1629, Fire Season, Fertility Week, Day (replace as relevant)
Context
The group just experienced a Lunar madness for themselves. Session 5O-8.
Events
On the way back towards Queen’s Post, Berra is managing to be on guard so hard that she is never looking at Maalira.
Maalira, on the other hand, is keeping her eyes on Berra quite persistently.
After about half an hour, when their destination is already clearly visible, Ornkarth paces his magnificent horse up next to Maalira’s bison. He has to look up to make eye contact, but he manages to make it seem like he is on equal footing, or at least riding. “If I pay you to stop me from being in pain from holding in laughter, will you talk to her?”
Maalira pulls a wry face. “Paying me won’t help if she doesn’t want to talk.”
“She wants to talk. She just refuses to.” Ornkarth shrugs. “I can’t say it’s physically painful, but it’s surprisingly awkward to watch.”
“In my opinion as a healer… you’ll live.” Maalira is uncharacteristically unsympathetic. She glances over at Berra. “However, for her sake not yours, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Go do that.” Ornkarth smiles slightly. “If I can help, or if she needs a target, let me know.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Maalira mutters, but she moves her bison over to where Berra is ostentatiously guarding.
Berra stops guarding, and gives Maalira her attention. “Hello.” After a second or two she tears her eyes away to keep on looking for trouble, but she looks back at the healer from moment to moment.
“Hi,” Maalira says. She pauses for a moment, taking in several of Berra’s glances. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Berra’s face twists into all sorts of thoughtful poses, before she finally admits, “I don’t know what the ‘it’ is. There’s a lot of its.”
Maalira smiles. “Pick one and talk about it.”
“I let people go unprepared into a dangerous situation even though they were under my command, and one of them was me, then I killed a lot of people I shouldn’t have killed, and then I kissed you, and I’m still working out if I should apologise for that. Um. The one about the command maybe?” So many expressions. So little time. Also, very little pausing.
“You don’t need to apologise for kissing me,” Maalira says, taking advantage. “It was a… complicated moment.”
“It was just there. I mean, in passing. Your ankle. And it… no, the other one! I didn’t look after my people right.” Berra manages to change the subject.
Maalira smirks then smothers it. “You were dealing with the red fever, the same as the rest of us. No one can blame you for that.”
“Before. I should have realised that the caravan was a potential danger. I should have told Nayale to keep away.” The little Humakti looks shamefaced now.
Maalira purses her lips. “Berra, you always try to do the absolute right thing, as hard as you can. If you didn’t realise there was a problem or danger, it wasn’t for lack of trying.”
Berra scowls. “That just means I’m not good enough at command,” she points out. “I keep missing things.”
Maalira matches her scowl. “You are stubborn.”
“Well, yeah? More rebellious really?” The Humakti might be trying to slip out from under, there.
Maalira laughs. “No, you’re not. You push the boundaries but you never actually rebel. You just dig your heels in.”
That seems to surprise Berra a lot. “Really?” She looks confused by the whole notion.
“Really.” Maalira pauses, thinking. “I’ve never seen you give your loyalty to someone you don’t trust, and if you trust people, you don’t rebel against them.”
Berra says, after a few moments of thought, “The essence of Movement is change. It’s an energy of being different. Just refusing to do something would be doing the same thing as other people, though. So I don’t rebel against people. But you can rebel for them and at them. I mean, I kind’ve have to.”
Maalira nods slowly. “That’s true.” One corner of her lips quirks up. “You do a good job of it.”
Berra stare-pauses. “Um, how is asking people like the Dwarf for stuff going for you anyhow?”
The Humakti might just have come to a realisation about what she did lately.
“I…uh… I told the Newtlings not to sacrifice you, very firmly!”
Berra laughs and looks down. “You’re great when you’re defending people.” Her fingers dig into her horse’s mane for a moment.
“So are you,” Maalira mumbles, also looking down.
“Alright, but I think I just accidentally killed four people. Unless Ornkarth did to make me feel guilty about it, but it was probably me.” Berra’s expression turns to glum.
“You did, but that definitely was after you had the fever,” Maalira reminds her.
Berra nods. “Yeah. I was back at Pennel Ford. Did I say?”
“You did. It took a while to persuade you that you weren’t.”
Berra spends a few seconds lost in thought, distantly. She is doing the thing with the nose and the freckles, and probably does not know that she is.
Through it all, Nayale stays in position on the opposite flank. She dutifully watches for enemies and ignores all else, even Ornkarth.
This is of course like putting fruit out and having it ignore a wasp. Ornkarth makes sure to stop by and check how she is.
“I’m on duty,” she snaps. “Go away.” She is tense, shoulders practically up around her ears. Though she’s generally a good rider, even her horse is picking up on her mood, its ears pointed back towards the young Narri.
Ornkarth considers, and then nods his head and folds back into the group.
Meanwhile, Berra has worked something out, and says to Maalira, “You know how in Heroquests you can kinda push to be a thing?”
“Yes?” Maalira tilts her head, waiting for Berra to go on.
“I’m wondering if this madness does the same thing. And if I was at Pennel Ford, and I could be there hardest and push hardest, then I wouldn’t be beaten there. Except by someone who made their own story be the one that won out. And then nobody’d know because I’d be dead.”
“That sounds… dangerous,” Maalira says slowly. “It could change the past?”
“Nah. I mean it could… I don’t think it means anything. But if part of the vision’s about like that, then it would explain why… hmm. But Pennel Ford was definitely inside Time. So maybe not.”
Maalira looks quizzical. “What do you mean?”
“I was thinking that if someone had enough power they could stay in something where they remembered winning, until they had won. But that’s not really a thing that’s in the Godtime. So I’m wrong, because you can’t Heroquest things … alright, other than if you’re being my High Sword. But sometimes you can’t Heroquest things that happened in Time. Because they didn’t make an impression in the Godtime.”
Maalira is quiet while she puzzles through that.
Berra watches Maalira, apparently with no more than quiet curiosity.
“I think it’s a good thing you got out of the fever when you did,” she says eventually.
“I wonder a bit if I’d have … well, probably not. I don’t remember getting upstream. But the next thing I did with Harrek was go to the City of Wonders.” Berra frowns at the memory. “I was fighting and then there was a red flash and I woke up looking at you.”
Nayale’s mount shies from something on the road and her rider finally takes note of the horse’s anxious state. Her posture shifts abruptly, as if she somehow forces herself into a state of calm. She murmurs to the animal in Heortling, her voice pitched low. Nayale continues to ignore everyone else.
Ornkarth does not wince, or tsk, or even apparently notice.
… The group rides on.
