Are you afraid of the dark? (Ero)

[Kiska]

Something clicked in Kiska's mind as she picked the last herb. "Goldenseal! That's what she called it." She placed the goldenseal in her beltpouch and stood up. "Well, that's part of it. I think mostly she's trying to teach me about local plant life and how to discover things on my own. Can't be a good herbalist if I can't make my own discoveries. Since I'll have to deal with all kinds of plants from all environments, she probably thought it would be best to start around here, so I wouldn't have to travel far. Who knows though, she didn't tell me the real objective of this little adventure." Kiska heard a slight rumbling, but when she looked up at the sky she saw nothing. It took her a moment to realize that it was her stomach making the noises. She was rather hungry after all, and hadn't gotten a chance to eat anything. She had some food in her pack, but they had already set out to do something. "This must be pretty boring for you, would you like to go do something else? Maybe go back to camp or something? I don't mind gathering herbs alone or anything." Kiska wondered if she had enough food to last her through the trip, she should have enough, but what if they ran out? Would they have to hunt for food? She wasn't exactly excited about taking the life of another, even an animal, but she knew that it had to be done at some point or another, directly or indirectly. If she was going to kill something, she would rather it be for food than anything, and she would definitely not waste anything. Death was all a part of the circle of life, everything lived by feeding off of the energy of another. While she didn't exactly like how things worked like that, she couldn't really argue with how life had been created, after all, she had had nothing to do with it.

[Ero]

Ero shook her head. "I'd rather stay with you. I don't know if there are any wild anilmals out here other than deer, but if there are deer, there is probably something that eats them...wolves perhaps. Either way, its more fun with you than back at camp. All I can do there is..." she realized what she could do back at camp by herself, and changed her mind quite suddenly. "Actually, I think I will go back. Make sure my...um....everything is good. wouldn't want anything to happen eh?" she smiled awkwardly and turned to walk quickly back to camp. Two steps later she was still looking at Kiska behind her, and paid for it. Her foot decended into a relatively shallow rabbit hole (resulting in a couple of small, wet, and terminal squeaks.), but the rest of her continued forward. she landed awkwardly on the side of her foot, and cried out as she collapsed forward. She moaned in pain, and retrieved her blood covered foot from the hole. She was worried at the amount of blood at first, but upon further inspection, could find no break in her skin. The blood must have come from something else. Ero didn't care though, her ankle hurt too much. And annoyingly enough, she was still getting pleasurable pangs from other bits of her body. "Um, on second thought, I may need some help..."

[Kiska]

Kiska turned around quickly as she heard her friend's cry of pain. She saw her friend's bloody foot and immediately assumed the worse. "Goddess, what happened? How did you hurt yourself so badly in the space of two seconds?" She looked around and looked back to Ero. There didn't appear to be anything that could have caused an injury like this, and she had to assume that she had just fallen, very badly. "Here, let me help you back to camp, and I can take care of this for you." Kiska helped her friend up and started making her way back to their camp so that she could get her healing kit set up and take a look at Ero's foot. She had no idea how someone so skilled in weapons (which obviously involve a lot of footwork) could be so clumsy on her feet. She just hoped that nothing was broken. To their good fortune, Kiska hadn't heard the squeaking cries from the hole, as Ero had, over Ero's own moans of pain. Had she heard them, she probably would have been very upset at the cause of them, and even more upset with her friend. But for now, she was just concerned with getting her friend somewhere where she could help her.

[Ero]

Ero limped along, leaning heavily on her friend's shoulder. When they got to the stream, she splashed a bit of water onto her bloody foot and did her best to clean it. She dislodged most of the nasty bits that had stuck to her foot from the hole, except for something nasty with white hair on the bottom of her foot. She dislodged it using a stick. She was careful not to move her foot too much, as she remembered quite clearly the crunch that translated up her leg as her ankle When they finally made it back to camp, Ero managed to topple down onto a soft bit of ground. She laid back and raised her foot, that still had quite a bit of blood on it, so that Kiska could put something under it. "I don't know what happened, but my foot hurts a LOT. I don't mean to be all weak about it, but I think I'm going to just lay back and hurt for a bit." She did just that.

[Kiska]

Kiska sighed and found part of a log to prop Ero's foot up with. After tossing her pouch full of herbs into her tent, she pulled her healer's kit out and began examining Ero's foot closer. She began cleaning Ero's foot using a piece of cloth and a vial of alcohol from the kit. Once done, she examined her work. Ero's foot seemed to be in okay condition, though her ankle had been twisted. Only a small wound in the bottom of her heel and a few scratches along her ankle could have caused her to bleed, but none could have caused the amount of blood that had been present before. Kiska shook her head in confusion. "I don't know how you managed that, your foot is barely cut up at all. You twisted your ankle though, so you won't be walking much until the morning. Looks like you'll be staying right there for the rest of the day." Kiska put a few small bandages over the scratches and the one small cut on Ero's heel. "That's all I can do for now, if you'd like, I can escort you to the stream later and you can soak your foot in that, but you should just rest for now. I'm going to wash myself up and attempt to start dinner." She began walking toward the stream, wondering what exactly had caused all the blood. Kiska had bought a few chunks of meat for their trip before they left, just in case. She hadn't cooked very much before, but she could probably manage to cook something edible. She had heard from somewhere that as she got better at philtering that she would be able to incorporate that in her cooking to make it taste better. This was something she wanted to try today. She stopped at the stream and knelt down to wash her hands in the cool water before heading back to camp to check on Ero. She picked up various fallen sticks and branches as she walked along to start a fire with.

[Ero]

And so Ero laid there, after some initial activity, she relaxed and sat up, adjusting her clothes as it seemed she would always need to do after anything. She sighed and crossed her legs to better get a look at her foot. Kiska was right, her foot was barely even scraped up. Where had all the blood come from? Now that she realized this, she was able to control the pain a bit better, and even stood up and limped painfully over to where the rest of her gear was. It still hurt to walk, but it wasn't crippling. She dusted herself off and then lowered herself down onto her bedroll and shoved her pack under her injured foot, then closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind and focus on nothingness. A few minutes passed, and Ero was bored with this. Her uncle had taught her that meditation in times of stress could help ease the tension in her mind and body, strengthening the balance between herself and Sesim, but she had always found it boring. She shifted, and something jutted up against her foot from the bottom of her pack. She winced, but sat up and dumped her pack out in her lap. Nothing she didn't recognize, and nothing that was the right shape. She reached deep into her pack and felt something hard and flat. Puzzled, she pulled out the object. It was the book the shopkeeper had insisted she buy. Ero had shoved it into the bottom of her pack and forgotten about it. She stuffed everything else back into her pack and shoved it back under her foot, but stayed sitting up so that she could read it. It wasn't in any language she recognized, but as she turned the pages, she realized that some of the symbols were actually very simple pictures. There was nothing she could understand at all, except for the last page. All it held was a single character, very obviously daubed with paint rather than ink, as all the others had been written. She touched it gently, and murmured aloud, "What is this?" As soon as she said it, the symbol seemed to flare and crackled up off the page, leaving it blank but for a few small bits of paint that had stuck. Ero saw none of this though, as the moment the symbol flared, everything blurred, and a voice began to speak to her. "Ah, It is good to speak to you again, child. I see that you have completed your last assignment, otherwise Jackrum wouldn't have given this book to you, and you would be quite dead. Shasshcramus was quite a powerful wizard. I am glad you succeeded. As you can see, this book is written completely in the ancient language. I strongly urge you to translate it, as It contains information you would find quite interesting, my young assassin. Now, to your reward for successfully killing that despicable beast - the basics of glyphing. This symbol is a character of Storing, and when inscribed on items, you can imbue them with magic. Nothing quite like this, as I am a master, but someday you will be able to store whole messages as well, provided you continue to please me." Ero suddenly shook her head, and the trance dissipated, leaving only a fading ring from the voice she had heard, some confusion, and knowledge of how exactly to employ this "Glyphing" as the voice had called it. Obviously this message was intended for someone other than her, and had been stored long long ago by a master hypnotist. She was unconcerned with this though, as she suddenly had the urge to summon up any djed she could, and use this symbol she had learned to inscribe djed into a mundane object. She began scrabbling through her things for something to mark with, and something upon which she could mark.

[Kiska]

Kiska washed her hands slowly, ejoying the feel of the cool water on her skin. The air was cool, and the stream shady, despite the high noon sun. Kiska was quite calm, despite her fear of being attacked by a bear, and her friend's inury. Kiska found the forests of the White Isle to be quite relaxing after spending months inside the city of Mura. She was enjoying herself, even after all of the accidents. After Kiska finished washing herself, she filled her waterskin and headed for the camp site again. She walked at a slow pace, in no hurry to be anywhere as of now. She was worried abuot her friend, of course, but she knew the injury wasn't severe at all. Surely Ero knew how to handle a twisted ankle, after all, she was a fighter of sorts. Kiska subconsciously began humming a tune to herself that she had often listened to her mother sing to her younger brothers. It was a nice tune, despite Kiska's harsh feelings toward it. She had never been sung to, as they had. Not since that tragic day. When she arrived at the small clearing they had made camp in, she discovered that Ero had moved from her original position. She frowned at this, as she had thought she told Ero not to move. She found Ero not far from the spot, on her bedroll. She appeared to be reading a book, though Kiska would have never guessed Ero was of the scholarly type. She seemed too, outgoing and combat oriented to really be interested in books. Kiska approached where Ero was staring at the last page of the book, as if it contained some masterpiece of artwork. "I thought I told you not to move, you're going to hurt your foot more walking around like that," she said, still frowning. She didn't want Ero to be more hurt, that would make the trip even less fun, and she might end up with some sort of permanent damage to her foot. "What is that you have there?" She asked, indicating the book, she was genuinely interested. While Ero didn't strike Kiska as scholarly, Kiska definitely wouldn't mind taking a look at anything of the sort Ero might happen to possess.

[Ero]

Ero wound up ignoring Kiska's question, only looking up for a moment. She was extremely excited about this strange vision she had received, and felt compelled to try out this new knowledge. After a few moments, she gave up digging through her stuff, and yanked out the knife she used for eating and looked around for something to gouge. Finally, she settled for a nearby piece of wood, and started chipping the symbol into it. As she did, she felt herself calling up her auristics, but she didn't hear any of the music she normally heard when doing this. It all seemed to drain into this symbol she was carving. She didn't know why she was doing it, but knew that everything would be better when she finished. Suddenly, she realized she was done. She knew this because she shifted her foot so that she could sit more comfortably, and the pain jerked her back to lucidity. She muffled a whimper, and looked at what she had been doing. It was confusing, but for some reason she could feel power nestled into the crude carving she had created in the bit of firewood she held in her hand. She looked up at Kiska. "Oh I just moved over here because there was nothing for me over there. I'll be fine. As for this book...well..." she hesitated, unsure of how to explain what had just happened. She herself was unclear of what was going on, how could she explain it? suddenly she had an idea. "Here," she said, tossing the small log towards where Kiska stood. "Put your hand on the symbol and like, will it to work or something. Just...you'll see."