Step by Step - Chapter Four
Wild knelt on the ground, holding his position as he waited for the blow.
None came, though he could still hear the battle raging above him. Holding his pose, he took a shaky breath and dared to shout again.
“It’s the poem!” he cried. “You have to kneel! Be humble before them!”
There was clatter of another sword falling and Wild hoped beyond hope that it was one of his brothers listening to him and not someone being struck down. But a second later he heard Time’s low voice bellow DO IT! and then the sound of more weapons being dropped and the rustle of more of his brothers falling to their knees, bowing before the dead.
Wild’s heart was in his throat, but overhead, slowly, the sounds of battle ceased.
He held his pose, terrified. What did they do now? Did they move? Would they be punished? He dared to peek up and saw with a jolt that the stalfos - ten of them, one for each hero - had lined up in a neat, horrifying row.
Wild took in a shaky breath. They were standing at attention, like soldiers waiting for orders - or like executioners waiting at the scaffold. He swallowed heavily. Either way, they were waiting. Wild really hoped he was right about what to do next.
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currently in the Fens
I am actually literally in a Fen right this moment apparently. I can actually hear the river Cam, which is doing something and I can't tell what behind a tree, there's a noise so it's either falling over something or being partly penned-up by something or-- like a dam or a waterfall idk. it's really flat here, like that's the salient feature of this geographic area i think, and the river is in like five channels kind of meandering around and of course this place being heavily human-inhabited for the last thousand years at least, but more like five thousand, many of these channels have been tamed, straightened or redirected or whatnot. but anyway some portion of the river Cam is outside my hotel rn.
There's also cows on it, which is kind of wild. There's a cattle guard at the park entrance so obviously those cattle are authorized to be there.
Anyway I am going to see several friends, some Internet and some Real Life, this week and am going to look at some museums and some architecture in Cambridge, and Flag Fen Archaeology Park and the cathedral at Ely and such.
Yesterday getting here was slightly an adventure because we'd researched and knew that by flying into Gatwick we could just directly get onto the Thameslink train and go right to Cambridge and so we bought our tickets and went and looked at the board to ask how to get to Cambridge and it said under Cambridge "please enquire" and oh they had shut down that whole branch of track because of some kind of fire so we Could Not Get There From Here ah shit! So we had to instead go to St Pancras and then nebulously to King's Cross which... I was not clear on the mechanism of whether those were the same thing or not but once we were there it was obvious that they are adjoining, that is the life hack solution etcetera, and then we had to get onto the Ely train to get to Cambridge (I had been pronouncing Eeeeleee right hurrah). But we managed, and it was not that difficult after all, and we could even just still use our same Thameslink ticket and that was great and all but like. Whew ok.
The solution to jet lag is just to be real tired; I slept like ten hours last night. I'm not exactly myself today but I am myself enough to go look at a whole museum in extreme detail. I suspect this museum is aimed at children but that has never stopped or deterred me in any way.
We are staying in a hotel that is university-themed, like why not. There is a giant model of DNA hanging in the lobby and the walls are covered in punts for some reason, and the desk staff are wearing tweed uniform jackets. (I am not surprised by the DNA thing because its discovery was announced hereish in the Eagle Pub ) It's cute. It's weird. It just got acquired by Hilton so who knows how weird it will remain. There's a balcony, which I thought was hilarious given my knowledge of the British climate, but actually it was ravishingly gorgeous yesterday (lightly breezy, meltingly sunny, a warm room temperature) and it is going to remain partly cloudy but warm for most of the week so actually the balcony was a really good call. (The room below, which has the footprint of the balcony as indoor space, was the same price, and Dude dithered a bit but went for fresh air.)
I have updated my bird packs in my Merlin app so i can try to find out what the various birds are (i mean I figured out the swan on my own) but I do not have a good app for plants and my burner French sim won't let me send photos so i am struggling with just not knowing what anything is. I had not realized how much of my psychic landscape is taken up by knowing the names of the plants around me, and everything here is familiar but Not The Thing and it's mildly distressing. There's no goldenrod but there are these exuberant things with pale purple spike flowers, seven feet tall, sprawling in every hedgerow. And there are willow trees along the river bank but this thing is like a huge mutant Japanese maple the size of a Norway maple. And those things have canes like bramble bushes but huge. what is anything.
The only plant I can reliably ID is English ivy which is probably not invasive here, I'm just going off a random hunch there tho.
OK the museum opens in a minute so I'm gonna go look at archaeology which is why I'm here, and having done that I will have largely achieved my goals so the rest is gravy.
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the purple hair is back, bitches 🤪💜
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today is another my bithday
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Edit: Also while I have you here, could you please donate to a friend's gofundme, it would be very much appreciated!
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yooooooo so today's fic chapter will be a day late - I went out and did IRL things and so need extra time to get it polished. See you tomorrow!
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