Chavie and Bu Bat: Caer Darrow
Chavie - March 24, 2006
Chavie had left Bu Bat free to wander around tainted, haunted
Caer Darrow. He took the opportunity to forage for yummy fungus.
Maybe in life he had been the sort of horse to favor fresh apples
and bales of hay, but in skeletal undeath Bu Bat had no appetite
for such things. Truth be told, he had no appetite at all. He
didn't even have an esophagus. But he had something left of his
tongue, and found the diseased fungus to stimulate his taste
buds, and the texture was comforting. He'd chew, and swallow, and
the chewed-up fungus would dribble down his front and land in
glops on the ground.
Ever since the other Bu Bat took Chavie here, Bu Bat the Horse's
master kept wanting to return. It wasn't so bad for Bu Bat at
first. She'd just ridden him around and looked at stuff. But once
while they were resting beside what might have been a kind of
house, Bu Bat and Chavie heard a ghostly she-child voice: "I
win!" It had scared Bu Bat, and he'd reared and neighed and
almost bolted... except Chavie caught his reins and smacked at
him with a fish and the fish always surprised and confused him.
His master took his face in her hands and rested her forehead on
his. "Der ar gos hir. Is o ke, de wil na hur tas." Bu Bat
nickered. What else could he say? He was just a horse.
Chavie turned away from him and looked around. "He lo?" she said,
her voice a soft whisper. He could smell something like fear on
her. "Li tel chal, wer ar yu...?" She extended her arms and
walked around. Sometimes she'd snatch at the air. She walked
backwards a lot, swinging her head around, like she'd lost
something. Bu Bat was getting bored watching her but he didn't
think there was anything else he could do. So he watched her
dance and skip around, singing silly children's songs, softly
calling out at someone, but she wasn't talking to Bu Bat, so he
didn't really care. And whoever she was calling to wasn't
answering, so they obviously didn't care, either.
When she had started getting angry and weeping, kicking at bones
and rattling the bloody death cages, yelling incomprehensibly, Bu
Bat had sighed a horsey sigh and plodded off to search for tasty
fungus. She was being silly and he wanted no part of it.
A long time later she'd come to him, sniffling, fish in hand. "Bu
Bat!" Her voice was hoarse. She was about to hit him with the
fish, but Bu Bat saw it coming and stepped aside. "Ka mon, su pid
has." She pulled him close and climbed on, then kicked him into a
canter. Surprised at himself for avoiding the fish, Bu Bat had
mindlessly obeyed her directions and they'd left.
Now, they were back again, and this time Chavie had brought a
very cumbersome bundle with her. Bu Bat suffered the extra weight
in silence, resisting the urge to buck off the sickly-sweet
smelling burden Chavie was forcing him to bear. Something wrapped
up in decaying cloth, smelling like sweet sweet death. He
wondered what its texture was like and if it was chewable. He
wondered why she didn't carry it herself.
Finally she had dismounted and carried the bundle away to one of
the sheds. She disappeared inside and Bu Bat nibbled at fungi.
That got tiresome after a while, and soon he fell asleep. He woke
when the shed door creaked open again. He'd slept for a long
time... and wanted to sleep more. He eyed Chavie's approach with
a small amount of resentment. Didn't she need to sleep?
But she didn't go to him. She staggered past him, humming softly,
disjointedly, and went up to the great big building. Leaving Bu
Bat alone with the ghosts and the random Alliance coming through!
He waited a little while for her return, but knowing her she was
probably asleep--without saying goodnight! Disgusted and
indignant, Bu Bat turned and trotted out of Caer Darrow, toward
the Hinterlands. He kept glancing over his shoulder, expecting
the wrath of the fish, but it didn't come, and soon he forgot
where he was going or why. He was just that tired. He fell asleep
now and then, but even in his dreams he was walking--only in his
dreams he was trying to get away from great big Abominations and
little dead pig-tailed girls who were chasing him with
sharp-toothed eels. So he decided it would be better to be awake
after all. He could outrun the things that stalked reality's
night; dream's night was full of inescapable terrors.
He trotted all the way back to Tarren Mill and slept in the
graveyard, by the chapel. Chavie might be angry at him in the
morning but that didn't matter at the moment. He didn't think
about the future, he was just a horse.
The next time they went, Chavie made Bu Bat carry two bundles of
cloth and death, and sat on top of him. His back hurt. Or would
if his nerves were what they used to be. He imagined it hurt...
and that was more or less the same thing.
Bu Bat nickered his annoyance, and walked slowly, trying to
convey his reluctance to carry what amounted to the weight of two
people on his back. Then, a carrot appeared in front of his face.
It was a trick.
But it was also crunchy and tasty-looking.
He broke into a gallop; Chavie squealed with delight. He strained
his neck and snapped his teeth, but the carrot got no closer. It
was a trick, he knew that. He wasn't stupid. But gosh darn it,
one of these days, he was going to catch that carrot, and then he
was going to bite it right down the middle. And chew and spit it
out. What would his master do, when her little trick to make him
run faster failed? What would she do when he caught it, and
destroyed it?
Probably beat him with an eel.
This time they went up the river by Tarren Mill to get to Caer
Darrow. Chavie dismounted, taking the carrot with her, and
dragged her bundles toward her shed. Bu Bat looked around for
yummy fungus. She spent the night again, leaving Bu Bat without a
proper stable to stand and sleep in. He wandered around the
ruins, listening for ghosts. Animals were supposed to have a
sixth sense about ghosts, but Bu Bat didn't have any. He was as
dead as ghosts were--maybe because of that he didn't notice
anything out of the ordinary. Maybe you had to be really alive to
be the sort of horse who could tell when a ghost was around, so
alive that the presence of death frightened and shocked you into
noticing it.
He wondered if his presence frightened and shocked living horses.
Only one way to find out.
Bu Bat didn't sleep that night. He went around terrorizing living
animals around Hillsbrad. Critters, not beasts--just sheep and
cows and horses and stuff. It was jolly good fun. He even bit a
sheep and it fainted. Or died. A farmer chased him away before he
could tell. He liked to think that it fainted, as that had more
comedic effect and would make for a better story to tell the guys
back at the stable.
When he got bored with that, Bu Bat went back to Caer Darrow to
catch a little sleep before Chavie got up. She ended up sleeping
all day so he got a lot of good, dreamless sleep. And that night,
after running around killing stuff with other Grims, she didn't
take him back to Caer Darrow. They stayed in the Undercity, like
proper Forsaken. Bu Bat was relieved.
t was raining softly in Tirisfal Glades, and Bu Bat stood
dripping and smelling like rotted wet horse while Chavie
dispatched the gnolls. She was wearing her wide-brimmed hat,
pulled down low over her face, and wasn't wearing her tabard;
from her mannerisms Bu Bat guessed she was "incognito" again.
He nibbled at wet grass while she dug around where the gnolls had
been digging. He didn't like the texture very much, and the taste
was so dull his decaying tongue recieved no stimulation. He
sighed a deep, horsey sigh, then spotted some peacebloom. It
tasted too perfumey.
Then Chavie was coming toward him with another bundle. Bu Bat was
tired of being a pack animal! It was enough carrying her, with
all her bags and... her nearly featherweight fleshless body...
well, the bags were heavy. There had better be just one bundle
this time.
She gently laid the bundle down on his back and started securing
it. It occured to Bu Bat that he was probably allergic to the
peacebloom he was chewing; and when you're allergic to something,
the best thing to do is to sneeze. He sneezed--violently--and the
bundle went tumbling off. It fell out of the cloth it had been
wrapped in, and rolled right under Bu Bat's nose. Another dead
human child. But Bat sniffed it.
Chavie shoved him aside forcefully, and cursed. "Don it dat!" she
hissed. "Su pid has!" He blew his nostrils at her, and stepped
aside, watching as she tenderly re-wrapped the body and brought
it back to his noble and undeserving spine.
"Du na mu!" she growled at him. "Yu ham dis chal an a kil yu, o
ke? Yu un der san yu su pid has?"
But Bat wasn't stupid, and tossed his head to express his
indignance at being called such. To prove he wasn't stupid, he
allowed the bundle to be secured, and allowed Chavie to get back
on the saddle. "I understand your threat well enough, once-human,
and am willing to comply to avoid a second demise." He would have
said that, if he could have.
Then she fixed the carrot-on-a-stick in place, and kicked him
off, towards Caer Darrow.