Season 2: Episode 6 – The Waters of Rhisari

This series contains mature themes and is intended for adult listeners.

>Begin Porta Cor imprint.<

I hear water flowing.

I see tall trees with big leaves.

My skin burns like fire.

Light trickles into my eyes, just a little.

Now more.

Tall grass blades wave over the edges of my vision.

Where am I? Did I die?

I hear movement.

Fuck. Is he coming back for me?

I see…whiskers?

I hear the lapping of water.

Big gold eyes like a cat.

Am I still recording?

>Your Porta Cor imprint is still recording.<

Okay.

Hell, I’m half-naked.

My skin is missing in places where it burns.

Pain. So much pain.

Everything spins.

Darkness creeps in again.

Oh no…

Water on my hand feels cold.

It’s so bright. I wait for my eyes to adjust.

I sit up slowly and look around through squinting eyes.

I am on a moss-covered rock on the edge of a stream.

Something about the light over the water is different.

Tall grass grows all around the edges of the large rock.

My hand is in the stream. I lift it out.

I look down at myself. I have new clothes on from my pack.

I smell clean. I touch my hair. It’s clean. I realize my wounds are bound.

What the hell?

How did I get out of the desert? Is this still the desert?

A large cat-like animal drinks water from the stream across from me.

The gold eyes and whiskers I saw.

Will the fucker attack me?

It laps up water unconcerned with me.

Then, once finished, he lifts his big head to look right at me.

It is now very still. Assessing while I assess.

I tense instinctively, still feeling aches and pains in my arms from the quicksand.

The big cat blinks at me twice and then turns and pads away.

I look at the rock I’m sitting on. My pack of stuff is there and Goroeswyr.

Didn’t I leave those out on the desert floor before the attack?

The attack. I don’t want to think about it.

I feel so much weight on me. I feel small.

I cry even though I don’t want to, and the tears burn my eyes.

They really burn.

I’m thirsty.

I cup water into my hand and drink.

Hell, it feels so damn good in my mouth and throat.

I cannot be dead. I feel too much.

I drink a little more water.

After a moment, I start to feel lightheaded again and lie back down on the rock.

Wisps of darkness take me again.

I hear a small squeak followed by tiny scurrying feet.

I open my eyes again, and I see a little mouse face with little mouse whiskers.

It sniffs me.

“I’m dead,” I declare to it.

It looks at me curiously. It doesn’t understand.

I am ashamed. I am embarrassed.

I don’t understand, and I am afraid.

The mouse scrambles away.

There is a plate of untouched food next to me: fruits and bread.

I sit up again, but very slowly. I don’t feel right still. Like I’m off balance.

I drink some more water from the stream, then start eating the fruit.

It tastes good. The mouse watches me eat from behind a bush and then scampers too far away for me to see.

I take a piece of the bread. It is freshly made bread. How did that get here?

I watch other animals come and go from the stream while I eat.

They drink. They look at each other. They look at me. I look at them.

No one interacts.

There is no prey or predator here.

I’m not dead. Am I dreaming? Is this a hallucination?

Is Twyloo lurking nearby, waiting to take me again? My heart races suddenly.

Did he touch me and wash me up? Unlikely, I realize.

I splash water on my face to stop crazy thoughts.

The water refreshes me.

The sun is up now, but the air does not feel like a hot desert.

My muscles ache.

I look at my skin in places that are not bandaged. Old skin is dotted with new skin. My body is scarred.

How long has it taken for my skin to heal like that?

I am light-headed again, and I curl up on my side on the rock to sleep.

My eyes flutter open again. Something’s different. I cover myself protectively, but I realize there is no light. It is dark. It is night.

Pell and Agos are only partial moons tonight.

I slowly sit up again.

There is another plate of food next to me. Nuts and fruits this time.

I drink more water from the stream.

Animals still come and go from the stream all around me.

I look up as I eat. Stars blanket the sky like magic lights. I recognize all the stars. I am still on Anturia.

It just doesn’t FEEL like I am.

I finish all the food on the plate. It feels good not to be hungry. I forgot what that felt like.

Slowly, I stand up and stretch even though I’m still light-headed. It feels amazing to stretch. I won’t push it, but I do decide to walk around a little and slowly.

After a couple of lengths walking on my side of the stream, I sit back down on the big rock.

Am I in an oasis?

As I ponder this, strange ripples in the light form over the stream. Instantly, they are gone.

I feel the amulet around my neck getting warm. I forgot about the amulet that Conwyr gave me.

I pull it out from my shirt and hold it. It should be warm from being against my skin, but for a moment, it seemed to warm more than my skin.

Didn’t it?

I let it drop.

The light particles I saw a moment ago appear again, but this time next to me. They start to take shape.

A female? She passes through sight and sound as though the fabric of reality bends to her will like a cloak. She’s there. She’s not there. She is alien and yet familiar.

I feel a strange energy shift in the air around me, almost suffocating but invigorating. It smells like deep soil.

The faint light from the moons reveals something that looks like my amulet around her neck.

I touch mine again, and it is very warm.

I stare at her very ethereal face. She is beautiful and terrifying together.

Complete awe floods through me.

“What are you?” I hear myself ask, but only my words echo back to me. She does not answer.

Suddenly, I see a vision of my late grandmother. She is also wearing an amulet like mine and reading me a story. I am small, and my little silver-tinted hands are wrapped around her silver hair as she reads. Her voice soothes me.

My hand leaves her hair and plays with the swinging purple-and-silver amulet. There is a strange rune I cannot make out on it. I look at my own amulet, and there is a faint rune on mine, too.

I look up, and my grandmother’s image is gone.

Now I see an image of a group of Croen Llwyd underground with a seed in some strange ceremony. One of the females holds a dagger that looks like my Goroeswyr. I recognize it instantly. It’s distinct. They gently nick the seed with the knife and then plant it.

A tree sprouts, and it fills almost the entire underground cavern.

What a stupid place to plant something.

I watch the female with Goroeswyr, hand it to someone else, and then step…she’s stepping into the roots of the tree? Blinding light. The roots have swallowed the female! The roots grow massive, and everyone runs out of the cavern as the roots push through bedrock and water like they are thin paper.

It spreads and spreads and spreads, blanketing Anturia like a mother’s fingers holding her baby in its arms.

I’m confused. Bewildered.

The image fades, and the translucent image of the female in front of me holds a small parcel out to me. Do I take it? I feel a sense of dread if I take it. I don’t know what it is.

I am afraid. But I am also afraid of not taking it. What will happen if I don’t take it? Who will?

I want to do something. I don’t know what to do. But I know I must do something. I feel it in me.

I reach out to take the parcel. As I think I’m going to touch it, she and the parcel dissipate.

I feel the burden of my choice, but what choice did I make? I only know I made one.

The rest of that night, I eat the food that keeps appearing on the plate beside me, and I drink water.

I check my pack, and it’s somehow full of supplies again. I’m not sure how.

This place confuses me. It is not normal. It’s unsettling.

I keep looking around to see if there’s anything besides animals and me in here, but I don’t see anyone else.

At least, I think I can make it back to Alltud now.

I will sleep the coming day and get up in late afternoon to start traveling early evening to early nightfall again. It’s easier in the desert to travel once the sun starts to sink.

I watch the animals for a while until dawn starts to break, and I lie down on the rock to sleep again.

I close my eyes and slowly drift into darkness.

The sound of water is gone.

I am covered in gritty sand.

It rubs against my flesh, dry and endless.

I see a body half-buried in sand.

Stillness.

Much too still. I don’t trust it.

Suddenly, a breath.

Like a whisper.

Barely there, yet it still exists.

Something shifts underneath the sands.

Waiting.

I jolt awake, sitting upright—Goroeswyr in my hand and my knuckles white around the hilt.

The animals at the stream still ignore me. I relax.

I wash my face and hands, drink water, and eat the food on the plate.

The sun will be setting soon, so I grab my pack and tuck my dagger back into its sheath at my belt.

I stand up. I do not feel dizzy. I must go. I feel it.

I look around, and the animals stop drinking water to look at me, then go back to drinking.

I turn my back on the stream and walk north. The sounds from my booted feet gradually change from the soft rustle of grass to the crunch of sand. Then it is all sand. I walk a bit further and turn back. The oasis is there, basked in a golden hue of the hour before sunset. The golden hue I first saw days and days ago. How many days? I have no idea.

I turn away from it again, determined not to look back at it and walk because I must.

I inhale a deep breath of the desert air. Desert air that I once hated, but I now feel a strange respect for it. My desert air. I am not an outsider. I am part of it, I realize.

I walk all night. I see no other signs of life as I move northward.

I set up my portable shelter in the morning, making sure some rocks hide it on most sides. I sleep during the day. Just before sunset, I wake again. Drink. Eat. Pack up and begin walking north again.

In the distance, I see dunes ahead of me, a massive set. I remind myself of the pivot weight-shift movement Rebane taught me.

As I’m going through the motions in my mind, against the last of the sun’s rays, I see a strange figure on top of the dunes also walking north. It is hunched over, almost on all fours, making its way over them. I cannot make out what it is, as it is too far away and the light is almost gone.

I watch it for a while as I walk.

I will follow it.

>End Porta Cor imprint.<