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Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 4:25 pm Post subject:

The men and women gather away from April for a time to discuss things, giving her time to rest. Some of them look at her strangely and suspiciously as they whisper among themselves.

After only moments of debate, a small group of two women and three men leaves quietly and without looking back and into the darkest parts of the cavern. The rest of them stand up and congregate around April. The piano man is among them, sitting closest to April.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

April nods. "Okay," she says, "Not to get all campfire team-buildy, but we're gonna need to know names. It's no good saying 'Hey ... uh ... you! That rock is crumbling!' I'm April. If you can't remember your name then we'll make one up. 'Round the circle, and let's make sure we've got it all down." She guides them through the process of being able to communicate as a team, rather than simply a mass of undifferentiated mutual suffering.

Eventually, she turns to the piano. "Right," she says, "We're going to need tools and materials. We want to save as many of the strings as possible, with as much length as possible. The pegs too ... those are the little metal screw-in posts that hold the strings. Those'll be our only way of making handholds. Then we're going to need to take every loose metal piece and see what we can do to make tools from them ... then we'll see if we can get the wires to cut scores in the metal frame. If we can get that to crack on lines then we'll have some really good carving edges, and that'll make the job much easier. All of the wood goes for platforms and wedges for the back of the line."

She looks carefully over the piano. "Now don't go crazy here ... splinters and metal shards aren't going to do us any good. You need more surgeon's touch than slaughterhouse." She waves her hand. "Have at it."

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:00 am Post subject:

The men and women go around, taking their time, trying to recall names and coming up with new ones. After a lengthy process, April faces the group as follows:

Scar, a man with series of four parallel white scars across his body, as if he'd fought tigers and lions in his previous life.
Pumpkin, a slender man with a roundish head and a small nose.
Leaf, a tall, dark, relatively wide-set man who never got over the cold water, trembling constantly.
Crow, a salt and pepper haired man with a slight hunch and a large hooked nose.
Horns, a woman with her hair slicked back, two black streaks running from her widow's peaks all the way back, contrasting against her grayish-white hair.
Paint, a man with faded blue line tattoos running all over his body.
Claw, a wrinkled, sharp-nosed woman with nails sharp and strong as claws.
Harp, the piano man, he has long hair that conceals much of his face but his wild eyes and smile.
Ghost, a very white skinned man with a pot-belly.
Prune, the oldest looking woman, with white hair, and impossibly wrinkled skin.
Hair, a gray skinned woman with thick wet hair down to her knees.
Shark, a bald man with no nose and his teeth sharpened to a point.

The group listens carefully to April's instructions and hesitate for a moment. They rise in a group and surround the piano. Many of them weep, some quietly, while others wail and moan. They begin taking the piano apart carefully, a process that is clearly taking quite some time. Harp seems lost in his task, meticulously placing removed strings on the driest platform.

Interestingly enough, they work together very well without exchanging additional orders or agreeing on how to perform a specific task.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

Watching the careful, slow, reverent disassembly, April steps forward a hair as if to speed things along, then steps back. She moves away and sits to the side while her team dismantles the piano.

In the long interval, her mind races, as she re-structures her plans. The original plan called for using some pieces of the piano and leaving the rest as junk. Now she adjusts and restructures the notions in her head, balancing and juggling so that the group will use every single piece of the piano, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.

When they are finally finished rendering the musical instrument for parts, April steps up and says softly "I ... I value the trust you've placed in me. Let's do this."

"Hair, Scar, two ends of the top there ... bring it up toward the ramp. Crow, Paint, gather up twelve of those pegs and three wires, and let's get our first foot-hold set up. The rest of you, package pieces into the following bundles, and distribute them so you can carry ..." she gives detailed instructions, noting that the twelve are already anticipating many of her plans without being told.

"Okay people," she says, "Let's move with a purpose!"

She sets to work, hefting people up to footholds where they need it, pounding pegs and wires into stone, and overall lending raw muscle and expertise wherever the line needs shoring up. Bit by careful bit, the group makes its way up. With cut-metal tools, they carve grooves in stone and mount wooden platforms and ledges, divert water, help each other up, and finally drag as a group into the huge empty bell-cavern above.

April looks again at the massive inverted climb ahead of them, and calls a break, looking over her team with an eye both toward their remaining stamina and their morale.

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 3:44 pm Post subject:

The group is tired, there is no doubt about it, and it will be a hard climb that takes tremendous upper body strength, due to the bell-shape of the climb. Thankfully, April can take her time finding the best possible path. She also realizes the possibility of having to climb helping each one of these ancients... A dangerous task if any of them changes their minds about the hostility level they choose to display.

For the most part though, the group is in awe at the upper room discovery. The light here is bright and rich and wells down from the cave's eye through the waterfalls below. They have all been so quiet, as if they don't quite dare speak out of line in front of April. Pumpkin and Shark walk away to drink water from a small pool connecting to the torrent of water. The rest of the group simply lay around, resting. Harp and Claw keep the tools and cables dry and away from the torrent.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

"Hey, Harp!" April calls. "Does this group know any hopeful songs?"

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 7:52 am Post subject:

Harp shrugs, a strange smile across his face. Before she knows it, Harp's voice echoes all around and what sounds like a lament at first, turns into a lyrical song about a place and a time and travels across the worlds. Most of them weep quietly, a smile sneaking on their faces as they begin to recall their adventures before the great fall. After several minutes of an immensely detailed journey, Prune and Ghost join in with surprisingly strong voices of their own, meeting Harp's lyrics halfway. Then Crow, Leaf and Hair, allowing the song to build in intensity and it continues to crescendo into an opera of voices, Harp in the lead with his own tale. In the end, April can feel tremendous power coming from these people, as if they had truly indomitable spirits and endless resources at their disposal, all of them singing loud and bright, giving April space to join in with a singing tale of her own.

These very old men and women have traveled their entire lives, the only life they know as truly valuable... and it is likely that April leads them to more lives of travel, discovery and deep experience.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

April joins in, tentatively, improvising in a clear soprano. Her song is of striving and failing and learning and trying, on thousands of different fields in hundreds of different worlds. In contrast to theirs, it is deliberately incomplete: rhymes go unmatched, the words spoken only by the shape of the silence they would fill, and there are crescendos unclosed hinting at elaborations that could be sung. It is the scaffold of a song, that gives evidence of the cathedral that may one day stand ... a beginning.

[ ... ]

When the singing comes to a close, April listens to the echoes bounce around the cavern for a few long seconds.

"Everyone ready?" she asks. "Home stretch." She rises and sets out to lead them to the light.

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 6:11 am Post subject:

When April joins in with her own lyrics, once in a while, a voice finishes some of her verses, cryptic and prophetic. A warning about the gray lands where she should not linger; another about her encounter with the speaking tree and the crow of betrayal; her travels to the end of the world and her final fall into the pit of eternal darkness.

As with most prophecies, this one is annoyingly vague, and most of them delivered by pumpkin from what she could tell.

...

All of them cheer and stand up, motivated to once again experience the delights of traveling Shadow. They stand around April, waiting for her direction.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

She directs them up the columns, moving in two lines, so that if someone slips or hits trouble there will be someone else with a good angle (not directly above or below) to lend support. She stays at the back of the pack as much as possible, advancing only to cross areas impassable to the old-timers, and pin supports in place with their few remaining pegs.

April wonders how far they can get up the bell before the strength of these voyagers starts to give out.

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 7:47 am Post subject:

The scaling of the rock wall takes time, but it is thankfully much less slick than the wet columns they had to scale before and it offers more openings and climbing leads.

Scar and Leaf lead the two lines and eventually Leaf gets to a point where he simply cannot take a good hold of the curved rocky wall and informs April of that fact. They have been moving slowly and carefully, as she had instructed them, taking breaks when necessary. Scar turns his head around, to look at her, holding on rather well himself, but looking a bit tired.
The openings in the wall are there, but he lacks the confidence to truly hang upside down for the remainder of the way to the eye.

The eye of the cavern is a bit less than thirty feet away. They have made it a bit more than two thirds of the way through, but here the rock wall transitions much more horizontally.

Shark starts humming quietly.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

April takes the last of the metal cutting tools that they made from the frame of the piano, and drives it with a smooth, powerful swing into the stone to provide a handle for others as they progress.

"Take a good grip for a few minutes," she warns. "Things are likely to get a touch unstable. I'm going to make some more handholds."

She moves up into the invert, clinging to the underside of the hanging rock with raw finger strength and feet wedged against hairline fractures. When she's moved a small distance, she secures her left hand and both feet as well as possible, then pulls her free fist back. With a short, direct, savage punch she fractures the stone. The force of the blow knocks her feet clear of the wall, and for a dizzying second she hangs with three fingers of her left hand ... then she swings back and reassesses her position. Wedging fingers into the broken stones at her point of impact, she tears loose fragments until a serviceable handhold is cut into the bare stone.

She moves forward and up, and repeats the performance. This time she leaves a smear of blood from her torn knuckles on the stone she punches. She hangs unsteady for longer, and when she regains a percarious hold, she clings to the underside of the rock for several long, panting seconds before moving again. Blood pools at the ripped edges of her glove, and drips in a web of crimson trails down her arm to the shoulder.

"Everyone okay back there?" she calls in a ragged voice. "I'll punch one more hold, then come back and swing the first of you over the gap to the hold."

She spiders forward, cursing the fading strength in her battered right hand, and steels herself for a third blow.

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 7:48 am Post subject:

The men and women have grown quiet, in awe perhaps. Grunts can be heard around the cavern as Ghost and Horns struggle a bit in their current position. They all seem alright.

April makes her way successfully and works on that final hold, the one she may have to count on the most for herself, should the elders fail in their attempt across. She realizes how precarious her position is but her mind was made up long ago... Interestingly enough, theirs were not.

Leaf goes first, inspired by April's prowess to follow the course she has taken to the opening. He hangs onto her hand and she swings him swiftly across the gap and he catches the first hold gracefully, grunting. He makes his way across.

Then in turn, they all make their way across, causing April little trouble. She can push herself some more. They are light and agile and her own confidence has inspired them, it seems.

Harp slips but is quickly snagged and brought up. These men and women are impressively strong and endured a great deal themselves.

Finally, as she's about to swing Shark, they can hear the voices of Leaf and Scar cheering as they have seen the light from outside! The pit is only several feet up and out!
It serves as a great distraction on everyone for the brief moment it takes Shark to leap at April, teeth bared.

The slight anticipation and paranoia have not given him the advantage to surprise her, however, only the other elders, as they looked forward and up, moving excitedly to the way out.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

April exposes her right shoulder to the attack, hoping that Shark is obsessed enough with his teeth to focus on biting and inflicting pain, rather than working to compromise her position and grip. Meanwhile, she steadies her three good grips, distracting her opponent with head-butts, and working toward the chance to flip her whole body around and roll up between him and the stone ceiling.

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:34 pm Post subject:

Shark goes for the bite and quickly grabs onto her hoping his own weight is enough to dislodge her. He is much too light for that and is hit by April several times, each time sinking his teeth deeper into her flesh.

April realizes now that his teeth are beginning to grow, or the suction he is putting on her shoulder is beginning to feel this way. His forehead is bleeding due to the blows she's unleashed.
He is grabbing onto her with his left hand and right leg. His left leg has lost its grip and he is trying to pull it up to the ceiling behind her from under her left shoulder. With his right hand, he is trying to dislodge her own grip, but to no avail.

The others are still heeding the cheers of Leaf, who has apparently, possibly made it to the surface.
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