Bottled Moon

[Ataraxis]

Bottled Moon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nrI2ttkM-U)


[ Dramatis personae ]


Marcus Kale Naïlo (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=20506)
Lillian Marici Sesthal (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=16278)
The VodnÃ*k Brothers
The Velikan Tribe

***

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.�




Anton Chekhov

[Ataraxis]

Lillian came to a stop at the crest of a snowy hill, catching her breath in steamy wisps as she admired the frozen vista of Lake Ashkalov. The girl had seen much in her wandering life, had been witness to many a starry winter scene, but few would ever come close to the ghostly beauty of what she saw in the sky that night. Shimmering curtains of light floated in the ether, drifting in the dark like emerald dust in the wind, and she looked in childish wonder as their silent arcs evolved without cease, winding and unfurling in the manner of stellar ribbons. At times she would see them slither in the firmament as the serpents of myth, and at others she would see a path in the darkness, a stairway to the skies, a gate into the heavens.

Her cheeks were damp; before they turned to ice, she wiped the tears away. Lillian had never seen an aurora before.

Her first thought was that she wanted to share this moment with someone. Her second was that her arm had extended outward without her realizing, fingers curled as if to grasp another’s hand. The glow and awe in her expression had cooled, as did the hopeful beats of her heart. There was no one beside her, no one to keep her company on these long treks through the hinterlands of this northern country. Only now… only now did she fully come to realize the weight of her solitude. Even as she watched the northern lights dance above her, Lillian could only feel the tightening in her chest, the knotting in her stomach.

The winds were mild as she hared down the hill and crossed the vast lake, treading carefully on the emerald lights that were coldly reflected in the frost. With every nipping gust, snakes of diamond dust blew past her ankle boots, and she felt a numbing chill travel up to her heart. Hours and hours, she trudged along the frozen loch, heading east toward the Ahyark Mountains, and even as she left Ashkalov in her wake, the girl marched hours more. Her trek seemed relentless, and even with a heart so heavy did the girl go onward with nary a falter: she had people to meet, a task to complete. By hook or by crook, her feet would carry her to destination, to the home of the Vodník brothers.

[Ataraxis]

Firs and pines were indigenous to the mountains, and with her knife, Lillian had no difficulty in sawing enough of their branches so as to fashion a bed upon the snow. The boughs were tightly bound with spools of strong thread, and the girl had tied the piney mattress to the trees that embowered the clearing where she had made camp, in order to avoid any unwanted slipping away while she slept. In the center of the glade, she built a platform out of thick pine sticks, taking advantage of the fact that both the wood and the oil it exuded were highly flammable; with this, she could avoid having the snow underneath steam up and douse the campfire the moment it was lit.

Lillian was in no mood to hunt, and so she stretched her bed of pines close enough to the fire to feel its warmth, but far enough to avoid her bed catching on fire at the haphazard touch of a wayward spark. After wrapping herself in her cobalt cloak and various quilts she had brought along in her bag, the girl drew over herself a cover she had fashioned out of threads and fir branches. She invited slumber to come has fast as it could, fearing those long moments at night when she was left with only her thoughts. Yet as always, she felt the burden of insomnia keep her wide awake.

So did her mind wander, as it would every night. Lillian thought of the Vodník brothers, and of the legend that went hand in hand with their name. It was said that in the tallest peaks of the Ahyark Mountains hid the mouth of a deep and winding cave, and should one follow it to the end, they would stumble upon the fabled lair of these brothers. They were mythical beings in the folklore of Salvar, originally peaceful guardians of streams and rivers, but their role changed centuries ago when they were asked to protect the people of Knife’s Edge from the threat of the Velikan, erstwhile giants that once thrived in snowy hills of the countryside. In exchange for a yearly tithe of grains and poultry, the Velikan were purportedly captured, shrunken and imprisoned in bottles by the Vodník, thus ending their tyranny upon the little people of the north.

The centuries passed in silence, the giants vanished from the mountains, and so did the Vodník fall into oblivion, surviving as no more than mere folk tales to scare children. Lillian, however, had reason to believe they truly did exist: for one, she had laid eyes on the official records of the contract between the olden king of Salvar and the legendary brothers, hidden along the darkest corridors of Castle Rathaxea. Libraries also held many valid historical texts wherein the authors described the Velikan as their numbers dwindled year after year, and there were also certified reports of their attacks on Knife’s Edge.

What had rekindled her interest in this otherwise cold case, however, were accounts of lost travelers that were last seen wandering east of Lake Ashkalov. There were naturally other threats in the mountains, but the consistency with which all of them disappeared seemed to imply a single common cause, and Lillian believed the Vodník would have both ability and motive to carry out these kidnappings: though their contract still stood, the people of Salvar had long since forgotten their agreement. This… this was their justice.

A deep howl trawled her from her analytical reveries, and the answering calls sent her springing from her makeshift bed. Her unusual eyes could see in the darkness, the moon’s shine reflected upon the snows lighting the woods as clear as broad daylight for the girl. They circled her, kicking up small plumes of white with every menacing step forward. These were draves, overgrown wolves with nothing but skin on their bones, creatures that had evolved to survive the harsh cold of Salvar on anything they could digest, including raw pinewood and leather boots. A live human, even as willowy as Lillian, was a buffet in their eyes.

They suddenly froze, a chill bristling through their rugged fur to make every hair stand on end. The girl had unsheathed a dirk from her belt, a sleek weapon of blue and dangerous glass. There was a sad smile playing upon her lips, and a shroud of darkness to her glacial eyes.

And the draves whimpered as one.

[Ataraxis]

The smell of burning pine was soon joined by that of cooked meat and dripping fat, blending into an aroma so strong Lillian imagined it might linger in the glade for days to come. The carcass of an emaciated wolf stretched next to her, its vile, dark blood impregnating the immaculate snow. A portion of its back had been skinned. She had been cutting away at the rough flesh with her dirk to make squares, slapping each new slab of meat onto a thin iron pan that had been heating up in the flames. The smoking stench she could endure, and the taste she could live through, but Lillian had no intention of enjoying this meal. While waiting for her sub-par meal to cook, she continued the no more delectable task of eviscerating of her quarry. If anything, she was thankful that the drave she had slain had been the alpha male: its swift death had sent the others scurrying for their lives, leaving her with only one troublesome corpse to carve up.

While spending the next half an hour gnawing on bits of meat so tough they might as well have been rubber, Lillian let the other slices cure in a mixture of salt and sugar, for consumption at a later time during her hike of the mountains. Once done masticating one of the more appalling meals she ever had the misfortune of eating, the girl of sixteen lazily returned to her cocoon of fabric and pine needles, tired and yawning long mists of steam. She was in dire need of sleep; thankfully, now that she was arguably well-fed, Lillian had found no trouble succumbing to the call of darkness.


Her eyes blinked open, lazy and in pain as the sun’s sullen rays burned into her retinas. As always, the night had gone by swiftly, escaping with her dreams like lovers on the run. As always, she felt aimless and abandoned, only seeing in the dawning light a terrible punishment. And, as always, she straightened up with the moans and groans proper to those who despised all manner crowing roosters and morning larks. It was a routine from which she would never stray, and the gods knew her waking grouchiness would only worsen with the years. Though she was quick to pack her traveling odds and ends, it was another hour before she shooed away her murderous mood and began her long and arduous hike.

The majority of the day had been spent negotiating footholds in the cracks of the mountain wall, teetering miles above earth on narrow ledges in an impromptu balancing act. She would rest whenever a suitably large and steady ledge crossed her path, but never too long as she always feared the rocky outcroppings would give out beneath her. The girl would look out on the mountainous vista, industriously chewing on her snacks of cold meat just enough to sate a bird’s appetite, and then she was off, struggling to find purchase a mile above ground.

Lillian sighed, her breath steaming from the chill and exertion. She had to wonder just how true the legends were: if the caves were indeed located at the tallest peaks of the Ahyark Mountains, then it was terrifyingly likely that before even reaching the halfway mark, she would become naught but a bloody smear across the ground.

The girl paused in her climb, steadying herself as the winds swept across her sides, dangerously tugging at the folds of her cloak. Then, with an audible gulp, she carried onward.

[Ataraxis]

It was with an uncharacteristic laughter that she greeted the sigh of a great maw gaping from the very granite. She had just hauled herself over a steep ledge, huffing and puffing, her hands covered in a thick coat of sticky webs that had saved her from a long and deadly fall more than once. Lillian quickly made her way inside, and at once she began drawing a map of the locale in her head. She saw traces of life every now and then, hiding away in this nook or that cranny. There were footsteps caked in old, dry mud, discarded fish bones from the trouts of Lake Ashkalov, even pine needles tracked in by dragging boots. She was certain of it now: this truly was the lair of the Vodník Brothers.

Lillian followed the winding paths, eliminating each and every diversionary passage from her mental map until she reached a vaster chamber. It was a study set in stone, furnished with an immense desk against one of the walls and various workshop tables at the other ends. Doused torches line the walls, while unlit oil lamps were scattered on the work surfaces. The most notable feature of this lair, however, was the immense hollow in the ceiling, too straight and smooth to be natural. It served as a great skylight, letting the light of day stream down in blinding waves.

It was then that she noticed a great glass jug on one of the large, oaken tables. It wass many times taller and larger than she was, and inside she could make out mounds of dirt and stone shaped into miniature dells and valleys. Water flowed in from a high tube that ran from the chamber’s ceiling to the jug, gushing onto the crest of a mountain, rushing down in a torrential river and pouring into a puddle-lake, whose contents were then slowly evacuated from drains that ran underneath the colossal bottle.

From the corner of her eye, she caught the flitting of a behind her. A low tremor ran through the cavern floor, as if something of great weight had fallen with the unwonted grace of a feline. She spun round, only to see a giant of a man tower over her with dark, unmoving eyes. She knew, now, that the shaft was another entrance into the lair.

Before she could even speak, darkness obscured her eyes. Even as she fell unconscious, she felt herself falling, falling, never hitting ground…

There was a great splash of water. Then, nothing.