Swarm.

Swarm.

Postby catch » Sat Sep 14, 2013 6:04 am

The weather has been hot, and it has been dryer than is comfortable for most farmers. Despite it, the crops have grown to monumental proportions, there in the Sikasoon valley. There is plenty of work to be had for idle hands, whether it is gathering the fruit from the fields, to transport, to preparation for winter. There are chickens and geese to draw and stuff with salt, pork to smoke, beef to dry, root vegetables to pickle and can.

There is so much excess that farmers could feel safe to sell their excess.

The caravan was on its way to Westenford, the last leg of a two-month trip, loaded down with fruit and vegetables to sell, and from there, to pick up dainties and cloth that was in such high demand for Myrkenwood. Another two months, and the drivers each were anxious to beat the frost home. Silks and teas, sugar and spices, weighed less that produce, after all. Perhaps the horses could be driven a little harder.

That night, they would remember that the frantic messenger had come too late, his horse lamed in headlong flight by a gopher's hole. They, themselves, had no horses to lend.

That night was split apart by the angry hum of vicious wings.

They were everywhere, fat, hard little bodies that careened through the sky, that swarmed, crawling into clothing and scrabbling at nostrils and mouths. The drivers woke up with screams and howls and curses, attacked by creatures they could not see, for the night was made pitch-black by their bodies, and the waving, frantic torches picked up only the vague shape of cigar-shadow darts. It was not until morning that they could see what had happened, what it was.

A man had broken an arm in the chaos. The horse-boy had been trampled when the horses had fled, terrified, screaming at the beasts that poked into their nostrils and ears and eyes. Every bit of food had been devoured.

The caravan-leader morosely turned one of the bodies in his hand as the messenger gasped out what he had been sent, to warn the countryside, as far as Myrken Wood and Dauntless, if needed. The other men were trying to find the horses, but he, with bluntness, told the man that he'd have no horses to spare.

The man held, in his hands, the body of a locust the likes of which he had never seen, a locust with the colors and patterns of red and gold.
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Re: Swarm.

Postby catch » Mon Sep 23, 2013 2:40 am

When the swarm came, they came upon wings of thunder.

There were whispers, frantic rumors, of a locust infestation the likes of which even the old, grey-haired men had never heard of. The wiser men drove themselves and their workers day and night, to harvest early the fall crops that there might be something for winter saved from ravenous, golden jaws. Those on the farthest edges of Rhaena's Myrkenwood, farthest from corruption, drove themselves thus.

The interior saw no need. After all, hadn't the summer crop been bountiful? Tainted eyes looked to the horizon, and it was a thundercloud - a strange thundercloud, granted, but nothing more than a bit of storm and rain. The revelers that lingered at Darkenhold turned back to their dance and their talk, the townsfolk that had nothing to do with production of food went back to their trades.

The insects struck, the promised storm, at the dark of night.

The townspeople would be awoken by the sound of hard, chitinous bodies striking the sides of their buildings, rattling against shutters that had been closed in anticipation of a storm that was entirely different than the one now. A few un-stabled animals screamed, those horses and livestock not protected by walls driven mad by the blind blundering of locusts in search of food. For any inside, it was a relatively calm, quiet night, save for the noise of wings; for those at Darkenhold, the revelers in the tents, they would have a harder time of it, with fat, squamous insects burrowing into clothes, trying to explore noses and ears, squashed by desperate hands.

They settled on the golden fields and verdant crops that had bore so fruitfully mere weeks ago. As day dawned, the fall wheat and corn, the fruits that stood in the orchard, the squash and peas and beans - all the beautiful flowers - were in the process of being devoured by a carpet of gold and scarlet, a writhing, undulating mass of ravenous insects, dressed in capes of Rhaena's chosen colors.
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Re: Swarm.

Postby Treadwell » Mon Sep 23, 2013 7:10 am

"Locusts."

Councilor Treadwell stands in his bedroom, peering through the windows there out at the fields near the house. He, himself, is no farmer, but he instead has a good-sized garden growing behind the house and a good-sized stable, carriage house, and barn to hold (in turn) his horse (and often his pig), his carriage, and much of the food stores already harvested or purchased. But with an oncoming wave of ravenous insects, the red-gowned tax collector feels sick.

Locusts mean famine.

He certainly has enough stored back for his own family and servant staff. . . for how long? A month? Two? Three, at a stretch?

The Tubbian Church has its own food stores, as a necessity, for its faithful. Pigs are farmed constantly, supplying meat; the fields around the church are the source of food enough for some time, at least under normal circumstances. Some small percentage of it had already been harvested, but not nearly all. Its chief benefit, at the moment, is the great barn adjoining the back of the church building. The Tubbians are prone to gluttony, yes, but their holy scriptures, The Folds of Tubbius, stress just as much (if not more) the virtues of saving for much leaner times. They will be safe. . . but only for a time.

Eat in excess as your stores allow, though be not unwise about your feasts! Save and store away, so that you might know your joyous, bountiful exorbitance more than not! So say the Folds in part.

Onto a bedside couch a pale, sweating Aloisius sinks, wheezing as he flumps heftily into place. Both hands fall to rest on his immense, gurgling gut. Both beady, wet eyes stare absently through the windows of his bedroom, taking in the hint of the oncoming wave of red and gold washing over the fields and land.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: Swarm.

Postby Jirai » Mon Sep 23, 2013 9:17 am

"Th' 'ell be that?"

The youth was balanced atop a roof in the dark of night when the sound reached the child's ears. It was only a few moments longer before the locusts arrived in a wave, triggering stifled yelps and shrieks from the urchin as Cat batted frantically while endeavoring to not fall off the roof. In the end, the waif's descent from the roof, while not a true fall, was by no means as controlled as one might hope. Cat hit the ground hard, with a shout, rolling to feet and still trying to smash the offending insects. Finally, head wrapped in jacket, the youth limped off in a rather drunken fashion, still swatting futilely, desperate for shelter.
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Re: Swarm.

Postby Dulcie » Mon Sep 23, 2013 11:51 am

The sound of the wings had woken Dulcie up in the middle of the night. She had been sleeping with her windows open, enjoying the cooler air of the fall night. As the sound got louder she realized some of the locusts had made their way inside. Windows and doors of her little secluded cottage were slammed shut and the locusts were stomped until Dulcie was satisified with their absence long enough to go back to sleep. It wouldn't be until she went to check on her siblings at the farm that she would see the real damage that had been done.
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Re: Swarm.

Postby catch » Thu Sep 26, 2013 6:04 am

For two days and nights, they lingered. Myrkenwood had become a breadbasket, an uncommon burst of fertility under the warm, blessing sun, that even a million ravenous maws needed some time at their task. Farmers could helplessly watch, though some went out with their boys and their men and attempted, in desperation, to beat some of the jeweled beasts away. In town, one went only to the tasks that were needed, and scuttled from building to building with a mouth-covering and shawl to keep the things from blundering, buzzing, into face and hair. They drowned by the hundreds in any open bucket of water, fouling horse-troughs and uncovered wells with the stacking of their bodies. There were accidents; high-spirited horses went mad, and even the most stoic ass could not stand the feel of chitin-bodies slamming against nose and eyes, an infernal buzzing about their ears. A broken bone or two, nothing worse; a lad had the senses knocked out of him by the rearing of his pony.

The sound of droning wings, of the cacophonous buzzing of mating-pairs, became a background noise, a constant memory of the swarm that bored into the brain, refused to go away. Until, this morning, it stops, a sudden and deafening silence.

The swarm has moved. There linger the red-and-gold locusts, of course; locusts in their hundreds, unwilling - as of yet - to move on. But the body of the swarm has pressed on, riding the eastern wind, likely to perish in the cold heights of the Sikasoon Mountains before ever reaching Derry or Thessilane.

Behind them they leave devastation. Those farmers who toiled tirelessly are spared scattered fields of their crops, driven to exhaustion, yet grimly satisfied. The root vegetables linger on on those who had the presence of mind to stake covering over them, everything from cheese-cloth to priceless, heirloom quilts pressed to the task. Whatever lies in the greenhouse of Darkenhold, or the scattered solars of those rich enough to own them - yet what had been grown there, due to Rhaena? Flowers, and hardly edible, save to locusts, and their brothers have downed every last, colorful bloom. Strangely, there is a circle of green that lingers, a five-foot radius around a madman's lonely shack, where no locust has dared to land.

Cellars and store-houses are still full of the bounty of summer, save in the rare instances where chinks were not properly covered, and locusts wriggled in. Pickle-jars line shelves, sheaves of wheat stack to the ceiling, while their threshed brethren lay in stout, oaken barrels. Perhaps another crop can be quickly put in the ground, before the frost comes, if men and women could be prised away from parties and frivolities...

_____________________________________________

"To hell with Madame Farwyn, and to hell with her party. She can get her cakes from somewhere else."

"But, Master -"

Tom Baker was a practical man, and a true artist. His specialty has always been in the realm of treats and specialty breads, never stooping himself to the coarse, good fair that townsfolk ate every day. He had seen a grand rise in his business with Olwak, and now her Vice-Governor, for he could make truly delicate, icing-filled cakes, so slight that it was an explosion of flavor on the tongue before it melted away. Or tiered cakes of grandeur. He had, in fact, been working on a truly marvelous cake for Farwyn's party, the centerpiece that was an edible dragon, with nostrils that really spewed fire. It lay, now, under Tom's knife, his grey eyes steely under his bushy, white brows as he regards his apprentice with a look that shut the boy's mouth.

"This ain't a time for fancies and cakes, boy. Don't know if you ever lived through famine. I have. I'll be damned if I waste good flour on fripperies. Yes, fripperies. I don't got no illusion about my craft. No more cakes. We stick with bread, good bread, and we don't fill it with sawdust. If I'm wrong, no harm done. If I'm right - we'll be wantin' bread far more than cakes, I wager."


_______________________________

A few others, those free of mind, did the same thing as Tom Baker. Over the course of the day, the wiser businessmen who were eager to spring on new clientele suddenly changed back to their good, though base, fare. Tea was turned around and sent away, to be sold north or south for coin or traded for sundries that would keep, like mead and beer. The fancy, elaborate menus became a bevy of soup and stews, items that could be prepared in bulk, and easily served. The fancy linens were taken down, in helpless defiance of the Vice-Governor's laws, because such fripperies could be quickly sold.

The keen-eyed, and the wise, prepared for the worst.
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