Faila Ranae Role Play

"Sounds fun. To the river then?"

I pack up my stuff and dismiss my spell. I slip the book back into my bag, and my bones creak a little as I rise.

 

The room darkens as quickly as it lit, and for a moment it sounds like bones are clicking together. I dismiss it as Stenmur and haphazardly cram my water pot into my bag.

"This way," I nod to my right, down a hill where the trees seem thicker and greener than those above me.

 

" I'll join you if you're going around water. Might find some fish I can nab." I say to them once again ignoring the mystery of a talking undead cat. "Perhaps I can get a bath to wash some of this dust off as well..." I say, somewhat trailing off, as if pondering my own mysteries. I still get up and gather my few items off the floor to follow Orin and Avi out.

 

I unintentionally end up leading the way through the woods. There are deep, slim cuts in the earth from a recent torrential rain, so I follow them downhill. I pass a few more buildings, each as dusty and old as the library from yesterday, but pay them no attention. I'll explore them soon.

There wasn't much of a path to the river once the rain trails ran out. What had been a road at one point was now overgrown with all kinds of weird-looking plants. I cut under a bridge whose planks were mostly rotted and was greeted by the faint sound of rushing water.

"We're close!" Sure enough, the riverbank was only strides away. It appeared to be recovering from a flood; the water was a thick, muddy brown, full of twigs and trees and floating logs bobbing in an out of tall whitecapped waves. A dull roar accompanied the harsh swirl, scraping across the buried ground and growling as it pushed its way past a pair of rusted metal barges on what I assumed was the original river bank.

"I guess we missed a storm," I shrugged, trotting down the bank in search of a calmer area.

 

I finish cleaning up camp and head down after the group. As I walk through the woods I hear the rushing water and know I am not far. I search fallen leaves and sticks looking for rocks I could use for a distractionof anything that might be in the area.

 

"It looks like there's a calm spot by those barges." I point to a dent in the bank a few paces down from the bow of the closest barge. "Probably deep as hell, though." Shrugging, I trot downstream, moving closer to the bank all the while. The tip of the scabbard on my back drags the hillside, pleasantly rushing its way through the grass. I zero in on the pool, hoping it's clear enough to drink. There's another waterskin somewhere in my rucksack, and animals tend together around clean water. Maybe I can catch lunch there.

"It doesn't look too bad!" I shout back to my companions.

 

The river land is grassy and flat with a sharp drop off leading down to clear water, on a normal day. Today it's swollen over its banks and is muddy and thick with debris. The grass is steaming in the early light and the few trees are heavy with last night's rain. There are signs that animals have been here recently, prints from deer and wolves in the mud.
To your right is a boat, just big enough for your party if you all squeeze, bobbing in the water and held in place by nothing you can see. To your left an incredibly muddy horse grazes in the wet grass.
What will you do?

 

[for simplicity's sake you're all next to the river now, unless there's somewhere you would really rather be, in which case continue to write yourself there.]

 

I put my weapon down and slowly approach the horse hoping to not spook it but instead to catch it. It could be useful to the part. I look amongst my own items to see if I have any rope. I have a few yards but not much. I'll have to get very close to the animal to get the rope around it. I motion to the group not to follow me and hope that they see and will stay quite.

 

It's a horse. I'm not sure if it's my flighty damn horse, but here it stands. If it weren't for the mud, I would be able to see whether or not it was mine, but anything could be buried under the lake's worth of mud covering its body. Abandoning my quest for potions ingredients, I slowly approach the horse from its side with my hands visible and lightly click my tongue. If it's the horse I lost, it'll walk up to me anticipating a carrot. If it's not my horse, it'll probably just run away scared out of its wits that random strangers are advancing toward it.

 

The horse raises its head to look at you for a moment, then resumes grazing peacefully.

 

I snicker to myself, "come here, you idiot." Slowly walking up to the horse, I take a brush out of a pocket on my bag and get to work on the mud. He seems alright; none of the mud is bloody and his eyes are bright. As I'm grooming, I notice he's the wrong color, and not my horse. With a sigh, I keep grooming anyway. When the first layer of dust and most of the twigs are gone, I look through my bag for rope or leather. When my bag yields nothing better, I sling a frayed, grayish rope behind his ears, twist it under his jaw, wrap the ends around his nose and tie a know beneath his chin. It's flimsy, but it's enough to lead him by until I find something else.

 

When you get the reigns on it the horse looks at you with deep contempt, whinnies, and continues grazing, just a little more disgruntled than before. If you brush enough mud off you'll find its fur is green, not brown, and if you were to look in its mouth you would find a set of carnivore's fangs.

Congratulations, you caught a kelpie.

 

When it whinnies, I see a mouth full of fangs. "Get away!" I recoil in horror and sprint upstream along the bank. "Fucking run!" It's a kelpie. It's a fucking kelpie. And here I thought it was merely grass-stained and wayward. I don't get far before I trip and fall to the ground. "Don't let 'im get near you!"

 

I pet the kelpie's neck and it looks at me with deep reproach, but there's nothing it can do now. "What's wrong? You got a halter on it. The poor thing is harmless now, couldn't drown you if it tried." I lean down and whisper in its ear, telling it that I won't let them take it too far from the river. A dried out kelpie isn't fun for anyone involved.

 

"It only wants you to think it's harmless." I scramble to my feet. "That's when it's most dangerous. It'll lure you into thinking you can ride it, then you're floating arse-up downriver in the rain."

 

"If you don't want it I'll take it." He has absolutely no understanding of how fairies and fey creatures work. There are rules. They're senseless and arbitrary, but there are definitely rules to these things. "Good kelpie." I pat its side and it whuffles. "Good boy. If you try to drown me I'm going to skin you and possibly eat you."

 

"Keep the bloody horse." I don't know what she wants with it, but she can have it. My swimming's bad enough without a kelpie dragging me down to the bottom of the river. Maybe she can skin the creature, who knows. Irritated and somewhat embarrassed, I pluck twigs out of my tartan and hair and start picking through plants on the shoreline. I'm still not sure what the saffron looks like, but it's something to do. "Oi, what's saffron look like?"

 

Well, there goes my chance of catching the animal. Oh well. I move back to grab my weapon then head to the shallows to see if I can nab any fish with the spear end of Waldo. I wade into the shallows and nab two small fish, I guess I'll try and cook them up soon. I think I'll need more than this though, who knows when I actually last ate. I look down the bank to watch the boat bob up and down, I wonder what interesting places we could get by river.. I wonder if that kelpie would be willing to help us with maneuvering the boat. "Hey, maybe we should take that boat, see what is down the river a ways, maybe there could be saffron, or more saffron down stream."

 

The river still looks angry, and the white swells make me nervous. "You know how to row one?" It can't be that hard, but if someone else knows how it works, they're more than welcome to do it. Maybe we can use it to get to the opposite shore; it looks greener and less dangerous than the current slippery mud and rocks I'm currently standing on.