After catching his breath, he turned back to the south. There, somewhere in the distant lights of Brinehaven, was his wife of almost seventeen summers. Or perhaps not. She may have fled both Borin and himself, unable to face either. He had no way of knowing. Perhaps he would never know. Perhaps he would never see her sweet face again.
Presently, Borin got to his feet, grabbed the handles of his barrow, and started toward the point where the hill descended to the north, and where the next hill would then begin. As he approached, the ex-Marshal wheeled about with a right hook to Borin's jaw. Accordingly, Borin dropped the barrow as he fell backward, landing flat on his back, and blinking several times while attempting to determine exactly what had just occurred.
Reginald quickly dashed to his son's aid. "Here now! That was hardly called for, you Ruffian!" he shouted at Marcus's back.
"Are you all right, Son?" he asked gently.
"Think so," Borin slurred while coming to a sitting position, and then shaking his head and working his jaw back and forth.
"Oh, good, good. Er, you haven't seen my port, have you?" Reginald inquired in an almost casual tone while licking his lips.
Borin stared at his father for a long moment before finally pointing in the direction of Marcus. "Got packed in his barrow," he replied groggily.
"Oh, Marcus, dear boy," crooned Reginald while releasing Borin, who, not having quite regained his balance, fell backward yet again. "Could I speak with you for a moment?" Reginald called, quickly catching up to his good friend the Ruffian.
Chapter Three-Jesse Through The Looking Glass
They've cranked up the A.C. again, he noted with a mild irritation at whoever among the nightshift staff had felt justified in accommodating his own fully-clothed comfort level, while disregarding the needs of patients whose only insulations consisted of a flimsy nightshirt, seemingly designed for the admission of awkward draft, and a loosely defined blanket, more closely resembling a too-short, too-narrow comforter of dubious workmanship.
This prompted an unconscious groping for the dubious blanket, which his fingers not only reported missing, but went on to include further tactile abnormality as might strongly suggest a radical alteration to the surface contours of his bedding in general, and with eyes yet closed, he lifted himself up on one elbow while swatting mechanically at the dirt, grass, and twigs clinging to his face and beard.
Beard? He briefly attempted to process, opening one eye to an unexpected scene, and understandably other than his yet semi-plodding awareness, was quite prepared to process, but one of sufficient justification as to warrant the attendance of both eyes.
The next topic to register was the frost, which reopened the subject of his rapidly increasing sensitivity to the chilled air, now punctuated by his visible breath. To his further surprise, considering his physical condition when he last checked, he gained, or rather, scrambled to his feet with relative ease, despite a considerable stiffness brought on by what must have been an above-freezing ambient temperature, or else he would no doubt have already succumbed to hypothermia.
Upon reaching a particular point of rising awareness, only roughly equivalent to true cognizance, he found himself in a field of what appeared to be winter wheat, were wheat capable of producing purple iridescent grain. In glancing about, he found that the small area he currently occupied had been matted in a radius of perhaps just over a yard, much as when a dog circles about in order to clear a proper place to bed down.
Of the wheat itself, he found his vision restricted to the confines of that matted area. He could look straight up. This afforded a small circular view of the stars and dark blue sky, which faded slightly as the morning light crept over the top of the tall grass above him.
While still in the grip of a befuddled state of half-sleep, some remote part of his emerging consciousness finally managed to convey an alarmed posture, enabling him to tear his attention from both moons, and successfully prompting his search for a way out of whatever mystery the tall, colorful, sparkling pasture might represent.
Accordingly, he made his way in the only direction affording an actual landmark. This was the top of a tree that he presumed was east of his position, considering the rising angle of morning sunlight as it struck the branches. In reaching what he could now see was an oak tree, he had also managed finally to exit the purple field. The resulting panoramic turned out to be all that was required for him to become more than adequately alert.
After the initial hysteria wore off, it was quickly replaced by the same cool, professional exterior he had always maintained while on the job. He was acquainted with the possible side effects of a great many prescription drugs. It came with the territory of his profession.
It didn't take long to deduce that despite his efforts to conceal his depression, it had still somehow been detected. This could have been solely a matter of the Doctor's keen eye, or more than likely, his big sister's even bigger mouth. Either way, he didn't believe the Doctor was so incompetent as to accidentally prescribe an actual hallucinogenic. It was probably a simple matter of just a tad too much Prozac, or one of several other anti-depressants capable of inducing some rather odd side effects in the small percentage of patients within which he obviously fell.
In this case, the adverse effect had apparently manifested within the subject's R.E.M. sequence. It was a definite comfort to refer to himself as a subject. It allowed him the same detached analytic calculations as he had been trained for when dealing with other such vict…subjects.
Overdose need not necessarily be a life-threatening situation, he reminded himself while casually observing a very white, and perhaps upwards of forty-pound, floppy-eared rabbit hop past him, dragging a two-foot carrot down an almost perfectly round rabbit hole. Of course, he had quickly arrested the rising sense of uneasiness that one might naturally associate with such sights as giant rabbits, or even the further disturbing images of various beetle-herds, with members ranging in sizes from that of a German Shepherd to that of small, German-made cars. He casually observed this with a clinical detachment as their numbers continued to graze contently on and about the sparkling purple wheat field he had just exited.
After properly regimenting his understanding that any absurdities he might witness were simply the symbolic representations of various unresolved issues in his own psyche, he was even able to dismiss the thirty-foot crow-chicken. That would be the pitch-black crow-chicken: the one with the red, serrated beak and hooked claws, which first lifted one of the automobile-sized beetles above the western grass-line, and then flew off with it while screeching like a mad daemon from the deepest pits of Hell itself!
Of course, there were a few drawbacks to this regimentation. It forced him to accept that there may be certain other problems he would eventually need to deal with. After all, who among us is without at least some degree of mental disorder?
This first became evident upon realizing that he was nude. In itself, this represented a certain ambivalent mixture of relief and apprehension. On the one hand, it supported his theory of a deluded state, since the lack of any clothing would surely have confirmed the initialization of the aforementioned hypothermia. On the other hand, he couldn't quite recall the specific symbolic representation, although he felt certain it was of a repressed sexual content. Some odd business about either getting too much, or not enough.
True, he had been in the hospital for quite a while. This triggered the memory of his friendly banter with the aged nurse Donavan, thus causing him to both wince and shudder. Still, under other circumstances, he might have endeavored to deny that he was anything but perfectly healthy in this respect. As it was, he preferred to accept this small concession, rather than consider such possibilities as giant crow-chickens from Hell.
It wasn't until catching his own reflection in a small puddle of water that he was temporarily jolted from his newly adopted veneer of clinical reassurance. Oddly enough, this was not due to the fact that his reflection was not his own. While dreaming, peo
ple often visualize themselves differently than they really are. Older people often picture younger versions of themselves, as it was in his case. The rippling image was perhaps that of someone at or around his late teens to early twenties, as opposed to Jesse's thirty-four years. It didn't even perturb him that the image wasn't representative of his own features at that age. What did upset him were the ears.
After several minutes of examining the anomaly, during which time he felt, poked, and thumped the pointy aberrations, he finally decided that while he may be in possession of some modest training, he was, in fact, quite far from qualified to diagnose anything of this magnitude. The best thing he could do was to try to keep a mental record of as much as possible, and then relay it to the Doctor. He would also respectfully request a lower dosage of whatever it was the quack had put in his I.V. bag in the first place. Finally, after failing to spread his fingers for the appropriate sci-fi farewell sign, he left his dream/hallucination to its own reflected accord.
Over time, Jesse's clinical detachment slowly lost its original resolve. Between the strange creatures, and in some cases, their bizarre behavior toward him, he found his grip on reality as he knew it to commence a certain loss of cohesion.
Of the more fearsome aberrations, such as the crow-chicken, and other, almost unthinkable and certainly unspeakable things that mostly came out at night, he had simply decided to ignore their inferred existence altogether. This is not to imply that he didn't take desperate measures to avoid them. He simply ignored them while doing so.
Still, these horrors only represented one aspect of the overall problem in this respect. Some aspects were relatively passive, such as Doberman-sized rabbits that hop casually past you as if you were of no greater import than a tree, or perhaps another rabbit. Others, perhaps less than perfectly passive, like the pack of approximately one dozen Timber wolves who treated him no differently than said rabbit, were yet far from defined as nightmarish. Of course, the rabbit hadn't insisted on sniffing him in places he would have preferred left un-sniffed. Mercifully, the wolves left his company directly after he lost control over his bladder, which, he realized in retrospect, might have been taken to impart some sort of marking of one's territory.
Ultimately, it was not until the next morning, when he awoke considerably warmer, that he actually lost all semblance of his originally constructed self-subterfuge. This was due in part to the rabbit, who had at some point during the night decided to curl up along side him for shared body heat, and was joined by the very same number of wolves, who had apparently returned during the night, perhaps accepting the rabbit's presence by reasoning that Jesse must be some personal acquaintance.
The final straw was the enormous tree-like creature that had casually waddled up to the unlikely slumber party, and then bent down to pat Jesse's head, almost as if he were a favored pet.
***
The image of the screaming Druid prompted a unified attention from the Treant, wolves, and hare as they all watched him flee their company, though the majority of their interests were fairly short-lived, as it was now time for breakfast.
The hare had already commenced foraging when it came to his attention that in the Pastor of Nature's absence, he was now in the presence of a number of carnivorous individuals who enjoyed a much loftier position along the food chain than himself, and as he scrambled down the hole to safety, he could hear the voracious pack as they continued to snap, snarl, and dig for some time before deciding he wasn't really worth all the effort. After he was certain they had gone, the hare carefully poked his pink nose about the now wider opening to his home, just to be certain.
Unfortunately, one can never really tell the difference between a regular tree and a Treant, until the Treant decides to announce itself. First off, they all smell alike. Such subtleties as flora-mobility were somewhat beyond a simple hare. Thus was he abruptly faced with one of Nature's official authorities, and thereby resigned to abide by its jurisdiction over him. With a sigh of acquiescence, the hare realized that it might have been better to have just thrown itself at the wolves. After all, they only wanted to eat him. Treants, on the other hand, propose an entirely different and usually elevated form of frustration.
Follow him , commanded the Treant from within the unfortunate hare's mind.
His ears, which had come to a fully elevated attention during his attempts to determine the wolves' whereabouts, quickly dropped as the Quest registered. Hoping that the Treant might not press the point if it considered him too thick-headed to participate, the hare decided his best possible course of action was simply to feign ignorance. As if to punctuate what would surely be interpreted as a lack of mental capacity, he casually hopped out to resume his morning forage.
FOLLOW HIM! The command of the Treant resounded from inside the now rattled hare's head as he scrambled without further delay, and in the specific direction of the deluded Druid.
After forcibly compelling the new volunteer and then making certain that it really was on the vassal's trail, the Treant ambled back toward the forked path in which they would all be crossing in due course.
Upon reaching the road sign pointing south, the Treant settled in, roots well buried. It then extended several forked branches, lifting the sign, and turning it ninety degrees. After re-planting the sign, it passed a branch over the wooden post. In the wake of that passing, paint commenced to peel away from the wood in selective portions, until it formed a word in the widely used common tongue of Homidris.
***
Sibastian had managed to feign a disinterest in the hushed conversation transpiring between Miria and Aqua for some time, but as their muffled chatter became punctuated by an increasingly frequent girlish giggling, he felt his cavalier disregard commence a steady deficit of conviction. Finally, he reached a point where he could no longer stand it. "What are you two idiots babbling about?" he shouted while drawing his beetle up to block their paths.
In response, both of their attentions came to bear on him briefly, almost as if they had been caught in the act of forming some sinister master plan. Then their guilty expressions switched instantly to that of perfectly innocent neutrality. Miria shifted forward, returning her attention to her mount while Aqua leapt lightly from Miria's mount to her own, and then adopted a similar pose as that of her friend.
"Just as I suspected!" he exclaimed triumphantly, returning his attention to the path of his own mount. "Naught but ditsy-do," he muttered, lightly slapping the reins.
Presently, he found himself riding alongside Aqua, as she had prompted her mount to catch up to his. He briefly cut his eyes at her, and then quickly forward again, resolved to display an impervious strength of will. He would not let her get to him. He simply would not sink to her level. She might be a full two summers his elder, but, after all, he was a High-elf. His superiority simply wasn't susceptible to their petty goading.
"So," she began in a jovial tone while laying back on her mount in a highly provocative display.
He glanced over, and then quickly looked away.
"I understand that you think I'm lovely," she crooned in a voice to match her overly exaggerated pose of sensuality.
"MIRIA!" he screeched in a cracked voice, instantly wheeling his beetle about, only to realize the archenemy in question had already turned her beetle around, and was currently in possession of at least a twenty-five meter lead. He quickly kicked his mount into forward motion, and specifically into the direction of his fleeing Wood-elf nemesis.
"Aqua!" shouted Maestro Spinwyp.
Oops!
"Are you teasing Prince Refrainison again?"
"Umm… No?"
The Maestro was about to commence upon yet another in a long line of lectures on the proper conduct of proper Bards, and the proper respect one is expected to extend through proper professional courtesy, when Miria's high-pitched shriek of terror properly broke his concentration.
***
Sibastian was just about to give up the chase when Miria suddenly em
itted her nerve-shattering squeal, and then leapt from her beetle to bolt back in his direction at full speed. Rather than continue on toward the others, she leapt as she reached him, landing in his lap. She loosed yet another scream directly into his ear, prompting his vigorous ejection of the hysterical Wood-elf. He threw her to the grass with both arms.
Upon regaining her feet, rather than address Sibastian's unprecedented breach of etiquette, Miria simply bolted forward yet again, this time to head toward the sanctuary of the group.
He simply did not know how to react to such an unmitigated breach of etiquette. All he could do, other than bear the utter shock of such cheeky behavior on the part of that common Wood-elf, was to hold the now injured ear into which she had screeched. Her vociferous attack was obviously a crude ploy to destroy his impeccably perfect sense of tone. She no doubt hoped that this would make herself appear more talented in the Maestro's eyes, or ears as the case may be. That was about the time he caught sight of what she had seen.
Miria was almost halfway back when Sibastian and his beetle passed her by, thereby leaving her to her fate. This of course prompted the issuance of yet another squeal of terror as she did the impossible by picking up her own pace, almost matching the speed of Sibastian's fleeing beetle.
***
"Slow dow…"
"And he had these beady little eyes!" Miria continued, squinting in illustration.
"Y…yes, and a whiskered face as well!" stammered Sibastian, his own eyes growing wider.
"Just calm…"
"He's still out there!" trilled Miria breathlessly.
"We really should get moving," Sibastian added quietly, attempting to look over his shoulder without appearing conspicuous.
"Did this person assault you?" Master Spinwyp inquired.
"Well…no," Miria supplied hesitantly.
"No," Sibastian confirmed.
"Then precisely why are you two so upset?"
"He's naked!" shouted Miria.
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