[P] dead dancing

[Turhan]

“ bone to rune ”

Already?


'Yes.'


Turhan said nothing more, the Elder made his way to her drum and thumped it himself.  With a grumble and a grunt, he shook his head.  "You cannot take drum - you must start again."  And he was quite serious about that, unblinking as he said exactly that at her without a flinch in his lips.  "Must always be good the first time.  Bad luck to use bad drum."  Then he muttered something about being unlucky.  Jaxis did not seem to waver from her posted stance, his expectations were unrealistic but she was a stranger to he, the Ilati.  An outsider wanting in.


"Not a toy.  Is a tool.  For talking powerfully.  Your drum, cannot make big sound like this."  Although it seemed like he was nitpicking he made a point to hit his drum to show her.  His boomed with a deep resounding echo while Jax's - boomed too - did so with a softer, shorter reverberation.  The lesson was over before it began, the rag-and-bone man disappeared through the foliage with a loud 'You want to learn to make a drum.  You follow me -- COME' yelled with his grandpa priviledges.  He refused to say where he was going or why he was taking her there, just that she should follow if she found herself asking more questions rather than thinking to run.


"Come child of Solis, you must see."  Turhan twisted through tangles of vines and weaving branches of lagoon trees.  Moss hung in wet, soggy glops which liked to cling its clammy hands onto the smooth flesh of horseback.  The spongy ground absorbed heat and released suffocating levels of sulfur-infused humidity where he was going. Everywhere in the near and far distances, shadows danced just on the edge of being in and out of visual range.  Whatever they were they were silent as the shadows they were.  Whatever they smelled like was masked by the Elder's heavy perfumed mane.    


All the animals here sounded like they had tasted the flavor of blood, and meat.  They smelled of blood and meat, whatever they were - wherever they were hiding - whoever they were into (or wearing).


And they did --
,most of them.
No --
,all of them.


The desert was a harsh and unforgiving place and the child of Solis should know a challenge when it was proposed.  Turhan stopped in the very thickest of Tinea - surrounded by miles and miles and more miles of thick vineland, of the same thick wet brickabrack weaving of grove trees and other aquaculture.  The water was thick and pitch black here, the ground all silt, sand, and mud.  Some puddles were sinkholes, and the stones across the way from them turned out to be two large alligator heads watching them.  Bugs were in clouds wherever a corpuscular stream of light broke through the heavy, dank canopy.


Almost everything brightly colored was poisonous bugs, frogs, flowers, mushrooms, and even the spores of exotic ferns with their fronds full of it.  Here the light barely broke through.  Large boulders rose out of water beds, the pathways were woven in treeroots, slippery with rot and scum, anything else to walk on was mud or a sinkhole.  Trees were covered with bones.  Skulls tied to their trunks, flat bones hung from the branches like christmas ornaments.


Some skulls were bloodslick and fresh.  The stink of the meat was still on some of the other bones which belonged to those bloody skulls, they dangled gory and red in the not too far distance.  The wind brought the smell before light brought the vision of such macabre elements.


"You want to make drum - you find a skin in there.  I give you three dusks, two mornings to come back."  The challenge had been set, but he required more.  She was a stranger coming in, there was no such thing as a fair advantage for an Mlendo like her.  Not long after he had presented her with a list of items to bring back, he was gone the second she looked away - leaving her with little to no guidance as to what or why he was even doing this.

T U R H A N
skull to dust

@Jaxis  Sorry it took so long.  It moved through a lot of material, figured she can just thread here for this silly Ilati trial.  He'll most likely put her through more - he is a hardass.  : /

THE TRIAL PROMPT:


Looks like the Elder is vesting interest in Jaxis.  Why?  He's old and crazy and she is young and pretty.  Not only that, but this beauty likes to scrape the hair slurry of dead animal flesh.  He wonders if she has what it takes to get a little dirt under those nails, to fight infectious viruses and to avoid poisoning herself in the wilds of Tinea.


 Turhan leads the child of Solis into the thickest parts of Tinea and asks for three things; a fresh pair of crow wings, a satchel of rare dark purple orchids**, and the third item is dealer's choice/that is Jax. In addition to gathering these items, he requires Jaxis to supply her own fresh skin to complete his drum lesson.


**Buyer Beware!  The dark blooms of the Tinea orchid, if harvested incorrectly, will spray a heavy dose of psychotropic dust that - if inhaled - will cause major auditory and visual hallucinations.   Effects last between 3-6 hours, this bloom is used by the Ilati during spiritual rituals when individuals come of age and must reach out beyond their physical realm to find spiritual guidance.


Any questions just message me @Snell.  ILY I hope you have fun with this prompt.