Wanderer

[Mason]

[ooc] I really did not want to post this until it was...in better shape. My creative flow has suddenly dried up on it. And, despite all common sense and Stephen Kings 'closed door' process, here is what I have so far. It doesn't make sense yet, don't care if it ever does. I just want to get it out of the desk drawer and...well whatever.
    This is fiction set in the world I was populating in my other thread, Creatures From a Forthecoming Setting
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     No wanderer could abstain from the road for long and Benjamin, a sly creature from great South'an'Yond was no exception. He crept along the dusty road in a rhythmic fashion, his long legs powered by a mystic verse that propelled him ever-forward and satiated his thirst and hunger.

    Whoosh-Ting / Whoosh-Ting,
    The great South'an'Yond / It's no little pond,
    But the world beyond / it's grave!
    The Great Grey Ghost, his / Incorporeal Host
    And all the World to Slaughter
   -Rhyme of the Wanderer, 32nd and 40th Verses


      His eyes spotted a curious shape on the horizon, a merchant-man wagon of rotting wood and iron. The sides were heavily damaged, barbs of wire clung haphazardly to its rotting frame, and on the pilots seat sat a man of bulbous proportion. The wagon was bare and only one disease ridden horse drove it on. The driver spotted Ben and waved.  
Benjamin unholstered his weapon and stood to the side of the road-careful to avoid the stinging brush and creeping brambles. His throat was suddenly parched and he realized he had stopped his song, the magic's quality was gone and Benjamin sucked in a hot lungful of air.
     
     How long had it been? Ten seconds. Benjamin tested his meddle, and resumed his song, urging the magic back to his body. Yes, it is still there. Ben smiled as he felt the moisture slip back into his mouth with the power of the rhyme.
 
      Easterlies, I cry for thee / your belly o steel
      And thorny flesh / mix stitch with stone
      Burn all you own / and die a deathless death
      An honest mans tongue / Kozlokian rum
      Three in one day / will make you stay

    The wagon was nearly upon him now. Ben could see the drivers face and bulbous proportions. Benjamin had not seen a fat man in many years, and he was startled by it. Ben himself was mal-nourished and bony. The weight of his pistol was strenuous on his arm, and he kept shifting his stance to keep it aloft.

    He recalled his last meal, two weeks ago, the salty meat and bitter sauce. The can was still in his satchel for smelling, but the sweet scent had abandoned it this morning, and Ben could only conjure a metallic twang from it, the can he kept for nostalgia and longing. What a meal that had been.

    The driver, too, noticed Ben, and raised his hands peaceably, to show Ben he had no weapon on his persons. Benjamin studied the driver carefully. He held his ground and aimed his pistol at the man's face. A slight shiver went up Bens arm and he knew he could not keep the pistol raised for much longer. Sweat poured from the merchants face and neck and all the while Ben recited the Wanderers Rhyme softly. He could feel the moisture caressing his weak body, the phantom food filling his aching stomach, and slowly he regained some of his strength.
 
      'Ho there!' cried the man, presumably Brewster. The man's voice broke Benjamin from his revelry, but he hung to the verses like a chill to the bone.

      'Get out of the bushes lad, before a spiny toad crawls up your breeches, and tell Brewster what ails you!' The man's accent and tone were one of the Eastern provinces, a place filled with steel cities and billowing coal-stacks. The tone was one of sarcasm, wit and knowledge; bristling with hate and oozing charisma all in one syllabic push. It made the hair on Bens neck jostle to life, despite the accumulating moisture.  

     'Come son, up out of that brush, Deliberate for a moment, as we have all the time in the day,' Brewster considered a moment; 'or the world for that matter.'

     Ben hesitated.

      'Come and see what I can sell you.' The man continued, motioning with one hand, the other slackening the horses' reins.
Ben stole from the brush, his firearm half raised and ready to fire. He studied the man's face, his sharply curved nose, and scraggly hair, and that pointy beard.

     Ben asked, 'What sort of merchant travels the brush lands, where none but the dead come to play?'

    'Why one who knows whom he wants to find. What brings you here traveler? You look not like a pilgrim for the grey ghosts, nor a madman if my eyes do not deceive. Unless you are yourself a grey ghost and I am already dead, in which case our conversation will be exceedingly long-indeed as long as eternity.' Brewster let out a hardy laugh at his jest, pounding his thigh with one meaty fist.  

     Ben smiled at this, and despite the circumstances found himself enjoying the company, which was rare and usually deadly out on the trails.

      'I've heard of you Brewster.' Said Ben, 'and to be honest sir, a merchant like you is known to deal death rather than medicine. A merchant is no prescriber of ailments, unless those ailments are to his benefit-which they usually are. Besides, I'm a healthy man in his prime-no need for medicaments.'

   Brewster sighed and continued, 'You are indeed a man in his prime-but how long will that last? Ten years? Maybe five if you're careful.  Maybe tomorrow, some bull-ape will bludgeon you on a whim. Some unlucky event ordained in the great black book of time. What then young man? Well I'll tell yah', and sell yah' if you're willing- I will take that mortality right from your bones- with secrets gleaned from far Easterlies, techniques and systems I myself have found to be infallible. This information was passed on to me from a shaman in the great grey Easterlies, a man who spoke with the living air and showed me '"'
   
       Ben could feel the magic work almost instantly. Suddenly, he felt very old; he saw his entire life laid out before him, he saw the hourglass of time and all the grains of sand that were his memories and thoughts drop, one by one into the abyss. He clamped a nimble finger to his temple and searched his mind for a passage, rifting through the verses he found one, and recited it in his mind to counteract the merchant's sorcery.

     'Quit your yammering' merchant man', said Ben defiantly. The Wanderers Rhyme swirled syllables around his head, and seeped through his eyes. His sustenance incantation suffered slightly, and Ben felt a minor prickling of exhaustion in his legs.

    'Move along Brewster, a' fore I slit that great belly your cart is carting' around and watch your horses lick the blood from your intestines.' Ben flourished his pistol once more, and with the other, a killing knife-a sly blade with a thick handle of Bull-Bone.

    Brewster grunted and eyed the wanderer carefully.  

    'Ah. Well then lad, I see you do not require everlasting life then, I was mistaken-go home then, away with you!' said Brewster in his milky voice.

    'Damnable merchant what devil you in that body? Grotesque no doubt! I'll kill you for profit and haul you up to the Coven!' Ben cocked his pistol and prepared to fire.

     'No devil here boy-' Brewster exclaimed, 'Only the great wisdom of the ages, secrets gleaned from far Easterlies, techniques and systems I myself have found to be infallible. This information was passed on to me from a shaman in the great grey Easterlies, a man who spoke with the living air and showed me '"'

    'You're mad old man!-no devil and not worth my steel nor' powder. Ride on and speak no more.' Ben holstered his pistol once more and prepared to move on.

    Brewster smiled and prepared to urge his horses on. Hesitantly, he produced a flagon of some brownish liquid from a compartment near his feet, and whistled to Ben.

   'Here lad- Free of charge. Spread the word if you find it agreeable. Good afternoon.' And tossing the flagon to Ben, Brewster moved on into the Brush-lands and the shadow-less horizon.

***********

      Under the milky moon Ben made camp, a humble affair with fire built from Bull-Ape shit, dried in the harsh sun of the day. It was at least a week old, and Ben worried not for the roaming herds of those creatures-probably taken far north on some scent of pilgrims.  He cleaned his pistol, as was his custom, licking the gears and drivers with his tongue-expending the valuable moisture to keep his method of defense in working order.
   
  He urinated sadly. He ate bugs and drew designs in the dust for amusement. All the while, the flagon Brewster had given him lay by his side.   
   
      He was tempted; he admitted that much to himself. He could feel it there, like some warm boon or treasure, just out of reach. Knowing that in all likelihood it was death to taste-but the temptation was great. The Wanderers Rhyme had finished several hours ago, and Ben wished for sleep and to awake in the morning ready to start the rhyme anew. But his fear was great; the delirium of exhaustion racked his mind with visions:

   He imagined the merchant man creeping somewhere in the dark, away from the light of his fire, waiting to strike once the poison was in Bens loins. He saw the dark like-stealing ritual the man would perform, Ben prostrate and poisoned, Brewster's necromantic presence awakened in the dark, and finally that cold crushing stone to Bens skull ending his life only after those last few moments of agonizing pain.
Ben shuddered at the thought, despite his fifteen years in the Brush Land, and another ten in the South'an'Yond, and those two hellish ones out in the Grey Easterlies.  


Take Two:
   
He wore a long leather coat despite the heat. It hung heavy and ragged on his thin frame. His long hair was tucked unceremoniously under a straw hat wrapped in snake skin.
   
Many words had sprung from Phizel's lips, a handful of them magical. He could sing-
   
         Indeed, he was a singer.

Old dusty tunes that scratch the air. When he got thirsty, he hummed an old tune about quiet mountain springs, long gone now-but still. Still. All about the catacombs of that mans mind.

   Sometimes a soft fuzzy lyric would come to him. It smelled magically of warm summer rains and soft mists in the morning-the kind of mist that is fearful to most for what may lie within, but for Phizel it is redemption and sanctuary. Or the quiet bite of ice-water in mid-afternoon.

   All of these things are relics; Hymns of an era long dead. His own future afforded no certainty, like the world about him. It hung on the precipice of the crowning death throws. Nothing here but the quiet din of the aging desert; and the occasional clash of a well-spun tale. He is a singer and this is his song.
   
He made a man famous in Stovepipe. The river there is full of dead currency, a sickening miasma of orphaned ore; Gold mostly, but other things-lead, iron, the occasional steel rebar. The spout of that river, a cyst of metallic humming and hissing- some dead echoing choir of  
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 [ooc]
     There it is.
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[Steerpike]

Cool.

Love the synaesthesia and the patois, and the oddness of the world.  This definitely demonstrates what the setting itself would feel like.  I can see the Dark Tower influences a bit better now.