Wood, Wind and Sand: Chyril 22, MT

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Wood, Wind and Sand: Chyril 22, MT

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Life these past months had been kind to Arigha. She had advanced her musical explorations separate from the stifling traditions of her tribe and still managed to fill her purse. Not only that, but she was free now to tread both the city and desert paths. Of course the desert paths seemed more and more dangerous these days. Her past two jobs as caravan beasthandler had featured more than one uncomfortably close call.

Still, her decision to pursue dual careers had also cost her. Freedom to travel made her less available for regular tavern bookings, and the business owners did not like unreliable entertainment. It was perhaps time to mend some of those relationships.

But not today...

A certain amount of whimsy had carried her to her old spot at Market. Memories of a time when sly Jubai had been her only audience. There was freedom there: no expectations or pressure to draw returning crowds. And there was the fortuneteller. Arigha was still convinced that his "powers" were mostly the result of years of reading people's expectations, but there were many predictions not so easily explained. Certainly enough to keep better than a simple tribeswoman wondering. Guidance did not have to be divine in order for it to prove useful. And guidance was what she needed. Despite Arigha's moderate successes, there was still an emptiness within her: a craving for the elemental dance of wind and sand.

So she took up a position near the old trickster and played her latest lonely wind tune on the flute. She had composed it mid-journey in a moment of rest after an attack the week before. It had helped calm both animals and the wounded at the unscheduled stop.
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As always at morningtide, the Great Market seethed with buyers and sellers. But if there was one thing more predictable than the presence of the seething crowds, it was that of Jubai Khaan, seated next to a low wall in a space outside the main flow of people. The old astrologer was in his usual spot, ringed with the accoutrements of his profession: carved bones, stones, jars of coloured sand. In his hands, as ever, was his favourite among these items, a round disc with a square hole in the middle and intricate runelike inscriptions on both sides. Round and round he spun it, on knobbly fingers that were wrinkled but still surprisingly dextrous, regarding the crowd before him intently and beatifically. As Arigha took her place by him, he graced her with a thin smile revealing his opium-blackened teeth and shrivelled gums.

Jubai did not speak yet. As Arigha played, he waited and listened with the patience and stillness of one who had occupied the same patch of ground every morningtide for decades. And as the tune lifted, so did the wind, gusting around their wall and ruffling the hems of the astrologer's Black Tribe robes. The strange domes far overhead had strange effects on the direction and intensity of the wind in Sabata, especially when it was blowing strongly from the sea, as it was on Chyril 22nd. Eddies and gusts swept intermittently through the city, and died down just as suddenly and inexplicably as they arose, upending one trader's stall of spices and not providing his neighbour with as much as a gentle breeze against his cheek.

Two young men in the robes of the Red Tribe, blades tucked through their belts, approached Jubai as she was playing. Both looked nervous and self-conscious. "Kal'essen, dreshi," spoke one of them, the taller and more fresh-faced of the two. "I hope the day finds you well... We are here to ask for a blessing for an expedition we are about to set off on, into the Sands in search of a source of life and healing."

"Baqir told us that you were the one to come to," added the other man.

"Baqir, eh..." Jubai blinked, rocking backwards on his haunches to see the young men standing above him. "Then you are in luck," he said, upon making eye contact. "For your blessing has already been bestowed."

The men looked blankly at one another.

"Do you not hear it?" Jubai added, crinkles appearing in the loose skin that ringed his bloodshot eyes. "Listen to the music. The skies will favour you this day." He inclined his neck and nodded towards Arigha. "Where she plays, the winds listen. Can you not feel them respond? They will hear you, protect you, and be at your back for the first day of your journey." The two young men turned as one to view Arigha, and the taller one could not hold back a brief gawp.

"Thank you, kurdi-gol," replied his companion abruptly after a few flickers. To Arigha he gave a bemused nod of acknowledgement. "Come on," he urged the taller man. "We must be at Longfellow's before the sun has risen past the apex of the dome."

The two young Red Tribe warriors departed, and Jubai began to observe Arigha out of the corner of his eye, smiling.
[size=84][i]"She told me I had too much to dream last night..."[/i] - [i]Apprentice of the Universe[/i], Pure Reason Revolution
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Arigha played, but kept an eye on those who passed. She liked to think of the market as a place full of potential cusomers - although there were less naive reasons to keep ones eyes and ears open in the bustking place.

Still, she felt a certain freedom in playing for her own pleasure that sent her into the music. Improvisations, cheerful and unpredictable twined through the initially simple and repetitive melody.

The red robes intrigued her. She had thought that tribe the least likely to seek the astrologer's advice. They must be headed into dangerous territory. Arigha spared some attention but continued to play. So she was both delighted and slightly scandalized at the old man's ruse.

Once the two younger tribesmen had left, Arigha let her song wind to a taunting halt, capping it off with the musically equivalent of laughter and a payful tug at Jubai's whiskers.

"Give them mystery, but what will you do to my reputation? Should I expect a precentage of your take for the part in which I am cast?"
It was clear that she was only making playful banter. But there was curiosity mingled with her mirthful tone.

"Would that I had blessings to bestow - other than the ability to sooth an animal or sing for a few coins. A source of life they said, and healing. It seems an odd quest, for most find just the opposite in the Sands these days.... What has my Windsong to do with a fool's errand in the sands?"
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Jubai shrugged. "Maybe nothing, d'war," he pronounced, "and maybe everything." It was a typically Jubai response to give. "But more likely somewhere in between." He rolled his head back on his stalklike neck. "For those two, as for many, the greatest blessing I could bestow was the simple belief in having been blessed. It will carry them through the day as effectively as if I had enchanted their sandals." This frankness was much rarer in the old man, who only occasionally deigned to explain his methods to others. It was only in the last few weeks that he had opened up to such an extent to Arigha.

"And as for you, maybe you should have more belief in yourself, too," he added with a smile. "Your song may have more power in it than you think. After all... you play to the wind." Moving deftly, he spun the disc in his hands upon a single finger. "And sometimes I have seen you dancing to the wind, too. Is it not only natural that the wind should watch, and listen?" The old man left a few flickers of silence for this to sink in.

"But today the wind needs no encouragement," he explained. "I have been sitting here long enough to read the flow of air and to predict the course of the day's weather, to some small degree. With the wind coming off the sea, as it is today, it will be at their backs as they travel into the desert." He smiled. "Unless you can convince it otherwise with your song and dance."
[size=84][i]"She told me I had too much to dream last night..."[/i] - [i]Apprentice of the Universe[/i], Pure Reason Revolution
Avatar by [url=http://pixieface.deviantart.com]Liz Green[/url][/size]
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Arigha was silent for a moment as she attempted to read the same patterns that Jubai claimed to have seen. Had she done so earlier, his ruse might have been more apparent. Still, the seeming randomness of its local effects made certainty difficult.

"Convince it otherwise? And make a liar out of you," she spoke playfully, "I think not."

She approached to sit nest to the old trickster and let out a wistful sigh.

"So you think the wind watches, do you? I used to make believe that it did – the sands too. When I played and danced to the small sandstorms near the Backbone. The patterns in the storms... I used to sneak out to watch the big ones sometimes... the patterns I try to put into motion and song. Almost like a language... but one that I cannot quite understand. Perhaps, if it watches, the wind feels the same way?"

"I think..."
She was hesitant now, for she had never really confided some aspects of her experiences on the night of her journey's start.
"... I think it was why the djinn understood me once. I have done many foolish things, but that was certainly the most foolish of all."

"But who is this Baqir, and why are two of the Red Tribe talking of seeking life and healing?"
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The trajectory of the wind itself did seem to be almost completely random within the dome, with some draughts blowing towards the East, in the very direction that the wind was supposed to be coming from. Still, a few flickers' contemplation revealed a few ways of judging it.

The source of Jubai's knowledge became most evident when looking upwards, into the heights of the great dome itself - for all around it, except along its western front, long, narrow slits opened to the sky. These were slanted such that they let no sunlight down to ground level, but so that air currents could freely enter and leave. When the wind blew from the desert, then, the wind would hardly enter the dome at all.

The quality of the sea wind was different, too. When tasting it on the tongue, there was a salty moistness to it that was almost diametrically opposed to the dryness of the turri winds of the desert.

The old astrologer nodded encouragingly as Arigha spoke of the wind and its patterns. His bleary eyes narrowed when she mentioned contact with djinn, but he did not make to interrupt. Instead he heard her out and then answered her questions.

"Baqir is of the Red Tribe," he replied, "one who lives here for the work this city brings to a martial man. In truth, I do not know him well - but he has been to see me on a few occasions, ever since an arrow somehow struck him in the chest without damaging his insides." He smiled. "This happening left him more aware of the influence of fate. Unlike many of his tribe, who believe that prowess alone is enough."

"They are looking for a legend," Jubai continued. "A guarrdi legend, of which their alchemists love to dream. It is a substance that can prevent death, they say, and can ward against it forever. Many think their efforts foolish, but their expedition is being led by one of the wetlander half-folk, Crispin Longfellow, and luck has often been on his side in the past. So who can say whether they will find this Stone of Philosophers?"

He lapsed back into silence, picking up a large spiralling shell and examining its whorls closely.
[size=84][i]"She told me I had too much to dream last night..."[/i] - [i]Apprentice of the Universe[/i], Pure Reason Revolution
Avatar by [url=http://pixieface.deviantart.com]Liz Green[/url][/size]
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"Prevent death... forever? But death is the way of things. We are born, we live as we are meant - however that may be - and fulfill our part in the world. And then we die. To prevent death does not seem like a good thing. No telling what else might be prevented along with it."

She sighed, this much logic being the limit to what she could vocalize. Philosophy was not one of her strong subjects. She was more elemental, emotional.

"Follow a wetlander little-man into the Sands... and of the Red tribe! It makes my dances seem quite reasonable by comparison."

"Did I never tell you of how I came to the city? The ship that fell from the sky, and the three djinn?"

Her voice had assumed a measured quality that bordered on the meter of song. She had never thought to sing of the events that had led to her spending her first marks away from home drenched in the blood of the dead. But for Jubai, she might.
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"And to seek such a thing as this," waved Jubai, a clear indication that he certainly considered it folly as well. Holding his trinket close to his face, he peered out through the square opening of his alabaster disk as if he were peeking through a cracked doorway. "The wetlanders seek this magic because they believe they want it. It is well for them that it is folly, for they would curse the day they found such a thing, hai."

Digging in one of his bags, Jubai devoted his mind for a moment to find another alabaster button similar to the first, so he might look through both of them at once, one for each eye. He was immediately distracted by Arigha's story tease, and he quickly lost all interest in his trinket amusements.

"A ship that fell from the sky?" That could only mean the wetlander's flying ships. "You have said none of this. You must speak to me of this story," he goaded, his charm-laden hand falling to his side as he peered over at Arigha closely.
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Archived without skilling due to player inactivity.
[size=84][i]"She told me I had too much to dream last night..."[/i] - [i]Apprentice of the Universe[/i], Pure Reason Revolution
Avatar by [url=http://pixieface.deviantart.com]Liz Green[/url][/size]
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