Rogue Sashimi Italienne

He was an artist. A rogue street sashimi artist trawling the fish market for a workable slab of tuna, tilapia, or Atlantic cod. He would throw the wax paper-wrapped side of dorsal muscle into a custom crafted freezer backpack with electric green radiator tubing coiled all around. He had a plan that day... mafia-switchblade sushi roll.
Toting his kit into the rambling brown and gray brick of Little Italy, he found a shady spot where the concrete was cold despite the the early spring pleasance. He gazed up at the light plashing over, around, and through the young beech leaves, waiting for for a likely accesory to his next edible art masterwork.
"You, hey, you there, sir!" he called quickly, shedding his hermit crab shell of sushi mats, bonito flakes, bud-green wasabi paste, and mica-sparkly seaweed sheets. He stood and addressed the portly gentleman with his chinstrap mustache and slick, helmety hair. He felt a bit guilty for playing to stereotype, only to be pleasantly surprised at the refined tone of the tough.
"How might I help you?" the man asked, with a hint of Northern Italy at the margins, in spite of his Sicilian stockiness.
"Would you happen to have a 'knife'?" the artist asked, leaning in and nodding to make it clear that he wasn't looking for a fingernail Swiss Army edge.
"When does one have a knife, really?" queried the man in reply. "And who is asking?"
"Marcus Rumiel," replied the artist, poised to explain his request.
The man cut him off. He turned back to look down the street and yelled in almost bellicose Italian. The only word Marcus caught was "'Ey, Giovanni," and then a string of drunken piano pitches in words.
An even swarthier figure ambled up at that, and began a conversation punctuated with much finger-pointing towards the sushi-fier. The newcomer produced a fine butterfly knife, lighting a glint in Marcus' eye.
In a flash of zippers, the clacking of hardwood, and the miniscule whuff of a butane lighter, he set up his tiny table and lit a candle, the forlorn flame blowing in the breeze. The tuna (for that was the catch of the day) made a bloody quadrilateral for him to carve with the butterfly knife he had only moments before run through the fire. He opened a stoneware crock of fine short grain rice and ladled it out over a seaweed wrapper. Behind his whir of flashing steel and flaking papery green green, steam rose lazily out of the freezer backpack, curling around the lotus-folded legs of Marcus Rumiel.
On a delicate platter whipped out from a crackling sleeping bag of bubble wrap, the street sashimi artist presented to the mobsters his new and exciting mafia-switchblade tuna roll.

The Quest for Ocarria, Chapter One

The Quest for Ocarria: The Hills of Galadralore

The dull thuds of Jasc’s pickaxe had drawn her up among the trees and to his beorlingras. Kelly MvGaragorm paused to look left out over the Avalin river valley. The Grey Cliffs heavy with tall thunderheads brooded from across the valley over the sunlit fields and woods below her. Turning again, she ducked low into the rough-hewn earth and stones of the doorway into the beorlingras.

“Hey, Jasc,” she said. Jasc was at the back of the small room, his shirt tossed aside and smeared with dirt from the delving. He wiped his smudged forehead with an even dirtier forearm and turned to greet her.

“Heyo, Kelly!” he heaved with his breath. “I’ve been at this for almost the whole morning, I suppose that I could use a break. What brings you up here?”

“My work at the house is done for the day.”

“Well, be glad I am no longer in a village, or else you could never have walked up so casually.”

“I do realize, Jasc. I’m not so stupid as you might think,” she said with a gentle smile.

“See that you don’t forget, though. I remember when a sister of one of the boys at Rahadraven came up. Her father and mother both gave her a thrashing to remember. I had to be seal to it.”

“I won’t forget. The secrecy is too much to me. What exactly are you all hiding?”

“It’s all just tradition, I guess. Women have the towns, and keep to them. Men work the fields, travel the roads. I’m surprised you’ve never heard about this before.”

“We’re also not supposed to think too much, at least in my house. My dá is a good man, but I think he’s forgotten that his daughters have value.”

Jasc smiled, “Well anyway, it’s good to see you. I don’t have much food to offer you, and I’m famished, so I hope you had something to eat before you came up. My hospitality will be lacking.”

“I’m almost done with this beorlingras. One more room to carve out and then I can settle in.” Jasc had only recently left his beorlingras in a small village to the West. The Grey Cliffs had protected the lands of Galadralore, and the short hills thrown up against the naked stone were home to several beorlingroli villages.

“It’s my birthday next week,” Kelly said, seeming to burst with a pent-up excitement.

“Now where’d that come from,” Jasc laughed. He collapsed happily down on one of the short, newly-cut oak rounds that served as the only real furniture in his delving, or beorlingras as it was called in the suppressed Galadralorean language.

“I don’t know. When are you going to come into town again? Surely you’ve got something for trade by now. It’s been weeks, and my mother and father are dying to host someone with our new furniture brought all the way from Celeronmore! Please come visit soon, Jasc.”

“I will try. Would you watch Elvenblade for a little bit? Just give him a combing or something. I’ve been trying to take care of him but it’s been three days of solid work on this delving.” Elvenblade, Jasc’s black gelding, was tethered outside, allowed to graze the clumpy grass of the clearing, and to strip the leaves off of the shorter trees at the edge of the Forest.

Jasc stood and threw his sleeveless open shirt over his shoulders. The dusty sunlight that came through the two small, empty windows glinted on the buttons. In the late summer heat, the air inside the beorlingras was stuffy and hot, but his own. Land in the Ithrondur Hills was free, untouched, forested. The boys of Galadralore and a few isolated towns were the only human occupiers of the land, though vestiges of older times could sometimes be found among the stately trees and tangles of holly and laurel.

“Does Kyjas know about this one, yet?” asked Kelly, on her way out the door. Jasc knelt to slip on his leather and soft wood sandals before he came outside with her.

“I haven’t seen him around anywhere. I heard he went down South-way, near the Silverwood.”

“Have you ever seen the Silverwood? Every story my mothers tells of that place is full of Magic. What is Magic like?” hurriedly Kelly questioned; though she was nearly fourteen, a year and months Jasc’s junior, she still had the inquisitiveness of a child.

“Magic is… complicated, tiring, and a skill that I never asked for.”

“I know, you’ve told me that before. But I would do anything to know what it felt like to have Magic flowing through me.”

“It’s not all that it’s made out to be, I promise, Kelly. But we were talking about Kyjas.”

“Oh right,” the girl stopped, and then her eyes lit up as she remembered. “Do you want me to tell him how to get here?”

“Of course. He thinks I still live in Tolenath,” Jasc said. Tolenath was the village that Manarovaloren town sent boys to for the training that all beorlingroli villages offered. “But Kelly,” he said as she turned to go, running down the hill, through the grass that marked where he could see out over the valley, to the treeline path, “don’t spread everywhere that I have this new beorlingras, all right?”

“Who would I tell?” she asked playfully. She knew very well that to speak of the beorlingrol was against tradition. She did not want to be punished.

“I didn’t think- Jasc began, smiling.

“You’ve been working too long, Jasc. I think your mind wants a break more than your body.”

“My mind is too far away.”

“Where is it?” Kelly continued the thought.

“On the Cliffs, looking for the Ocarrians. We’ve heard nothing from the West, no more edicts, no renewed raids, no demands. It’s unsettling.”

“Wouldn’t you be glad to know that?”

“You hadn’t heard? All the troops in the Avalin Valley have been pulled back. Children haven’t been taken from a town for a sixmonth. As good a news as that is, it bodes not well. They’ve pulled back to mass again, I’m sure of it.”

“Well, let’s hope not. I need to head back to Manarovaloren before evening chores begin, and do my letterwork.” Kelly looked wistfully into the Forest, at the never-ceasing play of light on the crinkly rotting floor of leaves. Saplings bent low in a sudden hefty breeze at the tree line, turning their leaves inside out.

“The storm could break soon. Do you need a ride to the edge of the Hills?”

“No, I can make it on foot.”

Jasc looked with concern for his friend leaving down through into the woods below his clearing, keeping his eye on the blanket of ever rising thunderheads that covered the Grey Cliffs in a greyer darkness.

He crept through the grass, moving his feet slowly, silently through errant leaves and dry grass until he reached the trees. Kelly was leaping down over gullies and scattered rocks and fallen limbs. There was no path down, but she was a girl wise to the ways of the woods. Her dirty blond hair had been inverse braided and tied off with a limp green ribbon bounced stiffly up and down with her hops.

“Yidë ilanë ivén,” he whispered the ancient blessing. Galadralorean was suppressed but not forgotten, nor out of all use. Kept alive in the beorlingrol, and taught among the women and daughters in secret, it flavored the hashing Ocarrian speech, creating a heavy but lilting accent.

“May God be with you.”