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[Vanari]

Day 2, Summer 514AV "Take me across the lake or I will gut you." "No," the surly fisherman spat. "And it's fer yer own good, lass. Don't you know about the monster that's been eatin' all them folk?" Ari clutched at her hair, having all but exhausted her list of tricks, arguments, and blatant bribery. "How do you even know there really is some giant fish out there eating people?" she spat back. "Have you seen it? Has anyone seen it?" "Dun matter," the man shook his head. "It's dangerous, and I ain't goin' fer nothin'." As a true native of Avanthal, Vanari had never developed much of a taste for violence. But at that moment she felt ready to sink her teeth into the man's thick skull in sheer frustration. She had come all this way from Nyka--a reasonable trip by most standards but grueling all the same--and she was not going to stand idly by while her efforts disappeared like a fart in the wind. "Please!" The vagrant looked about in confusion. Her mouth was half open and finger pointed high in to the air, but it was not her voice that had uttered the plea. "Please," came the cry once more, except this time it was followed by a disheveled looking woman pushing her way to the front. A considerable number of people were crowded along the shore, struggling in vain to catch a ride into Ravok, but this woman was the first to actually squeeze herself past the throng. "My son," she explained, "he's very ill. Someone told me I could find proper treatment inside the city. I need to get him there as quick as possible!" Ari looked down to see she was telling the truth. A small boy of no more than six or seven clung wearily to her side, looking so tired and feverish he could barely stay standing. The fisherman looked back at his own sons, who had been helping him load up their boat the entire time. A gleam of sympathetic pain flashed across his eyes before he returned his attention to the desperate woman. "Can't the lad wait a while? Maybe you can tell what medicine he needs and someone could br--" "No, he can't," the mother interjected, already on the brink of sobbing. "He doesn't have more than maybe a day. Mainly because he cannot be allowed to sleep; once he closes his eyes he'll go under for good." Witnessing this bleak exchange in silence, Vanari watched the boy with increasing alarm. At some point his eyes seemed to droop and, panicking, the Vantha clapped her hands. "Oy, stay awake boy!" she blurted. "Hey, have you ever heard of the, uh...the gingerbread boy?" She hadn't the faintest idea what she was doing, only that this child needed to keep his wits about him if his mother was telling the truth. The boy looked up at her curiously before replying, "No miss, I haven't. Can you eat him?" "Well you could, but he wouldn't like that very much," Ari explained. The idea seemed funny to the sickly child and his laughs were punctuated with wet, phlegmy coughs. With a firm glare, the Vantha addressed the unwilling fisherman in a sober but sincere tone. "If you take this child, his mother, and myself across, I will pay you twenty gold. And I will throw myself off your boat if some giant fish comes looking for its next human dinner. Does that seem fair?" The fisherman, his sons, and the boy's mother all looked at her as if she'd gone mad. But Vanari made no signs of retracting her offer and eventually the man agreed. Some of the other travelers seeking ferry looked a bit put off but none of them felt particularly keen to share close quarters with a dying little boy. Thankfully, the journey was not as agonizingly slow as a regular ferry would have been. As they rowed across the rather calm looking waters, Ari made every effort to keep the child awake, finding her creative feet tested to their very limits. First they had started with the story of the gingerbread boy. Given that the story didn't actually exist, she found it both plausible and useful to have Winston--which she'd discovered to be his name not long into the ride--tell parts of it himself. He was a very clever little boy, sick as he was, and his mother wept the entire way there in a horrific state of hopelessness and overwhelming love.