Maya nods to the others to not create an issue when Rick and the rest return. She greets Dana with relief and motions for her to join her near the fire. She watches as Rick settles in and nods at his question. "Yes, Rick, there are a number of people missing. Lindsey took several girls with her and left in that direction. Simon took a couple of boys with him and went in that direction. I think there are several people dug in with Dot around a lean-to over at that side of the camp and a few more are probably gathered about the tent still standing out there, and I am pretty sure there are some wandering lost and cold."

She pauses, waving her hands at the kids near her. "The group has imploded and there is very little to be done at this time except to let it happen. We were a bit too ambitious, you and I. We both wanted to see the greater number of people survive, even though our techniques are very far apart, but there was too much petty bickering and too many hidden agendas to allow either of us to succeed. I would like to offer you a chance to request admission to this group and work together with us, but not on your former terms. Whatever the reason, your way did not work out well. Can you admit that and work with me to create something different with the people we have left? We will only accept those who want to join us, not those who want to control us. There is no point trying to frighten us as that will not gain you anything. Think about it. In the morning, those remaining from our smaller band will be voting on accepting others into the group. If you and the others are set on running something based on your former experiences, there is a lot of space out there for you to go to and be that group."

Dana rushes to Maya and warmly hugs her, embracing the scarred lady into closer to her.
"I am happy to see you, but that bulge is a blade. Find good use for it." she whispers and discreetly hands her the knife.

[Nim - 4th day - Main Camp] #7

I watch the goings on closely. Unable to understand the speech but gleaning what I can from tone and body language.

I lean towards Cailin

Maya hugs Dana and takes the knife, placing it up the sleeve of the animal pelt she is wearing for clothes.

Once she is done with Maya, Dana runs excited to Caillin and warmly hugged her.
"I am so glad to see you again..." she said, then came Raff and Summers that got similar treatment. Dana looked around and asked "Is Addie around?".

Raf squirmed. The hug was not unwelcome, but felt a bit awkward. She was older, and so beautiful. And a lot taller than he was.

Embrace finished, he said, "No, I don't know of anyone that's seen her since things Rickland self-destructed."

He didn't really know that girl (though of course everyone knew who she was), so with so much going on hadn't noted her absence. It occurred to him to ask around, but was keeping half an ear on the conversation between Maya and Rick.

Day 4, evening, remains of the big camp

Once it became clear that nobody was going to trash or raid the lean-to, Pierre relaxed enough to think about other practical matters. The one remaining tent was going to be a whole lot less useful with a hole melted into the side. If they had a tarp it would be easy enough to fashion a fix but, they didn’t have any clothe except what they were wearing.

He snapped his fingers “Hey gang, anyone willing to give up part of their flats, top or bottom? I think we can lash a couple of chains of clothes so that we could pull a shirt tight across the hole in the remaining tent. Keep at least most of the rain out.”

Widget pointed out “Flats aren’t water proof at all, wouldn’t take too long to soak through.”

Leslie added “Besides, water will flow down the tent, under the flats, and into the hole. Unless you can glue them to the tent, won’t help a lot.”

Pierre grumbled under his breath a bit, but while tightly stretched fabric tended to shed water even when not water proof – the whole principle behind most umbrellas and tents, Leslie had a good point about water already on the tent running into the hole.

Then unexpectedly Rusty spoke up. “The pitch of these trees is pretty sticky, would that work?”

Pierre gave a small arm pump “Nice catch, mon gars! They used to use pine pitch to caulk things to make them water proof. I’m pretty sure we could use it to help seal a patch in place. Won’t be totally waterproof because pitch won’t hold tight enough to stretch it, but should keep most of the water out.

Then Dot offered “What about the skin suits? I know they aren’t water proof either, remember Addie had those juices oozing out when she used one to cook that vegetable mush? But I bet they wouldn’t leak as much as the flats do, and we have that suit here in the lean-to.”

“I love this group!” Pierre enthused. Problem solving not problem making. We can do this – we have enough fresh pine branches here that have some pitch leaking out of them anyway, and we could actually kind of do both, tie it in place and put pine tar around the up-slope side to make the water run over or around it. I bet it leaks anyway, but not that badly.”

“We could soften the pitch up some with the fire.” Pointed out Widget.

“Yes, then throw in some of the branches we were beating up anyway, since without Sim here it is burning down kind of quickly.

They set to work, and in the end it took much of their flats, one of the impromptu staves, Dot’s long arms, Dot’s and Pierre’s night vision, and everyone getting kind of sticky -- but they got the patch held in place. They didn’t have enough tar to make nearly as good a seam as Pierre would have liked, but “Well, I sure hope it doesn’t decide to rain now, after being so dry, but at least the tent shouldn’t totally flood.” Then thinking about rain, and looking at how they’d thinned the covering of the lean-to in search of pitch, he had them put the ‘soup-pants’ and the remaining pieces of flats stretched out over the top of the lean-to, pinned down with a few branches, to hopefully make that structure a bit more rain resistant.

When they finished that, Pierre was pretty happy with their work and ready to finally get some sleep until Rusty said “I was looking at the big fire, where Maya’s group is. The orcs came back, I saw Rick by the light of the fire.”

“Saint Esprit sur un skidoo” muttered Pierre under his breath, then more openly “I hope this doesn’t cause a new uproar.” Glancing at Dot he added “But Addie must have followed Rick, one of us should go over there and let her know where we are.” The troll had been voicing her concerns as dark had fallen and nobody had seen signs of the human girl.

Leslie shot back “I’m not trying to make my way over there in the dark, I’d break my neck or something.”

“Fair point. Dot, I guess it is you or me, the other one stays here and keeps an eye out for trouble.”

Dot stood up, looked around, then said “You go – everyone seems so scared of trolls for some reason, if I’m here probably trouble stays away.”

That made so much sense that Pierre quickly gathered up a couple of rocks and a solid stick, then worked his way toward the other fire to find Addie and find out what was going on.

Dana said to Raff "This is kind of bad, it is unlike her to go unnoticed I could usually spot her from half a camp. Did Vincent ever come back from his 'scouting'? "
The camp was a mess and Maya seemed to have gathered some new followers, or atleast people that kept close proximity to her.

Dana begun searching for Addie and Vincent, out of all the kids in that camp, she felt responsible for these two since they wanted to be part of her small pack.
Dana asked Summers "Can you try and call Addie to see if she answers? She usually is the one organizing things not the one to keep a low profile. " She sighed "Did Vincent ever got back?'" With Summers confirming what Raff has said (that Vincent was missing)

Dana felt her stomach turns, she felt physically sick on how two people of her group could just go out missing like that and with all the chaos, nobody was going to even look for them. She wondered how many other kids have gone missing with nobody even knowing about it? If some large cat snatched a kid, will she even hear about it or will everyone just assume he went with some other group?

But Dana was worried about two specific people, the one that belonged to her own pack, she could not possibly care for everyone. She asked Caillin " Can you try and find Vincent and Addie with a spirit or something?" Looking at Caillin's new friend she extended her hand and said "Dana"

Pierre, Day 4, evening, Maya's camp

Pierre had only caught the end of Maya's speech to Rick, so he wasn't sure of all that was going on, and at first he was going to be quiet until they'd finished talking. But then he realized that neither of them had reacted to his approach, and he wasn't sure if they hadn't noticed him or had just overlooked him --but either way he didn't want to get accused of eavesdropping. Discussions between leaders were not really his normal ground.

So when Maya was done he cleared his throat and said "Just thought I'd let you two know that the lean-to is intact and OK -- thank goodness nobody torched that! And we got a rough patch on the damaged tent, won't be totally waterproof if we ever get actual get rain, but should keep the worst of the dust, damp, and stuff out. And we have a few of the tools secured. So if, you know, you have people who still need somewhere to sleep you can send them back to the old camp for tonight. If Sim could maybe do his magic with the fire it would be nice, but like we found out last night if you pack people into the lean-to it gets warm enough."

Not sure how to end he trailed off "So, uh, let us know in the morning what is going on?"

Dana listened to the interchange between Pierre and Maya by that time Dana started noticing the fear crawls into her mind, what if all this chaos was due to some dark magic. To dismantle the camp without directly confronting it. Sure, she knows better than to blame 'magic' for their troubles but events did unfold so quickly and the move from the feast for Grok to Anarchy was so drastic that Dana cannot suppress that deep fear from magic herself.

Maya had been quite intent on Rick and had not noticed the Dwarf as he approached, but looks over at him as she waits for Rick to respond to her. "Pierre, Right? Thank you Pierre, there are indeed people here that could use the other tent. It is very good that you managed to save so much and provide for the others. Please let others know that you have space for them to sleep tonight and by all means, ask Sim if he will help with the fire. In the morning, we will be talking to everyone again to see if anyone wants to ask to join the smaller group. We are looking for people that are willing to put differences aside and work together to help us all survive."

She waves her hand at the remains of the larger camp. "It is very sad that this had to happen and I am concerned that there are kids wandering about lost and cold. Speaking of which, by any chance is Addie with you over there? Or Aria?"

[Nim - 4th day - Main Camp] #8

I continue watching body language and attempting to follow the conversation as best I can without understanding the words. When Dana returns I clearly brighten to see another elf. Though I don't understand her other words when she sticks out her hand and names herself the meaning is obvious. I shake and put my hand to my chest

Nimlaniel'Erudima Aduelwa. Hengar Sperethiel?

Pierre, day 4, satellite camp

When Maya asks about Addie, Pierre looks concerned. He turns to Rick and asks "She didn't go with you, or after you? I never noticed her come down the hill, so I assumed she'd headed off to help you -- if seemed a bit like her to charge off to try and fix things, you know?"

Rick shakes his head and explains "When I left she looked fragging wrecked -- she's been messed up ever since hearing about the rape, but this was worse. Taking her to go chase after Mohamed would have been stupid. But they say Lindsey took off with most of the girls, maybe she went to mother hen them?"

Pierre looks dubious "I don't know ... I never saw her and Lindsey hanging together much. Well, maybe, if she saw it as her duty, you know? She didn't leave with them from camp, but could have seen what was happening and intercepted them, I guess?"

"Anyway, if we are staying here we might want to make another lean-to or two tomorrow, and get more thatch on the first one. The girls who left are less than the ones who slept in that tent before, so we have a higher ratio of kids to shelter than we did before, and we didn't really all fit before. Except that Simon and some others left, but I didn't get a count of them .... maybe we should do a head count in the morning?"

With that, he goes to find a few people to go back with him to the old camp. Quickly he realizes that most of those outside the tents are orcs. Given what has just happened he doesn't want to take all of them back with him, but wonders if they will be willing to split up? Fortunately when he asks if any will join him and Dot -- he emphasizes the presence of the troll to make it clear that the orcs won't be able to easily just take over -- Jugalo and a couple of the other orc boys are willing to split off from the larger group, and he nabs a couple of the human boys who want to sleep in a tent more than they are worried about the orcs.

On the way between camps, Jugalo eventually asks "So, if you and Dot are over there, Addie must be there too?"

Pierre winces -- they all are a bit fussed about one girl, aren't they? Himself not excluded, of course. But there could be other campers missing, and was anyone really worried about them? He sets his shoulders a bit and replies "Naw, we think she might have gone with the other girls. I guess us boys will have cook and clean for ourselves -- wait we doing that anyway."

Dana replies Ni Hengar Sperethiel, Hangar Einglish, Arabic and Hebrew.
She then repeats the same sentence in Einglish "I do not speak Sperethial, I speak Einglish, Arabic and hebrew. "

Hoping that saying the same sentence (or so she thinks she says) in both Sperethial and Einglish will help the girl to pick up some Einglish and well, Dana would love to learn a new language if someone had taught her.

Addie, day 5, Bridal Veil Falls

She was confused, briefly, to find herself on the rocky edge of a shallow pond rather than burrowed under a fallen tree. Then the night, and its nightmares, came back to her. It had seemed like the sky should be brightening but it had still be too dark for her to see decently, when her pity party had been disturbed by snuffling and cracking twigs. It had been a ways away, but instinctively she’d been sure it was smelling her -- the large piece of meat that was out of place here.

In the dark, alone, already buffeted by doubts, fear had overtaken her. She’d slid out from under the fallen tree and stumbled away -- no doubt making plenty enough noise to let anything follow her. She’d run faster until she’d inevitably stumbled. After tumbling down a slope and slamming against a tree she’d staggered to her feet, only to step in ankle deep water.

Some lucid remnant of her mind reminded her that water doesn’t hold footsteps or smell well, so she’d done her best to stay in the shallow creek. Eventually it had come out of the trees into a rocky gully, and with an unobstructed sky there had been enough light to sort of see where she was going.

She didn’t know how long she’d jogged, slid, and scrambled along with the tumbling water, before she’d come to a wider pond. It had seemed like too much of a barrier to handle at the time and she’d finally perched on rocks along its edge, waiting for something to come out of the dark and attack her -- but in the end she’d fallen asleep again.

Woken by the rain, she took stock of her position. Upstream was a tough scramble of flat and steep areas, bare rock near the water. To either side the gully rose, at first slowly then more steeply, trees dotting the slopes giving some possibility of climbing out, but it would be a challenge. And downhill …

When she turned around, she froze for a while. The pond wasn’t more than five metres across, contained by a rocky ledge on the far side. And beyond that ledge was nothing. All she could see beyond was the cloud and rain.

Eventually she had to go look, of course. The cliff below her was not as steep or sheer as the side of an office tower, but it had to be just as high. The water that through itself past the ledge arced away from the wall, and gradually blew apart into spray as it fell.

She whispered into the wind “A veil of tears; how appropriate for this place.”

Addie, day 5, Bridal Veil Falls



Addie wasn’t sure how long she’d stood at the edge of the cliff, mesmerized, before words came softly out of her lips: “Deep. Cold. Remote and hard to find -- a lake or air instead of water.” All she had to do was step out, or dive like into a pool, or find a way to run and jump to get farther out past the edge.

It was funny, when she thought about it, but jumping to your death did require a bit of thought, a bit of technique. Obviously the goal was to die at impact, so tumbling down a rocky cliff, breaking bones, getting concussed, possibly getting snagged somewhere while crippled, to die of exposure, that would be no good. Even shattering your spine on impact but taking time for the shock and possible blood loss to kill you didn’t sound so good. Landing head first, that should be the goal.

But you couldn’t exactly do a practice run, could you?

She found herself actually giggling as she imagined the safety protocols you’d have to follow for safe practice suicide dives. Spirits, why did her brain always try to get silly when it should be serious? No wonder she couldn’t get anything done properly when she lacked focus and seriousness.

Still, she’d miss silly thoughts. Well, she’d be dead, so technically she wouldn’t miss anything … so it was more that giving up on having those fun silly thoughts made her a bit sad. Never to play with her grandmother’s cat again was another sad thought, and...

No, this was no good, she’d never jump if she kept thinking that way.

She stood right up on the edge, took her deepest breath, and screamed out into the wind, rain, and giant lake of air “I’m a screw up. I frag up everything. When I try to keep people together they split apart. When I try to motivate people it turns out wrong. When I try to protect people they get hurt. I never got the marks that would get me into a top college despite Grandma’s pull.”

She kicked at the water flowing past her toes, feeling no fear of falling right now, then resumed screaming all the louder, voice going ragged with the effort “Alll those boys who just wanted me to be a pretty blonde piece of tail? They were right! At least as arm-candy I wouldn’t hurt people.. It ended up being fragging Lindsey who pulled the girls together for their protection and me who got Niyaf raped.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks, dripping off her chin to mix with the rain and creek as she repeated “I got Niyaf raped. I fragging set someone up for that. Me. I’m not Addie the least, I’m the fragging anti-Addison: I don’t protect the weak and punish the guilty, I punish the weak and I probably somehow protect the guilty -- I don’t even fragging know how because I’m too fragging stupid to even know how badly I’m screwing it all up.”

Staring down into the valley now, she did her best to blink away the tear so she could pick out where to aim her leap “You hear that, all of you who aren’t listening? The best fragging thing I can do in this fragged up world is kill myself and stop hurting others. This spot is so fragging beautiful that there should corporate tour busses lined up so people could take pictures but the one good thing about this whole giant pile of drek is that there is nobody here to get hurt by me finally doing the right thing. See world, for once I won’t hurt anyone else, for once I can just frag myself up instead of everyone else. Thank you mountains and trees and creek and rain for not giving a heaping pile of drek what I do, and thank you everyone else for leaving me and the fragging elements alone!”

Finally she felt almost ready. Was there anything else to take care of first? She had nothing with her but her skin suit and the ragged remains of the top part of her flats, and there was no reason to take those off. Was there anything she should do with her link, in case it was ever recovered? Should she leave a note that she was going to climb down the cliff, so everyone could decide that she’d just been dumb and incompetent like always, so that they wouldn’t know she’d just given up? With nobody here to see her she had that option.

She grinned a bit ruefully; who, in this age, would ever get to kill themselves somewhere so beautiful, without any witnesses at all? There wasn’t even a road down there as best as she could tell, probably not even a remote camera beaming the view back over the matrix -- although a camera or small drone would be hard to see, with the threes and rain.

Then it hit her: why the frag wasn’t there anyone watching this place? It was so spectacular; where in the world would somewhere this stunning not have a road in for tourists, or at least a landing pad for VTOLs? Maybe if it was just monitored by cameras?

With a thought she turned on her link, carefully went through the boot up process, then worked her way through the controls like Widget and Pierre had coached her. Maximum sensitivity and transmit range, maximum retry attempts, maximum everything. Even if the clouds and rain blocked her vision she must have line of site for kilometres along the valley from up here, if there was anything on the matrix down there she should be able to pick it up.

And she touched nothing. Not quite true, she thought that maybe there was a very faint touch from Aria at one point, but she quickly shut things down after that -- the last thing she needed was people coming looking for her and getting themselves hurt, or finding her body and getting all upset. It was good that nobody would witness this as it happened, she didn’t need them putting it together after the fact and ending up upset.

And then it hit her. “Aw, DREK! I have to tell them. Frag you, world, just frag you and your cruel sense of humour! I have tol tell them that we are nowhere normal, that there is nobody over the next ridge, that this isn’t a trid special about a week in the wilderness. I don’t know if it is magic or we were kept asleep for years until the matrix changed or if we got taken to somewhere in Asia or just what, but I’ve got to tell them -- we are SO on our own.”

She cried some more, then. Tears at the thought of having to live after all, of picking all the pain and failure and confusion back up, and of having to go back and face her mistakes...

Day 4 evening.
Some time later, Dana went to a remote location and stripped, whispering words in Hebrew she turned herself into an owl. She summoned a minor spirit and ordered it "Carry my clothes and follow me" and as she did she was looking for Lindsey's group. They were not difficult to find because they were not very far from a birds perspective but also because they had a powerful spirit protecting them.
Dana got dressed near their camp and then approached it, visible on purpose to not alarm them. "Good evening ladies" She said.

Day 4, After dark, Maya’s Group

It has taken a little while but Rick has clearly been considering Maya’s challenge…he speaks directly to Maya but it is clear that his words are meant for everyone

“So, the great and glorious Maya is going to let us choose…petition to be in her select group? I had intended to ask her to reconsider and lead with me, or in my absence, but we are clearly too dysfunctional for her to cope with. So now you must beg to be taken in, the rest, she condemns them to a lonely death…how beneficent of her! I have already said this, perhaps some of you weren’t listening? It is going to take all of us to survive this, not small cliques. We don’t know how long we will be here…it certainly looks like it will be a damn long hike back to any kind of civilisation…”

Suddenly he stiffens, arms jerking out to his sides…when he opens his mouth again it is as though a lurid green light has infused him…even his eyes begin to glow…his voice when he speaks is different, rasping as though torn from ravaged lungs…

“Squabble, squabble, I am bored of listening to you all…”

And Rick lunges forwards for Maya with fingers curled in to claws…

Without thinking, Rafferty threw down the piece of wood he'd been whittling and his knife and rushed to place his own body in the path of Rick's attack, willing himself to move fast enough...

Maya is no stranger to danger in the wilds and the few seconds it takes for Rick to reveal his true nature gives her time to be reaching for the knife that Dana had given her. She is probably too slow to have it ready before Rick attacks, but she can hope that the pelt of the cat will give her some special protection and allow her to get a counter attack in. Suddenly, Raferty lunges into the fray from her left side, taking the brunt of the attack. She has time to move slightly apart and ready her weapon, ready for the next attack. She had always thought there was a lot to the quiet boy, and now she is certain.

[Cailin - 4th day - Main Camp] #145

Not expecting anything like that, Cailin is a bit slow to react. But when she does, she very obviously casts a spell on Rick, who starts to levitate a few meters above the ground, far enough from anyone to not be a danger...and no risk getting hit himself.

Maya looks over at Cailin. "Very nice. Very nice indeed. How long can you keep that going." She moves to where Raferty is while keeping an eye on the floating Rick. "So how are you doing, my brave hero?"

[Cailin - 4th day - Main Camp] #146

Cailin doesn't answer right now, very pale and still focused on Rick. She turns him towards the sky, such that he can't see anyone. And if he can't see anyone, he can't attack anyone.

With a growl, she says "Sim, destroy the spirit. Right now would be nice."

[Nim - 4th day - Main Camp] #9

I rush up to place myself and my spear between the floating ork and Maya.

Maya gives a surprised look at the new girl as she also steps forward. Maya's Sperethiel is pretty basic, but she replies as best she can.