A puppet-show, and its consequences.

[channe]

There are children in the town square.

A gang of children, to be exact, a noisy, impromptu gathering of eight and nine-year-old boys and girls and their shrieking younger siblings. Some have brought their parents, and some have not; they're all here to see the free puppet show someone's set up in the corner, and why not see a free puppet show, on a spring day as lovely as this one?

They gather tight together -- all save skinny Cary, the chandler's boy, who grew up far too fast after that fateful night the neighbors still talk about in hushed voices, and who stands with sunken eyes as old as his father's on a bench in order to be taller than everyone else -- taller, even, then the baker's apprentices, who have arrived in droves to distribute sweets and sticky-buns to young hands and collect half-shillings from their parents.

It is almost as if things are normal again.

The show is a little different than your standard Punch-and-Judy fare. It's primarily slapstick with a political twist, featuring one dark-skinned, white-haired puppet belaboring the other with a stick, and the other puppet -- in a uniform tabard curiously fashioned from colors that belong to both Straka and Janeiro, becoming one or the other depending on which way the puppeteer turned his hand -- screeches and screams and generally retreats behind the curtain. There is a hilarious chase scene. The soldier throws a miniature cream pie at the drow; the drow dances around in agony and chases the soldier.

It's quite funny, really, until the lute-player stops the chase-music and the cream-pies turn to words.

"None can stand against me! I am Audmathus!" the drow-puppet screams. "I put my pants on backwards and ride a pink horse!"

"Don't hurt me, Mr. Audmathus!" says the soldier-puppet in a high, girlish voice. "I'll do anything! I'll even dance the tarantella in a dunce-cap! I'll lick the underdark from your boots! I'll do cartwheels for your priestess! I'll bare my breast for your evil god's knife! Because that's what I do best!"

The children are still finding it moderately funny. The parents -- well. Not so much. Not anymore.

They whisper and talk amongst themselves. Some spirit their children away, offended, their offspring kicking and screaming at the offense of being taken away from a wildly enjoyable pastime; others smirk, leaning back, recognizing an iota of truth in this subversive display.

"I'll spare you," says the Audmathus-puppet, "if you sell your soul to me, so that I may flay your hide and hang your liver to dry on your mother's laundry-line and so that I can make wine of your hot blood!"

Predictably, there's much less giggling at that. Pies are forgotten; little ears, who hear tales of soulless Aiger-na at St. Iona's on sabbath mornings, who are cautioned by their mothers to 'be good, or Aiger-na will come in the night,' are trained; little eyes are wide.

"I shall, I shall! You may have my soul!" sobs the soldier, and he drops to his knees.

The show is over a few minutes later, and, recounting it for friends and family later, many people just don't remember what happened afterward. Many don't stay. Many parents have already hauled their children away, disgusted.

Nobody claps at the end, at any rate.

----

Later on that evening, a Janeiro patrol on the outskirts of town will encounter an interesting gaggle of troublemakers: Cary, and his noisy little gang of rattish street boys. They'll burst from the bushes, throwing rocks they've stashed in their pockets at the patrol, hooting and hollering, screaming 'Soulless!' 'Soulless!' and just generally having the time of their lives.

What the patrol does next, really, is up to them.

[Isobella]

Imagine Janessa's intrigue at a puppet show displayed in town square! How convenient it had been that she had just been there shopping a short while earlier. A delight of her youth could certainly be spared a moment or two couldn't it? She would linger at the back with her little parcel of things, watching the show. She seemed neither disgusted nor delighted, though perhaps her lips might have formed a little smile here or there at some of the more humorous parts.

However when the show would grow more dark and frightening and the little ones drawn away she would remain, perhaps with few others if any. She was curious if she would be able to catch a glance at the puppeteers, though as the show seemed to be finishing, and the puppets more threatening it would seem that the towns folk were giving her strange looks. She couldn't very well expect their trust in the Rememdium if she lingered too long watching something they had deemed immoral. And so unfortunately she was able to learn no more and would leave the square herself, a little more curious if this show and those signs she had seen were connected.

[Vanidor]

There would be much cursing, most of it directed at the children and their errant rock throwing. Rock throwing could and name calling was expected, especially by the men who had taken up the task of helping defend Myrken. It was harder on the two men who once wore the tabard of Straka. All they had done was try their hardest to defend the province from within and without, and this was how they were repaid... But they held their tempers, beyond the cursing and the demand that the boys return home, lest their mothers find out about their delinquency...

That was, until a popular young recruit named Gareth had his forehead split open by a thrown rock. The boy would sway in his saddle, the blood pouring down his face and staining the grey of his tabard. That was the funny thing about headwounds. Especially those that would slash across the 'brow. Blood would seem to come from everywhere, and it was hard to tell exactly how bad and how deep such a wound could be. But there was one thing for certain. There was a lot of it, and the boy could only whimper as he fell from his saddle and landed with a thump upon the dusty road.

Needless to say, the remaining patrol men would veritably explode. Three turning their horses to charge the youths and drive them away. Perhaps to apprehend them and turn them over to their parents (if they had any). The last two, a particular sergeant named Tyrol, would attend to his fallen. Gareth had made a fabulous meat pie, and he wanted to make sure the boy would live to make more... and perhaps prove to the people of Myrken that they, Janerio and reformed Straka, would be exactly what the province needed to stay alive.

[Alyrra]

The puppet show had been something of strange humor, even for one who had been born far beneath the surface of this terribly bright world. Yet from the shadows she had watched, her cowl hung far enough over the rich obsidian of delicate elven features so that they could not be percieved by those close by. With the turn of events and the darkening of the attitudes, she had found it rather within her interests to retreat, leaving the humans to their strange ways. She was in no mood to be hung in the town square and gutted or burned at the stake (that -was- what these humans did to those they percieved as villians, was it not?) simply because she bore the same coloring as Faeryl's little group.

It was from the shadows, those loving tendrils of darkness that are so willing to embrace the Underdark's escaped rogue, that she witnessed the throwing of rocks at guards as well. A slight squinting of light-pained eyes from beneath her cowl as she notes one of the guardsmen falling, only to leave the woman dashing out from her place so that she might offer some aid. Her disguise - momentarily - forgotten, she lifts gloved hands toward a pouch and draws forth a few vials of some potent pain reliever, along with bandages. They could take the lad to the Remedium, but with a head wound, one needed to know just how much damage was done and how quickly it needed to be treated. And so she offers her items to the man caring for the fallen lad, her head ducked slightly downward to keep the shadows in their jealous cover of her features. If they were taken? She might stay to try and help. She might run away in order to keep from being noted for what she truly was. It simply depended upon how she was recieved.

[Vanidor]

The woman would find the sergeant already leaning over the boys head and pouring water from his canteen upon the injury. He had a bloody cloth in his hand as well, something he had yanked from a pouch at his side. "Gareth! Boy, you best not die on me from somethin' so stupid as a rock! Else I'll come t'the other side and shit kick ya back t'life!"

And this is what the woman would find herself coming up to. An odd sort of compassion (maybe that was how soldiers were?) and a man with only partial knownledge of the healing arts. Which was just as well that this woman offered her services. It was also just as well that Tyrol was more concerned with his charge, he wouldn't notice the darker skin (or maybe he'd just chalk it up to one of the darker skinned races of humans?) of this stranger.

"If yer gunna help, make sure the boy doesn' pass out. I gotta make sure those idiots don' hurt any o'them kids over this." And then he'd nod his head. Hope the woman would accept that. "I'll give ya a few bits er shillin's if ya can help 'im survive t'the Remedium...." And then Tyrol would hand over his own bandage and go to start yelling at his soldiers...

Hopefully they hadn't banged up the kids too badly. At least they hadn't drawn any weapons...

[Alyrra]

Lips part for a moment as the Drow watches the man wander off leaving her with the wounded lad. Of course, she did still have a few tricks up her sleeve when it came to healing wounds. Though whether they worked for humans she was about to find out. Dipping one gloved fingertip into a small container of salve, she then spread it against the cleaned, but still heavily bleeding wound. The blood would slowly stop flowing with that potent mixture of herbs and tonics placed upon the wound, even as she settled upon her knees beside the lad so that she might draw one arm beneath his head to let both his head and shoulders rest upon the leather-embraced support of her thighs.

Vyctausa slowly reached back into the pouch at her side as she leaned over the wounded human, her gaze sweeping along his features to search for any signs that he was near to passing out. He did not seem to be quite hitting that point, though he was also not paying enough attention to the here and now that he seemed to have noticed the darkness of her ebon flesh. The potion from her pouch is finally brought up to the lad's lips, even as she lifts it beneath her hood to let her teeth free the stopper from the mouth of the bottle.

"Drink this... It should heal the wound," the woman purred out in a soft tone, her words accented thickly with that exotic elven tongue that had so recently been the only thing she spoke.

The potion brought to the boy's lips, she helps to shift him upward enough that he might drink of its contents. It was one of her private stock, and so something that would work to quickly help the flesh to begin knitting itself together. So often her kind used such things for torture sessions, so that their prey would not die, but could survive long enough to be tortured longer. She had found more practical uses for the mixture, at least.

Unfortunately, with the liquid half-drained from the bottle, the guard finally seemed to catch himself long enough to pay attention to his apparent savior. Only to find delicately sculpted features of striking obsidian hovering above him, half-hidden in the shadows of a cowl. With a start, and a yell, the man was scrambling to his knees, his head already healed, though the blood that had flowed still remained slowly congealing upon his forehead and nose.

[channe]

Perhaps the two former members of the Order of Straka would recognize familiar faces amongst the gang of boys. There was, of course, the one who had painted those silly messages in on the Wall last summer; the filth-mouthed one who'd lost his parents to the Bloody Flux; or the one was always getting into fistfights with other boys in the yard where children play stickball.

It was a game -- it was all a game, really, until the boy Charley's rock collided with Gareth's forehead, and the blood began to pour. At first, Charley hooted with pleasure, as if he'd just bagged a trout in Silver Lake -- but he struggled soon enough as the patrol bagged him, struggled enough that, perhaps, they'd feel the need to cuff him like the errant, misbehaving troublemaker he was. As he struggled, what might have happened? Did a fist hit an eye? Did he twist in their grasp so a muscle pulled too far?

(Later, they'll find his mother, pale with worry, who would take him inside and thank the soldiers -- and then shake her head. "He's jus' a boy," she'd say, before disappearing into the smoky house, "an' what's this world comin' to, when grown men feel the need t' hit li'l boys?")

But, before that, as Vyctausa and the sergeant attempt to heal poor put-upon Gareth, one of the apprehended boys would lift his finger, and point at the newcomer -- "Dirt-elf! Dirt-elf! She's a dirt-elf!" he'd screech.

[Isobella]

After having left the puppet show it seemed that she would be on her way back to the Rememdium, often Janessa's location of choice these days. However it would seem that shortly after she left the puppet show was over, and there were many sounds of voices..men, boys, and then screaming. She couldn't quite make out the words in the screams but they certainly seemed distressed. Her destination would change then and the red-haired woman would be hurrying back towards the town square, not slowing until she was within watching distance of the group of people who had gathered there.

Rather than immediately rush forward and into the middle of something unknown she would wait there then, trying to figure out exactly what was going on.