Completed Researching Magic

[Kelski]

Timestamp: 45th of Spring, 519 A.V.

Kelski had been up and about early. She had a mind to visit what passed for an actual library in Sunberth because on her early morning flight up the coast and across the city she’d found what she considered a treasure. She’d dutifully returned with Moth and her little horse cart to collect it. A dolphin, fully grown, but with terrible wounds as if it had been fighting a shark, had washed up on shore.

Sometimes she found things like this.

There had been a small toothed whale, a tentacle from a huge sea serpent (which had been good eating and tasted a lot like octopus), and various squid. She’d found fish carcasses sometimes too and once she’d even seen a live turtle. Each item had been something of a delight, but after her self-training in morphing, a find like a dolphin was invaluable.

The Sea Eagle was planning on a somewhat dubious sea journey at the end of the season and with miles of water and no land she knew first hand that having a form that could both swim and breath air would be invaluable if there was an accident. Kelski didn’t foresee any trouble, but then again she wanted to minimize risk if she could. Having a corpse from a dolphin to study thoroughly was a jewel. She’d seen them from afar and knew they could frolic in the waves quite easily, but she’d never seen the whole creature at once.

And this death was fresh.

It was also a warning to her that being a dolphin wasn’t exactly a truly safe thing in the sea. Something ate them. But like everything else on the land, things ate other things, and one just had to be careful. Kelski suspected it was sharks, but she wasn’t sure. Bigger toothed whales could as well. She’d just seen a lot of dolphins and never had seen them running from anything. They usually were chasing fish.

Life and death. It was a never-ending cycle.

When the carcass was hauled back to The Midnight Gem and safely stowed in the barn, Kelski took Moth and continued her ‘drive’ to the area of Stumble Alley and Remmy’s Library. She had a few questions to ask and a few things to look at before she truly got started on studying the dolphin.

First, she wanted to see if there were any books on dolphins or sea creatures. Kelski wasn’t a good driver yet, so steering the sedate horse through the streets of Sunberth was challenging for her even on the most uncrowded day. She had several mishaps, but luckily the little gelding knew where they were going when they took the direction they took and she had little trouble coaxing him into the alley and up to the side of the library with the use of her driving reins, voice, and prayers. When she arrived, she left Moth tethered with a bag of grain over his nose and slipped into the facility.

She shouldered her backpack, nodded to anyone that might be in attendance, and looked around for Remmy. She spotted her copying a text for a client and slipped up to her and squatted down in the nearest chair.

“Morning!” She added.

Remmy looked up, wrinkled her nose in annoyance, and muttered…”You smell like dead fish.”

[Kelski]

“Dead dolphin.” Kelski corrected. “One washed up on the shore this morning. I wanted to study a bit about its anatomy and was hoping you had some sort of book on it.” Kelski admitted, looking hopeful.

Remmy meanwhile continued her copying, got a few more lines carefully inked, redipped her pen, and looked thoughtful. “Nothing on anatomy… no wait… we have a book for cooks on what their parts are and what parts are best eatin.’ It has diagrams of turtles and sharks too and how to butcher them. I think it even has squid and octopus. It’s in the cooking section under seafood. Its called ‘Delicacies From The Sea.’” She said thoughtfully.

Kelski laughed. “I’ll go find it. Thanks Remmy. I might copy down the others too. Never know when more food might wash up.” She said, looking thoughtful and hungry. Kelski hadn’t eaten that morning, at least not yet.

When she started to move, Kelski paused again. She looked a bit thoughtful then asked quietly. “Remmy, have you ever been to Zeltiva? Do you know anything about it?” She asked quietly.

Remmy waved a hand dismissively. “You won’t find any books on it here… It has about 20,000 humans, hardly any other races, about 18 days by ship from here. They export ships, timber, books and knowledge… import foods and metals. Food is scarce there… scarcer there than here. It’s a sort of Trade and Educational Center… ran by a Council who has a Lord… very old city. Lots of big stone buildings, in the mountains, right on the shore. Interesting place. Different than Sunberth.” She said absently, still copying.

Kelski nodded. “Thanks. I’ll go find that other book now.” She added, offering Remmy a smile. “Thank you for the information on Zeltiva. I haven’t honestly heard much about it. But it sounds like a good place to live for people that like books.” She added, sounding somewhat hopeful.

“For people that like books that are locked up, sure.” Remmy muttered absently. She didn’t sound nearly as impressed as Kelski did. Kelski wondered about that and what she meant about ‘locked up’.

Did people not have access to the library? That would be a shocker. Kelski pondered at this, looked skeptical, and headed to the section Remmy had indicated.

The cooking section was devastation. There were books, scrolls, journals, and even piles of notes everywhere. There were recipes, catalogs of sorts, even lists of inventories of larders as Kelski looked around reading spine and front cover title after title looking for the book she had been directed too.

After a few chimes though, Kelski started to see the organization in the chaos and found the section where all the books and journals started with D. Then she moved through that section swiftly until she did indeed find the book that Remmy had suggested.

So… dolphins were edible? For some reason Kelski saw a lot of intelligence in their eyes and couldn’t imagine eating them. But the librarian had been right. There were diagrams in the book and that in and of itself delighted Kelski. She flipped through it until she found one of a dolphin and pulled out a journal, quill, and a bottle of ink from her backpack.

She quickly laid them out, propped up the dolphin diagram and began to copy it. The dolphin she used charcoal to lightly sketch out its shape. The picture looked a whole lot healthier than the corpse she’d found on the beach. She liked its jovial face and the fact that it had such interesting names for its parts.

[Kelski]

Once the charcoal was sketched out to her liking, she inked over the drawing and then began to label the parts in her small concise script. Kelski usually printed her writing, not liking the flourish of the decorative cursive script a lot of scholars liked to use. Her writing was like her jewelcrafting, neat efficient, and clean.

When she was done, she blew on the drawing to help it dry and then flipped through to see if there were any more sea creature diagrams she might want to have. Flipping through she found whales of multiple types, sharks, and turtles. Kelski copied down all these images though she didn’t add in the notes on what was edible and what wasn’t. Eating such things as a human just wasn’t in her interest.

The first whale was called a grey whale, though the artist had noted that humpbacks looked similar. The important thing was that they had hair in their mouths instead of teeth because they gulped up big mouthfuls of water, squished out the water through their hair, and munched what was left which was tiny shrimp.

Kelski thought that was odd and decided she’d have to see the mouth in action before she could remotely copy the form. Then, only after she’d made the sketch, did she realize the size of the creature…. most were as big as large boats if not bigger. The large whales were definitely out of her ability. But at least she had the notes for later.

Orca’s were smaller whales but much larger than dolphins. She wasn’t sure she could transform into one without seeing it up close, but having a diagram was going to be a wonderful thing. So Kelski did the work while she had the book before her and sketched it in anyhow. They had real teeth and hunted like predators. The artist who authored the book said they were the wolves of the sea. Kelski didn’t understand until she read they hunted in packs but got caught in fisherman’s nets often enough that sometimes they would be eaten. There were detailed notes on what parts could be eaten too. The Sea Eagle wasn’t a fan. She had tasted whale before… floating carcasses off shore near Lhavit. Monstrous sharks would feed on the fat, finding the blubber nutritious. Kelski, had of course sampled it, and found it oily and frankly disgusting. She’d much preferred the belly fat of a salmon or tuna than the enormous quantities of oil whales had.

Finally, looking at diagrams of sea turtles and notes on how if they were full of eggs, those eggs were incredibly nutritious and made good soup, she found what she was looking for. Sharks. There were about as many kind as there were fish, though the author suggested harvesting only bull sharks, white tips, and white sharks for food. There was a diagram as well, which had a lot of labels on it. But when she noted the size, Kelski could tell she easily could morph into one of these creatures if she chose. It had the same body mass she did or at least their ranges of body masses fell into the same as hers own.

And the teeth… wow did Sharks have teeth. The dolphin corpse in her barn attested to that. It was munched on with big bites out of it, which was why she had to journey here. Kelski didn’t want to mimic parts that were all vastly different between the living and the dead.

[Kelski]

After checking out the diagram and learning that almost every part of the shark could be used for food, including its fins, she was more than ever certain that a shark had killed the dolphin or at least fed on it after it was dead. Kelski wondered how many bodies the sea contained. Surely things died there daily. Were they all eaten by other creatures or did they slide down to the dark depths and were never seen again?

With a shudder the Kelvic finished up her research, copying, and drawing. Then she packed up her things, replaced the book on the shelf, and said goodbye to Remmy. She wondered if it would be her last goodbye. It might very well be.

Slipping out into the alley, she freed Moth from his grain bag hung over his nose, climbed back onto the cart, picked up the reins and actively started to navigate the streets to home. She wondered as she waited for a ferry if Zeltiva had such awkward lack of bridges that required ferries or if its streets were whole and uncrossed by Rivers. Wouldn’t that be nice? Kelski hated driving, she’d rather walk, but Moth had wanted to come and the cart had been hooked up already due to the picking up the dolphin’s corpse.

Eager to get back and start her study, the Kelvic took the shortest way possible, remembering to keep her hands from leaning on Moth’s mouth and let him simply pick his way through the crowds with the cart as best he could. Driving wasn’t easy. Riding was easier. But Moth was an expert cart horse and he was used to moving far heavier loads than Kelski’s little horse cart through crowds. He zigged and zagged happily, breaking into a trot when the way was clear and automatically slowing to a walk when the street got crowded.

Kelski was glad for the silvery grey gelding. She was glad for the day she saved him as well, even though it had been a hard one and she’d killed a human openly. Moth had no problems loading onto a ferry to cross the Mudway so they could head home. Moth was a good horse, one she appreciated. Any new home in Zeltiva needed to consider him and his needs.

The trip took less than a half bell and before long Kelski was back at the stable, pulling off Moth’s harness, rubbing him down and turning him out into the paddock surrounding the building they used to let the horses stretch their legs in. Kelski then went back to the part of the barn where they stored hay and to the pallet, she’d laid the dead dolphin on.

Opening the backpack, pulling out her anatomy notes, Kelski consulted the dolphin corpse before her. Carefully she studied it, learning each of its parts from the diagram in her book. Eyes, eye holes, beak… Kelski started with its head. The big head was called a Melon and housed a blow hole. The coloring was distinctive… grey on the top, white on the bottom. It had two flippers at its side instead of arms, and a pair of flukes instead of legs.

The body looked powerfully muscled and streamlined. The dorsal fin had a distinctive shape to it, which Kelski traced with her eyes. Then she gently pulled its mouth open and studied its teeth and tongue. She couldn’t see much further than that down its throat. And honestly, she was reluctant to split the dolphin open.

[Kelski]

But eventually she did, noting which organs were which. They were not that different than humans. They had a heart, lungs, liver, and miles of bowels. She saw a bladder, reproductive organs – it was male – and a stomach with half eaten fish in it.

Kelski spent time touching the rubbery skin and stroking the length of its body, learning its textures with her hands… avoiding the horrible wounds. She then tapped her well, flooding her eyesight with djed, and looked with her magesight. She felt the dolphins form djed to djed, feeling out the lingering djed still left in its body. She reached out and touched the lifeless flippers with her sight, studying how they moved and how they would trace the water. Kelski learned quietly, slowly, intimately touching the animal’s body… sad for its death and hoping that its life was good while it had one.

She traced her own skin… and djed welled up. First, she stretched out comfortably in the stable. It wasn’t safe to try such transformations in the open at the edge of the water. She’d have to learn it here, in secret, without water before she could go anywhere near the sea and watchful eyes that might spark a mob. Her djed was familiar with the dead creature before her and it still writhed within her as if eager to be put to use.

Kelski started with her skin. She thickened it, insulated it, and changed its color. Her form turned more silvery on her stomach and deeper grey across her back. She traded human skin for dolphin, trying her best to mimic the flesh of the corpse before her. The djed wasn’t done there though. Once she started concentrating on it, the djed pushed and pulled, changing her leg structure, shortening her legs to flukes and lengthening her torso.

The Sea Eagle just kept in mind how similar the dolphin was to her own human shape and her organs inside slowly an awkwardly rearranged themselves into the form she desired. Her back curved, changed its structure, and a dorsal sprouted from her back. Her arms shortened, attached differently and splayed out into pectoral fins.

She felt her skull expand, change, following the djed patterns her own auristics had determined in the other creatures. She lost her ears completely, the canals shrinking down to just holes in her head. She felt her breathing re-arrange itself, and a whole form at the top of her skull… and she took a deep breath from it. It came out as a huffed explosion of air. She felt so heavy, thick, and unwieldy laying in the hay of the barn.

She rolled, managed to get on her belly, and flipped her flukes.

Her snout was full of sharp teeth and she fired off sound that Kelski didn’t understand. She laid there, struggling next to the corpse, a fully formed dolphin with no water in sight. It had taken her a good twenty minutes to change… and it wasn’t a change she liked at all. Her sight was dimmer, as if not designed for the open air.

Kelski needed water. The new form screamed for it. Here she was awkward, out of her element even though she didn’t know how to swim. Taking a deep breath through the blowhole, Kelski tried not to panic. She calmed her mind, cleared her thoughts, and really laid there a few moments letting her body get a feel for the form. It was sleek and would be powerful in the water. She’d be able to swim well, gliding thorough the water.

Rustling hay wasn’t the idea environment but it gave her a chance to learn the form, know the form, be the form. And it felt really good doing so once she had grown quiet and cold marvel at the feeling of being so different, so sleek, and shaped for optimum motion in the water. Her meditative state grew and she calmly filed the form away, knowing that she couldn’t keep the model either. She’d need to give the corpse back to the sea.

Slowly, rolling over, she dismissed the form and came back to her normal shape. Then she went to find Ebon or Amber to see if one of them would help her carry the heavy dolphin back down to the sea.

Count: 3051

[Kelski]

G R A D E S

Kelski

Scavenging +1, Scouting +1, Investigation +5, Strategy +1, Tactics +1, Driving +1, Research +5, Drawing +4, Copying +3, Teaching +1, Morphing +4

Zeltiva: 20,000 Humans, Zeltiva: 18 days by ship from here, Zeltiva: Exports Ships, Timber, Books, Knowledge, Zeltiva: Imports Foods & Metals, Zeltiva: Food is scarce there, Zeltiva: Ran By A Council And Lord, Zeltiva: Educational & Trade Center, Zeltiva: Old City Of Stone Buildings, Dolphin: Appearance & Names of Parts, Grey Whale: Appearance & Names of Parts, Orca: Appearance & Names Of Parts, Sharks: Appearance & Names of Parts, Blank Book: Notes on Edible Parts Of Sea Creatures, Meditation: Visualizing Sea Creatures, Morphing: Researching Dolphins, Whales, & Sharks For Morphing Models, Scavenging: Picking Up A Dolphin Corpse As A Model, Morphing: Book Research Before Actual Magic, Morphing: Meditation Before Actual Magic

Note: Copy of Delicacies From The Sea (Food and Diagrams of Sea Animal Parts)

PM me with questions or concerns.