"You'll have my thanks, sir, and my gratitude undying. I have a wire, should be comin' in...maybe even tomorrow, and I can take that and leave town. I've been trying to get as far away from civilization as I could, as far west...so that there would be less people hurt, you see," he said.

"After we find those bandits you were gonna hunt down, of course," he corrected himself.

Sky Dog reappeared from the porch where Igor was stationed and tilted his head a little, trying to focus on Gabby's boot. "Were you injured by the made things, Uncle?"

"Eh, one o' them tried to nip me a bit. It aches, but I done been hurt worse in my time. Got skin like old leather, I do. Why, once I got trapped in a bit of a rockslide and carried halfway down a mountain. That was not a fun day, believe you me."

Sky Dog dipped his head a little to show he really did believe Gabby, his movements careful so as not to disturb his sister.

"I am minded to make chai, if you would like to take this drink with me." The shaman looked and gestured about the room to include the other men in the invitation.

Daniel nodded at the invitation, first slowly, then more vigorously. "Sure thing. Chai don't sound bad." He was a bit curious to see how it was tied into his uncle's most recent comment. If at all.

"Tea sounds good." Gabby say. "Danny, you think you might want to look over that wound?" He points to the scratch Danny received during the fight with the head-things. "Don't want to see it get infected, now."

Sky Dog paced over to the stove whilst Mansfield made up his mind, not without a wary glance at the room's other corners. He steadied himself against the iron in crouching to keep his occupied shoulder level, then set the fire, straightening perhaps half a minute later with a murmur of greeting to the first licks of flame.

After a moment's difficulty due to antlers vs. doorway the shaman brought Igor inside - checking the corners again - and unburdened and unblindfolded the reindeer, setting his possessions against the wall. Aside from a certain apprehension of Gabby's beard Igor seemed extremely content with this arrangement and folded himself in a quiet heap near the cells. Sky Dog transferred Korpi to Igor's antlers and brought that looked like a large tin tied up with string back over to the stove, giving Daniel a small cloth sack on the way.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:11, Wed 17 July 2013.

"I'm not even sure what that is, but I guess I'll have some. I like trying new things," said the doctor from within his cell.

"A cure for impatience, maybe," Sky Dog said, checking the fire and unpacking his tin. "-also against tired and to make smooth the spirits, it is good."

The large tin proved to contain a square tin that rustled softly, two small nested tin cans carefully folded and adapted into cups with wire and another with a more mysterious device inside them. A sealed tin, spoon, and a few wads of cloth also appeared, demonstrating the extreme efficiency of someone used to fitting his entire life on a reindeer.

Sky Dog went and fetched water in the large tin and one of the cups. "I am not offended, if you mock my hobo samovar," he said generally, setting the big tin on the stove and tending the fire. A weak ghost of a grin passed over his features.

"Often I find these boxes on the ground - I have asked them and they give me to know 'I was emptied, then thrown on the ground; I am left'. So I take some, as they are not offerings." Clearly this behaviour baffled Sky Dog, but if the iron devils wanted to spend time and effort making metal objects then abandoning them it was not his buisness to ask why. The odd can got filled with now-hot coals and kindling and set in the middle of the big one to ensure the water boiled evenly. "They are well-cleaned, yes?"

Daniel nodded at his uncle and looked down at the scratch. He had a little time yet before he'd have to get it patched up. Sometimes he liked to let a wound breathe a little before covering it with bandage and salve.

He took the small sack that Sky Dog offered and hefted it, judging the weight to be about a pound. A quick sniff at it left Daniel to shrug. At Sky Dog's question, Daniel nodded. "Sure do lookat way." He was curious about what Sky Dog would do next, a half-smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

"At least someone's gettin' some use out o' them, rather than just leavin' them to rust away." Gabby says. "I tell ya, sometimes during the thickest o' the war years, back in the '60's, no one in their right mind would toss out tin cans...Heck, there was almost a time when tin was worth it's weight in gold. Sometimes a can o' corn would cost half a dollar! And that was before Californy cracked like an egg."

Sky Dog was out of his depth with relative values of dollars and non-ferrous metals. The suspicion of deliberately-induced famine by Americans on Americans caused him to frown and skirt the thought. "Sorry, Uncle - what is Californy? I think I have heard of her, but I do forget." He went and fetched the battered tin mug from his ritual kit.

Catching Daniel's slightly bemused manner of holding the salt, Sky Dog gestured at it with the mug. "If a dead thing has broken the skin, it is well to drive off the bad spirits that come for its rotted onnir and make disease. Such things will not stand salt or silver." He opened the square tin and measured four generous spoonfuls of the contents into his medicine mug, adding a little for luck.

"That the water is all boiling, this is most important for chai," the shaman told Mansfield, since he seemed the most ignorant in these matters. "Any raw water, it offends the leaves; it makes a bad taste."

Giving the fire the first pinch of the tea leaves, Sky Dog supervised the big tin until the water was indeed roiling hot and set his medicine mug on the wires across the interior of the central can to heat. Once satisfied the steam had 'awakened' the leaves, the shaman used the empty can-mug to pour boiling water over them, topping the main tin up from the full one. "Now, waiting," he announced, but spoke seriously to Daniel:

"This, you do not drink." Clearly Korpi had told him about Daniel one-shotting undiluted vision-brew the day before. "When it is ready and the leaves sit, little bits with boiling water. If you drink the zavarka-" he indicated the brewing hyper-concentrate, "-yes, it gives you to see through time and space, but it is very dangerous to go into the shadows of the world unguided, and also there is risk of exploding."

"Californy--you know, the Great Maze. Californy was what the place used to be known before it done got shattered by the Big one in '68." he spots the frown, but misinterprets it. "Yeah, war shortages can be Hell. There's still shortages there, I hear...somethin' about sea water taintin' all the lakes and rivers and whatnot, which means things don't grow there the way they used to. I reckon there will be lean times ahead fer me until I make a strike to set me up."

he looks over at Danial. "What's he talkin' about? Seein' through space an' time an' all?" Suddenly, he's eying the chai with suspicion.

Daniel considered the brewing liquid anew. There seemed to be some danger in drinking the stuff, but his curiosity might just get the better of him. He blinked a few times to break the hold on his mind that the mixture suddenly had. He reconsidered the salt. "The Lord Jesus'll take care'o any bad spirits that're even thinkin' they gonna invade through these scratches. Though I 'ppreciate the sentiment."

He turned to Gabby at his question. "Prolly some kinda hallucinogen or magic potion or somethin'." He shrugged. Seeing through space and time was one thing. Being able to travel through time and relative dimensions in space, well, that was quite another. And far more useful.

Sky Dog watched Daniel a moment, then attended to making a third can-mug from materials among his possessions, leaning against the wall by the stove. "No, the Big One I do not know...the Maze, it is down the West coast, yes? I think. Maybe it is near the hole in the world...do they often see water-panthers? The very big swimming animal, many teeth and long - very long - tail, sometimes horns?"

He glanced back at Daniel, but only mentally noted to keep an eye on the injury in case Jesus didn't, placing the strip hacked from the top of the mug under construction over the brewing zavarka.

"Chai - zavarka and much boiled water - is not dangerous. It is very good! But the raw zavarka..." Sky Dog considered, "...it would be as to grind and eat all a sack of coffee, I think, and to ask it freely into your body to share all the things the plants have known. Maybe you would discourage Dalix, I see him think it." The shaman half-smiled across at Daniel, pale fingers twining wire into a handle by feel rather than sight. A scent, akin to a sun-warmed conifer forest some hours after rain, unwound itself across the room with a tang of smoke, subtly overpowering the hot-iron smell of the stove and all traces of blood.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:32, Fri 19 July 2013.

"The Big one was the earthquake in '68. I lived near Colema with my daughter at the time, up in the Sierra Nevadas, and we could feel the earth shakin' from there." He nods. "Yup, that's the place. Wouldn't know about a hole in the world, but I reckon it might be a good place to start. Trouble is, the Maze takes up the whole coast. If'n you were wantin' to head that way, Danny and I are headed there, to start up a small Ghost Rock mine once all this stuff with Quantrill is taken care of." Gabby scratches his beard. "I done heard there's sea serpents in the Maze--things like big snakes or eels, that're bigger than a boat. I reckon that's what you're talkin' about, yes?"

Gabby relaxes as he hears the coffee comparisons. Coffee--that was familiar enough, and he wouldn't be fool enough to try to eat a bag of coffee grounds nohow.

A pause followed as Sky Dog recalled what number the Americans had given this year and did some calculating. "Ah! I think I do remember...the people living along the coast did come further inland that year, back in Siberia, for that the whales were troubled." He pulled his sleeve up over his right hand and folded the sharp cut edge of the tin down over the encircling wire from the top of the handle, then rolled the remainder above into a rim with some effort.

The shaman considered the invitation, pensive. "My direction-knowing is damaged here, but I was drawn this way, checking often, as I sought the wound through the shadows of the world...perhaps it is the demon Quanterill, who walks the Middle World when he should not." He tapped the new-made mug with a finger, then set it down. "Yes. If I feel the harm is westward when we have caught Quanterill and ended him, I will migrate with you. If then you wish it." The shaman's smile quirked without the usual flash of teeth, almost shy.

"The water-panthers are usually living in the upper levels of the Lower World...they are like eels, yes, big eels, but also with little feets like a seal, with the claws. Do you hear that they have their little ones with them, or just one, two, as when an old wolf comes off the mountain?"

Eating or drinking a sludge that was like coffee grounds didn't sound particularly appetizing. He nodded when his uncle mentioned heading to Californy. "Don' hear much about water eels and seals round here. What stories we do hear are 'bout boats bein' broken up by 'em. Don't leave much time fer studyin'. If anyone done so, it'd be some scientists, but I ain't read no journals of late." Daniel wasn't sure if it mattered about the little ones.

He shrugged. "Sure do hope we can take care o' Quanterill an then head west, as ya say."

The shadow of a frown crossed the shaman's brow at the apparent heedlessness of the Maze-dwellers as he tended the stove. It was a while further into the tired quiet that Sky Dog picked up the thread of conversation, weighing his words.

"I will fast on the hunting-trail, I think. If we are well-favoured by the spirits that should be there, perhaps they will give us to discover Quanterill-the-Man, when he is less powerful. Is it your wish for to bury the quick dead with him in the ground, Dalix?" Checking on the progress of the zavarka and finding its surface shivering dark and clear and good, Sky Dog took up the spoon and the fresh-made mug, warming the latter in the steam before adding first zavarka then boiling water via one of the other mugs.

Mansfield was shortly presented with the first cup, Sky Dog's pale fingers pinking with heat to offer it handle-first through the bars. Leaving the medicine drunkard as soon as it was given, the shaman swiftly made up chai for Gabby and Daniel respectively. Gabby got a small handful of dried plant flakes from one of the cloth scraps alongside his: "Against the aching, if you wish it."

Daniel shrugged at the question from Sky Dog about Daniel's intentions. "Don't know nuthin' bout buryin' no quickdead. I jus' wanna make sure the Quanterill fella and any what follow him can't be hurtin' no more folk."

Daniel watched the preparation of the chai with interest, then drank when it was offered. Sipping at first while waiting for it to cool.

The shaman inclined his head a little, privately perplexed at Christians' somewhat haphazard treatment of their dead, transferring water to tin, excess zavarka to canteen, and awaiting re-boiling to make up his own chai in the medicine mug. "They will be stopped, yes, and then I think it best to give them to Our Friend," he indicated the fire, "-and the ashes salted, in case demon-onnir remains in them."

The drink proved to be one of those rare and precious things that taste as amazing as they smell: light on the tongue yet with a richness usually associated with aged alcohol, the pine-smoked taste offsetting more subtle twists of its dark flavour.

"I have no honey, but this stuff is good with, if you do not mind to sweat like a horse," Sky Dog's pale fingers tapped the little lidded tin, which with a quick levering application of the spoon turned out to be condensed milk. He left the tin and offer open and finally served himself, leaning against the wall whilst waiting for it to cool.

Gabby looks at the flakes. "Do I mix this in with the tea, or just hold it against the swelling?" He asks, since he's not that familiar with herbal medicines. he looks at the sweetener. "Sure, I'll try some. I like my coffee with sugar anyhow."

"Eat, like grain, then drink - the chai works with the medicine," Sky Dog directed, pushing away from the wall to move the condensed milk and spoon within easy reach of Uncle.

Gabby nods, spoons a little of the condensed milk into the tea, then chews the bark and grimaces. "Tastes bitter" He says before he takes a sip of the tea. "Guess that's how you know it's medicine."

Sky Dog tilted his head a little, birdlike, but added nothing. The chai ably mingled with and washed away the bitter-almond taste of the meadowsweet, warm, sweet and good.

The shaman lowered a spoonful of condensed milk to the bottom of his mug and retreated to his stoveside spot whilst pale tendrils of dissolving powder marbled the brew slowly opaque. At last, gradually, the tension left the lines of his figure. He sipped his tea, then paused and dug his free hand into his hair. "I..." he sighed, running his hand across his scalp and letting it drop. "...I offer apology. It was not well for me to lose my temper and criticise, unasked. I am ashamed of myself." He turned his hand palm upward before him, looking to Gabby and Daniel as though physically offering the sentiment.