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[Wa'Djinnabi]

The summer heat lingered towards the beginning of that fall. It hung low in the air, stubbornly simmering despite a westerly breeze bringing cool air from the bay of Matthews. It was the kind of heat that pressed down on you, full of sweat and crushed will. Like some alchemy of mist turned steam, it filled the lungs and wore them out. In fact, Wa'Djinnabi re Ahnatep would have expected the weather from a swamp, or at least someplace with much more water then the forests and mountains off the coast of Zeltiva. Dawson, the old farmer from Syliras, had cut the day early. Either from weather or from a lack of work. At this point, they were simply waiting and watching the harvest and the weather. They hoped to get one last harvest before the first frosts came in killed the plants. So today's work had been mostly weeding and checking the long lines of crops.

Which gave Djinn some time to himself.

The sun was above him as he ducked into one of the pavilions, embracing the shade, though there was no relief from the muggy weather even in the shadows of the tent. Supper would be served soon, but it was a bit to early for it so he had the tent that he had internally dubbed the restaurant to himself and a small group in the corner. Deciding that perhaps he aught to be more friendly he wandered over to go see what was going on. Mercy was there, holding a young child- maybe a year or so old, as were a young womanThis is Ember whose age was difficult to determine, an ancient woman knitting (read: mangling some yarn) and a pair of older men. There were space for more at the folding table that was set out and Mercy flashed a smile to Djinn as she bounced a burbling child on her lap. Taking that as an invitation the Eypharian approached and got a closer look at what they were doing.

Laid out on the table was not food, as he had expected but paper, or more accurately parchment. Sheets of all sizes were laid out, from a great scroll the size of the table to scraps scattered here and there. There was also pots of glue, a pair of shears, some colored wax and oddly enough, silver foil. But what had the attention of the group, especially the young woman, was one of the older gentlemen, industriously folding a thin, stiff sheet of parchment with complicated and exacting creases. The other man, who Djinn realized was an identical match to the first, was lounging and chatting with the ancient crone and Mercy. "...So you see Mosa, this thing Saegus is doing was a training aid before- Oh, hello there friend, have a seat." The man gave a mild smile and waving to a chair that was set out of the way.

Djinn pulled the indicated chair up to the table and settled in next to Mercy. The young one in her arms looking at his extra arms with wide eyes as --she? Yes, she was a young girl -- inexpertly managed to catch her hand in her own mouth. Djinn always marveled at how uncoordinated infants were, more flailing then anything deliberate. Still, she was adorable for a mutant without the proper amount of arms. By the time Wa'djinnabi's attention had returned to the man who was presumably Saegus and his chatty twin, the man was finished with whatever he was making. Astonishingly, instead of simple parchment, a miniature goat was standing proudly before him. Saegus, with a smug smile looked up at the young woman whose eyes were the size of saucers. "Would you like to try?" He offered the goat to her through the skillful sliding of it and the piece of paper underneath to her.

Djinn who was enchanted by the stylized, but clearly identifiable paper goat, broke in, "Mind if I try too?" Saegus merely shrugged and slid a paper to him too. Which of course led to Saegus brother getting into the spirit of the thing and pulling a piece of parchment to himself as well.



My words

Their words

[Wa'Djinnabi]

Djinn concluded that Saegus was an intense and serious sort. And the other man, whom Djinn found out was named Dunstin, was his twin brother who had a much more laid back and friendly attitude. Saegus would smile at his counterpart's jokes and antics but remained firmly focused on what they he had tasked himself, namely the teaching the folding technique to make a goat from paper. Djinn tried to follow along with the mousey woman who introduced herself with a shy smile as Ember. It only took Mosa a moment to off handedly announce her name as she struggled to tame her her rat's nest of yarn. Djinn wasn't sure what she was trying to accomplish with those knitting needles, but whatever it was, it was winning the battle and Djinn was afraid it would engulf her and split into more carnivorous blobs of yarn. He internally berated himself for the mental image; for all he knew the magic to make that happen existed somewhere and he tempted fate by imagining that event.

He cursed in arumenic as he folded the wrong way and had to unfold what he was doing for a third time and start over. At this point his paper was losing its stiffness and ability to take folds and was growing the texture and consistency of warn cloth. However the practice he was gaining by mangling his paper earned him more speed to get the paper to the correct stage. It was difficult, however, because Saegus had little inclination to stop except where it concerned Ember. Where he all but ignored Djinn unless asked a specific question, he was the picture of a conscientious tutor that was firm but gentle with Ember. Dunstin on the other hand had already finished his goat and was playing with Caitlyn, Mercy's little one. He was making silly noises and waving around the paper goat which the infant did her best to catch with her incredibly uncoordinated pudgy fingers. She turned her head to her mother and pointed at Dustin with a radiant smile.

Through trial and error, Djinn finally had the goat's shape in place. He placed it next to Ember's and Saegus and winced. It was... not quite like the others. Some of the previous folds messed up the proportion and made other parts lopsided. Compared to the other two, his was looking a bit ragged. Still, he was pleased with the results.

Saegus gave a dangerous smile, "Now would you like to know how to make it move?" Mercy, Djinn and Ember gave the older man a blank look, whereas Mosa was too busy wrangling her knitting project and Dunstin was busy trying to balance his chair on two legs. "...What?" Ember asked. Saegus' smile broadened, "I can show you some magic to animate them and have them walk around. Here, let me show you." Saegus industriously sketched out a pair of circles with a line between them. "So what we are going to do is attach a Life Principle to our little paper dolls. We can do that by drawing this diagram. This circle is what we call the source and this one is the destination." He pointed out the respective circles and placed his goat figure in the destination circle and put his hand over the source circle. "Normally these circles need to be bigger. But this will work for now. So when you go to use the magic of Animation to animate an object you are using living things as a source and template to copy into the object. So you put the creature in the source and you want them to do the action that you want the golem to perform. If you don't have a source it can't do the thing you want it to do. This will create a sort of simplified soul and a very basic astral body that will allow your thing to move joints and such. In our case, our joints will be the folds of our goat."

"And for the source, I will use my hand to make the action of flexing and releasing so that the goat can walk." Seagus said, moving on as the group stared at him. Ember's eyes were wide in shock and wonder and Mercy's were a bit glazed over as the information flew over her head to hand among the stars. Oddly enough it was Mosa that seemed to nod along sagely as if it all made sense to her. "... Normally this is much easier since your source will do the entire range of movements you need unconsciously, you don't really need to direct what joints do what at what times. But it's useful to be able to do these very small sets of individual movements. Anyways, to activate the circle you need a bit of blood." Djinn was struck by that detail, it was incredibly similar to how to activate an alchemy circle. He would have said so, but Saegus was intensely focused on explaining this magic that he couldn't really get a word in edgewise. Besides he felt that he would probably have been ignored even if he had.

Saegus nicked his offhand and let the drop of blood drop onto the circle. The circles' lines shifted from black charcoal to a faintly blue glow. Saegus' eyebrows knitted together as he concentrated and after a moment he slowly and deliberately flexed his wrist. It almost looked like he was waving his hand up and down if the movement wasn't so stiff. After a few moments he stopped and concentrated on the object. The circle then slowly shifted back to its normal charcoal colour and texture and all was normal. Dunstin was watching impassively, clearly bored, when Saegus reached down and tapped the Goat.

The newly created paper goat golem began to move! It mindlessly began to flex its legs in pairs and started walking towards the edge of the table. All the occupants of the table save Dustin, Saegus and again, oddly Mosa were either stunned into silence, gazed on in obvious wonder or gasped in sudden surprise.


WC: 1051