The Boy IN My Phone

A fell thing from another land

Hestia

How long had she been asleep? What had woken her up? That had: her shadow sense was jangling like a wasp in a web; that was what had woken her. Somewhere something was clawing at the under-skin of the world.

And there was also the scratching. She heard it again. It sounded familiar. It sounded close.

Hestia stood and battled with her skirts, which had woken in a worse mood than she was. They were still only half-tamed when she pulled the bolt on the door at the end of her burrow. The door pushed back against her as soon as the restraint had been removed. Aagh light! Surely it should come with a warning. As she reeled back, bony hands over her eyes, something low and sinuous snaked around and past her at thigh height. She half-closed the door then reopened it a small way, peering out through slit eyes. Late afternoon murmured the shadows; probably Berriber or, whatever the month afore that was, Ripenary? Not a month she was too familiar with.

So, she'd been asleep barely a season. She glanced down. There was a dead wood pigeon on her step. It might have been a portentous omen, but it was probably dinner.

Silenthe awaited her in the kitchen, black pin eyes assessing her hazy befuddlement. A second plumped up pigeon rested between the miniver's front paws, matching the one she held in her hand. Both were half-plucked and clumsily gutted but far from ready for the pot.

'I'm never awake this early. This had best be an uprising, or an invasion or significant death' Hestia reached down by Silenthe to pick up the second bird. She wanted to make her displeasure evident, so didn't mention the tell-tale strumming of her own premonitions. 'War would be good. Is it war?'

The miniver shook her sharp head, before turning it into more of a shrug of possibility. Her paw scraped a rune in the obstinate dust of her kitchen flagstones: the Dark Rune. Hestia stared then threw the birds in the rough direction of the pot and skittered, skirts protesting, into her viewing room. Hestia's view-drops were unlike most of those in Kernow as she would never allow water into her home. Instead, she opened and carefully poured strong clear liquor, raw hawska, onto five dimpled brackets of fungi thrusting out of the earthen wall of her burrow.

The liquid formed near-perfect circular pools, reflecting more light than could ever exist in the underground burrow that served as her viewing room.

She leaned over one pool and reared away. Oh Brama! Something horrible glared back; mean-eyed and glowering. It had hair like a angry hotchi-witchi exploding out everywhere. It took three rapid heartbeats to realise it must be her reflection. It had been awhile. She really must do her nails. She could no longer make out where her eyebrows ended and her horns began.

Viewdrops took concentration. Soon, her likeness dissolved and swirling images rushed in to saturate the pools of liquor.

'Let us begin with his mighty Lightness,' she said as Silenthe's pointed whiskered snout positioned itself close to a pool. The churn of images in the liquid condensed to just one. In it a robed elf, paced a hall, while distinguished officials stared forward sternly, most watching, some remonstrating.

'Our Elven King seems a trifle twitchy,' Hestia was unable to disguise her pleasure at this.

She stroked at a crop of green bell-like flowers that grew down incongruously from her ceiling. They hummed into life with a burst of low noise, each bloom outpouring a confused low cacophony, each distinct from its neighbours. Silenthe listened intently to a couple then nudged Hestia's attention to one of the flowers.

Hestia tapped this voicing bloom and a menagerie of louder voices fluttered into her room. A second touch tuned it to one thread, 'Babble...the Dark Elf is back, they say. 'Tis the talk of the Ravines,' came the first clear voice; others crowded in.