Closed Ducks in a Rowboat

[Ines]

Summer 20th, 519AV

wc: 523

Ines was lounging in a hammock, strung up between two trees in the immediate area of the sawmill. She was also fully clothed, in boots, pants, shirt, and even a hat. Lars had given her the day off, but she wanted to spend it at the mill anyway, a practice the millwright found questionable at best.

"You know, it's not nice to gloat, Ines." Lars was scooping up the ashta poop that morning, something that the kelvic wanted to do. Not because she enjoyed it, but because she knew he had more important things to be doing. She offered to work today instead of taking it off, and he instead insisted she relax. Ines didn't understand his desire for her to have a healthy amount of free time. The man lived at the mill, literally, and was out working earlier and stayed later than her. Every day.

"If I was gloating by being here, then why did you give me a hammock?" Ines retorted as she watched the millwright put the big pitchfork into the shed. He grunted in response. The bat rolled out of the hammock and marched into the shed. She picked up the pitchfork he had propped and placed it on the hooks below the second pitchfork, lining them up.

"You will come with me," Ines punctuated each word with a jab in the chest, an act which would have been more intimidating if the kelvic was a foot taller. She threw her hands up. "When was last time you were not working all day? When you were in Riverfall!?" Lars shrugged her off and left the shed, with the tiny angry kelvic stomping out after him.

"I have another job, too, Lars. You can help me with that, and it will make up for not working at the mill for few bells." The millwright was continuing chores as she pleaded. After what felt like an eternity of the bat staring at his turned back with puppy eyes, he looked at her.

"What's your other job, Ines?"

The kelvic clasped her hands together. "I am marked by Caiyha, but the jungle is dangerous, and how do I do what I need to if I am not in the jungle?" Lars nodded. "You can take me, and you can teach me, and then soon I will not need your help anymore, and I can do my job."

The millwright was certain that a founder - Randal, maybe even Mathias - would willingly teach her wilderness survival without him having to leave the sawmill. She did raise a valid point, in that he hadn't really stopped working since she had started, but it had only been around 14 or 15 days since she came to Syka to begin with.

"Alright, sure. I'll go with you, on one condition: we go up the river. There are some trees that I want to scout out before going to get them." Lars went off to change into proper jungle gear. Ines, fully dressed for the occasion already, went off to tell the ashta of her excitement. The animals had become a diary of sorts for the kelvic.

[Ines]

wc: 570

Soon, the pair was en route along the cobbled pathway. This particular segment was short, but went directly from the sawmill and to the base of the river. There was a small boat beached near the mouth of the river, their vehicle of choice for the day.

"It's the rainy season. I don't know how much I have to warn you about this, but don't slip." Ines regarded his words, walking slowly through the soft riverbank and towards the boat. The river apparently acted just like the basin in the summer season - full and wet, spilling over the usual boundaries and flooding the land nearby. It was clouded with loose dirt, obscuring any beasts waiting under the surface to make a quick meal of a thirsty tapir or capybara. "In the dry season we could just walk, but the river could flood at nearly any moment." The kelvic didn't need much further explaining. A flooded river would be able to sweep them away or block off their path home.

Rustle, rustle, squelch...QUACK!

The bat's snapped her head over her shoulder just in time to see Lars fall backwards into the shallows as he emitted an inhuman squeal. Ines peeked over the boat, nearly in the water, to investigate, and was met with a colorful waterfowl. The duck seemed a bit miffed at the disruption of its nap, because it snapped and quacked at the witch even as she tried to calm it down. It didn't listen to her authority, a fact which dawned on the kelvic soon - if she had the riparian biome, maybe she'd be able to tell it to leave.

"What did you do to this duck!?" Ines yelled at the millwright, now soaked, muddy, and not ready to let a spill deter him from travelling upriver.

"I think it was trying to nest in my boat..."

After few chimes of shooing by Lars and intense convincing to the duck that the pair meant no harm. The kelvic was able to discern that it was protecting a nest, along with the trio of eggs inside it. A crevice inside of a boat was an exceptionally safe place for a nest, and the duck knew it.

"How far do the flood waters go?" Ines was in the sand, leaning over the edge and peering into the inside of the boat at the clutch. "She'll let us move the nest if we put it somewhere safe. I think she wants to pick." The witch made eye contact with the mallard to confirm as much, and began slowly moving the nest out from under the seat. In a serendipitous realization caused by her hat falling off as she was contorted, Ines carefully placed the eggs in the cap, while Lars held the nest itself, an interesting weave of bright feathers and innumerable species of broken twigs and dead vines. They trekked just into the jungle, and after the duck searched for some time, relocated the next under a cleft of rock near the end-reaches of the flooded river. As they departed back to the boat, Ines noticed slithering movement from the corner of her eye. A snake looking for it's next meal, perhaps. Keeping the animals out of places they didn't belong was one thing, but it wasn't her place to interfere in a snack.

After that event, the pair was finally in the boat and began to paddle upriver.

[Ines]

wc: 795

It wasn't long before they came upon the pool. Notable in the way it was crystal clear to the bottom while the rest of the river flowed around it. She could even see the small fish and a rusting metal cage at the very center. An overwhelming curiosity came upon the kelvic, and even Lars was rowing slowly when they came across it, just enough to fight the flow of the river. Without even speaking, the two seemed to have the same idea, and Ines tied the now familiar boom hitch on the boat while Lars paddled to the edge of the river to tie the other end of the mooring rope to a tree.

"We will take it up?" she asked Lars, the pool visible even on the shore of the river. He shrugged.

"It's down there for a reason. It just looks like bones, but whatever it is is caged. It's probably fine." The millwright dug in his pack, finding a grappling hook and another length of rope. "Can you swim?" The witch just shook her head in response. She had splashed around in the shallows before, but the pool was at least twice as deep as she was tall, and she wasn't sure how she'd even manage to get down there. Lars could swim, but jungle rivers were dangerous enough with the current. The inhabitants made it doubly so. On the bright side, boat travel included a lot of extra rope.

The first step was to tie the grappling hook to the rope. It was heavy and it would be able to sink without anyone having to bring it down manually. All they had to do was have one person rowing to keep themselves in place, and the other to drop the grappling hook, nudging the rope to ensure that it actually hooked. Lars untied the boat from the tree, and Ines tied the grappling hook, even adding extra overhand knots through the length of the rope to assist with the pulling up.

As they went back to the pool, Ines double checked the knots around the hook. The rope was originally nearly 100 feet long, but the amount of overhand knots made it more like 50 or 60. That was still enough for it to reach near the bottom and back to shore for them to pull it up, but there wasn't enough length to wrap it around a tree branch like a pully.

"Syka is all strange things." said the Kelvic. The cobbled pathway was very strange the first time she had come to the settlement - she'd never seen anything like it - and yet there were even stranger surprises every day. Like this cage, and the gleaming blue skeleton of something, almost like a child, inside. She had more of a chance to peer into the pool as the grappling hook fell. Decaying plant matter hung off of the bars of the cage and small fish swam inside and around it. The vibrations from the grappling hook hitting the cage were enough to scare away the little fish. The however-long undisturbed muck, too, clouded the water.

"It gets stranger every day." replied the millwright, tugging on the rope along with the bat to ensure the hook was held fast between the bars. He rowed them back, where he again moored the rowboat to a tree, and the duo stood on the shore. With the rope knotted consistently, they had a much better grip and were able to muscle the cage out of the deep muck in a handful of chimes, the process of bringing it to shore taking only half a bell.

While the cage itself was rusted and coated in maybe centuries of river-slime, the skeleton was pristine. It was not bone - it was blue, translucent, and gleaming. It was not an animal that the witch knew. She was not an expert on the jungle, but she was not ignorant, either, and she had been around the bones of many animals and people alike in her three years. Never were they so crystalline.

"Do you know this?" She turned to ask Lars, though from the same bewildered look on his face, he didn't know either. "We should go back?"

He finally responded. "It looks like a...bear? I don't think there are any bears in the jungle." The witch shook her head. She'd never even heard of those before. "We might be able to get it on the boat, it wasn't too heavy, but it takes up a lot of space. Maybe if we can get the lock off." He grabbed the lock, rusted to the point that even if they had the key, it wouldn't work. Just one thwack from the grappling hook and it crumbled.

[Ines]

wc: 684

They were able to pull open the cage with a little effort. Rusty hinges alerted the surrounding ten miles of their location, but nothing else happened. Ines could easily fit into the cage herself, even with the skeleton inside. The inquisitive bat reached to touch the bones. With sunlight from a traveling sunspot over them, the bear gleamed, glittering and throwing out rainbows from its prism-like structures. They were smooth and cool to the touch, and their beauty elicited an ooh from Lars as Ines pulled out one of the larger bones. Its patterns of light danced around them.

"We take this home." She said, simply. Lars looked frustrated, his mouth forming a thin line as he contemplated how they would manage to wrest it back to the mill. Ines had already begun pulling large pieces out of the cage and resting them on the dirt beside it when Lars came up with his plan.

He grabbed a tarp and released the lengths of rope from the cage and the two of them began the tedious process of undoing all of the overhand knots. "I'm going to put all of the crystals on the spread-out tarp, roll it up, and then tie the ends and center with the rope. This is called a horseshoe pack, and it's very useful for carrying your things when you have limited supplies..." His eyes darted to the large cage and the skeleton inside, "or when you need to carry something with the wrong sized container. We'd have a hard time getting that cage onto the boat, but this will be much easier to transport this way."

The bat was overjoyed that he was entertaining her curiosity in the matter, and the pair switched off between arranging the bones on the spread tarp and untying the many knots she had tied just half a bell before. Together they rolled the tarp tight, and Ines held one end twisted while Lars tied the rope tightly on the other. After he secured the knot, the vampire bat stood up with the pack, holding it tilted towards the closed bottom end. The millwright used the opportunity to wrap the rope around the pack, and knotted the rope together where he crossed it over in the center. He switched places with the Kelvic and used the rest of the length to tighten the other end. With the skeleton and all the small bits and pieces secure, he was able to throw it over his shoulder and carry it to the rowboat.

"The horseshoe pack is easy to carry, too. Easy to make, easy to carry - you should have no trouble packing your things if you have a cloth and some sort of cords." He placed it in the bottom of the boat, where it lay secure and compact. Much more efficient than transporting it in its cage, which now looked fragile and moments from falling apart now that it was out of the river. It seemed much older than it had when the skeleton was still inside it.

Ines pushed the cage back into the river, its rusty bars leaving red-brown marks on her hands. Something had told her that it belonged back in the river, and it rolled onto the bottom with a large eruption of muck into the water. She climbed into the boat with Lars and leaned haphazardly over the side to untie it from the branch it was moored on. As they went downriver, the only real use of the paddle was to keep them going in the right direction.

"I wonder...what founders will think? When see the bones?" said the little bat, her gaze pointed at her millwright companion. "Has crystal bones found before?"

"No, I don't think so. And I have no idea what they'll think. It's probably just a relic of the ruins around here. Plenty of treasure gets washed up on the beach or in the other river... so maybe they've found crystallized bones before."

The Kelvic nodded and wondered what the petch she was going to do end up doing with a skeleton.

[Ines]

Ines
Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Animal Husbandry	1
Bodybuilding	2
Endurance	1
Engineering	1
Investigation	1
Knot-tying	1
Observation	2
Rhetoric	1
Wilderness Survival	3

Lores

• Lars: Workaholic
• Rowing a Boat
• Wilderness Survival: Beware of flooding in the rainy season
• Wilderness Survival: The current is strong
• Wilderness Survival: The river is home to nasty things
• Wilderness Survival: Making a horseshoe pack
• Animal Husbandry: Waterfowl nesting habits
• Engineering: Improvising pulleys to lift heavy objects
• Location: Syka River

Items Aquired :

+1 Crystalized Sun-bear Skeleton