You wake to a stony darkness. It is difficult to remember, for a moment, where you are. But the reek of human sweat does for your memory what your sight cannot: you recall the days of travel, chained to splinter-ridden wagon boards, the tasteless gruel, the urine and feces of your fellow travelers. The lash of the caravan drivers. The lash of the slavers. A slow change of climate, your surroundings hidden from you by the sides of the cart you rode in. And, somewhere in this nebulous space of thought, the arrival: nighttime, dragged from the wagons and across hard gravel, shoved more than led into a rocky opening, down stony corridors by rough, mail-clad men. Thrown into a black room, an iron door heaved shut behind you. No more light.
And now, you are awake. And, it seems, not alone. Around you, muffled grunts and breathing, and perhaps someone stirring.
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From the darkness comes the faint sound of softly scraping pebbles, as if a body is shifting position.
After a quiet groan and a deep inhalation, a young woman's reedy voice (in Riverspeak, with a High Realm accent for those who would know one) can clearly be heard. "Is anyone there? Does anyone know where we are? Were you all captured like me? Oh, sorry; maybe you're just getting up. Well my name's Number Seventeen Mouth, and I want us all to be able to get out of here as quickly as possible, so if anyone has any ideas then they should say so when they have the energy. I'm a little scared, but mostly I'm hungry. Does anyone know how much they feed people here? I'm going to -- Ow! That's a ceiling. I'm going to explore to see how big this place is."
More soft gratings of pebbles can be heard under the continuing stream-of-consciousness monologue, which now seems to come from a moving source.
"Anyway, there's also a parcel I need to deliver, so our plans for getting out of here will need to involve getting that back. This stone is pretty rough and not very finely worked at all. I -- oh, forgive me, sir. I hope they feed us more here than they did on the journey. I guess that they want to use us for something, but if they're to get good use then they need to take good care of us. By the way, does anyone hear and understand me, who can answer any of my questions?"
If there are no responses, then Number Seventeen Mouth will repeat herself, sans interruptions but otherwise word for word, in Forest Tongue and then High Realm.
Working quietly, he pulls the needles and garrote from hidden places, crafting them to a new purpose. He stitches together his torn skin from where the lash kissed him. "Hush child, we are with you," he breathes more than whispers. Before, he could hear the guards clanking occasionally just beyond the door. Now, he can only hear her words. She did not seem concerned with the lash or aware that two had already stopped breathing. He sighs audibly into the pain, tying the knot. "Hush," he whispers, this time as much to himself as to the girl, "Listen to the guards."
Crockus gently whispers in Riverspeak, in a soothing voice made to quieten even the most anxious animal: "Number Seventeen Mouth? Come hither, sit next to me and I shall appease you. Our friend is right, we need to gather information."
"Enki? Lin? Sacks?" The new voice is sonorous, rich as the evening play of temple bells. A brief pause. "Cáemgen?"
After a moment the woman laughs. "Well, Mouth, you have a parcel to deliver, and I seem to have lost all my baggage. What a jaunty little dance we've done. As to what we're here for, well, they've already gotten good use out of some of us. But use can cut both ways if you're clever enough, and luckily for you, I am. Sooner or later that captain will be back. I'll find some way to get him by the short hairs."
Number 17 Mouth had been approaching Crockus's voice as the other woman spoke. She manages a whisper to him, if a rapid and staccato one.
"What's your name, sedative man? You seem safe enough. You don't have any food, do you? Perhaps the jolly woman and the breezy man are right and we should listen for the captain."
Assuming she can get in a brief dialogue with Crockus and/or bring him with her, she then makes her way over to the sonorous-voiced woman. In the same short whisper, "Been here long?"
"Only so long as you have," she replies, "but I spent the better part of the journey in Captain Tenniel's tent. Lucky for me he's not a more generous man, else I might have been doled out among his men like soup. Well, perhaps he's tired of soup. I have been tossed in here, after all. But if he returns, I may have a chance to find out more about where we are."
She pauses. "Mina Starkweather, by the way. And just what kind of name is 'Number Seventeen Mouth?'"
[Number Seventeen Mouth's progress toward the sounds of her more vocal cell mates is marked by grunts and moans as she discovers by foot her less vocal cell mates.]
As Mouth stumbles into one of the groaning prisoners, a mad scream splits the darkness, ("AHHDRAGONSNO!") and she's thrown backwards as a shrieking wretch desperately scrabbles away from her, smacking full-on into the wall of the cell. He collapses onto the stone floor and groans, muttering nonsense and apologies to noone you can perceive.
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