Chapter 13: The Weary Ones and the quickly discarded Hope

Poarge, in spite of being a skeleton seemed very… wide. His choice of clothes also made him seem far more filled out than one would have expected from a being that is legitimately not much more than bones.

He wore a puffy lime green shirt, the sleeves of which were unreasonably heavy with ruffles. This shirt seemed, rather than having feathers attached to the collar, there was a mess of feathers the colour of fire growing from the collar. Instead of buttons, there was a series of milky ivory toggles.

Set into the fingerbones of his right hand was a collection of green gems, each a different kind and each framed by a different material. A few of the gems even had some symbols carved on them.

His trousers were some manner of tan baggy cloth often favoured by people who live in arid lands. A simple wide brown leather belt was wrapped around his waist, the belt’s only interesting features was that it had large metal studs, made from a kind of honey coloured metal. Atop his head was a cylindrical hat made of dark orange fur with a shiny black visor at the brim, it looked a little out of place.

As for what he was a skeleton of? That wasn’t quite clear, but whatever he had been it had tusks and was humanoid, that left more options than one would have thought.

Poarge gave a friendly chuckle.

“Look into my eyes and you’ll not see a spot of yellow, wanderers come sit”

Indeed while Poarge’s eyesockets held a pair of glowing rippling pools of green, they had no a bit of taint in them.

Gander was already seated, face buried in a bowl, he looked up.

“Come on! Thiss sssstrange sssskeleton will give you sssspirit food jusst for telling a ssstory, I got away with giving him a ssstory of a time Missstresss wet her bed when sshe was even ssssmaller, then in her worry about it, accidentally animated the bed, which then wandered though the royal castle. A full bowl of fried sssspirit chitterlingsss for that!”

Toro and Olice had been sitting down when Olice hear the end of Gander’s words. She stood up straight red in the face.

“Gander!” Olice exclaimed scandalized.

Poarge tut tutted Gander.

“Now, that wasn’t very nice to do that to the young lady”

Poarge put a hand to his chin and examined Olice.

“I reckon, what you need is a good bit of warm soup, You look like you’ve been through a lot for such a young lady. On the house, since your spirit friend was so mean”

“Bu tooful!” Gander objected through a mouthful of food.

Olice sat down, immediately her shame forgotten.

“Oh! Thank you!” Olice said.

She was actually quite excited to be eating spirit food, she had read about it before. Simply put spirit food was food made not from beings of flesh but of spirit. There was a few difficulties in making spirit food, mainly that fairly soon after a spirit dies, their form begins to reduce to mana.

While eating spirit food constantly can have strange effects on a being made to eat regular food, there is unquestionable benefits too, in Kigan, there is even people known as spirit gourmets who’s power and abilities come solely from their consumption of prepared spirit food.

Poarge lifted the lid off of a plan clay pot, and bone ladle in hand, poured out some blue shining blue soup with dark glimmers and bits of things that looked like vegetable matter. He set the wooden bowl down before Olice and handed her a spoon carved from bone. Olice happily breathed in the smell.

Her eyes widened and glowed, she felt cleansed, relaxed, she just sat there, breathing it in, waiting for it to cool.

A whispering came from beside Toro. Both he and Olice startled, they hadn’t noticed at all, but there was another patron of the shack!

It was a ragged form, barely more than an almost black red hooded cloak. Neither face, nor body could be seen. It was quite probably one of the weakest of pure shadow spirits, a shadower. This one was probably only red due the nature of the Red Crystal Realm. It was holding a jade mug.

“Weary ones! Don’t be afraid, this faint one here is quite friendly” Poarge cautioned.

Toro shook his head, one strange thing after another, spirits were just mere stories in his world, but here? He watched as Poarge took out a shadowy kettle and refilled the shadower’s mug with a steaming thick white liquid with flecks of green, a scent of fields and mint wafted through along with it.

The Shadower raised its mug in salute to Toro and Olice.

“A story for food eh?” Toro remarked.

Poarge nodded.

“I think I’ve a good one, just remembered it, I’m not from around this place, or the place connected to this place” Toro said.

“Oh, I’m not from this place either, just passing through, go everywhere me and my better half do”

“What?!?” Olice and Toro exclaimed.

“Do you know how to get out of here Mr. Poarge?” Olice asked.

Gander said nothing, having an idea of how this inquiry would play out, besides he had fried chitterlings to eat. Gander suspected Poarge was keeping the bowl full to prevent him from talking, but Gander wasn’t about to complain.

Poarge sighed.

“I’m sorry weary ones, but the paths I take aren’t fit for the living. I wish I could help, but…”

Poarge shrugged.

Olice sat down back to her soup, a bit dejected. Toro also on Olice’s behalf was quite dejected, he was getting the feeling that even if the Trans-Hazcarp was in working order, things would not be so simple.

“I can give you sustenance in exchange for a tale though, actually you mentioned something about it didn’t you, mister…” Poarge trailed off.

“Yacobs, Toro Yacobs” Toro said.

“Oh!” Olice realised something “I’ve been terribly rude Mister Poarge! I’m Princess Olice Hjord, Apprentice to the Witch of Dimensions”

“Hmm, since We’re doing all these introductions, I suppose I should call the missus, she’ll likely want to be around for the story you’re about to tell anyway I reckon”

Poarge turned around and called out to the darkness behind him.

“O’ my lovely coily, you wanna come out a introduce yourself, I think there might be a guy with an interesting story here”

Gander sniggered a bit at the petname Poarge had for his spouse.

A hiss issued from the darkness, then a dainty brown skinned ghostly arm snaked out around Poarge’s shoulder, followed by another one, following that, the ethereal coils of a massive purple snake wrapped themselves around Poarge’s body.

Finally a pretty face freckled with purple scales came out of the darkness to rest atop Poarge’s head. Her eyes were red and that of a serpent’s, her red hair tousled around her head wildly and from the tips the odd spark of flame would lick off. Above her head, was a black halo.

She was a spirit of a oncedead izair, a beastfolk with the lower half of a snake and an upper half like that of the humanfolk. Being a lamig izair, her upperhalf was not unlike that of an elf’s.

She seemed to wear the dark more than wearing clothes, it was clear that she was quite a strong spirit, considering that her halo was not the blank white one that most oncedead spirits have and the state of her hair.

“Hello little ones” She drawled in a heavy rich voice. “I am Zhadar, wife of this hopeless romantic”

She looked at all of the patrons before her.

“There is still one of you that has not given an introduction, is there not?”

Olice and Toro didn’t know who she was talking about, then Olice remembered. Gander remembered, but he wasn’t going to be helpful if he could get away with it.

She gripped the mousecat charm around her neck.

“Are you well enough to come out?” She asked.

In reply the mousecat charm shone and a mouse with pale blue grasshair appeared on Olice’s head. At the same time, a cat with similar hair appeared on Olice’s lap.

“I Sula, Saraun, Solpnir, now again called Susasov can do this much at least”

Zhadar clapped her hands together.

“Splendid, now, we can have a good tale, can’t we?” She said, staring at Toro.