RP:An Urchin for Omorfi

Rolling Dunes, Rynvale

It’s close to midnight. The moon peeps from behind a thick veil of cloud, a bright glimpse backlighting the silhouettes of cantankerous gulls disturbed from their rest by a drunk further along the beach returning to his skiff to sleep it off.

An impoverished-looking man is sitting on the shore here, sprawled like a child, foamy water licking at his shoeless feet like an overly enthusiastic whale calf. Tilting his face skyward, he makes a few ‘ca-caw’ sounds at the passing gulls as though in mockery of their shrill complaints. His head is a tumble of black ropey dreads, threaded through with silver. His beard is dark and thick, his coat – even in this dim light – appears to have seen better years.

He seems oblivious to other presences on the beach. The drunk, falling loudly into his boat. The trio of rough youths skulking toward him from the salt-bushes at his rear— feral dogs wanting a bone to chew on, no matter how lacking in meat. One thick-bodied kid has a knife held out before him as he stalks, like a talisman of the god of all petty violence

Rynvale's social underbelly tends to have a don't-ask-don't-tell policy when it comes to its citizens doing what they need to do to survive. But the trio of kids approaching the drunkard are not in it for survival.

"Guys, this isn't right." A female voice hisses. The other two grumble slurs at her and she shrinks back a step or two. Even from afar, she looks like the sort who gets beat up by kids half her size, despite being older. In the shadows her hair is the color of a dusty sunrise. She's dressed in an ensemble of shorts and shirt and boots, none of which quite fit her lean frame and scrawny limbs.

The boy with the knife presses the blade into her hand as they crouch amongst the thick ammophila and shadows. She shakes her head at him and tries to give it back. "You wanna earn your keep, new girl?" He practically spits. She considers it. How easy it would be. The stranger was probably just another drunk, what would it matter?

"We shouldn't." She says finally, even apologetically. "We should head back to town." She moves to head back the way they'd come but the boy's blood has boiled over. He grits his teeth and launches at the girl with all his weight, tackling her to the ground. She cries out in surprise and as she struggles against the boy's weight, they roll out of the grassy cover, kicking up sand as they go. The third kid rolls his eyes and stays put. Probably smart.

M'cracken has not only been fully aware of every motion and word these rough children have made since stepping onto the beach, but so much more. Character, in the timbre and cadence of each voice. Temperament, in the corresponding spikes and troughs of a pulse. Body mass, via the weight of their footfalls. He’d heard the larger of these spawn intending to attack him long before the thought ever trickled through the lad’s rather primitive brain, and heard the knife sloughing its sheath. For a being who can hear a distant shark as it slices through water like a whetted razor through skin, every motion and sound these younglings make is to him entirely predictable…. except one thing.

"…this isn't right."

Even a kraken can be wrong, occasionally. He’d taken the trepidation of this one youngling, in both voice and footfall, to be indicative purely of its place in the pack hierarchy. Her place, he thinks, swivelling to rise, pacing across the sand. Not one among them will sense the sound which grips the flesh of the knife-wielder. Whether they are aware of Mac’s sudden, looming presence or not, Knife’s two companions won’t miss their leader’s sudden cessation of motion, the rigid spasms wracking his thick frame, blood running from his bitten tongue, pungent odours of the urine and feces the boy has involuntarily loosed.

Ignoring the weaker male, Mac plunges a large, oddly webbed hand down toward the girl in a gesture that doesn’t brook refusal. “Come,” says the tall man, his gaze fixed on her, one eye white as a fish-belly, the other darker than night itself.

Saia squints her eyes shut in the flurry of sand that erupts around them as they roll. The boy lands a punch against her cheek that makes her wince, but she'll take a smart bruise over the end of his knife any day. Wait, she'd had his knife. No telling where it was now, she's a little busy trying to keep her arms over her face and keep the kid from pinning her.

She doesn't stop to question why he goes limp. Only that the second he does, she throws her knee beneath his hip and tosses him sideways with a grunt, wrinkling her nose at the sudden smell. The other boy is leering from the shadows, apparently not quite sure if he should approach to help his friend of not.

She looks up at the stranger when he approaches. She stares up at the one dead eye and scrambles to her feet, wrinkling her nose. Maybe that smell was him. She wears the look of someone who's been caught by adults before- shopkeeps and lawmen alike.

"We didn't mean nothin' by it." She starts with. Assuming he'd probably take her to the sheriff's office and they'd let her go after a night in a cell. She didn't even have the knife anymore. But she follows after the stranger because it's what she knows, to follow the pack leader.

The man-apparent shortens his stride so the smaller creature might keep pace with him. Mac finds himself surprised – yet again – by the girl, for despite the tensile resistance he senses in her, she does not cut and run. And once more, moments later, as she speaks an urchin’s grudging plea, for he has ascertained now that all is truly not what it seems with this youngling.

“Dost thou hunger?” he offers, making an eating motion with hand to mouth. “Food?” Because food is a good way to keep the attention of wild things, and the seaborn wishes quite profoundly to understand why he’s felt compelled to intervene in the fate of a land-walker, and thus risk nothing less than the ire of a goddess.

He is aware, as they walk farther from the township along the shore, of motion in the periphery of his limited human eyes. A soft scuffle of light feet on sand, at a distance.

"Hunger?" she asks. Because he talks funny, not because she doesn't understand the word. Or maybe she doesn't, not right away. It's not something she's used to people asking. Not adults, anyway (of which she doesn't always see herself as one). He clarifies and she shrugs, looking down at the sand as they walk. She lifts a hand to her cheek and makes a face. If she notices at all that the distance between them and the town is growing, she doesn't seem bothered by it. Far more interesting is the abstract play of moonlight and shadow across the sand. "I co'd eat." She says finally. "I don' like mushrooms though. Taste like dirt."

She glances over her shoulder briefly, apprehensive, a flicker of fear in the muddle of hazel eyes that aren't quite green and aren't quite brown. "I woulda had 'im, you know." She draws a deep breath and holds it, making herself take up more space than she does. "He's big but he's--" she pauses a beat and slowly exhales. "--dumb." She glances sideways up at the stranger finally, disheveled hair and all, seems to decide she's unimpressed with him thus far, despite the fact that she's here at all. She should probably ask his name. Or why he'd bother to try and help her. Or why he wanted to feed her. But what if he turned out to be a mushroom? No, probably better to get a free meal out of him first.

Mac doesn’t know what a mushroom is, and defers to his erstwhile charge’s expertise on the matter with a nod of acknowledgement. Her words to follow curl his lips into a faint smile, “I don’t doubt it, M’Lady,” he replies, and nothing about him suggests he is being anything but serious. “But thou art worthy of better company, so I thought to offer it.” Really? He inwardly shrugs to himself—it’s as good a theory as any for the inexplicable. Which better become a lot more explicable before he next reports back to Selene, but it’ll do for the moment. By this time they’ve traversed as far as the western caves, which gape to the north as they walk the narrow shore, and soon are among a crop of odd-shaped stones, one of which looks like a dragon, another a giant cat. Mac pauses briefly before one that resembles a woman with coiled snakes for hair, gazing into the pitted ‘face’ of the figure. Then glances down to Saia, “My friend makes a fine spiced fish stew. Her home isn’t far now.” Maybe that’s why the scent of fish stew and bread trails over the dunes on the next gust of wind. Mac resumes the journey, turning north across the sand-hills to a trail that ends with a rickety cabin, a light in its window and someone with a lovely voice humming inside, the delicious aromas thick in the air now.

Mac knocks. Waits. “No mushrooms,” he murmurs, stooping a little toward Saia’s ear.

M'lady? Saia wonders. Thou art? Yup, this one definitely talks funny. Even if the regality of it makes her smile faintly. She has a vague sense of where they're heading, although she hadn't quite ventured this far west yet, she had spend a lot of time over the weeks wandering around the beach exploring and not being lost. She had never noticed the stones before. Had they been carved by some craftsman or created in vague shapes by the sea? No, far too intricate to have been done by happenstance. The dragon one is of some particular interest to her and she reached out to trace some of the beast's stony scales in admiration. The mushroom-stranger seems far more interested in the lady with snake hair and when he mentions fish stew, Saia perks up a bit. Even more as the scent of it comes wafting through the air towards them and she draws in a deep breath, as if she could maybe inhale the taste of it into her lungs already. She wipes the back of her hand across the corner of her mouth as they walk on. She's probably not drooling. It's more than a little tempting to go running off towards the cabin without him and her steps are antsy as they draw closer.

Her smile is an honest one as the stranger leans down to reiterate her request for no mushrooms.

The door could have been opened by a rabid dragon with feathers for hair, for as much attention as she paid the figure. Instead she leans sideways to see around them, eyes widening as she scans the space therein for sight of that fish stew. She takes a half step forwards before remembering she still has her boots on. And, can't be impolite now. So she kicks off her boots at the door. Not that her socks are clean, exactly but at least they aren't caked in sand and dirt. She then side-steps the figure with a mumbled 'pardon me' and begins the brief search for a bowl or plate and a spoon. She opens a drawer or two and a cabinet before finding them and heads over to the pot of stew, whether over a fire or set out on a table, she makes herself right at home, ladling a few generous spoonfuls into her bowl before digging into a good mouthful. She doesn't even bother to sit down. It's hot though and she almost immediately has to stick her tongue out over the bowl to spit a piece of fish back into the bowl. Followed by a complained whine at having to wait half a second for another spoonful to cool off before taking another bite.

“The figure” lets out a warm chuckle at Saia’s predicament, side-stepping to allow Mac entry. “Wipe those feet, Old One!” she chides but her voice is warm and rich with affection, “How can it be that this Dry-World child has better etiquette than you?” The woman’s skin is so dark it seems to possess a blue-ish undertone.. or is it a deep green? She is almost as tall as the tall man himself, her hair wrapped tight behind a brightly coloured duku-wrap, and is still smiling as she goes about quietly closing all the cupboards and draws that Saia left open, before stepping toward her table. She pulls out two chairs and then one for herself. Though she is obviously blind as her eyes are covered with a tailored strip of cloth, she moves easily about her home, her every motion as confident as any sighted person. The woman sits and gestures for both Mac and Saia to join her. “And what a treasure you’ve brought with you! A bright little thing.” She turns her face toward the man-apparent, her head tilting just-so, which somehow translates to both a clear question as to who, exactly this “child” is, and a subtle scold that Mac has not yet introduced them.

Mac ducks to avoid his untidy dreads tangling with a bunch of seaside herbs hanging from a rafter, and slides into the offered chair, “Forgive me, Lady, this is….” An awkward silence.

Omorfi deftly pours a mug of black tea from a pot and plops four sugar cubes in it, stirring this with a hand-crafted wooden spoon, before pushing it in Saia’s general direction while addressing Mac. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve dragged this unfortunate girl all the way here and not inquired as to her name?” She tsk’s but the smile has never left her lips. “Come, little one, sit. You are very welcome here, and very safe. I am Omorfi, and this place is home to me for a time.” There’s a soft lilt to her words, which is pleasant and somehow soothing.

Said wasn't exactly raised by wolves- pun intended- and her mother would be appalled at her lack of manners currently on display. But Rynvale, at least what she'd seen of it, existed in some space of shadow where strength and defiance were respected. She wasn't all that strong. So she'd gotten used to accepting what she needed when it was given. Currently, that meant food. And it was delicious. She eyes the woman over the rim of the bowl in her hands. She's given up on the spoon entirely. It might have been rude to stare but the woman was clearly blind, so she doesn't feel ashamed as she all but ogles the woman's dark skin and webbed fingers. She shoves chunks of fish and vegetables into her cheek and tips the bowl up to slurp the last of the broth as Mac finds a seat.

"H's-eye-shuh..." Saia grumbles around a mouth full of food before turning her head to cough a little and remember she has to chew and swallow properly before trying to talk. Yeah, her mother was definitely rolling over in a grave somewhere. "Sorry," she manages, clearing her throat again as she wipes the back of her hand across her mouth. She flickers an almost nervous glance from the woman to the sea-weathered stranger and back again. The two clearly knew each other. She should have paid better attention to those stories about kids in houses made of candy. Was there one about fish stew?

Saia side-steps almost nervously to fill her bowl with a second helping of stew before joining the other two at the table. She reaches for the cup of tea Omorfi has poured, lifting it to her nose for a sniff before taking a gulp. "My name's Saia." She says finally. "And thank you, this is delicious." She glances around the room finally, as if just now realizing she's barged into someone's home at all, and her cheeks flush with a bit of embarrassment. "It smells nice." She takes another gulp of tea and sets the cup down to take another bite of stew. "Where's home the other times? When you're not here?"

Mac slides a glance to Omorfi and clears his throat as if to speak, but the woman gets in first, turning her face to the guest, her tone mild and pleasantly musical. “Saia,” she repeats, leaving a pause after as if savouring the sound. “It holds a note of loneliness but, below that, fierce resilience.” Omorfi grins widely, taps the nail of one slender finger on the table before Mac and continues, “Not one to be underestimated. You, young lady, will soon grow into a force to be reckoned with.”

“As may her odour,” Mac contributes, without a hint of humour, “May we impose a little further upon thee, Lady, and have the child bathe?”

Omofi’s full lips compress just ever-so-slightly, and she pushes up from the table. “And this paragon of civility here, we call him ‘Mac’. He is sometimes a blunt instrument, but he always does mean well. What say you, Saia?” She steps without hesitation toward a little alcove in the one-room cabin, a space separated out by a dense curtain of strung wooden beads. “Tub is big, water’s warming on the stove. You may borrow anything to wear, while I launder your clothes. Mac and I will walk, to give you privacy.” She brushes the curtain aside, beads clacking together as they’re gathered up, revealing a tin tub and a shelf beside it filled with jars of salts and oils. A bright yellow towel hangs on a narrow timber rail affixed to the wall.

Perhaps all this fussing has caused Saia to overlook the fact that neither of these people have actually answered her question. In any case, they appear to be readying themselves to go for said walk, so any further conversation on that must be put aside… for now.

Saia looks down at her bowl, poking at the stew with her spoon. She takes another bite or two and then not so nonchalantly turns her head to sniff at her clothes when Mac mentions her smell. Rude. But OK, he wasn't wrong. Her nose wrinkles and she tries to remember the last time she'd had a proper bath. It had been a while. She finishes the second bowl of stew while the pair talk about her- people tended to do that, she'd learned. "Mac's not a mushroom, at least." She says as she takes up the cup of tea.

Saia gets the feeling she shouldn't say no to the offer of a bath. Or shouldn't, at least. Was Mac giving her a look as if refusing would be offensive in some way? Or was that just her imagination? "A bath would be lovely, thank you, Omorfi." She finishes the tea as the two set out for their supposed walk. It's clear the pair know each other. Mac could have just as easily sent her packing after a bowl of stew, if he wanted some alone time with his girlfriend. Boys were apparently daft at every age.

She waits a few minutes after they've left. What if they forgot something and came back? Or changed their minds altogether about leaving a strange girl alone in Omorfi's home? Either way it feels strange to be taking a bath here. Vulnerable. She washes her hair twice and then a third time just in case, and scrubs her skin until it turns a little pink and raw, but the warm water feels good. Everything here smells earthy and spiced, with hints of the ocean salt from the distance. With her tunic and pants in a heap near the door, she sits on the floor in a towel and rummages through a trunk of clothing as neatly as she can. Everything is bright colors and prints. She doesn't want to get any of it dirty, didn't the Lady have anything... plainer?

And then it catches her eye. A dark lavender dress of soft cotton, with some kind of silver embellishments sewn into abstract patterns across the bottom. She tugs it on, struggling to tie up the back properly. It's too long on her, clearly meant for someone taller, but the sheer sleeves stop just past her elbows. Upon closer inspection, the silver thread embroidery almost looks like constellations, though none of them quite look familiar. She restraightens the clothes in the trunk and does what any teenager does when alone in someone's space- snoops. There are shelves of ingredients and herbs for salves. She recognizes most of them from her mother's workspaces. Some of them aren't at all familiar to her but she touches them, smells them, always trying to put them back in the same places. There are seashell and bangles and necklaces. Maybe she was the one who made those touristy shell trinkets in some of the port shops in town.

But a smaller charm bracelet catches her eye and she plucks it from its place. There's a cute little octopus on it, a starfish, and what looks like a mermaid? Maybe a whale. It looks like an ocean-themed version of her own, and jingles almost as prettily when she taps it. An owl hoots outside somewhere and the sound makes her jump, dropping the bracelet. She glances down and is about to pick it up when she crashes to the floor, unconscious.

The last thing she remembers is a vision of Omorfi's cabin from a distance and falling through trees, through darkness...

Windy Dunes

The two seaborn creatures stroll the dunes down to the shimmering shore all a-light with distant stars and the cold silver of moon-fire reflecting off golden sands and dark water.

Omorfi links her arm with Mac’s; she’s tall enough that the gesture is comfortable to them both. “That child is a trove of secrets, her parents left them in her and turned the key.” The gorgon’s voice is restrained, less warm and convivial now. “If she does not find a way to release them soon, I fear…”

“… she’s close,” Mac interrupts, perhaps not wanting to know what the Oracle fears. “I heard the power in her, singing to her blood. Two songs…

“… melded into one,” Omorfi finishes the thought, “I hear it too, and the two together forming a third, a song I believe the world hasn’t heard before.” Eucalypts high on the dunes shush each other in the salt breeze, as the gorgon draws them both to a stop, turning to Mac and placing her hands against his bearded cheeks. “Brother, are you sure that your actions in this are moved by the Mother’s will, and not mere pity? Or your own love for intrigue?”

The kraken releases a long breath, shaking his head slowly so his beard scratches softly on her palms. “I….am confident that Our Lady will be the first tell me, if I am straying too far from our agreement. Worry not, Sister. Enjoy the child’s company, whilst thou have it. I know how much havng someone to fuss over pleases thee.”

Omorfi pats his face with two hands, and laughs, “She can remain with me as long as she wishes. I hear her instinct to flee, and still she may. But if she wishes…”

A soft ruffle of feathers pocks the air, and even over the louder voice of the sea these two hear it and look up. A white shadow sweeps across the sky, circling them widely, its screech a sudden rock thrown through the window of serenity. The gorgon gives a little cry of alarm, tugging Mac by the arm as she turns for the shack, “It’s begun, Brother, and she is…” the Seer turns her face to the sky, briefly. No time for explanations, “She has fallen, there is blood on her head.”

Morning, Deadeye Doolie's Shack

Saia wakes to familiar smells of cooking. Breakfast, maybe? She flexes her fingers into the soft bed, the blankets warm over her. She's still wearing the lilac dress. She opens her eyes just enough to see that the room is alight with morning sun.

"There's tea there. Drink and then come have something to eat, child."

Saia turns her head to see the cup of tea on the bedside table, still steaming. It's not breakfast she's smelling, she realizes. Some kind of potion? Something for healing. She remembers it from her mother's workings. Earthy and rich. She sits up and reaches for the warm cup, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. The silver anklet jingles playfully as she stands to head towards the table. Mac doesn't seem to be around anymore. Had he left her here? She hesitates a beat, flickering a glance towards her clothes, which have been cleaned and folded neatly by the door. She could grab them and run still.

"Sit, sit." Omorfi is saying as she passes a plate of fruit and toast with honey across the table. Saia feels her stomach rumble and she sits finally, a bit uneasily.

"I didn't break it, did I?" Saia asks nervously, looking at the shelves nearby for the little bracelet she'd found last night. Surely she'd dropped it when she'd fell. "I was looking at it and I must have slipped, and-" Omorfi stops her mixing to look at her finally. "I can pay for it." Saia continues. "I mean, I can work it off. Whatever the cost? I can help with your jewelry stuff? Or your potions, even. My mother was a healer. She taught me a little. I mean, she tried to, I was stubborn. But I remember some."

"Was she that one who taught you to keep your gifts hidden, then?" Omorfi fixes her with a warmly knowing smile that makes her blush. "Smart woman, that one." Omorfi offers a wink and Saia tries to sink deeper into her seat. She picks up a piece of toast and takes a large bite, chewing slowly.

"You didn't break anything, child, and you did not slip." Omorfi joins her at the table finally, wiping her hands on a cloth. "Now, tell me what you saw."

Saia looks up at her, a bit surprised, and swallows hard. She knows she can't lie. Even if she weren't bad at it, she just had a feeling Omorfi would know. "This place." She says quietly. "But different. From the outside. From far away. And then falling, through trees and darkness. Faster and faster." She leaves out the part about the mouse. She doubts Omorfi would want to hear that. But she remembers the way it had squished. She wrinkles her nose and pinches a strawberry between her fingers as she remembers it, then licks her fingers and takes another few bites of toast.

"And then I fell, I guess. And woke up here." She shrugs. "I get headaches sometimes. Have strange dreams. My mom always said I lived too much in the clouds."

Mac isn’t really eavesdropping as such, just… the hut hasn’t glass in all of its windows, and sound carries to the porch quite clearly, and what with his prodigious hearing and all…

He listens intently as the girl speaks, hoping for a clue as to why he’d been so compelled to save and protect her. Bringing her here, to his safe-house, risking its exposure and that of Omorfi… for whose sightless visions battles have been fought, men murdering each other in droves in the quest to possess her. Just as they had once thronged to the quest of murdering her sister. Saia’s words offer him no definitive answer, except thar the word “jewellery” has given him an idea that might aid in keeping the girl close, until he can figure it out.

Pushing out of the porch’s lone cane chair, he heads for the door, opens it as quietly as that creaky aperture will allow and heads for the kitchen area. Below a shelf filled with jars, he finds the metal trunk he’d fished from the ocean a few days before, and sets this on Omorfi’s spotless table. Opening it, he grabs out several handfuls of gems of all types and sizes, diamonds and emeralds, rubies dark as blood, lemon-yellow citrines and sky-blue larimar. Of the latter, he plucks up a single exemplary stone and pockets it.

“I… uh, forgive me this interruption, ladies,” he says, as if they’re behind a closed door that doesn’t exist, “Seeing as Saia is recovering, and all seems well, I must away for a time to see… a person. I have left for both of thee these… things.” He gestures to the scattered precious stones, “In hope you may find delight therein.”

Omorfi, though her eyes were taken from her head when she was small, somehow manages to give the impression of offering Mac a long and silent stare, before leaning in to whisper to Saia, “He always talks fancy like that. And dosn’t he just love to be mysterious. But mark me on this, his hearts are good and true.”

“….hearts?”

The door creaks open again and Mac, with the chest under one arm, enters the world outside at the very break of a new day. Pausing to inhale deeply, as though breathing in the riot of fiery colour blossoming across the sky, he steps off the porch and heads for the waiting open sea.