"...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.