Jeane du Merlot, Part One: A Thunderous Beginnning!
The captain had said to be prepared for anything but
nothing could have prepared Jeane du Merlot for what
happened. She had just swabbed out the forward gun
when the very voices of Legion spoke behind her!
Picked up by an unseen hand and carried like a cotton
bloom on the wind, she hurtled toward the front of the
ship. Luckily the same force that picked her up also
blew the front of the ship outward and with the First
Prophet's own luck, she sailed out of the resulting
hole in a great arc to drop into the cold waters of
the river, relatively intact.
Pieces of the ship and pieces of other unthinkable
things littered the surface of the water around her as
she gasped for air. She reached out and grabbed onto a
large piece of wood that later turned out to be the
masthead of the ship: a large fierce eagle in
mid-swoop. Grasping this makeshift float, (which
somehow managed to look more suprised than fierce),
she gazed incomprehensively at the sight before her.
She must have turned a complete flip in the air, since
she now faced the burning hulk of the once-proud War
Eagle. As she watched the sails caught, and men and
women scrambled to extricate themselves from the
burning rigging. In all of her 18 years she had never
witnessed a scene more horrifying. It was too much and
she succumbed to the relief of unconsciousness.
.......................................................................................
Waking cold, sore, and very wet, Jeane tried to
determine where she was. She looked about her in the
failing light and discovered that she must have washed
up on the shore of the river further downstream from
the place of the War Eagle's (and very nearly her own)
demise. She dragged herself further up the shore
before her strength and her consciousness fled her
again.
Later in the evening, awaking to a state of
half-dreaming, she saw a beautiful man silhouetted
above her, looking at her with a half quizzical smile
in his eyes. Eyes which danced strangely by the light
of a nearby fire...
"Who....?", she tried to form the words, which only came
out in a croaking whisper.
The man placed his long thin finger on her lips. It
was very cold to the touch... She noted with a strange
sort of new-found clarity that his nails were very
long, almost claws...
"That is not important right now," he said. His voice
was somehow like a clear mountain stream bubbling over
sunny rocks. The coldness that accompanies such brooks
was somehow still present in spite of his smiling
eyes. And then, as he placed a warm homespun blanket
over her, "Sleep is what you need my little sister.
Sleep and heal; for tomorrow your life begins anew."
With those words a deep slumber overtook her and she
knew no more until morning...