Her exhaustion is bone-deep. She could probably sleep the rest of the day away; perhaps she wants to. Perhaps she misses her own bed, or hell: that enormous, cloud-soft things her wolf sinks into every night. Maybe she even misses that stupid pallet they make Mercy sleep on.
Or maybe she doesn't care. Fianna, wildling, fae-touched girl: she who has fallen asleep many a night in the forest, woken hungover with twigs in her hair.
--
She doesn't wake with twigs in her hair. A bit of dirt, though, sifting out as she raises her head. It was Assawetough who woke her, just as promised. Not by shaking her or shouting, but by clucking her tongue: a loud, hollow pop! pop! until she and Hannah are both blinking awake.
Oiguina is already up. It is near dusk; the sun low in the west, shimmering through the trees. The younger woman has built a small fire, far smaller than the ceremonial blaze they had the other night. This one is purely utilitarian. She's snared a pair of rabbits, which she's roasting over the fire. The skins have already been stripped: painstakingly peeled all in one piece and set aside to use, perhaps as shoes, a small scarf, a portion of a light winter mantle.
The heads have also been set aside. Hideous and raw-red, set upon a flat stone.
Implacable, Oiguina watches Devon sit up. She reaches out and turns the rabbits on their spit. Fat hisses into the fire.
"We call Ladies," she says. "Soon. Your people, not right." Taps her head. "Here, not right. Take Mary, yes? And Ulu. And others. I look, I see. I hear: not only here, New-Bury. Salem. An-Dover. Ips-wich. Many dead."
Assawetough, recognizing names if nothing else: "Njemile?" She spreads her hands, a searching gesture.
"Assawetough ask, where Njemile?"
DevonOiguina sleeps. Hannah even goes to curl up. Devon settles down onto the ground, tossing pebbles and twigs aside far less quickly and expertly as Oiguina had. She sits with her arms draped over her knees, staring at the creek for a while. She worries about Faith and hopes they don't hurt her. She worries about Nicholas, already half-twisted. She wonders about Rafael, and misses him, thinking of how in town, he just wanted her to run away.
She thinks about hugging him in what used to be Cold Crescent, begging him to stop going back, to stay with her if he could. She gets it now; the pull of duty to something greater than herself. Something older.
Her eyes close. She finds herself curling to her side, tucking her legs up, trying to find a position in which she can use her arm as a pillow. It won't be comfortable, but it will be rest. She yawns, and sleep comes up like a sudden wave, engulfing her and drenching out the light, the soft sounds of the woods, the watchful gaze of Assawetough.
--
Wakes later to clucking. She can't remember her dreams. She yawns and her ears pop. She shakes a little as she stirs, her body temperature recalibrating. She licks her lips and reaches for the knife she slept near, making sure she still has it. Sniffs.
The fire makes her wary, but not enough to suggest they put it out. Not when she can smell the rabbit. She rubs her face and crawls over, getting closer to Hannah and Oiguina and the fire even though it's still rather warm.
She imagines she might be cold tonight.
She imagines sleeping amongst her sisters.
She imagines going out alone into a secret, silent place and waiting for Rafael to find her, or calling him somehow. He would keep her warm, too.
--
Exhaling, she looks to Oiguina as the young witch -- shaman? -- speaks. The words 'your people' make her grimace with disgust, as though a foul smell touched her. Not her people. She knows what Oiguina means though. And she nods. The girl is right: they are mad. Their thoughts are mad. They took all these women. Hurt others. Killed some.
Devon rubs her face again, feeling very small and very young. She hears Assawetough and looks over, looking at her even as Oiguina translates. She looks pained, searches her memory for the name. And then she shakes her head.
Spreads her hands, helpless. At a loss.
I don't know.
Her hands lower. She turns her eyes downward, looks away.
I'm sorry.
divination"She ran away." Hannah answers for her: sitting up a little stiffly, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "When she heard they took Ulu. None of us know where she went."
This is translated back. Assawetough nods, seemingly satisfied with what little she has learned. The Wampanoag women speak amongst themselves for a moment, while Hannah gets up off the ground and dusts off her skirt.
Then, with a shy glance sideways at Devon, she unties her coif and sets it aside. Her apron, too. She unlaces her collar, and then her shoes, and then she rolls her hot, itchy hose off her legs. Not quite as bold as Devon, she leaves her dress on.
Oiguina, giving her rabbits another turn, smirks at the Puritan girls. "Now better?"
Devon"Good for her," Devon mutters. She doesn't try to eavesdrop on the Wampanoag women. She just sticks near the fire, waiting for food, feeling less tired but still terribly helpless. What can she do for these women? How could she possibly help alter a history already written?
She can barely look at the women. Not when she knows that in her own time, what few surviving descendants they have don't even have their language anymore.
Movement catches her eyes. She glances at Hannah, but doesn't stare at her as she undresses. She just waits til Hannah sits again, and nods.
Oiguina starts some shit, and Devon turns her eyes slowly to the other girl. "You find it so easy to leave behind the traditions of your people? Eh?"
It's a back off. It's a protective gesture for Hannah, who is barely taking the first steps towards the rebellion that creates power. It's not meant with hostility; there is not rage flashing in her eyes. Just a defensive flick of her voice, more for Hannah's sake than her own.
Devon, after all, needed no encouragement or companionship to strip off her own unwieldy garments.
divination"No, Mercy, it's all right," Hannah says softly. "She's right. It's silly of me, to be here practicing dark arts while still ... still acting like a god-fearing girl."
For her part, confronted, Oiguina narrows her eyes. It's more thoughtful than vicious. She regards the witch a moment. Then a hiss of air between her teeth; some version of shrugging it off.
"Eat rabbit," she announces, and pulls the scrawny things off the fire. One of them she hands to Assawetough, who squats beside Hannah to share. The other one Oiguina spears on the tip of one of her knives. "Here, skinny-bones. We eat this one."
Even unseasoned, the hare-meat is delicious: hot and tender, fresh as can be. Even in the summer, meat is a rare treat in the village. Mercy might not even recall the last time she ate meat like this, piece after piece, pulled off the bone.
While they eat, Oiguina asks, "You call Ladies before? Somewhere else?"
Devon"It's not silly," Devon says, neither flat nor aggressive, just simple. Plain. "It just is what it is. And silly or not, you don't have to take mockery any more than you have to take being hunted."
She drops it there. She's called skinny and it reminds her of one of the less-comfortable things Rafael has said about her. Doesn't like him calling her skinny thing, though he's only ever said it aloud maybe once of the hundreds of times he's thought it. Likes Oiguina doing it less, when she damn well knows their names.
But she doesn't engage again. Let Oiguina be an asshole. Maybe she has her own bullshit to sort through; Devon's not going to pick that bullshit up right now. She's got other things to carry at the moment.
She takes the meat. She eats it wordlessly, sighing at it, just shaking her head at the other women.
"No. Never met them before the night you were all dancing."
divinationOiguina snorts. "They not nice," she cautions. "Powerful. Help. But always for price.
"Best if you ask..." she searches for the word for a while, gesturing meaninglessly with her free hand, "...exact. Not, Ladies, help friends, make stop. Mary not exact, now look.
"Think exact. You want judge break back? Priest head explode? Town burn down? Maybe you want lightning from palm of hand. And maybe Ladies give you. But more you ask, more they ask. So you think now what you want."
DevonMary wasn't exact. That's not surprising. Mary herself seemed shocked and horrified by what was wrought in the church.
"What did Mary give?"
is what she needs to know now.
divination"Ladies asked for blood to stop bad men." Oiguina grimaces. "Mary brought chicken, cut throat. Ladies said not enough, chicken mean nothing to Mary. That is what important, see? Ladies don't really care what you give. Ladies care what it mean to you.
"Mary afraid to give own blood, family's blood. Mary said, you can have all blood you want from bad men. So Ladies took, didn't they? And now it matter to Mary. Mary rot in jail, wait for fire or rope."
DevonDevon is quiet for a while. Listens, understands: exchanges. Chiminage. The wily and demanding and eccentric nature of spirits. She looks at the fire, eats a bit more rabbit. Shakes her head a little.
"Why call on the Ladies at all? So many of you can do so much already. Without them. Without their prices."
divinationAnother, louder snort. "We four. They one hundred, two hundred. Now judges and guns too. You want save friends without Ladies? You dream."
DevonShe furrows her brow. "Is there no one else? They've all been taken?"
Devon exhales. "Tell me what you can do. Without the Ladies. Without offering up your soul to one god instead of another."
divination"None like us. We were six. Now we three. With you, four.
"Others: I not ask my village to help. Your people waiting for reason to hate us. Take so much already, always want more. No. I not give them reason. And rest of your people will not help you either."
While they speak, they've gradually gained the attention of Hannah and Assawetough. Seeing the older woman listening, Oiguina breaks off to speak to her briefly, catching her up on the conversation.
Then she turns back to Devon. "I call fire. If can burn, I can make burn. But some things harder.
"Assawetough is shadow. She move silent, you never see, never hear. She tell me once she walk through wall. Just once.
"Hannah walk in others' dreams. Ulu change face. Njemile casts curses. Very strong, but very slow. Anyway, she gone. No use."
A small silence. Hannah ventures: "Sometimes... sometimes I can hear what other people are thinking, too."
"You?" Oiguina says. "What you do?"
DevonDevon just nods to Oiguina's explanation of why she won't ask her people to help; she gets it. It makes sense. And no: 'her people' won't help, either. The only one she could probably count on to defend her would be Rafael, and he's not invincible. Nor omnipresent. And she's afraid that in this day and age, they might skin him alive if they catch wind that he's not... natural. At least a witch they can pretend is human still, on some level.
Her eyebrows hop at what Oiguina can do, though. She wants to interrupt, and ask, but she stops herself. Listens. Oiguina and Assawetough are profoundly powerful, though they may not see it as such. Devon just gets creative, when it comes to physics.
Hannah, too; she glances at the younger girl thoughtfully. She hears Oiguina say Njemile is no use right now, but... who knows what curses she laid down before she was gone?
Asked of her own powers, Devon -- who has so rarely been asked, has just as rarely spoken of them -- takes a deep breath.
"I can make medicines from plants. Put people to sleep, take away pain, make someone stronger or weaker. Sometimes they can heal hurts, or make them heal faster. It takes time, but --" she catches herself from mentioning her other time, her own time, where it takes a full day to brew something like what she was able to simply slip into the stew last night, "-- not as long as it used to take me.
"If I have tools, or make tools, I can find things that are lost, and... and find secrets that have not been told, and I can sometimes see a bit of what will be in the near future."
As she speaks, it occurs to her that she is far, far stronger, far more powerful, far more adept at far more things, than she's ever really let herself realize. It scares the shit out of her.
"I can move things without touching them. Open doors. Bring things to me. Break things." She resists the inclination to glance at Hannah, exhales a bit. "I can make people trip or move their bodies somewhere they don't wish to go."
But there's still more, and she feels lightheaded. "The other day a child was prattling near me and I wanted him to stop and I willed him to shut his mouth and ...and he did. So I think I may be able to influence others like that, too. Maybe. It's only happened once."
She puts her hands on her face again, for a moment, to give herself a moment to steady her breathing.
Jesus fucking Christ, she sounds like something unreal. Something inhuman. She exhales slowly, steadying herself. She's glad her feet are bare, touching the grass. It grounds her. It reminds her what she's connected to. What's under her, ancient and reliable and spiritual in essence though physical in form. Her throat moves as she swallows, and she lowers her hands.
"So... I think there is plenty we can do without offering more life, or blood, or our souls to the Ladies of the Wood. We will only call on them as a last resort. We can do more than enough on our own."
divinationOiguina smirks at first. When Devon is talking about plants and medicines, she's smirking -- because of course she would be. That doesn't sound so impressive. Doesn't sound like anything any woman worth her salt would be able to do. Boil one plant and turn it into a remedy for a winter's cough. Mash another and turn it into a poultice, perhaps to bind a hunter's wounds before they grew infected. Easy-peasy. Child's play.
But then the rest of it.
The divining, the moving, the urging, the willing. Oiguina's smirk fades. Hannah looks ... shocked, almost. Assawetough, understanding none of it, asks Oiguina a question in a low voice, and Oiguina answers without taking her eyes from Devon. She looks thoughtful now. Aware and alert and interested.
"What you think we do?" she asks. "What plan?"
DevonThe recitation of her own abilities -- and her newfound desire to not offer up any more compensation to the seemingly amoral Ladies of the Wood -- has made things a bit easier for Devon. She breathes in deeply, tucking her legs closer, not really making eye contact with anyone.
"I don't know yet," she says. "If we break the other women out of jail, if we hurt any of the people in town, this will only get worse. If we scare them any more, they will panic, and then... start burning. Hanging."
These would be some of the more familiar, more likely ways to die. Devon knows all too well how witches and suspected witches have been killed at other times, in other places: crushed to death. Stoned. Drowned. Beheaded. Strangled. Tortured. Flayed alive and torn apart. Left for crows to eat.
She shakes the thoughts from her mind.
"And it isn't enough to free the others. We have to protect them, and ourselves. Not just from what is coming. What was already happening. The things the men who died in the church were doing. Violence. Enslavement. Rape."
A pull for breath, here, but as quick as it is deep.
"I need to... scry."
She's never let herself use that word without rolling her eyes.
divination"But how can we protect them?" Hannah breaks in, bitter. " 'Tis not just one man. Or a dozen. Or even one town. 'Tis the entire colony, Mercy, and mayhaps all the colonies. What could we do that would shield us from it all?"
Devon"It's people," Devon tells her, firm. "It's mostly men, and many women. It's just... humans. To panic, and fear, and turn other people into demons so we can feel better about killing them."
She is still a moment, and lowers her voice. "Hannah, we can't fix all the colonies. Or the entire colony. We might not even be able to fix one town. Don't ask me how I might, because I know we can't. Only tyrants try to bend the will of all the people all at once.
"But one man, or a dozen: this we can do," she says, looking over at Oiguina and Assawetough to include them here. "I believe we can."
She gets up, brushing her shift off. "I'm going to the water. Leave me alone for a little while. I will return soon."
divination"Wait," Hannah gets up, taking a step after her. Just one: respectful. She can sense that. There's respect in the way Hannah deals with her now; respect in the way Assawetough looks at her. Even Oiguina eyes her with new interest.
"What if we leave?" Hannah blurts this out, like it's forbidden and dangerous, a hot coal in the mind. "What if we just ... leave and make our own town, somewhere where they can't find us?"
DevonDevon waits. Hannah doesn't have to urge her; she pauses, and looks. Same for Oiguina, or Assawetough: they are strange sisters, new ones, flawed ones, but they are sisters. Devon waits.
And she just gives a small nod. "We might. Make a town. Defend it. Because eventually it will be found. But we will need more people. And first, I want to look, and... see what I might see. There are always many paths. It wouldn't hurt to look down a few of them to see where they might lead."
She pauses before she leaves, and says -- awkwardly, a bit stiffly: "Eat something. Drink water. Rest. Ask Oiguina and Assawetough if they will help you practice listening to thoughts. It might make you tired, so don't exhaust yourself. But try."
divinationClearly, the mantle of responsibility -- leadership, even -- sits ill on Devon's shoulders. Fianna though she is, she's not exactly a social butterfly. She's not exactly a leader of men or witches. Wasn't before, at least. Now: harder to say. Necessity changes all things. Hannah nods to her, quick and acquiescent.
Assawetough and Oiguina nod, too. More complex gestures; nothing so simple as fealty or obeisance. Respect, yes -- recognition, also. As she leaves, Assawetough goes back to sharing her hare with Hannah. Oiguina watches her until she is a shadow amongst the trees; then nothing.
Back into the forest, then. Perhaps she looks for a still pool of water, and finds a shallow puddle at the edge of a stream. Perhaps she doesn't need such trappings. Either way, dusk has become twilight, and visual details are quickly disappearing into dim blue shadow.
[if there is a roll for scrying, roll it! if there isn't a set one... percep + occult or enigmas! and give me some indication (IC or OOC) of what she's scrying for.]
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