e-republik

Na, pár napja részt veszek az e-republik online szerep? stratégiai? SL-típusú játékában, és az első tapasztalataim azok, hogy ... hát egy kicsit egyenlőre az az érzésem, hogy nem sok mindent tudok csinálni itt, azaz mint játék... hát nem a legaktívabb dolog, pedig én elég türelmes ember vagyok. Persze lehet, hogy később jobb lesz. Egyenlőre sikeresen elnéztem a kezdést, és Mo. helyett Romániában landoltam (ha regisztrálsz vigyázz erre, az igazi Mo területének jórésze a játékban Romániához tartozik!), és a meghívóm kellett, hogy kisegítsen az átköltözéshez; Romániában ugyanis meglepő módon románul beszélnek, amiből én egy kukkot se értettem, hiába írogatta nekem a leveleket valaki. Legalább ez életszerű volt. :-)
No persze látom én, hogy az oldal elég bonyolult, és a funkciók többsége még szürke, azaz nem tudom használni; remélem ez azért idővel változni fog. Szóval még mindig ott vagyok, hogy 'majd meglátom'. :-)

De ha valakit érdekel, meghívót már tudok küldeni. :-)
Ha meghívóval regisztrálsz, az nekem is, neked is pénzt jelent később a játékban...

e-republik

Sámán

Nagy, visszhangzó, soktermes, zegzugos, mégis vendégszerető és barátságos ház áll a kis falu főutcáján. Sok ember nyüzsög benne, közelebbi-távolabbi ismerősök, barátok, és a szellemek, az énrészeim is itt vannak megtestesülve, mint elfek, harcosok, a tolvaj, a bárd, a többiek is mind. Össze-vissza nyüzsgünk a házban, ide-oda megyünk, nem leljük a helyünket, összefutunk, szétválunk, néha mintha keresnénk valamit vagy valakit, néha bújócska-jellege van, néha csak sétálunk, körbenézünk, de igazából nem történik semmi különös, csak ott vagyunk, és ennyi az egész. Még itt vagyunk, még mi vagyunk...

Van egy nagy terem a ház középpontjában, eldugva, a ház mélyén elzárva, a főhelyen, a ház szíveként. Itt furcsa, ijesztő rekvizítumok, koponyák, misztikus jelképek, sámándobok és sok-sok hangszer között egy ágy van, rajta egy ember fekszik, haldoklik. Fölötte egy gyógyító-sámán-mágus-boszorkánymester áll, mozog, varázsol, kántál, énekel, gyógyítja a fekvőt... Az ágy körül rejtélyes polcokon, asztalokon szorosan egymás mellé tett koponyák sorai, kövek, tárgyak és égő gyertyák százai vannak, de az igazán félelmetes hangulatot az a sok-sok koponya adja, akik misztikusan fénylő szemüregükkel lenéznek az ágyon fekvőre, aki szenved, nagyon szenved, láthatóan súlyos az állapota, haldoklik, elmenőfélben van. Az ágy fölött gyógynövények vannak felakasztva, egymással keveredő, súlyos illatuk, amibe a füstölők is adnak aromát, belengi a szobát, a füstcsíkok színesen hullámzanak a levegőben a ki tudja honnan betaláló keskeny fénysugarak fényében, a gyertyák remegő, sárgás izzásában. A sámán kántál, mormog, énekel, időnként felugrik, körbejár, tárgyakat vesz fel, és tesz le, de a testhez nem ér hozzá, távol marad tőle. Mi ki-bejárunk a terembe, halkan, csendben, de mindig mozogva, körbemenve, kavarodva, nem megyünk közel, nem szólalunk meg, nem zavarunk, csak az a feladatunk, hogy fenntartsuk az örvénylést a terem szélein, hogy ne illanjon el az időtlenségbe, hogy megmaradjon a kapcsolat a szellemvilág és a valóság között... Egyvalaki áll az egyik fal mellett, súlyosan, mozdulatlanul, vezekelve, ő hibázott, miatta haldoklik az az ember, miatta kell a sámánnak súlyos varázslatot végeznie, miatta nehezedik a házra nyomasztó felleg, elmenne szégyenében de nem teheti, vállalnia kell a szerepét abban, ami történt, hogy megtörténhessen az is, ami még csak lehetséges, de nélküle lehetetlen. A mágia illata érződik egyre erősebben, elnyomja, legyőzi a füstölőket és a növények tisztító aromáit, a rítus felível, a mozgás felgyorsul, a sámán már önkívületben táncol az ágy körül... és a csúcsponton összerogy, mi szoborrá fagyunk, az ágyon nagyot rándul a test, majd elernyed... várjuk, hogy történjen, aminek történnie kell, és a türelemnek megvan a jutalma; a fekvő alak felül, önmaga megint, megmenekült, élhet még. A sámánra nézünk, de csak néznénk - ő eltűnt. Soha nem láttuk azután. Életét adta-e a halálért vagy megdicsőült és a mennybe ment, netán csak meglógott, amíg nem figyeltünk... ki tudja.

A felleg elvonult a ház fölül, a füstölők illata elillant, a gyertyák önmaguk viasztócsába rogytak, a koponyák szemgödrében kihunyt a túlvilági fény - a ház megint ott áll, a falusi utcán, mintha sosem tűnt volna el onnan. Elszéledünk, a világ visszahív, az életünk azon fele, ahol emberi lények vagyunk, ahol élünk, szeretünk és meghalunk megint történni kezd. A mágikus ház most üres, termeiben por szitál. De vár, mindig csak vár, mindenkit vár, aki jönni akar, akinek jönnie kell...

Buli

Buli volt Aprajafalván... Mikulás-buli, Estiskola-szülinap, András-nap, és mindezeket megünnepelendő retró-buli, sok-sok estiskolással, ismerősökkel és ismeretlenekkel, bográcsbanpörkölttel, tucatnyiféle házi pálinkával (de már heverem ki őket), borokkal és tortával, ami citromtorta leend és rajta citromdisznók futkároztak, amíg Mesevirág le nem mészárolta őket tortafelvágás címén. Innentől a torta egyre jobban hajazott egy disznóvágásra, de cukrászdai tortához képest meglepően finom volt még romjaiban is. Aztán volt még retró-diszkó is, ami egy üres táncparkettből, hangosításból, kismillió régi számból és egy agyament maszkabálból állt főleg. Hogy mikor hordtak diszkókban horgolt fejfedőket az számomra kérdéses, ahogyan a szőröskardigán is, és soma-mamagésa sem az a típus, akinek a parókáját pont egy retró-életérzéshez passzítanám. De azért egy keveset táncoltunk is, én főleg azért, mert mezítláb a betonpadló hideg volt egyhelyben állni... aztán malmoztunk pattogatott kukoricával kesudió ellen, fény derült az audiovizuális antropológia mibenlétére, a jelenlévők féltettebb titkai körül párra, és a buli romjain hajnalban aludni vonultunk, illetve én pl. a vörösbort nyögtem még sokszor, amit hiába szeretek, egy kénesebb/gyengébb darab elég ahhoz, hogy a másnapot MÁSNAPPÁ tegye. Amely másnapot aztán másnap egy sárbancaplatós falutörténettel, majd egy jegesszélbenállós klastromtörténettel próbáltunk meg elűzni, részemről sikeresen. Amúgy tényleg érdekes volt, és langy szellőben, napsütésben órákig el tudnám hallgatni Andrást, ahogy mesél, mert egyrészt tud, másrészt meg van neki miről. Utána még punnyadva, beszélgetve, ki tilosrádiózgatva, ki azelől menekülve, képeket elemezgetve kihúztuk az ebédig, majd kivártuk a kávét is, és elszéledtünk.

Jó volt, jól éreztem magam - kivéve, amikor nem - de még lehetne javítani rajta. A retróhangulat pl. nem egy nagy durranás, a diszkó meg mint olyan eléggé elhibázott ötlet volt; a táncoslábúak erős kisebbségben voltak. Képelemzés jöhetett volna még, és ha én vagyok, szvsz egy össznépi társasjáték-bajnokság is elfért volna, nem csak a két tábla malom.

Időzavarban...

Nem, ez nem egy novella, ez sajnos a valóság. Páran mondták nekem régebben, hogy az ember minél több dolgot csinál, annál többre jut ideje. Ezt privátim már akkor is kétlettem, de mondom legyen igazuk, én inkább maradok a kényelmesebb időbeosztásnál. Aztán úgy alakult, hogy egyre több mindent csináltam, és a kényelmes időbeosztásom valahol elszállt - majd jött ez az írásroham, és az ihlettől (hogy legyek nagyzolós is) már ott tartok, hogy konkrétan halasztgatok dolgokat, mert inkább leírok valamit még, mert tudom, hogy ha nem írom le, akkor hatvanfelé megy az agyam, és az a részlet sose lesz már ugyanolyan, vagy átírok el kész részt, mert közben jobb jutott eszembe, és mindeközben nemhogy többre nincs időm, de sokkal kevesebbre. Egészen konkrétan még soha nem fordult elő, hogy frissen megvett könyvet egy hét után még el se kezdjek olvasni, szegény Pinker meg ott hever az ágyam mellett és nincs rá időm. Meg le vagyok maradva legalább féltucat emillel, amikre válaszolni kellene. A fényképezőgépet se vettem a kezembe se egy hete. Vagy kettő. A gépelésekkel is le vagyok maradva. És akkor még a munkát nem is említettem, mert azzal próbálok leginkább lépést tartani, tekintve, hogy nagyon muszáj.

Úgyhogy elnézést mindenkitől, de nekem lett igazam, és a több dolog nem nyújtja meg a nap óráinak a számát.

A Beginning and an End 3.

[part 3 – scream]

Wandering on this no man’s land again made me rough, filthy, for I could hardly find some water now and it too became a problem, and it made short work of my clothes too – so again probably I did look almost as bad as when I escaped from death’s snare. But still, I somehow felt that I was getting close to home, and in my mind as I walked and caught food and during the nights when I could not sleep, I tried to remember now. It was painfully hard, I did not exactly knew how much time passed but I guessed it a decade or so, and it is a long time, particularly spent in a way that I did. Elves usually have eidetic memory and these do not fade with the centuries either; a thousand-year-old elf will just as easily recite a poem that he learned in his youth as he would the previous day’s happenings, and I had not been an exception either. But experiences like mine do affect memory, and it took me effort to remember my life Before… I of course remembered Rihanna and father, these were strong recollections, a few other things and peple, and curiously a small piece of a cherry-wood that for some reason lodged itself in the front of my mind although I could not do anything with it, as for the life of me, I could not remember what it was for or its significance… but I do know that it made me sad for some reason… it must have something to do with Rihanna, he gave it to me or I gave it to him, I should remember, but there were gaps aplenty in my recollections, things that I almost but not quite remembered, friends whom I should recall for their shadow moves in mind but they elude me… I wondered how they would welcome me, would they recognise me at all, I must remember to tell my name at once, to spare any misunderstanding for all of us. I also wondered, how I could reintegrate to my former life, if I could at all, to be again as carefree and happy as I was before… to be honest I could not really dream of that, my imagination could not encompass this subject, no matter, I thought, I will improvise, I will get by, I always have, I learned to.

As the scenery became a bit livelier it was some kind of mixture of unconscious dread and joyful anticipation settling on me, I somehow felt that my long journey will end soon, and I went on with grater speed, watching every shrub and tree to see who came to welcome me, I secretly hoped of course that it would be Rihanna, but dared not to trust this hope, and it wasn’t him at the end, a group of strange elves, armed and unfriendly, the border guard surely, ordering me to stop and turn back whence I came from, and I struggled with the long unused words, telling them who I was, but they did not become any warmer towards me, ordering me to put down the sword I still carried, still in that sharp, alien voices, and I did not understand, I am an elf like you, I pledged to them, you must understand, I was abducted and escaped, I came home… but they still gave no sign of accepting me, one of them starting to intone a spell, and I felt consciousness leaving me, no, please, why are you doing this...

I come to in a dark and dank place, for the first glance obviously a prison cell. The sword disappeared as well as the knife and everything else I still carried. My hands were tied, not cruelly, but with the almost impossible to tear elvish rope. I was alone, but I was used to that, it was dark, but my eyes could see in that, but I was in such an inner turmoil that I could hardly think straight. Why did they do this? What did they take me for? A spy maybe, a dark elf, an assassin or what? But I came openly, I came in plain sight, not in secret, why would they fear me for anything, it is not possible that nobody could recognize me, I know that I have changed but surely not that much… but if so, I can surely prove it, I remember things, I lost a lot, but enough to prove who I was, who I used to be. I slowly calmed, it was a misunderstanding that I feared, but it can still be cleared, it will be more difficult now, for they are for some reason suspicious, maybe the do know about some kind of plot and I got caught in it, yes, that is possible, I came ill-timed, but we can elucidate it. I hope.

So, when they came and took me from the cell, I did not create a furor, instead went with them without a word. They took me to another room, a bigger one this time, with a group of elves, unfortunately all unknown to me, sat by a table, very much like a tribunal or a court… and yes, they asked me the expected questions, necessary to confirm my identity, and started to interrogate me for my capture, the captivity, my time in slavery, and the escape. They seemed neutral, not showing any emotion either sympathetic or otherwise. But still, by the end I was not sure of what verdict they would bring… they seemed positive about my being whom I claimed to be, but still their faces showed no favourable disposition for me, no compassion, no understanding. Nothing. Then they become silent, and me too, having said everything that I could. I looked up to them, and that unconscious dread that I have felt before came back to settle on me, like a stormcloud… And then, silently coming to an agreement, the one in the middle started to speak, and his words froze my blood in my veins… you are an outcast now, banished from our land, never to set foot on it again… it is a verdict of this hearing and you can have no more say in this matter. A what…? I stared at them, not wanting to believe my ears, not wanting to accept what I just heard, but why, I stammered, hardly able to speak, why? You freely confessed having become tainted and defiled with the human world, mind and body. It is the law. But I had no choice, I am not responsible for it, why don’t you understand… but we do. It is still the law. You are impure now, debased, and is not fit to live as an elf, here. You will be taken to the border and if you ever try to set foot on elven land, you can be killed by anyone.

They took me back to the cell, and this time I did make a scuffle, although it did me no good, and they practically threw me back into the cell, not quite beaten but handled roughly, and I still could not believe the injustice, it is not possible to be punished so for something that I am innocent of, I did not ask to be captured, I escaped as soon as I could, I have never heard of this law, so I could not expect it, I have learned much later that it was a strict law that elves always took very seriously, and so the jury had absolutely no jurisdiction to absolve me, it was nothing personal, just a technicality for them. But back then I did not know it, so my mind spun theories of plots against me, my father or something, all far fetched and improbable of course, but I had to make it all understandable for me, had to digest it, for there was no appeal, it was a day, a few days at most and they would really banish me from my homeland forever to wander aimlessly in an alien world for a thousand years… next day I had seen Rihanna, looking into my cell in the small peeping window on the door, and I almost cried, for he did not come in, did not talk to me, just a look, just a single glance and he was gone… the red of the talisman showing for a split second at his neck, and I remembered suddenly, I started to make it to him on that fateful day, and that piece of cherry-wood from a better world, a sunlit and happy place, that told me that it was lost forever, that there was no going back, that it was final.

I was quiet after that, what more could have been said… I waited for them to take me, out of the cell, the country, home… but my next visitor was not them, but my father with two of his guards. I dared not to hope again, but something like hope started to rise in me anyway… æta, I whispered softly, stretching my hands towards him… but his face was like stone and his voice steel, when he roared at me, don’t call me that ever! And my budding hopes were crushed suddenly and cruelly… he formally disowned me, declaring that I was not his daughter any more, I had no right to use the name and I was never to call him again father in any tongue… I did cry then for it was too much, or I thought it was to much to bear, but the worst was still yet to come… the guard forcibly hold me down and one of them pulled my head backwards by the hair… I saw him approach, until he was looking down on me and his face was so full of loathing, so alien, was he my father really, I wondered, how could he love me once so, and hate me now so… and then I noticed the knife that he lifted slowly, and for a second I thought that he wanted to kill me, and in that moment I really believed that it would be an act of kindness, and the best thing for me that could happen… but the knife did not cut my exposed throat, instead it sliced the skin on my face, it hurt but I did not understand its reason yet, but it cut again lengthwise, then a deeper gash, and he slashed and cut repeatedly, until I knew what he was doing, he was destroying my face for resembling too much for his, blood was now flowing from the wounds, hampering my vision and choking me, but I still looked at his face and saw it contort, he was now in a rage, smashing my nose, mutilating it, cutting away my lips, and I did scream then, then hitting my eyes with the butt of the knife, and they swelled shut and I was blind but still felt the slashes and blows for some time, until they let me fell to the ground, writhing in agony, pain and shame for the rest of the night, I would have screamed, but I couldn’t even do that, my face was a mass of pain, nose, jaw, cheek all broken, blood flowing freely from the many cuts, but the greatest pain was in the inside, he did this to me, it was unbearable and I did give up bearing it, I let madness flame and consume me for the first time, for it and only it eased the pain, the picture of his face over me with the knife burning into my mind, and madness did claim me and I remember no more of that night.

Next day probably, somebody pulled me up from the ground, and they tugged me, and carried me when I could no more walk or even stumble, and in some time I was thrown down to the ground and my bonds cut, and I heard and felt them to leave, leave me alone, leave me blind, leave me somewhere, and survival insticts took over, I started to grope around and it was maybe a forest, at least I felt twigs and leaves on the ground, and I crawled and prodded until I felt a rock face under my fingers, and I sought a cave or at least a crevice for it started to rain and I shook with cold and pain and anguish, but found a shallow niche in the rock, I huddled close to it, so as to be defended from the rain, it wasn’t much but a kind of shelter, I knew that I could do nothing until the swelling goes down and I can see again, it was literally the longest night of my life, this time even the madness could not come to take me away, the inner darkness, the cold and the rain soon made me wish for a quick death, it was a quite likely possibility, I knew, with the gaping wounds in the place of my lips and my jaw broken I would not be able to eat, even if I find something to eat here or can hunt a game without any weapon in this condition… I gave up counting the odds against me – they were all on the other side, I simply had none.

I felt the dawn breaking, still in the rain and I did not move. There was simply no reason to. It was more and more likely that I would die here, for I still could not see and I started to wonder if he took my eyes too, I wouldn’t even notice it amongst all that pain, and if so it was sure death… but by around midday the cold did its work and the swelling has gone down and with effort I could open one eye to a slit. It wasn’t much but an improvement, I looked around but the bleak winter landscape offered no hope, I started to find a better cave than this miserable niche but I only took a few tottering steps when noticing something on the ground… it looked like a cloth, and as I flopped down I saw it was a cloak and not just thrown away by a careless traveller, but folded, placed on a few boughs so as not to get soaked, and there was a reddish piece of wood placed on top of it… I knew whom it was from by that, and I cried again, I took the talisman, caressed it, as I was thinking of him, not going against the law, but not wanting to see me dead in this place… I did not look up, he must have came and gone by now, but he left a few things to me which could help me to survive and it gave me a reason to as well… I will survive for you, Rihanna, even if we never meet again, I vowed, and survive I did ever since… but wearing a mask to forever hide my face.

Creative Commons Nevezd meg!-Ne add el!-Ne változtasd! 3.0
Copyright by: Nádasdy Nóra – Quicksilver – 2008. november 24. – Oroszlány

Miért ír...?

Miért írunk blogot a netre?
Miért írjuk bele, hogy mi történt ma velünk?
Miért írunk novellát magunkról másoknak?
Miért szerzünk zenét, nem elég belül hallani?
Miért fényképezünk, hisz magunk már láttuk azt?
Miért vitatkozunk, győzködünk másokat a vélt igazunkról?
Miért fontos, hogy más hogyan látja a művünket?

Az egy szépen hangzó válasz, hogy nem számít senki véleménye, mert az ember önmagában egy kerek egész, nincs szüksége mások véleményére, érveire, elismerésére, kritikájára, egyáltalán semmilyére. Ráadásul igaz is, ezen nincs is mit vitatni. Csak szerintem nem teljes. Önmagában az EMBER valóban egy zártan teljes egész-ség, amire ezek az eddigiek igazak, és így vannak.

De az ember nemcsak ez a tisztán szellemi gondolat-érzelem-ösztön-lélekkupac, hanem egy fizikai test is, és egy szociális lélek is. És a fizikai testnek szüksége van táplálékra, társra, fizikai dolgokra, míg a szociális léleknek szüksége van a szociális simogatásokra, inputokra és outputokra is. Tehát a kerek egész ember mellett két síkon is a külvilágtól függünk, a fizikai és a szociális síkon. És ezeket sem szabad elhanyagolni, hiszen mindkettő, de leginkább az utóbbi is hozzátartozik az életfeladatunkhoz, a fejlődésünk eszköze, azaz messze nem szabad elhanyagolni.

Nem mindegy tehát, hogy miért ír, fotóz, szerez zenét és vitatkozik az ember; az egész embernek ez önnönmaga szórakoztatása, amihez nem kell neki visszajelzés (ez az, amikor az író belül tudja, bizton érzi, hogy a műve jó/tökéletes/szar), míg a szociális léleknek ez egy csatorna, amelyen a külvilággal, a környezetével kommunikál, és ahol nagyon is fontos neki a visszajelzés, az input, a megértettség vagy annak hiánya - mert ez a feladatának elvégzésének a sikere vagy kudarca.

Én így látom ezt, de tényleg kíváncsi lennék rá, hogy más hogyan. Hajrá, írjátok meg - itt/most nagyon is fontos a visszajelzés. :-)

URL

Amikor először belekóstoltam a netezésbe - hű de rég volt - a net egy nagy könyvtárra hasonlított, ahol volt már ugyan éppen elég információ, de emberek, közösségek, azok nem nagyon. Ez a kilencvenes évek eleje-közepetáján volt, és mára ugyan már tudom, hogy lettek volna kezdődő közösségek, csak nem találtam rájuk - preGoogle times you know - úgyhogy vállat vontam, és a könyveket jobban szeretve inkább IRL maradtam.

Második belekóstolásomkor (2000 tája) azonnali és hosszantartó szerelembe estem a fórumozással, kezdetben internettó, majd az index tájain, és ezek már közösségek voltak a javából, eleinte felfutóan, egyre több talival, majd ereszkedő ágba menve, ahogy több hatás eredőjeként egy csomó ember eltűnt a fórumokról, vagy az IRL-be, vagy az induló blogoszférába, még újabb helyekre (twitter, SL). Innen a modik alkobolítottak ki, mondván hogy quicksilver innentől fogva nemkívánatos az indexen, akármennyit is tett érte vagy ellene. Ez mondhatni eléggé megzavarta a közösségi életem maradékát is.

Harmadszorra jöttek a blogok, és ez még most is tart. Amikor először elkezdtek eltünedezni egyesek a fórumról, majd felbukkanni, belinkelni a blogjaikat, még nem tartottam komoly műfajnak, sose gondoltam volna, hogy egyszer magam is ide fogom pötyögni a gondolataimat, véleményemet, sőt novelláimat is. Azért nem, mert egyáltalán nem voltam biztos abban, hogy ez bárkit is érdekelne, márpedig ha nem érdekel, akkor minek csinálnám? Eleinte jószerivel megmaradtam itt, a saját társaságomban, aztán hullámokban kezdtem el egy-egy téma kapcsán terjeszkedni, márminthogy újabb ás újabb blogokat adni hozzá az olvasottakhoz, sőt, egy idő után, feladva természettől való szűkszavúságomat is, még hozzászólni is elkezdtem. Most, az indexes címlapozási meg reklámozási mizéria miatt többen is elkezdtek a blogoláson, miérteken, besorolásokon gondolkodni, és ez engem is némi morfondírozásra sarkallt; hogy nem címlapsztori akarok lenni, az itt tuti, hiszen a blogspoton (Google-n) ilyen nincs, de igazából nem is hiányzik; nekem sokkal természetesebb, ahogyan terjednek a linkek, szájról-szájra, illetve billentyűzetről billentyűzetre, tematikusan és mégis emberien, nem ideözönlik egy nap hatszáz troll, akik másnapra-harmadnapra eltűnnek, hanem akit olvasok ÉS érdekel, annak nézek utána, az ő blogjáról ugrok tovább, és ez szerintem így, ettől blogoszféra, nem az index címlapjától.

A kerék meg, a szamszara kereke fordult egyet, annó szörföléssel indult a netezés, ma megint szörfölök, csak már nem weblapokon, nem információkon, hanem blogokon, véleményeken.

és még mi minden fog jönni vajon...?

A Beginning and an End 2.

[part 2 – escape]

To make my chance even smaller, I was beaten before the hunt, and this time I had not got even a knife, while the two dozen assassins were practically bristling with weapons; I would get the sacred hour before they started after me, but no more. I permitted myself a small smile inwards, I have had survived on such odds before, and it was only me who knew that the stakes were that much higher this time… I started out and got into the forest, if only I knew the magic, I could just simply step into a suitable and willing tree… but it was useless to wish something that was impossible, so I started to run, the run that I have perfected over the years, that I could keep up for days, and days it would have to be this time… by the time they started after me I was at the outskirts of the usual area, picking a direction more or less randomly, although the mountains seemed to somehow call to me, so be it, it was that way, and even though they had horses – on which I was counting – it still took them time to track me and run down… I ran and I felt my heart beating its strong and steady rhythm, at last I was running for freedom, for life, and for home… but enough of that, I can have no such thoughts now, for surely they will be upon me and instead of the chase it would be part two – fight. And it was, the first one simply wanting to run me down with his horse, swiping with his sword, what kind of a fool he took me for, I thought as I swayed to avoid the blade, it was easy to wrench it out from his grip and pull him from the saddle, good I thought, the fastest one is the clumsiest, it is easier than I have thought, he was dead by the time he hit the ground, and in the next second I was in the saddle, quieting the blood-splattered horse, all elves can befriend any horse any time, it was mine now, and now full gallop and don’t look back.

I did not look back for the next few days, but I was sure that a full and this time serious hunt was unfolding behind me, they could not let me escape, even though they could not know about the antidote I took, and now I’d have to carefully avoid any other settlement, I have gathered from the other slaves’ stories that in this country nobody was my friend, there were little law and much chaos, plenty of robbers and bandits and many kinds of humans who had one thing in common - that they would surely try to kill me on the spot. Apart from this, I had the time pressing me, and the fact that I still did not know which way to go to leave the country by the shortest route… so I had to approach a settlement, to find a map or somebody who told me what a map could… I did not really trust in finding a map, and I could not either, so I had to be content with a priestlike human, whom I threatened with disembowelment, started it in fact, until he told me in a hurried way to go north, through the mountains and on the other side it would be another country. I hoped he was telling the truth but of course I could not let him live. I even had to take the body and bury it later, farther away from this place. But what he said was hopeful, the mountains were looming over me and not very high, I could traverse them in a week if I am lucky, and have a few days to find a wizard, for the first time it actually looked as though I could even make it…

But it all went wrong from then on. I could not take any food with me, did not find any in that last place, and I wasn’t really fat to begin with – a skeleton with some skin on would more accurately describe me, so hunger was soon an issue, and as good a fighting weapon is a sword, as awkward it is to catch game with… game that wasn’t even plenty in the mountains, later I got to know that with all the wars sweeping back and forth over these mountains, whatever game lived here and had a little survival instinct had long ago migrated to more peaceful regions… I had found only some dark, bitter berries and dug up a kind of an onion which had an awful taste but I couldn’t be choosy… they, together with some worms were the only edible things that I could find, and it had taken to find them far more time than I had thought. The horse was showing tiredness too, and it would not eat the sparse yellow grass either for some reason, only some leaves from a bush, and of course it wasn’t enough for it either. After four days the assassins started to come, they of course had knowledge of the area’s geography and knew which way I was fleeing. In fact my lack of knowledge was why they couldn’t find me earlier, for I did not go where I should have gone, and where they expected me… but from then on it was fighting all the time too, and I lost even more time, I killed them as they came, we played a bloody hide and seek amongst the trees, I cannot really remember how many there were, but a lot certainly, and I was moving slow, far too slow, in fact I was running out of my time, even though I moved downhill now, so it must be that other country that the old man spoke of, but even from up high I could see no light at night, which meant no settlements, and that meant death to me soon.

I started to feel the symptoms the next day, I knew it was not a nice poison, they are cruel and they do not even give death quickly when they can prolong the suffering, I was hallucinating by nightfall, I imagined Rihanna coming to me but when I stretch my hand towards him he becomes an orc, and then worms come out of its mouth and shower on me, eating my face, I would scream but only painful groans come out of my mouth, then it becomes a zombie, and it hugs me, and I scream anyway, its foul, decaying breath is suffocating me, and then the dark spirits dance around my head, twisting and turning and the ground opens and I fall, and it closes over me and I have earth in my mouth, in my lungs and it bursts and I have my innards trailing out, and from then on I only remember snatches of nightmares, never really regaining consciousness, but slowly and agonizingly move closer and closer to death…

But the poison did not take me to the other side. I do not know even to this day, how long I have been dying there, alone on the mountainside… but slowly the pain and the hallucinations started to lessen in intensity, and a new pain come instead… I was starving, quite literally. The horse has long before escaped from me, and the bleak landscape offered nothing to eat. I have crawled, for I had no strength for even to stand and walk. The place where I was agonizing looked like a dozen angry spirits’ battleground, it was covered with blood and filth and spit and vomit, all from me… I have more or less fell into a stream, but it did me good, washed away some of the filth on me, cleared my head a bit, which was still half into a nightmare or hallucination, and it gave me a thing that probably saved my life… a burrow of crawdads, which I could still catch and eat as they were, raw, probably still alive, as I waited no time to have them… it wasn’t much but it gave me a little strength, to find some more food, slowly moving down the mountain. The pursuers probably gave it up some time back, or it was really another country, they must have thought me dead because of the poison, and really, I should be dead, how I survived it I don’t know… maybe the fact that I got it many times as well as the antidote, and my system somehow became used to it, insusceptible to it…

I must have looked like a demon from nether hell, for the very first human I met in this country screamed and run away as fast as he could, and still lacking the strength for it I decided against the tagging game. Instead I have stolen some clothes put out to dry at a small farmhouse – after making sure that the occupants were not nearby. I washed the best I could, put on the clean, although uncomfortable and ill-fitting clothes and set out to find a settlement. I found a village just after two days walk, but they weren’t very helpful, for as I learned later elves were not particularly welcome folk on these parts, complicated by the fact that I still did not speak the language some human slaves called Common, only a few words of it, and elvish only got me not too nice stares and eventually I was hustled out from the village, and I wanted no trouble as an introduction in this country, so I wandered forth. In the town it was only marginally better, for I have found a human who could speak a few words in elvish, and coupled with my few words in Common and much sign language I could tell him that I escaped from over the mountains and when he translated that it did achieve a little respect from them. At least I got some food and directions – hopefully they understood that I wanted to go home and pointed me that way – and one of them gave me a tattered cloak, which I welcomed as it was winter coming and my stolen clothes were more than inadequate for the weather. And so I wandered, roughly keeping to the right direction, sometimes finding helpful folks, sometimes having to scurry away rather quickly, and finally I got to a region that was probably noone’s land, for no people lived there, very little plants, few animals… but I doggedly moved on, the difficulties hardly registering on me any more, I became resigned and quiet inside and out, hope of anything seemed so far as to unattainable, after going through everything it was now the lack of anything happening that made me stoical, moving more out of sheer habit than anything else…

[to be continued]

Limbo

Igen, van egy olyan érzésem, mintha... mintha felfüggesztettek volna, mintha nem akarna és tudna történni semmi, mintha az egész belső világom valamire _várna_ és amíg az nem történik meg, addig átmenetileg egyfajta limbóban érzi magát. Pedig az élet az zajlik, kisebb-nagyobb dolgok történnek, mégis valamire határozottan várok. Csak azt nem tudom, mire.

Hát, remélem nem kell sokáig várnom, mert nem nagyon szeretek...

Hírsaláta

1.
Némi derültséggel kezdtem el olvasni a cikket, ami szerint szépen magyarul mondva az államigazgatás egyes ágai egymást baszogatják, mert ilyenkor az ilyen kisemberben, mint én pl., azonnal felmerül az az egyébként teljesen jogos reakció, hogy a) megérdemlik és b) amíg egymással foglalkoznak, addig sem velem.
No persze a dolog ennél bonyolultabb, az ombudsmani hivatalok sokaságát elvileg azért állították fel, hogy valakit megvédjenek valakiktől, főleg mondjuk a kisembert a hivataloktól, így az, hogy az apeh mintegy büntetővizsgálgatja az ellene fellépő ombudsmanokat, az elvileg nekem rossz, mert ugyanaz az ombudsman legközelebb nem fog akadékoskodni, ha az apehtól valamit lát, márpedig tudjuk mind, hogy ma, Mo.-on az apeh gyakorlatilag a legnagyobb szivató és pénzpumpa szerepét játssza általában, azaz lenne benne bőven megrendszabályozni való. Tehát ha az apeh mintegy büntetni akarja az ombudsmanokat, az valahol nagyon nem jó, tudjuk jól, hogy a jelenlegi adójogszabályok dzsungelében hibát bárhol lehet találni, hisz így lett kitalálva, hogy ha már az adó nem folyik be, mert messze túl sok, akkor legalább büntetésekből éljen meg az állam, és az ő kis kullancsai.
No persze az apeh felháborodva tiltakozott, hogy képzelik ezt, hogy ő ilyent tenne, a kis ártatlanka... :-/

Ez volt a cikk:
http://index.hu/politika/belfold/ombn3831/

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2.
Megalakult a bloggerunió, akik a bloghu-n a saját hirdetési felületüket (cf kétpúpú teve) civil szervezetek, nonprofit szervezetek számára ajánlják fel. Ad 1. erre kíváncsi leszek, az önszerveződő közösségek szvsz az internet leghatalmasabb... na jó, ez túl nagyzoló, szóval az internet lehetőségeit a lehető legjobban használják fel; Ad 2. arra meg még kíváncsibb leszek, hogy mit lép erre a bloghu.

http://bloggerunio.blog.hu/

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3.
Kiírtak egy fotópályázatot, ami első látsára még csak gyanús, másodikra viszont már tök átverés; öt képet lehet beküldeni, 2500 Ft nevezési díjjal, és a nyeremény az, hogy beválogatnak egy könyvbe, amiért már csak 85000 Ft-ot kell fizetned, és kapsz 10 db tiszteletpéldányt belőle. Magyarán a plyázat szó lótúrót sem jelent, hanem a cég fotókönyvet csinál, amit te kifizetsz, plusz az ő hasznát is. De biztosan pályázatként flancosabban hangzik. :-)

[Dehogy linkelem be, (ennyire) nem vagyok megőrülve.]

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4.
Az erepublik-ot még meg kell nézem, de ígéretesnek tűnik:

http://www.erepublik.com/en

A Beginning and an End

[part one – survival]

I was very carefully chiselling a piece of cherry-wood, intending to give it to my friend, Rihanna, for his anniversary which was coming up in the turn of the white moon, and I wanted to give him a perfectly carved amulet of Narmiraen, to guard his steps when going onto missions to the outside world… not that he needed it, I mused, but to show him my love, which was always following his steps, wherever he went… he was older than me, but ever since I passed childhood, we were together, him teaching me, me lightening his often shadowy moods, everyone else is saying that we were the perfect companions, the perfect team, and I basked in the light of all that praise for I thought him far better than me… he was away now, but would return soon, I was already anticipating it, the house was all quiet without him, although it was more than usually empty, my father also left, together with most of the household and would not return for some time. In the quiet of the evening I suddenly sensed some disturbance, not quite yet hearing it, but I worked hard on my other senses too, and everyone said that I had been blessed with unusual qualities and destined for much… yes, it was shouting now, sound extremely rarely heard in the house, and screams too, I was alert now and sought someone, but the house was empty, I also run out to join it, whatever it was, picking up a sword on the way out, my place was with the adults now, I thought proudly, for it wasn’t that very long, not with the children any more, who already ran into their hiding place, I just caught their teacher’s worried glance as he shut the secret door behind them, outside was a full melee now, I saw orcs and humans fighting with the servants and the remaining guards, but we were few, very few, too few, I thought as I ran to help them, one guard peeling off the fighting, shouting me to retreat to the house, but I ignored him, my place is here, I wanted to fight, I was young then and naive, and although trained, unfortunately still untried, unhardened by real battle, I cut down some who came at me, and glory started to fill my head already, but then an orc found me from behind with a bludgeon, it should have smashed my head, but a guard collided with him and it deflected the blow a bit, so it only felled me…

I come to in darkness, seeing stars inside and out, so it was night and my head hurt like hell, and I was tied, so they must have won the fight, I saw now the fires around me, and them… I have never before seen humans, nor orcs, so momentarily my curiosity surpassed the pain and the possible consequences of the situation, I was watching them with morbid wonder… I had time from then on to watch them, for we – the few of us who were taken alive – were herded like animals for weeks, until I could hardly move, escape was simply not possible, and after a while it was only automatism that took me from step to step, dimly feeling the sting of their whip sometimes, until we arrived into some kind of a town, a big, mainly human town and in it, a warehouse-like huge building, full of beings of every kind, all chained and tied and bloody and miserable, and suddenly it dawned on me that although we elves had no slaves but other races weren’t that scrupulous, Narmiraen help me, they will sell me and I am to become a slave too, what should I do now, well, I cannot do much, it all depends on them now, I must communicate to them somehow that I was important enough for a ransom or something, but my education sadly lacked the language of humans, I did not understand them and vice versa. I could exchange some words with another elf who was nearby, and who told me that this place was named Pidera, where most of the captives from the outside world ended up to be sold to their new masters. He also told me not to expect any kind of exchange – they were simply not interested in that, what they needed was slaves to kill, to work or to experiment on and nothing more…

We were sold in groups and I was thrown in with other elves, all of us freshly captured but from different parts, they must have hit the elven border in a number of places, and even all the human slaves looked down on us, we were most often whipped or got the food gone bad, jostled and hit and treated with words of which I could not understand the meaning but certainly got the intent, it seemed that this place had even less liking for elves than the rest of the human world, as I heard that our kind is rather envied for long life and our abilities than despised in most human kingdoms, but this one was surely an exception, I had to end up in a place were my best hope is to die as soon as I can, but I shook myself, enough with all that whining, I am an elf, I am a noble daughter of a great house, it is time to behave something like that, I take what is my fate but I do not lie down whimpering like a whipped dog, I can and will escape and go home as soon as I can. It did help curiously, this vow strengthened me and gave me a goal, far as it was but worth fighting or hurting for…

We were taken on yet another journey, and the last part of it we had to walk blindfolded and ears covered, dragged by our bonds, so as not to be able to retrace our steps I guessed, and unceremoniously thrown into a huge cavern where we could see other slaves, bedraggled, covered mainly with scars and some shreds of torn clothing… we were to live there from now on until we die in some way, sleeping on the dirty floor, washing in only buckets of foulish water, cleaning the fighting pits, repairing the equipment - and mainly die by the various weapons that the school’s students were learning to wield and practiced with… They did exercise with each other too, weeding out the weakest ones from their ranks, but we were there too to perfect their skills on, slaves were cheap, worth almost nothing, each day we carried away dozens of bodies from the training fields, sometimes it seemed to me butchery, not training, but after all they were learning to be manhunters, assassins, and they had to be the best, for the school was the most famous in these parts, they for some reason called it Twins, but nobody bothered to explain the curious name. I survived the first few month with sheer luck, as I look back I do not really understand exactly how, as the average lifespan of the slave were certainly less than a month… I have changed much then, from a proud but gentle elf-girl, into a hardened and cynical somebody whose sole goal was to survive and escape… I collected scars on my body and on my mind too, there were times when I thought when the morning came that there is no chance that I can stand, much less go out and fight, defend myself, as we were not really there to fight as equals, the very idea was laughable, we never got decent weapons, just so much so as to have something in my hands, and I had to learn to win even with inferior weapons, against many, against all the odds, but my steel will, my determination carried me through some situations, that I hadn’t even dreamed to win…

I slowly gained some kind of grudging respect, even the school‘s leaders noticing that I survived for far more than any of the other slaves, and I suddenly had some unwelcome attention, as it meant ever more torture, for they did not want to believe that a simple elf, and a female at that could best their pure-blood apprentices, it was too much for their alleged superiority… I got through a pretty difficult time, but still persisted, still survived and the attention subdued somewhat, and though I became almost like a banshee, half crazy most of the time, my stubborn, dogged determination coupled with intellect and my abilities carrying me through the tight situations, and they did notice the stubbornness and tried to kill it in me, trying to break my resolve and backbone with shame and humiliation as well as with brute force… but still I lived and still I dreamt of freedom again, although the exact details of it has already started to disappear, I struggled to remember, to hold on to memories, faces, words, places and ideas… but they meant ever so less, fading into obscurity, not needed for survival, needing precious energy to think of them, my whole being streamlined down into the absolutely essentials, there was no place, no energy, no will for more… until one night lying exhausted on the filthy floor, half-dreaming and half awake I saw Rihanna’s face, sad but calling out to me, and I struggled again, for I understood that it also meant loosing my self, becoming a body which survives but contains nothing, empty of thought, devoid of feelings, memories, and what is the point to survive if it means loosing everything that worth living for…?

And from then on I had to struggle to attain these two goals, to survive and eventually escape and preserving my very self in the meanwhile. It took me years to even concoct something resembling a plan, the hunt, where I was the prey to be captured or killed, helped a lot to get acquainted with the surroundings of the school, but of course I was forced to take the slow poison, of which the antidote was back in the school, carefully portioned, so I could not escape, but still slowly I formulated a plan, that was of course dangerous, but I knew that eventually I had to take the risk, because as the years came, it was harder and harder to survive, I assimilated by then everything that the assassins had to learn, but they wanted to kill me more and more, on every occasion the stakes were higher, the odds against me lower, I was always on the razor’s edge, until I knew that it cannot go far, because I will on some day make a mistake, and it will be the end of me. It was a hunt again next day, I thought, and I have managed to steal some of the antidote the last few times, skimming the dose that I was given, it made me throw up and weakened me, but I got through it, and kept it hidden, hoping that it would be enough, that it would not loose its potency, until I got out of this accursed country, but could not be sure, since I had no idea of its location or what lands surrounded it, I had not ever learned the geography of human lands, and it was now the biggest risk, for the antidote was enough only for a week, tendays at most, and after that if I cannot find a priest or magician, who could neutralize the poison then I was dead.

[to be continued]

Spiclik és más állatfajták...

Amíg fórumoztam, gyakran felmerült a spicliskedés problémája, hiszen ott is, ahogyan az IRL világban is a törvények biztatnak, ha nem is egyértelműen köteleznek arra, hogy ha törvénytelenséget, MM-sértést látok, azt jelentsem, rohanjak a modikhoz, akik majd azt jól megítélik és elbírálják, szankcionálják, no persze a modi már csak egy olyan állatfajta, hogy ha hívják, akkor nem megy el intézkedés nélkül, hogyisne, majd még azt mondják, hogy nem csinált semmit, inkább akkor is tilt, büntet, ha hóttotálsemennyire se lenne szüség a beavatkozására, és ez a reflex persze megvan a rendőrségben, államigazgatásban is, ha bejelentés történik, akkor mozgásba lendül a gépezet és nehogymár fölöslegesen lendüljön mozgásba, csinálni is fog valamit.

Azaz a spicli nagyon jól tudja, hogy ha nem fúj a szél, nem zörög a haraszt elven valamilyen hatást úgyis el fog érni, ha bejelent valamit, valakit, annak ebből csak baja fog származni, ha már van két fűszál keresztbetéve (élesebb hangú a vita a fórumon), ott már lehet akár államellenes összeesküvést (fórumrombolást, személyeskedést) is kiáltani, vagy suttogni a megfelelő fülekbe, mert lesz eredménye, az illető meg lesz fegyelmezve (futhat a nickje után, pitizhet, ha akar és tud), és ez a spiclinek hatalom, befolyásosságérzet, ettől ő több lesz, ha a másikat lenyomják, és ez a különbség a törvénytisztelő állampolgár és a spicli között, az előbbi meglát, meghall valamit, és úgy érzi, ez bajt okoz(hat), ha bejelenti is, még inkább magát szégyelli, hogy mit tett, míg a spiclinek inkább csak ürügy kell, hogy besúghasson, hogy felnyomhasson valakit, akire amúgy is orrol, és ez a valódi indoka, nem a törvénysértés.

Ez a különbség, és nem az, hogy mekkora és milyen szabály-, vagy törvénysértésről van szó, nem arról, hogy valaki rendmániás vagy liberálisabban nézi a törvényeket, hanem a spiclinek a lélektanáról, hogy miért teszi, amit tesz. Nem a törvény és a megsértése a kérdés itt, hanem az indíték, a besúgó indítéka, hogy csak egy ürügy neki ami történt, hogy a saját bosszúvágyát, ellenszenvét, akármit kiélhesse. De ezt a törvény nem tudja kezelni, a törvény, a modik előtt minden spicli törvénytisztelő állampolgár, ill. szabálykövető user, és minden szabálysértő vagy MM-sértő bűnöző, bűnös, böntetendő.

Mert a jog nem egyenlő az igazsággal, a jog nem tud az igazsággal foglalkozni, csak azzal, amit már egyszer magának lefektetett, a jog precedensekből ás általánosításokból áll, az igazság pedig folyékony, és érezhető, de jogba, törvénybe foglalni nem lehet, elveszik belőle, mihelyst paragrafusjelet lát.

Erről jutott eszembe, trackbackolni továbbra sem tudok csak linkeskedni: Betyárbecsület

Az első hó

Reggelre kelve leesett az első hó idén. Már vártam, ígérgették is egész héten de eddig esély se volt rá, ma reggel viszont megtette ezt a szívességet, és ha csak egy lepelnyire is, de kifehérítette a világot... A cinkék persze azonnal megjelentek, mindig együtt jönnek az első hóval, sosem láttam még őket előtte, de már be volt készítve a mag a madáretetőbe, nem kellett csalódniuk, idén is jöhetnek a terített asztalra. Sajnos nem esett sok hó, nem fedi el még a füvet sem teljesen, és bizony ahogy elment, elkezdett sütni a nap hétágra, olvad is, délutánra, mire kimennék az erdőbe, nem sok fog maradni belőle, már egy óra múlva se lesz sok, még fényképezni sem elég talán.

De tél van, ez már visszavonhatatlan, előszedtem a méztől kezdve a méregdrága keleti fűszerekig mindent, ami kell ilyenkor, az autón téli gumi, benne fagyálló, homok, kislapát, akadtam már el a szekérúton a félfagyott, lucskos hóban, azóta van mobilom is, na nem a világ végén lakom, csak télen is kimegyek naponta az erdőszélre kocsival, viszem a kutyát futni, meg magamat sétálni.

A tolvaj

Megint erősebb volt a nagy szám és a naivitásom az óvatosságnál. Pedig a legutóbb is megfogadtam - miután felépültem és megint tudtam járni egyedül és egyéb apróságokat művelni, amik úgy jól esnek néha - hogy többször nem kötök bele barbárokba a kocsmában. No persze a múltkor sem gondoltam, hogy kötözködés lesz belőle, én csak aziránt érdeklődtem tőle, hogy ugyan mivégre hord akkora kardot, hogy kétlépésenként belebotlik, és ritka esetlenül néz ki, ahogy a kétméteres termetével és nagy, szőrös bundában, balettre emlékeztető mozgásokkal próbálja visszanyerni az egyensúlyát. Hát tehetek én arról, hogy zokon vette? Ha őt nem zavarta volna, akkor nem törte volna össze a csontjaim felét, hogy értékes ékszereket kelljen megint lopnom majd, amivel kifizethetem a gyógyító papot, és most nem kellett volna megint itt ülnöm egy ócska, vizezett sör mellett, mikor úgy utálom a sört, azt lesve, hogy a hiú kalmár mikor jön, hova megy, hogy követni tudjam. És persze nem állnék most itt megint egy hozzám képest toronymagas barbár előtt, aki aziránt érdeklődik, hogy mégis hogy gondoltam azt a kérdést a cobolyprém ágyékkötőjének a méretéről. Hát, mintha nem tudná, persze lehet, hogy tényleg nem érti, egyiküket sem az eszéért fogják elrabolni, lehet, hogy egy kétszeresen összetett mondat már kifog az agytekervényein és csak annyit fogott fel belőle, amitől megsértődhetett és megverhet, hiszen a sörön kívül semmi mást nem szeretnek annyira, mint a verekedést. Sajnos azt is hiába közöltem vele, hogy úriember nem verekszik gyengébbekkel, legnagyobb bánatomra sem az úriemberségről, sem a fair playről nem tudta, hogy éppen eszik-e vagy isszák.

Általában azért el tudok iszkolni a hasonló helyzetekből, ha már kicsi vagyok, legalább valami hasznom legyen belőle, ha van terem, nem nagyon tudna egy ilyen barom utolérni, de néha a tömeg olyan hangulatban van, hogy vért akar látni, és nem törődik azzal, hogy kiét, nem számít az ok, csak összetömörülnek, és lehetetlen meglógni. Mint most is; hiába néztem körbe, mindenütt csak söröskorsókkal hadonászó kezek, a hőségtől izzadó testek és vigyorgó arcok néztek vissza... egy félelfnek sosem könnyű az emberek között, de ha még ráadásul kicsi és látszólag védtelen is, akkor könnyen ki tudom hozni belőlük az állatot pusztán a létezésemmel is. Én tolvaj vagyok, abból a jobbak között tartanak számon, de verekedni csak akkor szoktam, ha nagyon muszáj, barbárokkal szemben meg aztán végképp nincs esélyem. Jól megáldottak az istenek a nagy számmal, aki ekkora, mint én, az tanuljon már meg végre hallgatni,vagy legalább ne magánál kétszer nagyobb alakokba kössön bele… az első ütésétől repültem vagy öt méter, és csak azért annyit, mert az ember, akinek nekivágódtam fel se vette az ütközést, gyakorlatilag visszapattantam róla. Hogy eltört-e az állkapcsom, arra nem is figyeltem; ha most nem is, később úgyis el fog – innentől a cél a túlélés, és még az se lesz könnyű. Vártam a következőt, de nem jött… felnéztem, és leesett az állam – ami ezekszerint mégse tört el – a barbár tőlem két lépésnyire állt, bután nézve a mellkasában álló késpengére, amíg el nem dőlt, mint egy kivágott fa. Még jó, hogy nem rám dőlt, eltemetett volna, pedig ezt inkább vele kellett megtenni ekkorra. A dobókés röppályájának másik végpontján egy jelenség állt. Érdekes, a kocsma egyszeriben milyen csendes és nyugodt hely lett… mindenkit csak a söre és a vacsorája érdekelt, az ajtóban álló elfre már csak a legbátrabbak, rám már hála az isteneknek senki nem figyelt.

Nem akarsz inkább velem jönni Illyre, kérdezte az ezüstszínben szikrázó alak, és én továbbra is leesett állal csak bólintani tudtam… egy igazi elf, ráadásul magaself, járt az agyam tovább, soha még nem is láttam a fajtájából senkit sem, nemhogy beszéltem volna eggyel és még a nevem is tudja… hisz még a félelfek is levegőnek néznek, mintha nem is léteznék, sokáig nem is értettem a dolgot, aztán egy félbolond mágus mondta el már sok évvel azután, hogy utoljára próbálkoztam náluk, hogy az elfek között az olyan örökletes betegségeket hordozók, mint én is, a faj szégyenének számítanak, tisztátalannak tartják, kitaszítják őket. Nem tudott sokat az én nyavalyámról, de annyit igen, hogy ne számítsak még a félefek hosszú életére sem. A foltok a bőrömön sosem okoztak gondot, csak látványosak, jelzik azonnal, hogy mi vagyok, mást ami tünet lett volna még nem éreztem. Amióta ezt tudom, nem keresem az elfek társaságát, távol tartom magam az elfnegyedtől, igaz az emberek se fogadtak be soha, de ilyesmire már nem is számítok… amióta anyám meghalt, és ez igencsak régen volt, még gyerek voltam akkor, azóta nem volt senki, aki… nem, nem szeretett volna, ezt nem vártam el soha a világtól… csak legalább elfogadott volna, mint egy rokon vagy egy barát. Magamnak kellett megküzdenem a megélhetésért egy ellenséges világban, ahol a legtöbb amit kaphattam, a közöny volt. Közben az elf felsegített a földről – hozzámért, nem derogált neki megérintenie a bőrömet, ezt el se hiszem, ilyen csak a mesékben van – és a kocsma közönségére ügyet sem vetve tovább, elindult kifelé.

Gyorsan utánaszaladtam, és követtem az ajtón kifelé, de igazából fogalmam se volt, hogy hozzá merjek-e szólni, vagy mit csináljak… nem voltam hozzászokva ahhoz, hogy mit kell tenni ha jótevőkkel találkozik a magamfajta, ilyen nem szerepelt a praxisomban eddig. Az elfnegyedbe tartottunk, és ahogy közeledtünk a Mithrilkapu felé, úgy kezdtem aggódni. Vajon tudja-e, vagy érdekli-e, hogy én ott nemkívánatos vagyok? Rámnézett, mint aki hallja a gondolataimat, és elmosolyodott. Furcsa volt látni, ahogy a maszk résében megjelenik a mosoly árnyéka, de megnyugodtam tőle; gyanítottam, hogy még az elfek se nagyon mernék feltartóztatni, hogy kidobjanak a negyedből – amíg mellette vagyok, addig jó, utána meg meglátjuk. Mit akarhat vajon tőlem, a kocsmából semmi és senki más nem érdekelte, mintha tudta volna, hogy oda kell jönnie értem. Valószínűleg tudta is, olyannak néz ki, mint aki nem véletlenül tesz dolgokat. Tolvajra lehet esetleg szüksége, de azért realistán nézve vannak nálam jobbak is ebben a műfajban, és ettől még egyetlen elf se fordulna pont hozzám, a kitaszítotthoz. Én is az vagyok, hallottam a választ immáron a fejemben, és megdöbbenve néztem rá… majd elmesélem, ez hosszú történet, és itt vagyunk már, ide jöttünk. A Yavenna fogadó az elfnegyed legjobb ilyen helye, természetesen soha nem jártam még a közelében sem, még mindig nem voltam benne biztos, hogy beengednek-e oda, akárha vele is… de bemehettem, és mintha egy másik világba léptem volna. Az elfnegyed kívülről nem sokban különbözik a város többi, más fajok lakta részeitől, így sosem gondoltam volna, hogy a háztömb belsejében kis erdő, patak bújik meg, a szobák a fák köré vannak építve, sosem voltam még Riuleanban, de azt mondják ott ilyen a táj… ahogy beljebb mentünk gyakorlatilag már nem fáradtam azzal, hogy a leesett államat keresgéljem, hisz lépésenként láttam valami olyan csodát, amit még soha életemben, én, az utcán felnőtt, árva tolvajgyerek…

Nem hazudtam neked, én is kitaszított vagyok, felelt a kimondatlan kérdésemre, mihelyst a szobába értünk, és vacsorát rendelt kettőnknek, csak én kivívtam, hogy féljenek tőlem, tiszteljenek, és hogy senki ne merje a státuszomat még említeni sem. Feltéve persze, hogy nem zavarom őket sokáig, és ez nem is áll szándékomban. Szükségem van rád egy küldetéshez, amiért neked tekintélyes mennyiségű pénz járna, akár új életet is kezdhetsz belőle, ha az a vágyad… a mélytüzű szempár itt olyan erősen nézett az enyémbe, hogy szinte égetett, éreztem benne a szavak súlyát, egy döntés mélységét, amiről még azt se tudtam, micsoda, de fájt látni, de ezt eldöntheted majd később is mondta, erről lenne szó… a dolog kockázatos volt mindkettőnk számára, és még mindig nem értettem, hogy miért választott annyi tolvaj közül pont engem, majd idővel megérted, jött a válasz, és csak ekkor esett le, hogy végig egy szót se szólt egyikünk sem, hanem az elménk beszélgetett, igen, neked is megvan hozzá a tehetséged, tanulnod kellene, és nem csak ezt. Holnap este megyünk, legyél ott, fejezte be kurtán-furcsán a beszélgetést, remegett a hangja, szinte kilökött az ajtón, és ahogy visszanéztem, a csodás, ezüstszín alak, már láthatóan összerándult, mi a baj, kérdeztem volna, de az ajtó becsapódott, holott hozzá sem ért, most menj el, sikoltotta az agyamba egy szörnyű hang, és én mitagadás berezeltem tőle, olyan gyorsan futottam kifelé a negyedből mintha kergettek volna, ami valószínűleg meg is történt volna, ha nem sietek, és még a nyomorúságos szobámban is azon törtem a fejemet, hogy ez most mi volt, és mire számítsak holnap…

De a másnapból semmi nem lett, az éjszaka közepén törték rám az ajtót,első látásra cca. tucatnyi ember, és ugyan a fejem alatt tartott tőrt belevágtam egyikükbe, de egyszerűen túl sokan voltak, esélyem se volt. A szememre kendő került, a fejemre zsák, összekötöztek, és vittek, sokáig, mintha kivinnének a városból, de még éreztem a város bűzét, az egyetlen érzékem, ami elfhez, na jó félelfhez méltóan működött, átok többnyire, de néha hasznosnak bizonyult, most is azonnal megéreztem, amint közelértünk a nekropoliszhoz, és úgy istenigazából elkezdhettem rettegni… ide élők nem nagyon jártak, aki mégis, nem sokáig. Más, normálisabb helyeken a temetők nyugodalmas helyek, ahol a holtak békét lelhetnek, de itt, ebben az átkozott városban zombik, élőholtak, vámpírok és hasonlók lakhelye volt, ahová senki nem temettette el már szeretteit, akiknek jót akart… Hamarosan már föld alatt haladtunk, de a hullaszag érdekes módon megszűnt, és amikor ledobtak a földre, már tudtam, hogy csak keresztülmentünk rajta, és most valahol a falvárosban lehetünk, amiről szintén csak hallottam eddig, de nem is nagyon ismertem olyant, aki járt volna ott. Hja, akinek élőholtak őrzik a kapuját… ez nem az én szintem, felettem van ez az egész, gondoltam, és igazam volt, azt akarták tudni, amit az elf mondott este, de azt nagyon és nyomatékosan, úgyhogy hamarosan eszembe jutott, hogy lehet, hogy a barbár mégiscsak jobb választás lett volna, ezek kifinomultan ütöttek, kegyetlenül, és fájdalmasan, hisz tudtam én, hogy előbb-utóbb beszélni fogod, de mégis, életemben először megmakacsoltam magam, a fenébe is, semmit se tudok róla, miért nem mondom el nekik, amit akarnak, akkor még az is lehet, hogy életben hagynának, persze úgy komolyan ebben azért nem hittem, úgyhogy mindegy is, most már annyira mindegy, gondoltam, ahogy elkezdett halványulni bennem a lélek, ez egy hirtelen vég lett, erre nem számítottam…

Halk, de annál hamisabb éneklésre ébredtem fel, holott inkább valami másvilágszerűt reméltem, hátha az jobb lesz, ennél csak jobb lehet bármi, nem is álltam neki leltározni a sebeket, túl sok volt, túl fájdalmasak, nem akarom én ezt, hagyjon békén már a világ… én is voltam így vele, hallottam a hangját, miközben tovább énekelt, eljutsz egy pontra, amikor minden tényleg mindegy, és ott, és csak ott tudsz dönteni a sorsod felől. De te még nem vagy ott… mit tudsz te rólam, fortyantam fel, sose láttál még, én se téged, mit akarsz tőlem valójában? Esélyt adok neked, jött a válasz, először is arra, hogy lábra tudj állni – valóban, szinte észre se vettem, ahogy a fájdalom múlt, és a sebek összezáródtak, hallottam már az elfek gyógyító mágiájáról, de még sosem volt hozzá szerencsém – aztán, hogy tovább tudj menni.

Gyere, szólt, talán ekkor először hangosan, és én fel tudtam ülni, állni, és szótlanul követtem… tudtam, hová megyünk, az előző este elmondottakat akárha beleégették volna az agyamba, a puccos belsővárosi utcán szinte meztelennek éreztem magam az ócska ruháimban, de a hátsó ajtó nyitva volt, és innentől már csak zárak és csapdák voltak, ezeket ismertem, ez megszokott terep volt, bár a tét akkora, mint még soha, idegesen gondoltam bele, hogy ha ezt bejelentettem volna a céhnek, és meg is csinálom, akkor tuti megkaptam volna a mestertolvaj rangot, de ez már késő, csak sikerüljön… gyorsan dolgoztam, óvatosan, de sietve, időre be kellett érnem, mert addigra ő is ott lesz, elvonni a figyelmet, hát, ez kétségtelenül megy neki, gondoltam, rá figyelnek, ő egy jelenség, el is szégyelltem magam, alig ismerem, csak jót tett még velem, és irigykedek rá? Pedig biztosan nem véletlenül kitaszított és a maszkot se valószínű, hogy csak farsang alkalmából hordja. Megvan! A zár megadta magát, és újabb ajtóval kerültem beljebb, egyre magabiztosabban haladtam befelé, csak kifelé is menjen, már közel járok, és ő is ott van már a szalonban, legalábbis hőn remélem, és lefoglalja a márkit testőrségestül, őröstül, amíg én megküzdök a zárakkal, naná hogy őt tartják veszélyesebbnek, de konkrétan nem gyanakszanak rá, párbajt akar, azzal ellesznek egy darabig, lökj egy nemes orra alá egy becsületbeli ügyet, és nem fog eszébe jutni, hogy mi van éppen a szigorúan őrzött lélekkarddal, amit mondjuk amúgy se tudna használni, de irtóztatóan büszke rá, hogy neki ilyenje van. Hopp, egy őr. Illetve kettő, ezeket nem vonzotta el a kinti látványosság? A picike tűket én találtam ki, én reszelgettem őket otthon, álomméreggel voltak bekenve, és pár méteren belül elég veszélyes voltam velük, bár nem öltek, de ez kevésbé is volt feltűnő, az őrök gyakran alszanak el szolgálatban, én meg mindig összegyűjtöttem a kis dobótűimet utólag.

Az utolsó ajtó, és bent vagyok, csak most vigyázzak, imádkoztam, istenek, ha vagytok, most lessen ide valamelyikőtök, ezt itt már jó lenne megúszni, izzadtam, küzdöttem, a zár bonyolultabb volt mint bármi, amit eddig láttam, érzésre dolgoztam, csak reméltem, hogy menni fog, közben rettegtem, hogy rám ne nyissa valaki az ajtót, hogy sikerüljön, most már elhittem, hogy sikerülhet, igaza volt az elfnek, merni kell magasra nézni, nem járhat az ember, meg a félelf sem lehajtott, lesunyt fejjel, mert akkor mások is annyira értékelnek csak, mint én magamat. Furcsa gondolatok… az elf egy szűk nap alatt több folyamatot indított el bennem, mint addig az évtizedek összesen… ha ez sikerül, még mindig az adósa leszek, nem pénzzel, de … nem is tudom mivel, majd kiderül, de most… és igen, a zár felpattant, a torkomból meg kishíján kitört a diadal hangos kiáltása, de még idejében visszafogtam magamat, bár mint kiderült, nem is kellett volna, ebben a pillanatban jelent meg az elf, a külső szoba másik – csukott – ajtaján keresztül, lebukva a repülő tőrök elől, elegánsan átlépve a botlódrótot, lesöpörve magáról az ajtó törmelékét, és gyere, nincs időnk, követnek, felkapta a szobában lévő egyetlen tárgyat, a hosszúkás fadobozt, és futás, kiáltotta, és futottunk, ugrottunk, néhol kicsit kaszabolta az őröket, olyankor csak lestem, mert még életemben nem láttam senkit így kardot forgatni, nem volt szüksége a segítségemre, csak követtem, és amikor kiértünk az utcára, egy akkora fekete ló jött vágtatva, hogy majdnem elfértem volna a lábai között, de az elf könnyedén ugrott fel a nyergébe, és – pillanatra villant bele az agyamba, hogy most itthagy, prédának, hisz láthatóan tolvaj törte fel a zárakat – de már nyúlt értem, és a ló meg se érezte a súlyomat, szégyen-gyalázat, tudom, de félelfhez is méltatlanul nem tudok lovagolni, mire kiértünk a városból, kész voltam, összetört a ló, szétrázott, feldörzsölt ott, ahol a legjobban fáj.

Egy kiserdőben állt meg nem messze, a tisztáson patak folyt át, a napsütésben, a tavaszi erdőben valódi meseszerű látványt nyújtott az ezüst csillogásával, tényleg nem tudsz lovagolni sem, kérdezte mosolyogva, és én csak vállat vontam, amit tudok, magamtól tanultam meg, soha a városon kívül nem jártam még, lovam se volt soha, minek? A világ nagyobb ám, mint a te városod - és néhol még jobb is tette hozzá halkan, elgondolkodón - akarod látni? Nincs más választásom, feleltem, a városba nem mehetek vissza a mai nap után. Hosszan nézett rám, fürkészően azokkal a fantasztikus, égő szemekkel… te mit akarsz tenni, az a kérdés. Nem az, hogy mit lehet. Velem jöhetsz, egy darabig mindenképpen. Tanulhatsz, tőlem és másoktól akár. Veszélyes lesz, és én is veszélyes vagyok – egy pillanatra felborzongott bennem a tegnapi őrült sikoly emléke – de izgalmas és jót tenne neked. Vagy visszamehetsz a városba, ugyanaz úgyse leszel már soha, mint azelőtt. Bejelentettem a mestervizsgádat egyébként, mondta mellékesen, és én csak bámultam rá, sokáig, teljesen összezavarodva… miért, csak azt mond meg? Hirtelen megkeményedett a hangja, már-már fenyegetően rántott közelebb magához, arra neked kell rájönnöd, ha nem teszed, mindegy is. Dönts. A pénzedet a Yavennai szobámban hagytam, néhány tárggyal együtt, amik jól jöhetnek neked. Neked kell elmenned érte. Elfordult, a tüzet piszkálta, elmondott mindent, amit akart, a döntés az én kezemben volt. Én sem szóltam sokáig, a kérdések nem voltak fontosak már, már csak egyvalamit kellett mondanom, és nagy nehezen azt is sikerült kinyögnöm egy idő után… köszönöm. Bólintott, értette. A szemei még egyszer összekapcsolódtak az enyémmel, majd lórakapott és elment. Találkozunk még, visszahangzott az agyamban búcsúszó helyett…

Copyright by: Nádasdy Nóra – Quicksilver – 2008. november 22.

Fantasy

A Smile! sztori alapjában véve, formáját tekintve egy fantasy, azaz a sci-finek egy olyan korai, már önállóvá vált oldalhajtása, ahol a sci-t, azaz a tudományt szinte már teljesen elhagyva csak a fi, azaz a fantázia szalad el olyan messze, amennyire csak tud. A fantasy-világoknak vannak már-már egyezményesnek tekinthető elemei, motívumai (mint pl. a mágia és a létező fajok), de ezek csak a keret, amelyek nagyobb lehetőséget engednek a mondanivaló kifejtésére, mintha azt az itt-és-most-ban, az elfogadottan létező világunkban akarnám elmesélni (no igen, el is távolít persze, ez hozzátartozik); ugyanakkor tartalmaz mégis olyan általánosan elfogadott és ismert szimbólumokat is, amelyek a mondanivaló fő csapásait segítenek értelmezni. A fantasy történetek alapvető motívuma az utazás, a vándorlás, kalandozás, és a történet szabadságával, szimbólumgazdagságával együtt ez az, ami szvsz minden más műfajnál alkalmasabbá teszi belső utazások leírására. Ez a történet igencsak sok szálon kapcsolódik hozzám és az én (külső és belső) világom történéseihez, több szinten is értelmezhető mind vertikálisan, mind laterálisan, és nem biztos, hogy aki úgy hiszi érti velem kapcsolatban, az jól érti vagy teljesen... gyanítom igen kevesen ismernek is annyira meg értik is a párhuzamokat és még ráadásul képesek meglátni a megláthatatlant a sorok között - úgyhogy szerintem a legjobb, ha valaki simán csak egy dark fantasyként olvassa, függetlenül az írójától.

Ha meg még érti is valaki, hát annál jobb.

Smile! 4.

[part 4 – a hopeful smile]

I came to still in darkness, but this time darkness was all wrong, I was all wrong and everything else was even worse. Most of the pain left me, and as I recollected the input from my senses, I could feel what was wrong - I had my hands and feet tied. So it wasn’t far enough from the surface after all, and there were some waiting, or coming for me. Well, not for me, but probably for what I took from the dragon-hoard. My bonds were surprisingly good – whoever did the knots, was expert in it, and knew that I too was good with knots from this end, and escaped from more prison and tight situations that he’d ever seen. So even if I could undo the bonds it would take time and though I still could not see anything, I felt it clearly that they were not giving me any time to patiently fiddle with the rope. I felt the hands on my mask and despaired. Whatever was it in humans that made them compulsively want to see under my mask? Did they never learn? Well, probably those who ever tried it did learn – but a bit late, for a dead men cannot utilize any knowledge. All right, so they were curious, but curious enough to risk my wrath? They were not the first ones to catch me in some circumstances and try to peek under the mask. Besides the mask was not kept on my face with a puny rubber band, it was secured by magic which I have devised myself. In principle it could be removed with force, as I have tried once myself, together with most of the skin and some more – it was fairly gruesome even for me who was used to the sickening sight of my own face, and it took quite a force to do so too. So when I felt the first fingers trying to pry the mask’s edges away from the skin I was not worried yet. Maybe they would give up when becoming bored with the unsuccessful tries…? But they wouldn’t… after the fingers I felt a knife-point on my skin, slicing at the edges, the magic reknitting the bindings as it went, but blood flowing from it, and when the point came close to my still unseeing eyes, I had had enough. They knew by then that I was conscious, and I heard one of them to call for a gag, but it was too late for them, for my throat produced the sounds and my mouth formed the words, they came out hurting as always, elf magic was never intended to hurt, it was to interact with nature, but I forced it and twisted it and darkened it to my purpose, and it came out like a storm, a storm which kills, as their minds were all but defenceless, and magic flew into them and squeezed and they fell dead… this kind of magic takes its toll on me, I felt like throwing up, and felt disgusted with myself, and I tried now with time enough to loosen the bonds and get the hell out of here.

Until a sharp edge of something hold by somebody gently touched my throat… I froze. Nobody should be here, my mind shouted, flaming itself with disbelief, nobody, for I should have heard it, smelled it or sensed it… something took away my sight but the other senses had to be working, should have told me about this one, just as they told me of the ones I have killed, it is not possible to get this close to me without me noticing… not a word elf, not a word in any tongue, he warned, and the voice was that of a human male, but still I haven’t felt him… not one of Them, surely, why would I find one of Them here in this godforsaken place, no, he must be special, but not the Other, think now, I shook myself, listen and think, he did not kill me straight away, so there are possibilities yet, just be very careful now, for he is dangerous. I nodded my head fractionally to sign him assent, and he continued. A bargain, not again, but it seemed a day for hard deals, what does he want from me, I wondered, I have very little apart from my life, I never took any riches, just as much as I spent at the next corner, I have no titles or estates or anything valuable… but you have secrets, he said, that is true, but they are of no use to you, human, they are older than you and have nothing to do with humankind. Still he insisted. Your face and the story that goes with it. For my curiosity. For I want it and you have very little choice. Which I did. The sword did not waver for an instant, his voice was sure and steady, whoever he was, he was good. Very good. I was silent for a second, carefully weighing my possibilities, which I had to admit to myself were not that much. Apart from acceding his bargain, I could let him kill me, which I considered as a valid choice, but decided against it. I bragged much about anyone beating me who could and there he was, due to special circumstances, true, but still bested me. I should take this as a sign and go on with it, facing what it brought to me. Facing it literally if I was to agree his terms. So a nod again, this time even slighter, but he saw it and knew he won.

A promise first, he said, I know you’d keep your word, you’d kept it with the dragon, so no magic whatsoever until I or you leave this cave – and I have agreed to it easily, once one decides a course of action, one should go fully through with it, embracing its ups and downs equally, as I did. Let me sit first, I asked, and he dragged me to the cave-wall, the blindness should disappear soon, he said in the meanwhile, and secretly I was glad to hear that, for living blind was not something that I would gladly accept. I must undo the spell that keeps the mask in place… I warned him that I was not breaking the promise, and so I did, loosened it, feeling it to become slack, and he lifted it away from my face… I fought down the urge to turn my head, to hide it, I did not see his face but I heard his reaction, the sound of utter repulsion, I knew it would be like this, the shame and the flame warmed me again in the inside, lit up my face, as blood always did, I used to watch it in mirrors or in clear reflections in a lake, I knew it was awful and repulsive and utterly horrible… who did this to you, came the question and I fought to answer normally, or as normally as I could manage, I promised, so I would, even if my head split with the wave of madness, it is a long story, one that would mean shame to me and nothing to you… but you asked and you’ll get an answer, I will give it to you, force it into your head, no matter if you want it or not now, the deal you cut binds you just as well as it does me…

So I started my story, mind to mind, it was easier, I am not used to speak so much, and it would convey the emotions more accurately, he would feel what I felt, and I bitterly smiled inside, so he would not be able to get off it, even if he found it too much. I promised no harm to him but if a story hurt… well, he asked for it, and he would have to take it all. I was born as the only daughter of a noble elf family, destined for much, taught by the best, loved by my father, all those things starting about nine hundred and seventy years ago, in Riulean, the homeland of my people. I grew and learnt and lived without care until one day an orc raiding party, together with some rufaints crossed the border, and hit my family’s estates. It was not very well defended, war and violence was not heard here for quite a long time, and the border guard was lack as well. Many were killed, but some of us were taken by the raiders. I was taken too and sold later as a slave to the famous Twins assassin school… and not for my looks either, no, they despise any races except humans, all else can only be a slave there and the lowliest one too. Actually, I was to be target practice for the assassin-apprentices, someone, on whom they can perfect their skills; and as such my life expectancy was suddenly very short. But I survived… with luck at first and on skills later… I learnt what they learnt and I did better than any of them, becoming known to be the ultimate challenge, they had to face. I was there for years, almost a decade and it became harder and harder to survive against everything they threw at me… so I had to escape eventually. The fact that I am here tells you that I was successful, but it was a long and bloody story…

I had not known then that my problems would start once I got home… once I crossed the elven border, I was apprehended. I did not understand why. I’d hoped a warm welcome from my people and my family… instead I was taken a small pit, where they kept the captured orcs, under stone and iron and guard… and I was told that I was to be an outcast, damned from elvenkind, one who could never again set foot on elven land on pain of death… for I was tainted with the outside world, with humans and with my shame. After going through everything I did not expect this… but the worst was yet to come. After five days, my father came into the cell. My hopes flared, maybe he would put in a word to help my case, maybe… no, whispered the stranger’s voice in my mind, don’t you tell that it was… my father, yes. The others held me down and he disfigured my face. He disowned me and I resembled too much to him… and he put magic on me too, so that the scars would never disappear, and I was taken out from the cell, across the border, and blind with my eyes swollen shut, and bloody as I was, they threw me into the woods… for days I could only see inside, him with the knife, the cruel face above mine, ruthless and merciless, and I could not form the word æta for years, could not form any words for a while, without that inner pain engulfing me… for years after and I could still only dream of that night… madness was born in that cell, grew in the woods alone, blind and starving, fuelled later by an uncaring world, until I decided to be as much against it as it was against me, putting steel against its steel and flame against its flame…

I felt a finger touching my face… there are not just scars, I thought as the finger traced them, and they are not glorious signs of fights fought and won, but they are horrible scars, pieces of flesh missing from the nose, the brows, lips nonexistent now, the whole face is utterly disfigured, not glorious at all, I saw it many times and it never really heals, never grows back, I sought out magicians famous for their healing skills, and priest blessed by gods to heal even deathly wounds… but old elven magic proved to be stronger than any of the younger races’ ones and I have remained like this and will remain so until death makes all flesh rot away… I learned to live in a mask, learned to live my life as if I was wholly encased in a disguise - but I did go back once secretly and stole that knife from Him. It is this one with me, the only thing that accompanied me through the centuries… and now human, you know my story, the only one except myself, as the elves think me dead, for I really should have died then, and now I want to know your name. Lauriel, came the answer unhesitantly, and the question, will you try to kill me for knowing this? But I had no answer for him, and he accepted it. Smile now… I sensed somehow the command, but it was not coming from his mind, the words came from nowhere, they came from stars and moonlight… you can now…

My vision started to come back by then and I could see at least light and shadows moving, and as I tried to listen for his presence, I heard nothing, the shadows were not moving any more, and I was sure that he left somewhere, quietly and unassumingly. It was all right with me, I felt tired and drained with all that happened that day, I needed rest, well, after I have undid all the bonds that is, which I did, I must wait until my sight is once more fully functional, and slept for awhile. I woke up to no more unpleasant surprises, for which I was very glad. I could even smile, much to my surprise, an astonishingly honest and warm smile, without the mask on, which I postponed a little to put back into place… I started out of the cave, which was now open to the mountainside, so I did not have to sing me through living stone again, and went down, I had nothing with me, no possessions, nothing that I carried before, nothing that I collected in the cave, just the knife that he left me and some experiences.... The madness maze seemed to disappear too, and as I suddenly looked up, it was moonshine streaming down on me, it was full moon on a starry night, which I rarely noticed these days, and my steps suddenly had something in them that I had only felt such a long time ago that it was more than memory, it was legend… hope.

[Ishmael was waiting for me at the foot of the mountain, by the way]


Copyright by: Nádasdy Nóra – Quicksilver – 2008. november 19.

A szó elszáll, az írás meg nehéz...

Mennyire sokkal nehezebb és többet vesz ki az emberből leírni valamit... én magamnak képzelem el ezeket a történeteket évtizedek óta, amióta csak vissza tudok emlékezni, de soha olyan hatással nem volt még rám egy sem, mint most, amikor életemben először leírtam egyet, illetve még írom is. Alkotás ez, addig oké, de alkotás akkor is, ha csak elalvás előtt végigálmodok egy történetet, és az, ha van is neki egy alternatív valóság élménye, mégsem olyan hihetetlenül erősen hat rám, mint ez most...

Smile! 3.

[part 3 – a winning smile]

I went on climbing the mountain, healing myself and repairing my clothes as I went, still thinking of that bard. There was something about him that I did not get. Something undefinable, a hunch it was but insubstantial, trying to escape me, just as I was fishing for it in my mind, never an easy task, but even more difficult now that I was so much in an inner uproar… I gave up finally, if it does not want to be found then I had more pressing matters outside my mind. Namely that my sense told me that I should continue proceeding into the mountain. Into solid rock. Well, somebody should have placed a cave or an opening here, it would be so much more easy… but then somebody did place the obstacles on the way this far, meaning that I should not expect it to be a triumphal procession. So, lacking any dwarves to mine an opening for me into the rock, and finding no secret controls for any portals to open, I had to chose the harder way, the more dangerous way. I bowed my head and started to sing. Fortunately nobody was nearby to die of shock, and the Others cared not for my voice, they were only interested about the magic contained within. I felt my remaining ties with reality snap and cast them aside… I started forward, still singing, still keeping the illusion of my body instead of the reality of it moving through the rock… I felt the rock, felt its hardness, its coldness, its slow, ponderous life, and rock became my body, it seeped into me, until it became difficult to sing, for rock and gravel have no voice that could intone the magic, it is the danger of this method, for one has to keep true self away and it lets the surroundings take over, and if it has to go on long, one simply becomes what is around one, I could freeze here, as part of the mountain, nobody would ever find my body for I would have no body just an interestingly bodylike piece of stone, so when I felt the rock becoming my mouth, I called on the flame of madness once more, my sense of being, my burning self opposing the cold death of the mountain, and it helped, it propelled me forward, strengthened my voice, steeled my will, and I fell forward on still more stone but it was now inside a cave. I got through once more… I smiled, and for once it was a real smile, a glad-to-be-living smile, a smile still warmed by my burning mind, but quieting it as well.

I waited a bit till my night vision took over again, and my body shuddering, straining, shook off the last bits of the magic, and I got my bearings. Underground cave, leading ever deeper into the mountain. Elves do not like places like this, our natural habitat is under the twinkling stars, in the green woods, fresh air and moonshine. But I am not mad without a reason… a dark, small rock cave it was where madness flamed first… I do not have to like it, I do not have to enjoy it, I do not even have to go into it… but I have chosen to go this far and I am not the kind that turns back for a small thing like an underground cave. After all, I did expect a dragon – if there was one at all – to sleep in a cave, encircled by layers of protection, not just lying on the mountainside, for anyone to find it… and so I walked into the cavern, into the reddish vision of rocks and - expectably – traps. They were old, very old, some could say they were ancient. Like me, an ancient and bastard shot from the tree of life… the traps brought back memories, recollections of a summer glade where our teacher, a deceptively frail-looking and kind old elf, taught us the dangers of traps – the kinds that were in fashion then. I haven’t seen such ones ever since. Half of them were not even functional, the rest I could disarm easily, with no more than scratches. Well, when I say scratches, I do not mean the one that went through the bone… have I became careless with all that familiarity? It shouldn’t have done this… anger rose in me, and with it madness. I fought them down, I fought with the memories to go away, and I fought with the traps… it was a long way and by the end I throughly forgot the sun-lit forest of my youth – there was nothing nice and pleasant in the springs and knives going for my life here and the sand-pits and the long-dead scorpions or in any of the other instruments intended to keep away or if it is not successful, kill any intruders. Just a long and sweaty and bloody tunnel going into nowhere, I felt… no smiles there, you smile now, I thought, you bloody woman, I have none now to give to you or anyone else.

But it did end after all. And yes, there was a dragon in the huge cavern, asleep – or seemingly asleep. And a hoard of course. Dragons incidentally are not magpies, they do not collect simply nice, sparkling, glittering things… they collect magical things, which are incidentally mostly glittering, because of the precious stones that are used to power the item in question. One of them is the goal of our – or rather it is now my mission. The helmet of the thousand diamonds, for a particularly ambitious wizard or warlock to have it on his head and be able to cast spell after spell after spell… it augments the natural capabilities and stores enough energy for them to reenact the battle of Moytura, and have a pipe afterwards. I wouldn’t have it on my head for a second… this kind of wizardry is not for me, not for elves, besides I am mad enough on my own, thank you. For the helmet makes men go mad in a short time – it shows clearly how power can disrupt the human mind’s pathways. But still, if they want it, it is their problem, the world can stand one more madmen, I can stand it too, so … so the only problem is the dragon, for no dragon can be so deeply asleep as to not to awaken immediately when a thing of theirs is taken from the hoard. I wouldn’t kill a dragon asleep and without provocation, for I am still an elf, even if it is only myself who grants me that fact, and if nobody else, then I alone remember and honor an old alliance that was never broken, just… well, maybe expired? I smiled and chuckled at my choice of the word, it seemed so unusual, so out of place here Does an alliance expire in a thousand years? Or in hundreds of thousands? How long does honour last? And when it ends, what is left afterwards? Friend or foe? Memories decide or instincts dominate?

As it happens the dragon was certainly awake by the time I have finished my musings – or rather the sound made by softly shifting scales disrupted them. One should not engage in idle pondering while a dragon moves in close proximity, not if one wants to live for awhile yet. It was awake, I saw the head, as big as a decent house detaching itself from its pillow of gold an pretty things, its huge, green eyes – the size of me, I was their pupil in them - open, the breathing loosing its sleeplike rhythm, and a terrible intellect, contained within spearing me with its full force… It saw me for an elf, took in my unmoving, deathlike stillness, my ostensible lack of dangerous intent, and did not flame me on the spot. I won the first round. I smiled and it saw… saw it through the mask, like no other being can. Dragons have good eyes and they are terribly, dangerously intelligent – for their intentions do not often include caring for lesser beings. I smiled but a slight tremble shook my body – a dragon’s stare is not an easy thing to bear - not even for me. He asked me about my name, asking in the language of the mind, about my true name, the name that few even know and even fewer tell to anybody, for it gives power over them… but I dared to answer. I’d been to the Hall of Portals, I asked the right questions, I went through to the right place, where I could find my name and I came back alive – and with knowledge… but that is another story for the telling. I gave the dragon my name and with it a terrible purpose… and I was rewarded with a sight that not many being alive have seen… a dragon’s body shook by a fearful shudder, hiding its reaction immediately but my eyes are good too and I have seen it. It was it now who smiled, all dragons like daring, even though they put no stock in it – and when a dragon smiles, you smile too, it is a rare sigh, so one can surely enjoy those last few moments of one’s life…

It was a pencil-thin, beautifully rainbow-coloured flame that touched my mask… dragon-flame is about the hottest thing that can be found nearby, unless one goes to the closest sun for something hotter. My mask was white-hot in a split second, and my skin underneath started to burn, my eyes water in self-preservation as I shut them tightly – fast as I was it still took me this much time to activate a talisman that I bought just for this occasion. Not many charms can do this, mostly they are a simple water elemental put into a suitable receptacle, enough to counter a simple, everyday flame or fire, but I went to great lengths to find a sorcerer, daring to work with space itself and its deadly cold and making me a talisman that can protect me from dragonfire. It worked. The dragon did not want to kill me yet – it was just a test, a measure of me, my nerve and reaction, and I have passed this round too. I dared not smile now, for my skin was as dry as parchment and I feared that even with the mask it would crack and fell off from my face… I called out to it, again, defiant, in my mind, and it answered. A bargain it asked unbelievably, what do you want to bargain with? You are nothing and you have nothing that would be of value to me. And don’t even try to give me that crap with elves and honour and debt, because I care for neither of them. Its voice shook me inside, its wrath was so close to the surface now that I could imagine touching it, like it was a solid thing, and its shaking and still-contained but hinting of danger rumble resonated in me, rousing my inner struggle and threatening me to loose sanity just as I needed it most, more than ever…

I desperately needed a few more minutes, but I could see that I was running out of time and its patience – it did not want any of the witty conversation, dragons are so often fond of and on which I counted a little more time. So I tried the smile again, but it would have none of it. A ball of the same, beautiful flame roared to the spot, where I was standing just before - it took all my skill and muscle and instinct to jump just in time, for this flame would make short work of my talisman, he tested it, and gauged the level correctly, so if its fire found me even for an instant, I would be puffs of smoke and perhaps a little ash on the floor… so I kept on jumping and scrambling and dodging of the fireballs, and thinking fast in the meanwhile, I still wasn’t sure, but I cannot keep it up any longer, not even me with my abilities can outrun a dragon for long, so I had to take the chance. I called out as loud, as I could, giving it everything that anyone ever taught me about mindspeech, hurling it at the dragon, my last resort and the only one as well… and it worked. We stopped just as suddenly as we started, and our frozen tableau amongst the burning and smoking and the melting rocks was so very funny that I could not help but smile again, would have laughed if I have any energy and air left enough for that - I knew that I have won the third and final round, and the victory flamed in me, its exultant fire consuming me more surely than the dragon’s… how did you know it asked, the question weighing a ton on my exuberant mind, wanting to crush me, but knowing that it could not, for I had its name just as It had mine, I guessed correctly, took the risk and won. No matter how I came to its name, but it had to agree to the bargain now. I was willing to throw my life into it as well and it confused it for a little, but it would not want it to; just its name, and begone, it was more than angry, it was furious, but I knew it would keep the bargain, it had to, dragons can and often cheat in lesser things but are completely bound by their name, so burnt, wounded, dry, sweaty and covered with the ruins of my clothes, I soon was on my way to the sunlight, or moonlight if it was that time of the day, smiling as I went, knowing that whatever or whoever was waiting for me outside – I wasn’t stupid to think that there were noone - it would be much easier than dealing with an angered dragon, still rumbling behind me, fireballing and in other noisy ways venting its impotent rage. In the last part of the tunnel, safely away from the dragon, still safely away from the surface, I screamed once, howling long and hard with all my remaining voice, venting all the pain and weight off me, giving in finally to madness, which quickly took the chance and engulfed me. Darkness came and took me at last.

[to be continued]

Smile! 2.

[part 2 – a surprised smile]

We started climbing in the morning. Left the horses in the last camp; I did not worry about Ishmael, for he could well defend himself, but the other horses were wolfmeal. In fact, somehow, I was sure that Ishmael would be there somewhere at the end... he usually was. I rarely had to walk home, not even on the steepest terrain, in the thickest forest, or the rockiest desert. As we walked upwards, a queer feeling settled on me, something that I haven't really felt for a long time, if ever... the feeling of being lost. With my inborn and much practised sense of direction, path and goal it was more than simply queer - it was alarming. Even though going up on a mountain should be fairly easy; after all one would only have to go up all the time, but it only true on mountains shaped like a pyramid and I don't have to tell how commonplace these are. Real mountains have uphill and downhill parts, valleys and ridges and lesser peaks, and usually one cannot even see the middle part, the main peak, until one is almost right on the top of it. But one can get lost in a rocky barrenness of a mountainside. What I felt now was as if someone gently but surely took away my sense of direction, and left meg stupid - the first time in my life feeling that I was leading the others in circles. They trusted me in this, unquestioningly, as would all humans do in an elf. They rarely had the talent but we would always have it and use it and it was one thing that no elf ever made a secret of. So, for now it was only me who knew that we were moving randomly... I mean more randomly than it was usually so. I smiled again, a worried smile this time, but still one none the less. Madness sensed the seeds of my worry, flamed in me again, craved chaos that was its food, fed on my uncertainty, consumed my sanity in steps bigger than usual... I began to enjoy this newfound feeling, this new experience, and walked in the front, smiling, ever so smiling and sure that whatever I would find would be pleasant in some way - well, maybe not in a way people usually imagine pleasantness, but in a way that my mind can say it so...

In a few hours they too started to get suspicious. I noticed the glances, the soft words they whispered to each other - why would humans never consider elvish ears? They are not pointed with no reason... - the innocent-looking checks of our footprints that we left the last time around... I wondered how soon could I expect one of them to openly come out with a question. Probably it would take them a few more hours to get the nerve... how does one ask a mad and dangerous elf if she got lost? I was acutely curious about the answer, so I decided to let the situation unfold. It too made me smile, as I considered their possible words and reactions. In the meanwhile, I noticed one more thing... somebody tried to conceal their footprints, but to do that against an elf eye is not that easy. They did a good job, but not perfect. So it was to be another party... I wondered if they were just as lost as we were. Probably they were - although one can never underestimate what wizards can cook up to help them. I usually got by on my skills and if they were not enough, my madness took over and solved everything - I only had to cope with the results...

The road, such as it was has disappeared altogether and the rock-walls started to grow around us... closing us in in fact, and I still felt lost, still felt no inkling of where the hell we were heading, and even more, I felt my madness spread out and infect our surroundings... the others saw it too, that we were now in a kind of mad maze, a kind of reality where rules nonexistent, where place-time-reason is rather more than less a matter of choice and where it is only our imagination that defines our surroundings... I rarely felt home here on this land, outside my people's realms; but home it was that I felt now, for the first time in hundreds of years... I needed no directional sense now, relying on the here and now was by then out of question, I shaped what I wanted to see and feel, and the others were huddling close to me, fearing me but knowing me their only chance of ever getting out of this place, and I did not smile but laughed out now, for whosoever wanted to perplex me with creations of madness was helplessly outdated, I was mad, quite mad for some time now and I managed to live through it, lived in it in fact, and so I happily played with unreality and imagination, creating the environment that fit me perfectly, fighting with the creations of my own mind, cutting a bloody path through my own head, loosing myself in madness as willingly as a sane one would in love, or hate, or piety, for me it was all three and some undefinable more, and I was hacking and thrusting and spearing and cutting everything in sight, killing in animal abandon, letting all that accumulated steam coming off me in those few glorious moments... or hours as my tired muscles and tendons said later, when I found myself, and to my disgust my companions in a place where reality was solid again, including the high rock walls completely encircling us. No matter, we could climb them later. Or I could. For the moment I wanted only to feel that orgasm-like sensation and its aftermath. Living again instead of the shadow-world of dragging myself through my life doing whatever came to my way... this was why I was needed, the mad one, who cannot go more mad but is sane enough to go through...

I did climb it. It wasn't easy and I even threw down a rope to the others from the top - I debated with myself about that but they survived the full force of my imagination, so they deserved a bit more respect - and chance - than I accorded to them before. If they can climb it then it is good for them, but I did not intend to wait for them until they did it - enough is enough. Their life was now in their hands, and their mission was now in my head - and whoever else wandered around the place. I was never shy with information, when I could throw it into the winds, and that madness-storm of unreality was the perfect place-time to sow some ideas into. Secrets are best to be spread about as widely as they could be. Nobody believes the distributed ideas, they put them aside and crave for the secretly kept ones - so I always kept some secrets in secret, so they could find it and be happy. I even kept some more secrets deeper so the insistent ones and the stubborn ones and the clever ones could find some too and be even more happy. I am happy when everyone is happy. Or so I thought. If somebody still saw through me, then I found my match and the war could begin in earnest. I like war, did I mention that? Not for its nature, because war's madness is a feeble thing compared to what I call chaos - but it gives me plenty to do and even though war cannot create unpredictability enough for me, I can. I like the nicely tied ends unknot and let loose. I like to give people freedom to choose. I like to undo what is done and unmade what is thought stable and solid. I test everything and everyone - and my tests are cruel. I am not a god mind you; I am but a mortal elf. Anyone who can best me is invited to try. I've just happened to win all my little and big wars for a nice round thousand years or so. So, smile! I have every reason to do so, have I not?

So I smiled as I scrambled upwards on the mountainside. Night fell and dawn came and I climbed. I felt again the direction, and only had to follow its whisper - until I heard another kind of whisper, human one. They warned each other of my coming. Unknown voices, but humans too. Anxious. Cautious. The smell of magic was in the air too; they have a wizard. I like wizards, because they do the same with reality than me; they cheat it, twist it, deform it and desecrate it. It is no more than reality deserves... and I do really like wizards coming against me. They are dangerous and unpredictable, just as I am. Misery does not like company, I do not like it either, so I dispatch it as fast as I can. They set a trap, an ambush and they did it well. I cannot go round, for they expect me there - so I have to go straight into the trap with open eyes and take them all as well as I can. Including the wizard. I take the wizard first - I do like to play the game of chance, I just like to have the odds on my side - after all nobody else is there. The magic hits me with full force and I scream for it hurts like hell... I go forth and I still don't know what it is exactly but I can still reach the center, and it is the thing I need, wizard are never strong or able to defend themselves with anything else than magic, and my sword cleaves something soft and I hear his scream as my senses come on once more, and I still hurt but the cause of it disappeared, and I can turn my attention to the others, falling on me with swords and trying me from afar with crossbow-bolts, and I dance now, a tango with death, the black bolts whizzing by me, the swords finding mine in their pattern, twisting their pattern, silver dances in the middle of black shapes, have to tell apart good and bad, but who the hell is good here, I do not know, I am certainly not, I am as bad, as mad, as sad as they came, but still shine like silver, move like silver that I am... what stopped my hand at last, I still don't know. Sanity hurt, reality hurt, my body hurt but it never stopped my hand before - nor do I believe in giving last chances, leaving enemy alive when I could kill them, but still there he was, cut down and panting on the ground but alive, alone apart from me, and just as surprised to find himself in that condition as me.

I felt for my smile, hoping that maybe it would help me to understand, and I was so shocked to find the mask in place, then I was shocked to be shocked by that fact... I must come out of madness, it cannot stay, it always have left me in the end, I must remember and I must not forget, I am what I remember, madness cannot take that away! I still felt hot blood buzzing in my head, the pressure staying high, the thumping not wanting to quieten, and I fought my inner battle, always the same but always different, always wanting to take me away... but I came back, as always. He did not run. Well, he couldn't anyway. It was the bard that I saw, the bard from the other company, whom I heard once in my dream; singing of love or some such topic, which holds little importance to me any more. I stared at him. I rarely had the task of deciding what to do with a not quite dead adversary - but I do know that nothing happens by happenstance, and after all I did not kill him while I had the chance. So he can go on living and be an important somebody decades from now, which fate probably intends him to be - if only he behaves wisely and vanishes from my sight as fast as he can. Well, that won't be very fast, I can see that; so it was me, who left the place. Slowly, for I too had some healing to do. Whatever the wizardry was, it blasted my skin raw, and completely ruined my clothes. Only the mask survived intact, and my face in its embrace. And my smile...



[to be continued]