Ok, gosh, I hate this, I forgot to put in the standard disclaimer and had
to come back and do it! Grrrr... anyway, Anything pertaining to the
Valdemarian (I probably spelled that wrong... eh) universe is non mine own...
got it? Thanks to Mercedes Lackey for all it entails. ^_^
Read on young pups!
____________________________________________________
So at first I figured I was drunk. I had to be. I raised my weary head and it was all I could do to stop myself from throwing up. I didn't open my eyes, I knew that it would be worse if I did. One thought lost the next as I tried to make sense of the voices around me. I could have asked them to be quieter, or at least more gentle as one picked me up, but I knew if I opened my mouth the afore mentioned throwing up would occur.
I didn't think I knew the language as I began to narrow in on it to take my mind off my completely miserable body. It sounded something like French, but spoken in Chinese. (If that makes any sense to you then I commend you, because I still have no clue what I meant by that.) I was placed carefully in something that swung gently beneath me. I half expected myself to blow chunks right then, but a cool hand was placed over my forehead. I saw a light green flash, edged with gold and a deep sky blue. I fell asleep then, returning to the blackness I had been pulled from.
I cracked open an eye. A tan wall two inches from my face told me that I was lying on my side and that it was daytime. I didn't detect a glow from my halogen lamp, nor the blinking of my vcr as it repeats 12:00, so I came to the conclusion that I wasn't in my own bed. It's a novel experience for me, so I used the remaining few seconds it took to turn to the door to examine my surroundings. If I hadn't known better I would have said I was in a tree. The walls were rounded, shelves lined each until they came to two exits. One had some filmy fabric separating it from another room, the other was more of a window than a door, a bird perch sat in front of it, it wasn't shuttered so I could see the clear expanse of light blue sky beyond the curtains. Those were made of the same filmy material that separated my room from the rest of the house.
A sudden thought occurred to me. I peeked under the blanket above me and gasped as I discovered my body wrapped in unfamiliar clothing. I was wearing a pine green cottony shirt with laces up the front and down the arms, and a pair of drawstring pajama pants of slightly heavier weave and a dark, pitch black. My boots I noticed were slumped together next to the window, but my clothes were nowhere to be seen. I dropped the blanket back over myself and noticed for the first time that I was in a hammock. It wasn't woven of those coarse white plastic ropes or made of canvas stretched to rods. It was more like a rope made of tree bark, woven so tightly that it had no holes. It was remarkably comfortable, I discovered as I wiggled around. I discovered that the bark stuff was fuzzy, and I immediately began to relax back into it.
The shelves were the repositories of several old books and small decorative boxes. Some held ancient scrolls and some odd writing implements. Cute stuffed animals that looked to be well loved by the child who used them, and too important to throw away once that child became a teenager, occupied others. It reminded me of my own room, yet there were no lamps or a computer. I wondered how the person got any schoolwork done, or if
I had somehow ended up in a child's tree house.
An owl flew through the window and landed on the perch.
It hurred a content sound and spun its head around as if to amuse me. I would have chuckled had an owl not flown through the window and tried to make me laugh. Maybe it was a gesture made to set me at ease, but where I come from owls fly into windows, not through them as if they know exactly where they're going.
The clearing of a throat outside the "door" alerted me to another presence. He swept the fabric to one side and glided into the room. He was smooth and careful in his movements. He moved slowly to a chair, which was set next to the hammock, and settled his hands on his knees. His hair was long, died a mottled array of browns and white at the roots (this tugged my memory, as well as the small chimes that were braided in with small feathers and glass beads). He seemed to be too young for white hair, his face held no signs of wrinkles or aging. His eyes were a sapphire blue and his smile inviting. His hands were large and callused, his shoulders were wide and arms muscled. He wore a vest of brown leather laced up the front but not tied, and pants that were tooled with images of owls and deer with straight horns.
He began to talk.
I didn't understand a damn word that flew from his lips.
:confused?:
The bird looked at me from his upside down eyes.
"Very." I spoke directly to him, which the old owl thought to be amusing, since a chortle played inside my head as he flapped his wings and landed next to me.
The young man caught my eye and a small line appeared between his eyebrows as he concentrated.
+Can you hear me?
"Yes." I answered cautiously. His lips hadn't moved.
+Speak to me like this.
*Like what?* I thought to him, testing my theory.
+Just like that. *Oh great. Not only am I hungover, but I'm in a strangers bed and he's talking to me in my head... And not only a stranger... a STRANGE stranger... damn I hope this is a dream.* I didn't even bother to keep my thoughts to myself. If it was dream then I was just talking to myself, but if it wasn't... oh, I didn't even want to consider that possibility, because all of the situation was adding up to a picture that I struck off my list as impossible.
+I do not believe you are dreaming. The young man spoke in my head. He was going to introduce himself. I didn't want him to, because if he did it would only confuse me more. I knew how the introduction would end, and it wasn't something I wanted to deal with. +My name is Skydancer K' Valdemar. You are in my ekele. We found you on the path to the vale and my scoutmaster decided that you were in need of assistance. So we brought you back and you've been asleep since noon yesterday.
I had lost track of the conversation and was trying to will myself back to my own room, my own bed, for surely this was a dream. It had to be. +Miss?
*Go away I'm trying to wake up.*
+You're not asleep.
*I have to be... this is a fictional place, you are a fictional race... I think I've got a concussion... that must be it. I'm delusional. You're really a nurse or a doctor and someone slipped some ruffies into my drink last night. That's gotta be it.
+Whats a ruffie?
*A hallucinatory drug...the I suspect that Katie thought it would be hilarious to drop me off a a friends house, and they put me in the tree house and.... Oh my gods I'm in a Mercedes Lackey book. I groaned and slapped my hand onto my forehead. I swung off the hammock and onto my feet, fell and bruised my knees against the floor.
+Here, let me help you. He placed his hand under my elbow, but instead of just helping me to my feet he swept me into his arms and took me out of the bedroom into a kitchen area. There was no stove, but a cheery little fireplace with a cute little fire.
*Put me down please. I inserted into his head. He set me in a chair with springy cushions and a bowl in front of it. Inside the bowl was a substance that looked an awful lot like cream of wheat, and a spoon.
+Eat, it will help you regain your energy.
*I understand that. I picked up the spoon and blew carefully on the substance. Yep, definitely cream of wheat, it needs some honey or something.
+Here. Skydancer placed a small pot of golden honey in front of me. I lifted the little spoon and drizzled the stuff about the breakfast food.
*Thank you.
+Your welcome.
*I bet you're biting your tongue. He looked startled, puzzled, then cleared his throat.
+What?
*I'm sorry, it's a saying... it means you're curious about me, but you won't ask until I'm ready. You want to ask a lot, really badly, but your "biting your tongue" to keep it from flapping. He chuckled, blushed, then nodded slightly.
+True, and I was about to at least ask your name.
*My name? I blinked, and grinned. Call me Enigma.
+So that's not your true name?
I shrugged, if I was in one of my favorite "fake" places, I might as well take a name that suited me in it. *Enigma means mystery, a puzzle... a riddle to solve. I need to solve how I got here, and how I get back. It seems like the puzzle I present you is who I am, and why I'm here. Enigma fits the situation and myself rather admirably, don't you think?
+It's a beautiful name. He conceded.
*So, why am I in your ekele again? He blushed.
+Well, the vale is rather crowded at the moment, all of the guest rooms are taken and the healers didn't want you in the infirmary just in case you blew it up. They wouldn't like to re-heal any patients. So I volunteered my place, and since its on the edge of the vale, and pretty much apart from the other new ekeles, you couldn't destroy much besides myself and my place if you blew your top.
*That's not all of it, is it? You're a mage. He nodded in confirmation, So you could pretty much contain my powers if you were around me. Well, don't worry, the only power I have is the ability to piss people off in a very short time span.
+You seem rather proud of that.
*I am... It's a gift. I smiled coyly. He smirked placed a piece of buttered bread in my empty plate. I picked it up and chowed it down. He kept offering me fruit and bread until I was pleasantly full. He ate enough to keep me company, enough to make me feel like I wasn't a glutton, but I knew I was.
It was as if I had been asleep for days, I was so hungry when I began. I got to me feet, amazed at my new sturdiness.* I guess I was just weak from hunger.
+Seems to be.
*So when do I get to meet the others?
+As soon as you feel ready to meet them.
*Will I get to see ALL the others? I swung around and grabbed him by the laces of his vest. He seemed puzzled until I clarified.
*Where I come from we don't have hertasi, or gryphons... can I see the dyheli? The tervardi? PLEASE???
+I suppose that they'll be at the meeting, so I guess so.
*AWESOME!!!
+Awesome?
*Neat.
+Oh.
*Yeah, oh.
So at first I figured I was drunk. I had to be. I raised my weary head and it was all I could do to stop myself from throwing up. I didn't open my eyes, I knew that it would be worse if I did. One thought lost the next as I tried to make sense of the voices around me. I could have asked them to be quieter, or at least more gentle as one picked me up, but I knew if I opened my mouth the afore mentioned throwing up would occur.
I didn't think I knew the language as I began to narrow in on it to take my mind off my completely miserable body. It sounded something like French, but spoken in Chinese. (If that makes any sense to you then I commend you, because I still have no clue what I meant by that.) I was placed carefully in something that swung gently beneath me. I half expected myself to blow chunks right then, but a cool hand was placed over my forehead. I saw a light green flash, edged with gold and a deep sky blue. I fell asleep then, returning to the blackness I had been pulled from.
I cracked open an eye. A tan wall two inches from my face told me that I was lying on my side and that it was daytime. I didn't detect a glow from my halogen lamp, nor the blinking of my vcr as it repeats 12:00, so I came to the conclusion that I wasn't in my own bed. It's a novel experience for me, so I used the remaining few seconds it took to turn to the door to examine my surroundings. If I hadn't known better I would have said I was in a tree. The walls were rounded, shelves lined each until they came to two exits. One had some filmy fabric separating it from another room, the other was more of a window than a door, a bird perch sat in front of it, it wasn't shuttered so I could see the clear expanse of light blue sky beyond the curtains. Those were made of the same filmy material that separated my room from the rest of the house.
A sudden thought occurred to me. I peeked under the blanket above me and gasped as I discovered my body wrapped in unfamiliar clothing. I was wearing a pine green cottony shirt with laces up the front and down the arms, and a pair of drawstring pajama pants of slightly heavier weave and a dark, pitch black. My boots I noticed were slumped together next to the window, but my clothes were nowhere to be seen. I dropped the blanket back over myself and noticed for the first time that I was in a hammock. It wasn't woven of those coarse white plastic ropes or made of canvas stretched to rods. It was more like a rope made of tree bark, woven so tightly that it had no holes. It was remarkably comfortable, I discovered as I wiggled around. I discovered that the bark stuff was fuzzy, and I immediately began to relax back into it.
The shelves were the repositories of several old books and small decorative boxes. Some held ancient scrolls and some odd writing implements. Cute stuffed animals that looked to be well loved by the child who used them, and too important to throw away once that child became a teenager, occupied others. It reminded me of my own room, yet there were no lamps or a computer. I wondered how the person got any schoolwork done, or if
I had somehow ended up in a child's tree house.
An owl flew through the window and landed on the perch.
It hurred a content sound and spun its head around as if to amuse me. I would have chuckled had an owl not flown through the window and tried to make me laugh. Maybe it was a gesture made to set me at ease, but where I come from owls fly into windows, not through them as if they know exactly where they're going.
The clearing of a throat outside the "door" alerted me to another presence. He swept the fabric to one side and glided into the room. He was smooth and careful in his movements. He moved slowly to a chair, which was set next to the hammock, and settled his hands on his knees. His hair was long, died a mottled array of browns and white at the roots (this tugged my memory, as well as the small chimes that were braided in with small feathers and glass beads). He seemed to be too young for white hair, his face held no signs of wrinkles or aging. His eyes were a sapphire blue and his smile inviting. His hands were large and callused, his shoulders were wide and arms muscled. He wore a vest of brown leather laced up the front but not tied, and pants that were tooled with images of owls and deer with straight horns.
He began to talk.
I didn't understand a damn word that flew from his lips.
:confused?:
The bird looked at me from his upside down eyes.
"Very." I spoke directly to him, which the old owl thought to be amusing, since a chortle played inside my head as he flapped his wings and landed next to me.
The young man caught my eye and a small line appeared between his eyebrows as he concentrated.
+Can you hear me?
"Yes." I answered cautiously. His lips hadn't moved.
+Speak to me like this.
*Like what?* I thought to him, testing my theory.
+Just like that. *Oh great. Not only am I hungover, but I'm in a strangers bed and he's talking to me in my head... And not only a stranger... a STRANGE stranger... damn I hope this is a dream.* I didn't even bother to keep my thoughts to myself. If it was dream then I was just talking to myself, but if it wasn't... oh, I didn't even want to consider that possibility, because all of the situation was adding up to a picture that I struck off my list as impossible.
+I do not believe you are dreaming. The young man spoke in my head. He was going to introduce himself. I didn't want him to, because if he did it would only confuse me more. I knew how the introduction would end, and it wasn't something I wanted to deal with. +My name is Skydancer K' Valdemar. You are in my ekele. We found you on the path to the vale and my scoutmaster decided that you were in need of assistance. So we brought you back and you've been asleep since noon yesterday.
I had lost track of the conversation and was trying to will myself back to my own room, my own bed, for surely this was a dream. It had to be. +Miss?
*Go away I'm trying to wake up.*
+You're not asleep.
*I have to be... this is a fictional place, you are a fictional race... I think I've got a concussion... that must be it. I'm delusional. You're really a nurse or a doctor and someone slipped some ruffies into my drink last night. That's gotta be it.
+Whats a ruffie?
*A hallucinatory drug...the I suspect that Katie thought it would be hilarious to drop me off a a friends house, and they put me in the tree house and.... Oh my gods I'm in a Mercedes Lackey book. I groaned and slapped my hand onto my forehead. I swung off the hammock and onto my feet, fell and bruised my knees against the floor.
+Here, let me help you. He placed his hand under my elbow, but instead of just helping me to my feet he swept me into his arms and took me out of the bedroom into a kitchen area. There was no stove, but a cheery little fireplace with a cute little fire.
*Put me down please. I inserted into his head. He set me in a chair with springy cushions and a bowl in front of it. Inside the bowl was a substance that looked an awful lot like cream of wheat, and a spoon.
+Eat, it will help you regain your energy.
*I understand that. I picked up the spoon and blew carefully on the substance. Yep, definitely cream of wheat, it needs some honey or something.
+Here. Skydancer placed a small pot of golden honey in front of me. I lifted the little spoon and drizzled the stuff about the breakfast food.
*Thank you.
+Your welcome.
*I bet you're biting your tongue. He looked startled, puzzled, then cleared his throat.
+What?
*I'm sorry, it's a saying... it means you're curious about me, but you won't ask until I'm ready. You want to ask a lot, really badly, but your "biting your tongue" to keep it from flapping. He chuckled, blushed, then nodded slightly.
+True, and I was about to at least ask your name.
*My name? I blinked, and grinned. Call me Enigma.
+So that's not your true name?
I shrugged, if I was in one of my favorite "fake" places, I might as well take a name that suited me in it. *Enigma means mystery, a puzzle... a riddle to solve. I need to solve how I got here, and how I get back. It seems like the puzzle I present you is who I am, and why I'm here. Enigma fits the situation and myself rather admirably, don't you think?
+It's a beautiful name. He conceded.
*So, why am I in your ekele again? He blushed.
+Well, the vale is rather crowded at the moment, all of the guest rooms are taken and the healers didn't want you in the infirmary just in case you blew it up. They wouldn't like to re-heal any patients. So I volunteered my place, and since its on the edge of the vale, and pretty much apart from the other new ekeles, you couldn't destroy much besides myself and my place if you blew your top.
*That's not all of it, is it? You're a mage. He nodded in confirmation, So you could pretty much contain my powers if you were around me. Well, don't worry, the only power I have is the ability to piss people off in a very short time span.
+You seem rather proud of that.
*I am... It's a gift. I smiled coyly. He smirked placed a piece of buttered bread in my empty plate. I picked it up and chowed it down. He kept offering me fruit and bread until I was pleasantly full. He ate enough to keep me company, enough to make me feel like I wasn't a glutton, but I knew I was.
It was as if I had been asleep for days, I was so hungry when I began. I got to me feet, amazed at my new sturdiness.* I guess I was just weak from hunger.
+Seems to be.
*So when do I get to meet the others?
+As soon as you feel ready to meet them.
*Will I get to see ALL the others? I swung around and grabbed him by the laces of his vest. He seemed puzzled until I clarified.
*Where I come from we don't have hertasi, or gryphons... can I see the dyheli? The tervardi? PLEASE???
+I suppose that they'll be at the meeting, so I guess so.
*AWESOME!!!
+Awesome?
*Neat.
+Oh.
*Yeah, oh.