Winters-Oasis

Keluri's voice sounded ragged as he spoke. "Yes, the whole city was burnt to the ground. The beast Taskaru attacked the city and burned it all to the ground. My father was the only man in town that could stand up to him, and he almost died." She just looked at him. After a moment she got up and sat next to him, not really understanding what he was so upset about. "The past is the past." She said at last. "And you are all alive, aren't you?" Keluri nodded. "My father taught me so much, and I want to find the man who saved him that day." Any anguish left his face, to be replaced with determination. She didn't understand why something that ha...

They finished lunch, and Condon even paid for her. Ice sat there long after both Tora and the snake had wandered off, waiting for Keluri. It was only once the sun had long since begun to set, and long evening shadows covered the square, that she finally got up and left. She got back to their room late in the same evening, to find the otter sitting on his bed. He held a book in one hand and a pastry in the other. "Were you ever going to come back and say where you were?" She demanded, annoyed at  having wandered so far for no reason. "What?" Keluri asked, looking up from his book. "I told you I was going to be back in the room." "I don't th...

"Any objections?" She asked pointedly. "Not me…" Condon's voice didn't quite trail off, but it was close. "None here." Added Keluri. "Then let's eat." She said firmly, and sat down at one of the four-sided tables. Condon moved over to the table and carefully placed the chair to one side, coiling up his lower half and sitting that way. Ice felt nervous for some reason, restless. She drummed her fingers on the tabletop and craned her neck around surrounding streets, searching for something… "Expecting someone, Ice?" Keluri asked, pulling out his own chair and sitting down. "Or is something wrong?" "I don't THINK anything's wrong." She said, ...

Morning sunlight woke her, a steady and growing warmth on her back, so that she rolled over and blinked at the brightness. The smell of fresh fruit was spread throughout the room. Turning away from the blinding sunlight, she saw Keluri already up and dressed, and been that way for a while apparently. "Good morning, sunshine, sleep well?" She didn't even object to the nickname as she sat up and stretched. "Better than many a night I've spent so far." She said peaceably. Keluri took a soft ripe fruit from a dish and bit into it, juice dripping. Ice stood and walked over to the table, hefting one of the fruits herself. She turned it in her ha...

She set off back north the next day, shaking herself to get rid of any lingering doubts, and marched up the open path. The open grassland was still so much greener and more verdant than the March that she knew best, and for some time she was tempted to linger in the camps of the Pasu along her trail, but convinced herself to move on. The movement helped to fill the cracks in her self confidence, if only temporarily, until she arrived again in Muon. It was early in the afternoon, but she'd been walking most of the day on minimum food. As always, she hesitated before entering the crowds, the odd dual nature of the city only making her even m...

She spent three days, in total, at the inn, waiting for news of the southern lands and reaffirming her sense of the outside world. Despite her lack of remembrance of anything involving her own life before the Cold, the name of things that she shouldn't know popped into her head, leaving her less confused than she might have been. In that time, she learned that the person she'd been mistaken for had lead an expedition into the Wintermarch, right into the Cold's jaws searching for treasure. She didn't think she would ever be so stupid, but there was no telling. In any case, when no word came, and she grew too impatient to wait for someone to...

Before that moment, she had been called Sara Meriansdatter, and was a proud member of the Naraka Corporation. It was her who had been sent by the Corp. to represent them in this large expedition to the Wintermarch. Some ruins had been discovered, more protected than most by a strangely shaped bowl in that desolate landscape. The adventurer who had found them came back with all the treasures he could hold, and claimed he had barely touched the place. But that is beginning at the end. Her mother and father had both been merchants, it had never been her thought to continue in another line of work. Growing up in Gilead, she had a nice, normal ...

The first thing she knew was the Cold. It crept into her bones, twined around her flesh, and covered her skin in a coating that would have made her shiver, had it been possible for her to do so. She could only lay limp in the darkness of her own mind and let the freezing something twine its way throughout her body. And though the woman once called Sara knew nothing of souls, the Cold that made her knew that there would always be a microscopic kernel of warmth that could never leave her. The second thing she knew was Death. It was all around her as she sat up and looked around. The frozen corpses of humans and Pasu alike lay scattered acros...