Heavenfall

Low-growing plants swished around Ko's legs as she slowly paced the river bank between the evening's light rain showers, looking disturbed--a frown pinched the corners of her mouth and eyes and tightened a line between her eyebrows. She carried her walking staff and used it to test the rain-dampened ground carefully, wary of loose spots on the bank that might send her sliding toward the contaminated water below. Nonetheless, she stuck close to the edge, and peered at the water with half an eye even while moving.

"Whit dae ye mak' o' this river?" A man Ko might or might not recognise approached through whatever dense and twisted bank vegetation was there. Some smaller creature likely trotted in some distance beside him, with how the sweet flags were undulating. "Feels lik' a steid whaur mair bog hags cuid bide, nay?"

"Umm... huh?" Ko's head came up as she sighted the newcomer. She recognized the man by sight, but, since she'd never really spoken with him, she wasn't prepared for his accent--it cost her some extra effort to listen to and speak clearly with these 'Empire' tribespeople anyway, having heard only a single isolated dialect for most of her own life to date. This was something else again, though.

She managed to pick out a few words, anyway... she hoped. "It's sick." She poked the squishy edge of the bank warily with her staff. "Running water shouldn't be like this. Even standing water shouldn't be like... this."

"It seems tae me that th' closer we git tae th' destination th' mair rotten hings ur. Sae likelie tis nae th' wirst we wull be seeing." He seemed to be honestly engaged in the now ignited conversation without heed for how his highlander's vernacular impacted on its shamelessness, or rather lack thereof. "Better tae keep awa' fae this. Ah mentioned bog hags. We murdurred some awready. Thay hud caught up wi' us in th' lest swamp, wi' compromising oor effort in mynd."

"Murdered some... who? You mean the monsters people were talking of?" Ko's brows knit as she turned toward Koyama, reluctant to put her back fully to the stream, but hoping that if she could see his mouth she might be able to understand better.

"Maybe this sickness comes from the place we're going to, but poison doesn't run up streams." She poked the ground with her stick again for emphasis. "There's no keeping away any more, I think. If the water's bad here, so is the land we're standing on. It's just that land is stubborn where water reveals."

---
((Considering that I'd already fixed on Ko's Antisocial representing some difficulty following other tribes' dialects, this is definitely... interesting, heh))

(XD)

Koyama nodded in confirmation and agreement, keeping eyes on the river for them both, just in case. "Maybee th' sickness, lik' posh fish, kin gang up th' river. Maybee th' rivers shift thair runs here. "It is whit it is. Foul."

He rested his wrist on the head of his large bronze hatchet. "'n' aye, bog hags. Skin thieves. Thay murdurr whin no-one sees, pelt us 'n' dress th' skin. We fun four 'n' dealt wi' them."

"More likely the poison's in the soil, like salt, and goes into the water that way." Ko turned over a clod with her stick, gingerly, and made a face at the unidentifiable small crawling things that fled the sunlight as soon as they were exposed.

"They change skins?" That caught her interest.

"Thay flay folk 'n' tak' thair skins. Or sae ah ken fae whit a saw." He said, watching fleeing maggots, or rather the places where they had been.

"Ugh." That was all too much like horrible parody of the tales Ko loved, in which other beings took off their beast-skin cloaks to walk among humans.

"I really don't like this place." Her thin smile was wry, poking fun at herself for the extreme obviousness of this statement. She thumped her stick on the sickly undergrowth a few times to knock away any clinging foul dirt, with more vehemence than was probably strictly called for.