°??───??7??───??°
The night at the bar in which a party may or may not form
°??───???───??°
Kally seethed as she batted the leaves away from her. What. Was. That. A revered doctor her foot. What was with those rolling doctors? Despite herself, she laughed. Was that supposed to be a joke? A place like that could not possibly be real, right? It made Crumbledgard look respectable. At least their healers never fell that fully into despair, all at once. Thankfully, Katoia had been safely stowed away; there was no need for her to deal with that disappointment. At the very least, Kally could shield her from this sort of madness.
Before she knew it, her legs had taken her to a familiar place. Karin’s. The bar was empty but unlocked. She made her way in, setting up the fireflies that lit the tables. A few squeezes and they were bright as new. Sat at her usual table, she allowed her thoughts to wander away from Barley and towards that shadowed figure, that cloaked man, that man in the mask. It would be a lot easier if she knew his name.
The vision he showed her was so absurd and such a detriment to his plan, he could not have known what it would show. She strummed her fingers on the table.
She could not understand it.
He had said she did not trust him. She scoffed. How could she trust him? A searing anger bubbled in her. It scared her; she didn’t know where it came from. She bit her lip, still caught up in her thoughts, and banged the table with her fists.
Kally shuddered. A particular thought popped up again. So much sorrow emanated from him. A feeling originating from her toe interrupted this thought.
It felt like Katoia was crying.
She removed her boot and aired Kat out under the table.
???
She stayed a while in this morose mood until Tommy and Karin entered together.
“There you are, love.” Tommy breathed a sigh of relief, and dragged himself towards her.
“The usual?” Karin asked as he headed to the bar.
Upon Kally shaking her head, he joined them both. Pulling his chair out, he and Tommy shared a look. He eyed Kally cautiously. Tommy chuckled and commented with a twinkle in his eye, “Lass, something strange is occurrin’. You disappeared so quickly from the forest. We couldn’t find you anywhere.”
“We’ve already checked here twice, you know,” Karin added.
Kally looked at them both and smiled. “Thanks.”
Tommy sighed again. “That’s not the point lass, we—”
Karin interrupted, rushed, “You—you have that look on your face, you’re disappearing, you’re refusing beer… is everything okay?”
Kally looked at the earnest faces of Karin and Tommy and felt a wave of gratitude settle on her.
“Is it Katoia, lass?” Tommy asked gravely.
At this, Kally put her head in her hand, defeated. These friends of hers, know her well.
“Is what me?” piped up a small voice from below.
Both Karin and Tommy jumped at this. Kally wordlessly propped her leg up on the table, giving Katoia equal ground to speak. She put her head back on the table.
“Kally’s in a bit of a funk these days, ever since…” Katoia paused, and glanced at Kally, unsure whether to go on. “Well, ever since a couple of days ago. I can feel her moods change, swift and burning. I feel it in myself even, I’m not even sure if it comes from me or her. I suspect it’s both of us.” She glanced again at Kally. Her cuticle wobbled as she formed the determination to carry on. “Especially when that man—”
“Katoia.”
The toe stopped and flushed red. Kally grabbed her and put her away.
Neither Karin nor Tommy knew what to make of this. Nor did they know what to say. They did know, however, not to probe further about ‘that man’.
They certainly did not want to be put in a boot.
Instead they just looked at Kally. Perhaps it was the penetration of these earnest eyes that did it. Perhaps it was Katoia’s words which had already spoken part of it, or perhaps it was just a fleeting whim.
“Yes,” Kally broke the silence. “Yes, it is Katoia.”
Neither responded, just waited with bated breath.
“Have either of you heard of a doctor called Barley?”
To Kally’s surprise, they both nodded.
Karin spoke first. “He’s part of the Traemir clan. Give me a minute…” Karin left to retrieve a book from his room above the bar.
???
With a loud thud, he placed a monolith of a tome on the table. ‘The Almanac of Jordlega riki‘. He thumbed through the well used pages until he reached his intended passage. He cleared his throat and read aloud to the group.
“Darkurr Moor. An arid landscape, once filled with plumage and greenery, is now little more than a desert. On the outskirts of this barren land, communities of Traemir have formed in small settlements. Unlike the settlements within Darkurr Moor itself, huts built from the paste of sand and cloth, the Traemir’s abodes are made from stone. Imposing walls surround the town, keeping out the outside world, or perhaps containing the order within—“
Kally shuffled in her seat, fidgeting slightly. Tommy mouthed to her, “You okay, lass?”
She smiled and nodded, her attention shifting back to Karin and his tome.
Karin continued, upping the theatrics in his voice, in an attempt to keep their attention.
“—Order is sacred in this land; the Traemir are the species of bureaucracy and councils. Never has a dispute been unsolved, never a problem unresolved. They have a strict structure of law and order; reams and reams of dictates spell out every eventuality. All magical incidents have been recorded, in real time. Want to find out whether the rock in front of your foot is about to change back to a piece of gum? Ask the bureaucratic guard stationed nearby. Want to find out if the child in front of you is not in fact a frog with widow’s eyes? Ask the guard stationed nearby. The huge structures are connected to a database, meticulously updated by the council clerks. Some species have managed magic through ignorance and hiding. Some, though few, have embraced it. The Traemir have stifled it into manageable submission—”
Tommy nodded in solemn agreement.
“—Each village within the town has its own council dedicated to the bureaucracy of solving magical mishaps and keeping the records up to date. Alongside general record keeping, the Traemir have created statistical analyses on the habits of magic in order to predict and ergo prevent outbursts. Or at least, to minimise the impact—”
Karin broke away from the text and commented, “In a way, it’s admirable really. Attempting to micro-manage magic…“
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Kally scoffed. Admirable indeed.
“—The careers of the Traemir are white collar in nature. Often, council professions. In addition to the statisticians and data entry clerks, there are various council workers that work at the small claims court for magic related accidents at work, home or a public place.”
He paused and thumbed his way down the reams of text. He seemed in his element. Academics and philosophy often go hand-in-hand with bartenders.
“Ah ha, here it is,” he exclaimed. “…Those with the worst job by far are the clinicians. They deal with the day-in-day-out medical problems caused by magic. Burst rainbow rectums—“
Karin cleared his throat in discomfort. Kally shuddered. Why did magic have to be so… visceral and, she shuddered again, colourful.
“—crusty throats, organ misplacements and all the various skin related complaints. Magic has a definite affinity to skin—“
He broke off again, and smirked. “Perhaps it finds it fun to peel it off, slowly.”
Kally rolled her eyes as Tommy smiled in good humour.
“Okay,” Kally replied. “We now know more about the Traemir population, but does this tome of yours mention Barley?”
“Unfortunately not, no. I have heard of him in a list of proficient healers but I know no more of him than that.”
Kally, remaining silent, thought back to the vision of Barley. A sick knot started forming in her stomach.
“I once happened upon some Traemir documents - related to a job I had, in my younger years mind, clerical work. I won’t go into that now, though lass.” Tommy paused, caught in the memory somewhat. He cleared his throat, and continued, “One that stuck with me was written by a doctor called Barley Dew.”
“Could this be the same?” Kally asked.
“It’s possible, aye, lass. Is this Barley an old wisp of a soul?”
Kally nodded.
“The notes were of a patient. Patient 2085i or something along those lines— I forget.” He smiled. “It was a good few years ago now…”
He paused, took a deep breath, and cautioned them, “Buckle in lass, Karin. I have a lot to say about it.”
“Maybe I do need that drink,” Kally joked.
Karin made to leave, but Kally caught his hand, stopping him. “No, no. It’s alright.”
She turned to Tommy. “Go ahead,” she said.
“Ah, yes.” Tommy cleared his throat. “Now then, lass. Sounded horrific, a right prickly predicament. The report itself was meticulous and extensive with its gory details. It spoke of the patient’s bulging eyes as they were pushed out of the skull, the pineapple leaves that grew out of the patient’s scalp at a rate faster than ever recorded before.”
Kally scrunched her nose. Her stomach flipped. Karin was listening intently, his brow furrowed in thought.
“A pineapple? The patient fused with a pineapple?” She exclaimed. What a horrendous fate.
Tommy nodded slowly.
“Aye, lass. A right bloody mess from the sounds of it. The patient bled to death from these injuries: skin ripping, hair tangled.”
Kally grimaced and paled, as a sickness settled further in her stomach. Not one for the faint of heart, this story. Maybe she really did need that drink.
Karin, with his hand over his mouth, asked, “It couldn’t have taken a long time, could it?”
Tommy shook his head. “Nah, over in seconds. 3.5 to be exact. I remember this detail because, at the time I was in awe at the calculations— those cold calculations.”
He turned towards Kally. “Efficient but completely without emotion, lass. He had made calculations throughout, a complete analysis to determine blame, prevention possibilities and purely to document the phenomena. I thought it was cold, heartless even.”
“Yeah,” Kally replied, at a loss for words. Barley sounded worse than she had thought.
Karin had a look in his eye. His regular goofiness was replaced with something else.
“What is it?” Kally asked.
He frowned, furrowing his brow again. “But, what else could he do?”
“What do you mean, lad?”
Kally watched Karin, with sharp eyes. There was a part of her that was hoping she could understand Barley, to absolve him from this. She dared not think of why this may be.
“Well, um, I was just thinking. Surely, all he can do is observe and document. Um, I’d imagine it would be completely demoralising.”
He paused, trying to form the right words. “If you think about it, there’s nothing practical to be done in that situation, but wait.”
He frowned. “You’d have to wait for the effects to wear off and then hope for the possibility to treat the aftermath. And when you can’t fix it, you’re left with just a bunch of paperwork. You would have to detail it all; it’s the only thing you can do to be useful.” After a pause of contemplation, Karin continued, “I’m not sure how anyone could cope with that.”
Kally’s stomach fluttered. Her hands twitched. That was right; what else could he do? Her face lit up with this thought. Tommy was nodding silently, that meant he agreed too.
“I don’t think they do,” she finally stated with a wobble to her voice, and proceeded to tell an albeit abridged version of the vision, leaving out any mention of the cloaked man.
Karin, who had been searching through the Almanac for something during Kally’s account, suddenly thrust it towards them and pointed to a particular passage.
“This might explain what you saw.”
A look of triumph lit his face and he once again read from his tome.
“One of the adverse side effects of magic extensively documented within the Traemir community is SMID - Seasonal Magic Induced Depression. It is classified as an epidemic and highly contagious. If anyone with SMID even sighs within the same room as you, there is a 66% chance of catching it. Of course, Traemir with SMID will sigh at least once in a five minute period—“
Kally thought back to the vision of Barley. Could he have had SMID? She peered at the passage closely, following the rhythm of Karin’s voice.
“Clinicians, as such, require a vaccine every morning. Unfortunately, there are some weeks where sourcing the materials needed for the vaccine is nigh on impossible and as such, clinicians cannot always be vaccinated. Each day without the vaccine, their symptoms get worse—”
Kally inhaled sharply. It could definitely have been SMID. It would explain why so many of them were—
Karin, oblivious to her guilt, chuckled. “Here, Kally, you’ll like this bit… The Traemir solution for this - all windows are mandated to be no higher than 2 feet from the ground.”
Kally spluttered despite having no drink. “Th—that’s their solution to it?”
Tommy smiled. “Lass, it’s all they can do.”
“Still...”
Kally sighed and gazed into the wood grain beside her hands. Would she ever hear about Barley again? Hopefully so, it seemed she might have been wrong about him. No doubt that encounter was not the last she would have with that cloaked man. She would be able to find out more, then.
???
Sure enough, not long after, the door swung open and the cloaked man walked in. Kally’s stomach jumped. Not now, she groaned. Even though she was just thinking it was likely that he would seek her out again, she did not know what to do. Her immediate reaction, again, was to flee. Her toe wriggled in her boot. Unseen by Kally and the others, the cloaked man moved his finger to form a temporary sigil. This petty enchantment made its way to Karin.
Karin rose and said to the man, “The usual?” despite never having served him before.
The man nodded and occupied a table two tables down, facing Kally.
Karin sat back down. “Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be about Katoia?” He paused, “And how do you know this doctor?”
Kally, wide eyed, leaned over and shushed him. She could hear an almost indistinguishable stifling of a laugh from the table two down.
“What…?” Karin mouthed. To him, this was a perfectly valid question. To Kally, it was complicated and with atrocious timing.
“Okay, well why’s he important?” Karin spoke in a hushed tone.
Kally glanced at the cloaked man. Her skin crawled. All she could see was his mouth, curled slightly into a wry looking smile. Not necessarily malicious but it made her uncomfortable. She did not know what he wanted, not truly.
She looked away, face hot, and replied to Karin in a quieter voice than before, “Katoia, mine and Katoia’s issue.” Karin grabbed the table tightly. His face twitched. Even Kally thought she was overreacting. Not that she could help the squirm she felt in her stomach.
“And you can’t tell us how you had the vision? Is it to do with that man that Katoia mentioned?”
A chuckle of amusement burst from that man’s lips.
Kally glared at Karin.
“Okay, okay. I’ll back off.”
Tommy, quiet throughout this exchange, had been observing the cloaked man and Kally. Nothing escaped those old eyes of his, he was proud of that. He placed a reassuring hand on Kally’s shoulder and called over to the cloaked man, “Here, stranger, do I need to hoist myself up to invite you over or will you make the journey yourself?”
With a flick of his cloak, the man sat at their table, his mouth in a grin of slight condescension. Kally groaned inwardly as she shuffled in her seat.
What in the purple was she about to agree to?
°??───? Author’s Note ?───??°
Kally is haunted by the vision of Barley but with her friends help she learns what happens when bureaucracy meets body horror. Honestly, I wasn’t prepared for the pineapple either.
(╯°□°）╯︵??
Let me know what you think - thoughts, theories, toe puns, and especially on how you would deal with such an unpredictable magic system.
? Coming up - Chapter 8 title ?
°??───?? The first day of the journey in which dreamscapes encroach ??───??°
?? Vision Watch ??
? A faraway land, with blue eyes and pale faces vying for attention (Chapter 5)
~ SK Payde
? ? ?
