1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of ... (#6)

Redskin Plains

Dust chokes the air even in the massive tent that's the local equivalent of a pub. Lallie coughs and adjusts her scarf, while the locals eye her with new wariness as they keep chatting in the local languages. Her local garb can't hide her foreign magic, so she's a stranger and a foreigner. This...clan? tribe? seems to be entirely air affinities, and the current weather offers a potential explanation for why.

The fine fabric filters out the worst of the red dust that gives the plains their name (a name which, contrary to common belief, is not due to the reddish tone in many locals' skin). Lallie's glad for the child who clued her in about it, because constantly healing her lungs is even less fun than the grit that lingers on her teeth.

The murmurs and conversation are up, today, and Lallie's feral side pays attention to the undercurrent. Emotions range from curious to aghast, and many people as are discreetly eyeing her, so maybe someone recognized what she is and they're wondering who she murdered.

Lallie tosses another blue shell--local coinage--on the mat before her, for another drink. The alcohol's bite is so mild that she doubts it would have bothered her even if she hadn't been montai and immune to the effects. The gel of the drink, punctuated with small seeds still crunchy in their cores, is odd on her tongue, but it's refreshing and helps combat the dust.

The conversations' tenor shifts, and Lallie adjusts her grip on her staff, just in case. She's been hunting for the source of the local revenant problem--dangerous if they're actually zombies, undead created by a mage, but everyone is convinced they're natural, just part of the local thing.

The locals have detailed burial rites that ritualize killing a loved one's body after the spirit's left. Encountering one in another part of the Plains is how she found out about this place and went seeking it. She had been the better part of a month away when she'd seen someone die and their lived ones respond with preparation for the mindless resurrection.

Lallie's pretty sure it's a contagion. She even feels her magic flexing, at times, protecting her since her natural state is 'unaffected'. But from what? She can't consciously destroy what she can't identify.

And the contagion is normal, natural for the locals, so she can't remove it with the part of her magic that heals.

Identifying the contagion, being able to treat it, would be so helpful in both prevention and propaganda against the concept of revenants being evidence of a life ill-lived, some kind of curse from the Creator.

If a body ending up a revenant after the owner passed were a curse, Lallie's pretty sure it would be far more common.

"Excuse me," a male youth asks in slow mountaineer. "You are of earth, yes? Montai?"

Lallie tenses, ready to protect herself even from this child, and her feral side stirs. "What of it?"

"Your tribe left elf city," he says, scowling at his own struggle for words. "Scatter."

"Them or me?"

He shakes his head. "They... Some on Plains, now. Bad to women." Frustration is clear on his face, as is a steady seriousness. "Not tell you here."

Lallie eyes him. He doesn't seem to want her to follow him, so maybe he means... "You can tell them where I am. I'm not here to escape them."

No, she's here on the Plains because her husband preferred another, someone she couldn't in good conscience avoid without removing herself--but that very removal is what probably got him killed.

If he'd just told her he wanted a mistress, that he'd taken one, that he'd fathered a child... He had so many opportunities to say something, to let her process it and get a handle on how her feral side would respond.