When Moriah woke again, the memories from the previous broods of crystal ferrets still assaulted her, but seemed more manageable, her unconscious mind having categorized the many images and memories swimming behind her eyes. For instance, she could now recognize that each memory from each queen actually had a bazillion points of view at any given moment, to be precise, one point of view for the queen, for each of her peers and for every single freaking one of her children. If a queen had five peers and twenty children, then twenty-six points of view for every single memory. And if two peers and two thousand children were in the brood - yeah, the human mind simply was not designed to parallel process that much simultaneous information and it still confounded her brain. It plain old hurt her brain.
The three peers crooned at her face as she worked on not thinking about the memories, clearly worried. Her voice quivered and she stuttered when she tried to reassure them. “I, I’m alright, I think.” She strained to keep her thoughts on track. Just that little bit of disciplined redirection eased the strain on her mind. “I think. . . I think I’m remembering the lives of all your former queens. How can they think like that?” She stared at her peers, who watched her with oversized eyes, their concern blazing obvious to her through her mental connection with them. She completely understood them, probably better than herself since she like to live in self-denial. Still, the difference in their way of thinking made her light headed too. “I’m getting alright now, I think,” she repeated herself. She really did believe that she was starting to recover from the weirdness, even if she still had a long way to go. “It’s all a little overwhelming is all.”
Since the link worked both ways, the peers were reassured by her unfounded confidence, but also even more worried because of her unfounded confidence.
Moria sat up, raising bruised and aching hand to blood dried forehead. Since talking to the peers verbally really had alleviated a lot of the pressure on her mind, she continued even if it meant repeating herself due to her numbed thinking. “I think I must have access to your memories somehow and you must be able to remember what happened to your ancestors. Or something like that.” She wrinkled her nose and stood, declaring in a matter-of-fact voice, “Anyway. I smell like pee and I can’t take it anymore. Since I’ve found this nice hot spring, I’m soooo taking a bath and washing my clothes.” And as she began to move with purpose, the onslaught of memories tapered off even more.
Finding a spot in the pool where the hot and cold water mingled to a good temperature, she waded in without taking her coveralls off. However, she decided she could not clean them well enough while wearing them, so struggled out of the wet garment. Scrubbing them with gravel, she rung the coveralls and her undergarments out thoroughly and draped them over a large rock.
However, In the short time she was out of the water, her teeth began to chatter. She clutched her arms across her stomach and hurried back into the warm water of the hot spring. After several moments, her teeth settled and she scrubbed herself with gravel dirt from the bottom of the clear pool. Once satisfied, she settled to the level of her chin and basked in the hot water.
“Oh,” she muttered under her breath after some minutes of pleasant relaxation, fog billowing just over the steaming pool. She stared at her wet clothing on the rocks not far distant. “I think I goofed.” She sank deeper to her the level of her eyes and blew bubbles in the water. She wondered just how long it would take for them to dry in the chilly subterranean air.
Finally, with the ever-present threat of the memories eating at the edges of her mind and needing to hold them at bay, she began to sing.
In the mine proper, the “Ker incident” with its final harvest of spider carcasses dwindled into distant memory. Because of the quantity of high value production during that time, the commander met his own quota, even exceeding it in certain significant ways. Thus he graciously waved the punishment for Moriah’s death.
Life in the mines returned to normal. Production dropped with the spider corpses mined out, but remained higher than pre-Ker levels due to the continued production from the Mother Lode. Even with both Ker and Hank dead, the single remaining scrambler still produced well.
Klorachamol’s leash holder pulled him out of the mine occasionally, and the assassin invariably returned in a foul mood. Jenna tried to console him with only marginal successful.
Jenna herself found that she missed the strange girl. Not only because of the added tension and excitement that one’s silent presence had generated, but also because Klorachamol seemed to have attached to her. He had gentled a little during that time, only to harden even more than before with her death.
The priestess Karen had kept the two bet-scrolls inscribed by the gnarly men since the winner had died. Corko did not contest the matter and both dwarves had begun disappearing into the mines for longer and longer periods of time.
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Klierallan made no appearances, an unseen presence as he had been prior to the strange girl’s appearance. This both relieved and worried those who knew about the elf, since they knew Ker’s death had upset him greatly. For some reason, he had valued the small girl.
Life continued on, and times and seasons passed the same today as yesterday as tomorrow.
Shaskie sneezed, her small kytosine snout wrinkling into a funny expression. She was one of a number of scramblers sent down into the mine over the last couple of years. Currently the scrambling team numbered five, thanks to a small human boy-child recently come down. While she was still fairly new to scrambling, her small cat-like quadrupedal form was practically custom designed for the job. She had yet to fully adjust to the damp earthen smells of the mine, having grown up on a plain with wide open skies, but she thought she was doing okay, all things considered. Her current regret was that she did not have enough food to change into her upright, more human-like form. Things would be so much easier if she had hands and a mouth that could speak properly. She so planned to earn enough credit to get more food!
Her long tail swished behind her in feline agitation. Both it and the rest of her cat form were covered in short, reddish hair, though it was all dulled by the ever-present dirt of the underground tunnels. Currently stretched out in one of those tunnels taking a break, the kytosine licked the fur on her forepaw in absent habit.
I really wish I could adjust my body to stand upright again, she grumbled in her own thoughts. She let out a disgruntled half-growl, half yowl to verbalize her pique. Knowing it required more energy than she had to spare in order to change from her four footed felidae form to her upright andrae form just rankled. It normally did not take near as much as it did down in this place, but with all the magical radiation down here, the transformation was way harder than it otherwise should have been. Still, she liked her andrae form.
After a short rest, she rose and prowled further down the tunnel, her headlamp revealing red veins of earth running parallel to glittering silver ones. Nothing valuable, the silver coloring notwithstanding. However, a couple of hours later, she found a clumping of several crystal clusters glowing a nice shade of purple.
Marking the location on her navigation chip, she returned to her starting point, a small hole high in a larger tunnel’s wall. Springing to the larger tunnel’s floor from the high opening, she growled up at the human waiting for her.
“Did you find anything this time?” Restorm squatted and scratched the head of the miniature panther like cat, no bigger than a rusty colored tabby. Shaskie purred in response to the pleasant feeling of the scritches.
The black-haired human retrieved the navigation chip, inserted it into a stone reader and scanned its content. “Not bad. I’ll report this to Rocklite so he can arrange retrieval.” The gnome had become the senior scrambler by default. Since Ker’s death, the guards had given him a great deal of authority over all the scramblers, making them a distinct team of their own instead of a bunch of individuals.
Restorm stood. “Too bad you can’t mine them yourself, but even then, I doubt they would issue you enough food to morph very often.” He knew about her private desire because she had well and clearly publicized it to anyone willing to listen to her.
Shaskie sneezed again and rubbed her whiskers with both paws. Lisping in her felidae form, she replied, “I would very vuch like to change, vut I cale to the sale conclusion.”
“You came to the same conclusion?” Restorm grinned down at the adolescent. “If you can discover a rich find, something like what Ker found on her first venture, they would probably provide you as much extra food as heart could desire.” He smiled at the kyt. “I suppose I’ll let you know now; I’ve been saving my extra ration chits. Karen and a few others too. We’ll get there eventually, where you’ll be able to change at least occasionally. Just be careful of becoming indebted. That would be bad down here.”
“Thank you.” Shaskie grimaced, lifting her lips in a small snarl. She hated talking Emerite in this form because she could not make any bilabial sounds. Her felidae lips just were not made to compress together like that. She could make most of the other sounds, but she had to work extra hard to get some of those right too. Still, her curiosity perked at the mention of the mysterious legend of Ker and she could not quite resist. “Restrol?”
“What?” The man paused, having started to turn away.
“Tell le avout this Ker .”
Restorm chuckled and sat down on a convenient rock. “Ah, the legendary Ker. I make light reference to her and you have not heard enough stories yet, eh? Well, I would think it all happened about a year or three ago.” The man paused, glancing up at the ceiling. “It’s really hard to keep track of time, huh. Well, somewhere around that long ago, I’m sure.”
Restorm then told the kyt about the events that made up the Ker legend, finishing with a warning. “Be careful when talking about her around the guards. They’re still quite touchy about it since she became known as the Shift Changer in the short time she was here. And for heaven’s sake, don’t bring the subject up around Klorachamol. He’s the mahogany colored man with black hair who bunks with the two dwarves, Jenjen and Corko. He gets surely and is more likely to kill you as stalk away.”
“Did he like her?”
“Yeah, I suppose so. One does not think of a man such as him having affection for a child, but I almost think he came to care for the girl as a daughter, or something.” Restorm laughed. “Even more amazing since the girl returned nothing for his affection.”
“Sad.”
“Yes, it is a little sad,” Restorm agreed. Standing again, he brushed off his coveralls by habit. “Well, we should head back. Reporting this find will meet your discovery quota.” Shaskie meowed in response, tired of speaking the difficult language.