[WFRP2e] The Power of One - Part 2 - "Transire Benefaciendo"

[MrAbdiel]

"Forry..."

As you approach, your judgement seems to be correct. The mutant, though unclean and unsightly, seems to bear no weapons. He is covered in scars, cuts and bruises of hard living; some from the abuse of others it seems, though you note his knuckles are not calloused over, nor do his mutations include claws or teeth suitable for combat. He tucks himself into the corner of the room at the bottom of the ladder he is too frightened or in pain to climb, holding the wounded left arm to himself and the right hand up with its palm out in an apologetic gesture. Big, dark eyes flick to you occasionally in awful fear and the familiar anticipation of pain which you have seen in the eyes of dozens and dozens of miserable slaves. His refrain, Forry, he repeats like a warding mantra against that predicted punishment.

Cestié is wary as you and Bella turn immediately to pity; but he can't deny the compelling, odd innocence of the mutant fellow. Too hideous to dwell with humans; apparently, too dim-witted and gentle to be of any use to the various gangs, he has somehow scrounged out a life amoungst the refuse of the dilapidated East District of Miragliano.

"Oh! It's alright, it's alright. No, I'm sorry - you just.. frightened me!" Bella tries to explain. The slow calming fear in the mutants eyes seeps away with enough soothing from the pair of you, eventually enough that you are able to get close, take out the small kit of medical tools you have suitable for travel, and carefully unpick from his ravaged side some of the shrapnel you had carefully packed into your weapon earlier. It's a great mess of flesh wounds, and you end up bandaging up much of his skinny left leg and arm, and atleast cleaning the wounded on his oddly pudgy torso. After that, you convince him to take the draught; he cradles it carefully, sipping as directed until it is gone; relinquishing the vial back to you when you reach for it. It helps a great deal.

He doesn't seem to have much in the way of words. He understands Tilean as long as you speak slowly and clearly; but he himself tends to veer back to a few well learned phrases, or repetitions of simple ones he has constructed to convey something specific, without much capacity to rephrase or elaborate. You manage to extract from him that his name is Olio.

He must be in a great deal of pain, but after a while Olio just seems nervously pleased to have positive company even smiling a fair bit, wincingly. His fingertips worry at the air close to his chest when he is nervous; his trunk occasionally quirking up to snuffle at the air.

"Raphs 'teal me net..." He offers in what seems like an explanation, particularly to Bella. When that doesn't seem quite understood, he struggles to his feet again, and to the ladder. "Look, look... Look."

Up he goes, more slowly and carefully now; favoring the right leg, not using the left arm, but making it. Cestié tries to argue against the delay, but Bella insists on indulging him. She is clearly stricken with guilt, for the wound she inflicted.

You think briefly about "False Bertuccio"; the mutant whom Simonuccio and the Matrone suggested probably had his own face and name and life before one cursed Mystery Night where he was warped for the pleasure of an evil god into the likeness of the local lawman. At the time, Simonuccio's cold absolute assurance that mutants required death was an invitation to believe in easy if somewhat unpleasant answers to complicated problems like that. But then, Simonuccio's approach came into question not so long after... Considering what Bertuccio meant to Bella and how distressing the whole scenario was, she must have spent some nights dwelling on the hanged mutant in Bella Collina's village square - what he deserved; what he got.

When you and Bella follow Olio up into the attic, you find a narrow, cramped living space. A nest of rags must serve as his bed in one corner. The fireplace downstairs is of course waterlogged; but he has knocked a hole in the side of the chimney as it passes through the attic and plugged it with stone and mud, now baked hard from many nights of petty fires for cooking and warmth. A disorganized pile of woodscraps a crude tools lie in another corner; and in another lies a flattened mat of reeds upon which he has heaped a small mound of picked-clean fish skeletons from the swamp below.

And finally, the most precious corner to which he is look looking you, there is little wooden crate; and within that crate is an almost perfectly fine blanket; and curled up on that blanket is a lazy, lean looking, smoke-grey mother cat. Four mewing kittens, two grey, one white, one almost black, bumble around over and past each other trying to suckle.

Olio looks on the little feline treasury with paternal wonder, before wincing at a flare of pain from his bloodied side; and then offers a smile almost in apology for the wince to the pair of you.

"Raphs 'teal me net...", he offers again; brushing at the pile of cleaned fishbones with sadness in his odd features.