Nock

Nock

Postby Rance » Thu Feb 06, 2014 3:44 pm

She discovered the trail of blood and the gouges in the snow where a thing had, like a cumbersome load, been dragged. And then she found, laying derelict, the unfired crossbow.

Someone else would do the stitches; Cherny's frayed flesh would require them, and her fingers shook too violently. After bringing him to the Rememdium Edificium, the girl had excused herself as quietly as possible -- a kiss to the boy's brow was what she left, a tender touch of black-sweat palms to his knuckles, a cheek to press against his own. He would be fine, he would be just fine, and before even the smears of his blood had cooled on her dress, she stumbled into the bitter cold of Myrken night and sought out the wildling, the friend left behind--

The stables were hot and acrid with the breath of horses. The zagging trail of beast's blood marked a crimson narrative through the snow, between the great doors, and into the straw and mud. A climax had already been met -- a struggle, Cherny's wounds, Noura's knife driven to the hilt inside the offending creature. Now, with scraping feet, the seamstress followed the spattered denouement between the stalls. With Dulcie Miller's crossbow thumping like a wooden limb behind her, she meandered toward where the red scrapes terminated behind the furthest stall-partition. On the plank-walls, iron and bridle-leathers dangled, latent decorations to some equine god.

"Noura," she whispered, squinting her eyes against the sickly lantern-light that flickered in the stables.
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Re: Nock

Postby Guppy » Thu Feb 06, 2014 4:42 pm

Most of the horses within the stables were creating a ruckus, the scent of blood upon the air making them nervous. Perhaps eager for combat, given that some were mounts ridden into battle. The stallion that belonged to the Lady Egris was calmly eating his grain, but his head snapped up and nostrils flared as soon as Gloria entered. He gave a low nicker of greeting before his soft nose buried in his feed bucket once more.

The blood was smeared across the floor of the stables in a large swath leading towards Caliir's chosen stable. Other than the movement and occasional noise from the stabled horses, very little stirred.

By the time Gloria had taken her adopted brother to the Rememdium and was satisfied with Cherny's care, Noura had vanished. She left the fallen wolf below and had climbed the loft's ladder, hand over hand. There was little light, so she felt her way over towards Son's bedroll. She had visited Cherny there, once, and knew vaguely where it was located. Damp tears stained her cheeks as she nudged aside his thin covers and hunkered down into his bed for protection. Grief, worry, and regret assailed her. They exhausted her until she slipped into a fitful rest.

When Gloria entered, the whisper was not quite enough to disturb her, but brows knit together as she started to swim free of sleep's embrace.
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Re: Nock

Postby Rance » Thu Feb 06, 2014 5:23 pm

Noura was nowhere to be found. Silence answered her inquiry.

Silence, and at the forefront of Caliir's stall, the mangled, singed corpse of a dead wolf.

A dead wolf with fur still matted by the blood of her friends.

And still lodged between its ribs, a handle.

The handle of a killing knife.

She dragged her sleeve under her nose, gleaming trails of snot and spit left on her embroidered cuff. Her mouth hung open, blasting out economic bursts of breath. The crossbow clattered to the bloody floor behind her, forgotten. With her tattered skirt-hems whispering against the hay, she did not give the blind, flat-faced Caliir or even Lady Egris's friendly stallion even a single glance before--

(It seemed the right thing to do, a repressed desire, an unconscious instinct to recreate an old action)

--she wrapped her blood-stick fingers around the haft of the knife, pressed her gloved palm upon the wolf's bulging shoulder, and liberated the blade.

She held the knife. Noura was nowhere around. Thoughts had not even danced up toward the loft where it would have been sensible to look. No, the shivering seamstress clamped her hand around the knife, shaking free every vestige of disgust and fear that danced through her when she held it. The knife's previous wound smiled at her, a half-winking eye.

"He's my -- my brother," Gloria whispered into a canine ear.

(For a moment, she envisioned another hand cupping over hers, encouraging her. It's alright. It's deserved.)

The seamstress lifted the gleaming point, then swung it down, sinking it into the wolf's lifeless ribs.

"And she's one of my dearest friends."

The edge slithered free, dragging, uninspired. A trembling fist raised, knife poised, until she stabbed the wolf again. And a third time.

"You j'uk'ol. You little shit. You dead little shit."
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Re: Nock

Postby Guppy » Thu Feb 06, 2014 5:47 pm

Gloria's fury was palpable. Deserved, even. Still, the barely-contained fury woke the nestled wildling above and a sleep-filled voice soon broke the brief silence.

"Gloria?," she called from above, in the loft where Cherny and Son made their homes. "Are you -- are you down there? Come up," she requested, half-pleading. It was a quieter, more vulnerable Noura than the seamstress had seen in quite some time, should she venture to scale the ladder.

The whelp looked tiny as she sat among Son's blankets, which had been pulled to her chin. She was seated and her knees were drawn to her chest. Her arms were wrapped around them as she watched with wide eyes from the shadows. The girl looked positively haunted, her expression drawn.

"She was just hungry. Like all of us. And she has pups out there. I killed a mother, even if it was to protect a friend." Her voice was morose and small, the admissions dragged from her as if with great effort. "And now they are condemned to death by my hands. It will mean slow starvation for them."
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Re: Nock

Postby Rance » Fri Feb 07, 2014 2:18 am

Are you -- are you down there?

It took several moments for the words to pierce through the heartbeat pounding between her ears. But with every dip of the knife into the loose, lifeless skin, the static and white-noise in her skull began to thin. At first, the words were a torrent, insensible and garbled; then, another stab, and the seamstress heard the tilt of the question. Another still, and the disparaged fright of it, the individual syllables, knew it was Noura calling to her--

Hands covered, smeared red, clumped with straggling bits of beast-hair, she turned her wrist, then planted the knife into the soft, wrinkled meat beneath the pit of the creature's front leg. A final, squelching insertion of the knife, commanded by a jittering fist.

"A'arclth ag j'et j'uk'ad," she told it.

Getting up to the loft was scarcely an action she remembered. Her hands left wet, red prints on the wooden rungs. When she reached the upper storey, the girl was a sight -- her palms were clumped with gray fur and her dress dangled wetly from her hips and knees, drenched in the muck of a defiled corpse. Her eyes glistened, wet and blank, soft as sheepskin in their texture despite the desecration she'd just performed.

When she squatted beside Son's bed, reaching out to gingerly peel back the edge of the blankets with her red-stained fingers, she tried to offer the cradle of a shoulder to the other girl.

"You -- you protected my brother," she whispered. "You kept him safe. There's -- there's no foul in that, no wrong choice, no mistake."

And if the Glass Sun had an odor, Gloria Wynsee bore it; she reeked of tarsweat and coppery blood and ebbed with scorching warmth. Despite the bloodied mess of her palms, she tried to wrap her firm arms around the other young woman. There was a stiffness in her motions, a formulaic obedience to what was necessary -- giving comfort while wanting it, because there was so much red, red wax and there was a body to burn and--

"Their mother's jaws condemned them to death. Her decision, in her hunger, to attack a boy when someone more powerful and able than her was around? That will be the reason for their death, Noura. And they, in all their instinct?

"They, I imagine, would understand."
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Re: Nock

Postby Guppy » Fri Feb 07, 2014 6:12 am

There were noises, movements upon the ladder and for a moment, the wildling tensed with anticipation of the unknown. Then, it registered that it had been Gloria's voice down there. Gloria's strange language that filtered up through the floorboards, hatred and fury vibrating through her words.

Noura, by comparison, was a wide-eyed doe staring at her from heaped blankets. Blankets that belonged to one of the strongest, most fierce boys she knew. They provided feeble protection against her own all-encompassing guilt. Gloria stooped and peeled back the blankets with bloodied hands. Noura did not falter when it came to the gore, at least.

She wanted to lean into the seamstress. She wanted to take what comfort she could, but all she could see was tiny hungry bellies. The imagined whimpers filled her ears as they waited for their mother to return. She did not deserve comfort and so, she remained where she was; hunched with weight upon her shoulders.

"I do not regret what had to be done. Cherny would have met his end and that would have been--," she trailed off into a faint shudder. "Unacceptable. Still her children did not share their mother's crimes. And you must not hate her for what she did." If Cherny had been hungry, they would have done what they had to.

There was no evil here. Just survival.

Her shoulders shifted back, her jaw set. "I am going to find them." She declared, viciously.

"I am going to save them."
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Re: Nock

Postby Rance » Fri Feb 07, 2014 10:15 am

I am going to save them.

"Come here," she said, carefully peeling the rough blanket the rest of the way away before swiping her moist hand off on the breast of her own dress. Then, almost forcefully, she reached out to try to draw the wildling against her, refusing to recognize the other girl's hesitation -- and there, on the edge of the butcher-boy's bunk, the two young women sat like weary statues. Gloria draped her arm across the whelp's quivering shoulders, scraped her red-stained fingers through Noura''s tangled hair, and slid her thumb like a soothing balm against the crown of the other girl's scalp, because--

--because her mar'dak used to do that. For scraped knees and broken pride, whenever tears threatened to flee their hiding-holes, mar'dak would cradle daughter's head against her bosom and run her digits in circles along the pinnacle of her skull. The heartbeat, always sluggish and weary from the smokeroot, was a sweet, drunken march; the sour stink of her mother's greasy sweat was a bitter and gentling accompaniment; and the touch, the motion against Glour'eya's scalp always, always perfect.

"I've already hated her enough," she said, spreading the fingers of her free hand to display the lumps of hair and wolf-blood. "I am not so rational; I am cold wax. I cannot forgive her, but her pups--"

That hand lowered, trying to gingerly acquire Noura's wrist -- the one that had been twisted in the wolf's violent maw. Carefully, she teased up the whelp's thin sleeve to examine the damage given her by a slavering beast.

Her thumb never stopped circling, rustling wildling-hair, rubbing. In her own chest, as if it wanted, yearned to be a comfort, her heart pumped blood and sand and Sun just beside Noura's ear.

"If -- if you feel they ought to be saved, then I ask that -- that you teach me how to help. For if you desire it, I know too that Cherny would. Because your hearts are more forgiving, more venerate. I," she whispered, a grave admission, "would bludgeon their skulls out of principle. I would. Even knowing it would be wrong."

A few seconds passed during which she only breathed, occasionally sucking back through her nostrils to allay the wetness that stung inside them.

"I imagine it -- it will be hard to find them. The pups," she said against the crest of Noura's head. "Josin Crant and the doe told us as much with their corpses. With the footprints of both man and beast around them. And if -- if tracks tell no lies? If the human cuts done to those bodies offer truth?

"Those pups already belong to someone."
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Re: Nock

Postby Guppy » Sat Feb 08, 2014 2:12 am

Noura sat, staring at her own bent knees as if all of the answers were held there between the folds of Son's blankets. The boy was going to be confused later, his sheets tussled and the smell of girl and Gloria lingering. The seamstress took care to wipe her hand off on her own dress and tugged the whelp closer. Gloria was a warm weight around her shoulders and Noura could not help but lean closer. Her nose came to bury in the other girl's neck and she sniffled. Damp cheek pressed against her dusky skin as that thumb circled on her scalp.

It was soothing. Mothering.

Noura pulled tear-smeared cheek away to settle her temple against Gloria's stalwart shoulder. Her pale eyes caught on the gore upon the other girl's hands. She was docile as Gloria took her wrist and pulled back the fabric to reveal deep gouges within the pale flesh. The blood had stalled, congealed and the skin around the lacerations was slightly reddened. She had not bothered to tend to them.

Tension raced up her spine when Gloria made her woeful admission. "You will stay your hand from them. Gloria Wynsee. We will care for them. We will teach them that life is not so cruel as they might suspect. We will lie. Like all young things, that is a lesson best learned when they are older." She spoke gently, but firmly.

"There is one who tracks better than anyone else. Better than me, even. We will procure his help and here we will wait." The reasons behind why she chose Son's bed of all places to hide was infinitely more clear, now. This had been her plan all along.

Or perhaps the boy just made her feel safe when the world tumbled about her ears.
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Re: Nock

Postby Rance » Sat Feb 08, 2014 4:26 am

Beasts are beasts, she would have said. Put them in a floursack, that is what must be done, and hold tight to the mouth of the bag. Find a tree, then wind up your arm and--

"I'm not going to -- to hurt them. Alright?"

Though her fingers never ceased in their repetitive motion on the apex of the other girl's head, there was a whispered exasperation in her voice, a frayed bit of emotion that fluttered against the admonishment and demand in Noura's voice. These were not like Many-Fights pups, those that had been dropped like so many little baubles from the bitches he'd put himself into; no, these were wild pups. That was her reasoning. That was the principle she'd cited, however thin and irreverent it was. "I'm not going to hurt them," she repeated, more obedient, for anger should not soil the quietness of the moment.

The congestion of tears in her chest wheezed underneath Noura's cheek. Tenderly, she shifted her weight to better support the girl's head, and with her free hand, dragged the wildling's tattered sleeve up enough to fully expose the gaping rips in the flesh. Her stare froze on the damage.

"I -- I thought the crossbow would help," said the girl, a listless statement that verged on explanation for an unspoken mistake.

A few moments of adjustment, yanking, and ripping, she found a fray in the edge of her skirt, gripped it, and tore free a sliver of threadbare gray. She pressed it to Noura's wrist with a trembling palm, then temporarily reprieved her fingers from the girl's head to reach around her, as if wishing not to disturb a cradlde child, to begin wrapping and tying the fabric in a makeshift tourniquet. She applied careful pressure. And then, lifting the girl's mutilated forearm, instructed:

"Tighten your -- your fingers into a fist. Show me they can move."

There is one who tracks better than anyone else. Better than me, even. We will procure his help and here we will wait.

"Five minutes," Gloria said. "If I can do anything right tonight, it will be that -- that when you are are calm, I will be taking you to the Rememdium as well. No discussion, no -- no argument. The pups will have to wait; I will do what I can first for my family."
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Re: Nock

Postby catch » Sat Feb 08, 2014 6:40 am

A wary look at the horses. He was not a town-boy, nor was he a farm-boy. Horses could not wind their way through a wild forest, far less sure-footed than deer, with all those roots and clinging undergrowth. That was another part of the forest, the Lord's hunting preserve, where the trees were thinned out and the foliage neatly trimmed, little copses dotting a smooth, rolling landscape down into wide, mountain passes of Trae Kelsa. That was an entirely different aspect of m'Lord's hunts. That was for foxes, for hares, for deer that, eight times out of ten, required Papa to go out and find one for the Lord's tables, for deer were skittish, and not easily caught by hounds and trumpets.

Even after a year of living here, Son was not used to horses.

He skirted the big one, the spotted fellow that was Egris', and he was so absorbed with muttering platitudes that the smell of flesh and blood hit him, a physical thing, stopping him dead in his tracks. By the dim lantern-light, he saw it, there at the base of the ladder leading to his room. A wolf. A great, sodding she-wolf. The boy's mind scrambles, and he can't help but think of the steady stream of rats, neatly delivered to his bedside.

Hunger, ever-present, gnawed at his gut.

And there was someone up in the loft.

Son swings himself up and onto the ladder, swarming up it with much practice; the ugly head thrusts itself into the loft, broad and flaring ears, united brow, too-heavy jaw and all.

"Th' fuck's a wolf doin' 'ere," he bawls, as soon as he sees that it is Gloria. demanding of her. Until he sees who else is up here, someone who Son imagined to be Cherny, because why else would Gloria be here? But it was Noura. The ugly boy froze, his face between something of a surprise and a grimace, his heart squeezed into something cold and watery.

"Wolf," he says, after a moment. That first. That was the best question to ask.
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Re: Nock

Postby Guppy » Sat Feb 08, 2014 12:15 pm

The seamstress vowed not to hurt the wolf pups and the wildling lifted her temple from her shoulder to peer closely at her face. Shrewd. Uncertain. She heard the mild exasperation in the other voice and met it with sullen expression. Those wide eyes were still moist with unshed tears and seemed to take up the whole of her face. It was dim in the loft and her pupils were tiny black holes that threatened to eclipse everything else. She seemed to draw some conclusion from the expression upon Gloria's face and nodded, relenting. She leaned back into the other, her head easing onto shoulder once more.

Passive, she allowed Gloria to examine the wound upon her arm with only vague interest. The fabric upon her sleeve tugged sharply at the congealed blood as she drew that sleeve to bunch at her elbow. The wounds were angry, jagged lacerations that had stopped bleeding for the most part. Until, of course, cloth tugged the clots away and fresh blood welled. The whelp merely gazed at Gloria's ministrations as if she were separated from her body. Fingers tightened as dictated - no major injury to the inner workings of her arm, then. The cloth was tight around her elbow to stem the flow of blood.

Five minutes.

Noura's brows furrowed with protest. Still, she could see the wisdom. "It is too dark anyway, but we will leave at first light." At least she hoped they would.

There was a clattering cacophony upon the ladder and her heart lightened when it was Son's face revealed. He spat demanding questions at her and then Noura rose from Gloria's side. Her slim frame separated from the seamstress' bulkier one and she stood with arms wrapped around herself. She stared back at Son, expression gentle and eyes pleading.

"Son..."

Her voice trembled. Her eyes filled with tears anew and she stumbled towards him and the ladder.

"It -- It attacked Cherny," she nearly whispered. "It was so hungry."

The scent of blood upon her washed over him, covering her girl-scent and the salt from her tears. It taunted him, running in lazy rivulets down pale skin - lessened by the makeshift cloth tourniquet, but not ceased.
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Re: Nock

Postby Rance » Sat Feb 08, 2014 4:12 pm

If we don't go now, she wanted to say. If we don't go now, then what use am I?

Son's voice was a confounded blast of sound from below, and every clatter of his feet and palms upon ladder-runs silenced the seamstress, locked her tongue and the manic thoughts that trundled around like sluggish curses in her mind. For all of her efforts at Noura's wrist, the blood gleamed with arid freshness, and she drove her stubborn teeth down upon the bloated bulge of her lower lip. What she wanted, now that the adrenaline was drying in her veins and the aches and fears started to knock against the tension in her mind, was her own opportunity to cry--

(But why? Crying fixed nothing. Tears didn't heal tooth-torn gashes in friends and brothers.)

Noura rose to alight herself toward the bedraggled Son, the hard-inquiring butcher-boy, and she answered--

It -- It attacked Cherny.

Gloria, meanwhile, ground her scab-crowned knuckles into her thigh, though, because the fire was there, turning sand in her veins to glass. Son asked, he demanded; she wanted, very suddenly, to hit a wall. Bend back her arm, feel the fabric of her dress-sleeve stretch against the prominence of her elbow, and do something she knew she could do well--

"Noura saved his life, Son," she said from behind them. "She -- she acted quickly, and bravely. You both ought to go and see him. They're stitching him, likely giving him poppy-milk and salves. Noura's arm needs tending, and I..."

Her voice was leveled with stony stiffness, given a spine she knew her tone shouldn't have -- not now, not tonight.

"I'll tend to the corpse."
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Re: Nock

Postby catch » Sat Feb 08, 2014 4:37 pm

She came to him. And, for a moment, his heart stopped. It was not a beastly emotion, nothing of the Dark in it -

she was bloody, and hot, and she pressed herself against him. and hunting hadn't gone well. it hadn't. his belly clenched

- but it was something that came from his heart. She came to him, and Son put his arms awkwardly around her, and the pupil-filled eyes, almost black, gazed over at Gloria in bleak agony. Noura had made herself quite plain, quite clear. The only reason he didn't push her, crudely and angrily away, was because of what they said, both said.

The wolf attacked Cherny.

"Thanks," he says, lame, awkward. His tongue was thick in his mouth, and stuck to the roof. He didn't know what to say; but then, he did.Not knowing where the words came from, because Son, after a lifetime of jeers and insults, was certain he wasn't anything smart, anything clever. "It did what it wanted t'do, if it were 'ungry" he says, slow. "It - we're all animals, yeah? An' she picked an animal fer huntin'. She gone after a good, strong stag, it woulda ended th'same, wouldn't it?"

It was so hungry. She sounded heartbroken about that. Son didn't take his eyes from Gloria, giving her a slow nod.

"Keep it somewheres," Son tells her. "Think I gotta idea. So Cherny won' be stalked again." That's all he'll say, for now. For now, Son would half-support, half-pull Noura towards the ladder.

"Let's go see Cherny," he says, his boots making a clamor; big, distinctive boots, that Son might never grow into - that big, broad tracks in the snow. "Get yer arm looked after, too."
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Re: Nock

Postby Guppy » Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:20 pm

Gloria boasted on her friend's behalf, insisted on her bravery. She was not certain that she agreed with the glowing assessment, but she could not argue with she had acted with instinct. Cherny had been in danger, screaming and terrified. Her heart had almost stuttered to a stop at the sound. She had done what she had to, even if it left tiny wolf pups without a mother to tend to them. Fresh tears gathered in her already-swimming eyes and suddenly, Son folded her into his arms and she melted.

Her shoulders shook, trembled as she clung to him. Her nose attempted to bury itself in his neck and she snuffled against his skin. She was warm and likely seemed delicate against him. It had been a shock to find her skin in tatters and the wolf dead beneath her. The human part of her brain awakened with a roar of pain as the magic seared through her body. The power had been hungry. Eager to slake its thirst. That had been more upsetting than the act itself, but she could not find the words.

The woman's fingers curled in his clothing, wary of either of them trying to drag her away from him. She and Son were to go to the Rememdium and Gloria would care for the abandoned fallen wolf. It registered dimly in the back of her mind.

"No," she bleated, a note of panic slipping into her voice as she pulled her face away from his skin. She scrambled away from him, mere inches from the ladder down to the ground. She stared at him, her features paler than normal, if that was even possible.

Palms were lifted, offered to stay his demands that she have her arm looked after.

"Son, she's got pups out there. We can't - can't just leave them to starve. It's not their fault. Please?" It was difficult to say no to those big eyes, but Son was made of sterner stuff. "You can track her back to them, can't you?"
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Re: Nock

Postby Rance » Sat Feb 08, 2014 6:30 pm

Her fingers were lonely.

It was an irrational feeling -- comforting was something they yearned to do, an action in which they'd found momentary pride. But now they were leprous, blood-coated, and it infuriated her to look upon them. Filthy little sausages, useful only for stitches and impaling things already deceased. And now, with Noura fled to Son and crumbling against him, she realized that her shoulder was cold, that she felt the foreigner bloating in her veins with impossible jealousy; Son was who Noura wanted, someone who could solve a riddle, who could track and trap -- and Gloria Wynsee, in that moment, thought herself injudicious and inconsequential, a speck of nothing.

Maybe Son, over the whelp's shoulder, saw it: frustration scrawled into the lines of the seamstress' dark face, a queer and helpless resentment the origins of which not even the girl who bore the emotion could fathom.

"No," she said, too, but harder.

Am I not good enough?

She desired sleep; she desired that her friends be safe.

The girl swallowed her sharpness.

"You go after those pups in the dark," she said, a wretched stone in her throat, "you invite danger, Noura. Pups mean not only mothers, but -- but fathers. Protective, vicious fathers unwilling to let good-intentioned humans take their children. You're hurt, and -- and you feel accountable. But you stink of blood. Yours. Cherny's. And a father-wolf's missing mate.

"You go now," she whispered meekly behind Noura, watching Son, "and you are a threat. First, your wrist. A single night alone won't bring about their deaths."

The seamstress reached out to touch Noura's back, but hesitated. She wants Son. She doesn't want you--

Her arm fell to her side.

She said to Son: "I'll ensure the body won't -- won't attract scavengers. I'll keep it safe."
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