The crow’s nest of the Beauty
55 Spring 218, immediately after the execution of the imprisoned Swan
Sav
Screams of pain, the infliction of it by people she thought she knew, the miasma of hatred, the memory of a man’s freshly-single eye going wide with fear as she cranks back the string of the crossbow and then going slack as the bolt thuds through his skull and buries itself in the side of the hull—
It’s all too much. So she flees, as she always does.
There isn’t much choice of places to flee on a boat, though, and when her eyes draw level with the crow’s nest, she finds the lone halfling of the crew already occupying the space, snoring gently. A tinge of envy wafts through her as the peace evident on the sleeping Warbler’s face, unawares of all that had happened in just a few short hours. Pulling herself the rest of the way up, she squats on the edge of the railing, one hand on one of the ropes continuing up to the topsail to steady herself, and debates. This is very nearly the best alone time she’ll get here. Alternately, it’s far enough away that no one will see her if she changes herself.
Chewing on her lip, she comes to a decision and begins to sing, one hand sketching an invisible glyph in the air.
Warbler
Ringo is sleeping soundly with his feet propped up against one side of the crow’s nest. He finds sleep wherever he can; it never lasts long, but there’s something about the gentle sway of this ship and the quiet lapping of the river along the side of the boat that provides him with a momentary peace amidst the chaos of the past couple days.
He’s dreaming, and in the same place as always. Always home … He’s a young boy this time, so small he can’t see above the tall grass without stretching himself to his maximum height and hopping like a rabbit to take in the view. It’s a fall morning in the dream. The countryside is awash in green, yellow, red, and amber hues. Leaves flutter in the wind, and so do two children’s voices “You can’t find us Warbler! … Over here!” their laughter drifts along the breeze, and slowly shifts into a song. The grass transitions from green to a brilliant red, so bright that it’s blinding. Ringo’s nostrils fill with the smell of smoke and the flaming red grass ripples and dances to the melody.
Warbler wakes up with a squawk, while rubbing the sleep from his eyes and trying to clear the smoke from his nostrils. He sees a familiar silhouette singing and tracing shapes in the air, and says “city mouse?”
Sav
Sav hesitates as she hears the moniker, and the gathering power dissipates through the gap in her chant and gestures. With a sigh, she releases the remaining structures and peeps over her shoulder at Warbler. “Aye, country mouse. ‘Tis me.”
Aloysius, who had hopped out of his nest in the small of her back upon recognizing the song she was singing, boggles at Warbler in greeting and swarms down the halfling’s leg, propped upon the rail as it is and providing a convenient path down.
Sav turns a little bit more to face inward, rather than out of the nest, but remains perched on the railing.
“Seems I hardly ever see ye down on decks these days. Turnin’ intae a bird in truth?”
Warbler
Warbler yawns, stretching his arms wide, and then looking them up and down shoulder to finger tip. He wiggles his fingers in front of his face making a gesture reminiscent of a bird flapping its wings. “I … hmm, I don’t think so.” He twists his head working out a creak in his neck as he stands. “I just feel better in the treetops … and this is the closest thing we’ve got. ” he says as he drums his fingers on the edge of the crow’s nest. “What are you doing up here?”
Sav
There’s a long pause as she hunches down into herself more before she lifts her head and says, “Gettin awae.” Another hesitation. “I did a heavy shite thing - I still think ‘twas the right course o action, but ‘twas dirt. An’ there was too much branglin about it down on th’ deck.” She gestures down to the deck in question, looking tiny far below. Undoubtedly at this point most of the others have dispersed, the body sunk slowly behind their wake, but some heads might be seen from above.
But he deserves to know the full truth, so she elaborates, “‘Star, Vanja and Roux wentae ask up the Swan an’ it tumbled skewed. Lots o’ rage and coarsin’ ‘im up. Vanja I think put out his eye an’ healed him back to health, an’ talked about puttin’ ‘im t death by boxin’ ‘im up an drownin’ im. Roux bashed his face well in. An’ I don’ think the mannie e’en knew much to begin with, nowt more than we couldae guessed or had heard.” She does pause for a second there and adds, “Though ‘twas at least a relief to hear their choosin’ of this ship was pure chance rather’n conspiracy.”
She’s quiet for a second longer, then ends, “Soo when all else had left, I thought about it for a titch and thought it best to put him out o’ his misery immediatelike. I didnae think he had naught else to share, an’ he wouldnae ha’ left here alive in any manner. All ‘twas left for him was pain, an’ his presence was curdlin’ like lovers’ pox in Vanja’s soul.” Her lips twitch. “I think she disagreed.” Despite the dry, matter-of-fact delivery, her gaze is bleak as she stares at the horizon.
Warbler
“Well that kicks harder than a strong cup of spiced tea” Warbler says in as light a tone as he can muster. Any remnants of the lingering fog of sleep is gone from his eyes. “That’s … that is a hard thing. Even if you know it’s the right thing.”
“It, it was a mercy I suppose. Though that man may not have deserved it, or shown the same kindness in return if what they put Vanja through shows anything about him.” Warbler pauses, looks out across the water, and then tilts his gaze toward Sav with an expression of genuine concern. “Have you … ever had to do something like that before?”
Sav
“Most likely no, aye,” she agrees. “But were I to govern my actions by what the Swans would do t’ us, that’d make me no better than the Swans, no? An’ I dinnae aim to take ‘em on as a guide for me life.”
She shrugs at the question. “I’ve killed before, aye. Sometimes horribly.” A flash of a burning pile of corpses. “And sometimes people who had nae idea I was there.” Distant figures on a wall, screaming as they toppled from the shuddering blow of the cannon. Deep snow and armored men who stood between her and Lumotu’s unconscious form hidden in a bush. “But … never one who was unarmed. Helpless. Close.” She hesitates. “It needed doing. He was never goin’ ta leave here alive, not without endangerin’ all o’ us. But it seemed rank cowardice t’ leave it up to someone else when I’d figured that it needed doin’ anyway.”
She shakes her head then, and straightens up a little, gripping on the rope over her head. “S’enough about that, though. ‘m sorry to be disturbin’ your nap with news o what occurred below. Probably ‘tis best ye knew of it before ye descended, I guess.”
Warbler
Warbler nods solemnly “I trust your instincts Sav. I don’t know you all that well yet, but I can tell you’re a good egg.” Warbler’s eyes brighten and he pulls a stone from his pocket. “I almost forgot! I never got a chance to thank you for this … song stone?” He rolls the stone back and forth across his knuckles then thumps it towards Sav and says with a grin “Is there any way you can change the tune?”
Sav
Fortunately, Warbler’s distraction as he fishes the stone from his pocket gives Sav a chance to recover from the surprise of the compliment. By the time he chucks the stone toward her, she’s straightened and fought down the heat in her face, but the throw startles her slightly and she reaches out a fraction too late. The stone slips through her fingers, but another instant later it buoys up on an invisible grip and thunks back into her hand.
She’s equally as surprised by the presence of the stone itself, and as she inspects it and the birdsong twittering from her palm, a laugh slips loose unexpectedly. “I’d complete forgot about this, t’ be honest wi ye. I’m surprised it’s still goin’! Ye’re welcome, I s’pose, it wasnae much of a thing - just a lil trick.” Balancing on the rail, she reaches into a pouch with the other hand and pulls out a tool that looks a bit like a cross between a toothpick and a chisel set with a wood handle. She cocks a brow at Warbler. “Any requests?”
Warbler
Warbler raises an eyebrow, considering his next words. “Small trick … maybe, but a significant kindness. Could you make it sing … something like this?” Warbler crosses his fingers in an unusual twisted shape over his nose and mouth, takes in a breath deep enough that his chest visibly expands beneath his baggy clothes, and he emits a low soft hum. A pitch above is a backdrop of rustling wind and the distant chirp of birds and buzzing insects layered over a chorus of crickets and cicadas, which is followed by a percussive sound that could be a branch falling onto the forest floor. “Could … it sound like that? If it works that way? How, how does it work?”
Sav
Gray and green eyes both go wide at the multilayered sound that rises forth from the halfling. “Torchin’ havens, how’d ye do that?” Sav half-squawks. “That’s pure amazin’, that is.” Recovering a little, she settles down a little more on the railing, letting her feet down and twining her ankles around the rails to steady herself. “Alack, nay, I cannae do anythin’ so complex as all that. One sort o’ sound at a time on one item is about the limits of it, though I can do several at once.” She thinks for a moment, nose screwing up in concentration, before she etches a line that vanishes into the pebble she holds in her hand. The sound of crickets begins, rising and falling with regular gaps.
Passing that stone back, she pulls out a button from her inexhaustible bag and makes another mark. From this one, the sound of wind begins, hardly audible over the wind in the sails and the creak of rope up in the crow’s nest. Another piece - this one a short piece of string - gets far-off birdsong. A nail gets another birdcall, this one more of a plaintive, swooping call, and a shiny stone gets the sound of rustling leaves applied to it.
There, she stops, nodding to the collection of pocket clutter that holds the sound of the forest in his hands. “That’s about th’ whole of it, I cannae do furthermore.”
Warbler
Warbler focuses on the collection of objects, carefully examining each of them with visible curiosity. He rolls them around in his cupped hands, looking for some similarities between them, some pattern that connects the magic they now hold. He hops up onto the edge of the crows nest legs crossed in a seated position, and then raises his left hand and lets them slide from his palm into his sleeve.
“They’re wonderful, a little band, and each with their own note to play.” He says as he pretends to pluck the strings of a lute in the air.
Warbler rests his elbows on his knees and places his chin in his hands then says “I’ve seen the way you’re constantly taking notes … looking at your surroundings like they’re a puzzle that you can piece back together, and you seem to have a real knack for figuring things out … I … I’ve never been very good at things like that.” He looks up at the broken bits in the sky, and asks “Maybe … when you have time you could teach me a little about magic, and I could show you some of the things I can do that I still don’t quite … understand?”
Sav
The real pleasure in her face at the question finally drowns out the spark of darkness that had lurked in there since she climbed up to the nest. “That’d be right braw, it would. Seems like there’s been nae time at all to really study how everyone’s workins, well, work, but if we’ve time on the boat that’d be grand. Everyone seems t’ work far more on instinct an feel wi’ their magics, an’ there’s a place for that, but I cannae help but feel everyone’d benefit by a wee application of study an’ experimentation.” She pauses, adding cautiously, “Mind, what little study I’ve managed t’ do of other magics mostly seems tae show that it works on different principles than the way I’ve figured to wrangle the Stuff, e’en if it works with the same thing, so I dinnae ken for sure that showin’ ye how I work with the Stuff can translate pure to what ye do - but ye never ken wi’out tryin’.”
She thinks for a second, then pulls out another nail, raising her tool. “So, alterin’ a thing’s properties was one of the first things I figured out how tae do, an’ I’ll be straight an’ confess that I didnae full grip the underlyin’ principles o what I was doin’ when I first did it. But at heart, ye must grip that everythin’ is made up of an energy, what I call Stuff - an’ by energy I mean—” And she’s off to the races, explaining how the engravings she draws hooks into the Stuff and changes it, which in turn changes the properties of the item, from solidity to sound or light or otherwise.
Warbler
Warbler hangs on Sav’s every word with rapt attention. His brow furrows in concentration as he nods and considers the implications of her findings. He ponders the behavior and manipulation of energy, and the way she catches it, shapes it, and transforms it into something else. He struggles to keep up as she rapidly elaborates on the specifics of the interactions and calculations necessary to twist various forms of Stuff into other Stuff, while simultaneously worrying how she is finding time to breathe between syllables. He tries to mirror her gestures as she demonstrates the shapes and symbols required in order to turn concepts into theories, and theories into magic …
A few candles pass before there is a break in the lecture on the finer points of magic theory, and Warbler says “Incredible …” as he stands and stretches, his joints creaking and popping while a confident smile forms across his face “I think I understand now! We should share more soon.” He climbs down from the crow’s nest nodding as he thinks to himself “So magic is just like fishing … You just need the right kind of hooks …” He leans on the railing raising up to his tiptoes to peer out across the river, while somewhere on deck Easter mutters “ … big fish …”
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