Sorra bites her lip. Me too, she thinks. She reaches out and takes the boy's hand.
"I know," she says. He sounds like he's from the Spire, but maybe.... "Where is your home?" she asks.
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Sorra bites her lip. Me too, she thinks. She reaches out and takes the boy's hand.
"I know," she says. He sounds like he's from the Spire, but maybe.... "Where is your home?" she asks.
The boy squeezes Sorra's hand like a drowning sailor holds to a piece of wreckage, like a climbing person clings to every rock. His grip is strong and only slightly damp. "'m from Navek. Came up here for All Saints Day with my family. I want them. I want to go home. Please."
Eztra silently watched as the boy asks for two things, one of which was probably possible and one of which was almost certainly not.
She came forward, got down on her knees, and asked the dwarf lad, "What's your name? My name is Eztra, and this is Sorra, and Samuel." She left Magdi out for the moment; some dwarves were taught to hate goblins at a young age, and she felt it better to gain his trust first.
"I know," Sorra says. "I want mine too." Her mouth says the words, but somehow they seem to bypass her head, echoing dully. Her chest feels hollow. She doesn't know if it's good or bad that she doesn't feel them.
Navek, Sorra thinks, trying to think about something--anything--else. The almost-painful strength of the boy's grip helps. Navek the wrong way. The giants came from north, not south. Answers--the closest thing there is left to family, anymore--should be with them. What answers could they possibly find in Navek?
But she can't haul a child into the frozen north anyway. She squeezes the boy's hand in return.
SpoilerWhoops, ninja'd by SPoD; editing; can Sorra say this before Eztra speaks, and then Eztra introduces everyone?
"Jouren, but my friends back in Navek all call me Jory," the kid says, scrambling to sit up. He's in festival clothes still-a soft blue tunic over a slightly threadbare-looking white shirt, well-worn and probably used many times over, hemmed with red and green threads. As he squirms, you can hear the muffled sound of bells. Bell bracelets are common trinkets in Erlise, found all over during festivals.
Tear tracks and a bit of snot still run down his face, but he seems mostly oblivious to this. Jory looks about seven, by human standards. Maybe younger. He stares at Eztra with a curious expression on his face. "You're a southner. I can tell 'cause a your skin and your name. I've never seen a southner before." By his tone of voice, you'd think Eztra was a hippogryph or something similarly exotic, not just a human who happened to be native to a hotter climate.
"Well, now you have!" smiled Eztra. "Now, you'll always be able to say, 'I've met a southerner!' and no one will be able to call you a liar."
She scooted closer to the boy, ignoring the pain of her knees against the stone floor. "Jory," she began, "Do you have any family who stayed behind in Navek? Anyone who didn't come to the festival?" She prayed to the stars that he had someone left, anyone. Let him have that much at least.
"Granny never goes anywhere. She's really old-two hundred and eleventy-three now!" Jory exclaims, cheerfully oblivious to the fact that 'eleventy' is not an accepted number in Erlisan, Dwarven, or indeed in any known language except in a few dialects of Celestial.
Sorra forces herself to smile a little bit.
"I'll try to get you home to her," she says. "If you want to come with us. We have a few more things to do here first, though, I think." She looks back over her shoulder for the others' opinions.
Eztra saw the struggle in Sorra's expression. Clearly, she could not help but be touched by the boy's plight, but she also burned for the knowledge that they all believed must be here somewhere. By that time the next day, scavengers and looters will have already descended on the city and scattered any potential clues that lay strewn about.
Exhaling slowly, Eztra nodded. "Yes, we can take you to your grandmother, as long as you can be a good boy and not fuss. We need to look for something in these tunnels first. We'll keep you safe, though, don't worry."
SpoilerDiplomacy: The deal is, "If you come with us while we look for something and be a good boy, we will keep you safe and then bring you back home." Hopefully, staying safe and going home counts as a really good deal!
Diplomacy: [roll0]
Samuel, merely listening to the conversation thus far, steps inside the room fully and addresses the young child "So, you are from Navek young one? I spent 16 years of my life there, perhaps I know your parents! Is Sirlaith Winters still in good health?"
Jory nods once, solemnly, and hops out of the bed. He's barefoot. "I'll be good. I don't fuss. I'm nearly fifteen, you know," he says with a small amount of pride. "Been here all night, hidin' from the giants. They were loud, and mean. But they're all gone now, right?" He grins widely, showing a bit of dried fruit stuck in his teeth.
Magdi watched the conversation unfold for a little while before approaching cautiously.
"Would it be alright with you Jory if I came along too?" she asked politely, looking directly into the boy's face and trying her best not to look menacing. "I'm Magdi, I came here with Sorra and Eztra and Sam. Try not to worry about the teeth," here she thrust out her lower jaw a little to show off the bottom row of fangs, "they're hereditary but I never use them on people." she didn't come all the way over to the dwarf, she'd stopped just behind Eztra to keep a barrier between the two of them, just in case."You've made this place look really nice, by the way, did you do it all yourself? And have you eaten?" she pulled the mostly frozen parsnip out of her belt here and displayed it across open palms for Jory to see.
SpoilerGiven Magdi's race and everything I'll go ahead and roll a diplomacy check to try and negate Jory being freaked out at the sight of her. [roll0] I was typing this when Ajadea updated. But Magdi's eyesight's not always the best apparently, so she may not have noticed the dry fruit anyway?
Jory stares at Magdi. "You're a goblin," he says rather dumbly. Then he hears the rest of her words and seems to forget all about that. "No, I got friends here too. They found this place." He grabs the parsnip and picks at it with his fingers. He clearly doesn't think much of the half-frozen raw vegetable.
"I am a goblin," she agreed, "Just not a very normal one. I've been living in a city since before you were born, which is weird for goblins they say." "Your friends are pretty smart," she observed, "I've lived in the city for 29 years and I didn't think of hiding in here." She watched him with the parsnip for a moment.
"Found that in the snow outside. Probably should have warned you it was cold!"
Jory shakes his head. "I dunno where they are. Been hiding down here all night, you know."
Magdi gazed about the little cavern in dismay. At least one wall was practically wallpapered with drawings. Had they all been Jory's? She hoped so."Do you mean you haven't seen your friends since before last night, Jory?" she asked the boy, not sure she wanted confirmation from his answer. "When did they show you this place?"
"Day afore All Saints," Jory says. "But s'not all their stuff. There were drawings and things already. The rug too, an the crystals. The mouse is Kisa's," he adds, pointing down at the sad stuffed mouse.
While Magdi has the boy's attention, Eztra whispers to Sorra and Samuel: "Do we keep exploring this path? Or go back to where Magdi was searching?"
Sorra turns to the others. "Magdi said she thought the tunnel she was in went to the center of the spire, right? Do we have any idea where this might be heading? We might want to see where it leads."
Magdi picked the mouse up gently and sat it on her lap."Kisa has good taste then, it's a lovely little mouse, goes with the rug too" she commented, "and she's with your other friends, I suppose?"
She was starting to feel she was in over her head again. The dead had too many names now. At Sorra's question she looked up.
"I'll follow along whichever way you want to go, Sorra" she said somewhat flatly. "I'm not sure where the tunnel leads though, this is all uncharted territory for me."
She hesitated, wondering if the time had finally come to dare ask what the others knew of the fate of The Gilded Steeple.
It was still too soon. She didn't want Jory to see when she heard the bad news. It was bound to be bad news, that was why she hadn't asked sooner.
Jory nods enthusiastically. "Uh-huh. She's even littler than me, and she's really smart too. I'm sure she's fine!" He bounces up and down on the balls of his feet.
"Well, small people do tend to be rather smart. My mother was terribly small and proportionatly smart. She didn't have to use so much brain power on moving about you see - since she was so light and she could use the spare space in her head for thinking big thoughts."
Magdi folded her arms and mocked scowled at Jory.
"So if you last saw Kisa and your other friends the day afore All Saints, why did you split up? Did you run off? Or were Kisa and the others just going to go somewhere boring?"
"Mum and Dad took me and Darun down to the hall of saints to pray," Jory says, making a face. "It was really boring, but Dad wouldn't let me leave. An I saw Kisa when we were getting our lanterns and things, but she was releasing hers from the very tippy top of the spire so it would fly high and Darun is scared of going up there and Mum wouldn't let me go with Kisa."
Samuel whispers back to Eztra "Yes, we should continue to keep exploring. But what are we going to do with the little one? We can't take him with us, it might be dangerous farther in, and I worry about just leaving him here alone until we get back. What if something happens to us and we don't come back? There's got to be a good solution to this, but I'm not seeing it right now."
Sorra drops her voice a little.
"Why not let him choose?" she asks. "He can wait for us to come back, or come with us."
Eztra nods, and prods Sorra to ask him, since Eztra already made a request of the boy to come with them in the first place.
Sorra turns back to Jorry.
"Jorry," she says, her tone serious, "we have some more things we need to do here before we leave--more places we need to look. It might be nothing, but it might be very dangerous. If you like, you can come with us, but if you want to wait here, where it's safer, we'll come back for you. What do you want to do?"
Jory frowns. "I better stay. Mum'd yell at me if I went into a danger, 'specially with people she don't know. But," he adds solemnly, "You should take a good luck charm. Here." He trots over to the pile of stones and begins sorting through them. After a few minutes, he picks out four gingerly. They all look like more or less the rest of the rocks, smooth and round and gray. Jory holds them up to you. "Keep 'em in your pocket. That way you'll be lucky. Wish I could go. Bet it'd be exciting."
You aren't quite sure where he got the idea about the river rocks. None of you except Magdi are much of experts on the local dwarven culture.
Magdi
Spoiler
And no one's ever mentioned carrying around river rocks in pockets as a form of luck, whether they be dwarf or any other race.
Eztra smiled. "Thank you, Jory. I will do that." She kissed the rock and put it in the pocket of her coat, where she could feel its weight, however slight, pulling it down. If her studies in astrology had taught her anything, it was that the circumstances of chance were complex and ever-changing. The stars were capricious in their certitude, and she was not about to tempt their retroactive disfavor by refusing a proffered luck totem.