PM Tue Sep 17, 2002 (OOC) -->

If the Guild Hall felt empty when Rory first returned to Babel, it seems almost deserted now. Mage Kris, Queen Flutenote, Apprentice Josh, and a few other mages have all left for Caroban. Curiously, Mage Seraphae – whom Rory recalls as one of the most vocal opponents to remaining in Babel – was not among those leaving. With the reduction in mages, however, went a corresponding cut in the support staff: the Guild now provides jobs to fewer cooks, servants, messengers, and so forth. The lower floors of the Guild tower have been shuttered and locked from disuse; the current residents have no need for the space, and no money to maintain it.

Silhouette has been getting out in solid form a little more often, though not a great deal, just in case. But she, Rory, and Cyprian have spent some more evenings together playing at tri-gammon. She also spent a couple of days with the mind mage while Rory attended to business elsewhere. Rory doesn't know how, exactly, they communicate, since Cyprian doesn't speak Sign, and writing out notes is rather cumbersome for conversation, but Sil explains, vaguely, "We manage."

Rory has been attending to business in the Shadow and Life spheres, splitting his time about evenly between the two. He spent today at one of the Rinala hospices, which was quieter than usual. With the recent turn in fortunes against the established Temples to the Sisters, the Rinala priestesses have become a little bolder about proselytizing. Mage Tanieta feared that this would result in more conflicts – and injuries – but so far that hasn't materialized, and Rory left the hospice with a couple of hours of daylight to spare. Since the hospice is near the monument to the Wound, he decided to pick up some candy and visit the shrine to leave it as an offering.

As he munches on jelly squirmers while leaving the candy shop (because Skiree would surely want to share!), he notices a pudgy young bat calling out, "Tro-uble! Tro-UBLE!" in Eeee. He's looking all around the balcony of the tower they're on, with a rather expectant and worried look on his face.

"Whamph kife of truffle?" Rory asks between smacks, clip-clopping over to the young bat so that he can take a look around the balcony for himself. He makes a swallow, then, in a clearer voice, asks, "Where?"

The young Eeee starts, flapping his wings at Rory's question. "I don't know! Have you seen him?" he asks, peering earnestly at Rory. The boy looks to be about ten or twelve, wearing an over-sized hat and untucked shirt.

"Seen who?" Rory asks, and then he blinks at a sudden thought. "Oh! You mean, Trouble, as in, someone named Trouble? What a dark name!" He grins at the notion of all the confusion a name like that could cause (such as something very like what he imagines the present situation to be at this point).

The bat's ears pink as Rory figures it out. "Ee! Sorry! That's right, Trouble is my pet fuff'nar. I left him outside while I went into the candy shop, and now he's gone," the boy explains, looking truly woebegone. He squats down on the balcony, as if hoping that a fuff'nar will materialize out of the adobe. "Have you seen him? I can't see how he could've gotten far. It's not like he can fly."

Rory blanches at the thought of the fastest route the fuff'nar could have taken to leave the balcony, but as he peers over the railing (desperately hoping he doesn't see what used to a fuff'nar down there) he supposes that fuff'nars might be troublesome, but not suicidal. "Uhm … do you happen to have any of his fur on you? Or maybe … uh … I don't know. Something that belongs to him? Like a favorite chewy toy? Little brothers or sisters don't count."

The boy giggles at Rory's final comment. "Yeah, hang on, I do." He pulls up his oversized shirt to reach into a pants pocket, and draws out a rather tattered-looking circle of rope, with another length of rope tied to it. "This is Trouble's. See, there, it's even got some of his fur on it still. Uh Why d'ya ask?" Clinging to the fronds of the rope-collar are some tufts of orange-brown fur.

"Well," Rory says, "it's not really my specialty, but I can find stuff. Lost candy, a ball that rolled under a chair, a runaway pet, that sort of thing. The thing is, though, it doesn't really work so well if the pet doesn't want to be found, so we'll just have to hope he's lost or up to no good, and not trying to stay lost. I have to do some chanting stuff, which you'll probably think is pretty weird, and if that doesn't help, I might even have to make a magic circle … but I hope it won't be that hard."

The Eeee's eyes go big and round. "You can do magic?" he says, in a tone of hushed awe. He takes a step back as if suddenly wary, then, almost simultaneously, leans forward to get a closer look at Rory. He very nearly falls over from the conflicting motions, spreading his wings to keep his balance. "Hey! You're the messenger!" the boy finishes, gaping.

Rory blinks for a moment, and then says, "Ohhhh! Are you a friend of Dinahzadze? You know, the one who threw the New Year's party?" He grins. "I was the one who got stuck with playing the part of the evil captain, though I slipped off right before the snowball-pelting began. And I still got smacked with plenty of snow! Were you there for that?"

The boy nods so hard that he almost falls over again. "Was I there for it? Was anyone not there for it?" he says, dismissive of that possibility. "That was so … so … " Words fail him. He claps his hands to his forehead. "Amazing! Wow! I can't believe that I'm standing here talking to you! Were you really the one playing Rockmore? Wow! You don't look anything like him, well, hardly, and he was so vicious, and evil."

"Well, that was an illusion, you know," Rory says. "I suppose it might have helped a teeny tiny bit that I, you know, look the remotest bit like a Rhian – at least, you know, more than, say, Dinahzadze would – but I don't know the intricate details about how illusions really work. Only a bit of theory, because we have to learn that sort of thing to help us decide what Sphere we're best – " He blinks, realizing that he's rambling, then finishes with, " – suited for. And that Messenger thing – I really should warn you that Dinahzadze makes a big deal on that, but, you know, I don't think any deity has ever personally given me a message to deliver. So I don't know what to make of that." He examines the chewed rope closely, and does his best to gauge the nature of the hair samples – not that he really knows what to look for, but it seems the thing to do, as a starting point.

The rope is knotted into a circle a bit bigger than Rory's fist, with a separate length of darker rope tied to it. The tufts of orange-brown fur cling to the circled rope; at a guess, Rory would say they were from the fuff'nar's neck or body – too short to be from the tail, too long to be from the face. They're definitely not Eeee fur, which would also be shorter.

Rory breathes a sigh of relief that the fur isn't the same color as the owner's. Wouldn't do to get his sample overly "polluted." (But then, any trends in the spell that might point to the subject standing right in front of him could probably be safely eliminated as error.) "Well, I'm going to start a little spell here, and do some gobbledygook. It shouldn't take too awfully long. We don't want Trouble running loose for too long, after all!"

"You're not?" The Eeee boy is saying, probably in response to Rory's earlier disclaimer of godly powers. He sounds a bit disappointed. "But, uh, you really do do magic! OK! That's great! I can't believe you're going to help me find Trouble! I'll just stand here and watch." He takes another couple of steps back, then does his funny leaning-over-to-look thing, peering nearsightedly at Rory as the unicorn starts his spell.

Rory backs a safe distance away from the railing, closes his eyes, and then starts doing a little clippity-clopping fuff'nar-finding jig, sing-songing as he traces runes, connecting lines and bounding forms in the air about him…

"Ufnar, rufnar! Find a little fuff'nar!"

"Dufnar, sufnar! Hope you haven't fluffed far!"

"Bibble, babble, bibble, bubble!"

"Find me Trouble on the double!"

Rory tippity-taps and occasionally claps, singing his song without any lapse. He repeats the chant for many a time, never failing to come up with rhyme. And when his spell is just about through, he whirls around with his horn pointing to …

As Rory casts the spell, the runes he traces coalesce into a solid lines of light, and the Eeee boy gasps, blinking rapidly. The runes swirl together, then turn into a giant arrow, and forms onto Rory's horn, which is dragged down until it points at a 60 degree angle towards the ground, pointing down and to the right of their current position – which would make it pointed to one of the shops below them in the tower. The boy claps his hands together, his ears back in astonishment.

"All right! Trouble's that way!" the boy squeals, and jumps off the edge of the balcony.

"No time to waste, we've got to make haste! Now we're off … to a shop full of cloth!" Rory hasn't quite snapped out of rhyme mode yet. (Besides, when he's on a roll… ) "Whoa ho, let's go!" He rushes for the stairs, anxious not to be left out of the excitement!

"A shop full of cloth?" The other boy squeaks, flapping down to the next level. He peers around at the overhead signs. "Ummm … that tavern here's where people quaff. But I know there's a tailor somewhere above the ground … maybe he's … uh … on the next level down?"

The little unicorn scrambles on down the stairs, struggling not just to keep from looking silly while he hikes his robes a bit (to avoid tripping on them) but also to keep up the rhyme game, now that it's in full swing. "It could be the tavern, if they have any laundry … or else it could be all and sundry!" He's not above straining things to keep it going, but in the meantime he keeps an eye out – not only for fuff'nars and bundles of cloth they might be hiding in, but anything else he could swipe for a convenient rhyme the next time he has to say something!

As Rory scrambles down the next flight of stairs and hops off onto the landing, he sees that the first shop in front of the stairs does, indeed, have a needle-and-thread motif prominently displayed on the sign. But the entrance to the tailor's shop has a forbidding look to it, with big glazed doors ornately trimmed in chitin. Expensive fabric drapes in bolts along the walls, and Eeee mannequins display exquisitely tailored fashions inside. Plush red carpet covers the floor and just visible to Rory's eyes, as he looks at the carpet, is a tuft of long brown fur marring the expanse of red.

The flying Eeee beats Rory to the doors, but not by much, and he stands in front of them, his momentum stopped by their formality. "Ee. I'm glad you made it down the stair, cause this place has a lot of flair."

"This is a place that's not for banality," Rory says, not entirely sure what that last word means, but chancing it anyway, "So let's do our best to blend with formality!" He stands up straight, smoothes his robes, brushes his mane out of his left eye, and tries for a dignified mage-ly stride into the shop.

"D'ya really think my Trouble's in there?" Following Rory's lead, the boy tucks in his over-sized shirt and takes off his hat, trying to look less disreputable. The smudges of dirt on his gray-furred face don't help him with this effort. "If you weren't here, I don't think I'd dare," he whispers, entering behind Rory. Bells on the door chime, alerting the staff to their arrival.

Inside, the place looks even imposing. Rory can just see, through an open door, where a very tall and primly dressed male Eeee stands, fussing with the wide, puffed skirt of a ball gown worn by an even wider and puffier middle-aged Eeee lady. She admires herself in three mirrors in a room at the back of the shop.

"Hello, my good sir!" Rory says, with a melodramatic sweep of a floppy sleeve, hoping that pomp will make up for circumstance. "We're looking for Trouble! He's a fuff'nar, about … " He looks at the tuft of fur on the floor, and points. "… that color."

The tailor had looked up from his work at the sound of the chime on the door, and as Rory speaks, his eyes widen. "A what?" the lady Eeee says, blinking faintly. "What was that, my dear Emath?" she says to her tailor.

"… and very subtle!" Rory quickly throws in, trying a desperate save on his rhyme game, which he nearly forgot in the excitement.

Emath says, "Ah, nothing you need worry about, gracious lady, one moment, I will be right back," he promises hurriedly. The tall Eeee turns and stalks through the door to the main shop, directing a black scowl at the two boys. The batling who came in with Rory swallows hard and edges backwards, preparing to bolt for the balcony.

Rory's grin does a somersault, turning into a worrisome frown. "I'm sure my spell just couldn't be wrong … If we could just look, we won't take too long?"

The tailor closes the door behind him, and advances on the two boys with a look that is anything but welcoming. "I don't know what kind of game you young hooligans are up to, but you can take it out of my shop! This is a respectable business! Now – OUT!" He pushes up one sleeve threateningly, as if ready to throw them out if they don't comply.

The batling boy squeals and darts out of the doors onto the balcony.

"We'll be very quiet, we won't make a peep! We're just looking for a pet, and then – YEEP!" Rory clamps his hand down over his cowl so it doesn't flop in his face, and makes a whole-hearted dash after the young bat.

"And stay out!" Emath yells after them, shaking a fist as the two boys dash down the landing. He shakes his head. "Of all the days for that dratted apprentice of mine to take ill," he mutters under his breath as he withdraws back into the shop and closes the doors behind him.

Gasping for breath at the far end of the landing, the batling gives a wide-eyed glance to Rory. "That turned into quite a rout!" he whispers.

"Then I guess we'd better look about!" Rory adds in. He looks around, then says, "I must admit, that didn't go well. Maybe I'd better try … another scry spell!"

"All right!" the boy says, then adds quickly, "Uh – I'm sure that'll be just swell!"

Rory nods, and moves over to what he hopes to be an out-of-the-way spot, and he starts doing another jig number, still clutching bits of fuff'nar fur and a chewed-on piece of rope, while he turns about, trying to find a better bearing…

"Eeenie meanie miney – Where will I find ye?"

"Meanie miney mo – Where did you go?"

"Mo miney meanie – Has anybody seen ye?"

"Miney meanie eenie – Don't be a weenie!"

The arrow once more coalesces around Rory's horn, and together they point … straight at the shop they were just evicted from.

"That's no fair! We were just there!" Rory whines, looking cross-eyed down the length of the arrow, and clopping over toward a window in the hopes that he might figure out just what part of the shop houses a little Trouble.

Whimpering, the young bat tags along behind Rory. Together, they peer through the glass. The near-sighted young bat doesn't see anything, but Rory watches as a small, furry head pokes out from between a bolt and a pile of folded cloth on one of the deep shelves at the rear of the shop.

"Ooo! Ooo, I see it!" Rory stage-whispers, then, while he struggles for a rhyme, a thought occurs to him. "I need a sneaky speer-it!" He ducks his head, anxious not to draw more attention from anyone inside. "Oh, and I know it makes me lame … but I forgot to ask your name!"

"Trouble is in there? But how will we get through?" The boy asks. "My name's Karo – sorry I forgot to tell you," he adds after a moment, looking genuinely apologetic.

"I'll use another spell – though it won't be a … trifle." He wrinkles his own nose at the mangled word, "I'm going to make a lure – a little shadow yiffle!"

The boy's eyes widen. "Wow! You can do anything," he says. He pauses. "You're as powerful as … a king?"

"I wouldn't say that much about me," Rory says, grinning embarrassedly, "but I guess we'll try and see!" He looks about for some patch of ground that looks to be a bit out of the way, and digs through his component pouches for some chalks – especially some blue ones, for while his shadow yiffle won't be blue, he figures the spell should be.

First, Rory works out, with precision that comes from years of practice, a wide circle, within which he imbeds many-pointed stars and various other geometric shapes … decorated here and there with less refined-looking depictions of happy little yiffles.

Karo alternates between watching Rory's preparations, and glancing into the shop to try to spot Trouble for himself.

The unicorn adds in a few other colors – browns and oranges, mostly, with a little bit of white – to add in happy little fuff'nars chasing after the yiffle. (This isn't really a necessary component to the spell, per se – more a bit of wishful thinking thrown in for "good luck.") He ends up turning some of the spines of geometric forms into mountains, upon which he places a few buildings and towers and trees, and happy Eeee, sticks a side circle with radiating lines for a sun shining over the whole affair, and busies himself with further decorations that roughly suggest his impression of the surroundings – to which the shadow-yiffle will emerge – and the shop – where the shadow-yiffle will presumably start its mission.

"Xana, Zebox, Traya, Riter. Now it's time I start to sit here."

"Boga, Daza, Reyo, Niter. Conjure forth a shadow critter."

Rory continues in this vein, alternating between "genuine" magical phrases sprinkled with the occasional convenient (truly) nonsense word, to accent a suitable rhyme, just as he occasionally sprinkles parts of the circle with bits of colored sand. He shifts pebbles around along the geometric shapes, and complements the lines they make with occasional traces of runes in the air.

Some Eeee passersby give Rory strange looks as he works through the ritual, but no one seems inclined to question either him or the scruffy batling with him. As Rory closes on the last few minutes of his spell, Karo looks into the shop. "Uh-oh," he says, pressing his nose against the glass.

Rory perks his ears, but continues with his spell for the time being, rather than aborting it just yet. "Arey, Gama, Feya, Hubble. Fluffy fur, not spiky stubble. Yada, Baba, Utey, Nubble. Your mission is to bring us Trouble!"

"Messenger Reershock, I can see Trouble – he's moving around," the boy whispers. "He's … uh … he's just jumped onto the ground. Now he's running along the floor – and now he's sniffing at the back door."

Rory drops his chant to a conspiratorial whisper, "Toma, Tuma, Ruma, Rury. It's okay if you're a little blurry. Guna, Gusa, Susa, Sury. He's almost out, so you'd better hurry!" He waves his arms in wide sweeps, making his sleeves flop in a way he supposes is mystically melodramatic. "Help us with your tricky ploy – He's at the door, so get 'im, boy!" He gestures dramatically at a scribbly yiffle on the ground in front of him.

The shadowy yiffle puffs out, twitching into life, then scuttles underneath the front door. It scampers along the red carpet, heading for the partly-closed door to the back room. Rory, watching at the window, can see Trouble, an orange and brown tabby fuff'nar with brown and white stripes on his tail, nosing at the back door. Trouble doesn't seem to see the yiffle yet. He paws at the door, and it creaks open a little further. Rory can just catch the sound of a high-pitched Eeee voice through the glass. Karo, next to him, winces.

Rory peers in, shrinking down at the sound. "Go, yiffle go! Lead him like so!" He so wishes for once that shadows weren't scent-free and silent … and on the other hand, that he were a little less easily identifiable, because it sure looks to him as if soon the only way to get that fuff'nar out will be to rush in, risking the wrath of the tailor (not to mention that of the fuff'nar!) and grabbing the little creature!

"They heard the door move," Karo explains in a whisper. "She asked the tailor about the … uh door's groove," he says, rather nonsensically. "They're gonna get him, I just know it! Oh, Trouble, please don't blow it!" he prays.

Trouble pokes his nose around the corner of the door to the dressing room. It's still not open wide enough for Rory to see inside. The fuff'nar puts a paw down as if to go into the back room – then the yiffle runs underneath the foot. Trouble sees it! The yiffle draws quickly back, away from the door, toward the front of the shop and the waiting boys. The fuff'nar's eyes are riveted by the moving shadow-creature.

"Trouble, Trouble, over here! Yummy yiffle coming near!" Rory whispers hopefully through the window, keeping his fingers crossed tightly.

The yiffle teases the fuff'nar, moving from side to side as it draws away. Trouble crouches down, his long, fluffy tail waving, eyes still following the yiffle. "It's working!" Karo says, in a loud whisper. "It's working, and Trouble's not shirking," he adds. At that moment, the fuff'nar tenses, and leaps after the shadow-yiffle –

– with a loud, piercing, YOWL.

Rory sucks in his breath with a loud hiss, as his eyes go wide and his ears go back. "They'll hear that noise!" He then adds, "And it won't give them jolly joys!"

In fact, the sounds coming from the back room are loud enough for even Rory to hear, and they are definitely not joyous. The lady's voice is shrieking, "What was that?" while Emath tries to reassure her, "My lady, it's nothing, do not be alarmed, I'll – "

Meanwhile, the fuff'nar's insubstantial prey is scuttling out from between its claws and bolting for the front door. Still yowling, Trouble pounces after it, his claws tearing at the carpet when they try to close on shadow-yiffle flesh. The tailor throws the door open, and emerges from the back room. He spots the fuff'nar, and the Eeee gives a howl to rival the animal's cries. "OUT!" he shrieks.

"To the door!" Rory shouts, then quickly adds, "No time to snore!" He rushes up to the front door to push it just open enough for yiffle and fuff'nar to go through without any need for passing through solid objects (which, he hopes, is not an ability of the fuff'nar).

Not a moment to soon, as the shadow yiffle darts through towards his creator. The tailor has paused long enough to grab a broom from behind the counter. The lady comes forward enough to peer through the back door into the main shop. She spots the fuff'nar, and shrieks, half-fainting against the door frame. Trouble, his eyes wide, pauses near the open door. Between the confusion of the yiffle, the opening door, and the protesting Eeee, the fuff'nar doesn't seem to know quite what to do.

"Trouble!" Karo kneels outside the door, beckoning urgently to the animal. "C'mere! Don't fear!"

"Karo, grab 'im! Time to nab 'im!" Rory stage-whispers, still holding the door open.

"YAAAH!" The tailor charges the door, waving the broom. "You hooligans!" Trouble makes up his mind where he wants to go, and leaps into Karo's arms.

"Let's fly!" the batling yells, cradling his pet to his chest and leaping towards the balcony's edge.

"Bye bye!" Rory shouts, as he lets go of the door, and bolts off, making a beeline (or something roughly approximating it) for the stairs.

The tailor stands in the doorway, clutching the broom handle like a sword, and glares between the two kids, trying to make up his mind about which of them to pursue. "You – you – "

From inside the shop, the lady's voice comes weakly. "Oh … my … Emath," she says. That seems to settle the tailor, as he throws down his broom in disgust, and rushes back inside to the aid of his patron.

The unicorn, however, keeps at a healthy clip-clip up the stairs as if the tailor were still hot on his hooves!

Several flights of stairs later, the young Aeonian stumbles to a halt, breathing hard, and too tired to run any further. A few moments afterwards, a somewhat less winded batling lands on the ledge beside him. "Ohhhh. I think we lost him," Karo pants out. Trouble wriggles in the batling's arms, and purrs.

The unicorn is far too exhausted to contribute a rhyme this time. "(Wheeze!)" After a few moments of catching his breath, he says, "You've got Trouble now … so we don't have to keep rhyming. It's … whoof! Exhausting!" He looks warily up at the sky, then out toward the Monument. "Ungh. I don't know if I still have time," he says in a near-whimper.

Karo pets Trouble, who buries his nose against the Eeee's hand. "Time for what?" he asks. The sun is still visible above the ring of mountains surrounding Babel, though not by much. Still, Babel's position in a valley means there's another hour or so of sunlight left.

"Skiree," Rory gasps out, starting to rise to his hooves again. "I wanted to give Skiree some candy. She's a friend of mine. I visit her at the Monument. She was … there." He points out toward the Wound. "She was at the Guild Hall when … when it happened." He looks to Karo. "I hope Trouble doesn't give you any more … uhm … trouble. I'd better hurry off, since, well, I can't fly there … and I can't count on getting a safe ride back after dark. It's been … uh … well, kind of fun, actually." The unicorn manages a silly grin, as he starts out toward the nearest tower-bridge heading Wound-ward.

"Wait," Karo says. "Wasn't that your rakhtor outside the candy shop?"

"Oh! Oh yeah," Rory says, blushing. "Sorry. All the … uh … excitement." He spins about-face, and clip-clops over to the rakhtor. "Hey, if you've got anyone to visit at the Monument, you can come along, too! Just … keep a good hold on Trouble, if you do, 'kay?"

Karo nods, looking a bit more solemn, though he's still got a sort of goofy grin on his face. "Yeah. I have friends there, too. That'd be … that'd be nice. You're the greatest, Messenger Reeshock," he says, smiling again as he walks with Rory back to the candy shop and the rakhtor. "Thanks so much for helping me find Trouble."

Trouble reaches out to nuzzle Rory's arm, as if to second that opinion.

Rory grins, as he goes over to the rakhtor, and clambers up on hisback. "This is going to make for the best story in a Sphere that I've hadto tell Skiree." He then glances at the fuff'nar, and remembers theirlegendary knack for querying things about whether they're "dead," and then,if they're not, voting to "kill." He ponders appeasement. "Sayyyy … doesTrouble like Cricket Crunchies?"