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Part 2 – Superstitious Cacti Get All The Girls

It must have been nerves. Bluster and showing off were, as Bellemar understood it, a daily routine with men in large groups. But even this seemed like an exaggerated version of the stories she’d heard. The men were far from home, on the eve of battle, and they spent their time carousing like schoolboys. She’d stumbled upon some kind of drinking game that she didn’t entirely understand. Someone would take a swig from a bottle of whiskey, then whip their lasso into an ongoing loop. The bottle would pass to the next man, who did the same thing. Eventually, at some signal Bellemar must not have registered, the whole group whooped for joy, and the bottle went back to someone who took an extra-long swig.

Bellemar turned from the game. She figured it must be their way of relaxing. Or pumping themselves up. She’d grown up with her older brother, but she hadn’t really ever understood why boys do the things they do. Most of it seemed pretty impractical.

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Part 1 – A Trade is Discussed and Accepted

On the morning of their fourth day in the delta valley, the clouds finally started to break. The rainy season had officially ended nearly two weeks ago, though Bellemar thought perhaps someone ought to have informed the clouds. It had been the driest rainy season in a generation, and that was noteworthy given how dry the prior years had been. Bellemar found the irony of three straight days of rain delaying her mission entirely hilarious. She’d been sent by the people of the River, the farmers and fisherman, the shepherds and shamans, to parlay with the river itself.

Underwhelming rainy seasons had been piling up lately. When she was born twenty years ago, the weather was entirely predictable. Six months of relative dry, six months with consistent, though not constant, rain. She had been raised by her conscientious parents to understand the ebbs and flows of the weather. It was how they, and all other farmers in the river valleys, planned their lives. But in the twenty years since her birth, the weather had become less predictable.

No, not less predictable. It kept an understandable pattern. It just wasn’t a pattern that played well with the growing population of people that relied on the river and the rains to live. It had rained less and less each year, and as a result the river ran lower and lower. Less water was available now, and more people needed more water than ever. It was, there was no denying, messy.

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Daily Logs of Dr. J.B. Stirling
Day 478
Morning log: Submitted 0830 hrs
Ryder remains vibrant. The subtropical waters appear to agree with her, and she’s had more than enough energy to keep pace with young Jinx. None of the readings from her monitors indicate any residual health issues. The scares from the pregnancy seem to be entirely in the past.

Jinx is as healthy as we could hope. She’s formed a healthy bond with Ryder. She’s been observed dashing over and under and around her mother. The ravenous feeding remains an issue. The measurements, as I’ve noted in previous logs, are not nearly as precise as I would like – that said, we estimate Jinx consumes somewhere between 104% and 108% of the standard milk volume (of calves in her age range). Her growth rate is unremarkable, suggesting she requires more energy than a naturally born calf to produce similar growth.

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It was strange seeing the world as a photo negative. I pushed the sand under foot, felt it slide forward and out, acting just as sand should. I found a small, round rock on a little dune and dropped it into the water. It plopped into the dark grey sea with a very ordinary splash. The wind kicked up, for just a moment, and it whistled through the thin golden stalks of grass with a familiar tone. Aside from the place’s color, everything appeared to be almost the same.

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A small group of bighorn rams patrolled the edges of a massive field. The hardy, green grass had survived the worst of winter and now fed a variety of animals; a bison herd, a few adventurous cottontails, sinewy weasels and, almost unseen in the distance, pronghorns, the bighorns’ swift cousins. The well-populated meadow sat in a wide valley bordered on all sides by craggy, purple mountains.

“She’s worried her horns are coming in crooked,” Elder said.

Ulder wiggled his head and the enormous, curled horns that burst from it. “She’s worried about crooked horns?”

“It’s different for women. The horn thing, I mean.”

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Every winter the snows brought cold and white and wet
And if that had been all they brought
Things probably would have been alright
But of course the snow brought something more

There are three lead characters in this legend:
A shepherd, bachelor, who lived at the northern reach of our land
Parents, not ill-intentioned, exactly, rather ill-mannered
And the Snowdrift, capital S, who was a thing and a monster and unfairly judged all at once

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For the first hour, the clouds rolled beneath the four aging towers in silence. They carried little speed, meandering southeasterly in no great hurry. Patterns formed and crumbled, from intricate swirls to simple, ridge-like striations. To the lookouts, one huddled on the railing of each of the four towers, the low-clouds seemed to stretch to the horizon in every direction.

Inside the towers, small groups passed the time. The noise was low, controlled even with the echo off the old metal walls. Some tended to their crude weapons, and others took the time to inventory their packs. Some slept, but most could not. They knew what hid in the low-clouds, and relaxation was hard to come by. Even in the safety of the towers, nerves ruled.

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http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/nicobar-pigeon-central-park/

The door to the interview room burst open, and an officer in plain clothes entered. He dropped onto the table a pigeon corpse. Its feathers were a curious mix of grey and green. He dragged a chair close to the table with a horrific screech across the floor.

“What am I looking at?” asked his boss, already seated at the table. He took a sip of coffee, grimaced at the taste, then took another sip.

The plain clothes lifted an eyebrow. “Strange that you phrase it that way.” From his jacket’s inner pocket he produced a voice-disk.

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Third Hand Field Guide
Section 2.B
Operations in a Crowd

Crowds offer a variety of advantages to the savvy Third Hand operative. When engaging in the entry-level operations of a secret criminal syndicate, stealth is an extremely valuable commodity. Crowded spaces (e.g. markets, fairs, religious/political gatherings, particularly popular executions, etc.) are excellent places to pickpocket, the track or identify potential burglary targets, to make first contact on longer con jobs, and the like. As a full initiate of the Third Hand, your tattoo grants you certain perks that the everyday criminal lacks. For crowd work, the most important perk is the simple fact that no one can see you if they are not looking for you. Please keep that in mind when operating in among the masses. Further notes below will give some guidance as to what we consider best practices for working in crowded spaces.

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Capture the Feathered Flag

The snow had been unexpected. This close to the bay, it usually didn’t snow so early in the season. Yet here they were, entrenched in day 3 of their game, and the snow had fallen steadily since two hours before sunrise. By his internal measure, the Leader estimated it was just before mid-day. But that was tough to say for certain without a peek at the sun. And that wasn’t likely to come any time today.

From the endless, enveloping grey, he heard a soft flap. Soon after, a form emerged – white head, dark body. One of ours. She flew low, beating her wings with stiff effort. Her eyes were squinted nearly closed against the endless assault of snowflakes against her eyes. She alighted on a branch and shook herself violently to clear her wings of accumulated snow.

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