This was supposed to be a more calm time of year for Vasilija, a stint spending some months focusing on her Awenydd role over the more active training and combat or defense focused role of her Dz'olana position, but apparently when the seasons changed, or just around this particular area where the herd had come to camp, the veil was especially thin, allowing more spirit activity or just stronger spirit presences around. Normally, the moth mare didn't mind. She'd always been sensitive to the spirits and magic around her, but something in this new area seemed different. She couldn't quite put her paw on it, but something was setting her teeth on edge, almost like something was looming over her shoulder and whispering too low for her to hear clearly, just barely audible susurrant, uttered nonsense. It was an insistent feeling, had been since the camp was set up and it was going on four days now.
She laid out offerings, prayers, tried a couple smaller rituals to see if she could bring any stronger voices to the fore to see if she could parse out what or who exactly was trying to get her attention, what they were trying to say. No matter what she tried, they seemed to ignore her attempts to clearly communicate with them. Vasilija was starting to lose sleep over this because, while the whisperer or whisperers seemed content to keep just enough distance in her waking hours to be annoyingly ever present, if lightly so, the source of her irritation apparently figured out how to infiltrate her dreams, seeping into her subconscious to keep up their habit of speaking at her but not telling her what they were after.
Tonight was another such a night. Being overcast, it was harder to pinpoint the location of the moon in the sky, but just based on how quiet it was in and around camp, how deep the darkness at the edges of the light of the camp's fires and torches' reach, it was late enough to be drifting towards early. Vasia had been resting soundly, dreamlessly at first, but then the rising tide of whispering urgings snapped her from her sleep, not with a gasp, but an irate, soft growl. The moth mare emerged from her tent and padded out into the chilly mid-autumn night, her tail lashing low behind her.
She walked with her head high, jaw set, her deep green hooded cowl drawn up to just behind her antennae, her warm breath condensing in fine vapor that dissipated blending into the fog that settled into the valley in which her herd camped. Vasilija's trek away from the camp was suspiciously quiet and that fact offered little in the way of peace or comfort. One thing the awenydd knew for certain, she was going to try her damnedest to get a straight, clear answer and she wasn't going to rest until she did so.
Letting her mind mull over the questions that plagued her, Vasilija let her senses and awareness open to the night around her. Was their goal just to play games with her, talking, teasing, tittering behind her ear so that she was aware but not apprised of the specifics that they, it, whomever was directing at her? They weren't looking to be quieted or pacified, clearly. What did they want from her? Would they follow her when it came time to pack up and move along, or were they more bound to this place? She'd not dealt with this consistently evasive, yet cloying of a spirit to her memory. Her wanderings had her ascending a hill, her thoughts and the whispers keeping her company.
Suddenly, things changed.
It was a calm night, cool, foggy, so her hood being snatched from her head to fall about her neck was not from the gentle breeze that languidly passed through the area. Vasilija stopped her walking, her expression drifting from the contemplative bearing that had settled on her features back to the open frustrated irritation that had drawn her from her bed in the first place. "What do you want?" She asked aloud in a clipped tone, the polite deference normally used in her prayers and rituals gone. "I'm here now. You're clearly feeling braver, so why don't you speak up and be direct with me?" Her words were less a question and more of a direct command. Her green eyes narrowed as she scanned the drifting, subtly swirling fog around her, her ears pricking forward, alert.
Next a strand of her mane got yanked which gave her a bit of directionality. The mare wheeled around, staring pointedly into the dark, her breath huffing sharply through her nose in an almost hiss, making the clouds of her breath roil around her face. Another tug to her mane, forward. She yanked her head back to snatch her captured lock free, only just biting back the urge to fruitlessly snap her teeth at the non corporeal agitator, rearing back and fluttering her wings. "Use. Your. Words!"
There was several long beats of utter silence. Pausing to reflect? Making a decision? Then, one of her antenna had a hard tug forward. 'GO! HURRY!' It seemed to say, though she was shaking and lowering her head at the white stars that flashed across her vision from the yank to her antenna, pushing back the flare of nausea that followed. "Stop." She said. "Enough. Enough... Show me then. Gently. Clearly, this is urgent. I see now..."
Whatever it was seemed like it, or they, understood and once more collected a longer, loose strand of her mane and gave periodic, light little tugs to indicate direction. She followed dutifully along in silence, waiting to see what was so important that the only course of action was to inflict a campaign of harassment against her.
Vasilija opted to fly along in into the dark, fluttering low over the trees until the tug indicated to descend in what . So dense was the fog that it was only when she was halfway to landing that she saw the shape of another soquili emerge from the gloom. Their attention was seemingly focused on the rockface? The tugging stopped, the strand of her mane dropped, while the whispering faded to almost distant faintness as though they were watching. Anxiously? Excitedly? She couldn't guess.
As she was coming in to land, she announced herself softly, keeping a respectful distance. "Heigh-ho, there. I was out wandering the night and my attention was brought this way." She landed silently and was able to get a better look at the stallion before her. White spotted, cream yellow to brown, green haired, large, his expression one of anxious despair. "What's the matter?"
"My friend chased a little lizard into a gap in the rock. He can't get back out and it's been three days. He says that there's a bit of water collected in puddles in the rock, but he hasn't eaten... Please, is there anything you could do to help us?"
Vasilija drew nearer to the rockface, and saw that what appeared to the surface was a flatter vertical rock leaned up over a larger cavity within. There was some smaller gaps here and there around the stone. She hummed softly then nodded for the stallion to back up and keep away. She meant it, her tone leaving no room for argument. She'd try something. The mare shrunk herself and squeezed her way through a gap at the bottom. Inside, sitting fluffed up next to one of the puddles of water sat a small white chicken. "Friend?" She began softly. "I'm going to see about getting you out. Hold tight."
The gap behind the 'rockface' wasn't a cave proper, just a shallow crevice notched into the stone. The awenydd fluttered up to check out the inside spaces of the gaps near the top of the entryway. It'd take some doing. The 'door' wasn't a part of the outcropping that formed the exterior. She climbed along the top edge, angling herself to press her shoulders against the door while adjusting to press her paws all against the wall and ceiling. Once satisfied that she had a solid grip, she slowly shifted back towards her full size. The pressure of the tight space that she had wedged herself was intense, and it initially didn't look like her plan would work, but then she heard and felt a grinding of stone on stone and gradually she was able to grow, pressing her legs straight. The stone blocking the crevice rocked in time with her growth and stretching before it finally fell away, thudding solidly away from the nook.
Vasilija was able to catch herself before falling, a tight grimace settled on her face at the immediate ache in her muscles and wings when she landed back in the fresher night air. She closed her eyes as she breathed through the pain as it ebbed from the flare up. She'd probably be feeling that for a few days at least. She could hear the stallion and his friend reuniting nearby.
A revelation came to her that whatever these spirits were, they were tied to the very land here and that they were perhaps older than language itself, which is perhaps why she was never able to pluck any single actual words from the utterings they whispered to her, why she was unable to get any stronger voices to come through with her rituals and prayers. They had the cadence of speech, but had no actual language of their own. With the brewing crisis taken care of, her whisperers fell back into peaceful, contented, observant silence. Vasilija took a long, slow inhale through her nose before as slowly blowing her exhale through her mouth. Perhaps now she could finally rest.
She shifted her weary gaze over to the draft stallion, worriedly checking in with and checking over his fluffy chicken friend. Bosco? That's what she believed she heard the stallion refer to the bird. The moth mare sighed. "Hey... What's your name?"
The draft stallion looked up, relief and gratefulness evident on his face. "Amos... Thank you... Thank you so much. Who-"
She shook her head. "Don't worry about it. Amos, I'm going to be heading back to my herd's camp. You and your friend, Bosco, I think, have had a rough few days. Why don't you follow me back and rest and recover? We've got spaces for travelers. Bosco, you can fill your belly. I'm sure you're hungry... So," She looked between the both of them. "You both can follow me. I'm not going to fly back. I desperately need to go to bed. The guards won't do or say anything seeing you with me. Come along if you wish..."
With that, Vasilija turned and slowly started the walk back to the valley wherein the Baxt vai'datha had set up camp. She heard the stallion falling into pace behind her. When they drew nearer the camp boundaries, she gave them specific directions to a few different tents they could go to, pausing only briefly to tell one of the dz'olana who started to approach that she had found them out in the fog, that they had been in trouble and that they were in need of food and a place to recover. She bid the guard a good night, paused to look back to the pair that had followed, Bosco sitting on Amos's broad back, and bid them a short, soft good night as well before she prowled off to return to her bed, physical and mental fatigue settling heavily upon her.
WC: 1940
