Not long after they left the church, each going their own way, Sky Dog managed to convince Daniel that the time was ripe to go give the Siberian man's caribou a haircut. For a small town barber, this was likely far from a common request, but even still what followed was likely even more unusual than expectations might lead one to believe.

The raven glided through the stables, the sheen of her feathers going from steel and sapphire brightness to void-black with each flicker of sun.

"Korb," she announced, perching on the side of an apparently empty stall. A soft glingling and shifting answered her summons, and in a short time Daniel had his first view of the world's most southerly (and quite possibly most miserable) reindeer.

The piebald beast lifted his head with a mournful tinkling of the bells strung between his velvet antlers and put his chin up on the stall. *Hmf*

"Here," the shaman said, taking out a twist of paper and proffering it to Daniel as they approached. "It is best you should give salt, to show you are a friend."

This message was last edited by the player at 21:48, Tue 19 Feb 2013.

Daniel arched an eyebrow at that large animal, then back and forth between the paper and the caribou. "Salt, eh? M'kay." He paused and considered. "Anythin' else I gotta know? Whassis name again?"

Daniel took the salt in hand but scratched his chin a bit as he considered the beast and the tools he had on hand.

Sky Dog thought a moment whilst Igor gave the pair a long, tragic stare. "Caribou, he is more shy than a horse. If you talk to him, he will be more quiet. He knows his name, which is Igor, but I do not think he understands much human language - he is pretty stupid!" He offered his steed the sweat from the back of his neck and let the animal lick his fingers, frowning in sympathy.

"Poor Igor, yes, you are so heated. Ay, ay, poor, poor Igor..." so speaking, the shaman's hand moved to scratching, then backing the deer up to let him in.

"Maybe we take him out to the ground with corners?" Sky Dog gestured at the stableyard, stashing his jade treasure in a panier hung over the side of the stall with no heed to the fact the main compartment was marked by sinuous, sluggishly-stirring bulges. "It is less...close together there."

Daniel watched Sky Dog enter where his steed was being kept, then slowly walked toward the large mammal, "Heya, Igor." He slowly extended the salt in one hand while remaining mostly still otherwise. No sudden movements was suddenly Daniel's mantra. "What sorta cut ya want, Igor? Jus' a trim, or somethin' more risky? All that fur 'bout yer neck gotta be bit warm."

Daniel did take his eyes off the caribou when Sky Dog asked about changing locale. "Wheresoever ya think is best."

"...yes, out," Sky Dog decided. "I will do the asking outside, and he will see me there - it will make him more quiet." He leant to rummage in the other panier of the pair.

The deer eyed the big human some heartbeats, ears forward and nostrils flared, then came up at the sound of his name to nose for the salt. *hff.* Gentle lips picked the salt from Daniel's palm, light but noticably warm. *hmh*

The shaman picked a rope halter off the partition and slung it over his shoulder, collecting various other items in the crook of his arm. "...would you like this kind of animal to eat, Dalix?" Sky Dog held up a dazed-looking brownish snake. "-I will kill one of the little eels to take the meat to the Upper World: the ones not like an instrument, they are good eating."

Daniel arched an eyebrow at the snake. "Snakes're good eatin'. Perticlar ones have been fried up over a cookfire. Bigger snakes give more meat, though. Nice to stir in some greens if they c'n be found."

Daniel made as if he were going to pet Igor but looked to Sky Dog before he touched the creature's fur.

"Snake? Ah! Yes. On the land, snakes." Sky Dog thought a moment and rephrased his question: "Now as you are working, maybe you wish to eat a snake...that is cooked?"

He squinted a little to make out the gesture Daniel was making before reading it as hesitation and chuckling, rubbing his temple with the knuckles of the hand holding the snake. "Yes! You scratch him anywhere. Between the antlers, under the jawbone, he likes that very much. Strongly, scratching - the caribou, he has a thick hide: a tickle makes him crazy! He thinks it is the butterfly that drinks blood."

"Dalix." Korpi announced, apparently trying out the word. "Dalix. Uchakh."

Daniel shook his head slowly as he reached forward to give Igor a good scratching. "Naw, jus' ate a buncha bacon. I gotta weakness fer bacon, an' Uncle Gabby dint finish 'is up. So I gotta few extras." He rubbed his fingertips into the tough hide of the caribou as he talked, though he seemed to be only half paying attention to the conversation. The other was firmly on Igor, considering how best to trim the big boy.

Daniel slid his fingers behind the reindeer's ears, scratching a few times there, before they went between Igor's antlers. "Lotta men need cuttin' up here. Not so much fer you. Beard's more yer problem."

He turned to face Sky Dog, "Usin' scissors ta trim 'im up is prolly best. But he's gotta stay still fer it." And it will take a good long while.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:23, Tue 26 Feb 2013.

Sky Dog nodded, wrapped the single snake around his neck and stepped up to halter his steed, handing Danny the rope and leading onward. The animal's hoof joints clicked in counterpoint to the bells between his antler tines.

"These posts-" Sky Dog indicated the extent that sheltered the food bins and suchlike, coming out of the stables. Korpi fluttered down in the semi-gloom behind them to pick for lost grain.

"-Probably if you tie the rope lower and shave first the underneath, Igor will be tired with the heat and lie down. You are certain, the little shears? The nirku is not like the long winter hairs when they are there, it is very hard, you feel it. Maybe with the...razor? it will take more away. They have fast hair, the caribou - he needs some days without, so that his blood can become thin." The shaman massaged his temples, headachey from the heat, light, half-glass of beer or all three.

"You have what you need to work, Dalix? I will go to prepare, over there..." Sky Dog paused, struck by a thought. "Maybe you would like to see the Upper Word, some part that is mostly safe?"

"Upper world? Uh, sure do."

He helped with the tying and then took out some implements for cutting and shaving. "Now ya wanna shear all th'way ta his hide? So's he's nekid bout 'is neck?"

Daniel's sharp implements were at the ready, just waiting for final word from his client.

Igor wasn't sure about the implements and sidestepped, glingling. *uh!*

"Igor, quiet. You like Dalix, yes? Quiet." The shaman adjusted the snake, which seemed dimly aware that perhaps it should try to escape. "I will leave a thing for you to drink: my sister and spirit helpers will bring you to me. You will be well protected!"

He looked at the deer. "Yes, you make him naked here, and all along where is not covered when riding," Sky Dog indicated the lower part of Igor's side and flanks and the underside of his chest. "Yes?"

Since it seemed to be so, Sky Dog went and set his armful of stuff down in a spot likely to remain shady an hour or so and went inside, coming back with a blanket, a few twigs and a roll of white fur. Daniel recieved the former, to catch the trimmings with, whilst the latter was set at the back of the preparations, the bear skull still attached to the hide staring uppermost.

Korpi glided to an excited, bouncing halt next to her brother as he set up a tiny hearth on a skillet-lid propped by smooth stones. Sky Dog talked quietly to her as he unwound the snake, kissed it on the nose and cut off its head.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:17, Thu 28 Feb 2013.

Daniel shrugged. "Nekkid it is. Hope Igor don' get a chill now." Daniel stuck his fingers into the thickest of the fur around the caribou's neck. The shaggy part hanging down would need to be trimmed first, though that would be fairly easy with some scissors.

"He gotta undercoat? Like a husky? Huskies gotta get that undercoat brushed out when it's sheddin' time. Reindeer coat work like that? Or don't that stuff shed out?" Daniel considered the complete removal of the fur while trimming the deer beard. "Dontcha worry 'bout other reindeer makin' fun o' Igor? Laugh, call 'im names an' such? Mebbe they don' let 'im join in their games?"

"Hm?" Sky Dog gestured with his knife as he prepared the snake, switching to a smaller one for skinning. Korpi trotted away with the entrails to a point where she could see all around in case some rival appeared. "That is under-hair - the long coat, it falls off in the spring. You see him in winter, he is very hairy. It will grow fast...I see no caribou this far south, and the yellow wolves here, they laugh at anything!" Sky Dog laughed at the thought of coyotes.

"Corb," Korpi remarked, looking for places to cache the remainder of the snake-kibble, just in case.

"-They are not like the wolves in Siberia who are very serious," Sky Dog finished, casting a handful of dry stuff into the skillet that went with the lid and waiting for the twigs to light the charcoal in there, feeding the tiny fire slowly for heat.

Daniel chuckled, "Yeah, those Kie-yotes think they're funny. I s'pose anybody tryin' ta live in all that cold gotta be more serious."

Daniel continued to work at trimming the longest of the hair before he began eliminating the shorter stuff. "How long ya live in Siberia 'fore ya come down this way?"

Igor watched the activity around his throat with a certain amount of idiot nervousness, but kept as still as could be expected.

"Kiotes. Ha! More quiet, yes...I hear from a wolf-hunter about a camp who were trading, and the Russians stayed there on the sledges for the night - all of them became crazy on alcohols and started singing very loudly! The wolf-hunter said she thought it was her breath before her, that suddenly the camp went away, over on the other ridge, but they had woken the mountain, and the mountain..." Sky Dog gestured as though brushing out some errant spark and shrugged. "It is hard, sometimes - I am a very loud and impatient shaman, you see it."

The second question took a little more thought. "I...am about twenty, twenty-one winters coming - you are some months older than me, I think, maybe you are born in late summer?" Sky Dog grinned over at Daniel, working without looking. "-and I go onto the ice...in fall, before it is dark. So...nur-nur eighteen, twenty years? Between it. But there is a lot of Siberia!"

Daniel had moved on to removing some of the hair down to the hide as carefully and gently as he could. "Mountain started comin' live? Lika quake? Or a volcano?" He didn't entirely follow the story, or how it pertained to, well, anything.

"Yah, born mid-August. You?" He had bared a bit around the neck now, but looked to Sky Dog for instruction on where he wanted the line to stop. This was going to be one funny-looking animal. Hopefully Igor wouldn't care so long as he was dying of heat stroke.

Sky Dog frowned, giving the first bit of meat to the fire and setting the skillet partly over it so that the rest took in the herbs in the pan. Korpi hid a bit of gut under a tile on the tackroom roof, then changed her mind and wedged it beside the guttering. "The mountain is always alive...but the spirits they do not like to be disturbed. You see to survive, the people are maybe not so serious and for certain not like the wolf, who has a black, wicked heart, but they are quiet. What are they, the quake and volcano? I do not know these words."

"Early spring," Sky Dog grinned, squinting hard to see what was being gestured. "You leave his face, shave down, yes. Midaugust, is it far from Dodge?"

Daniel continued his work, removing the fur along Igor's body. The reindeer didn't seem to mind the treatment, though Daniel was being quite careful of where and how he used his sharp implements. Those antlers looked dangerous, tired caribou or no. "Earthquake's when the ground shakes. Volcano's where fire and ash come out the topova mountain."

He was now working near Igor's hindquarters, having left some fur where he expected the beast to be saddled. "Mid-August ain't no place. It's a when. Next month is August. Do ya use a differnt calendar up in Siberia?"

Daniel had gained a watcher as he toiled: having stripped the snake skull of its delicacies, Korpi perched on the edge of the roof above him, keenly following every movement of the shiny implements.

"Ah. The quakes I know - it is the cliffs that crash together underground, sometimes they are felt in the Middle World here. Volcano I have not seen - it sounds very strange! Maybe it is a fire-bird living there, that goes in and out of the rock."

Sky Dog was quiet awhile, trying to make sense of the new information. His pale hands moved steadily between heating the tiny fire further, slicing the snake meat into it, and shaving some dull knots of dried plantstuff into a tin mug. "In Siberia...the months are places." He added a little water to the mug and set it brewing right on the coals.

"Example - if you asked my mother which day in the year I was born, she would tell you 'under the girl's stilt-grave in the high meadow, if the cold is holding, and if the spring is wet, when you are a day past there, that is a year-mark since my first son was born'. Yes? If you knew the around-travel of her band, you could translate to how you are counting." Sky Dog shook his head. "I know the names of the Russian months, but they do not go together with the moon...it is confusing! American months, I don't know."

Sky Dog rubbed his temples and stirred up the brew with a twig, gradually adding more water. Korpi dropped down to the ground and tried to look casual as she sidled up to the shinies, trying to evade Daniel's notice.

At length the shaman paused, took off his hood, then set his snow goggles beside the snake bones and his shirt animals-upward beside the fire, untying the bandanna from around his throat. Blue ink sat bright over his heart and right shoulder.
"I will leave my body here - I am used to it," Sky Dog remarked, sipping the stuff down. "When you are ready, this drink. Here is water to cool as you need. Not to fear, yes?"

He grinned, tying the bandanna over his eyes and hunching forward a little. The shaman's breathing changed rapidly and he took up a slight rocking movement as a low chant formed at the back of his throat.

Daniel kept working while he listened, looking up briefly as Sky Dog described how his birth date would be described. "So, yeah, differnt calendar then. I ain't never seen a volcano neither. But I heard about 'em. 'Nuff ta stay away when they start gettin' uppity."

He happened to glance down at Korpi as she was wandering about looking at his implements. He tilted his head to the side in an almost bird-like way, "Ya wanna get shaved also Korpi? I think ya look mighty fine with yer feathers intact. But if yer too hot like Igor here..."

He then looked at the drink that Sky Dog had concocted. He shrugged his shoulders, "Igor's purty much done. Drink sounds good jus' 'bout now." He reached over and grabbed the liquid, sniffing at it before imbibing in a single swallow.

"Nyet." Korpi hopped away a pace, wary of Daniel's hands, then watched the tall human as he finished up and approached the makeshift hearth, nabbing a razor whilst he wasn't looking and cacheing it under the blanket.

The brew, taken neat, was close to scalding and fierce with ginger, mint, thyme and a pithy, bitter taste that kicked in after the rest, causing Daniel to swallow hard against his gag reflex. For a moment the hit to the sinuses dizzied him, but things seemed pretty normal as that subsided: simply brighter, the outlines of things hyper-clear as though at any moment the shadows might peel away and take wing. A small animal dashed away in the corner of Daniel's vision.

"MMMaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaannNN..." Igor stared blankly back at Daniel when he turned, then flexed his neck to look at his shaved self, distracted. "BAAaaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaRRE."

"You hear us, Dalix?" Somehow, he's aware that the sound that reached his ears was a raven's croak, but the knowledge of the sound and gesture crystalises into words in his brain. Looking up shows Korpi on the roof...and her halo, flickering like garnet flame beyond the inner rings of sullen energies that burnt like a rainbow in shades of bruise and blood.

A patch of white feathers shone on the raven's breast, defying death's own blackness clinging to her feathers. Although the yard was becoming engulfed in a kind of bright haze (Sky Dog nowhere to be seen) it was clear that power rested there, gripping the guttering. Daniel got the impression the war-angel was amused, awaiting his reply.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:28, Wed 06 Mar 2013.

Daniel's eyes went wide at the intertwined tastes and the bitter aftertaste. He smacked his abdomen with a closed fist once he had imbibed. That tasted like cow pie, he thought, but at least I'm getting a nice buzz out of it. He looked about before responding to the...bird? "I hear ya, sure. Am I dreamin'? And wouldya tell me if I were?"

"Where dreaming starts? Where it ends? Nature of the Shadow-paths? Ha! Why ask me? I'm just a bird."

She came and landed by his feet, aura bright and singing up through Daniel's nerves like raw courage and the joy of being alive with awakened sword in hand. "Got food?" she asked, ever-hopeful. Seeing as he didn't, she hopped off into the haze and returned with another paper twist to drop at Daniel's boot. "Salt."

Korpi fluttered up to Igor's rump and called into the haze. "Come! Come!" She cocked her head a moment, then explained to Daniel: "Not a shaman. To go up, need a shadow skin. Shiny!" This last remark seemed more to relate to the tools on the ground than the big bull caribou approaching Daniel.

"BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaaRRRRREEEEEEEE," Igor blared, ignoring the newcomer.

Close to, the big wild reindeer's skin was a patchwork of mushrooms and bark; the antlers seemed to be some kind of lichen, petrified and glistening with mist. It smelled strongly of larch and earth and mulch. "Give salt, then grab antlers. Then pull!" Korpi advised. "He expects it. Keep hold!"

Daniel's mouth hung agape for much of Korpi's instructions, though he shook his head slowly when she asked for food. "Salt. Right."

He looked over at Igor who seemed to at least have more energy than last Daniel saw. "Antlers an' pull, eh? I s'pose I can do that." He sniffed a few times while wondering if that drink had been some kind of hallucinogenic. He'd heard of such things before, but had never experienced the associated feeling.

With wide eyes, he offered the salt again, clambered aboard the reindeer, and grabbed a couple handfuls of antlers.

Igor became suddenly alert at the salt-offering motion, nostrils flared.
"DEEEEEEeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeEEERRRRR."

The mushroom-buck startled at someone attempting to mount him like a horse; he danced aside, causing Daniel to go hopping even as he got a good grip of the antlers. All at once, something gave and Daniel went rushing to the floor, a blanket - no, the thing's skin - sliding softly down on top of him. Korpi made a little jump-glide and bounced over, whooping with laughter.

"Ha ha ha! Not the way here, to climb on others! Not hurt? Good!" Korpi darted in to nudge him up, her touch like the fierce safe feeling of fighting alongside brethren, protected and protecting, too young to fear death. "You wear the antlers - you fly!"

She skittered around him like a stray sun, the knifedge glitter of her eyes assessing. "No boots. No metal-shirt. Things out of pockets. Then you fit." Her beak gestured at the skin.

The spirit-creature hung around warily, reduced to essence like the idea of a caribou scratched into a cave wall to make the deer come back, all angles and simplified skeleton.

Daniel looked briefly confused at Igor sudden reluctance to bear him. It was his damned hallucination, after all, and the silly caribou was making it difficult for him to enjoy. The barber gurgled softly in surprise as he was seemingly covered in someone else's skin.

"Not hurt." An odd sensation, though. "Yah, no boots. Gotcha." Daniel complied with the instructions he was given, then awaited the next nudge from Korpi as Sky Dog didn't seem to be around.

Igor remained where he was over by the entrance to the stables, alert with ears forward but not following the mushroom-buck's movements.

Korpi tried to pretend disinterest in Daniel's pocket-contents as he put down his boots, socks and shirt (had it been made of tiny metal rings this morning?) and took up the skin. "Here. Wear it this way," she said, tugging the caribou-foot over his own like a sock. It was easy to wiggle into, as were the forehooves, which fit like mittens...only after a little bit of wiggling, Daniel could no longer tell where the ends of his fingers were, or where the skin ended - in fact, his hands were hooves, and his body...

Korpi hopped back a step somewhere in the sickening lurch of balance. A pressure sat on Daniel's brow from the weight of the antlers, but that was the least distraction given that his vision had expanded to about 350 degrees, fizzing with colours his human mind had never seen and had no name for, each strand of the bright mist a subtle shade. Scents flooded in, familiar but intense, layered like tracks in a forest. "When you can walk, run."

Korpi eyed the Daniel-caribou and turned over some of his pocket-change before looking up to see how he was getting on. It was daunting at first, but the incentive of not falling on one's nose seemed to sharpen Daniel's mind - a movement much like sinuously waving his arms let him take a smooth caribou-step with his forehooves, so long as he remembered where his legs were before he got out of balance.

"Walk, yes, good. Then run, don't think. Think about legs, you fall over. Sky Dog says all wingless dream flight - their souls remember. Think that, run fast, then you fly."

Igor folded himself down to watch like he saw men turn into deer all the time.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:18, Fri 08 Mar 2013.

Daniel was immediately disoriented by the sensation of sight that wasn't steroscopic. His man-brain simply wasn't used to such. He tried to compensate by closing one eye and tilting his head to the side. That seemed to work okay...not much depth perception that way, But there wasn't much perceived depth with both eyes open, either.

The colors around him were somehow more blue? At least the sky was still, er, indigo?

The moment he was told not to think about his legs and stumbling, he immediately thought about how the heck to move four legs. He took several tentative slow steps, but quickly acclimated to the sensation. It's no like he didn't normally have four limbs.

He then considered exactly what he was turning into and laughed at himself a moment before he attempted to run and leap skyward.

He didn't come back down. Exhilaration came in a flood, like being a child at the height of a swing, only there was no rope, no need to fall back earthward. Daniel heard himself chuckling with a caribou's grunt, and was somehow aware his voice was yellow. The raven laughed and took to the air to keep up.

"Ha ha! Keep going! Keep going!"

Korpi flew to the side, directing him. It wasn't effortless, this flying buisness, but easier than swimming - indeed, there seemed to be some upward pull against the weight of gravity, like being underwater - and once Daniel hit his stride, adjusting his breathing, it was like there was no danger at all.

In a few minutes, they left the bright mist behind and Daniel could see Dodge receeding like a map of itself, becoming a chicken-scratch on the plains. Korpi kept pace, her halo incandescent. A vulture soared by underneath, oblivious to them, the texture of its feathers heartbreakingly clear in the upper air. Colorado appeared as a smudge of peaks on the horizon. The mushroom-deer trailed after them in sketch-lines and shadows, anxious.

It was quieter than a desert here: only the whisper of wind over caribou hide and the thud of living blood. Korpi nodded upward at a patch of cloud. As ice crystals started to form on Daniel's coat he realised he could hear the heavens singing.

Daniel's breath stopped coming so easily as he left terra firma, thought once he told himself to breathe he quickly remembered how. As the ground dropped further away, Daniel took a mental note concerning the locations of the building in the town. Might come in handy at some later time. He still was more comfortable closing one of his eyes to look around, his mind able to reasonably comprehend things in that smaller visual range.

He wasn't terribly fond of heights, but he still wasn't convinced this was anything other than a dream. Korpi's presence and chatter was somehow comforting rather than disturbing. "Keep goin'? Where we goin' ta?"

"Up!" Korpi laughed. Daniel became aware of how useful a caribou-skin was in clouds, insulated and warm even as his breath frosted before him.

"Here - follow close," Korpi said, taking the lead. Some minutes passed in the blind cloud, the raven blazing a complex trail that made little sense yet was surely important by the way she concentrated. At last Korpi came to a spot that seemed to be the right one, however that might be told, and with a further "Up!" shot almost vertically through the cloud layer.

Looking down, it appeared they weren't in Kansas any more.

Indeed, if Kansas was down there, it was a knot on a twig on a branch that stretched away like the distance to the moon below, one of several branches leading to a trunk so vast its edges could only be seen because they were so far away. Looking straight down a drop that might take a lifetime to fall caused the mind to writhe with wrongness: although the Lower World was beyond even the keen sight of a caribou instinct screamed to flee from the dangers there. Straight up, other branches and an infinite spread of green an unimaginable distance above, ever-shifting in the light from yet higher beyond the worlds.

"Close now," Korpi remarked, over the song of the air and the beat of the blood. Even with the little distance gained, there was a kind of ecstacy of purity in being nearer the light, the soul starting to tune to the upper air. Korpi looked up, an instant before shadow swept over them both with a downgust of tinny air and distant thunder.

"Aha! Don't fear!" she called to Daniel, moments before vast talons closed - carefully - over his shoulders and flank and he was swept upward in a thunderous blur of wind and wings and dumped - lightly - on some upper surface. Sky Dog's voice could be heard resuming a sentence nearby.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:30, Sun 10 Mar 2013.

A presence suddenly seemed to loom over them all, overwhelming the level of reality that Korpi had found within the Hunting Grounds, the vision quest for which she had found a companion. Whatever lay before them now, whatever they perceived was suddenly broken and shattered, and they found themselves now upon the branch of a gigantic tree. To such an extent did this tree dwarf them in size that there was no risk of them falling if they walked upon it, unless they ventured close to the edge.

Above them, peals of thunder tore into the night sky, and they could not but look to the source. White flashes of lightning burned in the wings of a gigantic bird, so far above them that it appeared little more than a dark shape, each beat of its wings crashing like thunder. As the bird came down closer to where they were, it could be seen more closely. At first, it was nearly beyond the limits of their perception, enormous, graceful and terrible all at once, though slowly it resolved into something they might think of as a condor. It perched upon the branch beside them. As a mouse is to a man, so were they to it, and being in its presence was terrible to behold. Keen, brilliant eyes studied them, judging their worth.

It did not speak, but something seemed to emanate from it. It was not something that spoke in language, but in thoughts and ideas that resolved in their minds into their own languages, that they would hear as if the mighty Thunderbird had in truth spoken to them.

"It has been long, little one, since you have come to seek the favor of my aid. What do you seek?"

Sky Dog stood up as his helper spirits scattered into half-there trees, predawn starlight glittering over his velvet antlers like frost. He grinned, never less awed or blessed than the first time, and held out a hand in case the Son of the Storm would deign to brush that mighty beak to it in greeting.

"Perhaps I have stayed out of trouble," he said, clearly a joke. "-but please, forgive me, it is a long way to get this far since I am still without a drum. You were never far from the heart of my thoughts, Most Radiant; See, I have burned sweet herbs for you, and brought the meat of a snake that it might please you. I have fasted since yesterday's sunset, and not licked the grease on my fingers: you have the full honour of the sacrifice."

"I seek your wisdom, cousin. Things are walking in the Middle World that should not walk, and I would know their path."

"Your sacrifices have pleased me, little one. Tell me more clearly what you seek, that I may send you my vision. Tell me quickly. I must not stray long from my hunt," came the thoughts, crystallizing in their minds into concrete words that they might understand.

The shaman straightened. "We are in the settlement of Dodge, North America. A nearby village was killed by a pack of vampires herded by a demon. The demon must have made a pact with a white sorcerer who was killed over ten winters ago: an immortal body for a way into the Middle World, but it has spent the time since regenerating the body...if the sorcerer was in the skin so long, he is probably crazy and unpredictable, but maybe he has influence over where he and the demon go."

"I would know where it is most likely the demon and the vampires will next attack."

"To see that which has yet to happen is not easy, and is not certain, but you have pleased me well enough that I can offer you a small glimpse of that which is, and that which may come to pass. Know that more than this, I cannot tell you." The mighty Thunderbird spirit lifted off the branch, hovering over them and paused to send its vision to Sky Dog.


It then lifted, and with a boom of thunder that accompanied each flap of its wings, it ascended the heights, flying further and further off until it could be seen no more.

PM:

PM:

Sky Dog waved his thanks to the departing thunderbird with a wide, wild wave, stepping back a pace with the backdraught before breaking into laughter.

In response to his wave, one last flash of lighting danced in the sky as the last traces of the Thunderbird disappeared. They no long stood upon a tree branch, instead standing upon the ground.

Sky Dog laughed, and shook himself, which caused the almost-trees around to become suddenly clear, cathedral-high and verdant larches. "Ah...sorry, Dalix - my cousin is the son of a storm, they are all like that. Hastier than me! It can be like talking to a hammer." His grin showed dog's teeth in his mouth.

As they flew upwards, Daniel had to repress a sudden urge to gulp at the air as the world seemed to disappear below him. Many thoughts flitted through his mind, though most prominent among those was some fear that the drink had been poisoned and he was now on his way to heaven. Though it all may still be a dream.

His worried thoughts were interrupted by talons, flying, an an enormous tree trunk lying on its side. At least he believed it to be a trunk before he discovered its true nature...merely a branch.

Daniel put his hands to his ears as the great being spoke, though it didn't seem to affect his perception of the bird's speech. He listened to what Sky Dog had to say, or at least he presumed it was Sky Dog. When he heard Sky Dog say that they were still in Dodge, Daniel relaxed a little. They must be in some sort of shared dream. He frowned at the mention of demons and vampires. Not that he was surprised by such talk, but that they might truly be the ones behind the attacks on Hays and other towns.

As the large bird flew away from the pair, Daniel could only manage a tentative wave as its receding back.

He slowly comprehended that Sky Dog was speaking to him, though Daniel had to blink a few times before he was ready to respond. "Your, er, cousin? If he is the son of a storm, and you are cousins, then what sort of parents do you have?"

"Ha!" Sky Dog gestured in the direction the vast bird had left. There was something different about him here: it took a surprisingly long time to realise it was the antlers. The subconscious insisted they'd always been there.

"Our mothers are blood-sisters: there were great storms in the Upper World when I was very young, and he was blown into the Middle World as a fledgeling. She covered him with the blankets and hot wreckage of our tipi, making many trips through the snow to gather embers when she might have snatched me from his side and fled."

"When the Hurricane herself arrived with wings like iron and copper, she gave my mother a little of her blood to replace what she had lost and named her 'sister'." Sky Dog stretched. Although Daniel's ears told him the shaman was speaking that deer-bell language of his, the nature of the place seemed to translate for them. "It was mixed things he showed me just now...but I am impressed you worked out how to get out of the caribou skin." The shaman seemed slightly bruised at present, and as he wandered up it could be seen that faint scarring criscrossed all over his visible skin.

A gentle nudge at Daniel's elbow proved to be the rough lines of the mushroom-buck, probably hoping for said skin back. A cuckoo called somewhere out in the forest and was answered by the scream of a jay. A crashing that sounded like something worryingly large was nearing off to the left, but Sky Dog paid it no heed whatsoever.

Daniel nodded at Sky Dog's explanation. "Cousins it is, then." His brow furrowed as Sky Dog asked about the Caribou skin, Get out of the...?

Daniel hadn't even realized that he had slipped his second skin, as it were. While considering the implications and the dream he had entered, he was suddenly startled by the nudging he received from the caribou outline and reached over to where the skin lay. He looked to Sky Dog briefly, "Does he need muh help replacin' it?"

"It would be kind to hold it up so that he can get his little skull in," Sky Dog said, distracted by some incongurous undergrowth. He crouched down and stretched out a hand to touch the leaves, attention on the shrub as though talking to it.

"...Mountain of Olives? Is that where you are from, Dalix?" he asked, looking over.

"Riiiight." As if this hallucination couldn't get any more bizarre, the reindeer needed help getting his skin back on. Daniel took a deep breath and then held the skin open for the caribou, as if he were putting a sweater on a child.

He waited for the Igor drawing to start wiggling its way into the skin before he stepped away from the animal. "Uh, thankee Igor. 'Preciate it. Hope ya didn't mind sharin'."

And now he was talking to the animal.

"Mountain of Olives? Where didya hear that?"
This message was last edited by the player at 11:41, Thu 14 Mar 2013.

Sky Dog laughed. "He cannot answer that you can hear - that is a mushroom-spirit, not the soul of Igor, my living-sacrifice," it's that kujjai word again. "Igor still needs his skin, or I would already have a drum!"

The mushroom-buck wriggled back into his skin and shook himself out, then nudged under Daniel's hand to show that the thanks were accepted before springing off into the forest. The crashing sound had come considerably nearer; looking off in that direction showed something knocking down trees.

"I asked the plant-soul where it came from...it is not part of my heart-forest," Sky Dog gestured at the ancient trees around, still crouched. "-I was hoping it was not like the little silver bugs from the World Below, because it is so much bigger...they are not very wicked, the silverfish-demons, and I have seen them in the Middle World, but they did not come this high before...there was not enough decay."

A huge elephant-like beast moved sonnambulantly through the upper left of the clearing, heedless of what it knocked into, copper-haired in the shafts of early sun and barely-there shadow brown in bars of shadow. A man could easily ride on the tusks if he chose. Sky Dog looked vaguely irritated.

Daniel smiled and nodded at Sky Dog's response about the mushroom spirit. Not for the first time he wondered exactly what had been in the concoction that he imbibed without question.

He looked questioningly back and forth between Sky Dog and the elephant-like thing that was breaking stuff left and right. "Plant soul? What kinda plant gotta soul?"

"The trees will right themselves," Sky Dog said offhandedly, noticing Daniel's distraction. "It is the ghost of a Lifter - in the beginning, they brought up the earth from the sea, but after humans came to the North God swept the land with flood to get rid of them because they were so destructive. Too much so for the higher Heaven!" He waved over at the hairy half-there beast lumbering heedlessly back into the forest.

"Sometimes when we cut clean freshwater ice for drinking back home we find their corpses, more often just bones and tusks," he added, then simply stared at Daniel, perplexed in the manner of someone asked what kind of animal obeyed the law of gravity. "Any kind. A thing could not exist if its spirit had no shape. It...I do not...you mean what kind is this plant? It is not a Siberian plant."

In the Lifter's wake, a fallen tree faded from view and replaced itself upright.

Daniel looked at Sky Dog for a few moments, attempting to comprehend. His mouth hung agape, though his eyes were clear and focused. "Soul maybe ain't the word yer lookin' fer, but we can talk 'bout language later."

He considered the story of the lifter, "You sayin' the lifters is why Noah had ta build that ark? It was lifters, not the wickedness of man that caused the Almighty ta flood the land?"

A snow crane dropped into the clearing, its feathers ringing like tiger bells, and approached with a kind of dancing caution. Sky Dog let the plant's leaves slip from between his fingers. "Noah? I do not think people at the start of the world had time to be wicked, before they had reindeer and dogs to help them carry and hunt...besides, they were not drowned: a raven was sent to warn them to the high places. It is why there are Yupik in Siberia and also in America - when the flood came, it drowned the land between, but they still live where they always lived."

He held out a hand to the crane in welcome, brushing under its throat as it snaked its neck over his shoulder to beak-clack, apparently murmuring in his ear. "Ah?" Sky Dog rose, a laugh abruptly giving way to seriousness.

"Dalix, we need to start seeking a way down." He beckoned, moving off. The crane looked at Daniel warily.

"-and talk as we go...my cousin showed me that Quanterill is on the plains: it is as I thought, that the sorcerer is still in his body, and mad from ten years buried in it, and the demon is sharing his remade skin...but there is a thing I have never seen: the demon has bound the corruption that moves the corpses to itself, so they follow its host - I was laughing very hard earlier because I was shown Quanterill-the-Man running away from these things, that cannot tell he is there or help but follow him." He smirked, but waved the humour away.

"The demon must be more powerful than I have ever met. It is east of where it will attack next, and is afoot...it may attack a stand of oak trees, or hide there in the day, I am not sure...but it is very powerful. The vampires...they are not like the vampires back home, perhaps they are something else. An American kind." Sky Dog looked back at Daniel for ideas, clearly afraid but with no thought of backing out of a hunt. Peace sifted through the clear forest light like dust from angel feathers, an assurance that horror could not take root there.

Daniel squinted at the crane as it approached, shaking his head a little at the tinkling sound that accompanied the fowl. "I'm purty sure folks could be wicked back then. Evil folk've been around fer awhile." He appeared ready to continue the moral discussion, but Sky Dog didn't, and this was his dream, or so Daniel surmised.

He nodded at the suggestion they search for a way to descend back to their bodies. Or the ground. Or leave the dream.

"Quantril, huh. I'd like ta get my hands on him. Or muh sword, even better. Why ya think there's a demon or sorcerer involved?" Daniel was aware of their existence. And knew that his future would bring him in contact with such, or at least he believed it would. It was his destiny. "If ya got a fix on where he got off ta, we should go git 'im before he attacks another town. 'Course we gotta stay a few days in Dodge first. An' where ya see vampires?"

The pair moved, the crane running on ahead, ringing and scattering light fom its white feathers.

"Ah, you are cavalry?"

The shaman moved a low branch aside with one hand and his antlers as the cathedral-tall larches gave way to a pole-forest of Siberian spruce and birches that dropped leaves like golden coins. "Because the stinking mute men that kill and heed no bullet are undead, and no lone mortal man could herd them, and because Quanterill-the-Demon acts like one of his kind, not a man...when men raid, they fall on a camp from the side with the animals, to make them irreversably into meat, discouraging the people from coming and protecting them. If they want to put fear into people, they make a terrible noise, but only once they are not giving people the chance to escape and shoot them from the woods." Sky Dog's tone was even as ever, though firm with the certainty of experience.

"So. These act in a way that would end them if they were men, and yet twenty afoot surround, catch and kill maybe fifty before the people can get to the woods or their horses. Twenty afoot that have followed a horse constantly ready to run as though wolves pursued it. Live men could not keep up with the horse. Dead men should not, but I have heard of it happening...a demon can supply such energy. Also, he acts much like a smallpox-demon, letting a few go to find settlements for him, speaking his name to give him more presence in the Middle World. Demons cannot make power, only take...and if Quanterill was not a sorcerer, how would a demon end up sharing his skin after his life was gone? It is not the same, to possess a man from the World Below and to be truly in the Middle World, in his skin."

They came onto a small plain, vivid with wildflowers though the air carried a chill of far-off snow. Off in the trees, Daniel might have briefly caught the gaze of the beast that had been silently padding parallel far off to his right before it turned and faded, a glimmer of flame-striped hide and empty dappled darkness. The crane called, indicating a direction with its beak; Sky Dog nodded and strode after it.

"I have nothing clear, save that Quanterill-the-Demon will run West afoot...I could draw the place with the trees for Wyitterp, perhaps. I also saw a white man who hated buffalo, killing more than he could eat in a month...perhaps he will be the first killed. If we could discover where there are buffalo and trees near each other, we might find Quanterill."

"Vampires I have seen back home...or rather, I have ended one and heard of many. They are easy to deal with - stronger and faster than a man, yes, but if you can outwit a wolf, you can trick or trap them, and end them. Quanterill's dead men use weapons, and they are all white, male, adult - when a horde of vampires swells itself, it is simply all the dead they create by biting. These...act strangely. What are American vampires like? Or...zombies, if they are different?"

More was spoken and things were done there in that strange place where their spirits roamed, but slowly those last words and actions faded into only the faintest of memories, only remembrances of dreams faintly recalled remaining in their minds when they came to again.