GREEN
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2415 13.32 KB 148
2415 13.32 KB 148
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>Only somewhere between three-fifths and three-quarters of your nights have been beside a fire with a tent.
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>The kind dragon providing a lift to the Southern coast cut your trip time down by a quarter, of course, and that was part of it.
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>You also suspect that Noire is somehow subtly accelerating your progress.
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>Making the distances shorter for you two and only you two, somehow.
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>Though the flight was certainly a big part of it, you’re still already halfway done with your journey in half the time expected.
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>You didn’t expect a duo hike to be so… communal.
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>Not that you’re complaining.
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>Seeing the interesting ways communities have been establishing themselves, even under primitive conditions, has been fascinating.
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>The fact it did probably says something about your past life.
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>You might be able to figure out something more about your own life just by looking at the lives of others here, and what you find peculiar against what you find normal.
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>That would require a lot more time spent among the groups than you have planned, though.
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>Seeing them all is more important than these personal mysteries.
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>You certainly recognize that you consider a warm campfire a blessing, but back home fire was nothing new.
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>Here, you only get a fire when you and Noire are alone.
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“You know something?”
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>Noire looks up at you, a morsel of cooked meat inches from her mouth.
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>”I know many things.”
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>You chuckle, then take a bite of your own dinner.
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“Oh, keep stuffing your mouth. Good thing you do that out here, imagine what the ponies would think seeing someone like them eat meat.”
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>Noire chews for a bit before answering. “They can eat meat too. I just do not think they do yet. I suspect in the future at least pegasi will.”
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“Oh? Why’s that?”
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>”Cultural exchange. Most flying creatures we created are carnivores.”
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“Ah, yeah. Guess you’re right.”
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>The two of you each take another bite.
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>Not a meal you acquired, but at least you cooked.
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>You need to get the hang of bow hunting, sometime soon.
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“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to say.”
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>You swallow to stop talking around your own food.
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“Fire is something we took for granted back home. Here, nobody’s discovered it yet.
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>You pause before taking another bite.
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“That’s fine, civilization isn’t even a year old. I mean, civilization hasn’t even been, uh, developed yet. The populations aren’t even a year old. But it’s still weird how much of a luxury it feels now, after I’ve taken it for granted so long.”
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>”For all they’ve done, they have a long way to go.”
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>You finish that delayed bite.
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“Yeah. They keep their warmth by just piling on top of each other. Or by being dragons, I guess. Even one of those.”
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>”Most are made with communal living in mind. It solved a lot of potential design issues.”
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>You laugh.
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“Don’t have to talk so clinically about it.”
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>The fire popped, sending a stream of embers skyward.
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“Anyway, just found it interesting, I guess. Back home we don’t really think about life before basic tools and fire. Here they don’t have fire yet. Some have the tools at least.”
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>”They will grow quickly!”
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“Yeah, I bet. In no small part because your background help.”
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>You lean back, and Noire – done with her meal – settles herself across your lap.
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>Idly stroking her coat, you gaze into the fire.
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“Back home, we almost universally had myths about stealing it.”
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>”Stealing?”
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“Fire. All our legends say we didn’t discover fire, we stole it from the gods.”
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>”That seems too devious to be considered noble.”
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“Oh, we had all sorts of trickster gods, and it was often them. Other times it was a more sympathetic deity who acted as an intermediary, and was punished for it.”
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>You look over at the maul you’d been carrying around, getting so little use due to the hospitality of others.
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“Of course, few of them really went into the details of how to make the fire after. Though some talked about how to keep it. Good practices and stuff. Fire was dangerous, thus deserved great respect. Gods dedicated to hearths and stuff.”
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>”It will be interesting to see how they approach it.”
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“How their myths form in general. You got me thinking about it, on the flight. How their myths will begin, how they’ll spread. How what we’re doing here might be interpreted. Everyone a myth of when the creators stopped by for a quick visit!”
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>She laughs, “Do you really think they will take it as something of great import? We stayed a night and left in the morning.”
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“People have lived and died on the casual interference of gods or their agents. Treating a guest kindly could be your ticket out of a city slated for destruction.”
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>”Incredible. We have not destroyed any cities, however.”
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“Aside from the fact they don’t exist yet? I don’t think it’s in my nature. Or yours.”
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>You frown.
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“Honestly, I’m more concerned about them destroying their own cities than you. We didn’t have magic back home, obviously, so I don’t have a good reference for its impact on civilization. But when we got the power of the sun, we learned to destroy with it before we learned to create.”
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>”Destruction is always easier.”
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“Yeah, I guess, but that doesn’t do anything to ease the concern.”
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>Noire looks at you with her big black eyes. ”For all your talk of putting faith outside one’s self, how they may put faith in us, you should have more faith in them.”
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“Mmm. Just worries. In the end, I hope the myths they make of us are happy, and more importantly, stabilizing. Our history shows you need all the help you can get, even if we made this world and these creatures with avoiding those problems in mind.”
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>Noire turns away from you to look out into the darkness before you catch a glimpse yourself.
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>In the night’s gloom, out towards the coast, a shape hangs airborne.
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>It’s approaching, you realize after a few moments of observation, though you can’t judge its size or distance.
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>It’s either small and close, or far off and big.
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>Maybe really big.
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>You reach out for the maul, dragging it closer, then half-leaning on it to push yourself up quickly if required.
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>As the shape comes out of the gloom, it’s apparent it is in fact smaller than you and Noire.
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>And quite close.
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>Varying shades of brown across the griffon’s body explain why it took so long to make out.
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>Once it comes in to land, you can see its only adornment is an extremely crude grass rope around its neck, stringing several shiny bivalve shells together, the halves of each one still connected by the hinge tissue.
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>Your fire must have attracted it; when it finally comes to land, you can tell it has the lion’s share of its attention.
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>How little – and casually – it regards your presence, after all the groups you have visited, brings a smile to your face, and you relax your grip on the maul.
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>Noire gathers herself up off your lap into a sitting position as you reach over to the pan, off to one side of the fire, that still held a few more pieces of meat.
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>Skewering one on a fork, you extend it to the visitor.
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>The griffon considers the offering, then – to your surprise – instead of eating directly from the fork, takes the fork from you, eats as if it’s always known what utensils are, and only after inspects the fork.
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>It takes another gesture for you to actually get the fork back from it.
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>Once the griffon hands it back, it grasps the cord around its neck and cuts it with an edge of its beak, dropping one shell to the ground before retying it with an incredible display of dexterity for talons.
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>Seemingly satisfied with this gift in return, the griffon backs up and takes off again, flying the direction it came.
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>You pick up the shell, inspect it, and angle it towards Noire to see.
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“Well we have a souvenir of our trip, now.”
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>”More than that.”
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“Hrm?”
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>”I think it is supposed to be payment.”
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“If I’d know that, I’d have refused it.”
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>Noire shakes her head. “Think again on what our presence means. Myth-building. Consider the difference accepting the payment versus refusing it may have on a legend that arises from this exchange.”
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>You blink a few times while processing the question.
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>Being a mythical figure was a lot more responsibility than you imagined.
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“Well, if I refuse it, wouldn’t that be hospitality?”
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>”You did offer the food before any payment received.”
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“Yeah, I guess. And I wouldn’t want them to feel indebted, or also that they should expect others to give for free.”
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>”Now that you accepted it, however, they know this is proper behavior. Give back for what you receive, even if in this case it’s mostly symbolic.”
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>You turn the shell over in your hand again.
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>You suddenly feel a lot heavier, weighed down by these considerations.
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>While Noire always moved with grace and a degree of formality around them, you’d seen it as a natural extension of her divine dignity, much like how she acted around you before the two of you had grown close.
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>Only now do you see a second function of that, or perhaps more appropriately, why she held herself like that at all in the first place.
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>Have you screwed anything up in the past few interactions of yours?
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>You did a similar exchange ritual with the pegasi, you remember, as an extension of help-for-help with that one mare.
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>Problem-solving with the unicorns, at least that one you took seriously.
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>Besides Noire getting drunk, you don’t think you at least made a BAD impression on the earth ponies, and drunk Noire isn’t really a destructive force.
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>Surprisingly.
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>You’d have thought an inebriated divinity a dangerous thing.
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>This is hard enough you want a drink yourself, in fact.
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>Maybe this is why she so eagerly got lost in the sauce.
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>You fish for your canteen – the duplicate she made just to give the two of you a supply of the cracked cider – and take a swig.
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>When you lower it again, you can see, in the distant sky, the griffon returning.
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“Huh. They’re coming back.”
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>”With friends?” Noire turns to look.
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>No, alone. But they look loaded down.”
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>When the griffon lands, this time it’s carrying a fish.
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>A whole fish, still glistening.
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>Not alive, fortunately.
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>Puncture holes from where the griffon’s talons grasped it in flight may have seen to that.
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>It drops the fish beside you, and then retrieves five more shells off the string around its neck.
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>You notice now there’s a sort of pouch on it as well, little more than two leaves bundled up.
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>You pick it up, unsure what to do with it.
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>The griffon looks to your pan, then back at the fish.
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“Ah. Yeah. I can do that.”
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>Using the back of your drawing slate as a cutting board, you got to work cleaning it.
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>Not one of your skills in your past life, it seemed, but you did at least know how to do it and manage it in the end.
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>It being rather small helped.
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>Fish in pan, pan over fire.
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>You’re not hungry anymore, after your meal, and Noire helps herself to the remaining scraps of your pervious cooking.
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>All for your guest, then.
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>The griffon stares at the process with rapt attention, from your motions cleaning it to the pan over the fire to the sizzle of the meat to the few spices you surreptitiously request Noire conjure up from your spice cabinet back home.
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>Every time the fire pops, it rears its head back, only to redouble its examination.
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>It paces around your ring of stones passing as a basic firepit no less than three times back and forth.
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>It pokes some jutting sticks a few times, shrinking away when the disturbance causes a momentary flare-up of the flame.
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>You have to practically drag its attention back to you when you estimate the fish is done, but then its eyes are glued to the pan and your work inside it.
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>Satisfied, you place the whole pan before it.
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“Careful, it’s still hot. Don’t touch the pan.”
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>It turns its head this way and that, eyeing the now-cooked flesh, then scarfs a whole filet down its gullet in one motion.
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>You and Noire watch it eat in silent amusement.
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>Let the thing have this apparently new pleasure.
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>Without the pan on top, only a simple folding metal frame sits on, really in, the fire.
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>And between its monstrous “bites”, you can see it still eyeing that flame.
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>Once it’s done, it removes the cord from its neck, shells and pouches all, and drops it at Noire’s feet.
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>Then it takes hold of a few of the larger sticks in the fire and, with great care, extracts them.
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>It does so with careful tugs and turns to prevent the whole thing from spilling over the stones, though your arrangement of the sticks and branches does collapse with the efforts.
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>Its prodding before must have been testing, and it’s a very quick study.
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>Reared back on its feline legs, it looks back at you with the flaming bundle in its talons, held upright away from the ground.
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>You can’t help but laugh as you wave a hand back in the direction it came. “Yes! Alright, go!”
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>Your grin remains as you watch it fly off into the night, much more visible than before, a floating beacon of enlightenment across the plains.
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>Noire has the pouch it left behind in her telekinetic grip, looking at what the leaves bundled up. “This is a lot of shells. Quite good condition. No bored hole for a string, either.”
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“Hah. Of course. Well, we don’t have to wonder about trickster spirits and myths of thievery.”
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>Noire looks back at you. “Why’s that?”
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“They just BOUGHT fire from the gods.”
by E4-NG
by E4-NG
by E4-NG
by E4-NG
by E4-NG