Chapter 2 - Wetstone

"Speaking of strange..." Edven walked past, holding a large backpack. "What do we do with this?" He lifted the bag containing the green gemin onto the table.

"Not sure, but it looks like there are a few changes we'll have to make." The captain paced toward the aeroship's map table and poked at the parchment with a finger. "Looks like a couple of beats from here. We'll have to make an evening campsite. Hopefully, my other boys haven't got too rowdy." She gestured at the map table. "After this last push if we don't meet our goal we might have to start taking more desperate measures."

"More desperate than we already are?" Solemnly the words came from Edven after a lengthy silence.

"Maybe not. We'll see what the fog brings." The captain returned to her seat.

The next few beats passed in a blur. The captain directed the two-man team to gather whatever useful supplies they could find. Ration packs were passed out, and the aeroship was readied for take-off. The two men took turns butchering the carcasses and packing them into salt. Once the animals had been packed they prepared for the long day's march.

"Captain, why did we only come out here with a team of four?" Cowel spoke boisterously. He had to, out on the deck, with the captain piloting around the marshland. The winds were intense.

"I've been thinking that myself since we had the accident with Jule. I brought the men I could trust most for this trip. The best we have." She cast the ship's wheel to center and stepped away from the rudder lever. Leaving the ship to the air's mercy.

"It is important to the whole clan that we find the stone that fell. Without it, we might have to resort to piracy just to get by." She moved closer to Cowel who walked over to the ship's railing to look out into the clouds. The captain stared back at him. "Besides it's not like I have many other choices. This way we might. We can make a fortune and buy a larger aeroship. Maybe you'll even have one of your own. There is a market for this sort of thing up in Argentis. Making it back won't matter if we don't have that stone with us. We need it to pay off the clan's bounty." The captain walked the few steps required to lean on the ship's railing and finalized her point. "I don't think we should cross this swamp. It's dangerous and unknown territory."

"Captain." says Cowel, now concerned by Alanea's hesitation.

Edven emerged from the ship's lower deck. "Hey, miss Alanea. Now I'm not much for flying, but if we stay much longer on this expedition we'll starve. Our provisions are worse than we've realized. Even the meat we've just gotten doesn't look so plentiful after you've broken it down. Many of the rations we have left are spoiled. Nothing in this swamp is substantial enough to keep us going without support." Edven looked out into the fog below. "We should leave soon, if not now. It'll take us almost a week just to make it back to civilization."

Cowel turned from the railing, and the three of them walked downstairs back to the map table. "We haven't gotten as far as I'd hoped in the last few days." The captain stated plainly. "We might have had a better shot if we knew more about the swamp and the location. Let's start mapping out a route and see where we are."

A plan was quickly made. The captain packed the whole three-person tent into a large cloth. They would double back to camp if they ran into any trouble. She ordered the long day's march broken up into manageable chunks of time.

The aeroship carried them back out over the fog to their eventual landing position. It hovered to a rest just above the ground kept hovering by its nacelles. The three of them disembarked from the ship across a solid wood and steel ladder of great quality. One likely to outlive the ship.

The captain got a good look at the aeroship as they dismounted the ladder. It needed some serious work. It took substantial damage striking a hardwood tree on its descent in an attempt to save Jule's life. He was already dead as soon as he had hit the ground.

"My guess is someone with a sharp eye for detail will need to make it out into the woody part of this swamp just before night hits." Cowel turned to the captain with a tired expression of the captain's expectation.

"Except this time I'll be coming with you." She exclaimed softly, strapping her boots into place.

"Captain, I insist on letting myself and Edven do this traveling. If something happens to you we will have no way to get home." Neither Cowel nor Edven knew how to pilot the ship. If they could figure out how they would be down on crew and unable to navigate. An almost certain death this close to the out beyond.

"Well, you don't have a choice in the matter." She held out her arms wide and gestured them in the direction they would be walking for the next few beats. "Let's find that stone."

The flyover exposed a part of the swamp that was drier than the rest. The soft clay slake depressed from each footstep, giving way to only one in ten. The best look they had yet. With this kind of thick material, it was easy to see recently fallen stones. The sourcelight made the smallest glitter cross the landscape, but most were too small to divert to pick up. Sometimes along their path would be a gemin stone within arms reach.

Edven picked one up and put it in his pocket as if someone left a tip for him. "These small ones are all over. If only we had more people. Fresh pickings. Not a soul has been to this swamp in centuries it seems." He reached down to an even smaller gemin, orange in color.

"Step aside guys." Edven warned his two comrades. Holding the small orange stone out at arm's length it began to glow. Upon opening his hand a powerful repulsive force emerged that bifurcated the clay and mud ten paces away from him. Revealing the sheet of rock underneath, creating a convenient and short-lived walkway.

Within his hand, the orange stone turned clear, and he tossed it into the mud. The repelled clay walls didn't last long under their own weight, and slid slowly back across the rocks it once covered.

"Was that worth wasting a stone for?" Alanea quipped, standing motionless before a clear path ahead of her. "Absolutely." Cowel asserted, relacing his boots which had become loose over the last few beats of trodding clay. The captain conceded that she too needed a place to set her equipment down to check.

This short reprieve was followed immediately by a return to stomping. The others had almost wished that Edven hadn't shown them a brief taste of the "good life". As the day loomed onward the fog started to roll in, making it difficult to see farther ahead than a couple dozen paces.

"I'm so tired, for a moment I forgot why we were even out here. Till' I saw this here." Cowel bent down to pick up a small opaque white gem poking from the surface of the clay. It was long and smooth, as if tumbled. "Must have been a flood or something." He inquisitively inspected the stone.

"You know a dayna would pay good money for this." Cowel observed its opaque sheen. Most white gemin were pearlescent like this one. "Captain, we should have taken a rake to the mud. Just to get the little ones."

Alanea splayed her arms out wide. "There's a whole wide world out there. No reason to go searching in one place." She slapped some mud with her bare palm. "This expedition was for easy money. If I wanted to do manual labor I'd be holding a pickaxe in Willowmoss." Both men audibly sighed in agreement.

It wasn't long before Cowel began to perceive a familiar sound. "There it is again."

"Is what?" Edven approached his immediate vicinity. "I don't hear anyt-... wait..."

The captain also joined the huddle. "Huh, is that a river?"

"See, I'm not daft. I was hearing water. It's much louder now." Cowel proudly vindicated himself. "Though we are, what, 100 knots from where we were?"

"120." Alanea muttered, intending only for accuracy. "This was the same sound you heard before?"

"I'm certain of it mam. It's weird too. If you turn toward the left. Nothing." The other two crewmates mimicked Cowel's motion to humor what they thought was nonsense, only to experience the phenomenon as described.

"That is so strange." Alanea swept a cupped ear across what would have been her field of view. The captain trudged toward and down what was to her a phantom river. This was easy to do with the sound so directional. She was followed closely by the two men, who approached the voluminous sound, each with a hand on their weapons.

"We should be careful." Cowel warned with his body abreast of Edven. "It's a ghastly thought to plunge into a stream underfoot, and drowned by mud."

This jolted the captain into her wits. She brandished her sword, poking it through the mud to tap the sheet of stone underneath. As if she was a blind woman checking that a cake was done. Alas, the batter clung to her sword after each stab.

"I must be close. If I didn't know better I'd tell you I was under a waterfall." Alanea rummaged through the mud around her, stomping in circles around a sound in the space adjacent to her. First to her left and then her right, ahead and then behind. The sound remained stationary, and she pinpointed its exact location.

"It's... right here? It must be."

The first mate and the deckhand looked toward each other and their leader. Both nearly in tandem moved their head toward the surface of the mud. As they suspected, the sound was of a tremendous volume. More so than any natural feature. It was as if someone was playing an instrument whose notes were the sounds of water and rocks. They shoved and shoveled the mud back with their hands in desperate throws, fighting against the rush of fresh slip into the shallow divot.

It didn't take long before the captain joined them. With the three clawing into the doughy muck, they made enough progress to reveal something. It had an angular surface, blue in color, and difficult to see. Alanea pried her fingers underneath it, and using both hands she heaved it through the sticking mud. The men didn't reach under to grab the stone themselves, but pushed the captain's torso back in instead. This was enough to give her the leverage she needed to free it. Although, her wrists were going to hurt later.

"That was a fight. Oh isn't she a beauty! Wow." Even through the layer of clinging into the stone's crevasses, it was extraordinary. In the truest sense, this was not a normal occurrence. This was a gemin. While not the one they were sent out to find, it wasn't going to matter. Any person would have been able to determine it was of value, just from its size; that of a small melon. It was transparent, rough and frosty, but transparent.

"I... I can't believe this is real." Cowel and Edven crowded into Alanea's personal space. The first mate hovered over the stone. "Our troubles are over. That is for sure." He reached out toward the stone to brush some mud from it. Mid-reach, the gemin began to expel a copious and unreasonable quantity of water. A fountain of clean and pure water radiated from its surface pouring from the captain's hands.

"Was this the sound we were hearing?" Edven inquired while he and the other's clothes fully started to soak through, something they managed to prevent during the half day's trip out here.

"Ahhh, nah. No. It's too quiet." Cowel reeled upset his sack was now drenched. A feeling he quelled by washing his hands under the clean water being generated by their new find. He then cupped some of the water into his hands and drank from it, and followed that by filling two canteens. Edven did the same.

"It is going to be a pain to deal with if it does this the whole march back!" The captain boasted in irritation. Immediately, the gemin stopped expelling water. "Oh right... sorry. I probably could have asked." The blue stone flashed faintly, as if in agreement.

"It understood you?" Edven's life was a sheltered one. Up until the last two years he had grown up in a small village. "I thought you could only communicate with them once they were set?" Cowel put a hand on his shoulder.

"I've never seen one able to communicate without a body, but I have heard about it." Cowel placed his hand on the stone, and through it, he felt vibration. An orchestra of waves cresting, rain pattering, and water falling. "I assume it doesn't know a quicker way through this mud." The raw gemstone did not respond. "Well, at least we have a source of clean water to fill some barrels with when we get back. We were nearly out. I was about to set up some rain catchers."

The captain tied the stone into a thin damp cloth blanket, and slung it around her back. The trek back was as uneventful as the trip out. Not long before they returned to camp, the darkness arrived. One step, dim daylight, the next in complete darkness. The sourcelight was just enough to make out the outline of the ship from two knots, but their movement was very slow.

When they finally made it to the aeroship, they were exhausted. The cold air hardened up the surface a bit, which helped, but made steps that fell into the mud more cumbersome. The fog was less intense now than during most of their journey. This was a blessing, especially tonight when they would need to make their way back.

They loaded up the equipment they had already off-loaded from the ship. Everyone was relieved that they weren't going to need it for another night. The ship's decks were better insulated anyway. Most of the time these tents were dragged to temporary outposts. The rare spots of solid land and tree roots that weren't already occupied by wildlife. Once everyone was back inside and the gangplank was pulled up, they freed the ship from its ties. The aeroship was small enough that a couple of trees were enough to keep it from running off. There was little wind out here anyway.

Cowel pulled out some of the salted meat which had been left smoking near dying coals in the oven all day, and took a gratuitous bite from it. "Finawy, ouw wuck has wetuwned." His mouth was full of the fibrous, barely seasoned, and gamey jerky.

Alanea set the makeshift sack containing the green gemstone onto the table. Where she immediately opened it examining the stone under white gemlight. "This stone is perfect, and I don't need a gemer to tell me that." She caressed the gemin close to her. "I don't know if we should go cabochon or geodesic for the cut." Moving it around through the light, she checked it for cracks or blemishes. There were some chips on the outside from its impact, but was otherwise in good condition. The mud broke the fall.

Alanea got up from the table to begin planning the aerial route. Cowel sat down with the magnifying lens to take a look himself. It was then that the gem shimmered, washing the entire room in a kaleidoscope of color. An intense prismatic light radiated from the portholes of the ship. With Cowel as its only witness.

"What is this? I don't understand."