"Why do you speak as a baby does?"  You can see she has relaxed a bit.  She does not understand you. She looks puzzled and curious.

   Well, I got through.  I'm still doing the combined mind and mouth communication.  "My name is Misty.  I am not your enemy.  I am a traveler.  This way of mind speaking is new to me.  What is your name?"

She stares at you, and you realize you did not get through to her.  You understand her, but she thinks you're going goo-goo, ga-gah.

She climbs out of the tree, and stands, all two feet, four inches tall in front of you.  She visibly gathers her courage, and then puts a hand on your forehead in the completely familiar 'Mom checking for fever' manner.

"No fever. Perhaps this giant has a head wound and cannot speak?" She mutters to herself.  She starts peering at your head, looking for a lump or blood one suspects.  "Typical giantish scum, leave one of their own to die if it gets injured."

She goes to her campfire, and kicks it up a bit, and then gets a large clay pot from the lean -to, with a lid. She tosses out the water, and puts in some honey and mint leaves.
She uses charades to show you are to stay there while she gets water for tea.

   While I'm sitting here waiting, I take a couple of deep breaths, letting each one out slowly to calm myself.  I mentally reach out to try to read her surface thoughts.

You breathe slowly, and use imagination to create a bridge, (and botch) which catches fire.

Your head aches, your eyes water. Brainburn.

For the next five hours you'll have significant difficulties with psi, and with heavy duty thinking.

She comes back and sets the teapot on the fire.

   "(Groans.)"  That didn't go well at all.  I think I should just sit here for a while.  Pixie Girl already thinks I'm punch stupid.  Now I had to go and prove her right.

The hot tea relieves some of the headache, mainly from the hot water.
ro
Meanwhile, she chatters.  Even if she believes you're unable to understand, you're at least an audience.

Her name means Misfortune, as she's the youngest of seven sisters, and after her came three brothers.  Her father, who was decently well off, was up to his eyeballs in debt by the time he finished paying the dowry for her six older sisters.

Especially as the third born had been 'a greedy piglet. A hundred white camels, come on!'

At this point she serves you veggies and root, plain, and a gamey, but well seasoned meat on a clay plate.

"So thats why I'm out here,  I'm getting my own dowry.  Making the catamaran was hard, after my first boat left on its own,and I nearly got myself burnt in my own fire."

If you'd had to guess, she's seventeen.

And its been an hour, and the headache is still with you, but its lifted substantially.

   Dinner was pretty good.  I've had worse in more civilized settings.  I can go along with being the dumb giant.  During a few investigations, I've done the dumb blonde bit.  There doesn't seem to be much difference, except for less hair tossing now.

   After dinner, I point to my stomach and smile.  Next, I hold up my hand, palm out.  I dig into my pack and pull out a king sized Hershey's chocolate bar.  I break off a corner of it, let her see me pop it into my mouth, smile, then offer the rest of it to Misfortune.

At first she's skeptical, then she's ecstatic.

Given that the best sweet she's had is something honey drizzled, this is a shock to her, and sends her bouncing around the area for five minutes.

She visibly resists the urge to ask for more, and if you offer it, she shakes her head 'no' out of compunction.

"While you rest, I'm going to mine."  She makes charades for you to sleep, and her to pickaxe.  She's actually pretty good at charades.

   Sleep sounds like a good idea.  I find a good spot in her site and put up my two-person trail tent.  Even though I'm kind of out of it, I still remembered to dig the rain trench around the tent.  I unroll the sleeping pad and lay out the sleeping bag.  I don't need the warmth, but the padding is nice.  I put my pack in the spot where the other sleeping bag would go, lay down on my bag, and fall asleep much more quickly than I would have thought possible.

You wake refreshed, and free of brainburn two hours later by your watch. Misfortune is still chipping away for gold as you can hear.

   The nap helped a great deal.  I feel great.  I run a hairbrush through my hair to get rid of the bedhead look, then leave my tent set up with my pack inside of it as I head over to the mine to see if I can be of any help to Misfortune.  I'm still wearing my weapon harness, of course.

She shows you how to mine for gold.  This is easy as the threads and nodules of gold are bright, glittering, and large enough to be quite obvious.

After several more hours, she quits and makes sign for food. Its back to the campfire for stoking it back up.  After that she puts on brown rice, water, and salt to boil.  Served alongside it is a wet, clumpy mass of white something that is kinda like cheese, and kinda like yoghurt.

After dinner, she sings 'The Naming Song' as she calls it.  Its a simple melody which starts with the Lion, the King, and moves on to Girraffe, the Tower, and she sings the first hundred verses.

Night is falling.

"Rest now, giant." She says even as trumpetting calls by some huges beasts saying goodbye to the sun ring out overthe forrest.

   Misfortune is a great hostess.  I'm happy to be able to help her in her quest for a dowry in exchange for food.  I will try to speak again to her in the morning after breakfast, using one word at a time mental transmission.  I got through to her once.  Maybe it will work again.  I also plan to break out a packet of hot chocolate for Misfortune to try.


Edited to add: after breakfast
This message was last edited by the player at 14:44, Sun 13 July 2014.

After breakfast, which is berries, you try your mental thing...

"Misfortune."
She spins her head and looks at you.

And you feel as if something is coming alive in you, some suppressed possibility is becoming active. And this Language, known only as Speech, is in you.

1@1 Mental Transmission Joined with Vocalization?? (Is that what you're doing?)
1@5 The Speech

After a bit you give her hot chocolate.  She spends a minute smelling it, until you inform her its for drinking.
"Oh." She's surprised.
"OH!!"  She wavers between gulping it down, trying not to burn her tongue, and trying to sip is slowly.  "Its so goooooooooood!!" She yells and monkeys and birds join in the racket until something large and not that far away roars in leaf shaking tones.

Then silence.

OOC: Yes. Yes, it is.

   Talking quietly to myself as I try to send it to Misfortune, I say.  "I am Misty. I am a traveler from far away.  It is nice to meet you."  It seems that my first contact procedures go better with some form of chocolate.  But then, what doesn't?

OOC: As my ladywife has called me a chocoholic, I'm hardly in a position to disagree with you on the virtues of chocolate.

"Your strange sounds, I can understand them. That means you were not damaged after all with your earlier sounds.  What is this that you do?"

   What is it that I do?  That is a very good question.  I doubt that I could explain what a Private Investigator does.  As to starship security or bodyguarding or that brief brawl on the War World...  Hmmm...  Was I a mercenary or a meddler?  I only had one answer for her.  "I travel around helping good people."

"So odd." She says softly, and looks sideways at you for a second.
"Misty Helper, I go to my father's house tonight. He will be worried about me. You are welcome in my father's house as guest."
You sense a certain rituality to what she's saying as if it means more than just the words.

"In the meantime, I will mine for eight more hours."

   "I would like to help you mine.  Perhaps you can tell me more of your family while we work."   Learning more of her family before actually meeting them seems like a good idea to me.  One thing bothered me, though.  Given the difference in our sizes, even if I was welcome in her Father's house, would I be able to fit into it.

Her father was not well to do enough to sit in the gates of the city, and discuss the city's rules, but he did all right for himself with his orchards, and sheep herds, and cowherds, and still had ten servants.  Or he had, now he was in hock.

Her mother had the job of keeping tabs on the servants, and kept them working pretty hard.  And she had spoiled the third daughter because that one had looked the most like her.  She was 'hard but fair'.  The richer daughters slipped her money at festivals.

Her sisters were all married, as we custom, before the youngest could get married.  One of them had her husband killed in a giant attack.  Her oldest sister had grandkids, four of them.  Just adorable.

The richest of them was her next oldest sister, who had offered to come up with the dowry for 'little'.  Her husband was a 'far travelling merchant'.

She wants to marry Rillin of the Horses, a great rider, with to listen to her, an incredibly astounding array of abilities.  It takes her a good hour to exhaust the wonders of Rillin.

"I feel sure great-great-great grandpa will bless the union.  After all, there's no reason he won't."  She bites her fingernails.

"And that would make for a stronger union between the two branches of the Patria's family, which would be good for warding off the sons of the serpent."

Then she talks to you of her three younger brothers, fifteen (trouble and chaos, has way too much fun), nine (argues enough to make your head ache), two (the baby of the family and exploiting it for all its worth, hardly never sets foot on the ground).

She also mentions that they do have a guest house for giants in the first orchard.  And that while you won't sleep in town behind the stone walls, you'll have tall wooden palisades between you and the Great Ones and the sons and Neph, well evil ones, outside.

One thing that strikes you is there is no mention of government.  Oh, they talk about talking in the gates, but its more of a suggestion than a command.

And then you hear a crunching noise from the river.

   The PDW seems to leap into my hand as I spin and drop into a Weaver combat stance to cover the area where the sound originated.  Whatever is coming up from the river had better have peaceful intentions, because once I identify whatever it is as a threat, it's going down.  Big, mean giants have their uses.

After a bit, you realize the sound is not getting any closer.  Misfortune has her spear ready.

   I take a few moments to pull down the PDW's front grip, extend the stock, and affix the suppressor.  I also swapped out the twenty round mag for a forty round mag.  If this was going to be a party, I wanted to be fully dressed for it.  "I'll go first to see what is out there."

Gulp. "Ok."

You slip out, silent and smooth, and come to the edge of the burnt area where even now new stalks are rising.  And at water's edge you see a scaled head the size of a mini-van, attached to a snake like body descending into the water.

The head is finishing off the last of the hemp sail.

Lick.

A tongue the size of a kayak comes out, slurps up the last tasty bit, and then the head looks about, leaving bits and pieces of a catamaran.

"One of the Great Ones." Misfortune says sadly from behind you.

Edited.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:47, Tue 15 July 2014.