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10:08, 29th March 2024 (GMT+0)

04 - In the Blue Mountains.

Posted by The KeeperFor group 0
The Keeper
GM, 141 posts
Tue 30 Jun 2020
at 00:03
  • msg #1

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush





The night had swung the stars across the sky overhead and the bush made quiet noises around their fading fire. The prisoners, like the horses, had been left to sleep with tied forelimbs since there were weapons to be got, the rope run under the sergeant's blanket to wake him should one start to wander.

Thomas Daniels slept like the dead, conserving energy. Jack was more wakeful at first from the itching of poison saps that had struck his chest and arms through the course of his cutting, part-surfacing at times to see Murphy sat quietly alert, toying with some small object, or the dim shape of a wife pacing out the dark. Brigitte had a deep and private nest of brush to lay her blankets on, and tiredness from the heat and unaccustomed work of heaving up and cutting water-branches scrubbed the memory of dreams from her mind. She remembered only seeking, and depth. Thomas also recalled little of his dreams, save a sense of accusation, of trying and failing to get somewhere before something...scrabbling at the ground in an attempt to reach a doorway, cursing, his fingertips raw and the ground smeared, then welling with old, foul blood like groundwater.


Jack woke with a crushing, dream-deep sense of failure within: he had been buried alive among scratching roots in his dream, and Peggy and his child were desperately calling him, searching side to side alone in the vast bush; he knew he could be distingished from the background sounds of insects and birds if he could call to them, but he had to call out to both, and he had forgotten his child's name. The sense of being a terrible father was wrenching. It took two aching, upset breaths to come fully awake and remember he was himself, above ground, and didn't have any children.

Everyone had risen with the racket of the birds in the blue-grey of dawn and breakfasted on tea and a coal-warmed mash of bush yam and something that tasted like nuts and scrambled eggs. The dish's exact nature remained mysterious, since the sergeant would not let Garangwaari translate the word "burradhan" around Henry or Brigitte. Henry seemed to have slept poorly and his skin had not calmed at all, leaving him fidgetty and inclined to poke at his face. Sgt. Wilkins took rum with his breakfast without comment and inviting none, clearly having slept ill himself. Once another round of water had been cut and drunk by horse and human alike they had got on their way.




The day was a hell of heat and thickets. Even under the canopy, the humidity pulled from the punished soil almost cancelled out the mercy of altitude, leaving everyone breathing hard and at points forcing the riders to lead the horses, as none had breath to spare for carrying their weight. The baby cried in complaint whenever energy permitted, desperate that the adults who met all other needs should make the breeze get up and the heat just cease. Flies came to drink their sweat.

Jack slept like a pile of potatoes at noon break, despite the baby and the cicadas' screaming: he woke to the others loosely grouped about him, seeming relieved that he'd finally shown some response to noise and shaking. Murphy insisted Jack be given at least some hours off, and Garangwaari came and gave him a small ball of clay to roll about in his mouth for medicine as well as water, saying it had the 'right salts'. He tasted earth for the rest of the day.






Henry volunteered himself as second cutter, and matched Thomas' afternoon speed quite well, despite the difference in their reach. Jack did get put to another stint of bushwhacking "in case you start getting a mind to be lazy, my lad - faints won't get you out of it", but not for very long. They made camp where it seemed Bowen had done, a natural clearing a short walk from a stream running deep through current-carved stone to the north, and overlooked by a rise of rock on the western (upslope) side. Garangwaari filled her cradle-basket with water and bathed the baby; Ngamurudyin made up a yellow paste for paint.

Sgt. Wilkins decided to carol as he made up the supper, passing through a deeply sardonic 'We Wish you A Merry Christmas', figgy pudding and all, to a surprisingly tuneful and sincere 'Adeste Fideles'. This round of soup was better fortified, with rind at the bottom and bush greens thrown in, though most of the party would have eaten their shoes, assorted rocks, or parrot at that point if it took off the effects of the heat. Wilkins read more of Calder's journal when they were done, though soon flagged and laid off, telling the rest "-and it gets stranger from there," before going to do some negociation with the guides.

Beds were secured and Ngamurudyin took first watch. There might have been drumming, far off in the night. Mostly there was the first stirrings of cool air to breathe, and with it, sleep.





Morning broke between the close bars of overcrowded trees, though the birds sounded a bit more distant, their voices echoed down rock with a bright, ethreal quality. The crowded bush seemed to suck down light even before sunrise, outlining its vine-drowned trees and teeming leaves with excessive clarity, as though all were seen through blue glass.

Jack surfaced slowly, though today the vague ache in him was only physical.Finally properly awake, the trees above him soar and sway in a bewitching canopy. The thumping in his head is gone, but his mouth somehow still tastes of earth.

Thomas stirs, and he knows he has been looking for Sally Jane in his sleep - Sally Jane who was trying to tell him something, desperately. In his dreams glyphs crawled out of rocks like flattened spiders and the trees grew fungus that was really teeth. A circle of trees. A circle of teeth. A circle of foul and poisoned water. A surrounding arc of fifteen smooth spheres of unknown rock. A circle of...his mind flinched and would not answer, bringing him awake. The sergeant is boiling water for tea three or four paces away, not yet aware Thomas is awake.


There had been stranger dreams for Brigitte: she had definitely been further down the great well (the spire, above the tower, above the palace that was perhaps above a city, fathoms deep where things lived lightless and could not imagine the existence of the sun), far closer to the base. She knew she had slept on the stair, and gathered some kind of hairlike fungus for sustenance there before resuming motion, as though her dream self continued her questing whilst the other self was awake. There was something...large, to a sense she could not describe, and it had smelt her, or done something like smelling her, following the colour of her thoughts, and it had got close.

Great-Grandmother's 'voice' had faded as she pulled away, but Brigitte had woken with a start as Melusine's scales had touched her side.

She finds herself kneeling under a slight overhang of rock just in earshot of camp. Her wrists hurt slightly, and looking down Brigitte sees she has been digging, or rather made some halfhearted attempt to dig, achieving no more than a shallow scrape in the earth. She looks up and sees that Bowen was also here, for that design of haloed circles and reaching limbs (or tongues, or flame) is above her on the rock.

This one is the most recent she's seen, its bloody charcoal crisp and dark.

It bears a new legend below:



TheRe are WorDs BENeATH tHat CaNnoT be Spoken in Air.
LiBErAtioN liEs in thE GoSPel; the GofPEl is iN the bODy ToOtH and BoNe
I Shall ReaD. I aM REad. I am KnoWN to Them.


This message was last edited by the GM at 00:05, Wed 01 July 2020.
Jack Duggan
player, 89 posts
a wild colonial boy
Tue 30 Jun 2020
at 19:41
  • msg #2

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

Jack crosses the distance to Henry Cotton as the camp stirs,

"Henry, thanks t'ye fer spellin' me at bush whackin' yestiddy. I was fair done in, I was. By the bye," he adds, nonchalant as you like, "Who was it made up Calder's party? Their names, I mean. D'ye recall?"
The Keeper
GM, 144 posts
Tue 30 Jun 2020
at 21:04
  • msg #3

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

If he wasn't up already, Thomas gets tugged upward by the rope between himself and Jack - the sergeant notices, and heaves up to go untie Thomas first.

Meanwhile, Henry doesn't stir. Now at liberty to do so, Jack steps forward and realises he's talking to an empty blanket and a bundle of pillowed clothes. Something about the lack suggests things have been so for a while - should he crouch to touch them, the objects contain no remnant heat.

Perhaps Henry went down early to wash: Jack doesn't know how many clothes the apprentice had along, so these may not be all of them. Wherever he's gone, he hasn't taken his boots, either.

Looking about, Murphy is gone, too (so are his boots and clothes, though, so he's probably at the stream), and Brigitte is not where she had slept. The birds' noise fills the space where they had been.
Jack Duggan
player, 90 posts
a wild colonial boy
Wed 1 Jul 2020
at 03:01
  • msg #4

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

"Here, Sergeant! Cotton's gone." Maybe Wilkins will take up a new suspect and leave Jack be for a bit.

"An' where's Murphy an' th' Countess? Ye'll have t'tie us all to ye, I reckon."
Brigitte d'Anjou
player, 84 posts
I can't drown my demons
they know how to swim.
Wed 1 Jul 2020
at 07:13
  • msg #5

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush


Brigitte looked at the drawing for a time once she came around. "Was she sleep walking now." she thought. As she made her way back to the camp she looked for anything out of place. Looking at her hands it was obvious that she was acting out her dreams while she was asleep.....

When she arrives back at camp she first has a cup of water before adding "I found something I think you need to look at..."

She then takes whoever was interested back to the cliff and the drawing. "I had a weird dream last night as well, incredibly vivid..."


-
Sgt. Wilkins
NPC, 30 posts
NSW Corps officer
Wed 1 Jul 2020
at 13:37
  • msg #6

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

Sergeant Wilkins looks over at Brigitte when she speaks, then immediately away on realising the lady is in her shift from the night. He refocuses quickly on Garangwaari with no hint of a flinch, despite the native not having more than a loincloth in the first place. "Go see if it's dangerous, I'll be there in a minnit," he says.

His response to Jack is to abruptly haul the rope towards him, almost pulling the little Irishman off his feet. The rope, itself probably made in Kent, scrapes hard against Jack's wrists before the sergeant has stepped forward to catch the binding and start untying. It puts them very close. Neither of them smell good, even after yesterday's access to water for washing. "You remember they're free to go where they want. Ngamooroo'-!"

Jack can't see the guide's response behind him, but guesses she doesn't particularly like the address, as the sergeant's tone only gets harder. "Go fetch Murphy and Cotton down at the creek with this one, there'll be tea when you get back." He shoves a physically liberated Jack towards the native.
Ngamurudyin
NPC, 3 posts
The Compass
Wed 1 Jul 2020
at 13:38
  • msg #7

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

Ngamurudyin is wearing some ash- and yellow paint today, though not enough for full camoflage or dancing. She gives Jack a look that's also somewhat fed up with the machinations of the British Empire as it is locally represented, but points with her chin to move down towards the creek, recognising that her wife's willingness has split them up as the sergeant intended.

The baby reaches out of her basket at Ngamurudyin's side and takes a grip of Jack's shirt, as though she's set to pull him along, too. Should he look down to query this he'd see the child briefly spook, then instinctively realise he was some kind of human and laugh, having as yet no more emotions to her range than joy and upset.

*AaReeuuh*
This message was last edited by the player at 14:04, Wed 01 July 2020.
Garangwaari
NPC, 6 posts
Wife (not yours)
Wed 1 Jul 2020
at 13:38
  • msg #8

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

Garangwaari follows Brigitte, passing up the Countess' blanket as she goes - it seems Brigitte had simply risen from her bed and wandered over to the spot she'd woken at, though it looks like someone else barefoot scuffed through the ash of the campfire at night and walked onwards, off into the bush.

The natives might also wander at night, of course. Feeling the uncertain texture of leaves, twigs and sandy rock underfoot, Brigitte was not entirely sure how she had not woken herself, though Garangwaari moved without sound or difficulty on toughened soles. Gaarangwari frowned at the thing Brigitte had found, and listened to her comment.

"What thing did you dream? Was it like this?" she asks, and crouches to look at Brigitte's digging. Her slim shoulders are marked with an unfinished pattern of paint today that moves as she reaches to feel the form of the tiny hollow.
Jack Duggan
player, 91 posts
a wild colonial boy
Wed 1 Jul 2020
at 14:15
  • msg #9

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

Jack does his best to keep his eyes away from his employer's form in such a state of undress. Conversely, Ngamurudyin's near-nakedness he gives not a second thought; maybe it's the paint. He nods and grins in response to her grimace at the sergeant's orders.

When the baby takes hold of his shirt, he startles at first, but then emotions left by his dream wash over him and a sprinkle of tears smart his eyes. Blinking them away, he smiles at the mite.

"There's a good babby," he coos.
Wadanggari
Wed 1 Jul 2020
at 14:41
  • msg #10

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

This makes the baby delighted, but does not make her let go.

*AAaayyeeeooouu!*

Ngamurudyin sets to rescuing Jack from her daughter's deathgrip as they head off, somewhat amused.

[[just a minute, I'll get you a new thread...]]
Garangwaari
NPC, 7 posts
Wife (not yours)
Sat 4 Jul 2020
at 21:41
  • msg #11

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

"There is nothing here," Garangwaari confirms of the scrape, looking up at Brigitte. "What did you dream you were digging for?"

The sergeant can be heard wading through the undergrowth towards them presently. Sunlight begins to filter through the trees.


[[in case you were waiting on me/confirmation the others had gone.]]
Brigitte d'Anjou
player, 85 posts
I can't drown my demons
they know how to swim.
Sat 4 Jul 2020
at 23:34
  • msg #12

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush


"A snake, that could speak.... it sounds silly now... but It seemed so real. On a stair case in a city, called Melusine...." Brigitte now realised what she was wearing, "I have to get dressed..."


-
Garangwaari
NPC, 8 posts
Wife (not yours)
Sun 5 Jul 2020
at 00:33
  • msg #13

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

"Maybe it is the spirit that helps your clan's women that was speaking to you," Garangwaari replies, out of her depth with what the settlers might know or not know. "That spirit would try to help you."

Sgt. Wilkins comes up, looking very much at the rock and the words and not at all at Brigitte, though he spares a glance to Garangwaari and the scrape in the ground. "Well...hmm." He doesn't swear, just leaves the harsh vexation in his tome. "Awright, 'ow long's that been there, then?"

Garangwaari looks for clues on the ground. "I don't know...everyone has walked about here now. I don't think the last night, unless he put old blood in his paint. Do those figures talk?"

Wilkins eventually understands by her gestures that she's asking if the parts of the drawing opaque to her in meaning are words, and crouches to read her the inscription as Brigitte trails off to fetch clothing. Small scuttling things avoid her feet.

"...to read, that is to hear that kind of drawing?" she catches Garangwaari saying over there as she does her best with her towelcloth and a little water, then looks out her outer garments. "Can you do reading, in a body?"

"I think our friend the artist is stark raving mad," the sergeant opines, and a glance over there shows him touching the image, just to be sure it's not been put there by Brigitte herself.
Brigitte d'Anjou
player, 86 posts
I can't drown my demons
they know how to swim.
Sun 5 Jul 2020
at 02:37
  • msg #14

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush


Brigitte continues to don her clothes... as she spoke"It could be possible, but things that can enter your mind are not look upon fondly in my culture..."

It had certainly been a very strange night.


-
Garangwaari
NPC, 9 posts
Wife (not yours)
Sun 5 Jul 2020
at 20:13
  • msg #15

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

"It is your mind that goes far when you are sleeping," Garangwaari points out, bush-wading back towards her. "...that is how we touch the...big Dreaming. The other place. Is there a word for that?"

The sergeant scuffs about a bit more over there in case any clue should appear, but returns once Brigitte looks more decent and toes Daniels into looking alive enough to serve tea (it tastes slightly of soup).

"Did the snake tell you anything that would help us? If it is a secret knowledge I will not ask more, but this is not a good place, with the story about the witches. I have heard that woolymen live up here, too."



[[edit: better leads for unsticking.]]
This message was last edited by the player at 14:23, Wed 08 July 2020.
Brigitte d'Anjou
player, 89 posts
I can't drown my demons
they know how to swim.
Tue 14 Jul 2020
at 01:42
  • msg #16

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush


Brigitte gave as good of description of what happened and was said in her dream as she was able. It was obvious that the aboriginal woman would be able to better understand it then her so she left no details out as she did not have a clue what was important and what was not.

It was exhausting and she went to find a cup of some thing wet and warm most likely.



-
Garangwaari
NPC, 10 posts
Wife (not yours)
Tue 14 Jul 2020
at 15:36
  • msg #17

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

It took some explaining, since Garangwaari was unfamiliar with the idea of towers or wells, though she knew what steps and windows were. She'd listened closely, still thinking whilst Brigitte went to fetch and resettle with tea. Henry Cotton had still not returned, nor anyone else who'd gone down to the creek.

"I think...the thing that talked but could not be understood, even in the Dreaming, it was from a different place. Like you to this country, but not on a sea or from a country that...is this not-Dreaming. All this world. It is from a different place, so when it spoke to you it was like if you put a sea-spiky,"
she mimes a sea urchin, cupped hands then spikes, "-in spring water. The landwater poisons the one that lives in seawater, because it is from a different place. So the stranger-thing's talking, giving its thoughts to you, to you it would be like going in the landwater. I don't...do you think its shape was like the drawing you found, on the rock?"

"I think your ancestor-friend the water-snake knows what the Stranger was, and the Stranger is afraid of her,"
Garangwaari reasons. "I do not know what she means by eating each others' young...it would be bad for something here to eat the Stranger's children, I think, though I do not know what they look like. They might be like a beast or a plant or a rock, or like nothing we have seen. I think we would feel the wrong water feeling, though, if they could speak, or dream they speak to us."

The birds have pretty much quieted down by now and a golden light filters down through the foliage, picking out leaves like copper coins and slivers on the packed earth. The sergeant has taken to pacing, agitated by the others' lack of urgency in returning yet unwilling to leave or send Daniels and the women after them. He doesn't contribute to the discussion of dreams, keeping whatever the night had brought him to himself.
Jack Duggan
player, 99 posts
a wild colonial boy
Wed 15 Jul 2020
at 02:37
  • msg #18

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

As Jack makes his way up to the campsite, he misses the weight and the warmth of the little body that had been given into his care for a while.

When he sees the others, he asks, "Any sign of Cotton at all?"
Sgt. Wilkins
NPC, 31 posts
NSW Corps officer
Wed 15 Jul 2020
at 21:13
  • msg #19

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

The force of Sgt. Wilkins' direct attention as he looks up is like a blow of heat from opening an oven door. One look is enough to make Jack glad he can't currently be accused of trying to carry off the baby. "It was you was supposed to be-"

"He wasn't down with me. There was one moment I might have missed him walkin' off on my watch when the Countess took herself aside right through the shrubbery, but if he left then Cotton's been away an hour and a half, easy," Murphy talks fast, striding over to give Garangwaari her child and look back to where Cotton had slept. "Might be sunstroke, sleepwalkin', not sure. We heard a scream might be a mile off or more along the water."

"Got fish," Ngamurudyin announces, holding up a specimen almost as long as her arm. It proves a sucessful distraction, for a moment, from the presence of one more person behind her, his skin as land-dwelling dark as her own. "He-" she throws a question over to her wife. [Language unknown: "ble t iv histo asmounun st English?"]

"Nephew. To the guide," Garangwaari explains, setting the baby to her breast. The child proves willing and their tension eases, the baby looking up with an unformed, animal love for this being that provides food and comfort, Garangwaari looking down with quiet contentment and a smile.

Ngarungadurung, meanwhile, can tell this redcoat whitefella is like one of their thickset, short-faced camp dogs, ready to sink teeth right to the bone at a shout or perceived provocation. He bristles, hand on the small fire weapon at his belt. "Tell 'im he'll be more welcome once 'e's put that spear down," he says.

[Language unknown: "U unar, il onleno, ofilil."] Murphy tries, his accent thick and odd to hear but effort in it.

Besides the ones that have spoken, Ngarungadurung can see a sullen, youngish whitefella sitting on a log away across the fire, and one of their wrapped-up women standing near Ngamurudyin's wife sipping a hot drink. Under the large straw hat her hair is also pale, wound up like snakes on her head, and he gets the uneasy idea that her flesh would be soft as a grub's.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:26, Thu 16 July 2020.
Ngarungadurung
player, 28 posts
Thu 16 Jul 2020
at 09:22
  • msg #20

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

The new man squats where he is, at the edge of the camp, and places the spear on the ground next to him. Then he removes his skin cloak and fibrecraft bag, folding them carefully on top of the spear.  He remains sitting on his heels and regards the group with silent eyes.

He has rarely been so close to such a large mob of whitefellas. His nose twitches at their fetor.
Jack Duggan
player, 100 posts
a wild colonial boy
Thu 16 Jul 2020
at 12:20
  • msg #21

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

Jack crosses the clearing to his employer.

"Is there anything you're needing, Milady?" he asks.
Sgt. Wilkins
NPC, 32 posts
NSW Corps officer
Thu 16 Jul 2020
at 13:17
  • msg #22

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

The sergeant lets go of his fire weapon and picks up an object to dip it in the bigger container by the fire, brushing off the bottom with his sleeve. He cautiously steps up to place this in front of Ngarungadurung, handle towards the newcomer, half an eye kept on what Jack is doing.

"Hot," he says firmly, as though Ngarungadurung will know what he means. The redcoat does not smell at all good, though the dark, gently steaming liquid in the cup has a neutral, soft plant-like smell with a tinge of earth, like lying where kangaroos have recently been grazing.

Beyond the whitefellas, in their own little patch of clearish ground, Ngarungadurung can see the huge riding animals, some brown, some pale and some spotted. Some are paying him attention.
Brigitte d'Anjou
player, 90 posts
I can't drown my demons
they know how to swim.
Fri 17 Jul 2020
at 00:56
  • msg #23

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

In reply to Jack Duggan (msg # 21):

"No, no I am fine. Just a long night that is all." Brigitte watched the new comer for a time and the sight of the fish was welcome at least it would be something other then rations.


-
Ngarungadurung
player, 29 posts
Fri 17 Jul 2020
at 04:28
  • msg #24

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

The aboriginal man says nothing to the redcoat but lowers his eyes and gives a small nod of the head. He touches the container gingerly, testing the heat, then uses the handle to bring it to his nose. He sniffs, cools the liquid with his breath, and takes a tentative sip.
The Keeper
GM, 154 posts
Sat 18 Jul 2020
at 00:20
  • msg #25

04 - The Blue Mountains Bush

The liquid proved smooth, with a not-unpleasant hint of bitterness and an aftertaste of salt and a little unknown grease. It was odd to be offered something brewed when not sickening with anything, but perhaps the whitefellas were trying to make him more resistant to ghosts or sickness in their own way. At any rate, after a short span it seemed to make him feel more awake.

The big fish was coal-baked and the crayfish boiled, all being distributed relatively equally. There was some talking about the camp, but also a tension - not just because of the native visitor, Ngarungadurung realised, but between each other - and still Henry did not come back. Murphy had done some cursory tracking and searching whilst breakfast was cooking but could say only that the youth had walked straight out into the bush, bootless and with no care for concealing his step, or even avoiding brush in his path. Murphy posited sleepwalking. Brigitte kept finding stray grains of earth caught in her nails.

The sergeant thought hard about their situation. "We'll give 'im the morning," he decided, glancing at the horses. Whilst their rations were easy to supplement with bush tucker whilst Murphy or the natives were around, a horse poisoned by unwise experiment with native foliage would have to be shot. Murphy, Daniels, and Garangwaari with the baby were left in camp in case Cotton should return, whilst the rest made a careful foray into the forest along Henry's track.





There seemed to be less cicadas up here, spacing their sound into an uncertain maze of sharp and dull that shifted with a turn of the head. Ngamurudyin and the stranger tracked, up ahead, whilst the sergeant kept an eye on Jack and Brigitte kept an eye on the sergeant. There was some breeze today, but breathing the hot leaf-dampened air was still much like breathing through cloth. The Europeans began, invitably, to sweat.

Now, perhaps an hour and perhaps not even a mile from camp - Cotton's determined sonnambulent upward path had dissolved into confused wandering some way back, making for tedious stop-start tracking as he looped and backtracked, sometimes walking, sometimes at a run - Ngamurudyin is crouched down close to the ground, looking for the most recent of overlapping tracks. The trees all sway a little, giving the impression of a general restlessness. They all look so similar to the non-natives that they might as well be dropped on the surface of the moon in terms of landmarks. The cicadas rattle and screech.

Then off away to the right somewhere ahead comes a far less distant scream.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:21, Sat 18 July 2020.
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