Dain to Compete

Featuring Madigan Madain & Dalaigh

Winter, Year 767 of the New Age

Somewhere in the Glenwood, Glenmore

Dalaigh

“It is a bad idea.”

The bad idea was being a year round undertaker, really. Madigan would argue that and he had proof. They were out in the frozen Glenwood, shivering amidst the winter trees in the bitter wind. The growth in these woods was so thick that even in deep winter naked branches adorned with snow created their own canopy - a thatched roof over most every glen. Clusters of twigs, gnarled and twisted, extend like hands to catch the soft falling flakes and lift them up away from royal heads.

In between glens, where the canopy grew thinner, white drifts had already assembled in soft curves. They stood in contrast to the dark mossy trunks that fenced the world into tidy order and were sometimes pockmarked by the hoofprints of passing highbreds who had carefully picked their way through the offending snow. It was hard to imagine the Glenwood redressed in its full spring finery this time of year, until they passed the glen of a particularly capable magic user -- whose house might be in full and luscious bloom. Bright green leaves sucking magic instead of sunlight holding the snow high above lofty heads. Snow kicked aside so that grass could grow thick and nutritious below noble feet.

There was a trail that Maddy and Dalaigh were following now left by where the precession had walked earlier -- carrying the body for those to see. At the end of this trail the deceased would be waiting, next to the agreed upon burial spot, until the ghouls arrived after dark to intur him. While they walked they talked, and so the matter of the Glenmorian King’s games had casually come up.

Madigan

It made sense for the Glenwood, where everyone was related to each other, that instead of try to cram all your family, extended family, cousins, half-cousins, second cousins and 20 fawns into one glen you simply did a viewing by way of parade. Look, here he is. Dead. Now you can go on about your business having performed your ceremonial duty of confirming his passing with your eyes, though we do acknowledge this may only be the second time you’ve ever seen him.

Mad had walked this exact trail earlier in the day, making sure that there was nowhere along the procession route where the snow was deep enough to be inconvenient for bearers’ passing. It would be unthinkable for a stag to stumble and drop their semi-rigid corpse of their beloved, so Mad had come through in the pre-dawn hours to act as a plough, then promtly left the Glenwood so that no one would have to see him while they were busy mimicking the recognizable signs of grief.

That could be distracting.

“Why?” Mad insisted with hushed indignity, “Why can’t I?”

Dalaigh

“Shouldn’t” Dalaigh corrected as they came upon the body.

Dolly was not taken to disagreements, and even if he was would not have made a habit of arguing with his brother. He was much happier to accept his brother’s words as gospel. Thoughts that had been turned over a hundred times, considered from every angle, and decided upon only after due time and information had been applied. This did not seem to be one of those times, however. This seemed like an uncharacteristically illogical decision -- based on ego more than reason.

“Shouldn’t do, and...why? Why would you?”

Madigan

That was a good question. Why had he decided, against all logic, to enter the Glenmorian King’s Games?

Ego maybe.

It certainly wasn’t because he agreed with the spirit writ spirit of the games. Celebrate the greatness of the king, the fact he had does and would be expecting a new litter of highbred whelps. None of those things really got Mad in laudatory mood. It was also worth noting that the highest honor one might hope to achieve through these games was the notice of the King, a thing which Mad very specifically did not want.

“A stag needs tuh be present,” he told Dolly. It was cryptic, and he hoped therefore that his brother would take a good time dealing with it while the larger stag dug snow.

Dalaigh

“No,” Dolly said sharply, stepping up close behind Mad.

The bigger of the two bucks spun around, feeling the sharp little stag at his flank and found himself nose-to-nose with perhaps the most impassive look those pale eyes had ever produced. Dalaigh was not far off in thought, or furtively avoiding the living in favour of his mind’s corridors. He was present behind the words:

“A Needler needs to be invisible.”

Madigan

Mad paused a minute, ears laid back. He squinted at the unyielding expression he thought he’d seen on his brother’s face -- as if it were a trick of the light. Then, proceeded by a snort, he explained something to Dalaigh quite clearly.

“You,” he directed, “daan't tell me wot a Needler needs. You dig 'oles, and take orders.”

Madigan and Dalaigh stared each other in the face, silently, for longer than was even normal for siblings. Mad snorted again, clouds of steamed stag breath issuing forth to ruffle the fur at either side of Dalaigh’s face. He was prepared to stomp a foot, secretly hoping that it wouldn’t come to tipping down antlers when Dalaigh walked out of the square off.

Dalaigh

“Bad idea,” Dolly’s back suggested, “dangerous. Could get...recruited.”

Which was something Mad had perhaps not given proper consideration. What if the King fancied his face a fearsome visage to be turned on other Commoners, and thought that someone with Mad’s physical prowess was better suited for the role of guard (or even royal guard) more than he was grave digger? What if Mad earned not only notice, but a new title and set of duties to go along with it? What then?

“To them, we do not want to exist. You said.”

Madigan

Maddy, in hindsight, did recall saying something that may or may not have been exactly that.

Watching his brother’s back for a few uncomfortable beats Mad went back to scooping snow away from the grave sight. Some time ago, in the earliest days of their career as undertakers, Mad had learned the commoner skill of throwing yourself into a physical task and allowing your body to act in an almost automatic way while your mind either stayed silent or spun off elsewhere. It was natural mechanism evolved by those whose life was only ever going to be mundane labour, meals and sleeping and it was where some of the lowerclass’ most dangerous thinking went on.

Mad let himself consider it. What would happen if after he had participated in combats and contests right in the garden of the new king he might be picked for some sort of special attention. The large white-coated commoner with the unusual face. Bring him to me. But why? I want him to watch over my princes? Make fun of him? I have a hole I need dug?

Mad was a stag whose ego was inflated, for certain, but not so much as it could lift his heavy feet from the ground. He knew, with almost certainty, that the king made commoner contests so that the disenfranchised could knock each other about the feet-and-ears and feel like they had a shot at making good. It was a ruler’s promise that if you worked hard, spent all your off time practicing (rather than thinking) and loved him dearly enough someday you might be elevated. That was how you kept to populace quiet, wasn’t it? If they always thought that the only thing between them and prominence was dedication to the profane business they had been given.

Meanwhile king would actually be watching his royals, as the games was no doubt his primary method for keeping them from becoming complacent to the point of being sedentary. Instead he kept his keen tools against any potential uprising in tip-top shape, and frankly fed them the same ‘hard work sets you free’ line that he fed commoners.

It was all a joke, and so why did Maddy even want to participate? Well, as his toes scraped snow he had to sort of smile at himself.

Dalaigh

Mad was suddenly struck from his reverie, literally, by the sound and sensation of clattering antlers. His first instinct to throw up his head and stagger backward would find him a few paces from the hole, looking into that same uncharacteristically agitated look on his brother’s face. While Madigan had been rapt in his consideration of the socio-political purpose of the Glenmorian King’s Games, Dolly had been very much standing by and waiting for either a withdrawal or a reasonable explanation. That one was in no way forthcoming seemed to be swiftly sending the lanky stag into a frothing madness, as well. He’d strode forward with full confidence to clatter his rack into Maddy’s, and was now affixing him with the sort of look that couldn’t wait to do it again.

Madigan

“Wot is wrog wif you, Dolly?!” Mad shouted, breaking the very important undertaking rule of keeping quiet so that no one need even risk being reminded of what you’re up to out there late at night, “'Hve you gone mad on me?”

Dalaigh

The Doll took a step towards him, which Mad could only respond to with an unbelieving gaze and a responding step of retreat.

“You said--” he began, pausing so that Mad could loudly insist ‘Wot did I say?’ in a way which firmly denied his tendency for creating catchy phrases and implanting them into those nearby as an easy means of influencing their thought when the rest of him couldn’t be present, “--you said that--”

Madigan

A wave of annoyance overtook Mad, and as it passed it wiped away the brief shock of fear he’d had when finding himself squared off against Dolly.

What a mad little bugger. What an absolute lunatic, that Dalaigh. Whose idea was he anyway? What sort of mad shadowy figure had envisioned such a stag as could stand across from his own brother (and next to a corpse at that) and think whatever thought was about to come out of this one’s fool mouth.

“--’ere now,” he insisted, “before you say anovver word you just kna, Dolly, that I will bury you in this ‘ole. I will knock ya aahhht and put ya in the bloomin' ground if the next fin' ya say is even half rathead*. You mark me word. Brovwer or nah. If i’s ratheaded, in the ground wif ya.”

Dalaigh

Dolly closed his mouth in the midst of his unspoken word. Slowly. There was, by his own admission, a reasonable chance that what he was about to say could be either a misquote or a misinterpretation which could be perceived as ratheaded and result -- if he understood the threat correctly -- in being buried alive.

The two grew quiet again, and all the electricity that had built up around them and bloomed into this altercation slowly settled into the snow. A sharp and chilly wind blustered through, found the moment uncomfortable and moved on.

“This is serious.”

Madigan

“It ain’t thump me on the ‘ead serious,” Mad insisted.

Mad took a minute or two to find the reason he’d reached for joining in the games. What was probably his true motivator, but that he’d only just gotten his teeth around when Dalaigh so very rudely interupted the procession of his thoughts. With another snort and a bit of a shake he reapproached the hole.

“Come breach ‘is, will ya? An’ for your information, I'm mostly gettin' in this fin' for the beat ups.”

Dalaigh

Dalaigh heard this reasoning, and it seemed sound.

Competing for the king’s notice, the admiration of rutting does, and for titles did not make sense to him. They were Needlers, and it was not what they did. In fact it jeopardized what they did do, and ‘stood for’. It was Dalaigh’s understanding that his brother had always intended to stand in opposition to tradition and that he shirked both it and social normality and close-minded exclusionism that only served the purpose of forwarding those what had originally put it in place. It would be difficult to stand in opposition to traditions while also participating in them, he thought, and so more than being dangerous it was a distinctly un-Maddy like thing to do to participate.

But joining up just to scrap and fight? That made a little more sense.

There were still ways to do it in a less sanctioned, more wholesome manner but the logical was still there.

Dalaigh walked over to the spot of earth that Maddy had cleared. He sent out waves of his mind’s energy -- refocused from conflict. When he found it, soft soil receptive to the gentle touch of his magical probing, he tilted his antlers down and began.

Beneath the lightly frosted grass the ground had grown firm -- stiffer even than the body they intended to bury. After a moment or two of flexing his minimal magical muscles, however, Dalaigh had the earth churning. Roiling, tumbling earth in a small area teamed as if troubled by thousands of ants.

“I am sorry,” he said once he had stood straight again.

Madigan

“Daan't worry abaht it,” Maddy soothed as his hooves slipped into the freezing earth and began to break it up into even larger chunks for removal, “Just remember tuh point that 6crazy aahhht from the family, aw’right Dolly? Never in.”

FOOTNOTES: