[Mkguild] STORY -- Lessons in Motherhood (2/~15)

[Christof M. Bradford]

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Here it is, the second chapter of my inaugural Metamor story.  Once again,
massive thanks to Matty for his help nailing down Jessica and Felsah.  As
always, feedback is Good.

STORY START ---->

Metamor Keep: Lessons in Motherhood


Chapter Two


Jessica's talons gripped the old log that served as her favorite perch when
she visited Laracin's Garden with such force as to cause warning twinges of
pain to move up her feet.  Though she would have liked to loosen her grasp,
the worry, and yes, even some small fear, that Margaret's naïve use of
magecraft engendered in the hawk made relaxing her grip nigh impossible.
Margaret had an uncanny talent in Flesh Shaping; totally untrained though
she was, the raven had been able to reach out to the hawk's aura, and
manipulate the Curse in Jessica's body to learn how to shift out from the
feral existence that she had been trapped in for nearly nine years.  Even
now, as the two birds waited for Felsah's current class to be dismissed,
Margaret was “playing” with a spruce sapling, twisting the infant tree's
growth until it resembled nothing as much as those abominations of the
Topiarist's art that the foreign fox, Ryuo, would spend hour upon hour
talking about.

But Jessica did not have to wait long for the class to end.  The Keepers
who'd come to listen to Father Felsah discourse and train them in the proper
living of their faith, dispersed in all directions like a flock of birds
startled by the twang of a hunter's bow.  Left in the middle of them, dark
eyes noting them in a studious but kind way, was what the curse had made of
Father Felsah.

Felsah hopped towards them, and Jessica suppressed the savage glee felt by
the Hawk at how the Curse had changed the Patildor inquisitor.  Gone was the
man who could intimidate by his mere presence wearing the Questioner's
hooded robes. All that remained was a sandy furred mouse with short arms who
hopped, rather than walked, on absurdly long legs with an equally long tail
streaming behind him.  Instead of the black hooded robe emblazoned with the
red Yew of the Questioners, he wore a simple black smock.  “Good afternoon,
Jessica.  How are you today?”

“I'm disturbed, Father,” Jessica admitted.   She shifted her talons on the
perch, and turned her beak toward Margaret who had given up her tree
manipulation project and was now focusing her blue eyes on the desert mouse.
“Weyden and I found this young woman a few days ago out by the Glen.  She's
spent the last eight years in a feral state, and has lost all sense of
responsibility and decency.  Weyden and I will do what we can for her, but
she is Patildor, and will need the instruction of one of her kind.  It will
sound better coming from you.”

Felsah nodded thoughtfully. “The poor girl.  Of course I'll be willing to
help.” He turned his eyes to the raven, whiskers a twitter, and noted the
misshapen plant. “Good afternoon, Margaret.  I'm Father Felsah.  Did you do
this?”

Jessica blinked in surprise when Margaret cawed her reply in a foreign
tongue. But Felsah was surprised even more, the jerboa leaning back on his
long paws, tail dashing the dust from side to side as his eyes widened and
his whiskers flattened.

“When, oh when, did you learn to speak the tongue of my birth?  You speak it
like you were born there?” Felsah hid any alarm he might feel well.  With
practiced ease, the mask of the Questioner fell across his demeanor and he
was calm again.

“From your mind,” Margaret replied candidly, and in the common tongue of
Metamor again. “You were thinking so clearly in it, I just listened and
learned.”

“Can you read the minds of others?” Felsah asked, holding one paw tightly in
the other.

“Only when they aren't guarding their thoughts,” Margaret replied after a
moment's pause.  She turned her head to one side in a very avian gesture and
stared at the jerboa intently. “I can't hear your thoughts anymore, Father.”

“Good,” he replied with the faintest of smiles.  He turned to Jessica.
“Margaret has just told me that she was making, I believe the term is,
bonsai.  She did not wish to wait the years for natural growth, so she sped
things up.  She admits that this will cost the tree many years of its life,
but it is only a plant.” Both Jessica and the desert mouse glanced at the
towering oak that was Laracin, who undoubtedly could hear their every word.
“I do not believe she understands how she's doing this, only that she can.”

“I'm right here,” Margaret pipped up, pulling her wings in tight. “Don't you
like my tree?”

Felsah stared at the twisted grotesquerie and nodded his head. “It is not to
my taste, but I am sure others will find it appealing.  The art of bonsai is
from the far east of Galendor.  How came you to learn it?”

She croaked softly, pleased with the attention that she was receiving, “The
fox from Yamato, Ryuo, taught me.  He would talk about the art, and I could
see in his mind such beautiful pictures of his home.  They showed me how to
pinch off a bud here, and bind a branch with twine there.  Yamato is a
strange place, but beautiful in its own way.”

“Now, Margaret,” Felsah said, by way of admonition. “You should never reach
into another person's thoughts.  Those belong only to them.  They are not
yours, and you should not touch them.”

“But why?”

“It is like...” Felsah stared at her for a moment, dark eyes contemplative.
“A person's thoughts are like their eggs.  They keep them in their nest, and
wish only for them to hatch.” Margaret looked stricken as he said this. “If
you try to read my thoughts, or anyone else's, you are stealing the eggs
from our nests, and destroying them.”

The raven's eyes widened in terror, and, with a sudden flap of her wings,
backed away from the murine Questioner, leaving a small white puddle in
her wake. “No, no, no.  Don't want that, no, not at all!”  Margaret hid her
head under her left wing and sobbed brokenly, “Empty eggs!  Eight years, no
chicks, always empty!  Why, Eli?! Why are my eggs always empty?!”

Both Felsah and Jessica were taken aback by her sudden panic.  Jessica
sheltered the frightened raven beneath a wing, while the jerboa sidestepped
her defecation and crouched at her side, one paw resting on a wing. “Calm
yourself, Margaret. Eli always hears our prayers.  Do not despair.”  He then
stepped back, and, locking eyes with the black-feathered hawk, said in a
quieter voice, “Stay with her a moment.  I will be back shortly.”

Jessica waited while the jerboa in black cassock hopped away on long feet,
tufted tail bouncing in the air behind him.  Beneath her wing, the raven
continued to tremble and stammer her fears.  She listened, but Margaret kept
repeating the same words over and over again. “Empty eggs!” and “Empty
nest!” What could she mean by it?

A horrible thought struck her and she slid her wing further over the raven
as if to protect her.  In those long eight years when Margaret was in feral
state, could she have tried building nests with normal ravens?  It would
explain why she lamented all her empty eggs.  She may look like a raven on
the outside, but fundamentally, she was still human.  No such coupling could
produce offspring.

Jessica's heart tightened in her chest, and then gushed forth with her own
bout of weeping.  How much agony had this  child suffered?  Seeing her
reduced to so beastly a state she could not help but remember that this was
what Nasoj had intended for all of them.  But for now all she could do was
hold this young raven and try to give her comfort.

Felsah return a few minutes later, the Questioner mask still in place on his
murine countenance.  He stopped a few feet short and gestured with one paw
at the pile of droppings. “D'Alimonte will be out to clean up this mess in a
moment.  I think it best if we take Margaret somewhere she can be
comfortable.”

“We've been letting her stay in our quarters,” Jessica replied.  Margaret
was no longer wailing, but from the way she fluttered, Jessica could tell
that she was in no position to really understand what they were saying. “I
think she has bonded to Weyden and I.  She behaves as if I am her mother and
he her father.”

The jerboa's cheeks twitched, but he gave no other sign of emotion. “We can
use that to our advantage then.  Take her back to your quarters.  I'll come
by in a few hours.  I'll take some time to pray with her.  That may help
straighten out her mind.  But for now, treat her like a child and instruct
her in how she is to comport herself.  We'll go from there.”

Jessica nodded, and felt a wave of relief coming over her. “Thank you,
Father.” It felt odd to thank a Questioner for anything, but he wasn't at
all like the reputation his order had earned. “I will see you in a few
hours.”  And ever so gently she coaxed the raven from the ground and guided
her back toward the Keep. Margaret muttered under her breath, but she let
herself be led.  She nestled very close to the hawk as they walked.  Jessica
could only hope that Felsah was right.

<--- STOP STORY


- --
I have an old tome.  A tome bound of flesh and scribed in blood.  It
holds many secrets, secrets for you to reveal.
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