An Encounter with Mystery
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 9774
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The wind pulled at the cloths about Andrea and she turned to face it full
on. One of her many questions rose to the surface of her mind as the icy
air blasted her face ~~where are we?~~ The words Northern Wastes and
'lost grove' meant so little to her...and so much. She knew, she felt
rather, that her destiny was here, somewhere. Indeed the Finder confirmed
this...if he was trustworthy and if he wasn't mad, that is. She thought of
her previous talk with the youth. It was even as they had reached the
Wastes; 'How did we get here?' she had asked as the rocky ridge came into
sight. She had recalled the forest and the miller's towne, she had
remembered the coast--yet not any ship; and the rocky path--yet not any
mule. She felt as if pieces were missing, pieces of her very life.
Jarlath simply had said that he told her they would be traveling. 'But
what about the night and money for inns, and possible troubles?' she had
asked. 'You worry too much,' he had said. Indeed she did, yet she didn't
remember actually leaving his arcane room, she didn't remember stopping
for any meal during the journey, she didn't remember sleeping not one bit
since that last night after she had changed---
"By all that's holy!!" screamed Andrea. "What day is this!??!" The Finder stopped walking and smiled, and gruffly responded, "For the Zhuloo it is the fourth day of the fifth solar month in the year 1985; for the Geldeans it is the eighth day of the second lunar month in the twentieth year since the reign of Prefect Weiser; for the—" "Shut up!!!" screamed Andrea. "How long have we been traveling?!!? How many days since we left your home?!!!" "That's an odd question, don't you think?" he said rather nonchalantly. "Days, weeks, hours, seconds...time is all relative you know. What if I told you that it has only been one little day since we left my humble abode? Would you believe me that we've made a journey of almost two months in only one day? Now what I like better than sand-counting is life- living, wouldn't you agree? You slept in my home and then we left; we moved to the seacoast and you didn't get seasick by the way! We gathered supplies, including your wondrous winter wardrobe, and now we're here. Isn't that what counts?" "NO!!!!!" she screamed, her pitch equal to the sound of the wind buffets coming down one of the monoliths. "What counts is that I'm tired and I'm hungry and all I want to do is lie down and curl into my own skin.....and stretch my muscles until I....until I come out like...like....like—" "Like a wolf?" "Where's the moon, Finder? Where is She? What have you done with Her?" "You call me Finder for Finder I am," he said. "I find things, my sly little lobo, I do not lose them." The wind was beginning to rumble through the walkway, it was beginning to howl through the under-stories of the stone ruin. Andrea was feeling her blood begin to rise, to boil; and her rage to overflow. "WHAT DAY IS IT?!!?" She felt ready to pounce on the mad little boy-man before her. She felt more than willing to claw another scar into his irritating face with her bare nails. Something had happened, something she didn't understand. Time flew by and the change had not occurred, her liberation from human flesh had not come, and somehow she had forgotten...she had forgotten too much. Jarlath began walking into a niche within the nearest stone edifice. Andrea stood still in the swirling snow, the icy wind, dressed like some eastern mummy in her thick fur cloak and strips of leather and rags. Her fists were clenched, her breathing short and quick. She took one step, a step of anger, towards the crevice when the Finder began his answer: "I once had a royal seal of passage. My lineage afforded me the luxury of travels far and wide and near and shallow. I lost that seal, one day, long ago. I kept meaning to get a new one, but I never got around to it." Andrea spit on the ground, her saliva freezing into crystal even before it hit. She took another step towards the bundled man-youth. "When I was a kid," continued Jarlath. "I thought Allaria was a wondrous land, yet our ways make not enough room for the magic of the peoples. So I left my home and traveled far, traveled too far perhaps. Then I found the Tower of Ilxior and the ones who would become my brothers. And ohhhh, how good it was! That Tower so slim and high and...small from the outside was truly the grandest of all places within! When I was a kid it became a place where anything could happen, and it did. My brothers had all this stuff, you know, silk robes and tin bells, rolled bread pies and curdled cream liquor, and they had magic! So here I was, with my own silk robe and following the rings of meditation and studying the Grey Way and other paths, and time passed in its queer little fashion and the fire came and I was burned and the Tower fell and then I knew...then I knew. I had discovered that the Tower was just like every other stinking place in the world. We had it all, all of it was there...the good and the bad...somewhere in there." Andrea was three steps closer to ripping his head off. "You are stark, blooming MAD!!!" she screamed. "Answer my question or face my wrath!" The Finder itched under his left armpit, scratched under a knee and with wisps of cold breath escaping his lips said, "You haven't been listening have you?" "AIIIGH!!!!" screamed the maiden from Croix. She lunged at the man and even as she did, her body writhed, her skin itched, her hair grew long. The muscles within her tender frame broiled and frothed, squirmed and growled. By the time she hit the stone wall, Jarlath was gone and she was nothing more than a thoughtless beast –more animal than human.
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5/30/2000 10:23:16 PM
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