room13/VillagePeople
13.1.2023 : ROOM 13 : The Village People
Days pass into a blur of cold, damp, hunger and fatigue. Sometimes it rains briefly, you huddle into your hooded cloak, grateful for it. Occasionally you discover a stick or dry grasses and collect them knowing an eventual fire will restore your spirits. The most useful find is a ground-birds nest which provides not only material to burn also several small eggs which refresh your thirst and ease your stomach ache from hunger pangs. You see rabbits in the distance but have little luck catching any on the occasions you try.
One day you are woken by sound of voices. A group of three, dressed in ragged clothes similar to your own are appraising you from a short distance.
"He looks in a rough way." Says one.
"Maybe he be carrying the plague" Another suggests.
You realise your nose is dripping and feel a cold or first sign of flu. You feel chilled to the core of your chest.
"Is ye carrying the plague?" The same one asks, shouting over to you.
You shout back, "I hope not."
"Ye's sniffling like ye's got the plague."
"Give 'im some of that juice. The fiery stuff. That ought sort 'im for the cold at least."
The third suggests. A leather waterskin is thrown which lands at your feet. You take a risk and pour some into your mouth without much wanting its metal spout to touch your lips. The liquid is indeed fiery, not a taste you recognise, not unpleasant.
"Ye be needing a fire to warm ye. Come along with us."
"Make 'im walk behind us. He may have the plague!"
"If ye make it to nightfall ye can sit at our fire and tell us yer tale."
"We have food for ye too."
The friendly strangers explain they're going to an old village they know close by, a village with a bridge and a stream. They don't recognise you, the body of Clays brother anyway, so you assume they've never encountered him and Clay before.
Its a relatively short trudge to the village. They have set up a semi-permeant camp in a large stone building with a good roof, double-doors at the front and a side door through which they enter. There is a balcony level across one end of the building above the side door, accessible by steep ladder-stairs and open eaves for the rest. In the middle is their camp fire. They have dragged a lot of furniture into the building to make partition walls so its easily defendable and also for storage.
"We been coming here a couple of years." The group explain. There is one woman and two men, all older than yourself. They have wizened faces of a harsh life spent as much outdoors as in.
One of the men lights the fire. They gesture for you to sit on one side of it as they prepare food. You begin to feel a lot better with the warmth and some company. The woman plays a long, meandering tonal melody on some sort of flute with two tubes, both bubbly and somber in a way you find disturbingly alien to any music you heard before. Still, it's nice to be hearing music and feeling safe in company of people.
"How long you been wandering out there alone and bedraggled?"
You don't know. A few days.
Deciding to be honest you tell them everything, about being woken by Clay and finding yourself in a world not of your own. Everything which has happen since. They listen without interrupting you. The melody stops. After you finish they wait awhile before speaking. The smell of food cooking fills the lodge.
"He's a Switcher." Says one.
"He's a Switcher." Says another.
They agree.
"We heard of such a thing. Never thought it was real."
"Yer job is to teach us and we to teach you. It's a sharing. This is our way, here. Yer friend ye call Clay he told you about our world, the war and the plague, yes?"
You are offered a wooden bowl full of grain sludge with herbs. It is delicious. By the standards of sugar and preservative laden food from your own culture it is disgusting but here, after days of wandering lost in the plains of an unknown world, soaked and cold, coming down with a cold and possibly something worse, the food is wholesome and medicine. Everyone is pleased to see you eating.
"Ye ain't got the plague, We'd a seen it by now. Ye's got yourself sick from wandering without a clue as to where yer at. Ye stay with us, we'll see ye good."
They tell you their names, Glom, Resh and Salin.
Gradually over the next weeks you make good friends with them and decide to throw in your lot with them for as long as it takes. They travel between several of the villages around here mostly for something to do to avoid boredom and because its the area where they're all original from.
When you tell them about the Fort to the North where there is a farm they explain its a slave camp where soldiers force the people to farm the land but won't let them out of the walls. It's a prison of a life. They discourage you from going up North any further than you have to, nor further south neither.
Do you intend to stay with the group indefinitely?
Or do you slip away one night, healed and knowing more about surviving this world, to make your own way alone?
If so; you can go
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