[ooc: Geh! I hadn't been expecting Dragon-lady to do something like this so soon... Hum. I better rewrite some bits of what I was going to post... (I was going to break this next lot into two bits, but maybe I'll just post the whole thing. Sorry it's long)
Okay, now the computer's fallen out with a: drive again. *sobs* I'll have to restart
Edit: Trying again... someone tell me if this doesn't make sense, it's a kind of rushed edit as I had only 10 minutes before lectures start...]
Aura was pacing, seemingly unable to sit still.
“So what we going to do now, huh?” she demanded, faintly, pausing to stare at him. “Yer heard what they said – he makes a hobby out o’ bearin’ grudges, an’ he’ll be watchin’ fer me t’leave town. Watchin’ so as he can get me back fer seein’ him kill Nar, fer eludin’ him when he tried t’kill me, fer humiliatin’ him… Frack, maybe that fire… maybe that was him…!” She visibly shivered. “Maybe he knows where we’re stayin’…!” she whined. “An’ he’ll come back…!”
Jan sat cross-legged and watched her, shrugged slightly. “I wonder why Rej didn’t say anything about this,” he said, calmly.
“Is that all yer ever care about, Jan?” she snapped, icily. “What Rej says? The old coot’s gone dozy, he talks a load of bollocks.”
He glared at her. “He doesn’t talk rubbish, he… “ he waved his hands, looking for the word that fitted. “Talks in riddles, I guess. If you took the time to try to figure out what he means-”
“By which time yer goin’ ter end up dead!” she went back to her pacing.
“Well, he’s been right every time so far, hasn’t he?”
She scowled. “Yer could read nearly anythin’ inter what he rattles on about.”
“Well…” he shrugged. “At least he’s been right!” He leaned back against the wall. “Come on, we should be thinking about what he said, maybe he’ll have said something useful.”
“Puh,” she went back to pacing. “Las’ thing he said – las’ thing he said what I kind of understood – was…” she frowned, thought for a minute. “ ‘Don’ neglect yer lessons lest yer run up against th’red plague before yer ready.’ Now, I know I may be wrong, but s’far a I know there ain’t no diseases in this town.”
“Hm,” Jan shook his head. “Do you remember his saying anything else?”
She shook her head. “Mebbe he meant when we got back home. Mebbe there’ll be some disease that we have ter help cure.”
“Maybe…” Jan traced patterns in the dust with one fingernail. “He said we’d get lost beforehand, didn’t he? At least, he implied it. So when we get home we’ll be un-lost. That’d be right, wouldn’t it? So… maybe this just wasn’t very important in his grand scheme of things – we just got lost, had to hang about here for a short time while some psycho was on the rampage, then got unlost and got home.”
Aura nodded, collapsed on her chin next to him. “I don’ like this waitin’,” she whined, rolling sideways so she leaned against him. “What if we’re needed real badly back home?”
He shook his head, absently ran a hand down the warm skin of the nape of her neck. “I’m sure they’ll be fine, at home. We’ve probably got the wrong end of the stick again, it won’t be some horrible disease, it’ll be him rambling and talking about someone having Nerellian flu. That gives you a red nose, doesn’t it? And it’s harmless to you lot, only muds get it…”
“Hope yer right,” she whimpered, and sniffed, tiredly. The gentle caress of his hand on her neck was calming her nerves, which she suspected was what he was trying to do, stop her overreacting and giving him earache… a trait she’d kind of learnt off Uncle Xar to make up for her lack in size…
Her eyelids drooped, and she was asleep in seconds.
Her sleep was by no means peaceful; it was plagued by dreams, of home, of her elderly tutor, Rej, and of his often eerily incomprehensible messages…
It was exactly as it had been the evening of the day before she’d set out; Rej sat in the centre of his hut, in the middle of a loose circle of smoky torches, cross legged, one hand on each knee, watching her out of cool, stony eyes.
“Y’called me, Boss…?” she still hadn’t got the hang of calling him ‘master’ as everyone else seemed to do.
“Neglect not your lessons child,” he intoned, softly. “Lest ye run against the red plague before ye are ready.”
“Red Plague?” She cocked her head. “What’s th’red plague, Boss…?
He shook his head. “That I can not tell ye.”
“Why not?” She padded about, uncertainly, uncomfortably. “Don’ yer know? Come on, Boss, please – give me a bit of an idea, here…!”
His stony expression didn’t change. “Tis not my place to tell,” he said, calmly.
“Why not?” she caught his look – his one-more-stupid-question-and-I’m-going-to-tell-you-nothing-but-riddles-for-the-next-week look – and changed tactic. “All right, okay, I’ll shut up.” She sighed, paced about in silence for a while, trying to think of something suitably un-stupid. “What happens if I’m not ready, Boss…?”
He shook his head. “I can not say.”
She tried a different tactic. “Yer say that as if yer don’ know what’ll happen. Come on, Rej, yer know ev’rythin’, don’ yer?”
His eyes slid sideways, watched her pace anxiously. “I do not know all,” he admitted. “What happens after I can not tell.”
“Why not?” She sank to her elbows.
“’Tis not for me to say,” he kept his gaze on her. “Your future is indistinct. What there is is contradictory. I should not tell you what you do not need to know.”
“Does that mean I’m dead?”
He actually smiled. “Ye may be,” he admitted, but his voice was mild, unworried. “But ye may not be. Ye may be powerful enough I need not read your future. Ye may even be out of my sphere of observation.”
“But-”
It was there that the dream changed.
There was that laugh – the laugh out of a nightmare, velvet smooth and as chilling as an ice-cube drawn up her spine. “Your old friend knows nothing,” the voice said, calmly.
She spun – there he was, mostly hidden in the shadows, but she could see those citrine eyes, reflecting torchlight, watching her with the same smouldering stare as she’d seen as he’d told her he was ‘any monster he chose to be.’ “What…?” she fell backward, closer to Rej. “Why are yer here…?!”
Another of those velvety laughs. “To teach you a lesson in survival, my dear,” he purred, softly. “And that’s to run away as fast and as far as you can and to never look back…”
She turned back; “Rej… Rej, what’s…”
The old mud hadn’t taken his eyes off her for a second. “The Red Peril hath many guises, child,” he said, in that thin, reedy voice, as the red creature paced gracefully behind the elderly mudokon with a considering look on his predatory face. “Mind ye do not mistake one face for another.”
“You know,” the red creature said, thoughtfully, closing one paw on the bony old shoulder. “I was a little hungry – I could do with a quick snack…”
Aura sat up sharply, sweating. Jan was out like a light on his mattress beside her, even snoring faintly, but then she wasn’t surprised – he’d looked utterly shattered when he’d finally found her, ahd what with that fire and everything else... She watched him sleep, for a while, then lay back down and tried to get her pounding heart to slow and let her get back to sleep.
So… what was all THAT about…? At first she thought it was just her hyperactive brain trying to make some sense of what had been going on, but… Maybe it was trying to tell her something…
Her last conscious thought before she finally made it back into the dreamworld was Dammit, the Red Plague means HIM…
[ October 15, 2001: Message edited by: Teal ]
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