light. Then the light swayed and moved. I saw the source of the noise, a person hunched over my pack and back turned to me. I could see a short tail and so, I first thought it to be Brad, but this person lacked the broad and masculine build of our guide.
I tried to stay calm. Down here people lived after all! Another momentous revelation, but this was not the time be excited about scholarly endeavours.
I concentrated my mind on the rocky ground the person was standing on. With my flux pouch and staff out of reach, I could reshape just a small portion of rock mere inches away from me, but I was sure to do it. I looked at the thief’s feet as they balanced their weight on them squatting down and hunched over, slowly moving my hand towards them to gain just a bit more reach. I carefully gathered my mind, finding all the formulas to change the shape of rock. Then, I clicked my tongue.
Before the thief could react, tendrils of rock had wrapped around their ankles.
The short feminine figure shot up from her squat position. She let out loud screams and I answered her with a loud “ALARM! THIEF!”
Brad was up immediately; the rest of the group was slower to react. As Brad raised his light vial, I saw the thief much better. She was screaming and hissing things that sounded like curses while trying to pull her ankles from the rock, erratically waving around a knife. Brad was quick to disarm and bind the girl – or woman – with a length of rope. With a tap of my staff, I freed her feet from the rock.
Once she had been tied and gagged into a neat little bundle, we sat the thief against a wall to further inspect her.
She was obviously crolachan, but so unlike any I had ever seen before. Instead of the golden brown to yellow of Brad and his kind, this one had a coat of mottled dark in tones of grey to red. The insides of her arms and legs as well as the front of her torso were mostly white fur, while Brad’s kind had only sparse and fuzzy hair there, letting pink skin shine through like a puppy’s belly. Her scalp’s hair was jet black and very fine while the cut it was in seemed irregular; the hair on front was cut just short of hanging into her eyes, while hair in the back and on the sides was of different lengths, mostly longer, all as if she had cut it herself with the knife she had tried to defend herself with.
Her build was very slender for the usually wide-built crolachans, albeit of similar height. Her legs were as short as her arms, giving her an undersized appearance while standing and her head of the same size of a human’s made her seem almost childlike in stature, were it not for the obvious fact that her body had already begun to blossom into a woman's.
She wore something like a long and oversized tunic of sturdy make and pants in similar make, also much oversized, the legs rolled up and all of it held together with a leather belt. On her feet she wore sandals that kept her toes free, no doubt to better use her claws to climb. A pendant made of a glowing elongated stone attached to a fine metal chain hung from her neck. The stone’s glow was very weak and neutral, which led me to believe the gentle moon had again been shining on me. I pushed the necklace into my pack for the moment, there were more pressing things at hand.
After we had made sure that she did not have any more weapons apart from the knife with her, we turned our attention back to the girl herself. Brad insisted on being lenient on her. “She could tell us where we can find settlements, people we can trade with for food or even a way out.”
While Professor Scutolith was of the solid conviction of studying her to learn more about this place. “We do not need to cut her open, of course I want to keep her alive, but you must admit that even just her stature should be subject to thorough investigations.”
Anne put her hand on her uncle’s shoulder. “This is enough, uncle, she’s a person, not a caught animal. We were not sent here to discover and catalogue new peoples, we are lost and need help.”
“But we are scholars of the University, we can be neutral and mature about a person’s bod-AAARGH!”
With a clamping pinch, Anne twisted the Professor’s ear. “Nobody is inspecting this girl’s body except me and that’s it, understood?”
“Yesyesyes AAAAUGH! Fine, fine, Lieschen, you win!” He was released and rubbed his ear. “Why must women always be so cruel when driven by their will?”
I was not known for smooth talking with the fairer gender; in fact, I would often fumble and fiddle nervously when talking to them, but even I could see the Professor earning himself more than a twisted ear for his attitude to women and shame. Knowing the clawed hands of Crolachans, he should stay as far away from their women as possible.
With no resistance to her proposition left, Anne searched the girl for weapons, then undid most of her bindings and her gag, leaving only feet and hands tied together. She sat down in front of the girl and tapped on her own chest, repeating “AN-NE” several times, then pointing to each of us and saying our names. After she had done this several times, she pointed to the girl, but the girl refused to respond, turning her head away in defiance.
Alternatively, we tried speaking various languages we knew to see if the girl would show any sort of reaction, but she answered to none until the Professor, speaking Pliranti, the language of scholars and merchants, dropped a word during a conversation: excruciating.
The girl’s eyes widened, her jaw clenched, she tried to lean away in fear.
“It seems the girl understands that word.” The Professor grinned happily about this revelation and got closer to the girl.
Anne did not like the look of that. “Uncle, get away from her you look like a madman about to cut her to ribbons!” She made a move to push him away from the girl.
“Wha- I would never do such a thing, just let me talk to her more!”
Her hand lunged forward and Anne had again grasped his ear, causing him to quickly give in. Then she sat down in front of the girl. But even though Anne's approach was much friendlier and understanding than the Professor’s and the girl seemed to react with understanding to some Pliranti words, she still remained stubborn. In the end, our stomachs won out and hunger drove us to at least try to catch more birds to roast.
The cavern we were currently in offered many places to wait in ambush and our magic helped too, but in the end, all but three birds eluded our grasp. During this entire time, we had bound the girl's hands and feet and then tethered her to Chrysita, just to make sure. She observed us with a condescending smirk in all our failures, not even being impressed by our displays of magic. She most likely knew very well to hunt and which plants to eat and revelled in our clumsy attempts at it.
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In the end, the four of us shared the meagre scraps we had caught and Anne even offered the girl a bite, which she gratefully accepted. Had we had more to share, we could maybe have coaxed some answers out of her, but alas, we had to continue our trek. We tied the girl’s hands behind her back and shackled her feet just loose enough so she could step small steps.
The chamber we were in had more than one exit; we could find at least three tunnels that converged in this place. Trying to get a suggestion out of the girl was without merit and so we decided to take the route that seemed most travelled, which took us further down a broad tunnel, offering much vegetation left and right of the path, the soil seemed to increase in thickness too as we descended.
We were at the definitive end of our rations and my stomach growled loudly more than once, often joined by Brad’s. I walked again at the hind of the group, Chrysita and the girl right in front of me. I noticed the girl looking left and right and tried to follow her. On one occasion, she intentively stared at a patch of the prickly bulbs we had found the day before. She noticed that I had noticed and stood for a moment.
“What do you see?” I asked in Pliranti, hoping she’d understand. Her face told me clearly enough she was considering saying something for her own sake, weighing the options in her mind. Finally, she pointed her head into the direction of the prickly bulbs and speaking two words in badly pronounced ancient Pliranti:
“Prickly feast.”
The others had heard and turned around. She faced them too and repeated it.
Anne chuckled. “Seems like hunger has won. She finally wants to talk to us.”
Brad shook his head and stepped closer to the girl, making gestures of disgust. Spitting on the floor and repeating the Pliranti words “disgusting, bitter”.
But the girl shook her head. “Feast. Feast.”
She walked towards the prickly bulbs and beckoned us to follow.
“Maybe she knows which ones don’t taste horrible.” Anne said to Brad.
“Or she wants to poison us.”
“Then we’ll have her taste it first.”
We allowed the girl to walk ahead to the patch of prickly bulbs. There I saw that one of them had already opened completely, the petals unfurled outwards and presenting their inside, covered in hundreds of filamentous flowers like a colourful meadow of pollen. Many tiny insects crawled through and over this field of yellow, blue and red, drinking deeply from the nectar. The girl had stopped at a specific one with petals apparently just before unfurling. Again, but with doubt in his face, Brad cut the bulb free and sliced out one of the petals. The insides of this one were closer to orange and red that the one’s we had tasted the day before and also looked softer, dripping with thick juice. He offered the huge slice to the girl, who took a single large bite out of the sticky mass and chewed on it with a face of true satisfaction.
Before we decided to try a bite too, we waited to observe any ill effects on the girl. With the scent of flowery nectar in my nostrils, I tried not to drool as I looked at the girl’s expression that showed her savouring every drop of the apparently very chewy but sweet treat. I have to admit, the urge in me to simply reach for that bulb would have won out, had Brad not demanded for it just a moment before me.
“I am tired of stalling; wait if you wish to, I am hungry!” He took a bite just as big as the girl's and his reaction was equally overjoyed. “This is good.” He said with a mouth full of sticky paste. “So sweet.” He chewed happily on the insides of the bulb, only interrupting to talk. “I can’t believe we would have passed up on this! Screw the birds, they can leap and sing as much as they want, we have prickly nectar bulb!”
We all tried and agreed: the bulb was delicious. I can still remember the sweetest of tastes for the first time. The mass was full of fibre and nectar, no doubt the filamentous flowers had been preparing spread the scent of their sweet reward far and wide. I chewed and sucked on the mass until all that was left were fibres and filaments stuck between my teeth.
We sat down to make a short rest and cut the prickly bulb into more slices, easier to hold by the thick outer shell. The girl stared greedily at the prepared prickly feast and when Anne noticed, she held out a piece to her, the girl leaned forward and opened wide for a huge bite, but before she could, Anne quickly pulled the slice back. Anne again tapped her chest and said “AN-NE!”
The girl groaned and before Anne could repeat herself, the girl brought forth “SA-RI-TA!”
And with that, the girl had a name. She enjoyed her part of the sweet feast
“This would be great for pie.” I said. “My mother made the best pies ever. Oh how I would love to show her this. Maybe we can bring seeds of this to the surface.”
The Professor agreed with glee. “Oh yes. I can see the bakers of Northbridge creating the greatest pastries and baked goods with this.”
Not content with just one bulb of sweet sticky goodness, we set out to look for more that seemed just ripe enough and repeated the procedure, but found not all bulbs to be equally sweet. Some had still a bitter note remaining, others had flesh so tough it was hard to chew it. It seemed to me that the bulbs were only truly delectable for just a short time, requiring luck and skill to select the best ones. Either way, all bulbs the girl pointed out for us were palatable and soon, our stomachs were filled to the brim with sweet mush.
It was Brad again who urged us to move on from our comfortable feast. “We might have found tasty morsels here, but we should continue.”
We tried to get a few more words out of Sarita on where the nearest village was, but she turned stubborn again, turning her head. We tried to convince her that we want to bring her back safely, but the girl did not budge, barking something that sounded like an accusation containing the word “ransom”.
It seemed the girl thought we would try to hold her ransom to extort money and goods from her village. I gained somewhat of respect for the girl, putting her life on the line to protect her kin. When we told her how important goods and information were to us and that we were willing to trade fairly, she started to plead with us to not bring her home for ransom, offering apparently what we wanted in return. It seemed odd that she would try to keep us from her home so desperately.
We all mulled over what to do next when I realized something: Sarita wasn’t talking about a ransom, the word had a different meaning or context in her dialect of Pliranti. She was talking instead about a reward. “She’s a runaway and her village must be willing to repay whoever brings her back.”
A common “Aaaaah” resounded from our group.
“Good thinking, Havellan, boy.” The Professor said. “Now that we know we have a little troublemaker at our hands, we should really return her to her home. I am sure we can find her home if we simply keep walking.”
Anne nodded and grinned at the girl. “Absolutely, let us bring her home before she hurts herself. I heard there might be a reward. Isn’t that true?” She tussled the girl’s dark hair.
Sarita realized what was being said and pleaded even more, pulling at her bindings, but when Brad tugged on her tether, she gave in.
We gave her to understand that she can either tell us how to get to her village or she could go without food until we found the way regardless. She understood and agreed. With her help we walked quite a bit longer that day, even until the mist had returned for the second time. When we tried asking Sarita more about the mist or the its occurrence or other things, she seemed not very eager to answer. Professor Scutolith tried convincing her some more with food, but everyone else agreed that it was a cruelty to do such a thing when we would soon have an entire village to ask.
It felt as if things were not just looking less bleak but actually somewhat good. I slept easy that night, hoping that we would quickly find the missing leads out of this place. Or at least more prickly bulbs. I fell asleep with a hint of mama’s cherry pie in my nose.