CARBONWIP

[WIP] Carbon's Story About Curses and Kegare


“Day 96.
Tonight I felt it again, that stale scent I felt back home. It comes from the east this time, beyond a small village I glimpsed down in the vale in the small hours. I made my way below, and at the village's tavern I found a man, a hunter with harrowed eyes, fidgeting hands and a quivering nose. His name is Bernard and this is his homeland.
He too could feel the stench. We struck a quick friendship and he told me about it, that there is a home further eastward and down the river where a family lives. The father lays dead, taken by illness less than a year ago, and now something has taken root there, under the house and inside whoever remains.
I told him it was a disease, a curse upon the land and its people, which surely would spread like fire if kept unchecked. I explained know by experience.
Nothing else was said, and after finishing our drinks we left together, under cover of night, and Bernard guided me halfway until I told him I could find my way from then on. I did not want anyone to see me during what was to come.
It became clear to me that Bernard is a kind man, for he insisted I take his bow. It was quite a beauty, the wood was polished and well kept and the string, albeit marked by intense use, had a vigor to it I've seldom seen in any weapon. I would not trust myself to use it in a fight without practice, but he wouldn’t take a no for an answer.
He also shared his rations with me, these tiny banana-leaf packets of meat and roots cooked together under a fire. They smell delicious, I had to control myself not to wolf all of them down right then and there. He saw my predicament and let out a bellowing laughter. The night’s silence, pierced, gave way to a small moment of comfort. We were, for a second, no longer two men in the preparation of a grave violence.
He turned to leave but briefly our eyes met and I saw a glint in his eyes. It felt quite familiar, there was an ember inside that reminded me of home.
And perhaps this time there is something I can do. No point in running anymore, if that disease will keep spreading throughout the land.”

There was very little to it, to the dingy house by the river. It was built out of wood, which was peeling and rotting from the river’s humidity, and pools of fetid mud were scattered around it. A vast terrain behind it was naked despite being dotted by weeds, most likely where the family grew some crops before whatever was in there took hold of them.
It all smelled of rotted fish, but there was something peculiar to it. It wasn’t the blunt smell of dead fish you’d find in the low tide, when seaweed and dead fish would wash ashore. Neither was it the aggressive smell of fish left to rot in a closed-off space, pooled in its own leachate. And it surely did not smell like the vapors that would accumulate inside a dead body, bloating it.
No, it had a very peculiar mark to it. It was the stingy smell of humid fish flesh, fermented in its and human filth, and so it also had a strong streak of humanity to it.
It was similar indeed to what had consumed distant lands, there was the same staleness and fermentation to it, but it was not quite the same.
The young man, hidden among bushes on a hill a few hundred feet away from the house, took it all in and tried to piece it all together. He stared at the house’s many holes, searching for movement or a candle’s flickering light, but nothing could be seen inside. Neither was any noise heard, except for the night’s chilly wind.
He thought of approaching and planned ways to storm the house. The entrance was wide open, the door had been torn off and thrown aside in one of the mud puddles, but just what was in there? Perhaps something that, in that darkness, could rip him to shreds in the blink of an eye.
Burning the whole thing was surely a safer move. Fire, after all, never failed to cleanse land and flesh from all sorts of curses and impurities. But the lad was no butcher, and he cared more for saving whoever could be spared than ridding this evil from the face of the earth.
His mind kept on munching on possibilities and strategies until a distant, squelching sound broke the night’s veil. It came from the river, down the hill. The young man strained his eyes and saw it clearly under the moonlight the moonlight, the silhouette of a child. It walked weirdly hunched over, carrying something close to the chest, but there was no doubt.
And it reeked, too, the stench of fish and human fermented together.
It went into the house and shortly after returned outside, now its hands empty of whatever it was carrying. The child made his way back to the river, but hesitated just before reaching the water. It raised its head, quivering lightly, and turned slowly towards the young man on the hill.