[Nanglow]

It is pure here.

The sun staring down on you, the cloudlessness of the sky, the clearness of air that lets you see over a hundred miles away.  

Everything is so pure here that it hurts.  

The sun bears down on you triumphantly, jubilantly, indifferent to the drops of perspiration beading on the back of your neck and smearing into your collar; you squint blindly into the distance, shading your eyes.

Are you unused to purity and clarity in your own life?  Perhaps you are used to the watery light of an impotent sun that insists on thrusting itself weakly into the spaces concrete jungles deign to leave in the skyline.  Perhaps where you normally see the sun it is always filtered – inevitably, invariably filtered through trees, church spires, parapets, and smog.  

No, here the sun is a different animal that tracks through the sky; it cuts across the rolling land like a disinfectant clearing the air, the vaunted sunlight that chases away superstition and vague night cruelties from peasant villages .  The sun is invited into the Sekudui farmlands with grace and hope and goodwill.

There are so few places in the world where one gets the sense that it is absolute and immovable, but surely the Sekudui farmlands would be one of them.  Placid, sturdy, stout-hearted...the natives of these heartlands of Barakka as well infrequently feel a need to question their identity or venture far from it.  Man and land carved out their destinies together here and rarely strayed.  Indeed, the towheaded shirtless boy standing barefoot on a plow following two similarly implacable Tuskow seems both curious as to why you are here and utterly uninterested in where you came from.

The air is pure too.  Drawing in a deep lungful here is like the first time you drew a draught to drink from an icy mountain stream in the Roraldi Forests – the newness and freshness of it leaves you momentarily startled and slightly dizzy.  And the taste.  You hadn’t known there was a taste to things that didn't have tastes.

The Sekudui farmlands lie rolling and frank-faced, staring into a dazzling cerulean blue sky that can only be termed with the infinite.  Leaning your head back to try to take the whole thing in leaves you with momentary vertigo.  You wonder how people don't develop agoraphobia here.

The pattern of furrows combing across fields through incomprehensible miles towards the horizon -- the visual monotony broken only by the uneven checkering of fields allowed to lie fallow this season, fields with a dusting of light green, and the dusty dirt paths like the one you are standing on that scrawls between homesteads -- strains your eyes and you briefly close them, watching the sudden wash of color bloom beneath your eyelids as you press down the heels of your palms.

You open your eyes.  What a relief then.  Just inside your peripheral vision is a welcome spot of shade that nevertheless sticks out like an embarrassing smudge on a Sekudui farm wife's immaculate apron.  Massed up against the sides of a hill is a layer of thick foliage that you can't help but notice for its virulent greenness in shocking contrast to the mild, unassuming colors of the rest of the rolling Sekudui farmlands.  Even more astonishingly...the crops on this hill recede into a (pinkish?  Purplish?!) shroud of fog that settles itself like a fur stole around the hill's shoulders.  Even the sun has failed to burn away this mist.  Fascinated, you head forward to take a look.

Drawing closer, you see a rusting iron fence surround the base of the hill.  Security looks none too tight as a gate flaps open – despite the lack of breeze here in sunny farm country, or  in the farmstead beyond the gate where the shadows grow more pronounced and the mist grows stronger as you stare up the path towards the top of the hill.  You feel that you see the dark vertices of a house appear and disappear through the curling of thick mists.  You look at the sign above the gate that reads "[name obscured] Company".  You reach out a tentative finger to see if you can rub away some of the ruination affecting the sign.  Your finger comes away with an oily green residue.  You shudder, quickly wiping your hands on your clothes.  Your fascination gets the better of you and you slip inside the gates and start walking eagerly up the path.  

It is a steep hill and a long path.  The air becomes heavier as you move, growing pregnant with humidity.  Sweat pours down your face; the dry heat out in the rest of the Sekudui was nothing compared to this.  But you see what is causing the pink and purples of the fog.  The mist over here is so thick, you feel as if you can barely remember the sunlight that lies just outside these gates.  Studded all over the ground where there would otherwise be sprinklers are giant grow lights lighting the broad undersides of leafy plants and exotic looking crops.  For some reason, they are pink, their light refracting off the undersides of the water particles hanging in the air to produce a mist tinted as it hangs before your face.

The mist grows thicker as you head towards the house...and now you smell something noxious as well.  Something of the tang of ozone combined with the sharp metallic taste of either blood or steel.  In the distance you see the dim figures of workers toiling and tending towards the vegetation, their outlines obscured in mist.  You wave eagerly.  None wave back.

You are rapidly approaching the house, even as it flickers in and out of your sight between thick swathes of fog.  Excited, you quicken your pace.  What a strange place!  What are they doing here anyway?

Suddenly you hear a twig snap and you spin around – but there is no one there.  Funny.  You had never noticed how silent it was before until now.  Even the workers in the distance make no sound.  You'd think in this silence, any noise they made would carry miles.  You hesitate – and hear a soft keening sound.  Startled, you cock your ear.  Did you imagine it?  No, there it is again...

You listen intently to the rising and then dropping wail as it fades in and out of your earshot...You are having trouble placing it...Is it a pleasing sound? Is it sad?  One would think so but you can't tell...You listen...and keep on listening...

Unaware of it yourself, your interest in the house on the high hill is fading...your feet turn towards the gates...and you drift on downwards, intent upon listening to the wailing mournful dirge even as the sound fades from your ears...

[Nanglow]

Pura spun out a line of webbing as she slowly slid down, watching the stranger walk off dreamy and unsuspecting of her influence.  Until she saw him leave through the rusty and moldering gate, she did not touch down upon the moist soil of the ground.

She had no particular wish today to make a meal out of anything or anyone today.  She had been feasting for a good three days on an unsuspecting Tuskow she had snatched out of a nearby farm.  Quick as a gasp, she had swooped out of a tree and paralyzed it with a stab of her tail.  She had been stalking it for days.  Its hindquarters were now sitting in her home, tied up so tightly it was lifted six feet into the air and bound into a corner of her web.  And woe unto any of the other jealous bastards that might try to get their talons into it.  Howa sat in their corner of the barn, drowsily guarding it for now -- but he would be quick to take action and offense at anyone who tried to scuttle into their territory.  Not for nothing did they make a good team -- she the best hunter among the small number of their kind, he with the fiercest protective instincts among the males.

Crooning, she withdrew a sticky clutch of eggs from her chest with her pincers, singing in high and chittering notes to the silken package, stroking it tenderly.  Within the translucent strands of webbing, one could see a few eggs beginning to wriggle and move.  Pura chirruped happily and spit some freshly sticking webbing onto the package before sticking it back onto her breast.  She spun out another strand of webbing to elevate herself back into the trees again -- guard duty had not been finished for now.

[Nanglow]

Some distance away among the carrion and homely webbed filth of their joined pens, Howa yawned and stretched, resting his chin on his front pincers as he hung head down from his own webbing.  Chimerantula have no real way of keeping time, but that strange internal clock that he carried, that all animals carry, the one which lets Draculi know when to stare accusingly that they haven't been fed yet or lets Tali know that now NOW NOW is the time to PLAY FETCH ALREADY, could tell it would soon come time for there to be a harvest.  He shifted eagerly, looking forward to a trot out of the farm.  It had been getting boring here lately, and for some reason Pura was the one who would keep getting saddled for outings.  He considered himself a perfectly capable mount himself, but he supposed Pura did have a better connection with the Other -- the mysterious Other that could only be defined in their indescribable separation from himself and Pura and himself and the others, even the other Hollowhearts or Aries.  The indefinable Other.  The mysterious Other.  He settled in for a long meditative period to muse on the whims and quirks of the Others...listening in for the sound of their footsteps as well to tell them when it was time to go.

[Nanglow]

Sona thudded heavy feet out of bed, blinking blearily in the ever-dim light of the Farm.  She jammed a finger through the blinds.  What did she expect?  As usual, the sky was lavender, which was dull or magical depending on how you looked at it.  The sun was replaced by the pink of electric grow lights.

She moved across the room, picking up clothes and pieces of body armor as she went.

Rali lay sprawled out against the wall on the other side of her spartan room, snoring with a reptilian hiss.  She kicked at him halfheartedly on her way to the bathrooms.  "Get up," she told him.  "It's Harvest Day.  It's your turn to take over for duties while I'm out."

Sona's toilette took all of two minutes.  She dressed with military efficiency.  Before long, she was in the stables pulling the saddles out of storage.

She made a clicking noise with her tongue.  "Come on," she called.  "Come on, Pura, Howa, Vida, Laretie.  Harvest!"

[Nanglow]

Vida yawned and sagged out of her webbing, watching with beady eyes as Sona saddled Pura, who clicked loudly and happily her pleasure.  Howa and Laretie had been bridled too, although not saddled.  Pura would be the one being ridden today.  Vida had no problem with that.  Let the old bitch get her back bent and broken.  

Vida swung out of her web, walking upside-down across a ceiling beam before scuttling vertically down the wall to show up next to Sona.  Pura ignored her.  Vida ignored her back, but started noting down opportunities to bother Pura with.  She sidled up next to Howa, ready to make her move.

Sona threw a bridle around Vida and cinched it.  "Ready to go!" she hissed.

[Nanglow]

Laretie pranced down the dusty dirt paths as they trotted towards Happy Tuskow.  Occasionally he would stop and rub his carapace against the rough bark of a tree, trying to buff it to a high shine.  At times like this, Sona was obliged to tug rather urgently on his bridle until he followed along after her on Pura, Howa, and Vida.  In no time at all, they were moving at a canter.  Then a fast clip.  Then a gallop, as they flew over the silent and moonlit landscape.

Although to some viewers, it can still be quite odd indeed to watch four man-sized insects move at a gallop with a bipedial lizard atop one of them.

[Nanglow]

Sona continued to brood unpleasantly about the rest of her duties after coming back from the farm.  The night soon passed into day as as she and the train of Chimerantulas continued to their meeting spot with Jules.  With any luck she'd be able to make this brief.

Pura clacked at her.  A wandering stranger had been to the farm yesterday, but luckily had meant no harm.  Sona petted her, then scowled as they neared the tavern where she was supposed to meet Jules.

She swung down from the saddle and stabled the Chimerantulas.  One of the reasons they were at their current stop was so that she could get them fitted for new riding gear.  She didn't appreciate the current situation and well...with 4 of them they frankly had much more comfortable options.

[Nanglow]

Concept Draculi

Common Draculi

Wood Kuchi Nagi

Frank served Sona a drink while his brother Bolla measured the Chimerantulas for new gear.  

"For your new coach," the bipedal Concept Draculi informed her, "you will need it to settle across the backs of a dependable pair, while 2 others bring up the front.  It will be a very lightweight coach, we will be carving it from pseudo-ambergris -- the hardened sap of the Bel tree.  It will be a half-shell design, with no closed top, to make it even lighter."

Sona sipped her iced tea from a straw.  "That'll be fine."

Frank the Common Draculi yawned cheerfully and took a nap on his paws after serving Sona.

[Nanglow]

[Switching to first-person perspective.]



It was a pleasure watching Bolla bustle about the Chimerantulae as he measured every limb, every pincer.  He was completely unflappable, ignoring Howa sniffing at him and Vida snapping at him.  Concept Evelonians were so good at drawing up plans and schemes, their creativity was unbounded.  Whatever the chariot he came up with, it would be astounding and I looked forward to it.

Frank drowsed purringly under my chair and I scratched his neck.  What I didn't look forward to was Jules' arrival.  

I could still remember the day we met.  The day I had accidentally let slip how far I would go to learn the craft.  What he had extracted from me in sly payment.

And there he was coming up the street now, on the back of his tiresomely boorish Carpetfang.

[Nanglow]

Wood Meji

Wood Kuchi Nagi

Imperial Rengosett

Sona had her usual expressionless mask on.  She remained an enigma after all the years I had known her.  

"Creatures have been raiding Charken in the dead of night, emerging from caverns below to plunder the villagers' homes and businesses.  In recent days, they grow ever more bold, gravely wounding the alderman Varrow Del when he found them in his barn.  The mayor is offering a reward from their disaster funds to anyone who can best the beasts."

"Where is the entrance to the caverns?" asked Hreena.

"A few miles to the east, inside the forest off their farms," replied Sona.

"Thank you," I replied.  She bowed briefly and said, "I will await your next letter and the usual payment shall be enclosed."

[Nanglow]

I watched them leave from inside the bar.  I was eager to get away from Jules.  

Frank nosed tentatively at my hand.  "Sona?  Are you okay?  Bolla's ready for you now in the backyard."

It was gorgeous.  Unassuming to look at, Bolla had a prodigious magical artificer.  The chariot was a feather-light white shell of pseudo-ambergris -- one of the hardest and toughest substances known to Evelon.  It could only be arcanely shaped and molded.  The top edges were smoothed over into scrollwork (so if I got into an accident I wouldn't accidentally get sliced onto the sharp edge of the cart) with a pommel to hold the reins.  There was a very simply molded seat for myself and a few other passengers on either side of me.

The bottom was very simply molded with enchanted soft spots on the bottom to be strapped onto two Chimerantulae.

For this Jules would be responsible.  I happily paid Bolla and thanked him and was on my way.

[Nanglow]

Plush Chimerantula

Pura, Howa, Vida, and Laretie pranced along with their new carriage, the chariot body slung alone the backs of the scuttling Pura and Howa.  As a pair, they made a very stable and placid team that worked well together.  Once in a while Vida would stop short just to screw with Pura.  

The sky was glorious as they positively flew home.  Sona enjoyed the new carriage very much.