The name Tiuóryka (2-ohr-eeka) lurks cloud-like and hazy over the surrounding bogs and wet-scape. The name literally means ‘third foundation’ in the local Dras tongue. Bard spun stories in the region tell a shadowy tale of a grand bastion of pure jet that sunk into the bog in a single night taking a hundred souls with it.
A second bastion was built on top of the sunken myth and is neither remembered, nor sung about.
The third was laid out on a slight mound widely reckoned to be the two before it.
This third made of quarried stone, and now centuries old rests
serenely in the murk. A bustling morass of Dras have raised up a bog home in the surrounds about this last bastion. The maps show the place marked as Serenaika. A home to morticians, mummers and mollygargles this nice-place-for-a-bog city has a tale of its own that inhabitants love to retell over and over.
~The favored story~
The Two-Fold Queen was walking by one day and noticed a spire of pure jet leaning over as if to tumble. Putting a hand to it she righted it straight in its place. A wizened old mann nearby watched aghast and keeled over dead. The Queen noticing this bent near the old mann, whispered something in his ear and walked on. Still dead the old mann laid there through the night.
In the morning a traveling mortician was walking through the waterlogged vale and seeing the body of the mann stopped with a very light step forward. A touch of the body: hmmm, still and cold; hours – a night even. A grim, happy smile broke out for the mortician. Relishing this happy find they immediately set to the task of preparing the Now Passed.
First things: Bind the feet - so they do not get up. Cover the eyes – so they cannot see. Bind their hands behind the head – to keep them from hurting themselves later. Second things: stuff their mouth with Henbane so they cannot talk you out of binding. Third things: drain the bodily fluids, blood and guts; and finally: spice and shroud. Binding complete.
Now this being just the second or maybe third solo body the mortician had ever wrapped they bound the feet as first things say and looking around discerned that a spot for drying the body above the wet ground would definitely be needed.
And just so a short distance away was a spot of dry ground sitting on the soggy stew. How perfectly fortuitous! Lifting the body – light as a feather – they carry it to the lucky dry spot. And setting it down notice an odd black crust about the ground.
As soon as the body was flat to the ground on the dry blackish crust it sprang up and immediately fell over. The mortician concerned but not surprised, gets up, walks over and kneels by the fallen body. Pulling out their jet-flecked cudgel they smack the body on the head right behind the left ear.
“Owwwwwwwwwwww!” The mortician frowns and goes to hit head again. This time the hands of the body are blocking the blow and the body grabs the mortician by the wrist. The squeeze is fierce. The pain turns white in moments and the mortician falls over, passed out cold.
The body, now that of a young mann sits up, wide-eyed. The bindings fall loose from its feet. And it runs.
Moments later the mortician grogs back to awareness and sees the binding wraps loose against the blackish crust of the dry spot and the body nowhere in sight.
Disgusted with themselves they get up and notice the pale blue bindings now writhing on the crusty, jet-like ground.
Still full of self-loathing the mortician puts out their grayish hand toward the wrap. Then slowly pulls on the bindings to reveal a baby wriggling and cooing.
“A baby! I don’t remember signing anything! What a morning”, the mortician gets up, gathers the baby, a largish blue feather just beneath, all the tools and things - and walks on toward home.
An eon later:
"Welcome! Welcome to our little spot in the bog”, Modjeska called out smiling. “It’s dryer than you might suppose and we have a mollygargle for every dear and nigh one! And far more serendipity than serenity."
- NA-W / Angelica //Xarkfleur : : :
